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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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I mean, we got roughly the same amount of XP before and after getting Lydia as a companion, so I really don't see why it would change.

Really, the XP staying roughly the same is why we need to change systems. If DP had done an exhaustive detailing of Lydia's off-screen accomplishments and how much XP they granted, and made Lydia roughly as productive as Molly to not make her look lazy, we would be getting at least 30+ and probably more like 40 XP an arc and this wouldn't be a problem. But that would be massively more work for DP, so he didn't do that, so our XP gain stayed roughly the same, so the system was completely untenable.

The only proposed methods that actually work are Yzarc's plan or forcing DP to do a lot more work. Anything else just won't be viable.
 
Ok, given that there's no free lunches, can I suggest we either commit to a full even split, or we continue to hog all the xp for ourselves?

Because either we want a companion who can keep pace (and therefore we should do a full even split) or we don't and we should just invest all the xp into the Solariod

There's no benefit to a 20% xp reduction in exchange for a companion who we'll outpace 4x. Either commit to companions who matter or don't.
 
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FriedIce said:
Except this will never happen in practice.

Questers are massive efficiency bunnies and it will always be more efficient to invest in the Solaroid than the pseudo-Terrestrial.

If we don't bind ourselves to invest an equal amount in our companions we never will in practice.

So all your plan does, is it decreases the amount of xp Molly has by 20% per companion in exchange for outpacing our companions by 4x
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To expand on this, on the last xp spend we outspent Lydia by 11xp. The most popular plan this turn does exactly the same.

We are not currently investing in Lydia as if we want her to remain relevant long term.

We need to either commit to 50% or stop investing in Lydia at all. Because if we keep investing in ourselves at a 2:1 ratio we'll outpace Lydia to the point where she's no longer relevant very quickly.
 
FriedIce said:
To expand on this, on the last xp spend we outspent Lydia by 11xp. The most popular plan this turn does exactly the same.

We are not currently investing in Lydia as if we want her to remain relevant long term.

We need to either commit to 50% or stop investing in Lydia at all. Because if we keep investing in ourselves at a 2:1 ratio we'll outpace Lydia to the point where she's no longer relevant very quickly.
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If we stay in the current split she'll languish in mediocrity forever anyway. I'm certainly not going to vote to give half our xp to her, and if we get more people the divide gets even worse.

Something that clones part of the pool is the only option that doesn't actively disincentivize having more people.

Even if it's not perfect it's still better than the other options. She doesn't need to be able to win a fight with Molly to stay relevant, especially if we take story actions to supplement her growth.

Like stealing back her father's old divine realm or having her heavily invest her time in training to get cost reductions.
 
To add to the above post, Lydia is terrestrial. We are going to outstrip her regardless.

Nothing short of another Solaroid will work.

Problem of mixed circles. It is why you do not share xp in the main game.
 
[X] Lydia XP: All companions get 1/4 of the total XP spent on Molly, rounded down. Molly can spend XP on companions but not the other way round. The 1/4 does NOT reduce what Molly earns.

What was originally intended. We are getting teaching charms later, which is going to be an additional 20xp per AP infusion anyway.

Lydia's purchases
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People seems to prefer Ox-Body over Willpower/Excellency scaling attribute. I am not sure what is going on, here. Especially since her Ox-Body is like, twice weaker than Molly's.
 
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Prospalz said:
What was originally intended. We are getting teaching charms later, which is going to be an additional 20xp per AP infusion anyway.
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We won't be able to teach Lydia, though. Pretty much all teaching charms are limited to mortals and "low-level" monsters like fomori.
Goldfish said:
This deserves repeating. Relevancy does not necessarily require equal power or ability.

This isn't a game of D&D, after all.
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Indeed. Barring becoming Maeve's BFF after curing her of Nemesis and getting her as a circlemate, Lydia is the only viable way to getting 40+ successes in collaborative casting rituals. She also has her own specialties, like dealing with dead and undead things - and yes, that in part overlaps with our own "creatures of darkness" social competence, but not fully. In combat, she would be a completely different character than Molly eventually - summoning things via charms is something open to her. Etc.

The idea is not to build a copy of Molly, but let each of them specialize in their own stuff to supplement each other. Molly is a crafter who makes Lydia iron masterwork equipment, which they'll enchant together, and Lydia would deal with peaceful ghosts for Molly.
 
