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General Exalted Thread

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HoratioVonBecker said:
I don't refuse to read them, just to own them. If it's as bad as I've heard, though, the very minimum would be going through with a sharpie.
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There are absolutely some books worth reading that don't require a ton of revision! Games of Divinity, for instance, is basically ALL well written, and gives you an excellent overview of the gods and metaphysics of the setting. Plus, it's from 1e so it's cheap, despite being still relevant. Compass of Celestial Directions: Malfeas may have flaws, but it should still give you ideas as to what Hell is like. Compass of Terrestrial Directions: The North is (IMO) the best of the ground-level books, focusing on the temperate-to-frozen north of Creation. The Glories to the Most High books fill you in on what the Incarnae are like, and why they act the way they do. The Caste and Aspect books give insight to what it's like to be exalted, looking at the Solar and Terrestrial castes and aspects

Nevertheless, it's possible for one person to take over the world, even without frankly absurd amounts of luck.
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With sufficient politics - forging alliances, conquering those who will not bend knee, cutting deals with those you find distasteful, and so on - you could find yourself King of the World. It would be a feat not matched since the end of the Primordial War, and would require you to defeat or slay hundreds of others, many with as much potential as you, but it's technically possible. But not forever, and likely only briefly.

Every Exalt is, to some degree, a flawed and maddened paragon of virtue. You cannot always be a good king, for EVERY exalt is broken inside, and this means you WILL sometimes make poor decisions, leading others to doubt you. You cannot fully trust your Exalted allies, for they are broken inside, and may make poor decisions and betray you. You cannot fully control your lessers, for every and any Exalt can learn to shed mind control. And when bad luck comes together - when you reach your limit and snap and your allies decide to stop you, or when they snap and decide to overthrow you - the mighty shall be overthrown by their inferiors, as has happened again and again through the history of Creation
 
Ok, total nonsequeter, but what happens if you try to use a perfect defense against the Mouth of Oblivion? I know that once you're in Oblivion, you die, but let's say someone more tapped you so you couldn't stop them, and threw you at the Mouth, but you managed to get some regen on the way down and use a perfect dodge or party to avoid touching it.
 
beowolf said:
Ok, total nonsequeter, but what happens if you try to use a perfect defense against the Mouth of Oblivion? I know that once you're in Oblivion, you die, but let's say someone more tapped you so you couldn't stop them, and threw you at the Mouth, but you managed to get some regen on the way down and use a perfect dodge or party to avoid touching it.
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If your PDs are applicability-trumping, you're fine.

Of course, they won't get you out of the Mouth of Oblivion, so they just buy you a tick/action/whatever.
 
tzar1990 said:
There are absolutely some books worth reading that don't require a ton of revision! Games of Divinity, for instance, is basically ALL well written, and gives you an excellent overview of the gods and metaphysics of the setting. Plus, it's from 1e so it's cheap, despite being still relevant. Compass of Celestial Directions: Malfeas may have flaws, but it should still give you ideas as to what Hell is like. Compass of Terrestrial Directions: The North is (IMO) the best of the ground-level books, focusing on the temperate-to-frozen north of Creation. The Glories to the Most High books fill you in on what the Incarnae are like, and why they act the way they do. The Caste and Aspect books give insight to what it's like to be exalted, looking at the Solar and Terrestrial castes and aspects


With sufficient politics - forging alliances, conquering those who will not bend knee, cutting deals with those you find distasteful, and so on - you could find yourself King of the World. It would be a feat not matched since the end of the Primordial War, and would require you to defeat or slay hundreds of others, many with as much potential as you, but it's technically possible. But not forever, and likely only briefly.

Every Exalt is, to some degree, a flawed and maddened paragon of virtue. You cannot always be a good king, for EVERY exalt is broken inside, and this means you WILL sometimes make poor decisions, leading others to doubt you. You cannot fully trust your Exalted allies, for they are broken inside, and may make poor decisions and betray you. You cannot fully control your lessers, for every and any Exalt can learn to shed mind control. And when bad luck comes together - when you reach your limit and snap and your allies decide to stop you, or when they snap and decide to overthrow you - the mighty shall be overthrown by their inferiors, as has happened again and again through the history of Creation
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The obvious solution is to begin designing my replacement, then. And thank you, by the way. It's cheering to talk to someone who doesn't seem to dislike me.
notthepenguins said:
No, his answer is as correct as mine. Both of them are true.
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Yours doesn't say "There are canon NPCs who are automatic Rocks Fall Everyone Dies no amount of Stunting can save you now, even by the end of a powergaming campaign". His forgot to clarify that.
 
