General Exalted Thread

[Deations]

Uh, I hate to be mean or burst bubbles or whatever, but is there any actual clause in the Charm that says you can't fire it from, say, a shadowland? Or a manse Outside Fate? Or, for that matter, Malfeas? Or the Wyld? Or anywhere else outside of the area the Loom of Fate can see?

Because if not, I can just... sit there and fire it repeatedly without the Sidereals ever being able to find me. They can get all the portents of doom they want, but Sidereals are overworked, there's only so much that Dragonblooded can do to stop a meteor blowing up a city or a behemoth capable of crashing through several cities in a row, and I have effectively no cost for this bar cooldown and can do it unpredictably whenever Heaven is stretched thin dealing with some other disaster.

And if the army of ghosts or the behemoth don't stop rampaging afterwards, then... what do I care? I mean, if the Charm forced me to actually be in the area I might be concerned, but if I'm sitting in my manse Outside Fate on the other side of Creation and firing it at enemy territory, then every day the disasters keep rampaging is just a bonus.

There are plenty of other ways I can bone a mortal or Dragonblooded kingdom, sure, but most of them at least require me to be there and thus be vulnerable to getting my face stabbed in. This one doesn't, so I'm laughing.

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The impression I get from what the Devs are writing is that being Outside of Fate isn't a death knell for Sidereals anymore:

(It would be awesome if the Sidereal Exaltation was designed to interface with any Fate-analogue they happen to be within -- Creation's Loom, the Design of Autocthon, the Calendar of Setesh or the Caul's pseudoLoom. The Caul would thus block divination and manipulation from afar but Sidereal agents on the ground would have access to their full toolkit, as well as having it in Autocthonia and the Underworld. Perhaps Sidereals within the Caul would have access to the Greater Astrology sealed off by the Maidens, since the Lunars might not know how to replicate the seals on the Loom...) (ysadrel)
This post thrills me.
I haven't answered anyone's "outside fate" questions yet, but my intention is that Sidereals have full jurisdiction anywhere they go. (John Mørke)

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I mean, I don't know for sure how mechanics like these will interact with Sidereals, but they certainly are able to fuck with the Prediction Magic involved in Prophet of the 17 Cycles in the charm description.

The Charm doesn't say there's any warning time at all.

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It doesn't say if there is or there isn't, which I guess is the biggest issue when it comes to how you interpret the charm. My view is that a GM can decide on which approach works best for them, given how much of 3E is being deliberately left up to ST interpretation or adjudication.

...I've been aware of what you've been arguing for all this time. It's irrelevant because it's utterly orthogonal to the point that I've been arguing-that it can cause massive world-changing effects, without very charitable reading probably requires a lot more than what your average Godbloods or even Dragonbloods can muster to prevent, and people really need to think about whether or not giving starting characters the ability to nuke important cities from literally the word go.

So "some places have enough Celestials with area-effect perfects so that you can't nuke them." is not actually a rebuttal to "a lot of important places are probably not protected sufficiently to do so."

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My argument is only that prevention is possible, not always guaranteed. Yes, it most likely could wipe out a nation without sufficient supernatural defenses, and I mentioned that several times.

My bone to pick over this has always been over the idea that because it doesn't say flat out that the doom can be averted, that it logically means that the doom cannot ever be averted.

 

[Carrnage]

It works from everywhere, and it can hit everywhere. There's no limitations whatsoever outside of targeting a foe.

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... please tell me i can't snipe everyone from fetich souls, to pattern spiders with a single charm, i don't want this interpretation to be plausible and valid, i want so much to not stumble into a session where a group of inexperienced newbies accidentallyied creation.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

My bone to pick over this has always been over the idea that because it doesn't say flat out that the doom can be averted, that it logically means that the doom cannot ever be averted.

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I spent a sentence basically once every other post pointing out that the contention is that you can interpret the charm as inevitable awful keening doom. Nobody has ever said 'this doom cannot ever be averted under any reading.'

 

[Hazard]

otherwise you get silly stuff like nuking Chiaroscuro while you're sitting safely in Malfeas listening to the music of the angyalkae, which is just... bad.

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Well, yes, that is something that will occur in play and the RAW say nothing about that not being possible...


Actually, even better is that the Charm forces a prophecy. Which means that yes, it's possible to overturn it if you've got some lead time. Or you can exploit this by declaring things like 'when the undead sally forth from Thorns and enter the forests a great fire will rage in the woods and consume them.' A clever Solar can create a prophesy minefield with this Charm, and the only constraint is that it's a Charm whose use is limited to once per season.

