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Alchemical Solutions [Worm/Exalted] Thread 9: Icon’s Idiosyncrasies Incite Irritating Inquisition

Jinnt said:
So right now we have a broken stunt (meditating) and a do the same thing stunt (talking to dennis). Let's do something different, shake things up a bit and see what falls out. Vote for the circus come on what's the worst that could happen.
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Asking that question never ends well, Jinnt. You should know this.
 
Jinnt said:
So right now we have a broken stunt (meditating) and a do the same thing stunt (talking to dennis). Let's do something different, shake things up a bit and see what falls out. Vote for the circus come on what's the worst that could happen.
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I think the wording simply implies that it was already off and we just don't turn it on?
 
FirstAndForsaken said:
I also think that, although meditating is a good idea, we should be meditating on Exaltation as well as Charms. See my example write-in for one way to do this. Fixing our soul should be a priority, since it gives us a leg up in dealing with mental trauma.
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Meditating on our Exaltation leads to our banner to flare up so should wait until we can have some privacy.
 
[X] Write-In: Remedial Meet and Greet: Meet the Archer
- [X]Stunt: A bunch of the NY Wards came back with the BB Wards when you didn't show for the meetup for pizza.
Among them was a Ward named Flechette...

[X] Write-In: Should've read the Owner's Manual first...
- [X] Stunt: You've been getting burned too often by poor understanding of your own Charms, and it's making you ineffective. This stops now. You tell the others you're taking a nap, close your eyes, and meditate on your Charms. It's high time to figure yourself out.

[X] 4 XP - Craft ●●●●○
[X] 4 XP - Bureaucracy ●●○○○
[X] 4 XP - Medicine ●○○○○
[X] 2 XP - Integrity (Mental Trauma ●○○)
 
ThornE said:
We go to sleep with SoPA on, we randomly wake up with SoPA on, we subconsciously turn it on during cheerleading even though it was off, we had no Clarity at the time and there was absolutely no logical reason to have it on then.
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....Fuck


We also explicitly stunted to turn it off back then to avoid undue alarm didn't we? Only it wasn't resisting this hard(maybe because we had IEU on Armsmaster at the time and weren't running accelerated all the time).
 
I think we should stop trying to turn off Sopa until we figure it out, it might be some sort of automatic thing that gets activated when we start getting stressed since we subconciusly turned it on during cheerleading AND when we go to sleep. I think that it might be stuck on because of the PTSD and the IEU giving a 5:1 consensus that its too useful to turn off.
 
Could everyone who voted for THIS:

[] Write-In: Should've read the Owner's Manual first...
- [] Stunt: You've been getting burned too often by poor understanding of your own Charms, and it's making you ineffective. This stops now. You tell the others you're taking a nap, close your eyes, absolutely do not turn SoPA on, and meditate. It's high time to figure yourself out.

change to this:
[] Write-In: Should've read the Owner's Manual first...
- [] Stunt: You've been getting burned too often by poor understanding of your own Charms, and it's making you ineffective. This stops now. You tell the others you're taking a nap, close your eyes, and meditate on your Charms. It's high time to figure yourself out.

we have no willpower left to turn off sopa AND its helping us with our trauma.
 
serra2 said:
[X] Write-In: Should've read the Owner's Manual first...
- [X] Stunt: You've been getting burned too often by poor understanding of your own Charms, and it's making you ineffective. This stops now. You tell the others you're taking a nap, close your eyes, absolutely do not turn SoPA on, and meditate. It's high time to figure yourself out.
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Might want to replace the bolded with this:

- [] Stunt: You've been getting burned too often by poor understanding of your own Charms, and it's making you ineffective. This stops now. You tell the others you're taking a nap, close your eyes, and meditate on your Charms. It's high time to figure yourself out.

As we have no WP to force SoPA off right now.
 
