I think the limit was specifically something like "if you could imagine it as having ever been a living thing on this Earth", so prehistoric stuff is totally fine.
And yeah, forgot about the little stuff like the moths.
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General Exalted Thread
And yeah, forgot about the little stuff like the moths.
Manic Dogma
This, I can't deny.
- Location
- The far side of tired
- Pronouns
- Whatever
And don't forget that you are allowed a Tiny spirit shape. You just can't assume that form unless you get the appropriate charm, just like with Legendary Size.
That said, you could make an argument for Giant Spiders in creation. The limits on what forms Lunars can take run more along the lines of "Is this animal magical? If so then fuck off" than IRL plausibility. Tyrant Lizards are explicitly unrealistic Super Theropods, after all.
That said, you could make an argument for Giant Spiders in creation. The limits on what forms Lunars can take run more along the lines of "Is this animal magical? If so then fuck off" than IRL plausibility. Tyrant Lizards are explicitly unrealistic Super Theropods, after all.
- Location
- Ottawa
Still bugs me that you need to care about animal stats when you choose a spirit shape.
Yeah, I know people have found dragonflys the size of birds. Probably others that I can't remember off the top of my head.
- Location
- United States
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There was a centipede ancestor (Arthropleura) that was about eight feet long in its largest species. Generally it only existed, along with most of the other bigger invertebrates on land at the time, due to the planet having much more terrestrial oxygen then than any other period in time and due to there not really being many predators for invertebrates.
- Location
- Washington, USA
With regard to point A, it's my understanding that the prayer goes to Ahlat, and as a result he becomes fractionally more interested in underwater basket weaving. If enough of Ahlat's cult considered it his purview, he'd start to gain dots in the appropriate Craft with a relevant specialty, and political maneuvers toward seizing official power over the actual Office of Underwater Basket-Weaving would be an increasingly tempting idea to him. The Syndics of Whitewall keep an angyalka around to counter that effect and maintain their individual identities, while Ystara is using it as a back-channel attack to seduce Rabszolga.
Peanut-007
Hat or Hair? America decides.
- Location
- Maryland, United States of America
Yeah. "Is it something that could plausibly be alive and do what it does without magic" is the big qualifier. You can be an elephant sized wolf. You can't be a fire breathing dragon.
Giygas
Cutest Sawk i could find. Lucario is a nice extra.
You can however be a Fire Breathing oversized Dragonfly. Let's all thanks the Bombardier bettle for bringing fire to Bug-Kind!
... Or you can do something strange with oversized Pistol/Mantis Shrimps. Punching so hard or snapping so hard to make cavitation bubbles and thus essentially natural gunshots? Yes please.
Ooor you can go the saner way, and use something similiar to the fanmade mutation thing that the TAW used.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
I need a little help with something I'm working on. Though it's a slight spoiler for my quest I'm working on.
Essentially I'm working on a scene of where a 112 or so mercenaries squaring off against a experienced Earth aspect. They have like forty crossbows, a shitload of pikes, Pole Axes, and a dozen or so firewands. They have three god bloods but only one of them is decent enough to directly clash with the Earth aspect. This is being written from the point of view of a soldier in the group. The fight is happening in the middle of a village sacking to bait out the DB.
This is a company with what you consider elite drill and have experience fighting dragon blood before, but usually have their own dragon blood support.
What I'm having trouble with is figuring out what kind of tactics they could employ to deal with the anima surge. Like I sure as hell know a good amount of tactics when it comes to this kind of warfare. Just not so much when you throw super humans into it.
I'm up for suggestions if you all have any. This is very much meant to be one hell of a fight.
This is a company with what you consider elite drill and have experience fighting dragon blood before, but usually have their own dragon blood support.
What I'm having trouble with is figuring out what kind of tactics they could employ to deal with the anima surge. Like I sure as hell know a good amount of tactics when it comes to this kind of warfare. Just not so much when you throw super humans into it.
I'm up for suggestions if you all have any. This is very much meant to be one hell of a fight.
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- Location
- Washington, USA
First idea that comes to mind is climbing up on rooftops, or scaffolding, or elephants or yeddim or similar-sized beasts, so the earth aspect can't close to melee without losing the various magical benefits of direct contact with the ground. Flight would be better, but I'm guessing you can't arrange flight capability on short notice. If the DB is motivated by protecting the village, they'll be trying to minimize collateral damage, which probably means houses won't just be demolished out from under you.
