New person here. Here are the questions I'm interested in

actually, dude, this is what the ancient users of the site used to call a "thread", an archaic construct from the old days where people didnt exclusively post generals on Veeky Forums. a thread can stay on topic, or even go off topic. theyre quite something.

give me an example. I know general premise about Exalted setting. In what way does 2nd edition fucks it up? Also was 2nd edition that bad they retconned it backwards for 3ed?

Woah man stop, we're here to discuss about Exalted, not posting into a stupid "thread" about edition war or something.

2E wasn't too bad at the start. By the end it'd gone full gonzo. Like, sun is a giant robotic ship gonzo. Everything was anime turned up to 11. Which isn't necessarily bad, but it's not the mythical heroes fighting in a doomed world that sold the game initially.

It also had this conceit where the game mechanics were the in-world physics, which lead to all sorts of stupidity.

Incidentally, the people who turned the sun into a giant robotic ship are the people writing 3E. Have fun!

Eh, they wrote what the line wanted. At that time, what the line wanted was stupid.

I have issues with 3E, but they're not with the fluff.

look for a book called "return of the scarlet empress" and just read through it. this is what 2e considers the canon end to the age of sorrows. highlights include: every single sidereal killed by infernals due to a loophole in a martial art, a yozi breaking free even though this is explicitly impossible, the scarlet empress making a bunch of perfectly square islands the size of the blessed isle for no reason whatsoever, and the death of the UCS

>What about 1e?

What about it?

1e was fine at first, but became a clusterfuck of bad design after a few splats.

2e was fine at first, but became a clusterfuck of bad design after a few splats.

2.5e was a clusterfuck of bad design. since it was trying to unclusterfuck 2e

3e.... Well history is telling.

I forget...what were the rules for elsewhere again?

what happens when something gets stashed and forgotten about? does it eventually pop back to reality or is it gone forever?

is there any way you can access somebody else's storage?

I'd just use 2ed stuff to fill it out until it gets here rather than wait for 2018 or 2021 or whenever a given splat comes out. change where necessary...but yeah, even so its much work, basically rewriting many thingsm so those things tend not to get used unless you play 2nd ed. infernals and alchemicals for example

>is there any way you can access somebody else's storage?

One Solar tried that in the First Age.

It didn't end well

I liked infernal...well once you throw out almost everything but chapter 5 ;)

i thought so :P thanks.

I'd assume that means there also isn't any way to fuck with their stuff like destroy or scatter it?

>Shitting on anything Infernal except chapter 5.
Literally Holden.

Ok Holden.

2e infernals chapter 1 and 2 should be required reading for anyone even considering running a 2e game. its some of the worst writing ive ever seen, the constant feeling when youre reading page after page talking about a girl turned into a bloated fuckbeast that the author was jacking off to it as they wrote it is unnerving.

Ok Holden.

This is the common circlejerking du moment. It is repeated again and again by 15 years old who didn't read the book in the first place, probably because reading a book takes forever when you're not used to read.

I don't make a judgement on the intrinsic value of that opinion. I'm just pointing a fact. It could be 'right' circlejerking, though in my experience circlejerking is rarely right.

Well that Twilight got in and found himself frozen in place and time like all the stuff Exalts sent Elsewhere.

I suppose someone with enough effort could potentially fuck with stuff that's Elsewhere, but how do you target an object that by definition can't be targeted?

Personally, I'd still play 2.5e over 3e at this stage if I had a choice. I can see the writing on the wall in advising new people to pick up 3e, though.

2.5e has more or less been beaten into shape and we're seeing the stress and hearing the creaking at the joints as it's strained to the limit. 3e doesn't _have_ a shape yet, although we're seeing a couple of weird outlines like how assassins want Awareness even more than Stealth.

Does anyone have 3ed pdf?

This is the weirdest argument and I keep seeing it. People are dismissing other people's opinions because a lot of people share them. It's the weirdest contrarian nonsense.

