Exalted General - /exg/: Fukkin' Solars Edition

>What is Exalted?
An epic high-flying role-playing game about reborn god-heroes in a world where pants are optional.
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
>3E Core and Splats
mediafire.com/folder/b54o6teut3fx6/Exalted_3e

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

>Other Ex3 Resources
pastebin.com/fG1mLMdu

>Resources for Older Editions
pastebin.com/GihMPwV8

Question of the thread: What's the douchiest Exalted character you've ever played?

Other urls found in this thread:

drive.google.com/file/d/0B7FqViticwNuam9lbVJBWFhJM2s/view
mega.nz/#!Qwx2RI6A!Mg8QNXd0XpVnD96opMLzpN3fvd9i7yHPpNCz1zDhlQ0
edexalted.com/default.asp
forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/1069023-ask-the-devs?p=1080599#post1080599
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Part 2 of the Arms of the Chosen Preview recently dropped: drive.google.com/file/d/0B7FqViticwNuam9lbVJBWFhJM2s/view

Hm? Gnomon's ratings are the same as any other Medium artifact weapon. I think they just printed it again for ease of reference.

realized that right after posting. I thought it was giving those +3 as a bonus. I need sleep

Have the devs ever said anything about Craft (Genesis) appearing in 3e?

gnomon looks cool as fuck

I don't think it will, but since we now have developers that actually engage with the fanbase through means other than sarcasm and vague hintwank you might actually want to actually ask the devs if it will. And if not, what kind of crafting would be needed to make things similar to what you used to need Genesis for.

i second this

goddamned timeshifting staff with violet colors

Is it just me or is Gnomon look very powerful for a 4? I mean I am not complaining but I feel like I have been gimping artifacts if this is a level 4.

ditto honestly I have been doing N/A at only moderately better than this. Though I have separated n/a artifacts into 3 tiers

I don't think N/A should be stronger than 5 in direct combat. They should act on a larger scale instead.

>3 tiers
what exactly are these three tiers and how big is the difference between them?

Fuck, it is. It's the return of the cool evocations from the leak. I am consciously hyped.

well low tier N/A was Just like a 5 dot but with Grander reach. Mid tier covers Powerful utility items and powerful unique weapons. Examples being a sword whom could trade automatic successes you would have got from charms letting you add effects to them instead or a Cloak that hid your motes being spent from being detected by manses and other such effects.

High tier was things that are super hard to reproduce and can't be made by wyld shaping or the like. And it is Things on par with the defense grid.

I do sorta wish they'd skipped Arms in favor of working on exalts. Get out the core setting exalts (DB, Lunars, Sids) before doing splatbooks so you are sure how each exalt will interact with it's artifacts.

I'm not too concerned about that because I feel like in getting these toys out you can set some flavorful groundwork. Like, Gnomon is absolutely awesome for Sidereals as well as sneaky Solar types.

I dunno. DBs are the most artifact-heavy faction in the setting, so it seems sensible to have the Big Book O'Toys out between it and the Default PCs corebook.

Yeah. I'd put it at a 5. I feel like they've marked it down hard for not having a grand killstick statline.

>I feel like they've marked it down hard for not having a grand killstick statline.

That doesn't make sense. Heavy weapons are garbage in 3e. Now if what you meant is dual-wielded short killstick statline, then I'd agree.

plz no bully sidereals

Is it just me, or does it prematurely terminate. What happens if the wielder achieves ten legendary social goals?

Honestly I expect that large chunks of that is now covered by Sorcerous Projects.

would you allow a 2e flaw similar to intolerance, or like an inverted virtue-specialty, where instead of the penalties on social attacks you'd treat that class of people/beings with 1 or more dots of compassion penalty?

(for example when it comes to beastmen, mutants, atabeasts, and nonhuman sentients your compassion is 1 lower since they're not really people)

and if so, how would you balance it?

that'd have been nice.

but I get the feeling this is meant to be even more solar focused than previous. (didn't one of the devs describe all other splats as props for the solar's story?)

when choosing armor what's better?

soak +9L/+9B? or an increase in hardness from 2 to 5?

and does this answer change between 2e and 2.5?

>not bullying the cutie bluesid waifu
what are you? Gay?

I think the goal is that 5-dots should be really setting-warping in some way. A sword that murders armies is that moreso than a staff that makes you better in personal combat and gives you tasty fruit.

>Question of the thread: What's the douchiest Exalted character you've ever played?

Pretty much pic related, with a dash of sending people to murder factories to rip out their souls for my own purposes. Being a Solar is fun.

It's very powerful in a singular manner, making it useful for fighting one person at a time. The three 5 dot artefact weapons that we've seen so far (Black Wind, Stormcaller, and Volcano Cutter) can wipe out entire armies and city blocks with a single Evocation. Gnomon just doesn't shape up in comparison.

