Depends on if there's magic backing up the effect. I mean, if there is any damage is likely much more severe than just some mortal hammering you in the helmet with a sledgehammer.
General Exalted Thread
Depends on if there's magic backing up the effect. I mean, if there is any damage is likely much more severe than just some mortal hammering you in the helmet with a sledgehammer.
Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Unless the artifact specifically says it provides immunity to dismembering attacks (or Crippling effects in general) it does not.
Given the soak value of artifact superheavy plate and the insane levels of damage that would be required for a dismembering attack anyway (I believe 3 health levels in step 10, but don't quote me on that) you can fluff it however you wish. Perhaps the opponent found the one chink in your armor. Perhaps he hit the armor with such precision that the cutting force was transmitted through the indestructible armor layer, leaving the opponent with one arm of their armor hanging useless with his arm still stuck inside it. Perhaps the attacker hungry Lunar unbuckled the straps on your armor with his tongue and swallowed your arm letting the disconnected pieces collapse at your feet.
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Anyone who has had a particularly bad injury in full padding can attest Its totally possible to be badly hurt and lose a limb while wearing indestructible armor, possibly even easier. Because the resulting trauma from the blow is Momentum, the same reason why Bashing damage is still possible, when the damage from the blow is transferred into the armor and used against you as the weapon in its place. Its not because the armor has failed you, but because your body failed to be as resistant as its casing.
Freedom of movement is a double-edged sword in these cases, because if you are unhindered by your equipment, once it becomes unsecured it can freely move around you as well. Amputation in Superheavy plate is from arms rotating on a bad axis and twisting off in sockets, sharp bends at wrong angles from joints turned around a limb and dislodging bone from bone so sharply the limb is left hanging and useless. Full helmets have decapitated their users before by sliding forward or back, crushing throats and popping vertebrae apart from eachother while leaving the skin unbroken.
The only real upside to having artifact armor vs mundane in these cases is that the limb will never be lost or destroyed for the purposes of recovery. The armor is intact even if you are not, so the limb is still inside the sleeve or boot where you left it.
Freedom of movement is a double-edged sword in these cases, because if you are unhindered by your equipment, once it becomes unsecured it can freely move around you as well. Amputation in Superheavy plate is from arms rotating on a bad axis and twisting off in sockets, sharp bends at wrong angles from joints turned around a limb and dislodging bone from bone so sharply the limb is left hanging and useless. Full helmets have decapitated their users before by sliding forward or back, crushing throats and popping vertebrae apart from eachother while leaving the skin unbroken.
The only real upside to having artifact armor vs mundane in these cases is that the limb will never be lost or destroyed for the purposes of recovery. The armor is intact even if you are not, so the limb is still inside the sleeve or boot where you left it.
- Location
- Brittany, France
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- He/Him
The problem is that while all these are technically amputation and would probably result in actual cutting of the limb as a medical procedure, they aren't "amputation" by the standards of the Exalted: bones dislodging, vertebrae popped, flesh mulched are all things the Exalted can recover from as long as the limb remains connected, even if only by skin. As long as the limb is not actually cut off, it will be restored to full health given enough time.
This is still true even if the limb is fully removed from the victim, however. Exalted amputations at any severity can be fixed simply by placing it back on the stump and leaving it secured for the recovery interval. It only develops into long-term "beyond this single combat" problems if the limb is fully destroyed or lost before then, which is much more vanishingly rare and typically the result of magic or otherwise "armor will not help you here" edge-cases.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
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You can take Lethal right through artifact armor though.
"But bashing works" is sort of irrelevant next to that weirdness.
Except if the armor is genuinely tougher and more resilient than its wearer, its not Lethal through the armor, the impacted armor itself is dealing that Lethal damage, the same way a punch of bone-against-bone can split muscle and skin under compression just as easily as a knife.
Justifying it out via damage-displacement is not anymore of an abstracted thing than lumping together cutting, shredding and stabbing as one entire group of "the injuries which kill you."
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
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I can't recall any blunt weapons that do Lethal by default. What you're referring to here is what bashing rolling over into lethal represents, not doing Lethal directly through the armor.
