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General Exalted Thread

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Ok, um, I got some things I wrote down when I was thinking of 'resources'.

GAINING THE RICHES BELOW - SOLAR CIRCLE SPELL
Motes: 60m
Duration: Permanent:

The sorcerer goes to the geomantic center of the area he wishes to cast this spell in, and carves out the sigil of the Kukla on a rock from that area. And then he repeats the process at each of the area's 4 cardinal directions, chanting the hymns of rebirth, of disaster bringing forth riches. After that, he goes to the center, and performs the sign of destructive change while standing in front of the center sigil. It is at this point in time that the sorcerer decides what kind of underground resources he wishes for. Then the sorcerer flees for his life, for at this moment, the very earth around him quakes.

Earthquakes and tremors rock the area defined by the four sigils at the edges, with small after shocks affecting the nearby area, enough to knock down straw and mud houses, and enough to crack brick ones. Within the area, any building that is not made of the magical materials is shake apart, while manses lose power and shut down as the dragon lines are reordered. All tunnels and previous excavations into the earth are collapsed and reordered, and everything in the general area at the ground level is completely destroyed and remade.

After a month of the catalysm, the shaking stops. And the miracle appears. What the miracle manifests as, depends on what the sorcerer wanted. If the sorcerer desired a diamond mine, he would be able to literally pick up diamonds just by digging into the ground, less than a foot from the surface. If he wishes for gold, he can walk towards the river, and find hundreds of thousands of nuggest of pure gold, released by the eruptions and overtuning of the earth. Any minerla, metal, or any resource which can be taken from the ground itself, can be created with this spell. With the exception of the five magical materials. Those can only be brought closer and more accessible to the surface, not created wholesale by this spell.

A/N: A question. Should this be celestial or Solar? I think being able to own the richest mines in creation should be a good thing, but in bronze age societies, food is always more important.
 
Accelerator said:
Ok, um, I got some things I wrote down when I was thinking of 'resources'.

A/N: A question. Should this be celestial or Solar? I think being able to own the richest mines in creation should be a good thing, but in bronze age societies, food is always more important.
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I'm not the greatest at judging Sorcery, but I do think you're on the right track. The existing Terrestrial Circle Spell... Smoke Dragon I think? Basically it creates an automaton that seeks out a concrete Thing which includes mundane resources. So you'd start as 'This is the Celestial Version of That', essentially.

One major issue is that there's no roll or mechanic to gauge the quality of the find, no int+occult roll at X difficulty or any sort of ritual-behavior modifier. Like, logically you could be able to get ores and metals easier in mountains or rocky areas. Things like that.
 
Accelerator said:
A/N: A question. Should this be celestial or Solar? I think being able to own the richest mines in creation should be a good thing, but in bronze age societies, food is always more important.
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From what I can gather, this spell actually restructures the local Earth Essence to generate resources ex nihilo, instead of dragging up existing deposits for easier collection. Being able to make anything short of the magical materials just happen, and in vast quantities, is definitely the product of Adamant Circle Sorcery. That's the kind of power normally reserved for the Unquestionable.

On the other hand, if I've misread and the spell is just dredging up existing deposits of the specified substance, then it's a solid Sapphire Circle spell - it fast-tracks industry by obviating the usual costs and time for procuring materials, but you still need to actually prospect around until you find somewhere with a sufficient quantity of existing ore or else you're flying blind. Definitely miraculous and a huge display of supernatural power, but still much closer to parting the Red Sea than it is to the Flood.
 
GardenerBriareus said:
From what I can gather, this spell actually restructures the local Earth Essence to generate resources ex nihilo, instead of dragging up existing deposits for easier collection. Being able to make anything short of the magical materials just happen, and in vast quantities, is definitely the product of Adamant Circle Sorcery. That's the kind of power normally reserved for the Unquestionable.

On the other hand, if I've misread and the spell is just dredging up existing deposits of the specified substance, then it's a solid Sapphire Circle spell - it fast-tracks industry by obviating the usual costs and time for procuring materials, but you still need to actually prospect around until you find somewhere with a sufficient quantity of existing ore or else you're flying blind. Definitely miraculous and a huge display of supernatural power, but still much closer to parting the Red Sea than it is to the Flood.
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I'm afraid you've misread. It does create the resources ex nihilo. The only thing that it can't create Ex Nihilo is stuff like the five magical materials. Those are dredged up to the surface. So yes, that means you can literally pick up hunks of jade or orichalcum, but that's it. if there was no jade at the start, then you're out of luck.

