Yeah, I know. It's one-half of the reason I'm doing HWHiT and not one of the others. But thanks!
General Exalted Thread
Yeah, I know. It's one-half of the reason I'm doing HWHiT and not one of the others. But thanks!
What does HWHiT stand for?
azoicennead
Overly-Affectionate Zombie Squad
- Pronouns
- He/They
He Who Holds in Thrall.
He Who Holds in Thrall.
Although I just noticed that it sounds suspiciously like Half-Wit.
Considering that his main servants is abrevated as a middle eastern food demanding nicknames should not be something new to him.
There was a Second Edition Lunar Charm that let them appear to be differently-cultured to different people.
He could seem Dynastic to everyone, OR choose to seem Dynastic to a Dynast, Marukhani to a Marukhan, Delzhani to a Delzhan...
Hello all!
So, an old roommate and I have been looking at the leak and have run into what seems like an overly effective Craft build; I'd appreciate another set of eyes on it to see if I'm missing anything.
It starts with Supernal Craft -
- okay, but it's not what you think. This isn't an Exegesis of the Distilled Form build; that's been argued enough. This is a little bit different, and maybe a little bit less cheesy - but the punchline is "A 5-dot to N/A artifact every week."
So. The build:
So. You're Essence 3, and still pretty early in, at that. You have at least as much XP as your friends, and likely more. You have a quantity of free Evocations that might be termed "oodles." Your whole circle can be outfitted with whatever Artifact 5 gear they want in a handful of sessions. At no point have you been a useless or uncontributing character; of the 36 Charms you've received so far, you're committed on 25 of them - which is a lot, sure, but leaves you 11 to play around with, plus almost all your BP, plus all your Solar XP, plus at least 3ish free Evocations (with ~3-4 more to follow once a season). At no point has your behavior been particularly constrained; in fact, you've spent a lot less time crafting than might otherwise be assumed for a crafter character. You know a lot, and you can Wyld-Shape basically anything, in addition to whatever your secondary competencies are. You may be slurping down excess XP from training people, or from making N/A artifacts, or both, but either way that's a footnote, not the point.
The point is: you can make a new 5-dot to N/A artifact every week.
Does this seem peculiar? Working as intended? What?
So, an old roommate and I have been looking at the leak and have run into what seems like an overly effective Craft build; I'd appreciate another set of eyes on it to see if I'm missing anything.
It starts with Supernal Craft -
- okay, but it's not what you think. This isn't an Exegesis of the Distilled Form build; that's been argued enough. This is a little bit different, and maybe a little bit less cheesy - but the punchline is "A 5-dot to N/A artifact every week."
So. The build:
You're a Twilight with Supernal Craft and Lore as a Caste Ability. At chargen, you grab the following Charms:
Lore:
Wyld-Dispelling Prana (E1, purge the Wyld from an object)
Chaos-Repelling Prana (E1, make an area around you Wyld-safe)
Harmonious Academic Method (E1, know lots about lots)
Supernal Craft:
Arete-Shifting Prana (E1, reassign Craft dots)
Sublime Transference (E2, change sxp to gxp or wxp)
Craftsman Needs No Tools (E1, fast crafting)
Tireless Workhorse Method (E1, extra major slots)
That's 7 of your 15 Charms. Do whatever you want to with the other 8 and your bonus points; Int 5, Craft 5, and Lore 5 are probably good ideas, but heck, you're a Twilight - you want those anyway. Grab, say, Terrestrial Circle Sorcery (why not?), a Social Charm (+ Excellency), an Investigation Charm (+ Excellency), and four combat Charms. Now you're a second-tier combatant, who can participate socially, help solve mysteries, do countermagic, make workings, and perform some really useful sorcerous task with control spell benefits. Also, you know a lot, and you can whip up any basic things the party might need - maybe even some dinky artifacts. This feels like a pretty inoffensive starting character, unless Supernal Craft is just axiomaticaly offensive.
Start making mundane stuff - knives, let's say. You're rolling gratuitously many successes, so you can sell your really excellent knives and net 3 sxp a pop. With CNNT, you can trivially churn out a handful of knives before bed every night - more, if you don't mind using up a chunk of your mote pool. (If you have tools, this won't flare your anima, so it's safe-ish.) Craft some artifacts with the sxp, if you like! Everybody likes artifacts. (Alternatively: put some of those extra starting Charms into First Knowledge's Grace + Flowing Mind Prana, convert the sxp to wxp, and start training your friends, recouping real XP for the privilege.)
