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Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

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Earth-Destroyer said:
Meh would still be maxed at 10 no way are we breaking the system that easily. Even lunars who natively have stat boosters don't get to go above 10 trivially. And since the dots given in either case don't count for the excellency the difference is really trivial. 2 dots more is less then a single success. Better to spend essence on other stuff.
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We can already go past 10 with certain things. In shintai if we turn this into an exalted martial art at its peak we can with the second shintai form boost stats to nearly twenty. It would only be in shintai and it would take a lot of exp to turn into the 5 dot exalted martial art though qm already said we could.
 
You are still talking about a Martial Art that we didn't learn the non-Exalted basis for, didn't invent from that basis and didn't learn to high levels yet.

It's all just theory for now, while our SHintai is very real and can save our ass when it is needed.
 
Busy day, so some quick responses and a commentary, if I can stay awake
bengalqueen said:
Quiet reminder that we need to be looking at a thing to ask a question about it. However…
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Yog said:
We have to be within line of sight of something to ask questions about it:
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Fair point.

BronzeTongue said:
I'm not talking about completely skipping those charms, just delaying them either to the last third of the next 50 exp block, or somewhere in the first half of the next one.

Flight is useful in a lot of ways, but it doesn't help as much with spreading devils snd sneaking into places because we still need to deal with stealth related issues. With ATP we can, for simple infiltrations, just ignore all that.

It also means we can do things like get involved in sketchy stuff in public and create confusion by only showing up in a minority of all witness reports. Whoever we're screwing with might get through, but bystanders won't even know to give our description to the police; it'll just be about some crazy asshole firing a weapon at nothing.

Being able to wander where we please so long as we don't directly or indirectly take a jab at someone is excellent for all kinds of tasks, especially while we're still getting set up.

DPE and TLF are good charms, but the former isn't as useful as something we can leverage to make a wide variety of different actions easier and the latter is basically just insurance. Useful to have, but our only reason to fear burning buildings right now is a Harry meme. It's unlikely that we'll end up in a fire we can't avoid by other means in the immediate future.
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Flight is the difference between hearing that something is happening across town and getting there in time instead of being caught in traffic. Between being able to relocate on an urban battlefield, and being stuck under fire.
Cyberdevils are a tool for gathering information, but just as important is getting to act on it in time.

Also, Flight allows you to do things like hover outside office windows at night to stare at their computers and Hollow Curse them.
Without going inside the building. And important officials always get offices with external windows.
If you have a good set of binoculars, you dont even need to get too close.

firefrog600 said:
honestly if we're caught in a burning building most of the time I'm fairly sure we can just jump out most enemies we'll be facing do actually need to breathe. Also if its an ally worry being able to breathe ourselves isn't all too useful we need to get them out. Not that it has no uses of course it does just something to note.
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The problem is not getting out, its going in to find people and not dying in the process. Our friends and allies are squishy.

Burning buildings have been a major plot point multiple times, in Grave Peril, in Blood Rites, in White Night, and in Changes.
A sinking boat was a plot point in Death Masks and again in Small Favor.
Environmental factors can and will kill you or people you care about.

the DragonBard said:
Hmm. I can agree with those, with some slight changes...
I'd trade VLE for the second purchase of OBT or Running to Forever, and use the last 2xp for Tech 2.
For the simple reason that to get the most out of WBS you need RtF

With the caveat that REPP and Bloodless Murk Evasion should be at least seriously considered for the next 50xp purchase, as well as the charm that didn't get purchased of OBT or RtF.
Reason I say keep the Tech 2 is because we need it for HMP, as it makes it easier to use our cyber devils.

Agreed?
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Im given to understand that VLE is important for combat, because armor >> hls.
Running To Forever does not do much for us that Sinner Renewal does not already do, and WBS does not need it.
I would also argue that rather than buy Tech 2 for HMP, you should consider a Technology Excellency.

BronzeTongue said:
For my part I'd suggest dropping the undecided exp and TLF for ATP.
TLF is most useful in scenarios that we have a lot of other options in and aren't likely to come up much, so it's safe to delay a bit.
Getting out spy network up in will be tricky to do in a timely fashion without something like ATP or another stealth charm.

For one example using HMP on computers in banks around the city would be an useful way to track financial data, and possibly mask records of our own business as needed. Getting into financial and corporate server farms and data centers would similarly be useful for all sorts of things.

In the public sector, reading the mayor's emails and the various internal operations of the city/state government would could be useful, and possibly profitable if we're willing to sell it and do a little insider trading (preferably through demonic stock brokers who are fed this data from our network directly).

