Exalted General - /exg/

>size of that motherfuggin sword

I think Prince is overcompensating

That's actually quite modest for a daiklave.

Diamond and Volfer have the whole length vs. girth thing going on.

I see new iconics, old iconics and Visiting Flare

Who are the others

Are you sure that isn't intended to be a chairoscuran red glass blade?

I hate how big daiklaves are in the art. They're supposed to be larger than life, but swords in fantasy art are already larger than life, so daiklaves have to be larger than larger than life and they end up looking fucking terrible for it.

Is artifact making something you need to learn how to do? If someone exalts but has never dealt with artifacts before, will they know how to make an artifact out of the magical materials or will they need instruction?

An Exalt with Craft (artifacts) 5 has learned literally everything there is to know about making artifacts

How do charms like Force Stealing Feint and having a Defend Other on you interact?

My ST argues that because you weren't protected by your evasion DV, but your friends parry DV, FSF doesn't trigger; and if they beat your friends parry and not your evasion, they just redirect to your friend, so FSF still doesn't trigger.

>When she successfully dodges an attack

Your ST is right

But you applied your evasion DV to an attack targeting you and they failed to hit.

And does that mean you can never successfuly dodge while being defend other'd. Since they either hit you, fail to hit your friend, or redirect the attack on to your friend.

>But you applied your evasion DV to an attack targeting you

No you didn't, your friend applied their parry instead. They block the attack so you don't have to to dodge it

Dude what?

>Should an attack defeat the guardian’s Parry, the attacker may choose either to apply the attack to the guardian, or may attempt to strike his original target by using his threshold successes to attempt to overcome the original target’s Defense.

The latter case is when you would successfully dodge while being Defend Other'd, assuming your Evasion > their remaining attack successes. An attack came at you, you applied Evasion to it, and you dodged it.

Yeah, but the enemy knows how many remaining attack successes he has and what your Evasion is, so it would be incredibly stupid of him to apply the attack against you

What said, the attack comes at you, the attack beats your guardian, the attacker redirects on to the guardian. You did not "successfully dodge", the attacker re-targeted.

And if you did successfully dodge because and attack came at you, you applied Evasion to it, and you dodged it then you should still have dodged it if they didn't beat your partners parry.

Or, you know, he's banking on one post-roll Charm or another, such as a Charm that provides a dice-bonus for going after your original target that could swing either way.

But yes, shocker: a fighting style predicated around being a tricky-dick fucker doesn't work so well when you're just standing behind your wall-of-iron friend.

>What said, the attack comes at you, the attack beats your guardian, the attacker redirects on to the guardian. You did not "successfully dodge", the attacker re-targeted.

What the fuck are you talking about? The LATTER case. The one where the attacker chooses to swing at you, not your guardian, and thus compares his remaining attack successes to your Evasion. ie, a dodge.

But he knows before he compares if he can hit you or not, so if your dodge would protect you, he has little to no reason not to redirect and attack your friend.

He might or he might not. Either of you might have post-roll Charms that'll come into play.

In fact, you as a Dodgemonkey, ESPECIALLY will. You could absolutely keep your Evasion low to intentionally bait him into it, and then use effects like Drifting Leaf Elusion to fuck him.

are their stats listed anywhere? it'd be nice to have them as examples

I remember some time they said they were going to do an example adventure like tomb of the dive directions or whatever that had stats for all of them but i dont know if thats still coming or not

I forget, is arms of the chosen going to contain a list of non weapon and armor artifacts like the codex did?

Maybe. It'll definitely contain Warstriders, so it's not like it's 100% regular arms and armor.

It'll probably be focused on artifacts with Evocations, though.

oh yeah, I think I rember hearing about that

The fact that he has no penis?

Eternal Nova in the top left and one of the new Exigents n the top right.

Assuming you mean thats Mirror Flag in the top right, with the mask. She's an Eclipse caste.

Does Creation have cigars? Where could I get one?

