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General Exalted Thread

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The other big thing about Sorcery is that, outside of it's 'Stand and Shoot' mechanics, is that you track it forensically. "Oh, why is someone buying up all the eyes of newt, powdered silver and the claws of a hundred year old tiger...?"

As for durability, your go-to spell is Invulnerable Skin of Bronze, which is actually pretty awesome. You get a lot of extra soak, some Hardness, and are y'know, a walking statue of Bronze. You are heavier though, so stay away from mud or water. Skin of Bones also improves your defenses as well.

I can't remember any Terrestrial Circle speed boosters, but there are a handful of travel spells.
 
horngeek said:
No. No, he cannot. I suspect a squad of well-trained modern military personell would win against a Terrestrial Martial Artist almost every time, but that's just from eyeballing. IIRC, there are very few Charms in the Martial Arts trees that actually increase your ability to take hits.
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Available to Mortals, anyway.
Five Dragon Style has a charm to lolnope all non-magical damage, but it's E4 IIRC, and thus out of reach of mortals.
 
uju32 said:
Available to Mortals, anyway.
Five Dragon Style has a charm to lolnope all non-magical damage, but it's E4 IIRC, and thus out of reach of mortals.
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yeah.... that's kinda sad.

Wish it wasn't limited by castes....

What about speed?

Shyft said:
The other big thing about Sorcery is that, outside of it's 'Stand and Shoot' mechanics, is that you track it forensically. "Oh, why is someone buying up all the eyes of newt, powdered silver and the claws of a hundred year old tiger...?"

As for durability, your go-to spell is Invulnerable Skin of Bronze, which is actually pretty awesome. You get a lot of extra soak, some Hardness, and are y'know, a walking statue of Bronze. You are heavier though, so stay away from mud or water. Skin of Bones also improves your defenses as well.

I can't remember any Terrestrial Circle speed boosters, but there are a handful of travel spells.
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Well, looking at Book of the Emerald circle, the only ones you really need are ritual sigils and talismans and salt. The rest require you to make hand signs, say words, or use tears or draw things.
 
Accelerator said:
yeah.... that's kinda sad.

Wish it wasn't limited by castes....

What about speed?


Well, looking at Book of the Emerald circle, the only ones you really need are ritual sigils and talismans and salt. The rest require you to make hand signs, say words, or use tears or draw things.
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I'm sure there are edge-cases, and to be absolutely fair, only a really shitty GM would totally deny you the ability to cast sorcery you spent hard-earned XP on. As long as you are willing to make that call, you're golden.

But more seriously, what is the intention of your question? Why is this hypothetical enlightened mortal showing up... wherever?
 
Shyft said:
I'm sure there are edge-cases, and to be absolutely fair, only a really shitty GM would totally deny you the ability to cast sorcery you spent hard-earned XP on. As long as you are willing to make that call, you're golden.

But more seriously, what is the intention of your question? Why is this hypothetical enlightened mortal showing up... wherever?
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Nah, just annoyed at the whole thing about Mortals being weak. Then I wondered how they would do against exalted. Then I realized: badly. Then I thought of how they would do against modern earth.

Though this may have been inspired by me thinking of introducing terrestrial martial arts and sorcery into Earth Bet.
 
Revlid said:
I will admit that I'd be pretty surprised to see a grapefruit cannon on the battlefield during any period of our history.
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Lawl. It's a term for a certain type of cannon load- instead of a single large cannonball, IIRC they loaded a bunch of smaller balls in.

Short ranged, but devastating against infantry.

EDIT: or loaded with shrapnel for similar effect, yeah.
 
horngeek said:
Lawl. It's a term for a certain type of cannon load- instead of a single large cannonball, IIRC they loaded a bunch of smaller balls in.

Short ranged, but devastating against infantry.

EDIT: or loaded with shrapnel for similar effect, yeah.
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I believe you're thinking of grapeshot, which was named after grapes because the formal version was a huge amount of small, grape-like balls.

As opposed to grapefruit, which is...

