Exalted General /exg/

How is magitech being a thing shitting on Holden?

I mean, I read that as more shitting on him, not that I really care about his feelings or some shit. Just clarifying they never meant they weren't bringing back magitech items, it was about not making Magitech the obvious thing all the good stuff is.

>Taking the phrase 'high flying' seriously.
Low earthbound mortals. That's why you aren't chosen by the UCS you pathetic virginal balded Immaculate monk.

Would a Solar remain a Solar if they became a vampire?

No double-Exaltation, so no. If a Solar gets turned into an Abyssal, they're an Abyssal now.

No. Vampires are specifically dead. The exaltation leaves after death.

yes, yes, I know all of that. the thing that bothers me is that suddenly there are also god-chosen champions who appear only in times of ludicrously great need with ALL THE EXACT SAME SYMPTOMS and the immaculates aren't all immediately claiming those guys are demons wearing bob's skin.

>How can we answer this, when we don't have full Manse rules yet?

I have no idea, it's not like the gameline hasn't existed for almost 20 years and 3rd isn't the first edition to exist or to have manses. also homebrew.

sure third ed might change them as radically as 1 to 2e did but it's not all that important for this, besides how often do we ever stick to the thread starter question. most seem to ignore it entirely

>ALL THE EXACT SAME SYMPTOMS
What reason do we have to think Exigents exalting look anything like Solars exalting?

One Exigent exalting most likely looks nothing like the next Exigent. There isn't even internal consistency within the category, I don't see how all those very different exaltation events should somehow all look like Solars or Lunars.

Considering the Immaculate narrative is that Demons steal the power of the Sun and Moon to make Anathema.
It's not even like people could go "yo but Gods do exalt people sometimes", because there's already "Yeah but Sun and Moon people aren't kosher" to respond to that.

This all makes me think I'd really like an Immaculate book that explores this aspect of the Order. More about their sects and alternative takes on Immaculate history, famous Immaculate-sanctioned Exigents and how they fit into the narrative, folk tales and stuff.

depends on how the vampirism in question works, the WoD splats were basically Exalt types but I could easily see a charm or spell inflicting the equivalent of Sun Seared and Diet (Blood) on some poor bastard.

>Demons
or sorcerers is also used its not that hard to read the anathema story as sorcerers tricking the sun and moon in exalting them.
and then going crazy because they chewed of more than they could handle.

Immaculates see exigents as a violations of the natural order same way they see improper prayer or gods lording over humans as a violation.
but not to the degree that you need to be hunted down like an anathema but you suffer a bit on the path of reincarnation.
which you need to make up for by proper uses of you powers in service of the dragons.

Weirdly precise question: Does the heptagram accept un-exalted Dynasts as students? I know the other Secondary Schools do, but I vaguely recall reading something about how the Heptagram doesn't?

>I vaguely recall reading something about how the Heptagram doesn't?
I doubt that that's case anymore. In 2e, you needed to be an Essence user to become a Sorceror; in 3e, becoming a Sorceror makes you into an Essence user.

Ah, makes sense, thank you.

It doesn't seem like something to draw inferences to me.

Remember guys the best way to approach EX3 is making sure they've rolled back each tiny piece of minutae before realizing anything is different.

It's definitely better than assuming the existing books are it and extrapolating from them.
There is no way you could possibly muddle your experience and then lay blame onto the edition for your faulty assumptions with this method.

I don't really understand your post, but I think your idea of "blaming" an edition is kind of dumb regardless of what else you meant.

harmonious jade makes me laugh. goes from a hardcore yozi cultist to a preachy holier than thou solar overnight upon getting a better offer. and by the end of the comics shes an abyssal. what's next, wholeheartedly throwing herself into taring down creation because a fairfolk offered her some shiny mutations? does that girl have a single dot of conviction?

i remember years ago reading one of the novels that starred her and thinking she's a fucking idiot on a level far above what you normally see in fiction, even amateur fiction and fanfic

At least she was better than Panther. I refuse to be lectured on morality by a man who exalted for getting bored at an orgy.

was creation really having that slow of a day?

