Perhaps Swan has a point there; to constantly seek the old glories and revitalize the past is nothing more then repeating the old mistakes that brought it down.
General Exalted Thread
Make new mistakes, more fun.
Not that much to comment on in this episode. It is interesting that those "prophetic visions" stopped when Playboy House Head slept over at Inks place.
And I suspect that the cure of a xenophobic mature Dragonblooded warhawk is about to make the political scene rather more exciting than people would otherwise prefer.
Looking forward to how it goes. Thanks to you and Aleph for sharing.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
So, I've long forgotten what the book was, but I once read an urban fantasy book with heavy influence from Chinese(?) mythology, and one of the ideas from it feels rather Exalted-ish: the Ghost Cart.
Whenever someone is about to die, it appears, wheeling in the skies above where their body will fall - an ornamented wagon made of old, greyed wood, drawn by moths with prayers for the dead written on their wings. It's a feared omen for those who can see it, because its presence means that death is imminent and inevitable. Nobody cheats the Ghost Cart.
One idea would be to make it the panoply of a particularly ostentatious and callous god of death, performing elaborate sociopolitical theatre to drum up prayer; he uses Charms to detect when a mortal is likely to die in his region of influence, then makes an appearance in the skies overhead to ensure that his purview is always in the back of peoples' minds. Of course, if the person who was supposed to die lucks out, he'll happily manufacture a corpse to maintain his reputation.
Another, of course, would be that it's one of the Greater Dead which has clawed its way up into a sizable shadowland, and appears to feed upon the po souls of the recently departed; the people of the region have no way to stop it from harvesting their dead, and its feeding habits prevent the formation of hungry ghosts, so the locals tend to see it as an unwitting servant of Lethe, or even some sort of benevolent deity. Meanwhile, necromantic thaumaturges despise the thing for depriving them of work materials, and the local Underworld lives in mortal fear of Calibration, when the Ghost Cart briefly returns to the Underworld to harvest the hun souls that escaped it.
Whenever someone is about to die, it appears, wheeling in the skies above where their body will fall - an ornamented wagon made of old, greyed wood, drawn by moths with prayers for the dead written on their wings. It's a feared omen for those who can see it, because its presence means that death is imminent and inevitable. Nobody cheats the Ghost Cart.
One idea would be to make it the panoply of a particularly ostentatious and callous god of death, performing elaborate sociopolitical theatre to drum up prayer; he uses Charms to detect when a mortal is likely to die in his region of influence, then makes an appearance in the skies overhead to ensure that his purview is always in the back of peoples' minds. Of course, if the person who was supposed to die lucks out, he'll happily manufacture a corpse to maintain his reputation.
Another, of course, would be that it's one of the Greater Dead which has clawed its way up into a sizable shadowland, and appears to feed upon the po souls of the recently departed; the people of the region have no way to stop it from harvesting their dead, and its feeding habits prevent the formation of hungry ghosts, so the locals tend to see it as an unwitting servant of Lethe, or even some sort of benevolent deity. Meanwhile, necromantic thaumaturges despise the thing for depriving them of work materials, and the local Underworld lives in mortal fear of Calibration, when the Ghost Cart briefly returns to the Underworld to harvest the hun souls that escaped it.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
It's been a while, but you might not remember that Inks deliberately warded one of the rooms with Private Plaza of Downcast Eyes, which prevents scrying and sending effects (common Spirit Charms) from reaching inside. It was mainly to isolate the cause of his prophetic visions- the next step is to determine if they're coming from a god or demon or other.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Importing a discussion of how to run PMMM in the exalted system here. Because it was Off Topic in it's original thread.
I like this idea. You'd still need to have the magical girls not respire motes naturally, to force the need to acquire grief seeds. Maybe a 1m per day cost to keep the body alive too.
Maybe a mote pool of 50? Since it doesn't respire, but we seem some pretty magic intensive fights?
I like this idea. You'd still need to have the magical girls not respire motes naturally, to force the need to acquire grief seeds. Maybe a 1m per day cost to keep the body alive too.
Maybe a mote pool of 50? Since it doesn't respire, but we seem some pretty magic intensive fights?
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
...ok, are we talking story or actual play here?
