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General Exalted Thread

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GardenerBriareus said:
My loose guesstimate on how common I'd want them to be is... okay, any good-size city is going to have a few, even if it's just because that city's god taught it to a few of his underlings. Any country is going to have at least one or two people wander out of the formless nothing between the Places That Matter every couple of years that managed to work out TCS on their own; a good percentage end up quickly integrated into the existing power structures or killed, but still - you have the possibility of ghetto bandit Sorcerers who end up having to be put down by the regional authorities when they get the bright idea of using Storm of Obsidian Butterflies to shred the guards escorting a shipment of silver to/from one of the Places That Matter[1].
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I think this is more in line with, like, thaumaturges and shit (who really do need a lot more love). Thaumaturges have extensive training/experience, a clearly defined area (or areas) of specialties, and the ability to either be big fish in a little pond or a school of smaller fish in a bigger pond. And there's a lot of mutability there too so they encompass everything from "village wise woman who can ensure fertility in the land and people and has been known to read portents in the heavens" to "shady back alley exorcist with a big black hat and a Mysterious Past" to "pokemon trainer Realm Military Thaumaturge and his ensemble of loyal minor elementals" to "scarred old salty-dog whose body is covered in arcane tattoos and can whisper to the weather".

They're good for that one-off-bit-of-oddness that works really well in Creation; they help flavor the landscape and establish it as something weird and wonderful without radically destroying the paradigm. I mean it's Exalted and it's up there with 40k for "everyone ditched different parts of the setting they didn't like to make their own" but...enh. Like I said, thaumaturges need more love. Them and god-blooded/ghost-blooded/demon-blooded.
 
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TenfoldShields said:
I think this is more in line with, like, thaumaturges and shit (who really do need a lot more love). Thaumaturges have extensive training/experience, a clearly defined area (or areas) of specialties, and the ability to either be big fish in a little pond or a school of smaller fish in a bigger pond. And there's a lot of mutability there too so they encompass everything from "village wise woman who can ensure fertility in the land and people and has been known to read portents in the heavens" to "shady back alley necromancer with a big black hat and a Mysterious Past" to "pokemon trainer Realm Military Thaumaturge and his ensemble of loyal minor elementals" to "scarred old salty-dog whose body is covered in arcane tattoos and can whisper to the weather".

They're good for that one-off-bit-of-oddness that works really well in Creation; they help flavor the landscape and establish it as something weird and wonderful without radically destroying the paradigm. I mean it's Exalted and it's up there with 40k for "everyone ditched different parts of the setting they didn't like to make their own" but...enh. Like I said, thaumaturges need more love. Them and god-blooded/ghost-blooded/demon-blooded.
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Point. I should probably crank down the number of Sorcerers in my estimate and replace like 1/3 to 1/2 of them with other forms of "mortals who can do stuff."

My big point is that Sorcery should elicit some concern, and have a definite weight of superstition and mystery to it, but it's ultimately not that much more rare than powerful whateverblooded, or particularly kickass thaumaturges. What it should not be is yet another big spiky stick for big people to hit little people with, because Exalted already has several quadrillion varieties of spiky stick for the big people and honestly, those big people are entitled pieces of shit already.

Meanwhile, you have the big dangerous motherfuckers (on the "normal" power scale, so Exalts excluded) be people who combine two or more of the sources of power that are thaumaturgy/mutations, TMAs, Sorcery, inhuman ancestry, and investiture by an inhuman power.
 
TenfoldShields said:
I think this is more in line with, like, thaumaturges and shit (who really do need a lot more love). Thaumaturges have extensive training/experience, a clearly defined area (or areas) of specialties, and the ability to either be big fish in a little pond or a school of smaller fish in a bigger pond. And there's a lot of mutability there too so they encompass everything from "village wise woman who can ensure fertility in the land and people and has been known to read portents in the heavens" to "shady back alley necromancer with a big black hat and a Mysterious Past" to "pokemon trainer Realm Military Thaumaturge and his ensemble of loyal minor elementals" to "scarred old salty-dog whose body is covered in arcane tattoos and can whisper to the weather".

