So We DO Have Guns Edition
>What is Exalted?
An epic high-flying role-playing game about reborn god-heroes in a world that turned on them.
Start here: http://theonyxpath.com/category/worlds/exalted/

>That sounds cool, how can I get into it?
Read the 3e core book (link below). For mechanics of the old edition, play this tutorial:http://mengtzu.github.io/exalted/sakuya.html
It’ll get you familiar with most of the mechanics.

>Gosh that was fun. How do I find a group?
Roll20 and the Game Finder General here on /tg/. good luck

>Resources for Third Edition
>3E Core and Splats
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/b54o6teut3fx6/Exalted_3e

>Errata for Third Edition
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n3ooTmopm3CBxW5jwPp1761xsaIccea-5XIhVM_PQEc/edit

>Other Ex3 Resources
https://pastebin.com/fG1mLMdu

>Resources for Older Editions
https://pastebin.com/BXSGuFdQ

>Collection of Exalted Hacks
https://pastebin.com/gtZnycJs

>Stuff that might be interesting
https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/the-exalted-thread-with-no-original-ideas.317216/

Last thread:>>95899423
Thread Question: You DO use other weapon artifacts besides daiklaves, right?

>>95954580 (OP)
to whomsoever updates, the abyssal backer pdf and Art of Exalted 2e are on g0fi1e<DOT>i0
/d/SfcLP6 and /d/U9mV0G respectively

>>95954580 (OP)
>You DO use other weapon artifacts besides daiklaves, right?
Her ass.

Just kidding, mostly she uses her claws and feet (she's 45 feet tall in her combat form so these tend to pulp the enemy).

She reserves her ass as a prison for people she doesn't want to kill in her 110 foot tall 'maternal' form.

>>95954580 (OP)
>You DO use other weapon artifacts besides daiklaves, right?
No, I must have the most generic gear possibly.

>>95954580 (OP)
What is the gun shooting? A beam or a ball? Does it remove the soul in the shape of a ball?

>>95954580 (OP)
Weekly Update
this week's update was done by dixie cochran rather than the usual richt, so some details may be incorrect
>Art Direction
Alchemicals – should be with Navella
Champions of the Divine Flame – with HIVE
Essence PG - funded
>Layout
Essence Novella Omnibus – With Travis
Miracles of the Divine Flame – Still working on it
>Press
Exigents – Quoting
Exigents Screen – At Studio 2
Sidereals – Quoting
Abyssals – out to backers
almost every note is repeated from last week save alchemicals and usually if there's no change they leave it blank, so who knows if change happened this week or if dixie is just a fuckup. next week's update will be monthly and weekly due to timing

>>95954664
>What is the gun shooting?
Pressurized Primordial Piss ™

This is a 1500-year-old super ghost of infinite magic and power.

>>95955074
As long as I have a face, she will always have a throne.

>>95955074
Slowly turning into a shortstack, legs first.

Alchemical pussy be like
>You wouldn’t fuck a city, would you?

>>95955179
"Orgy?"
"Orgy!"
"Yeah, fuck this city!"

Are there any good collections/sources for coming up regionally fitting names for characters?

>>95955179
I think the dorkiest scene I've ever witnessed in a game is two Alchemicals describing what their cities would look like combined. Literally like a couple talking about their future dream house but it's also intertwined with sex.

>>95955443
There are some specific call-outs for some regions or cultures in Across the 8 Directions. For everything else, you'll either have to go by context clues and named people from the area, or wing it with the general naming guidelines, also in At8D.

Re: names, forgot to mention, I believe there are also some resources in Essence and Pillars of Creation, but it might be asking a bit much to get those just for naming help.

What would count as easy comfort food/low effort dinner/snacky street food meals in Halta?

The 1e sourcebook has extensive details on what kinds of food they harvest, but so far as what they make it into it only really goes as far as saying "they can make good bread out of pine nuts".

For reference they have pine nuts and edible moss as agricultural staples, foraged mushrooms and a weird species of treetop rice as slightly rarer vegetables, plus various domesticated eggs and plenty of hunted meat because they consider raising an animal to kill it weird. Giant tree sloths are the single most common meat hunted, other types exist but aren't mentioned by name.

>>95955861

Oh also they have weed and no taboo against smoking it, but that's not food.

>>95955861
Plant honey + pine nuts to make baklava using pine nut flour. Huevos rancheros but with nutmeal instead of cornmeal.

These ones I'm about to list aren't mentioned specifically but I'm pretty sure they could be grown and harvested well in that climate for a variety of foodsAvocados. Goosefoot. Air potatoes.

>>95955861

Dunno if they have dairy but pine nuts and herbs is ideal for making pesto, which makes for an excellent burger sauce. Combo with some minced sloth and that pine bread with a side of sliced tuber and you've got yourself a winning fast food franchise.

>>95955982

>uuuuuh... welcome to slothburger, can i take your order?
>you want air potato fries with that?
>yes ma'am, the kids meal has a toy. we trade linowan captives to some creepy elf that makes them i think
>yeah, we don't have any ice cream today, the hundred mile rope bridge to the town that trades for it is out
>look ma'am i'm a talking ocelot i don't have thumbs
>have a nice day ma'am

>>95955861
>What would count as easy comfort food/low effort dinner/snacky street food meals in Halta?
Curry, risotto, omelets, chips and dips, salads, tortilla, and they could probably make pizza, cake, pie, and similar pastries and baked goods work, albiet with a nutty base and a tendency towards fruit fillings.

>>95954604
Uploaded both, please check the folder to see that they're working. I will also likely move the book on 2e's art out of the Ex3 folder in the future, but for now just let me know that it's working.

What unique Charm niches should Solars get, that they don't have or had very under represented in previous editions?

>>95956423
both work great, thank you

>>95955074
They must be getting desperate behind the scenes if they are willing to let a woman be sexy.

I hope Onyxpath loses the lisence for exalted soon

>>95957429
I don't, because things could get a lot worse than they are now, and I've absolutely no faith in them getting better if OPP lost the license.

>>95957473
Yeah Exalted could lose its identity and become pure slop.
Oh wait...

>>95957547
Have you ever paid attention to these threads? The absolute worst ideas for 'fixing' Exalted I've seen, ideas worse than anything OPP has ever done, I've seen here. The worst case scenario for Exalted would be that one of /exg/ regulars wins the lottery and uses the money to buy the Exalted IP.

>>95957565
>ideas worse than anything OPP has ever done
I dunno messing up the lore to the point they have is the worst idea I have seen alongside the trash artists/art direction.

>>95956451
To be honest with you, there really isn't a niche they haven't really touched. They are super HUMAN people with a light theme.What you could extrapolate is either outside the fantasy theme or another's splat gimmick.

>>95957709
This is because of the soft rule that Solars cannot have outright supernatural powers.
And some of the sun's mythological/literally stuff went to other splats.

For example, 2e!Abyssals gained the malignant eye beams, while Solars gained light throw weapons.

>>95957776
Count.

>EYES LIKE DAGGERS GLANCE
>Cost: —
>Mins: Thrown 5, Essence 3
>Type: Permanent
>Keywords: Avatar (1), Mirror (Fiery Solar Chakram; follows), Obvious
>Duration: Permanent
>Prerequisite Charms: Crypt Bolt Attack

>This Charm taps into the limitless necrotic Essence of the Neverborn’s malevolence, adding the Abyssal’s Whispers rating to the Accuracy and Damage of blasts from her Crypt Bolt Attack. These attacks also inflict aggravated damage to any target the Abyssal individually hates as an Intimacy.
>As a final benefit, the deathknight can ignite her eyes in addition to or in place of her hands, allowing her to wield other weapons. Abyssals throw murderous stares with Manipulation instead of Dexterity, but the attacks otherwise use the same rules.
>New Solar Charm: Fiery Solar Chakram (Prerequisites: Spirit Weapons; Exalted, p. 197). This Charm improves weapons created with Spirit Weapons, basing the bonus on the character’s primary Virtue rather than Whispers. Holy replaces the Avatar keyword, so the Fiery Solar Chakram inflicts aggravated damage to creatures of darkness instead of hated enemies. Although Lawgivers do not gain the unnatural power to throw attacks from their eyes, this Charm lets them substitute Charisma for Dexterity when attacking with Spirit Weapons.
Solars cannot go Helios/Medea

>>95957776
>This is because of the soft rule that Solars cannot have outright supernatural powers.
I hate that 3e doubled down on this.
I will give essence that it does give Solars more out there powers.

>>95957776
>This is because of the soft rule that Solars cannot have outright supernatural powers.
Mostly because they wanted to emulate the general power set that Greek gods and heroes had. The weirder supernatural abilities being sourced by artifacts.

>>95958118
It is a case of a feature causing problems down the line.
They didn't update Solars to the more esoteric charmset meta, and Exigents replaced them as everymen exalts.

>>95958205
Literal Herculean feats of strength are a no-no for 3e Solars.

>>95958267
>Literal Herculean feats of strength are a no-no for 3e Solars
What? Why? How does that make any sense

>>95958267
>Literal Herculean feats of strength are a no-no for 3e Solars.
How so?

>>95958436
>>95958442
NTA but he is likely talking about how Solas are explicitly limited by realistics laws of gravity when doing feats of strenght while other splats like lunars explicitly remark that they ignore this limitation.

For example a Solar would be unable to lift earth without it quickly crumbling while lunars could rip chunks of earth without it falling appart.

This is a big limitation being honest.

>>95958577
Yes, you cannot be like Badang and carry a ship that not even hundreds men couldn't.
It is one of the ways that make solars the "human male fighters" of the setting.

>>95957709
>They are super HUMAN people with a light theme.What you could extrapolate is either outside the fantasy theme or another's splat gimmick.
i can think of like 3 different things their themes haven't properly acquainted themselves that are totally within their themes.

Unless you think their themes are entirely defined by what charms they have and thus what charms they don't have, in which case discussing anything is pointless because it's a circular solved argument.
>>95958205
This ain't even fair to all editions though, solars have ALWAYS had weird bizarre shit...but when it's brought up as an example, it's either le exception proves le rule, some exegesis about how the weird thing isn't actually weird or a soft admission it's just your head canon.
>>95958442
>>95958436
They don't get any leverage charms, and leverage or lack thereof is explicit in certain editions.

I liked the Sunfire charms Solars got in Caste Book Zenith. Would love to have more martial weather charms like that. Survivals always been begging for more mastery of the environment rather than just action economy raping with familiars.

Also unrelated note, but what do the Intou remnants think of Necromancers? Do Dragonblooded there have special techniques for bonding with their ancestors on the battlefield?

>>95958577
>while other splats like lunars explicitly remark that they ignore this limitation.
No, you have to buy a charm in order to access that ability as a Lunar, its not a de facto thing all Lunars can do.

Anyway, seeing as Abyssals also have a charm in 3e that lets its user do feats of strength that would be impossible given their size and access to leverage, I think its just another one of Holden and Morke's bizarre autistic ideas about Exalted that didn't carry over when they got fired.
>>95957565
Yeah, I think this thread leans too much on autistic lore fixations rather than focusing on what has always been the main problem with Exalted: its too fucking hard to run. Essence has made greater strides in doing so than the fan projects here by virtue of having an easy-to-use system for running various scenarios such as administrating a kingdom or waging a war, in addition to a simplified NPC creation system.