Again, via CNNT, this takes basically no in-game time and almost no real time, so you're not bogging down the session or anything - it's pretty inoffensive behavior. It also doesn't require any "Well, it's been six months of downtime, so I have a million sxp" shenanigans - just work the days that your game actually plays.
Time passes; 48 XP later, you're most of the way to E2. Along the way, you buy:
Supernal Craft:
Efficient Craftsman Technique (E1, cheaper major slots)
Ages-Echoing Wisdom (E2, free gxp)
Dragon Soul Emergence (E2, free superior slot)
Copper Spider Concentration (E3, cheaper superior slots)
Clay and Breath Practice (E3, extra sxp)
Spirit Gathering Industry (E3, cheaper superior projects)
Keep making stuff - but now, of course, it's better stuff! Hopefully it's netting you lots of gxp. Alternatively, keep making knives and stockpile - your call. Again, you're not crippled during this time; stockpiling sxp is a thing you do for five minutes a session, in addition to being an awesome crafter and a decent fighter and a sorceror and whatever. Also, you've been grabbing Solar XP, so you can raise your Abilities, or buy Martial Arts/Evocations/Spells, or whatever you want to do. You're not a one-trick pony!
Time passes. You're about to hit E3, and you're approaching a total of 125 XP. That's enough for nine more Charms + change; spend six of them on:
Lore:
Bottomless Wellspring Approach (E2, know more stuff)
Lore-Inducing Concentration (E2, know even more stuff)
Truth-Rendering Gase (E2, analyze the world)
Supernal Craft:
Unwinding Gyre Meditation (E4, trade gxp rewards for successes)
Exegesis of the Distilled Form (E5, free XP someday)
Spirit-Stoking Elevation (E5, spend wxp on Lore Charms)
Do whatever you like with the rest of the XP. Round out your competencies some; make yourself more useful in whatever your party is doing. Reach Essence 3. Keep making knives.
You've just hit Essence 3! You need a couple more pieces:
Lore:
Wyld-Shaping Technique (E3, ... shape the Wyld)
Wyld-Called Weapon (E3, craft weapons)
Wyld-Forging Focus (E3, skip a WST roll)
Wyld Cauldron Mastery (E3, bonus successes to WST)
Stop. You're sitting on a stockpile of sxp now - or if you aren't, you're only a handful of in-game days from having hundreds. Thanks to Sublime Transference, that means you're also only a few days from dozens of wxp. Thanks to Spirit-Stoking Elevation, you can spend that wxp on Wyld-Shaping Technique and Wyld-Called Weapon.
Make yourself a 5-dot artifact. This takes five rolls, at what's functionally a flat difficulty 4, thanks to Wyld-Forging Focus and Wyld Cauldron Mastery. You have the motes for this; heck, with a little more investment you could skip to the N/A artifacts. Pay for it entirely out of wxp you've earned in the last four in-game days (or that stockpile you've been casually amassing).
Do the same thing four days later.
Do the same thing four days later.
Repeat until you can use Volcano Cutters as butterknives.
But wait! What good does it do you to have a bunch of Volcano Cutters, if you have no XP to spend on them?
Well, you're two Lore Charms away (Sacred Relic Understanding, Wake the Sleeper) from being able to get ~3-4 free Evocations on one artifact per story. You're also four Craft Charms away (Crack-Mending Technique, Design Beyond Limit, Hero-Forging God Weapon, Soul-Forge Tempering) from being able to activate another 1 or (likely) 2 Evocations on every artifact, though it's a little bit vague whether Spirit-Stoking Elevation will help with that.
But wait, there's more! You can also trade your sxp for real XP, by training your allies (and can have been doing so from the beginning), so you're likely a fair bit ahead of them. You are also borderline on qualifying for Exegesis of the Distilled Form - not as your main goal, but just as a lovely 20 XP/story cherry on top.
Lore:
Wyld-Dispelling Prana (E1, purge the Wyld from an object)
Chaos-Repelling Prana (E1, make an area around you Wyld-safe)
Harmonious Academic Method (E1, know lots about lots)
Supernal Craft:
Arete-Shifting Prana (E1, reassign Craft dots)
Sublime Transference (E2, change sxp to gxp or wxp)
Craftsman Needs No Tools (E1, fast crafting)
Tireless Workhorse Method (E1, extra major slots)
That's 7 of your 15 Charms. Do whatever you want to with the other 8 and your bonus points; Int 5, Craft 5, and Lore 5 are probably good ideas, but heck, you're a Twilight - you want those anyway. Grab, say, Terrestrial Circle Sorcery (why not?), a Social Charm (+ Excellency), an Investigation Charm (+ Excellency), and four combat Charms. Now you're a second-tier combatant, who can participate socially, help solve mysteries, do countermagic, make workings, and perform some really useful sorcerous task with control spell benefits. Also, you know a lot, and you can whip up any basic things the party might need - maybe even some dinky artifacts. This feels like a pretty inoffensive starting character, unless Supernal Craft is just axiomaticaly offensive.