If the DB has the ability to modify terrain more or less at will, try to set up a situation where you lay down coordinated crossbow volleys from several directions at once, so it looks like the obvious solution is to raise walls on all sides for hard cover - but then have one of the god-blooded standing ready to toss in a firebomb just as the bunker's closing up.
Ropes and nets made out of some material that's sturdy enough to stand up to anima flux - maybe steel cables, or enchanted somehow - could be useful. Pit traps, glue, anything that hinders mobility might let you poke away with the polearms while staying out of retaliation range.
Think about how many can effectively engage a single target at once without tripping over each other or causing friendly-fire incidents - especially if the DB has tricks for increasing the chance of those. Split up into appropriately-sized groups, arrange signals and procedures for the next group to step in while tired or wounded soldiers return to the reserves. Bemoan the lack of sesselja medical support.
- Location
- Library
"HEy bandit army sacked the village! They have crossbows and dozens of good warriors!"
"Cool I will go there solo".
What kind of force the exalt is bringing with himself, how many troops does he have? Does he have an armor that make him more or less impervious to mortal weapons? Is he a master of "lol nope to onslaught penalties" style? Does he have jade bow and can pick the soldiers from half a mile while laughing at them or have a charm that let him "see" in the dark, in which case the encounter is night of horror for all mortals involved?
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- Pronouns
- she/her
Rabszolga works a little like that because the god of slavery is himself a slave.
I don't have an answer for the Syndics mostly because I simply don't care and dislike them as NPCs.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
- Location
- DOOR STUCK DOOR STUCK PLEASE I BEG U
Thanks, this helps a lot. This isn't meant to be a onesided fight on either side. I just want to show off that DB's are fucking scary but not like completely roll over people who really got the drop on them.
Been playing a shitload of battlebrothers so the urge to fight this battle is strong. Everything's great until your best swordsmen head goes flying off in a arc since someone got a cheeky stab through his armor.
It's a single Earth DB with a jade artifact hammer that can return back to his hands when they throw it. The DB is by themselves since he fell for the bait hella hard. He got decent mortal armor, half plate and the such.
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greensun
You shall all burn beneath my light!!!
DB's are good, but they aren't take on entire armies on their own good. At least not on their own. An experienced Sworn Brotherhood that's properly outfitted could walk all over this group.
But a single Earth Aspect with mundane armor and a Jade Warhammer? Unless he's really lucky and really clever, odds aren't on his side.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Nah, Dragon-Blooded can totally do this sort of stuff. It's not a very large group per army standards (it's barely more than a company) and as long as the Exalt fights cleverly, this is not like, an insurmountable challenge. Like, per game rules if this Earth aspect is remotely combat-specced, it's not a problem at all unless that army is taking command actions, but I suspect following game rules directly here would be a bad idea, especially when I had a discussion just earlier about how undertuned battle groups are, game-wise.
- Location
- United States
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A Water Aspect in my game killed a Size 5 group of Tiger Warriors by himself once, but he was very deeply spec'd out into martial arts and his ally had shot the enemy's mortal commander in the back before he started.
...especially when I had a discussion just earlier about how undertuned battle groups are, game-wise.
Everybody just says this like it's true, but I really don't think it is. In the closest boss fight my circle of Solars ever had, the supporting battlegroup did more actual damage to the party than any other single combatant. The sole exception being one player who wasn't going to be able to play for much longer and pre-arranged with me for their character to take a crippling wound for a dramatic exit.
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- Location
- Ottawa
If you ask me, pretty much every battle group should have its leader statted out as an individual character. It makes such a huge difference, mechanically speaking, if orders are represented as command actions rather than as part of the battle group's attack stunts.
- Location
- Denmark
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh no, I don't say it because they lack power. I say it because they're one-note. They're very good at being blobs of health levels and doing ridiculous amounts of withering damage to people who lack NANOMACHINES, SON-levels of soak. They don't have any response to high soak, though, and they don't have any other cool powers to throw around; the Magnitude benefits scale nonsensically and Might eating up Charms makes them more one-note and boring. The basic chassis however, is quite fine. But note I never said weak. I said undertuned. Because they lack stuff to do.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Sand Fish
To the caravans and sand-sailing ships of the Sand Sea, there is a broad class of fauna that both vexes and vitalizes the merchant-king and their vassals.
Known broadly as Sand Fish, there are dozens of species of desert-dwelling, spineless creatures. Very few are even remotely similar to fish, but occupy a similar culinary niche. Most of which evoke images of scuttling legs, interlocking plates of chitin and gnashing mouthparts. Closely related to shrimp, crabs and lobster, or more pedestrian creatures such as wasp or scorpions, the various clades of sand fish are at times an awkward but treasured staple of the southern desert diet.
