- Location
- United States
Rand Brittian made this collection of mix and match martial artist QCs that you might want to have a look at
General Exalted Thread
- Pronouns
- They/Them
- Location
- Ottawa
Feels overcomplicated, especially for a non-player-facing system.
And if mortals have somehow become irrelevant in your game, I don't think a few E1 Charms will change that.
I do have an alternate suggestion. Came up with it a while back because I disliked the Martial Artist merit and ability.
Each Style is a separate merit. Style merits can be attached to any ability; they allow the user to use that Style with that ability. They usually provide some kind of benefit beyond letting you purchase Style Charms, but not always. Many styles also have advanced Merits, just as sorcerous shaping rituals do.
Examples:
Righteous Devil Style (•) - Purchased
Prerequisite: Archery ••
The character's Archery ability reflects their ability in the famous Righteous Devil Style. They may purchase Righteous Devil Style Charms.
Snake Style (••) - Purchased
Prerequisite: Brawl •
The character's Brawl ability reflects their skill in the swift and precise Snake Style. They may wield hook swords and seven-section staffs with Brawl, and may always choose to inflict lethal damage with unarmed strikes. They may purchase Snake Style Charms.
Single Point Shining Into The Void Style (••••) - Purchased
Prerequsite: Melee •
The character's Melee ability reflects their skill in the deadly Single Point Shining Into The Void Style. When wielding a slashing sword, they may flurry a Draw/Ready Weapon with an attack without penalty. In addition, they suffer no penalty to Defence for drawing or readying a slashing sword. They may purchase Single Point Shining Into The Void Style Charms.
Snake Venom Mastery (••) - Purchased
Prerequisites: Brawl •••, Snake Style
The character has lived around, fought with, and been bitten by thousands of snakes. They have mastered their deadly poisons. The character may handle snakes using Brawl instead of Survival, adds 4 dice to any roll to resist snake venom (including Snake Style's Essence Venom Strike), and may apply snake venoms to any weapon wielded with Snake Style (including their own fingernails).
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- U.S.
HMM. Not perfect, but I think this idea has a lot of merit with some tweaks....
Yes, mortals can summon and bind 1cd with the spell. Particularly skilled (and reckless) mortal sorcerers could summon a second circle demon with a working, but when you use a working there's no binding involved.
No and yes, as far as 3E is concerned once you learn Sorcery you cease to be "mortal".
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I like this,
EDIT: Saw the bit about replacing the Martial Artist merit.
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- Location
- Ottawa
What tweaks did you have in mind?
- Location
- Land of the Midday Sun
It's bad if I know where this link goes even before opening it?
STill I have a feeling that on some level that image works better as inspiration for Exalted than as description.
For some reason, I only just now saw the page name and had the thought that Abbadon has a strange definition of 'siege'.
meianmaru
The Devourer of Fiction
So. While I was walking my dog today, a random thought popped up in my head: "Huh, @The Phoenixian had a brilliant analysis in that old post that threw in the idea that SWLiHN is an anti-matter joke. I wonder if there still are other Yozi sci-fi/cosmology jokes that haven't been just found yet?" A couple of random other unrelated thoughts later, and suddenly it just seemed to click. Not sure if this has been posted before, but I couldn't find it in the thread or with google, so here goes:
Is Qaf, besides being a joke about the internet, also a joke about space elevators? Because the description about a mountain-like Yozi who has no base or a peak evokes an image about a soft-sci-fi mega-engineered space elevator half-way during the trip to me at least. The whole "Heaven-Violating Spear" seems to point towards that direction too, as does people actually climbing him to move (spiritually) up.
Or is my analysis just completely nonsensical ravings of a madman? What do you veterans think? And has this idea been thrown in before, or am I really the first one to suggest it?
Is Qaf, besides being a joke about the internet, also a joke about space elevators? Because the description about a mountain-like Yozi who has no base or a peak evokes an image about a soft-sci-fi mega-engineered space elevator half-way during the trip to me at least. The whole "Heaven-Violating Spear" seems to point towards that direction too, as does people actually climbing him to move (spiritually) up.
Or is my analysis just completely nonsensical ravings of a madman? What do you veterans think? And has this idea been thrown in before, or am I really the first one to suggest it?
How is Qaf a joke about the internet outsides the connection with the digital web in Mage?
