Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

@DragonParadox
QUESTION
Does finding out what happened in the boiler room, both the confirmation that there was an Outsider-aligned lab site in that location, and the fact that everyone there has been killed by wyldfae goblins, both Frankie and his guards, count as a supernatural secret?

Unfortunately not, the second part is just confirmation and as for the first... does it look like these guys would normally keep murder secret?
 
[X]Plan Cloudburst
-[X] Screw this, there has to be a way to give Harrowmont the insight he needs to put out the fires until nightfall when you can deal with the arsonist herself.
-[X]Call the party and have them meet you, bringing some supplies with them
-[X]Crown question: Focus this scene: Optimizing the ritual for Las Vegas's current situation: 1m
-[X]Tool-Transcending Constructs + Occult Excellency for the actual ritual: 2m
 
RATIONALE
Essentially, we're not assaulting into the tunnels until nightfall because we're bringing Reds with us.
And the Reds cant assemble in daytime. So we can use the time productively.

Sandra's chaos ritual was primarily enacted as a buff spell/mana manipulation ritual to prime the city with appropriate mojo, so whatever her magic plans are easier to enact, and to make the response of other people worse.
So taking it down will debuff whatever she's doing, and will make it easier for us to lead a force into the tunnels.

Also, directing a sudden, heavy cloudburst of rain on Las Vegas will dump floodwater into the tunnels.
Running water like this will thoroughly fuck most magic ritual preparations in those tunnels, and erode or damage magical defenses and alarms that the floodwaters can reach.

It will also provide enough water and justification for Molly to have BSM active when we go into them.
When we're done w, Molly can chill in some bleach water to regenerate Essence before nightfall.
Two hours will regenerate 8m.
Wouldn't you prefer the ritual to happen while we burst into the tunnels?

Both justifying BSM and distracting Sandra, while also keeping our more vulnerable party members relativly safe?

Molly and Lydia are Exalted, they don't really need Lash's healing abilities. They resist poison quite well by themselves, and can both soak Aggravated damage, which Lash can only do with Marble Flesh, not her base Stamina.
 
[X] Let Harrowmont go aheal with his ritual just as you make your way into the tunnels, hopefully stretch Sandra's attention to the breaking point
-[X] Leave several of your party members behind
--[X] Harry, a proper wizard used to this kind of magic
--[X] Tiffany for her understanding of old powers
--[X] Mutt and Adkins, for further guarding and occult insights respectivly


Okay, I want Harry there to supply personal power and skill that Harrowmont might be lacking. I hope he'll enjoy working with a famous Wizard.
He's also a heavy hitter in case the ritual gets attacked.
Let us leave aside the fact that you are breaking a cardinal rule about splitting the party before a major fight.

Harry is not going to let Michael and Charity's daughter go into a tunnel fight with Red Court vampires as allies while he stays up top in relative safety.
Nevermind letting Molly and Lydia do it.

Thats just not happening.
Everyone else, particularly Tiffany and Adkins, are barely useful in the tunnels as they are non-combatants, so I prefer them there.

Don't get me wrong, Lash is useful with her lore and flesh-shaping and she can somewhat defend herself in her Apocalyptic Form, but she has barely any skill at direct fighting. Only a Flashbang from the the Lore of Light and natural toughness from her Marble Skin.
Tiffany has a better base offensive dicepool than Lydia.

Lydia attacks with Dex 3 + Brawl 3 in melee, dicepool of 6. And Dex 3 + Athletics 2 at range, dicepool of 5.
She can enhance with a Dexterity Excellency, but she doesnt have all that much Essence to spend.
So most of the time, she's rolling 5-6 dice.

Lash attacks with Lore of Light 1, rolling Stamina 3 + Science 4 at range.
Dice pool of 7.
And she has a chance to blind or disorient people she hits.
 
I think we want to leave Lash behind but participate in designing the ritual. After it's started Lash and Harry can help keep it going while we teleport to engage Sandra.
 
Let us leave aside the fact that you are breaking a cardinal rule about splitting the party before a major fight.

Harry is not going to let Michael and Charity's daughter go into a tunnel fight with Red Court vampires as allies while he stays up top in relative safety.
Nevermind letting Molly and Lydia do it.