I think we are talking past eachother. What I am saying is, the same abstraction which says "this can happen" can also refer to "this other thing can also happen."
It doesn't matter what damage type the weapon is dealing, the only important point Exalted cares enough to have mechanics for is that damage is delivering the same result onto the wearer of the armor. In this case, the medium is not the weapon piercing the armor, but displacing the armor to deal it instead via the force of impact.
Both are abstractions, neither an inherently more complex logical leap than the other.
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Aaron Peori
Rest in Peace
Grand goremauls.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
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First off, "actually unlike with normal soak, defeating artifact soak doesn't mean you defeat the armor" is a logical leap. "As with normal soak, defeating the soak defeats the armor" is not. But really, that's not all that important.
So what happens, in this "artifact armor is impenetrable and it's just force transference" paradigm, when a Lunar uses Bite Your Arm Right Off And Then Chew It Up Methodology?
Like, I'm sticking to this interpretation because the alternative produces really dumb setting results, not because of solely mechanics.
Point. It's really weird that they do Lethal and ordinary Goremauls don't, but I guess it is in the books.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
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- She/Her
That's more the wierd RPG conception that blunt weapons are somehow less dangerous. Once you get up to twohanded weapons range, much less the even the low end of oversize anime weapons everything is hideously lethal. With that much mass behind a blow cutting the skin doesn't really matter because the sudden blunt force trauma means compound fractures everywhere.
The oversized weapons being perfect-or-die is actually perfectly realistic - fixing lethality basically requires removing those weapons or making them act like they are made of nerf foam.
The oversized weapons being perfect-or-die is actually perfectly realistic - fixing lethality basically requires removing those weapons or making them act like they are made of nerf foam.
Isn't this question effectively, "how could this be stunted"? Because that's the same way that shields, walls, helmets and other sundry similarly do nothing to stop the inevitable effects of a magical damage source at a given level of Five-Finger Death Punch potency.
Perhaps the enhanced bite surges through her jaws as an impossibly dense pressure wave, which without her teeth to focus it, spreads out and liquefies the limb within and crushes bones to powder. The end result is functionally identical, the limb is still pulped beyond repair, but the only difference is one leaves behind an unharmed artifact sleeve loosely drizzling gore into the dirt.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
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There's a reason "and then eat it" was included in the description, you know. Stunting it as "but you don't eat it" defeats the purpose of the exercise.
My point is that armor does not mechanically make you immune to having your limbs chopped off, or consumed, or whatnot; the idea that it does is a side effect of the non-mechanical idea that the magical materials are literally indestructible, not anything that actually rests in mechanics. That this fluff would then contradict mechanics is extremely silly.
The arm is effectively Gone, but the armor remains intact regardless. This is the extent of the mechanics and fluff which is required for this resolution of effects.
Not for an Exalt. The arm damaged like that is explicitly not amputated. It needs to be wholly severed from the body for an Exalt to have it count as amputated. You are trying to rationalize stupid shit Second Edition did, but the actual answer is 'Second Edition has lots of stupid nonsensical parts, and this contradiction is one of them.'
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vicky_molokh
Posthuman spidery thingy.
- Location
- Kyïv, Ukraine
Errata fixed that, now they're Bashing.
I know some people will point to the Sling of Deadly Prowess, but IRL slings are quite penetrative weapons, which is why Romans had a special tool for extracting sling projectiles from people, and why there are some skeletons found with sling projectiles lodged into bone.
If the Crippling tag for you is something which heavily relies on the minute differences between "liquefied" and "severed" to meet the requirements for a genuine, for-reals amputation, then I don't think it is the 2e rules set at fault here.
notthepenguins
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Unless you know, actually consuming the arm was a relevant part of the Charm's effects. Maybe now that you've eaten a part of their body you gain a portion of their strength, manifested as a +3 specialty die bonus against them. Or some other, similar effect; there are plenty of potential mechanical effects and results that require actually severing a limb.
Or hell maybe you just want to chop off someone's arm over a dramatic abyss and think it's pretty lame that the idea of 'indestructible magical materials' gets in the way of that.