Her writeup in the Caste Books exolicitly states that she would've happily stayed with the cult if they hadn't tried to kill her, though. After leaving the cult by necessity she initially just continued killing people for money, and only gradually started to feel like maybe she should use her powers for some higher purpose.

no, for all his faults, at least panther is sapient

>Would a Solar remain a Solar if they became a vampire?
>No. Vampires are specifically dead. The exaltation leaves after death.

Well, maybe.
In some books in 2e its mentioned that sometimes the Exaltation got stuck in the soul/body of the exalted due weapons the primordials used against them.
So lytek had these tools to pull exaltations out of dead people in that circumstance.

So, anyways, it depends on if the Exaltation stays connected to them or not.
Simply becoming inhuman is not enough for it to leave.

Fortunately for our hypothetical Solar-Vampire, the solar's anima banner does NOT count as sunlight (by default). So they don't get vaporized when ever they use their Solar exalted powers (as opposed to any vampire powers they may have gained).
Well, that is at least in 2e.

How would a (Owod) vampire that somehow got a solar exaltation work?

They would probably be EXTRA nuts, due to the whole frenzy thing on top of limit break.

They would probably be rather terrifying to other vampires, due to the anima banner.

Anima banners don't count as actual sunlight.

Vampires would more likely become Abyssals.

I mean even if it doesn't hurt like sunlight, it is still going to look a lot like it. So it's still going to cause rotschrek and stuff.

There is a charm that allows your anima banner to count as true sunlight though (although at that point it isn't clear if it would hurt yourself, or not).

More stuff in regards to owod vampires.

A lot of vampire discipline powers involve using attribute + ability roles. These are stuff that exalts can boost with excellencies.

So primordials can't "die", they just become neverborn. Can Gods like The UCS die, like permanently dead forever?

Yes.

Yes.

Going by RotSE, which I don't particularly dislike, contrary to the circlejerking sheep (sorry, you know you are that, deep down), they have contingencies in case of death, and the Sidereals can appoint a new UCS should it be needed.

Which makes a tremendous amount of sense. The Primordial War was not a certain affair, far from it. They should have had numerous contingencies if things went pear shaped. The concept of the UCS could theoretically survive the death of the UCS. It's just a mantle.

Due to the kneejerk sheep reaction to RotSE, take that with a grain of salt, but what is certain since 1e is that the UCS can die.

A mage + solar combo could be rather absurd due to "Chaos-Repelling Pattern"

That "UCS Is a position" thing is also present in the glories to the most high book.

All things of Creation, and tainted by Creation, can die. This includes Gods, Spirits, Raksha, Demons, Exalted, and mortals. The only things that can't die are the Primordials, because they predate the concept of death, which they created.

This isn't true. Technically the Neverborn could die, but their hate is such that they clog the very conceptual framework of death. Before the Neverborn there was no Underworld, and the ghosts (which are glitch in the framework of death) were incredibly, stupidly rare. The framework was never meant to accommodate the Primordials though, and their hate and will to linger were such that they broke it. They still died, which shouldn't be possible for them, but Exalted are good at doing the impossible.

Got a page number on that? I'm curious but can't seem to find it

Yup, only sheep could ever disagree with you. That sure sounds like a thinking man's attitude.

Thanks. I try very hard to keep a level head on those sort of subjects. When I see the sheep all babbling about the same irrational things while circlejerking, I try to understand why they were reduced so much from thinking, rational people to morons.

I think they do count as actual sunlight. I mean, what else would they count as?

>I mean even if it doesn't hurt like sunlight, it is still going to look a lot like it

some vampires might grow to enjoy that. theres some novelty in being able to see the sun after a few thousand years.

wonder if any would be dumb enough to intentionally set things up to push the solarvamp to get more chances to see it

nothing, just glowing light

no, speaking as differentfag, they totally are circlejerking sheep. it's not about the hate, it's about the reasons and tone for the hate

they explicitly do not(unless you get this one permanent charm in 2e). and if they did would break the game due to how many things are utterly fucked over by sunlight.

