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General Exalted Thread

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But more seriously, the main advantages of fast movement are twofold:

1. Getting there the fastest with the mostest

This is fairly simple. "Getting there the fastest with the mostest" is a more strategic use of fast movement speeds-it is, quite simply, being able to bring a big concentration of firepower up very rapidly to crush people. This applies in general.

Exalted doesn't have specific rules on decision-making times, but because of the technology level, the OODA loops of things in Exalted are fairly slow. Even sorcerers and Dragonbloods have WWII levels of OODA loops and someone very fast, if you have a decent ST who's willing to read up on combat tactics, can get inside the OODA loop-react to enemy strategic changes faster so that you're always in control of the situation. This is the biggest advantage of Exalts in a battlefield situation, actually, ignoring mechanics. A small force of Exalts has the firepower of units tens or hundreds of times their size, even at fairly low power levels. This makes them a nimble force that can take advantage of momentary weaknesses and slow communications.

This relates to the Giggle Giggle Zoom Scourge fairly easily-the Giggle Giggle Zoom scourge can get there the fastest but lacks the whole 'mostest' part. Being only capable of using an Excellency and maybe a handful of combat charms against non-mortal combatants makes you a lot less dangerous than someone who's half as fast but several times more lethal.

2. Using mobility to get a tactical advantage over the enemy.

Mobility doesn't just let you get there fast, it also lets you engage and disengage at will, take advantage of terrain that hinders the enemy more than you, attack from ambush or from unexpected angles, and generally twist the situation to your advantage. Speed is life-a faster enemy is harder to successfully engage, can choose to engage in situations which give her an advantage, and if the fight is going wrong, can disengage. One of the biggest issues with wound penalties is they apply to your movement speeds. This means that if you're at a -2 penalty, you're probably not going to be able to disengage from the other guy successfully. Amusingly, this means the Alchemical wound penalty reverser actually is even more useful than it looks at first glance-being able to get an additional +4m/s of movement if you've had the shit beaten out of you means you're more likely to be able to get the fuck out and disengage.

The problem is, this is all contingent on being able to turn that speed into advantage. Fast flight means you're immune to melee attacks most of the time. Stealth charms let you turn speed into an advantage by allowing you to disengage, hide, and then engage from surprise-a lethal tactic when there's a lot of charms that double threshold successes for damage. Speed combined with good ranged weapons and ranged attack charms let you pepper someone from outside of their engagement range. Speed combined with good durability and a strong melee weapon mean that you have a very large area denial zone, which makes engaging you problematic because no sane person wants to go in that denial zone and get murdered.

This is why the Giggle Giggle I'M SO FAST scourge is silly-he or she doesn't have enough of the other stuff to turn speed into a meaningful advantage.
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
This is why the Giggle Giggle I'M SO FAST scourge is silly-he or she doesn't have enough of the other stuff to turn speed into a meaningful advantage.
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Keris, to provide a shining example of this sort of thing, does not have a particularly high speed compared to theoretical builds at her Essence level - 19 yards/tick running and 38 swimming. But she has area attacks that can hit everyone along her movement tick with her full dicepool, she has high enough stealth to be competitive against Exalted observers, she has an Artifact spear with a 10-yard extended range and an alarming amount of damage when charging (and she's always charging), she has lead slingshot bullets and poison on all her weapons, and she isn't so much as slowed down by treacherous terrain - and that last one is a big thing, because Stormwind Rider only travels close to the ground, which means that environments like dense jungle or mountainous territory with a lot of sheer vertical cliff faces are a problem for it. Keris can just go in full-speed straight lines over such territory and then disengage, melt back into the scenery and heal any damage she's taken (which doesn't penalise her Dash speed) with the Kimbery Mythos Exultant. She's a guerilla menace who is a fucking nightmare to deal with if she can provoke you into chasing her into treacherous terrain where she has the advantage. It's not her speed that's the decisive factor; it's her mobility advantage over other people and her ability to ruthlessly exploit the hell out of it for fun and profit murder and mayhem.
 
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Okay, interesting question that just occurred to me: Can the Elemental Dragons make akuma?

It's not certain that they can. Akuma are thematically "sell your soul to the devil for power to accomplish one thing you are too weak to do yourself, and then become his creature forever after." It is akin to death - perhaps worse than death, for your body will linger afterwards as a puppet of a demon. But it will mean that you can save your beloved; defeat your hated enemy, save your home. You will be given the power to accomplish that which you are too weak to do yourself, and then what is left of you will go to your new master as the price of your bargain. "Yozi" may be a largely political distinction, but it may well be a mistake to assume that deva and demons are otherwise identical, even within the same Circle.

