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Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



You might well have different chairs for everyday vs. war-chariots. Of course, it's hard to make such things in the present day... except for Abyssals!

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Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world
It occurs to me that I can claim responsibility for what might be one of the earliest combat wheelchairs in RPG art. Here's the "Buddies" class from Strike!:



Given the tech on display here, this character might even be an Alchemical Exalt! You can't prove she's not. Admittedly, the chair has no wheels per se, and this general concept has surely been beaten to the punch by any build-a-superhero system's legally-distinct Professor X example character, but it was 2014. A different time. It's not fair to judge by today's standards.

Ham Equity
Apr 16, 2013

i hosted a great goon meet and all i got was this lousy avatar
Grimey Drawer

GreenMetalSun posted:

God, I love it so much because you can tell that every single person involved couldn't even be hosed to google 'what does a wheelchair look like?', nevermind speaking to one (1) actual disabled person.

Like, yeah, it it should definitely have no cushions/belts/support (and the armrests look loving uncomfortable), and there should be no way to get in or out of it, and there should be no way for the user to touch or reach the wheels, and also it should be so bulky that it actually restricts your movement because why would a person who needs a mobility aid need to get inside a building or go through a doorway? A wheelchair is exactly the same thing as a daiklave, right? Bigger is better? No need to confirm that, I think we've got it, lads.

Like at least being carried on a litter by the enslaved dead would be loving rad.


Schwarzwald posted:

Not to defend the murder death skull wheeled throne too much, but I don't think it's meant to pick up groceries in.

Yeah, I mean, my feeling is that the chair kind of should be the wheelchair equivalent of a grand daiklave. Everything in Exalted is over-the-top and impractical, it's the nature of the game.

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

Ham Equity posted:

Yeah, I mean, my feeling is that the chair kind of should be the wheelchair equivalent of a grand daiklave. Everything in Exalted is over-the-top and impractical, it's the nature of the game.

I mean, not exactly? A daiklaive is completely over-the-top but at the same time it's a fairly practical construction from the perspective of the owner. They're large because that makes them more effective weapons, but that doesn't matter to the owner because, to him, it weighs a normal amount for a sword. Most of the daiklaives you see are fairly sensibly-designed and only have skulls and things in the places where normal-size swords would have decorations.

The oversized Abyssal wheelchair with extra skulls reminds me a bit of the Kate Beaton comic where Isambard Kingdom Brunel is begging steampunk enthusiasts to tell him that the gears on their clothes do something — anything.

You can probably thread this needle, but not with something that looks even vaguely like a normal modern wheelchair.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]
Daiklaves work on two levels.

First, they work on the whole "mythic fantasy" level that Geoff Grabowski was going for in the first place, where he basically decided that there's no functional difference between mythic huge weapons like Cú Chulainn's Gáe Bulg or the ox-goad of Shangmar of Anath or the god-weapons used in the Ramayana (sorry, I can't name-drop individual giant mythic Indian god-weapons) and more modern huge weapons like the Guts' Dragon Slayer or Cloud Strife's Buster Sword or Ichigo's bankai. The thinking goes "Okay, epic heroes from historical myth across many cultures use cartoonishly huge weapons, and so do heroes from anime and video games, this is the same narrative pattern, folks like their mythic heroes to have big swords; haters who want to make fun of my game for having Cloud's big sword in it don't know what they're talking about." Hence, Exalts use daiklaves, and daiklave just means big sword.

