Everything else in your post I agree with, but this is wrong. Sidereal Martial Arts are only available to Sidereals and Solars, and can be very easily withheld from Solars because they can only learn them from someone who already knows them. Therefore, they only need to be balanced against those two sets. If you had just said MA, I wouldn't have a problem, but when you specifically call out the most powerful and actually restricted version as being available to everyone, it is somewhat irritating.
General Exalted Thread
I think she means Celestial Martial Arts - because if you replace "Sidereal" with "Celestial", the statement is correct.
(Also, the CMA problem is even worse, because CMAs can be learned by gods, demons and fae - and before E6 for the former two for certain CMAs. So you also need to balance CMAs against spirit charms.)
Thirsty Souls
Lesser Dead
Dead while Unfulfilled
A man dies poor, cursing the gods for his ill-fate and staring enviously at the rich estate of his neighbour. Bitter and hateful, his soul does not pass on. The only thing that remains to him when the debts are paid is his body, and he does not give it up. Cold and hungry, he rises from the grave. He breaks the legs of the animals of his neighbours, lurking in dark places away from the light of the sun. He steals milk from cattle who sicken and die, and drinks the blood of men and hounds. When the exorcists find his body sleeping in its grave, his rotting flesh is bloated with blood.
Thirsty souls are only made from the death of those who look at the possessions of others and long for them with their last breath. The envy such people feel chains them to the world, and twists their very nature. Through taking from others, they can remain in their flesh - though they must reap a price in stolen life. The order of the glorious sun reminds them they are dead, and so they shun his light. Should they be threatened, they can mould their flesh to resemble their long-toothed, clawed ghostly forms and fight for their unlives.
These Dead are above all things thieves. They steal life so that they may enjoy physical form, and with that form they exact revenge upon the world and take everything they feel they are owed. They sneak into barns to suckle on cows, they murder men on the highway for their clothes and silver, and should they survive the destruction of their own flesh, they steal the bodies of others who feel envy. Of course, such higher selves cast out of their own flesh often become another thirsty soul, seeking eternal revenge for their own stolen body.
Necromancers call upon thirsty souls for their great skill at maintaining physical form. In the hours of darkness they can pass as human, and they may even operate in daytime as long as the light of the sun does not touch them. Thirsty souls do not require sacrifices of blood to respire essence in Creation, as long as they have victims to feed off, and so they often see use infiltrating villages and towns serving their masters. Exorcists, on the other hand, must learn to drive off such dark spirits, for they are one of the most common malevolent ghosts encountered in both cities and rural areas. They learn to hunt them in the daytime, finding the dark places in which they lurk and dragging them out to face the sun's judgement. Corpses suspected of being a vessel of a thirsty one are nailed to their coffin and left out in the light for a whole day.
Lesser Dead
Dead while Unfulfilled
A man dies poor, cursing the gods for his ill-fate and staring enviously at the rich estate of his neighbour. Bitter and hateful, his soul does not pass on. The only thing that remains to him when the debts are paid is his body, and he does not give it up. Cold and hungry, he rises from the grave. He breaks the legs of the animals of his neighbours, lurking in dark places away from the light of the sun. He steals milk from cattle who sicken and die, and drinks the blood of men and hounds. When the exorcists find his body sleeping in its grave, his rotting flesh is bloated with blood.
Thirsty souls are only made from the death of those who look at the possessions of others and long for them with their last breath. The envy such people feel chains them to the world, and twists their very nature. Through taking from others, they can remain in their flesh - though they must reap a price in stolen life. The order of the glorious sun reminds them they are dead, and so they shun his light. Should they be threatened, they can mould their flesh to resemble their long-toothed, clawed ghostly forms and fight for their unlives.
These Dead are above all things thieves. They steal life so that they may enjoy physical form, and with that form they exact revenge upon the world and take everything they feel they are owed. They sneak into barns to suckle on cows, they murder men on the highway for their clothes and silver, and should they survive the destruction of their own flesh, they steal the bodies of others who feel envy. Of course, such higher selves cast out of their own flesh often become another thirsty soul, seeking eternal revenge for their own stolen body.
