mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
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- the bottom of a coffee cup
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- She/Her
That ability doesn't exist in 3e.
General Exalted Thread
- Thread starter Aleph
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- Nova Scotia
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You can tell when something is fucking up destiny, and narrow it down from other context clues -- which Sidereals have very broad access to. In combination, this is how the Bronze Faction is so good at finding out when a new Solar or Lunar has Exalted. It doesn't let you just like, instantly find someone with the Loom alone, though. This was also the case with the Sidereal-facing mechanics of the Loom back in 2e as well, I believe, as much as 2e Lunars acted like the Loom was a laser guided "find Anathema with pinpoint accuracy" machine.
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Not touching the 2e mechanics comments outside of this because it's not my thing, and don't mean to pile on, but there's a small error in your math: damage rolls don't double 10s in 2e, as with 3e's decisive attacks. Two dice only more-or-less average out to one success (ignoring distribution, which you shouldn't in general, because that double 10s pulls the average around from what's fundamentally a 60% chance of failure for any given die) with that function. Without it, the expected value of 7 dice is going to average closer to 3, and the expected value of 6 dice is going to average closer to 2.
I didn't strictly need to check my work here because I have all of this shit memorized, as I am a 3e developer and do intensive mechanics work, but to provide a handy visualizer I edited the code-prompt on AnyDice's calculator to remove the double 10s on the Exalted dice functions. This is what it looks like, with -1 being a botch.
Trad RPGs should probably preface every mechanics chapter with a crash course in probability. It would be useful to everyone- players, people running games, and designers.
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HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
- Location
- Valkyrie, Primus
Useful and very interesting. So long as basic math doesn't make a person break into hives.
I got started with D&D and didn't quite realize how "swingy" a d20 system was until I played a custom worldbuilding game that used multiple dice for action rolls. Or rather, when I found out anydice.com was a thing and started using it to measure the odds of getting the rolls I wanted with particular stats.
- Location
- Washington, USA
Not an exact analogue, but 2e lunars did have some options for stealing memories or skills, and even Flickering Star Infusion for seizing a deceased Sacred Hunt target's thread from the Loom of Fate, so that e.g. divinations will show them as still alive, and Infallible Messengers addressed to them will be redirected to the lunar.
I've also been thinking about ways to fairly represent the challenges of long-term infiltration / subversion / blackmail as part of my "court-scale" houserules. Current plan is to have it work sort of like a political analogue to controlling a mount in combat time.
Blaque
Resident Catblob
- Location
- SLC UT
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Crucible of Legend gives an overall population range for different Exalts on p. 153. While some stuff is superceded by later books, in part due to the timing of writing (Charting Fate's Course for instance says there's no more than 100 Sidereals at a time, ferex), they are about the range we should expect there. And the textbox does indeed have a "Your Creation my vary" call-out.
The numbers were note, with * denoting a caveat:
- ~150 Solars
- ~25,000 Dragon-Blooded
- ~300-400 Lunars
- ~100 Abyssals
- *No more than 100 Sidereals as of their book
- ~250 Liminals
- ~800 Alchemicals (about 100 per Nation, handful in Creation)
- ~50 Infernals
- *~64 Getimians (probably going to be more like Sidereals there)
- ~200-300 Exigents (highly variable).
And bonus from Exigents on the (highly variable) potential Apocryphal ranges, again, with a big "Modify to taste for STs" as per usual:
- 200-400 Hearteaters, about none to 20 active at a time.
- ~50-200 Umbrals (seems very vibes-based)
- Super variable ~25-100 Dream-Souled
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- Location
- my house
I'm genuinely not sure that's correct. As in, this was something I went back to the rules and was uncertain of my read because the actions steps call out Raw Damage (pre soak) and Damage (post soak). The Raw Damage is the "base damage" of the weapon + accuracy successes. Soak is subtracted from Raw Damage snd the remaining damage is rolled with sux removing HL.
Given this charm refers to "damage" not Base or Raw Damage, RAW I believe it would be post soak.
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- Nova Scotia
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Specifically, it is "no more than 100 at a time", which is basically the same as it ever was. They tend to still take longer between incarnations, seemingly, and at least one of them is usually currently dead.
- Location
- my house
My bad and good catch. Its been a while since I played and while I go back to double check rules ehen unsure (and gave a wuick scan to refamiliaize myself) I should probably sit down and reread them in more detail.
