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General Exalted Thread

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HalfTangible said:
Aren't Hearteaters in the apocryphal category or something? IE they only exist if you as the GM want them to?



That or you have a very short chronicle. The Exalted are simply too big of a setting element to ignore and too many of the game's mechanics are written with the assumption you'll be Exalted. Charms, for example.

I like the idea of mortal martial artists/sorcerers because these two systems are supposed to be outside the domain of what it means to be Exalted; a martial artist wasn't empowered by the gods, he learned these techniques. And while he may need to be an old sage to master Tiger Style to the same degree as the fire aspect girl who learned what a kata was a month ago, that strength is still his.

Sorcery, similarly, is a cheat code to the universe. You don't need to be Exalted to lie to Creation and use admin privileges you shouldn't have.



To be perfectly honest a big reason I don't like the Liminals is that while their creation is a unique enough story hook, their apparent role in Creation feels like it took ground that could be given to the Abyssals. And I'm just not interested in re-telling the story of Frankenstein.

@Indivisible Seems to me you're letting Liminals' status as Exalted define them more than what they actually are, because they're exactly what you're asking for except that they also are called Exalts
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I said that I want more peer opponents that aren't exalted, which Liminals don't count as because they are exalted. Things other than exalted should be able to challenge exalted characters or the world feels smaller.

I agree with you about Abyssals and Liminals though.
 
I'll reserve final judgement on Liminals until the splat comes out. I was initially cold on them but i've warmed up to them over the years.

I broadly think there should be more exalted tier threats who aren't exalts. In my own musings, i've generally given them certain limitations on their powers that make them less flexible and less exploitable than Exalt powers, while still have them situationally be worthy challenges for exalts. Having them tied to certain locations or needing them to be renewed or placing some pretty serious narrative costs on them for that power. Naturally these aren't player facing, nor should they be IMO.
 
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I think I've mentioned it before, but while there can be a lot of Exalted tier threats especially in 3e where NPCs can be custom built, the mechanical space of Exalted tier threats that are customisable like a PC is much smaller, and 2e's attempts don't actually raise confidence in that aspect.

So there's a choice to either have there be a bunch of non-Exalted which mechanically are near identical to Exalted (and people get really touchy about that) or expand the narrative space of Exaltation to encompass most of the bits you want that much customisability for
 
Inns and Hostels: The Laureate

Once the urban estate of a lineage of god-blooded nobles in Great Forks' Little Yu-Shan district, this palatial structure was recently sold off and converted into an upscale inn. While always a landmark, in the time since its conversion to a place of business, the Laureate has become the premiere residence in Great Forks for visiting god-blooded, priests, princes, and most importantly Exigents.

A baroque palace with five wings each in a different style radiating from a domed rotunda, the Laureate sits in the center of a walled estate, complete with extensive gardens and small menagerie of exotic animals. In its halls are myriad apartments, galleries, salons, gambling dens, dining rooms, and other amusements. Its corridors both public and hidden bustle with the traffic that only a small army's worth of staff can provide. In many ways, the Laureate is The Decadence in microcosm.

Owned by a group of shareholders including one of the Thearchs, the Laureate is staffed year round with luxuries and fine service, increasingly tailored and updated to suit the preferences and needs of Great Forks' growing subculture of Exigents. While Exigents of Great Forks aren't entitled to a stay for free, it has become a custom for wealthy patrons and would be patrons to pay for a room for an Exigent(or other powerful guest), or a membership to the Laureate's exclusive clubs. Exigents residing permanently in Great Forks may room elsewhere, but for temporary visits, it's increasingly said that nothing beats the Laureate.

