Neat! Though I feel like the setting's unfamiliar enough that I'll have to put extra thought into making a character. Is there any reason to have less than maximum willpower?

>>120348
>Is there any reason to have less than maximum willpower?
Saving points to spend on other stuff, authenticity to a character concept, and weaker mental defenses which mean that it's easier for your friends to work out a nonviolent solution when - not if - you go crazy.

>when - not if - you go crazy.
I'm sold!

>>120347
Oh geeze, exalts get so hyperbolically ridiculous I'm going to have to think on character ideas for a bit.

>>120364
Exalted is not well-suited to 'four-color' morality plays, apart from maybe Alchemicals (that's the astro boy/robocop power source), but superheroes are still a good starting point for character concepts. Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanoff, Steve Rogers, Tony Stark? All straightforward to spec out as starting Solars. Bruce Banner? Any exalt type, because the 'incredible hulk' powerset is available as a martial arts style. Thor's hammer, as depicted in the Marvel Cinematic Universe at least, could work as a tweaked/upgraded Lightning Torment Hatchet, one of the example artifacts in the core book. Long as we're talking about the MCU, "Pepper" Potts exalted as a fire-aspect toward the end of Iron Man 3. Peter Parker? Web-shooting is covered by a single Lunar charm, the rest is easy. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch seem to fit pretty well as Sidereals, chosen of Journeys and Battles respectively. Ultron and Vision are obvious Alchemicals, the former with Gremlin Syndrome. Alright, that's enough of the MCU, let's go a little further afield. Swamp Thing? Could be Metagaos, but seems more like a plant-totem Lunar to me. Lobo? Elder Lunar with some chimera knacks. Dr. McNinja? Can't model the whole story exactly, since true resurrection and change-the-past time travel are among the few hard 'no's in Exalted, but you could build a decent approximation of him as a GSP with a mix of low-Essence Adorjan, Ebon Dragon, Isidoros, and Malfeas charms, while what happened to the White House for the big finale fits perfectly as a particular sapphire circle sorcery spell. You name it, I'll figure out how to stat it, or at least where to start.

I'd be happy to have Tunic involved, too. Taoist Cultivators were clearly a major influence on Exalted way back in the development stages.

On the subject of Dragon King Quest, I was just looking through my e-mail and as of December 8th, Santova supposedly had an illustration ready for the next update but couldn't send it to me due to some problem with the telephone company which would hopefully have been resolved within the week. Since it's been two months, and the quest just dropped into the graveyard, I'm considering alternatives.

>>120456
Sorry to hear that matey. If you'd like, you can pull it out of the graveyard. It's fairly easy to do, just contact one of the admins on the IRC or Discord.

>'four-color' morality plays
I have no idea what the four colors are supposed to be here.

>>120458
You can also use the report function to ask for a thread to be raised from the dead (which is slower, as you have to wait for a mod to check outstanding tickets / issue). Or post and get a reader to ask in chat for you.

>>120462
>I have no idea what the four colors are supposed to be
The subtractive primaries, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow, plus Black, which can collectively be used to represent any visible color in halftone printing. It's a figure of speech, referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comics_Code_Authority -compliant superhero stories, where "in every instance good shall triumph over evil," along with many other restrictions against thought-provoking, youth-corrupting moral ambiguity.

>>120481
Oh I hadn't heard that particular expression for that before. I was trying to imagine what 4 moral poles were being mapped to what colors.

...I suppose one could build an exalt who believes the world works that way but it would probably end in exploding tears.

>>120495
>what 4 moral poles were being mapped to what colors
Conveniently, Creation has five elemental poles on a tidy compass/grid layout, each with an associated color of jade. Black and white for water and earth, blue and red/orange for air and fire, green for wood. "Black and white" morality, good versus evil, maps adequately well to compassion versus conviction, altruism versus competition. The mountain supports everyone equally, caring not that it may be ground down in the process, whereas the ocean has a more sink-or-swim attitude. "Blue and orange" morality or "red versus blue" tends to refer to any issue where the two sides seem identical to an outside observer, however important it may be the participants. That maps adequately well to law versus chaos. Any system with scarce resources has some immediately recognizable options in terms of who gets how much, but understanding a tradition versus innovation conflict requires some background knowledge of what the traditions in question actually are... and it doesn't help that argument over such definitions, and who gets to write them, is a big part of the tactics in such conflicts, so neither side can be fully trusted to provide objective information.
Green, then, would represent "everything in moderation, even moderation." Neutrality in D&D terms (particularly fitting for druids), Willpower in Exalted soul-anatomy. Pull your own weight when you can, try to avoid making too much of a mess when you can't, help people out when you've got enough to spare and there's a reasonable prospect of them eventually paying you back somehow, stick to tradition for the most part but allow for incremental improvement, stay honest unless the stakes are so low that nobody will really care, or so high that you'll be able to retire right afterwards. Probably symbolizes something interesting that, in Creation, 'neutrality' is off-center.

That just leaves anomalous yellow jade. The lack of an Elemental Pole of Vitriol is excellent news, since it would correspond to FFVI Kefka-style anti-morality: torture your best allies to death for doing their jobs too well, burn it all and piss on the ashes just to show that you can. In soul-anatomy terms, the Great Curse and Limit track.

>>120462
>>120458
I'm aware of the board's mechanics. My problem is the lack of a picture to go with the update. Writing, continuity, and plot I can do, mostly, but text quests are less casually accessible, and see correspondingly few active participants. Haven't got the tools, skills, or... patience? Executive function? Some damn brain thing... to make adequate art myself. The obvious options are soliciting volunteer work from my fans, or plowing most of the money I'm getting from Patreon right back into commission fees.

The issue discussed here: http://whitemantis-stash.tumblr.com/post/168710430908/ was apparently one of the main motivating forces for the changes in Exalted 3rd edition.

Ledaal Ji
Air-aspect Dynastic Dragonblooded
Motivation: Attain life unending, complete with sufficient health and wealth to enjoy it.
Willpower 5, Compassion 2, Conviction 2, Temperance 3, Valor 2
Strength 1, Dexterity 5, Stamina 5
Charisma 2, Manipulation 2, Appearance 3
Intelligence 5, Wits 2, Perception 2

Archery 1
Awareness 1
Bureaucracy 3
Craft (Air) 3
*Dodge 5 (Unwanted 'Assistance' +1)
Integrity 3
Linguistics 3 (High Realm, Old Realm, Rivertongue, Forest-Tongue)
Lore 4
*Martial Arts 5
>Walker-Among-Irises Perception
>Iris-Bulb Discourse
>Fluttering Cry of Warning
>Empowering Justice Redirection
>Crane Form
*Medicine 5 (Cash Up Front +1)
>Infection-Banishing Prana
>Jade Crucible Method
Melee 1
Occult 3
Performance 1
Presence 1
Ride 1
Socialize 2
War 1 (Black & White Stones +2)

Artifact 4 (Resplendent Satchel of Healing, Transcendent Phoenix Pinions, Path-Carving Boots)
Artifact 2 (Lightning Box, Silken Armor w/ long flowing sleeves)
Breeding 4 (11 personal, 25 peripheral, of which the medkit needs a 5 mote commitment, boots and armor 2 each)
Destiny 1 (get profitably married, thwart the assassination of an insane tyrant, and find true love - in exactly that order)
Henchmen 1 (blue parrot beastman, master alchemist, technically a slave but privately treated almost as an equal partner)
Mentor 4 (rooster-totem lunar anathema?)
Reputation 1 (discretion, heretical techniques to fix what other doctors can't, relentless professionalism, hates parties)
Resources 3 (remainder of a modest family stipend, after loan payments and other fallout from a failed business venture)

Bonus points: 6 for favored abilities, 1 for Lore, 11 for backgrounds


Does that sound about right? In terms of the Four Arts, Craft (Air) covers painting, calligraphy can be a function of either Craft (Air) or Linguistics, that nonstandard War specialty covers appropriate strategy games but has some room for brutally practical application as well (particularly with help from Path-Carving Boots literally adding black stones to the field). Weakest would probably be music, as it's mostly Performance-based. One dot is enough for basic proficiency with an instrument, practical but uninspiring, while Lore 4 could easily include the deeper mathematics of music theory. Lots of room for adjustment. As written, Ledaal Ji is only minimally engaged with mainstream dragonblooded society, and instead draws much of his power from forces that predate or otherwise stand apart from the Scarlet Dynasty, such as his Shogunate-era medical tools which can regrow amputated limbs (among other functions), or the mentor who any good monk of the Immaculate Order would stop at nothing to destroy, or the graceful, 'idolatrous' fighting style which lets him balance weightlessly on any surface, no matter how unsteady or slick. If you want more friends, minions, social or physical capital, anything like that, ther's probably a way to shuffle points around and make it work.

Transcendent Phoenix Pinions require an hour of maintenance for every 50 hours of flight, with any shorter period rounding up to a full hour. He's got almost all the requirements to do the maintenance himself, just needs Craft (Lightning) at 3 dots, plus at least 2 in Craft (Fire) as a prerequisite.

>>/quest/870899
>do you want to be tough and paranoid now
>invest in prospects for future development to get more power
Philosophically, I'm kinda not prioritizing either approach, really, when it comes to character creation. My main criteria is creating someone interesting and weird and true to whatever the concept is, rather than shooting for power in the long term, or ability to survive the short term.

Paranoid and pragmatic decision making is the realm of an established or existing character, trying to do the best they can with the resources have. (Well, assuming they think that way).

Cross-posted cause this is all design philosophy and no actual development on what I'm doing. (That's pending).

>>121068
Oh, did Tunic express an interest in this game?

>>121073
> did Tunic express an interest in this game?
Not that I can remember, but I had that character mostly prepared already, just as a thought experiment, so I figured I might as well make it available as a rough draft in case he did.
>interesting and weird and true to whatever the concept is
Much as I would love to help with that, it's harder to think about such abstract subjects when I'm as tired as I have been lately, relative to the more concrete mechanical decisions which I've already studied at length. Mechanical problems can also spoil an otherwise fun concept. So, when I point you at something like surprise-negators, that's purely tactical optimization advice, and should be considered accordingly. Vast majority of characters in the canonical setting manage well enough without Chungian paranoia combos; those who use them are terrifying juggernauts even by the standards of other terrifying juggernauts. https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?252712-Necro-EXALTED-2E-Combat-201

>>121074
Oh, don't worry about it, I didn't mean that as a criticism. You provided plenty of weird and interesting options to consider, I'm just working on sorting through and deciding what's most relevant from that pile right now.

The whole exercise has been a very interesting one, being able to design something in such a complicated system despite information disparity.

>>120456
Whoops! I had everything ready, but being overseas in a place without cell connection or internet meant I couldn't do much more than piggy back free wifi on my phone occasionally. Thought I was going to have everything set before heading back to the states, but the place we were staying never worked it out. Due to improper instructions from airport personnel, and a lack of both time and due diligence on our part, there ended up being problems with our baggage. One of the resulting occurrences was losing the images I had. And, up until now, it's just been personal reasons for not getting back on the bandwagon and re-doing it. If you're till interested I sent a mostly finished picture your way. Would be easier with any sort of actual art program or something more sophisticated than a track pad, but I suppose we're all doomed to suffer in the moment in hopes of suffering less in the future.

Just read this thread, gonna try to catch up on the big one when I've slept more than 6 hours in the past 2 days. Big walls of text filled with words I have to research are a bit tougher to get through than our ordinary posts which I seem to misread plenty as it is.

>>121618
> As far as questions go, I'm interested in where the name Ledaal comes from / what it means.
Bit of in-setting context needed for that. Somewhat more than 750 years ago, the world was in the process of being destroyed by the Great Contagion (a 90%+ lethal disease which was so virulent it ignored species barriers, and could even be transmitted by esoteric means, such as astrological study of it's progress), along with a simultaneous invasion by Prince Balor of the Terrible Gaze and his numberless armies of chaos. One woman, now known as the Scarlet Empress and by no other name, wiped out both of those existential threats at a single stroke with a stolen superweapon known as the Sword of Creation, or the Realm Defense Grid. A few years later, she used it again to stop a group of more conventional warlords known as the Seven Tigers, but the collateral damage from that incident was too severe to justify routine use, so she built up a conventional army and navy and so on of her own, and a dynasty of Dragon-Blooded Exalts to staff the upper echelons of the mechanisms of empire. She's been unquestioned ruler of the Blessed Isle (which has approximately the land area of Russia, but with far better soil and climate, plus an 800-mile-high mountain at the center serving as the Elemental Pole of Earth) from when she first seized control of the Realm Defense Grid and used it to announce that fact to everyone, up until about five in-setting years ago when she disappeared under excessively mysterious circumstances. Much of the rest of the civilized world is the Realm's tributaries and client states, which are now being overtaxed and/or preparing for open rebellion as everyone tries to figure out whether the Scarlet Empress is really gone (Dragon-Blooded normally die of old age after 250 to 300 years, without strict personal cultivation and/or anagathic drugs, and seldom make it to 500 even with such efforts; the Empress was seemingly young when she started, and never showed the slightest sign of aging even after more than seven centuries of very active rulership, but it's conceivable that whatever secret magic she used to prolong her life finally wore out, or turned against her) or just working on some secret project or playing an elaborate prank as a test of loyalty, and if she IS gone, who should take over. The "regent," a worthless little man named Tepet Fokuf, is a strictly short-term compromise.

The Scarlet Dynasty is over ten thousand strong, but far from cohesive. There are currently eleven Great Houses, generally named after their founders: the Empress's spouses, consorts, or direct offspring. Sometimes lesser Houses rise in status, and Great Houses can fall due to mismanagement. Over the years, two have been deliberately destroyed due to treason, though remnants of both remain, in varying degrees of secrecy. Eagerness to seize near-absolute power over the majority of known world is tempered by fear of becoming a third such 'object lesson.' Nobody but the Empress herself has ever been known to operate the Defense Grid, or even enter it's main control room without her permission and active assistance, so a successor would need to either duplicate her greatest accomplishment (about which little is known except that she thoroughly researched the matter beforehand, in libraries now lost, and went in with at least four companions, none of whom made it back out) or else make do without that ultimate trump card, the true keystone of her rule.

Ledaal was the Empress's fourth child to survive to adulthood, and the Great House which bears her name carries on both her bloodline affinity for elemental Air and a cultural tendency toward relentless intellectual curiosity, which tend to reinforce each other. I could go on about the four elders leading the house (Ledaal Kebok Omeger, Ledaal Catala Gamam, Ledaal Caros, and Ledaal Cycel), other notable descendants, the port city of Arjuf on the Blessed Isle's south coast, various assets both near there and off in the Threshold which the house controls, how and why the Catala household's study of sorcery is kept separate from the Heptagram, alliances and rivalries with other Great Houses, etc., but it'd mostly be copypasta from Manual of Exalted Power: Dragon-Blooded or Compass of Celestial Directions: The Blessed Isle. Any house can potentially produce an exalt of any aspect (as exemplified by Cynis Mond, the Windtamer) but of the two predominately Air-aspected houses, scholarship and adventures in search of secrets of the lost age seemed like a better focus for Ji's family than House Tepet's current political agenda, which is mainly focused on staving off their oncoming collapse in the wake of the loss of five of their six legions - a good chunk of the Realm's overall military force - in a campaign against some anathema in the far Northeast threshold.

>Also, do the mentor or henchman have names?
Not yet. I figured I'd sketch out mechanical necessities, and then let you fill in more of the characterization stuff. I've got a premade Abyssal and Lunar who could be plugged in as the lich-queen Astius and your Mentor, respectively, but the former was more of a theoretical optimization exercise in figuring out how to use Abyssal charms to stun-lock defenders and wipe out a city with minimal direct offensive action, while the latter actually started as a joke (expy of a well-known videogame character), and the power levels are a bit off, so it might be preferable to work from scratch instead.

Haven't got stats for the henchman at all, beyond the standard parrot-beastman mutation package and some vague concepts, but generating heroic mortals can be very quick and straightforward, since they've got no charm trees to be concerned with.

Having a Lunar as your sifu in Crane Style is super heretical, btw. Could change that, make it safer, or even respec for a completely orthodox set of starting charms, but this way might have more fun story hooks. The Immaculate Order, official religion of the Realm, says CMA should only be used to emulate the Elemental Dragons, which makes Crane Style itself heathen idolatry at best, Willing submission to an Anathema in any capacity is, of course, horrid blasphemy AND treason, has been since long before the Empress, all the way through the Shogunate, ever since the Great Uprising... even though it feels so good, so correct, as if the whole world finally makes sense on some soul-deep level. Several DB charms build off of that effect, of which the most easily accessible might be Tireless String-Plucking Meditation, which requires only Performance 4, Essence 3, and one other charm (a hide-in-plain-sight effect). By itself, it negates fatigue from, and other internal penalties to, Performance-based actions, and also makes the user's fingernails grow slightly longer, sharper, and perfectly manicured. When performing at the direct request or command of a celestial exalt (known to pious immaculates as Anathema), such actions don't merely fail to increase fatigue, but actually count as sleep for all purposes. So, if Ledaal Ji learned that charm, he could spend eight hours every night dancing across rooftops and trees, practicing Crane Style katas according to a schedule his mentor set, and then be perfectly well rested, ready to pack the remaining seventeen hours of the day full of other productive activities.

On the subject of heresy, those Path-Carving Boots are a product of the demon realm rather than wholesome elements of Creation. This isn't quite as bad as it sounds, since Realm sorcerers summon and bind demons all the time for various utilitarian purposes and that's fine with the Immaculates as long as they keep things under control, but it might still look bad to the sort of person who knows the implications. The boots function is to transmute whatever they step on into an inch-thick, yard-wide basalt roadway. On a solid floor, or even something like quicksand, that path persists indefinitely; across unstable surfaces, up to and including bridges or spiral staircases resting on empty air, there's a range limit (after which the boots can't carve more path until back on solid ground) and part of the magic fails at the end of the scene or when deliberately smashed, allowing inadequately supported sections to crumble into black gravel. Between that effect, Crane Form's perfect balance, and actual flight with the Transcendent Phoenix Pinions, he's got little to fear from unstable terrain despite lacking Athletics skill.

Lightning Box has two functions. When empty, an left out under the open sky during a thunderstorm, it attracts a bolt of lightning, which charges it up and might cause considerable damage to anything it happens to be touching. Once charged, it can be used to recover 30 motes, nearly as much as four hours of rest or meditation in an instant - but also inflicts serious injury in the process, since you're essentially jamming a canned lightning bolt up your nose. Air-aspect Dragon-Blooded gain the same benefit without injury risk, since their anima can naturally absorb lightning. If you're lucky enough to have an action scene during a suitable sort of storm, a lightning box might be charged and drained repeatedly, inverting the usual battle-economy dynamic of DBs having relatively limited mote pools.

>I'm not sure if you've read ISSTH
Sadly I have not. Don't know where to find it, nor am I adequately fluent in any language other than English. If you'd be so kind as to point me at an adequate translation, though, I tend to read both quickly and thoroughly - when I have the time and energy to do so at all, which is less than certain lately, but even so I'm very interested in the subject.

>>121619
>he could spend eight hours every night dancing across rooftops [...] and then be perfectly well rested, ready to pack the remaining seventeen hours of the day [...]

Does this mean the days are 25 hours?

>>121621
Yes. Each day is 25 hours, months are exactly 28 days, the year is five seasons of three months each, and between years there's a five-day period called Calibration during which the night sky lacks moon or stars and the borders between worlds are thin.

>>121619
>scholarship and adventures in search of secrets of the lost age
Sounds good to me.

>super heretical
Cultivation is inherently a defiance of the Heavens themselves! Stepping outside the natural order and weaving unique natural laws for oneself... How could one walk the long, arduous path to immortality if they're afraid of a mere Immaculate Order?

>the usual battle-economy dynamic
>mote pools
Motes are... sort of like pathfinder's ki/panache/grit/etc pools, right? Points to spend to power the stronger abilities? What is the size of Ledaal Ji's mote pool, and what is the average range of mote cost for his abilities? Also, what types of things can typically be done without spending motes? I'd just like to better understand how much I should be preserving and how much I should be spending. In other words, are these more like bullets or more like grenades?

>ISSTH
You can read the entire story, fully translated to English, at http://www.wuxiaworld.com/novel/i-shall-seal-the-heavens
It's over 1600 chapters long, spanning 10 books, so... it's more of a longer-term read. I myself enjoyed reading it a few chapters at a time on mobile in my off-time.

>What is the size of Ledaal Ji's mote pool
Listed under the Breeding background. Current total is 36, and there's room to grow, mainly by increasing Essence and Willpower.
>what is the average range of mote cost for his abilities?
None of the charms he has so far cost more than six, and the only ones costing more than three are scene-long. Of course, he doesn't have any Excellencies yet, but those have variable cost and tend to be very efficient for DBs. Terrestrial circle sorcery often costs ten or fifteen motes per spell, it's fairly rare for any charm or spell to cost more than twenty.
>Also, what types of things can typically be done without spending motes?
Any and all mundane actions. If you need a boost beyond what available Excellencies can offer, spend Willpower, possibly channeled through an appropriate Virtue (though that's only really useful for Virtues rated 3 or higher). As an Exalt, you have enough control over your own physiology that you can stanch your own bleeding wounds by simply deciding to do so, with two successes on a reflexive Stamina+Resistance roll, one attempt per five seconds. Similarly superhuman (though less than absolute) levels of resistance to poison, disease, etc. are standard for exalts and similar supernatural beings. Jade Crucible Method augments this capability for three motes per shot, since he wouldn't be a very good doctor if he went around catching diseases from his patients and then spreading them further, now would he?

Air-aspect anima power can't technically be used without spending motes, but it activates automatically when you spend enough on other things, creating a whirlwind around you which triples jump distance, negates falling damage, and deflects incoming projectiles. Flaring your anima to that level also creates light bright enough to read by and causes damage to everything near you (though not your personal equipment). This latter effect is more often a nuisance than an effective tool or weapon, since it'll break stealth, wreck a wood-framed house, injure or kill a horse you're riding or soldiers you're fighting alongside, at least absent other precautions, so sometimes it's worth the five motes to activate your anima power directly.

> are these more like bullets or more like grenades?
There are Solar and Alchemical charms which literally convert motes one-for-one into ammo. In a serious fight scene, with reasonable levels of creativity and engagement with the setting, you'll typically be recovering your choice of four motes or one temporary willpower per action from stunt awards. Sometimes six motes. More, with some limitations, if you learn Overdrive charms.

Willpower is somewhat more like grenades, particularly for spirits (demons, elementals, gods, exmachinae, etc.) who can't recover it so easily in downtime. That's a major reason why gods crave worship while shirking their duties, particularly the sacrifice of sapient beings.

>>121635
Interesting calendar differences; most notable difference to me is the 5 seasons, given that without a sufficient real world analog I’m at a loss for what it might entail. Are they based on the elements then, instead of positioning relative to the sun? Is there an intertwining between those elements? Is there even a definitive solar body?

>>121652
http://rpg.wikia.com/wiki/Exalted_Calendar
>Is there even a definitive solar body?
Yes.

Sol Invictus is the god of the sun, and 'first among equals' of the Incarnae. The Dirigible Engine Daystar, which appears from the East every morning and departs from the West every evening without fail, is the Primordial-forged battlestation of which he's the god. It has several other functions, as explained in Ink Monkeys volume 13. The sun is one of the few things in the sky which doesn't disappear or go all screwy during Calibration.

The other incarnae are Luna, who has her own flying base called Silver Chair, and the Five Maidens (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) who collectively manage the Loom of Fate for which the remainder of the night sky is a sort of display screen.

Gaia is considered one of the incarnae, but she's actually a surviving primordial. Elemental Dragons, slumbering in their respective poles, are among her third circle souls.

Others who might be considered equal to the incarnae, if their powers were fully manifest in the world, include the primordial Autocthon, a hypothetical sixth maiden (possibly petrified and imprisoned on a living island in the far West), and Sessun Douji, the Mountain Boy, who is associated with the transition between Ages.

>>121654
>No intimacies defined yet
Re-reading the backstory you wrote for me, it looks like Ledaal Ji's intimacy list would look something like:
- Loyalty to his Tao / his mentor. Abandoning either would be no different than abandoning himself. After all, when one steps off the path of ascendance, the only place left to go is down. It is a long and painful road, and if walking it requires one to pave the way forward with the bones and blood of those who stand in one's way, then so be it. Heresy be damned.
- Loyalty to his heritage / clan bloodline. Even if his personal relationships with other clan members may be distant and/or strained, they are still family and are thus treated with a higher degree of tolerance and respect than those not of the illustrious surname Ledaal. Petty feuds with cousins or uncles cannot ever sully his reverence for his sacred ancestor.
- Love for serenity. Observing nature, tending gardens, playing or listening to a serene song, slowly savoring fine wine, writing calligraphy, and so on. Any activity or environment which is calm and soothing to the senses.

>anything you don't think is a good fit
I can't imagine ever using archery or ride unless absolutely forced to, though I also don't know the system well enough to know whether or not these would be indispensible skills. If the party is riding everywhere and half the battles are fought at long range, I'd be a fool not to take them.

>Tireless String-Plucking Meditation
This sounds fantastically flavorful. I'm a fan.
>spend eight hours every night dancing across rooftops and trees, practicing Crane Style katas
This, however, sounds like a fantastic way to be murdered by the Immaculate Order. Or at least bring down a lot of unnecessary trouble on the party's heads. An eight-hour heretical martial arts performance every night sounds like a logistical nightmare. I don't suppose I could take this power, Performance 1 (+3 Guqin), and actually pluck strings for eight hours a night for my mentor instead?

>>121645
>reasonable levels of creativity and engagement with the setting
>stunt awards
Ah, is this an rp/fiat-based game? Hopefully I don't muck this up by not doing things that are obvious for an experienced player. Could you describe this battle system in more detail for me? Perhaps a typical exchange of blows?

I don't want to try to do something flavorful like backhanding away the BBEG's energy bolt like a DBZ character if the result is "You try to slap away the energy like an idiot and blow up" or "you succeed, but you expend most of your mote points in one go from the needlessly arrogant gesture and it whips up a windstorm that destroys the countryside and injures all your allies while the enemy moves in to finish you off, you idiot". Similarly, I don't want to be overly cautious like dodging away from an attack if the result is "You leap away into the distance like a coward, while your braver allies use their powers correctly and immediately restore all their spent motes for being flavorful while you did nothing."

In other words, I don't want to screw myself over by misunderstanding the system and power level of the world, as I did in Pdn[T]tO.

>>121667
Answered most of the character-specific stuff in the Quest thread.
>Could you describe this battle system in more detail for me? Perhaps a typical exchange of blows?
That's mostly covered in the linked thread here: >>121074
Notably, I am NOT using one particular part of the errata which gives all form-type charms the 'combo-basic' keyword, nor the 'dynamic form transition' stuff from Ink Monkeys, so... y'know that cliched half-serious question, which fans of any magical girl or sentai show have probably heard, "why don't the bad guys attack during the transformation sequence?" That's going to be a very real and serious tactical concern in celestial-tier combat, since most people won't be able to use perfect defenses during their power-up posing. Similar issues apply to casting mid-battle sorcery or necromancy. Standard safe options would be to activate scene-long charms right before the fight, or at least before you break stealth and get directly involved (Tuxedo Mask uses this strategy), or have teammates or bodyguards cover you using Defend Other actions.

That latter option doesn't necessarily require other exalts. A celestial circle sorcerer could summon and bind a second-circle demon, such as Gervesin, to provide a few timely perfect parries, or use the spell Imbue Amalgam to turn a willing mortal into a mutated servant with a limited selection of charms - possibly including a full Chungian paranoia combo. Even an emerald circle sorcerer could summon a storm serpent, though that involves other risks, and anyone could be protected by a sufficiently advanced combat automaton constructed as an artifact.

Ledaal Ji personally, as somebody with Dex 5, combat-relevant skills at 5, and a surprise-negator but no excellencies, can probably take on any reasonable number of mooks, but should exercise caution around even the weaker combat-oriented spirits, much less other exalts. Fluttering Cry of Warning doesn't work if the beneficiary has initiated a physical attack previously in the same scene, and he doesn't have any actual counterattack charms yet, so if you think there might be ninjas about, or enough enemies to completely surround you, don't attack directly unless you're sure you can end the threat completely in one shot with Empowering Justice Redirection. Could still fry 'em with your anima flux, though. If a final-boss-looking monster is unloading any serious violence, don't even try to tank it until you learn Crossed Wings Denial or some other perfect defense. Stone walls are pretty good for hiding behind, but First Age alloys (such as the hulls of magitech skyships) are often better, and being undetected or out of range is best of all. Sure, you're an Exalt, a Prince of the Earth, but you're also young, barely armed or armored, and short on backup.

>backhanding away the BBEG's energy bolt like a DBZ character
Parrying lethal and ranged attacks unarmed isn't normally possible, because catching an arrow or blade with your hand is normally just another way of getting hit and wounded. Stunting - that is, describing your action in more detail than the minimum necessary to establish the mechanics - can make things possible which otherwise wouldn't be, if it provides an explanation (however tenuous) for the exception.

Stunts provide three other benefits: bonus dice on the stunted action, mote or WP recovery on your next action, and "dramatic editing," meaning you can add some new feature or element to the scene so long as it doesn't contradict what's already present. The former two are a sliding scale depending on the quality of the stunt, but editorial privilege is somewhat more all-or-nothing: to retcon something into the scene by stunting alone, a stunt has to engage with the existing scenery and continuity in some succinct, non-repetitive way.

>is this an rp/fiat-based game?
Not exactly. The Invincible Sword Princess (Dex 5, Melee 5, Specialty +3, Weapon Accuracy +2, Excellency +10) having an off day (no stunt, -3 internal penalty from sleep deprivation, maybe a few more from marching for hours in the sun with full armor on, or intoxication), is usually going to summarily flatten an ordinary soldier (Dex 3, Melee 2, weapon accuracy +1) defending his true love (compassion channel +3, best possible non-heroic stunt +2, boosted to +3 by Motivation resonance) because the skill disparity is too extreme for hot-blooded passion to overcome. There's still an element of probability, though. Sometimes, when the ISP rolls her fistfull of ten-sided dice, none of them will come up successes, maybe even a few 1s and then it's a botch. For heroic types, 10s on the dice count as two successes, so sometimes somebody with no idea what they're doing (no relevant skill, attribute dice wiped out by penalties) pulls out a 3-die stunt description, and rolls 6 successes. Twelve successes on six dice is a literal one-in-a-million chance, but it could happen.

The Primordials created Creation by draining the chaotic potential out of a section of the Wyld, making a region of space bound by consistent, deterministic physical laws, but they also made servant races to maintain that system against the inevitable corrosion. The wyld's infinite potential, after all, would necessarily include the potential to unravel any static system, or even a dynamic system of finite complexity. So, the gods were given a degree of free will, in order to be able to adapt to unexpected changes. Humans were designed with even greater self-determination, so that they'd imagine how things could be better, but crippled in other ways to prevent them from realizing that potential. They were meant as a sort of self-replicating essence battery, containing a tiny spark of wyld-like potentiality in their dreams, channeling it through prayer to empower those greater than themselves, but otherwise fragile, weak, and harmless, at least by the standards of the time. Back then, behemoths and third-circle devas (not yet demons) roamed the world, and cataclysmic devastation was a relatively ordinary part of the weather. The gods weren't happy cleaning up those messes, but it was all they'd ever known.

Autocthon, the Great Maker, King of All Craftsmen, sort of a cosmic sickly nerd, often mocked and abused for his weakness by the other Primordials, thought humans were kinda neat because they used tools, and he likes tools.

The Unconquered Sun, incarna of perfection, virtue, light, and various other important things, liked humans at least partly because, unlike himself and all the other gods, they weren't geased against attacking his worst enemy. He got together with the other incarnae, Autocthon, and Gaia, they came up with a plan, and then the rest of recorded history happened.

Teal deer, stunting functions like a narrativist mechanic, but it's actually meant to simulate the in-setting metaphysical impact of creativity and free will: generating small but significant amounts of raw power seemingly from nowhere, and warping probability to enable heroism. Lots of charms interact with the stunt mechanics, notably including the form-type charm for Crane style.

