Talkin' bout Exalted

[User3]

I know about this board's vast hatred for the Storyteller system, but I was thinking that I could start a thread on this system. I only have the basic book but I'm willing to set more money on fire if someone can refer to me something interesting.

Let's start with something simple. What's the cheesiest (but not infinite-power comboable) magical martial artist you can think of? Refer me to books if you must.

[PhoneLobster]

I know this I keep picking up the book at the local store and checking it out.

I start from the front and start flipping through looking for the actual mechanics.

And I keep flipping.

And flipping.

Then I get bored and wander off.

I've yet to hit the mechanics.

[The_Matthew]

Okay, if what you want is an absurdly powerful martial art setup, then you want to start with the prismatic arrangment of creation and move over to the charcoal dance of spiders. Both of these are in the siderials book, the first having like 4 form charms to begin with and then getting the ability to have all of those active at once or any two other form charms active, and the second gives a form charm that duplicates you dice pool X times, I can't remember if X was your martial arts or essence. After you have those two you can get your grubby little paws on Basically any other martial arts form and eat people alive for fun. I'd suggest being an Eclipse caste and having an array of the five magical material based alchemical charms installed, and using twin daiklaivesas a martial arts weapon due to taking the fire dragon martial arts from the dragon blooded book.

Using that setup you could easily have around 8 dice pools in the 10+ die range. The question is no longer how to kill someone, but how many someones you can kill.

Named characters: you can expect to get a mere 40 successes worth of 'hitting' on a named character if you don't split your dice pool, which equates to somewhere in the range of 48 - 104 raw damage, which really means 24 - 30 dice actual damage without exalted power combat rules, and 30 - 56 or more if you are using the power combat rules. This gives 9.6 - 22.4 actual points of damage, or 1 - 2 named characters. Not bad considering this was without dice pool splitting or min maxing (this character was built of the top of my head with a mere strength of 4 when he could have around 7.)

Mooks: The new low-average end damage is 32 instead of 24, which means that you can lay waste to between 10 and 18 mooks.

Mind you, most of this is from what I remember off the top of my head, so I'd check up the specifics of those charms and such.

Edit: forgot to mention average successes per die in this assumption, and realized I rememberd average standard successes wrong.

Standard: avg 0.5/die given that 7, 8, and 9 are 1 success and 10 is 2 successess.

Damage: 10 is only 1 success -> 0.4/die

[Josh_Kablack]

I'll have to look it up when I get home, but I do remember that there was a theoretical ~80 die attack in the core book which made it through playtesting. It involved multple multipliers against objects.

As for other Exalted books, I can recommend Creatures of the Wyld as a fun read and a useful resource to swipe setting material for other games.

[User3]

Okay, if what you want is an absurdly powerful martial art setup, then you want to start with the prismatic arrangment of creation and move over to the charcoal dance of spiders.

No offense or anything, but I thought that this was a pretty much NPC-only martial arts form?

As in, it's so hard for PCs to get that it's basically ST fiat that you can put ranks into this style?

Extremely hypocritical on the part of the game, I know, but...

[Username17]

One of the points of the build, I think, is that you take the rising sign that arbitrarily allows you to get your bonuses off of any list you want for a premium in cost. So you pay extra points to tell the storyteller to take a flying leap when he tells you that you can't find a teacher for an ultra-secret big-wang NPC power.

-Username17

[User3]

How does this premium work again? I totally want those styles. Then I can go Uchiha Sasuke on the people I hate.

Also, beyond the standard twinky Sid MAs, can anyone recommend some other styles? The monkey king one looks especially nice, as it alows you to break rules, go Bullseye, and apply a percentage penalty (rather than the more common integer penalty) to people you hate. And as a bonus you get to make cool monkey noises.

Though the snake one, for being in a basic book, also looks like fun. Mad love for extra actions and aggravated damage.

[User3]

Just noticed that the monkey one was entirely made up. Serves me right for getting my information from pdfs.

Man, don't I feel like a tool.

[The_Matthew]

Alright, I'm a little busy right now, so I am going to have to work on this more later, but I'll have a broken martial artist build put up here by next week. Then people will cry.

