On one hand, this conversation is getting really annoying, but on the other, the thread was dead as fuck before it started, so I'm ambivalent.
General Exalted Thread
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I'm really adopting a Deathlord mindset here. Let the unending arguments flow like sewage through a beautiful field and despoil yet one more pleasure in life, to prove that actually life sucks and death is totally cool.
You realize this allows it to replicate the function of other charms for knowing languages right? Take the original message, swap every other character making it is technically ciphered, and now you can read languages you don't know.
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If you guys don't like endless arguments over linguistic philosophy and game mechanics that nobody in the argument even uses, what are you doing here?
Kinda funny that in this debate both Aaron and Dif turned up after being absent for ages. I guess it's nostalgic or something.
To me, a code is something that replaces words in order to prevent people who don't know the code from understanding what you're saying.
I actually quite like the definition you get when you google code definition, so I don't think I'm being weird about this. "a system of words, letters, figures, or other symbols substituted for other words, letters, etc., especially for the purposes of secrecy." suits me just fine.
Anyway, saying word X instead of word Y is the ur-code. The basic code. The code that you don't even have to invent. If you can't handle that, how can you handle any code? And isn't this the very definition of "the signals in a coded exchange"?
The Order 66 example is interesting because, if the code used the same words with a non-code-related intention, I don't think the Charm would work.
1-5, I get where each of you is coming from.
6, though...you are deliberately rewriting the Charm here, right? Because the Charm as written is totally all-or-nothing. As I said before it's a code-ignoring Charm rather than a code-breaking Charm. It's not written to give you the ROT13 meaning on a message that wasn't ROT13'd. Whether DSE succeeds against the OTP or fails, I don't see any way for "browse ciphered manuscripts as though they were in the original language" to give you insight into a cipher that wasn't used but could've been.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with changing the Charm's effect; god knows I've rewritten more than my share of Exalted. But that is what you're doing, right?
My reading is that the "original language" specifically excludes foreign languages from the effect of the Charm. Sure, a language is kind of like a code, but the Charm's not meant to do that.
In the case of multiple proxies, I'd say the Charm lets you understand the intent of the one who actually wrote the physical message in front of you.
I don't think the Charm can be used to compress information through book references. However, if the book references are being used as an obtuse way to hide the actual meaning of the message, that meaning is revealed. But of course the meaning can't be much longer than the message.
For similar reasons, the Charm does not explain how to make a crossbow.
I think this all follows naturally from the conceptual perspective I laid out earlier. You get what the message "really means", and all attempts to obfuscate that meaning are defeated. But if something isn't an attempt at obfuscation, the Charm doesn't do anything with it.
It's pretty weird that the Charm can give different results from the same message, but as your answers showed that's pretty unavoidable. And I think my interpretation makes it more feature than bug, by using it to get around chicanery. Kind of a Judge's Ear Technique situation, come to think of it.
Kinda funny that in this debate both Aaron and Dif turned up after being absent for ages. I guess it's nostalgic or something.
To me, a code is something that replaces words in order to prevent people who don't know the code from understanding what you're saying.
I actually quite like the definition you get when you google code definition, so I don't think I'm being weird about this. "a system of words, letters, figures, or other symbols substituted for other words, letters, etc., especially for the purposes of secrecy." suits me just fine.
Anyway, saying word X instead of word Y is the ur-code. The basic code. The code that you don't even have to invent. If you can't handle that, how can you handle any code? And isn't this the very definition of "the signals in a coded exchange"?
The Order 66 example is interesting because, if the code used the same words with a non-code-related intention, I don't think the Charm would work.
1-5, I get where each of you is coming from.
