3E Infernals - Change of Direction

[Blaque]

Thanks Blaque, that's helpful and hopeful. It sounds like they've taken a big U-turn from the previous 3E preview.

As stated a few times, even as quoted by Holden in the first post of this thread, that preview is in effect defunct. Different people are in charge than who wrote tha

Well yes, I could buy a bunch of hardbacks that I'll probably never get to use because I have no gaming group, but I'm hoping somebody somewhere has summarized the key points (castes, caste Abilities, caste marks, and what is Devil-Body for Infernals)

Pretty much everything save Abilities is known from Essence (which doesn't use Caste/Aspect traits really). Quick summary:

Castes: Azimuth, Ascendant, Horizon, Nadir, Penumbra (relating ot the Solar ones respectively). Caste Marks are something like this, though less "spkey" than apparently I rendered them as here.


Devil-Body is what shintai use to be. It's a personalized one-winged angel form that can either look like one of the shintais from 2e or be something unqiue to you. In Essence, it's a menu of a few powers that when you build an Infernal you choose two of at Essence 1, more wtih repurchases. It triggers even if you don't know the Charm at -2 health levels, or whenever you want if you buy it with a Charm.

or in the case of Getimians, Umbrals, Dream-souled, Liminals, and Hearteaters who Chose them and why, when were they created and/or why are they only appearing in the Time of Tumult, what are their castes/aspects, what are their themes? There's a little info here (p. 1) but not even all of those questions answered, and nothing about Getimians or Liminals: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...e-dream-souled

That's mostly forum and Discord stuff. Getimians are again, explained in Essnece. Their Castes are Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, colored pale pink, green, orange, and blue repsectively. Thier Caste marks are the astrological symbosls for Juno, Pallus, Ceres, and Vesta. Hey have been around for under a century, were originally made by the pre-Yozi titans Oramus and Sachverel, not used during the War of the Gods, and were let out by the rogue Sidereal Rakan Thulio who recruits them for his War on Heaven.

Liminals are as in the corebook and Essence, don't have Caste marks (since they dont' hae Castes but Aspects). The first showed-up after the start of the Shogunate.

Umbrals, Dream-Souled, and Heart-Eaters are kind of beyond scope of here. But two were from the War of the Gods and got changed and existed since in limtited form. Dream-Souled probably also were around always, but we don't know when Ketu started Exalting things.That post you link sums most of what we know about the optional Exalts.

...
I'm coming from a very post-modern, disability-as-social-construct point of view. For me being neurodiverse is 80% discrimination, 15% cool abilities that my society doesn't value for no good reason, 4% minor annoyances, and only 1% actual problems I'd ever want to "cure". ...

I guess speaking as someone who's legally blind, the environment is just not going ot afford me options, purposeful or not, that full sight would. This is with reading, navigating htings, tool use and so on. THis can be made less severe, but I'm pretty sure that my ability to navigate the world with my limitted eyesight is not sufficient for the environment most of humans in history have had. It's pretty hard-up "My eyes fucking suck, this sucks" and go with that myself. It affects how I do life, but it is somethign I would rather not deal with.

Mortals in Creation won't have a post-modern worldview, but things like ADHD, dyslexia, aphantasia, autism, missing hand/arm/eye/ear, anosmia, blindness, deafness still aren't automatically something a person hates every minute of. Having no legs in a society without wheelchairs and ramps... would be harder to cope with. Unless you're flying or brachiating beastfolk.

Having only 2 arms in a society of 4-armed people is a disability, until you run away (being Anathema and all) and enter a wider world where everybody has 2 arms. That might prompt some consideration of disability as a social construct!

Being blind means you can't see as well and humans are a primarily visual species like most primates. I guess to me "This is something that I'm bad at" is just also what I see it as. Getting around being blind is either inventing new powers that humans don't get (and thus dont' transhuman anything...it's non-human) or getting eyes that work (which is just getting me to baseline). This is why while there's a broad thing to be said on disability, I think there's not a one-sized-fits-all take on dealing with it nor shoudl there be.

Well, there is a difference between having your psychology shaped to ape a specific Yozi's stupid psychological problems (which wasn't attractive) vs. turning your Intimacies into self-aware demons who are NPCs in their own right, growing weird inhuman and unearthly powers, and gaining weird, weird perspectives on life. Like Transcendent Desert Creature... that doesn't change your psychology to be more like Cecelyne, but it will have a profound impact on your life. ...

I guess to me I see the former as intersting buts till fundementally alien, not better. And the latter is a refluffed and specifc take on Hardship Surviving Mendicant Spirit to me. The latter doesnt' say anything about impacting my life other than surviving harsh conditions but not in a way different form other Exalts in final effect. In Essence terms, it is probably more a Mode on the universla Charm.

And yeah extra limbs and eyes, built-in lasers, never pooping or peeing again, telekinetics, telepathy, that stuff is plenty transhuman. The only reason Infernals get called "not real transhumanists" is because so many people think transhumanism requires futuristic cybernetics or it doesn't count. ...

In my view transhumanism is a societal thing, not getting individual superpowers. I don't these mean you ahve some value that makes you beyond human. You are stil a human with pwoers, or you are shedding human features for power. I generally think it's baiscally exalting inhumanity as beyond humanity and often feel it has misanthorpic vibes to it. My own take there beyond context of this thread I admit.

...But even uploading your brain (or transferring your soul, or shapeshifting) into a completely different (robot/demon/animal) body is still transhumanism, and yes you are cutting away your previous human body. Just like you can tell a story about someone who cut off their human arms and replaced them with Inspector Gadget robot arms, or replaced their legs with a mermaid tail. Magic is just as valid as metal implants.

Again, different disconnect. I don't it's about the cutting stuff off or changing. I don't think i'ts "trans" anything. I don't fundementally think getting superpowers fits how I have seen transhuman presented or sold to me. It's getting power, and while I subscribe to things like full body cognition and stuff, I don't put an value or progressive weight ot it. It's different, not beyond. Again, inhuman, not transhuman, when it gets to the extrmees often highlighted by stuff I was first exposed to it by.

(Basically, balem garbige Tzimisce players and Ray Kurzweil for my generally antipathy to transhumanism.)

