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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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DragonParadox said:
Lara Raith looks like nothing so much as the centerfold of a fashion magazine incarnate among the plebeians, all the more remarkable since no one would call her beauty conventional, her face has just the right about of asymmetry to lend character and will and she fills out the dark blue dress unfairly well in your opinion, but it is the eyes under perfectly arched eyebrows that arrest one in place, grey with specks of violet like twilight in a cemetery.
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Okay, our protagonist is definitly extremly heterosexual, in case that was ever in question.

Seeing Lara Raith for the first time and having a reaction that is mostly neutral, with just a tiny hint of envy and no lust, is a definite proof.
 
Earth-Destroyer said:
Are not White Council wizards explicitly in universe are known to be bad at mental defenses. So yeah I expect they lose a fair few wizards to mental attacks every decade.
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Bad by the standards of the Corpsetaker =/= Defenseless.
And that was only for young wizards, and in Luccio's case, a mature wizard that was back in a young body.
Peabody had literally years and physical access to work on the Senior Council and still could only nudge them.

The White Council would not be a major nationstate if every two-bit Black Court vampire, ambitious Whampire or Sidhe noble could acquire a wizard boytoy or girl toy by investing in stealth and then UMI from ambush.
Or if every black magic user could just invest in it and lolstomp his opponents.
 
uju32 said:
Bad by the standards of the Corpsetaker =/= Defenseless.
And that was only for young wizards, and in Luccio's case, a mature wizard that was back in a young body.
Peabody had literally years and physical access to work on the Senior Council and still could only nudge them.

The White Council would not be a major nationstate if every two-bit Black Court vampire, ambitious Whampire or Sidhe noble could acquire a wizard boytoy or girl toy by investing in stealth and then UMI from ambush.
Or if every black magic user could just invest in it and lolstomp his opponents.
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The Wizard's main defence seems to be that they all, and the powerful ones in particular, have huge Willpower to resist mental influence.
And if they notice shit, they can start burning down people or buildings.

That's not a great mental defence, particularly against the really powerful or subtle actors, but it sure is enough for someone like Lara, who for all her relative strenght is still very burnable, not to mess with Wizards.
 
Artemis1992 said:
The Wizard's main defence seems to be that they all, and the powerful ones in particular, have huge Willpower to resist mental influence. And if they notice shit, they can start burning down people or buildings.

That's not a great mental defence, particularly against the really powerful or subtle actors, but it sure is enough for someone like Lara, who for all her relative strenght is still very burnable, not to mess with Wizards.
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It gets more complicated than that. I think, Or at least it seems to.
Younger wizards are more vulnerable than older wizards, andeven for people without Council training, age hardens them; we see Mortimer Lindquist standoff the Corpsetaker for hours of sustained pressure in Ghost Story. She never does get inside his head.

Dresden and Molly do an entire series of mental defense exercises in each other's heads, and in Ghost Story we see the complete array of Molly's defenses in full, and they got positively baroque.

But its noteworthy that in Turn Coat, Dresden and Luccio literally walk into Lara's residence alone, where there's at least nine Whampires in regular residence, with zero fear of getting whammied and eaten, and no-one knowing they had gone there.
Which speaks to either trust in Lara Raith's word, or confidence in wizard mental defenses.

Or both.
 
So the question of the hour is, is it possible for someone to slip under IPP, that is to simply influence your mind without you noticing it and thus not raise your defenses? Yes, but they have to be subtle and possess a good deal of skill. on the balance I don't think Gorfel should have been skilled enough for it
 
DragonParadox said:
So the question of the hour is, is it possible for someone to slip under IPP, that is to simply influence your mind without you noticing it and thus not raise your defenses? Yes, but they have to be subtle and possess a good deal of skill. on the balance I don't think Gorfel should have been skilled enough for it
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That ruling, if you choose to go with it, essentially undermines a big chunk of the mechanical systems you will be working with going forward.
In my opinion, at least.

===
Im not talking about Lara; like I said, she does not appear to be here for this.

A bunch of important things that appear to be anchored on reflexive activation, from the native anti-magic of an Exalt in ExWoD(reflexive Wits + Occult when attacked with magic), to shaping defenses(EIPP explicitly only activates after you get hit) to perfect defenses like Ablation of Brass and Fire(reflexive activation after you get hit)?

Dont work if an antagonist can slide around activating them by stealth or skill.


And there's the cases where you get hit with a UMI that would stop you activating mundane physical or mental defense, or even noticing it was used, like Mab removing Dresden's memories of fire magic in Small Favor, and the seven little words by a Fallen that made Dresden commit suicide in Changes.

Or the ones that come out of nowhere, like Polonessa Lartessa/Imariel mindfucking Dresden in the elevator in Skin Game.

