What is Exalted?

>What is Exalted?
An epic high-flying role-playing game about reborn god-heroes in a world that turned on them.
Start here: theonyxpath.com/category/worlds/exalted/

>That sounds cool, how can I get into it?
Read the 3e core book (link below). For mechanics of the old edition, play this tutorial: mengtzu.github.io/exalted/sakuya.html
. It’ll get you familiar with most of the mechanics.

>Gosh that was fun. How do I find a group?
Roll20 and the Game Finder General here on Veeky Forums.

Resources for Third Edition
>Final 3E Core Release
mega.nz/#!ctgxyJaC!ygkrLnFsrnBJzIUZY-dJsMfyFrhFQgDsQuuo52fcW0I
mediafire.com/download/q51qw8skdw1rg15/Exalted_3e_Core.pdf

>3E Backer Core (Old)
mega.nz/#!E1dRBBIa!ZbQG4IasYCJRli2bhgE2MOdWeFAeV3N1rqL9kAIGbNE

>Frequently updated Charsheet with Formulas and Autofill docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pfjmZKzcUqAX9mB58IAEUIFkZr8rq4CvdRRM4kzwwgU/edit?usp=sharing
>General Homebrew dumping folder: drive.google.com/folderview?id=0ByD2BL6J89NiQzdCWWFaY0c5Mkk&usp=sharing
>Eld 3e Materials, incl. comics & fiction anthologies mediafire.com/folder/t2arqtqtyyt28/Exalted_3Leak
>Charm Trees:
>Solar Charms: imgur.com/a/q6Vbc
>Martial Arts: imgur.com/a/mnQDe
>Evocations: imgur.com/a/TYKE4

2.5e Resources:
>Books w/ embedded errata + extras: mediafire.com/folder/253ulzik1j9s5/Exalted
>Chargen software: anathema.github.io/
>Anathema homebrew files: mediafire.com/folder/pka3nz3vqbqda/Anathema_Files
>MA form weapon guide: brilliantdisaster.net/dif/ExaltedMA.html
>mediafire.com/view/ua7tanepy2jfkdp/Exalted_2nd_Ed_-_Return_of_the_Scarlet_Empress.pdf

1e Resources:
>mediafire.com/folder/9vp0e9id3by6m/Exalted_1e

>Holden and Morke are out
>Vance and Minton are in
>Preview of Arms of the Chosen

So what does everyone think of Stromcaller and the new Evocations paradigm?

Other urls found in this thread:

dropbox.com/s/15xddoahzedtkwu/Arms of the Chosen Preview.docx?dl=0
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

I love Stormcaller and the new Evocations. I want more! More!

Looking at how Stormcaller works, it makes Volcano Cutter seem weak in comparision, doesn't it? Let's hope the latter gets a face lift.

>>Holden and Morke are out

Ding dong the witch is dead

Volcano cutter makes Volcano cutter look like shit.

The one from the leak was a lot better, yeah. SO how do you guys feel about the Antagonists and Bestiary splats coming out and Arms being 3 months away?

I'll believe it when it's in my hands

Anyone got a link to the last thread? I can't seem to find it.

NM, found it. Couldn't see it in the catalog or archive, but found it on google. Is that normal?

>big, chunky, character-defining powers

sounds like what infernal charms are supposed to be. Solars, however, get *specific* powers from specific charms to do specific things. That's the core of their strength as a splat.

____________
the solar who wants to sword real good gets the "i sword real good in this specific way" charm

an infernal with the same goal instead gets "i turn into an armored rage-beast that happens to also be above average at swording things" and combo it with "i can turn into wind and slip through walls to sword pretty good as long as the guy I'm swording is either loud, running away, or I love him" in order to "I sword real good" when those situations overlap.

meanwhile the dawn has bought two "I sword real good" charms and therefore swords way better than that slayer who's broad charms instead meant he gets a couple other cool powers on the side.

So when are the rest of the splats going to come out?

