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General Exalted Thread

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What about requiring that the infernal splits his health pool between the shintais so he has essentially 2/3s of his normal health levels inaccessible until he activates this charm.

Meaning that as long as this charm is active, he can access another form with locked away health levels, but he's essentially weaker, and can be incapacitated if there opponent acts quickly.

Essentially tying one hand behind there back, to surprise someone with there final form when they think they have their measure
 
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Eos_Astraeus said:
What about requiring that the infernal splits his health pool between the shintais so he has essentially 2/3s of his normal health levels inaccessible until he activates this charm.

Meaning that as long as this charm is active, he can access another form with locked away health levels, but he's essentially weaker, and can be incapacitated if there opponent acts quickly.

Essentially tying one hand behind there back, to surprise someone with there final form when they think they have their measure
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Seems like something extremely hard to balanced, especially in something as hyper lethal as Exalted and as tanky. Either this means you can't get more health levels normally so you go splat, or you essentially get more with a downside of unknown value.
 
I think it's just a lost cause mechanically and bad ground to tread for any PC-OK character.

Which isn't to say it shouldn't be in the game, just not as a PC power. Gods, third circles, raksha, behemoths and so on can all have Final Boss Form Prana to make the game interesting to play with them as antagonists without it needing to be vettable on a PC level.

The idea that all powers in the game have to be PC-OK needs to die in a fire anyway. It's just another problem that the Eclipse Caste ruined for the entire game line.
 
An option I can see would be adding specific preconditions to each Shitai, which would allow for the activation of a second stage, similar to the requirements/Imperfections that Infernal perfect defenses and Ascendancy Mantles have.

They could be as simple as requiring the Infernal to be in a specific Torment (which would work rather well with ES's Torments such as Cast-Down King Rage) , taking a sufficient level of damage, being stopped right before completing one's motivation, or be as complex as having a number of actively praying worshipers within a certain range for a Cecelynian shintai.
Being significantly wounded (be it physically or emotionally such as through the murder of a lover, friend or soul) by traitors and would be usurpers on one's own territory could trigger a boost to the Demon Emperor Shintai, as the actions of one's enemies resonate with the trauma inherent in Malfeas' essence and make it burn with even greater fury.

The point would be to balance the power of the upgrade with the significance/rarity of the triggering events and have it correspond thematically with its Yozi.
It also offers an actually emotionally and narratively satisfying option, as instead of a generic 'I stop holding back, suckers' covered by the base shintai we get 'The Demon Emperor holds in his arms the corpse of this beloved wife, crying tears made of sunfire as creation around him dissolves in chartreuse flame' or 'The Warlock draws upon every last mote of his power to ensure that the heaven shattering working he has spent a millennium on preparing is not disrupted by the heroes'.

Debatably this should be the role of the basic shintai, but their accessibility makes them a definitively 'not quite final form' from a narrative standpoint IMHO.
 
Continuing the theme of "So I woke up in the middle of the night," Another odd thought: I think the devs may have missed something.

108 is a significant number in several religions, for several reasons. In Buddhism, it is the number of human feelings: Six senses (the five we know + consciousness), divided between inner and outer, and aspected between past, present and future, and good, bad, and neutral. 6 x 2 x 3 x 3 = 108. Likewise there also 108 statements of negation and 108 earthly temptations. Or likewise that in Hinduism the names of the souls that assist Shiva are 108 in number.

So if one were to burn these 108 Thoughts upon a Pyre of 108 negations, it might reflect 108 sacred names and allow one to resist 108 temptations.

Incidentally, did I mention that the Buddhist equivalent to rosaries have 108 beads, minus the capping head bead? Or perhaps that 108 reflects a portion of our star system too? The distance between the sun and the earth being roughly 108 times the diameter of the sun, and likewise the distance between the earth and the moon being very close to 108 times the diameter of the moon?

Now I'm not particularly studied so this may break down in the face of one more knowledgeable, but all I'm saying... is that I don't think SWLiHN's central sphere is orbited by precisely 100 lesser spheres.
 
It would be much easier to write in 3e.

But if I had to do it in 2e, I'd just make the final form become active when you reach your -4 health levels. Maybe have one of its prereqs be a perfect partial soak that stops damage at your first or last -4 health level.
 
Nah, SWLIHN is fine. The mess up was not having 108 Sidereals.