Frankly, my preference would probably be to take away the Lydia xp completely and have @DragonParadox treat her like an NPC which gets new abilities granted to them on a per arc basis at a rate he feels is fair.

Is this something you'd be willing to do @DragonParadox ? No need to actually track xp for her, just give out charms and dots at a pace you feel is fair.

What happens currently is she doesn't get the benefit from off-screen adventures because we're supposed to be giving her xp from our collective pool. And we don't.

The proposed plan is to give her literally 1/4 of the xp of a Solaroid and then expect her to remain relevant long term. Because there's no way this quest base is going to pillage from Molly's pool to subsidise Lydia once the 1/4 rule goes through.

She will barely be able to afford relevant essence increases at that xp allotment, let alone multiple specialties of her own, plus enough stuff to be combat relevant.
Yzarc said:
To add to the above post, Lydia is terrestrial. We are going to outstrip her regardless.

Nothing short of another Solaroid will work.

Problem of mixed circles. It is why you do not share xp in the main game.
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In mixed circles you aren't giving the Solaroid 4x the xp of the Terrestrial.
 
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Yog said:
We won't be able to teach Lydia, though. Pretty much all teaching charms are limited to mortals and "low-level" monsters like fomori.
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I see the RAW, but I am not sure if solaroids being unable to use teaching charms on terrestrials is RAI. Like, what the fuck. Terrestrials were literally made for this.

RAW, we'd be able to teach her regardless after stacking fomor template on her, though. :V
Yog said:
Indeed. Barring becoming Maeve's BFF after curing her of Nemesis and getting her as a circlemate, Lydia is the only viable way to getting 40+ successes in collaborative casting rituals.
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Nah. Molly's potential as a Solaroid means being able to get 30ish on her lonesome, and Sorcs with ability to spend mana on dc reduction+fortune path buffs could add 7ish each. Before like, using crafting and stuff to stack buffs on their dicepools.
BronzeTongue said:
Like stealing back her father's old divine realm or having her heavily invest her time in training to get cost reductions.
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Or outright upgrading her to a Celestial with some sort of an ascension ritual. That would be neat, too.
 
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FriedIce said:
Frankly, my preference would probably be to take away the Lydia xp completely and have @DragonParadox treat her like an NPC which gets new abilities granted to them on a per arc basis at a rate he feels is fair.

Is this something you'd be willing to do @DragonParadox ? No need to actually track xp for her, just give out charms and dots at a pace your feel is fair.

What happens currently is she doesn't get the benefit from off-screen adventures because we're supposed to be giving her xp from our collective pool. And we don't.

The proposed plan is to give her literally 1/4 of the xp of a Solaroid and then expect her to remain relevant long term. Because there's no way this quest base is going to pillage from Molly's pool to subsidise Lydia once the 1/4 rule goes through.

She will barely be able to afford relevant essence increases at that xp allotment, let alone multiple specialties of her own, plus enough stuff to be combat relevant.

In mixed circles you aren't giving the Solaroid 4x the xp of the Terrestrial.
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No, I am not willing to treat her as an NPC, because that adds complexity on my end, I would effectively have to invent another system for 'new abilities granted at a rate that seems fair'. Secondly the XP you have now earmarked as 'Molly's' also includes things you did in common, you do not have to treat her as getting four times as much XP as Lydia. Also it's been two months IC, eventful months granted, but given the sheer scope of increased abilities I would say Molly has a fair development curve compared to say the wizard she would have been otherwise.
 
Just to be entirely clear; Lydia's Ox-Body adds one -1 Health level and one -5 Health level.

That's kind of garbage. Especially given that -5 Health levels pretty much irrelevant in combat, you can't fight with those sort of penalties.

Molly's Ox-Body gives her an array of four HL' and she enjoys benefits of a charm that reduces dice penalties. While Ox-Body is good for Molly, Lydia doesn't get the same value out of them.
 
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DragonParadox said:
No, I am not willing to treat her as an NPC, because that adds complexity on my end, I would effectively have to invent another system for 'new abilities granted at a rate that seems fair'. Secondly the XP you have now earmarked as 'Molly's' also includes things you did in common, you do not have to treat her as getting four times as much XP as Lydia. Also it's been two months IC, eventful months granted, but given the sheer scope of increased abilities I would say Molly has a fair development curve compared to say the wizard she would have been otherwise.
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This is fair. I understand the desire to avoid added complexity on your end - I should point out that I'm not criticising you here.

