I mean, I mostly just want to have a Malfeas-favored Defiler who can become a hideous knockoff Sauron, dominating a dark horrible metropolis full of broken things-that-once-were-men who brutalize their untainted brethren and drag them screaming before the soul-withering presence of their Dark Lord. Whether or not that involves Heretical Charms that crudely stitch together chunks of SWLIHN, Malfeas, and/or Metagaos with the aid of equally-Byzantine prerequisite purchases isn't really a big issue for me. Likewise, @EarthScorpion's point about the city themes of Malfeas being something that the Yozi in question actively hates and suffers from meets up with that concept pretty nicely - it means the Infernal has become an even more dangerous version of the Demon City, endlessly lashing out at the world with the borrowed strength of an entire brace of Yozis to cause damage that even the King of Hell cannot replicate. It harkens back to the source material, where Sauron's aspect as the Great Eye represents the final degradation of his being, the end state of his fall from grace where he's just a screaming soul nailed to a point in the air, a king forced to send his thralls into battle instead of taking to the field himself.
Why make it a magical material at all? Just look at the ingredients of Bakelite - phenol (extracted from tar) and formaldehyde (we know Creation has it, from its mention in necrotech stuff).
Oh, it's beyond common easy production these days with Creation's industrial capacity, but no doubt the Shogunate made plenty of use of its (as per its kinda 1930s-ish look). It's "mundane" - it's just beyond what most people in Creation can make, though some alchemists can make unreliable quality bakelite by following Shogunate texts and trying to maintain the heat and pressure needed to avoid it becoming foamy and crumbly.
By (Yozi)'s Designs
Mins: Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Prerequisites: First (Yozi) Excellency
This charm permanently enhances its prerequisite. When the Warlock uses the appropriate First (Yozi) Excellency, the maximum number of dice that may be added is increased by the least of (Attribute), (Essence), or (Yozi's favored Attribute).
The fundamental concept of this Charm is unsalvageable. The dice caps of excellencies are caps for a reason. Exceeding them distorts the entire balance of the splat in the worst of ways. Do not do it. Scrap the concept, find something else to contribute. Preferably something that doesn't revolve around Bigger Numbers.
I mean, I mostly just want to have a Malfeas-favored Defiler who can become a hideous knockoff Sauron, dominating a dark horrible metropolis full of broken things-that-once-were-men who brutalize their untainted brethren and drag them screaming before the soul-withering presence of their Dark Lord. Whether or not that involves Heretical Charms that crudely stitch together chunks of SWLIHN, Malfeas, and/or Metagaos with the aid of equally-Byzantine prerequisite purchases isn't really a big issue for me. Likewise, @EarthScorpion's point about the city themes of Malfeas being something that the Yozi in question actively hates and suffers from meets up with that concept pretty nicely - it means the Infernal has become an even more dangerous version of the Demon City, endlessly lashing out at the world with the borrowed strength of an entire brace of Yozis to cause damage that even the King of Hell cannot replicate. It harkens back to the source material, where Sauron's aspect as the Great Eye represents the final degradation of his being, the end state of his fall from grace where he's just a screaming soul nailed to a point in the air, a king forced to send his thralls into battle instead of taking to the field himself.
When it comes down to it, the thing is that the system does not support that. Endless Desert Shintai gets around that by basically just being a combat form where you turn into Imotehp and drown things under sand while being a howling voice on the wind, but the same doesn't apply to "becoming a city".
So yes, I've already written Charmtech to do everything you describe, but you're not the city. You're just the mishappen lord who dwells at the heart of this twisted expanse of brass and basalt, who has to constantly cut off the stone and metal that tries to grow from them (and can give them a -10 mobility penalty if they don't keep cutting it away). The problem is the insistence on "turning into the city" rather than anything else.
When it comes down to it, the thing is that the system does not support that. Endless Desert Shintai gets around that by basically just being a combat form where you turn into Imotehp and drown things under sand while being a howling voice on the wind, but the same doesn't apply to "becoming a city".
The fundamental concept of this Charm is unsalvageable. The dice caps of excellencies are caps for a reason. Exceeding them distorts the entire balance of the splat in the worst of ways. Do not do it. Scrap the concept, find something else to contribute. Preferably something that doesn't revolve around Bigger Numbers.
This is fairly easy to illustrate. Solar Bob is fighting Infernal Steve. Both have 26 dice attack pools, parry DVs of 13 and are Essence 4. Solar Bob has a 55% chance to hit Infernal Steve, and Infernal Steve has a 55% chance to hit Solar Bob.
Let's give Infernal Steve another 4 dice. His pool is now 30, his DV is 15. Bob's chance to hit Steve is now 32%, and Steve's chance to hit Bob is 76%. Every time they exchange attacks, Bob will be hit twice as often as Steve. What was previously a basically even combat turns into a hilarious slaughter, as Bob will run out of motes and die while Steve has a comfortable half of his mote pool left, at least.