6, though...you are deliberately rewriting the Charm here, right? Because the Charm as written is totally all-or-nothing. As I said before it's a code-ignoring Charm rather than a code-breaking Charm. It's not written to give you the ROT13 meaning on a message that wasn't ROT13'd. Whether DSE succeeds against the OTP or fails, I don't see any way for "browse ciphered manuscripts as though they were in the original language" to give you insight into a cipher that wasn't used but could've been.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with changing the Charm's effect; god knows I've rewritten more than my share of Exalted. But that is what you're doing, right?
My reading is that the "original language" specifically excludes foreign languages from the effect of the Charm. Sure, a language is kind of like a code, but the Charm's not meant to do that.
In the case of multiple proxies, I'd say the Charm lets you understand the intent of the one who actually wrote the physical message in front of you.
I don't think the Charm can be used to compress information through book references. However, if the book references are being used as an obtuse way to hide the actual meaning of the message, that meaning is revealed. But of course the meaning can't be much longer than the message.
For similar reasons, the Charm does not explain how to make a crossbow.
I think this all follows naturally from the conceptual perspective I laid out earlier. You get what the message "really means", and all attempts to obfuscate that meaning are defeated. But if something isn't an attempt at obfuscation, the Charm doesn't do anything with it.
It's pretty weird that the Charm can give different results from the same message, but as your answers showed that's pretty unavoidable. And I think my interpretation makes it more feature than bug, by using it to get around chicanery. Kind of a Judge's Ear Technique situation, come to think of it.
I see no reason why he cannot have his cake, get that one E5 Occult Charm, and then eat it too.I'm currently wondering if my Zenith's giant squid boyfriend from another dimension should be real or just a ruse for him to stay a virgin since men are mega thirsty toward him
That's fair.
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The spirit of every exalted thread ever posted on any website, condensed into a motto. Bravo!
Chloe Sullivan
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I prefer Taxes.
Sadly Hidden Horse style is not aesthetically very Abyssal.
The cosmic IRS in Discworld is trying to destroy all life and individuality, so I could see it working.
The Occult capstone that let you create another being? Making your own husbando since your standards are so high just seems incredibly sad to me ;~;
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
Except those about lunars. Those are more about exactly what are Lunars.
... To stop Meerkat steal the Spotlight Prana from taking effect,
Edit: you are in fact getting better wording, because i am extremely bothered by my perceived rudeness, and the wording is really bad.
Have we gotten out Bloat country with the Dragonblooded and Lunar number of charms? Is the number of one or both of them significantly lower than the solars?
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3e Dragon-bloods has 534 charms for everything outside of Martial Arts, and averages to about 21 per ability, with the most in an ability being 30 for Performance, oddly enough. Solars, in comparison, has 772 charms in those abilities (excluding the charms included in Miracles of the Solar Exalted, as Dragon-blooded doesn't have its backer charm book out either and the comparison would just become far more unfair), averaging ~31 per ability, and the ability with the highest amount of charms is Craft at a whopping 53. Further skewing things is that Dragon-bloods have Signature charms, in which each ability has 5 charms, one very potent charm for each element, that you can only pick one of at Essence 3 until Essence 5, where you get to choose one more. I've not counted up the charms in Lunars yet, but if I had to put it in a ballpark, I'd say more than Dragon-bloods but less than Solars, and there's no fiddly shit like Wyld-Shaping Technique.
EDIT: Note that I don't include repurchases in that tally, simply because, eh, it's usually either something like Ox-Body and just gives you more static numbers or a slight boost to an existing charm.
Anyway, I'm nuts! Let's go tally up Lunar charms! We have 633 total charms across the 9 Attributes, for an average of 70 per attribute and the most being concentrated in, unsurprisingly, Dexterity, with 88 charms to the god-stat's name. Stamina has the least with 62 charms total. Also of interest is that Lunar Craft (in Intelligence) is comparable to Dragon-blood Craft in number, with 18 charms total. Perhaps this is because neither deal with filling the tree with dozens of charms for getting more Craft slots and doing Cookie Clicker shit where you shit out an artifact every so often.