Or goody two shoes stuff like attempting to curb the influence of factions like the white court where we can.
Walking around and staring at private machines until we roll a permanent possession is probably not viable, so we'd need to plan individual break ins and subtle trips. Probably not really worth all the effort we'd need to put into it.

Or we could flip on one charm and walk around inside each building for a bit. We'd need to be careful about the trigger conditions, but most of the above places I've listed should be low security enough that just being around won't rise to the level of an indirect personal assault.

It'd also be our go to "commit crimes in public" charm. We get in a public fight like the one with the nazi werewolves they'll notice us again in short order, but almost none of the witnesses will, so the number of conversations we have with the police long term should go down.

The real fun combo would be REPP once we've got room to take it.
Someone ambushes us -> we activate ATP and disappear until we make our first attack -> ambush the ambushers.
That's downright unfair right there, and I can't wait to make some hardened murderers cry with it.
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Nope. ATP is useful, but its worth remembering that regular ass people with mortal dice pools semi-regularly bluff their way into police stations, banks and so on, with only a little research, some preptime and a clipboard. And bluff their way onto calls with important people like presidential candidates and ministers. Literally this is in large part what pentesters do.

Molly is rolling six dice for Man+Subterfuge, and she can double that with an excellency.
ATP is great, but not mandatory if you think its necessary to infiltrate a building. And frankly, you have the option to fly at night and just look in the windows until you see an important office, then whammy the computer.

And do remember that we're backing up Harry Pyromaniac Dresden.
Dealing with burning structures is when, not if.
Prepare for it.
bengalqueen said:
Honestly, I'm annoyed that none of the 50 XP plans have any Qiao at all in them, considering we're getting free XP from the training that can only be used to buy them. Also the whole concept of the 50 XP plan, since that's more than 2 whole arcs' worth of XP, and the situation is still too unstable to know what we'll need in two arcs. Will we be world hopping at that point? Then we'll need something like that Ancient Sorcery Spell to make portals. Starting a business empire? We'll want some Finance. Going deep on political stuff? Going to need more than 0 Politics dots to navigate these waters.

My main priority for the next XP buy is to get better soak, because we keep being hurt whenever we're in a fight, Qiao stuff, because Qiao, and whatever low-hanging fruit best patches the holes in our build that we're feeling most keenly after our next mission, because we still have that road-trip thing with our Dad before the arc finishes and we get our next XP buy.

We're still in the Baby Exalt phase trying to rapidly build up a steady base and survive the various enemies we've made by existing, we're not at the point of optimized builds or building up long-term infrastructure yet. Our main goals should be surviving and building up XP safely with our ride-alongs with Dad, not trying to take over vital city infrastructure with cyber-demons (Which, really? We've already been told these guys are naturally mischievous and get bored and people are thinking of sticking them where? Did not think this through.).
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Because they're working documents. Not set in stone. Note the lack of an Ally background.
Baby Exalt. We havent even been to Bock's or McAnally's yet.

That said, while there's a balance to be struck, putting out cyberdevils to extend the information available to us is just common sense. You cant address a problem if you dont know it exists
And you cant prep for hostiles if you dont know they are in town.
 
VOTE
[X] Return to Chicago to do more research with this new information
[X] Ask Harry if there's any particular reason why you shouldn't use the jailhouse as a focus for your Crown to ask where the other endpoint of the Way that Gorfel took is, or some similarly useful question we wouldn't have to go through the Fey for an answer for.
 
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DragonParadox said:
Unforgotten
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Note that wet feet do not spell Winter.
Could also be Summer, and you splashed through a puddle.
Mighy even mean passing through other parts of the NeverNeve.

Gorfel was asking about what Harry did last fall, when he used the bones of Sue to call up a dinosaur
And he was interested in the bones of dead people
There's a link there.

We have names for Mathews grandkids: Cindy and Alice.
Can have Clippy dig up what he can on them.
As long as they arent necromantic golem I'm cool.

Not all ghosts are conscious. Some are basically sleepwalking.
So we cant rely on ghosts for information.
DragonParadox said:
Rolls (Not everything, but the stuff you would be able to intuit)
Infernal is very Intimidating, news at 11
Realizing he is scared for his family (another excelency)
Harry is not very used to being the good cop, but he manages it
Harry to tell if there is a loophole in the matter of Kemler's secrets
Perception+Occult to realize Matthews is scared enough to make the talismans shake
Harry absolutely crushing the investigation roll
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Great rolls here.
Time to fold them.
 
DragonParadox said:
Any ghosts that linger in the jail house would likely have witnesses his passage so you can try to question them if you find any yeah. You would have to open a door to their layer of the Nevernever though and what would be a moderately complicated thing for Harry with no prep.
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This is where that corruption teleport power would be useful, if we had it.
 
Whoops, forgot to vote.

