Exalted General

At character creation? Pay the points, get the artifact. After that? It's a Story Merit; you don't need to buy the Merit with XP, you just get one when the story says you do.

>I wanted to either be a power-hungry Necromancer
Yes, but there aren't any rules for Necromancy yet.
>or a tinkerer that makes artifacts.
That is fine, though be prepared to spend a lot of your time crafting mundane things as well. If you're playing a crafter, be prepared to spend a lot of your time crafting to solve problems.

Or just making toys to give to random children, because everyone needs a hobby.

I think he meant with currency?

Do you have any tips for a first time payer?
Is it like any other WW games?
Should one always have points in dodge and guns? Is there any -one- thing everyone should either know or have?

Help a new player out, will you?

>Do you have any tips for a first time payer?
Dex is the god-stat in combat. You want a 5 if you want to be heavily combat-focused, and you don't want to go below a 3 otherwise.

>Is it like any other WW games?
It's fairly similar, though it uses its own engine that evolved on top of the Classic World of Darkness games' Storyteller System.

>Should one always have points in dodge and guns?
No guns in Exalted, just crossbows and "firewands" that look like guns but act more like short-ranged flamethrowers.

>Is there any -one- thing everyone should either know or have?
Five dots of Dexterity and 5 dots in whatever your primary Combat Ability is.

How do you simulate battle-savviness for tactician type characters?

Necromancy lacks book support, but if your GM is worth their weight, you can work something out.

Tinkering is very much possible, but is extremely tedious by the book with a subsystem that clashes with powers.

Necromancy would be a home brewed sorcerous initiation that concentrates on sorcerous workings involving dead bodies and ghosts.

Aha. Thanks for all the info. So it is medievel times.
I saw that summoning is a thing.
What combat abillity would a wizard kind of character have? Occult?
Is summoning reliable or prohibitly expensive in costs of stat/corruption or other resources?

Is crafting magic stuff worth it in terms of efficiency or costs?

exalted guns suck, use bows

need high dex

Sorcery is always your second choice when fighting. I don't mean it's useless, but while you're casting spells you need something else to back you up. So, Occult is needed highly for sorcery, but you should keep another way of fighting as well, like Melee.

crafting is horribly tedious. spells don't work well in battle time so the wizard's combat stat is probably melee ;) either that or it's running away and materializing your hoard of bloodapes of whom you've been summoning one a night ever since the game started

Guns depend on what you do with them boy.

>Bloodapes?
Not fire elementals, demons or undead?

>exalted guns suck, use bows
So 5 points in bow to use as a combat skill while being a wizard?

Could you help me by pitching a quickly and roughy generated mage-thing that can both be good at summoning and not die in combat?

You know what? I think your ST should explain to you the setting first. It's... A bit of a mouthful.

3-5 points in Occult minimum, and pick up summoning as your second spell, other spells are better first choices. Put points into War if you want to lead an army of demons, and put the rest into any of the combat abilities.

>Not fire elementals, demons or undead?

Bloodapes are demons. The "shock troops with little intelligence but a whole lot of brawn" kind. Fire Elementals aren't stated, so again, homebrew. As for undead, again, necromancy is not supported, there's really no way for you to make them, unless your ST thinks of something.

Only thing ST wanted to explain was that we have "common knowledge about the gods."

He really wants me to go into the setting/system/session blind.
>I'm not a fan of that man.

A summoner whom can make armies and command them. Coolio.
I have never thought to be able to do more than having singular bodyguards or summoning servants for singular tasks.

Heads up, you can only summon one demon a night, and they only stay for a year at a time. Accounting for the alternate calendar of the setting that's 425 demons at your disposal at maximum. Stronger demons can only be summon monthly or even annually, but don't worry about that yet.

Oh. Then we shan't spoil the surprise.

I have to wonder though, how exactly do they want you to make a character without knowing anything about the world? How are you supposed to come up with a backstory, a goal, and so on?

>Aha. Thanks for all the info. So it is medievel times.
More Bronze Age/Iron Age.
>What combat abillity would a wizard kind of character have? Occult?
Can be Occult, but if you do, you're going to want to take 3 dots in Melee or Brawl so that you can have something to defend with.
>Is summoning reliable or prohibitly expensive in costs of stat/corruption or other resources?
It's reliable, yeah. You buy the spell, you spend the time casting the spell (4-6 hours), and then you get a supernatural minion for a year that'll obey the intention of your commands, not just the letter of them (though they often have alien world-views that can lead to them interpreting your commands strangely).

>Is crafting magic stuff worth it in terms of efficiency or costs?
Yeah, but there's a fairly complex system built around it that requires you to have built a bunch of mundane stuff first.

