General Exalted Thread
HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
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... or you can take the advice as it was meant and not as a personal attack?
Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
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Honestly there's nothing wrong with doing an Avatar with the Dragonbloods. Sounds fun! Well, from a distance. I know enough about how I am as a player that if you put me in that sort of situation I'd probably end up scheming instead.
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Everyone has tastes; the line between taste and knowledge is pretty easy to miss. I think the skill that's genuinely hard to build up here is learning how to talk about that graciously. And like, fandom thrives on debates about taste. That's half of what we're here for. You can't just say "well, boy, I dunno...tastes differ" or a bunch of interesting conversations die in the crib
tbh, that's part of why I like the Exalted fandom despite how intense it can get sometimes: because something about the whole maximalist setting dials and the extensive style/lore gets people to actually engage with discussion of interesting messy things rather than it immediately getting turned into "idk, whatever you want" (or worse, pure memes) like I feel a lot of more, uh, mainstream and populist sorta adventure game discussions often fall into.
tbh, that's part of why I like the Exalted fandom despite how intense it can get sometimes: because something about the whole maximalist setting dials and the extensive style/lore gets people to actually engage with discussion of interesting messy things rather than it immediately getting turned into "idk, whatever you want" (or worse, pure memes) like I feel a lot of more, uh, mainstream and populist sorta adventure game discussions often fall into.
Imrix
Periodically Malevolent QM
And in turn, you can just say you don't like our playstyle or the things we like about the game without this constant incomprehension of why we might want complicated Dynasts, the implications we're joyless, or jumping to Confederate/Nazi comparisons.
Like we had most of a page of genuinely happy and analytic discussion about people's favourite material from What Fire Has Wrought/Charting Fate's Course and the glow-up 3e has done on the Realm, the Bronze Faction, etc, and we're now three pages hence from that, having spent most of it on This Shit. So, y'know, right back atcha.
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@TenfoldShields
So, with that bureaucrat idea I briefly mentioned earlier, it just makes me reflect on how a really fun section of The Realm that I don't think gets talked about that much is the bit that details some of the ministries of the Thousand Scales, and they've all got their own over the top names and internal cultures and built in plot hooks. Just a few:
So, with that bureaucrat idea I briefly mentioned earlier, it just makes me reflect on how a really fun section of The Realm that I don't think gets talked about that much is the bit that details some of the ministries of the Thousand Scales, and they've all got their own over the top names and internal cultures and built in plot hooks. Just a few:
- The Honorable and Humble Caretakers of the Common Folk
- The Infallible Conveyors of Official Messages and Heartfelt Expressions
- The Righteous and Accountable Ministry of Weights and Measures
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I always get very concerned about any "always acceptable target for violence" that's more human than, say, a mindless zombie.
I like action stories as much as anyone, and probably more than most, but the fundamental humanity of both sides is important. It's not a sign of moral purity to be unable to envision these fictional imperialists as also complex people with their own inner lives and understanding of what it means to be good.
They can be wrong, but if they're not presented as people, then the setting loses something important. And... I have to question this: they're an always acceptable target for violence unless they're currently immediately and unquestionably ready to betray their families, their honor, their faith, and their promises? That's the bare minimum to not be an acceptable target for violence?
I'm trying to be fair to you, but you seem to be stating that violence against them is something to take joy in, not a sad necessity or a tragic fact given that we have incompatible worldviews and needs.
That is quite the fun mental image, yes.
On that note, I really am quite fond of the patriciate and characters who have their origins there. Sometimes it feels a little under-utilized still, but the material that's there is quite good, and we do now have a few characters in canon who are either married into the patriciate (Kingfisher Swift) or patrician Exalts (Amon Mora).
And having this 'lower' aristocracy who are the middlemen between dynasts and the peasantry strikes me as a great space for expressions of local identities within the scope of the wider Blessed Isle, like say the patrician families of the Tarpan Wastes, a region mostly ignored by the wider Realm.
