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Neon Knight
2008-09-25, 10:56 PM
Pretty self-explanatory. I remember we've had this discussion a few times before, but oh well. Forums are cyclical things.

Question 1) Which edition should I get, 1rst or 2nd?

Question 2) If I was looking to DM/GM/story tell/whatever being the bossman of the game is called, what books I am going to need? Do I have to have the Storyteller's Companion, or is the main book enough?

Question 3) Do I need all of the Exalted type supplemental books if I am merely having these Exalted types as NPCs? Better worded, Are the supplements required to represent the non-Solar Exalted?

Question 4) This being White Wolf I probably know the answer, but I assume that the different Exalted types operate on such different power levels that running them all in the same group would be a bad idea. Is this so?

Question 5) This is something of a subjective question, but exactly how strictly does the average Exalted player expect you to stick to the fluff? The urge to make slight changes overwhelms me. I realize that question is kind of hard to answer, and I may elaborate on it later.

Question 6) I've noticed something of an Asian aesthetic to the books, at least the visual sections. Is this also present in the fluff, and is it easy to remove this aesthetic and replace it with something else? I've got Assassin's Creed on the brain, and Arabia sounds nice. Persia, India. That sort of thing.

Question 7) What do Exalted... do exactly? That sounds kind of lame and sort of obvious, but I've never really gotten the impression of how Sidereals, Solars, Lunars, Dragon-blooded, Abyssals, etc. do in their everyday lives, or how they primarily operate, or where they spend most of their time, etc. I bet the books will answer this, but I'd like to get a general impression.

streakster
2008-09-25, 11:13 PM
Pretty self-explanatory. I remember we've had this discussion a few times before, but oh well. Forums are cyclical things.

Question 4) This being White Wolf I probably know the answer, but I assume that the different Exalted types operate on such different power levels that running them all in the same group would be a bad idea. Is this so?

Question 7) What do Exalted... do exactly? That sounds kind of lame and sort of obvious, but I've never really gotten the impression of how Sidereals, Solars, Lunars, Dragon-blooded, Abyssals, etc. do in their everyday lives, or how they primarily operate, or where they spend most of their time, etc. I bet the books will answer this, but I'd like to get a general impression.

4) Yes, power levels vary. Running them in the same group is fine (They all get cool tricks to pull that feel unique) provided your characters are more focused on RP or fun than equity.

7)My impression? They don't have everyday lives. They're Exalted. They're out to change the world and kick reason to the curb!

More helpfully, Solars fight evil, Lunars do stuff, Abyssals do evil things (or rebel), and Sidereals try to hold the whole mess together. Every Exalted has a "quest" too - not like "kill warlord x" but more like "Destroy the Deathlords" or "Extinguish the Unconquered Sun" or so on. Big dreams.


Also, here.
http://keychain.patternspider.net/

MeklorIlavator
2008-09-25, 11:19 PM
Okay, in order:
1) Only used 2nd, so no opinion.
2) Never run a game, but I think you only need the core book in 2nd ed
3) You can use non-solars with just the core books, but from what I can tell you definitely can't play them.
4)Kinda. There are two tiers; Celestial(Sidereals, Solars, Lunars, Abyssals) and terrestrial(Dragon-blooded) exalted. Now, Celestial are more powerful overall, but you can bump up terrestrials by giving them more xp.
5)Not really sure. The setting is very interwoven, but alot of the small stuff is mutable. Need more info.
6) All depends on where you set the game. For example, the south makes a perfect Arabian Setting(IMO, of course). The Standard fluff is very...all encompassing.
7)Depends on the age(1st is very different from second), and to really get a feel you would need to read the backstory, but here's my best go(second age only):
Sidereals-Masters of fate. Can literally see the future. They act as Creations trouble shooters, trying to keep everything together, but are somewhat swamped after orchestrating the killing/imprisonment of the former troubleshooters(the solars). They had a good reason, though. They are constantly busy reeling in goods, defeating fey incursions, and politicing amongst themselves.
Solars-The former trouble-shooters/master of creation, the curse of the primordials made them go mad, and they were destroyed/imprisoned. Recently, the prison keeping them in was shattered, and now they walk the earth again, but they are hunted by the dragon-blooded(their former servants). They are Heroes for now, but the curse still lies on them.
Lunars-Very Different. Some try and create a human society that can exist without Exalted, but this has mixed results. They are also hunted. Don't know too much about them, to be honest.
Dragon-blooded-The current rulers of Creation. They have a religion that puts them in the place of gods, and the other exalted as demons that must be hunted and killed(primarily the Lunars and Solars, the Sidereals helped come up with it). They are administrators, warriors, and leaders of men.
Abyssals-The Solar's prison was shattered by a ritual preformed by the Deathlords(evil? however did you guess?), and about half of the solars were corrupted and made into abyssals, servants of the underworld who work to undo creation and bring down those responsible for their former master's deaths(deathlords were created by the dead primordials, killed by the other exalted). Some rebel against this, however.

This isn't that good of a description, but to get a good one you really need to sit down and read the backstory and the sections describing the types of exalted.

Callos_DeTerran
2008-09-25, 11:29 PM
Hmm...were Alchemicals ever updated to 2nd Edition?

