My personal pet theory for why much of the infrastructure developed the First age stopped being in common use during the Shogunate era was a systemic campaign of sabotage by the Lunar host. This seems like a good way to give the Lunar host more of an impact on Creation without having to significantly rewrite canon.
General Exalted Thread
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The issue is that you can't normally maximize all things, because everything is a tradeoff. Modern Fighter jets are a good example. They're amazingly effective in their role, and are somewhat terrifying peices of equipment. They also require something like 100 hours of maintenance for each hour of flight.
So, yeah, Solars probably could make equipment that didn't need maintenance, or at least didn't need it often. But, doing that should mean that the equipment is less capable than items that do need that maitences.
This also fits in with the whole idea about the First age collapsing over time. If the stuff was basically permanent, it doesn't make as much sense. If, however, you needed lots of maintenance, well then suddenly the various wars became even more destructive.
Legion1771
The God
How would a Solar defend against a nuclear explosion? I imagine that perfect defenses will trump the explosion itself, but how would they defend against the radiation? If at all? is there a thing for that?
The effects of radiation would at the very least be a environmental hazard, so resistance+Stamina would be the base roll, and Resistance charms would be able to modify or defend against it.
Environmental defenses and Anti Sickness/Poison(whichever you think radiation should fall under). Pair that with a PD and you're good.
Cool guys don't look at explosions?
Fucking Solars flat out walk through a nuclear fireball without a fuck to give.
Should it?
The Solar attitude towards crafting brooked no compromises with high end gear.
OTOH, the requirements of game balance requires at least some limitations.
I can see no definitive indication that First Age tech was either maintenance free, or required maintenance; more a matter of ST preference.
This also works with the whole "no upkeep' paradigm.
Doesn't require upkeep =/= Doesn't require repair.
Even artifacts get damaged with time and heavy use.
And if you can't fix it when it gets damaged, everything degrades.
Especially when you are using things as hard as the Shogunate did, first in the Uprising, then in internicine warfare, and finally against the fae.
Or the stuff they intentionally destroyed for fear of boobytraps.
Legion1771
The God
How do dots greater than five in abilities and attributes work? Like getting a +1 somehow. Does it just keep getting higher and higher or is there cap somewhere?
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Your cap in Attributes and Abilities is 5 or your permanent Essence, whichever is higher.
Legion1771
The God
Is there an Essence cap? Or is it simply never reached?
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Yes, it's 10.
10.
I'll note that certain beings, the Incarnae off the top of my head, probably also some Behemoths and such too, can have Attributes above 10.
The Sun, IIRC, has something like fifteen as his highest Attribute, though I can't remember which one.
20 actually, and that's for Strength and Stamina.
Legion1771
The God
Thank you. Final question for the moment. How do Solar's age? Because they do, IIRC, it was only the Abyssals that didn't age. But they lived for somewhere around 3000ish years IIRC and even then I don't think they died of old age so much as they were killed they by the Sidereals and the Dragon-Blooded.
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
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They age however they want.
Okay, more specifically, Solars - and any other Exalts really - don't suffer any drawbacks from old age. Their extended lifespans do run out eventually though, after about 3000 years for Solars. But that can be enhanced or circumvented if you want to.
Solars don't really show any sign of aging until maybe their last hundred years or so - so if you Exalt at eighteen years, you'll look that age for the next ~2500 years or so.
Of course, that's hardly written in stone. I personally really like the concept that Solars that exalt young age to the age that fits them best. A Twilight Sorcerer can definetly rock the Wise Old Man look, so it shouldn't matter what age he exalted at.
Okay, more specifically, Solars - and any other Exalts really - don't suffer any drawbacks from old age. Their extended lifespans do run out eventually though, after about 3000 years for Solars. But that can be enhanced or circumvented if you want to.
Solars don't really show any sign of aging until maybe their last hundred years or so - so if you Exalt at eighteen years, you'll look that age for the next ~2500 years or so.
Of course, that's hardly written in stone. I personally really like the concept that Solars that exalt young age to the age that fits them best. A Twilight Sorcerer can definetly rock the Wise Old Man look, so it shouldn't matter what age he exalted at.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
With access to Charms, sorcery, artifacts and hearthstones an Exalt can look like whatever they wish.
Actually, I think I remember reading in one book (don't remember which at the moment) that 10 wasn't a hard cap, just that there wasn't any point in describing higher levels since someone with Essence 10 is almost omnipotent compared to most beings.
Kylar
In Training Forever
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The healing as a power armor feature is really weird, TBH. Oh, I can see something like it for gunzoshas, but it would be to stop bleeding and prevent disease. We are talking about effectively supermortals here, primarily. Limited wound penalty negation also makes sense. But full up regeneration is unusual, even among the media sources you usually draw on for power armor inspiration. That before you get into balance which is kinda a 'haha NO' thing. Ok, not quite, but armor the regenerates you in combat is probably at least artifact 4 on its own, if not out right Artifact 5. Armor that heals you is really cool, and the sort of thing that feels fairly mythic, like Arthur's sheath. Either way, from balance or themes, its not some thing that should be slapped on as a submodul for power armor.
