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General Exalted Thread

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Honestly, I personally was really unconvinced by the idea of Exigents, and I'm still not super excited for Liminals or Getimians, but it's genuinely hard for me to imagine the setting without Exigents anymore. Absolutely blew me away. Sovereigns are great and Pakpao is my wife.
 
Oh right. Liminals.

I just do not care at all for Liminals, but eh. Can't all be winners.
 
Hearteaters are a must have for me. But I have them be super rare and not very well understood. They are a perfect foe to bring Immaculates and Silver pact members together to deal with a terrible foe.
 
That's actually one of the major reasons for them to not be Exalted, if you ask me.

They're first and foremost monsters. They work better without the shroud of protagonism that the E-word brings.

VagueZ said:
- Getimians, who I had to warm up to, but they're great: walking paradoxes with power to snarl fate, appearing from nowhere with grand ambitions about how the world should change, and the memories of how they did it before, in a world that never existed... except they can make others remember it. It's a niche that hasn't existed before...
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It existed, it just wasn't canon. Reminscent Oasis's Nocturnals were one of the better bits of 2e homebrew. Even in 3e I still imagine a world on the surface of Creation's sky.

(What I said about being stingier with the E-word doesn't apply to Getimians; they very much fit the mold and play the role. In the absence of 3e Nocturnals I'm glad to have them.)
 
Well that brings the question about whether having a shroud of protagonism when it comes to the E-word is missing the mark or not. The Exalted having the potential to be as monstrous as they are glorious has been a running theme with them in my opinion.
 
Even when the Exalted are evil evil evil, they tend to be evil in a main character kinda way. Villain protagonist rather than final boss, you know?

So while that is an important theme, I think it's completely compatible with the point I'm trying to make.

HalfTangible said:
Naming them Exalted also gives them more importance and power than they would have otherwise.
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It shouldn't.

And the main reason it does is because people keep making every important group of superhumans into Exalted. Exaltifying Hearteaters and other such things shrinks the world by reinforcing the impression that only people with the Magic Label really matter.
 
Queshire said:
Well that brings the question about whether having a shroud of protagonism when it comes to the E-word is missing the mark or not. The Exalted having the potential to be as monstrous as they are glorious has been a running theme with them in my opinion.
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I think that the Liminals are notable too in their grotesque/monsterous aesthetic, but their more balanced/humane nature. They draw that element from Promethean that is really important (to me) in that it brings up the humanity that can exist in the inhuman. And it also adds a healthy dsoe of Geist if I were to think of another WW property on the nature of life, death, the contrats between them and the needs of the living as well as the dead.

Like, I think that it's intersting that while Liminals are the splatterpunk Exalt, the Abyssals are the Heel ones. Which is quite neat to me.

Of the three canonical new ones, I think Exigents are indeed the easiest to justify. But I won't pretend that honestly, of the five "Exalted Beyond Creation" in the gamleine, Alchemicals and Infernals are just as accepted for legacy more than anything. To me not a lot that disqualifies Liminals jusitfies keeping Alchemicals about honestly, and Infernals even in 2e in my view were kind of the "Misc. Exalts' that I feel Exigents fit into the setting more smoothly.
 
Blaque said:
Of the three canonical new ones, I think Exigents are indeed the easiest to justify. But I won't pretend that honestly, of the five "Exalted Beyond Creation" in the gamleine, Alchemicals and Infernals are just as accepted for legacy more than anything. To me not a lot that disqualifies Liminals jusitfies keeping Alchemicals about honestly, and Infernals even in 2e in my view were kind of the "Misc. Exalts' that I feel Exigents fit into the setting more smoothly.
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Canonically, there wasn't much "miscellaneous" about Infernals. But the fanbase was hungry for such a thing, and very ready to hammer a round peg into a square hole.

Exigents, meanwhile, are a square peg.

Still, Infernals have their own niche and fill it well. I don't see any reason to do away with them that doesn't apply just as strongly to Abyssals.

Actually, the only splat that I couldn't ever see cutting is the Dragonblooded. And that's not because I like them best. They're just the ones that seem most "load bearing". Sidereals could be replaced with gods, Lunars with Raksha, and Solars with Infernals or Lunars. But DBs seem pretty irreplaceable.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
And the main reason it does is because people keep making every important group of superhumans into Exalted. Exaltifying Hearteaters and other such things shrinks the world by reinforcing the impression that only people with the Magic Label really matter.
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Having a bunch of different types of Exalts running around with their own agendas and adventures expands it. If the only splats out there were the Deebs and the Solars, you'd have a very small world with a very small pool of stories to draw upon. Having a monster that happens to also be Exalted is fine for a one-off villain (to clarify: I mean that it's fine to have one type of monster that's also Exalted. I dunno how you'd do multiple Hearteaters in one campaign but if you can good luck)

... That said I wish that martial arts and sorcery were open to mortals. They don't have to be Exalt level, just... give mortals something so they can have stories that kinda matter without homebrew or an Exalt showing up.
 