... please tell me i can't snipe everyone from fetich souls, to pattern spiders with a single charm, i don't want this interpretation to be plausible and valid, i want so much to not stumble into a session where a group of inexperienced newbies accidentallyied creation.

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It's not that powerful, but it's possible to turn 'a well supplied army of mortal ass kickers lead by Dragonblooded' into 'a ragged band of Dragonblooded, most wounded, without any support.'

 

[Orm Embar]

Well, yes, that is something that will occur in play and the RAW say nothing about that not being possible...

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Hence the need for applying common sense when utilizing it.

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

...I've been aware of what you've been arguing for all this time. It's irrelevant because it's utterly orthogonal to the point that I've been arguing-

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Given that he's pretty clearly delivberately and willfully refusing to engage with other people's actual arguments and merely repeating his thing which other people have already acknowledged and responded to pages ago...

isn't it about time we stopping giving him attention and moved on to actually relevant things?

Like say, that requisitions system people were talking about about twenty pages ago - i thought that was interesting. how would you implement it in 2.5e?

 

[Hazard]

Hence the need for applying common sense when utilizing it.

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I've noted before that I'm very certain there will be people who will not use common sense. Either because they lack common sense (which is common) or because they don't care. That's why IMO it's a badly thought out Charm in need of a rewrite.

 

[Aleph]

This is just one of those times you have to apply common sense, otherwise you get silly stuff like nuking Chiaroscuro while you're sitting safely in Malfeas listening to the music of the angyalkae, which is just... bad. It gives the players too much freedom of action. Heaven's Viziers should be able to work to stave off the coming doom while their Dragon-Blooded puppets respected allies kick down the door of the manse the Solar in question is hiding in. The former scenario is just asinine, the latter is compelling.

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That's basically why people have for several pages been saying that the Charm is poorly written, and should have included the sentence or two that it would have taken to specify that the latter option is the correct one, so that newbie players don't assume it's the former. Or just required you to be in the place, making yourself obvious by prophesising doom to everyone.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Given that he's pretty clearly delivberately and willfully refusing to engage with other people's actual arguments and merely repeating his thing which other people have already acknowledged and responded to pages ago...

isn't it about time we stopping giving him attention and moved on to actually relevant things?

Like say, that requisitions system people were talking about about twenty pages ago - i thought that was interesting. how would you implement it in 2.5e?

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Requisitioning artifacts?

You have 1 to 5 dots of Requisitions. You can turn them in for, say, 2 dots of mass produced, non-unique artifacts per dot. There, Alchemical Requisitions.

Also, if I was running an Alchemicals-only game, I would not be averse to the idea that the players could exchange charms or that you only buy Charm slots (at 10/12 XP each) which you can fill with any Charms you meet the prereqs for, because it makes it easier to play super multirole hot-swap robot sentai teams.

 

[Carrnage]

Hence the need for applying common sense when utilizing it.

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Common sense is incredibly vague, the problem isn't people deliberately stretching the RAW to get horrible interpretations, it when those interpretations are plausible enough complete newbies could use that interpretation accidentally.

 

[Deations]

Hence the need for applying common sense when utilizing it.

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Right but some people might not do that and furthermore common sense is apparently Rule 0 Fallacy, or at least something akin to it.

 

[MJ12 Commando]

Common sense is incredibly vague, the problem isn't people deliberately stretching the RAW to get horrible interpretations, it when those interpretations are plausible enough complete newbies could use that interpretation accidentally.

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This isn't exactly the D&D 3.5 "if you drown you never stop drowning and can never actually die" interpretation of the drowning rules we're talking about here. This charm is clearly a WMD, behaves like a WMD, and is intended to give the Solar a WMD effect. It's not impossible, difficult, or unreasonable to imagine it as a magical nuclear weapon with all the difficulties that implies.

 

[Orm Embar]

I've noted before that I'm very certain there will be people who will not use common sense. Either because they lack common sense (which is common) or because they don't care. That's why IMO it's a badly thought out Charm in need of a rewrite.

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Fair enough. I prefer to think of how that Charm (which is itself an abstraction of a specific way in which some Solars manipulate their native Essence) would work in the context of Creation, and then go from there. Every system is bound to have its loopholes; in this case they're obvious ones, but if you go looking for exploits, you're almost invariably going to find them. Sure, bad players can and will pounce on these loopholes to twist the story and setting in ways they weren't meant to go, but... why play with the kind of people who'd do that at all?

 

[Deations]

Given that he's pretty clearly delivberately and willfully refusing to engage with other people's actual arguments and merely repeating his thing which other people have already acknowledged and responded to pages ago...

isn't it about time we stopping giving him attention and moved on to actually relevant things?

