You will have a chance to add stuff in the next vote as well if you want.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
You will have a chance to add stuff in the next vote as well if you want.
- Location
- Earth
Then let's use this one to feel him out a bit.
Votes later. Comments now.
-Hmm. Michael is unavailable because of work? I see what you did there Big G.
-Yeah, well, fat chance of that Molls. You'll always be your mother's baby. And your dad's actually.
Enjoy it while you have parents.
-Yeah, Im thinking he initially pegged us as Winter Fae, because of all the cold.
Which could easily be a dangerous misunderstanding, since Molly's current fashion sense bears significant resemblance to Winter Lady Maeve's. Good thing we bought that Merit down.
His being initially stiff prior to us turning the temperature up certainly says interesting things.
-Howard Hyde is probably a pseudonym.
Not a lowlevel CoD, because Demonic Primacy didnt activate.
Could still be a high level CoD, of course.
-Surprised he didnt have a partner with him; when dealing with magic types, multiple people reduces the chance of misremembering stuff or being disappeared. Hell, the FBI always has its field agents operate in teams of at least two so there's a second witness.
Or maybe they're just minimising exposure of their field agents, and dude's partner is outside the church? Or they trust Forthill?
-Assuming we are getting this right, he looks mid twenties to mid-thirties.
Which would point at either his being hired no more than a decade ago, or his being significantly older than he looks.
Definitely older than Ramirez. Possibly ballparked around Dresden's age.
If he's his apparent age, he'd have graduated university in the 1990s.
-Silk shirt, silver stitched shoes. Dude is living good; I didnt realize the Dresdenverse Feds paid that well
- Sit tibi non labuntur in glaciem aut sanguinem. Latin for <<May you not slip on ice or blood>>
Interesting choice of words.
-More seriously, Im going to point out the amount of obvious and not so obvious magic shit on this dude(the shoes, the leather accoutrements) as indicating that he's either a supernatural himself, or the Library has connections to people who are capable and willing to supply them with this stuff and maintain it at affordable prices.
Latin stitching suggests(doesnt guarantee, but suggests) a post-Roman Empire magical tradition of probably human origin.
Probably. I mean, apprentice Molly didnt rock that much gear in canon, and she was making her own stuff.
Dresden doesnt wear magic shoes, and he's a full wizard with combat experience.
It makes me curious about what deals and arrangements they have made for that.
Curious, and a little wary.
-All Things Betray more than proves its utility in this scene.
Int+Occult roll: 6 successes on 9 dice at DC6. Legendary. DC
Reading Hyde roll: 4 success on 5 dice at DC4. Great
Etiquette roll: 8 successes on 12 dice at DC7. Legendary.
Hiding Knowledge roll: 8 sux on 14 dice at DC7 . Legendary.
Hyde cheats: 4 successes on a dice pool of 7 at DC5. Great, but not quite Legendary.
===
Interesting comment about the shoes. Thats combat gear.
Which suggests that the Library sends agents into situations where they can reasonably expect to face mortal hazard.
The fact that we rolled at DC6 to ID it with All Things Betray active means its original difficuly is DC9. Yowch.
Reading Hyde was a DC4 roll with All Things Betray, so without it, it would have been DC7. Dude has some skill at this.
Hyde has a DC adjuster for investigation/interrogation rolls.
As in, it dropped what would have been at least a DC7(Challenging) roll to read a social Exalt to DC5. Thats serious mojo; the kind of advantage that trivializes investigation against mortals, and levels the playing field against minor and midtier supernaturals.
His dice pool of 7 is pretty good, but still within normal mortal range.
Neither confirms nor disproves his being a supernatural.
COMMENTARY
-Hmm. Michael is unavailable because of work? I see what you did there Big G.
-Yeah, well, fat chance of that Molls. You'll always be your mother's baby. And your dad's actually.
Enjoy it while you have parents.
-Yeah, Im thinking he initially pegged us as Winter Fae, because of all the cold.
Which could easily be a dangerous misunderstanding, since Molly's current fashion sense bears significant resemblance to Winter Lady Maeve's. Good thing we bought that Merit down.
His being initially stiff prior to us turning the temperature up certainly says interesting things.
-Howard Hyde is probably a pseudonym.
Not a lowlevel CoD, because Demonic Primacy didnt activate.
Could still be a high level CoD, of course.
-Surprised he didnt have a partner with him; when dealing with magic types, multiple people reduces the chance of misremembering stuff or being disappeared. Hell, the FBI always has its field agents operate in teams of at least two so there's a second witness.
