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3e cannot be given enough credit for how much they fixed Lunar's poo poo, setting wise.
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Feb 4, 2021 06:14
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One can only hope the abyssals book similarly succeeds in fixing the Deathlords, they are the most boring piece of the setting ATM. Are there any other glaringly terrible bits of old fluff that still need a full remake aside from them?
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Feb 4, 2021 13:32
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Transient People posted:One can only hope the abyssals book similarly succeeds in fixing the Deathlords, they are the most boring piece of the setting ATM. Are there any other glaringly terrible bits of old fluff that still need a full remake aside from them? starts with "I" and ends in "fernals"
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Feb 4, 2021 14:16
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Infernal as a distinct exalt type need to be replaced with Akuma as a bargain you can make for forbidden powers that doesn't take your character away.
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Feb 4, 2021 19:59
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Ferrinus posted:Infernal as a distinct exalt type need to be replaced with Akuma as a bargain you can make for forbidden powers that doesn't take your character away. That's definitely not happening and honestly I don't see why, akuma as bargain for forbidden powers doesn't really cover Exalted Hell being an alien otherworld that just happens to have Faustian overtones sometimes. Infernals are great for communicating 'no, they're not uniformly cosmically evil, just weird and selfish and big' about demons. Since Infernals, rather than having made a dark bargain, are just weird and selfish and sometimes big.
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Feb 4, 2021 23:23
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Everyone in Exalted is weird and selfish and big.
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Feb 4, 2021 23:26
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Attorney at Funk posted:Everyone in Exalted is weird and selfish and big. Demons are doing it in a particular flavor, though, and that flavor isn't restricted to Faustian deals - in fact, Faustian deals are meant to be only a small part of the Yozis' general deal. The original akuma, Dukantha, was just a great favorite of a Yozi and the ancestor of the Lintha, not presented as a Faustian bargainer.
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Feb 5, 2021 00:07
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Joe Slowboat posted:Demons are doing it in a particular flavor, though, and that flavor isn't restricted to Faustian deals - in fact, Faustian deals are meant to be only a small part of the Yozis' general deal. Bargains don't become Faustian just because they're with demons - an underpinning of the way treating with hell works in Exalted is that it does just that: work. There's no secret catch or latterly soul-destroying price. You offer something and you get something in return (or you enslave them outright). The idea that you need a special bespoke splat with dumb caste names and weird not-Solar gimmicks is what I don't like about Infernals. It's akin to Beast: the Primordial, in that its narrative identity comes from carving space away from stuff that already exists in the setting. Regular Solars, Abyssals, demonologists or demon cultists (or their survivor or adversaries or whatever) as well as demons themselves fill all of the narrative space Infernals offer, and they do it more interestingly and without the baggage of the completely worthless original line.
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Feb 5, 2021 00:16
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Attorney at Funk posted:Regular Solars, Abyssals, demonologists or demon cultists (or their survivor or adversaries or whatever) as well as demons themselves fill all of the narrative space Infernals offer, and they do it more interestingly and without the baggage of the completely worthless original line. I really do not feel like that was the case in 2e. Infernals did have overlap with drat near every other splat, but for all of that they had a more compelling take on the material. (Leaving aside the two chapters everyone rightfully discards.) It does put them in an awkward position now that we have seen enough of 3e to anticipate that most the baseline splats will be solid on their own.
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Feb 5, 2021 00:31
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Schwarzwald posted:I really do not feel like that was the case in 2e. Infernals did have overlap with drat near every other splat, but for all of that they had a more compelling take on the material. (Leaving aside the two chapters everyone rightfully discards.) 2e Infernals were a completely different beast whose fundamental conceit was that the rest of Exalted 2e sucked rear end and you, the monster reading this, deserved to play a different, better game. It's already been more or less entirely thrown out (as a top-level narrative thing, I'm sure lots of fan-favorite charms and stuff will return) and the specific critique of 2e that's implicitly made by the direction 3e is taking is why 3e is the best edition of the game. I think - as someone who wants to buy books rather than sell them - that 3e would be better still if they abandoned the pretense that the game needs Infernals as a splat at all.
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Feb 5, 2021 00:35
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I agree. 2e style Infernals want to be in a very different type of game than what Exalted assumes.
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Feb 5, 2021 00:47
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It would be cooler if Infernals were not just ~twisted Solars~ because that feels extremely conceptually limiting, particularly since Abyssals cover most of the "reverse Solars" territory in a better way, thematically.
