Exalted General - /exg/

Yup, still Sidereals for that very reason.

Sidereal and Infernal because I love their concepts

What's wrong with incest?

>I put my vote with Infernals.
Infernal is even more fucked up than Solar, Urge mechanic is cool until you realize you might get hit by Torment all the time if you don't act like a villain, Infernal has more penalties than Solar, seeing that the majority of Creation gets access to Holy which will fuck up Infernal, their PD and Anti-Shaping are not as good as Solar, their mote booster is flatout shit compares to Solar
Malfeas is also a pretty crappy place to live, worse than Creation even
>What's wrong with incest?
It makes people retard and cause deformities

>It makes people retard and cause deformities
Not in Exalted because glorious auotobot Creation

For kicks, how high up the ladder is a mortal able to get by simply building up connections? Been thinking about the game where the players are trying to become... well, players in that they have at least as much pull as a lesser exalt in spite of being mortals with the challenge being to not push the wrong buttons and find themselves casually smashed into paste by the first Exigent or Dragon-Blood they rub the wrong way.

>Infernal is even more fucked up than Solar
Acting like a villain is the usual part of being Infernal, like being murderous is the for Abyssals.
When an Infernal is doing evil, he is honest about it (to himself) and it is within his nature. When he isn't doing evil, he is expressing his more rounded characteristics.

When Solars do something villainous it is usually them being fuckups by either going full OCD on their virtues, or lacking an otherwise completely natural human emotion, and committing atrocities left and right. When the supposed 'heroes' do that, that is a real fucking downer.

Ragara Bhagwei's parents were half siblings, and that never stopped him from being a pretty cool guy, so I think you're okay.

Solar is not hero, in fact none of the Exalted is hero nor villain, all of them are super murderous unbreakable power created to kill creators of worlds and wonders. One can use guns to kill a terrorist or shoot an innocent, Solar is no better than Infernal or Abyssal if he wants to be, but unlike those two he has more options to be good than chaotic (Infernal) or death (Abyssal).

Guild Masters are all mortals.

They wield absurd amount of wealth and political powers.

Is there a good lunar homebrew? I can name one for all of the others except for Lunars and Infernals. One of my players might want to try one later after we get the basics of the game down, or I might want a detailed Lunar antagonist.

Also any actual play or campaign journal recommendations? I'm running for the first time soonish and I still don't have a great grasp on scope or the sort of things I should have the party getting up to.

Is it the charms explicitly that allow an Exalt to do ludicrous things or is it just huge dicepools granted by charms? I wish the 3e book was a bit better about what how many successes let someone do.

Exalts are heroes in the sense of classical protagonist-centered morality.

I do believe that three degrees of genetic separation is enough even by IRL laws.

7 degrees or you're a freak.

Omniscient Focus Attack allows me to use Fervent Blow to clash against attacks that I'm not aware of, but an ambush means being attacked unaware and not having a weapons readied to fight with. Does that mean that I can't use Fervent Blow to clash against an ambush, or s there a way to let me take a ready Weapon action reflexively?

My geomancer set a ***** fire demanse to blow right under the feet of a Fair Folk court and the Guild merchant that was selling them slaves. When the smoke had cleared, he was a Twilight.

Blew up gem huh?

I'm trying to make a pacifist/nonviolent character. What's the best way I can inspire my enemies to drop their weapons and abandon the idiocies of war, and have them actually listen to me?

Depends entirely on your enemies. Who are you and who are you fighting?
Cus I could see a sidereal basically loom of fate writing entire armies into farmers

Ball deep into Presence.

With Listener-Swaying Argument, Harmonious Presence Meditation, Impassioned Discourse Technique you get absurd bonus to social actions. IDT particularly allows you to boost your social actions by using your own intimacies (4 dices for a defining principle of war is bad). Blazing Glorious Icon is also the pinnacle of non charm bonus dice.

Tiger's Dread Symmetry and Majestic Radiant Presence allows you to prevent any bloodshed by being fucking terrifying.