If you disagree, explain why. Don't just say 'you probably only think that because people told you to'.

Here's a page from chapter 1. I think the circlejerk has inevitably exaggerated what's going on, but it is pretty nasty.

Other stupid highlights include

> An agata might change a mortal’s fingernails and toenails from translucent keratin to venous panels similar in appearance to its own wings. Alternatively, the Infernal might find that he has iridescent compound eyes and that in place of his human genitals he now has a wickedly barbed stinger.
Join the forces of Hell today and get a free spikecrotch!

> THE TRIUMPH OF THE WILL
Caps because that's a section heading. Way to good taste there.

> Aside from information and opinion, coadjutors also color their Green Sun Princes’ personalities in hues of their own demonic behaviors. The effect is subtle but always present and is based on the type of demon the coadjutor used to be. Erymanthoi, for example, tend to make their Infernals short-tempered and predisposed to seek the most brutally expedient solution to problems. Neomah, alternatively, affect their Infernals’ pleasure centers, leaving them in a state of low-grade arousal regardless of the circumstances.
Because we totally needed neomah painted as stock succubus expies rather than fleshcrafters. /s

> When a Green Sun Prince’s Willpower is completely exhausted, conditions that would normally inflict Limit on whole, bound demons instead inflict it on the Infernal Exalt by proxy through his coadjutor. These conditions are determined as in The Abscissic Guide, but based on the highest Virtue of the Exalt, rather than the former Virtues of the unwoven coadjutor.
Everyone I know ignores the fuck out of the sidebar rule here that requires you to own one of the RoGD books to determine how Infernals gain Limit.

search tg archive for exalted general thread. Search 1st post for links.... or to make it easier for you (just this once)

mega.nz/#!E1dRBBIa!ZbQG4IasYCJRli2bhgE2MOdWeFAeV3N1rqL9kAIGbNE

Thank you, bro

ive read it you stupid nigger. one clue that might have led you to this was me referencing something, in the book, that i read. 2e apologists are so god damn fucking stupid.

Chapter 1 extracts continued.

Following Exaltation, the new Infernal is brought to Hell, where...
> the Exalt’s body is shared around among the other Third Circle souls of his master, followed by the jouten of the architect of the Reclamation who designed his Urge (if that Yozi is different from who claims the Exalt’s caste). Any humanity to which the Exalt might have been clinging is more than likely stripped away during this time.
In context it's supposed to indicate demonic communion, not gang rape, but... WORDING, PEOPLE!

> the other Yozis are still demon lords. It behooves any Green Sun Prince not to go out of his way to offend any of them. At best, the offended party might confront the Yozi to whom the offender belongs, which will likely result in punishment and educational degradation until the offended party is satisfied.

Yes, Infernals, you "belong" to one of the Yozis. You're on the worst fucking leash in Creation, one with "educational degradation". Mortal slaves at least have a chance to run away. You? If you try to run away the Yozi can reach out and Limit Break you all day. Wall of text on p27-28 that basically says the Yozis can inflict Limit Break on Infernals for anything displeasing an Infernal does and they're only holding back because the Ebon Dragon convinced them to at least /try/ cooperating.

Oh, and you also belong to all the souls of said Yozi:
> The Third Circle souls of the Yozi who claims a peer’s particular Exaltation are to be considered unquestionable by that Infernal Exalt. (For example, every Slayer is expected to consider Ligier to be unquestionable. They may question Jacint but must still do as he says.) Even those peers who question the will of those whom they are supposed to treat as unquestionable, however, are not subject to legal recriminations or sanctions. Instead, they suffer their masters’ displeasure directly, gaining Limit just as if they had defied their Urges.

This is bad and fucking hilarious. The basic concept isn't bad but details and approach to telling them is bad. It is as if a kid tried to write something cool and didn't know when to stop.

