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General Exalted Thread

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So, 3rdEd Sorcery has offered a way to make Rachel Alucard from BlazBlue something other than a raksha.

Sorcerous archetypes allow one to make her a something other than a Terrestrial Exalted who still has very direct powers over the raw elements of wind and storm. There's already a miscellaneous shaping ritual to start with in regards to making an Air-aspected variant on the "Pact with an Ifrit Lord" and resulting Merits.

Probably make her a Sidereal rather than an Abyssal, given her Observation and Fate-Interference tricks, as well as her habit of stepping into secret doorways to appear and disappear from the ground-level narrative as she pleases. Her vampirism would be hereditary Wyld mutations of some sort.


Rather than her, RAGNA is the Abyssal. What with all of the soul-draining, murderdeathkill, and sheer power.


Naturally, Jin is a Dawn Caste Solar who wields the Ice-evoking artifact Yukienesa with Single Point Shining into the Void Style.


Noel is a Moonsilver Caste Alchemical who constantly hobbles herself by keeping her Charmload hidden and inactive, which means that aside from Bolverk and her Gun-Kata Style, she's curiously inept despite being an Exalt, which reflects her poor grades at the academy and extremely low confidence. Naturally, that all goes out the window when she reveals her true nature and calls upon her new Kusanagi Armor.
 
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Not having had time to read through the leak, is GLORIOUS SOLAR RAILGUN still a thing? Because it looks like GLORIOUS SOLAR BULLSHIT is alive and well.
 
notthepenguins said:
I'm not familiar with the term.
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Which one? Glorious Solar Railgun refers to an Archery heavy solar with charms in Dodge, Stealth, Athletics and Perception, especially Perception charms that increase visibility range. There is a charm in 2E that for a trivial cost lets the Solar fire out to as far as they can see with no penalties. Athletics and Stealth are there so they can dictate the engagement, striking from "over the horizon" as it were, where they are immune to anything short of that one counter-attack charm.
 
samdamandias said:
Which one? Glorious Solar Railgun refers to an Archery heavy solar with charms in Dodge, Stealth, Athletics and Perception, especially Perception charms that increase visibility range. There is a charm in 2E that for a trivial cost lets the Solar fire out to as far as they can see with no penalties. Athletics and Stealth are there so they can dictate the engagement, striking from "over the horizon" as it were, where they are immune to anything short of that one counter-attack charm.
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Oh, so the question is "Does There Is No Wind still exist?" Yes, it does.
 
Not just that, but it can hit "My army just blew up because there's a Solar two countries over" levels of insanity before you break out the mass combat system or pass E5.
 
Dawns are the only caste that get the combat-abilities as Caste-Abilities, and thus the only Caste that can pick one of them as Supernal.
Which means that if you want to learn high-Essence Archery/Brawl/Martial Arts/Melee/Thrown charms early, you have to be a Dawn.

You can also now choose 5 out of 8 abilities from your Caste to be Favored, so Castes are more flexible.
Most Dawns will have one of those abilities as Supernal Ability, then Awareness, Dodge, Resistance and War as the other four Caste-Abilities. Plus any five other skills as Favored - maybe Integrity, Bureaucracy, Athletics, Performance and Ride, all solid for a Warrior-Archetype.
This also neatly solves the "why would i learn more than one type of combat charms?" issue Dawns had in 2E. Of course you still can do that, a melee and a ranged ability should mix reasonably well.

Zenith Castes get to choose between Athletics, Integrity, Performance, Lore, Presence, Resistance, Survival, War
Resistance and its soak-boosting can be pretty solid in combat too, so they are still good combatants by caste
Twilight Castes get to choose between Bureaucracy, Craft, Integrity, Investigation, Linguistics, Lore, Medicine, Occult.
And their Anima does grant Hardness, but that is only relevant against decisive attacks and does not stack with Armor or Hardness-granting charms.
Night Castes get to choose between Athletics, Awareness, Dodge, Investigation, Larceny, Ride, Stealth, Socialize.
Dodge is of course a viable thing to concentrate on in combat.
Eclipse Castes get to choose between Bureaucracy, Larceny, Linguistics, Occult, Presence, Ride, Sail, Socialize
 
Irked said:
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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The point was that "monetary gain" from "a clear in-game gain" should not apply more than a few times per story, since "a clear in-game gain" is obviously something the GM adjudicates.
Otherwise it just breaks the crafting system, as you demonstrated quite effectively.

As for using Wyld-Shaping Technique to reduce crafting times:
You ARE aware that WST costs Experience Points to use? And not CraftingXP, actual XP you can use to advance your character.
The same goes for Wyld-Called Weapon, except it costs even more experience. And only works for weapon artifacts, so no forging N/A artifacts with it - or indeed any non-weapon artifacts.



