Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
[X] Advance on the submarine together
-[X]Interrupt ritual, retrieve Mathews for interrogation, and secure bone knife
-[X]STUNT:Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with us sinners now. "Harry, get the guns. We'll get Mathews" you bark as you dart towards the old man, Lydia on your heels. "Stop that. We've rescued Cindy, and her pretty blue shoes" you snap as you reach him, disarming the startled old man of his bone knife and making it disappear somewhere on your person. Eying the malevolent blue searchlight, you continue."Can you run, or will we have to carry you?"
-[X]Interrupt ritual, retrieve Mathews for interrogation, and secure bone knife
-[X]STUNT:Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with us sinners now. "Harry, get the guns. We'll get Mathews" you bark as you dart towards the old man, Lydia on your heels. "Stop that. We've rescued Cindy, and her pretty blue shoes" you snap as you reach him, disarming the startled old man of his bone knife and making it disappear somewhere on your person. Eying the malevolent blue searchlight, you continue."Can you run, or will we have to carry you?"
- Location
- Germany
Okay, I'll try to go through the process.
First there is Lydia, the daughter of a deathgod.
And you have to ask yourself how do you portray that?
There are no demigods in WoD (that I know of), or even statted-out gods.
A Changeling is both something very different in WoD than in Dresdenverse and, more crucially, she is not half-fey, she is half-deity.
She's not a Mage, Demon, Ghost, Vampire or Werecreature either, the major players WoD has rules for.
She's not a lesser supernatural thing like Ghoul or Kinsfolk either.
The closest thing to gods in WoD are the Spirits from Werewolf and Mage, but those are very different from humanish characters and I don't think a half-thing exists besides Werecreatures.
Meanwhile on the Exalted side Godblooded do exists, but I don't know the rules for them in detail and they'd have to completly converted to WoD-rules to fit in.
So the closest options in story and mechanics would be the following:
1. Make her something like a Werewolf without shifting ability. Give her Gnosis and spirit-gifts appropriate to her nature. That would work, kinda, but a lot of it would have to be done from scratch
2. Make her an Exigent. Those are already the result of a god investing their power, the author of ExWoD was nice enough to write up rules and a set of examples for Esssence-regain, Exellencies and similar. Many Charms can be reflavored versions of other Exalted-Charms, particularly of Dragonblooded since Lydia was supposed to be Terrestrial-tier, with only some costum-made ones necessary.
So that seemed to be the best option.
Having an exigent around is sort of neat on one level, but it does have weird lore implications. Hell, it had them in Exalted canon; the basically exist to allow OC exalted types, but leave the question open as to how every two bit hack of a god can measure up to Autobot's best work.
It's worse here in that it provides a ready made source of exalts that complicates implementing the cross as being identical historically up until the remnants of the age of legends start popping up again.
Not that I want to fill the thread with complaints about it, but I'm hoping Anawn did something like dig up a terrestrial exaltation somewhere and reprogram it, rather than being able to just make some exalts if he's willing to pay the price in divine power for them.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] uju32
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
I'm hoping there are no other Exalts in the setting, exigent or otherwise.
- Location
- Who knows?
[X] Advance on the submarine together -[X]Interrupt ritual, retrieve Mathews for interrogation, and secure bone knife -[X]STUNT:Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with us sinners now. "Harry, get the guns. We'll get Mathews" you bark as you dart towards the old man, Lydia on your heels. "Stop that. We've rescued Cindy, and her pretty blue shoes" you snap as you reach him, disarming the startled old man of his bone knife and making it disappear somewhere on your person. Eying the malevolent blue searchlight, you continue."Can you run, or will we have to carry you?"
Man we need a proper ranged option for Molly don't we? I agree no point in swording the guns if we can't get there in time to stop them and Matthew's definitely the equivalent of a magic cannon we have zero info about, while the guns are dangerous but kinda manageable?