It reminded me of vampire discussion on GURPS forum where a guy posted a pretty decent post. Instead of writing shitty fiction and readers missing the point he made it directly to the point.

In the classic Swedish Chill supplement Horrors of the Night there was an extended essay on vampires and why we fear them. The author focuses on three points - Life without Hope, Lust without Love and Death without Peace.

Life without Hope centers on the hopelessness of vampiric existence. Humans can try to make life better for themselves or other, but the vampire's only goal is to try to keep himself 'alive' for thousands and thousands of years. The nihilism and despair inherent in this existence is palpable.

Lust without Love centers on the values of the vampire. Again, self-preservation comes first. When the vampire can do something else, they try to make others like themselves. They cannot be truly creative, they cannot create free men - like Wotan in die Walküre he can only create slaves. The life of the vampire resembles that of the heroin addict - the only thing that matters is the hunger for the next fix and the desire to avoid the shakes.

Death without peace centers on the relationship between vampires and humans. Vampires mock death, mock the religious conception of reward or peace in death and promise only a life of eternal existence. When a shark has taken a loved one from us, we can hope that they have found peace. But when a vampire takes a person, we know that they are condemned to a life of living death.

I think that if that paragraph was written in similar way it would have been more impactful and meaningful

So we were talking about just how fucked Infernals are if you listen to what chapter 1 says about them being puppets of the demon lords.

> So long as the Infernal Exalted zealously pursue their Urges and unquestioningly accept their just punishment when they fail, the Yozis will hold off punishing them for /every/ perceived misbehavior that falls outside the purview of their Urges. They will instead inflict Torment for only specific kinds of offenses.
That italic "every" is in the original. Be a good slave, accept half your beatings and we won't give you the other half.

Other stupidity includes the note that when the Yozi have a new champion,
> they call all of their Green Sun Princes together from Hell, Creation and Yu-Shan and hold a special conclave at which to debut the newcomer.
Travel time to and from that conclave is MINIMUM five days EACH WAY.
Let's disrupt our operations for about two weeks every time an operative gets killed. Who the fuck came up with this plan?

Also, there's a full five-day conclave every Calibration. What, you thought that might be a good time for Infernals to spend summoning or inviting high demons into Creation? Fuck you, go to Hell.

Pic related, it's how the Hellthing's Infernal justice system works.

For every bit about the Reclamation that I liked, there was an awful amount of stupid shit in that book.
Thanks for reminding me that I own it.

Halfway through reading that in my mind I created a picture where they do "your momma jokes" or Flyting-rap battles in hell

*Everyone* wants Awareness more than anything else. And when everyone is rolling 25 dice with double 9s and cascading 10s, nobody is. Or something.

I would like to think that 3e infernals won't be stinger-penised demon-rapists.

I would also like to think that 3e won't have a splat of stinger-penised demon-rapists at all. Am I setting my sights too high?

Honestly, if you want a stinger penis just play a sorcerer or Wyld mutant.

I'm with you user, but with the splats they've added and they speed of writing, I won't hold my breath.
I wont why they picked the Dragon-Blooded as the first splatbook, though.
They were never popular in my area despite everyone having his favorite splat, be it Lunars, Sidereals, Alchemicals or Abyssals.

But I don't want a stinger penis. In fact I want there to be as few stinger penises around as possible.

Start a club, make it a rule that people with a stinger for a penis aren't allowed in.

Dragon-blooded are the most prominent Exalt in the setting. Solars are the most popular, so they come first, but the setting doesn't work without Dragon-blooded (plus they're usually second most popular splat in sales/polls).

>plus they're usually second most popular splat in sales/polls
That's what I guessed, but it's a bit surprising regarding my personal experience.
I'd say the setting works well without the DB having their splatbook, but well, it's understandable for sales and popularity to make the planning.

Compare any description of a Demon in 1e's Game of Divinity to any description of a Demon from 2e's Roll of Glorious Divinity II. The former is extremely flavorful and possesses a degree of mystique, while the latter tends to be very humdrum.