When everything else fails, Hypnotic Tongue Technique allows you to mind control people.

A build around Performance or Socialization is also possible. Performance is great if you want to convince thousand of people at the same time by singing the song of your people.

>who are you
A Solar, probably a Zenith.

>who are you fighting
anything from elite mortal soldiers, all the way to a Wyld Hunt

Get resources 5.

Black Claw style would also help. Even in the thick of combat you can weave around attacks and convince them of your moral superiority until they lay down arms.

Just because it can be used for evil, doesn't mean it has to be.

Yes, that's true. Black Claw is the perfect Martial Art for one who wants to punch people into friendship and brainwashing.

Fulminating Word is also important if you want to grind the willpower of any adversary. It's a good pick with Hypnotic Tongue Technique: just spam Fulminating Word until the target has no willpower left, then hit him with Hypnotic Tongue Technique for maximum assuming direct control.

A build around Linguistic is even possible with Twisted Words Technique. That'd be a really fun one.

Is the great contagion still around in small pockets?

IIRC that's not the case canonically, but surviving pockets of Contagion aren't really impossible either.

You'd probs do it even if it was.

There's a thrown charm from Miracles that lets you reflexively ready a weapon. Otherwise, be the kind of paranoid fuck who carries a weapon around all the time. If you want to be more realistic about it, carry a walking stick or something else that can be used as a weapon but has other practical uses too.

Have any of your players found or otherwise interacted with Her Redness? How did you go about statting her? I never read RotSE, so I don't know if there was ever a real statblock unless theres one I'm forgetting somewhere else.

when you Join Battle you reflexively ready a weapon, and using OFA is joining battle.

You don't get to reflexively readied when ambushed, which is the issue.

yes, because you arent entering combat. in this situation you are entering combat, because you're using a combat charm. you draw your sword at the last second and slice away an attacker as they aim for your throat, whats not to get?

Please read the rules before telling people they're wrong.

"Characters are assumed to begin combat with a weapon of their choice already drawn or readied, unless they are ambushed (p. 203)."

well, the solution was actually in the charm text all along so this entire discussion is pointless:

"As long as she is gripping her weapon, the Solar feels the slightest movement in the air around her and may react with impossible speed"

'as long as she is gripping her weapon' aka you cant use the charm unless already armed

Dude, that is the entire point of the whole discussion. The original person wanted to know if there was any way to reflexively ready a weapon when ambushed in order to use that charm. Can you please grow some basic reading comprehension?

Call the Blade also lets you reflexively summon a melee weapon to your hand if you can pass the difficulty 4 activation roll.

Reading into this charm, I think that's only for weapons that have been disarmed. Summoning the Loyal Steel, however, lets you reflexively summon a weapon from Elsewhere.

It's written under the assumption that you'll be grabbing a disarmed weapon, but it still works both mechanically and fluffwise for reflexive drawing. But yeah, StLS does the trick too.

How many charms can I put into my Supernal ability before I should start worrying about being too specialized?

▶▶52109813
212,687,449

Harmonious Presence Meditations says "For five motes, this Charm grants three bonus dice to all forms of social influence from all Abilities except Stealth."
In what situation could you even use Stealth for social influence? Are there any abilities besides Presence, Performance, Socialize, and Linguistics that make sense to use for social influence?

Weird-ass charms/spells/evocations can do weird-ass things, I think they're just covering all their bases to be compatible with whatever they may print in the future. You certainly can't use any abilities other than the ones listed for social influence without having an effect that explicitly allows you to do so.

War. Possibly Bureaucracy. Maybe some of the teaching stuff in Lore?

If this were a different storyteller system game then your GM might ask you to roll a skill for knowledge to use nerd-cred rather than fancy talk to convince someone to like you, like say nerding out about swords to an old general with Melee, but that sort of flexibility doesn't work with the charm system and is better represented by just lowering the difficulty of the roll or feeding it through the Stunt system.

