Exalted General - /exg/

>What is Exalted?
Lies, half-realized concepts, and the lying liars that tell them.

>This suggests that Solar half-castes exist because of something happening during the process of conception
No, it suggests that Half-Castes happen due to some quality of the Exalted, such as the quality of being Exalted and being filled the Essence of an Exalt.

So my cum is filled with the "quality of being Exalted and being filled with the Essence of an Exalt"?

That's the thing about this. You say, "there should be something about their children that's special," I say, "how," and you can't give a non-stupid explanation because all the possible explanations are stupid! A Solar Exaltation doesn't alter you on a genetic level, it doesn't infuse your cum with magic, it doesn't irradiate a baby in the womb with essence. There's no place for the transference of power to occur, because it doesn't fit with what Solar/Lunar Exaltations are.

>On a thematic level, Lunars and Solars are disconnected from the natural process of reproduction. Their mythic place is equivalent to a reincarnated bodhisattva, or a prophet of God, or similar figures. They are a mortal who is empowered by a mixture of luck and merit, specific and unique to them as an individual, with an element of divine favor tied up in that.
What? No they aren't lol. Solars are the best at fucking and Lunars were literally created to be fucked by Solars in part. There are probably plenty that regularly partook of Maiden's tea but there are also probably some that didn't bother. Being pregnant is no hindrance to an Exalt, so having kids is only a problem if you don't want to raise them.

>Half-castes are residual magic from mommy and/or daddy carrying on to the child. They turn the focus away from "empowered by the Incarnae" to "has a magic machine in his chest." If Exalted was about being a man with a magic machine in his chest then half-castes would fit and be thematic; but it is about being returning god-kings, the Chosen of the Unconquered Sun.
what

No, it has nothing to do with magitech. Let's walk back from your pit of stupidity here. The Dragonblooded don't necessarily pass along the magic to their children, but they do pass along superior capabilities than "common" mortals typically have. The same model can easily apply to other Exalts without anything getting hurt.

>As such, half-castes are stupid and don't fit and shouldn't be in the game.
You're stupid and shouldn't be playing the game. That sentence has all of the same weight of evidence as yours, to be clear.

The thing is that your subjective, not objective, not obvious, not universally accepted, opinion is that all possible explanations are stupid. Explanations provided are perfectly reasonable and appropriate in the context of Exalted, even if you don't like them. Because yes, an Exaltation does indeed alter you on a genetic level, infuse your cum with magic, and irradiate a baby in the womb with essence, or something close to that. It permeates everything about you, which means there is nothing about you untouched and unaffected by it. This is not in any way, not even slightly, not even arguably in conflict with what Exaltation is and how it works. You trying to phrase it in a particulary silly way does not change things.

Are you trying to win this argument by sciencing Exalted. You either don't get Exalted or are trying to cover up retardedness

>Are you trying to win this argument by sciencing Exalted. You either don't get Exalted or are trying to cover up retardedness
Yeah I take back what I said. user is providing weight of evidence to the "stupid and shouldn't be playing the game" statement.

Half-castes should definitely be unable to use Solar charms. I'd be fine with a weak excellency, or high Attributes, or something obviously supernatural but very weak, like the ability to shed light.

>Half-castes should definitely be unable to use Solar charms.
Yeah, I think pretty much everyone agrees with that.

Game of Thrones s6e4 I can't believe Dany used Element-Resisting Prana and sets fire to a building, that was gonna be my plan.

>It permeates everything about you, which means there is nothing about you untouched and unaffected by it.
I don't necessarily disagree, but that doesn't mean my kids get magic powers. You can restate over and over that "it permeates everything about you" but that doesn't lead to "therefore half-castes," since, after all, my children are not me.

Let me try a different tack: do you think that a Solar's corpse, resurrected as a Liminal, should be a Solar half-caste? Should a redeemed Abyssal be an Abyssal half-caste?

Don't know about Liminals but Solar Ghosts and Hungry Ghosts ARE particulary powerful. That's why there are so many First Age tombs, because the last thing DBs wanted was a bunch of raging, extremely powerful undead.

And no, redeemed Abyssal ceases to be Abyssal on every level. That's why it's called redemption.