Man we need a proper ranged option for Molly don't we? I agree no point in swording the guns if we can't get there in time to stop them and Matthew's definitely the equivalent of a magic cannon we have zero info about, while the guns are dangerous but kinda manageable?
- Location
- Germany
The thing that would make a low-end Exalt different from something generically powerful not-Mortal like Gard or Kincaid is just the Exaltation itself.
So if Lydia is just a demigod that happens to be build like an Exigent but does not have an indestructible superweapon that will attach itself to another mortal on her death, then I believe she is perfectly harmless for the lore and coherency of the world.
- Location
- Hive City Ares, Armageddon, Segmentum Solar
[X] Advance on the submarine together
-[X]Interrupt ritual, retrieve Mathews for interrogation, and secure bone knife
-[X]STUNT:Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with us sinners now. "Harry, get the guns. We'll get Mathews" you bark as you dart towards the old man, Lydia on your heels. "Stop that. We've rescued Cindy, and her pretty blue shoes" you snap as you reach him, disarming the startled old man of his bone knife and making it disappear somewhere on your person. Eying the malevolent blue searchlight, you continue."Can you run, or will we have to carry you?"
-[X]Interrupt ritual, retrieve Mathews for interrogation, and secure bone knife
-[X]STUNT:Holy Mary, Mother of God, be with us sinners now. "Harry, get the guns. We'll get Mathews" you bark as you dart towards the old man, Lydia on your heels. "Stop that. We've rescued Cindy, and her pretty blue shoes" you snap as you reach him, disarming the startled old man of his bone knife and making it disappear somewhere on your person. Eying the malevolent blue searchlight, you continue."Can you run, or will we have to carry you?"
- Location
- Earth
Different ritual, I think. We aren't even seeing Arawn.
It's also still very much in debate how we deal with Harry's marching orders.
And we made no preparations for any recipient of Arawn's mantle.
The problem is that we don't know what exactly he's going to do. Letting a practitioner of any real strength finish a blood ritual is bad news.
For all we know he's about to finish a warding array bound to his life force like Cindy's was and drown us in ghosts, or something equally complicated to deal with.
It could be that he's starting the main event, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
As per Sorcerer Paths of Power(20th Anniversary Edition), these are the relevant Paths available for sorcery/hedge magic/linear magic
SORCERY
- Alchemy: transformation of substances, making healing and magic potions, magic reagents, magical alloys.
- Conjuration: transportation of items through space
- Chronomancy: viewing of past events, manipulation of past events
- Conveyance: fast travel, from seven league boots to broomsticks and flying carpets to superspeed or flying cars to teleportation
- Divination: predicting the future
- Enchantment: creating magic items
- Fascination: supernatural social influence, love potions. Vanilla mortals have no defence, supernaturals get a chance to defend, and supernaturals with similar powers can ignore it.
- Fortune: curses or blessings on people, groups of people and organizations
- Gauntlet Manipulation: weakening or strengthening the barrier between worlds
- Healing
- Hellfire: destructive energy. Fire, ice, lightning, earthquakes, decay, death lasers, etc. Not actually evil despite the name.
- Mana Manipulation
- Mediumship: calling and befriending ghosts and spirits, letting them possess you, seeing into the Spirit World.
- Oneiromancy: entering and manipulating dreams
- Saturnal Anima: manipulating the minds of mortals. Does not work on supernaturals
- Saturnal Manes: alternate path of interacting with spirits
- Scrying: looking through space at/ for someone or something
- Shadowcasting: shadow manipulation for various effects
- Shapeshifting: cosmetic changes to self, adopting non human features, full transformation into animal form, adopting the form and features of mythic animals
- Spirit Awakening: creating fetishes, using them, and awakening the spirits of objects, binding spirits and releasing spirits from bindings.
- Spirit Chasing: taking on aspects of some spirit by emulation.
- Summoning, Binding and Warding: animals, humans, ghosts, spirits, gods, angels, demons, other supernaturals.