Thats just not happening.
@DragonParadox
Would Harry agree to this split-up? He does the magical heavy lifting, we go and have fun murdering vampires.

Tiffany has a better base offensive dicepool than Lydia.

Lydia attacks with Dex 3 + Brawl 3 in melee, dicepool of 6. And Dex 3 + Athletics 2 at range, dicepool of 5.
She can enhance with a Dexterity Excellency, but she doesnt have all that much Essence to spend.
So most of the time, she's rolling 5-6 dice.

Lash attacks with Lore of Light 1, rolling Stamina 3 + Science 4 at range.
Dice pool of 7.
And she has a chance to blind or disorient people she hits.
Yeah, dicepool 7 Bashing Damage.

Lydia has 5+Successes Lethal with her Hunter's Bolt at reduced attack-DC and with the option to go aggravated.
Also she's much tougher than Lash, since she can borrow her Marble Flesh, on top of her own Stamina+Steel Skin, which can all naturally soak aggravated damage.
 
Wouldn't you prefer the ritual to happen while we burst into the tunnels?

Both justifying BSM and distracting Sandra, while also keeping our more vulnerable party members relativly safe?

Molly and Lydia are Exalted, they don't really need Lash's healing abilities. They resist poison quite well by themselves, and can both soak Aggravated damage, which Lash can only do with Marble Flesh, not her base Stamina.
1) If you want to be sure of the ritual actually happening, you want all hands on deck.
Because its likely to be an opposed roll.

2) We need both Harry and Tiffany down there.
And we were never gonna talk Harry into staying uptop while we walked into the tunnels with only a 16-year old and Rampires as backup, in addition to Brass Court troops with no experience on Earth.

3) ExWoD p36:
Exalted lower the difficulty to resist, soak, or recov-er from all poisons and diseases by –2. Non-supernatural diseases can weaken the Exalted, but cannot kill them, and each successive roll an Exalt makes to recover from a disease lowers its difficulty by –1. Incurable diseases such as HIV are purged from an Exalt's system after (8 – Stamina) weeks.
Exalted are not immune to poison. They just soak it at lower DC.
Poison gas can still fuck us up. And do worse to Lydia, who doesnt get BSM.
 
Poison gas is an environmental hazard to which we can become immune for a scene for 1 mote.
 
Yeah, dicepool 7 Bashing Damage.

Lydia has 5+Successes Lethal with her Hunter's Bolt at reduced attack-DC and with the option to go aggravated.
Also she's much tougher than Lash, since she can borrow her Marble Flesh, on top of her own Stamina+Steel Skin, which can all naturally soak aggravated damage.
Dicepool 7 Bashing Damage + chance to stun/disorient.
This simple evocation allows a demon to fill an area with pale silvery light, akin to moonlight. The light seems to emanate from the area's surroundings, allowing individuals to move and act in the illuminated area without penalty. This evocation also has a more tactical application, permitting the demon to stun or disorient opponents with intense, blinding flashes.
Avg Light Pistol damage + flashbang in the face.

And thats not counting that Lash's base dodge pool in Apocalyptic Form is Dexterity 7 + Athletics 1, before she uses Flesh 2 to buff herself even higher. Or that she can burn 1/10 temp Torment to activate Mist-Wreathed Form and impose debuffs to ranged and melee attacks against her.

She isnt as tanky as I'd like, but she's not fragile. And we'll need her down there.
I certainly think she's safer with us when we know that the enemy can very well summon Outsiders and send them on rear-area attacks.
Poison gas is an environmental hazard to which we can become immune for a scene for 1 mote.
Lingering gas is an environmental hazard.
Gas used as an attack is an attack.

Not that it matters, since Molly is the only person who can defend other people from environmental hazards.
So the rest of the party need to be around her to benefit.
 
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Okay, then I'll stick with my plan.
If we persuade him, good.

If not, that's largely okay still.
I want him at the ritual to protect the vulnerable people like Adkins and the librarian, not because I think it absolutly needs his expertise.
 
Let us leave aside the fact that you are breaking a cardinal rule about splitting the party before a major fight.

Harry is not going to let Michael and Charity's daughter go into a tunnel fight with Red Court vampires as allies while he stays up top in relative safety.
Nevermind letting Molly and Lydia do it.

Thats just not happening.

Tiffany has a better base offensive dicepool than Lydia.

