Exalted!

What page?

198, near the bottom- though I jut noticed the sentence starts with "For the purposes of necrotech crafting," which kinda shuts down the fun opportunities.

For anyone who didn't already know: Charms for everyone! (Assuming everyone is Solar-tier.)

Poor Lunars, Alchies and Dragon-Bloods. (Oh, and Sids.)

Still, SWLIHN has a new sobriquet ("Whispering Flame") and the foundations of a second Charm tree; the Ebon Dragon has new ways to be a douche; and Malfeas now has something that as I read it allows Slayers to activate DEMON EMPEROR SHINTAI as a kind of fuck-you move before springing back to life and beginning the beatdown. And that's just the Infernals.

Kimbery. Also, Infernal Monster mindrape (additional).

Nice.

The Broken-Winged Crane is out. As soon as I've got the family's Christmas presents settled, it will be mine. And radioactive green tentacular awesomeness will ensue.

OH DEAR GODS SERIOUSLY BUY IT NOW.

A teaser quote from the book: [quoteblock]This Charm conveys one final benefit: The Infernal’s player and Storyteller may work together to design a personal analog to First (Yozi) Excellency suited to the personality, themes and obsessions of the character[/quoteblock]

Righteous Avenger's Aspect is an awesome Charm.

Yes. Yes it is.

I'm also a fan of Final Ray of Light. I can just imagine a Zenith telling his opponent "Hope never dies" while Dragonforce or Raw Raw Fight The Power blares out on the soundtrack.

Final Ray's rather fun, yeah.

A thought: pulling a Redemption Equals Death with an Abyssal- but in your last moments, actually becoming a Solar, and doing the Charm trade-in thing- including picking up Final Ray of Light...

I suspect you'd then need to use a perfect defence against the Storyteller-only Charm known as Character-Smiting Wrath of Purple Lightning.

That depends on whether you clear it with 'em first or not.

But yes, CS Wo PL is possible.

So my tabletop group is playing Exalted.

After rolling a character (and royally miscalculating the point distribution) and being told that my character's backstory/goals were insufficiently epic, I find myself asking what I've got myself into and whether it's my cup of tea.

The thing about Exalted is that it's on rather a different scale to a lot of games, and it can take a while to get your head round that. The average character needs to have done something that could be the climax of a short arc in another game just to Exalt (assuming you're playing Solars).

I really would encourage you not to give up yet. OK, for some people, the fact that you're pretty much expected to want to, and manage to, significantly change the setting may just be wrong- but you may find you enjoy it if you get used to it.

At least it's not ticking me off as much as the troubles I had with the d20 system when we were running D&D.

But yeah, my reaction was like "wtf what do you want me to DO here".

Ah, there's the problem. I reckon your ST's doing something that's not uncommon in Exalted- letting you do what you want.

The best game I've been in so far (it's Pb P) started with someone saying, "I feel like S Ting. Which one of these bare concepts would you guys like to play?" and continued through, "OK, where do you want it happening?" and has a "Stuff you'd like to happen" thread. It's more of a burden on the players, but once you've got properly acquanited with the idea that you don't always need a plot given to you, it can be great.

That's not to say I think you're doing anything wrong- it can be very tough to just go off and do something without there being something in-game to spur you on. My personal belief is that Exalted works best when the ST knows what the players want to do and provides situations that can get them started doing it.

I will confess knowing what I want to do here would probably actually help. :V

As it is I'm kinda like OKAY THROW STUFF TOGETHER.

Also, I'm not sure if I wanna invest so much in a fictional character whose sole existence is for a TTRPG.

edited 21st Nov '10 3:24:44 PM by Charlatan

Abbreviated list of motivations: would you rather prove yourself the greatest thief/swordsman/martial artist/poet/Haltan nose flautist in Creation, go around punching evil in the cock to protect the innocent, recreate the advanced technology of the First Age, or take over the world?

Solar, right? Those are the classics, although there's also weirder stuff- maybe make a Raksha your bitch...

