What is Exalted?

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Anja Silverclaws.

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What is Godbound? It's a 3pp Pathfinder class that basically transforms Pathfinder into a brand new game, though still a d20 game.

In Godbound, you play a Godbound. You're a superpowered godling whom no mortal hero can stop, no matter how powerful they are. If you're a level 1 Godbound and the other guy is a level 20 mortal wizard, you'll win because your can fling your divine powers at them and they'll have no chance of resisting. Your only opposition comes from other Godbound.

What kind of Godbound can you play? Think of an Exalted type. Those are the playable Godbound, because Godbound's setting is actually just Creation from Exalted. So you can play a Solar Godbound, a Lunar Godbound, a Sidereal Godbound, an Alchemical Godbound, or whatever.

What do you do in Godbound? Take over the world, try to make the world better, or both. But don't worry, because this game doesn't have any clunky domain management rules to slow you down. You'll just have to trust in your GM to fiat how things work in downtime.

Sounds good?

Posted this last thread, but it died soon after.

Why does Wyld-Shaping Technique suck so horrifically bad in 3e?

Why, after paying 64xp (about 13 sessions at least) or devoting vast swaths of my character's design at chargen (Supernal Lore/Lore 5/8 charms, meaning it's definitely going to be the character's niche) and going through what is basically a session's worth of effort (because now you need to bring the whole Circle along to defend you while you're fucking with the chaos) after locating one of the relatively limited places in Creation where using this Charm is actually possible, must I still pay 2xp per phase?

The charms building up to WST make sense, the charms expanding off of WST are good, but there are very many of them. Yet WST already demands extensive effort to use and requires an xp cost - oftentimes an exorbitant one if you're trying to make anything remotely worth having gone to the trouble of getting WST.

Was this to protect the niche of the absolutely trash Craft system that barely anyone wants to use?

One of the responses was:
It's hardly free. As it stands, you're basically buying a charm for 8xp just so you can have the opportunity to pay even more xp to undergo a possibly session-encompassing production to maybe get the thing you want, which is probably something that can be mechanically portrayed through story Merits (Allies/Followers/Command/Demesne/Manse/Resources) you likely could have gotten easier just by spending about the same amount of charms & time becoming a social-fu master talking yourself to power or death machine warlord conquering what you happen to want. Oh, and if you use it to create land or a demesne, you best just wipe out the wyld-zone for good if you don't want insurgent Raksha nipping at your heels from then on. I would even understand implementing a cooldown/reset condition or requiring some expansion charm things, such as Artifacts, to simply outright cost xp, but it's just not worth it as-is.

The only thing I have to say to you is goodbye.

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Because WST has been shit every edition except for 1e. 1e, you could walk into the Wyld, and pull a fucking kingdom into existence with mild effort.

The writers lost the magic of Exalted in the name of the false God known as "balance". Everyones gotten steadily de-powered over time, and this is the weakest Exalt's have ever been.

Question about sorcery. A lot of shaping rituals say that the motes they grant are last for the duration of the scene or last all day or something. Does that mean that the motes go away at the end of the scene if not spent, or does it mean, as I've heard suggested, that those motes are applied to every spell in that time, effectively lowering the sm cost of all your spells?

Because Wyld-Shaping Technique encourages you to completely disengage with the setting and fuck off to a corner.

The setting encourages you to completely disengage from the setting and fuck off to a corner because of Wyld Hunts.

Not really.

I'm sorry dude, I know you're just trying to be a comrade and such, but I gotta be honest, bro, you are bullshitting. 1e WST was powerful, but it was also vague as hell and thus subject to enormous ST oversight - not to mention there simply wasn't enough info on how it interacted with the setting in general; 2e basically offered the same shit just as easily (because the Lore Excellency existed), but offered far more explicit detail and eventually extended into fucking with reality with the Shinmaic charms.