If they can, though, an interesting plot thread arises. A Dynast Exalts as a Solar, realises they have become an Anathema, and promptly turns themselves over to the Immaculate Order. Either they convince the monks of their idea or escape being praised for their piety and killed long enough to try it, and go on a quest to awaken Pasiap from where he slumbers beneath the Imperial Mountain. And then they give themselves over to his judgement before the demon within them wrests control from their human soul, and allow him to make them into a servant so that their power can be used for good, and not pass to another who would use it for evil. The Urge they would choose for themselves would probably be something along the lines of "loyally serve the Realm and its interests with no ambition or desire of my own".

I'm honestly not sure how the Immaculate Order would react to that. Obviously their immediate reaction would be to praise the Dynast-turned-Solar for doing the right thing in turning themselves over, then kill them to save their soul and prevent the demon from taking over - Immaculate doctrine states that an act of piety and temperance like this pretty much guarantees that you'll be born a Dragonblooded in your next life. But if they were actually convinced that yeah, Pasiap himself had intervened and bound the demon and made the Anathema an avatar of one of the Immaculate Dragons... yeah, honestly not sure how that would go down.

A lot of them would push for the Anathema being killed anyway, I imagine. Others would point out that they basically have a Solar Anathema without the hellish ambition to rule but with the super-empire-building powers that synergise so well with Dragonblooded lieutenants, and that they could totally use their new akuma as an administrator to organise the Realm (with oversight and a veto on their orders just in case). The Sidereals would be... distinctly worried, since Pasiap is a factor in this whose goals do not necessarily align with those of the Realm. The Great Houses would probably react with varying degrees of "you fuck the what now" to the concept of putting a leashed and enforcedly loyal Solar in charge of the Realm's actions.

Hmm. As I said, it depends massively on whether the Elemental Dragons can even make akuma, and doubly so on whether a Dynastic Solar could find one and talk them into it before realising "hmm, I don't feel very demonic, and it's been like three months already". But an interesting plotbunny nonetheless, if only for what such a Realm - with a "safe" Solar who lives to serve the Realm providing supernal direction and management for it - would look like.
 
I think that the key question here is whether the Solar be "safe". My personal interpretation of the Akuma was that they suffered from significant mental problems as a result of the overpowering nature of their urge. My view was that the urge made their mental processes overly rigid and unable to deal with compromises. I can easily see how the given urge could lead to a conflict between the Solar and the dominate powers of the Realm based on differing interpretations of how to best serve the "Realm".

Also I think another issue is how the Solar would manage to prove that he is actually a trustworthy Akuma of Pasiap. I think that this would be a major struggle considering the fact that the Dragon blooded should be well aware of the disguise and social skills of the Solar exalted. What could an Solar Akuma of Pasiap do that would prove beyond all doubt that he is not faking his status and does possess the given urge? The Solar would also have to prove that he came by his powers honestly and did not steal them from Pasiap in a similar manner to the way that the Anathema are believed to have stolen power from the Sun and Moon.

I can certainly see your idea as a valid but I think that this would be more of something that a Solar would try to do rather than something that would actually succeed.
 
Aleph said:
Okay, interesting question that just occurred to me: Can the Elemental Dragons make akuma?
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Hypothetically speaking, yes.

The Investiture, although channeled through a Deva, must be approved by the Primordial before the process can begin. So basically it would require not just getting Pasiap's attention, but Gaia's as well. Which has it's own issues.

To say nothing of how Gaia bound Pasiap and Hessiah to sleep because their movements made Creation just a wee bit unpleasant for humanity to live in. So waking him up would likely have some consequences.

The other three, Mela, Daana'd, and Sextes Jylis are active AFAIK but apparently spend most of their time at their respective Elemental Poles making sure the trains run on time. One of them could provide the Investiture, but it would require traveling to the edge of the world and that seems like it would leave the Immaculates somewhat skeptical of a claim that one of the Dragons themselves bound an Anathema.
 
If you're using the interesting and useful take on akuma, then creating Solar Gaian akuma is more trouble than its worth. Because Urges are just Motivations the user can't change and Motivations aren't slave collars.

Once you've popped out the Solar's Motivation to give him an Urge that Urge is just like a Motivation and Solar's have a lot of magic that fucks around with Motivation, including the ability to give themselves a new one at will.

Yeah, "Faithfully serve the Immaculate Order" may sound like a good urge with no possibility of danger... until the Gaian akuma becomes convinced that due to his natural superiority the best place to serve that order would be from the top, so he pops himself a new Motivation with Integrity Charms and now you have a completely dedicated Solar overthrowing your organization from within and oh god why.

And this exists for all the potential Urges you could create. Urges are not things you can Literally Genie with. The more complex you make them the more prone to breaking they are, because they will encounter more stress and inner conflict. Plus, if your Urge has more than two clauses I, as ST, would probably smack you upside the head and say no. You want to play with trying to chain a Primordial slaying superweapon to your will? Good luck with that.