So, does anyone have the text of the New Hundred Devils Night Parade? Apparently it's 3-foot magical songbirds and "bloodworms" this time, and the latter come in multiple sizes.

The most common reason for hating RotSE is RotSE not being very good. There are no doubt some who hate it just to fit in, but most people who dislike it have actually made up their own minds and judged the book by its own merits.

god of the sun is a position like all divine purview's UCS is the current one.

I think this was asked in the dev thread.
about how not every heptagram student becomes a sorcerer but they still have a general occult education which can be of used for exorcists, sorcerer assistants and artifact maintenance etc.
so most mortal students end up like that and dragon-blooded and mortal sorcerers are the top of the class.

Fuck those guys, Solar Anima banner in 3e is sunlight

So, question - where can I find information on what happens when the Wyld encroaches on a shadowland?

I don't remember it ever being specifically addressed, but the results are going to be pretty much the same as when the Wyld encroaches on regular territory. There'll just be more death-flavored mutants and such. Worth keeping in mind:

"Someday, we shall have to visit the ocean, and I will show you an estuary. Estuaries are some of the richest, most diverse ecosystems in all Creation. They form the transition zone between river and ocean environments, and the resulting mixture of salt water and fresh water forms a brackish environment that contains a startlingly large variety of different nutrients. As a result, estuaries allow an unprecedented variety of different lifeforms to thrive and flourish. In fact, did you know that roughly half of all humans live near estuaries?"

"Shadowlands occupy a similar state, consisting as they do of both the nature Essence used by living beings, and the death aspected Essence of the Underworld. Each morning, the Sun rises, and waves of fresh nature Essence sweep across the Shadowland. And each night, the removal of the Sun causes a fresh upwelling of death Essence flowing up from the Underworld. While the physical ecosystem tends to be lackluster, the spiritual ecosystem-"

>remove Magitech from the game
>FIRST GODDAMN SUPPLEMENT adds it back in
10/10 Holdorke. Also not a complaint by me, I loved magitech.

>but their hate is such that they clog the very conceptual framework of death
That's part of it yeah, but the much greater problem is that Lethe was never, ever intended to handle something as vast as a fucking primordial.

The problem with magitech in 2E is that it wasn't really rare. How much magitech is in the new supplement?

this was said by a being who generally lies in a naruto fic.

I think he was thinking more "does the wyld close the shadowland?" and possibly "can a shadowland with it's connection to the underworld keep the territory anchored in creation rather than be so easily washed away or distorted"

magictech in 2e seemed to be treated like energyweapons and robots in fallout and for similar reasons. 3e magitech seems to be more about changing the cosmetic fluff than their existence.

less the "purge the badwrongfun" of holdmork and more "take the magicetch but make it out of clay or something, replace that chrome with spirit wings n shit so we can pretend the emphasis is more on the magi than the tech" looking more like the precursor relics in jak and daxter

unfortunately holdmork's overzealous jihad against sufficiently analyzed magic has already genocided thaumaturgy and given us the utterly bland nonentity that is "sometimes things just happen, what the hell". but somehow they were smart enough to steal some of it's cool stuff for the sorcery revamp which just doesn't make any sense when you put the two things together.

They never said that stuff was going away, there are posts way back on the what we know wiki about this.

"magic a = magic a is boring. pure storyteller fiat is so much more magical. you wave your hand and something happens just because."

somehow they think making things more shallow adds depth. it's like one of the sidereal's koans if they weren't all about maidens

Oh, and on the topic, looks like my initial predictions were right, most of power armor's stuff got folded into evocations. Hell the specific example I used even came true, there's that one armor set in arms that purifies air around you and lets you breath in harsh conditions/underwater that's literally just a breathing respirator except Air Essence instead of a little tube of metal.

What do you think he was lying about in that example though? Makes sense to me.

