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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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The Sandblast Charm has the advantage of being something we're always armed with, assuming we have Essence to spend, and, IIRC, it doesn't require any special investment in skills to make us a suitably proficient, unlike firearms.
 
Goldfish said:
The Sandblast Charm has the advantage of being something we're always armed with, assuming we have Essence to spend, and, IIRC, it doesn't require any special investment in skills to make us a suitably proficient, unlike firearms.
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It would also be rather hard to link to you by any mundane forensics since it's you know... actual magic. On the other hand you need Essence to power it whereas yo get Transcendent Anathema on a gun you only need to have your anima flaring, which means Molly would be harder to mote tap since Exalts always have 1 Essence at the beginning of a scene and that is all you need to Anima Flare. On the third tentacle if you are flaring to your full fiery eyed glory it would rather obviate the discretion of the gun
 
DragonParadox said:
It would also be rather hard to link to you by any mundane forensics since it's you know... actual magic. On the other hand you need Essence to power it whereas yo get Transcendent Anathema on a gun you only need to have your anima flaring, which means Molly would be harder to mote tap since Exalts always have 1 Essence at the beginning of a scene and that is all you need to Anima Flare. On the third tentacle if you are flaring to your full fiery eyed glory it would rather obviate the discretion of the gun
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Prince of Ruin Attitude doesn't require essence to spend, so, if it does provide ammunition, we get essentially infinite ammo (would we still need to reload?). We could design essentially a one-shot weapon that is completely optimized to precision and damage output, but that has stuff like a barrel that gets melted / destroyed after one shot, one bullet / ammunition / charge only, etc. And use PoRA to totally make it viable. We'd need more Appearance and Technology to make sure we are always successful, but those are good anyway.
 
Yog said:
Prince of Ruin Attitude doesn't require essence to spend, so, if it does provide ammunition, we get essentially infinite ammo (would we still need to reload?). We could design essentially a one-shot weapon that is completely optimized to precision and damage output, but that has stuff like a barrel that gets melted / destroyed after one shot, one bullet / ammunition / charge only, etc. And use PoRA to totally make it viable. We'd need more Appearance and Technology to make sure we are always successful, but those are good anyway.
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Something that destroys the barrel on the first shot will destroy more on the second.
Even if the charm keeps it usables for one or two more, soon it won't be a recognisable weapon at all.

Also I think you are going pretty far with that charm when it comes to non-functional. There's a different Charm for having infinite ammo, one that is 3 Dots and takes actual Essence to activate. Why should a 1 Dot Charm do it for free?
 
DragonParadox said:
Less a new paradigm for mortal alchemy and more a paradigm for Infernals using alchemy. Mortals would not use 'the magic is the soul of the potion' because they do not have a natural affinity for ensouling things. If you tried to teach a mortal to cast alchemy like Molly is doing, much like with the Shih arts it would kill them, assuming they could ever contort their souls into those patterns to begin with
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Of course, this is Alchemy, not Hellfire.
Its meant to be done in ritual form, sometimes over several days if not weeks. The risks of actually bleeding yourself out of power unknowingly should be pretty low.

Admittedly, the people who'd get full use out of this paradigm would be Exalts, and people with access to non-mortal levels of vitality or power sources.
Yzarc said:
I really want to pick up murder is meat next turn. If only to be sure.
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Eh.
At the moment, murder is meat drops the dead in one of the Hells of Yomi Wan.
Given as most of the Yomi Kimgs are presumed hostile, thats a distinctly suboptimal prospect.

BronzeTongue said:
Sandblast strike is deeply annoying to me because it's paying exp for a fixed weapon. It can't get any better or really benefit from many synergies.

And the point about the pain ray is that making it not dangerous is the hard part. If you add more power you can make it much more dangerous. PoRA, which we want anyway, would allow us to design one that's supposed to be used with a larger power source and just carry the broken off emitter around we could dial in how much hurt we want.

Getting your skin burned off is pretty damn lethal past a certain point, so I think the max output would qualify for TA as well. Which means we could do Agg damage with it, unlike the sandblast charm.
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Sandstrike Blast does 8 damage in its single person mode at DC5, with a range of 60.

For comparison:
Assault Shotgun is 8L. Range 50.
Rifle is 8L. Range 200.
The axe is STR+3
Greatsword does STR+4L at DC7
Chainsaw does STR+5L at DC8

By comparison, Sandstrike Blast does pretty damn good baseline damage, and you dont need to carry a weapon. Its always available. And its alt-mode does 10L damage to everything in Essence*5 yards radius of the impact point.
Prospalz said:
In E2, there were various elemental lenses that allowed to boost the damage from blasty charms like Sandblast.
We'd need to discuss it with DP, but some some sort of a crafted foci should be possible at Enchanting 2-3.
But yeah, I sure wish it scaled with something.
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Eh.
Like I said, SB is already plenty killy. Limited range, but honestly we're not going to be fighting at max assault rifle ranges anyway.
Just pick up Windborn Stride when we can, and Rage Recast Swift Stride at E3.

