About equivalent to North Korea being the best country in the world.
General Exalted Thread
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
10. Total Propaganda. The weakest Lintha blooded are glorified mortals. The stronger ones are basically God Bloods, and the purebloods from the Pre Primordial War era were probably on the same or slightly lower level than DBs.
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
I'd go with an 8. Mostly propaganda, but they are a civilization of people who can use Solar Charms.
The claim that the weakest of the Bloodline outclasses the strongest DB is utter bullshit, but the original, undiluted Lintha were likely up there. An interesting question I have is whether or not Lintha can Exalt. They can get Solar Charms, but is it in a way that is canceled out by getting a Solar Exaltation? Can they learn Celestial Martial Arts?
Eh, they can get Solar Charms up to Essence 2, so their bottom line is quite a bit higher than the DBs. Granted, there's a bundle of restrictions that basically say 'None of the iconic Solar stuff,' and they don't really have much above Essence 2, but the average Lintha blooded is a decent match for newly Exalted DB.
Here is the thing though: "Impossible" as a setting conceit only exists so long as the ST says so, because PC goals always get priority over setting fact if it'd make a good story. But meanwhile, the setting itself in the books has to present a logical state that says "these are either the only Exalts who got made, or they are the only survivors, despite all the strength of the primordials, and the high-magic/technologies of the First Age which could call that into question."
Because, as with the problem arising in Ex3, once you open the door for Exalts to be simply invented or manifest out of seemingly nowhere, you have demarked that "Exaltation" is now simply another word for "primary character" and therefore the only meaningful actors in the world will not be anything else. Why rumble with gods when you can rumble with the Exalts created by those gods, why fight the undead when you can fight an Exalted who is undead, why come into conflict with anything but other Exalted when all other factors are clearly chumps who will not measure up to you in any way, especially when all your ST needs to do is apply the aesthetics of the enemy du-jour to somebody with a crazy anima lightshow instead? Variety? Wish-fulfillment? None of that requires anything below Exalt-level actually be statted or characterized as anything but a cheap cut-out to knock over on your way to the next shiny lightshow fight, kicking over mortal armies as you go.
But with regards to your own campaigns, the game does not need to implicitly Give you permission to alter the status quo. It simply needs to give a workable foundation onto which that kind of thing can be added externally without snapping under the weight of the justifications underlying "how is everything not Just Exalts and Exalt-derivatives anymore?"
Or the Ex3 way of putting it, "Its like that Because We Said So. Make something up, I guess!"
This ignores both their place in the fluff and uses really stupid mechanics to justify it. In the Fluff, the Linatha Empire was considered a major threat, something that would take decades to defeat after the war, until Kimbery had to withdraw her support, at which point it collapsed hard and fast. That doesn't really work if Linatha are so strong normally.
And the mechanics giving them Solar charms basically uses the same justification that half casts, deathlords, or Liger have, ie it's really simple to give them those written charms, and so they reach for Exalted charmsets, despite those being incredibly poorly suited for that purpose.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Somewhere between 19 and infinity.
Like seriously, the Dragon-Blooded can wipe the floor with them.
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
Well, for Half Castes, Deathlords and Liger, they are directly connected to the Exalts they are Charm-stealing from. For the Lintha, the issue is more that they have no connection at all. Honestly, I find reusing the Solar charmset there to be partially fitting, but they really should be using renamed, renumbered versions of those Charms. Higher Mote costs, higher Essence requirements, more restrictions, that sort of thing. It should all come out to being a bit above DB power, using as few actually new Charms as possible, perhaps keeping most of the same space saving by making them be worded 'Like this Charm, except these exceptions.' But the Charmset should not just be 'Solar Charms, with these restrictions.'
That still ignores the fluff and mechanical issues with doing that.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
Why should they be above DB power? They're clearly written as having declined throughout the ages. Shouldn't they be weaker than the standard "super soldier" exalt type?
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
They were a serious threat in the times that all the Exalts, working together, were still on a war footing. For that to be the case, they need to be above Dragonblooded because otherwise the War Charm Solars with Dragonblooded troops would steamroll them, Yozi backup or not.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think they should be glorified God-Blooded and nothing more, personally speaking.