I'll give you one.

Where are you?

Yes

Coral has the best cigars

>Are you sure that isn't intended to be a chairoscuran red glass blade?
It's an artifact daiklave made of Chiaroscuro glass and fittings/filigree of Orichalcum, if I remember right. Possibly some Jade?

>Does Creation have cigars?
Probably.

>Where could I get one?
Based on the IRL climates where tobacco grows easily? Probably either the Neck, Wavecrest, or the Scavenger Lands.

Your door. Open it.

Favorite backer charm?

Hallowed Bond of Night and Flame

...

I just checked. You weren't here dude.

Go hard or go home

Took too long. I already left. I'll be back tomorrow by 8pm.

So is anyone here going to gen con? Because apprently there might be finished dbs there

>finished dbs

We're still waiting for the backer charms to be released to the public.

Are the War charms less bafflingly boring to read when you've actually tried War or what?

Yeah, they're astoundingly good when you read them understanding what they actually do in practical terms.

So now that high essence combat is apparently being locked off in 3e I know it's a long shot, but I don't suppose anyone out there's working on a fan supplement for high essence charms?

Alternatively, I'm open to ideas for playing a high Essence-like campaign from another game that doesn't hinge on being able to convince my ST a game where True Fae and Archmages are PCs.

The story anthology is awful. Like, it's really fucking bad and clearly written by someone who didn't understand Exalted at all. They're also just bad stories in general, with no real conflict or ending.

What the fuck were those idiots thinking?

...how bad are we talking here? Chrysalis Grotesque levels of NOPE?

Don't they include a Dragon-Blood exalting as a Solar?

Okay, here are a few examples.

One story is about a Twilight Caste who has a rivalry with another Twilight Caste. She casts Rune of Singular Hatred on him, and he dies. That's the entire story - She doesn't learn anything, she doesn't suffer any consequences.

There is a Dragon-blooded who also has Solar powers.

There is a girl who makes a deal with an Exigent(?) of masks, to swap bodies with a girl in order to avoid a marriage to a mysterious stranger who is apparently some kind of Exalted. (We don't know what kind of Exalted he is, though.) When she decides "No, I don't want to go through with the deal. You can keep my payment." the Exigent simply deflates her like one of those horrific fetish comics.

A gambler ends up being bailed out of trouble by Plentimon, and is either given a pair of enchanted dice/made into an Exigent. (It's unclear.) He spends the whole story wanting to run and hide, and doesn't really do anything.

A very young girl becomes a Solar Exalted, and is raised and protected by bees that owe her a favor from a previous life. They're being attacked by demonic wasps. Usually, this is where she'd be given a powerbow and start kicking ass: Instead, she rescues a hive queen larva and runs away, with instructions to find her circle.

A Lunar raises a weird fucked-up creature to look for his Solar mate, makes a deal with the Fair Folk to do it, and when he completes a ritual that requires the creature's blood, he finds he can't do it. (Also, instead of being an unstoppable rampaging beastman, he can apparently be brought down by things like kicks to the head and thrown stones.)

...the actual fuck?

Who wrote this shit? It's they're actually TRYING to make the Exalted look like incompetant, irresponsible morons who deserved to be usurped.

I got the feeling that the writers were uncomfortable or actively hated the idea of fantasy supermen elevated by the gods. I mean, the Exalted are basically ubermensch and are superior to mortals in every way.

The worse part, it's not *hard* to make the stories better. The second one could be 'Someone of Dragonblooded heritage Exalts as a Solar instead. Oh shit.' The third one's twist could be 'Actually, your fiancee is a Solar Exalted who was running an elaborate scheme to find and killing the mask-trading Exigent.'

The fourth one isn't a bad concept, it's just that the story is boring. Plentimon basically FORCES his magic dice onto that guy, who wants nothing more than to be left the fuck alone. The protagonist doesn't even particularly enjoy gambling.