Tengu_temp
2008-09-25, 11:40 PM
1. Second edition is better in general.
2 & 3. The main book is enough for players, if they want to play Solars. The storyteller, should he want to introduce other kinds of Exalted as NPCs, needs the Storyteller's Companion. To play as other kinds of Exalted, you need their respective books.
4. What MeklorIlavator said.
5. I don't know, because I played with only one group.
6. Creation is huge, and therefore you can have all kinds of aestetics - the Empire is a combination of Japan, China and ancient Rome, but in other regions the atmosphere can be very different, from pirates to Arabian Nights deserts to frozen wastelands.
7. What MeklorIlavator said. Keep in mind that all Exalted are very powerful and each of them usually has a goal he set before himself to accomplish - and those are always of great scale, like abolishing slavery in the whole world or defeating the Fae Folk once and for all. Note - if a campaign goes for long enough, players will accomplish these goals (unless they die in the meantime).

nargbop
2008-09-26, 12:10 AM
The OP's last question leads directly to my answer : Playing Exalted requires a completely different frame of mind from playing D&D or GURPS. Your characters are enormously awesome; I can't imagine playing Exalted passively in a DM-says-something-players-respond way. In Exalted, you are telling a story of epic proportions together.

My suggestion : Read the Exalted Core book as if you were doing homework on it : ask yourself questions while reading it, and don't be afraid to jump around trying to answer those questions. Ask experienced friends questions while getting the Story of the World inside your head. Make sure you can get your head around the SIGNIFICANT backstory before trying to create a character. Sit in on a number of games, asking questions afterward.

The best sort of people for playing Exalted with are the same sort of people who aren't emberassed to LARP or go to costume balls or work at Ren Fairs.

BobVosh
2008-09-26, 12:13 AM
Pretty self-explanatory. I remember we've had this discussion a few times before, but oh well. Forums are cyclical things.

Question 1) Which edition should I get, 1rst or 2nd?
2nd ed is quicker combat, bit more clean and smooth running. I liked 1st ed combat better as it felt more epic with both players rolling.


Question 2) If I was looking to DM/GM/story tell/whatever being the bossman of the game is called, what books I am going to need? Do I have to have the Storyteller's Companion, or is the main book enough? Not needed, I would recommend it though. (Both editions)


Question 3) Do I need all of the Exalted type supplemental books if I am merely having these Exalted types as NPCs? Better worded, Are the supplements required to represent the non-Solar Exalted? For flavor on the lunars...I would say yes unless you get a good website for it. This is if they go to lunar society, otherwise you should be fine.


Question 4) This being White Wolf I probably know the answer, but I assume that the different Exalted types operate on such different power levels that running them all in the same group would be a bad idea. Is this so? 3 tiers: Celestial, Terrestrial , and Mortals. Cel can mix with each other, Terrestrials are fine with Celestials for essence 2-3, but a little underpowered, and who would play a mortal?


Question 5) This is something of a subjective question, but exactly how strictly does the average Exalted player expect you to stick to the fluff? The urge to make slight changes overwhelms me. I realize that question is kind of hard to answer, and I may elaborate on it later. It is WW. How do you define "average" for a fan of the system? You have too wide of a range for it.


Question 6) I've noticed something of an Asian aesthetic to the books, at least the visual sections. Is this also present in the fluff, and is it easy to remove this aesthetic and replace it with something else? I've got Assassin's Creed on the brain, and Arabia sounds nice. Persia, India. That sort of thing.Yes and no. Fluff is easy, but a lot of the Sidereal stuff is impossible to refluff without changing all of Heaven.


Question 7) What do Exalted... do exactly? That sounds kind of lame and sort of obvious, but I've never really gotten the impression of how Sidereals, Solars, Lunars, Dragon-blooded, Abyssals, etc. do in their everyday lives, or how they primarily operate, or where they spend most of their time, etc. I bet the books will answer this, but I'd like to get a general impression.What do adventurers do? Anything they want. Exalted are adventurers on crack. Thier motivations tend to be more epic, but more or less they do the same things.

Kiero
2008-09-26, 03:45 AM
In all honesty, your best bet would be to take the question to RPGnet. Self-professed home for Exalted, one of it's enduring favourites.

I've made it easy, here's your thread (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=416452) over there, you don't even need to register if you don't want to, just watch the responses.

Tengu_temp
2008-09-26, 06:17 AM
I disagree. This is the Gaming (d20 and General RPG) forum, there are fans of non-d20 games here that happily answer questions and discuss them. Let's not turn this into a forum about DND solely, with the rare minorities of other game threads being pushed into a ghetto.

Not to mention that many people wouldn't join a new forum just to ask a question they can ask somewhere else. I know I wouldn't.

Rad
2008-09-26, 07:57 AM
I'm very intrigued by Exalted since I got the main book. There is an incredibly well-written adventure online: Forgotten Suns (http://rpg.divnull.com/exalted/). I'm still waiting to play it but it looks like it's the perfect forst adventure for new players. I'd recommend it to you.

Kiero
2008-09-26, 07:59 AM
I disagree. This is the Gaming (d20 and General RPG) forum, there are fans of non-d20 games here that happily answer questions and discuss them. Let's not turn this into a forum about DND solely, with the rare minorities of other game threads being pushed into a ghetto.

Not to mention that many people wouldn't join a new forum just to ask a question they can ask somewhere else. I know I wouldn't.

Turn? It already is. Non-D&D threads vanish within a day or two. This isn't even that big a site as it is. RPGnet is one of the biggest on the internet, and has a massive Exalted community. I wouldn't be surprised if its Exalted community is bigger than the entire regular poster-ship on this forum.

It's entirely worth joining a new forum if you're going to get a much better quality of response, due to a much larger number of interested parties, and often developers and the like too.

potatocubed
2008-09-26, 09:09 AM
1. 2nd edition. It's readily available and any flaws are easily houseruled. You are, however, missing all the fun of Alchemicals, but I suspect that will be rectified sooner or later. You're also missing the Fair Folk fatsplat, which is, frankly, A Good Thing.

