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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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Earth-Destroyer said:
The paths are generally not worth it, 5 dot which is generally needed to be competitive with charms is 36xp. That near two, 5 dot charms or a lot of lesser ones.
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1) You can get charm-competitive effects in several Paths at 2-3 dots.

2) 5 dots(or 6 dots, to max out Alchemy and a couple others) is only necessary if you need to absolutely master a Path.
Achieving broadbased competence is much cheaper.

3 dot Alchemy will give you healing potions, wound negators, supertough materials and potions duplicating psychic powers for a scene
3 dot Conveyance gives you the speed of an airplane
3 dot Divination allows you to look into time over ten years forwards and backwards

3 dots Enchantment allows us to make stuff that can duplicate supernatural powers
3 dots Fortune allows us to curse or bless individuals and groups of people with lifechanging effects; stuff like inflicting permanent illness, winning the lottery, better health, career success or success with the opposite sex for months at a time.
3 dot Healing allows us to stabilize dying people in the field, enough they can move under their own power.

I could go on.

3 dots in a Sorcery Path is 13XP.
For the 34XP for paying 5 dots of 1 Path, we could add 5XP and pay for 3x 3-dot Sorcery Paths.
Or we could add an additional 2XP, then buy 1x Ancient Sorcery spell and 2x 3-dot Sorcery Paths.
 
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uju32 said:
3 dot Alchemy will give you healing potions, wound negators, supertough materials and potions duplicating psychic powers for a scene
3 dot Conveyance gives you the speed of an airplane
3 dot Divination allows you to look into time over ten years forwards and backwards

3 dots Enchantment allows us to make stuff that can duplicate supernatural powers
3 dots Fortune allows us to curse or bless individuals and groups of people with lifechanging effects; stuff like inflicting permanent illness, winning the lottery, better health, career success or success with the opposite sex for months at a time.
3 dot Healing allows us to stabilize dying people in the field, enough they can move under their own power.
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GM confirmed that 5 dots in Alchemy&Enchantment only = the 5 dot crafting charm. Only difference is being able to teach it to mortals. And that both Alchemy&Enchantment, and the charm, only give us the stuff in the supplement, either way nothing much worth the xp to me.

Conveyance is really only worth it at the 5 dot level, for the teleportation. Stacking speed boosters we can break the sound barrier already.
Fortune would be good for another exalted type, but infernals have both ways to bless, and curse people with charms.
Healing path is also not so useful when you can grab some dots in medicine and the excellency, and just make 5+ success rolls on the regular. Reminder 5 success is legendary IE fully reattach a limb, in a mud pit with just a needle and thread, and also do it so well their is no chance of infection. Anything that cannot be fixed with huge success in a medicine roll, would need a us to spend xp to make ritual to fix anyway so kind useless.
 
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Gonna need some more votes, ya'll.
Adhoc vote count started by Goldfish on Nov 2, 2022 at 11:24 PM, finished with 68 posts and 5 votes.
  • [X] Close up for the night
    -[X]Thank Rose. Promise to talk to Dresden by phone next day. Admit to being in Cleveland for the next few weeks with family and if theres any contacts in the Cleveland area she would recommend
    -[X]Send a DM(devil message) to Mouse via Burny(Clippy to Burny) to give Dresden and Bob a name and description of the Pathfinders and request any information they can provide on them and Don Phillipe de Leon. Plus any supernatural contact in Cleveland Dresden would recommend.
    -[X]Research: Cyberdevils (while Molly is asleep. 8 hours.)
    --[X]Check for Finnish-American ancestry among list of Soul's Rest residents and staff, and Dreamless Rest subjects. 4 hours.
    --[X]Look for any recent resident deaths, staff hirings or firings at Souls Rest and their contact info; we already got access to their computer system. 2 hours
    --[X]Look for signs of Red Court infiltration of the Cleveland PD. Start with Le Blanc's phone, emails and call/contact history; we have phone access. 2 hours.
    -[X]Write in suggestions for what to do tomorrow (Optional):
    --[X]Check burner email
    --[X]Phone calls and/or visit to family or grave of any recently dead resident for Lydia to take a look.
    --[X]Tour of the facility as friends doing a favor for a Finnish-American family.
    --[X]Track down any Soul's staff that recently quit or were fired.
    --[X]Look for the local supernatural hangouts
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BronzeTongue said:
Yeah. Based on the other hells the big ticket item is probably fuel for stuff, since they're optimized for extracting things from souls instead of reshaping them into other things.

Not that Molly would, but I'm curious how that would work with our hell. Would our "eternal torment" of life mean we can collect energy whenever some dies and comes back?

I'm envisioning Molly learning about such a property as a really unpleasant surprise sometime early on.

——

Molly, three hours into the paperwork backlog from a thousand years that never happened: " This stuff was giving me a headache just existing, never mind reading it. Jeeves, does this place have anything cold to drink?"

'Jeeves' the demon butler: "A moment mistress"

…

Molly, drinking the twice distilled spiritual anguish of those who've frozen to death: " This stuff is amazing, what's even in it?"

