- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
General Exalted Thread
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Reading it again, this is the kind of thing we really need more of. It's the best of fluff homebrew. I especially love the second one, his jars are just so... evocative to me. I can really see him in my mind's eye hauling around a customised wagon built like a honeycomb that folds out with over a hundred tiny recesses for his jars. His backpack carries his most important jars while the wagon is miscellaneous stuff.
AmineHsu
A worm, not a man, scorned and despised.
- Location
- NoVA
So, thinking about Ex3 Solar Integrity and what sort of effects I'd like to see.
Most simply an effect that is like 'you're annoying I hate you', mechanically allowing you too instant developer a Defining Tie of Hatred and disregard influence from the annoyer addressing what I feel is an issue with a single talented persuader wearing down even the most hard-headed/stone-hearted defender.
Second, I feel like a few other effects would be nice, something like 'when you resist a social influence targeted at a group, you're so cool in your rejection that you allow others targeted who can see you to resist as well', mechanically thinking perhaps waiving the WP cost for others to resist (greatly increasing the percentage with a reason to resist that will do so)
Finally, and simular to the previous an effect that is like 'you're soon cool and cold in your rejection you shake the failed influencer's confidence', not sure if this would be best modeled as a social counterattack, wp penalty or a resolve penalty... but it would be towards the first charm idea, punishing someone intending to try to force through influence by needling a target...
Anyways, I feel like there are probably further effects there souls probably be as well, but those are my immediate ideas.
Most simply an effect that is like 'you're annoying I hate you', mechanically allowing you too instant developer a Defining Tie of Hatred and disregard influence from the annoyer addressing what I feel is an issue with a single talented persuader wearing down even the most hard-headed/stone-hearted defender.
Second, I feel like a few other effects would be nice, something like 'when you resist a social influence targeted at a group, you're so cool in your rejection that you allow others targeted who can see you to resist as well', mechanically thinking perhaps waiving the WP cost for others to resist (greatly increasing the percentage with a reason to resist that will do so)
Finally, and simular to the previous an effect that is like 'you're soon cool and cold in your rejection you shake the failed influencer's confidence', not sure if this would be best modeled as a social counterattack, wp penalty or a resolve penalty... but it would be towards the first charm idea, punishing someone intending to try to force through influence by needling a target...
Anyways, I feel like there are probably further effects there souls probably be as well, but those are my immediate ideas.
For the first one, you don't actually need any charms to just up and gain a Defining intimacy to someone, if it's dramatically appropriate.
p.171 said:
As for the rest, Socialize actually has some of that stuff. It has Wise Council, and Effective Counterargument let you intercede, and Asp Bites Its Tail, and Aspersions Cast Aside are a sort of 'counterattack' (even though that term doesn't exactly fit the new influence paradigm).
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
Do any of you remember an Exalted quest set in a school, where the main character's sister ran off and he got into the all girls school to get her? I can't find it.
Also, so I am actually contributing, One of my ideas for a Solar social charm is for public debate. When you successfully defend against a social attack, the Solar makes a social attack at full pool against everyone observing. I'm thinking it's a good charm, I'm just worried it isn't Solar.
Also, so I am actually contributing, One of my ideas for a Solar social charm is for public debate. When you successfully defend against a social attack, the Solar makes a social attack at full pool against everyone observing. I'm thinking it's a good charm, I'm just worried it isn't Solar.
Frakir's brother
Goodbye.
- Location
- The Sea of Trees
Sorry, it wasn't that. Dragonbloods all round, and the MC was crossdressing to chase his sister into an all-girls academy.
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
- Location
- Wörms, the half continent
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
So if I wanted to make a cloak like skin-walker would have, one that is made out of an animal's hide and that allows you to take that particular animals form how would I do it? Would it be a thurmathurgical ritual to create the cloak in question, or would it be powerful enough that it would just be a low level artifact?
My idea was for it to thumathrugical in scope, thought by the Moon-Witches to their guerrilla forces, and would be seen as anathema-magic by the Realm and any other areas against the resurgence of the Lunars.
Mechanically, it would a specially made cloak made of one animal's hide that is large enough to cover the wearer (meaning no mice skins) and that enables them to transform into that animal. I was thinking that the person would have to shed blood, either their's or a sacrifice's, to activate its powers.
My idea was for it to thumathrugical in scope, thought by the Moon-Witches to their guerrilla forces, and would be seen as anathema-magic by the Realm and any other areas against the resurgence of the Lunars.
Mechanically, it would a specially made cloak made of one animal's hide that is large enough to cover the wearer (meaning no mice skins) and that enables them to transform into that animal. I was thinking that the person would have to shed blood, either their's or a sacrifice's, to activate its powers.
