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General Exalted Thread

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WyldCard4 said:
Of note, most modern first world people don't have as many children as they want.

Australians want more children than they have, so are we in the midst of a demographic crisis?

I think Dragon-Blooded education is really going to be cheaper per-capita than real world high class education. Dragon-Bloods learn at Exalted speeds post-Exaltation and pre-Exaltation can be taught by mortals just fine. With DB Charms an average Dragon-Blood is going to have a lot more wealth than an equivalent mortal noble would have. Pregnancy is inherently less debilitating and dangerous for Exalts than for mortals. Most of the resource constraints that keep modern fertility so low are gone in the Realm. Most of the constraints that kept historical growth rates down are also gone for DBs, as they have access to Medicine Charms and the ability to supply plenty of food through either their own abilities or the time honored practice of making mortals do it.

Certainly I would not expect factory farming of DB babies or any such shit, but I'd expect the population growth to be fairly high and steady for any group with the traits possessed by Dragon-Bloods.
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I find the assumption that DB's cost less to educate strange:

1. Dragon-Blooded learn just as normal until Exaltation, I.E. until at least age 10, with most Exalting only in their teens. In other words, most of their most crucial and formative years are spent as mortals, and so they will learn like mortals until Exaltation, at the same cost.


2. After they Exalt, well, they're Exalted. You're not having them study the same material as mortal students, just faster. Even when a mortal and an Exalt go to the same course in the House of Bells, in the rare case that a mortal gets to go there, the mortal and the Exalt will have a different learning experience: the mortal will be training his mundane fighting skills and memorize conventional tactics, while the Exalt will be training in the use of combat and War Charms. Not merely developing those Charms, but also training in how to use them best. This is training that the DB will have to take, but the mortal does not, because it's not relevant for him to train in abilities he does not possess.

This is before going into things like accounting for Anima Flux, the legendary tempers of the Dragon-Blooded, or the fact that Exalts are more likely to train abilities to 4 and 5, which requires quite a bit more than simply learning the same material as a mortal, but faster, as you're looking at better teachers, access to more advanced study materials, and potentially time to train and advance personal enlightment for optimal use of Charms in the relevant field. You don't train to 4 or 5 by learning the same material and from the same teachers as everyone else who got a 2 or 3, otherwise the school would be pumping people with abilities at 4 or 5.


If you are sending an Exalt and a mortal to the same training, then you'll get a mortal and an Exalt trained to mortal levels. Yes, the Exalt will finish his training earlier and at probably reduced effort, thus less cost. This does not mean that you have a well-trained Exalt, it means you have two well-trained mortal-level professionals, one of whom happens to be an Exalt.

To train an Exalt means to train an Exalt. The fact the Realm adds all the trappings of nobility to the matter only helps to increase the financial burden here.
 
Farming doesn't fit cleanly into any ability, but Craft fits as well as anything. Craft's whole many-abilities-in-one schtick works well for random extra skills, after all.
 
Survival is the Ability for farming and agriculture, barring a few Thaumaturgy procedures which undoubtedly require Survival rolls themselves. Because it covers all of what "farming" entails, living off the land and adapting your surroundings and the nearby plant/animal life within it to better sustain human habitation. You are not exactly "building" a farm so much as using the lay of the land for plotting out a suitable growing environment, finding the right soil with the least amount of local pests, closet to the nearest clean water supply, with pleasant yearly weather and a solid foundation for building a house or barn.

A farmer has to train/tame their own animals, feed and house them, set traps for foxes and coyotes raiding the chickens or young livestock, and for rabbits and vermin in the fields, identify harmful weeds choking their crops out, etc. And that's before you get into the basics of cultivating schedules by time of year, inter-breeding hybrid stock to better adapt to local climate or bring out particular traits, learning what parts of which crops are edible and which are not (like the poisonous leaves of rhubarb, or cashew shells), which crops must be rotated after another is harvested, and so on.

All of this easily falls under Survival, if you cast it as more of a "group" Ability, rather than just one person pursuing their inner hermit.
 
There's certainly overlap, especially for primitive farming, but I think you're overstating it. Knowing how to survive in the wild doesn't make you a good farmer; many high-Survival characters would be downright bad at farming.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
There's certainly overlap, especially for primitive farming, but I think you're overstating it. Knowing how to survive in the wild doesn't make you a good farmer; many high-Survival characters would be downright bad at farming.
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In theory, yes. In practice, this is a game system that involves simplification. You can learn Weaponry 5 and thus be good at a Bo Staff despite never having seen it.