...
I mostly like getting rid of the Reclamation as a "get us out of jail now!!!" thing, but the idea that not even the Third-Circle and Second-Circle Demons have agendas and goals in Creation? Doesn't make sense me. They have Yozi cults for a reason. They're going to want to ask for something from the Green Sun Princes.

They have goals, they're just going to be custom to the individual deomon and probably tied to their itnerests and power bases in Hell in some fashion. Ligier thinks more of Creation should be like Hell becuase he htinks Hell is effing sweet. So doing that to impress him is probably going to be on the table. The big thing is Yozis as a whole mostly do their own things, which involve usual Yozi spite-related stuff, or their partciular thingsl ike Cecylene being an ass, the Whispering Flame enslaving shit, the Ebon Dragon being drama-goth, or Malfeas thrashing.

Making a god or familiar or elemental as a separate person is nothing like animating your love of music and poetry as a demon musician who is still part of your mind and soul while also walking around as a person in their own right, and if they get Ghost-Eaten you can't appreciate music anymore.

Thematically, no. Mechancially, yes. Infenrals will likely be pretty good at it, and have the fluff justificaiton to make more than the one a Solar usually makes from their own Intimaices or a Lunar their refelction. But like, mechanically? I doubt it'll be much different.

I gotta disagree. There's a big difference between the themes of animal weirdness (Lunars), earthly and divine weirdness (Exigents) and totally alien Hell weirdness (GSPs). Exigents can never fill the place that GSPs have in my heart, even though one could plausibly be telekinetic or telepathic. Everything under the Green Sun belongs with Infernals.

It depends what you are going at. If it is the specific aesthetics, thsoe are not really necessary ot have the transhuman stuff. They are alien powers, but still at the end fo the day powers. Lunars are able to explore that via the animal kingdom since animals can get fucking weird. And Exigents get to just play in areas that Infernals didn't or at least ot me, didn't without just doing the "Oh I want this set of powers, make up a Yozi or Devil-Tiger to suit them."

Infernals got telekenisis, shadowmancy, evil genie powers, super gaslighting, turning into Doomsday, anime hentacles, devil-triggers, and more all stuffed into one splat. To me, the Yozis were often retraoctively used to justify this (SHLiHN for example had no real implications of telekinetic anythigns ave floaty balls origianlly). Exigents are by design there to let you explore systematic ideas beyond that, and the gods of heaven and earth include things ranging from Plentimon's fair dice gimics to Han-Tha's necrophagy to going all Majora's Mask with a thousand faces and forms that way, including your own being one of them now. Infernals are going to have some things just not htere becuase Infenrals were to some extent, the Tzimisce of Exalted for me. A dozen things under one umbrella, many of them able to stand on their own as an Exalt in themsselves. Lunars got this focus in 3e, and this is why Liminals exist in part in relation to Abyssals.

Can you give me the basics of how this works, please? I have no idea what you're talking about.
MHM isn't just a weapon. It's a retractable third arm/hand that gets upgraded with later Charms: you can make it invisible, turn it into a grappling weapon, turn it into a any handheld weapon you want, turn it into Craftsmen Need No Tools, give it longer range, etc. Reducing it to just a weapon that does nothing else would ruin it. Forcing you to shapeshift into a weird-looking monster to use it worse than destroys it. MHM is telekinetics and should just be... telekinetics. Useable in human form, and potentially invisible/not Obvious.

Devil-Body basically gives you a suite of powers that reflect variosu effects previous Charms did that you can customize to look like older Charms or do your own thing. The weapon/sense/movement one could easily just be MHM's more offesnive elemeents. If you really want it to help in tool use so be it. If you bascially look human but there's a bunch of teleekentic arms floating about it can be that. And again, "Fucking mind-movement TK powers" Is literally what I mean where "Infernals wer teh wastebin Exalt" as nothing about that is Hellish save Exalted said it was and you can build a whole Exalt out of that without it also being demonic.

But Green Sun Prince is hugely superior to vanilla "Infernal". "Infernal" is confusing and bland especially when "akuma" now refers to 483734 different kinds of things while also being included in Infernal. It's like saying Solar, Lunar, and Sidereal are deprecated now, just use "Divine" or "Celestial" for all of them indiscriminately. Blegh. D:

Akuma as a term might not even return. But that's a thing. In 3e, Akuma aren't Infernal Exalted even they are. There's a term for folks who make deal with the Yozis for power. Infernal Exalted are actually Chosen fo Hell. No other Exalt of that sort exists. If your Solar maeks a deal to wrok with teh Maks of Winters or the Fair Folk they don't get a special term of Deathlord Exalted. They're Solars work with a Deathlord. If you are doing infernalism, you are just an Exalt working with the Yozis. If you're an Infernal Exalt, you are Chosen by them.

The entire distinction comes from 1e never really giving a defintion of Infernal beyodnd Akuma and 2e trying to have both under one header of Infernal Exalted when it was never eneded. Akuma are sellouts, simple as that. They don't need to be considered Infernal Exalted when like...Infernal Exalted actually do the Chosen of Hell thing.

So the demon in your head and the Past Life memories aren't even options now? That sucks. They should not be taking away character options, that just makes more and more 2E character concepts invalid and impossible to convert. ...

Past Life was a soultion to a problem they invented. Lytek has nothing to do with how Exaltation operates in 3e save observation. Before his advent in Sidereeals, sometimes you had Past Lives, soemtimes youd idn't. Infenrals don't get special Past Life points becuase like...Exaltation jsut dones't need scrubbing. The thing in your head is still there. It's just a more personal demon, not a random First Circle.

... Coadjutors were awesome, and they could give you mutations. They can always make it an option for the Coadjutor to be mind-blasted/traumatized/absorbed into silence, or have its mind assimilated by a goetic psychic manifestation of its host. But that shouldn't be mandatory.

They're still there, just different route. Likely by default htey just act as a weird Google demon to talk to Hell if you need it and likely you expand on it via Merits or Charms. A big thing to me on Infenrals in 3e seems to be you are getting a lot of the Devil-Tigers tuff out the gate. You define the Coadjutor. You define the form ofyour Devil-Body. You get an Inner World before Essence 6. And so on.

Getting rid of Urges is excellent, from a gameplay perspective. But I think it needs some serious, GoD-consistent explanation for why the Yozis of 3E are inexplicably super nice and friendly to the Exalted who they utterly hate. No akuma, no torture or Torment, no Urges, never abuse or hurt anybody, never try to force their Exalted to do anything even useful. Whuh?

