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>>44146071
Do things like weapons and armor really matter for Exalted in this setting? I see a lot of characters being posted in these threads that use anime-girl-with-dress-armor type art.

What's to stop me from playing pic related because he thinks it looks good? Is it actually helpful to him?

So...about the Skeleton Armored Division...

>>44146362
>skeleton armored division
Do tell.

>>44146250
They matter, but:

- Your primary combat tools will be charms and other magics, and they are function of yourself, not your armor or weapons.
- Artifacts armors can look like a dress or even vaporous ether and still provide good protection.

Armors are decent enough in 3E, but not to the point you can't play a naked character if you desire.

>>44146071

You mean the one with the chocolate Zenith?

Leaving aside any praise/gripes with the writing itself, it's inaccurate of the system, as he greatly simplified it.

I honestly cannot think of much else off the top of my head.

>>44146585
What does the world think of it? Is pic related from >>44146250 likely to be viewed as odd by the demigod community because he enjoys his practical-ish armor and sword?

I suppose that reminds me to ask--what's the community like as a whole? I understand that most of these demigods are competing against each other, but are there a series of pseud-cultural ties that bring all demigods together aside from their power level?

>>44146688
The world don't think much of it, because most of the world will only see a guy with a 1.5 metric tons armor, and react appropriately. Mortals don't know, and don't care, that they aren't really indispensable for essence users. They see a walking tank, they fear it like a walking tank.

Wearing an armor is still a decent practical choice though. If your Solar is wearing a bigass Artifact armor, then the world will see some guy in bigass Artifact armor. It will instantly ping the 'warrior' and 'badass' marks. Maybe even 'paranoid'.

With the right charms (and those are ridiculously cheap), you can reflexively summon and banish armors. Putting an armor at all time when you can choose not to is a sign that you are always prepared for the worst, or that you hide your face behind it.

Go with the narrative that you want, really. If you keep your armor 100% of the time because you want to be always prepared, say so, and words will go around and people will respect you for this. If you keep your armor 100% of the time because you want to hide yourself, say so, and words will go around. You have the control of the narrative.

>>44146441
Last thread I asked about the viability of Bonewheels as an Abyssal Summon, for some reason I turned that into 'Black Jade, Soulsteel and Bone versions of vehicles used by the armed forces of today.' after someone mention Bonestriders made of Yeddim skeletons.

>>44146766
> Mortals don't know, and don't care, that they aren't really indispensable for essence users. They see a walking tank, they fear it like a walking tank.
I'm clearly new. I haven't actually read the core book yet--it's very late here and I'm going to bed soon--so I'm having a lot of questions while others kick the thread up so it will be here tomorrow.

Mortals don't know about the Exalted? Do they not know about the Dragon-Blooded and all that shit, or do they just not know about the Solars coming back? If that's the case, how to Exalted get into positions of power without drawing attention to the fact that they are demigods? How exactly does a Chosen's power relate to their amount of followers?

>>44146825
>Mortals don't know about the Exalted? Do they not know about the Dragon-Blooded and all that shit, or do they just not know about the Solars coming back?
The latter. In general, here's what a given Realm mortal in Creation knows about Exalted / Anathema / supernatural in general:
1) The ones with elemental powers and jade == good-and-or-powerful guys, obey them and you wont' get in shit.
2) The ones with gold or silver glowybits == literally satan, run to your nearest Immaculate and let him know.
3) Everything else == probably not satan, but tell an Immaculate about it anyway.

For non-Realm mortals, swap out "nearest Immaculate" for "the god/ghost/whatever that rules over you." For mortals from Lunar- or Solar-ruled places, ignore this.

>If that's the case, how to Exalted get into positions of power without drawing attention to the fact that they are demigods?
They generally don't, unless they expend considerable effort being subtle about it. Usually the safer route is to give on the "yes I'm a supernatural" front, but then conceal the "I'm the satan kind of supernatural" side.

>How exactly does a Chosen's power relate to their amount of followers?
Not nearly as much as it relates to his desire to collect followers. A Solar with no interest in ruling isn't going to have much of an entourage.

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>>44146865
Why split the phrases Exalted, Anathema, and supernatural? I mean, the latter is an overarching term. The onyxpath overview made it clear that there are forces outside of the Realm that are effectively Exalts, but following different gods/spirits.

Also what's the general "tech level" of the Exalted world? The Quest makes it seem like it's kind of medium-range on the Magitek scale, but the QM also said it was a personal choice of his.

>>44146949
That...is the best version of a Cherubim I've seen in a while.

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>>44146958
I like pictures of angels that are basically pic related, but the angels that come off as "holy edlritch," are pretty awesome as well.

I mean, it makes sense. Every angel that enters the scene and says "Fear not," is saying it for your benefit. You know, so you don't freak out when you behold them.

>>44146825
>Mortals don't know about the Exalted?

Mortals don't know about the rules of the Exalted, the source of their power (it's all magic to them), what they can or cannot do, or even approximative powerlevel. A mortal will not see an Essence 3 Terrestrial Exalted, but a man that has suddenly summoned flames around him. He is obviously dangerous. He can obviously manipulate flames. The only sane action is to flee or be prepared for very, very tough fight.

More canny mortals, or those that have gobbled up the misinformation, will recognize terrestrial exalted (the 'good' guys), and all the others (the 'evil' guys). Threshold mortals will also probably recognize Lunars (the 'they eat babies' guys) and have a vague inkling of what they can do (shape shift, steal your soul, eat your babies). Depending on the place, on the population, etc.

Most mortals put everything magical into a vague category: gods, demons, ghosts, and exalted are simply 'magical beings'. They can fuck you up. They probably will. Don't ask too many questions.

Of course there is well read mortals, too, scholars and the like, who know everything about the subtle distinctions. But they are comparatively rare.

>If that's the case, how to Exalted get into positions of power without drawing attention to the fact that they are demigods?

Unless the Immaculate Philosophy is strong, it is ridiculously easy to go to any Threshold village, flash your powers, and say 'now you obey me or I kill you all'. Gods, demons, ghosts, and exalted alike do that occasionally. Mortals don't have very much of a choice.

In more civilized place, yes, you will need to hide if you don't want to summon a Wyld Hunt.

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>>44146979
>Wyld Hunt
Pardon? Is this some sort of Exalted-specific version of pic related?

>>44146250
That's a guy that's wearing Articulated Plate and wielding a Straight Sword. Articulated Plate is extremely rare and expensive; only the largest cities like Nexus are typically capable of making it, and only the wealthiest of princes are capable of affording it; it literally costs as much as building and furnishing a palace, if not more; it definitely costs more than raising and equipping a Legion of 5000 professional soldiers.

So, no, there's nothing stopping you from playing that guy, and it won't make you the subject of mockery. If anything, it'll be the opposite: wearing armor that expensive will tell everyone else that you are Very Important, and probably Very Dangerous as well, so they'll probably treat you with the respect that would come with that status.

>>44146977
Isn't "Be not afraid" and its variants actually a command rather than a reassurance?

>>44146949
>Why split the phrases Exalted, Anathema, and supernatural?
Mostly because, to your typical Realm peasant, "Exalt" and "Anathema" are not overlapping categories, and neither overlaps with "the general mishmash of spoopy stuff that's also out there."

>Also what's the general "tech level" of the Exalted world? The Quest makes it seem like it's kind of medium-range on the Magitek scale, but the QM also said it was a personal choice of his
Bronze-ish age with some anachronisms for fun. Magitech exists, even in 3e, but it's rare and significant; any essence-circuitry cathedrals and warstriders and the like are Big Fuckin' Deals.

When I get tech-heavy on Exalt characters, I tend to think in terms of, like, Daedalus style copper/canvas/wood/clockwork inventions, rather than magitech, which is saved for the really big shit.

>>44147018

It's the term for the Realm institution that hunts down and kills Anathema, so-called because most of its prey (pretty much exclusively Lunars for the last thousand years) tends to lurk at the edges of the world, near the Wyld.

>>44147035
Depending on who you ask, I guess? I always interpreted it in that way where someone wants to reassure you, but they're used to commanding people. Doesn't come across as reassuring, but they're trying.

>>44147054
What are Anathema? Also aren't Creation's edges basically "Plane of X Element?" Or is "Wyld" just the umbrella term for what I just said?

>>44147041
Are there any canon-esque art pieces of cities and the world at large, or do people here just use art of characters that are clearly larger-than-life?

>>44147018
This is almost exactly like that picture.

The Wyld Hunt is the Realm institution made to kill Anathema (Solars and Lunars, principally). They are excessively good at it. They have money, extensively trained Terrestrials and Mortals, and their policies is 'better a city burned down than one Anathema alive'. They are the very definition of ruthless. The worst thing that can happen for a new Solar is to encounter the Wyld Hunt - he probably won't survive it.

>>44147084

Anathema are the Realm's name for Solar and Lunar Exalted. See, Solar and Lunar Exalted were treated as heroes. Their official titles are 'Princes of Earth', 'Lawgivers', 'the Chosen of the Unconquered Sun/Luna' and so on. The name Anathema is to demonize them.

The funny part is, there are Infernal and Abyssal Exalted (made from corrupted Solar Exaltations) that are really, genuinely terrifying and likely deserve the term Anathema.

>>44147041
>Mostly because, to your typical Realm peasant, "Exalt" and "Anathema" are not overlapping categories, and neither overlaps with "the general mishmash of spoopy stuff that's also out there."

Actually, "Anathema" does overlap with "the general mishmash of spoopy stuff that's also out there." "Anathema" means "a supernatural force that threatens the stability of the Realm". Solars and Lunars are automatically Anathema, but if a God, Demon, or Faerie starts fucking around with a Terrestrial's turf, then they're entirely allowed to declare them Anathema and round up a posse to beat the shit out of them.