You're basically trying to embody a Lunar power in something that people can attune to. Artifact under the 2E/2.5E paradigm, Sorcerous Working under the 3E paradigm.
1E had The Masks That Command The Animals, which didn't require attunement, would allow the wearer to transform into a given animal type(1 per mask), use whichever Physical Attributes are higher, and command all animals of that type within 100 miles.
Artifact 5, obviously.
Yours sounds closer to the 2-3 dot range.
I think it could work as thaumaturgy, as long as the cloak only works for the person that made it. Maybe the ritual is only for one species, even? Just turning into a wolf and back sounds like an appropriate power for a mortal thaumaturge.
That seems well outside the power and precision range of a mortal thaumaturge.
Bargained for from an old ghost, or a god maybe, or an animal avatar.
But on it's own? Nah.
greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
That is fairly explicit? you have the one form and that's it. I mean, having free shape-shifting powers would be at least 3 or 4 on the artifact scale.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
If you're going to do that, then just rip off Skinchangers. 
- Location
- my house
Just bunged this and it was absolutely amazing! How did it die
Updates stopped happening. Most common cause of quest fatalities.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
I mean, fundamentally "I become a wolf" can be modeled by just applying a set of appropriate mutations, payed for partially with XP (which in this case represents the time and effort spent learning how to make such a cloak and invoke its power) and partially through negative mutations (both in terms of not having hands, not being able to speak, and other things which represent the difference between a human and an animal body, and in terms of pseudo-lycanthrope qualities like vulnerability to certain forms of harm, strange compulsions or allergic reactions, lessening of one's mental faculties while transformed, etc). Provided you're not trying to shapeshift into something super badass, it seems like something that a thaumaturge should be able to do. After all, those two thaumaturges I listed up above were made using @Aleph's idea for using @Revlid's mutation list to represent thaumaturgic workings, and your average animal doesn't need more than 10-20 points of positive mutations to model.
Mind you, it would be a pelt that only lets you become one specific animal (because mechanically you've purchased a single specific mutation package) and only works for thaumaturges who've been trained in that specific method of skinchanging[1] (because they're the only ones who have paid the requisite XP cost to purchase said mutation package), which would apply significant strategic limits on the strategy - the Lunars would either have to make do with a handful of skinchangers that can't be replaced easily, or spend years waiting for the current crop of skinchangers to train up potential replacements before sending them into battle.
An equivalent pelt that works for anyone would definitely be a 2-dot Artifact.
[1] Since you could also have someone who skinchanges by using a totem made from the bones of the animal he intends to become, or has a spiritual link to a local god with that animal in their purview which he calls upon to take on its shape, or even an alchemist who doesn't bother with animals & instead drinks tinctures made out of peoples' blood in order to take on their form, Decoy Octopus style.
You said the ritual was making the cloak, that doesn't necessarily prevent you from skinning several different animals.
Let's take a step back and consider: What do we actually want Thaumaturgy to do? What narrative and mechanical role does it play? Especially in third edition where it is a special gift you need to be born with.
It is supposed to give you an easy way to represent people with a special knack, with a special gift. You come into a village and the wise shaman has some trick he can pull. He can put on a wolf skin and go scout the surrounding forest or guide a wolf pack away from the village's herds or something. But for thaumaturgy to do that, it needs to be actually useful. It needs to be something you can look at and think 'yes, I can see how this is something neat and useful', a neat trick to spice things up. And a gifted skinwalker turning into a wolf certainly fits into that. Does it matter where he got the power from? If it is from a pact with the local animal spirit or an inborn gift he can in theory teach an apprentice if he takes him on one of his sacred hunts?
Now the mechanical question. How powerful can such rituals be? It's actually quite hard because to say what the canon power level range is because we have such a tiny sample size so far, ranging from pretty much useless (duplicate a loaf of bread once a day) to pretty potent supernatural power (banish ghosts). So how powerful is a wolf? Fundamentally, a wolf isn't that much more powerful than a mortal. It might even be less powerful, if the mortal were optimized. What's more, you can get a wolf as a familiar for the same or less merit dots. Even if a wolf costs 2, that's still the same cost as such a ritual. You lose some flexibility in not being able to spy on people directly, but mortal+wolf is still undeniably more powerful than a single mortal in wolf form.
Now how about when used on NPCs, who don't use chargen and who we can't apply merit cost arguments to? Is anyone going to go 'wow, how unfair' to a mortal turning into a wolf in a ritual? I highly doubt it.
