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General Exalted Thread

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Sanctaphrax said:
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.



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.)
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Link? This sounds cool
 
Just recently ended a multi-year PBP game on Discord. Some notes:

-I don't think I've ever made it to the actual end of a campaign without the group falling apart for one reason or another before. It's... a melancholy feeling. But a welcome one.
-PBP is a terrible format for Exalted. Especially for combat, holy shit.
-Having multiple circles in the same Creation (and area) can work and is VERY cool when the two cross over. But the GMs need to communicate and probably keep like a word doc or something so that they can keep track of timelines and established facts about the world they inhabit (mechanically introduced or otherwise)*
-I enjoy noir monologing much more than I should and it can be downright hilarious at times.
-"Why does Bronze Peak have more brothels and entertainment than mines?!" "Probably because one of our players is an escort who is perfect at her job and YOU introduced like 4 brothels as locations just because you could."
-In the epilogue, there is a four-character poly consisting of two solars (players) and their Lunar mates (never actually appeared in the game). This is someone's mixed splat campaign.
-I should run cool ideas by the players before integrating them because they will probably come up with a way to make it cooler. Not all of them, obviously, because it would spoil the story, but bouncing ideas off of one or two players could work.**
-Sympathetic backstories do not generate sympathy from your players. Make the villain charismatic, attractive, and/or funny, otoh, and the players will immediately try to make them allies.
-Circles where everyone is among the most attractive people in the world are fun in part because everyone is instantly floored.

* For context: GM set up a game but got like 12 applicants and we didn't want to throw anybody away, so we decided to split them into 2 groups, one GMed by her and the other by another player (me until recently). Since we all were in the same Discord already we also decided that the two would be in the same world. This was not a great decision but I think it could have worked with more GM experience and communication.
** My Moonshadow villain introduced a merit to a group of bandits that would make them more powerful but also slowly rot them into zombies as they took damage; I represented this as Pain Tolerance. Two of those bandits ended up joining the players because the players liked them. The person that took over as GM decided that they would *also* have the health levels of zombies flat out. Which is such a fitting idea I'm embarrassed I didn't think of it.
 
Chehrazad said:
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.
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Yeah I used to be pretty dubious on Exigents but they won me over pretty handily. There's a lot of mileage out of the combo of "narrowly bounded and strongly aesthetic powers" and "slightly offbeat but congruent applications". The example of the hot springs assassin is lodged in my brain as a wonderful proof-in-fact because it makes a kind of pleasant sense y'know? The mix of mist, the relaxation, the murky steaming water and the vulnerability of a semi-public place where everyone could be anyone. Lives intersecting semi-anonymously.

Architects are my personal great love from Exigents. There's been such an effort in 3e's post-core stuff to show Creation and its societies as living, breathing places; caught between prevailing influences and trying to weather the coming uncertainty and cities, obviously, are a part of that. It's one of those things that's just genuinely very fun to think about, the like- idea of who would speak for these places. What kind of person would come to embody them y'know? Who speaks for Wu Jian, caught between the Realm and the West. Who speaks for Onyx, it's ruled by the Silver Prince but is this truly his city? Is the Architect of the Imperial City some anonymous bureaucrat power broker, a food cart vendor serving the great crush of people operating the machinery of empire, a legionary on leave or an immigrant from the colonies or what? There's just such opportunity there to like- dig in deep and make some interesting choices with a character.

Also the Foxbinder. Fantastic idea all around, YA protag shackled to this Terrible Fox, love it no notes.

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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Imrix said:
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.
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Part of what has me the most like- excited, kinda giddy even for Abyssals is to finally see the glow up the Deathlords got. Like, the work the team did on Sids made Yu Shan (previously terminally mid to outright cringe) an absolutely captivating setting and filled the Bureaucracy with a compelling cast of characters vs "corrupt minister #1-25", and it all gives me a lot of hope for something similar. Aiui centering Abyssals around their relationships with their (monstrous, awe inspiring, wretched and beautiful) lieges is a big part of the new direction and that's thrilling to me. Just the idea of like- at the lowest and last moment of your life, what did you, you personally look at eye to eye and agree to serve. What came to you as you lay there starving, in your sickbed, with your throat cut, chained and forgotten, or beneath the heels of the mob? A terror of deep antiquity told you to cast your name into the void and take their hand and you did.