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Chloe, I'm sorry if I came off like that, but the impression I was always getting from people when arguing over this charm was less 'this charm is badly worded and should be modified to prevent a reading the Devs weren't going for' and more 'you have no valid basis to make this reading, whatsoever'

Followed by me trying to explain why I felt like my reading had sufficient justification, even if it wasn't the only possible reading a person could make.

 

[SerGregness]

Chloe, I'm sorry if I came off like that, but the impression I was always getting from people when arguing over this charm was less 'this charm is badly worded and should be modified to prevent a reading the Devs weren't going for' and more 'you have no valid basis to make this reading, whatsoever'

Followed by me trying to explain why I felt like my reading had sufficient justification, even if it wasn't the only possible reading a person could make.

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Except that very explicitly wasn't what most people were arguing.

 

[Shyft]

Chloe, I'm sorry if I came off like that, but the impression I was always getting from people when arguing over this charm was less 'this charm is badly worded and should be modified to prevent a reading the Devs weren't going for' and more 'you have no valid basis to make this reading, whatsoever'

Followed by me trying to explain why I felt like my reading had sufficient justification, even if it wasn't the only possible reading a person could make.

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Okay, see, the problem here, is that multiple possible readings is evidence of bad design when it comes to a charm with this kind of scope. That is it, there is no exception to this. One possible good reading does not remove any possible bad readings. That you HAVE a good reading is fine! It's still a badly designed charm.

 

[Hazard]

Fair enough. I prefer to think of how that Charm (which is itself an abstraction of a specific way in which some Solars manipulate their native Essence) would work in the context of Creation, and then go from there. Every system is bound to have its loopholes; in this case they're obvious ones, but if you go looking for exploits, you're almost invariably going to find them. Sure, bad players can and will pounce on these loopholes to twist the story and setting in ways they weren't meant to go, but... why play with the kind of people who'd do that at all?

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Ignorance of their gaming habits? Lack of opportunity to play with anyone else?

God King's Shrike is not, conceptually speaking, a terrible Charm. It's actually an amazing and evocative Charm. The problem with it is that its balance is absurd, limited in two ways; you need to hit a 'foe' and you can only use it once a season. Everything else can and will change a campaign's course when used.

The first issue is that the damage and damage scale allow you to fairly easily erase mortals and low level supernaturals as potential threats, including starting PCs that lack a suite of Charms that allow them to handle Environmental Damage effects. That's not as great a problem with getting hit with a meteor (oh look, an excellent reason to say 'this is uncountable damage, perfect or die'), but getting hit with a sandstorm that will strip the flesh from your bones and then grind those bones to dust or having pyroclastic flows engulf your character and make him explode from the sudden heat boiling his blood in his veins while he chokes on the poisonous fumes are both very different challenges, as is 'there's a tornado,' 'ahead of you is a tidal wave. Behind you is a cliff face,' and many other situations that can be reasonably called 'incoming disaster.'

And you still lose those mortals, which can be extremely inconvenient to any ongoing story involving them.


The second issue is that there's nothing preventing a Solar who knows this Charm from hiding in some unassailable, impossible to locate fortress and just keep firing off the Charm at whatever. His presence is not required, and his 'research' needs not be research, he can just say 'I think about how it'd suck to be hit with a disaster over there' and the Charm will still kick in.


The third issue is that, as I noted, it's a prophecy Charm. Which means that while yes, you can say 'it'll hit in 10 minutes,' one can also set up the circumstances in which the Charm finally delivers its promised doom in excruciating detail and then leave it hanging until it gets triggered.


The fourth issue is that it's a prophecy Charm. Why isn't this in the Sidereal Charmset?

 

[Anasurimbor]

Uh, I hate to be mean or burst bubbles or whatever, but is there any actual clause in the Charm that says you can't fire it from, say, a shadowland? Or a manse Outside Fate? Or, for that matter, Malfeas? Or the Wyld? Or anywhere else outside of the area the Loom of Fate can see?

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I would argue that you're going to need a truly comprehensive and up to date library, but there is nothing strictly preventing this as written.

Because if not, I can just... sit there and fire it repeatedly without the Sidereals ever being able to find me.

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No. It is a common myth that Sidereals have trouble finding things outside fate, but this is simply not true. Not in 2E, and presumably not in 3E either.

The Sidereal Awareness charm Wise Choice makes finding absolutely anything, anywhere relatively trivial. It will probably require multiple uses to pinpoint the exact location, but using a divide and conquer algorithm, not that many. It is completely unaffected by beings and locations outside Fate. It has some weaknesses against truly unknown unknowns, but much less so than it was probably intended to.

If that wasn't enough, Wise Choice can also provide the Pharoh's magicians with up to a month of advance warning before Solar Moses calls down something truly dangerous.

