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General Exalted Thread

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Jon Chung said:
My view has always been that the primary issue with artifact crafting in Exalted is due to the model of artifacts used traditionally in the game being remarkably close to D&D magic items. Stuff which grants you really useful magic buff effects, which improve your combat numbers in an extremely efficient way. Stuff which grants you powers and abilities you can't access as a normal part of your character builds which also do not cost permanent character-building resources.
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My problem is that Exalted used the term Artifacts in the first place.

The majority of the bling is literally improved items made out of magical (I shudder at that) materials that are more appropriately called essence reactive materials. Going back all the way to Tolkien the vast majority of 1-3 dot artifacts are Bilbo Baggins Mithril Shirt (Artifact 3) or other such items.

I think Exalted should have taken a cue from D&D regarding the terms artifacts and magical items

Call your standard Daiklaive, armor, boots of god kicking, etc a different term. These represent the players being blinged out with looted gear of essence reactive materials.

Artifacts are the ultra powerful game shaping artifacts (with awakened Least Gods who have their own agenda) that aren't just handed out at character generation
 
fitzgerald said:
My problem is that Exalted used the term Artifacts in the first place.

The majority of the bling is literally improved items made out of magical (I shudder at that) materials that are more appropriately called essence reactive materials. Going back all the way to Tolkien the vast majority of 1-3 dot artifacts are Bilbo Baggins Mithril Shirt (Artifact 3) or other such items.

I think Exalted should have taken a cue from D&D regarding the terms artifacts and magical items

Call your standard Daiklaive, armor, boots of god kicking, etc a different term. These represent the players being blinged out with looted gear of essence reactive materials.

Artifacts are the ultra powerful game shaping artifacts (with awakened Least Gods who have their own agenda) that aren't just handed out at character generation
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Yes, let's rip all mysticism and wonder out of the setting and use perfectly boring scientific terms. God, Essence Reactive Materials. Could you have picked a more dull way to describe them?
 
Vanigo said:
But that's tantamount to getting rid of artifacts entirely, which causes some pretty serious problems with the setting, particularly where scavenging from ancient ruins is concerned. And "artifacts exist but cap out at +1" isn't much better. If legendary artifacts are legendary only by association with their wielders, and kind of meh in and of themselves, then what's all the fuss over the lost wonders of the First Age (and more specifically the ones that the Shogunate was unable to maintain)? Why does the Realm make a point of controlling most of the world's Jade if Jade equipment is kind of take-it-or-leave-it? I guess you could say "noncombat artifacts are good but artifact weapons and armor aren't worth much", but that doesn't seem very plausible.
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"Meh" is relative. A First Age era suit of armour might be "just" a suit of really fantastic armour, let's say, but it's still worth retrieving to wear or sell for enormous amounts of money because the modern era does not have the ability to build that suit of armour any longer. Still, you know, it's a suit of armour. It won't give you a suite of Resistance Charms that need to be balanced against other Resistance Charms in an endless nightmare cascade of combinatorial hell. It won't give you +5 Dexterity. It's just armour.

And if you dig out the Solar equivalent of F-22 Raptors, that's fine, you don't have jet fuel, spare parts or the maintenance manual, better get on putting all those together. Probably need a nation-state, eh?
 
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You should probably not take it for granted that, in this thread, people are talking about 3e when they say 'Exalted'.

You should also probably calm down.
 
Fenrir666 said:
Yes, let's rip all mysticism and wonder out of the setting and use perfectly boring scientific terms. God, Essence Reactive Materials. Could you have picked a more dull way to describe them?
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What Mysticism and Wonder?

Thaumaturgy has been gutted and made near useless (why the flying fuck would any player character want to spend 3-5 xp points learning how to cut bread in half or speak with one particular mountain spirit). Daiklaives have been made generic statsticks whose only difference is a sub-system that most people won't bother dealing with, and occult once again is 'lore by a different name'.

I've stated before that I want there to be a 'third' tier so to speak, between mundane items and proper artifacts, one where you can have swords made from living crystal or a bow whose wood was grown in moon-silver tainted soil. A layer for the 'everyday magics' that might be practiced by a hedgewitch, that might be imbued into a weapon to grant it a spirit cutting edge after being purified by the Head Abbott of the local immaculate church, etc etc.