Alright, so let's break this down for whoever you are.
>Fair Folk: weird things from outside of the universe
This is pretty much accurate, but the typical term is Raksha.
>Primordials: A bunch of Fair Folk that decided to create the universe and also embodied themselves into it.
Kind of true. The Primordials were Unshaped Raksha that wanted to bring order to chaos and shape the Wyld, which is the main difference between them and other unshaped Raksha.
>Gods & Spirits: A bunch of helper entities Primordials created to help run the universe.
Gods, Elementals, etc. Yeah.
>Demons: The Primordials (and their subsouls) that resisted when the Gods rebelled against the Primordials. Also, slightly different from normal Primordials in that many Demons were horribly injured and changed during the war. So Primordials with PTSD basically.
Kind of true, but the terms are completely fucked up here. The Primordials who survived the Exalted surrendered and became The Yozi. That's the official name for Primordials that survived. During this surrender the some primordials had their fetich soul (the only subsouls they had at the time) killed, hence why we had changes. Theion into Malfeas for example. This act also spawned actual demons, which are the subsouls of Yozi.
>Abyssals: The Primordials (and their subsouls) who actually died during the war but came back as zombies.
Neverborn is the name for dead primordials. They didn't come back, it's more they couldn't die as they hadn't coded a method for them to die yet.
>Ghosts: Other beings of creation that the Abyssals brought back from the dead.
Ghosts are a byproduct of the Neverborn as is the Underworld. They didn't intentionally bring in ghosts and create the underworld, it's simply that they got shoved into the reincarnation system that's meant for mortals and as one would expect, they didn't quite fit. Much like a car doesn't fit through a needle loop.

...

what's the y value supposed to be there?

DB Kickstarter this year? Seriously? They said that it won't happen until all of the text is done.

Tbf, Holden probably said that

Probably about as meaningful as the real "dark ages"

>But even with Eric and Robert revved up and excited to deliver the projects I mention above, we can’t deliver these projects backwards through time.

yfw the 3rd edition version of broken winged crane is already saved on your computer

Iirc on the real one it's supposed to be scientific progress or something

Where can I get Stormcaller? There's nothing new in the OP that I can see.

dropbox.com/s/15xddoahzedtkwu/Arms of the Chosen Preview.docx?dl=0

Considering that the book has een in second draft for *ages*, the text is presumanly mostly done already.

>During this surrender the some primordials had their fetich soul (the only subsouls they had at the time)

Where are you getting that? AFAIK the Primordials always had a full set of subsouls.

Gaia had at least 5 before the war even began.

I really liked their work on 3E, but even I have to admit that they were taking way too long on everything.

>Charms should be big, chunky, character-defining powers
That thinking was the root of most problems in 2e. People deciding that things like 'I can parry anything's or 'reshape society by rolling dice once' where good ideas.

>Holden and Morke are out
We don't know the extent of this yet. We know they aren't leads anymore but they might still be around helping out in one fashion or another.

Holden wrote the craft system

Vance wrote the sorcery and martial arts

I am ecstatic

Morke wrote craft

Isn't Morke the "All gods are corrupt bastards with absolutely no exception" guy?

Reminder that Morke also wrote Steel Devil

He was making a reference to Hercules: The Legendary Journies i.e. "The Ancient Gods Were Petty and Cruel"

No, I'm pretty sure that was Vance.

Morke wrote a lot of the Solar Charms though.

what is y axis? meaningless graph is meaningless

Has anyone come up with a solution to the clusterfuck that is fighting multiple opponents? Is it right to reap Initiative off one opponent, and then turn around and unleash it on someone else? Do you keep track of your Initiatives against individual opponents seperately? The system just breaks down once you get into a 2v1 in terms of the fluff of what Initiative represents and how best to handle big fights, but works great as a duel system.

That's why you use Battle Groups instead. They limit the amount of initiative that can be drained by players.

we replaced a team of rakshasa with heroic mortals who may or may not end up exalting as dragonbloods down the line

Thank god they're gone. I like Exalted 3, but Morke turned into an asshole the second he got any sort of power over the line, and he'll always be both the guy who drove off Goodwin to me, and the coward who refused to own up to his fucking ghost rape charms.

Holden was alright, and I hope he still does some writing for the line, but his fucking Dita Von Teese act got old way before even RotSE came out.

>Ghost rape charm
Nicene.me

treat it as a duel against a battlegroup

other option is to let you reap Initiative off one opponent, and then turn around and unleash it on someone else, but apply a penalty to doing so(such as cutting it in half)

Goodwin was shit, Mummy's terrible from a mechanics perspective and don't forget that he worked on the core.

The ghost rape thing is just overblown chinese whispers shit at this point.

Don't get me wrong, I still think putting Minton and Vance in charge is a great idea.

*worked on the 2E core

Yes. Attacking a schmuck to build up initiative that you turn around and use on the BBEG is a totally fine tactic. Initiative is a bar you build up that is independent of any single opponent.