 

[Nervaqus987]

Okay. First of all, I've got no dog in this fight.

Second;

The second issue is that there's nothing preventing a Solar who knows this Charm from hiding in some unassailable, impossible to locate fortress and just keep firing off the Charm at whatever. His presence is not required, and his 'research' needs not be research, he can just say 'I think about how it'd suck to be hit with a disaster over there' and the Charm will still kick in.

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No....The Charm explicitly states what kind of research is needed:

Sage-emperors returned from their long slumber, the Solars' great beards have shattered their
stone tables. In their great and terrible throes, they may call upon the forces of doom in order to
save their world. The Solar must spend a full week contemplating and researching a region's
history, climate, geography, etc. before using this Charm. Casting her gaze toward a foe, the
Solar draws deep from the well of her experience, her knowledge of this life connecting to her
knowledge of lives before. Through this Charm she reaches realization of a certain calamity that
must happen, and her consciousness is recognized, in turn, by the universe.

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The third issue is that, as I noted, it's a prophecy Charm. Which means that while yes, you can say 'it'll hit in 10 minutes,' one can also set up the circumstances in which the Charm finally delivers its promised doom in excruciating detail and then leave it hanging until it gets triggered.


The fourth issue is that it's a prophecy Charm. Why isn't this in the Sidereal Charmset?

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Regarding the "prophecy" bit.

Sage-emperors returned from their long slumber, the Solars' great beards have shattered their
stone tables. In their great and terrible throes, they may call upon the forces of doom in order to
save their world. The Solar must spend a full week contemplating and researching a region's
history, climate, geography, etc. before using this Charm. Casting her gaze toward a foe, the
Solar draws deep from the well of her experience, her knowledge of this life connecting to her
knowledge of lives before. Through this Charm she reaches realization of a certain calamity that
must happen, and her consciousness is recognized, in turn, by the universe.

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It's not so much "foretelling" what will happen as it is telling the universe "This is will happen, m'kay?"


Now personally, I'd just move this Charm over into Sorcery and call it a day.

Can we call it a day? Because this discussion is starting to make my eyes bleed.

 

[Roadie]

Unrelated to God-King's Shrike talk, wow, I just realized the reroll mechanic is terrible. To actually use it, you need to keep track of your dice pool and your number of successes so far separately (or, if you're using Unbroken Image Focus, two separate numbers of successes). You can't just add up your dice at the end, because there are Charms that reroll specific numbers, including successes, and you can't just add more dice to the pool, because there are Charms that depend on having specific numbers or sets of numbers in your (or your enemy's) results pool.

 

[Fallen One]

I am currently creating a character for third edition. It's a Twilight crafter, and I wanted an artifact 4 or 5 to aid him in that aspect, like the singing staff from 2e. We'll be using the craft abilities of 2e for mundane charms to avoid an excessive xp sink. In that regard, he has craft Fire 5 and craft Earth 2.

I was thinking in a blacksmith hammer that is just a regular hammer in combat, but gives advantages in crafting anything related to metal. Problem is, I don't want it to just be a dice-adder. Maybe giving it the capability of hardening the materials it touches, or imbuing the items created with it with minor magic?

 

[Imrix]

Hence the need for applying common sense when utilizing it.

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Common sense is not common. It's rather badly misnamed like that.

 

[Hazard]

No....The Charm explicitly states what kind of research is needed:

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I exaggerate there, but generally speaking the research needs not be thorough, as the difference can be made up with what's basically sheer wishful thinking.

It's not so much "foretelling" what will happen as it is telling the universe "This is will happen, m'kay?"

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It's foretelling in the same way that telling a great king who's going to make war upon another and seeks a prediction about how it'll go 'someone is going to lose.'

Now personally, I'd just move this Charm over into Sorcery and call it a day.

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It's certainly a better position than in the Solar Charmset.

 

[azoicennead]

So, I just realized something.
There Is No Wind nullifies all penalties to an Archery attack but wound and multiple action penalties.
Called Shots, as written on page 158, just cause an external penalty.
Who needs Accuracy Without Distance, you can pull any trick shot with just 3m. Also, ranged disarms. No -4 external penalty, just a regular attack roll.
(Now if only there were more examples of called shots to use...)

Noticed this because I want to write some Solar Melee charms for my character, and figured a disarming charm could be a good start. I'm also considering a Heaven Thunder Hammer-esque effect (though without the follow-up effects), a charm that lets you make a mundane weapon act like orichalcum (I'm thinking 1-2m committed for the scene), and a Defend Other-based Overdrive.

 

[ryuan]

So, they don't have excellecies anymore in 3e?