This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Describe Exalted Discussion here.
Peteman: I'm confused... are you guys saying the game is no longer as good as it used to, but at it's height it was the most awesome thing ever?
Pteryx: No, they're describing the backstory.
Peteman: Then why are they bringing up Jumping The Shark? It's a completely unrelated trope.
Moonsword: It's possible they're referring to a few of the more... interesting... additions to Exalted. The main one is the Autocthonians and the Alchemical Exalted (these are the ones described as being robots raiding for materials to feed their dying god, the Primordial Autocthon, which they live inside of), although I've heard a few pointed references to certain other splats or setting tidbits. It's also possible that someone's getting at the move to Second Edition. Generally, though, the ire tends to focus more on specific books than it does a perception that the series has jumped the shark.
Pteryx: *scrolls down* ...Oh, that? I think that's an attempt to make a TV Tropes-flavored version of the game's tendency to invoke Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot to crazy, fun effect. It probably doesn't belong there in that form, no.
Peteman: Who agrees that the Jump the Shark thing should be removed? If the game hasn't declined in quality, then it hasn't jumped the shark.
Mike: I moved "Dragon-Blooded Exaltation is inherited" from Lamarck Was Right to Superpowerful Genetics, as children aren't necessarily as powerful as their parents. I kept Lamarck Was Right in the article, though, because I think that the Breeding background is close enough.
Aquillion: I'm not sure Lamarck Was Right belongs at all, though. The Dragon-Blooded once always inherited exaltation, but when they cross-bred with mortals, some of them stopped. Now, the more 'pure' your bloodline is, the more likely you are to exalt, and the more powerful you're likely to be if you do (though the deity of, appropriately, inherited power has some say in this too). Aside from the divine interference and their initial creation (when they were specifically created to breed true), that's closer to Darwin Was Right rather than Lamarck Was Right — the Dragon-Blooded inherit their powers genetically based on their bloodline, not because their parents were influenced by super-powered rocks.
Servitor_2152: Removed the following comments, because we know who Desus eventually reincarnated as. He's Swan.
- Of course there is nothing stopping Desus ghost BEING a Deathlord there being a REALLY complete monster.
- It is entirely likely that the Silver Prince of Skullstone is Desus' ghost as a Deathlord, given suspicious similarities in their stats. And his policy of encouraging his mortal subjects to deliberately sacrifice their lives to become ghosts, under the impression that they will ascend to superior positions in his empire of the undead when their actual fate is to be forged into soulsteel and made into techno-necromantic war machines stockpiled for the eventual destruction of the world, is sufficiently sadistic enough to qualify.
Darth Fanboy: Except that the two are not mutually exclusive. The (higher) soul can be snagged by the Neverborn and turned into a Deathloird whilst the Exaltation Shard gets shoved in a box and eventually pops out as another Solar. And the lower soul can still be haunting the tomb (in theory, though it would be unlikely after this long). I would suggest putting themk back in.
Servitor_2152: Point taken. However, I do request that whomever puts it back makes it more of a summary than the previous thread-mode multipost.
TA: "There's one particular Exalted martial arts combo that would allow you to kung fu the entire population of the Blessed Isle in the face. Simultaneously. And the Blessed Isle is larger than continental Asia." Details, please.
Mark Z: Use Infinite Melee Mastery to reduce the cost of Second Melee Excellency to zero, conjure your Glorious Solar Saber (which has infinite attack rate), and flurry for eleventy billion attacks, using Second Excellency to give yourself an automatic success on each one. The multiple-action penalty reduces your dice pool to negative something huge, so you don't even roll the dice, but you do get the free successes. If you like, combine this with Violently Advancing Theories (the GSS isn't a style-appropriate weapon but there's a charm that gets around that) and you can move on every attack of the flurry.
This is technically lightsabering the entire population of the Blessed Isle in the face, so the earlier comment might have been referring to some other infinite kung fu spam combo. If so, that just shows how preposterously awesome the game is.
Jefepato: What you just described doesn't actually work anymore, Mark — the "infinite-rate flurry with zero dice and automatic successes" trick was stealth-errata'd in the Infernals book. I think Grandmother Spider Mastery is what we're talking about. Combine that with some means of seeing a long distance and you can punch them all twice with one blow.
- This is correct. The only way for this to work is with a custom Solar Awareness Charm, or standing atop Mount Meru. This particular Combo is called "Creation Slaying Oblivion Kick" by RPG.net users.