Lydia attacks with Dex 3 + Brawl 3 in melee, dicepool of 6. And Dex 3 + Athletics 2 at range, dicepool of 5.
She can enhance with a Dexterity Excellency, but she doesnt have all that much Essence to spend.
So most of the time, she's rolling 5-6 dice.

Lash attacks with Lore of Light 1, rolling Stamina 3 + Science 4 at range.
Dice pool of 7.
And she has a chance to blind or disorient people she hits.
Yeah but you're forgetting to mention that the six dice pool that is actually a 16 dice pool because Her Excellency lasts four turns in combat now even if she only spent half her Essence On Her Excellency that would still anywhere from 10 to 12 turns and we've never had a combat last that long.

Also that light only works once now that could be really effective in certain circumstances but in a group battle where dispatching opponents is really the key anyone who's not disoriented by the initial blast will immediately either try to Blitz her with celarity or tell everyone to either keep their eyes off her because she doesn't actually offer any combat abilities herself or for all of them to Blitz her with their celarity and kill her.

Also the fact we're also going to be fighting along a bunch of Reds no one on the field is going to appreciate flashes of light that are really bright in these tunnels hell I don't even think we're going to appreciate it that much and they're going to be coming from behind us.
 
I am still surprised by how weak lydia is. The XP system really fucked her over. Granted she didn't do her own adventures is the reason but it does suck she is this weak.
 
I am still surprised by how weak lydia is. The XP system really fucked her over. Granted she didn't do her own adventures is the reason but it does suck she is this weak.
Yeah our acquisition of circle mates to cover blind spots has been terrible so we haven't been using any of our primary XP on Lydia so she's just been getting her slow Trickle and it's not great. If we had a niche and could fill it out to the best of our ability then maybe we would be more willing to spend our primary XP on improving our Circle mates but we are trying to be a Quantum infernal have all of the charm sets have all of the abilities be able to do everything and that's really XP expensive. Never mind the fact that literally everything in the book takes up anywhere from a 10th to a half of our per story XP which means that is really not much left over anyway after spending.
 
Okay, then I'll stick with my plan.
If we persuade him, good.

If not, that's largely okay still.
I want him at the ritual to protect the vulnerable people like Adkins and the librarian, not because I think it absolutly needs his expertise.
Dont split the party.
Commit one way or the other. You want to do the ritual, do it with the full crew.
You dont, leave Harrowmont alone and make peace with the fact that it wont work and he might come to harm.

In a city where nerve gas is being deployed, the opposition has access to Outsiders, and Molly is the only person with an environmental protection charm?
Splitting the party is a terrible idea.

If not, that's largely okay still.
I want him at the ritual to protect the vulnerable people like Adkins and the librarian, not because I think it absolutly needs his expertise.
Adkins and Mutt we drop off at the Hanging Gardens when we're going underground.
Harry's offensive options against such Sandra classics as enthralled mortals is limited anyway.
He cant blast mortals with magic.
 
Huh?
Isnt going against an Intimacy a DC8 roll?
Or is that only for Exalts?

Molly would have BSM that means rolling 18 dice on DC 7 after BSM on her end vs 10 dice of willpower on DC 6 on his. Those are very good odds

Tiffany is entirely fine letting you go into danger is that is what you choose. She conceptualizes Molly and Lydia as incarnate level beings first and teenagers a very distant second.
 
Yeah our acquisition of circle mates to cover blind spots has been terrible so we haven't been using any of our primary XP on Lydia so she's just been getting her slow Trickle and it's not great. If we had a niche and could fill it out to the best of our ability then maybe we would be more willing to spend our primary XP on improving our Circle mates but we are trying to be a Quantum infernal have all of the charm sets have all of the abilities be able to do everything and that's really XP expensive. Never mind the fact that literally everything in the book takes up anywhere from a 10th to a half of our per story XP which means that is really not much left over anyway after spending.