The Laureate's appeal to the Exigents of Great Forks isn't simply its luxury or entertainment, but its opportunity. In the scant few years since its opened its doors, the Laureate has been the backdrop for more than one lifelong friendship or rivalry. In its halls can be found not only exquisite furnishings and fine dining, but dojos, workshops, libraries, and almost anything else a young Exalt in the throes of essence fever could want in between heroic excursions. More experienced exigents frequent its hookah dens and drinking rooms where they hobnob with gods, princes, and heroes surrounded by stuffed behemoth heads and ornamental mounted daiklaves. Master artisans display their wares in its lobby and send their apprentices to bring gifts to the residents. The elite of Great Forks and beyond post requests and advertisements by its gates. Agents of powers both terrestrial and otherworldly rent rooms or reserve seatings to scout out potential allies, or spy on potential enemies.

While the inn's culture is primed to cater to Exigents, the facilities can suit other Exalts just fine, so long as they can afford the cost. The Laureate has hosted wandering Outcastes, vacationing Lookshyans, Liminal ghost-killers, Sidereal emissaries, disguised Lunars, and even the odd Solar(never openly of course). The inn has yet to host a Deathknight, and in truth the staff dread such an arrival, but currently there's no law saying it can't. Any anathema hoping to reside at the Laureate must take care however, for while the Laureate offers many things to its guests, complete anonymity isn't one of them. While the hotel staff won't knowingly endanger guests or deliberately spy on them, word of what goes on in the Laureate's public spaces has a habit of traveling. The estate is a place of celebrities after all, and where there are celebrities, there is gossip.

The manager, concierge, and chief "aedile" of the Laureate is Apirus Luxius, a handsome, agelessly young god-blood whose family previously owned the grounds. Having sold off their urban estate to pay off rather staggering debts incurred in the wake of the Battle of Mishaka, Luxius is the sole remaining member of that dwindling clan to remain on the grounds. Having grown up in the Laureate, he knows the palace inside and out, possessing an almost preternatural awareness of its goings on. Priding himself on "the experience" of the Laureate, Luxius coordinates a host of servants, slaves, and entertainers, planning amusements and "chance encounters" for his guests on a daily basis, taking the opportunity to personally greet as many guests as he can and regularly paying for complementary gifts out of his own pocket. While he was born into an indolent noble's life, Luxius has found that the service industry suits him, especially when it provides him so many opportunities to network with newly made heroes and the elite of the City Called Decadence. In truth he probably has enough favors saved up by now to make back his old family fortune and then some, but he's loath to call them in now, he's having far too much fun.
 
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Sanctaphrax said:
Qualify is a funny word there. It implies that non-Exalted Liminals would be non-Exalted because they somehow weren't good enough to be Exalted.

Which is pretty much exactly the implication I'm trying to avoid. Not being Exalted doesn't make you a lesser order of being. And non-Exalted Liminals would help to send that message.

Moreover, being an Exalt comes with a bit of baggage. Aspects, animas, a patron, the Great Curse, a certain level of "normalcy" in the way characters are built. Some of those things are fine on Liminals but others feel tacked-on. The Dark Mother feels like she's only there because an Exalt type must have a patron; we know nothing about her and that doesn't even seem to matter. The Great Curse also seems unnecessary, since being a patchwork pseudo-zombie created in a failed attempt to revive the dead provides more than enough drama on its own.

If the Exalted baggage was removed, I bet the stuff that replaced it would be even better.
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Okay, fair enough on the specific word choice, but cutting out Liminals as "Exalts and therefore PCs" does cut out a viable play space that isn't filled by other Exalt types. They're an undead horror bound to the living (through their Thread of Life) and given a very definite hook about identity: they're the result of an attempt to resurrect someone else, someone whose body and maybe memories they share at creation, but not who they are. That's a reason that they're Exalts.

I'm trying to see the opposite argument to weigh them. What I'd like to get at, really, is what you propose filling that "Exalted baggage" space with, and why it's not possible to do it with some non-Liminal creature because Liminals exist. If you're proposing changing Liminals broadly, why can't you just... stick a new type of creature in there? And what is the "even better" stuff? I'm really just trying to figure out what that is.

