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[Sorcerous Overlord]

yeah that's the kernel of my problem balancing 4 Solars on 1 Enemy. Well, that's one of them.


So there's a bit to unpack here:
E3E has many defenive tools: True.
It's easy enough to get those tools: True.
Those charms keep high numbers from being an automatic win: Debatable
PCs will reliably take those options: Your Mileage May Vary.

My current cirlce has a Twilight Bureaucracy Supernal who barely invested in Thrown and only has 1 Dodge Charm* because Exalted lets him just play a super bureaucrat and he thought that was neat. The Zenith...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

I've run combats with PCs against a Single Baddie and it's, pardon my Old Realm here, fucking terrible. I've got a Single Point/War/Sail Eclipse with a steel-willed battlegroup, a Twilight Melee Sorcerer with a Full Survival Tree Familiar, and a Presence Supernal Zenith. It is a goddamn nightmare to run anything short of Octavian at them. I had to install a custom charm/rule that the Sole Baddie only loses 1 initiative when withered (Solars gain full initiative, the baddie just only drops 1) and negate Onslaught penalties or there is no way to dig yourself out of the hole of having all your initiative...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

Malfeas isn't just a place where demons live- it's their prison, so even if we ignore the Hate Radiation thing, we are left with this mandatory (and interesting!) question: why are there humans in Demon-Jail? It takes extremely powerful sorceries to get there, across a 5 day wide desert.

Infernals are/were called the Green Sun Princes, and 2e lore was that they are treated EXTREMELY well in Malfeas. They inherit a lot of political power beyond the abilities of even many powerful demons. So maybe one of them has set something up? A Cult? A Seraglio? Palace staffed with humans to keep...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

I think the lore of 2e was that a regular human in Malfeas would die horribly from the Nuclear Hate Radiation given off by the green sun in a matter of minutes....

[Sorcerous Overlord]

So everything else aside, I think we can reach an agreement on the following: Sail is used in Naval Combat to kill other people on boats (among other things). It is both extremely powerful at this, and this power can be attained very cheaply. It is opposed only by other people with Sail. Solars are overwhelmingly better at sail than Non-Solars, in large part because of how powerful and cheap Sail charms are. There are not enough strong naval enemies to make heavy investment in Sail useful.

So we're all clear on those bits?

I could go on and on about What Specifically...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

Do you have the same problem with the name Social Combat?



Melee only has 2 charms over E3: Heaven Sword Flash (E4) and Circle of Bright Reaving (E5). Saying you NEED those charms to be the best swordsman in the world is just false.

For reference though: Every core book martial art ends at E3 with the exception of Crane, which has one Essence 4 charm. The same is true of War and Stealth and Thrown. Survival only goes into E4 for 2 charms, and they are both in Miracles of the Solar Exalted. Ride ends at 3. Dodge ends at 3. Resistance has a single E4 charm...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

Its also pretty easy to get an absurd Join Battle roll, ensuring you start first, which can then turn into splatting a couple dudes right from the get-go. Its easy enough to build for this exact tactic in Melee

[Sorcerous Overlord]

Better change your name to Tony Rocky Horror.

I'll accept differences on the Sail motes thing, because I consider that to be actual combat. But like I said, I see your reasoning.

I'm not very familiar with DB and Lunar powersets- but I assume they have Sail charms or something analogous? Armyofwhispers' complaint was that 2 charms in Sail let you effortlessly beat people who don't have sail charms- but as i demonstrated that is not unique to Sail....

[Sorcerous Overlord]

That's right. Our session this week was online due to Covid, and since we were about to take on the campaign-ending Leviathan (NOT Leviathan from Lunars, whose name is terribly inconvenient), I threw a side story at them. A Fae Noble wants them to fail. This battle was actually designed to be easy to beat- but drain the Eclipse of motes and willpower so he'd be weaker for the "real" challenge.


That's right. They did not beat the Sail supernal. They didn't stand a chance (go ahead and quote me, forumites), becuase they are not Exalted themselves. They only damaged...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

Leviathans warrant this....

[Sorcerous Overlord]

So back to the Wyld- y'all are making this too difficulty.

We live in Creation. Its real. It has rules like "fire is hot, water is wet".