Or maybe they're just minimising exposure of their field agents, and dude's partner is outside the church? Or they trust Forthill?
-Assuming we are getting this right, he looks mid twenties to mid-thirties.
Which would point at either his being hired no more than a decade ago, or his being significantly older than he looks.
Definitely older than Ramirez. Possibly ballparked around Dresden's age.
If he's his apparent age, he'd have graduated university in the 1990s.
-Silk shirt, silver stitched shoes. Dude is living good; I didnt realize the Dresdenverse Feds paid that well
- Sit tibi non labuntur in glaciem aut sanguinem. Latin for <<May you not slip on ice or blood>>
Interesting choice of words.
-More seriously, Im going to point out the amount of obvious and not so obvious magic shit on this dude(the shoes, the leather accoutrements) as indicating that he's either a supernatural himself, or the Library has connections to people who are capable and willing to supply them with this stuff and maintain it at affordable prices.
Latin stitching suggests(doesnt guarantee, but suggests) a post-Roman Empire magical tradition of probably human origin.
Probably. I mean, apprentice Molly didnt rock that much gear in canon, and she was making her own stuff.
Dresden doesnt wear magic shoes, and he's a full wizard with combat experience.
It makes me curious about what deals and arrangements they have made for that.
Curious, and a little wary.
-All Things Betray more than proves its utility in this scene.
Perception roll is 2 success on dice pool of 2. Okay
Int+Occult roll: 6 successes on 9 dice at DC6. Legendary. DC
Reading Hyde roll: 4 success on 5 dice at DC4. Great
Etiquette roll: 8 successes on 12 dice at DC7. Legendary.
Hiding Knowledge roll: 8 sux on 14 dice at DC7 . Legendary.
Hyde cheats: 4 successes on a dice pool of 7 at DC5. Great, but not quite Legendary.
===
Interesting comment about the shoes. Thats combat gear.
Which suggests that the Library sends agents into situations where they can reasonably expect to face mortal hazard.
The fact that we rolled at DC6 to ID it with All Things Betray active means its original difficuly is DC9. Yowch.
Reading Hyde was a DC4 roll with All Things Betray, so without it, it would have been DC7. Dude has some skill at this.
Hyde has a DC adjuster for investigation/interrogation rolls.
As in, it dropped what would have been at least a DC7(Challenging) roll to read a social Exalt to DC5. Thats serious mojo; the kind of advantage that trivializes investigation against mortals, and levels the playing field against minor and midtier supernaturals.
His dice pool of 7 is pretty good, but still within normal mortal range.
Neither confirms nor disproves his being a supernatural.
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- Location
- Earth
It also suggests they aren't White Council affiliated.
They avoid latin as a casting language since it's their spoken language.
Dresden got duped by his mentor that way.
ID was not impacted by All things betray. That was INT+Occult, if you had just made the Perception+alertness you would have known the shoes are magic but not what kind.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
[X] Yog
If we don't take efforts to discourage the idea he is likely to think that we are a fey. The aura of cold often gives that impression. Which makes our words seem even more believable.
Edit: Unless our piercings look like they have any iron in them.
If we don't take efforts to discourage the idea he is likely to think that we are a fey. The aura of cold often gives that impression. Which makes our words seem even more believable.
Edit: Unless our piercings look like they have any iron in them.
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He might be thinking we are the Winter Knight.
This could be interpreted two ways:
1) Either this is a gift from Winter, giving blessing related to their domain
2) Or it's meant to fight against Winter, giving protection against them a bit
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
My question is really how much Forthil said. Hyde was very smart to go to him first. He is the least threatening avenue of investigation. Approaching Molly or Harry directly likely would not have gone well.
It suggests that the Library not only knows who we are, but knew who we are BEFORE reaching out to the church because otherwise why ask the Church in the first place. Our dad is a known entity, so he likely knows we our dad is. He likely knows there has been no break in our family, so we have not strongly aligned with a non-church faction.
Forthil is a professional lawyer, and not a bad one, from my understanding. Harry is/was his client. I doubt he spilled much.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
It is at least just as likely that they went to him because Forthil was Dresden's lawyer. He would be the diplomatic one to contact even if they knew nothing else.
We do have all things betray up. We can say "I am very good at reading people". We should be able to manage a very impressive Sherlock scan where we tell Hyde all sorts of things about himself using perception+empathy.
I think, can someone math if we should expect to be able to manage 6+ successes?
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Yeah, expect me to be a hard no.
Pay attention to who we are playing. Molly Carpenter's first encounter with the justice system was an arrest for marijuana and molly *snerk* possession. She served community service for it, and made a promise to her father(and mother) in the aftermath.
