/exg/ - Exalted General

>What is Exalted?
An epic high-flying role-playing game about reborn god-heroes in a world that turned on them.
Start here: theonyxpath.com/category/worlds/exalted/

>That sounds cool, how can I get into it?
Read the 3e core book (link below). For mechanics of the old edition, play this tutorial: jyenicolson.net/exalted/. It'll get you familiar with most of the mechanics.

>Gosh that was fun. How do I find a group?
Roll20 and the Game Finder General here on Veeky Forums. With the new edition, though, chances are more games will crop up.

Resources for Third Edition

>Final 3E Core Release
mega.nz/#!ctgxyJaC!ygkrLnFsrnBJzIUZY-dJsMfyFrhFQgDsQuuo52fcW0I
mediafire.com/download/q51qw8skdw1rg15/Exalted_3e_Core.pdf

>3E Backer Core (Old)
mega.nz/#!E1dRBBIa!ZbQG4IasYCJRli2bhgE2MOdWeFAeV3N1rqL9kAIGbNE

>Frequently updated Character Sheet with Formulas and Autofill docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pfjmZKzcUqAX9mB58IAEUIFkZr8rq4CvdRRM4kzwwgU/edit?usp=sharing
>General Homebrew dumping folder: drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByD2BL6J89NiQzdCWWFaY0c5Mkk&usp=sharing
>Collection of old 3e Materials, including comics and fiction anthologies mediafire.com/folder/t2arqtqtyyt28/Exalted_3Leak
>Charm Trees:
>Solar Charms: imgur.com/a/q6Vbc
>Martial Arts: imgur.com/a/mnQDe
>Evocations: imgur.com/a/TYKE4

Resources for 2.5 Edition:
>All books with embedded errata notes, as well as some extras: mediafire.com/folder/253ulzik1j9s5/Exalted
>Chargen software: anathema.github.io/
>Anathema homebrew charm files: mediafire.com/folder/pka3nz3vqbqda/Anathema_Files
>MA form weapon guide: brilliantdisaster.net/dif/ExaltedMA.html
>mediafire.com/view/ua7tanepy2jfkdp/Exalted_2nd_Ed_-_Return_of_the_Scarlet_Empress.pdf

Resources for 1e:
>mediafire.com/folder/9vp0e9id3by6m/Exalted_1e

Elementals and Gods and Demons oh my Edition

Other urls found in this thread:

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/872463-sidereals-martial-arts-and-violet-bier-of-sorrows/page2
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Can we get some of the good pics from the actual Ex3 core in here? I'm so tired of Gilgamesh.

Also do small Gods still exist in this edition?

>so tempted to roll up a fair folk noble and make Christmas themed minions

>Also do small Gods still exist in this edition?

They probably still 'exist,' but I would expect considerably less wordcount devoted to them. Occasional flavor text, like they were always supposed to be.

Any fans of a Discworld deity approach to Gods (belief empowers them, shapes them, they can shrink to almost nothing without it, but never die)

The Incarnae would be more like Anthromorphous Personifications of Success, The Sun etc.

I'm a fan of pretty much anything Discworld, but I wouldn't necessarily like that approach in Exalted. In Exalted, belief empowers deities much like wealth empowers people in the real world, which is an appointment I like.

Is it just me, or does sniping seem way more effective in 3e?

By contrast clinch seems more balanced, but still really potent.

How so? Any attack made from Medium range or further require an Aim action, and a number of Athletics charms allow for closing the gap.

What are all the charms relevant to buffing up spirit familiars? Occult, Survival, whatever, I just want to see what my options are, because my sorcerer is very closely tied thematically to their familiar.

By sniping I mean long range in conjunction with unexpected attacks, which means there is time for aiming and then some.

Survival. Almost all of it.

The trouble is that ranged ambushes face all the difficulties of regular ambushes (have to beat their Awareness roll, and the Join Battle roll), on top of the difficulty of recovering, since you're so far away it's almost impossible to gather init for a second go.

So... you guys ready for 3e's Sapphire Veil of Passion Style? Or sidereal styles in general?

Yeah, but now Solars can actually BE ambushed meaningfully. I'd say it's worth it to try and initiative crash or gack an opponent with an ambush.

