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General Exalted Thread

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ManusDomine said:
Ah, but you see this is because I am tired of the fact that my own Dragon-Blooded Outcaste Water Aspect will be needing to armor her elite bodyguard in White Jade if she wants to use her War Charms optimally, instead of having a badass black-clad entourage.
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Fitting elemental themes has everything to do with overall charm concepts filtering down to concrete effects and nothing to do with nitpicking minutiae like having the wrong kind of jade. Jade type is just flavor. Ultimately the concept of the charm is just "the unit gets improved armor, with better armor and armor more suited to the dragonblood gets bigger bonuses", to the point that you could rewrite the whole thing as saying "+XL/+XB bonus where X is the Resources cost of the armor worn -1, +1L/+1B if deliberately customized to the specifications of the dragonblood in command".

That Dragon-Blooded see their Charms through the lens of their elements is important, but ultimately an aesthetic and not the ultimate focus of their Abilities, as you will note that Blazing Courageous Swordsmen Inspiration looks very much like a Fire Aspected Charm, rather than an Earth Aspected Charm; now my ideal system for Dragon-Blooded Charms includes Charms from like three of the elements for each Ability but I still have to somewhat operate within the recognized paradigm here.
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I would actually disagree that Blazing Courageous Swordsmen Inspiration looks fire aspected; it's a temporary toughness buff, which is earth aspected because earth encompasses concepts of durability and relentless endurance in spite of hardship. The fact that it slaps some fire flavor into the name and first line of the description counts for little (something about lunar charms being solar charm clones but with mentions of animals in the first line here). I guess you could argue that it's got the fire thematics of pushing beyond one's limits until being burned out, but I would expect that to have different mechanical effects to reflect the flavor (probably something like automatic exhaustion even if they live through having their temporary damage rolled over).

More generally, the aesthetic of a charmset defines what is acceptable for the charmset. This is as true of any type of Exalt as it is for those with more limited themes, like spirits; while exalts should be able to accomplish a huge variety of things (which is why they have charms in every single ability/attribute) they must approach those things through the the lens of their themes. The "ultimate focus of their Abilities" is to express their splat's aesthetic.

Now, the argument that the themes of a dragonblood in any given area are not limited by the aspect linked to that ability is reasonable- certainly it's a popular one, with the 3e Clutch of Dragons fanset going so far as to outright declare large fractions of the charmset to belong to elements in spite of the usual ability-aspect pairings. But in that case you can clearly see the idea of "this is how Water would approach Lore" or "this is how Fire would approach Integrity" behind charm groups; there is a specific element acting as the dominant theme to justify a variant approach. Admittedly, dragonblooded have the supersoldier concept to work with as well as the elemental concepts, which helps to paper over some thematic cracks, but it's still "this is how [a soldier of] [Element] would approach [Ability]", in the end.

If you abandon this, in the end you find that you haven't made a dragonblooded charm tree, you've just made a generic charm tree that you could easily slap on any random dragonblood, war-ghost, or demonic captain-creature without having thematic dissonance. Not that having something like that isn't nice, because it is, but more from a behind-the-GM-screen perspective than anything else.

See, this is where I heavily disagree; first of all, I am using the Kerisgame version of the Abilities (so this should probably be Command tbh). Now, the second part is that those Charms were Lore Charms originally; they fit in War because Dragon-Blooded are really good at murder and a Dragon-Bloded general is totally able to throw lightning strikes which kill hundreds of men when he directs the fury of Mela in their direction, just like a Dragon-Blooded scribe can send messages on the wind and twist the sounds of his speech or a Dragon-Blooded dancer can make even the deadliest assassination look like innocent play, or hide a terrible sneak attack in the appraisal of a rose. Solars master their Ability and thus gain I HEAL GOOD Charms in Medicine, I RULE GOOD Charms in Bureaucracy and I IMPRESS GOOD Charms in Presence, but they can't just take Medicine to lead a hospital; they're going to need them all. Dragon-Blooded however, are specialists; they approach a field, learning a large variety of tricks and gaining a very particular set of varied tools to deal with it, which is why War approaches warfare from the angle of "how do I kill lots of people and make the battlefield a living hell?"
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I suspect that we're going to have to agree to disagree here, but I'll reply anyway.

