General Exalted Discussion: There's a God for that! Except for Sorcery, of course.

[Rhyvurg]

Actually, it is possible to remove exaltation. Lytek supposedly (meaning if the ST wants him to) has surgical tools that can remove the exalt spark from a mortal. Or, again up to the ST, the Ebon Dragon has them.

[golentan]

Actually, it is possible to remove exaltation. Lytek supposedly (meaning if the ST wants him to) has surgical tools that can remove the exalt spark from a mortal. Or, again up to the ST, the Ebon Dragon has them.

Yes. It's called "any surgical tool improperly applied," and it works the way every other means of removing the shard...

Okay, no. I know lytek's tools let you still work on the shard. But IIRC it is also fatal to remove it with them.

[Kyeudo]

Canonically, there is no known way to remove an Exaltation from a host without killing the host. This includes Lytek's tools.

[Rhyvurg]

Whether or not he can do it is left intentionally vague so the ST can decide if it's possible.

[Kyeudo]

Whether or not he can do it is left intentionally vague so the ST can decide if it's possible.

To quote the Core book: "No known process can sunder the bond between soul and Exaltation in either Terrestrial or Celestial Exalted."

If you pull the Exaltation out of someone, you get their soul as well. Bodies do not live long without souls, barring magic. Just ask Autochthonians if you need confirmation on that.

[Rhyvurg]

*rolls eyes* And it says in the Yu-Shan book that Lytek has tools made by Autocthon (the inventor of Exaltation) that have great power over manipulating the shard of power itself. The extent of that power, like I've been saying, is up to the ST.

[WalkingTarget]

*rolls eyes* And it says in the Yu-Shan book that Lytek has tools made by Autocthon (the inventor of Exaltation) that have great power over manipulating the shard of power itself. The extent of that power, like I've been saying, is up to the ST.

Take these phrases:

"there are many vague things that this stuff can do... we leave what they are up to you"

"here is something we have decided isn't possible in the setting"

These statements are not mutually exclusive - the designers can make definitive statements about what is possible while still leaving other options open for STs to make rulings of their own.

Although, if the wording from the Core book really was "no known process" then the point isn't as solid as my second example, here. It might just mean that nobody has figured it out yet (possibly/probably including Lytek), which again opens it up to ST discretion.

[Kyeudo]

*rolls eyes* And it says in the Yu-Shan book that Lytek has tools made by Autocthon (the inventor of Exaltation) that have great power over manipulating the shard of power itself. The extent of that power, like I've been saying, is up to the ST.

Autochthon specifically made the Exaltations to never come off. If all it took was a Primordial waving its hand/tentacle/cloud/sphere/wing/other appendage, the Primordials would have just done it every time Exalts approached and then killed the resulting mortals.

Besides which, those tools fall into the category of "known processes". They are things that have been used to try and pry an Exaltation out of someone. They probably got the Exaltation out, but ripped out the Exalt's soul in the process, killing him. Still a half step better than what anyone else can do, but not quite what they are looking for.

[Jokasti]

{table=head]Name|ST|Exalt Types|Description|Recruit/ends
The First Age: Awaken From the Dream, Living the Nightmare|Myllinia|First Age|Usurpation Survivalist|19 Nov
After The End|EvilDMMk3|Dual|Play Exaltation in 1st and 2nd Age|[/table]

So, in addition to the current games, I'll keep track of Exalted ST's and Players.
So, if you play/would like to, post your info as such:
{table=head]Name|ST?|Player?|#1Exalt|#2Exalt|#3Exalt|Type of Game
Phil|No|Yes|Solar|Lunar|Sidereal|Exploration[/table]

