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mistaya posted:Well, you can look it at as a master/slave but I see it more as a lord/knight. One of the things that's neat about the 2E Abyssals that I hope they don't change is that Abyssals are part of an army. Where the others are usually doing their own thing alone or in small groups. The Underworld has it's own society and power rankings, and the Abyssals don't even have to go to Creation if they aren't needed there. This. Abyssals are knights serving underneath characters who are iconic, involved, and have the weight of history behind them, and they are lieutenants (and possibly more) in an army of the dead. I thought it was really lovely how 2E suggested that going renegade and seeking redemption was the one viable long-term option for Abyssal PCs. It'd be like if the one viable long-term option for Lunars was to leave the Silver Pact and run into the arms of their Solar Mate or the one viable long-term option for Dragonblooded was to betray the Realm, or the one viable long-term option for Sidereals was to join the Gold Faction and find some Solars to buddy up with. One of the cool things about Exalted is that you can pick up almost any splat, serve nearly any faction, and play someone who has good moral character and believes they are fighting the good fight. Infernals can believe they're righting a cosmic injustice and actually channel their urge into remaking the world into what they see as a better place. Dynasts/Lookshy can believe they're the only thing standing against the destruction of what remains of civilization, especially if they're Wyld Hunt/Immaculate Monks, and they're right plenty of the time. Lunars can believe they are pretty much the only thing willing to stand against the Chaos at the edge of the world, or the only beings who have been capable and willing to make a real stand against Magical Soviet Rome for millenia, and they're generally right. Solars can believe the world is hosed up and they have the power to change it, and they're right. Bronze Faction Sidereals can say that if you had seen the alternatives to what they did, you would approve of their choices, and they are probably right. Every group in history sees themselves as the good guys, as the ones standing for what is right. Exalted makes this plausible with almost every faction, but Loyalist Abyssals (and Infernals, if you use all their fluff and listen to everything the book suggests re:urges) are pretty well screwed over in this regard. I do think Abyssals suffer from being a relatively late addition, but I also think they suffer more from not having enough thought given to how they can be protagonists in epic stories where they are the anti-heroes instead of spoooooooky ghooooost antagonistssss. MiltonSlavemasta fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Jan 31, 2014 |
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Jan 31, 2014 08:40
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MiltonSlavemasta posted:This. Abyssals are knights serving underneath characters who are iconic, involved, and have the weight of history behind them, and they are lieutenants (and possibly more) in an army of the dead. I thought it was really lovely how 2E suggested that going renegade and seeking redemption was the one viable long-term option for Abyssal PCs. It'd be like if the one viable long-term option for Lunars was to leave the Silver Pact and run into the arms of their Solar Mate or the one viable long-term option for Dragonblooded was to betray the Realm, or the one viable long-term option for Sidereals was to join the Gold Faction and find some Solars to buddy up with. I agree with all of this and it's one of the reasons I really hate the way the Infernals/Yozis are portrayed. I feel like if anybody, the Abyssals should be skating that line of, "Well, we look pretty evil, I admit all the skulls are sort of a turnoff, but listen, there is a lot of twisted poo poo in the Underworld and we're trying to help things..." rather than, "gently caress you, nihilism rocks." Infernals get to do pretty much whatever they want, and in a weird way they are champions out in Creation totally doing cool poo poo for the common folk (sometimes) while Abyssals have to destroy everything no gently caress you seriously. I think some of this is that the Deathlords are unabashedly evil; there are no Deathlords who are sorta kinda not that bad, whereas if you squint your eyes just right Malfeas is a victim and the Ebon Dragon just can't help that he's a dick. I think the Neverborn should be moved further into the background and Abyssals should serve their Deathlords more directly, some of whom are bigger jerks than others. This creates a lot of room for Abyssals to have conflicts without ever leaving the Underworld, creates a framework to hang the Deathlords' "secret" Neverborn cult and creates broader latitude of play. If your character isn't quite so dedicated to the end of the world it's a lot easier to swallow that they're a 'dark hero' rather than a psychopath with a delay timer. "I'm trying to make life easier for the ghosts of the North", for instance, carries a lot more weight when you cut off the appendix at the end that says, "...until it's time to pull the switch, then gently caress you." The competing evils of the Neverborn and the Yozis as struck me as kinda lame. I don't know if we can cram that genie back into the bottle (there are a lot of Infernals fans out there) but I definitely feel like the Infernals stole some of the potential thematic direction of Abyssals.
