Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
- Crossover Fantasy
Willpower on IPM, so we have 3 essence to spend between Subterfuge, Etiquette, Empathy, and potentially Hellscry Chakra.
This is not actually true.
We used both Empathy and Etiquette during our previous encounter with Mab at the Museum iirc.
Thats why we've been spending XP on building up those abilities.
Its not an obvious charm.
At least, as written, its not going to be any more Obvious than All Things Betray.
See below.
1)Yes it is. But its not what we need for observing individuals.
To use an analogy?
Free access to Janes Defense or the New York Times is not going to make it any less necessary to buy a subscription to New England Journal of Medicine or Nature to keep track of the details of the covid-19 pandemic.
Don't get me wrong.
When we start regularly traveling the NeverNever, or going to other cities, Essence-Dissecting Stare, which allows us to automatically map the local supernatural terrain will be immensely useful. Invaluable even.
Same for when we regularly encounter supernatural players or groups of enough metaphysical mass that their very presence distorts the environment.
But in day to day Chicago?
Where we have friends and allies on speed dial who have mapped the area and have decades of historical experience of the local supernatural climate and terrain? Its of significantly less immediate importance.
Not that we shouldn't get it; we should.
But for our current needs, Hellscry Chakra appears more urgent IMO.
===
2)I am not home, so I can't look at my stuff, and a quick search isn't finding the quote I wanted.
So I can't give you the exact quote.
I don't see any reason why it wouldn't.
Besides, the V20 Auspex table that this appears to be benchmarked to for Aura Perception and Karmic Sight explicitly equate outside influence as the same; Dominate and demonic possession? Same type of threat.
Plus there's the QM quote on the previous page.
We're not working off canon Exalted 2E; we're working off Exalted vs World of Darkness Revised, a free fanbook by Holden Shearer and available on his website. Here's a link to the (free) pdf; its roughly 36MB
Exalted_Versus_World_of_Darkness_Revised
Doesn't matter that I can think of; she's seen our anima banner and shintai form before at the Museum when we first met.
I doubt we're going to be holding back any on burning Essence.
=
IPM: 1 Willpower
All Things Betray: 1m Essence
Hellscry Chakra: 1m Essence
Etiquette Excellency: 1m Essence
Empathy Excellency: 1m Essence
Subterfuge Excellency if needed.
Cost: 4-5m, 1WP
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
[X] Plan Secret Agent Molly
Like this plan best. Basic Attributes and Abilities will help us more than any of the charms people are aiming for, I think.
Like this plan best. Basic Attributes and Abilities will help us more than any of the charms people are aiming for, I think.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
That's my thought as well. They're just basic foundational stuff that will always apply, regardless of Essence levels, that we've put off enhancing for long enough. There were good reasons for the delay, but now seems like a good time to start working on remedying the issue.
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
Votes tied. Regarding abilities, getting one dot in abilities which do not reduce 1s will not help. Especially since we do not have an excellency in them. So we are literally only going to get 1 dice from them.
I do not see how this will help where Hellscry has been stated to work on Mab.
We roll Perception + Occult on a difficulty of 6 or 3 (If ATB is active). So that is 8 dice on difficulty 3 by spending 1m 1wp for a scene. This seems much more useful than rolling +1 or +2 dice in Subterfuge.
I do not see how this will help where Hellscry has been stated to work on Mab.
We roll Perception + Occult on a difficulty of 6 or 3 (If ATB is active). So that is 8 dice on difficulty 3 by spending 1m 1wp for a scene. This seems much more useful than rolling +1 or +2 dice in Subterfuge.
Its mechanically suboptimal, and there isn't really a thematic thrust to compensate.
Compare:
===
Perception 2 + Awareness 1 = 3 dice. 3XP
Perception 2 + Alertness 1 = 3 dice. 3XP
Total Cost: 6xp
=
Perception 3 + Awareness 0 = 3 dice.
Perception 3 + Alertness 0 = 3 dice.
Perception 3 + Investigation 0 = 3 dice.
And that Perception increase also boosts Perception + Occult( 7 dice to 8 dice, 14 dice to 16 dice with Excellency), Perception + Empathy(6 dice to 7 dice, 12 to 14 dice with Excellency).
Total Cost: 8xp
Basically, if you are concerned about increasing Attributes and Abilities?
At Molly's current stat spread(Perception 2, Occult 5, Empathy 4, Awareness 0, Alertness 0, Investigation 0)?
Buying a dot of Perception for 8XP is a better deal than buying a dot each of Alertness and Awareness for 6XP combined.