Take people they kind of agree with, give them the abiltiy to rip the world apart, send them out in the world. It's consistent in that the very act of Exalting to them is spiteful in itself. Again, the shaekn soda can analogy. The can doesn't usually survive the process. Giving people who are downtrodden, and angry might result in folks hwo make the world better, but for the Yozis, they kind of hope more you hurt a lot of folks along the way. But they can't control you, they know that. They stole a part of the world and wnt to watch it eat that world with their power basically.

That said, you can likely get power and resrouces form them or their souls. That puts you in a more obligatory relationship with them. But they kind of hope you hurt peoplewith their power. You ultimately serve them through your action, kind of like how 3e geenrally runs with things like the Sun probably thinsk Choosing Solars is him doing something in the world.

Far more plausible and interesting (and humorous) would be this:
1. Malfeas turns Gorol into an akuma. The Yozis acquire some more akuma. They torture and abuse them for fun. They send out the Broken-Winged Crane. And... they don't get freed from prison. The akuma have no capacity for heroism or new ideas, are a pain to micromanage, and are fairly easy to detect (us truth charm, ask "do you serve the Yozis?"). The Exalted figure out that akuma have no free will, and unsurprisingly there's a huge drop-off in Chosen dumb enough to make that deal.

If akumahood was an utter sucker's bet, it's basically nothing but a way to make one-dimensional NPCs and plays up the Yozis as Always Super Awful Badguys. This entire step, at the end of the day, is a waste of wordcount and time to me. Like, rather than having akuma s was, we're getting akuma as a more political thing with a range, where some folks go infenralist since well...they get somethingo ut of it save beings uckers. The Yozis know they'll never get out. They can't get out. It'll never happen. So they work with Exalts becuase it might hurt the world. They send out the Broken-Winged Crane because they might get agents out there...to hurt things more or let demons out. The big thing to mostly think on is don't even think of the "Uselss husk" thing as an option. Yozis work with people they know will do the job without being brainwashed puppets.

2. So the Yozis (or 3C Demons) make the 2E Green Sun Princes with Urges screamed at them constantly (but with 3E Charms, I guess). There's a hilarious Holden quote that I can't find just now, describing this as the result of the Yozis being utterly clueless about human psychology and motivations. So of course it fails. The first generation of GSPs quickly figure out how to Swallow the Scorpion [or insert name] at E3, or get themselves killed constantly Tormenting themselves, or just screw around with Acts of Villainy and do their own thing. Even the loyalist ones almost never try to fulfil their specific Urges. Except Manosque Cyan.
3. Finally, the Yozis (or 3C Demons) realize they can't win and just throw up their hands and give up on Urges. All future Green Sun Princes are the 3E version with no Urge. They still use a Coadjutor to deliver the Exaltation to Creation. Suddenly... GSPs are rewarded for their actions with artifacts and training that makes them more effective at fulfilling their contracts with 3C and 2C Demons, and they don't keep falling apart due to Torment... and they're actually more useful. Except all the ones who aren't loyalists.

I do worry what will replace that for the Great Curse, though. I've always disliked the Great Curse.

Again, this is kind of roundabout to do what? The Yozis want to just let Infernals Fuck Shit Up. And might give them the resoruces to do that. That's to me the big thing. The Yozis are not in a place to want shit. So they're using the Infernal Exalted to get some semblance of relevance in the world they no longer can ever really touch or have. This isn't nice. They see people who are hurt, think "I'm hur too...and this is what I would do" and empower them thinking that what they would do is what you would do. The modicrum of empathy they show only ends where it serves them and thier wants and needs to hurt things. If you give a betrayed general Exaltation and a boss daiklave, she'll conquer that kingdom, form a new empire and purge its ranks. Their power allowed it. Their champion upended the Destiny the gods of Heaven wanted. And even if they killed her, another one like her will come up at some point. The Infernal Exalted don't need to serve them as slaves so long as they upend the world that was denied them, basiclaly.

You don't need Urges for this. The Yozis look for folks who already align with them. That the people might do something else is a known side-effect, but well, they aren't Diminsehd by the looting and they generally are cynial about how humans take power even if your character need not be that bad.

[glamourweaver]

So can I ask, where was this all confirmed? (keeping the Yozi-themed Charms, keeping Mind-Hand Manipulation, explicitly making demons that are the PC's subsouls not just familiars, creating inner worlds, doing all that before Essence 5) ?

Like a hundred individual comments from the devs from every time Infernals come up both on the dev thread and on the Discord. You're asking us a while after we made the posts you're quoting so it may be hard to track everything down now.

But Yozi themed Ability Charms were self-evidently confirmed by the Exalted Essence draft

[Erinys]

Ability Charms, but Yozi-inspired ones.

I mean they can still make demon races and create their own paradisal realms according to the devs. So they’ll still be you know. Freaky and weird.

many of their iconic powers from 2e will still be part of their charmset, and some of the coolest things Neph loved about them (building your own soul hierarchy, worldform, etc) will now be part of ther core essence 1-5 Charms instead of something you can only start to do at High Essence.

so while it will be different, the idea that it erases rather than continuing development on his work isn’t fair.

So can I ask, where was this all confirmed? (keeping the Yozi-themed Charms, keeping Mind-Hand Manipulation, explicitly making demons that are the PC's subsouls not just familiars, creating inner worlds, doing all that before Essence 5) ?

[Erinys]

Thanks Blaque, that's helpful and hopeful. It sounds like they've taken a big U-turn from the previous 3E preview.

Inferlal Castes and general population Chosen from are in Exalted Essence. They'll be expanded on, as Lioness notes, more in Crucible of Legends. Same with Getimian Exalts and some on Exigents.

Well yes, I could buy a bunch of hardbacks that I'll probably never get to use because I have no gaming group, but I'm hoping somebody somewhere has summarized the key points (castes, caste Abilities, caste marks, and what is Devil-Body for Infernals)

or in the case of Getimians, Umbrals, Dream-souled, Liminals, and Hearteaters who Chose them and why, when were they created and/or why are they only appearing in the Time of Tumult, what are their castes/aspects, what are their themes? There's a little info here (p. 1) but not even all of those questions answered, and nothing about Getimians or Liminals: http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...e-dream-souled

People used to post and collect these kind of summaries of What We Know of 3E. I hope it wasn't banned or something.

