General Exalted Thread

[Jon Chung]

But unless they had a mentor to teach them about all the Charms they could learn, I don't think they would know that the paranoia combo was possible, on account of Charms not being on a convenient list you can look through in-universe? They are, I believe, instead things that develop as extensions of stuff you try to do? Like, you don't get Heavenly Guardian Defense by investing in a Charm tree which you know leads to a perfect defense, you get it by constantly trying to parry harder, until one day you can parry perfectly.

So someone who fights at range would not go out of their way to develop Melee charms to get a perfect parry, and someone who runs around in superheavy plate would not go out of their way to learn dodge charms to get a perfect dodge, no matter how optimal it might be to do so.

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Sure, you could argue that and enforce it if you wanted. Then the people running the suboptimal builds die and respawn until someone happens to spawn with Dodge favoured. Same end result.

The problem is not the paranoia combo exists, remember, the problem is that it is the only way to not die.

 

[ichypa]

The problem is not the paranoia combo exists, remember, the problem is that it is the only way to not die.

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All right, I'll accept that, though could you explain this bit to me?

I've never really understood how this can be the case, and I don't feel comfortable making any further assertions on the subject until I do.

 

[Jon Chung]

All right, I'll accept that, though could you explain this bit to me?

I've never really understood how this can be the case, and I don't feel comfortable making any further assertions on the subject until I do.

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tl;dr: The 2E game is extremely, ridiculously lethal and it's trivially easy to get insta-gibbed or burned down in a handful of ticks unless you have the specific set of capabilities the paranoia combo grants: a perfect defense, a way to make unexpected attacks no longer unexpected so you can perfect defend against them, and a way to get out of range quickly if someone drops an Extra Action flurry on you, in a combo so you can use all of them at the same time.

Conveniently, getting all of the above is easy: grab the first four Charms in Solar Dodge, stick them in a combo.

 

[Salty]

All right, I'll accept that, though could you explain this bit to me?

I've never really understood how this can be the case, and I don't feel comfortable making any further assertions on the subject until I do.

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Long story short, in Exalted 2e played RAW, combat was hilariously lethal. Getting a hit was easy, and damage was ridiculously high. Even if you didn't get outright oneshot, wound penalties meant you were locked into a death spiral anyways. 5-on-1 battles meant somebody on the 5 team got a free hit with zero defense on the 1. Stealth and unexpected attacks were instagib city.

The paranoia combo was the only way to reliably survive that combat paradigm.

 

[ichypa]

tl;dr: The 2E game is extremely, ridiculously lethal and it's trivially easy to get insta-gibbed or burned down in a handful of ticks unless you have the specific set of capabilities the paranoia combo grants: a perfect defense, a way to make unexpected attacks no longer unexpected so you can perfect defend against them, and a way to get out of range quickly if someone drops an Extra Action flurry on you, in a combo so you can use all of them at the same time.

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Wouldn't that mean that you'd be almost incapable of using offensive charms unless you wanted to swiftly mote tap yourself?

Long story short, in Exalted 2e played RAW, combat was hilariously lethal. Getting a hit was easy, and damage was ridiculously high. Even if you didn't get outright oneshot, wound penalties meant you were locked into a death spiral anyways. 5-on-1 battles meant somebody on the 5 team got a free hit with zero defense on the 1. Stealth and unexpected attacks were instagib city.

The paranoia combo was the only way to reliably survive that combat paradigm.

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Don't most extras have rather low accuracy, though? And wouldn't you be with your Circle, and thus few battles would be 5-on-1 unless you've been outmaneuvered?

 

[Jon Chung]

Wouldn't that mean that you'd be almost incapable of using offensive charms unless you wanted to swiftly mote tap yourself?

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Yes. In fact, the only offensive charm you use is an Excellency via Infinite Ability Mastery. Your actual damaging power is purely passive, because you're holding a Grand Goremaul or something with similarly excessive damage. You don't need offensive charms to kill things in one hit, and spending motes is stupid when motes are functionally your hit points, so don't spend motes attacking.