Indivisible said:
I want more peer opponents for exalts that aren't exalts themselves, especially at the terrestrial level, and having a new non-exalted category of being at that level would help with that.
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...as opposed to the space already filled by the Yennin, any remnants from the Niobraran League, the Nine Foxfires, various demons and raksha and behemoths, the Yspra, the Flame Scourges, the Storm That Rode, Jill-of-the-Nine-Lives' living ship, the Winged Serpent Plague of Zerit the Devourer, gods and elementals, the Paper Legion and its massed ledger-ranks, the Eater of Tongues, the aurochs-dragon of Hellbender Mesa, gigantes of Dis, the Brass Seraph, the Flying Devil Kings, the Shadow-Riders of Wan, the worm-thing that became the Hundred Rings, No Key the Mushroom King, the blood-sorcerers of the Hexmanse, the Frozen Star, the legions of the Chatoyant Sovereignty, the devil-stars, various "strange folk" of Adversaries of the Righteous and various entries in Hundred Devil Night Parade.

This is a non-exhaustive list of things that have been called out as peer opponents to Exalts, many of them called out as having been the death of one or more Exalts.

It's not a trick question; I'm trying to pick up the answer. What does a non-Exalt Liminal have as a role to fulfill that can't be done with one of these or by creating something else, since there are this many weird things in Creation? I'm assuming that there's some mechanical or thematic niche that could cause an issue with taking some bits from Exalt-Liminals and duplicating them. That's certainly a possibility, but I can't think of what it would be.
 
HalfTangible said:
To be perfectly honest a big reason I don't like the Liminals is that while their creation is a unique enough story hook, their apparent role in Creation feels like it took ground that could be given to the Abyssals. And I'm just not interested in re-telling the story of Frankenstein.
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I don't think Abyssals, with their romance of the grave and moral quandries, and roles as Death's Lawgivers, knights of oblivion sworn to Deathlords, and bleak ghost-emperors, have much in common at all with Liminals, who safeguard the line between the dead and living and enforce reincarnation, struggle with their very existence and strained connection to humanity, and are ill-known monsters of flesh's horrors. People keep saying Liminals took space from Abyssals, but that just isn't true. It wasn't true when the core dropped, but it was more reasonable to believe; it isn't true now that Essence is out; and it'll be even more obvious when Abyssals drops, then Liminals later down the line.

What do they actually share? What does one existing actually take away from the other?
 
mothematics said:
What do they actually share? What does one existing actually take away from the other?
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I have not really heard any answer to this that doesn't amount to some variation on "Abyssals used to look like zombies sometimes, and I've heard that now they don't and Liminals do", and/or an inability to imagine there being space for more than one Exalt type with death themes and a relationship to the dead, no matter how little the two have to do with each other in terms of their specific takes. It's not really a thoughtful or well informed opinion, it's just the same stale, decade old takes people have been recycling for years or whatever. It's pretty tiresome.
 
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I suspect a lot of it stems from how 2e Abyssals saw a lot of pushing (both officially through Ink Monkeys, and unofficially through fandom conversation) into the space of being The Underworld Exalted as a reaction to how stale their canon portrayal was, which was much more tightly focused on being The Murder Exalted/The Solar's Evil Mirrors (before Nephilphal took a second crack at that with Infernals; it was a cycle with him), so there's a sense that it's territory that Abyssals have some kind of claim on. But in truth, they never really did.

People wanted to play in that thematic space, and Abyssals were the closest fit, and so an attachment has grown up to the idea of playing in that thematic space with Abyssals, while the line seems to have instead squared the circle both by giving Abyssals a glow-up, and adding Liminals to cover the macabre themes which are beyond Abyssals' remit.
 
mothematics said:
I don't think Abyssals, with their romance of the grave and moral quandries, and roles as Death's Lawgivers, knights of oblivion sworn to Deathlords, and bleak ghost-emperors, have much in common at all with Liminals, who safeguard the line between the dead and living and enforce reincarnation, struggle with their very existence and strained connection to humanity, and are ill-known monsters of flesh's horrors. People keep saying Liminals took space from Abyssals, but that just isn't true. It wasn't true when the core dropped, but it was more reasonable to believe; it isn't true now that Essence is out; and it'll be even more obvious when Abyssals drops, then Liminals later down the line.