Necromancers call upon thirsty souls for their great skill at maintaining physical form. In the hours of darkness they can pass as human, and they may even operate in daytime as long as the light of the sun does not touch them. Thirsty souls do not require sacrifices of blood to respire essence in Creation, as long as they have victims to feed off, and so they often see use infiltrating villages and towns serving their masters. Exorcists, on the other hand, must learn to drive off such dark spirits, for they are one of the most common malevolent ghosts encountered in both cities and rural areas. They learn to hunt them in the daytime, finding the dark places in which they lurk and dragging them out to face the sun's judgement. Corpses suspected of being a vessel of a thirsty one are nailed to their coffin and left out in the light for a whole day.
Oh cool. Folklore vampires.
If you cut off their head, do they fly around as a severed head?
Nah, that'd be a different kind of ghost, probably made from decapitated people or something.
As I see it, you can pretty much fold every kind of folklore vampire into one kind of Lesser Dead or another - and then for when you want a one-off big bad thing, you can just say that, hey, they grew up and became a Greater Dead or even a Deathlord.
The end intent here is that most dead things from folklore or myth should be within scope for the Dead. Mummies, for example, are just the product of thanotic rites that force the ghost to linger along with the po in the corpse, awaiting their resurrection. Of course, you can't do that in Exalted - but that doesn't stop people believing it's possible, so what you get is a corpse with two ghosts bound into it that's violently protective of itself.
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
And now I have a sudden idea.
If anything comes of it, I might post it in thread. Don't hold your breath though.
Aaron Peori Ghost Homebrew: Lingering Haunts
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Lingering Haunts
Dead By Isolation
Lesser Dead
If one comes across a home in some threshold province with salt across the windows and doors it would be best if you pressed on or sought the nearest exorcist. For sometimes it is not about how you died, but where. For the Lingering Haunt, this place of death is their home. A Lingering Haunt is formed from those unfortunate souls who in life gave more thought to their residence than to other matters. Typically formed from the newly rich, who build opulent palaces or retreats to display their ostentatious wealth but also can happen to the poor or destitute who have lost everything but their homestead. Sometimes those who obsess about their own death will become a Lingering Haunt who inhabit the elaborate tombs or crypts they constructed to house their material possessions.
Unable to care about anything except their own home the Lingering Haunt disperses like mist upon death, only to be trapped forever within the confines of their old home. Their essence seeps into every floor and wall, every nail and stone and plank. The very air of such places takes on a malign presence and does not care for intruders into its restful contemplation. Worse yet, since such deaths often occur alone the corpse of the dead can go seasons without being properly disposed of, releasing a yidak into the world. The yidak is constrained by the spirit of the Lingering Haunt much like the po soul was enslaved to the hun in life, becoming a second set of hands with which to do its work. The foolish exorcists who hunts down and burns the bones of the corpse and salts them and thinks his work complete may live to regret his misunderstanding of the true danger, or not.
Lingering Haunts are relatively rare in the second age considering how rare opulence in general was but they grow more common as the age progresses especially in the isolated villas of merchant princes who grew fat and callous in trade. They were more common in the Shogunate, and their stories have survived as typical childhood warnings in both the Realm and Lookshy. The homes inhabited by these restless spirits gain unnatural endurance to the elements, they may decay and fill with vermin but somehow they can survive decades if not centuries untended and thus if one finds a surprisingly intact Shogunate style manor abandoned in some distant land it would be best to not linger near it after sundown.
Lingering Haunts are diffuse spirits and frequently fall into torpor if undisturbed. Their fitful dreams fill their cobwebed bodies with fleeting images and distant echoes or unnatural chills that unnerve living things. The constant presence of living bodies within them, or any threat to their integrity, is often met with reflexive defense. Doors seal shut against even the strongest mortals and innocuous items become murderous weapons against intruders. Other, more clever, Haunts learn Charms that drive those who linger inside them mad, turning decent men into family destroying psychopaths or driving women into obsessed maniacs who exist only to preserve the Haunts home-bodies with all their effort until they die. When a person dies within a Lingering Haunt there is a not small chance that the ghost will sup on their sins and Essence, growing powerful and chaining the victims as incorporeal slaves of the house's malign intelligence. Some such powerful ghosts become Shadowlands, with their darkened corridors occasionally leading into the underworld. The strongest such spirits sink into the Underworld and form new realms, becoming magnificent courts of the dead as they sprawl outward with no earthly laws limiting their boundaries any longer.
