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

Infernals edition. Are infernals heroes?

Other urls found in this thread:

pastebin.com/tqpcKsGP
youtube.com/watch?v=ZSS5dEeMX64
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

first for my waifu

>Infernals edition. Are infernals heroes?
By Exalted's definition, yeah.

Anyone else watching ExalTwitch here?
It's an incredibly fascinating campaign to watch, especially because I don't have a 3rd edition group of my own.
Last week they had like a dozen devs and writers in the chat with them.

Posting the screenshot of the 'Heroes' thing I have, since interest was shown last thread.

About half of that is true.

Should Eclipses go in for Charisma or Manipulation? A number of social charms specifically use rolls with one or the other.

Does your Exalt lead from the front or from the shadows?

Depends on your character. If you earnestly believe in what you're trying to get others to believe/do, go Charisma. If you're just interested in getting them to do what you want, and are willing to lie your arse if in order for them to do it, go Manipulation.

Also, Manipulation will give you guile, which you'll need so your marks won't see you as the sack if shit you are. If you're Charisma, you won't need it as much, because, in general, you're not hiding stuff.

Charisma is inflexible, but has few drawbacks. Manipulation is high risk/high reward - if someone cottons on, you're likely to be run out of town on a rail.

>Will decides that his Solar learned sorcery before even Exalting, serving as a cultist to the demon Glafira, the Zodiac of Blood. This is just a name and a title he made up, but he and the Storyteller work out that Glafira is a Second Circle Demon who dwells in the stars of Hell, and hungers for the end of time itself.
So, Sorcerers are common enough that it's not unusual for demon-cultists of Second Circles to be inducted into it.

>A PC does something exceptional
>CLEARLY THIS IS PROOF THAT EVERYONE CAN DO THIS THING

>serving as a cultist to the demon Glafira
We're not talking a high priest, just 'a cultist.'

And this was before they even exalted. And not the stimulus for exaltation either.

I'm not saying that anyone/everyone can pull it off. I'm just saying it doesn't sound mind-boggling in rarity either.

So how are Alchemicals, Abyssals, and Infernals heroes? And what about Getiminininians, Liminals, and Exigents?

I'm thinking of making a tanky as fuck sorceror. What is the best way of going about such an idea?

stop pulling shit out of your ass

cultist in this context doesn't meaningfully distinguish anything beyond serving glafira

Occult 5 Resistance 5 Stamina 5
All the Ox-Bodies or whatever

Invulnerable Skin of Bronze and summon an army of demons and elementals, take War.

Supernal resistance.

Sorcery is just too small to be the mechanical focus of a character. Initial buy-in is really small, and there's barely any room for growth, apart from a handful of spells that cost SXP.

In our group's experience, you don't so much play a Sorcerer, as you play an XYZ Sorcerer - a Demon-Summoner who uses War to command has unholy legions in battle, or Social Sorcerer, who uses Corrupted Words, or Silent Words of Dreams and Nightmares to bend people to their will, or a Crafter, who uses Workings to enhance his people/places/things.

Invulnerable Skin of Bronze is cool and all, until someone distorts it.

I really like this War idea. Any ideas on how to make it practical and make the best use of it?

Summon one demon or elemental every day until you have a BG whose size you're comfortable with, favour War and pick up Tiger Warrior Training when you can. Spend all of combat giving command actions.

Alchemicals were built to be heroes and act like it. They don't just drop their nuts on the table and demand the puny mortals suck them, their entire job is to keep mortals safe and keep their society from falling apart, and in the time that Creation has suffered four separate apocalypses, maybe more depending on how you count it, they've managed to keep a continuous society where, maybe it still sucks compared to our world, but it's among the least shitty places to live. Fucking Alchemicals dude.

Abyssals, I got nothing, unless you're playing a rogue Abyssal in which case you're telling one of Creation's ultimate evils to suck it, even as your unlife grows shittier with every great deed you perform to redeem yourself for falling when Creation needed you to stand. I was going to say that they're the champions of death and the underworld, keeping ghosts in line and holding up the rule of law in a place where you're literally being slowly sucked down into almost-nothingness, but that's all been shifted onto the Liminals. I don't know what 3e Abyssals are like.

Liminals are the champions of death and the underworld, keeping ghosts in line and holding up the rule of law in a place where you're literally being slowly sucked down into almost-nothingness. They're heroes because even when you're dead, they have your back.