I try not to go with more than six. Otherwise you leave little room for "that one charm" that gets you a trick and an excellency in a non-favoured ability. The Stealth reroll charm is an excellent That One Charm, as is Thunderclap Rush Attack from Brawl.

Are you trying to top chichi miko oyakodon?

Anyone have any good more combat oriented Exigent ideas? Stuck in a rut of creativity but not in mechanical creativity. I basically need a starting idea for a few Exigents who would be hired by the Guild for defensive purposes.

It arrived.

How many years did you have to wait for it? Was it worth it?

I think it's been 3 or 4 years right? I'm probably a lot less invested in Exalted than most people in here as I haven't actually play the game since the middle of 2e. I just wanted the limited edition to put on my bookshelf. It's going to sit on there with my Nobilis 2e GWB and other hard-to-find or limited editions.

But yeah, it's a pretty book and worth the wait. No comments on the content, I won't be playing it.

How are the new weapon tags? All else being equal, are there any I should shoot for?

Smashing, Balanced, and Piercing are quite good. The others all have their uses though.

>I won't be playing it

then why get it? I don't understand that reasoning. Every book I own is something that I read read when I was younger or something I wanted to read (and then I read it soon after the purchase). Same goes for rpgs. I don't own books for games that I don't plan to read or run a campaign in.

Books just sitting in the shelves remind me of people who try to look more educated but they didn't read any of those. They just sit there for decoration.

How long can a Stamina 5 Athletics 5 with no relevant charms for endurance running go while carrying a mortal?

>Is it the charms explicitly that allow an Exalt to do ludicrous things

Yes. There's a Larceny Charm that lets you steal stuff behind glass without disturbing the glass. There's a Melee Charm that summons a sword of molten sunfire.

It's a deliberately blurred boundary because the devs can be kinda dumb sometimes, but for the most part it's the Charms doing the work.

Depends on how your GM wants to deal with fatigue, since there's no rules for it in the 3e book even though there is a merit to give you a bonus to resist fatigue and exhaustion

Can I maintain the commitment to Glorious Solar Plate if I send my armor to Elsewhere with Hauberk Summoning Gesture?

I'd say that mechanically there's probably nothing preventing it, but I wouldn't allow it at my table, because it doesn't make that much sense in the context of what Glorious SOlar Plate actually is fluff-wise.

Make an Evocation for it.

b-but I am the GM.... I just made it 50 miles out of my ass

What are the best ways of optimizing Faster Than Self Technique?

It'd depend not only on the distance but also on the speed he maintains and the terrain he runs through. I wouldn't use any specific distance, but would require Athletics+Stamina rolls with increasing penalties at intervals I deem appropriate. I'm not sure how I'd actually handle the effects of the rolls. Maybe a successful roll means a -1 penatly for subsequent rolls, a failed roll means -2 penalty, and when the penalty exceeds the character's Stamina, he can't go on any longer? Or maybe a failed roll means the character can either stop and rest or force himself to go on despite his body having reached its limit, taking some amount of bashing damage for the effort? I'm not sure.

anybody know off hand what the rules are for an exalt being possessed? are they different than for mortals? are exalts immune? etc

Anyone have any suggestions on how to make the Giant merit worth taking? I was thinking of combining it with the merit in the antagonists section that allows you to wield two-handed weapons with one hand. What do you guys think?

Look at the charms for ghost possession in 2e.

Exalts are not immune, but their high mental defense values and high willpower make them really difficult to possess. A ghost possessing an exalt has also no access to his charms and supernatural abilities.

Newbie here. I might head off to the East for adventuring. What are the dos and don'ts and what do you think is interesting to play as?

I'd prefer a mental character over a physical one, maybe a social type.

What do you think about crossbows?

Don't neglect to take some combat charms even if you're not primarily a combat character. A handful of charms will really boost your surviveability.

They're awesome. Shame their rules are a tad shit though, in a "using this weapon actively crippes your character" kind of way. They really need to get their own Righteous Devil equivalent at some point during 3e's lifespan.

