General Exalted Discussion Thread IX: Errata is Combo-Ok!

[Lord Raziere]

here is how you do Tron Lines Shintai:

[Rhyvurg]

The Twilight anima was already messed up. When you come down to it, all that really separates the castes are the anima powers. Dawns cleared out extras so they can fight worthy foes, Nights conceal the light caused by their powers, Zeniths serve their function as priests by being able to prevent harmful undead from walking around and gaining extra defense against creatures of darkness, Eclipses seal pacts in their capacity as diplomats, and Twilights...had a force field. Flavor wise it suited a scientist/mage, but in function a soak booster would suit the resilient Zeniths and warrior Dawns just as much. Personally I like the new Dawn anima power, passive effects that don't consume more motes are always good, and the new magic-vision Twilights get is pretty cool.

[Turalisj]

Twilight don't get magic vision, they get a boost to magic vision. That you have to buy first.

That's how I read it at least.

[golentan]

Twilight don't get magic vision, they get a boost to magic vision. That you have to buy first.

That's how I read it at least.

Twilights get a bonus to seeing through illusions, a bonus to seeing and identifying magical effects, a bonus to identifying charms, and (if they have essence sight) a bonus to analyzing them. Only the last of those requires essence sight as I read it, though the wording could be clearer. And the rest are all dice-that-are-not-from-charms, making twilightoids (already with the best dice cap in the game) absolutely peerless at visually inspecting magic, which is only further enhanced by any effect granting essence sight.

[Rhyvurg]

It improves essence sight but it's not dependant on it, it also provides a bonus to your dodge MDV against illusions.

[Lord Raziere]

….nope, it seems to be magic vision all by itself……don't know what your reading, but I'm reading a 5m charm that adds successes to identify magical stuff in general. thats really useful, considering the kind of world Exalted is. I might actually use that.

[Turalisj]

Twilights get a bonus to seeing through illusions, a bonus to seeing and identifying magical effects, a bonus to identifying charms, and (if they have essence sight) a bonus to analyzing them. Only the last of those requires essence sight as I read it, though the wording could be clearer. And the rest are all dice-that-are-not-from-charms, making twilightoids (already with the best dice cap in the game) absolutely peerless at visually inspecting magic, which is only further enhanced by any effect granting essence sight.

Unnatural illusions, and you need essence sight of some form to make use of ID'ing magical effects.

They are peerless at identifying magical effects.... If you have AESS already up. It just doesn't seem as useful as the Dawn or Night caste powers, and I'm not even going to mention Eclipsoids.

[Kyeudo]

I agree with Turalisj. It seems to require all Twilights to buy some form of Essence sight.

My own homebrew version of the Twilight anima was thematically similar to the new errata version:

Anima Effects: The members of the Twilight Caste are gifted with a clarity of vision with which to bring secrets to light. By spending five motes of Essence, a Twilight Caste Solar can sharpen his senses, adding half the Exalt's Essence in automatic successes to all rolls to perceive, discover, or detect anything hidden, secret, unnoticed, or unknown. This applies to everything from spotting a lurking assassin to finding the true cause of a patient's illness to uncovering flaws in an architectural design. This effect comes into play automatically at no cost once the Solar's anima banner reaches the brilliant level or higher.

I think I'll be keeping my version, since it makes Twilights more than just the essence sight guys. They can be private eyes, doctors, craftsmen, and scholars in addition to sorcerers. Heck, they weren't ever made the be sorcerers by Exalted's fluff. Sorcery wasn't discovered by the Exalted until at least the Primordial War.

[Yuki Akuma]

Unnatural illusions

...Is there such a thing as natural illusions?

[Fortuna]

...Is there such a thing as natural illusions?

Prestidigitation immediately springs to mind, and depending on how illusions are actually defined there's some possibility that blatant lies fall under that description too.

[Turalisj]

...Is there such a thing as natural illusions?

Lunar tell are classified as natural illusions. It's a natural mental influence effect.

[TheCountAlucard]

The Twilight anima was already messed up.

Amen.

When you come down to it, all that really separates the castes are the anima powers.

And the Dawn Keyword.