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Sanctaphrax said:
Canonically, there wasn't much "miscellaneous" about Infernals. But the fanbase was hungry for such a thing, and very ready to hammer a round peg into a square hole.

Exigents, meanwhile, are a square peg.

Still, Infernals have their own niche and fill it well. I don't see any reason to do away with them that doesn't apply just as strongly to Abyssals.

Actually, the only splat that I couldn't ever see cutting is the Dragonblooded. And that's not because I like them best. They're just the ones that seem most "load bearing". Sidereals could be replaced with gods, Lunars with Raksha, and Solars with Infernals or Lunars. But DBs seem pretty irreplaceable.
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While admittedly not someone who knows the deep lore, this seems pretty... reductive? Well maybe all of it, but I don't quite get how they occupy the same narrative space as the Raksha, unless you're suggesting some complete redesign of them?

I don't necessarily know about whether the same "Sidereals could be replaced with gods" thing is equally reductive or not, but the bit about Lunars just stood out to me.
 
Oh, they occupy a totally different narrative space. All those replacements do.

The Realm needs credible enemies around the borders of the world, and games outside the Realm need powerful people to interact with. Raksha could do that job in place of Lunars, in much the same way that the glorious and terrible uberpeople returning from a bygone age could be Lunars instead of Solars.

It'd be different, and probably worse, but it'd be recognizably the same setting overall.

I don't know if you could say the same about a setting without DBs.
 
If I recall, one of the ideas of Lunars way way way back in the early days of 1e - like before they even got their proper book - was that Lunars were the Exalted of the Wyld - not just wyld-touched, but actually drawing their power from the sea of chaos.
 
Ngl, Umbrals are probably my favourite of the new Exalted types. Their whole core thing is a character dynamic I enjoy a lot, and they're finally another type of Celestial Exalt who are just straightforwardly powerful within their remit, without some kind of mechanical gimmick underpinning the splat. Even if some parts of their mechanics could use a second pass.

Hearteaters cause me genuine emotional distress though, they're profoundly, *distractingly* unsettling. Not gonna claim they're bad or anything, I just flatly don't want to engage with them even as antagonists or a distant setting detail.
 
Manic Dogma said:
Ngl, Umbrals are probably my favourite of the new Exalted types. Their whole core thing is a character dynamic I enjoy a lot, and they're finally another type of Celestial Exalt who are just straightforwardly powerful within their remit, without some kind of mechanical gimmick underpinning the splat. Even if some parts of their mechanics could use a second pass.
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As someone who doesn't know a whole bunch about them what is the Umbral's remit?
 
Liminals have a lot of trappings that are fantastical and monstrous, but fundamentally they have very human, emotionally resonant themes. The first thing any of them remembers is opening their eyes and meeting someone who desperately wants them to be someone they're not and will never be, and this fraught relationship and matters of identity being at the core of Liminal stories is pretty compelling to me. Being a disappointment to someone important to you just by existing is something a lot of people can relate to, I think.

Their Essence interpretation also has all kinds of cool stuff about like, being both a barrier and a bridge between the living and the dead, while not entirely belonging to either, and playing sin eater for the communities they touch by taking pain and negative emotions onto themselves to spare others from them. To me, they feel more or less exactly as much like Exalts as Alchemicals do, and I don't think I've ever seen a compelling argument against any of the three new Exalt types that's predicated on the insistence that one or more of them are not real Exalts or don't feel like real Exalts.

A thing I appreciate about Liminals is that they lend themselves to like... smaller scale Exalted stories involving specific people and places and their problems. It's the "please save our town from this terrible ghost" end of the narrative space Exalted occupies, rather than the "Solars fucking around and conquering a city or whatever" end. Liminals being sort of low key and having such inward facing themes also makes them pretty easy to just stick in with a group of Dragon-Blooded as the creepy oddity who these Princes of the Earth keep around. This is pretty important for a Terrestrial level Exalt type, and I think what we have so far works about as well as Exigents do for that kind of Terrestrial level mixed splat game.
 
I'm glad that things have been scaled back from what the old devs wanted, with each main splat having their own antagonist type of exalted, but I do miss when the creation of the exalted was a singular but I'm still torn about the new exalted in that did end up with. Adding new things to the setting is good, but at the same time I wish that they were new things that weren't exalted that could still challenge the exalted.

I think Liminals would still have been cool if they were terrestrial level non-exalted that popped up sometimes when you tried to resurrect someone.

I have come to appreciate Getimian exalted as being very cool and am willing to wait and see how the Liminal exalted turn out when we get more of a focus on them.
 
alexthealright said:
As someone who doesn't know a whole bunch about them what is the Umbral's remit?
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Umbrals are an optional, non canon Exalt type that gets summarised in the back of Exigents, who are the Chosen of a traitorous Incarnae who was imprisoned for siding with the Primordials in the Divine Revolution, and poured himself entirely into the creation of the Umbrals to kill himself and escape.