So far this has been the case. We have had characters who are explicitly physically disabled Exalt (in the case of Kumari Samathi Anja of the Forest Witches for instance), and one of the things the developers wanted to make sure were in artwork for Essence were at least more representations of people with visible physical disaiblities, such as missing limbs, eyes, and also those not impeding or adding to coolness, as in one case an Abyssal with a soulsteel wheelchair.

Awesome! I also saw the one-handed Solar in the corebook, but more importantly the Flaws section does NOT say you can't have a flaw that predates your Exaltation.
Incidentally, I like how they handled Flaws. I was originally unhappy when I heard they would not be worth points at chargen, but the Fate-esque xp award is a great idea. It can still matter, but if you totally compensate then it's just aesthetic.

I would say actually Lunar Exalted can explore part of this. In the sense that some folks take disability as an impedence that can be fixed and which their acquisiton of god-bodies or different froms let them overcome. (This is me as a disabled person as well who honestly while it defines me also considers it a pain in my ass.) Exigents especially it depends as I think more or less any "embracing the weird' element Infernals had...they can do? It just depends on the kind of god you became Exalted by. But it's a matter IT hink that different individuals will interact with their disablities differently and each Exalt goes at that differntly.

I'm coming from a very post-modern, disability-as-social-construct point of view. For me being neurodiverse is 80% discrimination, 15% cool abilities that my society doesn't value for no good reason, 4% minor annoyances, and only 1% actual problems I'd ever want to "cure". Mortals in Creation won't have a post-modern worldview, but things like ADHD, dyslexia, aphantasia, autism, missing hand/arm/eye/ear, anosmia, blindness, deafness still aren't automatically something a person hates every minute of. Having no legs in a society without wheelchairs and ramps... would be harder to cope with. Unless you're flying or brachiating beastfolk.

Having only 2 arms in a society of 4-armed people is a disability, until you run away (being Anathema and all) and enter a wider world where everybody has 2 arms. That might prompt some consideration of disability as a social construct!

I guess to me I'm not as big on the transhumanism as it was presented and adverstied in 2e. It was not so much embracing your difference but discarding the stuff that made you you to become someone else. (Not something else, someone else, unless you bought a lot into Devil-Tiger stuff...which was then a splat selling itself on not being that splat.) It wasn't really saying much to become a serial killer aping a titanic one (Adorjan). Or how becoming a Logic Bot ala the Transcendent Virtue Charms actually was being transhuman. It was in a way to me anti-human.

Well, there is a difference between having your psychology shaped to ape a specific Yozi's stupid psychological problems (which wasn't attractive) vs. turning your Intimacies into self-aware demons who are NPCs in their own right, growing weird inhuman and unearthly powers, and gaining weird, weird perspectives on life. Like Transcendent Desert Creature... that doesn't change your psychology to be more like Cecelyne, but it will have a profound impact on your life. And yeah extra limbs and eyes, built-in lasers, never pooping or peeing again, telekinetics, telepathy, that stuff is plenty transhuman. The only reason Infernals get called "not real transhumanists" is because so many people think transhumanism requires futuristic cybernetics or it doesn't count. But even uploading your brain (or transferring your soul, or shapeshifting) into a completely different (robot/demon/animal) body is still transhumanism, and yes you are cutting away your previous human body. Just like you can tell a story about someone who cut off their human arms and replaced them with Inspector Gadget robot arms, or replaced their legs with a mermaid tail. Magic is just as valid as metal implants.

To me the big thing that I will say needs refinement (and which the writers have said aree aware need it) is that Infernals are revolutionary. And the issue there is sometimes revolutions work and sometimes you became what you hated. Dismantling strucutres of opporession without presenting replacements is easy, building new strucutre sof society is hard.

Note also this means that Infernals are not like, always the good guys either. Revolutionaries can go bad. It's a trope in movies afterall, even good one that aren't trying to be wishy-washy both sides stuff or reactionary strawmen. Your PC need not be that, but I think that a thing to remember is that this is going to be an avenue where they can go since that's like...intersting way it can go. Closing off potentail negative results is as much dishonest I think as saying it's all doomed.

Absolutely. This is a challenge for Solars, Lunars, Gold Stars, and Getimians too. Like you said, no splat should be always good (nor always evil). If they were, it wouldn't be Exalted. Killing all the Guildsmen who trade slaves is easy. Rebuilding new trade networks while being blacklisted by the remaining Guild and hated by all the cities/nations now suffering a recession because you cut the trade routes... well you shoulda planned that out before you went on a killing spree!

The big thing in 3e is the Yozis don't frankly care what you do with the power. One of the devs for Essence described Infernals a few times as the "Shaken soda can Exalts". They care you mess up the world of the gods and Exalted. If you make something better, fine. You show the world needed them all along and their power can fix it. It spites the gods and Exalted by that alone. If you fail? It proves them right about human nautre. Their plans are to hurt, stew, dance, and live.

I mostly like getting rid of the Reclamation as a "get us out of jail now!!!" thing, but the idea that not even the Third-Circle and Second-Circle Demons have agendas and goals in Creation? Doesn't make sense me. They have Yozi cults for a reason. They're going to want to ask for something from the Green Sun Princes.

And in this case, you still can get souls (since making spirits mechancially is literally soemthing Celestials seem to like...do in 3e),

Making a god or familiar or elemental as a separate person is nothing like animating your love of music and poetry as a demon musician who is still part of your mind and soul while also walking around as a person in their own right, and if they get Ghost-Eaten you can't appreciate music anymore.

Inner World is something htey want to explore,

I hope they stick to that!

I actually think Infenrals in 2e were the Wastebin Exlats often. A lot of thier powers were basically "We coudln't justify this in a main Exalt, so they get dumped here" to me. So a big thing to think on is that Infernals are going to be weird, but probably aren't every werid under the sun.

I gotta disagree. There's a big difference between the themes of animal weirdness (Lunars), earthly and divine weirdness (Exigents) and totally alien Hell weirdness (GSPs). Exigents can never fill the place that GSPs have in my heart, even though one could plausibly be telekinetic or telepathic. Everything under the Green Sun belongs with Infernals.