The only exception is Extra Action Charms, because they are very efficient. You get 8 full-pool Grand Goremaul attacks for 5m 1w with Iron Whirlwind Attack, as an example. If someone had to perfect all of that, it would cost them 24 motes, which leaves you wildly ahead. This is why you have the flurry breaker in your paranoia combo, so you can get out of that for 6 motes instead of 24.

Don't most extras have rather low accuracy, though?

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Accuracy doesn't matter if you've been surrounded. The fifth guy gets an automatic unexpected attack against 0 DV, which you cannot perfect because most perfect defenses explicitly cannot be invoked against unexpected attacks. If the dude doing the unexpected attack has a high-damage or poisoned weapon, is a grappler or has touch-effect disabling charms, you lose when he touches you.

And wouldn't you be with your Circle, and thus few battles would be 5-on-1 unless you've been outmaneuvered?

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Bring more extras. They're extras. Lots where they came from. Did you know that fighting back to back with an ally or a wall doesn't remove the fifth guy automatic unexpected attack, merely reduces the number of people required to trigger the condition?

 

[Cosar]

Wouldn't that mean that you'd be almost incapable of using offensive charms unless you wanted to swiftly mote tap yourself?


Don't most extras have rather low accuracy, though? And wouldn't you be with your Circle, and thus few battles would be 5-on-1 unless you've been outmaneuvered?

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Yes. The issue is that 0 mote attacks were dangerous enough that it didn't really matter.

And the accuracy doesn't matter: your defenses are inapplicable. As long as they get 1 success you get hit. As for being outnumbered, well, Dragonblooded want to outnumber you, and will often bring mortal cohorts along to help them. And other Exalted aren't exactly strangers to this idea, either.

Edit: also, keep in mind that even low damage weapons were still dangerous, as you only have 7 health levels to work with, not to mention wound penalties that put you into a death spiral (you're in a tight fight, then have a -1 penalty applied to all of your dice pools, suddenly you're losing, then they hit you again because it's easier now, and you eventually go to -2, then -4, then death).

 

[Crumplepunch]

You'd mentioned going back and giving the charmsets another once-over to balance the aspects with each other in terms of charm counts. Is that part of this doc, or is it a compilation of the first-round stuff?

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There are a handful of new Charms that I wrote a couple of months ago, but I plan to add more along with the new chapters.

 

[Shane_357]

If I may redirect the conversation, how would cities in Exalted be set up? How large would they be (in terms of walking/hours)?

 

[Accelerator]

If I may redirect the conversation, how would cities in Exalted be set up? How large would they be (in terms of walking/hours)?

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Should be pretty darned small compared to ours, since they have a distinct lack of technology.

 

[Bel]

Should be pretty darned small compared to ours, since they have a distinct lack of technology.

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On the other hand, many of the cities have access to magic, or the techno-magical artefacts that were created to help grow food etc. As mentioned in a post a few pages back, sometimes the Immaculate Monks will go beat up the gods of disease etc to stop them blighting crops that belong to the Realm. There are sorcerous workings to give you an unnaturally abundant harvest and keep more harvests coming throughout the year so, if you have the magical infrastructure, you can probably feed a surprising amount of people with a relatively small amount of farmland.

Of course this all depends on the Sorcerer King who rules over the land and his pact with the Spirits of said land and if you go and disrupt the Daily ritual of him paying thanks to them, or steal his ceremonial staff suddenly the entire regions goes to famine (much like a modern city is usually only days away from starvation).

 

[Accelerator]

On the other hand, many of the cities have access to magic, or the techno-magical artefacts that were created to help grow food etc. As mentioned in a post a few pages back, sometimes the Immaculate Monks will go beat up the gods of disease etc to stop them blighting crops that belong to the Realm. There are sorcerous workings to give you an unnaturally abundant harvest and keep more harvests coming throughout the year so, if you have the magical infrastructure, you can probably feed a surprising amount of people with a relatively small amount of farmland.

