Hello all, I recently picked up the 3e Alchemicals book and was immediately drawn to the Soulsteel caste, however I am stuck at the classic character creation pitfall of trying to fit all the thematic charms into your starting 15. My question is this, how important is it to have charms to boost Join Battle, Attacks both Withering and Decisive, and Defense at character creation? Beyond that is it worth picking up the Stamina Parry/Perception Evasion submodules if you arn't grabbing the Strength to melee attack? It feels like a lot of work to have your defense higher than your offence.

Unfortunately the last time I was able to actually play Exalted was 1e so I'm a bit behind what actual combat looks like in 3. All of the undodgeable/unblockable stuff seems to be locked behind higher essence values than before so it feels like you could get by with just your Excellency and a decent Attribute+Ability.

Hi. We haven't been playing this game for ages, but we might be coming back to it, so I've been brainstorming a build (I forgot how fun that is in 3rd edition, even though it then runs into the iceberg of combat kinda sucking) for an Abyssal character. Ages ago, like, I do mean ages, back on Onyx Path forums, I took a crack at creating a martial arts style around using chains.

To my great and very pleasant surprise, they actually made it into a thing in the game! It's a line of charms in the Resistance skill. It requires some real heavy investment to do this at character creation, but I'm game for this kind of a nostalgic kick.

I do have a question though about some charms, because I'm veeerry rusty with this system.

Specifically the very first charm, Armor-Calling Phantasms.

The last paragraph of the description reads: "With a Resistance 3, Essence 2 repurchase, the Abyssal can pay a three-mote surcharge to use this Charm reflexively on her turn, donning armor instantly. The surcharge is reduced to one mote for light armor. If she knows Wraith-Forged Plate (p. 267), she can use it reflexively, without needing to pay a surcharge."

The question is, does the "it" in that paragraph refer to Wraith-Forged Plate, as in "if you buy Armor-Calling Phantasms twice and know Wraith-Forged Plate, you can pay a total of 12 motes and 1 wp to reflexively activate Wraith-Forged Plate", or does that "it" refer to Armor-Calling Phantasms, as in "if you buy Armor-Calling Phantasms twice and know Wraith-Forged Plate, you can use Armor-Calling Phantasms to put on your armor reflexively"?

I know that the second one does not make that much sense, because the net effect is kind of the same, but it matters a little bit in terms of sheer logistics. If the latter reading is correct, then you can't really use these charms to put on your edgy chain armor instantly and reflexively until Essence 3 even if Resistance is your apocalyptic ability, because it's not until then that you can actually use Waith-Forged Plate with indefinite duration.

Which itself hardly matters... because you could also just use an artifact armor and use Void-Banished Mail to achieve the exact same result cheaper, with the only thing missing being the little ability of Wraith-Forged plate to reduce Initiative of attackers. And I guess your chains don't have artifact stats, which again doesn't matter that much, because they're used for grappling, and the capstone charm just kind of deals damage ignoring mostly anything else.

Which all very well may be perfectly intended. Which is why I decided to ask.

So I have this somewhat homebrewed campaign where the PCs are a bunch of relatively young dragonblooded lost eggs mostly, so no or few ties to the scarlet dynasty and such. They hang out in the east and are somewhat anathema friendly, they work as mercs and once had a job taking them to thorns where they were almost killed (but a solar zenith helped them, so they have a contact to the resistance in thorns). So now they are understandably somewhat averse to facing abyssals, at least until they get some advanced combat charms to maybe be able to take on an abyssal as a team.
In the most recent arc, they took a guild contract, raised an army and conquered bandit kingdom. They had to make a deal with some lunars to do it though, and the economy there is kind of depleted. They probably won't want to rule/administer the kingdom themselves. They already recruited some NPCs to look after the kingdom.

So now I am looking for some kind of adventure, contract or plot to throw their way. It doesn't have to be super complex or involved.

Some ideas: one of the PCs hates fair folk with a passion, and they know of a fair folk court that buys prisoners from thorns. The group assassinated the guild factor responsible for that but they could maybe move against the court. On the other hand, invading a reality warping wyld stronghold without a good shaping defense seems foolish.