What do they actually share? What does one existing actually take away from the other?
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Liminals hunt the dead and interact with them as the fine line between them and the living. Frankly that seems like a role that an Abyssal could easily fulfill as a wandering ronin or something. Liminals seem to be more geared towards the material (their aspects in particular gear more towards the corpse/body than the spirit/ghost) but frankly that doesn't seem different enough to make an entire splat for. It feels like the kind of separation you'd find between two characters themed around death.

Of the things listed there that Liminals bring to the table, the only one Abyssals don't/can't occupy would be the "flesh's horrors" bit. And even that's kinda covered by necrosurgery.

And again, not interested in playing Frankenstein's monster. I just don't like them. It's not an attack or w/e, i just personally don't care for them.
 
mothematics said:
I don't think Abyssals, with their romance of the grave and moral quandries, and roles as Death's Lawgivers, knights of oblivion sworn to Deathlords, and bleak ghost-emperors, have much in common at all with Liminals, who safeguard the line between the dead and living and enforce reincarnation, struggle with their very existence and strained connection to humanity, and are ill-known monsters of flesh's horrors. People keep saying Liminals took space from Abyssals, but that just isn't true. It wasn't true when the core dropped, but it was more reasonable to believe; it isn't true now that Essence is out; and it'll be even more obvious when Abyssals drops, then Liminals later down the line.

What do they actually share? What does one existing actually take away from the other?
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Do Abyssals not struggle with their very existence and strained connection to humanity any more? Are they no longer ill-known monsters of flesh's horrors? Do the more noble ones not safeguard the line between the dead and the living?

Abyssals have always been my least favourite type, so I can't really speak for myself here. But I have heard Abyssal fans talk about what they like about the splat, and they seemed to be fans of playing a tragic misunderstood undead monster striving to protect people.

VagueZ said:
Okay, fair enough on the specific word choice, but cutting out Liminals as "Exalts and therefore PCs" does cut out a viable play space that isn't filled by other Exalt types.
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They don't have to be exalts in order to be PCs, that's the whole point.

Later in your post, you list a bunch of beings that can fight on an Exalted level. But many of them are unique entities, many of them are not people, and almost all of them make for very bad PCs.

My ideal Liminals would likely have some stuff in common with the Dragon Kings, which I'm a big fan of.

VagueZ said:
I'm trying to see the opposite argument to weigh them. What I'd like to get at, really, is what you propose filling that "Exalted baggage" space with, and why it's not possible to do it with some non-Liminal creature because Liminals exist. If you're proposing changing Liminals broadly, why can't you just... stick a new type of creature in there? And what is the "even better" stuff? I'm really just trying to figure out what that is.
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Like the old saying goes, anyone in the audience can notice a problem. But most of them can't fix it.

So I'm a little hesitant to suggest replacements for the weaker and less interesting parts of Liminal lore. Which are mostly things tacked on in the name of "being Exalted". But in the case of the Great Curse I think I might have an idea.

Rather than having a Limit stat that builds up until the Liminal flies into a Solar-esque fit, I'd rather see something less explosive and more persistent. Probably Intimacy-based. A Liminal who can't maintain regular interaction with people they hold positive intimacies towards might fall into a state of depression or alienation.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
They don't have to be exalts in order to be PCs, that's the whole point.
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They kind of do. Exalted is a game about being an Exalt. The playable options kind of have to fit into the mechanical space of being Exalts.

Trying to offer something else will be either so different as to cause mechanical problems, or so similar as to make one wonder why they shouldn't be Exalted at all.
 
Not at all.