Now, personally, I don't think ALL fluff that 2e introduced is terrible. The problem is that most of it is just repetition of stuff from 1e in a more boring fashion. 2e also gets a bad reputation for its fluff because it includes Dreams of the First Age, a shitty supplement that damaged the history of the setting by filling in the content of the First Age with stupidity. Then there's Infernals, which I think were very, very good when they were presented well, but were very polarizing because they were pretty shit when they were done badly, hence all the bitching about Return of the Scarlet Empress and all the praise for Broken Winged Crane. One can argue for ages about exactly what should have been the cut off point for extensively detailing the Yozi and their personal ideals.

2e's plain tone is not always bad and it certainly does fill in quite a few setting areas, concepts, and entities that had been mentioned before but not expounded upon. Further, 2e's take on the Incarnae in the Glories of the Most High supplements were interesting and the MoEP: Alchemicals and CoCD: Autochthonia books were quite well done. Even so, Abyssals were completely and utterly fucking botched, taking them and the Underworld away from their epic Wraith: The Oblivion origins and dropping them into even more insipid Saturday morning cartoon villain territory than FaFL had gotten himself into by the end of 1e.

But this isn't to say that 1e is totally perfect in its presentation either, though I've run out of room to note why. Basically, IMO, it pays to know the fluff of both past editions and what went down in them so that you can pick out the ideas you approve of and apply them to the presently much more undefined 3e as you see fit.

>2e was fine at first

No, it was pretty clearly fucked out the gate.

EGT Twilight, negro, among other shit, all in Core.

1e was garbage that just shouldn't have existed
2e was amazing at start and then everyone realized how unbalanced it was
2.5e fixed a lot of the balance problems and made an amazing setting
2.5e + homebrew is fucking amazingly fun
3e took everything that 2.5e made outback and shot it in the face. There's absolutely nothing good about the setting for 3e. System is pretty okay since they made it impossible to kill anyone anymore in a single blow. Even Stu, the retarded kid will be able to survive 2-3 blows. Also all the weapons are pretty much the same now with a single tag of difference.

That description for Elsewhere has always been extremely misleading. I'm a fan of Jukashi and all, but he's pretty much outright off in calling Elsewhere its own unique plane unto itself and that idea will only lead new players astray. Actually, I think in the commentary of that particular strip, he outright says that the description is not actually how Elsewhere works.

Initially, Elsewhere just meant something has been put into a pocket dimension, for lack of a better term. It's "elsewhere" - it doesn't matter where, it's just gone from the here and now and can be brought out whenever through whatever means. That's Elsewhere. It's a vague space of "not here right now" that can be exploited to contain stuff. That's it.

>One Solar tried that in the First Age.

An example of the comic writers not knowing what they were doing.

Incidentally, there's a high essence Solar Larceny "stealing from elsewhere" Charm in Lords of Creation that... just lets a Solar do it. It's frankly fucking stupid and further goes to demonstrate a totally misled idea that certain 2e writers had about what Elsewhere was supposed to be, hence it getting wiped away in errata.

>There's absolutely nothing good about the setting for 3e.
Please elaborate on this, user.

>1e was garbage that just shouldn't have existed

This is someone who has never read 1e and probably has never read 3e.

I actually think 2.5 is perfectly legit once you get a hold on it, but holy shit, saying 1e is garbage demonstrates a very serious lack of comprehension of the setting's development.

You summed it up with aplomb. I feel like when I play 2e it's all technical and with little in the ways of dramatic story-telling.

What's the mega link for 1e?

next time you post about exalted just remember this man posts alongside you and any opinion or advice you read may be written by his small and weak hands

Do you prefer Ex2's 'pretty much everyone can dabble in martial arts styles' or Ex3's 'martial arts are super hard to get into and only specialists will be buying them'?

