[X] Yog
Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I thought we were decided to claim we got all the info out of the head of the red vampires noble we have.
- Location
- washington
Hey @DragonParadox how many of these would you let us do offscreen?
The museum ones could be structured into an action you could do in the background, all the other ones are going to require some kind of follow up. If something feels important enough that it would impact the setting just asking questions about it and then throwing the answers into the wind (or keeping them silent) is kind of irresponsible.
- Location
- washington
I mean its not really feasible to ask too many questions on screen cause we only have so much essence. But, there are hundreds if not thousands of essence motes going unused off screen which we can use. Also you know we'd use the information but we can't get a information broker level of information unless we're allowed to ask these things in the background. We can decide what to do with these things once we have them.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
One day this way of using Shintai is going to bite us in the ass.
- Location
- Germany
Doubt it.
So far we had pretty good results using it on the boss of any given arc.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
If we're like this, we should get Dexterity 5.
This is not a quest about maximizing essence use, it is one about being Molly Carpenter Infernal Exalted. Is there one or more among those ideas that you think would make sense for Molly to focus on? Then vote for it and see if there is support. You could for instance use an action like
[] Make use of the Crown's power to become a political information broker
That would be an action in which many questions would be asked in the background. Same for
[] Make use of the Crown to find objects of historical value and direct archeologists to them
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
What if we pop it then need it later for a "surprise boss"? We can't assume we'll know of every enemy we'll have to deal with for a given arc. It seems extremely arrogant to act as if we will. That surprise boss Walker who showed up without any warning for example.
Another possible example, someone we thought to be an ally turns on us and we get fucked over and need Shintai. We already used it however because we were so sure that this arc would follow the same climax and resolution as most others. We try to pop it off and the rolls fail, we end up wasting essence and willpower when we need it most all because we used it earlier when we really didn't have to. Just because we've had good results so far doesn't mean it will remian that way as the world adapts to Molly in turn.
Can you really not imagine such a senerio?
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- Location
- Germany
Sure I can.
But the combination of us completely misjudging our situation and need for ressource-management, followed by a crisis that we can't avoid with our very high strategic and tactical mobility?
That's unlikely enough that I can live with the risk.
In addition, as we grow stronger, the odds are only going to be more in our favor.
Essence 3 already means we have a decent mote-pool and more dice for the second Shintai-attempt then before, Essence 4 will make it even easier.
BoredMan
Dinosaurs came in many flavors. Like potato chips.
...I feel like even if Molly will probably be fine by acting in such a manner we might end up getting people killed by gambling with our ace like that but whatever I said my peace.
@uju32 on the fetish crafting stuff from earlier, per ExWoD there's an ancient sorcery spell that opens that option directly:
If we just got that we'd basically have paid 10 more exp than we needed to get the functionality we'd be using.
If 14-20 dice and a good argument were enough Uriel would have done this by now. It's possible we could accomplish something, but treat it like it's inevitable or without risk because exalt memes is the sort of mistake that kills exalts.
The advantage of Holden's system is that it provides a framework for building things that isn't so loose we can add any gsmebreaking stuff we want but isn't so restrictive that we can't do anything useful.
We can, for example, make weapons for minions, we just can't give random muggles unlimited supplies of super weapons unless we pay a surcharge to make it useable by them.
It also simplifies the research end of things. We can with a few potential exceptions just start making stuff instead of needing to buy even more skills to produce the effects we want.
Right now Molly has great occult, alchemy, and magic martial arts. As far as I understand it if we crafted like a mage we'd be limited to potions and the like until we bought more skills.
If we just got that we'd basically have paid 10 more exp than we needed to get the functionality we'd be using.
Can in the sense that we're allowed to try, but it's worth remembering that a lot of the impossible things the exalted did were were reached by one of the chosen standing on a pile of their predecessors corpses.
If 14-20 dice and a good argument were enough Uriel would have done this by now. It's possible we could accomplish something, but treat it like it's inevitable or without risk because exalt memes is the sort of mistake that kills exalts.
A lot of examples of it exploding maybe.
The advantage of Holden's system is that it provides a framework for building things that isn't so loose we can add any gsmebreaking stuff we want but isn't so restrictive that we can't do anything useful.
We can, for example, make weapons for minions, we just can't give random muggles unlimited supplies of super weapons unless we pay a surcharge to make it useable by them.
It also simplifies the research end of things. We can with a few potential exceptions just start making stuff instead of needing to buy even more skills to produce the effects we want.