- Weather Control
PSI
- Animal Psychic: communicate with and control nonhuman animals
- Anti-Psychic: increases difficulty to use psi powers and non-psi mental powers near the psychic
- Astral Projection
- Bio-Control: absolute control over their own body, with effects like hysterical strength, accelerated healing etc.
- Channelling: gaining temporary knowledge and skills from the dead.
- Clairvoyance: distance viewing of a location
- Cyberkinesis: send commands to a computer
- Cyberpathy: read data of computer within line of sight
- Ectoplasmic Generation: creating ectoplasmic constructs
- Empathic Healing: taking in the damage and illness of others
- Mind Shields
- Precognition: see the future
- Psychic Healing: power to heal others
- Psychic Hypnosis: hypnosis, mental domination, brainwashing
- Psychic Invisibility: invisible to humans, visible to animals amd electronic surveillancr
- Psychic Vampirism: drain emotions, willpower and life force from victims
- Psychokinesis: moving items with power of your mind, levitation
- Psychometry: view history of items, animals, even people, with a touch
- Psychoportation: psychic teleportation
- Pyrokinesis: creation and manipulation of fire
- Synergy: linking multiple psychics mentally for coordination and to share senses and powers
- Soul Stealing: steal willpower and HLs, edit victim's mind and personality
- Telepathy: mind reading, emotion projection, mental illusions, mental communication, false memory implantation, mind control
OTHER
- True Faith: boosts critical willpower rolls, can act as countermagic, can repel the undead and Wyrm-tainted, can be used as temporary willpower, and at high levels miracles.
- Countermagic(counterspells and unweaving)
DARK PATHS (INFERNALISTS* ONLY)
- Chains of Pleasure: forcing nonconsensual pleasure on a victim
- Curse of Knowledge: knowledge about a person or situation, from public knowledge to the darkest secrets, depending on roll.
- Demon Summoning
- Fires of the Inferno: pure fires of destruction summoned from a dark Realm. Ignores fire immunity, deals Agg, kills dragons and demons. Granted by demonic beings
- Hands of Destruction: entropic destruction
- Liberation of Pain: inflicts pain on victim(s)
- Plague: inflict disease on people or groups of people, summon insect swarm to help spread disease or consume food
- Terror of Phobos: induce fear and paranoia, feed on victim's fear for mana
*Infernalists are sorcerers who make dark pacts with demons, devils, dark spirits and gods for power.
Such pacts always include a desecration of things the sorcerer previously held dear and a murder.
Examples of such infernal patrons include "the Adversary of Christianity and the Yama Kings."
PS Demon summoning is also included in the Summoning, Warding and Binding Path. Its strongly disapproved of, but not strictly speaking categorized as a Dark Path exclusively.
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
How good are these options compared to Charms which can produce similar or greater effects?
For example, if we decided to invest in the "Hellfire" Sorcery path in order to gain some ranged magical combat options, how much XP would we need to spend to rival the sand-blasting Charm ya'll have mentioned whose name I cannot recall? What about Essence efficiency?
Would being an Infernal Exalted mean Molly doesn't need a pact to access these?
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, one thing I want to ask is if the Hellfire path uses Occult instead of Athletics. Because the sandblasting charm uses Athletics, which we stink at. It's why I like the idea of converting the Qiao of I Shen into a proper CMA, because it lets us make the attack roll with Occult, which we're awesome at. If Hellfire uses Occult to attack and is even sort of competitive with the sandblasting charm otherwise, it would be worth it to me, because we'd need to buy 4 dots of Athletics and an Excellency to be as good at it as we are at Athletics, and even then we won't ignore 1s on Athletics rolls like we do with Occult.
- Location
- Germany
I don't have the M20 edition yet, but going by the older Sorcerer it's pretty inefficient compared to things we actually have Charms for.
