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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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It's worth noting that we still don't actually know anything about Arawn and that there are serious questions that result from that. Just to name one thing, he kept his daughter in ignorance, and it resulted in her getting possessed by a necromancer.

Further, while Lydia doesn't know what a knight of the cross is and who currently holds that title I very much doubt Arawn moved to this city without that sort of information. Which makes the way she met Daniel a little suspicious. Not that she did anything, but that he might have deliberately been trying to set up a play of some sort by arranging for her to be in the same place as Micheal's kids.

Even discounting his checkered past, which we shouldn't, his recent behavior doesn't look good.

Coming from our end of things, recall Mouse's reaction to baseline Molly. Even before Shintai we probably look like something he'd have fought for souls back in the day. Right now she's probably pinging as something closer to diabolic royalty than an archfiend.

Some formality and cautious clarity might be a better idea than trying to sneak in some teasing.
 
bengalqueen said:
The second dot of a non-key ability costs 2 XP, not 4. It's 3/2/4/6/8 for the XP costs of each new dot.
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Right. It's been corrected.

Any thoughts on Good builds to deal with needing to make regular trips into undertown for a few weeks?

I'm thinking like... stealth 3(9 XP), awareness 1(3 XP), Bloodless Murk Evasion(9 XP), Technology 2(2 XP), Crafts 4(3 XP), Stealth Excellency(4 XP)

Edit: You could also turn down a couple things to get Night Swallows Secrets. Like, get Stealth 2, Drop Crafts 4 and Tech 2 and we could do that
 
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I agree that Essence 2 would we cool, and I'm always in for mysterious dreams that teach us neat things so Sorcery is cool too.

Edit: whoops, I don't pay that much attention to the crunch and I wired when we got essence 2.
 
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I think we should really consider running to forever.

done properly, it would allow us to get extra time to do a lot of background stuff, like crafting.
 
Honestly, if this fight tells us anything it's that we need to beef our combat. Combat should be a solved problem for us, no more waiting around at just Harry's level
 
We need to up our survivability (VLE Charm?), pick up a solid ranged attack option (Sandblast Charm?), and enhance our mobility (Flight via RR?), IMO.
 
zxzx24 said:
I have little expectation that will be a concern?
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Simple Application: Ensuring the minions from the Tattoo Parlor can't speak of who attacked them without significant difficulty
Other Applications: Impeding the White Council's ability to speak of the Rosie incident incase they change their minds. Making it impossible to raise an alarm because they find somebody we KOed while Sam Fishering into a place. Giving us a headstart in the event of legal troubles with Daedalus or something.
 
My preference for the new stuff would be to take the things that provide the most significant universal upgrades or useful new tools first, then backfill the incremental stuff.

Running to Forever and Windborne stride could make Molly permanently superhumanly fast, double her initiative rolls, and provide infinite cardiovascular endurance for 12 exp.

That plus flight would give us a significant maneuverability and initiative advantage and still leave something like 9 exp for other stuff. Ideally something making use of the MA stuff


OctarineShrike said:
Night Swallows Secrets would be useful for covering up FUBAR situations.
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That one is sort of obvious in its effect, it's probably better to get a less in your face option. The most convenient one would be black mirror incantation, but it's expensive. Next best (and something that would pair well with it later) would be Anonymity Through Propriety:

anonymity through propriety (••)
The Infernal wraps herself in a mantle of Essence which devours the attention of the weak-willed, mak- ing it feel like an impossible burden to notice the Exalt
or interfere in her affairs.
System: Spend 1 Essence and roll Charisma + Et-
iquette against difficulty 4. Anyone whose Willpower rating is equal to or lower than the resulting successes cannot notice or acknowledge the Infernal unless she directly interacts or interferes with them. If she's tak- ing some indirect action that would distress a character were he to acknowledge it (such as reading his diary or murdering his spouse), and that character has Will- power 5+, they can spend a point of Willpower and make a Willpower roll against difficulty 7 to attempt to acknowledge and confront the Infernal. This Charm lasts for one scene.
Signature Effect: Anonymity Through Propriety acti- vates at no cost when the Infernal dons her Shintai form.
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Which isn't perfect coverage, but does do a lot of work to keep the uninvolved uninformed.
 
BronzeTongue said:
Running to Forever and Windborne stride could make Molly permanently superhumanly fast, double her initiative rolls, and provide infinite cardiovascular endurance for 12 exp.

That plus flight would give us a significant maneuverability and initiative advantage and still leave something like 9 exp for other stuff. Ideally something making use of the MA stuff
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That does sound nice. Remind me of how fast we would be able to fly with that combo?
 
Part of our issue is that we're the only Exalt, so we're trying to cover all the roles that the rest of our circle would. Which, of course, also gives us more opportunities for earning XP, but also means we're not as good as we could possibly be.

Build - Jack of All Trades
Awareness 1 - 3xp
Alertness 1 - 3xp
Investigation 1 - 3xp
Streetwise 1 - 3xp
Medicine 1 - 3xp
Mind Hand Manipulation - 8xp
Boiling Sea Mastery - 4xp
Stealth 1 - 3xp

Build - Combat Monster
Sandstrike Blast - 8xp
Bloodless Murk Evasion - 9xp
Ox-Body Technique - 3xp
Scar-Writ Saga Shield - 3xp
Viridian Legend Exoskeleton - 6xp

Build - Ninja Master
Stealth 1 + 2 + 3 - 9xp
Silence of the Inverted Spires - 8xp
Anonymity Through Propriety - 8xp
Rendered Villain Dispersal - 4xp

Build - Minion Master
Demonic Primacy of Essence - 4xp
Mercy in Servitude - 4xp
Verdant Emptiness Endowment - 20xp


Some ideas of directions we might want to go in.
 