2. You can run a game with just what's in the core book. Basically, the ST's companion is a space-filler if you're waiting for/not willing to pay for the fatsplats for each Exalt type. If you've got all the hefty books, the ST companion isn't much use. Otherwise, it's great.

3. I've never run a game without the fatsplats, so I can't really say. In theory, no, they're not required.

4. I wouldn't run a mixed circle. The power levels of Exalted do vary, but the crunch and fluff don't always match up regarding mismatched power levels *cough*Sidereals*cough*. On the other hand, plenty of people cheerfully run mixed circles, so it's eminently possible.

Although, if you're going to mix Exalted types, I figure you should get the fatsplats for each. I don't think there's enough info in the STC to tide you over.

5. Depends on the player more than the game, I think.

6. Creation - the setting for Exalted - is huge. If you want to wodge in a little slice of Persia, there's plenty of room in the southern Threshold (which will make 0 sense until you look at a good map, but hey).

7. Solars spend most of their time on the run from various groups just powerful enough to give them pause, pursuing mostly personal projects of immense scope. Things like 'drive back the snows of the north to create more temperate farmland for my people'. Lunars... I have no idea. Dragonblooded scheme and plot against each other. Sidereals scheme and plot against everyone, and do paperwork. Abyssals kill things and either mope about all emo-like or turn into monsters. This summary, I will admit, is coloured by my opinions of the various Exalt types. Guess which ones I like!


It's entirely worth joining a new forum if you're going to get a much better quality of response

Wait... are we reading the same RPGnet?

Sure, you'll get more responses over there - especially for niche games like Burning Whatever or Reign - but the average quality is certainly no better.

Rad
2008-09-26, 11:37 AM
Turn? It already is. Non-D&D threads vanish within a day or two. This isn't even that big a site as it is. RPGnet is one of the biggest on the internet, and has a massive Exalted community. I wouldn't be surprised if its Exalted community is bigger than the entire regular poster-ship on this forum.

It's entirely worth joining a new forum if you're going to get a much better quality of response, due to a much larger number of interested parties, and often developers and the like too.

You're right in your analysis; non D&D threads on this board are doomed :smallfrown: I think this could be solved by making two different subforums for D&D and the other roleplaying games but so far the admins have proved impervious to the idea.

Back OT, the Lunars are primarly concerned with the defence of Creation by the attacks of the Fair Folk. They have a loose society, called the Silver Pact, an there are a few elders who survived all the way from the Usurpation.
Most lunars stay out of the reach of the dragon-blooded and close to the Wyld. They rarely get as far as the thresold and never venture in the Blessed Isle (unless they exalt there).
Moreover the curse of the Lunars slowly turn them into bestial monsters; the main accomplishment if the Silver Pact is to have discovered some magical tattoos that stop this process completely and seek all newly-exalted lunars to do so.

Neon Knight
2008-09-26, 12:04 PM
A second batch of questioning. Thank you for your responses so far, and for humoring my vaugness.

Question 8) I'm noticing a certain repeated motif with the weapons that characters wield in the visual representations I've seen, namely that they seem limited to fists, katars, buster style swords, bows, and daggers, usually twin. How limited are the arsenals characters can wield? More generally, how tightly does the game tie you to certain asethetics?

I realize all this freaking out about the asethetic can seem a bit petty and shallow, but asethetics are pretty important to me, and part of the reason I am attracted to Exalted is the promise of asethetic and narrative descriptive freedom, what with rule of cool being a major repeated vibe I get off of Ecalted and Exalted players. I'm the kinda of guy who wonders what a fight between someone using Ivy's swordwhip from Soul Calibur, someone using the hidden blade from Assassin's Creed (man, I sound like a broken record or an annoying fanboy,) and someone who fights with iron rings around his forearms like the Tailor from Kung Fu Hustle would look like.

Really, all I want is to be emancipated from the shackles of slavish adherence to realism.

Question 9) I should have mentioned this before, but if I do play Exalted, PbP is the mostly likely format, consideirng I can't find any real life games in my area. For any RPG. How does Exalted handle over the internet?

Question 5 redux) Alright, here was what I was planning on doing, along with my excuses reasoning.

My problem intially was that I couldn't find a good antagonist that interested me. Abyssals, the deathlords, neverborn, primordials... Bah. I just couldn't get behind them for some reason. I don't know much about the Fair Folk, and should probably check them out before inserting something that may share many similarities with them.

What I'm interested in is the ideal of "horrors of the Elder Planet" found in the works of Robert E. Howard. This concept is seperate and distinct from the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones in a quite a few ways.

The essential idea is that things linger from an older time, things that should be long dead, nightmares from the black eons of the dawn of time that decadent, aberrant, abhorrent, degenerate, and in general should not exist.

I was going to adapt it by citing the "Rebirth" theme in Exalted. If an Exalted dies, his Exaltation goes to someone else. I even think past lives are used in the setting if I remeber correctly, thus meaning souls are reused. If these things can be recycled, why not the physical material of the world? And if so, perhaps at certain times that matter remebers its former incarnation, and takes the shape of horrors whose age is eons past, fiends out of time seeking to revert the world to a primal state.

Or perhaps gates to forbidden places outside of time and existence sometimes gape forth to loose the hideous shapes of abominations banished from time and reality, come forth to contest their excommunication.