Because 'do not regain motes' is pretty shitty for actual play, not to mention has the weird side effect of making hearthstones keep witch corruption at bay. Which doesn't seem to fit well thematically.
Whereas Limit type systems were literally built for the kind of Mahou Shojo type ideas. You don't need to reinvent the wheel here: Limit track, grief seeds reduce limit. Include conditions for grief increasing Limit, or 'burn X motes gain Limit'. And boom, you have a functioning system.
And your mote pool will be a function of how much charms cost- it's not like you need more then a handful. You need to figure out how much the person is able to use them, and what usages = Limit. But that's pretty straight forward math.
And now paging @EarthScorpion and @Aleph, who I have seen develop the idea in some depth and are both better at this then me.
- Location
- Ekaterinburg, Russia
50 is probably a little too little. Make it Willpower*10, and whenever it hits 0 it automatically activates the limit-to-mote conversion. This ought to work for most MGs barring the outliers with extreme Potential.
Potential is probably a measure of Permanent Essence and Destiny background... Not sure how it would affect things, though. But clearly, both Homuhomu and Madokami would have Destiny 5.
Oh, god no, I wouldn't use Exalted's system for PMMM. Firstly, because I wouldn't use any RAW Exalted system for anything, and secondly because the system as it exists is particularly ill-suited for the "personality-as-powers, doubt-and-despair are as dangerous to you as the actual Witches" stuff in PMMM.
If I wanted to run a PMMM game, I'd either build a system from the ground up specifically to support the themes and pacing of the anime, or more likely I'd go talk to @open_sketchbook and go "Yo, you got any suggestions for modding Five Across the Heart specifically to run PMMM?".
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
Inb4Sketch'sdespair
More seriously though, there are already a bunch of Magical Girl RPGs based on the meduka mode. A significant point of 5ATH is that it's a rejection of the "doom, gloom, drama, despair" aesthetic that was a significant vein in game design at the time and a return to the more Sailor Moon-ish vision of MGs where they are given power by, and express their power through, their femininity. Feminism As Action, basically.
Kylar
In Training Forever
- Location
- Canada
Fair enough, I just remember you talking about this way back. Must have been a couple years now.
- Location
- Ottawa
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Whatever
Yeah the game to play Madoka with is Ewen Clueny's Magical Burst.
EarthScorpion Homebrew: Six Locations in Cecelyne
Six Locations in Cecelyne
Silver sands, white salt plains, glass-coated hillocks - many who cross Cecelyne see only these things in their journey under the black, starless sky. Still, there are things to be found in the barren wastes of the affliction of the Yozis. Some of these things even have known routes that lead to them, though such approaches are tenuous and risky. Demons and hell-questers who find a new reliable route that leads them past a place of interest have found their fortune.
Asteroid Block Crater
When the layers of Malfeas slam together, chunks of the King are cast off and sent flying. Sometimes they fall in the Desert, triggering glass-storms from his fire and fury. The scars of these impacts can last for decades or even centuries, titanic pits walled with green-tinted glass. At the centre of the pit is a fragment of Malfeas, bleeding the warmth of the king's hate into the chill of Cecelyne.
The smallest impacts are just a building or two, but sometimes palace-complexes or entire neighbourhoods are cast off. Occasionally some of the demons dwelling in the area survive, and eke out their existence in the slumped and shattered buildings that survived the fall. Other times desert-nomads find a habitable structure and set up a shrine to the grace of the Desert for providing such a home. Such places can serve as way-stations and caravanserai for those crossing the desert - if they are not desolate ruins inhabited by mutated demons painfully dying from Green Sun Wasting.
The Black Moon
In the sunless, starless skies of Cecelyne hangs the black moon, who has no name. Some call her Noh, and those who are learned know her to the black heart of the Ebon Dragon. Endlessly she tests the borders of the prison of the Yozis, trying to outpace Cecelyne's expansion into infinitude. Sometimes she succeeds and slips into Creation on moonless nights, but mostly she is too late.
Some lost souls have visited the black moon, though Noh never welcome those who willingly sought her out. The surface is a dark, cold and sombre place, which gently welcomes the doomed and the dying. Previous guests have included traitors to the gods, conspirators against the priests of Cecelyne, and at least one Sidereal who regretted his role in the Usurpation. Before he departed to his doom he left his winged lance, Jylte Sky-Kisser, there as a gift for any of the Chosen who would later walk the same dark path as him.