===
And Molly has Subterfuge 3 as a Key Ability.
That means that she's rolling 6 dice for social subterfuge (Cha/Man 3 + Subterfuge 3 before stunts), or 12 dice when burning an Excellency. Spending 3xp to raise Subterfuge from 3 to 4 is the same cost as a Favored 1-dot charm for a 16% increase in our Subterfuge dice pool.
Thats...not a great deal.
Remember that the key strength of an Exalt is in their charms.
3 dots is usually respectable in a non-core ability, especially if that Ability rating does not appear to gate any Charms or determine how they work.
I mean, we've been building Last Station with Craft 3, Occult 5 and Tech 2.
I won't deny that there are thematic reasons to buy some Attributes and Abilities up.
I myself particularly want to eventually get Appearance to 5. Eventually.(Also Academics, Science and a couple others need increasing for narrative or thematic reasons IMO).
But I don't think it applies here, right at this time.
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It would have been great when poking the jades, since it should have let us see the changes to the ley lines at least well enough to roll for understanding.
There's also potential when we're poking the hiding places of creatures like the Naagoloshi, which has probably set up some defenses.
It's got plenty of day to day utility, arguably more so than Hellscry because we can theoretically check it whenever we like for free once we've bought it, and getting a mood ring isn't guaranteed to help us as much with Mab.
The last QM post related to this talks about how hard it is to detect with the sight, which is otherwise treated as essentially infallible. People barely even bother with illusions because strong mortal mages can trivially pierce magical disguises crafted by a god if they're willing to pay the price to do it.
If anything that makes me more inclined to believe Hellscry Chakra isn't capable of casually outing nemesis on sight.
Going into obvious power use mode is still poor etiquette while trying civilized diplomacy.
You don't see Denarians in war mode at Accord related events, or Reds sitting at the peace table without their flesh masks.
They do that for back alley diplomacy, but not formal stuff.
Flashing our anima banner is probably about as classy as showing off a gun.
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
Nemesis was SPECIFICALLY designed to avoid Sight. It was not designed to avoid Exalted.
Nemesis is CONFIRMED to be CoD. CoDs show up on Hellscry.
Both have been confirmed. We are also rolling 8dice at difficulty 3. So getting 5 sux to notice Nemesis, if we need that much to understand what we are seeing, will very much be possible.
I will repeat, Hellscry CAN see Nemesis.
That's not exactly what the quote says:
How the Sight interacts with Outsiders is a complicated subject... that I almost wrote in here before I remembered spoilers are a thing. (). Sufice to say it is theoretically possible for a wizard to spot Nemesis, it is just not very likely becase the damn thing is designed to hide from among other things the Sight.
Among other things, as in a set including the sight and presumably all the divine grade senses that don't automatically sniff it out everywhere it goes.
The sight is no small thing either; it's the single area where mortal magic stacks up to exalted charms. It's not as absolute, but it's closer to it than most anything else gets.
The 15 exp for that single ability should say something about where it sits.
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
Yes, the quote says exactly that,
Nemesis is built to overcome things in current Creation, i.e sight and other detection.
@DragonParadox has also gone on record to say charms do what they do and "If an exalted says no, it means no, for better or for worse".
So, given that Nemesis is a CoD, it shows up in Hellscry. Given we can roll 5+ sux on the roll, we will be able to see that something is wrong at the minimum.
But lets Clarify this. @DragonParadox would Hellscry work as intended against Nemesis or will Nemesis juke it like it does on sight?
Also with regards to the 15xp part, keep in mind that this is a mortal ability and not an exalted one. One that acts like a charm and can be learned by anyone. That is why it is priced so much, because it is universal.
Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
My plan increases Perception to 3 dots, and it buys us 1 dot in Alertness and Awareness. That's 14 XP well spent, IMO.
What the cost to raise our cyber spy's dots
Duquette7
I am Fire, and I am Rain
Welp, I think I'm going to have to strike through my vote, I just lack the experience to properly evaluate the merits of the proposed plans.
Narratively I feel that what we need most is increased skill or aptitude with awareness, alertness, and perception, but I don't know how to properly gauge the mechanical benefit of those expenditures in this system.
Barring that, new charms are always interesting, but I'd strongly favor getting our first perfect defense over an addition sensory charm at this stage, given that I'm more concerned about the Skinwalker then Nemesis at the moment, and that's not on offer here.
You know what, fine, might as well put up a plan instead of moping given that I was going to throw my vote out anyway.
