Not 'easy'. More like 'necessary, so Elders will do it until they either succeed or are eliminated, and of those who succeed, their success will be better than Lookshy by the same margins as a Solar infrastructure-builder is better than a bunch of DB infrastructure-builders'.

Basically, it's a creation of a situation where Elders either maintain an island of 'Mild First-Ageness' in their Dominion, or get wiped out by those who are closer to such an ideal and/or those who manage to sabotage their infrastructure. People like pointing out how "this had to happen before the PCs started doing it", and that's what happens. Of course, if that ultimately does result in a "Elders got wiped out before PCs were created; game without Elders", that's not an inherently bad thing.

And why is such resistant infrastructure not having significant costs? Why is having such infrastructure even remotely possible without additional, non-hardened infrastructure?

Oh, right, because your ability to critically read and respond to a given scenario is about the same as the average housecat's.
It's largely an example of "Look, even mere Terrestrials can achieve this; now let's see how much better can a single Solar circle (or even a single Solar) get than that".
So you're using an example that doesn't apply to the proposed situation while ignoring and disregarding all of the things that factor into the example's present state?Why do something that utterly moronic and without merit?

I mean, even ignoring the garbage of the 'mere Terrestrial' line, you're ignoring the principle advantage that Lookshy has over a Solar circle in a similar situation: 1000+ exalted rather than 5. Given the issue with infrastructure as presented is that having exalted be able to guard all points of attack is generally impossible due to the sheer number of points this numbers advantage is pretty critical.
 
Not 'easy'. More like 'necessary, so Elders will do it until they either succeed or are eliminated, and of those who succeed, their success will be better than Lookshy by the same margins as a Solar infrastructure-builder is better than a bunch of DB infrastructure-builders'.

Basically, it's a creation of a situation where Elders either maintain an island of 'Mild First-Ageness' in their Dominion, or get wiped out by those who are closer to such an ideal and/or those who manage to sabotage their infrastructure. People like pointing out how "this had to happen before the PCs started doing it", and that's what happens. Of course, if that ultimately does result in a "Elders got wiped out before PCs were created; game without Elders", that's not an inherently bad thing.


It's largely an example of "Look, even mere Terrestrials can achieve this; now let's see how much better can a single Solar circle (or even a single Solar) get than that".
I don't understand. You're comparing the combined work of many cooperating generations of Exalts, who all have expert level competence in their chosen field (their is no moderately experienced Terrestrial Exalt who won't have a 5 in at least one ability) to the singular work of one Solar whose starting off with very few resources.

Lookshy and the Realm are examples of hundreds of years of Exalt level competance making some of the most powerful nations in Creation. An Elder Solar is at a major disadvantage crafting their own nation and infrastructure, due to the fact that the majority of Dragon-Blooded hate their kind, and thus they can't really be too showy in their flashy Solar Magic.

It's going to take hundreds of years for an Elder to make something comparable to Lookshy, and it's going to be fragile, because the Elder has probably made himself indispensable to the society, and it's going to break down if he dies, whearas a Dragon-Blooded society is only going to collapse if most of the Dragon-Blooded die, and killing that many Exalts is a lot trickier than killing one Elder.
 
We're talking Solar Elders. Of course they'll have spent millenia on their projects.

Pfft.

No. They won't. Because they're all dead.

You might remember something called the Usurpation? Sort of killed almost all the Solars. Quite a lot of the survivors ran away and died like little babies in the Invisible Fortress, because they were so scared of millions of Dragonblooded out for their blood.

There is literally no point post-Usurpation where a Solar can begin the mass-scale infrastructural work required for the sort of "First Age lite" you so casually assume as an axiom without being detected by the Terrestrials or the Sidereals. There are only 17 Solars running around before five years ago in-setting. Most of them are going to be all on their own, or at most rarely managing to form a small circle. As soon as they stop moving and begin the mass-scale infrastructural projects we posit are necessary for such things, they lose their stealth.

That is unfortunate for them, and usually fatal.
 
To be fair, warstrider rules are supposed to be punitive and background sinky. It's supposed to be almost impossible to begin play with one and even high experience Exalts will often consider investing in one less useful than just putting effort into Charms.

