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General Exalted Thread

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HamSandLich said:
This is my second time homebrewing anything with Crunch for Exalted, so I'd be grateful for feedback.

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  • Mythic Berserker Strike(3m, Supplemental, Psyche, Scene): When making an attack, the Baptized may call upon legends of the terrifying berserks of the North. A creature damaged by the Baptized gains a scene-long Minor Intimacy of Terror towards the Baptized, the intensity rising by one degree with each successful attack. Applying social influence during combat to strengthen this intimacy makes it a regular intimacy that persists after the scene has ended
  • Mythic Hero Blows(4m + 1i, Supplemental, Withering-Only, Stackable, [Essence] +1 Rounds): The Baptized channels the strength of mythic warriors into their blows. After making a successful withering attack, the Berserker can force the target to pay one point of Initiative whenever they make an attack against the Knight, stacking the effects up to Essence + 1 times.
Defensive Charms
  • Mythic Berserker Resilience(3m + 1wp per point of wound penalty, Reflexive, [Essence] +1 Rounds): The Baptized calls upon the legends of astounding endurance of Northern warriors. The Baptized ignores 1 point of Wound Penalty for every 3 motes and one willpower spent, for a number of rounds equal to their essence +1
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There should probably be some way to resist Mythic Berserker Strike.

Mythic Hero Blows seems fiddly and annoying to track. Kind of unimpressive at E1, too.

Mythic Berserker Resilience seems incredibly weak and useless at E1, which is what this guy has. I don't think the Essence scaling is serving you well here.

MiracleGrow said:



Behold my character creation skills. I made a performance based Fire DB that's a beastmen mermaid. I don't know why I keep getting ideas like this, but every single one of them is genius and I except no criticism telling me otherwise.

Anyways, how the fuck do I portray the anima going up in the water.
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Just have the fire burn underwater. It's no sillier than fire burning without fuel.
 
Aren't underwater volcanic vents like, a really big deal for the continued survival of life in the bleakest, darkest bottoms of the ocean? Maybe something in that vein?
 
Queshire said:
Aren't underwater volcanic vents like, a really big deal for the continued survival of life in the bleakest, darkest bottoms of the ocean? Maybe something in that vein?
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Well yeah, I got pretty hard on that for my homebrew. I'm just trying to figure out how to make my anima PRETTY. And a giant blast of steam bubbles seems pretty cool.
 
Subrosian_Smithy said:
Hey, I really hate to come into the thread acting like an ignoramus, but I think that I'm missing some details on Principles as a replacement for Virtues/Intimacies/Motivation in the various Kerisgame hacks.

When I look at "XYZ-type Principles take one fewer scenes to create or manipulate" charmtech, like My Dark Lady on Keris' character sheet, what exactly determines the number of scenes required to mess with a Principle to begin with? I assumed beforehand that Kerisgame Principles were basically the thing that Revlid's social hack is pointing at, where (as I understand it) messing with people's minds via polite small talk natural mental influence is primarily restricted by your ability to build up and play off of existing Principles, rather than by a "building or eroding an Intimacy takes [Conviction] scenes" clause.

Has this been talked about before?
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Might want to tag @earthor @Aleph for that
 
Sanctaphrax said:
There should probably be some way to resist Mythic Berserker Strike.

Mythic Hero Blows seems fiddly and annoying to track. Kind of unimpressive at E1, too.

