notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Probably three dots of Artifact, if you want to be able to use it as a weapon.
General Exalted Thread
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
Well, it'd certainly be possible to just treat them as non-weapon artifacts.
If you want them as artifacts, just treat the knife as a light artifact weapon with Lethal, Melee, Concealable and possibly Thrown (Short). It wouldn't be any longer than a normal cutlery knife, it'd just project some dark energy as needed to cut in combat.
The fork could simply be part of the set without being treated as a weapon itself - instead, it could act as a capacitor of sorts, or simply ensure that the knife always returns to it (useful for a thrown weapon). Basically, some Evocations could key off it without being actually used in combat.
If you want them as artifacts, just treat the knife as a light artifact weapon with Lethal, Melee, Concealable and possibly Thrown (Short). It wouldn't be any longer than a normal cutlery knife, it'd just project some dark energy as needed to cut in combat.
The fork could simply be part of the set without being treated as a weapon itself - instead, it could act as a capacitor of sorts, or simply ensure that the knife always returns to it (useful for a thrown weapon). Basically, some Evocations could key off it without being actually used in combat.
The Sandman
So Zetta Slowpoke
- Location
- Wherever I am, which isn't where I'm not
She's a very old, very insane ghost. It doesn't have to make sense by any rational standards.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
Yeah, in that case, they're just expensive mundane items. The butter knife is just a normal but unbreakable knife, and the fork doesn't really have a purpose in combat.
It'd be interesting to eat things with it though.
Nah, see, that's why you then increase the difficulty of the exams. You see, if they're so ill prepared for actual career work, that indicates that they're too easy.
By the end point, you're needing Bureaucracy 5 (Passing Exams +2) to get a good job placement and mortals need at least 13 dice to get the best positions. As a result, the competition for a good Deliberative job is incredibly fierce. Bright students from farming villages find the entire village clubbing together to put them into super-expensive pre-prep schools to get into the prep schools to get into the exam training courses to get onto the exams. There's a common culture of stimulant abuse and cognitive aiding drugs among students going for even mid-end placements, because those drugs and stimulants might help you get another +1 or +2 equipment bonus and that can turn a mere 11-dice student into a 13 dice student - or a 9 dice student into an 11 dice student. Individuals who fail their exams? It's honourable for them to kill themselves rather than have to face their village and live up to the fact that they're wasting everyone's times.
The Solars get a hyper-efficient bureaucracy out of this, full of people who are willing to put 100% into everything they do and who are utterly frantic with not making mistakes. Sure, most of their bureaucracy has been training for these exams since they were four and have been spending all their XP on that which means the bureaucracy is full of people who are only good at bureaucracy and quite a lot of them are hot-housed beyond belief and it's only the Solar buffs on the Deliberative that are stopping half their staff having a nervous breakdown, but damn, that's a super-efficient bureaucracy there.
Solar excellence, optimised towards "getting the most efficient bureaucracy possible" without as much regard given to little things like "quality of life for my staff" (why bother? They're happy to serve me, my Charms say so) and "getting well-balanced human beings out the other end" (who needs 'well-balanced'? That just means they're suboptimal, spending their XP on hobbies rather than serving me).
FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
Honestly, if you can't come up with an idea for a 2-dot artifact, just make them Exceptional Equipment. They could provide a +1 bonus to resist disease from anything you want with them, in addition to never wearing down and being nearly unbreakable. I'm sure you'll be able to think of some use for two nearly unbreakable objects that are a few inches long.
For a stealth-focused character, make sure to pick up Rumor of Form (return to stealth after somebody tries to hit you), Hidden Snake Recoil (return to stealth after incaping somebody) and Stalking Wolf Attitude (actually have some way of getting initiative while in stealth) ASAP. You can't pick them all up right off the bat, because Rumor of Form is an E2 Dodge Charm and Hidden Snake Recoil is an E2 Stealth Charm. Without HSR/RoF I think you have to spend a whole action trying to enter stealth.
For real though, if you fuck up on re-entering stealth, or somebody beats your stealth roll, or literally anything happens, you will really want to have Ox-Body. A really good way to deal with a character who has Stealth is to deal a couple HLs of damage whenever you can, so they suffer a penalty to their Stealth roll, making it easier for you to spot them when they reenter it, etc. One level of Ox-Body gives you almost half again as much health (assuming Stam 3+).