If that's the case, they could have saved wordcount by having a picture of a guymelef and the words FUCK YOU pasted over repeatedly. One page is a lot cheaper than a dozen devoted to telling you much this thing is going to suck.
 
And why is such resistant infrastructure not having significant costs? Why is having such infrastructure even remotely possible without additional, non-hardened infrastructure?
Because Lookshy seems quite resistant so far. Resistant enough that it didn't fall through loss of non-resistant infrastructure.

I mean, even ignoring the garbage of the 'mere Terrestrial' line, you're ignoring the principle advantage that Lookshy has over a Solar circle in a similar situation: 1000+ exalted rather than 5. Given the issue with infrastructure as presented is that having exalted be able to guard all points of attack is generally impossible due to the sheer number of points this numbers advantage is pretty critical.
I'm not ignoring. I'm working on the assumption that Glorious Solar Persuasion is generally good enough to recruit a thousand Terrestrials for that. And I'm assuming this based on the way mere returning Solars (not Elders) are presented in the Vanilla Exalted Campaign in the corebook.

Pfft.

No. They won't. Because they're all dead.
If they're all dead, then you don't have an Elder problem to worry about because you don't have Elders to worry about.
 
I'm not ignoring. I'm working on the assumption that Glorious Solar Persuasion is generally good enough to recruit a thousand Terrestrials for that. And I'm assuming this based on the way mere returning Solars (not Elders) are presented in the Vanilla Exalted Campaign in the corebook.
Recruiting a thousand Terrestrials is generally going to require a long campaign of either A) Talking with each Terrestrial individually and monofocusing on Presence, Performance, and Socialize. Which means you need a buddy to protect your fragile self, and you're weak against Terrestrials faking allegiance, beating your rolls, and then stabbing you in the back. Or B) Changing society to like Solars, which means you need to be sneakier than every Solar in the Ursurpation, because Sidereals are watching for Solars who have this 'genius' idea.
 
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If that's the case, they could have saved wordcount by having a picture of a guymelef and the words FUCK YOU pasted over repeatedly. One page is a lot cheaper than a dozen devoted to telling you much this thing is going to suck.

You know cutting out the second half of my post to make my point seem different than what it was is generally considered being an asshole.

You want a Guymelef? Go ask the Cult of the Illuminated for one. Just don't ask where it came from.
 
If they're all dead, then you don't have an Elder problem to worry about because you don't have Elders to worry about.

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Because when we're arguing "the requirements for infrastructure to support the greatest works of the Exalted means that an elder can't just sit in a cave - they have to go out and make themselves a target" and you are disagreeing with us, you have to actually justify your own damn argument. You can't say "oh, then elders aren't a problem" when we are arguing that "the reasons there are no elders with First Age stuff around is that the infrastructural requirements to support it means that they have to either do without, or they make themselves a target and almost certainly die".

You can't just parasite on our argument when you are stating a completely different thing.

I'm not ignoring. I'm working on the assumption that Glorious Solar Persuasion is generally good enough to recruit a thousand Terrestrials for that. And I'm assuming this based on the way mere returning Solars (not Elders) are presented in the Vanilla Exalted Campaign in the corebook.

...

My gods. You're actually serious.

Oh, pray, tell me how waving your glorious Solar cock in the direction of a thousand Dragonblooded will stop them using their social defences and beating you to death for trying to mind control them. Because there are a grand total of two polities in modern Creation with a thousand Dragonblooded as members. There's the Realm, who hate your guts for political and religious reasons. And there's Lookshy, the Immaculate Faith-practicing, Wyld-hunt maintaining, self-proclaimed "last remnants of the Shogunate" who hate your guts for political and religious reasons, but might be slightly more prepared to deal with you at a distance as long as you're not actively a threat to them.

PS, actively trying to mind control Dragonblooded into serving you makes you a threat to them.

The Usurpation happened because the Solars were domineering assholes who took the loyalty of the Dragonblooded for granted. The Sidereals wouldn't have been able to get the Terrestrials on side if the Deliberative hadn't managed to already alienate them. You're doing a wonderful job of demonstrating exactly why the Terrestrials were right to rise up and beat to death overlords who took them for granted.
 
