/exg/ - Exalted General

>Once this Evocation has been used, it does not reset until Stormcaller’s wielder performs the proper ritual cleansing of the weapon with rice wine at the next new moon. She must have Occult 3+, or Occult 1+ and a demon-related specialty, to attempt the purification ritual. This is a difficulty 3 Intelligence + Occult roll.
>In addition to resetting this Evocation, the purification of Stormcaller tempers the storm devil’s fury. As long as a wielder with this Evocation perform the ritual purification successfully on the last new moon, sheathing Stormcaller without using this Evocation will not cause harm to her allies or any character she has a positive Tie towards.

I don't understand why performing the ritual is a roll, beyond the first time you do it. Surely once you know the ritual, you just know it. Why must you roll for it every time?

>Why must you roll for it every time?

Because it's presumably an at least somewhat complicated ritual, and just because you know how to do it doesn't necessarily mean you're guaranteed to do it perfectly every time.

This being Exalted, that doesn't make sense to me. In a game of heroes why should we have to worry about messing up a minor ritual once every month? It's a low difficulty roll too, the same difficulty 3 Int+Occult you'd roll to bind any of the 1st circle demons in the book with the spell. But the consequences for failure there include a demon running loose in the world. The consequences for failure here are...one or two of your charms don't reset. It seems like pointless rolling for minor consequences. I guess the devs like that sort of thing though.

Even a superstar basketball player sometimes misses shots, bro. The Exalted aren't a hundred percent infallible.

Also I should point out that if you mess the ritual up, that Charm can't be reset for *an entire month*, 'til the next new moon hits and you can attempt the ritual again. Not that minor of a consequence.

When the Exalt goes to purify his sword, it is time for his enemies to strike. How big of a penalty do you think being cursed, blinded and poisoned is when failing the ritual means you can't use your power evocations for a month?

Not to mention, the user might be badly wounded and still has to do the ritual or have to wait for the next new moon.

stfu notanautomaton

>This being Exalted, that doesn't make sense to me. In a game of heroes why should we have to worry about messing up a minor ritual once every month?
I agree with this guy. You're exalted and you shouldn't have to bother yourself with failing rolls.
As a matter of fact you should just auto succeed every roll you try.
You're EXALTED. You can nuke CITIES with a SPOON.
Maybe every session the GM can roll a d10 and get that number of counters that he can use to counter the auto success on rolls for added drama but that's it. Everything else succeeds .
I WANT TO FEEL LIKE AN EXALTED GODDAMNIT

Am I just imagining things or have we been getting more of these chucklefucks lately?

With information and things in general picking up again we're getting all sorts now.

I guess there's a downside to every good thing.

Try this one:
mediafire.com/#b54o6teut3fx6

>mediafire.com/#b54o6teut3fx6
>mediafire.com/#b54o6teut3fx6

Right, so these two are the same. When you clicked the link in the OP, were you logged into Mediafire? I wasn't and it took me to the front page.

It has more to do with how you and yourweapon relate to each other. At best you do that ritual every month in the same fashion. The roll ifself is more to see if you have made the necessary preparation, since being a wielder of a fabulous weapon like that, you're more likely to be a warrior than a sage, or in gameplay terms, the low treshold of the roll is mostly for people who go full murderblender, to signify at least some investment of your very self to the weapon by investing a bit in Occult and intelligence . The Artifact defines the characters story as much as his abilities and personality do. Stormbringer wants to define your abilities as well, at least to some extent.
That's what I get out of that at least.

It's not about Exalted having to succeed at every roll.
It's more like that is a minor inconvenience that you execute by rote. Even if an Exalted coincevably can trip over his feet and fail the ritual there's no reason your character should. Dice rolls should be used to adjudicate an outcome when stakes are high and a failure has as much dramatic impact as a success; losing access to your power during downtime because you rolled the wrong numbers is just boring.

>makes a new op
>shit doesn't work as intended
How very Exalted.

Is it the Mediafire link? Are you logged into Mediafire?

mediafire.com/folder/b54o6teut3fx6/Exalted_3e

This is the proper link.