Way, way beyond the edge of the world is a land of Raw Chaos. Fire is cold, water is down, green is tomorrow, reality doesn't exist.

If Creation is dirt and Chaos is Water then the Wyld is Mud. Its a mix of the two. There are some things that live there called the Fae (aka Fair Folk, aka Raksha). They are like sentient nightmares or daydreams. They are super evil and they eat dreams and emotions and intangible...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

I thought their ethos was "Robo-Communism, Ho!'...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

Sort of, they were fae puppets controled by a raksha noble. They had a dicepool of 12 though. (5+5+2)


Yes they wanted to destroy the sholars ship and humiliate them. EDIT: I think the "want" is a typo. The enemy did attack the non-Sail Solars and did damage, yes.


Yes. It was a 4 on 4 battle, and the other Solars didn't have sail charms and relied on the crew's sail pool of 8, although Invincible Admiral Method gave them a large bonus. they only succeeded by ganging up on one ship at a time, 3 on 1. They also used some of their non-Sail abilities...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

I get the appeal of these types of posts, and lord knows i've done them with DnD characters a ton, but it's just not a good match for Exalted.

See, in Dungeons and Dragons you have to take the preset abilities in each class. What skills does Geralt have? Investigate, Medicine, Survival, Nature. What Tool Proficiencies? How many levels of Fighter/Hexblade.etc? But it doesn't work in Exalted. Grog is a Barbarian with a big axe. He has Melee, Resistance, Athletics. So does Kratos. So does everyone. Vax has Melee, Larceny, Dodge, Stealth. Percy is just History, Craft, Archery (flamepiece)....

[Sorcerous Overlord]

I'm the ST of a circle with a Sail Supernal Eclipse. We just had a naval battle that may help shed light on the situation. First, though I want to address this:



Person with a Daiklave but no combat charms loses to person with combat charms but no daiklave seems like a pretty fair comparison. It makes sense that the one with charms and excelencies will pull out a win. In fact, I hope that paradigm is true for every subsystem.

So my Eclipse has finished the Sail tree, has an artifact imbued ship (NOT an artifact ship). He was on one ship, the other 3 solars...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

My schools (in Japan) are maybe going to open in June. Maybe.

The Ministry of Education is also toying with the idea of kicking the whole thing to september and making september the beginning of the first semester (its currently april to march). That would be a huge cultural shift but they apparently have wanted to do it for a long time to line up with the rest of the world better....

[Sorcerous Overlord]

My circle has a Twilight Survival Supernal with an Otter familiar. Originally he used the Great Cat statblock except he switched out Keen Smell for Swim Speed. Then the Survival charms came rolling in and now its a Terrifying God Otter with the stats of a Tyrant Lizard that can do Water Magic and has its own Cult **. His name is Meat Buns (because he's from Wu-Jian). Meat Buns also has a floating scarf type thing that it controls with its essence (perfect for grapples)

The Party then decided that the best thing to do on the Caul while assisting said Twilight's Lunar Wife hunt and...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

Just flat out reflavor. It costs nothing, it breaks nothing, its fun, its easy.

Lighting Brawler? Ok, make a Solar Brawler. As take Stormcaller as your artifact weapon and ask your ST to let it be an artifact fist instead. Or just pull a Naruto and say the demon is bound to your soul. You get artifact stats and the sick lightning abilities. TAP literally tells you to make a signature effect for it, make yours a lighting flashstep. Lightning punch. Lightning kick. Take Stormwind Rider as a control sorcery and make that the Unleashing of Raw Electricity. The Burning Name becomes a lighting...

[Sorcerous Overlord]

Trevor and Sypha fighting demons in Castlevania season 3. It's got almost everything Exalted: A chosen hero using a blessed Artifact that deals aggravated damage to Creatures of Darkness. A scholar blending control of the elements with kung fu. A Sorcerer interrupting a demonic ritual in a Demesne. A blood sacrifice to summon a Deathlord from the Underworld. Great stunts, great fights.

Season 2 has three heroes taking on a Deathlord. Alucard, Trevor, and Sypha are basically an Abyssal, a Heroic Mortal, and a Dragonblood. Alucard is simply more powerful than Trevor and is much faster,...