>>95959821
>i can think of like 3 different things their themes haven't properly acquainted themselves that are totally within their themes.
Sounds neat, what are you thinking about?
>Unless you think their themes are entirely defined by what charms they have and thus what charms they don't have, in which case discussing anything is pointless because it's a circular solved argument.
Not really, but I see where you are coming from. I was mostly talking about how most of the themes related to IRL Solar deities are already fleshed out as the main theme of the newer Exalted/Exigents.
Rebirth is kind of universal, with the mechanics of Exaltations and actual reincarnation on top of Liminal's bullshit. Cleansing is covered by medicine charms and kind of vague outside of that. Climate control shenanigans and traveling across the globe are covered by spells.

>>95960336
I think it was caused by the piece meal charmset design + "martials are not allowed to defy logic" that was a hot topic a few years ago.

>>95960336
>on what has always been the main problem with Exalted: its too fucking hard to run. Essence has made greater strides in doing so than the fan projects here by virtue of having an easy-to-use system for running various scenarios such as administrating a kingdom or waging a war, in addition to a simplified NPC creation system.
That's mostly because the criticism of "The rules are kinda ass" fade into the background because it is a WW game. The rules were what you tolerate to make the story work.Venture Rules make the process of non-combat scenarios less annoying.

>>95959839
>Survivals always been begging for more mastery of the environment rather than just action economy raping with familiars.
The overlap with Mortal Sorcery killed most of need for weather control charms.

>>95957565
>The worst case scenario for Exalted would be that one of /exg/ regulars wins the lottery and uses the money to buy the Exalted IP.
Mostly because they are weirdos who would make the game fit their particular taste in trash rather than build something that doesn't suck.

>>95956451
>What unique Charm niches should Solars get
Nothing because they are the base splat people grow out of eventually. They might be the best at everything they do but they don't get to reach the niches.

>>95961873
NTA but other splats get weather control charms, though on a lesser scale. makes sense Solars should get something more bombastic.
>>95961901
>They might be the best at everything they do but they don't get to reach the niches.
They do tho. 3CS, Wyld Shaping Technique, making any spirit you want with Occult, Divine Mantle, Carnal Spirit Rending. Some abilities just have more variety than others. This is exactly what I meant about people just flagrantly saying Solars are meant to be straightforward. It requires you to ignore all the things that go against that narrative and then somehow twist yourself into thinking that's correct because...that's how it is!

Like, Craft has a billion charms that all do one thing, but that didn't need to be the case.

Solar Craft should have shit like Transmuting Jade into Celestial Materials, have a bunch of materials gather Solar Essence while you go out doing other shit then you come back and boom the artifact is made without you having to work on it until the last interval, Charms that explicitly mean you don't need as many resources to make an artifact of any particular level. At the upper end you could even make mundane structures have Tardis like properties in so far as they're bigger on the inside than the outside. These things would tie very well into putting Solars as the premier craftsman who could do shit no other guys could, beyond just saying they do it faster and do it gooder.

Someone could look at exactly what I've wrote and say like, only Getimians should do something like that, and we come right back to the core complaint that Solars don't get much sauce outside of Sorcery. Oh yeah, they don't get any cool unique sorcery interfacing charms beyond dice tricks.

>>95961873
>The overlap with Mortal Sorcery killed most of need for weather control charms.
Simply pray to the weather gods and Speed the Wheels of the heavenly bureaucracy.

>>95957429
oh yeah so, nuwhite wolf number 3 "we really ean it this time you guys, we're doing it ourselves" under the grifters at paradox interactive can have a chance to chop it around while it loses the little nuance it's allowed to keep now, fuck off

Does Indolent Official Charm not instantly hard counter the Wyld Hunt? If Arcane Fate lets Sidereals avoid the Hunt, wouldn't summoning a gretchin do the same thing?

>>95962471
>At the upper end you could even make mundane structures have Tardis like properties in so far as they're bigger on the inside than the outside.
Wouldn't this be handled by the talisman/thaumaturgy/artifact system?

>Getimians.
They stole more from cecelyne

Any ideas for getting Adorjan some therapy so she's safer to let out?

>>95963628
Beat her to a pulp so that you can slap Manacles of Night on her and leave her mote tapped forever, now that she can't activate mote-based charms reduce her to zero Willpower and keep her there for several days so that you can break her Motivation and completely rewrite her Intimacy selection.

You might hate it, but the best form of forcing therapy on someone in 2e is brainwashing in the mental asylum.

>>95963856

Sir Adorjan is a hurricane with 144 souls

>>95963967
Don't let that stop you.

>>95963628
Mindwipe her entire being before giving I a new purpose.

>>95963628
Let Adorjan give you therapy instead.

>>95962471
>They do tho. 3CS, Wyld Shaping Technique, making any spirit you want with Occult, Divine Mantle, Carnal Spirit Rending. Some abilities just have more variety than others. This is exactly what I meant about people just flagrantly saying Solars are meant to be straightforward. It requires you to ignore all the things that go against that narrative and then somehow twist yourself into thinking that's correct because...that's how it is!
Fair. The thing is that a lot of people don't remember the weirder stuff Solars tend to do because they're deep into the charm trees where people rarely use them.

>>95964639
WST is pretty iconic, to the point it became an Exigent type.
The problem is "merge with somebody's shadow to posses them".

>>95964690
>The problem is "merge with somebody's shadow to posses them".
The problem isn't 'merge with somebody's shadow to possess them' it's that they've put it in Stealth. Being a shadowy puppetmaster taken to literal levels is perfectly fine for the Solar themes if they'd actually done it as that, but if they were doing that they'd have put it in Socialize or Bureaucracy or something. Instead it ended up in Stealth because they visualised Stealth as shadowy, and gave the Solars shadow-based superpowers because of it, rather than making it in any way an expression of skill, humanity, or even sun-stuff. Possessing people isn't something the stealthy culture heroes do, it's more like what the disguise/trickster or mastermind culture heroes do, but we ended up with it anyway.

>>95964767
>The problem isn't 'merge with somebody's shadow to possess them' it's that they've put it in Stealth. Being a shadowy puppetmaster taken to literal levels is perfectly fine for the Solar themes if they'd actually done it as that
Not really, Solars should become light to possess people.
Becoming an etheral light would even resonate with the religious old testament imagery that was dropped across the editions.

>>95960336
>No, you have to buy a charm in order to access that ability as a Lunar, its not a de facto thing all Lunars can do.
Duh, obviously I'm talking about their charm powers.

>>95964838
NTA but I see nothing wrong with Solars having shadow powers because control over light also means control over shadows.

As for abyssals they could be flavored as them having control not really over shadow but the absence of substance the void a darkness beyond shadows.

>>95964767
I feel like an untapped niche of Stealth is blinding people. Absolute light is the same as absolute dark in that respect.

>>95965975
That's a bit counter productive.
If you want to be stealthy flashing lights defeat that purpose.

>>95965995
It works for Crystal Chamelon though.

Any unintentionall game-breaking nonsense in abyssals?

>>95964290
She does that to herself on the reg. I don't think it's going to work.

>>95964256
You've got to be at least a little more creative than that. I vaguely recall Kimbery or some other oceanic being that the Exalted of old defeated by lifting up a lot of the sea floor so that it made contact with its surface. Torqued up inside, it fell easily.

>>95965995
Not when Tien uses Solar Flare.

"Oh god, it's like walking in on Frieza in the shower!"

>>95963628
>safer to let out
>Adorjan
Fucking Infernals man.

>>95967039
That anon wants to fix her first, though.

>>95966984
>She does that to herself on the reg. I don't think it's going to work.
Then I really don't know what the hell you could do to a primordial to "reset it" besides throwing them into a wood chipper and rebuilding the material into something new. The problem is that there really isn't an established way to do something along those lines.

>>95967721
In 2e, there was one, Infernals developing new charms.
Some Infernals players even roleplayed curing Autochthon through this mean.

>>95962753
It depends on the ST.

>>95967741
I hope that was a good time.

Where do you get ideas for low end Gadgets and Tech Fetishes?

>>95966984

Overlooking soul surgery?

Adorjan has 18 third circles, meaning 144 total souls.

Prune, edit and manipulate them until she's psychologically healthy.

>>95963628
She's not gonna fuck you, anon.

What kind of stuff happens at the secret Silver Pact manse villages they send new Lunars to? Non-horny answers only.

Are ghosts immediately distinguishable from mortals? Ones that haven't been moliated or shifted over time, I mean. That are in human shapes, but are ghosts. I guess what I'm really asking is, are ghosts transparent / glowing / surrounded by fantasy magic strings, or anything like that?

If you had a room with two goons and a ghost, could you tell which one was the ghost just by looking at them?

>>95968775
>Are ghosts immediately distinguishable from mortals?
IIRC ghosts needed about 5 charms to make the ilusion of a normal person or manifest themselves.

>>95968775
Yeah easily the ghost is intangible and invisible by default so you could easily tell them appart form a goon.

>>95968785
>>95968790
Oh for- in the Underworld or a shadowland or otherwise fully materialized, obviously.

>>95968731

>just do 144 lobotomies

That's a gross of lobotomies Stu

>>95968773
>What kind of stuff happens at the secret Silver Pact manse villages they send new Lunars to? Non-horny answers only.
I'm pretty sure it's just an excuse to get the new blood higher than heaven with magic mushrooms and feed them whatever animals they have on hand. Besides that, maybe the elders try to figure out how to best use the fuckers in the meantime.

>>95968802
Bruh, yeah, for the most part, they look like normal people, if rather pale or malnourished. At least if the art is anything to go by. They also don't need to breathe so that's a sign.

>>95968846
>At least if the art is anything to go by.
I really don't trust the art as far as ghosts go if I'm being honest. There's a lot of variance that would lead you to believe Disney Mulan's see-in-the-dark transparent blue ancestor ghosts were the standard.

>>95968811
>That's a gross of lobotomies Stu
At least it's not a google of lobotomies.

>>95968869
Fair.

>>95968731
>Adorjan has 18 third circles, meaning 144 total souls.
Technically Adorjan only has eighteen souls, and her eighteen souls have seven (or less; spirit-killed 2CD/3CD aren't necessarily replaced and there's the entire First and Second Age for them to take losses) souls of their own each. The 2CD don't really impact Adorjan so it'd be more a decimation of the 18.

>>95968894

You can soul surgery a 3rd circle more subtly by messing with it's subsouls. If you just kill them it can use a charm to respawn them, but you can do fucky shit.

Also I imagine the yozi would at least feel weird if you killed the defining soul of it's fetich.

>>95968940
>You can soul surgery a 3rd circle more subtly by messing with it's subsouls
Is any of that reliable, or canon?

>If you just kill them it can use a charm to respawn them, but you can do fucky shit.
They can't use a charm to respawn spirit-killer'd 3CD. The 'make a new 3CD' charm makes new 3CDs rather than re-creating the old ones, which is honestly good for you as someone trying to shape the Yozi since it gives you new levers to pull (by killing them).

Isn't the logical end state of Exalted basically just the Draka?

>>95969083
>Draka
Who?

>>95969184
S.M Stirling althistory novel about a slave-taking state that grows out of South Africa. It was listed as a point of inspiration in the 1e Dragon-Blooded book with the note that it's kind of a bleak read, though a lot of criticism also goes along with that, since a lot of world powers had the opportunity to stop said fictional state but didn't because of what could be seen as arbitrary reasons.

>Welcome to Exalted Book Club!
>Next Week: the Bastard!! manga!

Which Exalted is for autistic players?

Which edition is the best for a beginner?

