Okay, but if someone wrote a story about finding a snake a mile long, I'd be dubious, but I couldn't completely rule it out. Weird shit has happened. If someone wrote about finding a dog who can eat memories, that's just obviously bullshit. It would require literally actually magic to be real, even from a layperson's perspective who can't explain why a snake a mile long probably requires magic or a different sort of planet to exist.
General Exalted Thread
I mean, they're already canon in Hundred Devil Night Parade, are native to Sijan, and are also good bois. Unless the devs specifically say that the Grave Hound is verboten due to being too weird and out there to qualify as a regular animal, if a player wants their form they just need to explain what they were doing in Sijan, or how one was imported all the way to where the game was set.
The guidelines Vance gave in the Ask the Dev thread explicitly disqualify stuff that is overtly magical like that. It's based on an animal, but it's not one. It's a weird underworld beast with weird magic powers. There is no explanation you could possibly give me as a player that would convince me a grave hound counts as a mundane animal when it is literally a dog except more magical.
Fair enough! I'll read the Dev Thread.
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Why the fuck not? I've never considered the Lunar totem idea to be in any way special or significant. It's just more oWerewolf cruft from the disastrous pseudo-pivot back in 1e.
I legitimately wouldn't be surprised if they got retconned into spirits, just to make sure the "mundane v. magical" tissue graft from D&D that they're busily sewing onto Exalted's body takes properly.
A snake that's a mile long and dozens of feet wide? No, that's also obviously bullshit unless you're literally a peasant from the Middle Ages who believes that all Catholic priests are taught a secret ritual to invoke God's wrath to kill the person of their choice at the cost of immediate excommunication should they use it. If you saw a mile long snake rearing up above the treetops, your first thought would not be "Oh, what a strange but perfectly normal creature!"
At that point, you might as well just say that medieval almanacs and folklore are a valid source of "mundane animals", like the old-timey dragons that breathed poison gas, or Pausanius' account of the manticore from the 2nd century AD, which could shoot its tail spikes at people like arrows and had an old man's face. At this point, I can only assume that your definition of "mundane animal" also allows for the Dire Beast and Titanic Beast templates from 3.0 D&D.
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Wrong, almost certainly wrong, half-true, wrong, incidentally wrong.
Non-animal forms showed up in the Lunars manual, which included plant, elemental, demon, and behemoth forms.
I'm quite confident there was no public admission that they couldnt make animal shapeshifting useful attached.
Lunars have strong connections to the natural world, but they have even stronger connections to the monstrous, the impossible, and the strange.
As Kaiya pointed out, explicitly magical beings in general seem to be off the table.
And a Tyrant Lizard is very unlikely to devour a Solar Circle, even at chargen.
Totems have always been stupid and there's never been a good reason for anything about them.
If I was writing Lunars I'd let them have whatever totems their players wanted. Ghost, dragon, featureless black cube, Lookshyan national anthem, concept of rehabilitation. Whatever. But that's me, and I realise it's a radical approach.
Is this some kind of joke?
shulkerbox
free gender radicals (ze/hir)
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Ugh, since everyone seems to be really caught on mile-long snakes for some reason - Lunars don't need to hunt a mile long snake and take it's form - they have a charm to turn that big.
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That's how turning into magical beings should work in general.
*shrugs* Says you. You can feel free to stop denigrating D&D anytime, though, that'd be great.
Aha, my bad. You're right, I forgot about the Form Acquisition Knacks in the 2E core and assumed the extra bells and whistles came from Glories.
I was being at least somewhat facetious, but it's true that Glories introduced the ability to take the form of Ghosts, Gods, and Raksha, which in 2E were all more useful than the baseline animal forms. The question of 'why would I even bother shapeshifting outside of Deadly Beastman Transformation' was a serious one for Lunars in 2E, and something that I believe Glories attempted to address by broadening the number of forms they're able to take.
I realize that it's something of an extrapolation on my part, given they never explicitly outright said it, but given that I'm also debating with with other people that no, they're not trying to literally turn Lunars into D&D Wildshape: The Splat or that the Lunars are incompetent because the Dragonblooded aren't pathetic pushovers, I don't think my extrapolation is all that out there or out of left field.
None of that means that they have inherent connection with ghosts, raksha, or celestial level deities.
My bad! Though given that Miles Long Serpents are explicitly mentioned by Vance as being on the table, there's still room for debate. He certainly said in Kaiya's link that the Grosbeak would not qualify, but creatures like the Metagalapan Hawk or the Tiger's Eye are still very much on the table.
Maybe not a whole circle, but I'd give it better than even odds with a starting Solar that isn't optimized for combat.