GetimIcantspelliteithers are heroes because heaven is bullshit. Sidereals talk a big game about how they're helping keep Creation going but the world is on life support, and even that's starting to not be enough. Something has to change. The rule of fate and gods has done nothing to keep Creation from suffering disaster after disaster, and when a Getimwhatever is created, it's because they said "no more." No more death and destruction, only for the powers that be to nod and say, "This is good." it's not good, and the Whocameupwiththisnames are heroes because they fight for something different. Maybe it won't be better, but it'll be different.

Exigents are a different breed of Exalt entirely. They have belief. They believe so hard that a God will nearly kill themselves to invest their power into them, so that they can uphold these beliefs, whether it be in the regularity of the harvest, or the tranquility of the night, or the lost knowledge that refuses to be forgotten. They champion gods that are as essential to Creation, but are forgotten beneath the might of the other demigods running around. They could be more powerful than any Solar, they could be only slightly more powerful than a human, but they have belief, and they'll use whatever power they have to hold to it, no matter what.

Infernals aren't heroes. They're villains. Things break down here. Sorry.

I thought Liminals were more Alucard-ish. Hunters of their own kind and very much not champions of death and the undead.

It depends how crazy you want to be about it.

It could be as minimal as being a Twilight, binding a Blood Ape to your aura, and having him Defend-Other you in combat.

Or it could be as maximal as going Supernal Occult, taking All Souls Benediction, and keeping 200 demons immaterial around you at all times.

There are a couple of things to consider:

1: You'll generally want to keep your demons dematerialized, and pop them out for battle. There are charms that let you do that relatively cheaply, or you can command them to materialize themselves. If they do it themselves, they sacrifice half their mote pool.

2: It's not hard to detect dematerialized beings, especially Blood Apes, the only real combat demons stated for 3E, as they snuffle and grunt and stink, even while dematerialized. It'll be hard to hide what you are, and people will treat you like a loaded weapon.

3: Command actions and Shape Sorcery actions are mutually exclusive, so you won't be able to buff your Blood Apes hugely with War, at the same time as spewing Obsidian Butterflies at your enemies - pick one or the other.

Anyone got some Wuxia-themed music for fight scenes?

jesus christ that's disgustingly wide

Stop browsing on your phone.

Desktop, not phon

What tremendous bullshit.

>Infernals aren't heroes. They're villains. Things break down here. Sorry.
Heroes of their own stories

If I posted a character sheet for an ex3 game, could Veeky Forums give feedback and advice on it?

Of course.

Sure, when you post it let us know what your concept or idea for the character is.

Cool. In a pasteibn because I use .txt sheets; my computer hates editable .pdfs for some reason.

pastebin.com/tqpcKsGP

The idea was a person used as an experiment by a mad merchant-scientist, more or less; the intent was to mass produce exigents from a captured god, but things went awry. She's meant to be a little independent; resistance charms and agile dodging instead of heavy armor, brawl instead of melee, throwing improvised weapons as a backup. There's some things on there that more represent who she was before the experiments than who she is now, but i felt it was appropriate to have some remnants of her old life there.

Abyssals are heroes because some things are mistakes that get completed before they can be prevented. To be Abyssal is to be death itself, and plenty of things need to die. If a bandit lords who roves the countryside stealing and raping whatever he pleases gets put in the ground, no one's going to care. If some sleazebag merchant empire that's devoted its entire history to making its money off the backs of the impoverished, starving and suffering gets wiped off the map, then the world can thank whoever's responsible. When a forest gets so overgrown that the wildlife grows beyond its ability to sustain itself, when a behemoth from ages ago is still rampaging around when it should've died before it was born, when someone, somewhere can only make the world a better place by not being part of it anymore, then someone has to do the dirty job. Creation's going to die sooner or later. The entire cosmos is coming to an end. The Abyssals will do their part killing what needs to be killed, shortening the world's suffering. Then, once everything's nice and dead and gone, they'll put up the chairs, turn off the lights and close up shop. Abyssals are heroes because there's always something that needs to die.

Infernals are heroes because there's someone who hasn't gotten theirs yet. It's called the Reclamation for a reason. Creation has its proper owners, its rightful kings, and they were denied what's theirs by a bunch of upstarts who thought they knew better than the people who put them there. And then, after the new kids on the block kicked the kings off their thrones and burned down the castle, they acted like it was the Primordials' fault for being losers, like it was anything less than theft and treason. That story is shared by every Infernal. Every Infernal knows that they didn't fuck up. They weren't too weak or too cowardly or too stupid. Their moment in the sun was right there, waiting for them to take it, like it was made for them. Their moment was stolen. Their glory was stolen. They've spent their whole lives being stolen from. The forces of Creation are wrong. The Reclamation isn't theft or conquest. It's the world's first rulers righting a case of robbery that goes back thousands of years. Infernals are heroes because they're sick of being told to shut up and take it. The world's always pushed them around, and now they've got the power to push back.

