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General Exalted Thread

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Wondrous Transmutation
Price: 1-3 dot hearthstone; Circle: Emerald; Anchor: Artefact 2+ (Alchemy equipment)
Target: Object or Character
Spell Duration: Instant; Casting Duration: 12 Hour Ritual
Essence Aspect: Special; Favoured Aspect: Special

It is said that the Anathema devalued hard work with their magics, turning lead into gold at a whim. Modern sorcerers know such feats are indeed possible with the correct tools. Through careful mixes of acids, ground-up hearthstones, salts and stranger reagents, the sorcerer-alchemist can transform base materials into other things.

Ritual: The sorcerer requires access to a workshop set up for alchemy, as well as a thematically appropriate Artefact which can be used as part of their ritual. The ritual involves the careful dissolution and rendering down of a hearthstone in a way which does not violently unleash the trapped essence, followed by the application of the reagent to the object or character that the sorcerer wishes to transmute. The substances a sorcerer can create are dependent on the essence aspect of the hearthstone used as the price. For example, Solar essence is required to produce gold, while Fire essence can be made to make rubies and Wood essence make emeralds. Necrotic hearthstones are required to make the strange wonders of the lands of the Dead, while hellish essence is needed for the ores of the Demon Realm.

Mechanics: This spell permits the sorcerer to transmute the composition of an object or a character to a single homogenous substance. The sorcerer rolls their (Intelligence + Craft (Water)) at a difficulty equal to the (1+ the Resources value of the final object), paying the Price of a one-dot hearthstone. As a result, it is much easier for an alchemist to turn lead into brass rather than gold. He may not create mundane substances with a Resources value greater than 5. He might be able to transmute a boulder to tin or iron, but he cannot turn it into solid gold.

If he attempts to make a magical material with this spell, such an act is Difficulty 6 and has a Price of a three dot hearthstone. This creates an amount of the magical material worth Resources 4. Additionally, the magical material forms as tiny fragments within the transmuted object, which must be carefully purified and cleansed with thaumaturgical ritual before they can be used for anything. Attempting to pass off unpurified transmuted jade as mined jade is a capital offence in the Realm, due to the dangerously unpredictable effects that it can cause.

Effects: With a success, the alchemist has successfully transmuted the object into a form as described above. On a failure, the object is still transmuted, but the end product is impure dross of the Storyteller's choice. Should he fail the roll by three successes or more, he experiences a dramatic failure producing something hazardous or otherwise unexpected. Very rarely such a failure can still have productive results - yellow jade is an example of such an anomaly.

If used against a living target, the character must be kept Inactive and restrained throughout the ritual. The results are resolved as a Shaping attack against the target. Mortal characters die instantly as they are transmuted. Enlightened characters take (sorcerer's Essence) dice of aggravated damage a tick which ignores armoured soak, until they either die, the spell is countermagiced, or they are freed from their restraints. Damage inflicted by this spell can inflict disabling wounds even against characters who heal as Exalts, with the Crippling injuries representing extremities or organs that were alchemically transmuted. Otherwise, the same conditions of success and failure apply as above. The origins of more than one behemoth come from a failed alchemy experiment.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
Wondrous Transmutation
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Looks good at the face of it, though a couple of thoughts-
  • For one, it seems like an 'easier' version of the already existing thaumaturgical method to transmute materials, so I have to ask if you intended to replace that entirely for thematic or balance reasons.
  • I think the cost relies on an assumption of how you handle/houserule hearthstones, so I have to ask first if you intended for people to use 2e style manses with this spell.
  • Having-re-read the spell just as I was writing this post, you did underscore how much you 'get' when transmuting Magical Materials, which I had concerns about.
  • I'm also going to assume that like most sorcery, you can't enhance the int+craft roll with an Excellency or other Active Charm use.
 