They're good for that one-off-bit-of-oddness that works really well in Creation; they help flavor the landscape and establish it as something weird and wonderful without radically destroying the paradigm. I mean it's Exalted and it's up there with 40k for "everyone ditched different parts of the setting they didn't like to make their own" but...enh. Like I said, thaumaturges need more love. Them and god-blooded/ghost-blooded/demon-blooded.
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Exactly. I love thaumaturges, because you can put them everywhere and they make things feel more magical. Yep, the blacksmith talks to the spirits and offers them things, and if you stop him from doing it then his iron is brittle. Yes, the sailor knows how to trap a favourable breeze in a knot and keep it in there as long as he feeds it a few drops of his own blood every Mercuryday. Yes, the dancer slightly calms everyone in the area when she dances one of her supernaturally efficacious dances taught to her by her mother. Yes, the occultist knows how to summon demons, and bribes them to serve as his familiars - and yes, the exorcist knows how to drive out demons.

Sorcerers are too big for that. Sorcerers are sorcerer-kings and powerful men, and even the ones who wander the earth are leaders of cults, or guardians of hidden holy places. And because they're rare they can be powerful and special without ruining the baseline of a world where the most effective common military technology is "A bunch of dudes together who are brave enough to not run away" and the most common device used for digging canals is "peasants".
 
Leingod said:
I mean, once you get to the Celestial stuff, yeah. In 3e the most deadly the Emerald Circle (i.e. the only one available to anyone who isn't a Celestial Exalt) gets is Death of Obsidian Butterflies, which, yeah, that can seriously f*ck up mooks, but it's not exactly "destroy a city," you know? Costs 15 motes and 1 Willpower and it's range seems to have been nerfed from what I remember.
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You are seriously understimating the power of a spell that can break whole army formations and turn the tide of battles.


EarthScorpion said:
River of Blood. Kills all plants within a mile of the river (or the aqueduct, or the fountain). Makes water supplies nearby useless for drinking. Draws hungry ghosts from all over to the blood river.
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Well, to be fair, i have always thought that River of blood is out if place in the first circle. Devastating a whole region with a single spell should be Adamant sorcery in my book, if anything.
 
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GardenerBriareus said:
My big point is that Sorcery should elicit some concern, and have a definite weight of superstition and mystery to it, but it's ultimately not that much more rare than powerful whateverblooded, or particularly kickass thaumaturges. What it should not be is yet another big spiky stick for big people to hit little people with, because Exalted already has several quadrillion varieties of spiky stick for the big people and honestly, those big people are entitled pieces of shit already.
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Well to be fair most of the time the big spiky sticks are hitting each other. Like...I guess where I'm going with this is that the origin of Sorcery is heavily involved in Exaltation stuff, it didn't well up from below like it ought to have in your reading but came down from above, with maybe-probably Mara teaching her captors a secret art (and her captors being the most powerful men and women in all the known world who had no general interest in letting it spread among the populace). The thing too to consider is that Sorcery was a poisoned gift as well. Implicitly intended to make practitioners vulnerable to infernalism and the promises of the Yozi. Something that, again, doesn't do anything if it's targeted to Some Guy in Province Whatever because literally who cares about Some Guy.

Sorcerers proliferating means too that thaumaturges and lesser weirdness is further diluted in importance because who cares about the scholarly warrior who runs a dojo that he defends with his elementals and trains those who endure his puzzles and trials yes i will make this a pokemon thing dammit when a county over chibi-Sauron is building a fuckoff big tower that's on fire all the time.

(It also means that because the Realm has the most wealth and rice and highest concentration of population it'll have the most and best trained Sorcerers so really in the end you're just handing the Scarlet an even bigger spiky stick to hit people with.)