OctarineShrike said:
We'd need gravity rebuking grace or mind hand manipulation or something to fly
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Rage Recast has a flight option, which is cheaper and less conditional.

Goldfish said:
That does sound nice. Remind me of how fast we would be able to fly with that combo?
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It uses the flight Shintai rules, so at our movement speed. My understanding is that the charm is counted for the purposes of stuff like that.
For reference:
Wind-Born stride (••)
The Infernal moves with the ferocious speed of the
killing winds of Hell.
System: The Infernal's movement speed is perma-
nently tripled, and she doubles the result of all Initiative rolls. By reflexively spending 1 Essence, she can instead increase her movement tenfold for her Essence rating in turns. Outside of combat, her movement speed in- creases by one factor for every full minute she continues to run (so after a minute of running flat-out, her move- ment speed is quadrupled; after another minute, it is quintupled) until it caps out at a tenfold increase.
Signature Effect: The Infernal's Shintai form is peerless in its speed. On her turn, in addition to any other movement she makes, the Infernal may reflexively move to any point within (Essence x 100) yards that she could reach through normal movement. This is light- ning-quick movement, not teleportation; it can't take her through a locked door, or up the side of a sheer wall (unless she has the ability to run up walls, of course).
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Given her already enhanced exalted movement speed she'd be up at low car speeds just jogging, and running could get up to highway levels. Being tireless, the only limit Molly would have flying would be the essence cost of activating RR.
 
So, 27 XP. That's quite a decent chunk of change. Obviously, we are going to need to up our Combat Prowess since we're going to be getting into more fights (we want to be a Witch Queen straight out of Tolkien after all), but we're also going to want to dip into social stuff now that we've started establishing ourselves. So here's a tentative plan:

EXP PLAN - Witch Queen Ascendent
Demonic Primacy of Essence - 4xp
-- Not a favored charm, but this is a huge boost to our social scores. "Lesser" creatures of darkness should apply to basically any magical beings which are below "Fallen Angel" tier. Lowering the difficulty to all social actions against such creatures will aid us greatly as we start making waves in the community and allow us to establish an organization of our own. Difficulty reduces are just great in general as well, since they stack really efficiently with dice adders like an excellency. This also removes (mostly) the need for learning binding spells. Demons and spirits will instinctively want to obey us, and an excellency should go the rest of the way. At least for anything we want to summon this early. And the actual summoning can be handled by Dresden.
Scar Writ Saga Shield, Viridian Legend Exoskeleton - 9xp (total)
We favored into Malfeas, which means that our charms want us to be Tanks. We've got a decent amount of that already, but this will allow us to get the rest of the boring, but essential and cheap, soak improvers from that tree.
Appearance 3 - 8 XP
I know this is an expensive purchase, but it feels weird for Molly not to be on the high end of looks for her age. The books spend so much time drooling over her that her being below average just doesn't feel right. EDIT: Also, narratively I think Molly would appreciate being pretty. She's always seemed to appreciate her looks, and as a girl in love I can't imagine she *doesn't* want to look prettier so that Dresden looks at her more. Mechanically it should be a solid boon to her social rolls (and this is a good time to boost it since we are dipping our toes into social with DPoE) if social works anything like 2e where App was king

We save the rest, I think for another big purchase.
 
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BossFight said:
The books spend so much time drooling over her that her being below average just doesn't feel right.
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Appearance 2 'is' average.
BronzeTongue said:
Exalting was a big life changing event; leaving physical marks isn't that strange. This is a pretty hefty investment just to get something back from canon that the story was honestly probably better off without.
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Eh, helps in social situations, which is a big part of Molly's build, so wouldn't be worthless.
 
the DragonBard said:
Eh, helps in social situations, which is a big part of Molly's build, so wouldn't be worthless.
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I'm not saying it's useless, but it is less useful than most other things we could use the exp on right now. We've got a lot of untapped sources of power, and this sort of fill in option has the opportunity cost of pushing off access to some of the better stuff available to us for at least an arc.

If it was something critical then that'd be one thing, but adding back in the horndog tone Dresden thought about Molly in isn't.
 
BronzeTongue said:
I'm not saying it's useless, but it is less useful than most other things we could use the exp on right now. We've got a lot of untapped sources of power, and this sort of fill in option has the opportunity cost of pushing off access to some of the better stuff available to us for at least an arc.

If it was something critical then that'd be one thing, but adding back in the horndog tone Dresden thought about Molly in isn't.
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TBC, I'm not saying *this* quest has to drool over her. But part of Molly's identity as a character is her looks. If we aren't going to bring those back to where they were then I would like that change to have some focus. She went from a 10/10 to a 5, that's a significant enough change she shouldn't really recognize herself in the mirror
Edit: in the interest of fostering discussion, where would you prefer the XP go? I personally think it's a solid purchase mechanically when paired with Demonic Primacy of Essence as a foray into really grabbing some social stuff, and I think it's something molly would appreciate narratively since she has always seemed to enjoy her looks and what they do (and she wants Dresden to look at her) but I'm not married to it
 
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