User Profile

[Sunder the Gold]

Well, this is a fantasy setting.


EDIT: I'm not saying that women fighting or being warriors is fantastic, though it was historically rare. I was specifically referring to "traditional warrior-women" as an entire social caste, which is unheard of....

[Sunder the Gold]

Going back to how "everyone can be a wizard, even the warrior", there's also "everyone can practice kung fu, not just the warriors".

That is to say, traditional women who are stay-at-home mothers can be Exalted, and be just as powerful as traditional warrior men Exalted, in different fields.

Crafting, Medicine, Lore, Integrity, Presence, Performance, Bureaucracy... You can spin the world on the new axis that is you without ever learning how to fight. While this is harder for Celestial Exalted in the Second Age, it's always been an option for Dragon-Blooded...

[Sunder the Gold]

I love that the skills of the athlete and the warrior can be as magical as the skills of the scholar, and that the skills for applying medicine to heal people are central to the ability to heal people with magic, rather than redundant in the face of healing spells.

That said, I'm upset that there are no spells that heal or help with healing.

Also, I'm upset about the arbitrary lines drawn between "combat skills" and "martial arts", when combat arts are martial skills and martial skills are combat arts.

[Sunder the Gold]

I wasn't thinking of healing magnitude damage in the first place, but I agree with your ideas....

[Sunder the Gold]

Again, what about applying Battle Group logic?

Granted, it works best when the entire cohort of patients is suffering from the same ailment, like poison from their shared water supply, a communal disease, or the sword-wounds inflicted upon them when they tried to fight a single Exalt.

[Sunder the Gold]

That sucks, man. My condolences.


I live with my extended family, and we're sitting pretty for now. It helps that we planned ahead for emergencies like this, so we already had surplus toilet paper, food, and water bottles.

I get to work from home, my parents are retired and surviving on Dad's pension, and my sister is still sharing custody of her kids with her trustfund-baby ex.

Sis is enjoying the opportunity to cook at home more often, and we're all enjoying the more frequent family meals. I went and picked up chicken dinners for us all from a local...

[Sunder the Gold]

Anyone remember how the Luna of the Modern Exalted shard is actually so badly wounded by... something... that she's essentially comatose and being kept stable by Gaia out in the Wyld?

I think Autochthon (who is actually her twin brother in that shard) was lobotomized by... something... and may or may not be Creation's moon in disguise? I forget. But I remember the local version of the Alchemical Exalted are actually Lunar Exaltations twisted to emulate Autochthon instead, which is how Alchemical Exalted in that shard are ridiculously more flexible and independent than vanilla Alc...

[Sunder the Gold]

The problem is that the game doesn't feature Patient Groups like it features Battle Groups.

Performance actions at least let you direct social influence at entire groups at once with a single dice-roll action. But you cannot direct a single Medicine action at an entire group of people at once, following the rules as written....

[Sunder the Gold]

I think being Diminished to the point where he really COULDN'T do much of anything to help Creation would be a fine excuse, and perfectly salient to this thread....

[Sunder the Gold]

The typo was not deliberate.

[Sunder the Gold]

It was admittedly a little petulant of me, born of the frustration of someone taking a potshot at God in a venue where DEMONSTRABLY any response would provoke "no theological discussion please!" despite the thread being about the morality of gods that rule the universe.

Do you see anyone taking shots at atheism?


But yes, in a game written by people, limited to the imaginations of people, gods must ultimately be envisioned as little different from humans, if humans were in their circumstances.

Even to the extent that a creature is inhuman,...

[Sunder the Gold]

edit: double post

[Sunder the Gold]

Epicurus' petulant arguments work better for the Unconquered Sun, who is neither omnipotent or purely good, than they do for God.

The Unconquered Sun didn't create humanity, nor reality, and thus cannot be a perfect moral arbiter for either.

He didn't grant humanity free will. Though one could make the argument that he did the next best thing by giving them Exaltation and ownership of Creation, instead of enslaving their species to serve the gods.

In that sense, he might come close to the idea of a God who granted humanity the freedom to love or reject him....

[Sunder the Gold]

The question is, "What would be the consequence of forcing the Sun to step in?"

Humanity might not care for those consequences, very much....

[Sunder the Gold]

That was a Second Edition idea, wasn’t it?...

[Sunder the Gold]

It could possibly be an artifact’s Evocation.

[Sunder the Gold]

What would it change, if it were made canon that the Unconquered Sun KNEW about the Great Contagion and the Fair Folk Invasion, and the reason he didn't step in and do anything is because he'd given Creation to Exalted and humanity in general as a reward for their service in the Primordial War?

What if the only way he could intervene would be to break his promise? Which would, if he's anything like his Late Second Edition self, would actually render him vulnerable.

Or, what if there was an "escape clause" that would allow the Unconquered Sun to step in, but...

[Sunder the Gold]

It can work under either of the models I proposed.

Achilles' player has gained so much Limit that he's crippled by penalties or has lost most of his bonus strength (depending on the model you use). Then Achilles receives the latest insult and gains one more point of Limit than his player is willing to put up with. He can either choose to go into battle under-strength, or he can choose to have Achilles give into his stress and Limit Break.

("Limit Break" would need a new name if entering a psychotic fit is a matter of choice.)

Because Achilles and...

[Sunder the Gold]

If Limit imposed penalties on characters, that would match the idea that Limit represents a supernatural form of stress, and gaining Limit would represent becoming more distressed, and Limit Break would feel more like the euphoric moment in which your character returns to full power and in which the player has no choice (or the perfect excuse) to take that power and run wild.


Alternatively, a designer could avoid penalties and simply design Celestial Exalted so that their default power level is represented by a full Limit gauge, and that the euphoric freedom from distress is...