Apologies for this, but does anyone happen to have a suggestion for a character creation program for 2.5? I tried Anathema, but the download doesn't seem to be working. As in, I hit download, and then it takes me to a page which takes too long to respond, and doesn't give me a download.

So I was hoping someone might have a suggestion for a different character software, or some way to get ahold of the program.

Anyone played a gunner character with Golden Exhalation and/or Righteous Devil Style?

Emerald Circle Bump

If the guy who was going to play a Zenith in my game never comes back, the circles NPC Zenith will be a Righteous Devil stylist.

I know the Night caste player in my group sent me a link to this. "I want this!" Being able to start combat, make a free decisive attack against someone and not reset to base Initiative (which is always really high at the start of the battle) would be like gold too him.

the night caste players are always like this though. i guess that caste just attracts those kinds of players.

It helps that it'd be great with Stealth to open combat with. As an aside, charms that create a reflexive clash like Fervent Blow attack would still work against the time stop abilities, right?

I assume so, though it makes stunting it hilarious.

>Hilarious

How so? "The wilder of Gnomon slips and falls on my blade" or something else entirely?

>To be frank, I'm glad I could defeat you quickly
>Only I, DIO, should have power over stopped time

What Exalt type and build?

The hardness lets you ignore anything that would have done 5 damage or less and doesn't work on aggravated. The soak subtracts from raw damage and the lethal soak number also applies to aggravated if it's from armor.

Characters have natural soak based on their stamina but not natural hardness which is mostly from armor. hardness doesn't stack but soak does.

Since Fervent Blow is Decisive only, I was thinking more of a "I suddenly find my spear protruding through the chest of an old man wearing elegant robes and an odd looking staff."
I should really catch up on this, there's probably some choice ideas for some evocations.

>2.5e
butwhy.txt
mega.nz/#!Qwx2RI6A!Mg8QNXd0XpVnD96opMLzpN3fvd9i7yHPpNCz1zDhlQ0

>mega.nz/#!Qwx2RI6A!Mg8QNXd0XpVnD96opMLzpN3fvd9i7yHPpNCz1zDhlQ0

Curiosity. I've never tried any edition, and all the hype on the net seems to revolve around 2e/2.5, so I figured I'd see what the heck it's all about.

Thank you for the link, by the way!

Where are you visiting that there is any hype about 2/2.5?

Er, all the hype about Exalted in general. The whole Perfects Block Everything! and all that. ... My situation's weird, okay?

It is not /recent/ hype, I feel compelled to point out. Also, it might actually be about 1e, for all I know.

... I have no idea what I'm doing, basically, and want to figure out.

Would you allow a player to make a character who exalted purely because he really, really wanted to? Like

>Be son of a merchant
>Get attacked by bandits
>Solar Circle rescues you, explains a little about what they are during the night, effectively be a one-off NPC for a party.
>Become desperately obsessed with becoming one, ultimately exalting purely because of sheer jealous willpower.

Go 3e. Just go 3e. If you have never played Exalted before go 3e. The only reason anyone plays 2.5 still is if your splat is not Solars. And as soon as other splats start coming out for 3e the reason to play 2.5 is gone.

2.5 made one of the worst (although nowhere near the actual worst) systems ever somewhat playable. And I mean somewhat. Do not touch 2.5. 1e or 3e are your only real options. And 1e is superior in lore introduction but not in system. So read the 1e lore. Then add in the new places of the 3e lore (Dreaming Sea, Caul, minor cool new city-states). Ignore 2e lore. Then learn the 3e system.

No.

Isn't that the life goal of the Perfect of Paragon? Sounds like a good way to end up as an Infernal.

>Being Princess Morebucks or Syndrome [Incredibles] as an Infernal

I did not know I wanted this. That sounds like it'd make a good resentful petty villain.

No, but it sounds like a good background for an Infernal or an Abyssal.

I mean. Some of the stuff I'm curious about is the other splats. I've strongly considered looking through the various homebrew, but I feel like unless I know what the actual 'baselines' of those are, using the homebrews would be a bad idea.

So I probably will use 3e, but I still want to know how the previous editions actually worked, so I can understand what the hell people are talking about when they talk about them. I wanted the Anathema because it helps me get a grip on the system if I've made characters for it.

Make them a Fiend caste to maximise the petty narcissism.

>N/A Artifacts are plot devices that operate almost on the level of Storyteller fiat, like the Eye of Autochthon. Their Evocations aren't just regular Evocations cranked up to a higher power level. They work on a higher scale and can transcend many of the implicit limitations of the setting. You'll see some examples in Arms.

