General Exalted Discussion VI: Ascendancy Mantle of the Playground

[Xefas]

Wait, what? How is one of the most well known gods to the celestials outside the Incanae barely self aware and weak?

No, he's not saying that Lytek is barely self aware. He's saying I got my terminology wrong (and he's probably right). He's saying Lytek is a little god, i.e. <6 Essence. But that what I'm talking about are "least gods", which are the barely self aware ones, which Lytek is not.

So....ever person might have their own god?

Yes, every human has their own god. IIRC, they're pretty weak, but they have extra mojo when it's your birthday. Celebrating your birthday gives them power, which they then use to give you good luck. Or something like that.

EDIT: Good news, everyone. I found yet another fictional character who failed, made a demonic pact to redeem themselves, and then came back with a caste mark and powers originating from their demon lord while nominally serving them, but really planning to backstab them at their own earliest convenience.

[Lord Raziere]

Who is it, Robin?

[Tavar]

Slade, from the Teen Titans animate series.

Man, I didn't see many episodes, but the episode where he came back was really creepy.

As for Little God-no, actually. Rolls of Glorious Divinity, page, 6. Little Gods are any and all gods less than the Celestial Incarna/Five Elemental Dragons.

Least gods are those without sentience/awareness.

[meschlum]

And gods are spirits, so...

The Mantle of Solipsism

A fundamental conceit of the Fair Folk is that their stories are all that matter. Since Creation refuses to adhere to this perspective, it is, of course, abhorrent. The Gods of Creation, from the Least to the Incarnae, must be taught that only the bearer of the Mantle matters, if Creation is to be of true value.

The bearer of the Mantle understands that she is the only truly real being in existence, and can use this insight to manipulate the compulsions set into the gods themselves by the Primordials. If she lacks the power to make her commands real and irresistible, she retains the ability to transmute the Creation-born into blobs of protoplasm, and heal any harm that may afflict her, as it comes from her own mind rather than anything real.

Only the Exalted show a partial resistance to the effects of the Mantle, confirming its potency as a true Primordial artifact, rather than the mostly tattered Cup Grace of a hapless Worker. At least, that's the tale told by its wearer. Its other, less publicized weakness is that every season, the Mantle must be refreshed as its bearer indulges in an intricate dance culminating with a Creation-born freely swearing eternal loyalty to her. Whether such an oath reaches into the Underworld is unknown...

1-dot Outward-Facing Oneiromancy
Assumption of Dreams and Passion - the Mantle is made of self-righteousness and raw confidence, as well as a hefty amount of denial.
Emotion-Weaving Style - any gods who interact with the bearer of the Mantle have their Motivation changed to "Joyously serve the Mantle bearer in all things". Normally, this effect only activates when the bearer has Essence 7+.
Bestial Transformation - any living beings who disagree with the bearer of the Mantle are transformed into giant amoeba, mute and incapable of moving or doing much else.
Ordinary Object Conjuration - when the Mantle bearer gestures in a particular way, a bottle full of Celestial Wine appears before her, ready to be consumed.


And...

The Dreamer of Flowers and Songbirds

The Dreamer is a common Worker, whose Cup Grace was remade by a curious noble into something more. The transformation warped the Dreamer into what it is now, and she is quite content with her weird state.

Manifesting as a young child of ten or so years, the Dreamer radiates innocence and love in truly disgusting amounts. Where she walks, flowers bloom and birds sing, the weather is warm and pleasant, and wild animals come forth to play together. She finds Creation a lovely, huggable place of wonders and Creation cannot help but meet her expectations, for she wears the Mantle.

Creation-level Heroic Worker
Essence 5
Artifact 1 (Mantle and a 1-dot Chancel)
Birth 4
Temperance 5
Performance Favored - specializations in prayer.
All-Consuming God Monster Stance (Heart Stopping Numinous Power, Calling Upon the Dragon's Ire, whatever)
Nature Eliminating Knife
Principle of Worlds
Subversion and Transformation Artifice

3 free charms
0 free bonus points

This character is designed for abuse.

- Heart Stopping Numinous Power gives Essence 7 for the Mantle, thus ensuring the utter devotion of all gods.
- Prayer ensures communication with gods.
- Nature Eliminating Knife, and Forging the Sword Grace, let the Dreamer enhance All Consuming God Monster Stance until it grants all the possible benefits.
- Principle of Worlds (done while in the Chancel) enables the creation of flowering landscapes to overlay in Creation.
- Subversion and Transformation Artifice gives any animals coming close 3 points worth of Derangements / Delusions with which to ensure they behave properly.
- It's even possible to get Translucent Dream Sheathing Technology with the remaining three Charms, ensuring even more people behave the way the Dreamer expects.

