General Exalted Thread

[VagueZ]

I don't think that a chargen Dawn Caste being able to reliably kill elder Exalts is like, desirable, especially not if they don't even have to be a bizarre optimisation monster. That they are arguably capable of doing this is a combination of certain Solar abilities being badly overtuned and a lot of QCs for Lunar elders etc. being really conservatively written. Like, I think that Solar should definitely be one of the more dangerous people alive, but immediately trying to fight a millennia old Full Moon or Chosen of Battles shouldn't be a sure thing either that you feel confident about winning. That's not particularly good for the setting, and like...

"How do I challenge my Solar PCs when the Dawn wrecks anything balanced for the group and if I balance for the Dawn the other characters would explode" is a legitimately serious recurring problem for new STs, and the stock "you don't" response at some point just feels like more of a cope than anything.

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Yeah. It's a fine pitch for another game to have a character or character archetype whose role is "my foes reliably explode into gore the moment I can press them into a stand-up battle, because I'm just that terrifying in combat," but that pitch doesn't really fit with a crunchy group tactical system, so it doesn't fit Exalted in either lore or mechanics.

If one side reliably does evaporate when an optimized combat monster hits, then the combat system is unnecessary fluff for someone whose pitch is "I'm that scary."

I prefer such a character to be terrifying to fight against, but not unassailable. That just seems like more fun both in terms of playing it out and the stories it inspires.

 

[Gazetteer]

If one side reliably does evaporate when an optimized combat monster hits, then the combat system is unnecessary fluff for someone whose pitch is "I'm that scary.

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I'm not even worried about strict like, optimisation as much as like, "can someone who barely knows what they're doing solo the setting by making a Brawl supernal and taking brawl charms at random?"

It's not only not like, good for the game, it's also not really lore accurate in a way that's pretty frustrating, sometimes.

 

[Blaque]

I think the issue on Dawns beating everything at chargen is it kind of like...invalidates the thing that has the most complexity in the game mechanically (combat). This is actually a bit of something since the prior devs I think genuinely was a bad design ethos. "Things are okay to be broken since PCs are powerful" doesn't really feel good when that power is represented by trivializing the system.

This is a personal gripe I have also on the attempts to make mortals relevant, but also presenting most mortals as "Guys who just use dice pools." Doing that kind of just makes it so they aren't partcipating in the system and makes your champion of a lord not as interesting to me. I don't think Exalted needs to have characters being stomped by elders, but I do kind of think that combat-orientated characters should have challenges actually worth investing into combat for, otherwise why put so much time and effort into mechanizing it?

 

[Sanctaphrax]

I think it would help this conversation if we all made clear exactly where we put the NPC benchmarks relative to one another.

Upthread someone replied to a comment about beating Ahlat with a comment about being immune to the Wyld Hunt. And I thought "that doesn't make sense, the Wyld Hunt is way scarier than Ahlat". But then I realized that I have no solid reason to expect the thread to agree with me about that.

Maybe we should make one of those editable tier-lists or something. Failing that, we can at least present our own expectations.

The general hierarchy of the people discussed so far, in my mind, is something like

Young Celestials (like the hypothetical Dawn) < Major gods (like Ahlat) < Elder Exalts (like MHS) < Coordinated Exalted groups (like the Wyld Hunt)

There's a lot of flex in each category, of course. I generally have a pretty low opinion of MHS and would be much more intimidated by, say, Anys Syn. And your PC circle might be a coordinated group of Exalts but it's probably a baby one at the beginning of the game so a single older Exalt should still be a very serious threat. But I think it's perfectly reasonable if your Solar circle is gunning for Ahlat from day one, and even at chargen he can't stand against the five of you alone.

 

[DanZapman]

Isn't the Wyld Hunt no longer a specific Realm hit team of Dragon-Blooded in 3e? I thought it'd become something along the lines of a more general lynch mob, with the name Wyld Hunt reserved for a more particular sort of target. Also I recall even in 2e you often had enlightened mortals instead of 100% Exalted Immaculates. Also, since we're discussing groups like the Wyld Hunt instead of specific individuals, I'd say Ma-Ha-Suchi having his own army and such puts him above a Wyld Hunt even if it were guaranteed to be a full circle of Dragon-Blooded.

 

[Jarovan]

I think it would help this conversation if we all made clear exactly where we put the NPC benchmarks relative to one another.

Upthread someone replied to a comment about beating Ahlat with a comment about being immune to the Wyld Hunt. And I thought "that doesn't make sense, the Wyld Hunt is way scarier than Ahlat". But then I realized that I have no solid reason to expect the thread to agree with me about that.