[X] Plan Today And Tomorrow
-[X] Molly (21 XP)
--[X] Empathy 5 (4 XP)
--[X] Perception 3 (8 XP)
--[X] Bloodless Murk Evasion (9 XP)
-[X] Lydia (9 XP)
--[X] Hunter's Bolt (6 XP)
--[X] Oxen Body (3 XP)
There, that looks better, Empathy for Mab, Perception for everything, and a perfect so we don't get ganked if the Naagloshii decides to strike during Halloween.
Given the potency of Exalted bullshit we might be able to stumble onto Nemesis in the next 4 days, its even possible we get actionable intelligence before the meeting, but we are utterly unprepared for the follow up. The wiki states that He Who Walks Beside is extremely diligent in suppressing threats to its secrecy, and we lack the personal power to survive its attention, let alone the strength to shield our dependents.
We are trying to do too much.
We don't need to beat Mab at social today, just secure the space and time to grow strong, which is basically a stalemate. We have WoG that the gossamer is a tasty enough bribe to buy off our dot of enmity with Winter, so if it comes down to a break glass moment, we have an out.
We don't need to uncover the underlying and overreaching threat of the Outside today, at seventeen and essence 2, we do need to put down or at least survive the Naagloshii hunting in our city and trying to eat our crush.
We are Exalted, all things are possible, but they shouldn't happen all at once, so saith the Pattern Spiders, and I feel the thread could use a reminder of that.
Narratively I feel that what we need most is increased skill or aptitude with awareness, alertness, and perception, but I don't know how to properly gauge the mechanical benefit of those expenditures in this system.
Barring that, new charms are always interesting, but I'd strongly favor getting our first perfect defense over an addition sensory charm at this stage, given that I'm more concerned about the Skinwalker then Nemesis at the moment, and that's not on offer here.
You know what, fine, might as well put up a plan instead of moping given that I was going to throw my vote out anyway.
[X] Plan Today And Tomorrow
-[X] Molly (21 XP)
--[X] Empathy 5 (4 XP)
--[X] Perception 3 (8 XP)
--[X] Bloodless Murk Evasion (9 XP)
-[X] Lydia (9 XP)
--[X] Hunter's Bolt (6 XP)
--[X] Oxen Body (3 XP)
There, that looks better, Empathy for Mab, Perception for everything, and a perfect so we don't get ganked if the Naagloshii decides to strike during Halloween.
Given the potency of Exalted bullshit we might be able to stumble onto Nemesis in the next 4 days, its even possible we get actionable intelligence before the meeting, but we are utterly unprepared for the follow up. The wiki states that He Who Walks Beside is extremely diligent in suppressing threats to its secrecy, and we lack the personal power to survive its attention, let alone the strength to shield our dependents.
We are trying to do too much.
We don't need to beat Mab at social today, just secure the space and time to grow strong, which is basically a stalemate. We have WoG that the gossamer is a tasty enough bribe to buy off our dot of enmity with Winter, so if it comes down to a break glass moment, we have an out.
We don't need to uncover the underlying and overreaching threat of the Outside today, at seventeen and essence 2, we do need to put down or at least survive the Naagloshii hunting in our city and trying to eat our crush.
We are Exalted, all things are possible, but they shouldn't happen all at once, so saith the Pattern Spiders, and I feel the thread could use a reminder of that.
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Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
Also on this. Are we still having a vote on what to do with this Charm in the next update as you said we would previously?
Because as is, this is a dead charm till E4. Any enemy we use it on will soak it and 5 dmg is soakable, thus wasting presious motes in a fight for no effect.
Even worse is that we will not be hitting E4 anytime soon, given we have yet to hit E3.
It would be a waste of Essence against mooks as we do agg dmg which they do not soak anyway. So 5 dmg is cosmetic at best, wasteful overkill at worst.
My idea was to swap it for "By Agony Empowered" which makes mook spam a less of a threat and also gets us a Charm that we woulc not otherwise take as it is poorly ported.
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Yes, it does. I was making a point.
Awareness 1 + Alertness 1 = 6xp. Same cost as a 2-dot Favored charm.
Seeing Is Blindness. Shadow Spite Curse. Kneel or Be Knelt. When The Tigers Break Free.
All cost 6xp.
???
*checks again*
No it wouldn't. Read the text of the Charm again; the passive effect is viewing Dragons Nests, and the active effect is paying 1WP to see across the Gauntlet into the NeverNever, or to view the chimerical aspect of reality.