[/img]
 
Revlid said:
I believe you're thinking of grapeshot, which was named after grapes because the formal version was a huge amount of small, grape-like balls.

As opposed to grapefruit, which is...

[/img]
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Yeah, I remembered that pretty much as soon as I made the post you quoted. :V

(At least I didn't call it a grapefruit canon)
 
horngeek said:
(At least I didn't call it a grapefruit canon)
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I swear I said nothing about this.

But anyway, I have something I need to know. You know the whole..... thing? The Martial arts charms?

ok, let's say it lets you.... dunno. explode people from the inside out. How does that work, when you learn it. Do you use the formulas in your head, shaping the essence? How does one learn martial arts?
 
Shyft said:
I can't remember any Terrestrial Circle speed boosters, but there are a handful of travel spells.
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Stormwind Rider is ostensibly a travel spell, but using for a superpowered take on mounted archery is both appropriate and awesome.

The wind is my charriot, but he's.
 
Omicron said:
Stormwind Rider is ostensibly a travel spell, but using for a superpowered take on mounted archery is both appropriate and awesome.

The wind is my charriot, but he's.
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Won't work. Trying to fire arrows out of a magical tornado without a There Is No Wind-alike is a fool's errand.

Cirrus Skiff is the mounted archery platform, or that TCS chariot spell in The Black and White Treatise.
 
No. No, I have this. What you do, is get a single person sailing boat with a sail in it right. And you affix wooden wheels to the bottom, so its sort of like a children's cart. And then you cast 'Calling the Winds Kiss'. And then you drive around on your little sailing boat (on wheels) and people look at you like your a madman. However its great for getting around the modern world on roads. I mean yeah you COULD call down a Cirrrus Skiff I guess, but is that really what you want to do when you can drive around on a wind powered go cart?
 
Accelerator said:
Nah, just annoyed at the whole thing about Mortals being weak. Then I wondered how they would do against exalted. Then I realized: badly. Then I thought of how they would do against modern earth.

Though this may have been inspired by me thinking of introducing terrestrial martial arts and sorcery into Earth Bet.
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A mortal is generally considered 'Not Strong' compared to an Exalt, but for comparison's sake, a fully trained and kit out Tiger Warrior is akin to a miniboss. At least, for most 'Regular' characters.

Also, when you keep saying 'Speed', do you mean action speed, which is how often you get to act during combat? Do you mean movement, as in, how far you move per tick? or DV increase, which improves your ability to directly evade attacks?

Like, if you really do pay attention, you can use mobility as a defense in Exalted, but nobody really figured it out until Scourges, and even then, Scourges are really simple creatures when it comes to mobility-evasion.

Anyway, So like all terrible things, Worm is involved. (Joking, but it is quite common). Alright, so basically the point I'm trying to make is that depending on your character, you will have a flare that burns bright and quickly, or an infrastructure titan. Sorcery is not for pew-pew blaster magic or people getting stuck in fighting their Betters. Sorcery is for miracles. One of the 2e sorcery spells is literally 'Parting a body of water'.

Now, the other hurdle and you can houserule this, is that enlightened mortals can't combo Charms. At all. They use ONE charm per action, so scene-longs are their bread and butter.

This ties back into some other stuff I've said for quite a while about 2e especially. Exalted is not a supers game, and its powers, down to the very bedrock, embody the 'Martial Arts Magic' to the hilt. The best techniques are always actively invoked and require decisions. They are not passive "I am Superman" powers.

A Charm is a Charm because with a few reasonable exceptions, they are active, deliberate invocations of skill and power. Heavenly Guardian Defense is not a power like Superman's Invulnerability. It is a learned technique that a Solar expresses with their mastery of armed combat. This is equally true for any Martial Arts Charm.
 
There's also the fact that...well...compared to the few 'A Solar appears in Earth Bet' fics...your going to have a pretty low mote pool. It's going to take a long while for it to recharge as well. (I believe its 1 mote per hour while resting). I mean granted, if you use up all your motes, your hypothetical 'Martial Arts 5, Essence 3' mortal is still Martial Arts 5 but...