Necromancers find it valuable to seek out the locations of Lingering Haunts and use their magic to bind the spirit to their needs. These locations serve as suitable fortresses and laboratories for their work, the presence of the spirit often serving as a buffer against the life energies of Creation and the intrusion of mortal busybodies. Some such Haunts come with their own servants and slaves that can be put to useful purpose, but only within the boundaries of the household. Others will tear the spirit free of its home and use their capacity to inhabit areas as part of their manse design or other magical projects. Lingering Haunts make excellent loci for necromantic engineering projects.
A Lingering Haunt that is forced to exist without inhabiting a residence of some kind gains one Resonance per week, as does one who is inhabited by anything other than a creature of death. One that is forced to endure damage to its home-body gains one Resonance per scene. The higher its Resonance, the more dramatic and unsettling the visions it unconsciously produces within its boundaries. Every night rolls (Resonance) against the Dodge MDV of everyone who resides in the location, anyone whose defense is overcome fails to regain Willpower from sleep and counts the night as one scene of building an intimacy of Fearful Adoration for the location. Those who linger too long find their disgust turns into fascination and eventually they abandon all other concerns except the house. When they die, they linger as slave-ghosts of the master intelligence.
Dead By Isolation
Lesser Dead
If one comes across a home in some threshold province with salt across the windows and doors it would be best if you pressed on or sought the nearest exorcist. For sometimes it is not about how you died, but where. For the Lingering Haunt, this place of death is their home. A Lingering Haunt is formed from those unfortunate souls who in life gave more thought to their residence than to other matters. Typically formed from the newly rich, who build opulent palaces or retreats to display their ostentatious wealth but also can happen to the poor or destitute who have lost everything but their homestead. Sometimes those who obsess about their own death will become a Lingering Haunt who inhabit the elaborate tombs or crypts they constructed to house their material possessions.
Unable to care about anything except their own home the Lingering Haunt disperses like mist upon death, only to be trapped forever within the confines of their old home. Their essence seeps into every floor and wall, every nail and stone and plank. The very air of such places takes on a malign presence and does not care for intruders into its restful contemplation. Worse yet, since such deaths often occur alone the corpse of the dead can go seasons without being properly disposed of, releasing a yidak into the world. The yidak is constrained by the spirit of the Lingering Haunt much like the po soul was enslaved to the hun in life, becoming a second set of hands with which to do its work. The foolish exorcists who hunts down and burns the bones of the corpse and salts them and thinks his work complete may live to regret his misunderstanding of the true danger, or not.
Lingering Haunts are relatively rare in the second age considering how rare opulence in general was but they grow more common as the age progresses especially in the isolated villas of merchant princes who grew fat and callous in trade. They were more common in the Shogunate, and their stories have survived as typical childhood warnings in both the Realm and Lookshy. The homes inhabited by these restless spirits gain unnatural endurance to the elements, they may decay and fill with vermin but somehow they can survive decades if not centuries untended and thus if one finds a surprisingly intact Shogunate style manor abandoned in some distant land it would be best to not linger near it after sundown.
Lingering Haunts are diffuse spirits and frequently fall into torpor if undisturbed. Their fitful dreams fill their cobwebed bodies with fleeting images and distant echoes or unnatural chills that unnerve living things. The constant presence of living bodies within them, or any threat to their integrity, is often met with reflexive defense. Doors seal shut against even the strongest mortals and innocuous items become murderous weapons against intruders. Other, more clever, Haunts learn Charms that drive those who linger inside them mad, turning decent men into family destroying psychopaths or driving women into obsessed maniacs who exist only to preserve the Haunts home-bodies with all their effort until they die. When a person dies within a Lingering Haunt there is a not small chance that the ghost will sup on their sins and Essence, growing powerful and chaining the victims as incorporeal slaves of the house's malign intelligence. Some such powerful ghosts become Shadowlands, with their darkened corridors occasionally leading into the underworld. The strongest such spirits sink into the Underworld and form new realms, becoming magnificent courts of the dead as they sprawl outward with no earthly laws limiting their boundaries any longer.