Of course this all depends on the Sorcerer King who rules over the land and his pact with the Spirits of said land and if you go and disrupt the Daily ritual of him paying thanks to them, or steal his ceremonial staff suddenly the entire regions goes to famine (much like a modern city is usually only days away from starvation).

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Yeah, but from what I can tell, out in the places away from the realm, there isn't much magic at all. I'm sure that sorcerous workings and such are supposed to be fairly rare.

 

[uju32]

The Amari Empire
Primary Aspect: Crow
Secondary Aspect: Coyote

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The flower of Amari's armies fight mounted, either from horse, boar, Simhata or llama back, and employ bow, fire wand, saber and lance as their weapons of choice. Some units capture giant eagles or elephants as war animals.
Most cavalry are light, employing missiles and light, face lance attacks when they have the advantage, however the Empire also employs large numbers of heavy cavalry and superheavy cataphracts.

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Why is a mountain-based empire fielding a largely cavalry-focused army?
Even with access to magic, one would think geography would prejudice them against that sort of combat.

One would think the reliance on cavalry is one of the reasons why the Amari would do well against Realm-allied forces from the plains, showing up in the mountains with cavalry in terrain that sharply circumscribes their ability to take advantage of their maneuverability.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

Why is a mountain-based empire fielding a largely cavalry-focused army?
.

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Because they're Persia/Afghanistan as well as being Incas. Traditionally, people of the central Asian plateau have still deployed large a fairly cavalry focused army to my understanding.

Also they have riding llamas, which are sure footed

Basically it's not just steep slopes, it's actually a whole series of fertile plateaus and stuff. If they need to fight in the actual mountain terrain, they dismount and fight on foot.

 

[changeling]

Last time I checked, the Scarlet Empress was a dragon blooded, and she absolutely did do that, with her sworn brotherhood, with no assistance from any terrestrials.

She set everything up to explode when she was gone because she's Stalin.

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Which is going to implode now that the Empress has disappeared, making it an Etch-A-Sketch contribution.

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Yeah, "the empire going to explode after SE disappearance" needs to die in fire. I always made fallowing changes to Realm fluff:

1)there is lot of Houses dating to pre-Realm era, because Blessed Isle was not devastated by Crusade and Contagion had lesser impact there.
2) therefore Empress is not an all-powerful common ancestor of all important Realm Dragon-blooded (which was moronic idea, if you do even most rudimentary math). Her legitimacy was derived only from access to RDG and later her unnatural life-span as she accumulated the power and build Scarlet Faction.
3) after her disappearance, the Realm was not thrown in chaos and near civil war; the "Old Shogunate" faction used it to size power and declare Ten Blessed Mandarins as a ruling body in stead of missing Empress.
4) since it's two sworn brotherheoods of elder Dragon-blooded working togther, the system works better; because Dragon-blooded are just more powerful in combination and using synergies between the charms. Scarlet Empress was way to paranoid to share power and it hampered the Empire in many way. The Shogunate Oligarchy is way smarter and more dangerous.
...
There were many small changes flowing from that, for example, one of my campaigns started with Lookshy broke the Confederacy of River and allied itself with the Restored Shogunate, because the Usurper and Tyrant was gone. It started gigantic war over Scavengers Lands, when Realm Legions invaded Thorns..

My players allied themselves with Mask of Winter and Walker. That was fun in horrible ways.

Why is a mountain-based empire fielding a largely cavalry-focused army?
Even with access to magic, one would think geography would prejudice them against that sort of combat.
(...)

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Don't ask questions. It's Lunars society-building.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

Yeah, "the empire going to explode after SE disappearance" needs to die in fire. I always made fallowing changes to Realm fluff:

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I don't think there's much difficulty in having a giant succession crisis when the realm has to do a succession for the first time. Like, this is honestly pretty normal.

Don't ask questions. It's Lunars society-building.

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Piles of cavalry armies came from high up you know

 

[changeling]

I don't think there's much difficulty in having a giant succession crisis when the realm has to do a succession for the first time. Like, this is honestly pretty normal.

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It's my change to the setting, used only for my campaigns. Plus, Realm is far from normal polity.

