Exalted 3E Discussion

Target acquisition is implied in step one. You know, where you target an enemy's defense value? In order to target said enemy defense value, you need to target an enemy. And if you STILL say that that doesn't count, then I'm with Serafina and Smuthunter on this. You're nitpicking just to complain about something.

 

It's a basic step that could have been solved by a single line. They omitted it to make attack resolution look more streamlined on paper, relying on players filling in the missing step on their own.

It's an easy fix, of course. As we've seen, everyone makes it on their own.

But it's still a houserule, because the rulebook doesn't say "target an enemy's defense value".

But yes, you can ignore the small fuckups if you like. And you can ignore the big fuckups like the crafting system. And you can ignore both. Feel free to declare the game flaw-free after blinding yourself to every flaw.

 

Resolving Attacks

Explained below are the steps in resolving attacks, followed
by an explanation of the elements involved.

Resolving a Withering Attack

First, you decide what combat Ability your character is
attacking with—Archery, Brawl, Martial Arts, Melee, or
Thrown. Based on this decision, you make an attack roll:

Step One: Roll (Dexterity + [relevant combat Ability] +
weapon’s accuracy and any other modifiers) against a difficulty
of the target’s Defense (see p. 194). If the roll produces
fewer successes than the target’s Defense,
it fails.

Step Two: If attack succeeds, determine its raw damage.
Raw damage is an attack’s damage rating before soak (see
p. 194) is subtracted. Raw damage is usually calculated as
(attacker’s Strength + weapon’s damage value + threshold
successes on attack roll in Step One.) A few weapons, such
as firewands and crossbows, omit Strength from this calculation—
see Chapter Nine.

Emphasis mine, direct quote. Again, it does not NEED an explicit step to declare a target when the rules IMPLICITLY STATE that you have a target chosen. And hey, if that's not good enough for you:

Combat proceeds in a series of rounds, during which each
combatant acts once; the order in which characters take
turns acting is determined by their Initiative ratings (in
order from highest to lowest). Generally each combatant
will attempt to attack another character in each round,
attempting to either bolster her Initiative at the expense
of an enemy’s Initiative (known as a withering attack),
or to “cash in” a high Initiative value to damage an opponent’s
Health Track and hopefully defeat him (known as
a decisive attack).

Emphasis also mine. The summary for how combat goes states that you attack another character/enemy. The fact that the rules for resolving an attack don't is because resolving an attack does not actually necessitate having a target. As an example, there are a number of spells and charms where the target amounts to 'everything in that direction'.

At this point, if you still believe that you need to 'houserule' targeting an enemy to attack, I don't know what else to say. The fact that you believe that baffles me, but also does me no harm. So you do you. I don't care to argue anymore.

 

He's always been an obstinate prick, sometimes it's best not to engage.

 

Could you please cite a canon source for this?
Because I am pretty sure that killing a Primordial does not harm the concept they represent.

(Moved from here (NSFW))

 

Take note that what I use are not things outright stated in various splatbooks, just conclusions I developed from studying the lore and following logical steps of thought.
SWLiHN citation about what really was thing dubbed "Three Spheres Cataclysm" is in Infernals splat. She destroyed three of her spheres/conceptual-body-parts, becoming forever imperfect in the process, eliminating said concepts from Creation's framework in the throes of Limit Break inducted by how Exalted, prodded to Dew Eit by gods, rejected her admission to follow orders of the new world order. Because She is Principle of Hierarchy, there is no Order without Her.
BSOD ensued during the binding into a Yozi.
Fact: Primordials made Creation. Creation is an unfinished product since they kept tinkering with it to perfect it.
Speculation: Primordials can also unmake parts of Creation. Both deliberately and not.
Conclusion: Primordials weren't all that smart, if opfucknope powerful. Elimination of 3 concepts, a deliberate action from SWLiHN, set what was left of Creation on fire, or so Exalted and gods claim.

