Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
It depends on what you consider our primary priority is.
- Building up our minion strength as well as helping them out in general.
- Maggot Mana Plague (••) (8 XP) Satisfy all hungers both mundane and supernatural. Very useful now that we have minions that feed on despair, lust and fear. As well as helping them deal with addictions. We should also expect more diet problems.
- False Springs Beckon (•••) (9 XP) allowing us to suppress addiction and weaknesses like to love.
- Inner Devils Unchained (••••) (12 Xp) allows us to empower the Mortals working for us. Or our school friends and siblings if we want.
- Chirality Prohibition Index (•••) (12XP) allows us to train people mostly in combat arts, but other things as well.
- Splintered Gale Incarnation (•••••) (20XP) The charm for if we really want loyal competent middle managers to be able to handle things for us.
- 3 dots of Prayer-Eating (12 XP) being able to hear and grant prayers is useful.
- Social skills and generally preparing for Mab
- Naked Wicked Souls (•) (3 Xp) Knowing what people are most ashamed of can be a powerful social tool.
- The Man Who Sold the World (••) (8 XP) for any short term social interaction this charm will allow us to manage. Basically we can get people to give up much for a kind world or pocket lint. It's only afterwards that they might feel cheated.
- Verdant Emptiness Endowment (•••••) (20 XP) being able to grant wishes on the spot is a lot of social leverage especially with the prices enforced.
- Political aspirations (almost put this under social, but there are differences. However some charms here would fit both)
- Endless Torment Emanation (•••) (12 XP Might or might not destroy supernatural factions, but they certainly won't like it. Will destroy mortal organizations as well as making it so no politician we don't like if ever elected.
- Shadow Spite Curse (••) (6 XP) can be used to similar effect as Endless Torment Emanation, but cheaper however requires more work to use that way. Has other uses on the small scale. Also a great sig.
- The King and the Kingdom: The
Thousand and First Hell (•••••) (20 XP) Yes. Also a great Sig.
- Fast Movement useful in general, but also for either making sure Broken Seeker can't get away or allowing us to get away
- Rendered Villain Dispersal (•) (4 XP) Not actually that go for combat movement, but great fast travel and make it easier for us to regain essence as well as deal with nightmares.
- Running to Forever (•) (4 XP) Basically means that we can move at full speed well doing something else. Would be even better if we were good with firearms or the like.
- Wind-Born Stride (••) (8XP) Triple speed by default 10 times speed if we spend essence or keep running for a few minutes.
- Pure killing power
- Space Monster Scream (••) (8 XP) if we can lure something to a prepared location this provides damage that would be hard to match without a volcano.
- Prince of Ruin attitude (•) (3XP) Make a super gun as well as other uses. Might be a good idea to buy firearm skill to go with it.
- Simmering Sinner Resentment (•) (3XP) we have a target that we can decide to hate. -1 DC on all attacks is fairly powerful, but there are also uses for using intimacies in combat.
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[X] Yes, 8 XP refunded, use the new rules for Essene raised by total XP spent
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Isn't it always Tshirt weather for Molly? Or really any clothing she wants. She is immune to cold and her touch of frost protects her from heat.
Essence level has historically been a function of enlightenment, and on a narrative level its relationship with the Exalted always been patterned as a flash of insight at lower levels, and a breakthrough due to purposeful intent and effort at improving your enlightenment at higher levels.
Your Essence level and your accumulated XP being on independent tracks was a deliberate choice.
It told a narrative story when the three hundred year old veteran with a breadth of skills and charms, and the specialized teenager who had been doing this for barely two years were both on the same level of enlightenment.
Mechanically, it also served as a deliberate signpost for both players and QM about difficulty and scope levels in the setting.
A player whose Exalt is hitting E3/E4 in play is generally ready to rock properly, and the QM/GM can start breaking out the upper tier of antagonists.
It left a certain amount of control on pulling the trigger, and in shaping your build, in the player's hands.
Having that happen automatically here, especially with the signature Infernal charms that are keyed to E3/E4?
Just rubs me the wrong way.
I dont expect to win this vote, not when there's a bonus 8XP for grabs and a discount on XP going forward if you vote for change.
But I still had to register my opinion about the change here.
So yeah, my two cents.
Bolded are priority.
Molly
Hellscry Chakra: 8xp
Rendered Villain Dispersal: 4xp
Etiquette 5: 4xp
Empathy 5: 4xp
Tech Excellency: 4xp
Alchemy 1: 3xp
Craft 4: 3xp
Science 1: 3xp
Academics 2: 2xp
Drive 2: 2xp
Naked Wicked Souls: 3xp
Cyberdevils 3: 3xp
If the 8XP is refunded, spend it on Maggot Mana Plague.