I think you firmly entrenched yourself. While Half-castes are kinda controversial and I do understand why some people wouldn't include them in their games you are obviously reaching hard for every reason to call them stupid.

Why doesn't hardness apply to environmental damage any more? I thought the only point to the Twilight anima hardness was to allow them to walk through fire and other hazards as puzzle solvers and sorcerers. It's got fuck all use in combat.

>While Half-castes are kinda controversial and I do understand why some people wouldn't include them in their games you are obviously reaching hard for every reason to call them stupid.
If I was truly reaching for every reason to call them stupid I would've pointed out that they encourage retarded breeding camp crap.

Im not sure the book ever specifies it doesn't. If someone was wearing artifact armor and got a big rock dropped on them id usually say they're fine.

I wouldn't. I don't know why having hard armor would stop your neck from snapping like a twig if a boulder was dropped on you.

Sadly, it does. p230

An environmental hazard’s damage is the number of dice
rolled against characters subject to the hazard, as well as
what kind of damage is being inflicted. This damage ignores
soak and hardness, and is applied directly to the charac-
ter’s health track, like a decisive attack.

Unrelated, anyone have any ideas for combining Brawl and Melee? Other than just taking Thunderclap Rush Attack and calling it a day on punching people, I mean.

Brawl offense, Melee defense. You immediately neuter Brawl's biggest drawback (being outnumbered) and Melee's efficiency frees up motes to open the throttle on Brawl's offense.

>I thought the only point to the Twilight anima hardness was to allow them to walk through fire and other hazards as puzzle solvers and sorcerers.
Why would you ever think that.

I can tell you what not to do, because it's horrible in this game. Don't take brawl for grappling and melee for melee. In other words don't try to emulate real world HEMA, because it won't work well. You'll end up with two incompatible kinds of offense.

Supernal Brawl, get the charm that lets you make a free full brawl excellency 1/full anima. Take melee defensive charms and Peony Blossom to reset the brawl charm. Laugh.

>Unrelated, anyone have any ideas for combining Brawl and Melee?

More broadly, if making a Dawn that isn't taking War, what two combat abilities should you take for the best synergy?

Awareness and Thrown fucking love each other.

Thrown and any melee ability are friends, since you can always just lead off with Thrown and use it for back-up range if you have to.

Brawl and Melee have an offense/defense synergy, as mentioned.

Resistance goes well with Brawl.

Archery and Dodge like each other almost as much as Archery and Ride.

Honestly you're going to really need to narrow down your use conditions to identify a "best" synergy, since there's tons, all at different purposes.

Assume that Dodge, Resistance, and Awareness are favoured, and War isn't. Of the four remaining abilities, Archery, Brawl, Melee, and Thrown (but not Martial Arts), which two work the best with each other. To narrow it down further, assume either Brawl or Melee is the Supernal ability.

What kind of adventures are possible with mortals? I'm so used that the player are demigods in Creation, I have problems with a mortal campaign (So fragile...)

- Any adventure with mundane opposition, like clearing the countryside of bandits, unseating a wicked judge, winning someone's hand in marriage.

- Any adventure with a single supernatural opponent, like exorcising a demon or ghost, forcing an ifrit to see the error of his ways, bribe a god to heal your loved ones.

Get more permissive with stunts, use critters with low stats (zombies and hobgoblins instead of nephwracks and cataphracts), focus on the drama of saving individuals and neighborhoods instead of the world. To borrow a superhero analogy, it's like the difference between Daredevil and Captain America.

Exclusively with each other, Thrown+Brawl or Melee+Brawl are probably the "best" synergies.

So how do twlights fit into the whole sun cycle allegory?
Rays of the dawn are the ones that drive back the darkness, like how dawns fought back the evils threatening creation
The sun standing at its zenith inspires and leads others, just like zeniths do
Night offters concealment and is often used for secrecy, like the nights
And the eclipse is an event that brings all the forces of heaven into accord, just like eclipses do.
But how do twilight factors in? The only explanation ive heard is that it gives man time to record what they have seen before the sun leaves for the night

Twilights are downtime wizards.

Twilight is associated with weird shit coming out of the woodworks and strange occurences. Twilights are the people who investigate weird shit coming out of the woodworks and strange occurences.