It carries implications about the characteristics and personality of the Lunar who has the totem. It's as central to a Lunar as an anima banner is to a Solar. A reader is going to make assumptions about say, a Lion Totem Lunar, a Bull Totem Lunar, or a Hyena Totem Lunar, by default.
I'd rather not let it be something that absurdly cartoony or wacky for its own sake. That isn't going to add anything positive to the game.
Sorry?
I mean that for the most part, the property that makes this creature unique compared to a mundane Serpent is Legendary Size and some heavily scaled up Soak, Strength, and Health Levels. Lunars can in fact devour and take the form of animals with Legendary Size, so I don't see any reason why they must be taken off the table especially when Vance said they were fair game.That's still a massive stretch, given that again, in this setting mundane animals include a shark that can freely swim through mist and a snake the size of a river. From what I understand Vance will make it clear which animals are fair game for Lunars and which are not by the time Fangs at the Gate is released, and I'd wager anything that what is mundane for Creation is still going to be utterly weird by our standards.
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A snake literally a mile long would be pushing what I'd be willing to allow, honestly, and I'd probably ask it be reduced to a few hundred feet. At that stage I'm writing landscape altering merits to account for it's sheer bulk. I make a distinction between "impossibly big" and "magic", but there are limits for my own suspension of disbelief.Aha, my bad. You're right, I forgot about the Form Acquisition Knacks and assumed the extra bells and whistles came from Glories.
I was being at least somewhat facetious, but it's true that Glories introduced the ability to take the form of Ghosts, Gods, and Raksha, which in 2E were all more useful than the baseline animal forms.
None of that means that they have inherent connection with ghosts, raksha, or celestial level deities.
My bad! Though given that Miles Long Serpents are explicitly mentioned by Vance as being on the table, there's still room for debate. He certainly said in Kaiya's link that the Grosbeak would not qualify, but creatures like the Metagalapan Hawk or the Tiger's Eye are still very much on the table.
Maybe not a whole circle, but I'd give it better than even odds with a starting Solar that isn't optimized for combat.
It carries implications about the characteristics and personality of the Lunar who has the totem. It's as central to a Lunar as an anima banner is to a Solar. A reader is going to make assumptions about say, a Lion Totem Lunar, a Bull Totem Lunar, or a Hyena Totem Lunar, by default.
I'd rather not let it be something that absurdly cartoony or wacky for the sake of it.
Sorry?
That said, I do agree with shulkerbox, it seems like a non-issue as it's likely there aren't actual miles long snakes, but probably some magic to become that huge.
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I can see arguments for excluding certain classes of being from Lunar shapeshifting. But leaving out everything with magic is just not a good idea.
Same.
Like I said, I'm a bit fringe on this issue.
But I think the anima banner comparison is appropriate, because Solar players have, and should have, almost total freedom in describing their banners.
Sorry?
Legendary Size goes on things smaller than the average house.
The mechanics of Legendary Size alone are not adequate to represent the impossible immensity of a river-sized creature. Actually, at that point I'd seriously consider throwing out the combat mechanics. Mahicara already has six separate health tracks and a bunch of extra abilities on account of sheer hugeness, and on a geographical scale it's a speck.
I kind of agree. I think the Grave Hound should be on the table, if possible, simply because it'd be really neat if my player can be a spooky good boi. I'll wait to see how Lunars 3E actually handles it, mind, and it's true that taking the shape of creatures with an assload of magical abilities on top of the character's native Lunar Charms is just going to be a massive headache for everyone involved.
I like the Beast Totem aspect, if only because it does carry implications that carries over into the character. Leviathan's Totem is an Orca, and he is both massive, aloof and detached from the surface world, and a terrifying predator. A Spider Totem carries very different implications in terms of personality for the character than a Bear, for example, in ways that benefit the character.
But it's harder to characterize or boil down a Ghost to specific essential characteristics or attributes because the Ghost is fully sapient and can vary wildly in characteristics beyond the supernatural category that they all share. A Ghost Totem would tell you almost nothing about the Lunar other than the fact that they are happily stepping on the toes of the local Abyssal.
AmineHsu
A worm, not a man, scorned and despised.
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If having Hearth-Cat totem is wrong, I don't wanna be right.
But seriously, I don't think totems are a completely bad idea, I just feel like... they should be more customizable than as of yet indicated. Like having it reflect soem animal is... fine, but I feel like it should also reflect the legend of the Lunar, because it's more interesting and also it's more fun. The mechanics for this even... sorta... exist already within the familar rules.