{table=head]Name|ST?|Player?|#1Exalt|#2Exalt|#3Exalt|Type of Game
Jokasti|Yes|Yes|Solar|Lunar|Sidereal|Anything.
Kyeudo|Yes|Yes|Alchemical|Infernal|Solar|Sandbox.
Neon Knight|Yes|Yes|DB|Lunar|Solar|!=kingdom building
Reynard|Yes|Yes|Solar|DB|Lunar|Anything
Lord Raziere|No|Yes|Abyssal|Sidereal|Lunar|Anything
Britter|No|Yes|Solar|||Anything
Yuki_Akuma|Maybe/No|Yes|Sidereal|Infernal|Lunar|Anything really
The Rose Dragon|Maybe|Yes|Abyssal|Solar|Infernal|Threshold sandbox
Sanguine|Maybe|Yes|Infernal|Alchemical|DB|Anything
Ganurath|Yes/Maybe|Yes|Fae|DB|Infernal|Mixed Group
Drascin|Maybe|Yes|Alchemical|DB/Lunar|!=Abyssal|Story-driven
Raz_Fox|Maybe|Yes|Lunar|Solar|Sidereal|Character-Driven
Xefas|Maybe|Yes|Infernal|Sidereal|Solar|Sandbox
Rhyvurg|Maybe|Yes|Alchemical|Solar|DB|Anything
aetherialDawn|No|Yes|Lunar/Alchemical|Solar|DB|Any
erith|No|Yes|Lunar|Alchemical|Solar|Any
a_humble_lich|Maybe|Yes|Lunar|Solar|DB|Any[/table]

Updated list.

[Mattarias, King.]

...If the Scarlet Empress was your great great... grandmother, you'd be a Terrestrial Exalted, not a God-Blooded.

Her Redness is a Terrestrial.

I know, I know. But that's up to my ST to decide. And I don't even know if it's true.

Our game's set about 30 or so years after the canon beginning of Exalted, using what books the ST has, so pretty much anything could happen. Heck, our Abyssal explained to his Lunar mate what he had become via finger puppets!

...Still don't trust the Abyssal, by the way, but as long as the Lunar's tolerant, I won't set them on fire quite yet.

[Kris Strife]

Put me in the player list Jokasti. I'm still at the beginning of my first game so I'm not familiar enough with it to try my hand at running it.

[SurlySeraph]

Heck, our Abyssal explained to his Lunar mate what he had become via finger puppets!

I initially imagined an Abyssal with its mouth sewn shut attempting to explain the situation to a very distraught-looking catgirl via puppets made of human fingers. Then I remembered what finger puppets are, that using a visual aid doesn't necessarily mean that you're mute, and that the Chosen of Luna are not catgirls. But whatever the details, that's hilarious.

[Kyeudo]

I initially imagined an Abyssal with its mouth sewn shut attempting to explain the situation to a very distraught-looking catgirl via puppets made of human fingers.

This is the kind of thinking that Exalted runs on and it is GLORIOUS!

[Mattarias, King.]

While that IS hilarious, nah, the Abyssal (My girlfriend playing a male character), explained to the giant crab-man (No, he has no weak point for massive damage..) with actual finger puppets she made and brought in, against backgrounds she painted herself. It was pretty cool. ST gave her bonus experience.

Sidenote, I need 36 experience to get to essence 3. >>; I'm currently at twelve. ...How do you "train" for essence? It has a training time, but I couldn't find anything on how you go about it..

[Xefas]

...How do you "train" for essence? It has a training time, but I couldn't find anything on how you go about it..

You go on a pilgrimage to a particular place that is associated with you (for Solars, they typically travel to tall mountains to be closer to the sun, or to deserts where the sun's effects are felt the most severely - while Lunars are more likely to travel to some sacred place within the natural habitat of their spirit animal) and then you meditate on the mysteries of the universe for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, every week for a few months.

I dunno where a Godblood like yourself might go. Elemental Pole of Fire, maybe? The Maiden of Battles' dojo in Yu-Shan?

EDIT: Ooooo, oooo, or maybe a battlefield scorched into an eternally smoldering crater by the implosion of a Garda Bird's elemental phoenix form upon its death and reincarnation.

[horngeek]

and that the Chosen of Luna are not catgirls.

Unless they have a cat spirit shape. I direct you to a catgirl Lunar in the Scroll of Exalts.

[Drascin]

You go on a pilgrimage to a particular place that is associated with you (for Solars, they typically travel to tall mountains to be closer to the sun, or to deserts where the sun's effects are felt the most severely - while Lunars are more likely to travel to some sacred place within the natural habitat of their spirit animal) and then you meditate on the mysteries of the universe for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, every week for a few months.

Which is really kind of bothersome, since in most chronicles it kinda means you're not really going to be able to raise you Essence - because, you know, spending three months going around to sightsee and meditate on the wonders of the universe while old Faffles is eating the world seems just a wee bit unadvisable .

[ShadowFighter15]

Unless they have a cat spirit shape. I direct you to a catgirl Lunar in the Scroll of Exalts.