>I don't mean it's useless, but while you're casting spells you need something else to back you up.
Sorcery's more than just spells. If you take The Burning Name merit, you can toss blasts of fire at your enemies for free using your Intelligence + Occult.

>Not fire elementals, demons or undead?
Blood Apes are demons; they're one particular breed of them. There aren't any stats for summonable fire elementals yet, though it shouldn't be too hard to homebrew some.

>Could you help me by pitching a quickly and roughy generated mage-thing that can both be good at summoning and not die in combat?
Here's one I made:
pastebin.com/Yrfv4Hrd

he should at least give you any common knowledge of some random mortal from where hes starting you....that'd be way more than that.

also you'd have to at least know a little about how to build a character anyway.

Woah. Thanks man. I appriciate all the info. Is the Blood ape just the "go-to" standard troop due to statwise superiority?
I saw the crystal Bee thing, sounded rather cool. But I don't know enough about stats and stat-interaction to know what's good and not.

I hate going blind into things, kinda.
I can see the appeal of having no meta-knowledge and get to explore things on your own merit; but then you're at Chargen without motivation, inspiration or collected thoughts on what you want to do or try.
Then you end up making a suboptimal character that either dies quickly and have to play catch-up to the others, or you just end up not having less fun due to being regularly out-performed in the same roles by others.

Then you have the worst scenario where the DM doesn't actually have an iron grip on the rules or that you find out that chargen is the only real place do shape your dude and you don't actually get to play the concept you wanted to play; and the GM doesn't want you to re-roll.

Char-gen is part of the first session or so I'm told.
>He didn't want us to know what Exalteds and Castes are before the session.

why not just start you out as mortals then?

Craft Artifact, Craft weapons, Summoning demons, Knowledge of demons and magic, and demonic nobillity.
Sign me the fuck up sempai.

Did you pick Cestus for a reason or will a regular Longsword do just the same?
Is the burning Name THAT good?

>Then you end up making a suboptimal character that either dies quickly and have to play catch-up to the others, or you just end up not having less fun due to being regularly out-performed in the same roles by others.

Well at the very least you're well aware of the typical problems of WoD.

And knowing is half the battle.

We are.
I have no idea what that means though.

Care to elaborate what that entails, starting as Mortals?
Is it like starting as level 0 commoners in D&D?

Huh, right I'd like to ask, if my heroic mortal starts out with Strength 4 Dex 3 Stamina 2 how many extra points am I allowed to put into? Just 2?

>Woah. Thanks man. I appriciate all the info. Is the Blood ape just the "go-to" standard troop due to statwise superiority?
If you're summoning demons? Probably, yeah. There are others, but they don't have stats in 3e yet.

>I saw the crystal Bee thing, sounded rather cool.
Crystal bee? Are you referring to the Vaktri? They're more like spiders or crabs than bees. They are pretty good if you're summoning elementals, though, and so are the Greenmaws (giant, sapient venus fly traps).

>Then you end up making a suboptimal character that either dies quickly and have to play catch-up to the others, or you just end up not having less fun due to being regularly out-performed in the same roles by others.
Exalted's particularly bad about that, too. 3e's somewhat better in that regard, since it's more difficult to make a character who dies in one hit in combat, but it still has the XP inefficiency problems.

Unless you have that 2e manse power that lets you summon a 2CD, but instead get (2 CD's Essence /2) Magnitude in first circle demons.

Was talking about the 3E Agata, Beateous Wasp; first circle demon. Can't see the Vaktri tho.
>There is a second tier demon that is called Keeper of the Forge.
>Can you summon second tier demons too?

>Was talking about the 3E Agata, Beateous Wasp; first circle demon.
Oh, right. The Agatae aren't really heavy combatants, no, they're mainly steeds. If you want to go flying around a battlefield, you summon an Agata; if you want a demon to walk up to your enemies and club them to death, you summon a Blood Ape.

>Can't see the Vaktri tho.
They're in the Elementals section.

>There is a second tier demon that is called Keeper of the Forge.
>Can you summon second tier demons too?
Yes, but only once per month, and not at character creation unless you want to be spending XP to summon them unbound with a Sorcerous Working.

I want to be a sword-dancing Dawn slut. How well do Solar Melee, Shining Point and Steel Devil Style work together?

Melee and Martial Arts don't work well together at all, since you have to pick one Ability to enhance any particular attack or defense with.

Shining Point and Steel Devil can work together pretty well, though.

Is a single bloodape super-powerfull?
Do you need a battlegoup of apes?
What kind of bonuses to a battlegroup of apes get compared to a singular ape?

Can you put a battlegroup against a single opponent?