Lydia
Command The Dead: 3xp
Authority of the Psychopomp: 3xp
Occult 2: 2xp
Drive 1: 3xp
Medicine 1: 3xp
Familiar 2(Raven): 3xp
Jade Talisman 1: 3xp
Most of these charms still seem like bad ideas to me.
MMP isn't that awful, but it seems very inefficient. It just doesn't scale that high, and the mutations are concerning from a recruitment and reputation perspective. We could probably find some use for it,
IDU is more of a curse you inflict on your disposable supply of useful idiots than anything else. The powers most bakemono get are mostly trash, the transformation is horrible, and there's good odds that they end up on what's essentially life support via our other charms.
Not something I'm enthused about using on people we're planning to keep around rather than use up, and Molly isn't the type for that sort of thing anyway.
Playing a more traditional infernal the bakemono charms have some limited potential, but for one specifically trying not to be assholes they're kind of a nonstarter.
CPI has mind control mixed into it. That's not necessarily a deal breaker for someone trying not to be an asshole, but for Molly specifically it's a bad idea. She's got too many issues bound up in it, and too many people who won't take it well around her.
Sure she's immune to black magic now, but this is functionally the same as a recovering heroin addict claiming they're immune to drug dependencies and then getting caught choking up again a few months later. No one IC knows what an exact is, they're working off what they can observe lensed through their own biases.
False Springs Beckon is still nice, but we're not exactly suffering from having minors with a common bane here. Thomas is cool, but I'm not interested in spending 9 xp to improve his love life.
Cult is a can of worms we probably don't want to get into, because Molly is catholic. The mechanical merits are irrelevant, baring substantial character changes she wouldn't set herself up in anything like what the prayer powers require.
Agree on most of these, but I wouldn't consider MwStW a Mab charm. It's discoverable, so we shouldn't use it on anyone we're not willing to end up on the shit list of.
I think our perfect attack should probably be above simmering sinner resentment in terms of pure killing power.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Still disagree that we need Molly
Hellscry Chakra. Would rather just spend that XP or alertness or awareness.
But why in the world do you think that we need more drive when we can make cars self driving at will?
Ninja will respond.
Hellscry Chakra. Would rather just spend that XP or alertness or awareness.
But why in the world do you think that we need more drive when we can make cars self driving at will?
Ninja will respond.
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Enlightenment isn't typically something you control though, and divorcing it from all the things you do, learn, and become is a strange choice at best.
It was a deliberate choice, but Holden's notes make it clear he thinks it was a mistake that makes the game less enjoyable. It seem to me that it's set up that way for the sake of making the character advancement rules uniform more than anything else.
I see what you're saying, but I don't really agree with your conclusions.
Essence buy as a sort of sign post is an interesting point, but not buying essence doesn't stop you from getting stupid strong. The information value of it is limited in that respect.
Pinning it on exp makes it more of a warning to both parties that you're moving up the ranks and your higher power level should be account for.
We don't actually have to buy all of our special options at the first buy point available either. If we're paying for it we probably will because that's a major advantage of the new level, but if it's not soaking up a huge chunk of exp on the same level we can think on a longer term level about it.
I get RVD, but HC is comically bad for it's price point and one additional base dot to etiquette rolls isn't exactly the highest return we can get for four exp.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
100 per essence level seems like a good amount of scaling to me. Especially since I expect us to mostly use it as a diet supplement rather than only feeding them it. We are more interested in the supernatural hungers then the mutations. Or at least I am.
DPs information post seems to indicate that we can get a better deal than that.
Shouldn't be a problem if we pick the right things to hate the right rituals and dress code. If we don't want it to be a burden it really doesn't have to be. Although now I am thinking that we might delay getting this charm until after our kingdom. Maybe we can make a super training center in our hell.
I personally find them cool. Mostly because I want to see that conversation.
Couldn't find the perfect attack. Don't even know which hell it is supposed to be in. I think that it was gaze something? Something to do with burning people with an gaze attack.
As far as supernatural perception stuff goes, we really should look into getting that DF Sight merit. We do have that option.
I don't really think that we really need them right now, or have anyone to use them on, but I don't really want to bin them.
DP has an entire info threadmark devoted to "No, Bakemono charms don't have to suck for the recepient." And that prolly could be taken a step further with a correct hell and a correct devil.
I don't really think that we really need them right now, or have anyone to use them on, but I don't really want to bin them.
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It just seems like a very medium term fix to me, since we'll probably bust the cap on it by simply not being an asshole to people the supernatural regard as the dregs of society.
The mutations still need to be managed though, because they're the sort of thing that immediately feeds into the string bias supernatural anything will have towards the idea that we're eating people or similar.
Looking at his general rules I'm somewhat more optimistic, but the powers on offer still aren't that great unless they're already improving good existing toolkit.
The problem isn't what we pick, it's that the process happens at all in any form. Wizards can see stuff like this, and most of them take violent issue with mind control even if it isn't a law violation, which they probably have more troubling buying if we start acting like a warlock.
