Keychain of Creation 3: Not-a-Keyblade Understanding & Falafel-is-Awesome Prana Combo

[Arcanoi]

Nah, it's only Glories. Like Zeal, most people will ignore the existence of those charms(I hope).

Glories is a bit of a mixed bag, with gems and jackhammers in equal measure. Dreams, however, is uniformly broken.

[Tackyhillbillu]

There is some good stuff past Lunars.

[Ganurath]

Abyssals brings some fun stuff to the table, like Honey-Tongued Serpent Attack and Headstones Flung Like Pebbles. I personally like how a Solar with a Grand Goremaul and Stubborn Boar Defense can kill the Neverborn, so long as the Lawbringer is in Limit Break while doing so.

[Arcanoi]

Abyssals brings some fun stuff to the table, like Honey-Tongued Serpent Attack and Headstones Flung Like Pebbles. I personally like how a Solar with a Grand Goremaul and Stubborn Boar Defense can kill the Neverborn, so long as the Lawbringer is in Limit Break while doing so.

Wait... what? Stubborn Boar Defense just makes you treat Unnatural mental influence as unacceptable. Last I checked it takes more than that and a Goremaul, no matter how grand, to kill Primordials, no matter how dead.

[Ganurath]

Sagacious Reading of Intent, one of those two. All you need is a Perfect Mental Defense that can last the fight, the ability to overcome Hardness 20 (16 base damage + 4 prereq Strength,) and the ability to deal at least 5 post-soak, provided by the GG's Overwhelm 5.

[Xelloss]

Sagacious Reading of Intent, one of those two. All you need is a Perfect Mental Defense that can last the fight, the ability to overcome Hardness 20 (16 base damage + 4 prereq Strength,) and the ability to deal at least 5 post-soak, provided by the GG's Overwhelm 5.

That wouldn't kill the Neverborn, just make it dead. No a big change.

[Xelloss]

Glories is a bit of a mixed bag, with gems and jackhammers in equal measure. Dreams, however, is uniformly broken.

I'm interested to know what you find bad in Glories. I have yet to see anything that isn't at least good.

[horngeek]

And I just love Crane Style.

Possibly because I tend to make characters for whom it just fits.

[Drascin]

There is some good stuff past Lunars.

Such as, say, Alchemicals .

I'm interested to know what you find bad in Glories. I have yet to see anything that isn't at least good.

Well, there's aforementioned Sun And Moon Method and Spanning Bridge Relay, for saying something that won't force me to go and check the name of things before speaking . I really do agree quite a bit with Jerthanis about it, personally.

[horngeek]

Actually, I like quite a lot of the books. And some of Dreams, even. The Charms are broken, yes, but the other stuff is okay. The background, in particular.

[Sojiko]

Glories is a bit of a mixed bag, with gems and jackhammers in equal measure. Dreams, however, is uniformly broken.

*spits tea on keyboard*


Wait, what? Glories is awesome. The Lunar part isn't as good as it could have been (but errata saw to that), and that's about it. There's nothing broken or stupid in there.

[Sojiko]

Well, there's aforementioned Sun And Moon Method and Spanning Bridge Relay, for saying something that won't force me to go and check the name of things before speaking . I really do agree quite a bit with Jerthanis about it, personally.

It's just factually wrong.

You can think "ho noes, Solars were *******s", which is true, and not anything new. Apart from that everything he says his basically only true if you make it so.

[Ganurath]

That wouldn't kill the Neverborn, just make it dead. No a big change.

Ah, right! I forgot the most important part! The character is an Eclipse who knows the Abyssal Mirror to Ghost-Eating Technique, the one that casts slain foes directly into Oblivion.

Also, horngeek: Did you like all the backgrounds in Dreams? Between Desus being Desus and the most noteworthy Fire Aspect being a failure of a whore, there are some elements of the background that kinda rub me the wrong way. Anyone who makes a joke about the Fire Aspect whore rubbing me the wrong way gets Anima Fluxed.
Slightly more on topic... Have ghosts always not had faces, or is that just Jukashi's artistic style representing them?

[The Rose Dragon]

Slightly more on topic... Have ghosts always not had faces, or is that just Jukashi's artistic style representing them?

Ghosts do have faces in Exalted. See, well, most ghosts in the Underworld book, as well as the entirety of the Deathlord host.

