Hmm, using your framing you can think of it not like absorption Siezing, but Siezing that Skyfire to then shove it directly in your attacker's face.
General Exalted Thread
Hmm, using your framing you can think of it not like absorption Siezing, but Siezing that Skyfire to then shove it directly in your attacker's face.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The problem with universal charms, and the barrier the system has to be able to overcome to work is being able to represent diverse experiences within the framework of a stripped down solar Charmset.
Rather, this is a great gimmick for Solars and Abyssals. It works, quite arguably, neatly for DBs as well. All of these are basic exalts whose core competency is do the abilities+theming. Competence/light, edginess and elemental respectively.
By contrast, I'm very worried about Lunars, much less Alchemicals and Infernals. Getimians and liminals are also a bit of a concern here, but obviously there's not as much room to compare. The good things that mostly set the Alchemical and Infernal charmsets apart have essentially died for universal charms to be a thing, and that's a shame, but I don't think Essence really succeeds at its goals unless we have something a bit more diverse and inspired than Hulk-solars, robo-solars and beast-solars in effect, and we won't really know how well that works for a while.
That said, I do think the Getimian charm mechanics we've seen look a bit promising in terms of offering something different on the baseline in terms of how they build.
Rather, this is a great gimmick for Solars and Abyssals. It works, quite arguably, neatly for DBs as well. All of these are basic exalts whose core competency is do the abilities+theming. Competence/light, edginess and elemental respectively.
By contrast, I'm very worried about Lunars, much less Alchemicals and Infernals. Getimians and liminals are also a bit of a concern here, but obviously there's not as much room to compare. The good things that mostly set the Alchemical and Infernal charmsets apart have essentially died for universal charms to be a thing, and that's a shame, but I don't think Essence really succeeds at its goals unless we have something a bit more diverse and inspired than Hulk-solars, robo-solars and beast-solars in effect, and we won't really know how well that works for a while.
That said, I do think the Getimian charm mechanics we've seen look a bit promising in terms of offering something different on the baseline in terms of how they build.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Don't worry then, Universal Charms are Universal Charms, but Exalts with special gimmicks have their own Charms.
Abyssals and Infernals seem to have their own, Liminals have their own, and there's a set of samples for what Exigent stuff should look like using Janest as the benchmark.
So it seems like the 'Primordial War' Exalts mostly lean heavily on the Universal stuff using Modes as their way of tailoring to flavor, while the stuff that came later tend to have their own stuff out of left field.
Last edited:
Manic Dogma
This, I can't deny.
- Location
- The far side of tired
- Pronouns
- Whatever
This is categorically not what's happening. Infernals can be antagonists, but they're not a designated villain splat, and to be completely frank thank god for that. A lot of the worst shit about 2e Infernals can be laid at the feet of them being a designated villain splat, letting the puerile edgelords running the show at the time go fucking nuts with complete abandon. And that's when the teams were even talking to each other.
3e Infernals have more than half an ounce of nuance to them, exploring varying reactions to varying kinds of oppression. I'd very much like to be able to play a heroic Infernal without being forced to act like a 2-bit GI Joe villain just to get by.
Also yeah, Universal charms are something we've known about for a while, and they're a fantastic idea. Alongside the entire concept of Modes. I have bugbears with certain parts of the charmset, but the Universal charms are generally really solid.
- Location
- Germany
I'm trying to, but it does not work for me. Skyfire-Seizing Repast had this whole imagery of the brass roofs and walls of Malfeas absorbing the light of the Green Sun in the sky and growing hotter while remaining unharmed - represented by the Infernal absorbing energy attacks like fire and flaring their anima one level brighter. It is a super evocative and iconic charm in Malfeas' charmset.
Skyfire-Seizing Flare has none of this. It might if it had more wordcount, but as it is now, meh.
I shall hope that the other charm names will appeal to me more. It is not as though I expect the world form general charms anyway, the splat specific ones will most likely be the most defining (or so I hope).
- Location
- my house
I feel like you are misunderstanding what I mean by villain here. I mean that their powers are drawing inspiration/aesthetic from being the sort of powers you see JRPG villains having.
Which is why they have a "true form" that unlocks when they take enough damage, and have anima powers which get stronger as they kill extras and such.
Also, you're description of Infernals is just flat out wrong. The first 2 chapters had the shit you were describing, but that was widely disavowed by the line, the writers, the fans and even the rest of that book.
Yeah, something to do with "retribution" or "punishment" would have been better for actually describing the effects of the Charm.
Hmm, one way to evoke the individual Yozis but with Ability Charms would be to do what they did with DB Charms in 3e, and have Charms from each of the Yozi patron within all the trees, instead of "these abilities solely track to X Yozi/element."