How you do the Devil-Body is pretty flexible. When you buy it you pick two effects: An attack, senses, aura of emotion, become biggo, change the enviornment, gain alien senses, gain alien movement. Mind-Hand Manipulation in this context is just....probably wepaon and movement/senses. Maybe a custom tool-use take if you want something else. A big thing too is you can have it be like, soemthing unqiue to you also that's still weird. RIght now I have tested building an Infernal who has the rough terrain take where everything turns to amber quartz, and the attacks are lighting bolts that explode from them.

Can you give me the basics of how this works, please? I have no idea what you're talking about.
MHM isn't just a weapon. It's a retractable third arm/hand that gets upgraded with later Charms: you can make it invisible, turn it into a grappling weapon, turn it into a any handheld weapon you want, turn it into Craftsmen Need No Tools, give it longer range, etc. Reducing it to just a weapon that does nothing else would ruin it. Forcing you to shapeshift into a weird-looking monster to use it worse than destroys it. MHM is telekinetics and should just be... telekinetics. Useable in human form, and potentially invisible/not Obvious.

Worth noting on terms, shintai is depreciated since it turns out it's a real world religious one that kind of got co-opted through KotE into WW and evovled into like...its own thing that doens't really hit that. Green Sun Prince has also not shown up so far in any context with Infernals in 3e.

So Devil-Body replaces it?

But Green Sun Prince is hugely superior to vanilla "Infernal". "Infernal" is confusing and bland especially when "akuma" now refers to 483734 different kinds of things while also being included in Infernal. It's like saying Solar, Lunar, and Sidereal are deprecated now, just use "Divine" or "Celestial" for all of them indiscriminately. Blegh. D:

Coadjutors are there still but more goetic manifestations of your own psyche trying to put into sensible terms the Screaming Meat Wall of the Yozis. Urges aren't there. The First Age Solar stuff is depreciated a lot since the current devs dont' really thing fixating on events from a millennia and a half ago are as importanta s whatyour character cares about now.

So the demon in your head and the Past Life memories aren't even options now? That sucks. They should not be taking away character options, that just makes more and more 2E character concepts invalid and impossible to convert. Coadjutors were awesome, and they could give you mutations. They can always make it an option for the Coadjutor to be mind-blasted/traumatized/absorbed into silence, or have its mind assimilated by a goetic psychic manifestation of its host. But that shouldn't be mandatory.

Getting rid of Urges is excellent, from a gameplay perspective. But I think it needs some serious, GoD-consistent explanation for why the Yozis of 3E are inexplicably super nice and friendly to the Exalted who they utterly hate. No akuma, no torture or Torment, no Urges, never abuse or hurt anybody, never try to force their Exalted to do anything even useful. Whuh?

Far more plausible and interesting (and humorous) would be this:
1. Malfeas turns Gorol into an akuma. The Yozis acquire some more akuma. They torture and abuse them for fun. They send out the Broken-Winged Crane. And... they don't get freed from prison. The akuma have no capacity for heroism or new ideas, are a pain to micromanage, and are fairly easy to detect (us truth charm, ask "do you serve the Yozis?"). The Exalted figure out that akuma have no free will, and unsurprisingly there's a huge drop-off in Chosen dumb enough to make that deal.
2. So the Yozis (or 3C Demons) make the 2E Green Sun Princes with Urges screamed at them constantly (but with 3E Charms, I guess). There's a hilarious Holden quote that I can't find just now, describing this as the result of the Yozis being utterly clueless about human psychology and motivations. So of course it fails. The first generation of GSPs quickly figure out how to Swallow the Scorpion [or insert name] at E3, or get themselves killed constantly Tormenting themselves, or just screw around with Acts of Villainy and do their own thing. Even the loyalist ones almost never try to fulfil their specific Urges. Except Manosque Cyan.
3. Finally, the Yozis (or 3C Demons) realize they can't win and just throw up their hands and give up on Urges. All future Green Sun Princes are the 3E version with no Urge. They still use a Coadjutor to deliver the Exaltation to Creation. Suddenly... GSPs are rewarded for their actions with artifacts and training that makes them more effective at fulfilling their contracts with 3C and 2C Demons, and they don't keep falling apart due to Torment... and they're actually more useful. Except all the ones who aren't loyalists.

I do worry what will replace that for the Great Curse, though. I've always disliked the Great Curse.

[Blaque]

...

I love, LOVE the concept of Exalted chosen from the downtrodden, the oppressed, the people who were rejected utterly by humanity or by Creation itself. I love the idea of broken and disabled people being Chosen, and not in spite of their "inferiority" but because it can give them strength they maybe never knew they had. The previous devs had said they would dump the awful 1E-2E canon that Incarnae and Dragons NEVER chose anyone with a disability because disabled people are incapable of heroism. I hope that crap is still being thrown in the garbage because nothing make me more angry, as a disabled person. ...

So far this has been the case. We have had characters who are explicitly physically disabled Exalt (in the case of Kumari Samathi Anja of the Forest Witches for instance), and one of the things the developers wanted to make sure were in artwork for Essence were at least more representations of people with visible physical disaiblities, such as missing limbs, eyes, and also those not impeding or adding to coolness, as in one case an Abyssal with a soulsteel wheelchair.

... But simply being a Solar/Lunar/Exigent who was disabled as a mortal is nothing compared to being an Infernal for whom that experience, of being disabled or broken or mentally ill and excluded from 'normal' humanity, is a central theme and cast as a source of strength and unique insights and unique abilities instead of just failure. Someone who embraces their identity and finds new abilities from it, instead of "overcoming disability" by trying to be "normal" all the time.

I would say actually Lunar Exalted can explore part of this. In the sense that some folks take disability as an impedence that can be fixed and which their acquisiton of god-bodies or different froms let them overcome. (This is me as a disabled person as well who honestly while it defines me also considers it a pain in my ass.) Exigents especially it depends as I think more or less any "embracing the weird' element Infernals had...they can do? It just depends on the kind of god you became Exalted by. But it's a matter IT hink that different individuals will interact with their disablities differently and each Exalt goes at that differntly.

That, and the specific themes of the individual Yozis (except 2E TED) and the theme of transhumanism, is what made me love 2E Infernals so much, and what I can't get from Exigents. But the idea that to play any Chosen with a theme of being disabled or exiled or oppressed, I'm required to play an eeeeevil, sadistic, world-destroying villain who just turns the tables of oppression onto Creation and humanity, is utterly toxic to me. It also looks pretty contrary to the post-modernism that Exalted started with, where justice does not automatically result from "legitimate" power and rulership.

