Thread 96441763

Calibration 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 (embed)

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

>Current Quixalted Extended QE Version (Fanmade Supplement)
https://files.catbox.moe/rjgmo5.pdf

>Optional Quixalted Exalts
https://www.mediafire.com/file/jg86yrewnhx2ov3/QE_Reject3eExaltHomebrew.pdf/file

>Exalted Demake/Black Vault (Now with updates):
https://pastebin.com/Tt1PjuYt (embed)
https://pastebin.com/qHRW9N51 (embed)

>collection of Exalted Hacks
https://pastebin.com/gtZnycJs (embed)

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

Last thread:>>96401058
>TQs
>Have you ever done anything with Calibration in your campaigns?
>What about other holidays in Creation, have you ever used them in a campaign? Or even made an original one?

>>96441763 (OP)
>>Have you ever done anything with Calibration in your campaigns?
>>What about other holidays in Creation, have you ever used them in a campaign? Or even made an original one?
I once had a city-state with a nearby shadowland where Calibration was a time of more-or-less friendly interaction between the living and the dead, with the dead coming out to hang out in the city. Like, a man might have a drink with his dead father and reminisce about the past and so on. The PCs happened to pass by around Calibration. They were DBs, one of them was an Immaculate monk and deeply disgusted by that custom, so they overthrew the shadowland side's ghostly monarch and put an end to such blasphemous traditions. I don't think I've done anything else special with Calibration, though.

How do we fix Lunars?

>>96441950
Make them YA magical fiction where they're the hyper-competent super-special chosen one being fought over by other, more physically powerful, men.

>>96441950
Why is "dark fantasy" just look at these three hot tall guys who abuse me and sexually harass me?

>>96441763 (OP)
>Calibration
But we're not in December.................

What's the point of a skill like Lore in a setting where every natural phenomenon falls under Occult?

>>96442052
A return to 2e? But with 60 lunars, and each Lunar is bound to a Solar circle?

>>96442055
With women it always was, the problem is that 3e is misaligned Tanith Lee's gooning principles.

>>96442107
>What's the point of a skill like Lore in a setting where every natural phenomenon falls under Occult?
Because History and stuff like that make more sense as their own skill.

>>96441950
>How do we fix Lunars?
What's their problem?

>>96442587
They exist. They add nothing to the world, it's lore, or any sort of interesting plot.

>>96442055
>Why is "dark fantasy" just look at these three hot tall guys who abuse me and sexually harass me?
Because that's the only goddamned thing that sells with the title.

>>96442107
It is a long story, a resume is that it is a legacy of an urban fantasy system ported to a pulp fantasy.

In pulp fantasy occultism and science aren't really separated, contrary of urban fantasy, so a lot of "lore" falls under "occult".

>>96442593
In that case you either remove them or give them a general goal and conflict with other factions. For example, giving them a Great Wall™ analogue piece of infrastructure to keep against the Wyld or a task along the lines of "keeping the menagerie of creation alive."

>>96442639
So what do a Lore 5 Occult 0 and a Lore 0 Occult 5 character look like?

>>96442873
It would be analogous to the difference between a generalist handyman/electrician and a historian/lawyer.

>>96442078
>But we're not in December.................
Something something our calendars are out of sync. Something something Chinese New Year blah blah blah.

>>96442078
It is based on the Aztec calendar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C4%93mont%C4%93mi

Why are Fae vulnerable to Iron in this setting?

>>96443403
Because they're creatures of raw Chaos and iron is associated most strongly with the element of Earth, which embodies order and stability.

>>96442078
Calibration is towards the end of the autumn-equivalent, not midwinter. It's very similar to southern-hemisphere Halloween in vibes.

>>96443746
Isn't southern Halloween around the vernal equinox? With Christmas around the summer solstice?

I want to do a crossover game with World of Darkness so correct me if I’m wrong: awakened mages in Word are equivalent to sidereal exalted. I want to have mage characters from world of darkness be randomly transported to the Exalted setting. They should be roughly as powerful as sidereals correct?

I want them to be hardasses from the Technocratic Union if you know about Mage lore. They’re actually even bigger control freaks. My friends and I already talked about it

>>96442706
Treating any Exalted type as a faction is a mistake. In fact being treated too much like a faction with shared goals is a problem with Lunars as it is, and doubling down on that isn't going to make things better.

>>96444143
The Realm was made by the Dragon-Blooded, with the rest being put in the outcaste book.

>>96443403
Honestly I wish there was a more detailed and autistic explanation like there is for a lot of shit than >>96443530, I mean it kind of makes sense but with how powerful high level Raksha (let alone Unshaped and Ishvara) are supposed to be lorewise I just wish there was more to it

>>96444136
The high end of them are much more powerful than Sidereals could ever hope to be-frankly rivalling the Primordials themselves-but the vast majority of mages, including PC mages, operate similarly to Sidereals, yeah. For most intents and purposes you can treat them like subtle manipulators who can be situationally deadly and masters of hax fuckery but are also geased to hide from the limelight, it’s only if the metaplot lore about mages having shards of God that want to reunite and form a new Godhead that you have to start worrying about aiming hire. And frankly I’ve never heard of anyone using Masters of the Art rules in an actual Mage game. In spite of the fact I know of someone who statted fighting an avatar of Malfeas in a game of Exalted (reskinned Behemoth, basically).

>>96444239
Re: power level can’t exalted shards technically keep growing in power too? I agree that for PCs it isn’t really relevant. Ascended archmages can’t even come to Earth any more, they have to move to the umbra.

>>96444180
Sure. All Dragon-Blooded aren't from the Realm, however, as you yourself point out. Realm itself is at the moment only nominally united at the moment. There are Dragon-Blooded factions, but the Dragon-Blooded are not themselves a faction, and things are specifically set up so that the most dominant faction among them is falling apart. There's no shared Dragon-Blooded cause, not in the same way there's a shared Lunar cause.

>>96442107
While making distinctions between supernatural and natural phenomena and related knowledge in a setting like Creation is artificial as fuck and probably pointless, Exalted does for whatever reason make such a distinction. Occult deals with the supernatural, not the natural, and knowledge about natural phenomena doesn't fall under it.

The sidereal exalted would probably get along great with The Technocracy from mage. The Technocracy is into the same shit but they are actually competent and always win instead of fucking it up

>>96444256
Outcastes are like 1e!Lunars that weren't part of the Silver Pact, or ronin Sidereals.

>>96444136
>correct me if I’m wrong: awakened mages in Word are equivalent to sidereal exalted
No, they're different. They're not based in the same ideas, and exist in completely different environments. The only equivalence is that Sidereals generate something called paradox, but the paradox that Sidereals generate is only the same as Mage paradox in 3e. In 1e/2e a Sidereal's paradox is just a measure of how annoyed the pattern spiders are at them.

If a Mage crosses over into Exalted and paradox is the same thing they would likely start getting pattern spiders biting them in the fate the same way Sidereals do, or recieving pattern shock the same way 3e sidereals do if they're going into that edition (because the Loom of Fate is a more active reality engine than the frayed consensus of WoD or the supernal ideas of nWoD), which might put stronger limits on their top end.

>>96444267
>The sidereal exalted would probably get along great with The Technocracy from mage. The Technocracy is into the same shit but they are actually competent and always win instead of fucking it up
Sidereals haven't fucked up yet. It's only in the non-canon scenarios like RotSE that they're completely buggered, and that's because those scenarios write them out because they don't know how Sidereals work in the first place.

>>96444274
Except for the Realm not being as central to the Dragon-Blooded as Silver Pact or Sidereal factions are to their respective splats, the Realm not really being a united faction at the moment, the Realm not having a distinct common goal the same way the Silver Pact has even when it was firmly united under the Empress, and there being both major and minor Dragon-Blooded factions outside the Realm. In other words, not really.

>>96444300
They were said to be equivalent in the first edition. Obviously they operate in different environments but awakened mages essentially have the same exaltation. You’re right that their power would be more limited in Creation

>>96444136
Just look at Holdens WoDvs Exalted you are better off doing that then doing it from scratch.

>>96444484
Holdon writes some pretty great stuff even if I find the mechanics on it all pretty lacking. Love the Broken Winged Crane, dislike the mechanics. Amazing how consistent he's been with that.

>>96444239
>I just wish there was more to it
They couldn't come up with a good reason for that in changeling. Trying to make it a coherent thing in Creation would raise more questions than answers even if you have some very basic ideas like Auto hating on the Wyld so hard he creates fucking anti matter out of it because fuck them in particular.

Exalted has this weird issue where it feels like the bigger you try to make it the smaller and less significant everything feels. I don't really have the words to explain it but I'm pretty sure other people know exactly what I'm talking about.

When you first learn about the settings you have all these amazing ideas for what 300 solars could do if they came back and change the world - then when you're really into the setting you wonder why there are billions of people and how 300 people could ever do anything cool in a way that doesn't sound absolutely silly. 3e doubling down on smaller adventures doesn't really help with this. It makes me wonder if any game actually feel like your effecting things at a scale where things feel important and impactful. The battle group mechanics are nice but still feel pretty jank in pretty much every setting, although 3e easily does them best.

>>96444705
There isn't a good way to make the numbers work, people already tune things out dealing with IRL Imperial China numbers to making meaning changes to creation as a whole is just going to raise more questions and problems at the table.

>>96444723
Yeah... A thing that makes me sad in a strange way is this desire to make settings "bigger then earth". Like, earth is already huge with billions of people and all their stories. We're just a marble, floating out in space, forever alone. Then you get into a fantasy setting and it's just "There is always more, everything is infinite, everything is endless." Heck, from what I remember it's canon that Exalted is a multiverse with infinite suns and universes with who knows how many other Creations out in the Wyld or in the Well of Urd.

It just shouldn't be hard to have your cake and eat it too but I haven't found a system that really pulls of that feeling. Exalted used to be the closest but less so nowadays. I don't know, just lamenting.

>>96444705
>Exalted has this weird issue where it feels like the bigger you try to make it the smaller and less significant everything feels. I don't really have the words to explain it but I'm pretty sure other people know exactly what I'm talking about.
I get it. It feels impossible to push against the vast everything. The best you can really do ends up being cutting it down into chunks you can take on until you reach a tipping point or are forced to flee greater retaliation, or otherwise looking for key events and positions where you can weigh the scales in your favor. Local issues ends up being 99% of games.

>>96444746
I'm pretty sure the Exalted multiverse thing came from the Nocturnal fanbook to explain their weird Schrodinger's Gear charms being fleshed out into a whole thing.

As far as making things have a sense of weight to them, you could "just" plan things out as an ST on a macro level but a lot of games make that kind of stuff pretty much irrelevant. Who gives a shot about the Realm losing 8 trillion people in a single battle and 6 million Terrestrials on the way to said skirmish?

>>96444746
>Heck, from what I remember it's canon that Exalted is a multiverse with infinite suns and universes with who knows how many other Creations out in the Wyld or in the Well of Urd.
The Wyld is theoretically endless, but there is only one Creation in it, and the rest of the endless Wyld is forced to orient itself around Creation. There could be other stable lands, but those capable of making a persistent land and fighting off the raksha would also know about Creation and likely be able to move there if they wanted to, because Creation is never that far away even in the endless lands of True Chaos (which is to say that space and distance are negotiable out there to the extent that there is an upper bound on how difficult it can be to get to Creation from the Wyld). The Well of Udr is an access to an unlimited multiverse, but it's not a portal that goes to a consistent place, and there isn't any way back. The Arch of Undreamt Dreams is a better way to access a theoretically infinite multiverse (even if the understanding of it is flawed, that understanding still provides access to an infinite multiverse of alternate timelines) if exploring the multiverse ever became a meaningful thing, but it's like... not that relevant, really? It could be, in that there could be an invasion of outworlders, but how really cares, y'know?

The difference between a multiversal invasion and a sea of beasts from deep underground coming up into the world, or something coming down from the moon, is pretty aesthetic and tactical. It's all outworlder invasions fundamentally, and the strategic differences are minimal. There is no wildly out of scale enemy that could crush all of Creation and it's defenders with it's little pinky unless you subscribe to the wildest Ink Monkey fever dreams, and even then that enemy is the Unconquered Sun and the expectation of the Ink Monkeys is that if your Solar PCs eat their vegetables and grow up big and strong they can beat him too.

>>96444908
I'm pretty sure the multiverse talk came about when stuff about the Well of Urd and it having alternative Creations in it. I thought that came about in the 2e abyssal book but it was probably invented way earlier. I don't think it was ever directly said that there are infinite multiverses though, just that the possibility may exist. Which like... just say no.

Although I bet anything someone out there thinks the Well of Urd is the coolest thing ever. For me it's the Eye of Auto. The fuck is that thing, why is it here, what would I do with it. I refuse to leave the ancient artifact that dooms everyone it touches. I want to, I don't know, give it to that lady in the sun. Maybe it can help make her job easier or something. Find stuff that can actually improve your job in the Daystar seems like a pain in the butt.

>>96444252
Techhnically, sure. But I mean…max oWoD mage wank goes up to introducing new constants to the universe with NO “it has to be subtle” limits, experiencing and interacting with all of space-time at once, or outright creating new universes.

I don’t think even max 2e wank E10 Charm bullshit competes with that on an individual basis, at least. Not from the Sidereal charmset. Besides, it takes thousands of years to even get to statted First Age Solar level and Sidereals all have set lifespans so if we’re really playing this imaginary big dick contest seriously-the Sidereals are inherently disadvantaged because they just drop dead by the time it takes for them to even come close.

Anyway, like you said all of that is navalgazing for the purposes of PCs who aren’t locked into a campaign where they have to deal with Voormas trying to use the Pashupata Astra to eliminate the concept of death. Because if you end up in such a campaign, either your ST hates you or you’ve long ago agreed on a set of homebrew rules to enable it that ensure you are basically not playing Exalted anymore.

>>96444679
Nah, miss me with that pessimism. Having a longwinded autistic explanation about Auto’s enmity with the Wyld is exactly the kind of experience I come to Exalted for.

>>96444746
I’ve come to accept that Nobilis is the game that Exalted was sold to me as. And unfortunately, it is a very different experience to Exalted.

>>96444969
>give it to that lady in the Sun
Given Nysela just wants to uphold the ideals of the Unconquered Sun as much as possible (and get dicked down by him; 3e making her his daughter just makes that funnier) so handing her the object notorious for dooming any owner sooner or later is probably a good way to make her very upset.

In fact, I’m totally using this idea as an Infernal plot someday. Why bother cursing or corrupting the Daystar when you can simply put a treasure in there that will do it for you?

>>96444794
>Local issues ends up being 99% of games.
I feel like that's desirable, to be honest. There's some people who treat Exalted like its Crusader Kings and I've never been interested in that at all or considered that kind of removed interaction with the world at large to be really fitting for Exalted. Keeping it local lets you build up interesting characters/places, and make the stakes more personal when push comes to shove.

