>>98069878
Tepet, Yushoto, V'Neef, yes.

>>98069878
I honestly don't remember much about any of the houses so no comment.

After reading all the Exalted source material, I finally got what Exalted wanted to be.

A sword and sorcery game styled after Moorecocks Elric. Wherien he's a whiny failure asshole whos first appearance is of him throwing a tantrum because he killed his cousin who he wanted to fuck.

And why yes, Elric does also doom the world. "The Great Curse" is nothing like Greek tragedy, and everything like Grabowski needing his players to play gothic failures for him to feel like his game was mature.

Everything about it being like Gurran lagan, or slaying planet sized monsters was power and scale creep the writers introduced because White Wolf is lazy and hates editorial work.

Its also barely existent and vestigial. RPG.net gaslit the internet that Exalted was about anything but gothic emo melodrama and the internet as a whole has not caught on.

>>98071821
By "reading all of the Exalted source material" do you mean you read Moorcock and stopped there?

>>98069878
>TQ
Favourite House: Tepet. Favorite Gens: no strong opinion, really. Hated House: Iselsi, I guess. Spoiler question: yes.

>>98071821
At its core, Exalted is just a re skinned WoD, the more you read 1e and comments, the more it becomes clear.

>Its also barely existent and vestigial. RPG.net gaslit the internet that Exalted was about anything but gothic emo melodrama and the internet as a whole has not caught
The devs themselves were two faced, as it is typical for a WW game, the fans and fans-turned-writers never caught on on the grift.

>>98072067
Exalted isn't really anime, Conan, Tanith or Dunsany.
They may copy them, but hate when the players do stuff like ERP with Ligie/Azhram, instead of treating him as a typical WW-villain sue.

>>98072197
At its core, Exalted's influenced by a bunch of things - yes, obviously majorly by WoD, but also a bunch of other things - and it has also evolved across three editions into something not quite the same as it was back when 1E core was published. Not just talking about 3E changes there, either. I've seen a bunch of claims about Exalted being just x, with the x varying, and literally all of those claims are bullshit. Not just any bullshit, either, but "how did someone barely sapient manage to write a full sentence in English" level stupidity.

>>98072242
>At its core, Exalted's influenced by a bunch of things
A lot of it is in an "I am not like the other girls" sense, and like you said WoD is predominant.

>>98072263
No, I didn't say WoD's predominant, I said that it's a major influence. Not the only major influence. Is that the kind of reading comprehense you applied when reading Exalted and it's source material, too?

>>98072275
>comprehense
Dunno what happened there, but *comprehension

>>98072275
>>98072282
>yes, obviously majorly by WoD.
>Majorly.
>Synonyms: Extremely, highly, greatly, really, predominantly and totally.

>>98072308
There's more than one major influence, doofus.

>>98072319
WOD is the only one that feels like hitting an invisible wall.
And 1e Sidereals outright mocked Dunsany in an attempt to one up him.

>>98072308
Majorly has two possible meanings; it can mean the dominant influence, or it can mean an important influence. Predominant is synonymous with one meaning (dominant influence) but not the other (important but not majority influence), and from the context of the statement it was pretty clear the adjective was not used in a way synonymous with predominant.

Alright, alright, this is just not working. Let's go back to brass tacks and see if we can find a consensus. Make your elevator pitch. Describe Exalted in one paragraph as if you're introducing it to someone who has never heard of it. Try to cram as much information as you can in as few words as possible. Then we take a moment to compare notes. Sound good?

>>98072412
>Try to cram as much information as you can in as few words as possible.
That is not how you make a good elevator pitch or introduce a game to someone who's never heard of it. That's how you give someone information overload and have them stop paying any attention to your mad fixation.

I'd probably say something along the lines of 'action heroes with kung fu magic in a neato fantasy setting where you play as movers and shakers doing big dramatic stuff from the start' and expand based on what kinds of questions they asked.

>>98071821

My storyteller largely tracks virtues on the honour system unless it's something really egregious like a martial artist with high compassion using lethal force in a friendly tournament (he let that happen for one round, then forced the roll and had the NPCs shame him a bit for "letting himself get caught up in his pride"). This means... We don't actually gain limit outside of social resistance very often, lol. Yeah, I have temperance 1, but I just make mention of my character smoking fine tobaccos and a bit of Haltan weed during downtime and camping scenes, I don't need to "Roll to not fuck that whore" which, depressingly, I think might have been the original design intent.

