Exhalted: L2P

[TalonDemonKing]

So, a friend of mine managed to convince me to pick up Exhalted, and before we could even get a game off (Or even create characters), we ended up getting scattered to the four winds.

I've been flipping through my books lately, and inbetween what fluff I can read and pretty pictures, I -cannot- wrap my head around the entirety of what exactly is going on.

From what was explained to me; you're some sort of monk-paladin-cleric hybrid with a big stamp on your forhead, randomly chosen to follow some path of whatever that was stuck on your head. Have that meeting over the top crazy cinematic action movie and it was enough to make me pick up a few books.

If anyone is pretty solid on the game; I'd like to learn how to play!

[TheCountAlucard]

From what was explained to me; you're some sort of monk-paladin-cleric hybrid with a big stamp on your forhead, randomly chosen to follow some path of whatever that was stuck on your head. Have that meeting over the top crazy cinematic action movie and it was enough to make me pick up a few books.:smallconfused:

Okay, the base premise is, you were a mortal. Then something happened that caused your soul to have an ancient metaphysical titan-slaying superweapon grafted onto it, the results of which grant you awesome power. And no, you don't exactly have to play a monk-paladin-cleric hybrid, either. Some Exalts never revere their patron deity. Heck, the "big stamp" doesn't always happen either, in the case of Terrestrials.

[WalkingTarget]

My favorite way to describe it is High-powered Fantasy Shounen Anime crossed with Greek Tragedy (although, the game world is varied enough that there are plenty of setting/playstyle options to choose from).

Part of what an Exaltation means is the ability to do things Beyond the Impossible and the universe will ignore laws of physics in the case of sufficient Awesome (really, if you describe your actions in a cool enough manner you get bonuses).

edit - oh, and try to get past thinking of it in terms of D&D ("monk-cleric-paladin hybrid"). The mechanics are different enough, not least of all the lack of real parallels to classes, that it's not really helpful as an aid to understanding. The "stamp" you get is supposed to be in line with what your character was good at before getting the exaltation - it remains easy to improve those abilities, but a Dawn caste (the ones who can buy all of the combat abilities cheaply) can be just as good at Sorcery as a Twilight, as good at hiding as a Night, or as good with languages as an Eclipse. Each caste gets a couple of special abilities, but there aren't restrictions on the purchased abilities within one Exalt type (Solar charms are Solar charms, any of them that meet the rating requirements for a charm can buy it).