Basically, they're weird shadow Exalts who have the pretty pronounced mechanical gimmick of each having a "shadow", an alter ego in their soul made up of their darkest, most self destructive impulses. Their shadow pushes them to act on these impulses, offering them power in exchange. This is translated into a unique limit mechanic where you want to keep gaining it, and then your limit break has your shadow actually taking control of your body to do not great things (still controlled by the player, though). Their charms also have a lot of shit about darkness , and can like... Grow extra arms of ink blackness that they can turn into weapons and stuff.

The Shadow and the playstyle it represents is a very clear element that the writeup really wants you to engage with, to the point that ignoring it is sort of like being the guy who insists on making their Lunar never shapeshift for whatever reason. You can do it, but it's absolutely still there and a big part of the Exalt type.
 
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Indivisible said:
I think Liminals would still have been cool if they were terrestrial level non-exalted that popped up sometimes when you tried to resurrect someone.
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Tbh if this was the case would the Liminals mechanical implementation actually be different? If they were meant to actually be something playable. Spirits use charms, the dead use charms, demons use charms.

This may just be me being someone who could never vibe with the view of exalted the 2e fans talked about until I jumped into 3e and found something I liked but I really don't understand the bugbear here.
 
HalfTangible said:
Oh right. Liminals.

I just do not care at all for Liminals, but eh. Can't all be winners.
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Same, but that's what I thought about Exigents and I ended up liking them, so I'll give Lims a chance.

Sanctaphrax said:
And the main reason it does is because people keep making every important group of superhumans into Exalted. Exaltifying Hearteaters and other such things shrinks the world by reinforcing the impression that only people with the Magic Label really matter.
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Heart-Eaters are exalts because they started out as normal mortal humans before a foreign power uplifted them. Honestly, they have a better claim to the title than some.
 
Amusingly a couple of weeks ago I briefly brought up the idea of Exalts of the Ebon Dragon and now reading about Umbrals there are definitely stuff in common with my half baked ideas. Like, one thought I had was that the ED Exalts would have some sort of enemy within as their equivalent of Limit.

I also came up with medicine charms for them because it amused me. Impatient Coroner's Intrusion, a diagnosis charm which is about when the patient will die. Snake Oil Suffusion which treats mental influence but drains willpower (Snake Oil is the fifth humor), Spoiled Child Substitution, a charm to fake illness and manipulate others. And some sort of shadow based technique to restore health levels and repair crippling injuries. It only has an Indefinite duration so it requires committed motes... or the recipient can sustain it with a positive intimacy directed at the Exalt.
 
Also, unifying all the major PC like beings, even the antagonistic ones, as Exalted means you get to use the one workable execution. 2e's attempts at making Exalted level antagonist splats with non-Exalted rules ended badly like... every time? Raksha being peak.
Admittedly we could also just make everyone use the same chargen no matter what but for some reason simulationist PC chargen is still a Exalted sacred cow (at least in the sense that having similar chargen rules meaning you're similar in setting)
 
Queshire said:
Oooo... sounds like a Jekyll & Hyde sort of vibe.
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That's pretty much the idea, yeah. It informs a really strong built in character arc about struggling with a part of yourself that's very pronounced, but also not necessarily constructive, be that in the scale of those feelings or the nature. The big example I like to use for them is the relationship between Guts and the Black Beast, in berserk. There it's less literal than it is for Umbrals, but the element of a destructive urge nipping at the back of your mind the more you indulge it is really clear.

Gazetteer said:
The Shadow and the playstyle it represents is a very clear element that the writeup really wants you to engage with, to the point that ignoring it is sort of like being the guy who insists on making their Lunar never shapeshift for whatever reason. You can do it, but it's absolutely still there and a big part of the Exalt type.
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This is the thing I like yeah, Umbrals do have a clear aesthetic but how your character engages with that aesthetic is entirely up to you as long as they engage with the psychological arc. Dreadful, shadow-draped swordswoman? Brilliant. Nightmarish bramble-like tangle of shadowy swords? Aces. Night-weaving sorceror unleashing your manifest Id from beyond the torchlight? Let's fucking go. All supported with a built in internal struggle with your character's metaphorical demons, and it's a really strong core conflict to build characters around.
 
The devs have said one of the inspirations of the Umbrals was The Immortal Hulk and that instantly sold me on them. I just wish the whole alter ego shapeshifting was represented in their charm set

Hearteaters are fun villains and possible allied NPCs but i feel they'd be super effort intensive player characters for both players and storytellers. Cool flavor though.

Dream Souled are fun little guys though i do feel they need a slightly more refined direction
 
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