Just have the Caste change from incarnation to incarnation based on the need and you still end up with 100 active Sidereals and an eight man "buffer" for the long reincarnation period.
 
Aaron Peori said:
Nah, SWLIHN is fine. The mess up was not having 108 Sidereals.

Just have the Caste change from incarnation to incarnation based on the need and you still end up with 100 active Sidereals and an eight man "buffer" for the long reincarnation period.
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But then all people would ever play with Sidereals is Literally Suidoken.
 
I'd just... you know.

Make an expansion Charm for an E3 Shintai at E4 or E5, give it consequences so you don't want to lead with it if you can avoid it (perhaps it's a Blasphemy or causes too much collateral damage to use it as a bread and butter combat form), and then specify that motes committed and wp spend towards the prerequisite Charm can be transferred into this one's activation cost. And then maybe, I dunno, add a Knockback AOE when you upgrade.

Ie, you start off with the 10m, 1wp Shintai, and when that's active, you can activate the 18m, 1wp Shintai for only 8m because you "pre-spent" on the previous form.
 
The 108 Sidereal thing gets brought up every so often and is usually dismissed by the writers as being, I think SLS's words were "cute for the sake of being cute."
 
Omicron said:
The 108 Sidereal thing gets brought up every so often and is usually dismissed by the writers as being, I think SLS's words were "cute for the sake of being cute."
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I mean, I'm no expert in Exalted, but don't they have entire elements of the plot and setting that are extended reference to physics terms?

Like, hasn't Exalted sort of run out the barn door with "being cute"?
 
The Laurent said:
I mean, I'm no expert in Exalted, but don't they have entire elements of the plot and setting that are extended reference to physics terms?

Like, hasn't Exalted sort of run out the barn door with "being cute"?
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Eh, maybe?

Like, it's possible to go years - indeed, indefinitely - playing Exalted without ever hearing "the Shinma are a set theory joke" or "Cecelyne is the Moon." Dropping in random 108s is much more obvious due to the number's significance in a lot of media that inspired Exalted.

I don't think having 108 Sidereals would be bad, I just think it would be kind of random. It doesn't particularly add, or remove, anything. It's just a thing to get a quick chuckle. Do it if you want to, sure.
 
So, @EarthScorpion and other people who are interested in his take on Sorcerers. In the take, you utilize outside resources to do sorcery, like Gods, backgrounds, or whatever. Can you use 'being an Exalt' to power your spells, since Exalts are often more powerful than gods or elementals? What would this look like?
 
@EarthScorpion , are you planning on reviving/rewriting the Taboo background for your sorcery rewrite. It seems like it would work better for a pulp sorcery power source than it did for avoiding mutations.

I really like the rewrite idea. It feels similar to Wildbow's Pact, another animist setting, in using artifacts, bound spirits, rulership over a place, or regular sacrifices of resources to power magic and tools such as implements and social status to shape it.
 
Sydonai said:
Maybe if it's a "If I can't win then nobody can!" charm meant as a final "FUCK YOU!" and it can only be used as a reaction to receiving a fatal blow, with the user still dying when it's over?
Or if it costs a Dot of Essence to use, or otherwise lowers stats or costs experience?

Something with permanent consequences, that unarguably lessened the Infernal in exchange for temporarily grasping power beyond their reach.
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Or something that explicitly kills the infernal, something that if there's a player he stops playing. How about based off the idea that infernals are mini primordials they have a charm into a hekatonkheire on death.
 
Honestly, I don't see the benefit of invoking 108 in relationship to most of Creation, at least, not as something current. Creation's big central number is 5 and 108, being mathematically rooted in 2^2 x 3^3, doesn't really fit in with that. Not only that, but since the sidereals are aspected between five maidens, that's one of the places some root of five, in their case five-score, really should be.

Of course, if you invoked 6, that can be a root of 108, and indeed we do see that six comes into play in places in Creation's numerology. And yet, from what I can see it's often in the role of things missing. Sometimes lost, sometimes never made. The sixth, hidden caste of alchemicals; the sixth element, never added to the world; the sixth magical material, a gem barely known to men within Autocthonia and who's corresponding circle of sorcery was lost with the Usurpation.