In other words, its basically Lovecraftian themes in a format and emphasis more appropriate for a story of passion, heroism, and bloody magnificent combat.

That's what I want to do; establish that before the current iteration of Creation, there were old spheres of Elder things destroyed for their hellish and foul forms and ways, and that these things still lurk, remnants of a lost and terrible time forgotten and forsaken.

Is this particularly offensive to the pre-established setting?

Tengu_temp
2008-09-26, 12:24 PM
8. You can use any type of weapon (heck, there are even firewands - magic guns that shoot fire), but as an Exalted warrior, you will probably use artifacts. Artifact weapons and armor are more elaborate than normal ones, much more powerful, and, in the case of weapons, also usually much larger (light weapons are an exception). All artifacts are also made from one of the magical materials, each associated with a single type of Exalted, and Exalted of this type usually use artifacts made from this material - for Solars it's Orichalcum, which looks similar to gold. Most artifact weapons are Daiklaves (swords), but practically all weapons can be artifacts.
Unusual weapons include fighting gauntlets and boots, fighting chains, the already mentioned firewands, hook swords, razor or spiked harnesses, claws, war fans, boomerangs, chakrams... and that's just the main book. Scroll of the Monk has more.

9. I play Exalted over the net and the only problem is when one or more of the players aren't active, but that's standard for all PBP games.

5 redux. Other people will surely give you more specific examples, but I'll say myself that - yes, Exalted has its own Lovecraftian horrors and supports players battling them.

MeklorIlavator
2008-09-26, 12:28 PM
8) No clue. The core books are kinda limited, but I think making custom weapons isn't that hard.
9) I think it works well that way because people are more willing to write huge descriptive pieces than to verbally communicate them, and people are also more willing to let others do the same.

5)Okay, in a way that wouldn't work, and in a way it works perfectly. See, creation is the first world, created by the primordials, who then created the gods to rule over it/maintain it while the primordials then played the "games of creation". The gods couldn't actively move against the Primordials, but they were able to create the exalted(mortals raised to godlike power) to fight for them, and they ended up either killing or imprisoning the primordials. Now, the imprisoned primordials still have much of their power and were able to create new servants, demons. These demons might be exactly what you're looking for. Also, the prison dimension is close to what you seem to want, but I'm not entirely sure about that.

Tengu_temp
2008-09-26, 12:32 PM
I think making custom weapons isn't that hard.


I agree with that. If your ST doesn't let you, for example, fight with the iron bands Kasrkin mentions and treat them as fighting gauntlets, then it means he does not encourage creativity. And Exalted requires creative players and storyteller.

Artanis
2008-09-26, 12:59 PM
A second batch of questioning. Thank you for your responses so far, and for humoring my vaugness.

Question 8) I'm noticing a certain repeated motif with the weapons that characters wield in the visual representations I've seen, namely that they seem limited to fists, katars, buster style swords, bows, and daggers, usually twin. How limited are the arsenals characters can wield? More generally, how tightly does the game tie you to certain asethetics?

I realize all this freaking out about the asethetic can seem a bit petty and shallow, but asethetics are pretty important to me, and part of the reason I am attracted to Exalted is the promise of asethetic and narrative descriptive freedom, what with rule of cool being a major repeated vibe I get off of Ecalted and Exalted players. I'm the kinda of guy who wonders what a fight between someone using Ivy's swordwhip from Soul Calibur, someone using the hidden blade from Assassin's Creed (man, I sound like a broken record or an annoying fanboy,) and someone who fights with iron rings around his forearms like the Tailor from Kung Fu Hustle would look like.

Really, all I want is to be emancipated from the shackles of slavish adherence to realism.
Aesthetics are one of the things that is officially the most malleable things in Exalted. The book practically (or literally, I can't quite remember) basically says, "if it's cool, do it". As an example from the Exalted campaign I was in not too long ago, one of the characters was a musician who fought by sending waves of destructive resonance (think Tacoma Narrows Bridge) at the enemy using his instrument...and it used the stats of an Orichalcum Powerbow.

And seriously, "the shackles of slavish adherence to realism" don't exist for Exalts. Even the weakest Exalts tell the laws of "realism" to sit down and shut up, and then stab them a couple times for good measure :smallwink:


Question 9) I should have mentioned this before, but if I do play Exalted, PbP is the mostly likely format, consideirng I can't find any real life games in my area. For any RPG. How does Exalted handle over the internet?
PbP might work better for Exalted than for other games, simply because there's more emphasis on actually describing things, and the more awesome the description the better. I know that it works VERY well on something like OpenRPG.


Question 5 redux) Alright, here was what I was planning on doing, along with my excuses reasoning.

My problem intially was that I couldn't find a good antagonist that interested me. Abyssals, the deathlords, neverborn, primordials... Bah. I just couldn't get behind them for some reason. I don't know much about the Fair Folk, and should probably check them out before inserting something that may share many similarities with them.

What I'm interested in is the ideal of "horrors of the Elder Planet" found in the works of Robert E. Howard. This concept is seperate and distinct from the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones in a quite a few ways.

The essential idea is that things linger from an older time, things that should be long dead, nightmares from the black eons of the dawn of time that decadent, aberrant, abhorrent, degenerate, and in general should not exist.

I was going to adapt it by citing the "Rebirth" theme in Exalted. If an Exalted dies, his Exaltation goes to someone else. I even think past lives are used in the setting if I remeber correctly, thus meaning souls are reused. If these things can be recycled, why not the physical material of the world? And if so, perhaps at certain times that matter remebers its former incarnation, and takes the shape of horrors whose age is eons past, fiends out of time seeking to revert the world to a primal state.