- Location
- Washington, USA
How to save Autocthonia from Gremlin Syndrome
Without breaching the Seal of Eight Divinities
Using only non-unique assets from the canonical 2e setting
You will need:Without breaching the Seal of Eight Divinities
Using only non-unique assets from the canonical 2e setting
- An Alchemical Apostate w/ God-Machine Weaving Engine + voidtech submodules for sapphire circle sorcery
- A Dreamscape Tutor Gem (or equivalent) from before the Eight Nations were founded
- Willing mortal test subjects (NOT enlightened!)
The plan:
- Either invent a variant of the spell Imbue Amalgam which does not require stone quarried on the Blessed Isle as an ingredient, or learn the original spell and acquire a suitable quantity of such stone from among the materials Autocthon took with him into exile.
- Have the apostate cast said spell on one or more mortals, drawing on the Dreamscape Tutor Gem to imbue each subject with Order-Affirming Blow as well as it's prerequisites: Essence 4, Lore 5, and six other Solar Lore charms. (This is slightly beyond what the standard Dreamscape Tutor Gem in Wonders of the Lost Age could hold, 28 out of a possible 25, but the issue could easily be handled by either upgrading it to some sort of 3-dot variant, or including additional limitations, such as requiring knowledge-transfer sorcery for the contents to be accessed at all.) Also make sure to increase Willpower to at least parity with the Apostate's Essence rating, or ideally, all the way to ten - and perhaps expand WP storage further with the charm Reserve of Will (copied from captive elementals or exmachinae). A mote pool of at least 15 is preferable, and even more would be better, but that's not strictly necessary given sufficient ongoing thaumaturgical support.
- Have the former mortal use Order-Affirming Blow to cure their master. That corruption will come right back a mere moment later, due to installed voidtech charms (including, and probably not limited to, the weaving engine), but even a brief respite should still be enough for a reset to minimum Dissonance (a breath of fresh sanity should make later steps run far more smoothly), as well as hard-earned proof that the procedure worked at all.
- Direct other available mortals to worship the successful test subject(s), hopefully boosting their Cult background up to at least 2 or 3. More mote and WP recovery enables more frequent use of Order-Affirming Blow, and possibly also safety amid blight zones thanks to Chaos-Repelling Pattern. Given the benefits being provided, this shouldn't be a particularly hard sell. Vestments of Holy Vigilance could help to focus such energies further, and simultaneously serve as a crude early-warning system to lead the amalgam(s) toward settlements experiencing gremlin-related problems.
- Refinement and mass production. Something along the lines of a Sorcery-Capturing Cord, or the Crucible of Tarim, could be set up to apply the spell further without a potentially unstable apostate's direct involvement. Each amalgam can serve as a template for others, reducing need for the original gem.
- Induce exmachinae to fuse with the amalgams, forming drone-prophets (MoEP: Alchemicals p. 76-77) who can survive in the Far Reaches while instinctively seeking out greater gremlins and healing Autocthon's sickness as close to the root as possible.
- Find a trapped raksha, or some other renewable source of energy which Wyld-Shaping Technique can transmute into almost anything. Given a charm template for Wyld Cauldron Technology, even the shortage of po souls could be solved.
- Profit, secure in the knowledge that while "the arts of the Solar Exalted" may be required, the god-kings themselves were entirely unnecessary for Faith, Dogma, and Tools to triumph over the Void.
- Location
- Singapore
1. This is why imbue amalgam is way too overpowered.
2. Dreamscape tutor gem? Good luck. Not likely to find one. And not likely to even get access if it even exists.
2. Dreamscape tutor gem? Good luck. Not likely to find one. And not likely to even get access if it even exists.
Or maybe just admit that locking out access to an entire wing of world-saving plots which Exalted and the wider fantasy/scifi genre is known for by demanding explicit dependence on and upholding the setting priority of unrelated external actors is ultimately something that undermines any attempt at giving the Alchemical Exalted or the Eight Nations narrative agency within their own domains, rather than go looking for Technicality rules-loopholes in the attempt to patch the gap.
Its okay to admit the writers bodged it up. Autochthonia 2e was not a good look for anyone involved.
Its okay to admit the writers bodged it up. Autochthonia 2e was not a good look for anyone involved.
