General Exalted Thread
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Oh determinately, but there should be a difference between a 'Daikliave' (ie immensely powerful and potentially 4-5 dot artifact that is potentially the symbol of being an exalt) and 'ordinary' artifact swords (which may variy depending on the plot and all that). That way people can have their golden surfboards AND their immensely powerful katana that is kept 'sealed' within a cane to hide its power when not in use, etc etc.
In my completely inexpert opinion, Option A sounds better than Option B.
My opinion is basically that while stuff like Guts' sword or the Monster Hunter weapons should be an option, so should Excalibur.
I do think weapons that have no magic apart from being made from a magical material should be a thing, and they should be confusable with an outright Artifact that hasn't been attuned to or (if we're using 3e) hadEvocations developed, but not with a totally mundane sword.
I do think weapons that have no magic apart from being made from a magical material should be a thing, and they should be confusable with an outright Artifact that hasn't been attuned to or (if we're using 3e) hadEvocations developed, but not with a totally mundane sword.
A jadesteel blade is precisely as easy to mistake for a steel sword as a steel sword is to mistake for a bronze or iron one. Because... uh, it's made of an alloy of steel and jade dust and that has a distinctive appearance.
But as for the rest... well, blades have a reason for their design. To force artefacts to have excess ornamentation or an impractical design isn't something I'm a fan of. Can't a daiklaive just be a wonderfully efficient exemplar of a sword?
And no, I oppose oversized weapons not least because oversized weapons produce the baseball-bat-and-watermelon problem. If someone's swinging around a sharpened surfboard, you're not parrying that without magic and you're not surviving if you're hit without magic. And your armour isn't much use from sheer momentum transfer. That produces undesired game effects when these properties of a fuckhuge sword are mechanised and leads to damage escalation. Therefore I act to exclude oversized weapons because I don't want to face those things - and the few oversized weapons which do exist are actually special and truly terrifying artefacts because holy shit that little gothic girl is swinging a grand goremaul which weighs more than she does.
Eukie
Powered by furious Canadian redheads
Ah, sweet, got my new character concept. Thanks!
I was planning to play Shoat of the Mire sometime with a Berserker-sized Grand
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Jon Chung
=][=
Note that a weapon that can be confused with a totally mundane sword is superior to one which can't. Because nobody looks twice at mundane swords, while people notice blinged-out tacky decorative objects covered in gold filigree. This is a disadvantage that you don't necessarily want to suffer if you have a choice.
Something which looks just like a mundane sword right up until you pull it out of the scabbard and cut them with it is better.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sigh. Okay, who summoned Alveua and her ridiculously huge white-hot goremaul?
I have no problem with the idea that Exalted have to choose between the Awesome Sword and fitting in.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
I needed someone to fix my TV okay! God, stop judging me!
Jon Chung
=][=
My point is that the most awesome sword is one you can't tell apart from a conscript's standard issue weapon up until you get stabbed with it and it's too late to regret one's arrogance at thinking that a conscript's standard issue weapon is not threatening, because that sword went right through your steel plate armour and most of your internal organs. Effectiveness matters, not appearance. I prefer a setting in which this is the preferred design methodology.
*tilts head*
I never said a mundane-looking sword shouldn't be threatening. After all, at the end of the day it's the wielder who's the real threat in any Exalted fight (or who should be). But, uh, if you're trying to argue that 'fuck this entire battlefield' should be strictly inferior to looking normal...
Well, at that point I feel it's best to mark it down to different playstyles, because I'm thoroughly uninterested in that.
Jon Chung
=][=
Eh. That style of weapon has two approaches to implementation: a) it really is only slightly better than a mundane sword despite how it looks and b) yes, the giant slab of metal larger than a human has the statline appropriate to what would actually happen if you hit someone with a sharpened surfboard made of solid steel, "a few orders of magnitude more kinetic energy oh my" kind of level and going up from there.
If we're using a), which I am assuming is the case since that's what canon Exalted actually does, then the excessive, blingy appearance is an explicit aesthetic design choice, which is arguably a pretty bad tradeoff - see the statline for a perfectly normal perfect-crafted straight sword made of Chiaroscuro glassteel compared to an orichalcum daiklave, for example. If we're using b), other problems make themselves known. So since I don't want b) to apply because I have enough chunky salsa problems with the game as-is without making it worse, and I don't want my Exalted to favour overcompensating vanity features over effectiveness under a)...
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- Pronouns
- He/Him
1: They could really use a top-down effort to make the splats fit into some kind of niches, or at least have some kind of specialization, or at least some kind of focus.