Would everyone who voted for the Essence Reservoir-to-Heart stunt with Dennis consider changing to

[] Write-In: Remedial Meet and Greet: Meet the Archer
- []Stunt: A bunch of the NY Wards came back with the BB Wards when you didn't show for the meetup for pizza. Among them was a Ward named Flechette...

this way we can meet Flechette and maybe get a chance to evaluate her for Exaltation later.

Edit: AND adding [] 2 XP - Integrity (Mental Trauma ●○○) since we have 2 new omakes and it should help with PTSD.
 
Say I don't know if anyone said that already, but could it be that we have to turn SoPA off for every thought of IEU (like Aisha) ?

(Maybe it was only that easy to turn off at the beginning because IEU was not on)
 
1986ctcel said:
Would everyone who voted for the Essence Reservoir-to-Heart stunt with Dennis consider changing to

[] Write-In: Remedial Meet and Greet: Meet the Archer
- []Stunt: A bunch of the NY Wards came back with the BB Wards when you didn't show for the meetup for pizza. Among them was a Ward named Flechette...
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I don't think you're going to get many takers 1986. This vote cycle is enough of a boondoggle already.
 
dpara said:
Say I don't know if everyone said that already, but could it be that we have to turn SoPA off for every thought of IEU (like Aisha) ?

(Maybe it was only that easy to turn off at teh beginning because IEU was not on)
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Yeah thats possible also we keep turning it back on subconsciously AND it apparently gives us a bonus to dealing with PTSD so we should leave it for now also would you consider voting for these:

[] Write-In: Remedial Meet and Greet: Meet the Archer
- []Stunt: A bunch of the NY Wards came back with the BB Wards when you didn't show for the meetup for pizza.
Among them was a Ward named Flechette...

[] Write-In: Should've read the Owner's Manual first...
- [] Stunt: You've been getting burned too often by poor understanding of your own Charms, and it's making you ineffective. This stops now. You tell the others you're taking a nap, close your eyes, and meditate on your Charms. It's high time to figure yourself out.

[] 4 XP - Craft ●●●●○
[] 4 XP - Bureaucracy ●●○○○
[] 4 XP - Medicine ●○○○○
[] 2 XP - Integrity (Mental Trauma ●○○)

We get to meet Flechette AND we should have enough XP from the two new omakes for the purchases.
 
ThornE said:
What it's actually saying is that SoPA is trying to help us.

Remember how Eidolon's shard tried to help him?
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Grom flat out STATED that it gives a bonus against mental trauma AND we have no WP to deactivate it anyway.
 
Gromweld said:
- These rules for mental trauma/PTSD are not new; I have been using these rules for mental trauma since the Coil Assassination Attempt. Remember those PTSD Freak-Outs back then? Yeah, same deal - you had 1 or 2 WP at the time and rolled poorly. Since then you've been running around with at least 3-5 WP at most times so it wasn't a big deal, or been high enough Clarity to gain a mental modifier from it. SoPA also yields a bonus against mental trauma, because it's actually trying to help you.
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And I had issues with it when Taylor was suffering through it then. PTSD is a decidedly small potatoes thing that as a Celestial Exalt Taylor should be outright ignoring; it is simply beneath the scale at which an exalt should be operating on. As an analogy, consider childbirth. It's a Stam+Resist roll, with the catch that on a botch the mother dies. Exalts don't have to worry about that.

Taylor has a titan-slaying superweapon grafted onto her soul, designed to help her tackle sanity-blasting, reality-warping entities without flinching. That's why Limit (or, in this case, Clarity) is a thing that exists. And that's what we saw happen when Behemoth attacked. Taylor couldn't deal with thousands of people dying in seconds (she had to suppress her Compassion), so she gained Clarity instead, as intended. But the problem is that you're using it as an excuse to milk more Clarity gain after-the-fact, which is something that's not supposed to happen. Limit/Clarity doesn't work like that.

I've also done a bit of reading up on it and, as has already been mentioned, yeah, don't use temp WP to roll for things. It's a resource pool, not a trait; it's the equivalent of saying, "roll your peripheral mote pool," or something equally nonsensical. There's simply no mechanical support for such a decision.