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I think that the idea was supposed to be that the basic combat system would work in a way that would ensure that ordinary mortals with high skills would matter. Enlightened mortals, this thinking went, were removed because they were a stopgap measure that would make only those mortals matter.
I suspect that the removal of techniques during development also wrecked havoc on this original design, because it meant that there was almost nothing you could use to mechanically distinguish a non-thaumatergical, non-Sorcerous mortal (and both of those routes were largely cut off as well.)
Though this come back to a more basic issue, I think, which is that many decisions feel like they were made more in response to forum arguments, theoretical issues, or problems that came up in one specific game rather than things that were actually an issue. People on the forums liked to theorycraft weird things you could do by giving mortals every possible power that was available to them in 2e, which led to weird places.
But completely removing all mechanically-distinct / "exception-based" powers that mortals could access, in a system that was still fundamentally entirely about exception-based interactions, had the thematic effect of making it feel like mortals were just mooks. You can make a mortal matter in a fight, certainly, but the system heavily discourages you from giving a mortal any sort of mechanically distinct identity.
Ehhhh.
Any type of Exalt is capable of ruling well, in the same way that any type of Exalt who has a sword is capable of swordfighting well, and any Exalt who finds the right magic cloak is capable of shapeshifting, and any Exalt who looks at the stars is capable of astrology. There will even be charms that can help you with each of those things!
But not all Exalts get charms themed around each of those things, so to speak. Lunars are capable of using their charms for swordfighting, but they shouldn't get Glorious Solar Saber, for instance - they can express "I am really fast and strong", which logically make them good at swordfighting and that's fine, but they should generally not express "I am a swordsman" specifically as the concept of a Lunar charm. (Occasionally you can get oddball leaf charms that stretch an Exalted's capabilities in weird ways, so I wouldn't say absolutely-not-ever. But it's not something that would be at the root of a Lunar charm tree or which would be consistently expressed by an entire tree.)
Similarly, I don't think that "leadership" is something that every type of Exalt explores, and I definitely don't agree that they each have their own take on it. The danger for that is that...
Thematically, Solars are the "human" Exalts. Their power is to do things humans do, but on a larger scale and with supernatural force behind it.
Realistically, most of these things can be accomplished by other Exalted in some way, and that's fine. But that's not the same as having it as a charm theme. Lunar charms in particular are about your physical attributes, shapeshifting, and so on - Lunar-specific themes. They're not (mostly) structured or themed around your human talents.
If you make "do human things on a larger scale" a generic charm theme available to everyone, and you have everyone excel at their own slice of "human things on a larger scale", then Solars become the generic jack-of-all-trades, masters-of-none Exalted. It takes away what's cool and unique about their charmset. It also leads to other Exalted feeling more generic (there's a reason this discussion constantly focuses on Lunars, specifically, who have repeatedly fallen into that exact trap across multiple editions.)
So, like... there's definitely Lunar charms that make you good at leading, because being super-smart and super-strong and having a thousand shapes and whatnot can make you a great leader if you apply it well. But that's not the same as having charms whose justifying thematic is "I am a great leader." And maybe, sure, there's Lunar leadership charms of various sorts? But I don't think it's something every type of Exalt gets, and to have it you have to justify it via unique Lunar themes, not just by saying "well it's something humans do" or "well it's something Solars get, so everyone else should get it too." And it's not something that will fit equally-well into the themes of every type of Exalted.
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Queshire
Wants a pink flamingo for their lawn.
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It'd be fun to add in some stuff from the old Chinese bureaucracy to the Thousands Scales. =0 Stuff like having an exam where you're stuck in a cramped stone room for days while taking the exam and having a lot of it ve based on immaculate philosophy instead of confucianism. I'm not sure how it'd work with the inherent nepotism of the Dragonbloods though. Maybe have the test be for mortal aides to the Thousand Scales and have someone exalt as a Solar during it or something.
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So I've backed all the splatvooks like.lunars,.Exigents, Sidereal's,.etc, but I hear that there are two different books of monstera for 3e, so could someone tell me a few of their favorite antags from each one so I know which one to buy first?