I guess to me I'm not as big on the transhumanism as it was presented and adverstied in 2e. It was not so much embracing your difference but discarding the stuff that made you you to become someone else. (Not something else, someone else, unless you bought a lot into Devil-Tiger stuff...which was then a splat selling itself on not being that splat.) It wasn't really saying much to become a serial killer aping a titanic one (Adorjan). Or how becoming a Logic Bot ala the Transcendent Virtue Charms actually was being transhuman. It was in a way to me anti-human.

To me the big thing that I will say needs refinement (and which the writers have said aree aware need it) is that Infernals are revolutionary. And the issue there is sometimes revolutions work and sometimes you became what you hated. Dismantling strucutres of opporession without presenting replacements is easy, building new strucutre sof society is hard. All that. It's still quite post-modern in that it presents the fact that the revolutionary is as "right" to action as rulers in some instances depending on the strucutres they present. But note this is kind of disconnected a lot from transhumanism since trnashumanism (to me at least) isn't actuall post-modern. It's actualy usually hyper-modern (since it assumes progress in rational technological or engineering capability to go to something "better").

The main thing to me that the devs want to do is that tearing down structures of oppression or marginalization is easy. But that building new ones up is hard. And there isn't a Charm that gives you a new perfect un-oppressive structure.And due to the Yozis nature, your powers are going to be alien and Hellish. Not necessarily evil since Exalted doesn't still go with that. But you are dealing with pwoers themed on beings defined by hatred and spite, so you have to make do with tools at your disposal. I think of it similar ot Sidereals but with a bit more again, nuclear firebomb constraints on your toolkit.

I want to play my 2E concept for a disabled Defiler with Oramus and SWLIHN Charms, who looks at the Yozis and says "You learned all the wrong lessons from oppression and exile. I will not be like you. I will save Creation from all oppression, including your oppression. I will even save the 1st Circle Demons and Midwryth and Jadeborn from oppression if I possibly can. I will use your own powers against your plans." ...

The big thing in 3e is the Yozis don't frankly care what you do with the power. One of the devs for Essence described Infernals a few times as the "Shaken soda can Exalts". They care you mess up the world of the gods and Exalted. If you make something better, fine. You show the world needed them all along and their power can fix it. It spites the gods and Exalted by that alone. If you fail? It proves them right about human nautre. Their plans are to hurt, stew, dance, and live. As for Charms, well, you'll get those regardless of Caste, it's how you do it. Like, a good chunk of stuff with mobility and stuff is already in Devil-Body Incarnation. As noted above, Mind-Hand Manipulation is pretty much a skin of one of the powers it gives.

Someone who is not a villain, a chump, a slave, or a walking engine of inevitable harm to everyone around her -- but someone who saves Creation with bizarre, inhuman, weird, creepy magic that probably never gains her the acceptance she wants from humanity, but still does it anyway because darnit, it needs to be done and someday she will remake Creation into a place where being weird and inhuman isn't a death sentence. ...

This is doable just fine I think with the way they present things, it just is a way to do things mind. A big thing as noted is that due to Essence's abbreviated Charms, you're nto goign to get too alien aesthetically but similar ot how Alchemical stuff doens't in itself preent roboticness in Essence's aesthetics, I'm sure some transformative stuff is there. But kind of wroth remembering that the Yozis threw you out there to break the world. How much you prove them right or not is up to you and such. One of the Anima powers is literally No Gods No Masters, so take that as the general vibe theyw ant there.

Note also this means that Infernals are not like, always the good guys either. Revolutionaries can go bad. It's a trope in movies afterall, even good one that aren't trying to be wishy-washy both sides stuff or reactionary strawmen. Your PC need not be that, but I think that a thing to remember is that this is going to be an avenue where they can go since that's like...intersting way it can go. Closing off potentail negative results is as much dishonest I think as saying it's all doomed.

... Somebody who struggles to balance her human mentality with deliberately embracing some aspects of transhumanism -- including shintai, an internal soul-landscape, and demonic sub-souls. Who just rejects the entire notion that you have to be a 'normal' holy Exalt to be a hero. Rejecting the very concept of "normal" as having any moral validity whatsoever. A bizarre and unorthodox antihero, but not at all a villain.

Again, to me those aren't transhuman. They're personal acquisition of power, but I generally am with one of the earlier posts that "transhuman" when it is one person isn't actually that. It's flaying off humanity often for non-human power. It's not past, it's different. And in this case, you still can get souls (since making spirits mechancially is literally soemthing Celestials seem to like...do in 3e), Inner World is something htey want to explore, and there's Devil-Bodies which are very customizable and such out the gate. How much the game is going to support your specific needs there is kind of up to yout hough. It's a system rmember that's trying to present a splat of mutliple charactr options and so it needs to not be too one-note.

Also again note is that Infernals need not have all that. Lunars and Exigents do a lot of heavy-lifting on transgression (Lunars are all about pushing against norms in 3e) as well as exotic power (Exigents can get weird as hell). Something to consider is that part of why we got a couple new Exalts in 3e at all is that some things were generally "dumped" itno Exalts. I actually think Infenrals in 2e were the Wastebin Exlats often. A lot of thier powers were basically "We coudln't justify this in a main Exalt, so they get dumped here" to me. So a big thing to think on is that Infernals are going to be weird, but probably aren't every werid under the sun.

... Yes, I want to be able to have Mind-Hand Manipulation at character creation, darnit, without taking an entire Shintai Charm as a pre-requisite. I built my character concept around having tons of MHM-based Charms. Also, I was holding out hope for a CMA based on each Yozi involved with the GSPs, as alternatives to Malfeas-rage Infernal Monster, but SWLIHN's CMA being all about telekinetic grappling and MHM-swords. With the Maidens turning Abilities on their head into unintuitive pure weirdness with Sidereal Charms, I should be able to get MHM from Occult with no problem.

