Exalted General - /exg/

The Core

Meant for 2E. Friends have roped me into a ridiculously heavily houseruled version of it.

It was an Ink Monkeys thing, I think. Might be in the ultimate collection or whatever it's called.

Thanks.

Check Scroll of the Monk.

Daily reminder that Lunars will always be shit.

I don't know, I think the power to be Godzilla can be pretty awesome.

No answer for this question, no?

Essence Gathering Temper. You don't need to heal if you never take damage in the first place.

The Ox-Body branch is great for getting initiative really fast, EGT seems to be more about offense than surviving.

Intimacies

Does it bother anyone else how much importance is placed on these?

I'm sure I've seen a few suggestions that Exalts can, at least in part, pacify roaming Demons by demanding they abide by the Yozi's surrender oaths. Am I going crazy, or do one of the books say that?

Nope.

In fact I think the social system is pretty swell. It actually makes you engage with a person and not just turn an entire conversation into a single roll.

So, either/or then?

Ox-Body gives you a chance to build up massive Initiative early in a fight and get off a decisive attack to potentially finish. The best way to stay alive is to win before they can hurt you.

So as a dawn who is sorta becoming the team medic what charms would be recommended for quick heals and patch jobs?

Wound Mending Care Technique and Instant Treatment Methodology.

But they never get to be giant, atomic powered, fire breathing, super adaptive evolving kaiju who are damn near unkillable though.

Nah, I think the importance of intimacies is one of the good things about Ex3.

Explain. Because to me, it's the system trying to prevent players from being sociopaths who only care about things when it's convenient for them. The game weeding out That Guys will only encourage people to be lazier about policing their own groups.

Is there a Ink Monkeys pdf with all their exalted blog posts in one file?

There's an Ink Monkeys Ultimate Collection floating about, made by Plague of Hats. I can upload it if needed, but it might be in the OP file folders.

thanks I will search for it.

I used to hang out on the old WW forums back in the day; I heard Holden got fired, what's up with that? He had some good ideas but he was always a twat.

That's not even remotely what intimacies are, though. They're there to give some mechnanical weight to character's personalities, and to provide a foundation for a proper social influence system. The social influence system, what with actually having to account for people's desires and personalities, is one of the strong suits of Ex3. Intimacies are an important part of this system.

Exactly. Your XP gain increases by about 22% when you do things that are relevant to Intimacies, with the Solar Experience system. If you choose not to care, you advance slower than the players that do. I should say though, I never learned social combat in 2.x, and I don't see that changing in 3e.

What. I don't see how it would affect this in any way. That Guy is gonna be That Guy regardless, he'll just set abstract intimacies or sociopathic ones.
Ex3 seems to borrow heavily from CoC/Delta Green with its intimacies.

Overall I like it, primarily because it lends more weight to social scenarios when players can be trying to read intentions or cover up their own. You used to get Veeky Forums bait threads of people bringing up the old "What do you say to him?" when rolling social checks vs just rolling to attack in combat. I had one player also bring it up in DnD and whilst I think it's a pretty stupid comparison, Exalted's system at least brings the two closer together with Stunting and Intimacies and gets players like that to quit whining.

Yeah, it sure is terrible that you're encouraged to do things that make sense for your character. What exactly is your problem, here? As for not learning the social influence system, why would you decide beforehand to not learn the rules of the game you're playing?

Because I feel social contests shouldn't be decided with dice, at all.

>That Guy is gonna be That Guy regardless, he'll just set abstract intimacies or sociopathic ones.
Hell, even a proper murderhobo has intimacies he consistently follows. Stuff like "I'm gonna get rich as fuck", "Enough violence solves all problems", "Fuck [a specific group of people]", something like that.

Okay. Then you should just cut out the social stuff from your games, including social Abilities, Attributes and Charms. I want social characters to be viable and have a well-defined system to interatc with, though. I mean, the way strengthening Intimacies or persuading people to do anything meaningful work, you can't *just* roll dice. It's not like Ex3 social influence is just about strictly mechanical rollplaying. People should be able to play characters whose social skills are either greater or lesser than their own, and in a game like Exalted, they should also be able to play people whose social skills are just plain superhuman. For something like that to work out, a system that doesn't just amout to the ST making something up is needed.

Can A Solar Cure Ma Ha Suchi Of all his wyld crap with Order Affirming Blow?

He's no longer a developer. I'm not sure if he got fired or quit. He'd had some personal stuff going on for a while.

Bracers to make you look hot while killing people, and have onlookers love you for it:

howsfamily.net/Exalted/wiki/index.php?title=Perfected_Form

Reflection-themed paired swords, all about the clashes: howsfamily.net/Exalted/wiki/index.php?title=Twin_Mirrors

>Bracers to make you look hot while killing people, and have onlookers love you for it:
I'm not sure whether that's more disturbing or cool, but it's certainly both disturbing and cool.