Sorry if this is the wrong.place to ask stuff like this, but I heard the questions thread was deprecated.
Sorry if this is the wrong.place to ask stuff like this, but I heard the questions thread was deprecated.
I don't have examples to share but you are broadly correct about two antagonist books.
Adversaries of the righteous covers 'human/exalted' antagonists, while hundred devil night parade covers more monstrous things to fight
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It doesn't come off as advice to me, I've been into Exalted since 2014, I've played in and ran several long-running campaigns since then, and I think Gazeteer knows that but is, well, trying to be insulting. If she isn't, my apologies, but it's very frustrating to hear that. Honestly I feel weird about this whole situation since I've been trying to post positively, I've been making a conscious effort to be nicer to people because I feel really fucking bad about being seen as a prick by people, but it gets so much less traction than me being stubborn about something that's, ultimately, not really consequential in any case. I've *been* posting about how much fun I've had with Sidereals, my ideas for my campaign, and asking about mechanics, but it's upsetting to me that this is the most interaction I've gotten out of this thread in a while, and its mostly people getting irritated over something that I wasn't even trying to be mean about.
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Thanks for the explanation. Does adversaries have any Infernals or getimians in it, or is it mostly wierd heroic mortals and examples of splats we already have rules for?
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
One thing What Fire Has Wrought leans into is that while any given Realm Dragon-Blooded will never officially have a less than immaculate record, it's entirely normal for any young DBs who show less-than-excellent talent to be press-ganged into "voluntary" "study sessions" and "social clubs" until they've been drilled into being good enough at something to be useful to their House.
I suspect the same would apply to official bureaucratic exams, where any underperforming Dragon-Blooded would officially show exceptional results, but some excuse would be engineered by their elders to either put them somewhere else where they would be more useful or to delay their official appointment date until they can be intensively trained to perform well enough to match those official exam results.
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Dragon-Blooded can still succeed at formal exams and things like that just by merit of quite possibly having had access to better education, and having magic that can make them better at bureaucratic and academic pursuits.
An interesting thing to note is that Dynasts sometimes have trouble advancing through the ministries, because they're usually dominated by powerful patrician families, some of which control certain Thousand Scales ministries like their own little fiefdoms. This means that the nepotism isn't quite weighted in their favour.
I think my favourite from Hundred Devils Night Parade is Charnavrix the Unyielding, a sad gay Lesser Elemental Dragon of Wood who has been guarding the tomb of his murdered Solar boyfriend for so long that he's turned to petrified wood, waiting for his love's reincarnation to return.
It also has lots of new animals, as well as some good bread and butter demons and ghosts. Included in that is a write-up for Sibri, the Rampart of Serpents, a new Third Circle Demon.
Adversaries of the Righteous has Cuelebre jin-Hua, an Exigent chosen by a god of Secret Arsenals. She's a scavenger lord with a cool little frog-shaped warstrider. The Scarlet Egg Players are a lot of fun -- they're a company of charlatan performers touring the Threshold and pretending to be Dragon-Blooded, and getting rich in the process.
(Also Zhao Terang Delima is a cool mortal noblewoman chafing under the Realm's rule, but she's loyal to her sister who is aligned with them. I just think she's neat.)
Adversaries has more in the way of Exalted and other human and humanoid QCs, with a focus on groups and individuals and that sort of thing. Night Parade more often gives you new categories of being, or else big unique characters or creatures, including a few that are very much suitable for big set piece boss fights. The art is a lot more consistent in Night Parade, I think, but there are some nice pieces in Adversaries too.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
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Anyways since it got brought up a little bit in the discussion about villains. Something that's really helped me with building good villains over time. Is that every time you make a character for a tabletop game. Sit down and think 'What events could lead this same person to be the antagonist? What kind of situation would they easily become an antagonist in?'. It helped me a lot with making effective villains I guess.