Fortunately, this build lacks gossamer at start with which to set off the major abuses. Ravishing the Created Form and some handy mortals should ensure the issue isn't relevant for long.

[golentan]

Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

I've been waiting for what seems like months for Autochthonia pt. 4 to come out.

I want my reaches...

[tonberrian]

Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

I've been waiting for what seems like months for Autochthonia pt. 4 to come out.

I want my reaches...

Just one more week.

[golentan]

Just one more week.

Wait, do we have a date? Because if so that would make everything so much better right now.

[Turalisj]

Slade, from the Teen Titans animate series.

Man, I didn't see many episodes, but the episode where he came back was really creepy.

You mean the one with the symbolism?

[tonberrian]

Wait, do we have a date? Because if so that would make everything so much better right now.

The Demented Monkey said that Eddy told him that part 4 is supposed to be released on the 17th.

[Turalisj]

Hmmm.. Tavar, for your idea of making MA charms count as non-charm activations, what if you make that in itself a charm? Something that splits off of the Swallowing the Lotus Root charm. Make it require essence 4 or something and mastery of 1 martial art style and up to the form charm of another.

[Choco]

Alright here is a question for y'all. First off I apologize if this has come up before, but all I ever seem to find is speculation:

Is there such a thing as aggravated hardness? If so, does armor lethal hardness also apply to aggravated damage, like soak does? Aggravated soak is specifically brought up, but no mention of hardness which leads me to think no. As far as RAW goes the only way I found to get aggravated hardness is to use charms that give hardness against a specific attack, like Durability of Oak Meditation.

[tonberrian]

Alright here is a question for y'all. First off I apologize if this has come up before, but all I ever seem to find is speculation:

Is there such a thing as aggravated hardness? If so, does armor lethal hardness also apply to aggravated damage, like soak does? Aggravated soak is specifically brought up, but no mention of hardness which leads me to think no. As far as RAW goes the only way I found to get aggravated hardness is to use charms that give hardness against a specific attack, like Durability of Oak Meditation.

As far as I know, hardness is hardness is hardness, and it applies equally regardless of damage type (barring unique limitations).

[golentan]

Hardness is Hardness is Hardness unless specified. For example, there's the Alchemical Charm Essence Shield Projector which gives you a force field with hardness 20B/15L/10A.

So there's your answer right there: Yes by default hardness protects against Agg, and yes, there are ways to specifically get aggravated hardness.

[Choco]

Ah ok thanks guys. I just saw that most armor/charms specified the types of hardness and sometimes had different values for each, and thought that was the rule not the exception. This explains it though.

[Shadow Lord]

Can somebody explain to me the setting and mechanics of the game in simple terms, in a way that someone who's never played or even read any Storyteller system book could at least gain some semblance of understanding it? Pretty please?

[TheCountAlucard]

Can somebody explain to me the setting and mechanics of the game in simple terms, in a way that someone who's never played or even read any Storyteller system book could at least gain some semblance of understanding it? Pretty please?

There's a lot of setting, and a lot of mechanics, but I'll do my best to try.

Setting

Spoiler

Show

Imagine a flat world, a vast flat world - each direction corresponds to one of five elements: North is Air, icy-cold; South is Fire, with blazing sands; East is Wood, with dense forests; West is Water, endless sea. This world is called Creation. It was made by the Primordials, giant titans of nigh-incomprehensible power. They in turn created the gods to oversee everything, from the tiniest rock to whole cities to immaterial concepts like war, perfection, and prostitution.

To ensure maximum efficiency, the Primordials gave the gods free will; they would tend to Creation while the Primordials ascended to an otherworldly city called Yu-Shan to play the mysterious Games of Divinity.

Over time, the gods grew jealous of the Primordials, and decided to rebel; the greatest of gods, Celestial Incarnae, headed the rebellion. Unfortunately, the gods could not harm the Primordials, due to a geas placed on them by the Primordials.

The gods turned to Autocthon, the Primordial champion of invention, for assistance. Autocthon, who had been the subject of torment from his brothers and sisters, agreed to help them. They also recruited the Primordial Gaia, and together the Celestial Incarnae, Gaia, and Autocthon made the plans for the Exalted.

Humanity was a relatively-weak force in that time; however, when the Incarnae, Gaia, and Autocthon blessed certain individuals with Exaltations, those humans gained massive amounts of sheer, mystical power - perhaps even more than the gods were expecting.

The Exalted were not bound by the geas the gods were under, and were able to defeat the Primordials; great titans that never even considered death were slain at the hands of these superhumans, while others surrendered, and were forced to swear oaths and imprisoned forever.

