/exg/ - Exalted General

For a "reflexes" roll, the attribute is obviously dexterity or wits, but what would you use for the ability? I'm leaning towards dodge with the option of substituting martial arts if higher, rather than athletics which is the only other thing I can think of.

or would you fudge and roll dex+wits instead of attribute+ability on something like that?

What exactly do you mean by "reflexes?" What's the outcome supposed to be?

stuff like catching a dropped or thrown item, grabbing a fly with chopsticks, just general fast-twitch muscle stuff that doesn't fit cleanly into something else already but I'm actually having hard time thinking of examples that aren't already dodge so I'd guess that answers my question

Doesn't one of the comics in the 2e infernal book have the Malefasian infernal fighting one? I figure they must exist in that case.

On the subject of Infernals, would a Brawl-specialized Solar's right arm be enough of an offering to convince Ligier to make me something cool, essentially on the level of a 3 dot artifact or so?
Would the arm being freely given make him more or less interested in it?
How do you pronounce Ligier?

Fuck, wrong image. I should start naming them better.

Yes, like a warm lil bug snugging up against her!

It depends on what you're trying to do, pretty much entirely.

Good news, everybody. One of the antagonist mini splats has dropped! Which one of you has enough points in Resources to buy it?

drivethrurpg.com/product/210741/Adversaries-of-the-Righteous-Harrowing-Silence?cPath=8329_24225

You're pretty much describing Athletics checks, with "catch fly with chopstick" style things. Basically, anything that isn't outright trying to murder shit (combat skills), be a ninja (stealth skills), etc, would fall under that, as far as physical shit goes.

It's a night caste northerner with nothing interesting. Was not worth the dollar

I can never tell. it's so damned abstracted I can either afford a pizza or a new car before I run out :/

Mind uploading anyway? I at least want to see what they got cooking, anyway.

with that much snow you'd think she'd be wearing more than 6 mospid feathers and a thong

>lunars

Think he means he didn't bother buying it

That would imply that people on Veeky Forums talk about things they don't really know anything about! That's absolute madness!

In all seriousness, the "was not" implies he did purchase it

>Exalted
>making sense

Hoo boy. Someone has a lot to learn.

> a small mistake was made:
The charm description for Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit lists the effects of Flashing Nocturne Prana instead.

What's a good sacrifice for Necromantic initiation?

pastebin.com/nWSGkM8D

Can you post the pdf anyway?

Your lover.
Parent.
That little shit you hate that got into a good sorcery college.
Your necromancy teacher.

i was just copypasting from a review someone put on drivethrough

>Your lover.
>Parent.
Those are, uh, pretty dramatic. More like an Obsidian initiation than an Iron initiation.

I guess it depends how crazy you want to start then.

>Your necromancy teacher.
yes

They never see it coming, do they?

Thanks senpai

Never.

> youtube.com/watch?v=n0vOOVTQLhQ

Yo the first adversaries thing is up

Can you post the full pdf? I don't that there'll be any water marks due to the fact that you purchased it legitimately.

The download link literally had water mark in the address. The only picture is the one that's in the preview.

My mistake, thanks for the pastebin.

I dunno, man. Last thread, there were a lot of people on the side of "Exalted is gritty realism", as impossible as that may sound to reasonable people.

Sounds like they missed the point of the game entirely.

Very low crazy, if at all possible. Could I just, say, let my sword rust away to nothing and get a new one?

I don't think that's exactly what people claimed. It was more about the Creation not working on cartoon physics or whatever by default.

That wasn't really the argument? The argument was that most of creation ran on normal physics, but then Exalts, specifically, got to run on I'M AWESOME physics, because they're Exalts, and above petty things like leg cycling speed not being enough to let them outrun the wind or whatever. On the other hand, their I'M AWESOME physics field shouldn't extend to the house they're trying to pick up, so the house should break, since it doesn't have the structural integrity to handle being picked up.

Yes, I believe the argument was that Charms allow you to do the unrealistic and impossible in a realistic world.

Which is why using 6 charms does not allow you to pick up a house. Because muh realism.

But 6 charms will let you stick your hands in the ground and pull an enormous fissure into the earth.

Because your logic has consistency, right?

