Exalted General - /exg/

Different user. But I think that the Alchemicals already started to pretty much stretch the entire Exalted thing and now with Exalted created by a rogue Sidereal it's starting to be a bit much.

Didn't she wear leather?

That looks nothing like her

Aren't his exaltations stolen?

solars aren't really obsessed with gold

Could I use Ethereal Induction Technique to create a god and then have that god beseech the Sun for the exigence?

I mean long term, set it up as a protector or something, have people worship it so it grows (whilst keeping it's defining ties or loyalty to me) until it would get Sol's attention?

then I'd have an exigent working for me

Or orichalcum really, being able to use any material and all. Tought I like to imagine first age aesthetics to be something like this, orichalcum/gold detail, marble/white jade construction.

no, im talking about aesthetics, a random solar wouldn't be wearing a shit ton of golden things or pave their house with gold tiles

But they aren't created by Rakan Thulio.

You could do that, but there'd be no guarantee of the UCS agreeing to that request, and even if he did, the Exigent would serve you to the same extent you serve the UCS, at most.

Yes? What do you think I'm talking about?

> able to use any material and all

I mean that they have an affinity with every material. I imagine that you'd rather surround yourself with something that you resonate with rather then something you're just neutral or dissonant with.

yes. and sadly, this lack of taste can hardly be said to have been limited to solars of the first age :( such is the true horror of the great curse

that only matters for your weapons and tools

a random solar wouldn't dress like a golden power ranger

that sad the cringy fucker has got to be an abyssal, right? the only reason I question it is a startling lack of overdone eyeshadow...but maybe hes new

I think he might

That only matters mechanically for tools and weapons yes. But isn't it logical that a Lunar would be much happier using something like a moonsilver earring rather then a jade one?

Cathedral of Subline Annihilation is basically perfect for my alt-palestinian Zenith. The capstone evocation is even basically what I already had planned for a finisher.

Alchemical, Getimian(?), the new non-gsp infernal(?), dunno, Green Sun Prince

Last session, I sparked the powder keg between 2 PCs, one of whom is our leader. Said leader used a charm during the social combat that gave him his last point of limit. So now he's going to go on a berserk rampage, with the only things around him being his own army and the other PCs. This is likely to put a crimp into the multi-front war with the Fair Folk we're in.

Good times. It's like a reenactment of the fall of the First Age.

sure, it's more likely than for most people in the setting because you'd get the occasional personalities like insane UCS cultist zeniths and the paranoid dawns who never takes their artifact plate off, but it would still be rare

it's only logical if you have a very theme park-y, cartoony view of the world

when i think "solar pirate", i think fancy sailor clothes and wooden ship, not golden clothes and gold encrusted ship, and the same goes for 99% of other character ideas

>It's ________
New Exalt types no one needed and will now forever more clog the release schedule unless they're rightly dumped for any editions past 3rd, assuming the game even survives to that point given all of it's mishandling?

>deliberately sets himself off
Player just trying to cause trouble, or just plain retarded?

Deliberately not paying attention to his Limit meter, because he figures it's not supposed to be a meta-concern.

Ah, so the "act completely normal and then suddenly full retard" switch play style.

I think that's the exact way Limit should be played desu. The player can't see his own Limit, GM tracks it, notes down why you gained/lost it, and then tells you when/if you Break. Else, no one will Break, ever, so you might as well not track limit.
I'm not saying that solars just fucking covet gold and ori like it's fucking shekels. I'm saying that the affinities aren't just some mechanical shit to gate exalt access to artifact evocations, if you resonate with the material it's obvious you're going to like it more then other materials. That's not saying every solar ever is out there trying to build himself a Flavor Flav clock out of his metal.

>if you resonate with the material it's obvious you're going to like it more then other materials
that's your headcanon, but it's fine if you think so

> The player can't see his own Limit, GM tracks it

This is how our group does it, works really well. We know one person has gone through a Break, but we don't know the effect either beyond "Made a bad deal". Looking forward to this biting us

>I think that's the exact way Limit should be played desu. The player can't see his own Limit, GM tracks it, notes down why you gained/lost it, and then tells you when/if you Break. Else, no one will Break, ever, so you might as well not track limit.

I've had much preferred something more like how Fate handles it's points. To get people indulging in the worse aspects of it's nature on occasion rather than being perfectly fine until they explode and do something dramatic. It's why I rather liked how Infernals handled it, as they promoted the PC actually playing into those flaws in general rather than going nuclear.

What makes a good anima banner?
I honestly have no idea what to do with this - it seems like animals are pretty standard for them. I think that's the Iron Bull's banner and in the book art one has a crocodile.

But I also heard that they can get pretty abstract looking.

One beuracracy supernal i played with manifested a huge golden ledger and whoever looked at it would see an accounting of all their sins as its entries.

>sins
>in exalted
lmao

Resistance supernal could have waves crashing against a cliff or a big ass shield, for example.

