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General Exalted Thread

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rikalous said:
I actually don't think Abyssals should be turning into bats and wolves, unless they're skeletal bats and spectral wolves. Mundane animals, even creepy ones, are part of the natural order that rejects Abyssals as a violation.
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Then you are, of course, free to take monstrous shapeshifting instead of animal shapeshifting for your Abyssal, just like anyone else is free to either do the same, or to make an Abyssal that does, in fact, command and turn into a giant murder of crows all the time. The big problem of the Abyssals of the last version was them being so constrained into a few narrow development paths, for the next attempt personally I'd err on the side of too many over running the risk of repeating that mistake. Hence why I'm so critical of the ideas some other people have thrown around, because I think making those restrictions mandatory instead of optional is a mistake.

Like. Let me compare to Infernals, which almost anyone seems to agree are done well. They can be the rockstars of hell and loyal harbingers of the reclamation, or they can fuck off and do their own thing. They can become a copy of an existing Yozi, become an entirely new Primordial, or they can simply not bother with any of that stuff. They can follow the commands of their Coadjutor who assigns their Urge as part of their control mechanism, browbeat or seduce them into being loyal to them over the Unquestionable, or they can have a Coadjutor who's so damaged as to be braindead. They can mainline all the power of the Yozi at the cost of warping their personality until it's unrecognizable, or they can be more careful and only take those charm paths that serve to reinforce their existing personality.
In all of these, they have choices. Abyssals should too.
 
I have to say, I'm not a great fan of tying Abyssal Charms to Principles. @Revlid has basically sold me on the importance of the Ability link, specifically for the argument that it's the best way to support the "the revenant using their skills in life in supernaturally horrible ways" thing. We do, I think, want to see beautiful singers murdered by their jilted lover becoming banshees, and butchered farmers picking up scythes and sickles and bemoaning that Creation has no chainsaws as they inexorably, unstoppably hunt down their foes.

... it's just that I'm not a fan of the 25 abilities and their superfluous bloat. So that's something that'd need to be dealt with - probably by artificially collapsing down the abilities so, for example, the "I'm a Bloodborne Hunter" tree of flash-steps and gratuitous bloodshed is shared by MA and Melee. But the basic principle - "In life I was a killer - in death, I am bloodshed incarnate" remains. Likewise, so should there be considerable merger between Occult and Medicine in some trees, because the kind of stories Abyssals are suitable often don't really distinguish between magical abominations and medical abominations and necromancers can be magical or scientific.

However, yes, every last trace of the Mirror keyword needs to be burned from the Abyssal Charmset. Abyssals should be at least Dragonblooded-divergent from the Solar interpretation of Abilities, and quite probably more divergent. Dragonblooded Performance is still basically just Performance with some plant themes - Abyssal Performance has the trees for banshees and vampire counts. Abyssals should be able to command the Dead to rise with just performance, whether they're doing it by ordering them, or by coaxing them back from the coldness of the Underworld by playing The Black Parade at them the sweetness of their songs.

Basically, Abyssal Abilities should be "how does this Ability get used in horror or by antiheroes?". Medicine prevents death by turning people into room-temperature Creatures of Death (oh hai there, Cool Air), boosts people at the cost of physical deformation, and makes "Genesis" constructs. Performance gets you banshees and lords of the dead; Investigation gets you JUDGEMENT DAY, Anubis and measuring sin. And so on.

I would go as far as to say that Redemption does, in fact, equal death. You should have died. You chose to sacrifice the world to get what you wanted done. Therefore part of Redemption inevitably involves the Abyssal's death - and once that's in place, the major justification (namely, easy conversion of Abyssals to Solars) is dead and gone, so Mirror can go melt.
 
rikalous said:
I actually don't think Abyssals should be turning into bats and wolves, unless they're skeletal bats and spectral wolves. Mundane animals, even creepy ones, are part of the natural order that rejects Abyssals as a violation.
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To elaborate on my above;

The big problem of the canon Abyssals was a narrow and specific vision of How They Should Be preventing players from playing the Abyssals that they wanted to play.

Now you can, of course, go and replace that vision with your own vision. And to an extent that's fine. After all, it's your vision, so of course you'll have fun playing it out. But you still have to accept that in doing so the underlying issue, namely Abyssals being constrained by a narrow and specific vision of How They Should Be, has not changed in the slightest.