If we really need something incredibly long ranged, thats what Mind Hand Manipulation is for.
DragonParadox said:
You know for someone without Wicked City as a Key Charm Molly sure gets a lot of Wicked City ideas. :V
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Just you wait.
When we actually start learning Conveyance Path and/or unlock magic crafting, then we'll actually have justification to rebuild a minivan as a focus to move 7-8 people at a time as a personal Mystery Mobile for going to other cities with a war party.

Since she seems to have stumbled into Mercedes as a personal brand(thanks Kattrin!), that means buying a GL/GLS-class and rebuilding it from the ground up as a minivan.

DragonParadox said:
Sooo... I've been reading up on various WoD Disciplines to see what I can steal to use in this quest and I found this thing in one of the early source books on blood magic

Oneiromancy

Source[16]
  • Portents: Receive visions after waking that allegorically refer to future events of one's life
  • Foresee: As Portents, but works on another individual
  • Dreamspeak: Send messages to someone through their dreams
  • Augury: Gain answers to questions from another person's dreams
  • Reveal the Heart's Dreams: Learn what someone most desires and fears from their dreams
Note the distinct lack of anything remotely blood or vampire related in this thing. I think it might be better dream magic than the mortal sorcery of the same name and you get usable information about a person without the utterly broken power that is Divination.

So what do you guys think would this be a good fit for Rose? I am not going to change it if you guys do not want to since it is a bit of a nerf at higher levels given the lack of dream manifestation.
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Definitely a significant nerf.
But thats a QM decision about what role you see Rosie in, and available power levels for NPCs.

EDIT
Because right now, there's nothing stopping any of those being 1-3 dot Rituals for the sorcerer version of Oneiromancy.
Yog said:
True, but that's a three point charm, instead of a one point charm. And it can't give us futuristic weapons / weapons designed for an exalt.
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Principle Invoking Onslaught gives you specialty weapons
Tear gas, flash and potentially EMP grenades. Breaching charges. Missile launcher. If its a manportable weapon then YES.
Its not an immediate requirement, but its something we'll probably want. Eventually.

Even if only because it fucks with forensics.
 
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Artemis1992 said:
Something that destroys the barrel on the first shot will destroy more on the second.
Even if the charm keeps it usables for one or two more, soon it won't be a recognisable weapon at all.
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PoRA can make a rusted-out car wreck fully functional. Unless the weapon evaporates in our hands, it should be restored. So, barrel warping or partial melting? That should be perfectly ok. At most we'd need to design the weapon so it isn't completely destroyed after repeated uses, but is only rendered fully non-functional.
Artemis1992 said:
Also I think you are going pretty far with that charm when it comes to non-functional. There's a different Charm for having infinite ammo, one that is 3 Dots and takes actual Essence to activate. Why should a 1 Dot Charm do it for free?
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Much as I dislike it, you might be right. The text of the charm is as follows:
The Infernal dredges an arsenal out of the raw po-
tentiality of the age and in so doing, arms herself.
System: By taking an action and spending 1 Es-
sence, the Infernal can forge a weapon out of raw Es-
sence; this weapon persists for the rest of the scene.
Created weapons must be complex devices made of
machined parts; all guns qualify, as would a bando-
lier of grenades, a flamethrower, or even a chainsaw; a
sword, pitchfork, or spear would not. Created ranged
weapons may be reloaded with a turn of concentration
spent summoning additional ammunition. Alternate-
ly, the Infernal may reflexively spend 1 Essence to
charge an existing ranged weapon with power, granting
it infinite ammunition for the rest of the scene.
Signature Effect: The Infernal may reflexively
spend 1 Essence to edit her Shintai form after sum-
moning it, banishing one Aspect and summoning
forth a new one to replace it. The Shintai reverts to its
normal array of Aspects when next summoned.
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On the other hand, PoRA has an explicit example of use:
For the rest of the scene, success forces a
dulled and broken sword to cut as though it were sharp
and intact, a junked car to run as if it were new, or a
rotted old tent to keep out the rain as if it were whole.
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And that would be pretty damn useful if the fuel wasn't also provided.

So, maybe a distinction could be "PoRA can provide fuel for the weapon to run, but not consummable ammunition that gets shot out"? I.e., for example, it would fuel a laser or a microwave blaster, because that's restoring functionality of those devices, but not provide free ammo for a revolver, unless you put spent into the gun? It would restore the cartridges, but not generate ones ex-nihilo? Or... Honestly, I am not sure how to resolve this without either rendering a large number of PoRA uses which seem to be intended (making broken technological devices work), or making a part of a 3 dot charm completely redundant and overpriced regardless.
 