What's your character

It's almost like people wouldn't have as many problems with things if they actually fucking read what the things are.

But no one's going to give themselves Limit on purpose? Gaining Limit means that you're already going against your character, it's a stressful situation.
Well he said whoever looks sees his own sins, so it's reasonable to imagine it's not "sins according to the law of heaven" but more "things I feel guilty of".

My Super Original Brawl supernal has a solar flare for a banner

My Zenith judges banner is a pair of eyes glaring at you in a huge golden fire.

Eclipse caste samurai

I was thinking of something like this: at the lowest level he generates an indistinct looking archway with golden globes floating around it. Similar to the Tori seen in Japan.
At the highest level his anima banner is actually a pair of arms holding onto a sword blade. The arms are covered in tattoos/bracelets of religious iconography. Dripping down the blade and arms is blood - given that the anima is made out of golden light this is less horrific then it sounds. The golden blood droplets float around and form old-realm symbols - those that read old realm notice they're mostly about honor.

That's pretty neat.

What would an infernal of a neverborn be like?

Abyssal?

I thought abyssals don't get neverborn charms?

Do Neverborn even *have* Charms? They're dead, or eternally dying, whatever. They don't actively do anything.

would you consider a gravehound sufficiently non-magical to be a lunar's spirit shape by 2e rules?

I'd say that if yozi are their charms then neverborn wouldn't *have* any charms to learn.

and anything charm-like they use in the story is simply some charm-like property of their existence.
like how an eclipse can't learn to make the forest get out of his way like a running niljake because that isn't a spirit charm or even a proper mutation, just a 'natural' magical property of that creature. so there couldn't be an infernal-like of the neverborn.

Think this works as an anima banner or should I make it more of a.... complete manifestation of a whole body and not just arms?

In 3e your iconic imagery only displays when you first reach Bonfire level anima, and then again at key dramatic moments.

If the arms are dramatic enough then leave it at that. Don't overcrowd it.

Abyssals don't serve the Neverborn directly, they serve the Deathlords. The Neverborn really just tell the Deathlords "End Creation", give them some good negative energy power, and leave them to do it however they see fit. Remember that now Charms are actions suffuse by Essence, an the Neverborn are explicitly forbidden from physically acting in any way. Even the few things they can do, in order to imitate the charm, you'd have to meet the conditions for purchasing a Neverborn charm, IE be dead.

A corpse.

Wasn't there an Abyssal that served no Deathlord, but acted as an enforcer of the Neverborn?

But the thing is that the power of the Abyssal exaltation doesn't come from the Deathlord either. It's a regular Solar exaltation (this is going by the stupid Shards of Exaltation thing from 2e so "an exaltation" is an actual, meta spiritual "object") with an envelope of pure necrotic energy to allow control by the Neverborn and by extension, it's Deathlord. This doesn't add any power to the exaltation, just corrupts the solar power. So whoever the Abyssal is answering to, deathlord or neverborn, his power doesn't come from them.

sure, why not. not like it wouldn't be trivial to just get one after picking something that actually is op cheese like a tyrant lizard. spirit shape in 2e only really matters for the base stats, everything else is trivially acquired through hbr

>(this is going by the stupid Shards of Exaltation thing from 2e so "an exaltation" is an actual, meta spiritual "object")

lol at you thinking it somehow isn't NOW. if anything, exigents make it far more of a thing than it ever was in 2e. the devs just liked to get pretentious about it as part of their scheme to cover their own considerable failings by using golden years tarnished black on your concept of 2e...and even then mostly targeting shit they themselves wrote for inkmonkies

How did Sol create night castes if the sun never set until he actually created the Solars?

Is there any kind of chart or fluff text for the different amounts of Essence in 2nd edition? (Or third, not gonna be TOO picky.)

Basically, I’m just wondering from a fluffy “how does it feel to be Essence [#]?” Perspective, and would like to know if there’s a scale for the different levels of Essence. (1 is mortals, animals, least Gods; 2 are new Exalts, enlightened mortals, god-blooded, etc)

I swear, at one point I found SOMETHING like that, but now I have no freaking idea where that was...

Also, unrelated question: Do Abyssals have to meditate in tombs/Shadowlands to increase their Essence levels the same way Solars have to find sunny places and deserts? I think I read that somewhere too, but have forgotten. It does make sense though.

Mortals are Ess0. Having an essense score is to be attuned to the heartbeat of the world itself, it is effectively to be a god. Increasing essence scores probsably just feel like getting increasingly good at something like running or Russian, you just feel better, more in control, and superior to others with less than you and envious of those with more.

Sorcery is the ability to extend your will beyond yourself. It's like being in a hall of mirrors all the time, able to see yourself from the outside as well as the inside and see all the variations of creation that are, were and could be.