EIPP especially comes to mind because the NeverNever is a thing, and shaping effects are apparently a thing there.
As are shaping people like the Leanansidhe's "I will turn you into a dog". Something also shared by the ErlKing.
Or Odin stating that he could simply will Dresden dead while talking to him in the heart of his power.
Or a shaping death curse, like Maggie LeFay did to Lord Raith.



Surprise and stealth work as a mechanic in physical combat because there are mechanical defenses for that in ExWoD
Per+Alertness, Per + Awareness, and the surprise negator charm Raw-Edged Paranoia Principle( 2 dot charm, 8xp) all would allow us to notice a physical or magical attack on our person.

Social combat in ExWoD,otoh doesnt have a surprise negator I've noticed.
I dont think social surprise or social stealth is even a thing in V20; at least, a quick look at the PDF doesnt show it anywhere.


At least, that's my understanding of the mechanics.
Feel free to disagree.
 
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uju32 said:
That ruling, if you choose to go with it, essentially undermines a big chunk of the mechanical systems you will be working with going forward.
In my opinion, at least.

===
Im not talking about Lara; like I said, she does not appear to be here for this.

A bunch of important things that appear to be anchored on reflexive activation, from the native anti-magic of an Exalt in ExWoD(reflexive Wits + Occult when attacked with magic), to shaping defenses(EIPP explicitly only activates after you get hit) to perfect defenses like Ablation of Brass and Fire(reflexive activation after you get hit)?

Dont work if an antagonist can slide around activating them by stealth or skill.


And there's the cases where you get hit with a UMI that would stop you activating mundane physical or mental defense, or even noticing it was used, like Mab removing Dresden's memories of fire magic in Small Favor, and the seven little words by a Fallen that made Dresden commit suicide in Changes.

Or the ones that come out of nowhere, like Polonessa Lartessa/Imariel mindfucking Dresden in the elevator in Skin Game.

EIPP especially comes to mind because the NeverNever is a thing, and shaping effects are apparently a thing there.
As are shaping people like the Leanansidhe's "I will turn you into a dog". Something also shared by the ErlKing.
Or Odin stating that he could simply will Dresden dead while talking to him in the heart of his power.



Surprise and stealth work as a mechanic in physical combat because there are mechanical defenses for that in ExWoD
Per+Alertness, Per + Awareness, and the surprise negator charm Raw-Edged Paranoia Principle( 2 dot charm, 8xp) all would allow us to notice a physical or magical attack on our person.

Social combat in ExWoD,otoh doesnt have a surprise negator I've noticed.
I dont think social surprise or social stealth is even a thing in V20; at least, a quick look at the PDF doesnt show it anywhere.


At least, that's my understanding of the mechanics.
Feel free to disagree.
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That is a fair point and one I had not considered, could someone make it so you cannot activate a reflexive action by being subtle enough with shaping/UMI. Someone stopping your heart definitely isn't subtle I will say that much and neither is removing a whole class of magic from someone's brain. I was mostly thinking about perception filters and the like. That said it would get very subjective very fast and would require me to rule on what is 'subtle enough' in an nontransparent way so for the sake of not getting into (mechanically unsupported) weeds I think it would be better to just table the whole things. You can always trigger a reflexive action when the magic would be affecting you rather than your environment.

Keep in mind though this applies to other people as much as it does to you so people like Olivia are uniquely vulnerable to heavy weights with UMI protection on tap.
 
DragonParadox said:
Keep in mind though this applies to other people as much as it does to you so people like Olivia are uniquely vulnerable to heavy weights with UMI protection on tap.
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That's actually arguable lorewise. Exalts have inviolable exaltations as part of their souls. Even if their brain and souls would otherwise be affected, there's a small part of them that isn't, and that might grant them a chance to reflexively activate their defenses and protect their larger selves.

There is one canon precedent where no exalt was able to dodge, block, or counter a shaping effect / curse / unnatural mental influence, and where your interpretation (if you are sneaky enough, you can bypass perfect mental defenses) is absolutely correct. It's Great Curse, and it was aimed and affected the exaltation shards first and foremost.
 
Yog said:
That's actually arguable lorewise. Exalts have inviolable exaltations as part of their souls. Even if their brain and souls would otherwise be affected, there's a small part of them that isn't, and that might grant them a chance to reflexively activate their defenses and protect their larger selves.

There is one canon precedent where no exalt was able to dodge, block, or counter a shaping effect / curse / unnatural mental influence, and where your interpretation (if you are sneaky enough, you can bypass perfect mental defenses) is absolutely correct. It's Great Curse, and it was aimed and affected the exaltation shards first and foremost.
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Not disagreeing, just saying that with this beings in your weight class conceptually will have the same protections.
 