I'm not sure range penalties and range increments are the same? But I'm also not sure what else they could be so *shrugs*
You're right, and thank you for pointing that out but *ugh* that means I'm going to have to redo a lot of calcs.Not touching the 2e mechanics comments outside of this because it's not my thing, and don't mean to pile on, but there's a small error in your math: damage rolls don't double 10s in 2e, as with 3e's decisive attacks. Two dice only more-or-less average out to one success (ignoring distribution, which you shouldn't in general, because that double 10s pulls the average around from what's fundamentally a 60% chance of failure for any given die) with that function. Without it, the expected value of 7 dice is going to average closer to 3, and the expected value of 6 dice is going to average closer to 2.
I didn't strictly need to check my work here because I have all of this shit memorized, as I am a 3e developer and do intensive mechanics work, but to provide a handy visualizer I edited the code-prompt on AnyDice's calculator to remove the double 10s on the Exalted dice functions. This is what it looks like, with -1 being a botch.
Trad RPGs should probably preface every mechanics chapter with a crash course in probability. It would be useful to everyone- players, people running games, and designers.
- Location
- London, England
Charms like Fire and Stones Strike, in Solar Melee, specifically call out that the damage they apply is post-soak.
Without that rider, the combat step system very clearly says that all damage is totalled up before being compared to hardness and soak. Thus, Force of the Mountain adds to raw, pre-soak damage, not post soak.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Just for convenience's sake for people: The 50-200 is Umbrals and 25-100 is Dream-Souled. This post had a lot of good information, but Blaque just happened to miss including the labels on these two.
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- my house
While the first is true, the second is not. Step seven says that your raw damage is base damage (usually str + a flat value) + successes on the accuracy roll and that "effects which modify the raw damage of an attack apply as written"
Step 8 then says (assuming your raw damage is higher than the target's hardness) you subtract the targets soak from the *raw damage*. And that what remains is the final damage of the attack.
Step 10 then tells you to roll damage.
The only time "damage" with bo modifier is used furting the step breakdown is in step 10.
While Fire and Stone Strike sets a precedent that you should expect charms to specify if damage is post soak, these steps equally set the precedent that Raw Damage, Base Damage, and Damage are different things. Which is why I was/am genuinely unsure as to which reading is intended. I came down on it meaning post soak, if only because the steps are so consistent about defining specific terms here.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Speaking from the experience of someone who was around while this edition was alive and widely discussed, 'raw damage' and 'damage' were used interchangeably across 2e's run. 'Post-soak damage' was the one that got called out specifically as a special thing - because, y'know, it is special, it was for denoting armour-piercing damage that was commensurately more valuable and important for doing so.
I could probably go back to the books and refresh my memory to lay out an argument for how this flows from the rules, but to be blunt I don't actually want to go rooting around in the muck of 2e anymore, so I'm simply going to stick with the assertion that no, Maugan is 100% correct, Force of the Mountain adds to raw damage because if it added to post-soak damage it would call that out specifically, because that's how everybody played and discussed the game, including the big experts like Chung and the Ink Monkeys.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
Nope.
Check 2e core pages 145 and 148-150.
It does talk about raw damage and post-soak damage on 145, but there's a very important wording choice that you're ignoring. It's very explicit in that things that affect "post-soak damage" play on step 8. Effects have to modify post-soak damage to count here. You're trying to read "it adds to the damage" and trying to make a claim that if it doesn't say 'raw damage' it must mean 'post-soak damage'.
This is not accurate. Page 148, under Step Seven, has "Effects that modify the raw damage calculation of an attack apply as written." You're trying to say that because this includes the word 'raw', there's a different, undefined sort of 'damage' that doesn't get added here, where it says that things that modify damage calculation are included. It's claiming that things have to say 'raw' damage or they fall into a mysterious void that can get added anywhere that it's convenient for the attacker.
Contrast this with the very last sentence of Step Eight, on page 150. "Apply any effects that increase or reduce post-soak damage to the final value after factoring in minimum and maximum damage as necessary." This is pretty clearly written with the intent of this needing to list that it affects post-soak calculations. It has to at least hint that it's trying to be post-soak for it to apply on Step Eight instead of Step Seven.
This is backwards. One of these is written to point out that it's looking for a very specific language tag, and the other is a broad "here is where you add effects", and it's the inverse of what you're trying to use.
Post-soak damage boosts are rare in 2e; in most cases the most powerful effects are just listed as "unsoakable" instead of affecting things post-soak.
Sometimes Exalted 2e does include that things are included pre-soak, but that's just for convenience and the fact that it was written with an unfortunately uneven quality control.