But then on the second level there's a rigorously worked out explanation for why it makes sense for characters in the setting to use big swords. Daiklaves are made of imperishable magical materials that are superheavy but if you attune them they become light for you, so to the guy carrying the one-ton solid gold imperishable razor surfboard, it just feels like a normal real-rear end cavalry sabre with a cavalry sabre's mass and momentum, and he's able to whip it around at the same speed a normal well-trained person can whip around a cavalry sabre... but to the people he's hitting with it, it feels like a one-ton solid gold imperishable razor surfboard that's being whipped around at the same speed as a cavalry sabre but because it weighs a ton is imparting much more kinetic energy into anything it strikes, and because it is imperishable and won't chip or crack, it will never lose its edge and so it's actual shaving-razor sharp, which is much sharper than you'd normally sharpen a sword. And moreover, Exalted (well, early Exalted) rejected the idea that you could have a +5 sword that does +5 damage for nebulous reasons -- a magical material sword that's the shape and size of a normal sword would just be about as damaging as a normal sword, because its impacts would carry about as much kinetic energy as a normal sword and because inflicted damage doesn't come nebulously from enchantment but rather from physical impact and cleaving power... so if you want to make a super-dangerous god-weapon, you kind of have to do it by making an imperishable solid gold razor sharp surfboard. And if you read Geoff's old forum posts on the topic, the tone is kinda "Folks in the setting who think it would be better to have a normal-sized magical material weapon instead of a daiklave are gonna have to deal with being at a mass and momentum disadvantage in a swordfight against someone with a daiklave, and while it's possible to overcome that gap by being better than the other guy, all else being equal the guy who wants the smaller magic sword he can easily sheath at his waist because he thinks big weapons are awkward and dumb weeaboo poo poo is just going to have to deal with getting his rear end beat by the Invincible Sword Princess who's willing to deal with the awkwardness of carrying an orichalcum bulldozer blade strapped to her back."

So, mythic fantasy, sure, but then he wrote a strict materialist take on why big swords being possible makes big swords objectively superior, and how that influences the culture of the setting's elite.

The current edition... does not subscribe to the idea that if what you really want is a normal-sized golden sword, you should have to deal with the fact that that sword sucks, and everyone in the setting with a big sword is going to laugh at you for your objectively materially inferior taste in weapon design. And that serves a purpose! It's actually kind of rude for the game design to go "Sure, you can picture your character with a normal-sized sword, if you want to play a loser."

But that kind of abandonment of strict materialist takes on questions like "Why is sword big?" leads to lack of clarity on why big artifacts are the way they are, and that can lead to "Artifacts are supposed to be big, so big wheelchair."

EDIT: Early manse/demesne stuff had a similar take. The Book of 3 Circles' approach to manses was that obvious magical effects in a manse are the result of improperly channeled magic from the demesne being vented off because they weren't properly channeled into the hearthstone but they can't just be allowed to build up, lest the manse explode. Which means if you have a manse and it looks fancy and has cool special effects and flaming walls or magic fountains or such, people who understand geomancy who see your manse will laugh at you for hiring a lovely architect. Again this did not make it into the current iteration of the game, because, again, it's rude for the game to tell you "Oh, you wanted your magic temple to look cool and magic? God, you suck."

2ND EDIT I JUST REMEMBERED: I think there's even a bit in 1e about how magic armor has fins and spikes and whorls and idols and magic inscriptions all over them to vent excess essence, and if you try to make a non-elaborate suit of magic armor the essence will accumulate inside it and make it all itchy and uncomfortable to wear. So there's your actual explanation for why magic wheelchairs have to be so extra to work. If you don't make them gigantic and cover them in bullshit, they might explode.

Stephenls fucked around with this message at 07:21 on Aug 19, 2023

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



I figured you'd want to play into the aesthetic in some form and if your aesthetic is "I want to be minimalist and boring and efficient about everything" well, do what you want at your table I guess, and I suppose there are always Sidereals.

Quackles
Aug 11, 2018

Pixels of Light.


Nessus posted:

I figured you'd want to play into the aesthetic in some form and if your aesthetic is "I want to be minimalist and boring and efficient about everything" well, do what you want at your table I guess, and I suppose there are always Sidereals.

