Stunts are basically supernatural in Exalted. The reason that they're free is because they take effort on the part of the player and generally aren't constant on. Having it be constant, no cost, no effort is counter to that idea.
In brief; Exalted is to some degree a cinematic game, but is emphatically not a cinematic setting. It's actually a very gritty setting, where people die of blood loss or infection or dysentry, not improbable death traps. James Bond isn't a mortal in Exalted, he's very firmly a Solar or Sidereal. Mortal heroes are the kind of people you'd find in the Black Company. This juxtaposition is an important part of the game, since it's what creates a lot of the sense of awe and power that surrounds the Exalted; they're not just action heroes, they're heroes who get to take a realistic, gritty world and stride through it like action heroes.
Perhaps my terminology is indeed unclear, particularly when encountered without clarifying context. I'll try to explain.
Yeah, that helps.
Charms are nearly always powered by spending a specific number of calculable units of magical energy that the setting's scholars know about and study scientifically, they have strict rules regarding when they may or may not be used depending on what other magic was used at that point, they result in flaring magical auras, and they can usually be dispelled or prevented by various antimagical (anti-Charm) effects or artifacts. I don't see how that can be claimed to not be outright supernatural. Also I really hope that you're talking about being unable to represent the 'TV Version' of Lee Jun-Fan with a Heroic Mortal, as being unable to represent an actual realistic mortal as even a Heroic Mortal would be . . . sad . . . for a system that is all about heroism.
Yes, but these are out-of-setting abstractions. In setting, scholars of the First Age could explain to you in detail how breathing worked in strict, measurable terms of Essence exchange, how walking does, how the forging of steel involves least gods singing songs of transmutation to the iron and coal. Everything in Creation runs on explicit supernatural magic. That's the point. It's an animistic setting. Exalted are just better at it and have more magic to spend.
Ehhh, not so much. Sidereal Fate-trickery is often covert by its nature, and tends to represent the kind of shenanigans that Wise Old Masters get up to, and while Dragon-Blooded definitely do overt A:tLA style element-bending, there's a lot of less obvious effects that rely on metaphorical elemental associations. Spirits vary a lot like always, and even Lunars aren't all overt magic all the time, although for canon Lunars that's partly due to their widespread Silver Solar problem. Still, even TAW's don't have Obvious on all their Charms.
I was going to answer this, but uh, Aleph did it better than me, faster than me. Just go read her post above again, she's a smart lady.
Motes are like calories.
The sort of Essence an Exalt uses for their charms is exactly like the Essence they use for the same things mortals do. A mortal with supernatural abilities uses the same Essence for their mystical kung fu and their breathing.
Yes, but Duelling Torc's and Manacles of Night are both terrible Artifacts written by people who clearly had a poor understanding of Artifacts and Exalted in general, because if Manacles of Night are a thing, how come the Wyld Hunt hasn't slapped them on every hostile Exalt to turn them into helpless mortals who can be safely locked up for a few thousand years until they die of old age?
See, we're once again getting into "I think those are bad writing", and the reason for that isn't even anything to do with this; it's that they allow you to reliably imprison an Exalt. That's awful precedent. That's horrific precedent. If that is in any way reliably possible, the Primordials would have won the War, frankly, because they'd just have made things that stopped Exalts using their Charms and then locked them all in jail. The whole point of the Exaltation, the thing the setting is founded on, the reason they were made; is that you can't stop the fucking things. If you kill them, they come back. If you command them, they disobey. If you imprison them, they escape. If you challenge them, they grow stronger. They were created, as an explicit design intention, such that they were impossible to stop, or hinder, or subvert, or destroy. Which is another reason for Creation being the way it is; because nobody can turn them off now that their original purpose is long-since achieved.
Regarding a safe way to imprison a Solar with those manacles being the way to sidestep the reincarnate-upon-dying zerg rush:
As a newbie, I kinda feel uncomfortable in this situation, but okay, here goes:
Armour-Shattering Strike said:
I thought training to do Charms requires actual training, as opposed to just lying Incapacitated while a situation comes up where having been trained in a charm would be useful in retrospect. You know, the differene between undergoing a schedule of gradual cold-weather conditioning, and just being thrown out of a house in the Northern Winter.
I would consider "Constantly having to make Stamina + Resistance rolls because I'm being drugged" a valid training time for a Resistance Charm.
Any time an Exalt spends imprisoned is training time to break out. The Jade Prison worked because the Exaltations were captured while outside Exalts (though it still didn't work on the Lunars).
One part of the training for Fire Dragon Style involves being set on fire.
Yes... But a; a Solar would treat that as training time to develop Charms like Immunity to Everything Technique for reasons already stated by Walker above, and b; that's both more effort-intensive and less certain. "Similar enough to the Jade Prison" is not a good thing; the Jade Prison is kind of intentionally something that runs counter to the usual themes of Exalted, as a mark of how mighty an undertaking the Usurpation was, and as a necessary measure for the history to work. It's not something that should be replicated.
Sure, but the problem with that is that we're talking about a setting populated by demigods with Lore/Craft/Intelligence/Whatever Excellencies, so if you introduce a potential way for a character to become rich and famous, you immediately have to think about how people have already tried/are trying to use it to become rich and famous.
I mean it's notable that you take crossbows as your example, because quite a few people tend to take the view that crossbows being some wonder of lost technology in Creation is bloody stupid. Crossbows are a fairly simple weapon that have been developed in parallel across the length and breadth of our world as early as the 6th Century B.C.E. There's a section of the Art of War devoted to their use; the greeks were using them not long after. The idea that it takes First Age knowledge to design and construct them just makes everybody in the Age of Sorrows look like idiots.Revlid said:
Sigh. I'm not sure whether to groan 'Ink Monkeys' or 'Shaping' as I pinch my nose over that.
You seem to be talking of possible ways of screwing up one's agenda in such a way as to make enemies, e.g. rising to power through intimidation, backstabbery and stepping on someone else's toes as opposed to by charming everyone else to the point of convincing them to just step down willingly. That's the stuff that happens in the campaign depending on in-campaign actions.
It's actually from Glories of the Most High: The Unconquered Sun.