Personally I would think that as long as we're doing this, we might as well do it in a way that strictly enables Abyssal character concepts, instead of forbidding them. Make it so that it's possible to play any and all of canon's Bob McMurder and The Little Abyssal Who Wanted To Be A Solar, @EarthScorpion's Passion-driven revenants who fall asleep for the last time should they have archieved their aims, your own spectral shapeshifters, and my version of an Abyssal who summons and turns into giant murders of Crows, or an Abyssal who can at least have a temporary measure of contentness, even if it's not going to last.
That way, if all the above concepts are possible, but only as valid as all the others instead of being The One True Way, everyone can play something they're happy with, instead of only a narrow subset of people whose specific vision is published.

Now you could, admittedly, argue that this approach runs into the opposite issue of canon Lunar's brown blob of shapeless possibility with no, or at least no good, central concept, but personally I still think that it's not the same. All the concepts above are in fact, as far as I can see, still allowed by the central concept of cursed heroes and villains too defiant to die.
 
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Gnarker said:
Now you could, admittedly, argue that this approach runs into the opposite issue of canon Lunar's brown blob of shapeless possibility with no, or at least no good, central concept, but personally I still think that it's not the same. All the concepts above are in fact, as far as I can see, still allowed by the central concept of cursed heroes and villains too defiant to die.
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I think the bigger issue is that rather than Lunars, who have one mechanical implementation, this would seem to require several different implementations all working off of similar but not the same flavor.
 
EarthScorpion said:
However, yes, every last trace of the Mirror keyword needs to be burned from the Abyssal Charmset. Abyssals should be at least Dragonblooded-divergent from the Solar interpretation of Abilities, and quite probably more divergent. Dragonblooded Performance is still basically just Performance with some plant themes - Abyssal Performance has the trees for banshees and vampire counts. Abyssals should be able to command the Dead to rise with just performance, whether they're doing it by ordering them, or by coaxing them back from the coldness of the Underworld by playing The Black Parade at them the sweetness of their songs.
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In this framework an Abyssal should be able to frolic under a new moon through a graveyard and raise the dead from shallow graves in a proper Danse Macabre. They should be able to Pied Piper a horde of zombies around with their demented, profane grace. The Nightmare Before Christmas of all things seems like something they should be able to do at the far end.
 
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Eh, if we are going to do all this, then we probably should make all the Exalts have exaggerated Caste differences. Have it so that the different Castes run on somewhat different core mechanics, but not have the Charms require those mechanics to function.

Like, Lunars have some lore that makes this setup work shockingly well for them. Their Exaltations are unstable to begin with because they came from a nearly conceptually perfect shapeshifter. Then they got a pile of Wyld mutations from hiding from fate in the Wyld. Now, canon Lunars actively change caste and can turn into something of utterly bizarre power if left alone too long. So, why can't their Exaltations have mutated to have different core functions?

Perhaps you have the Chimera situation for one Caste-equivalent, with TAW being another. The hard part is having one charmset to be shared by all of them, and to make the mechanics close enough that no charm fundamentally requires the core mechanics of one of the Caste equivalents.
 
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Gnarker said:
Personally I would think that as long as we're doing this, we might as well do it in a way that strictly enables Abyssal character concepts, instead of forbidding them. Make it so that it's possible to play any and all of canon's Bob McMurder and The Little Abyssal Who Wanted To Be A Solar, @EarthScorpion's Passion-driven revenants who fall asleep for the last time should they have archieved their aims, your own spectral shapeshifters, and my version of an Abyssal who summons and turns into giant murders of Crows, or an Abyssal who can at least have a temporary measure of contentness, even if it's not going to last.
That way, if all the above concepts are possible, but only as valid as all the others instead of being The One True Way, everyone can play something they're happy with, instead of only a narrow subset of people whose specific vision is published.
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I disagree with your analysis of the problem.

At the heart of it, the problem with the 2E Abyssals is that the only unique story they have is "Redemption", and "my story arc is that I want to stop playing this splat" is hardly the most alluring of things. Beyond that, they're basically gothy Solars who unlike Solars, by default have uber-powerful nigh-invincible ghosts who you can't kill permanently and have all the same Charms as you as your bosses, telling you what to do. Their Charms are Solar-Charms-but-Worse, Resonance is just more painful than Limit, and so they essentially fail to provide a unique playing experience.

(And "I have a boss" isn't a unique story - Sidereals and Dragonblooded both tell it better)

We can compare this to the Infernal story, which is not the Solar story. Infernal Charms do not feel like Solar Charms, and the struggle to use your Charms to do what you want to do without side effects is a uniquely Infernal thing, which is similar but distinct from the Sidereal "I have to try to do things with only a hammer, a rubber chicken and a screwdriver which only works on cross-headed screws". Infernals play in a very distinct way from Solars, even if you utterly cut the Reclamation from the game. Infernals are becoming monsters and god-titans, becoming detached from humanity and through carrot and stick incentivised to act in inhuman ways. And at a thematic level, Infernals have themes of failure, second chances and using your powers in ways they're not meant to be that Solars entirely lack.

