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General Exalted Thread

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azoicennead said:
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.
When Exalts get hard-core about training, they get hard-core. Sitting naked on the peak of the mountain nearest the Pole of Air during Rising Air (winter) would, in fact, count as very high-level training for Resistance and general environmental hazard charms.
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Okay, that sounds somewhat overly generous towards the trainee, but I guess that's a consensus in a topic which has about as little as 1-2 pages dedicated to it. I do have to wonder where they get so much XP doing nothing, though - I would also expect them to gain XP slower than a leisurely Elder at the most optimistic, and probably much less. This means they still eventually get the immunity, but are nonetheless disabled for a long while, giving more time to hunt and capture the young Exalts.
 
vicky_molokh said:
Actually, if you can somehow capture a Solar well enough to bind it with manacles, then you can also capture a Solar and dose it with some sort of sedative, and keep the dosage at such a level as to ensure incapacitation but not death
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vicky_molokh 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.
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Nope! Exalts aren't experience vampires who suck xp out of corpses, and while untrained learning times are longer, you can still learn just by fluff justification of "my Essence is adapting to exposure to the drug". As has been said; as long as you keep showing up to sessions and RPing your actions, you will hit enough xp to buy the Charm, roleplay developing it unconsciously, and then be immune to sedatives. Wheee, escape time.
vicky_molokh said:
As a newbie, I kinda feel uncomfortable in this situation, but okay, here goes
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Firstly, Glories was... not good at Charms. And secondly, that's Shaping. Which means that even if it were valid, anyone with Integrity Protecting Prana goes "haha, you're so cute" and then kills you.
vicky_molokh said:
Also, more on the gaming-philosophy side, I find it interesting how differently we see 'unusual precedents'. When you see something that breaks a trend (whether a real one or imagined, but let's say there are some such real trends in Exalted), you call it a bad precedent.
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When I see something that breaks a trend that the game was built, pitched, distinguished and sold on, then yes, I call it a bad precedent.
 
azoicennead said:
Motes are like calories.
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Calories that you regenerate? Why not go to some of the original inspiration, eastern martial art tradition, and just call it breathe.

Anyway, Exalted fluff justification of charms as extreme skill seems to logical break down when Solar Exalted are great at things because their Exaltation, not their natural capabilities. Also, the rest of splats charm justification doesn't echo "charms are the application of extreme" skill thing. The mere existence of Exaltations as divinely bestowed status, kind of undermines the it not being explicitly magical. It seems to me that it would be more accurate to say that Solar Exalts have magic that make them extremely skilled rather than their extreme skill let's them accomplish magic like feats.
 
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vicky_molokh said:
Okay, that sounds somewhat overly generous towards the trainee, but I guess that's a consensus in a topic which has about as little as 1-2 pages dedicated to it. I do have to wonder where they get so much XP doing nothing, though - I would also expect them to gain XP slower than a leisurely Elder at the most optimistic, and probably much less. This means they still eventually get the immunity, but are nonetheless disabled for a long while, giving more time to hunt and capture the young Exalts.
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According to the long-term experience table, you have ~3 years before a Resistance 0 non-Zenith Solar is completely immune* to poisons (10xp per year of doing nothing interesting).
That means you have 3 years in which you have 1 less Exalt to scour all of Creation Creation for. Who will come out of this immune to your counter-measures, more familiar with your operations, and inclined to fuck you over. You might find a couple more in this time. You might capture another. Then, in another 3 years, you have another Exalt immune to your counter-measures, etc. Exalts can learn to regrow limbs if they need to. It's entirely intentional that the inevitable result of imprisonment is escape (and that there are no perfect anti-Exalt prisons, and that there is a net increase in their power), because otherwise they would have lost the Primordial War.

Instead of capturing them, you should repeatedly kill them so they never grow strong enough to challenge you (this doesn't work as well when they have a perfect infrastructure shoveling power into them, like in the Primordial War).

* Depending on various factors, sufficient resistance to be active may come sooner.

Ghost said:
Calories that you regenerate? Why not go to some of the original inspiration, eastern martial art tradition, and just call it breathe.
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You don't regenerate motes any more than you regenerate calories, it's just that the process is more like photosynthesis than eating.
 
Ghost said:
Anyway, Exalted fluff justification of charms as extreme skill seems to logical break down when Solar Exalted are great at things because their Exaltation, not their natural capabilities. Also, the rest of splats charm justification doesn't echo "charms are the application of extreme" skill thing. The mere existence of Exaltations as divinely bestowed status, kind of undermines the it not being explicitly magical. It seems to me that it would be more accurate to say that Solar Exalts have magic that make them extremely skilled rather than their extreme skill let's them accomplish magic like feats.
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Eh, I prefer to look at it that the Exaltations allows them to become extremely skilled, and reach a level of ability beyond mortals and spirits. It is still something they have to work to achieve.
 
I think the game suffers a little from the idea that a Solar can never, ever be held captive for long. It's always dangerous of course, but it means places like Tai-Lungs prison in Kung Fu Panda and the Red Lotus prisons in Korra are a speedbump more than a terrifying place you never want to go to.
 