I guess I should specify that it's not the fact that the exaltation has a defined vessel that's retarded, it's that they were defined as being basically auto sufficient and sapient by themselves. How do exigents relate to shards of exaltation though?

They probably dont have tje capacity to modify exaltations to that extent. S'why the bulk of their charms are grisly mirrors of solar charms. They just inverted them into resonating with death without doing any sort of detail work.

No, mortals have Essence 1, because they’re ALIVE, and even that’s debateable because there’s plenty of undead who have Essence 1 or higher. Essence 0 means you’re dead.

An Essence rating gives you a mote pool. In any edition, mortals are E0

All of the stat blocks list mortals as Essence 1, though, don't they? I don't remember seeing anything with an Essence of 0, even barely-sapient artificial beings like Brass Legionnaires.

I don't think you can go lower than 1.

Don't got the book on me but I could swear the only E0 beings I've seen are the Neverborn.
Really commits my motes

Mortals are e1 in second edition, e0 in third.

...

Well, that explains that mix-up.

Feel kinda biased, but I prefer the 2nd ed version.

I guess it's the other way around, because they were definitely E0 in 2e/2.5e

...

Hahahahaha.

Lets just round this out.

Golden Years Tarnished Black strikes again

Okay, so is there some kind of scale for Essence and fluff for characters with awakened Essence who aren’t Exalted?

Page 179 of the 3e core has a bit on how long it typically takes to reach certain Essence levels and how rare that is, but beyond that, I'm not sure. If there was more in past editions, I'd be interested in seeing that too.

>talk about Golden Years Tarnished Black

SV fags please go

Depends what you're talking about, I think there's some things written about essence 10 rakshas, like Balor, things like the unformed and hannyas. Awakened mortals, it's already a miracle to awaken, so reaching e2 by themselves is nigh unimaginable.

This is because there are apparently ONE HUNDRED of them. They are exactly the same size as the Sidereals.

This is an enormous thing. It's a universe-changing thing, in fact, because so much was accomplished merely by 100 Sidereals.

I'll steal from it as much as I want and you can't stop me

Ok that is fucking stupid. The combined forces of the Yozis and Deathlords barely got a hundred in a complete surprise attack on a moment of weakness. A hundred of those implies that either
A) Rohan or whatever the name is stole a hundred exaltation by himself
B) Getimians are mirror Siderals
I don't like either

Perfect Defences

100 solars were pussies who never learned them

But getimians are the same as siderals thought, in their affinities

If wearing a silicon headband made me stronger you'd bet I'd try to wear it as much as possible.

My Dawn was a gladiator and as the anima flares, a sun-beaten arena overlays everything and a roaring crowd cheers in the background.

you should make your anima banner recursively display your anima banner ;)

It doesn't though. And a gold headband doesn't make a Solar stronger either. Furthermore, even an orichalcum headband isn't better for them than Jade, Moonsilver, Starmetal or even Soulsteel.

I typically try to have the banner reflect either the Supernal ability or the moment of Exaltation. For example a Craft Supernal surrounded by an array of magic mirrors that reflect the sun back at him, this is a reference to the mirrors needed to distill Orichalcum from gold.

Incidentally, I always get stuck coming up with a banner for my Dawn castes.

I usually keep the banner's content roughly the same, but add detail the higher I get in essence

I know this has probably been though of before but how about a setting where when the Solar exaltations were stolen by the Neverborn and Yozi an entire caste was stolen and none of another caste was ever stolen?

Like all the Dawns and Zeniths, but none of the Nights, Twilights or Eclipses? I want to say it's not feasible, but really it's no more so than stealing exactly half of every caste.

What implications would there be for the setting? The combination that I suggested that the CoD forces would have unparalleled military might and the ability to pick off high profile targets through assassination, but the Solars would be able to raise nation and create alliances plus all of the sorcerous infrastructure and artifacts that having all of the Twilights would imply.

infernals were the best limit handling, and alchemical clarity was 2nd best. solar was the worst

also the acts of villainy were fun to play straight or hammy no matter what anybody says

Didn't Abyssals heave something similar to Infernals in Shards? It also gave them an actual Limit track instead of Resonance.

Pretty similar yea.

>Is there any kind of chart or fluff text for the different amounts of Essence in 2nd edition?
There's nothing that directly addresses it, but you can infer a lot. Mortals with enlightened essence cap out at 3, if they somehow reach Essence 4 they ascend into godhood and you normally need some sorcerous means of doing that or a benediction from a very powerful god, you can't just push yourself to make it happen. So getting to E4 with a proportional number of charms puts you firmly beyond humanity. And when elemental dragons try to reach Essence 8 they go insane because they're trying to transcend their place in Gaia's designs, which makes another threshold clear.
>Do Abyssals have to meditate in tombs/Shadowlands to increase their Essence levels the same way Solars have to find sunny places and deserts?
Yes, and they need to meditate on the nature of Oblivion and their role as bringers of death and destruction.