Maybe we should make one of those editable tier-lists or something. Failing that, we can at least present our own expectations.

The general hierarchy of the people discussed so far, in my mind, is something like

Young Celestials (like the hypothetical Dawn) < Major gods (like Ahlat) < Elder Exalts (like MHS) < Coordinated Exalted groups (like the Wyld Hunt)

There's a lot of flex in each category, of course. I generally have a pretty low opinion of MHS and would be much more intimidated by, say, Anys Syn. And your PC circle might be a coordinated group of Exalts but it's probably a baby one at the beginning of the game so a single older Exalt should still be a very serious threat. But I think it's perfectly reasonable if your Solar circle is gunning for Ahlat from day one, and even at chargen he can't stand against the five of you alone.

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I'd personally prefer Ahlat-tier gods to be higher than that, more or less equal to elder Exalts. I think that at every point in an Exalt's lifespan and at every Essence level there should be both non-Exalted opponents who can challenge the Exalt in a fight and opponents who can challenge that Exalt's whole Circle in a fight. That's hard to achieve if big dog gods are distinctly weaker than old, experienced, high-Essence Exalts. This is a statement of my preference, to be clear, not on how things currently are.

 

[Kymme]

It's one reason that I would generally suggest that an NPC who is crashed will try to get away.

By having NPCs act like retreat is an option, it can signal to players that it is okay for them to retreat.

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In the abstract it's reasonable to have foes retreat from encounters, and it's reasonable for player characters to retreat from encounters once it becomes clear that they're outmatched or caught of guard. But practically speaking, without the use of stuff like Hurry Home or Avoidance, its never gonna happen. Have you tried to use the Withdraw rules? This game does have mechanics for retreating from fights, and they're godawful tedious nonsense that people use once and then never again.

I still remember the day I was looking at the comment section of something (I think it was a YouTube video), and saw people complaining about how they didn't make good cartoons like The Amazing World of Gumball anymore, which was the show that first made me think to myself that they didn't make good cartoons anymore.

It was the clearest instance I can recall of feeling a part of my soul die in real time.

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Avatar the Last Airbender's first season came out twenty years ago.

You may slay me now.

 

[Cosar]

Yeah. It's exceptionally hard to break contact from something that doesn't want to let that happen. Movement in general can be a bit awkward in 3e.

 

[Lioness]

Yeah. It's exceptionally hard to break contact from something that doesn't want to let that happen. Movement in general can be a bit awkward in 3e.

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The problem there is that there was an unspoken assumption that never got into the final version of the rules that withdrawing would be occurring as part of a fighting retreat and that combat should basically end in favour of a test of speed if everyone on one side just decided to book it.

 

[elfgames]

I don't think that a chargen Dawn Caste being able to reliably kill elder Exalts is like, desirable, especially not if they don't even have to be a bizarre optimisation monster. That they are arguably capable of doing this is a combination of certain Solar abilities being badly overtuned and a lot of QCs for Lunar elders etc. being really conservatively written. Like, I think that Solar should definitely be one of the more dangerous people alive, but immediately trying to fight a millennia old Full Moon or Chosen of Battles shouldn't be a sure thing either that you feel confident about winning. That's not particularly good for the setting

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I, on the other hand, think that it's actually very fine and good for the game and the setting if the category of "elder Exalt" has enough flex in it that you can kill some of them straight out of chargen. Anys Syn or Lilith? Probably not. Ma-Ha-Suchi? Maybe, on a lucky day - he's mostly an "army guy", not a "duels guy", in my mind. Ragara or Cathak Cainan? Now that's a spicy question - I'm leaning towards "yes, but you shouldn't feel too confident about it".

"How do I challenge my Solar PCs when the Dawn wrecks anything balanced for the group and if I balance for the Dawn the other characters would explode" is a legitimately serious recurring problem for new STs, and the stock "you don't" response at some point just feels like more of a cope than anything.

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I get the concept that "mechanical challenge is an important thing a lot of people want to have in their game", but like--

- having a huge, freeform system where you can be multiple flavors of "sword demigod" or "socialite demigod" and have dozens of special magic powers you can buy for your shtick is clearly desirable
- having those individual special magic powers be actually impactful enough that the player who has significantly more of them has a commensurate edge is obviously also desirable
- if the socialite demigod and the larceny demigod and the investigation demigod want to be as good at their shtick as the sword demigod is at swording, then clearly they should be buying 12 Charms in those things instead of putting them into swording
- this means that right out of chargen, the sword demigod will have a 10-Charm edge and that edge will keep growing as the game progresses because the Dawn's player will mostly keep buying combat Charms, and everybody else will buy Charms for whatever their shtick is

I don't think it's possible to design a game in such a way where "how do I challenge my Solar PCs with my cool boss encounter when one of my PCs has 5-10 times as much investment in combat than anyone else in the group" has a good answer and having 5-10 times as many combat Charms as another player is, like, a value-add that feels commensurate with the investment.