Thirty chapters in to ISSTH, and I think I've got some idea how to explain the similarities and differences. In Exalted, the equivalent of all those medicinal pills and disposable flying swords would be the products of thaumaturgy, mostly the Arts of Alchemy and Enchantment. The best ordinary thaumaturgical items, such as 8-scream devil powder, are considered equivalent to 1-dot artifacts, while that pink amulet might be a 2-dot comparable to Skin-Like-The-Mountains Oil. The only item I've seen which really seems comparable to an Exalted-style artifact (apart from the standard-issue inventory pouches, of course) is the copper mirror. The jadeite bottle and wooden sword might also fit, haven't really seen enough of them to be sure.

In Exalted, artifacts (above the 1-dot level, at least) take months or years to make, potentially decades when you're really pushing your crafting resources to the utmost limit. Once made, they're extremely durable. Some starting dragonblood's basic jade armor or daiklaive might have a far longer and more storied history of previous owners than any IRL Stradivarius violin, and that's just for stuff forged during the reign of the Scarlet Empress. The Primordial War ended roughly five thousand years ago, quite a few interesting things were built during it or before it even began, and some of them have been in more or less continuous use. The height of Exalted innovation was the High First Age, which lasted from the end of the Primordial War to the Usurpation, some 3500 years. During much of that time, there were factory-cathedrals cranking out mass-market user-friendly flying cars, and everything else that might imply. First Age infrastructure was run into the ground by the Shogunate, then shredded by the Balorian Crusade, so it's mostly the very sturdiest stuff that survived. Daiklaives don't just randomly crack apart, and people don't usually start vomiting blood unless they're out of the fight.

The level of profusion of thaumaturgy depicted is rare in the default exalted setting, though somewhat plausible in areas thick with supernatural beings. Many of the effects described - particularly meal replacement and instant healing - are far beyond what Exalted thaumaturgy can normally provide. Drugs intended to facilitate spiritual advancement appear in Exalted more or less exclusively in the context of allowing mortals initial access to enlightened essence, and are only one of several options; after someone's got an active essence pool, it's down to either months of training, personal epiphany from Quest completion, or direct infusion of power from a spirit or exalt.

Another big difference is that there are a LOT fewer steps separating the least from the greatest. First there's extras, who are completely generic and interchangeable. Then there's named nonheroic mortals, then heroic mortals. (Technically you could have a nonheroic mortal with enlightened essence but that's rare.) Most magic treats all three the same, as non-essence-users, basically chumps. First big dividing line is enlightenment.
Enlightened mortals and god-blooded start at Essence 1, same as the chumps, but they don't get roflstomped quite as casually by some magical effects, and they can do a lot more thaumaturgy in a day by paying for it with motes rather than WP. Sometimes they can learn charms, or attune to artifacts, or do other useful stuff. Depending on the method of enlightenment, they might get bumped up to Essence 2 automatically. With a lot of XP and arduous training, they can reach Essence 3, but no further. A god-blood who gets to that point and receives a blessing of further power stops being human and transcends into an Essence 4 spirit, exact type dependent on heritage.
Actual exalts almost always start at Essence 2, and can reach Essence 3 easily. Next major dividing line is Essence 4, the level which god-blooded can't reach at all and exalts have to work for. Exalts, along with naturally-enlightened races such as the Mountain Folk or Dragon Kings, can't go higher than Essence 5 without being more than a hundred years old, or finding some sort of special exception. Those usually have unpleasant side effects, and even then only raise the cap by one. Essence 7 has an age minimum of 250 years, then 500 for Essence 8, a thousand for Essence 9, and too few have ever made it to Essence 10 to safely generalize. There is no such thing as having a true Permanent Essence of 11 or higher, though it is possible to stack bonuses for calculating the effects of charms or spells based on essence rating beyond that point.
Celestial gods, "lesser" elemental dragons, and second-circle demons are usually in that same Essence 5 to 8 range. Third-circle demons, deathlords, and other apocalyptic monstrosities tend to be Essence 8 to 10 - though an Essence 5 exalt can sometimes summon them with adamant circle sorcery or void circle necromancy, as appropriate, and even bind them to service. The Celestial Incarnae and any Primordials (even the yozis and neverborn, which may be fallen and lessened but are still transcendent entities) are all Essence 10.

One thing I never really understood about the Exalted Universe was this strange appearance of a mandatory pseudo-canon, in which EVERY Exalted world begins with the same exact context and history: Solars conquer primordials, Solars enact Golden Age (pun intended) with zenith in technological advancements, Solars go crazy from complacency and pride, Sidereals tip the balance in the Dragon-Blooded's favor during the revolution, Scarlet Empress comes to power the same way Quaintana did, intentionally constructs her empire with such fine-tuned precision and balance that it cannot survive her disappearance, she disappears, the empire slowly goes mad from losing its universal counterweight, she comes back married to a deathlord and all hell breaks loose.

I mean, I get that some games require certain immutable pieces of back-history to make sense, but there doesn't seem to be an actual Exalted world that doesn't have its own partially-cobbled-up history that happens to use Exalted rules. What gives?

>>121691
The default setting is enormous, so there's plenty of room to cram various different stories into it. Mythological context is helpful for setting the tone. Prior eras of the default history are playable settings on their own. Shards of the Exalted Dream gives various other alternatives, including space opera, modern day hidden-world (e.g. The Matrix), and Gunstar Autocthonia which is a possible alternate outcome of the Primordial War.
> she comes back married to a deathlord and all hell breaks loose.
This isn't standard. The "Return of the Scarlet Empress" adventure (and "Under the Rose," which is a sort of preview) presents several possible scenarios, including Her Redness coming back as a deathlord, but by default the yozis cannot escape their prison in any lasting way, and the Scarlet Empress need not return at all; the world must learn to make do without her.

Took me a while but I'm through the combat framework, now just browsing the comments for interesting information.

Having a better understanding of the combat is useful, but without a solid foundation to rely on a lot of it is still sort of ambiguous to me; it might be useful to elaborate on the how and why of things as we start to make in-game actions, at least for me, although i'd bet some other people would benefit too.

My basic understanding is that we describe a given action, and then roll however many dice are applicable based on all our relative attributes, so everything is additive as opposed to having a single relevant skill bonus like other systems. We're given bonuses and penalties based on our description and what's going on in the environment; pretty standard environmental rules, although the stunting feature is very cool. Then, in the case of combat, our opponent has a defense value, which also gets some penalties and bonuses for the same type of stuff, and we roll to see who gets more successes. If my attack succeeds, then I check to see if it's mitigated by anything like armor or natural resilience. If it's nullified, I get to roll a small amount of base damage, but if it's not, I get to roll for damage + extra successes. Depending on what charms you have, you may be able to add extra dice at certain points- it seems that excellencies are a good basis for getting extra dice here, which I didn't really understand at first. Might want to look at my character again now that I know how much money I have to work with, and what makes you good at stuff.

This is a simplified breakdown given that the overview was several pages of technical jargon I don't think I can fit every nuance in while I'm tired and hungry, but let me know if there's any glaring misunderstandings or errors. For instance, the idea that we can only channel our virtues a small number of times per story, which seem to be fairly long units of time if that whole fight was just once scene, strikes me as odd. I'm also curious what you can and can't spend temporary willpower on, and if you can stunt in your downtime to re-gain it at all.

>>121710
>the idea that we can only channel our virtues a small number of times per story, which seem to be fairly long units of time if that whole fight was just once scene, strikes me as odd
There are a number of ways to regain virtue channels. As a houserule, you can also recover an appropriate virtue channel as the award for a 3-die stunt (including a normally 2-die stunt upgraded by Motivation resonance) when your Willpower pool is already full.

If a scene is approximated as twenty minutes, then a 'chapter' (game session, seldom relevant to the mechanics) could be anywhere from a single excessively complex and exciting scene to months or years of downtime, but can be usefully approximated as a week, and a 'story' usefully approximated as a season - three in-game months. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, for example, would be two stories: reaching the surface world and fighting Lord Genome, then reaching space and fighting the Anti-Spirals. That sense of closure, even if it's less than complete, is when virtue channels get replenished.

>I'm also curious what you can and can't spend temporary willpower on,
Main things are resisting mental influence, and enhancing any rolled action by adding a bonus success (or virtue channel). In other words, kicking reason to the curb and going beyond the impossible. One interesting corner case is that you can't choose not to spend willpower to resist influence that goes directly against your Motivation: even if you haven't got any WP left, such influence is always resisted unless your will has been broken by prolonged hardship or particularly nasty mind-magic. Recovering from that sort of brokenness is as simple as regaining full WP... which, interestingly, means people with higher WP take longer to recover.
>and if you can stunt in your downtime to re-gain it at all.
If you're taking stuntable actions, it's not downtime. Keeping your motes and WP topped up with stunt awards is a sensible practice, and doing so successfully means, in-character, that you're either staying within your comfort zone and avoiding serious challenges, or holding back and not making full use of your powers.

Motes and WP can absolutely be regained in downtime, though, under the right conditions. In any environment of healthy living essence, non-Abyssal exalts regain 4 motes per hour of casual activity, or 8 motes per hour of meditation or total relaxation. Hearthstones can provide motes even without rest, and artifact sockets are only necessary to gain the secondary benefits; you can in principle charge from an arbitrarily large number of hearthstones just by holding them against your skin. The dreams from a night of restful sleep provide WP proportional to your Conviction. Worship from a cult provides daily WP (unless the cult consists maily of ghosts). A scene of progress toward your Quest (or pursuing a demonic Urge, or snuggling your True Love) recovers one WP, even if it's trivial enough to require no rolled actions and repetitive enough to be unsuitable for a stunt. That's the low-level mechanical teeth of healthy societies turning morale advantage into tangible gains: people who do what they love have a lot more WP to throw around when the going gets rough.

The cathartic madness of Limit Break can provide temporary WP which exceeds your capacity - as an aside, my personal theory is that during the Primordial War the Exalted Host could have resisted the Great Curse, but on some level decided not to. Imagine them sitting around the table, discussing it OOC, after the ST provided a loose outline of the mechanical effects. They might've been thinking it was a matter of having kicked open the final boss like a piñata, then collecting a prize which fell out. In the moment of dying, a cosmic sollipsist gained just enough empathy for the mortal human perspective to give a perfect poison apple, a prize to help them win the war - at the cost of subtly rotting their society from within in the peace that followed.

>>121719
>One of the dying primordials developed a greater understanding of humanity's spirituality and thought process, just in time to have their ass handed to them but with enough preparation to throw out one last curse that the Solars bought hook, line, and sinker, and brought cosmic harm to the entirety of Creation as a direct consequence of their own easily-manipulated free will
That's deep, man.

Okay, so I made a few changes to Embri, mostly after re-reading the rules according to this: http://ageofexalted.net/wiki/index.php/Character_Creation:_Alchemicals
First up: apparently Adamant Caste is normally unplayable, but we're going to toss that rule because you obviously don't care about what's playable. You let me play a gnoll-human with cybernetic laser guns and a harpy with OP resurrection passive powers. You let strngy play a Face-Stealing demon Widow with an alignment shift and you let Santova play Holy Al Hoehnheim. At this rate, my biggest worry is that I don't have the imagination to think up even wackier characters for future games.
I altered Embri's attributes according to the 8-Caste 6-Favored 4-Other +1 to C or F rules, but I honestly don't like them. I don't want to use any bonus points here, though.
Caste Dots (+8): Strength+0, Appearance+4, Perception+4
Favored Dots (+6): Dexterity+3, Manipulation+3, Stamina+0
Other Dots (+4): Charisma+2, Intelligence+1, Wits+1
Extra Dot(1): Dexterity+1
I forgot what abilities you recommended, but I've picked four specialties, most of which go into Stealth in Populated Areas: Ambush (the spider's greatest skill, even greater than luring), Hide in Plain Sight (in populated areas, she doesn't stand out to anyone she doesn't want noticing her), and Selective Inconspicuousness (the higher-ups regard Embri as a common courtesan, whore, or tourist rich girl). And crafting because you said something about that.
I gave Embri's background a few tweaks. I would have put all 10 points in Artifact for maximum efficiency but then I remembered you said Savant is for maintaining artifacts and -> http://www.waterphoenixking.com/comic/volume-18-page-30 I'd rather not have this happen to all these expensive 4-dots I'm planning to hoard.
As for the artifacts themselves, a 21-dot limit is surprisingly low. I ended up choosing the Time-Strung Bow, a Frozen Heart of the Tellerauthelot, an adamant reaper daiklaive with that flying ability mirror mod thing, a Scabbard of the Living weapon, AND a Mantle of Soot. See, I'm planning to give that mantle of soot as a peace offering tribute. Embri snuck her way into the floating castle, she is NOT there by accident. But, she has the mantle and doesn't know what it is, and suddenly Lute is jumping up and down, pointing at the cloak that Embri thought was a mere blanket of darkness, and begins offering a king's ransom for it. After some careful bargaining, Embri trades the Mantle of Soot to Bridget for a Rite of Safe Passage, which basically makes her a permanent paid servant to Bridget's House (and thus her Kingmaker ambition will now point towards "making Bridget the Tollmaster of the local area, then the region, and then quite possibly the entire PLANET"), and in turn Bridget demands servitude and boons from Lute, upon whom she will bestow the Mantle after her demands are satisfied. Embri can now draw resources from Bridget's house, and instead of using two dots on a backstory item like resources, she trades a six-dot artifact she purchased for the price of two dots to someone who is willing to offer four dots' worth of resources and their eternal friendship, and this in turn also cultivates a relationship between the castle owner and Lute.

Hey guys, sorry about the silence. Life's kicked me hard in the ass lately but things have stabilized and I think it's uphill from here.

It looks like things have been moving while I was gone! I should be able to start contributing to the patreon again soon, and I'll jump back into the xalt quest once I've had time to figure out where we are. I missed you all!

>>121720
>has the Mantle of Soot and doesn't know what it is
>suddenly Lute is jumping up and down, pointing at the cloak that Embri thought was a mere blanket of darkness, and begins offering a king's ransom for it.
I'm not sure why you think the fate-ninja who specializes in manipulation and social-fu is going to have a poker face that bad, much less tell Embri she's holding something extraordinarily valuable and massively undervaluing it before trying to trade for it.

I mean 'worst' case Embri gifts it to her new best friend, convinced it was her idea, it disappears into hammerspace, and maybe for good measure Embri is then made to forget she ever owned such an item in the first place.

Granted, Lute would probably make sure Embri found her best self in return for her unwitting gift... your mileage may vary on if that's a good thing.

*cough* Did I mention you also outlined a whole bunch of different ways to manipulate Embri in your very first post? >>/quest/867073 Invoke her sister or a resemblance, pose as her Oyabun, otherwise position oneself to give her orders, be a ninja...

Silliness aside, I'm not going to complain if you buy me an artifact, but I can't in good faith advocate it. Also, I'd point out it's likely the Lich who owns the castle would also be very happy to take that off your hands.

>>121725
Welcome back!

You haven't missed much in the way of action, we're still in the chargen haggling stage, though much closer to being done.

>>121725
Good to have you back among us friend.

I've been slowly browsing solar charms, and it feels like browsing through a store look at all the food you know you can't buy. There's a lot of cool charms in here, but one of the themes that I think is really interesting is how many speed focused charms there are for the solars. For some reason I just wasn't expecting it.

To cover a few different options, just because I want to talk about it even though I'm the only solar, you have mountain leap, which gets you about 240 miles an hour, at a cost prohibitive rate. In one scene, aka roughly 20 minutes, I'd pay 40m, 4w, and in my character's case, travel 80 miles. With my essence pool though I could only go a max of about 120 miles before burning out.

Then there's run like a bunny style, which would let me run 90mph for an hour, at the low low cost of 5m, 1w. This means that I could cover ground much more cost efficiently, but much more slowly. My max runs into my willpower cap first, meaning I could go 810 miles in a day. Not bad at all.

Finally, race the sun is very cool, because it lets me stack a different buff on myself as many times as I can pay for. This means I can manage 13,662ft in 22 seconds, or roughly 2.5 miles. Had I infinite essence, the number would be bound to how often I could activate it, meaning I'd just get faster as time progressed. I don't know if I did it correctly, but to find out how many miles you could go in an hour with infinite essence you basically need to do 54(3600!), and then divide that by ft per miles, which I think gives me just under 66,300 miles for that first hour. After about 100 hours of this constant travel, not stopping for even a second, you would have broken light speed. Of course you'd need over a million essence for that. I'm sure anyone with that much essence to throw around would have higher skills, and therefor move things along a bit more quickly, but, given how stunts work, if I spend each turn moving, then I get to act on each tick. And, if every time I act, I stunt, then in theory I could have the essence required to power the lightspeed technique, as long as the storyteller basically said "sure, for the next 360,000 turns you stunt successfully and gain back 4 willpower".

if anyone else sees any potential charms for ridiculous movement speeds, throw them out there, it might be fun to design a character who's goal is to outrace the sun.

>>121729
It's entirely possible that Embri and Lute Silhouette Speculation have met several times before, then mutually forgotten the incident.
>pose as her Oyabun,
You'd probably need the charm Masque Of The Uncanny from the sidereal Larceny tree, or else Loom-Snarling Deception (the Ebon Dragon's gift to all akuma) to make that work, since the boss in question is a god with many mechanical parts.

>>121732
>I don't know if I did it correctly,
You did not. Racing The Sun makes Lightning Speed stackable, but it's still reflexive to activate and requires a scenelong commitment of 3 motes. Biggest applicable mote pool you could plausibly get is 130, committing as much of that as possible would yield a speed of less than 500 mph, and that's at Essence 5. A starting Lunar can do way better with Instinct-Driven Beast Movement.

If you want maximum sprint speed no matter the cost, the best option for Solars is Godspeed Steps (from Dreams of the First Age: Lords of Creation). Variable cost depending on how far you want to go, tops out at 8m 1wp for one mile in a second.

Lunars can still do better, though, with clever use of their native charmset along with three different martial arts styles (Crystal Chameleon, Terrible Ascent-Driven Beast, and most important of all the Art of Relentless Persuasion) to stack multipliers: 4620 yards in a second, more than two and a half miles, for 5m per action. Admittedly it requires more than fifty motes committed to various longer-duration effects, but lack of a per-action willpower cost means it's far more sustainable. Stunts can't be repeated indefinitely, but there's no hard limit to how many lightning boxes somebody might carry around, so a lunar might simply activate one every six actions (sixteen miles) or so, and recover any damage they inflict using Bruise-Relief Method. It'd be possible to push the optimization even further, probably to well over 3600 mph, using Dexterity Excellencies and Relentless Lunar Fury, but I haven't done all the math for that.

>>121733
Fair enough. I assumed soul-mulching doesn't necessarily leave memories pristine.

Loom-Snarling Deception was one of the few charms I was aware of before starting this process, and a disguise option is definitely on my list of things to pick up later. Is there a significant advantage one way or the other compared to the Sidereal charm, beside presumably requiring ranks in Larceny?

>>121740
Loom-Snarling Deception is cheaper (particularly once you're higher Essence), quick to activate, and can potentially beat perfect-perception effects like Eye of the Unconquered Sun, but can only disguise you as a fictitious individual inside fate, rather than, say, impersonating a specific pre-existing person like Embri's oyabun, who happens to be outside fate. Also, the Ebon Dragon could conceivably yank it away from you if you betray the Reclamation, or just if he feels like it.

Masque of the Uncanny supplements a normal disguise action, the only perfect elements of it are fooling mundane scrutiny and making you seem to be naturally outside of fate. If you need to swap disguises quickly, though, the Infinite Resplendence Amulet and Resplendent Destinies can be switched on and off potentially even faster than Loom-Snarling Deception, though for best results against possible magical scrutiny you'd still need preparation time and study of whoever you're impersonating. Resplendent Destinies and the Arcane Fate bonuses to disguise in general won't work against creatures naturally outside of fate, though, including Abyssals, Alchemicals, and second-circle or higher demons - unless you can figure out a way to forcibly bring them inside fate first. There's a Sidereal Lore charm, a type of 4 or 5 dot artifact weapon, probably some other ways.

>soul-mulching doesn't necessarily leave memories pristine.
True enough, but I mean since then. Lute Silhouette's got Arcane Fate to mess up all sorts of records, including memories, plus occasional use of the Forgotten Blade, while Embri has that anima power. Them facing off is like a pair of Wild West gunslingers who've had their revolvers replaced with MIB neuralizers.

>>121739
Oops, I thought it was a logarithmic progression. I was operating under the belief that it added my movement speed every time, and since my movement speed increased every time it was used, then I would get increasingly fast, but after re-reading, it's pretty clear that is not at all how it works.

The lightning speed => godspeed steps => Speed of Light Approach = Speed of Light Approach actually gave me an idea for a character, although I'm not planning on making any more for the current thread at this time. Something along the lines of "Six Pound Ogre", a tiny ball of death who fights with gauntlets and operates primarily by speeding around the room so fast you can't see them, slamming into you with their incredible speed as an unexpected attack for that sweet sweet DV denial, and then simply rinsing and repeating. Obviously with the essence required for such a tactic to be your combat mainstay, you'd have to be approaching godliness, which then means that most of your adversaries would have perfect defenses that can easily deal with you, so it's not a particularly GOOD character design, but it seemed like a fun idea in my head.

Is Terrible Ascent-Driven Beast a lunar only style? I actually had that marked as one of the ones I wanted to train in, on the list after learning how to tank and heal better.

I noticed that the Warhammer (not 40K) Empire consists of a single continent. There is no explaining what happens beyond the mountain boarders, even after millennia of discovery and conquest. Does the same concept of "map bound by the dark ages" apply to our game, or has the Scarlet Empire confirmed the existence of other continents and the shape of the world, but with the same accuracy as a baby drawing scribbles?

>>121751
I thought it was less "map bound by dark ages" and more "running past the edges of Creation into the Wyld."

>>121752
I'm not sure how the Wyld works, but I think it is actually that we haven't mapped past certain points, because of the elemental poles. In each corner of the world there is an elemental pole, and supposedly progress is slowed the closer you get to them, making it almost imposible to go beyond them. I don't know that for certain, but I think the edges of the maps end with the elemental poles, and that the Wyld is almost underneath creation, only bleeding through in certain parts. JamesLeng can probably clarify.

>>121750
>Is Terrible Ascent-Driven Beast a lunar only style?
It's a terrestrial martial arts style, roots of the perfected lotus, so anyone can learn it, even enlightened mortals. In fact it's the only known animal-based style which isn't Celestial.
> speeding around the room so fast you can't see them, slamming into you with their incredible speed as an unexpected attack for that sweet sweet DV denial
Crystal Chameleon Style is meant for that sort of thing. No gauntlets, though; form weapons are the spear, rope dart, weighted rope, and artifact equivalents thereto.
>>121752
This is correct. The edges of the world aren't necessarily well-defined at a glance; they shift with the lunar cycle. Tainted lands which are technically part of Creation may seem much stranger than bordermarches which technically aren't. There's usually about 20 waypoints of bordermarches, 60 waypoints of middlemarches, each waypoint being equivalent to about 30 miles, and then 20 more waypoints of deep wyld where distance is seldom consistent. Beyond that, Pure Chaos. Usual reference I point people at for that is "duck amuck."

The Scarlet Dynasty has no shortage of emerald-circle sorcerers, and the spell Conjuring the Azure Chariot allows point-to-point flight at 200 mph for up to 12 hours per day, so with that alone, long-distance scouting isn't a problem.

The Realm is NOT Dark Ages. They don't make as much military use of magitech as Lookshy, but they've still got a fair number of warstriders and energy cannons, cities and rich peoples' houses have essence-powered lights and heating, they've got weather control tech reliable enough that it's a routine part of both agriculture and riot suppression, lots of other stuff.

Can Alchemicals learn Sorcery, or do they develop cybernetic equivalents akin to Quantum-Potential Alternate Realization?

For now, Embri won't take this path. She doesn't have the courage to explore the unknown, and while she isn't proud of anything she's ever done, she's uncomfortably stubborn in her opinion about the glory and infallibility of her noble House... though that may change, given the lingering doubt that was planted in her mind at the time of The Event.

I'm just wondering what path I should have her take to "complete" her playstyle.

>>/quest/875415
>instrumental in bringing about the Holy Tyrant, who in turn brought about the Unconquored Sun, so historically there’s a viewpoint that favors the Yozai as benefactors of creation. It certainly wouldn’t exist without them.
The Primordials were the creators and (debatable) benefactors of Creation. Yozis aren't full Primordials anymore. Surrendering broke them, so now they're crippled, castrated, imprisoned, boiling over with infinite malice and spite. The legend of the Unconquered Sun is in some sense alternate-history fanfic of the story of Lucifer Morningstar, diverging at the point where rebellious angels (and their human allies) kicked Jehovah's ass, locked the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the basement as if He were Domingo Gallardo Molina, and stole His personal stash (the Games of Divinity, within the Jade Pleasure Dome) for their own amusement.

There are other perspectives on this, of course. "The mind is it's own place, and in itself / can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heaven."

>>121807
I figured at best the myths about the primordials are legend at best and simply wrong at worst soeverything really comes down to what you want to believe, and what perspective you take on said beliefs. All that takes a backseat to my characters relatively low access to scholarly information so I’m assuming we’re in the “sun is good, demons are bad, gods and yozai have a hierarchy I think” level of knowledge, which combined with my seeming abundance of misinformation, should make the actual details of the settings history pretty unimportant for me as a player currently.

I will say though, this is remincient of your Please Don’t world, with the fragmented information we have on the backdrop for the setting. Seems to follow a similar line of “big war, break down, golden age, break down, dragon empire controls society and purges dangers strategically to keep things from getting out of hand again.

Found workable-looking versions of the two Sidereal Martial Arts which Lute Silhouette Speculation is probably most interested in. http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/72397-sgambit-s-sidereal-martial-arts-rewrites Scroll down to Obsidian Shards of Infinity and Quicksilver Hand of Dreams.

Obsidian Shards of Infinity is absolutely perfect and exactly the kind of bullshit I imagined this character pulling.

Quicksilver Hand of Dreams is also very good, really captures the non-quite-all-there crazy person feel I wanted. It also feels like a much more thematically appropriate way to get into dream stuff than climbing all the way up Infernal Monster Style, too.

Favoring martial arts looks like it was a good choice. Thanks for finding those.

>every day spent without knowingly being in the martial artist’s presence counts as a scene spent eroding any intimacies the character has regarding the martial artist unless the character spends 1wp to hold onto those intimacies.
My only real complaint is this doesn't really feel like a good thing for a social operator, but oh well.

Are ones going to count as two failures, just as 10s count for two success?

>Seems interesting to me that, given the natural course of combat in most games is to kill or otherwise subdue an opponent, that all social encounters are automatically "combat". Makes sense in certain situations, but in this scenario for example, it's interesting to me that we're immediately trying to see who will defeat the other; having just appeared, the idea that everyone's first instinct is to try to defeat me seems a bit of a different set of starting assumptions compared to other games with a social conflict element.
Not every social encounter is combat; only when there are clashing interests, with something meaningful at stake. Barging in to a crash site shouting "Who's in charge here?" does generally qualify, but many Bureaucracy or Socialize-based interactions explicitly don't use the social combat system, while low-tension issues (what to have for lunch, etc.) can simply be resolved with freeform roleplay unless part of the point is to, quoting the rulebook here, "depict a character who is an unrelenting social bully."

Not every combat ends in slaughter, subjugation, or rout; sometimes both sides achieve what they came for, perhaps by discovering that their disagreement was predicated on a misunderstanding, or simply by pursing perpendicular objectives.

>>121859
Ones only normally matter if you get no successes, for determining whether it's a simple failure or a botch. More of them means a more severe botch. Yes, this means that highly skilled people (with lots of dice in the pool) are eventually more likely to get an extremely severe botch than a simple failure; this is the system working as intended. Legendary masters hardly ever produce merely mediocre work, just grand triumphs and the occasional epic disaster.

>My only real complaint is this doesn't really feel like a good thing for a social operator, but oh well.
There are ways to work around the effect, and strategies that turn it to your advantage.

If you're going to learn Sidereal Martial Arts in any serious way, you need to fully master at least one Celestial style. Can't have the full Blossom of the Perfected Lotus without a bulb. Might want to think about which that should be. Many of the Celestial styles from Scroll of the Monk are clunky and uninspiring, but Dreaming Pearl Courtesan could be a good fit, and Throne Shadow is the sidereal 'hero style,' so you can invent new expansion charms for it.

>>121865
Especially given how I am a hulking brute who looks and appears as a monsterous sun demon, and am trying to assert command over everyone, it definitely makes sense in the current boat crash scenario; I just haven't encountered something like this system before, so I was surprised, and am still working through the logic of it. It isn't immediately intuitive to me, so while I don't find anything outright bad or wrong, I'm just taking a bit to adjust. It's certainly an interesting way of doing things.

Unrelated, but in fashion becoming of myself, I've got a few character design ideas I wanted to go over with you. I've been reading the third edition rulebook, and I've barely made headway, but there was a character design I was thinking about how I would realize, sort of an internal example to help me think over rules and how to apply them, and I came across 3 main things I wanted to hear your thoughts on:

1) Farming and Mercantile work
So, as mentioned, I haven't gotten into the meat of the rulebook yet, but when I was making Bridget I had another character concept I considered using if she didn't work out in the creation process. I was imagining a fat, happy merchant, plied on rice wine and fine silks, who could simply use their girth and joyous nature to assume the roll of "tank". Personality, somewhat similar to the (organistic?) martial arts style based around recreational drug use, although mechanically, based more around bringing good harvest and prosperity to areas so you can reap the bounty rather than such a narrow focus on carnal pleasures. I started looking for and thinking about charms that would suit farming and quickly growing plants, and it seemed like sorcery would be the best way to go, but even that seemed rather limited. There's a lot of good spells, but not enough based around plant growth; for instance, being able to touch a peach tree sapling, and pluck ripe fruits by the time company comes calling, is all well and good but since it only affects one plant at a time it would be virtually useless in a rice field. The effects described in Dragon King quest for the agricultural tools were really appealing, but that seems mostly like I'd need to focus on artifacts. So if you have any suggestions for realizing that portion, that would be great. This leads me to my second point though because...

2) Exigent Exalted
... it didn't feel like culturally and mechanically any of the existing exalted types were a good fit for what I wanted. Dragon Blooded fit the character background best, with fat happy merchants likely to be members of high society, but the restrictions on sorcery make it seem like a poor choice since theres not a lot of charms covering what I want to do. So, after reading about the Exigent, it sounded like it would be fitting; the main problem is, it seems as though you kinda just gotta make up all your own stuff, and I'm not familiar enough yet to balance costs and powers, whereas that seems like a lot of extra work to ask you to do. Working within the idea of being an Exigent though, clicked because it felt like I could be specialized in the sort of portfolio I was looking for. So I came up with the broad strokes of a character background, and explaining it is going to lead me to point 3. The basis is that I was formerly a tax collector, perhaps even a member of the lesser deliberate, who's goal in life was to get fat and happy off rice, wine, and jade. Follower of the immaculate order by spirit and law, they believed it all, but wanted a good life, yanno, in the right now, before eventually merging with a dragon somewhere deep in the earth. Somewhere down the line, they and their home village were probably subjected to forced and unfair de-citizen laws which I forget the term for, but makes you no longer even considered a person, worse than a slave, given no rights or protections, etc. Utterly betrayed by the order and bureaucracy they served, they were filled with a righteousness burning so hotly, all they could do was laugh. The spirit of the town, knowing they would soon be out of a job, decided to get one last act of vengeance, and gave themself to exalt Mirthful Vengeance, to protect their people, bring prosperity back to their lands, and carry out sacred vengeance against the order that betrayed them. This brings me to:

3) Rakan Thulio and the Getimain Exalted
This caught my eye right off the bat. I don't know exactly how being Getimain works, if you have to be a Getimain exalted specifically, or if you can just ally with Thulio and cast yourself from fate, but a band of malcontents plotting to overthrow a bureaucracy they feel has betrayed them seemed to fall right in line with what I wanted. Less thrilled about the gross dudebro entitlement issues that spurred Rakan to scorn heaven, but I suppose I can't really change that. So if theres a way to join their ranks, ally myself with them, I thought that would be a cool idea. I also thought it would be cool to give that dual personality a second pass, but instead of being a conflict in the soul, it would be more of a covert identity kind of deal. No one could possibly expect Mirth Rice Jade of being consumed by vengeance, for they are a joyous merchant, dedicated to bringing prosperity and decadence wherever they travel! But when they do not hide behind the mask of Merchant Prince, Mirthful Vengeance works to undo Yu-Shan and the Realm, to bring about a new order, one no longer rotted from the inside out. And hey, if they just happen to gain a decadent residence in the new celestial order, where they can relax, bring blessings of good harvest and trade, and reap the reward of their generosity in ambrosia, who could say it was not well deserved?