And that's just really gripping y'know? The complex mix of love and fear and loyalty and resentment and faith and doubt, the chains that tie you to this thing and them to you. Asking what have you done, where have you gone, what have you become. And do you even regret it? Do you find that you are happy here, in the house of the Dead? Do you feel as if you belong with all these monsters?

Which is all to say that those are sufficiently weighty themes and shit that Abyssals really aren't losing anything by Liminals also working with the dead. Positioning them more on the terrestrial end too feels like just a reasonable and solid choice really, and helps orients them better towards Witcher-esque type stuff. Deathknights aren't going hungry by any means.

MiracleGrow said:

(Artist)
If fandom posting made Lunars better. I must keep spamming cute demons until I make it R E A L
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Neko arc type energy.
 
My opinion on the new Exalted types is somewhat reserved. I do hope that however the books shake out, each splat would be able to tell their own kinds of stories without too much toe-stepping. Admittedly this is why I'm slightly worried about the Getimians and Liminals. Though if what I've heard about the Sids is correct, I probably shouldn't be too worried.

MiracleGrow said:

(Artist)
If fandom posting made Lunars better. I must keep spamming cute demons until I make it R E A L
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So, how dangerous would it be to hug this??
 
Ummm, actually I'm going to settle this argument right now with my words, Liminals are not just "a" valid Exalt type they are "THE" valid Exalt type because I am informed Liminals will let me go:

"Ledaal John was a retired member of the Legions when the Yellow Eyed Infernal burned down his house with his family inside, he created two Liminals from the bodies of his dead sons and now they walk the Blessed Isle, saving people, hunting things, the family business."


View: https://youtu.be/TYME1QBrXw4?si=vNsxQWki0X9GYere
 
Amidatelion said:
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.
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Or so different you don't see them played or playable until near the end fo the edition as a "misc. option" ala what the Dragon Kings, Mountain Folk, and god-blooded in prior editions. Or a throw away "might as well while we'r ehere" as I feel i sthe case with most mortal and ghost stuff. Something that being an Exalt does is kind of jusitfy letting folks play you and not just be a weird NPC side-noute.
 
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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I guess a question is why aren't Alchemicals? Like, one could mad lib a lot of what you say, just replace the corpse with clay and magical material.
 
The Abyssal-Liminal relationship and Lunars came up and I want to kind of expand on it some more as it is something I think that is important too. Abyssals in 2e, like Lunars, kind of picked up being the "This is where X lives" splat. Lunars had more or less everything even remotely shapeshifty or animistic in their purview. THey could turn into literal fucking rocks, the land, mist clouds, do Reed Richards stretchy powers, become shuggoth or Alex Mercer, spirits of various sorts, and so on. And needed to spend Charms to also take on humans at all. Plus they had some glamour/illusion powers. Plus they had the social engineering things. Oh, and while we're having it one of the Factions was also about preserving nature.

3e Lunars was as noted, picking something, sticking to that, and saying fuck the rest. They turn into people and animals. The end. They draw on werewolves and witches and all the scary shapeshfiter stories. They aren't Dr. Fantastic, they aren't Dracula, they aren't Prototype. Note: those things can still b eout there. To an extent, some of Prototype is in Liminals now, as an example there. And Infernals always had aliens shapeshifting stuff that was out of the Lunar purview.

Abyssals had this too and this is a bit what Gaz is noting. The revenant and zomibe stuff was like, soem Resistance and Medicine Charms. They were there because flesh-eating zombie was like, an undead trait htey could do. Their default stuff though was the gothic knight undead Lord Ashram, vampire lord, or lich thing. Zombie stuff was kind of peripheral. And there's a notable bit I think where the "On the line of life and eath" seemed angsty but Abyssals powerwise and presentationwise in the end were much more about dominance, destruction, tyranny, and bringing the mighty low. They just also got the zombie, revenant, life-death-threshold angst, etc. stuff. But a lot of that was very peripheral. It wans't important to being an Abyssal, it was tagged on since it had no where else to go.

Abyssals in 3e so far to me kind of play-up the strengths. They weren't as covered in misc cruft as Lunars, but that's becuase it turn sout with Liminals there's a lot htat Abyssals never picked up thematically in text htat I guess is very important now and a new Exalt can't have. Lunars to me bascially ditched most of the shapeshfiting they could do in 2e to be a stronger particular kind of shapeshfiter in 3e. Abyssals didn't have as much undead they were trying to be, but they did offload some of that and Liminals got a lot of the ones that never came up. But folks seem to kind of, to me, be imagining Limnals as taking a bunch of things Abyssals frankly never were nor really wnated to be.
 