Necromancers find it valuable to seek out the locations of Lingering Haunts and use their magic to bind the spirit to their needs. These locations serve as suitable fortresses and laboratories for their work, the presence of the spirit often serving as a buffer against the life energies of Creation and the intrusion of mortal busybodies. Some such Haunts come with their own servants and slaves that can be put to useful purpose, but only within the boundaries of the household. Others will tear the spirit free of its home and use their capacity to inhabit areas as part of their manse design or other magical projects. Lingering Haunts make excellent loci for necromantic engineering projects.
A Lingering Haunt that is forced to exist without inhabiting a residence of some kind gains one Resonance per week, as does one who is inhabited by anything other than a creature of death. One that is forced to endure damage to its home-body gains one Resonance per scene. The higher its Resonance, the more dramatic and unsettling the visions it unconsciously produces within its boundaries. Every night rolls (Resonance) against the Dodge MDV of everyone who resides in the location, anyone whose defense is overcome fails to regain Willpower from sleep and counts the night as one scene of building an intimacy of Fearful Adoration for the location. Those who linger too long find their disgust turns into fascination and eventually they abandon all other concerns except the house. When they die, they linger as slave-ghosts of the master intelligence.
Last edited:
Eukie
Powered by furious Canadian redheads
I did mean Sidereal Martial Arts, but only because I was mistaken about the access restrictions on SMA; if I'd known I'd have used CMA as the example.
Though... yare yare Spirit Charms, demons, and gods too? I mean, I proposed Object Oriented Charms as a way to simplify combinatorics when balancing charms at a slight cost overhead, but a CMA that stretches from god/demon to Sidereal seems like it would be nightmarishly complex, anemic, or possibly both...
- Location
- Ottawa
Given that spirits are generally not PCs, I think it's best to treat each individual/type as a unique case. Helps with balance and saves STs some work.
I mostly take this approach to make spirit-writing easier, but as a side benefit it deals with the whole MA issue.
I mostly take this approach to make spirit-writing easier, but as a side benefit it deals with the whole MA issue.
- Location
- Singapore
Where do you find the qualifiers for any attributes/ traits above 5?
You don't. 5+ traits break things and casually render characters invincible due to how the dice bell curve works.
- Location
- Spain
Be a god.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The fact that Chejop Kejak doesn't actually need his Charms to solo an average chargen Circle, will never cease to amuse me.
- Location
- Singapore
Is that why the unconquered sun has stats over 5?
But what about NPCs?
The UCS has athletics 10, archery 6. How does that work in story?
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It doesn't because that's stupid and you should ignore it and just give him appropriate Charms instead.
- Location
- Singapore
Oh. Ok then.
Thanks.
Has anyone bothered to explain how exaltations work?
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Basically, either you should cap traits at 5, or - for spirits - you should give them 6+ traits that are calculated as though they're boosting with magic all the time and no Excellencies. Their superhuman traits assume that they're already using the equivalent of Spirit Excellencies, and this is folded into their base dicepool. They do not get any dice-adder techniques because of that. This makes them easier to run, since you don't need to track their motes every action.
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
Or you can give them 6+ traits, and then make them work like traits in Reign: everything past a certain value merely decreases the amount of penalties the character can get. So, if a spirit has 10 dots in both an attribute and the linked ability then it merely gets 10 normal rolling dice and 10 dice of buffer against penalties. Or something like that.
Aleph proposal probably is simplier and requires less work to put in a system and works better with simple opponents hacks, but i happen to like reign and i willkill everybody in this forum for not playing reign (Wait, shit, i still hasn't played Reign with anybody) still like my proposal more. Also, nobody says that you cannot give anybody both Penality Buffer Dice and Pseudo Excellency dice.
Yes, this requires more work, but otherwise it becomes Ex2 Lunars all over again.
Aleph proposal probably is simplier and requires less work to put in a system and works better with simple opponents hacks, but i happen to like reign and i will
It would work better by treating most martial arts charms as pointers to charms in the canonical charmset of various being. You want to use a certain style? Then most of the charms will be the charms of the splat/slightly modified versions of the charms, and a few will be something written because not fitting in the charmset of the being.