Well; they can look like catgirls if they just have a cat in their Heart's Blood library and use Hybrid Body Rearrangement. It's what Anja's using in that picture of her and this is what she normally looks like.

[The Rose Dragon]

Which is really kind of bothersome, since in most chronicles it kinda means you're not really going to be able to raise you Essence - because, you know, spending three months going around to sightsee and meditate on the wonders of the universe while old Faffles is eating the world seems just a wee bit unadvisable .

The alternative is completing your motivation, which allows you to bypass the training time.

[The_Snark]

Which is really kind of bothersome, since in most chronicles it kinda means you're not really going to be able to raise you Essence - because, you know, spending three months going around to sightsee and meditate on the wonders of the universe while old Faffles is eating the world seems just a wee bit unadvisable .

You might be surprised. If your chronicle begins with a gigantic invasion of the dead through shadowlands-Gem and never lets up on the action, then you're not going to have a lot of opportunities to raise your Essence, true. But otherwise? It's pretty reasonable to take a bit of time off to train. Sure, there are plenty of threats looming off in the distance, but Solars don't have the bird's-eye view of the world that we do; they aren't aware of every threat to Creation. Many of them feel (rightly) that they need to take some time to prepare before they try to take on the entire Realm, or the Mask of Winters, or whoever they've decided to oppose.

Also worth noting that completing your Motivation affords you the opportunity to increase your Essence; you still have to pay the experience (and I'd imagine a nice ST would let you go into debt or hold off until you had enough), but you don't need the training time. Personal growth through action, rather than meditation. Granted, that situation doesn't come up very often, but then you won't need it very often. The transition from Essence 2 to 3 is instant (for Solars and other Exalts, anyway), and it'll take you a good long while to get the point where you need Essence 5.

Mind you, if you are playing a nonstop-action game where it would be ludicrous to run off and meditate on a mountaintop for a month, and you picked a Motivation that's too open-ended to complete (like "Defend Creation")... well, hopefully your ST will have mercy on you and let you raise Essence at suitably dramatic points.

[Drascin]

The alternative is completing your motivation, which allows you to bypass the training time.

Thing is, at least in the couple games I've started to play in, most people go for either massive epic end-goals, or simply for representing the character's greatest drive as their Motivation. The end-goals thing are something you can only get around the end of the campaign, because they're part of the chronicle's whole objective, and the character drive is something that just drives you forward, but can't truly ever be completely done. Either way, the rule is utterly useless.

For example, a sampling of Motivations of random players around the games I'm currently in: "To give those that deserve it a second chance, and take it away from those that don't", "To do everything in my power to thwart the Mask of Winters", "To protect those who can't protect themselves", "To bring peace to all of the East", "To end the suffering of the people of Autochtonia".

Most of those are basically infinite things that can't be "achieved", only "done" day after day - and the few that can be achieved (such as the one about the East) are all but the campaign's end-objective. In either case, you don't get to raise Essence.

EDIT due to ninjas:

You might be surprised. If your chronicle begins with a gigantic invasion of the dead through shadowlands-Gem and never lets up on the action, then you're not going to have a lot of opportunities to raise your Essence, true. But otherwise? It's pretty reasonable to take a bit of time off to train. Sure, there are plenty of threats looming off in the distance, but Solars don't have the bird's-eye view of the world that we do; they aren't aware of every threat to Creation. Many of them feel (rightly) that they need to take some time to prepare before they try to take on the entire Realm, or the Mask of Winters, or whoever they've decided to oppose.

Thing is, even if it's just you against a particular threat, say a Deathlord... it seems rather suicidal to give him three months of peace to plan and scheme and increase his domains to his heart's content while you're off in a voyage to the gods know where, unable to do anything other than meditate if you want it to do anything - likely leaving your circle to deal with things without you in the meantime. Three months is a lot of time.

[The_Snark]

*shrugs* It's not something you do lightly, that's for sure. But you can't really avoid giving him time to scheme, unless you intend to try and invade Thorns right away. You'll probably want to find allies, maybe build up an army... prepare to face him, in other words. Raising Essence is more spiritual and less conspicuous than raising armies, but it is a way of preparation. From our cultural perspective, it looks like negligence, but in-setting it matters. There's no point rushing to face the Mask if you cannot actually beat him.

And the Mask of Winters has already had 4 years to scheme and plan—centuries, if you count his time in the Underworld. Immortal beings are apparently pretty bad at working quickly.