Don't break dice caps. Don't. Just don't. Don't do it with Charms. Don't do it with artifacts. Do not, in any way, touch the dice cap or allow it to be bypassed, or the game will quickly turn into an endless race of cap-breaking bonus stacking, because doing that lets you roflstomp all over the helpless faces of everyone who isn't.
Just for fun, Elder Bob has a dice pool of 40, minimum. Does anyone know what the probability of hitting DV 20 is for 26 dice? 1%. The dice pool's curve is extremely sensitive to bonuses. Do not mess with it. It can easily get that bad.
As for the imperfection, we don't know the Greater Imperfection of Malfeas, but since he is a city by definition... doesn't that make his perfect defense always applicable? Closing the imperfection of Malfeas seems like it could cause a hell of a lot of problems. Granted, he's locked up, but if he ever gets out... you now have a truly invincible Yozi free to vent his rage against Creation.
... that's sort of a thing with Primordials. There`s nothing two Essence dots higher than Cecelyne. SWLiHN has dissected and categorised everything in existence. Adorjan never stops moving. Kimbery literally is a Sea. All of them satisfy their imperfections and are chained by them; that's why you fight them by killing their Third Circles instead of trying to kung-fu duel the Ebon Dragon himself.
... that's sort of a thing with Primordials. There`s nothing two Essence dots higher than Cecelyne. SWLiHN has dissected and categorised everything in existence. Adorjan never stops moving. Kimbery literally is a Sea. All of them satisfy their imperfections and are chained by them; that's why you fight them by killing their Third Circles instead of trying to kung-fu duel the Ebon Dragon himself.
At which point you get flung through a portal in time Malfeas to the future darkness where his evil is law. And then you have to fight your way through endless waves of robots First Circle Demons and bounty hunters the occasional Second or Third Circle.
At which point you get flung through a portal in time Malfeas to the future darkness where his evil is law. And then you have to fight your way through endless waves of robots First Circle Demons and bounty hunters the occasional Second or Third Circle.
He'd do a great job as a Zenith, too. I kind of like little subversions like that, where an Exalt is given a Caste (or whatever a particular splat is calling their Caste) that isn't the very first thing you would associate them, but when you actually stop and think about it fits them pretty well, too. It's more interesting and real that way, adds more variety to the Castes and reminds us that they're not a bunch of stereotypes to pigeonhole a particular build into. Panther is also a good example of a Zenith who breaks the mold a little, but not quite as much.
Here's what Jack would be like, if he were a Solar in Creation (or Malfeas, I guess):
Jack isn't the evangelical "Praise the Sun!" preacher man. He's not an attention-seeker at all, really. He's perfectly restrained and dignified almost at all times (before 50 years with no results and no end in sight started to really, really wear down on him), and somehow that quiet restraint becomes more inspiring than any amount of dramatic flourishes or bold declarations or shining auras of golden glory.
See, Jack doesn't talk about doing good. He doesn't promise to do good. He doesn't posture about good he's done. If good deeds need doing, he does them, and that's it. End of story. There's a purity to that that can, to some people, be even more inspiring than some shining hero in golden armor flying down on a brilliant winged steed with a flaming horse and shouting "Praise the Sun!" Because when Jack does the right thing, it's not for ego, it's not for praise, it's not for power. When Jack does the right thing, you know he did it for no other reason than because it is right. Jack doesn't have to tell you how awesome the Unconquered Sun is (and by extension how awesome he is as the Sun's Chosen) because he's turned showing you how awesome the Unconquered Sun is into an art form.
I think the best example of what Solar Jack would be like is his encounter with Da Samurai. Da Samurai is all about talking and posturing and boasting. He thinks that by talking the talk, he's walking the walk. He thinks all you need to be a samurai (or, perhaps, an Exalt/Hero in general) is to be really cool and stylish and occasionally beat up a bad guy or two, and then you're entitled to act however you want because you're the big hero now. He sees being a hero as allowing you to get away with anything short of murder, where Jack tries his best to live the most virtuous life he can because his skills and position demand no less. He's a moderately sized fish in a tiny pond, and he's gotten it in his head that he's the baddest mofo around. He sees Jack's restraint and sees cowardice, sees his quietness as meekness, sees his patience as hesitation. Da Samurai is the epitome of just not getting it. Your average experienced Solar would just backhand this idiot and be on his merry way. If he was a bit more compassionate, he'd try to beat sense into him.
Jack doesn't do that, not really. He lectures him a bit, yeah, and he utterly humiliates him in what can't even be called a fight, but that's not what gets through to Da Samurai, and it's not what Jack intends to get through to him. Da Samurai was going to keep stubbornly insisting he was moments away from beating Jack, no matter how obviously false that was, because Jack was anathema to Da Samurai's entire worldview, his entire conception of himself and what he should be.
