/exg/ - Exalted General

Creation worked, sure they didn't have to worry about the Wyld invading or the Deathlords but they had to deal with titanic beings who while they weren't quite mad, were utterly incapable of comprehending mortal life. Civilizations could be wiped out because Isidoris decided to walk over the East. They are so vast and powerful that they could not interact with Creation in a way that wasn't bad for mortals unless they took specific steps to ensure it wasn't. Steps they didn't think they needed or flat out didn't want to take. Why be careful with some single souled beings would die? They're barely alive! Mortals are ants compared to Primordials, why would they care about their misery?

Creation is absolutely in a better state for mortals than it was when the Primordials were in charge. All the other Primordial made races are worse off, but from a mortal perspective life is much, much better.

>they randomly wiped races out or deleted continents on a whim. If you weren't a primordial your life was at risk of ending because your species wasn't amusing enough anymore. Or was made by another primordial when one was having a tantrum.

According to some of the lore like 90-95% of creation was wiped out by all the numerous disasters that followed after Sol's rule. The Exalted themselves enslaved numerous races, wiped out many more, and then all killed each other because MUH POWER AND RIGHT TO RULE. Sol sat around doing dick all while the Wyld faggots and Neverborn killed millions.

Were the Primordials *that* bad in comparison?

So you are the type to Kent Brockman when the Ants come to wipe out humanity because some kid flooded their anthill.

The Solars were just as bad though, they powered up to the levels of primordials and then they stopped seeing mortals as anything other than ant colonies to have molten aluminum poured into them. Mind you, that's in 2e lore, I have no idea what the glory and terror of the First Age was like in 3e.

Speaking of which, wouldn't the true First Age be the time before the Exalted uprising?

>Speaking of which, wouldn't the true First Age be the time before the Exalted uprising?

Pre-Exalt was the Time of Miracles

How would you go about making a MA style in the ven of pic related?

Considering a bunch of upjumped mortals managed to overthrow the Primordials, it was a fucking miracle indeed. Also, I made a gladiator Dawn (yeah yeah cliched) and I wanted to research the role in Exalted to get more in character, but all the Scavenger Land books / Manacle and Coin / Masters of Jade haven't been too forthcoming, so I used late Roman gladiator references instead. Am I too far off the mark? Where should I be looking isntead, if I am?

Solar exalts are humans turned up to 11

Whatever is your "thing", Solars are literally the best at it

Not to my ST I'm not. I have to explain every stat above (or below) 2 on my character sheet. And to him 5s are unrealistic.

Your ST is a fag.

2 is what you get for doing a PhD in a subject, or equivalent. Solars are inherently better than average

>According to some of the lore like 90-95% of creation was wiped out by all the numerous disasters that followed after Sol's rule.

The Three Sphere Cataclysm? I don't think your rebellion counts as unjust because the maniac in charge screams "IF I CAN'T HAVE IT! NO ONE CAN!" and pushes the self-destruct button.

Isn't a PhD a pretty big deal? But yes, he used the book's definition for skill ratings, never mind that the book is kind of inconsistent even within itself.

I think it includes things like the Solars who wanted to rebuild Creation in their image, pushed for the Great Geas, turned their domains into their own personal visions of heaven or hell... Speaking of heaven and hell, Is Amalion still the nicest 3rd Circle? What would sex with her be like? inb4 table humping

>Isn't a PhD a pretty big deal?

Yes. 2 dots in an ability is a big deal. 1 is "trained but not an expert" and 5 is "literally fucking Einstein but better"

Despite book explicitly stating that it's okay for Solars to be the kind of exceptional people who have 5s?

>2 is what you get for doing a PhD in a subject, or equivalent.
Nah, 2 just means professional level of competence. Someone with Lore 2 would be more like an alright teacher than a respected scholar.

I don't know who to believe.

Me.

Alternatively, the book. The average professional soldier has Melee 2, and while a professional soldier is no doubt well trained, he he's hardly the kind of an expert someone with a PhD would be in his field. A professional merchant would have relevant Abilities at 2, but this wouldn't be comparable to having a PhD in Economics.