>>95969748
Infernals

>>95969825
Essence is the easiest to learn to play, but 2e is probably best if you want to get a beginner invested in Exalted.

>>95968773
>She's not gonna fuck you, anon.
Literally the ONLY Yozi who canonically boned an Exalt. Learn the lore.

And yes, that Solar WAS a lolicon.

>>95970595
>Literally the ONLY Yozi who canonically boned an Exalt. Learn the lore.
The Ebon Dragon, infamously, fucks.

>>95970667
XXXalted is non-canon

>>95970721
The Ebon Dragon was fucking the Empress since before exalted was a thing, and it was also in 1e.

>>95955074
Looks better than her art in MoEP: Abyssals.

>>95970721
>he doesn't know

>>95970962
>>95970954
Though the implications were there and indeed the short passage in the books about Mnemon's dream imply some form of violation happened, there is no confirmation Ebon Dragon actually FUCKED rather than be a creepy incel who ogled over her and jerked off to the fact she might NTR him.

Adjoran is the only one who has CANONICALLY fucked.

Unless we all ignore the part in GoD where it says basically every Yozi could potentially be found in some brothel harassing the concubines.

What´s next, the ebon dragon being the father of that one empress kid gifted to neverborn?

How bad is shadowlands actually? Could it be harnessed to allow people meet their ancestors and stuff in a nice way?

>>95971154
Iphitymia confirms that Malfeas agrees with this (he's right btw).

>>95971280
>How bad is shadowlands actually?
Not that bad just proof that creation is being pulled towards oblivion to be destroyed and everyone consumed and a breeding ground and entry point for the armies that want to destroy all life.
Also no people and ghost should be set apart even from "good" ghosts as they can easily be puppets to the neverborn.

>>95971280
>How bad is shadowlands actually?
Not that bad, really. Mostly spooky, like gothic horror mansion vibes, you know the type. Big castle on a cliff, eternal thunderstorms, lightning strikes whenever someone says something ominous, the village at the bottom of the hill is hushed and furious at their overbearing, blood-sucking lord's taxes, etc.

>Could it be harnessed to allow people meet their ancestors and stuff in a nice way?
It absolutely is used this way in Creation already, yes. There's all sorts of comments about how necromancers will have a shadowland in their closet to better get into/out of the Underworld and access the dead, or how villages will have a graveyard where they can commune with their fallen, or so on. Some cities have active trade through local shadowlands, though less so in 2e because they decided they didn't like that idea and made the Timeless Order of Manacle and Coin specifically to punish merchants and give them an awful afterlife Confucian style.

>>95971280
It's not inherently lethal, but it is antithetical to life and as such only the most desperate with no other options would live there. Any community there would be a slum, necromancer ganglords would battle for territory, major food desert too

>>95971328
It's not necessarily that bad; that's the best case scenario for living in the Underworld, but shadowlands are a little more survivable. Rather than being completely unlivable, my understanding is that it's more like the vibes immediately descend to the point it's like you're in England. Tolerable, but a bit shit.

>>95971280
See the opening fiction of caste book dawn, it slowly kills creation itself

>>95971327
>Not that bad, really. Mostly spooky, like gothic horror mansion vibes, you know the type.
Are you being dumb on purpose?
That's like claiming cancer is not that bad for your body after all it could be benign.

>>95971695
Yes.

>>95972113
What version of the Fae can alter souls?

Does it make sense for an exalt to show reverence to gods?

>>95972433
Sure, depending on the Exalt and circumstances.

>>95972433
Yes, gods need worship the way humans need food and water, so worshipping gods is a good way to show respect as part of a mutually beneficial relationship

>>95972433
Who do you think gave them their powers?
And you should take you head out of modern thought and think:
Would a person born in a world where gods are something very much tangible and with great sway in day to day activities believe and revere gods?

>>95972585
I'm mostly thinking of it from the point that exalted are somewhat in the role of also beating their asses and keeping them in check.

>>95972590
Only PCs. Most exalts, except for battle castes have minimal combat charms to manage self defense. What use for them would a Linguistics Supernal Twilight besides that when they could better be put towards their scholarly and literary powers?

>>95972851
>Linguistics.
Historically speaking, it was the dump stat for npcs.
They always had some combat investment.

>>95972536
gods explicitly can live without prayer, but its a shiftless, rueful existence

>>95954604
>>95956423
based

>>95972851
>Most exalts, except for battle castes have minimal combat charms to manage self defense. What use for them would a Linguistics Supernal Twilight besides that when they could better be put towards their scholarly and literary powers?
It's the Age of Sorrows and everybody is here for it whether they like it or not. The world is dangerous for literally everybody, so everybody takes combat charms, even Linguistic Supernal Twilight NPCs. You'd be right in a better age - you'd be entirely correct in Exalted Modern or Heaven's Reach - but you're not right in the current state of things in the standard Exalted start time, not unless you're mixing words to win semantic arguments and thinking 'minimal' can apply to anything.

>>95975418
>The world is dangerous for literally everybody
lol

>>95975800
It is named "times of tumult" for a reason.

>>95975800
Even if you're in the safest places in the entire world, it's going to be either dangerous in general or look like there's war that'll sweep through and catch you up on the horizon. Like, where is it and for who that you think isn't going to be dangerous enough to warrant some combat charms? I'm going to brainstorm here but I don't really see it outside of Sidereals, who tend to be full of combat avoidance effects and have enough information, arrogance, and institutional tendencies towards staying out of fights to think they could go without. And even they'd want Duck Fate.

>Resident of the Plaza, Chiaroscuro, under the protection of Grandmother Bright
It's safe-ish in the Plaza but you're going to have people trying to lure or force you out so that the next person in line can have your spot and themselves have that protection through the Time of Tumult.

>isolated peasant on the Blessed Isle
Welcome to the army, you're being conscripted - even if you're isolated on an island, in which case you're likely going to be conscripted by Peleps/V'Neef instead of the Houses without a serious navy.

>any Lunar domain, Prasad, the Scavenger Lands
War is coming.

>the Lap
...honestly, I could see a native Laplander being naive enough to go without some combat charms, but even then they'd be concerned with either the Wyld Hunt (Anathema being better informed on Immaculate doctrine and with a local garrison) or the possibility that they're going to be recalled to the Realm (for Dragonblood).

Is there currently any options in 3e/essence that enable using performance for some kind of an attack?

>>95976413
>Is there currently any options in 3e/essence that enable using performance for some kind of an attack?
There is a soul sucking attack but that's a whole thing.

>>95976413
Depends on the charms of each exalt.
There is a martial art in 3e that lets you use screams to attack and Solars can do the same with one of their new charms from the player guide.

>>95976413
Also DBs can attack by playing instruments

I miss when Exalted wasn’t ashamed of being a cool setting.

>>95975832
>>95975948
None of these problems would demand combat charms to deal with.

Tell me about Alveua, what kinds of intimacies would fit the Intimacy? Or where can I read about her?

>>95977554
>Tell me about Alveua
Hammer waifu

>>95976816
>None of these problems would demand combat charms to deal with.
The charms people learn aren't determined by what is 'required' it's determined by what people feel is likely to be necessary - or more accurately charms they want, and most people are concerned with not dying if it's a possibility. Nobody is acting with full information and there are no speedrunners. They don't know they're going to be kidnapped out of the Plaza in the middle of the night (and no, they can't hire bodyguards to hang around indefinitely that would prevent it with the population controls), they don't know if there's going to be a scam or a summoning or bureaucratic pressure that lures them out for an ambush, and preparing for anything ahead of time is a lot harder without just getting good enough in a fight to be able to escape a small ambush from a competent team of high-quality assassins, which does, in fact, require combat charms.

It's also very hard to guarantee your safety without combat charms when war sweeps through wherever you are, and it's difficult to avoid the pervasive fear or 'I have enemies' getting to you when you exist in the proximity of dangerous foes who could stumble upon you any day.

Unless you mean 'none of this requires combat charms' in that running and hiding from literally everything in the world is always an option, in which case you're still fucking wrong because you can always get unlucky and there are many forces in Creation that get around the usual information limits (see: astrology, luck, destiny, sorcery, investigation, and similar).

>>95975948
I said exalts would have the minimum needed for self defense, I accept Exalts are natural targets so going without any is foolhardy. But those not in battle castes are naturally going to prioritize other charms over combat ones, most non-PCs aren't expecting to do battle every session of their lives

>>95977554
>Tell me about Alveua
She hammers the souls of mortals into artifacts on her forge of night. The souls are often but not always ethically sourced - one who wishes to sacrifice themselves may call on Alveua and have her answer by bringing them to her forge, making them into an artifact, and sending them back to Creation in a way that will fulfil their dreams and wishes, without the involvement of a sorcerer or mystic knowledge more advanced than that. She tends to have death cults with an undercurrent of romance, and they tend to be small and secret but rich and influential. She enjoys her work and sees it as a way to help set things right in Creation.

>what kinds of intimacies would fit the Intimacy?
It could be almost anything, because the artifact's purpose is based on the mortal who chose to sacrifice themselves to become an artifact, not on Alveua's designs on Creation. Thus, 'to raise my old lover from rags to riches' or 'to rip the Paragon's Staff from his cold, dead hands' are equally valid, and so are many other goals so long as they're emotionally charged enough a mortal could believably commit suicide to see them through.

>Or where can I read about her?
3e Core pg527's take is a different vibe (much more insect-y) from 2e's Ghosts and Demons pg55 or 1e's Games of Divinity pg95. I'd go with Games of Divinity for preference.

>>95977904
>I said exalts would have the minimum needed for self defense, I accept Exalts are natural targets so going without any is foolhardy.
Refer to >>95975418
>unless you're mixing words to win semantic arguments and thinking 'minimal' can apply to anything.

>>95976413
Not to aim this at you specifically anon, but why the fuck does this mentality exist so heavily in Exalted? Why is it that people think that their characters should be good at an aspect of the game without actually investing to be good at that aspect of the game. Probably the biggest single aspect of the gameplay of Exalted that can be recommended to people is the nearly complete freedom to build characters to be good at whatever a player wants to be good in. Of course this comes with the caveat that it's impossible to be good at everything, so players have to make decisions to specialize in one of the 4 pillars of gameplay (combat, social, creation, clandestine). So, why the hell is it that when it comes to combat that people are constantly of the opinion that players should be allowed to make any significant contributions without building for it? Could you imagine players doing that with any other gameplay pillar?

>Hey Anon, I want my character to help with the creation/building stuff.
>Okay, well you need to invest in these abilities to do those things.
>No, I mean I want to help as a social built character.
>Okay, well you can help obtain materials or make deals to help the character spec’d to do this stuff.
>No, I mean I want to do it myself.
>…Okay no, there are literally roll requirements for this that your character currently can’t make without investing into them. You either put in the points, or you’re just not going to be good at certain things.

>>95976413
No one would blink twice at this interaction, but change it to combat instead and suddenly everyone starts whinging incessantly about how you just aren’t being accommodating enough to a player’s fantasy. I mean it’s not like a social character can’t raise an army, or make enemies flee in terror or negociate to end a fight before it begins (or during it for that matter). No, they also have to be able to actually fight like a character built to fight things. You know there is a reason that almost all major characters in epics and myth had a certain amount of combat prowess to them. In times defined by conflict, the one who can fight are the ones to get to shape the world.