But when he sees Jack in action (really in action, not f*cking around with some dumb punk too blinded by himself to get the point of the whole exercise) that Da Samurai understands. Jack couldn't tell Da Samurai what being a samurai really meant, and he couldn't beat it into him. He had to show him, by example. And when he did, Da Samurai finally understood that he was looking at the real deal. More than that, he understood what the real deal actually was in the first place.
50 years later, Da Samurai has hung up his sword and become a simple bartender at the inn where Jack changed his life. He reminisces fondly about his days as "Da Samurai," and claims that Jack took something dear from him... but at the same time, the profound respect he has for Jack is obvious. What is it that Da Samurai lost? His ability to be satisfied with himself. Jack took away his ability to ever be complacent in his skills or his virtue, and because of that, he's spent the rest of his life keenly aware of exactly where he stands in the world... and it's not very high. Jack took away his delusions, and Da Samurai will always be grateful and angry at him for that.
Seriously, the slow pan up to this image of Jack, eyes closed and hand on his sword? That's how Da Samurai will always see Jack: an indomitable monolith that you can't view all at once, both sternly disapproving but keenly benevolent, at once ready to act but with the restraint to keep his blade in its sheath. He showed Da Samurai the true way of the samurai... and at the same time broke him of the delusion that he could ever attain it.
So yeah, that's my sleep-deprived fanboyish rant about what a Solar Jack would be like. Take it for... whatever the hell that's worth.
Like I pointed out previously, Matter 5 allows the creation of Orichalcum and Moonsilver.
Matter 5 also allows the creation of uranium and plutonium, and other magical materials with properties impossible for this world which decay in an instant, so alien they are to the sensibilities of the Chosen of the Maidens.
Just for fun, Elder Bob has a dice pool of 40, minimum. Does anyone know what the probability of hitting DV 20 is for 26 dice? 1%. The dice pool's curve is extremely sensitive to bonuses. Do not mess with it. It can easily get that bad.
There is one narrow situation where I can see capbreakers being 'balanced' in the sense that they don't turn everything to shit, and that's where the capbreaker lets you match the other guy's dice cap (i.e. you use their Attribute + Ability or whatever if you're fighting them) but such a charm would probably:
1. Have to be very finely tuned;
2. Probably become a guaranteed must-have for any enterprising Exalt.
Like I pointed out previously, Matter 5 allows the creation of Orichalcum and Moonsilver.
Matter 5 also allows the creation of uranium and plutonium, and other magical materials with properties impossible for this world which decay in an instant, so alien they are to the sensibilities of the Chosen of the Maidens..
Way back in days of yore, Exalted was supposed to be the prequel to Mage: the Ascension; our present is Creation's grim future, fallen is the Third Age, blah blah blah. It somehow snuck its way onto the back cover of the 2e corebook, too, but it stopped there, and for good reason.
Because there's no real point in forcing a connection between the two settings, especially given the utter nightmare that would be trying to make their mechanics play nice with each other. M:tAs has nothing to do with Exalted beyond a few draft notes that originated in the first edition of the latter, promptly went nowhere, and ultimately breathed their last in the form of a tacked-on reference in Return of the Scarlet Empress (shudder). You can certainly finagle some theoretical connections and parallels between chunks of one and chunks of the other, but if we're arguing that the rules of Exalted should be superceded by something from M:tAs, then things have gone rather awry.
@MJ12 Commando is playing a game I don't really understand here.
As far as I know, the only notable crafting Malfeas did was making the Games of Divinity. I sincerely think that the closest Malfeas Charms should be able to approach the Crafting system is by throwing a lot of dice at a project through his excellency and by browbeating crafters through his social charms. It's already got a suite of combat charms, resistance charms and social charms in the core charms and fan made charms expand these areas quite a bit. He doesn't need crafting charms, and the crafting charms people seem to want for him don't fit in his aesthetics.
It comes from his "This Charmset is what is used by people who want to be Sauron" theme. So it's there for grandiose, excessive, unsubtle projects - preferably made by taking something that already exists and corrupting/improving (delete as applicable) it. It touches on Malfeas' "creative destruction" stuff as he tears himself apart to make new layers, but it's not living in his city stuff. Malfeas conquers and pillages your city, melts down your treasures, and forges himself a new crown from it. Malfeas takes his slaves, and makes automata from them by tearing out their hearts and putting them in perfect brass bodies. Malfeas demolishes your city and builds a new city on the ruins, one more suited to his view of the world.
It comes from his "This Charmset is what is used by people who want to be Sauron" theme. So it's there for grandiose, excessive, unsubtle projects - preferably made by taking something that already exists and corrupting/improving (delete as applicable) it.
I feel like people often focus on Malfeas' theme of kingship, which is really Tyranny. He's not just a king, but also nuclear power, a cit, a devil and probably a few other things I'm forgetting.