Do you prefer Ex2's 'sorcery is sorcery; every sorcerer goes through the same trials even if they have slightly different flavors' or Ex3's 'sorcery is whatever it is; the source can be wildly different even if the powers are similar'?

Do you prefer Ex2's 'Thaumaturgy is mortal sorcery and necromancy; a series of useful rituals that can be powerful but are always limited in some form that anyone can learn' or Ex3's 'only certain people and exalts can be thaumaturges, and only special people can learn thaumaturgical arts'?

>stinger
isn't that a modified ovipositer? so the chicks would have a stinger dick.

like the gnoll-->spotted hyena debate

I really liked a lot of the 2e fluff about sorcery. The trials were cool, and I really liked the idea of sorcerous regalia - the mantle, the sword, and the crown. I REALLY don't like how MA has been shut behind a gate and is the suboptimal choice for the Dawn combat monster - Exalted is a kung fu movie, dammit!

>and is the suboptimal choice for the Dawn combat monster

Getting doubled XP to pump into a massive variety of combat tactics that also offer non-combat skill effects is not really "suboptimal."

>Exalted is a kung fu movie, dammit!

Congrats on being part of the problem they tried to solve with MA merit

i think he feels it adds nothing to the setting that wasn't already in the last two and removed everything he liked about 2.5+homebrew

context, bro ;)

Well too late, I'm posting my own views.

Clearly the reason why 2e was so bad? Bush. 2e game out during his presidency and the quality of 2e also went way, WAY down compared to 1e.

I don't think this is a coincidence.

Aren't wuxia movies one of the biggest inspirations for exalted?

And JRPGs, particularly Final Fantasy. The conflict with the Neverborn in particular reeks of the typical Final Fantasy apocalypse plot, except that the dead Primordials have a better motive for their omnicide than most FF antagonists.

That isn't exactly elaborating on the post, user. Telling us what exactly is so objectionable about 3E's setting and what made the previous editions so superior would be.

>i think he feels it adds nothing to the setting that wasn't already in the last two and removed everything he liked about 2.5+homebrew

>That isn't exactly elaborating on the post, user. Telling us what exactly is so objectionable

what exactly do you expect? an itemized list of ways in which 3ed was not expanded and things not added to it?

sure

These questions really speak to me.

Honestly? I prefer a little bit of both in all cases. This post definitely reminded me of things I wasn't extremely fond of in the transition to 3e and why I think 2.5 continues to be a valid choice if you're able to swallow and understand it all, though. There are certainly balance considerations to take into account either way that more or less even things out, but regardless.

Considering the character I transferred over from 2e to 3e, even though the concept remained the same, the changes to his overall backstory and presentation were pretty extensive to account for 3e's directional differences. I think it was for the better, though, as it brought the character more down to earth.

The character was supposed to be skilled at martial arts, social-fu, and sorcery, which stretched things thin and required careful adjudication of xp even in previous editions; in that regard, martial arts and sorcery essentially switched places. Sorcery was once the extensively gatekeeped area of expertise while martial arts was easy to jump into and grab charms from. In 3e, Sorcery has become easier to dip into, while martial arts is something that requires deep investment. In my opinion, neither 2e or 3e got this right - in both editions, both skill sets either have too many or too few hurdles. Mechanically speaking, though, things have worked out for me in both editions once I've gotten a handle on the system, so I can't complain too much.

>Do you prefer Ex2's 'sorcery is sorcery' or Ex3's 'sorcery is whatever it is'

I liked the trials because they were extremely flavorful, but in a meta sense they were a series of backstory checkmarks to justify being able to learn Sorcery. They did go a looong way towards demonstrating why not everyone could learn Sorcery, though.

>Do you prefer Ex2's Thaumaturgy or Ex3's 'only special people' Thaumaturgy

The former is better for the setting. 3e's fits the real-world definition better, though.

>Getting doubled XP

Wait, what? Did I miss something?