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Feb 5, 2021 01:14
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One of the things I've always liked about Infernals that nobody else gets is the way they have a certain amount of finger-snap magic. Where even Solars generally have to spend 24 hours talking to people to start breaking down a society's taboos, Infernals have a lot of effects where they can just snap their fingers and make magic happen. Bam! Weird crop circles appear! People will look at them and spontaneously form a cult with the doctrines you just made up. Bam! The village wimp is now a tough guy, and you get his soul in exchange. Bam! Delicious candy insects pop out of the ground! To me it's way more characteristic than things like "telekinesis", although their weird tricks are also important.
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Feb 5, 2021 01:18
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Infernals got namedropped in a couple of the 3e books (off the top of my head, I think the Lunars book mentions them in the context of the Solar bond and there's a really obvious Infernal in the core book art) so I doubt they're getting entirely culled. It will be interesting to see what they do with them now that they're working in a very different zeitgeist, especially since two out of three of the "well gently caress we have to add these because they were called out in the Kickstarter" Exalts already prove that stepping into design space of preexisting Exalts is going to happen in splats.
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Feb 5, 2021 01:20
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You could probably just make them demonic Exigents.
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Feb 5, 2021 01:44
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Rand Brittain posted:One of the things I've always liked about Infernals that nobody else gets is the way they have a certain amount of finger-snap magic. Where even Solars generally have to spend 24 hours talking to people to start breaking down a society's taboos, Infernals have a lot of effects where they can just snap their fingers and make magic happen.  Their other thing that stands out a lot to me is directly linking Intimacies and other mental traits to combat right away, when other splats only do so tangentially and in limited ways. Roadie fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Feb 5, 2021 |
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Feb 5, 2021 02:30
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Direct point-and-click magic that dissolves the mind/body boundary being basically unheard of in the rest of the setting is exactly why it'd scan well as corruptive infernal investments.
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Feb 5, 2021 02:36
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We have heard a lot about Infernals from the devs, and they sound pretty cool and good. The idea of removing them sounds really bad, but having spent a lot of time in the big exalted discord, most people mostly have bad ideas with exalted.
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Feb 5, 2021 03:16
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KittyEmpress posted:We have heard a lot about Infernals from the devs, and they sound pretty cool and good. The idea of removing them sounds really bad, but having spent a lot of time in the big exalted discord, most people mostly have bad ideas with exalted.
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Feb 5, 2021 03:28
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Yeah I don't particularly feel like Infernals are a bad setting element At their core their quintessential salespitch is very simple and workable. 'Solars are Superman or Batman. What if you could play Spiderman instead, with powers that don't terribly fit you?'. That's something worth keeping, IMO. The exact details can vary, but it's not something that needs a complete and total remake the way 'your boss is completely unlikable, terminally boring, and them taking any form of successful action is an immediate world-ending threat to the setting that demands a fast answer that warps the story around them, so you can't actually use the splat-defining relationship with them at all, whoops' is.
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Feb 5, 2021 13:28
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Transient People posted:At their core their quintessential salespitch is very simple and workable. 'Solars are Superman or Batman. What if you could play Spiderman instead, with powers that don't terribly fit you?'. respectfully, I don’t follow this pitch at all lol.
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Feb 6, 2021 21:54
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The only cool thing about Infernals is their powers, which is why the game absolutely needs to contain telekinesis and phase 2 bossfight transformations. But does it need to include the "malefactor caste"? Iiiiiunno.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:08
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Ferrinus posted:The only cool thing about Infernals is their powers, which is why the game absolutely needs to contain telekinesis and phase 2 bossfight transformations. But does it need to include the "malefactor caste"? Iiiiiunno. I'm pretty sure we've been officially told the Infernal Castes in 3e: Azimuth, Ascendant, Horizon, Nadir, and Penumbra.
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Feb 6, 2021 22:28
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Rand Brittain posted:I'm pretty sure we've been officially told the Infernal Castes in 3e: Azimuth, Ascendant, Horizon, Nadir, and Penumbra. Like, Nyadir. 
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Feb 6, 2021 22:37
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:respectfully, I don’t follow this pitch at all lol. Solar powers are expressions of themselves as incredible humans, Infernals tap into a power that isn't their own and so some of the bits don't suit the individual perfectly is the deal, I think. Like Solars powers are Human ++, while Spiderman has powers that were granted by a spider so he has spider++ and no man powers. He usually doesn't have all the legs and eyes and stuff that would really make him kick off, maybe?