Yes, this requires more work, but otherwise it becomes Ex2 Lunars all over again.
Some kinds of NPC beings should probably still get Attributes over 5. Nothing really breaks if a Tyrant Lizard or similar has strength or Stamina 7, and I think you can also make exceptions for Appearance 6 or 7 for certain beings, like powerful Social-specced fae.
But Exalts and especially PCs really shouldn't get.
But Exalts and especially PCs really shouldn't get.
Graypairofsocks
What is Grammar?
- Location
- earth
This seems like an interesting idea at first, but how would that work?
The biggest problem is the invulnerability that they have.
So, I had some questions about @EarthScorpion's homebrew.
Why does your Coadjutor have to be untouchable? His current philosophy is that it is absolutely impossible to kill anyone's Coadjutor no matter what, and trying is horrible because it takes away your nice shiny soul world, all of the characters living in it, and the XP you put into those charms. I mostly don't get why a Coadjutor has to be irreplaceable. There are already charms that let you replace it with your Id or one of your other souls. You obviously need something to regulate your Urge and Torment. The thing is that I don't see why the problem of having a dick of a Coadjutor should never be solved by violence.
It is absolutely in character for a violence focused character who believes himself to have been tricked into being a slave of the Reclamation to try to kill the voice in his head telling him to do stuff. Under ES's rules, this is both possible and verboten. The spirit of the rules says no killing Coadjutors. The letter says that no one from outside of your Empire can enter, and says nothing about your souls killing each other. This is the big thing that I dislike about ES's handling of Coadjutor death. It is unlike Fetich death in that it is philosophically forbidden from happening. Sure, most infernals won't kill their Coadjutors. Sure, having your Coadjutor killed without any way to save it is bad storytelling arguably worse than "Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies." I mostly just feel that the Lord British Postulate exists for a reason, and that I like the way that Exalted as a whole dealt with it: they acknowledged it and included ways for damn near everything to be killed. One of the big complaints about the Deathlords was that they were as completely immortal as the devs could make them.
My other problem is that there is no discussion about what happens after your Coadjutor dies.
Take it as a given that someone will try to kill her Coadjutor at some point, and that they might just succeed. What happens to her Tiger Empire? Does it immediately disappear destroying everything except the artifacts inside, or does it start to slowly unravel from the center out without the keystone holding it in place? Can the Infernal do damage control and possibly learn a new Heretical Charm to make one of her other souls the linchpin of their Empire?
What about the charms she learned to let her Coadjutor speak through her? Can she repurpose those soul-structures to let her Id or one of her kids speak through her?
Does she immediately enter Torment as soon as the stabilizing factor of her Coadjutor is gone? Does one of her other souls take up the burden of directing her transcendental insanity? If so, what does it make her want to do, if it doesn't have a set of marching orders from the Yozis?
These questions and their answers open up a small niche of Infernal characters. They also eliminate the Lord British Problem. By adding consequences to killing your Coadjutor, you make it possible to kill them in an interesting way while also incentivizing players to protect their Coadjutors. Like all backgrounds, the ST should damn well discuss anything that may have an impact on the player's enjoyment with the player first. That's why backgrounds exist. It doesn't mean that it is absolutely impossible for you to lose your awesome ship, just that it would be lost only if the player is OK with it.
By making Coadjutors killable, you also open up your Tiger Empire to trade with the real world. You allow people you like and trust to enter your world. You allow your Coadjutor to be summoned, and interact with its old friends. You allow so many more things to happen.
If there is some other reason to preserve Coadjutors above and beyond Mentors and Allies and the like, please tell me. I'd love to hear it.
Why does your Coadjutor have to be untouchable? His current philosophy is that it is absolutely impossible to kill anyone's Coadjutor no matter what, and trying is horrible because it takes away your nice shiny soul world, all of the characters living in it, and the XP you put into those charms. I mostly don't get why a Coadjutor has to be irreplaceable. There are already charms that let you replace it with your Id or one of your other souls. You obviously need something to regulate your Urge and Torment. The thing is that I don't see why the problem of having a dick of a Coadjutor should never be solved by violence.
