- Location
- my house
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
@SerGregness , @rogthnor @Sydonai , I appreciate the discussion. As a draft, I agree the mortality times are forgiving, but I as much wanted to prevent reactive charm designs.
What I mean is that people tend design defensive charms and they're all about dying less. I wanted the base mechanics to be friendly enough that you wouldn't feel the need to buy Number boosting charms. Instead you should be looking to get Charms To Find treatment or treat yourself.
What I mean is that people tend design defensive charms and they're all about dying less. I wanted the base mechanics to be friendly enough that you wouldn't feel the need to buy Number boosting charms. Instead you should be looking to get Charms To Find treatment or treat yourself.
- Location
- Singapore
...... perhaps.
Maybe me living in a modern world, typing on a cheap device made of glass and silicon that lets me to talk to people half a world away has skewed my priorities and sense of proportion?
- Location
- Singapore
Automated kill switch.
It's a dumb thing put in the BWC to push Infernals into the Devil Tiger path. It encourages players to Essence-rushing into elder essence with the nagging feeling they're on a clock.
My advice is either to ignore it, or standardise 150 years for both Infernals and Solars and thus make the "And you too will die" a core part of the Solar story so the madness of the First Age was much more obviously caused by them getting all Gilgamesh about the knowledge of their oncoming deaths.
- Location
- my house
That's good advice and all, but canoicanlly how does it actually work?
Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Well if you go with 150 for the solaroids you'd need to scale down the other exalt types too since DBs can reach 300. Otherwise.... other than putting in more generations of Exalted rule and either doing something with the Scarlet Empress' long life I don't see it needing much. Maybe have Scarlet be dead, or have living several times longer than a solar add to her mystique in universe?
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All we know on the subject is what was written in The Broken-Winged Crane:
I'll also note that immediately after this it says "it is never inappropriate for players to avoid this fate".
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- Location
- United States
it's their "natural" lifespan. Just like how solars & lunars have a natural lifespan of 3,000 years, but solars developed high essence resistance charms that can up it to 10,000, and lunars developed stamina charms that let them hibernate the years off.
I personally don't see why other Exalt needs to be scaled down; Solars burn the brightest, why shouldn't they burn the shortest? It's not the hill I'd pick to die on, though.
As for the Empress, she's already using magic to extend her lifespan, so there's no need to fix anything there.
- Location
- Ottawa
If I were writing the gameline, lifespan probably wouldn't be consistent from Exalt to Exalt. One Solar might find themself ageing to death at 200, one might still be hale and hearty at 2000. There'd be plenty of science and pseudoscience among Exalts about how to live longer, of course.
If I were writing the gameline, I would have the longest total lifespans going to those who constantly use their powers to push all boundaries, and thus create a twisted incentive to burn as bright as possible for as long as possible, and result in those who could have lived longest dying younger than they might have otherwise, because the wars they waged and the nations they crafted led to more and more violence in their life, until finally their luck ran out.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
I like it, but it doesn't mention how Hardened Devil Body (Infernal Ox Body) interacts with the system.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
because I hadn't re-read that Charm before I laid out the draft. Logically it'd probably fall somewhere between Lunar and Solar for mechanics, but I personally think HDB is part of the Malfean tree's overwhelming defense advantage, and I'd... rather depreciate that a teensy bit. It's an opinon mind, just that I've seen malfean soakmonster builds that are game-deforming.
Basically my view is that Sidereals should get the Least mortal wounds, as they're not meant to get into combat willy-nilly- and when they do, it's via esoteric means like offloading it onto happlest bystanders/enemies and so on. Abyssals and Lunars I feel should get the most tech for it within their themes, and then Solars/Infernals/DBs all have respectable directions to take.
Like I said, I wanted to avoid over-designing this mechanic in favor of 'reactive' or 'boring defensive charms'.
Like... there are only so many ways you can say 'Doesn't Die' in Exalted, any edition.
- Location
- United States
Were I writing the game line, I'd say that the number of exalts who have died of old age are such a small number in the face of the number of exalts that have walked Creation that it's impossible to guess what the "normal" lifespan is of an exalt of any stripe. Then I'd just leave it to STs on a case by case basis, secure in the knowledge that "dying of old age" is not a real concern for any PC in actual play.
I were writing the game line, I would just have Exalts have the exact same lifespans as mortals but wouldn't suffer from the fragilities of age, and have living beyond that require external assistance. Having Exalts live for millennia by defaut adds nothing to the setting and the options for pushing off the end available to Exalts that have lived long enough that old age is an issue means that very little of the canon situation would change if a particular elder being around is important.
At the most I would just have everyone get the 300-400 year lifespan, as other supernatural entities besides Exalts are capable of living for centuries.
At the most I would just have everyone get the 300-400 year lifespan, as other supernatural entities besides Exalts are capable of living for centuries.
Or this.
- Location
- United States
Yeah "Some exalts have died of old age at 400, some have died of old age at 3,000, some have died of old age at 7,000, others have lived beyond 9,000 years before they died in an accident" would be the long and the short of it. Maybe there's some theories that people who have a bunch of stamina or resistance charms live longer, but there's no real way to experiment on that in any meaningful fashion. Some exalts guzzle magical medicines and engage in exotic meditation practices to extend their lives, but it's hard to tell if they'll live longer than any other exalt.
IIRC it's detailed in Compass: Underworld as "Creation, but EVIL, and also with rape camps." I suggest looking to homebrew.
Salty
Shadow Cabal Assumptor Supreme
- Location
- Sun, Moon, Talia
- Pronouns
- I/Me
The "natural" lifespan of an Exalt is indefinite. This is because so many Exalts experience death by natural causes (e.g. too many DBs nearby, the presence of a nearby Lunar, alcohol overdose) at so many different ages (and Ages) that averages must necessarily be used.
- Location
- Ottawa
It adds elder Exalts to the setting. If Exalts just live the standard 80-100 years, you don't get things like Chejop Kejak remembering the First Age. Sure, you can say that elders all have some kind of external assistance, but after you do that a few times it just becomes the new default.
Right, but only if you do it more than a few times, which in my view is "any more than Chejop Kejak and the Scarlet Empress." In my opinion, other than the old man, Lunar and Sidereal elders don't need to be a default part of the setting anymore than Solar elders.
Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Sure, but if JUST THOSE guys live so much longer than everyone else, that's something people are going to notice and it would increase the pressure for some form of explanation. If all Exalts have extended life spans then those two's long life becomes less of an "oh fuck!" factor on its own.