Cool article! I definitely think it can apply to these situations, but don't these all fall under the 'problems both larger than, and unrelated to CBT' category I was talking about earlier? Like, I can see how a combination of fallacies #2 (mostly) and #1 and #3 to a lesser extent could create the kind of atmosphere where you would feel like you couldn't speak up, but how is the problem in such a situation not the fucked up social dynamics at play?
Uh, dude, how do you think it works?
Because for me, emotional attachment involves a lowering of barriers and a sharing of more private thoughts and opinions, along with the standard bonding stuff. Part and parcel of that is the ability (and enthusiastic permission, even!) to tell me to stop being a fucknugget if I am, in fact, being a fucknugget.
Is this uncommon where you're from?
If you're talking about the 'it's emotionally draining to evict a creeper from the group' portion of the post, how is that an issue with CBT. I am very skeptical of the notion that someone who goes out of line in a campaign that has CBT, would not be out of line in a campaign without it. Getting one or two creepers among the applicants to join your group is an unfortunate reality of the fact that sometimes you just meet assholes.
(I feel like I may have strayed a bit from the topic, but I'm going to finish this train of thought)
If you're getting more than the 'standard' allotment of assholes, the problem may be more uh, structural. Look to your recruitment process.
So yes, maintaining a positive atmosphere and environment for everyone involved can be kind of draining, I guess. Nobody said that healthy relationships were easy.
Backing up a bit to head off another dodging accusation, let's say that Creeperdude gets added to the group, and creeps someone out, but not in an egregious enough fashion to be kicked from the group immediately. Help me understand your viewpoint, here: If we have the right mix of fallacies #1-3 such that the offended person doesn't feel they can bring their issues up with the group, how is this a problem with CBT and not with the unhealthy social structure at play? Why is Creeperdude (who, having a poor understanding of boundaries, would be stepping on someone's toes no matter what) more problematic with CBT than without? How is the social situation keeping our protagonist from voicing their grievances alleviated if CBT is no longer in the picture?
Honestly, the most compelling (for me) argument against CBT I can think of given what I've read of the arguments from the rest of the thread kind of hinges on something @Aleph said earlier:
Now my knee-jerk reaction was to disagree with her 'this is plainly bad' conclusion based on everything I've been saying so far: CBT is one of a variety of ways available to Solars to be terrible, awful people, and if someone in your group is playing their terrible, awful solar in a way that is squicking you out IRL and you don't feel you can bring it up, that's more indicative of problems in the social situation in your group than anything else.
But there's the issue that sex specifically is a much more problematic topic (however much I think the double standard between violence and sex is stupid, it exists) than other 'I am a terrible person' options available to a Solar. Given that, I can almost sympathize with an argument somewhat analogous to gun control that says that despite the fact that it's important that Solars are allowed to be awful, the damage caused in the failure state is such that it's worth it to get rid of CBT.
I'm sympathetic to that argument, but it still doesn't quite do it for me.
Apologies if this isn't entirely coherent. It's late, but I wanted to finish this.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
Dipping waay back to page 366, I am calling @Aleph out:
We're trying to figure out how to describe 'sorcery' that is used in the construction of military artifacts- helltech no less. I have my own ideas about this, but I wanted to see if you could share some thoughts too.
Anyway- there aren't that may 2nd edition spells that deal with 'Enchantment'. Necromancy has most of them, with 'Build or Enhance a Horror' spells. (Please don't get up in arms about 2e sorcery/necromancy. This is for a game I am actually playing in.)
So here are some of my ideas for general craft-sorcery
We're trying to figure out how to describe 'sorcery' that is used in the construction of military artifacts- helltech no less. I have my own ideas about this, but I wanted to see if you could share some thoughts too.
Anyway- there aren't that may 2nd edition spells that deal with 'Enchantment'. Necromancy has most of them, with 'Build or Enhance a Horror' spells. (Please don't get up in arms about 2e sorcery/necromancy. This is for a game I am actually playing in.)
So here are some of my ideas for general craft-sorcery
- Sorcerous purification rituals: Remove elements/materials/traits for artifice
- Enchantment/Essence association. Pour raw Fire/Solar/Malfean Essence into something- nothing will go wrong!