The other thing is that Conviction should be part of the roll regardless of whatever other stats you feel merit being included in the dice pool. Overcoming hardship and mental strain is explicitly what this Virtue is for, it would completely eliminate the purpose of having Conviction if it were to be ignored here. I'm going to be adjusting my free action accordingly, to accommodate this.
landcollector said:
Don't get me wrong, the vast majority of the scenes, like the Dough-boy, Fashion shoot/shopping trip, and the toy store ones were absolutely great and funny. But the PTSD Freakout poisoned the whole update. Sorry, Chandra.
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This. So much this. There were so many things that I liked about this update right up until the point of Taylor's freakout. So many things I was looking forward to talking about. And I can't do that because of this huge, glaring issue.
BobTheNinja said:
Guys, again, I'm really not sure about the implications of the "I AM EXALTED" self pep-talk. It sounds like going down the path of suppressing our real feelings about what happened in the Behemoth fight, and I do NOT want Taylor bottling up her emotions yet again. It's just not healthy.

Am I misunderstanding how this action is supposed to work?
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Standard shonen hero protagonist psyching themselves up to get themselves over a funk. We're not suppressing our real feelings, we're recognizing our feelings and using them to strengthen our resolve with GUTS and FIGHTING SPIRIT. Basically, it's straight up Conviction Virtue.
================

[x] Write-In: Should've read the Owner's Manual first...
- [x] Stunt: You've been getting burned too often by poor understanding of your own Charms, and it's making you ineffective. This stops now. You tell the others you're taking a nap, close your eyes, absolutely do not turn SoPA on, and meditate. It's high time to figure yourself out.

[x] Write-In: An Amusing Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum?
- [x] Surprise Carnival!: A traveling circus was moving through the area, when they broke down due to their haste to escape Behemoth's wrath. Seeing an opportunity, they set up shop! Go to the circus with the Wards; ride the rides, pet the animals, see the sights, play the games!

[x] Free Action: get over our PTSD. (Conviction + Integrity roll)
- [x] Yeah, Behemoth was scary. Yeah, people died, including our friends. But cowering in fear, having panic attacks? That's letting them win. That's letting our friends down. We can't let that happen, can't let them win. We are better than this. We are Exalted. We are a divine instrument of the Great Maker Autochthon. We stand tall, where others would falter, against the darkness and the forces that seek the destruction of humanity.

4 XP - Craft ●●●●○
4 XP - Bureaucracy ●●○○○
4 XP - Medicine ●○○○○
 
FunkyEntropy said:
And I had issues with it when Taylor was suffering through it then. PTSD is a decidedly small potatoes thing that as a Celestial Exalt Taylor should be outright ignoring; it is simply beneath the scale at which an exalt should be operating on. As an analogy, consider childbirth. It's a Stam+Resist roll, with the catch that on a botch the mother dies. Exalts don't have to worry about that.

Taylor has a titan-slaying superweapon grafted onto her soul, designed to help her tackle sanity-blasting, reality-warping entities without flinching. That's why Limit (or, in this case, Clarity) is a thing that exists. And that's what we saw happen when Behemoth attacked. Taylor couldn't deal with thousands of people dying in seconds (she had to suppress her Compassion), so she gained Clarity instead, as intended. But the problem is that you're using it as an excuse to milk more Clarity gain after-the-fact, which is something that's not supposed to happen. Limit/Clarity doesn't work like that.

I've also done a bit of reading up on it and, as has already been mentioned, yeah, don't use temp WP to roll for things. It's a resource pool, not a trait; it's the equivalent of saying, "roll your peripheral mote pool," or something equally nonsensical. There's simply no mechanical support for such a decision.

The other thing is that Conviction should be part of the roll regardless of whatever other stats you feel merit being included in the dice pool. Overcoming hardship and mental strain is explicitly what this Virtue is for, it would completely eliminate the purpose of having Conviction if it were to be ignored here. I'm going to be adjusting my free action accordingly, to accommodate this.