Because Lookshy seems quite resistant so far. Resistant enough that it didn't fall through loss of non-resistant infrastructure.
Before the game begins the only concentrated points of Exalted power opposed to Lookshy is the Realm and possibly the Lunars, and one of the points that defines the Realm/Lookshy conflict is that the Realm wants to take Lookshy without destroying it's infastructure because that's part of what it wants. The Lunars are significantly more fragmented no matter what, and likely aren't as opposed to Lookshy if only because the latter's reach is smaller than the Realm allowing Lunars more freedom. So the Lunars aren't seriously trying to break Lookshy. Hell, they and the Sidereals quite possibly aid it at times. Plus, Lookshy actually does have pretty good security because it does have lots of exalted that it can use to protect it's infrastructure.

But despite that it's canon that Lookshy's position has gotten worse over time.

I'm not ignoring. I'm working on the assumption that Glorious Solar Persuasion is generally good enough to recruit a thousand Terrestrials for that. And I'm assuming this based on the way mere returning Solars (not Elders) are presented in the Vanilla Exalted Campaign in the corebook.
Where are you getting that Solars are going to be able to easily get that many Exalted on their side? Keep in mind that, assuming some sense and thus removing ones from Lookshy or the Realm, the numbers you're talking about comprise 1/5th of the Terrestrials, and that they're spread around the 4/5ths of the world in small numbers. How are you even going to contact this many people with any sort of ease?
 
Because Lookshy seems quite resistant so far. Resistant enough that it didn't fall through loss of non-resistant infrastructure.
Absolutely false.

Lookshy's situation has gotten consistently worse over the years as more and more irreplaceable shit fails. Their stockpile was never anything they could produce in the first place, because it required the industrial base and genius of the First Age that no longer existed; the part of their arsenal that was Shogunate-maintainable equipment is still a ridiculous drain on their resources to maintain, much less produce. They're lengthening their fall, not creating an infrastructural base to make things.

The idea that any Elder Exalt could make a Lookshy-equivalent state is completely ridiculous, unless that Elder also came with an army of loyal Dragonblooded and the right mix of amassed Shogunate-era weaponry that can still be maintained with enough effort, and First Age weaponry that can't be maintained but can be expended as a one-off in case of dire need.

And that mix doesn't exist anymore, because the Realm and Lookshy have approximately all of it.
 
Are you being deliberately obtuse?

Because when we're arguing "the requirements for infrastructure to support the greatest works of the Exalted means that an elder can't just sit in a cave - they have to go out and make themselves a target" and you are disagreeing with us, you have to actually justify your own damn argument. You can't say "oh, then elders aren't a problem" when we are arguing that "the reasons there are no elders with First Age stuff around is that the infrastructural requirements to support it means that they have to either do without, or they make themselves a target and almost certainly die".

You can't just parasite on our argument when you are stating a completely different thing.
You seem to be arguing for Solars having infrastructural dependencies because that's what it takes to make the low-Essence fellas capable of defeating them (because otherwise there's an Elder Problem). Which means that Elders, being interested in not being defeated, would try much harder to have glorious infrastructures of their own (e.g. by Perfect Mirror'ing Dragonbloods in Lookshy and gradually concentrating political power). And then you say that Elders are dead. Which means that there isn't an Elder Problem and nobody needs to worry about making Elders vulnerable.

So are they a problem that needs to be solved (i.e made defeatable by low-Essence fellas) or not?

My gods. You're actually serious.

Oh, pray, tell me how waving your glorious Solar cock in the direction of a thousand Dragonblooded will stop them using their social defences and beating you to death for trying to mind control them. Because there are a grand total of two polities in modern Creation with a thousand Dragonblooded as members. There's the Realm, who hate your guts for political and religious reasons. And there's Lookshy, the Immaculate Faith-practicing, Wyld-hunt maintaining, self-proclaimed "last remnants of the Shogunate" who hate your guts for political and religious reasons, but might be slightly more prepared to deal with you at a distance as long as you're not actively a threat to them.

PS, actively trying to mind control Dragonblooded into serving you makes you a threat to them.

