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Fans of the Cackling Triad rejoice, for I bring you:

The Storm Daughter, Chosen of Tempests


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Exigent Seed: The Storm Daughter, Chosen of Tempests v1

Exigent Seed: The Storm Daughter, Chosen of Tempests The Storm Daughter is the Exigent of the Cackling Triad, a trio of venerable storm mothers who have plagued the northwest for centuries. The Cackling Triad “Hail to Yshma of the Gnawing Maul, may she never use it to grind our marrow. Hail to Y...
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As always, feedback is appreciated
 
Today's exalted game went a little off the rails.

We had a big setpiece fight with Smoke-from-stone, a volcano god who is not only incompetent, not only a doomsday prepper, but a Paradox player. (The villages will continue to be destroyed until he gets his build order right)

At the end of the fight, he has been forcibly discorporated, and Ruin* is trying to force him into a flame of exigence**. All of us are badly wounded, and my necromancer, Flint is on his last health level. After Ruin realizes that we can't force Smoke-from-stone into the flame, he proposes taking the red jade throne. Smoke-from-stone says we can't take his throne or the volcano will erupt.

So I,wounded, burned, and bleeding, say "This throne?", before, suspended from my necromantic bone spider***, staggering over and flopping into said chair, thus stealing it, and saying "My throne?"

And thanks to the wonderful magic of Mine By Right, Smoke-from-stone starts pointing out how I haven't used my throne in hundreds of years and if he can just borrow it for a little longer...

Getimians are fun, is what I'm saying.

*Not his full name
**longer story, also we may have had a run-in with Heaven's Dragons at one point
***Great for avoiding hazards
 
That feel when you make a dumb joke NPC character but come to absolutely adore them. Cutest Night caste on the entire Blessed Isle. Wyld Hunts stop in their tracks from the sight to only have their belongings nicked. I will continue to spread my not Lunar beastmen exalted agenda wherever I go.
 
horngeek said:
I admit, I'm doing the exact same with my Sidereal PC (wolfgirl) in a game @Maugan Ra's running
Off the top of my head, so's @Cornuthaum (literal penguin) and a couple of other PCs.
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WHO PINGS M-

Oh yeah, Farhan, Chosen of Battles, Actual Penguinman. I decided to make a beastman pc for a change because i wanted to move out of my comfort zone and also think more about how nonhuman body structure would work with stuff like emoting and eating and doing normal things
 
y'know who would make a neat group of Exigents? The Crimson Guard from the Malazan Books.

More to come.....
 
linkhyrule5 said:
Wait you have a Sidereal game too?!

Some people have all the luck :<.
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Basically, games tend to happen within friend groups. The people who play lots of games tend to be in circles with multiple people who periodically run them. @horngeek is good friends with a fair few people who regularly run games, entertaining to be in a game with, and is just generally super nice, as well as _running_ games sometimes, so he's gonna be fairly routinely at the top of the list for RP considerations.

Honestly, though, biggest advice if you wanna play an Exalted game? Run one. Or run any game, really, and invite Exalted players into the group. Like, there's a chain of games that I got involved in because early last year Horngeek and I were talking about a pair of Dresden Files RPG characters we wanted to play alongside each other. @emeralis00 went "hmm you know what, I want to run this", and did so, and so the adventures of Sam, Christian Minister and Wizard of the White Council and Heather, Knight of the Cross from the wrong side of the tracks began. A couple months later, emeralis was talking about a bad experience she'd had with Exalted, and I went "well that's not really how Solars work" and ended up deciding to run a solo game, at which point uh, @Maugan Ra jumped in and made an incredibly amusing pitch for making it a duo game, and now Dreaming Sea game is more than 100k words long with logs and everything and @Omicron joined in recently, playing Yatagarasu, who is definitely just a bird, who knows what the birds know.

And then Maugan invited me into his Sidereals game because he likes my Exalted game, and I originally brought Omi into my Exalted game because he's consistently been a highlight of a lot of the groups I'm in, as a player, as a GM, and just as a friend. Maugan, Omi, emeralis, Horngeek are all on the list of people I'd suggest for inviting into games if a GM was going "I need more players but am not comfortable with open invites", and they're also all on the list of people I'd want to run games for and prioritize as players (indeed Omi I think has been in every Exalted game I ever ran/attempted to run that wasn't a solo game).

You can start a group of your own! Pick the friends you like most, or the people you know from various forums or chats that you think would be most fun to write for who know you from Adam, and plan a game. Make your own luck, tell a neat story, and spread the love of gaming, and maybe make some longterm friends along the way!