This. So much this. There were so many things that I liked about this update right up until the point of Taylor's freakout. So many things I was looking forward to talking about. And I can't do that because of this huge, glaring issue.



Standard shonen hero protagonist psyching themselves up to get themselves over a funk. We're not suppressing our real feelings, we're recognizing our feelings and using them to strengthen our resolve with GUTS and FIGHTING SPIRIT. Basically, it's straight up Conviction Virtue.
================

Write-In: Should've read the Owner's Manual first...
- Stunt: You've been getting burned too often by poor understanding of your own Charms, and it's making you ineffective. This stops now. You tell the others you're taking a nap, close your eyes, absolutely do not turn SoPA on, and meditate. It's high time to figure yourself out.

Write-In: An Amusing Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum?
-Surprise Carnival!: A traveling circus was moving through the area, when they broke down due to their haste to escape Behemoth's wrath. Seeing an opportunity, they set up shop! Go to the circus with the Wards; ride the rides, pet the animals, see the sights, play the games!

[x] Free Action: get over our PTSD. (Conviction + Integrity roll)
- [x] Yeah, Behemoth was scary. Yeah, people died, including our friends. But cowering in fear, having panic attacks? That's letting them win. That's letting our friends down. We can't let that happen, can't let them win. We are better than this. We are Exalted. We are a divine instrument of the Great Maker Autochthon. We stand tall, where others would falter, against the darkness and the forces that seek the destruction of humanity.

4 XP - Craft ●●●●○
4 XP - Bureaucracy ●●○○○
4 XP - Medicine ●○○○○
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You're missing the [ X ]'s for the write-ins Funky.
 
ALSO, PSA:

DON'T BUY THE NEW SPECIALTY EITHER. Seriously, don't. A waste of XP. This is something that Taylor shouldn't have to deal with at all; Exalts have Limit/Clarity for a reason.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
ping
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Grom said that we run on Earth Bet PTSD/Trauma rules until we meditate on our Exaltation so it probably won't work and SoPA apparently HELPS with our trauma (and since its 8:00 on the same day we still have no Willpower to turn it off) and don't you want to meet Flechette?
 
Just a reminder: This is the latest (and likely last) iteration of my vote:

[] Write-In: Should've read the Owner's Manual first...
-[] Stunt: You've been getting burned too often by poor understanding of your own Charms, and it's making you ineffective. This stops now. You tell the others you're taking a nap, close your eyes, and meditate on your Charms. It's high time to figure yourself out.

[] Essence Reservoir-to-Heart: Provide counsel for a member of your caravan, getting to know them better as a mortal as well as evaluating them for Alchemical potential.
-[] Stunt: Talk to Dennis, find out how he's doing, and what he thinks of things so far. Get his support in covering up for any Clarity induced social mistakes, and see about enlisting his assistance in keeping Aisha sufficiently motivated and amused, especially after their mutual Glenn sessions. The last personal conversation you've had with him involved a prank involving being surrounded by a swarm of bugs, after all, things could stand to be on a more positive note.

[] 4 XP - Craft ●●●●○
[] 4 XP - Bureaucracy ●●○○○
[] 4 XP - Medicine ●○○○○
[] 2 XP - Integrity (Mental Trauma ●○○)
 
FunkyEntropy said:
And I had issues with it when Taylor was suffering through it then. PTSD is a decidedly small potatoes thing that as a Celestial Exalt Taylor should be outright ignoring; it is simply beneath the scale at which an exalt should be operating on. As an analogy, consider childbirth. It's a Stam+Resist roll, with the catch that on a botch the mother dies. Exalts don't have to worry about that.

Taylor has a titan-slaying superweapon grafted onto her soul, designed to help her tackle sanity-blasting, reality-warping entities without flinching. That's why Limit (or, in this case, Clarity) is a thing that exists. And that's what we saw happen when Behemoth attacked. Taylor couldn't deal with thousands of people dying in seconds (she had to suppress her Compassion), so she gained Clarity instead, as intended. But the problem is that you're using it as an excuse to milk more Clarity gain after-the-fact, which is something that's not supposed to happen. Limit/Clarity doesn't work like that.
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This is another reason why I find that update aggravating. This PTSD mechanic is using an OWoD idea to try to represent mental trauma in an Exalt.

