Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

Not that I don't like high numbers, but where does this come from?

Charisma + Intimidate would be 7 dice, or Strenght + Intimidate 8.
Even adding a good stunt can't possibly land us at 13 dice without Excellency.

Oh right it should have been 11 not 13. Str+intimidate+Armor+Stunt (2). That would make your success 'only' 8. What happened is I accidentally added the stunt twice
 
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Oh right it should have been 11 not 13. Str+intimidate+Armor+Stunt (2). That would make your success 'only' 8. What happened is I accidentally added the stunt twice
Well, only one of the last two dice was a success, so if you take the dice off of the end, it would bring our successes down from 10 to 9. Which is still scary considering we didn't even use our excellency. And is still probably enough to get whatever information we want.
 
Well, only one of the last two dice was a success, so if you take the dice off of the end, it would bring our successes down from 10 to 9. Which is still scary considering we didn't even use our excellency. And is still probably enough to get whatever information we want.

Anything 8 or above would have gotten you this reaction. The berserkers all have 4 willpower, so the one who you spoke to cannot roll more than 8 successes on that even with straight 10s hence why I did not bother with it
 
Is there some rule that you can spend Willpower to ignore people if you are loosing social combat?

There were Exalted memes about spending 1 WP and joining combat, so I assume there's a mechanical base for that?
 
Is there some rule that you can spend Willpower to ignore people if you are loosing social combat?

There were Exalted memes about spending 1 WP and joining combat, so I assume there's a mechanical base for that?

As far as I know spending one willpower gives you one success, but only so long as you also get at least one natural success so it can't turn a fail into a success or a botch into a fail.
 
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As far as I know spending one willpower gives you one success,but only so long as you also get at least one natural success so it can't turn a fail into a success or a botch into a fail.
In Exalted you can just pay a WP to reject a social attack (as its mental influence). In conversation this just means you'd have to grind down an opponent's stubbornness.

If you try to social bomb someone with mega dice and Charms though, the answer is pay WP and then Join Battle. You can't social while in combat, in general and because its a long tick action iirc.

Even most social Charms can be WPd, they just take more WP.

Just to explain, I don't think this extends to WoD.
 
In Exalted you can just pay a WP to reject a social attack (as its mental influence). In conversation this just means you'd have to grind down an opponent's stubbornness.

If you try to social bomb someone with mega dice and Charms though, the answer is pay WP and then Join Battle. You can't social while in combat, in general and because its a long tick action iirc.

Even most social Charms can be WPd, they just take more WP.

Just to explain, I don't think this extends to WoD.

I do get the gist of it and in general there should be some enemies who just will not listen in the lead-up to battle, but personally I think that is better handled in fluff as a case by case situation. 'No the Uber-Ghoul is not going to sit there and listen to your carefully crafted argument about why eating humans is wrong even though it is smart enough to do so, because you smell delicious', that kind of thing.
 
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I do get the gist of it and in general there should be some enemies who just will not listen in the lead-up to battle, but personally I think that is better handled in fluff as a case by case situation. 'No the Uber-Ghoul is not going to sit there and listen to your carefully crafted argument about why eating humans is wrong even though it is smart enough to do so, because you smell delicious', that kind of thing.
That would mechanically be Join Battle-ing from the word go most likely, which fits in with how Exalted works.
 
Not a lot of votes at all. Well we'll see how it goes by morning.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Jul 27, 2022 at 4:55 PM, finished with 47 posts and 7 votes.

  • [X] Suggest leaving the mooks for Marcone or to run, but take the Warlock with you to Harry
    -[X] "Best case this idiot here was lied to and the old sorcerer is in fact the entire organisation. But if that's not the case, I think the White Council or at least Harry personally should really know about the secret, magic Nazi-organisation that acts in Chicago and other places"
    -[X] Try to get more information out of the old man once you are in a less time-pressed situation.
    [x] Just leave them for Marcone, he will want to start a personal war with these guy. No business of ours.
    [X] Let them try running, Marcone might get them or not, it doesn't matter to you.
 
