/exg/ - Exalted General

Mediterrean in scope would likely be too small but yes the scale should be substantially smaller because the lack of shit like teleportation magic make the scale of Creation problematic from a logistics stand point.

Yes it needs to be big to handle the variety of geographic features as well as give Solars room to develop new emerging empires but by a similar token you need to have the scale at a size where you can actually take your newly trained elite soldiers into war vs other empires and the fuck-huge size of Creation makes that next to impossible.

Lol what

Imperial Legions are 5000 soldiers strong and per 3e core there was 40 legions at the time of the disappearance

So 200,000 troops + whatever house troops are present in the realm + militia (which are garbage)

Is that on nishkriya anywhere? Regardless, if it's that old I'm guessing those charmsets have long since been scrapped.

You don't need the Legions to protect the Blessed Isle except in one of those Peasant Rebellions. At which point you recall the Legions and crush it before going back out. You may lose the grip on the Threshold for a time but you did let a Peasant Rebellion happen. So 90% of the time the Legions are in the Threshold. When you look at home much Threshold is actually under direct Realm control versus just being a tributary its not that large. Sure if every Satrap rebels at the same time it would be an issue. But the Empress did not just rely on armies to control them. She used intrigue and she had control of the Realm Defense Grid. So a full scale revolt against the Realm by the Satraps was unlikely. However now that she is gone the chance increases dramatically.

Again compared to historical armies of that technology level the Realm is one of the largest ever. Again how large would you want the Legions to actually be?

I do downscale my map. my players would spend more time travelling than getting shit done. but mediterranian is too small.

>Again compared to historical armies of that technology level the Realm is one of the largest ever. Again how large would you want the Legions to actually be?
LArger than those of the Roman Empire, at the very least. because the area of the Threshold under the Realm's boot actually is fuckhuge, and because the Realm has to deal with external threats in addition to keeping the satrapies under control. Lunars with their barbarian hordes, Fair Folk and plain old mortal raiders and invaders are all things the Realm has to pretty routinely deal with.

Most of the time the Roman Empire had a half of the Troop size the Realm had. The Roman Empire only got to about 600,000 during the very end of the Empire when they were stabbing each other more then the outsiders. During Hadrian when Roman was at its largest it was 350,000 but only 150,000 were Legionnaires.

The Roman Empire was also a fraction of the size that the Realm was not to mention the Threshold Satraps.

Keep in mind that most maps in common use are designed for navigation purposes and heavily distort the relative size of Europe. So the reality is a Realm this size of Russia with population density similar to pre-industrial China is beyond fuckhuge and would require significant amounts of troops to protect even if you are assuming that the majority of the threats are unruly Threshold DBs witholding tribute from the Empress.

It requires a large number of ships to protect as it is an island. It has those ships. The only threats would be from within.

And again Alexander the Great and Ghangis Khan the two people with some of the largest land Empires ever and with a similar technology level were able to take most of the world with 100,000 men. And its not like they only fought pushover armies.

you can get to any /region/ of creation with a 10 day ride through hell, so I guess the world's improbable size depends largely on how many and well known your st decides entry points to cecelene are...at least for infernal or solar players, and to a certain point most other PCs...
and how widely used he feels is too much for when we're talking about the realm or anybody else

also sids have gates of yushan to teleport with, but I get the impression that's a bureaucratic nightmare even when using stationary ones.

and lunars have the wyld where distance is meaningless and could potentially shorten any journey to any edge...of course it could probably also make it take centuries or something so that's not a great option.

and none of this really helps with mortal armies or even realm forces led by dragonbloods

>What is Exalted?
An epic high-flying role-playing game about reborn god-heroes in a world that turned on them.

>That sounds retarded.

most of the world. I hove how people love saying that.

Alexander conquered Greece and Middle East.

Gengis Khan conquered mongolia and some parts of india, parts of china, russia etc.

This is the highest expansion of Rome.

And all these regions also tributary states inside their borders.

Well darn, I guess this thread isn't for you.