Mythic Berserker Resilience seems incredibly weak and useless at E1, which is what this guy has. I don't think the Essence scaling is serving you well here.
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How Bout now?
  • Mythic Berserker Trance(4m, Simple, Scene): The Baptized enters a supernatural berserk state. They add Essence+1 Dice to withering and decisive attacks and damage rolls, as well as to Rush actions.
  • Mythic Hero Blows(3m, Supplemental, Withering-Only, Stackable, [Essence] +3 Rounds): The Baptized channels the strength of mythic warriors into their blows. After making a successful withering attack, the Berserker can force the target to pay one point of Initiative whenever they make an attack against the Knight, stacking the effects up to a maximum of Essence+3 initiative paid
  • Willbreaking Berserker Strike(3m, Supplemental, Psyche, Stackable, Scene): When making an attack, the Baptized may call upon legends of the terrifying berserks of the North. When making a sucessful attack, the Baptized makes an Inspire Awe roll(Presence+Charisma) against the target's Resolve. If the roll is successful, the target gains a scene-long Minor Intimacy of Terror towards the Baptized, the intensity rising by one degree with each successful application of this charm. Applying social influence during combat to strengthen this intimacy makes it a regular intimacy that persists after the scene has ended
  • Mythic Berserker Resilience(3m + 1wp per point of wound penalty, Reflexive, [Essence] + 3 Rounds): The Baptized calls upon the legends of astounding endurance of Northern warriors. The Baptized ignores 1 point of Wound Penalty for every 3 motes and one willpower spent, for a number of rounds equal to their essence + 3
 
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Accelerator said:
Something I've been thinking of for a while. I'm thinking of an SI.
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If I may counter:

Doctor Tolkien said:
I never imagined that the dragon was of the same order as the horse. And that was not solely because I saw horses daily, but never even the footprint of a worm. The dragon had the trade-mark Of Fairie written upon him. In whatever world he had his being it was an Other-world. Fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was a profound desire. I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril.
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Exthalion said:
If I may counter:
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I disagree. In a way.

I think its worth shattering beauty and wonder... if it keeps people safer and easier. A raksha is beautiful. But it is also immensely dangerous. So are the Exalted. Yu-shan is a wondrous place, but its existence speaks of supernatural beings that humans have to bow down to. I find this state of affairs intolerable.

In case you didn't realize yet, I'm on the side of the technocracy.
 
Accelerator said:
I disagree. In a way.

I think its worth shattering beauty and wonder... if it keeps people safer and easier. A raksha is beautiful. But it is also immensely dangerous. So are the Exalted. Yu-shan is a wondrous place, but its existence speaks of supernatural beings that humans have to bow down to. I find this state of affairs intolerable.

In case you didn't realize yet, I'm on the side of the technocracy.
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Perhaps you will find this utopian then: The Man in Asbestos - An Allegory of the Future

A world where they turned the ocean to jelly to make the weather a constant mild overcast, each person has exactly one identical set of clothes made from asbestos so it is easy to clean and lasts forever, no one travels because everything is the same anywhere else, there are no phones because no one has anything to talk about, no one has a job because there is no work to do, and people "eat" by taking a pill once a year.
 
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Exthalion said:
Perhaps you will find this utopian then: The Man in Asbestos - An Allegory of the Future

A world where they turned the ocean to jelly to make the weather a constant mild overcast, each person has exactly one identical set of clothes made from asbestos so it is easy to clean and lasts forever, no one travels because everything is the same anywhere else, there are no phones because no one has anything to talk about, no one has a job because there is no work to do, and people "eat" by taking a pill once a year.
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I love how you managed to make a strawman out of something so off hand.

You must be a great farmer.
 
Was there another way to read lines like these I missed?

Accelerator said:
And with dullness... dullness is good.
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Accelerator said:
I think its worth shattering beauty and wonder... if it keeps people safer and easier.
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But please, if you think it a strawman replace it with flesh.

Tell me where you stop, what measure do you use to say "this thing is worth the danger its existence brings while this thing is not"? Why is it alright to murder the gods and tear down their thrones, to exorcise the spirits and cut down the sacred groves, but not to kill all wolves and tigers or ban mountain climbing, alcohol, and skydiving? Why do the wonderous but dangerous things of the real world get a special exemption from destruction?

It is very fine and fashionable to talk about shattering beauty and wonder in the name of progress, but most people I have encountered who use lines like those don't like what those ideas look like when taken to their conclusions.