Most games I've seen—not all, but most—do have a downtime mechanic of some kind. Say a Circle's Zenith wants to raise Essence; he goes off to meditate, while the Dawn trains his Tiger Warriors, the Twilight forges artifacts, and the Night and Eclipse run interference with the Mask's operations. (This isn't played out; it's just something that happens during downtime. Perhaps they're paying XP for backgrounds, or using the time to learn Charms.) Maybe next time the Night will want to raise Essence, and the Zenith will rally support among the Marukani while that happens.

There are plenty of actions in Exalted that can happen over a dramatic timescale, and a few that only work that way. A crafting-based Twilight, for example, would be useless in the kind of game you described, because even simple artifacts take months to create. The game is built with downtime in mind.

If it doesn't feel right for your game—and I can definitely see your point; sometimes it doesn't feel right—some of these rules are going to need tweaking. Abstract away training times, pick Motivations that you can achieve without ending the campaign, handwave the occasional crafting attempt... that sort of thing.

[Rikandur Azebol]

{table=head]Name|ST?|Player?|#1Exalt|#2Exalt|#3Exalt|Type of Game
Rikandur Azebol|No|Yes|Solar|Lunar|Infernal| Any Crazy Enough[/table]

Hello there ! I like a lot Exalted theme, and the whole dangerous setting. I would strongly disagree with people wanting to decrease deadliness of the basic combat mechanics. Why ? Because saying that solving problems in Exalted is doable only by punching problems in the face is a D&D approach to stuff.

In my last Exalted campaign (that ended hangt because ST got exhausted by player's creativity) we solved some of our worst situations trough Social Combat stunting. Or with violence threats from muscle (me).

Story Hooks

Spoiler

Show

We had 3 players:
Dragon who was claiming that he isn't Exalt. (Night Caste mutated with bonus points into classic Red D&D-ish Dragon) played by me.

Demonblood sorceress whose innate powers were mimicking Solar Sorcery Charms. Pinnacle of thousands of years of hard work for "daddy" who were one of the survivors of the Primodial Era.

Mountain Folk Artisan, raised by First One himself, bent on curing the curse plaguing the Mountain Folk. Imagine Chun-Li chibi with Great Goremaul ... that is a smithing tool. ST almost fainted, but with my backstory and cocept he was ... somewhat insensate to silly ideas.

Players started game in South ... I on the desert near the Fairfolk, full of Prince of Persia and Alladin themes. Sorceress in mountains, busy making an army out of demons serving her papa. Chibi was hired by some random God to go and fix damaged ley lines. Under my Dragon's mountain-lair !

Sorceress decided to find some old pyramids and dig up artifacts from there. In my peaceful town arrived Immaculate Monk and started babbling his nonsense. After hearing about Immaculate Philosophy for the first time my drake was drawn to it and wanted to discuss details with the Immaculate. Since locals were praying, on daily basis, for my dragon to not notice them but notice their mothers-in-law ... monk started talking with my dragon, who didn't let the baldie to dominate the conversation ... while observing locals were impressed how politely my dragon behaved, one thing led to another Monk got warned to not break local laws and my dragon left to nap it over.

Local Sultan, always the paranoid one, had guards hid behind tapestry and stuff when he invited the dragon-blood for an audience. It ended with already irritiated dragon blood slaughtering whole garrison ! After brief but unconclusive fight in the market square where I wanted to question him about why he did what he did (not that I didn't saw it coming when Sultan consulted me for advice and I told him that this guy is extremely dangerous);

Dragonblood fled, but did one fatal mistake and hit one of my dragon's Maidens (who were girls raised by my dragon, bought from slave market, to be warrior-monks for him). After lenghty pursuit Dragon-Blood finally kicket the bucket ... even if his Earth-Shaping charms proved to be a real pain in the neck. And then he had to have heartstroke when my dragon used Archery Combo to ... urinate on him. Of course during this combat my dragon's social ineptiude showed fully (and ST had fun accusing me of all Anathema stuff) and this childish reaction was all he could do without giving in to Berserk Anger.

Still angry about this DB, I got lost ... and wandered into the desert only to find demon expedition digging up some old tomb. Having soft spot for chicks my dragon approached diplomatically and was ... cheated ... into helping of the excavation for the BIG share of spoils. Excavation proved to be a bother with living Sandstorm Behemoth plaguing us ... in fact, my dragon had to save Sorceress and I annoyed second player with talking about She Owes Me Her Life(Ownership) intimacy my dragon will develop.