Which is really where the "de-powered" notion falls flat, ultimately; while 2.5's paradigm of perfect defenses and gradual resource depletion was less sustainable (read: less fucking tedious because fights didn't come down to whose defense pool rolled shittily first), 2e went beyond Essence 5 with DotFA into charms that were so absurd as to be initially straight up fucking broken until errata fixed them, whereupon they were still absurd and represented a profound powercreep that made 1e look really quite reasonable in most places.

Which says nothing of Sidereal Martial Arts. Obsidian Shards of Infinity is infamous for how it's so retardedly powerful it doesn't even bother to interact with the system half the time, making it basically unusable.

Seriously? Weakest Exalted has ever been? When they started out hardly knowing where the fuck they were going with this thing and Time of Tumult had a glorified D&D dungeon in it and that's the best Kal Bax, transcendentally esteemed architect of First Age wonders, could do? The false god of "balance" is a problem when Sidereal Martial Arts was a thing that got published?

3e is not perfect. I think 1e and 2e are still very much playable if you know what you're doing and know what to throw out. But I would be very careful about saying the "magic" of Exalted lied in its oft fucked up mechanics.

Hey /exg/.
I backed Ex3, and have casually browsed the pdf. I'm waiting for the hardback because I dislike reading on a screen.

I have heard all about the lies, poor decisions, and lack of quality of the product itself, especially the art, but I'm really more curious about the mechanics.

I'm a relatively intelligent gamer and a perma-GM by choice, I don't care about balance because I can easily adjust any game to play well regardless of it, does Exalted have anything to offer me?

Not really.

In the first place, they already fixed that problem by making the setting come to you in the form of Raksha raiders wanting to shape your sweet Solar asshole for fucking with their beautiful pure primeval soup of conceptual possibility. If they wanted to reinforce this aspect, they could have made it so Wyld-Shaping eventually becomes noticed by Sidereals as more anomalously large bursts of essence are spontaneously woven into the loom or some shit like that.

And generally speaking, the usage of Wyld-Shaping Technique isn't to just sit down and make yourself cool shit forever, it's to make yourself cool shit that you then bring into the setting to fuck around with. Even if you do decide to powergame and sit in a corner and just conjure yourself a kingdom of fakey fraudy unpeople who don't have souls, eventually the Wyld Hunt is going to come knocking, as always when you finally get yourself a kingdom.

Even if the amount of effort and time spent to generate subjects with WST is still unacceptable, it would still be far better to
a) only pay the 2xp on the first phase;
b) throw down a necessary cooldown so playstyles which accomplish the same thing but take more time can catch up;
c) a reset condition (i.e., you must do this amount of heroic things, you must obtain this degree of demiurgic inspiration, similar to Craft except less bullshit).
Anything to not tie it quite so utterly down to your actual fucking xp, which therein pigeonholes WST as an ability that is essentially only optimal when you need a thing it can grant you right this fucking instant, since otherwise you're liable to fall behind the other players in both power and actual accomplishment.

Oh well. I wouldn't even bother houseruling it. It's just vexing.

Combat is much improved over 2E. 3E is worth it for that alone.

Do you have a game you like so we have a reference? If you come from somewhere like Scion or Pathfinder Mythic it may offer you few things compared if you came from somewhere like Dark Heresy.

If you liked the previous editions of Exalted or if you think the setting of Exalted is cool, there are reasons to play 3e. Setting wise, the edition is like a fresh start, a 1e that has been refined by the knowledge gained from 2e being "filled in to its logical conclusion" as it were.

3e is generally better mechanically than any previous edition. Anyone who says the social influence system is not better in every way from the social conflict system is either an idiot or lying. Combat is pretty fun. Mass combat is not the stupid worthless nightmare it was in 2e. A lot of the system interactions are intuitive. Sorcery went from a strong utilitarian thing

But it is not perfect. The Craft system, for example, is extremely contentious. Most people think it's garbage not worth their time, but there are people willing to devote characters to it to make it work and they're fine with it, more or less. There are other little things here and there, but I guess it's mostly a matter of personal opinion.