What’s worse is that Essence seems to be doubling down on this mentality. They absolutely want this to be the norm going forward. This absolute normification of the gameplay will honestly kill its potential interest to people long term. Oversimplification is good for bringing people in, but is absolutely terrible at retaining them.

>>95978318
but Essence does have combat that can be used for social things, and Performance/Presence being able to attack has been a thing since 1e. The literal only time Social has been entirely viable by itself for making a very strong combat build is in 3e with Black Claw. You have a lot of conclusions but no evidence or rationale.

>>95978318

>>95978300
>why the fuck does this mentality exist so heavily in Exalted?
Because Exalted panders to power fantasies of many kinds, and the power fantasies that don't involve being good at swinging swords (or otherwise physical combat) curdle when they run into a reality where sword-gods dominate. Therefore, they should be given the tools they need to survive long enough to do their thing, which can translate to 'let me convert social dice to combat'.

Weird how Exigents writers/fans really dislike their patrons, every series I read that feel like "Exigent", have the supernatural patron as an important part of the cast/plot.

>>95978751
Part of the responsibility is how kludgy the system can be. A social type character survives because they have combat type characters that are their friends and owe them favors. In a party the social guy doesn't fight because the combat guy fights. NPC social guys have NPC combat guy guards. But if you don't want to rely on your party and want to be "independently" survivable, you need NPC combat guy guards for your PC which adds a whole other actor/character sheet into a fight which just makes things take even longer. The alternative is to just sit on your hands while the combat characters do their thing in combat and then the combat characters sit on their hands while the social character do social stuff which is how a lot of games turn out, everyone just siloing into their own thing.

>>95979079
>A social type character survives because they have combat type characters that are their friends and owe them favors. In a party the social guy doesn't fight because the combat guy fights.
This is nice in theory but my experience is that it absolutely does not work if your enemies are not cooperating with the idea. Defending another player takes all of your combat actions unless you've gone outside your build to get defend other type stuff, and blocking their path or trapping them in close combat with you simply does not work if they have the jump or initiative and get you and your allies in close combat at once. Playing bodyguard is really bad, doubly or even triply so if the person you're guarding can't be relied on to handle themselves.

This bodyguard angle is simply not optimal for anyone. It's debatable whether it's even viable. It's definitely not good.

>>95978640
>Performance/Presence being able to attack has been a thing since 1e. The literal only time Social has been entirely viable by itself for making a very strong combat build is in 3e with Black Claw.
…You know what, I’m going to humor this for a moment. Let’s follow this idea through to a conclusion. Okay, basic design premise here: the effectiveness of a player at a given task in an rpg should be in near direct proportion to how much they have invested in being good at that task. I think we can agree that this isn’t controversial at all, no? Now, given that idea, let's look at two design ideas here.

>A. A player heavily invested in social gameplay purchases a one-off ability that is usable once per fight that allows them to use their social stats to damage their opponents and possibly debilitate them.
>B. A player purchases an ability that allows them to directly convert their social stats into combat stats and use them that way without penalty.

Now, option A is perfectly fine because as a one-off, it provides a fun thing for the social player to do in combat without fundamentally altering the way their character functions. Option B however, is completely fucked design wise because it means that they are able to completely skip on investing in combat and still gain the same effectiveness as someone who has done that investment while none of the combat characters investment allows them to dip into social stuff. Keeping this in mind, let’s look at what I’m guessing your examples fall into.

>>95978640
I already said that option A is fine; one-offs are cool and help make things interesting. Going by 3e though, the only B options I can think of off the top of my head are Silver-Voiced Nightingale and Black Claw. Oh, no they break things… but wait, do they? Let’s look at how much investment it takes to be good at those two styles. First, you need the Martial Arts merit. Then you need the Martial Arts dots (along with a brawl one), then you need the actual charms themselves. So bare minimum you are talking about 50+ exp of investment and if you want the styles to actually be really good (going down the trees) over double that. So, is that a violation of the rule I was talking about? No, of course not. I said in my post:
>Why is it that people think that their characters should be good at an aspect of the game without actually investing to be good at that aspect of the game.
What you are doing is investing massive amounts of exp into being good at combat as a social character. A combat character could invest the same amount of exp in social shit and be just as good at social stuff as you. This is not only fine, but reinforces that WHOLE GODDAMN POINT of what I was saying:
>Probably the biggest single aspect of the gameplay of Exalted that can be recommended to people is the nearly complete freedom to build characters to be good at whatever a player wants to be good in.

You didn’t actually consider what I said in my post. You just read it and reacted without thinking because you wanted to be right. You clearly have read the books (which is a step above many here), but knowledge does not by itself confer the ability to actually think about what is being absorbed. You are the definition of a midwit; just smart enough to take stuff in, but not smart enough to actually consider what is being said.

>>95979098
Oh I agree, but that's how the social character usually works in fiction. The weak king has a stupidly strong bodyguard and you have to defeat that guy before you can even attempt to hurt the king. The combat character dramatically steps in front of the social character and then it's a DBZ fight between the two combat guys. The social character just wouldn't be rolling into combat at all if such an example would be followed. Even if the ST plays along with it, all it results in is the social character sitting around for the 4 hours of game time that Exalted combat can take if people are combat invested.

>>95978640
>>95978640
>Implying that I think Essence's retarded design choices are a good decision.
Anon, I literally made a post several threads back specifically about how fucking stupid the Essence attribute design is at a fundamental level design-wise. I don’t think you’re going to win any points with that argument. Essence oversimplified it’s design and in doing so utterly fucked its potential design space. It has nowhere left to go but new charms. Why do you think that they are doubling down on Exigence so much? It is the ONLY form of expansion other than charms that Essence has left to add because Martial Arts and Sorcery are just charms by another name. Essence is NOT a viable game line because it is essentially finished in 1 book. And what’s more I think they realize that; hence the constant push for more Exalts.

>>95979170
>>95979176
>>95979236
Social guys are already encouraged to buy MAs because of the way split XP works. Black Claw is an incredible martial artist style that has giga defense, giga offense and giga social and gives you incredibly efficient returns on your meagre investments.

You also schiz'd out on a post where some guy asked if Essence had a Charm that's had supported thematic functionality since 1e and are now going in so many incoherent directions that you have literally lost the fucking plot.

>Martial Arts and Sorcery are just charms by another name
You have not read 1e, 2e or 3e if this is your frame of reference. I don't think you've actually read Essence, you've just parroted snippets of what people who've actually read Essence have to say about the system.

>But muh Attribute and Ability parallels what about muh social
Attributes are a literal sacred cow from WoD and Essence devs were not allowed to take Attributes out. The overwhelming bulk of combat power in Essence comes from Close Combat Charms. You are probably under the erroneous impression that Build Power's function also functions as an execute for decisive attacks (read the book), and you DEFINITELY have exaggerated expectations for how BP works out in play relative to combat.

You're right, I'm stitching together and trying to iron man what you're saying, because otherwise you're just pissing your pants with no throughline to support what you're saying about Exalted systems. Enough autism to make a long post, enough autism to not see the big picture.

>abyssals uses the presence charm to inflict damage on someone
>random armchair developer nogamer: THIS IS WHY EXALTED IS DYING
Seems like /exg/ is bricked. I'll be back in a week to see if you guys have improved.

>>95977856
You can just avoid or escape danger by using your non-combat charms. Its very easy to do so.

>>95979411
>Attributes are a literal sacred cow from WoD and Essence devs were not allowed to take Attributes out
Mark Rein•Hange was 10 years old when D&D came out.

>>95979236
>Why do you think that they are doubling down on Exigence so much? It is the ONLY form of expansion other than charms that Essence has left to add because Martial Arts and Sorcery are just charms by another name.
Strange, why didn't they spand upon the Apocryphal trio too? Instead of creating more splats?
Essence can also expand by publishing ST facing supplements, but it is a no-no for the current devs.

>>95979037
it's probably in inherent aversion to being indebted to some supernatural benefactor, especially the ones whose characters didn't ask for it. though i'd argue that there's likely a substantial group of standard exalts who feel similarly about their source beings if they know of them, though in practice save the ones explicitly written to rebel against their creators most exalts tend to at least begrudgingly accept their influence because of all they can do in their lives now

>>95979236
>Essence is NOT a viable game line because it is essentially finished in 1 book.
Isn't this an entirely good thing for me, the consumer? I pay for one book and then I'm set.

>>95980342
Maybe, but it isn't lucrative for OP, specially with the kickstarter treadmill going on.

>>95980342
Sure, but only if what you want out of the game line is one and done. Keeping players and interest in a game usually requires at least a slow drip feed of content. And they killed their ability to add to the content except in the ways I listed. Hence, all we will get is more charms and more Exalt types.

>>95980379
That's on them.
>>95980412
I'm not sure what would prevent them from doing something like an artifact book or a write-up of antagonists/NPCs in general.

>>95980424
>I'm not sure what would prevent them from doing something like an artifact book or a write-up of antagonists/NPCs in general.
I think they are trying to copy Wizards of the Coast's attempt of making the players buy as much as the ST.
Which explains why they didn't release metropolis rules.

What's the latest version of Exalted Essence? Is it out or is it still a manuscript?

>>95980454
It and its companion are out, the manuscript was for the pc guide

>>95957417
KEK, this. Which is surprising because the absurd kickstarter money proves retards really will pay for well-wishes and empty promises.

>>95957417
>>95980953
Considering the Deathlord love bombing going on, I think they did it in an attempt to make her popular with the fans.

>>95957417
As long as you're not keen on long legs, I guess.

She has a goblin face

>>95978648
damn, sliced to ribbons in midair. nagezeer will probably have that djala give him victory head once servants hall the body away

>>95980549
>>95980454
all in the OP, pillars of creation as a backer pdf

>>95982993
well what's your face look like as you fire an essence cannon?

have we ever had a SIGNATURE character in any edition who was a Beastfolk who was also not a Lunar?

SIGNATURE. So that disqualifies Ophilis Set

>>95983073
Sorry, meant >>95955074

How braindead are fey slaves? Can they only work menial physical labor? Could they cook? Can they perform music or dance?

>>95983236
They're human-level intelligence, albeit with an alien focus on consuming emotions. So it's completely ok to fuck your enslaved Lorelei

>>95983394
I believe they mean soul-eaten mortals, rather than slaves that are fairies.

>>95983236
See: Above for the assumption I'm making. This is also 1e/2e because that's where we have raksha mechanics.
>How braindead are fey slaves?
Fae take slaves and then slowly wittle them down until they're entirely soul-dead, which I'll detail following. During the process of having their souls kissed away, they're going to have their Willpower slowly drop, but outside that they'll generally just be normal. After they're fully drained, if they don't have special talents raksha tend to sell them on to the Guild for new slaves, so expect most of their mortal slaves to be basically mortals with slightly below average Willpower.

Soul-drained are zero Willpower and their Virtues aren't doing good, and Willpower and Virtues convert directly into how competent they are at general competency, but their Attributes and Abilities aren't effected, so in their specific competency they're still proficient, just completely unmotivated, skittish, and dull - check picrel for the Willpower chart and understand that they're another step lower. If they were a hero they should probably now be an extra unless they had some powerful set of skills, including if they are an essence-wielder or scholar of rare lore.

>Can they only work menial physical labor?
Definitely no, they can do more than that. However, it should be recognized that noble fae can make or trade for commoner fae who're immortal, aren't food, and can be more readily customized towards specific purposes, who'll usually be the menials in a fae stronghold rather than mortals, who're more like pets and kept lovers.