Excavation proved to be fruitless because there was no artifacts, only some big chamber with trone where trap-springing Succubus sit as a test and 'xploded when moon shined upon her. Aww, aspect of Luna coming over and getting rid of all remmants of the demoness as well as lecturing me about not raising claws against her ladyship by dropping the pyramid on our heads was quite nasty. But my dragon managed to dig us all out ... only to find Sorceress sunbathing with her demons outside ... I hate transportation sorcery. But she is so preety I forgave her easily.

Later we returned to my dragon's home only to find some Mountain Folk arguing about landscape with my Maidens. I again burned Willpower to not go on rampage and managed to talk it all down. Chibi was begging to kill her with "Your Solar Highness !" and this respectful demeanor. Her player had a lot of fun at my dragon's expense. Fortunately messanger whinned to the Sultan II's palace screaming nonsense about "Invading Realm Army !!!"

Long story short, I had beaten the snot out of the army with tactical thinking (defeating their dragonblood general/sorcerer etc) eliminating any real threat (nasty ballistae and catapults burn preety) and attacking their water supply ("Water and Food ... CONFISCATED !!!") when they were camping in the desert. Not to mention bluffing nicely that their arrows and spears didn't even scratched me. Terrorised the Legion of some lesser house surrendered unconditionally and I sold them to Guild ... sharing spoils with all widows from my city. (Each could pick up some guy she found nice to replace her deceased hubby, my dragon disallowed swapping after some consideration and generous bribe from city council "It is to avoid riots, Your Magnificience ... we aren't the least afraid that our young wives would swap us for Young virile men after You changed sucession law to be mother-daughter ! Here is the gift for Your great patience, och great one.")

Sorceress fled home by magic, only to find that on her territory was encroaching some Lunar with his barbarian horde.

My dragon learned from Realmites about the Scarlet Empress (our game started 5 years prior to Her dissaperance) and demanded picture. He liked what he saw and decided to learn more ...

Thus while other players went ... meditiating for Essence or Crafting city under my Mountain ! My dragon flew westward and stumbled on some Realm client city where he did a prank and accidentally drowned a ship. (ST had a great laugh when he said that my dragon's curse made him use Archery Combo with ... spit and pierce some random boat, that showed up to be someones important private yacht, did I mentioned that someone cursed my dragon with worst of luck ? I knew it were Sidereals after all, but my dragon kept forgetting these annoying voyeurs)

I managed to negotiate with local dragon-blood prince ... but before that he sent Wyld Hunt after me ... I wanted to buy Celestial Vine and he made stupid face and said that he'll look around for it. I promised to not start any wars ("Hey ! I'm a dragon, how can I not TAX slightly people passing by my lands ?! Whoever murdered these caravans is spoiling my business ... thanks for info.") Of course he didn't called back the Wyld Hunters ... Tch.

Fortunately Raksha proven to be bigger obstacle and I managed to temporarily ally with Wyld Hunters against the Raksha with particularly pathetic Style. My dragon managed to piss him off a lot by pointing out flaws in his "grand" entrance ... and ST told me that I had just gained Mortal Enemy. Of course I hid my charms from Wyld Hunters who theorised that I'm some close combat monster, and predictibly attacked me from behind when Raksha threat was chased away, ... and it wa first brush with death my character had ! Suprise EarthSmash Combo left my dragon in agony ... dragon-bloods sure that I perished went hurriedly after other players. In several minutes my dragon regenerated himself, it took better part of the day to dig himself up from the earth.^^

Wyld hunters run afoul on the Sorceress who ... dispelled their magic and subsequently enslaved them. ST regretted allowing this player to make Sorcery Soul-Link and Essence Fountain spells. Anyway later we went into the underworld, pursuing some ... relative of the Sorceress who was stranded there at the mercy of Nephwrack and his ugly artifact. It came to no suprise that again, I the party's fighter proven to be only able to do something in Ebon Dragon style ... sneakily and stacking odds to myself. We rescued imprisoned 2circle demon who did horrible stuff to the Nephwrack. Nephwrack managed to open the way into the Labirynth and ST said that massive ghost extermination lured soul devouring behemoth. Sorceress spit out, as an panick attack, Wyld Zone spell at it ... and ST bothed all rolls to resist mutation. In effect tentacly monster as big as mountain mutated to the size of the cat, and was put into the cage. ST mentioned that Sidereals are sure to intervene in our Sessions because otherwise serious theme he wanted to enact wouldn't transform so flawlessly into comedy, so often.

