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General Exalted Thread

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I made a thing!

Law Breaker's Abrasive Reprisal
3m, 1wp (3m)
Essence 3
Simple
Sorcerous
Prereq: COUNTER-PRONOUNCEMENT OF ENTHYMEMIC LAW, SANDSTRIKE BLAST

Though the priests of Cecelyne uphold endless laws and contrary decrees, they seldom need to uphold the ban on the countless serfs abusing the Sacred Azure. The Silver Sands themselves flay any of them foolish enough try.

As the Infernal activates this charm, she declares a valid law as per Counter-Pronouncement of Enthymemic Law. This creates a invisible, sorcerous incidence of Sandstrike Blast that observes a radius of 100 yards, or 1000 yards of desolation. It automatically applies the Warlocks (Essence) successes to any awareness roll to notice anyone breaking the declared law, and double that if they are a being that the Warlock can detect with Hellscry Chakra or Wayward Divinity Oversight. Once it detects a lawbreaker, it attacks them as per Sandstrike Blast. The Warlock is aware whenever this charm attacks someone and may reapply this charm for 3 motes. This charm may be repurchased to apply the effects of Dune-Burst Onslaught at a 2m surcharge, and again to apply World Grinding Sandstorm Devastation (which costs 40m, 3wp total, and is not Blasphemous until it attacks).These upgrades do not harm bystanders that immediately start praying to the Warlock.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
That is a worry, but looking at the rituals I don't think they're that powerful. Even for someone with six rituals, fueling a Death Ray still looks like a real task.

I admit I haven't tested this, though.
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Nah. With six rituals you'll easily get Death Ray off on the first round every time. Be sure to buy lots of Awareness charms to go first and make it extra painful.

The big advantage is that you don't have to make all those annoying tradeoffs between reliability, burst power, and usage limits. That 1/story Heptagram initiation that can potentially give you >20sm indefinitely is incredibly attractive when it's strictly a backup plan that doesn't cost you easy actionless sm in every fight.
 
Anasurimbor said:
Nah. With six rituals you'll easily get Death Ray off on the first round every time. Be sure to buy lots of Awareness charms to go first and make it extra painful.
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Could you break that down for me?

Because I'm looking at the rituals right now, and I'm just not seeing it.

Anasurimbor said:
That 1/story Heptagram initiation that can potentially give you >20sm indefinitely is incredibly attractive when it's strictly a backup plan that doesn't cost you easy actionless sm in every fight.
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Even with max stats and a full excellency, you'd have to be incredibly lucky to get 20 successes on one roll.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
Even with max stats and a full excellency, you'd have to be incredibly lucky to get 20 successes on one roll.
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In Lore, at E5, on a downtime roll? If anything I was being conservative. You just roll 30d (base + 1 point stunt + circumstantial bonus + Heaven-Turning Calculations) and get 5 non-charm successes from Harmonious Academic Methodology.

Sanctaphrax said:
Could you break that down for me?

Because I'm looking at the rituals right now, and I'm just not seeing it.
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The big thing is the boosts for control spells(which is one reason I'm hesitant about charms that grant more), but those aren't strictly necessary. Just work out how many sorcerous motes each ritual can give, and start combining them.

As a simple example, a full excellency averages 10sm. The first ritual for the Talisman of Ten Thousand Eyes can yield an average of 15sm with a good total bullshit Join Battle pool. The second will yield at least 3sm, while the third can give up to 14sm to your control spell.

Sure, this particular combination will deplete most of your essence and willpower, but that's a small price to pay for starting a battle by wiping out entire armies.
 
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Aaron Peori said:
It's horribly broken.

"Nobody but me can breath in this space." Weee.... infinite 3m attacks on everyone for as long as you can afford the motes!
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Her Excellency does say "She demands reverence from allies and enemies alike and works terrifying and wondrous miracles to expand her worship."

But really, isn't this just murdering random extras? You could break the loop by counter magic.

Or it could just reduce the range to 10 yards, 50 in an area of desolation.
 