>>96445088
>Having a longwinded autistic explanation about Auto’s enmity with the Wyld is exactly the kind of experience I come to Exalted for.
If I had to write a lore explanation for this kind of stuff, Auto creates various porpuse organisms and materials.
After the 777 billionth Fae fucking around with his shit leading to a lost game of divnity he says "Well fuck your kind, in general" before crafting the mother of all stable materials even cutting a part of himself to allow it to cut the illusions of the fae. The main reason why this wasn't developed further was because if he replicated that targeting other deities would be bad enough to justify imprisoning him driving a wedge that would eventually lead to the devine revolution.

>>96441763 (OP)
Monthly Update
>Predevelopment
Sidereal Jumpstart
Alchemical Companion
Essence Extended
Essence Storyteller's Guide
>First Draft
Essence Player’s Guide novellas
Essay Collection lol last seen here
>Development
Riders from the Sunless Lands: The Abyssals Companion
Infernals
>Art Notes Prep
Champions of the Divine Flame
Essence Player’s Guide (possible error)
>Art Direction
Essence Player’s Guide
Alchemicals: Servants of the Machine God
Agents of Heaven (Sidereals Companion)
>Proofing
Miracles of Divine Flame (Exigents Companion)
>Press
Exigents: Out of the Ashes: Quoting
Exigents Storyteller Screen: At Studio2
Sidereals: Charting Fate’s Course: Quoting
abyssals was out last month and the novella omnibus. the closest thing coming is the exigent companion, may see it within a month if timing is good. we may even see alchemicals before or after year's end if thing's go smoothly. infernals crowdfunding still seems to be planned for the holiday financial reaming zone

>>96445201
Yeah, desu. It's just I really want it to be both, ya know? Crusader Kings is a great example. Or Shadows of the Forbidden Gods. I do enjoy local stories as well, especially when "local" can mean an entire kingdom or country.

>>96445210
The funny thing is this is the canonical reason why SWLIHN’s attack Charms do Aggravated damage to Wyld things.

>>96445387
Every reminder about 3e preparing to butcher Infernals inspires numbing dread in me, like anticipating a failing mark from exam results.

>>96445554
They'll be better than old Infernals

>>96445581
Bullshit. Every single thing I’ve heard about them makes them sound infinitely worse.

>>96445491
I feel like it was every fucking thing that opposed the wyld and did special effects or better damage to creatures of the Wyld by the end of 2e. She Who Lives in Her Name opposed the Wyld, Adrien opposed the Wyld, Theion opposed the Wyld, Autochthon opposed the Wyld, Gaia stands against the Wyld, The Unconquered Sun opposes the Wyld, Luna stands ward over the Wyld and enforces it's separation from Creation, the Maidens of Fate work daily to weave fate in order to sustain Creation from the Wyld, the essence of death and everything that uses it (Neverborn, the Underworld in general, ghosts, Abyssals) oppose the Wyld, Solars crusade into it to claim and stand against the Wyld, Lunars oppose the Wyld, Sidereals oppose the Wyld, the Solar's creations build bastions in the Wyld, fucking commerce opposes the Wyld.

Like it's a bit of a wank for raksha and the Wyld that all this shit can be set against them and they're still encroaching on the borders of the world while historically being some of the closest to achieving their overarching goals, but I mean really? Don't you think this is a bit much? They're just raksha. Imagine one Solar with their mate and a circle of outcaste dragonblood backup dancers Wyld-Shaping a couple miles of mountains made of cold iron wrapped up in a wall around the world and try to think of a way the fae do anything about it.

>>96445635
I mean, to be fair-it makes sense for all those things to oppose the Wyld with how consistently voracious and predatory the Wyld has acted towards Creation.

>>96442052
So give them multiple solar mates instead of just one?

>>96445662
While each of them could be and have been justified to oppose the Wyld on an individual level, for some of them it's a stretch, and taken collectively it's a huge enclave of forces that'd usually be at odds that can agree that the Wyld should go kaput and have special powers to make it happen. It's not really needed to have all of that be anti-Wyld. Like, any fae invaders are going to come in to tear down the stable reality of Creation and find that under that vile stabilizing force is an EVEN MORE STABLE world, and this time it has death and destruction!

Also, a lot of the justification of opposing the Wyld being this voracious all-devouring anti-stability force that can never really be defeated, only held back, loses a lot of weight when Creation is the only realm threatened by it. The Underworld isn't bordered by the Wyld, it's bordered by an endless blank white nothingness. It never even touches the Wyld unless there's a shadowland that's been swamped by bordermarches. Yu Shan just has quicksilver oceans that go on forever (so far as we're told). Malfeas is surrounded by Cecelyne and Kimbery, the Wyld being a non-factor. The Wyld is completely unknown to the nations of Autochthonia, and Zen-Mu probably isn't attached to the Wyld either or it would have seen a Wyld Crusade rallied to take it down with how long it's been left unattended by greater powers.

Most of these otherworlds aren't attached to or upheld by Creation either - if Creation falls, Yu Shan keeps rolling on (though hopefully adopting some humans so that prayers can keep rolling in), Malfeas is completely unaffected, Autochthon doesn't even notice, and Zen-Mu is even more lost. The only winner is the Neverborn, who either finally die for real or continue to exist as shadowlands in the Wyld, neither of which can eradicate the other.

>>96445703
That would be too straight forward. She needs at least one love triangle between a Lunar Elder the MC and a Abyssal.

>>96444705
It is the "AAA+ open world game", it is a big world but mostly "empty".
Addition of more land doesn't make the world better, it may end up making it less dense.
Malfeas city is so big that planets can pass between his layers, but we don't have means to interact with stuff in thar scale.
3e's ideas of more personal is to make the setting more insulated, not just the locations, but also concepts like the devil stars.

>>96445581
Essence's version caused the original rpgnet thread to be nuked.

>>96445635
Oh yeah it's overkill to give everyone and their mother anti Wyld charms but no one gives a shit about the raksha and company, mostly because no cared for Dreaming.

>>96445623
I think the ability framework is good and they have nice charms in Essence. I also think focusing on revenge against the world is better than the focus on being the bitch of the Yozi 2e had.
>>96446287
>Essence's version caused the original rpgnet thread to be nuked.
Anything gets nuked on rpg.net, the mods there are trigger-happy prudes.

>>96446287
Ahh the No Man's Sky of TTRPG locations.

Are the Solar flame charms too much of an overlap with the Fire Aspects?

>>96446974
Yes, and the overlap is even worse with Golden Janissary Style. Golden flames just shouldn't be a thing Solars do, really. Anima flare is already golden glow enough, you don't need to put it on charms too when you have superhuman skill as a more easily useable and telling visual bit.

>>96444705
I can't agree with that. Even right off the gate, Exalted PCs can change the fate of nations, and they definitely can change the world, too - not trivially or swiftly, but they can do it. Exalts start off nation-shaking and end up world-shaking, and the world being big as fuck and taking a whole lot of effort to shake just means that there'll be something to do and something worth striving for even in a game that runs centuries in-game and sees the PCs become established, experienced, high-Essence powerhouses.

>It makes me wonder if any game actually feel like your effecting things at a scale where things feel important and impactful.
What counts as important and impactful to you? I've seen young Exalts with little support to begin with do things that impact the lives of hundreds of thousands or millions of people. Is that not on the level of being important or impactful? If not, then impacting things on a larger scale is obviously possible, but it takes more time and effort, as it, IMO, should.

It's not a matter of scale, it's the relentless mudcoreification Exalted has suffered in 3e, though truth be told the over-explaining they did in the latter half of 2e also helped kill the mysticism and wonder of the setting.

>>96447501
While I don't disagree that 3E could use more thaumaturgy and wacky mortal martial arts shenanigans and so on, there's still so much magic and so many weird, powerful things in the setting that talking about "relentless mudcoreification" is ridiculous exaggeration. And not just as something rare and separate from mundane mortal life, either.

>>96446974
You can do it.

>>96447293
This didn't stop Abyssals from throwing "fire" and ice around, or Cecelyne from having sand charms.

And why have those sidebars from Exigents.
One saying that it is OK to outright copy charms, and the other saying to not fear overlapping themes

>>96447318
These are good points and I'm still trying to think up a proper response.

>>96447293
>>96447656
The Abyssals have a better excuse because of the underworld elements, but those are far too underdeveloped as far as I know at least.

>>96447293
Golden Janissary is anti-CoD though. Flames, Gold, Sunlight are all part of their theme. You can't deny a concept its parts just because it exists Elsewhere.

Golden fire fits solars just fine imo, seeing as how the sun is also made of fire. Things like solar flares, light that literally burns, or something like a red dwarf star. You just don't want red/blue flames or really fancy shit like dragon-blooded can do. You might run into overlap but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.

A fire tornado, bending flames, setting yourself on fire, throwing fireballs, that's all still dragonblooded stuff. No real reason for solars to have that even if they can shoot a laser beam or glow so bright things catch on fire. Or say, collapsing their anima on themselves and turning into a walking red dwarf star.

>>96450690
>A fire tornado, bending flames, setting yourself on fire, throwing fireballs, that's all still dragonblooded stuff
Not really, they are too inhuman supernatural; a Dragon-Blooded should just attack with the ferocity of a fire tornado (reroll 6s twice during a withering attack)

uuuuuhhhhhh need big tiddy abyssal gf

>>96441763 (OP)
in my game, a cult was using calibration to reverse erupt a chain of volcanos to use the entire gem population as a sacrifice to the yozi and summon mucho demons.

the PCs had to fight the cultists and some 2nd circle demons in the volcano while random effect happened every 5 ticks. earthquakes, color changes, strong winds, etc.

>>96441763 (OP)
Say, if I was looking to create my own original holidays in Creation, what should I make sure to keep in mind?

>>96452719
Checking your white privilege and taking a class in sensitivity training.

>>96441763 (OP)
this week's is so small i might as well do it now
Weekly Update
>Art Direction
Ex3 Alchemicals – Revisions and finals are in. Sending off for dev approval
>Proofing Queue
Miracles of the Divine Flame
no real change from the monthly >>96445387 yesterday, probably won't be for a week or so, though alchemicals might get to layout soon depending on those approvals

>>96452719
holidays are usually made to commemorate, celebrate and/or indoctrinate. the event is shaped by both the circumstances and people of the area and time, creation having the added fun of all the magic in it
what happens on the holiday?
who started it and why?
what do people care about it for vs. what are they meant to care for?
what can they do/have to do they wouldn't/couldn't normally?
what do the greater powers and forces in the area want from it?
does it change circumstances in your plot in a significant way?

>>96445581
Will we still be able to get our own souls? That's something I liked, though I followed the idea of keeping the Essence on the same level as demon summoning for 2nd and 3rd circle equivalents.

>>96453305
Sort of - going by Essence, you'll be able to make some demons of your own, but it's based on summoning, creating, and upraising coadjutors despite confused phrasing that tries to have it both ways by calling it a demonic emanation of your soul. Picrel is the text.

>>96453783

Essence is also extremely jank (Getimian charms, looking at you) and has a very different charm design philosophy, so they might well be completely different. We do know that the 3e infernals have a 1/story super mode and will definitely have Soul Hierarchy stuff, it just probably won't be 2e's "you have 15 third circle demons" level of elder essence nonsense.

>>96454557
>Getimians.
They don't really have a "north", and their deal "time travel" is against the setting ethos.

>"we don't want time travel, so the players don't erase their past mistakes".
>"Getimians is all about retconing the past".

>>96441763 (OP)
Say a Solar or another “Anathema” has captured a DB, and needs their assistance to achieve an objective. What are some artifacts and/or Charms, but especially the former (or maybe some spells) that they can use to keep the DB compliant? Picture related clearly won’t cut it, lol.

>>96455217
Thrice binding of heart.

>>96455217
Celestial Bliss Trick, next question.

>>96455217
>none of the above
Eclipse Oath anima power is the obvious answer, but I understand that's sketchy with how weak it is.

>artifacts
A five dot Slave Collar is the penultimate way to force submission, but difficult to procure. A Collar of Dutiful Submission is not as good, especially if you need them to do something very specific that they very much don't want to do and double so if it's on a time crunch, but they're much more easily obtained because they exist in a known location - they're used by Heaven's law enforcement to punish gods. Manacles of Night are also relatively obtainable, and while they don't actually force obedience themselves they do suck out all of a person's motes which typically leaves them easy prey.

>charms
Standard social influence, Celestial Bliss Trick (3e), Hypnotic Tongue Technique, Memory-Reweaving Technique, and Husband-Seducing Demon Dance are the classical tools for Solars to force a relatively helpless enemy to assist.

>spells
Now this is where you can really start cooking. From the first circle we have Peacock Shadow Eyes, Droning Suggestion, Hypnotic Piping, and in certain cases Theft of Memory and Sorcerer's Irresistible Puppetry would work. At Celestial we have Threefold Binding of the Heart as the premiere for 'you are now a minion', and at Solar Circle Sorcery the spell Evocation from the Mirror is often even better.

The best in terms of availability is probably using Peacock Shadow Eyes to implant fake memories if you being their best buds forever, since you can probably chase down a mortal sorcerer with the spell relatively easily (compared to finding an artifact that might not have been seen for millennia, at least).

>>96455405
>>96455237
What if they don’t have those Charms? And does the former even have a 3e version?

>>96455217
look up how glowies do it

>>96455446
>3e version
oh I didn't realise you were in 3e, the comic pic had me thinking it was 2e. My bad.

Yeah, CBT is unironically your single best way to go about making it happen. Failing that, the Solar charms I mentioned before are still good for it. Without any really truly relevant charms, brainwashing comes down to running through the list of social influence actions with some occasional escalation until the DB runs out of Willpower, then building up an Intimacy structure in them that you like and does what you want. If you want their assistance faster, though, just keep using Read Intentions to find Intimacies that're of the right scale and type that you can target with Persuade actions convincing them to help you until they relent. If you have them captured there's very little stopping you from changing scenes until they run out of Willpower, if they decide to hard resist you that way.

>orgasm-causing sex charm
>it shortens to CBT

>>96455712
Even more so when it was a Sidereal astrological power under the Lovers.
>it is symbolic of sexual depravity and sexual or social rape of the helpless or entrapped

>>96454557
>will definitely have Soul Hierarchy stuff
If that's confirmed then that's great.

>it just probably won't be 2e's "you have 15 third circle demons" level of elder essence nonsense.
I'm fine with that. Honestly I think they should just take inspiration from sorcery and its demon summoning when it comes to soul hierarchy. Like you can only bring out one at a time or something like that, with a ritual or something, with the rest staying in your soul or something.

>>96455740
I need an adult.

>>96455740
>empty life of sex and submission.
>kept courtesean.
Weren't those expected to have more going with them than mere sex?

>>96455822
Yes, and also no. It depends, and some amount of that extra they do can be folded under the 'submission' part of the Lover's archetype too. There were courtesans catering to the upper class who were expected to be intellectuals and lower class courtesans who weren't respected in that way. Courtesan is also a word that traces back to courtier, and the words split off in ambiguous enough fashion that many who were considered the latter at the time might have been attributed to the former later on.

Creation is also a world of mythic fantasy. Courtesans of the kind that spend their day lounging about on the lap of the truly rich Leia-and-Jabba style are something that exist in Creation even if they aren't very realistic to IRL's history, kind of like how rich, fat, lazy merchants are around despite also being the kinds of people who got run out of business IRL.

>>96455822
It depends on the culture.

