Remove ads

General Exalted Thread

Reader mode
Jon Chung said:
What I keep pointing out here is that the GM's ability to use their authority to shut down an abusive usage of the rules does not absolve the system for allowing it to happen in the first place.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
On the Giant in the Playground forums (mostly for D&D 3e/PF), I've seen this phrased similarly as, "Just because you can use Rule 0 to patch something doesn't mean the rules being patched aren't broken." I think there's a "named fallacy" for it, but I can't remember whose name is associated with it.

There IS a place for stopping with the rules and simply saying, "Here's how we intend for this to be used; use your judgment if your use-case matches." 5e D&D gets a lot of guff for stopping a little too soon in places, and some of that's fair, but other times, I think they just are following their "rulings, not rules" ideal. (In fact, where they fail hardest, I think, is in failing to give enough "here's how we intend this to be used" examples and advice so DMs can use those as rough guidelines for their rulings.)

But if you're making a hard rules game - which Exalted has always been - you need your rules to be solid at least to the point that it's only corner cases where things get questionable. "When should I invoke this subsystem?" is not a corner case!

I find that the trouble with a split mass combat/normal combat set that has normal combat invocation trump mass combat is that I can't think how mass combat would ever be allowed to happen, except by mutual agreement OOC that they want to play a different game than they had been in previous fights. While there's some merit to that, it means that the ST is stuck fielding unwieldy numbers of mooks in normal combat if even one player feels like he's being unfairly treated by having mass combat rules imposed on him when he's not designed for it.

This also creates a degenerate state if that player is RIGHT, and he'd win if he were permitted to use normal combat but not if he agrees to use mass combat. If a player agrees to what's supposed to be a fun-enhancing and time-saving paradigm shift, he shouldn't have that choice make his character go from "unstoppable" to "dead to a dozen bronze shivs," or worse, "worthless in the scene."

Ideally - and I acknowledge that we're looking at not rebuilding the mass combat subsystem for 2E at this point, but rather redesigning combat on all scales to some degree - mass combat should grow organically out of normal combat, such that having large numbers and optimally utilizing them involves increasingly coordinated actions which can interact with uncoordinated individual actions, but which scale upwards such that those using coordinated actions with increasing numbers wind up having greater advantages to match or exceed what they'd get from each individual creature acting independently, until both sides have started coordinating themselves to the point that they're reducing the number of agents on the simulated field while increasing their "group" prowess in combat.

That's kind of my ideal vision for it, anyway. Somehow, "coordinate action" type things enable groups to act as one agent at the direction of a leader (probably using War), with those coordinated actions being better than them each taking comparable individual actions (a tall order, given the old saw: "action deficit kills"). And then you can use "coordinate action" rules to coordinate actions of groups already coordinating actions, rolling the bonuses up the chain and merging any required rolls to coordinate the sub-groups into the total difficulty/TN/internal penalty/external penalty/whatever of the top-level coordination.
 
Segev said:
On the Giant in the Playground forums (mostly for D&D 3e/PF), I've seen this phrased similarly as, "Just because you can use Rule 0 to patch something doesn't mean the rules being patched aren't broken." I think there's a "named fallacy" for it, but I can't remember whose name is associated with it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Rule 0 Fallacy, its come up before in this thread. A lot. Its kind of Jon's thing.
 
Azrael said:
Rule 0 Fallacy, its come up before in this thread. A lot. Its kind of Jon's thing.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
That makes sense. It's a better name than I was expecting, too; I've seen a number that are named after whoever coined them. "The Stormwind Fallacy," "Grod's law," things like that.

The Stormwind Fallacy is the better-known one, I think, as it originated on the old D&D forums, and basically says that optimization of a character and quality of the RP the player gives said character are independent variables. That is, it doesn't automatically make a character poorly RP'd just because the player also made them highly mechanically optimal. Conversely, it doesn't make a character automatically RP'd well just because the player chose sub-optimal mechanics to avoid "being a munchkin."