The Will did not have the metaphysical mass to affect Dragons Nests passively, so it wouldn't have pinged on EDS.
If they had successfully fucked with the leylines, that should have been noticeable, but just their existing in the general areawas demonstrably not enough to distort the flows of power.
Furthermore, EDS has a range of Essence* miles; at Essence 2, that's 2 miles.
If we were never within 2 miles of its location, EDS would never have never noticed, even if it was massive enough to distort Dragons Nests.
If the naagloshii stays away from Dragons Nests, EDS is unlikely to ping its presence
Given its metaphysical mass, it will probably see it though.
===
Calling Hellscry Chakra a mood ring is explicitly doing it a disservice, because that's in no way what it is.
It would be like calling Essence-Dissecting Stare a compass.
Furthermore, even the emotional aspect of the charm is the sort of thing that has significant applications in both social and combat situations, when you can see what a person actually feels even if they have the most pokerface of pokerfaced that ever pokerfaced.
Not to mention that there are multiple entities in this AU here who use emotion as a vector for feeding, for influencing others, or just as a direct mental attack.
Being able to see that happening allows for early warning.
Finally, its worth reiterating:
Essence Dissecting Stare is a 3 dot charm. Hellscry Chakra is 2 dots.
They're both unfavored, but we would pay 8xp for Hellscry Chakra and 12xp for Essence Dissecting Stare, 50% more cost.
I provided citations from Mr Butcher that the Sight is explicitly not infallible.
And the QM confirms that Nemesis is designed to evade the Sight.
Flaring your anima banner is about the same as Mab dropping the temperature when she shows up; a passive manifestation of Power use, but nothing more than that. IIRC, she did this at the Museum.
Showing a gun? Would be manifesting our demonsword, or going into shintai as a flex.
We have shown her our anima, and our shintai war form, wittingly or not.
And she will notice our Demonic Primacy of Essence, even if she is too senior to be affected by it.
Im not especially fussed at the idea that she sees our anima again in a peaceful avenue.
Besides, better to be a little gauche than to actually lose social combat because we were trying to avoid anima flare.
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Molly does not know what a Nemesis is IC and she does not have the charm. The last post I answered was about the Sight in canon where you can infer it is not a surefire way to stop Nemeris by the fact that it is still so dangerous. Answering the same question about Hellscry would actually be spoilers unfortunately.
Yzarc
The Spark of Madness
Thanks for the response. About GSNF. The current ruling makes it a dead charm ATM. Would it be possible to have a vote to decide what to do with it?
Because I stand by what I said that it js useless as it is at best and a waste of precious motes in combat at worst.
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I'm still thinking about how to present the options. It will be next vote.
4 essence. We can spend 4 essence before flaring our anima. IPM with willpower, ATB also with willpower, and then excellencies. If we have budget for it, NWS just as Mab is leaving.
It was previously ruled that we can track naagloshii (and, I assume, similar things) with EDS. They are, in essence (pardon the pun) walking Dragon Nests. Unless naagloshii is actively hiding (in which case, it only can use shapeshifting, no magic), we'll be able to track it.
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Ok, so, once more, an argument towards Subterfuge. Because yes, it's that important.
Right now we have subterfuge 3. We are likely rolling either manipulation + subterfuge, or wits + subterfuge (less likely). In both cases this amounts to 6 dice total, 12 with excellency. That's 6.6 successes on average, assuming DC 7. We can safely assume that Mab has at least 20 dice plus whatever difficulty adjusters she has to read us. Assuming she can botch, her average success rate at DC7 would be 8.8. Assuming she can't botch it would be 11. By increasing Subterfuge to 5, we get 4 additional dice, which brings us to the average success amount of 8.8. If I understand correctly, in an opposed rolls, we need to roll more successes than Mab does (please, someone, correct me here. Is it strict > or >=? I am assuming >). Gaming it out, we get
So, currently we have, in the best case scenario, 1/3 chance of not spilling secrets to Mab, essentially. If we take the Subterfuge to 4, we get
Already better, but still below 50%. If we buy subterfuge to 5, however,
So, we essentially go from 1/3 to 1/2 chance of winning a roll-off against Mab in the best case scenario, and from 1/50th chance of winning to 1/14th in case of the worst case scenario. Now, whether this is a substantial increase is arguable. However, the alternative is Perception 3. Perception rolls are almost always going to be "attack rolls" - us trying to read Mab, to understand what she's doing. As @uju32 pointed out, we have a number of possible roll combinations:
Perception + Awareness = Perception + Alertness = Perception + Investigation =2 and 1s subtract total successes
Perception + Occult = Perception + Empathy (in all the leading votes we are buying Empathy 5, so I'll treat this as a foregone conclusion) = 14 (including excellency).