Savannah Locust
Indigenous to the southern coast of the Inland Sea, and known to reach into the more arid Savannah north of An-Teng, the Savannah Locust is a larger offshoot of it's more common cousins. Their nymphs are often the size of a child's pinky finger, and as adults, they grow to about as long as a man's forearm. Savannah Locusts rarely swarm more than once a decade, but can darken the skies with their numbers.
Many southern gods use the Savannah Locust or it's normal cousins as their totem beast or omen of choice, and numerous cultures all throughout the south know beckoning rituals for individual locusts or whole swarms. In some small communities, baked locust with saffron is a ritual delicacy reserved for festival days and weddings. However, any meal of locust must be cooked or served in a silvered pan or bowl, and each body carefully examined by sun or candlelight to reveal the hint of Cecenlyian irridescence. Whole swarms have been burned on the suspicion of a single invader from the Endless Desert.
Red Dancing Scuttler
An armored, desert centipede, some three feet long with sharply angled, sturdy plates of chitin, the Red Dancing Scultter is found primarily in the Sand Sea and outlying dune-rivers that cross the South. The edges of those plates are a brilliant scarlet, allowing it to blend into the rusty red sands of it's home territories more easily. Primarily a nocturnal hunter, it has four long thin antenna nearly half the length of it's body, and poisonous claws astride both it's mouth and tail. it's poison suffuses it's body much like that of the ocean-dwelling puffer fish, so care must be taken when dressing the meat for consumption.
The meat itself is succulent, and a single scuttler can satisfy a family for several days, or be the main dish in a grand feast. Catching the scuttlers is however a different matter, as they burrow under the sands during the day and move fast and lightly across the dunes or between rocks at night. If caught during the day, it can and does swim through the sand as easily as a fish does water.
Drowning Scarab
A small beetle about the size of a child's fist, this creature is akin to the more mundane dung beetle of other regions. It has a lustrous blue-black shell that is valued highly for it's use in pigments and cosmetics, in some ways superior to lapis lazuli. While less useful as a food-source, the scarab is unique in that as part of it's reproductive scheme, it must seek out not dung for it's eggs, but standing water and underground pockets of moisture.
To accomplish this, the Drowning Scarab is notoriously good at sensing buried aquifers, essence tokens from far off water demenses, water Elementals, and most importantly, fragments of Black Jade that find their way into the Sand Sea and nearby regions. A single obol's worth of the rare material has likely provided enough moisture for a hundred or more such scarabs over the years- and with a thaumaturgical rite, a Scarab can be convinced to hare off in search of such things. They are known as Drowning Scarabs, because they often spend hours or days wading in small pools- and more than one campfire story has hinted that they find a dozing traveler's open mouth a handsome spot to bring their water-making trinkets to.
Many captains and caravan-masters of the South keep a Scarab or two in wire or glass caged lanterns, watching where their antennae point for water.
Dune-Cresting Shrimp
If one picked such a creature out and held it front of an ocean, one would be surprised to find that a Dune-Cresting Shrimp is in fact deathly allergic to salt water, and does not much enjoy freshwater either. Dune-Cresting Shrimp instead subsist entirely on smaller sandfleas and krill that weave through the shifting hills of the Sand Sea. Most are about the size of a man's hand, and they gather in great schools tens of thousands strong. Their movement tends to shape the 'waves' of the Sand Sea as well, where they often leap out of the dunes to shake off the crust that collects on their many legs.
Dune-Cresting Shrimp are often caught by trawlers hauling nets, or by baskets and traps staked out at the sides of the more fluid sandbeds around desert settlements. They are served fried with various sauces and dips.
To the caravans and sand-sailing ships of the Sand Sea, there is a broad class of fauna that both vexes and vitalizes the merchant-king and their vassals.
Known broadly as Sand Fish, there are dozens of species of desert-dwelling, spineless creatures. Very few are even remotely similar to fish, but occupy a similar culinary niche. Most of which evoke images of scuttling legs, interlocking plates of chitin and gnashing mouthparts. Closely related to shrimp, crabs and lobster, or more pedestrian creatures such as wasp or scorpions, the various clades of sand fish are at times an awkward but treasured staple of the southern desert diet.
