General Exalted Thread

[VagueZ]

So this actually gave me an idea: how would Storyteller-VagueZ feel about altering the effects of the God-Blooded quality (with the "Children of Spirits" sidebar as precedent), and saying that the demon-blooded "Zoanoids" have the ability to commit a mote and "materialize"/"dematerialize" their other Supernatural qualities/mutations? The main difference between the two being that I guess that the "dematerialize" could fall under a more general "conceal/suppress your demonic nature" effect that would hold up to more intense mundane scrutiny, while the "materialize" option would be more along the lines of the desired "assume battle form" effect. This way I could make my armies of doom with Every Man a Devil to tide me over until Essence 3, when I can use second circle Sorcerous Workings to make artisanal Hyper-Zoanoids…which now that I think about it, would be lore-accurate for Hyper-Zoanoids.

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To be honest, one of the things I'd push back on is letting it be fully equal to demon-summoning. If it's mechanically as good as summoning demons, but you don't have to deal with demonic foibles as much, and it's not as ethically fraught because you're hiring people who sign on instead of getting supernatural slaves, then why would summoning demons be the standard? And it's fun to have those complicated moments where your demons do their best to be a good help and just aren't.

For mechanical rigor, you can about equal demon summoning and call that balanced, but as a Storyteller I personally really like to use mechanics to incentivize playing to type, or provide a sort of terrible reward for failing to do so. If you're walking the harder road because you feel the need to make a point (an ethical stance, to show some guy up, because you made an ill-considered promise, whatever), I would want to honor that by genuinely making it harder. Not to a point of guaranteed failure, but definitely so the character can feel the price they're paying.

That's something that would color a lot of my decisions as a Storyteller. I do try to sort of split a difference here that's significant to me: some things are how I'd do it and other things are how it should probably be done. Sometimes I'll suggest (or build!) things that I wouldn't use as ST, because I don't want to impose all of my foibles on other people's fun.

I'd push back on a lot of Zoanoid stuff pretty hard because it mostly feels too convenient and too far from the standard setting. Something like them could be fit in, but it'd be a unique and weird thing like Volivat's Yennin (who actually aren't a bad template for some of this).

However, your Storyteller is not me (presumably, at least). This specific proposal is pretty much a slight flavoring of what I suggested, and, yeah, go for it if the table's down for it. Personally, I'd still want to make sure that Every Man a Devil people feel changed by their transformation. They aren't just "people with a demon form". They are fundamentally changed by Hellish influence.

 

[EarthScorpion]

To be honest, one of the things I'd push back on is letting it be fully equal to demon-summoning. If it's mechanically as good as summoning demons, but you don't have to deal with demonic foibles as much, and it's not as ethically fraught because you're hiring people who sign on instead of getting supernatural slaves, then why would summoning demons be the standard? And it's fun to have those complicated moments where your demons do their best to be a good help and just aren't.

For mechanical rigor, you can about equal demon summoning and call that balanced, but as a Storyteller I personally really like to use mechanics to incentivize playing to type, or provide a sort of terrible reward for failing to do so. If you're walking the harder road because you feel the need to make a point (an ethical stance, to show some guy up, because you made an ill-considered promise, whatever), I would want to honor that by genuinely making it harder. Not to a point of guaranteed failure, but definitely so the character can feel the price they're paying.

That's something that would color a lot of my decisions as a Storyteller. I do try to sort of split a difference here that's significant to me: some things are how I'd do it and other things are how it should probably be done. Sometimes I'll suggest (or build!) things that I wouldn't use as ST, because I don't want to impose all of my foibles on other people's fun.

I'd push back on a lot of Zoanoid stuff pretty hard because it mostly feels too convenient and too far from the standard setting. Something like them could be fit in, but it'd be a unique and weird thing like Volivat's Yennin (who actually aren't a bad template for some of this).

However, your Storyteller is not me (presumably, at least). This specific proposal is pretty much a slight flavoring of what I suggested, and, yeah, go for it if the table's down for it. Personally, I'd still want to make sure that Every Man a Devil people feel changed by their transformation. They aren't just "people with a demon form". They are fundamentally changed by Hellish influence.

