General Exalted Discussion II: No Longer Mortal

[golentan]

I'm sorry, but everything I've read seems to have been pretty consistent. The elemental dragons are embodiments of the elements, part of gaia, and were used as part of the funky thing the primordials did to create and stabilize creation. The Lesser elemental dragons are high essence elementals, and the greater elemental dragons are phenomenon involving a lesser elemental hitting maximum essence and turning ****ing insane.

That doesn't make creation Gaia's Jouten, it's its own thing, but her souls are a part of that.

[Kyeudo]

Um, the Roll of Glorious Divinity places the creators of the first elementals as being the Celestial Incarnae.

[Tavar]

Plus, aren't the Dragon-blooded some combination of mortals and Gaia's lesser souls? Unless you're saying that Gaia gave gods(instead of her own souls) permission to muck around with her soul to create the exalted, then the Elemental Dragons make much more sense as her third circle souls.

[Kris Strife]

Is there a way to weaponize raw essence without using an essence cannon?

[Tavar]

What do you mean by weaponizing raw essence?

[Kyeudo]

The Elemental Dragons are pretty much confirmed as Gaia's Third Circle Souls.

[Arcanoi]

From my understanding, there are Elemental Dragons, and then there are The Elemental Dragons. Elemental Dragons are excessively high-essence Elementals. The Elemental Dragons, who supposedly dwell at the various poles, are Third Circle Souls of Gaia.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Guess who finally remembered the multiquote button!

Originally Posted by golentan

I'm sorry, but everything I've read seems to have been pretty consistent. The elemental dragons are embodiments of the elements, part of gaia, and were used as part of the funky thing the primordials did to create and stabilize creation. The Lesser elemental dragons are high essence elementals, and the greater elemental dragons are phenomenon involving a lesser elemental hitting maximum essence and turning ****ing insane.

That doesn't make creation Gaia's Jouten, it's its own thing, but her souls are a part of that.

Okay, looking back at it, I seem to have suffered from jumping around a bit too much.

I think I've got it now.

The Five Elemental Dragons are gods, specifically gods that Gaia created to help stabilize Creation along with the Poles and the dragon lines.

The Incarnae studied the Dragons with Gaia's permission, and created the five great Elementals to regulate the elements inside of Creation. At the onset of the Primordial War, the Primordials hit the elementals as an opening blow, shattering them and wreaking havoc with the geomancy of Creation. Their power spread out over the dragon lines, resulting in uneven distribution of power. Those pockets of power are what create elementals.

Fast forward later, and the elementals are growing in power. Many of them reach Essence 6, and fashion themselves into dragon forms in honor of their divine "parents".

The Dragons are flattered by this, and while he's holding court, the Dragon of the Pole of Wood declares that they should honor the elementals that take their shape, and issues a decree that all elemental dragons should be allowed to develop as they wish, and that the gods should treat them as the Five Dragon's favored children.

Fast forward again, and the Kukla hits Essence 10, becoming the first Greater Elemental Dragon. The Five Dragons are very, very pleased at this reflection of their forms, but the gods notice that the GEDs are kind of HOLY****ING**** powerful, and they bind them away into remote locations where they can't do any harm.

That seems fairly clear-cut, reading the RoGD.

Originally Posted by Kyeudo

Um, the Roll of Glorious Divinity places the creators of the first elementals as being the Celestial Incarnae.

This is correct, I was wrong.

Originally Posted by Tavar

Plus, aren't the Dragon-blooded some combination of mortals and Gaia's lesser souls? Unless you're saying that Gaia gave gods(instead of her own souls) permission to muck around with her soul to create the exalted, then the Elemental Dragons make much more sense as her third circle souls.

Well, under the story I lay out up there, the Dragon-Blooded are Exalted with a godly patron, just like the other Exalted.

This does contradict some other things, so let me go reread up on the DBs and I'll get back to you on that one.

Originally Posted by Kris Strife

Is there a way to weaponize raw essence without using an essence cannon?

In Exalted, this is kind of like asking if there's a way to weaponize raw atoms without using a weapon.

So, uh, no.

[Kris Strife]

Originally Posted by Tavar

What do you mean by weaponizing raw essence?

I thought saying without using an Essence cannon would have indicated my desired meaning.

Is there some charm or CMA that will allow a character to attack using just his essence, without channeling it through an item?

[Tavar]

Well, do you count the various methods such as Blazing Solar Bolt or the elemental ones? What about the Elemental Anima effects?

Besides that...well, there's a hearthstone that kinda allows something like that.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Originally Posted by Kris Strife

I thought saying without using an Essence cannon would have indicated my desired meaning.