Twilights are investigators - whether that's uncovering a crime, discovering a new invention, investigating the human body or plunging into the source code of Creation. They stand between the darkness and the light, bringing knowledge and order out of one, and into the other.

Probably a combination of the first place I encountered Exalted and the fact that Twilights aren't combat-focused in terms of their caste role.

They're at the edge of what is known (the light) and what is unknown (the darkness), existing in perpetuity at that verge.

Yeah I actually agree--I always thought it made sense because a Twilight sorcerer was kind of like being Gordon Freeman. Sometimes the shit you're doing causes a resonance cascade, and when it does you better have your anima HEV suit on.

On the argument about half-castes and magical radiation, I would like to note the semi-precedent that several Biblical figures left residual magic on everything they touched.

> 20 Then Elisha died, and they buried him. And the raiding bands from Moab invaded the land in the spring of the year. 21 So it was, as they were burying a man, that suddenly they spied a band of raiders; and they put the man in the tomb of Elisha; and when the man was let down and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet.

> 41 And behold, there came a man named Jairus, and he was a ruler of the synagogue. And he fell down at Jesus’ feet and begged Him to come to his house, 42 for he had an only daughter about twelve years of age, and she was dying. But as He went, the multitudes thronged Him. 43 Now a woman, having a flow of blood for twelve years, who had spent all her livelihood on physicians and could not be healed by any, 44 came from behind and touched the border of His garment. And immediately her flow of blood stopped.

> 11 Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons were brought from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out of them.

Why do you have to bring that evil back into this thread?

Can't you just let dead horses lie?

Of course. Magical Essence permeating everything does not magically stop before your womb or sperm. Magical Essence permeating everything permeates everything, it's kind of in the job description. The idea that you can be elevated to the status of a god and yet not have any transcendental nature is laughable at best.

Does my spit heal people now too? Do blood transfusions from Solars give people magic? When I come in a girl's mouth does she get Exalted healing for a week? After a hard workout, do my clothes gain magical properties from my sweat? After all, "magical essence permeates everything."

exaltation attaches itself to your soul, which empowers your body. your children share a bloodline with you but do not in any way share your soul, and thus do not recieve any benefits from your exaltation. thematically they'd likely be a heroic mortal but only that: the peak of what a human being can be without magical assistance.

Honestly, half-castes are unnecessary. If you want magical, glowy children, then Sorcerously work them into something. Or chuck them in the Wyld for a bit. Or Lore-train them into peerless savants. Or uplift them with Presence. Or Craft artifacts that empower them. Whatever. If you want super-powered kids, you can have them without half-castes.

Honestly, I think this is way more interesting. If Half-Castes don't happen then you either get stories about the perfectly ordinary mortal child of a Solar exalt OR the story of what a Solar puts their child through in the pursuit of making them special.

More like the difference between pre-eclipse guts and post-eclipse guts

Only if you really want to. Our group would narrate all that stuff in downtime, we wouldn't march the whole group through it.

Other than being huge, and the rules written in it, what're the general reviews of the core book like?
Is it sturdy, is the print quality good?

I would absolutely want to, even if it was someone else's story. I hate doing interesting things in downtime.

Write a novel, then. I mean, do you really do stuff at the table that just involves a single character and nobody else? Or would you integrate the rest of the Circle into your child-rearing tale?

>I mean, do you really do stuff at the table that just involves a single character and nobody else?
Not that guy, but yes? How else are you supposed to make sure that the occultist, the radical, the vigilante, and the king's wife all get scenes that focus on them? Shoehorn everybody into everybody else's thing?

>Write a novel, then.
You're a bit of a cunt.

>I mean, do you really do stuff at the table that just involves a single character and nobody else?
Not him, but sometimes things absolutely happen in games that mostly just involve one character. There's nothing wrong with this, as long as these things don't make up the majority of the campaign.

>I mean, do you really do stuff at the table that just involves a single character and nobody else? Or would you integrate the rest of the Circle into your child-rearing tale?

We usually have problems that require multi-discipline approaches to be solved.