How you do the Devil-Body is pretty flexible. When you buy it you pick two effects: An attack, senses, aura of emotion, become biggo, change the enviornment, gain alien senses, gain alien movement. Mind-Hand Manipulation in this context is just....probably wepaon and movement/senses. Maybe a custom tool-use take if you want something else. A big thing too is you can have it be like, soemthing unqiue to you also that's still weird. RIght now I have tested building an Infernal who has the rough terrain take where everything turns to amber quartz, and the attacks are lighting bolts that explode from them.

I think that's a bit there too is to consider whether soemthing, while signature, was something that needs to be a whole Charm in itself for nostalgia. I am actually fine with it being absorbed into the more unique-to-Infernals Devil-Body stuff rather than trying to ape soemthing that was about ultiamtely playing a mini version of some NPC.

Worth noting on terms, shintai is depreciated since it turns out it's a real world religious one that kind of got co-opted through KotE into WW and evovled into like...its own thing that doens't really hit that. Green Sun Prince has also not shown up so far in any context with Infernals in 3e.

I'm fine with 1E-2E-type akuma still existing as antagonists, or even potential teachers to GSPs. Akuma with no free will, who are transformed through gratuitous and totally unnecessary torture, is exactly what many Yozis like Malfeas or Adorjan would do to the Exalted. ...

As far as we know Akuma as a category of being is likely not there at all. They're more likely something of a political term applied externally, kind of like Left-Handed if you're familiar wt all with Mage: the Awakening. Basically if you sell-out to the Yozis, yous houdl get something out of it. And while you have folks all-in like Dukhantha, you also could have the Immaculte Order claiming that say, a Black Claw Stylist is one too, even if said martial artist might disagree.

... I like the idea that GSPs were created in part because the akuma didn't accomplish what the Yozis wanted out of them, and yet the Yozis still don't comprehend that the akuma suck precisely because they are deprived of their capacity for human heroism and innovation. And I'm fine with GSPs having coadjutors and the voices of insane, deranged Solar god-kings ranting in their heads or tempting them to become evil infernalists or charicatures of Solars at their worst. That could be fun if handled right. But I think they should have plenty of options to reject those pressures, or twist their suggestions to something more anti-heroic, and with less intense pressure than the 2E Urge system.

Basically none of this is the same or need be. Infernals are opportunistic Molotov cocktails thrown by the Yozis into the world. There's not much else to that and they need not be Version 2 of anything. Coadjutors are there still but more goetic manifestations of your own psyche trying to put into sensible terms the Screaming Meat Wall of the Yozis. Urges aren't there. The First Age Solar stuff is depreciated a lot since the current devs dont' really thing fixating on events from a millennia and a half ago are as importanta s whatyour character cares about now.

Actually I wouldn't mind a form of Urges which gives a rough framework, which the GSP has the latitude to interpret to their own preferences. So for example, Malfeas (or rather, one of his 3rd Circle Demons) wants you to go blow up Gem, but what he can actually pressure you to do is go destroy something epic in the South, or some city somewhere in Creation. I was actually really interested in playing my Defiler concept with the fanmade Oramus Urge to Create, where what she creates is alien or bizarre but not actually intrinsically harmful to humanity or Creation - just weird and/or laced with subtle Oramus flavor. Or 3rd Circle Demons trying to make contracts with you to go do something for them in Creation, but the carrot is a favor or artifact or MA tutoring or spellbook or something, and the stick is that if you refuse the Demon will politically oppose or dislike you, rather than torturing you with Torment or mind-controlling you.

I doubt we'll get anything Urge-like. What's more often going to be the case is th elatter stuff. You want to know a kung fu style for the demon dojo? Do something for him. You want Ligier to get you a boss daiklave? Work with him. Basic summoning and interaction with demons is probably enough to generate plots with them without psychological cattle prods.

[Blaque]

What the heck, I can't edit any of my posts at all ever?

Where can I read the new official info on 3E GSPs, their castes, similarities and difference from 2E, etc.?

Inferlal Castes and general population Chosen from are in Exalted Essence. They'll be expanded on, as Lioness notes, more in Crucible of Legends. Same with Getimian Exalts and some on Exigents.

[Lioness]

What the heck, I can't edit any of my posts at all ever?

Where can I read the new official info on 3E GSPs, their castes, similarities and difference from 2E, etc.?

I think most of the info is on the Exalted Discord and the upcoming Storyteller's Guide, Crucible of Legend.

[Erinys]

What the heck, I can't edit any of my posts at all ever?

Where can I read the new official info on 3E GSPs, their castes, similarities and difference from 2E, etc.?

[Erinys]

Why can't I edit my post at all?

Where can I read more about Getimians and other new Exalted?

And where can I read the new official description of the 3E GSPs?

[Erinys]

My question is, how do we actually convey our hopes to the new devs? Do we have any chance of influencing their decisions?

And where can I read more about Getimians and the other new Exalted?

All in all, I'm really happy with ExEss Infernals. Notably, all the signature Infernal characters from 2e can be emulated with the ExEss rules, more or less, so you don't have to change too much. But you are also less doomed to wind up doing evil than in 2e. You can be an Infernal and stick it to the man as an antihero rather than as a cackling villain.

I hope this proves true in Ex3 as well.

I love, LOVE the concept of Exalted chosen from the downtrodden, the oppressed, the people who were rejected utterly by humanity or by Creation itself. I love the idea of broken and disabled people being Chosen, and not in spite of their "inferiority" but because it can give them strength they maybe never knew they had. The previous devs had said they would dump the awful 1E-2E canon that Incarnae and Dragons NEVER chose anyone with a disability because disabled people are incapable of heroism. I hope that crap is still being thrown in the garbage because nothing make me more angry, as a disabled person. But simply being a Solar/Lunar/Exigent who was disabled as a mortal is nothing compared to being an Infernal for whom that experience, of being disabled or broken or mentally ill and excluded from 'normal' humanity, is a central theme and cast as a source of strength and unique insights and unique abilities instead of just failure. Someone who embraces their identity and finds new abilities from it, instead of "overcoming disability" by trying to be "normal" all the time.

That, and the specific themes of the individual Yozis (except 2E TED) and the theme of transhumanism, is what made me love 2E Infernals so much, and what I can't get from Exigents. But the idea that to play any Chosen with a theme of being disabled or exiled or oppressed, I'm required to play an eeeeevil, sadistic, world-destroying villain who just turns the tables of oppression onto Creation and humanity, is utterly toxic to me. It also looks pretty contrary to the post-modernism that Exalted started with, where justice does not automatically result from "legitimate" power and rulership.