[X] Ask Harry if there's any particular reason why you shouldn't use the jailhouse as a focus for your Crown to ask where the other endpoint of the Way that Gorfel took is, or some similarly useful question we wouldn't have to go through the Fey for an answer for.
 
[X] Before you leave, use the Crown to learn the identities of all Kemmler's disciples. Clearly, there are some that White Council knows nothing about.
[X] Ask Harry if there's any particular reason why you shouldn't use the jailhouse as a focus for your Crown to ask where the other endpoint of the Way that Gorfel took is, or some similarly useful question we wouldn't have to go through the Fey for an answer for.
 
Ok, looks like we are out of here.
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Aug 23, 2022 at 1:31 PM, finished with 80 posts and 14 votes.
  • [X] Ask Harry if there's any particular reason why you shouldn't use the jailhouse as a focus for your Crown to ask where the other endpoint of the Way that Gorfel took is, or some similarly useful question we wouldn't have to go through the Fey for an answer for.
    [X] Before you leave, use the Crown to learn the identities of all Kemmler's disciples. Clearly, there are some that White Council knows nothing about.
    [x] Return to Chicago to do more research with this new information
    [x] use the crown on Matthews, query all of the names of members of Kemmler organization and their rank he knew about.
    [X] Ask more questions
    -[X] Ask Mathews to explain in general terms how his old compatriots preferred to operate. Any sort of standard procedures that he or they used to follow, or how he used to prefer to solve problems when he ran with them.
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are there enough votes to use the crown while we're still here? Cause I wouldn't vote for the top one if they aren't a package deal personally?
 
Okay, I just happened to see a link to a Random Ideology Generator on another quest, and with only a few tries I got Molly's exact orientation:

Catholic Techno-Transhumanist

 
Winning Vote
Adhoc vote count started by DragonParadox on Aug 23, 2022 at 1:31 PM, finished with 80 posts and 14 votes.
  • [X] Ask Harry if there's any particular reason why you shouldn't use the jailhouse as a focus for your Crown to ask where the other endpoint of the Way that Gorfel took is, or some similarly useful question we wouldn't have to go through the Fey for an answer for.
    [X] Before you leave, use the Crown to learn the identities of all Kemmler's disciples. Clearly, there are some that White Council knows nothing about.
    [x] Return to Chicago to do more research with this new information
    [x] use the crown on Matthews, query all of the names of members of Kemmler organization and their rank he knew about.
    [X] Ask more questions
    -[X] Ask Mathews to explain in general terms how his old compatriots preferred to operate. Any sort of standard procedures that he or they used to follow, or how he used to prefer to solve problems when he ran with them.
Click to expand...
 
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Arc 2 Post 12: The Way and the Watcher
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    • The Way and the Watcher ​

    21st of July 2006 A.D.

    "Ah..." you open your mouth and then you close it, looking between Harry and the presumably reformed warlock's apprentice. Telepathy would be great about now, you think not for the first time. Barring that headsets and a mike. It would probably be easier to get Harry to wear a demon infused wire for just when you are on the job than getting a phone with one of your helpers.

    As for Harry himself, he's not looking at you but at the old man, unsure for a moment what to make of him, or what to do. On the balance it is probably not common for a warden to meet a legacy of Kemmler, much less in a peaceful way. "You be careful now and if any more friends from back in the day come around give me a call."

    He takes out a little pad to write his number on but Matthews raises a hand. "I know your number Warden Dresden, you are in the phone-book under wizard."

    People still use the phone-book? You wonder if Harry would like a site to get the word out, just because wizards blow up computers does not mean the people who want to get a hold of them haven't moved on to the twenty-first century.

    So the three of you leave with Mouse in the vanguard this time rather than watching the rear. As soon as you are safely out of earshot of the house you ask: "Is there any reason why we can't just drive by the jailhouse nice and slow so I can ask a question about where the other side of the Way Gorfel took on the seventh is."

    "That will only get you the first stop," Harry points out. "See the way the Ways work is that conceptual distance doesn't match up with phisical distance so if you know your way around the Nevernever you can go from Chicago to Tokyo in half an hour, but you still might find yourself walking down to Rio de Janeiro and across town in Anchorage Alaska along the way."

    You think about that for a moment, and you do not think about it alone. "I'm... pretty sure I can ask about the journey at this end, now that we have both a date and a time at least and it will give me the ultimate destination on the material side so we wouldn't have to traipse down whatever ways are welcoming to the likes of Gorfel."

    "Traipse?" his lips twitch into a smile as he gets in the car.

    "Blame mom for like seventy percent of my odd word choices, the other thirty percent is either Tolkien on Jane Austin."

