Remove ads

General Exalted Thread

Reader mode
I have now done a quick skim of the Essence PDF.

Things that please me:
-The Physique rules make sense now
-Judge's Ear Technique (player facing version) has been changed to a repurchase of Witness Rapport Technique and has been bumped up to Awareness 4, so you need to put some investment into Awareness in order to get it. I still think story-long penalties are broken, but its better than the kickstarter draft
-The Air Aspect's Iconic Anima power is now actually cool and useful, instead of criminally boring and bafflingly counter-intuitive
-Animals are cleaned up
-Milestones are cleaned up
-New antagonist Qualities that are pretty nice, I like Looming and Oppressive especially
-Although Final Harvest's inherent powers and Evocations are left undefined, at the very least weapon tags have been provided
-Using a Stunt for Instant Training explicitly allows you to borrow against a future milestone, as well as use one that you have saved up.
-Great Heart Companion is now a Dragon-Blooded Mode for Rider-and-Mount Unity

Things that do not:
-The Air Aspect's Active Anima power is still a flat penalty rather than scaling with Essence, like nearly every other Active power
-Guarded Mind Meditation no longer lets you conceal your Anima.
-Liminals didn't get art in their Exalt Charms section.

Things I'm neutral on but found noteworthy:
-Unless there is an error during editing or I'm misreading things, The Abyssal's Banquet of Cruelty Advantage got super fucking buffed, as the once-per-scene limit on its benefits now only applies outside of combat

I'm sure I will have more to praise and/or complain about once I've done a more thorough reading.
 
ichypa said:
-Unless there is an error during editing or I'm misreading things, The Abyssal's Banquet of Cruelty Advantage got super fucking buffed, as the once-per-scene limit on its benefits now only applies outside of combat
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I talked with the Devs on the official Discord about this topic. It is very much intended, because at the end of the day, to really optimize it you need to be an Essence 5 Dusk-Caste Abyssal constantly killing mooks to get an extra 5 motes per turn. At Essence 5, that's not that broken, since you'll be running out of steps to activate charms on first.
 
Nice to see this burst of homebrew writing.

Of all the signs of life a fandom can show, fanwork is the most convincing.

HamSandLich said:
So, anyway, i've been reading my way through Kengan Ashura and i'm thinking that the Annihilation Tournament is totally something that the Guild would do.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
HamSandLich said:
So, uh, I might've gotten carried away after reading some of Kengan Ashura, here's another design seed. Once again feedback is appreciated

Exigent Seed: The Contenders, Chosen of Tournaments v1

The Contenders, Chosen of Tournaments A hero’s body burns on a pyre as his army holds funeral games in his honor, the champion, the dead hero’s lover, finds himself filled with newfound strength. A masked gladiator fights for the favor of the princess, and when she removes her helmet she is more ...
docs.google.com
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Hey, a fellow Kengan fan!

I agree, a Guild-sponsored Annihilation Tournament would be sweet.

I'm not sure about the Contenders, though. Although the backstory is solid, the sample characters interesting, and the Great Curse compelling, I can't really get behind contenders who hardly have anyone to contend with. There's only fifteen or so of these guys and Exalted-level characters competing in athletic competitions are just not very common. A Contender ball-game-player can't realistically hope to have a sports-anime-worth of teammates, rivals, and opponents.

Sure, you can just have the ball-game-player fight people instead of playing their sport. But that seems a bit lame.

I think these guys might benefit from a step down the power scale, from Terrestrial-level Exalts to mortals with some divinely-granted Merits. That'd let you raise their numbers immensely, while letting them reasonably compete against mortals and also raising the possibility of gods from outside the group sponsoring their own contenders. Apart from Chidorimaru defeating a Dragonblooded swordmaster in a duel, I think pretty much all your lore would still work.

And I'm generally in favour of adding more stuff to the space between the powerless and the Exalted.

Perhaps full-on Exigence could be a grand prize that they all strive for, granted only to the occasional champion.