>>96455436
>Solar Circle Sorcery the spell Evocation from the Mirror is often even better.
I love that one, specially when you use it to fuck with their friends and family.

>>96455822
>Weren't those expected to have more going with them than mere sex?
They were supposed to be entertaining in various ways even before you got to fuck them.

>>96445387
>Essence Storyteller's Guide
Will that be kickstarted like the player's guide?
I hope we see a ton of options for NPC there and other game aids but my gut tells me it's going to be more vague and numinous vibe based advice on how to be cringe and gay.

>>96446974
Makes sense and they already have these powers for example the Archer cham that let's you shoot a nuke and other charms that allude to slar flames.

In my opinion a way to keep them apart is that solar fire is thematically different from DB fire.
DB fire is earthly mundane flames while solar fire is the empyrean flame that surrounds the celestial dome it is holy and pure anathema to darkness and more akin to pure plasma or lighthning leaving behind mundane fire as a secondary effect of its use rather than it's main effect.

>>96445387
>Essence Extended
What is this?

>>96456911
NTA but that is the KS strech goal for the player's guide.
basically more charms for all the exalted and a few more exigents.

>>96453783
God I love power from darkness.
I'm gona build a holy army of solar spirits with this.

>>96456945
>NTA but that is the KS strech goal for the player's guide
Oh, the players guide companion. It is getting hard to keep track of Essence.

>basically more charms for all the exalted and a few more exigents.
Essence will get too bloated at this point, it has 4 books of player options at this point.

>>96456985
>Essence will get too bloated at this point, it has 4 books of player options at this point.
Which books am I missing? Core, Pillars of Creation, Player's Guide.

>>96457162
>Which books am I missing? Core, Pillars of Creation, Player's Guide.
Essence extended.

Literally the realm

>>96457708
False. The Realm don't have cool iconic uniforms.

>>96458014
WW/OP's sense of aesthetics went to shit during the 10s, to the point exalted lost the few iconography it had.

>>96458140
*what little iconography it had. But yes, I feel ya. Not even Mel-Uran can carry the art direction anymore.

>>96458014
They had extremely cool designs for the legions in the making of exalted.

>>96458272
Prove it.

>>96458388
Honestly the original sketch was the better design.

>>96458388
Forgot to attach the screenshot

>>96458484
That looks really cool. I remember there being some badass pictures of warstriders and stuff around as well. Sadly 2e had some of the worst art you've ever seen. 3e is significantly better but that's not really saying a whole lot. I hate to be honest, I pictured realm solders looking more... anime-ish and pretty.

>>96458484
>Rigid roman formations.
Strange how, of the ancient world, only the Romans are associated with battle formations.

>Anime armor.
It looks more like fallout.

>>96459018
Mentioning Roman battle formations as an inspiration does not imply associating only Romans and no one else with battle formations.

>>96456592
Either by successfully arguing Confucious w/ you w/o making you angry, or talking about a shared interest like the most recent fights.

>>96459001
>3e is significantly better but that's not really saying a whole lot.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

>>96459151
According to Grabowski "the use of rigid formations would reminder the the players of the Roman legions", I.e rigid formations = reminds of Romans.

>>96459184
I am pretty sure that was bait.

>>96459249
It's just true.

>>96459514
Not sure why but there's something wrong with 3e piece, beyond the pose art; I think it is the perspective, namely the ghost woman legs, her left foot looks like it is closer to us than it actually is.

Do Solars have any charms to force spirits to materialize?

>>96459869
Phantom Siezing Strike off the top of my head.

>>96459869
>>96459887
Spirit-Caging Mandala too.

>>96459762
They have a sweatshop art house working for them. I might be wrong about the location but I think it's in Indonesia and the core book art was so bad they had to redesign it.

>>96459938
I'm more inclined to believe they are nepotistic and only hire their retarded gay friends who don't know how to draw.
At least of they paid some slaves to do it I would expect them to at least churn out the books quickly instead of taking a year for each one.

>>96459938
>the core book art was so bad they had to redesign it
Sorcerer Saitama.

>>96459001
>worst art you’ve ever seen
Paulie bring up the art of the haslanti league from across the eight directions

>>96459184
Speaking of 3e being better I want to know where is Exalted's fanbase in general? I played 1e and 2e with and without errata. I played a bit of 3e and I found it to be okay. Did it get any better with all the new releases they've done? I haven't read to see if they've nerfed sidereal martial arts or not. As far as the lunar book showed me it look like they were going to repeat the mistake of later releases meaning the most powerful Exalt type at that time.

>>96460024
Nah they went to some 3rd world sweatshop for some reason. Maybe so rich can take more kickbacks.

>>96460063
I have strong suspicion that it was AI, and comments from these threads made them more rigorous with the art, to the point they caught an AI artist.

Strange how despite all attempts of fixing Lunars, the devs never gave them the nature manipulation charms that 1e!Sidereals said they have.

With the closest being the territory charms.

>>96457708
Very stupid post for a number of reasons.
>The Realm practices slavery in all editions
>The Realm is racist against foreigners in all editions
>The Realm isn't fascist in any edition, as its a pre-modern imperial state

>>96460636
Because that kind of shit clashes with what they are "supossed to be" even when you try to include animals that alter their enviroment.

>>96460636
They can 'fix' Lunars by nixing the Solar-Lunar Bond and making them more involved in the Solar Comeuppance, to the point they tried to take the Solar's place as Lords of Creation before pre-emptively being told to walk backwards into the Wyld without Moonsilver tattoos. To the point that its Lunars that are considered the main Anathema and Solars being viewed as a strain of those Wyld barbarians that lurk at the edge between chaos and order.

>>96460810
Not really, it is the natural evolution of the god-animal archetype, for example; the Night Elves from warcraft, and the Forsaken from WtF.

It is a more natural evolution than those weird attempts of cultural heroes from the essence player guide.

>>96461095

Both the Exalted fans and the developers do not know what they want it to be. Not to mention they may know what Exalted is. I think the tabletop game would honestly benefit immensely from a video game that is well made that'll help give a coherent vision. I'm pretty sure the developers and the fan probably can't agree on what an Exalted game would look like either.

Now that I think about it, it is weird how the development team's take away from 1e is.

>"the book was rushed!!!"
>"the charmset themes don't match the made-bad-on-purpose published charms".
>"Let's remove the themes".
Than they proceeded to try to fill the holes of the charmset with random stuff

>>96460903
Sidereals have too much foresight to let Lunars near a thing that they can entrench themselves in better than Dragon-Blooded, so they should be targets of the initial attack as well.

>>96461002
They were never supposed to be Night Elves, and both Werewolfs games have themes that don't entirely carry over... though now you can always have them learn appropriate spirit Charms that fill in for these grab bag functions, since Eclipses stopped bogarting Charm share and it was pared back significantly. Behold, Gifts as they were in Apocalypse!

>>96460757
The original Dragon-Blooded hardback listed SM Stirling's Domination series as an inspiration, so it might not be as off-target to call the Realms fascists as you think.

>>96461363
>The original Dragon-Blooded hardback listed SM Stirling's Domination series as an inspiration, so it might not be as off-target to call the Realms fascists as you think.
As far as I know, they lack a lot of the more cultish bullshit you see in fascism. They are just another absolute monarchy.

>>96461595
>The Realm
>NOT having cultish bullshit
…y-you realise the Immaculate Faith exists, right?

>>96460636
What are you picturing? like terraforming a place via spreading seeds and building dams?

>>96461640
That's a mainstream religion.

>>96461640
>…y-you realise the Immaculate Faith exists, right?
I keep forgetting about knock off shintoism, not sure if that's a me problem or if the whole thing just rings hollow to people.

>>96461640
It is closer to how Christianity was during the absolute monarchies of Europe.

>>96461664
Religion is just a big cult. Specially in this scenario.

>>96461664
…one used to justify religious violence against Solars and Lunars, yes (but not Exigents lmao)? You remember this part, right? The dreaded Anathema? Right?

>>96461686
The main difference between religious cult and cult!cult is how open to new members it is.

>>96461640
>Immaculate faith

That's Lookshy's version. The Realm's version is the Immaculate Order.

>>96461664
The only one, because it wields the Realm's power against every other form of veneration of spirits. Also, it holds that the Scarlet Empress is a luminary that upholds civilization with the blessing of the Dragons. Part of the deal that she made with the Sidereals was that if she helped them carry out the Bronze agenda, they would directly support her reign with religion. Kind of a no-brainer for the both of them.

The Scarlet Empress is also said to enjoy a great deal of secular veneration... in the text of the Cult background. So she absolutely has or had an actual Cult as an objective fact of her Background.

>>96461666
Probably just you, as I've seen plenty of people talk about liking the Immaculate Faith, I've seen plenty of people talk about disliking the Immaculate Faith, I've seen people argue about whether or not the Faith's got a point in some respects and whether it's overall more of a positive or a negative force in Creation, and most importantly, it's got cool kung fu monks. Immaculate Faith is definitely something people remember, think about and have opinions on.

>>96461595
>As far as I know, they lack a lot of the more cultish bullshit you see in fascism
Its more that the Realm (like the ancient empires of old) doesn't have the tendency towards internal terrorism and the self-victimization in fascist states.

>>96462102
>Its more that the Realm (like the ancient empires of old) doesn't have the tendency towards internal terrorism and the self-victimization in fascist states.

Anon they literally import all the dangerous animals that Wood Aspects can train to inhabit the wilderness and make it too dangerous for peasants to even consider fleeing into the hills. Also, on Calibration, some of the Dragon-Blooded dress up as Anathema and go on to rape and murder in scapegoat guises engineered to continue making the peasantry afraid of the boogiemen that they created.

>>96462285
I vaguely remember reading about that Calibration custom, but what book is it from? It's so blatantly un-Immaculate behavior that I doubt it's officially sanctioned or widely accepted, but I'd like to check whatever book that's in to see for sure.

>>96462285
Sounds pretty clownish if true. I don't think that's how it is in 3e in any case, and that's the only edition (+Essence) that has any players these days, so I'll only be using that as a baseline.

>>96460903
>Lunars can be fixed if they take the place of Solars.
Why do lunar fans just want to play Solars with shape shifting?

>>96460757
>Let's ignore the huge trans elephant in the room tho.
It's obviously an exaggeration to criticize safe edginess.
The realm is an evil colonialist empire that's supposed to be very into eugenics yet they are extremely racially diverse despite being xenophobic and they accept all sexualities and identities despite that clashing with their whole deal of having political marriages to produce DB children.
I do agree that at the very least 3e didn't get rid of slavery.

>>96461595
Anon everything that's not commie is fascism for Americans.

>>96462699
>The realm is an evil colonialist empire that's supposed to be very into eugenics yet they are extremely racially diverse despite being xenophobic
Their brand of eugenics doesn't really have anything to do with race, and they're not so much xenophobic as jingoistic and firmly convinced of their own superiority. That sense of superiority is more cultural than racial - it's not that people of the Blessed Isle are the right color and barbarians are the wrong color, it's that people of the Blessed Isle talk, behave, believe and dress like civilized people ought to while barbarians don't. I don't think it's accurate to describe the Realm as a whole as extremely racially diverse as there's a clear main ethnicity there, but regardless of that, racial diversity doesn't really clash with the any part of the Realm's ideology or goals.

>they accept all sexualities and identities despite that clashing with their whole deal of having political marriages to produce DB children.
I'll at least partially agree with that, though -partially because the Realm's always been fine with gay people and that's completely consistent with the rest of their culture. It's just that marriage used to and should serve a practical purpose, and personal romantic and sexual life used to be something Dynasts had on the side, on their own time after they'd taken care of their duties to the Realm and House.

>>96462751
>Realm's always been fine with gay people and that's completely consistent with the rest of their culture
Yeah because of a quirk of the exaltation they were hyper sexual and to prevent the dilution of the blood gay sex became normalized.
But that was completely stripped from 3e so there is no excuse for it now.

>>96462782
>But that was completely stripped from 3e so there is no excuse for it now.
Buddy I can tell you that one never needs an "excuse" to have gay sex.

>>96462788
Sure but you do need one to have it be so widespread to a whole race of exalted.
Specially when they have such a strong incentive to force everyone of them to be straight.
This was recognized by the old writers.

>>96462782
No. That hypersexuality wasn't a thing when first 1E material on the Realm was published. IIRC DBs having a heightened libido, or at least their first generation having been chosen for a strong libido, was first mentioned in 2E. In 1E DBs just were fine with homosexualitu because there was no cultural or religious reason to feel otherwise.

>>96462817
It's not particularly widespread in the Dynasty, I don't think, it just isn't frowned upon. And again, the original writers didn't write in any particular reason beyond cultural norms for the Realm being fine with gays.

>>96462892
The culture wasn't fine with it. Which is why you had to hide it. The first edition dragon blooded stresses is that almost everyone is miserable their lives. Dragon-Blooded have expectations to meet from childhood until retirement and even retirement is filled with fulfilling duties. The norm for dragon blooded marriage is either neutrality or abject hatred to the point that happy couples are noted because they are the exception. One thing 3e just doesn't understand is that the realm oppresses the dragon blooded in a similar vein as the the rest of it's populous. The culture has expectations that kill a large portion of dragon blooded before the age of 100. The reason the former books only had 10k dragons is because a significant number never survive allowing dragon blooded to never reach more than replacement numbers. It's not outright stated but it's the only thing that makes sense. if you join an order you can't have kids. If you go into the military there's a good chance you won't make it to 100. You might not even have time to pop out kids. By softening the edges of the Realm you have a bigger issue of how there aren't way more than 15k DBs in the modern age after 900 years.

>>96463118
Cool maths. Mind showing the class your working out?

>>96463128
nta but the first assertion was that the Realm was fine with it to begin with, so the burden of proof would start with that side of the argument.

>>96463132
That's retarded. The assertation is that the Realm shouldn't be okay with homosexuality. It's like saying the person saying water is wet has to prove to the person who said it was dry that water is indeed wet. That's stupid.

>>96462409
Very early in the line. And a lot of Dragon-Blooded families, if the original deeb book is to be believed, were fairly heretical and out there; even without them, scions going in for a deniable Purge is still something that their culture could contain even if the IO disapproves of it. They're most shades of decadent warrior aristocrat; the peasentry existsin social fact to indulge them, even if the monks insist that it's to enlighten and become a Dragon-Blooded via reincarnation.

>>96462668
You're leaving a lot of potential on the cutting room floor, but it costs money to have a full collection of every edition, so I can't fault you for possibly not wanting to expend a large sum on something you might never use.

>>96462782
>quirk of Exaltation was that they were hypersexual

Let's leave that in the deepest vault of 2e. And even if you're playing 2e, it should stay buried.

>>96463151
The realm as a culture isn't okay with it in 1e. It expects you to go into a loveless marriage and uses eugenics to get as many dragon-blooded children as it can from you. You are allowed a private lover but you have to keep them a secret gay or straight. If you rape people you can't have children out it. Once you do have children you are expected to remove yourself from their lives. So they can been raised by nannies just in case they fail to exalt because they've become a failure to the family. Their luxuries came at a very steep price for anyone who isn't a ruthless sociopath. The Realm is set up like this for the explicit reason of distracting the dragon-blooded by putting them into a perpetual meat grinder in order to prop up a single woman who's death will spell the end of it. You can't just start changing things without expecting everything to unravel.

