- Pronouns
- They/Them
Welp, looks like we're doing the slash-and-burn approach for 3e Dragon-Bloods.
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- Spain
They key is this:
This implies that most ghosts can't cross a line of salt, regardless of who laid it down. You don't need a merit at all.
- Location
- New York City
No, placing down a line of salt is not a thaumaturgy ritual in 3e. It is placing a line of salt. Also thaumaturgy comes in 1-2 dot ritual forms, so there are not any 3 dot rituals, no.
Mechanically it is reflected as an innate weakness of Ghosts. Anybody can do it. If you need a citation, it's the first sidebar under the header for the Dead in the Antagonists section.
That Charm just makes such barriers placed down by Dragon-Blooded more effective.
Mechanically it is reflected as an innate weakness of Ghosts. Anybody can do it. If you need a citation, it's the first sidebar under the header for the Dead in the Antagonists section.
That Charm just makes such barriers placed down by Dragon-Blooded more effective.
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Seriously Sucal, know your salt.
- Location
- London, England
I have read that section, and no, placing a line of salt is something that people just know how to do. The closest Thaumaturgy comes to such things is actually being an exorcist and knowing how to banish ghosts back to the underworld.
Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Yeah, but in trying to pull back from that, 3e went waaaaay too far and made thaumaturgy a stupidly expensive innate merit that only lets you do one or two little things. This means that, instead of learning thaumaturgy like a skill and having it be actually useful, everything that was thaumaturgy before gets crammed into Essence 1/2 Charms and idiotic sidebars for specific enemies, while your "thaumaturge" is doing stupid shit like "making a talisman that breaks after one use" or "being able to talk to one specific river god after sacrificing a child" or whatever that godawful writeup was. Basically, there's a theoretical sweet spot in there, but they overshot it so hard might as well have deleted thaum from the game entirely.
- Pronouns
- she/her
It's unavoidable to some extent, but I'd rather play with that and allow them to have buddy cop stories with the Gold Faction members than add them to the list of people they want to kill.
Found a typo, bolded the correction.
- Location
- Ottawa
You're going to have a really hard time convincing me that a laser gun isn't magitech, no matter how laboriously it was crafted.
So, who was the rape-author?
Are they still writing, for Exalted or anything else?
I think the thaumaturgy stupidity is somewhat balanced by outright Sorcery being far more accessible over all, even for mortals, who were the people who primarily used thaumaturgy in 2e/2.5e; as opposed to needing to shell out an assload of xp to get Occult 5 and Essence 3, they only need Occult 3, presumably awakened Essence, and then purchase a shaping ritual as a 5-dot Merit.
I like thaumaturgy, but I must admit I can't see why would you need wide-spread use of fiddly little rituals when you could learn to cast actual spells.
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
I think you completely missed the point of the analogy used there. Replace 'lasgun' with 'sword' if you want.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, sure, dude? The conception of magitech that I was bringing up was divorced entirely from stuff like aesthetics because I think that's dumb and inevitably leads people into thinking that the more technological something looks, the more powerful or advanced it must be.
I don't think magitech should be in an aesthetic or particular capability because that unnaturally festoons the other Craft skills with limitations. I do agree in that the word magitech has implications that are unavoidable and what I'm proposing has a flaw in that respect.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
The main thing/difference between 2e sorcery and 3e sorcery, was that in 2e, the onus of 'deforming' the game/setting around the sorcerer lied with the Storyteller. If you are a sorcerer or a sorcerer is in the local environment, that is an impactful thing. This tied into Sorcerers, while not being 'rare', were also exceptional enough to be Notable.
Like, Infallible Messenger is one of the best one-way communication methods in the game. It's as secure as the sorcerer's loyalty/professional standards are, fast and nearly impossible to intercept or prevent. A kingdom that employs a court sorcerer just for sending messages is an amazing force multiplier.
Then you get into stuff like summoning automatons, raising fortifications in a few hours, knocking down castle doors or summoning plagues of bronze snakes. Sorcerers are WEIRD and DRAMATIC... but only if the Storyteller bothers to remember that.
In 3e, which is arguably a good design decision that is equally limp-wristed, is that it puts the onus of dramatic influence on the Workings System. By mechanizing the Big Things a sorcerer can do as complicated projects, it creates a mnemonic that players and storytellers can refer to. "Oh yeah you Made this thing so I remember it and can now track how it works with its traits."