Shyft said:
Looks good at the face of it, though a couple of thoughts-
  • For one, it seems like an 'easier' version of the already existing thaumaturgical method to transmute materials, so I have to ask if you intended to replace that entirely for thematic or balance reasons.
  • I think the cost relies on an assumption of how you handle/houserule hearthstones, so I have to ask first if you intended for people to use 2e style manses with this spell.
  • Having-re-read the spell just as I was writing this post, you did underscore how much you 'get' when transmuting Magical Materials, which I had concerns about.
  • I'm also going to assume that like most sorcery, you can't enhance the int+craft roll with an Excellency or other Active Charm use.
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In order:
  • No - this doesn't scale like the thaumaturgical methods. This is effectively more expensive, but more flexible. It's basically designed for PC (or PC-equivalent) use, because it's limited to sorcerers and requires heartstones to be consumed by the casting.
  • It is not designed for 2e hearthstones (it's designed for hearthstones as oil). However, it is compatible with the 2e stuff, because as per the core it takes 1 month for a hearthstone to regenerate after being destroyed. In my things, a manse generates (Rating) dots of hearthstones per season. One month/one season to get a replacement stone are broadly compatible values.
  • Mmm. Yes. That "Resources 4" amount is explicitly balanced so you're better off making non-magical-materials and using them to get the money to buy the magical material... if you can get your hands on it. But if you can't, this means your PC has a way to get that small amount of adamant or whatever that they need - while being unable to scale up production enough to dilute the rarity.
  • Correct, yes. Honestly, I do kind of get irked what Excellencies do to the scaling required for magical stuff (that mortals can't access anyway). Since this is sorcery, though, it means that the given difficulties are designed so a very skilled alchemist can moderately-reliably make small amounts of whatever magical material they want, given access to the proper hearthstones, and less skilled alchemists can make a living off a manse they control. Consider, for example, the alchemist who controls a 1-dot Wood manse - he only needs a base pool of 6 dice to be able to (with WP spend) be able to make Resources 4 a season from his alchemy once a season half the time. And with the Wood manse, he can do things like turn sand into saffron, or pebbles into emeralds.
 
I really enjoyed reading the Gorgon entry in arms of the chosen. I've had a very difficult time settling on a particular weapon 'look' for my slayer in a game, but this one is right up my alley.
 
Also another question @EarthScorpion - how is this 'artifact 2+ alchemy lab' supposed to work? And as an extension of that question, do you intend for anchors to be focused on satisfying 'applicability of action' or do they have tool and-or mechanical bonuses on the alchemy roll?
 
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Shyft said:
Also another question @EarthScorpion - how is this 'artifact 2+ alchemy lab' supposed to work? And as an extension of that question, do you intend for anchors to be focused on satisfying 'applicability of action' or do they have tool and-or mechanical bonuses on the alchemy roll?
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The "Artefact 2+ (Alchemy equipment)" is just there to restrict the forms of permitted Artefact - you need to be able to justify its use in alchemy. So, for example, barring a good justification (for example, that you're inducing crystalisation on your daiklaive's blade) a sword isn't an acceptable anchor, but on the other hand something like the Crucible of Tarim or a magic mortar and pestle or those gloves that glow red hot and let you forge metal with your bare hands would be.

As for the other question, the base function of an Anchor is to serve as a prerequisite making the action applicable in the first place. However, that doesn't disable any utility that the Anchor may provide - a magic furnace that provides benefits for working with fire-aspected materials would still enhance working with fire hearthstones, for example.
 
EarthScorpion said:
The "Artefact 2+ (Alchemy equipment)" is just there to restrict the forms of permitted Artefact - you need to be able to justify its use in alchemy. So, for example, barring a good justification (for example, that you're inducing crystalisation on your daiklaive's blade) a sword isn't an acceptable anchor, but on the other hand something like the Crucible of Tarim or a magic mortar and pestle or those gloves that glow red hot and let you forge metal with your bare hands would be.