The downside is we're not dealing with limit breaks and such as often as we really should, the upside is that it would be pretty damn obnoxious to have your roleplaying constantly mechanically challenged.

>>98072412
Version 1
Exalted is a game where you are chosen as one of the next incarnation of reincarnating demigods. You play a person given titanic power that dwarfs nearly everything in the world. Such power comes with the freedom to do nearly anything, and the consequences. Great deeds often also attract great foes, and there are quite a few that can match your own powers. The footfalls of careless giants often squash thousands of ants, and the people you valued as a mortal are likely no different. You can take care to not harm anyone caught in your passions or simply admit casualties as inevitable and move on.

Version 2
Exalted is a game where you play as a badass comic book or anime character. Be Iron man, be Ryomen Sukuna, be samurai jack, be Vergil devil may cry. Beat up armies and dark gods, or be an eminence in shadows, making secret cabals to take over entire nations. It's just like DND but you start epic level and martials don't get mogged by wizards at literally everything!

Version 3
Don't play that shit man it was big in the early 2000's and its fanbase is mostly 40+ guys in a nostalgia trip. The rules are shadowrun-tier broken complicated dogshit. If you're really into the ATLA aesthetic I'll make our next DND 5e campaign like that, trust.

>>98072412
I'm going to predict that we won't find a consensus. I'd personally say pretty much what >>98072449 suggests and then answer whatever further questions prospective players have.

>>98072502
>Version 1
The problem with this one is that Exalted has a lot of trouble living up to that kind of hype in play. In 3e you have the titanic power of rerolling 6s and doubling 9s, 2e has the titanic power of blocking without a roll, and 1e has the titanic power of grinding through a 1v100 one attack at a time. Yes there's sorcery, but titanic power with sorcery is gated super hard to the lategame of Essence 5. Yes your power is functionally unstoppable in every edition but it's not very titanic about it, there's a lot of nickle and diming your way to victory no matter which version of mainline Exalted you play.

>Version 2
The problem here is that playing any of that shit requires homebrew, and a lot of people see any kind of homebrew as saying system can't actually do it. It doesn't matter if custom charms are canon and making Sukuna's finger blades or Iron Man's flying suit happen would take like two seconds since stuff that's already there is only a fraction off, it's still homebrew and that means the system can't do it.

>Version 3
The problem here is that you're just driving people off. Also, that the systems used to play Exalted aren't really broken in the manner that something like Shadowrun or D&D are in any edition, they're broken in that the meta breaks down such that the best play isn't great fun.

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>>98072412

>>98071821
Exalted wanted to be everything to everybody (but especially WoD fans and D&D fans).

At its most basic core, it's a story about about tragically angsty supers living in a crapshack world. But instead of it being a goth-punk modern America, it's a post-post-apocalyptic high fantasy world, with lots of other fantasy settings within the overall setting being available simply by scaling how many magic items are sitting around, and how many of them your players have (and/or have internalized).

Problem is, it uses the buggy Storyteller System as its base engine, then adds a card-based battle game on top of that, then scraps the card game in development but keeps the same PvP-heavy mentality, and plans on groups filling out the gaps but doesn't give meaningful tools to do so beyond "don't make your Charms better than ours because ours are the cap". Which everyone then ignores.

The limits of Aberrant and Scion were both well known, and yet Exalted went ahead and took the worst parts of both (massive dice pools and tick-based combat respectively). Exalted is so mechanically bad that after three editions, and revisions to two of them, they released a "lite" version that doesn't so much fix stuff as it just dilutes it.

That half the mods on RPG.net seemed to have freelanced for the line didn't hurt keeping it in the eye of the community there. I still remember Rand Brittan's advertising Borgstrom's work in the main rather than their ad-board and getting away with it because he was a mod. But mod abuse in RPG.net is a whole other thread.

