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General Exalted Thread

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Imrix said:
I think I recall reading that Ambrosia basically tastes like whatever you want it to, because it can be any material you want it to. Don't quote me on that. Check CoCd: Yu-Shan.
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Anything except for one of the magical materials besides jade. Soulsteel needs to be made from ghosts, and the other three can only be made out of ambrosia specifically formed from prayers dedicated to the relevant Incarnae.

Also, making things out of ambrosia is the only way to make permanent things; quintessence-made goods are temporary.
 
Point of note, the cocoa plant's scientific name is Theobroma cocoa, its seed pods noted for their high yield of theobromide. Where do these terms come from? Latin for "Food of the Gods", so yes, ambrosia being chocolate is entirely fitting with Exalted's brand of puns.
 
ichypa said:
IIRC, the Salt Rate is a thing because the Salt Gods who's job is "make sure salt stays a part of Creation" actively attack anyone trying to collect it, and the Salt Rate is based on the price of the offering people need to give the Salt Gods to appease them and allow mortals to collect the salt, with the annual price for all Salt God offerings being set by the Scalet Empress
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That's correct- my point was that any source of salt would have to contend with salt gods, it's just that as far as I know, the primary/only source of 2nd age salt other than abandoned/half-functional first age infrastructure, is the shores and backbreaking manual labor. Therefore, it stands to reason that there is an untapped or widely forgotten source of salt in the Age of Sorrows.
 
Academia Nut said:
Point of note, the cocoa plant's scientific name is Theobroma cocoa, its seed pods noted for their high yield of theobromide. Where do these terms come from? Latin for "Food of the Gods", so yes, ambrosia being chocolate is entirely fitting with Exalted's brand of puns.
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Very intriguing. Thank you.

Though is there actual chocolate in Creation?
 
Ok, I'm sorry for asking, but where do you find how to calculate the effects of hardness and soak?

I've been searching for it in the 2nd edition drama systems, but I still can't find it.
 
Accelerator said:
Ok, I'm sorry for asking, but where do you find how to calculate the effects of hardness and soak?

I've been searching for it in the 2nd edition drama systems, but I still can't find it.
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Harness is binary: either your raw damage is at least one more than the hardness or your attack does no damage.

Soak subtracts dice from your raw damage equal to the soak rating, down to a minimum based on the weapon, magical effects, and either Essence or 1, depending on if you're using the base rules or the errata.
ichypa said:
Thank you for your critique. You make good points on using it as an actual replacement system, but like I said I mostly was going to use it as a personal thing, and just wanted to be sure it was something vaguely resembling workable, instead of inadvertantly making something that was all "herp derp I'm going to homebrew away everything that prevents me from fulfillying my power fantasy." I and since I don't find Paradox at all interesting or fun, nor do I find the idea of Sidereals literally being part of the bureaucracy, rather than agents of that bureaucracy (like, I'm 99% certain Seal Team Six wasn't made up of members of the IRS.) to be fun either, it works for me.
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Paradox is presented as a significant Sidereal limiting factor, and you don't really seem to be replacing it with anything. It's really their limit mechanic. That's not to say that the current paradox system is functional(it's too easy and too hard to get it, and the punishments are generally terrible across the board). But the idea that forcing changes can have some blowback doesn't seem terrible.

As for the bureaucracy, your example doesn't actually seem relevant. Seal Team Six is not the be all inspiration for Sidereals. In fact, it's barely even an inspiration, and seems to be cutting out the many inspirations, narrowing the stories possible drastically. The benefit of being in the bureaucracy is that means you get to make significant decisions, rather than just accepting orders. How in the world is the latter more interesting?
 
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Accelerator said:
Very intriguing. Thank you.

Though is there actual chocolate in Creation?
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Creation is deliberately designed to have almost Everything known in earth history- and have it co-exist. This is why there are dinosaurs that share space with modern riding horses or giant sharks and squid. The same applies to plants. If it was extinct or mythic, there's probably some of it somewhere in Creation.

Now, the question is- does modern chocolate exist in Creation, that depends, but the decadent Realm culture I imagine would have put some effort into developing it.

At the risk of being blunt, @Accelerator , Exalted (the game) is enriched by doing research into actual human history, mythology, economics, religion and anthropology. Seeing as it's earlier editions were written by people with higher education in those fields,and in some cases philosophy and computer science.

So my advice to you is- while you can ask questions, you also should do your research too, we all did.
 
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Yeah, honestly, I'm doing quite a bit of research to go with my fic... There's not a lot of actual characters to use that have established personalities that any random OC is likely to run into in Creation, (though they do exist), but the world itself is practically its own character.

Nexus has a different feel than Lookshy or any city on the Blessed Isle or the East, or the Western islands.
 