Later, when digging trough another site we found half of very veird Solar buried in an meteorite-impact-like site. It was alive and obviously some sort of Magitech body-enchancement nut-Twilight. ST used him as guy we sell our spoils to, and as quest giver. I theorised that this guy was a construct thinking it is a Solar, with infused Alchemical-like artifacts mimicking Solar charms. As long as we remained Anvilfury's only link to the ("Idiots disturbing my grand experiments !") and were able to identify artifacts and ask for training in interesting crafts it was all cool. Sorceress was the one doing the talking as the most charismatic among us. She also got tutoring in Craft(Genesis) and Chibi was deceived into believing that "His Solarness" wanted her to reconfigure Sorceress's Manse into Genesis Laboratory.

Later from some random book my dragon's Maidens were reading for him he found out about Dragon Kings and this caused him to have Deja Vu. He decided to go to Ratchet and see what's in it. He also taxed Chibi and her Mountain Folk for the promise of helping her get to Yu-Shan to investigate Mountain Folk Curse. Gaining suprising wealth from that my dragon adopted barbarian tribe ... I mean their hunters attacked him, mistaking him for Tyrant Lizard, and later when he hunted them down shaman offered all womenfolk to appease angry "god". I did took the women, scattered the tribe's menfolk to the four winds and returned to my city. Here, my Guild contacts brought me horses and I gave them to the tribes-women after appointing smartest among them as new chief and ordered them all to learn warcraft ... in short, army training charms are gold and several months went with me training people to defend my city and Mountain Folk raising Iron Walls around the city. In Your eye, Raksha !

After that, and going broke with purchases and financing plant-genesis of some cacti that are edible and gather water while growing on sand ... my party gathered with me again to go to Ratchet. We stopped by the port-town with my "friendly" dragon-blood where I dictated an elaborate letter to the Scarlet Empress. Scribes were growing quickly ill after reading my ramblings, and even DB Prince of the city had somewhat troubled expression. I paid in jade to have the letter delivered ... and went on to Ratchet in Chibi's mole-mobile. During our trip we encountered broken flying ship and some demons repairing it when some weird Exalts were fighting off the horde of barbarians/fae and spirits trying to slaughter them.

Long story short. PC's managed to ambush and defeat the Infernals(who didn't exist yet) and demons were easily bullied. Sorceress, again, Soul-Linked the Exalts and Chibi snorted upon hearing that fly-ship will take at least month to repair and handwaved damage away in hours. We learned from the Infernals that they are from the 10 years in the future. That Ebon Dragon have copy of Imperial Palace in his domain. That Scarlet Empress dissapears in fev years !!!

My dragon imediately declared War on ED with a fiery speech. ST asked, in most suprised tone, why ? "Helen of Troy, Jacob. Need more hints ? Look at Red Fury's Motivation(Get ALL he wants, in more elaborate fashion) and Intimacies(Women and Treasures[Greed] among others)." ST's face ->


Then we helped local forest goddess to build Wood manse, promised to return and help again, and finally arrived at Ratchet. After we began exploring, my dragon busy with Artifact Blue Songbird (lets user use Infallible Messenger) to dictate dogma to my Maidens back home while we all asserted damage done to the city and all this stuff. Chibi looked around, said that it'll take months, but is manageable ... meanwhile Sorceress and my dragon were exploring. We found Ratchet's Observatory and Chibi read from the essence patterns to what it served ("To predict future ? Neat !!!") ST said how only the Starmetal dome was left by plunderers and my dragon started voicing negative opinions about the Unconquered Sun for abadoning Dragon Kings.

Unfortunately game ended when we started repairing the city, my coffers weeping tears of blood, Sorceress's thralls returned with some more demons to work harder under the guidance of Mountain Folk taskmasters ... and my dragon began planning on how to get Scarlet Empress before ED, for himself.

Anyhow, I believe that true heroism is achieved when we manage to overcome impossible odds. For example foes capable of dealing 20+ lethal into our noses after Soak. My dragon invested in heaviest purchasable armor after taking hit that costed 21 lhlvls, after soak/rolls. Fortunately my mutations and investment in Ox-Body to get as much health levels as possible paid off.