>>44147018
Sort of. Basically, the Terrestrials are the ruling power of the world, controlling the Realm, Creation's most powerful empire. As a part of their religion, they believe that they have the divine right to rule Creation, and as a part of that right, they have the right to assemble whatever forces they desire to, and then use those forces to kill anything that threatens their rule. This can range from three or four Terrestrials picking up their daiklaves and heading over the hill to go shank a Blood Ape that's gotten loose and has been eating people, to them assembling a giant army of tens of thousands of soldiers, dozens of Terrestrials, multiple Sorcerors, and a few Warstriders and other similarly powerful First Age weapon-relics in order to take down a burgeoning Solar kingdom.

>>44146949
Because the masses aren't educated on the supernatural. A generic mortal lives their life only ever encoutering the supernatural when it comes out to kill them. Peasants will react to Supernatural shit according to how their local culture treats them. In "barbarian" lands where local rulers and gods reign, most people will see glowy people doing crazy shit and assume "god" or "spirit" or "Exalt" depending on how educated they are in the supernatural, and what the Exalt does. In places ruled by the Dragon-Blooded dynasty, most people will not even recognize Solars/Lunars as Exalts because the only Exalted are the Dragon-Blooded (and the rare Exigent) in their culture. They'll see an "Anathema" and run to the local Immaculate temple to warn of the devil-god's presence. Among the Mortal masses you'll find savants and knowledgeable people who might know more. Actual Dragon-Blooded? They might very well know more, hell, they might even know the truth about the Solars and Lunars not being actual devils. But those are exceptions among the Mortal world. In the Spirit Courts, in the Exalted Circles, in Heaven and Hell and the Land of the Dead, people will know what you are, and will know to recognize you as a worthy foe or ally.

The world is vast and there's no single way people will react to you. You might end up being worshiped as a saint sent by Heaven to save a city-state from doom. You might be contacted by knowledgeable people who managed to determine what you are and would like to do business with you. You might get the Wyld Hunt called on your ass. All of that depends on what the people you meet see you as : Exalted, Anathema, or just "holy shit glowy terrifying woman with a giant sword just saved us".

>>44147103
>>44147120
>>44147054
This was changed in 3e, dudes. See >>44147124
.

>>44147124
>Terrestrials
I'm guessing this is another term for Elemental Exalts? Or is it another term for Dragon-Blooded?

>...giant army of tens of thousands of soldiers, dozens of Terrestrials, multiple Sorcerors, and a few Warstriders...
Did you intentionally misspell sorcerers, or is a Sorceror an Exalted-specific thing? This also brings me to my next question, related to the tech-level question. How common is magic for people outside of Chosen?

>>44147041
>Bronze-ish age with some anachronisms for fun.
I think the tech level as presented is closer to Iron Age than Bronze Age, with some variation between different parts of Creation and, as you said, some anachronisms.

>>44147195
>I'm guessing this is another term for Elemental Exalts? Or is it another term for Dragon-Blooded?

For the Dragon-Blooded, yeah.

>Did you intentionally misspell sorcerers, or is a Sorceror an Exalted-specific thing?

No, I am just derp. Sorry. :P

>How common is magic for people outside of Chosen?

Rare but not unknown. A large city might have one or two, barring unusual cases like Lookshy or Ysyr. If you've read the original Conan stories, modelling the Sorcerers of Exalted after the Sorcerers of Conan isn't a bad idea.

>>44147195
>I'm guessing this is another term for Elemental Exalts? Or is it another term for Dragon-Blooded?
Oh, right, some terminology :

Terrestrials = Dragon-Blooded (Exalted by/of the Great Elemental Dragons' blood) = DBs
Dynasts = DBs from the Empire
Celestials = Solars & Lunars & Sidereals
Solaroids (not an official term at all, I quite dislike it too, but it's used a lot) = Solars & Infernals & Abyssals

Circle : A party of Celestials
Brotherhood : A party of Dragon-Blooded
Wyld Hunt (that "Hunts the Wyld") : A band of Terrestrials and whatever supernatural and Mortal soldiers they have with them, that assembles to destroy threats to Terrestrial egemony.

First Age : Back when the Solars ruled Creation
Usurpation (Uprising) : When the Dragon-Blooded killed the Solars and drove the Lunars away
Shogunate : The period just before the rise of the Scarlet Empress. Ended with the Empress saving Creation from the Fair Folk of the Wyld and creating the Scarlet Empire.
Scarlet Empire : Ruling Empire of Creation, jewel of Civilisation, home of the Ten Thousand Dragons distributed in eleven Great Houses, all descending from the Empress herself (eight hundred years of rule makes for a big family!) = The Realm.

>>44147273
>Exalted by/of the Great Elemental Dragons' blood
>Inb4 Peleps Deled kills us all for heresy.

Not really 'new', but this might be a noob question. Are there any good homebrew variations of the Clarity mechanic? I might be suffering from a lack of perspective here, but it seems terribly boring and stale. And overly harsh for obliterating the more human Intimacies an Alchemical possesses.

>>44147283
>implying it's even possible to not be a heretic in Peleps Deled' eyes
Seriously, the guy's writeup in Aspect Book: Water makes it seem like he considers literally everyone aside from himself either spiritually misguided or plain evil, to various degrees.

>>44147313
>And overly harsh for obliterating the more human Intimacies an Alchemical possesses.
That's the point, I think. The more Clarity you get, the more cold and robotic you become, and the less able you are to hold onto emotional attachments to things. That said, though, you can probably hold onto a lot of those Intimacies if you can come up with "logical" reasons to hold onto them. Alchemicals are, after all, artificial humans, and humans are really good at rationalizing our decisions ex post facto. ;)

>>44147333

I dunno, flavour-wise it feels to me like it gets exponentially harder to lose Clarity as you go up the scale. At the far reaches of Clarity 10 there doesn't seem like a whole lot you could do to be anything but BLEEP BLOOP I AM AN EXTENSION OF THE GREAT MAKER'S WILL. Which might be necessary at certain points in a story - if your assembly's Weaver has to be brought to the center of a blight zone and initiate Great Maker's Pattern Reassertion in order to obliterate it, she's basically sacrificing all personal connections in order to be sufficiently harmonised with Autochthon and the Ministers and pull off the objective. Their humanity is basically totally suppressed.

Like, how do you come down from that aside from accidentally getting dumped into Creation and spending years with nothing *but* messy organics around you like Eternal Perfection of Nova? It bugs me a lot about Alchemicals, and I want an alternative. If I've gotta write one myself, then so be it, but hey, if someone's already come up with something better, like the new Familiar rules I saw on an RPGnet thread, why bother reinventing the wheel?

>>44147496
>BLEEP BLOOP I AM AN EXTENSION OF THE GREAT MAKER'S WILL.
Why is this funny to me?

I just realized, the world of OFF would be great for influences to a Primordial.
>Fetich Soul: The Queen
>3CDs are the Guardians: Dedan, Japhet, Enoch and Hugo
>2CDs Made of the four elements of the World Jouten: Meat, Plastic, Metal and Smoke
>1CDs are generally made of only one of the elements and make themselves manifest through the people contained by the World Jouten (How else would I justify the Burnt Elsen?).

>The World Jouten itself is divvied up into five Zones, four tied to the 3CDs and one housing its Fetich Soul, each Zone is divided up again into four areas. The World Jouten is a twisted form of Metal and Plastic, cloaked in a blanket of thick smog with liquid rivers of Meat running through it. People who enter the World Jouten cannot leave as once you have inhaled the smog, you cannot breathe anything else.

>>44147333
In 2e? Spend Willpower to channel Virtues; you start out with eight points in Virtues, so if you spend all of them, you'll be able to reduce your Clarity from 10 down to 2.

>>44147496
>Like, how do you come down from that aside from accidentally getting dumped into Creation and spending years with nothing *but* messy organics around you like Eternal Perfection of Nova?

YOUR CLARITY MAKES YOU INEFFICIENT AT DEALING WITH MORTALS. YOUR NEW JOB DEMAND A LOWER CLARITY. PLEASE ASSIGN TWO THIRD OF YOUR WORK DAY AT SOCIALIZING UNTIL LOW CLARITY IS RESTORED.

>>44146071
>Is Exalted Quest a decent read/representation of the world, if not the system?
Not really, no.

How do you guys come up with locations? When you add a city state for your game, how do you come up with its politics, geography, diplomacy and economy? I'm trying to fill in the details of my character's home city and it's hard to work out things like staple crops, exports and interactions with nearby cities.

>>44147273
>Celestials = Solars
Wait what
I thought Solars are the level above Celestials, like with the Sorcerous Circles

>>44147713
OFF?

>>44148270
They're still Celestial Exalted.

>>44148270
Power level wise, Solar's are the best, but referring to them as Celestials is just a means of classification.

>>44148278
An RPGmaker game that is...interesting. Interesting is a word that can describe it. It was fun.

>>44148260
Use real world cultures and locations for reference, especially for things like staple crops and other such basic matters of day-to-day life. Start by trying to figure out one thing - like, if you have an idea for an important local deity, start from there, then try to think about how his priesthood might work, how his worship might have shaped the local culture, how this culture would impact the way the city deals with its neighbors, and so on. If you don't have a strong concept to work on, starting from one detail and expanding on that until you have something resembling a coherent, interesting location works out reasonably well. You shouldn't try to design the location in too much detail: that'll be stressful for you and generally useless for the actual game. Some important features of the location and a general idea on how these features fit together is usually enough. More detail can be added as the game progresses.

What kind of differences do Breeding 1 and Breeding 5 have?
How about Breeding 5 and one from First Age?
apart from their kennels hur dur

>>44149121
Breeding 5's got more pronounced Aspect Markings and a higher chance of producing children who Exalt. If you want to know something more specific, you'll have to ask a more specific question.

>>44149261
Power wise and what they were/are like socially I guess?

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>>44148260
>work out things like staple crops, exports and interactions with nearby cities.
You don't have to work these things out.

Although I did, because the game I'm running is based around mercantile enterprise.

Crops are usually very easy; what sort of climate does the city lie in, and does it benefit from First Age geomantic enhancements for certain types of crops? This is very easy stuff to answer.

