Exalted General - /exg/

Still getting art for Arms. So we are for sure in July territory now.

At least we may get a Dragonblooded Charm preview this week.

How do you have sex with a Primordial?

Anyplace you can find a hole user. Anyplace you can find a hole.

Point them at the setting part of the core and shout "Read".

With that thing I can't remember the name of, but is called something like 'the many-stalked flower of delight'.

Carefully, and with the utmost fawning respect.

What is the optimal spatial configuration for a DB breeding farm? How can you safely manage a DB breeding farm? How would you categorize the breeding stock? How would you keep them contained? What about low breeding/high breeding disparity?

Are you watching American Gods?

Because Quilbis might have some advice for you.

>What is the optimal spatial configuration for a DB breeding farm?

I think I've heard this joke, is it a perfectly spherical vacuum?

How can you safely manage a DB breeding farm?

Socialize Charms.

How would you categorize the breeding stock?

Likely by their aspect.

How would you keep them contained?

Didn't 2e have a set of manacles that drained motes constantly? Otherwise, build your farm in a shadow-land or any other place where they can't respire motes.

What about low breeding/high breeding disparity?

Sell off the low ones, keep the high for selective breeding.

What are some examples of characters in other media that can serve as inspiration for sidereals?

On a related subject, what exactly are the consequences of incest in Exalted?

Like, one assumes for mortals it's the same as in real life, but is it different for magical beings? Like, for DBs, maybe the results of inbreeding show higher degrees of elemental madness? Maybe even elemental-related mutations? And what about gods, if a god keeps having children with his own god-blooded offspring, will the children become more powerful with each generation? What negative consequences are there to that?

It's not like gods have chromosomes, and the kinds of mythology Exalted is based on are full of divine sibling/child/father/motherfuckers. Did the primordials decide that shit wasn't ok and built punishment for it into reality?

Anyway, as for DB breeding farms, I think they'd have limited effectiveness. DBs need a heroic soul and a demonstration of its qualities to catalyze their Exaltation as much as others do, the soul squad in yu-shan bump a good supply of heroic souls towards the Realm (probably with sid encouragement) and the Realm's culture takes a lot of trouble to put its potential DBs through hell so that they get the opportunities for the activation of their blood that they need. If you keep your kids in cages they won't get the moments of high-passion drama that make their Exaltation go off, even if you've cut a deal with heaven to get the good souls you need.

Don't ask about the skull motif.

>Did the primordials decide that shit wasn't ok and built punishment for it into reality?
It's not a very good punishment, is it? Don't the effects of inbreeding start to only show gradually over the course of generations?

And chances for birth defects only really increase with repeated relations happen with direct offspring. Going for 1st and 2nd cousins has a nearly negligible risk of increased birth defects. However, there is still the issue of a shallow gene pool and lack of diversity.

The devils of the New Hell in TWGOK desu

I'm sure that DBs will be more resistant to it. Correct me if I' wrong, but in 2e, Autochthon made10,000 DBs only 100 of which were male, and told them to make more DBs. All 11 great houses are all descended from Her Redness as well.

Th founders of the Houses are her descendants, though in 1E so of them where her 'descendants' by virtue of adoption. All of the members of the Houses aren't descended from her, though. I mean, it is pretty clear that Houses don't actually start with one Dragon-Blooded who then gives birth to the rest of the House. V'Neef, for isntance, wouldn't be even as large as it is if that was the case. Also, the custom of adopting Lost Eggs who Exalt young enough into the Houses goes to show that blood ties to the founder aren't necessary for membership in a House.

And I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same in 3e.

There isn't much of a con to Dragonblooded incest in the setting.

Those guys from Leverage.

The Agents from the Matrix.

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>Don't ask about the skull motif.

Chosen of Endings, obviously.

>OrichalcumHeavyPlateArmor.jpg

Superheavy plate is my favorite kind.

Is the joke here that heavy armor protects you more by covering you less?

Only on women.

The joke is that females in fantasy are often depicted as wearing basically nothing and calling it armor. This combines excellently with Exalted's "armor looks like damn near anything, and helmets are optional at best", ie: fashion armor, more or less.