Uh, the Sidereals are who the starmetal spider leg chair is for. :v:

KOGAHAZAN!!
Apr 29, 2013

a miserable failure as a person

an incredible success as a magical murder spider

Stephenls posted:

(sorry, I can't name-drop individual giant mythic Indian god-weapons)

The Indian ones are interesting because a lot of them are divinely empowered arrows. I think because in Indian culture the principal heroic weapon was the bow?

PoontifexMacksimus
Feb 14, 2012

KOGAHAZAN!! posted:

The Indian ones are interesting because a lot of them are divinely empowered arrows. I think because in Indian culture the principal heroic weapon was the bow?

Comes with the territory when you're fighting from chariots, same as Egyptian pharaohs wanting to be depicted as chariot archers in their triumphal propaganda.

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/abyssals-sworn-to-the-grave-for-exalted-3e#/

The Abyssals kickstarter indiegogo campaign has begun.

LaSquida
Nov 1, 2012

Just keep on walkin'.

If you back it, watch out; Indiegogogo sets a 20% "tip" to itself at checkout (which is new; this didn't happen during Exigents which also used IGGG).

PatentPending
Nov 27, 2007

[1950s eel-based dad joke]
Thanks for the warning! How odious.

Whirling
Feb 23, 2023

so is anyone else reading the previews for abyssals and if so, what are your thoughts? I like a lot of the stuff in the fluff chapters about the deathlords and the underworld, but the latter really makes me wish that onyx path had the vitality to put out something like the compass books for 3e since there's not that many locations they can put in this book. also drat, this book might make less money than the exigents book if it doesn't have a good last day turn-out

drunkencarp
Feb 14, 2012
Across the Eight Directions is available in PDF from Drivethru as of today. Anybody seen it?

PatentPending
Nov 27, 2007

[1950s eel-based dad joke]
Oh hey a geography sourcebook. Did I miss a kickstarter?

wiegieman
Apr 22, 2010

Royalty is a continuous cutting motion


PatentPending posted:

Oh hey a geography sourcebook. Did I miss a kickstarter?

No, but that's because Kickstarter won't let them start new campaigns until they deliver books so they have to use other platforms.

PatentPending
Nov 27, 2007

[1950s eel-based dad joke]

wiegieman posted:

No, but that's because Kickstarter won't let them start new campaigns until they deliver books so they have to use other platforms.

Lmao I’m so glad I get these books out of principle (I want something non-d&d and non-Tolkien to exist) rather than actually having to use them for things.

LaSquida
Nov 1, 2012

Just keep on walkin'.

wiegieman posted:

No, but that's because Kickstarter won't let them start new campaigns until they deliver books so they have to use other platforms.

This is not, in fact, true. Across the Eight Directions was never slated to be crowdfunded.

Stephenls
Feb 21, 2013
[REDACTED]

LaSquida posted:

This is not, in fact, true. Across the Eight Directions was never slated to be crowdfunded.

Correct. The big hardcover fatsplats get crowdfunded; normal books are released like normal books. A8D is "just" a sourcebook.

PatentPending
Nov 27, 2007

[1950s eel-based dad joke]
Well as long as I didn’t miss out on preorder bonuses, I’m happy.

LaSquida
Nov 1, 2012

Just keep on walkin'.
Many Faced Strangers is now finally out for those who backed the Lunar kickstarter at a level which includes it.

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."
It looks like they didn't change a thing about Thousand Blades Style.

Schwarzwald
Jul 27, 2004

Don't Blink

drunkencarp posted:

Across the Eight Directions is available in PDF from Drivethru as of today. Anybody seen it?

I just finished reading through it.

It's clearly the work of several writers (some better than others) but it's solid. Most locations are described with an eye towards what kind of adventures that could be had there with a broad variety of types of locations for different types of story. There's a good mix of cosmopolitan cities with intrigue, places currently suffering from one or more big problems in need of a hero, and genuinely strange societies that lean on Exalted's more particular setting elements.