The City of Spires
Two thousand years ago, a prideful demon lord thought to leave Malfeas and build a city within the Desert, so that he might be closer to Creation. He gave many great gifts to the temple of Cecelyne and shed the blood of ten thousand serfs, and upon a ridge in the deep desert he built a city of tall spires. He bragged that he could see the sun of Creation from the highest steeple, and perhaps it was true.
Cecelyne tolerated his actions for a while, and then when she tired of his prayers she laid waste to the city. A storm swept in and when it departed every demon within the City of Spires had been turned into glass. The city now stands, lonely within the desert, and all who stay there for more than one day and one night become one of the agonised statues who litter the streets.
Damned Gods' Garden
When lost things of Creation slip into Cecelyne, their gods sometimes also fall between the gaps in the world. Under a black sky these lost spirits of forgotten things wander. Sometimes they escape back into the world, and these gods are the lucky ones. Unfortunate gods are found by Samasque the Harvester, and taken to his salt-plain garden. There they are buried up to their necks in the salt, and left there forever.
Samasque has the seeming of a priest of Cecelyne, though they do not recognise him among their ranks. His bones are ancient and his fires dim; his robes are encrusted with salt. So many gods brought close together within Hell means that omen weather strikes the area frequently, and the slopes that lead down to the salt plain are littered with the strange things that fall out of the sky.
Empty Chasm
Those who have found the empty chasm say that it always appears on the fourth day of one's journey across Cecelyne, no matter which direction one travels in. From horizon to horizon it stretches, and the sand pours down it like a silvery waterfall. It has done this for five thousand years, and there is no sign that it will ever fill up. Great toothed gears have scarred the landscape around the canyon, and tiny slivers of soulsteel can still be found at the bottom of some of the lesser gashes.
Those who wish to continue past the chasm must either manage to cross it or walk back into the desert and find another five-day long path. Those demon-traders who have the ill-luck to encounter it frequently have found a number of ways, from flights of agatae fed alchemical compounds to give them the strength to carry a ship to daring sand-surfing contraptions that leap the canyon in a single great bound. In some places the chasm is only a few tens of yards wide, but in others it stretches for many miles.
The Foul Sea Augustus
Born of an affair between one of Cecelyne's souls and the Water Dragon, the waters of Augustus are not fit to be drunk. They sparkle a brilliant cyan, but such beauty comes from poisonous salts that saturate him. His shores are littered with the bones of demons and akuma who ran to him in their desperation and never left. He is so dense that men can walk upon his surface and only get their feet wet. Strange metal creatures heavy enough to sink swim within him and savage those who walk on water without due care.
In the centre of Augustus, there is an island and upon that island stands an ancient monolith of black jade blessed by his mother. It is this monolith of the purest jade that maintains Augustus' health within the barren desert, and were it to be removed he would dry up and perish, leaving behind only copper salts. Should a thief come looking to steal this wondrous ancient artefact, they would have to fight an entire enraged sea.
Silver sands, white salt plains, glass-coated hillocks - many who cross Cecelyne see only these things in their journey under the black, starless sky. Still, there are things to be found in the barren wastes of the affliction of the Yozis. Some of these things even have known routes that lead to them, though such approaches are tenuous and risky. Demons and hell-questers who find a new reliable route that leads them past a place of interest have found their fortune.
Asteroid Block Crater
When the layers of Malfeas slam together, chunks of the King are cast off and sent flying. Sometimes they fall in the Desert, triggering glass-storms from his fire and fury. The scars of these impacts can last for decades or even centuries, titanic pits walled with green-tinted glass. At the centre of the pit is a fragment of Malfeas, bleeding the warmth of the king's hate into the chill of Cecelyne.
The smallest impacts are just a building or two, but sometimes palace-complexes or entire neighbourhoods are cast off. Occasionally some of the demons dwelling in the area survive, and eke out their existence in the slumped and shattered buildings that survived the fall. Other times desert-nomads find a habitable structure and set up a shrine to the grace of the Desert for providing such a home. Such places can serve as way-stations and caravanserai for those crossing the desert - if they are not desolate ruins inhabited by mutated demons painfully dying from Green Sun Wasting.