Plus, of course, there are the theological implications that occur if this got out. If it became known to the peasants that its possible for an Anathema to be saved by the blessing of the Dragons... well, they're less likely to turn on friends and family who just started glowing out of nowhere now. After all, the victim can be saved now... so maybe instead of having him killed he should be allowed to get away so you can pray to the Dragons for his soul...

Yeah, not going to turn out well for you.

That said, I can see several uses for Gaian Akuma in the setting. Like, say, a First Age Solar who swore to Gaia to preserve a certain location in Creation that was sacred to her from danger and gave up his very identity to do so and now gets to hang around at the confluence of three rivers where a city has been built...
 
Except that an Urge is not a Motivation. The definitional difference that it's an Urge rather than a second Motivation that fits a Primordial's themes is rather important.
 
Okay, not sure I should be posting this here, but I've got an idea for a story set in a haked version of Creation, and I need some help descrbing some stuff. Mainly dressess that the women of the social elite in the 17th centuary would wear. I've looked online, but I feel that I'd probably need a book based on the subject to get really good understanding of the subject matter.

As an aside; would muskets be too setting breaking, or am I safe with the whole 'its your story/game' thing.
 
Khepri said:
As an aside; would muskets be too setting breaking, or am I safe with the whole 'its your story/game' thing.
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Muskets break the setting the same way that they broke the supremacy of sword, pike and heavy armour; they make it fairly easy to train up a peasant into something that can threaten some of the best trained soldiers. It does have its flaws though, not least of which was that muskets tended to perform poorly under wet conditions (rain, snow, thick fogs) and had an abysmal rate of fire.

You'll need to keep that in mind, and how that interacts with the Exalted.
 
Khepri said:
As an aside; would muskets be too setting breaking, or am I safe with the whole 'its your story/game' thing.
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Basically, the rule of thumb in Exalted is this: "Can the elite skilled wielders make this awesome? If yes, Go for it."

Thematically, that means a lot of modern 17th-18th century+ technology and tactics don't work well, because basically from that point on, the world was more interested in getting the most people working, instead of celebrating the elite few.

This is actually why Dragoblooded are roughly equivalent and evocative of WW2 technology and capability as part of their magic, but nothing to do with their artifacts/technology. Their grasp of Elemental Essence let them ignore a lot of the things that would have ordinarily lead to ... pretty much the modern western world.
 
If you want muskets, it's probably a better idea to look at the, uh, about 15th-16th Century uses of guns, where they were still used in combinations with other weapons than on their own.
 
Khepri said:
As an aside; would muskets be too setting breaking, or am I safe with the whole 'its your story/game' thing.
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One of the big things it'll do to warfare is make everything even more dependent on morale and the bravery of the troops. The real killer and war winner with early modern warfare was shock, once you get blackpowder weapons to a certain level of effectiveness but below the mass-murder level of effectiveness. Bullets and even individual accuracy doesn't win you battles. Shock does. Training your troops to withstand shock and to hold fire until optimal and then fire in uniform will win you battles.

This does in fact mean that Tiger Warrior Training becomes far more dangerous because you can train a formation of Tiger Warriors into a group which will have the kind of morale only seen in a few incredibly elite formations IRL, who'll not break when they march into the face of a musket line, and who'll fire in perfect unison. Tiger Warrior Musketeers are fucking terrifying, especially when boosted with Solar morale boosters.

Of course, muskets don't appear out of nowhere (unless Europeans are selling them to you, in which case they kind of do [1]). Where are your hand-cannons, your arquebuses, and other weapons? Muskets are relatively advanced and come at the end of hundreds of years of development and refinement.

Also, muskets are in many ways less revolutionary than cannon. Cannon revolutionises warfare, because it allows the easy breaking of sieges. Which increases the relative power of centralised authority because now the king (or the Empress, as the case may be) can raise an army, smash you, and not have to pay for a really expensive siege if you don't accede to her demands. The Realm, much like the British Empire, will love cannon. The Realm will develop vast artillerist's corps.

[1] Although remember, Japan went OH SWEET FUCK WE LOVE THESE when introduced to blackpowder weapons, copied the designs, began mass production within ten years, and invented more advanced techniques than were in use in Europe at the time.
 
Hazard said:
You'll need to keep that in mind, and how that interacts with the Exalted.
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Also it takes a lot to be competitive with bows in exalted. Admittedly, my character is going for Glorious Solar Railgun, but I have a speed six action with a base of 10L before damage adders, sux, and soak. For comparison, a 1M shot from a Fiery Solar Cannon is 9L, and those things are BFGs that shoot lasers

horngeek said:
If you want muskets, it's probably a better idea to look at the, uh, about 15th-16th Century uses of guns, where they were still used in combinations with other weapons than on their own.
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Look up Tercio and Pike-and-Shot formations. IIRC, part of the reasoning behind bayonets was so musketmen could function as pikemen. (Or at least in the 1632 series, where it was mentioned that you don't go lower than one pike for every two muskets.)