Or perhaps gates to forbidden places outside of time and existence sometimes gape forth to loose the hideous shapes of abominations banished from time and reality, come forth to contest their excommunication.

In other words, its basically Lovecraftian themes in a format and emphasis more appropriate for a story of passion, heroism, and bloody magnificent combat.

That's what I want to do; establish that before the current iteration of Creation, there were old spheres of Elder things destroyed for their hellish and foul forms and ways, and that these things still lurk, remnants of a lost and terrible time forgotten and forsaken.

Is this particularly offensive to the pre-established setting?
It's very hard to be offensive to the pre-established setting :smallbiggrin:

Two things immediately come to mind: the Yozis and the Neverborn. Both of them fit your description of what you want:

In the beginning, the Primordials made Creation, and made the Gods to run the little things (like, say, Fate). The Gods didn't like being, in effect, slaves, and came up with a way to kill the Primordials: the Exalted. The war was long and horrifically bloody, and in the end, the Exalted won.

Some of the Primordials had been killed during the war, and these became the Neverborn: too dead to truly live, but too Big to truly die. The very concept of a Primordial somehow being dead created the Underworld. As it stands, the Neverborn are trying to kill Creation and literally everything in it, which would fit with the "dead things rising out of the depths to cause Very Bad Things" that you say you want.

The Yozis are the Primordials who surrendered, and as part of that surrender, had one of their souls executed, which horribly altered and mutilated them. They were then stuffed inside the body of their leader, Malfeas, which now sits not just outside Creation, but outside everything. Your statement "Or perhaps gates to forbidden places outside of time and existence sometimes gape forth to loose the hideous shapes of abominations banished from time and reality, come forth to contest their excommunication" is the definition of what the Yozis are and want to accomplish.

Kyeudo
2008-09-26, 01:29 PM
A second batch of questioning. Thank you for your responses so far, and for humoring my vaugness.

Question 8) I'm noticing a certain repeated motif with the weapons that characters wield in the visual representations I've seen, namely that they seem limited to fists, katars, buster style swords, bows, and daggers, usually twin. How limited are the arsenals characters can wield? More generally, how tightly does the game tie you to certain asethetics?

I realize all this freaking out about the asethetic can seem a bit petty and shallow, but asethetics are pretty important to me, and part of the reason I am attracted to Exalted is the promise of asethetic and narrative descriptive freedom, what with rule of cool being a major repeated vibe I get off of Ecalted and Exalted players. I'm the kinda of guy who wonders what a fight between someone using Ivy's swordwhip from Soul Calibur, someone using the hidden blade from Assassin's Creed (man, I sound like a broken record or an annoying fanboy,) and someone who fights with iron rings around his forearms like the Tailor from Kung Fu Hustle would look like.

Really, all I want is to be emancipated from the shackles of slavish adherence to realism.


Exalted lets you go wild with the stylistic choices. If you don't care for a Grand Daiklave (i.e. Buster Sword), you can go with a normal Daiklave (a more normal sized sword), a Reaver Daiklave (short and choppy), a Reaper Daiklave (essentiallly your scimitars and katanas for exalts), paired Short Daiklaves, or a Wavecutter Daiklave (Exalted cutlasses!). And that's just for swords.

When you start looking at the other options, you have Grimcleavers, Goremauls, Grimscythes, Bloodspike Harnesses, Slayer Katars, Serpent-Sting Staves, Smashfists, Dire Lances, Dire Chains, God Kicking Boots, Razor Claws, Sky Cutters, Power Bows, Slings of Deadly Prowess, and Infinite Jade Chakrams.

Then there is the various martial arts styles, which can vary from the extremely simple but effective Solar Hero Style (hit it hard) to elemental styles like Fire Dragon Style (light things on fire with karate!) to stranger styles like Dreaming Pearl Courtesan style, which IIRC is a martial art devoted to diplomacy.



Question 9) I should have mentioned this before, but if I do play Exalted, PbP is the mostly likely format, consideirng I can't find any real life games in my area. For any RPG. How does Exalted handle over the internet?


I can't imagine trying to play it in real life. So much discription on stunts would be lost, it would be like watching a black and white TV after having seen color TV.



Question 5 redux) Alright, here was what I was planning on doing, along with my excuses reasoning.

My problem intially was that I couldn't find a good antagonist that interested me. Abyssals, the deathlords, neverborn, primordials... Bah. I just couldn't get behind them for some reason. I don't know much about the Fair Folk, and should probably check them out before inserting something that may share many similarities with them.


The Fair Folk are like Sephiroth. Extremely good looking, extremely powerful, and extremely crazy. They are spawned by chaos itself, feed on dreams to survive in Creation, and most seek to unmake reality. No two Fae are alike.



What I'm interested in is the ideal of "horrors of the Elder Planet" found in the works of Robert E. Howard. This concept is seperate and distinct from the Lovecraftian Great Old Ones in a quite a few ways.

The essential idea is that things linger from an older time, things that should be long dead, nightmares from the black eons of the dawn of time that decadent, aberrant, abhorrent, degenerate, and in general should not exist.


Sounds like the Yozis. They are the Primordials, warped into monstrous shapes after their defeat in the Primordial War. They delight in corrupting mortals and Exalts, and in general would like nothing more than to retake Creation and turn it back into their own personal playground. If the seals keeping them bound in Malfeas ever broke, things would go to crap REALY fast.