The Celestial Incarnae bequeathed Creation to the Exalted, and ascended to Yu-Shan to sit and play the Games of Divinity. However, not all was well - you see, the slain Primordials cursed the Exalted host with their dying breaths, such that their greatest virtues would lead to excess. The dead titans remained as ghosts, calling themselves the Neverborn, creating an alternate Creation of death and decay, called the Underworld.

Within it, ghosts resided, a violation of the natural order; prior to that point, anything that died would reincarnate, their soul recycled to be born anew. The Neverborn reside at the very heart of the Underworld, the Labyrinth, floating over an all-consuming Void, wanting nothing more than to die forever.

The Exalted were unaware of their curse, and thus went on to do many great and terrible things. The Solars, the most powerful of the Exalted, were the most affected by the Great Curse, and thus even the other Exalted suspected that the Solars had been afflicted by madness. The Sidereal Exalted, who serve as viziers and tend to the workings of Fate, took it upon themselves to make a prophecy, and saw that if they did nothing to stop the Solars' excess, Creation would be destroyed.

Thus they manipulated the Terrestrial Exalted, the weakest yet most numerous of the Exalted, to rise up with them and kill the Solars, trapping their imperishable, reincarnating Exaltations in a Jade Prison, which was then cast into the sea and forgotten. This Usurpation was successful, and the Terrestrials went on to manage Creation, adopting a religion that venerated themselves, the Immaculate Philosophy.

Unfortunately, the Neverborn came into contact with the ghosts of Solars who died in the Usurpation, and twisted and corrupted them, empowering them with their own magic to become the Deathlords, such that they would destroy all of Creation for them.

The Deathlords created a disease that would kill all of Creation, the Great Contagion, and released it. It was devastating, killing ninety percent of the people in the world in a few short years. At this time, the Fair Folk, beings of chaos from outside Creation, sensed the weakness of the ordered world and decided to invade, in what came to be called the Balorian Crusade. One Terrestrial took control of an ancient Solar weapon, the Realm Defense Grid, and then carved out an empire for herself as the Scarlet Empress.

For over seven hundred years, the Scarlet Empress reigned, but just recently, she's disappeared. At the same time, the Jade Prison cracked, allowing the Solar Exalted to finally return to Creation. Unfortunately, half of those Exaltations were stolen away and corrupted by the Deathlords and the trapped Primordials, now called the Yozis, to serve as champions of their respective causes: for the Deathlords, destroying Creation; for the Yozis, corrupting it so that they might finally escape.

[Guancyto]

Well, there's a pretty good explanation of the setting here. (Warning: some stuff on the site is NSFW, article itself has language)

[Tavar]

This is not a d20 system. Instead, it is a dice pool system, using the d10. This means that pretty much every roll you make is going to be a combination of 2 or so stats. This combination gives you a number. You roll that many d10's. If a die comes up as a 7, 8, or 9, that's 1 success. If it comes up as a 10, that's 2. Now, having a single success in this system isn't always enough; generally you're trying to reach some number of successes. If you get more successes than your target number, you succeed, with varying levels of success. If you don't, you fail, possibly with varying levels of failure. If you get no successes at all, and at least one '1', it's considered a blotch, which is especially bad.

Now, to add some more variance to the whole experience, there's stuff called penalties and bonuses. Internal penalties remove dice from the pool before you roll, and bonus dice add die to your roll before you make it. External penalties take successes away after you roll, and bonus successes add, well, successes.

[Story Time]

Can somebody explain to me the setting and mechanics of the game in simple terms, in a way that someone who's never played or even read any Storyteller system book could at least gain some semblance of understanding it? Pretty please?

Exalted is a game where a player character struggles against the Liquid Evil (tm) corruption of beings of immense power. The only way to win is to break those beings, and any of their servants, so that the player character can set up their own system.

Oh, one slight glitch though... The beings of immense power? They actually made the world your character moves around in. Crazy Universe isn't it?

I hate Exalted some days...

[Tavar]

I'd agree that there are many things not to like about Exalted(paranoia combat, sidereal charms, lunar charms, martial arts implementation.....), but I don't see how that blurb is a bad thing. Or how it's that accurate, to be honest.

[Story Time]

If you'd like to make a blurb, a better one, feel free to try, Tavar.

Not everyone shares my opinion, or play-style, for Exalted. And that's not a horrible thing...for them. It just means that it's super-hard for me to find games where I'd enjoy myself.

And suddenly I notice that there is no Shrug Smiley. If there was one, I'd probably use it.

[Volthawk]

Well, Creation is a wreck, and pretty much everyone with the power to fix it are either *****, crazy, or not in a position where they can fix it.

[Story Time]

...a little bit more vulgar than I'd have said it, but that's essentially Exalted. Almost everything is corrupt, broken, or both. The manuals are full of material that is intentionally supplied to make player characters want to fix the problems in the Setting. And the only way to fix the bigger problems with any kind of permanence ( read: eternally ) is for the character to become a primordial themselves.