Twilights get a bonus to seeing through illusions, a bonus to seeing and identifying magical effects, a bonus to identifying charms, and (if they have essence sight) a bonus to analyzing them. Only the last of those requires essence sight as I read it, though the wording could be clearer. And the rest are all dice-that-are-not-from-charms, making twilightoids absolutely peerless at visually inspecting magic, which is only further enhanced by any effect granting essence sight.

Our many-armed friend has it right.

(already with the best dice cap in the game)

I thought the best dice cap in the game fell under Dodge MDV, since it's based off of Willpower + Integrity.

They are peerless at identifying magical effects.... If you have AESS already up. It just doesn't seem as useful as the Dawn or Night caste powers, and I'm not even going to mention Eclipsoids.

You don't need AESS up to identify a magical effect, though; this has been discussed. For instance, you could use the level-0 geomancy ritual.

...Is there such a thing as natural illusions?

Yes. Technically natural mental influence that would give someone an Intimacy of belief in something is a natural Illusion effect.

Lunar tell are classified as natural illusions. It's a natural mental influence effect.

That, too.

[Andreaz]

You don't need AESS up to identify a magical effect, though; this has been discussed. For instance, you could use the level-0 geomancy ritual.

And plain sight for Obvious effects.

[golentan]

I thought the best dice cap in the game fell under Dodge MDV, since it's based off of Willpower + Integrity.

It is. And twilights have an additional free (essence) successes to seeing through illusions on top of the willpower + integrity cap. So neh.

[Tavar]

The obvious solution would be to fix the Eclipse Anima power rather than trying to balance against it.

Well, I've already admitted to reading the proposed effect incorrectly, so my statement isn't accurate. But, assuming that it was, that wouldn't help matters at all. Charm-sharing isn't powerful because it's in the Eclipse Anima power, so removing it from the anima wouldn't weaken charm-sharing at all.

You mean like how they 'fixed' the Twilight anima by making it almost completely worthless without having a specific charm active?

Not really. Remove the Charm-sharing ability from the Eclipse Anima and it's still one of the most powerful: Diplomatic Immunity+Oath Sealing is pretty damn sweet.

[Lix Lorn]

Duly noted.

By the by, this concept was developed in honor of our very own primordial of free love, Lix Lorn. Just for the record.

whut.

[Madwand]

Alchemical City-Apotheosis is scary. Very, very scary. Nice work Golentan!

[masterjoda99]

I have an Exalted game coming up soon, and a chance to play my old concept of Author of Worlds under the 2.5 revisions. Of course, I find myself paralyzed by options and choices once again, so now I'm asking for help.

Author of Worlds is an Infernal (Caste: Defiler, Favored Yozi: Achsam, from the Wiki) renegade Infernal who plans to try to lay low and keep under the Reclamation radar so as to have access to malfeas infrastructure until he can build up his own, and his ultimate goal is to create his own perfect world.

Mechanically, as I said, he's a Defiler caste, and I was planning on taking a 2-dot helltech armor designed by Citadel in their Hell-Tech design thread, and a 3 dot manse Oramus aspected. That leaves 2 background dots left to spend, and I was contemplating a demon familiar for a Hopping Puppeteer or one of those other crafting demons.

Charmwise, my initial thought was to go for an even split of 5 SWLiHN charms and 5 Achsam charms, and buy Essence 3 at character creation. My rationale for this was to set up a fairly good slew of magical capabilities that he can use out of the gate, as I am unsure how frequently this group would be meeting. Also, the GM has admitted that he really dislikes killing PCs, so as long as I have decent armor and DVs, I'm not too worried about combat at this point, especially as other players are making the fighty-types.

The SWLiHN charms I have in mind are the two prereqs for Mind-Hand Manipulation, Mind hand itself, Force Deflecting Screen (or whatever that DV boosting forcefield one is), and Principle Invoking Onslaught.

From Achsam I had thought to either focus on the charms that allow for the conjuration of objects and mortals, or for getting to Director Demands Contortion (a charm cluster enabling me to make masks for various concepts that also attach mutations, think like the masks from Majora's Mask).

Also, relevant houserules: Manse, Contacts, Cult, Influence are all capped at 3 dots, Caste and Favored First Excellencies are free (so no recurring repurchases for SWLiHN and Achsam first excellencies here), and Ox-Body technique (or its analogue) is given once for each dot of essence above 1.

Any suggestions and advice are very much welcome, and particularly helpful posts will be thanked.