[x] [X] Suggest leaving the mooks for Marcone or to run, but take the Warlock with you to Harry
-[X] "Best case this idiot here was lied to and the old sorcerer is in fact the entire organisation. But if that's not the case, I think the White Council or at least Harry personally should really know about the secret, magic Nazi-organisation that acts in Chicago and other places"
-[X] Try to get more information out of the old man once you are in a less time-pressed situation.
 
Good point. The likelihood that the existence of the Thule Society as a modern magical group has entirely escaped White Council attention is fairly slim, but it's not completely out of the question. If the Society mages have been especially careful or lucky, and if their talents have been minor enough not to make too many waves, the Council might not know they're still around.

Bringing them to Harry's attention, and him passing that up the chain to the Council, could get him and us wizard brownie points.
I kind of doubt that this is the original society, or that the white council is unaware of them.

For all that the council is portrayed as being obstructionist and pointlessly difficult about things in canon, it's worth remembering what they are.

The white council was around at least as early as the days of the Roman Empire, and at some point between then and now came to all but monopolize mortal wizardry.

It feels weird that it worked out that way, but it's still canon that there isn't even the whisper of an idea of serious competition that doesn't ultimately trace back to their own active membership screwing around.

No one else has any significant number of pure mortal wizard tier talents, and for all intents and purposes the major nonhuman powers treat them as the definitive word in major mortal magic use.

That doesn't strike me as something that just happens; the white council ending up in that position implies they're really good at managing new factions of mortal magic users, one way or the other.

Assholes like nazis playing with magic with state backing would absolutely press all of the council's buttons, so my bet is that Ebenezer and co. spent some time in the 30s and 40s hunting down and killing their membership until the organization collapsed.

They aren't perfect, so it's possible they missed something, but if it was easy to slink off after a fight with them with more than one or two survivors then they'd probably have more mortal competition.
 
[X] Suggest leaving the mooks for Marcone or to run, but take the Warlock with you to Harry
-[X] "Best case this idiot here was lied to and the old sorcerer is in fact the entire organisation. But if that's not the case, I think the White Council or at least Harry personally should really know about the secret, magic Nazi-organisation that acts in Chicago and other places"
-[X] Try to get more information out of the old man once you are in a less time-pressed situation.


Nazi magicians! Are there going to be nazi vampire magicians too?
 
The white council was around at least as early as the days of the Roman Empire, and at some point between then and now came to all but monopolize mortal wizardry.

It feels weird that it worked out that way, but it's still canon that there isn't even the whisper of an idea of serious competition that doesn't ultimately trace back to their own active membership screwing around.

No one else has any significant number of pure mortal wizard tier talents, and for all intents and purposes the major nonhuman powers treat them as the definitive word in major mortal magic use.

That doesn't strike me as something that just happens; the white council ending up in that position implies they're really good at managing new factions of mortal magic users, one way or the other.
That not really strange that they have a monopoly on true magical talents, they are super rare. All it would really take is 2-4 wizards gathering together, to be a major % of the wizard population, a few thousand years ago. Premodern times population was low, and wizards could travel the entire world thou the NeverNever, to scout for magical talent. Given the advantages of that brings, the first magical organization that establish itself, just by existing prevents any others from forming. Not because they need to suppress others, but because anybody relevant was trained by them, if they weren't they where not powerful enough to really be relevant anyway.
 
[X] Suggest leaving the mooks for Marcone or to run, but take the Warlock with you to Harry
-[X] "Best case this idiot here was lied to and the old sorcerer is in fact the entire organisation. But if that's not the case, I think the White Council or at least Harry personally should really know about the secret, magic Nazi-organisation that acts in Chicago and other places"
-[X] Try to get more information out of the old man once you are in a less time-pressed situation.
 