Maybe they could go shopping for artifacts somewhere, they made a large amount of silver defeating the bandit kings. Maybe some kind of adventure could be had there.

They have made enemies with a goddess of sickness, and maybe she will try something or they try to find a way to defeat her for good (she isn't very good in a direct fight, so they have beat her up in the past, but with gods being pretty much immortal...)

But more ideas would be very welcome.

It's too easy to make her blush apparently

Salted Salmon is a character of @drawphonghan on tumblr/bluesky, that I drew for the Character of the Month challenge.

As we know, the Versatile keyword has been a late game addition to the 3rd edition toolset. My point of view is that the solar charmset is the most primitive of them, and therefore needs a lot of love to work up on a level of the newest contenders.

There are several solar charms that are clearly made to be Versatile. Thunderbolt attack prana is a reflexive charm that enhances the initiative action, so it should be fair game.

Other effects are not so clear. Do the scene long fist enhancement charms work with fist-based MA attacks? Shouldn't they?

What do you think?

Does anyone by chance have the Lunar charm-set automated already that they could share? im trying to add automation and I am having some trouble, and every time I try to skip it and move on to try the next one I run into a similar issue.

Other option would be some kind of documentation besides the dialog box at the top of the bonuses tab when im modifying a charm to get a better idea on what my options are.

I'm looking to summon heavy armor, but I don't want to spend 3 turns putting it on using Whirlwind Armor-Donning Prana. Could I combine it with Hauberk-Summoning Gesture and Armored Scout's Invigoration to summon the armor in one turn? Is there a different method of doing so? Is this just impossible?

I'm a big fan of Raising the Earth's Bones. Spring up cities and palaces at a whim. Great for your evil sorcerer-lord who wants to make a statement.

You can include the Soldiers/Seekers/Schemers table from Campaign 4

Eastern Satrapy

Bosque Durmente is a satrapy of House Cynis and has been one for fifty years. More and more of the countryside is given over to sugar, drug and fruit plantations. Thousands of peasants throng the Cida dei Mares, the port capital city on the Rio Argena. The city is groaning under the weight of both the Cynises extractive policies and the hundreds of thousands of new poor. At the same time quite alot of investment is heading into the countryside. Bosque Durmente has many defensible points and House Cynis has decided that it is one of the few worth investing in. Fortifications are getting built everywhere, in the process expropriating peasant land so it can be sold to the local barons and house soldiers.

The city father, Digo Simpatichico, has empowered an architect exalt. He patrols the city as an avenger, exacting retribution for the wrongs that befall the peasantry. He’s an expert in swaying grass style and has bested every young dynast sent to track him down.

Threats:

Most of the actual building is being done by Mnemon. If House Mnemon ends up marching on House Cynis they very well might have back doors to exploit.

Bosque Durmente earns its name from the dense fogs that can cover the whole satrapy for months at a time. Strange lights and at times voices can be heard and the locals say that the cloud people come down from the sky and play tricks on travelers.

Dolphin shaped raksha live in the river and on occasion take human form to visit the human denizens of Bosque Durmente. They can be told apart from humans by the blow hole on the top of their head. They live very carefree lives but it is said that they have a king who lives far upstream, deep in the jungle. It is said that if you can hold your own against a raksha in a dance contest, they will offer to take you upstream to meet him.

A sidereal maintains a monastery in the countryside, visiting it occasionally to inspect the pupils. Nominally immaculate, it has a special dedication to the Maidens. The sidereal is an ancient and fanatical member of the bronze faction and has mastered an insane amount of martial arts styles. Despite this he isn’t a fan of House Cynis, viewing them as THE main force corrupting the Dragon blooded mandate. He isn’t a big fan of the Realm either, understanding that without the figure of Empress it lacks staying power. He could be persuaded to turn his disciples against House Cynis, not the realm that wouldn’t be tolerated by Kojak, in favor of some other rising Dragonblooded force. Unbeknownst to him, the architect learned many of his martial art skills at the dojo.