Shyft said:
I'm not the greatest at judging Sorcery, but I do think you're on the right track. The existing Terrestrial Circle Spell... Smoke Dragon I think? Basically it creates an automaton that seeks out a concrete Thing which includes mundane resources. So you'd start as 'This is the Celestial Version of That', essentially.
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I'm.. afraid not. At least I don't think its that spell in particular. Smoke Dragon leads you to resources. It leads you to stuff like gold, jade, water, food, but it doesn't actually create them, unless I have done a fatal rereading. This one does.
 
Accelerator said:
I'm afraid you've misread. It does create the resources ex nihilo. The only thing that it can't create Ex Nihilo is stuff like the five magical materials. Those are dredged up to the surface. So yes, that means you can literally pick up hunks of jade or orichalcum, but that's it. if there was no jade at the start, then you're out of luck.


I'm.. afraid not. At least I don't think its that spell in particular. Smoke Dragon leads you to resources. It leads you to stuff like gold, jade, water, food, but it doesn't actually create them, unless I have done a fatal rereading. This one does.
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You're correct re: Smoke Dragon, I'm using it as an example of 'Okay, this is the same basic idea of 'Acquire Resources with Sorcery'. So you go 'Okay, that spell costs XYZ, with these ritual behaviors. I want it to be Better, so i make it cost a little more in time/motes/ritual, and I get More out of it- resources Ex Nihilo and so on.
 
Shyft said:
You're correct re: Smoke Dragon, I'm using it as an example of 'Okay, this is the same basic idea of 'Acquire Resources with Sorcery'. So you go 'Okay, that spell costs XYZ, with these ritual behaviors. I want it to be Better, so i make it cost a little more in time/motes/ritual, and I get More out of it- resources Ex Nihilo and so on.
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True.... and it manifests differently.

Question. How about a spell that repairs entire buildings and cities sound like?

Apologies, but I found some interesting homebrewed spells.

Celestial Circle Sorcery
Cost: 30 motes

All earthly materials are but a concatenation of the five elements, mingled together upon a weft of Essence. The master sorcerer may cleanse the Essence of matter of all detritus and impurity, transforming it into something finer. This spell transmutes any base substance into a nobler one. Tree bark becomes cinnamon, canvas becomes silk, lead becomes gold, and glass becomes diamond.

Each casting of the spell affects a single object no larger than a table or a suit of armor. Any mundane material can be transformed into something of value; the wealth provided by a single casting of the spell can provide up to five dots of Resources if used wisely. Food and drink become of the finest quality, no matter how foul, poisonous or inedible it may have been. Any mundane item can be likewise improved, becoming a Perfect item (see the Exalted Player's Guide, page 145).

This spell cannot create any of the Five Magical Materials, nor can it generate substances not found in Creation. Exactly what a given material can be refined into is up to the discretion of the Storyteller.
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Within the OutsideWorld
Solar Circle
Cost: 50 motes or 10 motes

To prepare for this spell, the sorcerer draws up a set of plans for the dwelling. This requires special inks costing Resources-4. These plans show what the rooms are and how they connect together. All of the connections between rooms must exist at the time the spell is cast. As the spell is the cast, the sorcerer traces the lines of the plan, paying special attention to the connections(doorways, stairways etc) between rooms. Casting takes one hour per hundread sections of the dwelling, and must be done within sight of a section of the dwelling, but not in any of them. At the end of the spell, all of the rooms in the dwelling are connected togther as shown on the plan. Note, the individual sections of the plan can exist anywhere in creation. This spell effectivly creates magical connections between rooms as specified on the plan. There is no limitation on the connections between rooms other than there must be holes in the walls of each room and all the rooms must have the same orientation(so a door in one room cannot be a trapdoor in another, although a trapdoor in the floor of a room deep underground could connect to the ceiling of that was physical above it). Thus a sorcery can be in a room high in a tower in Nexus and walk out the doorway into a underground cellar beneath the Realm. This spell can create an underground room with a view, for instance. There do not need to be doors between the rooms and it is possible to look through doorways just fine. The rooms are connected for all practical purposes, charms and sorcery will work accross connections normally.