>Could they cook? Can they perform music or dance?
Yes. If anything it'd be expected; again, we'd compare them to pets and lovers. It's worth noting that faeries will want to provoke emotion from their mortal slaves to feed from them, so giving them ways to express emotion (i.e. art, cooking, etc) is a common thing.

>>95979037
>Weird how Exigents writers/fans really dislike their patrons, every series I read that feel like "Exigent", have the supernatural patron as an important part of the cast/plot.
I guess that's the result of most of the exalted not directly serving their gods and people just wanting a power set rather than a plot line.

>>95984959
>>95979037
That's weird it I liked the exigent(I don't) I would make my patron into a cool righteous minor goddess that upon being diminished took the shape of a loli.
And now my exalt wanders around fighting evil dudes being advised by the goddess that once upon a time was an important celestial god.
Having a close relationship with your patron is actually one of the most interesting aspects of exigents imo.

>>95986412
It can be really interesting but like other relationships it takes 2 to tango. In other words the ST needs to give a shit about that plot line to make it worth playing.
>>95983236
The vast majority is on par with regular humans.

>>95986412
>Having a close relationship with your patron is actually one of the most interesting aspects of exigents imo.
Already covered by Abyssals, and will sort of be covered by Infernals via contracts with 3CDs.

>>95983163
>have we ever had a SIGNATURE character in any edition who was a Beastfolk who was also not a Lunar?
No. We haven't had a signature beastfolk Lunar either. All of the signatures that look like they could be beastfolk are just using Hybrid Body Rearrangement / Technique, when you read their descriptions and character sheets.

>>95988196
>Already covered by Abyssals, and will sort of be covered by Infernals via contracts with 3CDs.
It is rare that I will defend exigents but it is different as Abyssal or Infernal patrons are either alien or evil so exigents are unique in that their patron can be good and normal.

>>95989924
>Abyssal Patrons are evil
>Implying the Sable Order isn't the true final form of civilization.
It's like you don't even want to become a thanatocrat

>>95989924
The ones with the vaguely (debatably) good and (questionably) normal patrons who they can go talk to pretty much any time and who they take on quests for and are organised by are the Sidereal Exalted. Whether their patrons themselves, who're available to talk to pretty much daily, or older Sidereal mentors, that's the siddie experience.

>>95989952
If it were me, I would create a lunar bond-style system between exigents and their patrons.
To make exigence a bit different from regular exaltation and give gods a real reason to risk death for a powerful ally.

>>95989959
Heck, I'd go further and have Monstrances of Celestial Portion as a linked artifact when igniting an Exigent.

>>95989952
>>95989924
I don't know, I sort of see the appeal of having a patron as an exigent who is much closer to you in power level, and not an omnipotent super deity or ancient megaghost, and who relies on you much more heavily and has a singular relationship with just you. But nothing is really done with that, basically every example exigent either has a dead patron or ran away.

>>95990462
>But nothing is really done with that, basically every example exigent either has a dead patron or ran away.
I dislike that the Foxbinder's writeup mutilated the Unconquered Sun's character, but it's a decently well-written example of a character that'd have the dynamic you're looking for.

>>95989924
Abyssals patrons are more elders like than actual patrons

Is the moment of exaltation always a burst of glory and ability?
Considering of playing a liminal, and wondering if it would make sense for them to have taken a little while to grow into person and get a grip on actually doing and willing things.

>>95991836
>Is the moment of exaltation always a burst of glory and ability?
No. Particular kinds of events preluding Exaltation is a very 1e/2e thing, and even then, that one's only for Solars, and even for them it's only common, not an always thing. For Sidereals it's often a quiet moment, and Exaltation happens when they have their destined opportunity to take the reins of fate and do. This usually doesn't involve anima or any obvious example of prowess. Dragonblood Exalt in a burst of elemental power. Lunars would have a visitation from Lunar after some great upheaval. Abyssals typically rise from their graves.

>>95954580 (OP)
Weekly+Monthly Update
>Predevelopment
Sidereal Jumpstart
Alchemical Companion
Essence Extended
2 Essence novellas
Essence ST guide
>First Draft
Essay Collection lol last seen here
>Second/Final Draft
Riders from the Sunless Lands: Abyssals Companion
Infernals
>Editing
Essence Player’s Guide
>Post-Editing Development
Agents of Heaven (Sidereals Companion)
>Art Notes Prep
Essence Player’s Guide
>Art Direction
Champions of the Divine Flame
Alchemicals: Servants of the Machine God – Confirmed all with Navela and contract finalized. They are also gonna do up the cover dealie guy
>Layout
Essence Novella Omnibus – Travis, to you on Monday morning swearsies
Miracles of Divine Flame (Exigents Companion) – still working… other things came up. Also the map continues to bedevil Navella
>Press
Exigents: Quoting
Exigents Storyteller Screen: At Studio2
Sidereals: Quoting
Abyssals: Sworn to the Grave: Devs going through errata
how hard can it be to iron out a map for a city that was mapped the edition before. i better be able to snipe a god from his temple window in great forks these maps are so detailed
abyssals likely out before summer's end at this point, maybe alchemicals before year's end. the omnibus ould still beat it out
infernals is probably 3 crowdfunds from now unless something comes up after the curseborne one
might field a question about why the stretchgoal essay collection is absent 3 months after being stuck in first drafts 6 1/2 years, but i expect to be ignored

>>95991836
>Is the moment of exaltation always a burst of glory and ability?
No, the epicness of an exaltation moment is oversold by the fans and writers.
Even Solars have a lot examples of "down to the earth" exaltations.

>>95992333
>infernals is probably 3 crowdfunds from now unless something comes up after the curseborne one
Oh, they are doing more kickstarter for curseborner? I thought it wasn't even out yet.

>>95992333
>Essence Extended
is that the companion for essence's player guide?

>>95992511
>Oh, they are doing more kickstarter for curseborner? I thought it wasn't even out yet.
it would be hilarious if they kickstart an expansion before the core is out.

>>95992776
>>95992511
it is for an expansion, their Toil and Trouble Player's Guide. it will have new splats, fleshed out old splats, rules for normies and other shit as well to my understanding
>>95992765
it's the working name for it, yes. more of the same as the player's guide with charms, some exigents, that milieu

>>95990472
>I dislike that the Foxbinder's writeup mutilated the Unconquered Sun's character
What's this then? Haven't seen it yet, how'd it fuck up ol' Conky?

>>95993288
>it's the working name for it, yes. more of the same as the player's guide with charms, some exigents, that milieu
The naming of Essence's supplements feel confusing, too many "companions"

>>95983236
pic related.

>>95993394
>>95990472
i wouldn't say it mutilated much of anything. the foxbinder exigent was the result of unca sun ruling that an exigence would be used to punish a god that had drastically overstepped his boundaries. yes he used the permanent diminishment of a recalcitrant god to empower an exalt, give it to the immaculates, and probably teach an abject lesson though example, but i wouldn't say any of that is outside his wheelhouse because none of his virtues were violated to that degree

>>95994042
I think its also weird to say it reflects poorly on the Sun when the Sun also Exalted every Solar lunatic that ruined the First Age and betrayed his masters solely to play WoW Classic forever in the Jade Pleasure Dome.

>>95994072
In 1/2e, he didn't, he also didn't seem to have liked Havesh exalting, and was angry about Jade.

>>95994292
Autonomous Exaltations still worked according to criteria set by the Incarnae, so in practice he did.

>>95994072
>when the Sun also Exalted every Solar lunatic that ruined the First Age and betrayed his masters solely to play WoW Classic forever in the Jade Pleasure Dome.
first point doesn't apply as the curse is out of his control the second is right tho.

>>95980424
>I'm not sure what would prevent them from doing something like an artifact book or a write-up of antagonists/NPCs in general.
You know what, I have some suspicions on that one. In my experience with Exalted (which is admittedly mostly running games) I’ve found a couple of things to be true. First, once you get to know the system, you’ll probably be making up your own antagonist sheets far more than you’ll end up using anything written down. First, because as the game goes on your characters will absolutely clown on most anything in the books past essence 3+ with few exceptions. Second, because a lot of the sheets in the books just kinda suck. They are seemingly gimped on purpose and often not really good at something they are supposed to be good at. Understand this is from the 3e perspective of course, but even bringing stuff forward is just more homebrew at that point.

As to artifacts, it’s the same thing really. With new players, they are more likely to see something cool and want to use it, but once your players get to know the system they are more likely to want something custom that caters to a character concept than most of the premade stuff. The best artifacts are actually the menial and utilitarian stuff rather than combat ones because players tend to have a harder time knowing what they should or shouldn’t be allowed to play with on that front.

Arms of the Chosen was released at pique 3e interest and still was pretty lackluster in sales. I imagine that something like that now would sell substantially less.

NGL Lyra is peak "I can fix her" for me.
She has potential to be a great hero but is severely misguided at the moment.

>>95994042
>>95994072
The consequences of 2e trying to Jesusify Conky instead of keeping him as the Zeus allegory he is meant to represent cannot be overstated. The gods were meant to be absolutely fallible and full of their own kind of hubris. They were meant to be greater than mortals, but not necessarily better. You know, like old school pantheons. Is the very obvious irony the devs intended with the “God of Perfection” not being perfect in practice somehow passing over people’s heads here.

>>95994354
>Autonomous Exaltations still worked according to criteria set by the Incarnae, so in practice he did.
No, an imperfect being setting standards that they think will work only for their own short-sightedness and hubris to create unintended consequences is such a common theme in storytelling that it’s almost not worth mentioning. He can be faulted for hubris, but no more than anyone else.

>>95994363
>first point doesn't apply as the curse is out of his control
No, he's still giving incredible power to psychos. The curse, as represented in the game, just makes their temper tantrums worse. It doesn't permanently make you a psycho in any edition.

>>95994480
by definition, the curse means anyone he gives power to is going to be psycho, given a long enough time frame.

>>95994494
Very stupid mindset. Its a bit like saying that its ok for me to give a child a glock because everything he does subsequent to that is out of my hands.

>>95994461
>No, an imperfect being setting standards that they think will work only for their own short-sightedness and hubris to create unintended consequences
I would a 100 percent agree with this if it wasn't for the great curse that absolutely fucks that message.

>>95994480
>It doesn't permanently make you a psycho in any edition.
Kind of false mechanically it is temporary but the writing itself heavily implies that with time it warps the personality of the exalted.
And for example in 2e power from darkness used to take away limit boxes so potentially there could be Solars unknowingly in permanent limit
And even evil Solars have seeds of heroism in them Havesh could easily develop into a true champion for the casteless.

>>95994461
>The consequences of 2e trying to Jesusify Conky instead of keeping him as the Zeus allegory he is meant to represent cannot be overstated. The gods were meant to be absolutely fallible and full of their own kind of hubris
3e also is doing it, in it, "Conky choses but not really".

>>95994542
NTA that's really funny
From what I remember is that now the gods have some kind of autism that forces the to exal people that calls their attention so they can't help themselves even if they wanted to stop exalting people.

>>95994480
>It doesn't permanently make you a psycho in any edition.
According to the devs, it does, the great curse has unpublished effects that warps your mind in the long run.

>>95994520
>Kind of false mechanically it is temporary but the writing itself heavily implies that with time it warps the personality of the exalted.
I have not seen any writings to that effect. If they wanted to mechanically represent it permanently making someone insane, they would have done so.