HoratioVonBecker said:
Is there any individual character who's supposed to be beyond a dedicated group of players to kill? (Yozis don't count as individuals.) No? A group of players with enough time can kill all of them. Hopefully, it's not much harder to get a quarter of those working together.
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This doesn't respond to the question of how you think a completely fixed creation would be. Unless you are saying that killing everybody is the solution, of course. If you do, the DeathLords are always recruiting.

Edit: To elaborate, if you want to make a world without any kind of suffering, you either need to destroy everything and drop the ruins in Oblivion, or unravel creation to make a world free of time. You only need to defeat all those pesky Exalts in your way.
 
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notthepenguins said:
If your PDs are applicability-trumping, you're fine.

Of course, they won't get you out of the Mouth of Oblivion, so they just buy you a tick/action/whatever.
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Right, but, I was thinking more in universe. As an example, if an Infernal uses Malfeas' perfect parry that can block unblockable attacks by making them break on (or bounce off, if the delivery method is indestructible) your body, and tries to use it against the Mouth?
 
beowolf said:
Right, but, I was thinking more in universe. As an example, if an Infernal uses Malfeas' perfect parry that can block unblockable attacks by making them break on (or bounce off, if the delivery method is indestructible) your body, and tries to use it against the Mouth?
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It depends on the specifics of how your GM rules the Mouth of Oblivion works. Is it actually a space you can enter, and thus be subject to damage while inside it? Does it drag you in? Does it deal environmental damage just for being near it? Etc etc etc.
 
Broken25 said:
This doesn't respond to the question of how you think a completely fixed creation would be. Unless you are saying that killing everybody is the solution, of course. If you do, the DeathLords are always recruiting.
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Give everyone absolute immortality and their own universe, with the ability to meet if neither party objects and an off switch for their mind if they feel the need.
Same for any universe, really.
 
HoratioVonBecker said:
The obvious solution is to begin designing my replacement, then. And thank you, by the way. It's cheering to talk to someone who doesn't seem to dislike me.
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Designing a replacement sounds reasonable at first, but it's going to run into an issue - one of the "soft" rules of the setting, the things that are upheld in books but never explicitly stated, is that you can't make something unique stronger than a Celestial Exalt (or maaaaaybe a Solar), or reproducibly stronger than a Dragonblooded. And this means that whatever replacement you design is going to run into the issue of "there will always be virtuous, occasionally mad heroes stronger than me around." And you really can't get rid of the Exalts - destroying an exaltation is outright impossible, lessening it effectively so, and the buggers reincarnate everytime you kill them. The only thing in history known to have held Exaltations prisoner was a plot device that fundamentally broke the universe and even then couldn't last forever.

Now, if you want to violate those rule in your own game, that's fine! There's no secret Exalted ninja fansquad coming to kick down your door. But people will tell you that allowing said replacements in game is a violation of the thematics of Exalted as a default setting, and they'll be right.
 
tzar1990 said:
Every Exalt is, to some degree, a flawed and maddened paragon of virtue. You cannot always be a good king, for EVERY exalt is broken inside, and this means you WILL sometimes make poor decisions, leading others to doubt you. You cannot fully trust your Exalted allies, for they are broken inside, and may make poor decisions and betray you. You cannot fully control your lessers, for every and any Exalt can learn to shed mind control.
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And, by precedent, if you try to throw your support behind a worthy and un-Exalted master to loophole around your own folly and madness you're gonna pick a dictator running a police state or the forbidden god of cannibalism or a no-shit Deathlord. Q.v. the part about folly and madness.
 
Warning: Warning
  • Staff Post
    • warning
    @HoratioVonBecker, it's becoming increasingly clear that you have zero interest in actually discussing Exalted, but rather your own setting, and you have refused to engage with anyone else in this thread, instead just making justifications and explanations and then moving on or just plain ignoring them when anyone refutes them. You are becoming disruptive. You are debating in bad faith.