>Ghost rape charm

Go fuck yourself.

I agree with everything else you said though.

Stop being so snappy. It's like you were raped by a ghost or something.

I was raped by your posts

The whole ghost-rape bullshit was fucking retarded. The Charms didn't include any kind of ghost rape. At worst, unwanted ghost touching.

That's what people were up in arms over, that there was a Charm that allowed for unconsensual touching. And, oh no, we can't have someone touching my character in Exalted if I don't want them to!

Sooooo I heard Holden and Morke got shitcanned. What'er the details on this?

No details as to why it happened, all we know is that the rumors were true, so it happened.

i'm going to jump in here, but if people don't want to get ghost raped, maybe they should get a ghost rape whistle.

They developed, released and sold exactly 1 Exalted book since they were hired to create 3rd edition half a decade ago.

This is for Exalted, one of OPP's hottest properties (or at least it used to be one of OPP's hottest properties). 1 book sold to people in 5 years with any kind of excite and goodwill buried under the delays and the fact that we ended up with an average system with some huge fucking flaws when all was said and done.

From there, you can probably figure out why they got canned.

Haven't actually had a chance to play 3E yet, what are the system flaws? Is it as bad as 2E?

It's fucking garbage. Literally nothing has been fixed since 2e and the problems have only been made worse.

Use a superior system like Godbound for playing Exalted in.

What's exciting now is the new scheduling they've got going.

>So what we have planned are two projects that we are going to start releasing in April. That’s right, in order to provide our community with playable material now and not waiting until the Arms of the Chosen Advance PDF is released three months from now, we’re going to be releasing a section of each book each month as PDFs.

>New release very month

Things are looking good for the first time since the leaks.

Can you be more specific? This is the time for several paragraph rants, because I am honestly curious.

They fixed paranoia combat you twatwaffle

>like Godbound
An unbalanced piece of easily breakable shit that doesn't even fit Exalted's themes? Come on now.

Hell, Godbound fucking enforces alpha striking and perfect spam.

>Le Godbound May May

A lot of the problems stem from the natural, conversational language that the charms are written in. It mixes crunch and fluff in a way that causes ambiguities in the rules and makes it difficult to parse at a glance.

Craft is a giant load of shit, with Solars only being good at Crafting because the charmset is an even bigger load of shit. Though that being said, they solved all of the problems with raising Manses by simply giving them the same rules as Artefacts.

Better than 2e, good overall but like any 'good' system has rough spots.

Yeah. I'm glad Vance ended up as one of the Dev's. He's said before he's a big fan of open development in RPGs and he would have liked to engage more with the community and releasing material for people to see. We should be getting a steady drip of material from here on.

It's better than 2nd edition, which is good because 2nd edition was a shithole. While 3nd edition was a broken mess, 3rd edition is merely playable, but the system often gets in the way of the fun. Overall the system itself is only somewhat below average, but some of the subsystems like Crafting are borked.

If you enjoy the Exalted setting you'll be able to hold your nose and enjoy 3rd edition. Unlike 2nd edition, it's playable at least.

Stormcaller's sort of clunky to use, though. It has a lot of evocations with scene/story limits and occult ritual requirements.

True, but only having to keep track of the storm intensity, makes it less clunky than Volcano Cutter. VC has its own internal mote pool, how many Eruption Points you've made, the initiative of each individual Eruption point and the location of each one as well. All that builds up to using a charm that you can't use again for another season. It just doesn't hold a candle to Stormcaller.

I'll also note that the return of Evoctions with Exalt specific prerequisites (Divine Tempest Blade) adds a nice layer to the artefacts, mening that one Exalt type will be able to get access something that not eve Solars will.

But, I stopped playing 2E because I hated Perfect Spams.

If I wanted to play god bound I'd just wait for scion 2e. It literally does the same thing, powers selected from purviews like fire or justice. Hell they even have the same super strength/speed/durability purviews.

Overall it's really good, the social and combat systems in particular are leagues better than anything 2E had, or indeed anything WoD has.

Its issues really mostly revolve around what 2Eisms it retained, rather than the new stuff they introduced.

It is a lot of fun. The social and combat systems are great and only held back by natural language in the charms

...

Read it and find out.

...

>Read it and find out.

Playing and reading are two different things. Something that looks alright on paper can be a horrible shitfuck on the table and vice versa.

Well then, play it and find out.

It works pretty well.