- Location
- Ottawa
Nonsense. Autochthonia was the best-written setting of 2e.
Man, this 2e-iest thing I've ever seen.
Man, this 2e-iest thing I've ever seen.
- Location
- U.S.
Looking at the spell, a Gem is not a valid source for charms. You need something who actually knows and can use them, not an object storing information. This does not work. Also, I don't think automata are valid donors for traits anyway.
I also doubt the ability to use an Amalgam as a basis for further charms, as it only sort of has the charms.
- Location
- United States
Step one and two literally call on custom content cheese.
And Step Zero requires void corruption.
- Location
- Washington, USA
Really? Sounds to me like it's exactly the right amount of power, at least in this context. It simultaneously answers the question of how Autocthonia can ultimately solve it's own problems, and why it hasn't done so already: the solution requires ancient knowledge, which can only be used by an extremely powerful Apostate, applying vanishingly rare reagents, to willing mortal assistants, thereby transforming them into mutant super-cyborgs, who would then need to go around curing gremlins one by one, while maintaining some sort of quarantine so they don't get reinfected, instead of taking the easy route toward exploiting whole packs of them as a power base. And let's not forget the logistical challenges of keeping those modified humans alive! They'd have basic exalt-like toughness, but still need food, sleep, clean air, shelter from the environmental hazards of the Realm of Brass and Shadow in general and Blight Zones in particular, and if any loyal citizen of any of the Eight Nations, or agent of the Divine Ministers or, heck, even most of the more conventionally sensible tunnel folk or polar mutants, noticed any sign of this before step 5, they'd call it a terribly advanced Voidbringer cult fit only for high-priority extermination. Maybe the basic scheme has been attempted many times before, and always ended badly before it could even really begin.
If saving an entire realm of existence from insidious, Gigeresque mecha-cancer was safe and easy, everyone would be doing it. There ought to be some sort of grail quest involved, right? Long journeys, strange alliances, perils both physical and moral? This has all that, woven right in there inherently. The impossible cure for gremlin syndrome requires a paragon among gremlins to turn back from the brink, choose to embrace virtue even while alone in the dark, and reconnect with humanity against all odds, because the only way out is through. That broad, flexible framework for a proper epic pulls itself together almost spontaneously, and all you can think to do is smack it apart with your nerf-bat, back down into the primordial slime, no fun allowed?
I've got a fix for the Eclipse anima power, too, on the off chance you're interested. Three straightforward changes, barely any mechanics needed: one, every charm has to be linked to an oath between the teacher and the student, with some conceivable condition under which the oath would break, the charm would be lost, and the student's 16 xp would be refunded. Optionally, it may include conditions under which the charm would be temporarily revoked, just as the Ebon Dragon can revoke Loom-Snarling Deception from the akuma of other yozis.
Two, the student doesn't have to be an eclipse-caste. Oaths and treaties including such a learn-foreign-charm clause can be established between other parties, even between groups with magnitude no greater than the Solaroid's Essence, and such an agreement might continue through generations as new members join a group and the old leave or die off - but no more than that initial magnitude can benefit at once, and if the deal's ever broken, or lapses due to one side or the other going extinct, it can't be restored without another eclipse anima touch to sanctify it.
Yes, this means un-exalted mortals can gain appalling, world-shaking power. (Chejop Kejack had reasons to be scared of Salina's ambition.) They're still dependent on Exalted for innovation, to create the best charms and the mechanisms by which such power can be distributed. They're also still squishy in all the ways those charms don't cover, and have no way to build proper paranoia combos. See, one of those existing clauses in the Eclipse anima power says, when you learn a charm with a Flaw of Invulnerability, you need to apply one of your own splat's flaws to it.
Third houserule, more of a fill-in-the-blank, is that the 'native flaw' for mortals and god-blooded is automatic failure against any attack which exceeds the relevant DV. Handy for bluffing, or against unfooable effects which don't include any actual attack roll (such as environmental hazards), but not much else.
I don't understand this appeal to improbability. It's just a two-dot utilitarian magitech artifact, minor variant on a standard formulaic template. Any starting Alchemical could easily have one of those without even needing to spend BP, then buy a daiklaive and reinforced breastplate forged from their favored magical material with the change left over.