[X] Suggest leaving the mooks for Marcone or to run, but take the Warlock with you to Harry
-[X] "Best case this idiot here was lied to and the old sorcerer is in fact the entire organisation. But if that's not the case, I think the White Council or at least Harry personally should really know about the secret, magic Nazi-organisation that acts in Chicago and other places"
-[X] Try to get more information out of the old man once you are in a less time-pressed situation.
 
[X] Suggest leaving the mooks for Marcone or to run, but take the Warlock with you to Harry
-[X] "Best case this idiot here was lied to and the old sorcerer is in fact the entire organisation. But if that's not the case, I think the White Council or at least Harry personally should really know about the secret, magic Nazi-organisation that acts in Chicago and other places"
-[X] Try to get more information out of the old man once you are in a less time-pressed situation.
 
[X] Suggest leaving the mooks for Marcone or to run, but take the Warlock with you to Harry
-[X] "Best case this idiot here was lied to and the old sorcerer is in fact the entire organisation. But if that's not the case, I think the White Council or at least Harry personally should really know about the secret, magic Nazi-organisation that acts in Chicago and other places"
-[X] Try to get more information out of the old man once you are in a less time-pressed situation.


nazi warlocks fuck off heads off
 
That not really strange that they have a monopoly on true magical talents, they are super rare. All it would really take is 2-4 wizards gathering together, to be a major % of the wizard population, a few thousand years ago. Premodern times population was low, and wizards could travel the entire world thou the NeverNever, to scout for magical talent. Given the advantages of that brings, the first magical organization that establish itself, just by existing prevents any others from forming. Not because they need to suppress others, but because anybody relevant was trained by them, if they weren't they where not powerful enough to really be relevant anyway.
Those are very useful advantages, but we're still talking about a fairly unusual structure.

Wizards are nearly supernaturally stubborn due to the role willpower plays in magic, and highly individualistic due to how each of them has a slightly different interaction with magic even if the general rules stay the same.

That could make for some heated disagreements, especially since many of them would be capable of leading factions of lesser talents in their own if they decided to go their own way.

Just as an illustration the kind of problems I'm taking about; it's also canon that faith isn't incompatible with magic, and in fact there are a number of wizards for whom it's a core part of how they use it.

So what happens the first few times a group of impossibly stubborn people who can set things on fire with their minds have a religious dispute while sharing notes on magical theory or something?

For that matter, how did they stick together when their home nations were fighting for that or any other reason?

I can't imagine that the Middle Eastern wizards were terribly happy about needing to travel to Rome to participate in meetings held exclusively in Latin a few times a year during the crusades. Especially when white council policy discouraged doing anything major to the mundane world.

On a doylistic level it's because none of that stuff matters to the story being told, and it works better with some of the setting elements to make human mages all answer to one faction.

But if we have to start treating this like more realistic politics then it kind of requires a frightening level of political skill, military power, and ruthless willingness to use both to start and maintain an organization like that.

Without all three of those they'd have fragmented or been weakened by less skilled competitors centered around various ideological lines centuries ago.
 
So why wouldn't dresden have max mortal willpower like 10 he's at least at one point even willpower his way out of some trap by the winter mother. Let's not even mention the amount of wounds he's taken or overpowering a centuries old converted wizard vampire in a battle of wills kind of soundly.
 
But if we have to start treating this like more realistic politics then it kind of requires a frightening level of political skill, military power, and ruthless willingness to use both to start and maintain an organization like that.
Not really again 99% of wizards of note where trained by the WC themselves. And the WC is a fairly loose organization actually. The only thing that matters to the WC is protection of humans, and enforcing the laws. Stuff they have objective proof is important.

And don't discount how long wizards live, just a hundred years is generally enough time that allegiances to mortals falls away. In pre-modern times even the language could shift radically over a short time. It is a lot harder to maintain loyalty to a nation, that doesn't even speak your native language anymore.
 
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