He's referring to Solar xp.

>what exactly do you expect? an itemized list of ways in which 3ed was not expanded and things not added to it?
When someone says that 3e "took everything that 2.5e made outback and shot it in the face", they're implying that in some way 3e retroactively makes 2.5e worse or that it isn't compatible with 2.5e.

Is 3e incompatible with 2.5e? I've seen nothing to indicate that. How is 3e's fluff even different other than adding more stuff to the edges of the map? Is 2.5e's appeal dependent on the Dreaming Sea region not existing? Do Mortal Sorcerers invalidate all previous work in the game? Is the fact that there are additional types of Exalts somehow contradictory to the older fluff in any way beyond "here are some people you probably haven't met"?

I think the answer to all of that is No. 2.5e's fluff still exists, 3e neither harms nor threatens it, and it's a better rule system. Not perfect, just better.

(Unless you think 3e threatens 2.5e by drawing players away from it. Which is fair enough, because it does. Who'd want to play 2e now that 3e is out? Who'd learn 2.5e when they can learn 3e?)

MA charms can be bought with Solar XP, which cannot be spent on solar charms. (Not the best word choice there; think of it as core XP and bonus XP.) The cost of the merit is basically a cost to access combat proficiency without taking XP away from your character's main focus. Or you could get Supernal Awareness/Dodge/Resistance as a Dawn and master that while mastering Martial Arts and get double the combat charms.

Highly focused. I'd rather play a Dawn Sorcerer and get some versatility in there. But highly effective.

>what exactly do you expect? an itemized list of ways in which 3ed was not expanded and things not added to it?
No, user. I expect, or rather would like, some specifics on what makes 3E's setting suck. This isn't exactly unreasonable.

What limits, if any, apply to charms that add to your damage dice? With Brawl you can stack up very high onslaught penalties, and use a 1m charm to add that onslaught penalty to your damage. If I manage to get an enemy to a -30 onslaught, do I get to add +30 damage with that charm? If not, what's the max?

Are you fucking retarded? Return of the Scarlet Empress explicitly says it is NOT canon.

Also the scarlet empress doesn't turn the West into squares, SWLIHN does, because she's the primordial of order.

You're bitching about a book you haven't even read.

If you can hit a guy 30 times without them stopping you or leaving, you've won. The book even mentions that the GM can declare a character to be out of the fight if they're basically just a free source of initiative. +30 damage at that point doesn't really matter when their defenses are all zeroed and you already hit them at least 20 times.

Hey, is there anywhere I can get my hands on a copy of the E3 corebook? My google-fu is failing me atm and I don't have the money to get it from DriveThru

There'd normally be links in the OP of the general

mega.nz/#!ctgxyJaC!ygkrLnFsrnBJzIUZY-dJsMfyFrhFQgDsQuuo52fcW0I
mediafire.com/download/q51qw8skdw1rg15/Exalted_3e_Core.pdf

3e MA is stupid.

2e Sorcery and 3e sorcery are both valid, and I can't say if I like one or the other more. 3e sorcery is certainly more generic, but it also more flavourful - or should I say, it is easier to draw parallel with other works and other worlds. 3e Sorcery is every sorcery ever. 3e sorcerers are every Sword and Sorcery sorcerers ever, every eastern wizards, every Hindu brahman. I can play pic related in 3e. I can play almost any wizard in 3e and almost any character concept. It was created to allow this.

On the other hand, 2e sorcery is incredibly evocative, and gated in such a way as to make it really rare and potent. 2e Sorcery is hermetic. It is interesting, fascinating. It is the tool of the dead creators, the hacking into the matrix. 2e Sorcery is less versatile thematically, but the themes it gets are absurdly powerful.

3e Thaumaturgy is weird and doesn't work as explained or expected. The gate on the number of thaumaturges when thaumaturgy is so incredibly useless is weird and doesn't feel right. The book seems to imply there is more sorcerers than thaumaturges, which simply doesn't work in the setting as it is. It is workable with some changes, and certainly seems more powerful thematically than 2e thaumaturgy.