That's not exactly a bad thing, but it lacks a certain kind of creative alchemy that the 2e approach aimed for. Note that 2e failed, but it's approach was not itself a bad idea.
As for why 2e thaumaturgy is hands down superior to 3e thaum, setting aside mechanical implementation on both. (2e thaum is too impractical to learn for PCs which makes people ignore it.)
Read this post by @Dif . Like it, appreciate it.
- Location
- Virginia
That's not the main way 3e makes sorcerers Weird. It's actually much more straightforward and cooler: when you become a sorcerer, you designate a spell as your "control spell", which gives it enhanced effects but also gives you some kind of personal weirdness. For example:
- ISoB as a control gives your skin a permanent bronze tint.
- Stormwind Rider generates winds when you feel strong emotions.
- DOoB turns your nails to sharp volcanic glass.
- Infallible Messenger makes little tells start appearing hidden in objects you spend time around (e.g. cherubs in corners of paintings).
3e thaumaturgy is garbage but "unusable mechanics for the sake of lore" is also garbage and shouldn't be done. Just tell us the lore.
- Location
- Ottawa
Not missed. Refused.
A fatal flaw, in fact.
If you want to divide Artifacts into unique wonders and mass-produced magic, whatever. But don't mangle the language by trying to tell me that this daiklave is magitech and that laser gun isn't.
The "the more technological something looks, the more powerful or advanced it must be" thing is not an inevitable result of vocabulary. It was a product of 2e's writing, and not a terribly difficult one to avoid.
Not a flaw. If you don't want to be made weird by your control spell, you shouldn't have to be.
- Location
- Virginia
Eh, I believe if you don't want to be made weird you shouldn't be a sorcerer.
Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
Ah, so you deliberately chose to ignore his argument because 'he used a specific example that I consider sci-fi and thus, not 'magic''.
Carry on then.
Jetstream
Ask me about my tyranny!
- Location
- Austin, TX
Ghostly existence sidebar, page 506
"GHOSTLY EXISTENCE
The dead rarely change much from their living days. Storytellers
can represent many ghosts with an appropriate
mortal Quick Character template, adding only an Essence
pool of (50 + [Essence x 10]) motes and a few ghostly
Charms. A typical ghost cannot cross a line of salt or
germinated grain. An especially powerful ghost may
cross such a line by spending one Willpower."
It's not a thaumaturgy ritual, it's just something you can do. By default. No special power required. DBs can put essence into it.
Edit: yeah, I misread. I'll own that. Leaving it here anyway.
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Azrael
Sakura Saber
- Location
- Throne of Heroes
That is literally what Maugan Ra said.
- Location
- Ottawa
Okay.
Other people want to play sorcerers without being made weird, at least in that specific way, and it'd be daft to stop them for your sake.
No.
I kinda thought this was self-expanatory, but apparently it's not, so...
The proposed definition of Magitech classifies things that are obviously magitech as not magitech. Therefore, it's a bad definition. I used the example given because it was there, but any number of other examples would serve just as well.
- Location
- Virginia
We're having some sort of non-argument here. There are all kinds of things that Exalted doesn't let you do; in fact the entire point of a system of rules is to tell you "no, you can't do that". Many of these rules say "no" because doing so makes some kind of statement about the setting (e.g. if your DB player asks "actually, can I go take that Solar charm?").
One thing reasonably well established in Exalted's setting - and that I like about it - is the mystical spookiness etc. of sorcery. A perfectly reasonable way to communicate this is with a rule forcing all sorcerers to have some kind of quirky weirdness.
(I also appreciate how the control spell weirdness becomes more imposing as you go to higher circles - because progressively unlocking these mysteries should set you further and further apart from everyone else.)
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- Location
- Ottawa
Yes, sometimes you have to tell people they can't do things. But you need a much better reason to say no than to say yes. And a minor thematic point is not a good enough reason to shut down a significant number of people.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Sure, but that's a ham-fisted approach to it and for good or ill, 1e and 2e expected more of its playerbase to achieve its end. It works, don't get me wrong, but like with a lot of my frustrations with 3e, it's inelegant.
Jetstream
Ask me about my tyranny!
- Location
- Austin, TX
So it is. I misread it as him not seeing anything to indicate that laying a line of salt is something people know how to do.