Oh thank god, super duper n/a evocations would have recreated the elder problem.

Lunars have never been done right so unless you are a furfag ignore them and hope 3e does not fuck them up. Sidereals have been done right in spirit but never in system and are one of my personal favorite Exalts. However they should only be played by experienced Exalted players. Dragonblooded are cool enough but weaker in general in everything. 2e's book was basically a single page saying read 1e's Dragonblooded book written over a couple hundred pages. It was also written before the core 2e book was finished. Abyssals are Solars with black paint and cause excessive blood explosions. Infernals were pretty cool but some fans of that group ruined it for everybody. Also I would only recommend experienced Exalted players play this for maximum enjoyment. Alchemicals are amazing but are nearly impossible to get working in main setting as they have their own setting that can interact with the main setting but I have yet to see be done right.

For a first game you want to play Solars to get into the groove of things and feel like a badass at all times. Then later on you want to start exploring the other Exalted niches and find your actual favorite Exalt types. Sometimes people pick Solars as their favorite though.

edexalted.com/default.asp

this one is great(i like it better than anathema anyway), the only thing that'd make it better is if it had fancy flowcharts like anathema or if it had plans for a 3e version

According to the devs, that's an editing fragment to be chopped out of the final version and can be safely ignored.

I can't wait to start crafting all that shit.

solars are boring as shit. at least be a dragonblood or something

desu Fiends are most interesting Infernal.

I see, thank you. So start the players on Solars 3e, and hope the other books come out before the campaign finishes? And just read the 1e books for the lore? Also; are any of the splat homebrews any good? I was hoping to use the other splats for, well, fleshing out the setting and stuff, and while the QCs exist, I feel like I'd get through them too quickly, and want to throw different types of characters at the players.

Bookmarking, thank you!

>Isn't that the life goal of the Perfect of Paragon?

It is, yes, and in private I wouldn't be surprised if he occasionally has breakdowns of "I WANNA BE AN EXALT I WANNA I WANNA I WANNA"

I'd give him a bit more credit than that.

Like, I'd imagine that one of the Southern Deathlords offered him a suicide-ritual that would exalt him as an Abyssal and he told them to go fuck themselves. He doesn't just want to be an Exalt, he wants to rule Creation. Just any old exaltation wouldn't be good enough for him, it HAS to be Solar.

>solars are boring as shit
I've never understood this opinion

Infernal Exaltation seems really likely for him.

SWLiHN probably approves of his methods already - and while a new Domain of Stately Order may still have a little bit too much free will, it's a great improvement.

Or Abyssal, after he's finally killed by some PC's after his Staff.

>and hope the other books come out before the campaign finishes

correct this line to "before I die"

"sorry to interupt, but perhaps we can come to an arrangement?"

followed by him reflexively squashing the poor (eddy posessed)healbug
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO dahamnit why'd i do that"

Solars are not boring at all. Fuck you!

Fucking shit how long ago was this? Dammit I probably missed all the hype shit already
Fucking around with species is explicitly listed as a thing you can do with sorcerers workings.

Dropped in the most recent Monday Meeting.

>Fucking shit how long ago was this?

His post was right when it happened.

So what exactly made 1e fluff better than 2e fluff?

Put simply, less retardation overall. It wasn't perfect, but it was the purest representation of Exalted and what it was supposed to be about.

2E was Exalted as viewed by people who didn't really play 1E, and 3E so far seems to be someones homebrew campaign with the word "Exalted" written hastily on the cover before it was shoved out the door. It's closer in spirit to 1E than 2E was, but it changes so much stuff and alters a few fundamental setting rules to the point it's really not the same world anyway.

2e fluff is generally considered bad for two reasons. First it tired to explain everything rather then leave any mystery or storyteller interpretation. While you would think more information is a good thing it leads you down a path where people are being controlled by nanomachines and the sun is a giant airship. Second the magitech influence. Straight out of the gate you had magitech everywhere. Now I love magitech so I did not mind that to much but it was awfully dull magitech. 1e had magitech sure but it was more subdued and storyhooks existed but remained vague and up to the storyteller how they wanted to take it.

Plus the writing itself was... I don't know more flavorful. Savage Seas was basically a sailing book. It actually taught me a lot about sailing and how things worked in Exalted. It was just an introductory but I still found it very helpful for running a game with ships. Games of Divinity is considered one of the best books in the Exalted line. So that is why mostly.

Sounds like a Zenith to me, especially if you train to exhaustion, then pick a fight with a meteor shower.

Wouldn't exalting wipe away all of the oaths sworn to the sceptre? Basically on exalting Paragon riots, massive loss of life, becomes a shadowland.