Really? I thought most of the Survival Familiar charms specified that they only work on animal familiars rather than spirit ones.

Depends on whether they're accessible before Essence 3. If so, then yes. If not, then they'll be filed under 'waste of pages,' just like half of the Evocations and all of Solar Circle Sorcery.

Oh! Yeah it's definitely more of a threat now, comparatively. I thought you meant it was, like, too much of a threat.

I don't think so? Some might, but I don't remember it being a constant.

Did First and Forsaken Lion give Autochthon cancer?

No, Autochthon was ill long before the Deathlords even came into existence.

No, Autochthon already had cancer due to his own actions.

In 1e, Falafel just attempted to take advantage of Autochthon's cancer during the events of "The Autochthonians," 1e's equivalent to RotSE.

Have you guys looked at forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/872463-sidereals-martial-arts-and-violet-bier-of-sorrows/page2 ?

I'm thinking of making a character using it but I'm not great at mechanics.

How does one counter Melee's unique and overwhelming flurry charm?

That's what I thought, thanks.

Oh, so that's why I recall there being some connection between him and Autochthon. What did he do exactly?

As I recall, Falafel interloped in the Locust Crusade and attempted to invade Autochthon to make his cancer worse until it killed the Primordial. This would therein birth a Neverborn who was free of the restless slumber and sorcerous sealing that plagued its kin, a being more likely to actively attempt to destroy the world. Unfortunately for Falafel, it seems his goal was misguided, as the Engine of Extinction is indicated to be more interested in invading Malfeas and giving his erstwhile brethren a taste of Oblivion as vengeance for their cruelty towards him in ages past than attacking Creation.

As badass a military leader as Falafel is, he is kind of a moron with regards to fucking with the various cosmic forces of the setting.

By consistently denying them Initiative advantage. The Melee guy will likely not open the fight with his flurry Charms- that's a rather bad idea given the fact that he can't make these attacks accurate as using Excellency on every single one is going to be way too costly. If they're blowing it early, they're risking a lot, because if these attacks fail, they are vulnerable as hell.

The multi-decisive ones for Melee and Archery (and others?) can be pretty effectively nullified by hardness or just not letting the other guy get to high initiative. (i.e. be better than them) The others either have activation conditions that are either triggered by hitting the target or spending a lot of essence, so they can be negated by defending effectively (i.e. be better than them).

I know how people love trumpeting the One Weapon Peony Blossom Iron Whirlwind Fury of the Dawn combo as evidence that 3e is broken and terrible, but I'm the guy who pointed out the damn combo X threads ago, it gets shut down by dodging the first attack in the chain or having a good soak, it's not really any better than any of the other ways to spend stupid motes at once (of which there are many), and 3e is imperfect but still brilliant. Go play it.

>Cataphractoi are actually dangerous this edition right out of the core

Pinch me

Personally I'm an "ambush and re-establish surprise" kind of fighter. Melee doesn't worry me too much.

By grappling them.

Is this the combo you're talking about? I'm not very familiar with Charm combos, so let me know if I get something wrong here.

You do a withering attack, one which manages to get their initiative lower than yours. Then you use One Weapon, Two Blows to make another withering attack, with a -1 onslaught in effect. Between those two attacks you spend enough Essence to get yourself to bonfire. Then you use Peony Blossom Technique to make another withering attack, with a -2 onslaught. With all the initiative you've built up now, you use Iron Whirlwind Attack with its upgrade and make 5 decisive attacks, distributing your Initiative so that the last attacks have more initiative than the initial ones, to take advantage of the mounting onslaught penalty.

Ideally every attack will hit, but in case they don't, if you spend enough on the first attack to get to bonfire, you can still use Peony Blossom Technique and go from there.

The Charms themselves cost a total of 9m, but you need to spend at least 15m to get to bonfire, and you'll probably need a lot more motes to make your attacks able to land. Probably dump your whole pool into the combo.

Is this right? I'm not very familiar with 3e Exalt combat yet.

That's basically the idea, yes.

I wanna make a sexy assassin killer character exg. What charms/stuff should I focus on?

Throw in Increasing Strength Excercise as well just to squeeze out more attacks using Invincible Fury of the Dawn. This combo is powerful but eats up Willpower quite fast.

