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General Exalted Thread

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EarthScorpion said:
(This is the "sorcery is cast through Backgrounds, sorcery requires appropriate sources of essence for a given spell" thing I've mentioned a few times)
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The High First Age had Adamant Circle spells that required elemental essence, designed to be used by a Solar sorcerer using their Dragonblooded lieutenants to provide the appropriately Aspected power. Such great works are all but unusable now that the Chosen of the Sun and Dragons are turned against one another, and many copies were destroyed as useless during the Shogunate. Weep, sorcerer. Weep for the loss of that golden age.
 
Aleph said:
The High First Age had Adamant Circle spells that required elemental essence, designed to be used by a Solar sorcerer using their Dragonblooded lieutenants to provide the appropriately Aspected power. Such great works are all but unusable now that the Chosen of the Sun and Dragons are turned against one another, and many copies were destroyed as useless during the Shogunate. Weep, sorcerer. Weep for the loss of that golden age.
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Likewise, for works of great potency, the Sidereals, Lunars and Solars would gather together and weave the power of the celestial sphere into grand designs, which would only obey the commands of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars simultaneously.

Alas such empyreal works have been rendered useless now that the Sidereals and Lunars are trapped in their shadow war and the Solars are only just returning.

[weeping intensifies]
 
EarthScorpion said:
If you're using RAW Necromancy, then the Necromancy circles are at the same levels as the Sorcery ones, sometimes shifted up by one level for inappropriate Essence thematics (so a purely theoretical Enlightenment 11 Solar could cast Void Circle Necromancy, but alas Enlightenment only goes up to 10).

(Oh, and of course, Sidereals and Lunars can get Labyrinth Circle Necromancy because of this. They're not forced down to the lowest circle due to the "gotta be worse than Solars" thing - which there really is no legitimate reason for. It's Abyssals who are the best at Necromancy, not Solars - and Solars don't get anything that says they should be better necromancers than Lunars... arguably, really, they should be worse.)

I have a half-built sorcery thing that alas also requires my half-built project thing (since Workings are just a form of Project carried out by a sorcerer), and in that "necromancy" is alternatively "sorcery shaped from necrotic essence" and "sorcery which uses Whispers as an Authority" (most things that use Whispers as an Authority are also fuelled by necrotic essence). So what the Black Nadir Concordat stole was the secret of how to use Whispers as an Authority, which of course involves contaminating yourself with the spiritual impurity of the Neverborn. But that's just scattered notes in documents and things in my head at the moment.

(This is the "sorcery is cast through Backgrounds, sorcery requires appropriate sources of essence for a given spell" thing I've mentioned a few times)
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In terms of big workings, you could probably install a soft cap by letting people "pay" for a Working directly through their Enlightenment, in addition to their Backgrounds. If their Enlightenment's not appropriate (e.g. Earth Aspect trying to create a palace of eternal fire) they suffer a penalty. If their Enlightenment's directly inappropriate (e.g. Fire Aspect trying to create a frozen castle) they can't use it at all, because pumping motes into the project would just be counterproductive. This would have the perhaps-unwelcome side-effect of tying certain kinds of large-scale sorcery more directly to the themes of the sorcerer in question, but aforementioned Fire Aspect can always bind a dozen Air Elementals (Followers 3) and employ the power of an Air Demense as the foundation (Demesne 2) and ship in a perfect uncut diamond to act as the castle's frozen heart (Resources 3) to bootstrap their way up.
 
Or be a clever prat and go "I'm stealing all the Fire Essence from the region into this giant perfectly cut ruby" , thus chilling a great area while creating a powerful heart for a forge

Then use all the Followers and Demesne to build an awesome frozen castle
 
ManusDomine said:
Likewise, for works of great potency, the Sidereals, Lunars and Solars would gather together and weave the power of the celestial sphere into grand designs, which would only obey the commands of the Sun, the Moon and the Stars simultaneously.

Alas such empyreal works have been rendered useless now that the Sidereals and Lunars are trapped in their shadow war and the Solars are only just returning.

[weeping intensifies]
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Or at least you hope they are rendered useless rather than still trying to carry out obsolete commands with no-one left able to make them stop.
 
fitzgerald said:
Or be a clever prat and go "I'm stealing all the Fire Essence from the region into this giant perfectly cut ruby" , thus chilling a great area while creating a powerful heart for a forge

Then use all the Followers and Demesne to build an awesome frozen castle
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Just remember not to accidentally freeze your sister's heart dooming her to turn into a statue of perfect ice.