Let me know what your thoughts are on charms centered around agriculture, playing an Exigent Exalted, and banding with the rather gross but politically fitting Rakan Thulio and the Getimain Exalted.

>Performance (While Naked+1) isn't a good specialization for Embri
Too bad, I found that pretty amusing.

>>121866
http://ninjasensei.wikidot.com/ma:dreaming-pearl-courtesan-style
http://codreams.wikia.com/wiki/Throne_Shadow_Style
Hmmm. Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style seems an interesting fit thematically, and I was thinking of rebasing the Forgotten Blade as a floating ribbon, which seems like it would be compatible. Mixed feelings about the charmset- there's some that look useful, but some look rather underwhelming, or like they cost too many motes for what the do.

Then you get to Invoking The Chimeras Coils and it's all suddenly it's roll-on-the-floor-laughing ridiculous. It does what. And oh my gods, that last line.

Throne Shadow Style has less exciting themes but a higher percent of the charms look useful or have costs that seem in line with usefulness, and has some solid options for making use of allies.

I'll do a better comparison later, it's getting late.


Purely bookkeeping question: what would the attunement costs of the Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye and Multifocal Lens Arm be?

Trying to get caught up here, but there is a lot. Also I got to admit, I like coming up with character concepts but pouring over numbers and feats is not my jam.

It looks like we've gotten into character actions but I'm not sure how to proceed.

I want to start playing Embri, so let's get the clutter out of the way.

- Bump up resources to 3, using any bonus points that don't get a 3:1 deal on artifact dots.
- That other specialization you recommended sounds good
- I trust your judgement for the rest of whatever we didn't finalize

Also, can you write up a setting to get her started? Something along the lines of "Embri sneaked her way through the castle, using disguises to casually walk in the open hallways while the guards disregarded her as part of the maid staff".

>>121867
> a fat, happy merchant, plied on rice wine and fine silks, who could simply use their girth and joyous nature to assume the roll of "tank". Personality, somewhat similar to the (organistic?) martial arts style based around recreational drug use, although mechanically, based more around bringing good harvest and prosperity to areas so you can reap the bounty rather than such a narrow focus on carnal pleasures. I started looking for and thinking about charms that would suit farming and quickly growing plants,
Sounds like that could work as a Lunar, actually. They've got lots of tank-y charmtech, and "Moon And Earth Blessing," from the Ink Monkeys, lets you grant a miles-wide region fertility and strangeness. Also, y'know that classic D&D Cleric move where you wave your holy symbol at some undead or demons or whatever, make it glow, and then they flee? Lunars have a set of charms which actually covers that trick better than Solars.

Exigents and Getimians are strictly 3rd edition, they didn't exist in previous editions. Also the main books for them aren't even out yet last I checked. So, probably not in this game, sorry.

>>121869
>some [Dreaming Pearl Courtesan charms] look rather underwhelming, or like they cost too many motes for what the[y] do.
Which?
>attunement costs of the Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye and Multifocal Lens Arm?
Arm needs 7 motes committed full-time for basic arm functions and relatively simple tools, two more for fine manipulation, three for range. So if you want to pick a lock from across the room, that'd mean 12 motes committed in total. Fine manipulation can be sustained indefinitely, but ranged functions have to be reactivated anew every scene. Reshaping it costs 1 mote per transformation, uncommitted.

ShaFFIE costs 10 motes to attune, and various exotic attack modes cost 1, 3, or 5 motes per swing. Some functions require a hearthstone.

>>121878
>I'm not sure how to proceed.
You're a superspy, one of the rockstars of Hell. Your airship just crashed, your witless minions are misbehaving, and there's probably a lot of shiny stuff in this here sky-castle which hasn't been stolen yet. Take charge of the situation.

Maybe direct the blood ape to start smashing up those skeletal guards?

>>121878
>Trying to get caught up here, but there is a lot.
If you wanna just start doing stuff, only the last few posts between JL and Santova actually cover in-game actions. The rest is all character design brainstorming, questions answered, lore answered, etc. Interesting, but not necessarily mission critical.

>>121882
>which?
Pending. Not critical to chargen and a little time consuming to go over.

>artifacts
Pricey. By my math I can just manage the artifacts with 31/37 peripheral committed, then. Disappointing the range is conditional, I thought that was the main mode of operation.

Is there a good reason to have my hearthstone plugged into an amulet or tiara rather than the mirror? (Well, +essence regen vs +occult vs +unknown mirror function). Biggest issue might be the mirror's on loan. How time consuming or difficult is it to move hearthstones to different sockets?

>You're a superspy, one of the rockstars of Hell.
The way I've had had playing a GSP summarized to me before: if you're acting like a Bond Villain, you're doing it right.

>You're a superspy, one of the rockstars of Hell.
>Bond Villain
Haha, this I can roll with!

>>121882
I’ll look into it, thanks for the guidance. Since it seems like I need to get at least 10 successes to do have a good shot at social combat I’ll probably move on, but out of curiosity is there a limit to how long I can aim? As I understand aiming takes 1 tick for a 1 dice bonus, so being interrupted is a problem, but otherwise that seems like the best way to gain the upper hand when I’m clearly out matched. In order to have good odds I’d probably want to roll at least 20 dice, which would mean a lot of aiming.
Also, do social flurries apply an onslaught penalty? Is there a social equivalent to surrounding someone in combat?

>>121883
>Is there a good reason to have my hearthstone plugged into an amulet or tiara rather than the mirror?
If you've got it plugged into the mirror, you're at more risk of losing the hearthstone (and it's tactical-mobility-relevant power) to a disarming attack, or fumble, or absentmindedly tucking it into those Elsewhere pockets. Destiny-Knitting Entanglement means it likely wouldn't be gone for long, but even so. There's so real advantage to socketing it in a dragon tear tiara beyond the hands-free factor, but a hearthstone amulet provides slightly more motes.

Even if you usually keep it somewhere else, though, you'll want to socket that hearthstone into the Shard Fallen at least once a month or so in order to sync it's internal video cache with the off-site backups.

>How time consuming or difficult is it to move hearthstones to different sockets?
Few seconds, no roll required. Technical term is a 'diceless miscellaneous action.' Somewhere between prying magnets off a refrigerator and swapping magazines in a gun.

>>121888
>is there a limit to how long I can aim?
Three ticks (minutes, in social or mass combat time), though there are ways to change that: a hearthstone called the Sand Serpent Jewel, a solar Awareness charm called Panoptic Fusion Discipline.
>best way to gain the upper hand when I’m clearly out matched.
Bear in mind that aiming penalizes your own defenses, too.
>In order to have good odds I’d probably want to roll at least 20 dice, which would mean a lot of aiming.
One dot and a First Excellency in the appropriate skill would let you jump from five dice to twelve; each additional dot in the skill adds two dice when you're pushing that excellency to the limit.
>Also, do social flurries apply an onslaught penalty?
Yes.
>Is there a social equivalent to surrounding someone in combat?
Coordinating attacks is based on Socialize, just as it's based on War in physical combat. Other straightforward ways to penalize someone's MDVs include getting them drunk.

Your main problem is the MDV modifier for relative Appearance. Could bypass that by communicating in writing, in which case it's based on relative Linguistics instead (beauty of calligraphy, structured phrasing that holds up even under repeated scrutiny, etc.) which still doesn't quite work in your favor, but at least isn't as bad. Alternatively, you could enhance your own Appearance by various means, or reduce your opponent's advantage by inflicting disfiguring wounds on them.

Attacking an agata at all without desperate need requires failing a Compassion roll, and the level of atrocious cruelty needed to deliberately cripple someone just so they'll pay attention to you would go against Compassion even if they weren't so unspeakably lovely at the outset, but it's an option the game's mechanics provide support for.

Or, you could channel Compassion (or another virtue, as appropriate) for extra dice on a pivotal action. Make sure to stack up all the other bonuses you can first, though, since virtue channels are a somewhat scarce resource.

>>121899
>aiming penalizes your own defenses

I’m just going to wonder out loud since I assume this is OOC knowledge, which I’m not going to use a question to answer, but I’m curious as to what they actually would want from me in a social victory here- not having read the spoiler text, all I know IC is that they’ve crashed their ship and damaged the manse. Intelligent with animal features probably means some sort of beastmen, perhaps a group of terrestrial martial artists raiding this castle? Some sort of air traffic control accident, caused by stealth systems or negligence? Clearly not interested in being helpful, so they likely have an escape route and less than benign intentions.

I’m just curious what a victory here means for them, in game based on motivations, and what it means out of game for me. So I guess the real question I need to ask is how are our motives and goals opposed, and to what degree. Do they simply not want to be cowed by a stranger, or is there something more they stand to gain by attacking me socially.

My actual question for you is, mechanically, what happens if I’m beated in social combat by an NPC? I’m happy to roleplay I’d just like to know mechanically speaking what I can be forced to do. I assume most things can be wiggled out of by spending a point of willpower and stunting.

>how to bypass defenses
Good to know, but for right now I’m probably going to disengage and move to a new area, given the time constraints. I like to play social characters, so shooting myself in the foot socially is kind of a fun exercise in adapting to something I like to do but am bad at in game. I think it adds a little fun and flavor. I’ll always try to talk someone down, no matter how unlikely I am to succeed. Good faith effort.

>>121899
>the level of atrocious cruelty needed to deliberately cripple someone just so they'll pay attention to you would go against Compassion

Also goes against my limit break condition. A big part of the character concept is the reluctant monk aspect, so I’ll be doing my best to portray someone unwilling to harm foes unless forced to do so. That’s why I put compassion high- it needs to be above the normal threshold to give some credence to my unwillingness to defend myself fully against foes using lethal force. Something along the lines of Aang being unwilling to kill the firelord- I’ll fight, but I don’t want to hurt people, and I really want to do my best not to harm people irreversibly.

>Panoptic Fusion Discipline
That’s a very cool charm. It’s going to be hard to decide what to focus in on when there’s so many interesting things to to pursue. This seems like it fits best with flurries because you get the most out of that extra aiming, and can get +3 to everything you roll for cheap essence, helping you be those odds.

You mentioned I had spent 14m 1w but by my count
Mountain leap 10m 1w
Iron Kettle Body 6m (for the whole scene)
Crane leap 2m
Puts me at having spent 18m 1w. Did you decide my entrance paragraph was with a 2 dice stunt and give me back 4m? Or am I miscounting something?

Personal combat (Join Battle) interrupts and mostly supercedes social combat, because, while the pen may be mightier than the sword, the sword is quicker on the draw. Mental influence effects that work in personal combat time aren't completely unheard-of (the Abyssal charmset has several, and Black Claw Style is packed full of 'em), but tend to be very narrow in application, only allowing a single simple command: ignore the otherwise-obvious battle, flee, don't flee, something like that. Outrage-Kindling Cry is about as advanced as it usually gets, compelling witnesses to defend the user and attack whoever just hit them, but has no further capacity for tactical guidance. Normally when you want to mess with somebody's head in personal combat time, the only way to do it is by keying into their Virtues, which is highly circumstantial, often unreliable, and has little or nothing to do with conventional social skills. https://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0219.html

Mass combat (Join War) supercedes personal combat, because a well-drilled army won't usually line up and let you kill them one at a time. It's possible to challenge a significant individual enemy to a duel, bringing personal combat rules back into play, but identifying and reaching the one you want amid the chaos of the battlefield still requires some engagement with the mass-combat system, including competence with the War skill.

Mass combat takes place on the same timescale as social combat (Join Debate), so, while it's extremely difficult to smooth-talk a solitary assassin before they shank you, negotiating with an oncoming army is far more plausible. Best results generally require magic, but not particularly rare or highly specialized types: spells like Commanding Presence Of Fire, or Infallible Messenger, and other standard tactical communication methods are sufficient.

>>121900
>what happens if I’m beated in social combat by an NPC?
When a social attack 'hits,' that means they've made a genuinely persuasive argument. You can either accept the influence, or spend willpower to reject it despite IC apparently sound logic and/or your own feelings.

Natural mental influence can't usually directly compel behavior beyond the scene in which it occurs, but it can build up or erode Intimacies, or convince someone to make promises or other commitments which would then be entangled with their own Conviction and Temperance. This is why strong-willed, virtuous people are high-value targets in social combat: they're much harder to persuade than soft-headed chumps, but once it's in, that persuasion tends to stick.

>Iron Kettle Body 6m (for the whole scene)
Can't recover those committed motes until the charm ends. Same with the 10 for Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit.
>Crane leap 2m
That should be four. Check the errata.

>disengage and move to a new area
Consider using stunt-based dramatic editing to create uncontrolled Essence Vents at tactically useful spots within the damaged manse. Nobody else seems to have adequate protection against environmental damage, so it'd be a great way to give Bridget a terrain advantage.

>do my best not to harm people irreversibly.
Can't bring somebody back after they're dead, but almost everything else is fixable with the right Solar Medicine charms. Permanent Crippling effects, such as amputations, require an Essence 3 charm, most other physical stuff is in Essence 2, including negating penalties for lack of supplies, or speeding up treatment from hours to seconds. Any and all mental illnesses are fixed by an Essence 4 charm with three prerequisites, but only when the patient wants to get better. For Shaping, including grotesque transformations that seemingly break the laws of physics, you need an Essence 4 Lore charm called Order-Affirming Blow. Lotsa prerequisites for that one, including Wyld-Shaping Technique.

Mostly just mentioning disfigurement as an option to highlight the system's incentives, and the OOC munchkin logic which supports a certain sort of jealous rage. Appearance provides twice the benefit per dot as Manipulation or Charisma do, both on attack and defense, so there's a recurrent complaint that it's overpowered, but Charisma and Manipulation don't have the same sort of direct physical vulnerability.

>>121074
I finally went through and read the whole combat guide / example in detail and the lessons seem to be "stunt everything unless you want to be out of essence real fast" "everything is flurries" and "goddamn that's a lot of dice".

Also apparently having available peripheral essence is more useful than I thought, so we'll see how much trouble I get into tying almost all of mine up in artifacts.

>build stuff
I'm sorta impatient to get going and I haven't had any sudden inspiration for a defect so I'm thinking I might just stick with the amulet.

Also I tried to make an actual character sheet. (Blue is for things that would get modified frequently, red's for unknowns).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1szQvvT8qt4Fo8mVh-5XRI4eBdQ-L50wkd5XZIYUl4fY/edit?usp=sharing
Might try and do the same for other character later. Not sure if there are other derived things that would be handy to have in there?

>>121931
>"everything is flurries"
Flurries are a good way to batter down conventional defenses, and the mechanics are fiddly enough that it's important for a tutorial to cover, but sometimes it makes more sense to take a single well-aimed attack instead.

Considering Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style, mostly this is just thinking out loud.

Demure Carp Feint: 4 m feels a bit much for a transitory number boost right now, but it cover a weakness (since Lute's not into armor) and the effect scales with essence.

Pearlescent Filigree Defense: uninteresting but practical. Another that'll be more attractive at higher essence.

Lethal Paper Fan Attack: This one bothers me in that it feels like the keystone charm of the set (since it makes the props used in attacks or in the other charms into weapons) but it's not a commitment or scene long- you have to keep paying to use it every time. Nice that it explicitly includes mirrors, tho.

Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Form: Being able to stack martial arts into socialize rolls looks really nice.

Flurry Of August Leaves Concentration: seems pricey to set up, as you want to combine with DPCF and LPFA. Looks like a way to around flurry penalties? (Also possibly more expensive, since it seems like combos have additional cost / setup).

Resplendent Sash Grapple Technique: Hmm, a grapple-counter could be useful, and I don't think I have many other counter-charms in the stuff I've been considering for Lute.

Vindictive Concubines Pillow Book Understanding: another uninteresting but probably practical one.

Fragrant Petal Fascination Kata: pricey, and a bad option for Lute, since it's cha dependent.

Seven Storms Escape Prana: seems like a pricey movement option for a character who's planning on having other ways to get around.

Invoking The Chimeras Coils: hilarious. Super-trippy boss form with multiple attacks is neat, but I can't imagine I'd use it very often (I feel like by the time I'd be willing to throw that much essence around at once, I'll have other options I'd turn to first). The risk of permanently disappearing a character if you try to keep it up makes me think of http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Discussion.aspx?multiverseid=5712

Having quite a bit of trouble understanding the system and my own capabilities, so I'm just going to describe what I'm doing, and hope to god I have some kind of power and/or the motes/essence/whatever necessary to help me through it. Use my abilities for me if they're applicable, and if the worst should happen, I'll just go back to waiting on Pdn[T]tO.

>>121939
I’m not at a computer, so I don’t have your character sheet, but as I understand the basic premise is that you add the relative ability (one of those 9 from the beginning), and the relevant skill, of which there are a number of predetermined skills similar to Pathfinder or D&D. Then, you add bonuses from giving a flavorful description, and any environmental factors then add or subtract. Take that big number, and then all of those are d10 you roll, and try to get a number of successes based on how difficult something is. Each d10 has 60% chance of failure, 30% chance of 1 success, and 10% of 2 successes, so rolling lots of dice gives you getter odds of succeeding.

Summation: add ability, + skill, + bonuses. This number is the total dice you get to roll, which normally gives you better odds.

If Ji wants to dodge something, that’s probably Dex + Athletics, + at least a 2 dice from your cool description. For something like going through a waterfall of razor blades, I’m guessing that’ll be a 4-5 challenge rating, so you’re probably good assuming you have at least 6 between Dex and athletics

Hey, so I want to join combat, in case I need to separate the spell caster and blood ape, but I also want to engage the caster in social combat, and roll that reflexive spell check. Should I simply state what I want to do, and have you roll off screen? Should I just roll like thirty dice, and have you count up successes and failures from each as appropriate? Three different posts with their own roll in each? If I make one post, I think I can only stunt once (once per turn usually, right?) so do you decide how it fits into the situation? Let me know how best to proceed if you can.

As for essence, I've spent 30 so far, we'll say Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit is committed to my peripheral, and Iron Kettle Body is in my Personal, Mountain-Crossing Leap came out of peripheral, as did my leaping. That means I've spent 30, and have 14 that I can regain. I'll go ahead and get back 4 from my previous stunt, putting me at 15 personal, 36 peripheral, right?

I also am just now seeing the post where you replied to my character sheet- I had somehow skipped it, and was waiting on input this whole time. So I'm gonna just clarify a few quick things here to keep from cluttering up the action thats now getting under way.

>Unreciprocated levels of force
If I want to talk to someone, and they punch me, that's unreciprocated. If I try to subdue someone non-lethally, and they stab me, and that's unreciprocated. Similar to caps binding, I can only act one level under the worst harm they're trying to inflict on me to benefit from it. Falls in line with the reluctant warrior archetype I'm working towards.

Harm I inflicted sounds good enough- that covers harm I've willingly taken on through charms right? Because soul fire resurgence doesn't sound like it covers that.

>Monkey Leap compare to Soaring crane
Would have done that opening move differently, but it's my own fault for not seeing this.

>Suffocation Isn't Environmental Damage
Gottcha. Quick clarification then, is the danger of walking on the bottom of a lake that I would avoid crushing pressure? And, do I have to hold my breath and keep water out, or can I breath water into my lungs safely, and just don't get any oxygen from it?

I think instead of soul fire Resurgence I'm going to take Fists of Iron so I can parry blows without a weapon. Having trouble finding the stats for barehanded written anywhere, but I think that my Parry DV is dex + martial arts + none for specialties normally + whatever fist defense is, all divided by two, so I'm at the pretty piss poor level of 4 normally, marginally better than my dodge DV of 2.

Although looking for information on the rate, damage, defense, speed, and DV penalty for unarmed attacks, it seems like taking a specialty in “unarmed” would be a much more well rounded specialty for defense and offense

>>/quest/876255
Good enough! I'm not making Embri steal the WHOLE library, or even a single bookshelf. Even a copy of a single page from an arcane tome in the restricted section would be worth a piece of jewelery, and if Embri steals what she can smuggle physically along with a few mundane books in hammerspace, that's the equivalent of hacking an entire database of credit card personal information. With enough manipulation, Embri could easily make a rough copy of any books she steals with self-created elgegantly-written flippant nonsense and lies in between, hiding the original copy in her GIANT back compartment. As long as the pages aren't blank or scribbles, any guards that flip through them will likely say "yep, this is a book" or "oh yeah, I remember the last time I peeked at this book while the mistress was reading it and it had this handwriting and this art style" and not worry about reading it in detail for literary and grammatical errors on subjects they know barely anything about when the library is on fire. Or if all this is implausible, she could just craft-scribe a few pages here and there, leave without incident, and make sense of what little she stole later.

So, how plausible is my current strategy and do you recommend something slightly different?

>>/quest/876245
>burn half the library in order to steal the other half
Reminded me of this: http://egypt.urnash.com/5glasses/

>>121972
>Mountain-Crossing Leap came out of peripheral, as did my leaping.
That would mean your anima flare is at the thoroughly stealth-defeating "bonfire" level, just two short of iconic. Not making any effort to keep a low profile, then? Could've kept it at zero by spending personal motes first, as is more typical. Between the Wyld Hunt and whatever else, for starting celestials anima flare tends to work a bit like 'stars' in GTA, drawing a potentially endless stream of unwanted attention.

>that covers harm I've willingly taken on through charms right?
Yep.

> Quick clarification then, is the danger of walking on the bottom of a lake that I would avoid crushing pressure?
Pressure would be part of it, but probably also hypothermia, any sharp stuff in the muck on the bottom, swarms of stinging insects or jellyfish, and maybe other things. Element-Resisting Prana covers all that.
>And, do I have to hold my breath and keep water out, or can I breath water into my lungs safely, and just don't get any oxygen from it?
Having your lungs full of water would be less of a problem than it would be for an ordinary human, but still bad. Basically, at this point Bridget has underwater-survival capabilities on about the same level that Beowulf had when he was going after Grendel's mom: a few days marching around underneath a lake is manageable, but being knocked unconscious during a fight underwater would result in drowning as quick as ever, and setting up a shelter to sleep in would be enough of a hassle that you probably wouldn't want to live there full-time.

>>121937
>Lethal Paper Fan Attack: This one bothers me in that it feels like the keystone charm of the set (since it makes the props used in attacks or in the other charms into weapons) but it's not a commitment or scene long- you have to keep paying to use it every time. Nice that it explicitly includes mirrors, tho.
Once you've got a compatible artifact weapon, Lethal Paper Fan Attack can - explicitly - reduce that weapon's speed below 3. That's a really big deal, particularly at higher levels. Or, it can boost accuracy or defense, effectively a bonus which breaks the usual dice cap for excellencies - another potentially pivotal advantage. It's not very efficient at any single application, but makes up for that with versatility.

>it seems like combos have additional cost / setup
Not after the 2.5 'errata.'

>Fragrant Petal Fascination Kata: pricey, and a bad option for Lute, since it's cha dependent.
More of an issue with the character than the charm, then.
>Seven Storms Escape Prana: seems like a pricey movement option for a character who's planning on having other ways to get around.
Is there any such thing as having too many getaway plans?
>Invoking The Chimeras Coils: hilarious. Super-trippy boss form with multiple attacks is neat, but I can't imagine I'd use it very often
Did you notice the clause about perfect lie detection, and negating unexpected attacks? Normally that sort of thing costs motes per use.

>>121974
>MA specialty in "unarmed"
Too broad. That's like a Melee specialty in "at close range" or a Socialize specialty in "humans."

>I think instead of soul fire Resurgence I'm going to take Fists of Iron
Action's already started, too late to retcon your build. Learning Solar Hero Style as a solar only takes a tiny little bit of training time, anyway.
> so I can parry blows without a weapon.
You can already do that just by stunting.

>That's a really big deal, particularly at higher levels. [...] but makes up for that with versatility.
Ah, hmm, the way it's set up makes more sense then, since you can pick a different bonus as appropriate per application.

>Not after the 2.5 'errata.'
Oh, well that's handy.

>Did you notice the clause about perfect lie detection, and negating unexpected attacks?
Yup. I think that qualifies as this again:
>Sidereal charmset is weird like that. Lot of the time, the main thing you end up using some charm for is a weird side effect of the 'intended' purpose.

Not sure what anyone likes to celebrate, but happy springtime season. I hope the coming year is fruitful and contains many good memories you can look back on in the future.

>>>/quest/876303
> What's the XP to dots exchange rate?
First dot in any skill costs 3 xp, three weeks training time or six weeks without a tutor. Specialties likewise. I'll waive the training time for Linguistics in this case on account of the whole mess with a first-time player running through the akuma rules (which aren't normally meant to be PCs at all) but normally picking up the basics of a Caste skill does require some training, and that's why Favored skills have to start with one dot.

After that, caste and favored skills have no training time and the XP cost formula is (Current dots x2)-1. So, one XP for the second dot, three for the third, five for the fourth, seven for the fifth, nine for the sixth.

Kome, I just wanted to say Lute's not out to get Embri, poking her via the magic mirror was the only quick way I say of trying to prevent library arson.

I'm not really sure how much of a threat such a poke would be! Experimenting with artifacts has some risks.

>I'll waive the training time for Linguistics in this case on account of the whole mess with a first-time player running through the akuma rules (which aren't normally meant to be PCs at all)
Well thank you for accommodating my non-standard character, then.

>>121972
>Let me know how best to proceed if you can.

I see you’ve been rolling for kome- or at least that’s what it looks like. Should I just post and let you take care of the needed rolls?

>No retconning character sheet stuff.
Darn. Does that means I’m stuck with a specialty for fighting on stone? Doesn’t seem to be really thematically relevant.

>Not making any effort to keep a low profile, then?
Nope! The does not hide itself, and the mountain does not budge in the face of adversary. Let those who take issue come deal with her as they will.
I also wasn’t sure how long anything above the first rating would last, since mountain leap and hardship were both done more than 5 minutes ago. I was happy to show off my anima no matter how bright though. Is it okay to say Bridget’s caste mark flares in her third eye, as opposed to having a regular pupil, and burns brightly enough to been seen clearly even if she blinks or something like that?

>Too broad.
Got it- specialties in specific weapons cropped up a lot in forums, I thought that might be an industry standard. Can I stick to what I had written originally then?

>Stunting to parry
Yeah, but like I said before, in the case of multiple actions per post, I thought I couldn’t stunt on everything, and would only be able to apply limited stuff, and if someone attacks me when it’s not my turn I don’t get to roll and stunt, so it seemed like I’d be limited in my ability to defend myself.

>>122023
>Does that means I’m stuck with a specialty for fighting on stone?
You can swap out a specialty for a different one in the same skill once per story for free, or for 2 xp if you're in more of a hurry than that.
>Doesn’t seem to be really thematically relevant.
You say that, but then you turn around and say
>the mountain does not budge in the face of adversary.
Mountain needs a strong foundation, right? The idea was, this is someone who bounces around in rocky canyons, rather than tree branches.
>I thought I couldn’t stunt on everything,
You can stunt pretty much everything except your soak values, even unrolled actions. A single stunt description could apply to several related actions, if they're all on the same tick. There's a limit on how many stunt awards you can get in combat time, but no such limit applies to how many stunts you can make for bonus dice.
> Is it okay to say Bridget’s caste mark flares in her third eye, as opposed to having a regular pupil, and burns brightly enough to been seen clearly even if she blinks or something like that?
Yeah. Actually, if you've got a readily recognizable "I'm an Anathema" sign on your forehead even without spending any peripheral essence, that's the Permanent Caste Mark disadvantage, giving you two extra bonus points. How about spending those on a fourth dot in Resources? Three doesn't quite cover the sheer scale of a commercial-quality farm, with magical support, covering multiple square miles, which you own outright, owing no fees or taxes to anybody due to right of conquest.

I did not know about stunt dice.

Actually, this Spy-Vs-Spy thing is getting stressful; I don't know how to play Exalted properly and now I'm just getting Embri slowly killed. Can we find a way to call a truce? I was hoping to get Embri in a specific situation so she'd be inclined to join a classic adventuring party.

>>122027
>I did not know about stunt dice.
They're pretty cool. Basically, apply flavor text or role-playing to an action, get bonus dice applied to the attempt. If you succeed, the stunt also lets you regen essence or willpower.

I found the combat example linked here >>121074 pretty helpful.

>Can we find a way to call a truce?
Yes. Sorry, I hit you harder than intended (downside of experimenting IC and OOC). I just wanted to stop you setting the library on fire, and poking you in the magic mirror seemed the best option.

Maybe I could have sent a message via Destinty Knitting Entanglement? I'm not sure that has a send function. There would have been more lag though.

I'd also like all our weirdos with competing interests to find a way to work together. I was messing around with scrying mostly to try and find a way for Lute to realize the manse was going to explode, so she could try to fix it.

>>/quest/876620
>Five lethal would fill all of Lute Silhouette's -0, -1, and -2 health levels
>That's the first UMI effect. There are two more.
Although I may have gotten myself killed even faster than you were afraid of, so you may not have to worry about spy shenanigans at all.

>>122028
> Basically, apply flavor text or role-playing to an action, get bonus dice applied to the attempt.
More specifically, "flavor text" alone gets you a 1-die, playing off some other established fact gets 2-die, and spontaneous OOC praise gets 3-die. There are other factors which can modify this, but mostly expect a 2-die stunt on every significant action.
>If you succeed, the stunt also lets you regen essence or willpower.
With the 2.5 errata, stunt awards are no longer contingent on success.

>>121931
Checking the spreadsheet, I noticed an error: an Infinite Resplendence Amulet can be properly attuned so long as any of the included material types fit the user, and four-dot IRAs include two materials. The one Lute has should be both Moonsilver and Starmetal, with only five motes committed to it.

Also, I never actually said the Shard Fallen had only three attack modes.

>>122046
Oh, thanks for the correction. I'm gonna try to set up ref sheets for all the characters now that we're done chargen.

>Also, I never actually said the Shard Fallen had only three attack modes.
Well that's what the insert row function is for! I'll fill them in as they're discovered / revealed.

----

Okay from the stuff the lich queen hit Lute with, and what the prerequisites for those charms are, we can assemble a partial list of Astius' charms, and minimum skills:

Essence 3+

Stealth 4+
Socialize 5+
Presence 4+

Shadow Cloak Technique
Atrocity Without Witness (5m 1wp)
Exquisite Etiquette Style
Honey-Tongued Serpent Attack (3m 1w)
At least one Presence Excellency
Dread Lord’s Demeanor
Killing Words Technique (1 wp)*2
Morbid Fascination Style (5m)
Inescapable Massacre Technique (5m 1wp)

She's got at least 18 motes committed to giving you a bad day if you look at her (although there may be other charms or artifacts reducing that cost) and spent at least 5 willpower setting those defenses up (although there's good odds she regained some of those stunting).

On the subject of Ledaal Ji's sifu: http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-2323
>>122048
>18 motes committed
Honey-Tongued Serpent Attack is a supplemental charm with instant duration, so those motes don't actually need to be committed. Same for any excellencies used to enhance the rolls.
>spent at least 5 willpower setting those defenses up (although there's good odds she regained some of those stunting).
Lore charms to use summoned demons as willpower batteries, actually.

>>122026
>Switching specialties
Huh, thats a cool, in game feature to make sure your build isn't totally irrelevant if you go outside your comfort zone. As long as it's okay, I'd still like to go with the "unreciprocated levels of harm" idea, unless that's not clear enough, in which case I'll take a specialty for restraining or grappling. I can see the connection you're making with my phrasing and her upbringing, but personally I'm not feeling the standing on stone specialty.