Basically, when it comes to TTRPGs, friendship really is magic~
 
HamSandLich said:
y'know who would make a neat group of Exigents? The Crimson Guard from the Malazan Books.

More to come.....
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It always makes me sad whenever someone mentions Malazan, because despite forcing myself to read well past the point I would drop a novel based on the recommendations of several people whose literary tastes I respect, I just could not get into it.
 
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Tinkering with a homebrew idea for a five-dot Starmetal powerbow in 3e, since unfortunately all five-dot weapons so far are melee weapons (and the majority are daiklaves, naturally). The gist of it is that it was forged from a fairly sizable meteor that originated in the House of Secrets, created from the mass essence expenditure of the gods trying to keep the Divine Revolution a secret until it was the right time to begin. Naturally, the meteor drops from the sky the second war is declared. The meteorite is recovered and forged into a bow called Apsinthos, whose power is inflicting fatalistic foresight upon those who are struck by its arrows; its victims can see the future, but are compelled to believe that it is pointless to try and change it, and the wielder of the bow can exploit this.

Now, obviously this is inspired somewhat by the Book of Revelation, specifically that bit about the star Wormwood that falls to Earth, but as I tinker with it, I'm mostly wondering what a good inherent bonus it should be. I think the charms will be easy enough to write, but I weirdly always get stumped on the basic attunement bonuses. Also, I never get when an Evocation should be unlocked by RP (like "this charm awakens at no cost when the Exalt kills an enemy she has a major/defining tie of enmity to", stuff like that) or when it should cost XP. If anyone is good at homebrewing artifacts, would love your feedback.
 
SunnySprings said:
Tinkering with a homebrew idea for a five-dot Starmetal powerbow in 3e, since unfortunately all five-dot weapons so far are melee weapons (and the majority are daiklaves, naturally). The gist of it is that it was forged from a fairly sizable meteor that originated in the House of Secrets, created from the mass essence expenditure of the gods trying to keep the Divine Revolution a secret until it was the right time to begin. Naturally, the meteor drops from the sky the second war is declared. The meteorite is recovered and forged into a bow called Apsinthos, whose power is inflicting fatalistic foresight upon those who are struck by its arrows; its victims can see the future, but are compelled to believe that it is pointless to try and change it, and the wielder of the bow can exploit this.

Now, obviously this is inspired somewhat by the Book of Revelation, specifically that bit about the star Wormwood that falls to Earth, but as I tinker with it, I'm mostly wondering what a good inherent bonus it should be. I think the charms will be easy enough to write, but I weirdly always get stumped on the basic attunement bonuses. Also, I never get when an Evocation should be unlocked by RP (like "this charm awakens at no cost when the Exalt kills an enemy she has a major/defining tie of enmity to", stuff like that) or when it should cost XP. If anyone is good at homebrewing artifacts, would love your feedback.
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Every artifact should come with a basic auto-unlock Evocation, IMO. It's just good vibes and provides a nice bonus for the investment and bit of flavor. The Attunement bonus for a 5-dot Artifact should be fairly potent, as well.

Evocations that are unlocked by RP should come in the middle of the tree, ideally requiring only one other pre-req it is linked to, and extrapolates from the power of the Charm it is linked to, it's a reward for playing the Artifact like it is thematically designed to be played, more or less, and works best when it stems from a strong Charm two or three Evocations in that "completes" the vibe in some way.

For the artifact you're talking about here, I personally would have the attunement bonus be something like reducing soak and hardness against the attacks of the bow by (intimacy of fatalism) or the like, once you've inflicted an obsession on them with the bow's Evocations, armor protects them less from future attacks. If you raise it to defining, they're at -4 soak and -4 hardness against you, which can be circumstantially pretty fantastic, especially against Heavy Artifact armor. It won't stop a Lunar with soak in the 30s, but it'll make it harder for big monsters to shrug you off.

Attunement bonuses can be tricky because they're easiest to do once you have a sense of what is valuable in Exalted combat and what isn't, what effects would be too much and what effects would be not enough. I personally tend to favor strong conditional bonuses that further the weapon's themes, new avenues of attacks, or boosting static values in some way for Artifact 4s and 5s.