Yog said:
So, maybe a distinction could be "PoRA can provide fuel for the weapon to run, but not consummable ammunition that gets shot out"? I.e., for example, it would fuel a laser or a microwave blaster, because that's restoring functionality of those devices, but not provide free ammo for a revolver, unless you put spent into the gun? It would restore the cartridges, but not generate ones ex-nihilo? Or... Honestly, I am not sure how to resolve this without either rendering a large number of PoRA uses which seem to be intended (making broken technological devices work), or making a part of a 3 dot charm completely redundant and overpriced regardless.
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Anything the Infernal deliberately arranged that way does not count as "ruined". :V It is merely Unusually Designed in that case. The Charm does not consider the Infernal capable of ruining things. :p

(Suggestion is only half serious. This is an ugly hack aimed specifically at the cheese trick of building an energy gun that requires impractical amounts of power, disconnecting the power supply and using PoRA instead.)
 
uju32 said:
Of course, this is Alchemy, not Hellfire.
Its meant to be done in ritual form, sometimes over several days if not weeks. The risks of actually bleeding yourself out of power unknowingly should be pretty low.
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While you can do it over weeks and months, you can also do it in a hurry as Harry shows with his escape potion. Something like that would be fast enough to do some serious harm if you did it 'the Molly Carpenter way'. It will come out more in further alchemy updates but basically the core of that she is doing is trying to make each potion or other work of alchemy a mini-construct. But that does not just require soul-stuff, it requires a template for the proto-soul. Generally humans only have one template for their soul, their own minds

uju32 said:
Definitely a significant nerf.
But thats a QM decision about what role you see Rosie in, and available power levels for NPCs.
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See I do not want to nerf things mid-quest, I think that is bad GM-ing so you guys have veto on any sort of change of this nature. For what it's wroth my primary purpse is to make the Path more usable at low levels.

Yog said:
Prince of Ruin Attitude doesn't require essence to spend, so, if it does provide ammunition, we get essentially infinite ammo (would we still need to reload?). We could design essentially a one-shot weapon that is completely optimized to precision and damage output, but that has stuff like a barrel that gets melted / destroyed after one shot, one bullet / ammunition / charge only, etc. And use PoRA to totally make it viable. We'd need more Appearance and Technology to make sure we are always successful, but those are good anyway.
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Prince of Ruin Attitude has the limit of 'it must still be a weapon or tool you are trying to emulate' even if it is not functional. So it depends on if the remains of your one shot weapon are still conceptually that ting or if they are conceptually a pile of slag
 
DragonParadox said:
See I do not want to nerf things mid-quest, I think that is bad GM-ing so you guys have veto on any sort of change of this nature. For what it's wroth my primary purpse is to make the Path more usable at low levels.
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It's not like Rosie already has used the Path, or even has it unlocked yet. And we never had a choice about Rosie's magic in the first place. We loose nothing, like we would from a nerf to an already-bought Charm or such.
And she wouldn't be combatant either way.

I'm fine with any version of dream-related magic for her.
 
Exmorri said:
Anything the Infernal deliberately arranged that way does not count as "ruined". :V It is merely Unusually Designed in that case. The Charm does not consider the Infernal capable of ruining things. :p

(Suggestion is only half serious. This is an ugly hack aimed specifically at the cheese trick of building an energy gun that requires impractical amounts of power, disconnecting the power supply and using PoRA instead.)
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I am giving this a funny rating simply because I don't want this to be insightful. More seriously, this would make PoRA functionality MUCH lower, as we wouldn't be able to use it on anything we ruined.

DragonParadox said:
Prince of Ruin Attitude has the limit of 'it must still be a weapon or tool you are trying to emulate' even if it is not functional. So it depends on if the remains of your one shot weapon are still conceptually that ting or if they are conceptually a pile of slag
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Oh, I understand. It still renders part of PIO redundant. Why use it on a weapon to give it infinite ammo if PoRA can do the same, and for no Essence...

uju32 said:
Principle Invoking Onslaught gives you specialty weapons
Tear gas, flash and potentially EMP grenades. Breaching charges. Missile launcher. If its a manportable weapon then YES.
Its not an immediate requirement, but its something we'll probably want. Eventually.

Even if only because it fucks with forensics.
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It is of lower priority, though.
 
DragonParadox said:
While you can do it over weeks and months, you can also do it in a hurry as Harry shows with his escape potion. Something like that would be fast enough to do some serious harm if you did it 'the Molly Carpenter way'. It will come out more in further alchemy updates but basically the core of that she is doing is trying to make each potion or other work of alchemy a mini-construct. But that does not just require soul-stuff, it requires a template for the proto-soul. Generally humans only have one template for their soul, their own minds
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Fair enough.
I assume Molly learned both the conventional, safer path well enough to teach it, as well as the version she personally prefers.