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Jan 31, 2014 09:24
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I like to think that this is a rough approximation of the conversation Abyssals have before/if they decide to go renegade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToKcmnrE5oY
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Jan 31, 2014 15:03
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Mendrian posted:I agree with all of this and it's one of the reasons I really hate the way the Infernals/Yozis are portrayed. I feel like if anybody, the Abyssals should be skating that line of, "Well, we look pretty evil, I admit all the skulls are sort of a turnoff, but listen, there is a lot of twisted poo poo in the Underworld and we're trying to help things..." rather than, "gently caress you, nihilism rocks." Infernals get to do pretty much whatever they want, and in a weird way they are champions out in Creation totally doing cool poo poo for the common folk (sometimes) while Abyssals have to destroy everything no gently caress you seriously. I think some of this is that the Deathlords are unabashedly evil; there are no Deathlords who are sorta kinda not that bad, whereas if you squint your eyes just right Malfeas is a victim and the Ebon Dragon just can't help that he's a dick. What I've read about the Deathlords and their relationships to Abyssals for 3E seems to be headed in the direction you want. Stephenls made a post about this a few weeks ago: quote:Honestly? When the 1e corebook hit, I didn't see the Deathlords as the epic villains of the setting; I saw them as one more piece of political set-dressing from which to draw power players -- just a word that meant, basically "Powerful ghosts in the Underworld, in the same way that local lords, rulers, emperors, chiefs, etc. are powerful people in Creation." That was back when there might have been as many of a hundred of them, and the most powerful were hinted at not giving even the tiniest poo poo about Creation, though. Deathlords that aren't automatically villains would bode well for the Abyssal Charmset, since Abyssals now draw on their themes rather than on "the Void". It would be great to see them get a broader, more fertile thematic space than "the Exalted of Murder". However put off I may be about the decision to keep Storyteller system cruft, the Ex3 developers seem to know what they're doing in terms of setting.
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Jan 31, 2014 23:07
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Bigup DJ posted:I'd love you to go on and on about 2E Abyssals! What's wrong with them now? What could be done better? I mean I hate the idea that you could be eternally beholden to anything - Neverborn, Deathlord, whatever. I think the Lord-Knight relationship is way more nuanced and interesting than the Master-Slave relationship. Okay, here's this. The first to understand is that Master-Slave also does not work for this relationship. In the Master/Slave relationship, the Slave has to be able to do something the Master either can not, or will not do, for various reasons. Part of this is the Master taking care of the Slave, because they represent an Investment, but that the Slave will do what the Master wants done but will not personally do either due to lack of ability or lack of will to. Abyssals are not this. Abyssals have a very consistent theme through their charms of 'Take X Solar charm, remove some functionality, then call it a charm.' Perfect examples here are Husband-Seducing Demon Dance of Solars to Irresistible Succubus Style for Abyssals. The Solar Charm allows you to build intimacies with contexts including anything such as Loyalty or something. It makes you fall in love with the Solar or the Solar's cause. Irresistible Succubus Style says that the Abyssal can only build Intimacies of Lust, and only to themselves. The Abyssal has no ability to build loyalty to Oblivion or Love for Oblivion, only Lust for themselves. We can also examine this with the Spectral Keyword, which was eventually removed from PDs, but not from all charms. The Spectral Keyword is this; when you use a charm with it outside of Shadowlands, the Underworld, or the Labyrinth (so almost all of Creation), you must pay 1 Willpower Per Action to use them. If you Perfect Defense, you must pay a Willpower, but then you do not have to until you get to act again. If you