>Stunting
So you can stunt on unrolled actions, and one stunt can apply to multiple relevant things, but only when they're on the same tick, right? When you say unroll actions, do you mean trivial actions, or things that I don't get to roll for, like my defenses? If I can stunt on my defenses, how do I do that in combat, after you've already had the chance to say "this is how many successes, ergo, x happens"? That's why I was thinking I'd have trouble stunting on the defense, because by it's nature, defenses will always come after attacks.

>Permanent Caste Mark disadvantage, giving you two extra bonus points. How about spending those on a fourth dot in Resources?
Hell yeah, let's double double down. That is, assuming this part of the character sheet is still open to changes.

>>122048
Obviously I'm not quite done with chargen yet given this post, but while I'm waiting on input for how to proceed with my multiple actions in one post and stats of unarmed as a weapon questions, I'll work on Bridget's Character sheet, so don't feel like you have to do that; your organizational skills are however, quite welcome.

For some reason working in spreadsheet completely drained me, so I left some stuff blank, didn't bother to double check everything. I would be happy to accept help with formatting and stuff if anyones offering.


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XoBdxCRVdSjxAIX0uHvH6UmLL-KWLAmyykK0fpPMMG0/edit?usp=sharing

>>122050
>I'd still like to go with the "unreciprocated levels of harm" idea, unless that's not clear enough,
The idea of it is alright, but that specific phrasing seems longer and more awkward than it needs to be. How about "intemperate cruelty," to convey the concept in about half the syllables with words that don't make spellcheck all itchy?

>When you say unroll actions, do you mean trivial actions, or things that I don't get to roll for, like my defenses?
The former, though it's true for both. Unopposed difficulty zero actions are almost always unrolled, difficulty 1 can be when you've got at least seven dice in the pool, 2 with ten dice, 3 with thirteen dice, 4 with sixteen. Difficulty 5+ stuff probably shouldn't ever be treated as trivial; at the very least, margin of success tends to matter.

>If I can stunt on my defenses, how do I do that in combat,
When somebody attacks you, I'll give a chance to say how you're defending, as I have for Embri:
>>/quest/876472
>Attack roll will be compared to Embri's choice of physical defense value: she could dodge, or parry with a bare hand (or foot, which is usually suboptimal), or with the incendiary device itself, likely activating it prematurely.
...and for Lute Silhouette Speculation in Comet's Reflection:
>>/quest/876849
>against your dodge MDV, which has a base of 6 for (Willpower 10 + Integrity 0 + Essence 2), +2 for the stunt of covering the mirror with your hand,

Lot of the formal 'steps' in combat are being skimmed over for lack of meaningful decision-points. Step 9 can be dispensed with when nobody knows how to do counterattacks yet, for example.

>That is, assuming this part of the character sheet is still open to changes.
Backgrounds are less intrinsic than Charms, the exact state of Bridget's finances back home haven't been relevant yet, adding something on is less of a problem than the 'removal' part of swapping something out. More generally, when I explicitly present something as an option, it might or might not be a wise option, but I definitely won't waste everybody's time by yanking your chain with an invisible maze. I mean, can you imagine that?
[navi]"Hey! Hey listen! Try going north.[/navi]
>Go north
The only possible exits are east, west, and south.
>Look north
A featureless, uninteresting wall.
>Search wall
There's no such thing as secret doors, dingus.

That wouldn't be fun.

>>122060
Thank you for your input, clarification, and patience! I know a lot of this stuff may seem obvious to others but it’s helpful for me to have expressly written clear cut answers, moreso in an online game where clarification can be slow. I’m not particularly skilled at reading and end up missing a lot of stuff or misinterpreting things because I didn’t catch something that we already went over. Hence my impetus to read whatever rulebooks I can, to make sure I have a better grasp and can play on the same levels as some of the other people who are better at this stuff.

>intemperate cruelty
That sounds great- I wasn’t thrilled with the way it was phrased before but I couldn’t think of a better, more concise way to phrase it.

I know that when you say something, you usually mean it, but when two rules are directly contradicting each other I usually feel like it’s worthwhile to ask what’s up.

>>122052
>happy to accept help with formatting and stuff
Style question: do you want every skill and background listed, including those your character doesn't have? Personally, I'd think it would be neater to remove the ones you don't need (and add them back in if and when they come up), but I figured I should ask before pruning things.

>>122082
I'd recommend listing all the skills, since those are a closed set of exactly 36, while backgrounds can and do often have multiples of the same type.
>>122061
>when two rules are directly contradicting each other
Specific beats general, physical beats mental or social, mass combat beats personal, perfection of defense beats perfection of attack (within the defense's scope of applicability, at least) but the all-purpose perfect defenses accessible to Exalts are always expensive and never last more than a single action, and absolutely EVERY perfect defense - a behemoth's immortality, or the indestructibility of most artifacts and some few manses, or even the Aegis of the Unconquered Sun Himself - has some exploitable flaw by which it can be overcome. Other contradictory effects, such as perfect perception vs. perfect stealth, are resolved with a roll-off according to the "Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object" rule. When in doubt, first try to find what I've previously written on a given subject, and if that doesn't cover it, then ask me to clarify. The more information you can provide about what you already know and don't know, the better I'll be able to focus on the most relevant gaps.

>>122082
Neater yes, but this makes it easier to refer back and swap out info. If there’s a full character sheet it’ll be easier to make new ones since I don’t have to hunt for information, as well as making it easier to see where my gaps are and what I might want to work on improving.

>>122086
>look for answers, and if you can’t find them ask and I’ll fill in the gaps

Yep, seems like par for the course thus far.

Okay, I cleaned up Bridget's stat sheet somewhat, the charms. I'll look at the backgrounds and mutations later.

I'm not sure where the 9(10) wp is coming from? I didn't see anything that cost a permanent wp to buy. Or how the str 2(4) / dex 3(5) works.

JL, if you could just double check I didn't make any errors in the charm table, I'd appreciate it. Also if you could tell me what her essence pools / committed motes are supposed to be.

I also split things into a stat sheet / reference doc. The first is for quick reference, with lists and numbers, and assumes you know what everything means. The second contains links to source material (when possible) and longer explanations copy-pasted from the thread so you don't have to go hunting for em in the thread.

https://tgchan.org/wiki/RNG_XALT.qst

2/5 down, other characters pending.

>>122126
>I'm not sure where the 9(10) wp is coming from? I didn't see anything that cost a permanent wp to buy.
Yeah, that should just be a 9. One temporary WP was spent on Mountain-Crossing Leap to get up to the castle.
>Or how the str 2(4) / dex 3(5) works.
Dex is 3, no modifier. Strength and Stamina both increased by two thanks to the Huge mutation.

>errors in the charm table
Solar First (Craft) Excellency is 1 mote per die up to (attribute + skill) dice, not one mote per two dice. Lot of the other charm descriptions are somewhat vague or redundant, so feel free to look up the official versions in the Scroll of Errata and/or fan-made charm lookup index which is floating around somewhere.

I am not using the Dawn keyword, and it has no relevance here in any case.

>what her essence pools / committed motes are supposed to be.
For Solars, Personal pool is (Essence x3 + Willpower), or 21 for Bridget, and Peripheral pool is (Essence x7 + Willpower + sum of Virtues) or 46 for Bridget. Ten motes of peripheral essence are committed to Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit almost all the time, nine more usually committed to scene-long buffs (Monkey Leap Technique and Iron Skin Concentration).

Soul of Honor doesn't work with only Valor 2. Flawed virtue needs to be rated at least 3. How would you feel about Red Rage of Compassion? Similar trigger, and significantly more consistent with the idea of accidental conquest.

>Scroll of Errata
Ooh! That was a useful thing to google.

>>122134
9/9 (10) represented that I have 9 max, ten total with my extra will from cult, spent one, so I'm on 9/9. None of the flaws feel super compelling, but blood red compassion will suffice.

I'm kinda lost on what to do next- I was waiting on input as to how to handle rolling for 3 actions, because I directly wanted to intervene in what has subsequently occurred, and since I would have wanted to prevent that I'm not sure how to sort of explain away my direct proximity but lack of action. Maybe trying to fix the manse took priority, but that seems to directly go against high compassion; blindly ignoring life saving fixes in favor of preserving life should be the priority set. Any advice on how to reconcile that whole situation, and on how to handle multiple rolls would be appreciated.

Thanks for the help with the sheet, red stuff is still highlighted for general confirmation, clarification, or correction.

Also, to clarify, I haven't used Monkey Leap Technique. I didn't see the clarification on the differences, so I though crane leap was cheaper and superior; it wasn't until after I used it that I found out monkey leap was scene long and cheaper. So it's not currently active because I didn't realize it was the better choice until after it was too late.

>cult
I think that increase how much wp you naturally regen per day rather than pushing you one over your cap? If it does push you over the cap 10/9 would probably work for notation, since it's temporary/permanent.

>I was waiting on input as to how to handle rolling for 3 actions
>Any advice [...] on how to handle multiple rolls would be appreciated.
This might sound a little silly, but just roll a bunch of dice. When in doubt, roll more. Worst case, extras go unused.

I've just been guessing <skill> + <attribute> + <stunt 2> dice for each action. And then rounding up to the next 10.

For instance, my most recent post >>/quest/877498 , I rolled for a social interaction, possible charm use (not sure those are needed, or that they'll happen), and spot or analysis or whatever deciphering the essence in the wall would be.

>Any advice on how to reconcile that whole situation
If Malice or the Blood Ape reacted faster to disable Lt. Malroth than Bridget could act to diffuse the situation, I don't see any conflict. Presumably, Bridget then stepped in to do the compassionate thing and treated his injuries. Would the others skillfully averting fight with a minimum of violence against the person starting it, and with restraint or mercy, be something Bridget would have a problem with?

Which leaves you free to do... whatever feels right? Could be off screen right behind Malice and walk in, could head in a different direction, could be doing something with the other demons, who knows.

>>122146
>I'm not sure how to sort of explain away my direct proximity but lack of action.
Could've done some first aid alongside Jo the spider-demon, wrestled with Legbreaker in an effort to snatch Malroth's various severed limbs away before they were eaten, and/or engaged in an inconclusive shouting match with some of the other (relatively intact) palace guards on the subject of exactly who owes tribute to whom.

>>122149
>I think that increase how much wp you naturally regen per day rather than pushing you one over your cap?
This is correct. Very few things can provide cap-breaking reserves of willpower, and all of those note it explicitly as an exception to the normal rules. Uncontrolled Limit Break is one, sidereal charm Perfection In Life is another.

>minimum of violence against the person starting it
Speaking of which, any witnesses do have the opportunity to spend WP to resist Malice's use of Open Palm Caress, and thereby remember that Legbreaker actually swung first, while Lt. Malroth followed policy more or less correctly.

>>122149
>>122157
>willpower regen

Huh, the phrasing is confusing me then- if it’s temporary, does that mean tomorrow I’ll have 9/9, but when I go to bed that will disappears, meaning tomorrow I wake up with 8/9 +1 again? Or is it not temporary at all, and just makes me regen a will every day?

>proximity without action
Okay yeah, that makes sense. I guess I thought I was locked out of having been involved in the first aid process by nature of the implications that had already sort of been established, and the fact that I didn’t roll at all.

>resisting malice?
Nah, makes it easier to explain why I didn’t try harder to stop them.

>Roll a buncha dice
That was my first thought; I refrained from doing so because in our previous quest we were expressly told not to do that. Hence me waiting for JamesLengs input instead of simply guessing and checking. It is perhaps an irrational instinct in this scenario, but for much of my life when I misunderstood or assumed how people wanted things done, errors in my judgement were treated harshly, so I prefer to ask for clarification and wait for answers whenever possible, as a sort of CYOA defense mechanism.

I’ll think more about how exactly I want to proceed given that the immediate threat has been extinguished, but not the overall danger of the situation. Might be nice to get everyone together and working side by side for some sort of difinite reason- riding an airship out on the escape sounds like a good way to wrap us all together; if all else fails, Bridget could surly just wrap everyone who can’t dance among the clouds naturally in her arms and jump to safety. Something along the lines of “I need sheep, but you say it’ll take a while for your heard to cross the desert, so eveyone shall enjoy our hospitality while we await the arrival of payment”

>>122169
>cult and willpower
Bridget's got Permanent Essence 4, and that's not going to vary short of months of cultivation, or a spirit blessing of life-changing magnitude, or a Soul-Cleaving Wound or something like that. She's also got temporary essence, meaning a mote pool which can be spent to power instant effects, or committed to power artifacts and ongoing charm effects.

Briget's got permanent Willpower 9. Again, that's not going to vary without some major soul remodeling, for better or worse. She's also got a pool of temporary willpower, capped at nine for most purposes, which can be spent to add an automatic success to a roll, or channel a virtue, etc.

Outside the Underworld, recovering motes is as easy as breathing. Even down there, that hearthstone would provide two per hour so long as it's held against your skin, and two more per hour from the cult. Willpower is trickier. For nonheroic mortal types, their main willpower supply comes from sleep: after waking from a night of restful sleep, roll a number of dice equal to your Conviction, recover WP equal to the successes. Exact reasons for that tie into the metaphysics of dreaming, which I think I've mentioned before.

For someone with a one- or two-dot Cult, all those prayers are literally wishing you sweet dreams, adding a bonus success to the sleep-based WP recovery roll. Higher Cult allows you to recover WP even without sleeping, though still only a few points per day.

>given that the immediate threat has been extinguished,
Haha, no, not hardly. Did you forget about the unique-in-the-world elder abyssal exalt, with her contradictory-compulsion basilisk gaze, or the demon she's almost finished summoning? Into a circle which may have been compromised by the geomantic damage, in ways that would presumably complicate the binding process.

>>122157
>confusing
It means, when Bridget goes to sleep tonight and wakes up the next morning, she regains <willpower award from sleeping> + <1wp from cult> up to her max of 9. It increases your rate of recovery.

JRPG "go to bed and wake up wih full hp/mp" mechanics are not in play.

Temporary willpower is so named because you can spend it readily in play- on charms, channeling virtues, resisting compulsions, etc. And can regain it from various sources too: 2-dice stunts, some charms, sleeping, etc.

Permanent willpower on the other hand, is one of your base stats, and relatively few things can change it. (Lute unlocking her Greater Sign, for instance, would cost a permanent point of wilpower. One of those 'ultimate forbidden technique' deals. >>/quest/866119 ).

Basically you have a willpower bar alongside hp and mp. Permanent wp is how big the bar is, temporary wp is how full it contently is.

>>122172
>JRPG "go to bed and wake up wih full hp/mp" mechanics are not in play.

Yep! I was at least aware of that much- I didn’t know the exact numbers for how fast you regain stuff but I was sure it was written somewhere in here, and the correct info is online out there somewhere.
>Permenant will vs temporary will
okay that makes a lot of sense now! It seems weird to have 2 names for it, but now I understand the mechanic. It would be weird if we called it “temporary hp and max hp” instead of just calling it “hp”, right?

>>122171
>threat isn’t gone

I suppose we were thinking of “immediate” differently; didn’t forget about the ritual, just seemed distinctly easier to avoid. Get in an airship and fly away! Even if we can’t just avoid it, it just seemed like the bigger threat in my mind. Fighting a demon we neglected to keep out of our realm would be a fun continuation of the story though

>>122183
>It would be weird if we called it “temporary hp and max hp” instead of just calling it “hp”, right?
In D&D/Pathfinder, the usual terms are current HP and max HP, with temporary HP referring to special boosts that exceed the usual cap. In Exalted, the usual terminology distinction is between points of WP (current/temporary/whatever) and dots (much less variable, costs XP to restore), sometimes spelled out as "a dot of permanent WP" to further emphasize the significance of such an expenditure.

>>122198
Okay yeah, I think I can groc that. Temporary was throwing me off because it usually implies something other than current, but I feel like I’m on the level with that particular topic. I would still like clarification on some of the previous questions, like how you’d prefer multiple rolls in a single post handled, or the details for unarmed attacks.

>>122216
>how you’d prefer multiple rolls in a single post handled,
Fistfulls of gratuitously excessive dice are fine here because I'm counting out successes one-by-one anyway. More than one set of 3d6 in the same post was a problem because it's the sum that matters, with just three I can see the sum at a glance, with six I can't, so that's a big dent in the practical utility.

If we're talking about flurries, you should not be rolling all those dice at once because that messes up the resolution sequence. First the attacker declares most of the charms and other stuff they're using (virtue channels, etc.), then the defender declares similar DV-boosting expenditures, then the attack roll happens, then there's another little back-and-forth with rerolls, then hardness and soak and 'step seven' defenses, then counterattacks. Damage isn't technically applied until after a counterattack, if any, which is how you get double knockouts.

Point being, a significant part of the strategy, the difference between step 2 and step 7 defenses, is supposed to be that step 2 defenses have to be declared and paid for before the defender gets to see the attacker's roll, let alone how subsequent attacks in the flurry will turn out.

>or the details for unarmed attacks.
Not sure what you mean by this. Absent extra-limb types of mutations, your unarmed attack options are punching, kicking, or grabbing. Kicks are less accurate but deal more damage, and can still be attempted while your hands are full.

>>122226
>Kicks are less accurate but deal more damage

That was the kind of information I was looking for- specifically rate, speed, damage, defense and other relevant info which I either can’t remember or haven’t learned about.

>>122227
Grab is speed 6, accuracy +0, defense n/a, rate 1.
Kick is speed 5, accuracy +0, defense -2, rate 2, and notably has a minimum Dexterity of 2, so effectively another -1 accuracy and defense for someone with Dex 1.
Punch has speed 5, accuracy +1, defense +2, rate 3.

>>122228
Awesome, thanks.

Seems weird to me that they specify “punch” and “kick” as the two attacks instead of like, a fast attack and a strong attack, since that sort of restricts the naraative based on play elements- things like elbows, knees, and headbutts have to get lumped into a specific box instead of mechanically being covered under one type of weapon.

Off topic question, but would things like peatmoss and limestone fall under the wood aspect or the earth aspect?

>>122246
Limestone is definitely more of an earth thing, peat moss... well, it's dirt, but if some wood elemental had any-biomass telekinesis it'd probably work on that too. Physical objects are seldom exclusively associated with one element.

>fast vs. strong
As part of the called shot rules, you can make any attack a 'fierce blow,' taking a -1 success penalty on the attack in exchange for +3 to bashing damage or +2 to lethal or aggravated damage. Not normally a great strategy, since hitting with an extra threshold success would be +1 to raw damage anyway, but it might be a good trade against someone in heavy armor: mobility penalty to dodge, and weaker attacks would just bounce off. A few supernatural martial arts, such as Flame And Stone Style, require a fierce blow for best results with some of their charms.

Other called-shot options include deliberately limiting damage (to avoid leaving more than minor bruises in a training bout, or inflict a scar or other limited crippling effect when you could have killed as 'mercy with a reminder,' or to drag things out and toy with someone), dealing bashing instead of lethal with a bladed weapon by hitting with the flat of the blade or the pommel, disarming, striking clothes or carried items instead of flesh (destroy the rolled-up treaty that emissary has tucked into his belt to prevent your enemies from formally joining forces against you, leaving the 'mark of Zorro,' or just adding this as another entry in https://tgchan.org/wiki/Category:Clothing_Damage_RPGs ), and miscellaneous elaborate grandstanding. The most elaborate tricks a human could realistically pull off are at a -4 success penalty, but this can stack; for example, shooting a sword out of someone's hand, using a longbow operated entirely with your feet, would normally be at -8, meaning you'd need nine successes on the dice for any chance of useful effect.

An Archery-oriented Solar could negate those penalties using There Is No Wind, and hit automatically (except against a perfect defense) using Accuracy Without Distance. Other exalt types have their own tricks.

Speaking of damage modifiers, I forgot the damage ratings for those unarmed attacks! Punch is just strength +0, kick is strength +3, grab only does damage on a subsequent 'crush' - you can also choose to hold, or throw, or simply release. Grappling is unusual in that it lets you make an attack roll based on strength rather than dexterity, and while in a grapple you can't take other physical actions, even if they'd normally be reflexive (such as dodging or parrying other attacks), without a stunt to justify it. "You hold 'em, I hit 'em" can be a powerful tactic. All three are bashing damage, but

>>121618
>I eventually just ended up giving up on the idea after a couple days, as I wasn't able to conclusively figure out if my hypothetical character concept was even possible to construct.

Looking back over this... did I adequately adapt the concept as Ledaal Ji, or were you thinking of something else entirely? I'm always curious about other perspectives.

>neglect of the dramatic editing option
Would you mind elaborating on how we could or should be making use of that? I'm not really sure what liberties are appropriate to take.

>>122348
The canonical example is vaulting over a battlement to jump off a castle roof, then slowing your fall by grabbing the banner which you added (IC, of course, it was there all along) by stunting the jump.

Can't add some detail which your current action depends on, but you can use stunts within a flurry or a series of reflexive actions to benefit each other in succession. In the example above, jumping and slowing a fall are separate actions, so the jump's stunt (a two-die by virtue of referencing the previously-established battlement) can edit in the banner for the fall.

The main constraint is that you can't contradict previously established facts. If you try to, that might even get the stunt downgraded.

The main benefit is, there are a LOT of things I haven't established facts about one way or another. Any time you're about to ask a question about the facts of the world (as opposed to the game mechanics), consider whether it'd be more to your advantage to declare a specific answer, instead. Secret doors, http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20031006 improvised weapons http://www.zebragirl.thecomicseries.com/comics/280 and anything else the presence or absence of which hasn't been firmly established in narration. Sometimes I'll overrule this, saying that an edit would be inconsistent with the setting in a subtle way, or contradict facts you're not yet aware of - but far more often I don't have any such plan.

Yisheng Ji's Destiny background is potentially more powerful narrative control, but only once per scene, adding a bonus to a critical action or contriving an unlikely coincidence in pursuit of Fate's plan for him. Notably, it's always applicable in efforts to preserve his life (he couldn't fulfill his destiny if he died first) but seldom beneficial to comfort or happiness.

Celestial and Primordial exalts can't have the Destiny background, though they can become infected with Whispers of the Neverborn, which is in some ways similar.

>>122354
So this kind of improvisation could cover say, any non-artifact supplies or props Lute might have just now always had on hand to pull out of the Infinite Resplendence Amulet.

>Notably, it's always applicable in efforts to preserve his life (he couldn't fulfill his destiny if he died first) but seldom beneficial to comfort or happiness.
Ah, like Magician Bink!

Yeah, I haven't found any super good things I wanted to put in yet, if that makes sense. In hindsight, I could have stated that a castle official was rushing to come placate me earlier on, but that seems a little jarring to just throw in, apropos of nothing, and I couldn't use it on the action to find a castle official, so it's just one of those things were the mechanic is cool, but I just haven't really thought of any ways I want to utilize it. The idea of essence vents went unused because to me, that seemed counter productive to gathering the party and protecting people, if only I could brave the terrain.

New scene means I've still burnt my essence, but the only things active for me right now are Hardship Surviving Mendicant Spirit and Element-Resisting Prana, right?

>>122357
> super good things
Don't dig too hard for sensible tactical advantages. ANY little cosmetic detail could be the feature you (or someone else) stunts off of later in the scene, or during a later scene in the same area, or involving the same characters. That's how the larger dynamic of 2-die stunts is supposed to work: stunt-relevant minutia are a common resource pool which can be depleted by repetition, or restocked by innovation.

In some sense there's a larger cosmic conflict between the suffocating inevitability of eternal recurrence (particularly cyclical usurpation and vengeance) and the vast purposeless potential of the chaotic Wyld, of which that whole stunting feedback loop is a microcosm.

Let's say you use dramatic editing to declare that there's a bas-relief carving on one of the walls of the council chamber, which depicts some dwarves fighting a walrus/porcupine-looking behemoth. Now that it's there, instead of just a nondescript white cloud-stone wall, it's something other folks can riff off of. Good art stirs emotions, which could be relevant to social stunting. The historical context of the battle depicted, the implication that Jadeborn were involved in the sky-palace's construction somehow. Even the simple fact of deeply carved figures, meaning irregularities in the surface of the wall, presents parkour options in the all too likely event that negotiations break down.

>>122371
I could easily think of details to add- for instance, the fact that the skeletal remains were organized into small, neat individual, respectful burials, despite the lack of material to bury them in, but overall, what is my motivation to add arbitrary details that might be a non-sequiter to my actions? What reasoning is there for me to say “Bridget walks in, surveying the fresco encircling the hall... etc”. Tactically, it might be useful, but it might also be dangerous! I don’t know at the start of the scene. Story wise, why choose that over any other detail I could make up? Like Magey was talking about decision paralysis for making a character, because you have to read so much to know what anything is, this is the same situation but with an unfathomably larger and more difficult to distinguish choices. Until the time it becomes relevant, or works within the boundaries of my character, it would be difficult to find any good sort of thread to follow in the tapestry of neigh infinite details I could add on a two dice stunt.

Summation: Why would I do that specifically?

Perhaps that’s just me though- I have a feeling Komes flair for dictation might lead to both the inclusion of new stunt info and probably some contradictions as well. Maybe Tunic or Magey will be better able to think of useful applications of the mechanic, and I bet Strngy will have good ideas if/when they can rejoin and post more regularly. For me though, the infinite choices means I can doomed to play sub-optimally somehow, at least in the mathematical sense, and the ability to add any detail to the setting is just decision paralysis to a T for me.

>>/quest/878591
>Possesses the mantle in her hammerspace, easy to detect by magical means
Embri doesn't have the Mantle of Soot. Spent the points on more immediately useful artifacts instead.

Anything stored Elsewhere is not easy to detect.

>>122357
>New scene means I've still burnt my essence, but the only things active for me right now are Hardship Surviving Mendicant Spirit and Element-Resisting Prana, right?
That's correct. Anima flare drops from 12+ mote
'bonfire' to the 8+ mote 'aura' level.

>>122357

>>122387
Can you explain why my anima is currently flaired at 8+? Is it just taking a while to die down, active because of my indefinite charm, or something else I missed? And, just in case it somehow isn't covered by my first question, anima is only flaired when charms activate right? Not for any other reason?

>>122390
Anima flare happens whenever you spend peripheral essence, unless suppressed with the night-caste anima power or equivalent. It usually takes a scene or 20 minutes per step to die down, though the first step (barely-visible twinkles) takes longer and the last (iconic) recedes on your next action if you want. Ongoing committed essence doesn't maintain anima flare except as specifically noted.

>>122392
So I had spent 19 from my peripheral pool, putting me at 12+, but then enough time has passed that it’s begun to die down?

>Embri doesn't have the Mantle of Soot.
I think that was Kome riffing off the fact the mantle's current location is unknown and the narration stated it could have already been swiped by Lute or Embri when the scene started.

Sorry I haven't been around again lately. The xalt quest is a lot harder to keep up with than Pdn[T]tO (posts are tending to be much more verbose) but I'll try to read through it all soon.

>>122443
If you want a tldr: You got a guard beat up and convinced him it was his own fault, and the castle explosion has been averted for now.

The most immediate decision you have to make is if you want to roll to participate in this or not:

>>/quest/878560
>Everybody who wants to claim innocence of all wrongdoing and/or demand payment for services rendered, or at least persuade some courtiers to support such claims before the Lich-Queen herself becomes personally involved, is directed to meet in a suitably grand hall. Anyone involved, gimme a Wits + Awareness roll for Join Debate. Stunts on that roll should probably involve some sort of formal introduction.
So far, Bridget is showing up to demand her toll be paid, Lute is showing up because social-fu, and Embri has opted to try and get the hell out of dodge instead.

>>120347
>Anyway, the new one, where you can finally play as actual exalts.

I've read the entire story thread, and I was wondering if you're willing to accept more players. I have not read the whole discussion thread, as it is now 2:15 AM when I am posting this, so I'm sorry if this has already been asked and answered.

...If you are, how much power gaming do you allow? Because I happen to have this one particular trick I've wanted to use for over a year now, but I don't want to break things too badly. On the other hand, I shouldn't be all THAT much more powerful than the rest in terms of total XP, given the way you're handing out one per post, and it comes with several weaknesses.

>>122459
Go ahead and post your character proposal, including an explanation of whatever munchkinry it involves, rather than beating around the bush.

>>122460

Right, so, in Return of the Scarlet Empress, they stated out the Ebon Dragon. This is generally considered a bad idea, but I've seen many people who feel that way agree that the charms listed there should be available. One of them is Hollow Heart Transcendence. Its main function is that it adds your Essence to your maximum temporary willpower, at the cost of dropping all of your virtues to 1. However, it also refunds the XP those virtue dots would have cost, which is three times the rating of the previous dot, or 30 for each one at 5. It does require Essence 4, but even with the 4 remaining points after spending 14 on that, it's possible to get two of the virtues to 5, for 60XP during Character creation after obtaining E4.

My idea was that I'd be an Infernal, obviously, who prior to Exalting had actually been a somewhat insane Conviction 5, who was imprisoned along with all his people by some group and slowly tortured after they had lost everything. There was indeed an opportunity where he could have exalted as a Solar, as he successfully escaped his chains a month into it and attempted to lead an escape attempt, but no Solar Exaltations were available at the time. After the attempt failed, and he saw every surviving person he knew killed in front of him, and he was subjected to much harsher torture that would kill him within a few hours, he finally broke, and rejected his own morality, and his now impossible Motivation was replaced by creating a world where nothing could ever hurt him again. That's when the Coadjutor (not sure what kind of demon to use yet) came to him. As he accepted its offer and the Chrysalis grew around him, he felt the shifting of his very self (less than what happens to Akuma, but the character generation process in IC for Infernals, from what I understand), and resolved to spite his own Virtues after what they had done to him. However, as he began to develop a Hollow Heart to follow this path, he instinctively recognized that it was taking them and burning them for power, and before it completed he put as much more power as he could into them, out of his own spite towards them. He did not realize how efficient this was at the time.

Given this, I intend to select primarily for defensive abilities and very little else, but while I will be incredibly difficult to harm through normal social and physical attacks, I will always have the gaping hole of every Virtue at 1 when there are attacks that are specifically defended against by Virtues. I have no intention of preventing this, and will not use Perfect Defenses to guard against them if the ones I end up taking to guard me against normal attacks end up applicable. I've never played a cowardly, cruel, whimsical hedonist before, and imagine it would be interesting.

Also, I noticed you were using Flaws, and am willing to let you pick which ones I get if you are willing to give me 7 points worth, so I can actually perfect that moment of "I am burning off the moral code that hurt me so for more power? Then it deserves to burn as much as possible.", by actually having all 4 of them at 5.

...I also want to make a character whose Charms would make him a highly effective warrior, but who only uses them for Defending himself and tries to achieve everything through Social and Intellectual means, when very little of his total power is invested in such things before he gets a chance to practice.

>>122461
Same answer as Magey: if you do something during character creation that would normally cash a trait in for XP, you instead get BP. Not a very good trade for virtues, particularly with the errata.

You could learn Hollow Heart Transcendence in the course of play, but then you'd probably need Training-keyword effects to make the best use of that XP windfall, and by my houserules, Verdant Emptiness Endowment (the go-to GSP Training effect) can only target the user after multiple upgrades, and even then requires special circumstances to do so. Instead of just wishing for whatever you want and then getting it, no strings attached, you have to find someone else who already has what you want (possibly as a result of you granting it to them as a wish), and then convince them to wish to be rid of it. Bit of a hassle, I realize, but by that point you'd have to have Cecelyne's excellency, so constructing schemes to build your power base by jerking various people around using their desires and regrets should be almost habitual.

>>/quest/879318
>mildly extortionate prices
With Resources 3, and a dynastic background, Ledaal Ji would mostly be thinking of money in terms of jade. Smallest official denomination is the obol, worth (in GURPS terms, or equivalently USD circa the turn of the millennium) about $1000. Smaller transactions are handled with jade bits (a quarter of an obol, officially deprecated), paper money and copper coins for peasants, or silver for relatively respectable foreign merchants. Some islands in the west use cowrie shells, and with those three dots in Bureaucracy Ledaal Ji could likely make a decent living as an arbitrageur exploiting inefficiencies in the rates of exchange between the various other eccentric local variants, but jade is the only real money and silver covers almost everything else worth worrying about.