See, this is proof to me that removing the little blurbs detailing what someone's rough competence at each skill level should have never been removed.

You're explicitly wrong though. Individuals did, but that was 100% against the rules of the Deliberative, because any Joe Schmo could be the next Excessively Radiant Buttplug, you had to try not to overly step on toes.

Now there were events were bad things happened, but there was always more reasons than "Because I was bored." for the ones always bandied about. Wyldhand, Salinan working, all dangerous to mortals but with clear intent behind them.

Yeah, as another said, it was a Primordial last minute fuck you that caused that. Not the direct fault of the rebellion, at least not in a "See, the Exalts are the villains." way.

Only if the ants are explicitly less directly interested in casual genocide than whatever came before. I'll take the less shitty of two shitty options any day.

Oh, and while we're checking what the book says about things, the sidebar titled 'Yes, you can take a 5' on page 149 seems relevant to the discussion at hand.

But they havne't been removed.

Ability Rating Meaning
0 The character has no training or signifcant experience in this Ability.
• The character has been trained in the
fundamentals of the Ability, or is experienced enough to be familiar with using
it. This is the level of apprentices, interested amateurs, and dabblers.
•• The character has trained in the Ability
to a professional level, or has experience equivalent to a professional. This
is the level of most soldiers, healers,
savants, and merchants in the world
of Exalted.
••• The character’s training in the Ability
surpasses the competence expected
even of professionals, marking her as
an elite or veteran in her feld.
•••• The character’s mastery of the Ability
sets her above even experts in her feld.
Seasoned veteran soldiers pale before
her prowess; the top physicians of noble
families consult her for guidance; clever
and wealthy merchants envy her business acumen.
••••• The character is a legendary master of
the Ability—or else, she will be once
word of her skill spreads. She has a comprehensive understanding and utter
command of every aspect of her skill.

To put this into degrees.

0 is someone who hasn't even taken any schooling.
1 has a high school degree
2 has a Bachelor's
3 has a Master's/Ph. D.
4 has a Ph.D. for sure and has published a lot of personal research that has impacted the field.
5 has created an entire field of study or is so far beyond everyone else it's ridiculous.

Einstein probably had 4 in Lore, Specialty (Physics)

>She has a comprehensive understanding and utter command of every aspect of her skill.
The ST was pretty hung up on that for why I couldn't take a 5 in Performance.

>To put this into degrees.
>0 is someone who hasn't even taken any schooling.
>1 has a high school degree
>2 has a Bachelor's
>3 has a Master's/Ph. D.
>4 has a Ph.D. for sure and has published a lot of personal research that has impacted the field.
>5 has created an entire field of study or is so far beyond everyone else it's ridiculous.
>Einstein probably had 4 in Lore, Specialty (Physics)
Of course, the fact that there's only a one die difference kind of lessens the practical impact of Ability 4 and 5. At lower levels, I think that small difference feels more meaningful.

>Only if the ants are explicitly less directly interested in casual genocide than whatever came before. I'll take the less shitty of two shitty options any day.

Please feel free to kill yourself to make the world a better place. Humans genocide entire species all the time. You won't though.

Zenith.webm

i.4cdn.org/wsg/1516828566894.webm

Refer to . Or rather refer your ST to that particular sidebar.

That's just how Exalted Abilities work, a lot of them cover an incredibly broad area. Performance covers every musical instrument, dancing, singing, story-telling, public speaking, and all that shit.

Fuck, Melee covers every single melee weapon ever made. Do you know how different all that shit is in real life? It's ridiculous, yet someone with Melee 5 can fight at a beyond expert level with a sword, shield, hammer, spear, mace, flail, staff, when most share nothing in common. It's a part of the setting/system.

Now, something I've done before because this does seem pretty odd is to give a conditional penalty that lowers their effective ability to 1 due to unfamiliarity that gets lower over a few scenes of them getting used to it. Once they've interacted with the weapon/instrument or what have you this goes away forever. Much like Lore, a background or specialty will get rid of this. So if you were a band or something you'd have familiarity, or just pick it up in play. Or shit if you know ahead of time, spending some time off screen getting yourself familiar with it is enough. Say you know the king loves the flute but you've never played one, you go into town, buy a flute and spend the afternoon figuring it out. Bam, no penalty.