She saw drug use result in the conception of Rosie's baby. She got desperate enough to use magic on her friends.
Drug use is at the center of her breakup with her first/last boyfriend, and part of the causal chain that ended with her in Arctis Tor.
Drugs are a foundational part of Margaret Katherine Amanda Carpenter's teenage trauma.
The idea that she's going to suddenly become a routine user of a powerful stimulant goes against both her life experience and at least two of her Intimacies.
And no, this is not coffee.
A single shot of coffee does not reduce your need for sleep to one hour a night for a week. Meth doesnt reduce your need for sleep that much. Military go-pills wish they were that effective, and didnt fuck up the user as badly.
The fact that its not addictive to an Exalt doesnt suddenly make it any less of a hyperstimulant.
This is not the first optimizing strategy that has faced oppositio for roleplaying or narrative reasons.
If mechanics were all that mattered, we would be cutting ourselves every other day in order to use Soul Rendering Practice to stockpile successes.
Because this is Dresden Files, not Starcraft. And this is the United States, not drug war Mexico or Colombia.
War machines dont generally rumble down city streets unremarked. We dont have pitched magical firefights out in public. There are strict limits to how big a reasonable combat servitor can get without drawing too much attention.
Furthermore, there is even more about how storing them in a Dragons Nest. Underground locations have limited space.
Any servitors will travel at foot speed.
And she cant just summom them mentally from across the city; they have to see and hear her.
This is a charm that has use cases, but limited ones.
Guarding fixed locations like Dragon Nests, or her home.
Combat servitors have to be small enough to be easily portable by a five foot twoish female.
If Lydia is ever going to use anything big in combat, she is going to have to call them up on the field.
Arc 1 Post 8.
[Mechanics(includes autorepair and construction as well as largescale construction).]
We voted for this Craft specialty for a reason.
Cars have had electronics for decades. Electronic ignitions were invented in the late 1940s and showed up as standard equipment in some car models in the 1960s. Electronic Control Units for car management started showing up in the late 1970s. If you're doing cars, you're doing some electronics. Not cutting edge of course, but some.
Jewelry-making(includes polishing and cutting gems; working with precious metals)
Power armor is never going to be a thing for Molly.
Wrong build.
Wrong setting as well.
The four C's of jewel-grade stones are: Carat. Clarity. Color. Cut.
Size only relates to Carat, and its the easiest to fudge, because you can cut a 10 carat stone into 10x 1 carat stones.
Cut, Clarity and Color? Any one of them is going to stand out if its too good.
Agree to disagree.
theoffice_michaelscott_no.jpg
===
You are being precipitate. Again.
What do you know about the Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress IC? Or even OOC?
Who gives them orders? Whats their chain of command? Whats their charter? What are their policies? Whats their history with the magical community and magical nations? What pre-existing commitments do they have, and what enemies? Whats their information management and information security like? Do they have infiltrators like the Catholic Church?
Whats their defection rate?
Are you once again assuming they are good people because they are Feds?
I mean, IC, this could just be the good cop to Daedalus Group's bad cop. Howard right here is wearing magical combat boots, so these arent just book collectors. Sure, they have a working relationship with the Catholic Church, but so does Mab.
And then, you want to give these people we know very little about IC and OOC a guide to the Thousand Hells.
Something that will give away a ton of insight about Molly's personal knowledge(we were laundering the book through Dresden specifically to help obscure the sources), and be very useful to warlocks looking to do deals with the Hells for power. With no idea who will have access to it, and who can give them orders to make it available to other people.
Figuratively?
You are not just proposing unprotected sex with someone you just met at the bar? You want to give them a house key.
Because they look cute.
And precisely what do you expect them to do about it?
What do WE know about the Pathfinders?
Not to my knowledge.
IDK about other people, but for me, personally, the only reason I don't really care much for Power Armor is that in ExWoD and White Wolf games in general, heavy armor actually sucks due to dexterity penalties. 3-4 average, extreme 6 points of additional soak on top of what we have aren't worth eating dexterity penalties. Just isn't good.
If that is solved, then sure, once we got the materials and the ability. We don't actually have anything in our build that would suffer from more soak, which means everything else is either aesthetics or practical, solvable problems.
Shame that the whole unwillingness to use potion thing didn't come up when we were voting between Alchemy and Enchanting. Oh well.
Sleep is prolly going to be solved by that Flaying Winds charm that allows any activity to count as rest.
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- Location
- Germany
Exalted Power Armor seems impossible, since there are no heartstones around.
