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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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Hm...

I'll keep my vote for the other plan.

No By Rage Recast, demon weapon and WP are just deal-breakers.

Alectai said:
Mind you, that's my perspective rather than anything else, but I do like Infernals, and I do like the Dresden Files, and I want to see that clash rather than try to gear towards one side dominating the other at maximum speed
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I think this mindset is making...lots of assumptions that wont bear out.
 
[X] Plan: When did my life become a YA Action-Horror story?

Works for me. I'd have put the White Council in as one or two dot enemies since Molly was a warlock and her current existence probably doesn't improve things, but that's small potatoes.

I'm way more interested in this because it tries to be more than just Numbers Go Up and actually sells me on the idea that Molly exalted and not some rando.
 
flotter said:
[X] Plan: When did my life become a YA Action-Horror story?

Works for me. I'd have put the White Council in as one or two dot enemies since Molly was a warlock and her current existence probably doesn't improve things, but that's small potatoes.

I'm way more interested in this because it tries to be more than just Numbers Go Up and actually sells me on the idea that Molly exalted and not some rando.
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Strictly speaking, she's not a Wizard anymore, so she's out of their jurisdiction.

Valkhir said:
Hm...

I'll keep my vote for the other plan.

No By Rage Recast, demon weapon and WP are just deal-breakers.


I think this mindset is making...lots of assumptions that wont bear out.
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"You don't build towards getting free aggravated damage with every attack and maximum Willpower, and that's a deal breaker to me"

I mean... Is my assumption wrong in this context? Or are we expecting a kill squad of Ancient Wizards to drop in and not having easy access to Aggravated Damage right this second is game over?

I just want to build up to the Cool Shit instead of blowing it all in the introduction.
 
Alectai said:
I mean... Is my assumption wrong in this context? Or are we expecting a kill squad of Ancient Wizards to drop in and not having easy access to Aggravated Damage right this second is game over?
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Yes.

The assumption I mentioned is more about having "one gear towards dominating the other".

Dresden stuff definitely isn't a setting that this would even mildly inconvenience.

Aggravated damage is a good thing, but we're really...weak. It wouldn't protect against a squad of people with automatic guns, much less real, high caliber combat capable Wizards.

The demon weapon and Agg is mostly useful for creature type enemies, which...we would probably encounter a lot of, in general and here in Arctis Tor.

Human derived enemies like Wizards dont really care about Agg in combat timeframe, as they die to Lethal too. The problem is them being able to kill us...very easily without appropriate defenses.

Creatures tho, which we are in immediate danger of, are another thing.
 
Valkhir said:
Yes.

The assumption I mentioned is more about having "one gear towards dominating the other".

Dresden stuff definitely isn't a setting that this would even mildly inconvenience.

Aggravated damage is a god thing, but we're really...weak. It wouldn't protect against a squad of people with automatic guns, much less real, high caliber combat capable Wizards.

The demon weapon and Agg is mostly useful for creature type enemies, which...we would probably encounter a lot of, in general and here in Arctis Tor.

Human derived enemies like Wizards dont really care about Agg in combat timeframe, as they die to Lethal too. The problem is them being able to kill us...very easily without appropriate defenses.

Creatures tho, which we are in immediate danger of, are another thing.
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... But, you're acting as though we will have literally zero time to learn anything before we're stuck fighting something massively out of our weight class and if we don't have an infinite bane weapon right now we are dead?

And even then, that our only option is to fight, and that we are alone and entirely in a white room that there is no escape from?

Come on, there's more options in the world than just "Delete Hostile"
 
Alectai said:
Come on, there's more options in the world than just "Delete Hostile"
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There are other things, I just disagree with the priorities of your plan.

Combat and not-dying is always first. Why? You can do nothing if you're dead.


As for our only option being to fight...well, also yes. I do expect that, because...that makes sense. You may be able to talk around a lot of potential enemies, but that's relatively unreliable in my eyes.

It's just a different kind of thinking. I am not expecting to convince you of anything.
 
[X] Plan: When did my life become a YA Action-Horror story?

You have a point about the optimization, especially in the context of Molly's character.

Her canon skill set wasn't really oriented towards being a combat wood chipper anyway, and taking ancient sorcery knowledge plays more into her background as a wizard and her new compulsion for secret knowledge than becoming one.

I also appreciate the lack of socially crippling flaws that would do things like require her younger siblings to roll like social gods to avoid crying when they see her.
 
Valkhir said:
There are other things, I just disagree with the priorities of your plan.

Combat and not-dying is always first. Why? You can do nothing if you're dead.