Right now Molly has great occult, alchemy, and magic martial arts. As far as I understand it if we crafted like a mage we'd be limited to potions and the like until we bought more skills.
We also have Devil-Refining Cauldron which lets us make fetishes.
True, but it doesn't really offer any additional functionality and costs 16 exp. If we want fetishes the ancient sorcery spell is the most efficient option.
It allows us to store spirits in our anima for 24 hours, which, I guess, could be used as emergency life-extension, but that's an edge case. It is somewhat redundant with other craft options.
That's not really worth the 6 exp difference in my mind.
The technocrats make it work and they aren't randomly exploding so it can't be that big a risk.
But it is needlessly restricted. Like the various class of items are kind pointless, its classification is super gamified and pointless.
Like sure wonders may not have those restrictions but they have their own restrictions, they can't be made without the appropriate spheres which we can replace with crafting goods that resonate with those spheres. So it has the exact same restrictions that prevent us from breaking holdens system.
We can't do that with wondercrafting as well. It would take our AP and we can just get equipment from our hell. Like we don't need an in built restrictions on the system when we are already going to be limited by AP and materail restrictions. Then being told that we can't significantly let mortals be relevant is a stupud restrictions.
That would be worth while because all skills are useful in other fields, so its not like being an omnipotent person is a problem
Also this would be another restrictions if you are worried about wonders being broken
But the effects of alchemy itself would be a lot more flexible for our purposes.
On the subject of crafting rules, since they are more relevant now, I wanted to try and make my opinion known.
First, a premise - I am someone who loves the idea of craft. I am a scientist by trade, and this is a profession I love, the calling of my life, as I know it, despite all the issues. I adore the idea of creating something new, unique and meaningful, of changing the world for the better and enriching it, and our understand of it. As such, I am very biased, and unashamedly so. The amount of fiction where my chosen field or engineering, or magic crafting makes any meaningful impact is so small that I will always be pushing for more craft, because that's what I enjoy.
Anyway, my thoughts on Holden's craft system, good and bad:
1) The very argument of Holden's system is, to quote:
It's also bad for the game we are playing. Because this is not WoD. The reality is not at the very edge of winking out. This is not just a versus game.
2) While I haven't read through Mage rules, assuming the author is not lying, wonderforging is way too broken and would have to rely very carefully on the player consensus to limit ourselves. That said, I think Holden overcorrected... a lot.
3) Gadgets and super-science. Now, this here is where the argument makes sense for WoD, where reality is consensual, but only just so, because exalts are not a part of consensus, and motonic science is a goddamn science, not art or magic. It doesn't, however, make sense for Dresden Files. To quote the rule book "Unlike Technocracy Devices, these are genuine mad science, not magic cosplaying as science. Gadgets don't tend to work for anyone but their inventor." These two sentences contradict each other. Moreover, the next sentence is "They're the easiest sort of special items to make, but are maintenance-dependent and prone to breakage.". This doesn't make sense. If I am a self-styled heir of Autochton, craft 5, technology 5, computers 5 Solar, and I am making a planetary siege engine or a power armor, no, it wouldn't be breaking down every other day - it would be rugged and with redundancies on top of reduncancies.
The point is, the system does not work for anything but, and I quote "McGyver improv whiz". The "cutting-edge super-genius engineer" is not the type of character served by gadgets. Basically, this segment proclaims that gadgets are super-science, not magic cosplay, but it lies.
And the whole thing breaks down even more when advanced kingdoms get involved.
4) Prodigies are lesser splendors with physical bodies that don't discorporate into our anima when not manifested. That's the biggest difference I see. The separation feels very artificial otherwise. Also, most of the prodigy description is lifted straight from enchantment path, and for low level ones (up to 3 or maybe 4 dots) a) makes it redundant, b) worse than the mortla enchantment path (for example, I am fairly sure that mortal crafted objects don't require attunement, or sacrificie of metusselah-level entities). It's a bit of a linear fighter, quadratic wizard thing, I guess. But it's strange to see that there are things where mortal stuff is explicitely better and cheaper (1 dot prodigies are worse than 1 dot enchanted objects in all ways). Fetishes certainly are better. And by making spirit arcana you can make fetishes, thus making prodigies mostly obsolete.
