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General Exalted Thread

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Salty said:
While I think "power" does factor into the equation of the spell's thematics, what really brings me back to this spell is the fact that it's not Total Annihilation. It's pure, relentless force, but it's focused, aimed, an instrument of violence to shape the world at will.

And coming back to the idea of obscuring the name, how about Gaia's Breath Eternal?

It invokes power with the name of the free Primoridal, Breath Eternal is a decently thematic way of describing the effect of the sorcerer continuing to extend this devastating beam as long as more successes are pumped into it, and it's even got the amusing reference!
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GBE? Heh. I'm not sure I like the pinnacle of single target directed sorcerous fuck you being an invocation of a higher power though. I did, I will admit, like the removal of Ligier from TA in ESs rewrite*. It just doesn't seem to fit that even at the peak of your power (and power is indeed violence) you have to lean on one of the gods whose siblings you(r past life) humbled.

*If I were to use Ligier in an Adamant Spell, I'd probably make it curse a city with a green sun and horrible wasting curses like it's Egypt and I'm Moses and all the second sons are now the heirs.
 
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That assumes that those who are of Creation can escape association with Gaia, though. Or even that they would want to.

In any case, it's not a spell meant to invoke Gaia, per se (though you could definitely fluff it that way) as much as it is meant to evoke her. Gaia, the One Free Primordial, unbound and unmatched, simultaneously part of Creation and so free from its bonds that nothing can stand in the way of her explorations. It, much like her, chooses a direction and sets off in it, with no regard for what might stand in its way.

Also, it sure as hell didn't read like a single-target spell as much as a "fuck everything in this particular Direction" spell.
 
Hmm.

Hide-Hardening Practice and Life of the Aurochs only work on one familar each per purchase right? (Ie if you have two or three familiars, each needs its own purchases of the charm)
 
Legion1771 said:
Is there an equivalent to the stats? Character A with X strength can lift Y kilograms? Or something to that tune?
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In second edition or in the third one?

Anyway, in the second there is a feat of strenght table with all the weights someone can lift(Up to a dicepool of 20), meanwhile the third edition has a table with some examples of things to lift, a strength minimum to do the feat of strenght and a difficulty.
 
The Nomad said:
There are ballpark examples for lifting and breaking stuff. Also examples of minimum strength requirements.
Strangely it seems 3rd edition has no armor/hp for inanimate objects unless I missed it.
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Yeah. It's pretty much assumed that a PC can break through most minor obstacles with just a strength of 3, and with auto-successes for certain weapon types. No need to roll attacks against stuff like doors, they're not exactly worthy enemies.

EDIT: Honestly it was the weirdest D&Dism to give inanimate objects stats to see how quickly they could be broken down in 2E.
 
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Deations said:
Yeah. It's pretty much assumed that a PC can break through most minor obstacles with just a strength of 3, and with auto-successes for certain weapon types. No need to roll attacks against stuff like doors, they're not exactly worthy enemies.

EDIT: Honestly it was the weirdest D&Dism to give inanimate objects stats to see how quickly they could be broken down in 2E.
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Except for Manses. I liked the fact that there were rules for how to damage the magic building to stop its power channeling and make it blow up. But yes, I wouldn't have given stats to any non magical object. You'd need superhuman strength to break through a stone wall, obviously, but there's no need to give it health levels or soak.
 
Aaron Peori said:
Here is the trick to making cool names and things in Exalted.

Start with something cliche, or ridiculous or lame and then disguise it. As my reaction upthread shows, I didn't realize for years that Death of Obsidian Butterflies was literally a spell for glass cannon wizards, because the spell was disguised.

Infallible Messenger was an IM (ie, Instant Message, you know that thing we used to do before twitter and skype and texting).

Invulnerable Skin of Bronze was "Doc Savage, the spell!"

Heck, look at the old standby Birth Of Sanity's Sorrow.

You take an effect that, if you were to explain it in clear terms to the audience they would look at and raise eyebrows or roll eyes or dismiss out of hand and then you obfuscate it, by using flowery words like obfuscate.

This does two things; first it gets the effect and/or setting element past that initial reflexive hipster genre-aware part of your brain that wants to roll your eyes and call it all silly. Second, it allows the player to feel clever when they realize that you flowery name is actually just an elaborate pun or disguise for a fairly common effect. This second bit also allows you to expand the lore in a new way because you say to the players "This is how you do stuff that would seem silly in this game." Like, if I want to have robot armies in my game? Brass Legionaires!

Death Ray does none of that. It's just... a ray... of death. It evokes that part of your brain that thinks of silly Flash Gordon serials and wants to raise your nose at it. It doesn't have anything deeper to it to reward a player who thinks of it any deeper either. It is, literally, exactly what it says it is. It doesn't add anything to the setting.
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I always thought that "Spear of Saturn" was a rather elegant name for the equivalent of a "Death Ray" spell. It seems to have some interesting mythic implications that could serve as excellent fodder for flavor text regarding's it origins and method of casting.
 
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Salty said:
And coming back to the idea of obscuring the name, how about Gaia's Breath Eternal?
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Sorcery can be used by Malfeas denizens, too. So no.

And for me, the word "Death Ray" is associated with steam-lighting-arcane beams from Magicka. They basically killed anything in the direction you shoot them really really fast, but you turn really, really slowly while firing it.

MJ12 Commando said:
Obviously it should have been called Bursting Fiery Geyser.
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Oh! How about, errr... Shining Finger of Death?
 
Sucal said:
Hmm.

Hide-Hardening Practice and Life of the Aurochs only work on one familar each per purchase right? (Ie if you have two or three familiars, each needs its own purchases of the charm)
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Going by the last line of the charms, yes.