Walker of the Yellow Path said:
If I want to make a Demon Summoning Twilight with a bunch of spirit familiars, is it better to Supernal Occult or Survival?
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First, Twilights don't get Survival as a caste-ability, so it can't be Supernal for them.
So if you want Supernal Survival, you need to be a Zenith - who can still summon demons, but can't easily bind them to his Anima like a Twilight.

Second, while Survival is indeed the way to go for enhancing, Occult has Ephemeral Induction Technique. Yes it has quite a few prerequisites (10 to be exact), but it DOES allow you to create a custom spirit which acts as your familiar. It even gains experience alongside you and shares your Essence-rating - so in the long run, it's easily more powerful than what you could otherwise summon.
 
Serafina said:
The point was that "monetary gain" from "a clear in-game gain" should not apply more than a few times per story, since "a clear in-game gain" is obviously something the GM adjudicates.
Otherwise it just breaks the crafting system, as you demonstrated quite effectively.

As for using Wyld-Shaping Technique to reduce crafting times:
You ARE aware that WST costs Experience Points to use? And not CraftingXP, actual XP you can use to advance your character.
The same goes for Wyld-Called Weapon, except it costs even more experience. And only works for weapon artifacts, so no forging N/A artifacts with it - or indeed any non-weapon artifacts.
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There is a simple solution to this. You simply have your character have a defining intimacy for helping the common man, then spend all their time making toys for orphans or whatever. Once the ST says toys are out of the question, you make clothes, and so on. Then, after you have made enough toys for orphans, you can build your super-weapon.

Also, it doesn't say anything in the rules about limiting the number of times per story you can fulfill crafting objectives for basic projects, so your objection doesn't have any basis in the rules.
 
Yes the rules need to state more clearly that they are GM-adjudicated to prohibit all that exploitation.

But if you want to be pedantic, i'll point out that you technically only gain the CraftXP if "finishing your project causes" these things. Which means that what you do with the project afterwards - sell it, donate it, eat it, whatever - does NOT impact whether you gain CraftXP.
So when someone comes to you and says "do X for me for Y reward" it would qualify since there is a direct causation, but if you just craft and then seek out a buyer (or other recipient) it doesn't.
 
Serafina said:
But if you want to be pedantic, i'll point out that you technically only gain the CraftXP if "finishing your project causes" these things. Which means that what you do with the project afterwards - sell it, donate it, eat it, whatever - does NOT impact whether you gain CraftXP.
So when someone comes to you and says "do X for me for Y reward" it would qualify since there is a direct causation, but if you just craft and then seek out a buyer (or other recipient) it doesn't.
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RAW pedantry: A double-edged sword!:D
 
samdamandias said:
Not just that, but it can hit "My army just blew up because there's a Solar two countries over" levels of insanity before you break out the mass combat system or pass E5.
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If you work at it, possibly, but battle groups exist without entering mass combat and would be what an army is represented as. We'll say you're doing this at Essence 3, with Perception 4, Dexterity 5, Awareness 5, Archery 5, with a Specialty in Archery (Bows) and Awareness (Sight).

An army of 1000+ is Size 5, so you'd have to do:
Size 5 + Base 7 (12)
Size 4 + Base 7 (23)
Size 3 + Base 7 (33)
Size 2 + Base 7 (42)
Size 1 + Base 7 (50)
Total: 50 levels of damage.
Assuming all the troops are in Medium armor, you'd be facing a soak of 10. This is only relevant for withering attacks, which I won't be using for this thought experiment. We'll say they have a Defense of 4, and you have an Initiative of 13. However you gained it.
Using Arrow Storm Technique for (Essence*3) = 9 hits, Fiery Arrow Attack and Dazzling Flare Attack to add damage, Accuracy Without Distance for better to-hit, Wise Arrow for Defense-negation, and There Is No Wind to hit from miles away. Also, max Excellency.
So, 10m+5m+2m+3m+1m+1m+3m and 1wp+1wp - or 25m, 2wp - to launch this storm.
Your attack is 21 dice, and the results are:
1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10

Dazzling Flare Attack adds another success, and Accuracy Without Distance adds an additional 3 non-charm successes, for a total of 15, against a Defense of 4 - 1 (Wise Arrow).
That's a definite hit. Those two 10s each add a die of damage. Arrow Storm Technique adds Perception damage to each attack.
So, you do Perception + 3 damage 5 times and Perception + 4 damage 4 times. One of the dice on each is converted to an automatic success (assuming Fiery Arrow converts; otherwise, you get 9 levels plus the above).
That's 5*6 dice and 4*7 dice, for a total of 58 dice plus 9 levels of damage.
Damage rolls:
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10