Even in 3e you can play as a mortal, and 2e had several non-Exalted splats. Some canon, some fanmade, one co-created by me.

Most of them didn't fall into the pitfalls you mention. Though I will admit that Raksha were so different as to cause mechanical problems.

It's only the profusion of new Exalt types that's given people the idea PCs absolutely have to be Exalted. Which I don't care for at all.
 
VagueZ said:
Okay, fair enough on the specific word choice, but cutting out Liminals as "Exalts and therefore PCs" does cut out a viable play space that isn't filled by other Exalt types. They're an undead horror bound to the living (through their Thread of Life) and given a very definite hook about identity: they're the result of an attempt to resurrect someone else, someone whose body and maybe memories they share at creation, but not who they are. That's a reason that they're Exalts.

I'm trying to see the opposite argument to weigh them. What I'd like to get at, really, is what you propose filling that "Exalted baggage" space with, and why it's not possible to do it with some non-Liminal creature because Liminals exist. If you're proposing changing Liminals broadly, why can't you just... stick a new type of creature in there? And what is the "even better" stuff? I'm really just trying to figure out what that is.



...as opposed to the space already filled by the Yennin, any remnants from the Niobraran League, the Nine Foxfires, various demons and raksha and behemoths, the Yspra, the Flame Scourges, the Storm That Rode, Jill-of-the-Nine-Lives' living ship, the Winged Serpent Plague of Zerit the Devourer, gods and elementals, the Paper Legion and its massed ledger-ranks, the Eater of Tongues, the aurochs-dragon of Hellbender Mesa, gigantes of Dis, the Brass Seraph, the Flying Devil Kings, the Shadow-Riders of Wan, the worm-thing that became the Hundred Rings, No Key the Mushroom King, the blood-sorcerers of the Hexmanse, the Frozen Star, the legions of the Chatoyant Sovereignty, the devil-stars, various "strange folk" of Adversaries of the Righteous and various entries in Hundred Devil Night Parade.

This is a non-exhaustive list of things that have been called out as peer opponents to Exalts, many of them called out as having been the death of one or more Exalts.

It's not a trick question; I'm trying to pick up the answer. What does a non-Exalt Liminal have as a role to fulfill that can't be done with one of these or by creating something else, since there are this many weird things in Creation? I'm assuming that there's some mechanical or thematic niche that could cause an issue with taking some bits from Exalt-Liminals and duplicating them. That's certainly a possibility, but I can't think of what it would be.
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I haven't been giving trick answers either, I want MORE new peer opponents for exalts, especially at the terrestrial level, and not being unique beings like most of the opponents in your list.

What is there about Liminals that says that they have to be exalts? They're undead horrors bound to the living sure, and they have that identity thread as the result of resurrection, but what does that have to do with exaltation? Those are reasons to be player characters sure, but exaltation is something involving a god and either the Exigence or Autochton's work.

Why aren't Liminals a type of Exigent then, combining the sacrifices made by the would be resurrector and a spark of Exigence that the Dark Mother has hoarded since the Usurpation swept it into the underworld?

Why not make Liminals a type of Abyssal? Abyssals typically die before they take their second breath, why not make it so that sometimes instead of popping back into their own corpse they end up in the corpse of someone else and have to deal with the fallout?
 
What are the widgets which make a playable splat Exalted compared to something else? Also are there any quests or anything centered around playing a demon?
 
HalfTangible said:
Liminals hunt the dead and interact with them as the fine line between them and the living. Frankly that seems like a role that an Abyssal could easily fulfill as a wandering ronin or something. Liminals seem to be more geared towards the material (their aspects in particular gear more towards the corpse/body than the spirit/ghost) but frankly that doesn't seem different enough to make an entire splat for. It feels like the kind of separation you'd find between two characters themed around death.
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Are 'wandering ronin Abyssals' still a thing? Do you know that?
Sanctaphrax said:
Do Abyssals not struggle with their very existence and strained connection to humanity any more? Are they no longer ill-known monsters of flesh's horrors? Do the more noble ones not safeguard the line between the dead and the living?
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I don't know, do they?