Shards of Exalted Dream, this splatbook contains alternate Creation where Exalted lost the Primordial War and are on the run. Creation is much, much bigger (galaxy sized at least) and much less Primordials are murder/formed into Neverborn.
Fact: Less damaged Creation is awesome and breathtaking.
Speculation: It implies that Exalted history is innacurate OR Exalted who won Primordial War were full of shit and outright lied in their version of history.
Conclusion: They are, despite superpowers, only human. Thus without a doubt blamed all the destruction on the defeated. Vae Victis and all that rot.

From just those two things, and lore contained in Dreams of First Age about the pre-Exalted Age era remnants, conclusion that Creation could survive without Primordials supplying conceptual weight ... is skeevy. Thus my belief that Exalted hasted the dissolution of Creation by making Neverborn and crippling Primordials into Yozis. All concepts present in Creation are inter-linked with Primordials and dependant on them.
For the simple reason that Creation wasn't a finished product to "stand on it's own".

 

The entire reason, or at least the single largest reason, for the Surrender Agreement was because killing Primordials damages the concepts that they represent and if many more died it was possible that Creation would completely destabilize back into Wyld. That’s why they went to all the trouble of creating such a complicated set of laws and binding the Primordials to obey them. It would have been much easier, and so far as they knew then safer, to just kill them all.

 

I thought it was because Gaia asked for them to be spared.

Yes Gunstar Autochthonia' version of Creation is massive because its a completely different setting. Its not just an alternate universe where the Exalted lost but and alternate universe where they lost that took place in a completely different setting. I'm pretty sure canon's version of Creation wasn't originally made up of multiple galaxies. There's also the fact the the setting is based on Battlestar Galatica so of course its version of Creation is going to be massive and take place in space.

 

Alternatively, Gunstar has no more to do with canon Creation than Burn Legend does. I don't think the devs ever expressly nailed down the Spiral as definitive canon apart from Theion definitely being representative of Malfeas-That-Was.

 

Sorry to tell you this, but this is just fanon, and one that does lessen the setting by making it even more dependent on the Primordials.
The Yozis are vanquished, their existence sealed away and inconsequential to the survival of Creation or its concepts. They fashioned Creation from Chaos and are so tied to it that their impossible ghosts cannot escape their unlife of eternal suffering before it is plunged into Oblivion, but if an army of Exalts broke into Malfeas and slew Adorjan, no concept of Creation would be harmed in the process.

Or it's a shard - an alternate setting inspired with, but not identical to, Creation and its history.

Nope, Gaia asked for them to be spared because the Exalts sure were ready to annihilate them, and besides, killing them or their Third Circle fetichs apparently created massive shadowlands that would resist almost any effort to cleanse. In the end, these elements stayed the blades of the Exalted Host, not any concern for 'conceptual damage'.

 

Gaia did not have that kind of pull. No one did. Even with the surrender agreements if Ebon Dragon got out of Malfeas somehow and walked into Yushan then none of the gods would be able to fight it. That kind of security risk is insane. They only agreed to it because there was no other choice.

 

Bre Karn , lets agree to disagree then. Here are some other logical things that stem from those same 3 splatbooks for Second Edition.
Creation is unfinished product. Why would it survive the Wyld, without melting back into it ... when it was not meant to survive it unfinished?! EVERYTHING about Creation was made by Primordials.

"Gaia asked for sparing them" - Do you know how Exalted treated their Allies? Jadeborn were ENSLAVED and SOULRAPED collectively. Autochton, the Primordial that Exalts can thank for their EVERYTHING for? He fled after adding 2 to 2 and concluding:"Exalts are ungrateful pricks, expect betrayal from them". Gaia is 99% away from Creation, since unlike other Primordials she never tired from searching for so-called Shining Answer.
Dragon-Kings were reduced to drunk and drugged "Indians in shitty enclave". Most prominent Gaian worshippers, also humans just so you know ... they were fucking exterminated when they asked Exalts to leave them alone since they are worshipping their allied Primordial. And they are unwilling to squander gifts from Gaia to amuse bored Exalts.

That shows how much value would be put on Gaia's word. Do you know why no Exalt even thought about attacking Gaia? Gaia's fundamental concepts are linked with Evolution AND Life. Thus harming her would not only turn Luna against Exalted but also would make life changed in ways that I doubt any not-insane human would wish for.

