Exalted!

That's facetious, right? I don't have to pass the link on myself?

Anyway, with the stuff about how Liminals horrify people and their animas come with looking more like gross corpses, they're really embracing their status as Exalted Prometheans.

I found it amusing that Liminals are more creepy than Abyssals.

Prometheans do creep people out more than vampires. And there's the whole "death that mortals crave" thing.

Oh yeah, also: the zombie army commanding charms from the abyssal necromancer were cool as hell.

I also rather liked the Lunar "shed disguise to instantly cast a sorcery" charm.

It's a minor thing, but I like that the Exalt writeups have Charm names instead of the sometimes-vague "you'll get the details when the splatbook hits" kinds of descriptions in the last corebook. This is Exalted, fuckas, we call this shit Shadow Walker Revelation and Hope-Rending Teeth.

The whispers of things so vast they could never die
But in aeons past were cast down, and now murdered lie
Things so great that the cosmos could not concieve their death
Now they lie in wait of the cosmo's last breath

Never to die, Neverborn
Reincarnation forever torn
Things so vast they could never die
Now writhe forever and mercy cry

They circle the Void, wishing for the final release
Now die forever and the pain will never cease
Things so great they could not be taken by Lethe
Until all they gave life suffers the final death

There's something about the Ex3 rules that I only noticed on a closer read of the chargen rules than my initial pass. You can't spend bonus points on increasing your Essence. Everyone's going to start at Ess 1 unless you use the rules for more experienced characters. Now, they've moved a bunch of Charms down to Ess 1 to compensate for that, including Terrestrial Circle Sorcery. But another thing they've done is let you pick a Supernal Ability, which is a Caste Ability where your Essence is counted as 5 for the purpose of Charm purchases, letting you get early access to the higher-Essence Charms.

So what I'm wondering now is whether Supernal Abilities are supposed to be a Solar-only thing that reflects their peerless-in-their-specialty schtick, or something that all the splats (except for the ones that get Supernal Attributes) are going to get so they can stretch beyond the Essence-1 arena with the stuff they're really good at. Any thoughts?

edited 7th Feb '15 9:33:18 PM by rikalous

Interesting. It might very well be a Solar/Infernal/Abyssal-only thing, with Lunars getting the "Supernal Attribute" like you suggested. If Sidereals keep Colleges, they may be given the ability to use their College rank in place of Essence for purchasing Charms within that Ability? At any rate, I can't see Dragon-blooded getting more than an "Essence 2 to buy Aspected Charms" boost.

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

Thinking about it a little more, it wouldn't make sense to have it be a universal thing, because then how would non-Attribute-or-Ability-based Exalts work?

...And then thinking about that a little more, they could just pick one or two Charm trees to be Supernal at, so I'm back where I started. Harrumph. Guess we'll know more when What Fire Has Wrought hits.

(I just hope it at least extends to Solaroids, because my main's an Abyssal and I'm selfish like that.)

So, what do you guys think about the rules for 3e? Were they what you were expecting?

Personally I like them as far as I've read, but the supernal ability might need a bit of rework. I don't like the idea of being extremely good at one thing, but merely competent at everything else.

Suffer not the witch to live.

I'm not the crunchiest sort around, so I wouldn't want to pass judgement on most of the mechanics until I'd taken it for a test drive, so no particular opinion on, say, the combat system.

Still disappointed that Craft remains the sole ability out of twenty-five where they decided being good with all aspects would be unrealistic, but at least the book makes a point of encouraging things like letting an armorer repair a horseshoe because they've gotta have some basic metalwork skills.

Not sure why they dropped virtues, but Principles are enough of a clear improvement over Motivation that I'm totally cool with it.

Overall I'm positive about the new edition, but that's got more to do with being interested in Exigents and Evocations than any of the nitty-gritty.

edited 14th Feb '15 1:31:25 AM by rikalous

I still can't find these rules.

If you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy, have some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste.

How did you like the evocations already present?

edited 15th Feb '15 5:43:04 AM by Adannor

The only ones I've done more than skim are Black Wind and Spring Razor, because it's a big book and they're way in the back, which means I've only really looked at the ones that seemed most interesting in the first place, but still. Black Wind trails streams of your enemies' blood behind it until you decide to eat them or make them explode or something and Spring Razor's toxic flowers would give Poison Ivy a ladyboner. That shit is pretty damn dope.