Have fun killing rats in the tavern cellar with your 1st level fighter or whatever.

all these maps also include tributary states inside their borders. I write like a tard.

Genghis Khan mostly controlled open plains too be fair. The Roman Empire was more impressive by far.

>Alexander conquered Greece and Middle East.

Which was most of the world at that time. All that was left of civilized nations at the time were India (which Alexander could have won against if his men were not faggots), China, and Carthage. Everything else was under Macedonian rule.

>Gengis Khan conquered mongolia and some parts of india, parts of china, russia etc.

True. But it was still the second largest empire ever.

Real life numbers and statistics don't matter. Please don't bring those into the conversation. The only thing that matters is that the Exalted authors fucked up.

>Which was most of the world at that time.
Correction: most of the world that was known to Greece. This was at least a couple thousand years after many civilizations had already risen and fallen worldwide.

>True. But it was still the second largest empire ever.
Yes, because the British Empire was larger.

>Correction: most of the world that was known to Greece. This was at least a couple thousand years after many civilizations had already risen and fallen worldwide.

All of which were in that area. There was nothing in America. Nothing in Africa save North Africa. Nothing really in Europe outside of the Mediterranean. Nothing in Northern Asia. Nothing in Australia. I mean beyond what he took there was only those areas along with India and China.

Yeah there were humans living in all these places but they rarely existed outside of a clan structure and no built civilization.

Yes, user. That is why people have been addressing those numbers and statistics, either questioning whether they're correct or offering reasons for why real life empires aren't really comparable to the Realm in all ways.

>That sounds retarded.

it does. but I think it's also the game's actual official tagline

I'm pretty sure there was urban civilization in the Horn of Africa at that time, at the very least. Can't really comment on America, though obviously there were cities and civilization there before the Europeans came. I have no idea what the state of America was during Alexander's time, though.

You're not taking into account the technological capacity of the Realm's armies. They effectively have firearms and magitech armor/weapons, which makes them FAR better equipped than the Roman Empire at any time period, and is likely even comparable to weaponry in our time period. In some cases (read: warstriders) superior by miles.

The numbers make total sense for the setting in question. We're talking hordes lead by elemental supermen, guided by destiny-manipulating supermen

>This was at least a couple thousand years after many civilizations had already risen and fallen worldwide.

none that really mattered. fuck all was honestly going on in the new world, all you had was that one evil blood empire of dragonkings sacrificing their neighbors to mad gods and stealing their land, and they got smacked down by a corn blight before anybody even noticed them. ignoring that continent seems fair enough when everybody knows what you mean anyway

The Realm's legions are armed with swords and spears and clad in armor comparable to those of other proper professional military forces of the Creation. Magitech is hardly abundant enough to be in common use. Warstriders are nice when they're wielded, but most of the time legionaries have similar weapons and armor as anyone else. They have an advantage over most enemies in their Exalted officers, but it isn't *that* rare for the other side to have some kind of supernatural power as well.

>I have no idea what the state of America was during Alexander's time, though.

Just the Olmecs slightly starting to build temples. Otherwise I think not much. Most of the awesome American stuff happened after Rome fell until the European's arrived.

>The Realm's legions are armed with swords and spears and clad in armor comparable to those of other proper professional military forces of the Creation.

> comparable to those of other proper professional military forces of the Creation

Yes, user. There are other properly trained and equipped armies in the Creation, though not as large as the Realm's legions, and their equipment is indeed comparable.

Lookshy does not count.

Mediterranean makes absolute sense, if you look at the cities of the map at face value. It's no bigger than Europe and north Africa put together. I can perfectly imagine that the pre-1e writers were told to create a Roman empire scaled world.

For the scope of the game, Mediterranean is an error. It should be at least earth sized.

Of course it does, but it is also not the only place with actual soldiers. You don't actually think that literally the entire Threshold aside from Lookshy just wields peasant militias with rusty spears or something, do you?

>It should be at least earth sized.
Well, that is pretty close to what it is now, isn't it?

Yes. Because they do. Well Paragon I guess not.

While it is only slightly smaller than earth it is almost double the land mass.