A volcano is a very poor example of this because volcano soil is very fertile and the flora in volcanic regions is well adapted to bouncing back after an eruption.

Very quickly, the land would be bouncing back up with lots of jungle plants.

Well, no. You can totally pick up a house. The house just won't survive it, because it's not awesome enough to do so.

The logic's basically that just because an Exalt is awesome enough to smack a behemoth with a tree, that doesn't mean that the tree is awesome to survive being smashed into the behemoth. Similarly, just because an Exalt is awesome enough to pick up a house, that doesn't mean that the house is awesome enough to survive having an exalt pick it up.

Not that I really agree with that, but I just wanted to point out that the argument wasn't, "Exalted is a gritty game", it was that "Most of the world isn't as awesome as an Exalt is."

>The argument was that most of creation ran on normal physics

Which it explicitly doesn't, because everything in Creation is made up of essence, and watched over by local spirits/gods/etc to make sure it functions properly. Not to mention the whole place is fucking flat, and is also technically a rug being worked on by technomagical spiders that may or may not get pissed off or not function right.

It's not quite Bugs Bunny tier, but it's at the very least firmly within the comic book realm of "Shit just isn't normal".

I don't really see how that matters. Death on a large scale is enough to create a shadowland, and after the shadowland is there, normal plants won't do all that well, no matter how fertile the soil.

Most of the things in Creation work the same as real world, though. Gravity in Creation is based on different principles than real world gravity, but as far as phemonena perceptible and relevant to humans are cocnerend, it works the same.

Huh, stupid faggot misrepresenting people's arguments? Shocker.

"Normal" physics, then. The core of idea's more that the house just isn't awesome enough to survive being manhandled by the Exalt. You could make it sufficiently awesome, probably through a charm or by just building it that way, but the average peasant isn't going to have a house that's normally that good.

Basically, the group arguing that the house should be liftable is approaching it from the angle of "I'm awesome enough to lift a house." The group that's arguing that it should break is arguing from the angle of, "The house isn't awesome enough to survive being lifted by me, because its god is some stupid house god of a single house, and he's not going to be able to stand up to an Exalt shoving on its bottom super-hard."... or something, I'm not actually on that side, so I'm not really sure what the logic is there.

Either way, no one's arguing that Exalted as a game is gritty. They just have different ideas of what it means to be that awesome, and whom the awesome applies to.

Shadowlands don't form overnight. Atop that, it takes a LOT of death in an area to create one, or a lot of death over a long time. A volcano exploding probably wouldn't do it unless it was some extinction-tier Pompeii thing AND new life was prevented from happening thereafter, which, given volcano's are actually pretty good at making new life what with all the fertile stuff they can spread, is probably not happening.

Sounds good so far. What would be some ways to resolve the situation?

>How do you pronounce Ligier?
Lee-Hee-ERR.

Fuck that man. I'll keep saying lig-ee-er.

I would base on the intent behind the action. If you're trying to lift a house up and hold it over your head and toss it at some schmuck, it'll survive until you bring it crashing on someones head. If you're trying to literally rip a house from it's foundation to bring it crashing down on everyone inside, that would work, too. If you're trying to just support a house that is in danger of collapse (say, because of an earthquake) while others quickly add on some supports and shit so it won't fall apart, you can do that too.

You don't understand, the in game explanations for how the world of Creation works are irrelevant, because it is an explicit design goal that the rules of Creation largely follow the rules of the real world even if the explanations for why that is so are wildly different.

The purpose is to create a 'realistic' base so that when you exalt jumps 30 feet into the air, everyone around him can point and say Holy shit! That guy is some kind of God or something. What a badass. The devs have said as much.

>Shadowlands don't form overnight.
I think they did in 2e at least. The Mask of Winters won his war for Thorns because he made separate shadowlands and combined them all together.

MoW also is a retardedly powerful ghost thing with access to necromancy and sorcery. You can greatly expedite matters like that.

You can explicitly do anything that you can do without magic as anyone who isn't magical. That includes anything under the "legendary success" line, as long as you can pull it off, because thats done just by sheer dice rolling.

Of course, pulling it off is another matter entirely. An extra probably is never going to hit that level of success. A heroic mortal might. An Exalt is going to do it easily.