I was going to adapt it by citing the "Rebirth" theme in Exalted. If an Exalted dies, his Exaltation goes to someone else. I even think past lives are used in the setting if I remeber correctly, thus meaning souls are reused. If these things can be recycled, why not the physical material of the world? And if so, perhaps at certain times that matter remebers its former incarnation, and takes the shape of horrors whose age is eons past, fiends out of time seeking to revert the world to a primal state.


There is a small fluff problem with that idea. Souls do get reincarnated, sometimes after a time spent as a ghost in the Underworld, but they don't carry any memories because they pass through Lethe before reincarnating. Memories are what keep them from reincarnating. As they forget their ties to mortality, they begin to move on.

The substance of Creation was originally shaped from the chaos of the Wyld. If uncreated, it returns to pure chaos.

Of course, such is all fluff, so tweaking it to fit would work.



Or perhaps gates to forbidden places outside of time and existence sometimes gape forth to loose the hideous shapes of abominations banished from time and reality, come forth to contest their excommunication.


Sounds like Malfeas to me. Specific circumstances can crack open a portal between Creation and Malfeas, which can and does bring over demons of all sorts, as can Sorcery and thaumaturgy.



In other words, its basically Lovecraftian themes in a format and emphasis more appropriate for a story of passion, heroism, and bloody magnificent combat.

That's what I want to do; establish that before the current iteration of Creation, there were old spheres of Elder things destroyed for their hellish and foul forms and ways, and that these things still lurk, remnants of a lost and terrible time forgotten and forsaken.

Is this particularly offensive to the pre-established setting?

Nope. The Yozis and Malfeas would seem to fit your ideas very well.

If that doesn't work, the Wyld, as it is pure chaos and utterly random, spawns anything and everything. Given enough time, it will spawn whatever the plot calls for and then some.

Oh, I almost forgot the Well of Udr. Its an artifact in the possession of the Dowager of the Irreverent Vulgate (one of the death lords) that can peer into and draw from other universes. No one knows its true origion.

Tengu_temp
2008-09-26, 01:37 PM
Exalted lets you go wild with the stylistic choices. If you don't care for a Grand Daiklave (i.e. Buster Sword), you can go with a normal Daiklave (a more normal sized sword), a Reaver Daiklave (short and choppy), a Reaper Daiklave (essentiallly your scimitars and katanas for exalts), paired Short Daiklaves, or a Wavecutter Daiklave (Exalted cutlasses!). And that's just for swords.


Emphasis added - Daiklaves are so heavy an ordinary human will have trouble lifting it, much less fighting with it (Exalted are able to because they commit essence to their artifacts) and still larger than normal swords - especially when your character is a five feet something girl fighting with a four feet something Reaver Daiklave. In one hand.

The Valiant Turtle
2008-09-26, 01:51 PM
8) As has been mentioned before: Creation is really freaking huge! Plenty of weapon types are listed in the books. The only typical fantasy weapon that is considered rare are crossbows, because of their mechanical nature, but they do exist in some areas. In the south, you can find musket style weapons as well. Most of your standard weapons have stats, and plenty of unusual martial arts weapons have stats as well. I'm fond of 7-section staves and sun-moon rings myself, which might work as stand ins for the battle you had in mind (but I'm not familiar with those sources). It really would be pretty easy to house-rule yourself some weapon stats though.

Artifact weapons are traditionally and intentionally huge oversize montrosities that could not be used in a real situation. The only reason exalted can use them is because they attune themselves to them so that the weapon to an extent becomes part of them.

One part of your post gave me quite a laugh: Really, all I want is to be emancipated from the shackles of slavish adherence to realism. Exalted is wild crazy anime-wire-fu with magic on Acid. I think it will fit the style of game you want very well.

9) No idea, but I think it would do pretty well. It's not as fussy about exact positioning and details as other systems, it's really all about over-the-top description of your actions. Now that I think about it, I think it will do really well.

5 redux) This is tougher. Exalted is very tied to the setting and especially to the mythos around it. I think your ideas could work as a twist on either the Neverborn or the Fair Folk, or as a freaky intermix between the two (probably your best bet... opens up truly bizarre diplomatic options between all factions). A Yozi really isn't out of the question either. For that matter, some long-delayed manifestation of the great curse among the pattern spiders might cause something like this. It does somewhat tie in with the nature of the Neverborn as being beings who were to great for their essences to be recycled or destroyed in the normal manner. I find myself wondering how this would interact with the Underworld since it did not exist until the slaying of the neverborn.

However, I would caution you against having a plot in mind before you have characters. The nature of Exalted is that the Characters should really drive the plot, not the other way around. For me Exalted characters need quite a bit more story around them than most other systems. I imagine if you make it a pbp you'll get a lot of great character stories with depth. Use those and draw together a story if you can.

Also, Exalted doesn't work well with just one Bad Guy, you need to decide how other factions are going to try to take advantage of this (or let the players give you evil ideas as they contemplate who might be behind it and what they might be doing).

Okay, enough Exalted fanboyism on my part. Have fun.

Oslecamo
2008-09-26, 03:16 PM
especially when your character is a five feet something girl fighting with a four feet something Reaver Daiklave. In one hand.

Hmm, from what I heard, I thinked exalteds killed stuff with their bare hands and crazy kung fu. How strong is naked martial arts compared to steel weapons?

potatocubed
2008-09-26, 03:30 PM
8. You can pick anything as a weapon. Basically, the only serious aesthetic is 'does it look awesome?' I have no idea if the weapons are balanced against each other, but because combat is more... multidimensional than D&D it's not a big deal.