[Recaiden]

Slightly more on topic... Have ghosts always not had faces, or is that just Jukashi's artistic style representing them?

He does have a face. He just doesn't have eyes. Or, his eyes are pure white.

[Weimann]

I'm pretty sure it's just an artistic choice by Jukashi, yeah.

[Xelloss]

Well, there's aforementioned Sun And Moon Method and Spanning Bridge Relay

As I said, I have yet to see anything that isn't at least good.

[Drascin]

It's just factually wrong.

You can think "ho noes, Solars were *******s", which is true, and not anything new. Apart from that everything he says his basically only true if you make it so.

I don't see much wrongness there. Basically, Sun and Moon Method is "yeah, so you adore me. No, you're not going to get to resist. Enjoy your -5MDV" and Relay is "no, no escaping, come back here my little doggy". It's a very clear positioning on the part of White Wolf - before reading things like that, you might have some doubts, it might just be a spiritual thing, you know, stuff like that. Stuff like this on the other hand is basically telling Lunars straight on "the Bond sucks and leaves you completely at the mercy of your Solar, and is a problem for you to overcome on par with or even worse than Limit. What are you going to do to solve it?".

[Green Bean]

Ah, but Glories also gives you the Golden Widow Society, which is an expedient solution to said problem.

[The Rose Dragon]

[Lilith] Yes, because killing your Solar mates repeatedly until he gets the idea is the solution to every problem! [/Lilith]

[Drascin]

[Lilith] Yes, because killing your Solar mates repeatedly until he gets the idea is the solution to every problem! [/Lilith]

Well, the choice is between slavery and murder - and Lunars are very independent custodians that actually can get abilities from murdering people and eating their hearts (ie, they don't have all that many qualms about killing people, as a whole). It was kind of inevitable, really .

[horngeek]

...funny. All the Lunars I've actually played have had relationships with their solars based on mutual respect.

[Reynard]

Probably because neither you or the player behind the Solar are the sort of person to be such a... donkey with other players.

[Arcanoi]

Lets see... broken things in Glories?

Luna is pretty good. I don't have it on hand, but the only thing I can remember being particularly broken is Heaven-spanning Staff of the Monkey King. I have a Full-Moon build that, with 75 EXP, can dual-wield Warstrider Goremauls, has 20-something accuracy with them, and can produce them at any time for about 12 motes and a WP. I called this build Hammerspace.

Let's see... Unconquered Sun..

GttMH is broken unless your ST knows how to play the Limit breaks you're constantly hemorrhaging against you.

Terrible Sun-King Condemnation is pretty broken, in addition to being hilarious. I recall that during a game, a Zenith limit-broke, and during that time, condemned a shop-keeper who tried to refuse to give him a discount as a Creature of Darkness.

There are some... interesting things you can do with Dragon-Riding Meditation and Worthy Mount Technique, especially if you're riding say... your Lunar mate. I haven't explored this fully, however.

The Arms of the Unconquered Sun style is rather annoying, in that it allows any martial artist who is using an unarmed style to take a 4m unstoppable flurry breaker at char-gen, and then never touch the otherwise rather interesting style again. Not exactly broken, but abusable.

Shedding Infinite Radiance, specifically the Twilight/Daybreak Variant, reduces the cost of all sorcery/necromancy by half, and stacks with other things that have similar effects rather easily.

Maidens has a SMA. I haven't seen it in action, but I'm just going to make the reasonable assumption that it breaks things.

There aren't as many broken things in glories as I had suspected, but there are also quite a few ridiculously situational or otherwise not-worthwhile charms. I do like Glories as a whole, but saying nothing inside is broken is wrong.

[Drascin]

...funny. All the Lunars I've actually played have had relationships with their solars based on mutual respect.

Well, yeah. When I ST for my group (the main reason I'm learning Exalted is because my group wanted to play) you can bet I'm going to explain it to them like that. I'm just annoyed that the further into the book timeline I read, the further the fluff seems to head away from supporting that kind of actually interesting relationship and more into making the Bond just a horrendous complication and a tool for assholish Solar NPCs.

Thankfully, if years of D&D taught me something, is that the things written in the books are there so everyone has a common base at the table for what we're not doing .