I'm pointing out to the voting base that the voting base A) is almost certainly not going to subsidise Lydia appropriately in the 1/4 system based on previous xp allotment, and B) seems to expect that a Terrestrial who they are currently giving ~1/2 the xp that the Solaroid gets should be able to keep pace with said Solaroid long term (even in their specialties).

Maybe I'll start keeping a Lydia XP Deficit tracker.

Current Lydia XP Deficit: 11xp
 
FriedIce said:
Maybe I'll start keeping a Lydia XP Deficit tracker.

Current Lydia XP Deficit: 11xp
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This is not enough, btw. She needs more XP than a Solaroid gets to "keep up" in terms of stuff she could do with her charms.

The wonders of mixed circles. Lydia in particular actually has its better than most terrestrials, given that her Excellency + Qiao of Meng performs at Celestial level - its the rest of her kit that lags behind.

Her background as a rich heiress of Ankou also allows her to stay "relevant" for longer than you'd expect from a terrestrial, given DF's heavy social/background focus.
 
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Prospalz said:
Or outright upgrading her to a Celestial with some sort of an ascension ritual. That would be neat, too.
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If we did that I'd think it'd fit best as a consequence of her regaining her father's divine realm than as a separate ritual.

Not sure if I'm totally on board with an upgrade like that even being possible, but if it was that'd be the place to do it.
FriedIce said:
This is fair. I understand the desire to avoid added complexity on your end - I should point out that I'm not criticising you here.

I'm pointing out to the voting base that the voting base A) is almost certainly not going to subsidise Lydia appropriately in the 1/4 system based on previous xp allotment, and B) seems to expect that a Terrestrial who they are currently giving ~1/2 the xp that the Solaroid gets should be able to keep pace with said Solaroid long term (even in their specialties).

Maybe I'll start keeping a Lydia XP Deficit tracker.

Current Lydia XP Deficit: 11xp
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That's pointlessly negative.

Again, she doesn't need to win a contest against Molly to stay relevant and doing so isn't the same as being an exact equal.

She's terrestrial, without serious bullshit even by exalt standards they aren't supposed to be as good in the first place.

Being strong enough to influence events is enough, even if she can't influence them as much as we can.
 
[X] Agree to meet with the Librarian
-[X]Ask Michael along
[X] Plan Ballroom Blitz
[X] Lydia XP: All companions get 1/4 of the total XP spent on Molly, rounded down. Molly can spend XP on companions but not the other way round. The 1/4 does NOT reduce what Molly earns.
 
Anyway, I keep saying Terrestrial this, Celestial that, Solaroid-Solaroid-Solaroid - let me explain what all of that means by using some comparisons.

Here is the a brief comparison of common charm types that have equivalents in almost all splats; excellency, difficulty adjuster, dice adders, defense charm, perfect defenses, offensive charms. I'll compare Dragonblooded charms against Infernal charms. The format is [Charm Category] - Dragonblooded charm brief description, Infernal charm description. No super deep understanding of mechanics necessary, just look at the numbers.

Excellency - Dragonblooded excellencies provide [Ability] number of bonus dice. Expected value is 5.

Infernal Excellencies provide [Ability + Attribute] number of bonus dice. Expected value is 10.

Difficulty Adjusters - Dragonblooded lack broad spectrum Difficulty Adjusters entirely. Nothing. Nada.

Infernals either have an easy to trigger -1 adjusters like Boiling Sea Master (just pour a bottle of water on yourself lol) or -3 adjusters that require jumping through some hoops.

Persistent Bonus Dice - Dragonblooded have a "Bounty" set of charms that provide +1 dice if Terrestrial is surrounded by a [Powerful Expression of a corrsponding Element]. Being in a hurricane, buried under tons of stone or being in a stone building, being in forest or a forest fire... That sort of stuff.

Infernals have a charm that gets them +2 dice if they are cold. Any sub-zero temperature.

Defense charms - Dragonblooded have a a 5 dot charm scenelong that allows them to negate [Ability + Attribute] amount of damage from ranged attacks. Excellence applies.

