Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
Having a cargo hatch that just dumps everything you put in it into Elsewhere would help immensely with hauling loot seems to be reasonable though.
General Exalted Thread
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yes, but Keris has one of those. It's called a Devil Domain.
Okay, I've ripped out and rewritten the layout of the Baisha to better fit the small destroyer that Ligier has rebuilt it into. Writeup is still here and here, the relevant bit is as follows:
Probably won't bother with blueprints since what's there and where it is only really matters for scene continuity.
Is there any canon support for the notion that Sidereals, while not aware of the fourth wall, 'can certainly stunt off it' as I've seen it put elsewhere?
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
Not canon. The first time I saw something like that used was in Keychain of Creation, an absolutely awesome Exalted webcomic that you should read. Many Sidereal charms are easier to show in a written piece than in visual, so the author decided to show how weird Sidereal Charms were (I think Sid MA mostly) in a more visual sense, by allowing the Elder Sid who showed up to interact with the medium of the webcomic.
I've definitely read Keychain, and it's one of the things I had in mind in asking the question.
Romantic_Kaiju
Romantic Kaiju
- Location
- National Battlefield
Circle: Celestial
Cost: 20m+ 2m per person (see below)
Duration: One Month (see below)
This spell allows the sorcerer to attune himself to an Essence wielding being for a base cost of 20m plus 2m per individual at the time of casting. Note that the motes per individual are considered committed and decommitting them loses all inherent bonuses.
An attuned Essence wielder is now a battery for the purposes of sorcery the character utilizes. Regardless of distance between sorcerer and subjects (apprentices) the sorcerer in question can use [Sorcerer's Essence * 2] motes per day of the apprentice's, but only for sorcery (no artifact attunement, charms, or other effects that require motes of essence). All motes used this way are considered peripheral for purposes of the sorcerer's anima flare and return to the apprentice at whatever their normal rate may be.
A sorcerer can have no more apprentices than his Essence, and can not apprentice anyone with an Essence score higher than the sorcerer's Essence-3.
As a side effect of being used as a battery for the Exalted, the Apprentices gain a toughness equal to the power of the Exalt using them. An apprentice gains the sorcerer's permanent Essence score to their bashing and lethal soaks, and gains a hardness equal to half the sorcerer's Essence, rounded down.
Celestial Countermagic when aimed at an Apprentice will only decommit the motes used on that one individual. Celestial Countermagic when applied to the Sorcerer will decommit ALL the Apprentices and this spell may not be applied to them again for 24 hours.
Cost: 20m+ 2m per person (see below)
Duration: One Month (see below)
This spell allows the sorcerer to attune himself to an Essence wielding being for a base cost of 20m plus 2m per individual at the time of casting. Note that the motes per individual are considered committed and decommitting them loses all inherent bonuses.
An attuned Essence wielder is now a battery for the purposes of sorcery the character utilizes. Regardless of distance between sorcerer and subjects (apprentices) the sorcerer in question can use [Sorcerer's Essence * 2] motes per day of the apprentice's, but only for sorcery (no artifact attunement, charms, or other effects that require motes of essence). All motes used this way are considered peripheral for purposes of the sorcerer's anima flare and return to the apprentice at whatever their normal rate may be.
A sorcerer can have no more apprentices than his Essence, and can not apprentice anyone with an Essence score higher than the sorcerer's Essence-3.
As a side effect of being used as a battery for the Exalted, the Apprentices gain a toughness equal to the power of the Exalt using them. An apprentice gains the sorcerer's permanent Essence score to their bashing and lethal soaks, and gains a hardness equal to half the sorcerer's Essence, rounded down.
Celestial Countermagic when aimed at an Apprentice will only decommit the motes used on that one individual. Celestial Countermagic when applied to the Sorcerer will decommit ALL the Apprentices and this spell may not be applied to them again for 24 hours.
Is this as Broken as I think it is? Looking at it, if you are E4 you can only pull motes from E1 beings, but if you have a reliable way to enlighten people you can use this spell to have 8 motes (only for sorcery though) for 2 motes committed. so 5 E1 enlightened dudes would give you 40 free motes to use on sorcery, but would only cost 10 motes to maintain.
Is this really fucking Broken, or is that just me?
40 motes is about 4 uses of an Emerald spell, 2 uses of a Sapphire or 1 use of an Adamant (2e).
I'm not too sure about how well sorcery works in combat, but if you specc'd your character totally towards sorcery and non-stabby stuff, then this could help bridge the gap. And if you did get stabby stuff, you can't use this for it.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Unless they've radically changed things sorcery is shit in personal combat.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Sorcery is awesome in personal combat.