This is meant to represent someone with high skill being able to figure it out much quicker than learning a whole new skill.

What does everyone think of the 1/2e Solar sigs vs the 3e sigs?

You're forgetting all the other calamities that came after. Like the Usurpation, the Contagion, the Balorian Crusade...

Does anyone have a copy of the updated version of Arms of the Chosen with Errata that they can post in the thread?

No, I just think it's better to suffer under your own mistakes than at the whims of an Eldritch master. Assuming both will be terrible, which they are, I'd rather suffer by my own hands.

People keep saying, but the Exalted went crazy, but faeries, but this and that. None of those is worse than the Primordial casual genocide.

Doesn't require me to kill myself. But I would find a dark sort of humor if say, Planet of the Apes happened. I wouldn't want it to certainly. But nor would I blame the apes or expect people to come after to cry baby bitch tears that the mean monkeys bullied me. And that's still not on the same level, because it is a very small subset of humans willing to commit those levels of death so casually. Most of the primordials were totally okay to "reset" their created races.

The 3E signatures really suck. Most of them all have some weird sex thing going on. The 2E signatures were more reflective of what an actual adventuring party would be like.

Unless you count the "Eye of Vagamotto" that Shen has, then only weird sex thing is the Eclipse. What do the others have that's weird?

Please elaborate. And personally I preferred the 1e blurbs for each class, I thought they were really inspirational.

Off the top of my head, Volfer is an exhibitionist manwhore, Novia has no pants, and I dunno about Perfect SOul, maybe she's lez? I want to bone the two of them though.

As if Gods and mortals wouldn't do the same. A Plague God's entire life is pointless murder, and mortals would readily genocide anyone they had to, Barbarians, Realmites, you name it, they're killing each other and would do so to the last of them. In the end, the same crazy amount of deaths happened with or without the Primordials, except now there's no Primordials to smooth out the kinks in the machine that might happen with wholesale death.

Volfer wears as much as Panther and there's no proof that Novia is going commando.

> Prince Diamond: Transsexual.
> Perfect Soul: Stronk womyn who don't need no man.
> Volfer: Apparently a homosexual.
> Eternal Nova's reincarnation: I identify as zir.

Those are the ones that jump to mind.

Visiting Flare/Eternal Nova isn't exactly a sig, though he is the PC of one of the devs.

Sure, but Panther didn't have chapter fic of him showing his cock off to imperial legionnaires to dare them to attack. And Novia doesn't wear pants, I never said she didn't wear panties. That would be nice though.

Where are you getting the ones for Volfer and Perfect Soul? I don't see them. Are you sure you don't mean Rakan Thulio instead of Volfer.

Wasn't there an iconic Alchemical who was always naked, except for a small cloak? It's not like what you say about the Ex3 iconics isn't unprecedented. Would it make any difference if Novia wore a skirt instead? She's wearing more than Harmonious Jade anyway.

It's honestly as simple as scale of power. Even the UCS is not as strong as all the Primordial, much less so the local plague god.

Did the Primordials get a somewhat rough treatment? Yeah, but they were being fucking cunts. Is everyone else also cunts? Sure, but at least the cuntery is on a smaller scale.

But at this point, if you're seriously arguing the Primordials were good ol' boys who didn't do nothin', I'm kinda assuming you're just a really weird Sub trying to convince more people to subtly run your ideal magical realm. Or some other sort of Authority Fetishist.

>Being a PC while being female
>Apparently time to call the "Sex Thing" police.

Fucking what? Volfer just playing the "Everyone is bi until proven otherwise" rule that's been true since 2e at least too, so that's a stretch.

Yeah, the iconic Adamant Caste. And I don't have a problem with it, it was just that the guy I was responding to said there was a weird sex thing with all the 3e iconics and that was all I could come up with.