Hm... what would be the closest thing to one could get to godzilla as totem?

Some sort of Tyrant Lizard, probably.

>What is Exalted?

Dead.

Yeah, going by what the devs have said, that sorta thing seems like an Infernals' exclusive thing in 3E.

Chimerism is a voluntary thing in 3e.

Does that matter with Order Affirming Blow?

Well that doesn't cover the breath thing, but it's a start.

You could also look into Pestletails, Ox-Dragons, and Siege Lizards (any reptile with Legendary Size, really.) but if you want fire breath, that seems something that an Elemental might have. You'll likely need to homebrew something.

The love child of a river dragon, a siege lizard and an electric eel should work good enough.

anybody have a backup of revlid's astrology(2e)?

I mean it could just be Wyld-mutated. That would be a pretty good replacement for the whole radiation thing.

Dragon's Breath mutation iirc? That would fit.

Fuck Infernals. They shouldn't have any form of shapeshifting.

Shintais are a perfectly fitting part of Infernals. Lunars are and should be *the* shapeshifters, but they have their own specific flavor of shapeshifting. There is room for other splats to have some limited shapeshifting stuff without stepping on Lunar's toes.

2e shintai yes. 3e green dbt hell no

There obviously isn't room for it when anything possibly interesting (ie: Not a bog-standard animal) gets relegated to "Buh buh it's not for Lunars because Lunars have to be animinuls ownlee!".

Wasn't the Infernals Preview shit-canned for being canned shit?

Reminder that everything said minus radioactive already applies to lunars.
Is right in sofar that super-adaptive shapeshifting shouldn't be part of infernals, but transhumanist evolution into something alien that kinda breaks logic at times should be well within the themes of infernals. Like malfeas charms changing how natural soak is calculated by way of fractally folding unto yourself, becoming so accustomed to running it becomes recuperative and so on.

Honestly, imo, an Infernal's shintai is something I've always looked at as a final boss's second form, which seems entirely fitting to their themes. So I've never seen what the issue is with Lunar fans getting pissy over it; Lunars get a broader range of functional shapeshifting while an Infernal's shintai is essentially just getting bigger and stronger. You won't see an Infernal turn into a mouse or a tyrant lizard; he'll grow horns, claws, wings, etc. but he's just going back to the same general form each time.

Aside from the facts that there's nothing uninteresting about animals, and that shapes themselves don't have to interesting anyways as long as you can do interesting things with themselves, Lunar shapeshifting doesn't have to be just about animals. However, the sacred hunt, or more generally having to actually acquire the shapes they use, is an importan part of Lunar shapeshifting. It's one of the actually cool, well-defined and thematically appropriate things Lunars have had in the past. They don't just turn into whatever, they turn into something whose shape they haven claimed through strength or cunning. Partial shapeshifting or mixing features of various creatures to come up with some kind of a chimera form is fine as far as I'm concerned, but that still leaves plenty of shapeshifting room for other splats.

>You won't see an Infernal turn into a mouse or a tyrant lizard

The problem is turning into a tyrant lizard or a mouse, traditionally, is pretty shitty. Theres really been no reason to assume most animal forms outside of the occasional mechanical trick (some of which got removed entirely in eratta's or what have you anyway), or squeezing through shit as a mouse or something equally tiny.

It's also because it's usually more beneficial to apply bonuses to yourself, than try to turn into something else entirely, because of how flaring would lock you into certain forms, which meant you couldn't spend much essence or had to somehow have a base form that wasn't complete shit. Thats why DBT was usually the go-to anything for Lunars, and why turning into other shit usually sucked balls.

tl;dr If shapeshifting were just bonuses added to your base form you'd probably have better overall Lunars, than Lunars trying to turn into Tyrant Lizards, because of how the system usually works.

Black jade daiklaive and black jade full plate: took crumblepunches water dragon style, cut it in half and split between the two.

Soulsteel daiklaive: took crumblepunches fire dragon style and cut a bunch of charms and refluffed it as black flame

Orichalcum chain shirt: bunch of resistance charms from an infernal homebrew

So has no one put up the antagonist pdf yet?

No. One guy bought it and said something about a watermark, but posted the text to pastebin.

pastebin.com/nWSGkM8D

Chimerism isn't caused by wyld taint in 3e. It's what happens when a Lunar adds a second(maybe more, we don't know yet) animal to her Spirit Shape.

The solution is obvious. Let the Lunar take that 2e merit that lets them use Strength instead of Dexterity for accuracy pools. That is LITERALLY all it takes for Lunars to live up to their insanely powerful warrior fluff.

Onyx Path didn't pay him and some other writers for cut material pulled from the core and put in the backer charms pdf, so they went on silent strike.

OP then fired them and put Vance and Minton in charge.

No one really comes off well here, apart from Vance and Minton - Vinton? Mance?.

Slight follow up, whens the first bestiary?

I feel combat shouldn't be decided with dice at all either.