The particular gem which is needed in this case happens to be very old, or possibly an accurate copy from older sources, and happens to mostly hold information with few other uses... but there could easily be dozens, or even thousands more just like it. Perhaps one of Creation's first Factory-Cathedrals produced a batch of them in order to bring newly-exalted Solars up to speed on skills they might need for pushing back the Wyld, then the Great Maker grabbed a few of those for his personal collection out of historical interest, and one of the Divine Ministers eventually plundered that titanic museum to find a suitable gift for an adamant-caste angel. No worse a contrivance than the old standby of a starting Solar justifying whatever item they don't know how to build themselves with an offscreen, pre-game visit to a previous incarnation's Shogunate-era tomb.
In fact, it's actually far more plausible, since Autocthonia is all but overflowing with magitech infrastructure, and their history includes no Usurpation, Contagion, Balorian Crusade, or DB/Sidereal censorship to disrupt the continuity of institutional knowledge. The dreamscape tutor gem in question might have been recycled into some creche, as an archaic but pleasingly efficient device for cramming literacy and other basic job skills into young members of the Olgotary and/or Theomachracy during their otherwise underutilized nap-time shift, greater functions long forgotten until, hm, let's say some lunatic like Excessively Righteous Blossom just completely snaps, pulls a "my god, he's killed all the younglings," and pockets the shiny thing on his way out.
The really critical apostate, the one with the weaving engine, of course, gets to be the Palpatine in that scenario. After Luke and Leia have had their turn, then the Viator of Nullspace might play the part of the Yuuzhan Vong. Skywalker dynasty could even be Excessively Righteous Blossom's actual children, engineered to some eccentric 'perfection' through an Integrated Genesis System... wouldn't that make for such an interesting moment? Maimed in the aftermath of a beamklaive duel, clinging to a catwalk in a cavernous vent shaft, no more than an hour after the High Celebrant of Xexas was instructed to pray that some deal not be altered any further. Roll Join Debate and stunt your investigation-based Parry MDV with "that's not true, that's impossible."
I'm pretty terrible at reading sarcasm over the internet, and have seen this same sentiment said way to many times to simply gloss over it, so I suppose its time I gave the wider thread a refresher on Why this is the case. If you mean this legitimately, then this is by no means going to convince you if you've already been sold on it. I haven't, and the lofty standards I hold it too prevent me from reading "best-written" so charitably than "more got written about it that wasn't before, unlike most setting books." Which doesn't mean all of it was Great, simply that there was More.
The biggest sin out of everything is the fact that for almost 5000 years of history, Autochthonia doesn't have one for the most part. Its enduring monoculture and national archetypes somehow persist across two times as long as modern history without change, pause, or even notable figures of note or events worthy of mentioning which aren't extremely recent like the Elemental War. The timeline simply stops at the Great Unification, then jumps straight into the current year as though Nothing has happened except there's just More of everything now and Shit Is Getting Bad. There are no cultural institutions, no uneven rotation of leadership, no power blocs, not even something so simple as a fanclub of a charismatic Alchemical mentioned to give texture to its people, every nation exists as an Environment and a Personality and everything else gets vaguely sweeping gestures of hardship and Orwellian oppression.
Which wouldn't be too bad if several of those Environments weren't painted as "isolated from damn-near everyone most of the time," and three of those Personalities weren't War-Monger (Estasia), Asshole (Sova) and Idyllic Hippy Luddite (Jarish). You get talk of "raids" and "alliances" and "trade" but the mentions are so generalist as to be dirt-simple, while also running counter to the idea these people would Ever interact with eachother at all. Even forgoing the constraints of travel difficulty and distances involved, the foreign politics are jumble of half-formed ideas. Estasia somehow sustains a war-economy on the back of mercenary intervention in international dispute, but we never hear about any of those outside of Yugash vs Sova, and so spend the rest of their time sabre-rattling about conquest with enough foreboding seriousness that its a wonder how no one else has thought to either starve the beast or start a mutual alliance to take care of this highly militarized threat keen on destabilizing what little civilization they have built.