For a weapon like this, I would suggest between seven and ten Evocations, I personally would probably do about 10. Two or three at Essence 1, including the first Evocation automatically unlocking, three at Essence 2, two at essence 3 and then maybe that RP unlock at Essence 3 as well, one at Essence 4 and 5 respectively. That would give you a solid progression over the course of the game, E1 to E5, and let your character have a couple things to grab at every Essence marker with their splat XP, feeling like the weapon grows with them. By Essence 5, it would easily feel like the weapon has been a part of them all the way.

If you don't feel up to that many Charms, though, I'd advice 7 Evocations, one for each Essence level bought with XP, and then one automatically unlocking upon attunement at E1, and one unlocking through a thematic roleplay unlike at Essence 3. For even more minimalism, you could do E1, E3, E5, two unlocks for 5 Evocations, which is IIRC about what I did for my Artifact 4 dagger for my Night Caste.

The big thing to remember about Evocations is that they should NOT provide accuracy boosting except as NPC-specific bond Evocations, like a faery with a gossamer daiklave having a psuedo-Excellency effect. Evocations should generally provide effects players otherwise wouldn't have access to, like social influence expanding from attacks as you've noted this weapon to do, or focus on pure damage effects. The biggest mechanical faultline Exalted Third Edition has is when accuracy exceeds the usual caps set in place, and there's solid damage options. Evocations that provide rerolling failed dice, doubled numbers on attack rolls, or automatic successes on attack rolls are very, very risky and should never be available to Solars, and to a lesser extent Sidereals. An expensive Evocation that adds an automatic success to the attack roll and increases overwhelming by 2 is probably fine overall, but one that doubles 9s on the attack roll and adds +Essence to decisive damage wouldn't be, for instance.

Capbreaking accuracy boosts and raw decisive dice boosts on supplemental Evocations should be your biggest things to avoid, both those effects are meant to be fairly limited in Ex3, and especially on effects that, like Evocations, can combine with Exalt Charms. So long as you keep that in mind, though, you should be able to be confidant that your artifact won't break anything.
 
always remember that you can use existing artifacts as a balance point, for instance if you are making a homebrew powerbow you could totally use the moonlit huntress (it's in core so you know it's the golden standard), it is a powerbow with exactly one evocation that lets you spend 1wp and reflexively gain 15 Initiative at any moment under any circumstances (not perilous)
 
Well i've suddenly got a few days worth of free time because of medical reasons so here's the Design Seeds currently in my pipeline, in no particular order:

  • Apocryphal Seed: The Boreal Exalted, Chosen of the Hyperborean Serpent
  • Apocryphal Seed: The Nebular Exalted, Chosen of Andromeda (this one is a long shot)
  • Exigent Seed: The Strifesworn, Chosen of the Indigo Company
  • Exigent Seed: The Serpent-Dancer, Chosen of the Oasis
  • Exigent Seed: The Far Strider, Chosen of Forestry
  • Exigent Seed: The Gourmand, Chosen of Feasts
  • Exigent Seed: The Worm-Kings, Chosen of Tyranny
  • Exigent Seed: The Ghost-Killer, Chosen of Exorcism (name tentative)
 
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HamSandLich said:
Well i've suddenly got a few days worth of free time because of medical reasons so here's the Design Seeds currently in my pipeline, in no particular order:

  • Apocryphal Seed: The Boreal Exalted, Chosen of the Hyperborean Serpent
  • Apocryphal Seed: The Nebular Exalted, Chosen of Andromeda (this one is a long shot)
  • Exigent Seed: The Strifesworn, Chosen of the Indigo Company
  • Exigent Seed: The Serpent-Dancer, Chosen of the Oasis
  • Exigent Seed: The Far Strider, Chosen of Forestry
  • Exigent Seed: The Gourmand, Chosen of Feasts
  • Exigent Seed: The Worm-Kings, Chosen of Tyranny
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Honestly all this stuff you're posting is gold and I love it. Particularly liked the Myrmidon Horde, and Fokuf.
 