Nah, I was looking at it more like 'what kind of weird shit will pop out of place like that'. Zombie cataphracts and buck-ogre bonesiders, stuff like that. Was hoping there was some sort of precedent, but alas.

I'd also like to know what monstrosities would pop out where a gate to Malfeas touches a shadowland/the Wyld/both, but it seems like there'd be even less information on that.

If the Underworld has the same metaphysics as it did in 2e, then you'd become a walking nuclear bomb for most of the things there just by having your anima.

don't try to bring facts into this

...

Yep. Hungry ghosts, at least, explicitly treat it as real sunlight in 3rd. I can't imagine it's different for anything else. You literally shine with the light of the sun, ghosts get fuck.

Yeah, this has already happened multiple times this thread. They wanted to not have magitech as a keyword, and especially not as justification for "this can be more powerful but it needs repairs" when there was nothing similar for non magitech. Barring Warstriders, even the other "magitech" now only needs special skills to repair when damaged, not necessarily requiring it all the time. Which is borderline admittedly. But the point is they were never NOT bringing back magitech items.

Most importantly, they wanted to avoid all amazing ultra powerful artifacts getting labeled as a specific style. Magitech in 2e ended up becoming "if it isn't this, its worthless."

Magitech was the Enlightened Mortal of artifacts

I think it was also kind of a 'look and feel' thing. Like you can still have artifacts that do all or at least some of the stuff that artifacts do, its just not a result of straight up sciencey stuff anymore. It's like the times the devs have said that guns wouldn't break the game, they just want to keep them out for tone reasons. You can still have automotons, like the brass leviathan was a thing in 1e even, just don't make it have a straight up motherboard and so on.

I 100% agree. I LOVE magitech, and I'm also happy they tried to shake it up. Because it makes the decision to do something magitech is a meaningful stylistic choice not a foregone conclusion for any remotely intelligent artificer.

And if I'm ever playing a more traditional type of fantasy smith or something I can do that without kneecapping myself.

whatever happened to Jon Chung, I've been waiting for him to find the inevitable massive system flaw in 3e that reveals it to be just as big a pile of shit as everything that came before

Got banned from the White Wolf forums, IIRC.

As I understand, the Wyld hates death aspected essence as a matter of course. Death aspected essence is stagnant, orderly, and profoundly antithetical to the Wyld. Raksha loath ghosts and everything dead. It is almost physically painful for them, and they can't survive in the Underworld long.

I would rule that the Wyld won't encroach into the Shadowland until everything else around it fall, and when it does, the Shadowland effectively disappears. A conflict between a Shadowland pocket inside the Wyld provides also great thematic opportunities for the players.

Got banned from talking about exalted after all he would say was he didn't read 3e but too many charms and combinatory he'll. And wouldn't shut up about how he hadn't read 3e's book because its shit.

3e Sorcery is simply 2e Thaumaturgy revamped and upped a notch.

3e Thaumaturgy is simply 2e Sorcery revamped and toned down.

And yes, 3e Thaumaturgy is a blight and useless, gimped down so much it could as well not exist.

He'd have to actually bother reading and understanding the book before he can do that. I mean, he is an active poster on Sufficient Velocity, which frankly is where he belongs, and he has made posts there about 3E, but he has made those posts without actually knowing shit about 3E.

I'd be perfectly happy with thaumaturgy not existing, to be honest. Some Supernatural Merits to represent divine or otherwise superhuman ancestry, the blessing of some greater entity, resuls of seeking power and knowledge from the Wyld or something like that, that's fine. Thaumaturgy as a unified system seems completely unnecessary to me, though.

Yeah, he rambled on for a while about how Fate-Shifting Solar Arete broke everything forever and Larceny was now a required Supernal and people basically just patted him on the head and said "there there, old man". It was a refreshing sight.

...wasn't there an assumption however that let them resemble the undead? Assumption of Cerements and Bone, I think?

Well, looking it up, it sure seems like it's pretty damn bro--

>this charm can only be used once per full night's rest

...Yeeeeah never mind, he's retarded.