That way when someone pulls out a true soulsteel Daiklaive, the party might know they are in for a real danger, when they might only have mass produced 'lesser' daiklaives to challenge it with.
 
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Jon Chung said:
A First Age era suit of armour might be "just" a suit of really fantastic armour, let's say, but it's still worth retrieving to wear or sell for enormous amounts of money
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Part of the problem here is that the game doesn't really treat Artifacts as valuable. Rare, yes... but valuable, no.

If the game actually treated Artifacts as valuable, there'd be guidelines for running plots in the vein of Pulp Fiction's priceless briefcase, mechanics for ransoming captured Artifacts back to a dead owner's bloodline in the same manner that captured nobles were ransomed in the real world, background elements intertwined or driven by specific Artifacts all over the place, or something to actually affect character and player behavior instead of having the first daiklave you get your hands on be immeasurably useful and the second one just be a nice wall hanging.
 
Aaron Peori said:
Don't talismans and everyday wonders already exist?
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If by exist you mean they have a few short lines of word and absolutely no clue on how you get or make them. They don't fit in with the current crafting system for one thing. But yeah, I want that sort of stuff expanded and similar, when combined with something like Alepths stuff on small m magical materials
Aleph said:
Lesser artifacts, whee!
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I prefer the term 'wonders' myself, but it is inspired by a large part by your stuff on magical materials, jadesteel and similar. Something that the occultist or crafter can make that explains why daiklaives are considered rare yet every weapon based NPC or quick character seems to have one.
 
landcollector said:
Artifact is 3 syllables (relatively short and sweet), whereas Essence Reactive Materials is a mouthful at 9 syllables. Needs a more compact, yet still evocative, term.
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Wonders.

A masterpiece that a mortal smith might spend his entire life working on, and that his recently Exalted son might wield for the rest of his life, but a twilight with the right infrastructure might mass produce to increase the might of his Dawn/Zeniths armies.
 
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Sucal said:
Wonders.

A masterpiece that a mortal smith might spend his entire life working on, and that his recently Exalted son might wield for the rest of his life, but a twilight with the right infrastructure might mass produce to increase the might of his Dawn/Zeniths armies.
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Effectively a magically fluffed version of Perfect Equipment? Something that just gives you the stat boosts and leaves the awesome powers to true Artifacts?
 
Jon Chung said:
"Meh" is relative. A First Age era suit of armour might be "just" a suit of really fantastic armour, let's say, but it's still worth retrieving to wear or sell for enormous amounts of money because the modern era does not have the ability to build that suit of armour any longer. Still, you know, it's a suit of armour. It won't give you a suite of Resistance Charms that need to be balanced against other Resistance Charms in an endless nightmare cascade of combinatorial hell. It won't give you +5 Dexterity. It's just armour.
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But why is it worth tracking this armor down and digging it out of a haunted ruin if it's "just armor"? Is it so much better than contemporary armor that it's worth the risk? Then we're back to "magical bling is super-desirable". Is it just armor +1? Then why all the fuss?

And if you dig out the Solar equivalent of F-22 Raptors, that's fine, you don't have jet fuel, spare parts or the maintenance manual, better get on putting all those together. Probably need a nation-state, eh?
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At that point it seems like a bit of a white elephant. By the time you can actually use the things you're just about in position to make your own F-16s, at which point having a handful of F-22s is just the cherry on top. It won't do anyone in the Age of Sorrows a bit of good, and if they have any sense they'll know it, so I'm not sure why they'd get excited about it.
 
Vanigo said:
But why is it worth tracking this armor down and digging it out of a haunted ruin if it's "just armor"? Is it so much better than contemporary armor that it's worth the risk? Then we're back to "magical bling is super-desirable". Is it just armor +1? Then why all the fuss?
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It's desirable as armour, sure. Think like, say, Fallout. Pre-war Combat Armour is pretty good stuff! It's not like having it means you automatically win fights with people wearing post-war Metal Armour or even tilts the fight in a heavy manner, but it's certainly worth having.

If there was a US Army National Guard post right there for you to loot for Combat Armour, would you wear it over making Metal Armour? Of course you would. If you were a raider warlord without such a handy source and someone put Combat Armour up for sale, would you buy it (or kill the auctioneer)? Of course you would.