 

[ichypa]

Yes. In fact, the only offensive charm you use is an Excellency via Infinite Ability Mastery. Your actual damaging power is purely passive, because you're holding a Grand Goremaul or something with similarly excessive damage. You don't need offensive charms to kill things in one hit, and spending motes is stupid when motes are functionally your hit points, so don't spend motes attacking.

The only exception is Extra Action Charms, because they are very efficient. You get 8 full-pool Grand Goremaul attacks for 5m 1w with Iron Whirlwind Attack, as an example. If someone had to perfect all of that, it would cost them 24 motes, which leaves you wildly ahead. This is why you have the flurry breaker in your paranoia combo, so you can get out of that for 6 motes instead of 24.



Accuracy doesn't matter if you've been surrounded. The fifth guy gets an automatic unexpected attack against 0 DV, which you cannot perfect because most perfect defenses explicitly cannot be invoked against unexpected attacks. If the dude doing the unexpected attack has a high-damage or poisoned weapon, is a grappler or has touch-effect disabling charms, you lose when he touches you.



Bring more extras. They're extras. Lots where they came from. Did you know that fighting back to back with an ally or a wall doesn't remove the fifth guy automatic unexpected attack, merely reduces the number of people required to trigger the condition?

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Yes. The issue is that 0 mote attacks were dangerous enough that it didn't really matter.

And the accuracy doesn't matter: your defenses are inapplicable. As long as they get 1 success you get hit. As for being outnumbered, well, Dragonblooded want to outnumber you, and will often bring mortal cohorts along to help them. And other Exalted aren't exactly strangers to this idea, either.

Edit: also, keep in mind that even low damage weapons were still dangerous, as you only have 7 health levels to work with, not to mention wound penalties that put you into a death spiral (you're in a tight fight, then have a -1 penalty applied to all of your dice pools, suddenly you're losing, then they hit you again because it's easier now, and you eventually go to -2, then -4, then death).

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Wow that is horrifically dumb. Thank you for explaining.

 

[The Laurent]

Yeah, "the empire going to explode after SE disappearance" needs to die in fire. I always made fallowing changes to Realm fluff:

1)there is lot of Houses dating to pre-Realm era, because Blessed Isle was not devastated by Crusade and Contagion had lesser impact there.
2) therefore Empress is not an all-powerful common ancestor of all important Realm Dragon-blooded (which was moronic idea, if you do even most rudimentary math). Her legitimacy was derived only from access to RDG and later her unnatural life-span as she accumulated the power and build Scarlet Faction.
3) after her disappearance, the Realm was not thrown in chaos and near civil war; the "Old Shogunate" faction used it to size power and declare Ten Blessed Mandarins as a ruling body in stead of missing Empress.
4) since it's two sworn brotherheoods of elder Dragon-blooded working togther, the system works better; because Dragon-blooded are just more powerful in combination and using synergies between the charms. Scarlet Empress was way to paranoid to share power and it hampered the Empire in many way. The Shogunate Oligarchy is way smarter and more dangerous.
...
There were many small changes flowing from that, for example, one of my campaigns started with Lookshy broke the Confederacy of River and allied itself with the Restored Shogunate, because the Usurper and Tyrant was gone. It started gigantic war over Scavengers Lands, when Realm Legions invaded Thorns..

My players allied themselves with Mask of Winter and Walker. That was fun in horrible ways.



Don't ask questions. It's Lunars society-building.

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I dunno, that seems kinda wanky? "The Realm suffers a regime change it's never been through before and somehow something something something it becomes even stronger than ever."

 

[changeling]

I dunno, that seems kinda wanky? "The Realm suffers a regime change it's never been through before and somehow something something something it becomes even stronger than ever."

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First, the Realm is not the Realm of canon, where there is little continuity with Shogunate, everyone is confused by SE disappearance and are no contingency plans for her death; Shoguns of old were assassinated by Lunars and died in various other circumstances, so the old precedences apply.