>>96463118
You didn't have to hide it anymore than your extramarital affairs in general, in other words you didn't really have to hide but you had to pretend to hide it so that other Dynasts could pretend to not know about it and everyone could pretend to respect the concept of marital fidelity. There was no particular stigma associated with homosexuality, there was just an expectation of a modicum of discretion in both heterosexual and homosexual affairs. 2E was more explicit about this, clearly stating that homosexuality was fine, while in 1E it was more just that there was no implication anywhere of it not being fine. As for spouses often despisibg each other, Exalted: the Dragon-Blooded clearly states that families usually avoid pushing marriages between two Dragon-Blooded who genuinely dislike each other and that courtships can last for decades in order for the would-be couple to get to know and hopefully like each other. Love isn't the point of marriage, but an amicable working relationship between husband and wife is definitely and explicitly something the Dynasty considers desirable.

>>96463183
The Realm has never, in any edition, ben depicted as trying to get as many Dragon-Blooded children as possible. 3E is actually kind of closest to it, because progenitive Essence means that you can't push out children more frequently than Dynasts typically do and expect them to have a decent chance of Exaltation. In the previous editions Dynastic birth rate was similarly low because that just was how Dynasts preferred to do it. Sure, there was the thing about too frequent childbirth causing health issues, but even considering that the average Dragon-Blooded couple could've had children more frequently than it did but just chose not to.

>>96463151
>That's retarded. The assertation is that the Realm shouldn't be okay with homosexuality. It's like saying the person saying water is wet has to prove to the person who said it was dry that water is indeed wet. That's stupid.
In your analogy the person saying water is wet should have to prove their assertion, but they can do it by falling on prior established common ground and common knowledge, or by providing proof (licking a finger, for example), not because they should assume it's obvious. In this situation it was not agreed prior that the Realm was okay with homosexuality, it was actually outright disagreed upon.

>The assertation is that the Realm shouldn't be okay with homosexuality.
The opinion that 'The Realm SHOULDN'T be okay with homosexuality' wasn't ever in the debate, and if anything it seems all parties agree on it. This wasn't an opinion argument and you didn't ask for them to prove their opinion, you asked for them to prove the fact they asserted. I hate to call things gaslighting but this is actually that. We can literally scroll up and see that you're stating false information as fact here.

>>96463368
There is nothing in 1E stating or implying any kind of bias against homosexuality. There's a lengthy writeup in Aspect Book: Air about Ledaal Kes, who's homosexual, that writeup has a section on Kes' romantic life, and there's nothing about anyone having ever given shit to him about being gay. He does have a reputation for debauchery, but that's due to him and his wife doing things like using sorcery to change shapes in order to have something of a shared sex life, not due to his homosexuality. What is your basis for asserting that the never-mentioned anti-homosexuality attitude was totally a thing in 1E's take on the Realm?

>>96463424
I already know you're going to over-exaggerate any stance made even vaguely against you on any topic. You have already done it, even, by claiming that asserted something myself, because all I'd done was point out that you were being an asshole demanding evidence when people argued against you when you hadn't first provided evidence to back your own claims. I'm actually going to pass you back to >>96463183 though, because they are actually making the claim you're trying to refute.

>There's a lengthy writeup in Aspect Book: Air about Ledaal Kes, who's homosexual, that writeup has a section on Kes' romantic life, and there's nothing about anyone having ever given shit to him about being gay. He does have a reputation for debauchery, but that's due to him and his wife doing things like using sorcery to change shapes in order to have something of a shared sex life, not due to his homosexuality.
See this? This is what I'm talking about. You have first referenced evidence to back your claim before asking what the basis of the opposing argument could be. Good work.

To be clear, I'm pretty sure there's stuff in 1e Dragonbloods that could be used to argue an anti-homosexual sentiment exists in the Realm between the whole thing where you don't marry for love and statements the focus on reproductive capacity and reproduction itself as an important facet of social status and tradition and so on. On the other hand I think you could argue that homosexuality as an accepted form of love makes it pro-homosexual even if gay marriage isn't a thing, and that the actual reason it seems homophobic is because of Realm society's distaste / disregard for love, seeing it as a bad thing and low priority. My personal opinion is actually that there are a mix of factors at play that don't easily reduce without losing context and that this is probably a good thing, because it helps open up the space for storylines that don't all have antagonists with the exact same opinion.

>>96463565
I'm pretty sue you're confusing me with another anon, but this whole "burden of proof is always on other people" thing is pretty tiresome. It's especially tiresome when the argument, which was very explicitly made way before, was that there's nothing in 1E hinting at anti-gay sentiment. Asking for a source for that is absolutely nonsensical.

>because of Realm society's distaste / disregard for love, seeing it as a bad thing and low priority
Just as a side note, while the Realm does consider love a low priority, it does not consider it a bad thing. As was mentioned before, Dynastic Houses do try to give a potential couple time and opportunities to get to like each other, and if they actually fall in love, that's all the better. It's just not the point of the institution.

>>96462688
as seem in ExVsWoD, narratively wise Lunars are Solars with shapeshifting.

>>96462688
>>96463743
>>96460903

It's a little weird to hear people still argue on how to fix lunars. Is it just that people want lunars to be equal to werewolves in world of darkness in importance?

>>96463848
>people want lunars to be equal to werewolves in world of darkness in importance?
It's almost as if that is one of the main problems with them.

>>96463848
I think its just cargo cult at this point; people bitch about them ITT because its expected even if fundamentally the thread's resident shitposters have niche opinions that aren't backed up by anything. Lunars are more popular and frequently played than the other non-Solar splats, indicating that they work for quite a few people. Its really only here that complains so much about them, leaking into the broader RPG space here and there, and the complaints are often rooted in a very baroque view of the setting.

>>96463848
Lunars are controversial for decades at this point, the first thing that I learned about them, is that there was always a flame wars raging about them.

But my post was more about the accidental meta analysis from ExVsWoD.

In it, problems such as the similarities of the Solar and Lunar narratives, get more apparent.

>>96463864
>>96463903

Maybe you're both right? I know Exalt over the editions has fallen into the problem that everyone wants their Exalt to be the best and really dislike Solars for that position.

Now that the power curve has been compressed the only thing lunars might not have is an established power structure that all splats are forced to interact with.

>>96463929
>Now that the power curve has been compressed the only thing lunars might not have is an established power structure that all splats are forced to interact with.
That'd be amusing, considering how much this thread bitches and whines at the prominence of the Realm (which is an inescapable part of the setting). I think the complaints about Lunars ITT usually stem from a blinkered view of why other people choose certain splats over other/ what other people find cool, along with a little resentment towards Exalted for being hard to run and hard to find games to play in.

>>96463848
>It's a little weird to hear people still argue on how to fix lunars.
It's a complex issue with many possible solutions that are each exclusive with each other while each being fairly involved on their own. This means that people can look at Lunars and see one or even several potential ways to improve them, and can even look at the ways other people posit as improvements to the Lunar condition and sometimes agree. There are a lot of traditional talking points to go over but there are also a lot of new takes and interesting implications to cover that still sometimes get brought up. Sometimes it even spirals out into broader setting changes that can get quite involved in an alternate history kind of way.

Unironically, arguing over Lunars is one of the most consistent ways /exg/ produces novel content.

>>96464026
I think it is because of how many problems 1e Lunars had, depending on which you focus, you end up taking Lunars to a completely different direction.

For example: changing moons were not meant to be a socially focused caste, they were meant to be night analogs; you can change changing moons to be a social caste or find ways to make them rogues and still give Lunars social charms, such as giving no moons Charisma or changing Lunars to be ability based.

>>96464026
>Sometimes it even spirals out into broader setting changes that can get quite involved in an alternate history kind of way.
Yeah, having more prominent Celestials around does fuck with a lot of the Assumptions of the original setting. For examples Half-Casts being around reduce the Dragon Blooded main advantage by a significant margin.

>>96463743
>>96463923
Using EXvsWOD to compare the narrative differences between them is interesting and there is actually a huge one you seem to have missed.
Lunars in EXvsWOD are simple power fantasies without a direction they give power to the oppressed and that's it they do whatever they want.
While Solars are hand grenades meant to destroy and change the status quo they choose people aware of the supernatural and with both an axe to grind against it and a willingness to change the world.

This reflects their position in classic exalted Lunars are mostly aimless they do whatever they personally want with maybe the silver pact giving them some collective direction.

While Solars are a returning unstoppable ancient power renewed and ready to reshape creation with their powerful passions and ambitious for better or for worse.

Seeing them from this perspective Solars and Lunars are Ying and Yang.

>>96464240
So what you're saying is. Solars impregnate, and Lunars pregnantete?

>>96464240
Now that you mean it, this matches how players describe their characters.

>>96465421
Solars do, Lunars are.
Solars are masculine minded, defined by their actions.
Lunars are woman brained, defined how the "slay"/serve cunt.

>>96465644
It is true that men are unable to serve cunt at all. But surely that doesn't mean their dicks live in their hands?

What's the most useful Craft if you're not interested in making artifacts?

>>96465731
It is a slang found in female circles like a lot of female culture, it started with drag queens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serving_cunt

>>96466278
Can't believe gay people have stopped normies from saying cunt. They are more powerful than we could have imagined.

>>96466405
"Girls being cunty" and "girl failures" are replacing "girl bosses", making 3e's female empoweredment come as really outdated.

>>96466253
Cooking.
Bitches love a guy who knows how to cook.

>>96466471
It's funny because exalted used to have several good girl failure characters like Lilith.

>>96466512
Depends on how they write her. Either as a battered wife rightfully angry that no-one tried to help, or "uwu im tsuntsun for her hubbie's re-incarnation Uwo"

>>96466551
>>96466512
Just emphasis her need for freedom™*, and you get a romantasy FMC.

*Freedom entails being sent to the kitchen by a "more idealized than a Howard's mc" giga Chad.

>>96466609
Can't be a chad if you beat women.

Gay used to mean happy but now it just describes exalted. Taking control of the slurs is just human nature. I'm more surprised that people seem to be confused over the fact that a really gay game made being gay... not that big of a deal in their setting. You're already playing one of the gayest things ever, embrace that shit don't fight against it.

It is funny though how Solars are the main splat but also the most boring one. Like if DnD made a book but the only class they released in it was Fighter. I mean, I'm exaggerating, Solars can do plenty of mystical shit. It's just all the other splats do it more mysticanally and be even cooler when doing so. Gold is just... really tacky. They're like, the piss exalted.

>>96463294
They weren't trying to actually do what one would do if they cared more about dragon-blooded than the empress but they were expected to have a number of children and you could have all your house privilege's stripped if you didn't have children in I think it was like 30-50 years. You were expected to have children. Not above replacement levels because the Empress could in no way deal with an explosive growth of dragon blooded but enough to make sure they didn't die out.

>>96463231
In 1e there was a stigma in the sense that it was frowned upon to be openly gay beyond the concept of marital fidelity. It was clearly depicted as an issue with the culture itself because the culture is using eugenics to create stronger dragon blooded. Dragon-Blooded as a whole are still raised not to care but still see their parents and relatives break taboos constantly leading to much different perception. But every other being in the realm is supposed to ignore discursions. SLS's vapid argument about "oh you can get gay married in real life." Is utterly stupid for a game that takes it's place with the realm as it is. If the players want to get gay married they should fucking change the society from within. It needs about a million changes on purpose.

Dragon-blooded couples might care or be more neutral with each other at first. However, familiarity breeds contempt and divorce isn't something you can do in the realm. There are a lot of couples who a dozens of years later resent each other. Some might actually become better friends or even true lovers over time but that's never been depicted as the norm.

>>96466999
They only need to do it during the heat of lust/passion/moment/etc...

>>96467072
>You're already playing one of the gayest things ever, embrace that shit don't fight against it.
I am pretty sure that modern D&D alone already out gayed Exalted, making those sidebars funny in hindsight.

>Solars' fighter syndrome.
Solars and fighters are the most popular splats of their respective games, and the thematic limitations are self imposed by the devs.

And even then, Solars aren't the most boring splat, just the the "oddly colored Solars" like the Dragon-Blooded.

>>96467268
Nah, exalted is a 1000x gayer then DnD. At least in the "people will think u gay if you play this" way. Now is DnD pretty gay? Oh yes, BG3 proved that. It's just not nearly as gay. Now which one has been gay for longer? I don't know. I want to say Exalted.

Also I'm sorry but Solars are totally the most boring splats. Even dragonblooded have cooler thematics. I mean obviously this is my preference but damn do they feel boring.

>>96467072
>It is funny though how Solars are the main splat but also the most boring one
Nobody actually thinks this except the most retarded contrarians.

>>96467346
So... you think solars are the most boring splat?

>>96467322
Dragon-blooded aren't much better. Most of their shit's ruined from the decision to make them like shit-tier solars rather than giving them something would actually deal with team work.

>>96467358
They are objectively. I don't know who had it in their mind that rolling a bucket of dice was fun but it's literally not after the first time. It's tedious and takes forever. I had a group that collapsed because of 3e solars.

>>96467072
>It is funny though how Solars are the main splat but also the most boring one. Like if DnD made a book but the only class they released in it was Fighter. I mean, I'm exaggerating, Solars can do plenty of mystical shit. It's just all the other splats do it more mysticanally and be even cooler when doing so. Gold is just... really tacky. They're like, the piss exalted.
Are you trolling, retarded or gay?

>>96467322
>Nah, exalted is a 1000x less famous then DnD. At least in the "people will think what-is-it if you play this"
FTFY

>Oh yes, BG3 proved that. It's just not nearly as gay. Now which one has been gay for longer? I don't know. I want to say Exalted.
Baldur's gate out gay/queer WW in both in-game content and appeal.

The bear alone out gay nearly anything WW did in its history, only losing to Davis "the writer sincerely needs therapy" Mal.

>Also I'm sorry but Solars are totally the most boring splats. Even dragonblooded have cooler thematics. I mean obviously this is my preference but damn do they feel boring.
Dragon-Blooded are literally weaker elemental Solars.
With the teamwork aspect decried as "care bear-like".

>>96467373
>I don't know who had it in their mind that rolling a bucket of dice was fun but it's literally not after the first time.
Holden

>>96467373
The dice obsession is funny because I only ever see people use virtual dice. For what it's worth people love their huge dice pools. Dragon-blooded have a better theme (the elements) but eh. Mechanically solars also suffer from being the first book - of course the other splats are gonna have cooler shit. Hell fire deebs have more going for them then all the solars splats put together. Lots of cool things you can do with fire. I mean it's not surprising - "Sun, excellency and gold" doesn't really leave a lot to work with.

oh wow i can treat a 6 as a success. oooh wow amazingly flavorful charms. Now excuse me as I shift into a t-rex and ignore your whole army because they're too small to matter.

>>96467380
Monster fucking has been a vital part of exalted since 1e. Also Halsin would be terrible in bed and I refuse to accept otherwise.

In 2e solars were so poorly done that the coolest thing about them was the fact that they could use stuff from other splats. Imagine being so terrible that the only thing you can do that people remember is stuff that belongs to other splats.