Thinking bad thoughts about a varation on the Lunar Exalted for the Underworld.
>Gimmick: Something to do with eating ghosts I guess.
>Excellency: In a similar way to the Abyssal One getting rid of Successes there's allows them to reduce the number of dice their target gets to roll.
>Charms: these guys lack Charm Trees related to the Wyld, Beastmen and Totem Animals instead having Labyrinth Charms, Ghost FUcking Charms and Charms that allow them to do spooky shit

>>98073649
So Liminals?

>>98073661
I mean I have said that Liminals would be a better name for Underworld Lunars before this, yes.
You can even make the Exaltation Requirment similar to Abyssals where you died meeting the requirements to exalt as a Lunar.

>>98073649
I'd have Underworld Lunars be either the ghosts of Lunars empowered by Luna or just regular Lunars, but either way their task is to actively hunt down and slay the Abyssals. Kind of the inverse of their former role to serve the Solars and make them look good, now the Umbrals (because we have to recycle WoD terms when possible) roam the Underworld working to undermine and overthrow the power of the Abyssals and their masters.

"But what kewl new powerz do they get?!?!"

I don't know. Let them have ghost powers if you need something beyond a distinct purpose and meaning to make them feel like special snowflakes. Maybe they are really good at eating ghosts to replenish their Essence.

>>98073686
I thought Lunar exaltation required you to survive? That's the opposite of dying

>>98073724
At least my idea for Excellency where they can spend Motes to Reduce the number of Dice in an opponent can roll is on point.

>>98073027
>The problem here is that playing any of that shit requires homebrew, and a lot of people see any kind of homebrew as saying system can't actually do it
They are kind of right, it is a major problem with the exigents, since point to them implies that the game doesn't support X, and the player has to make X from the ground up.

>How do I play a sailor diplomat? A.K.A. Eclipse caste
>Oh, sorry, you need to use an exigent for this.
This is a canon example

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>>98073649
I see the vision, and you can make them normal ghosts if you want because ghost cannibalism has been a thing since the first drafts of Wraith, possibly as far back as Ars Magica, but I really don't care for the gameline to give a proper look at that.
Also, you can just steal the Primeval manifestations from Geist the Sin Eater 1e and that should be a decent enough skeleton for an antagonist stat block, even if you need to buff the hell out of them.

>>98073724
Regular Lunars who just happen to hang out in the Underworld and hunt creatures of death would be my favorite. That shiuld be something that falls witjin Lunars' themes and capabilities, I think.

>>98073952
1e Geist had perfect defenses and 2 digits excellencies, only their limited MP handicap them in favor of creation's characters.

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>>98073976
Odds are it one of those prompts that always had a mention but no one bothered to flesh out.

>>98073989
Yeah, if you specialize hard into a power, yeah, you can get some insane boosts.

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>>98074014
>Odds are it one of those prompts that always had a mention but no one bothered to flesh out.
It is lunars, even their animal side is underdeveloped.
You don't see them pulling these kinds of stunts.

>>98073952
I figure that "Flip the Excellency" is always good for making Exalts Aligned with the Underworld.
>Solar Exalted Add [Ability] Successes to their Dice Pool/Abyssal Exalted Subtract [Ability] Sucesses from an Enemies Dice Pool.
>Lunar Exalted add up to [Attribute] Dice to their Pool/Spooky Ghost Lunars Subtract up to [Attribute] Dice from their Opponents Pool
>DB's can Reroll Dice that dont Succeed/Underworld Element DB's can force the enemy to Reroll Sucesses.

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>>98074136
I have heard some advice before that boils down to "take everything from the Beast Courts and give it to the Silver Pact," and I am not sure if that helps all that much because of how much they don't use their animal side in terms of gear or abilities. In most cases it just gives you the ability to do an animal thing but no real reason to do it, the best example off the top of my head being the Bear Totem. You can hibernate through the winter, but the game lacks an incentive to do so because the IRL reasons just don't apply.

>>98074344
Oh yeah, that is a nice mechanical trait to have. Did we ever get any details on the underworld elements? They felt even more of a first draft than the one from Autoctonia and they had even less of a reason to flesh it out.