Hm. So assuming I went full Shining Point + Steel Devil to soak up my Solar XP, what would be a good defensive ability?

In fact, what do people use to eat up Solar XP?

You can use dipping Swallow and Bulwark stance with MA I think easily enough. Dunno about Fivefold Bulwark stance.

And 'using' a Single Point + Steel Devil style on my character now? It does like 35L withering damage on good hits. Let that be the judge.

>Is a single bloodape super-powerfull?
Better than mortals, not as good as a combat-focused Exalt or a higher-tier spirit.

>Do you need a battlegoup of apes?
Not really, no. You could even argue that they get a bit weaker in a battle group, since they can't make Decisive Attacks or Grapples anymore, and that turns off a lot of their combat-related magic.

>What kind of bonuses to a battlegroup of apes get compared to a singular ape?
A fair bit more health, along with passive bonuses to attack, damage, defense, and soak.

What weapons do you use for that? I was thinking of something like a daisho (short + reaper daiklave, enchanted to count as paired weapons) or a reaper + sheath pair.

And how good is Clashing? It seems pretty stronk.

>What weapons do you use for that? I was thinking of something like a daisho (short + reaper daiklave, enchanted to count as paired weapons) or a reaper + sheath pair.
Steel Devil requires paired swords; Single Point requires slashing swords. If you're using both styles together, you have to use paired slashing swords (or their artifact equivalents).

Basically, you need to use a katana or scimitar in each hand.

Sounds like a job for Agni and Rudra

Question, Would a dawn from chargen be able to use an ordinary stick as a real weapon? Like a weapon to fight and win battles not just to wail on mortals

Yes. Video related:
youtube.com/watch?v=QWwmqHGYHus

(Fists of Iron Technique is really all you need.)

are those... puppets?

Huh? aren't they just regular tattoos that work like mundane armor?

Yes. /a/ was literally a Taiwanese puppet show board a few months ago.

youtube.com/watch?v=OQ38hNC5zy4

not that odd since we are a Japanese rock gardening site

blood eagle puppet. so violent

Clashing is hella strong. Its the 'he who dares wins' part of Exalted. If your enemy has a hella high defense, you can negate it by clashing them and praying you roll higher.

The character you made can see and attack ghosts, investigate crime-scenes at an unnatural speed due to intuition, you can speak ancient, forge weapons and relics and summons demons for personal use.

Is there a theme in particular to your dude?
Or did you just slap together whatever looked usefull at a glance?

>Are these puppets? That's kind of cool.
>Entire ribcages getting BTFO

>Is there a theme in particular to your dude?
Super-scientist/occultist.

>The character you made can see and attack ghosts
>you can speak ancient
Being able to see and talk to demons is useful when you're an occultist. Additionally, the former is a prerequisite to a combat charm, and the latter serves double duty as a combat charm.

>investigate crime-scenes at an unnatural speed due to intuition
Because he's so good at science he can calculate the physics of it all.

>forge weapons and relics
Well, yeah, building things is one of the things that scientists do. In a world like Creation, that means building magic things.

>summons demons for personal use.
Occultist.

theme looks like "I'm a twilight, this is what I do"

is that any worse than "me dawn. me headbutt mountain until it ceases to be an obstacle. smash all the things"

The shaping ritual; Pact with ligier, is that a setting-custom thing?

I know of the pact with Ifrit, which let's you draw motes from fire and also is a pre-req for the Burning Name, but I don't know of any that let's you draw motes from demons.

It's a customized variant of Pact with an Ifrit Lord and Bargain With Mara. Basically, just take the fire-themed stuff, turn it green, and substitute demons for fire elementals where appropriate.

Summoning shadow-demons to use as small pets and devouring them for mana later seems like a pretty cool concept in itself.
But that would be spirits instead of demons I think.

I saw that some combat things and actions reveal the opponent's intimacies.
It's also stated that knowing your opponent's intimacies can lower their defenses, initiative and suchlike.

Would you mind explaining an example of this or how much it can impact combat?
>I've seen a lot of anime fights, but this as a game mechanic still boggles my mind.

It's not really a core mechanic, it's just that there's lots of Charms that key off Intimacies, like Fist of Iron that lets you punch through more soak with a stronger Intimacy, or all of Black Claw Style, which is built around manipulating and profiting from your enemy's.

There's the strategem stuff under Mass Combat.

I may be running Exalted 3e. What shoudl I keep in mind?

Storyteller Guide

docs.google.com/document/d/1sG52v0QCij7-vI0Y3Mb2s2gusu8dfkzdUOLkmMshw3Q/edit?usp=drive_web

>I want to be a sword-dancing Dawn slut. How well do Solar Melee, Shining Point and Steel Devil Style work together?
Other than the hammerspace charm, the only way Melee works with the other two is as Defense or for reflexive attacks.

