Caine is Cain from the Bible, eldest child of Adam and Eve. Also the first and most powerful vampire.
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
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- Crossover Fantasy
Yeah, yeah, it is thematically appropriate.Killing Caine is something you can do at the end of a Exalted vs WoD Chronicle, it is thematically appropriate. 'Oh God himself said we can't not kill this asshole. Which one?'
That still leaves one with a need to build a Post-Gen3 vampire who makes every ExWoD endboss look like a petulant children - from scratch, more or less. That's not a trivial task to begin with, and the following "so, how are you gonna kill him, mechanically? Homebrew charms, Elder Essence, what are you gonna bring into the game to allow that?" is pretty fucking hard to address.
Anyway, we are kind of dancing on the edge of relevance, here. There is a bunch of "how you are supposed to portray and/or fight these?" entities in DF that parallel issues with Caine pretty well, but still.
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Specifically his vampirism is a curse from God who still loves him. That curse is specifically to live forever, but unlike other vampires that curse encompasses ALL forms of death, not just old age. When WoD says Cain cannot be killed they are being literal. There is no way to kill him in setting. Anything that harms Cains doesn't, instead harming the being who made the attempt 7 times as much.
Shaping defense would be non-optional to avoid killing yourself in the attempt. You would need the right sort of perfect attack to get around his "nullify damage" perfect defense, and it would need to be specific because defense normally trumps offense. You need to fight a perfect attack that bypasses his defense and have your own perfect defense that protects against the attack you are doing so you survive the backlash.
Then, on top of that, you actually have to deal with whatever Cain throws at you.
It would be hard, even for an Exalted, to fight Cain. It would be at least POSIBLE for an Exalted to fight Cain.
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The Exalted are not merely powerful in their own right, they exist in narrative-fictional context to be adjudicated by a reality-warping GM figure outside the fiction as a condition of playing the game.
Spells that have a variable duration of "one scene", or mote refresh at the start of a scene.
Charms that block "one attack", defined as one spray of many bullets but not two single bullets. (Mass Combat makes this even more ridiculous in core Exalted. You can block arbitrarily large numbers of bullets if they're from "one unit".)
The entire stunt system, where you get mechanical bonuses for impressing the GM.
Role-playing games take a lot of rules simplifications and conveniences and abstractions for the sake of the players; Exalted is bizarre about pretending to reify those abstractions and having the characters interact directly with them. Consider the Charm A Cold And Lonely World.
This two-dot charm includes an effect of infinite-range long-duration precise undetectable multi-target mind-control that does not require LOS.
That power would be utterly, ludicrously, absurdly, GM-infuriatingly broken, if it weren't also so very narrowly limited by the game rule abstraction that it's supposedly affecting "an individual", the touched target, rather than affecting everyone else who's made to forget about and disbelieve the target.
In most RPGs there's a social contract to not poke the abstraction too hard, dev time is limited and we're here for a cooperative game. Exalted invites me to punch the abstraction and loot the body, it's very silly.
The level of GM Favoritism, to be exact.
The Exalted are not merely powerful in their own right, they exist in narrative-fictional context to be adjudicated by a reality-warping GM figure outside the fiction as a condition of playing the game.Spells that have a variable duration of "one scene", or mote refresh at the start of a scene.
Charms that block "one attack", defined as one spray of many bullets but not two single bullets. (Mass Combat makes this even more ridiculous in core Exalted. You can block arbitrarily large numbers of bullets if they're from "one unit".)
The entire stunt system, where you get mechanical bonuses for impressing the GM.
Role-playing games take a lot of rules simplifications and conveniences and abstractions for the sake of the players; Exalted is bizarre about pretending to reify those abstractions and having the characters interact directly with them. Consider the Charm A Cold And Lonely World.
With but a touch and an injection of enervating
Essence, the Infernal severs an individual from her
place in the world.
System: The Infernal touches her target, spends 2
Essence, and roll Manipulation + Subterfuge against
a difficulty of the target's Willpower. Success curses
them for one day per success. The target is are alienat-
ed from his own identity, from his relationships, and
from the shape of his life within the world. It's diffi-
cult for him to gain the attention of strangers without
doing something to anger them – and everyone is now
a stranger. Friends, allies, and loved ones do not recog-
nize him, and no mundane effort will convince them
of his true identity; even if he displays a driver's license
or other such identification, they are likely to think
that this stranger somehow stole their friend's ID. He
is not only nobody: he is an outsider to all and sundry.
If he wishes to use any sort of supernatural power to
impose his will on another (such as the vampire Disci-
pline of Dominate), he must first spend a Willpower
point to do so. He likely loses access to several Back-
grounds while the curse persists.
Essence, the Infernal severs an individual from her
place in the world.
System: The Infernal touches her target, spends 2
Essence, and roll Manipulation + Subterfuge against
a difficulty of the target's Willpower. Success curses
them for one day per success. The target is are alienat-
ed from his own identity, from his relationships, and
from the shape of his life within the world. It's diffi-
cult for him to gain the attention of strangers without
doing something to anger them – and everyone is now
a stranger. Friends, allies, and loved ones do not recog-
nize him, and no mundane effort will convince them
of his true identity; even if he displays a driver's license
or other such identification, they are likely to think
that this stranger somehow stole their friend's ID. He
is not only nobody: he is an outsider to all and sundry.
If he wishes to use any sort of supernatural power to
impose his will on another (such as the vampire Disci-
pline of Dominate), he must first spend a Willpower
point to do so. He likely loses access to several Back-
grounds while the curse persists.