The plans may consist of multple pages, as it is quite possible to have a room layout that cannot be drawn on a plane. Additionally, the spell can compensate for minor differnces in the architecture, i.e. two rooms may be connected, even if their doorways are not exactly the same size, although gross mismatches will need to be corrected before the spell can be cast. Connections, such as doorways that are taken over by this spell disappear and become like the surrounding wall, doorways not affect by this spell work normally. In fact, it is even possible to connect two doorways in the same room, although this is considerd childish, as it's very confusing to look out of a room and into it at the same time.

Adamant Countermagic directed at a connection between rooms will sever the connection, reverting the connection to it's prevous state. Broken connections can be repaired for 10 motes each, although after a while it becomes more effient to recast the entire spell. Countermagic directed against the plan destroys the entire spell. Massive architectural damange will also break the connections between rooms(Yes, breaking down the wall may make it more difficult to get to the next room. Yes, that was a magic bearing wall)

The spell is fine for normal traffic, but if a large number of people pass through a single connection, that connection may fail for a day or so.
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Your views?
 
Accelerator said:
True.... and it manifests differently.

Question. How about a spell that repairs entire buildings and cities sound like?

Apologies, but I found some interesting homebrewed spells.

Your views?
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For 'mass repair' you want to look at Incantation of Effective Restoration as a baseline, which is for held objects of a certain size. Exalted 2e defines the difference between an object or structure as 'Objects are things you can lift and are smaller than a Yeddim'. (a yeddim is like 18 feet tall and several thousand pounds, like a very hairy camel-elephant).

The trick about mass repair (and really any spell) is that you really ought keep in mind things like 'Does this break the setting, would the setting as we see it deform around this spell, etc.

Like, let's say you make your spell and it works on an Entire City. Logically you're going to want to use it on say, Meru, the city, which was wrecked in the Usurpation. Does your spell heal all the geomancy, the artifacts and magical stuff that went into it, etc? Would it create a world-changing impact like testing a nuclear weapon did? I don't think it should, for the record, as that'd be Too Powerful for CCS and maybe even SCS.

Another thing to remember is that there are uncountable Terrestrial Circle Sorcerers, demographically speaking... and far more Celestial Circle than the 700 potential Exalted; Celestial gods can learn Celestial Circle Sorcery, after all. They usually only learn spells relevant to their domain or hobbies though. So from an internal consistency perspective, you need to account for why the spell Hasn't been used yet. You can try to say that Nobody's Invented It Until Now, but that just creates a knowledge-race plot.

Basically you can't just TELL us that nobody has used the spell, you have to prove why it hasn't been used or that it HAS been used and its impact is accounted for in the writing.

So with that in mind, I'd lean towards being very Specific as to what the spell repairs- nothing magical or limited magical. (This ties into the whole thing that a lot of the best writing for Exalted respects infrastructure and then makes very clear exceptions for things like sorcerous miracles).

The CCS transumation spell is overcosted- base material transmutation can be done with thaumaturgy at a very low level, so a generalized TCS 'Transmutation' is fine. I think @EarthScorpion wrote one a while ago.

The door-portal spell overlaps with manse powers too much, and by context of 2e, flies in the face of travel being a challenge. Remember that most sorcery travel spells work in 10s of miles before getting into magical vehicles which go faster. 'Across Creation' teleportation was established in DotFA as requiring unimaginable resources, so you can discard that if you want for Your Game, but it's still a setting statement you ought consider.

Now I wouldn't put it past Creation to have an artifact like a key that lets you open Door A and exit Door B. Either as a set pair or as a generalized 'go anywhere' mechanic as long is it had some limits, but the door-room spell you posted is too fantastically powerful for 'base creation'. Even as a Solar-tier spell.
 
Ok, um..... I'm just going to reply to all of that at once.

For the transmutation spell, I agree. Even the reviewers where it was posted say that they should turn it into terrestrial. I guess the writer never bothered to edit.

As for the giant repair spell, I agree with the thing about magic. No reparing magical artifacts. Only non magical materials. I just like the idea of having old age castles suddenly be repaired overnight.