- Transmutation effects: Build or discover components to an artifact, and then reshape them into another form factor. (This is how you get like- supertough materials by merging the qualities of a magical material with something else).
- Spells to create powerful spirits that can become an animating intelligence.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, hmm. I like the thought of "imbuing" spells (that you know) to make Sorcerous Artifacts like the glasswing lance or cherub shrine, which charge up at 1m/tick with an "artificial anima banner" effect to make them big and flashy before casting the spell in question (and are generally bulky enough that learning the spell is better, plus they break if you use them somewhere where the essence blend is damaging).
As well as that, you have Sorcery providing exotic ingredients for things you can't make otherwise - a working that distils starlight down into a shimmering liquid that you can paint onto your proto-artifact, or which which shrinks a giant redwood down into a bonsai tree that you can put in the miniature shrine to the Wood Dragon that powers your crop-boosting tractor. Or, for that matter, a sorcerous spell-forge Working that lets you handle abstract concepts to weave a cloak of dismissal from the minds of men who shun you.
And yeah, you should probably have direct "enchantment" or "animation" spells that let you set an inanimate object to doing a Thing - whether it be moving or providing some magical effect - that's Sorcerous-keyworded. Animation is a definite speciality of this sort of thing, I suspect - it may be a single spell that lets you set a simple object to Doing Its Job - the broom that sweeps the floor by itself, the harp that plays music on its own, etcetera.
Hmm. There should really be links between Workings, Spells and Artifacts - a chain of progression of "ease of use" - and possibly some similarities between sorcerous enhancements to things and astrological blessings on people. All variants of one system, if you see what I mean.
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
I'll Respond more fully tomorrow, but i had a thought for Sefeid specifically, in that she has a Forge Of Night tool or similar that lets her 'focus' a traditional spell into an enchantment that attaches to some other creation. Mostly because I envision her casting Magma Kraken on some battlefield-striding combat platform and so it constantly spills out magma as it walks.
Remember, too, arguably the sorcerer themselves is an exotic ingredient. It means the tool was forged by one who has mastered essence and can structure and form it in repeated, predictable patterns. Indeed, I would argue that artefacts designed by sorcerers are going to have a pronounced tendency to have "the crafter must be a sorcerer of the Xth Circle" as one of their exotic requirements if they're doing structured things with essence - because if the sorcerer is making it for personal use, that's like a free, zero-effort exotic ingredient. Which then turns out to make things far more complicated in later years when they want to have their Dragonblooded servants make copies, but it can only be made by a Saphire Circle or higher sorcerer.
Things can even get more demanding and esoteric, too, on that front. What if the artefact needs a sorcerer of a certain school to help make it? Indeed, that might even be a problem if Sasi was to try to create one of Keris' designs, because Keris is a pretty hardcore Salinian-Kimberyian, while Sasi uses her personal blend of Cecelynian and Silurian techniques. They use different techniques to alter essence - and different blends of Yozi essence, too.
But then again, I've long called for a single system to handle large-scale projects which would mean the same basic mechanics would involve organising work gangs to build a new canal, or carefully studying and finding the right place on the landscape to strike with your staff in a display of geomantic accupuncture to make the earth spring up and form a new canal. Which would mean that a sorcerer who makes a weapon by hammering demons into shape by using magic to twist their flesh is using the same system and basic mechanics as the person who just makes their sword out of boring old not-ethically-bankrupt jade.
So, I know the opinions on 3E here are rather, ah, divided, but I'm curious. Of those of you who dislike Third Edition, how much of it is mechanical beef, and how much is thematic? Like, Third Edition is pretty much ridiculously better than 2E's mechanics, and having played both Editions extensively (I've been playing 2.5 Edition for two and a half years, Third Edition for sevenish months, on and off). I'll admit, 3E isn't perfect, but it's so, so much better than 2E. This is, admittedly, an incredibly low bar to pass, but I find 3E genuinely fun and interesting to play. In 3E, I enjoy it in part because of the system, not in spite of it.
How many of the rest of you who dislike the thematic directions or the actions of the devs and stuff at least find promise in the system itself?
How many of the rest of you who dislike the thematic directions or the actions of the devs and stuff at least find promise in the system itself?