I don't think you quite get the subtleties.

No one said the Abyssals or Infernals were right, but that's the rhetoric they're pushing.

Mechanically, your attributes are sub-optimal, but this may not be much of a concern if you never plan to raise them.

Do you have a supernal? It's not indicated, and none of your charms (from memory) have higher than Essence 1 as a requirement.

Where have your bonus points gone? I count 5 on high ability dots, 2 in willpower - not sure about the rest.

Supernal's up at the top, it's Brawl. I spent 5 on abilities, 2 on willpower, and then eight on +1 dexterity and stamina, which started at 4 before bonus points.

The campaign is technically a one-shot which might evolve into a full campaign but we're not sure on that yet.

Nobody gonna comment on the shadowrun picture? No? Okay.

No, they're not. Why would they?

Why would they care?

You don't seem to be using it, though. That's not necessarily, as long as you don't expect your Dawn to be better at fighting than anyone else - really, it's the Supernal that actually gives you the ability to out-fight the other castes.

If you want to be fighty-er, I'd suggest taking Hammer on Iron, and Fivefold Fury Onslaught. That will really ramp up your potential for violence.

I find Iron Battle Focus an odd choice, if just because you've bought Dodge up to 5. I'd start working on Dodge charms, if you're planning on it being your primary defence - which is Brawl's main weakness. In fact, with Resistance bought up to, you really seem to be spreading yourself thin amongst the defensive abilities.

Okay so there's a blurb in the EX3 rulebook that goes like, "Write this down for yourself because it's really important!" and it's a list of combat formulas and stuff, that's more detailed than the one on the actual EX3 character sheet.

So I replaced it with the one from the book. Don't know if anyone actually uses the PDF character sheet, but here you go.

I'd second being a resistance supernal. That's what I'm doing and having a blast. Last session our ST threw a Wyld hunt at myself and another party member, despite not making any attacks for 4 rounds I gained two initiative and was only down about half motes and lost two health levels (from death of obsidian butterflies), while reliably regenerating 15 motes per round before I teleported us both out. And this is a character with no offensive skills to speak of.

With invulnerable skin of bronze, unusual hide, pain tolerance and giant things get ridiculous when you add resistance charms.

For added shenanigans, take War Lion Stance, and never let anything attack anyone but you.

I actually need to take that, our Night barely made it out of that fight.
Unfortunately I've got zero dots in Melee.

I'll look at charm choice, then; I'll be honest, I got a little overwhelmed by Brawl's choices because there's just so many brawl charms that I wasn't sure what to go for and what not to go for; I decided to focus on striking instead of grappling at least for now, but other than that...

>I really like this War idea. Any ideas on how to make it practical and make the best use of it?
War charms are great. Feel free to buy them all, but even just a few can be really potent. The most important three are: War God Descendant, Ideal Battle Knowledge Prana, and Immortal Warlord's Tactic.

Also Tiger Warrior Training. In a month and a week you can turn rinky-dink dirt farmers into hardened shock troopers.

Is there anything that specifically says that battle groups can't be knocked prone by smashing attacks?

... Common sense?

Ignoring the "Raising the dead, summoning ghosts" stuff that falls under the net, what would you expect from Necromancy spells?

Nothing. It's going to be Sorcery but weaker and suckier and edgier all over again.

...

are quick characters and/or battle groups supposed to get stunt bonus dice?

Couldn't you do that Dynasty Warriors thing where you send dozen of guy flying with each swing?

What would YOU do with it then?

If I were GMing I'd ask for a good stunt to do it.

Anyone important enough to have a name should probably get 2 stunt dice; I'd hesitate to give an NPC two- or three-point stunts.

Not those dingalings, but I'd prefer it looked nothing like Sorcery at all, precisely to force people out of that comparative mindset.

Tearing secrets out of the screaming minds of dead Titans should be far more dramatic than picking up a new sorcerous widget.

If it were up to me, being a "master" Necromancer would consist of knowing like 5 Necromantic "things," and each of them would have a permanent effect on the character and the world around them, in addition to their active effects.