The problem with 2nd edition fluff was that Chambers (the developer) specifically did not want new ideas that diverged too much from 1st edition. What he wanted to see in 2nd edition, was for 2nd edition to primarily focus on expanding what 1st edition had to offer. This ended up with 2nd edition spending waaaay too much time going into a lot a lot of detail on stuff that really wasn't important. Or it would confirm things that had merely been tossed out as a possibility by other authors (like the Three Sphere's Cataclysm, which in First Edition was presented as an apocryphal story whereas 2nd edition confirmed it as fact).

So overall, while 2nd edition fluff was actually pretty close to 1st edition fluff, it often had a lot more details and very often those details weren't terribly good and actually made stuff worse than what we had had before.

Sometimes when you get all the details, those details make things seem less wondrous and neat than if it hadn't gotten them.

Exalted is, on paper, a game about playing Illiad, Odessy, Gilgamesh, Journey to the West and so on.
In exalted 2e you could invade thorns from a giant aerial command base straight out of the avengers, zip lining in mortals wearing power armor and wielding laser cannons.

>Straight out of the gate you had magitech everywhere

That is a bit of a misconception. It wasn't everywhere. It was more common than 1E, but still wasn't common at all. I think most people just were influenced, overly so, by one of the first supplements being a magitech book.

So... it got a little bit Hindu?

It was the second book in the line. And it was filled with nothing but magitech.

>you could invade thorns from a giant aerial command base straight out of the avengers, zip lining in mortals wearing power armor and wielding laser cannons.

To be fair, I think the Illiad would be have been a lot cooler if that had been Odysseus' plan instead of the stupid wooden horse.

Like I said, people were overly influenced by it being the first supplement. Also it was the magitech book, what did you expect to see in it other than magitech?

So First Edition was Greek mythology and Second Edition was Hindu mythology.

It also increased in prevalence towards the end of the line. Somebody already mentioned the Daystar, for example.

I think that Factory cathedrals were a great problem here. Allowing players to have access to first age wonders incredibly quickly.

Makes me wonder how power amour will work in Ex3 with every artefact being completely unique.

Feel like running this for my group in a week or two, but they only really play 5e. I'll kind of be learning it myself so is there anything in particular that might make the crossover easier?

My players generally tend to be glory hogs or mass murdering lunatics anyway so I figure they'll have fun.

It comes from the same place as people who stop doing something once everyone else is doing it. Everyone's a Solar, so you've got to pick something more obscure to demonstrate just how original and creative you are. Usually Infernal, because nothing is more original and creative than turning into a Primordial, like every other Infernal.

Tomb of the Exalted Dream is a one shot campaign designed to allow new comers to ease themselves into the game. There's a link to it in the OP, under 3E Core and Splats.

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/1069023-ask-the-devs?p=1080599#post1080599

>"Ancient warstriders constructed at the height of the First Age may have more elegant or esoteric control mechanisms—levitating crystals that orbit around the pilot, complex control interfaces of solid light, liquid metal that molds itself to the pilot’s body—but still operate on the same principle of emulating the pilot’s movements."
>liquid metal that molds itself to the pilot's body

So who's ready for GANDAMU FAITO?

Solars are the ultimate marysue, everything they do is special...which tends to end up blurring into being a bland "nothing is special" kind of general shininess that makes the whole game trivial.

2e tried not to repeat anything 1e printed

...well somebody said that at the beginning, but in practice it didn't work quite like that

which is hilarious given the amount of lazy fucking copy/paste jobs from 1e that 2e would do

I doubt it will exist at all. Power armor was always just regular artifact armor with bells and whistles strapped on, can you name anything power armor could do that regular artifact armor can't do with evocations?

Gunzosha is named as being an example of First Age Artifice in the Core. Just need to see now how many Lookshy has. A dozen unique ones? No problem. More than fifty? Kind of waters it down for me.

iirc the power armor is basically the least of first age artifice

They are not even trying anymore.

(You) (You)
(You) (You)
infernals are interesting mechanically(and their powers are more fun)

sidereals would be awesome...if they were functional. but the idea of their splat is cool in spirit.


lunars could have had potential...but they suck because theres never been a clear idea of what they were even for. you can't build a splat on "lets make a vague werewolf:apocalypse reference" and "weaker than solars" alone.(incidentally this is why I oppose the idea of prometheansI mean "liminals"(well that and stealing the only potential abyssals had to branch out))


abyssals are shit. waay below anything else. never play abyssals. just emo shits, solar's dark mirror who isn't allowed to be cool or have any fun toys.


____________________________
dragonbloods are still exalts, they're mechanically straight forward like solars, and they're weak enough you can actually do something without instantly destroying the entire setting.

alchemicals are the best splat, but sequestered off in their own world.

play one of those two