Start making mundane stuff - knives, let's say. You're rolling gratuitously many successes, so you can sell your really excellent knives and net 3 sxp a pop. With CNNT, you can trivially churn out a handful of knives before bed every night - more, if you don't mind using up a chunk of your mote pool. (If you have tools, this won't flare your anima, so it's safe-ish.) Craft some artifacts with the sxp, if you like! Everybody likes artifacts. (Alternatively: put some of those extra starting Charms into First Knowledge's Grace + Flowing Mind Prana, convert the sxp to wxp, and start training your friends, recouping real XP for the privilege.)
Again, via CNNT, this takes basically no in-game time and almost no real time, so you're not bogging down the session or anything - it's pretty inoffensive behavior. It also doesn't require any "Well, it's been six months of downtime, so I have a million sxp" shenanigans - just work the days that your game actually plays.
Time passes; 48 XP later, you're most of the way to E2. Along the way, you buy:
Supernal Craft:
Efficient Craftsman Technique (E1, cheaper major slots)
Ages-Echoing Wisdom (E2, free gxp)
Dragon Soul Emergence (E2, free superior slot)
Copper Spider Concentration (E3, cheaper superior slots)
Clay and Breath Practice (E3, extra sxp)
Spirit Gathering Industry (E3, cheaper superior projects)
Keep making stuff - but now, of course, it's better stuff! Hopefully it's netting you lots of gxp. Alternatively, keep making knives and stockpile - your call. Again, you're not crippled during this time; stockpiling sxp is a thing you do for five minutes a session, in addition to being an awesome crafter and a decent fighter and a sorceror and whatever. Also, you've been grabbing Solar XP, so you can raise your Abilities, or buy Martial Arts/Evocations/Spells, or whatever you want to do. You're not a one-trick pony!
Time passes. You're about to hit E3, and you're approaching a total of 125 XP. That's enough for nine more Charms + change; spend six of them on:
Lore:
Bottomless Wellspring Approach (E2, know more stuff)
Lore-Inducing Concentration (E2, know even more stuff)
Truth-Rendering Gase (E2, analyze the world)
Supernal Craft:
Unwinding Gyre Meditation (E4, trade gxp rewards for successes)
Exegesis of the Distilled Form (E5, free XP someday)
Spirit-Stoking Elevation (E5, spend wxp on Lore Charms)
Do whatever you like with the rest of the XP. Round out your competencies some; make yourself more useful in whatever your party is doing. Reach Essence 3. Keep making knives.
You've just hit Essence 3! You need a couple more pieces:
Lore:
Wyld-Shaping Technique (E3, ... shape the Wyld)
Wyld-Called Weapon (E3, craft weapons)
Wyld-Forging Focus (E3, skip a WST roll)
Wyld Cauldron Mastery (E3, bonus successes to WST)
Stop. You're sitting on a stockpile of sxp now - or if you aren't, you're only a handful of in-game days from having hundreds. Thanks to Sublime Transference, that means you're also only a few days from dozens of wxp. Thanks to Spirit-Stoking Elevation, you can spend that wxp on Wyld-Shaping Technique and Wyld-Called Weapon.
Make yourself a 5-dot artifact. This takes five rolls, at what's functionally a flat difficulty 4, thanks to Wyld-Forging Focus and Wyld Cauldron Mastery. You have the motes for this; heck, with a little more investment you could skip to the N/A artifacts. Pay for it entirely out of wxp you've earned in the last four in-game days (or that stockpile you've been casually amassing).
Do the same thing four days later.
Do the same thing four days later.
Repeat until you can use Volcano Cutters as butterknives.
But wait! What good does it do you to have a bunch of Volcano Cutters, if you have no XP to spend on them?
Well, you're two Lore Charms away (Sacred Relic Understanding, Wake the Sleeper) from being able to get ~3-4 free Evocations on one artifact per story. You're also four Craft Charms away (Crack-Mending Technique, Design Beyond Limit, Hero-Forging God Weapon, Soul-Forge Tempering) from being able to activate another 1 or (likely) 2 Evocations on every artifact, though it's a little bit vague whether Spirit-Stoking Elevation will help with that.