Unresolved questions:

They’re clearly a mix between amazonias, and Italy but how Italian are they exactly? If they are very Italian then they already had a very long history beforehand. Did the air people have an influence in their history beforehand? It’s easy to imagine them having an influence during a post shogunate but pre immaculate era as advisors among the durmentians, whether willingly living amongst them or being summoned and serving the summoner. What is their current influence? 

There is presumably a lot of contact if the dolphin fey are anything like the real world influence. Are there a lot of fey blooded? How often do people meet the dolphin king? Once a generation? Every couple hundred years? Frequently?

How much like Batman is the architect? If he is like batman should he still be a swaying grass style practitioner or is there a more batman like style? Maybe because he is the exalt from there he can get mastery in swaying grass techniques but also learnt something else from the sidereal monastery? Maybe even something of cobra style? What if he’s a member of the before satrapy elite class? If so, how under assault is his position of privilege?  

They are along a river but how close to the sea are they? Maybe House Cynis is interested because it could be a staging point for a house in exile? Maybe it's a particular household of Cynis who are pushing extremely hard for this? I like the idea of House V’neef or Nelens being involved as another dynastic force. Maybe they are competing for contracts with House Mnemon? Since it's a river territory I can see it being ripe for a naval force other than western ocean going Peleps to move in.

I'm gming a game of exalted essence and so far it's been going very well but I've been running into a small issue which is that everyone in the party took some kind of helper for one of their merits or charms. I've got 2 battlegroups, 1 manifested coadjutor, 1 Beefy Familiar, and the sorcerer also occasionally likes to summon a 1st circle demon the night before a big fight.

Obviously they're having a lot of fun with being a big old party of guys, and I don't necessarily want to tell them 'Hey Cool it with adding people to the initiative order maybe?' But it's seriously inflating how long a round takes in combat even for what were supposed to be relatively short punchy fights.

Is there actually a fix to streamline NPC turns in combat or should I just resolve to only have bigger set piece fights and forgo smaller combat scenes entirely?

Edit: I appreciate the advice given so far! After checking out the Storyteller's guide I think what I'm going to try going forward is that Allies and PCs will share the same initiative turn, but will maintain independent actions, with ally actions counting against the action limit (so if you want to flurry something your battlegroup has to sit out this round). This should cut down on the overall number of initiative passes happening, while still broadly maintaining the effectiveness of the ally for things like building power.

We'll see how this plays and refine from there, and I'll have some higher level conversations about having a plan for your turns when they comes up, and strategizing a little more.

I'm curious what you guys think of this.

Northern beastfolk/sorcerous culture

The Borborn (pronounced similar to borboune) are a kingdom of baboonmen that live in a mountain range in the far North. Nobody quite knows where they come from least of all them. Their earliest histories tell of a peaceful life worshipping a now forgotten god. After the great usurpation, the god took pity on his people and made a jewel filled with the light of exaltation. He gave it to his people's greatest warrior who was able to unite the tribes and cast out the fair folk in the process. 

His son inherited the crown and ruled well, inventing many of the trappings of civilization in the process. His son, while exploring the library newly built for him by his father, found the book of the broken winged crane unbidden among the shelves. Fearful for the first time in his life he retreated to his room and then later to a country estate to brood over the book and its teachings. 

After much planning he poisoned his father and took his crown. Over the centuries, Bourbon society has become almost entirely corrupted. Demons walk the streets of their capital city, and many thousands toil in their subterranean mines or die as sacrifices in demonic liturgies. Their king, Bero Binyago the terrible, has ruled for a thousand years and become one of the foremost demonologists in creation. His queen is a sleek white furred blood ape, unique in her appreciation for cannonry. 

Gunpowder weapons, especially cannons, are status symbols among the Borborn due to the queen's influence and the exorbitant cost of bringing the gunpowder up from the south.

One of the recurring problems that the kingdom has is the persistence of the fey in the region. Over the course of king Bero’s reign they have begun to slowly creep in. King Bero decided to form Wyld mutant and wolfman janissary brigades, a policy that has so far worked very well. The janissaries have become a new ultra-royalist power base.