As for the other question, the base function of an Anchor is to serve as a prerequisite making the action applicable in the first place. However, that doesn't disable any utility that the Anchor may provide - a magic furnace that provides benefits for working with fire-aspected materials would still enhance working with fire hearthstones, for example.
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Gotcha, and extending this out into more general Anchor discussion- I've been generally under the impression that anchors are 'tapped' for the duration of spells or workings (however those workings are implemented). So logically, if you have an indefinite spell/working, the anchor is tapped indefinitely as well. The example Aleph described is like saying 'you can tell your spirit ally to work the fields for a season, or use sorcery to do it, but the ally is still 'tapped' for that season'.

Is that accurate to the intention?
 
Shyft said:
Gotcha, and extending this out into more general Anchor discussion- I've been generally under the impression that anchors are 'tapped' for the duration of spells or workings (however those workings are implemented). So logically, if you have an indefinite spell/working, the anchor is tapped indefinitely as well. The example Aleph described is like saying 'you can tell your spirit ally to work the fields for a season, or use sorcery to do it, but the ally is still 'tapped' for that season'.

Is that accurate to the intention?
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Pretty much. The intent is that, essentially, Backgrounds take the place of motes for long-term commitments in such cases. A sorcerer isn't tying up his mote pool by casting a spell that gives good weather for his kingdom, but he's tying up his Backgrounds in this. And it means someone who wants to thwart the sorcerer can kill his Followers, turn his Allies against him, or steal his Artefacts.

This isn't just a sorcery thing - it applies also to strategic scale projects. For example, if you're doing a road-building project in your Kingdom, you can commit your Followers to meet the manpower requirements - but you can't also have them serving as your army. Indeed, how Workings basically work is that they let you devise rituals that let you swap out backgrounds to meet the requirements for projects. Rather than use your Followers to rebuild the roads, you use your Influence with the earth elemental court and conduct a great act of magic where rocks float down from the mountains and embed themselves in the ground. Mechanically, it's as much "effort" and the same number of strategic actions as having your Followers build the roads - you're just using a different Background to do it.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
The issue with that is that Legalist Cecelyne was at the core, to some extent, of Primordial Cecelyne's very existence, and I don't think that she suffered fetich death, which I think would be required to take her out of that paradigm, because it's a shift comparable to Theion->Malfeas or Adrian->Adjoran. Even when she shows cynicism towards the law, she should express it in a paradigm that is informed by her innate nature as a lawmaker, which means that the things she declares should still be recognizable as law. Solar Lon Fuller should be able to go 'yeah this sure is law, it's awful but it sure is law' when looking at the Laws of Malfeas or whatever.
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I think the difference between our takes here is that I don't perceive that drastic a shift in her nature pre and post Primordial War, in the sense that Cecelyne's magic looks like it's always been capable of enforcing whatever the user declares she wishes to enforce, as opposed to having a predefined vision which attempts to enforce itself written into the charmset like, say, Kimbery does. She didn't need a fetich death to rearrange her charmset to let her enforce arbitrary spiteful decrees instead of laws, because she has always been able to do that and simply did so less egregiously.

From this, I take it that she wasn't attached to the concept of law, but in the perception of being fair with her arbitrary decree power in the eyes of her fellow Primordials (or Theion specifically, I suppose), something that ceased to matter after the Primordial War.
 
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Jon Chung said:
I think the difference between our takes here is that I don't perceive that drastic a shift in her nature pre and post Primordial War, in the sense that Cecelyne's magic looks like it's always been capable of enforcing whatever the user declares she wishes to enforce, as opposed to having a predefined vision which attempts to enforce itself written into the charmset like, say, Kimbery does. She didn't need a fetich death to rearrange her charmset to let her enforce arbitrary spiteful decrees instead of laws, because she has always been able to do that and simply did so less egregiously.

From this, I take it that she wasn't attached to the concept of law, but in the perception of being fair with her arbitrary decree power in the eyes of her fellow Primordials (or Theion specifically, I suppose), something that ceased to matter after the Primordial War.
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Pretty much. I mean, Cecelyne has always been pretty arbitrary and hypocritical; she saw nothing wrong, for example, with Autochthon's abuse even though he was supposedly part of the class that her laws were most concerned with.
 