>>98074435
Not really. Except for one of my favourite bits from 2e where because the underworld is so innately connected to humanity, even mortals can learnt eh first step of each Dark elemental path from Dragon Kings

>>98069878
thats street wear toph and zuko

>>98074455
Neat, where's that from? Abyssal 2e?

>>98074497
modern dragon-blooded

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>>98074435
>Oh yeah, that is a nice mechanical trait to have
1e wins again

>>98069878
Tepet (perfect underdogs), Nefvarin (cool name), I don't hate any of them in particular, hell yes, in fact I had a Solar NC her during a Gunstar game

>>98074520
Scroll of Fallen Races - Dragon Kings, gives info chargen rules for them including the Dark Elemental Paths

>>98074564
Thank you very much.

Barring charms that change the default rules, can you only roll Lore for topics you have a specialty in? Or can you roll any and take a penalty for not being trained in that field?

>>98074352
This is a problem with animal characters in general, they can end up as "stat-checkers with niche abilities" if the author isn't careful.
A solution is giving them thematic esoteric abilities, such as healing to deers.

>>98074638
https://jackiechanadventures.fandom.com/wiki/Talismans#Powers_and_abilities

>>98074631
iirc it was the same deal with crafts in their own edition.

>>98074650
>Turtle: shields, divination, time manipulation and ninja prowess.
>Rabbit: Easter & sex appeal.
>Rat: normally are plague themed, see ratkin from wod.
>Ox and Horse: these cannot scape being Stat checkers.
>Monkey: Sun Wukong saved them from being only "super agile".
>Snake: poison, sorcery, healing and seduction.
>Rooster: saved by their connections to the sun and mystical beasts.
>Sheep/Goat: sleep and wool holy magics/demonic weirdness.
>Pig: comic relief, or embodiment of sins
>Dragon and Tiger: Too many to list.
>Dog: stat checker, other canids are more lucky.

Which abilities are the least susceptible to getting outsourced to specialized artifacts?

>>98074758
Presence, socialize and bureaucracy

>>98074842
>they're all useless
another dub for craftchads

What charms did we have for raising your effective Essence, and would any of them help a godblooded/halfcaste with the Essence 3 limit?
(Don't care about which edition, although I think what I barely recall was used in 2E for breaking the Essence 5 limit)


And since I'm already asking about those who aren't Exalted what martial art styles and sorcery spells would you recommend for mortals? I think I remember the usefulnesss of sorcery varied a lot, at least.

>>98074901
>What charms did we have for raising your effective Essence, and would any of them help a godblooded/halfcaste with the Essence 3 limit?
achieving your motivation

>>98074901
In 3e Summon Elemental is great for mortals. Non-exalts aren't part of the Yozi surrender oaths so aren't able tobanish demons away if they fail to bind them in any edition, but in 3e elementals that you fail to bind simply dissolve back into essence rather than sticking around and being potentially very butthurt. So it's all upside compared to 2e where an angry Kukla guard might show up to turn you inside out for the insult of summoning it.

>>98074934
>Non-exalts aren't part of the Yozi surrender oaths so aren't able tobanish demons away if they fail to bind them in any edition
the surrender oaths are part of the binding, I dunno if they're part of the banishing.

>>98074895
None of those is useless, those.

>>98075000
>can't even make an argument
more grass for craftchads

>>98075048
I would've made a counterargument if you'd made an argument for their uselessness, but I felt that going through the trouble of doing so in response to a baseless assertion would've been wasted effort.

>>98073622
Exalted was made before Scion.

>>98074631
No, Lore is an ability that represents general knowledge, your specialties in it represent what you're particularly knowledgeable about. At most you'd roll against a higher difficulty when dealing with topics you're unfamiliar with.