Well, that and charms that were so poorly balanced and require such high essence to use that games involving them are basically examples of freeform roleplay. It was honestly pretty impressive.

>>96467449
>oh wow i can treat a 6 as a success. oooh wow amazingly flavorful charms. Now excuse me as I shift into a t-rex and ignore your whole army because they're too small to matter.
>Immediately gets pinned down by the solar brawlchad chocking him to death while the Solars tiger warriors tear his ass open with their spears.
You don't get the point of Solars they are the ideal heroic archetype.

>>96467581
How can they imagine how a supernal swordstrike looks if they don't have a page and half of description to tell them what to think?

>>96467616
2e was really into long paragraphs for their charms, yeah. It was pretty silly.

>>96467636
Yeah, that was almost all Neph which I didn't learn until 1e mummy where he was a dev and you saw the same bullshit.

>>96467616
>>96467636
And they make fun of anime named attacks...

>>96466253
Could appreciate a few more replies. I'll be playing in a mortal game soon.

>>96467669
My name is Jalen and I... am a Super Saiyan.

>>96467698
You mean for 3e, yeah?

>>96467706
Yup.

>>96466253
Craft (Wood)
Always going to have wood at hand. And if you don't have wood, you've got bigger problems going on that Craft can't solve.

I love Solar women.

>>96467812
Craft Wood also covers cooking IIRC, something that you can do pretty easy in a game to earn crafting points.

>>96468030
I love DB women...

So what's a good starter set for melee? A package of charms I can pick up for a character who's not combat focussed but want to be able to hold his own in a fight?

>>96468364
take the ranged attack charms and stay out of trouble

>>96467581
Unironically yes, it is.

>>96468364
Take Ride and hop on a god-blooded horse. If you want to be able to not die in a fight, very annoyingly due to weird rules, this is one of the more efficient ways.

>>96468414
Oh, it was you who commissioned this from the draw thread?

>>96468030
>>96468122

Sometimes I still get confused as to why the Exalted fanbase always circle back as to which Exalted type is the best as a woman. Ironically, I have no clue if with the introduction of Exigent if the canonized "make your own exalted" is actually the best now.

>>96468680
It is mostly shitposting.

>Ironically, I have no clue if with the introduction of Exigent if the canonized "make your own exalted" is actually the best now.
Exigents are notorious for killing the "X in Exalted" discussions in other places to the point people avoid mentioning them; since they end the debate, don't compare themes and don't help people porting X.

>>96468680
>Why would people enjoy waifus? I don't get it!
But yeah in general most men are interested in women and the differences between exalted do bring different flavors of possible waifus.
As for exigents they are basically either pick one of the OCs like Janest to waifu or build your own perfect waifu with powers like "She gets to reroll ones when she does something to enforce her intimacy of love towards me" or other stuff like that.
In general the OG exalted are much more interesting and offer actual room for discussion for example do you value a shape shifting(Lunars) more than hyper competency(Solars) or absolute loyalty(DBs) in a waifu?

>>96468708
Yep exigents are basically an amorphous blob of grey goop compared to the rest of exalted that are more distinct and interesting.

>>96468795
It is less that they are amorphous, and more that they are nothing, literally, there is nothing to discuss with them.

For example: Shirou from fate.
Some would say that he is like a Solar, others would argument that he is an Infernal, and some would point to his similarities to an Alchemical.
They all would talk about exalted, the setting, characters, castes, etc... but with "Shirou is an Exigent" the conversation ends without anything really being talked.

>>96461725
In exalted it's actually the masses.

>>96468923
It only happened because they were cursed by undead supergods.

>>96468934
It merely made them displeasing to the masses.

>>96468923
>>96468947
DBs are not the masses lmao

>>96468708
>>96468785

Fair enough. Although I guess I wonder what would be the downsides of the exalted waifu as I feel dating mortals can be easier.

Lunars literally gain limit each full moon (2e). Dragonbloods might set you on fire if they want succeed too much at the time.
Abyssals might as well just be lover's clad if you're unlucky
Infernals I actually don't know enough about as they threw out half the book.

>>96468923
Maybe I am forgetting an important case, but the mortal masses feel like nonfactors in Exalted. Even the Dragon Blooded feel more like props than actors with their own stories.

>>96469012
Dragon Blooded literally rule the world.

>>96468908
>They all would talk about exalted, the setting, characters, castes, etc... but with "Shirou is an Exigent" the conversation ends without anything really being talked.
Odds are you could talk about what he would be the Exigent of and how to translate his story into Creation. The thing with translation cases is how often they feel rather boring because they are either really straightforward or so convoluted you lose most of the appeal.
I don't know enough about fate to care about if this aplies to him tho.

>>96469018
Depend on the writer, sometimes they are "the princes of the earth" because they rule the Realm, other times they are "the princes of the earth" who happens to rule the Realm.

I want a monster girl waifu...

>>96468674
Nope, but honestly I wish it was now.

>>96469018
>Dragon Blooded literally rule the world.
As Siderial puppets.

>>96469063
What kind?

>>96469018
If we’re being technical, the Incarnae never stopped ruling the world.

>But the Mandate of Creation
Was handed down formally by the Sun to his favourite Solar, it’s basically like outsourcing. Furthermore after the Usurpation, the gods’ failure to recognise the Dragonblooded as a legitimate authority (and if we’re being technical, the increasing lack of Solar monopoly on total metaphysical ownership of Creation in 3e) leads to it being more a question of de facto “I literally tell the rain and river and blueberry gods when to make X happen in the Loom of Fate” versus “I, Mnemon Fuckwit, hereby declare this particular geographical territory to be where I collect taxes from”

>>96469136
That is literally something 2e added.

>>96469136
The Incarnae don't do shit.

>>96469172
1e FA Solars decided the seasons, because of this they were so weird in 1e/2e, Sidereals didn't have the same political pull with the Bureau of Seasons to put autumn back.

I can fix her...........

Does anyone here know when Gaia left creation? I know she went to search for something called a shining answer or some crap but I have no clue how long gaia has been gone.

>>96469276
Early First Age.

>>96469275
Why not make her worse?

NGL reading the story of that one outcaste wood aspect whose whole village gets destroyed and she gets sold as a wive for a forest spirit to keep her safe at like 13...
She then grows up returns and sadistically murders everyone living in her old village with the help of her spirit allies and has two or three kids with the spirit before he gets bored and she thinks about leaving the forest to start a new life.
And that's hot as fuck...

>>96441950
>Have them be the faction with the biggest foothold in the Underworld and Malfeas besides the Abyssals and Infernals. They have the most reason and ability to expand into other realms, especially the Underworld. Have some Lunar kingdoms exist in both Creation and the Underworld, Lunars be more aware of Underworld threats than Heaven, etc.
>Give more emphasis to internal Silver Pact politics. There's a little of this already, but it's not enough.
>Have the Lunars have more obvious victories over the Realm. The fact that the only significant Anathema military victory in 1500 years was by the Bull of the North, a Solar, is embarrassing.
>Integrate beastmen into the Lunar lore better, if they're going to exist at all.
>Go into more depth about how Lunars deal with the return of the Solars.

>>96444315
>Whoops we accidentally the Deathlords
>Whoops we accidentally the Great Contagion
>Whoops we accidentally the Balorian Crusade
>Whoops we accidentally the Deathlords opening the Jade Prison
>Whoops we couldn't figure out how to defeat the Lunars and like 10 remaining Solars in 1500 years

>>96469914
>Deathlords
They could have formed without a Usurpation. All it took was dead Solars (or in 3e, any dead Celestial Exalted at all), and those existed in the First Age too. They're also only on the level of 'problem' that random warlords are so far, and if they do become a bigger problem the Sidereals can handle it.

>Great Contagion
Was completely random bullshit coming out of the Well of Udr, impossible to attribute to the Sidereal Exalted. No, Contagion-Curing Touch and Solar Charm Bullshit Etcetera would not have stopped it any more than Citrine Poxes of Creation did. If anything, you could just as reasonable assert that the moment Solars started dropping they would've gone every man for himself and made it ten times worse.

>Balorian Crusade
Only did anything because of plot armor, same as the Great Contagion. Plot armor is equally effective against Solars. If Sidereals can't rock up and roundhouse kick the Crusade out of Creation then Solars can't either. The Balorian Crusade also wasn't caused by anything the Sidereals did.

>couldn't figure out how to defeat the Lunars and remaning Solars
Did you not notice the Wyld Hunt uniting the civilized world behind a joint effort to crush the Solars and Lunars for the last 1500 years

>>96467116
>In 1e there was a stigma in the sense that it was frowned upon to be openly gay beyond the concept of marital fidelity.
And this is stated where? I have read 1E material pretty thoroughly but not lately. I don't remember any hint whatsoever of what you're talking about, I might just not remember everything, but that's definitely the kind of claim that needs to be backed up by pointing to something in a published book.

>Dragon-blooded couples might care or be more neutral with each other at first. However, familiarity breeds contempt and divorce isn't something you can do in the realm. There are a lot of couples who a dozens of years later resent each other. Some might actually become better friends or even true lovers over time but that's never been depicted as the norm.
This sounds less like anything 1E actually says and more like your personal elaboration on how things might go. Sure, some couples probably do grow to resent each other, but that's not depicted as the norm either.

>>96467375
>Are you trolling, retarded or gay?
While those aren't mutually exclusive, I'd estimate that there's a roughly 100% chance of anon trolling.

>>96468923
That's like saying that nobility revolting against the royal family is masses revolting, or that a military coup plotted by high-level officers is something done by the masses.

>>96469914
Meanwhile the roots of all of that are in the fuckups of First Age Solars.

>>96469987
I used to not quite get the Sidereal Great Curse but the sheer fart-huffing hubris this post drips with has helped me understand it a lot better.

If the DBs could do it then so could a bunch of mortals.

>>96470019
>That's like saying that nobility revolting against the royal family is masses revolting, or that a military coup plotted by high-level officers is something done by the masses.
NTA but yeah that's why a proletariat revolution is practically a myth.
All revolutions have been led by nobles, high ranking officials, military officers and intellectual elites.

>>96470068
>queue montage of Dragonblood charging into the Wyld to take down raksha

>>96470021
Well, it's also pretty easy to say the Solars are directly responsible for the Deathlords. After all, the Deathlords are Solars who turned to the dark side. So really, the Solars are at fault for all of that.

>>96470131
It's still really more of a direct thing, as opposed to the devastation that might be wrought by the Walking Devil Tower (which is also the fault of Lunars). Assuming anyone even remembers what was there in the first place...

>>96470165
>direct thing
*indirect thing

The only meaningful feats Solars have are all tied to mcguffin artifacts. They're not personally invincible like many people like to headcanon, so of course a bunch of DBs could bring them down.

>>96470172
>feats
Hello powerscaler, sorry but this is not vsbattles/spacebattles. Exalted in 1e/2e pretended that the lore made sense in the context it's mechanics rather than the other way around. If you can build a character that can solo a primordial that's a feat with better reliability and footing than the Kukla being able to solo the Solar host in it's lore, which is also a real 'feat'. This isn't a comic even if it has comics.

>>96470273
Hello retard, sorry but the setting does not work at all if you try to apply mechanics to the lore.

>>96470275
When the setting fails to work because the lore does not correctly reflect the mechanics, we call that a plot hole, not a failure of the mechanics. You can see in the thread, and in most previous threads, complaining about how Lunars are made irrelevant in the setting despite us being able to clearly see that their mechanics don't reflect the way they're ineffectual, and how that's a plot hole that extrapolates to imply that other Celestial Exalted (mostly Solars) wouldn't be a meaningful change in the current age. You see how it's a plot hole, rather than a failure of mechanics? And almost everybody suggests that Lunars should have a more prominent role in the setting's lore, rather than suggesting their mechanical powers be toned down to better reflect their role in the setting? Mechanics have precedence.

>>96470382
>When the setting fails to work because the lore does not correctly reflect the mechanics, we call that a plot hole, not a failure of the mechanics
No, we call it shit mechanics.

>>96470068
Explain your logic.

>>96470092
I'm not talking about just the leadership, though. Usurpation was entirely undertaken by military aristocracy with no meaningful involvement from the masses even as foot soldiers.

>>96470497
By the time the usurpation happened there were hundreds if not millions of dragonblooded. What fucking need for a mortal when you can have your entire army be exalts?

>>96470791
Going by 2E population numbers for the First Age, DBs made up about 0.01% of the population. Top percent of one percenters isn't "the masses" by any sane definition of the word.

>>96470863
Wouldn't this put the dragon blooded demography in the 100s k?

>>96441763 (OP)
Hey, how would Five Days Darkness go about becoming the official god of Calibration? And what would an Exigent of him be like besides being a shadowy mimic of a Solar?

>>96471197
Sure, kind of like the number of ultra-high net-worth individuals IRL. You generally wouldn't refer to those as the masses, either.

>>96469904

This is what i'm talking about it seems like lunars want to make sure people have to interact with them or can't be ignored. If lunars were present in all three different realms of Exalted that'd raise questions on why they didn't focus on saving creation. Also I thought sidereals had charms revealed to them at the right time to be made specifically to deal with ghosts. If lunars are somehow more knowledgeable or capable of dealing with underworld then do you want them to pretty much just take the spot of the Green Lady?

>>96471409
0,01%, would mean that 1 in 10,000 would be a Dragon-Blooded, even is small cities you would have a few.

>>96472389
Sure. Well, not actually 'sure' because it's doubtful that Dragon-Blooded were evenly spread throughout Creation back then, but it's not really worth arguing about because it's not central to my point. I feel like you might've lost sight of what this discussion is about, so I'll just point you to the starting point: >>96461725 >>96468923. Furthermore I'll ask you to spend a moment thinking about the difference between what people mean when they talk about 'the masses' and what people mean when they talk about the the elite.

>>96472627
It was just a comment about the odd logistics of the setting.

>>96466253
>useful crafts
Masonry, structural carpentry. Build a reasonable house or a Manse. (To the sorcerer specifications)
Shipwright. Build and sell ships.

>>96470863
But by 2e population numbers Solars made up 0.01% of the total Exalt numbers. Among the Exalted, the DBs were the masses.

Even in real life the masses aren't as powerful as they are in Exalted.

>>96473243
If, say, Vladimir Putin was usurped by the rest of Russia's political and economic elite, would you say that he was overthrown in an uprising of the masses? You're playing pretty silly semantic games here, anon.

>>96473364
This conversation reminds me of 1984

>>96473364
>If, say, Vladimir Putin was usurped by the rest of Russia's political and economic elite, would you say that he was overthrown in an uprising of the masses?
Literally yes

>>96473746
Alright, guess it's another "words don't mean things" episode. I think I'll go to sleep and see if there's a better quality discussion going on tomorrow. I know there won't be, but a man can dream.

>>96473364
If Puting got usurped by a lone gigachad then it wouldn't count as the masses.

>>96473768
At similar scale of demographics we're talking about a world where the kremlin is stormed by a hundred thousand of Russia's citizens to throw down Putin and his most loyal cronies. Regardless of whether those citizens are upper class or not, yes, I would still call it a mass uprising.