So, be honest with me, is 3rd good? I never got into second due to a combination of bad press and the fact the system looked too clunky to warrant the effort.

Especially consider Resistance gives you viable means of going unarmored.

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Pretty much good. The biggest issues with Exalted 2E was stuff like Paranoia Combat, Mote Attrition, way too easy to kill people on accident, and a terrible social system. All of those issues have been addressed pretty well by 3E.

It's not perfect, there's still stuff like wonky chargen and a bad crafting system, but otherwise I'm really happy.

Mechanics on the whole got worlds better. Exceptions: Craft, Martial Arts, BP character gen still being a thing on purpose because the dev's were functionally retarded, and arguably Sorcery, if you want to stick to the purest Exalted representation of Sorcery as "Not something to be done in combat" like was originally intended.

Fluff got better in some areas (bigger world, less in your face threats, more places), worse in others (West is STILL basically water and fucking nothing else, addition of entirely shit new Exalt types that rob design spaces from existing types and will of course eat up dev time whenever they decide to shit their books out).

Yeah, thats always nice.

What new Exalt types are there?

While I'm mostly on the same page, I'm going to disagree with you about Martial Arts (Single Blade effectively gives you two attacks per turn, you progress twice as fast because you can pump Solar xp into it), and Sorcery (arguably the best new system in the game)

Also Exigents are an extremely good idea and should have been made sooner.

Exigents, aka "Exalted of being a special fucking snowflake". They're going to be the make-your-own Exalted that are obviously going to end up as Solars+++ because they'll be full of shitters trying to design the most mind numbling dumb OC Donut Steeles you've ever seen.

Liminals, aka "What if Promethean was Exalted?", while forgetting that Promethean was kind of a shit game. Steals design space directly from Abyssals by including another "Undead Exalted" type when Abyssals already had pretty piss poor themes and flavor already.

And Getimen, also known as "The Dev's forgot Sidereals already had Fae, Abyssals, Infernals, and Lunars as a counter", and are designed to be, uh...Sidereals counter. Because they totally needed another. For shits and giggles they were also made BY a Sidereal, to further hammer home the point that Sidereals are the most incompetent motherfuckers to ever exist.

The Liminals, who are basically Terrestrial level Abyssals who can steal organs from other beings and gain new abilities based on that. For example, they can take a skilled liar's silver tongue and get a whole bunch of talking magic as a result. Ressurection is still impossible in Exalted, but people try anyways and the end result is a Liminal.

Getimians we don't know much about beyond that they're opposed to the Sidereals, their Chosen have a bone to pick with the Loom of Fate and Heaven in general, and they get two essence pools, Yin and Yang.

Then there are the Exigents. When a god is desperate enough, they can petition Unconquered Sun for a blank shard, which they fill with their own essence. This is not done lightly, the god either outright dies or is permanently diminished depending on how strong they are, but the end result is an Exalt with the themes of that god and a fuckload more power. They can range from barely above Terrestrials to just below Solars in power, depending on the god and how much mojo goes into their creation.

It's possible to go back and forth on Martial Arts though. Somepeople will go on about the Merit and XP tax, while others will reply with Solar XP and the sheer effectiveness of the MA charms.

Craft and BP chargen are shit. The fact that the former has been solved arguably makes it worse.

>For shits and giggles they were also made BY a Sidereal, to further hammer home the point that Sidereals are the most incompetent motherfuckers to ever exist.

They were not MADE by a Sidereal; stop spreading this untrue meme. He just *found out they existed* and decided to recruit them for his rabid hateorgy against Yu-Shan. Which is itself kind of a boring idea, but at least tell an honest tale.

>Exigents, aka "Exalted of being a special fucking snowflake". They're going to be the make-your-own Exalted that are obviously going to end up as Solars+++ because they'll be full of shitters trying to design the most mind numbling dumb OC Donut Steeles you've ever seen.
It's pretty much a given that there won't be the option to make your Exigent Solar++.