DragonParadox said:
Not disagreeing, just saying that with this beings in your weight class conceptually will have the same protections.
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Not that there are very many beings in the same conceptual weight class as a Solaroid Exalted. There's a reason DPE has "all lesser creatures of darkness" include everything below elder vampires and the Yama Kings. If you're getting into a tussle with something that is a peer of the Winter Queen, you better have something more than a single gambit with a mortal-practitioner-class UMI and a surprise gambit up your sleeve.
 
[X] Bluntly, all those who serve you are granted control of aspects of inner darkness that would be otherwhise outside their control
[X]Activate All Things Betray: 1 WP
[X]Activate Hellscry Chakra: 1m
[X]Activate IPM, Etiquette or Empathy Excellency if necessary
 
[X] Bluntly, all those who serve you are granted control of aspects of inner darkness that would be otherwhise outside their control
[X]Activate All Things Betray: 1 WP
[X]Activate Hellscry Chakra: 1m
[X]Activate IPM, Etiquette or Empathy Excellency if necessary
 
uju32 said:
It gets more complicated than that. I think, Or at least it seems to.
Younger wizards are more vulnerable than older wizards, andeven for people without Council training, age hardens them; we see Mortimer Lindquist standoff the Corpsetaker for hours of sustained pressure in Ghost Story. She never does get inside his head.

Dresden and Molly do an entire series of mental defense exercises in each other's heads, and in Ghost Story we see the complete array of Molly's defenses in full, and they got positively baroque.

But its noteworthy that in Turn Coat, Dresden and Luccio literally walk into Lara's residence alone, where there's at least nine Whampires in regular residence, with zero fear of getting whammied and eaten, and no-one knowing they had gone there.
Which speaks to either trust in Lara Raith's word, or confidence in wizard mental defenses.

Or both.
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Your forgetting the fallacy of survivor bias is a thing, of course wizards over a 100 will have somewhat decent mental defenses, they won't make it that long if they don't.
 
So, @DragonParadox I wanted to do some math on what might be a rasonable Essence progression. I tried to make an estimation based on the following:
1) Let's assume that the the amount of total XP spent between essence upgrades doubles each level. I.e. you need to spend X XP to go from E1 to E2, then additional 2X XP to go from E2 to E3, then additional 4X XP to go from E3 to E4.
2) Let's assume that E5 to E6 progression is possible in principle, but is as hard as possible to achieve via spending XP. I.e. you need to literally max out everything - buy every canon charm (including all excellencies), raise every Attribute and Ability to 5 dots, buy all prayer eating, raise permanent Willpower to 10, and learn all Ancient Sorcery on top of that all.
Now, let's calculate how much XP we would need past chargen to get there.

Charmwise, we initially had this build. This leaves us with 1288 XP left needed to buy all charms, including prayer eating.
For attributes and abilities, this is our initial statsheet. We would need
236 XP for attributes, 535 XP for abilities, and 9 for Willpower, to the total sum of 780 XP.
There are 31 Ancient Sorcery spells, to the total sum of 310 XP.

So, in total we would need 2378 XP to max out everything Molly has as a character. We have an equation X+2X+4X+8X+16X=2378, giving us roughly X=76.7 XP. So, the essence progression levels would go
E1 to E2 at 77 XP
E2 to E3 at 231 XP
E3 to E4 at 537 XP
E4 to E5 at 1151 XP
E5 to E6 at 2378 XP.

Of course, that's an upper boundary estimation.

Right now we are in the middle of E2, which seems reasonable enough to me. We gain roughly 25 Xp per in-game month, so roughly 300 XP per year. At this rate of progression it will take us ~ 4 years to become an E5 juggernaut, and the amount of XP spent at that time would mean that we should be able to fight people like Mab on roughly equal footing, throwing ~20 dice at everything with a difficulty discount. At the end of the decade of a steady advancement we'll be able to enact some grand working and probably kill / eat / consume an Old One to fuel our ascension.
 
Hmm.......unless you increase the xp gain, we will not be hitting E4 in any reasonable timeframe.

To put ti into context we have had 7 arcs including tutorial and we are only half way to E3.

Just purchasing Essence would be better than that or just arbitrarily increasing Essence.

Because holy shit. 4 ooc/real time years to hit E5??
 
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To add more context it will take real time.....

1 year from now to hit E3.

2 years from now to hit E4.

4 years from now to hit E5.

8 years from now to hit E6.
 
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Yzarc said:
To add more context it will take real time.....

6 months from now to hit E3.

2 years from now to hit E4.

4 years from now to hit E5.

8 years from now to hit E6.
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Sounds reasonable.

DP has proven that he can stick with a quest for years on end.

Edit: ASOIAF took about 5 years to get the main character from level 1 to level 18 and Mythic Tier 4.
 