Ack Sed: Sorry,but what does "Welcome to Creation,here's your shovel." mean?
Gattsuru: Two possible meanings come to mind, both fairly apt. A non-trivial amount of Creation involves shit needing to be shoveled, and it's present from pretty much character creation. Another, perhaps more common usage, is that of being in a deep grave and being given a tool to keep digging.
Exploding Frogs: Actually, I'm pretty sure it's an extension of the Wide-Open Sandbox metaphor. Maybe someone should Pothole the phrase, just to be clear?
Janitor:I Am Not Making This Up is gone for good as link target. Please enter your astounding facts under a different heading. Also , the Trivia/ Exalted link may be useful to you.
Removed the reference to Deathlords knowing Sidereal MA. Scroll of the Monk made it clear that nobody currently in existence aside from the Sidereals knows Sidereal MA. Even if some of them knew Siddy MA in life ( which is not at all guaranteed ), they lost it when they died.
Exploding Frogs: There seems to be a small disagreement about the You Are the Translated Foreign Word at the bottom of the article. Specifically, a disagreement on whether or not the name Sol Invictus is, in fact, canon, whether it's necessary to include a note that it's a Fan Nickname in the event that it is not, and whether it even qualifies for the trope if it is Fanon rather than canon. Rather than let it escalate into a full-blown edit war, let's take the discussion here for now and leave the entry be until we come to an agreement.
My position on the matter is thus: firstly, that there are several terms left over from first edition that are still used semi-regularly in-fandom (Celestines, Malfeans when used in reference to the Neverborn, etc.) and that Sol Invictus may well be one of these. (Lacking access to the first-edition books, I have no way of verifying this myself. If someone could settle this question once and for all, that would be extremely helpful.) Secondly, even if it is Fanon, the term is ubiquitous in Exalted fandom. Pretty much every fan, player, and writer on every forum I've been to has used the name or one of its abbreviations to refer to the Unconquered Sun at least once, and it even shows up among his list of names and titles on the official wiki. If you use the name, people will know who you're talking about. And finally, whether or not it is canon or a Fan Nickname has little to do with whether or not it fits the trope, which it does. Adding Natter pointing out this status (which, as mentioned, I am not entirely sure is accurate to begin with) is thus...well, Natter.
Ramidel: Removed this from Did Not Do The Research both because it's incorrect (Charm doesn't work like either of you said, and SES itself is an example of what the Did Not Do The Research entry is talking about) and because discussing it would lead to even more natter:
- Can be done with one charm, and does not include Zeal. Use Scarlet Patterned Battlefield Style's Singular Escape Stratagem charm and set the condition to "Do not use perfect defenses," then attack (possibly comboing with the Sidereal Excellency that grants success with no threshold). The rules simply state that the condition cannot be an unacceptable order (which means not "overtly" suicidal), and a person can still defend themselves without a perfect defense. Even if you have to wait a turn, he can't channel essence on his next action anyway or he gets hit without perfect defenses doing anything.
- That charm has the compulsion keyword, so it's not actually beating a perfect, just telling you to not use one. Use a perfect mental defense, and there's nothing to stop you from perfecting next round (unless you lack an appropriate combo).
- Can be done with one charm, and does not include Zeal. Use Scarlet Patterned Battlefield Style's Singular Escape Stratagem charm and set the condition to "Do not use perfect defenses," then attack (possibly comboing with the Sidereal Excellency that grants success with no threshold). The rules simply state that the condition cannot be an unacceptable order (which means not "overtly" suicidal), and a person can still defend themselves without a perfect defense. Even if you have to wait a turn, he can't channel essence on his next action anyway or he gets hit without perfect defenses doing anything.
Useful Notes: What SES does is it specifically "prevents you from using a perfect defense." Per the rules for charm conflict, the response is to perfect-defend, since SES actually can't stop you. The compulsion keyword is misused.
Also, I chopped the Zeal natter for much the same reason.
Ramidel redux: I see I need to explain myself further on Zeal.
The Charm-conflict rules were always in place from the very first book, so Zeal failed even when it was written. The errata used against Zeal was a clarification, not a new ruling; it's saying the same thing the rules have always said. Ergo, it's not a Game-Breaker, it's just a broken charm (that doesn't do what it says it does).
The rule is on Page 179 of the core under Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object. "For example, when using a parry against a magical parry that blocks even unblockable attacks, the parry always wins.