It should also probably have the Ex3 comic: Tale of the Visiting Flare in there.

I'll throw in the fiction Anthology while I'm at it. Can you think of anything else that should go in? Charm trees, maybe?

why would I log in to Mediafire?

are you not using a VPN either?

>why would I log in to Mediafire?

Nevermind, there's a fixed link at >are you not using a VPN either?

Nope.

you shouuuuld be~

Recommend me some good, free, ones. Which one do you use?

Not that guy, but I think the rule for VPNs is that if you're not paying for the product you are the product.

>good
>free
Choose one.

If you're willing to shell out, Freedome is the best you can get. If not, the best you can get is fucked because they'll be selling your data.

Yeah, could throw in MadLetter's Charm Cascades.

Solar Charms:
madletter.net/rpg/exalted/cascades/v3/cascade_v3_all.pdf

Martial Arts:
madletter.net/rpg/exalted/cascades/v3/ma/cascade_v3_all_ma.pdf

They're up, can you think of anything else?

Fair enough. Take them down and put them somewhere else?

Could just make a new account and upload to that.

Right, does this one work?

mediafire.com/folder/5mqvjg2fl1vb2/Exalted_Ex3

I also simply changed the display name on my other Mediafire. Probably won't do shit, but it's no longer identical to my Reddit and OPP accounts, at least.

...

I'm going to interpret that as not being sarcastic in order to sate my ego. Having DHCP enabled also gives me a dynamic IP, which is also good, I think? Does /g/ have threads on this kind of thing?

honestly wouldn't be all THAT surprised if this became a solar innate power in 4e ;)

Fire Orchid was supposed to be in her early 50's if I remember correctly. She was a retired, career soldier.

Tell /g/ you're scared of the botnet and that you need help. They might also have guides.

hey /exg/ how can I be the speediest solar around in 3e?

Yeah. Being even a MILF instead of just a greying, aging woman is thanks to the effects of Solar Exaltation.

All the Athletics charms that increase speed.

Living Wind Approach lets you beat the Maiden of Journeys in a foot race.

That is, of course, assuming the Maiden of Journeys doesn't have a similar Charm.

Oh, and it can only be used once per scene, so only during one interval of a foot race. It is still obviously an extremely useful Charm for a Solar speedster, don't get me wrong.

Hatewheel posted:

Solars are myth-heroes. It is a myth-hero's purpose to subvert mythos and thereby define it. Solars fight, destroy, and ultimately recreate the status-quo, doing so by conquering the obliquely magical through acts of sheer will, force, and skill writ-large, like every myth-hero in literature. IE, a Solar built to win a foot race will win a foot race with the very Maiden of Journeys. The Solar will outrun Death itself.

Okay, but the Solar won't do that just by using Living Wind Approach. I'm also bothered by Morke stating that the Solar *will* win rather than that he *can* win. There are plenty of stories where the hero's victory isn't actually guaranteed, not in-story - from an outside perspective, from the reader's perspective, it is clear that he will win, but that's not guaranteed "in-setting".

>I'm also bothered by Morke stating that the Solar *will* win rather than that he *can* win.
jeez, nitpicky much? Go read the 3e book and tell us whether this is an edition that makes Solars autowin all the time against any opposition no matter what. Spoiler: they don't exist, and Morke never wanted them to exist, so stop trying to find grand conspiracies hidden in irrelevant word choices.

Living Wind Approach always wins, except if contested by Living Wind Approach. Checkmate.

user, I just specifically pointed out that Solars don't actually autowin on foot races, not even with the Essence 5, Athletics 5 pinnacle of speed Charms that Living Wind Approach is. It doesn't exactly make sense to claim that I'm looking for some grand conspiracy. Morke's choice of words, in this and other statements he's made about Solars, annoys me. That is all.

It wins once a scene on one interval of a foot race. It doesn't let you win an entire race, nor an entire chase.