No manses greater than a regular Dragon's Nest.
And sci-fi Power Armor is pretty far out there. We can do some impossible things, but we can't create technology that isn't yet invented without actually going deep into tech-research, which we are absolutly not build for.
No manses greater than a regular Dragon's Nest.
And sci-fi Power Armor is pretty far out there. We can do some impossible things, but we can't create technology that isn't yet invented without actually going deep into tech-research, which we are absolutly not build for.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Powered armor is unlikely to be for Molly expect as a way to make her more conditional charms active. Any armor that would give us meaningful soak is likely to cost Molly too much dex to be worthwhile, but if we could somehow get Molly armor that works as a freezing container for toxic liquid that would be great. Not sure about locking ourselves into it, but freezing toxic liquid suit seems well worth making.
Also armor might be more useful for our minions.
Also armor might be more useful for our minions.
It's not addictive period. Because it's magic.
This is not the first optimizing strategy that faces entirely self-invented problems too. This is not role-playing. Or, rather, that's taking a very strong stance on role-playing, where other interpreations are possible, and when the issues can be overcome in-story. Such as, for example, talking with Harry and having him explain how the magic potion works and that no, it isn't drugs.
It's a magically more effective coffee. In all respects it acts as coffee does, only better.
Not if she buys Carriage of the Ankou, and uses it to hold the war golems. Charm synergy can be rather powerful here. A modified armored car with compartments designed for effective storage and deployment would probably be able to deploy up to ~ 8 slightly larger than human warforms on the field, while outwardly looking like a normal van. Or she can study conjuration path.
Human sized and slightly bigger foldable war golems are entirely possible. I am not saying that other, smaller sized forms won't have their uses, starting from animated blobs of oil as reshapable multitools. But large scale ones have their uses too.
And again, that's your interpretation and intention. Exalts are meant to break the setting over their knee and usher in a new age. And Molly's crafting skill is completely suited for power armor. Cyberdevils + craft + Prince of Ruin Attitude = power armor. Why is power armor not a thing today? Lack of dense enough power capacitors (batteries) and lack of smart enough control systems. Cyberdevils give us control systems, Prince of Ruin Attitude let's us disregard empty batteries. So, yes, Molly is on the right track for power armor. Lydia is too, for that matter (wooden undead power armor).
You might not like it. That's up to you. I like it. That's up to me. I will be campaigning for making such in the future, especially once we get our kingdom.
Any large jewel can be broken down into smaller ones.
We know that father Forthil didn't warn us against them, and big G didn't see fit to send Michael (our mentor as per our deal) to guide us here. So there's some measure of trust right there.
We know roughly their organization, we know at least some of their assets, we know they do illegal unethical magical medical research.
Do they?
I was racking my brain, and the only two casting languages I recall were Dresden mixing fauxLatin and either Spanish or Italian.
And Molly C using Japanese.
Fair enough.
Fair point there.
A new Winter Knight would be one of the possibilities that fit the profile for someone with the data trail of Molly C.
Would also explain the oblique request for a meeting.
But Winter dont use Latin to my knowledge.
And by the time the Library was set up, Rome was a thousand years dead. More likely to be a Church-affiliated group; they use Latin. Or some European group from when Latin was the language of thr educated.
Even assuming he believes us, why do we want to tell him that we can read people like an open book?
Not for Molly.
Someone with a shintai and the ability to cast Invulnerable Skin of Bronze has no application for power armor.
There isnt an unwillingness to use potions.
There is an unwillingness to use potions lightly. Combat potions? Great. Cure and Healing Potions? Wound negators? Antivenom and antitoxin potions? Fabulous. Potions to improve material science? Excellent.
Lots of applications for Alchemy.
Even hypermeth so you can stay awake all week in a crisis is something Molly might be able to justify.
But the idea of popping it routinely so that she can stay awake to get more AP is going to run head first into her personal history with the finality of an airliner running into a mountain.
I know I've mentioned this before.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Useful powered armor for Molly has somewhat higher requirements then it would for a human. A human would likely be happy with a big bunky suit that allows them to be a durable as a tank and allows them to carry a huge heavy gun. If they could manage a walking pace in it they would be ecstatic.
Molly however is already as durable as a tank and transformed has inhuman dex.
Still worth making to allow us to activate our more conditional charms, but I would not put your hopes too high.
Edit: Ninja.
Soak and dice bonuses stack.
Yeah, but I am not optimistic about case by case judgement every single potion would invariably be subject to. You still going to get a lot of use out of it, but Enchanting would have been a whole lot less tiresome to manage. Oh well.
