What Exalted Books Should I Get?

[Otacon17]

A friend of mine will be celebrating his birthday at the end of the month. He tends to like really over-the-top action, and he always tries to pull crazy stunts in whatever game we play, so I thought I'd get him the Exalted 2nd Edition Rulebook (we've never played Exalted before, but it sounds pretty crazy, so I think he'll like it). I've mentioned the game to my group before, and everyone is definitely interested, including the player in question, so I think it's a safe choice.

A couple of other people I know haven't decided what to get him yet, and they were considering maybe some Exalted supplements to go along with the Core Rulebook. So, what ones are good (especially for new players)? Anything out there a must-have? Anything we should steer clear of? I really don't know anything about the game other than the general concept, so any help would be very much appreciated

[TheCountAlucard]

I would recommend getting the Scroll of Errata, which is available for free. If you want to throw in other varieties of Exalt, it'd be nice to get the corresponding Manual of Exalted Power.

[golentan]

Agreed. Also, I've never seen a game that found either oadenol's codex or wonders of the lost age sitting on the shelf past chargen if it took that long, though that may have more to do with my style of play. If you have someone who wants to do sorcery, or ten times more if they want to do necromancy, White and Black Treatise is a must. And if you know the setting you'd like to use the relevant compass book can be good, though that's quite optional.

[Xefas]

Go google "Exalted Scroll of Errata" and find the version that's hundreds of pages long and free to download. Not only does it have a revised character generation system, but a hell of a lot of charms written in full.

After that, go get the Manual of Exalted Power: Infernals. The core book has Solars in it. Infernals are the other kind of Exalted. Those books should do you for a while.

[Teln]

Fair warning, Exalted is suffering from a multi-source problem at the moment.

[Otacon17]

Thanks, everyone! I grabbed the Scroll of Errata and I think another guy in our group is going to pick up a Manual of Exalted Power (probably Infernals). Hopefully my friend will have an awesome birthday thanks to you guys!

[Tavar]

Note, for your own sanity, ignore chapters 1 and 2 of Infernals. The Writers of those sections didn't really talk with the other writers about what was going down...

[DeadManSleeping]

Note, for your own sanity, ignore chapters 1 and 2 of Infernals. The Writers of those sections didn't really talk with the other writers about what was going down...

On the other hand, those chapters are a good deal more compatible with what Core says about demons than the rest of Infernals. Seriously, when hairless 'women' who vomit forth cocoons of flesh for their homes and sew together babies are your lowly and relatively 'normal' (and relatively benign) servants, you should expect that your realm is guano crazy and disturbing.

But, yeah, they don't fit with the sections that have, y'know, MECHANICS, so that's a problem. In an RPG, flavor that can't be supported by mechanics is worth very little.

[Xefas]

Seriously, when hairless 'women' who vomit forth cocoons of flesh for their homes and sew together babies are your lowly and relatively 'normal' (and relatively benign) servants, you should expect that your realm is guano crazy and disturbing.

Anything sounds crazy when you describe it like that. Really, Neomah are just magical midwives. They can be summoned by mourning parents, they can fix stillbirths, and even create genetic children for reproductively incompatible folks, such as for barren women or homosexual couples. Ultimately, the overall message is that they're just outright benevolent. Especially compared to most other varieties of people in the setting. Between any random Neomah and any random Solar, you're way better off trusting the Neomah to do right by you.

They're also fairly attractive and wear a lot of jewelry, but their appearance is nothing weirder than you'd see from the cosplay section of an anime con. Or, hell, anyone at a metal concert. They also happen to live on the body of a big titan (not by choice). The main building material there is brass that is also metaphysically flesh. They live in brass towers. It's not that weird.

This is contrasted quite well with the other demon in the core book, the Erymanthus, which is just a bloodthirsty killing machine. It shows that demons are varied (even among the children of the same titan), and not your typical generic 'western' demons.

The problem with those specific chapters in the MoEP: Infernals is that they actively seek to undo that, and just make all demons (and their human servants) into two dimensional baby rapists like we've already seen a million billion times in fantasy fiction. Not because it makes them look weird. Weird is fine. Weird is good. But we don't need quite so much rape.

Despite a few freelancers' inexplicable obsession with telling us that demons are uninteresting and we shouldn't like them or care about them as characters, aside from those two chapters, everything else in the game points to the contrary.

[Lord Raziere]

I like the Neomah.

One of my Infernals has one as a demonic familiar, mostly only tolerating her for her guidance through Malfeas, cause the character is really reckless- valor 5 plus cosmic transcendence of virtue- and would've gotten killed without her keeping him in check. for example the fool might've tried to walk up to the Black Boar (y'know, The Irresistible Force, Isidiros, that guy that twists the sky...) and start bad mouthing him and telling him to get out his way.

but to keep on topic of this thread- should I get the roll of glorious divinity books?
aslo, is Glories of the Most High worth getting?
and lastly, how worth it is it to get Compass of Celestial Directions: Underworld and Autochtonia?

[DeadManSleeping]

I can't speak for Autochthonia (but I know people have been awaiting every installment after the previous has come out), but Underworld was, I'll be honest, a waste of my time. It wasn't BAD, per se, but it didn't give me anything useful. But, then again, I haven't run a game of Exalted in...

Uh...

Wow. I'm a bad person.

[golentan]

Rolls of divinity is good for pre made spirits and the mechanics of making your own, but honestly you can probably just make stuff up with what's available in the core book (you don't have to worry too much about balancing unless you're running for Dragonbloods, celestial exalts tend to run all over spirits and anything else without a perfect D).

Glories... Some useful expansion charms for the exalt types in question. Glories of the Maidens has one of my favorite martial arts types (crane style), so that's fun.

Can't speak to Compass the Underworld but Compass Autobot is an amazing, fun, detailed, and absolutely necessary book... if you're going to be running a game in Autochthonia at some point. Otherwise don't waste your money.

[Lord Raziere]

So what I'm basically getting is:

- spirits are basically make up able from core and I can basically base everything off that unless I'm really going for balance and such.

- Glories is good

- Auto is good but Underworld is up in the air?

meh. I'm thinking this just tells me to get Glories, Auto and Underworld.