That's 23 levels of damage, and because this is a decisive attack against a battle group the attack deals an extra level of damage for every 4 dice of damage being rolled. With 9 attacks adding 2 levels each, that's 18 levels of damage, bringing the total damage up to 41.
41 divided by 9 gets you an average of 4.555... damage - this is relevant because that means several (assuming an even spread of 2 and 3 levels, 5) attacks dealt 3 levels of damage, meaning Fiery Arrow Attack lights the battle group on fire, dealing (Essence) dice of lethal damage every turn until it's extinguished.
Additionally, for every four dice of damage (rounded up) on each attack, it deals an extra level of damage. With 9 attacks each adding 2 levels, that's an additional 18, totaling 41.
(If Fiery Arrow Attack adds a success instead of converting (which I don't think it does, but I've been wrong in the past), this is 32+18=50 levels, which splits to 5.555... levels each, and fills the full Magnitude track for Size 1.)

This burns through the firs three Magnitude tracks, leaving it at Size 2 (almost down to 1). This is a force of "several dozen" troops, down from 1000+.
This then forces them to make a Rout check at Difficulty 5 (or higher). This uses their Willpower (+3 from Size loss, +1 from a devastating supernatural area-of-effect attack).

With your mote pool of 66 (19+47), you can fire this all again on your next action, though you might lose some punch from a lower Initiative. I'm not sure if the +5 Initiative from each time you drop its Size carries over to your next action

If you have Supernal Archery, you can add Whispering Prayer of Judgement for an extra 1m to add (Essence) damage, which adds another 27 dice (averages to another 10.8 levels of damage), which burns through their entire Size 1 track and leaves the remaining troops seriously injured.

Did I mention that they're on fire?

Conclusion: I think it's still kind of a thing? I'm still not totally clear on this system, but this seems to all be how it's supposed to work. But you definitely light an army on fire.
EDIT: I forgot to add levels of damage for throwing a decisive attack at a battle group, which changes this to definitely being a thing.
 
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Serafina said:
Yes the rules need to state more clearly that they are GM-adjudicated to prohibit all that exploitation.

But if you want to be pedantic, i'll point out that you technically only gain the CraftXP if "finishing your project causes" these things. Which means that what you do with the project afterwards - sell it, donate it, eat it, whatever - does NOT impact whether you gain CraftXP.
So when someone comes to you and says "do X for me for Y reward" it would qualify since there is a direct causation, but if you just craft and then seek out a buyer (or other recipient) it doesn't.
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Even if they explicitly stated that the GM needs to make sure that the character doesn't abuse the crafting rules, they still don't say how much crafting xp a character should be able to get, which leaves the GM in about the same position. I honestly don't know what they were thinking when they wrote the craft system, it's like they wanted to make it as obtuse and difficult as possible.

As to your second point, that would indicate that it is impossible for a pc to craft anything more complicated than a nail RAW instead, which is no better than the other situation. I don't understand why they felt the need to have a basic project tier at all. I think that a crafter should be able to craft, say, a house, or a sword, or some clothes, without needing to spend a few hours making nails and carving spoons or whatever instead. I've been working on a fix to simplify the craft system by copying the sorcerous works system, which I think works pretty well as a replacement. The main thing I have left is to work over the numbers, which will be rather time consuming to the sheer number of excellencies this edition.
 
azoicennead said:
If you work at it, possibly, but battle groups exist without entering mass combat and would be what an army is represented as. We'll say you're doing this at Essence 3, with Perception 4, Dexterity 5, Awareness 5, Archery 5, with a Specialty in Archery (Bows) and Awareness (Sight).

An army of 1000+ is Size 5, so you'd have to do:
Size 5 + Base 7
Size 4 + Base 7
Size 3 + Base 7
Size 2 + Base 7
Size 1 + Base 7
Total: 50 levels of damage.
Assuming all the troops are in Medium armor, you'd be facing a soak of 10. This is only relevant for withering attacks, which I won't be using for this thought experiment. We'll say they have a Defense of 4, and you have an Initiative of 13. However you gained it.
Using Arrow Storm Technique for (Essence*3) = 9 hits, Fiery Arrow Attack and Dazzling Flare Attack to add damage, Accuracy Without Distance for better to-hit, Wise Arrow for Defense-negation, and There Is No Wind to hit from miles away. Also, max Excellency.
So, 10m+5m+2m+3m+1m+1m+3m and 1wp+1wp - or 25m, 2wp - to launch this storm.
Your attack is 21 dice, and the results are:
1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 10, 10