Like, Black-Oil Heart (Onyx-level Necromantic Scar) would turn your guts into a slurry of rot-juice that you could use to raise zombies, corrode objects, poison people or geomantic arrays, etc. and would also completely remove your ability to have Minor-level Intimacies; they just dissolve in your heart unless magically reinforced or forced up to Major.

Another question. What happens if two people roll exactly the same successes on a clash attack?

Same as any other opposed roll: best stunt wins.

And if those are equal?

I think necromancy might not exist as distinct from sorcery in this edition. After all, it could be represented as a set of sorcery rituals.

Generic Necromantic Ritual

You are a spooky necromancer.
When you kill a mortal, you gain a sorcerous mote that may be spent on any spell for a day, up to your Essence. If you kill an Essence-user, you gain your Essence in sorcerous motes that can be spent on any spell for a day.

Spooky Scary Skeletons ( 3 dot Merit)
Out of combat, you can grant animation to someones skeleton. The skeleton has 6 dice to spend on attacks, and can wield weapons normally. The skeleton has no essence, and has 5 dice to spend on all non-combat actions. The skeleton is too imprecise to perform any non-attacking combat actions. You can have your Essence in skeletons at a time. You can treat all your skeletons as a single artifact, and learn Evocations for them.

Puppet on a Lonely String (Merit 5 dot)
If you kill a non-extra enemy with a spell, you can reflexively spend 10m, 1 wp to animate them in your defense. They retain all their stats, essence, willpower, and attunements until the end of the scene, and then collapse back in to a corpse.

Generic Necromancy Ritual 2

Spoooky.
You are attuned to death. While in a shadowland or the Underworld, every turn you spend shaping sorcery you gain [Essence] dice of sm.

Shroud of Darkness (Merit 3 or 5 dot)
You are considered to be a creature of death for the purposes of mote regeneration, etc. The 5-dot merit lets you switch back and forth by spending ten minutes and a willpower in concentration

Glory to Stagnation/Movement (Merit 3 dot)
You can only choose one of these two merits. Glory to Stagnation allows you to force any being that dies within long range of you to stay as a ghost in the Underworld. Glory to Movement force them to Lethe. This merit does not work on Gods, Fae, Elementals, Titans, Yozi, or Neverborn.

Then that's it, figure out a tie-breaker yourself; it doesn't matter what.

That tbqh fempai.

But the devs are more like that

Honestly, I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me on this, but I'd start with massively limiting the scope of what Sorcerous Working can accomplish. Sorcery, while obviously needing to be varied, can't be a 'do anything' button if it's going to have a counterpart. Monkeying around with souls, and making things static and immune to decay, are now all but impossible. Those are necromantic now.

Necromancy governs both decay, and stasis. It comes from dreams, and thus has power over dreams, even drawing them into reality to bend space and possibility. It is also despair and endless monotony, the end of new possibility. It is the remembrance of the past and the wild manipulation of organic matter. As the Underworld is a reflection of Creation, so too is reflection within Necromancy's preview. It has power to chain spirits, both dead and living.

Sorcery can still do a lot of those things. Most of them, not as well. They're what necromancy's good at.

That's what I'd do with it.

, here, and I think your way has both good and bad points.

The best thing about it is that it makes necromancy very distinct from sorcery.
The worst thing about it is that it makes necromancy very distinct from sorcery.

When you split something up like that, it becomes significantly harder to balance it, and it is still very difficult to split it up properly.

Why have sorcery so much more versatile than necromancy? 2e did this, and it generally made it a better idea to go for sorcery. If you really wanted to make necromancy so distinct, it raises the question of why you don't split sorcery into many different forms. Why not have elementalism, light sorcery designed to uncover secrets and bless actions, starlight sorcery designed to twist fate and reality, infernal sorcery designed to corrupt? Why only split it into a very versatile tool, and a tool that is better only in specific circumstances?

If you manage to cause a battle group to lose multiple points of Size in one attack, do you gain the initiative break bonus each time? On page 208 I could read it either way. Either you caused them to lose a point of Size multiple times and get multiple rewards, or you fulfill the boolean condition of "group has lost Size = true" and only get the reward once.

>why you don't split sorcery into many different forms

Because in Creation, everything that is playing with the tool the Primordial gave us while creating the world is sorcery.

There is certainly a metric ton of different ways to shape sorcery, from a contract passed with the embodiment of fire to computing the last decimal of pi. But you are still using sorcery.

The Neverborn and necromantic energy are inimical to Creation in a way that is different. They weren't supposed to exist. They broke Creation in a fundamental level only by dreaming, and Necromancy is the art of manipulating those inimical, eldritch energies.