If I may be forgiven from quoting Tolkien again:
On Fairy Stories said:
"The rawness and ugliness of modern European life"—that real life whose contact we should welcome —"is the sign of a biological inferiority, of an insufficient or false reaction to environment." The maddest castle that ever came out of a giant's bag in a wild Gaelic story is not only much less ugly than a robot-factory, it is also (to use a very modern phrase) "in a very real sense" a great deal more real. Why should we not escape from or condemn the "grim Assyrian" absurdity of top-hats, or the Morlockian horror of factories? They are condemned even by the writers of that most escapist form of all literature, stories of Science fiction. These prophets often foretell (and many seem to yearn for) a world like one big glass-roofed railway-station. But from them it is as a rule very hard to gather what men in such a world-town will do. They may abandon the "full Victorian panoply" for loose garments (with zip-fasteners), but will use this freedom mainly, it would appear, in order to play with mechanical toys in the soon-cloying game of moving at high speed. To judge by some of these tales they will still be as lustful, vengeful, and greedy as ever; and the ideals of their idealists hardly reach farther than the splendid notion of building more towns of the same sort on other planets. It is indeed an age of "improved means to deteriorated ends." It is part of the essential malady of such days— producing the desire to escape, not indeed from life, but from our present time and self-made misery— that we are acutely conscious both of the ugliness of our works, and of their evil. So that to us evil and ugliness seem indissolubly allied. We find it difficult to conceive of evil and beauty together. The fear of the beautiful fay that ran through the elder ages almost eludes our grasp. Even more alarming: goodness is itself bereft of its proper beauty. In Faerie one can indeed conceive of an ogre who possesses a castle hideous as a nightmare (for the evil of the ogre wills it so), but one cannot conceive of a house built with a good purpose—an inn, a hostel for travellers, the hall of a virtuous and noble king—that is yet sickeningly ugly. At the present day it would be rash to hope to see one that was not—unless it was built before our time.

This, however, is the modern and special (or accidental) "escapist" aspect of fairy-stories, which they share with romances, and other stories out of or about the past. Many stories out of the past have only become "escapist" in their appeal through surviving from a time when men were as a rule delighted with the work of their hands into our time, when many men feel disgust with manmade things.
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I don't think there's anything dull about modernity or progress.

I think the thing that makes dragons and ogres and the like otherworldly and fascinating is their imaginary nature, not the threat they pose. You can get the same sense of the dreamlike from elves and angels. Or from starships and androids; the imaginary future and the imaginary present are as wondrous as the imaginary past.

Our relationship to dragons and Exalts would be very very different if those things were real.

HamSandLich said:
How Bout now?
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An improvement, I think.

Keeping track of durations in rounds still seems a bit fiddly, though.

Mythic Berserker Trace probably doesn't need to penalize soak.

I'd probably give Willbreaking Berserker Strike the Psyche keyword and a wp cost to resist.
 
The Penitent Deeps

Within the Labyrinth, there is a canal with an ash plank dock. At the end of the dock waits a solemn ferry crewed by a hooded figure in black robes with gold trim. The Ferryman is The Sire of Orphans, the shade of an ancient Solar. The Sire, like many ancient Lawgivers, came to regret past sins, and wandered the Underworld in search of atonement. Those with great deeds to their names and hearts full of regret who find the ash plank dock immediately know the ferryman's toll, a single drop of blood, dripped onto a coin. Once the toll has been paid, The Sire of Orphans ferries the seeker to the place where he found something approaching inner peace, to the Penitent Deeps.

As they travel down the canal, the passengers of the ferry witness great stone statues of warriors in ancient styles of armor, the procession of carvings seeming to turn and watch the ferry as it passes. The walls of the Labyrinth begin to darken and the watercourse becomes wider until nothing but the black canal is visible, eventually, even the sight of the river and the ferry fade into darkness and the passenger is left in utter blackness. They eventually realize that their eyes closed somewhere along the route, having fallen into slumber for an unknown amount of time.