Exports are also, in part, answered by the agriculture question. If they have agricultural goods that are easily preserved are draw good value on market days, chances are they export a lot of them. From there you need to consider the types of industry your city engages in. A port city will probably export all of the goods the local area tends to produce. So Port Calin exports wood, wood products, and ships (as an example).

Interactions with nearby cities is pretty much up to you. They could be long-term allies, bitter rivals constantly skirmishing for territory, competitive trade partners. Whatever makes sense for the two cities and what you want your character to get dragged into.

If you want a sense of what a "complete" write-up looks like, try this:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fmDgOP2oZjkx_NROeF1lPWpNY6MrMt-sZYjGyAAQzVE/edit?usp=sharing

I'm playing a Zenith who has absorbed a fuck ton of intimacies pre-game. I would appreciate it if you guys would post your intimacies, and a little context, so I can accumulate an astounding number of intimacies before our first game. And yeah, I'm making some up myself, too. I just want the intimacies to feel like they're not all from the same person.

>>44149288
>powerwise
bigger mote pools
>socially
because at breeding 5 you are much more likely to have your kids exalt you have alot more value as a marriage partner in inter house/gens politics

>>44149634
How do the Breeding numbers actually work?

>>44147273
>Circle : A party of Celestials
Actually, Circle is Solar-Specific, iirc. Each of the Exalt-Type has their own name for a group, though I cba to go digging around for my 2e books to try and find what they were.

>>44149688
In Second Edition? They added to your motepool, and they also increased the likelihood of your children exalting.

Back in 2E the check to see if your child would exalt was rolling a 1d10; if both parents were dragonblooded, they exalted on a 1-6. If one parent was breeding 4, you added 1 to the range of exalting. If one parent was breeding 5, you added 2. Thus, with a Breeding 4 and a Breeding 5 parent, the children would exalt on a 1-9, and only with two Breeding 5 parents did you have a guaranteed Terrestrial Exalt.

Every dot of the breeding background also added 1 to your personal motepool, and added a bit more to your peripheral as well; breeding 1 gave you 1 personal, 2 peripheral, breeding 5 gave you 5 personal, 9 peripheral.

Which was. You know. Dumb. A merit to directly increase your power as an Exalt? Who WOULDN'T buy all 5 dots of it every time? It'd be like playing without two virtues at max. Or not buying 10 willpower at character generation.

You know. Min-maxing character gen so you'd have an actual motepool.

>>44149971
Sworn Brotherhoods for Dragonblooded, Packs for Lunars, no name for a group of Sidereals but in the First Age the Sidereal advising any group of Celestials was called a Glorious Vizier, Coven for Infernal Exalts, Abyssals are just also called a Circle

>>44150031

Constellations for Sidereals.

>>44149971
>>44150031
Yeah, but it's easier to simply refer to a group of Exalts as a circle and not worry about whether it's the right one.

>>44149688
Breeding, well, dragonblooded in general are like mages in Halkgenia of Zero no Tsukaima.
Sure, they're doing decentlyish but clearly in decay.
A kid from a thousand years ago with dot magic (breeding 1) sneezes more power than a noble (breeding 5) can gather and do at his best.

>>44150099
Ah, thanks man, couldn't find that term while skimming through the Sid book.

>>44150105
Nah man, it's more like Breeding 5 is where every single DB used to be at in the First Age, and now Breeding 1 is the norm with everything above that being special. All because those silly twits had to break the rules and start fucking humans instead of Dragonblooded.

>>44150105
>A kid from a thousand years ago with dot magic (breeding 1) sneezes more power than a noble (breeding 5) can gather and do at his best.

That's not true in Exalted at all. Why would you just go online and talk about things you know nothing about?

So what are fae-born like? Are they weird mutants or more akin to half-elves, or somewhere in-between?

>>44150105

>>44150132 already got it right but why does this post remind me of every bad DB player i've ever seen

>>44150099
I thought the term for Sidereals was Alignment?

I could just be crazy, though.

>>44147960
I'm curious what marks you feel it misses in terms of the setting. I find that sort of thing to be really helpful to read.

>>44150297
You'd be better off watching some actual play or reading logs from actual play of sessions.

Unfortunately those are pretty rare for Exalted.

>>44150318
Well, sure. But I find direct criticism to always be helpful and insightful in pointing out things I might not have noticed or even considered as being "wrong" or "off."

(Of course, everyone plays in their own version of the Exalted setting anyway.)

What would you recommend for making House in Exalted?

>>44150345
Supernal Medicine, and a great deal of Investigation?

>>44149449
Tie: [soandso] (Useful Idiot)
Tie: [soandso] (Unrequited Love)
Tie: My poetry (Pride)
Tie: The Realm (Impotent Hatred)
Principle: The path upward in society is marriage.
Principle: Speak less than you listen.
Principle: Slavery should never be tolerated.
Principle: Pay no homage to a god that does not give anything in return.

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>>44150359
>Principle: Slavery should never be tolerated.
Why does everyone have this kind of shit?

>>44150415
Because slavery is an extremely and deeply and fundamentally immoral act which plenty of people hated throughout history and everyone hates today.

>>44150415
The dude basically has 'no taxation without representation on his sheet'.

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>>44150447
Because we live in Creation

>>44150466
What?

>>44146778
I WAS MENTIONED! WUUUH!

>>44150518
Flibbity floo, here's your (you)

>>44150480
Terran values are applicable in Creation.

>>44150415
>>44150447
What the hell is the point of playing Exalted if I'm not even allowed to oppose slavery? Being anti-slavery (or, hell, being anti-noble, or pro-democracy, or whatever) is exactly the kind of radical reform agenda that a Solar should be allowed and encouraged to pursue in spite of the huge political costs as he comes into conflict with every single entrenched group on the face of Creation that doesn't want slavery abolished (which is roughly all of them, especially one of the major world powers, the Guild, which gets a lot of profit from the slave trade).

>>44150560
>What the hell is the point of playing Exalted if I'm not even allowed to oppose slavery?
You are allowed to oppose slavery, but that isn't the point of playing Exalted. Why would you think the point of playing an iron age game is playing with modern ideologies? It's both unimaginative, boring and is rarely framed in a way that makes sense.

>>44150560
It's more that every Exalt and his mother has "I will abolish slavery" as one of their intimacies to the point that it's a bit tired. Every party for Exalted I've ever been in, personally, has had at least one person who makes that a very big character goal. It's like the "Dynast who didn't exalt as DB and ended up exalting as a Solar" backstory. It's not intrinsically bad, and since it's a tabletop game, you don't have to give a fuck what people are doing at other tables, but it shows up a LOT. In the end it's just all about the execution; if you play it well, no one should have the slightest reason to complain about your character goals OOC.

>>44150560

It's not that being anti-slavery is wrong, it's that it's been done to death in the same way that everyone and their dog makes Twilights with a primary goal of recreating the First Age. The problem is one of over-saturation, and usually reeks of someone transplanting their own modern day morality and sensibilities into the setting.

>>44150594
Though it should be noted hat opposing slavery isn't exclusively a modern phenomenon. IIRC Zoroastrianism considered slavery a sin, and it was a hugely influential religion before Christianity was a thing. Having some values that a modern person could share isn't inherently boring, unimaginative or nonsensical, having entirely modern set of values kind of is.

>>44150644
To the average person in Creation, slavery might not be a huge thing, but it's not an appealing situation for the slaves themselves, at all. Rome had Spartacus, after all.

To a Solar with memories of a First Age society, that was advanced enough that slavery was outmoded, it'd probably be at least kosher for them to consider the situation fucked.

>>44150662
Yeah, this. "I oppose slavery!" "Why? Almost noone in the setting does."

>>44150771
>To a Solar with memories of a First Age society, that was advanced enough that slavery was outmoded, it'd probably be at least kosher for them to consider the situation fucked.
Do you think they'll see slavery as a problem or a symptom here?

Why is there a Martial Arts merit? Are the Martial Arts charms better than the Melee charms that you can get for free?

>>44150796
I would say simply that it depends on the Solar in question.

Regardless, a Solar that wishes to do away with the concept of slavery must contend with the fact that for a bronze age society, slavery is still profitable and makes economic sense, regardless of its morality.

>>44150817
The thing about Martial Arts charms is that they're Solar tier charms that you can spend Solar xp *and* regular xp on, which is surprisingly huge.

Can some Raksha be friendly to humans? Like, do some of them get that maybe devouring the emotions and souls of people is in poor taste and that they should keep that shit to a minimum?

>>44150817
I think their reasoning was "If we let anyone buy Martial Arts, they'll all buy Martial Arts with their Solar XP!"

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>>44146071
If I'm new, what would be the best version to start with?

>>44150884
3

>>44150884
Ex3. The rest of your question doesn't matter, I don't care if you want to play Lunars, it's still Ex3.

>>44150594
It's not "the point," but I never said it was. Playing somebody who's totes cool with slavery, my man, is perfectly fine too. But if you restrict being anti-slavery, that implies all other kinds of constraints, and frankly I'd always rather play the radical reformer than the conservative empire-builder.

>>44150856
>Can some Raksha be friendly to humans?

Yes, though again, it's hard to really understand what is going on in a Raksha's head when it acts that way. It could be out of sincere fondness, it could be a long-game strategy to feed without provoking the ire of its neighbors, it could just be trying to lull you into a false sense of security before it eats your soul. You can never tell, which is what makes Raksha worrying.

However, a Raksha, even if it doesn't go into outright soul eating, still has to eat emotions if it wants to leave the Wyld and not turn into a pillar of salt. It's just that a person *can* recover from having their emotions eaten, which in 2E was represented by a person having their Virtues temporarily reduced for a set period.

Some Fae who live amongst humans pay them to do things like have arguments in front of them. The mortals feel drained and weak afterwards, but they'll get better eventually and the money is good!

>>44150856
>Can some Raksha be friendly to humans?
Sure-ish, there are a few 2e canonical Fae that hung out in cities doing business and shit openly without being chased out
>Like, do some of them get that maybe devouring the emotions and souls of people is in poor taste and that they should keep that shit to a minimum?
But not this, like maybe some of those city Fae don't eat the whole soul, but unless they have a really good reason not to they sure as hell still eat emotions. They need that shit to exist in Creation

>>44150345
Craft. The entirety of it.