Now, of course, there's no solution in making Abyssals just feel like Infernals - hence why I've been against having Essence-based or Principle-based charms for Abyssals. But still, the point remains - limitations define a splat, as do the intended stories you're meant to tell with them. And if a person wants a splat that plays like a Solar and tells Solar stories, they should be playing a Solar. Because that's what Solars are there for.

(It's one of the many reasons that giving Solars access to Abyssal and Infernals was so bad - it hurt Solars, by getting in the way of the stories that they're meant to be telling)
 
A lot of the problem feels like Abyssals also do the stories they're most suited to doing worse than most other splats that do them easily.

The fact that the death lords are... generally weak in characterization compared with Yozis hurts Abyssals as well. There's an interesting story to be told of standing in the shadow of a mad genius, driven by hatred and loathing against the world and caught up in the cycle of their past, of growing to understand something who is bigger and strange and driven by odd impulses that you don't quite get without looking back a thousand years and retreading the past. But even the better death lords are generally very bland. They're cut-outs that work, maybe, as a distant antagonist you rarely encounter directly (while ST-created abyssals fight back against your glorious default solar circle on a much more direct and engaging levels), but none of them as envisioned is really good enough to carry a plot, or help your character concept stand out in the way that Malfeas, Adorjan, Elloge or SWLIHN and all their third circles can. Lunars hit on this ghosts of the first age theme as well, but are nowhere near as monolithic in it, as do Sidereals, though both feel like it's fairly weakly executed in practice, it's also easier to play with and adapt than the pragmatically unstatted deathlords.

Abyssals and infernals also share stories of their own chunk of the setting. Except here too, Malfeas is simply better written than the Underworld in attaching infernals to the hierarchy of power. There's a mass of interesting creatures that can and have every incentive to mess with rookie circles and/or each other at both the reasonable starting antagonist level (individual second circles) and at much higher XP levels. The first two chapters of Infernals get a lot of (deserved) scorn, but they also set up a ton of plot hooks for actually using this entire massive alternate part of the setting that Abyssals never get. You could probably quite easily carry out an Infernals game entirely or predominantly in Malfeas, and even emerald circle summoning lets you essentially bring a lot of that with you if you venture out into Creation. It feels a lot harder to do this with Abyssals.
 
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Dif's Alchemical Homebrew, Underworld Critters & Assorted
  • Apocrypha
    • Out of respect for uncluttering the threadmarks, here's all my worthwhile stuff in one spot for now, to be updated as I keep tossing stuff into it:

    Alchemicals:
    Contrasting Autochthonia and Creation
    Faith and Autochthonian Society
    Blood-Thaumaturgy
    Warfare in Autochthonia
    Face-Symbolism and the Role of Humanity in Autochthonian Art and Beliefs
    Fame, Hero Worship and the Alchemical Condition
    Redefining Clarity as Internal Conflict
    Alchemical Activation and Construction
    Enriching the Autochthonian Language and Profanity and the Common Worker
    Analyzing Gremlin Syndrome and Redefining Autochthon's Nature
    Victim Complexes - Gremlins, Apostates, and the Ideology of the Blight
    The Olgotary and the Laws of Faith
    Crime and Punishment, Part 1
    Crime and Punishment, Part 2

    The Foundations of Magic:
    Folk Magic and Superstitions of Creation: Part 1 - The Lay of the Land
    Folk Magic and Superstitions of Creation: Part 2 - The Miracle-Working Class
    Folk Magic and Superstitions of Creation: Part 3 - Moving Heaven and Earth

    The Underworld:
    Reimagining the Underworld as Creation's Greatest Wounds
    Critters: Squirms, Skitters and Slumps
    Critters: Scalps, Skinflints and Sloughs
    Critters: Loomers, Luckless, Lingers and Lamplights

    General Rules-hacks:
    Clearing up Virtues
    New Natures
     
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  • Apocrypha
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    Shyft's Solar Essays and General Homebrew
  • Threadmarks
    • And here is my as yet incomplete index of forum links.