>user, I just specifically pointed out that Solars don't actually autowin on foot races, not even with the Essence 5, Athletics 5 pinnacle of speed Charms that Living Wind Approach is. It doesn't exactly make sense to claim that I'm looking for some grand conspiracy. Morke's choice of words, in this and other statements he's made about Solars, annoys me. That is all.

They're the truth though.

Now repeat after me:

"Solars are not sometimes-sorta the best, they are always the best."

Morke ain't even a dev anymore, dude.

One of the ideas I remember Holden mentioning years ago was that different Exalted have certain things they're really good at, Solars are special because they can be just as good in those areas as the other Exalted for whom that is their specialty. But, Solars aren't better in that area than the other Exalt is.

So while Solars are always "the best" there are certain areas where they have to share being the best with the other guys who are also the best at that thing.

But who fucking knows if that's going to matter or not. Holden and Morke have jack shit to do with Exalted, and Vance and Minton might have somewhat different ideas on how this whole thing goes down.

Ironically Morke had originally dismissed this point with that very "no, Solars aren't the sometimes the most powerful, conditionally the strongest Exalted, they are *the best Exalted* flat out" post.

Which goes back to the mantra

"Solars are not sometimes-sorta the best, they are always the best."

Even with new devs, I heavily believe this will remain the same.

The thing you have to remember though is that Morke didn't mean, for example, Solars are better at shapeshifting than Lunars, or better at wielding Fate effects than Sidereals. What it means is that, say, a Solar fighting a Lunar isn't autofucked if that Lunar shifts into a river dragon.

I'm personally fine with "Solars are always on top" so long as the gap between "the best" and "the next" is narrow enough to keep fights exciting and meaningful.

Agreed

A specialized Solar can become the very paragon of whatever field he chooses. A single Solar isn't the best at *everything*.

That is something usually lost in these power level discussions. They tend to be about some platonic ideal Exalt with every possible charm - it doesn't actually work that way, every Exalt is an individual.

In mine I generally assume a Solar and X contesting in a field the Solar is specialized in. Tends to be combat a lot, because combat usually is first to come up.

that would be much better than the stupid "i is da best at evraything at once! lulz" nonsense people generally spew

...

At the same time, "every Exalt is an individual" only works on the story-telling level where one author has total control over the narrative.

While the story is integral to an RPG, so is the ability of each player to have an equal share of telling it - and that comes down to mechanical fairness and role protection.

As long as "playing a Solar" doesn't become equal to "having the most narrative power" or "taking design space from other character types" - then it's not an issue if they're technically the strongest.

Otherwise it's worse than DnD's caster supremacy - because at least that was just incompetence and not: "Magic Heroes are all about unfathomable cosmic power, so obviously they should be stronger than other characters at the same level, and their players should just be glad to be the supporting cast of their glorious Wizard leader".

Or hell, it'd have been easy to balance characters around Essence. Then say "Mortals can go up to Essence 3, Terrestrials to Essence 6, Celestials to Essence 9, Solars up to Essence 10+" - thus preserving Solars as the strongest, but making it so that any given party is actually balanced because most games will cap at Essence 5 anyway.

>Otherwise it's worse than DnD's caster supremacy - because at least that was just incompetence and not: "Magic Heroes are all about unfathomable cosmic power, so obviously they should be stronger than other characters at the same level, and their players should just be glad to be the supporting cast of their glorious Wizard leader".

I thought that DID stem from actual design intent; the Ivory Tower paradigm of system mastery.

It was kinda-accidental. They wanted some superior choices to reward systems mastery, and the Forgotten Realms books were ALL about super wizards being amazing - but they *also* didn't know what the fuck they were doing.

IIRC, their idea of deliberately bad feats were things like Toughness and their example of a too-strong feat was Power Attack.

Casters being so overwhelmingly strong never really occurred to them because they played them in the super-generic party of archetypes kind of way that all the book fluff went with - where Fireballs were cast regardless of them being mechanically shit, because Wizards Cast Fireball.

So while Ivory Tower design was their plan, they fucked it up so badly it *still* became Ivory Tower design... just one they never showed any signs of understanding.