I mean, sure, everybody can't be in the limelight every scene, but over the course of a session, the occultist should call on the spirits to find the true cause of the problem, the radical should be solving the problem by shifting the attitudes of the masses, the vigilante should be taking out the key players opposing the resolution, and the king's wife should be running interference for them all at a political level. Everyone's involved, even if everyone's not involved simultaneously.

But if I opened a session at our table with "ok, today's going to be the story of how Joe Blog's Sorcerously enhanced his kid", everyone would be slowly drifting off into their own conversations, or hanging out with the food 20 minutes in. It'd end up just being the ST and Joe Blogs running through what he does to his kid, and everyone else not even being there. I find wasting people's time like that rude.

I mean, if your whole Circle's on board, and it becomes a group effort to enhance your kid, then it's obviously a story everyone wants to be told, and that's a-ok. But if it's just something one character wants to do as a personal project, then I see no reason to drag everyone else along as an observer. Just hash it out with the Storyteller off-line, and fill everyone else in on the outcomes next session.

It's not the whole session, just some scenes.

doesn't seem to think so. Or at least, if the "story of what a Solar puts their child through" extends to just a couple of scenes in a single session, then they're making a mountain of a molehill in terms of what difference the existence of half-castes make to their stories.

If the only thing half-castes accomplish is mean you get to skip the "I make my kid magic" scene (which you could cover in downtime if you really wanted to), then yeah, they're probably not worth the pagecount.

Or maybe it's a ton of scenes over a lot of sessions. That seems like the more sensible option here unless you regularly timeskip like, eighty years.

I don't think any of the options I listed would take more than a season - other than Craft if you're going for NA tier stuff, and haven't got your charms all sorted.

And even then, if you were wanting to direct that amount of table-time to your character's specific project, I'd want at least some buy-in from everyone else.

So you're on board for the 'magical reactor' explanation of Exaltation? That's fine, but it's not 3e canon any more. A 3e exaltation is a deep, metaphysical change that affect body and soul, and yes, your children is made from your body and your very own essence. It is only logical that the life born of You would have something when you are so much more than a mortal.

Gods, Rakshas, Ghosts, Elementals, beings of Essence give some measure of their own to their children. If an Essence 1 elemental can do it, an Essence 9 Exalts should be able to do it. It's not rocket science.

By the same token, you should have only one way to create magical children. Sorcerous working, wyld, lore-training, uplifting them with presence? Why so many ways to have magical children when only one canonical ways would be so much better?

If you can't understand the thematic niche of having some of your own powers going into your children because you are so much *more*, then you're either really stupid, or shitposting.

when you die, your exaltation disappears entirely. it is tied to both your body and your soul - this is why methods of immortality that involve leaping from body to body dont work - it is not a "magical reactor" as you put it. it is a gift of power bestowed upon YOU, and only you, and as long as you live your body and soul will be uplifted by its power, and when you die it finds a new champion to exalt. your children tangentially share a fragment of your body and no part of your soul, so they get jack shit.

an addendum: gods, raksha and elementals are not human in any way. ghosts are a soul missing from its original body. neither of these are anything like the solar exalted, who are physical embodiments of the apex of humanity. this is why i said earlier your children would make sense to be heroic mortals - after all, that greatness would logically be inherited in some way. but they do not get your essence, as that is fundamentally tied to both your body and soul.

>By the same token, you should have only one way to create magical children. Sorcerous working, wyld, lore-training, uplifting them with presence? Why so many ways to have magical children when only one canonical ways would be so much better?

If all Sorcerous Workings, Wyld Mutations and Lore charms were good for was for making glowy spratlings, you'd be right. But they're not, and you're wrong.

>If you can't understand the thematic niche of having some of your own powers going into your children because you are so much *more*, then you're either really stupid, or shitposting.

Oh wait, you mean that thematic niche that' explicitly called out as part of the Dragon-Blooded shtick, to the point that their whole society revolves around it?

If you can't understand that just because something is a valid theme, it doesn't mean Solars should automatically get it, you've been sucking too much golden wang.

If it is tied to *both* your body and soul, how does it make sense that the children born from your body aren't touched by that essence in any way?