EarthScorpion said:
Exactly. I love thaumaturges, because you can put them everywhere and they make things feel more magical. Yep, the blacksmith talks to the spirits and offers them things, and if you stop him from doing it then his iron is brittle. Yes, the sailor knows how to trap a favourable breeze in a knot and keep it in there as long as he feeds it a few drops of his own blood every Mercuryday. Yes, the dancer slightly calms everyone in the area when she dances one of her supernaturally efficacious dances taught to her by her mother. Yes, the occultist knows how to summon demons, and bribes them to serve as his familiars - and yes, the exorcist knows how to drive out demons.
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To build off of this ('cause I'm in full amateur ramble mode I guess :V) the Exalted are a drop in the bucket that is Creation and its denizens. The arrival of an Exalted in any given locale is a big deal even if they're just some Terrestrial on spring break from the Heptagram and most ordinary people would be extraordinarily (un)lucky to meet or even see more than one or two in their entire lives. In that environment a lady who runs an alchemist shop full of tinctures and vials and strange elemental extracts is a meaningful thing. And when Exalted (ie. PC's) do show up it's easy to have them organically engage with them in the pursuit of Whatever.
 
Is being able to create a new crop, i.e. "SUMMONING OF THE HARVEST" that important? One would think that a society would not be so close on the margins that a new harvest is worth so much...
 
Accelerator said:
Well, it depends. Most people would flee after seeing an army formation get shredded. You gotta get lots of morale. Also, if you really get moving, the survivors will cut the Sorcerer down.
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One army fleeing usually gives the victory to the other side, so that's probably a win for the side with the sorcerer. As for the sorcerer getting killed, well, hopefully they have some measure of self defense, plus an army backing them up. Sure, a well led Realm legion and/or Tiger Warriors can and will press through that, but those are also huge threats in setting.
Accelerator said:
Is being able to create a new crop, i.e. "SUMMONING OF THE HARVEST" that important? One would think that a society would not be so close on the margins that a new harvest is worth so much...
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Oh my god yes. Famine is an incredibly real threat, especially to well established societies. It's notable that many rebellions/revolutions start due to bad harvests. For instance, this minor event called the French Revolution was helped along in part due to grain shortages (which resulted in army units clashing with mobs). Basically, remember economics: if you have less of something without demand being reduced, the price of that thing goes up. So during famines the price of food goes up, and for Bronze age civilizations the cost of food is going to be a significant portion of income normally. People will go hungry, which means tensions rise, and their anger is likely to be directed mostly at the state/wealthy. With predictable results.

There's a reason that historically that most people farmed, and that wealth and power was determined by holding property, and it wasn't because people were dumb.

Major Edit: It completely slipped my mind, but another example to show how critical avoiding or managing famine and the like are, one of the causes for the Syrian revolution that's still currently ongoing was agricultural issues (stemming from climate changes in the region).
 
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EarthScorpion said:
I don't follow.

A Dragonblooded doesn't need to twist themselves into a new class of being just to learn sorcery. All they need is Enlightenment 4 and to undergo the Trials of Sorcery. This is for beings that can reach Enlightenment 3, but can't reach Enlightenment 4.

A Dragonblooded sorcerer is a Dragonblooded who can use sorcery. They're weird, but only in the way all sorcerers are a bit weird for having gone through the Trials of Sorcery. From a certain point of view, they already had their dramatic transformation when their blood awoke. They're not a human who has to render them something else just to grasp the understanding of essence needed to practice sorcery.

Or are you asking if a Dragonblooded could try for sorcerous ascension to practice Sapphire Circle sorcery? Because to that, I'm not going to say it's impossible. I'm just going to say that would involve "not being a Dragonblooded anymore" and that means you lose all your DB Charms and benefits.

Hey, you know, the Yozis are offering a path for it already! All your Dragonblood has to do is to sacrifice their free will, and accept their place as the servant of the makers of the world. They'll totally get Sapphire Circle Sorcery out of that!

(There are no easier paths than that, and most of them are equally unpleasant in the "downsides" column)
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I notice that under this model, it is totally possible for Celestial exalts to do the same thing. Like, if a Lunar or Sidereal decides that losing significant portions of their power is worth gaining the Adamant Circle. Or a Solar who choose to become a legit immortal being of sunlight over staying as the more powerful but merely long-lived Solar exalt.

I imagine that during the First Age, pulling off a stunt like this tends to generate a lot dramas over issues of inheritance of power and properties due to the inevitable appearance of their shard's inheritors.