>>44150415
Because people are inherently unoriginal.

>>44150856
>Can some Raksha be friendly to humans?
Yes. There's quite a few, living in Great Forks, that live a sort of symbiotic life with the population of the city.
>Like, do some of them get that maybe devouring the emotions and souls of people is in poor taste and that they should keep that shit to a minimum?
But yeah, no, they can't live without eating that stuff. Great Forks, for example, has laws against Fair Folk eating emotions from people without permission, so they generally will hang around places that are effectively AA meetings, and devour the part of a person that drives them to drink, or whatever else a person is okay with giving up, in order to remain in Creation.

>>44150777
Almost no one in the setting is a PC.

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>>44151330

Does anyone else feel like the split between Charisma and Manipulation is redundant? In actual play they're so interchangeable that they might as well be a single attribute.

>>44151897
>In actual play they're so interchangeable that they might as well be a single attribute.
Holy shit what? No they aren't.

>>44151897
No, but I don't think Appearance is really needed as an Attribute. One Attribute for commanding, demanding and making an impression and one for persuasion and subtler influence is what I'd like.

>>44151375

this is a game about fighting the entire fucking world for your beliefs and you don't see why being anti-slavery when slavery is widely accepted as the norm is a good motivator?

>>44150447
I have that on my license plate.

>>44150884
none of the above

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>>44146250
>Do things like weapons and armor really matter for Exalted in this setting? I see a lot of characters being posted in these threads that use anime-girl-with-dress-armor type art.

Yes, it does matter. Buying superheavy plate armor and a couple Resistance Charms is a very good start to combat effectiveness. We post under-dressed anime girls because it's our fetish, not because it's a sensible approach to building a character.

>Someone tell me some good stories

>>44150318 's suggestion of reading some Actual Play threads is a good one. My favorite is:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?183638-Actual-Play-Gem-Edge-of-Destruction

The first hundred pages of the 3e backer PDF are setting info and narrative, and they're not bad either.

>>44146825
>how to Exalted get into positions of power without drawing attention to the fact that they are demigods?

By only spending personal essence.

>>44150884

1e was a splash, 2e was a marketing disaster by a dying company, and 3e is looking really good so far, so enjoy it before something happens down the line to make it shitty as usual.

>>44150777
>almost no-one in this setting does

almost no-one in the setting is a reborn Solar with memories of their immediate past life being that slavery is a horrible abomination like it was viewed in the "Sit back and let Sunny D do everything for you" First Age

Also Zeniths, slavery seems pretty opposed to the ALL RIGHTEOUSNESS ALL THE TIME religion of Sol Invictus (hell the whole Primordial War may serve as an emancipation analogy). The other castes I can kinda see having varied responses to it based on their values and backgrounds. But probably not his natural priests

>>44153023
>slavery seems pretty opposed to the ALL RIGHTEOUSNESS ALL THE TIME religion of Sol Invictus

Except for the part where he was totally cool with the Dragon Kings keeping human slaves and eating their hearts, mang.

Bronze-age virtues, not modern.

>>44153045
Sacrificing their hearts to Sol, too. Apparently he didn't find such offerings particularly offending, as he continued to favor the Dragon Kings.

>>44153088
At least they did their shit right and didn't use his name in vain.
Unlike a certain bunch of dickbags.
Fucking Solars.
Almost as bad as Sidereal.

>>44153023
>ALL RIGHTEOUSNESS ALL THE TIME
What is righteous can vary widely depending on who you ask and what period it is. Your Zenith can preach that every righteous man is free... but slaves aren't men.

> reborn Solar with memories of their immediate past life
I hear people saying that all the time but does it really work that way? Firstly, it's not like the previous host of your Exaltation was you. He was just that, a previous host of your power. Secondly, Exaltation loses most memories attached to it. So vivid, detailed recollections of First Age are rare exception and not something every Solar will have. Most will only know where their First Age tomb is so they can handwave their Artifact/Manse dots.

>>44147852

Weeeeeak.

>>44154116

"A man chooses, a slave obeys."

>>44154238
"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Sorry, but it's you who started to throw vaguely related aphorisms around.

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People tend to forget that in a primitive society were you can't afford to feed people in prisoner camps doing nothing and being in general a nuisance and don't have the infrastructure to make prisoner do public work and such, you're pretty much limited to :
Option A : kill the prisoners
Option B : put them into slavery and distribute the responsibility of feeding and taking care of them.

Slavery in the Antiquity was more how serfs were in the Middle Ages than how black slaves were in America.

In short, removing slavery from Creation should be followed by an epic campaign of dealing with the consequences of what to do with PoW.

>>44154383
I have this one : "Power makes dumb, and Primordials and Yozis are entities with almost unlimited power"

>>44154116
The player knows, but it's not clear to the character and we aren't talking about every Solar, just the one that's against Slavery.

>>44154385
>In short, removing slavery from Creation should be followed by an epic campaign of dealing with the consequences of what to do with PoW.
Yes, and?

>>44154450
Well, when I say "epic" I mean "good luck with that guys it will be a pain in the ass".
Pretty much if you don't handwave the problem, you'll need to put in place a modern-era kind of society.

>>44150436
That some people hated throughout history and that corporate leaders wish they could reinstate today.

>>44154611
>wish

Hah, no. They've already got a way better option. Employees are way cheaper, aren't that much better off in terms of rights (so far as the employer is concerned anyway), and will happily turn on each other.

>>44154385
As an ST, how do you impress on your players that things are tough and hard? Especially when they're attribute 5 ability 5 in what they're trying to do. Should an att 5 ability 5 solar be able to handwave away convincing local leaders and generals to act in this new no-slavery manner, and if not, now do you make it not so easy for your players without making everyone also att 5 ability 5 so they can resist the mechanics?

>>44154904

It's not the "convincing people to do it" that's hard. "Can we do it" only rarely is the point, for Solars, it's "should we do it at all" and "are we doing it the right way."

It's what happens after. "Yay, we abolished slavery!" Six months later, total economic collapse, massive crimewaves, conquering and pillaging from neighboring states.

A Solar can convince a man to eat his own shit to survive a famine; that doesn't mean the guy won't die.

>>44154383

"A pot calls a kettle black."

>>44154904
As a Solar, nothing in your area of expertise should be tough or hard.

>>44155068
Then why don't we just freeform

>>44154979
The middle ages saw the quiet abolition of slavery without any total economic collapse, I think you're exaggerating its economic necessity.

>>44155068
>>44155083

1) ALMOST nothing. 99% of the time, the Solar will steamroll their opposition, because 99% of the time their opposition is mortals, first circle demons, and other low-level supernaturals. High-level supernaturals and other Chosen, on the other hand...

2) Because not everything a Solar deals with is going to be in their area of expertise. Rather by definition, a Solar will be facing a selection of challenges biased AWAY from his area of expertise, because everyone else in the setting knows not to fuck with a Solar in their area of expertise.

Even fucking mortals, if they've got the stones to oppose a Solar in the first place, are going to be knowledgeable enough to go "maybe there's a way to defeat the guy who killed 500 demons at once OTHER than open battle."

>>44155093

There's a massive difference between quiet abolition through a general transition to a largely-fungible equivalent (serfs) and dropping slavery from a dead stop in a single day because some golden demigod told you it was bad and evil.

>>44155093
"The middle ages" is a really long period of time.

>>44155156
It is a period of time that a substantial portion of Creation's technology comes from, thus things like articulated plate and boats capable of going 3000 miles semi-regularly.

>>44155169
Okay, so? That's irrelevant to the point.

>>44155068
I do have to ask you, is it actually fun to play a game in which nothing you do in the thing you actually wanted to do is challangung for you?

hi /exg/ you've been pretty good about answering things well lately so i wanna throw my lot in and get some conversation to jog my head.

I got a new player in my game who's an eclipse and they've made me realize i cannot fucking into social planning at all.

i know this might be more a general matter than a system or theme matter, but every time i try making situations where the subtle charming rogue can be the focus of the scene, it tends to not work out.

None of the other players are pushing them out of the way or anything, though. It's really more that I don't know how to plan for them. They took bureaucracy and socialize charms primarily, with a few utility charms to round out, but the matter of trying to make something that truly makes them the hero of the situation can be hard at times.


So, tl;dr for what i'm asking, is for examples of cool stuff i could plan out for my merchant eclipse who just joined the game. Telling them they can be receipt jockey for the warlords of the party isn't really a super exciting premise, to be honest.

>>44155553
>make a character who's really great at some things
>never do those things in play
Sounds like super duper fun

>>44155169
You are right in that the abolition of slavery would not collapse a pre-industrial society, though I'm not sure that serfdom is much of an alternative.

The issue is simply that a pre-industrial society that practiced suffrage is losing out on tangible material benefits for the sake of a moral good.

That makes the choice harder, and less appealing. That is what an Exalt who wants to abolish slavery must contend with.

>>44155648

I think my favorite part of the whole slavery/anti-slavery thing in Exalted is how many PCs are against slavery...

...and still use bound demons or elementals.

It's largely a player bias leaking into the characters, I think, but it's a leak that makes for more organic and believable Exalts and stances on slavery.

>>44155606
One plot I had was that Guild Merchants were conspiring with weather gods to cause a drought in a local city, and then jacking up water prices to horrendous levels.

The drought and the price increase were already in place when the PCs arrived, so the game became about:

1. Procuring a cheaper source of water for the city-state by means of trade agreements with neighbors, and preventing the Guild from undermining this effort.

2. Using the full force of bureaucratic mojo to blackmail the weather gods into doing their jobs and bringing the fucking rain back, or else getting the full force of Heavenly Law to crash upon their heads.

>>44155553

uh, people buy into being The Best Ever At This Thing for a reason. It should be vanishingly rare that something comes close to challenging you in that field, if that's how you set yourself up.

the worst shit ever is when STs either pretend you don't have those skills and challenge you other ways exclusively (which you bumble at because, hey, you're a detective, not a demon summoner, for example).