Ishem said:
I think the game suffers a little from the idea that a Solar can never, ever be held captive for long. It's always dangerous of course, but it means places like Tai-Lungs prison in Kung Fu Panda and the Red Lotus prisons in Korra are a speedbump more than a terrifying place you never want to go to.
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But... Those are speedbumps. I mean they're pretty tough ones, but both of them were introduced as dangerous places to be broken out of to establish the power of their inmates. This is kind of a pattern with fantasy prisons.
 
Nekraa said:
Eh, I prefer to look at it that the Exaltations allows them to become extremely skilled, and reach a level of ability beyond mortals and spirits. It is still something they have to work to achieve.
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Yeah, bluntly, that's just not true. The game tries to claim it sometimes, but it's not true.

Maybe if every Solar Charm needed superhuman Abilities, the game might justify it. But it doesn't. It's magic powered by your magical third soul. You have to learn to use the magic, but the Exaltation is blatantly unfair (and also unearned - you won the lottery).
 
EarthScorpion said:
Yeah, bluntly, that's just not true. The game tries to claim it sometimes, but it's not true.

Maybe if every Solar Charm needed superhuman Abilities, the game might justify it. But it doesn't. It's magic powered by your magical third soul. You have to learn to use the magic, but the Exaltation is blatantly unfair (and also unearned - you won the lottery).
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When did I say that it's not unfair?
 
Aleph said:
Firstly, Glories was... not good at Charms. And secondly, that's Shaping. Which means that even if it were valid, anyone with Integrity Protecting Prana goes "haha, you're so cute" and then kills you.
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Not only that, it doesn't break charms, it breaks defenses, which is much easier to justify. That particular (whatever) tried to stop you from hitting the target, and got shattered for its trouble. "Shut down a particular flavor of charms under thematically-appropriate circumstances" isn't much of a precedent for "shut down all charms with one blanket effect".
 
vicky_molokh said:
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.
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Doesn't matter. There are people you can't sweet talk and they will oppose you. If your campaign is set in the East then the Mask of Winters, Lookshy, Walker in Darkness and Ma Ha Suchi are already out to get you. Oh, they may not kill you. But unless you bend knee to them and swear oaths of fealty enforced by magical compulsions you're going to have a Bad Time.

I'm talking about enemies as a drawback you start with (and possibly retain in spite of your best effort to eliminate or befriend them) as a drawback of a character, in exchange for having an extra point or two to spend elsewhere. (I'm also not talking about the Designated Enemy that happens to become the enemy of the whole Circle because a plot hinges on it.)
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You're Solars. You have 10,000 Dragonblooded, 50 Sidereals, a variable number of Lunars, a number of Abyssals, probably a Deathlord or two, a handful of Infernals, uncountable demons (including a handful of extinction level event opponents), the literally numberless hordes of the Fair Folk and significant chunks of the gods themselves who want you dead, banished or enslaved.

Just for being a Solar. No personal enmity required.

That's not enough for you?


I'm talking about Flaws/Drawbacks/Disadvantages of the same sort as starting a game with one eye/hand/leg, of perpetually having bad luck, being in debt, having a restrictive code of honour etc. Are we having a game-system-paradigm/-philosophy incompatibility?
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Having one eye/hand/leg is a good reason to buy your Perception or Dexterity down to 1. Having bad luck means some Sidereal, or heaven in general, has decided to fuck with you and you specifically (there is no 'luck' in Exalted, its all Fate and Destiny). Having a restrictive honor code is know as "Having High Conviction and an Intimacy towards Honor".

Also, not necessarily the wrong sex, but rather anything incompatible for orientational reasons. Robosexual Autochtonian Populat? Check. Asexual former soldier ("War changes everyone in a different way . . .")? Check. Lithosexual mountain-spirit? Check. The sort of mythic beauty that transcends boundaries. Again, Asari are probably the best example: they're not particularly pretty (okay, maybe a little), but their allure is definitely Applicable against pretty much anything worth using it on.
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"Seduce People Not Attracted To Me" is still a valid specialty.

There is nothing about orientation in Exalted that renders seduction Inapplicable. Heck, even Unacceptable Orders are not Inapplicable (they just are automatically resisted at no cost). The only Unacceptable Order is suicide.


Aleph said:
Nope! Exalts aren't experience vampires who suck xp out of corpses, and while untrained learning times are longer, you can still learn just by fluff justification of "my Essence is adapting to exposure to the drug". As has been said; as long as you keep showing up to sessions and RPing your actions, you will hit enough xp to buy the Charm, roleplay developing it unconsciously, and then be immune to sedatives. Wheee, escape time.
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Or, for that matter, "My First Age incarnation knew this Charm." Past lives are a thing in Exalted and are, in fact, the justification for why you know most of your Charms at chargen.
 
Ishem said:
I think the game suffers a little from the idea that a Solar can never, ever be held captive for long. It's always dangerous of course, but it means places like Tai-Lungs prison in Kung Fu Panda and the Red Lotus prisons in Korra are a speedbump more than a terrifying place you never want to go to.
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Notice how both prisons are introduced and then almost immediately escaped from.