I get the impression that evocations might be too easily exploited by unscrupulous P Cs trying to get ultra-powerful evocations for their artifacts or, on the other extreme, made too weak by the G Ms. I'd have gone for more specific rules for their creations, maybe a point-buy system for the first few powers, and an extra one at the end offering more options of customization.

Suffer not the witch to live.

Not sure why homebrew Evocations being unbalanced is any more of a worry than any other homebrew Charms, personally.

Well, one thing to worry about homebrew evocations is that they are not bound by splat thematics, and thus may turn out to eclipse the other splats that should have those things as their hat.

Then again, that worry applies to official evocations too. Looking at you, Volcano Cutter.

edited 15th Feb '15 11:48:47 PM by Adannor

Mm. They are bound by the thematics of their magical materials, which is presumably going to limit how much splat crossover there's going to be. Like, Bob the Sidereal isn't going to be busting out Abyssal-style bloody murder if he can't use soulsteel worth shit.

On the other hand, Solars don't have to give a shit about that. If there's a sword that shoots tentacle-mouths, they can use it. And once they've gotten far enough, use a random sword they picked off the ground to shoot tentacle-mouths. (Ooh, that actually gets a nod in the book. "A Solar might shout loudly enough to shatter bones or wreath her fists in glorious Solar flame, but she cannot develop Charms to grant her raw command of the elements, a warped and demonic body, or other such strange powers; such feats require sorcery or the Evocations of puissant artifacts.")

On the hand with the Godspear in it, Liminals and Getimians and two other unrevealed guys are going to be running around and it doesn't look like any new magical materials are going to be added. Which might not be a problem given that Getimians are supposed to be Sidereal foils and the two yet unknown are supposed to be Lunar foils, so maybe they'll fit as well with starmetal and moonsilver themes respectively as the old-school splats. And it's hard to say that a Blood Aspect Liminal shouldn't be able to make good use of the blood-trailing skycutter.

On the final hand, Infernals. Not sure how they fit into this. Orichalcum's associations with sorcery would fit, since they were as good at it as Solars, but orichalcum's also used for "harnessing the power of light while taming shadows, channeling divine judgment to burn away that which is tainted or unclean," which jives considerably less.

On the remarkably dexterous mouth, I wonder if starmetal evocations would give Sidereals something to put points into if they aren't all that into martial arts.

I'm not worried for Bob the Sidereal, I'm worried about Bob the Solar, which CAN use Soulsteel to the maximum.
Or Jade. Volcano Cutter has it's "wide scale fiery destruction" tree locked in as exclusively Solar. This irks me greatly.

Well, the solar better-than-you-ness needs to have some mechanical backing. It's their whole thing.

..Yeah, NO.

They do not get to be better at other splats' shticks than those splats.

Where's that come from? I thought mechanical information on that level was being kept out of the official preview channels, and I can't find anything in core saying how good Dragonbloods are at Evocations.

edited 16th Feb '15 1:48:37 AM by rikalous

The whole tree is rooted with a prerequisite Solar Charm - specifically in having and using Call the Blade. So non-solars could potentially ever only access the other half of the published Evocations array for it.

(And given that D Bs were being developed alongside the core, if they wanted them to have access to that tree, they could have made a note about it or added an alternate prerequisite for them, but nope we got nothing)

> and I can't find anything in core saying how good Dragonbloods are at Evocations.
That general "evocation capability" would only define which of three levels of evocations they can access, and the charmtrees span all three of those levels.

edited 16th Feb '15 1:54:02 AM by Adannor

Oh yeah, the Call the Blade thing. That'd do it.

You could rule that your Dragonblood builds the tree off of Dragon-Graced Weapon or something, and that'd even be supported by canon stuff about how Evocations are flexible, but I definitely see the issue.

Homebrew does not fix affect issues in the book - and the intent in the book is for only solars to have it, unless they retcon it in the dragonblooded book.

Also that quickfix won't actually work as part of the tree functions based on recalling your weapon.

edited 16th Feb '15 2:05:09 AM by Adannor