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General Exalted Thread

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Ryang said:
Fundamentally the answer is going to revolve around 'is a machine gun noticeably more powerful than a dragon sigh wand without evocations' and if your mental model is yes then, sure, the Realm will have issues. If it's a no (which is equally fair), then the Realm is entirely capable of fighting an enemy with massed artifact ranged weapons but no good defensive traits, especially considering that the USA is relatively less mobilised and capable of tolerating losses than the Realm, which dampens the effect of all those artifact-grade weapons.
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I'll note it's not just mental models, 'cause like. We have artifact siege weapons and ranged damage charms and the spears of war gods, all of which can be reliably assumed to be grander and more deadly than Some Dude With A Gun. Your guy with a rifle isn't outdamaging Glorious Solar Bolt or Elemental Bolt Attack, much less a Lightning Ballistae. Being very generous, we could give machine guns artifact traits but I don't really see a compelling reason to assume an M60 is better or even nearly as good to bring to a fight than Mahicara's lava fists or Fakharu's breath attack.

You can just give it heavy mundane weapon stats and some unique tags to make it better against battle groups and bam, you have a machine gun. Anyone with really good parry has a pretty solid chance of handling it, though, because weapons aren't special, the people who wield them are. Unless a legendary hero is manning it, you're not gonna be doing well against monsters that need legendary heroes to fight them.
 
Kaiya said:
I'll note it's not just mental models, 'cause like. We have artifact siege weapons and ranged damage charms and the spears of war gods, all of which can be reliably assumed to be grander and more deadly than Some Dude With A Gun. Your guy with a rifle isn't outdamaging Glorious Solar Bolt or Elemental Bolt Attack, much less a Lightning Ballistae. Being very generous, we could give machine guns artifact traits but I don't really see a compelling reason to assume an M60 is better or even nearly as good to bring to a fight than Mahicara's lava fists or Fakharu's breath attack.

You can just give it heavy mundane weapon stats and some unique tags to make it better against battle groups and bam, you have a machine gun. Anyone with really good parry has a pretty solid chance of handling it, though, because weapons aren't special, the people who wield them are. Unless a legendary hero is manning it, you're not gonna be doing well against monsters that need legendary heroes to fight them.
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That's why I said it depends on how you hew; I agree with you, but there's definitely people out there who think that machine guns are more devastating than a 10kg metal fist wielded by a skilled boxer who thinks it's 10g. Certainly, World of Darkness is of the principle that if you manage to bring a bazooka to a fight with a werewolf, you're definitely outdamaging them (they may still survive through esoteric means, but blast weapons, man, once you're done rolling the three separate undodgeable attacks that's a lot of agg).

There's only one stance I disagree with, and it's the 'every bullet rolls attack once' school of thought which I have seen before. Hence bringing up flame weapons, they're about as much a continuous stream of projectiles as a machine gun.
 
Ryang said:
Certainly, World of Darkness is of the principle that if you manage to bring a bazooka to a fight with a werewolf, you're definitely outdamaging them (they may still survive through esoteric means, but blast weapons, man, once you're done rolling the three separate undodgeable attacks that's a lot of agg).
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I'd say that Werewolf's equivalent to something like a bazooka would probably be a balefire Gift?
If you want an actual comparison at least?
 
I do still primarily think that the biggest reason not to shoehorn firearms into Exalted is that there's already a weapon type that has existed for decades and that fills that niche already in the setting.

But I will admit that this conversation is making a pretty good go at convincing me that Exalted gun discourse is exhausting enough that it's worth avoiding for its own right as well.
 
Hmm. Is a second circle demon about a hundred feet tall silly? Specifically. An oak tree with a roughly humanish shape and a massive split down the middle held together by iron bands.
 
Grytorm said:
Hmm. Is a second circle demon about a hundred feet tall silly? Specifically. An oak tree with a roughly humanish shape and a massive split down the middle held together by iron bands.
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That's a little outside of what 2cds usually are like, but it doesn't scan as inherently silly or wrong for the setting to me, no. Demons should be weird, in bespoke ways that speak to their nature.
 
VagueZ said:
That's a little outside of what 2cds usually are like, but it doesn't scan as inherently silly or wrong for the setting to me, no. Demons should be weird, in bespoke ways that speak to their nature.
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I agree with this, and I actually find the design concept rather interesting. I'd say go for it!
 