Just add some sort of "Farming" Specialty onto a character with their Survival, or whatnot.
 
The Laurent said:
In theory, yes. In practice, this is a game system that involves simplification. You can learn Weaponry 5 and thus be good at a Bo Staff despite never having seen it.

Just add some sort of "Farming" Specialty onto a character with their Survival, or whatnot.
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Farming is not a use of an ability. Farming is a culture involving many people using many abilities.

A peasant uses Survival to tell if his plants are healthy, to plant and harvest and more. The village headman uses bureaucracy to determine how much seed needs to be sown. The blacksmith crafts the tools the peasants use. When it's time to develop a new rice patty, the peasants all assist the headman in digging ditches for irrigation and making walk-able paths. When a field needs to be plowed, strong men or livestock use athletics to pull the plows.

There's probably enough technicalities that I missed to fill a book or two on how people feed themselves, but this is a start.
 
GeneralChaos said:
Farming is not a use of an ability. Farming is a culture involving many people using many abilities.

A peasant uses Survival to tell if his plants are healthy, to plant and harvest and more. The village headman uses bureaucracy to determine how much seed needs to be sown. The blacksmith crafts the tools the peasants use. When it's time to develop a new rice patty, the peasants all assist the headman in digging ditches for irrigation and making walk-able paths. When a field needs to be plowed, strong men or livestock use athletics to pull the plows.

There's probably enough technicalities that I missed to fill a book or two on how people feed themselves, but this is a start.
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You're not wrong, exactly, but that's getting way too granular for most gameplay. When you forge a sword, you generally don't make a separate Athletics roll to work the bellows, you roll Craft and call it good enough. Plus, that's an extremely broad definition of farming - most people wouldn't file the village smith under that header.
 
Vanigo said:
You're not wrong, exactly, but that's getting way too granular for most gameplay. When you forge a sword, you generally don't make a separate Athletics roll to work the bellows, you roll Craft and call it good enough. Plus, that's an extremely broad definition of farming - most people wouldn't file the village smith under that header.
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Sure, all of this is happening in the background by NPCs, but it gives the PCs opportunities to enhance farming in many different ways, from better bureaucratic planning to better tools to better planting systems.

Farming is the thing that everyone's lives revolved around, back in Earth's Bronze Age. If you weren't growing food for yourself, someone else was and you were getting their supplies by force of arms, by trade, by virtue of being a dependent.

Granted, Creation has to put more priority on not being brutally murdered by whatever spirit or exalt or raksha is in town this week, but food is still really, really important. It deserves more than being a single specialty in a less relevant ability.
 
GeneralChaos said:
Granted, Creation has to put more priority on not being brutally murdered by whatever spirit or exalt or raksha is in town this week, but food is still really, really important. It deserves more than being a single specialty in a less relevant ability.
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It's also really, really boring. Both as a tabletop RPG activity, and IRL.
You might as well state that administrative work deserves more than being pigeonholed under bureaucracy.

Even War gets mostly shoved under one ability, when raising and running an army in pre-modern times required equal parts politics, bureaucracy, teaching and medicine, with actual combat being the very last thing on the list.
Abstraction is necessary.
 
uju32 said:
It's also really, really boring. Both as a tabletop RPG activity, and IRL.
You might as well state that administrative work deserves more than being pigeonholed under bureaucracy.

Even War gets mostly shoved under one ability, when raising and running an army in pre-modern times required equal parts politics, bureaucracy, teaching and medicine, with actual combat being the very last thing on the list.
Abstraction is necessary.
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I don't know; you could probably make a pretty cool game about running a farming village in a bronze-age fantasy world. You could even set it in Creation. You'd have to do a good job of glossing over the boring parts and focusing on the interesting decisions, so there'd be tons of timeskips, but I'm sure it's doable.

However, Exalted is not that game. It isn't even a very good base for that game, since it would revolve around large numbers of people who are good at one or two things, and their competence in other fields is largely irrelevant; it would need more mechanical focus on the village and less on individuals.
 