As for our only option being to fight...well, also yes. I do expect that, because...that makes sense. You may be able to talk around a lot of potential enemies, but that's relatively unreliable in my eyes.

It's just a different kind of thinking. I am not expecting to convince you of anything.
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Yes, but are you suggesting that they're going to be right here, this very instant?

That we literally need to be an Agg damage, WP 10 demigod just to survive post charactergeneration until our first XP dole? And this needs to come at the cost of Molly's entire social life? Including the family that loves her?
 
Alectai said:
Yes, but are you suggesting that they're going to be right here, this very instant?

That we literally need to be an Agg damage, WP 10 demigod just to survive post charactergeneration until our first XP dole? And this needs to come at the cost of Molly's entire social life? Including the family that loves her?
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The counterpoint is...Why not? Why not have the necessities to start with before branching out into luxury?

What is a concrete reason, from my point of view? Nothing.
 
Valkhir said:
The counterpoint is...Why not? Why not have the necessities to start with before branching out into luxury?

What is a concrete reason, from my point of view? Nothing.
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Because it's nonsensical, "The minimum standard is maximum destructive power and resources, because anything less is suicide". How the hell has Dresden survived all this time if you need to have unlimited access to Aggravated Damage and Senior Council level Willpower to survive contact with the supernatural?

Yes, the very peak of Dresden Files is legitimately fearsome, but that peak isn't right here, we are still dealing with the relative Street Level stuff here, and for that, a nuclear powered killing machine is gross overkill, and I'd rather fan out so we have a wide variety of options--which does, in fact, include having a lot of destructive power too, because it's not like I don't have Green Sun Nimbus Flare in this build, which does a big pile of Aggravated to any target, and we're 9 XP away from being able to just make any weapon we desire thanks to Principle Invoking Onslaught, which is like, one XP dole at forum quest rates.

The only thing we don't have is "Our every attack does Aggravated Damage", but that's on the table when we get our Shintai at Essence 2. My build isn't weak, it's just not willing to sacrifice's Molly's entire life on the altar of "Combat Optimization at the get-go"
 
Alectai said:
The only thing we don't have is "Our every attack does Aggravated Damage", but that's on the table when we get our Shintai at Essence 2. My build isn't weak, it's just not willing to sacrifice's Molly's entire life on the altar of "Combat Optimization at the get-go"
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I disagree with this post and the idea behind it. That's all, I can't really express it differently, so...yep.

Edit: Also, thats a very weird line to me. "Sacrifice Molly's life for combat optimization". I don't...see any sacrifice that isn't already made by virtue of becoming an Infernal Exalt.

Molly's life as it was is over anyway. She will have one, but I expect radical changes. Exaltation is always...great. Effect eise.
 
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For me it really having Brigid's Heir being to just learn spells is a big deal. We would have to dungeon crawl, bargain for, or spend years researching for every single spell without it. It saves so many headaches.

And frankly I don't like flaws in exalted, they either do nothing that raw exalted power can't make irrelevant. Or are so crippling you have to buy a custom charm to negate them.

And I really want argent binding, that spell lets one just make 1-3 dot fetch every single day at essence 1, once we increase essence we can start making 4-6 dot fetch daily.
 
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Valkhir said:
I disagree with this post and the idea behind it. That's all, I can't really express it differently, so...yep.
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...

Okay then?

I mean, if you're insistent that this setting is a Chungian Hellscape where the slightest chink in your armor at any point in your story is Instant, Irrevocable Death, then yeah, that makes sense.

I disagree, but I guess if our outlooks are just that fundamentally different, there's no argument to be made. We'll leave it to the voters to decide.
 
As someone who doesn't know exalted mechanics, can someone explain how sorcery works? I recall it being said that sorcery was mechanically inferior because you have to put in more then you get out of it?
 
Parzival95 said:
As someone who doesn't know exalted mechanics, can someone explain how sorcery works? I recall it being said that sorcery was mechanically inferior because you have to put in more then you get out of it?
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It's kinda just mediocre compared to charms. It's also expensive as fuck to learn. Sapphire exorcism is something DP called out as useful for the denarians, but... eh. Want a couple of mediocre zombies that dont last very long? Sorceries got you covered.

@Alectai If you can fit our demonic advisor in there somehow I'll vote for your plan.

We already named Usum and everything! :V
 
Parzival95 said:
As someone who doesn't know exalted mechanics, can someone explain how sorcery works? I recall it being said that sorcery was mechanically inferior because you have to put in more then you get out of it?
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The reason I am not sold on Sorcery has a few reasons. Some of these I am less sure of than others.

One is that in this Age Sorcery is diminished like all things. That's not to say its not useful, the problem is, is it useful enough to justify investment when you could invest on Charms, backgrounds, etc?