Grod's Law is one I think Jon would appreciate: You can't balance overpowered mechanics by making them annoying for the RL player to invoke. e.g., if you make it so that you can bypass perfect defenses, but only by physically rolling a ton of dice, calculating the number of successes, and then working out a mote value based on a complicated equation that takes 5 minutes to solve if you know advanced trigonometry the way cookie monster knows cookies, you still have a broken mechanic for Exalted 2E, you just have made it so that the entire table is slowed down immensely (more than it already is in Exalted 2E combat!) while that player insists on using his overpowered ability.
 
Segev said:
That makes sense. It's a better name than I was expecting, too; I've seen a number that are named after whoever coined them. "The Stormwind Fallacy," "Grod's law," things like that.

The Stormwind Fallacy is the better-known one, I think, as it originated on the old D&D forums, and basically says that optimization of a character and quality of the RP the player gives said character are independent variables. That is, it doesn't automatically make a character poorly RP'd just because the player also made them highly mechanically optimal. Conversely, it doesn't make a character automatically RP'd well just because the player chose sub-optimal mechanics to avoid "being a munchkin."

Grod's Law is one I think Jon would appreciate: You can't balance overpowered mechanics by making them annoying for the RL player to invoke. e.g., if you make it so that you can bypass perfect defenses, but only by physically rolling a ton of dice, calculating the number of successes, and then working out a mote value based on a complicated equation that takes 5 minutes to solve if you know advanced trigonometry the way cookie monster knows cookies, you still have a broken mechanic for Exalted 2E, you just have made it so that the entire table is slowed down immensely (more than it already is in Exalted 2E combat!) while that player insists on using his overpowered ability.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Also called Oberoni Fallacy, after the guy who named it.
 
MJ12 Commando said:
I mean the sort of simple way to deal with 'mass combat' is to make having a superior army give you better environmental conditions rather than act as the primary form of resolution (and make sure that Charms which negate these advantages are expensive as hell and difficult to get, so that even negating the existence of an enemy army is going to mean that you're doing a thing which can backfire on you and get exploited). If you have a pile of mans, and they have a pile of mans, you inherit combat-related bonuses from the pile of mans you're dealing with. It might give you reflexive attacks, let you throw a bunch of mooks into the path of an attack to protect yourself, whatever.

It honestly would have worked better as a 'cinematic' sort of mass combat thing where the large army is just there to show that the big bad means business, which is kind of fitting for the scale Exalted are sort of implied to work at? Armies are helpful but you don't send them unsupported against Exalts. Yes, it means that all good generals should also be good duelists, but...

...that's basically 100% in-theme for Exalted's inspirations.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Is that not what the "you wear then" rules are meant to portray?
 
rogthnor said:
Is that not what the "you wear then" rules are meant to portray?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That description is vague since it's a thought experiment, but I take this suggestion as setting up a situation where the presence of the hostile army grants the equivalent of an environmental penalty, which you can negate by picking up charms to remove the penalties if you keep ending up in the situation. There should also be charms that require the environment of "being in a mass battle" to use since they use random unfortunate nearby troopers as resources.

You Wear Them gives the commander a pile of bonuses which cannot be removed unless you are removed from the mass combat context, which imposes a bunch of different global rules. The difference is that MJ12's thought experiment doesn't change the context outside the environmental penalty and those trooper-fueled effects - you are still presumably acting in normal combat time and under normal combat Charm interactions.

Without more detail I can't say if it's better, but it's definitely different. Amusingly, both have the same AoE problem.
 
Last edited:
AT LAST! AFTER A MONTH TEN THOUSAND YEARS, I, HAMSANDLICH, HAVE RETURNED FROM MY SUSPENSION EXILE IN THE OUTER DARKNESS! TREMBLE IN ANTICIPATION AS I READY TO BRING FORTH MY BLASPHEMOUS LORE AND HEADCANON!
 
Last edited:
The Shining Devil Genesis
An apocryphal Immaculate Tale…..

