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General Exalted Thread

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Alectai said:
Abyssals was backed a while back, we should actually get the proper PDF in a few months at the rate they're going now actually.
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Oh, that's good to know.

Also, on the topic of backing; since I haven't gotten around to backing Alchemicals yet, would anyone who has be able to tell me if the Alchemical Exalted in 3e are Celestial Exalted or Terrestial Exalted?
 
Constenanto said:
Really? I got the impression that they were considered Terrestial in 2e, although I profess I'm not all that knowledgeable when it comes to 2e.
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They were explicitly not considered Terrestrial in 2e. The books talked about this and then, as with 1e, just settled on them being Celestial-equivant, after noting that they're technically Primordial Exalts. Prior to 3e, there were not really any other Terrestrial level Exalts in the setting aside from Dragon-Blooded, and Alchemicals have always been stronger than them by enough that the comparison has always broken down past the "well, there are a bunch of them" point.
 
Yeah, Alchemicals are intended for Celestial level play. Terrestrials at the moment seem to be Dragon Blooded, Liminals, and Most Exigents.
 
Gazetteer said:
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Fair enough, them being Celestial does make much more sense.

Alectai said:
Yeah, Alchemicals are intended for Celestial level play. Terrestrials at the moment seem to be Dragon Blooded, Liminals, and Most Exigents.
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Ah, was just about to ask about Liminals. While I'm still somewhat at a loss as to what to think of Liminals, it is nice to see that there are more Terrestial Exalted, since before that really only meant the Dragon-Blooded (as far as I'm aware).
 
Constenanto said:
Fair enough, them being Celestial does make much more sense.



Ah, was just about to ask about Liminals. While I'm still somewhat at a loss as to what to think of Liminals, it is nice to see that there are more Terrestial Exalted, since before that really only meant the Dragon-Blooded (as far as I'm aware).
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Liminals look neat so far, it's just that we don't have their third edition interpretation yet, all we know is that they're kind of one part old school Kamen Rider, one part Incredible Hulk, and one part Frankenstein's Monster apparently, with a lot of body horror vibes in their charmset.

They're also insanely hard to kill holy shit, Pretty much the only way to kill a Liminal for good is to either completely isolate them from all society and emotional bonds and then bury them at the bottom of a river or sea. Anything less, they'll just get back up later.

They're associated with some ancient Underworld Goddess who predated the Primordial War and before the Neverborn broke everything, who apparently decided to start rolling them out recently--it happens chiefly when someone tries to raise the dead, instead of just failing or creating some abomination, you get a Liminal--who isn't the person they were trying to raise but is a whole new lifeform in a mostly undying body that exists to police the borders between life and death, which requires them to have at least one strong bond to a living person to stay intact.
 
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Alectai said:
Liminals look neat so far, it's just that we don't have their third edition interpretation yet, all we know is that they're kind of one part old school Kamen Rider, one part Incredible Hulk, and one part Frankenstein's Monster apparently, with a lot of body horror vibes in their charmset.

They're also insanely hard to kill holy shit, Pretty much the only way to kill a Liminal for good is to either completely isolate them from all society and emotional bonds and then bury them at the bottom of a river or sea. Anything less, they'll just get back up later.
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I don't hate them by any means - I think the whole Frankenstein aesthetic is pretty cool, it's just... I'm not really sure what kind of niche they're supposed to fulfil? That might just be a me thing, though. I'll wait till their book drops before I make any judgement.

(Side note, is it said how they became a thing in the first place? Can't recall the corebook going into detail on it, and I'm interested in how that happened.)
 
Constenanto said:
I don't hate them by any means - I think the whole Frankenstein aesthetic is pretty cool, it's just... I'm not really sure what kind of niche they're supposed to fulfil? That might just be a me thing, though. I'll wait till their book drops before I make any judgement.

(Side note, is it said how they became a thing in the first place? Can't recall the corebook going into detail on it, and I'm interested in how that happened.)
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Unclear, they're fairly new though, Great Contagion at the absolute earliest I think, but they only started popping up in significant numbers in the past ten, twenty years I think. They're actually one of the handful of Exalt types that don't automatically get registered as Anathema for instance, (Though the Immaculate Order doesn't quite know what to do with them, since on the one hand, they're obviously unclean due to their grave association--but on the other hand, they're consistently big on exorcism and keeping rogue ghosts and other undead things out.)
 