Shyft said:
At the risk of being blunt, @Accelerator , Exalted (the game) is enriched by doing research into actual human history, mythology, economics, religion and anthropology. Seeing as it's earlier editions were written by people with higher education in those fields,and in some cases philosophy and computer science.

So my advice to you is- while you can ask questions, you also should do your research too, we all did.
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Very well then. Sorry.

It's just that I'm.... not that good at doing resesarch. Actually, I"m not sure how to research most things in the first place. The most I know is to type into google.
 
Accelerator said:
Very well then. Sorry.

It's just that I'm.... not that good at doing resesarch. Actually, I"m not sure how to research most things in the first place. The most I know is to type into google.
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That's what I do- I google it, then I hit wikipedia, and I go from there. I just remember that Wikipedia while good, is not a replacement for higher education, and I qualify that I don't know for sure.
 
ichypa said:
So, upon my recent realization that so-called Sidereal Astrology is not in any way unique to Sidereals, and only requires them to be involved at all in the case of Resplendent Destinies, I decided to scrap the entire system -- with the exception of Resplendent Destinies and the system of crafting Destinies (as in the Background) for someone like an artifact -- and the stupidity of Paradox along with it; I went on to try and make something to replace it, at least for my personal use, and I'd appreciate it if any critiques you might have, or pointing out any blatant holes or imbalances I didn't realize where there.
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So, I like the concept of some of your ideas, but they don't resolve some of my biggest problems with how astrology currently functions.

I also think that paradox as a concept and mechanics could be much more interesting, especially with a rewrite.

For specific points.

ichypa said:
To lay out the basics, the ascending/descending destiny part of astrology is something available and usable by anyone with at least one dot of Backing in one of the five Divisions of the Bureau of Destiny, although how high your rating is and where you have those ratings defines what you can actually do with that access.
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This is something that I've used in my own games because it makes sense and allows for a lot of very interesting Sidereal missions.

One of my favorite started as an investigation into why a minor river wasn't flowing properly.

When the players investigated, they found that the river's end was looping back into its beginning and that the god in charge of it was well aware of this happening, It had been happening for years, decades even. He wasn't even the person who made that modification. It belonged to a god who was promoted for the tremendous amount of prayer he got from fishermen who loved how full of fish the river was, because they entered and never left.

The problem was, the modification to the river was very hacky and required regular maintenance/resets in order to function well and the current river god was a little too lazy to listen to the advice of his predecessors.

The players eventually fixed the fate, but only after discovering just how deep the corruption in that particular bureaucracy was and deciding they really didn't want to unravel who was originally at fault. That was the job for the celestial audit they recommended.

ichypa said:
Resplendent Destinies are crafted as Destinies rated from 1 to 3 dots, permitting the use of one Resplendency power per dot;
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I like the concept, merging systems as much as possible helps lower required system knowledge and the crafting system works well enough.

I'd disagree about limiting it to 1-3 though. Keeping the 1-5 + NA scale would give some more wiggle room for very large or important destinies... and also mesh nicely with the background rating if you want to tie that in.

If you keep the Attribute minimums, it would also give elder's more to do than just play politics. Sometimes they'd get called to perform a month long repair process on a particularly nasty issue.

ichypa said:
Astrological Charms and the ability to create new such Charms are not sealed; however, the ability to begin learning and using Astrological Charms is locked behind the Sidereal's ability to use the Greater Sign of their Maiden, as this provides the foundation of the mastery of Essence and understanding of Fate necessary to safely use the Greater Art.
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Also liked, though I think this is a place where paradox could matter.

ichypa said:
Astrological powers require extensive preparation, because the Maidens, in their infinite wisdom, knew the saying "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and designed their Chosen to need to take steps to prevent their greatest powers from ripping holes in Fate before they use those powers, rather than blasting them with Paradox.
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And paradox. I don't entirely disagree, but mostly do.

I think that paradox would be better if it was something that didn't directly impact the Sidereal fate weaver. Instead, it could be the result of either lazy work, a rush job, or reaching for more than they're capable of. The main sources would be local gods making up solutions that they know exactly the weird quirks of and will break down, or going way above their own abilities to do something big in xchange for the sweet, sweet prayers that it would provide.

It could be worked around, with even more active maintenance and attention, but if left uncontrolled for would create exactly the type of errors that other Sidereals are sent out to fix. The penalties of paradox would be social/bureaucratic, assuming you get caught. This would be because you not only failed to fix the problem, but also made more work for someone else.

To pull from another system that exists, not commenting on its quality, this could function in a manner similar to the Extra Creation Point sources for Manses in Oadenol's codex. A Destiny of rating X gives you Y points, but if you accept some paradox, you can get the same number of points as what X+1 would give.
 