The other worst shit ever is when they consistently press your best skill to a point where you wonder how weird it is that since you took up swordplay, everything and their aunt is vying to be The Greatest Sworder Ever just to fuck with your claim. Or how it'd be even weirder that they're -actually succeeding- in almost ruining you, on a near-constant basis.


Both are bad. You buy points to be good at something? You should be leaving a good impression when made to use those skills, and very rarely need to really try hard, unless you're intentionally messing with the Big Powers that can be considered above you.

>>44155606
>but every time i try making situations where the subtle charming rogue can be the focus of the scene, it tends to not work out.

I would like to know what situations you tried, so I can hopefully give better advice.

>>44155869

i'm kind of speaking from past experience.

this is a new game with the eclipse player, so i want to keep them interested and all.


in a previous game, it was a good chunk the players and a good chunk myself. I never really planned any politics or scheming for a born schemer, to a point where he outright quit.

One scene i remember, is where a performance/presence zenith outbid their control of a hostage situation before the eclipse could get a deal signed to force the hostage-taker to leave with no blood spilled in return for keeping his own life. So it looked like the eclipse did nothing there in the end despite their plans.

When he had quit, though, I had prepped a parliament of liars for himself to sneak into to cause disruption by throwing their power around. It wasn't very strong, I don't think, either. So that's why I'm asking for ideas now.

The new player is a merchant prince socialize supernal with focus on guile and intimacy-scanning.

I underestimated the Dawn.

I put the group up against an Essence 3 Sidereal, because they broke into the house of his Essence 2 friend while looking for the Zenith's sword(which she stole). He attacked them because they broke in and the Dawn shredded the door into pieces.

The Dawn promptly smacked him with his sword once, getting himself up to 27 initiative(from 6), then smacked him again at the start of the next round with a Decisive attack that knocked him the fuck out with a total of 56 damage dice and 26 successes.

I even tried to bullshit it by giving him a charm that let him roll his dex+melee and add successes to his Parry, but he still got fucked up.

DESU I wish I hadn't second guessed myself in instead giving him a charm that turned the Dawn's sword(not an artifact, just a shitty wooden sword he uses for non-lethal takedowns) into doves. For some reason that seemed too nonsensical to me. I should have done it.

>>44156154
An argument for perfect defenses coming back

>>44156154

What about literally any other Charms, at all?

How would a Night do in Roanapur?
How about a Water Aspect?
A Slayer?

>>44155786
This is why Exalted is a bad RPG. There's this notion that you should be (and are encouraged mechanically to be) the greatest at some field. You're also a supernatural being who has no equals in the realm of mortals, and at character creation are better than a large portion of those from the supernatural realm. So now you play a politician, or archer, or detective, who is so good at what they do that they have to go out of their way to find a challenge. If there is no challenge, the game isn't very fun. The story isn't very engaging. But if there is a constant challenge, if you can keep finding people who are excellent swordsmen or master manipulators, then the notion that you're a rare supernatural being possessing incredible skill is challenged. Are you really that rare if you keep coming across people of comparable skill? The book says you are, but to make the game engaging, you have to not play it like the book says. In short, the developers are trying to have their game two ways at once, but you can't do it and have an engaging story and a good game.

>>44156309
Given that they're all literal demigods?

They'd most likely be running the fucking place inside of a week, but who knows.

>>44156349
>If there is no challenge, the game isn't very fun.

Because, of course, the only kind of challenge that can exist is one where the other guy has numbers as big as yours to bash into your biggest number.

>>44156189
I probably would have called the doves thing a Perfect, but eh
>>44156194
Well, it's 3e, and after I got him up from 6 Defense to 12, vs the Dawn's 19 successes, I just kinda gave up and decided 'yeah, he's getting shrekt'

>>44156349
?

That's not the case at all. Other Exalts are still viable enemies, and are constant, recurring antagonists. Gods, powerful ghosts, demons, fae, and so on are things that an ordinary Solar should treat seriously, not to mention battlegroups of mortals or what have you!

Steam-rolling ordinary people can and should be a given. But a starting Solar is still *very* much the underdog with what they have to go up against in Creation.

>>44156154

Did you just use the Bronze Faction Assassin in the Antagonists section, or did you modify it in any way?

If you want to give a better challenge, pump him up to Ess 5, give him the ability to activate two form charms simultaneously for a 10m, 1wp surcharge. Then pick any two styles that go well together, such as Single Point and Steel Devil.

>>44156189
Perfects are still present in 3E, just significantly more limited in scope and with a lot more restrictions.

>>44156410
For splats that haven't been written for 3e yet, I'm more than okay with bullshitting in abilities that they had for 2e. At the very least, I'd have gotten the Sidereal to Avoidance Kata the fuck outta there.

>>44156410
>Well, it's 3e, and after I got him up from 6 Defense to 12, vs the Dawn's 19 successes, I just kinda gave up and decided 'yeah, he's getting shrekt'

Well-Being Meditation alone would have ripped the teeth out of the attack.

3e is not a game where you just give up once his attack roll is higher than your DV, you clown.

>>44156478
>>44156516
I didn't even look in the antagonists section
I bullshitted everything
>>44156497
DESU I probably should have grabbed my 2e Sids book to look up some charms for this guy(or his friend, who I actually expected them to run into) to use

>>44156659

Okay then, what was the Dawn statted for? Melee, Brawl, something else?

How would a Solar Circle do if dropped into the Fate/Stay Night setting?

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>>44155648
The issue is simply that a pre-industrial society that practiced suffrage is losing out on tangible material benefits for the sake of a moral good.

Slavery is inherently one of the least efficient economic models possible.

1. Slaves have no personal incentive to increase productivity. A slave who can get away with doing less work will do so, because the only thing they get out of doing more work is more tired. Only the owner gets the benefits of the profits from their working harder

2. Slaves have no incentive to improve their skills. If a slave learns to become a nurse instead of a farmhand, again it's the owner that reaps all the profit from selling his skills.

3. A significant portion of the non-slave class must spend all its time monitoring the slaves for fear of revolt. These people can't produce any goods or economic benefit on their own.

Slavery is only good for the tiny sliver of society that owns many slaves and has the wealth to employ overseers (see: colonial era of Latin America, certain stages of Imperial Rome). Societies that lean excessively on slavery end up out-competed by cultures that don't.
You don't need “modern Western values” to realize that – if Alcidamas can declare “Nature has made no man a slave,” in 350 B.C., then so can my Zenith.

>>44156681
Martial Arts, Supernal.
Single Point Style.
He used Shining Starfall Execution and that other one that adds the difference between you and the target's initiative to the raw damage of a decisive attack.

>>44156705
Except for the part where skilled slaves are rewarded in terms of better living quarters and prestige for their services. A slave who is a good doctor is a much more expensive slave than one who does hard labor. Any master who isn't an idiot will make sure that doctor slave will be better treated so they perform better and they don't betray you. You incentivise with reward.

Any time I have hosted a game that takes place in a pre-industrial setting, slavery is a thing because it was a thing historically, and we have historical examples of it being beneficial for skilled or valuable slaves.

There were men who sold themselves into gladiatorial slavery for the sake of the prestige and rich lifestyle, for example.

>>44156751

And the Sidereal what, just stood there like a gorm between the first attack and the second? He should have been swinging at TN4 right back at the very least, let alone any of his own offensive Charms.

Secondly: 19 successes on a decisive attack with nothing but an Excellency behind it? Even if he's 5/5/1, that's a massively good roll.

>>44156751

That's what Single Point is good at. Doesn't seem like the fight lasted long enough to exploit any weaknesses.

Time to come up with consequences for killing a Siddie.

How strong is Appearance in 3e?

>>44156996

It's okay. It has some actual rolled purposes now, and it's more or less just as fungible with the other 2 social stats as they are with each other.

You can think of taking high Appearance as taking a specialty in "people with low Resolve," just high Manipulation is taking a specialty in being a jackass and Charisma is a specialty in being an okay guy. They can do all the same social influences as each other, you just have to stunt differently.

(Yes, I am mildly salty that they didn't make the social stats more different, but whatever.)

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>>44156794
>Except for the part where skilled slaves are rewarded in terms of better living quarters and prestige for their services

What you're basically describing is the incentive scheme used by Stalinist societies like North Korea or 1960s Poland. You don't get to take home better pay, you don't get to move or improve yourself or your society, but you get some slight benefit that your overlords decide to assign you – slightly better living quarters, fewer restrictions on your behavior, the favor of the upper class.
Look at the GDP over time graphs of ex-Warsaw Pact countries and look at how they rocket upward the moment people get to start deciding for themselves what to learn, do, and study. Same thing applies to slavery.

>>44157110
>Look at the GDP over time graphs of ex-Warsaw Pact countries and look at how they rocket upward the moment people get to start deciding for themselves what to learn, do, and study.
Except for the part where the economies of those countries suffered severely, taking years to recover, and experienced major deindustrialization in the aftermath of the fall of the USSR.

>>44157079
While I understand your saltyness, I really think they did a better jup with App here then in 2e

>>44156796
It wans't a 1v1 fight, and the Siddie got crashed and never got another turn in between the two attacks.

It was definitely a massively good roll.
>>44156811
He didn't die.
Though they did obliterate his ridiculous hair cut, which I described as an "ascendingly smaller series of buns"/"ziggurat top-knot"

>>44157282
>Ziggurat top-knot
I'm going to borrow this.

Also the image of said siddie running cryingto his mentor with it's highly unsual new haircut is hilarious

>>44157282
>Though they did obliterate his ridiculous hair cut, which I described as an "ascendingly smaller series of buns"/"ziggurat top-knot"

brilliant

I want to make an Exalted game in RPG Maker. Suggest plot and/or settings?

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>>44157159

Oh yeah, look at the goddamn economic suffering in Poland here. Estonia's chart is even more ludicrous.