It was broken because it was the only way to boost Sorcerous Workings and it also helped for Craft rolls.

It's since been errata'd to only apply to Night Caste abilities.

The important thing about Chungian thinking is that JC doesn't play Exalted. He runs whiteroom tests and makes sweeping declarations on the basis on them.

Now, in the case of 2E Rocket Tag and Perfect Spam, the problems he identified were real and serious problems; not purely because they existed, but because the system didn't advertise itself on the basis of those issues and as a result they lurked under the surface of the game like landmines waiting to fuck up your campaign.

3E, though? That one "I am super fucking metal just for this one roll" is a murderous shitbag in whiteroom, but apart from one nasty combo with Craft, it's a complete nothingburger in play. It's certainly not a ubiquitous game-ruining landmine, and indeed it's starting to look like 3E doesn't actually have any landmines... well, yet. So Chungian thinking is a total waste of time.

>It's since been errata'd to only apply to Night Caste abilities.

Really? Huh. I feel like even without that it's not broken simply because you can only use it on one roll a day, effectively.

It was broken because it was a mandatory purchase for Twilight Castes, or anyone who intended to perform Sorcerous Workings. The fact that it could only be used once per day didn't matter when you were only rolling once per week, after all.

>indeed it's starting to look like 3E doesn't actually have any landmines... well, yet

The big one I've seen is 'For the love of all that's holy, don't have a weak combatant in a fight'. Since each person stores init on themelves but can gain it from anyone, it's quite easy to beat a weaker combatant (Like say, a twilight caste who's got skills but no charms) like a redheaded stepchild to build up init to offload onto the guy he actually wants to fight. You are legitimately better off not having them at all.

So the game sort incentives 'Unless you dumped a good chunk into combat, just stand back and watch the Real Guys fight'

>Night Caste
Speaking of shit that annoys me: In 3e, a Night Caste isn't required to actually take stealth at all (He could be Aladdin running about crazily or the TF2 spy with disguises just as easily). However, a good chunk of his Anima abilities are about improving stealth.

They really should have made it more generic for improving Night Caste Stuff rather than a single skill.

>The fact that it could only be used once per day didn't matter when you were only rolling once per week, after all.

Aha, gotcha. I don't play Twilights tremendously often so I'm not as familiar with the sorcerous working rules.

I've found Defend Other and effects keying off of it to be pretty helpful in this scenario.

Yeah but even then, you are a drag on the better combatant as Defend Other is taking away from his own ability to end the fight to mitigate the effect of the weaker guy.

A bit, but Melee's protection charms can make it so that you can still gain initiative or even force the other guy to attack you directly instead of the weaker person, opening them up to stuff like Solar Counterattack.

An honest question: Can anything stop a Circle of Solars that's working together? I mean, my group has snuck into Thorn, and they're fucking taking the bad guys apart. It's not even a question of combat ability - When the Night Caste, the Dawn and the Eclipse ambushed a Deathknight and his retinue of soldiers, he just got fucking bodied. He simply couldn't recover from being gutterstomped by three Solars at once (and a handful of resistance fighters).

I've found the same thing to happen when they were fighting an Wyld Hunt. Sure, the Wyld Hunt had some Dragonblooded, but the Solars fighting together pushed their shit in.

It seems to me that having an adventuring 'party' doesn't work very well, because the sheer competence of a Solar Circle just fucks a hole in everything.

Depends on the Charms they've got. If they've got War Lion Stance, the cost to them is minimal (2m committed for the duration of the scene).

current thaumaturgy is just inexplicable miraculous powers which are a neat thing but not what was understood by thaumaturgy.
the learned scholar or exorcists and wise shamans that have knowledge of the occult aspects of creation and rituals to affect and use them.
thaumaturgy should just have been a part of the systems and conflict chapter about how to use occult.
using the lore system with occult to introduce occult facts including rituals which can then be performed with occult seems like a reasonable fix.

And if you're not a Melee user, well they can't attack your charge if they're currently flying across the horizon. God I love Heaven Thunder Hammer.