5) Going back to gadgets (I am doing this as I am reading through the book), it's just painful. It's very clearly that Holden wanted to avoid legions of adeptus astartes in power armor being unleashed by would-be god-emperors of mankind, but the results are just painful. Suitable for an exalt starting out in a literal dump cobbling something together in a few spare moments they are not fighting off vampiric hordes amidst apocalypse, but not much else. At the very least everything about maintenance and storage rules has to be strongly reworked or thrown out, I believe. Otherwise this is just magic cosplaying as super science.
It's quite notable that gadgets only have one example given, and it's a very low level one.
6) Arcana - now, Arcana I like. There are actual rules I can play with, builds I can make. I think there's some very unbalanced stuff, but that's technicalities. There's a distinct lack of robot / high tech arcana, though. Again, if I want to build a planetary siege engine (a Bolo by any other name), is it an arcana or a gadget? Also simulacra need to be expanded into general life imitation (if I build a cat or an elephant simulacra, is it a simulacra or a golem?)
On the technical side - 3 dot arcana get 21 freebie points, while everyone else get 15. That's strange, as generally arcana with more dots have everything arcana with fewer dots have. That probably needs correction.
7) Spelndors - while I like the constructor (I enjoy making something new, have I mentioned that?), the huge argument against them is the need to sacrifice for their making. There are two arguments against this:
a) This is needlessly evil, lore-wise, in a game that's not a direct versus where we are constantly killing monsters, but are, instead, working on redeeming at least some of them.
b) It's too easiyl circumvented. Make an arcana, and sacrifice it. No permanent resources consumed.
Overall, my thoughts are something like this:
1) Gadgets need to be reworked somehow. This system doesn't allow for super-science that's not a McGyver-style emergency assembly
2) Prodigies and Splendors should probably be re-integrated into one more broad category somehow, with splendors from the book being higher rated prodigies or something like this. Some manner of transitioning from one to another should probably be set up, like anchoring a splendor to a magically-resonant physical vessel. At least for the least prodigies (1 or 2 dots) attunement requirement makes no sense
1) No mystic collapse
2) No limit on how many fetishes we can have attuned. From W20:
Fetishes are eco-friendly prodigies / splendors. Which makes no goddamn sense, because if they are, the correct choise is to only use CCoP to make arcana, and then use Devil-Refining Cauldron to make fetishes out of said Arcana. Which, come ot think of it, is exactly how infernal craft was done in E2, isn't it? Distill demons into equipment.
First, a premise - I am someone who loves the idea of craft. I am a scientist by trade, and this is a profession I love, the calling of my life, as I know it, despite all the issues. I adore the idea of creating something new, unique and meaningful, of changing the world for the better and enriching it, and our understand of it. As such, I am very biased, and unashamedly so. The amount of fiction where my chosen field or engineering, or magic crafting makes any meaningful impact is so small that I will always be pushing for more craft, because that's what I enjoy.
Anyway, my thoughts on Holden's craft system, good and bad:
1) The very argument of Holden's system is, to quote:
I feel this argument is bad. It's bad for Holden to make, because it undermines the premise of the setup, which is "cancelling the apocalypse". Cancelling the Apocalypse doesn't just involve punching Cain in the teeth, and strangling the Wyrm. It also means repairing reality. Otherwise, it's all meaningless.
It's also bad for the game we are playing. Because this is not WoD. The reality is not at the very edge of winking out. This is not just a versus game.
2) While I haven't read through Mage rules, assuming the author is not lying, wonderforging is way too broken and would have to rely very carefully on the player consensus to limit ourselves. That said, I think Holden overcorrected... a lot.
3) Gadgets and super-science. Now, this here is where the argument makes sense for WoD, where reality is consensual, but only just so, because exalts are not a part of consensus, and motonic science is a goddamn science, not art or magic. It doesn't, however, make sense for Dresden Files. To quote the rule book "Unlike Technocracy Devices, these are genuine mad science, not magic cosplaying as science. Gadgets don't tend to work for anyone but their inventor." These two sentences contradict each other. Moreover, the next sentence is "They're the easiest sort of special items to make, but are maintenance-dependent and prone to breakage.". This doesn't make sense. If I am a self-styled heir of Autochton, craft 5, technology 5, computers 5 Solar, and I am making a planetary siege engine or a power armor, no, it wouldn't be breaking down every other day - it would be rugged and with redundancies on top of reduncancies.
The point is, the system does not work for anything but, and I quote "McGyver improv whiz". The "cutting-edge super-genius engineer" is not the type of character served by gadgets. Basically, this segment proclaims that gadgets are super-science, not magic cosplay, but it lies.
