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

[Jokasti]

I think I've found one of Isidoros' humaniform jouten.


Pompadour? Check
So much chest hair that it distends his clothes? Check
Phallic motif? Check (Lookit that nose )

He also punches sharks and swims by grabbing the ocean and pushing it so hard that it moves behind him. Those are a bit harder to express in a screencap, though.

Looks like a bro.

[Tavar]

Nope. Lytek already knows, as does the Maiden of Secrets. Not to mention the Yozi and Neverborn (And their Deathlords).

Lytek: Is either trying to fix it himself, or is lazy. Depends on your opinion.
MoS: Well, she's not telling anyone. It's her nature.
Yozi: Hah. It's a crapshoot if they even tell their Infernals about it. Same goes for the Deathlords and their Abyssals.

Yozi: aren't part of creation, thus aren't part of Nara-O's purview. Same for Neverborn. Not sure about deathlords, but I believe they're outside of fate as well..
MoS: either doesn't count towards his purview, or his purview doesn't do anything at all.
Lytek: He knows there's a flaw. We know what the flaw is, it's cause, and possible ways around it.

[Kyeudo]

It. Nara-O is a it.

Well, he could be a he or a she, but that's a secret only one person knows. Can't really tell under all those bandages.

[Kris Strife]

So, Nara-O only knows secrets that one person knows? What happens if that person dies? Does he forget it?

[Kyeudo]

So, Nara-O only knows secrets that one person knows? What happens if that person dies? Does he forget it?

No, it just disapears from his files in Yu-Shan, just as though you'd told the secret to someone else.

[Yuki Akuma]

So, Nara-O only knows secrets that one person knows? What happens if that person dies? Does he forget it?

Nara-O doesn't know secrets only one person knows. Secrets only one person knows are his purview, but he has to look them up in his files all the same.

Once he knows something he doesn't forget it.

(And 'he' is the gender neutral pronoun for people in English, so screw you and that 'it' rubbish.)

[Cyborg Mage]

Speaking of Nara-o, through logic, Nara-o shouldn't know anything. Think about it. He automatically knows secrets known only to one person. Therefore, it is technically known by two people. Sure, being a god he can kind of screw logic, but still. 'Tis food for thought.

[Kyeudo]

Speaking of Nara-o, through logic, Nara-o shouldn't know anything. Think about it. He automatically knows secrets known only to one person. Therefore, it is technically known by two people. Sure, being a god he can kind of screw logic, but still. 'Tis food for thought.

He doesn't count as part of his own purview, just like Xaos, I think his name is, doesn't count for his purview. Xaos is the God of Things No One Knows.

[Lord Raziere]

The bad thing about them is neither of those gods can tell the secrets. Its completely against their nature and would make Exalted too easy.

So I'm thinking Nara-O or Xaos concocting some complicated scheme for someone to find out the Great Curse by themselves would make a great Exalted game, just imagine the convoluted scheming that he would have to pull off

[Kyeudo]

The bad thing about them is neither of those gods can tell the secrets. Its completely against their nature and would make Exalted too easy.

So I'm thinking Nara-O or Xaos concocting some complicated scheme for someone to find out the Great Curse by themselves would make a great Exalted game, just imagine the convoluted scheming that he would have to pull off

Actually Xaos tries to share the things he knows quite regularly. People just tend to go mad when he tells them.

Nara-O similarly doesn't seem to have any behavioral prohibitions against telling others things he knows.

[Teln]

Hypothetical question: How would you go about porting a Thousand-Forged Dragon into 3.5? The Construct type is the obvious way to go (average BAB, but autosuccess on all Fort rolls makes up for that), and I was thinking about giving it a Disintegrate effect as a breath weapon, because I think a dragon really isn't complete without a breath weapon.

[Kyeudo]

Thousand-Forged Dragons don't have a breath weapon. They suck in Essence until they go critical, then explode with the force of a nuclear blast.

[The Rose Dragon]

Thousand-Forged Dragons don't have a breath weapon. They suck in Essence until they go critical, then explode with the force of a nuclear blast.

Gasp of Hesiesh disagrees.

[Kyeudo]

So I'm wrong there. Been a while since I last looked at their write up. My game isn't quite ready for that level of threat.

[Fortuna]

Tables, you say? Fine, I'll try a table. (Yes, I'm behind the times. Live.)

{table=head]Player|ST?|Favorite Exalt|Second Favorite Exalt|Third Favorite Exalt|Favorite Game Type

Random_person|Yep.|Alchemicals|Infernals|Lunars|An y[/table]

[Reynard]

I've been getting a hankering to run one of the published adventures as a solo adventure for a slightly higher-powered exalt (Ess 4-ish, rather than 2).

I don't know why.

So, I guess this is an interest check. Would anyone be interested?

[Fortuna]

Yes please! I'd be very willing to play as anything but a Sidereal, and somewhat willing for that.

[Reynard]

Alright then, I suppose I'll get to work thinking up the houserules. If you can get on AIM, we can get the pre-adventure fluff stuff out of the way faster, and fit your char into the story better.

[Fortuna]

Sure, I'm there now.

[Tavar]

That sounds interesting to me as well. Probably a Lunar of some sort, though a solar would be interesting as well.

[DragonSinged]

Alright, so I've been finishing up the details on my character, and my group got together last night to run a sample combat so that we could all get a bit of an idea on how that flows.