do, you must once more pay Willpower to use such a Charm. What that means mechanically, however, is that an Abyssal must pay 1WP per Action to Perfect Defense. An Exalt can have a maximum WP of 10. Assuming that the Abyssal does not use his WP for anything else- and there are many charms that might want it-, he can PD for 10 actions, then must flee. Stunts can restore WP, but if you're spending stunts to restore WP you're not regaining motes, and Abyssals, I repeat, can not regain motes in Creation. That means if you lose motes, you're out of them until you either drain blood from Mortals or get back into a fight and stunt up your motes, which you better hope you never have to PD because Spectral will again demand WP from your stunts instead. In addition,while the Ink Monkeys are full of charms for Solars and Infernals, and Solars, Lunars, and Dragonblooded all got charms for higher Essence combat in Dreams that were rewritten later, Abyssals have almost nothing. They have a handful of mirrors and a handful of charms, a few of which are good. They also have some that are terrible, including the idea that one of their Overdrive Charms literally turns you into a berserk monster that must assault Elder Exalted if you see them. The charm gives you an Overdrive pool that gains motes when you encounter; a Sidereal whose prior incarnation participated in the Usurption, a Sidereal who personally participated, a Lunar who survived the Usurption, your Lunar Mate, or a Solar or Infernal that was a member of your Circle in the First Age. Notice that two of those- Sidereal Participants and Surviving Lunars- are both going to be Elder Essence Exalted who are incredibly powerful and probably not too fond of you turning into a rampaging monster when they say hello. Now in theory this might not happen. But if you have 10 Willpower, you have to get under 3 successes to avoid this. You are not allowed to resist it unless you spend 2 Willpower before the roll starts. This prevents you from rolling against a single character for a week. But that doesn't even actually protect them. If they are near you when you Join Battle, you are forced to roll the Overdrive again. If you get 4 or more successes, you then turn into a slavering monster again. If you incapacitate all of your opponents while like this, you then turn around to attack the person you just spent Willpower Protecting. This is one of only two Overdrives Abyssals have, while Solars and Infernals both have large amounts of them. Abyssals are also hosed with regards to Backgrounds. The thing that the game says Abyssals have over Solars is their Support Network. They have the Deathlords and their armies and the power of the Underworld at their back. They get the same amount of Background Points as Solars, who are supposed to essentially be alone in the world. Infernals get 7 as well, but they also come with 3 Free Ones that are pretty useful. Well I say they get the same. That's not true. See, an Abyssal has to pay a Tax on using their charms. Several of their more powerful Charms require a specific Background, Avatar. You see it was decided that Abyssals are too weak, for some reason, to use the very same Charms that their counterpart Solars use even more effectively. They are given the Avatar Keyword, which requires you to spend dots on the Whispers background, as they have a rating. If your Whispers is lower then that, you are not allowed to buy or use the charm. Now remember you can't spend more then 3 dots in a Background, so you spend 3 Background dots and then 4 of your 18 Bonus points. Then you are actually given the honor of being able to have any charm you want out of the books instead of always having to make sure you are allowed to get the charm. So you actually have 4 Background dots to the Solar's 7. While other splats, such as Sidereals and Dragonblooded and Alchemicals all get 'Artifact' Backgrounds with special rules, usually involving giving them more per dot, Abyssals instead purchase along Solar Lines, despite the Realm 'dividing it's magical wealth among it's 10,000+ members rather then 100 or so Deathknights', it doesn't let them have more. And as I mentioned last post, an Abyssal can not respire motes in Creation. They instead can only Respire in the Underworld or a shadowland. This becomes hilarious later, when we get to Deathlords. They also take a -2 Internal Penalty to all actions while in Creation. Unless you're