Personally I think Novia's uniform could really have used a pair of pants so she could look like a proper ship's officer, but her current look is good too.

I'm arguing that Primorials don't care about stepping on things that are so below they might as well be theoretically alive. Do you consider the feelings of grass when you walk over it? If it kills the grass, just plant more. Does this hurt the grass? Sure. Are you grass? No? Then you don't care.

I'm not talking about the necessity of the war against the primordials. Just don't fool yourself thinking mortals were why that war was fought, the gods were the ones who were tired of being enslaved. Also your "scale" is fucking wrong too since the total suffering on Creation has increased since the Age of Miracles. Not only did the Contagion+Wyld incursions kill 90% of everyone, Creation itself has shrunk by orders of magnitude. The universe itself is worse off now.

I'll ignore your epic muh magic realm remarks since my nan taught me to not make fun of the disabled.

Again most of that shrinkage came from the Primordials themselves throwing a tantrum as they lost not a consequence of the gods rule. And you can give me this "blades of grass" nonsense if you want, and usually it may have been true, but they would 100% casually pick out races to completely annihilate. 100%. I'll take 90 over 100. From a non-specific, all race standpoint you may have some weird sort of point. As a species that exists at the time it's cowering in caves and huts.

At least under the Exalts/Gods mortals were capable of tasting some level of comfort. And the fucking catastrophes you're speaking of come from the bitter losers of the war sabotaging things, and using their agents to pull a disease from another reality.

Like seriously, the Primordials are STILL causing grief. I get you're trying to be contrarian on purpose and let us know how much more enlightened you are, but it's not as impressive as you think.

It should be pretty fucking obvious I'm speaking fro a non specific, outsider standpoint. If I'm the blade of grass being stepped on I'm obviously not going to be happy about it.

No, the shrinking is thanks to the gods being useless fucks that can't defend against the Wyld at all without the Primordials. The Jade Obelisks were toppled by rakshas, not by primordials.

Contagion was released by who? A fucking solar. Rakshas aren't "released" by anyone, they've always been ready to end Creation any time they reasonably thought they could, and they saw the chance when the gods where too busy playing the pop up pirate game in the jade dome instead of doing their jobs like how it was under Primordial rule.

You act as if the Yozi/Neverborn shouldn't retaliate against their usurpers because it would cause grief. It sure reminds me of another group of usurped shaking up the universe with plenty of strife to retake their place in the world. I don't think you get anything pal.

What Evocations would fit a Blue and Black Jade Daiklave meant to be a graceful and elegant but deadly weapon fitting for a Western prince with a penchant for duels?

The Solar who released the contagion was being goaded by the Neverborn. And at least one bit of fiction I remember reading said it was ALSO Deathlords/Their servants who knocked over the obelisks.

Like, the original point was that the gods are terrible because they LEAD all this to happen. When really at worst they don't do enough to prevent it. I'm back to my original point. AS any specific individual OTHER than a Primordial is in a worse place when they live at the whims of these chaotic cosmic toddlers/retards who murder/break your entire species because you were made by their nerd brother. I would much rather have to fight off hordes of faeries and terrible diseases than have to wait for random, uncontrollable death.

Plus, neither of these would have broken everything if not for the Primordials cursing the Exalted and/or these things happening without new Solars to defend.

Yes, the Solars were terrible. But the original argument that started all this was that the UCS and crew were inherently wrong and that Primordials did nothing wrong. Not that they were only relatively similarly terrible tyrants. I'll accept that the violent cycle is ironic and begs repeating. But no, the Primordials were actively malicious pretty consistently. Real glad they made Creation and all, but fuck 'em.

The Deathlords were responsible for the Great Contagion and for the Raksha entering into Creation. The Deathlords were able to let the Raksha back in since they could speak with Solar authority since they were once Solars.

Didn't Eye and Seven Despairs specifically make it, just to get the Neverborn off his back? I swear, if he wasn't so petty and self absorbed, he'd be the biggest threat to reation out of all the Deathlords.