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Constenanto said:
I'm not really sure what kind of niche they're supposed to fulfil? That might just be a me thing, though. I'll wait till their book drops before I make any judgement.

(Side note, is it said how they became a thing in the first place? Can't recall the corebook going into detail on it, and I'm interested in how that happened.)
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From what we currently have in Crucible of Legends, Liminals were first created by the Dark Mother to try and address what she views as the Underworld's broken state from where Lethe was damaged by the Neverborn plunging down through it, and to guard the boundaries between life and death in the relatively small way she could manage. She's some kind of vastly powerful primeval spirit who is not any of the major categories, and who was associated with the cycle of reincarnated and is probably older than Creation is. She discovered how to create her own Exalts by studying the souls of all the Dragon-Blooded who died at the end of the Shogunate.

They're weird outcast monster hunters who are neither alive nor dead, who can act as a bridge between Creation and the Underworld at times without belonging to either. They facilitate stories about identity etc. in a particular way I find really interesting, in that they are created when someone tries to bring a dead person back to life and the Dark Mother intervenes, but they are never actually the person who the corpse used to belong to, and are someone new instead.
 
The_Reptile_ said:
I absolutely understand the necessity of changing the Lover's entire deal but I cannot help but feel what they gave her in 3e was just not that interesting.
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Honestly i find it amusing that she's kind of Ayn Rand, except instead of hypocritically obsessing over her imagined idea of self sufficiency she's hypocritically obsessing over her imagined idea of a world without love
 
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HalfTangible said:
Gonna regret asking but... I know generally what was wrong with the Lover and also about the Heron/Lion but what was wrong with the Eye?
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I'm just going to dump this behind a spoiler for reasons of "I'm writing about gross sexism and transphobia here and I want you to know that before you see it":
The 2e Abyssals book has a problem with transphobia and women. I know you said you know what's wrong with the Lover and Heron, but I need to start here for comparison.

There were three women Deathlords and six men; the men at least had some redeeming qualities as characters (not necessarily as people, just useful things as villains or someone to follow) and the women were... the sexy sex woman who will sex you and might fall in love with you to get redeemed (the Lover). The horrible evil witch who's ugly and old and you can tell she's a monster because she does terrible things to children (the Dowager) who had a weirdly bad ability to... be used in games, because she only has one Abyssal who's a preteen kid she'll replace now and then, so notably hard to plug a group of PCs into. Last, the Black Heron, who also has exactly one Abyssal (a crazy maniac) and otherwise mostly will not have Abyssals but she's a damsel in distress you might be able to save!

Given this issue, who would be less accepted by people who would write the girlbosses like this than the cis women characters? Thaaaaat's right, it's the "not entirely cis" characters! There's other characters who get hit by bad transphobic writing than the Eye, which I'm just going to mention and not give details on because this post is unpleasant enough already.

So, the Eye had an ability to shift shape somewhat even in 2e. The text was very clear that the Eye is a guy. It only used masculine pronouns for him. The book talks about him taking a woman's appearance to seduce one of his deathknights and wrote it up in the most "I've never met a trans woman in my life, just heard about them from pulpits" way possible. The Eye is presented as this repulsive, aimless, petty little monster, and "man wants to be a woman" was supposed to be the crowning, emblematic issue that makes him truly worthless.

3e took the interesting parts of this write-up of the Eye (mostly focusing on the artifice and creation of various weapons side of things), snipped off the irredeemable parts, gave them a non-binary identity that makes a lot more sense, and then kept cranking up the mad scientist side until it was hilarious and wonderful. They're not my favorite Deathlord mainly because the others also are very compelling, as opposed to the 2e presentation where I mostly just wanted to ask the book to shut up because it didn't know what it was talking about.

By making the Lion and Eye enbies, we now have a 4 men/2 enby/3 women split in the nine Deathlords, which is minimally modified while being a better gender split. Then all nine of them are just improved.
 
HalfTangible said:
Gonna regret asking but... I know generally what was wrong with the Lover and also about the Heron/Lion but what was wrong with the Eye?
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The Eye's story in 2e revolved completely around their past and the idea of making the First Age just the worst thing ever.

The Eye was a newbie Solar who's entire Circle were complete fucking assholes that hazed them to hell and back again, topping off with them handing them their father's eye as "Hey look, we killed your mortal dad for funsies!"