[The_Matthew]

Okay, having found and re-read my exalted books, I can now give you Ass-kicker incarnate, master of the stabbing death:

Caste: Eclipse
Nature: Dosn't really matter... Grilled Cheese
Concept: Ass kicker

Str: 3 Cha: 3 Int: 3
Dex: 5 Mani: 2 Wits: 3
Sta: 2 App: 2 Per: 3

Abilities that got points: Martial Arts(5) Dodge(3) Awareness(3) Stealth(3) Athletics(3) Socialize(3) Ride(3) Endurance(2) Resistance(2)

Backgrounds: Artifact (4) Manse(1) Mentor(3)

Virtues: Valor(3) Conviction(3) Compassion(1) Temperance(2)

Virtue Flaw: Deliberate Cruelty

Essence: 5
Willpower: 6/6
Personal: 21/21
Peripheral: 50/50

Flaws: Sterile(-1) Known Anathema(-3) Wanted(-3) Disturbing(-3)

Charms: Flash Fire Technique, Flame Flicker Stance, Searing Fist Attack, Perfect Blazing Blow, Fire Dragon Form, Unnatural Many Step Stride, Dance of the Hungry Spider, Maw of Dripping Venom, Flickering Moonsilver Approach, Deadly Starmetal Offensive

Artifacts: 2 orichalcum short daiklaives (+3 speed, +5 Acc, +4L damage, rate 7)

Hearthstone: Dosn't matter.

Now, this is the unimpressive starting character build, which can't kill an entire army of extras assuming they are within sight, but that ability costs around 350xp to get all the way going, but it is funny so let's do that.

347 xp goes into new charms:
The rest of all three martial arts forms he has. He's only taking fire dragon form to qualify for form charms from the sid martial arts, and because dual wielding allows him a whopping rate of 14.

Now, here's how this man kills an entire army:

Round 0: sneak in, activate prismatic arrangement of creation form, charcoal march of spiders form, and fire dragon form... all at once. (27 essence, 1 W)

Round 1: roll initiative. Go first almost assuredly. In PAoCF his base initiative is 20. That's more than any extra, and most exalts can roll for initiative even before taking into account his die roll.

Activate Dawn Caste Exalt Ways, granting the anima power, which you don't care about, and giving 5 automatic successess to every martial arts roll he makes for 5 rounds. (10 essence, 1 HL Total 37 essence, 1 W, 1 HL)
With your other two independent actions for the round you make 7 attacks at dice pools of 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 respectivly. All of which have 5 automatic successess added on to begin with. The other action is used to do a cascading parry because killing 14 people on round 1 before they get to act isn't cool. btw, damage you do per attack is 9 + successess on attack roll, minimum damage is your essence of 5.

Round 2: activate Grandmother Spider Mastery with one action (20 essence +1 W) The other two actions make those same seven attacks we saw last round, except targeting every opponent that you can see. Note: you perfectly percieve a 50 yard radius around you, which means that all those people are dead.

Just so you know, the whole point of having mentor is an excuse to learn these martial arts forms, because your mentor is a gold faction siderial who just knows alot of martial arts.

[User3]

That's really cool and all, except for a few things.

1.) I was sort of looking for something that would be awesome out of the box rather than having to accumulate like 350 experience.

2.) I noticed that you could get a lot of the good parts of the Charcoal March of Spiders for a cost of 6 charms and all of the abilities are pretty much solid gold. You think this would be a good starting set, or should I bite the bullet for a few sessions and try to complete the Prismatic Arrangement of Creation chain?

3.) Do you think that sorcery is worth it? Some of these look awesome and don't seem to follow the normal rules for charms (which is great).

4.) Social skills in this game seem crazy-go-nuts. Unlike Shadowrun, the bureaucracy in this game doesn't have so many layers that a young upstart can't twist things the way they want to and unlike D&D a single (non-super twinked) exalted group can't take on empires by brute force alone. Furthermore most of the members of the Dragonblooded bureaucracy don't seem all that badass; if you have the right charms you could probably gain an audience with the house leaders right out of the box.

5.) Is there any way other than Prismatic Arrangement of Creation to load up on more than one form at once? I'd definitely like to use the entire prereqs for PAoC at the same time as CMoS.

6.) I only have the basic book and some charm trees. If you're referencing anything outside of that you're going to have to tell me.

7.) What's the point of the appearance stat? The only benefit it seems to be is to make your character less noticable and to get more schmexy encounters (the game seems to have a lot more emphasis on courtesians than most games I've played, even including it as a weird martial arts style.