We can safely assume that we'll be using ATB, which gives us a 3 DC discount. Assuming 20 dice for Mab, currently we have the following probability of winning
Now, assuming we buy Perception 3, we get dicepool of 3 for Awareness, Alertness, investigation, and dicepool of 16 for Occult, Empathy. This results in the following:
So, we'll go from being able to see through Mab (in empathic and occult senses) 6/10s of the time to 7/10s of the time. The effects on Awareness, Alertness and Investigation are negligible.
Of course, this is not only about Mab. This is also about Molly in general. And one thing that I'd like to remind everyone is that Bob, Harry and others have repeatedly said "keep your secrets close". I abhor this policy. However, in certain situations certain secrets need to be kept. For that, we need subterfuge.
EDIT: Math (perception tables) corrected, sorry for the initial errors folks
Right now we have subterfuge 3. We are likely rolling either manipulation + subterfuge, or wits + subterfuge (less likely). In both cases this amounts to 6 dice total, 12 with excellency. That's 6.6 successes on average, assuming DC 7. We can safely assume that Mab has at least 20 dice plus whatever difficulty adjusters she has to read us. Assuming she can botch, her average success rate at DC7 would be 8.8. Assuming she can't botch it would be 11. By increasing Subterfuge to 5, we get 4 additional dice, which brings us to the average success amount of 8.8. If I understand correctly, in an opposed rolls, we need to roll more successes than Mab does (please, someone, correct me here. Is it strict > or >=? I am assuming >). Gaming it out, we get
| Probability of winning, if Mab's 1s subtract successes, % | Probability of winning if Mab's 1s don't subtract successes, % | |
| Equal DC=7 | 30 | 14 |
| Mab rolls at DC 6 | 17 | 6 |
| Mab rolls at DC 5 | 8 | 2 |
| Probability of winning, if Mab's 1s subtract successes, % | Probability of winning if Mab's 1s don't subtract successes, % | |
| Equal DC=7 | 38 | 21 |
| Mab rolls at DC 6 | 23 | 10 |
| Mab rolls at DC 5 | 12 | 4 |
| Probability of winning, if Mab's 1s subtract successes, % | Probability of winning if Mab's 1s don't subtract successes, % | |
| Equal DC=7 | 46 | 29 |
| Mab rolls at DC 6 | 30 | 16 |
| Mab rolls at DC 5 | 18 | 7 |
The total dice pools currently are
Perception + Awareness = Perception + Alertness = Perception + Investigation =2 and 1s subtract total successes
Perception + Occult = Perception + Empathy (in all the leading votes we are buying Empathy 5, so I'll treat this as a foregone conclusion) = 14 (including excellency).
We can safely assume that we'll be using ATB, which gives us a 3 DC discount. Assuming 20 dice for Mab, currently we have the following probability of winning
| Probability of winning, if Mab's 1s subtract successes, % | Probability of winning if Mab's 1s don't subtract successes, % | |
| Equal DC=7 | 3 | 0.16 |
| Mab rolls at DC 6 | 0.9 | 0.02 |
| Mab rolls at DC 5 | 0.2 | negligible |
| Probability of winning, if Mab's 1s subtract successes, % | Probability of winning if Mab's 1s don't subtract successes, % | |
| Equal DC=7 | 73 | 58 |
| Mab rolls at DC 6 | 57 | 39 |
| Mab rolls at DC 5 | 40 | 23 |
| Probability of winning, if Mab's 1s subtract successes, % | Probability of winning if Mab's 1s don't subtract successes, % | |
| Equal DC=7 | 5 | 0.5 |
| Mab rolls at DC 6 | 1.7 | 0.09 |
| Mab rolls at DC 5 | 0.5 | negligible |
| Probability of winning, if Mab's 1s subtract successes, % | Probability of winning if Mab's 1s don't subtract successes, % | |
| Equal DC=7 | 82 | 71 |
| Mab rolls at DC 6 | 69 | 53 |
| Mab rolls at DC 5 | 53 | 35 |
Of course, this is not only about Mab. This is also about Molly in general. And one thing that I'd like to remind everyone is that Bob, Harry and others have repeatedly said "keep your secrets close". I abhor this policy. However, in certain situations certain secrets need to be kept. For that, we need subterfuge.
EDIT: Math (perception tables) corrected, sorry for the initial errors folks
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