When they open their eyes, they find themselves in the Penitent Deeps, a great square shaft, carved with images of brash heroism and the tragedies that came as a result. Chain elevators, their mechanisms extending into the dark above, await to convey the living and the dead to different levels of the Deeps. Descending reveals alcoves cut into the rock where legendary warriors sit in meditation. Some date back to the First Age, others wear the armor of Realm legionnaires, a few have garb that cannot be dated to any time period or place known to the savants of humanity. They are the Penitents, heroes and monsters both, who reject their legacies in search of redemption. Many have come to the Penitent Deep over the years, to regret and to forget that which they have wrought, meditating in contemplation of how they may atone for their deeds. Many are dead but some still draw breath, preserved in stasis by the power of the Deeps. Over the centuries, several have ascertained ways to atone for their sins and left the Deeps to make things right. Some levels hold passages leading to cells where Penitents torment themselves or seal away the artifacts that feature in their legends, other passages lead back into the Labyrinth proper or into stranger locales. One Penitent wandered into the Deeps via a shadowland of her own accidental creation. Plying the Penitents with respectful questions sometimes results in helpful advice and insights into the past, especially if one of the Penitents believes that they can prevent others from making the same mistakes they did.

At the lowest level of the deeps lies a placid lake with shores of white sand, its surface illuminated by wisps of light. The greatest of the Penitents, their legends covered in bloody glory, stare endlessly across its waters. The other Penitents are loathe to disturb them. Their repose has lasted centuries and whosoever interrupts it without good reason must face their wrath. Some have thrown themselves into the lake to be taken Away, to places unknown even to the Maiden of Secrets.

Many famous heroes have become Penitents over the years, some having legends known throughout Creation(and their bloody deeds censored by centuries of nostalgia and embellishment). The Deeps house storied names such as Karal Onura, Hero of the Late Shogunate, who saved the fortress of New Linde by sacrificing countless villages and civilians; the Messenger Three Pennants, who delivered a dire missive warning of an assassination plot to the Shogun, who responded by razing the conspirators' province; and the Lunar Singing Stoat, who threw countless beastmen followers at the Realm only for them to be exterminated down to the last child by vengeful Dynasts. The shores of the placid lake hold even more dire figures: the Bronze Faction Vizier Dennin Mors, who helped orchestrate the Usurpation; the Lawgiver Prudent Voice, who oversaw the mutilation of the Yozi's soul pantheons; and a terrestrial hero who was among closest comrades of the woman who would become Scarlet Empress
 
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Exthalion said:
Was there another way to read lines like these I missed?




But please, if you think it a strawman replace it with flesh.

Tell me where you stop, what measure do you use to say "this thing is worth the danger its existence brings while this thing is not"? Why is it alright to murder the gods and tear down their thrones, to exorcise the spirits and cut down the sacred groves, but not to kill all wolves and tigers or ban mountain climbing, alcohol, and skydiving? Why do the wonderous but dangerous things of the real world get a special exemption from destruction?

It is very fine and fashionable to talk about shattering beauty and wonder in the name of progress, but most people I have encountered who use lines like those don't like what those ideas look like when taken to their conclusions.

If I may be forgiven from quoting Tolkien again:
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If that's what you think then I"m afraid that I can't help you.

I don't think there's any way to have a conversation with someone who thinks multiple choices of clothes or coral reefs are dangerous.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
What?

How the heck did you get that from what Exthalion wrote?
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This:

I said:

I think its ok to destroy dangerous and wondrous things, if it keeps them safe.

Then Exthalion says: Well, then I guess you'll like this story then:

A world where they turned the ocean to jelly to make the weather a constant mild overcast, each person has exactly one identical set of clothes made from asbestos so it is easy to clean and lasts forever, no one travels because everything is the same anywhere else, there are no phones because no one has anything to talk about, no one has a job because there is no work to do, and people "eat" by taking a pill once a year.
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Except that's stupid.

Coral reefs aren't dangerous. Clothes aren't dangerous. Different places aren't dangerous. Different and flavorful foods aren't dangerous. The fact that he said that, means that he probably thinks theyre dangerous and that I'll destroy them.