8.) The game seems to have the atmosphere of Metal Gear Solid. It encourages you to ignore or bypass fights with hordes of weak soldiers since unlike D&D, they can kill most exalted in modest numbers; however the game also tries its damnedest to get you to do cinematic things in fights that matter. Specifically, boss battles.

9.) I'm thinking about getting a lizard familiar. That extra 5 essence could be worth it.

10.) Any charms or items or spells or whatever not in the basic book that I should keep an eye out for?

[The_Matthew]

Ok, so to begin with, there is no way to have more than one form active at a time without PAoC, and even with it you can only either have all its prerequisites, or 2 other form.

Secondly, the CMoS form has a prerequisite of mastering an entire celestial martial arts charm tree. I'm not even joking.

Third, I can twink out a martial artist out of the box by Sunday, I'm a little too spun on caffine to work on it right now.

[Josh_Kablack]

I came home tonight to find a free copy of Exalted 2nd Edition on my desk. Beautiful production values, and one of the listed playtesters is "Your mother".

[Lago_AM3P]

I agree with Josh; this book is one of the slickest books I've ever read. This exceeds D&D on some levels and the comics make this book so much easier to read that I--

Is that a nipple?

THAT'S A NIPPLE! WHOO!

Ahem.

---

So far, I've been going through the Sidereals book and it seems like the easiest way to build a martial arts mastah is to pick up an Eclipse Castle Solar (which are better than everything) load up on disadvantages and blow all of your bonus character points on charms; this way you can have the 16 charms required to master this style and you can spend the very last bonus creation point on a mentor.

The only problem is that it says that Eclipse Caste solar spend double experience for learning charms of other forms; I'm wondering if this applies at character creation. If it doesn't, then you have a ridiculously powerful and versatile character who will soon be on the way to learn a couple of powerful social and sorcery charms and then will be on his way to master the Charcoal March of Spiders, which is one badass style.

[Lago_AM3P]

I'm an idiot. It just occured to me that you will need minimum amounts of Essence and Martial Arts for this awesomeness. Which will eat up your points.

Goddamn it. So much for having awesomeness right out of the gate.


...

Well, for people more familiar with the system, can anyone give me an idea of how to fully get the Prismatic Arrangement of Creation with a minimal amount of pain, time, and experience? Would appreciate it.

[User3]

No problem. Just start out with a character who is 5 years old. Then advance him to 80. You get experience every year until you're a hundred years old and you're immortal. So if you just spend ten minutes of game time agonizing about how all the non-exalted children you grew up with grew old and died and now their grandchildren have sweet asses you want to tap and that makes you feel dirty - you have enough XP to simply buy the whole rainbow arachnid school of advancing corruscating doom.

-Username17

[Lago_AM3P]

I must've missed that part in character creation. I had no idea that the rules let you gain experience before the point where you actually start playing.

[RandomCasualty]

1143615440[/unixtime]]No problem. Just start out with a character who is 5 years old. Then advance him to 80. You get experience every year until you're a hundred years old and you're immortal. So if you just spend ten minutes of game time agonizing about how all the non-exalted children you grew up with grew old and died and now their grandchildren have sweet asses you want to tap and that makes you feel dirty - you have enough XP to simply buy the whole rainbow arachnid school of advancing corruscating doom.

I'd be shocked that any DM would actually allow something like this. I mean who is going to let you sit around and wait 75 years in game time?

[The_Matthew]

Well, the experience for age rules are for character downtime. But the major part of what frank is suggesting be 5 years old is true. Until the ripe old age of 100 you get 5 exp/year of downtime. There are suggestions that you be forced to put them in groups so that out of every 10 xp 4 goes here, 3 there, 2 over there, and 1 all the way over there, but nobody really cares.

In the end the only reason you want to be an eclipse caste is because you can learn the super-awesome charms that reduce the target number, because all Solars can learn siderial martial arts charms. The EPG states that clearly, and for this all non-eclipse solar martial artists can feel somewhat adequite now.

[RandomCasualty]

1143644537[/unixtime]]Well, the experience for age rules are for character downtime. But the major part of what frank is suggesting be 5 years old is true. Until the ripe old age of 100 you get 5 exp/year of downtime. There are suggestions that you be forced to put them in groups so that out of every 10 xp 4 goes here, 3 there, 2 over there, and 1 all the way over there, but nobody really cares.