Exploding Frogs: Zeal also specifically says that perfect defenses cannot stop it, which implies that it negates the Unstoppable Force, Immovable Object rules. It's poor wording, perhaps, but it gets the concept across clearly enough. And the thing about tabletop games (as opposed to, say, computer games) is that the exact wording doesn't matter as long as the intent is clear enough that the Storyteller can arbitrate the effects. It's clear that Zeal is intended to negate perfect defenses under specific conditions, so, unless the Storyteller has an attack of sanity and disallows the Charm entirely, that's exactly what it does. From this perspective, the errata in question was designed to limit Zeal's ability to break through perfect defenses—Solar, Abyssal, and Infernal perfect defense charms are now beyond it, as they all contain the "block the unblockable/dodge the undodgable" clause.
Ramidel: That's my point, though. Whatever Zeal says it does, the baseline rules, even prior to the errata, prevent it; we both know that. As for "an attack of sanity," I have never -heard- of a Storyteller allowing it to actually break a perfect defense, unless the one who wrote the charm used it in his home campaign or something. I'm aware what Zeal attempts to do, but with Exalted combat, the engine meta-rules trump the individual Charm rules. Soulbreaker Orb, Singular Escape Stratagem, and Zeal are all "intended" to break perfects, and UFIO stops that kind of malarkey cold every time. Even Neph owned up when he tried to do it with Soulbreaker Orb.
It's only a Game-Breaker if it actually can break the game, and if the Storyteller knows how the rules as written work, it can't; you use Zeal, I use HGD, and HGD wins. This does not take errata and the only reason it was errata'd is because the backdraft led the Word of God to spell out what people should already know. "This could break the game if the Storyteller is an idiot" doesn't make it a Game-Breaker; I think for tabletop games it has to be a Game-Breaker when played by the RAW. If the Storyteller is an idiot, the game comes prebroken.
(As for breaking DB perfects, those never were perfect to begin with. Sidereals have Serenity in Blood, Lunars have Flowing Body Evasion.)
Exploding Frogs: I see. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm actually still kind of iffy about whether or not the baseline rules preventing it prior to the errata, but that's really a technicality at this point. It's not really worth arguing over; whether it was ineffective before or not, it certainly is now. Maybe we could compromise with the Game-Breaker entry, and have something to the effect that Zeal is widely perceived as such to the point of Dis Continuity and severe Internet Backdraft, but thanks to awkward wording in its description, various errata, and the fact that no sane Storyteller will allow it, it's not really much of an issue. The fandom-wide perception of Game-Breaker-dom is arguably as important to the trope as actually breaking the game, after all.
Ramidel: Agreed. Perceived Game-Breaker status that led to Internet Backdraft like none before seen is worthy of mention.
Aquillion: Regarding Scarlet-Patterned Battlefield's Singular Escape Strategem, no matter how it's explained it still doesn't work. If it just negates perfects, then it fails because you can't negate perfects. If it uses compulsions to prevent you from using charms to defend yourself in the first place, then it fails because commanding you not to defend yourself against a lethal attack is always an unacceptable order. Furthermore, if its effect preventing you from defending yourself is a compulsion, then by the corebook it must have a willpower cost to resist, which defaults to 1 — meaning you can ignore the whole charm for 1 WP, basically. (Though, again, you don't even have to pay that 1 WP in any situation where failing to defend could potentially put your life in danger, since suicidal compulsions can be resisted for free unless they specifically state otherwise.)
Metaphysician: Okay, what exactly is supposed to be so bad about Void Avatar Prana? I've read the description, and it doesn't strike me as anything other than an unusually powerful Celestial MA pinnacle charm. About the only erata it could use is explicitly stating that the Flaws of Invulnerability are invoked whenever a perfect defense is invoked, *not* when a perfect defense *charm* is invoked.
Exploding Frogs: It's a perfect defense and an automatic, unsoakable counterattack all in one, and it only costs one mote per invocation—invocations that don't even count as Charm use. In Exalted's combat system, this is huge. Worst of all, it lasts as long as Dark Messiah Form does, effectively making it a scenelong perfect defense. This means that if you were attacked four times in a turn, Void Avatar Prana allows you to negate each and every one of those attacks, zap-fry the attackers, and still be able to use a Charm, all for only four motes plus the Charm's cost—as opposed to any other perfect defense, which will merely defend against a single attack for a similar cost and won't allow you to use any other Charms unless the defense is included in a Combo, which will cost Willpower and yet more Essence. It's absurdly broken.