The Black Moon
In the sunless, starless skies of Cecelyne hangs the black moon, who has no name. Some call her Noh, and those who are learned know her to the black heart of the Ebon Dragon. Endlessly she tests the borders of the prison of the Yozis, trying to outpace Cecelyne's expansion into infinitude. Sometimes she succeeds and slips into Creation on moonless nights, but mostly she is too late.
Some lost souls have visited the black moon, though Noh never welcome those who willingly sought her out. The surface is a dark, cold and sombre place, which gently welcomes the doomed and the dying. Previous guests have included traitors to the gods, conspirators against the priests of Cecelyne, and at least one Sidereal who regretted his role in the Usurpation. Before he departed to his doom he left his winged lance, Jylte Sky-Kisser, there as a gift for any of the Chosen who would later walk the same dark path as him.
The City of Spires
Two thousand years ago, a prideful demon lord thought to leave Malfeas and build a city within the Desert, so that he might be closer to Creation. He gave many great gifts to the temple of Cecelyne and shed the blood of ten thousand serfs, and upon a ridge in the deep desert he built a city of tall spires. He bragged that he could see the sun of Creation from the highest steeple, and perhaps it was true.
Cecelyne tolerated his actions for a while, and then when she tired of his prayers she laid waste to the city. A storm swept in and when it departed every demon within the City of Spires had been turned into glass. The city now stands, lonely within the desert, and all who stay there for more than one day and one night become one of the agonised statues who litter the streets.
Damned Gods' Garden
When lost things of Creation slip into Cecelyne, their gods sometimes also fall between the gaps in the world. Under a black sky these lost spirits of forgotten things wander. Sometimes they escape back into the world, and these gods are the lucky ones. Unfortunate gods are found by Samasque the Harvester, and taken to his salt-plain garden. There they are buried up to their necks in the salt, and left there forever.
Samasque has the seeming of a priest of Cecelyne, though they do not recognise him among their ranks. His bones are ancient and his fires dim; his robes are encrusted with salt. So many gods brought close together within Hell means that omen weather strikes the area frequently, and the slopes that lead down to the salt plain are littered with the strange things that fall out of the sky.
Empty Chasm
Those who have found the empty chasm say that it always appears on the fourth day of one's journey across Cecelyne, no matter which direction one travels in. From horizon to horizon it stretches, and the sand pours down it like a silvery waterfall. It has done this for five thousand years, and there is no sign that it will ever fill up. Great toothed gears have scarred the landscape around the canyon, and tiny slivers of soulsteel can still be found at the bottom of some of the lesser gashes.
Those who wish to continue past the chasm must either manage to cross it or walk back into the desert and find another five-day long path. Those demon-traders who have the ill-luck to encounter it frequently have found a number of ways, from flights of agatae fed alchemical compounds to give them the strength to carry a ship to daring sand-surfing contraptions that leap the canyon in a single great bound. In some places the chasm is only a few tens of yards wide, but in others it stretches for many miles.
The Foul Sea Augustus
Born of an affair between one of Cecelyne's souls and the Water Dragon, the waters of Augustus are not fit to be drunk. They sparkle a brilliant cyan, but such beauty comes from poisonous salts that saturate him. His shores are littered with the bones of demons and akuma who ran to him in their desperation and never left. He is so dense that men can walk upon his surface and only get their feet wet. Strange metal creatures heavy enough to sink swim within him and savage those who walk on water without due care.
In the centre of Augustus, there is an island and upon that island stands an ancient monolith of black jade blessed by his mother. It is this monolith of the purest jade that maintains Augustus' health within the barren desert, and were it to be removed he would dry up and perish, leaving behind only copper salts. Should a thief come looking to steal this wondrous ancient artefact, they would have to fight an entire enraged sea.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
Another relic dug up from that urban fantasy novel I've forgotten the name of: tiger amber.
One of the main cast members was a tiger that could adopt a humanoid form, one of a larger race - that was now effectively an endangered species thanks to the fact that their living souls could be torn out and rendered into a tremendously useful (and beautiful) substance with the appearance of amber.