It is absolutely in character for a violence focused character who believes himself to have been tricked into being a slave of the Reclamation to try to kill the voice in his head telling him to do stuff. Under ES's rules, this is both possible and verboten. The spirit of the rules says no killing Coadjutors. The letter says that no one from outside of your Empire can enter, and says nothing about your souls killing each other. This is the big thing that I dislike about ES's handling of Coadjutor death. It is unlike Fetich death in that it is philosophically forbidden from happening. Sure, most infernals won't kill their Coadjutors. Sure, having your Coadjutor killed without any way to save it is bad storytelling arguably worse than "Rocks Fall, Everybody Dies." I mostly just feel that the Lord British Postulate exists for a reason, and that I like the way that Exalted as a whole dealt with it: they acknowledged it and included ways for damn near everything to be killed. One of the big complaints about the Deathlords was that they were as completely immortal as the devs could make them.
My other problem is that there is no discussion about what happens after your Coadjutor dies.
Take it as a given that someone will try to kill her Coadjutor at some point, and that they might just succeed. What happens to her Tiger Empire? Does it immediately disappear destroying everything except the artifacts inside, or does it start to slowly unravel from the center out without the keystone holding it in place? Can the Infernal do damage control and possibly learn a new Heretical Charm to make one of her other souls the linchpin of their Empire?
What about the charms she learned to let her Coadjutor speak through her? Can she repurpose those soul-structures to let her Id or one of her kids speak through her?
Does she immediately enter Torment as soon as the stabilizing factor of her Coadjutor is gone? Does one of her other souls take up the burden of directing her transcendental insanity? If so, what does it make her want to do, if it doesn't have a set of marching orders from the Yozis?
These questions and their answers open up a small niche of Infernal characters. They also eliminate the Lord British Problem. By adding consequences to killing your Coadjutor, you make it possible to kill them in an interesting way while also incentivizing players to protect their Coadjutors. Like all backgrounds, the ST should damn well discuss anything that may have an impact on the player's enjoyment with the player first. That's why backgrounds exist. It doesn't mean that it is absolutely impossible for you to lose your awesome ship, just that it would be lost only if the player is OK with it.
By making Coadjutors killable, you also open up your Tiger Empire to trade with the real world. You allow people you like and trust to enter your world. You allow your Coadjutor to be summoned, and interact with its old friends. You allow so many more things to happen.
If there is some other reason to preserve Coadjutors above and beyond Mentors and Allies and the like, please tell me. I'd love to hear it.
Last edited:
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
They're... not invulnerable? I don't think? I'm pretty sure Octavian is on bad terms with them, and he may have been stated to have killed a few. They're just Sapphire-Sorcery level anti-demon creatures, so they can fuck over more or less any First Circle and aren't trivial opponents for a non-combat-focused citizen.
Honestly, I'd quite like more focus on the Priests. I might write up a thing on them some day to give them more facets than just "identical LAW ROBOTS" and introduce some space for distinction and different characterisation between them - like the one on Keris's ship, which is pretty old for a priest (its fires are deeper blue than most), very mentally flexible wrt "being in a realm where the sky is illegal" and has a pair of lesser-starmetal sabres that it refuses to explain the origins of. Keris keeps asking whenever she remembers (usually after it uses one to decapitate a crewmember that's broken the law), and it keeps dodging the question.
Keris does not like her Priest very much, and not just because she knows it's there to spy on her.
How does a Priest deal with that? On the one hand, it can honestly say that it is in the process of taking legal action against the sky by virtue of trying to free Cecelyne and her souls so they can punish all of those people who are breaking the law by looking up at the sky, and on the other it both can't and is supposed to go after all of these people.
It's probably some balance between practicality and "It's a big job and I'm working on it!"
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Most don't. Like I said, Keris's was chosen specifically for its unusual mental flexibility in not going berserk and killing everyone around it during daytime.
It may, in fact, be Priest!Jamelia. Who is, let's face it, a pretty good pick for the role of "spying on Keris".
Graypairofsocks
What is Grammar?
- Location
- earth
They are invulnerable. They can't be harmed, except by things that were bathed (or something like that) in the freely given blood of someone who never broke any of heaven's laws.
Well that is for the Hidden Judges of Heaven. Maybe it should be from someone who never broke the laws of cecelyne for the priests, but those laws are super easy to break.