"three spheres cataclysm" - caused by Exalted bullheadness. Rebellion is anathema for Principle of Hierachy, so if she surrendered ... she'll stay this way.

"killing Primordials causes only Shadowlands" - Nah, it caused "creation" of both Oblivion and Underworld. Both things hastening Creation's demise. During Solar High Age despite all their Essence 10 powers, Solars were unable to remove Shadowlands caused by Primordials deaths. No methods they tried worked.

Exalted, as a setting, is partially conceptual. Primordials represent the total apex of Power in Exalted. You can't get more powerful than that, in Creation. Thus why maiming of Primordials was a horrible thing to do. Exalts traded Future for illusion of safety.

 

Not "unfinished" so much as "in need of constant, passive maintenance".

 

From/tg/

 

Active maintenance too, see calibration

Fanon typically implies it being completely unbacked. While his arguments are backed by referring to

 

That's what Gods are for.
The Primordials were important for the passive maintenance, stuff like Adrian just existing at the perimeter.

 

It was meant to be self-sustaining because the Primordials went 'create and forget' so that they could toy with it and take turns playing the Games of Divinity.

Irrelevant to the canon fact that it was primarily Gaia's intercession that stayed their blades, not concepts disappearing from Creation.

Irrelevant, she sacrificed a bunch of spheres in a hypocritical spite strike that burned away large swathes of Creation, and the memories associated with it. Maybe it was an active conceptual attack (on the scale of an instant sorcerous working), but it doesn't mean that slaying her here and there would have done anything to the nature of hierarchy.

Yeah, that too. Doesn't mean the Primordials are tied to concepts so closely that hurting them harms the concepts themselves.

It is irrelevant to the enforced thematics of the cycle of violence and usurpation which are intrinsic to the setting and did not require the breaking of the three spheres, and it does not in any way prove that Primordials are so tied to the concepts they embody that killing them damages the concepts.

Wild extrapolation and arguments that do not follow from quoted canon elements remains fanon.

And the Sidereals debugging the Loom of Fate, etc. Nothing requires the Primordials, no more than killing a deadbeat, absent father magically removes limbs from the child.

EDIT: okay, taking a step back from this, with a last consideration:

Maybe some 2nd Ed author intended for the Primordials to be tied closely to concept and sprinkled some of it here and there. It is not even clearly canon in 2nd Ed, and definitely not in 1st and 3rd edition. It does the setting more harm than good. It is useless and toxic, like those bits about Yozis time-altering inside Malfeas (except those bits are actually FAW (Fluff As Written)).

For all its defaults, I suggest reading the Exalted Megathread and question thread on SV, asking the question there. You'll get a scathing but well-documented retort, more than I can stomach making as of now.

 

Wat.

 

...it's not even wrong, mate.

Like I legit can't decide where to begin to correct you.

 

Bre Karn , you are putting words in my mouth that I hadn't spoken about. Let me clarify:
Primordials are WHAT aligns Wyld Concepts with Creation. Creation is UNNATURAL and thus Wyld so Shaped constantly tries to return to natural state, aka Pure Chaos.
Finished, Creation would require no constant tinkering from Primordials to not revert back. Gods whinning about their Purpouse Of Existence and wanting to be Neglectful is also part of that.

So yes, eliminating Primordials is what removes things Anchoring Creation to existence. In similiar vein as Raksha Fake Worlds fall apart when destroyed OR it's creator-Raksha is unwilling to sustain it anymore OR is destroyed.
Primordial War happened before Primordials finished their tinkering so Creation remains dependant on them. Quite similiar to my unfinished product talking.

What is so hard to imagine that finished Creation would require no passive maintenance from Primordials and be capable of "standing on it's own feet"? And gods would only need to exist to do their fucking work?

Primordial's revelance to said Wyld Concepts? As far as Creation is concerned is totally irrelevant. Without Primordial's Will anchoring said Concept with Creation, those concepts and Creation are disaligned.
Why? Because in the wider Wyld ... Creation is neither unique, nor important. It's just Exalted delusions of importance when they were and are just "daggers" in Autochton's metaphorical hands.

Read Infernals splat where it's written about what SWHiLN did when she broke three of her 10,000 spheres.