I liked 1e's thing about sunset and doomed glory and whatnot. but they lost that when they dropped the silly "this is prehistory for world of darkness" thing in favor of "an marysue is you"

Lookshy is substantially more advanced than the bulk of the Realm forces. For instance Lookshy has Gunzosha and a substantial amount of artifact weapons that are shogunate era.

Most of the realm legions are heavy infantry in reinforced jackets.

It's just that most legions have a nucleus of dragonblooded in superheavy plate with the ability to deploy some gundams if absolutely necessary.

Of course since Realm legions are infantry supported by some mounted auxiliaries they would get wrecked by mobile troops if caught on the open plains of the south or deep in the eastern jungles.

Unfortunately 1e and 2e made the Legions shitters by having the Bull of the North wreck 5 elite Tepet legions with the bulk of the Tepet DBs. Sad

Paragon, the mercenaries of Nexus and Gem, the guards of Sijan, in fact almost everyone in the scavenger land, a lot of pirates and nations in the west. And An-Teng. Everybody forget An-Teng.

There are many good, well equipped armies in Creation. They are obviously far smaller and usually don't have DBs, but they are trained and can hold their own.

Paragon has a proper military, Gem uses well-trained and well-equipped mercenaries, Harborhead is a proper warrior culture. Whitewall has a competent standing army. Medo has enough badass horse-warriors to be known for offering said warriors as auxiliaries for the Realm. Oh, and guess what? The locations detailed in the fluff are just examples or places of particular global or regional significance. The vast majority of the world's cities and kingdoms, including most of it's large cities and respectably sized, powerful kingdoms, aren't actually defined in canon. Several of those places will have their own standing armies, though they will obviously be supplemented with poorer-quality troops in times of need.

>Unfortunately 1e and 2e made the Legions shitters by having the Bull of the North wreck 5 elite Tepet legions with the bulk of the Tepet DBs. Sad

Assuming Bull had Tiger Warriors, thats pretty expected. Realm Troops gear isn't exactly that great, and Dragonblooded in 1e and 2e get completely shit upon boy Solars with little to no essence expenditure.

Hell, in 2E along a unit of Tiger Warriors trained up the max allowed and equipped with some regular armor and weaponry shits all over pretty much ever single bit of the Realm forces except the super special Empress made legion that she uses to defend her palace, that are imbued with all kinds of magical bullshit, and are *still* functionally shittier than Tiger Warriors.

I had to show several GM's that a by the book Realm force with standard armaments would get it's shit pushed in by a much, much smaller force of TW's led by a Solar.

DBs were never supposed to get turbogibbed by essence 2-3 solars certainly not whole legions of experienced DBs.

Pretty much the only way the Bull of the North narrative makes sense is if some Silver Pact/Gold Faction elders were backing up the Bull and the Bronze faction decided that Tepet needed to get fucked with the Empress disappearing.

It's the same problem that happens over and over in the setting.

Solars that could defeat the Primordials wouldn't lose to the DBs in the usurpation and Dbs that were able to gank 270 Solars more or less at once shouldn't get steam rolled by a single solar circle.

There were a lot more DB's back then, with better armaments, better teaching, and probably higher essences on average too, also being backed by Sids. And they all suffered major casualties, as was expected.

On the flip side, if you go in the other direction-Solars can lose easily to massed DB's, you get the other problem. Why need Solars, if Solars were meant to kill Primordials, if DB's massed up can easily gank them?

I'd honestly rather play a game where Solars can easily gank DB's (but the Ursupation is explicitly said to have been a straight up war of attrition with thousands of DB's dying in droves for every Celestial killed), than a game where a few DB's can easily gank Solars, because that calls into question why the fuck other Celestials even exist if they could've just been making more DB's and still ran over the Primordials. It's not like the Gods probably gave a shit about casualty rates as long as the job got done, after all, especially since DB's could just breed more of themselves.

if I recall there were 3 legions and in one book that Sidereal leader states he and Empress orchestrated that defeat to reduce Tepet's power.