The fifth one should've ended with the girl getting her hands on her weapon from a past life and proceeding to kill all the demonic wasps.

if you were to make a demon similar to john carpenter's thing who's hierarchy would it belong to?

to be fair the usurpation *was* likely necessary... I know we have a decided solar skew to everything but really

It literally wasn't. Also, it's been canonically stated that society will eventually collapse without the Solars as all their technology ceases to function and the rest is irreplacable.

not that that has anything to do with those stories and how they suck though

Metagaos if it's Third Circle, or a demon with themes of the traitorous familiar if Second Circle.

By default just about strong enough to be a 1CD, honestly, meaning its hierarchy is irrelevant.

>It literally wasn't.

>In time the Solars grew wicked, deceitful and mad; their magnanimity turned to spite, their justice to tyranny. They began to turn against their subjects and each other, and the world was soon threatened by the very sorceries and machinations the Solars had used to protect it.
Yep, super ambiguous.

It was. You already got a citation and if you meant Vision of Gold then it had like 50/50 chance of success. You don't gamble with the fate of entire world if you've got other, sure option.

>t's been canonically stated that society will eventually collapse without the Solars
First Age society did, yes. And then we had Shogunate and, after that, Scarlet and her Realm. And that's not even mentioning myriad other kingodms and societies.

But the Scarlet Empress's reign was built on the Sword of Creation. Which - you know - was built by Solars. The Shogunate was also highly reliant on irreplacable First Age tech.

Don't confuse "using it because it's there" with "relying on it to exist at all."

If you snatched all the First Age tech out of Creation all at once, things would change, but the relative power levels would sit more or less as they are.

thanks. (somehow i had forgotten about metagaos

They would all die when the next Fair Folk invasion happened, or the Deathlords. There would be no meaningful way to resist.

No, seriously - How would you beat a Fair Folk invasion without Solars or First Age technology?

>They would all die when the next Fair Folk invasion happened, or the Deathlords. There would be no meaningful way to resist.
The Deathlords would be significantly hampered by the loss of all First Age artifice.

>No, seriously - How would you beat a Fair Folk invasion without Solars or First Age technology?
They're guerrillas, refugees crushed on one side by the predatory Hannya and crushed on the other by a reality that's hostile to them. An individual noble clocks in at Dragon-Blood, and commoners aren't much more threatening than First Circle Demons.

A grand invasion of Fair Folk is simply impossible now. That's why they nibble on the edges of the world, declaring themselves kings of small places, far and away from the reach of the Realm, and constantly fearing the fangs of the Lunars.

But the Deathlords would be immortal and invincible. Shadowlands would eventually engulf all of the world. Not to mention that each Deathlord is about as individually powerful as an Elder Solar.

Also, the Dragon-blooded would be run ragged trying to stop the Fair Folk. Worse, they cannot reclaim the areas lost - Dragon-blooded don't have Wyld-Shaping Charms. It just doesn't work.

>Chrysalis Grotesque levels of NOPE
Oh please, the CG is overrated in terms of gratuitous grotesquerie.

>But the Deathlords would be immortal and invincible. Shadowlands would eventually engulf all of the world. Not to mention that each Deathlord is about as individually powerful as an Elder Solar.
First Age artifice has no relevance to these things. First Age artifacts aren't going to bring a Deathlord down any better than any other wonder. If anything the Deathlords will suffer for its loss, since their powerbase is composed significantly of it. Certainly a much greater percentage than the Realm's.

>Also, the Dragon-blooded would be run ragged trying to stop the Fair Folk. Worse, they cannot reclaim the areas lost - Dragon-blooded don't have Wyld-Shaping Charms. It just doesn't work.
You do remember that the Empress wasn't using the Sword on the regular, right? She used it to establish initial dominance, and then that was it. The Realm has the Fair Folk problem under control with or without it, just as they had it under control up to the Balorian Crusade--which is, as I mentioned, now more or less impossible to repeat.