Kymme said:
I've made this argument and heard disagreement or agreement based purely on whether or not I frame it as a positive or negative thing, but my thought is that Exalted 3e is better for not trying to model both the Graphic Novel and the Mythic Paratext at the same time. Exalted 2e attempted to do both, with things like Dreams of the First Age, Broken-Winged Crane, and Glories providing Charm infrastructure that let people model the journey of a wandering wuxia hero to a reality-warping, cosmos-eclipsing demiurgic supergod. I think it's safe to say that its success, if any, was mixed.

And that's fine. TTRPGs are tools we use to create the games we want to play, and good tools have specific uses. If I want to paint the broad strokes of a setting's Mythic Paratext or what-have-you I'll run Godsend, or Mythender, or something. The experience will be all the better for using a tool specifically intended for that purpose.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Mm, I dunno if it's really a change for the better.

2e's mechanics for the Mythic Paratext were bad, there's no denying that. But its mechanics for everything were generally shaky at best.

I think Exalted could do better; I believe it could encompass itself entirely. Most of the crazy stuff, like murdering entities larger than planets, is dependent on NPC rules rather than PC rules. And we have immense freedom when it comes to NPC rules. With a bit of care and creativity, we can write antagonists that let your wandering wuxia hero perform the deeds of a reality-warping, cosmos-eclipsing demiurgic supergod.

I've always liked the fact that an Exalt who can be endangered by mortals can nonetheless threaten a sentient universe. And with good NPC rules-writing, that idea can be made real.

(Incidentally, most interaction with Yozis should be Third Circle-based. Third Circles are shamefully underused in canon.)

Kaiya said:
The perfect part wasn't the issue, it was how lethal the system was otherwise. Paranoia combat was a combination of factions:

Poison, Crippling, Shaping, Emotion, Unnatural Mental Influence keywords can all trivially destroy any character if they land.

Ambush allows for insane amounts of damage to be dealt while denying use of some Charms (I think, on that last part, it's been awhile).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

You remember correctly. Some of the denied Charms were immensely important, like Heavenly Guardian Defense. And whenever five people attacked you at once, one of them got a free ambush.

The Combo rules, of course, made all of this far worse.

2.5 did a lot to fix all this, though.

Shane_357 said:
So opinions, should a minor ghost possessing animals be a valid target for the Familiar trait?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I don't see why not. Three-dot familiar examples include an equine demigod and a T-Rex-but-more-so. A dog with a ghost in it hardly seems unreasonable.
 
So how are Infernals compared to 2e/2.5e or Exalted vs World of Darkness?

Extending on this, Canon 2e/2.5e Infernals have Devil Tigerdom, EXWOD Infernals have the hell inside their soul, I've heard talk of some equivalent in Exalted essence, I'm particularly curious what's up with that.
 
Last edited:
OctarineShrike said:
So how are Infernals compared to 2e/2.5e or Exalted vs World of Darkness?

Extending on this, Canon 2e/2.5e Infernals have Devil Tigerdom, EXWOD Infernals have the hell inside their soul, I've heard talk of some equivalent in Exalted essence, I'm particularly curious what's up with that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
So to caveat, I think that Infenrals and Sidereals are two Exalts that do kind of lose a bit of their characterization compared to a full set like Exalted 2e or 3e would provide. Just is a side-effect of the squishing things in a bit.

It's worth noting too that the devs wanted like, twice the wordcount we ended up with in the book. So some of this might be in their eventual Charms in Pillars of Creation, the KS Companion/Sretch Goal book.

Some of the custom stuff is right off the bat now. You custom-build your Devil-Body, and while it's pretty utilitarian and mechancial, a lot of the more straight-forward ones are basically there if you want with the ruels as they are. All Infernals have access to Devil-Body Transformation as part of their inherent powers, and can get more to it if they invest in it.

They have some terraforming stuff to be more like Cecylene (kind of more anti-terraforming) and also some things similar to Wyld-Shaping Technique to rework reality itself. But not a lot in the Charmset as it is deals wiht inner worlds or spitting out soul pantheons.