However, this is fine: it's "just" lightweight, comfortable, hard-wearing and protective armour. This has a very low impact on the metagame, relatively speaking. The lost products of the pre-apocalypse civilization don't have to hand out Dexterity bonuses or have their own charmsets to be worth looting, y'know. We can have a scavenger economy and also no combinatorial hell or Codpieces of Strength.

Vanigo said:
At that point it seems like a bit of a white elephant. By the time you can actually use the things you're just about in position to make your own F-16s, at which point having a handful of F-22s is just the cherry on top. It won't do anyone in the Age of Sorrows a bit of good, and if they have any sense they'll know it, so I'm not sure why they'd get excited about it.
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Because F-22s will murder the fuck out of F-16s, and if you can build F-16s someone else who is not your friend can probably do the same.
 
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Fenrir666 said:
Which means, in Exalted, that it is magical. They are materials which are magical.
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Okay? Most of Creation is magical to some degree, and little thaumaturgic rituals are a part of life (Washing your hands? Ritual that helps fend off disease gods.).

landcollector said:
Artifact is 3 syllables (relatively short and sweet), whereas Essence Reactive Materials is a mouthful at 9 syllables. Needs a more compact, yet still evocative, term.
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I was asked for something that's duller, not something less evocative. I just wanted to point out that "artifact" is a pretty dull way to describe things, in addition to providing little useful information about them.

On the topic of better terms, "relic" for powerful magical items and "wonders" for the lesser ones feels better than "artifact", just from a few minutes of thinking about it. Making them separate categories would also allow a broader spectrum of strengths, though I'm not sure how to implement that mechanically outside of giving multiple wonders for each dot you have in the background or something.
 
Bursting Eagerness Soul said:
Effectively a magically fluffed version of Perfect Equipment? Something that just gives you the stat boosts and leaves the awesome powers to true Artifacts?
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Pretty much. The thought was that to build an 'artifact' daiklaive, you take a wonder daiklaive then add a few powers. Be it a number of spirit charms and perhaps an 'urge' for the weapon (I liked Hellforged Wonders and evocations aren't that bad) to represent its 'legendary power' or a few unique ablities added onto it, or all of the above. Perhaps an artifact weapon is the same as a wonder, but its fame and former owners have given it a cult that obeys the wielder. Of course if the sword that famously slew an entire branch of the Cynis in a single night resurfaced, they'd be sure to pay attention to it.

Or perhaps it can do the whole 'cut through a mountain' thing, but refuses to obey a Solar since their own Melee charms can do it better. Or the demon forged into it might eat the memories of the target, leaving them with a false history of having always served the wielder. That what you can have your stormbringers and your excaliburs but they aren't quite on the same level as people who can do that stuff natively. So while an 'evocation' under this system might be weaker then a true exalted charm, it might also be cheaper to purchase with XP (or it might start with a strong urge but all the evocations unlocked... if you can keep your half of the bargain).

As for the backgrounds and such? I was mostly thinking that each character can start with a Wonder, then you either get 3 dots of wonders per merit point spent, or you have to purchase them with resources/hire a craftsmen/alchemist to make more etc. So the Occultist might have an ever filled bag of Devil Powder, even as the Dawn has his glorious statstick
 
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landcollector said:
Hmm, wouldn't that result in a bit of Background/Merit (whatever they're called in 3e, I don't know *shrugs*) bloat though?
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Not really. You could slot this sort of thing into the existing Artifact merit with ease: just make then 2 dot artifacts. At least as far as combat gear goes, and not one off effects. Just slice out Evocations from artifact weapons/armor and your done. Same for mundane weapons with limited effects (like spirit cutting). Artifact 2 is just in reach for truly skilled mortals, and once you start adding in equipment/workshop bonuses it gets fairly reasonable, if difficult, to make.

(Or make some 2 dot thamaturegy powers that are the focus of elite units and tightly protected secrets of nations and guilds, if you want temp bonuses. Things like the Ghost Hunters tools and Warding Talisman from the Sijanese Deadspeaker/Exorcist/Shaman in the Antagonists section is a good guideline.)

Mortal usable artifacts should obviously have a higher rating, being rare as hell or carrying significant drawbacks. I like gunzosha's, dammit.
 
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