Because essence isn't some sort of radiation that mutates anyone it touches? The whole world is permeated by essence - you just have the ability to manipulate it.

i dunno how to explain this in simpler terms, but both body and soul means BOTH, body and soul. your souls does not retain the exaltation when seperated from your body upon death, and neither does your body. it goes elsewhere. your children dont even have your body, at best you could say they sort of have half, but they definetely do not have your soul in any way.

as a simple example, dragonblooded who maintain exalted bloodlines still have to actually exalt, in life. they dont get their parent's for free.

>i dunno how to explain this in simpler terms, but both body and soul means BOTH, body and soul. your souls does not retain the exaltation when seperated from your body upon death, and neither does your body. it goes elsewhere. your children dont even have your body, at best you could say they sort of have half, but they definetely do not have your soul in any way.
I don't see how that is in any way relevant to the discussion of Half-Castes, so I hope you could explain it in simpler terms.

>as a simple example, dragonblooded who maintain exalted bloodlines still have to actually exalt, in life. they dont get their parent's for free.
Neither do Half-Castes. They are, if anything, further away from 'getting their parent's Exaltation' than the children of the Dragon-Blooded, who at least get the potential for Exaltation. Dragon-Blooded also work pretty differently from Celestials, so I guess I also don't see how they're relevant to the discussion on Half-Castes.

i mean i dont know how to explain it any simpler without being outright condescending, but okay, ill try.

the concept of a half-caste is, as far as i can tell, the child of a solar that inherits a small measure of their essence-related powers. perhaps a longer lifespan, or superhuman strength, or an aptitude for sorcery normally beyond mortal means. the problem is that this makes no sense with what an exaltation is.

before exaltation, we have a mortal. a heroic mortal, almost certainly, but a mortal. the exaltation is a fragment of the unconquered sun's power that attaches itself to them and empowers their actions. their body, mind and soul are able to go far beyond their limits by harnessing essence. so their body is, yes, full of essence. the proposition by you and other people pushing this half-caste idea is that logically, this essence extends to their sperm/egg and any child born from them will also have this. the problem is that this is not how an exaltation works. the example i gave before: an exalt dies, moves his soul to a new body, comes back to life but is no longer an exalt. this is because the exaltation is tied to ONE SPECIFIC PERSON, and is so intertwined with them that changing bodies is enough to remove the spark of power from them permanently. your child does not inherit this power because it is yours and yours alone. it fills every inch of your body, but the most it can be passed on is uplifting a mortal follower with a small essence pool.

i dont know what youre not getting here.

What do you think of the Lunar in the third edition? Better or worse than in the previous editions?

Better in that their book isn't shit, worse in that they don't have a fucking book you tool.

A Solar's Exaltation is analogous to a mortal's soul (thus, "second breath"). Mortals are ALSO animated by essence, which suffuses their body and provides them with everything that they are; without their hun or po, they're fucking dead, a zombie at best.

Saying that a Solar should have half-caste kids is, therefore, akin to saying a mortal should have ghost-blooded kids.

>Lunar book at the earliest in five years.

Kill me

>i dont know what youre not getting here.
What I'm not getting is why you think that the fact that, as you say, "an exalt dies, moves his soul to a new body, comes back to life but is no longer an exalt. this is because the exaltation is tied to ONE SPECIFIC PERSON, and is so intertwined with them that changing bodies is enough to remove the spark of power from them permanently" matters. I mean, it's not like anyone is suggesting that Exaltation is in any way heritable, except for the Dragon-Blooded, merely that the Exalted, while they live, are not on any level regular mortals, and that it makes sense for this to have some effect on their descendants. What Exalts are when they sire or bear children matters, not what Exalts were before they Exalted or what they will be once they die. The fact that Exaltation is tied to one specific person has no bearing on the fact they are indeed filled with Essence, and why on Earth would a child born from or sired by someone like that be exactly the same as a child of a plain old not-Essence-filled mortal? The way you view this thing just fundamentally doesn't make sense to me.

Well, okay. I mean, the people writing any edition of Exalted obviously haven't agreed with that. Grabowski presumably had some say when Half-Castes were introduced in 1E, for instance.

yiou are a fucking idiot my man

Not that guy, but why would that make it a difference in whether or not it's a good idea?

When one of the arguments for it being a bad idea is that "Exaltation doesn't work like that" and canonically Exaltation does indeed work like that, then it definitely makes a difference.