> Exalted: 1e vs. 2e

The core systems are good, except for the old bugbear of character creation (BP/XP) and the new bugbear of Craft. The charms are generally solid but also generally really hard to read for a few reasons. It's a good system if you've got a group of friends who like crunch.

My guess on the situation: Paradox told Rich, "Stop causing our property to lose value, or we'll give the property to someone else." Rich either fired Morkeholden, or gave them the same ultimatum and they quit because they knew they couldn't meet that expectation.

>Lets buy some Charms
>What does this one do?
>It lets me add dice to a melee roll so I can swing my sword slightly more accurately
>What does this one do?
>It lets me reroll 1s on a melee roll so I can swing my sword slightly more accurately
>What does this one do?
>It lets me count 9s as double so I can swing my sword slightly more accurately
>What does this one do?
>It lets me translate my bachelors in art history into the ability to shape the inchoate chaos of the universe into solid matter and energy at my whim

Can we talk more about how Exalted's last remaining problem is Charm bloat?

I doubt paradox was involved in the decision, if only for their continuing resolve to not give a shit about OPP.

See also the Zak Smith thing for more examples.

Not really. I agree that it's a problem, but what is there to say? I don't have a solution that doesn't involve months of redrafting to create a better charm set from the ground up.

We can, but it's not actually a big problem. The Charms you mention, for instance, aren't examples of Charm bloat. They're mechanically useful effects worth their price, they're effects that make sense, and combining them into one or two Charms would lead to one or two pretty damn overpowered Charms. Those effects are boring, but this is a separate issue from supposed Charm bloat.

This works well against schmucks, but what about when I'm jumped by a pair of Dragon-Blooded assassins? Being limited to only withering damage until the opponent is crashed restricts them, especially with certain anti-battle group charms.

The suggestion for penalizing Initiative used against a source other than the one you drew from sounds interesting, but what happens when combat two foes at once?

When Darth Maul duels Obi-Wan and Qui-gon, if routinely attacks both Jedi to prevent them from building too much Initiative and getting the upper hand. Albeit, he eventually isolates them and then we very clearly see the system at play in the 1v1. Mail never goes for the killing blow during the 2v1 that we see, but neither is he just being whittled down by their attacks. Perhaps they were a battle group together? But that seems to deprive them the advantage of numbers since it limits their attacks. And you certainly couldn't treat multiple PCs as a battle group, they almost certainly want to act as individuals.

Sorry for using a perhaps gauche example, but it's a fight between superhuman opponents that everyone is familiar with and also demonstrates my concern.

I was under the impression that it represented your advantage in a fight. Dueling makes sense because, duh, they're the only person to fight. Having multiple combatants, some of whom don't interact with all the other opponents, means (to me) that you would have to build initiative versus the opponent you want to decisevly strike first. You may be dominating in your one on one, but you haven't affected the battle happening at the other end of the throne room, so you couldn't use that Initiative to snipe a target you aren't engaged with. Having a Initiative act like a generic resource you build up like a super meter means you could be having a good one on one in a clusterfuck brawl and then be 1-shot by someone out of nowhere. While being sucker punched is certainly a familiar strategy, it doesn't seem very heroic.

This is all just my opinion, of course. Perhaps I'm being too honorable about it all. I'm sure a group of assassins would use any means necessary to kill an Exalted target, I just wish the system could better represent more possibilities.

Zak smith thing?

Having friends who get into fights often, beating up one guy and then going over to smash some other dude you've never even touched is absolutely a thing that happens.

>This works well against schmucks, but what about when I'm jumped by a pair of Dragon-Blooded assassins?

You're going to be in trouble when that happens. Action economy is important, not just for Exalted but for any RPG. If team A is getting 2 actions per round, and team B is getting 1 action per round, then team A has a serious advantage. Hopefully the two of them are a fair bit weaker than you are in combat.

If they are, then you'll be able to focus fire on the weakest one, take him down and then go for the stronger one.

As for the fight with Darth Maul, Obi-wan and Qui-gon, Darth Maul was the stronger fighter and had much more experience invested in his combat Charms. This helped to give him an advantage over the other two, but Obi-wan and Qui-gon managed to keep landing Withering attacks, which kept his Initiative from getting high enough for him to feel comfortable with throwing out a Decisive attack.

Paradox hired Zak Smith for an interactive Vampire novella or something. Smith also cyberstalked OPP writer David Hill for years, and when OPP complained to paradox they didn't give a fuuuck.