But wait, there's more! You can also trade your sxp for real XP, by training your allies (and can have been doing so from the beginning), so you're likely a fair bit ahead of them. You are also borderline on qualifying for Exegesis of the Distilled Form - not as your main goal, but just as a lovely 20 XP/story cherry on top.
So. You're Essence 3, and still pretty early in, at that. You have at least as much XP as your friends, and likely more. You have a quantity of free Evocations that might be termed "oodles." Your whole circle can be outfitted with whatever Artifact 5 gear they want in a handful of sessions. At no point have you been a useless or uncontributing character; of the 36 Charms you've received so far, you're committed on 25 of them - which is a lot, sure, but leaves you 11 to play around with, plus almost all your BP, plus all your Solar XP, plus at least 3ish free Evocations (with ~3-4 more to follow once a season). At no point has your behavior been particularly constrained; in fact, you've spent a lot less time crafting than might otherwise be assumed for a crafter character. You know a lot, and you can Wyld-Shape basically anything, in addition to whatever your secondary competencies are. You may be slurping down excess XP from training people, or from making N/A artifacts, or both, but either way that's a footnote, not the point.
The point is: you can make a new 5-dot to N/A artifact every week.
Does this seem peculiar? Working as intended? What?
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FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
You only gain crafting experience when you fulfill a "basic objectives" with crafting.These include:
- Strengthening or creating an intimacy with your crafting project
- A clear in-game gain. Monetary gain is mentioned, but i doubt that any sane GM will count the profit from every single knife - it's more likely to be lumped together into a Resource-rating or maybe awarded once per story/session.
- Upholding/futhering one of your own Intimacies.
So it's likely the GM will call Shenanigans if you try to claim crafting XP just for crafting some knifes each day.
But if you are creative with it and actually do varied and interesting stuff, yes you can earn quite a few crafting XP.
Also, finishing a Legendary project takes at least 10 years.
Artifacts require two years for Rating 5, one year for Rating 4, three months for Rating 3 and six weeks for Rating 2.
Thousand-Forge Hands can reduce those times, but you haven't planned for that charm so its an additional purchase.
- Strengthening or creating an intimacy with your crafting project
- A clear in-game gain. Monetary gain is mentioned, but i doubt that any sane GM will count the profit from every single knife - it's more likely to be lumped together into a Resource-rating or maybe awarded once per story/session.
- Upholding/futhering one of your own Intimacies.
So it's likely the GM will call Shenanigans if you try to claim crafting XP just for crafting some knifes each day.
But if you are creative with it and actually do varied and interesting stuff, yes you can earn quite a few crafting XP.
Also, finishing a Legendary project takes at least 10 years.
Artifacts require two years for Rating 5, one year for Rating 4, three months for Rating 3 and six weeks for Rating 2.
Thousand-Forge Hands can reduce those times, but you haven't planned for that charm so its an additional purchase.
Eh, make each crafting project something different, if that helps - "knives" is just functional shorthand. If "a knife" is too trivial, make something that's big enough that your GM agrees it's a separate project - CNNT doesn't really care. Surely minor projects don't become literally unable to score their own benefits just because you're doing more of them.
But you aren't interacting with the Craft system for actually producing your artifacts - that's why WST is relevant here. It appears to entirely sidestep the normal time/successes/billion supplemental success-granting Charms in favor of... half-a-dozen phase rolls, each only taking a few minutes.
Or so I read it! Do you see something different in Wyld-Called Weapon?
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Some parallels jump out at me regarding Sword Art Online and Third Edition martial arts.
Supposing that Kirito was a Solar Exalt, his common One-Handed Straight Sword character skill is basically Melee, with the Solar Charms being the associated Sword Arts. Whereas his unique Dual Blades character skill, separate from but related to that common skill, is basically the Martial Arts rating and Charms for Steel Devil Style.
(You can TOTALLY pull off a Starburst Stream with that Style. I wonder if the inspiration was directly or merely coincidental convergence?)
His buddy, Klein, unlocked the special Katana skill which branched off of One-Handed Curved Swords. In this case, we're looking at Single Point Shining Into the Void, which also evokes one of the unseen Unique Skills that Klein might have gotten in higher floors: Battoujutsu.
Unfortunately, we have longer to wait until Holden graces us with an official rapier-based style forAsuna Third Edition, assuming that some kind and talented soul doesn't convert it first. Hummingbird Style, was it? Or "wind-something blade"?