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Oh, I do agree there that the transformation into a demon should make them a demon. That means including the foilbles there. They might have loved cats before, but Mr Blood Ape now flies into a red haze when he sees one. Miss Tomescu sees the will of the Yozis and her own death and screams at the top of her voice every sunrise and sunset. Mr Hopping Puppeteer oozes narcotic slime even in his human form, and even if he does know how to care for babies better than his breed, he's still stealing people's children to keep around while he works.

If they're not made crazy demons by the transformation, you're failing both the genre check of "man who sacrifices his humanity to become a demon becomes a demon mentally too" and the reference that it's inspired by.

 

[BossFight]

The real question with Zoanoids isn't "how do I make demon equivalent minions" its "how do I scale production because my time as an Exalt is too prescious to spend 4 hours a day making a single minion".

Personally, I lean towards massive ant queen monster which regularly births new minions controlled by scent marking known only to selectively trained thaumaturges who act as their handlers (I sure hope no Dragonblooded heroes reverse engineer those chemicals and turn my army against me).

Firt Zoanoids though, you're probably going to want to train a cadre of sorcerer-chirugeons to do the work of turning men into monsters for you

 

[GardenerBriareus]

I mean, for Zoanoids, the original 'catch' to their power was that a Zoalord can casually hijack their minds whenever and wherever they want; one of the Zoalords literally sends out a psychic broadcast drawing in every Zoanoid from miles around, so that he can force them to dissolve into flesh slurry and flow together to form a giant kaiju-body for him to control.

Having your Zoanoids mentally transform into exact replicas of existing 1CDs leaves an odd, unpleasant aftertaste for me. I'm too tired to really cudgel together an alternative right now, but... hmmm, this reminds me of the work @QafianSage and I did to try and build a Qafian Charmset, ~4-5 years ago. There, the idea of your Pupils eventually being able to shed their mortal form to become tokusatsu villains of the week was undergirded by the fact that you've already gotten your hooks into them pretty deep, in terms of mental manipulation, and there was also the added idea that as their sifu, you suffer consequences if they ever see you unequivocally fuck up, so you were encouraged to be secretive and concoct baroque schemes to hide your failures and, if it came down to it, just lie like crazy to make your Pupils doubt their lying eyes and believe that no, you totally expected the Solar to blow up your giant Essence refinery, this was all a secret test of your Pupils' wits, and they clearly failed!

Wait, @EarthScorpion, didn't you have a spell or a Charm that lets you transform humans into demon-alikes? I think that's where I first really absorbed the phrase 'death and rebirth' as a descriptor of how those sorts of transformations can leave the subject significantly changed without necessarily being an intentional manipulation of their psyche. For lack of a better analogy, I'll gesture toward how Officer Murphy isn't quite the same being as RoboCop, and it's not just about having 90% of his body replaced with cybernetics.

 

[ichypa]

However, your Storyteller is not me (presumably, at least). This specific proposal is pretty much a slight flavoring of what I suggested, and, yeah, go for it if the table's down for it. Personally, I'd still want to make sure that Every Man a Devil people feel changed by their transformation. They aren't just "people with a demon form". They are fundamentally changed by Hellish influence.

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Tbh it's doll-making that developed enough that it might evolve into solo play, so technically I can do whatever I want. But why bother using any mechanics whatsoever if I'm just going to fiat everything?

They'll definitely be mentally altered by the experience, yes.

The real question with Zoanoids isn't "how do I make demon equivalent minions" its "how do I scale production because my time as an Exalt is too prescious to spend 4 hours a day making a single minion".

Personally, I lean towards massive ant queen monster which regularly births new minions controlled by scent marking known only to selectively trained thaumaturges who act as their handlers (I sure hope no Dragonblooded heroes reverse engineer those chemicals and turn my army against me).

Firt Zoanoids though, you're probably going to want to train a cadre of sorcerer-chirugeons to do the work of turning men into monsters for you

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This is why God Malfeas gave us the giant glass "amoral experimentation" tube tanks. Probably going to need to complete his conquest of Lathe before he can start setting up that infrastructure, though.

I mean, for Zoanoids, the original 'catch' to their power was that a Zoalord can casually hijack their minds whenever and wherever they want; one of the Zoalords literally sends out a psychic broadcast drawing in every Zoanoid from miles around, so that he can force them to dissolve into flesh slurry and flow together to form a giant kaiju-body for him to control.

Click to shrink...

One of the Charms that inspired this build was, in fact, Absolute Override Protocol.