Savannah Locust
Indigenous to the southern coast of the Inland Sea, and known to reach into the more arid Savannah north of An-Teng, the Savannah Locust is a larger offshoot of it's more common cousins. Their nymphs are often the size of a child's pinky finger, and as adults, they grow to about as long as a man's forearm. Savannah Locusts rarely swarm more than once a decade, but can darken the skies with their numbers.
Many southern gods use the Savannah Locust or it's normal cousins as their totem beast or omen of choice, and numerous cultures all throughout the south know beckoning rituals for individual locusts or whole swarms. In some small communities, baked locust with saffron is a ritual delicacy reserved for festival days and weddings. However, any meal of locust must be cooked or served in a silvered pan or bowl, and each body carefully examined by sun or candlelight to reveal the hint of Cecenlyian irridescence. Whole swarms have been burned on the suspicion of a single invader from the Endless Desert.
Red Dancing Scuttler
An armored, desert centipede, some three feet long with sharply angled, sturdy plates of chitin, the Red Dancing Scultter is found primarily in the Sand Sea and outlying dune-rivers that cross the South. The edges of those plates are a brilliant scarlet, allowing it to blend into the rusty red sands of it's home territories more easily. Primarily a nocturnal hunter, it has four long thin antenna nearly half the length of it's body, and poisonous claws astride both it's mouth and tail. it's poison suffuses it's body much like that of the ocean-dwelling puffer fish, so care must be taken when dressing the meat for consumption.
The meat itself is succulent, and a single scuttler can satisfy a family for several days, or be the main dish in a grand feast. Catching the scuttlers is however a different matter, as they burrow under the sands during the day and move fast and lightly across the dunes or between rocks at night. If caught during the day, it can and does swim through the sand as easily as a fish does water.
Drowning Scarab
A small beetle about the size of a child's fist, this creature is akin to the more mundane dung beetle of other regions. It has a lustrous blue-black shell that is valued highly for it's use in pigments and cosmetics, in some ways superior to lapis lazuli. While less useful as a food-source, the scarab is unique in that as part of it's reproductive scheme, it must seek out not dung for it's eggs, but standing water and underground pockets of moisture.
To accomplish this, the Drowning Scarab is notoriously good at sensing buried aquifers, essence tokens from far off water demenses, water Elementals, and most importantly, fragments of Black Jade that find their way into the Sand Sea and nearby regions. A single obol's worth of the rare material has likely provided enough moisture for a hundred or more such scarabs over the years- and with a thaumaturgical rite, a Scarab can be convinced to hare off in search of such things. They are known as Drowning Scarabs, because they often spend hours or days wading in small pools- and more than one campfire story has hinted that they find a dozing traveler's open mouth a handsome spot to bring their water-making trinkets to.
Many captains and caravan-masters of the South keep a Scarab or two in wire or glass caged lanterns, watching where their antennae point for water.
Dune-Cresting Shrimp
If one picked such a creature out and held it front of an ocean, one would be surprised to find that a Dune-Cresting Shrimp is in fact deathly allergic to salt water, and does not much enjoy freshwater either. Dune-Cresting Shrimp instead subsist entirely on smaller sandfleas and krill that weave through the shifting hills of the Sand Sea. Most are about the size of a man's hand, and they gather in great schools tens of thousands strong. Their movement tends to shape the 'waves' of the Sand Sea as well, where they often leap out of the dunes to shake off the crust that collects on their many legs.
Dune-Cresting Shrimp are often caught by trawlers hauling nets, or by baskets and traps staked out at the sides of the more fluid sandbeds around desert settlements. They are served fried with various sauces and dips.
I've got an idea for a thing thing among other things might be a cool way to address the might v. charms issue, but until I get off my ass and hash it out a bit, I'll just say that the gist is that you can treat Might as being the uncoordinated use of powers by supernatural troops, and if you come up with some resource to peg it to (similar to the way initiative costs balance gambits), it might be cool to allow commanders to fire off battlegroup charms with command actions representing coordinated power usage without breaking the fiction.
For 'undertuned', maybe we'll chalk that up to some kind of cultural difference, because where I'm from your usage of 'undertuned' is a synonym for 'weak'.
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I find it a bit odd that, in 3e Lunars, social-based Protean charms don't work in your true form. So, if you're using Beast-King Dictates on, say, your loyal beast-man retainer to get him to travel far South and speak with your shahan-ya, you don't get the Protean benefit unless you're pretending to be someone else with authority over him. Very strange, I hope they change the wording since it does screw over social Lunars who are running enterprises, kingdoms, or so on in their own true form.