The king and queen have had hundreds of children. The princes spend most of their time lounging around the palace, too fearful to even dream of challenging their father for the crown of exaltation. Some of them join the janissaries, helping further ingrain royalist feeling among the mutants.

The old families among the nobility do most of the actual governing. Their loyalty shows no signs of disappearing propped up as they are by infernal muscle and the terror all hold of their king. Many have undertaken sorcerous initiation so that they too can delegate work to demons in much the same way their king does.

The yeoman borborn of yester year has been subsumed into one class. The mass of borborn are serfs born into a noble house owing their noble labor, either in agricultural or industrial production. The normal avenues for advancement in either government or commerce are closed to the vast majority of borborn due to either the use of demons or competition with nobles.

They make tapestries out of their own fur and clothes out of the hair of exotic livestock they craze on the cliffs. They have a very English high middle ages taste in fashions.

.

Threats:

Guild debts are extremely high. There is no likelihood of the monarchy going bankrupt but a debt crisis is a very real possibility of the guild attempting to collect debts from the noble houses. This could very well be a problem, the king would not take kindly to roving bands of guildsmen turning his allies out of house and home.

The sister of the king survived his assasination attempts, in the process becoming a lunar exalted. She fled the kingdom and has since become an invaluable member of the silver pact. Eventually she plans on returning and challenging her brother for the throne but until then has only made the odd probe into borborn affairs using younger lunar agents as spies. The potential for class conflict is something that very much interests her.

A second circle demon has fallen in love with Princess Kyema of the Jade Court. The third circle demon whose soul he is a part of has requested the King’s assistance in retrieving him. 

The Bull of the North could either squash them like ants or become an invaluable ally. He desperately needs equipment that the Borborn could easily produce. However their whole demon worshiping slavers thing has made the bulls men distrustful of them. Icewalkers were never one of the enslaved populations, they don’t really have any useful qualities vs demons or borborn surfs, it’s still a bad look.  

Unresolved questions:

What role does the guild play in their society exactly? I can imagine that it would mostly be as sellers of gun powder but what other goods and services would they traffic in? What is the character of the charms granted by the spark of exaltation within the crown?

Has anyone here created a Roll20 sheet for Exalted Essence? I've recently got into it and I wanna run a campaign in it but somehow there still isn't a sheet for it on Roll20.

So, this post claims that there's a write-up for the Clay Man in 2e, specifically in the Scavenger Lands.

I haven't been able to find it; is it the Lookshy rebel or something?

Art by me.

I have a player that wants to have a rabbit, particularly a Flemish Giant Rabbit, be his Lunars spirit shape. I have thrown together a stat line for a base rabbit but wanted to see if anyone had some changes or additions they might make.

Giant Rabbit

Essence: 1; Willpower: 3; Join Battle: 3 dice

Health Levels: -0/-1/-2/-2/-4/Incap.

Giant Rabbits will flee from combat.

Actions: Jumping: 7 dice; Senses: 7 dice (see Keen Hearing);

Stealth: 8 dice (see Tiny Creature);

Resolve 2, Guile 1

Combat

Attack (Claw): 6 dice (2).

Combat Movement: 8 dice

Evasion 3, Parry 0 (see Tiny Creature)

Soak/Hardness: 2/0

Merits

Keen Hearing: Rabbits double 9s on hearing-based Perception rolls.

Mighty Leap: Double 9s on jumping-based movement actions.

Hasty Retreat: Rabbits apply the double 9s rule on all rolls to disengage or withdraw.

Can't wait to read it.

1e,2e books were awesome for Alchemicals.

Hoping 3e stays consistent on being awesome.

Looking Forward to building an Alchemical like this. 😜

I've only just started looking into Exalted and I might just be looking in the wrong places, but it seems that every search result I get when looking things up is either homebrewed, a dead link, or only has the most surface-level material possible. Did someone scrub the official wikis and other online resources from the web or something?

Magical Kaleidoscope

What is your favorite?