I meant mechanically.

Mechanics should reflect the setting.

Even if there's a reason to split it up in-setting, and there is, that doesn't mean you have to split it up mechanically. Just have it known throughout Creation that those who meddle in the affairs of life and death are those who have divorced themselves entirely from the waking world, with a paragraph detailing how necromantic rituals tend to focus on dreams, reflections, sleep, and stasis. Demand that the necromancy-focused sorcery rituals have flavor concerning how their users become pale, or look sickly, how their reflections are warped, how their dreams are twisted or non-existent. Make the stronger necro rituals remove willpower gain from sleep, instead offering the sorcerer twisted, horrific alternatives that chip away at their sanity. It's not necessary to split things up in the book itself, it just results in bloat and sorcery being a better choice than necromancy.

Charms don't reflect the setting. The existence of charms doesn't reflect the setting. In fact, very few mechanics reflect the setting. Battlegroups? I don't see a paragraph detailing how Realm tactics prefer splitting up battlegroups into several smaller ones to optimize their strength. Withering? It's not really common knowledge that its more difficult to kill someone with one hit if they're alone.

I would say it's pretty clear with RAW. Every time you cause them to drop a point size/dissolve = crash bonus, and you can cause multiple size drops per attack or size drop/dissolve.

So you could gain the benefit multiple times.

No need to be so defensive Holden. We all agree that 2E Necromancy is shit. Now, we're just waiting to see if you will be able to fuck it up even worse, or somehow get it better.

I'm going to try some Awakening Eye+Fate-Shifting Solar-Arete shenanigans, the only thing I'm not sure of is what to combine it with. I was thinking Archery for Revolving Bow Technique and Finishing Snipe, but I'm unsure if that would be the be all end all. Suggestions?

I'm looking at the book, and I'm considering running a campaign. There are a few things that I worry about before doing that though.
The first one is:
How much of a slog is combat? The Withering/Decisive thing seems like it'll drag on for ages.

I like that. I like that quite a lot.

Unless it's a one sided blowout, combat takes forever as people look up what exactly their charms do and how they interact, spend a long time describing their stunts aloud or typing a flowery sentence, and ask how rules work. It is definitely a slog.

1v1 combat can either been super lopsided and super quick or very even and a drag. More average numbers of players around will play generally the same time-wise as other games so long as people know the rules and aren't having to look up how to assemble their god damned withering attack pool every god damned attack their god damned dawn makes cause it's not like it's their fucking job or anything to know how to fucking hit things with their stupid ass reaver fucking daiklave Ryan you fucking piece of shit.

Ok. People don't knowing what to do will happen in all systems.
How bad is the system itself?

Define "a slog"?

I mean sure it isn't the fastest combat system in the universe, but fight doesn't generally take more than a few rounds to resolve.

Meant By the way, where can I read about titans and what they were/are?

1E Games of Divinity discusses the Yozi, and 2E's Ink Monkeys has a bit of lore about the Titans before the War.

Alright.

By "War" you mean the Usurpation, right?

No, I mean the Primordial War, which was before the First Age where the Exalts ruled.

The Usurpation ENDED the First Age, when the Solars were slain and locked up.

Oh, we're going way way the fuck back, yikes.

Well the Primordials are the most ancient beings to exist in a useful sense, so yeah, we are.

Are Titans related to Primordials?

Different name, same beings.

Any significant reason for a different name?

I don't think that they've used the word Titans since early in 2e.

That's a point, which place on creation would be the best place to locate Tracy Island? I know TB5 would be affixed to the Dome Of The Sky, but that is about all I can think of right now.

Alright. Would Old McDonald's codex help with understanding where magic comes from, or is there a better book?

I always thought that Infernals were meant to be the equivalent of school-shooters. So full of spite, so full of hatred, they're back to take it out on everyone.

Because the main deal of the Yozis is TREMENDOUS, FOCUSED SPITE. The Infernals are their weapons to fuck people up. Someone like Eliot Rodger or Brevik would be perfect Infernals.

What, magic in general? Or just Sorcery?

I like to imagine that they play this constantly.

youtube.com/watch?v=ZSS5dEeMX64

>magic in general or just Sorcery
Aw fuck, man...

Sorcery and Necromancy specifically

White and Black Treatise, or the 1E counterpart Savant and Sorcerer.

In general, 1E has more evocative but fluctuating quality lore, while 2E has more blase but consistent lore, so your call.

>Savant and Sorcerer.

Ah! THAT book.