You seem to not understand the scale here, just how disproportionately the Solar Exalted were outnumbered. You also seem to be overestimating just how much of the population is required for a revolution to be 'of the masses'.

>>96473872
Mass doesn't mean just "big number of people"; despite Julius Cesar being assassinated by a big chunky of the political "caste" of Rome, the actual Roman "mass" went after his assassins.

It is like 1984.
We have the inner party (Solars/Cesar), outer party (Dragon-Blooded/senators) and the mass (non exalted/citizens)

>>96474095
nobody cares about this semantic faggotry

dragon blooded = the masses

You know that somebody lost a discussion when name calling starts.
They should read more books.

>>96474138
The dragon blooded are the outer party, politicians who weren't at the top of the hierarchy.

>>96474156
you can make as many DBs as you want, that's their defining gimmick

they're the masses

>>96474156
>The dragon blooded are the outer party, politicians who weren't at the top of the hierarchy.
No, the outer party was the Sidereals, Lunars, and the gods. The Dragonblooded did not have a political say.

>>96474163
The same way Rome had senators, the outer party is more numerous than the inner party, and they are the ones that can instigate the masses to revolt against the inner party (Solars/Julius)

>>96474193
nope, DBs are the masses because their number isn't limited

>>96474201
That's dumb the nobility has never had a limited number.
DBs are exalted all exalted were nobility even if ones were clearly lesser than others.
Saying DBs are the masses is like a commie multimillionaire saying that we should kill the billionaires.

>>96474413
and yet if there was a supernobility that did have limited numbers then the regular nobles would in fact be the masses

>>96474413
What about just a commie millionaire?

>>96474427
>and yet if there was a supernobility that did have limited numbers then the regular nobles would in fact be the masses
Well... normally there's a single monarch, regents aside.

>>96474452
equaly dumb
>>96474427
This is like saying that patricians are the masses because there can only be a certain number of senators.

>>96474525
none of this pedantic quibbling can change the fact that the DBs are defined by their superior numbers

>>96474536
>defined by their superior numbers
Anon they are numerous correct but they are literally nobles with divine blood.
They represent hereditary nobility.
That's like the complete opposite to being the masses.
The other exalted are random geniuses that raise above their born station.

>>96474564
they are literally the objectively inferior, massed exalt

>>96474584
Because that's the ironic joke with them they are the noble rightful rulers of creation with an ancient lineage and divine powers.
Yet they are the lowest exalted.
Exalted is supposedly a commentary on the great men theory of history(But fails in this athe great curse fucks up the message).
You fail to recognize that nobles are not the same as commoners just as much as royals are different to nobles.
Would you say that an army of 100 knights runnings over a force of 50 peasant conscripts is the masses being victorious just because the knights are more numerous than the conscripts?

>>96474625
don't care

dbs are the masses

I wouldn't call the dragonblooded the masses. They have magic powers and are in charge of a fuck ton of humans. In a solar game I can see them being the masses because you're even more elite then the dragonblooded, or well, you will be.

Either way we shouldn't be too hung up about a fantasy game not being completely analogous to the real world. I think it's rather nice desu. The fact that people are talking about this stuff and are interested in it means it's doing its job.

>>96474625
>Because that's the ironic joke with them they are the noble rightful rulers of creation with an ancient lineage and divine powers.
The same people that don't get this, seethe about the Lintha's claims of a noble lineage.

I'm also supposed to believe that EVERY SINGLE deeb present at the Usurpation had 5 dex and 5 melee?

Besides the Dragon Kings, are there Mayan like civilizations in Creation?

>>96474764
First Age Solars, oddly enough.

>>96474724
>I'm also supposed to believe that EVERY SINGLE deeb present at the Usurpation had 5 dex and 5 melee?
Yeah, it was the first age, odds are they had a way to cast training charms on mass or something along those lines.

>>96474764
>Mayan
Aren't Dragon Kings Aztecs?

>>96474792
>Aren't Dragon Kings Aztecs?
Honestly, I keep mixing them up.

>>96474781
First age degenerates wouldn't bother.

>>96474780
How were they similar?

>>96474792
imagine being so confident with yourself that you show up to a costume party with people dressed as actual birds and jaguars and you just have a skirt with your dick hanging out and a badass cape-helm.

>>96471211
Depends on how you characterise him
>Vizier despising Sol Infernus
Solars, but evil
>God resigned to never reaching the power he idolizes; Shadow reaching for the light that casts him
Black Solars.

Both types would only wake at Calibration and only for Calibration. Their lives would be full of resent and acceptance of missing years of living, only coming out for 5 days to ensure all is well. Probably incentivize them going hard since they'll be in torpor until next Calibration.

>>96474864
Before becoming Japanese during the Shogunate, the first age realm was mesoamerican themed.

3e changed the alphabet from a Mayan inspired one to the current one Rich had a meltdown, when someone said that they thought the new one was really good, but they personally preferred the old one.

>>96474956
What's the new one like?

>>96474781
First age same as any age. Who the fuck would bother working hard?

>>96474992
Souless and ironic comming from the edition trying its best to distance itself from anime

>>96474992
Gives better range for syllables and more approachable than the draftsmenship required for >>96474956
Wait. Does this mean that the script written by Pain Reforged looks like this now?

>>96475012
It is the paradox of anime; anime by itself is everything that Exalted wants to be (heir of pulps, eclectic mixing of genres, over-the-top and personal stories, influenced by pulps/mythology/martial arts/video games, etc...) by removing "anime" you get all the problems and none of the ups.

>>96475012
The only person who said that is the homunculus you brewed in your head. Because it doesn't follow previous editions trappings doesn't say anything like what you said.

>>96475086
Anime is/was a curse word among 3e circles, 3e!fags even blamed DMP on anime.

>>96475086
Are we trying to rewrite history now?

>>96475099
Is that what the voices are telling you now

>>96475104
Only one is making baseless claims in what a book of all things is thinking.

>>96475123
This post is so retarded I'm finding it difficult to formulate a proper response for it.
Look here.
Do books come into existance by their own?
No?
ok then do their creators have thoughts, feelings and goals?
Yes?
Ok then what if the people that wrote 3e deliverately wanted do distance exalted from its reputation as an anime tabletop roleplaying game?

>>96474859
They really couldn't. That's why they built artifacts to do that for them.

>>96475143
Then you would have to provide evidence for that claim beyond
"It FEELS real to me."

>>96475143
Is that why they keep recommending anime/manga in each new book?

I'm confused about what this argument is about.

>>96475201
It is about nothing.

>>96475201
Schizo is trying to create a new shitstorm becausd his mommy never loved him. Shut it down and post the new alphabet in actual use >>96474992
It looks more functional than whatever the first age shit was.

>>96471211
>And what would an Exigent of him be like besides being a shadowy mimic of a Solar?
Lets see... Besidess the option of using the Umbrals with almost no modifications you could give them an ability to posses shadows allowing them to control people.

>>96475219
>Functional
>When talking about exalted
That's the opposite of the spirit of exalted and exalt doesn't pragmatically defeat an opponent in the most efficient way possible an exalt does sick nonsensical pirouettes and flourishes just to tell his opponent he's already dead and watch the horror in his eyes as his head falls to the ground cut a few seconds ago without his notice.
The world itself rewards coolness it's cooked into the physics of the setting itself.

>>96475249
The reward diminishes in significance the higher your dice pool is. Simple comparison of 5 vs 10 vs 21 dice.

>>96475249
Reread the post you just replied to and understand it is talking about using FirstAge writing in-game

>>96471211
He could gather the support of calendar-related gods so that they could ask the Incarna to do them a favor or just declare him the "Lord of Calibration" and boost his power during that period.

>>96474992

This script sucks. It doesn't have any discernible internal logic justifying each character's complication. It could easily have been something like a Japanese-looking Abugida to make it more comprehensible.

>>96474138

>nobody cares about this semantic faggotry
>translation: i am too autistic to understand anything except my own definitions in my own point of view

>>96475790
>doesn't have any discernible internal logic
Good job outing your low-IQ, brainlet. There isn't. It's a conlang to fill a niche that may or may not show up in a session. So if you want to see what the Poem of the Tyrant Eternal looks like on an Infernal, naked, bronze skin you have a guide.

>>96474992
Got any worked examples? Its written left to right or top to bottom?

>>96475811
Anon... every source book has it in their cover, do you even read 3e?

>>96475830
I don't read moonrune. Thought the alphabet system was a recent addition.

>>96475811

You don't know the difference between a con script and a conlang, and you're accusing other people of being low IQ brainlets?

>It's a conlang[sic] to fill a niche that may or may not show up in a session.

And it fills it in a shit way because the script is shit.

>>96475955
Put your dick in your mouth then and show me your artificial languages then.

Strange, the last few days we have an oddly defensive anon here, who attacks any kind of perceived criticism against Exalted.

And he seems to be a newfag since he isn't aware of 3e's FA script.

>>96475426
>He could gather the support of calendar-related gods so that they could ask the Incarna to do them a favor or just declare him the "Lord of Calibration" and boost his power during that period.
Okay, so how would he gain their support?

>>96475246
>you could give them an ability to posses shadows allowing them to control people.
Why that? I get the Umbrals comparison, but why that?

>>96474947
I prefer the latter. Them waking only at Calibration seems like it would limit their potential as playable characters too much though, maybe instead they simply cannot use their full power during the day or outside of Calibration?

>>96475188
>Is that why they keep recommending anime/manga in each new book?
Sometimes it is less that they want to do, and more that they have to.

For example, Sailor Moon doesn't really have anything to do with Lunars, but not adding her to the recommendations is an admission that Lunars aren't actually the moon exalted.

>In-before.
The reincarnation romance is the only argument for the inclusion, even them 3e downplayed it.

How would I go about most easily porting Exalted:Essence as a system to play Vampire the Masquerade in?

I know that idea probably sounds insane. But I love the Exalted ruleset, but my group doesn't like the Exalted setting. Yet we also all agree VtM mechanics suck ass.

>>96476528
>Okay, so how would he gain their support?
I presume he would go around and get people to celebrate holidays to empower the calendary gods as a favor to those amicable to him while making celebrating the holidays of those who oppose him a terrible idea. His limitation of only existing during the daytime and where there is shade is a decent excuse why he would empower mortals like his maker.
He could also bloat their numbers by inventing and imposing new calender systems or naming days like france did.

>Why that? I get the Umbrals comparison, but why that?
Because possesing random children for 5 days before killing their parents is Five Days Darkness favorite pastime apparently.

>>96476562
Sounds fake. I'm just going to use Occam's Razor and say they like Sailor Moon and thought the reincarnation romance was like Solars/Lunars instead of your over-complicated hallucination.

>>96476778
>How would I go about most easily porting Exalted:Essence as a system to play Vampire the Masquerade in?
Take a look at ExWoD for a rule of 3 guideline and from there things should work ok. If you just want decent rules for VtM use Requiem 2e and the 1e translation guide, good luck with that project either way.

>>96476778
The main issue is porting unique aspects of the template.

Disciplines can easily handled, like the physical ones being variations/modes of the base excellence.

>>96476824
1e!Lunars didn't have recommendations, the reincarnation romance is literally the only thing Usagi has in common with Lunars, and even then the reincarnation romance was likely from Tanith Lee.

>>96476875
>1e!Lunars didn't have recommendations
Totally irrelevant to the conversation, which is regarding you alleging that 3e is distancing itself from anime/manga.
>the reincarnation romance is literally the only thing Usagi has in common with Lunars
Sure, that's why they call it out specifically. This is not unique to Sailor Moon's inclusion in the recommended materials or recommended materials in general; many of those in 1e and 2e are recommended for specific attributes rather than being totally a match for Exalted.
>and even then the reincarnation romance was likely from Tanith Lee
That is its original inspiration, but those books are already recommended.in the core and one can take inspiration from multiple sources.

I really do wish that you would talk to me and other anons as though you actually valued and took into account the views of others instead of trying to browbeat everyone that talks to you into accepting your own as the gospel truth. You never fucking budge on anything and this is why I feel like its pointless to even say anything to you because I'm going to get into an eternal struggle of me going "no I don't think that's true" and you ignoring me to ramble about how your theory is true.

>>96473872
Referring to "the masses" in the context of uprisings or in the context of comparing the impact on history of "great Men" and "the masses" doesn't just mean "more dudes", it means "the common dudes", the commoners, the population at large.

>>96474138
Then way are you engaging in semantic faggotry? You're the one engaging in gay little semantic games to argue arguing against commonly accepted usage of the word "masses"

>>96474584
Sure. Still Exalted, though. Still elite, still nobility, still rare and powerful. Mortals are the masses, Exalts are not, plain and simple.

>>96474685
Do people seethe about Lintha? I've seen people argue about whether the original Lintha should've been truly inhuman species or Primordial-blooded humans, and I've seen people argue about whether revealing the truth about Lintha origins instead of leaving it open was a good call, but I don't remember seeing much real seething about them.

>>96474956
IIRC the funniest part about it was that Rich, who was the art director for early 1E, had himself designed or helped design the original script.

>>96475099
And yet there's anime and manga in the Suggested Resources sections of several 3E books.

>>96476803
Doesn't Five Days Darkness have a big grudge against calendar gods because they mocked and refused him when he originally tried to get an official position as the God of Calibration? While it would be the pragmatic choice, I'm not sure if he'd be inclined to play nice with those gods now.

>>96476958
>You never fucking budge on anything and this is why I feel like its pointless to even say anything to you because I'm going to get into an eternal struggle of me going "no I don't think that's true" and you ignoring me to ramble about how your theory is true.
It's particularly frustrating because even referring to something devs have said or actually published won't help, because anon'll dismiss it as something the devs accidentally did due to not thinking things through, or as something they didn't really want to do but for some numinous reason had to do. There's already an example of the latter in anon claiming that inclusion of Sailor Moon in Lunar recommendations was somehow something they had to do. It's seems pretty clearly like a case where anon's feelings don't care about the facts and no argument can sway his already made up mind.

>>96477284
>Doesn't Five Days Darkness have a big grudge against calendar gods because they mocked and refused him when he originally tried to get an official position as the God of Calibration?
True, that's why a new calender, and attached pantheon, becoming a thing would be his best option.

>>96477335
Yeah, I think he might stat off trying to get rid of the old calendar gods either through outright assassination or political trickery. Trying to invent and implement new calendar systems actually does sound pretty neat, too, and trying to push a new system into prominence sounds like a funny yet reasonable in context goal for an Exigent of 5DD.

>>96477284
>Do people seethe about Lintha? I've seen people argue about whether the original Lintha should've been truly inhuman species or Primordial-blooded humans, and I've seen people argue about whether revealing the truth about Lintha origins instead of leaving it open was a good call, but I don't remember seeing much real seething about them
They think that "depiction = endorsement", and praised the way 3e fixed them.

>>96477365
Depiction of what is endorsement? I vaguely remember some discussion on 3E Lintha, but I don't really remember much seething about them one way or another.

>>96477376
Something about they actually having an actual non-human mortal species past is feeding racist tropes.

>>96477388
I do not remember such discussion.

>>96477388
>>96477406
There was a post from the writer describing how you could read the Exalted coming exclusively out of humanity as a parallel to some racist dogmas like the Mormons.
While I understand the reasoning behind it really comes off as someone who has felt with that kind of stuff before or is trying to make a point.