Infernals have Opened Eye of the Hurricane, scenelong charm that negates [sux] amount of damage from all and any attacks, and thanks to difficulty adjusters + excellency, negates twice more damage than Terrestrial's version, numerically.

Perfect Defense - Terrestrials have a number of charms that could be used only once per scene, deflect one attack, and typically carry some sort of a drawback - like being paralyzed for one turn after being triggered, or suffering some damage regardless.

Infernal perfect defenses charms could be used infinite number of times per scene, don't have drawbacks, and have versions that allow to become invulnerable for a whole turn, instead.

Aaaaaand it is broadly the same in all other categories. The gap is actually bigger than pure "my numbers are twice bigger than yours" given that

A)ExWoD inherently runs on non-linear sux measuring system, where 1 sux is mundane and 5 is legendary.

B) Outside of comparing how much dice given splat could throw at a [problem] there is also a matter of how broad is the spectrum of allowed charms/effects for a given type of Exalt; and terrestrial charmsets are also tend to be more limited in terms of utility, their spectrums of allowed effects are lesser.

Too Long Didn't Read - the same stuff that I was always saying, just in a little more details than before. Terrestrial charmsets are inherently much weaker than Solaroid and Celestial charmsets.
How exactly terrestrials typically work in Celestial circles, then?
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You provide them access to out-of-charm powers that are superior to their native charmset, give them a bunch of artifacts that Celestial PC typically don't get, provide them with backgrounds, social and organizational support that a typical rando Celestial doesn't get, and finally, reward them a lot more XP than to the celestials in the circle.
 
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Votes as they stand. People better start voting.
Adhoc vote count started by Yzarc on Jan 3, 2023 at 10:03 AM, finished with 33 posts and 8 votes.
  • [X] Lydia XP: All companions get 1/4 of the total XP spent on Molly, rounded down. Molly can spend XP on companions but not the other way round. The 1/4 does NOT reduce what Molly earns.
    [X] Plan Ballroom Blitz
    -[X] Molly: 17xp
    —[X] Rendered Villain Dispersal 4xp
    —[X] Wind Borne Stride 8xp
    —[X] Qiao 1: Steel Skin 3xp
    —[X] Touch of Frost 2xp
    -[X] Lydia 6 xp
    —[X] Ox-Body 3xp
    —[X] Background: Familiar 1: Raven 3xp
    [X] Agree to meet with the Librarian
    -[X]Ask Michael along
    [X] Agree to meet with the Librarian
    [X] Lydia XP: All companions get 1/4 of the total XP spent on Molly, rounded down. Molly can spend XP on companions but not the other way round. The 1/4 does NOT reduce what Molly earns.
    -[X]Ask Michael along
    [X] Lydia earns 1/4xp of what Molly does seperately. So If Molly earns 20xp, Lydia earns 5xp, which is not subtracted from Molly's pool.
    [X] Plan Know thy Enemy, member of the coven
    -[X] Molly, 15 XP
    --[X] Empathy 4, 4 XP
    --[X] Awareness 1, 3 XP
    --[X] All Things Betray, 8 XP
    -[X] Lydia, 7 XP
    --[X] Willpower 6, 5 XP
    --[X] Occult 2, 2 XP
    [X] A portion of all XP gets partitioned to her automatically
    -[X] 50%
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Prospalz said:
RAW, we'd be able to teach her regardless after stacking fomor template on her, though. :V
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The only fomor creating charm that works on supernaturals is the one that requires throwing them in a pit of maggots that devour them alive and then excrete out replacement flesh behind them, and is so agonising that it breaks the victim's mind so that they're abjectly terrified and so servile to the Infernal that did it to them:

It's something I doubt Molly would do to her worst enemy, let alone a friend.

This is clearly deliberate, as it's the only charm that specifies what happens to supernaturals that can't become fomor when it's used on them.
 