Sandblast Strike:
1 Essence to activate for the entire scene and use for free afterwards
Range 60 yards
Damage 8 Dice lethal
Difficulty to aim (Dex + Athletics) Diff 5
XP Cost 8
Alternative fire-mode: AoE-attack with 10 dice of damage, costs 1 Essence per shot.
Hellfire:
1 Willpower to activate (per shot)
Range: Depends on successes spend, but shorter than Sandstrike on all but 6+ investment
Damage: You have to apply successes from your casting-roll at a rate of 2 Damage per 1 Success, to a maximum of your Dots in the Path, so you need 4 Dots and 4 Successes to match Sandstrike
Difficulty to aim (Dex + Melee) Diff 7
Minimum XP for equal Damage: 21
The rules are not as simple as the direct blast.
You have to roll Manipuation + Occult against a difficulty depending on the level of the ability used and apply the successes to the various aspects of your hellfire blast, like damage or area.
You can spend Essence like Mana to generate auto-successes on that roll.
The major problem with the Path is not the effect though, with Excellency we could propably generate enough successes for a killer blast, the issue is also that Sorcery has several rounds of casting-time, unless you raise the difficulty of the casting substantially.
So all in all, whily Sorcery has some utility in things like healing or alchemy, using it in combat is both inferior and annoying due to the variety of factors. And costly in terms of WP.
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Some are, some arent. Some synergize with our charms for enhanced effect.
Usually, Exalted's personal combat options are superior to most everything you can get outside it. They are fiat backed, and more efficient. Some of the Hellfire options are more flexible, but for ranged damage Sandstrike Blast is superior
But outside of combat, they are much more competitive.
For example, VDE allows us to meet a persons specific wish, but only once a year, and each time it costs 5 Essence.
But Fortune doesnt stop us layering multiple Blessings on a person's life if we so choose, and is relatively cheap to do. We cant use Fortune to specifically cure cancer, but we can layer a 3-4 dot blessing of good health, and they get better.
Yes they can be dispelled in theory if there is someone with enough mojo to try, but its not easy.
Or, for an example of synergy, enough Weather Control to summon the equivalent of a bottle of water on Molly's head at any time, combined with Sea Mastery for difficulty reduction.
Or just to make things cold, combined with her Charm bonuses for acting in cold.
No.
The appendix of the ExWoD book makes it clear that Exalts can still make dark pacts for power, so I assume these would require much the same as anyone else.
Remember, Molly is not a god or a demon, she's a mortal.
Even if she is superior to them in some ways.
Eh Athletics is good to have anyway, as it helps determine running speed, max lifting ability, etc.
There are alternative rules for that in the book if you choose to use them.
Specifically to avoid the situation where Sorcery is worthless outside of rituals, because while you're trying to cast one spell over half a dozen turns, someone walks up and bashes you over the head with a club.
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- Location
- Germany
Sorcerer only has the Fast Casting rules, which raises the difficulty so quickly you can basically just throw a lit match at the enemy to represent your remaining damage-potential, and also costs even more Willpower.
They just didnt put all the rule options in one place.
The other mention is in the Storytelling chapter, where they give us three options to mix and match
1)Waive the Fast Casting penalty
2)Remove the penalties to magic for witnesses
3)Only require the highest Aspects successes for a spell or ritual to work
Page 140, Sorcerer Paths of Power
- Location
- Germany
Okay, but at that point you are seriously stretching the rules to make Sorcery more combat-viable.
And that would be fine if we were playing a Sorcerer in a combat-focused story.
But we are an Infernal Exalted who might at some point dabble in Sorcery.
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The big problem is you really need 5 dot in a path for it to be worth taking and in competition with our exalted charms. That a full 34 XP. For that same XP we can almost always just buy some charms which do the same.
About the only path worth it is Conveyance as 5 dots lets us teleport bypassing needing to use the ways.
About the only path worth it is Conveyance as 5 dots lets us teleport bypassing needing to use the ways.