Vanigo said:
I don't know; you could probably make a pretty cool game about running a farming village in a bronze-age fantasy world. You could even set it in Creation. You'd have to do a good job of glossing over the boring parts and focusing on the interesting decisions, so there'd be tons of timeskips, but I'm sure it's doable.
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You mean Stardew Valley isn't an Exalted Modern farming community? The mines house various elementals of Earth and Fire and opens up to the underworld on lower levels. Wood elementals live in the woods. The community worships a local god of farming. Thaumaturgical rituals are performed to placate local wilderness spirits and bring good harvest and to capture lightning and grow crystals. Small quirks in fate manifest themselves in blue chickens (with Infernal interference leading to Void chickens). An Exalted farm wouldn't be complete without an unusual farm animal and various local festivals.

edit: lets not forget that the Guild JojaMart threatens your pastoral way of life.
 
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uju32 said:
It's also really, really boring. Both as a tabletop RPG activity, and IRL.
You might as well state that administrative work deserves more than being pigeonholed under bureaucracy.

Even War gets mostly shoved under one ability, when raising and running an army in pre-modern times required equal parts politics, bureaucracy, teaching and medicine, with actual combat being the very last thing on the list.
Abstraction is necessary.
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I treat running a military organization as a mix of Bureaucracy, general social skills, and War. I don't force my players to handle every aspect - because that can become boring too easily, so they can pass off grunt work to NPCs - but ignoring logistics entirely would involve losing plot options (you need to acquire weapons for your troops, where do you go?) and ignoring the need to actually manage subordinates involves ignoring entire NPCs-worth of plot hook opportunities. There's also jockeying for position to get good gigs, political intrigue/fallout from your operations, and more that I don't feel like typing because it's getting late.

Similarly, including all of the component actions involved in farming - even if the players delegate to NPCs for a lot of it - creates opportunities to create adventures.
 
veekie said:
Considering laying eggs is not a normal Dragonblooded feature and has been mentioned about never, I'd file that under weird sorcery shit
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it wasn't a serious suggestion. just that they didn't actually need to do the harem thing with the first couple generations if gia instead swapped out the mamal pregnancy thing rather than padding it out to 15 months for some reason. if first age dragonbloods laid eggs they'd have reproduced much faster than just making them horny and skewing the ratio to lessen the female bttleneck
WhatIf said:
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wait...rabbits are the only animal that can't reproduce? and you only get it's foot rather than plucking it's wool with high friendship...what?
 
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asdfasdf said:
it wasn't a serious suggestion. just that they didn't actually need to do the harem thing with the first couple generations if gia instead swapped out the mamal pregnancy thing rather than padding it out to 15 months for some reason. if first age dragonbloods laid eggs they'd have reproduced much faster than just making them horny and skewing the ratio to lessen the female bttleneck
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Please stop.

Stop
 
DestinyPlayer said:
I mean, it wouldn't be the weirdest thing you can find in Creation. Egg-laying Terrestrials are par for the course tbh.
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No they absolutely are not. They're not literally Dragons in any way. They are spiritually draconic, in the spiritual role of dragons in the setting. And dragons, in setting, do not hatch from eggs. They are the final stage of spiritual apotheosis. Not giant reptiles who reproduce as such.

Accelerator said:
Perhaps.

But i would expect exaltation to burn those mutations out
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This is also not how Exaltations work. If a Sorcerer Dragonblooded turns themselves into a bizarre bird thing, they should totally lay eggs. Because weird old sorcerer. And then their child may or may not lay eggs, it's up to the player!

(crazy Dragonblooded bird thing has actually come up in my games, fun fact. Sorcery is fun!)
 
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Kaiya said:
This is also not how Exaltations work. If a Sorcerer Dragonblooded turns themselves into a bizarre bird thing, they should totally lay eggs. Because weird old sorcerer. And then their child may or may not lay eggs, it's up to the player!

(crazy Dragonblooded bird thing has actually come up in my games, fun fact. Sorcery is fun!)
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Uh, i meant that dragonblooded would not lay eggs. Unless they deliberately alter themselves to be so.
 
Accelerator said:
Uh, i meant that dragonblooded would not lay eggs. Unless they deliberately alter themselves to be so.
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Or are the product of someone who did so. Like...you ever play Dark Souls 3? There's this dude who turned himself into a crazy lizard-dragon mutant as the centuries wore on. That's the sort of thing where you might get a kid who lays eggs. Because they're from an insane sorcerous bloodline that resorted into a weird bird Dragonblooded who has sex normally but also lays eggs. Just them Exalting I wouldn't say would remove that, unless it's specifically 2e which had some boring clause for "Celestial Exaltations reset you to baseline human". Which is boring, because weird sorcery mutants are totally a thing that should happen.
 
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