Then the Eye killed themselves, went to the Underworld and became a Deathlord where like the rest of the Deathlords they did fuck all for an Age and a half until corrupting the Solars. The Eye managed to land all but one of the shards of their former Circle mates and went around selecting Abyssals that were as close of a match as possible to play out their vicarious revenge fantasies. They also faked their double death at the hands of their Abyssals and disguised themselves as a ghost called the Proprietress of the Bloody Sands or something like that to seduce their Abyssals and turn them against one another for kicks.


So yeah, much prefer the current "Bored Arms Deal, Enthusiastic Mad Scientist" angle the Eye has where they'll shove some terrible weapon of dire power into my hands and tell me to go kill some dread behemoth with it and tell them how it preformed.

Me: "Wh-what's this even supposed to do?"

The Eye: "I can't tell you that, it would bias the results!"
 
Nervaqus987 said:
They also faked their double death at the hands of their Abyssals and disguised themselves as a ghost called the Proprietress of the Bloody Sands or something like that to seduce their Abyssals and turn them against one another for kicks.
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It's funnier than that. They disguised themself as a sexy ghost girl called Star of Dirt and Doubt to seduce their deathknights and are just "tricking them" by living in a toxic polycule with all of them under that identity. Help! I've Been Betrayed by the Hero's Party and now my Evil Ghost is Posing as a Slutty Ghost Girl to Seduce Their Hot Goth Reincarnations as Revenge!

The Prioress was a separate persona that they used to reluctantly go do actual Deathlord work elsewhere.
 
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Gazetteer said:
It's funnier than that. They disguised themself as a sexy ghost girl called Star of Dirt and Doubt to seduce their deathknights and are just "tricking them" by living in a toxic polycule with all of them under that identity. Help! I've Been Betrayed by the Hero's Party and now my Evil Ghost is Posing as a Slutty Ghost Girl to Seduce Their Hot Goth Reincarnations as Revenge!

The Prioress was a separate persona that they used to reluctantly go do actual Deathlord work elsewhere.
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Kind of interesting to me is the whole thing with the Star of Dirt and Doubt in the original 1e Abyssals book seemed more like a showcase of their deathknights thinking they successfully revolted against them, and it being kind of a drawn out "You thought you won?" sort of plot. Like, that whole deal and some of how they fought in 1e made me think they were a Night Caste. 2e kind of contextualized it into being their obsession and the kind of mad science stuff along the way.

2e also didn't do itself any favors by just kind of being transphobic in the third-person narrative text of the document too. It stood out a lot to me back then in how just kind of utterly different the character was and it was one of the better instances of "2e isn't just a repeat of 1e lore" out htere, along with other general issues with many characterizations of established characters as well.
 
Blaque said:
2e also didn't do itself any favors by just kind of being transphobic in the third-person narrative text of the document too. It stood out a lot to me back then in how just kind of utterly different the character was and it was one of the better instances of "2e isn't just a repeat of 1e lore" out htere, along with other general issues with many characterizations of established characters as well.
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Oh, yeah, like, the way the whole thing is written is transphobic as fuck. I think it is supposed to be funny, but you get the impression that the joke is supposed to be that it's funny that Eye, who was written about as a man exclusively with he/him pronouns at the time, likes to cross dress and pretend to be a woman in order to deceive people into sex and then kill them. That it then also adds "yeah, the other Deathlords think it's weird and embarrassing that he keeps posing as a woman" on top is just explaining the joke that was already present and making it dumber and more explicit.

Like, I do not feel that the reasons I think this is funny and the reasons the people who wrote it thought it was funny are the same.
 
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The Eye's female cover identity shenanigan (maybe both of them, including the old woman?) was in 1e, where it did not have a lot of text focus and was presented basically as another part of being a cunning supervillain who ran to the mastermind-y. In 2e, that aspect kind of swallowed up most of the Eye's characterization and it became much less "a tool for villainy" and more "the whole point of the villainy," the only thing they're doing with any success, and in a way that was treated as at best frivolous and pointlessly sexual, and more often treated with this othering leer. It is one of the pieces of 2e content that is most clearly just a reaction to reading the 1e content and phoning in a bad Take on the character; there's very little about the 2e Eye that is usable as anything other than a punchline.

I have a somewhat quixotic attachment to parts of 2e Eye anyway -- I liked an ancient revenge ghost who was a hot mess and had weird power dynamics with their deathknights -- but I don't think the author really put any of that there on purpose. The writeup is a total trainwreck, maybe the greatest case in 2e of how to update material badly even if you ignore the really direct transphobia.
 