The issue is not helped by the fact that for some groups, "low combat investment" will mean "I have Dex 4, Melee 3 and maybe a 3-dot daiklave if I'm feeling spicy", and for other groups, it means "I have Dex 5, Melee 5, a daiklave and a specialty in wielding that daiklave, like everyone else, but other than that, I'm just grabbing the standard package of ES, DSD, FSS, TAP, and an Ox-Body, as you do when you're feeling casual". Designing encounters in such a way that the Dawn can sweat a little but other PCs won't immediately explode is far easier for the latter than the former!

 

[ichypa]

A lot of people have cited Ahalt, so now I'm curious: how well (or poorly) would Faraku or Octavian fair against the same hypothetical Dawn?

Avatar the Last Airbender's first season came out twenty years ago.

You may slay me now.

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If I weren't already laying down when I read that, I would have actually keeled over in psychic agony.

 

[Kaiya]

A lot of people have cited Ahalt, so now I'm curious: how well (or poorly) would Faraku or Octavian fair against the same hypothetical Dawn?


If I weren't already laying down when I read that, I would have actually keeled over in psychic agony.

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We figured out how to two-round Octavian from chargen in 2015 so not great actually. Fakharu does way better via being great at being a Huge Dragon Guy, but Octavian loses fast against Solars, his only chance is to overwhelm them ASAP. If they can cope with him going for grapples and maxxing JB, he loses fast. Neither of them can hold up against Brawl, to be clear, Fakharu is just better because he can fly.

 

[ichypa]

We figured out how to two-round Octavian from chargen in 2015 so not great actually. Fakharu does way better via being great at being a Huge Dragon Guy, but Octavian loses fast against Solars, his only chance is to overwhelm them ASAP. If they can cope with him going for grapples and maxxing JB, he loses fast. Neither of them can hold up against Brawl, to be clear, Fakharu is just better because he can fly.

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You know, it's bothered me from time to time, but maybe it was really for the best that there are no 3CDs in the core book.

At least we can take some comfort that Ahalt does better going against other splats. Like as a completely random example, if an Earth Aspect assassin hypothetically armed with Gorgon were to fight Ahalt, only by his grace and benevolence could that character possibly survive that battle.

 

[Crumplepunch]

Octavian suffers from having a lot of Perilous Charms and unlike Ahlat not having a very strong withering defense. He has some nasty attacks, but if you keep bullying him he will never get a chance to use them.

 

[mothematics]

I, on the other hand, think that it's actually very fine and good for the game and the setting if the category of "elder Exalt" has enough flex in it that you can kill some of them straight out of chargen. Anys Syn or Lilith? Probably not. Ma-Ha-Suchi? Maybe, on a lucky day - he's mostly an "army guy", not a "duels guy", in my mind. Ragara or Cathak Cainan? Now that's a spicy question - I'm leaning towards "yes, but you shouldn't feel too confident about it"

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Ragara, the weakest solo combatant on there, is a like 500 year old Essence 5 Earth Aspect with a powerful Artifact daiklave he knows his way around who's attended by his scions and guards at all time, but even without the help you could drop a building on his head and he'd walk it off on account of being an Essence 5 Earth Aspect, because they are built like mountains.

I think history has shown us it's just pretty terrible for the integrity of the setting to be able to do what you're suggesting, and I don't see why every splat that isn't a Solar should be made into a joke. No example you've listed makes any sense to be able to solo out of chargen without just breaking the setting like a twig and trivializing the entire splat in question as well as their purpose in the setting. It's absurd.

 

[mothematics]

I also just want to highlight how not serious that last example is, because the idea that you could or should be able to wash Cathak "The Glass Ceiling Breaker" Cainan potentially on your own out of character generation is making me feel like I stepped into another dimension.