I'm the kinda of guy who wonders what a fight between someone using Ivy's swordwhip from Soul Calibur, someone using the hidden blade from Assassin's Creed (man, I sound like a broken record or an annoying fanboy,) and someone who fights with iron rings around his forearms like the Tailor from Kung Fu Hustle would look like.

You know, you said that and I thought 'that's the sort of fight I'd run in Exalted'. :smallsmile: You might have to make some custom charms (vaguely similar to 4e powers, but not really) to make full use of, say, the hidden dagger, but the other two are eminently possible straight out of the box.


Really, all I want is to be emancipated from the shackles of slavish adherence to realism.

Seriously. Exalted is for you. :smallsmile:

9. No idea. It should work quite well, given the descriptive nature of combat and the lack of serious tactical maps, but I couldn't say for certain.

5.1. This


I was going to adapt it by citing the "Rebirth" theme in Exalted. If an Exalted dies, his Exaltation goes to someone else. I even think past lives are used in the setting if I remeber correctly, thus meaning souls are reused. If these things can be recycled, why not the physical material of the world? And if so, perhaps at certain times that matter remebers its former incarnation, and takes the shape of horrors whose age is eons past, fiends out of time seeking to revert the world to a primal state.

is very Exalted. It's not canonical, but it sounds like it would fit right in. All I'll say is this: Exalted can be really powerful - powerful enough that railroad tracks can't hold them. Prepare for characters to drag the plot in directions you didn't expect.


Or perhaps gates to forbidden places outside of time and existence sometimes gape forth to loose the hideous shapes of abominations banished from time and reality, come forth to contest their excommunication.

Actually, this is pretty much canonical. The Yozis ('demons', although to call them that gives you the wrong idea) are just such things, and the Malfeans are Yozis that were killed but didn't die - because Yozis don't. The Malfeans are the driving force behind the Deathlords and the Abyssal Exalted.

Artanis
2008-09-26, 04:18 PM
Hmm, from what I heard, I thinked exalteds killed stuff with their bare hands and crazy kung fu. How strong is naked martial arts compared to steel weapons?
Well, there's four levels of martial arts: mortal, terrestrial, celestial, and sidereal.

*Mortal is pretty much what it sounds like, and mostly useless for exalts.

*Terrestrial is on par with Dragon-blooded charms. So it's not weak or anything and has its uses even for higher exalts, but just plain isn't as good as what a Solar or Lunar or whatever gets. Any exalt can learn this level.

*Celestial is on par with Lunar and non-MA Siddy charms. It's powerful enough to be good even for Solars. In fact, one of the Celestial-level martial arts is basically based on Solars' ability to be awesome at stuff like punching people. Dragonbloods can only learn this level with EXTENSIVE training and essence-awakening.

*Sidereal is every bit as powerful as standard Solar charms, and can do some seriously ****ed-up stuff. Things like infecting somebody's soul with an incurable disease, or punching everybody they can see all at the same time...twice. Only Sidereals and Solars (and I think Abyssals) can learn this level.

Tengu_temp
2008-09-26, 04:29 PM
Hmm, from what I heard, I thinked exalteds killed stuff with their bare hands and crazy kung fu. How strong is naked martial arts compared to steel weapons?

Celestial martial arts deal a bit less damage than armed combat (with artifact weapons), but are more versatile (and, unlike DND, versatility is very good in Exalted). Sidereal martial arts, which are basically accessable only to Sidereals, are extremely strong and better than melee in almost everything.
Also, note that each school of martial arts has different weapons you can use its charms with - for example, Solar Hero Style allows you to fight not only unarmed, but also with fighting gauntlets, chains, wind fire wheels and other martial arts weapons. Sidereal martial arts can be used with, among other weapons, swords.

BobVosh
2008-09-26, 05:26 PM
Celestial martial arts deal a bit less damage than armed combat (with artifact weapons), but are more versatile (and, unlike DND, versatility is very good in Exalted). Sidereal martial arts, which are basically accessable only to Sidereals, are extremely strong and better than melee in almost everything.
Also, note that each school of martial arts has different weapons you can use its charms with - for example, Solar Hero Style allows you to fight not only unarmed, but also with fighting gauntlets, chains, wind fire wheels and other martial arts weapons. Sidereal martial arts can be used with, among other weapons, swords.

Each stance has its allowed weapons. In 1ed celestial monkey style allowed all weapons as its final charm.

Sidereal martial arts CAN be taught to a solar. If you want the other 99 sidereals to come and show you why 99 users of the same techniques is BAD.

Solar hero martial arts suck....Solar Circle Martial arts are AMAZING.

Also remember in Exalted, ANYTHING you can do, so can a solar.

Kyeudo
2008-09-26, 05:41 PM
Anything a Solar can do, an Abyssal can undo.


Hmm, from what I heard, I thinked exalteds killed stuff with their bare hands and crazy kung fu. How strong is naked martial arts compared to steel weapons?

Ever wanted to eat someone's soul? Drown a man in his own blood? Punch a T-Rex so hard he passes out from a single blow? Heal mortal wounds in mere seconds? Break a man in half with your bare hands? If so, then Melee charms are not what you are looking for. All of those tricks can be accomplished with a handful of the many Exalted Martial Arts styles.

Tengu_temp
2008-09-26, 05:45 PM
Drown a man in his own blood? Punch a T-Rex so hard he passes out from a single blow?

Combine these two and you get:

"My blood! He punched out all my blood!"

Kyeudo
2008-09-26, 05:54 PM
I don't doubt it possible.