Shane_357 said:
Honestly all this stuff you're posting is gold and I love it. Particularly liked the Myrmidon Horde, and Fokuf.
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The Myrmidon Horde is honestly one of my favorite ideas. They're gribbly mushroom zerg but they can also be fun helpful little guys. Biggest influences are the Scarlet Rot from Elden Ring and the Egregorians from Lancer
 
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Omicron said:
always remember that you can use existing artifacts as a balance point, for instance if you are making a homebrew powerbow you could totally use the moonlit huntress (it's in core so you know it's the golden standard), it is a powerbow with exactly one evocation that lets you spend 1wp and reflexively gain 15 Initiative at any moment under any circumstances (not perilous)
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I know this is controversial but I think someone should saw Brittany off from France and let it sink into the ocean Bugs Bunny style
 
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Omicron said:
always remember that you can use existing artifacts as a balance point, for instance if you are making a homebrew powerbow you could totally use the moonlit huntress (it's in core so you know it's the golden standard), it is a powerbow with exactly one evocation that lets you spend 1wp and reflexively gain 15 Initiative at any moment under any circumstances (not perilous)
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Eh, I just wanna practice homebrewing. I have another idea that I'm working on more passively, which is a kit for doing various Shards of the Exalted Dream in Exalted Essence's framework. Vehicle rules, firearms and what not, how certain new Exalts fit into those alternate universes, and so on. I want to wait until Essence is out (or at least, the next-to-last version they'll be dropping sometime soon) before I do anything beyond spitballing, though.

Kaiya said:
Every artifact should come with a basic auto-unlock Evocation, IMO. It's just good vibes and provides a nice bonus for the investment and bit of flavor. The Attunement bonus for a 5-dot Artifact should be fairly potent, as well.

Evocations that are unlocked by RP should come in the middle of the tree, ideally requiring only one other pre-req it is linked to, and extrapolates from the power of the Charm it is linked to, it's a reward for playing the Artifact like it is thematically designed to be played, more or less, and works best when it stems from a strong Charm two or three Evocations in that "completes" the vibe in some way.

For the artifact you're talking about here, I personally would have the attunement bonus be something like reducing soak and hardness against the attacks of the bow by (intimacy of fatalism) or the like, once you've inflicted an obsession on them with the bow's Evocations, armor protects them less from future attacks. If you raise it to defining, they're at -4 soak and -4 hardness against you, which can be circumstantially pretty fantastic, especially against Heavy Artifact armor. It won't stop a Lunar with soak in the 30s, but it'll make it harder for big monsters to shrug you off.

Attunement bonuses can be tricky because they're easiest to do once you have a sense of what is valuable in Exalted combat and what isn't, what effects would be too much and what effects would be not enough. I personally tend to favor strong conditional bonuses that further the weapon's themes, new avenues of attacks, or boosting static values in some way for Artifact 4s and 5s.

For a weapon like this, I would suggest between seven and ten Evocations, I personally would probably do about 10. Two or three at Essence 1, including the first Evocation automatically unlocking, three at Essence 2, two at essence 3 and then maybe that RP unlock at Essence 3 as well, one at Essence 4 and 5 respectively. That would give you a solid progression over the course of the game, E1 to E5, and let your character have a couple things to grab at every Essence marker with their splat XP, feeling like the weapon grows with them. By Essence 5, it would easily feel like the weapon has been a part of them all the way.

If you don't feel up to that many Charms, though, I'd advice 7 Evocations, one for each Essence level bought with XP, and then one automatically unlocking upon attunement at E1, and one unlocking through a thematic roleplay unlike at Essence 3. For even more minimalism, you could do E1, E3, E5, two unlocks for 5 Evocations, which is IIRC about what I did for my Artifact 4 dagger for my Night Caste.

The big thing to remember about Evocations is that they should NOT provide accuracy boosting except as NPC-specific bond Evocations, like a faery with a gossamer daiklave having a psuedo-Excellency effect. Evocations should generally provide effects players otherwise wouldn't have access to, like social influence expanding from attacks as you've noted this weapon to do, or focus on pure damage effects. The biggest mechanical faultline Exalted Third Edition has is when accuracy exceeds the usual caps set in place, and there's solid damage options. Evocations that provide rerolling failed dice, doubled numbers on attack rolls, or automatic successes on attack rolls are very, very risky and should never be available to Solars, and to a lesser extent Sidereals. An expensive Evocation that adds an automatic success to the attack roll and increases overwhelming by 2 is probably fine overall, but one that doubles 9s on the attack roll and adds +Essence to decisive damage wouldn't be, for instance.

Capbreaking accuracy boosts and raw decisive dice boosts on supplemental Evocations should be your biggest things to avoid, both those effects are meant to be fairly limited in Ex3, and especially on effects that, like Evocations, can combine with Exalt Charms. So long as you keep that in mind, though, you should be able to be confidant that your artifact won't break anything.
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Very useful stuff, thank you. I take it that a full charm meant to break soak-stacking along the lines of Shadow-Piercing Needle from Sidereal Thrown wouldn't be out of line for a 5-dot artifact, right?
 
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