I'm a little hesitant to give too much respect to what Abyssals "really were" outside of fanon, because the canon was frankly often bad. If I had to pick one central theme, based on wordcount invested, it would probably be "Solars but worse". In theory it was meant to be morally worse, but in practice it was often just less effective. People set aside canon in favour of fanon for good reason.

As for Lunars, I don't think putting some of the broader shapeshifting back in would detract from anything. In some places it would even enhance the chosen themes. But they can get by without it, because just being a werewolf is a lot more compelling than just being a bad Solar.

Blaque said:
I guess a question is why aren't Alchemicals? Like, one could mad lib a lot of what you say, just replace the corpse with clay and magical material.
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Autochthon, basically. If you removed their patron, or turned him into a Dark-Mother-style blank space, they wouldn't feel very Exalted.

Patrons in general are a huge part of the difference between Exalts and non-Exalts.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
As for Lunars, I don't think putting some of the broader shapeshifting back in would detract from anything. In some places it would even enhance the chosen themes. But they can get by without it, because just being a werewolf is a lot more compelling than just being a bad Solar.
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What would it enhance? The fact that their 2e shapeshifting was so formless and unconstrained was an issue that basically required the bandaid of their 8+ anima banner forcing them into a true form, where 3e Lunars have a vast ability to continue to shapeshift for combat or social advantage using the Protean keyword or Quicksilver Second Face. Basically, I see a much stronger focus on their themes as the shape-shifter, the face-stealer, the ever-changing witch, by slightly restricting what they can turn into and then expanding when and how they can shift

A 2e Lunar trying to eavesdrop wouldn't have much additional value that I can see in taking a shape that isn't a human or animal, and likewise when going to ground or escaping I don't see a lot of thematic or mechanical benefit to adding "ivy" to "whatever birds, fish, or rodents might be scampering away", but allowing it requires more cruft to account for.

What else are you thinking of?
 
VagueZ said:
What would it enhance?
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This stuff:

VagueZ said:
...their themes as the shape-shifter, the face-stealer, the ever-changing witch...
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In particular, it bothers me that the face-stealer can't steal the faces of spirits. Impersonation is the most obvious use of shapeshifting, after all, and it's downright weird that a Lunar can eat a god's Cult rating but not its form. Looking at Shed Divinity's Nectar and God-Body Consumption, it sometimes feels like the game is contorting itself to avoid the idea of just taking a god's Heart's Blood.

I also think that shoggoth-y aesthetic bits are very appropriate for existing Charms like Flowing Body Evasion and Perfected Hybrid Interaction. I'd rather they lean into that stuff than away from it.

As for cruft, there's no reason it should add much. Taking a shape does not need to involve consulting that shape's whole character sheet. Taking a god's face can just mean taking its face; you don't need its dicepools, too.
 
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Blaque said:
I guess a question is why aren't Alchemicals? Like, one could mad lib a lot of what you say, just replace the corpse with clay and magical material.
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Not really. In addition to what I said about the involvement of Autochton, Alchemicals are fleshed out and integrated into their (optional!) setting instead of a Dark Mother that's still a mystery box after all these years.

Since Autochton created the Exigence, I guess you could say that he was inspired by how he created the Alchemicals if you want to.
 
I kinda get what you're saying but, uh, Autochthon is also essentially a mystery box. Even in 2e he has been silent for centuries. Even what little we know about the Dark Mother is already more direct interference in the lives of her Chosen than alchemicals ever get from him. "Quest for the godhead and figure out what the fuck is up with the sleeping titan" has been a default alchemical plothook since the beginning.

The other part is just "their book isn't out yet."
 
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We know an absolute ton about Autochthon. We had an entire Compass about the inside of his body. And his basic biography - origins, goals, fears, major personal flaws, most important life events - is quite clear.

He may not be giving active orders, but so what? Neither is the Sun.
 
Indivisible said:
Not really. In addition to what I said about the involvement of Autochton, Alchemicals are fleshed out and integrated into their (optional!) setting instead of a Dark Mother that's still a mystery box after all these years.
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I mean, we know enough to see the similairty. That stood out to me honestly when I first saw Liminal Exaltation described. The patron uses the human demiurge to facilitate the Exalting of of a target human-enough construct. For Alchemical Exaltation it is basically a golem, the Liminal is an aimated corpse. Both create a new indivdual with a connection to but not idenitifed as the source of their materials, and whose powers are impacted by the initial conditions of their construction.