He's talking about the 2nd Age Lintha imo, judging by the "declined throughout the ages" language he used, not Primordial War-era Lintha.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
They also kinda collapsed once they lost the Yozi's backup. But as landcollector said am talking about present Lintha, not past pure blooded Lintha. And present Lintha in lore are not anywhere close to DBs.
You ignore the part that as soon as the support of their Parent Primordial was unavailable they folded like a house of cards: instead of a long campaign their entire empire was destroyed in a single year. Thus, we know that their power that made the Exalted wary of them was tied to the Primordial.
Note that Dreams of the First Age has Pure-Bred Lintha using Spirit charms, not exalted ones, and this is also the source that gives Lintha the empire that made the Exalted wary.
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'll give it an "ignore it, it's stupid and nonsensical" out of ten.
Because you should ignore it, as it's stupid and nonsensical.
No. Because they wouldn't be Exalts.
As this thread has seen, there should be plenty of beings in the setting that can operate on the Exalted tier enough that they're not casually dismissable. But they're not Exalts. They don't have Primordial-murdering spirit-killers, they don't have comprehensive multi-role Charmsets, and they don't get the higher levels of anima reactor.
There were totally super-expensive Solar-made automata or augmented subjects or artificial beings that, one on one, could kill a Terrestrial in a duel. But they required massive undertakings of magic and craft - and that got you a superlative duellist who couldn't run a bureaucracy or give charming conversation. Solars made things like the Kin of the Urtalmic, and just like their Primordial-made predecessors they got wiped out by the Dragonblooded in the post-victory genocide.
And god-blooded, no matter how jumped up they are, are not Exalts.
Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
Unless Third Circles and the acid oceans were actively being used, then Pure Bred Lintha need to be able to go past what the DB are able to pull. Again, full armies of Exalts and Tiger Warriors with Solars using Charms to boost the war effort are what was being fought against.
And present Lintha should be able to compare to low-end DB, the sort Solars treat as mooks. They should be a threat that needs Exalt involvement to deal with, otherwise they wouldn't be a thing because some enlightened Monks/sailors/random Heroic sorts would have killed them off.
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
@EarthScorpion , no offense, but you're talking based off your own homebrew setting again. "Anima reactors" aren't a thing in vanilla Exalted, that's your (very good, mind) houserules.
I think it's important to mention that because a lot of people come here for information and should be aware of your own view of Creation (which, again isn't a bad one) and what people get from the rule- and setting-books.
I think it's important to mention that because a lot of people come here for information and should be aware of your own view of Creation (which, again isn't a bad one) and what people get from the rule- and setting-books.
ganonso
Compulsive Quest Starter
- Location
- PACA France
Has someone made a capacity analysis of the Siderals and Dragon Blooded, showing how favored abilties define their caste role. (By instance we easily see Dawn are warriors-generals because Archery; Thrown, Melee, War and Martial Arts) and how their Charms play into that?
Or if nobody did that, why it makes sense for the Chosen of Endings to have Bureaucracy and what it has do to with their themes?
I mean I understand a bit how the Journeys charmset correlates to Journeys as a concept and how the Secrets ability spread is all "acquire knowledge)" but I'm at a loss for the rest of the Caste/Aspects.
Or if nobody did that, why it makes sense for the Chosen of Endings to have Bureaucracy and what it has do to with their themes?
I mean I understand a bit how the Journeys charmset correlates to Journeys as a concept and how the Secrets ability spread is all "acquire knowledge)" but I'm at a loss for the rest of the Caste/Aspects.
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UrsaTempest
Don't Panic!
Lore-wise, as far as I'm aware there are no Exalteds made in the height of First Age. When Exalted Host is at their peak of power, and so on and so forth. So saying you can build it in second age is, well, a bit of stretch.
Of course, your table, your rules! If you think that's interesting enough, feel free to pursue it.
Of course, your table, your rules! If you think that's interesting enough, feel free to pursue it.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
You are describing your own personal setting. You're perfectly within your rights to say that, in EarthScorpion's Creation, no Twilight of the High First Age ever dared try to approach the greatest accomplishment of the Incarnae*, but I disagree with your statement that nobody can do it because of facts that you're presumably pulling straight from the design docs of your Kerisgame GM Bible.