I have a lot of other ideas on Lunars, but I'll freely admit Lunars (outside TAW) have never realized jived with me, so I'd probably never be all that happy unless many of the old thematics were tossed in favor of new stuff (like, I honestly despise the Sacred Hunt in both flavor and mechanics, The Tell I super-hate and the tattoos always felt like an obnoxiously forced aestetic. the whole Lunar Mate/Solar Mate thing.... can do done good I think, but when I see it creep into mechanics in the form of "lol you mate can null (some of) your social defenses" it makes me kinda hate it)
But seriously, I don't think totems are a completely bad idea, I just feel like... they should be more customizable than as of yet indicated. Like having it reflect soem animal is... fine, but I feel like it should also reflect the legend of the Lunar, because it's more interesting and also it's more fun. The mechanics for this even... sorta... exist already within the familar rules.
I have a lot of other ideas on Lunars, but I'll freely admit Lunars (outside TAW) have never realized jived with me, so I'd probably never be all that happy unless many of the old thematics were tossed in favor of new stuff (like, I honestly despise the Sacred Hunt in both flavor and mechanics, The Tell I super-hate and the tattoos always felt like an obnoxiously forced aestetic. the whole Lunar Mate/Solar Mate thing.... can do done good I think, but when I see it creep into mechanics in the form of "lol you mate can null (some of) your social defenses" it makes me kinda hate it)
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So here's a question? Does anyone actually like 2e/1e lunars? If so why?
To be clear I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm trying to determine their good points so we can have a productive discussion going forward. Leaving out 3e since they aren't released yet
To be clear I'm not trying to be confrontational, I'm trying to determine their good points so we can have a productive discussion going forward. Leaving out 3e since they aren't released yet
I was never into them. I'd like them to be good, but only in the sense that I'd like as many things possible to be good. But their implementation was flawed from the word go. 2E Lunars was actually an improvement over 1E, but still deeply flawed in many ways.
1e Lunars were written by an ignorant, vaguely racist bastard. 2e Lunars...worked, mostly, as long as you wanted to be a werewolf murderbeast or a social powerhouse. There's a reason so many people used TAW, and that reason is 2e Lunars were just uninspired. They weren't talking about how you'll probably rape some people since you're a bunch of illiterate savages, though, so they were a big step up from 1e.
Now, now.
It took inspiration to decide that you really hated the idea of Eclipses learning Lunar shapeshifting things, but also that you hated the idea of there being Charms an Eclipse couldn't learn, so you'd design the entire "Charm" bit of the Lunar set to be Eclipse-OK, and fold everything else into Knacks.
Not necessarily good inspiration, but inspiration.
eclipses delanda est
As much as this may draw flak, I liked (some of) the wyld associations Lunars had. Previous editions had this thing where the Wyld existed as its own sub-setting (like Malfeas or Authochthonia but FAR less interesting) that consisted of a few barbarian tribes that lived near it, the Fairy LARP kingdoms that preyed on them, and a loot pinata to WST things out of past that.
Lunars dragging Creation stuff out into the Wyld and Wyld stuff into creation (narratively, not objects so much) helped to (a little bit) make it feel like an actual part of the setting.
Now, the Wyld being a good part of the setting is a different issue and I never really liked the treatments of it. But if its there it should be integrated.
Lunars dragging Creation stuff out into the Wyld and Wyld stuff into creation (narratively, not objects so much) helped to (a little bit) make it feel like an actual part of the setting.
Now, the Wyld being a good part of the setting is a different issue and I never really liked the treatments of it. But if its there it should be integrated.
Personally, I liked the whole Thousand-Stream thing.
The bit where some writers wanted to make the Lunars more based on relationships and people over Big Concepts also resonated with me a lot and is why I ended up playing a lot of Lunars. I have trouble sympathizing with the "archetypical" Solar mindset - there were few things I hated more in 2E than the "epic Motivation" thing. I never knew what to put there, because none of my characters want to turn the world around or anything. So "Lunars are more based on relationships with people" was basically "hey, Drascin, these are your guys" in so many words.
And well, becoming a giant Tyrannosaur and getting into a kaiju fight with a dragon is always fun.
The bit where some writers wanted to make the Lunars more based on relationships and people over Big Concepts also resonated with me a lot and is why I ended up playing a lot of Lunars. I have trouble sympathizing with the "archetypical" Solar mindset - there were few things I hated more in 2E than the "epic Motivation" thing. I never knew what to put there, because none of my characters want to turn the world around or anything. So "Lunars are more based on relationships with people" was basically "hey, Drascin, these are your guys" in so many words.
And well, becoming a giant Tyrannosaur and getting into a kaiju fight with a dragon is always fun.
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This is actually I theme I find super intersting as well, and it works as a nice contrast to solars
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- She/Her
I maintain that the Thousand Streams River was bad design and ultimately worse off for the game at large, and that's a position I will maintain until I die.