 

Creation already don't need tinkering from Primordial, mate. That's gods' jobs. And occasional Exalted.

Gods whine about their purpose of existence because they are sapient being, and sapient being generally doesn't like to be slave, for some unfathomable reason. Primordial, being Primordial, don't really much care about what their slave-race thinking.

Creation is, well, Creation not just because of Primordials' Will, but because its anchored to a bunch of pillars that's really a set theory joke. It basically turn Creation into focal point, which is, well, kinda the point of the grudge of faes. Now, time is linear - and if they don't make it so, they still know time is linear.

And so on, and so forth.

Regarding spheres, it's never stated what those spheres are - or even what's the meaning or effect of these spheres, both the destroyed one, and not. Only the destruction of it caused much destruction, which isn't that strange when you consider Primordial is fuckhueg being.

Like if SWLiHN rage and decided to destroy her spheres now, I imagine Creation would be pretty safe, but Malfeas (both being and location) would be pretty destroyed, too.

 

That is literally the exact opposite of everything ever said on the subject.

Even the fucking Fair Folk's own goddamn splat book gushes about how important Creation is and its invention changed everything.

 

Ok so, how does the ability for Solars to pull chunks of Creation out of the Wyld fit in this? Legitimately curious, by the way. If Creation is only existing thanks to the Primordials, than wouldn't Solars be incapable of making more?

 

.......................................

By this stupid logic building a fortress in the middle of a lake of acid means it's "not finished" simply because it needs regular maintenance due to acid-induced wear and tear.

Environmental damage is a thing that exists.

Or you just don't realise "Hey MAYBE the Primordials expanded the original flat Creation after the war?" is the most likely explanation.

Also 90% of Creation does not equal galaxy-sized unless you're saying canon Creation in the Age of Sorrows is literally 1/10th the size of the Milky Way?

FTFY

 

That raises a good point. Design by committee tends to have such contradiction. I can think of many many contradicting author viewpoints sprinkled throughout other TTRPG games I played. Ultimately the choice rests on the DM on which one to use

There is no contradiction there. Solars are immensely powerful and can kill primordials and create miracles.

Furthermore, if creation was damaged by killing a primordial doesn't mean it is automatic destruction, other beings of immense power can step in and mitigate and repair the damage so long as it is not too significant, the same way solars can expand creation out of the wyld. Not to even mention the major gods whose job is to maintain creation so that the primordials wouldn't have to... But that doesn't mean that primordials are completely irrelevant either.

He was explicitly NOT talking about fixing wear and tear but explicitly talking about making additions, improvements, and expansions.

You are mixing up maintenance and tinkering. Tinkering is the adding of new features or making design changes, not mere maintenance. Also, creation literally needs to have major portions of it shut down for maintenance for a few days every year. Think of how many items in your house do that?

 

Fact. That version of Creation is ruled by Primordals and only a total ignorant fool would ever want to live there. Each single of there beings is a bigger prick than all Solars combined ever, were, are or could be.

They are group of near omnipotent tyrannical, despotic, dictators who haven't JUST YET turned Creation into an absolute hellish universe to live in and reformed all sapient life inside of it into a perffect vision of a serving subjects to their greatness, is because they are too preocupided with trying to destroy Gunstar.

 

Speaking of the Loom, I need a second opinion. What are the odds that a Solar can use Prophet of Seventeen Cycles to fuck with a Sidereal? Directly or indirectly? I've only ever played 3e, so I don't know how much actual control Sidereals have over Fate.

 

Not guaranteed few days every year. Especially if you are not constantly tinkering with it. There are servers that have been running for many years without having to go offline. Creation is more equivalent to a Windows 95 running computer rather than a modern one.

Also, speaking of computers. what the gods are doing is the equivalent of cleaning out the dust in the fans and purging viruses. While the tinkering he was referring to earlier would be the equivalent of upgrading components such as ripping out the HDDs and replacing them with SSDs.

 

Iffy. The charm is literally 'let ST adjudicate it for you', so anything goes.

Also, 'to fuck with Sidereal' is way too vague.

Mmm. Probably Sidereal can spot the tangled Fate and might decided to correct it by murdering you or doing their own Working against it and such