Water and air are fluids, so emphasis in flow, yielding to attack only to sweep the opponent's feet out from under them, hidden movements building up to a great crescendo. In other words the evocations should reward defense, patience, deception and then work to finish the foe off in one mighty blow.

That's what I remembered, yeah. In other words, the Neverborn (Ex-Primordial) actions. Only tangentially related to the gods taking over. In that things that are just as bad short term would happen under Primordial rule, they just can casually remake more stuff to fill in for the obliteration.

The new ones will probably never gain the benefit of having as much word count to narrate their own experiences as the old ones did. Even if the Twilight Castebook was the absolute nadir of not just the splatbooks, but all Exalted books until Kingdom of Halta. And then the Player's Guide. And then 2e... especially DotFA.

No, you're thinking of his misplaced Trioxin canisters. Also, 2e Eye - really, 2e anything, but Abyssals in particular - is the shittiest lore.

I know the mechanics of that were pretty borked and the fluff itself was eh at best, but why is Kingdom of Halta so bad?

Are low initiative decisive attacks really so big of a deal that you need an entire armor attribute dedicated to preventing them?

It's meant to screw over Iron Whirlwind Attack.

If someone can launch Low Initiative attacks at you they can slowly whittle you down. They don't have to farm initiative so they don't have to continuously attack you, as soon as they reset they just launch an attack. This could end up being quite threatening, especially with multiple opponents. Since the weapon stats don't matter for decisive this means any mob of people could slowly bring you down.

Hardness meanwhile forces them to engage with your soak and defense repeatedly. With a shit weapon they need to be able to hit you well above your defense to get enough damage to hurt you. If they're so far below you in skill and weaponry they can't meaningful gain Initiative off of you thereby making you damn near invincible.

This also.

>the Twilight Castebook was the absolute nadir
...dare I ask why?

Read it, then come back if you still have questions

As and
It's also a carryover from 2e. It fills a decent role, a stat to discourage death of a thousand cuts. Which there is some support to trying, unarmored opponents should be wary of getting slammed over and over and nickle and dimed into a death spiral of wound penalties.

>A Plague God's entire life is pointless murder
Plagues happen, plague gods or no plague gods

Wow, so that's what people mean when they talk about grasping at straws.

Why would you even be an exalted and not present your glorious body at all times?
Insecurities towards other godlings ?

2e had a fucking bear of a black man with a tattoo of the sun in his biceps, Old Man Retired Badass, sexy, sassy and powerful black woman, the Ice Queen, and Swan, who was arguably the less interesting of the bunch but was made interesting both by contrast with the others and his extensive backstory.

3e has a badly drawn tranny, a badly drawn generic WE WUZ black woman, a very badly drawn generic barbarian, another badly drawn generic black woman so generic everyone forgets she even exists, and Doctor Strange. I'll give them a point for Doctor Strange. Can't go wrong with Doctor Strange.

Doctor Strange put aside, only the WE WUZ character has a semi-interesting backstory.

Stat this exalt
But really, westerners are nude all the time. In other places, where the sun will destroy your bare skin / it's cold as shit / jungles full of thorny vines and poisonous ferns, there's some clear advantages to wearing clothes.

>badly drawn generic WE WUZ black woman
who do you mean user?

>implying Panther is black in 3e

Did anyone ever notice that while Dace was the Dawn, Panther seemed to do all the fighting? What was up with that?

I want to say that Doctor Strange has the least interesting backstory because I think "Solar Dynast" has been done to death, but his backstory is the only one I can remember out of the iconics, so the others must be pretty forgettable.

How can you forget Prince Diamond, the Delhzahn who kills you for getting his pronouns wrong

I know Prince Diamond, Holdmorke's so progressive that they put him on the cover. I just don't know if there's anything to his personality beyond "kills you for getting his pronouns wrong." Didn't Delzhan culture work a little bit differently previously, though?

I'll give credit to Volfer, though. From what we've seen of him he seems like exactly the type of character someone new to the game would create: naked, provocative, next to no backstory, and has an evil sword.

Delhzan culture does work differently, because the locals all know what they're about.