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>>98075560
good to know, thanks

Can someone help remind me of any of the things, from any edition, that let someone do sorcery a circle above what they normally could? I remember there was like, brigets cloth or something, but I forget if it was from dreams of the first age or some other book. And then maybe the paragons staff did something, though that could have been only for humans not exalts. Was there anything else? I remember tepet having something, like an incense burner or something like that I thought

>>98075951
Mnemon has a thing (like a lantern)
Scarlet Empress has the Mantle of Bridget

One lets you use the entire circle above, one lets you summon demons a level above only. I think the Mnemon one is the demon one and Scarlet has full level above but I might be misremembering

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>>98075959
That thing

>>98075951
In 3e anyone can do workings above the level of sorcery they can cast, except that Terrestrial circle sorcerers can't do Solar 3 level workings

>>98075959
Do you remember what book talked about the Mantle of Bridget? I could just open pdfs one by one and ctrl f, but I figured I'd ask first

>>98074901
Create an Artifact or Hearthstone with an effect or Evocation that increases your effective Essence. There is also Soul Fire Shaper Form, from the Prismatic Arrangement of Creation SMA, but that's an SMA, and that Form Charm is E4 anyways.

>>98071821
My interest in Exalted is derived purely from my experience reading Keychain of Creation when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. I have never read Moorecock, or posted on RPG.net. I have always seen it as a goofy, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Anime game.

>>98073649
I had started concepting a group of Exigents made by the Gods of Near-Extinct Animals. I had sort of imagined them as being kind of like Terrestrial-tier Underworld Lunars. I was thinking of calling them the "Extirpatent."

>>98075951
As previously pointed out, the Mantle of Brigid in general and the Emerald Thurible for demon summoning let you onto a higher level of sorcery. Going Akuma (or maybe 3e warlock i guess?) lets you onto a higher level of sorcery. The Mantle of Ash and Soot as a grave good version of the Mantle of Brigid lets you onto a higher level of necromancy. You can fake having a higher level of sorcery with a sorcery-capturing cord or the Crucible of Tarim and someone/somewhere to get the sorcery from. In 3e sorcerous workings maybe. In 2e you could commit Power-Awarding Prana to someone and have them raise their Essence to E4-E5 the normal way, and if you never uncommit the effect shouldn't fall off even when they ascend into a spirit and they should still be able to take Solar charms like the various circles of sorcery. Who knows what happens when you uncommit, but at least some of it might be recoverable and sorcery's the most likely stuff to stick around. Oh, right, ascension - yeah, becoming a spirit that can learn a higher level of sorcery than you would otherwise be able to (i.e. a mortal who becomes a god and reaches 6+ can learn second circle sorcery) would work. Having a 2e Sidereal use Riding the Dragon to transform you into a lesser elemental dragon and spending xp to let you stick around and retain sanity with potential for more would work too. Theoretically if you could learn the next circle before the charm ended the 1e/3e versions might work too, if you were then looked after and given treatments to bring you back to good mental health. The Neverborn can probably do something similar to Akuma-tising people with Whispers that'd get them to second circle necromancy, what with how they were able to bring solar ghosts up to void circle necromancy by a similar method. Finally, I'd expect some combination of Wyld shenanigans to be able to push you to a higher level of sorcery, whether that is by making you into a behemoth or unshaped chicanery.

>>98073622
>But mod abuse in RPG.net is a whole other thread.
I remember when RPGNet was good... like, 15 years ago. Only went there for PBP though.

>>98076141
I think it was Book of Three Circles. Counts you as one circle and +5 Essence higher.

>>98075951
>>98075959
Emerald Thurible lets you cast Demon of the Xth Circle at one level higher than what would normally be allowed.

It is theorized that the Mantle of Soot is the grave goods version of the Mantle of Brigid which affects necromancy instead.

>>98076996
>what with how they were able to bring solar ghosts up to void circle necromancy by a similar method.
Weren't the deathlords basically Solar ghosts juiced up on 3CD soul shards? Their mote pools correspond to a Solar's mote pools + a spirit's mote pools combined.

>>98073622
>Problem is, it uses the buggy Storyteller System as its base engine.
My theory is, that the real reason, was the last minute introduction of the Solar Exalted; a lot of 1e feels like it was rewritten to accommodate them, and overpower them.

>Card based battle.
Both 2e and 3e are halfway there.

>>98077026
>Weren't the deathlords basically Solar ghosts juiced up on 3CD soul shards? Their mote pools correspond to a Solar's mote pools + a spirit's mote pools combined.
Yes, but stitching Exaltations and mortal souls together with demon souls is how Akuma work too. The most exceptional part of the Deathlords is that they did it so much better that they gave ghosts Exalted powers, including a bunch of powers they never had in life.