I can dig people able to do minor miracles in a setting where gods, demigods, demons, and superhumans exist, as long as they are numerous enough to fill their niche. People able to do minor miracles and rarer than demigods are useless in any sense of the term.

These are some great opinion posts.

Now, for 3e thaumaturges and their place in the setting, there should be little but a change of venue between edition. Instead of every tribe having a shaman that was schooled in the way of spirit, every tribe has a shaman with the thaumaturgic spark that was schooled in the way of spirit. The spark adds an air of mystery to something that should be mysterious: certainly, in the popular stories, not everybody can talk to the spirits or perform exorcism. Only special people can do that.

This version of thaumaturgy allows more interesting stories to be told, like a shaman seeking for a worthy successor, or a spark'd individual plagued by visions and wonders. It is incredibly low fantasy for Exalted, but it is actually alright for minors shamans to be low fantasy. There was always this distinction between the incredible lives of heroes and the grim lives of mortals. A spark'd shaman can supplicate a spirit to answer him by prostrating for a day, while a terrestrial exalt while drag him kicking and screaming while being engulfed by a literal bonfire of magical energy.

>3e MA is stupid
3e MA is "you have to learn this from something or someone".

This might be a "common among PCs" issue. MA is harder for PCs to access than natural charms, but the existence of the Merit really doesn't change the setting. You have to learn MA from someone or something; unless your character's backstory involved meditating in a cave until he learnt Steel Devil Style... actually, even then you probably had some sort of funky spirit dream mentor.

Similarly
>People able to do minor miracles and rarer than demigods are useless in any sense of the term.
Thaumaturges are more common than that, aren't they? Specific thaumaturgical rituals are rare, like Jesus Bread and the ritual that summons one specific river god in one specific area, but the tea leaf reading is described as being more common than every type of non-Terrestrial Exalt put together and Sijan is full of funeral thaumaturgy.

It's easy for PCs to access Sorcery, but fluff-wise it takes years to learn while a thaumaturgy takes weeks. You need a special talent, but it's still going to be easier for those people to learn that than for any given intelligent person to learn Sorcery.

>On the other hand, 2e sorcery is incredibly evocative, and gated in such a way as to make it really rare and potent.
On this, I agree. The more accommodating sorcery backgrounds work too, but I liked the Five Stations and the big sacrifice. I hated the way every PC I've ever seen was written in such a way to cheese their way out of having to give up anything that would ever inconvenience them, but I liked the idea. The Keychain of Creation story where Marena and Secret learn Sorcery did it very well.

You have five minutes to explain to me how Golden Janissary isn't pretty much a Hamon ripoff.

I won't because that's not a bad thing.

It is. It just lacks the 'Golden Janissay who has attained the mastery of the form can add 20% to his lifespan as he is sustained by sun energy'.

e MA is stupid
>3e MA is "you have to learn this from something or someone".

I think the problem is more that you not only need the Merit, which demands you put a useless little dot in Brawl, but also raise individual, distinct Martial Arts abilities for each style you want to use. The bp and xp cost is exorbitant with the only consolation being the existence of Solar xp, and even then, that's only for Solars.

I think the developers' lack of understanding about martial arts really shows through in the 3e implementation. They should have simply had Unarmed and Melee and you can take Martial Arts Charms as normal but you can't get the Celestial-level benefits without paying for the "Celestial Martial Artist" merit.

Ex3's sorcery is way better, but that's probably because the whole implementation was written by Vance. It's elegant and simple and easy to build an entire session around or not, depending on how you want to do things. Which is just right.

2e's Thaumaturgy was more interesting, I guess, but it's not compatible with 3e sorcery, really. I'd like a compromise where 3e sorcery was more available to mortals but only in the workings way and only difficulty 0 and 1 stuff. The XP requirements alone would basically forestall much of it ever getting done.