Prince Diamond goes to other Directions who have no way of knowing the Delhzan way and then slits people up for it

Dace was a general-type, while Panther's concept was pretty much kung fu jesus. It seemed natural for Panther to fight more, while Dace led more. The castebook fiction and stuff usually has Dace leading his merc company around and negotiating with high level people, while Panther goes around smashing face.

No, he/she/it/whatever explains to people how things work in her culture, and how insulting she considers the use of wrong pronouns. She duels them if they continue using wrong pronouns on purpose after the explanation. Killing people for refusing to adhere to the norm of some faraway culture is still pretty dickish, but it's dickihs in a way that's just par for the course for Solars.

Perfect Soul, obviouly. Novia is so boring she doesn't even get a chapter break in the corebook.

I want to Celestial Bliss Trick her.

Par for a Limit Break maybe. Killing someone because of "MY PRONOUNS RRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" is the same as killing someone because in their culture wearing blue is offensive and you already "explained" to not wear blue in their presence. If you're not in Delhzani territory you don't have to observe Delhzan custom.

The idea of socially conservative people playing Exalted is so fucking bonkers that it makes me question reality. Then I remember nobody here actually plays the game they just theory fight on the internet.

You know what, nevermind. I'm actually perfectly content with this state of affairs.

You would be surprised at the amount of sane people playing Exalted. This is because, on average, sane people are a majority.

Insane tranny worshippers only makes a very small portion of the overall population. The genital mutilation agenda has been pushed far in Exalted, but by far and large, most sane Exalted fans still find it disgusting. This is a good thing.

Killing someone for intentional insults is pretty par for the course for Solars, Limit Break or no.

Hey now, that's not fair. They updated that art for the final version. As you can see, Panther is the blackest one.

You can also see that they left Perfect Soul and Volfer as-is, obviously meaning they're intended to be white. I can't believe every other artist got it so wrong.

To be fair, I think Volfer is supposed to be tanned rather than naturally dark, and I guess Perfect Soul is kinda light brown. But I always thought it funny that they went out of their way to color-correct this image but left those two alone.

too soon to say, there's a lot of people bitching about Prince Diamond being the LGBTQ quota but we'd know basically nothing about the old sig circle if it wasn't for the Caste books

When did Demetheus become a proud atheist?

Honestly, Prince Diamond struck me as LGBTQ pandering the first time I read about him, but now I've decided to just see how he turns out.

The idea that communists play Exalted is bonkers too, but I too remember that they actually don't play anything.

I wonder what gave you that impression

>I want to say that Doctor Strange has the least interesting backstory because I think "Solar Dynast" has been done to death, but his backstory is the only one I can remember out of the iconics, so the others must be pretty forgettable.

only one in canon is Lyta but people forget she's a Dynast because they associate it with mixed feeling about killing family members not genocidal fury.

oh hi /pol/ didn't see you there. Don't you belong at a misplaced attempt to understand economic theory and glorify racists instead of in a thread about games of imagination and feelings? I was to believe you hated those weak things.

there's nothing inherently wrong with quotas, the original signature circle with two people of colour and Arianna our strong independent sorceress who don't need no man battling the seemingly non-existent patriarchy was informed by a similar desire for diversity.

You could always piss off back to /lgbt/ if you want to talk about lgbt shit instead of doing it on Veeky Forums

I've liked the 1e/2e circle a lot less since DotFA where they hogged like a quarter of the Primordial War survivors, Panther is the reincarnation of the guy who made the Unconquered Sun turn away from Creation, Lilith feels unusable because she's canonically Swan's mate and the frantic attempts to link one or more of their past lives to a Deathlords.

At least the new guys are connected to a dot on the map that I can go visit or avoid. Maybe they'll drown in shit too? Time will tell.

>glorify racists
Spotted the (((bolshevik))).

The trick is in making sure that quota characters are actually interesting characters on their own right instwad of just kinda being there for the sake of diversity. has the right idea about waiting to see how Prince Diamond and other characters turn out in the end.

Agreed.