I don't exactly disagree with you, but I do see their point. It's like, IRL, if you try to move a boulder with a twig, you're not going to get much done, because it's a fucking twig. It doesn't matter what you do with it or how strong you are (well, unless you just toss it to the side and shove the boulder yourself, I guess, but that's kinda the point), it's going to break before the boulder moves.

Similarly, it doesn't matter how strong you are, if you're trying to pick up some ramshackle peasant dwelling with brute strength, the place is going to fall apart before you manage to do so, because, simply put, it's a piece of crap.

On the other hand, you're a fucking Exalt. Lifting a house and throwing it at some is way too cool of an action for me to start quibbling about the architectural skills of the local peasants and the effectiveness of the house god in holding the stupid thing together.

This is what Exalted gets for trying this weird mix of "realistic" simulation combined with over the top fantasy powers.
>I want to pick up the house and throw it at the archer
>You can't do that, it's too big
>But I'm a fantasy super hero with crazy magical powers that let me lift huge things
>Yes but it's just a house, it'll fall apart if you pick it up, it's not magical like you
This shouldn't be a problem in this game. It should clearly be one way or the other.

I'm an idiot and always pronounced it like the animal thats a mix between a lion and tiger.

I'm about 99% sure that shadowlands can form pretty quickly and that mass deaths on short term can be enough to cause them. I mean, they can also form over longer periods of time, obviously, but the site of a particularly bloody battle absolutely is valid shadowland material.

So much so that intelligently-run armies in Creation have dedicated corps of funerists to take care of burial rites for the slain, so that the army isn't stalked and devoured by their hungry ghosts the next time they pitch camp.

This is a false dichotomy, you can pick up a Yeddim or giant boulder and hurl them just fine.

The fact that you can lift and hurl these other giant things but the house collapses around you isn't meant to punish your concept, but illustrate the difference between them as choices - choosing what to lift and throw can make a meaningful difference - and to show that yeah that peasant house reacts to you attempting to lift it by the side exactly as you'd expect - that wall collapses. Maybe you'd have more success if you stunted lifting it by its stone foundation?

>The fact that you can lift and hurl these other giant things but the house collapses around you isn't meant to punish your concept, but illustrate the difference between them as choices - choosing what to lift and throw can make a meaningful difference
...What? M8 that's just stupid.

>This shouldn't be a problem in this game. It should clearly be one way or the other.

I don't think it is a problem, this is the first time in all of my years playing Exalted I've heard anyone, near autistically, demand that Exalted follow some sort of fucked up "but realism" paradigm when it's very clearly meant to model a mythological setting in every fashion.

What, do you think a 3-ton Yeddim and some shitty peasant house should feel the same when you try to lift them?

It all started because of a developer statement.

So was it Morke or Holden? They seem to have a track record for this shit.

Great, but they can state whatever the fuck they want on some shitty message board. If it isn't in the books or the eratta it might as well not exist. Trying to cite "buh buh muh message boards" will probably get you laughed out of most discussions.

No, the argument is over what 'Mythological setting' means. I'm arguing that a mundane house in exalted functions the same way as it does irl, and the whole argument spun from a dev comment saying that if you tried to lift and throw a house it would break apart.

You think it's some kind of "meaningful choice" being enforced by how you can pick up and throw some big things but not others because "realistically" they'd collapse? That makes so little sense that you must be baiting.

I'd argue in mythology if anyone tried to lift a house it'd probably get lifted without breaking. Same as why "and then Zeus fucked people as a raincloud" worked. Because it's not meant to be realistic.

There is also nothing in the books saying Creation runs on funny looney tunes physics. In fact, it doesn't mention the rules of the world at all. That is why we're having an argument in the first place, but the devs agree with me that the default assumption should be everything is more or less the same as irl except when its not.

No, it was Eric Minton.

The ask the dev thread IS the errata, since they refuse to write official errata for 3e.

>they refuse to write official errata for 3e

So when are these chucklefucks getting fired too then?

The mythological aspects of Exalted are modeled off of the supernatural exception based powers of the setting's Gods and Myth heroes. Yeah, a given being probably could lift a house by a single ceiling tile, because he has a power that lets him do so, but its not an ingrained fact of the universe.