*glances at update number* I very much suspect you will have more XP than usual at the end of this arc. ;)
 
Molly would have BSM that means rolling 18 dice on DC 7 after BSM on her end vs 10 dice of willpower on DC 6 on his. Those are very good odds

Tiffany is entirely fine letting you go into danger is that is what you choose. She conceptualizes Molly and Lydia as incarnate level beings first and teenagers a very distant second.
Im asking because I recall the rules in ExWoD being to this effect:
Whenever something attempts to force an Exalt to act against, abandon, or betray an Intimacy, the Exalt's player can make a Willpower roll against difficulty 8 to refuse to do so. This remains true even if the Exalt isunder the influence of a supernatural power (such asDominate) that she already failed to resist. Her Intimacy acts as a second line of defense.
Thats why Im asking if thats an Exalt only thing in this Quest.
 
Im asking because I recall the rules in ExWoD being to this effect:

Thats why Im asking if thats an Exalt only thing in this Quest.

Oh you are not attempting to force him to stop his damsel in distress protecting ways, you are just trying to convince him it does not apply here, regular DC 6 roll for him, base DC 8 for you since you are also trying to convince him to perform a dangerous ritual with a guy he met five minutes ago.
 
[X] Let Harrowmont go aheal with his ritual just as you make your way into the tunnels, hopefully stretch Sandra's attention to the breaking point
-[X] Leave several of your party members behind
--[X] Harry, a proper wizard used to this kind of magic
--[X] Tiffany for her understanding of old powers
--[X] Mutt and Adkins, for further guarding and occult insights respectivly
 
[X] Let Harrowmont go aheal with his ritual just as you make your way into the tunnels, hopefully stretch Sandra's attention to the breaking point
-[X] Leave several of your party members behind
--[X] Harry, a proper wizard used to this kind of magic
--[X] Tiffany for her understanding of old powers
--[X] Mutt and Adkins, for further guarding and occult insights respectivly
 
Fair enough.


Current tally:
Adhoc vote count started by LightLan on Feb 5, 2024 at 12:52 PM, finished with 60 posts and 9 votes.

  • [X] Let Harrowmont go aheal with his ritual just as you make your way into the tunnels, hopefully stretch Sandra's attention to the breaking point
    -[X] Leave several of your party members behind
    --[X] Harry, a proper wizard used to this kind of magic
    --[X] Tiffany for her understanding of old powers
    --[X] Mutt and Adkins, for further guarding and occult insights respectivly
    [X]Plan Cloudburst
    -[X] Screw this, there has to be a way to give Harrowmont the insight he needs to put out the fires until nightfall when you can deal with the arsonist herself.
    -[X]Call the party and have them meet you, bringing some supplies with them
    -[X]Crown question: Focus this scene: Optimizing the ritual for Las Vegas's current situation: 1m
    -[X]Tool-Transcending Constructs + Occult Excellency for the actual ritual: 2m
    [X] Let Harrowmont go aheal with his ritual just as you make your way into the tunnels, hopefully stretch Sandra's attention to the breaking point
    -[X] Only with the goblins



Either vote to help Harrowmont fully with the full party to break this spell and disrupt Sandra's magic shit.
Or vote to leave him to work with the goblins and accept that we'll be at a debuff in the tunnels, because he isnt likely to defeat a magic ritual by someone whose magic patrons are Outsiders.

Just dont half-ass this stuff and leave half of our war party above ground.
Dont split the party.
Thats my opinion.
 
Punk goblins. Thats new.
I was expecting the supernatural denizens to have a reaction to all this tomfoolery.
Glad to see I was right.
Also scary as hell, because DF goblins aren't DnDs lightweight type.

They're Winter's foot soldiers, but that should be taken in the "Rome's Legions" sense and not the mook sense. If I recall correctly when Dresden runs into them in Changes his description included the word Kryptonian.

Obviously they're not that strong, but there's a reason that was where Harry's brain went. When Mab wants industrial quantities of violence delivered anywhere from the most alien hell realms to the mortal world these of all her many monsters are who she calls on.

If you counted up all the fey bones before the Outer Gates since time started again I'd be surprised if goblins* weren't the plurality of them. I could also be convinced that they're the outright majority, but it's hard to quantify that given the number of dead people involved.

These guys aren't part of that anymore if they ever were, but they got their supernatural dna from the same bulk murder store.

* and potentially whatever they used to be before the courts formed, since some species do seem to collectively turn into something else when interacting with the oaths that formed Summer and Winter. The primary difference at that point was who ran the show though, so it's highly likely it was the fey equivalent of going from janitor to sanitation technician.
 
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