I don't disagree with most of this; indeed, I firmly agree with the idea that thanks to their thematics dragonbloods should be able to take actions which result in the death of their enemies in almost any Ability, and push past human ideas of what is possible and into conceptually and elementally rooted ones.

But they do have to stick to those Abilities when applying the concepts. War (or Command) as an Ability is about controlling your own troops, and when it's not about them it's about understanding and manipulating terrain or the enemy. Is using War to kill the enemy valid dragonblooded charmspace? Sure! But they need to do it in a War-like way, which means it's done by controlling their own troops, or by understanding and manipulating terrain or the enemy. Buff their guys with flaming swords, cause a fog bank or a chasm or a gigantic flaming hellscape, identify the enemy formation's weakness and crack them apart with a terrifying charge; whatever.

But don't just throw lightning at them and call it War, because that's not conceptual War, and you can't justifiably include it in conceptual War (because it kills people [always okay] and War involves enemies [loose Ability link]) any more than you can include it in conceptual Sail (because it kills people [always okay] and Sail involves weather [loose Ability link]). If you've got very solid thematic argument for why "just shoot them" is a War-linked concept, I'd be happy to hear it.

(Note: I will also argue that having Elemental Bolt Attack and the following in Lore was dumb, so clearly I'm not entirely tied to canon interpretations myself and have long ago wandered off into opinionspace.)
 
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Violation of Rule Three and Four: General Conduct
azoicennead said:
The fact that you didn't realize I was referring to the daughters of Adorjan, which were the result of something that could either be a long-term sexual relationship or a series of one-night stands (the information is rather vague) makes me question whether you actually have the knowledge necessary to discuss the nature and mentality of the Yozi as-written, rather than your pet conception of them.

Also, the dude was probably, like, a few hundred years old, of the thousands that Solars canonically cap out at. Solars haven't actually been around for eons yet.
And, as mentioned, Adorjan visited his dreams and they (meta)physically banged, and Adorjan got preggers. No weaving the "essence of existence" or "riveting debates". Just hot, silent, murder-wind-made-flesh-on-man action.
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Azo, I don't think you have the mental fortitude to resist dissenting opinion.

Ok, now that we've gotten past the very very poorly veiled personal attacks. I don't proscribe to all canon. I don't run Lunars like canon, I know many people her run them under TAW, and I run them in another way beyond that. Those same daughters have no sentience and it's only implied they had it once. It's just some shot in the dark comment out there to be used as a story seed if you want - it has no meaning.

So if you want to view it as my own personal pet conception and thus take away, what you feel is, my right to the pulpit - cool. So going with that, I think "human" form Yozi is stupid. No other words needed, just stupid. Writers know their audience, most people are stupid, so they have to cater to that. They have to make Yozi walk around as humans and make them shallow so they can be understood. That does not mean someone can't make it their pet project (o such a nasty thing, TAW was a pet project too) to give some depth to infinite beings with so many memories and experienced that they spin off souls to encapsulate and ruminate upon them.

Why be satisfied by what was crafted for the average man or the lowest common denominator. Most people here can understand and achieve greater.
 
IIRC...some people said that when I asked. Others said the opposite.

And while I have a Solar PC with Brawl he's mostly a sorcerer. I don't feel qualified to comment on the fine points of the ability's balance.
 
Touch of Sepia said:
Azo, I don't think you have the mental fortitude to resist dissenting opinion.

Ok, now that we've gotten past the very very poorly veiled personal attacks. I don't proscribe to all canon. I don't run Lunars like canon, I know many people her run them under TAW, and I run them in another way beyond that. Those same daughters have no sentience and it's only implied they had it once. It's just some shot in the dark comment out there to be used as a story seed if you want - it has no meaning.

So if you want to view it as my own personal pet conception and thus take away, what you feel is, my right to the pulpit - cool. So going with that, I think "human" form Yozi is stupid. No other words needed, just stupid. Writers know their audience, most people are stupid, so they have to cater to that. They have to make Yozi walk around as humans and make them shallow so they can be understood. That does not mean someone can't make it their pet project (o such a nasty thing, TAW was a pet project too) to give some depth to infinite beings with so many memories and experienced that they spin off souls to encapsulate and ruminate upon them.

Why be satisfied by what was crafted for the average man or the lowest common denominator. Most people here can understand and achieve greater.
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And yet they disagree with you, and provide tons of reasons why, and you proceed to ignore them. Have you perhaps considered that the reason they disagree with you is not "because they're plebians catering to the 'lowest common denominator'" but because they think your ideas aren't actually well thought out?
 