That power would be utterly, ludicrously, absurdly, GM-infuriatingly broken, if it weren't also so very narrowly limited by the game rule abstraction that it's supposedly affecting "an individual", the touched target, rather than affecting everyone else who's made to forget about and disbelieve the target.
In most RPGs there's a social contract to not poke the abstraction too hard, dev time is limited and we're here for a cooperative game. Exalted invites me to punch the abstraction and loot the body, it's very silly.
Hum would A Cold And Lonely World break a coin host from their coin.
In WoD, Caine from the bible got "cursed" with fantastical power and eternal life for killing his brother Abel, becoming the first Vampire.
He passed parts of this on to his children, albeit in weaker form.
And so did they in turn to their children. If you count Caine as the first generation, these third generation Vampires are the ones who most of the older modern clans are named after.
Caine has an oft-cited character sheet, which replaces most combat relevant stats with the words "YOU FUCKING LOSE" printed in big bold letters.
I think it would do better than that.
Denarians basically run on the power of evil friendship; the closer the fallen and the human are to partners the stronger they are in practice. It's the reason Nicodemus+Anduriel run the show and Magog hits things for them.
For Nicodemus and Anduriel in particular the relationship is one of two thousand years that Butcher literally described in terms like "one and only".
Suddenly being in possession of someone else who looks like they're impersonating a companion that close? With people that habitually violent and cruel? Someone is going to do something they'll regret. It might even permanently fracture the only truly trusted relationship some of them have or have had since the Fall.
I think it'd be scarier than anything else we can do to them from their perspective.
Exactly, and I think my plan speaks for itself on what I think the answer is.
Which includes, just to make sure the point is well hammered home, every. single. discipline at 10 dots (which is literally named: plot device), with the ability to create any Discipline he wants on the fly, also at 10 dots.
He's not primordial level, but he is one of the strongest being in the old World of Darkness.
Pick up A Cold and Lonely World, and Endless Torment Emanation, and we could probably sweep the entire Denarian order in 1 epic road trip with the Knights.
A combination of A Cold and Lonely World, Theft As Release and Golden Years Tarnished Black used in quick succession on a denarian mid-combat would be absolutely devastating.
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It is best not to think too hard about what AC&LW would or would not do, because the edge cases are as many as they are stupid. Does the ATM refuse to recognize my credit card? Does the lock on my door not recognize my key? Does it make my conjoined twin think he's been suddenly grafted onto someone else?
It's written as a global conceptual effect with no stopping point, even if all common sense says it has to stop somewhere.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
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- Formerly of the Far Realm
You're seriously going to tell me you don't want to psychologically traumatize a Fallen Angel and diabolic sorcerer/tax collector?
I bet you if we did it right we could hit them both with that sort of bitter regret that sticks to the back of your throat and wakes you up angry at 3am on random days for the rest of their lives.
The only question is how far we can go before we risk the Ebon Dragon spontaneously reforming to give us head pats.
Does it work on objects? If so, yes, why wouldn't it work like that? The Atm simply refuse the credit card, the key doesn't enter in the door.
Yes, once again, why wouldn't it work like that?
It doesn't really have to stop somewhere?
That reminds me a little about someone that was arguing that an omnipotent being couldn't smurfdle a kehuto, or create a married bachelor, of course they can, here's a demonstration:
-Step one: create the action of smurfdling and a thing that is called a kehuto.
-Step two: smurfdle the kehuto.
And for the married bachelor:
-Step one: make a man and a woman that are married.
-Make it so that the woman simultaneously exist and don't exist, and voila! That man is simultaneously married and not married! (Of course, you could do it with making it so that they ate simultaneously married and not knowing each other in the first place, but that doesn't leave you with a situation where someone is trapped existing and not existing at the same time, and where's the fun in that?)
And that kind of reasoning is the true strength of conceptual effects, that's how you *fly free from worry* to never have problems, *manipulate the boundary between losing and winning* to win a match you just lost, and other things like that.
There is also using socials to convince him not to find back and then you only have to get around the conceptual defenses while he stands there and waits to be killed. As far as I recall he does not have any defenses to being social-ed into assisted suicide, if anything given his history it should be a relatively easy sell *points at vampires*
Anyway onto more topical things. A Cold and Lonely World probably would not work on Adnduriel since he probably has perfect mental defenses.
Regarding what Exalted are capable of fighting and killing it really is worth remembering that they're also very specialised.
They were designed to fight creator Titans who could drop a moon on you as their opening strike.
Solars specifically are also hilariously vulnerable to mooks.
You don't send your scary right hand man with the instant death demon sword, you send 5 - 10 basically competent grunts with shotguns to kill them.
Wait for said grunts to die and send the next group.
Repeat until mote tapped and dead.
The tricky part is engineering things so the Solar won't run away and can't bring their own mooks to deal with yours.
They were designed to fight creator Titans who could drop a moon on you as their opening strike.
Solars specifically are also hilariously vulnerable to mooks.
You don't send your scary right hand man with the instant death demon sword, you send 5 - 10 basically competent grunts with shotguns to kill them.
Wait for said grunts to die and send the next group.
Repeat until mote tapped and dead.
The tricky part is engineering things so the Solar won't run away and can't bring their own mooks to deal with yours.
Or to take one look at your mooks and inform them that they are changing sides now and to be thankful for the opportunity.
That depends on how successful the Solar was in social combat against you.
EDIT: Which probably = yes if you were silly enough to actually speak with the Anathema.
fictionfan
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Yes the Dragon bloods spent and continued to spend huge amounts of propaganda to convince everyone not to let the Solar speak. Kill them before they can get a word out!
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
[X]Plan Speed Kills
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Never understood why or how Caine made childer, it's not like being drained of blood can end him.