And the whole thing breaks down even more when advanced kingdoms get involved.
4) Prodigies are lesser splendors with physical bodies that don't discorporate into our anima when not manifested. That's the biggest difference I see. The separation feels very artificial otherwise. Also, most of the prodigy description is lifted straight from enchantment path, and for low level ones (up to 3 or maybe 4 dots) a) makes it redundant, b) worse than the mortla enchantment path (for example, I am fairly sure that mortal crafted objects don't require attunement, or sacrificie of metusselah-level entities). It's a bit of a linear fighter, quadratic wizard thing, I guess. But it's strange to see that there are things where mortal stuff is explicitely better and cheaper (1 dot prodigies are worse than 1 dot enchanted objects in all ways). Fetishes certainly are better. And by making spirit arcana you can make fetishes, thus making prodigies mostly obsolete.
5) Going back to gadgets (I am doing this as I am reading through the book), it's just painful. It's very clearly that Holden wanted to avoid legions of adeptus astartes in power armor being unleashed by would-be god-emperors of mankind, but the results are just painful. Suitable for an exalt starting out in a literal dump cobbling something together in a few spare moments they are not fighting off vampiric hordes amidst apocalypse, but not much else. At the very least everything about maintenance and storage rules has to be strongly reworked or thrown out, I believe. Otherwise this is just magic cosplaying as super science.
It's quite notable that gadgets only have one example given, and it's a very low level one.
6) Arcana - now, Arcana I like. There are actual rules I can play with, builds I can make. I think there's some very unbalanced stuff, but that's technicalities. There's a distinct lack of robot / high tech arcana, though. Again, if I want to build a planetary siege engine (a Bolo by any other name), is it an arcana or a gadget? Also simulacra need to be expanded into general life imitation (if I build a cat or an elephant simulacra, is it a simulacra or a golem?)
On the technical side - 3 dot arcana get 21 freebie points, while everyone else get 15. That's strange, as generally arcana with more dots have everything arcana with fewer dots have. That probably needs correction.
7) Spelndors - while I like the constructor (I enjoy making something new, have I mentioned that?), the huge argument against them is the need to sacrifice for their making. There are two arguments against this:
a) This is needlessly evil, lore-wise, in a game that's not a direct versus where we are constantly killing monsters, but are, instead, working on redeeming at least some of them.
b) It's too easiyl circumvented. Make an arcana, and sacrifice it. No permanent resources consumed.
Overall, my thoughts are something like this:
1) Gadgets need to be reworked somehow. This system doesn't allow for super-science that's not a McGyver-style emergency assembly
2) Prodigies and Splendors should probably be re-integrated into one more broad category somehow, with splendors from the book being higher rated prodigies or something like this. Some manner of transitioning from one to another should probably be set up, like anchoring a splendor to a magically-resonant physical vessel. At least for the least prodigies (1 or 2 dots) attunement requirement makes no sense
True. The benefits of fetishes are:
1) No mystic collapse
2) No limit on how many fetishes we can have attuned. From W20:
3) No need to permanently sacrifice anyone or anything to make it
Fetishes are eco-friendly prodigies / splendors. Which makes no goddamn sense, because if they are, the correct choise is to only use CCoP to make arcana, and then use Devil-Refining Cauldron to make fetishes out of said Arcana. Which, come ot think of it, is exactly how infernal craft was done in E2, isn't it? Distill demons into equipment.
I meant on a system level. Holden has a preface to his crafting rules describing why he did what he did. To take a quick snippet:
We don't have paradox at all, so some of that is even worse.
No it isn't. The system is far from perfect, but it defines different categories based on skill used which do mechanically different things and provide flexibility without the vague bullshit of the base system.
Prodigies let you make "normal" items. Splendors let you make Ancient Sorcery grade cheating items. Arcana allows servant building, and gadgets/inventions allow super science equivalents that use different skills and have different requirements.
Gadgets for example, aren't primarily intended to be made in advance. You use it to make grenades in a janitor's closet, or emp devices like we did during the Holt arc. Inventions are longer lasting and easier to make than enchantments (if you have the skill for it) but have ongoing upkeep.
The restrictions give definition and block stupid nonsense. I'd prefer if we could make more stuff on the magic side without killing people for it, and that prodigies have a portfolio of effects to draw on, but the basic idea isn't bad.
AP restrictions are clearly not enough for this, or at least not for the super powerful stuff. Being able to take baseline people and turn them into magic Batman is too valuable to not exploit.