>>96476562
>Lunars aren't actually the moon exalted

They are, in that the moon in Exalted is very different from what you'd expect from a lot of real world folklore due to W:tA influence. They're not here to be the embodiment of taiyin to a Solar taiyang, they're not tide-based and not standing in for anything. They are super werebeasts who keep what they kill within them, always. If that gives them more in common with shapeshifting kaiju than someone's idea of what they should be like based on Selene, Artemis, or Hecate, so be it.

>>96477786
hit and run tactics and enchantments feel very moon related. shapeshifting is also an obvious one.

Which is the most powerful Exalt between Lunars and Sidereals? A break down of all editions would be nice if someone is up for it? This is from a lore perspective although you can bring in mechanics if you want.

I think the answer is lunars but i'm not sure?

>>96478550
>This is from a lore perspective although you can bring in mechanics if you want.
>I think the answer is lunars but i'm not sure?
It's Sidereals, and this is across all editions though for somewhat different reasons. Sidereals also are not stronger in all fields, but when it comes to fighting the top end of Sidereal Martial Arts is considered stronger than the Lunar top-end in every edition, and they're considered better social manipulators as well.

>1e
When it comes to non-combat, Lunars essentially don't have anything. There's some talk in their splat about how they might have illusions or terrain manipulation or what-the-hell-ever-else, but that's mechanically reflected with approximately three charms that sum up to being able to tell more compelling stories and maybe some craft charms that're useless for doing anything meaningful. Compare the Sidereals, for whom a great portion of their charmset lets them clown on the social sphere, and have comparable (or better) shapeshifting powers for the purposes of disguises to the Lunar Exalted through their resplendent destinies on top of that. From the combat angle, mechanically, Sidereal Martial Arts sweep, and lore-wise they sweep even harder, because in this edition the example SMA are explicitly some of the weaker and more accessible early-game Styles and the true power of the Sidereal Exalted is strongly implied to be many magnitudes greater. From pretty much any angle Sidereals have more than an edge in this edition, they blow Lunars out of the water, and this is how it goes in the lore as well.

>>96478550
>>96478640
>2e/2.5e
Lunars are rounded characters now, and mechanically Sidereals being a botched copy of 1e takes them down a notch, but Sidereal Bullshit is still a powerful meme, and Lunars still get swept by SMA when it comes to combat or anything in the elder essence region outside of pre-nerf Octopus-and-Spider Barrage with forty limbs (and in lore, Sidereals are doing much worse in general but against Lunars specifically they're pretty much the same; them not taking down the Lunar Exalted is basically chalked up to them not being bothered), and resplendent destinies are still as good as or better than Lunar shapeshifting. Lunars do come out ahead when it comes to leadership and most mental feats (except craft, where it's more like they have different focusses (the Sidereals are much better at making the top-end stuff, which is to say they can actually do it, but they don't have as much free time or space or manpower to exploit which lets Lunars do better at crapping out low tier items), and especially in and around the Wyld they can do enough stuff that a non-specialised Sidereal probably wouldn't be able to handle them head-on, and that's basically the same in the lore where the Lunar Exalted are much more settled as Wyld-touched monsters with a heart of gold working to build up the fringes of the world as part of their long-term strategy against the Sidereal-backed Realm. Overall the Sidereals are still ahead lore-wise, but the Lunar Exalted aren't blown out of the water anymore.

>>96478550
>>96478640
>>96478645
>3e
Lunars are all in on being anti-Realm failures who never get anything done despite being better organised than ever, while the Sidereal Exalted are all-in on riding out the consequences of being power-hungry megalomaniacs that fail at everything they've ever attempted. Lunars have the pleasure of having a well-written charmset, but the pain of existing in a world where everybody's closer in power levels, which means they can't defeat more than a handful of Dragonblood at once. Sidereals have the pleasure of existing in a world where everybody's closer in power levels while still having a priviledged position of master behind the curtain able to throw Dragonblooded at problems they don't like, while also feeling the gutwrenching pain of elder-level Exalted getting ripped out from under them, when they benefited the most from exponential power levels out of everyone outside the Deathlords. The Fivefold Fellowship can no longer throw down against the Silver Pact in a 100v300 and expect to win. Even 1v1s are dicey. Lore-wise a Sidereal SMA'ist will win the 1v1, mechanics-wise Lunars being legendary size is ludicrous and mixing martial arts with their native charms is very silly, so it depends on how trimped out they are, but the other hand is that Sidereals were written after Lunars and a few of their charms exist to counter to the standard Lunar meta-defining plays, so again I'd just call it dicey and move on. Sidereals going into 1v1 combat against peer-level Exalted isn't supposed to happen anyway. As a group, lore-wise the Fivefold Fellowship is in a much better position and better able to project power and numbers, but the factional thing leaves them less cohesive overall than the Silver Pact. Individually, when it comes to the amount of power that a single Exalt is able to project, Sidereals come out ahead because of their better position, because Sidereals can easily grab a bunch of Dragonblood or sway a kingdom to punch up.

>>96478050
>hit and run tactics

I'd prefer not to have on Exalted be the "X tactic type", personally. 2e tried it by making the Lunar strength being "indirect" and it didn't work. It. Did not. Work.

>enchantments

What do you mean?

>>96478640
>this is how it goes in lore as well

The game exactingly avoided a lot of confrontations with Lunars and Sidereals at all in 1e. The only one we really have is Lilith killing Sad Ivory, which 2e decided to be coy about.

Also, if you were really cheesy about building your DBT, you could absolutely break Sidereals in half.

>>96478640
>>96478645
>>96478649
>>96478668

I appreciate the insight in to it. Mechanically speaking the one thing I was uncertain about was the relentless lunar fury from 2e at an elder level with custom lunar charms but based on the post I guess in practice it wouldn't be a clean win for a sidereal vs lunar. I guess the only thing sidereals really have to help them even the playing field is sidereal martial arts. I was just reading the throne shadow style and it seems kinda lame. Although lore wise I feel it explains a lot of why wyld hunts were terrifying along with astrology

>>96478668
>Also, if you were really cheesy about building your DBT, you could absolutely break Sidereals in half.
Sidereal Martial Arts is full of bullshit counters, even between only three styles. Charm Redirection Technique stops the Lunar turning on DBT, and Sequential Charm Disruption turns it off if they activated it early. Glorious Sidereal Protection + Gem of Adamant Skin is some bullshit. Charcoal March of Spiders is full of instagibs and Jumping Spider Strike / Grandmother Spider Mastery have range that is simply ludicrous.

Plus, they can still dump Dragonblood on you to soften you up just like they can in 3e. Plus, they had exclusive access to Blade of the Battle Maiden + persistent defenses for Infinite Ability Mastery-alike plays.

You can make busted builds for everything, but Sidereals were pretty much expected to be silly from the get-go.

>>96478702
RLF was kind of a trap option, because it disabled your capability to use perfect defenses on the turn when you used it. In general, the entire thesis of "Lunars burn fast and hard" was only ever holding them back, even in the brief moment of 1e when putting your persistent defenses up was a bit of a bother.

>>96478702
>Mechanically speaking the one thing I was uncertain about was the relentless lunar fury from 2e at an elder level with custom lunar charms but based on the post I guess in practice it wouldn't be a clean win for a sidereal vs lunar.
Lunar gets crumped. RLF isn't good.

>I guess the only thing sidereals really have to help them even the playing field is sidereal martial arts.
Sidereal Martial Arts are a really big thing. This is kind of like saying the only thing Lunars have to put them on the same playing field is charms, y'know? SMA are the only way Sidereals make novel charms and expand into elder essence at all, and they're stupid strong, on the high end of Solar tier.

>I was just reading the throne shadow style and it seems kinda lame.
Throne Shadow Style is often kind of lame, and it actually points that out in the style itself, and that basically no Sidereals use it anymore. It was only ever good when you got to hide under a circle of Solars with it, and speaking as someone who has actually played a 2e Sidereal with Throne Shadow Style in a circle of mostly Solars activating Throne Shadow Form and having the entire party Defend Other'ing you the entire scene makes you invincible. Being invincible to non-perfects for the scene so long as you're near your party is pretty good as far as Essence 2 charms go. It's mostly a utility style, though. You don't fight with it.

>>96478720
>Charm Redirection Technique stops a Lunar from turning on DBT

No, DBT was reflexive. CRT didn't work on that in any capacity to stop it completely, as the Lunar could just pay the cost again and then the Sidereal was SOL. Depending on how you parse the verbiage of the tattoos, it might also stop the Sidereal from using it at all for this purpose.

>Glorious Sidereal Protection + Gem of Adamant Skin is some bullshit

Agreed. It's almost as if GCG was extremely performative or at least super petty about Gemstone of Adamant Skin and Wound-Knitting Power being used to heal all non-agg every turn.

>Jumping Spider Strike / Grandmother Spider Mastery have range that is simply ludicrous.

But the transformation capacity of Pattern Spider Touch was utterly no-sold by tattoos, and apparently the Sidereals aren't aware that this would happen.

Lunars also had dedicated anti-disease so they wouldn't be completely SOL against weird magic diseases. They didn't get any published Charms for resisting poison or stupid instant death attacks, but like Solars, they were implied to be able to create Charms to patch this, which Sidereals were cold-stopped from doing in 1e.

Also, the author of Sidereal Charms originally intended for Lunars to be able to use SMA. The ban on that came later, in the player's guide.

>Exclusive access to BotBM

No one actually had exclusive access to that. That was part of the problem. That said, BotBM was also non-instant and couldn't be placed in a combo, so a Sidereal was risking having a head-crushing thrown on them if they used it around the Lunar, and the Lunar having the time to fire up Moonsilver Monkey Exercise or Crouching Tiger Exercise if they spent the time preparing for the fight.

(It'd be nice if we ever saw where Lunar custom Charms were actually supposed to go, but apparently no one could ever be assed to do this in 1e. By implication, they were supposed to be on par with some SMA aspects, but who even fucking knows.)

>>96478722
>>96478735

These a good insights in sidereal mechanics, but i'm confused about RLF not being good. I get the errata stealth nerfed somethings by making combos something everyone can do for free. Dragonbloods took a great hit with that but I thought lunars being able to activate enhanced versions of fury charms for free was one of their big selling points? Mind you, it require them to actually have all the fury charms, but that combined with DBT I thought even solars would rather perfect than get hit by them.

>>96478756
It's simple - without a combo, you have no meaningful defense against 2e's meta of rocket tag. The rocket will hit you, and if it hits you at all, it will splatter you (grand daiklaves and other three-dot Artifact weapons did ludicrous amounts of damage). End of story.

>>96478776
RLF is reflexive charm that lasts for essence x 2 actions or essence x 2 + 4 with the upgrade. It doesn't stop you from doing defensive actions, just non combat actions. Unless my reading skills sucks, if so fair enough. It just sounds like it had the same problem martial arts form had in 2e that there was a great opportunity to obliterate them before the errata.

>>96478827
It has no Combo keywords until 2.5e, I believe. No combo means no perfect defense. No perfect defense means anyone can just throw a bunch of dice at you in an attack and kill you.

>>96478827
My understanding is that pre-2.5e you couldn't combo it with a perfect defense, which meant that on the turn you activates it you would simply be hit by an instant kill combo, and that even when you could reap the benefits (including post-errata) the gamestate typically devolved into who had the most mote-efficient combos because whoever ran out first died horribly soon after, and RLF amounted to a +2 mote surcharge on everything without adding much in the way of meaningful effects. It didn't let you make multiple actions per turn and it didn't let you extend useful defensive charms either. A lot of the Fury-OK effects were just kind of mid, or worse than the base charms.

>>96478649

I think mechanics-wise the 3e matchup largely depends on how high-essence the fighters are - Lunar shapeshifting is incredibly frontloaded, you get basically all of it at E1, whereas Sids are backloaded - SMAs only come online at E3-5 and their absurdly strong excellency gets even better at 4 and 5, plus they start having enough XP to bank counters to bullshit like Legendary Size grappling.

E1 Full Moon is going to fold almost any E1 Sid in half with relative ease just by turning into a tyrant lizard and full excellencying a grapple, but an E5 Sid can fairly easily have a 0-1 mote resting defence that Lunars need to throw full excellencies + accuracy charms at just to hit over half the time, before we even get into the relative merits of the active combat charms, and since their mote pools at E5 are basically identical the Sid efficiency benefit means the bastards basically never run out of juice.

(The NPC Sid elders were also written after the writers figured out they needed to combine multiple PC charms into combos to fit a normal amount of stuff in a QC, the Lunar elders weren't, so mechanically Anys Syn can no diff any of them, but that's not reflective of the setting or of the PCs.)

>>96478649
>As a group, lore-wise the Fivefold Fellowship is in a much better position and better able to project power and numbers, but the factional thing leaves them less cohesive overall than the Silver Pact.
First half is true, but I'd say the latter half is not. The Silver Pact is a coalition of loosely aligned cells centered around Lunar mentors that have deep disagreements about how to actually achieve the goal of destroying the Realm. Its like that scene in Andor where Luthen talks with Saw with the latter laying out how divided the rebel cells all are in terms of ideology and capability.

>>96469051
>Odds are you could talk about what he would be the Exigent of and how to translate his story into Creation.
They just say "Exigent, chosen of a smith god".
Which is both boring straight forward like you said, "convoluted" since you have to build it whole cloth.

>>96479232
>First half is true, but I'd say the latter half is not. The Silver Pact is a coalition of loosely aligned cells
Them being loosely aligned cells that cooperate ad-hoc is better cohesion than two factions actively working at odds with mutually exclusive visions. Lunars might have disagreements on how to go about bringing about the downfall of the Realm and even go so far as to clash and sabotage each other over it because their plans are mutually exclusive, but when that happens (looking at Seven Obsidian Leopard vs Tanisa Ring-Eater here) it's kept to a relatively small and polite scale (similar to Sidereals still being able to talk to each other politely when they come across each other) but with the advantage of not escalating to encompass the entire Silver Pact and get the whole array of Lunars deadlocked against each other.

>Lunar mentors that have deep disagreements about how to actually achieve the goal of destroying the Realm
Sidereals have that exact same kind of small-scale conflict as well, with stubborn individuals going against each other or conventions being at loggerheads, but the factional conflict creates a greater rift than anything Lunars have against each other.

>>96479301
There also the way stuff like that was already covered by GodBlooded.

>>96479744
Godblooded used spirit charms which are icky is the justification for Exigents, I think.

They could've just made endowments make Godblood and asserted that Godblooded (including Half-Castes) built charm trees based on the ideas of their parents rather than actually getting their charms but that would've been too hard I guess.

>>96479861
I don't know why this shit is so funny to me.
>Hey, these charms are dogshit.
>How about we create a whole new splat rather than fixing this?

>>96479861
>>96480278
Introducing Exigents instead of just changing God-Blooded probably has more to do with powerlevels than with spirit Charms being icky.

>>96480309
>Introducing Exigents instead of just changing God-Blooded probably has more to do with powerlevels than with spirit Charms being icky.
It didn't do anything to fix or adjust power levels whatsoever though. If anything it made it worse by introducing any number of new Celestials and terrestrial lineages.