The Usurpation happened because the Solars were domineering assholes who took the loyalty of the Dragonblooded for granted. The Sidereals wouldn't have been able to get the Terrestrials on side if the Deliberative hadn't managed to already alienate them. You're doing a wonderful job of demonstrating exactly why the Terrestrials were right to rise up and beat to death overlords who took them for granted.
'How' is a matter of how much the system is capable of delivering what the fluff promised. Fluff says that Presence 5 (or was it Performance 5?) can convert even a Wyld Hunter into a worshipper of UCS. That's before factoring in Charms. Standard Vanilla Campaign Description mentions returning Solars restoring the Solar Deliberative - that seems to involve getting lots and lots of DBs onboard.

Of course, I'm totally pessimistic regarding whether the system delivers what the fluff promises, which means that game-mechanical handwaves might be required in order for the world to work as described.
 
You seem to be arguing for Solars having infrastructural dependencies because that's what it takes to make the low-Essence fellas capable of defeating them (because otherwise there's an Elder Problem). Which means that Elders, being interested in not being defeated, would try much harder to have glorious infrastructures of their own (e.g. by Perfect Mirror'ing Dragonbloods in Lookshy and gradually concentrating political power). And then you say that Elders are dead. Which means that there isn't an Elder Problem and nobody needs to worry about making Elders vulnerable.

So are they a problem that needs to be solved (i.e made defeatable by low-Essence fellas) or not?
There are types of Exalted not called 'Solars.'
 
There are types of Exalted not called 'Solars.'
Okay, getting to where it started:
How do non-Solar Exalted Elders become less of a problem through the removal of Solars' infrastructural independency provided by Craftsman Needs No Tools / Words-as-Workshop?

Because the hate against CNNT seems to be hinged on the idea that Solar miracle-workers need to be infrastructurally dependent.
 
So are they a problem that needs to be solved (i.e made defeatable by low-Essence fellas) or not?
Let me put this in simple terms, Vicky.

If it is possible for an elder Exalt to build infrastructure which is universally resistant to attack, or otherwise acquire the benefits thereof in a manner that cannot be easily attacked, such as Aleph's model of the super-crafter sitting in a cave and punching rocks into power armour... Why are the elders all dead?

If elders can do that, they are, logically, unassailable by anybody without commensurate advantages. There should already be a Solar (or other kind of elder) who hid in a cave for the last seven hundred years, building a mighty empire with Lookshy-level fortifications everywhere, because once that train gets rolling, how are you going to stop it?

But there aren't. Because the elders are all dead. Because infrastructure that is well defended everywhere cannot be made, so the nations of elder Exalted are mighty, but not invulnerable.
 
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Okay, getting to where it started:
How do non-Solar Exalted Elders become less of a problem through the removal of Solars' infrastructural independency provided by Craftsman Needs No Tools / Words-as-Workshop?

Because the hate against CNNT seems to be hinged on the idea that Solar miracle-workers need to be infrastructurally dependent.
No no no, you don't get to do that.

You've been the one justifying every argument as if Solars are the only Elders who exist, along with your hilarious lack of comprehension of how the setting elements you're talking about are even stated to work in text.

Don't just leap back to the starting point of CNNT in an attempt to cloak that.
 
Fluff says that Presence 5 (or was it Performance 5?) can convert even a Wyld Hunter into a worshipper of UCS.
Hahahaha. Dude. You're generalising from one line in core, when half of the ability examples are bullshit hyperbole (hint: the difference between 1 and 5 dice is about 2 successes, not "complete novice" to "convert Wyld Hunts"). Everything else in the line makes a mockery of them, and in several of them the writers were too lazy to even come up with good or relevant examples in the first place.
You seem to be arguing for Solars having infrastructural dependencies because that's what it takes to make the low-Essence fellas capable of defeating them (because otherwise there's an Elder Problem). Which means that Elders, being interested in not being defeated, would try much harder to have glorious infrastructures of their own (e.g. by Perfect Mirror'ing Dragonbloods in Lookshy and gradually concentrating political power). And then you say that Elders are dead. Which means that there isn't an Elder Problem and nobody needs to worry about making Elders vulnerable.
And glorious infrastructures have costs. Lookshy extorts the Scavenger Lands for tax money to fund itself. It pours hundreds of thousands of Exalt-hours into maintaining what it has - which still isn't enough. Everyone in the Scavenger Lands and most people in the Inner Threshold know about it. It's got thousands of Dragonblooded, all of whom are fucking Exalted, not mook chumps you can take for granted. The Realm is willing to outwait them because they're slowly decaying and the Realm wants their infrastructure and doesn't think ruining the Blessed Isle is worth firing on somewhere so close to them.