Occasionally when I'm in situations where I need to fly by the seat of my pants real damn quick. I'll lean into one of my many older characters and start acting them out. Of course twisting things so it fits the situation and isn't blatant. My group actually occasionally notices when I do this and teases me lol
Occasionally when I'm in situations where I need to fly by the seat of my pants real damn quick. I'll lean into one of my many older characters and start acting them out. Of course twisting things so it fits the situation and isn't blatant. My group actually occasionally notices when I do this and teases me lol
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HalfTangible
Only half sane (it's less cringe)
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Did this with one of my Dawn castes, now my players all have a big dusk to fight (although the dawn player was flabbergasted when he found out how many health levels he had). My Deeb showed up with his wife in a cameo in one of the games I was running. In fact a lot of characters I use started out as character sheets from other Exalted games I played or theorycrafted for.
MiracleGrow
Miracles for only $19.99 [They/Them]
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Yeah, I do that a lot to. Beryl was supposed to be a antag for that first Deeb game I ran IRL but they never ran into him! I got art of how I was kind of planning to introduce him.
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I dunno. In the context of Exalted as a predominately action-focused game, I design quite a few people whose ultimate purpose is to challenge the players via trying to murder them so, if the player kills them, they feel cool. I take my cues from action cinema, in which you could probably ask these same questions of any mook in a Quentin Tarantino film. While I don't want to imply that any of his protagonists are paragons of morality, we can generally put the ideas of "oh this dude probably has a family" or "what if this woman was nice to waiters" away when Django or the Bride absolutely gore these hired goons because it sure is a wonderful spectacle to witness and is, ultimately, what you're here to see. My players crave fights, and boy can you do a lot of fights with Dynasts because they have neat little kung-fu powers like they do and they're generally the ones to start shit first. If Mr. Verhoeven doesn't have to worry about portraying a fair and even-handed view of Clarence Boddicker and his gang in RoboCop, do I have to stress that much that Cynis Jakam, the leader of a Wyld Hunt, gets ripped apart by one of my players going Deadly Beastman mode on him? Is James Cameron being a bad person when he doesn't spend much time on humanizing the RDA mercenary forces before they go up against the Na'vi because they really need space minerals and the Na'vi are living over a big vein of it?
I dunno, it's weird, this could be an interesting conversation but it feels kind of disappointing that people are getting so hostile with me over this. I mean, I don't think I ever directly insulted anyone or intended anything to be hostile, but some people really escalated things or just went very passive-aggressive with it when none of this shit matters in the end.
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Blaque
Resident Catblob
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I severely doubt techniques really would have done much. The big thing is like...Exalts could get them too. So it kind of was back to square one, it's just your prelude characters had more widgets to buy before Charms overrode them.
To me, honeslty, the issue is over support of mortal play at expense of mortals as NPCs. I think weirdly, Exalted kind fo treats mortals like D&D treats martial classes out of 4e. Where mortal = no special stuff, in a game where special stuff is pwoers. This combined with an assumption of PC/NPC symmetry in rules, means that whatever cool, not-Charm thing to giv ea mortal NPC to make htem a challenge to Exalts, Exalts were obligated to have access too or it exist in the world as some diagetic, purchasable widget. Which means things that mortals could use to be intersting challenges....weren't for them.
How I do it and the solution I run with has been just....le tmortals have things that let them be basically not-Charms that represent their prowess in the combat arena. They're "Charms" in teh sense they give intresitng, mechancial edges to help the mortal compete. Just like a Solar Charm isn't necessarily a technique, the Merit a mortal has that makes htem something any barely-competent combat-focuesd Exalt doesn't paste at Essence 1 can be too.
To me, the big issue for a lot is basically not going full into QCs than was done.
Blaque
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So without going into the details of what's all of them, the presentaiton of characters and things in the two books is different too.
Hundred Devils Night Parade is most a monster manual. Everything is a QC, and somthing that presents either texture to a story, a boss fight, soemthign you summon, a companion animal, or th elike. Its chapter break-down is:
Strange Beasts - Basically exotic critters you'd find in a monster manual. Notable ones for me include some returning critters from previous editions, like chillikins, thousand-forged dragons, Lodestar, and mice of the sun. It also includes new entries like Plentimon's ladybugs (magically luckly ladybugs), Scorll (strange friendly simulcrum ink/paper creature), Gajam-Un the Living Manse (kaiju fight), or Mahicara, the Volcanic Earhtwalker (different kaiju).