Exalted is already a game where we're expected to eviscerate what the original designers made and build what we like from the corpse. Stating "NO EXALTS OUTSIDE CORE, EVER", especially when you seem perfectly content allowing the existence of beings that can occupy the same levels of power, stops being acceptable when it shows up on a general discussion thread instead of at your table. If somebody came in here and said, I don't know, that nobody is allowed to use TAW rules because their version of Creation still uses the canon model of Lunars, or something, I'd say the same thing.
* Especially since some versions of Exalted even have it be that Autochthon only helped with the creation of the Exalted Host, instead of doing it all himself!
Yes, that is true. However, the statement remains - if not undebatably true - arguably true if you cross out that line. From a 1e and 2e viewpoint, all original Exalts were made by Autochthon and the Incarna/Elemental Dragons working together, except for Alchemicals who were Autochthon's work alone. 2e builds on some of that and makes implicit connections between Autochthon's dying nature, his transgressions of limits, and the fact that the Exalted can murder Primordials. There is no evidence in Dreams of the First Age that the Exalted host ever managed to make a new kind of Exalt, and the two "new" kinds, Abyssals and Infernals, are derived from the original Exalted.
From this you can make a very good argument that the personal involvement of Autochthon is a critical element of Exaltation - and from the mention of the Solar-races murdered by the DBs and the thematic similarities to the Exalted wiping out the Primordial races, we should conclude that the Solar races were more than just "baseline human with a few mutations", considering how varied "baseline human with a few mutations" can be in Creation.
3e decided they wanted to cram in lots of new "Exalts" into the setting, making up their special new kind of godblooded they're calling "Exigents", ripping off Prometheans with Liminals, and... fuck, I don't know, making up a new splat to be the enemy of Sidereals just 'cause.
Wrong. Actually, I'm speaking from DotFA here, which is the major canon source of the First Age we have.
Of all the many, many things DotFA did wrong, one of the lines it didn't cross was "newly made Exalted" (even as it talked about lost Maidens).
The Twilights either did not try, or they tried and failed. Given the balance of probabilities and the nature of curse-maddened Solars, "tried and failed" is vastly more probable.
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Morphic Tide
Crazy Brainstormer, Munchkin and Wannabe Min-Maxer
- Location
- MI, USA
Well... Exigents might offer a way for a hyped up Exalt level God Blooded to convert that godly might into an Exaltation, probably in a lethal fashion, instead of going the 'become a god' route. Emphasis on MIGHT be able to. Granted, Exigents are basically jumped up God Blooded anyway, but the point still stands, 3rd edition lore has an opening for God Blooded to become or create an Exalt. Precisely one Exaltation, in exchange for giving up being God Blooded/basically a god already, and likely dying on top of that.
Actually, on the topic of people who have crazy mystic powers due to their parentage, how setting breaking would Terrestrial Half-Castes be? Crunch-wise, it would be a way to make pre-Exaltation Terrestrials still be able to do something in a Heroic Mortals to Exalts group, or have DB Charms in an all Half Caste group. Fluff-wise, it would be a way to verify that the child can Exalt as a Terrestrial. This would also give warning to the Terrestrials born outside the normal power structure, and make it so that the Realm could focus on training the people who actually can Exalt.
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
I'm having one of those moments where I want to express that I actually like the Exigence and Exigents in particular, and that expanding the role of Exaltation into something less fixed could be beneficial.
But since I expect this to turn into a long "my canon is better than yours" debate, I'll just leave it at that and this disclaimer.
But since I expect this to turn into a long "my canon is better than yours" debate, I'll just leave it at that and this disclaimer.
They existed at certain points in the gameline's history.
Bluntly, they're the only half-castes who actually make sense as a thematic thing. They're Terrestrials so degraded in their bloodlines that they're not truly Exalted, lacking anima banners and unable to properly learn Charms.
But they were dropped because - as I recall - they basically worked out as "weaker almost-Terrestrials" mechanically.