Something the devs have stated, though, is these are things that will be there. Building your own inner world, Devil-Body aesthetic, and generla themes are things just kind of bult-into Infernals. It's just that they don't ever stop being Infenrals to do that. Your power is still ultimatley Hellish and draws on demons. It's just you know, Exalted has a unique cool botique Hell so that helps a lot. It just might not be very much something that's easy to put a lot of wordcount to in the Essence format.

You'll probably see less focus on thing slike decadence, and such too. Infernals have a more revolutionary bent going, and the First Age is less a focus for the current devs. This will impact a bit things like how much it is meant to inform the Infernal experience compared to what I understnd Ex v. WoD went for.
 
OctarineShrike said:
So how are Infernals compared to 2e/2.5e or Exalted vs World of Darkness?

Extending on this, Canon 2e/2.5e Infernals have Devil Tigerdom, EXWOD Infernals have the hell inside their soul, I've heard talk of some equivalent in Exalted essence, I'm particularly curious what's up with that.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I'm presuming you mean in ExEss? In that, they're weird, and not in the typical way that 2e Infernals were weird. Some of their charms have odd limitations, seemingly as a hold over from 2e (e.g.: Broken Silence Laughter Defense wants the Infernal to not speak, Desert-and-Flame Endurance does not work in "verdant locales," etc). They feel very out of place now that we've ditched the whole "these are the charms that Yozi's are made out of" conceit.

They each have a Devil-Body (shintai), which can be activated at will with a charm or free at critical health or limit break... I think. Their limit break later text states that "The Infernal may choose how to pay for Devil Body Mode activation as normal." Unless I'm missing something, I think it's a contradiction.

The benefits from transforming aren't too exciting (compared to the wilder things you could get up to in 2e) but one option is to "transform your surroundings out to medium range into difficult terrain befitting your aesthetic." They also get a "turn land into deserts" Cecelyne-style charm. Those deserts can then be treated like the wyld for their Wyld-Shaping equivalents. No innerworld or pantheon stuff outside of being creative with those charms, however.

Beyond that, they're mostly solid. They make surprisingly good generals.
 
Last edited:
FateBreakers Act 2 Episode 13: Lythander's Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day:

---
With the clock running out on the demon summoning (and the encroaching army, and Sozen's heist, and who knows what else in the background...), the Circle gathers their allies and makes plans to ensure Champoor is still in one piece by sunrise. But that requires restoring the rest of Lythander's lost memories which reveal some rather disturbing truths. Both from his prior lives, and also this one: Meon's memory curse was just the beginning.

Meanwhile, Aura holds an intervention for her gun! Gavel learns about naval warfare and finally gets the gang a boat! Unblinking Eye finds out how the Hearteater is, somehow, worse than we already thought! Lythander stops a ghost sky pickpocket from stealing their stuff! And we move on to the finals of the fight club! But, uh, it is not a smooth finale! Hey, what's that prayer strip say? Why's it glowing like that?



Check it out here on Podbean and here on YouTube!

---

Act 2 Episode 14: Staring Contest With The Abyss(al)

---
Meon's trap has been sprung, and the gang must now escape both the ocean's crushing depths and the terrifying demon attempting to fry them all. And the army of jellyfishfolk now visible on the horizon, they're still here too. While the Circle struggles to reorient themselves and strike back at their Sidereal foe, their allies uncover the final pieces of several puzzles, and finally enter the long battle to save the Nighted City from the oncoming mini-apocalypses!

Aura also has another run-in with Sky Sundering Shadow, who wants to make good on their contract from back in Act 1. She reveals some ominous information about the coming fight and offers yet another devil's bargain to help turn the tide. Also, Gavel's own army forgets who she is! Lythander singlehandedly invents a shovel-based martial art! Many, many high-difficulty rolls get blown out of the water! Nellens Liza has a harebrained scheme, and Rajeev gets some major flashbacks! A lot's going on today, on the penultimate episode of Act 2!