Argo and her tiger claws are sitting pretty at the intersection of Tiger Style and Ebon Shadow, though mastering both would represent a significant divergence from her more characteristic pursuits.
Supposing that Kirito was a Solar Exalt, his common One-Handed Straight Sword character skill is basically Melee, with the Solar Charms being the associated Sword Arts. Whereas his unique Dual Blades character skill, separate from but related to that common skill, is basically the Martial Arts rating and Charms for Steel Devil Style.
(You can TOTALLY pull off a Starburst Stream with that Style. I wonder if the inspiration was directly or merely coincidental convergence?)
His buddy, Klein, unlocked the special Katana skill which branched off of One-Handed Curved Swords. In this case, we're looking at Single Point Shining Into the Void, which also evokes one of the unseen Unique Skills that Klein might have gotten in higher floors: Battoujutsu.
Unfortunately, we have longer to wait until Holden graces us with an official rapier-based style for
Argo and her tiger claws are sitting pretty at the intersection of Tiger Style and Ebon Shadow, though mastering both would represent a significant divergence from her more characteristic pursuits.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
I like that analysis, but the awkward element there is the fact that they still don't combo with native Charms very well, since the same Supplemental use restrictions as 2E appear to apply.
Roadie
A plate full of blins and a cat nearby.
Which is really dumb.
This also parallels Sword Art Online.
Kirito could use a regular Straight Sword Art with one of his blades, or a Dual Blade Art with both of his blades, but he couldn't combine two different Arts in a single attack. At most, he could use Arts from different Skills in sequential combos.
In the same way, a Solar Kirito could use a Solar Melee Charm to enhance one attack, and then a Steel Devil Charm to enhance a follow-up. But he can also still use Reflexives from either Ability freely.
Incidentally, I like how having each Martial Art Style as a separate Ability prevents the "same Ability to punch, sword and shoots arrows" problem from happening again.
I also see how it punishes dipping into a completely different Style in an attempt to cherry-pick low-hanging fruit. I like this aesthetically, and mechanically it seems like even the entry Charms were made stronger to compensate for this change.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
If I want to make a Demon Summoning Twilight with a bunch of spirit familiars, is it better to Supernal Occult or Survival?
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Survival. Supernal Occult is pretty unimpressive, and doesn't have anything related to getting spirits to be your familiar IIRC.
Is anyone else confused about why they coined the Martial Arts keyword "Celestial" when it only ever applies to Terrestrials?
It would seem to make more sense to call it Terrestrial, as that's the only Host it applies to, and it denotes their limitation to the Terrestrial level of Martial Arts. Once they ascend to the Celestial level, they don't need to worry about the keyword anymore.
Instead, right now it suggests an extra BENEFIT that one attains if one is a Celestial or up to the Celestial level.
It would seem to make more sense to call it Terrestrial, as that's the only Host it applies to, and it denotes their limitation to the Terrestrial level of Martial Arts. Once they ascend to the Celestial level, they don't need to worry about the keyword anymore.
Instead, right now it suggests an extra BENEFIT that one attains if one is a Celestial or up to the Celestial level.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
Thanks. Are there any benefits for having Demon of the Frst Circle as your control spell?
I read over it and Summon Element three times; there are no control benefits.
Yet neither is there any word about being unable to take those as one's automatic first spell.
Don't know what to make of that.
- Location
- Asunción
What ability (not supernal) do you thinks makes for a better combatant, using 3 or so charms in it?
What about supernal, with 6 or 7 charms invested in it?
What about supernal, with 6 or 7 charms invested in it?
Impossible to know. It depends on various factors.
The first and biggest one that comes to mind is whether or not this combatant regularly fights alone or as part of a team. That makes a huge difference.
Then you get into weapon choices. Melee offers everything from great axes to knives, and Thrown can go from knives to throwing spears. The specific tool radically alters the equation.
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As your sole combat ability? Melee, no question. No other ability covers both attack and defense as well. Martial Arts is probably also a fine choice, if you don't mind the 4-dot merit tax. Brawl is deadly, but its defensive options are much more limited than Melee. Archery and Thrown combatants really need Dodge or Athletics or something so they don't get shanked.
Now, if you're going to pair your ability of choice with Dodge and/or Resistance to improve your defensive options... I don't know.
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The_Reptile_
Jolly Good
- Location
- THE PITS OF HELL. Also known as Connecticut.
Another big thing about Melee and Brawl as well is that, in my look over both of them, Brawl doesn't really get utilized to its full potential unless used when in groups, while Melee is a more decidedly one on one type of deal but is a bit lacking in crowd control.