I mean, if you want to do that, more power to you, but for gods' sake don't just stumble into it.
 
Perhaps it might be appropriate to have the base workings be unmodified if it's neutral, a positive bonus of some sort if it's favored, and then only the penalty if it's opposed?
 
So, just to note on the concept of an Authority, the essential idea is that a sorcerer should be forced to acquire bling, status, holdings and the like. Sorcery is the magic of privilege and of the Man, the power of institutions and wealth. Thematically, the acquisition of sorcery by the Exalted after the defeat of the Primordials was the transfer of The Man-hood from the Yozis to the Exalted.

Sorcerers require assets. They don't "like" them, they don't "make their job easier". Without assets, a sorcerer can't do anything. For example, one of the common Authorities for a combat-y TCS spell is "an artefact weapon". Which, yes, may indeed be a staff. Take away a sorcerer's weapon, and he can't cast any of those spells. When a sorcerer surrenders his weapon at the entrance to a throne room, that's a real sacrifice (at least until he uses Call the Blade, because that kind of cheating is entirely in theme too).

A sorcerer-king can use his royal authority to command the earth and the animals and the kingdom (like King Jonathan in the Tortal books). A sorcerer who controls a demesne can suck the landscape dry of power to cause natural disasters (becoming a Miyazaki villain - or a Sailor Moon villain). A sorcerer with a cult can channel their prayers to cast the Spirit Bomb (it'll probably do nothing when the enemy uses a perfect). A sorcerer can channel magic down their sword to rain down burning arrows from the sky. They can use their spy network to place occult symbols all over a kingdom so they can remotely spy from the runes they had their spies carve into things. And that's not getting started on the things enabled by having lots of Resources, because a lot of rituals require very expensive ritual components.

Sorcery provides wide-scale power beyond the scope of Charms. And the cost of that is making you dependent on outside things. The sorcerer-king, when usurped by a party of PCs, finds the land no longer responds to his orders. When you steal his sword, no more burning arrows fall from the sky. Steal the spy network and his magical scrying runes fail without the servants to maintain them. Get your Night to pillage his treasury and he can't afford the sorcerous reagents anymore. Seal the demesne, and watch as he falls to his knees, deprived of his flow of external power. And the Spirit Bomb... well, just perfect that, because the Spirit Bomb never works ( :p ).
 
EarthScorpion said:
So, just to note on the concept of an Authority, the essential idea is that a sorcerer should be forced to acquire bling, status, holdings and the like. Sorcery is the magic of privilege and of the Man, the power of institutions and wealth. Thematically, the acquisition of sorcery by the Exalted after the defeat of the Primordials was the transfer of The Man-hood from the Yozis to the Exalted.
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Which would, I imagine, be why the sorcerer in the plucky band of heroes is usually limited to offering insight and knowledge, with only the occasional burst of actual wizardry – and is always so hot on claiming the Five Mystical Doodads of Tir Na Nog before the Evil Queen gets her hands on them.
 
Revlid said:
Which would, I imagine, be why the sorcerer in the plucky band of heroes is usually limited to offering insight and knowledge, with only the occasional burst of actual wizardry – and is always so hot on claiming the Five Mystical Doodads of Tir Na Nog before the Evil Queen gets her hands on them.
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Pretty much! That's one of the big design goals for something like this - to strongly incentivise being power-hungry from player character sorcerers via the mechanism of offering them carrots, while keeping young sorcerers relatively subtle and limited on the personal scale so they act from day to day more like Gandalf than a D&D wizard.

Obviously, another big goal is to provide weaknesses for sorcerers that player can target, or that weaker enemies can use against the players without having to constantly escalate how strong the opponents of the players are. If a young, cunning Earth Aspect can ruin your demesne and break one of your great workings by smashing a dam, then she can be meaningful opposition despite not being able to stand up to an E5 Solar face to face.

And of course, one of the other goals is strongly incentivise sorcerers to sorcerer things up. Yes, of course you want a familiar spirit. It lets you use Infallible Messenger (the spell may literally empower your familiar to carry the message). Of course you want to carry an artefact staff, to channel your spells through. Of course you want to wear jewelry laden down with hearthstones - each ring is linked to a specific spell. Of course you want to dissolve a demon down into ink and tattoo yourself with its demonic essence - do you know how much power you can channel through that and it even gives you an easy source of Malfean essence!