>They're guerrillas, refugees crushed on one side by the predatory Hannya and crushed on the other by a reality that's hostile to them

Source in the 3e book of this?

>You do remember that the Empress wasn't using the Sword on the regular, right?

It was the threat of the Realm Defense Grid that kept the Fair Folk out. Why would you invade when you have 100% chance to get your ass kicked again?

>But the raksha are no longer the undisputed lords of the Wyld. In the centuries since the failure of their last great crusade to end Creation, a new and terrible sort of faerie has emerged from the depths of the Wyld. These twisted and hungry beings—the hannya—count raksha as their preferred prey.

The Raksha are no longer welcome in the Wyld, and if they could push deeper into Creation, they would have. They're stuck in a thin rim around Creation, where the balance between real and unreal lets them hide from the other side.

Except it still says in the book that there are Fair Folk in the Deep Wyld. So while there are Hannya that does not mean that there is still not infinite Fair Folk in the Wyld.

And an equally-infinite horde of Hannya to keep them busy. They're an irrelevancy.

What are the hannya though?

Except it says that they are talking about War with Creation in the core book. Again. Better to run into Creation screaming and accomplish something then just keep fighting Hannya.

Just new Unshaped. Basically the same as the old but have a slightly higher starting essence.

You know what happens when you turn your back on an enemy that's you, but stronger and hyper-optimized to hunt you down and kill you in a way that you literally can't do back?

Hint: it isn't "successfully cross a massive gulf of hostile chaos and reach the other side in any kind of shape for war"

>You know what happens when you turn your back on an enemy that's you, but stronger and hyper-optimized to hunt you down and kill you in a way that you literally can't do back?

Well if they were equal in number then the Hannya are all that is left and there are 0 Fair Folk left since they are so superior in every way. And yet again do we know if the Hannya have the same hate for Creation all Fair Folk do? Because being Unshaped they should. So now you replaced one enemy with another still out to blow up Creation.

Looks like this line should not exist in the book...

>The Fair
Folk, still fuming from their last bitter defeat, have begun
to speak war words and sing the chaunts of battle, from
their septs within Creation and from within their halls in
the deep Wyld

>Well if they were equal in number then the Hannya are all that is left and there are 0 Fair Folk left since they are so superior in every way.
That isn't how there being infinite Raksha works. You were the one who wanted there to be infinite Raksha, so stick by it.

>And yet again do we know if the Hannya have the same hate for Creation all Fair Folk do?
Unstated. Seems reasonable that they'd prefer to hunt down other Wyld-critters, since Creationfolk have no narratives to nom.

>That isn't how there being infinite Raksha works. You were the one who wanted there to be infinite Raksha, so stick by it.

You said there were infinite Hannya. If there were and one can destroy the other you subtract the Infinite Raksha away by the Infinite Hannya. Which leaves you with 0 Raksha.

>since Creationfolk have no narratives to nom.

What? That is what Creation side Fair Folk do. Force and consume mortals for their narratives and turn them into one narrative creatures. At least in old editions.

I really like the Chrysalis. That is genuinely good fluff.

>You said there were infinite Hannya.
I said there are "equally-infinite" Hannya. That is, any argument you would use to support infinite Raksha, I would then also apply to infinite Hannya. If you don't want there to be infinite Hannya, then don't argue for infinite Raksha.

>If there were and one can destroy the other you subtract the Infinite Raksha away by the Infinite Hannya. Which leaves you with 0 Raksha.
Again, that still isn't how infinity works.

>What? That is what Creation side Fair Folk do. Force and consume mortals for their narratives and turn them into one narrative creatures. At least in old editions.
Fair Folk devour Virtues (in old editions) and emotions. The whole POINT of their fascination with Creation-born was that Creation-born creatures don't have narratives. They just DO things, with no foreshadowing or clever omens or anything.