Exalted has few major, regional empires. Prasad and Halta spring to mind, and perhaps Chiaroscuro and the Delzhan can be considered one. But most other places we've seen such as Paragon, Gem, Whitewall, Greatforks, etc are more like city-states that empires or even kingdoms, and the size of troop levies they can bring to bare will be rather limited in comparison.

well this is similar in a way i imagined Primordial War. Primordials not having a concept of time as humans do. They didn't see short time while humans do crazy shit in days, weeks.

Also Solars are crazy powerful. DragonBlooded only needed to bury them under their dead bodies until Solars run out of Essence.

Except for canonically speaking most of the Solars died day one at the massive banquet.

The elder Solars that managed to flee the massacre the first day took ages to track down but it's not like they didn't die due to massed attacks.

Unfortunately 2e's mechanics made it soe that even starting solars can curbstomp experienced DBs and once your get into the dreams of the first age charms set Solars are completely unkillable.

I like that 3e is no longer making starting solars invincible. This way you need 100-200 XP to be the invincible sword princess

>I like that 3e is no longer making starting solars invincible. This way you need 100-200 XP to be the invincible sword princess

Wholly depends upon your Supernal. If you're offensive enough, you're gonna crush opponents. If you're defensive enough, you're simply not going to die and can outlast them.

They did get toned down yeah, and fighting multiple opponents is now a complete bastard for ANYONE because the action economy is now completely fucked due to how most extra attack Charms function, but DB's are still likely to get shit on just going by the basic rules and supposed "One really experienced DB can probably trouble a starting Solar" thing being touted around. And after all, how many Tepet Arada's or Peleps Deled's can there be walking around?

This is a very silly line of thinking. Solars weren't responsible for the Primordials being defeated, the entire Exalted Host was. All 300 Solars, 400 (as of 3e) Lunars, 100 Sidereals, and likely hundreds of thousands of Dragonblooded. Along with who knows how many mortals, gods, elementals, and other such beings. Solars didn't 1v1 Primordials, that whole thinking came about because of one blurb about Mera strangling a Primordial with her bare hands but that just means she got the killing blow not the likely YEARS of buildup in which 1st Circle Demons were killed by the droves to get to the 2nd Circle Demons which were killed, seduced, or convinced to defect, all to position the 3rd Circles (and therefore the Primordial overall) into a fight they could possibly lose.

Further, saying "why didn't they make a ton more DBs!" is ignoring the fact that the UCS, Luna, and the 5 Maidens COULDN'T. They made the only Exalted they could make, they didn't design their Charms, they created what they could create. The UCS couldn't have traded his 300 Solars for 10,000 more DBs or anything like that.

The relevance and usefulness of the Celestials comes from their condensed power in comparison to DBs, there are some problems that don't allow you to park 100 DBs on it, where you need an individual. Along with the abilities that DBs can't emulate, DBs likely won't have the ability to Craft N/A Artifacts in 2 months no matter how hard they try or how many work together.

Assuming 1 in 10 make it to the next essence:
9000 essence 1
900 Essence 2
90 Essence 3
9 Essence 4
1 Essence 5

So with Solars it would be

300 Essence 1
30 Essence 2
3 Essence 3

I imagine before the breaking of the jade prison that is the ratio you would see before the solars got sniped by the wyld hunt.

It's not really silly at all, there used to be a pretty clear delineation of power here, and fluff had all types of Exalt's doing stuff. Lunars were diving into a Primordial to play volleyball with it's heart, for fucks sake.

The real reason DB's probably exist, is to fight 1st circle demons. Numerous, low powered spawn, to fight numerous, low powered spawn. The 2nd circles were probably for the Lunars, Sids, and Solars to deal with on their own (or bunches of DB')s, and the 3rd circle stuff was probably "Celestials beyond this point only", like a murderous ride at a water park.