Also you can't attune to things.
 
Bel said:
There's also the fact that...well...compared to the few 'A Solar appears in Earth Bet' fics...your going to have a pretty low mote pool. It's going to take a long while for it to recharge as well. (I believe its 1 mote per hour while resting). I mean granted, if you use up all your motes, your hypothetical 'Martial Arts 5, Essence 3' mortal is still Martial Arts 5 but...

Also you can't attune to things.
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... i'll have to fudge the rules, then
 
Expanding on Shyft's point about Artillery and the mote pool thing, the main thing you need to remember in context of Creation's mortals is that a TMA master is a street-level Action Hero and a Sorcerer is a Miracle Worker, and a lot of this comes down to Essence. Mortals generally only have Essence x 10 motes available to them, and max out at Essence 3. Those 10-30 motes say a Lot about how an enlightened mortal has to handle their business, because they have neither the resources or the longevity of effects to simply power through foes and obstacles with brute force alone.

For a TMA-user, their Charms cost about 1-5m, typically, which means that they are going to get used sparingly the more opposition they face. Like an Action Hero, they save their cool moments for the necessary times, and otherwise act through guile, stealth or misdirection to square things up against other mortals, or briefly punch above their weight to grab and hold onto an advantage. These are your Tony Jaas, your Bruce Lees and such, and they are at their best when the enemy has no other choice but to try and hit them, and open themselves up to the pain train.

For example, lets assume we have a martial artist who has a 2m "counterattack" which lets him advance on ranged enemies outside of melee. Some guy with a gun takes three potshots at him, and our martial artist blocks all three successfully and advances three times at his opponent, using some insane Jackie Chan table-sliding stunt and deflecting every bullet off hastily-grabbed plates to negate the Lethal aspect of the attacks through parries. He is now in melee range of his attacker, and kicks the gun out of his hand. He spent 6m to get there, somewhere in the range of 60% to 20% of his total resources, but has reduced One foe to a fistfight, his area of advantage because he's maxed out his Dex+MA. Two guys with guns? He's not going to try that trick. Three? He's not going to even enter the room unless its via the ceiling or window to get a drop on them.

And this only compounds as the more enemies there are to fight, and so you see a lot of creeping around like early-franchise Rambo, and less imperiously taking out rooms of goons like late-franchise Rambo. If our martial artist has a 5m Charm which allows him to punch like a sledgehammer, he can only do that an upwards of Six Times at his peak, so its going to be held in reserve until his method of evening the playing field requires putting a fist-shaped puncture-wound in someones chest cavity. Again, preferably from surprise, or while they are disarmed of their potentially-deadly gimmick, not as a boxing match.

By comparison, a Sorcerer has a handful of spells which cost 10m to 15m at the low end, but the effects are Much more impressive. But they are otherwise a mortal, with no other tools at their disposal once those motes are too tapped for spell-use anymore. After two or three such feats per day, its back to thinking smart and relying on something other than magical powers to push through. This is either your opening gambit to a conflict/obstacle, or cementing your victory, nothing more. Because anything else is likely to put you in deep shit when your options are that limited.

A sorcerer can throw a pair of Obsidian Butterfly waves with no contest, but like a man wielding a pair of bazookas with no time to reload, he is now totally at the mercy of any survivors who made it out of the way quick enough. He can rebuild a priceless tome from the barest scrap of paper once, but now he only has only half a pool available for the rest of the day, assuming that's even enough motes to cast most other spells he knows. Its entirely about choosing your battles, and if you can achieve things through trickery or physical force first, rather than relying on a limited-use spell, you've assured your option to cast that spell later.

This is, coincidentally, why mortals are never Just a Martial artist or a sorcerer. You need a plan B for when you can't do those things anymore, and putting yourself into the situations where those things will win the day. You can't be an Exalt and just keep piling on Charm activations until the world gives up, its tiling a floor with a toolbox of hammers and spanners.
 
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