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Dynamesmouse said:
I made a thing!

Law Breaker's Abrasive Reprisal
3m, 1wp (3m)
Essence 3
Simple
Sorcerous
Prereq: COUNTER-PRONOUNCEMENT OF ENTHYMEMIC LAW, SANDSTRIKE BLAST

Though the priests of Cecelyne uphold endless laws and contrary decrees, they seldom need to uphold the ban on the countless serfs abusing the Sacred Azure. The Silver Sands themselves flay any of them foolish enough try.

As the Infernal activates this charm, she declares a valid law as per Counter-Pronouncement of Enthymemic Law. This creates a invisible, sorcerous incidence of Sandstrike Blast that observes a radius of 100 yards, or 1000 yards of desolation. It automatically applies the Warlocks (Essence) successes to any awareness roll to notice anyone breaking the declared law, and double that if they are a being that the Warlock can detect with Hellscry Chakra or Wayward Divinity Oversight. Once it detects a lawbreaker, it attacks them as per Sandstrike Blast. The Warlock is aware whenever this charm attacks someone and may reapply this charm for 3 motes. This charm may be repurchased to apply the effects of Dune-Burst Onslaught at a 2m surcharge, and again to apply World Grinding Sandstorm Devastation (which costs 40m, 3wp total, and is not Blasphemous until it attacks).These upgrades do not harm bystanders that immediately start praying to the Warlock.
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I'd advise you to cost this against existing Solar technology for storing reflexive attacks, since that's effectively what it does in its earlier stages.
 
Dynamesmouse said:
Her Excellency does say "She demands reverence from allies and enemies alike and works terrifying and wondrous miracles to expand her worship."

But really, isn't this just murdering random extras? You could break the loop by counter magic.

Or it could just reduce the range to 10 yards, 50 in an area of desolation.
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Counter magic is more expensive than this charm, though.
 
Revlid said:
I'd advise you to cost this against existing Solar technology for storing reflexive attacks, since that's effectively what it does in its earlier stages.
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I'd suggest not doing that and also taking the Solar technology for storing reflexive attacks and burning it and scattering the ashes in five directions.

Every single attack is a force multiplier. Any effect which allows you to stack more attacks in a single tick should be reviewed with a default intent of denying it. The game already breaks down bad enough when you can do (Dexterity) or (Essence+1) actions, it completely collapses when those numbers are "effectively infinite".
 
Aaron Peori said:
I'd suggest not doing that and also taking the Solar technology for storing reflexive attacks and burning it and scattering the ashes in five directions.

Every single attack is a force multiplier. Any effect which allows you to stack more attacks in a single tick should be reviewed with a default intent of denying it. The game already breaks down bad enough when you can do (Dexterity) or (Essence+1) actions, it completely collapses when those numbers are "effectively infinite".
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Yeah, I know reflexive attacks are broken as fuck. Unfortunately, they're still very strongly present in the 2.5e game – so if you're going to do something that basically creates reflexive attacks, you might as well use the existing tools for them as a benchmark.

Then again, applying that sentiment elsewhere would lead me to encourage the use of attunement motes.

So more realistically speaking, you might have this Charm create an AoE environmental hazard that only affects lawbreakers until they repent or leave.
 
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Omicron said:
Oh, okay, I completely misunderstood the point of that Merit. You're adding a cost to taking an additional shaping ritual on top of the story requirements, rather than adding a merit that lets you spend xp to skip the requirements. My objection then is the opposite - if you, in-game, make a pact with an Ifit Lord for sorcerous power, you shouldn't have to pay any xp for the new ritual you're getting out of it.
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I have to admit, my opinion is, if you're getting a new mechanical benefit, you pay XP for it, that way it keeps things balanced.
 
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Aaron Peori said:
I'd suggest not doing that and also taking the Solar technology for storing reflexive attacks and burning it and scattering the ashes in five directions.