Sova is even worse off, since Yugash being the Project Razor site makes them the Protagonist Nation, and therefore instead of Sova having somewhere to fall from and mark a tragedy by its sudden turn towards xenophobia and isolationist rhetoric, it turns out they were huge arrogant dickheads posturing about blood and honor the entire time, to themselves and everyone else, and would've likely done the same thing eventually anyway, so therefore totally had it all coming. The text even comes through here to double-down on just how bad the Estasians are by having them give a fucking thumbs-up to Yugashan war crimes during the Elemental War, sending them on their merry way with a rogueish "its only bad 'cause you got caught" with no lasting repercussions to Either side of the fighting. The only fallout besides this is a frankly bad-taste sidebar where they talk about chunks of abandoned housing and infrastructure left behind where the remaining vestiges of both sides continuing killing and raping eachother in lieu of national oversight to this day. Its a fucking mess of trying to broadly paint black/white hats where the context demands more nuance, and botching the attempt to give some kind of significance in the process.
Outside of that, Jarish is a complete walk-back of anything interesting about 1e Jarish, instead replacing it with someone's homebrew campaign you'll never get to play in since they're part of Honored History now, but instead you can fight a totally contextless technological reskin of the First and Forsaken Lion without any of the backstory or possible characterization, who is painted as nothing more than a raving monster coming to destroy the Most Magical Place On Earth. Speaking of that history? Totally nonsensical bullshit, because it describes the entire affair as an international team-up of Champions who, despite there being no established reason why Or how so many of them would even agree to such an arrangement with so many nations left too distant or aggressive to bother with, nevertheless manage to defeat the evil bad guy and get a fucking Monument made in their honor but refuse to disseminate the information about this serious undertaking to either their home nations or the top Jarish brass in case of future problems, leading to no one having any clue what's going on when its obvious they didn't seal up that ancient evil quite well enough. The seemingly greatest international defense put together against an impossibly powerful enemy of unknown origin gets relegated to a fucking footnote so that Your Guys get be the ones to kick his ass for Round 2. Fucking Clownshoes.
Gulak is shown as a multicultural melting-pot, but we never hear anything about these cultures who have apparently upheld the same strident beliefs and traditions for thousands of years and how this persistence co-exists with a culture which is all about discussing and arguing religion and philosophy with eachother all the time as a regular passtime. Neither do we get how this influences their class-based society at all or the inter-group conflict which undoubtedly arises when you have wildly clashing belief paired with power-dynamics. When asked to even describe these marginal groups to begin with, we get shit like "there's some who wear gas-masks and practice ritualized kleptomania." Claslat is a mercantile hub which introduced Money as a "toy for the proles to play with" and somehow this has not turned their society on its fucking head, and what little we hear about the deep-seated corruption where glot-money is paid for work absence and deferral from legal consequence, its ignored completely because of a "Yeah and?" conspiracy about folks turning themselves undead by bumbling accident.
I could go on here, but lets step away from the Nations for a second and talk about the total mishandling of Gremlin Syndrome, which was a minor threat in 1e largely off in the Far Reaches where rarely anyone goes and once there you'd have just as much chance finding a gremlin incursion as you would be coming into conflict with regular old custodians and elementals who mistook you for an obstacle to be removed. In 2e, gremlins are literally the barbarians at the gates with footholds everywhere, and Apostates and Adamants are engaging in some kind of neverending shadow-war where both sides only barely know the other side even exists at all. In the attempt to make the setting more "action gameable," they've placed such an unnecessary emphasis on the Alchemical Exalted as the only people who can reasonably fight these things that it makes any kind of exploratory effort staffed by mere mortals into a potential suicide mission, when "exploring the reaches" is the lifeblood needed to keep the whole affair afloat. There are only like 1000 Alchemicals, they simply cannot be everywhere at once, and the implication that any random gathering of malfunctioning machine gods is working under the direction of some manner of mechanized necro-monger means that the foremost priority of any Champion isn't going to be fixing industrial disasters, traveling aboard as the Face of the nation, or doing cool spy-game shit, but acting as a caravan bodyguard to insure everyone gets food for the next couple months.