Yeah, if their "I 'dodge' by causing my attacker to suddenly fly into the air or by phasing through the floor" Mode is any indication of what they're like, I'm going to enjoy Getimians immensely.
- Location
- my house
Yeah, that is the other way I can see this going, with each Yozi basically getting certain ability trees. I actually did a breakdown of how the abilities could be split (with overlap, a deliberate choice) a page or two ago.
That said, I do think we are going to see more... focused exalts as part of essence. Like, the thrust seems to be to make each splat unique, instead of making each caste within each splat unique. Which honestly makes sense. They only have more space and time in the book, and something had to be cut somewhere.
Honestly, my dream release schedule having seen parts of essence is to basically start the line with a corebook which covers each exalt and universal charms, and then to start releasing individual splat books that focus on and diversify the individual exalts once the game has been in the hands of the players for a year or two. Give the basic mechanics and universal charms time to be stress tested before moving onto individual splats.
…I mean, not rain on your parade, but I don't see why they would release additional Essence books? It's an alternate rule system, not a new edition (sadly), and they're supposed to have a 3e-Essence conversion guide in the appendix, so they might as well release mainline books and let the players convert to Essence if they want to rather than releasing splat-specific Essence books.
That said, if they do make more Essence books, my dream release would be to get rules for the vaguely-alluded-to-in-fluff and/or unofficial splats, like the Niobarian Exalts, or Modes for various non-Exalt supernatural entities, like the Fae or Elementals, or maybe in my wildest dreams, Dragon Kings or Mountain Folk.
- Location
- my house
Yeah, that's why its my dream release schedule.
Like, one of the problems of exalted as a line has always been that Solars are by far the worst design splat because they are the first ones to be released. All the subsequent splats get to benefit from the development of a meta, the writers increased understanding of the system, and just, extra time to figure out how their splat will work.
Exalted Essence solves this problem by including every exalt in the corebook, and using universal charms to both make them more standardized and easier to write. While this does have its flaws (the biggest being the loss of uniqueness in the splats, both in that each splat has a more standarized charmset and that the focus is by necessity going to be on making the splats unique rather than focusing on making each caste unique), I think those flaws are worth it in the end, because it creates a system with a better baseline that applies to all the splats equally.
Just as importantly, the issues it creates can be addressed later down the line in individual splat books. The Infernals (for example) don't need to have a crazy unique charmset and super distinct castes right out that gate. Instead those things can be added in during the Infernal's splatbook, once the writers and players have had a better understanding of how the base system functions. And that can of course apply to all the splats.
So while I don't think that we will be getting more essence books in the future, I am hopeful that 4e (whever it comes out) will learn from this, releasing an essence style "all-splats" corebook to start the line, before following up with setting and other miscellaneous books until the the writers and players get a firm handle on the base system, at which point they can start releasing some truly superb splat books to flesh everything out.
Eh, I don't really see those as flaws, if only because 1) universal Charms are something I've always wanted in Exalted, so getting Modes to reflavor the Universal Charms and additional splat-specific Charms is just gravey to me, and 2) the castes never actually felt that unique to me anyway (they felt little more than, like, "themes to interweave with my character concept" + Caste Abilities + some generally uninspired Anima powers), so that loss of focus isn't really important to me.
That said,
100% agreed. I love what they've done here and I hope they do something like it to start off a future addition.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
Certain dev comments make me feel like it might end up being treated like a new edition, even if it's not officially acknowledged as one, so, I wouldn't be 100% sure about that.
This pleases me greatly.
Like, I've always figured I'd enjoy getting to play Exalted, or at least playin g with the setting and dollmaking, but Essence is probably this first time I've thought that I could engage with the system mechanically and have that be an enjoyable experience.
- Location
- my house
Honestly, for most splats I agree with you, which is why I don't mind that much. But for Infernals, the loss of unique and weird charm trees is, imo, a huge loss.
Unrelated, but have another hack, because essence has gotten me so excited I'm making hacks for a game that isn't even our yet.
----------------------------
So, much less confident in this one than I was in the Infernal Hack. Not necessarily because its worse, so much as because I expect it to be considerably more divisive. Even if this hack is balanced (and it might not be, since we don't have the full book out yet), it still represents a pretty dramatic shift to what it means to be an attribute exalted.
With this hack, Attribute Exalted transition into the generalist/skillmonkey roll, having a lower ceiling but a much more universally applicable excellency. Which could make them underpowered, but it also might make them overpowered as spending less XP on excellencies allows them to spend more xp on other charms.
Attribute Excellency for Reference
When purchasing an Attribute Excellency, the Exalt choose an (Attribute + Ability) pool. The Exalt may spend 1 mote when rolling this pool to double the amount of dice given by their attribute. This is included simply for reference and to make sure I actually understand attribute excellencies correctly.