Also you come into the whole problem of the rules never really supporting the fluff. Octavian for example, was supposed to be some kind of hot shit 2nd circle demon, and he would get curb stomped by any starting Exalt built even remotely to fight, for 2 whole editions. That left the impression that things weren't really as tough as the fluff made them out to be, because an actual combat optimized character would BTFO pretty much any NPC in the books outside of shit that purposefully had stats way out of line with anything else (Deathlords being the most common and extreme example) by themselves.

I never said there shouldn't be a clear delineation of power, but the idea that a Solar needs to be able to curbstomp dozens and dozens of DBs to be any use at all is ridiculous.

Things said in #Exalted. Basically Holden says a lot of things he shouldn't, either because this is literally the only thing he has going for him or as virtue signaling. It's hard to separate the two, frankly.

I wonder how he'd react to one of those super crazy feminists telling him it doesn't matter how much he signals, he's a cis white male scum and if he really wants to help the cause the best thing he can do is put a gun under his chin and pull the trigger.

Then he'd nice guy complain

What the hell does cis even mean?

I think the Essence 1-2 would be a lot more than 1 in 10, with Essence 2 being a fully grown average Exalt, with Essence 1 still being a rookie

You think you are what you were born.

That you fit the gender you were born with.

It's a nonsense term used to group all non trans people under a single banner.

This is a good primer video

youtube.com/watch?v=HTX9yP3fJNA

K. 1/2 getting from 1->2 and half as many each time gets

5000 Essence 1
3750 Essence 2
1094 Essence 3
147 Essence 4
9 Essence 5

That....still sounds fishy. I mean I would ask for logs but even those can be faked without much trouble. Besides even if that's the case it wouldn't change much. I doubt the current devs are just going to slap those charms onto the books and push them out, or at least not without going through all of them. I suppose we see how fast lunars come out.

In chemistry when you're talking about certain molecules you use trans to indicate that certain pairs of bonds are not on the same side of the molecule, they are across from one another. Cis is used to indicate they are on the same side.

Since trans was used already for transgender people someone thought it clever to use cis to indicate non-trans people, or people who identify with the sex they were born with instead of one that they weren't. Now, this would be the vast majority of people, typically you'd call that "normal" but if that's normal, trans is abnormal and we can't have that can we? So they insisted on labeling anyone who was born male and identified as male or born female and identified as female "cis".

>It's a nonsense term

No, it's an actual meaningful Latin prefix, originally meaning "on this side of". You're right about its use, however.

Again, it goes right into tiers of power here. Either stuff is strong enough it flat out requires something of a roughly equal tier to match it, or it can be taken out by things much lesser than it. If lesser things can overrun it, it brings into question why not keep making more of the lesser things, which require little actual investment to make.

Basically, it's a...I dunno the right word for it. Production issue? Something along those lines. It leads to fluff and rules clashing, and player wants VS game world clashing. I do think Exalted is hampered a lot by this idea that all these other Exalt types NEED to be playable for people, or for some reason NEED to be equalized in some way, and it leads to a lot of compromises or straight up sacrifices which kills a lot of the original flavor of the game that I enjoyed so much.

I'll note, and I could go dig up the quote if you want, that the devs said they aren't really operating on the idea of 'tiers' anymore. They also said that they realized people still would even if they werent.

So it's been appropriated?

...

That also seems like a mistake. You're not going to rub out the idea of "tiers" in a game where they were explictly part of the setting from day 1, and a lot of stuff in the game was even modeled around "3 tiers of stuff". It was a larger overarching theme. DB's, Celestials, Solars. 1st, 2nd, 3rd circle demons. Terrestrial, Celestial, Solar sorcery, etc.

solars being their own tier above celestial is not day one. it's powercreep and author favoritism

Again, fluff wise they couldn't just make more Dragonblooded, they made as many baseline as they could and kept producing as many as they could.

But into the mechanics of this, I am absolutely not wanting to equalize the splats, I don't think DBs should be equal to Solars but I'm not on the complete opposite late 2e side where a single combat specced Solar could reasonably solo hundreds and hundreds of DBs. Balance wise it is very possible to keep the idea that Solars are a big fucking deal in the setting while still having them die if they get mobbed by DBs, that doesn't rob them of their importance.