I want to play my 2E concept for a disabled Defiler with Oramus and SWLIHN Charms, who looks at the Yozis and says "You learned all the wrong lessons from oppression and exile. I will not be like you. I will save Creation from all oppression, including your oppression. I will even save the 1st Circle Demons and Midwryth and Jadeborn from oppression if I possibly can. I will use your own powers against your plans." Someone who is not a villain, a chump, a slave, or a walking engine of inevitable harm to everyone around her -- but someone who saves Creation with bizarre, inhuman, weird, creepy magic that probably never gains her the acceptance she wants from humanity, but still does it anyway because darnit, it needs to be done and someday she will remake Creation into a place where being weird and inhuman isn't a death sentence. Somebody who struggles to balance her human mentality with deliberately embracing some aspects of transhumanism -- including shintai, an internal soul-landscape, and demonic sub-souls. Who just rejects the entire notion that you have to be a 'normal' holy Exalt to be a hero. Rejecting the very concept of "normal" as having any moral validity whatsoever. A bizarre and unorthodox antihero, but not at all a villain.

Nope. Mind Hand Manipulation is one of those iconic Infernal charms that people built entire characters around and didn't necessarily have to be be a return to SWL as the SCIENCE! Yozi.

Yes, I want to be able to have Mind-Hand Manipulation at character creation, darnit, without taking an entire Shintai Charm as a pre-requisite. I built my character concept around having tons of MHM-based Charms. Also, I was holding out hope for a CMA based on each Yozi involved with the GSPs, as alternatives to Malfeas-rage Infernal Monster, but SWLIHN's CMA being all about telekinetic grappling and MHM-swords. With the Maidens turning Abilities on their head into unintuitive pure weirdness with Sidereal Charms, I should be able to get MHM from Occult with no problem.



I'm fine with 1E-2E-type akuma still existing as antagonists, or even potential teachers to GSPs. Akuma with no free will, who are transformed through gratuitous and totally unnecessary torture, is exactly what many Yozis like Malfeas or Adorjan would do to the Exalted. I like the idea that GSPs were created in part because the akuma didn't accomplish what the Yozis wanted out of them, and yet the Yozis still don't comprehend that the akuma suck precisely because they are deprived of their capacity for human heroism and innovation. And I'm fine with GSPs having coadjutors and the voices of insane, deranged Solar god-kings ranting in their heads or tempting them to become evil infernalists or charicatures of Solars at their worst. That could be fun if handled right. But I think they should have plenty of options to reject those pressures, or twist their suggestions to something more anti-heroic, and with less intense pressure than the 2E Urge system.

Actually I wouldn't mind a form of Urges which gives a rough framework, which the GSP has the latitude to interpret to their own preferences. So for example, Malfeas (or rather, one of his 3rd Circle Demons) wants you to go blow up Gem, but what he can actually pressure you to do is go destroy something epic in the South, or some city somewhere in Creation. I was actually really interested in playing my Defiler concept with the fanmade Oramus Urge to Create, where what she creates is alien or bizarre but not actually intrinsically harmful to humanity or Creation - just weird and/or laced with subtle Oramus flavor. Or 3rd Circle Demons trying to make contracts with you to go do something for them in Creation, but the carrot is a favor or artifact or MA tutoring or spellbook or something, and the stick is that if you refuse the Demon will politically oppose or dislike you, rather than torturing you with Torment or mind-controlling you.

[Whiskey Jack]

Nope. Mind Hand Manipulation is one of those iconic Infernal charms that people built entire characters around and didn't necessarily have to be be a return to SWL as the SCIENCE! Yozi.

I sort of assumed the first "weapon" effect of a Devil Body Incarnate would be routinely used to create MHM attacks. That doesn't give it to you for everything, so it doesn't fill every need, but it does at least touch on it.

[Gonzo]

I'm not sure if the new Caste names sound "infernal enough"... They sound to me like te caste names of "astronomical exalted", or something like that. But I may be the only one that prefers the old Castes.

[Lioness]

Also am I the only one who is let down by the lack of mind hand manipulation charms? I really missed those and wanted to see how the devs would have developed them.

Nope. Mind Hand Manipulation is one of those iconic Infernal charms that people built entire characters around and didn't necessarily have to be a return to SWL as the SCIENCE! Yozi.

[TomDick&Harry]

I don't really have anything to add since I more or less agree with what's already been said: just because Essence didn't include those sorts of charms doesn't necessarily mean we won't be getting them when 3E comes around. It's still a little bit disappointing to not get a taste now, and it'll probably take quite a while to see it done since we still have so many books between Exigents and Infernals that absolutely can't be rushed, but there's not much to do about it but wait and hope.

Also with regards to the lack of inner world, it may be due to it being to similar to Getimians who draw from alternate worlds? Any thoughts on this?

I don't really see them as that similar. Like I guess the Getimian alternate world is kinda similar in the sense that it isn't physically real and solely exists inside of the Exalt in question, but I think the Infernal's inner world is more an emanation of their self than an alternate possibility made manifest? uhhh, if comparing it to the Fate series helps, a Getimian's Origin is like a Lostbelt while an Infernal's is more a Reality Marble? In any case, I doubt that's the reason.

Also am I the only one who is let down by the lack of mind hand manipulation charms? I really missed those and wanted to see how the devs would have developed them.

Yeah, SWLIHN is my favourite Yozi, so even with the charms no longer keying off them specifically I would have liked to see it. But I guess when you have to compress a splat down like that you need to be a bit more streamlined? Edit: We got Will Crushing Force at least.

[FallenEco]

Well, so far we are going off Essence charms which are the slimdowned versions, set up for cross-play.
Because Essence is set up for cross-play, rather mixed play, we should be getting the 'friendly, non-offensive' charm concepts. Since Infernals, by the nature of their patrons, tend toward darker stories, I'm not surprised about the lack of a 'demon/soul pantheon' charm, as it is esoteric, specific, high tier and not exactly something anyone else has an equivalent of. The fact we got a 'turn people into demons' charm and no-one else got anything like it (in Essence) indicates that spawning demons out of your own soul isn't off the table when the splatbook drops.
Cross-play differs from mixed play in that regard; level playing field vs different kinds of experts/abilities balancing the dynamic is a very different design space.