Check it out here on Podbean and here on YouTube!
 
Last edited:
XS Houserule/Expansion - Martial Arts Modes

Some people have complained that the Martial Arts trees in XS feel too small. This houserule is intended to capture the "feel" of the traditional larger martial arts styles from other Exalted editions in a context of universal (and splat-specific, if appropriate) charms, and additionally give something of a more distinctive feel to martial arts forms in the style of a more wuxia setting.

Martial Arts Styles may have modes associated with Universal Charms, or - in some cases where particularly appropriate - splat-specific charms (such as Immaculate Dragon Style modes for Dragonblooded charms).

These Martial Arts Modes are accessible to any martial artist character who has learned the Form Charm of their appropriate Style. However, by default they can only use these modes when the Form charm is active. Characters can "master" the Mode by purchasing the mode with a Personal Milestone or an Exalt milestone, which allows them to use the mode even when the Form charm is not active.

Example: Snake Style

The following are example modes for Snake Style, which serve to demonstrate my basic school of thought for this.

Mongoose-and-Cobra Escape
- Shed Rattle Retreat (Snake Style): The martial artist leaves a deceptive decoy in her place, like a rattlesnake escaping a predator. Until the start of her next action, trivial characters will believe the decoy is her. The decoy disintegrates if it takes a health level from any source.

Ambush Sensing Premonition
- Disturbed Cobra Stance (Snake Style): For the first attack the martial artist makes against the ambusher next turn, she reduces the target's Hardness by the penalty she negated with the use of this charm. Note that to benefit from this, it must be the first attack she makes; if she flurries a withering followed by a decisive attack, the second attack does not benefit from the Hardness reduction.

Enhanced Senses
- Pit Viper Eye (Snake Style): If the martial artist has the version of Enhanced Senses which applies to sight, she can commit one mote to sense the fire essence that dwells within life. This negates all penalties to detecting living creatures if they are within Medium distance, even in complete darkness. This does not work against characters who conceal their inner fire essence in some way, such as smearing themselves in river mud.

Excellent Strike
- Envenomed Retort (Snake Style): If the enhanced attack is a decisive attack and inflicts at least one level of damage, the martial artist may spend another mote to inflict a poison on the target with 1 damage/interval, duration equal to the penalty she negated, and a difficulty of 3.
 
EarthScorpion said:
These Martial Arts Modes are accessible to any martial artist character who has learned the Form Charm of their appropriate Style.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
As written, this can be interpreted as being able to learn the martial arts mode of a solar specific charm even if not a part of that splat (i.e, a solar learning the wood dragon style mode of a DB charm). Might want to add some wording if this is not intended
 
BossFight said:
As written, this can be interpreted as being able to learn the martial arts mode of a solar specific charm even if not a part of that splat (i.e, a solar learning the wood dragon style mode of a DB charm). Might want to add some wording if this is not intended
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
?????

You can't learn a mode without first learning the charm, that's how Modes work.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Yes, that. Modes modify an existing charm you know; you can't have them as stand-alone things.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I think I understand the original confusion.

It appears that you are wanting to put additional modes on non-MA charms that would require that specific MA style form charm known to be able to be use the new modes. Which could then just be purchased as additional modes as per normal once you have both charms to not need to be in that form to use them.

Effectively making the new modes combo nodes for both required charms. Or as modes that have other charms as a prerequisite rather than stats/essence.