Usually I'd say maybe even if its not for me.

In this case however, Dresden magic exists. And we're very likely still a practitioner with very good Occult and probably reserves.

Can it do what Sorcery can? It seems to be broader if less deep. But for depth we have Charms.

Demon summoning as the big draw of Sorcery seems kaput as well, so...
 
Parzival95 said:
As someone who doesn't know exalted mechanics, can someone explain how sorcery works? I recall it being said that sorcery was mechanically inferior because you have to put in more then you get out of it?
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2E Sorcery is useless--for combat, so combat sorcery is a waste of time.

What it excels at is giving you wild out of combat options, like easy worldwide communication spells, raising a Manse in hours instead of months, summoning demons to do everything you can't do personally, and so forth.

3rd Edition Sorcery is better, in that battle sorcery spells often have valuable niches and you're not spending motes to do it unless you're burning an Excellency. And having Sorcery at all lets you do Sorcerous Workings, which are general "Do cool magical solutions to your problems".

ExVSWoD meanwhile is kind of in between. Ancient Sorcery is clumsy but effectively inviolate in nature, because you're accessing root level command codes to How The Universe Works, and DP has mentioned at least once that while it's not as versatile as modern day Wizardry, it can often do the impossible--like exorcising a fucking Denarian from its host. Which is impossible to the knowledge of anyone in the setting right now.

Death of Obsidian Butterflies for instance? It's just a straight up "Everything in front of you that isn't behind solid cover gets shredded to bits, no save possible" Flight of the Brilliant Raptor? "Target in your line of sight and everything within 15 yards of them takes 15 aggravated damage dice and is now on fire"

Dresdenverse magic tends to be either resistable or subject to proper aim like any normal thing, and it's also corrupting if you violate the Laws of Magic. (I don't expect this to be protected by Being an Exalt, even if we don't lose access to Dresdenverse Wizardry, though Impervious Primacy Mantle would let us laugh off the corruptive elements of using Magic against the Laws if we had to)
 
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[X] Emerald Angel Unfurling V 1.3

Anyway, I'm not super up on what powers we get, but I do like having the vengeful, eerie, and cold breeze flaws in this one.

Brigids heir and sorcery are fine and I don't mind taking enemy 1 Winter but I like the other flaws more, and that's what it comes down to for me.

Edit: and thank you all for explaining sorcery to me.
 
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Parzival95 said:
[X] Emerald Angel Unfurling V 1.3

Anyway, I'm not super up on what powers we get, but I do like having the vengeful, eerie, and cold breeze flaws in this one.

Brigids heir and sorcery are fine and I don't mind taking enemy 1 Winter but I like the other flaws more, and that's what it comes down to for me.

Edit: and thank you all for explaining sorcery to me.
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So, you're eager to ruin Molly's life I see?

You look at the aesthetic, but what the hell you've basically established that normal humans look at her and have to make San Checks just from being near her. That can't be good for Molly's psyche.
 
Valkhir said:
The counterpoint is...Why not? Why not have the necessities to start with before branching out into luxury?

What is a concrete reason, from my point of view? Nothing.
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I think the point is that there are concrete costs for a high flaw mostly combat focused build.

Having combat ability is good, that doesn't mean that every level of combat ability is strictly superior to any other option that could be taken with those resources at any point in time.

From the perspective of a game that's more than a long sequence of fight scenes hyper focusing on ever greater fighting ability is the luxury spending. You're sacrificing ability in all the other things we may need to do in the near term for more smash potential than we likely need.

It's like buying ever fancy cars while eating crap food and living in a crap apartment. A little rebalancing of the budget could go a long way.
 
Alectai said:
So, you're eager to ruin Molly's life I see?

You look at the aesthetic, but what the hell you've basically established that normal humans look at her and have to make San Checks just from being near her. That can't be good for Molly's psyche.
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I mean yes, exactly, it's great. I'm totally down for it. Franky I think you let her get off too lightly. I'm fine with the rest of your plan, I'd just rather have the flaws.
 
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...

Uh.

Okay then.

I'm not of the belief that ruining lives is a prerequisite to an engaging story, but okay.
 
Alectai said:
Death of Obsidian Butterflies for instance? It's just a straight up "Everything in front of you that isn't behind solid cover gets shredded to bits, no save possible" Flight of the Brilliant Raptor? "Target in your line of sight and everything within 15 yards of them takes 15 aggravated damage dice and is now on fire"
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15 dice off agg damage is pretty good.

Damage on death of obsidian butterflies is pretty stinky though.

Both count on good rolls. Though green sun nimbus flare would probably help.
 
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