The charts for Russia and Ukraine don't look nearly as good, but that's because both countries simply went from rule by one group of oligarchs to rule by another group of oligarchs - they didn't succeed in developing institutions that protected the freedom of individuals to pursue their economic preferences.

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>>44157282
>"ziggurat top-knot"

Awesome.

>>44157382
Team of heroic mortals defending their hometown from Realm invasion; one or two Dragon-Bloods as the Final Boss, surviving characters Exalt just before the credits roll.

>>44157382

the fast and brutal method of exalted's general theme and system really wouldn't make for a good traditional JRPG in my opinion, but hell, that's your call.

Just do the usual "fuck up gods for misbehaving" stuff at first.

>>44157416
Estonia's GDP looks like a flat line with a dip downward from '90 to like '97. I don't know what you're on, here.

>>44156366
I really think it's you who doesn;t understand the nuanse of what challange constitutes anon. Yes, it is still a challange if a swordsman has to talk their way out of trouble, but it is not the kind of challange they signed up for. If I make a charatcer who is good at fighting I'm telling my GM "this is the area in which I want to be challanged", not "this is the area in which I want to NOT be challanged ". That is bacwards.

Yes, there is a thousand and one way to challange a character, but a player will hardly have fun if you don;t challange their character in the exact place they're telling you they want to be challanged.

>>44157651

i think you're maybe misinterpreting. My idea of supernal handling is to just push players with supernals to pull out the stops, then deal with consequence for going full blitz mode. Not outright challenge in scenarios where pulling out all the stops is still a maybe on success.

Like, you have to take into account the fact that flaring anima is a bad fuckin' time in most of the setting. So, sure, you're the best swordsman ever, but holy shit, don't try using those skills on an immaculate monk who's challenging you to show your true colors.

You can probably get away with using charms with discreet amounts, but that leads to the idea of sacrificing points or being careful to avoid hitting your second level anima where you start to glow.

That's plenty a challenge without being a world-ending motherfucking awful monster that ONLY a combat supernal could handle.

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>>44157522
?

>>44157651
>a player will hardly have fun if you don;t challange their character in the exact place they're telling you they want to be challanged.

One Punch Man is kind of interesting to look at here. For those who don't know, the titular character, Saitama, isa superhero who wins every fight with one punch. It's a comedy show, but Saitama's struggles are based around motivating himself and figuring out what's the right thing to do – for example, pretending that he cheated to beat an opponent so that his friends would get the credit when people started looking down on them as useless. Each episode still has cool fight scenes, but the real narrative is about why Saitama chooses to fight.

>>44157837
>?
Yes. Exactly. Look at the point at which the GDP goes above its 1990 level. That's roughly... '97. Like I said.

I'm not saying that the economies of Eastern Europe are doing worse today than they were in 1990. That would be pretty insane. But it took most of them years to recover from the shock, because capitalist economies don't work the same and it forces all kinds of changes as employment goes from full to 95%, as every instance of every product has to make a net profit, etc.

Which ties into the discussion of abolitionism in Exalted - sudden mass abolition of slavery can easily result in a short-term economic downturn and malaise, possibly up to famine as certain crops become wildly unprofitable as soon as you're expected to pay the farmhands actual wages rather than just beating them into it.

(There is also the obvious fact that economies constantly look like Js in the present because it's an exponential curve, but that's irrelevant.)

>>44157837
And I am perfectly sure it's entertaining to watch as a viewer. I'm pretty sure though that the player roleplaying Saitama would get pissed really quick that they can never be challanged in an area they built their character in.

>>44152685
Ah... I miss Ero Exalted.

>>44158102

really? every combat-heavy player i've had who's oneshotted nearly everything would just laugh because they're absurdly powerful. then they'd freak when they ran into shit they couldn't oneshot because of social situations or the consequence or what have you.

like, what do you think is more valuable in this case? frustration? it sounds like you're trying to argue that being frustrated is the only way to play. there's plenty of frustrating bullshit out there that isn't Exalted 3e. Hell, you could always just do Exalted 2e and try to play the game as it's written, at that matter.

>>44150415
Thanks, Buddy!

>>44158182
If you seriously consider being challanged in the area you wanted to be challanged is synonymous with being frustrated, I don't really want to ever run a game for you and would rather not play with you. You strike me as the kind of person that would get butthurt if their super speciul snowflake beast-man Solar was defeated in a fight instead of being exhilarated at an oportunity for character development.

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>>44157981
>Yes. Exactly. Look at the point at which the GDP goes above its 1990 level. That's roughly... '97. Like I said.

It's a slight dip – practically a plateau – followed by a rocket rise.

>sudden mass abolition of slavery can easily result in a short-term economic downturn and malaise, possibly up to famine as certain crops become wildly unprofitable

I will definitely agree with you that there could be short-term shocks. Your example of suddenly unprofitable crops is a great one, actually, since crops are labor-intensive products that can be leveraged with unskilled labor (as the histories of indigo, pepper, and cotton production show).

Six years of disruption, though (1991-1997) is pretty minimal for a far-sighted ruler – if you expect to sit the throne for thirty years, it's an investment. If you expect to sit the throne for thirty centuries, because some helpful spirit told you about how long Exalts live, then six years is fucking nothing. In the same way that an Exalted general should be able to conquer swathes of Creation if he sets his mind to it, an Exalted administrator or scholar should be able to work out the basic theories underlying markets and banking. And once you go down that path, it's pretty easy to see that you should get rid of slavery immediately.

>>44158123
>Ah... I miss Ero Exalted.

Fine, I'll go back to posting under-dressed characters instead of GDP charts. ;_;

>>44155606
Are you me?

>>44156349
Some players get their rocks off on steamrolling shit.

As long as they're good role-players and don't disrupt the table as they're engaged in that role--playing, I really don't give a shit if all they want to do is smash.

I have to run fantasy settings right now because one of the players at my table doesn't do sci-fi at all, and Exalted is a fairly not-terrible one.

>>44158476
>Six years of disruption, though (1991-1997) is pretty minimal for a far-sighted ruler – if you expect to sit the throne for thirty years, it's an investment. If you expect to sit the throne for thirty centuries, because some helpful spirit told you about how long Exalts live, then six years is fucking nothing. In the same way that an Exalted general should be able to conquer swathes of Creation if he sets his mind to it, an Exalted administrator or scholar should be able to work out the basic theories underlying markets and banking. And once you go down that path, it's pretty easy to see that you should get rid of slavery immediately.
Oh, sure, except for the minor problem that it will very possibly cause significant unrest and sympathy for the old order, destabilizing your country politically as well as economically. That wouldn't be much of a big deal, and probably something you could handle easily... assuming you have no external military enemies.

Which, in Creation, is not very likely.

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>>44158888

Yeah, well – that's why I have awesome kung-fu!

I'm not saying abolishing slavery should be easy, I'm saying that there are objective, straightforward reasons why a newly Exalted Solar would want to abolish slavery, in response to the folks upthread talking about how it's so anachronistic for a Solar to want that. If I build an abolitionist character (I haven't yet), I would fully expect the ST to throw scheming courtiers, angry gods, and the whole damn Guild at me.

That's what would make it -fun-.

Just a reminder : just because slavery is inherently an inefficient system, it doesn't means an alternative system can be easily set up in a viable fashion.
Especially since most of the more efficient systems are founded on the fact that exploiting lower class worker is cheaper and more productive since if they are ill or fall into gambling and substance abuse, you don't have to care for them. In a way, Greek and Roman slavery is a better system for those that are among the exploited class.

Any people interested on the subject of modern times exploitation of working class can read Victor Hugo's les Misérables, or Émile Zola's Germinal

>>44158610
No, but I'm you.

>>44159041
I would myself recomend something more scientific, like the works of Marx and Engels on the subject, but sure, you can read Hugo. If you want to fill your mind with pulp that is.

>>44156687
Oh look it's this post again.

>>44159174
Hugo and Zola are more "this is how much it is shit" and less "here's how I suggest to solve this" kind of reading.

>>44159247
Again? Does that question get asked a lot?

>>44159257

F/SN is like babby's first "thing to mash into Exalted or vice versa" because they share such a similar premise ("take some mythological figures of varying degrees of obscurity and make them a hot anime chick.")

>>44159372
Well, what's the answer?

>>44159174
>Marx & Engels
>scientific
Pick one and only one, then get the fuck out you stupid-ass commie.

>>44159395
Same as the answer to every other crossover, doubly so when involving Exalted.

1) Who gives a shit?
2) Depends on which universe's rules take primacy.
3) My favorite kicks the shit out of your favorite, obviously. Fag.

>>44158338

maybe, but you're throwing phrases like "butthurt" and "speciul(emphasis on misspelled) snowflake" at someone who disagrees with you so you just strike me as a plain-as-day faggot, no need for trimming

oh, that and threat of "oh if i meet you outside this conversation i'll treat you like shit" and all too, that's a real showing of character as well


which really has nothing to do with the core point. the core point is that you're asserting "best in the world at something" shouldn't ever be on top. That something will always be better.

That does match exalted's style. But some days it's okay to uppercut a dragonblood as a solar brawl supernal and watch his spine click up five notches as he flies into the air. Or to take on an entire mortal army that no single person should stand up to. Those do not have to be difficult things. They can be, if you actually test things, get a feel for power amounts, and push your player by adding to the situation.

But, hey, being bad? That can't be helped

>>44158610

am I? did I ever fix that problem? I'd like to know how I solved it since i'm still stuck with it right now

>>44155606
>>44155777

This is a great example. Killing people doesn't achieve as much in this situation, but if the Eclipse does his socialise thing, and uses the murderbeasts to make sure shit happens, they leave a lasting impression, and if they come back and find these cunts are up to their old tricks...well, you've got something to escalate to, then. Or threaten to, at least.

'Lawgivers' IS one of the titles given to Solars, after all, and justice can come in many forms.

>>44158123

I remember running a ero game for a year and a half.

Good times until my uni killed it

>>44158338

Speaking of which, anyone really have players like this?

I remember one time I had a player who'd throw a shitfit anytime he was actually hit. Even if the hit was not that bad.