As for the stuff about the door-portal spell.... I apologise, but I disagree. I think its a wonderful spell, that shows how truly out there Solar Circle Spells can be.

By the way, what do you think about my anti-tech and data dog spell homebrew?
 
Accelerator said:
Ok, um..... I'm just going to reply to all of that at once.

For the transmutation spell, I agree. Even the reviewers where it was posted say that they should turn it into terrestrial. I guess the writer never bothered to edit.

As for the giant repair spell, I agree with the thing about magic. No reparing magical artifacts. Only non magical materials. I just like the idea of having old age castles suddenly be repaired overnight.

As for the stuff about the door-portal spell.... I apologise, but I disagree. I think its a wonderful spell, that shows how truly out there Solar Circle Spells can be.

By the way, what do you think about my anti-tech and data dog spell homebrew?
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Don't care about them, sadly.
 
It isn't quite as explicit rule as these, but 'no making Creation feels smaller by portal and such' is somewhat accepted, too.

That is, you can make stuff that cut away your travel times, but there must be some compensation. Usually, it's not stealthy. Like, 'airplane on the sky' unstealthy.
 
Accelerator said:
Well, I thought that the three rules were: No resurrections, no time travel, and no changing of the celestial bodies.
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You are correct, those are the three hard-fast rules. The reality is that most of us who follow the game have internalized a lot more 'setting-consistency' rules that we all more or less agree on for basic interaction with each other.

Like, if you tell me right now, that your spell is not intended for 'general' use and only is allowed at ST discretion (above even the norm for homebrew), then most of our objectives would fall away. We say what we say because we as a community encourage due-diligence in good writing/design.

Like, if I write a Solar Charm, I write it for Everyone to use- I keep that in mind. I want it to be as convenient and easy to understand as possible, so that it can be plugged into as wide a number of games as possible. Same with an artifact or spell. Adding caveats of 'Don't allow this spell because it fundamentally alters the tone of the game' is the writer's perogative, but you have to make that clear. Otherwise we all take it as benefit-of-the-doubt that you're presenting homebrew for General Consumption.

What I mean by setting-consistency is a simple question: "Does this dramatically change the setting or an accepted book-backed concept or event." We have glib names for it like Usurpation-OK and whatnot, and those are just guidelines to writing what we consider Decent Charms.

So yes, on paper the door portal spell is the kind of out-there wankery that Solar Circle is supposed to be, but it's so far out there that we can't assume it's meant to fit into everyone's games. I know that if I tried to pitch it in Inksgame, Aleph would laugh and laugh and laugh because it obviates about 80% of the gameplay she wants to present. (Now of course there's a counterpoint in that limiting player options so the GM can keep them on rails is it's own problem...)

I think more relevantly, you have to look at a spell or charm in context of the Setting, the Players and the Storyteller. Let's assume for example you have a full circle, plus ST. Let's say one of them went hard into Sail and has a tricked out airship. This is awesome, they can travel across the world, trade goods in a matter of hours, do cool stuff.

The crazy portal spell immediately devalues Sail as an ability and that player's investment. Even with countermagic weaknesses, the spell is too good and unfair to the Eclipse.
 
UrsaTempest said:
It isn't quite as explicit rule as these, but 'no making Creation feels smaller by portal and such' is somewhat accepted, too.

That is, you can make stuff that cut away your travel times, but there must be some compensation. Usually, it's not stealthy. Like, 'airplane on the sky' unstealthy.
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So... basically create stargates? Or make teleport gates that send a certain package across creation in a massive beam of light?
 
So what you're saying is...

No sorcery spells that are better at twilights than healing, no sorcery spells that completely obviate the need for dawns, eclipses and nights, and twilights, because this ain't D&D?
 
Accelerator said:
So... basically create stargates? Or make teleport gates that send a certain package across creation in a massive beam of light?
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I would highly disadvise those too. The good example of magical travel is something like Stormwind Rider. It's fast, and can carry a good bit, but it is very, very obvious on sight from a long way, and very, very loud.
Accelerator said:
No sorcery spells that are better at twilights than healing, no sorcery spells that completely obviate the need for dawns, eclipses and nights, and twilights, because this ain't D&D?
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Those are good guidelines, yes. "Instantly fix any ailments a person may have" is just not a thing you want floating around for general use, because it breaks an entire ability, similar to how Shyft talked about travel magic and Sail.
 