Lastly, all Exalted Sorcerers can learn Thaumaturgy. This is probably where the biggest possible balance concern comes in, in that it gives them a somewhat potent toolbox effect and might infringe on Lunar designspace, especially if there's a Lunar in the party. Except you learned this one ritual to turn into a wolf and that's it, the Lunar is still infinitely more flexible and has charms that interact with his new form. All you have is the wolf's probably quite subpar statline, compared to what you had before.
That was a bit more rambly than I intended, but I've been rather annoyed by how Thaumaturgy was presented in E3 and then we get useless things like making a single loaf of bread for a wp instead of anything actually useful. Maybe the sorcery book will make it clearer where Thaumaturgy is supposed to stand.
Consider all the constraints there are to shit like classic werewolves; you can only change at night/under a full moon, your human intelligence is impaired, you develop a weakness to silver.
Thaumaturgy is controlled and reproducible, with few side effects.
A single species-specific artifact, which only works for one living person, I'd put around Artifact 1-2, depending on the cost
Mechanically, it would basically be a 1-2 dot Chaomorphic Symbiote.
I'd put it solidly in the territory of the sort of thing a thaumaturge would have to bargain for, after beckoning an appropriate spirit.
Maybe an animal avatar, like the Mammoth Avatar mentioned in RoGD I. Or whatever the Exalted version of a selkie pelt is.
Or an old ghost cooking up something similar via moliation.
1) The initial question was asking, from what I can tell, about a PC application.
NPCs don't require that much worry about how it balances.
2) Can't speak for 3E; I detest what they did with thaumaturgy, among other things.
In 2.5E you'd do most of that stuff mechanically with mutations and spirit charms; fluffwise, you'd have bargaining with spirits for blessings or exposure to Wyld energies of some sort.
*collapses*
Finally caught up with the thread! I must say, it wasn't really much of a chore, as I found it a rather interesting and informative binge.
Btw,
But to add to the current discussion, what about a similar pelt meant to drive the wearer into a battle frenzy, like viking berseker wolf pelts? Or would that design space be better left to beastmen?
Finally caught up with the thread! I must say, it wasn't really much of a chore, as I found it a rather interesting and informative binge.
Btw,
Dunno if you're aware or not, but apparently around two weeks after you made this post, the author rose from the grave and declared that he was coming back in 2018.
But to add to the current discussion, what about a similar pelt meant to drive the wearer into a battle frenzy, like viking berseker wolf pelts? Or would that design space be better left to beastmen?
- Pronouns
- They/Them
*hisses*
Fuck that. It makes no thematic sense, no fluff sense and no mechanical sense. If you want 'people with one little trick' use mutations induced by being tainted by essence (e.g. a guy who can make little fires because he was conceived and born in a fire-aspected demense, etc). The entirety of 3E Thaumaturgy should be set on fire and shoved up Isidoros' arse.
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greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
In 3E thumathrugy is a left over from 2E, like the human appendix, much of its applications, low level magical effects that mortals can do, have been folded into the Sorcerous Workings system. To be blunt, they'd have been better of just getting rid of them all together, with how poor it is.
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA
... Unless we're using @Aleph's idea, where you can make thaumaturgical rituals/devices/tattoos/whatever by essentially refluffing mutations, at which point adding negative mutations to soak costs becomes an example of quick-and-dirty thaumaturgy that can be learned easily but has side effects due to the requisite cutting of corners, or bleeding-edge thaumaturgy that strains the limits of the art, and thus has side effects just from the sheer insane complexity of what's being done (and mechanically, because otherwise no mortal PC or NPC would have any real chance of being able to pay its XP cost). However, even super-dodgy thaumaturgic techniques with boatloads of side effects in exchange for a 1 XP price tag remain perfectly controlled and reproducible.
That makes sense, assuming you run a version of Exalted where mortals are largely helpless, and generally only those who are born of spirits or favored servants of such can aspire to being more than an annoyance to the actual power players of the setting - demons, elementals, gods, fae, and of course the Exalted.
On the other hand, under the system I'm using, skinwalkers are generally more "people who have training in a specific set of occult techniques" than "people who own a magic pelt". The pelt itself is just a tool used to enable their skinwalking, no different from an alchemist's reagents or a Malfean vinegaroon's vitriol-tainted tattoos. If you took it away, they could hunt down another wolf/deer/etc, skin it, prepare the pelt to the proper specifications, and then go right back to skinwalking without any loss in effectiveness.
The version of Exalted that I'm using makes spirit boons a quick path to power for mortals, but not the only one. Using a god or ghost's blessing as the explanation for a thaumaturgic gift is essentially just flavor text, unless you reinforce it with Background dots or other mechanical underpinnings.