Qerdus, the Scar Unspeaking.
Defining Soul of the Stinging Springs.
Really tall demonic oak tree man split down the middle and bound together with bands of iron. Is good at history, entomology, copying texts, and being really big and enduring. Is surprisingly stealthy, especially in the East. Can reach some spells from the first circle of Necromancy.

Negative attitude. Avoids offering their own opinions unprompted. Doesn't like moving around too much. Spreads mutant strains of wasp. When summoned arrives at a portion of his full size, needs time to grow into his own, and needs a fair amount of maintenance especially in the South.
 
I forgot that part. And the whole thing could definitely stand to be fleshed out more... Just realized something.

Qerdus may escape to creation when a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody around to hear it.

Edit: I mean when a wood elemental or forest god dies and goes unmourned.
 
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Kaiya said:
We have lightning ballistae stats, the machine gun is going to be a non-artifact version of that with some special tags. Guns are not special in Exalted. Weapons are not special in Exalted. Technology will not save you from magic. I'm sure the Suppressing tag would be quite useful against mortal battlegroups, but it's still just a siege weapon. At the level the mechanics operate at, it's not really that different from a ballistae, it just shoots faster, reloads easier, and would have a tag representing automatic fire.

Nothing a Raksha or Exalt needs to be intimidated by. A gun in the hands of a mortal man is no different from a knife or a sword in the hands of a mortal man when raised against monsters or legends. Light, medium, heavy, tags, siege.
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Yeah, the lightning ballista stats are part of the problem. If you open up on a hoplite phalanx with modern machine guns, and it's only as effective as a lightning ballista, that's kinda hard on the old suspension of disbelief.

Wouldn't break anything to make artifact siege weaponry better against battle groups, though. It does bother me that firing an implosion bow into a battle group is just a normal decisive attack that always hits, adds threshold successes to damage, and knocks them over.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
Yeah, the lightning ballista stats are part of the problem. If you open up on a hoplite phalanx with modern machine guns, and it's only as effective as a lightning ballista, that's kinda hard on the old suspension of disbelief.
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I mean yeah, the lightning ballista should blow the gun out the water in terms of what it does to its victims.
 
Well, you can open up Arms of the Chosen and look at what a lightning ballista does. It's not that much better at killing crowds than a normal bow.
 
Grytorm said:
Qerdus, the Scar Unspeaking.
Defining Soul of the Stinging Springs.
Really tall demonic oak tree man split down the middle and bound together with bands of iron. Is good at history, entomology, copying texts, and being really big and enduring. Is surprisingly stealthy, especially in the East. Can reach some spells from the first circle of Necromancy.

Negative attitude. Avoids offering their own opinions unprompted. Doesn't like moving around too much. Spreads mutant strains of wasp. When summoned arrives at a portion of his full size, needs time to grow into his own, and needs a fair amount of maintenance especially in the South.
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I love this! You're right it can use some fleshing out, yet you've already got a really strong core which covers a bunch of the demon essentials: distinctive visual, eclectic interests, weird logistics, strong personality, carefully hidden in-joke.

I would probably flesh out more about why he is a necromancer rather than a sorcerer since that's pretty unusual, and probably tie it to a necromantic initiation - there's interesting story to both him having his own and to him being mentored by someone else, maybe a former summoner.
 
Thank you.

As for why Qerdus knows Necromancy. It's because he is descended from an OC Yozi who I have mentioned a couple of times (Joklua, the Broken Spires? Title is a work in progress) who has a penchant for Necromancy. And his greater self is the most necromancer orientated of Joklua's souls. He himself would mostly use it to summon ghosts to ask questions.
 
Grytorm said:
Thank you.

As for why Qerdus knows Necromancy. It's because he is descended from an OC Yozi who I have mentioned a couple of times (Joklua, the Broken Spires? Title is a work in progress) who has a penchant for Necromancy. And his greater self is the most necromancer orientated of Joklua's souls. He himself would mostly use it to summon ghosts to ask questions.
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Certainly makes sense! I agree with everyone else, this is a really solid base for a demon, just needs some more fleshing out to make it a proper write-up! I recommend checking out EarthScorpion's Green Cherry Demonomicon for good examples on how to style and structure your demons; ES's demon write-ups are some of the best I've ever seen, and I'm probably not the only one here who thinks so.
 