There are 17 elder Solars in the setting. If they want infrastructure, they have to face all those problems. They still need resources if they want to produce a high concentration of force, which tells both the Realm and Lookshy where they are. They still need Dragonblooded to help them if they want any kind of power in their extremities - and waving a Glorious Solar Dick in a DB's face gets you dogpiled and killed, regardless of what one hyperbolic line in core says. If they're close the Blessed Isle, they get dogpiled and killed; if they're far away then word will eventually reach the Realm and they get Sword of Creation'd. They cannot put even a hundredth as many Exalt-hours into maintenance as the Dragonblooded polities, and they are not a hundred times better at maintenance than a specialised DB.

This means that in our Creation, there are no vast Solar empires on the scale you posit. By your rules, on the other hand, there should be. After all, you admit that infrastructure helps, and you haven't offered any reason the few older Solars haven't done this in your Creation. Even if they haven't for some handwaved reason, you still face the elder problem, since you posit they can build HFA-level tech without infrastructure, and thus all 17 of them are presumably sitting on yeddim-high piles of the stuff behind HFA-level defences that they maintain infallibly with no vulnerabilities. How is this good design space?

Work out what you're trying to say and make your argument consistent. Right now you're just embarrassing yourself.
 
There are 17 elder Solars in the setting.
Just to unpack this statement so vicky doesn't get the wrong idea here:

There are a maximum of 17 elder Solars in the setting. There actually being 17 elder Solars in the setting requires that the Sidereals be complete chumps and the Solars complete dull sit-in-this-cave-for-a-century morons.

In practice the closest to an 'elder' you've got is Filial Wisdom, who is an Essence 6 Dawn Caste but IIRC has the Charm spread of like, an E4 Exalt, because all he does with his time is sit in Rathess and contemplate murder poetry.
 
In practice the closest to an 'elder' you've got is Filial Wisdom, who is an Essence 6 Dawn Caste but IIRC has the Charm spread of like, an E4 Exalt, because all he does with his time is sit in Rathess and contemplate murder poetry.
Filial Wisdom: "... okay, okay. How about this one?"
Filial Wisdom: "Ahem." *assumes dramatic pose*
Filial Wisdom: "Swording, oh swording,
"the swordiest maraudering,
"I like it a lot."
Filial Wisdom: *gasps for breath, sweat pouring down his forehead from the intense mental labour*
Filial Wisdom: "So? What do you think?"
Feral Dragon King: "RAAAAWR!" *murderleap*
Filial Wisdom: *stabs it a hundred times in under a second and cuts its head off*
Filial Wisdom: "Crap, really?" *counts* "Dammit, you're right! Eight syllables, not seven! Okay, let's see..."
Filial Wisdom: *bites lip and frowns in intense concentration, bends over the paper again*
 
There are exactly 3 kinds of elder exalted currently in creation.
Sidereals, involved in heaven and so as they are already in a organisation unable to build up a creation based empire.
Lunars which are on the edge of the world, or infiltrating the threshold
Dragonblooded, which has one elder exalted with infrastructure, and many other in organisations serving that infrastructure.
If you remove infrastructure that means that every sidereal could build a soulbreaker orb, that MaHaSuchi has a army of warstriders that he crafted between bemoaning no longer having appereance 7.
 
Let me put this in simple terms, Vicky.

If it is possible for an elder Exalt to build infrastructure which is universally resistant to attack, or otherwise acquire the benefits thereof in a manner that cannot be easily attacked, such as Aleph's model of the super-crafter sitting in a cave and punching rocks into power armour... Why are the elders all dead?

If elders can do that, they are, logically, unassailable by anybody without commensurate advantages. There should already be a Solar (or other kind of elder) who hid in a cave for the last seven hundred years, building a mighty empire with Lookshy-level fortifications everywhere, because once that train gets rolling, how are you going to stop it?