Putting Solars on top was kind of a neat approach, in contrast with WW's previous work. Without that metatext it's not too special.
2: Solars, Dragonbloods; These two seem to actually fit together to give the game a proper dynamic. DBs are numerous but less strong, Solars are less numerous but more strong, letting them fit as PCs, as ancient rulers, and as end bosses for a DB game.
3: I feel like Lunars, Abyssals, and Infernals are monster types. I don't get why they're splats at all, except "White Wolf lol."
Take the Solaroids. Wasn't this supposed to be a world without black and white morality or something? I guess not. If Solars were just Solars, then we could focus on their individual morality, but instead they're split into Good Solar and Evil Solar types. 'Evil Solar' isn't a good enough concept to base a splat around, never mind two splats. So we've got Vampire Solars and Devil Solars which everyone is frantically trying to pretend are deep and interesting concepts, even though Devil Solars get a mechanical bonus for being more stereotypically villainous. (Worse, they aren't even funny!)
Lunars have no niche or focus, and their shapeshifting ranges from unsatisfying to meaningless, but at least don't undermine game concepts that way. They're colorful, and thus can futz around being midbosses and I guess that's okay. However, while Evil Solars are absent from the backstory because they only recently started existing, Lunars are absent from the backstory because they fell into a plot hole for a thousand years. They undermine the concept of 300 Celestial Exalts being a big deal, because they're 300 Celestial Exalts and are no big deal.
Darmani
Cast in the name of Pod, Ye Go Ninty
- Location
- Lansing
Only in Solar games. Otherwise its not an issue (god the realm is tacky, I love them but damn) or its such an issue you end up pushing to murderhobo-ing which is the mode Exalted is least capable of handling
Answering...
1. the "first" three or four were nice and form an interesting story even though some are so obviously there to support and not be stars in their own story. Also a way to do metaplot without metaplot. And in stupid ways in part. But each forced to play together from the beginning allow for some interesting interactions and setting. Getting more experience with rpgs I realize its more.. lets say "smart" 40k than anything innovative unique or original. And that's not an insult to either franchise (40k LOVES being dumb but running with it, Exalted carefully balancing this took talent and it succeeeded in parts)
2. Solars, Dragonblood, gods and fairies before Sids and Fairfolk, and finally Scavenger Lords
3. Lunars, sooooo much promise, so much fail on mechanics. Though I think some just hated being barbarians at a time fandom was over that shit. Sidereals, add Chung's reasons, but their deformation on the setting was extreme, and Fair Folk post their own book being too divergent for the game even if received by some. Scavenger Sons' versions just seemed better to use. Though I'd want to take some of the non mechanical and setting implimentations and put them into that version.
But Sidereals undid the good of the setting. For one the gods were made a lot of things but often obstructive and useless to players. the demons were the opposite and we saw how they could be dangerous. Then Sids come and they are really streamlined to revolve around the Sids schtick AND made useful but only in a way that only the Sids can use (along with everything else) and so on. They were implemented real well. But it felt like you were playing Sidereals, not Exalted with Sidereals.
I'm ignoring the later ones because, in a way, they suffer and benefit from coming later so being able to implement with a ful lsystem and setting that fits as to building about it piecemeal. So they seem sleeker, smarter, easier to use, and so on. Its why they are liked, they leave the boring and baggage. The problem is this often makes them advantaged over the foundational groups and that gets to be a problem.
- Location
- The end of all things
And what of the Fomorian Dream, who darkened Creation and battled the Unconquered Sun for an entire day before being finally struck down? Ishvara are explicitly stated to have powers akin the Celestial Incarnae. They're not a true mortal threat to the Primordials themselves, but they're not something even the Titans get to simply ignore.
They did have the Sword of Creation which, used indiscriminately, was not weaker than the apocalyptic wrath of the titans. Things got rather sketchier after the Usurpation, though both it and the Incarnae were still theoretically there if truly needed.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
Ha! The Primordials are stronger than the Incarne by a very wide margin. Remember who made those gods in the first place. And She Who Lives In Her Name is the bane of all Wyld things. She casually inflicts aggrevated damage on them with her most basic offensive attack and how knows what she's developed that the Infernals haven't yet reached. Like turning bathing entire regions in Pyarian Essence that inflicts damage on anything in the wyld with every step they take until they're nothing more than statues of Pyrian Crystal.
To put it simply, even the mightiest of the Raksha were nothing less than pests to the Primordials of old.