Jade currency goes by powers of two. The largest denomination, a talent, is (for ledger purposes) 1024 obols, or about a million bucks. A true jade talent weighs 68 pounds; the Imperial Treasury contains tens of thousands of talents, assuming someone hasn't broken in and looted the place yet to finance a civil war. Ji's annual net income (family stipend plus occasional profits from adventuring, minus taxes, debts, and other tediously unavoidable expenses) is between half and three-quarters of a talent.

Intermediate denominations of jade are, in descending order, the bar, mina, and shekel. One jade bar is an eighth of a talent, or 128 obols. One jade mina is an eighth of a bar, or 16 obols. One jade shekel is half a mina, or eight obols - but a solid physical shekel actually weighs about as much as twelve obols, and is worth correspondingly more than it's nominal ledger value (particularly when a rare quality of jade is needed for magical purposes), because obols are round while larger denominations of jade are rectangular. When a shekel is cut into obols, the extra material is ground to powder ("imperial boot polish") which becomes the key ingredient in jade-alloy artifacts, from daiklaives and superheavy plate armor to geomantic capstones and windslave disks. Likewise, a 'true talent' cut from the finest jade sells for far more than it's ledger value (often to sorcerers or manse-builders), while the occasional man-sized jade boulders dug up in Harborhead are, for most practical purposes, priceless. Like Peaches of Immortality which are sporadically stolen from the celestial city of Yu-Shan (eating one makes you 100 years younger), and many artifacts above the 3-dot level, any attempt to sell such a thing at open auction would likely see the surrounding city destroyed by invasion and/or rioting long before a cash price was agreed upon, never mind paid.

Silver is not a magical material, and thus more favored by the Guild since it doesn't attract quite so much magical attention. A 64-pound silver talent is only worth about a fifth as much as a jade talent, but hardly anybody actually forges silver ingots that big anyway. In GURPS terms, silver is worth $3125 per pound. Standard guild denominations are the 16-pound "dirham" ($50,000 and again, rarely seen as an actual ingot, more often a ledger value or keg full of smaller coins) and the 1/25th pound "dinar" ($125), roughly equivalent to the largest denomination of paper money used by peasants on the blessed isle, which is worth 1/8th of an obol.

What qualifies as "mildly" extortionate depends heavily on the victim's budget. The license fee for a Realm sorcerer to practice summoning and binding demons is four minae per year, plus an additional mina per apprentice, and they seldom have trouble coming up with that much money. Hopefully sky-palace necromancy turns out to be equivalently lucrative.

The usual math for value of a slave is five years' income at the best job they're able and willing to do, but that's complicated by the fact that you're also assuming responsibility for their room and board. Up-front cost for establishing a permanent endowment, e.g. paying for a priest to maintain a shrine indefinitely, is somewhere between 20 and 30 years of expenses depending on the rate of return wherever that money is being invested.

So, if a mercenary sorcerer earns around five jade talents per year, acquiring the long-term services of such an individual - or, equivalently, preventing their senseless death early on in what would otherwise be a long and productive career - might conceivably be worth more than twenty talents, but certainly less than two hundred. That's roughly the same range as how much a major bank might have available to lend out.

If 'Doctor Xu' can talk someone into paying that much for miraculous limb-regeneration services, even if the cash up front is just the initial deposit toward a much longer-term debt, lack of a suitable hearthstone to power the Instrument of Regrowth becomes a very solvable problem. Credit on such a scale might be sufficient to buy a manse outright, or hire an army to seize such a place of power from it's intransigent (but hopefully ill-equipped) owner, or survey a broad swathe of wilderness for extant and/or potential demesnes and then build from scratch.

Dozens of jade talents isn't really "mild" by most standards of extortion, though. Fair price for the most immediately relevant medical care, restoring health levels and preventing infection so the patient will survive long enough for eventual hearthstone acquisition and limb regrowth to be relevant possibilities, would probably be somewhere around a shekel. (Compare, for example, the modern-day cost of an ambulance ride and emergency room visit, particularly for someone without health insurance.) Differences between a ledger shekel's worth of obols, or silver coins, or even trade goods, and a single solid half-pound-plus chunk of jade could be good fuel for stunting polite escalation from a quote that initially sounds fair, to a harsh and highly specific demand - though still far from absurd or intolerable, under the circumstances.

>>122462

That makes sense, I just can't find the post where that is stated. Still can't, after spending 15 minutes looking for it with the Find function. But that's fine. I didn't really expect to be allowed to use that exploit anyway.

Do you have an opening at all, though? While I won't be specifically handicapping myself the way I was to make up for my earlier build that involved gaining 120 XP immediately, I would still like to play as an Infernal who uses Pyrian Charms to make themselves a highly effective warrior despite being terrible both physically and in the normal martial skills.

>>122466
I think this:
>>/quest/866602
might be the post in question; after a quick skim I didn't find anything else that mentioned BP/XP trade offs, but i don't see an explicit reference to "anything that would refund XP during character creation turns into BP "

>>122466
Also, I can’t back my claims up, but if I had to guess I would think JamesLeng would be happy to have you join the game- currently though, for many of us this is a somewhat busy and chaotic time, so responses might not be too quick for the time being.

Oh hey, a new player! Welcome, glad you have you.

>they stated out the Ebon Dragon
I feel like if the Ebon Dragon has stats, that's only as a starting frame of reference for his cheating.

>>122475

Heh. Well, the adventure path in question, if followed properly, has you finally meet him after gaining total immunity to his Social abilities, where he's mostly focused. So he's only stated out for what he's capable of in physical combat. This is still terrifying.

Anyway, I do hope I am a new player, but I can't confirm that yet.

>>122466
>Do you have an opening at all, though?
Yes.
>I would still like to play as an Infernal who uses Pyrian Charms to make themselves a highly effective warrior
You'll be wanting Precision Thought-Force Exercise, Manifest Consciousness Extrusion, and Illimitable Boundaries Assertion.
>despite being terrible both physically and in the normal martial skills.
Quadruplegic is a -6 mutation, makes you virtually useless at any and all physical tasks. Take a skin mount amulet as a 2-dot artifact, and a 4-dot Qaf-aspected manse producing a Flaw-Transcending Amethyst.

Want to be another GSP? As an alternative option, I have some old, incomplete ideas for a Lunar Pyrian akuma. Backstory concept was, fanatical follower of a solar, out beyond the edge of the world, exalts as the solar's lunar mate during a Wyld Hunt attack, sort of the reverse of the situation here https://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0195.html and the solar ends up cursed or poisoned or otherwise mortally wounded somehow. Noob lunar takes the boss's hearts-blood (it's all very romantic) but then underestimates the dangers posed by the Wyld to those without Chaos-Repelling Pattern, City-Moving Secrets, and other solar charmtech. Shapeshifting in the Wyld without tattoos means a risk of mutation, and limit break in the wyld means accumulating permanent limit.
She's still fleeing the Wyld Hunt at this point, but (never having been contacted by the Silver Pact) has nowhere left to flee toward, and is feeling like the light's gone out of the world. She prays to her solar mate, and his ghost gets a bit of extra essence while hanging out in the Underworld, but can't hear the words. She prays to Luna, who shoots back something like "I didn't give you all that power just so you could mope around. Buck up, deal with it!" She prays to Sol Invictus and hears back "BRB, almost beat the Games of Divinity, leave a message after the beep," The Maidens probably aren't much help either.
So, she goes over their heads.
Prays to the very principle of order and logic and sanity. Asks to have her original human form back. Asks for the world to make sense again. In exchange for what? Free will? Not like that's been doing her much good lately. She only ever wanted to serve anyway, completely lost without the strict chain of command to which she was accustomed. A few hours with Ego-Infused Pattern Primacy, and poof! Horrible mutations all gone. Permanent Limit stabilizes at 5, just enough for chimera knacks.

The end result of all this is like if Michael Bay and David Cronenberg teamed up to make a movie based on the Touhou franchise, but (due to a research error) thought SaiKano was part of that. Meek little shrine maiden, floating at the center of an invisible sphere of absolute force, radiating meticulously calculated patterns of bizarre energy blasts in all directions without visible effort, subduing or bloodlessly dismembering all the individual soldiers in any army that dares stand against her and disassembling or vaporizing whatever buildings offend her sense of geomantic harmony. When a heroic counterattack somehow penetrates that moe-blob core, she gets torn apart... but fights on unhindered, while her flesh flows back together like quicksilver. The central body is a mere sentimental affectation; discarding that form, perhaps to encase her vital organs in a more efficiently armored shell, would take her a few seconds at most. She barely even remembers how to use bone-and-muscle-based limbs, anyway.

>>122480
>You'll be wanting Precision Thought-Force Exercise, Manifest Consciousness Extrusion, and Illimitable Boundaries Assertion.

What are these? I was going for Mind Hand Manipulation, Force-Suppression Barrier, and Ascendant Objectivity Stance. This obviously need Essence 4 for the last one, so I'd take the Pyrian Excellency, Efortless Pyrian Dominance, and not have the points to start with any more at that point.

>>122486
Precision Thought-Force Exercise
Cost: —; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Permanent
Keywords: Obvious
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: First She Who Lives In Her Name Excellency, Mind-Hand Manipulation
She Who Lives In Her Name feels something like pity for humans. They are crippled amputees, incapable of reaching beyond their physical forms. It isn’t really pity, of course, but rather an acute and targeted awareness of her superiority and the necessity of upgrading lesser beings to her specifications. The Green Sun Princes who learn this Charm perform a great service, serving as honored prototypes of humaniform transmogrification even as they civilize themselves.
This Charm permanently upgrades Mind-Hand Manipulation in the following ways:
• The Charm may be used to protect others with Defend Other actions out to its maximum range rather than the usual (Dexterity rating) yards.
• The Charm can be used to deliver Touch effects as though the emanated force is part of the Infernal’s body.
• The Infernal adds +2 to his Parry DV using Mind-Hand Manipulation while taking a Guard action. With Essence 4+, this benefit also applies while using Defend Other to protect someone.

Manifest Consciousness Extrusion
Cost: 3m; Mins: Essence 3; Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Mind-Hand Manipulation
The Infernal sends a pulse of will through her telekinetic limbs, giving them strength to reorder the world or disassemble her foes. Manifest Consciousness Extrusion can supplement any telekinetic action made with Mind-Hand Manipulation. The warlock adds her (Willpower) to her effective Strength rating for that action.

Illimitable Boundaries Assertion
Cost: —; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: First She Who Lives In Her Name Excellency, Mind-Hand Manipulation
The Whispering Flame is not limited by the scope of her physical existence. Comprehension defines the ambit of her grasp, and her comprehension is all but infinite. All telekinetic attacks made with Mind-Hand Manipulation have their Range extended to (Willpower + [Essence x 5]) yards. In addition, any enemy that suffers knockback from a telekinetic blow is damaged upon colliding with an obstacle as described in Heaven Thunder Hammer (Exalted, p. 242).
With Essence 3+, the warlock can manipulate the bodies of enemies held in a telekinetic clinch. Whenever she succeeds on a roll to maintain control of a telekinetic clinch, she can move the bound character up to (Essence) yards in any direction as long as they remain within the range of Mind-Hand Manipulation. Clinched enemies that are moved into obstacles suffer collision damage as if they had suffered knockback.
With Heuristic Logos Shintai active, this Charm instead adds +500 yards to the Range of the warlock's telekinetic attacks. In addition, the shintai allows clinched enemies to be telekinetically moved up to (Essence x 3) yards with each successful roll.

Start with Essence 3, the slots freed up by AOS, Effortless Dominance, and an Excellency purchase can go to those instead, while the freed-up bonus points can be spent on Virtues (for later enhancement with Cosmic Transcendence), flight-capable artifacts, or other stuff.

I may have made myself insufficiently clear before, as this is getting increasingly frustrating: you clearly already know the system, so please post a complete character sheet, right down to skill specialties, Motivation, Urge, and Intimacies. I'd like to evaluate your proposed character holistically rather than quibbling over mechanics with only fragmentary context.

>>122480
Cool character idea, and I like the subversion of making her a shmup boss with an obvious weak point slash core that's not the vulnerability it appears to be.

https://keychain.patternspider.net/archive/koc0195.html
>It's interesting to note the difference between Lunar and Solar Exaltations. With Lunars, it happens after they've reached the point of hopelessness and make the decision to try and persevere anyway; it's common for Luna herself (or himself) to appear to them them and give Exaltation. With Solars, it happens when they attempt to do something heroic, something that normally would not be possible for a mere human; but they succeed, and then suddenly they'll realise that they just took the Second Breath. And generally, the Unconquered Sun does not speak to his Exalted, except for the Zeniths, his priests.
Not the point you were discussing, but now I'm curious, how does that go for the others?

>>122494
>not the weak point it appears to be
Her vestigial body really is the 'weak point,' it's just that taking her out that way is much harder than it looks, thanks to Stamina charms. Halting the Scarlet Flow to recover health levels in combat time, Unstoppable Juggernaut Incarnation to delay (and soften) the effects of an otherwise lethal wound, Luna's Fortitude linked into Relentless Lunar Fury to remain alive and conscious for a few actions regardless of injury, it goes on and on. With advanced chimera knacks she could even regrow from a drop of blood, unless struck down with Ghost-Eating Technique or equivalent, and such attacks can still be defended against in the usual ways. Wouldn't be able to have all that as a starting character, normally... but akuma have plenty of traits they can trade in for more charms, so it might be possible to get most of the essentials. Haven't actually done all the math on that yet.

>how does that go for the others?
Dragon-Blooded awaken their hereditary elemental superpowers around the same time as puberty. GSPs and Abyssals are maneuvered by destiny into the same sort of situations that could lead to Solar exaltation, but fail at the pivotal moment (by insufficient prowess or simple cowardice for GSPs, or dying in the case of Abyssals) and willingly make a pact with an otherwordly force in the aftermath. GSPs accept power from the demon who will become their coadjutor, and then spend five days inside an invulnerable cocoon called the Chrysalis Grotesque. Abyssals accept servitude to the Neverborn or their agents (the Deathlords) in exchange for surviving until the end of days, and are miraculously healed from whatever was about to kill them, sometimes after a delay but rarely more than a few hours. Sidereals are deeply entangled in destiny from the day they're born, but I can't generalize about what that means in practical terms apart from the fact that Lunar or Solaroid exaltations can pick a host a month or so after the previous one dies, while a slain star-chosen will be out of circulation for more like twenty to thirty years, and the sort of people who know how to read the Loom of Fate better than any mortal astrologer (including, but not limited to, more experienced sidereal exalts) can identify such individuals far in advance. Lute Silhouette Speculation In Comet's Reflection may well have been captured at a young age and indoctrinated by demon cultists as a result of Kimbery somehow outmaneuvering the Fivescore Fellowship.

Alchemicals are unique in that they are deliberately constructed, rather than exalting spontaneously from suitable heroic mortals. The process requires at least five half-mad genius engineers, of different specialties, a 'vats complex' (typically one of the charms installed in every Alchemical who reaches Essence 8 and metamorphoses into a city, but it's possible to build vats directly on a suitable geomantic site to bypass the chicken-and-egg problem), and such a quantity of raw materials and labor that the expense couldn't be taken lightly even by someone with Resources 7. It also depends on Autocthon personally inspiring the aforesaid half-mad engineers, and as such cannot be done at all outside his world-body, or copied by reading their minds, or otherwise outside the conditions he specified before his long slumber. One of the key components is, as for all exalts, a suitably heroic human soul - but rather than one already in a living human body, it needs to be in a soulgem, between incarnations, then slotted into the new artificial body.

>>122489
>
I may have made myself insufficiently clear before, as this is getting increasingly frustrating: you clearly already know the system, so please post a complete character sheet, right down to skill specialties, Motivation, Urge, and Intimacies. I'd like to evaluate your proposed character holistically rather than quibbling over mechanics with only fragmentary context.

I was busy over the weekend, as I work at a movie theater. Sorry, but I notice no-one else posted either, so hopefully that won't be too much of a problem.

Force of Ordered Thought
Slayer Caste Green Sun Prince
Urge: Destroy forces of chaos, both in society and agents of the Wyld
Motivation: Never be hurt again
Favored Yozi: She Who Lives In Her Name
Willpower 10, Compassion 2, Conviction 5, Temperance 1, Valor 1
Strength 1, Dexterity 1, Stamina 5
Charisma 2, Manipulation 2, Appearance 5
Intelligence 5, Wits 3, Perception 3

Integrity 5
Craft 3
Occult 5 (Mind-Hand Manipulation +3 Demons +1)
Lore 5
Awareness 5
*Performance 1
*Resistance 1
*Bureaucracy 1
*Linguistics 1 (River Tongue)
*Presence 1

First Pyrian Excellency X3
By Pain Reforged
Nightmare Fugue Vigilance
Impervious Primacy Mantle
Factual Determination Analysis
Essence-Dissecting Stare
Mind-Hand Manipulation
Force Suppressing Barrier
Manifest Consciousness Extrusion
Illimitable Boundaries Assertion

I'm not entirely sure what Intimacies would be appropriate here. I tried to come up with a backstory, but it didn't quite work. Besides that, the only thing left is Backgrounds, and that's where things get... uncertain. I'm buying three things, two of which may not work for the only reason I'm buying them based on interpretation.

Artifact 3 (Chaos Targe)
Artifact 3 (Gunzosha Commando Armor)
Sapience 1 [Agate imbued into the Armor] (1 Charm: Landscape Travel, Additional Urge: Fly)

The Chaos Targe adds 3 to all DVs and allows the Parry DV to apply against unblockable attacks. Many STs ban it for its second effect, which is obviously why I want it. Sapience is a special thing from Malfeas where a Demon can be melted down and combined with an existing artifact, letting its owner use a limited selection of its charms, in return for having an extra Urge that is based on the Demon's Motivation. Agate use Landscape Travel to apply their flying speed despite anything that tries to stop it. Applied to a suit of Armor, I'm hoping invoking that variant of the Charm gives the owner the Agate's flight speed themself. If it does, it would make sense for their Motivation of "Be Ridden" to change to "Fly", since they're providing the power to do so. But that may not work, since all the Charm says it does is negate penalties to movement through the appropriate environment. Also, Gunzosha Armor doubles ground speed through its Muscular Enhancement, I kind of hope it can apply to the flight, since the flight is from the armor itself, but that's gimmicky and much less supported than everything I've already said in this secion.

Beyond that... Oh! Pools!

Personal Essence 19/19
Peripheral Essence 30/40 (10 committed)
Health -0 -1 -1 -2 -2 -4 I
WP 10/10
Dodge DV 0
Parry DV 13 (+3 if FSB, +2 if anima)
Dodge MDV 9
Parry MDV 2
Telekentic Attacks 20 dice
Move 1/2 (Not sure if the mobility penalty applies to movement speed before or after it's doubled by the armor)
Dash 8/11
Fly 15

I think that's everything.

>>122555

Should probably explicitly state what my points were spent on.

18
Essence 3 (-7) [11]
Willpower 10 (-5) [6]
2 Favored Charms (-6) [0]

>>122555
>Urge: Destroy forces of chaos, both in society and agents of the Wyld
Is that Malfean or Pyrian? In the latter case, might want to rephrase it as "Root out and reform those who serve the Wyld, destroying any that did so willfully." Coadjutor would be pushing you toward an inquisitorial role.
>Motivation: Never be hurt again
Could work, but "become invincible" sounds better, and has a clearer end-state. Once you've built a satisfactory Chungian paranoia combo or equivalent, poof, new Motivation, plus the rare opportunity to buy a dot of Essence without worrying about training time.

>Craft 3
Specify an element. Options are the Gaian elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Wood) corresponding to mundane crafts, the Autocthonian elements (Crystal, Lightning, Metal, Oil, Smoke, Steam) corresponding to esoteric crafts - some of which have prerequisites - and Vitriol, mostly meaning Malfean alchemy.
>Occult 5 (Mind-Hand Manipulation +3 Demons +1)
Can't normally have more than three specialties in the same skill.
>*Linguistics 1 (River Tongue)
One dot in Linguistics means you know your native language AND either one major language group, or up to three tribal dialects.

As for charms, how about swapping out Impervious Primacy Mantle, Force-Suppression Barrier, and Manifest Consciousness Extrusion in favor of Cosmic Transcendence of Conviction, Counter-Conceptual Interposition, and Unshattered Tongue Perfection? That would mean you could start with Essence 2, freeing up ten bonus points (seven for Essence, three for the excellency repurchase) for, say, backgrounds.

Speaking of backgrounds...

Gunzosha Commando Armor is magitech, not helltech, so it can't be modded with Sapience. Even if it could be, Landscape Travel is an Essence 2 charm, so you'd need at least two dots.

How about bumping the artifact armor to 4 dots, spending a few more BP on a similarly potent manse or essence capacitor or some equivalent power supply (maybe even a 5-dot Proto-Shinmaic Vortex, maintenance of which could eventually be performed with Constructive Convergence of Principles) and having a proper hellstrider? The example Jewel-Of-War includes agata-style flight capability, and can fold up into a fist-sized ball for easy storage. With Craft (Vitriol) 3 (Hellstriders +1) you'd even know how to do all your own maintenance and repairs, though access to tools and budget for parts is a separate issue.

The manse could include a suitable workshop, or even a factory for creating more hellstriders (staffed with demon laborers rather than factory-cathedral-equivalent automata), but that probably means trekking back and forth across the Endless Desert on a regular basis unless you take, say, a 5-dot manse with Integrated Utility Artifacts (The Scarlet Bridge). Could purchase portable tools as a 2-dot artifact, or as part of Resources 4+, or do the work telekinetically with Tool-Transcending Constructs at Essence 3, or by learning some of Metagaos's charms: Sprawling Marsh Indulgence => Self-Seed Infestation => Flesh-Weaving Tendrils, none of which require more than Essence 2. If you plan to take unfavored charms at all, it makes sense to buy 'em with starting charm slots where possible, since they cost more XP and training time later.

A Chaos Targe is treated as a Thunderbolt Shield with the additional enhancement of being able to parry unblockable attacks, meaning effective use will depend on your Melee skill, currently zero, yielding an unimpressive parry DV of 3 before other bonuses. You could wield it with MHM to substitute willpower for dexterity, but then you're still somewhat limited by lack of skill, and ought to pick up Pathetic Distraction Rebuke for negating the -3 external penalty (as well as any and all other penalties, plus a further bonus when wounded). With Counter-Conceptual Interposition available to deal with serious unblockable threats, you might be better served by taking a 2-dot vitriol-tainted starmetal shield, in order to parry the unexpected once per scene.

In either case, that's definitely helltech, so Sapience can apply. Maybe two dots, with the charms Affinity Air Control (sculpting wind or ice for armor and barricades), Hurry Home, and Landcape Travel (flight, standing on the shield), Urge to protect anyone traveling on the same path as you? Convenient for an adventuring party or caravan, less so when faced with hostile pursuers, always applies when blocking attacks aimed at yourself. If you go for a sapient shield AND a Jewel-Of-War, swap out the shield's Landscape Travel for Loom Stride: tactical teleportation (possibly themed after Hegra's black lightning or some other sort of omen weather) without having to dip into Adorjan or the Ebon Dragon's charmsets, nor dig deep into martial arts or sorcery.

>Dodge DV 0
Dex 1, Dodge 0, and Essence 2 or 3 would give you a dodge DV of 2. Mobility penalty should be noted separately, since you won't be wearing that armor 25/7.
>Parry DV 13 (+3 if FSB, +2 if anima)
(Willpower 10 + Occult 5 + specialty 3)/2 gives you a telekinetic parry DV of 9. Again, the gunzosha armor's bonus should be noted as such. Might also want to note the anima power's various other defensive effects. (I'm not a huge fan of the overall "Dawn Solution;" individual charms are mostly fine, but I figure the anima power errata was enough to make solaroid castes adequately balanced.)
>Telekentic Attacks 20 dice
Willpower 10 + Occult 5 + specialty 3 is only 18. Are those other two dice coming from the targeting subsystem?

>I think that's everything.
You forgot the Backing, Cult, and Influence all starting GSPs get for free, and should describe your Unwoven Coadjutor. Even if specific skills and personality are left vague, the species is relevant for your iconic anima and any demon-creating charms.

Not taking any mutations? That quadruplegic/skin mount amulet/flaw-transcending amethyst trick can actually combine surprisingly well with a hellstrider.

>Force of Ordered Thought
Foot!

>I tried to come up with a backstory, but it didn't quite work.
Well, given the motivation and urge, I would imagine Foot was hurt very badly and very personally in the past, and the wyld may be responsible (or simply blamed). Of course, there's a lot of ways people can be hurt.

If you're trying to brainstorm ideas for the personality beyond the stats: I could see anything from a Inquisitor driven by an absolute philosophical mandate and certainty about how the world should work, to someone driven mad by loss and grief and pain, following a path of vengeance.

Is the motivation coming from a place of practical utility, of arrogant egotism, a desperate need to be safe, of making onself into an immutable ideal (a living testament to enduring permanence against the tides of chaos), or something else? The emotional why behind the motivation is probably a good cornerstone.

>>122566

Sorry for taking so long, I had to dig up a copy of Shards to find the Charm I wanted to bring up and make sure it worked like I thought.

So let's address everything in order.

>Is that Malfean or Pyrian? In the latter case, might want to rephrase it as "Root out and reform those who serve the Wyld, destroying any that did so willfully." Coadjutor would be pushing you toward an inquisitorial role.

It was Malfean. I specifically chose it to fit with my Caste but influenced by what I favor.

>Could work, but "become invincible" sounds better, and has a clearer end-state. Once you've built a satisfactory Chungian paranoia combo or equivalent, poof, new Motivation, plus the rare opportunity to buy a dot of Essence without worrying about training time.

...I actually think a mere Paranoia Combo isn't enough on its own to fulfill that, but that plus one of the things I was going for anyway would. On the other hand, the trick to finish it need Heuristic Logos Shintai, which is Essence 5 anyway. Still, can definitely make that change.

>Specify an element. Options are the Gaian elements (Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Wood) corresponding to mundane crafts, the Autocthonian elements (Crystal, Lightning, Metal, Oil, Smoke, Steam) corresponding to esoteric crafts - some of which have prerequisites - and Vitriol, mostly meaning Malfean alchemy.

It was taken solely to let me manage the Repair rating of 2 on the Armor, so whatever substitutes for Craft (Magitech), I guess.

>Can't normally have more than three specialties in the same skill.

I was sure the rule was that only a maximum of 3 could apply to the same roll. But having Looked It Up, I was wrong. Um. Lore (Malfeas +1) instead?

>One dot in Linguistics means you know your native language AND either one major language group, or up to three tribal dialects.

Yes. I should have put down that his native tongue is now Old Realm, as part of the changes made to him in the Chrysalis. Linguistics gets him River Tongue, as that's the language generally used for trade.

>As for charms, how about swapping out Impervious Primacy Mantle, Force-Suppression Barrier, and Manifest Consciousness Extrusion in favor of Cosmic Transcendence of Conviction, Counter-Conceptual Interposition, and Unshattered Tongue Perfection? That would mean you could start with Essence 2, freeing up ten bonus points (seven for Essence, three for the excellency repurchase) for, say, backgrounds.

I really don't want to give up Impervious Primacy Mantle, since that's my main method of dealing with Unexpected Social Attacks. Most supernatural methods of setting those up can easily be interpreted as orders, but I'm willing to leave the mundane method of distracting me with something else that leads into the topic open for those who can actually exploit it. That requires me to keep Essence 3, at which point I will say that I would rather give up Illimitable Boundaries Assertion than Force Suppression Barrier.

This is a good point to talk about the Charm I looked up. Shards of the Exalted Dream introduces several new Charms for it's Modern Setting, which are noted to be available normally as long as they don't require modern technology. There is only one Pyrian Charm among these, Purpose Driven Refraction Cloud. It lets me 'store' a number of items (which can be up to Artifact 3 as long as I'm attuned to them) equal to my Essence as chunks of crystal floating around me. Then, for five motes, I can activate them for an hour, and use them for their normal purpose, except with Mind-Hand Manipulation instead of normal limbs, without the normal penalty for doing so, as shards of crystal and beams of hard-light carry out their purpose.

>Gunzosha Commando Armor is magitech, not helltech, so it can't be modded with Sapience. Even if it could be, Landscape Travel is an Essence 2 charm, so you'd need at least two dots.

The first part is undeniably true, I just missed it. The second part, while a perfectly reasonable Houserule, is never actually stated. Sapience does not have an Essence limit on which of their Charms can be purchased kept using it. It's something I'm willing to accept, but would require me to think hard about what to give up for it.

>How about... training time later.

Not much to say to these two paragraphs other than "Thanks for the ideas, but I'm not currently interested."

>A Chaos Targe is treated as a Thunderbolt Shield with the additional enhancement of being able to parry unblockable attacks, meaning effective use will depend on your Melee skill, currently zero, yielding an unimpressive parry DV of 3 before other bonuses. You could wield it with MHM to substitute willpower for dexterity, but then you're still somewhat limited by lack of skill, and ought to pick up Pathetic Distraction Rebuke for negating the -3 external penalty (as well as any and all other penalties, plus a further bonus when wounded). With Counter-Conceptual Interposition available to deal with serious unblockable threats, you might be better served by taking a 2-dot vitriol-tainted starmetal shield, in order to parry the unexpected once per scene.

Never seen any Errata mentioning that change to the Chaos Targe, but it's eminently reasonable. I was just basing it on the idea it added to all my DVs simply by being there (I'm aware I forgot to include it in the Dodge DV later), as a scale of the Yozi of impossibility, surrounding me with streamers of deflecting light that let me try to block anything and partially deflect everything on its own. Now that I know how you're treating it (and that it's allowed at all, which is effing awesome), I want to take PDRC so I can actually use it with Mind-Hand Manipulation and apply my high DV without worrying about perfects.

>In either case, that's definitely helltech, so Sapience can apply. Maybe two dots, with the charms Affinity Air Control (sculpting wind or ice for armor and barricades), Hurry Home, and Landcape Travel (flight, standing on the shield), Urge to protect anyone traveling on the same path as you? Convenient for an adventuring party or caravan, less so when faced with hostile pursuers, always applies when blocking attacks aimed at yourself. If you go for a sapient shield AND a Jewel-Of-War, swap out the shield's Landscape Travel for Loom Stride: tactical teleportation (possibly themed after Hegra's black lightning or some other sort of omen weather) without having to dip into Adorjan or the Ebon Dragon's charmsets, nor dig deep into martial arts or sorcery.

Still hoping not to have to take Sapience 2, but if I do... I'd rather have Loom Stride than Air Control. Even using Agata, they have Portal, and it makes sense to me that limiting it to Essence 2 would reduce that Loom Stride. They don't actually have Air Control themselves, so if you were basing it on them, it makes more sense that way.

>Dex 1, Dodge 0, and Essence 2 or 3 would give you a dodge DV of 2. Mobility penalty should be noted separately, since you won't be wearing that armor 25/7.

Yeah, several screw ups here.

>(Willpower 10 + Occult 5 + specialty 3)/2 gives you a telekinetic parry DV of 9. Again, the gunzosha armor's bonus should be noted as such. Might also want to note the anima power's various other defensive effects. (I'm not a huge fan of the overall "Dawn Solution;" individual charms are mostly fine, but I figure the anima power errata was enough to make solaroid castes adequately balanced.)

I was including both the Gunzosha bonus and the Chaos Targe bonus. 9+1+3=13. Those were the ones that are 'always' on, since I assumed I'd be wearing the armor in most cases where it would be relevant, though I maybe shouldn't have.

>Willpower 10 + Occult 5 + specialty 3 is only 18. Are those other two dice coming from the targeting subsystem?

Yes, they are.

>You forgot the Backing, Cult, and Influence all starting GSPs get for free, and should describe your Unwoven Coadjutor. Even if specific skills and personality are left vague, the species is relevant for your iconic anima and any demon-creating charms.

I did forget to list those automatic things I thought were unimportant. As for the coadjutor, I don't actually see any reference to it affecting my iconic anima, but I forgot that it does affect the Demon Creating Charms. Is a Tomescu acceptable? I don't think they have to be descended from the Yozi that gives me my Urge? ...If they do, I'm open to changing to the Pyrian version of it you suggested. Their actual personality is irrelevant at Coadjutor 0, since they're unconscious.