[Kyeudo]

Hello there ! I like a lot Exalted theme, and the whole dangerous setting. I would strongly disagree with people wanting to decrease deadliness of the basic combat mechanics. Why ? Because saying that solving problems in Exalted is doable only by punching problems in the face is a D&D approach to stuff.

I don't think you understand what we are trying to do by reducing the "deadliness" of combat. We want to be able to have a big ol' brawl where both combatants paint the floor red with each other's blood, execute the incredible supernatural manuvers for which the Exalted are known, and decide the contest on the merit of skill instead of having combat devolve into *description of two-die stunt* "SSE, LOL" and seeing who has the largest Essence Pool.

[Rikandur Azebol]

In short, I believe what You want to achieve is to mechanically enforce people to not Nova stuff. Right ?

IMO, it's more attitiude flaw than mechanical stuff. My experience with Charms meddling in combat, in Exalted, is slightly limited. My latest, and first Solar ever, character the beforementioned Dragon was having only Archery boosters from the "who have bigger can of Essence" tree. I resolved all of it trough two silly comboses I created, using charms that improve their performance with my character's development to avoid wasting XP.

To resolve defense problems I wore biggest/harderst perfect quality armor I could afford (and I could afford anything buyable, given time) even if it made me feel bad for mimicking Deathwing from Warcraft.
Also I was using the Essence Gathering Temper and it's branches, including custom charm I devised for EGT to make it innate ability.

With Regeneration charm from Dreams of the First Age, and small Cult of 3 I was capable of regain Essence/Willpower at phenomenal rate as well as being hard to nail while flying above everyone's head and raining at them with fire.

Sorry ... I again sidetracked.

Thus, if Nova-ing is the problem here ... then it is not the problem with mechanics (wich I were simply preffered using handvawium at, my ST preffered D&D rounds to ticks and I agree it overcomplicates stuff for those not being math-geeks or living calculuses) but problem with people abusing mechanics to their "min/maxing" and then complain about being weak in this or in that.

My suspicion is, that majority of this complaint is generated by such silly-fu used: Player pumps up his Attack Charms so much that he can slay mortal-equivalent with a sneeze, while forgetting all about toughtening his character up to whistand such punishments himself.

Example ? (I totally ignore perfect attacks, and other Autokill nonsenses as well as perfect defenses wich work not against simple Flurry)

Dieadder charms, fordamage it doesn't causes levels of damage but adds dice. Wich translates into ~30% of damage more when compared to damage die added.

Soak-adding charms, more often than not, add soak levels not die rolled. Wich translates into roughly thrice the bonus from damage adders. IMO, it's hot. And allows for flavourfull scenes like PC absorbing enemy's strong slash with the palm of his hand and then raising the eyebrow with a question.
"That's all You got there ?"

Thus, if I assumed wrong, please correct me.

[Toptomcat]

The problem is not so much offensive nova combos as grand artifact weapons, which can paste all but the most soak-focused in a single hit.

[Rikandur Azebol]

That's why I alvays clapped ST's saying that artifact weapons gain cool powers, not +dmg.

[Xefas]

So, regarding Ink Monkeys vol 45: Does this mean an Infernal with Essence 4 and Miracle Gift Mastery can, in a single scene, for the cost of 10m 1wp + 1 mote per dot granted, give a mortal 5 dots in every Attribute and every Ability, and three dots of specialties in every ability?

I know they're still a mortal, and thus still worthless, but the idea of being able to turn somebody from Joey Joejoe Farmer into The Pinnacle of Human Achievement in the span of an evening is awesome.

[Kyeudo]

The problem in Exalted Combat is NOT attack novas. It is a combination of the sheer power of ordinary attacks (aforementioned Grand Daiklave is a canon artifact weapon capable of making most characters into two half-characters with any decent hit) with the existance of perfect defenses. As it stands, any combat between two competent, combat-focused characters is as follows: Stunt attack roll, defender activates perfect defense while stunting, attacker becomes defender and vice-versa. First character unable to activate a perfect defense dies horribly.

Now, to change this, perfect defenses have to become less necessary to survival among pairs of evenly-skilled combatants and also less optimal means of defense. If taking a hit is not instant death, allowing for taking a hit in combat becomes an option. If usings a less-than-perfect defense is better for you in the long run than a perfect defense, using the perfect becomes less inviting.

[The Rose Dragon]

Raksha errata!

*licks*