The Dead - Various strange undead things. Again, some return form previous editions like rantai or white robes. You have variety of things like a literla centamanus made of volunteers fighting somthing that pswed out of the Underworld like something out of a SOulsebourne game; Ankou, the ghost of the first person who dies every year in the North who serves as a psychoopomp for souls in the region; a haunted house; and a ghos tship.
Spirits - This is divided int elementals and demons. Gaz mentioned the quite-cool Wood Dragon. It has a few returning spirits like huraka (wind bears), cloud people, and storm serpants for lementals. New ones include various well, elementals to summon and make friends or enemies with. Demons also ar ea mix of old and new again, with the notable new ones to me being something someone descirbed best as a combination of a gyroscope, a Bibilically accurate angel, and a general message courrier who's dumb as hell and determined to get its message delivered. Something about how dedicated yet so seemingly stupid and destructiv the little guys are endears me to them greatly. You also as note dget the only fully stated in any form Third Circle Demon in al of Exalted hsitory, who serves a spretty damned big final boss fight or long term antagonist.
Creatures of the Wyld - WHat it is on the tin. Various Wyld things like unicorns, cockatrice, lava moths and such. You also get some weird indivdual Fair Folk monsters, behemoths, and just weird shit like piles of junk that are hsiny to attrack people so they can try to fall on them.
Animals - Animals. Most of them are like, mundane extant or extinct naimals thorughout the wolrd, while some are made-up weird things like fan favorite simhatas, eight-tailed mole hounds, and bears that have gills.
So overall, big variety of critters. It's I think either exaclty or over 100 total atual entires too, and it does a lot to add to the lroe of th esetting and brainstorm and use QCs too.
To kind of contrast, Adversaries of the Righteous is less a mosnter manual and more a big dramatis persona, and plot hook pile. While some of the things in HDNP were indivdual creatures, the things in Adversaires are all unique, indivdual characters, creatures, or organizaitons as they're written. So instead of like, a dopplegange, you get a specific poltergeist. Instead of a mercenary soldier tmeplate, you get a Hundred Kingdoms queen.
Various chracters will also come with some support cast, such as a good vareity of new artifacts with Evocations, new critters they come wiht, or notable QCs, such as the Bloodthisrty pirate fleet having some QC write-ups.
Its break-down is more:
Mortals - What's on the tin sorta. It includes actual mortals wiht interesting s, sorcerers, a master of a dojo who gets some magic spirit snake powers for it, a sky pirate, and an immortal witch-king who has put his entire polity to digging through sand to find shards of the magical rock empowering him.
Strange Folk is things a bit more overtly supernatural and less human than above, but still human. This includes a few Fair Folk nobles, a few god-blooded, fey-blooded, and demon-blooded. Ku Nenaveya who has been bourhgt up as a woman with a daikalve made from her own teras. A guy who's half jade cyborg. ANd a failed attempt to replicate the yennin of Volivat and getting a guy who's kind of a whole manhunter/cirminal investagtion story arc in a box.
Spirits and the Dead is what it seems like. It provides more unique elmentals including the Censor of the South and a toadstool dragon, and an Ifirit coverted to the Bahari Creed. A few ghosts. And some gods including one that's kind of I think a Paradox spirit doing her damnedest to fulfill the destiny for some no-good sword hero dude, and even a return of Siakal.
The Exalted includes example Solar, Dragon-Blooded, Lunar, Sidreal, Abyssal, Liminals, and Exigents. Kind of what it is on the tin there.
Groups is actually to me pretty cool. It's a grip of culturles, organizaitons, or societies, their overview, and notable member,s some of which are foudn throughout the rest of the book like the Scarelt Egg Players, the Quaghead Tribes, or the Cult of Aton.