Besides that: most of writing seems to imply a sane sense of scale, so long as you don't think about the physical map too much. More than one culture has invented the crossbow. There's emphasis on how terrifying and dangerous supernatural threats such as the fae and hungry ghosts are to your typical mortal human (and how that danger effects different states). The book brings in hannya in a manner you might ever interact with during a game. And I think it has the first named Infernal Exalted this edition..?

Schwarzwald fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Jan 30, 2024

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that

Rand Brittain posted:

It looks like they didn't change a thing about Thousand Blades Style.

What's wrong with it that they should have changed? (Genuinely asking, I don't remember and/or missed it)

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

Kaza42 posted:

What's wrong with it that they should have changed? (Genuinely asking, I don't remember and/or missed it)

The entire style is ludicrously, insanely overpowered, on top of the fact that they made it an Essence 1 style that just hands out the power to telekinetically control swords as the first Charm.

Just to give a few examples:
  • You can create a mobile difficulty 6, damage 6L hazard out to short range that is also difficult terrain, but the hazard and the terrain don't apply to you or your allies, for a scene, without committing any motes.
  • A Solar can make a melee attack out to medium range without aiming for five motes. A Martial Arts Supernal Solar with five daiklaives can instead make a melee attack out to extreme range for the same cost.

It is a completely broken style, and the fact that it even got previewed in this state, much less reached publication after people warned them about it, is a sign that there's nobody actually at the helm of Exalted any longer.

Ferrinus
Jun 19, 2003

i'm finding this quite easy, i guess in part because i'm a fast type but also because i have a coherent mental model of the world

Rand Brittain posted:

  • A Solar can make a melee attack out to medium range without aiming for five motes. A Martial Arts Supernal Solar with five daiklaives can instead make a melee attack out to extreme range for the same cost.

I assume that here you mean "A Solar using the style with no special extra benefits or specialization", but it's worth adding this context to the comparison: the actual Solar Melee tree contains "Iron Raptor Technique", which lets you attack out at Medium range only for 7 motes and with the extra bonus that if you crash someone thereby you get +1 WP.

Thousand Blades's spammable ranged attack not only costs only 5m to strike at basically any range you like, but it also adds (Arsenal), which amounts to 6 dice once you've got your full panoply, to your attack roll on top of that. So it's like you've got a 6-for-5 excellency in your back pocket that gives you the ability to snipe at basically anyone you can see on top of that, gratis. And a number of the Charms are like this, not only doing something outrageous in flavor terms but doing it at something around two-Solar-Charms-for-the-price-of-one efficiency.

If you just added three dots to every Essence requirement and categorized this as a Sidereal martial art, it might scan. As-is, you could replace every instance of (Arsenal) with (Arsenal divided by two, rounded down) and still have something overpowered for its ability to create maximally-convenient difficult terrain and snipe at your enemies from completely out of their reach even if they are, themselves, archers.

Attorney at Funk
Jun 3, 2008

...the person who says honestly that he despairs is closer to being cured than all those who are not regarded as despairing by themselves or others.
I don't see what the big deal is. My Storyteller is letting me use it RAW.

Whirling
Feb 23, 2023

The Abyssals and Sidereals manuscripts are very good, so I can forgive them for making a busted thing once.

Kaza42
Oct 3, 2013

Blood and Souls and all that
That's disappointing. A solid majority of Exalted games I've run, somebody has tried to build Unlimited Blade Works and it's never gone well. I was hoping this would be something I could point them to

TaintedBalance
Dec 21, 2006

hope, n: desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfilment

Kaza42 posted:

That's disappointing. A solid majority of Exalted games I've run, somebody has tried to build Unlimited Blade Works and it's never gone well. I was hoping this would be something I could point them to

Just go in on Ferrinus' suggestions for dots, and then get rid of the dumb "not a martial art martial art" thing, and break it into two stances that are granted for free at the start of the tree and then midway through. Make one stance for dealing with foes in the first two range bands, and the other for the other ones. Then take Ferrinus' 1/2 arsenal suggestion as the penalty for attacking the wrong range. It's still pretty nutty, but takes time to scale and doesn't break a fundamental building block of the game.