It makes wonders worse. Either we need to spend even more exp to do anything, or we have the base abilities and run wild. It's a boring change that puts the problem off instead of solving it.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
We kind of got all the benefits of gadgets already just from Tool-Transcending Constructs ●. We are already able to not really McGyver because we always have access to the best equipment on the planet, but generally quickly craft grenades or whatever else we might need using random materials.
Personally I am inclined in many cases to just ignore the magic crafting rules continue to craft normally then slap a "and it's even better than that because magic!"
Personally I am inclined in many cases to just ignore the magic crafting rules continue to craft normally then slap a "and it's even better than that because magic!"
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The issue here is scale. This is how a 1 dot prodigy is described:
Two dot prodigy are
Starting from two dots, an exalt must have a Dragon Nest background in order to make prodigies. Only an exalt can make use of prodigies. Only up to Essence rating prodigies can be attuned at a time. Prodigies suffer from mystic collapse.
Now, compare this to Enchantment Path:
Basically, they are exactly the same. Only you don't require attunement, or a Dragon Nest. And there's success overflow mechanic for mortal magic.
There's a substantial difference at high dot rating, but low dot one is nerfed into uselessness, where an exalt is far better off using mortal hedge magic with exalted excellencies.
Exactly. As written, there's basically no system for anything but that. Nothing for "you have an actual workshop, actual resources, and actual time to do things right". Anything but scrap-built emergency trinkets need to be invented wholecloth, system-wise.
While I agree that one dot prodigies are more or less identical to enchantment, two already diverged. Being able to lower the DC by one is considerably more powerful than just adding 1 die also thematically one makes you stronger/faster/smarter, the other alters the circumstances of your work. As BSM shows these things are not the same.
1 point difficulty adjustement in narrow categories is 1 dot prodigy / enchantment niche. 2 dot enchantment can give one a 2 dice bonus. Here are canon examples from Sorcerer: Path to power (page 91):
• Dead-Aim Gun: A handgun that reduces the difficulty of all aimed shots by 1
• Hawkeye Medallion: A medallion with a chrysoprase serving as the eye of a hawk's head. It grants 2 dice to Perception for long-distance sight and detecting movement when rubbed. This power works once a day.
•• Bulletproof Flask: A liquor flask that provides three dice of soak against one source of Lethal damage. It works by sitting in the user's breast pocket and drawing a bullet or other weapon to it. It can only be used once.
•• Dancer's Bangle: A silver anklet with charms hanging from it that grants two extra dice on all Dancing rolls.
•• Hyperbullets: Bullets that go so fast that they do an additional two dice of damage. One is created per success on the Enchantment roll.
Given that starting from 2 dots, you have to have a Dragon Nest to craft prodigies at all, I still think that mortal enchantment is better. And I haven't even talked about how in order to use high level Prodigies you need to permanently reduce and then destroy said Dragon Nests consuming "the potential of the world". That mechanic is just plain stupid and makes using high level prodigies a complete non-starter.
As an aside, a 3 dot enchanted protection against magic is insane if made by an exalted craftsman:
••• Counter Amulet: An amulet that, when grasped, provides protection against sorcery. Up to three times a day, it will subtract a number of successes from a sorcery effect targeting the wearer equal to the number of successes rolled when creating it. It must be stored in a special jewelry box made from a single crystal when not worn or it loses one success per night until it is inert.
This is... I don't even know how to call it.
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You can modify the cost per effective dot rating with complications. That makes it possible to get good effects for a lower cost by making them a little interesting.
You can also pay to take off the attunement cost and/or make them usable by non-exalts. Both of those are 1 dot bumps.
Bumping up the price and then lowering it with well designed special rules is entirely possible where it's even necessary.
We could make a long action variant M24 sniper enchanted with a 1 dot equivalent effect usable by mortals for the 2 dot price. Which results in a weapon that is immune to casual wear, won't break from misuse, grants -1dc on attacks, and has an effective range of 3 kilometers.
If we're willing to pay a reagent and/or add complications then we can start playing with other effects.
Also, mystic collapse rules are basically universally gone for the quest because paradox and the like aren't a thing in DF. DP ruled on it a while back.
Trinkets are like that, inventions and Apparatus aren't. They're just nerfed in weird ways because Holden wasn't building for exalt backed Industrial Revolution games.
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Proof that the base crafting rules are stupidly broken.
Even without exalted that becomes a ridiculously useful item to the point where everyone should have at least one.
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