The reason Solars are important, and I use Solars as the main example but this could be expanded to other Celestials with smaller numbers, is that they have all that power condensed into a single person instead of spread out across numerous people. Sometimes you can't march an army somewhere. You can't send in 30 DBs to try and sweet talk the king into being on your side. Numbers aren't always applicable.

Regarding combat balance, it's very possible to set Primordials>Celestials>DBs into a Rock>Paper>Scissors scenario. One being with 200HP can deal with a natural disaster that deals damage to everything around it every round much better than 10 20HP people, even though the same amount of HP is split between them. The 200HP could survive 10 rounds of 20HP per round, but the 10 20HP people could only survive 1 round.

I always liked the idea of one murderblender solar outo f character creation versus two adult dragonbloods was an amazingly even fight. Adult dragonblood as in intermediate freshling and experienced.

Is it true that holden was fired?

Either he quit or was fired, I don't know. I've heard conflicting stories and Onyx Path probably won't be saying any more about it.

Holden and Morke are definitely out, though, with Vance and Minton replacing them as developers.

Given his major, public asshurt, he was definitely canned. No one who leaves a company on good terms under their own will is gonna cry like he has so far. He was definitely fired, and under bad terms.

Solars are the generic protagonist exalted type.

Conceptually they were supposed to be the champions, the leaders, the savants, the spymaster and the diplomats of the exalted world.

There was never supposed to be a massive power differential between Solaroids and the other Celestials. Lunars were supposed to be even partners for the Solars and Sidereals were supposed to be the viziers that helped the glorious Solar-Lunar demigods live in a way that aligned with the wishes of the incarna.

Of course the Solars went bugfuck insane and the lunars NOPED on out of there but that was largely the intent.

But we got a really shit 1e Lunar fatsplat and 1e Sidereals made some really really dumb decisions such as having a static charmset supplemented by Martial Arts as well as having a ridiculous small number of sidereals.

In retrospect if the desire was something along the lines of Solars = Lunars > Sidereals >>> DBs > Godblooded then the numbers of Sidereals should've been more numerous than the Lunars and Solars maybe 300 per Maiden and they could've safely occupied the middle ground of power levels.

But obviously at this point it's too late to go back and change all the shitty decisions of the past.

Maybe he quit but still rages in public? Not getting paid for products he didn't write in 4 years. So he said "fuck you bitches" and decided to badmouth Onyx Path Publishing. I seen this kind of people. Slacking and thinking they deserve salary.

Not saying it happened. But this is also a possibility. They would have canned him sooner or later but maybe he decided to feel better about himself and his worth by "You can't fire me. I quit."

It could be, but such public raging would also pretty much null his chances working anywhere else. You just can't do that, it's professional suicide.

What Celestial and Terrestrial Martial Arts styles favor the cestus and/or smashfists? Canon or homebrew, 1e, 2e, or 3e, whatever.

it didn't stop people in past from doing it. People don't think.

I think it would be better if Solars were basically the Leadership and Infrastructure Exalted. Make them good big bads but not as good at getting their own hands dirty.

I also think the original plan of making the Dragon-Blooded the game's lead splat would have led to a better game.

Does anyone have an image macro or a demotivator for the glorious solar emoji/twilight awesome face? I'm trying to explain Exalted to a friend and I can't find the thing.

>Not getting paid for products he didn't write in 4 years

>I didn't get anything published and put out for sale, but you owe me money anyway

Holden's a fucking Millennial isn't he?

this?

You should always get money for doing nothing, IMO, and more people should do it

But Holden is still a fucking fag and I'm glad he's gone

You really should stop using the term "Solaroid". It's giving you away. We know you're still mad: you were mad since before the inception of 3e. By now, you should have understood than we don't really give any fuck.

They were always the strongest of the fucking Exalted since 1e you dipshit.

No one is fucking arguing that you twatwaffle. They are arguing about how much stronger than others they should be.

>forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/1069023-ask-the-devs?p=1073407#post1073407

Oh my fucking god I hope they green-light the Storyteller's Guide.