And I say this as someone who thinks the MA merit is trash and just cut it from my game entirely. You can just do that as well, it's a bad merit!

Rohan Kishibe
Oct 29, 2011

Frankly, I don't like you
and I never have.
My group finished our "short" Force and Destiny campaign in a mere 4 years so I've finally managed to con them into playing Exalted. My Exalted artist character utilising Linguistics charms to imbue effects into paintings isn't a totally nutty idea is it? My storyteller is fine with it, it just seemed to me that Craft didn't really support the idea of painting a fresco so beautiful it makes all who view it weep/scream/revolt against the Realm (delete as necessary).

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."

Rohan Kishibe posted:

My group finished our "short" Force and Destiny campaign in a mere 4 years so I've finally managed to con them into playing Exalted. My Exalted artist character utilising Linguistics charms to imbue effects into paintings isn't a totally nutty idea is it? My storyteller is fine with it, it just seemed to me that Craft didn't really support the idea of painting a fresco so beautiful it makes all who view it weep/scream/revolt against the Realm (delete as necessary).

It definitely seems like something a Solar should be able to do, and if you're just doing it for you, arguments about where in the Solar Charmset that kind of effect "should" go don't really matter.

Lambo Trillrissian
May 18, 2007

Rohan Kishibe posted:

My group finished our "short" Force and Destiny campaign in a mere 4 years so I've finally managed to con them into playing Exalted. My Exalted artist character utilising Linguistics charms to imbue effects into paintings isn't a totally nutty idea is it? My storyteller is fine with it, it just seemed to me that Craft didn't really support the idea of painting a fresco so beautiful it makes all who view it weep/scream/revolt against the Realm (delete as necessary).

It's impossible to break anything in the game if you're reskinning already existing mechanics to represent a perfectly sensible application in the fiction that just wasn't anticipated by the weird taxonomy of how Abilities are divided up in the text. Don't sweat it. You shouldn't be shy about poaching stuff from Performance too. It's been a few years since I've ran the game but iirc the rules are a little bit allergic to the idea of persistent magical influence effects as opposed to single use, so if you don't want to homebrew much it will be easier to do "incite a riot against the Realm at the grand unveiling of my painting" and harder to figure out "subtly influence anyone who comes through the gallery, over and over forever." It's a rad character concept and it's fine to be generous in interpreting the rules text to make it work.

Rand Brittain
Mar 25, 2013

"Go on until you're stopped."
I think I actually put a communicate-via-painting Charm in Book of Wonders Wanted, but I didn't carry it forward to Golden Calibration because I decided that honestly, you probably didn't need magic to make your painting communicate the idea "gently caress the Realm".

Mile'ionaha
Nov 2, 2004

Lambo Trillrissian posted:

It's impossible to break anything in the game if you're reskinning already existing mechanics to represent a perfectly sensible application in the fiction that just wasn't anticipated by the weird taxonomy of how Abilities are divided up in the text. Don't sweat it. You shouldn't be shy about poaching stuff from Performance too. It's been a few years since I've ran the game but iirc the rules are a little bit allergic to the idea of persistent magical influence effects as opposed to single use, so if you don't want to homebrew much it will be easier to do "incite a riot against the Realm at the grand unveiling of my painting" and harder to figure out "subtly influence anyone who comes through the gallery, over and over forever." It's a rad character concept and it's fine to be generous in interpreting the rules text to make it work.

Shards of the Exalted Dream had an Exalted Modern rule that persuasive art would slowly lose steam as it worked on people, so your master shitpost couldn't mind-control troll infinity people.

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Ego Trip
Aug 28, 2012

A tenacious little mouse!


I think that's more important where you can throw The Parrot up on the internet.

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