You've just gotta redefine the paradigm so personal combat is 'I sit here and laugh while I bury you in bound demons'
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ah, yes, the Skitter approach. Have so many minions that everything is mass combat.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
Exactly!
Fair fights are something reserved for the Dawn Claste.
For everything else, theres spirits!
What kind of idiot Dawn do you play?
Glorious Solar Railgun, ahoy! Killin' dudes from a hill on the other side of the valley and then saying 'meep meep' and running away if they try to close. Basically, Solars are bullshit cheaters who declare that the way they cheated was retroactively fair after they win. I feel that touches a fundamental part of the Solar nature.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
That sounds more like a Night Caste to me!What kind of idiot Dawn do you play?
Glorious Solar Railgun, ahoy! Killin' dudes from a hill on the other side of the valley and then saying 'meep meep' and running away if they try to close. Basically, Solars are bullshit cheaters who declare that the way they cheated was retroactively fair after they win. I feel that touches a fundamental part of the Solar nature.
Dawn Castes get to be the big glowly distraction that are sent out to go raiding and pillaging with a few thousand of their closest friends while the rest of the circle get the real work done!
- Location
- Gladstone, OR
So this is literally the product of maybe 10 minutes thought, but I felt like putting it out there: A prototype replacement to Repair and Maintenance mechanics for Artifacts.
Summarizing the 2e versions, the idea is if you miss Maintenance, where characters with X traits spend Y bench time and Z Background dots on your gear, you run the risk of having something break.
Repair, on the other hand, is the abstraction of how hard something is to fix once it does break. As per 2e the scale goes up to 7, I think- and it actually unfolds into a lot of sub-requirements. It's in the first 11 page of Wonders of the Lost Age and most people never even see it. It does have some interesting descriptions of what Workshops entail though.
Anyway- assume we scrap those. My idea this: Maintenance becomes akin to a 'Magitech Virtue', which is to say that when you satisfy a certain condition in-game, you roll the Maintenance rating; if you get a success, a suitable complication befalls the thing and you have to repair it.
Like with Virtues, higher Maintenance ratings mean more likely chance of tripping a Maintenance check and rolling a success. For the sake of saying so, Maintenance would still be on a 1-5 scale.
Now what are these in-game conditions? I have no idea, but they have to be objective enough that they can come up in play reasonably, but not so often as to become a terrible gameplay burden.
So Pros/Cons
Pro: You don't have to sweat hourly maintenance checks and fussy bean-counting trait minimum management.
Pro: It's faster/easier on players.
Con: You lose some of the implicit 'pagentry' of having high associated traits with Maintenance- if you stop requiring Lore 4 to maintain your gear, why do you bother raising your kingdom's average education to Lore 4?
Con: Virtue Mechanics as they are currently implemented tend to be negative- all stick no carrot.
There. That's the draft. I spent 8 minutes writing this. Counting this silly bit at the end, there are three hundred and forty-four words. Enjoy.
Summarizing the 2e versions, the idea is if you miss Maintenance, where characters with X traits spend Y bench time and Z Background dots on your gear, you run the risk of having something break.
Repair, on the other hand, is the abstraction of how hard something is to fix once it does break. As per 2e the scale goes up to 7, I think- and it actually unfolds into a lot of sub-requirements. It's in the first 11 page of Wonders of the Lost Age and most people never even see it. It does have some interesting descriptions of what Workshops entail though.
Anyway- assume we scrap those. My idea this: Maintenance becomes akin to a 'Magitech Virtue', which is to say that when you satisfy a certain condition in-game, you roll the Maintenance rating; if you get a success, a suitable complication befalls the thing and you have to repair it.
Like with Virtues, higher Maintenance ratings mean more likely chance of tripping a Maintenance check and rolling a success. For the sake of saying so, Maintenance would still be on a 1-5 scale.
Now what are these in-game conditions? I have no idea, but they have to be objective enough that they can come up in play reasonably, but not so often as to become a terrible gameplay burden.
So Pros/Cons
Pro: You don't have to sweat hourly maintenance checks and fussy bean-counting trait minimum management.
Pro: It's faster/easier on players.
Con: You lose some of the implicit 'pagentry' of having high associated traits with Maintenance- if you stop requiring Lore 4 to maintain your gear, why do you bother raising your kingdom's average education to Lore 4?
Con: Virtue Mechanics as they are currently implemented tend to be negative- all stick no carrot.
There. That's the draft. I spent 8 minutes writing this. Counting this silly bit at the end, there are three hundred and forty-four words. Enjoy.