Heck, even once Zaheer's recaptured, he's not truly confined- he can access the Spirit World whenever.
 
The truly inescapable prison in fiction is the one that's never shown or mentioned in the plot, since any prison that is shown or mentioned in the plot will almost certainly be shown or mentioned so that someone can break out of it. From this, we can deduce that prisons are adversely affected by proximity to plot, and should be stored in a cool dry place away from narratives.
 
Aleph said:
The truly inescapable prison in fiction is the one that's never shown or mentioned in the plot, since any prison that is shown or mentioned in the plot will almost certainly be shown or mentioned so that someone can break out of it. From this, we can deduce that prisons are adversely affected by proximity to plot, and should be stored in a cool dry place away from narratives.
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Or broken into.
 
It's kind of like the opposite of plot armour. The less the plot cares about it, the more likely a prison is to stay in one piece with all its bits intact.
 
Shyft said:
Or broken into.
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Very few people are inclined to break into a prison without then breaking out again. In fact, I would be willing to go so far as to say that I cannot recall offhand a single plot that features someone breaking into a prison and then aggressively demanding to stay there, though I must admit that it sounds like something I would have enormous fun watching.
 
Aleph said:
Very few people are inclined to break into a prison without then breaking out again. In fact, I would be willing to go so far as to say that I cannot recall offhand a single plot that features someone breaking into a prison and then aggressively demanding to stay there, though I must admit that it sounds like something I would have enormous fun watching.
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I think I've read a few where that was the case, though they never successfully remained there, despite their wishes.

I guess they should have done something about being a protagonist first.
 
azoicennead said:
I wouldn't recommend Husband-Seducing Demon Dance for actual seduction unless you're going after the wife, too. And the neighbor. And a big chunk of the neighborhood.
... It's not good for delicate work.
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"Its all collateral damage baby, these hips don't lie! Drive them all crazy and have them beat the one that annoys you with a stick!"

(starting with the one that thinks sex is an appropriate use of performance, when it should surely be in presence).
 
Aleph said:
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.

Stomping all over that precedent for the sake of a couple of artifacts that let you completely shut down a player's agency is, in my view, almost as bad as making a Spell that lets you literally delete Charms from a person's character sheet. It's setting-breaking in-universe and it's bad game design out-of-universe, because it blatantly attacks player agency by denying them access to internal, self-sufficient things that they have paid for. One of the first checks that should be done when making a game effect - especially one that sets a precedent like "it is possible to deny an Exalt the ability to use their personal Charms" - is "does this break the entire history of the setting/balance of the game over its knee?" Whoever wrote these Artifacts clearly did not make that check.

... okay Imrix, you win the race this time. Bah, humbug, etc.
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While I agree with you in principle, the some of the earliest descriptions of the Usurpation have the Dragonsblood using essence damping poisons against the Elder Solars, so that they couldn't call upon their terrible magics.
 
TheLastOne said:
While I agree with you in principle, the some of the earliest descriptions of the Usurpation have the Dragonsblood using essence damping poisons against the Elder Solars, so that they couldn't call upon their terrible magics.
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Thats still not quite as bad as the artifacts though. Poison after all has to be something used sparringly against an Exalt, especially an elder exalt otherwise they might start coming up with broad spectrum antivenom inserted into artifact teeth (combined with normal charms of course)
 
Ghost said:
Anyway, Exalted fluff justification of charms as extreme skill seems to logical break down when Solar Exalted are great at things because their Exaltation, not their natural capabilities. Also, the rest of splats charm justification doesn't echo "charms are the application of extreme" skill thing. The mere existence of Exaltations as divinely bestowed status, kind of undermines the it not being explicitly magical. It seems to me that it would be more accurate to say that Solar Exalts have magic that make them extremely skilled rather than their extreme skill let's them accomplish magic like feats.
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It's the opposite. In Exalted, everything is magic. Someone breathing? That's magic. Someone who breathes so hard they can breathe fire? Also equally magic. There's no magic/mundane division, not really. 2e points this out in quite a few situations: The Alchemical 4th Augmentation, for example, is quite literally an attribute dot represented as a charm, and a lot of charms are basically specialties on steroids. Someone can have a +3 Perfect Balance specialty-or they can have Graceful Crane Stance, which is a perfect balance specialty on steroids.

So really it's more "the ancient and powerful superweapon fused into your body and soul allows you to access the pinnacle of skill-which is represented as special, quantifiable techniques."

Aleph said:
Very few people are inclined to break into a prison without then breaking out again. In fact, I would be willing to go so far as to say that I cannot recall offhand a single plot that features someone breaking into a prison and then aggressively demanding to stay there, though I must admit that it sounds like something I would have enormous fun watching.
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The original Wasteland game-the Army Corps of Engineers who become the Desert Rangers break into a supermax prison after a nuclear war happens then aggressively demand that they get to stay there. By using bullets on all the prisoners who refuse to leave.
 
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