So yeah, together they're pretty neat. Very different take son monster manuals but I Think both really cool and I think togehter they make a good spirutal successr to Creatures of the Wyld.
Look, the issue is that you came into a conversation with two people who were gushing about their own approach and started talking about how you don't get that approach, and, well...
Imrix describes things better than I can. Whether you intended the first paragraph or not, that's certainly how you've been coming across.
TenfoldShields
Lounging on a Hoard of Words
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I mean I don't wanna be a dick or dogpile you but it's like- over two pages and in no particular order you've compared Dynasts (the main play space for Dragon-Blooded by design) to the Confederate States of America, Nazis, the RDA (papa dragon???), expressed bewilderment that anyone would or even could write them as sympathetic, said that the only way one could honestly elicit empathy was if they were a persecuted outcaste or otherwise ready to totally abandon the Realm, and that the best use for Dynasts was for them to die gassing up other splats.
And it's like- I mean this earnestly. Thats pretty discouraging, especially when people were mid-talking about how much they liked the reworked Realm or aspects of it. Even at its most charitable it reads a lot like "fuck you, yeah you". And saying you didn't mean to be hostile, and just wanted a conversation comes off as kind of disingenuous even if it's true.
That's not a conversation happening anymore than me coming in and saying "Solars are all like Elon Musk debate me" is y'know?
Sorry for responding so late. I have not slept well in a long time and it finally caught up with me.
I could see dozens of Circles using it as a base of operations presuming there were benefits to doing so. Greater support would of course come with obligations, and I have no doubt Caul aligned Lunars would be more likely to be targetted by Sidereal interference since a united Lunar host given time to organize and build up is incredibly scary. I have noticed over the years that most people are turned off by the idea of allying with Elders because of how slothful they are, and especially ones like Raksi and Ma-Ha-Suchi because of how abhorrent they can be. I think plenty of people would be willing to work with a more proactive and sane Lunar like Sha'a Oka. Of course, I still think most Lunars would prefer to strike out on their own, and that is good.
All of this is what I feel is missing from Lunars, an unignorable display of Lunar victory before the Solars show up that provides plenty of story opportunities.
Also, I heard Sha'a Oka is supposed to be drawing inspiration from His Divine Lunar Presence from Shards of the Exalted Dream, and he falls short.
I actually have a few ideas for powerful Lunar dominions that are far enough from the Realm that there is little chance of direct conflict, along with smaller things that could still be a valuable for the setting at large. But I doubt anyone is in the mood to hear them after my ranting and raving walls of text. Perhaps another day.
I think it would be better to be able to disengage from the bind entirely, but as an IC choice rather than an OOC decision. Of the top of my head, it could work by by having it so when you meet your mate, you have the choice of automatically gaining an Intimacy to them based either on a former host or the first impression their mate made. or squash it with an act of will. That way, it would only matter if you chose for it to matter.
One of the problems I have with the bond as it is now, is I liked that it was done at Luna's request. It feels like it is in her nature to think that granting her Chosen some variation of what she has with Gaia would be an excellent idea. Based on that, I would also create a series of Charms that would grant similiar bonuses, but for an entire family of Dragon-Blooded or whatever a group of Dragon-Blooded is called in 3e. I think it started with Hearth.
I think a good example of this is the old jokes about Dragon-Blooded breeding camps when it does not take into account how impractical that is. I have no doubt such a situation would eventually lead to a slave result, and if there were enough Dragon-Blooded, they would have a high chance of success.
Still, I can completely understand wanting to squash the possiblity of that sort of thing, but I would have just had it so Dragon-Blooded are selectively fertile so there is no chance they will cause a pregnancy unless they want it to.
Now, while that would hurt the character idea of a Lost Egg descended from a Dragon-Blooded who seduced there mother during a one night stand, there are probably a bunch of sick Dynasts who think granting a woman the chance to birth a child who will one day Exalt is a gift.
Now, off to bed. Sorry for any grammer errors.