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Yog said:
So, @DragonParadox I wanted to do some math on what might be a rasonable Essence progression. I tried to make an estimation based on the following:
1) Let's assume that the the amount of total XP spent between essence upgrades doubles each level. I.e. you need to spend X XP to go from E1 to E2, then additional 2X XP to go from E2 to E3, then additional 4X XP to go from E3 to E4.
2) Let's assume that E5 to E6 progression is possible in principle, but is as hard as possible to achieve via spending XP. I.e. you need to literally max out everything - buy every canon charm (including all excellencies), raise every Attribute and Ability to 5 dots, buy all prayer eating, raise permanent Willpower to 10, and learn all Ancient Sorcery on top of that all.
Now, let's calculate how much XP we would need past chargen to get there.

Charmwise, we initially had this build. This leaves us with 1288 XP left needed to buy all charms, including prayer eating.
For attributes and abilities, this is our initial statsheet. We would need
236 XP for attributes, 535 XP for abilities, and 9 for Willpower, to the total sum of 780 XP.
There are 31 Ancient Sorcery spells, to the total sum of 310 XP.

So, in total we would need 2378 XP to max out everything Molly has as a character. We have an equation X+2X+4X+8X+16X=2378, giving us roughly X=76.7 XP. So, the essence progression levels would go
E1 to E2 at 77 XP
E2 to E3 at 231 XP
E3 to E4 at 537 XP
E4 to E5 at 1151 XP
E5 to E6 at 2378 XP.

Of course, that's an upper boundary estimation.

Right now we are in the middle of E2, which seems reasonable enough to me. We gain roughly 25 Xp per in-game month, so roughly 300 XP per year. At this rate of progression it will take us ~ 4 years to become an E5 juggernaut, and the amount of XP spent at that time would mean that we should be able to fight people like Mab on roughly equal footing, throwing ~20 dice at everything with a difficulty discount. At the end of the decade of a steady advancement we'll be able to enact some grand working and probably kill / eat / consume an Old One to fuel our ascension.
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Why?

I don't recall off hand what it was, but when we voted to switch from buying essence levels to growing into them there was a specific value set right? Something from an update to ExWoD.

Why are we still fooling around with changing it?
 
BronzeTongue said:
Why?

I don't recall off hand what it was, but when we voted to switch from buying essence levels to growing into them there was a specific value set right? Something from an update to ExWoD.

Why are we still fooling around with changing it?
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DP was very generous with the xp so he wanted to add more speedbumpx in Essence progression.
Artemis1992 said:
Sounds reasonable.

DP has proven that he can stick with a quest for years on end.

Edit: ASOIAF took about 5 years to get the main character from level 1 to level 18 and Mythic Tier 4.
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Except, this was voted on specifically to automate the system, not to wait literal years to raise Essence.

We made that vote on the premise that the requirements would be reasonable. Waiting years for E4 is not reasonable.
 
I don't understand regular Exalted progression, or the system in general, but I get the impression that specialization was generally the way to go? If that's the case, it doesn't seem reasonable to set the boundary between E5 and E6 to basically be a maxed out character, even if ExWoD did weird things to the power scale.

I personally don't mind a slow-ish progression, though I think @Yog's proposal might be too slow.
 
DragonParadox said:
Hmm... that sounds reasonable (and I am admittedly happy someone else did the math). We'll go with that unless someone can see an issue with the progression.
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if no one finds an error with my math (very possible), and there's no issue in general, I'll do similar calcs with Lydia, because her progression under the same logic (has to buy everything in order to transition to elder essence) would obviously be different (far fewer charms, different costs of buying charms).
Yzarc said:
Because holy shit. 4 ooc/real time years to hit E5??
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I meant 4 IC years, actually. 25 XP per in-game month translates to 300 XP per in-game year to 4 in-game years to get to E5.

Still, now that I think of it, we are approximately 1:1 in-game to real life time, so yeah, that's a valid commentary. We'll be sticking to E3 until and unless we start getting involved in events that shake Creation, probably, and a worth a lot of XP.
BronzeTongue said:
Why?

I don't recall off hand what it was, but when we voted to switch from buying essence levels to growing into them there was a specific value set right? Something from an update to ExWoD.

Why are we still fooling around with changing it?
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Initial idea was, I think (I don't believe it was actually stated, but I might be wrong), to use E3 progression. The issue is that there E5 is 200 Xp total? Or something like that. Basically, with the rate we are raking in XP, we'd be E5 at no time.
 
Artemis1992 said:
Taking a few years to become equal to the biggest powerhouses in the setting is absolutly reasonable.
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Except Essence =/= Power.

All Essence does is lock certain charms away or effects excellence.

Unless DP manually locks even more charms against Essence requirements, Molly at E5 is not that different from Molly at E2.

It was also NOT what we voted for.
 
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