    Essays and Editorials:
    Shyft's Essays: War
    Shyft's Essays: Solar Thematics
    Shyft's Essays: Essence
    Shyft's Essays: Integrity
    Shyft's Essays: Performance & Presence
    Shyft's Essays: Resistance
    Shyft's Essays: Twilights & Craft
    Shyft's Essays: Investigation & Lore
    Shyft's Essays: Medicine
    Shyft's Essays: Occult
    Shyft's Essays: Nights, Movement, & Athletics
    Shyft's Essays: Ticks, Vision, & Awareness
    Shyft's Essays: Dodge, Counterattacks, & Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick
    Shyft's Essays: Larceny and Moral Relativism
    Shyft's Essays: Stealth
    Shyft's Essays: Wide Angle, Close Up, & Bureaucracy
    Shyft's Essays: Linguistics
    Shyft's Essays: Ride
    Shyft's Essays: Sail
    There is no essay here
    Shyft's Essays: Border of Kaleidoscopic Logic Style

    Elaboration on the Resources Background
    Shyft's (Sorta) Essays: Creation's Economy
    Analysis of Stunting, feat Chun-li and Vega
    Shyft's Essay: Lawmaking in Creation

    Solars are Skilled, not Flying Bricks
    Attribute+Ability Essay
    Thaumaturgy Reference


    Exalted 3e sucks and here's why


    Demons

    Third Circles
    Rhevahtri, From Which Rage Rises, Ninth Soul of Cecelyne

    Second Circles
    Homkora, Dancer in the Crystal Treasury, Warden Soul of the End of All Wisdom
    Vakurhamin Thousand-Handed, Indulgent Soul of the Crucible of Brass and Iron

    First Circles
    AkarsasIya, the Demon Fists of Hell
    Ekditaksai, The Infinite Serpents
    Basilisk Dogs (co-written with @Aleph)
    Tagankra, the Meditative Shields
    Charms
    Instead of manually linking all my posts, I have a nice big fat google doc that's full of Charms and prototypes. These are not final or fully balanced. Comment at your leisure, but bear that in mind as you do.
    Solar Charm Compilation 2016

    Artifacts and Wonders
    Idealized Accompaniments
    Thousand-Year Carp and Century Scales
    Heartwood Cuttings
    Memory Crystals
    The Unkind Thing
    Caldera Engine
    Maelstrom Blade
    Thunder Breaks the Mountain
    Crafting Stuff

    Sorcery
    Celestial Circle
    Enduring Heartwood Bastion
    Solar Circle

    Demesne
    In the Hills Lies Little Lost Pond
    Goldweb Copse

    Manse

    Mechanics and Houserules
    Court Mechanic: Communications
    Drama and Systems: Composition
    Drama and Systems: Expanded Mercantilism
    Tabletop - General Exalted Thread | Page 495     More mercantilsm fix later.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • Ford Prefect said:
    I picked @Revlid, @Jemnite, @Shyft, @EarthScorpion and @Omicron. Do as you will (but don't mess the thread up).
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    Yo can I leverage this into a banner or something so I can brag about my e-peen? :V

    And also get threadmark perms for the General WoD thread on a slightly more serious note so I don't have to report spam everytime I do a thread binge? I mean the reports are probably amusing (because I am funny) but like we could cut out the middleman.
    ManusDomine said:
    will go bribe @Jemnite with some dank memes
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    your gift of dark sacrifice has been accepted
     
    EarthScorpion said:
    I disagree with your analysis of the problem.

    At the heart of it, the problem with the 2E Abyssals is that the only unique story they have is "Redemption", and "my story arc is that I want to stop playing this splat" is hardly the most alluring of things. Beyond that, they're basically gothy Solars who unlike Solars, by default have uber-powerful nigh-invincible ghosts who you can't kill permanently and have all the same Charms as you as your bosses, telling you what to do. Their Charms are Solar-Charms-but-Worse, Resonance is just more painful than Limit, and so they essentially fail to provide a unique playing experience.
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    So your solution to Abyssals not having a unique story is to force them to tell your particular unique story only? Infernals are allowed to ditch the Reclamation, there's Dragonbloods who aren't part of the Realm, and even a Sidereal can elect to wander the earth and kung-fu bandits instead of politicking in Heaven.
    I can agree that the Passion-driven Revenant who'll go back to being dead once his revenge is fulfilled and he's happily back with his wife is a valid story concept and should be playable. But I disagree that it should be the only valid story concept.

    The rest of this quote can be rephrased as the Writers deciding that Abyssals should have the two aspects
    - Abyssals as evil Solars, so all their charms have to be inverted Solar charms, and if you want to play a good Abyssal you have to play a Solar
    - Abyssals as loyal bootlicker to the Deathlords and doom dispensers incapable of anything besides killing who don't get to be happy
    and those aspects only, and writing them accordingly. Which is exactly the narrow and specific vision I referred to, so why do you say you're disagreeing with it?