This game is awesome.

I have nothing to say besides that. Except I was a lazy fuck and didn't my groups game today.

Also, I'm wondering if I should pick up the books from my local Half-price books. I've already got the core rulebook, but the shop has the Abyssal, Infernal, Alchemical, Lunar, Sidereal, and Dragon-Blooded books. And the Fair Folk book. All half-off.

My friend already has all 80+ books of Exalted on a USB stick, but I like to own the books myself, so....

Go for it, you may as well.

Check Drive Thru RPG for the free download of the Scroll of Errata, which includes errata to Graceful Wicked Masques. Lots of extra reading, but it makes it much more playable- for example, all the Shaping Charms now have utility in Creation, so you can build a Fae for a Creation or Wyld game and still be useful in the other place.

Okay, so I can just about understand the baxkstory and characters of exalted, but how does the combat and all the various words like "charms" and "perfect defences" and other things interplay with each other?

Could you give me terms that a newbie to Tabletops could understand, is essence basically like mana? Is limit break essentially your sanity meter? I am just a bit confussed.

You have two resources: Essence and Willpower. Essence is indeed functionally mana. You have a pool of temporary willpower that starts equal to your permanent willpower, and goes up and down as you spend it, recoup it by sleeping and so on.

Charms are low-level magical powers; it's probably best to think of them as being like feats in D&D, only most of them require an essence payment to activate (some also require points of temporary willpower, a few experience points, or some health levels). Charms can be:

• Supplemental: these assist a specific action.
• Reflexive: these can be activated more or less at will, say to increase your defences.
• Simple: these take a few seconds; Thunderclap Rush Attack, which is a specific magical kung fu move, is a simple Charm.
• Extra action: these allow you to do something multiple times. Most of these create combat flurries, where you wail on your opponent with your BFS.
• Permanent: these are modifications to your basic abilities that last pretty much forever. (Infernals are so very weird because most of their permanent Charms have drawbacks of some kind.)

Excellencies are Charms that allow you to use mana to become better at a specific action. A Melee Excellency lets you improve your "sword people" rolls, while a Larceny Excellency makes you better at breaking into the Realm treasury. However, you have to pay specifically, and certain Excellencies are useful only because other Charms have them as prerequisites (Dodge in particular has this problem; why bother raising your Dodge DV when you can just pay three motes to perfectly evade an attack?)

You can only activate one Charm per action unless you've paid to have them put into a Combo. Combos can be anything from simple little two-Charm ones allowing you to dish out accurate attacks without reducing your defences, to huge leviathans that allow you to shrug off any kind of incoming attack while delivering a lightning-fast string of devastating blows.

Perfect defences are Charms that allow you to automatically avoid harm from an attack unless it exploits a specific Achilles' heel. Given that Exalted are all glass cannons, these are very very important, especially in the later stages.

The basic mechanic is that you have [stat + skill + assorted bonuses] ten-sided dice when you roll; 7 or above is a success, and 10 counts double. You have to beat a specific difficulty with your total successes.

Stunting is a reward for describing your actions in a really cool way, in the form of bonus dice. 1-die stunts are a description slightly better than "I hit it with my BFS". 2-die stunts involve use of the scenery, such as leaping onto one end of a table to bring up the other end into your opponent's chin. 3-die stunts pretty much require either Stunned Silence or a round of applause from everyone else at the table.

Limit is a kind of psychological stress meter; when it hits ten, you lose control, flip out in some way, and that's Limit Break. These can be partially controlled, to ensure you remain vaguely functional, or you can just let rip and get a massive willpower refill even as you go temporarily insane.

prove yourself the greatest thief/swordsman/martial artist/poet/Haltan nose flautist in Creation

As it turns out, my character's goal is to be the greatest Gentleman Adventurer in all of Creation.

Just for the record.

:-D

What Caste?

So... (as a minor side thing) how to GSP's bugger over their masters? I mean I know how they come into being, but the actual page on exalted is a bit light on how they can mess up the plans of the demon kings.