Socialize, Performance, Stealth, Thrown or Melee. Sprinkle in Larceny and other abilities to taste.

done.

>Storm-Slaying Rebuke (2m, 2i; Reflexive; Instant; Counterattack, Decisive-only; Essence 1): All onslaught penalties to the cataphract’s Defense are cancelled against a single attack. At an onslaught penalty of -3 or greater, a successful defense allows the raksha to respond with a decisive counterattack.

Fair Folk can counter that pretty effectively, particularly since their normal combat dicepools are in the 14-18 range.

>against a single attack.

The Dawn is probably going to slinging out eight at least. A better counter is Fivefold Bulwark Stance and Ready in Eight Directions Stance. I think Crane Style might have some counters.

Well, I notice that you can only pop peony blossom once in a sequence unless you burn so much essence in the interim that you flare again. So your sequences would be like

>Withering Attack
>OWTB
>PB
>IW + Excellence + Others
>PB again
>OWTB or IW

Your essence expenses look like this (x being the cost of other charms in a combo)

>0+X
>3+X
>1+x+wp
>5+x+wp (min 15 to reset the sequence)
>Optional 1+x+wp
>Optional 5+x+wp (min 15 to loop)

You can loop it pretty much ad-infinitum, but you need to spend 9 motes 2wp minimum for one set, and to tack on another sequence you need to burn through 19 motes 2wp, and that set will rack your costs up to 25 motes 4wp minimum and 35 motes 4wp to set yourself up for another chain of attacks.

They can reflexively use that charm in response to every attack at the cost of 2 motes each.

Against a single attack doesn't mean "you can't use this against a flurry," it means you'll have to use it each time against each attack. It's Reflexive so you can do this.

I misinterpreted the text. I read it as only being able to throw out a counter every third attack, as if the onslaught was being removed outright.

Sheesh, I didn't notice that. Yeah, if you had infinite motes and willpower, you could bounce between Peony Blossom and Iron Whirlwind indefinitely.

Nope. Then consider that they have a default dice pool of 16 and defense of 8 or 9. Back in the day I could build shit that was even scarier.

Yep. But I'd imagine that a Lunar with high soak/hardness and healing would fuck your shit up.

Is it true? I want to believe.

A static dicepool of 16 is pretty important shit this edition. Plus they seem to be able to generate a "battle group" of hobs in any given fight, which makes withering attacks for them. Their lethality against celestials/solars seems way up from last edition.

Plus, they have a janky kind of flurry breaker in Dreadful Fanged Maelstrom Approach and Storm-Slaying Rebuke. Once their Onslaught hits -3, they get their decisive counterattack, which they use to pop fanged maelstrom and teleport to anywhere in short range of where they started. It doesn't get them away from Solar Melee, because there's that one charm that lets you move a range band between each attack, but it helps against a lot of other stuff.

Add in Leaping Tiger Attack and you're getting a base damage on every Decisive Attack of (Ess*2)+1, and then you start adding on Initiative.

Initiative can crash, and it can flow

It becomes tit for tat at a certain point. At a certain point you have an essence depleted solar rolling his attack against a base defense of 8 and getting a counterattack at base pool of 16ish while burning his essence like crazy to keep up tempo.

Do you like having a dice pool system?

Do you like having Exalted's dice pool system, where you have to keep track of specific numbers being rolled?

I remember 1e. Dice pools have only gotten better since.

That all relies on you actually making the attacks. If a guy can just out defend your shit then its all worthless.

Or if they can soak/hard/heal like a motherfucker. Then you're burning essence/wp at a loss.

Wait. Wait. Does Bulwark Stance defeat ambushes, or do ambushes bypass Bulwark Stance?

Heh

Ambushes don't penalize your defense, they directly set it to 0. Bulwark Stance's penalty-negating effect does not stop ambushes. This is how this mechanic was in 2e as well.

Ambushes beat Bulwark Stance, but Bulwark Stance beats surprise attacks.

So as some one who may or may not start a game of Exalted and is completely new to the setting and system.

Exactly what the hell is supposed to challenge Solar's? I mean from what im getting these dudes are basically invincible and all powerful?

Other Exalted.