So I was considering getting exalted 3e but I am hesitant because I had a copy of 2e and I found the layout and system incredibly convoluted and difficult to grasp, has 3e improved these issues or is the system still unintuitive.
Also out of curiosity how many dice would you recommend for the storyteller and for each player to have?

Yeah, I was mainly thinking of it for defense and reflexives.

50.
My last session had 2 players only and we used 150 dice total.

Yes, in 3rd Edition. Yes, we are probably idiots.

Is there actually any good character management software available, as Anathema for 2E?

I've seen some smaller attempts earlier this year, and I'm actually kind of motivated to code my own application.

But getting the state of the art before doing so is probably smart :)

What are you guys using? I know some other coders are also in this thread.

there was a benefit merit they could get in 2e where they can store things Elsewhere straight into their tattoos, so they'd basically get extra storage and their tattoos would have whatever they were keeping on them. weapons, usually.

the biggest and most popular method lately is the google doc up top. a nice, transparent way for you to see how he codes everything, too, since all the data's in secondary tabs.

Steel Devil in general is surprisingly bad. But Shining Point in general is ridiculously OP.

However doubling down on all 3 doesn't really work. Redundancy isn't really something you want in 3e, in general you pick an ability and style and stick to it.

Also, take a lot of Wits and Awakening Eye. You'll thank me later.

Probably Dodge, at that point. And it would look cool with the sword-dancing thing.

Remember that you need a dot of Brawl for Martial Arts though.

I mean, if your ST allows it, great. I wouldn't allow people to combine Steel Devil with Shining Point, but that's just me.

Jesus christ just read up about the setting yourself.

I stumbled upon the "starting as mortals" section of the book.
But thanks for your help anyway.

How bad of an idea is it to allow a charm to double-dip Melee and Thrown?

The rulebook tells you almost everything you need to know about the setting as a beginner player.

Well. It does make sense that the 600-900 page rulebook tells you what you need to know as a player.

But do you have a helpfull pagenummer to a sort of summary of everything you need to know?
Or do I have to go through 300 pages to know what I should?

As long as by double-dip you mean "Take Summon the Blade" and use it repeatedly after throwing your javelin, a great idea.

Now once that is covered you can either a) focus on ride/dodge to avoid close quarters combat, or b) ignore that and actually take melee charms, treating the Javelin Throw just as a combat-opening burst to then transition into a steady hand-to-hand which Melee excels at with it's high defenses.

Both have been tested by me and are highly viable. It's a matter of play-style.

Take what?

And I mean something like an artifact spear that has a charm that allows it to be thrown, but the throw is a Simple that requires an aim, and can benefit from melee and thrown charms.

Call the Blade was the Charm I think. I confused it with Hammerspace Charm, Summoning the Loyal Steel.

I recall there is a Melee weapon with a Thrown tag and I'm sure there's an Artifact version, so you don't need a special Charm to throw that thing.

Oh. Would it having both Thrown and Melee be unbalancing? Direlance, in this case.

No. As I recall the artifact version of that thing is special in that it's the only thrown artifact weapon that does not come back on it's own. Hence Call the Blade.

Blood Apes are the standard demon for dumb muscle if you're looking for standard combat. There's a lot of others though. Agata for aerial transport, neomah for sex, weeping women to sabotage an enemy plan, hopping puppeteers for construction, and a stomach bottle bug to just make you immune to poison.

So, does this combo work the way I think it does? Battle-Dancer Method + Thousand Courtesan Ways + Poised Lion Attitude.

Spend 3m to activate Poised Lion Attitude to make a free Presence social influence action on your turn without suffering Flurry penalties. Thousand Courtesan Ways triggers, adds in an erotic dance action for free. This then lets you activate Battle-Dancer Method for 1m whenever you're attacked to add +2 to your Defense scores.

Everything that doesn't talk about the mechanics gives insight on the setting. Look for it, it's really not that hard.

Basically the first two chapters/120 pages sum things up pretty well.

I have to say, I enjoy the expressions in that image immensely. The expression of pure WHY on the solar is brilliant.

So they can have artifact powers as long as they don't reach beyond the skin and can't be considered a shaping effect?

What does that allow other than armor or some small stat bonuses? Anything interesting seems like it'd be disqualified.
Only thing I can think of that'd be worth taking with that is armor if it stacks with actual worn items and doesn't count against martial arts.

Would I be right in guessing even something using projected essence like 'the fire claw bracer doesn't count either? Or can they use something like 'bracer of the hawk' and throw their tattoos at people?

this image makes me want baking charms

I think the art is pretty bad.