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Yzarc said:
Votes as they stand. People better start voting.
Adhoc vote count started by Yzarc on Jan 3, 2023 at 10:03 AM, finished with 33 posts and 8 votes.
  • [X] Lydia XP: All companions get 1/4 of the total XP spent on Molly, rounded down. Molly can spend XP on companions but not the other way round. The 1/4 does NOT reduce what Molly earns.
    [X] Plan Ballroom Blitz
    -[X] Molly: 17xp
    —[X] Rendered Villain Dispersal 4xp
    —[X] Wind Borne Stride 8xp
    —[X] Qiao 1: Steel Skin 3xp
    —[X] Touch of Frost 2xp
    -[X] Lydia 6 xp
    —[X] Ox-Body 3xp
    —[X] Background: Familiar 1: Raven 3xp
    [X] Agree to meet with the Librarian
    -[X]Ask Michael along
    [X] Agree to meet with the Librarian
    [X] Lydia XP: All companions get 1/4 of the total XP spent on Molly, rounded down. Molly can spend XP on companions but not the other way round. The 1/4 does NOT reduce what Molly earns.
    -[X]Ask Michael along
    [X] Lydia earns 1/4xp of what Molly does seperately. So If Molly earns 20xp, Lydia earns 5xp, which is not subtracted from Molly's pool.
    [X] Plan Know thy Enemy, member of the coven
    -[X] Molly, 15 XP
    --[X] Empathy 4, 4 XP
    --[X] Awareness 1, 3 XP
    --[X] All Things Betray, 8 XP
    -[X] Lydia, 7 XP
    --[X] Willpower 6, 5 XP
    --[X] Occult 2, 2 XP
    [X] A portion of all XP gets partitioned to her automatically
    -[X] 50%
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You took that tally from the wrong threadmark.
 
BronzeTongue said:
[X] Plan Ballroom Blitz
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Could you explain your reasoning behind this plan, if you don't mind? It's an entirely combat focused XP spending plan. We aren't fighting, or planning to fight, beings that would require such focus. We aren't fighting Mab. We aren't even likely fighting denarians soon. Most of our challenges and opportunities are social in nature.

On Lydia and her "relevance". I mentioned this before - don't push Lydia to compete against Molly. Make them synergetic.

In combat, Lydia, in my opinion, should be built around summoning. Or, rather, a combination of summoning (compelling beings to come to your aid) and conjuration (teleporting beings to you). She has a lot of charms aimed at creating / compelling minions. Many more than Molly:

1 dot charms:
Speaker to Crow and Hound gives her command of a number of animals, and I am fairly sure that there are insects associated with death too (flies for certain, and wikipedia cites myths with butterflies).
Command the Dead (do dead animals / insects work? And does 1 point of essence cover one insect, or a swarm?) gives her zombies. And while problematic, I am fairly sure that we could make some necrotech animals.
Carriage of the Ankou- tank summoning. Like, a literal tank at that, if we want.

2 dot charms:
Open/Close the Way - what it says on the lable. Not directly summoning, but related.

3 dot charms:
Call the Restless - literally calls the restless dead towards our location. Coupled with Open/Close the Way and it's potentially country-wide range... Very useful.

4 dot charms:
Call the Hunt - summon/conjure supernatural dogs
Companions of the Hunter - empower an animal companion

Stack conjuration / summoning paths on top of that, even at low levels, and Lydia should be able to bury enemies in waves of summoned creatures, while chilling in her tank. By contrast, Molly needs Summoning and Conjuration at high levels to be usable (to summon beings from her Kingdom in the future, or call Lydia to her).

In terms of Abilities, we definitely want her with Occult 5, and probably Animal Ken 5. Do a quest to find an orphan golden crow egg (or a dragon egg, if those are associated with death), empower it further with Companions of the hunter. Fund Mouse's litter mates. Do the whole Disney princess thing properly.
 
Yog said:
In combat, Lydia, in my opinion, should be built around summoning. Or, rather, a combination of summoning (compelling beings to come to your aid) and conjuration (teleporting beings to you). She has a lot of charms aimed at creating / compelling minions. Many more than Molly:
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Molly has access to Ancient Sorcery and a trait that allows her to buy spells without a teacher. With quite trivial investment we'll be a better summoner than she'll ever be.

We're better off spending that same XP on Molly as it gets the group significantly better summoning than spending it on Lydia.

There are niches other splats can have to compete with an internal. Summoning really isn't one of them.
 
Alratan said:
The only fomor creating charm that works on supernaturals
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For the purposes of possession, Dragonbloods work pretty much as mortals. Strict RAW excludes them, but it should work.

That said, in general, you don't want to hit your handpicked best with the same charm that you use to create mass-produced disposable shock-troops. Lydia is not going to be open to any sort of stuff like that for a long time, but if we ever gain the level of trust required, we'll prolly go with something custom.
 
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