But this just goes to show someone can write a brilliant system and the incompetence of the morons running the show can still undermine it.

>2e's Thaumaturgy was more interesting, I guess

I do not agree. The only difference in practice between 2e and 3e thaumaturgy is that 3e thaumaturgy is gated, and I personally think that gating thaumaturgy is thematically potent, as long as it is not overdone for the sake of it. In low fantasy fictions, you can either see the angels, or not. If you can't, that's it.

>The only difference in practice between 2e and 3e thaumaturgy is that 3e thaumaturgy is gated

wtf

2e thaumaturgy is grades and fields of magic science you can study if you are occult enough

3e thaumaturgy is irregular rare miracles you may or may not get access to by accident of birth

Still doesn't change the fluff outside of moving it from "your master iaijutsu swordsman can probably throw a punch with moderate efficiency" to "your master iaijutsu swordsman can definitely throw a punch with moderate efficiency". Frankly, the fact that MA doesn't require decent base physical stats is much weirder than that.

The cost isn't exorbitant for Solars. The consensus is that MAs are a strong option. And sure, other characters might not get as much out of them, but when the only thing that's been released is the core/Solars book, does it actually matter for the purpose of playing the game rather than reading it and analysing it alone? (Not saying that judgementally; I haven't found a group for it either.)

You can study rituals in 3e as well. Sijan is still a thing. Thaumaturgy is more of a change than MA, but neither is incompatible with the previous versions' books.

>I think the problem is more that you not only need the Merit, which demands you put a useless little dot in Brawl, but also raise individual, distinct Martial Arts abilities for each style you want to use. The bp and xp cost is exorbitant
OTOH, you don't have to buy useless filler charms.

> You can study rituals in 3e as well. Sijan is still a thing.

Sijan is still a thing, but it's not nearly as useful a thing as in 2e:

> Thus thaumaturgy bears another distinction: books of thaumaturgy are useless for teaching thaumaturgy. A thaumaturgic ritual known to one thaumaturge may only be passed to another through direct teaching and practice. Such rituals are directly communicated and transmitted from thaumaturgist to thaumaturgist

Scavenger lords find a First Age lorecache and... fuck you, the grimoires are useless. Extra so since

> Mortal sorcerers do not gain this Merit automatically, and it cannot be taught, either to mortals or the uninitiated Chosen. One is either born with the power of thaumaturgy or one is not.

And then there's the massive flattening of Thaumaturgy. While I think it was a bit complex in 2e, the progression was interesting, and 3e has overflattened it by reducing all thaum to either one-dot or two-dot with no differentiation of type.

You could invade a city in 2e with a giant floating war ship armed with beam weapons, dropping soldiers into it wearing power armor.
The game was supposed to be illiad and odessy sword and sandles.

>The game was supposed to be illiad and odessy sword and sandles.
This just gave me a revelation as to why I've got into so many arguments about 2E over the years.
I never played 1E, 2E was my introduction to Exalted, so I didn't know what it was "supposed" to be, I only knew what it was, and that I liked it. It wasn't until much later that I learned 1E and 2E had drastically different tones about them, and that I vastly preferred the latter.
I was so disappointed when they announced 3E was going to be more along the lines of 1E than 2E.

I'll throw in my 2c here and note that this wasn't even the sort of splatbook issue mentioned by in talking about going gonzo; 2e Core mentions
> the giant mechanized suits of armor called warstriders
> the advanced power armor manufactured in the Shogunate Era
as examples of 3-dot and 4-dot artifacts.

Nah. The lore cache is useful as hell, as the lords of the Southeast can tell you. The Children of Ten Fathers are the reason that Ysyr and Prasad do not rule the Dreaming Sea.

The lore's not worth shit to a Thaumaturge, but it turns out that might as well mean 'to one type of sorceror.'

What filler charms?