>>96480309
Ironically enough, rare Dragon-Blooded level GBs already existed.

Hey guys do you happen to have cults of runequest: the lunar way?
I would also appreciate it if you had the other cults of runequest books.
Thanks in advance!

>>96480359
>If anything it made it worse by introducing any number of new Celestials and terrestrial lineages
NTA but this exigents are even worse godblooded.
I think the real reason godblooded got completely deleted was actually to distance exalted from eugenics it became an ultra taboo for lefties to the point you can't talk about it or portray it or you are a fascists.
The other big example is getting rid of DB breeding and changing how their reproduction works.

>>96480359
I meant in the sense that if God-Blooded weee Exalt-tier in terms of powerlevel, the setting would be fucked up beyond recognition. God-Blooded can fill the same niche as Exigents regardless of how their Charms are handled, because they can't be as powerful as Exigents.

>>96480581
God-Blooded aren't deleted, though. They're still a thing in 3E. So's Dragon-Blooded Breeding, for that matter.

>>96480581
>>96480717
Oh, and as for eugenics, consider Nechara.

>>96480717
>>96480734
They are present sure but are of such less importance as to be almost irrelevant.
The least exigent wipes the floor with most if not all godbloods and breeding has almost mechanicalal effect and it's more about having famous ancestors than the actual quality of your exaltation itself as it used to be be because all DBs are equally powerful now.

>>96480784
Okay, so when you said that those things were removed, you did not actually mean they were removed, you just said something you didn't eman for dramatic effect. Okay, anon. God-Blooded are, regardless, there, there are several examples of God-Blooded characters, there's a nation ruled by God-Blooded aristocracy that specifically and actively seeks for divine or otherwise superhuman spouses to strengthen their blood, and God-Blooded being weaker than Exalts seems about right. As for Breeding, it being mandatory Merit to take if you didn't want to be mechanically distinctly weaker than your fellow PCs was a common complaint in the previous editions, and in-setting the increased likelihood of having Dragon-Blooded children is depicted as its most significant effect, anyways. That aspect of it is still there, and Dynasts still care about maintaining their Breeding.

>>96480809
>Dynasts still care about maintaining their Breeding
Yeah but they are wrong to do so as breeding is practically a myth among themselves all dragonbloods are equal.
A modern DB is as powerful as a first generation one.
That's a huge difference from breeding being truly important and key to DBs.
And exigents make godbloods obsolete making the setting revolve entirely on the exalted which is boring and leads to a game who years after being published has no actual rules for antagonist outside exalted.

>>96480717
>I meant in the sense that if God-Blooded weee Exalt-tier in terms of powerlevel, the setting would be fucked up beyond recognition. God-Blooded can fill the same niche as Exigents regardless of how their Charms are handled, because they can't be as powerful as Exigents.
Rare powerful God-Blooded are a thing since 1e, they are less setting breaking than Janest.

>>96480809
God-Blooded were removed by lack of support, it is similar to the lack of "build a ghost" rules.

>>96480921
No, Breeding is not a myth, as it affects your children's likelihood of Exalting. That's a hugely important matter.

>>96481007
no it doesn't

>>96481023
I literally fucking says in the description of the Well-Bred Merit in What Fire Has Wrought that it does, and that the Thin-Blooded Flaw affects Exaltation chance in the opposite direction.

>>96481041
we're taking worthless fluff text literally now? lmao

>>96481007
Doesn't matter, why?
Because breeding was important for creating both powerful DB and make sure they would also give birth to powerful DBs.
If all DBs have the same base chance to give birth equally powerful DBs then who actually cares?
That's the modern leftie view slipping in eugenics actually don't matter an outcaste born from a family of mortals with zero pedigree is as powerful as the fist DB ever exalted and the outcaste will have a decent chance of also having DB kids.

>>96481052
The text that describes how this entirely fictional world works? Yes, anon. Characters in the setting obviously don't think "well we're all just characters in someone else's story and it's all in the Storyteller's hands so there's no point worrying about Breeding".Breeding affects Exaltatuon chance because published materail explicitly says that it does so, and Dragon-Blooded care about Breeding because the likelihood of their children Exalting matters.

>>96481081
so suddenly mechanics don't matter anymore?

>>96481057
Do you think it's desirable for there to be an overwhelming reason to never make Outcaste characters or even Dynasts of average pedigree? The fact that higher Breeding means that your kids are more likely to Exalt obviously means that eugenics does matter, a lot and in ways the Dynasty cares about.

>>96481086
Did I say that? Weird, I just re-read my post and I'm pretty sure I didn't say that. Fluff matters, too, as fluff's the closest thing to an objective description of how a fictitious world "actually" works. If fluff and mechanics clash, then there's reason to argue which of them should be chanced to accommodate the other, but in this case fluff and mechanics don't clash.

>>96481100
fluff and mechanics contradict each other so you have to pick one

>>96481106
Mechanics for deciding whether a child Exalts are "Storyteller decides", ie. there are no mechanics. Insofar as you consider those mechanics, the same mechanics also include the statement that Breeding matters. There's no clash of fluff and mechanics here.

>>96481123
fluff or mechanics - pick one

>>96481128
But mechanics in this case are all fluff, so I literally don't have to. Breeding impacts the chance, Storyteller decides what happens when it comes to actual in-game Exaltation chance, and there's absolutely no contradiction there.

>>96481093
>I won't play the game unless I have the most power possible I would rather everything be blander and everyone becoming closer and closer to different colored Solars.
Well I fundamentally prefer that different exaltations be as remarkably distinct as possible.
If that means powergamers cry a bit I don't care.
Yeah there should be a powerful mechanical advantage for pureblooded DBs over ones with muddled blood because that is in line with their themes.
Yes Infernals should mutate and become inhuman, yes Abyssals should bring death and suffering to those around them, yes Lunars should be irreversibly changed by the wyld.

>>96481144
so you've picked mechanics

breeding is a myth then

>>96481086
>so suddenly mechanics don't matter anymore?
This is a WW's game, the importance of mechanics is a snake eyes in a dice roll

>>96481147
>If that means powergamers cry a bit I don't care.
Powergamers didn't cry in 1E or 2E, they just went for Breeding 5.

>Yeah there should be a powerful mechanical advantage for pureblooded DBs over ones with muddled blood because that is in line with their themes.
Why? A Dragon-Blooded Exaltation's a Dragon-Blooded Exaltation, and likelihood of Exaltation and number of Exalts in the family is already a more significant benefit of a pure bloodline than added individual power.

>Yes Infernals should mutate and become inhuman, yes Abyssals should bring death and suffering to those around them, yes Lunars should be irreversibly changed by the wyld.
Okay. And Dragon-Blooded should be elemental, their Exaltation should be in the blood and the purity of their bloodlines matter. None of those things requires Breeding to increase individual power, though.

>>96481150
The mechanics that handle things narratively and explicitly state that Breeding is not a myth sure. Whether we look at the fluff or the Storyteller-call "mechanics", there's no rational argument to be made for Breeding being a myth.

>>96481174
>Why?
Basic logic.
Who is more powerful a god or a mortal?
Then a demigod that's half god or one that's a quarter god?

The less the purity of their divine blood matters the lesser they become thematically.

>>96481277
>Then a demigod that's half god or one that's a quarter god
Gilgamesh was pretty strong despite being a third god, and in Greek myths we have (X×great) grandchildren beating children of gods.

>>96481277
>Then a demigod that's half god or one that's a quarter god?
That's not what we're talking about, though. All Dragon-Blooded are Exalted, none of them are half-Exalted or 75% Exalted or anything like that, and basic logic does not dictate that some of them should be more powerful than the others due to their blood. It is true that their blood should also matter, but it already does, in that Exaltation chance. which on the level of families, dynasties and empires matters more than whether or not some DBs have a bit more motes in their mote pool.

>>96481305
And gods, in some cases. Iliad sees Ares be wounded and driven off the battlefield by Diomedes, and Achilles kicks the ass of the god of a river flowing near Troy.

>>96481305
To be fair, diluted divinity is the reason for Atlantis war against the world and their destruction.

>>96481324
That logic does apply to celestials they don't care for blood.
DBs deeply care for it and it does get diluted and weaker and that was reflected in weaker DBs makes perfect sense.

>>96481305
>>96481336
Of course a no breeding DB can defeat a legendary breeding one.

And some heroes are just unnaturally skilled and powerful beyond what their blood can explain(celestials).

But purity of blood is key to DBs how powerful they are should be affected by its purity.

>>96481375
You do realize that you're not actually making any kind of an argument for why the increased likelihood of Exaltation isn't a sufficient reflection of the thematic importance of bloodlines, right? You're basically just saying that you like a specific thing and insisting that the thing in question must therefore be of utmost importance. I don't think anyone disagrees that purity of blood should matter to DBs, but differences in individual power aren't the only way to have it matter.

>>96481398
I am and you are ignoring it.
I'm saying that the more impact the purity of the DB has the stronger they are thematically.
You on the other hand are making an argument for having the bare minimum to represent this theme.

The whole breeding shit is dumb as hell anyways. It's changed so much from each version of exalted that it's just silly. 2e did this dumb shit where Dragonblooded weren't allowed to sleep with normal humans. Super good looking uber humans who AREN'T fucking all the people? what the fuck were they thinking. It's even worse because it's literal magic. Like you're telling me they couldn't factor in... them sleeping around? Let's not forget how terrible the First Age books were and how most of this crap comes from them.

I prefer the take that pretty much everyone in creation has deeb blood now. Too much fucking, too much breeding, too much time for it to work anyway else. 3e handles it way better but I fundamentally don't understand why they would even bring back Breeding at all. It's just lame as fuck story telling.

You know what's cool? Dragon blooded generals with more kids then Ghengis Kahn. As it should be.

Oh, right, the worst part of breeding. It's just another stolen mechanic from World of Darkness with vampire generations and the less shit we steal from that the better. Why people can't think of new ideas and have to constantly "borrow" from these old ass books blows my mind.

Think of something new you faggots.

>>96481365
And too many demigods around was the reason for the Trojan war

>>96481460
>You know what's cool? Dragon blooded generals with more kids then Ghengis Kahn. As it should be.
Yeah I took dislike 3e DBs.
Why would they make progenitive essence a thong?
Lame as fuck if you ask me.

>>96481479
What?
No, it was that one dude stole another dude's wife.

>>96481473
It is WW, borrowing is a foundation of their writing.
Because of this sometimes, the games stop about being X, and start to be about stories about X.

>>96481439
>I'm saying that the more impact the purity of the DB has the stronger they are thematically.
Yes, you're saying it. You're literally just saying it, though, not arguing for it. If I think that personal puissance was never a thematically important part of Breeding but just an extra goodie for players who spent their points on the Merit, that Exaltation chance is the part that actually matters and that 3E retains everything that's thematically meaningful about Breeding, which I do, there's not much more to say here than let's agree to disagree.

>>96481460
2E Deebs did fuck mortals all the time, so what are you talking about, anon?

>I prefer the take that pretty much everyone in creation has deeb blood now. Too much fucking, too much breeding, too much time for it to work anyway else.
That's pretty muh how it already is in every edition, isn't it?

>You know what's cool? Dragon blooded generals with more kids then Ghengis Kahn. As it should be.
Do that with a Solar, or literally any other kind of Exalt than a DB.

>>96481473
Sure right now think about something new.

>>96481496
In some texts Zeus manipulated the events behind the scenes to get rid of the numerous demigods.
A lot of the Trojan circle was lost to the sands of time.

>>96481473
Breeding's not even vaguely like the vampire generations.

>>96481503
Borrowing's the foundation of, like everything. The key's to do something interesting with what you borrow.

>>96481503
it's a 1 to 1 copy of the generation mechanic yeah. It's the very definition of lame as fuck and lazy storytelling. 3e tries something new. From what I remember it takes time for the "womb" to recharge in a dragonblooded. So you can fuck and have tons of kids and be a sexy breeder for my pregnancy fetish without having to ask "well why ain't everyone a deeb". They basically have a magic cunt and I find that great. Same thing with Dragonblooded men and having magic splooge.

better then 1e and 2e with the whole "ooooh it's just vampire generations".

>>96481513
Agreed to disagree.
And no the difference in individual power between pure and muddled DBs was also very thematically important.
But is also the most politically incorrect aspect.
>No some people are not inherently better than other tabula rasa!

>>96481558
There is a pretty obvious and hugely important facet of vampire generations that isn't in any way reflected in Breeding, I wonder if you can guess what it is?

>>96481566
It's a game with Exalted, including ones born of a magic bloodline. Political incorrectness has nothing to do with why Breeding no longer impacts power. It all boils down to those 2E-era complaints about high Breeding feeling a bit too mandatory - maybe 1E-era complaints, too, I dunno, I just know for sure about the 2E-era ones. That's all there is to it.

>>96481566
The whole breeding thing does attract some IRL weirdos. Same reason why you see less rape and other gross shit in the game line, it just attracted some really gross people who aren't interested in playing the actual game but instead use it for their whiteroom fantasies. It's even worse because the real fantasy is having your dragonblooded sleep with an many people as possible. but oh no. gotta make that edgy too. because the people who wrote that shit are lame and wrote something that's lame and boring.

I don't honestly much care if it's canon or not, to be clear. I'm not arguing about what edition says about what. I'm just saying how fucking lame it is. Breeding could have been your place in the hierarchy but instead they went with vampire generations. it was so lame. It was super, super lame.

>>96481612
Ironically enough, it is the opposite, see the fandoms of shows whose themes are love and tolerance.

So before 3e ruined exalted it was Inkmonkeys that ruined it. Then before that it was Return of the Scarlet Empress. Then before that it was the infernal book that ruined Exalted. What were people complaining about ruining Exalted before the 2e infernals book?

>>96481612
why does two guys on a forum get to dictate what happens to a gameline

>>96481757
>So before 3e ruined exalted it was Inkmonkeys that ruined it. Then before that it was Return of the Scarlet Empress.
I think it was the same writers who did those.

>>96482014
Fanboys running the asylum, a lot was written to win forum arguments.

>>96482014
This literally defines everything that went wrong with 3e

If I was a fan on a forum to a game line and then managed to enter a position where I can dictate how that new edition would work and the lore for it then I'd consider that an epic win. If other fans actually cared as much as they did then obviously they'd be trying to get hired to work on Exalted.

if anything all this talk about how two people ruined exalted is just a round-about way to say you want to suck them off because they did something you never could - actually impact the franchise.

ah fuck the devs are IRL solars who used shinmichalmore calibration to change reality.

>>96482399
They are closer to the primordials in behavior

>>96482386
>If I was a fan on a forum to a game line and then managed to enter a position where I can dictate how that new edition would work and the lore for it then I'd consider that an epic win.
By all metrics, it is. We just don't like what we ended up with and have to work with various other versions of the game.

What should be the next TQ. I have no creativity left after writing ghost smut.

>>96482525
Ghost smut

>>96482386
Sure they did win in that regard.
The problem is that the changes they made were entirely reactionary to autistic internet arguments instead of out of a want for exalted to stay true to it's mythic roots.

>>96482787
>>96482787
>>96482787
New thread