A noble Raksha never "dies" without spending at least 2 weeks planning its own assassination with its killer. A mortal gets shanked in an alleyway with no warning whatsoever. That's what surprises and enthralls the Raksha so much.

I remember Holden discussing them back when the Fair Folk errata was released.

If you think of regular Raksha as LARPers who participate in grand stories and great dramas, Hannya are more like those really old school D&D dungeon crawlers who approach things as more of a mechical boardgame where the goal is to win and the idea of a story is completely unimportant.

This of course makes it very aggravating and deadly for Raksha because Hannya aren't playing the same game they are and are basically approaching everything from a totally different perspective.

"Yes, I am the grand prince and tonight I shall attend the opera to find..."

"Someone throws a rock at your head and you die."

"W-well, I spend Essence and dodge the rock. Then I turn and shout at the knave who would dare to throw a rock at me! I challenge hi-"

"Someone else throws a rock at your head. You die."

"Well, I uhh.. spend more Essence to dodge. And I yell at this other guy who would try to challenge me because I want to go to the opera."

"Someone else throws a rock at your head. You die."

"Gee, I am running low on Essence and this story sucks. It's just random people throwing rocks at me. That's not any fun. I will try to leav-"

"Someone throws a rock at your head. You die."

Just think of them as Unshaped who are a form of apex predators that devour Raksha and completely ignore all the story bullshit and grand drama that Raksha love to play. Unlike regular Unshaped, there's nothing fun or exciting or dramatic about fighting the Hannya and losing really, really sucks.

Fortunately Hannya can't get into the Middle or Bordermarches and quickly die in the Deep Wyld, so the Raksha are safe from them as long as they don't go into Pure Chaos.

>Fortunately Hannya can't get into the Middle or Bordermarches and quickly die in the Deep Wyld
Wait, so where do hannya dwell then?

>Shogunate

The Shogunate wasn't that bad. Sure, it had a loss of technology, and a lot of infighting, but things would have settled down somehow, and I can see hundred of thousand of DBs having a positive impact on Creation. The Great Curse is magnanimous on DBs and they're still kicking ass demigods. It is the Great Contagion and subsequent fey war that fucked Creation's shit up.

It could have worked better. The vision of Bronze was viable, for a time. The Sidereals just didn't take into account the Deathlords.

The primary issue is Sid foreknowledge doesn't take into account things outside fate.

Neverborn, Deathlords and Abyssals

Yozi and Infernals

Fair folk

Basically everything that is a creation ending threat.

Hence the massive issue.

The Shogunate could have fought against a full-scale invasion of Fair Folk at the height of his power. It is the Great Contagion that allowed the Fair Folk's invasion by killing 9/10 of all DBs everywhere, depleting armies of mortals, infrastructure, cities, etc.

Yozi and Infernals were a non-existent threat at this point of time.

The only massive issue of the vision of Bronze was the fact the Sids were absolutely blind to the Underworld, even though it should have been obvious that any real threat would have come from the land of the murderous rampaging dead creatures.

There were a few good stories too, if I remember right. The one with the mountain?

>It was. You already got a citation and if you meant Vision of Gold then it had like 50/50 chance of success. You don't gamble with the fate of entire world if you've got other, sure option.
> if you meant Vision of Gold then it had like 50/50 chance of success
I'm not sure if it was even a 50/50 chance. 1E Sidereals, at least, speaks of a 'slim chance of success' in relation to the Vision of Gold. It isn't clear what counts as 'slim' of course, but what is clear is that the odds weren't good.

Pure Chaos. "Deep Wyld" is kinda misleading because that is still technically Creation, at least in my understanding. It still has some of the Creation rules and form but it's extremally malleable and changing. Pure Chaos is, as the name suggests, pretty much undescribable. And that's how the Wyld was before Creation came to be.

Things are not infinite by default, and the developers are aware of how retarded making an adversary infinite in number was.

sacrificial pawn wyld-hunt distraction prana

lol, 3e book log is shit. its literally just solars right now. so what do you think?