This is not a good thing. The two settings are based on very different premises, and this whole PTSD stuff that ignores the Exalted mechanics is pretty stepping all over that and throwing it into the dust.

Let me just quote Holden on this.
Obviously, endless cakewalks get boring, but here's the secret of Exalted:

Cleaning out the Temple of the Lizardmen and slaying the blasphemous dark god they just summoned isn't the challenge of the game. Your Solars are supposed to have the power to do that, and without it being an uphill hundred-to-one-odds hail mary miracle victory.

The thing a Solar may want to do as a hero, and which nobody in the setting has ever yet managed, is to create lasting peace, equitable and fair government, enduring happiness and boundless opportunity. Note lasting, as in, without a subset of those things being temporarily gained in such a way that it ensures later strife and calamity. To rule with grace and wisdom—there is no Charm for this. And if it seems that the best thing is not to rule, then to determine how best to wisely use the great power one has been granted—there is no Charm for this. To create a perfect world—there is no Charm for this, although there are Charms to create worlds.

The point of Exalted, behind all the exploding cities and riotously fun punch-ups with behemoths and gods, is that given the power to easily (or even manageably) change the world, changing the world is still a task fraught with peril and unintended consequences and that power alone is not sufficient and has never been sufficient to solve the eternal dilemmas of the world.

The actual military maneuvers by which the Primordial War was brought to a conclusion are fun to play through but they're not really the point of the War, at all. They're almost superfluous, to be honest.
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The point of OWoD is distinctly different from everything said here. As a player character, you're struggling in a depressing world to keep control of your humanity and survive amongst the manifold horrors that infest it.

In Exalted, you kill those horrors as a matter of fact and laugh about it. There are mechanics for mental trauma in Exalted, but as it fits the Wuxia-esque setting with larger than life heroes, that mental trauma does not take the form of constant PTSD attacks from simple things (relatively).

Behemoth is monstrous. The attack on Brockton Bay was horrible.

Adrian was more monstrous. To fight her was to be set upon by a thousand different pains and tortures, to be faced with a cosmic entity that even in her new form causes billions of deaths on a daily basis. The River Of All Torments was very aptly named, and the Exalted cast her down. If the Exalted were traumatized by her very presence, rendered incapable of agency, they would never have been able to strike at her heart and kill her.

Theion was GOD, in the Old Testament sense. His wrath shattered worlds and his merest displeasure terrified his lessers. The Exalted defeated him, chained him, and turned him inside out. If they had cowered from his wrath, their minds shattered under the strain of his judgement, this would have been impossible.

I could continue describing every single one of the Primordials, but the truth is all the Endbringers and everything Taylor has experienced so far is utterly laughable compared to the scale of things that Exalted were built to deal with.

They are meant to stand in the face of horrors worse than anyone conceive and come out standing on the other side. It is their very purpose, the reason why they were built in the first place. You're throwing that down the drain by doing the PTSD mechanic that operates off Temporary Willpower, as some kind of constant shackle on Taylor that we cannot counter despite us turning her into the the most mentally resilient person alive, where even for Exalted she stands above the pack.

That whole last part of the update falls completely flat. It's ridiculous, demeaning, and it comes across as a really underhanded blow to the players (I'm not saying it is, just that it comes across that way). The fact that not only has it been implemented, but that you had to have Taylor complete several stupid acts to get into a state where it would become an issue, and you've used it to hammer in Clarity as something it's not supposed to be is aggravating.

I don't mean to be insulting here, and I apologize if it came out this way, but this is not a game of OWoD, it's a game of Exalted, and it should be treated as such. We especially shouldn't have our character go off and do stupid things that put her into a position directly contrary to the whole point of Exalted in the first place.
 
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