[Turalisj]

It is. And twilights have an additional free (essence) successes to seeing through illusions on top of the willpower + integrity cap. So neh.

+3 to their MDV to see through unnatural illusions. And most illusions need some sort of charm active to see through, such as Eyes of the Unconquered Sun.

My problem is that the Twilight Anima is too reliant on what charms you have.

[Xefas]

My problem is that the Twilight Anima is too reliant on what charms you have.

Perhaps the solution lies in tackling the problem from a different direction. Maybe instead of giving them a bonus in the area of expertise they already have charms to excel at, they could have an anima power that shores up a place of weakness. Like, some kind of damage-reducing force field...

[Qaera]

Perhaps the solution lies in tackling the problem from a different direction. Maybe instead of giving them a bonus in the area of expertise they already have charms to excel at, they could have an anima power that shores up a place of weakness. Like, some kind of damage-reducing force field...

Say, that would also help with crafting in dangerous or extreme conditions!

~ ♅

[Turalisj]

Don't get me wrong, the Twilight anima is useful... If you have All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight or Eye of the Unconquered Sun active. Without those two charms, it's not all that useful.

Compare it to the Dawn anima, which turns you into a killing machine. Or Night caste anima, which let's you sneak around easier. Or Eclipse anima, even without the "learn others charms" thing, which gives you diplomatic immunity and the power to make heaven enforced pacts.

Compared to those three? The Twilight anima is boring.

[Arrghus]

...Is there such a thing as natural illusions?

The Illusion keyword is ambigously worded. I have seen guys on the official forums (Revlid foremost among them) argue that since Illusion technically just denotes an effect that changes how the target perceives the world, any attempt to convince someone that something is true (whether or not it actually is) or otherwise change their opinions counts as an Illusion. So it's kind of broad.

[Andreaz]

Compare it to the Dawn anima, which turns you into a killing machine.

Turns you into a fearless and scary machine, not a killing machine. Your capacity for murder is not altered by it :p

[tonberrian]

So I put together a CRM-based Crafting hack. All the cool kids were doing it.

[Lord Raziere]

Huh, I think the anima flaring and such works better in my head if I think it more as a transformation around the Exalt. as in someone yells "Exalted Transformation: Twilight Caste!" and suddenly the anima, caste mark and artifacts appear in a flash of light and they strike some pose…..weird….

does anyone else think like that? or is this just some weird association with anime I have that I just can't disassociate from Exalted? whatever. I like it better that way.

[Gensh]

Huh, I think the anima flaring and such works better in my head if I think it more as a transformation around the Exalt. as in someone yells "Exalted Transformation: Twilight Caste!" and suddenly the anima, caste mark and artifacts appear in a flash of light and they strike some pose…..weird….

does anyone else think like that? or is this just some weird association with anime I have that I just can't disassociate from Exalted? whatever. I like it better that way.

While definitely not the same way, my idea of anima flaring has the same basic concept - actually being iconic of the caste rather than just looking iconic of the character. A Dawn banner makes enemies truly comprehend and fear the Solar's strength. A Zenith banner makes Creatures of Darkness instinctively recoil and lessen their blows, fearful of making lasting contact. A Night banner conceals the Solar's true glory to better suit his needs. An Eclipse banner warns that full wrath of the Sun shall be unleashed on any who transgresses against an oath or his diplomatic immunity. The Twilight banner...doesn't really do anything like that, now or before. Ideally, a Twilight anima power that has those same sort of thematics would espouse a concept like "With these hands we will destroy! With these hands we will rebuild!"

[aetherialDawn]

So I put together a CRM-based Crafting hack. All the cool kids were doing it.

I WILL HUG YOU

[Edge]

A quick question for a character I'm building. With 2.5, Spirit Weapons has changed its cost from 2m to 4m, with the following changes:

Weapons created by this Charm are always exceptional. The Solar can reflexively create new weapons at any time as long as
he has a hand free to hold them.

The rest of the Charm remains the same, including its duration of one scene. Does this mean the Charm's cost is now a commitment, and that the Solar can freely create weapons throughout the scene? Or does it really cost 4m each and every time you create a new weapon with it? That seems a little steep to me.

[Lix Lorn]

I WILL HUG YOU

HANDS OFF MY KISMESIS