Opinions vary between story-tellers, though.

[Lord Raziere]

Yea, cause if there were people in the books who could actually solve the problem aside from you, there wouldn't be much point would there?

[Story Time]

I'm not going to try to find fault with that square logic, but here's a neat little thought experiment:

A group of five new, naive, and inexperienced characters have set out on a quest to make a better Creation. There are many other characters beside this circle of five. All of said characters are stronger, wiser, and all-around better than the circle of five and yet they all have failed to make a better Creation. They all repeatedly failed and yet somehow this magnanimous group of five will do what the unified powers of the Terrestrials, Sidereals, Lunars, and Solars could not accomplish.



Right.

[Lord Raziere]

You have it wrong.

a group of five inexperienced characters will set out on quest to make a better Creation- and succeed, because Creation runs on narrative causality! it will succeed precisely because they are the five that learn from all the past mistakes and start new! It will succeed because they will it to succeed, they will succeed it is how the world runs....

they will succeed....because it will make such an awesome story, that will be told all down the Ages and becomes legend, then someday, endures even as the greatest myth ever.

Why everyone didn't succeed before you? Well, that wouldn't make a good story now wouldn't it? and besides, if they succeeded at everything, then we would have no chance to succeed at something ourselves, eh?

[Volthawk]

"Unified"? One of the reasons things are so bad is that no sides are working together - Abyssals and Infernals are given goals that oppose each other's and that of pretty much everyone else. Terrestrials hunt the Lunars and Solars (the majority of whom are not in any real organisation). The Sidereals are split, each side assisting one of the sides in the Terrestrial/Celestial conflict for their own purposes. The Alchemicals (who I personally believe would have the best shot, due to their society) are sealed off from Creation. The Incarnae are hooked up on the Games of Divinity. The Fae are also doing their thing. Not seeing much unity there. The only time there was any real unity was in the First Age, which was pretty much the best time for the people of Creation, and that ended with the unity breaking.

[Revlid]

Can somebody explain to me the setting and mechanics of the game in simple terms, in a way that someone who's never played or even read any Storyteller system book could at least gain some semblance of understanding it? Pretty please?

>Look around you.

You are in a world of WONDER, governed by physical laws at once similar to and alien from our own.

It is FLAT, pinned to existence by five ELEMENTAL POLES, bordered by an INFINITE CHAOS and crowned by the manse of HEAVEN. It is currently in its second Age, the AGE OF SORROW, and across its surface mortals live brief and painful lives, ruled by GODS and HUMANS alike.

This is the house the PRIMORDIALS built, and it is your home. Even at its lowest ebb, this place is magnficent, but it stands on the brink of destruction; the SCARLET EMPRESS, ruler of most of the known world, has vanished, leaving the REALM on the brink of CIVIL WAR.

In the NORTH, the ice creaks beneath the army of a conquering GOD-KING.

In the EAST, the trees shake to politicking and war, as a greater DARKNESS stirs.

In the SOUTH, things rise from the desert that were thought BEST FORGOTTEN.

In the WEST, the oceans are plagued by DEMONS, PIRATES, and DEMON PIRATES.

In the UNDERWORLD, dust stirs with the dreams of DEAD TITANS, and GHOSTS walk the land.

In MALFEAS, every tongue wags with rumours of INFERNAL PRINCES who herald a grand RECLAMATION.

In a distant land of METAL AND STEAM, a forgotten people fights for survival in the belly of their dying god.

Once, this place belonged to you, but an ANCIENT CONSPIRACY deemed you unworthy and toppled your ivory tower.

You are a PRINCE OF THE EARTH, reborn after two millenia, and the world shakes before your return.

Welcome to CREATION. Here is your SHOVEL.

[golentan]

Alchemicals aren't much unified either: they're split into 10 factions which can and do fight amongst each other, not even counting internal conflicts.

Abyssals probably spend as much time fighting each other at the behest of their lords for control of the underworld as they do actually working towards killing all things.

Infernals... well, the politics of hell are, quite literally, crazy.

yeah...

[Drascin]

Can somebody explain to me the setting and mechanics of the game in simple terms, in a way that someone who's never played or even read any Storyteller system book could at least gain some semblance of understanding it? Pretty please?

For a quick setting primer, this is pretty good, and decently amusing.

As for the point of the game... well, you're an Exalted, a dude who did something remarkable and got chosen by the gods to be special and have world-shaking powers. Now, question is, what are you going to do with them?

Also, as mentioned - these are books written by White Wolf. This means that if you believe what is written, near-everyone is a ****, annoying, or usually both, and everybody hates everybody on principle. Don't let that discourage you too much, your ST's NPCs are likely to be much better