Fire and Stones Strike costs up to (STR)m for +(motes spent) Post-Soak damage, Force of the Mountain costs 2m for +(Essence) damage. They have the same Type, Keyword, and Duration. If FotM did Post-Soak damage it would be a CMA charm almost strictly better then a Solar charm.
Also @BossFight you should really read the Errata when doing your analysis. Theft of Essence Method doesn't give the user the motes anymore, Avalanche Method can't Immobilize, ect.
Between your misunderstanding of 2e rules and not reading the errata I (a 2e holdout) didn't read past Earth Dragon Style except to confirm you got Theft of Essence Method wrong because Garbage In Garbage Out. Do you want help finding the Errata or with reading rules text for your next analysis project?
Also @BossFight you should really read the Errata when doing your analysis. Theft of Essence Method doesn't give the user the motes anymore, Avalanche Method can't Immobilize, ect.
Between your misunderstanding of 2e rules and not reading the errata I (a 2e holdout) didn't read past Earth Dragon Style except to confirm you got Theft of Essence Method wrong because Garbage In Garbage Out. Do you want help finding the Errata or with reading rules text for your next analysis project?
The lack of the errata is honestly just a choice about which philosophy you want to look at. The errata was a big change, and came extremely late in 2e's lifespan after all.
Blaque
Resident Catblob
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- SLC UT
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- He/Him/His
COrrections/all that always appreciated. Now to fix <_<
I'm surprised theres so few Exigents and so many liminals, I would think Exigents would be in the high hundreds or a thousand while Liminals are very rare.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Most Exigencies only last for a mortal lifetime and die with the user, with renewable sources or ones that reincarnate like a Celestial Exaltation in the firm minority, the other Exaltations tend to be harder to remove from circulation.
- Location
- an unseen void
- Pronouns
- Any
common error; Exigents actually appear at a rate precisely correlated to how comfortable your GM is with bullshitting their stats, because they're always delightful but that's work
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- Pronouns
- They/Them
It's important to realize that Exigents are on an uptick in just the last handful of years. Between when the Unconquered Sun turned his face from Creation before the Usurpation and the opening of the Jade Prison to release the sealed Solar Exaltations, he paid much less attention to Creation, and to prayers to him, which includes prayers for the flame of Exigence. Not zero, just... not many.
There's maybe 200 to 300 in RY 768, the default campaign start date. There probably was at least a good chunk less in RY 718. Any numbers I pull out are entirely made of vibes and not something we can point at substantial canon support for, but imagine that it's maybe more like 100 to 200, for instance.
This uptick means that there's less need to create stories of historical Exigents in the last thousand years, because while they've been around, they haven't been around... all that much. Something like the March Lords or Sovereigns are pretty significant chunks of the overall Exigent numbers. It also means that there's a bunch of Exigents you can run into who are about the same age as your starting Solar/Abyssal/Lunar/Sidereal/etc. You're still growing into your power, but so are they, so they're more appropriate rivals.
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- Nova Scotia
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- She/Her
I'm not sure if it's true that most Exigents only live for a mortal lifespan. That isn't what the book says on the subject:
Article: Many Exigents live a lengthy yet still mortal lifetime, maintaining their health until their final years. Some find ways to extend their lives beyond their natural span with anagathic drugs purchased from the Guild, sorceries learned from gods and demons, or stranger methods of staving off aging. Others have lifespans measured in centuries, which they can extend further using many of the same methods as their shorter-lived peers.
Rarer still are Exigents with the potential to live for millennia. Of these, relatively few have survived the passage of ages, though a few may yet be found, with long and faded memories of the rise and fall of civilizations. Sometimes this persistence is conditional: An Architect does not age as long as she remains within her home city's bounds, while an Exigent chosen by the forest deity Ever-Rising Oak is only nigh-ageless so long as the titanic tree she guards still stands.
I think it's noteworthy that we don't like, have an example of an Exigency that reincarnates automatically like the Celestial Exalted do. In every case, there's a point of failure. The Torchbearer could just die alone without an apprentice. Shifune could be slain permanently before another Foxbinder could be chosen. For there to be another Sovereign, you need access to the Font of Glories. There's seemingly always some way in which this process is a little more precarious, judging based on all current examples.
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HamSandLich
MEAT WIZARD
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- He/Him
The majority of exigents also don't reincarnate or propagate their exaltation in any way, and often don't have extended lifespans, which serves as a hurdle to the historical footprint or population exigents can collectively have relative to DBs or Celestials
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I struggle to read a section that says that this is true of, again, many of them and come away with this impression. I have directly quoted the relevant passage.