Such entities that hail from the First Age would make a kickass mentor/allies/antagonists for PCs, but they're probably all dead from the Usurpation/Contagion/Balorian Crusade/etc.

EarthScorpion said:
I consider any attempt to make sorcery into an equaliser to be laughable - because as far as I'm concerned, sorcery is the power of privilege. Sorcery is the means by which the powerful (which includes more knowledgeable) turn their power into more power. If you want to be an equalist, work hard, enlighten your essence, and learn appropriate low-Enlightenment Charms by hook or crook.

Sorcery is not that. Sorcery is the king who rules the land and orders it to rise up and crush men; the demonologist with hellish servants who obey his every order with all enthusiasm; the wanderer covered in sacred tattoos who turns your blood to burning oil; the general who orders all his men to raise their blades and fight and as long as he keeps his arms aloft his soldiers never break or flee.

I mean, just look at sorcery spells. A lot of them are literally biblical in scope. When every city has multiple people who can part the Red Sea or turn rivers to blood, shit has got pretty wack, yo.

So, no, there is not a sorcerer in every town - or even every city. Because a sorcerer is a man who can slay an entire formation with a gesture, deadly glass butterflies scything out to lay waste to a formation. A sorcerer is a man who can ensure that the crops come in no matter the drought and can squeeze an extra harvest out of a field even in midwinter. A sorcerer is a man who can lay down some sticks, and walk around the town - and like that, three story walls spring up from the ground.

Sorcerers are not D&D wizards. They do not need to be there to run the local magic shop. Sorcerers matter at the strategic level. They warp the setting around them. And thus they must remain somewhat rare and unusual. Because for all the complaints about "mortals mattering", making sorcerers that common means you've actually just made it so sorcerers matter. You've just made it so warfare is getting pretty damn Napoleonic, because a sorcerer is like an artillery battery. And now you've massively cut down on the range of people who can lead a nation, because you need to be a sorcerer or have a sorcerer on call to counter the enemy's sorcerer.

No, by keeping the number of sorcerers down, you can actually have viable nations that don't have to worry about a sorcerer-gap against their rivals.
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I suppose this means that any polity which hosts an actual school of sorcery is pretty much a superpower then.
 
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Alasnuyo said:
I notice that under this model, it is totally possible for Celestial exalts to do the same thing. Like, if a Lunar or Sidereal decides that losing significant portions of their power is worth gaining the Adamant Circle. Or a Solar who choose to become a legit immortal being of sunlight over staying as the more powerful but merely long-lived Solar exalt.
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Solars cannot - at least not via this path. Your nature as a Solar is not something blocking you getting the Adamant Circle, so you cannot sacrifice it to get the Adamant Circle.

As for other Celestials... there's no indication that there's a path for them save the "offer yourself to the Yozis and get the power of sorcery in return for that self-sacrifice" (the one which resembles canon akuma) or the "kill yourself and become a deathlord directly by immediately taking up a fragment of the Neverborn" route. And note both of these ways involve getting involved with Primordial sources of power.

But if any Celestial does that, they'd be an Incarna/fetich level being with a specific focus around Sorcery. If a Sidereal did it, they might literally become the Maiden of Sorcery. If a Lunar did it... well, there's always a chance one did already. And then Luna ate them and they became part of Luna and Luna became part of them; one of her many faces; the Sorcerer Of The Night Sky.

But the default assumption is that it's never been done.

Alasnuyo said:
I suppose this means that any polity which hosts an actual school of sorcery is pretty much a superpower then.
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Any polity which can host a full-time school of sorcery has enough Exalts that it's worth it, or a large enough population that they have enough E3 mortals to be worth teaching them. So, yeah, superpower.

Lesser major powers "merely" have a school of thaumaturgy with a sorcerer on staff who can teach anyone with the potential to do it. If you can still get a few sorcerers a generation... yeah, the Realm and Lookshy might be able to fuck you up because they have more sorcerers and their sorcerers are Exalts so they have More Motes Than You, but you're still the regional big fish.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Solars cannot - at least not via this path. Your nature as a Solar is not something blocking you getting the Adamant Circle, so you cannot sacrifice it to get the Adamant Circle.
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Oh. I was actually kinda assuming that there were some overlap between sorcerous ascension rituals and more generic 'create a non-exalt E10 entity' rituals using the caster's own hun and E10 po as Resources. Assuming that any Solars were willing to give up massive amounts of power for a benefit (immortality) that might not even pan out.
 