EDIT: Note that I don't include repurchases in that tally, simply because, eh, it's usually either something like Ox-Body and just gives you more static numbers or a slight boost to an existing charm.
Anyway, I'm nuts! Let's go tally up Lunar charms! We have 633 total charms across the 9 Attributes, for an average of 70 per attribute and the most being concentrated in, unsurprisingly, Dexterity, with 88 charms to the god-stat's name. Stamina has the least with 62 charms total. Also of interest is that Lunar Craft (in Intelligence) is comparable to Dragon-blood Craft in number, with 18 charms total. Perhaps this is because neither deal with filling the tree with dozens of charms for getting more Craft slots and doing Cookie Clicker shit where you shit out an artifact every so often.
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There are 645 Lunar Charms, outside of Martial Arts. That still makes their charmset appear even more cumbrous than Solars though, considering it's spread across 9 Attributes rather than 25 discreet Abilities.
While Dragonblooded do have a lower charm number, a lot of it comes with unexpected gaps in their competencies compared to Solars as a result. I think mechanically I'd describe them as really competent offensively, but weak defensively. Good in bursts (especially since their best Charms are Per Story), and if they're outnumbering a Celestial. But they have serious glass jaws by Solar or Lunar standards due to a comparative lack of defensive options.
This is still a massive step up compared to 2E though.
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I think the Lunar curse has been broken by 3e's preview.
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I've said this before in this thread, but it is very telling about 3e's iteration of Lunars that a LOT of people I know who did not give a single damn about Lunars wants to play them now. I mean, hell, I certainly didn't give a shit and now I love the guys.
I'm thinking about 3e Abyssals (and to an extant, Infernals as well) and I hope that being tied to the Solars doesn't make the new guys have to repeat the mistakes of the old. While I feel like the new books do a good job of avoiding the stuff I absolutely hated about 3e core (Craft charms that exist solely to give you boring ass slots and horrible horrible god awful recursive die bullshit, Socialize charms where you have to basically create a new character and track their XP and other tedious endeavors that prevent you from playing the game, insanely weird hang-ups about Bureaucracy charms that let you prevent your workers from backstabbing you, huge-ass charm trees), I have to wonder if the devs will HAVE to bring back that crap in order to have parity with the Solars or if they'll consider Abyssals different enough to not bother with that stuff or at least implement it better.
EDIT: Like holy fucking shit are core Solar Bureaucracy charms bad. There's a lot of shit the Dragon-blooded do that's just flat-out better than the alleged perfect God-Kings of Creation, whose laws are wise and whose servants partake in their magnificence and blah blah blah, because the new devs don't have the odd taboos surrounding that ability that Holden and Morke do, and thank god for that
I'm thinking about 3e Abyssals (and to an extant, Infernals as well) and I hope that being tied to the Solars doesn't make the new guys have to repeat the mistakes of the old. While I feel like the new books do a good job of avoiding the stuff I absolutely hated about 3e core (Craft charms that exist solely to give you boring ass slots and horrible horrible god awful recursive die bullshit, Socialize charms where you have to basically create a new character and track their XP and other tedious endeavors that prevent you from playing the game, insanely weird hang-ups about Bureaucracy charms that let you prevent your workers from backstabbing you, huge-ass charm trees), I have to wonder if the devs will HAVE to bring back that crap in order to have parity with the Solars or if they'll consider Abyssals different enough to not bother with that stuff or at least implement it better.
EDIT: Like holy fucking shit are core Solar Bureaucracy charms bad. There's a lot of shit the Dragon-blooded do that's just flat-out better than the alleged perfect God-Kings of Creation, whose laws are wise and whose servants partake in their magnificence and blah blah blah, because the new devs don't have the odd taboos surrounding that ability that Holden and Morke do, and thank god for that
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Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
My hope is slightly different but related: i personally hope that the example charms of the Exigents will be easily converted to Solar charms. Or that Exigent will have enough rules to fix the current solar charms. The second is more probable, and we are getting apparently Exigents before Abyssals anyway.