Every single attack is a force multiplier. Any effect which allows you to stack more attacks in a single tick should be reviewed with a default intent of denying it. The game already breaks down bad enough when you can do (Dexterity) or (Essence+1) actions, it completely collapses when those numbers are "effectively infinite".
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I wish more games paid attention to this and enforced a strict rule of "no multiple attackers per round. Ever. No, not even you. NO, NOT EVEN YOU."
 
Kuciwalker said:
I wish more games paid attention to this and enforced a strict rule of "no multiple attackers per round. Ever. No, not even you. NO, NOT EVEN YOU."
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The problem is that ORAORAORAORAORA!! is a pretty well established attack trope, and so players will want and expect something along those lines for pretty much any game you can think of that even looks in combat's general direction.
 
Most modern games will have some means of handling 'fire a machinegun at people' and 'strafe firing' as attack actions, shouldn't be hard to handle ORAORAORA by just applying that to punching instead of bullets.

So yeah, it's an easily solvable problem.
 
Quantumboost said:
Most modern games will have some means of handling 'fire a machinegun at people' and 'strafe firing' as attack actions, shouldn't be hard to handle ORAORAORA by just applying that to punching instead of bullets.

So yeah, it's an easily solvable problem.
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Not that I'm disagreeing in principle, but most specific examples of that I've seen boil down to 'get a +X bonus to hit/damage, and burn some extra ammo' or something similarly boring. It's functional, but is sort of poor at capturing the feel I think.
 
SerGregness said:
Not that I'm disagreeing in principle, but most specific examples of that I've seen boil down to 'get a +X bonus to hit/damage, and burn some extra ammo' or something similarly boring. It's functional, but is sort of poor at capturing the feel I think.
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In WW games, sure. Because WW doesn't understand that getting hit with 5 bullets instead of 1 is way nastier than +50% damage, or that five bullet hits into the head (or torso, or whatever) by one attacker is as nasty as five bullet hits by five attackers.
Games like Fallout PnP, GURPS and others simply give a chance for more than one bullet to hit, and treat each extra bullet just like they do the first bullet.
 
SerGregness said:
Not that I'm disagreeing in principle, but most specific examples of that I've seen boil down to 'get a +X bonus to hit/damage, and burn some extra ammo' or something similarly boring. It's functional, but is sort of poor at capturing the feel I think.
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Perhaps something based on the Coordinated Fire rote from Convention Book: VE? Wherein you're coordinating fire with X others of yourself in the same location.

Would require extensive simulations and testing of course.
 
SerGregness said:
Not that I'm disagreeing in principle, but most specific examples of that I've seen boil down to 'get a +X bonus to hit/damage, and burn some extra ammo' or something similarly boring. It's functional, but is sort of poor at capturing the feel I think.
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Honestly, if the thing someone wants out of Exalted combat is rolling 20+ die pools a handful of times in rapid succession, there's no other mechanic which will capture that same "feel." So where that leaves things designwise, is making sure that additional successes past a certain threshold do LESS than the initial roll (which is unsatisfying) or do the smart thing of diverting away from the idea that each attack itself requires its own distinct resolution. The latter case is much easier to implement fixes for and doesn't require so much balancing between "primary roll" effects and "secondary roll" ones, and you can get away with things like having all remaining attacks beyond the first just consist of halving and applying your attack pool as successes once, since out of all leftover attacks made you're banking on Averages to hit, so you get an Average result.

Exalted has a lot of "feels right" baggage which is more detrimental to its design than assists it, especially when it wants to be this kind of fast and crunchy tactical combat system while in most cases putting its standards entirely at-odds with the results it wants to achieve.
 
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Dif said:
Exalted has a lot of "feels right" baggage which is more detrimental to its design than assists it, especially when it wants to be this kind of fast and crunchy tactical combat system while in most cases putting its standards entirely at-odds with the results it wants to achieve.
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Uh, it wants to be fast? Srsly?
It seems to want to be crunchy, yes, but never did it seem to want to be fast, starting with the fact that it uses a dicepool-vs-TN-and-count-successes mechanic.
 
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