>Steals design space directly from Abyssals
And from Alchemicals, who are already the Promethean Exalted.

Given they're also the splat of "How to make your own Charms", chances are thats gonna happen. We'll probably all have some laughs about it here on Veeky Forums, but the sad reality is this shit is going to happen, be used, and be encouraged.

Not encouraged user.

Not unless you let it be!

So Exigents are generic exalts? That's a neat idea that absolutely should have been in the setting earlier. I remember hearing the elevator pitch of this game "you play as Gods in a non-Tolkien world" and thinking it neat, only to be slightly disappointed that you only get to play a very narrow variety of gods.

Exalts aren't really gods (though they can be worshipped as if they were); they're more like demigods and similar tier culture heroes. Think Hercules, Gilgamesh, Enkidu, Achilles, Rama, Arjuna, Hou Yi, Sun Wukong, Vartan, Beowulf, et al.

Regardless, they were still stuck to really limited concepts.

How many versions of the exalted of five days darkness do you think we're going to get

As many as we get for the possibly missing Maiden, but not nearly as many as "It's Solar tier power but it uses BENDING JUST LIKE AVATAR".

>really limited concepts
>guy who's good at a thing
story checks out

>dat filename

So what the the other 6 examples of superheavy plate?

Guy who's good at thing and stuck with a very specific place in the world.

This is less limited.

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And since I'm apparently dumping some art, have my favorite pirate pic and DB grandma of one of my players.

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>MA being functionally retarded

You bring this up every thread don't you?

Yes. He is the same faggot who hates on Exigents.

There is only two types of Exalted who need to exist, anyway - DBs and Solars. All the rest are garbage and there to just limit those two.

These people are artistically just incensed that a new dev team would dare fucking try anything they didn't personally approve.
If they put limited rules on Exigents then at least speshul snowfleks will have a guideline to not being pants on head retarded. (Like I'll take middleground ones, instead of the worthless/broken charmsets) Let's be honest, someone was gonna bring back something like Devil Tigers eventually. Some rules on making them will help.

Yo hold up, I've been gone for like a year and they STILL haven't released a splat?

>These people are artistically just incensed that a new dev team would dare fucking try anything they didn't personally approve.

Personally, I see it as needless line clutter. The game already has to flop out a core book, and then what is essentially a "core book" for every other Exalt type. This takes a LONG time to do. It consumes a lot of resources and dev time to shart out an entire Exalt type. You get people waiting for ages just to play whatever they like, if it isn't Solars. All of this is in addition to whatever other sourcebooks they need to put out, and on top of that, Exalt type books ALSO serve as what is basically the antagonist guide books-Most of your foes are gonna be things of a different Exalt type in my experience, usually DB's.

Now they want to add 3 more Exalt types to a game already flooded with them, and is struggling to make the existing ones unique and different enough already in some cases, on top of a completely fucked release schedule thanks to the dev's themselves.

Okay but, honestly, they're hardly the only gameline to try something like this. I can see complaining specifically that you'd have liked "x" before they came out. But people are running that idea and shooting past it to "These are all shit ideas". And realistically, for new content to have a chance at thriving it needs to come out somewhere in the middle.

Like, people have thrown hissy fits at editions of DnD and Pathfinder for putting different classes in core. And in some cases their new shit has been good or often even better than recycled stuff.

I get it, Lunar fans are mad, but that's not new. They were mad in 1e as shitty barbarians who had their powers held hostage. They were mad in 2e as their splat was silver solars with smaller numbers and less design focus (now with bonus shit we copypastad from 1e because we're fucking lazy and WAY WORSE THAN THE FUTURE 3e DEVS at getting a book out) and they'll be mad about 3e until they get their book. Then they'll read the book and it won't have enough rules for fucking.a donkey to make a Donkeytaur.

>They were mad in 1e as shitty barbarians who had their powers held hostage. They were mad in 2e as their splat was silver solars with smaller numbers and less design focus

1E Lunars was terrible, but 2E wasn't too bad. The biggest problem was their Charms were just flat.

They were pretty much agreed to be the least inspired charms in the edition by anyone I ever talked to.