It helps to be good at memorizing phrases. Makes it much easier to re-find things.

Also, learn to love the Wayback Machine.

Graveless said:
So, I like the concept of some of your ideas, but they don't resolve some of my biggest problems with how astrology currently functions.

I also think that paradox as a concept and mechanics could be much more interesting, especially with a rewrite.

...

And paradox. I don't entirely disagree, but mostly do.

I think that paradox would be better if it was something that didn't directly impact the Sidereal fate weaver. Instead, it could be the result of either lazy work, a rush job, or reaching for more than they're capable of. The main sources would be local gods making up solutions that they know exactly the weird quirks of and will break down, or going way above their own abilities to do something big in xchange for the sweet, sweet prayers that it would provide.

It could be worked around, with even more active maintenance and attention, but if left uncontrolled for would create exactly the type of errors that other Sidereals are sent out to fix. The penalties of paradox would be social/bureaucratic, assuming you get caught. This would be because you not only failed to fix the problem, but also made more work for someone else.

To pull from another system that exists, not commenting on its quality, this could function in a manner similar to the Extra Creation Point sources for Manses in Oadenol's codex. A Destiny of rating X gives you Y points, but if you accept some paradox, you can get the same number of points as what X+1 would give.
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My half-finished Paradox homebrew might be worth a look.
 
Accelerator said:
It's just that I'm.... not that good at doing resesarch. Actually, I"m not sure how to research most things in the first place. The most I know is to type into google
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Quick Tips To google like an expert and Google Advanced Search. Those two links will actually change your life, or at least how you google search. They are super helpful. If you learn nothing else from the first article, at least learn how to exclude words and search exact words.
Shyft said:
That's what I do- I google it, then I hit wikipedia, and I go from there. I just remember that Wikipedia while good, is not a replacement for higher education, and I qualify that I don't know for sure.
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Well there is Wikiversity... Admittedly I haven't actually tried it so I can't say how good it is. There's also Google Scholar for when you need to find an academic article.

Now all we need is someone to write up Google-Fu as a charmset...
 
Cosar said:
Paradox is presented as a significant Sidereal limiting factor, and you don't really seem to be replacing it with anything. It's really their limit mechanic. That's not to say that the current paradox system is functional(it's too easy and too hard to get it, and the punishments are generally terrible across the board). But the idea that forcing changes can have some blowback doesn't seem terrible.
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Well, the Sidereal's limit mechanic is their limit mechanic, Paradox is something separate and only shows up if you do stuff with astrology. So if you wanted to never do anything with maybe a third of Sidereal themes and abilities, you need not ever concern yourself with it. As for a limiting factor, I feel that Astrology powers have (or should have) a limiting factor built in, in that Sidereals effectively have 50 abilities to keep track of and spend experience on instead of 25.

And yes, there being blowback isn't inherently bad, and yes, as is Paradox is fucking terrible. There are many reasons why, but the most important to me as of late is that its fluffed as the fucking Pattern Spiders getting pissy and deciding the best course of action is to fucking cripple you, which is yet another way in canon shows that Sidereals don't actually do astrology, at all, its all Pattern Spiders.

Cosar said:
As for the bureaucracy, your example doesn't actually seem relevant. Seal Team Six is not the be all inspiration for Sidereals. In fact, it's barely even an inspiration, and seems to be cutting out the many inspirations, narrowing the stories possible drastically. The benefit of being in the bureaucracy is that means you get to make significant decisions, rather than just accepting orders. How in the world is the latter more interesting?
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This is more just me. I'm usually content to be a follower than a leader, so I would find having to plan everything out myself to be less enjoyable than following orders, and in general when I play table tops I do it to murder things in new and interesting ways. While bureaucratic maneuvering and political intrigue is certainly something Exalted can support as an interesting adventure, its not what I would play Exalted for.

I mean, that should probably tell me that I shouldn't be playing Sidereals in the first place, buuuut I wanna do it anyway.

Graveless said:
So, I like the concept of some of your ideas, but they don't resolve some of my biggest problems with how astrology currently functions.

I also think that paradox as a concept and mechanics could be much more interesting, especially with a rewrite.
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Thank you for taking the time to read it and give me feedback!



Graveless said:
This is something that I've used in my own games because it makes sense and allows for a lot of very interesting Sidereal missions.

One of my favorite started as an investigation into why a minor river wasn't flowing properly.

When the players investigated, they found that the river's end was looping back into its beginning and that the god in charge of it was well aware of this happening, It had been happening for years, decades even. He wasn't even the person who made that modification. It belonged to a god who was promoted for the tremendous amount of prayer he got from fishermen who loved how full of fish the river was, because they entered and never left.