Or there is the part where the entire 2e setting is seemingly hinged on pushing everyone Out of itself back into Creation, undermining it as a place where Cool Things Happen, not simply as part of an Invasion plot arc but with the idea that unbroken knowledge of its ways, creatures and underpinning reality has been remembered for five millenia with no confusion as some sort of Promised Land of Wealth and Plenty. Yet, Autochthon explicitly fled from there and took humanity with him for his own safety, and these two ideas are never once contrasted against eachother for fear of realizing how dumb painting the fetishism of blue skies and green trees is when you're talking about a devout and embattled people who have barely heard of this place, and if at all, never by name or by anything less than a secondhand account. Everywhere in the book there is one more reference or another which simply serves to underscore a caustic idea that this generations-distant people of the Octet do not actually consider Autochthonia their home at all, and would sooner hang up their loyalty to God and Country to march single-file out into the nearest open grassy field to make their own way for the sake of some ineffable Freedom and Wonder.
Is it any surprise then, how the writing starts to fall apart entirely when you stop using it as Vanilla Exalted But With Robots and try to make it actually BE Autochthonia.
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- U.S.
The fact that they may well have not been a thing yet? And that the Solar's would be unlikely to put such esoteric charms in such storage?
Your plan is also, as I said, inherently flawed, because Imbue Amalgam doesn't work like that.
- Location
- Washington, USA
Do you have any textual basis whatsoever for any of those claims, beyond a gut reaction? The Dreamscape Tutor Gem is not an object, but rather, as you say in that very next sentence, an automaton - which is a type of creature. It has a stat block with attributes, abilities - even a Join Battle dice pool! - soak but no hardness, and a range of possible charms "useable for teaching purposes only without volition." The spell Imbue Amalgam could reasonably be construed as a "teaching purpose," and any given "donor's" participation explicitly does not require volition.
I'm not going to say this is iron-clad, but, think about that 'special pattern of jewels' the spell requires. That's got to be the interface by which it directs transformative essence into the subject's body and mind, right? Could be the same sort of interface that a tutor gem uses to access dreamscapes, but with more power and less subtlety, which is why non-artifact gems are 'burned out' by the casting. Then there's this passage:
Y'know what else the Wyld tends to be compared to? What raksha have a really easy time meddling with, even when they don't have power to spare for inflicting major mutations? What they supposedly eat? Dreams, again, almost as if those were a weaker, subtler version of the same basic phenomenon.
As for the 'custom-content cheese' of designing a variant spell which uses something other than stone quarried on the Blessed Isle for the focal statue, please consider the second optional power of Silurian Absorbtion:
Designing a 'reskinned' spell which presents identical mechanics in every respect apart from substituting one relatively mundane mineral for another is therefore very explicitly possible, and actually somewhat encouraged. It's not even strictly necessary, since blocks of stone originally quarried millennia ago on the Blessed Isle could conceivably be found somewhere in Autocthonia... but swapping that requirement out for something more readily available would be immensely convenient, and the rules DO support it.
- Location
- Washington, USA
Going by the timeline from Dreams of the First Age, Autocthon packed up and left about 120 years after the end of the Primordial War. That's the entire Ochre Fountain Era, plus the first ten years or so of the First Deliberative. Ochre Fountain extended to the edges of Creation at the south and east, bordermarches and middlemarches together were narrow enough back then to cross in a single day, and dueling was the standard accepted form of conflict resolution, so they definitely would have butted heads with Unshaped Raksha at some point. Once you've been out there, inventing Chaos-Repelling Pattern and Wyld-Shaping Technique is a simple matter of self-defense, then Order-Affirming Blow lets you smack down chaos-spawn in one shot AND clean up the worst side effects afterward. Once they'd had enough of pushing at the frontiers and turned back to centralize, the cities of Sperimin and Denandsor were founded. Sperimin was all about scholarship - y'know, the kind of collegial environment where folks might share some of their nifty new Lore charms - and Denandsor was all about crafting, particularly specialized in automata.
Esoteric? We're talking about standard corebook material here. Wyld-Shaping Technique is an amazing charm, right up there with Demon of the First Circle in the sheer scope of it's versatility. Whoever first invented WST definitely would've returned to Merela's court to brag about it, and she might've said "yeah, that's a pretty good trick, you should write that one down." Wouldn't want to lose the genius idea to some blood-sport-related mishap, right? Same deal for Order-Affirming Blow, but even more so because it's directly useful in a fight. Doesn't take all that long to design a 2-dot artifact from scratch, not when you've got the sort of unspoiled resources they had back then. After the Ocher Fountain Era, with the loss of some mountain folk tech and advent of a centralized government over all the exalted, there'd be even more pressure toward preservation of core competencies in a standardized curriculum.