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... I wasn't around for 1e or 2e (discovered KoC through a friend's Nova expy and didn't get involved in the actual game until after 3e was announced) but from what I can gather "weirdly sexual" seems to describe like 90% of the problems with the (1e/2e) setting >.>
 
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Martial Arts

Crystal Chameleon Style
One Wire Among Many: Be stealthier the higher your anima is!
Light-Treading Technique: Movement rerolls based on Anima
Sudden Radiance Onslaught: Stab harder if they didn't expect you, or you're at bonfire
Crystal Chameleon Form: Reflexively entering when you hit two tiers of anima in one go is cool. Removes stealth penalty from anima (even bonfire) and lets you do all the above stuff better
Shattered Crystal Rebuke: Burn two levels of anima to make a non-Init counterattack that blinds and lets you hide again.
Shadow Among Shadows: When being hit with a decisive, negate damage with an Anima-based roll, and if you negate all, you dodge and can hide
Razor-Edged Prism Assault: Make Anima+1 witherings that can all be unexpected in one Simple! Or two, if your Terrestrial. Sob.
Flashing Fatal Strike: Teleport short and decisive, with added damage if you do all the Crystal Chameleon things
Stepping Beyond Light: Instant, perpetual bonfire (because your anima costs are waived). Also easy hiding and more vision penalties. Truly a capstone.

Ho boy yes, for Exalts who want to raise their anima (Sovereigns) this is extra spicy. For Alchemicals, the best combinations is... War, I think? That's where all the anima stuff goes. The defensive suite does help out a general, though I wonder if the War anima Charms still work when you're stealthed.

Live Wire Style
Whistling Analog Signal: Double decisives! Whips! Also you ignore onslaught penalties by the person you whip.
Lightning Supremacy Reversal: Disarm bonus dice, esp against metal weapons. Bzzzt. Another whip bonus.
Tangled Weaver's Trap: Ranged disarm/grapple with whips. Actually flat out only works with whips.
Live Wire Form: Free whips! Extra zappy init damage because you're electric! More bonus for dual wielding whips! The special activation needs you to disarm or grapple good.
Charged Coil Surge: Autosux on withering savaging, extra if they are silly and wear metal armour. If you crash them, they get zapped for lethal
Crackling Arc of Retribution: Clash reflexively! Better if you dual whip!
Unassailable Lightning Dance: I was going to ask 'why is this not three separate Charms' then I saw the Mastery section. This is a multi-grapple/disarm/withering, unless you're at Mastery in which case you can do two of them.
Conductive Principle of Authority: The capstone lets you upgrade your Form to make artifact weapons, deal more zappy damage and make a lotta attacks.

I feel like this MA wants to be whip only and got the unarmed compatability shoehorned in. I guess LSR with unarmed to let you get into your Form? No particular synergy with anything alchemical, but that's fine, I guess?

Thousand Wounds Gear Style
The Circle Screams: Bonk lower init people, special synergy with gyroscopic chakrams
Gear-Catches-Gear Defense: Parry someone (extra bonus if you use a chakram) and if you succeed, cripple them
Thousand Wounds Gear Form: General goodstuff, but emphasises that one shall bonk low init people. The reflexive activation is to wither someone above you in init to below you.
Arc-Blinding Assault: Your chakram (and very specifically a chakram) parries also blind
Flesh-Rending Gear Technique: Your decisives on lower init deal more damage and has crippling penalties
Linear Flight Principle: Double 9s (8s on lower init) withering that also knocks back and prones. Also double 8s on withering throws, so unarmed has a use here!
Rearing Crane Release: If you crash someone with the previous, they just... float there, until they escape
Floating Target Lock: Reflexive aim! When you cripple, blind or float someone, at least
Hungry Gear-Tooth Attack: If you deal 5+ decisive, the enemy can choose to take the highest crippling injury or suck up another -3 crippling for the scene
Thousand Wounds Persistence: If you miss a decisive, your Chakram just sticks around and go for it a second time. The value on this seems pretty big between Terrestrial, normal and Mastery - with Terrestrial, that counts as your attack, so unless the close range + ignore cover is worth more than 5m towards making a new decisive, the value propostion seems mid. Mastery meanwhile gets to reuse all non-Excellency Charms, and boy does TWG have decisive Charms.
Thousand Wounds Disassembly: Undodgeable triple attacks! Nice capstone, though once again, lower init only.

The lower init thing synergises with Dex offense Charms, so this feels like it's the 'default' Alchemical MA... except for the chakram thing.