Tell me where you stop, what measure do you use to say "this thing is worth the danger its existence brings while this thing is not"? Why is it alright to murder the gods and tear down their thrones, to exorcise the spirits and cut down the sacred groves, but not to kill all wolves and tigers or ban mountain climbing, alcohol, and skydiving? Why do the wonderous but dangerous things of the real world get a special exemption from destruction?
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Because, you idiot, the power differential is far different.

You're comparing things like the Raksha, who can suck out a man's soul, to wolves or tigers. I mean, animals are currently running from us in fear, or we just shoot or poison them. Good luck doing that to a Raksha, that's currently mindfucking or literally fucking you.

The difference between a thinking, knowledgeable spirit that can curse you with plague or destroy your fields and a mere animal is immense. If you think they're the same, you're dumb.

Skydiving? Mountain climbing? Alcohol? You can refuse to do them. You can look at the death count on mount everest, and decide 'this ain't for me'. If a god walks into your village and says 'give me a virgin maiden' you can't do the same. You can say 'I'm not going to touch alcohol' but you can't say 'I don't want you' to a hungry ghost that's clawing on your front door because a bunch of battles occurred and they didn't bury the bodies.

The problem with having a beautiful, wondrous, interesting, and epic world like Exalted, is that the normal guy? The peasant? He's fucked. He's, literally, the weakest, most fragile thinking being on the planet. Fucking weak elementals that are barely sentient and solid have it better than him, because they don't age, they can revive after being splattered, and they can just go immaterial from disaster. Let's not forget immunity to normal poisons, diseases, and hunger.

And its going to go on, continuously, until he dies, gets and exaltation, or gets some other benficience from the supernatural power. Or luck. Because any fight between him and the supernatural? Or between the environment and him? He's got a disadvantage.

I'll sooner get a boring world like now, instead of a world like Exalted. Because its just as likely to be 'I'm a dragonblooded, now bow down to me' as 'I am an enlightened Exalted, here to lead you to prosperity'. And frankly, I'm not quite ok with a world where there are a bunch of people that can, measurably, objectively, better than me in every way. Humans were titanic dicks when we only had steel versus bronze, or the advantage of gunpowder. And now, they'v got superpowers.

Wonderful.
 
Violation of Rules 4 & 5: You have already received your final warning for this behavior.
Oh yeah, another thing.

@Exthalion ?

I'm not impressed by Tolkien quotes. Argue your own point with your own words, or shut up. Tolkien was a monarchist who managed to spin off several hundred copy cats. I don't care much for him.
 
or both of you could knock it off before a mod comes in

that works too
 
While that's true, and I am actually very sympathetic to your position, sadly the mods do not much care who started an argument, only that it happened at all.

Or like, it takes two people to continue an argument, whoever started it.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
No, it actually is entirely your fault.

As I probably made clear with my earlier post, I'm mostly on your side of this question ideologically. But you're being ridiculous here.
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Whatever.

linkhyrule5 said:
While that's true, and I am actually very sympathetic to your position, sadly the mods do not much care who started an argument, only that it happened at all.

Or like, it takes two people to continue an argument, whoever started it.
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Fine then. I guess I'll just... go do something else.

Like talk.

Anyway, I have a thing. Headcrabs. Or more importantly, VR headsets. I had an idea once, for grabbing a headcrab from fallout and turning it into a training tool for Exalted. Basically, the headcrab latches over your head, and puts you into a dream world, where it puts you into a mental landscape where it trains you wherever you wish to be trained. Want to learn about debating? You get a dreamworld with an audience and judges, where failure means you get your lips stitched until you realize your mistakes. Want to learn parkour? A shifting landscape of pillars and moving platforms, and if you fall there's a sea of acid to catch you. Small things like that.

There are trade-offs, for one. For one thing, while donning the VR headset, you're defenseless. Another, is that using the headset-headcrab makes your body atrophy, weakening your body and physical form. A third, is that it is mildly addictive, what with the headcrab giving your experiences an eurphoric, dreamlike quality, making it so that without enough integrity, you will try and put it on again and again, until you're trapped in a wondrous dreamworld and your body is a withered husk.

What do you think?
 
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