Attribute Exalted Hack
When purchasing this charm, the Exalt chooses 1 attribute. When rolling an (Attribute + Ability) pool with that attribute, they may spend 1 mote to count their attribute die a second time, rather than rolling ability die.
- Location
- Nova Scotia
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I have seen a pretty significant number of dev comments directly disputing these rumours, so I am pretty dubious.
- Location
- London, England
Regarding the charms etc, I've playtested Essence and the charms actually work fantastically for both basic competency and unique, splat-appropriate twists.
To be clearer... there are Universal Charms with their own modes, like Ox-Body and the Excellency and Excellent Strike etc, which have already been covered. And then there are splat-specific charms as well. The latter are where you put things that just cannot be easily described as a variation on a core competency. I think Avoidance Kata for Sidereals is a good example - nobody else gets to just say "actually I was never here", so its a Sidereal charm rather than a universal charm with a Sidereal mode.
Though on that note, I want to say that Modes actually offer a lot of variation and distinctive tastes, its not just swapping numbers around. In my playtest group, I played a Chosen of Battles and someone else played a Dawn caste. We both took League of Iron Preparation, which is the "turn peasants into soldiers with rapid training" charm, ala Tiger-Warrior Training from the main 3e text (it also wraps in some other buffs to the new troops).
The Dawn got the Solar mode, which allowed him to train his recruits up to being elite soldiers and made them personally devoted to him - he used this to both create an elite bodyguard for himself but also to hide a growing cult in amongst what appeared to be a friendly fight club sort of deal. I got the Sidereal mode, which allowed me to attract recruits without needing to find a likely lot in advance and make them loyally devoted to a cause, which I used to attack a hostile nation by training up resistance networks and rebel groups in their home territories like some kind of demented CIA operative.
Same charm, same foundational effect, but it was applied with very distinctive themes depending on our Exalt type and allowed us to pursue very different goals and methods.
To be clearer... there are Universal Charms with their own modes, like Ox-Body and the Excellency and Excellent Strike etc, which have already been covered. And then there are splat-specific charms as well. The latter are where you put things that just cannot be easily described as a variation on a core competency. I think Avoidance Kata for Sidereals is a good example - nobody else gets to just say "actually I was never here", so its a Sidereal charm rather than a universal charm with a Sidereal mode.
Though on that note, I want to say that Modes actually offer a lot of variation and distinctive tastes, its not just swapping numbers around. In my playtest group, I played a Chosen of Battles and someone else played a Dawn caste. We both took League of Iron Preparation, which is the "turn peasants into soldiers with rapid training" charm, ala Tiger-Warrior Training from the main 3e text (it also wraps in some other buffs to the new troops).
The Dawn got the Solar mode, which allowed him to train his recruits up to being elite soldiers and made them personally devoted to him - he used this to both create an elite bodyguard for himself but also to hide a growing cult in amongst what appeared to be a friendly fight club sort of deal. I got the Sidereal mode, which allowed me to attract recruits without needing to find a likely lot in advance and make them loyally devoted to a cause, which I used to attack a hostile nation by training up resistance networks and rebel groups in their home territories like some kind of demented CIA operative.
Same charm, same foundational effect, but it was applied with very distinctive themes depending on our Exalt type and allowed us to pursue very different goals and methods.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
was his name tyler durden?
HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
- Location
- Valkyrie, Primus
Universal charms like that also help with Exigent creation, or any new/homebrewed Exalt types.
- Location
- United States
You are ignoring content by this member.
Show ignored content
Poor Alchemicals. Someone convince the devs to give them just one more health level per purchase of Ox-Body in Essence.
Liminals clearly stole them all (you can at least meet the prerequisites to buy 20 -0s at character creation, wtf?)
- Location
- United States
You are ignoring content by this member.
Show ignored content
Clearly this is how you drive your GM mad: by insisting that your Liminal is, in fact, unkillable.
No amount of health levels can compensate for the Hell of being trapped in an eternal escort mission.
- Location
- East of the Sun and West of the Moon
It's been mentioned on the Discord that that's been flagged for review. So the final product is probably not gonna say that being made of metal makes you squishier.
Onyx Path Virtual Convention info, more stretch goals, and some Solar Charm previews.
Can one use Glorious Solar Arsenal more than once in a Scene to get armor and weapons? Could I use that to trigger Golden Champion Glory more than once? I don't really understand what the limitations would be there.
Can one use Glorious Solar Arsenal more than once in a Scene to get armor and weapons? Could I use that to trigger Golden Champion Glory more than once? I don't really understand what the limitations would be there.