Also, tyranny is always hideously ineffective due to many factors; and history knows a lot of instances of one-man rule replaced by something simply better. Someone mentioned Stalin in passing, so for example, Leader of Progressive Humanity replaced by Politbiuro' oligarchy is clear-cut case. But it wasn't that hard to clear the better-than-Stalin bar, so something else: Athens city politics. It just worked better without one-man-rule.

I could point out to the whole history of modern representative republics eating alive all feudal societies, but this is way more complex issue.

But, in summary, it's not unimaginable that Realm without Empress would work better.

 

[The Laurent]

First, the Realm is not the Realm of canon, where there is little continuity with Shogunate, everyone is confused by SE disappearance and are no contingency plans for her death; Shoguns of old were assassinated by Lunars and died in various other circumstances, so the old precedences apply.

Also, tyranny is always hideously ineffective due to many factors; and history knows a lot of instances of one-man rule replaced by something simply better. Someone mentioned Stalin in passing, so for example, Leader of Progressive Humanity replaced by Politbiuro' oligarchy is one example. But it wasn't that hard to clear the better-than-Stalin bar, so something else: Athens city politics. It just worked better without one-man-rule.

I could point out to the whole history of modern representative republics eating alive all feudal societies, but this is way more complex issue.

But, in summary, it's not unimaginable that Realm without Empress would work better.

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In the long term, maybe? But the realm is also an Empire, whatever else it is, and oligarchies isn't a particularly good type of government, either, and has its own weakness. Like, you know, conflicts between the oligarchs over who gets the larger slice of the pie that has suddenly dropped from the Emperess' hands.

I don't think Precedents applying would change all that much? Or at least, it wouldn't stop everyone from trying to jump onto power, or rebel because the idea that the Emperess is some uniquely evil tyrant and once she's gone the Realm will totally be much nicer is both absurd, and something that nobody whose people have been crushed and enslaved by the Realm is likely to believe, even if it were true.

Succession when it is sudden is very often rough in an Empire, especially of the type we're talking here. Even if the stuff at the top goes smoothly.

Maybe in the long term it'd work better without the Empress, but we're not talking about the long-term here. We're talking about the immediate aftermath. The first few years after her disappearance.

 

[changeling]

In the long term, maybe? But the realm is also an Empire, whatever else it is, and oligarchies isn't a particularly good type of government, either, and has its own weakness. Like, you know, conflicts between the oligarchs over who gets the larger slice of the pie that has suddenly dropped from the Emperess' hands.

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Yes, this is the problem. But in context of cooperative Dragon-blooded charms it is still better than absolute monarchy.

I don't think Precedents applying would change all that much? Or at least, it wouldn't stop everyone from trying to jump onto power, or rebel because the idea that the Emperess is some uniquely evil tyrant and once she's gone the Realm will totally be much nicer is both absurd, and something that nobody whose people have been crushed and enslaved by the Realm is likely to believe, even if it were true.

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First, I was clear that it was more efficient, not nicer. It's still an empire, just under improved management.

Second, I used wrong word. You don't happen to know how to describe in one English word settled order of succession and proper procedures of changing power?

Because in my homebrew (and again, it's only my homebrew with specific campaigns in mind) those were widely known and applied, because SE didn't overturned and rebuild the Blessed Isle polity from top to bottom.

Succession when it is sudden is very often rough in an Empire, especially of the type we're talking here. Even if the stuff at the top goes smoothly.

Maybe in the long term it'd work better without the Empress, but we're not talking about the long-term here. We're talking about the immediate aftermath. The first few years after her disappearance.

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That's five year and Dragon-blooded have instant communication tech. Enough to settle things into new order.

 

[The Laurent]

Yes, this is the problem. But in context of cooperative Dragon-blooded charms it is still better than absolute monarchy.



First, I was clear that it was more efficient, not nicer. It's still an empire, just under improved management.

Second, I used wrong word. You don't happen to know how to describe in one English word settled order of succession and proper procedures of changing power?

Because in my homebrew (and again, it's only my homebrew with specific campaigns in mind) those were widely known and applied, because SE didn't overturned and rebuild the Blessed Isle polity from top to bottom.