Super dumb question. No relation to Jack Vance, yes?

Not that that wouldn't be awesome, but the image of Solars as prepared casters getting murdered in their sleep by Sidereals is hilarious. Dumb, but hilarious.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
IIRC...some people said that when I asked. Others said the opposite.

And while I have a Solar PC with Brawl he's mostly a sorcerer. I don't feel qualified to comment on the fine points of the ability's balance.
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Brawl has some hideously powerful single attacks whose primary limitation is that it doesn't have cap-breaking accuracy like Melee, so even if you're going all out they can usually be defended against.

The bigger problem is that you make it nearly impossible to defend against its grapples, as River-Binding Wrath already allows you to reroll 5s and 6s on grapple attempts. A maxed-out Melee user would only have a 20% of avoiding your grapples.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
IIRC...some people said that when I asked. Others said the opposite.

And while I have a Solar PC with Brawl he's mostly a sorcerer. I don't feel qualified to comment on the fine points of the ability's balance.
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I can if you want, but I'm pretty sure @Anasurimbor is right and John was going for that vague zen koan thing he likes to do.

Right there with you on finding it an unhelpful answer at the time, but, like, grapples should not get Excellent Strike. I feel pretty strongly about that.
 
Irked said:
I can if you want, but I'm pretty sure @Anasurimbor is right and John was going for that vague zen koan thing he likes to do.

Right there with you on finding it an unhelpful answer at the time, but, like, grapples should not get Excellent Strike. I feel pretty strongly about that.
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I would appreciate it.

Excellent Grab does seem fairly unfair, but then so do a bunch of things that are clearly working as intended. So I don't think the answer here is obvious.
 
My fear that Vance is now in charge is that he's finishing a law degree which means that in like, 1 or 2 years there's a pretty serious chance he'll turn into a pumpkin and disappear into a vortex of having no time because he's literally exchanging them for money. He'll have plenty of money, but no time.
 
Touch of Sepia said:
I don't proscribe to all canon. I don't run Lunars like canon, I know many people her run them under TAW, and I run them in another way beyond that. Those same daughters have no sentience and it's only implied they had it once. It's just some shot in the dark comment out there to be used as a story seed if you want - it has no meaning.
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The difference between what you're doing and TAW is that TAW was a response to Lunars being a thematically incoherent mess, whereas you're just congratulating yourself for how ~*~intelligent~*~ you are for not wanting Yozi to be comprehensible to humans.

Touch of Sepia said:
So if you want to view it as my own personal pet conception and thus take away, what you feel is, my right to the pulpit - cool. So going with that, I think "human" form Yozi is stupid. No other words needed, just stupid. Writers know their audience, most people are stupid, so they have to cater to that. They have to make Yozi walk around as humans and make them shallow so they can be understood. That does not mean someone can't make it their pet project (o such a nasty thing, TAW was a pet project too) to give some depth to infinite beings with so many memories and experienced that they spin off souls to encapsulate and ruminate upon them.
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  1. Yozi vs. TAW: see previous point about Lunars.
  2. Your idea for the Yozi is trite repetition of ideas from self-congratulating, pseudo-intellectual Lovecraft wannabes, done many times in different games for better reasons. The people who disagree with you are instead looking at the things that were actually written in the books and significant chunks of the inspiration for Exalted - that being mythology - and basing their idea of what the fallen creators of the world should be on that. The Greek pantheons are one of the more accessible examples. Go read up on the Titans and the Titanomachy if you're not familiar with them. You might notice some distinct, intentional parallels.
  3. You don't actually understand what the people who disagree with you are saying. People are not saying "the Yozi are big humans". People are saying "the Yozi have totally understandable mentalities" - rejecting the idea of them being wholly alien, not the idea of them being inhuman. It's the difference between the Thorian or Reapers in Mass Effect (where we can clearly understand what they want to do and why) and budget Yog-Sothoth.
  4. Your ideas don't really fit the rest of the setting as-written, even if they might fit the setting as you run it. Given that most of us still use canon as a baseline, at least getting close to the themes and ideas of what's written is pretty important to being relevant to what other people want.
Touch of Sepia said:
Why be satisfied by what was crafted for the average man or the lowest common denominator. Most people here can understand and achieve greater.
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Because what you're proposing fucking bores me as an idea for Creation, and I don't delude myself into believing that because I'm interested in arcane and esoteric shit that I'm somehow more intelligent or better than other people.
 