Exalted is one of those games where you just don't bother to doubt someone's story. If someone tells you he was piloting a thirty foot mecha made of gold with a sword forged from ice from beyond the edge of the world at the head of an army of pig-men armed with flamethrowers and took on Cthulhu and Sephiroth leading an army of cyborg vampires and almost lost except that his time traveling buddy showed up with a tribe of werewolves and faeries and saved the day, always trust them. They were just playing Exalted.

Worira
2008-09-26, 06:19 PM
Question 6) I've noticed something of an Asian aesthetic to the books, at least the visual sections. Is this also present in the fluff, and is it easy to remove this aesthetic and replace it with something else? I've got Assassin's Creed on the brain, and Arabia sounds nice. Persia, India. That sort of thing.

Nitpick: Persia and India are/were both Asian.

Beleriphon
2008-09-26, 06:24 PM
Exalted is one of those games where you just don't bother to doubt someone's story. If someone tells you he was piloting a thirty foot mecha made of gold with a sword forged from ice from beyond the edge of the world at the head of an army of pig-men armed with flamethrowers and took on Cthulhu and Sephiroth leading an army of cyborg vampires and almost lost except that his time traveling buddy showed up with a tribe of werewolves and faeries and saved the day, always trust them. They were just playing Exalted.

Or Rifts, I'm serious. :smallbiggrin:

Kyeudo
2008-09-26, 06:31 PM
Or Rifts, I'm serious. :smallbiggrin:

Okay, I suppose that's true.

But Rifts probably didn't give out bonus points for converting the pig-men by belching really loud.

streakster
2008-09-26, 06:50 PM
Here. This (http://www.motivatedphotos.com/?id=1185) is an excellent summary of Exalted.

Kyeudo
2008-09-26, 06:52 PM
Yeah, that about covers the basics.

Oslecamo
2008-09-26, 06:59 PM
(and, unlike DND, versatility is very good in Exalted)

Well, my D&D honor must strongly disagree with this sentence.

The classes that are considered strongest in D&D are considered so mainly because they're the most versatile. Cleric, wizard, druid, archivist and artificer are feared because they can do pretty much anything. As a free action if you optimize enough.

Versatility is considered power in D&D. The fighter is hated because he gets very few tricks. The sorceror is considered a weak wizard because he gets less spells known. Polymorph any object, shapechange and gate are in the top 10 spells because they can do pretty much anything just by themselves.

So, I really don't understand your statement of versatility not being very good in D&D.

Tengu_temp
2008-09-26, 07:19 PM
I disagree. DND promotes specialization - one character should specialize in dealing as much damage on a charge as possible, other on buffs, yet another on crowd control. Wizards et cetera are not considered so good because they're versatile, but because they are too powerful - their field of specialization, spellcasting, lets them do anything. Compare the less-ovepowered generalist, bard, who's considered pretty weak, unless built properly (which usually involves specialization in one of the aspects of the class).

Oslecamo
2008-09-26, 07:39 PM
You can specialize in D&D. Just as you can specialize in Exalted from what I saw(hey, you learn a limited number of charms).

But you eventually reach a point where making any more specialization is a waste of your time. A charging build can be dealing hundreds of damage before lv 10. At wich point any more damage in a charge is a waste of your resources. So you pick some stuff to make you good at ranged combat here, some crowd control there, and you end with a character that's really good at several things, instead of a character who's totally overkill at just one thing.

A sneack attacking rogue will have left over skill points to be good at other stuff, and can always fall back to ranged combat.

The bard isn't weak. Like the fighter, is just hard to optimize. If built properly, you'll be really good at one thing, and good at several other things.

Those uber optimized builds with just one trick are normally pointed out at taking out extreme situations, like trying to face a god at level 5. Unless you've got the most sadic DM in history, there's no need for overspecialization in D&D

Trust me, I've never seen anyone using any of those one uber trick ponies in real campaigns. They're just theorical exercises, and during real games players will not only seek to build versatile characters, they will suceed with them. Having just one trick is a ticket to defeat in D&D.

Artanis
2008-09-26, 08:37 PM
Well, my D&D honor must strongly disagree with this sentence.

The classes that are considered strongest in D&D are considered so mainly because they're the most versatile. Cleric, wizard, druid, archivist and artificer are feared because they can do pretty much anything. As a free action if you optimize enough.

Versatility is considered power in D&D. The fighter is hated because he gets very few tricks. The sorceror is considered a weak wizard because he gets less spells known. Polymorph any object, shapechange and gate are in the top 10 spells because they can do pretty much anything just by themselves.

So, I really don't understand your statement of versatility not being very good in D&D.
The classes you mentioned aren't necessarily strong due to versatility in and of itself, it's often because of versatility without sacrificing potency.

Say you have a class that hits stuff. Now say you have a class that can either hit stuff or heal people. The first class should be better at hitting stuff than the second, right? But in DnD, with the Fighter and the Cleric, that isn't the case. The Fighter hits stuff, but the Cleric hits stuff just as hard AND heals people just fine AND blows stuff up.

Oslecamo
2008-09-27, 05:57 AM
The Fighter hits stuff, but the Cleric hits stuff just as hard AND heals people just fine AND blows stuff up.

This is a myth. Do the math. The fighter hits even harder than the cleric.

The cleric still hits hard enough to take down stuff of his CR. And that was my point. You don't need to fully optimize one single trick to it's full power to be really good at it.

Also, the fighter can easily get room on his build for grapple, crowd control(triping) and some archery besides hiting stuff hard. Not too shabby.

Again, it's all a matter of optimizing properly your character. There's a whole world of diference between a weakly optimized character and a strongly optimized character.