On the more general FA and maintenance, I imagine it was a mix, at least as far as Solars (and other Exalts) personal gear goes. I can easily see an Exalt being annoyed enough to Ragnarok proof their stuff just so they don't need to fix it ever again. On the other hand, FA!Tony Stark is going to do maintenance on his stuff because he likes to, and so he can figure out what to do better for next time. Also possibly to squeeze more performance out of it. Still others are going to have gear maintained by a buddy/friend/professional, who either don't care to spend the effort/resources to Ragnarok proof, or deliberately don't for various reasons. Mind, this is personal gear, which is to say having roughly as much in common with the run of the mill stuff as an endgame super prototype mecha has with the mook mechs. As you go down the scale to say, gunzosha, you probably see a drop off of Ragnarok proofed/super prototype gear as it needs to be mass produced and useable by mortals. Given those two constraints, you need gear the is fixable by mortals when shit inevitably goes wrong with their gear. There's still probably a range for maintenance, from Russian 'it-will-work-come-hell-or-high-water' to the more American 'here's the manual and a multi-week course, pay attention or it stops working and you die, but its a really nice piece of gear if you take care of it'. And if my exposure to people talking about military gear is any indication, people will argue about which approach is better till the Upsuration decides for them.
Also, on the down tech from FA to Shogunate, I imagine the massive number of explosions from the ongoing DB vs DB conflict did the infrastructure no favors. And that's before you get into what sundering what would have been a Creation wide trade network must have done. Add massively pissed off Lunars for a remarkable case of 'holy shit, we lost the capacity to do what now'. Lack of maintenance probably took a bit to kick in compared to all that.
(Though most of this assumes Art of Permanence is in a less stupid form. Seriously, why is this a costless permanent charm when you made a shiny section of artifacts balance point they need maintenance. Oh, right, because it was these specific charms that let the Solars be the best things ever for Creation's mythic infrastructure, buy them and you to will have that power. Also DotFA laughs at pitiful things like game balance.)
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
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You know, while we are discussing power armours, I can't help but wonder about the type of maintenance helltech 'power armour' would require? A former Neomah turned suit requring you spend 8 hours involved in various forms of 'creative processes' for every hour of use? Dancing before the winds of Adorjan to appease the CBA forged from one of her 3cds?
Dunno
Dunno
Kylar
In Training Forever
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Well, a Neomah power armor probably would require bodily fluids, as per their compact. Blood Apes, probably blood shed in battle, and not necessarily yours. Agata, you need to keep it polished and pretty. An Adorjan based power armor probably requires an intimacy of care or love to be thrown away for maintenance, or just grinds away at you directly. Cecelene, prayer would be the obvious one, though I can also see requiring you to obey certain 'laws' or the armor breaks down.
Malfean ones are, of course, powered by your HATRED. So long as you HATE, it is maintained, when you stop HATING it breaks down. Or it runs on pure power of some kind, that works to.
Overall, depends on the demon and theme of the item. The Yozi are easy for this: they have their themes spelled out for you. Demons take a bit more inventiveness.
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azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
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Unless there is a narrative reason otherwise, I'm pretty sure you just stop aging when you hit full maturity (generally early 20s). A 16 year old isn't going to be stuck looking 16 for 3000 years.
I'll point out that the healing for everything not CBA is limited to bashing.
So if you get wounded by a [P] tagged weapon, you're shit out of luck.
Seems rather a bit less than Excalibur- style healing to me.
My thoughts as well.
The engineer, for whom tinkering is more a pleasure than a chore, would be fine with something that requires lots of maintenance and tweaking.
Other Solars with a more utilitarian bent though?
Would insist on designs that are more rugged, both for themselves, and their retainers.
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Maybe it's the word choice, but this discussion feels like it's pigeonholing FA maintenance into just "Magitech upkeep," where the only thing that matters is actively re-tightening the screws after each use (and the tragedy of the Age of Sorrows is that all of the screwdrivers from the past are lost to the mists of time). I also think that this wording suggests a strict continuum of artifacts, where you can always make the same classes of thing, just toggling the settings on durability/upkeep. Thus, if FA Solars could always make imperishable items then they were either lazy or foolish to make things that could perish.
Maybe it's just the way that I've played/read the setting, but I've always seen the loss of FA infrastructure as basically wiping out entire categories of things that only make sense/could exist within the FA context. Like, if I threw my iPod a few thousand years into the past it would last less than a day before it became a weird looking trinket. The engineers of today aren't idiots for making something under the assumption that there would always be electricity to power it, mp3s to fill it, etc. Likewise, I don't think that FA Twilights would be idiots if they made something to exacting standards that was only possible because of the infrastructure they had available.
Bullshit. No one said that, and it's not true.
Yes, and there's a fortunate solution for that.
The way they've been portrayed sucks. Wonders of the Lost Age was a shit book at a thematic level as well as at a mechanical level, because it made the things within neither wondrous nor lost. Hence, it can be discarded casually and things are only improved by doing so.