>Not taking any mutations? That quadruplegic/skin mount amulet/flaw-transcending amethyst trick can actually combine surprisingly well with a hellstrider.

I actually forgot all about that over the weekend I spent working, because most people consider Exalted's Merits/Flaws system to utterly broken and refuse to use it. Yes, I will totally take that.

...I'll start making an edited character sheet immediately after posting this so you can see what this actually ends up as.

Force of Ordered Thought
Slayer Caste Green Sun Prince
Urge: Destroy forces of chaos, both in society and agents of the Wyld
Motivation: Become Invincible!
Favored Yozi: She Who Lives In Her Name
Willpower 10, Compassion 2, Conviction 5, Temperance 1, Valor 1
Strength 1, Dexterity 1, Stamina 5
Charisma 2, Manipulation 2, Appearance 5
Intelligence 5, Wits 3, Perception 3

Integrity 5
Craft 3 ("Magitech")
Occult 5 (Mind-Hand Manipulation +3)
Lore 5 (Malfeas +1)
Awareness 5
*Performance 1
*Resistance 1
*Bureaucracy 1
*Linguistics 1 (River Tongue) {Native tongue: Old Realm}
*Presence 1

First Pyrian Excellency X3
By Pain Reforged
Nightmare Fugue Vigilance
Impervious Primacy Mantle
Factual Determination Analysis
Essence-Dissecting Stare
Mind-Hand Manipulation
Force Suppressing Barrier
Tool-Transcending Constructs
Purpose Driven Refraction Cloud

Intimacies: ???


Artifact 3 (Chaos Targe)
Artifact 3 (Gunzosha Commando Armor)
Sapience 1 [Agata imbued into the Targe] (1 Charm: Landscape Travel, Additional Urge: Fly)
Artifact 2 (Skin Mount Amulet)
Manse 4 (Flaw-Transcending Amethyst)
Cult 1
Backing (Malfeas) 1
Influence (Demons descended from Malfeas) 1

Flaws Quadruplegic +6 (24)

Personal Essence 19/19
Peripheral Essence 38/48 (10 committed)
Health -0 -1 -1 -2 -2 -4 I
WP 10/10
Dodge DV 2 +3(Force Suppressing Barrier) [+2DV, -1 external pentalty to attack on me](Anima Banner) -3(Gunzosha Armor Mobility Penalty)
Parry DV 9 +1(Gunzosha Armor Targeting System) +3(5 extra dice from Chaos Targe) +3(Force Suppressing Barrier) [+2DV, -1 external pentalty to attack on me](Anima Banner)
Dodge MDV 9
Parry MDV 2
Telekinetic Attacks 18 dice +2 Targeting System
-Telekinetic Blade Acc 20, Dam 3 L, Piercing
-Targe Shield Bash Acc 21, Dam 5 B
Move 1
Dash 7/11(armor speed boost)
Fly 15
Awareness 8 +2(Gunzosha)
Stealth 1 +1(+4 dice Gunzosha, -3 Mobility Gunzosha)
Resistance 6 +2(Gunzosha)

I think that's everything.

Why can't I hold all these souls? JamesLeng 2018/04/25(Wed)06:47 No. 122593 ID: 2007b6
File 152466406001.jpg - (29.80KB , 450x600 , PB9d7.jpg )

>>122570
>Well, given the motivation and urge, I would imagine Foot was hurt very badly and very personally in the past, and the wyld may be responsible (or simply blamed).
Motivation is the original human's personal quest. Urge is the job they've been given by the Reclamation yozis, as mediated by the Unwoven Coadjutor, and has nothing to do with their personal history. (Yozis being what they are, count yourself lucky if it even has relevance to the infernal's skills, or current position.) That's why Isidoros charms can't count an Urge as a "desire."

See, most stuff in Creation (though not necessarily in the broader Exalted setting) has just one soul: animals and other nonsapient living things have a po soul, while inanimate objects are managed by Least Gods. Humans and most other sapient species add a hun soul, which reincarnates through lethe (whereas the po is either laid to rest, destroyed, or lingers as what Jukashi refers to as a 'zomby goast').

Exaltation adds a third soul. Celestial Exaltation shards are fixed in number and recycle much like hun souls, while Alchemical and Terrestrial exaltations are single-use, more like po souls. (Dragon-blooded "martyr" charms can take advantage of that for a final surge of power.) Most exalts seem to think that three is plenty, and focus their further development on quality over quantity, to the extent that they think about the issue at all.

Green Sun Princes are not most exalts. First of all, they've got four souls right out of the gate: the two they started with as normal humans, the Exaltation shard, and the Coadjutor, an equally heroic first-circle demon. They're channeling the power of the yozis, each of whom has at least a dozen third-circle souls, each of which in turn has seven second-circle souls (as I was going to St. Ives/I met a man with seven wives/each wife had seven sacks/each sack had seven cats/each cat had seven kits, etc.) and the yozis spawn whole species of first-circle demons as casually as your body sheds dandruff. Explore any given yozi's charm tree far enough, eventually you'll end up with a fifth or sixth soul wedged in there somewhere. Once you start, it's hard to stop. Before you know it, you've got enough voices in your head that taking turns isn't an adequate coordination strategy, they'll have to form subcommittees.

Well, okay, "before you know it" is an exaggeration. The really hardcore god-monster transhumanism stuff takes centuries of growth to attain, going by the canonical rules. It IS pretty much inevitable if you can survive for that long, though.

>>122589
>I really don't want to give up Impervious Primacy Mantle, since that's my main method of dealing with Unexpected Social Attacks. Most supernatural methods of setting those up can easily be interpreted as orders,
That's not how Impervious Primacy Mantle works.
>Social attacks framed as supplication or humble suggestions bypass this defense,
>The basic defense of this Charm presents more of an inconvenience to social adversaries, who can easily stunt around it if they can swallow their pride or cultivate a taste for caustic irony.
It's an excellent defense against some mental influence, but against anyone courteous or canny, all you get is an MDV bonus which the unexpected quality would blow right on past. Cosmic Transcendence of Conviction is effectively limited-use-per-day, but it works better when you need it most, and provides other benefits such as a steadier supply of willpower from sleep, or the ability to throw five extra successes at more of your worst problems, above and beyond the dice cap.

I'm not saying you can't take IPM, just that it may not be the best way to get what you say you're looking for here.

>The second part, while a perfectly reasonable Houserule, is never actually stated.
https://ericminton.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/ink-monkey-bones-9-unofficial-infernal-relics-errata/
>Never seen any Errata mentioning that change to the Chaos Targe,
Special case of the more general 'panoply' errata. Shields are low-damage, high-defense weapons now, not portable cover. Same benefit as a pre-errata tower shield => same benefit as a post-errata tower shield.
> Even using Agata, they have Portal, and it makes sense to me that limiting it to Essence 2 would reduce that Loom Stride. They don't actually have Air Control themselves, so if you were basing it on them, it makes more sense that way.
I was thinking of Radeken and Eristrufa, actually, though probably not either of them exactly. There are lots of demons that don't make the main list because of an unfavorable ratio of utility to instability or danger.
>Is a Tomescu acceptable? I don't think they have to be descended from the Yozi that gives me my Urge?
Yep, a Clamorous Cloud Arsenal is fine. Urge yozi and Caste yozi being the same means the coadjutor's origin is wide open. Being descended from the favored yozi fits as well as anything.

Hm... thinking about Octavian and Munaxes... how would you like to have Force of Ordered Thought's introduction to involve appearing alongside Stanewald when the lich-queen summons her? Cover story could be some sort of assistant or handmaiden, actual assignment (as part of the larger Urge) is research toward high-altitude geomantic engineering, specifically to dismantle a longstanding arrangement between air elemental courts, binding the cities of the Cloud People into strict deterministic orbits instead of the current whimsically unpredictable trajectories.

>most people consider Exalted's Merits/Flaws system to utterly broken and refuse to use it
I think it's got salvageable parts.

>>122592
You've added 6 bp worth of flaws and 7 bp worth of backgrounds, without changing anything else, so that math is out of whack.

Zero dots in Resources means that, except as otherwise noted, you're starting out homeless and destitute. No steady income, no mundane equipment. Could be a result of deliberate asceticism. If you want to be able to create whatever material wealth you need at the moment from (almost) nothing, Principle-Invoking Onslaught is the way to go.

In terms of other charms, you said you were interested in Pathetic Distraction Rebuke, but... didn't add it?

Purpose-Driven Refraction Cloud is fine to take, but the only immediate benefit of it seems to be ability to conceal the chaos targe when not in use and prevent it being stolen. You'd need more of a panoply to make the best use of it. How about Unseen Force Application?

>Craft (Lightning) 3
Magitech is one of the esoteric crafts with mundane prerequisites. You've got adequate Lore, but would also need 2 dots each in Craft (Air) and Craft (Fire). Magitech is the pinnacle of Autocthon's artifact-crafting paradigm based on the magical materials, so it necessarily builds on a foundation of understanding fine detail work and exotic alloys, not entirely unlike IRL semiconductor-based integrated circuits. http://www.scp-wiki.net/a-brief-explanation-on-demonics

What I'm trying to figure out is, do you specifically want a suit of Gunzosha commando armor, complete with all those magitech maintenance requirements which you haven't quite budgeted for (and, fair warning, I'm planning to track that stuff pretty strictly)? A lot of the bonuses are meant for heroic mortals, to compensate for their lack of default exalted resilience and excellencies. Yoroi Rapid-Response Armor provides the same night vision and arguably better ground speed enhancement (thanks to a lack of mobility penalty). Strength enhancement, camo, and soak aren't quite as good, but that's a fair trade for eliminating maintenance requirements. It'd be easy to reskin that as a helltech equivalent. If the breath mask is more of a priority, how about Tiger Shark or Myrmidon armor for a proper rebreather?

What are you looking for, from this armor? I'd even be willing to design entirely custom stuff, as I did for Magey's character with the Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye.

>>122595
>That's not how Impervious Primacy Mantle works.
>Social attacks framed as supplication or humble suggestions bypass this defense,
>The basic defense of this Charm presents more of an inconvenience to social adversaries, who can easily stunt around it if they can swallow their pride or cultivate a taste for caustic irony.
>It's an excellent defense against some mental influence, but against anyone courteous or canny, all you get is an MDV bonus which the unexpected quality would blow right on past. Cosmic Transcendence of Conviction is effectively limited-use-per-day, but it works better when you need it most, and provides other benefits such as a steadier supply of willpower from sleep, or the ability to throw five extra successes at more of your worst problems, above and beyond the dice cap.

>I'm not saying you can't take IPM, just that it may not be the best way to get what you say you're looking for here.
Maybe have that be an in universe mistake as well, I don't know. The important thing is that I'm fairly certain every Charm that lets you make Social Attacks in combat time simply says what the attack does, and you can't really stunt it otherwise. Right? Like, the Lich-Queen Basilisk gaze attack that was used earlier would absolutely count as orders and she couldn't bypass that, right? If I'm wrong... Maybe I will go with Cosmic Transcendence of Virtue, but I was really hoping for a counter to the Unexpected Mid-Combat Social Attack issue that didn't require me to spend resources each time it comes up.

>https://ericminton.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/ink-monkey-bones-9-unofficial-infernal-relics-errata/
Fair point. Counterpoint: this is literally the first time in the discussion thread it's been brought up, and I don't remember the Character Creation in the main thread well enough to know if it's there without checking. I'm checking now, but the point remains that it's perfectly understandable that I missed that on skimming even if it is there, and while I've read both the Ink Monkeys Collection and the Scroll of Errata, this is a little less obvious. ...Ok, it was there. Cool.
...What to remove, though.
... ... May I take Permanent Caste Mark? It makes my Caste Mark stay visible as though it was a tattoo, but not actually glowing. Having a design on your forehead may be seen as being in bad taste in Creation, but a pair of crossed swords shouldn't really ring any bells beyond that.

>Special case of the more general 'panoply' errata. Shields are low-damage, high-defense weapons now, not portable cover. Same benefit as a pre-errata tower shield => same benefit as a post-errata tower shield.
This is completely fair.

>I was thinking of Radeken and Eristrufa, actually, though probably not either of them exactly. There are lots of demons that don't make the main list because of an unfavorable ratio of utility to instability or danger.
Didn't know of either of those. Were they from the original Games of Divinity 1E, and never reprinted in 2nd? How fast would the flight they grant be?

>Yep, a Clamorous Cloud Arsenal is fine. Urge yozi and Caste yozi being the same means the coadjutor's origin is wide open. Being descended from the favored yozi fits as well as anything.
Cool.

>Hm... thinking about Octavian and Munaxes... how would you like to have Force of Ordered Thought's introduction to involve appearing alongside Stanewald when the lich-queen summons her? Cover story could be some sort of assistant or handmaiden, actual assignment (as part of the larger Urge) is research toward high-altitude geomantic engineering, specifically to dismantle a longstanding arrangement between air elemental courts, binding the cities of the Cloud People into strict deterministic orbits instead of the current whimsically unpredictable trajectories.
...This ties into something I will bring up later.
...Although, having written that later point, I realize I should still say that, yes, I am totally OK with this. Not entirely sure how well it works given the 'tattoo', if you let me take it, but still.

>I think it's got salvageable parts.
I'm sure it does. Every system in Exalted has at least some salvageable parts, the issue is identifying which ones those are in the systems where most of it isn't.

>You've added 6 bp worth of flaws and 7 bp worth of backgrounds, without changing anything else, so that math is out of whack.
That was me just literally adding what you suggested without thinking about it, because it at least raised my mote regeneration to 12 per hour of non-combat, when I'd be spending 10 to have my shield manifested and Landscape Travel on in each of those same hours. Now that I actually think about it, though, with Mind-Hand Manipulation, I don't think I need the Flaw Transcending Amethyst, even with Quadriplegic. My Shield will let me move myself, and my telekinesis lets me move everything else, so who needs limbs?
Not needing that particular Hearthstone means I can go to Manse 3 instead of 4, and spend my 1 freed up bonus point (was at -1, lowered my spending by 2) to raise my Cult to 2, actually getting some Mote regeneration from it, and keeping mote positive while flying on my 'shield'. Then I actually looked at what level 3 Hearthstones are available, and, um... Would a Gemstone Of The White Jade Tree be overpowered? You're already allowing the Chaos Targe, which is generally considered such, so I wanted to ask.

>Zero dots in Resources means that, except as otherwise noted, you're starting out homeless and destitute. No steady income, no mundane equipment. Could be a result of deliberate asceticism. If you want to be able to create whatever material wealth you need at the moment from (almost) nothing, Principle-Invoking Onslaught is the way to go.
It very much is. That's why I didn't bother putting points into Resources, I plan on buying that Charm eventually. I have several Pyrian Charms I need to grow into before I ever go for Essence 4.

>In terms of other charms, you said you were interested in Pathetic Distraction Rebuke, but... didn't add it?
No, I said I was interested in PDRC, not PDR. Purpose-Driven Reflection Cloud, not Pathetic Distraction Rebuke. See immediately below.

>Purpose-Driven Refraction Cloud is fine to take, but the only immediate benefit of it seems to be ability to conceal the chaos targe when not in use and prevent it being stolen. You'd need more of a panoply to make the best use of it. How about Unseen Force Application?
This is very obviously one of us misunderstanding how the Charm works. Since you're the ST, it's probably me, but I'd like to at least expand on my view.
PDRC turns an object into a crystal for storage, yes. But you don't take it out of storage, you pay to temporarily transform it into a cloud of crystals that let you use Mind-Hand Manipulation to perform the function of the object. There are individual crystals projecting barriers of light around and under me the copy the effects of a Sapient Chaos Targe, all being managed by my telekinesis and the instincts I gain for using it for its conceptual purpose. This seems to me like it very much should use my Willpower+Occult pool with no external penalty, instead of needing to be manipulated around like an actual shield using Melee and taking a penalty for using an item. It's based entirely on taking the conceptual purpose of the item rather than the item itself. This is the entire reason I took the Charm.
...It also allows me to put my armor on in five seconds, which means I can consistently have it on during combat, without the drawbacks outside of combat. But that's just a nice bonus to the above.

>Magitech is one of the esoteric crafts with mundane prerequisites. You've got adequate Lore, but would also need 2 dots each in Craft (Air) and Craft (Fire). Magitech is the pinnacle of Autocthon's artifact-crafting paradigm based on the magical materials, so it necessarily builds on a foundation of understanding fine detail work and exotic alloys, not entirely unlike IRL semiconductor-based integrated circuits.
This is understandable, but can I use either Craft (Air) or Craft (Fire) to perform the necessary maintenance? Because that's literally the only reason I have Craft at all right now.
...I looked it up. I take a -2 external penalty for doing so. But it's a difficulty 2 roll of Intelligence+Craft. So I need 4 successes on eight dice, and since I only need to do it every fifty hours of actual combat, I can be practically assured I'll have the motes available to use an Excellency. So... Craft(Fire) 3 instead of Craft(Lightning)

>What I'm trying to figure out is, do you specifically want a suit of Gunzosha commando armor, complete with all those magitech maintenance requirements which you haven't quite budgeted for (and, fair warning, I'm planning to track that stuff pretty strictly)? A lot of the bonuses are meant for heroic mortals, to compensate for their lack of default exalted resilience and excellencies. Yoroi Rapid-Response Armor provides the same night vision and arguably better ground speed enhancement (thanks to a lack of mobility penalty). Strength enhancement, camo, and soak aren't quite as good, but that's a fair trade for eliminating maintenance requirements. It'd be easy to reskin that as a helltech equivalent. If the breath mask is more of a priority, how about Tiger Shark or Myrmidon armor for a proper rebreather?
Here we go. Remember how I mentioned turning up with Stanewald being relevant to something later?
I'm considering trading in my Artifact 3 for Patron 3. Probably Munaxes, I'd rather have the limited attention of a 3rd Circle that that rank gets me than the focused attention of one specific 2nd circle for the same cost. I'd still mainly be using it for my Gunzosha Armor, but one thing I could do is take Resources instead when I'm not actively working, and buy the necessary components for maintenance, which finishes covering the "do you actually have everything you need to keep this armor" question.

>What are you looking for, from this armor? I'd even be willing to design entirely custom stuff, as I did for Magey's character with the Shard Fallen From Ishiika's Eye.
Now, for why I actually want the Gunzosha Armor specifically, it's because of the Integrated Targeting Subsystem and the Vitality-Boosting Subsystems. Everything else is just gravy. Well, the soak and Hardness are also important, but that comes with every type of armor, so...
I mean, the Sensory Augmentation is convenient, more for ignoring darkness than for the extra dice, and I would actually use the Resiliency Augmentation (unlike the Camouflage and Exomuscle), but they're nice bonuses, rather than crucial.

>>122599
>Like, the Lich-Queen Basilisk gaze attack that was used earlier would absolutely count as orders and she couldn't bypass that, right?
No. It's a combination of charms, none of which are, in-character, framed as an order. Atrocity Without Witness is framed as http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BystanderSyndrome , Morbid Fascination Style is framed as http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BileFascination , and Inescapable Massacre Technique is framed as rearranging psychological landscapes so that any attempt to flee starts by crossing the http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DespairEventHorizon . Nothing anywhere in that is her saying "Obey me, for I am your queen!" or equivalent, so Impervious Primacy Mantle's main 'unacceptable order' defense doesn't work.

If the main thing you want is to defend against Queen Astius's 'basilisk gaze' combo, how about Intolerable Burning Truths (Trust Is Naïve) ? One scene of voluntary action to gain a positive intimacy of some sort toward her, then all that mental influence falls apart: it's all founded on the idea that she presents a deadly threat to you, which is an Unacceptable Order because you can't believe anything bad about her (except by voluntarily spending [essence] WP per day to hypocritically override the compulsion, in which case you still get the defense against outside influence).

>May I take Permanent Caste Mark?
Sure. Just -1 due to difficulty of recognition, but that'd be enough for the listed backgrounds, though Sapience 1 won't grant Essence 2 charms.

>I don't think I need the Flaw Transcending Amethyst, even with Quadriplegic. My Shield will let me move myself, and my telekinesis lets me move everything else, so who needs limbs?
It also provides effective immunity to all other Crippling-keyword effects, including nasty stuff like Jumping Spider Strike from Charcoal March of Spiders Style, and the ability to interface properly with standard models of power armor.

If you want the Gunzosha bonuses (and other stuff, including better soak and lower mobility penalty) in an amputee-friendly package, there's always Metsubou Gremlin-Armor, though that's 4 dots. I houseruled away the 'die on unequip' bit; it's not a necessity of the design, just a statistical inevitability when a mortal's taken incapacitating levels of lethal damage (rapid regen means it couldn't have been just bashing), has no limbs, and lands naked on the hard, grimy metal floor, during a war, in a blight zone.

>This seems to me like it very much should use my Willpower+Occult pool with no external penalty,
It's effectively an Elsewhere storage effect, like Many-Pockets Meditation or Dread Panoply of the Silent Wind. "Functions normally" means you can wield an abstracted-away weapon in your hands with Dex + Melee, or in your telekinesis with Willpower + Occult at the normal penalty. Only way to get around that is something that explicitly says it negates such penalties, such as Pathetic Distraction Rebuke.

> can I use either Craft (Air) or Craft (Fire) to perform the necessary maintenance?
With Resources 0, yeah, you'll probably need to. Craft (Lightning) says "welp, the arc reactor's busted, that whole theotechnic resonator needs to be replaced," and reaches for the spare parts bin, which is empty. Craft (Fire) tells you where to find the rocks you need, smelt the palladium from them, and draw it into wire, then Craft (Air) tells you how to shape the wire into a ring of the correct size, and inscribe each strand with the correct sigils at correct depth. That's just one example, you'd probably have to work out some whole Robinson Crusoe setup to approximate the necessary supply chain.

Major advantage to taking Craft (Vitriol) and a hellstrider is that it wouldn't require other craft skills as prerequisites. You'd need Craft (Smoke) and Craft (Steam) to build a helstrider from scratch - soulforging and biogenesis, respectively - but Vitriol, Lore, and Occult are sufficient for maintenance or field repairs.

>Integrated Targeting Subsystem
Eighteen dice is plenty for routine use. On the rare occasion you're facing a physical DV way up in the double digits, or missing otherwise seems like a realistic possibility, use the excellency to turn that into thirty-three. Same logic applies on defense. Heck, the Targeting Subsystem's bonus should probably count as dice added by a charm, anyway.
>Vitality-Boosting Subsystems
Have you considered taking a sesselja as a demonic familiar, or enough sorcery to summon 'em, or the Ego-Infused Pattern Primacy tree? A mere one-dot sesselja familiar lurking in your stomach provides de facto immunity to ingested poison and the ability to instantly heal not just bashing, but lethal or aggravated damage, at least if it's not more than four levels at once. Stomach bottle bug's motes and willpower can both be rapidly recharged with alcohol.

>I'm considering trading in my Artifact 3 for Patron 3.
When a Patron loans out artifacts, duration of use is limited. If you want to have the armor available indefinitely, or at least until you decide to swap it out for something else, better fit would be Infamy, the Infernal equivalent to the Abyssals' Liege background.

>>122599
>Didn't know of either of those. Were they from the original Games of Divinity 1E, and never reprinted in 2nd?
Eristrufa are in Compass: West and Radeken are in Compass: Malfeas.
>How fast would the flight they grant be?
It's the same basic spirit charm regardless.

>..I looked it up. I take a -2 external penalty for doing so. But it's a difficulty 2 roll of Intelligence+Craft. So I need 4 successes on eight dice, and since I only need to do it every fifty hours of actual combat,
You're mixing up the rules for maintenance and the rules for repairs. There's no roll for maintenance; you either spend enough time and resources, or you don't. If you lack necessary skills, maintenance fails and excellencies won't help you. That -2 for using the wrong skill represents improvised repairs, making something that's structurally sound but not quite up to original spec. If you're trying to "maintain" magitech power armor using just Craft (Fire), that's going to be a sad process of stripping off whatever parts break down and replacing them with solid metal. Best plausible outcome is eventually you ship-of-Theseus your way into a suit of artifact quality articulated plate.

>Would a Gemstone Of The White Jade Tree be overpowered?
Nah. It reduces post-soak damage by half, but a ping from Overwhelming 3 is still two dice, gratuitous stacked-multiplier alpha strikes are still likely to be one hit kills, and reducing movement speed (particularly when you've already got low dexterity) means, even with Loom Stride, engaging anyone who prefers to avoid you or disengaging from a determined pursuer will both be decidedly non-trivial. Popping a hearthstone in or out of it's socket is a miscellaneous action (diceless if you're messing with your own equipment, Dex + Larceny pickpocketing to target somebody else's if you're being sneaky; more overt grab-and-run, e.g. purse-snatching, is a clinch attack using a called shot to target the item), then stashing it safely in a pocket or something is another, and that momentary distraction could be significant in combat time.

>>/quest/880188
Well, while I'm waiting for "Xu" and the exchequer to take their turns...

>the tactics of debate involve matters of official policy, procedure, and decorum at least as much as personal preferences
I wanted to play off of that, would I make a flurry of Efficient Secretary Technique to look up relevant institutional policies and procedures followed by social attack(s) informed by or using that knowledge?

>>122265
>did I adequately adapt the concept as Ledaal Ji, or were you thinking of something else entirely?
I think Ledaal Ji is an interesting and well-made character adaptation. I usually enjoy building new characters rather than adapting old ones though.

I did come up with a new character concept for XALT, but couldn't make heads or tails of the majority of the Exalted source material, so I couldn't tell how much, if any, of this nonsense was even possible. I'm perfectly fine with playing Ledaal Ji, but I'll share it anyway.

The character I was envisioning was also a healer... of a sort.

An ethereal spirit-creature of variable size and monstrous appearance (mostly teeth and eyes), to those capable of seeing them at all. They are invisible and intangible in the same way that an aura of ferocious, otherworldly power might be described as invisible and intangible. In order to stay anchored to life, they must bind themselves into a soulless living body, essentially a human puppet. The body can be manipulated in all the ways a normal living person may manipulate their own body, but has the added advantage of being capable of impossible stunts by means of being pulled, pushed, and flung about like a marionette in an invisible hand. The body has no instinctual fear of death or pain to limit it, for the spirit is not the body. However, it is still bound to the limits of its form. The muscles, bones, flesh... Unimpressive. Despite supernatural speed and dexterity, its brute strength is within the realm of mortality, and of average appearance.

Should the body perish, a suitable replacement must be found immediately for the spirit to transfer and bind itself inside, to avoid being dragged back into a cold and miserable quasi-existence. The body must be alive, but soulless to function as an adequate vessel. To this end, the soul of the unwilling host is simply consumed on entry. Certain conditions (see below) apply to affect its... edibility, so to speak, though an entity of exceptional power may simply ignore these conditions, by virtue of just being too spicy.

Besides unparalleled body self-manipulation, this creature has the capacity for significantly impacting the physical world around it. Their appetite is insatiable, but unusually selective in nature. Specifically, they draw nourishment from pain, injury, illness, destruction, and suffering. Their jaws may pass easily through a lamp to devour the flame that glowed inside. Their healing abilities come from literally eating the affliction. Poisons and diseases are easily torn from the blood without harming the flesh. Cuts and scars are mended by consuming the damage. Flesh knits together as if it were never injured in the first place, for the injury has disappeared from the world. Objects, as well, may be repaired in this way. A battle-scarred sword may be restored to its original forge condition, for its painful history had been consumed. A broken wall may have its bricks returned to it, even as the old bricks lay untouched on the ground. This sort of thing. Naturally, larger and more complicated objects take longer to ingest than smaller ones, and anything with intelligence can attempt to resist this effect. As far as potential hosts go: tormented, suffering souls have little-to-no innate resistance to being devoured, while innocent, happy souls would be like a human chewing on a brick. Futile.

Forgetting their own true name in the stress of assuming a body, the spirit picks one for themselves, although just as often as not, they simply go by the host's former name. Devouring the soul makes its most heartfelt knowledge known to the spirit, though the minor details have a tendency to be obliterated in the process. This spirit has decided "Glaw" is a nice name and has taken it as their own. (You can give the body whatever name you think is most suitable.)

Their literal appetite for cruelty and pain could possibly be construed as a high level of COMPASSION (5), as they're naturally drawn to personally alleviate suffering and put an end to evil. And ravenous pursuit of particularly delectable prey may be considered akin to a significant level of VALOR (3). Their (again literal) detachment from the world makes them a spontaneous creature, with relatively low CONVICTION (2) and TEMPERANCE (2). Being not a creature of this world, there is little for them to find a true connection with, or worry unnecessarily about.

Yet, is that not a suitable dream for such a creature? Armed with a certain degree of WILLPOWER (8), this Glaw has a PERSONAL QUEST to make their permanent mark on the world: to create their own long-lasting connection. They wish to create a legacy that is personally theirs. Something to truly care about. And in their eyes, the most direct way to accomplish this is to sire a mighty clan, multi-generational, and spread out such that it could never be extinguished. To somehow pass down some aspect of their true essence, such that the children would well and truly be kin with Glaw, and not merely the host body's. That is this spirit's dream.

Thus, they find it within themselves to care deeply about:
1. anything personally created by themselves
2. children, for they wish to have their own someday
3. the continued long-term existence of a comfortable world for their descendants to inhabit
4. the pursuit of learning, for they hold self-improvement as a key to long-term success
5. spirit/soul manipulation magic, for they feel personally threatened by it

The intangible nuances of cultured civilization is generally beyond Glaw's experience, having little understanding of topics like philosophy and law, and they generally eschew manufactured weapons, preferring to rely on their own occult powers. Their expertises primarily lies in their comprehension of the mystical weave, an intuitive understanding of the anatomy and functionality of living things (easily applied to fields like medicine and herblore), and skills requiring a great deal of perception, patience, and/or focus, such as crafting or spying. They particularly appreciate skills and knowledge which, once learned, will continue to be just as useful in a fresh body when the current one eventually, inevitably shuffles off its mortal coil, rather than skills primarily relying on developing the physical state of the body.

That's about all I came up with. Feel free to let me know what you think.

>>122625
Right off the bat, an exalt piloting a corpse makes me think of Liminal Exalts- I don’t remember the exact details, but think Frankenstein’s monster, complete with your own Dr. Frakenstine who has some degree of influence over you, although you can switch handlers provided you do so in a timely fashion.

Interestingly when I first read your description I assumed a high conviction and low compassion, based on the assuming the driving force is hunger rather than a bleeding heart; even if the result ends up helping people, the whole “constantly craving food, eating souls to get by” gimmick reads to me as someone who is very dedicated to a specific goal/idea (eating). Not saying the way you have it phrased is incorrect, I just thought it was interesting the difference in interpretation.

On a side note, your post in the game thread made me chuckle- I really liked the bit of flair you put in about “I work so hard you all never even see me!”, thought that was clever. I wonder if this sorcerer you’re healing even has enough money to pay you; it may certainly be a product of my rather untenable means of income, but I certainly have never had a years income just lying around, not even in a bank, much less on my person. Wonder how that’ll shake out if they just physically cannot pay up.

>>122623
>would I make a flurry of Efficient Secretary Technique to look up relevant institutional policies and procedures followed by social attack(s) informed by or using that knowledge?
Efficient Secretary Technique can get you quotes from official style guides and etiquette manuals, but practical application of the knowledge is Socialize skill. It's almost exactly like the difference between memorizing The Art of War word-for-word and knowing how to react pr lead effectively in an actual battle.

You could absolutely stunt on knowledge previously gleaned from Efficient Secretary Technique, though, or use it mid-debate to look up something you didn't know you'd need to know - but because it's a Simple charm, you can't include it in a mundane flurry. Even if you've somehow got an Extra Action charm that'd only let you ask the spider multiple questions rapid-fire, with responses coming back when your DV next refreshed, so you couldn't base the choice of later questions in the flurry on answers from the previous ones. Couldn't take any other non-reflexive actions at the same time regardless. Basically, stopping to look stuff up on your fate-o-phone while somebody's already talking to you is awkward, distracting, and slow.

Amusingly there's an odd little exploit available: if you need an answer faster than that, simply drop out of social combat by rolling Join Battle, use the charm in personal-combat time, and then re-join the debate. Ten questions in one minute instead of one per six minutes. Of course, if people notice you getting all tensed up for a fight, there may be some.... unproductive misunderstandings. Counter-assassination contingencies activated, that sort of thing. White Veil Style martial arts would be useful for that sort of problem, but Lute Silhouette doesn't know that one yet.