Imrix said:
Pretty much. I mean, Cecelyne has always been pretty arbitrary and hypocritical; she saw nothing wrong, for example, with Autochthon's abuse even though he was supposedly part of the class that her laws were most concerned with.
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I disagree. We have had systems that have turned entire peoples and civilizations into second-class citizens and abused them which are still law. Simply because someone was getting shafted by the law doesn't make it not law, doesn't make it inconsistent, and doesn't make it hypocritical. Remember that statement about how the law, in its infinite majesty, prohibits both the rich and the poor from sleeping underneath bridges? It's not as if Autochthon was like, some random, generic Yozi. He was sick. Flawed. Dying.

Jon Chung said:
I think the difference between our takes here is that I don't perceive that drastic a shift in her nature pre and post Primordial War, in the sense that Cecelyne's magic looks like it's always been capable of enforcing whatever the user declares she wishes to enforce, as opposed to having a predefined vision which attempts to enforce itself written into the charmset like, say, Kimbery does. She didn't need a fetich death to rearrange her charmset to let her enforce arbitrary spiteful decrees instead of laws, because she has always been able to do that and simply did so less egregiously.

From this, I take it that she wasn't attached to the concept of law, but in the perception of being fair with her arbitrary decree power in the eyes of her fellow Primordials (or Theion specifically, I suppose), something that ceased to matter after the Primordial War.
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The thing with this take is that it's boring, because it's just another "yawn, stereotypical comic-book evil judge take 10 million." And Exalted's a game which tries to touch upon actual sociopolitical questions, with actual nuance. If you're going to have a set of superpowers themed around someone who was once a rulemaker and lawgiver, I think it's better if those superpowers actually show you how the law can and is abused, rather than enshrining the all-too-common meme that procedural fairness is sufficient to make the law 'just.'

I want Cecelyne's law to be cruel, horrific, and oppressive. I also want it to fulfill every actual requirement of law, because it simply works better that way, to show how law and justice are not always synonyms and how the power of law is twisted to give an advantage to those who are friends and allies of those who use and make it.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
I disagree. We have had systems that have turned entire peoples and civilizations into second-class citizens and abused them which are still law. Simply because someone was getting shafted by the law doesn't make it not law, doesn't make it inconsistent, and doesn't make it hypocritical. Remember that statement about how the law, in its infinite majesty, prohibits both the rich and the poor from sleeping underneath bridges? It's not as if Autochthon was like, some random, generic Yozi. He was sick. Flawed. Dying.
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Yyyyes, except that's not the point I was making. Prior to the Primordial War, Cecelyne's law absolutely treated entire peoples and civilisations as second-class citizens to be freely abused; namely, anybody who was not a Primordial. But her laws were supposed to arbitrate fairly between Primordials, and they didn't. There's no implication that her laws treated Autochthon as an exception, only that she treated him as an exception, somebody for whom she did not enforce the lawful protection to which he was due.

I mean, I don't disagree that Exalted is a game which certainly should touch upon the legal questions you point to, and I have previously pointed towards a place you could raise them, but I also think that the issue of laws technically existing and all supposedly being equal under them, when in practice those laws are either not enforced or are enforced in a discriminatory manner, is one that, while it might be more simplistic, is no less topical or worthwhile in today's world, nor was it when the game was first published.
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
The thing with this take is that it's boring, because it's just another "yawn, stereotypical comic-book evil judge take 10 million." And Exalted's a game which tries to touch upon actual sociopolitical questions, with actual nuance. If you're going to have a set of superpowers themed around someone who was once a rulemaker and lawgiver, I think it's better if those superpowers actually show you how the law can and is abused, rather than enshrining the all-too-common meme that procedural fairness is sufficient to make the law 'just.'
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Hmm. I don't see Cecelyne's Charmset as enshrining the concept that procedural fairness makes the law just, it's enshrining the concept that the girl with the figuratively biggest (metaphysical) guns sets the rules in any given scenario and she's not obligated to make them fair, sensible or logical as there is no higher authority that can make her do anything, she is the highest authority by virtue of force. Note that she's not obligated (or even incentivised at all) to follow procedural fairness, she can change the rules in the middle of an argument, contradict her own statement she just made three seconds ago and her magic will still work. The only thing it respects is "I have more Essence than you" or "Try that once I've run you out of motes".