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Harry pulls it off with enchantments, so it's possible he has one for that too.
Though on that topic I'm curious about his gear. If he's a talent then it's mostly explicable, but if he's vanilla then that implies some interesting things about what the Library of Congress is capable of equipping its agents with.
His gear is interesting. Note that Harry has to spend about twenty hours a week maintaining his half dozen pieces of gear. That's apparently pretty standard, and is why wizards and sorcerers aren't geared like a D&D adventurer.
If this guy has enchanted gear that he regularly wears, then either he or someone in his organisation is putting in serious man hours to keep it operational.
In terms of real life power armor (powered exoskeletons), these are the issues:
1) Power supply. Even our best portable power supplies would only last for a couple of minutes of active work. We could strap in an internal combustion engine, but that makes any powered exoskeleton too heavy and large to actually use in building, or be useful on the battlefield (especially in the urban warfare). This is an issue entirely solved by Prince of Ruin Attitude.
2) Making a lightweight skeleton and durable enough actuators. We can make carbon nanotubes already. Large scale ones. Making a lightweight carbon skeleton is nothing. We got that covered.
3) Flexibility - yes, that's an issue.
4) Power control and modulation - solved by HMP and even a primitive neural interface. A human-level AI with magical senses should be enough to handle the issues, by essentially granting the armor proprioception both internal (to feel how hard we are pushing) and external (to feel how hard it is pushing in response to us).
HMP + PRA solve most, if not all Power armor issues and make strength enhances much more viable. In fact, once we get PRA, a lot of "sci fi" designs become possible with modern tech. There's a lot of stuff that can't work because we don't have dense lightweight batteries. Once you don't need batteries at all in your design... Well, you jump about 30 years into the future immediately.
And Lydia can have wood-based undead power armor.
Yes, you mentioned this before, appealing to "if this was possible, Dresden would be using it", "there have to be side effects". I rebutted most of the arguments then, if I recall correctly, and someone provided mention of Dresden making the use of such potion occasionally. We don't know completely why he doesn't use them every week (my guess - need for rare components and time needed brewing), but you overdramatize the issue, opposing even trying, and invent the worst possible interpretation.
I know, that I won't convince you. You aren't convincing me. When the issue comes up to vote, feel free to vote against it. I will be voting for it, and working on my write-ins, and making sure that the issue is handled responsibly.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Steel Skin + Viridian Legend Exoskeleton does rather make it so that bonuses to our dice rolls become more soak. If we wear a refrigerated suit that is plus 2 dice to the Steel skin willpower roll. If that suit is filled with liquid with a low freezing temperature that is minus 1 to the DC to the Steel skin willpower roll. If that liquid is toxic that is essanse recovery as if we were resting in a dragon nest and Regen.
If we can make it so that willpower roll regularly gets us up to 8 stamina then I believe that would mean we have 17 soak.
I don't think that man portable heavy weapons can even get though 17 soak especially if you consider that we can also dodge.
If we can make it so that willpower roll regularly gets us up to 8 stamina then I believe that would mean we have 17 soak.
I don't think that man portable heavy weapons can even get though 17 soak especially if you consider that we can also dodge.
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In this system, Dexterity is probably the most commonly rolled attribute that is also essential for both defense and offense in combat. Moreso for Exalts, who have important combat charms scale of dexterity.
If you can manage PA-level soak values without hitting dexterity, then it is good. If you are paying for soak and misc.trinkets slapped onto the armor by diminishing your dexterity, impacting basically your everything negatively, then it is bad. Simple as.
Consider: +4 Dex Shintai is broadly considered to be the strongest, even though +Stamina shintai also has nifty things like additional -1 difficulty to soak, allowing standard soak difficulty of 4 before Boiling Sea Mastery.
Supernatural materials and exotic physics interactions start coming online somewhere around Alchemy/Enchanting 3, better 4 dots. The Good Stuff prolly would be higher.
Alchemy 6, iirc, allows to craft tools that reduce difficulty of everything they are used for, so I guess that's roughly the point where PA would be actually good without jumping through excessive amount of hoops.
A bracelet that makes wearer cold would be like, Enchanting 1. Maybe Enchanting 2, but at that point it is fairly likely you'd also would be able to make wearer both cold and wet enough to trigger BSM.
Turning PA into a wearable fridge via tricky engineering is a massively overcomplicated solution to a simple problem.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Considering that touch of frost means that we generate cold having a refrigerated suit might be at simple as just being tight enough to keep the cold in.
But an enchanted bracelet would also be nice if that works.
But an enchanted bracelet would also be nice if that works.