Is there some charm or CMA that will allow a character to attack using just his essence, without channeling it through an item?

Nope.

There's no such thing as "raw Essence", anyway.

Essence is the building block of matter in Exalted (motes being the smallest unit, I believe). You can channel it do neat things, but even an essence cannon isn't using "raw Essence", it's channeling power to create a blast.

This is basically semantics, but every Essence weapon you find is going to be colored by whatever made it. A "raw" Essence weapon doesn't exist.

[Arcanoi]

Originally Posted by Kris Strife

I thought saying without using an Essence cannon would have indicated my desired meaning.

Is there some charm or CMA that will allow a character to attack using just his essence, without channeling it through an item?

- Martial Arts charms. I hope you knew about this one.

In addition, most splats have some form of ability such as Glorious Solar [THING] or Claws of the Silver Moon (for Lunars) that let them make weapons out of Essence. There's also various bolt attacks such as Corpse Bolt (Abyssals) or Elemental Bolt (Dragon Bloods). Infernals also get Mind-Hand Manipulation and Star-Piercing Spear of Glory.

[Kris Strife]

Originally Posted by Tavar

Well, do you count the various methods such as Blazing Solar Bolt or the elemental ones? What about the Elemental Anima effects?

Besides that...well, there's a hearthstone that kinda allows something like that.

Blazing Solar Bolt, but without having to channel it through a weapon.

Basically, I want to know if you can hadoken/kamehameha/Spirit Gun/etc someone in Exalted.

[Tavar]

You can use the melee ability with martial arts weapons, so, yeah, you can.

[Kyeudo]

Originally Posted by Mr.Bookworm

The Five Elemental Dragons are gods, specifically gods that Gaia created to help stabilize Creation along with the Poles and the dragon lines.

Just went and double checked my MoEP: Alchemicals. It pretty much closes the case on what the Five Elemental Dragons are. They are Gaia's Third Circle Souls.

[Xefas]

Originally Posted by Kris Strife

Basically, I want to know if you can hadoken/kamehameha/Spirit Gun/etc someone in Exalted.

There used to be a Solar charm for that, but it got replaced in the errata into something far more useful, and far less awesome.

But, as per usual, Infernals to the rescue! The Charm "Star-Piercing Spear of Glory" allows you to fire bolts of pure essence at-will from your hands/eyes/crotch-thrusts/whatever once you hit Essence 4. The stats for the blasts are Speed 5, Acc +2, Damage +8L, Rate 5, Range (Essence x 5 yards). They may be used with either Archery or Melee, deal Aggravated damage to Gods, and allow you to supplement any attacks made with them via Green Sun Nimbus Flare as an innate power.

Principle Invoking Onslaught will also let you do this, with the added bonus of allowing your hadokens to turn people into solid gold (or any raw material).

[Kris Strife]

Originally Posted by Xefas

There used to be a Solar charm for that, but I got replaced in the errata into something far more useful, and far less awesome.

But, as per usual, Infernals to the rescue! The Charm "Star-Piercing Spear of Glory" allows you to fire bolts of pure essence at-will from your hands/eyes/crotch-thrusts/whatever once you hit Essence 4. The stats for the blasts are Speed 5, Acc +2, Damage +8L, Rate 5, Range (Essence x 5 yards). They may be used with either Archery or Melee, deal Aggravated damage to Gods, and allow you to supplement any attacks made with them via Green Sun Nimbus Flare as an innate power.

Principle Invoking Onslaught will also let you do this, with the added bonus of allowing your hadokens to turn people into solid gold (or any raw material).

Has anyone homebrewed this for the other Exalted types? Or is there a Solar version of Green Sun Nimbus Flare?

[Cyborg Mage]

Originally Posted by Xefas

But, as per usual, Infernals to the rescue! The Charm "Star-Piercing Spear of Glory" allows you to fire bolts of pure essence at-will from your hands/eyes/crotch-thrusts/whatever once you hit Essence 4.

... I just got a mental image of Duffman firing lasers. I wonder what beer Infernal Duffman promotes...

[Lix Lorn]

I have to make Jareth as an Infernal now. Thanks a lot.

[Kylarra]

Originally Posted by Xefas

There used to be a Solar charm for that, but it got replaced in the errata into something far more useful, and far less awesome.

But, as per usual, Infernals to the rescue! The Charm "Star-Piercing Spear of Glory" allows you to fire bolts of pure essence at-will from your hands/eyes/crotch-thrusts/whatever once you hit Essence 4. The stats for the blasts are Speed 5, Acc +2, Damage +8L, Rate 5, Range (Essence x 5 yards). They may be used with either Archery or Melee, deal Aggravated damage to Gods, and allow you to supplement any attacks made with them via Green Sun Nimbus Flare as an innate power.