(I can remember this in part due to one of the minor villains taking potshots at said character by loudly lamenting that he'd have to kill them quickly - "wouldn't even have time to get a nice amber watch fob [out of killing them all]")
Does anyone think there's a space for that sort of thing in Exalted? Elemental races, or heavily altered human subspecies, or people with inhuman ancestry, being hunted by necromancers so the power in their souls could be reaped and turned to their own purposes - and such a thing being fairly well-known to most people with any real knowledge of the occult?
One of the main cast members was a tiger that could adopt a humanoid form, one of a larger race - that was now effectively an endangered species thanks to the fact that their living souls could be torn out and rendered into a tremendously useful (and beautiful) substance with the appearance of amber.
(I can remember this in part due to one of the minor villains taking potshots at said character by loudly lamenting that he'd have to kill them quickly - "wouldn't even have time to get a nice amber watch fob [out of killing them all]")
Does anyone think there's a space for that sort of thing in Exalted? Elemental races, or heavily altered human subspecies, or people with inhuman ancestry, being hunted by necromancers so the power in their souls could be reaped and turned to their own purposes - and such a thing being fairly well-known to most people with any real knowledge of the occult?
- Location
- Singapore
Fairly sure dotfa had cattle people wishing to be killed and eaten
- Pronouns
- They/Them
It would be awesome if you did an entire 'geography' of Malfeas threadmark with locations within Metagaos and Kimbery too.
Alright, a 2E question regarding the Forge-Hand Gauntlets(Wonder of the Lost Age pg 68)
Does the stats in bracket replace the bashing damage when the Heating feature is activated, or does it add to it?
The damage statline for strike says +7B(+4A Heated).
Does the stats in bracket replace the bashing damage when the Heating feature is activated, or does it add to it?
I think the Agg damage numbers would replace the Bashing damage.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
I've consistently seen it ruled that it replaces the damage- note that it's still piercing aggravated damage, which in context of 2e is absolutely disgusting. I should know- I played an Alchemical with forgehands.
Thank you.It wasn't clear, so I wanted a second opinion.
And yeah, it is...emphatic; I was wondering why there was no minimum damage rating for the artifact until I stopped to do the math.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Well remembe rit was a 2e artifact and I doubt it was put under the 2.5 damage pass? Your minimum damage was Essence.
So in Forge's case, as long as he hit the target, and beat Hardness, he would roll 4-5 minimum damage (he started at E4 for concept reasons). This is partially why Ping was disgusting back in 2e anyway, because you were effectively guaranteed a trickle of damage for just hitting the target, and it was much more worthwhile to crunk Accuracy anyway because any surplus accuracy went on to post-soak damage.
...I don't remember that? I thought it adding to regular damage was already the case, not a change in 2.5
AmineHsu
A worm, not a man, scorned and despised.
- Location
- NoVA
Huh really? I've been talking about running a Magical Girl game for years (before PMMM even aired) and while II never intended to run it in PMMM specifically, I definitely had elements like:
and the only specifically Magical Girl system I've ever had suggested was Princess: The Hopeful.
I'd be curious to hear about other... though this convo is probably not on topic for this topic...
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
I meant as a general part of how combat damage worked- you are correct though.
To lay it out for clarity-
- Higher accuracy was necessary to get past higher DVs
- Any extra successes over DV were added to the raw, pre-soak damage
- There was no cap on sux-over-DV, nor was there any mechanical incentive to 'hit low, damage high', so maximizing accuracy was a 'Win more' strategy.
- Therefore, even low-damage weapons could and did compete with statistically superior weapons.
- Related to that was again, Ping. As long as you could hit your target, you could more than often do some damage and make a meaningful contribution- death of a thousand cuts was a viable strategy, especially in flurryspam 2e whiterooms.
- Hardness was often not utilized as much as it could have been, because it was a very binary mechanic- you either had too little and it did nothing, or too much and had an almost zero-cost defense against whole swaths of attacks.
- Location
- secret base
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have some spare change and have certain thoughts about buying a tabletop game.
The thing is, I don't know that much - or anything - about Exalted, so I hoped someone can enlighten me about it. Like, can you explain to me like I don't know a single thing about this system, the world and else.
I just thought this would be a nice place to ask this question.Please, don't hit me.
The thing is, I don't know that much - or anything - about Exalted, so I hoped someone can enlighten me about it. Like, can you explain to me like I don't know a single thing about this system, the world and else.
I just thought this would be a nice place to ask this question.