For gods sake don't lag so far behind in combat that you become a liability. Something as little as 3 melee charms increases you combat power by something like triple your combat ability without one.

Otherwise than that Lore is pretty good, Occult if you want to deal with spirits more often as a Twilight.

Yeah, would be cool to see something to make them less shit. An MA would be good. As it is they don't mechanically even fit the idea of the crossbow very well. I'd take a special tag that says like "You are considered to have two dots of Archery or your Archery, whichever is higher when using this weapon." So that outfitting an army of morons with them would be feasible.

...

You could just write up an artifact crossbow that said something like "If a Solar or Dragonblooded attunes to this artifact, it loses the slow tag." Maybe make it a green jade one that grows its own shafts (or bolts or whatever) in place without any action on your part, with the power to make them take root or sprout into sapling where they hit.

Which is fine for high level stuff. And totally cool. Kinda wish it would be logical that the Haslanti are scary because of these. Instead it creates a "Wow how are the Haslanti so strong, they insist on crippling their troops."

Though I don't know if the Haslanti crossbows with the self destruct pins are still a thing I suppose. They were cool though. Maybe you could assume they were a different, better crossbow?

>I'd take a special tag that says like "You are considered to have two dots of Archery or your Archery, whichever is higher when using this weapon." So that outfitting an army of morons with them would be feasible.
Not really a usable (or needed) houserule for 3E or anything, but I think I might prefer it if Accuracy bonuses raised the effective Ability rating, but only up to its natural maximum. That way you could have weapons that are easy to use and effective even in the hands of relatively unskilled people, but at the same time the truly skilled fighters could kick ass with whatever weapon they prefer. This would require rethinking and rewriting things like defense and such, though, and kind of would ruin the thing where Withering attacks are easier to get in than Decisive ones. Maybe it's just a shit idea.

Yeah, that's a neat idea. Kinda opposite of Shadowrun 5e accuracy I guess. But also would need a ground up rework.

System for now mostly works, just a few things fell through the cracks. Shields, Crossbows.

thanks

Is that official art or just random art?

How to make a heroic mortal if I don't have any specific future exaltations in mind?

What edition?

2.5E

Stop.

Pray your ST likes you and roll with a random character concept? Because 2.5 mortals literally cannot win against anything more than a dumb supernatural anything. Most animals probably eat you alive too.

Unless you can get enlightened, but you're basically not a mortal then, and it's a matter of finding efficient TMA

how important is starting with an artefact weapon, particularly as a Dawn? I'm kind of banking on picking up the first one I come across in play ad spending my starting merits on other things.

That depends entirely on your GM. Are they likely to let you pick up artifacts?

I'm not sure. I was kind of assuming that the first big threat, such as a Wyld Hunt, might have weapons or armour to pick up. I'm also banking on having a Supernal combat ability to carry me until then. The question is how soon will one of those threats come into play, I guess.

If you have a supernal combat ability you don't ned an artifact weapon. You can kill 99% of Creation with nothing but a stick without even breaking a sweat. Don't worry about it, just do what makes sense for your character concept.

>just do what makes sense for your character concept.

Speaking of which, do you guys ever have any trouble on deciding what your ninth and tenth favoured abilities should be? I ended up fluffing my killy-talky Dawn as a former crook to justify favouring Larceny, but I couldn't think of a reason for anything else so I just took Occult so I could buy spirit killing charms later.

Have a guy standing behind you throwing out war charms as your commander.

So in term of size who was bigger? Mardukth, Theion, Adrian, Kimbery, Cecelyne or Isidoros?

Mardukth is the size of a mountain, Theion is presumably a city like Malfeas, Adrian surrounded all of Creation at his prime, Kimbery stretches to infinity, as does Cecelyne, and Isidoros is likely the smallest, only the size of a large building.

Who'd be denser? Isidoros or the Exigent of Harem Protagonists?