The problem was, the modification to the river was very hacky and required regular maintenance/resets in order to function well and the current river god was a little too lazy to listen to the advice of his predecessors.

The players eventually fixed the fate, but only after discovering just how deep the corruption in that particular bureaucracy was and deciding they really didn't want to unravel who was originally at fault. That was the job for the celestial audit they recommended.
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Yeah, this is is something along the lines of how I would like Sidereals to work. Its sounds like a lot of fun.


Graveless said:
I like the concept, merging systems as much as possible helps lower required system knowledge and the crafting system works well enough.

I'd disagree about limiting it to 1-3 though. Keeping the 1-5 + NA scale would give some more wiggle room for very large or important destinies... and also mesh nicely with the background rating if you want to tie that in.

If you keep the Attribute minimums, it would also give elder's more to do than just play politics. Sometimes they'd get called to perform a month long repair process on a particularly nasty issue.
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I did originally have the third Replendancy power requiring a rating 5 Destiny, but but then I realized that it would essentially make it so that the third power wouldn't be obtainable until well after the character could by individual Astrology Charms, and I wanted the Resplendancies to fill the positions of E1-3 Astrology Charms. I admit, I'm not quite satisfied with the solution, as it feels awkward. I'd certainly be open to just buffing the hell out of the third Resplendency powers, since they'd only be acquirable at Essence 7. Given that most of them are just slight variants of "hide from bureaucratic supervision for a week," little of value would be if I changed things up.


Graveless said:
Also liked, though I think this is a place where paradox could matter.


And paradox. I don't entirely disagree, but mostly do.

I think that paradox would be better if it was something that didn't directly impact the Sidereal fate weaver. Instead, it could be the result of either lazy work, a rush job, or reaching for more than they're capable of. The main sources would be local gods making up solutions that they know exactly the weird quirks of and will break down, or going way above their own abilities to do something big in xchange for the sweet, sweet prayers that it would provide.

It could be worked around, with even more active maintenance and attention, but if left uncontrolled for would create exactly the type of errors that other Sidereals are sent out to fix. The penalties of paradox would be social/bureaucratic, assuming you get caught. This would be because you not only failed to fix the problem, but also made more work for someone else.

To pull from another system that exists, not commenting on its quality, this could function in a manner similar to the Extra Creation Point sources for Manses in Oadenol's codex. A Destiny of rating X gives you Y points, but if you accept some paradox, you can get the same number of points as what X+1 would give.
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This is not my first attempt to solve the Paradox issue, its just the one I came up with when I realized that Sidereals don't actually do any astrology, it was all Pattern Spiders, and there were only four instances out of the entirety of the powers and abilities that Sidereals have at their disposal in which your rating in a college (as opposed to just having a rating, mind). Fucking four. At the end of the day, I just want a system in which Sidereal's mastery of astrology and fate 1) actually fucking matters, and 2) can be used without a massive sword of Damocles over their head.

But back to my original point, another alternative to the canon system I toyed with, and still rather like, is to basically have Paradox act as an overcharged Destiny background. Shedding Paradox and Paradox Break would involve rolling dice to determine how wacky the wacky shit that's about to go down will be, as per Destiny; so the results of managing and rapidly accumulating Paradox would basically result in AGGRESSIVE SIDE-QUESTING, which I felt was fitting because it would mean that the Sidereal would have to put aside some delicate, long-term scheme in order to deal with some random bullshit, or a finely tuned balance of power decades in the making goes straight to shit because a pegasus just burst out of the satrap's chest cavity and flew away.

Sanctaphrax said:
My half-finished Paradox homebrew might be worth a look.
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I saw that, actually; it looks interesting, but I wasn't really enthused about it enough to use it.
 
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ichypa said:
Well, the Sidereal's limit mechanic is their limit mechanic, Paradox is something separate and only shows up if you do stuff with astrology. So if you wanted to never do anything with maybe a third of Sidereal themes and abilities, you need not ever concern yourself with it. As for a limiting factor, I feel that Astrology powers have (or should have) a limiting factor built in, in that Sidereals effectively have 50 abilities to keep track of and spend experience on instead of 25.
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The important thing to remember is that Sidereals have 2.5 limit-breaks/similar 'sticks' to keep things off kilter. They have Flawed Fate, then their Inverse Law of Decision-Making/Hubris curse, and then they have Paradox. All are meant to be 'interesting times' modifiers on their various powers/behaviors. The main reason they were given Flawed Fate was so that their Limit Track would have a purpose.

I can't speak 100% accurately here, but I'm pretty sure that Sidereals were not supposed to have a solar-like Limit Break mechanic. It got added on at the last minute.
 
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