In the Time Before, when Creation was pure and whole, the Exalted Host, Chosen of the Dragons, stood astride the world. It was their prize and their charge, their ward and reward. They dredged mountains hollow, tamed storms into beasts of burden, and grew great cities from shining crystal. They and the mortals who they loved knew no want nor evil. The imperfect peoples were driven to the secret places beneath the world, the anti-gods were sealed or destroyed, the tribes of madness locked weeping in their fever-dreamlands. And it was good.

But in time, bliss turned to ignorance. The Perfected Hierarchy knew no threat for so long that even the wisest of Dragonblooded thought it self-evident. When mortals left their homes to build new ones, they brought no Dragon-Blooded to set them on the right path. When the Dragon-Blooded saw this, they thought little of it. And so, the Exalted grew lax, and their mortal flock grew wild and unruly.

It began with the holy-queens and savant-kings, with the sword-saints and spear-dancers, all those great names who the Dragon-Blooded Host neglected to rein in. These mortal aspirants, these Ecstatics and Illuminates, displayed such talent and skill that even the Chosen thought little evil could come of them. And from that trust, the smallest of errors, a horrible, ravenous Hunger took root in the minds of mortals. Hunger to be More than they should, to define the Hierarchy instead of being a part of it. The insatiable urge to be God, at any cost, and they brought ruin.

The Ecstatics spread their teachings, crossing every boundary they could in their fervor to experience the All. "Look!" they said, "Come and see!", as they danced and sang and loved their way through all of Creation. They danced to bring joy, they sang to stir hearts, they loved to spread love. They danced atop the black spirals of Hell, they sang of forbidden things, they loved that which should not be loved. And in the end, they danced and sang and loved their way to the edge of Creation, where the Moon performs her mysteries amidst an endless gyre of forms. Their mortal vessels and untempered souls were unfit for that unknowable place, and became abominations. Women and Men no longer, they were formless silver devils, stealing the shapes of others to fill the hollow of what they had left behind: their own role in the great tapestry of Creation. They were the Anathema Lunar, and no matter how many times they died their sin leapt from mortal to mortal, erasing who they had been just as in the beginning. And so it is that all must respect the boundaries of the Perfected Hierarchy, for one's station is their Self.

The Illuminates raised great queendoms and towers, they forged their bodies into temples and their minds into diamond. They ascended the omphalos and performed austerities for one hundred and forty-four thousand sunrises. Through black sciences, they reached the Sun's house, which was pure until sullied by the touch of the mortal world. Its divinity made imperfect by the presence of mortality, the Sun could not help but err when the Illuminates asked of it a boon. It touched their brows and in doing so, unknowingly burned their souls into charred ruin. What was left of their virtue was twisted by hubris and the urge to appease the sunfire that ate away at their souls by venting it upon the world. They were the Anathema Solar, profane mockeries of mastery and skill, their stolen divinity corrupted by their own inescapable mortal frailties. And so it is that all must not reach beyond the Perfected Hierarchy, for beyond it there is only suffering.

In time, the Exalted would slay these first Anathema, the Ecstatics and Illuminates, but their sins were so great that they echoed through the ages. No matter how many times the Chosen of the Dragons slew them, their souls were still impure. They had so distanced themselves from the Perfected Hierarchy that their false divinity would incarnate itself endlessly, repeating the same mistakes, committing the same blasphemies, on and on, down the years, forever...
 
Last edited:
Tseleth, The Sibilant City
Deep in the forests southeast of Thorns, the small villages and hamlets of the tribal Yzica people go in reverent fear of the jungle highlands, of the monumental stone spires of Tseleth, the Sibilant City. The cyclopean structures tower over even the greatest longhouses of their village chieftains and the inhuman beings who dwell within ripple with muscle and scales. And despite this fear, the Yzica worship the alien rulers of the Sibilant City, for they drive off slavers, raiders, and enemy gods. Their medicine women tell stories of the great saurian emperors at the dawn of time, of their clutches of eggs that were abandoned during a great cataclysm, leaving the young to hatch prematurely. These tales hold a sliver of truth, for the beings of Tseleth are semi-enlightened Dragon Kings.