That's why every conflict the game is decided by who buys Pizza next time.

Are non-wyld mutated animals with inherent magical properties, like say, furnace rhinoes, still valid targets for lunar shapeshifting in 3E?

Have you put them in homebrew folder up top?

General Question: How zany / wacky do people let their Exalted games become?

Do you feel meeting Raksha and the Wyld allows you to up the goofiness and do stuff like homages and parodies?

Like "While journeying in the Wyld, you come across a small yellow bear in a red shirt, blindfolded, and meditating on top of a large beehive"

Would it make a good story if the PCs could do it as an afterthought if they had the right charm, and were fucked if they couldn't?

Charm or no, I'd give them several possible avenues to overcome this, as well as several contradictory hints about what's likely to happen if they do.

did infernals have some special ability to sense or recognize demons in 2e?

I feel like I had read that somewhere but didn't see it when I looked quickly

Yuo're probably thinking of the Unwoven Coadjutor, which is capable giving bonus dice to social rolls against demons and can detect Yozi Cultists regardless of how well they conceal themselves.

My players are attempting to open the seal of eight divinities. I know what I want one of the keys to be but I'm drawing a blank on the other 7. Any ideas?

What side of the Seal are they on? Are they Autochthonians or are they in Creation?

The only thing that springs to mind is key like objects that are easy to find themselves but need to be 'activated' by exposure to the elemental poles. That only covers 5 though. Maybe the other two are one exposed to the void and another from someone in heaven?

ah, found it. it was demonbloods

Five elements, Malfeas, Underworld, Heaven. That's eight.

He fled Creation because of the Solar exalted, so maybe the one of the keys is proof of the Usurpation?

And another is a crusty old God the players have to convince that #NotAllSolars are assholes.

But yeah it'd makes sense if some of the keys weren't physical objects, but concepts, moments in time, or memories.

Auto left due to the Geas being bound on Mountainfolk right? So maybe breaking the Geas would also break one of the seals?

thanks, I was thinking of a mix of that and the demonblood 'caste' power from scroll of heroes

user said he already had an idea for one of them. But yeah if I was ever going to run a game like that, that seems fairly thematic and suitably epic.

I don't know any way to contact the guy who does the Google Docs character sheet, so I'll post this here in case they see it :

The Socialize DB charms are missing bro! Apart from that, brilliant job, I love it.

I betcha you can't come up with a Night/Day/Scourge concept that isn't an assassin, a thief or an identity thief.

Now that Night Castes can have Investigation as a Caste ability? Detective, Batman-style.

Exalted shit is way too confused and up it's own ass, particularly with the many different types of exalts. I get that:

Solars = Glorious Golden Gods, classical era hero's (complete with the flaws)
Lunars = Enkidu to the Solars Gilgamesh
Abyssals = Corrupted Solars
Alchemicals = Basically exalted from a different setting where everything is technologies
Sidereal = Ching-Chong exalted who are more like wise men and tao masters from eastern mythology(?)
Terrestrial/Dragon Bloods = Mortals with some boons, the Power Rangers
Infernals = ????? Corrupted Lunars ??? (if this isn't what they are, this is what they should be)
Liminals = Frankenstein/Manmade Exalts
Exigents = Exalteds belonging to smaller gods
Getiman = What the fuck?

TOO MUCH BLOAT, WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING SHITTING THIS OUT IN THE CORE? These are all decent idea's that deserve their own books but jesus mcfuck-daniel christ, they barely have core out!

Just focus on the fucking Solars, Lunars, and Exigents! Then give the Abyssals, Infernals, and Terrestrials their own book! Then the Alchemicals, Liminals, and Sidereal!

Heaven
Corrupt/Earth
Weird unnatural shit

Infernals are Solars with the powers ripped out and replaced with transhuman demon shit.

How about, instead, you go fuck yourself.

>Alchemicals
>unnatural
Nigger what?

Infernals are a shit idea to begin with.

Regardless of how much he gets wrong, this user is right. There's too many splats already. Too many EXALTED of SOMETHING. I mean what's next, Exalted of Elsewhere?

Do you know why 3.x/PF is such an enduring DnD edition, despite it's flaws? The sheer wealth of material players and DMs have to draw on. There's nothing wrong with having a lot of splats available, the ST doesn't have to allow them all. Most games only use one at a time.

While your whole post is fucked. I agree with your main point. The exalts we had back in 1e were enough. I know they need to sell books, but I just look at everything past the five basic Exalts as bloat. I'd rather have book detailing the regions, adventures etc. than this shit.

I do find Exigents to be quite a cool idea that sort of eliminates the need for more Exalted types.

Gentimen are the chosen of Fuck Fate and draw from weird fiction. It makes Sidereals less monolithic in their wheelhouse, all to the better.

Fuck yeah Sidereal cold war and civil war.

Couldn't you just reuse 2Es region books?

Plus obsessively detailing every part of the setting dragged 2E down