>>95994408

It'd be a really long road. Lyta's pretty fucked up from being raised a mortal Dynast and then being declared Anathema, and then being handed over to some arm of the Cult of the Illuminated.

>>95994461
I don't think that the Unconquered Sun was ever meant to be as bad as Zeus. Probably more Apollo (since the writers for the longest time loved to talk on about Apollonian vs Dionysian) or Hades.

>>95994567
Yes, I think it exists to give Conky a scape rote with both "he cannot be blamed for the Solar actions!!! They failed to live their potential" and "He exalted Havesh in the spur of the moment".

>>95994582
>I have not seen any writings to that effect.
The whole Solars were super cool and awesome at the startr but slowly grew more insane and corrupt is central to the premise of the setting bro.

>>95994582
>I have not seen any writings to that effect. If they wanted to mechanically represent it permanently making someone insane, they would have done so
First age Solars are constantly described as going insane thanks for the great curse.

>>95994510
No you dumbass, it's like saying if you give someone a glock, and he later gets shot by a magic schizophrenia beam, that you're not a monster for giving a schizophrenic a glock, especially when no one in the setting knows the magic schizophrenia beam exists. Plenty of solars are boringly noble and heroic at the moment of their exaltation, but that makes for less memorable characters, so there's no point in talking about it. They're interesting after they've gone crazy, or when they're the rare case that was crazy at the start.

>>95994582
What is mechanically interesting and appropriate to the gameplay of a ttrpg is not the same as what is thematically appropriate to the setting. If Exalted had a mechanic to take control away from players and make them forced to act more and more crazy over time, we would dunk on it harder then we do already.

>>95994584
Conky originally was Zeus/OT!Ywahe, but those traits ended up with Theion/Malfeas.

It is similar to how Abyssals/Infernals ate the negative themes of the sun & Solars themselves.

>>95994584
>I don't think that the Unconquered Sun was ever meant to be as bad as Zeus.
Zeus by the standards of the mythology of the time and among his contemporary gods isn’t even that bad. Unless we want to call all the Greek pantheon complete assholes. I mean, they kind of are. Again, it comes back to the old world mindset that gods are not better than mortals, only greater. All old world pantheons are full of heroic characters doing things we absolutely would call evil by modern morality standards. Even Yahweh is a huge asshole, hence the need to redo the character with the new testament. Conky is actually worse because:

>Zeus is a philanderer and does some not so kosher stuff with women, but absolutely holds to the responsibility of keeping the world he conquered in working order.
>Conky conquers the world by force to liberate its people from the tyranny of the former rulers. Immediately abdicates any responsibility for the world to his chosen surrogates in favor of spending eternity playing the divine xbox for self gratification.

>>95994520
>I would a 100 percent agree with this if it wasn't for the great curse that absolutely fucks that message.
Oh, I am well awake. I made a rather long post about it a thread or two back about this exact problem. The Great Curse is stupid and undermines the themes of the setting in every conceivable way.

>>95994965
This is because Zeus is like a god from Pegana, maintainer of the cosmic order but he isn't omniscient, play to him and maybe he will fix stuff.
Conky is a a god from Flat Earth series, completely apathetic to mortals.

>>95994542
One of the random things that just makes no sense to me. The Exaltations being this external thing that flies around is just kinda cool to me. I know people memed on it and made it less mystical but just remystify it a bit. Don't do these crazy mental gymnastics that the UCS can't help but Exalt crazy people and he personally thinks you're rad. Them being weapons first just makes so much more sense to me to explain why these random crazy people get it, they would have been baller Exalts in the Primordial war.

>>95995639
It is because of a few factors.
The poor in-between of "reincarnation of ancient heroes" vs "weapons of the gods".

Overcorrection against 2e.

Some wanting validation from being personally chosen.

Attempt of giving conky more agency, and benevolence.

Similar to Lunars tattoos, the writers having an idea and working backwards to fit it, regardless if it breaks stuff.

>>95991836
i find it's much like "going nova" as a quantum user in aberrant. you power emerges asdramatically as your situation or power loadout demands. still, general consensus is that your anima fully manifests as you fully come into your exalted nature, at least if you can be seen

>>95995698
>The poor in-between of "reincarnation of ancient heroes" vs "weapons of the gods".
You're still the reincarnation of ancient heroes, they were also just weapons of the gods. Your Exaltation being a discrete thing connects better to the reincarnation bit instead of this weird thing where the UCS wills it but it's separate but he can't help it but he's still totally the one doing it.

>Some wanting validation from being personally chosen.
Each of the gods can personally give a vision to their Chosen, Zeniths traditionally got one, so did Lunars, otherwise it depend on the Exalt. If being personally chosen is important to a character just say you got a vision from the UCS about why you're cool.

>Attempt of giving conky more agency, and benevolence.
The Incarnae should not have agency really, they abandoned the world and that's that. Otherwise we have the Elder problem of them just solving stuff. And even then he really doesn't have agency he's just TECHNICALLY helping I guess?

>Overcorrection against 2e.
>Similar to Lunars tattoos, the writers having an idea and working backwards to fit it, regardless if it breaks stuff.
These are the only things that makes sense and it's basically just because they're dumb about some shit.

>>95995698
>Some wanting validation from being personally chosen.
Honestly this is just sad "I want to know that me I mean my character was personally chosen."
>Attempt of giving conky more agency, and benevolence.
He already had tons of agency the point was that he willingly chooses hedonism he can do anything yet chooses pleasure high irony for a perfect god of virtue.
>Similar to Lunars tattoos, the writers having an idea and working backwards to fit it, regardless if it breaks stuff.
Also sad "NOOOO Lunars can't be victims of anything they chose to create the tattoos just because."
Again the point like with DB is to show how things have changed and will never be the same Lunars will never have the same relationship with olars that they used to have they are broken just as Solars are corrupted or hated by the world as devils.

>>95995749
>bit instead of this weird thing where the UCS wills it but it's separate but he can't help it but he's still totally the one doing it.
This is the poor in-between that I mentioned, 3e pushed exaltations more in an object/blessing direction instead of a soul.

>Validation.
It is similar to "devs, are the Getimian gaslighting?" Issue, certain players really want to be validated in and out of universe.
I think it is also the reason for why Infernals are the way they are now.

>The Incarnae should not have agency really, they abandoned the world and that's that.
3e is against this notion, because of it, Conky personally choose both Solars and Exigents.

>>95995787
>Also sad "NOOOO Lunars can't be victims of anything they chose to create the tattoos just because."
I was talking about their 1e origin, Grabowski imagined Lunars having swirly tattoos, so he worked backwards to justify them.
Because of this all Lunars got their castes broken, and the chimera exist.

>>95995794
I feel we are talking past each other, I agree all these things happened, I am saying they're bad. My comments replies to your factors was explaining why they were bad.

>>95994584
Fixing her would be my motivation.
Likely as a twilight healer.

>>95995794
I hate all those things you just described, and I think they all make 3e fucking suck.

>>95994042(Me)
as an aside, one reason i like the foxbinder story is for implicit exigent possibilities because for however much hands-off control the spark of exigence is supposed to grant a god, apparently it's not nearly as much as unca sun can do himself by deliberately shaping how an exigence is manifested and used. it brings to the for ideas of exigents used and formulated for specific purposes or specific means, an interesting throughline for giving them some tacit rigidity in the setting

>>95994622
>>95994645
I've yet to see anything that indicates the bad Solar behavior in the pre-purge era was solely due to a temporary affliction that lasts a session in length. If anything, the structure of power depicted in Dreams of the First Age is terribly open to abuse and apparently that structure was made millennia before the Solars were ousted.

>>95997072
>I've yet to see anything that indicates the bad Solar behavior in the pre-purge era was solely due to a temporary affliction that lasts a session in length.
Correct, but what I'm trying to tell you is that the curse works in two different ways: one temporary, represented mechanically by limit, and the other a slow descent into madness that is presented in the lore.
The Solars didn't suffer from the great curse right away; even after murdering the neverborn it took a long time to start showing up as limit breaks and then show its long-term corruption.
You can see that it is the case with the iconic dawn from dreams after he died he recovered his sanity and could be the hero he was meant to be.

>>95997105
It never needed mechanics in my mind, we can just extrapolate what occasional Limit Breaks would do to people.

Imagine you're a Solar in the First Age, you're thrust into a position of power and get stressed out (gain Limit) pretty regularly, eventually you Limit Break. Let's say you have some Berserker Rage and you just go to town on your slaves or some shit, when you come out of your stupor (that is a natural exaggeration of who you are as a person) you react in horror. Sure you get angry at the slaves every so often but you've never murdered one before. You feel absolutely terrible about it, you might even release the family of the slaves because you feel so guilty. You tell yourself it's a one off situation and you'll never get that angry again. Maybe you're on your best behavior or a while but eventually that Limit builds up and you Berserker Rage again, more dead slaves, maybe a peasant or two this time. You guiltily cover it up again but this keeps happening again and again. How long until it's no longer this fucked up exception and that just who you are. By the 10th time you have to pay off someone to keep them quiet about murdering a loved one you can't really lie to yourself anymore, you're a guy who murders people when he gets really pissed off.

Eventually you're probably going to be that guy even when you don't Limit Break. It doesn't help that Limit is mental stress and a Limit Break resets you to zero so it feels great at the same time.

>>95997143
>It never needed mechanics in my mind, we can just extrapolate what occasional Limit Breaks would do to people.
Yeah, obviously, but there is also a component of long-term corruption that has no mechanical backing. See again the first age, dude, as a ghost.
He immediately felt sane after dying, so it has effects that are not represented mechanically yet are still the work of the curse and not just the Solars getting used to their own actions under limit break.

>>95997169
>He immediately felt sane after dying

Which is silly because then it's obvious some sort of mental bullshit is going on. The Great Curse only works if it's incredibly insidious. Canonically only a handful of people know it's a thing so there shouldn't be an obvious example of "man something spooky is going on here guys."

More liminal questions:
On some level, I feel like their purpose is against undead to keep the dead and living as separate things. But functionally I'm feeling like it's more about arbitering between the living and undead to have them going about their own businesses without bothering each other.
How confused am I?

>>95997248
>The Great Curse only works if it's incredibly insidious.
Not necessarily that change can be explained away as the human mind not being able to cope with the power of the US.
Mind you that I hate the great curse not only as a mechanic but as a concept too.
There is literally no need for it simple abuse of power and human nature could explain away everything that happens in the lore.
The thing I'm starting to suspect is that the writers might unironically have believed that humans can build a perfect utopia so they needed something to justify to themselves why it didn't happen.

>>95993394
>What's this then? Haven't seen it yet, how'd it fuck up ol' Conky?
The Unconquered Sun giving out Exigency is used as a punishment for Shifune, which is directly counter to his other actions regarding them in 3e. The Unconquered Sun then placed the Foxbinder into the care of the Immaculate Order. To put that into context, his first interaction with Creation post-Usurpation through the entirety of Exalted so far was to give the Immaculate Order a reincarnating Exalt which they immediately began using to hunt down Anathema. Until this point it has not even been clear that he knew the Immaculate Order existed or any of what it entailed. Now he endorses and directly supports it. This is centuries prior to the Jade Prison breaking.

His character is almost purely 'turned his face from Creation after seeing the atrocities his Chosen committed' with 3e adding 'and now his face is turning back with the return of the Solar Exalted'. They fucked up every bit of it up with the Foxbinder's writeup, and well-written as it may be it lacks faithfulness to the setting.