The architecture of the Sibilant City seems bizarre to human eyes. There are stairways that lead to nowhere, rooms with irregular dimensions, and streets that seem to wind through the city on nonsensical routes. Bridges wide enough for only one to walk on connect towers to each other and the ground. Water diverted from a nearby waterfall and river flow through canals, sometimes interrupting the city streets. A great irregular citadel-manse towers over the city center, its walls studded with abstract mosaics and reliefs. Ancient artifacts reside in the citadel vaults, but many are secured with wards that none among the living know how to open. Magical infrastructure can be found throughout the city, but much of it is devoted towards mundane purposes or to esoteric functions. Beneath the city lie nurseries, animal pens, fungal farms, and more mundane dwellings. Though at a glance it appears deserted, Dragon Kings can be seen in odd places throughout the city, engaging in weird rituals.

The Dragon Kings of Tseleth possess reason but little of their ancient memories. The austerities and rituals they perform aid greatly in recalling their immediately preceding lives, but they can only recall the memories of distant ages past with great difficulty. Only a few can recall the distant First Age, and the gaps in their memories are a source of constant distress for some. These nascent Dragon Kings, called the Initiate Priests, corral and herd their Jungle Stalker brethren, keeping them on the right path. Through ritual mysticism built into Tseleth's urban culture, Stalkers can often recall the life before their current incarnation, but anything before that is clouded, they require the aid of the Initiate Priests to provide a greater sense of continuity between their lives. Initiate Priests also search for relics of the Time Before, that they might act as touchstones or catalysts for their enlightenment. They fight ferociously when threatened, some disregarding their own lives with the knowledge that they can easily regain the memories of their previous life after rebirth, Initiate Priests are more cautious but also more skilled. Through weird sciences and enchantments upon the city, they ensure that their souls reincarnate within eggs laid in the Tseleth.

Guiding them in the search for enlightenment are the Penultimate Lords, ancient Dragon Kings, more god than creatures of flesh, who periodically enter stasis crystals to extend the lives of their physical vessels. The Penultimate Lords are powerful, alien beings, delaying their own apotheosis to guide their lesser brethren. To different onlookers, they each appear as different breeds of Dragon King, and sometimes even as great dragons from different angles. On the few occasions they have displayed their power, they have demonstrated control over saurian wildlife, power over the elements, and the ability to change into draconic behemoths. They could easily rule the Yzica people and more, but so alien are their thoughts and wants that they care little for temporal power, instead concerning themselves with arcane and seemingly illogical things such as contemplating natural disasters or raising butterflies.

Within the central citadel, in a wing apart from where the Penultimate Lords reside, lies the tomb of Perfected Condor, an ancient lawgiver. Known for his many wars against other Solars and Dragon Kings on behalf of Tseleth(for the Penultimate Lords were considered schismatics by many other Dragon Kings), the ancient solar is revered as a guardian deity.

Once, there were over twoscore Penultimate Lords, but they could not delay the deaths of their physical vessels indefinitely. Now there are only three, and two of them are nearing death. The Age of Sorrows has been unkind to the Sibilant City, the ancient enchantments upon Tseleth are failing, fewer Initiate souls are reborn within the city, instead reincarnating abroad into a near animal existence. The Dragon Kings do not know how to repair the city. The Penultimate Lords are primarily spiritual guides, not technicians, they were only able to just barely keep the city functional after the Contagion. They send Initiate Priests with Stalker and Yzica servants into the wider Creation, searching for lore and artifacts with which to keep Tseleth a place of enlightenment instead of ignorance.
 
Jon Chung said:
That description is vague since it's a thought experiment, but I take this suggestion as setting up a situation where the presence of the hostile army grants the equivalent of an environmental penalty, which you can negate by picking up charms to remove the penalties if you keep ending up in the situation. There should also be charms that require the environment of "being in a mass battle" to use since they use random unfortunate nearby troopers as resources.

You Wear Them gives the commander a pile of bonuses which cannot be removed unless you are removed from the mass combat context, which imposes a bunch of different global rules. The difference is that MJ12's thought experiment doesn't change the context outside the environmental penalty and those trooper-fueled effects - you are still presumably acting in normal combat time and under normal combat Charm interactions.