Now, here's the caveat re: Don't devalue an entire ability

It's fine for Sorcery to do mythic things, but you have to look at what is already availible to Non-Sorcerers.

Let's take Solar Medicine, since all the Charms in 2e core cap out at Essence 3; You can heal all Keyword effects, turn Agg Damage to Lethal, heal 3+ HLs per day, treat people in the span of seconds, flawlessly diagnose anything, etc.

There's nothing wrong with say, a sorcery spell that transforms a subject into a glorious orhicalcum golem-servant, instantly healing them of all maladies- but now they're a living gold statue and have a really crazy diet regime and whatnot. Sorcery is messy, it doesn't do cheap, free miracles. Usually the cost is on the Sorcerer with ritual implements and so on.

Most of the advice we're giving here is Practical, on how to Play. Not 'thematic' or 'in keeping with the scope of SCS' which is a secondary concern for most of us.

It's funny that @Monotov mentioned stargates- because that's what DotFA basically did, just establishing that it could only be done during the height of the First Age with frightening infrastructure.
 
Accelerator said:
So... basically create stargates? Or make teleport gates that send a certain package across creation in a massive beam of light?
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2E had something like this when magictech was everywhere and more accessible. They were called Gates of Auspicious Passage, 5 dot artifacts built into 5 dot manses with as much geomantic power going to them as a factory cathedral took to run, only connecting to other similar gates on the same network that each required escalating hundreds of successes to bring online.

All that is vastly more difficult than one Solar spell.
 
So I've always thought that Calibration was basically New Year's and took place around the same time as real life New Year's but I... have no idea if that's actually true in canon. Anyone know?
 
Queshire said:
So I've always thought that Calibration was basically New Year's and took place around the same time as real life New Year's but I... have no idea if that's actually true in canon. Anyone know?
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Creation's end of the year is after the hottest month of summer, Descending Fire, and Calibration marks the point when things begin to rapidly cool down for winter over the course of several weeks due to the extended growing season. "Autumn" lasts roughly one month following Calibration at the beginning of the new year as Ascending Air, before cold storms begin to roll in during Resplendent Air and finally full-blown winter frosts in Descending Air.

For temperature-sensitive places like the North, this is downright apocalyptic in scope, because the rapid pass from Summer to Winter brings not just intense windstorms and freezing rain, but tremendous blizzards during the evening hours once the sun goes down. The South effectively becomes a baking/freezing equatorial desert overnight through Ascending Air, with swift temperature drops at night not Quite as extreme as the North but enough to make exposure a legitimate threat. This is the reason why a lot of folks fear Calibration, not just for the host of strange things happening outside the yearly calendar, but because it also foretells a massive upheaval from the idyllic months prior of calm weather and regular harvests.
 
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Accelerator said:
So... basically create stargates? Or make teleport gates that send a certain package across creation in a massive beam of light?
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UrsaTempest said:
And very high cost, too. Probably need very thorough ritual, or can't be put as one spell.
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Shyft said:
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It's fine for Sorcery to do mythic things, but you have to look at what is already availible to Non-Sorcerers.
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If you're interested in an example of what this might look like @Accelerator, there was an old game from Bungie's old days called Myth: The Fallen Lords that had devices called World Knots which I always thought were a neat idea that might fit into Exalted if you massaged them a bit. The details aren't really addressed in the game, save that what we are shown leads me to infer that they have a useful, yet limited range and require sorcerers to activate and use them, while being vulnerable to sabotage. They're infrastructure in the way this thread is fond of.

Tangential to this, Bungie's Myth series draws on a lot of the same inspirations as the low-to-the-ground parts of Exalted (The Black Company books most visibly), and this shows in the general style and tone of the final product. The Avatara, Fallen Lords, and other mythical figures hold a similar place in the Narrative that the Exalted hold in creation, and you spend most of the game following normal front-line soldiers, who treat the various power players more like natural disasters than anything else. It's a neat perspective.
 
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So maybe make a keystone or something that an enemy can hit in order to destroy it? Or maybe make it maintenance heavy, with monthly sacrifices of resource 5?
 
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