Cainan is not just some guy. He's Him. He rules from a throne in Himbuktu and is a Dragon-Blooded GOAT contender. We are talking about the one man bad enough to be made matriarch by virtue of the premier military Great House by its founder over literally anyone else, a Fire Aspect general and warrior who is one of the greatest living fighters of the entire setting. This guy murders five slave rebellions before breakfast and has the stragglers crucified before he's got his coffee. He has killed, probably, more Anathema than you have had friends in your entire life. Mnemon wouldn't fight him for real. Fuck, I don't think Anys Syn would fight him for real either - not because she specifically wouldn't win, but because she'd be too mad to deprive the world of a swordsman of his caliber. And even then, you'd never get him alone.

And we're entertaining the idea some plucky baby Melee Supernal or Night Caste assassin who teleported into his office talking about some "I'll show you the power of justice!" wouldn't get splat or jumped by 15 devoted Exalted bodyguards working for their man who doesn't even need the help probably? That they should just have a real fighting shot for some reason despite that turning the continued existence of every elder non-Solar in the game into "are the Anathema stupid? Why isn't he dead yet?"


Get the fuck out of here.

 

[elfgames]

And we're entertaining the idea some plucky baby Melee Supernal or Night Caste assassin who teleported into his office talking about some "I'll show you the power of justice!" wouldn't get splat or jumped by 15 devoted Exalted bodyguards working for their man who doesn't even need the help probably? That they should just have a real fighting shot for some reason despite that turning the continued existence of every elder non-Solar in the game into "are the Anathema stupid? Why isn't he dead yet?"

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I'm not sure how any of that follows from "you should be able to take him in a white room combat with some luck".

 

[mothematics]

I'm not sure how any of that follows from "you should be able to take him in a white room combat with some luck".

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Well, ignoring everything else I just said that you aren't responding to, I said that because my point is that the white room combat scenario is just fundamentally inapplicable to the way elder Exalts work 95% of the time. The rare freak like Anys Syn who will duel your ass alone aside, you are never fighting them alone. It's a scenario that just isn't going to happen barring some plot contrivance to get them to willingly isolate themselves, which isn't impossible, but it's just not realistically how it's going to work.

But again, the overwhelming majority of my posts have been taking as a given a hypothetical 1v1. So nitpicking my phrasing here doesn't actually do anything for your position.

 

[Crumplepunch]

For my money Ragara is much tougher than Lilith or Ma-Ha-Suchi as statted, though he probably shouldn't be. When I ran a first draft of Anys Syn against Lilith as a quick test of her capabilities, she actually killed Lilith before her own first action using a counterattack.

 

[Imrix]

I'm not sure how any of that follows from "you should be able to take him in a white room combat with some luck".

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Congratulations on managing to slalom your way between the substantive points to pick out this supplementary afterthought to respond to. I applaud your evasive driving skills, but if we could perhaps engage with the argument that is actually being made... ?

Mothematics is correct. The idea that a chargen Solar should be able to take on Cathak Cainan, 300-year-old luminary and leader of the most martial Great House of the Realm, and have a reasonable shot of doing anything but ending up as a head mounted on his mantle, is absurd. I have been around for the times when this kind of Solar supremacy was de rigeur for the fanbase, we do not want things to go back to those days, they were awful.

 

[alexthealright]

The rare freak like Anys Syn who will duel your ass alone aside, you are never fighting them alone.

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Yeah, and even Anys Syn will bring a murder squad with her it it's really serious.

 

[elfgames]

Well, ignoring everything else I just said that you aren't responding to, I said that because my point is that the white room combat scenario is just fundamentally inapplicable to the way elder Exalts work 95% of the time. The rare freak like Anys Syn who will duel your ass alone aside, you are never fighting them alone. It's a scenario that just isn't going to happen barring some plot contrivance to get them to willingly isolate themselves, which isn't impossible, but it's just not realistically how it's going to work.

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Yes? We seem to be in agreement about that? Which is why I think that a chargen Solar being able to maybe win a white room fight against in-setting big shots doesn't actually imply a lot about the integrity of the setting or render every other splat a joke, contrary to your claim? I think going from "you could maybe win, if you somehow managed to negate every single institutional advantage they have, which you won't" at Essence 1 to "you have a realistic chance of actually winning, if you're not completely stupid about it" at Essence 5 is, like, good progression.

 

[Kaiya]

I also just want to highlight how not serious that last example is, because the idea that you could or should be able to wash Cathak "The Glass Ceiling Breaker" Cainan potentially on your own out of character generation is making me feel like I stepped into another dimension.