Like even the mechanical bits they were good at were more oversight and weird interactions than really strong mechanics.

Can I reiterate on the unedited 1e callover? I mean that happened to Sids and DBs too, but at least those two had deep thematic charms that were fun to imagine and use.

Lunars in 2e just had shapeshifting. And that's dope, but it probably shouldn't be the only leg for an entire Exalt type to stand on. (Weirdly, I'd make an exception for an Exigent, as I definitely see them as very narrow power sets).

And hell even if I give you that they weren't that bad, Lunar fans were still mad. Clamoring for a rework before 3e became the design focus. They've not lost anything by letting Lunar fans stay mad until they can come up with a good enough book to MAYBE get half of them on their side.

yeah that's always going to be the problem with lunarfags

there's a massive amount of variation in what each individual fan of lunars wants the splat to be and what they think is good design. no matter what is done with them, officially or unofficially, there will be some folks who are pleased as hell and a lot of folks who will bitch venomously.

Question about Exalted.

How many Essence 5, warrior-oriented , competent Dragon-Blooded is needed to take down Essence 5, warrior-oriented, competent Dawn Solar?

1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50? Also by competent I'm not thinking about min-maxer (that uses every loophole in system).

>there will be some folks who are pleased as hell and a lot of folks who will bitch venomously
That's the story of fandom since time immemorial. What makes Lunar fans so unique in that regard according to you?

Hate to say it, but it depends. A Dawn specced for Brawl will be great at fighting single targets, and will likely only need 5 or so, but one based in parrying and counter attacks would fare better against more.

We also don't really know just how powerful an E5 DB is.

If I wanted to be a sword trainer type in the Anthony Hopkins' Mask of Zorro sense, what training skills should I look at with an eye toward future charm purchases?

How is the Swallows of the South podcast? Most Actual Plays are garbage for the first few episodes, I want to know if you think it's worth sticking it out.

I take it more to mean that a slutty choker and some leather straps can count as full plate in this setting because the choker can be an artifact that extends a super strong force-field around its wearer. Or the bejeweled oricalcum pasties can be etched with 10 Billion microscopic mantras to the gods of protection, consequence, and causality so that any sword, bolt, or fireball that hits the wearer causes localized reality to be rewritten so that the blow always hit the few metal bits all along. Or that the silk fishnet stockings and gold-chain mesh tubetop are just that and the person wearing them is a Resistance Supernal Solar with the charms to make their bare skin more invulnerable to damage than any mundane, magical, or artifact armor could ever be.

Its a game about God-Kings and the wonders they wrought. Go fucking wild

TRIGGERED!

New charm preview

theonyxpath.com/signature-charms-dragon-blooded-pt-3-exalted/

They don't seem to get the message that no matter how many gimmicks you slap on them Dragon-Blooded will always be mediocre.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Luna just this weird fucking thing that wandered in from the Wyld in first edition? Like nobody even new if he/she/it had more in common with a god or fey, but Luna could go toe to toe with Sol and the Primordials decided to offer Luna a job? Because that would help explain why nobody can decide what Lunars should be. They're the Chosen of Luna, but Luna is undefined.

what the fuck is wrong with your brain you stupid motherfucker

But that's the point. They're the weakest but most numerous Exalts.

Well you got to give the players something when they start popping out DB kids from their rape farms.

>Rape
Dude it's an honor to receive dragon bones. Everyone is happy to be there.

Let's see...

>Distraction of the Babbling Brook
Useful, but I don't see why it should be Signature-keyed.

>Sleeping Dragon's Lair
Same as above.

>Tempest-Ruling Commander
OK, this one is legit good.

>Terrifying Forest-Devil Mask
Discount Resplendent destinies? Pass.

>Wildfire-Taming Technique
Potentially powerful, but painfully situational.

Overall a weak update. Meh.

t. SomethingAwful

>Jinouga
That's clearly actually the blind virus one. I can't remember the name, but Jinouga are the lightning brute wyverns.
I rip monsters from Mohan for behemoths when I run low on ideas.