    You go. Now.

    Come back in a week when you can actually take a hint.


    official staff communication Reduced to warning and cleared of bad faith on appeal.
     
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  • Staff Post
    • So, a question:

    When you summon a 3º circle, he is simultaneously in Creation and Malfeas, right? So, what happens if you kill him in Creation and use a spirit killer?

    Does he dies five days later in Malfeas? Is he just unafected? Or maybe he becomes like Jacint and loses from then on the capability of being in two places at once?
     
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    tzar1990 said:
    There's no secret Exalted ninja fansquad coming to kick down your door.
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    I wouldn't bet on that, given how heated some of these debates become.

    To remain relevant, I remember an interesting point someone brought up a while back in some Exalted discussion. The basic gist was that an Infernal who took Howl of the Devil Tiger was not precluded from learning (Devil Tiger) Cosmic Principle, because the new entity would not be a Yozi, but an unmaimed Primordial. The relevant text:

    The Broken Winged Crane said:
    In declaring his own legend, he may never learn (Yozi) Cosmic Principle
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    Thus, a Devil-Tiger Keris* couldn't learn (Malfeas) Cosmic Principle, but could learn (Keris) Cosmic Principle because (Keris) is not (Yozi).

    *used her because she's a common name around these parts

    I think this rationale relies too much on nitpicking language, but it's an interesting idea. Learning "Howl" is no longer a cutoff point, and remaining in the Devil-Tiger path is more of a constant choice to remain an exalt, losing out on power to keep your sanity.
     
    Broken25 said:
    So, a question:

    When you summon a 3º circle, he is simultaneously in Creation and Malfeas, right? So, what happens if you kill him in Creation and use a spirit killer?

    Does he die five days later in Malfeas? Is he just unafected? Or maybe he becomes like Jacint and loses from then on the capability of being in two places at once?
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    No: if you kill something with a spirit killer(and that is a meaningful charm vs them) then they're dead. That's the whole point of those, and if they didn't have any effect or such a minor effect then the war would never have been won because then the Exalted couldn't fight the Primordials.

    Personally? That demon is dead, instantly. How that manifests depends on how you interpret the 5 day thing, but it happened and now a Yozi will change as one of it's defining souls is cut down.
     
    C.o.S.a.R said:
    No: if you kill something with a spirit killer(and that is a meaningful charm vs them) then they're dead. That's the whole point of those, and if they didn't have any effect or such a minor effect then the war would never have been won because then the Exalted couldn't fight the Primordials.
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    Yes, that is my favored interpretation too. Still, is not completely clear. Is possible than you can't use a spirit killer as long as the demon still exists in Malfeas, even if you just killed him in Creation.

    (But i don't really like that version, since it would mean that is impossible to actually kill 3º Circles out of Malfeas)
     
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    If you summon a 3rd circle, they simultaneously exist in Creation and Malfeas, right? So how does this interact with the five day limit? Can you command their body in Malfeas?
     
    Broken25 said:
    Yes, that is my favored interpretation too. Still, is not completely clear. Is possible than you can't use a spirit killer as long as the demon still exists in Malfeas, even if you just killed him in Creation.

    (But i don't really like that version, since it would mean that is impossible to actually kill 3º Circles out of Malfeas)
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    This is a misunderstanding about how 3rd circle souls operate: they can naturally be in multiple places at the same time. The limit is that only one instance of them can be in creation at the same time. Your reading would have them be utterly invincible, as they can just have other instances of themselves be elsewhere, and thus never be defeated.
     
    Peanuckle said:
    To remain relevant, I remember an interesting point someone brought up a while back in some Exalted discussion. The basic gist was that an Infernal who took Howl of the Devil Tiger was not precluded from learning (Devil Tiger) Cosmic Principle, because the new entity would not be a Yozi, but an unmaimed Primordial.
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    I honestly think thats a fairly stupid idea and the people who came up with it should really feel bad. Being a Devil Tiger is awesome enough, why do people want to dampen the awesomeness of it by trying to get MORE power ups.

    (besides, Devil Tiger > Primordial/Yozi).
     
    No, Howl of the Devil-Tiger does exclude you from learning (You) Cosmic Principle, but it doesn't exclude (for example) the next bearer of your Exaltation doing so.
     
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