Fair enough. I assumed that the Caul was right off the coast of the Blessed Isle, making an invasion much easier. This is doubly embarrassing, because this is the second time I have made that mistake, although it was a while ago. However, in that hypothetical, it basically turns it into the Realms equivalent of Cuba. Everyone from bureaucrats, Dynast houses, the militiary, the Immaculates, and peasantry, would all seethe and feel fear thanks to the knowledge a powerful host of Anathema were right on their doorstep. A simultaneous benefit is being close to the Blessed Isle is they could not risk using the Sword of Creation without damaging the Blessed Isle, and even if they did, a very important holy sight would be lost forever. Complete victory being achieved while Big Red is still in charge would make it extra impressive. It would show that even if on the whole, the Scarlet Empire has the advantage, but they can still lose hard on occasion that do not involve a Solar like the Bull of the North. Besides from that, I still do not think it would be ignored as a background element, mostly because it provides opportunities for Lunar plot hooks since it would be the most concentrated center of Lunar power in the setting.
I could see dozens of Circles using it as a base of operations presuming there were benefits to doing so. Greater support would of course come with obligations, and I have no doubt Caul aligned Lunars would be more likely to be targetted by Sidereal interference since a united Lunar host given time to organize and build up is incredibly scary. I have noticed over the years that most people are turned off by the idea of allying with Elders because of how slothful they are, and especially ones like Raksi and Ma-Ha-Suchi because of how abhorrent they can be. I think plenty of people would be willing to work with a more proactive and sane Lunar like Sha'a Oka. Of course, I still think most Lunars would prefer to strike out on their own, and that is good.
All of this is what I feel is missing from Lunars, an unignorable display of Lunar victory before the Solars show up that provides plenty of story opportunities.
Also, I heard Sha'a Oka is supposed to be drawing inspiration from His Divine Lunar Presence from Shards of the Exalted Dream, and he falls short.
I actually have a few ideas for powerful Lunar dominions that are far enough from the Realm that there is little chance of direct conflict, along with smaller things that could still be a valuable for the setting at large. But I doubt anyone is in the mood to hear them after my ranting and raving walls of text. Perhaps another day.
I get your point, and looking back on it, a lot of my complaints are me ragging on Holden's ideas that never got implemented. I think I am frustrated because I like a lot of his work, but he never should have been made a developer because he needs someone to reign in his more boneheaded ideas. He wanted the Lunars to have destroyed the bond completley. Still, I find it hard to disagree with my friend who said it felt like the bond only exists because they were too reluctant to remove it entirely, even if I am not convinced Of course that is just speculation, so it is not worth much.
I think it would be better to be able to disengage from the bind entirely, but as an IC choice rather than an OOC decision. Of the top of my head, it could work by by having it so when you meet your mate, you have the choice of automatically gaining an Intimacy to them based either on a former host or the first impression their mate made. or squash it with an act of will. That way, it would only matter if you chose for it to matter.
One of the problems I have with the bond as it is now, is I liked that it was done at Luna's request. It feels like it is in her nature to think that granting her Chosen some variation of what she has with Gaia would be an excellent idea. Based on that, I would also create a series of Charms that would grant similiar bonuses, but for an entire family of Dragon-Blooded or whatever a group of Dragon-Blooded is called in 3e. I think it started with Hearth.
Yeah, I thought the same thing about a lot of this.
I think a good example of this is the old jokes about Dragon-Blooded breeding camps when it does not take into account how impractical that is. I have no doubt such a situation would eventually lead to a slave result, and if there were enough Dragon-Blooded, they would have a high chance of success.
Still, I can completely understand wanting to squash the possiblity of that sort of thing, but I would have just had it so Dragon-Blooded are selectively fertile so there is no chance they will cause a pregnancy unless they want it to.
Now, while that would hurt the character idea of a Lost Egg descended from a Dragon-Blooded who seduced there mother during a one night stand, there are probably a bunch of sick Dynasts who think granting a woman the chance to birth a child who will one day Exalt is a gift.
Now, off to bed. Sorry for any grammer errors.