DragonParadox said:
See I do not want to nerf things mid-quest, I think that is bad GM-ing so you guys have veto on any sort of change of this nature. For what it's wroth my primary purpse is to make the Path more usable at low levels.
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Fair. Then just import them as Rituals for Sorcery Path dream magic.

Portents as a 1 dot ritual.
Forsee and Dreamspeak as 2 dot Rituals.
Augury and Reveal the Hearts Dreams as 3 dots.

That makes the lower levels more useful, while leaving the high end potentially open if you choose to go that route.
 
DragonParadox said:
She could write such a thing, but there is a reason why in this universe magic is generally passed from master to apprentice, just learning it from a book lacks the personal touch that is necessary to map the transcendent reality of magic to their own experiences
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Could she write a book that would allow an Infernal to learn alchemy? Or even for Exalts in general? Not really relevant unless we either teach Lydia or find another Exalt, but I'm curious if the nature of an Exaltation would be enough commonality to stand in for that personal touch.
 
DragonParadox said:
She can teach alchemy to mortals, but is is not a matter of preferance she cannot use it as a mortal because when she tries things tend do explode as shown in her last alchemy study action.
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Hmm... This is probably too spoilery, but would Lydia-made potions be undead?

Also, are our potions Creatures of Darkness, if we are ensouling them? And would they benefit from MiS and TLF then? TLF for keeping the potions from freezing / evaporating / being damaged in places of desolation. MiS... Probably for preventing side effects of the potions / preventing them from rotting?

Or is it too much (literal and metaphorical cheese)? I mean, once we breach 20+ successes we are probably creating sentient beings of a kind, whose only purpose is to be consumed. That gets ethically tricky. I'm guessing the dodge could be something like this: after the first time we create a potion, a spirit / soul is born. When we or someone else drink the potion, the spirit doesn't die (unless we use Murder is Meat, I guess), but returns to our anima, like cyberdevils do. If we get more successes on the potion making (maybe multiple times?) the spirit strengthens. We definitely don't want (many of) them to be characters, to avoid character bloat, but something like this in general could work.
 
DragonParadox said:
See I do not want to nerf things mid-quest, I think that is bad GM-ing so you guys have veto on any sort of change of this nature. For what it's wroth my primary purpse is to make the Path more usable at low levels.
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Technically, "Paths as spectrums of effects" Paradigm allows to just include this stuff onto the Oneiromancy "spell-list" without taking anything off it.

I am not sure all of these really fit for Oneiromancy. Just folding divination stuff into Oneiromancy feels bad if Divination actually exists.

And Dreamspeak is definitively overpriced. Two dots non-ritual spell, max. The same effect on Oneiromancy list is also overpriced.
uju32 said:
Like I said, SB is already plenty killy.
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I felt that way. Then we had a major spook encounter and then learned that there is a Naagloshi around. I no longer really feel that way.
Yog said:
I mean, once we breach 20+ successes we are probably creating sentient beings of a kind, whose only purpose is to be consumed.
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Unless sentience is a part of the design, I find it unlikely. There are some precedent for symbiotic demons, though.
 
Yog said:
Hmm... This is probably too spoilery, but would Lydia-made potions be undead?

Also, are our potions Creatures of Darkness, if we are ensouling them? And would they benefit from MiS and TLF then? TLF for keeping the potions from freezing / evaporating / being damaged in places of desolation. MiS... Probably for preventing side effects of the potions / preventing them from rotting?

Or is it too much (literal and metaphorical cheese)? I mean, once we breach 20+ successes we are probably creating sentient beings of a kind, whose only purpose is to be consumed. That gets ethically tricky. I'm guessing the dodge could be something like this: after the first time we create a potion, a spirit / soul is born. When we or someone else drink the potion, the spirit doesn't die (unless we use Murder is Meat, I guess), but returns to our anima, like cyberdevils do. If we get more successes on the potion making (maybe multiple times?) the spirit strengthens. We definitely don't want (many of) them to be characters, to avoid character bloat, but something like this in general could work.
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The potions are not actually creatures mechanically, this is just the paradigm the exaltation uses to engage with the relevant form of magic. If you want to make construncts, you actually have to do it. That said if you do get to constructs Molly will think 'oh, it's like alchemy but more so' IC
 
Prospalz said:
I felt that way. Then we had a major spook encounter and then learned that there is a Naagloshi around. I no longer really feel that way.
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We can probably guesstimate the power level of a naagloshi based on Bane's power. Molly thought that Bane would be able to at least fend off Broken Seeker. If that's a good guess, then their "power levels" should be comparable.
 
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