Cainan is not just some guy. He's Him. He rules from a throne in Himbuktu and is a Dragon-Blooded GOAT contender. We are talking about the one man bad enough to be made matriarch by virtue of the premier military Great House by its founder over literally anyone else, a Fire Aspect general and warrior who is one of the greatest living fighters of the entire setting. This guy murders five slave rebellions before breakfast and has the stragglers crucified before he's got his coffee. He has killed, probably, more Anathema than you have had friends in your entire life. Mnemon wouldn't fight him for real. Fuck, I don't think Anys Syn would fight him for real either - not because she specifically wouldn't win, but because she'd be too mad to deprive the world of a swordsman of his caliber. And even then, you'd never get him alone.

And we're entertaining the idea some plucky baby Melee Supernal or Night Caste assassin who teleported into his office talking about some "I'll show you the power of justice!" wouldn't get splat or jumped by 15 devoted Exalted bodyguards working for their man who doesn't even need the help probably? That they should just have a real fighting shot for some reason despite that turning the continued existence of every elder non-Solar in the game into "are the Anathema stupid? Why isn't he dead yet?"


Get the fuck out of here.

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Congratulations on managing to slalom your way between the substantive points to pick out this supplementary afterthought to respond to. I applaud your evasive driving skills, but if we could perhaps engage with the argument that is actually being made... ?

Mothematics is correct. The idea that a chargen Solar should be able to take on Cathak Cainan, 300-year-old luminary and leader of the most martial Great House of the Realm, and have a reasonable shot of doing anything but ending up as a head mounted on his mantle, is absurd. I have been around for the times when this kind of Solar supremacy was de rigeur for the fanbase, we do not want things to go back to those days, they were awful.

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Completely agreed. The greatest tragedy of the DB set is the difficulty of supporting this mechanically and it's been a long-time ambition to make some proper E3/4/5 DB stuff and upgrades on E2 to let guys like Cainan shine the way they ought to. That Solar Brawl works the way it does is exceedingly annoying precisely because it damages the integrity of the setting by chumping so many important characters and figures and mechanics.

 

[FaeGlade Plural]

The notion that a Baby Solar should be able to take on any Elder Exalt in their area of expertise is frankly boring.
(barring perhaps Craft because there's the whole "wonders of a lost age" element, though even then I'm not necessary fully fond of that being done by Baby Solars).

If my Dawn straight out of character generation can 1v1 Ragara, or Cathak Dainan, or Ma-Ha-Suchi, or Ayn Sys, or such - then what aspirations do I have?
What story can I tell where my character works up to overcoming anything by growing into their power, if they already start out more powerful than anyone else?

Sure, I can still tell a story of having to find that opponent and divesting them of their guards first. That's something.
But just to take an archetypical example, Luke didn't start out being a better pilot than Vader and being able to beat him in 1v1 combat, only having to run away because there were more TIEs and Vader had too many Stormtroopers on his side. He grew into that over the course of three movies. He faced his father in his area of expertise (piloting) in the first movie and only prevailed through the help of a highly skilled friend, he faced him in an area where he was still growing (Jedi Lightsaber Fighting) in the second and lost, and only in the third had he grown enough to beat his father in a 1v1 fight - and still had to work to make that fight happen, by surrendering and being brought before the Emperor.

I'm not saying you have to do that exact story.
But overall I can think of way more stories where the antagonist is initially much stronger than the protagonist - including in terms of personal prowess - and can only be faced later in the story.
Probably because this feels a heck of a lot more satisfying to a lot of people.

And this isn't just so with Dawns and personal combat.
This is also so with Social stuff, and every other aspect an Exalt can be skilled in.
I want my Chargen Solars (or any characters really) to have to rely on allies (that is why we have other players) and cleverly working around their antagonist, before they can risk direct confrontation. That makes for a much more interesing story.
If I can just force the confrontation right away, and am only stopped by obstacles that prevent the confrontation from happening (that my allies can probably strip away), then that feels boring.

 

[VagueZ]

It's worth pointing out that mothematics' point about Ragara's role and place in the setting also should be true if you want Solars to matter.

A story is defined in large part by the challenges that its protagonists need to overcome to achieve their aims. If the world around Solars is so insubstantial that they can be reasonably expected to directly fight and power through the greatest possible resistance, then... that's no longer impressive.

It starts to feel kin to the lamest sort of isekai power fantasies, where the protagonist is never more then momentarily inconvenienced. The thing there, though, is that even most of these stories realize the need for a sufficiently hyped opposition: their antagonists get a hype squad moment showing how and why these are potent figures before they get steamrolled. And this is still something that gets dull once novelty wears off.

If there's no tension, then all the fun pieces of the setting are just detailing ant hills that are about to be pushed over. Solars don't matter, because all that they can accomplish is pushing over ant hills.

I'd rather that they matter.