He also said that they aren't working with tiers before, and to not be surprised if you see charms from other exalt types that seem more powerful than charms of solars.
I take it he meant things like the lunar charm that lets them immediately cast a sorcery.

By my understanding, this is all quite accurate.

And sad.

It's an RPG. Hopefully the people playing together aren't assholes. If a Lunar wants to be good at X, it would be kind of dick for the Solar player to make his character focused on X so he can make the Lunar player kiss his ass.

A lot of these conversations seem to be based off the idea that Exalted is some kind of PvP game with the players out to murder-fuck one another one. Instead the point is that the players and ST work together to make a game that's fun for everyone.

Building a character designed to butt-fuck over another player ain't cool, and the ST should tell that asshole to knock it off.

>it'd have been easy to balance characters around Essence. Then say "Mortals can go up to Essence 3, Terrestrials to Essence 6, Celestials to Essence 9, Solars up to Essence 10+" - thus preserving Solars as the strongest, but making it so that any given party is actually balanced because most games will cap at Essence 5 anyway.

I like the concept, but I don't like that specific implementation. I'd give all Exalt types an Essence range, mortals at 1, Terrestrials at 2-4 depending on experience and spiritual training, Celestials at 3-5, and Solaroids at 4-6. That way, a GM can say "I'm running an Essence 4 campaign, so it'll be balanced if you play a renegade Immaculate Master, or an experienced but not quite elder Lunar, or a newly exalted Solar". Players would be able to progress within that specific bracket, but they wouldn't go from Essence 4 to 5 in the course of ordinary play. That'd be the domain of the shounen-style time skip and the sequel campaign with some returning characters and some new ones.

Exalted is not about mechanical fairness. You pick an Exalt for their themes and story, if you play in a mixed circle then part of that will be exploring how one Exalt is simply stronger than another. If that isn't your thing, don't play a mixed circle. What should happen is that the storyteller gives each player equal attention regardless of the disparate strength of the party.

>Otherwise it's worse than DnD's caster supremacy

DnD starts from the (false) premise that each class is equal, Exalted is upfront about the inequality.

>Or hell, it'd have been easy to balance characters around Essence. Then say "Mortals can go up to Essence 3, Terrestrials to Essence 6, Celestials to Essence 9, Solars up to Essence 10+" - thus preserving Solars as the strongest, but making it so that any given party is actually balanced because most games will cap at Essence 5 anyway.

This makes zero sense in the setting, and would result in a terrible game. I don't think you even like Exalted.

Solars aren't supposed to be so overwhelmingly more powerful than other Exalted that mixed parties can't be gatherings of equals, though. That just isn't the way things were initially presented in 1E. Solars are the greatest among the Exalted, sure, but 1E core stated that Sidereals made better scholars than Twilights and mentioned Full Moon Lunars in the same breath as Dawns when talking about the most fearsome Exalted warriors. Solars being in a tier of their own is not a core part of Exalted.

>Sidereals made better scholars than Twilights

I doubt this, at least, will survive. Except as a function of the Sidereals simply having access to more sources of lore than your average Twilight.

This is an interesting idea.

I'd have gone with 'Essence is balanced against essence BUT in-universe different exalts have it easier'. So most DB will never leave essence 1 and raising it is a hard, rigorous process. For Solars it's easy and simple and most that survive will quickly rise in essence.

PCs are all equally able to do so, however.

This is my waifu.

your waifu is a FILTHY ANATHEMA

It turns out Holden and Morke aren't just bad people, they're also misogynist members of the patriarchy.

theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/04/why-the-patriarchy-hates-the-moon/521853/

Your move, Vance & Minton. Only you can correct this tremendous social injustice by making Lunars better than Solars.

Nigga we're fucking talking about Exalted, why the fuck are you showing me this shit

I know its amazing right

>shounen-style time skip
So Dragonball is Essence 4 (Goku as a tiny kid able to have exciting fights against assassins and demons and armies), Dragonball Z is Essence 5 (humans are no longer relevant in serious fights, monsters need to be the strongest it's possible for them to be in order to keep up with the saiyans), and Dragonball Super is Essence 6 (go saiyan or go home).