The initial reading they, and I, had was that these would just be modes on the MA charms, and that anyone with the MA charm could just buy them without needing any other charms.

~~~

In other things, how/where did XS become the shorthand for Exalted Essence?

And I really want to see a Thousand Weapon Style and Nightengale style for XS.
 
Gazetteer said:
"Exalted Essence" -> "ExEss" -> "XS". I think that ExEss is supposed to visually resemble like, Ex3, Ex2 etc. but it very quickly got shortened to the two letter version. It was the terminology the community settled on almost immediately.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I am not surprised that something was settled on right quick due to how clumsy it is relative to normal editions are abbreviated.
 
Skelethin said:
I am not surprised that something was settled on right quick due to how clumsy it is relative to normal editions are abbreviated.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Okay.

Skelethin said:
I think I understand the original confusion.

It appears that you are wanting to put additional modes on non-MA charms that would require that specific MA style form charm known to be able to be use the new modes. Which could then just be purchased as additional modes as per normal once you have both charms to not need to be in that form to use them.

Effectively making the new modes combo nodes for both required charms. Or as modes that have other charms as a prerequisite rather than stats/essence.

The initial reading they, and I, had was that these would just be modes on the MA charms, and that anyone with the MA charm could just buy them without needing any other charms.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Anyway, addressing this, I think that what the proposed houserule is doing here is pretty explicitly spelled out, like, to quote it directly, emphasis mine:

EarthScorpion said:
Martial Arts Styles may have modes associated with Universal Charms, or - in some cases where particularly appropriate - splat-specific charms (such as Immaculate Dragon Style modes for Dragonblooded charms).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's a proposal to give martial arts stylists additional mechanical widgets to play with out of the universal charmset. The other reading would be a little strange, given how XS modes work. We are given specific universal charms that these modes would be associated with, but no martial arts charms. If it were the way you're imagining, it would not be usable in its proposed format.
 
1337Procrast said:
?????

You can't learn a mode without first learning the charm, that's how Modes work.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
EarthScorpion said:
Yes, that. Modes modify an existing charm you know; you can't have them as stand-alone things.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This is the reading I would go with, but specific trumps general is the usual rule, and as written this says "these charms are available to *anyone* who knows the form charm" right after the section on how martial arts can have modes to splat specific charms. A simple "and the base charm" would make it read a lot clearer and remove ambiguity
 
I would not personally assume that a line telling you you have access to modes on certain universial charms, which in all the examples rely on the effects of said universal charms, is actually like, completely ignoring how modes work without mentioning that it is doing this, and actually means that you don't need the charm the mode is on at all.

Like, in one reading the mechanics in the examples make sense, and in the other they just don't before we get anywhere near the hypothetical problem of "would this let you get another splat's charms, actually".
 
Gazetteer said:
I would not personally assume that a line telling you you have access to modes on certain universial charms, which in all the examples rely on the effects of said universal charms, is actually like, completely ignoring how modes work without mentioning that it is doing this, and actually means that you don't need the charm the mode is on at all.

Like, in one reading the mechanics in the examples make sense, and in the other they just don't before we get anywhere near the hypothetical problem of "would this let you get another splat's charms, actually".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You seem to misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not arguing for a mechanical reading. I'm making a suggestion about clarity.

Like even if we assume that it's 100% impossible for a player to make this reading given RAW... Well they might still just forget that's how charms work? Or assume this homebrew is making an exception (because homebrew does that all the time) or have a vested interest in another reading because it allows a character concept they want.
 
Marin said:
Ever wanted to send a storm of flying daiklaves your enemy's way? Here's Thousand Blades Style, a preview from the forthcoming Lunar companion Many-Faced Strangers:

Thousand Blades Style: A Many-Faced Strangers Sneak Peek – Onyx Path Publishing
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
This seems interesting but I'm unsure of the whole 'you can learn this without getting the Martial Arts Merit thing'. While I believe the Merit is a stupid and annoying tax, this feels like sle thing that will be reused over and over again even if it's designed to avoid double taxing you with the requirement for additional artifact weapons.

Also it seems to lack a method of adding additional signature weapons.
 
Sucal said:
This seems interesting but I'm unsure of the whole 'you can learn this without getting the Martial Arts Merit thing'. While I believe the Merit is a stupid and annoying tax, this feels like sle thing that will be reused over and over again even if it's designed to avoid double taxing you with the requirement for additional artifact weapons.















Also it seems to lack a method of adding additional signature weapons.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...



You just ready them when you ready your first weapon, same as dual wielding.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top