The main place where seige weapons disapointed me is how ineffective they were vs. legendary sized opponents.
Battle Groups are much less of a problem for me because of what magnitude loss represents, I assume the ratio of dead to fleeing soldiers is much higher vs. an attack from a lightning ballista than it would be from someone shooting a bow.
 
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Sanctaphrax said:
Yeah, the lightning ballista stats are part of the problem. If you open up on a hoplite phalanx with modern machine guns, and it's only as effective as a lightning ballista, that's kinda hard on the old suspension of disbelief.

Wouldn't break anything to make artifact siege weaponry better against battle groups, though. It does bother me that firing an implosion bow into a battle group is just a normal decisive attack that always hits, adds threshold successes to damage, and knocks them over.
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Machine Gun: Industrial Siege Weapon.
Close −5, Short −3, Medium +4, Long +2, Extreme +0; Damage/Overwhelming: +15/3

Anti-Personnel: It is only a Strength 3 feat to relocate a machine gun.
Armor Piercing: Against mundane armor, the piercing tag automatically applies to attacks made by this weapon.
Rapid Fire: Against battlegroups, this weapon doubles threshold successes for determining raw damage.
Industrial: Weapons of industrial warfare are unusually loud and terrifying, and add +1 to the difficulty of rout checks made by battlegroups opposing them.
Siege (Extreme)

Artifact Siege Weapons: Trivial opponents struck by these weapons are instantly killed, and battlegroups suffer double magnitude damage from every attack. Artifact siege weapons ignore soak from mundane armor on battlegroups.
 
Ryang said:
especially considering that the USA is relatively less mobilised and capable of tolerating losses than the Realm, which dampens the effect of all those artifact-grade weapons.
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That's not really a factor, because the total forces each side can pull together are so vastly different.
There are forty-ish legions in the realm, each of them with about 5000 people. That comes out to 200,000 people, give or take ten thousand I think.

The USA mobilized more than a million people during the civil war, and the population has grown somewhat since then.
 
alexthealright said:
That's not really a factor, because the total forces each side can pull together are so vastly different.
There are forty-ish legions in the realm, each of them with about 5000 people. That comes out to 200,000 people, give or take ten thousand I think.

The USA mobilized more than a million people during the civil war, and the population has grown somewhat since then.
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Those forty-ish legions are just what the Realm has on hand right now - well, them and the House troops, and Imperial navy, and prefectural militias - not the maximum amount of troops it could possibly pull together.
 
alexthealright said:
That's not really a factor, because the total forces each side can pull together are so vastly different.
There are forty-ish legions in the realm, each of them with about 5000 people. That comes out to 200,000 people, give or take ten thousand I think.

The USA mobilized more than a million people during the civil war, and the population has grown somewhat since then.
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I... think you missed my point - the Realm is able to get to civil war level of mobilisation (or close to), the USA is decidedly not - it has a professional army that is actually trained to use machine guns whose most ready troops are largely deployed outside of USA borders, and whose reserve forces will take some time to respond and retrain. There's also a second tier of combat trained-ish units who significantly less lethal weapons, like police. And a significantly larger population that is not going to mobilise at all and might take out some dinky guns that won't penetrate decent body armour if threatened, but why bother doing so when your DBs can just toss 10 dice to loudly tell everyone to surrender?
 
Jarovan said:
Those forty-ish legions are just what the Realm has on hand right now - well, them and the House troops, and Imperial navy, and prefectural militias - not the maximum amount of troops it could possibly pull together.
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Ryang said:
I... think you missed my point - the Realm is able to get to civil war level of mobilisation (or close to)
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It's a medieval society, it cannot mobilize that many people or everyone starves because you've sent too many farmers to war. But for the sake of argument let's say it can mobilize 3x that number if it needs to, or 5x, that's still not large enough to match the USA

Also-

Ryang said:
it has a professional army that is actually trained to use machine guns whose most ready troops are largely deployed outside of USA borders, and whose reserve forces will take some time to respond and retrain.
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Most of those legions are also already doing stuff, they're not just sitting down relaxing as reserve troops ready to be sent out to war in a far off land.
 
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