Personally I'd kind of prefer Essence not being a thing, with all Charms being theoretically avialble even to newbie Exalts but obviously being gated behind their Ability/Attribute requirements and prerequisite Charms. Spirits should still have Essence as normal, but all types of Exalts sort of breaking the rules and being able to reach the ultimate power right after Exaltation would be cool and appropriate as fr as I'm concerned. This would kind of be the exact opposite of what you guys are suggesting, with the differences bewteen various kinds of Exalted being specifically about Charms of some Exalts being more powerful than those of others.

Oh right, so we can assume they got fired because they were taking to long but did we ever learn if it was because they were just dragging their feet from personal life problems or something else.

Isn't forbidden love the best?

>Solars aren't supposed to be so overwhelmingly more powerful than other Exalted that mixed parties can't be gatherings of equals, though.

I never said that, don't put words in my mouth. What I said is that Exalted is not about mechanical fairness. Solars are not overwhelmingly more powerful than other Celestial Exalted, but a Dragon-Blooded is absolutely going to be overshadowed in a mixed circle.

>That just isn't the way things were initially presented in 1E.

They weren't said to be in a tier of their own in 1e, but they WERE said to be the most powerful. This is 3e, however.

And guess what? In 3e it says that the Solars are the mightiest among the chosen. Its hard to say how this will be expressed mechanically in 3e, but judging from Mastery and Supernals I expect Solars will both have an edge over other exalted in their field of specialty, and get access to the whole tree right from the word 'go'.

It wouldn't surprise me if, for example, Sidereals could use their Lore charms to change fate and call up facts from spirits, but they would actually be worse than Solars at succeeding at lore rolls.

I can't wait for DB's to come out so we can finally put some of these power level arguments to rest. They're probably just going to get replaced with arguments of a different type though.

If we can't agree on how significant the imbalance between a Solar and other kinds of exalted are, can we at least agree that 'tier 2 exalted' (non-Solar/Abyssal/Infernal, non-Terestrial exalted) should be balanced?
Like, if a Lunar, Sidereal, Alchemical, Liminal, Getimian, and Exigent were all (somehow) in the same circle, shouldn't they all be mechanically equivalent/balanced?

Yeah I fully expect them to be too powerful for some, not powerful enough for others, and generally nobody to be happy.

Maybe? There would probably be weird stuff in any mixed circle, not to mention how strange it would play IC. Like a Sidereal being able to go to Heaven whenever he wants but the Lunar would get murdered, or none of the splats really having a cohesive theme all mixed together beyond some justice league thing.

Obviously there would be issues based on the individual quirks of each exaltation, but wouldn't you agree that there's no reason for a Lunar to be significantly better than an Alchemical the same way a Solar is significantly better than a Lunar?

Holden and Morke being fired for failing to do their job isn't relevant here. It's how they supported the patriarchy and kept the moon goddess down.

Well, that is hard to say. The advantage of the Alchemicals in 1e was that they could customize themselves to fit any scenario, but if they weren't prepared for something they were fairly weak because their charms were slightly weaker than other celestials and they could only have so many equipped at one time.

So it might very well be the case that a Lunar is significantly better than an Alchemical in a mixed circle, if the latter doesn't have access to the magical infrastructure or assumed downtime to change their charms.

But that really remains to be seen in 3e. I suspect that mixed circles will turn out fine in 3e, barring Dragon-Blooded, and most people won't notice that a Solar is slightly better at X than their Lunar, because the charm trees will be asymmetrical.

If Lunars have a significantly different charm tree than Solars that is also fun to play, thats all anyone will care about.

No. People are always going to find something to complain about. This just affects how effective telling them to fuck off will be.

If new Lunars are not TAW then they can fuck off in all honesty.

3e has given me no faith for Lunars overall, and I doubt the book will change my mind.