Also, unintended but logical consequences of their own actions.

Not really invincible and all powerful. I mean there are things that can directly challenge them, but it's less about what directly challenges them and far more often about 'Okay you did this really difficult thing. Here are your consequences and this is what happens BECAUSE you did that thing.' It's more narrative focused in the long run. Although throwing things like Abyssals at your players or even other Solars can directly challenge them.

In a Solar's specialty? Not very much. The upper power-players of the setting can still throw down with them, but meeting a Dawn head-on in combat is still a risky proposition, whether you're a sworn brotherhood of DBs or a god of war.

In a Solar's middling capabilities? Much more. A mortal and the weaker end of spirits will still probably lose to a Solar who only has one or two Charms in something, but a DB will trounce him at it.

In a Solar's weaknesses? Even a mortal will take a Solar to task.

Solars are not "all" powerful. That is, in fact, exactly their problem: Solars are GREAT... at one thing. Which usually means that one thing gets them into trouble in ways that one thing can't help them in.

Doesn't just throwing other Exalted kind of pose the problem of the enemy just "conveniently" is another Solar ? (Well at least other Solars and Abyssals. Book does really explain just how powerful Dragon exalted are.

Also for consequences of actions. Maybe I'm still stuck in D&D mode but doesn't that cause the problem of making victory... Well not very victorious?

Sufficiently challenging your PCs is one of the biggest challenges for an Exalted GM. At the level of starting characters, they are strong in an area that they specify, but not so strong that they just win instantly. In combat, a higher-Essence god or other Exalt will be a strong challenge. That's the easy part for a GM. In politics, social aspects, or adventuring, you have more trouble.

One of the best things you can do is to make sure there are always, always consequences to the characters' actions. Consequences which follow logically. If they enter a kingdom in the Hundred Kingdoms and decide to slaughter its leaders and say they're in control now, there's probably no one who can stop them. But then what? A kingdom of however many people is now in upheaval, conquered by a foreign group. Some of their now-subjects will flee, neighboring warlords will try to take advantage of the land's turmoil, and not many people will think very highly of the new rulers. Local gods will be upset and may curse the players for interrupting their prayer income. And worst of all, if they were open in their usage of Essence and their Anathematic nature, they risk drawing the attention of Sidereals and the Wyld Hunt.

Moral quandaries are good too. Deciding who lives and who dies is part of wielding the power of Exalted. Starting Solar characters have only been Exalted for a year or so, so their memories of being human should still be dictating their personality and thought patterns. They shouldn't be able to so easily go "I'm a demigod now, you all suck."

Practically speaking, after each session, think about what the players actually did, and what may happen now. You don't have to come up with these consequences on the fly.

>Doesn't just throwing other Exalted kind of pose the problem of the enemy just "conveniently" is another Solar ? (Well at least other Solars and Abyssals. Book does really explain just how powerful Dragon exalted are.
The power gap is REALLY narrow. A single Solar and a single Dragon-Blood facing off in areas of equal investment, the Solar is probably going to win.

2 DBs? Prrrrobably still got it.

3, 4, 5? Now he's sweating.

For Lunars and Sids, it's even trickier; both are very good at avoiding any kind of direct confrontation, which means the Solar's strength might never even get a chance to come into play.

>Also for consequences of actions. Maybe I'm still stuck in D&D mode but doesn't that cause the problem of making victory... Well not very victorious?
Not quite.

The idea isn't "You overthrew the tyrant! J/K AN EVEN WORSE EVIL ERUPTS BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU DID, EAT SHIT."

It's "You overthrew the tyrant! Now what about everything else? You going to just throw someone on the throne? Take over yourselves? What policies are you going to institute? What about [problems the country had before]? And the old loyalists?" etc etc etc.

Basically Exalted never says "and then everything was happy ever after," it doesn't let players have that excuse.

Compared to the original version, that isnt bad at all. Still not sure if its appropriate, but I can tolerate this version.

Reminds me though! The thing I am now sad about, is that the original 2nd edition mistake that meant the Mask of Winters couldn't read; wasn't kept as an ongoing joke. Even if those kinda jokes have no real place in a serious game.