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, you could have an associated mechanic - like "treated" and "untreated" traits for diseases - of reduced Maintenance ratings/rolls with sufficient traits. So if you have someone with a pool of 7+ looking after an example bit of magitech full-time (encouraging you to train someone to do it so that you don't have to spend all your time on it yourself), it goes down from Maintenance 4 to 3 and you don't have to roll with every five uses, just if it gets hit by something or uses the wrong essence blend to charge.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
The obvious comment is 'because you can' or 'because it has other benefits'. Such as ensuring there are plenty of people around that can actually use your kingdoms day to day infrastructure. Or help you maintain it, are less likely to trigger the checks in the item in question. Or if it requires a non-craft method of repair (admittedly might be more suitable for sorcery based infrastructure).
Dropping the former constraint allows you to fix the latter.
If you de-couple the "Virtue" from 1-5, and instead have it as 0-Uncapped, then you can pair off the dice pool of the average maintenance guy against the "Virtue" / "Skill at breaking itself". As a simplification, you can assume that if the dice pool of the maintenance guy exceeds that of the object, it'll function fine as well as it gets regular inspections. However, if their pools are equal or the maintainer has less, that's when you start getting problems as they'll start cropping up at least half the time. So roll the skill vs the "Virtue".
So, take a clockmaker's tools which require fine precision and delicacy. They might have a Maintenance Pool of 5 - they need someone who's got at least 6 dice for clockmaking to keep their tools intact. That means they have to be skilled in their field, but Dex 3, Craft (Air) 2, +1 Clockmaking is enough for that. However, a blacksmith with Craft Air 1 and Dex 2 only has 3 dice, and so their 3 dice is against the Maintenance pool of 5 and so on average they're going to lose by a success.
A Shogunate thunder ballista, by contrast, might have a Maintenance Pool of 8. This is a problem. It means only highly skilled mortals in the field can keep it in operation - you'll need someone with Intelligence 4, Craft (First Age) 4, +1 Shogunate Weapons or else you'll start getting problems. Things get even worse if you overuse the thunder ballista, which means it'll get bonus dice for its pool. However, if you have Terrestrials on your side they can go "Mwhahaha I have the First Craft Excellency, my dice pool is well big innit" and keep your gear in good order.
The moral of this story is that DBs are awesome.
They've radically changed things!
(Notably: you can plausibly pull off a single Celestial - or even Solar - spell in a single round of combat; casting spells doesn't cost your motes, and often won't cost your Willpower either; you can move, use Charms, and defend yourself normally while spellcasting; your opponents can't afford to 3m perfect away your big doom spell when it goes off.)
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
Not quite accurate.
It's perfectly possible to get a Terrestrial spell off in a single round of combat, but that'll usually require both shaping rituals and excellencies (though if you do it right, one of those will suffice).
Celestial Spells are pretty much impossible to do in a single round (at least the combat-relevant ones), and the same goes for the single Primordial-Circle Combat Spell we currently have.
It's perfectly possible to get a Terrestrial spell off in a single round of combat, but that'll usually require both shaping rituals and excellencies (though if you do it right, one of those will suffice).
Celestial Spells are pretty much impossible to do in a single round (at least the combat-relevant ones), and the same goes for the single Primordial-Circle Combat Spell we currently have.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Some shaping rituals are hilariously gameable, and you get one ritual per circle of sorcery, so you can build for combat-time high-rank sorcery but it doesn't really happen on its own.
Sorcerers can nova pretty hard though - a lot of shaping rituals give you per-day or per-story motes, so it's not too hard to have someone who can throw a ridiculous number of motes at a single spell once in a while.
Sorcerers can nova pretty hard though - a lot of shaping rituals give you per-day or per-story motes, so it's not too hard to have someone who can throw a ridiculous number of motes at a single spell once in a while.
Cantata of Empty Voices is a Celestial Circle spell costing 15sm. A full die pool + stunt will get you ~6sm; an Excellency can get you 5 more. That's only 4sm that you need to pull from shaping rituals, of which you have a minimum of 2 (and a maximum of "whatever the GM will let you get away with.") Even one ritual should be enough to make up the difference.
So some combat-time Celestial sorcery is absolutely viable in small amounts, until your rituals run out - and that's without Breach-Healing Method, Ancient Tongue Understanding, Spirit-Draining Mudra, Spirit-Drawing Oculus, etc. Even Death Ray is viable once, given that you have at least three shaping rituals that could each throw 5sm or so onto the pile.
(If you do have all those tools, you could throw 5sm from base pool + 1sm from stunt + 5sm from Excellency + 2.5sm BHM + 10sm SDO, for at least 23sm before rituals.)
Incomparable Body Arsenal is going to be rough, sure, but that's pretty close to the upper end.
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Bursting Eagerness Soul
Threadwalking Rating Machine
- Location
- Wisconsin
I mean, it fits the spell.