Principle Invoking Onslaught will also let you do this, with the added bonus of allowing your hadokens to turn people into solid gold (or any raw material).

Abyssals also have their crypt bolts, which, while not quite as good, are still applicable and is only a charm tree of 2 (3-4 to make it better) rather than 6 and usable at Essence 3, not 4.

Crypt Bolt is Speed 5, Acc 0, Rate 2, Range (Thrown x10 yds), Damage (Ess x2)L; Upgraded version 1 adds your Whispers rating to Accuracy and damage and you can shoot them through your eyes by substituting Man for Dex and deals Aggravated to anything you specifically hate as an intimacy.

There's also a 1 action charm that gives you infinite rate and +2 acc with your crypt bolts for that action. This one has Ess4 prereqs, but all the others are Ess3.

[Reynard]

Originally Posted by Kylarra

There's also a 1 action charm that gives you infinite rate Rate 5 and +2 acc with your crypt bolts for that action.

Errata'd.

[Tavar]

Does that even really matter? I mean, from what I've seen, using flurries just means you're going to miss a lot more, due to how flurry penalties are decided.

[Reynard]

Originally Posted by Tavar

Does that even really matter? I mean, from what I've seen, using flurries just means you're going to miss a lot more, due to how flurry penalties are decided.

Yeah, but Infinite Rate means you can just keep going even after they have no DVs.

Even if you're rolling 1 or 2 dice, you only need 1 sux to hit.

Combine with Second Excellency, and destroy them utterly.

[Tavar]

Oh. Guess the danger there would be a counter attack charm. You'll probably run out of DV's first, after all.

[Cyborg Mage]

Has anyone homebrewed a charm tree for Elloge yet? I have a straaange desire to do so. Some might call it an urge.

[Jokasti]

Originally Posted by Cyborg Mage

Has anyone homebrewed a charm tree for Elloge yet? I have a straaange desire to do so. Some might call it an urge.

Didn't Revlid do that?

[Kylarra]

Originally Posted by Reynard

Errata'd.

Whatevs, I didn't check Scroll of errata.

[The Rose Dragon]

Originally Posted by Reynard

Yeah, but Infinite Rate means you can just keep going even after they have no DVs.

Even if you're rolling 1 or 2 dice, you only need 1 sux to hit.

Combine with Second Excellency, and destroy them utterly.

Yes, but Excellencies cannot create actions, established as early as Manual of Exalted Power: Dragon-blooded. If you run out of dice in your attack pool, pre-Excellency, you cannot attack at all. Which means you can attack a maximum of times equal to half your pre-Excellency attack pool.

Besides which, there are mundane weapons that can have a Rate of 6, so why is my magical rate limited to 5?

Man, I hate that errata.

[golentan]

Well, it's easy to ignore in your games if you can convince the ST.

Okay, so a primordial related question. How to they create new jouten, and what's the interconnection level between them? In short, is it sufficient to kill (any) one jouten to activate ghost eater and put the neverborn hurt on a titan, or is there a specific form you need to kill.

[Xefas]

Originally Posted by golentan

Okay, so a primordial related question. How to they create new jouten, and what's the interconnection level between them? In short, is it sufficient to kill (any) one jouten to activate ghost eater and put the neverborn hurt on a titan, or is there a specific form you need to kill.

So far as I know (and I know that if I'm wrong, you'll hear about it swiftly and loudly), a Jouten is created from a Primordial learning a Shintai charm. Cecelyne's jouten that is physically an infinite desert is a manifestation of her knowing "Greater Shintai of the Endless Desert". Similarly, Malfeas probably has a "Demon City Shintai" and "Brass Dancer Shintai" out there somewhere.

Shintai charms are pretty rare, and the current Primordials/Yozis, being finite concept-entities, have already designed all the Shintai charms that their design space allowed.

And, yes, killing one Jouten with Ghost Eating Technique is enough to Neverborn them. A Jouten is the Primordial's body. Stabbing it to death stabs the Primordial to death.

Originally Posted by Kris Strife

Has anyone homebrewed this for the other Exalted types? Or is there a Solar version of Green Sun Nimbus Flare?

I don't think so. Solars just aren't cool enough.

EDIT: Also, the Star-Piercing Spear of Glory used to also have Infinite Rate; I listed 5 because of the errata. Which is a shame, because its visual reminded me of the greatest name a DBZ technique ever had. "Continuous Die Die Missile" (which also strikes me as more than slightly Malfean).