——
:V


All that aside, the reaction of the mortal world to realizing that they're the cosmos' crude oil supply will be … interesting.
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Creation was a prayer engine designed to extract power for the Games of Divinity and mankind's fear of death designed by the primordials to keep the humans praying. Make of that what you will.
 
Correct me if I'm mistaken but I thought that most hedge Magic was ritual-cast and that some preparations are required to be able to use in combat???

[X] uju32
 
ImBuda said:
Correct me if I'm mistaken but I thought that most hedge Magic was ritual-cast and that some preparations are required to be able to use in combat???

[X] uju32
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If you want to get powerful results out of hedge magic as a mortal you need the help that ritual magic gives you, but there are rules for doing it off the cuff in a fight, just don't expect it to be very powerful... unless of course you can throw (un)holy numbers of dice with difficulty reductions on top of that. ;)
 
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DragonParadox said:
Creation was a prayer engine designed to extract power for the Games of Divinity and mankind's fear of death designed by the primordials to keep the humans praying. Make of that what you will.
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I am guessing we are going to need prayer collection to kickstart reality's transformation back to the times of Exalted Glory. Strengthening and empowering of reality and all that. Grand, humanity-wide rituals. Have I mentioned order conferring bitcoin trade pattern?

Concerning the paths - are they this, or do I need to hunt down some books?
 
Yog said:
I am guessing we are going to need prayer collection to kickstart reality's transformation back to the times of Exalted Glory. Strengthening and empowering of reality and all that. Grand, humanity-wide rituals. Have I mentioned order conferring bitcoin trade pattern?

Concerning the paths - are they this, or do I need to hunt down some books?
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Those are the paths from Sorcerer Revised which is what I have access to yes.
 
Uhhh… that Mana Manipulation Path that says you can use it to recharge your own reserves… does that work with essence? Because if it does, I'm pretty sure what I want to go for first when we take magic lessons from Harry.
 
bengalqueen said:
Uhhh… that Mana Manipulation Path that says you can use it to recharge your own reserves… does that work with essence? Because if it does, I'm pretty sure what I want to go for first when we take magic lessons from Harry.
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Are we looking at the same Path?
Because I can't find anything under Mana Manipulation that would allow us to recharge our own Pool.
At best we could infuse things with Essence to use it later, but I think our personal hellfire might be a bit too volatile for that.
 
bengalqueen said:
Uhhh… that Mana Manipulation Path that says you can use it to recharge your own reserves… does that work with essence? Because if it does, I'm pretty sure what I want to go for first when we take magic lessons from Harry.
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Unless we convert it to essence manipulation somehow, it's not going to be at all efficient. Our smallest unit of power consuption is a mote of essence. A mote of essence has more energy than a nuclear explosion. It is the raw stuff from which reality was created. It is the most real thing to ever exist. We would either be eating reality itself thinning the walls of existence, or we'd have to gather mana from the whole of Illinois at least to get reliable mana recuperation. Or we'd need a Dragon's Nest. Or, in fact, we can do this already in some shape, given that we do respire essence, and benefit from Dragon's Nests.
Artemis1992 said:
Are we looking at the same Path?
Because I can't find anything under Mana Manipulation that would allow us to recharge our own Pool.
At best we could infuse things with Essence to use it later, but I think our personal hellfire might be a bit too volatile for that.
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Four dot description: "Learn to manipulate your personal energy reservoirs and replenish them with energy from the outside."
 
Well, be sure to post whatever houserule changes you decide on in the thread, because we're definitely interested in those magic lessons in the future.
 
Yog said:
Four dot description: "Learn to manipulate your personal energy reservoirs and replenish them with energy from the outside."
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Authorial intent is for that to work with Mana/Quintessence, a much more diffuse and less potent source of energy.

Mana Manipulation is still the way to go if we want to not spend precious motes on paths.
uju32 said:
3 dots Fortune allows us to curse or bless individuals and groups of people with lifechanging effects; stuff like inflicting permanent illness, winning the lottery, better health, career success or success with the opposite sex for months at a
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Fortune also explicitly works on the Caster. Unlike, say, VEE, which needs Molly to jump through additional hoops to effect herself with it.
 
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Yog said:
Four dot description: "Learn to manipulate your personal energy reservoirs and replenish them with energy from the outside."
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Don't we technically have the ability to do that already as a remnant of Molly's magical talent?

The thing where we can meditate to recover motes, but it takes so long that it's sort of useless.
 
Prospalz said:
Fortune also explicitly works on the Caster. Unlike, say, VEE, which needs Molly to jump through additional hoops to effect herself with it.
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And it would allow Molly to be the bestest fairy godmother to ever be for Rosie's kid. I wonder, would actual fae sue her for copyright infringement? Or maybe we could troll Leanansidhe for advice on how to be a good godmother.

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BronzeTongue said:
Don't we technically have the ability to do that already as a remnant of Molly's magical talent?