Remember that black magic twists the user, but it doesn't work like warp corruption. You get warped based on what you're doing and how you're thinking about it.
Molly's problem is going maximum over Charity on people and taking their choices away for their own good. Pulling (or appearing to pull) a classic brainwashed goon squad employment program, but trying to make it something good for her victims is exactly the sort of path Molly would walk if she'd gone bad.
They're really not that impressive as abilities. I think the only reasonable way to get what you're going for is if our hell happens to take one of the top two loyalty levels and people just pop into existence to worship Molly.
Molly deliberately going for it is just too OOC; that one conversation might as well be with a pod person wearing her face at that point.
We also got a ruling that they don't get to soak this. We roll and they suffer the damage barring perfect defense.
Which is good since we have no other perfect attack and can't play the typical exalted dice pool games with this one.
As we are starting to get minions VEE is massively more useful.
[X] Yes, 8 XP refunded, use the new rules for Essene raised by total XP spent
If we are allowed to purchase the Devil Disciple Lanka Charm from Dark Ages, we should get that instead. It both saves us XP do to being a 5 dot Charm that trains and creates fomori, and it lacks the brainwashing CPI causes.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Molly doesn't deliberately go for any of our build choices. It's just her Exaltation waking up. Also praying to Saints for intercessory prayers is about as old as the church.
They're supposed to be her growing and following a path. We're picking them, but IC exalts don't just get random powers by gacha rules.
Saints are a thing, but generally speaking you don't appoint yourself one and start accepting prayer in your own name.
Frankly I thought Molly being declared a living Saint was so such a natural path to take, I have taken it as a for gone conclusion.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
We don't appoint ourself one. We just mention that we can hear and answer prayers and that we are available at 8 pm. Save the white god some essence.
There's a world of difference between being a saint and the prayer rituals described in ExWoD. There's also one between being declared a Saint and declaring yourself one; especially in the DF where the white god might actually take issue with powerful people trying that.
And again, Molly is Catholic, and not a casual one that shows up because it's expected, she actually has real reverence for this entire concept and the parties involved.
The point to MMP is that it meets all mundane and alternative nutritional requirements, whether blood, life force, whatever.
If you have a bunch of Whampire minions or supernaturals with specialized requirements, you can administer it as a once or twice weekly treatment regimen to feed their Hunger in place of predating mortals.
As long as you dont feed them MMP continuously for (Stamina) weeks, no mutation. Just have them eat normal food as well.
And you can mitigate the social DC thing, if you so choose, by having them treat it as a (tasty, tasty)medicine, not a food.
Take once or twice a week.
If you're not eating it everyday, you dont get the social debuff.
And as for scaling? MMP is Essence*100 people.
At E2, thats two hundred people. Enough to feed 200 people every day for a week is enough to give 1400 people one days feeding weekly, or 4200 people one meal every week.
Lord Raith and Thomas both demonstrate that Whampires in particular can go without feeding for extended periods of time.
As long as you arent burning full combat spends on a regular basis.
So just keep filling up the magic tanks against future need.
Read the fluff to Hellscry chakra again, and pay attention to the aura colors.
-Drive:
Because at Drive 1, we're barely competent.Drive said:
Our cyberdevils can make cars self-driving.
Their dicepool appears to be 5(Int 2 + Tech 3), which is roughly as bad as Molly's current pool(Dex 4 + Drive 1).
Worse than Molly's pool if she stunts. And they dont get DC modifiers like Molly does.
In a combat encounter, or a situation where our skill is called on, I'd like the option to take the wheel.
And we wont get to HMP every vehicle we ever drive.
Hellscry Chakra is
-Knockoff lie detector
-Emotional state monitor,
-Creatures of darkness detector,
-General detector fpr supernatural creatures and the possessed.
Its also the only charm/ability that will reliably pick up on Nemesis-infected people; according to the Gatekeeper, the Sight helps but is not reliable. In some ways its frankly better than the Sight, just narrower application.
Its very much worth its 8XP running costs.
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
I
So I will make this suggestion here,
| Essence | Experience Spent |
|---|---|
| 2 | 50 |
| 3 | 100 |
| 4 | 200 |
| 5 | 400 |
This is the modified 3E Essence Table and acts as a good block to ensure that E4 and E5 are not reached quickly. To give further context, we currently have a total xp of 12xp + 18xp + 30xp + 27xp +23xp = 110xp.
So this turn , we will be hitting E3 if accepted and it will be a while before we hit E4, unless we do something crazy and an even more while before we max out Essence.
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fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
First time we put a Cyberdevil in a car it provided a -2 DC on our drive rolls which seems like enough if we want to do combat tricks. However in most combat situations I can think of Molly is better off flying out of the car.