>>95997286
NTA but 3e writers not only don't get exalted but they don't even understand the shit the previous devs were doing.

>>95997284
White Wolf just loves mechanics that tell players what to do with their characters. The Great Curse I think is mostly there to stop the players from just being shining beacons of utopia. They could write the setting and history the exact same way but then the players can just be like "Well we simply won't go mad with power!" and they can just decide that since they're pretending. A more modern game design way wouldn't be to build it into the setting that the Great Curse damns the Exalted but just have a meta narrative mechanic that gives XP or some other bonus when you act like a power hungry crazy person to encourage the genre conventions they want in the game. All the Exalts in history went power hungry because that's what people do, and your Exalts are going power hungry and matching that behavior because you're being mechanically rewarded for doing so.

>>95994408
Pantsu

>You, a Solar, mindbreak a DB courtesan with your cock, whom happens to be the descendant of the DB who killed your Exaltation’s original host
I feel like there’s potential here.

>>95997459
>I feel like there’s potential here.
The power dynamic's too lopsided in the Solar favor. We can flip half of it and get something like catching the tiger by it's tail instead which'd be fun though.
>You, a Dragonblood, mindbreak the Solar courtesan with your cock, as the last survivor of your hearth that was hunting her down
>but you still haven't worked out how to kill her, or if you even should
>and you're traumatized as hell by all your friends being killed by the girl you're fucking

>>95997459
the contrarian within me says no
the male within me says yes.

the question is, will your Solar MAN UP and breed an empire out of her?

>>95997986
You can't have kids more than every 15 years or so if you want to maximize the chance of exaltation as a DB.

>>95998624
No, it's safe to go ten years between consistently for Exaltation chances, it's just considered normal in polite society to wait fifteen years. Like people IRL tending to have children with two or three year gaps instead of only waiting a few months after a child is delivered to recover iron, bleed off the other health issues, and go again.

>>95997105
>You can see that it is the case with the iconic dawn from dreams after he died he recovered his sanity and could be the hero he was meant to be.
I'm not sure that getting shot in the head would make a crazy person's ghost normal. I think the 2e Underworld book wasn't written with a good understanding of how death works in Exalted.

>>95999441
>I'm not sure that getting shot in the head would make a crazy person's ghost normal. I think the 2e Underworld book wasn't written with a good understanding of how death works in Exalted.
nta but it would depend on the kind of crazy, I think. When they're attached to excessive base emotions I'd think it likely to fall into the po and be released when the hun goes on. On the other hand I'd expect hallucinations and paranoia, and possibly manias and phobias, to stick with the hun and even possibly become fetters.

My personal headcanon is that the long-term effects of Limit Break are simply undiagnosed addiction to the emotional high and catharsis of Limit Break, and the high-seeking behavior pursuant to that. Mechanically, Limit Break is a bigger hit than any listed drug, including opium and crack cocaine, so that made sense to me. Ghosts going cold turkey and coming back to themselves after a few weeks or months works in that context.

>>95997251
You can do either, splats and subsplats were supposed to be more than one thing.
Your Liminal can choose between these interpretations and more.

>>95999441
You are right a bullet to the head won't cute the ghost.
That's why the big implication is that the curse is what made him into an asshole.
After it left him he became the hero he actually was.
It is proof that the curse slowly turns you into a terrible person even outside limit break.

>>96000031
I'm not sure it proves anything other than that he reflected on his life and saw it was bad.

>>96000332
He clearly estates that his mind is finally clear.
Meaning the curse effects have left him it's the obvious implication.

>>95994582
Every edition's core book explicitly says that the Great Curse is what drove First Age Solars to wickedness and madness. It's one of the very first facts about the setting explained in the 1E Core.

>>95998624
>>95998700
Progenitive essence is one of the gayest and most unnecessary additions from 3e.
What's the point of it?
Loss of breeding was perfect to limit DBs in previous editions.

>>96001073
The point was that the the new writers didn't want dragon blooded to work as en eugenics project so they hand waved a very dumb justification for why they should not be seen as such.

>>96001073
>What's the point of it?
Equalizing female/male reproduction + a counter argument against "DBs rape farms".

>>96001129
NGL that just takes a ton of flavor away from them they were an ironic view of noble blood as their original place was as servants to others and eugenics is a big theme with them alongside elitism and inherited duty and sins.

>>96001141
Sounds like the writers got too deep into internet discussions and lost track of the point of things.
Rape camps could work but that is part of the grim nature of the setting.
If someone actually built one in setting they would be rightfully be seen as mad monsters.

>>95996537
Sorry, I was expanding upon the points.

>>96001285
Certain nuances were lost, like with the Lintha.

>If someone actually built one in setting they would be rightfully be seen as mad monsters
This is how elder scrolls did it with those elves slavers.

>>96001375
Exactly or like the gnome conspiracy in arcanum.

>>96001285
They did get too far in the weeds, the 2e rape camps were a thing only the chronically obsessed Exalted forumites argued about. I doubt it ever came up in an actual game without being immediately shut down, going out of their way to negate it reeks of late 2e books where writers would explicitly write things to win forum arguments.

That said, the equalizing of female/male reproduction is a good one for the setting. They've always established the Realm as matrilineal if not slightly matriarchal. Women DBs are just as competent as men DBs at combat and what not, the setting is wuxia bullshit and DBs are extra magical on top of that so that shouldn't be a problem in terms of capabilities, however if the reproduction rate is gated by the women as it is in real life you'd still have a very strong pressure culturally to not risk the women in battles or what not. They've kind of just handwaved this throughout 1e and 2e, it's a cultural oddity, they're fine with it, and the Realm isn't completely obsessed with numbers, but it does mean the natural conclusion to boosting DB numbers if having a harem which isn't something that feels right for the setting. So some reason would be nice so you don't have to answer why every DB society is like this.

Progenitive essence has all the problems the 3e writers complained about in 2e with motonic physics and all the stuff that removes the mystery of the setting. All they needed is a line that said dudes can't pump out DB kids, it's a mystery of the DB lineage, and just carry on. Instead they made this entire in depth cringe explanation that is now, fucking six years later, getting memed on.

>>96001451
>That said, the equalizing of female/male reproduction is a good one for the setting.
Not really imo.
Wasn't the shogunate supposed to be patriarchal?
I think that it would make more sense to model the realm after real life matriarchies than imaginary ones like the amazons.
Irl matriarchies are not simply patriarchies with the genders reversed.
But ironically that seems sexist for the feminist they just want women to be men.

>>96001498
You can disagree the setting as presented is a good one however equalizing the the reproduction rates make the setting as written more coherent is my point. They WANT Amazon wuxia warriors and they also a relatively coherent not just slapped together culture attached to it. Both of these have been true since 1e. The mismatch in reproduction rates undermines that so changing it makes the setting that has always been presented more reasonable. Good or bad as you may think it is.

>>96001533
>They WANT Amazon wuxia warriors and they also a relatively coherent not just slapped together culture attached to it. Both of these have been true since 1e.
Not really in 1e male DBs weren't treated as lesser, and the token sexist character was treated as a close minded.

>>96001285
I think they realized how they gave the fanbase a problem to solve and the easiest solution is very inhuman but they couldn't find a way to give a different solution without retconing some important stuff. Why they choose that particular explanation is beyond me, odds are you could just state that trying to build a breeding camp decreased the odds of Exaltation or that doing so consistently pisses off Heaven and the local gods and people would be fine with it.

>>96002197
>odds are you could just state that trying to build a breeding camp decreased the odds of Exaltation or that doing so consistently pisses off Heaven and the local gods and people would be fine with it.
I think the easiets and most obvious result for capturing DBs to use as breeding stock is that they would unite and murder you its that easy.

>>96002197
Alternative idea: Chance of kid exalting is based on how much the parent is revelling in their essence fever.

Dynasts who go out on wyld hunts, and do general exalted things all the time, then come back to have kids have the most kids who exalt. Dynasts who stick around and administrate the isle, their kids don't exalt as often. If you try to get a dragon blooded rape camp going you wind up with 0 exalted kids.

It also would explain the lack of Lunar-run dragon-blooded breeding camps, which is a thing Progenitive Essence doesn't answer.

>>96001651
There really wasn't a token sexist character until the 2e core featured Tepet Lisara as an antagonist for the DB section. It didn't work out too well.

>>96001498
The Shogunate was patrilineal (as Lookshy continues to be) but not necessarily patriarchial. Again, if Lookshy is anything to go by, it was like the book version of Starship Troopers, only in fantasy and instead of bugs they hate Anathema (Anathema that are bugs are a specific case).

>>96002373
>Book version

Disregard that, movie version. Book version didn't have compulsory service.

>>96002339
It doesn't need to involuntary in the first place. Also I'm pretty sure lobotomizing DBs would be within reach of the tech the shogunate had so that should also be an option.

>>96003012
>Also I'm pretty sure lobotomizing DBs would be within reach of the tech the shogunate had so that should also be an option.
Check the description of the Slave Collar for Exalted. The Dragonblooded had this kind of thing done to them during the First Age, and are very watchful for it, disgusted by it, and will band together to annihilate people doing it even in the Age of Sorrows. During the Shogunate, with the horrors of the First Age fresh in living memory? Fucking no, they weren't doing that.

I'm also unsure why you think lobotomizing the Dragonblood you capture would help stop Dragonblood uniting to murder you.

>>96003547
I'm wasn't talking about a war from "outside" just a revolt against whomever from within the camp.

>>96003574
The guy you were responding to wasn't.

>>96003012
Lobotomies and other hits to the brain in general that don't outright destroy it are treated by the Exalted as only slightly more of an inconvenience than getting their teeth knocked out, so you'd have to keep repeating it.

>>96004080
>the brain in general
Really, it's more like the brain in Exalted doesn't do what it does IRL. It's the seat of consciousness, but does that mean it's just the place the souls rest/attach to, since they're the parts which do the thinking and personality? Mortals have a whole set of organs straddling the line between spirituality and biology tied into and through their body, canonically including chakras, meridians, gates of virtue, a flow and pool of essence, and several of these are tied directly into specific organs. Then there's the parts of the body which have magical power or potency and are presumably doing something with it that they aren't IRL, like how blood is a potent source of magic entirely separate from your essence pool or experience points canonically exist as fractions of your soul.

Looking for ideas for curses, something I can throw down an arcane link. Shikari broke into my house and left some hairs behind while ransacking my kitchen, so it's basically going to be a lucky dip on bad times for them. I'm entirely happy to write the mechanics myself, I'm just struggling to think of anything on par with Curse of the Maledicted Compass or copying-pasting Shun the Smiling Lady.

>>96005187
Their testicles clang loudly together when they move like cow bells, causing penalties to stealth and social interaction.

>>96005219
>giving the idiot who broke into my house literal balls of steal
Dramatic irony, I love it. I'll probably slap a valor buff on it too.

>>95957565
>>95960336
>>95961889
I thought Onyx Path was on the edge of bankruptcy, how can they afford shills?

>>96006866
Shills paid in kudos.

>>96006871
Oh, so they do it for free like Correct the Record.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oXkF2viFDgU

>>95961889
>Mostly because they are weirdos who would make the game fit their particular taste in trash rather than build something that doesn't suck.
How is this different from the official writers?

>>96006866
They do it for social cloth.

>>96006963
>social cloth
Isn't that Berengiere's thing?

>>96006963
>How is this different from the official writers?
It isn't besides the fact they are a group of weirdos with some experience with making these kinds of games.