    It's a short drive to the jailhouse but along the way you still have time to ask idly. "Do you think Tolkien knew something about real magic? I've been thinking of the Ways how they are not really different roads, but one big web of interconnected realms and symbols. It sounds kind of like... 'It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.'"

    "Maybe, but probably not the way you're thinking," Harry replies briefly just as pensive. "Painters, poets, artists, the good ones at least they see with a sharper eye and remember with a clearer mind, it's what draws the audience to them."

    The county jailhouse looks... like you would expect an abandoned jailhouse dating back more than a hundred years to look, which is to say grunge creepy, between the grey walls, the patched up roof and the crooked storm-drain. If that place isn't haunted you I'm a Taylor Swift fan.

    "From where came the wizard Gorfel who passed this way on the seventh of the month?"

    You do not get anything like the long conversation you got on the matter of soulgazes, just a flash of a dark grey peak above scrub-land that stretches beside a glittering city, a glimpse and a name. "Clippy search Frenchman's Mountain, Nevada please."

    The answer is as instantaneous as it is through: "The peak lies on a north to north-northeast trending ridge about 2000 feet above the nearby valleys. Sunrise Mountain lies 3.6 miles (5.8 km) to the northeast adjacent to Nellis Air Force Base. The north end of the McCullough Range about 12 miles (19 km) to the south has a parallel trend. The River Mountains lie to the southeast..."

    "Thanks, save it and put it on screen." You give it a once over and then start to hand her off to Harry, but he is looking at your funny, a rather familiar state of affairs recently. "What? I didn't want to listen on speaker like that, it would look odd from anyone who sees us drive by."

    "No, it's just... what was really fast, you looking to put me out of work?" Teasing again, better.

    "Ha, ha," you faux laugh. "If you hadn't been there I might have scared him too much to talk and say what you will about my other senses, I can't see souls."

    "You would likely be able to learn it oh Magnanimous Heart of Night," Usum offers. "It would not even require finding a way around the issue of manipulating lesser powers as it is a strictly passive ability."

    "Well I certainly would not be able to magic up more than a decade of detective work,"     you inwardly roll your eyes

    But you cannot stay grumpy for long, the weather's nice, the road's clear and unlike on the way here you actually know the way so you are not on the edge of your seat. Then Wheels of Fire starts playing on the radio. It's been a pretty awesome day so far.

    ***​

    Sadly that evening you learn that the universe is all about balance. You had barely gotten back to Harry's place, half an hour or so of him going into the lab and bringing out some books 'to look into and give you a bit more of a rounded education' when you hear a knock on the door, loud and insistent.

    Harry freezes, motions for you to hide again.

    This time you roll your eyes outwardly. "No blood this time," you whisper sharply. It might even be more incriminating, the part of your brain that is still on flirt with Harry mode notes. Stupid brain.

    Realizing that he is not going to win this one Harry goes to get the door. to reveal a trio of carefully suited men whose manner practically screamed 'government agent.'

    "Harry Dresden," the suit in the middle, filled out by a bald middle aged man who who appears to have just grown broader not fatter with age and sporting what you can only call 'the bald of power'. He flashes a badge. "Agent Alexander Wright FBI, you are under arrest for the murder of Officer Herbert Greene. You have the right to remain silent. If you do say anything, it can be used against you in a court of..."


    What... the... Hell, you watch in shock as leftmost suit takes out the handcuffs. Greene is dead and they think Harry did it. Did whoever had beaten him up before decide to up the stakes to murder? Why?

    Harry manages to recover before you do, which is probably for the best because in the absence of any real plan you might have defaulted to Usum's suggestion which involves cowing the offending party into submission.

    "I know you guys hear it all the time but I'm innocent, haven't even seen him since the ninth." Apparently Harry's first instinct upon being presented with people looking to arrest him is less 'look upon me and despair' and more wiseguy.

    "You're a sick..." the guy with the cuffs says.

    "We have witnesses placing you at the scene of the crime Dresden and we have cameras showing you disposing of the remains in the lake, we recovered it and it has your prints on it," Agent Wright cuts in dryly. "All we need to know now is why you did it, we know part of it but not what started it all."

    Your mind is running at a thousand miles an hour, a glamor would not have registered on camera properly and a wizard's veil would most likely have shorted it, so it would have to be a physical transformation, an actual shapechanger.

    What do you do?

    [] Explain that Harry has been with you all day (Charisma+Empathy can use Excellency)
    -[] Write in

    [] One surprise deserves another, if these idiots are going to try to arrest a wizard then you will show them magic (Charisma+Intimidation can use Excellency)
    -[] Write in

    [] Write in

    OOC: It was surprisingly hard to find art that fit a plain human in a suit.
     
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