Without more detail I can't say if it's better, but it's definitely different. Amusingly, both have the same AoE problem.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

rogthnor said:
Is that not what the "you wear then" rules are meant to portray?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Not purely environmental penalties, but just various bonuses and conditions that give you an advantage. Presumably there would be various Charms which negated parts of this, but in total negating all benefits from having an army backing you up would be significant and expensive. The army itself would also not be directly affected by attacks on the general, and presumably you would need certain sorts of attacks to deal meaningful damage to the army, which would reduce or remove the pressure it would put on you. So, for example, area attacks would also have the alternative use of impairing the function of the other guy's army if they brought one.

If you had your own army, you could use them to directly fight the other guy's army without direct command because they don't use your stats, which would be another valid way to counter 'the guy has an army'-bring one of your own.

Basically, armies become specific battlefields that you bring with you and favor you. They don't inherit your stats, because they're 'environmental hazards' rather than 'equipment.'
 
Last edited:
Currently: Writing up pseudo-Rohirrim who turned out more like pseudo-Dunedain than initially intended
 
Having watched the latest episode of If the Emperor Text to Speech Device, I shall henceforth use it as my standard for how to use Performance in social combat.
 
HamSandLich said:
They could easily rule the Yzica people and more, but so alien are their thoughts and wants that they care little for temporal power, instead concerning themselves with arcane and seemingly illogical things such as contemplating natural disasters or raising butterflies.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's not surprising that the Dragon Kings who found the most success in reclaiming their ancestral memories are, by and large, also half-mad. The Dragon Kings never really recovered from the Primordial War - both the immortal lives lost in the conflict, and their utter abandonment by the Sun in favor of mankind. Reclaiming a First Age incarnation's memories would immediately restore the knowledge of that unspeakable trauma, and if that incarnation had lived to witness the Usurpation? Few could suffer that and remain sane.
 
GardenerBriareus said:

It's not surprising that the Dragon Kings who found the most success in reclaiming their ancestral memories are, by and large, also half-mad. The Dragon Kings never really recovered from the Primordial War - both the immortal lives lost in the conflict, and their utter abandonment by the Sun in favor of mankind. Reclaiming a First Age incarnation's memories would immediately restore the knowledge of that unspeakable trauma, and if that incarnation had lived to witness the Usurpation? Few could suffer that and remain sane.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

hmmmm, that wasn't the initial intention, though it certainly is part of my canon for the Penultimate Masters now. They were initially meant to evoke the sheer alien-ness of the Dragonewts from Glorantha. As an example of their strangeness, Dragonewts will sometimes straight up work themselves to death doing seemingly irrational tasks because they know they'll reincarnate with full memories. Those irrational actions are actually a form of mystic asceticism which lets them reincarnate in forms closer to that of true dragons.

See that guy with the wings, he's basically a demigod who spends almost all his time contemplating random minor things like a bouquet of flowers because that's how he'll get closer to apotheosis. Once he accrues enough mystical potency, he'll use that obsidian knife on his belt to commit ritual suicide so he can reincarnate faster.

The DKs in Tseleth don't do that, but they do use bizarre forms of asceticism on a regular basis.
 
Last edited:
I'm pretty sure the fan-writer came up with it.

I personally like the Old Realm characters in Lords of Creation more. I admit there were problems with the book (yes, I am a master of understatement), but the Errata helped that particular book a great deal... and some of the charms are hilarious! A solar can shoot an arrow at the sun... then, when the target next lights a candle, or steps outside, or is touched by any light at all?


Anyways. I was checking the threadmarks, the links that came with them, and got curious. So I HALPED.

It's a fan-made work, with some... original takes on the origin of Old Realm. Make of it what you will.

And also?

 
mAEma, the Neverborn are screaming again!

And that's not a comment on your avatar. You write the best, hands-down, Abyssal Exaltations... Exaltation... that I've ever seen.

And your art isn't half bad. I think, if I had perhaps any focus, I could draw something better than my current noses. But you manage something... that isn't an abomination upon the lands of sanity. Which is ironic, considering what you draw.
 
Last edited:
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top