The Devil-Tiger charm tree in Broken Winged Crane is the most obvious sign of it. Most people here consider it badly implemented mechanically, but those Charms turn you into a full out Primordial 2.0. Moreover, when they statted out the Ebon Dragon in RotSE, they specifically wrote his essence ten Charms that make him the himself as General Charms that any given character can only learn one set of, but which Infernals can learn and which would turn them into clones of whichever Yozi they took them from if learned.
General Exalted Thread
I remember reading somewhere about the fact that the original Deliberative chamber didn't shut off charms (because, as discussed earlier, that's awful design space) but it DID make all personal essence count as peripheral essence while in the chamber, thus making it obvious if you were trying some shenanigans.
That was probably just some homebrew I came across, but it seems like a decent enough way to handle it.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
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- The Land of Memes
Wouldn't that be a Shaping Effect?
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
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Nah. It doesn't actually drain motes so it's not the sort of "lol get fucked" effect that needs to be Shaping. With that satisfied, as it would be utterly pointless for it to exist if it was Shaping, it probably shouldn't be.
Ah. Yeah, good point, you're right. My bad.
It was talked about in Dreams of the First Age.
Rather than cause all Essence spend there to count as Peripheral it instead projected glyphs relevant to the Charms used for all to see, basically giving everyone the mechanical equivalent of All Encompassing Sorceror's Eyes, which makes all Essence use Obvious to the one with the Charm.
Rather than cause all Essence spend there to count as Peripheral it instead projected glyphs relevant to the Charms used for all to see, basically giving everyone the mechanical equivalent of All Encompassing Sorceror's Eyes, which makes all Essence use Obvious to the one with the Charm.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
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Better than AESS actually -- it voided the need to roll to understand the Charm, iirc.
frozenchicken
Does not have a custom title.
In fairness, it does let you cannibalize all the General Charms you've previously bought in order to make your own suite, so it's not too bad xp-wise.
Honestly, it's still pretty bad.
The Devil Tiger cascade adds up to something like +2 MDV against demons, an uncapped lifespan, and the privilege of being able to buy into a new Charmset when you've gotta start all over again from the entry level E1-2 Charms. Whereas any other Exalt at the same level of development is.....gonna be spending their XP on E6+ Charms.
Yeah......
Devil Tiger gets buy on its sheer conceptional bling factor rather than any mechanical chops.
Don't forget the Third-Circle demons you can create. And they're outside too, so they're immediately useful.
I see the difference as Solars becoming personally powerful, while Infernals become more powerful as a group. Vertical vs. Horizontal expansion.
In solo combat, an E10 Solar will beat an E10 Infernal who went Devil-Tiger, but a smart Devil-Tiger isn't going to be fighting solo, he'll have a number of 2nd and 3rd circles backing him up.
notthepenguins
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Except... you can trade in your old ones for new ones and put you at almost the same place you were in the essence advancement curve. Like yeah, it's an xp tax, but it's not nearly as bad as you're saying.
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
Didn't Solars get Yozi fighting Discipline specificially to counter DTs that have 3rd Circle Souls?
It prevents a Yozi-like being from instagibbing them in one round, by letting them pay the costs of a charm or combo once, and activate it freely against all members of said being until his next action.
Basically, all the Solar's charms become action-long when he's fighting a networked being.
Not really.
So you trade in Excellencies(and other General Charms) for other Excellencies, which should be balanced against each other, leaving you basically the same as you were before.
The only difference is that now, you're Ormagöden, Cremator of the Skies and get access some shinny new Charms. Which are mechanically equal to pre existing Charms and you have to buy your way up the new Charmtree, starting at E1-E2. Whereas your buddy who didn't go Devil Tiger is spending the same amount of XP on Malfeas's E6+ Charms.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Unless I'm misremembering, you don't just turn in the general charms, you turn in the entire charm trees. So you're still learning E6+ Charms.
I might be wrong, but I think it's one of the reasons ES didn't like Devil Tiger - you get up to the point, learning to operate in the shadow of the Titans, learning to make their logic your own, lead to the places you want to go, then you throw it all away.
notthepenguins
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As well as anything with an Excellency prereq... which I actually thought helped you more, but only Cece and TED look to have much gated behind an Excellency.
Yeah, that's derpy then.
You're misremembering. You can only turn in the general charms, not the entire charm trees.
Nope. Only the General stuff and whatever is gated behind the Excellencies.
Which is a lot less than you'd think.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
If you have VEE as a well established Exalt, you wouldn't give it up as a Devil Tiger. You make your own version, just as good (maybe a little different if you want). Make sure you include the "She Excels in giving others what they want in order to influence and own them" clause in your excellency.
So, no one has an opinion on "Squid versus Greased Pig" for the martial art about wrestling while soaked in oil, water, or mud?
I think it might work better as evocations from Bargain with Mara style tatoos. That way you're not invalidating the use of a chosen weapon, and you don't have to go past a Form charm, which means Essence 2 in all known E3 martial arts.
Turning every exotic effect into a martial art is a bit of a slippery slope.
I second this. It can easily go really stupid places.
vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Yeah, 'can detect the empirical effects but not the reason' seems to be the current ad hoc interpretation in the game I'm in. However, at this point I have to wonder:
what is the functional difference between knowing about all the effects but not the name/origin, and knowing it with the name/origin?
Because with this interpretation, the Exalts gain justification to say "Jane goes berserk no later than on the tenth day if subjected to high amounts of direct mind-affecting magic", knowingly use Charms and tactics that reduce Limit accumulation, keep their berserking friends away from crowds when they're about to snap etc. etc. It really sounds like "Oh, in this world nobody knows about electricity; sure, they craft batteries and computers, but they don't know that it's Electricity, a phenomenon crafted by the great awakened ethereal mage Tesla the Paradigm-Shifter" (note: statement for illustrative purposes only; not saying that Tesla was actually the first one to notice the phenomenon).
I mean, at this point, it seems like nothing prevents a character from learning Integrity: Spirit-Maintaining Manoeuvre and spend motes in place of WP vs. UMI and Virtue Compels (which is not always preferable, but affordable), because a character does notice the effects produced by the GC, or the lack thereof. What is usually / can be done to avoid making the distinction in knowledge meaningless from a functional PoV?
Remind me, does it make any difference if the Yozi-like in question is the head of a single unit made of its Third-Circles with its seven or whatever Third- and Second-Circle Heroes/Sorcerers?
Edit: apparently it is of no use in a War, at least no mention of such a use; also, it very explicitly says that it offers no discount against an Exalt who grows extra souls, though it does offer the discount against those souls if originally used against the Exalt, so it is important for Devil-Tiggers to be the last one to jump into a flurry. Teh weirdness.
Ah, Shaping! A very good thing to look out for each time one hears 'directly affects the character, no save', except I'm not quite clear on identifying them. I think I read somewhere that any directly-affecting effect with listed no defense mechanism automatically gains the Shaping keyword, but I can't find it. Is it (or something similar to it) actually written somewhere in the books, or am I misremembering?
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notthepenguins
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If you have no reason to think it's not a base part of being an Exalt, you have no compelling reason to think it can be 'cured.'
Sigh. Mechanics are abstractions, not pure in-setting reality, as I keep saying.