This is what I was getting at. The fandom sense of Abyssals has very little to do with Abyssals as published, and a great deal to do with how people have for years wanted to play The Underworld/Goth Exalted, and Abyssals were the closest fit available, so there was a consistent, grinding pressure to turn them into that. Which is fine, Exalted should serve those stories - that doesn't mean it should serve them with Abyssals. Dividing up the thematic space of gothic/underworld stories between Abyssals and Liminals is an entirely valid approach, which may well allow each to focus more tightly on their respective themes, and better realise them.

Hell, we've seen this already - Lunars went through this process, to an ultimate reaction of 'widespread applause'. 2e portrayal a thin gruel with just enough juice to attract people with the thought of what they could be, years of fandom arguments about three dozen fractallating, mutually exclusive approaches to fixing them up into the best they can be, eventually 3e Lunars are released and they solve the argument by picking one version of what Lunars could be, and executing that vision with some actual bloody skill and energy. Speaking as someone who still prefars TAW for being exactly my jam, it worked. The success of TAW was in picking a vision of what Lunars should be and what they shouldn't be, and executing that; 3e Lunars did the same thing with a different vision, and the fandom has embraced the result with open arms.

3ebyssals aren't going to be 2ebyssals, and they won't be the Abyssals the fandom has built up in its head, because nothing could be that. They'll be 3ebyssals, and they'll be good at that, and if you feel like there's gothic stories you want to dig into that aren't served by 3ebyssals, it'll probably be because 3ebyssals won't be meant to play host to all possible spoopy scary skeleton narratives, with Liminals and Exigents and whatever else to pick up the stuff that's outside 3ebyssals' remit.
Sanctaphrax said:
Not at all.

Even in 3e you can play as a mortal, and 2e had several non-Exalted splats. Some canon, some fanmade, one co-created by me.
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Yes, and they were, without exception, either so rarely played as to be worthless (seriously, who ever did mortal games as more than a prelude? Who even did mortal preludes?) or bad. Raksha were the poster child of being wretchedly overcomplicated for an NPC splat, but the rest weren't much better. Dragon Kings were a fun lore note, but I will boil a sock and eat it if anybody can honestly tell me they played one for any length of time. I realise that the Mountain Folk are your beloved babies, Sanct, but how many people besides you ever played one?

The game is called Exalted. It is about the Exalted. You can make PC splats in it that aren't Exalted, but evidence suggests you shouldn't. It goes against the grain of the game's narrative focus.
 
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Indivisible said:
I haven't been giving trick answers either, I want MORE new peer opponents for exalts, especially at the terrestrial level, and not being unique beings like most of the opponents in your list.

What is there about Liminals that says that they have to be exalts? They're undead horrors bound to the living sure, and they have that identity thread as the result of resurrection, but what does that have to do with exaltation? Those are reasons to be player characters sure, but exaltation is something involving a god and either the Exigence or Autochton's work.

Why aren't Liminals a type of Exigent then, combining the sacrifices made by the would be resurrector and a spark of Exigence that the Dark Mother has hoarded since the Usurpation swept it into the underworld?

Why not make Liminals a type of Abyssal? Abyssals typically die before they take their second breath, why not make it so that sometimes instead of popping back into their own corpse they end up in the corpse of someone else and have to deal with the fallout?
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*shrug* to drift into a different game for a moment, why have sorcerers when you've got perfectly good wizards?
 
Indivisible said:
What is there about Liminals that says that they have to be exalts?
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Liminals have Aspects, charms, and anima banners. They're empowered by a patron who is a great and powerful entity who has capital-C Chosen them for a purpose. They're created, fully formed in the process of this, but that's very similar to Alchemicals, with a few key differences. Sure, some other, hypothetical kind of weird undead who uses part of the themes Liminals have is something you can imagine, but the basic concept is that they're Exalts, and the ways that they are feel pretty obvious, to me.
 