Playing a sidereal effectively often requires thinking at least one or two steps ahead; when somebody manages to yank the keikaku out from under them, stereotype is they'll either retreat and regroup, or press on and fall to pieces. Lunars (and to a lesser extent, Alchemicals and Infernals) are regarded as more adaptable, but then again they also have a harder time converting that all-purpose personal prowess into long-term institutional results. EST, rules for crafting prayer strips in combat time, zero-prep options for sidereal astrology, even the closed charmset forcing high-XP growth into sorcery and/or martial arts (particularly the much bemoaned duration of Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style's multi-Form powerup sequence) all contribute to that dynamic where giving an experienced Vizier even five, ten, thirty seconds of preparation can be a completely different scenario from catching them with their pants down, and the idea of someone like Chejop Kejak clearing out his schedule so he can devote a few days, maybe a whole week to setting up some mission should be a terrifying prospect for that mission's target. The usual balancing factor is that free time is an inordinately precious commodity for sidereals; they're agents of the Bureau of Destiny, constantly being sent out on urgent missions, sabotaged by divine office politics, audited by celestial censors with an axe to grind because they know perfectly well who was behind the Usurpation but can't quite prove it, and if that wasn't enough, using the charm Yellow Path to it's fullest potential requires a schedule so heavily over-committed, that making it to your next appointments on time would require a miraculous violation of the laws of physics.

>>122625
Yeah, there's a few different ways you could make that work, but hands-down the best fit would be a raksha with Assumption of the Person's Heart, then heavy investment in Feeding charms and All-Consuming God-Monster Style.

...hm. On the one hand, I want to walk you through properly realizing such a bizarre and fascinating concept in character creation, but on the other hand I'm short on sleep and raksha stuff is unusually hard to explain from scratch. Would you be okay starting with an ass-backwards reading assignment? Grab a copy of the Scroll of Errata (it's available on DrivethruRPG for the low, low price of zero dollars) and ctrl-F to the phrase "soul digestion catalysis", then branch out and see what you can piece together from there. Fortunately (at least in this odd context) the raksha sourcebook was very heavily modified for the 2.5 edition update. If you like what you see, ask me some follow-up questions or somehow obtain the actual Graceful Wicked Masques book or something.

>quotes from official style guides and etiquette manuals, but practical application of the knowledge is Socialize skill. It's almost exactly like the difference between memorizing The Art of War word-for-word and knowing how to react pr lead effectively in an actual battle.
Not the application I meant, exactly. I was thinking more looking up organizational rules, regulations, laws and SOPs the executor is operating under. Any organization of sufficient size and age will have those, and if you want to try to rule-lawyer someone into paying you (or anything else) it helps to know the rules in play.

I don't want the art of war, I want the operations manual, or code of laws.

>if people notice you getting all tensed up for a fight
Which part is the noticeable tensing? Dropping out with mass social combat, the individual action lookups, or rolling to re-enter? All of it?

>The usual balancing factor is that free time is an inordinately precious commodity for sidereals; they're agents of the Bureau of Destiny
Yeah I could see that one coming at least. I'm quite happy not going that route.

>>122625
That's a fun character idea. I like it.

>>122633
>Which part is the noticeable tensing?
https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2007-06-19
>I want the operations manual, or code of laws.
That kind of thing is a lot more useful in a parliamentary or tribal system, anywhere that old precedents can have respectable authority in and of themselves, than it is under an Exalted autocrat who built a lot of the key structures with her own two hands, and reserves the right to tear it all down the same way. What specifically do you want to know, in questions that might plausibly be answered with 25 words or less?

>>122682
Perhaps I’m missing some sort of context clues, but the link to the comic doesn’t make it clear to me what tips people off you’ve stopped having a normal conversation and are getting ready to fight. I’m also curious about it, although I don’t know if Bridget will be worried much about that sort of thing.

On that matter, you mentioned a martial arts style which would help with jumping between combat and conversation without scaring everyone- are there other charms that do this? How does surprise work with roll battle? Is there a way to drop into combat and attack before people even notice what’s happening?

>>122696
>what tips people off you’ve stopped having a normal conversation and are getting ready to fight
It's one of those genre conceit, underlying-cultural-concept things. http://www.threepanelsoul.com/comic/video-game-novices Tunic might be able to explain it better than me, or you could try reading the manga Assassination Classroom, which explores the subject at quite some length in the specific context of teaching mortals without enlightened essence how to make effective surprise attacks.

>are there other charms that do this?
There's generally more than one way to skin a cat in the Exalted system, yes.
>How does surprise work with roll battle? Is there a way to drop into combat and attack before people even notice what’s happening?
Quoting from the book, here:
In the case of ambush or an opening attack by an invisible opponent, roll the attacker's (Dexterity + Stealth) against the victim's (Wits + Awareness). If the victim is distracted by conversation or focused on some other activity rather than casually looking around (or if the attacker is completely outside the field of her senses, as by being directly behind), the victim suffers a -2 internal penalty to this roll. Conversely, add one die if she is actively wary and suspects danger. Setting an ambush from plain view is also possible (such as in the case of an assassin who wishes to throw a knife at someone during a peaceful banquet without telegraphing her aggressive intentions in advance), but doing so adds two to the difficulty of the Stealth roll and requires that the scene is not currently in combat. Make this roll immediately before rolling (Wits + Awareness) as part of a Join Battle action, as noted on page 141. If the defender wins, she notices the attack in time to respond to it normally with a block or dodge. Her DV still drops normally if faced with an invisible opponent, but she can defend, which beats the alternative. If the attacker wins, the defender suffers from an unexpected attack and must rely on passive defenses or magical defenses that work against surprise. Players of Exalted characters should keep in mind that Melee Charms require that an Exalt be armed with a ready weapon to use them. As such, characters whose magical defenses focus on evasion will have an advantage against ambush unless the parry expert expects trouble enough to unsheathe her blade. Reestablishing Surprise: Unexpected attacks normally open hostilities but are not often a factor once fighting is underway. Once a traitor stabs his master in the back o an assassin shoots a blowdart from his concealed perch, everyone present reacts by initiating a Join Battle action. Regaining the considerable advantage of surprise is not easy. The character must try to hide while alert opponents do everything in their power to track his movements. Even invisibility does not guarantee a new surprise attack, though it certainly helps. Whenever a character wishes to hide, doing so is a miscellaneous action that may be part of a flurry as normal. Roll the attacker's (Dexterity + Stealth), and make independent reflexive rolls of (Wits + Awareness + 2) for all witnesses. If the hiding character is invisible or similarly obscured from senses, add two bonus dice to the stealth roll. Using a distraction, movement, or some aspect of the environment to aid in hiding is a stunt, adding bonus dice as normal. If the environment affords no hiding spots and the character cannot hide or cloak himself magically, he cannot attempt concealment. Any witness who loses the contested roll loses track of the character entirely and cannot continue to attack or interact with him until he reveals himself - or until someone else who still sees him points or calls out the general location or direction. The hidden attacker may launch new surprise attacks against anyone who doesn't know his present location, granting the full benefits of surprise. Once the character launches a new surprise attack, he gives away his location to everyone until he can hide again. Until then, any character can take a miscellaneous action tp try to find the character (potentially as part of a flurry), rolling a (Perception + Awareness) check against a difficulty of the successes on the roll to hide. Those who find him can immediately shout to others (subtract two successes from the stealth roll for alerted searchers) or keep the knowledge to themselves.

Long story short, anyone involved in combat is automatically more alert and harder to sneak up on (+2) than they can possibly be out of combat (+1 for 'actively wary and suspects danger'). Successfully attacking from surprise completely negates the first and most important line of defense, but you'd better make the first shot count. Even if you could flurry a dozen attacks in the span of a second, only that FIRST attack will be unexpected. It is impossible to attack without breaking stealth. A sniper with a whisper-silent pneumatic dart gun gives away his position just as thoroughly, even on a miss, as a howling berserker leaping out of the bushes with an axe. The difference is, while either of them could make a two-action flurry, attacking and then reestablishing stealth before anyone else has a chance to respond, a sniper's prepared nest offers bonuses to the latter roll.

The first half of White Veil Style is all about skirting around the edges of those rules. Alehouse Memory Stance negates the penalty for a sneak attack in plain view, Birdsong Over Blades lets you hit somebody without damaging them but still deliver poison, Owl Clutches At The Night lets you abort an attack at the reroll stage - thereby potentially forcing a defender to burn motes on surprise-negators and step 2 defenses while preventing counterattacks and maintaining your own stealth, since you never actually completed an attack - and White Veil Form is a whole heap of scenelong modifiers based on confusing people by acting like you haven't quite Joined Battle all the way. Then, right after the form, there's Blinded By Laughter, which punches an exception into that big bold impossibility of the previous paragraph: under the right circumstances, with that charm, you can make an attack without anybody noticing, even after it hits. Part of 'the right circumstances' is the attack mustn't inflict even a single level of damage, or otherwise not capture the target's attention - but that's what Birdsong Over Blades is for, or you can use Owl Clutches At The Night to repeatedly aim, swing, and pull out (nonchalant whistling optional) until you get a good enough roll on the attack to effectively guarantee a one-hit KO. Can't capture somebody's attention if they're already unconscious, right? Basically, a White Veil master could do the trick Vos pulled on Tilkos, but reliably, with pure skill rather than luck.

>but the link to the comic doesn’t make it clear to me what tips people off
Especially as I asked a mechanical question, not a Watsonian one. I don't understand if it's the act of leaving the debate, doing Efficient Secretary Technique research, or rolling join debate or all three that's being construed as hostile in this example.

IC, any of those could include physical tells of impending hostility (although that would be subject to the character's intentions and acting skills. What happens if the character's intentions are peaceful, or she's not bothered in the least by what's going on?) but since all 3 of those actions could take place on different ticks, it'd be nice to know which one risks setting the guards off. Is dropping out of an argument, or choosing to enter one late, generally a dangerous action that people around you might mistake for something else and attack you over?

>>122702
I found the first 3 chapters free, but they didn't seem to really get at the concept you were talking about much. That tree sounds very cool though, one of those thing that inspires you to make characters based around a core ability tree. It's unfortunate that so much of the exalted information is scattered and disorganized. You know it occurs to me that I never actually asked outright what edition we were using- based on your responses to various things I'd assume we're mainly playing with the 2.5 rules, which is the errata of 2nd edition if I understand correctly. Are you synthesizing information from all the editions, or do you want to try to stick with one main rule book?

>>122706
>I don't understand if it's the act of leaving the debate, doing Efficient Secretary Technique research, or rolling join debate or all three that's being construed as hostile in this example.
None of those. The potentially-seen-as-hostile part is rolling Join Battle to define your own little pocket of personal-combat-scaled time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AwPwqO2iuA
>>122711
I'm mostly using 2.5, yeah, but planning to adapt the Sorcerous Project rules from third edition, and maybe some of the combat-sorcery-as-extended/contested-action stuff. Not all of it, though, and definitely not a free spell just for becoming a sorcerer. As with the Dawn Solution, I feel like they swung the pendulum a bit too far back the other way on that point. With sorcerous projects and the ability to actively contest somebody else's spell in progress, it could make sense to build a character who's a sorcerer, but doesn't know any spells. Could be a rear-echelon magitech engineer, or a hedge witch or something, somebody who doesn't plan to use magic in combat time. They could do so, despite that lack of training... but only to wreck another sorcerer's spell in progress, or maybe blow themselves up. That fits particularly well with a passage from the Thousand Correct Actions of the Upright Soldier (Lookshy's in-setting tactical manual), since it means the one thing you know any sorcerer can do is counter an enemy sorcerer (of the same or lower circle) thus effectively neutralizing them both. So then you can have 'civilian' sorcerers, just wanting to keep to themselves and do research, who keep getting dragged away from their projects and pressed into military service by warlords who are largely ignorant of the finer points of the occult, but who DO know that the army they're up against has a sorcerer, and the only way to counter that is to have one of your own. And then the two wizards do http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BeamOWar at each other, with probably very little effect on the battle unless one of them happens to decisively lose the contest of arcane forces, or get sniped or overrun by conventional weapons. Sharpshooters are also considered a type of sorcerer, for the tactical manual's purposes. If you give a sorcerer like that some proper engagement with the larger military strategy, instead of brandishing them like a good-luck charm, they could build you some armored golems, or reshape terrain to alter the whole context of a siege, or modify the blood of your elite troops so that when spilled it transforms into giant scorpions which attack whoever inflicted the wound, or any number of other bizarre context-breaking advantages, but setting any of that up requires time and infrastructure. It's possible to do a sorcerous project in just a few days, on a shoestring budget, but the results probably won't be pretty.

>>122721
Okay, so you can still get the jump on someone, but as soon as you enter combat time people are tipped off. Makes sense as a concrete mechanic, and can have an argument made for how it's rationalized IC.

Yet again another cool description that makes me want to try to figure out the character creation process for other exalted although, if this is a sorcerer, maybe a solar wouldn't be a bad call. Any tips on what books to look for if I wanna learn more about the rules for sorcerous projects?

>>122739
I've been reading the pirated pre-release copy of the 3rd edition core book, which contains the complete ruleset for sorcerous projects. It's not actually all that complicated.

Santova 2018/05/01(Tue)20:15 No. 122760 ID: d22dc0
File 152523095348.jpg - (420.01KB , 1280x720 , panda_lazy_on-rock_0.jpg )

Rough draft of a lunar exalt I spent roughly 11 hours making today.

Name: Mirth Rice Jade

Caste: Changing Moon
-Seneschals of the Sun Kings

Animal: Giant Panda

Tell: A jade colored ring on the forehead

Motivation: Bring down the Dragon-Blooded and Sidereals as both recompense for the personal loss, and to ensure a new society can begin to grow and prosper

4 Strength, 2 Dexterity, 5 Stamina (huge mutation, BP 2)
5 Charisma, 3 Manipulation, 3 Appearance
3 Perception, 3 Intelligence, 4 *Wits

Bureaucracy 3 (taxes and tribute 1)
Endurance 3
Linguistics 2 - High Realm, Low realm, Rivertongue
Lore 3 (farming 3)
*Martial Arts 2
Occult 3
Resistance 3
Socialize 3
*Survival 3

(BP 2)
Artifact 1 (The agricultural equipment from DKQ)
Backing 1 (MRJ is an initiate of the Seneschals of the Sun Kings)
Manse 1 (Producing a hearthstone that powers the agricultural equipment?)
Resources 2 (A small farm that MRJ has tasked a first circle demon to maintain)
Mentor 3 (A Lunar of the wandering path who gave MRJ their tatoos)
Hearts Blood 1 (Bluebird, Springbok, Leopard Seal)

Knacks and Charms 2
Humble Mouse Shape*
Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
-Emerald Counter Magic
-Demon of the First Circle
Celestial Circle Sorcery
-Ivory Orchid Pavillion
-Cloud Trapeze
-The Spawning of Monsters, from which MRJ has sired a child mixed between himself and another animal, to be determined based on the allowance of dinosaurs as viable candidates

Virtues
2 Compassion, 3 Conviction, 2 Temperance, 2 Valor, focused determination flaw

Willpower 9 (BP 4)

Intimacies (11) (in no particular order)
Their Fallen Mate
Their Mentor
Their Pack leader in the Seneschals of the Sun King
Cleansing the world of it's corrupt organizations
Starting a new society, bereft of currency, working towards a common good
Farming
Relaxing and Drinking
Protecting other Exalted from the Wyld Hunt
Protecting Animals- the Hearts Blood hunt was tough for him to go through with, and he is loath to have to hurt animals for personal gain in the future
-
-

Essence 3 (BP 10)
PE = E+2W = 21
pE = 4E+2W+4V = 42

Health -0, -0, -1, -1, -1, -2, -2, -4, Incapacitated

Okay so this was a lot harder and took a lot longer than I expected, but here's the stats behind the concept for Mirth Rice Jade. A lunar sorcerer who, aided by their physically imposing offspring, seek to re-build after tragedy and enlightenment. Current backstory follows:

Formerly a lower class member of society in the Threshold, Mirth Rice Jade realized their true nature far too late. Seeking little more than to attain a comfortable life through political kiss-assery, Mirth Rice Jade became a bureaucrat for the Immaculate Order, hoping to eventually work their way into a marriage of opportunity, and move up in life. This all changed when MRJ met Six Pound Ogre, a solar exalted who intervened when the Wyld Hunt came after MRJ. The two became quite close, and while neither realized it, they were a mated pair before the Usurpation. As their relationship grew, they hid in a small city SPO governed, where MRJ was taught of exaltation, and initiated into sorcery. SPO had never met a Lunar before, and didn't understand the ways that they differed, so while MRJ couldn't master the Solar arts as they had both hoped, Sorcery proved to be common ground. Unfortunately, as is the case with most backstories, these happy days were not meant to last. Prepared now, for a fight against two trained exalted, the Wyld hunt returned in force, and destroyed the city. Six Pound Ogre gave his life so that Mirth Rice Jade could escape, where he did so hastily. Traveling into the Wyld, his unchained body began to shift, become large and bear like, before he was rescued by an Elder Lunar who tattooed Mirth Rice Jade, and took him under their wing, Literally. In time, Mirth Rice Jade was taught of the Lunar, the Silver Pact, and of the true history of the world. His master had isolated themselves from the other Lunars, devising their own plans for the future of society; Mirth Rice Jade was, however, taught of the different ideologies of Lunars, and after his personal loss, he allied himself with Seneschals of the Sun Kings, and began training to one day push back against the oppression of the Dragon Blooded and create a new world order for all to prosper in. Ironically, given the name, Mirth Rice Jade believes that forging a world without currency will place everyone on equal footing, and allow for a greater and more harmonious society; by seeking to foster this idea, MRJ furthers their mentors plan, none the wiser.

>>122760
>Artifact 1 (The agricultural equipment from DKQ)
>Manse 1 (Producing a hearthstone that powers the agricultural equipment?)
The vegetech diagnostic & maintenance kit from Dragon King Quest was actually a 2-dot artifact, and intended for use on genetically engineered plant-based industrial infrastructure, not just for sowing and harvesting basic food crops. A 1-dot agricultural tool could be something like a self-turning millstone, or a shovel that aerates the soil (so even hard-pan clay and permafrost become as easy to dig through as loose silt), or a scythe that automatically binds string around whatever it cuts through (whether that's bundling stalks of grain, or a tourniquet for an enemy soldier's leg-stump), or some pressure/temperature/wind gauge/lightning rod combo that gives +2 to rolls to predict and prepare for bad weather, or some equivalently minor enchantment on a nigh-indestructible but otherwise mundane tool.
The 2-dot kit probably includes not just pruning tools, soil chemistry analysis, and the plant-only version of a Rod of Cleansing the Body, but the equivalent of a modern university genetics lab, PCR machines and all, made magically self-cleaning, smaller, and sturdier. Inadequate for creating organisms from scratch, but the ability to check germ-line code directly takes guesswork out of hybridization and selective breeding.

>-The Spawning of Monsters
Instead of this spell (which I'm not sure was ever officially brought over to 2nd edition) take the Courtesan's Possession knack, and add appropriate dinosaurs to your heart's blood library, possibly at the expense of Mentor dots.

>Essence 3
You need Essence 4 for Celestial Circle Sorcery (and Courtesan's Possession). Pay for that with Diminished Taste (-3 for a lunar, as it interferes with Heart's Blood acquisition), Known Anathema (-4 for a lunar since disguise is relatively trivial), Nearsightedness (-2), and downgrading Huge to Large.

>backstory
Actual moment of exaltation seems to have been skipped over.
>a bureaucrat for the Immaculate Order
You mean the Thousand Scales, the Realm's secular civilian government?
>intimacies
Lot of these don't have an emotional context specified, and the baby dino-hybrid's absence from the list seems notable. As an example for formatting purposes, here's the moon-goddess's canonical list of 'more enduring' intimacies, from her stat block in Glories Of The Most High: Change (Need), Gaia (Love), Creation (Fierce Protectiveness), the Lunar Exalted (Pride), the Unconquered Sun (Friendly Rivalry), the Five Maidens (Wary Respect), the Fair Folk (Joyful Provocation), Autochthon (Fear), iconoclasts (Tacit Approval) and dissidents and outcasts (Kindness).

>>122760
>Endurance 3
There's no such thing as the Endurance skill. I'd think you meant Resistance, except that
>Resistance 3
Craft (Steam) for genetic engineering requires 2 dots each in Craft (Water) and Craft (Wood), and can't exceed your Medicine skill, so how about swapping out 'endurance' for one dot each in those three prerequisite skills? Apart from the longer-term growth prospects, that'd also mean knowing first aid, how to turn grain into bread or booze, and how to turn lumber into watertight barrels to hold the booze, among other tasks.

>>/quest/881910
Hmmm. I'm not sure what to do with this.

My first idea my to try and establish social capital with the other exalted by facilitating their claims, but Ledhaal Ji's petition has already been accepted, and Bridget hasn't made hers yet (although Lute could plausibly alreadhave an idea what Bridget is here for if she'd Efficient Secretary Techniqued the visible-through-walls solar anima flare before showing up). Is there a social-attack equivalent of punching a hole in the exchquer's defenses for Bridget to walk through? Or would it be a good idea to guard for a tick so I could act on the same tick as Bridget, hammering the exchquer from two sides? (Although I'm not sure her proposal needs much support- seems to me the cost of 3 sheep is pretty cheap to get a solar exalt not to try and extract payment by force).

Another useful move might be putting myself on good footing with the Lich Queen's servants so I can operate here more easily. I'm not sure I can take credit for fixing a problem before it was apparent to many people, and without drawing attention to myself. Prince consort might be able to vouch for what he saw, or could just warn them about the new essence vents.

Still seems premature to try and negotiate any kind of longer term repairs project, as there are lasting security implications there and almost certainly can't be resolved without the Lich Queen.

There's using the note and recorded video to sell out Embri for some advantage, but that seems unnecessarily mean OOC, and IC Embri's too interesting, entertaining and possibly useful to burn.

>>122769
> Is there a social-attack equivalent of punching a hole in the exchquer's defenses for Bridget to walk through?
You could set up a coordinated attack, yeah. That's a Charisma+Socialize roll, difficulty equal to half the number of people being coordinated (so 1 with just yourself and Bridget), and creates a window of opportunity on the tick when you next act. Only useful if both of you attack right then, but delaying with a Guard or Aim action is easy enough.

>>122769
Thanks for the set up! I’m curious to see how that kind of coordinated attack looks in fiction as opposed to the abstracted mechanical version; I thought your flavor text was really cool as well.

>>122785
Unfortunately my computer is on the fritz so while I’d like to make changes to the posted character sheet, I don’t have the capacity to do so on my phone. This may also impact my ability to coherently post in the exalted thread, but I’ll do my best and just ask extra questions if I need to. Since Bridget already did her voice line, should I post that again, for the sake of clarity? Or make a whole new post?

>>122802
>Since Bridget already did her voice line, should I post that again, for the sake of clarity? Or make a whole new post?
I think you probably need a new post, since you need to say if you're aiming or guarding in order to stall for whatever tick the coordinated action is scheduled on. And your previous roll was for join debate. Actually making a social attack in that debate would be a new roll. (And probably new text if you want to stunt that roll, I assume).

If I can draw a courtroom analogy, what you said before was your opening statement. Now it's time to press your case.

Of course needing to stall for the coordinated action assumes that Lute successfully set one up. I think I did, but for all I know I'm counting wrong or one of the npcs might have a way to mess it up.

Ledaal Ji 2018/05/05(Sat)16:15 No. 122844 ID: 20ea96
File 152556213445.png - (91.02KB , 517x845 , souldigestioncatalysis.png )

>>122630
>Grab a copy of the Scroll of Errata, ctrl-F to the phrase "soul digestion catalysis", and see what you can piece together
Reading exalted documentation makes me feel slightly like I've had a stroke, but as far as I can work out, a Raksha with a build focused on feeding charms would need to eat someone's soul every day to fill their motes and possibly gain temporary buffs, storing up to five bonus motes in their Bottomless Dream Gullet, and then burning that every tale/scene to fuel the All-Consuming God Monster Style (which costs 5 motes). They then fight by consuming enemy traits, ala PF ability score drain?

It doesn't quite seem like what I had in mind, considering you can only feed once per day or tale, and you have to give up filling your motes in order to take advantage of soul-digestion catalysis speed-training. I was mainly interested in the concept of feeding on destruction in order to enact healing and repair, rather than just... feeding in order to eat things.

Also, that speed-training doesn't really seem like a great deal, considering it gives you a tale's worth of training, but makes you trade in your once-per-tale feeding ability for it, so I wouldn't be able to fill up my motes to be able to use the expensive All-Consuming God Monster Style for the actual encounters, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

Either way though, it's a moot point since I'm already playing Ledaal Ji, and I have no intention of multi-balling.

Okay so I rolled to set up the coordinated attack- do I need a follow up post to roll for executing the attack?

Out of curiosity, do animals also get 9 stats, and if so, how is that sort of determined?

>>/quest/884710

Not that it would have made the difference here, but no dice from aiming? Also, what does the coordinated attack actually do? Do lute and Bridget both make attacks with separate rolls for success but the defender accrues an onslaught penalty? How does attacking at the same time help?

>>/quest/884710
>Mutations
Wait, what? Embri's a cyborg, how can she get mutations? Rogue nanotech?

>>/quest/884723
Man, that's a bad roll. Speaking of which, what are the basic rules for determining the number of successes and failures?

>>123067
For each d10 you roll, 1-6 counts as a failure, 7-9 as a success, and 10 counts as 2 successes (for exalted, at least). How many successes you need to pull something off depends on the situation.

>>123067
>Embri's a cyborg, how can she get mutations? Rogue nanotech?
In the wyld (or a wyld-tainted region of creation), you're dealing with primordial chaos and the fundamental physics of Creation you take for granted breaking down. It's not radiation messing up your dna, or nanobots messing up your robotics so much as it is being caught up in reality warping.

>>122892
Animals are usually listed with a simplified statblock that omits most of the social stuff.
>>123065
Should've been three extra dice from aiming, for one additional success. Sorry about that. Coordinated attacks penalize the defender's DVs, but only if more than one member of the group being coordinated actually takes the opportunity to attack. Maximum penalty is the coordinator's successes on the initial roll, or twice the number of attackers, whichever is less. Exchequer gets DV bonuses from having a group backing him up (relative magnitude), the nature of the request being inconsistent with the group's policy, and relative appearance, so it still wouldn't be enough. Picture Mongo from Blazing Saddles waiting in line at the DMV.
>>123071
Tens count as two on most rolls for all heroic characters, including heroic mortals and combat-relevant spirits. On damage rolls, tens only count as two if some magical effect specifically allows that.

Seven is the default "target number." Sidereals and Primordials have connections to the metaphysical underpinnings of probability which allow them to manipulate target numbers (mostly, but not exclusively, their own) in various ways.

Magey, I'm still waiting on your social attack. What are you asking the exchequer to do, either in an immediate physical sense or as a longer-term policy shift?

Beowulf, haven't heard from you in nearly a month now. Want to finalize Force of Ordered Thought and jump in to the wyld pocket scene, or would you rather stick with the previous plan of being brought along when Stanewald is summoned? Or have you completely lost interest and wandered off?

>>123181
Oh, sorry for holding that up.

Should that be in the context of supporting or mediating Bridget's position, or are you expecting an independent demand? I'm not sure if the coordinated attack means a bonus to working on the same thing, or if it's just trying to overwhelm defenses by hitting the opponent with too many issues.

>>123183
>Should that be in the context of supporting or mediating Bridget's position, or are you expecting an independent demand?
Either way is fine.

More Kimbery charms to consider: https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/46133/

>>123232
PELAGIC MUSE ARTISTRY and SQUAMOUS IDOLS RAISED look interesting at first blush. Low essence, permanent, and social stuff. At a closer look I'm a little confused as to how one actually applies them.

PMA enhances social attacks- but it's infernal influence can be made, and triggering additional derangements (and mutations if enhanced by SIR) seem like more of a problem for an undercover operative than a boon. The crafting bonus seems more straightforward to apply.

On it's own SIR seems like a way to maintain / bolster a cult, or npc followers? If you don't mind them being openly mutated, at least (or have a charm to clean up mutations). Which might be useful, but I'll have to get around to establishing a cult or gaining followers first.

OCEAN’S BOUNTY BLESSING seems more like a strategic charm more than a tactical one. Which might be useful, and is actually a good fit for the whole sidereal manipulator thing on a political scale, but I probably have other bases that need more immediate covering.

PEARLS OF THE SECRET DEEP: artifact crafting, neat. Pretty good fit, but also seems like less than an immediate priority.

Bonus points if I can stunt and stretch OBB or PotSD to pull goodies from a mirror.

WEEPING WOUNDS TRIBUNAL seems perfect for Lute, but it has TRUST IS NAIVE as a prerequisite and I hadn't decided if I wanted to take that. Depending on how one interprets the implementation of TIN, not being able to believe bad things about a beloved character might get in my way, since I feel like Lute should be fully willing to make someone hate or oppose her in pursuit of bringing out their best self, and not being able to comprehend she was doing that feels like a problem.

Can you target yourself with TRUST IS NAIVE? Seems like an interesting work around that could be fun to roleplay, feeds into the idea that Lute is doing what she thinks is best, regardless of how others may feel about the "perfect self" she envisions for them.

An interesting perspective on Exalted social abilities from "tzar1990": https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/posts/1336442/
>Charisma represent Pathos, the appeal to the emotions of the listener. Charisma is used to convince people to do something because it feels right, or just to make them feel. The musician who stirs people to tears has high Charisma, as does the speaker who drives listeners into a patriotic frenzy, or the supposed weakling who convinces others to aid him with artfully applied stabs of guilt. Charisma's weakness is that it's difficult to determine just how an audience will react - you might fill them with joy or anger, but what they do with those emotions is up to them.
>Manipulation represents Logos, the appeal to reason. Manipulation is used to convince people that something is true, or that something unpleasant is necessary. The lawyer who can argue every point of precedent in the last century has high Manipulation, as does the teacher calmly working students through mathematical proofs, or the general convincing his king that atrocities are necessary for the greater good. Manipulation's weakness is that it lacks the emotional "punch" of the other abilities - people might be intellectually convinced by it, but it cannot make them feel as though it's true.
>Appearance represents Ethos, the appeal to the character of the speaker. Appearance is used to convince people to trust you, or to make sacrifices on your behalf. The fatherly minister whose congregation assumes he's a living saint has high Appearance, as does the beloved king, or the con-man who lures people into trusting him against their better judgement. Appearance's weakness is that it works almost exclusively on a personal scale - while you might be able to convince others to give you gifts and act in your best interests, it has very little ability to move them to act on any scale that doesn't involve you - Appearance may get you out of the draft, but it's unlikely to convince anyone that the war as a whole is wrong.

>>123247
That would require Lute forming a positive intimacy towards herself, which I assume you can't normally do. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's a workaround for that, though.

>>123250

I feel like I remember something about Exalted characters being able to assume they have an effective intimacy for other members of their circle (i.e. their fellow players), so that a group doesn't have to go to the trouble of everyone getting intimacies towards everyone else. I feel like it'd be reasonable to assume everyone has an effective intimacy towards themselves, as well.

>>123250
Why not? You can form an intimacy toward any concept you're aware of enough to form an opinion about, and many people have strong opinions about themselves. In fact, the last sentence of the charm Locust Mana Plague is "If the Exalt eats her own food, the Intimacy she gains toward herself is one of smug self-satisfaction."

>>123349
Puts an interesting spin on all our characters who haven't listed intimacies towards themselves; clerical oversight in character creation, at least for me, but an interesting idea to build off of as a character. Especially given that intimacies can be negative, right? So it's not even like our characters hate themselves or anything like that, they just consider their own personage irrelevant, something they've not put much thought into. Makes me think of disassociation, being almost separated from yourself as a concept.

>>123349
I guess I was thinking they were limited then they are.

That is an interesting roleplaying option to consider, then. My first buy when we reach training downtime is still going to be First Kimbery Excellency, but I'm still juggling about a bunch of different options after that.