As the person railing on about WST in this thread, 3e is not perfect, but I find that a lot of the diatribes thrust against it are greatly exaggerated, often by people who just fuckin' hate the devs - who, to be fair, are a little a douchey, but not as douchey as a lot of the rest of the utter cockmonglers employed by OPP.

Who is douchier than holden and morke? I say that as somebody who doesn't care about how douchey they are to idiots at all

Whoops.

>Sorcery went from a strong utilitarian thing
*which demanded very significant buy-in, had spells which demanded fucktons of motes, and was littered with plenty of traps and the occasional abominable monster god spell (that tended to get banned) in 1e and 2e to this fucking crazy thing with sorcerous motes and shaping rituals and workings and shit in 3e.

Fixed.

I wonder how much of sorcery's lore from the previous editions will return. Or if they'll just keep it vague to let you do as much of whatever the fuck you want with it as you can.

Holden and Morke are accidental douches, they don't actively work at it.

So they're only low-level douches.

David Hill, who ruins literally everything he touches, and also his significant other. Sean Steele. Matthew McFarland since he's gone off the deep end and vomited up Beast: The Primordial in a profoundly misguided attempts at virtue signalling. Anyone who writes the preachy, ignorant social justice garbage in the new ChroD trash heaps.

Which is pertinent considering Holden and Morke are very liberal (self-admitted SJWs, I believe? it's been a couple years), but far less obnoxious in the sense they don't just shit out a condescending blurb about personal pronouns, instead simply creating the work they want, i.e. slapping Prince Diamond on the cover. I mean, the two do get preachy, but it's on their Twitters and shit and they don't ride is so hard into the game it ends up shittier for it, so who the fuck cares? They kept Geoff's old "keep your personal politics in check" mandate in mind at least.

Rather, Holden just shovels pile upon pile of coals into the hype train's engine and then has no idea how to control it afterwards, so it's no wonder the train ends up crashing. Morke is kind of just a dick occasionally. And both fellate Solars hardcore, regardless of their justification for doing so.

But then, on the other hand, you'll read from their detractors about a bunch of things they said which, well, they didn't actually say - it's generally some shit taken wildly out of context from the early days of 3e's announcement. Like the whole magitech fuckery? They never said they were removing artifacts with a mechanical aesthetic, they were literally just not using the term "magitech" anymore.

Well, they did fuck up with a few things like the kickstarter fiction rewards they didn't even pay attention to, though.

This turned into way more of a spiel than I wanted. Well, at the end of the day, they made a better fucking game overall than Nephilpal did.

yeah like this

>Beast
I liked the original version, where you knew you were the monster and liked it.

Not this PR backpedaling bullshit version made to appease the SJW RPG.net fucktards.

Don't kid yourself. Every version of Beast was fucking dumb SJW shit, mang. It was Otherkin: The Faggotry from day one. And RPG.net fucktards weren't the only ones who bitched. Where RPG.net saw an utterly fucked subtext, Veeky Forums saw yet another manifestation of OPP's preening tumblrina identity politics zeitgeist.

I liked it, and I'm closer to being from /pol/ than being a tumblrina. But my primary interest in it was in the I TERRIFY PEOPLE AND LIKE IT part far more than it was the SOUL OF A MONSTER part. So maybe that's the difference.

>I'm closer to being from /pol/

So basically the sort of person (mixed with Gaston or some shit I guess) they were attempting to sneeringly bastardize with Heroes?

From the few times I've interacted with them they seemed like all right guys.

Not that self-centered, not that full of rage, and not willing to blame others for my own choices.

Obviously, but as a concept Heroes encompassed an alt right boogeyman.

And on the note of blaming other for their own choices, you do realize Heroes were spawned explicitly as a result of Beasts doing what they did, right?

Unless I'm remembering a later, shittier version, I though the ones capable of becoming Heroes had a universal trait of blaming others for their own shortcomings?

sounds pretty alt-right to me

The mechanics turned out better in a lot of areas that count (combat), worse in some areas that count (Charms being another huge clusterfuck of Charm bloat beyond anything anyone ever wanted), and full fucking retard in some areas (the fluff changes, holy fuck the fluff changes).