Well it might be 'convenient' but the thing is, Exalts are kind of drawn to each other, further a group of dragonblooded can be a big problem for fledgling solars. It's not always a cut and dry thing.

For the consequences portion, no not really. Consequences don't have to be inherently negative to the party, but could cause them more problems down the road. As said, it's not like you beat the problem now suddenly a bigger problem is instantly in your face. It's kind of like your Twilight Medicine Man just cured a big plague. He made a vaccine in a couple days and shipped it out to the entire affected area, now no more people are dying. But he can't fix what's done. What about the people who died before he got there? Sure, a lot of people are going to be thankful, but there might be a few other people who are bitter. They could cause him trouble down the road, or maybe they blame him for not getting there sooner and now he has to fix his relationship with those people before they do something stupid. That kind of thing.

>I don't think so? Some might, but I don't remember it being a constant.
It seems strongly implied, if it isn't stated outright. A lot of them feel frankly inappropriate for non-animals, especially with how their fluff text is written. For example:

>An Exalt with a familiar has experienced the gift of having been chosen twice. The Exalt reaches through her anima to touch the bond she shares with her companion animal
>The Solar holds dominion over the beasts of the field. With this Charm she can train an animal, familiar or otherwise, to follow her commands.
>With this Charm, the Solar can invest her Spirit-Tied Pet with traits beyond its natural capacity. This Charm supplements a normal beast-training roll
>The Solar reaches into the substance of her familiar, and draws out that which is soft and vulnerable, hardening muscle, bone and hide.
>The Solar can inspire zealous devotion, even in the beasts of the wilderness.

It's less that Survival charms explicitly spell out that these charms don't work on spirit familiars, and more that they're written in a way that doesn't seem to realized that anything other than animal familiars even exist.

And Melee's flavor is written like nothing but swords exists. It's fine, mang.

Ok. So in general play the cards:
1. There are a shit ton of these guys and some may be smarter and/or know more about you than yourself
2. You can save people. You can't save everyone though.
3. When you fuck up you have ROYALLY fucked up

These sound about right. At least for simple guidelines?

You got it exactly.

...

That looks fine to me. Im not even just talking about in comparison to the first one.
That lunar is kinda hot

...

If by 'these guys' you mean Dragonbloods, there are about 20,000 (?) DB's if I recall correctly, Realm has about half of them. Lookshy has a large portion of the last 10K and then others all over the place. Though, I guess in 3e there's not a solid number of Solars anymore from what i've been hearing, in 2e they were at a solid 300, but 150 of those were morphed into the Abyssals and Infernals.

Otherwise, exactly right.

Wait, wait wait. Guys, are there still Infernals?

Almost certainly, yes.

From the core book no.

Though they maybe may come back someday. There are also no Alchemicals which from what I hear were dope as all fuck

Yes.

>There are also no Alchemicals which from what I hear were dope as all fuck

At least Lissome Avid Engineer is in a pic in the corebook.

Is that the girl with the goggles when they have all the different exalted lined up?

>If by 'these guys' you mean Dragonbloods, there are about 20,000 (?) DB's if I recall correctly, Realm has about half of them.
Not quite. The Realm has 20k, which is half of the setting's DBs, for 40k total. You can probably expect 20k in the Realm, 10k in Lookshy, 5k in the Realm's satrapies, and 5k 'other.'

Correct.

This is actually quite an interesting thing.

For a start, as a young Solar, your main challenge is not getting killed by the Wyld Hunt and dealing with people who think you're a demon. Basically, most of the setting thinks that you're a fiend right from hell. Overcoming that so you don't get crucified on sight is pretty hard.

As you get older and more powerful (And you can get powerful fast) your next challenge is making the world a generally better place. You're only one man, so if you want to run a kingdom or better society - this shit happens naturally - you have to make the step from wandering hero to King.

At the same time, you have to deal with the bigger hitters like Deathlords (Who cannot be killed, so raw punching is out of the question), your opposite numbers in Infernals and Abyssals (Who are as powerful as you) and politics.

In Exalted, a fight shouldn't just be about the fight itself. If, assuming a white room, a Dawn Caste goes up against a handful of bandits or mortal soldiers, he will slaughter them. The context of the fight is important: Are you protecting your love interest, so that half of your actions have to be focused on defending her so she doesn't die? Are you fighting your family and friends, and you're doing your best to avoid crippling or killing them, while desperately talking them down and going "I'm not a demon! I'm still the man you know!"