Dazzling Flare Attack adds another success, and Accuracy Without Distance adds an additional 3 non-charm successes, for a total of 15, against a Defense of 4 - 1 (Wise Arrow).
That's a definite hit. Those two 10s each add a die of damage. Arrow Storm Technique adds Perception damage to each attack.
So, you do Perception + 3 damage 5 times and Perception + 4 damage 4 times. One of the dice on each is converted to an automatic success (assuming Fiery Arrow converts; otherwise, you get 9 levels plus the above).
That's 5*6 dice and 4*7 dice, for a total of 58 dice plus 9 levels of damage.
Damage rolls:
1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10

That's 23 levels of damage, divided by 9 gets you an average of 2.555... damage - this is relevant because that means several (assuming an even spread of 2 and 3 levels, 5) attacks dealt 3 levels of damage, meaning Fiery Arrow Attack lights the battle group on fire, dealing (Essence) dice of lethal damage every turn until it's extinguished.
(If Fiery Arrow Attack adds a success instead of converting (which I don't think it does, but I've been wrong in the past), this is 32 levels, which splits to 3.555... levels each.)

This burns through the first two Magnitude tracks, putting the remainder of a 1,000+ army at Size 3: somewhere between 100 and 300 ("several hundred" is the threshold for Size 4).
So, the army has been reduced to 100 - 300, meaning you killed 700 - 900 enemies from the horizon in a single attack.
They have to make a Rout check at Difficulty 4 (or higher). This uses their Willpower.
(Fiery Arrow adding a level would put them most of the way through their Size 3 track, with 2 empty Magnitude levels.)

With your mote pool of 66 (19+47), you can fire this all again on your next action, though you might lose some punch from a lower Initiative. I'm not sure if the +5 Initiative from each time you drop its Size carries over to your next action

If you have Supernal Archery, you can add Whispering Prayer of Judgement for an extra 1m to add (Essence) damage, which adds another 27 dice (averages to another 10.8 levels of damage), burning them down to part-way through Size 2, or "several dozen". This sets the Rout Difficulty to at least 5.
(Fiery Arrow adding a level puts them almost down to Size 0, at which point they become individual combatants.)

Did I mention that they're on fire?

Conclusion: I think it's still kind of a thing? I'm still not totally clear on this system, but this seems to all be how it's supposed to work. But you definitely light an army on fire.
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one problem with your analysis

you don't use decisive attacks against battle groups

it's all withering attacks against their magnitude
 
It's not even that pedantic.
Two of the basic objectives are based around the Intimacy-system. How something interacts with an Intimacy is clearly adjudicated by the GM, since otherwise Intimacies are just too nebulous.
The first one is fully under GM-adjudication, because it depends on NPCs gaining Intimacies.
The other depends on furthering your own Intimacies, but that is also pretty obviously up to the GM - you couldn't constantly donate toys to orphans to constantly regain Willpower either.

As for the one based on clear in-game gain, note that the other two examples are outright merits (Allies or Contacts) - it is an obvious stretch to claim that a monetary gain that would not even qualify for Resources 1 would count (especially since Resources are a long-term income).



It's not that hard really.
The intent of the rules is pretty obviously to encourage the players to do interesting things with Craft.
You see some hungry refugees, so you whip them up a five-star meal, causing them to gain an Intimacy of Gratitude towards you.
You need passage to the Blessed Ilse, but don't have the funds for it. So you craft high-quality clothing for the entire crew of a ship and barter those for the passage.
Your belief that knowledge is sacred inspires you to repair the roof of a local monastery-library to preserve the scrolls within against rain.

Whenever a player tries to powergame Intimacies, the GM needs to haven the right, ability and courage to say "No" to that.
 
Serafina said:
As for the one based on clear in-game gain, note that the other two examples are outright merits (Allies or Contacts) - it is an obvious stretch to claim that a monetary gain that would not even qualify for Resources 1 would count (especially since Resources are a long-term income).



It's not that hard really.
The intent of the rules is pretty obviously to encourage the players to do interesting things with Craft.
You see some hungry refugees, so you whip them up a five-star meal, causing them to gain an Intimacy of Gratitude towards you.
You need passage to the Blessed Ilse, but don't have the funds for it. So you craft high-quality clothing for the entire crew of a ship and barter those for the passage.
Your belief that knowledge is sacred inspires you to repair the roof of a local monastery-library to preserve the scrolls within against rain.
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Then it remains impossible to get crafting xp, as no basic project will give you enough money on its own to qualify you for resources 1. Maybe if you convinced your gm to count spending a year doing nothing but selling basic projects it would, but other than that it wouldn't give you anything.

As for your examples, they all require three things: That the GM regularly give the players a way to get crafting xp through their intimacies, that the character have the relevant craft (Who would take Cooking? Chances are that the character is only going to have two crafts), and that the character have crafting xp already, as all of your examples are major projects. How is a character supposed to get crafting xp in the first place under your reading? Are they just expected to get the charms that give crafting xp?
 
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