Things went pretty ok, but I have a question about Glorious Solar Saber (and I'm thinking that reading that sentence might cause a few of you to groan.)

See, my problem was, I wanted my character to use melee, but my character also only has 1 Str, which is pretty limiting on the weapons you can use. I figured, hey, if I pick up GSS, I don't think I have to worry about the Str requirements of the weapon, but I'm not exactly sure about how to actually /use/ GSS.
Anyways, according to the Errata, 5m will get you a weapon with traits equal to a 3 dot artifact weapon. Problem is, in the core book at least, the only 3 dot artifact weapons I can find are your crazy grand gore-this's, and grand grim-that's, that are all sporting 14L-16L damage, and from what I can tell, and have read on here, that way madness lies.
So yeah. I guess what I'm going for here is suggestions. Are there any good 3 dot artifact weapons to use with GSS that aren't going to start an arms-race?


(Also, the spell "Flight of the Brilliant Raptor"? So fun to use. Fwoosh. )

[Temet Nosce]

Hrm, I keep seeing this thread here and I'm about to play in an Exalted game for the second time (the first one was ages ago and fell apart rapidly however, so I'm not exactly extremely familiar with the system). As a result, I feel inclined to ask if there's anything I should know before mechanically creating my character that wouldn't be immediately obvious (or any tips on the most effective way to go about it/the best uses of the system)

To be a bit more specific, the character I'm developing is a blind Twilight caste who navigates through echolocation ala Ben Underwood if you're familiar with him. The character will also be rather obsessed with obscure forms of martial arts and the lore surrounding their creation/the way they portray reality.

Ah also, is there a reason not to invest in Essence 4 at start?

[Yuki Akuma]

There is indeed a reason not to invest in Essence 4 - it costs a lot of BP and doesn't give that much of an advantage.

Essence 3 is wiser.

[Kyeudo]

The best thing to invest in with bonus points is Charms and Ability Dots. Attributes also work, but are a little less cost efficient. Essence 3 is easy enough to pick up after about 4 sessions - it has no training time.

[golentan]

Hrm, I keep seeing this thread here and I'm about to play in an Exalted game for the second time (the first one was ages ago and fell apart rapidly however, so I'm not exactly extremely familiar with the system). As a result, I feel inclined to ask if there's anything I should know before mechanically creating my character that wouldn't be immediately obvious (or any tips on the most effective way to go about it/the best uses of the system)

To be a bit more specific, the character I'm developing is a blind Twilight caste who navigates through echolocation ala Ben Underwood if you're familiar with him. The character will also be rather obsessed with obscure forms of martial arts and the lore surrounding their creation/the way they portray reality.

Ah also, is there a reason not to invest in Essence 4 at start?

That sounds familiar to me from a different Ben...

It does depend on a wide variety of things. There are reasons not to go essence 4, but there are reasons to hang your build on it as well. It is not the most efficient use of bonus points, as has been said, but who cares? Exalted ain't never really been about "optimization," because the instant you start optimizing everything everywhere dies and combat becomes about as exciting as flipping a coin.

In general, essence 3 satisfies many of your prereqs and lets you do the awesomes while leaving you enough BP to not be a one track wonder IME. But your call.

[The Rose Dragon]

The best thing to invest in with bonus points is Charms and Ability Dots. Attributes also work, but are a little less cost efficient. Essence 3 is easy enough to pick up after about 4 sessions - it has no training time.

Charms are really expensive with bonus points, actually, coming to about 2.33 XP per bonus point. The best thing to invest in with bonus points is favored abilities above 3 and specialties (at least 5 XP per BP), Attributes to 5 (4 XP per BP), Virtues above 2 (6 XP per BP) and Willpower (if you take it from 5 to 10, 14 XP per BP). Almost everythig else is ridiculously expensive compared to these and are likely better off being bought with XP.

[Mr.Bookworm]

It's really not so much about optimization. Buying Essence 4 at the start is just kind of pointless. If you're spending 14 of your 15 or 18 BP to raise yourself to Essence 4, well, what are you going to do with Essence 4?

You have ten charms at character generation, and if you want to grab Essence 4 charms, you're going to be blowing most of those ten on a single charm tree.

You could want to grab Celestial circle sorcery, I guess, but how are you getting spells without those delicious BP? You can trade in charms (correct me if I'm wrong), but trading in your charms for sorcery, the great Willpower eater, is a good way to get yourself killed pretty quickly, especially as you're going to have a smaller Willpower pool then you might want.

And because you're blowing all of your BP on Essence, you're stuck at starting levels for almost everything else.

Really, why would you want Essence 4 when you can get everything you want or need as a starting character at Essence 3?

[The Rose Dragon]

Really, why would you want Essence 4 when you can get everything you want or need as a starting character at Essence 3?

You even get things you may not want or need, such as a Charm to turn "killed" Primordials and Yozis into Neverborn.

[Temet Nosce]

To be clearer, I will be either buying Essence up to 4 at start or shortly after the game begins barring some extremely good reason not to (some of the martial arts I'm interested in require high essence).

Also, thanks for the brief breakdown of BP effectiveness - that's the kind of information I'm looking for in general. Charms I should have because they're extremely effective for their cost, bits of information I might not notice that could be relevant later, etc. Things to ensure smooth design and play I suppose.

[golentan]

Which Martial Arts?