Cecelyne isn't an evil judge, Cecelyne is a belligerent nation-state whose words are backed with nuclear weapons*, the girl holding a gun to everyone's heads and saying "obey my arbitrary whims, or be annihilated". If you don't want to obey, you need metaphysical guns just as big, so you can go "Make me, bitch". If you're on the same level she is, you end up in a state of MAD, and that's really the best you can hope for. That she calls this law is, in my view, supposed to be a joke. "Cecelyne the Just Lawgiver" is as lulz-worthy as "Theion the Rightful King".

* Amusingly, note also how this ties into her wish-granting charms (a gift in exchange for unspecified future obligations, enforced with bad things happening to you if you don't obey your master when she wants something) and foreign policy of the superpower-to-client-state kind.

MJ12 Commando said:
I want Cecelyne's law to be cruel, horrific, and oppressive. I also want it to fulfill every actual requirement of law, because it simply works better that way, to show how law and justice are not always synonyms and how the power of law is twisted to give an advantage to those who are friends and allies of those who use and make it.
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That's great and I think it should definitely exist, but Cecelyne is the RULES OF NATURE / geopolitical power bully primordial IMO, not the law primordial.
 
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EarthScorpion said:
Pretty much. The intent is that, essentially, Backgrounds take the place of motes for long-term commitments in such cases.
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Alright, so in your model there's a depreciation of 'fast' methods. Or maybe more accurately, 'Workings' are the mid-point between codified spells (Which tend to be Faster) and non-sorcerous strategic actions.

So if you want it Fast, you have to use a Specific Spell
If you want it Sorcerous (Read: substitute Background A for Background B, but functionally identical to Strategic); you commit an Anchor-Background
If you want it Normal, you just commit an appropriate background.

One of the problems I've been having as a player is trying to generate suitable anchors with in-game actions; it feels almost like a double-unlock system. First you need to get an anchor, and then you get a spell. And often times you can't just connect a background to spell easily- I think that's a feature, as you wanted to emphasize certain backgrounds as the most easily secured for Anchors like Cult or Artifact.

Like, you take a strategic action to get an anchor, and then you have to take whatever other in-game effort is required to Learn The Spell, (and spend the XP), and then you have to make sure you're using the anchor in the correct manner. And again this comes back to the earlier point of 'Okay, your Anchor is tapped, but if it has a relevant function that can work while tapped, it still works?'

Dumb example; if you cast a Working through an Artifact, I assume the artifact is effectively Gone. You pin the daiklave down at the symbolic point and order no one touch it for a season. A Spell, having more structured timing rules, generally doesn't seem to tap your Backgrounds... or not?

I'm rambling at this point I admit.
 
Ok, a question on drivethru rpg, cause i can't exactly understand the terms and conditions.

By default, do they send you letters of their products? Actual physical ones, not those to your email?
 
Accelerator said:
Ok, a question on drivethru rpg, cause i can't exactly understand the terms and conditions.

By default, do they send you letters of their products? Actual physical ones, not those to your email?
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That's the Print On Demand, or POD option.

It's not actually the default, because PDFs are so much easier to distribute.
 
Accelerator said:
So billing addresses are only when you buy physical books?
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Christ's sake, dude. Do you actually need people in this topic to spell out every little last thing for you, or are you at least capable of doing enough fucking research about a completely orthogonal site and service as to reach your own conclusions?
 
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