Also, i can say to have discovered..... WATER. Or, i realized that i could have used Artifact Rules to make non artifact/advanced infrastructure all along.
I mean, I honestly don't think Lunars or Dragonblooded or all that much of a paradigm shift from the core. They still have tons of charms, and lean on 'reroll this' or simpler effects in many cases. The language is cleaner, and they waste less charm space going into highly niche things like the persona charms in Solar Socialize, but otherwise it's not much of a conceptual shift, it's about what I'd expect with developers who grow more familiar with an edition's mechanics.
Solars are always left in a strange and rough place, mechanically, as an edition progresses. That was true in 1E (compare Solars to Sidereals and Alchemicals) and 2E (compare Solars to Infernals). The reason it was less apparent in 2E was because at least initially, Dragonblooded and Siderals and Lunars were a step back from the Core.
Overall I'd say that Solars don't need a significant rewrite or really need to be addressed right now. As the line progresses their mechanics will start to look clunkier and more awkward by comparison, but there's not much that requires significant revision compared to 2E. Remember pre-errata Solars in 2E? One weapon, two blows meant you spent an entire charm on +1 Acc and +1 Rate for a single action, it was so shitty. Or how a badly written Dragonblooded Charm in their Integrity tree meant that the most powerful Exalts in the setting were actually the Terrestrials.
Comparatively, 3E Solars still meet the criteria of being the Strongest and the Blandest with the least baggage, which is sort of the niche they were always meant to occupy.
Solars are always left in a strange and rough place, mechanically, as an edition progresses. That was true in 1E (compare Solars to Sidereals and Alchemicals) and 2E (compare Solars to Infernals). The reason it was less apparent in 2E was because at least initially, Dragonblooded and Siderals and Lunars were a step back from the Core.
Overall I'd say that Solars don't need a significant rewrite or really need to be addressed right now. As the line progresses their mechanics will start to look clunkier and more awkward by comparison, but there's not much that requires significant revision compared to 2E. Remember pre-errata Solars in 2E? One weapon, two blows meant you spent an entire charm on +1 Acc and +1 Rate for a single action, it was so shitty. Or how a badly written Dragonblooded Charm in their Integrity tree meant that the most powerful Exalts in the setting were actually the Terrestrials.
Comparatively, 3E Solars still meet the criteria of being the Strongest and the Blandest with the least baggage, which is sort of the niche they were always meant to occupy.
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I don't really think it's an shift of the paradigm, it's just a shift in the right direction and honestly, I'm not quite sure Holden and Morke could've managed to do that much. Fuck, right before they were kicked out, they were talking about Arms of the Chosen having big ass charms trees that would cost a whopping 120 XP to get through. Even if, say, Morke learned how to write charms more coherently (in core and Miracles, he has a habit of repeating himself and inventing pointless terminology, in addition to natural language bleeding into the charm descriptions), his peculiar approach towards charm design would remain. I'd say Morke's design is epitomized in Miracles of the Solar Exalted, mainly due to it forcing him to take on ideas from other people. Often is the phrase "The backer wanted this but I changed it because I felt that didn't fit with what I was going for" uttered, and never to anything more interesting than what the backer wanted. While he occasionally does make gold with backer ideas in that book, such as Seventeen Cycles Symphony being a cool and interesting Performance, more often he just craps outs something like Arc Shedding Rain Technique (disarm a trivial opponent after parrying them and then punch them with an unarmed attack, because apparently it's very necessary to spend 8-10 XP for a charm to defeat something that never should've been rolled into combat in the first place) or Divinity-Conferring Touch (10m committed indefinitely to give a follower a "major miracle and two minor miracles", terminology which is never really explained and which just makes me wonder why you couldn't just make this "Once per story, turn a devoted follower into a spirit" instead).