Where was this stated?
Darmani
Cast in the name of Pod, Ye Go Ninty
- Location
- Lansing
Seriously. Its rather key at that level there are no guarantees, like with knife fights in person or nukes in nations. Who cares who "wins" the wounds are NOT minimal.
I have very little respect for such fluff crammed in at the end to generate heat for the "No, really, the fae can play in the big leagues for realsies!" ishvara. If Balor had not had all the goddamn fae all of them and had not been attacking when literally everything was falling apart he would have been murdered in the face.
It is an eternal problem with the fae, the endless desire to elevate them. I blame the fact that they got a playable splatbook. It means people want to make them into more than the chaos-locusts who dwell Beyond the Fields We Know. But no. They are lessened. Crippled by linear time. Once they may have wielded such powers, but now that time is past. It is time which has lessened them. As soon as the first Primordial sprung fully formed from the chaos of the Wyld, the time of the unquestioned princes of chaos was at an end - and when Creation was formed it ran their funereal chimes. When in these fallen times they win, they do so through trickery or numbers, for they have not the strength to defeat the mightest protectors of Creation all on their own.
Now, for them to reclaim such power, they must unmake Creation and its hateful chains of order - yet most Raksha are weak younglings who do not remember how things once were and have 'gone native' to some extent. They have lost it all and they do not even remember what they have lost - they have taken on other roles, other niches in the wyld ecology and some even exist as parasites or symbiotes upon Creation. Only a few recall the power they have lost, and they are ancient beyond belief and sickened by hateful time.
The tale of the Raksha is a tragedy. They are the original usurped, the princes of chaos disdained by both Exalt and Primordial. They are the ragged nobles cast down to scrape for scraps on the edge of the estate which once was theirs. They are the victims of the ultimate act of imperialism. "We too were Usurped!" they cry out to the Solars. "We too wish to Reclaim our former power!" they cry out to the Infernals. "We too wish to destroy Creation!" they cry out to the Abyssals.
Then they get kicked in the face by the Solaroids because they're lying soul-stealing faeries and you'd have to be an idiot to trust them.
(Read The Compleat Traveller In Black. Not only do you get the most Sidereal character ever, but the elementals in those stories basically describe perfectly how I see the fae - creatures of pure chaos who once extinguished star systems in their fantasy chaos-dreaming, but now are bound and tied and limited to mere memory echoes of the power they once held by the weight of crushing linear time)
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FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
I do love Raksha, I got into Exalted via Graceful Wicked Masques.
But "we are undone by Order/Creation" is really one of their central themes. They're all about playing with themes, not committing, constantly changing. Claiming that some of them, even the most powerful ones, could go toe to toe with a Primordial? That's very much against their themes, because the Primordials are the inventors and incarnations of fixed themes. They just ARE, and that's not something Raksha can deal with.
I've always seen the Ishvara as Raksha who turn themselves into pseudo-Primordials - fixating themselves on a singular theme, to the exclusion of all others. They're no longer living stories, they suck all stories around them in and therefore destroy them.
But for all that, they're still not Primordials, because they haven't invented and embodied a new concept - they've just imitated whats already there.
But "we are undone by Order/Creation" is really one of their central themes. They're all about playing with themes, not committing, constantly changing. Claiming that some of them, even the most powerful ones, could go toe to toe with a Primordial? That's very much against their themes, because the Primordials are the inventors and incarnations of fixed themes. They just ARE, and that's not something Raksha can deal with.
I've always seen the Ishvara as Raksha who turn themselves into pseudo-Primordials - fixating themselves on a singular theme, to the exclusion of all others. They're no longer living stories, they suck all stories around them in and therefore destroy them.
But for all that, they're still not Primordials, because they haven't invented and embodied a new concept - they've just imitated whats already there.
I actually think I remember the glories of the unconquered sun book explicitly saying he could defeat primordials in personal conflict if he wasn't shackled by them to never harm his creators. It's sort of central to his concept that he is, well, unconquerable. Hell, the emphasis on his perfection and transcendence of the abilities of all his lesser's is to me, sort of central to the plausibility that the Incarnae's rebellion could have won at all against a free and unreduced Yozi horde.
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greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
'One' Primordial. The book says he could face one Primordial and possibly come out on top. Which is fair, he is the magnum opus of Theion. Him being stupidly powerful makes sense. But I doubt a singular being could take on the Primordial Host. That's why the Gods cheated and unleashed used the Exalted army to do their dirty work for them.
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