It's definitely better than 1e and 2e, but it still has flaws it really shouldn't have had like Crafting, Martial Arts, the fucking awful fluff additions like whole new Exalt types that read like someones fucking shitty homebrew garbage.

tl;dr You'll probably like it. Does a lot right, but some of the shit it does wrong will make you facepalm.

What's good to branch into when you have almost all the melee charms you want? Melee+resistance sounds like it'd be fucking stupid.

They do, but although Heroes are nutjobs, their actual origin is directly tied to the Beast themselves and this is part of why RPG.net bitched. Beasts draw Heroes because their Rampages create them. For example, if you Critical Fail on your Rampage check, you spawn a Hero. This hilariously paints the Heroes as victims of the Beast's repugnant nature anyway and implies that the Beast brought it on themselves. Given Beast's clumsy subtext, it's basically like saying "queers create their own bigots, it's their own fault."

ChroD writers are not very clever, hence RPG.net fucktards bitching.

it fucking does don't it

Dodge. Dodge has initiative stealing charms.

Steal initiative when they attack you, wither them down more, then dump a killed decisive on them.

*killer decisive

>GM won't use 3e yet
>Decides to run 2.5 anyway
>I go ahead with it, i'm an idiot
>I want to use solar hero style

Am I fucked if I go with SHS and resistance charms for defense in 2.5e? It feels like I do no damage even with perfected kata bracers. Whatam I doing wrong? besides playing 2.5e

> besides playing 2.5e
>playing 2.5e

>Am I fucked if I go with SHS and resistance charms for defense in 2.5e

you really shouldn't be

SHS is the most supported hero style in the game and solar resistance is frankly great as far as defense goes

I'm running my very first campaign in Exalted third edition, do you have tips for a new storyteller? We are all new players to the game.

Run a test combat or two just to see how it works once you've made some characters.

Already tried that (pitted the two dawn castes against one another). It is rather long but not that difficult after all.

Also, fuck those who want to fight with two weapons. Fuck them and everything that has to do with them.[/spoiler|

I'm actually playing a Zenith in 2.5e right now who uses SHS and Resistance. You should be fine, honestly. Adamant Skin Technique is a great perfect defense, but it won't protect you against Bad Touch attacks, like the Water Dragon style charm that drains Stamina from a target on hit. Those are much rarer than just normal HL damage attacks though, so you should be fine. If you're worried, grab either Heavenly Guardian Defense or Seven Shadows Evasion and you'll be safe from Bad Touch attacks too.

If you don't have them already, I would suggest picking up Essence-Gathering Temper and Willpower-Enhancing Spirit. Battle Fury Focus and Bloodthirsty Swordancer Spirit are also useful Resistance charms to have.

Grab Hammer On Iron Technique when you get a chance, it's Essence+3 attacks which can either target a single target or other targets as well. If more than one hits, you'll drain them of essence quicker by forcing them to hit Perfects to avoid being hurt, and if they don't use or don't have Perfects, it's 5+ attacks. Costs a point of Willpower per use, but Willpower-Enhancing Spirit might be able to help deal with that some.

Depending on the armor and weapon you're sticking to, you might consider learning other styles as well if possible. SHS is definitely enough to get you through, but having other style charms to choose from definitely doesn't hurt, and nothing's stopping you from combining them together (and, assuming you're using the errata, Combos don't cost XP to use; you can just use charms together normally so long as they have the appropriate combo tags).

Good luck user!

I'll keep SHS then, I knew Adamant skin doesn't prevent bad touch, but i'm not expecting a lot of that at the start of a game and I can get SSE later since I have dodge favored.

Any tricks for damage? Outside of form I deal 6b, not a ton. (totally unarmed, no weapons), with form I get a decent 9l, which is enough to annoy. I guess i'm just use to melee charms and double digit damage numbers. I pretty much intend to just stick with S&S since I want to be a paladin who smites evil with his fists, basically.