The black boxing of the Dark Mother doesn't, to me, mean much difference from it nad Alchemicals. So again, what is the difference here besides knoweldge gap? Because again, what stops from madlibbing the prior post tojust be Alchemicals, Autochthon, and so on?

Indivisible said:
Since Autochton created the Exigence, I guess you could say that he was inspired by how he created the Alchemicals if you want to.
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This is very much explicitly not the case. The planetary gods found and utilized it. Autochthon is never mentioned in either its discovery or use.
 
Potato Anarchy said:
I kinda get what you're saying but, uh, Autochthon is also essentially a mystery box. Even in 2e he has been silent for centuries. Even what little we know about the Dark Mother is already more direct interference in the lives of her Chosen than alchemicals ever get from him. "Quest for the godhead and figure out what the fuck is up with the sleeping titan" has been a default alchemical plothook since the beginning.

The other part is just "their book isn't out yet."
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This to me is the big thing on the Dark Mother. We know plenty enough of he rand her relation to death. Mostly, she worked with what was there before and odnt' like what's happened to the whole hting now. And to be hoenst, that's all we often need to know. We know more about her than the Dragons I think even as far as motivaiton or actions these days.

And even then, as I highlighted in the quote, this is kind of not a fair ocmparison of something that's had two editions versus soemthing which hasn't had its time yet. It's like saying Infernals of any stripe are less legitimate also since hteyw eren't statted in 1e. Which note, we had as much of them in 1e as Liminals in 2e.
 
Article:
The necropolis of Sijan is a vast tomb, dedicated to the arts of interring the dead according to ten thousand different customs. Kings and emperors are buried in tomb-complexes, while the Mortician's Order trains to put the dead to rest across Creation. Yet Sijan's memory is long, extending past the First Age and into the Time Before, where even then it was known as a city for the dead, before the formation of the Underworld.

The death of beings never meant to die shattered whatever old order lay beneath, consigning whatever Old Laws ruled that place to dust and legal limbo. The earliest myths and legends in Sijan's vaults speak of Lethe as a vast and fine web, torn apart by the death of titans: if the web of Lethe is tattered and ripped, what of the spider?

The Dark Mother existed before this cruel and cold Underworld came crashing down. The end of the Divine Revolution injured her, and she slept in a realm of death.

The shock of the Deathlords pledging fealty to the Neverborn in the Shogunate's reign awoke her. In the internecine wars plaguing Creation, she scrutinized the relationship between the reincarnating higher souls and the lower souls swollen with Exalted power. As untold numbers of Dragon-Blooded slaughtered one another in the frenzied final days of the Shogunate, the Dark Mother gleaned the secret of Exaltation from them.

Resurrection of the dead is impossible. But the Dark Mother hears every plea to the named and nameless gods of death, every call for a soul to return to flesh and live again. Sometimes, she chooses to answer these calls, but none can give what those aspirants desire, so the Dark Mother Exalts the corpse as a new champion of the spaces between life and death. Her touch recedes from her Chosen, but remains as a light presence in their mind; her immanence connects every Liminal to one another. The Dark Mother exists as a weight within the spirits of her Chosen, driving them to hunt the hungry dead and stymie the machinations of the Deathlords.
Source: Crucible of Legend pg.150


Details are a little scant, but we can sort of piece together enough about her nature to be going off of until we eventually get a Liminals book. She's a truly ancient being who doesn't belong to any of the major categories of big ancient being, who had a powerful association with Lethe and the pre-Neverborn Underworld.
 
I think it's important that Abyssals and Liminals operate on different power levels.

An Abyssal can be a ghost hunter but they're as powerful as Solars and perhaps even more so in this area so this concept risks reaching a level of specialisation where they trivialise all of the ghost antagonists currently in print. Meanwhile I suspect it'll take a while for a circle of Liminals to outgrow the Nephwrack as an enemy and probably have limitations on permanently destroying spirits similar to other Terrestrial-level Exalts.
 
I assume that Liminals in particular will have access to charm tech that makes defeated ghosts go to Lethe, it's very much in theme for them. Maybe not at Essence 1.

Presumably they'll really be able to fuck up a lot of ghosts if they need to, though.
 
The other other important thing about Liminals is that between them, Dragonblooded and Architects you can finally have variety in a Terrestial power level game (and also Alchemical when they come out but in 2e they were closer to the non-Solar Celestials than Dragonblooded IIRC?)
 
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