Nah, they'd be fine as a single charm, as long as everyone else got the same for combat.

Combat is charm bloat personified. Rather than doing the smart thing of broad, all encompassing effects, they decided to chip everything down even further, thereby making charm bloat even more of a fucking problem.

Initiative doesn't only represent advantage in a fight. Think of it as also representing cinematic focus.

Take of a movie with a big fight scene (the Lord of the Rings movies spring to mind). The camera will spend time on one character, say Aragorn. He's sitting at high Initiative so the camera follows him as he's dodging and ducking through the battle. He throws out a couple of small hits (building up more Initiative). Then the camera zooms in as he makes a big attack, stabbing an orc through the chest. We get a good glimpse of Aragon's face, or a behind-the-back shot of the orc with a sword through him. Then the camera moves on to the next person (representing that Aragorn has reset to base Initiative and does not have the same commanding cinematic presence that he did while he was at high Initiative).

I find it's more helpful to think of Initiative in those terms than an advantage over a single individual in combat.

>>I find it's more helpful to think of Initiative in those terms than an advantage over a single individual in combat.

Not that user, but the problem with Init is you can very easily single out a target that can't defend itself too well (until a GM cuts you off for beating someones ass too hard without killing them), reap a fast, huge init score, and then use it to crush a different opponent easily. It really is a "Super Meter" more or less.

If someone who can't defend himself is on the battlefield, he should be either a noncombatant or a trivial opponent, not a proper combatant.

Because it worked so great for 2e right?

There are like four charms that enhance a single attack in melee. The rest are stuff like multi attack, defense, counters, so on and so on. If you wanna talk about charm bloat look to craft.

Going for the weaker guy to build up Initiative to throw at the stronger guy is a legitimate tactic. At the same time though, since you're not attacking him and reducing his Initiative, that means he's free to build up Initiative to throw a big attack at you.

Did he really go that far?

No, Morke pretty much stuck to the idea in your post - that most of the gods your players are going to interact with are jerks, because the gods who aren't jerks are generally too busy doing their jobs to interact with the players.

I count three. And, although the game could do with more of an explanation for them, each of those charms has a clear role.

Excellent Strike is the "you will use this on every attack/Solars are just better than ordinary people" charm.

Rising Sun Slash is specifically for when a full excellency might not be enough. Maybe your GM is being a dick and throwing 13 Parry Mortals at you, or maybe you decided the best way to defend against an alpha striking Full Excellency Shining Point Bastard is to Full Excellency clash them right the fuck back. (I guarantee one of you will roll 20+ dice and get 3 successes.)

Perfect Strike Discipline is a cheap full excellency, because occasionally you want to use the previous charm.

This is the thing about this tangled mess of charms. It's hard to get into, but it's not actually a terrible mess of broken rules that collapses into 5% single perfect build and 95% irrelevant. It's not perfect, but it's more robust than that.

Those are boring charms but they are boring charms that the system is built around. Exalted 3 basically operates from the assumption that you will start with a 5 in your main skill and attribute and that boring attack booster charms will be your main source of mechanical growth in that field.

Wow Holden's first reaction to the public revelation of his firing is to insist he's going elsewhere for more pay?

top. fucking. kek.

Also Exalted 3e is garbage, even if Minton and Vance are righteous bros it's probably irredeemable at this point. 5 years to deliver a game that would have been marginally good in 1999. A lot of fucking bullshit for a community to put up with. I mean Morke scammed the Exalted community. Straight up. Holden's just an asshole who can't back up the shit he talks. But Morke is a fucking crook.

4e announced next year.

Excellent strike is more thematic reasons. It's an anti botch charm, you always get one success, and never any ones. Its saying 'the first step to being legendary swordsman badass is to learn to not fuck up. To do away with imperfection'

Whereas in 3E, apparently "you can write a book" is a good idea for a magical power. There's a great vast middle that's being excluded there.

I mean, while in a fistfight at the entrance of a club, does he chose to not punch the guy in front of him and instead pull out a gun to shoot someone else several dozen feet away? Ganging up I understand, putting a guy on the ropes only to capitalize on that advantage my murking someone else out of your combat is something else.

I can see how it could represent a hero who has a moment to breathe in combat that aids a friend in need, such as launching a timely arrow to kill a foe who is about to get a lucky hit in.

Thanks for the feedback, user. I suppose they were not wrong when they said that being ganged up on is dangerous even for Exalted.