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Alasnuyo said:
Oh. I was actually kinda assuming that there were some overlap between sorcerous ascension rituals and more generic 'create a non-exalt E10 entity' rituals using the caster's own hun and E10 po as Resources. Assuming that any Solars were willing to give up massive amounts of power for a benefit (immortality) that might not even pan out.
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Nah, this is specifically you loopholing sorcery when you're one short of the min requirements for it and capped out, going "ah ha, so it's my nature as a X that's stopping me achieving sorcery, therefore if I Sacrifice it I can become a sorcerer while no longer being X".
 
I doubt anyone cares, but...the first ten songs of the Ex3 Music Suite are out.

GardenerBriareus said:
Point, but your average mortal, the kind that doesn't have Sorcery or shitloads of thaumaturgic enhancement/mutations or TMA or something to juice them up? Background scenery is honestly a bit generous. They effectively exist to do the bidding of whatever lower-middle-rank-or-better god, demon, ghost, elemental, raksha, or Exalt walks up and takes ownership of them.

Exalted is already a setting where Wammu's ethos that "only the strong are real" rings uncomfortably true. The common man is utterly meaningless in the face of the various uberbeings roaming Creation, and potentially even his own mind and beliefs aren't safe from being overwritten at the whim of such beings. He's nothing but a slave (or quite possibly, a lump of untapped resources) for the actual people that matter in the world that hasn't been officially claimed yet.
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Nah, that's just bad fanon. Mortals still have full human agency, even if they can't go head-to-head with the Exalted in their areas of specialty.

Also, the power curve is smoother than that. Low-end spirits are generally not far from human limits. And supernatural beings have their areas of competence, just like mortals; the average Solar PC is worse at ironwork than the average mortal blacksmith.
 
Yes it does.

Even under the ridiculous 2e social system, supernatural social influence can be resisted with willpower, violence, or just running away. And in the 3e system, social characters are limited heavily by the Intimacies of their targets.

There are ways around the ways around social influence, but they're not trivial. The existence of Hypnotic Tongue Technique actually compromises the agency of Exalted's mortals rather less than the existence of Dominate Person compromises the agency of D&D's low-level characters.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Nah, this is specifically you loopholing sorcery when you're one short of the min requirements for it and capped out, going "ah ha, so it's my nature as a X that's stopping me achieving sorcery, therefore if I Sacrifice it I can become a sorcerer while no longer being X".
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I am reminded of the first age solar that modified herself so much that her own exaltation abandoned her.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
the average Solar PC is worse at ironwork than the average mortal blacksmith.
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This is false, though.

The average mortal blacksmith is going to have around six dice, maybe eight for an exceptional one. A Solar with str 3 and craft 0 reaches 5 just by applying a stunt.* A solar with craft 1 gets an excellence and reaches ten dice easily.


*(And for the record, i think that Exalts shouldn't be excepted from untrained penalties, but as per RAW, they are).
 
Most Solars don't have any dots in Craft (blacksmithing), you don't get an excellency just for having a dot unless you favour it, and mortals can stunt too.
 
grommile said:
Full human agency doesn't mean much when a Zenith(oid) starts making Social rolls.
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There's a sharply limited number of Zeniths, which are outnumbered by all the nations and city-states that are run by mortal leadership by several orders of magnitude. In Creation, the actual percentage of exalts compared to mortals is outlandishly small and the percentage of exalts that want to rule things is much smaller than the number of exalts there are. Mortals can go their whole lives without seeing an exalt or spirit. Just because Mortal Agency can't withstand the direct application of social magic by an exalt, that doesn't mean it doesn't mean much.

That's like saying the shelter from a home doesn't mean much when faced with a tsunami or a nuclear bomb. It's true, but it glosses over the fact that most homes aren't meant to protect against something like that.
 
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