The Laurent said:
And yet they disagree with you, and provide tons of reasons why, and you proceed to ignore them. Have you perhaps considered that the reason they disagree with you is not "because they're plebians catering to the 'lowest common denominator'" but because they think your ideas aren't actually well thought out?
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Honestly I think it's something worth considering too:

Yozi being kinda anthropomorphic is heartening in a weird way. As wicked as their greater selves are and as fucked up as they themselves can be, 3CD's and 2CD's are totally capable of caring for one another. They can feel all that important shit like love and fear and hope y'know? They're not like the Neverborn who are stuck dead and dreaming and birthing fucked up nightmares because their corpse-galaxy can't quite recall what a bird looks like so they kludge together a bunch of half-remembered impressions into an "oh jesus what the fuck" monster. And, like, I'm not saying that all of Malfeas's problems can be fixed by getting in Ligier's pants and blasting that bronze ass to kingdom come but like...

Changing a 3CD is absolutely possible for an Exalted to do and in changing a 3CD you change the greater Yozi. Maybe not a lot true. It's not like you can get Kimbery to slow her fucking roll by chatting up a single Soul. But you can introduce something new in a sick, diseased mind. Cultivate something good if you're into all of that weak-ass, feel-happy shit. :p But even if you're not necessarily that's a plot with a lot of potential hooks that's uniquely enabled by the existence of Yozi Soul Hierarchies. By the Yozi's brain basically being exploded out across Malfeas into dozens of different moving, clashing, parts that you can talk to and beat up and ally with.

Making the Yozi unknowable castrates the lot of it (Ligier nooooooooo) and gives us, uh

nothing?

Yeah, fucking nothing but some deep-ass navel gazing on how oh man just look at how girthy and turgid the Primordials were weren't they?

Edit: And yeah I know the conversation's moved on some but gdi I deserve to share my navel-gazing too. :V
 
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I can't get over how goddamn cool Stormcaller from the Arms preview is. At some point I'll want to adjust the couple of my artifacts that are mostly done to use Resonant/Disonant I guess, but that's not such a big work load. What is a bigger deal is the fact that appropriate evocations for Artifact 5 apparently goes at least to ~Solar Circle Sorcery so, uh, I'm gonna have to give one of my players some better shit. :V
 
TenfoldShields said:
Honestly I think it's something worth considering too:

Yozi being kinda anthropomorphic is heartening in a weird way. As wicked as their greater selves are and as fucked up as they themselves can be, 3CD's and 2CD's are totally capable of caring for one another. They can feel all that important shit like love and fear and hope y'know? THey want They're not like the Neverborn who are stuck dead and dreaming and birthing fucked up nightmares because their corpse-galaxy can't quite recall what a bird looks like so they kludge together a bunch of half-remembered impressions into an "oh jesus what the fuck" monster. And, like, I'm not saying that all of Malfeas's problems can be fixed by getting in Ligier's pants and blasting that bronze ass to kingdom come but like...

Changing a 3CD is absolutely possible for an Exalted to do and in changing a 3CD you change the greater Yozi. Maybe not a lot true. It's not like you can get Kimbery to slow her fucking roll by chatting up a single Soul. But you can introduce something new in a sick, diseased mind. Cultivate something good if you're into all of that weak-ass, feel-happy shit. :p But even if you're not necessarily that's a plot with a lot of potential hooks that's uniquely enabled by the existence of Yozi Soul Hierarchies. By the Yozi's brain basically being exploded out across Malfeas into dozens of different moving, clashing, parts that you can talk to and beat up and ally with.
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I can't help but wonder what the 'tipping point' of a Yozi's souls being changed would be like. When you've managed to just nudge Malfeas's souls the right way to change him intrinsically, how does that happen? Does the Demon City just exist in a new state as though it had always been so? Is it a rippling wave of change that rushes over all? Or - my personal favourite - is the Demon City wracked by destructive earthquakes as Malfeas twists and turns in agony?
 
You know what I've always liked in Exalted? How heavenly ambroisa comes in little edible coin form and is so unspeakably delicious that it is a constant temptation for novice Sidereals to eat because they mistake their operating budget for a bowl of candies on their desk.
 
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