So what? Canonically, every god thinks that the DBs are chumps deserving of more contempt than the lowliest street urchins. Even if you're going to kick 2e out of the setting's canon, there are still things that are really stupid and undermine the setting, like Regent Fokuf and Lytek. Nobody is arguing that half-castes aren't canon, since they obviously are, they're arguing that they don't make sense.

>Have we talked about the non-human races of Creation yet? Because I'm kind of curious about whether Dragon Kings and Jadeborn will be changed in any way.
So, does anyone have any opinion on this? I just want to discuss something other than Half-Castes.

Nothing known yet. Thing I've been pondering is that Dragon Kings are old users of sorcerous workings, but not sorcery. They take to alterations easily and are good at using them. Prehuman working, lizards with stone scales, outright fire breathing, etc. Primordials made them, but left them mystically "open source" or still in beta.

There was an interesting idea I saw that Ixtaoctl or whatever the eastern beastman empire is called had a relationship to the Dragon Kings like the Romans to the Greeks, idolizing them and patterning themselves off them in a lot of ways.

Oh, that sounds pretty interesting. Was that an idea presented by the devs or by fans? Either way, a culture like that would be neat to have.

>Primordials

Do you mean the enemies of the gods?

Found the quote:

Isator Levi:
>I think we're being distracted from the matter at hand here, namely the position that the amazing new beastfolk empire is just a rehash of the Dragon Kings.

Stephen Lea Sheppard
>There may be a bit of deliberate cultural appropriation on the part of Ixcoatli there, much the same way that the Romans idolized the Greeks. Or maybe Holden or John might decide that's dumb and not go anywhere with it, I dunno.

Well, I kind of hope Holden and John do go somewhere with that, because I like the idea.

Yeah. Had a bit of an idiot moment there where I forgot my lore. Replace wirh "Gods". The gods did the thing.

What kind of evocations would you say are appropriate for a suit of Soulsteel Articulated Plate?

Depends on the rest of the artifact.

Just asking about [material] [weapon/armor-type] is like asking "What Charms would be appropriate for a Twilight caste?"

Same with Exigents. It's going to be a long time before it's really hammered into people's heads that "The Exigent of Fire" is not what they'll be making. Not even "The Exigent of a Volcano God," but "The Exigent of Boreus, the Volcano Maestro."

Spawn's razor-edged chain attacks. Spikes that drink the blood of those who dare to try to clinch you. Elevating the moaning of the metal into deafening screams of horror that freeze the blood of all around you.

Agreed. Artifacts need a theme. I like the two potential themes from , though. Blood-thirsting spiked plate or abyssal chorus plate. They could both be interesting.

Trying to come up with something else...

Heat-death of the universe plate. Attacks that hit it are drained of energy. Weapons lose momentum, attackers lose vigour, magical fire freezes and shatters on the ground... the user doesn't gain this energy, it's simply lost from existence. Forever.

Abyssal zeal plate. Made entirely from volunteers. Drives the user forward to greater heights of slaughter and destruction, strips its protection away when the user hesitates or acts to protect people.

Self-forged plate. Made from the soul of the wearer, in an agonizing cycle of forging and recuperation. Impossible to remove, doesn't count as armour for whichever purpose that might matter for. User progressively loses the advantages and disadvantages of a human body.

Three's probably enough.

>waahh cunt cunt cunt
Fuck off.

Ever read or watch Berserk? Yeah.

They're not out yet, and won't be for at least another half-decade.
That said, Lunars are fated to be shit in every edition, outside of a few very specific gimmick builds. They were shit in 1E, they were shit in 2E, and they'll be shit in 3E.

Sorry, think I should elaborate. I'm not asking for straight-up evocations, I mean like what sort of themes fit for a suit of Soulsteel artifact armor? Soulsteel's kind of weird to me, it's suggested themes in the book kind of strike me as more weapon-focused than armor focused, so I just need a general idea of themes Soulsteel armor might have in it's evocations. As for specific details about the armor in question, I'm still working on it. All I've got so far is that it currently belongs to an abyssal who once served The First and Forsaken Lion (and got his gear from him) before going rogue.