Yeah, though I mean what GM is going to hand out 75 years of downtime? Spending 75 years sitting on your ass is the equivalent of just writing yourself out of the story.

[erik]

It's not 75 years of downtime. It's 80 years of back story. What DM is going to hand out back stories? Most any I presume.

[RandomCasualty]

1143659606[/unixtime]]It's not 75 years of downtime. It's 80 years of back story. What DM is going to hand out back stories? Most any I presume.

Well, generally not when it constitutes giving one player an unfair advantage. I don't see any exalted GM allowing the free XP trick any more than I see a D&D DM giving a 1st level PC a +5 vorpal sword because he wanted a backstory where his father gave it to him as an inheritance.

[The_Matthew]

Well, to be honest you only need 75 years downtime to reliably kill everybody within a 50 yeard radius of you in addition to everybody you can actually see.

What you can do to cut down the xp costs is simply take the celestial monkey style, the charcoal march of spiders style, and Dawn Exalt Ways. I'll give you some stats later, as I'm having to leave right now.

[Lago_AM3P]

Well? Where are the stats?

C'mon, it's been a month and a half. Daddy needs his medicine.

[nightchill]

You cannot take Sidereal Level Martial Arts until you have completed an entire previous Celestial Level Tree. It will also generally require some form of Sidereal Mentor to teach you. Mentor background points, while generally a waste, can provide this to you. Unfortuately the Siddies are often hostile to Solars especially given the largest faction of them caused the genocidal slaughter of the Solars 1500 years ago.

You also do not need to be an Eclipse. All Martial Art trees are generally available, they do not count as being charms of one particular Exalt type. If you want ass kicking ninja goodness I would suggest the Night as they hve the best ability spread or the Twilight for the anima ability.

For Celestial Level Martial Art styles Violet Bier of Sorrows (from the Sidereals) is very strong. As is the Tiger Style from Caste Book Dawn. Celesial Monkey from the PG is OK but makes you mess with your virtues to work. Fire Dragon style from the DG book is excellent (for the form) but prevents the use of armour.

Bear in mind that to be more effective you will want to wield a weapon. Each style has a small number of weapons which count as you attacking unarmed for the purpose of charm usage.

At the end of the day to be an effective MA'ist requires a particularly heavy investment of charms from several different trees. I wouldnt rely on getting access to Supernatural Sidereal MA's as they are generally considered broken.

For combat excellence as a Solar you are far better going with melee/dodge combo and getting both persistent defences (five fold bulwark stance and flow like blood). They stack and make combat against anyone who isnt an exalt trivially easy. Also go for counter attack charms and butcher anyone who dares your massive defences. The only thing likely to get past you is a perfect attack which are generally only possessed by Solars and pretty rare at that.

Once you have filled out some of those trees you will also want to start adding in custom charms of your own. The standard argument for why Sidereal Level MA's arent broken is that Solars (and presumably abyssals) can make their own charms and there are very few printed Solar charms of Essence 4 or higher. (Siddies can make MA charms, the other exalts are stuffed). I suggest borrowing ideas from

http://exalted.xi.co.nz/wiki/wiki.pl?Is ... [br][br]As far as sorcery goes if you take it dont really expect to use it much in combat. It is slow and has pretty poor effects as a combat discipline. It is however rather good for destroying large cities and entire armies.

If you want to really rule the setting then you want a combination of Presence, Socialise, Performance and Investigation. Social based Solars can and do change entire Kingdoms around them.

As far as the age xp thing goes forget about it. It is a system designed to allow for lengthy downtime in games rather than some power up loophole for the anally fixated rules lawyer...

Bear in mind that much of this relates to 1st ed and a number of things have changed with 2nd.

Finally, I would really advise against upping essence above 3 at start of play. You will get far more xp efficiency from either increasing your highest virtues (and corresponding willpower) or putting favoured or caste skills to 4 and 5. Generally I leave essence at 2, there arent massive numbers of charms that demand it barring sorcery and sidereal MA's.

edit: Also, dont take familiar, its utterly utterly awful as a Background, more a trap for the unwary than anything else.

Finally if you want true ultimate power take lots of Lore and Wyld Shaping Technique. Head to the edge of the world and make whatever you want out of raw chaos.