But there aren't. Because the elders are all dead. Because infrastructure that is well defended everywhere cannot be made, so the nations of elder Exalted are mighty, but not invulnerable.
Okay, that's a good way of putting the question.
Do Sidereals & Co. have the tools to detect (and defeat!) Solars all over the caves of Creation? Did they have any such tools during the Usurpation? Because on one hand, I remember it being mentioned that Exalted is incapable of modelling things like the Primordial War and the Usurpation, and this was never a goal etc. etc. On the other, I remember discussions of Sidereals having übertools for said job, which was a cause for the (infamous?) Jenna Moran quote to assume that the world works and backfill a justification. On the third hand, I remember complaints that canonical Solars have Charms that are not Usurpation-OK, in the sense of noselling what other splats could do to Usurp (and these not being Crafting in 2e/2½e, unlike the infamous Dual Magnus Prana in 3e).


Hahahaha. Dude. You're generalising from one line in core, when half of the ability examples are bullshit hyperbole (hint: the difference between 1 and 5 dice is about 2 successes, not "complete novice" to "convert Wyld Hunts"). Everything else in the line makes a mockery of them, and in several of them the writers were too lazy to even come up with good or relevant examples in the first place.
Well yeah, in a game line based around glorious hyperbole being not actually hyperbole, the system failing to live up to such descriptors is a failure of the system. In fact I heard a similar complaint at least as early as VtM2e (though, somewhat surprisingly, played in the early 2000s).

Work out what you're trying to say and make your argument consistent. Right now you're just embarrassing yourself.
Hmm. I guess you're right: at a minimum, I should get some sleep before working out further posts (if any). And thanks for expressing the latter statement in a non-snarky way.
 
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Hahahaha. Dude. You're generalising from one line in core, when half of the ability examples are bullshit hyperbole (hint: the difference between 1 and 5 dice is about 2 successes, not "complete novice" to "convert Wyld Hunts"). Everything else in the line makes a mockery of them, and in several of them the writers were too lazy to even come up with good or relevant examples in the first place.

This is a problem, though, because those are presented in exactly the section a new player would look to figuring out what numbers correspond, roughly, to what outcomes.
 
Well yeah, in a game line based around glorious hyperbole being not actually hyperbole, the system failing to live up to such descriptors is a failure of the system. In fact I heard a similar complaint at least as early as VtM2e (though, somewhat surprisingly, played in the early 2000s).
This is a problem, though, because those are presented in exactly the section a new player would look to figuring out what numbers correspond, roughly, to what outcomes.
This is not a problem with the mechanics. This is a problem with the fluff descriptions. You should not actually be able to convince a Wyld Hunt to be your loyal subordinates with 5 dots in an ability, otherwise mortals would be able to do it.
 
Okay, that's a good way of putting the question.
Do Sidereals & Co. have the tools to detect (and defeat!) Solars all over the caves of Creation? Did they have any such tools during the Usurpation?
This is literally the premise of what the Sidereal Exalted have been doing since the Usurpation, dude.

Even if you jump to mechanics, the answer is yes. Depending on how you read their prophecy Charms, at least, and explicit authorial statements indicate that they're supposed to be read in such a way as to continually and infallibly track down newbie Solars.

I think this is pretty goofy, and they should be limited to reading the Loom for that (which means that Solars who are very sparing and careful in their Essence use and hide in large populations can actually survive for a while), but either way they have to be able to kill new Solars with fairly decent reliability or the setting doesn't work anymore.

This is a problem, though, because those are presented in exactly the section a new player would look to figuring out what numbers correspond, roughly, to what outcomes.
It is; there's also a difference, I think, between "can accomplish task" and "can trivially accomplish task" that people tend to gloss over.

This is not a problem with the mechanics. This is a problem with the fluff descriptions. You should not actually be able to convince a Wyld Hunt to be your loyal subordinates with 5 dots in an ability, otherwise mortals would be able to do it.
I dunno, Daryl Davis is a real guy. It should be possible to do, though certainly not in the "bam my minion now" sense.
 
You know, this thread is actually the greatest argument i've ever seen for joining the cause of Oblivion.

Anything to put this endless recursion out of it's misery...

[Insert something about 3E here and wait for argument to spring up.]
 
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