    Now, of course, there's no solution in making Abyssals just feel like Infernals - hence why I've been against having Essence-based or Principle-based charms for Abyssals. But still, the point remains - limitations define a splat, as do the intended stories you're meant to tell with them. And if a person wants a splat that plays like a Solar and tells Solar stories, they should be playing a Solar. Because that's what Solars are there for.
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    Chasing a measure of happiness despite all the obstacles your very existence throws at you - evil omens and absolutely terrifying powers making people afraid and suspicious, catastrophe following whereever you go, and always the temptation to just stop playing nice and start killing, and with enough effort just maybe succeeding for a time, is an exclusively Solar story now? No. Come on. Now you're just repeating Abyssals 2E, "if you want to play an Abyssal who isn't a murderous asshat, go play a Solar," when lines ago you spoke out against it.

    Solars absolutely can perform sorcerous mutation and artifact cybernetics on themselves, despite their themes being human excellence, and cybernetics and mutation being the nominal domain of Alchemicals, Lunars, and Infernals. Sidereal martial artist wearing an appropriate fate mask get to play the wandering hero just as much as Solars do, even if they won't have it quite as easy. Likewise for Infernals, and nobody will force them to take the Pantheon charms if they don't want to. Shapeshifting is the Lunar's shtick, but Abyssals should still get to turn into the Grim, even Infernals can shapeshift to an extent with the Devil-Tyrant Avatar or maybe some kind of heretical Coadjutor shintai; They won't be as good as a Lunar, but they can still do it, and worst-case Sorcery still lets you turn into a flock of birds. A Solar who exalts after he decides to make up for a failure will have the exact same theme of Second Chances as an Infernal has by default. People other than Abyssals can learn Necromancy. Solars with high permalimit don't actually pull off the Cursed Hero figure any better than successsful Renegade Abyssals should.
    A certain overlap will always be there, and that's absolutely fine. Themes provide emphasis, inspiration for character concepts and lenses to filter them through, they are not absolute constraints.

    You say thematic purity, I say the notion that it ever has existed in as rigorous a form as you're presenting is as bullshit as the notion that it should.


    Cosar said:
    I think the bigger issue is that rather than Lunars, who have one mechanical implementation, this would seem to require several different implementations all working off of similar but not the same flavor.
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    Not really?
    I mean, Bob McMurder is just the Abyssal Melee tree, as well as the fact that most Abyssal charms and Necromancy spells should be ab-/usable in various horrific and/or hilarious ways.
    Turning into a Solar, whatever, it's an option for those who want it, when it happens cash in all your old charms and buy new Solar charms that fit.
    The Passion-based Revenant can be done by Abyssals being undying only as long as they choose to be to accompany Abyssals exalting when they die, the rest can be done by characterization and maybe the occasional optional Must Get Revenge Integrity charm.
    Optional other charm trees with adjustable FSX and base skill can account for any appropriate flavor of shapeshifting, raising the dead either by commanding them to or by beckoning them with fluteplay, and so on.
    The 'temporary happiness if you struggle for it hard enough' can be done by modified Resonance being an on-demand Plot Hook dispenser, from people going mad in your presence to bloody hurricanes striking your position to lynchmobs forming because holy symbols catch fire at your touch.

    Overall, shouldn't be more difficult/have more cdifferent sets of implementation than writing Infernal charms. Which granted, I still couldn't do, but other people do.
     
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    The Sandman said:
    So, a question. Is there actually any point to Abyssals being former Solar shards at all? Has anything interesting ever been done with that concept?
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    I have to admit, for me this question is rather important cause Ex2 (and Ex3 claims to be following suite) doesn't do it just once, but twice. This for me feels like a Shark Jump moment. Honestly, all of the things people seem to be so interested in playing with the fallen Solar angle don't feel like they really feel like it NEEDS to be done twice. Infernals can play the dark mirror and redemption angles, Abyssals can play the decadent first age angle. If you have to have a corrupted/fallen Solar, pile all your ideas into one splat, there is no conceivable reason to spread it out. (especially cause I think 'normal' Solars can play the corrupt, nihilistic, decadent, needing of redemption, etc. angles perfectly well all on their own)
     
    Gnarker said:
    Not really?
    .....

    Overall, shouldn't be more difficult/have more cdifferent sets of implementation than writing Infernal charms. Which granted, I still couldn't do, but other people do.
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    Me: "Man, that seems like it would need several different implementations"
    You:"Not really, you'd just need several different implementations"

    Well, I'm glad we agree on that then.
     
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