And as @EarthScorpion mentions, cannon will change seige warfare, and bomb ships will change how war in the west works, but war in the north and east won't be changed that much by the introduction of black powder. IIRC, northern warfare tends to be fast, because a commander has a very short campaigning season, and their troops know that if they aren't home before winter sets in they will die. But this isn't a problem, because northern war tends to be along the lines of "Take and hold X" where X is a manse, or a bridge, or a mine, while southern war is multi-year sieges.
 
Would the use of cannons in siege warfare still have a significant influence on the social structure of the Realm given the existence of relatively low hanging destructive techniques? It was my understanding that siege warfare was much less of a significant factor in Exalted due to the existence of many spells and charms capable of rapidly taking down walls and fortifications. It seems unlikely that the IRL paradigm of castles weakening the authority of the central power due to their ability to withstand lengthily sieges would exist in the Realm given the large number of powerful sorcerers and dragon-blooded.
 
Ct613hulu said:
Would the use of cannons in siege warfare still have a significant influence on the social structure of the Realm given the existence of relatively low hanging destructive techniques? It was my understanding that siege warfare was much less of a significant factor in Exalted due to the existence of many spells and charms capable of rapidly taking down walls and fortifications. It seems unlikely that the IRL paradigm of castles weakening the authority of the central power due to their ability to withstand lengthily sieges would exist in the Realm given the large number of powerful sorcerers and dragon-blooded.
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This is true, but cannons were also incredibly destructive to infantry.

Consider round shot, which was roughly comparable to bowling for corpses.
 
Ct613hulu said:
Would the use of cannons in siege warfare still have a significant influence on the social structure of the Realm given the existence of relatively low hanging destructive techniques? It was my understanding that siege warfare was much less of a significant factor in Exalted due to the existence of many spells and charms capable of rapidly taking down walls and fortifications. It seems unlikely that the IRL paradigm of castles weakening the authority of the central power due to their ability to withstand lengthily sieges would exist in the Realm given the large number of powerful sorcerers and dragon-blooded.
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Cannons can approach, but I'm not sure they can equal even the Terrestrial Circle in sheer destructiveness.

My comment on Death of Obsidian Butterflies boils down to 'Mortal soldiers just go away when you point this at them', remember.
 
Ct613hulu said:
Would the use of cannons in siege warfare still have a significant influence on the social structure of the Realm given the existence of relatively low hanging destructive techniques? It was my understanding that siege warfare was much less of a significant factor in Exalted due to the existence of many spells and charms capable of rapidly taking down walls and fortifications. It seems unlikely that the IRL paradigm of castles weakening the authority of the central power due to their ability to withstand lengthily sieges would exist in the Realm given the large number of powerful sorcerers and dragon-blooded.
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You can have way, way, way more cannons in an army than you can have sorcerers, and the cannons can keep on firing for longer. Take the battle of Edgehill in the English Civil War, for example - both armies numbered around 10,000 men, and the Parliamentarians had thirty cannon to the Royalist twenty. You are not going to have a comparable number of sorcerers on a battlefield. Especially when there's nothing stopping you from taking the sorcerers as well as the artillery.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Also, muskets are in many ways less revolutionary than cannon. Cannon revolutionises warfare, because it allows the easy breaking of sieges. Which increases the relative power of centralised authority because now the king (or the Empress, as the case may be) can raise an army, smash you, and not have to pay for a really expensive siege if you don't accede to her demands. The Realm, much like the British Empire, will love cannon. The Realm will develop vast artillerist's corps.
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Doesn't Exalted already have rules for artillery? Or are they all Essence powered? I never actualy bothered reading those rules.
 
I am aware that the cannon's would also have a major impact on the military engagement but I was focusing more on the question of Cannon unique efficacy against fixed fortifications. The tremendous difficulty in besieging a castle had a significant role in perpetuating feudalism and weakening the central authority of states in the real world. My question was really focused on whether this type of paradigm would exist in Exalted prior to the development of cannons as a tool for siege-breaking.

I think that this is an interesting question because of the tremendous influence that the difficulty of sieges will have on the relative power of the Great Houses within the Realm. I believe that increasing the difficulty of sieges would weaken the central authority of the Realm by enabling weaker powers to better withstand the superior forces of the central authority. On the opposite side making it easier for sieges to violently broken would weaken the Great Houses and support the creation of a stronger central authority.


(I realize that this is an very basic summary of incredibly complicated power dynamics but this is not exactly the best time or place for a more lengthily exposition)
 
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