The MA section might benefit from talking about how certain core-book styles exist in Autochthonia, not just a sidebar which generally says so but an actual "In Autochthonia, Snake Style is known as the Electric Fang Style, commonly used in xxx, Serpentine Evasion is known as the Electrified Reflex, ..." like that. Since you need the core book to play anyway, I feel like that's helpful for people looking to play a 'vanilla' martial artist Alchemical?
 
I gave "Alchemical Terrestrial" a search on the discord, because I idly remembered some plan to make them Terrestrial in 3e.

Turns out that they were Terrestrial during the Essence playtest. But it didn't stick.

Ryang said:
Crystal Chameleon Style
...
Ho boy yes, for Exalts who want to raise their anima (Sovereigns) this is extra spicy. For Alchemicals, the best combinations is... War, I think? That's where all the anima stuff goes. The defensive suite does help out a general, though I wonder if the War anima Charms still work when you're stealthed.
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Crystal Chameleon was doing the lightshow thing before it was cool; I'm glad that it plays nicely with all the new anima stuff. Once the book is actually out, I should update the embodiment.

Ryang said:
Live Wire Style
...
I feel like this MA wants to be whip only and got the unarmed compatability shoehorned in. I guess LSR with unarmed to let you get into your Form? No particular synergy with anything alchemical, but that's fine, I guess?
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Back in 2e, the style's description emphasized how many mortals were skilled in it. There was a once-international brotherhood of kung-fu cops who fought with it. Alchemicals could learn it too, of course, but it was one of the more mortal-oriented styles.

Probably not much of a thing anymore, given the changes to mortals in 3e. But hey, maybe Autochthonia has some kind of cybernetic solution to that. Would be cool. Autochthonia could use a larger "bestiary", too.
 
Kingfisher said:
Could you just post what was said? A link to a discord channel I'm not in isn't really helpful.
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There was a typo in the Essence manuscript that listed Alchemicals as Terrestrial level in one place. They were referred to as Celestial elsewhere. This was fixed for the final release. More is sometimes made out of this than is necessarily warranted.
 
Kingfisher said:
Could you just post what was said? A link to a discord channel I'm not in isn't really helpful.
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Sure.

Crumplepunch — 21/08/2023, 09:20

Essence uses it that way, with Liminals and Alchemicals being Terrestrial.

endwaar — 21/08/2023, 09:22

Which is weird, because the latter is supposed to be Celestial-level.
But there you go.

Crumplepunch — 21/08/2023, 09:22

Sort of.
think they've been moved solidly up in 3e.
As opposed to their weird halfway place in previous editions.

Crumplepunch — 21/08/2023, 09:23

Yeah, notes in 1e and 2e indicated they were meant to be between DB and Celestial level.
The Charm installation requirement was supposed to be a way to limit them from full Celestial tier.
But for my money they ended up more effective than Lunars.

VagueZ (they/them) — 21/08/2023, 09:23

Essence no longer has Alchemicals being Terrestrial.

Crumplepunch — 21/08/2023, 09:24

Oh really? I haven't had a game since the playtest, I'm likely out of date.

VagueZ (they/them) — 21/08/2023, 09:25

Yeah, I recognized exactly the thought because I had a similar reaction on checking the updated draft. They use Celestial MA modes now, and already were on Celestial sorcery level, so nothing much currently lists them as Terrestrial.
(I checked both my KS manuscript and the latest download to verify my memory here)
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Gazetteer said:
There was a typo in the Essence manuscript that listed Alchemicals as Terrestrial level in one place. They were referred to as Celestial elsewhere. This was fixed for the final release. More is sometimes made out of this than is necessarily warranted.
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I don't think it was just a typo.

Because in the discord logs, it looks like everyone (including you!) was treating it as deliberate. In fact, here's Neall Raemonn Price on the topic:

Neall — 18/06/2021, 15:05

Essence classifies Alchemicals as Terrestrial Exalts, albeit ones who have spikes of great competency.
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Neall — 17/06/2023, 10:23

I thought reaallllll hard about giving Alchemicals the Terrestrial keyword in Essence

MMOVRXYZ — 17/06/2023, 10:24

interesting
😮 but guess with the way it ended up being decided with attribute-based exigents, changed your mind?

Neall — 17/06/2023, 10:25

I think I honestly just forgot to do it, or bring it up to the rest of the team; that's something you want broad support for
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