That's five year and Dragon-blooded have instant communication tech. Enough to settle things into new order.

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...at which point you're still kind of missing the point? Like, the world is supposed to be changing, and part of it is that the Realm kinda, you know, sucked? It might be better than some alternatives and different homebrewers will fall in different shades of how they treat the Realm, sure, but 'Empress disappears, Solars come back, Infernals and Abyssals also come back' is pretty central to it? Have 'Empress Disappears and no it's actually a great thing for the oppressive Realm, which now has EVEN MORE resources to hunt down the Solars' and it seems like you're missing the point?

Admittedly, all of this is predicated on the fact that I don't like the Realm and think the best part of it in Exalted canon is the part where it's actually finally being shown to fall apart like every Empire ever eventually does. I mean, if I object to ES-like justification of it (which is in their words only meant to make them more than a paper tiger, and isn't actually meant to justify them, even if I do think it spends too little time reflecting on the fact that 'Oh yeah, and this is bad' but that might just be stylistic differences and we're supposed to just infer this message), then yeah, it's obvious that I object to your take on it? Especially the part where "more efficient" suddenly means that, apparently, people turn to its side so it gets even closer to conquest.

Unless the point of the whole game was to stop the Realm, that feels a little too much like, well. Making up a scenario where things get better for the Realm with no real downsides. IE: kinda wank?

 

[Chehrazad]

ES-like justification of it (which is in their words only meant to make them more than a paper tiger, and isn't actually meant to justify them, even if I do think it spends too little time reflecting on the fact that 'Oh yeah, and this is bad'

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Generally Exalted hasn't really done this; it's gone "oh yeah, now I'll explain to you exactly how slavery works and how it's maintained, but I won't obviously condemn it at any point" so it gives you all the knowledge on a Thing and then expects you to realize that This Is Pretty Bad. Likewise @EarthScorpion's Realm still does all the things it does in canon, it still enslaves hundreds, it still hunts Solars and Lunars, it's still a horrifically oppressive empire that acts like ancient empires tend to do, except it has literal magical elemental demigods helping it. Dragon-Blooded Charms allow you to efficiently allocate resources and manage bureaucracies, his Realm takes notice of that and concludes that this means that your Dragon-Blooded can efficiently tax the peasants to pay for his drugs, just like he can efficiently enslave hundreds of people or efficiently collaborate with the enemies of the Realm to carve out a slightly larger power base.

 

[The Laurent]

Generally Exalted hasn't really done this; it's gone "oh yeah, now I'll explain to you exactly how slavery works and how it's maintained, but I won't obviously condemn it at any point" so it gives you all the knowledge on a Thing and then expects you to realize that This Is Pretty Bad. Likewise @EarthScorpion's Realm still does all the things it does in canon, it still enslaves hundreds, it still hunts Solars and Lunars, it's still a horrifically oppressive empire that acts like ancient empires tend to do, except it has literal magical elemental demigods helping it. Dragon-Blooded Charms allow you to efficiently allocate resources and manage bureaucracies, his Realm takes notice of that and concludes that this means that your Dragon-Blooded can efficiently tax the peasants to pay for his drugs, just like he can efficiently enslave hundreds of people or efficiently collaborate with the enemies of the Realm to carve out a slightly larger power base.

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Oh, I know that. It's an aesthetic thing, I suppose? My own viewpoint is that people (including myself, at times) are remarkably bad, unless they're told, at actually realizing some of the negative implications of Empire if they aren't shown them. Admittedly this has led to simplistic, "The Evil Empire versus the Good Republic" sorts of stories, but I do think that more often than expected, the public might miss things like that, or, even more than that, rationalize them away as being 'necessary' if they don't have their noses rubbed in it.

But perhaps I'm just being too cynical/untrusting?

It's sort of like how many people there are who totally believe in an Absolute Monarchy, if it's run by an AI/"Guy who totally agrees with my every political stance." It's just...*waves hands*.

Whether it does enough depends, so.