There are a lot of fights like that. For instance, a Zenith Caste does great against the walking dead. But he isn't focused solely on fighting them, in this encounter: While he could fight off his immediate attackers and escape easily, the goal in the fight is to hold off the undead hordes until the villagers escape. And that is hard, because he has to hold the line.
The point is, Exalted shouldn't really be about those white-room punching matches. In contrast to D&D, where killing enemies and looting them is essential, you don't really need to do that.

>tfw lost all crops and fanart of LAE
>need to comb through 2e books to find it all again

Hey, my sorcerer tore off their own shadow in order to animate it into a spirit familiar. What should it count as, mechanically? A unique demon of the first circle? Some kind of elemental - probably air, representing the absence of light/fire and its ephemeral form?

I want it to qualify as a target for the Twilight Anima, because it doesn't look like you can get anything other than an animal as a familiar any other way, so it actually needs to fall into one of those two categories, I think.

I think there's an actual spell for that.

For making a custom spirit familiar? Because that's an Essence 5 Occult charm, actually.

Anyone have a link to that google doc combat tracker that was making the rounds a while back? It used to be in the OP but I don't see it now.

And now there remains only one final question...have you been naughty, or nice? HO...HO...HO...

Quick question, can you Command Action for multiple battlegroups at once if you have a way to direct all of them?

If you have a way to flurry them, then yes.

Otherwise that'd need a War charm, something akin to you raising your sword and everything under your sway belts it in the same direction until there's nothing left.

I can never keep this straight. If the roll is difficulty X, and you roll exactly X successes on your dice, do you count as having "one success" or zero successes?

This is yes. I would perhaps add another category:

4. Your well-meaning improvements, social reforms, and general Solaring have succeeded beyond your wildest expectations and resulted in unexpected side effects that beg for more Solaring.

For example, you issue an edict banning police brutality. A month later 90% of your law enforcement wants to quit because of some combination of having seen police brutality as a job perk, or having been convinced that it's a necessary tool for dissuading criminals.

You bring sanitation and hygiene reforms to the country. Child mortality is practically not a thing any more. Sadly, the demographic shift takes time to work, during which a lot of people will still be having eight children in ten years, and now food prices are sky high and the Guild has you over a barrel with the threat of starvation.

You overthrow the oppressive tyrant. Said oppressive tyrant was the main thing protecting a hated minority group that a tyrant was a member of; now there's a serious risk of genocide unless you intervene. (*cough*libya*cough*)

With the common thread here that's it not just about "what else" as mentions, but about the temptation to fix the consequences of your solaring by solaring HARDER. Police trouble? Grab some more Socialize charms and issue a magically compelling edict that just bans crime nationwide. Hunger trouble? Get sorcery, cast Benediction of Archgenesis, problem solved. Country in danger of genocide and civil war? You had better take power yourself for the greater good.

Or to put it another way:

Exalted has lots of charms for making your decision stick.

Exalted has no charms for making particularly good decisions in the first place.

Exalted most of all has no "Wisdom" stat.

With all the Craft talk that's been made. Can large scale construction projects be made by a single character? Could a ship or manse be made by just one person in the listed time or would it take longer than normal?

You succeeded, with 0 extra (threshold) successes.

Really big scale projects (read: 2-dot superior projects, even mundane ones), like palaces and ships, require a workforce to be done in the given time, so it would take easily much longer working alone, even with Charm help (ST discretion).

Major projects are generally assumed to have a single character working on them, even if they're kinda big (a hut, a boat). They might be closer to the upper end of the timescale working alone, but it wouldn't take you years to build a cabin.

Except for extended actions, where you would add 1 to your total number of successes.

Me and a friend were talking about that in the gym yesterday. The idea that a 1st Age solar was a high functioning illiterate was the greatest thing ever.

Where does it mention the workforce necessity?

Large-scale projects sidebar, page 243.
>and sufficient materials (including, for most such projects, significant funds and manpower) to attempt

So basically just reiterating the rule that exists, and pointing out that "enough dudesmen" is part of materials.