>>44160620
Tell us?

What do you guys think of a Solar who has taken the whole "Solars are supposed to be righteous god-kings" idea way too far into ideological extremism?

The basic concept was that he had a shitty life while mortal (then again who in Creation hasn't), and rationalized it to himself that SOMETHING must be testing him. When he Exalted, he took this as validation of his beliefs and has gone...kind of off the deep end. Now he believes that as a Solar, literally everything he does is righteous by default and anyone who opposes him is by definition wrong.

Only problem is that this kind of character wouldn't play well with others. And I need to flesh him out more.

>>44159436

Who'd win in a fight. A circle of ess5 solars or Cain

>>44160763

Defining Principle: Everything I do is by definition good, because I myself am a good person.

He doesn't need to play well with others if he's the antagonist. Other than that, be at ease with the fact that intimacies can be eroded and by the end of the game he may not hold that belief.

>>44160942
A circle of ess5 Solars because they just use Zeal to win at everything they attempt to do.

>>44161139
What is Zeal again? All I know is that it's supposedly from DotFA.

>>44161197
Spend a virtue channel to succeed at any action with threshold successes equal to Integrity. It bypasses perfect defenses.

>>44161235
hahhaha holy shit that is ridiculous, though it does sound pretty damn anime.

Reminds me of an ability in my own homebrew RPG that a particular NPC has: she succeeds at ANY archery-related roll automatically and her roll instead is for how many threshold successes she has. I can't imagine letting PC's have those abilities.

>>44161235
>>44161235
>It bypasses perfect defenses.
no it doesnt. rtfm.

>>44159415
Hey, Marx was a great economist. A crazy ideaologue. But an amazing economist.

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>>44161350
Oh? Then what do you make of this?

>>44161506
lrn 2 read errata.

>>44161538
He was talking about Zeal itself, not Epic Zeal of a virtue.

>>44161538
Zeal doesn't exist in the Errata, dumbass. It was removed.

>>44161538
Zeal doesn't exist at all in the errata. Also the anon who asked the original question didn't state an edition.

>>44161559
right

>>44160684

When I get home from work sure.

>>44161580
Yes. It was replaced by Should The Sun Not Rise.

>>44161559

I think that was his point. That Zeal got removed in errata.

>>44162026
Then he has no point. The answer to what is/was Zeal, specifically asking for the version of Zeal from DotFA, should not be nothing, it should be the removed version of Zeal.

So, what book in 2e talks about human half-breeds like god-bloods, demon-bloods, fae-bloods, etc.? They get mentioned a lot in some books but I've never seen any mechanics or descriptions of what one would look like.

>>44162689
That would be the Scroll of Heroes, Anon.

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>>44160620
>>44160684


Seconding anon's request.

>>44160374
>I don't want to play with you due to your attitude
>YOU ARE TREATING ME LIKE SHIT

Hahah, oh wow. And you still manage to totally miss his point the whole time, that just makes it all the better.

>>44156687
Fuck shit up, them get rekt by the servants.
In case they win, unleash all the evils of the world and doom it.

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>>44161614
Bumping while we wait for this story.

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>>44160942

Its been a fucklong time I last read any of the oWoD stuff. Is Cain affected by sunlight? Because that "mark of Cain 7-fold retaliation" bullshit is only if someone *attacks* him. Solars can just glow at him

>>44160374
>Or to take on an entire mortal army that no single person should stand up to. Those do not have to be difficult things.
Your entire post was retarded, but this part was especially idiotic.

So I'm not super knowledgeable with Exalted mostly make Kaiju Lunars and stuff.

I want to make a something like a adventure that using tech/artifacts they made. Fights with Bloodborne style trick weapons, has an extra robotic arm, uses a grappling hook to help climb kinda stuff.

Any good Ideas on how to do this without overextending dots and BP?

>>44165526

The simplest magical method is probably to have "one" artifact that represents an entire panoply of tools, maybe one Evocation per tool, so it's got very shallow trees, but covers a breadth of tricks.

The simplest nonmagical method is to get free-wheeling with tags on weaponry and/or swing a die or two for relevant tools in non-combat contexts.

>>44165526
>>44165804
This is a 2.5 game. Forgot to state that sorry. What you be a good caste Dawn or Twilight?

>>44165901

Well, my answer still applies, just substitute "Evocaions" for "artifact powers." High-dot artifact with lots of little powers rather than one big one, representing a panoply.

And either could work for the idea, just depends on whether you want them to be defined with the emphasis on "COMBAT ingenuity" or "combat INGENUITY"

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>>44165901
Turning a piece of metal and a rope into a grappling hook, a screw driver, a sling, etc. is basically what Craftsman Needs No Tools is for. Depending on what you're building and your ST's ruling, it might not be a mid-combat thing.

Unless you play 3e.

Play 3e.

>>44165324

Oh sorry, the terrible day at work nearly made me forget about this.

Typing now.

>>44166979

My apologies, I nearly forgot after a horrible day at work.

While it was a ero game, occasional porn flings scattered about here and there, it did have a plot going for it. It was also some time ago so I can't remember most of it, especially the second half, but I do remember the beginning of it. Please note that this isn't all doom and gloom, the PC's did eventually manage to knee the BBEG in the balls *very* hard later on, and just before one PC's uncle died, uni ate my life, and whatnot the game died on the final chapter. I find it sad that I never got a chance to finish it, but at the same time I don't regret getting my degree either.

OK the game premise is basically Solars from the first age coming into the second. Relatively new ones, but had access to a First Age battleship and some pretty powerful weapons/knowledge, so the ground was basically hit running. It's been long enough where I forget the starting PC's, as I have a curse with tabletop gaming in where players quit every 3-4 sessions and I'm forced to find new ones.

The first session started off coming back to Creation after a journey in the Wyld lasting 50 years. The Captain of the ship thought this was worth it, especially since it put a black eye on Admiral Arkadi when she was doing it. Lo and below however when the group returned, they couldn't come into contact with I AM, Luthe, or anything friendly in the ocean waters of the West. Fearing the worst, they decided to head to a manse that the Captain's Lunar wife knew about, hopefully it having some information inside of it.

>>44167466

Upon going to the manse proper, they find the island it was on overrun with foliage and the manse in a horrible state of disrepair, to the point where it was barely function. The Lunar wife and Twilight began to work on repairing some basic functions of the manse while searching for bits of information. What they basically found was a shogunate era logbook talking about the events of the Usurpation (hundreds of years after it, but still enough to let the PC's know that the Solar Deliberative was no longer in power), the manse became a safehouse for house of Dragonblooded during a warring states era, how lucky they were that their isolationist base avoided the most of the Great Contagtion, and finally a last stand against numbers of Raksha which "seemed to blot out the sky itself." It was upon reading this that Creation not only had three consecutive disasters since they last left, but also Solars were no longer in Creation at all it seems.

After recovering from the shock, the PC's then decided the best course of action was to investigate, as some PC's still didn't want to accept that this happened. Upon surfing the waves, the eventually found a small town in the West and decided to carefully approach it. Upon the island they were once again shocked that how the people there had regressed to a tribal state. The natives confused their clothing for some strange gods, but it wasn't until a mortal Immaculate Monk who had a monstary on the island came and greeted them, even inviting them for tea. During this time they basically had polite conversion over the 'history' of Creation, founding of the Order and the Scarlet Empress, and the Realm itself. The very thought of the Realm Defense grid in hands of someone who wanted them dead terrified the No Moon, who seriously had trouble believing that anyone, especially a DB, could get into the Realm Defense Grid and wrest control of it successfully.

>>44167477

The PC's decided that they had enough fooling around, deciding to go and meet the Dragonblooded house on the island itself and say hello with a bang. In this case, literally kicking open the door and saying hello to the Dragonblooded. It was actually a very tough fight, as while the PC's had caught the dragonblooded semi-unprepared while they were on a vaction/resource gathering, the Dragonblooded still had a mass combat group of demons (modified mass combat system, kinda like 3e's in that it works in normal combat time) and two of the Dragonblooded where Immaculate Monks. It was close, but the DB's lost. The Air aspect whisked away the Earth and Water aspect with that tornado travel spell while the PC's took the Fire and Air aspects back to the manse for a 'talk'.

Back at the manse the Fire Aspect, Takga, was extremely hostile towards the PC's. He was so rabid that he had to be put into a cocoon made by the Captain's Lunar Wife after they knocked him unconscious again. Since this was a ero game, they decided the best option was to make a loyal sockpuppet by fucking him until he had no chance to answer with whatever they wanted. I forgot what they asked, but it was mainly involved with what they were doing in the West and if what the mortal monk said was true. The Air aspect was far more accomdating however, more curious about the solars rather than seeing them as demons like the idiot "Takga" did. After a few bits of hitting on back and forth, the Twilight and Air aspect also got their rocks off. She went them to study while Takga was left on the beach, buried up to his head in sand and then had a bucket of crabs put on his face.

>>44167485

It was also during this time, while finding a Guild port and staying there in exchange for blowing up pirates, that the Silver Prince himself contact the PC's, mentioning that he wished for change in the West. He wanted to unite the West to resist Realm, who were lately just pillaging all that they could for their stupid civil war, and after that civil war there would be nothing left but pirates. The PC's were concerned with his message method (It was that necromancy spell that let's one speak through a mortal body remotely, but ages them rapidly) and that a nation of ghosts were so well armed. They didn't blindly accept, but said the offer was on the table, and that the No Moon could contact them with the Messanger spell if they should so decide.

On the flip side House Ragara contacted them, saying that the Silver Prince does nothing but enable pirates on anyone who doesn't side with him, giving them powerful necromatic boons, and is a blasphamy to Creation. However unlike the other houses, Ragara knew an oppotunity when they saw it. They said that the Wyld Hunt was coming after the PC's, a BIG one considering the Realm knew they had working First Age weapons in immaculate working order. Ragara said they could shield them from the Hunt and offer them safety in exchange for them protecting shipping lanes for House Ragara's interests and make the Silver Prince's supply line dead in the water. The Silver Prince could also offer protection from the Wyld Hunt, but the PC's felt the better deal was with the Dragonblooded as at least they wouldn't be doing a favor for some 'ghost'. The Ragara had an Oathstone with him, so unfortunately the PC's were stuck with House Ragara after the deal, but they were going to keep their end by force too.