Unlike Batman or Solid Snake, you're at the mercy of the dice. Failing your stealth roll will happen, sooner or later. So will an opponent beating even an insanely boosted Evasion or Parry. But decisive damage doesn't have double 10s, so it's a lot less swingy and those HLs give you a lot more space to breathe.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
notanautomaton
I've got 99 quests, I've finished one
Would anybody be interested in working on an Exalted homebrew system with me? I've got some of it done, but I could use another set of eyes to tell me where I'm being dumb and to keep up my motivation.
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Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
Well this is terrifying, and I thought South Korea was bad. Is this a joke or was this actually the case, for Kerisgame at least?*
*Please don't answer "Yes".
How much XP does it cost to be a super efficient mortal Bureaucrat? Aside from Intelligence and Bureaucracy, what skills would they need?
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Lore for calculation and background knowledge, Linguistics for parsing text and crafting concise and effective text quickly, and Resistance for those 16-hour shifts.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
Wits and Perception, to notice and react quickly to problems. Dexterity, to be able to fill out forms faster. Stanina and Resistance, to be able to work longer. Lore, to be able to know history, math, and other useful stuff. Linguistics, to make well written papers that articulate how everything is running just fine.
Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Sounds good. Having them be exceptional equipment doesn't cost any merit points, I think?
Hmm, as far as two dot artifact, they could sterilize any food they are used to eat with, basically be the disease counterpart of the anti-poison chalice, and otherwise function as mundane exceptional equipment. Fits with the soul-steel thing, at least intuitively.
... seriously.
Fuck the High First Age. So much.
I think it might be a commentary on this kind of thing?;
Japan's Suicide Problem: Searching for Answers
- Location
- The end of all things
It makes a lot of sense once you realize that the Dowager's Craft charms are really, really creepy...
Alternatively, strange things happen when you soulforge someone's parents into cutlery and she Exalts as a Solar while stealing them and escaping.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
With 5 (INT) + 5 (BUR) + 3 (DOT exams), what difficulty can a mortal pass? If they add a Willpower for a success, if they're Heroic or not, and possibly adding 1 or 2 dice from DrugsEquipment?
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
I just assume everyone here is talking about 2E unless otherwise stated.
Walker of the Yellow Path
Ho There!
- Location
- The Land of Memes
A mortal with max dice from Attribute + Ability + Specialty + Equipment + Virtue 3 Channel is rolling 18 dice. He has a 50% chance of beating a difficulty 9 roll. Not entirely sure what the difficulty of the exam would be, but he'd be well suited to beat it.
Dynamesmouse
Bzzzzzz
Mortals have TN8, not TN7 like the Exalted have. And difficulty 9 is what I was thinking the DOT exam was going to be, but I was thinking that DOT was going to be 3 or 5 exams, with the 2nd highest test result being your final score.
notthepenguins
Neither Spherical Nor Frictionless
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Nope. Mortals are TN 7, though non-Heroic characters only get 1 success on a 10.
Look, it's going to be whatever the fuck best suits your story.
If your character is a moral who exalts as a Twilight while studying for the exams despite not being able to even afford the prep schools, then it's a complicated and careful sequence of different rolls using different Ability and Attribute combinations designed to push people to the limits and skim the best fraction of a percent off the billions of Creation's mortals.
If you're a DB and you want to know if your mortal cousin gets into a good job? Then it's one roll and then we can get into the important things, like if you're going to have to get incriminating blackmail on the exam supervisor so you can sneak a Linguistics-hidden cheat sheet in with them for the final exam without it getting caught.
Aleph
Princess of Stabbity
- Location
- The sixth circle of Hell (second on weekends)
- Pronouns
- She/Her
ES's answer aside, though, there is a reason that one of Keris's biggest long-term fears [1] is ending up like the "ancient monsters" that she remembers the elder Solars/Primordial War veterans becoming from Yamal's flashbacks.
It isn't just because of what they were. It's what they made the world into.
[1] Below "losing my loved ones" and "getting ganked" but about parallel with "all my shiny things are gone" and "the people I hate win".
Why not just setup a training regime style thing? Pretty sure that 3ed has a system similar to workings for that.