I am strongly, strongly in favour of the optimal path of play for a sorcerer - if followed to its logical conclusion - making you look like a decadent sorcerer-king laden down with the wealth of nations, carrying a magical weapon, and surrounded by demons and elementals and spirits who call you their monarch. Systems should be constructed so optimising encourages you to act like the system wants you to do, so you can't tell the difference between a cold-blooded optimiser and someone who's really in to playing a depraved sorcerer-king.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Sorcery provides wide-scale power beyond the scope of Charms. And the cost of that is making you dependent on outside things. The sorcerer-king, when usurped by a party of PCs, finds the land no longer responds to his orders. When you steal his sword, no more burning arrows fall from the sky. Steal the spy network and his magical scrying runes fail without the servants to maintain them. Get your Night to pillage his treasury and he can't afford the sorcerous reagents anymore. Seal the demesne, and watch as he falls to his knees, deprived of his flow of external power. And the Spirit Bomb... well, just perfect that, because the Spirit Bomb never works ( :p ).
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...so this spy network runes...even if I don't have a spy network anymore (because that fucking party broke in and stole my fucking kingdom, the fuckers), can iI still place runes manually and spy from THEM? I mean yeah i'm putting my neck on the plate, and I no longer have a spy network to go and maintain them for me, but they are MY runes, I put them there. I mean they are there so I can scheme to get my kingdom back.

Hmm...I do rather like the 'Using Authority to order the land' etc. It's pretty cool way to model it.
 
ManusDomine said:
being Jafar is mechanically optimal

im on it
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Just be aware, when an orphaned street rat from a Middle Eastern background shows up to murder you so they can save their waifu-princess after they previously entered the town pretending to be fabulously wealthy and scammed the ruler of the city, sometimes you're not lucky enough that they're Aladdin.

Sometimes the individual seeking to save/steal the princess is Keris. :V

(Likewise, when you kidnap a princess who resides in a castle of white stone which rises above a swampland and who's very musical and prone to breaking into song and there's often fireworks above the castle, always be sure they were in fact a Disney princess, rather than Haneyl. Haneyl may resemble a Disney princess from a distance, but making that mistake may result in being bitten and/or set on fire.)

horngeek said:
Whst sort of spells could you power with kidnapped princesses tho :V
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Princesses are accepted as valuable currency by many demons and deathlords.

(They also accept princes at an equal exchange rate)
 
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ManusDomine said:
And if they cave into demands and make them into benders I will strangle someone.
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If you strangle yourself you will never have to deal with disappontment anymore! And then your ghost will presumibly rise, and will strangle peoples with much more efficancy that you could ever achieve!

Its a win win situation!
EarthScorpion said:
Sorcerers require assets.
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Thiiiisss is pretty much what i would need to create a part of my dream Exalted System.

If you finish this, you may find yourself inexplicabily married to me. Such is life.

Also, i be needing some kind of devil advocates: can someone give me reasons to keep grapples and middle weight weapons in an hypotetical rewriting of the Combat system?

I am a practicing Karateka (Black belt, first dan), and the second hour of training is usually dedicated to a course of self defense. (mostly escaping from untrained ?Grappling? [Google translate isn't helping me, expect stange terms], parrying things in ways to not hurt yourself and limiting the options of the aggressor, and simple but effective grapping to completely stop cold the aggressor [Things like "You are now on the ground, i am on my feet, and i have one of your arms firmly grasped: if you move, then your arm is going to be twisted in a most umpleasant manner."])

As the part between parenthesis shows, my limited experience tell me that someone properly grappled is fucked and at completely mercy of the opponent. If the grappled have allies that know what to do, then it could potentially escape, but it is generally doomed.

Why should someone keep something that requires outright magic (And thus this magic would become the new Perfect defences) to realistically escape when lacking allies, and otherwise puts the opponent at complete mercy? (I don't know anything but the basics, so peoples with experiences in other martial arts can and will probably prove me wrong. Karate isn't exactly a grappling Martial Art...)

The second question will materialize in another time, because i am getting slightly panicky about the current question. Bye!
 
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