Depending on your ST, you may be able to get an XP discount on multiple purchases for multiple familiars.
 
Then again, if we are talking about a mundane utility familiar - anything that is not meant to be a front-line combatant, such as lots of fliers - you don't really need to about their survival that much.
First of all, they won't be targeted that much.
And second, if they die any XP-investment gets re-funded anyway, so you don't really loose anything but a bit of downtime.

Sure, that doesn't work if you want to be all lovely-dovely with your familiar, but then again who says Solars have to be?
 
Question: Seeing as apparently 3E, while still better than 2E, is still quite borky mechanics-wise and/or simply not directed at the simulationist crowd; How possible is it, instead of arduously houseruling everything to taste, to just cut out everything people who have complained about the above propblems don't like (that is, most of the mechanics) from the reasons that people like the game (the fluff, the worlds, the creatures, the characters, the thematics, etc.), and transposing the setting onto other mechanics?

DnD was discussed, and Trawling The Internet Style has yielded a bit of information about ports to a system I've been interested in for a while: GURPS. Given that the design philosophy of Gurps is 'can do everything, while still making sense and being balanced' this should make it on paper very, perhaps uniquely, suited to modeling the enormous diversity of Creation and Co.
Now the question is of course, is that actually true? If not/also, what other systems could be used?

For reference, the results of my Google-Fu are:
http://www.bazzalisk.org/GURPS Exalted/GURPS Exalted.pdf; A seemingly decent basic port from Exalted to Gurps, most noteworthyly including a, to the untrained eye, fairly good social combat system; Or at least, seems better and more in-depth than the default Exalted 2e one.
http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=77717; Another take on this, that takes a slightly different approach in that it converts charms into abilities and specialties that can be taken in levels and rolled to determine how big an effect their use produces. Doesn't contain much but Charms though.
 
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Gnarker said:
Given that the design philosophy of Gurps is 'can do everything, while still making sense and being balanced' this should make it on paper very, perhaps uniquely, suited to modeling the enormous diversity of Creation and Co.
Now the question is of course, is that actually true? If not/also, what other systems could be used?
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GURPS would do amazingly well at modeling anything without perfects/auto-success. GURPS handles absolute effects very poorly, and such effects are very expensive. Adding Cosmic: No Roll, Cosmic: No Active Defense and Cosmic: No Passive Defense (aka auto-hit unblockable and undodgeable) multiplies the cost of a base ability by 8.

I could possibly bodge together a charm system using advantages, skillvantages, and imbuements but that would be far more time than I have right now.

So really, as long as you're playing a game where Terrestrials and experienced 1st circles are the upper cap for the PCs, you should be good. (Though expect stuff to be in the 300-500 point range).
 
Note that Perfects are mostly not Perfect anymore in 3E.

Adamant Skin Technique "merely" allows you to apply your full non-charm-enhanced (except for one charm that can only be used while unarmored) Soak to a decisive attack (where soak does usually not apply at all).
In other words, it can be overwhelmed by sufficiently strong attacks, which basically anyone can get by just building a bit more Initiative.
It also costs 8m, so it costs more motes than you regenerate.

Heavenly Guardian Defense allows you to reduce successes against damage rolls by 1 for each point of Initiative you spend. So its very effective, but you can only use it while you have enough Initiative - if your enemy does more Withering attacks first, this charm won't work.

Seven Shadow Evasion DOES perfectly avoid one attack, but can only be used once per scene. This can be reset by the Dawn Anima and by dodging three decisive attacks while using Reed in the Wind (which is quite difficult).

All three are very good defensive charms, and getting one of them is definitely wise.
Oh and yes, they are all still perfect against uncountable scenery damage, so you can dodge that exploding volcano, stand in the center of an exploding manse or parry that falling meteor. But against actual attacks, its no longer "perfectly save until you run out of motes".
 
Well. I never quite liked the Perfect Effects anyway, so that actually works out rather nicely.

I mean, yes, attempt to parry the tidal wave or the flensing sandstorm, absolutely. But at the very least you can roll that shit, instead of simply ignoring any and all environmental penalties and the like; That's what high skill and excellencies are for. And presumably, parrying a comet or a firestorm or an entire hail of arrows all at once or what-have-you should incur some steep penalties of it's own.
 
Well they only work against "uncountable" damage - exploding Manses, getting buried under a landslide
Against normal environmental damage, that requires other charms. And since uncountable damage is by definition fatal if not avoided, rolling is kinda pointless there.
 
Serafina said:
Note that Perfects are mostly not Perfect anymore in 3E.

Adamant Skin Technique "merely" allows you to apply your full non-charm-enhanced (except for one charm that can only be used while unarmored) Soak to a decisive attack (where soak does usually not apply at all).
In other words, it can be overwhelmed by sufficiently strong attacks, which basically anyone can get by just building a bit more Initiative.
It also costs 8m, so it costs more motes than you regenerate.

*snip*
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AST is actually quite a bit better than you're implying here. For decisive attacks ~15 dice is what you're normally looking at to have a good chance of gibbing your average combatant, with fewer dice attacks being mostly to inflict wound penalties. Now, consider also that it's fairly trivial to get more than 15 soak if you're investing in Resistance and you're looking at someone needing at least 30 initiative in order to kill you. 30 initiative is what's more commonly known as holy shit that's a ton of initiative. With Ox-Bodies in the mix too, you can probably get up to a ~50 initiative kill threshold.

Also, I'm fairly sure that even if you fully soak an attack with this Charm, the attacker still gets reset to base initiative for landing a decisive strike.
 
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