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Feb 6, 2021 22:38
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Speaking of weird psychic powers, story considerations meant I ended up writing what were effectively a bunch of She Who Lives In Her Name charms for my Essence 5 Twilight (which were properly speaking accessed through an N/A artifact, specifically the three spheres that the yozi cast off back at the end of the primordial war). I'm gonna link 'em here in case anyone thinks they're good: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w7BtIYyHUQid_chXl56ZDOLN_kUFP2MX6OFkbn98kMk/edit?usp=sharing
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Feb 6, 2021 22:45
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DOCTOR ZIMBARDO posted:respectfully, I don’t follow this pitch at all lol. Lemme see if I can break it down then. Solars' powers are derived from who they are. It is impossible to be a warmaster if you're not skilled and interested in war, for example, or a genius merchant if you've never applied yourself to learning the rudiments of trade. You can pick up new abilities easily, but it requires a personal effort and intent to become good at that discipline. By contrast, Infernals' powers are derived by what they are. Does being able to pick up objects with your mind follow from your personality? No, obviously not. What about being able to grow horns? Likewise, the kind of person you are is relatively irrelevant, only that you have the power of Malfeas matters. What makes Infernals cool is that you're given these bunch of powers that have no connection whatsoever to whom you are as a person and have to make use of them to achieve your goals. Hence the Spider-Man comparison, because Peter Parker had no fascination with spiders, no interest in webbing nor anything else of that sort before he got bit by a radioactive spider. His ability to climb walls and not be a total wimpy nerd is the result of happenstance more than effort put towards having these abilities. If Solar exaltation is defined by having the power to achieve your goals, and Abyssal exaltation is defined by getting the chance to fulfill your ambitions that you couldn't achieve in life, then Infernals are defined by getting a clean break from the person whom you were (a failure, in 2e) and a chance to become someone new. And that was pretty cool! It allows Infernals to be another kind of hero (or villain) and explores a conceptual space the other two solaroid splats didn't. So in short... EthanSteele posted:Solar powers are expressions of themselves as incredible humans, Infernals tap into a power that isn't their own and so some of the bits don't suit the individual perfectly is the deal, I think. Like Solars powers are Human ++, while Spiderman has powers that were granted by a spider so he has spider++ and no man powers. He usually doesn't have all the legs and eyes and stuff that would really make him kick off, maybe? This.
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Feb 6, 2021 23:06
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Ferrinus posted:Speaking of weird psychic powers, story considerations meant I ended up writing what were effectively a bunch of She Who Lives In Her Name charms for my Essence 5 Twilight (which were properly speaking accessed through an N/A artifact, specifically the three spheres that the yozi cast off back at the end of the primordial war). I'm gonna link 'em here in case anyone thinks they're good: Love it! Is the orbiting property to do with aggravated damage meant to be decisive damage rather than defining? I think it is, but the thing interacts with intimacies a lot so maybe that's a thing here that I just haven't found yet.
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Feb 7, 2021 02:16
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I like that snuck in at the bottom there is a spell to do the thing in Kill Six Billion Demons where Nadia Om just turns a guy into a tree.
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Feb 7, 2021 02:40
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Those evocations kick rear end and feel very appropriate for a 3e take on SWILLIN's charms. I'm not going to pretend to have the systems knowledge to judge them mechanically, though.  It does feel weird that there's one charm to use telekinesis as a Brawl or Thrown weapon and then a second to use it as a Melee or Archery weapon.
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Feb 7, 2021 03:03
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Oh, yeah, that should be a "decisive damage roll", that must have just been a brain fart while writing. And I figured the brawl/thrown -> archery/melee dividing line was actually a bashing -> lethal dividing line, where the first evocation just lets you summon the force fast enough to be combat-ready at all and the second evocation lets you concentrate it to a cutting edge, although of course any character eventually wants both to get that sweet +1 acc/+3 dmg/+whatever overwhelming artifact bonus.
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Feb 7, 2021 03:12
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Ferrinus posted:And I figured the brawl/thrown -> archery/melee dividing line was actually a bashing -> lethal dividing line, where the first evocation just lets you summon the force fast enough to be combat-ready at all and the second evocation lets you concentrate it to a cutting edge, Yeah, it looks like I just misread the charm. On a second read, it makes a lot more sense.