I just feel like if the old devs had continued on, Dragon-bloods and Lunars would have just made the same mistakes as core, honestly. Dragon-blooded Brawl would be 40 charms long, the Lunar charm tree to create a more negative split personality for yourself would be drastically complicated by rules for XP and ability distribution in this form as well as being 6 charms longer, both DB and Lunar Crafts would be filled with more cookie clicker stuff, and so on. Fuck, even if Holden and Morke were better designers, I still wouldn't want them on just due to Morke being a sex pest and weirdly transphobic (what with his insistence that souls can only be male and female and that non-binary people don't exist as the result), and Holden covering for Morke's creepy shit while also pretending to be a woke Twitter personality.
EDIT: Oh, I also forgot their weird ideas to make yet more Exalted, which immediately ended the second the new devs came in and instead made them optional stuff you can homebrew yourself in Exigents because good heavens, Exalted already has enough Exalted as is, why did they feel the need to have like 5 more types in addition to the three new ones introduced in core?
I just feel like if the old devs had continued on, Dragon-bloods and Lunars would have just made the same mistakes as core, honestly. Dragon-blooded Brawl would be 40 charms long, the Lunar charm tree to create a more negative split personality for yourself would be drastically complicated by rules for XP and ability distribution in this form as well as being 6 charms longer, both DB and Lunar Crafts would be filled with more cookie clicker stuff, and so on. Fuck, even if Holden and Morke were better designers, I still wouldn't want them on just due to Morke being a sex pest and weirdly transphobic (what with his insistence that souls can only be male and female and that non-binary people don't exist as the result), and Holden covering for Morke's creepy shit while also pretending to be a woke Twitter personality.
EDIT: Oh, I also forgot their weird ideas to make yet more Exalted, which immediately ended the second the new devs came in and instead made them optional stuff you can homebrew yourself in Exigents because good heavens, Exalted already has enough Exalted as is, why did they feel the need to have like 5 more types in addition to the three new ones introduced in core?
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To some extent this is the problem with Exalted's reversed order of power-by having the Most Powerful Splat come first, it means that you're having to write their charms with no idea how to actually write them, whereas if you have power creep, you can also expect that the Most Powerful Content is going to be done with a fuller understanding of how the game actually plays, in practice.
Solars eat a double whammy because their themes are so broad (and their charms are so ambiguous in how they function), and that also makes them harder to pin down well.
I think that this is just an inevitable side effect from the axioms of Exalted though. Solars are always going to be kind of weird and janky.
The_Reptile_
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Solars Being First And Thus Jank is a well known axiom. The fact they're also by Definition the most Powerful of the Splats makes this issue an actual Problem, because by defintion they become the comparison point for all the other splats, but since all the other splats are going to be written well after the system will have been ground down into dust and recontextualized, they're also going to play a lot better, which isn't a lot of fun for everyone when Solars are the focal point of the game.
Obvious answer?
Cult of the Illuminated book with Solar Charm Errata
Obvious answer?
Cult of the Illuminated book with Solar Charm Errata
Peanut-007
Hat or Hair? America decides.
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This but unironically. Cult of the Illuminated could really use a touch up with the better writing on religion in Creation that's been present throughout this edition.Cult of the Illuminated book with Solar Charm Errata
Solars Being First And Thus Jank is a well known axiom. The fact they're also by Definition the most Powerful of the Splats makes this issue an actual Problem, because by defintion they become the comparison point for all the other splats, but since all the other splats are going to be written well after the system will have been ground down into dust and recontextualized, they're also going to play a lot better, which isn't a lot of fun for everyone when Solars are the focal point of the game.
Obvious answer?
Cult of the Illuminated book with Solar Charm Errata
Yeah, I'd love a new Cult of the Illuminated book. 3e's writing on religion has been one of my favorite parts of the edition thus far.
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Per Discord they wanna make a book about the setting's religions, including a revision on Cult of the Illuminated
Yeeeeees.