How does one acquire intimacies (outside of charms that cause them to form)? Are they on a point buy, or do you just define them as it makes sense? Because if they apply that broadly I'd expect a person to have dozens to hundreds.

>>123181
>>/quest/885779
Also in case you missed it, I had Lute roll, so you should be good to go unless we're waiting on Beowulf too.

>>123403
>How does one acquire intimacies (outside of charms that cause them to form)? Are they on a point buy, or do you just define them as it makes sense?
You can form an intimacy with a number of scenes of voluntary action equal to your Conviction, or remove or redefine one the same way. More than one intimacy can be changed in the same scene, but (without magic, at least) the same intimacy cannot be incremented up, down, or sideways more than once in a single scene. People with Conviction 1 can remap their entire worldview (apart from the core of Motivation and Virtues) almost as quickly and easily as changing clothes. http://forwardcomic.com/archive.php?num=35 To persuade more hard-nosed people in a way that'll stick, you need to give them time to think between successive bouts of social combat. That's why Hitler's propaganda rallies had intermissions: each fifteen minute rant is two speed 6 Performance-based attacks with three long ticks of Monologue between them, then after a scene break and some downtime, anyone who either had an intimacy shifted or spent WP to resist is ready to go again.
>Because if they apply that broadly I'd expect a person to have dozens to hundreds.
People can and do have many opinions or emotions which are not strong or persistent enough to qualify as intimacies. The normal maximum sustainable number of intimacies is Willpower + Compassion. Beyond that, your heart is full http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20041112 ("I haven't any kindness left for the dead!"), so the least relevant ones will be crowded out, fall away, and depart in dreams. There are magical ways to exceed or ignore that limit, particularly among Kimbery's Intolerable Burning Truths, but such changes also indicate a departure from healthy human psychology. Larger organizations can have intimacy-like policy commitments of unlimited number and complexity.

It occurs to me https://tgchan.org/wiki/Polokoa_Quest is actually a pretty good point of comparison for a GSP working their way up to Elder status. Probably a Defiler (Polo is fairly consistent with Pyrian themes) with Isidoros favored (for Rokoa). CAI in the suit would be her coadjutor, networked out via Unweave Into Hollowness, Chaos Dunk would be an adamant-circle direct-damage spell, elder machines might be Neverborn or something, Rokolo is another GSP of similar age who dug into the Will-Crushing Force tree, or maybe that sleeper-agent upgrade to Splintered Gale Shintai. The conflict between them doesn't quite translate correctly into a setting where solving problems via time travel is legitimately impossible, but for most practical purposes the resource requirements and philosophical differences could be translated into some great working of sorcery or geomancy or primordial transcendence easily enough. Time police would simply be Sidereals.

You mention time travel being impossible, but didn’t the primordials invent linear time? If time had to be made linear, that suggests non-linear time at least existing, ergo, a potential for time travel, right?

>>124495
Well, sure, if you murdered the Five Maidens and broke the Loom of Fate and revoked the yozi surrender-oaths and dismantled whatever else is enforcing linear time, thereby dissolving all Creation into the Wyld and/or Oblivion, then time travel would be possible. At least, in theory. What's your plan for surviving the various side effects of all that for long enough to do anything useful with it?

>>124511
Well, I'd think you could find other work arounds. Time being non-linear means that there's no before or after for when it's non-linear, otherwise it was always linear. The non-linear part is just a list of facts rather than a time line, because there's no line to put them on, no sequence they occurred in, no even "occurred" Just things that are. So, it makes sense that there's some wonky things related to non linear time, at least to me.

>>124516
Linear time didn't exist before it was created by the primordials, but before they did that nothing really existed to be defined by time, except the primordials themselves - there were the unshaped raksha, but they weren't really real either. As for the primordials, they probably enforced some sort of linear time for themselves voluntarily because it made things easier for them.

Like... if you say "non-linear time" was the case before creation, like sometimes effects happened before causes... well, what was there to define a "cause" or "effect" before then at all? Everything was unbounded and undefined. Cause could be effect and effect cause. Saying before should be before after made as much sense as saying you should only ever walk backwards or only ever turn right or only ever say a particular word once. You're placing too many limits on the concept of time. You're thinking that if time wasn't linear, that added the possibility of "back" to the existing possibility of "forward". But before creation, time could also go sideways, or loop around to itself, or split into multiple streams only some of which bend back to create the original stream from which they came, or instead of flowing like a stream time burned like a fire, or any or all of these simultaneously crossing over each other.

There are oddities in the concept, the main one I can think of being that Oramus is described as the first/oldest primordial, but perhaps he wasn't oldest as in he's existed for the longest period relative to some external time, but because somehow he precedes the other primordials in some conceptual way. Lunar Quest briefly brought up the idea that Oramus invented/defines the concept of existence and non-existence, and if that was the case then any other primordial could only be able to exist with in a space defined by him, therefore necessitating his existence during theirs regardless of how long and by what strange paths they each take timewise.

>>124517
If they enforced linear time for themselves, then that would make sense; problem for me here is you're saying that non-linear time was before creation, when I'd posit it can't be, since "before" doesn't exist without linear time. You can't have before and after on the timeline if there's no line. To say something happened "before" the line implies it's still linear, we just can't see or remember the rest of the line. It's gotta happen in some outside structure, except that things can't even "happen" because that /also/ implies a linear understanding. No before, no then, or after, or next, just a bullet point list of truths we know. That seems to imply some wiggle room for the stuff that could be on that list to me, if someone figured out some new time bending martial arts.

>>124518
I don't know if thinking about it as "before" even makes sense. It might be more accurate to describe it as, like, a venn diagram with pre-linear time and linear time as nested circles? Creation is bounded on all sides geographically by Chaos (well, in a 2d plane), so maybe it's bounded chronologically as well. If you're outside the circle, you can move in all directions around it, but if you enter the circle at any point, you're bound to time.

Perhaps a better way would be to describe it as, like, a funnel? Think of Creation like a knot or a whirlpool in the original chaos that sucks everything into it that gets close. Maybe there's some extra layer of Chaos, out beyond "Pure Chaos", where linear time also breaks down. But you can't tell because anything that comes in from outside linear time is forced to go through the same door, that is, the beginning. So if you did time travel in any way except forward, which would necessitate you leaving Creation and its linear time, maybe you get kicked back to the beginning of everything if you try to come back, because by the nature of linear time that's the only place anything can enter that doesn't already exist in it. So like, "before" linear time (that is, outside linear time) you're wandering around in all directions as you like, but then as a result of wandering in ALL directions you eventually stumble into a one-way door and suddenly you're in corridor that's a series of one-way doors and now you can't see outside, only things that are in there with you, and you mistakenly assume that the old freedom you had was destroyed somehow instead of you just being separated from it.

Time and distance are kind of the same thing in the Wyld that is accessible, so it'd make sense that the original chaos might have been an even more extreme form of that. So "before" isn't the right word to use. You might say "somewhere else". To a being in non-linear time, linear time would be a place they could go to or they could not (though probably only the primordials had the power to actually deliberately navigate in any "direction"). It's only within and relative to linear time that the word "before" would make any sense. Like, if you have a string and you say one end is the beginning and one is the end, you can point to any point on it and say "this bit is before this bit". If you point off the end of the string entirely, well, that's obviously not on the string at all, but if you asked someone what was before the beginning of the string they'd probably confusedly point off to the side, even though there's no string there. And maybe if you bent the string around in a U shape, the space that was "before" the string is now also "after" the string, even though for the string every point along its length still comes after the one before it.

And that sort of defining beyond itself is a deliberately noted aspect of the thing? When Creation came into existence, everything that came before suddenly WAS BEFORE, when previously the idea of it being before made not sense. Creation forced everything else to adhere to linear time not because it imposed linear time on those things intrinsically, but because IT had linear time and therefore everything surrounding it could be thought of in terms of linear time. Maybe time is just a way of looking at things, but one that the primordials made so attention-getting and obvious that you couldn't not see it any more.

Ultimately though, however it works out, it's entirely possible that linear time is such a fundamental aspect of any creation-born being that removing yourself from the limitations of linear time might be equivalent to removing yourself from the limitations of having a consciousness.

Which is not to say you shouldn't introduce time powers if you think you can manage it and they'd be fun.

I don't know if anything I just wrote could make sense to anyone besides me. I'm not that sure it makes sense to me either.

>>124519
Makes sense to me actually, it's a mostly helpful metaphor. I particularly like the correlation between time and distance idea, where time is a physical location in space rather than a stream we're flowing down. Having trouble visualizing movement in space without time though, so even moving from one time to another seems like it would connote a sequence. I think you might be right when you say divorcing ourselves from linear time is as nonsensical as divorcing ourselves from consciousness, it's just not useful. I think JamesLeng will run things pretty close to the book rules with some noted exceptions, so I doubt timeplay will be involved.

>>124517
>As for the primordials, they probably enforced some sort of linear time for themselves voluntarily because it made things easier for them.
Some sort of overall causality flow, but not necessarily a linear one. Isidoros, for example, enjoyed fighting with his own past and future selves http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/we-all-peacock-in-our-own-way to the point of experiencing significant distress due to the fact that it's no longer possible.
> Lunar Quest briefly brought up the idea that Oramus invented/defines the concept of existence and non-existence, and if that was the case then any other primordial could only be able to exist with in a space defined by him, therefore necessitating his existence during theirs regardless of how long and by what strange paths they each take timewise.
This is incorrect. Existence and identity are defined by the shinma Nirvishesha, not any of the primordials. Advaita Iraivan, which defines the concept of separation, is one of Nirvishesha's aspects. To be one of the shinma is to intrinsically define a concept, something which is simple to explain yet infinitely broad in application, by lacking it. This whole subject is an elaborate joke about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_theory and Advaita Iraivan in particular is a joke about atheism. The shinma are more fundamental than the Primordials, and the Primordials built Creation with shinma as foundations much as the Exalted built kingdoms within Creation. The Ebon Dragon aspires to become a shinma (perhaps of something like morality, causal determinism, or restraint), much the same way some mortals aspire to become gods or some exalts aspire to become new primordials.

>>124518
There's no well-defined "before linear time," just as there's no well-defined place you can walk in real life that's further north than the North Pole, but there's still space above the north pole, and some "causal past" leading up to the definitive beginning of linear time.

>>124524
>I think JamesLeng will run things pretty close to the book rules with some noted exceptions, so I doubt timeplay will be involved.
Oh, no! By the book you can absolutely screw with time. Sorcery can create bubbles of stasis, or pocket dimensions where time flows at a different rate. The in-setting Broken-Winged Crane is a book that hasn't been written yet, sending malevolent echoes of itself into the past. Even mere mortal astrologers can glimpse future events written in the Loom of Fate, while the Five Maidens can predict things beyond the Loom's reach by examining something called "samsara" (which is another cosmic mind-screw comparable to the shinma but possibly distinct from them). The Yozis claim they can use the five-day slack across the Endless Desert to roll back events in the recent past within their prison (this is a lie, but close enough to what they understand as the truth to possibly fool lie-detection magic; the utter submission to their power which they claim is necessary in order to let them alter your personal past, for example to resurrect a recently lost companion, actually means investiture as an Akuma) and they can back that up with demonstrations of time-related adamant circle sorcery or even stranger things. All sorts of ways to mess around with time, just can't completely reverse the direction. Can send information into the past, though not reliably. Snatching inanimate objects out of the future might be possible, but doing so requires enough energy that it's never been provably differentiated from conjuring or transmuting a temporary copy of such an object. There was even this one famous episode in the First Age called the "Time of Cascading Years" when warfare between exalts apparently caused a BSOD of the loom, leaving Yu-Shan frozen and trapping every exalt within Creation in their own private timeline. Those who survived all remembered having personally gone on some adventure to solve the problem; many others apparently didn't, though their various souls reincarnated normally once it was over.

>>124540
>All sorts of ways to mess around with time, just can't completely reverse the direction.

A river you can fight against but not change the origin or termination of, right? Ultimately whether you disrupt the flow or dam it or whatever else you want to do, it’ll still go downhill towards the ocean

>Right, I'm new to social combat. How does surprise work?
Core book p.172, discussing uses for various skills in social combat:

Socialize: While many function of this Ability operate on a dramatic time scale outside the scope of social combat, (Manipulation + Socialize) replaces (Dexterity + Stealth) for veiling intentions, and any instance where War would be used to manage a military unit changes to Socialize for social units and setting up coordinated social attacks. In general, Socialize cannot be used to make social attacks.

Beowulf, Strngy, Tunic, you still around?
cricket noises
I'll just leave this here.
http://nobilis.me/the-weight-of-history

>>124926
I thought Nobilis was a different game system?

>>124933
It is, yes, but there's some overlap among the creative teams. That particular essay is rather explicitly about Exalted.

Light of the Moon Cleansing the World

Her Quest: To Kill the Realm

She was given a horrific (almost) execution after she murdered a Mnemon Dynast for being a serious dick that she survived through the gifts of Exalting from not instantly dying. She hasn't forgiven, and she certainly hasn't forgotten.

She's lived all alone for the months that follow save than the voice and overwhelming power of the evil bog that she was bound to in the heat of her 'death' and rebirth as a Lunar exalted who turned her silver barbed wire guillotine noose into a stylish necklace that helps stop her from becoming more of an unholy easy to send into a spiraling depression where she retreats even further from humans.

Also, while she's been alone, she's been hunting down and becoming all manner of creatures from a particularly large earthworm to the mightiest of all hooved quadruped, the Moose. And also sneaking into towns to sleep with all of the hot people to take a break from animals, and leave corrupt people violently murdered, as though crushed to death under 750 pounds of Terror.

The most recent stop in her extremely erratic journey across the east half of creation that's managed to avoid every major Lunar compound thus far leaving her horrifically vulnerable to Wyld Taint, has left her outside of a village in the East that had no name(which just recently introduced her to several concepts that she had been sheltered from in her previous 'life' and her current one, namely that boats could be in the air, and that they could start to fall from the sky once they were up there.) acting as a scourge on the local raiders, several of whom she heard describe her as some kind of demon animal possessed by a demon, and hopefully get caught onto as a positive force by the Thorpe.

>===============================================
Lunar Exalt (Casteless) Opossum Totem
3 Strength 3 Charisma 4 Perception
4 Dexterity 1 Manipulation 1 Int
4 Stamina 3 Appearance 4 Wits

Athletics 3
Larceny 3
Martial Arts 4
Melee 1
Presence 3
Resistance 3 (Play Dead +2)
Socialize 3 (Seduction +1)
Stealth 3
War 2 (Guerilla Tactics +1)

Essence 3
21/21 Personal Motes
36/40 Peripheral Motes

Familiar 5 (Mother Bog)
Heartblood Library 5 (41+ forms, list last checked in at 83)
Artifact 1 (Stability Conferring Collar) 2 committed motes

Willpower 10

Temperance 3
Conviction 4
Valor 3
Compassion 2
Limit Flaw Shame of the Fleeing Chicken

Before the power of the Great Curse, the Exalt flees from civilizations seeking to isolate themselves and abandon their goals for the solace that isolation as a lone animal can bring, causing her to shift into an animal form that is most appropriate for the region and try to flee any civilization they might be near, preferring the natural wilds to the protean landscape of the Wylds.

Partial Control: The Exalt shifts instead to a social animal, and is free to stay near a society, but at most as an outsider


Parry DV 5 Parry MDV 3
Dodge DV 3 Dodge MDV 7

Charms:
>Stamina/Wits Second Specialty
>Steadfast Yedim Method (Stamina)
>Unstoppable Juggernaut Incarnation (Stamina)
>Hide of the Cunning Hunter (Appearance
>Shifting Penumbra Stance (Appearance)
>Spider's Trap door (Wits)
>Humble Mouse Shape

Bonus Points
18 to start with, +2 from Heart Blood Addiction Debility,+2 from Sexual Addiction, +1 from Claustrophobia, +5 for Greater Curse

-10 Essence 3, -5 Willpower +5, -4 Familiar +2, -4 Heartblood Library +2, -1 Martial Arts +1, -1 Survival +1

Light of the Moon Cleansing the World

Her Quest: To Kill the Realm

She was given a horrific (almost) execution after she murdered a Mnemon Dynast for being a serious dick that she survived through the gifts of Exalting from not instantly dying. She hasn't forgiven, and she certainly hasn't forgotten.

She's lived all alone for the months that follow save than the voice and overwhelming power of the evil bog that she was bound to in the heat of her 'death' and rebirth as a Lunar exalted who turned her silver barbed wire guillotine noose into a stylish necklace that helps stop her from becoming more of an unholy easy to send into a spiraling depression where she retreats even further from humans.

Also, while she's been alone, she's been hunting down and becoming all manner of creatures from a particularly large earthworm to the mightiest of all hooved quadruped, the Moose. And also sneaking into towns to sleep with all of the hot people to take a break from animals, and leave corrupt people violently murdered, as though crushed to death under 750 pounds of Terror.

The most recent stop in her extremely erratic journey across the east half of creation that's managed to avoid every major Lunar compound thus far leaving her horrifically vulnerable to Wyld Taint, has left her outside of a village in the East that had no name(which just recently introduced her to several concepts that she had been sheltered from in her previous 'life' and her current one, namely that boats could be in the air, and that they could start to fall from the sky once they were up there.) acting as a scourge on the local raiders, several of whom she heard describe her as some kind of demon animal possessed by a demon, and hopefully get caught onto as a positive force by the Thorpe.

>===============================================
Lunar Exalt (Casteless)
3 Strength 3 Charisma 4 Perception
4 Dexterity 1 Manipulation 1 Int
4 Stamina 3 Appearance 4 Wits

Athletics 2
Larceny 3
Martial Arts 5
Presence 2
Resistance 3 (Playing Dead +2)
Socialize 3 (Seduction +1)
Stealth 3
Survival 3
War 2 (Guerilla Tactics +1)

Essence 3
21/21 Personal Motes
36/40 Peripheral Motes

Familiar 5 (Mother Bog)
Heartblood Library 5 (41+ forms, list last checked in at 83)
Artifact 1 (Stability Conferring Collar) 2 committed motes

Willpower 10

Temperance 3
Conviction 4
Valor 3
Compassion 2

Intimacies
Hatred for the Realm
Love of beautiful individuals
Conviction Flaw Shame of the Fleeing Chicken

Before the power of the Great Curse, the Exalt flees from civilizations seeking to isolate themselves and abandon their goals for the solace that isolation as a lone animal can bring, causing her to shift into an animal form that is most appropriate for the region and try to flee any civilization they might be near, preferring the natural wilds to the protean landscape of the Wylds.

Partial Control: The Exalt shifts instead to a social animal, and is free to stay near a society, but at most as an outsider


Parry DV 5 Parry MDV 3
Dodge DV 3 Dodge MDV 7

Charms:
>Stamina Second Specialty
>Steadfast Yedim Method (Stamina)
>Unstoppable Juggernaut Incarnation (Stamina)

>Wits Second Specialty
>Spider's Trap door (Wits)



>Hide of the Cunning Hunter (Appearance
>Shifting Penumbra Stance (Appearance)


>Humble Mouse Shape

Bonus Points
18 to start with, +2 from Heart Blood Addiction Debility,+2 from Sexual Addiction, +1 from Claustrophobia, +5 for Greater Curse

-10 Essence 3, -5 Willpower +5, -4 Familiar +2, -4 Heartblood Library +2, -2 Martial Arts +2

Bugs:
1: Earthworm
2: Giant Spider
3: Rhinoceros Beetle
4: Giant Centipede

Mammals:
1: Mouse
2: Vole
3: Shrew
4: Squirrel
5: Rabbit
6: Bat
7: Shard Bat
8: Cat
9: Hearth Cat
10: Emperor Rat
11: Dog
12: Wolf
13: Coyote
14: Ferret
15: Otter
16: Moose
17: Brown Bear
18: Goat
19: River Dolphin
20: Normal Dolphin
21: Reigndeer
22: Seal
23: Cow
24: Fox
25: Rodent of Unusual Size
26: Deer
27: Wild Boar
28: Snow Rabbit
29: Cheetah
30: Elk
31: Bison
32: Buffalo
33: Polar Bear
34: Panther
35: Sabertooth Tiger
36: Auroch
37: Horse
Birds:
1: Crow
2: Barn Owl
3: Red Eagle
4: Falcon
5: Flamingo
6: Condor
7: Vulture
8: Crane
9: Duck
10: Goose
11: Finch
12: Starling
13: Warbler
14: Austerch

Reptiles/Amphibians:
1: Cobra
2: Python
3: Anaconda
4: Claw Strider
5: Tree Frog
6: Cane Toad
7: Bullfrog
8: Dart Frog
9: Viper
10: Bearded Dragon
11: Komodo Dragon
12: Newt
13: Salamander
14: Axolotl
Fish
1: Catfish
2: Bull Shark
3: Goldfish
4: Koi Fish
5: Dart Fish
6: Lobster
7: Crab
8: Oyster
9: Minnow
10: Cherubfish
11: Tuna
12: Salmon
13: Barracuda
14: Eel
15: Electric Eel
16: Squid
17: Octopus
18: Cuttlefish

>>125096
You've still only got 24 dots in skills before BP when it should be 25. Craft (Water) or (Wood), Medicine, Occult, or Thrown would be reasonable picks, since Melee is a bit redundant with MA.

Yeah, and I dropped the Melee, but I forgot that I didn't put the Craft (Water) but that's what I'm going to go with, since she was a Barmaid before she exalted, so she was at least competent at cooking.

I also just realized that I forgot to mention this, but her Tell is that she looks like a furry in her shadow, and regardless of what form she's in she has an Opossum tail in her shadow.

And her favored attributes are Stamina and Appearance

>>125125
If she's in the form of say, an opossum, does she then have no tell?

>>125132
Her ears and tail are silvery and shiny like most all physical Tells. But, the only Opossum form she has is a True Form.

Some sidereal Astrology Questions:

What happens if you fail the difficulty 6 prayer roll? Start over, minus resources and time?

Does buying additional dots in a sign do anything, or are they binary purchases? (You can create destinies under this sign, or not).

How do the costs and intervals for respendencies work? When a respendency costs x endurance and y paradox dice for z interval, does that mean you can only activate the effect once in that interval? That after you pay the price once, you can use the effect as many times as you wish until the interval passes?

There's a whole bunch of respendencies that have a second paragraph "So long as the character immerses herself in [thing]" you're hidden but only have 7 hours unallocated time a week. Is this optional? (Ie, exploit the first paragraph of the respendency for some advantage, but neglect to spend your time doing [thing] for the secondary effect). And why... are these considered a good thing anyways? Aside from some kind of sleeper mission where you need to remain undetected until a crucial preplanned moment, the opportunity cost seems rather brutal.

Holy heck why does one of these summon Adorjan to torture someone. (And if using the loom to invoke Yozi is an option, why only the one)?

>>125643
>What happens if you fail the difficulty 6 prayer roll? Start over, minus resources and time?
Pretty much. "Your call cannot be completed as dialed, please hang up and try again." Could be just a few minutes per attempt if you're not taking extra time for bonus dice. Preparations for the effect roll can be reused on subsequent attempts, so long as it's the same basic plan.
>Does buying additional dots in a sign do anything, or are they binary purchases? (You can create destinies under this sign, or not).
Extra dice on the effect roll, willpower cost for resisting resplendency social attacks, discount on Propitious (Ability) Alignment, and you need at least three dots in all five of the relevant Colleges to use a Greater Sign.
>How do the costs and intervals for respendencies work? When a respendency costs x endurance and y paradox dice for z interval, does that mean you can only activate the effect once in that interval? That after you pay the price once, you can use the effect as many times as you wish until the interval passes?
If it lists a duration, pay once to have the effect apply continuously during that time.
>There's a whole bunch of respendencies that have a second paragraph "So long as the character immerses herself in [thing]" you're hidden but only have 7 hours unallocated time a week. Is this optional? (Ie, exploit the first paragraph of the respendency for some advantage, but neglect to spend your time doing [thing] for the secondary effect). And why... are these considered a good thing anyways? Aside from some kind of sleeper mission where you need to remain undetected until a crucial preplanned moment, the opportunity cost seems rather brutal.
Not optional, no... though you could assume such an identity for mundane purposes just by donning the resplendent destiny normally. Those are your "deep cover" effects, for when someone powerful and unfriendly is trying to find you, probably after some other mission has gone wrong. Use the few free hours to call for backup, set other diversionary plans in motion, or to prep a new cover identity if Endurance is running low, then hope you make it to some position of longer-term safety before Pattern Bite catches up with you. Think of it as a multipurpose backup, like Duck Fate, rather than part of a typical 'Plan A.' "If all else fails, I'll disappear for a while."
>Holy heck why does one of these summon Adorjan to torture someone. (And if using the loom to invoke Yozi is an option, why only the one)?
It's disintegration, not torture. The Crow lets you turn yourself into a literal crow, Rising Smoke lets you turn other stuff into literal smoke. Long ago, Adrián, River of All Torments, circled Creation as a border against the Wyld.

>>/quest/904250
>Social attacks happen once every minute, but other dialog is still allowed right?
Social attacks normally happen on a scale of long ticks, which are approximately equal to minutes. Could have a flurry of several attacks (interlocking parts of a complex argument) on the same long tick, but usually after someone acts they can't go again until 4-6 ticks later. That's how the speed of actions works.

Dialogue can happen in personal combat time, but it's a lot harder to construct a persuasive argument under that sort of pressure. Basically impossible, short of highly specialized magic (such as Astius's multilayered basilisk gaze), or pushing emotional buttons hard-wired in by other traits (such as virtues or derangements).

>Does any sort of conversation count as social attacks, or just stuff that people don’t want to listen to?
Normal casual conversation doesn't use the social combat rules, same as sparring or playful roughhousing usually wouldn't use the physical combat rules, and parade-ground maneuvers wouldn't use the mass combat rules. Rolling Join Battle or Join Debate or Join War means you're committing to participation in a conflict, exerting yourself, treating the situation as though something serious is at stake. For social combat, the tactics involve things like logic and empathy, trying to "get inside the other person's head" and present some case they can't argue against (Parry MDV) or ignore (Dodge MDV) without wounding their self-image (spending WP). Ideally, a social attack should be something the subject does want to hear - something genuinely tempting, or even inspirational. The more an argument goes against their existing inclinations, the easier it is to reject, as reflected by MDV modifiers.

Presenting some subject neutrally, to inform and allow people to retain (or adjust) their own opinions rather than aiming to sell a particular agenda, is either not social combat at all, or the social equivalent of a 'guard' action. Avoiding any deep, visible commitments also tends to mean being ready to take full advantage whenever new opportunities arise, rather than engagements being constrained by the rhythm and direction of your own previous attacks.

Trying to convince Pillar to quit attacking an apparent Anathema would definitely involve social combat. Deciding where to have lunch? Not... normally. Depends on what's at stake. https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2006-06-19

>>/quest/904290
> I’m confused about where you got 16 from though; essence + stamina + resistance is only 13, right?
As an Exalt, Bridget's natural lethal soak is half her Stamina. Iron Kettle Body increases that by Essence 4 + Stamina 5 + Resistance 3 + specialty 1. So, technically I suppose it should only be 15, if half of five rounds down to two and there's no other bonus from mutations.

>>125742
>As an Exalt, Bridget's natural lethal soak is half her Stamina. Iron Kettle Body increases that by Essence 4 + Stamina 5 + Resistance 3 + specialty 1.
Got it, I thought her soak became that new number, didn’t realized it actually added it on top of what she had. Blaming that one on onditioning from other RPGs.
Unrelated, but I think that means incleasing her stamina to an odd number only increases her IKB soak by one, and her natural soak none, but increasing it to an even number increases the IKB by two and the natural by one.

As for social stuff, your explationation makes sense, and it helps, but I’m still not all the way there yet. Would Bridget telling the borrowed knife guy to inform her of other thefts or grievances be an attack, since it’s putting forward a request instead of just presenting information?

Likewise, aren’t there times where presenting information would be a social attack?

Also, could I have not rolled to join battle? If I already had a passive soak charm on, he can still do minimum damage, right? Meaning not joking battle would give him free reign to attack me as much as wanted and I’d just have to see what happened?

>>125750
>Would Bridget telling the borrowed knife guy to inform her of other thefts or grievances be an attack, since it’s putting forward a request instead of just presenting information?
Yeah, you could ask casually, without rolling Join Debate. Might still make sense to roll Charisma + Investigation for that, since even low-pressure inquiries can get different degrees of response based on social skills.
>Likewise, aren’t there times where presenting information would be a social attack?
When there's an agenda behind it, sure. Even apart from outright deception or blatantly misleading omissions, there's a lot of ways to privilege one interpretation over another with nuances of emphasis, context, and tone. Some people, almost every word out of their mouth is loaded like that. Folks with high Temperance tend to be better as impartial observers, since it goes against Temperance to "act dishonestly or show bias in a matter of importance," and the virtue also aids in avoiding or overcoming deceptions and distortions imposed by others.
>Also, could I have not rolled to join battle? If I already had a passive soak charm on, he can still do minimum damage, right? Meaning not joking battle would give him free reign to attack me as much as wanted and I’d just have to see what happened?
Whenever somebody takes a swing at you (and you're not already paralyzed or unconscious or something), you've got to roll Join Battle, if only for bookkeeping purposes.

If you'd rolled better, so Bridget had the chance to act first, one possibility would be a two-action flurry: take one hand off the beam to lift the kid with the stuffed dinosaur out of the way as a diceless miscellaneous action, then drop the roof (reflexive) and move to pre-empt the belligerent monk's attack with a grapple, called shot to disarm, or something like that. Bridget being seriously injured wasn't ever a plausible outcome there, but the child's safety and Pillar's clean getaway weren't guaranteed.

>>/quest/904466
>roll up a starting Dragon King character
A modern raptok lucks into sapience, follows blurry racial memories to a concealed manse which includes a library and a laboratory and painstakingly self-educates himself. A self-taught scholar / researcher / sage, focused on biology. Haughty about his own people and trying to unlock their lost secrets, but also fascinated by the workings of lesser races (if this were PdnTTO, high and low ambitions, right there). Doesn't really like to acknowledge this contradiction, and drawing attention to it is a good way to sour his mood. He craves respect- not fame (it's not about scale) or blind adoration (what does it matter if a fool reverse you). Simply that which is his due for his superior accomplishments, knowledge, and prowess. Prickly personality, which falls away when you get him excited about his own work or interests. This, along with the split between his nobler and lesser research interests results in a kind of tsundere attitude (pointing this out would likely also make him unhappy).

If this all sounds a little convenient for the village surgeon-hairdresser, I claim sidereal nonsense. :v

I'm not up to speed on dragon king naming conventions, and he probably has an alias for his human guise.

Rough draft character sheet (mostly minimums, haven't thrown BP at things yet, and it's hard to judge how high to raise abilities without charm requirements as a guide):


Modern Raptok Dragon King

[5 dots] Strength 2 Dexterity 5 Stamina 4
[4 dots] Charisma 2 Manipulation 3 Appearance 2
[7 dots] Perception 5 Intelligence 5 Wits 1


Virtues [5 dots, 1 must be in valor]
I'm not great at turning personalities into numbers here. Probably higher conviction or temperance?


Abilities [25 dots, 10 must be breed or favored]

Breed: Craft, Linguistics, Socialize
Favored (5):

*Craft (Genesis) 2
*Craft (Steam) 2
*Craft (Water) 2
*Craft (Wood) 2
*Linguistics 1 (High Holy Speech, Rivertongue)
*Socialize 1
Lore 3
Medicine 3
Occult 3

Survival and Investigation to fit history?
Specialty for experimentation or innovation in medicine or one of the crafts? Specialty for biological lore?


Backgrounds [7 dots]

Artifact 1-2
Manse 3-4 (some concealment, labspace, library)
Resources 1-2

Grab some useful artifact tools for medical research (take advantage of that dragon king bonus), a manse for a workshop, and resources for experimental supplies.


Paths [6 dots]

Breed: Both Wood
Favored (1):

Clear Air 1
*Growing Wood 1
*Shaping Wood 1
Shimmering Water 3
Technomorphic Transcendence 1

Needs BP for all those, TT should probably be 2, maybe clear air and growing wood too.