>>96007430
Despite the fact that they keep making garbage decisions like keeping the skill tree model and inflating the fuck out of the charm section.

>>96004378
No, it does... for mortals. Exalted are not bound by it as strongly, much like how they don't have to worry about either scurvy or a reduced lifespan due to Vitamin C production. They just do it.

>>96001451
I think a really understated element of the 2e discussions is that the setting material actually talked about breeding camps and breeding projects. These things were not arising from forumites over speculating, or at least, the rise of that discussion in 2e (compared to 1e era) is not solely the origin of 3 weird guys. It was 3 weird guys extrapolating the breeding camps talked about in the setting material. Some of them might have been writers.

>>96008350
>talked about breeding camps and breeding projects
From what I remember the one rape camp is leaded by mahatsuchi but it was for his beastmen so it makes sense he can keep control.
As for breeding programs yeah eugenics have always been a big theme for dragonbloods dynasts always take breeding into consideration for marriages.

>>96008350
Yeah you still have that with Lookshy, they are explicitly taking the lower Breeding higher numbers approach, which I think is still true in 3e I haven't read the Lookshy stuff in a minute. It's already there and it's an easy extrapolation to just go "well why aren't they actually trying their hardest when that is their explicit goal?" So having some sort of in-setting mumbo-jumbo that it won't work that great and there are concrete repercussions of it. Maybe the best gap is 10 years for both parents, the Realm pushes that to 15 because they train the fuck out of all their kids and Lookshy pushes it to like 7 because they don't care if their DBs have high Breeding. For that to work best you need to gate both sexes ability to pump out kids with a decent Exaltation chance or else the natural conclusion of all these breeding projects is stuff they'd rather not exist.

>>96008376
From memory, rape camps were a Lunar thing since 1e.
With a few exceptions, they were too villain coded.

>>96008863
>1e Lunars be like
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=52i14wYBef8

>>96009242
More or less, they aimed at Conan and hit the snakemen

>>96008863
No, Ma-Ha-Suchi had the skulls everywhere for skulls' sake (even beheading over 20 people in one hit), but very little actual mention of rape camps.

2e had that one that was in the Labyrinth where rape victims raped rapists and sometimes also just people the Lover didn't like. Technically, the Nameless Lair writeup wasn't supposed to be published, and it only saw the light of day because it piggy-backed on a quiet day on Ink Monkey content. It was basically "what if Island 5, but rape?"

>>95954580 (OP)
What’s your favorite piece of homebrew content and why?

>>96009928
Glory Overwhelming, as it's pretty easy to grasp and has immediately improved every campaign I've introduced it to. It immediately makes characters more cool without removing consequences, and trains people to be more proactive and engaged.

>>96010468
I've never heard about it, please tell me more.

>>96010490
>I've never heard about it, please tell me more.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fMnvGMIEMnPS3qZqEQRLnTZw0G--K899GAKyIwmDNyk
It overhauls mote pools into a cap on the number of motes you can spend per tick/instant, without a hard limit to the number of motes you can spend in a scene. Spending 5+ motes gives you Fever, and spending more motes gives you more of it, which rolls over into dramatic consequences determined by your Storyteller, which might include things like 'go do something based on one of your intimacies', 'have some bonus dice for a specific action I want you to take, and a penalty for another', or the catch-all for if they couldn't think of anything, 'you get some Limit'. Flaring anima gives you a discount on how much fever you pick up.

In practice the player is giving the Storyteller some sway over their future actions in return for power in the moment and the ability to assert themselves in the now. With the Storyteller's options making it significantly easier to push people to go chasing their intimacies, it naturally leads to a good mix of character-driven gameplay while also giving the Storyteller the ability to keep things on track without hard railroading. Also, Exalted with unlimited combat endurance throwing out thirty motes on every action feels fucking glorious, and Exalted trying to be subtle feels glorious too since anything 4m or under is basically free, giving them that baseline beyond-mortal feel that they've always been hyped up with but never really had in play. That and it actually puts some amount of consequences on out-of-combat characters throwing motes around, because normally there are basically no consequences to e.g. a crafter putting 40m into whatever they want, whereas with Fever they aren't immediately back to normal overnight. It does a whole lot of good things for the game, I think.

>>96010676
I enjoyed it when I used it, but the Essence Fever consequences could have used a bit more work. There were quite a few times I had a bunch of Impulses and what not stacked up that I couldn't apply at the moment so there was a big disconnect between actions and consequences.

I still need to finish my own increased mote regen/anima rework that I've been banging on for years.

>>96010775
>I enjoyed it when I used it, but the Essence Fever consequences could have used a bit more work. There were quite a few times I had a bunch of Impulses and what not stacked up that I couldn't apply at the moment so there was a big disconnect between actions and consequences.
Agreed, that was basically my own experience. Not being able to resolve the Impulses as quickly as they came was a bit of an issue, but mostly I think it was not having enough options rather than the options that were there necessarily needing a rework.

But yes my overall impression was that it was a good and more enjoyable experience, and made Exalted feel more Exalted.

Is it possible to make an alchemical potion with effects comparable to picrel?

>>96010676
So what does a Night Caste do when he wants to be sneaky? Does he need to spend as few motes as possible or does he still have powers that allow him to spend a lot without flaring?

>>96012829
Its in the FAQ, Nights can use their anima power to mute anima without gaining fever

>>96012829
As >>96012946 says, the Night's Caste abilities let them spend motes without flaring anima without a surcharge (normally there's a cost to suppress your anima when you would normally spend enough to flare it up a level, an extra +1 fever). However, you might have been asking about being sneaky in general, in which case the answer is: being sneaky costs. Using your power with subtlety is expensive, and that includes using your power to sneak. That said, Glory Overwhelming is built for 3e, where a lot of Stealth charms have the Mute keyword and don't count towards building anima, so the point is kind of moot either way.

Oh, and just because it's named Glory Overwhelming doesn't mean you're forced into full sunlight demigod mode, in case that's the thing you're trying to get at. Going that way isn't even necessarily mechanically superior. I've seen both playstyles, and flaring basically all the time and being very free with motes is very powerful (until you run into someone who can stop you) in that you don't get much fever for most of what you do, but the downside is that you're practically guaranteed to get some fever (usually only one) very regularly. High floor low ceiling sort of thing on the fever gain. The other major approach, which is to avoid fever and never really let it accrue enough to have any of the bad consequences, works pretty well as well. Usually it ends up with people having like zero to five fever all the time, but when they crash out it instantly spikes way fucking higher because they haven't been living in the headspace of someone who can actually spend a bunch of motes and don't optimize very much.

>>96010676
>giving them that baseline beyond-mortal feel that they've always been hyped up with but never really had in play.
This is because the exalted are written as "reaching divinity, not as being divine themselves".

>>96012576
I think those were in 1e

>>96013357
>This is because the exalted are written as "reaching divinity, not as being divine themselves".
This
>An epic high-flying role-playing game about reborn god-heroes in a world that turned on them.
is at the top of the thread. Also, in Exalted, gods don't feel like they're baseline better than mortals either, beyond that they're immaterial. Often they just aren't. Divinity as a measure of potence is rather thin in this gameline, which is why I tried to describe the way Exalted are hyped as beyond-mortal to begin with.

>>96013750
I think it is because of the poor power scaling and lack of niche protection.

In the waters of divinity, the Exalted are divers, not amphibians.
Numbers, quality and quantity, are used as a measure of power/divinity.
And most gods scales below the Exalted.

A solution would be emphasize lesser gods having "free-form" magic, similar to sorcerous workings.

>>96013805
>A solution would be emphasize lesser gods having "free-form" magic, similar to sorcerous workings.
The opposite is emphasized via custom charms.

>>96012576
Would you say that +3 dots in strength would be close enough? iirc that was the limit for mortal potions.

>>96013854
They could always copy the influence powers from CofD and add custom manifestations to fit the more fantastical setting.

>>96014368
>They could always copy the influence powers from CofD
pls not another subsystem that requires a flowchart

>>96014489
Not that one you Dingus.

>>96015572
The other is just as bad

>>96015583
How is this worse than Exalted blessing or elemental charms?

>>96015583
Those are just charms, they fit the gods of exalted.

>>96014107
Maybe a dot less, as that gets you from 3 to 5 or 5 to 7 for feats of strength.

>>96015781
The point is to condence things into a single charm so you have a better guideline as an ST.

>>96012576
There was a thaumaturgy potion that did something similar.

Setting material also suggests this exists, but writers across all editions have been tepid about explaining what exactly that'd look like.

>>96012576
Very much yes. In 1e you could theoretically stack up to a permanent Ability/Attribute 8 using a permanent +3 Ability and +3 Attribute score from Alchemy, then down a potion that gives you another +3 Ability and +3 Attribute temporarily, for the scene, for a total of +12. This is some serious wizardry though, we're talking 'could be left-overs steroids from the First Age' here. No Key the 'mortal' Mushroom King has Ability/Attribute 8 like that after millennia of slow decay, but he was a First Age king par excellence who cucked Solars and went mano-a-mano with Octavian, so maybe shouldn't be considered standard or mass producible.

>>96010676
These are fantastic.
Are these translatable to ExEss? I'm STing a game soon-ish and I want my players to feel free and still have rules that help with the narrative.

>>96017946
>Are these translatable to ExEss? I'm STing a game soon-ish and I want my players to feel free and still have rules that help with the narrative.
I think they would be, yes. You'd want to it to 1m intervals rather than 5m intervals, and set the caps on motes per tick to the maximum size of Essence's mote pools rather than trying to match 3e values. It does leave you without the 1-4m free space 3e has, but Essence is also a lot more generous with 0m/free charms in the first place, so people can still do stuff there. I could see Anima being somewhat annoying too, because you accrue a lot more levels of it in Essence than in 3e, but I don't see a straightforward way to make it cheaper to suppress. Personally I'd just roll with it and not change the cost to suppress anima, since the reason the rules for suppressing anima exist in 3e's Glory Overwhelming was to be something like the personal pool with the power to do some but not much essence-based activity subtly. Essence doesn't have personal mote pools, so there wouldn't be the need to replicate the option.

I will say that of all Exalted systems Essence is the one that needs something like Glory Overwhelming least, because it's pretty committed to making charms that don't need costs free and already balances the amount of motes you can reasonably spend in a turn by limiting how many charms you can activate per action with it's 1-charm-per-step rule. It also already has the best system for the Great Curse, which can sometimes fill a similar rule to fever consequences.

Is it thematically unfitting for an exalt to feel insecure or submissive to a mortal at times? Especially if they've had negative experiences or are bound by social structure before exaltation?

>>96018729
No. You might be loyal to a mortal you serve under. A Monarch, wealthy guild factor, or othe politically powerful person. You can be insecure, but I'd imagine it'd be hard to stay that way once you start flexing your divine might. You could stat the insecurity as an intimacy, though.

>>96018729
It would be very unusual and kind of contrived in most cases but not unfitting if there is an explanation. Like a warlord that despite being able to cleave through armies still can't say no to their wife or child. Insecurity is borderline nonsensical but I'm pretty sure there is an example character like that.

>>96018729
>Is it thematically unfitting for an exalt to feel insecure or submissive to a mortal at times?
No. Exalted are people too. They can learn helplessness and adhere to social structures even in the face of prudence or logic just like everybody else. The Time of Tumult is one where power structures tend to get shaken up and the talented rise to the top, though.

>>96009928
new splats
>but splats break the se-
i don't care