>>44167493

To keep the PC's safe, Ragara sent them to a Raksha freehold which owed them favors, and for the next several weeks was basically an orgy on the boat which was a non-stop party with curious Raksha and bored God kings in a freehold that was basically a bottomless whirlpool. After that they began to go to work, harassing Silver Prince and Pirate activities, cleaning up the West, they really didn't feel any yolk as Ragara's terms were basically "Just do your best to make these guys lives a living hell, stay out of our economic interests, and we don't give a fuck what you do." A few mercenaries from Coral tried to stop them, but nothing was really able of stopping 3x Solars and 2x Lunars. Being foolhardy, they decided to try and make more direct, obvious assaults against the Silver Prince.

The Silver Prince did not like this a single bit, so he decided to get more personally involved.

When the PC's attempted to chase after a supply ship headed for the Silver Prince's shadowlands, they suddenly noticed a large bank of creeping fog sneaking up on them. It was a bit too late when they suddenly found out their ship had suddenly been boarded by war ghosts materializing through the hull itself. After a small scuffle with the war ghosts, they PC's where lead to the top of the ship where advanced war zombies were located, and out on top of the deck the Silver Prince was there himself in all of his horrible glory, onyx armour, black cape, helmet and all. Seeing as they just wrecked the Silver Prince's most elite troops all by themselves, they figured that one more 'mere' ghost wouldn't be that difficult.

>>44167496

The Silver Prince didn't have supersolbyssal stats, but he was still *horrifically* powerful. He was more than enough of a match for the PC's (Who mainly statted out their characters to make sense, not minmax). The circle could hardly believe their eyes, the No Moon thought that such a ghost should not possibly exist while the Captain's Changing Moon wife went from interested to terrified in rapid order. No PC's were knocked out but came very close to it. When the Captain's Lunar wife attempted to run away by turning into her warform and flying away, the Silver Prince responded by intercepting her and grabbing her by the neck, Soulsteel Grand Daiklave ready to shove through her back and then demanded the PC's throw down their weapons, get on their knees, apologize, or else he promised that he'd ram his daiklave straight through her.

The PC's were forced to eat their pride and bow. Even the Dawn who had an intimacy not to bow to anyone other than his master, did so in order to save the the Captain's Lunar wife, apologizing for all the actions done to him. The Silver Prince than replied with the following,

"I don't accept your apologies."

>>44167506

He then rammed the daiklave directly through her while in front of the Captain, shocking everyone on board. The Captain immediately rushed towards her injured wife, but not before the Silver Prince put her face under his boat. He then said that this is only a 'taste' of what he could deliver. If they attempted to do anything else to him, he'd do much, much worse. He then turned around and left as soon as he arrived. The PC's didn't bother attacking him as he left, they were too busy trying to save the Lunar captain's wife. It was at this point every PC in the game made it their personal mission to kill the Silver Prince. This act wasn't sudden BTW, I even asked the Lunar player if such an act was fine and he agreed with it.

Anyways come the next arc, the PC's decided to ramp up operations tenfold against the Silver Prince, but for that they needed supplies, ships, and an army. They started to rally nations who'd fight against the Silver Prince, and even convinced the Realm that the Silver Prince was the biggest possible threat in all of the West. The Realm accepted this, acknowledging that any monster capable of taking on First Age Anathema and win singlehandedly is not to be trifled with, and even agreed to give the PC's temporary amnesty. I still remember when Takga met with the PC's again, in which I made his speech a modified "Hi Karkat!" speech from homestuck, I'm unoriginal, sue me.

>>44167514

Anywho what basically followed was one of the largest fleets in all of the Second age heading towards the Silver Prince's terrority on an offensive, Dragonblooded and Solar/Lunar under one banner again fighting one of the greatest evil's that threatened all of Creation. Of course the Silver Prince noticed this, and rallied the nations of Coral and a few others to muster their fleets to fend off realm agression once and for all. The stage was set for one of the largest navel battles in Creation's history, literal thousands on both sides.

When the battle started itself, the PC's had no shortage of things to do and were having a blast. The Night running along water cutting open ships with her anchor Daiklave, the Dawn fighting the Nephwrack ghost of his old mentor while blowing up ships just as scenery damage, the Solar captain using her overpowered ship to rip apart the enemy, animas of all colours blazed on the horizon and the battle appeared to be going in their favor.

It was at this point the Silver Prince appeared on the command deck once again in holograph form. The Solar Captain knew this system, usually a communication method used for ships in the first age, but thought nothing much else considering how strong he was so getting something like that probably would've been nothing for him. The Silver Prince had some small talk with the Solar Captain, about being in his way *again* and making small talks about MacBeth (which I said existed in the game, why not). The Solar Captain amused him for a bit, before finally asking why he was here. The Silver Prince said he had come once again to offer his mercy, this time he'd forgive the Solar captain if she would order her ship to kill every single living person and ship in sight, friend and foe. The Solar Captain laughed, thinking this was a joke before she realized he was serious and responded with a firm no. I can't find the fucking chat log, but the next line was something like this:

>>44167522

"...Very well, once again I need to take matters into my own hands, this is going to marginally hurt me more than you. " The Silver Prince's voice then suddenly seems to change. "Attention ship AI core, this is High Admiral Arkadi of the Delibrative Fleet. Control Override code X3662-G2147-F2671-Q0009."

"Acknowledged. Welcome back High Admiral Arkadi." the ship's AI replied.

"W-What?" the stunned captain replied, knowing that the failsafes where all but impossible to bypass unless it was the actual person doing the override.

"As of this moment I am assuming control of this vessel for the duration of this battle. Lockdown the entire vessel and go airtight. Disengage IFF's and friendly fire, lock onto all targets and fire on my mark." The Silver Prince/Arkadi replies.

"Acknowledged." The ship say as it's weapons began to turn towards the Realm fleet.

Now I know how some of you might be saying "Bullshit" right now, but the PC's in the game actually enjoyed what happened next. I also assured the Solar PC that the code was a one time only thing, and that SP had no way to get more nor any more actually existed.

>>44167534

Then all hell broke loose as the battleship started firing on both friend, foe, and even circlemates who tried to approach it. The Solar Captain collasped to her knees as she saw the carnage unfold in front of her, realizing that she really never had a choice with the Silver Prince, it would've ended up just the same even if he sided with her. The Silver Prince said that it was correct, and as much as this is personal revenge for how the Solar Captain humilated her in the first age, this battle was playing part in a role far bigger than she could ever imagine. During this time the Realm cut their heavy losses and began fleeing while most of the Silver Prince's allied fleet was demolished. The other PC's were utterly confused to why the Solar Captain's ship was firing on them and took heavy damage just to force their way on board. By the time they reached the bridge, they found the muttering and delirious Solar captain. She knew that by doing this the Silver Prince made it almost *impossible* for them to gain any more allies in the West or in the Realm now and that he was planning this since the very instant when she first arrived. But still, the Silver Prince invited them for a dinner in three weeks time in his castle on Skullstone. The PC's spent most of this time cleaning up the bodies and doing their best to make sure a shadowland wouldn't form. The Zenith herself burned bodies day and night, her hatred for Arkadi now beyond imagining.

>>44167549

The PC's did head to Skullstone for that dinner, literally kicking down doors as they marched up to the castle, meeting the Silver Prince in his own dining room. He invited them to sit, have a few drinks, it was a long time since they last met. He didn't have time to make many quips, in fact when the PC's drilled him on why he had done it he confirmed that it was partically of what they thought, but there was more. With this now the nation states under his banner would be *completely* reliant on him for protection, and all those they had killed would just become ghosts as part of his own army. This act wasn't even a setback for the Silver Prince, it was a benefit. Of course, this didn't amount to the *real* reward for what he was after. When the PC's asked what, he asked a few 'friends' to come in. About 15 or so people that seemed normal at first, but quickly flared into black animas and bloody castemarks of the Solars. Even the piggy Night caste dropped her fork at the act.

See, Arkadi explained he *knew* what happened to the Solars after centuries of exploring, the Jade Prison. But with the Sidereal's watching it he wouldn't be able to get close, much less do anything for long. Something *big* had to happen. So what the Silver Prince did is basically arrange things so that *big* thing would happen, the massive fight. With so much going on at once it would've been like a flashbang to the Sidereal's remotely viewing. Now instead of returned Solars, the Deathlord's had nearly 150 Abyssal Exalted spread out amongst their numbers and 100 to the Yozi's, as they had ample time for breaking the prison and collecting the Exaltations. It made sense why the Silver Prince didn't kill them the first time, he was just aiming to deliberately piss them off.

>>44167551

The Solar Captain Zenith felt as if her hope had vanished, betraying the Deliberative entirely and making them into a mockery of what they once were. The limit break kicked in which was known as Carnal Compassion (PC must drop everything to have sex, ero game). The Silver Prince made a cutting remark about that's *all* she's ever known to do in her pathetic life, before telling his new Abyssals *this* is why you don't fuck with him. Upon leaving, the Dawn caste seriously considered joining the Yozi's as he thought Creation was done for, the Night caste treasure hunter/prankster sneaked into the Silver Prince's elaborate study and drew whale penis's on his walls and desks (Later on the game, I made him have his revenge by getting his own Day caste sneak into the Night caste's room and write the entire play of MacBeth all over her walls of her bedroom), the No Moon thought it was time to pull out the *really* big sorcery and guns and began to hunt for that hardcore.

I wish I can remember more, but I can't remember the order. The only thing I can remember is one other major incident and what I had planned for the final session (In which yes, the PC's were to finally kill the SP)

So, how important is it to have good armor? Can a dawn get away with just mundane breastplate, or should I invest in artifact armor along with my daiklave? If I can do without artifact armor, what abilities should I be pumping if I stick to light armor?