>since they refuse to write official errata for 3e.

I don't think they outright REFUSE to write it so much as don't expect it for a good while.

It was Minton, who shortly thereafter said that you could also not use the things you pick up with a Feat of Strength to hit people. No picking up a horse or a cart or something and attacking with it.

At the very least, there's a Google Doc compiling a list of errata from the Ask the Devs thread. Unfortunately, it was recently locked.

docs.google.com/document/d/1n3ooTmopm3CBxW5jwPp1761xsaIccea-5XIhVM_PQEc/edit

I can accept that, if only because it'd be rather difficult to handle as an attack. Do you remember the screen shot from 2e detailing all of the charms that you need to throw a Yeddim at people? How the fuck do you even stat a Yeddim as a thrown weapon? It was funny the first time, after a while it just becomes trite.

Specifically with *just* a Feat of Strength, IIRC.

>first NPC antagonist comes up for that collection that'll eventually become a full book
>it's a Solar
>forums bitch like there's no tomorrow

Amazing.

No, at all. He said once you're holding something heavy, you cannot attack with it because this would create an expectation in players that someone strong enough to lift and throw a yeddim would be able to do more damage than a waif with a sword, which he didnt want. Swords should be the strongest thing you can attack with.

>Swords should be the strongest thing you can attack with.

That's not quite what he meant (and again, keep in mind that things like Shockwave Technique exist). It's less about making swords the strongest thing you can attack with and more about not making a mechanics meta where *every* combat character fights by grabbing the largest object nearby, living or not, and swinging it at enemies.

>Could I just, say, let my sword rust away to nothing and get a new one?
That doesn't sound like much of a sacrifice.

Not that I really like the whole sacrifice system. I think it drives a wedge between the player who wants cool powers and might roleplay some angst to justify them and the character for whom the sacrifice is actually a difficult choice.

No, the argument was that Charms are required to do impossible and unrealistic things in a realistic world.

If you have House-Picking-Up Prana, you can totally pick up a house without it collapsing due to physics. But if all you have is STRONK charms, while you might have the capacity to bear the weight of the house, you don't have anything that holds it together while you do.

Object Strengthening Touch

WOOHOO

I'd allow that at my table.

I had a player pick up a house full of orphans back in 2nd edition. They just stunted, spend Essence to make their Strength + Athletics pool high enough, and I told them they picked it up and moved it out of the way of an incoming boulder hurled by a catapult.

My player would have been rightfully angry if I had told them, "You try to move the house, but it collapses in on itself and all of the orphans die. That wouldn't have happened if you had House Lifting Prana, but since you don't, you can't move buildings."

Yeah. The idea of sacrifice when initiating into Sorcery/Necromancy isn't that you're paying a toll for power and knowledge to some kind of gatekeeper. It's that you're leaving behind a part of your old way of looking at the world or giving up something precious that's holding you back from enlightenment.

In the context of Necromancy, a proper way of framing 'losing my sword' as part of the trial of decay might be giving up the blade which is the last heirloom of your bloodline or which represents a promise made to a fallen companion, leaving it exposed to harsh elements on a mountaintop and making frequent pilgrimages to witness it becoming rusted and brittle, and eventually, diminished beyond repair, all while meditating on the inevitability of loss and oblivion.

Behemoths, some weird Fae thing, or a God.

Sure, but you the player aren't leaving behind anything. Your character is going through the life-changing transformation of the Sacrifice, you the player are adding a bit of Sad to your backstory then adding some cool powers to your character sheet.

There's a clash there, and as a result of that clash I've never seen anyone in actual play do anything other than minimize the impact of the Sacrifice. It's always something tidy, convenient, and very often only referred to in backstory. Such as the example in this very thread that I was responding to.

>Could I just, say, let my sword rust away to nothing and get a new one?

Sure, you could make the Sacrifice into something that your character might feel something about occasionally but that will never come up in play, never provide any mechanical penalties, and never inconvenience you on any level within the game. You could do that. You'd be doing the same thing everyone does when they pick a Sacrifice for their sorcerer/necromancer character.

Exalted is gritty. Ever played a mortals game? No? Thought so.