Imrix said:
Yes, and they were, without exception, either so rarely played as to be worthless (seriously, who ever did mortal games as more than a prelude? Who even did mortal preludes?) or bad. Raksha were the poster child of being wretchedly overcomplicated for an NPC splat, but the rest weren't much better. Dragon Kings were a fun lore note, but I will boil a sock and eat it if anybody can honestly tell me they played one for any length of time. I realise that the Mountain Folk are your beloved babies, Sanct, but how many people besides you ever played one?

The game is called Exalted. It is about the Exalted. You can make PC splats in it that aren't Exalted, but evidence suggests you shouldn't. It goes against the grain of the game's narrative focus.
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Can't argue with that. The non-Exalted splats were never played much.

Maybe I should just accept that my "side" lost this battle and stop griping about it. I still like what I like, and I always will, but it's not like I can't live with the direction 3e has chosen. I even heard a rumour that playable Dragon Kings might make a return.

Imrix said:
I don't know, do they?

This is what I was getting at. The fandom sense of Abyssals has very little to do with Abyssals as published, and a great deal to do with how people have for years wanted to play The Underworld/Goth Exalted, and Abyssals were the closest fit available, so there was a consistent, grinding pressure to turn them into that. Which is fine, Exalted should serve those stories - that doesn't mean it should serve them with Abyssals. Dividing up the thematic space of gothic/underworld stories between Abyssals and Liminals is an entirely valid approach, which may well allow each to focus more tightly on their respective themes, and better realise them.
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I'm inclined to agree, actually. I'm already more interested in Liminals than I ever was in Abyssals.

Still, my answer to mothematics remains the same. Whether the Abyssals got those themes from the books or from fanon, they did get them. That's where the concern about Liminals stealing from Abyssals comes from, and what the writers will need to deal with when they actually write those splats.

I wish them luck. I think they're up to the task, but it strikes me as a difficult needle to thread.
 
Imrix said:
Are 'wandering ronin Abyssals' still a thing? Do you know that?
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Last I checked one of the changes in 3e is that Deathknights do not need to be sworn/enslaved to a Deathlord.

'Ronin' was a deliberate choice of word because it implies a wandering knight/former samurai. If a Deathknight wandering Creation for whatever reason - redemption, boredom, growth, or anything else - isn't viable I'll be shocked.
 
VagueZ said:
...as opposed to the space already filled by the Yennin, any remnants from the Niobraran League, the Nine Foxfires, various demons and raksha and behemoths, the Yspra, the Flame Scourges, the Storm That Rode, Jill-of-the-Nine-Lives' living ship, the Winged Serpent Plague of Zerit the Devourer, gods and elementals, the Paper Legion and its massed ledger-ranks, the Eater of Tongues, the aurochs-dragon of Hellbender Mesa, gigantes of Dis, the Brass Seraph, the Flying Devil Kings, the Shadow-Riders of Wan, the worm-thing that became the Hundred Rings, No Key the Mushroom King, the blood-sorcerers of the Hexmanse, the Frozen Star, the legions of the Chatoyant Sovereignty, the devil-stars, various "strange folk" of Adversaries of the Righteous and various entries in Hundred Devil Night Parade.
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I had a whole post written up in response to this, but I deleted it because I don't think a wall of text of moaning would actually be productive to this conversation. Instead, I just want to say that I wish Exalted 3e was the kind of game where I could just extrapolate entire enemy writeups from evocative flavor text and one-sentence name drops from Artifact descriptions and corners of locale writeups and turn those into combat challenges for a circle of player character Exalts.

Unfortunately, Exalted 3e is a game where your best scaffolding to build challenges for player characters comes from Exalt splatbooks themselves. That's the real root of this 'only the Exalted matter' problem. Why write an antagonist design chapter when you could just write ten character creation chapters?
 
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