The thing where we can meditate to recover motes, but it takes so long that it's sort of useless.
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We lost access to normal mana when we exalted. We manipulate essence now. Which is far more potent, but the minimum unit is one mote, which is... Well, it's a gross overkill for a lot of stuff, and if we were to use it for anything like mortal sorcery... Well, I expect that almost all but the greatest rituals would cost one mote and 90 (if not 99,9) % of the energy would be wasted. Mana manipulation would be us regaining the ability to manipulate mana, I think.
 
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BronzeTongue said:
Don't we technically have the ability to do that already as a remnant of Molly's magical talent?

The thing where we can meditate to recover motes, but it takes so long that it's sort of useless.
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thonk.jpg

Perhaps we could get a small discount or stipend on some Paths when we get to learning them? Linear Magic practitioners get a bunch of XP bonuses toward their new path-equivalent when they become True Mages or vampires; for Molly to go from being a true mage to an (Exalted) Linear Magic practitioner is kind of the same process, if in reverse.

For Molly in particular, at least, sounds like she got enough vestigal control left to (re)learn first dots of Mana Control. I don't remember about what else Molly was capable of at this point in the timeline, but 1st/2nd Dot Path-equivalent for Molly previous specialties being discounted or free sounds alright-ish.

On the Matter of Linear Paths xp costs in general, sorcerous grimoires exist; magical artifacts that reduce the costs of learning Paths contained in them. We could go on adventure for a couple. Adventures are great.

We also could maybe try looking for a teacher; even if DP prolly not going to allow sux-for-dots exchange he allowed for Shih stuff, still might be worth discounts.
Yog said:
And it would allow Molly to be the bestest fairy godmother to ever be for Rosie's kid. I wonder, would actual fae sue her for copyright infringement? Or maybe we could troll Leanansidhe for advice on how to be a good godmother.
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There is a lot of situational comedy in this.

Yog said:
We lost access to normal mana when we exalted. We manipulate essence now.
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Well, not quite. We still can manipulate mana, its just when we try to use the old techniques to try to do anything useful with it, our Exaltation hoover it up before we get to start turning it into some sort of an actually useful spell. Linear Magic bypasses that thanks to being a very different practice. A lot of so-called hedgemagic doesn't even cost mana, just willpower. Not even that, if you are good.
 
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Yog said:
And it would allow Molly to be the bestest fairy godmother to ever be for Rosie's kid. I wonder, would actual fae sue her for copyright infringement? Or maybe we could troll Leanansidhe for advice on how to be a good godmother.
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Pretty sure fey lawsuits are more "broadswords at dawn" than court filings. :V

That said, you've got a point about fortune. Really it'd be better to get it to get it to three dots before the kid is born and bless Rosie to avoid medical complications. The path says you can hit up to two additional people in the splash off a blessing/curse at that level. So we could rig up a set of blessings where Molly, Rosie, and the kid are individually primary targets and in the splash of the other two's active effect for maximum efficiency.

… Would probably need to check that the kid won't end up glowing in the dark magically speaking first though. I imagine that being under the direct and indirect influence of three powerful blessings renewed monthly (or whatever the time table would be) starting before you were born could do some interesting things to a muggle.
 
The various Sorcery Paths look interesting and potentially useful, but finding a teacher both able and willing to educate us in one or more of the paths we're interested in seems like a pretty daunting task. Harry is available, I guess, though we aren't his apprentice and, despite his power and skill, doesn't seem to practice much of the more interesting types of magic we might want to learn.

I'm not sure how learning works in the system we're using. If we manage to find a teacher for a path, Healing for example, would getting enough instruction to purchase one dot in the path be enough for us to continue learning it on our own through self-study and experimentation, or do we have to purchase/learn two or three dots into the path before we reach that point? Does the teacher need to have a certain number of dots in that path before they can teach others?

If instructors only need a dot or two in a path to be able to teach us, and we only need to gain a single dot before using Exalted BS and XP to bull ahead on our own, we might be able to find relatively minor talents who aren't White Council material but skilled enough in their specialty that they can fulfill our needs. Could make for an interesting gap year before we start college (if we go at all), taking a road trip across the country to find magic tutors. Maybe fighting some evil on the side bonus XP as we go.
 
I would prefer to avoid Sorcery alltogether.

We have our own Charms and skills and we have already started on Martial Arts.

Leave Sorcery to other party-members, focus XP on aquiring more of our specialities.
 
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We're astonishingly better at sorcery than anyone else would be.

Sorcery in our hands is probably orders of magnitude better than in anyone else's.

The combination of our dice adders, difficulty reducers, and craft charm means we can do things with sorcery no one but another celestial exalt can.
 
Alratan said:
We're astonishingly better at sorcery than anyone else would be.

Sorcery in our hands is probably orders of magnitude better than in anyone else's.

The combination of our dice adders, difficulty reducers, and craft charm means we can do things with sorcery no one but another celestial exalt can.
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Sort of the point that is mortal stuff for mortals. We are exalted, if we do things as a exalted we will be a thousand times better off.
 
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