Thank you everyone for the feedback, and can I just say it was pleasantly surprising how many people knew what the hell Zoanoids even were.

 

[strange_person]

Bit late to the discussion, and might not be directly useful, but I've got a homebrew infernal charm for 2e that's all about turning people into demons more or less voluntarily: https://docs.google.com/document/d/...L5t_fMQfw/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.jf7dqx6n0vnq More intended for PMMM than tokusatsu, but I tried to keep it relatively flexible as a spiritual upgrade / "reveal your dark heart's full potential" effect, rather than overcommitting to specific genre tropes.
Also, separately, an artifact which lets non-sorcerers - even mortals - bind (a very limited selection of) 1CDs to service, at the risk of being corrupted into one themselves... but with the ability to shapeshift back into their previous human form. Tome of Imps And for maximum ambiguity, some such demons - specifically the ones who were never human - can use Memory Mirror + Mirror of the Infinite Wardrobe to imitate lost loved ones.

 

[QafianSage]

I mean, for Zoanoids, the original 'catch' to their power was that a Zoalord can casually hijack their minds whenever and wherever they want; one of the Zoalords literally sends out a psychic broadcast drawing in every Zoanoid from miles around, so that he can force them to dissolve into flesh slurry and flow together to form a giant kaiju-body for him to control.

Having your Zoanoids mentally transform into exact replicas of existing 1CDs leaves an odd, unpleasant aftertaste for me. I'm too tired to really cudgel together an alternative right now, but... hmmm, this reminds me of the work @QafianSage and I did to try and build a Qafian Charmset, ~4-5 years ago. There, the idea of your Pupils eventually being able to shed their mortal form to become tokusatsu villains of the week was undergirded by the fact that you've already gotten your hooks into them pretty deep, in terms of mental manipulation, and there was also the added idea that as their sifu, you suffer consequences if they ever see you unequivocally fuck up, so you were encouraged to be secretive and concoct baroque schemes to hide your failures and, if it came down to it, just lie like crazy to make your Pupils doubt their lying eyes and believe that no, you totally expected the Solar to blow up your giant Essence refinery, this was all a secret test of your Pupils' wits, and they clearly failed!

Wait, @EarthScorpion, didn't you have a spell or a Charm that lets you transform humans into demon-alikes? I think that's where I first really absorbed the phrase 'death and rebirth' as a descriptor of how those sorts of transformations can leave the subject significantly changed without necessarily being an intentional manipulation of their psyche. For lack of a better analogy, I'll gesture toward how Officer Murphy isn't quite the same being as RoboCop, and it's not just about having 90% of his body replaced with cybernetics.

Click to shrink...

The spell is the Wave-and-Fire Rite, I think, which basically merges a human and a first circle demon into an Akuma where the human is usually in control with the demon remaining as something akin to an Unwoven Coadjutor - but can body jack the human if it wants. It's in Keris' spell list over on the Ascensions and Transgressions thread.

The Charm is one of the Oramus Charms IIRC, linked in the Book of Ten Thousand Scorpions.

 

[blueJane]

Got a random question for you all (relevant to my current creative endeavors), do we have any idea, reference, concept, or description of what Nexus looks like from the outside? I'm doing some art for the start of the next part of my fanfic and I'm finding no kind of direct reference material; what I can infer from Across The Eight Directions is that:

- There are hills in the north where the wealthier live.
- There's an extremely poor neighborhood on the tip of the meeting point of the Yellow and Grey rivers that floods frequently.
- The Guild meets there in a 2 story building, while the Council building is a 'soaring' ten stories tall (and presumably stands out over its surroundings.

 

[EarthScorpion]

Got a random question for you all (relevant to my current creative endeavors), do we have any idea, reference, concept, or description of what Nexus looks like from the outside? I'm doing some art for the start of the next part of my fanfic and I'm finding no kind of direct reference material; what I can infer from Across The Eight Directions is that:

- There are hills in the north where the wealthier live.
- There's an extremely poor neighborhood on the tip of the meeting point of the Yellow and Grey rivers that floods frequently.
- The Guild meets there in a 2 story building, while the Council building is a 'soaring' ten stories tall (and presumably stands out over its surroundings.

Click to shrink...

The most exhaustive details on Nexus can be found in Scavenger Sons, for 1e. It's mostly compatible with 3e.