[Arcanoi]

Well, Sun-And-Moon Method is actually pretty cool for initiating a side-plot for any of your Solar players by having them go questing for their Mate. You could have this while the other players are doing down-time or their own solo quests.

You could even Houserule that your players could either buy, at reduced cost, say... 3 EXP.. the tracking part of Sun-And-Moon, or automatically start with it, and just not let them take the charm that has Sun-And-Moon as pre-req.

EDIT: Another cool idea might be to make the Charm impart a Lunar-Bond with equivalent effects on the Solar. Then it becomes less 'I'm a douche' and more of one of those gushy "I love/trust you enough to give you power over me" things.

[Jerthanis]

I'm interested to know what you find bad in Glories. I have yet to see anything that isn't at least good.

Here's my biggest problem with about a quarter to a half of the charms in Glories; Luna and Unconquered Sun: They were written more as a way of illustrating a particular setting concept rather than being useful crunch that the average PC would be interested in taking.

The biggest two are Sun and Moon Method and Soul Spanning Bridge relay; mostly there to say, "Whatever the intent of the Lunar Bond, it has been twisted into something ugly within the history of the setting." I almost can't imagine a player thinking the charm was necessary to further their goals within the context of a real game. And that's the big problem, it's hard to think of these charms being useful to a player.

Another like this is Rose Lipped Seduction Style, which comes after Husband Seducing Demon Dance and is only useful in hitting people you've already hit with HSDD already. It's a charm to get people to have sex with you easily if you already have the power to overcome them socially. It's written to show that Solars have the audacity to take what they want, but I can't imagine an actual player who would put 8 xp into such a narrowly specialized charm. Additionally, without RLSS, the assumption would be that HSDD would pretty much lock in any seduction attempts based on its name and effects... but now that RLSS exists, the assumption will be that HSDD isn't enough on its own to compel action. It weakens HSDD by the implication.

Truth Shines Through is almost just a plothook for finding out about the Great Curse, rather than an actually useful charm, Heavenly Mandate Marking is almost a joke about Bureaucracy not doing anything; eventually it becomes useful, but is wildly overcosted xp wise for what it does. Dragon Riding Meditation can die in a fire. A few others would be useful if they weren't an entire charm purchase and I dislike a few others for making combat even 'spikier', like Crystal Chameleon, which facilitates Unexpected attacks a little too well.

Lunars get a little too many "these are charms that Lunar Elders probably have", but I sort of see those as allowing Lunar games that take place over the course of the Shogunate or early Scarlet Realm. I won't complain about them any more than I'd complain about Dragonblooded charms that facilitate generational games. Somewhat niche, but pretty useful within that niche.

I like the charms in Glories alright, but a good portion of them are just worthless, difficult to justify as a full charm purchase (8 xp is 2 sessions), or actively harmful to existing charms and options.

EDIT: And I'm not saying a disproportionate number of them are bad as compared to any splatbook in the line. I'd say about 60-75% of all charms printed are usable and useful, and Glories sticks pretty close to this percentage.

[Felius]

Well, Sun-And-Moon Method is actually pretty cool for initiating a side-plot for any of your Solar players by having them go questing for their Mate. You could have this while the other players are doing down-time or their own solo quests.

You could even Houserule that your players could either buy, at reduced cost, say... 3 EXP.. the tracking part of Sun-And-Moon, or automatically start with it, and just not let them take the charm that has Sun-And-Moon as pre-req.

EDIT: Another cool idea might be to make the Charm impart a Lunar-Bond with equivalent effects on the Solar. Then it becomes less 'I'm a douche' and more of one of those gushy "I love/trust you enough to give you power over me" things.

The first is not a bad idea, or maybe make it a new charms, possibly with a couple other benefits to compensate the douchy part.

But the equivalent effect on the solar is just against the world setting. The point isn't to make all solars abusive douches against their mates, but to make it easy to be so.

If both the Lunar and the Solar are players, this charm should NOT be used, unless both of them are ok with it, can keep in and out game very separate. Heck, if only the lunar is player, it still shouldn't be used unless the player give an on beforehand, and it pretty much cements the npc solar as a villain.

[Rockphed]

So, now we need to spend the rest of the week guessing Secret's Secret Name.

I propose "Desdemona."

[The Rose Dragon]

That is certainly an interesting way to say "ain't I a stinker?".