I'd suggest that if 108 stars of heaven were to be invoked for sidereals, it would be in that context: Something either missing or yet to be, dived into one half one score between the other castes and eight somehow lost or yet unmade. (For a total of 18: one sixth 108)


I'd also like to go back to speaking on SWLiHN here, but before I really don't have the background in eastern myth I'd like in order to speak with authority here so instead I'd like to ask a question: I've seen (and spoken of) her cosmological associations, but what exactly are her common mythological associations? I have my own ideas, (which trend towards "More than one buddha among the Yozil") but I'd really like some proper grounding.


Carrnage said:
Or something that explicitly kills the infernal, something that if there's a player he stops playing. How about based off the idea that infernals are mini primordials they have a charm into a hekatonkheire on death.
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I think we have that: Revlid's got Anchor of One Hundred Hands, in the Unwoven Coadjustor rewrite.
 
notanautomaton said:
So, @EarthScorpion and other people who are interested in his take on Sorcerers. In the take, you utilize outside resources to do sorcery, like Gods, backgrounds, or whatever. Can you use 'being an Exalt' to power your spells, since Exalts are often more powerful than gods or elementals? What would this look like?
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That's what an Exalt is doing when they're using their mote reactor in their soul to pay the mote cost for the spell. It lets them get away with less ritual behaviour than other people, because if the spell they want to cast is compatible with their essence flavour they're home laughing.

Everyone else? They either need to hope their natural essence is okay and they can play the sizeable mote cost all in one go, or find a place to draw the power from (demenses, heathstones, manses, human sacrifice, thematically appropriate power-gathering ritual behaviour like performing something that needs Solar essence on the longest day of the year).

Is that what you're asking?

Or are you asking "is there a Status (Exalt) background that Exalts secretly have?". Because the answer there is kinda yes - but what that's there for is that's what gives them the authority to bind demons. Demons are forced to recognise the Exalted as the victors of the war, and that's what binding runs off.

That's why most non-Exalts can't bind demons. The only other way of doing it is either having Backing (a citizen or Unquestionable of Hell) and having them lend you their authority as you bind them under the auspices of Cecelynian Law, or personally making a contract with the demon in question that gets you it as an Ally and lets you bind it. The former is a common part of infernalism, while the latter is... also a form of infernalism, but a milder one because you can also get it by beating up a demon until it agrees to it.
 
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Sucal said:
Cranial Rectual Extraction!

Native was invented long after the LUnars were written.... I think it was in Infernals actually
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The wiki page in the link says "Ink Monkeys Vol. 3". And everything related to it suggests that it was meant to guard the SHS expansions that were being written from charmshare, which is just about as fucking lol as I can imagine.

So...no.
 
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Jon Chung said:
When the Lunar Charmset was written (both times), this did not exist. In fact, there was a fairly vocal subset of Eclipse players who would blow up at any suggestion of restricting their ability to cherrypick from every power in the game because such a thing would apparently be thematically bad and totally ruin the Caste (kek).
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With an understanding that it seems like patching one problem with another problem, I can imagine it might've been that some players already felt pigeonholed by the Caste abilities that being Eclipse stuck them with, so the weird and definitely too powerful ability to cherrypick other people's charms might've been seen by some as a kind of compensation.
 
Leetsepeak said:
With an understanding that it seems like patching one problem with another problem, I can imagine it might've been that some players already felt pigeonholed by the Caste abilities that being Eclipse stuck them with, so the weird and definitely too powerful ability to cherrypick other people's charms might've been seen by some as a kind of compensation.
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Who knows? If they really thought that was the case, they should be screaming that the Dawn Caste needed broken compensation for a shitty favoured ability set too, but that never happened, kek.

Most likely, it was a simple "Don't nerf my character!" reaction, based around the fact that doing so comprehensively would have inevitably cost them Principle of Motion, Portal, Hurry Home, World-Shaping Artistic Vision (1E), etc, etc.
 
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The Phoenixian said:
Honestly, I don't see the benefit of invoking 108 in relationship to most of Creation, at least, not as something current. Creation's big central number is 5 and 108, being mathematically rooted in 2^2 x 3^3, doesn't really fit in with that. Not only that, but since the sidereals are aspected between five maidens, that's one of the places some root of five, in their case five-score, really should be..
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Eh, only because we have an arbitrary fascination with the number 5 for no discernible reason in the gameline. There is absolutely no reason there should not be 9 Maidens, which fits much better into the 108 Stars of Destiny idea as well. It's also why we got the ridiculous thing where we had five Infernal Castes, instead of one Caste per Yozi like there should have been meaning if you want to play a Kimberry/Isidoros Infernal well, fuck you.
 
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