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Feb 7, 2021 05:58
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Ferrinus posted:Speaking of weird psychic powers, story considerations meant I ended up writing what were effectively a bunch of She Who Lives In Her Name charms for my Essence 5 Twilight (which were properly speaking accessed through an N/A artifact, specifically the three spheres that the yozi cast off back at the end of the primordial war). I'm gonna link 'em here in case anyone thinks they're good: Slight typo in System of Systems, it says "push Terrestrial to Terrestrial", when you mean "to Celestial" But overall I love it. I vastly prefer charms that increase the narrative domain space of a character to charms that give bonuses, but you have a good mix of the former to the latter. These are, (obviously) amazing evocations for a Sorcerer or Craftsman, but the things you can do with Telekinetic Hands vastly increase the domain of what a character can do beyond "I have lots of dice". I also like the way you balance long-distance grapple, making the grapple be a target for Withering attacks means you cannot keep a melee foe at arm's length forever, but you could interpose yourself to protect an ally. The Organization Charms lend themselves to nationbuilding but also an incredibly defense-minded character. Really turns 'it is easier to Attack than Defend' on its head. The Supernal class project idea also sounds pretty cool, but I'm a bit confused about how it would work with Artifacts, would someone need to carry 4 artifacts, or could 3 of them be Manses or other Artifact Buildings or Vehicles? Could 3 party members attune to a different artifact to boost the 4th? Subjugation charms scary. The will-shattering charms were always the most terrifying ones, to me. Will Crushing Force also serves as a Celestial Exalt-finder (albeit with a WP cost). The ability to completely subvert battle groups is awesome, maybe even too strong? Although the Urge is particularly vicious for friendly play or playing nice with NPCs But the Spite charms are all beautiful for expanding domain space. Boss-level telegraphed attacks? Yes. Cataclysmic Stroke applying to poison? My Kimbery Infernal is giddy with the thought. Cataclysmic Sweep to reshape creation? Oh yes. A shame that it'd take a billion years to get all these Evocations AND some sorceries.
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Feb 17, 2021 20:20
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I hadn't given a lot of thought to how System of Systems works with portable artifacts in specific; I guess I was imagining the Evocation to mostly apply to stable emplacements (three graven steles that radiate some effect empowering a fourth, or three manses all channeling energy to your staff, or whatever) but I guess as written you could have other members of your Circle carry a laurel, shield, and horn in order to empower your even-better spear. I'm turning it over in my head and I don't think I mind. As to subjugation charms, as powerful as they are their use has tended to be be abstract or theoretical in my game (sending away animals, threatening someone with the theft of their demons, or the like) - we have yet to see a serious Exalt-on-Exalt combat in which the bearer of the spheres has attempted to just end the fight by spamming Will-Crushing Force rather than fighting conventionally. It's possible that its capacity to deal willpower damage is either too high or too low, so I could see tweaking that in either direction based on results. (It's actually higher than I remember - I thought it was just "two with a possible bonus", not "two plus tier difference with a possible bonus" - I guess you have to gently caress them up a bit first, but immediately chunking 5 WP of a Dragon-Blood is a lot!) Thanks for reading and for finding that typo! Ferrinus fucked around with this message at 20:50 on Feb 17, 2021 |
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Feb 17, 2021 20:42
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Ferrinus posted:Infernal as a distinct exalt type need to be replaced with Akuma as a bargain you can make for forbidden powers that doesn't take your character away. This is my preferred take on things. But I also like a setting where Abyssals are just regular Solars made from ghosts because the Underworld didn’t exist when Solars were created, so no one thought to limit Solar exaltation to Creation. So I am a canon heretic already.
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Feb 24, 2021 20:53
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anyone wanna describe what exciting things have happened in exalted world over the last few years? i havent paid attention basically since the core rulebook eventually came out xd
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Feb 24, 2021 21:37
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Sampatrick posted:anyone wanna describe what exciting things have happened in exalted world over the last few years? i havent paid attention basically since the core rulebook eventually came out xd the lead devs were fired for working at a glacial pace deliberately out of spite, and now the new devs work at a glacial pace due to unintentional structural problems. that's about it
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Feb 25, 2021 00:23
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Mile'ionaha posted:A shame that it'd take a billion years to get all these Evocations AND some sorceries.
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Feb 25, 2021 01:43
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Lambo Trillrissian posted:the lead devs were fired for working at a glacial pace deliberately out of spite, and now the new devs work at a glacial pace due to unintentional structural problems. that's about it But the Dragon-Blooded and Lunar books are out and they're both great.
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Feb 25, 2021 02:41
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I mean, the old devs worked at the exact same pace that literally every corebook Onyx Path has put out since then has come out at, so the idea that they were doing it out of "spite" gets more bizarre every year. Exalted Third Edition was "late" by the standards White Wolf set back when books were developed by full-time employees. By the standard of Onyx Path paying people beer money to develop books in the time they have outside of their full-time jobs in other industries, it was positively loving early.
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Feb 25, 2021 02:45
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