willing to spend some of your precious, non-regenerating, motes, at a rate of 5 motes a day. Or you can wear 'trappings of death'. Those aren't really explained, but it's nice to know that by dressing exactly how they want you to, you can avoid taking -2 to all actions and -2 to all Static Values (Which is how it works according to the rules, so for example their Dodge if it is 7 goes to 5 just from that.). You say 'why don't you just get a Manse for your Abyssal to regen'. You can. It has to be a Manse in Creation- Underworld Manse Hearthstones become usless in Creation and Vice-Versa-. You take a -2 Penalty to all your actions for the rest of the day when you recover motes through a Creation Hearthstone that isn't Abyssal Aspected. You can not avoid this other then not using Hearthstones to regain motes. And as the book says, if you attempt to get some backgrounds, your Deathlord gets mad at you and smacks you, such as Cult. I realize the question is 'why do you need Whispers at 5 to start with, Avatar doesn't scale up as fast, you can get it later'. Raising Whispers involves a pilgrimage all the way to the Void and praying to the Neverborn. This could take months or even a full year or more, depending on how far away from the Void you are working. But you can at least use them to use their cool powers, right? Nope. If you are not specifically using a Soulsteel Weapon for some reason- say you thought it would be cool to play an Abyssal using your Lunar Mate's old weapon, a Moonsilver Whatever-, and you want a Hearthstone because Hearthstone Powers are cool, you're going to take another -2 Penalty if you use it's powers and it's not Abyssal-aspected. Neither of these can be removed with the 'trappings of death'. Abyssal-Aspected Hearthstones are also the smallest pool of them, or one of them, from Oadenal's Codex, meaning you are fairly limited in choices. But hey, once you've been nickle and dimed to death with internal penalties you can finally play your character. And also one of the restricted Backgrounds is Cult. So if you were hoping to avoid all that, you get the joy of your Deathlord going 'Hey, cut that poo poo out.'. So in list form; -Weaker Charms then Solars -Ignored past their Creation meaning they fell way behind the power Curve (Weakest of all Celestials once Sidereals became usable, could probably be defeated by a decently Combat focused Alchemical.) -Required Backgrounds that are forced to be spent in a certain way in order to get access to all of your charms -Not able to survive in Creation, where most of the stories of the game are supposed to take place, and are in fact weaker in it, including constantly punishing you with mounting penalties for daring to attempt to not want to run to the Underworld every week like a drug addict. Now that has only been the Abyssals themselves. Lets look at the Deathlords. First and foremost, Mote Pools and Charms. A Deathlord has the highest mote pool calculation in the game. In a system where Motes are Power, this is huge. Oh also they have all Solar and Abyssal Charms. They have other stuff too, but we can just start with that. When 2E started, they had both Solar AND Abyssal charms, meaning they had both versions of charms if they had Mirrors, just in case. This could be totally useful if for example you fought them in the Underworld, where they then had 2m PDs- there is no reason for them to ever be in the Underworld though, as I'll explain later-. This was later changed to 'All Solar Charms, but if Abyssals have those Charms as Mirror charms they only have the Mirror'. So they still have all the Solar Charms Abyssals were not allowed to be given, to make up for the Abyssal ones they have to have. They also have all Arcaoni (Which can be more useful then it seems), and unique Panoply Charms. Lets look at a few of them. The First And Forsaken Lion; • He has a supplemental Melee Charm, costing five motes, that enables his attacks to automatically bypass any non-perfect defense. • A supplemental Melee Charm that costs six motes kills every extra within 10 yards when he successfully strikes any enemy target. So he can just wander up to any castle, activate that second one, and just casually kill everyone in the Castle as he wanders around poking people with his sword. Or he could just use Sharp Light of Judgement Stance and do the same thing and also probably destroy the entire loving castle. Abyssals do not have a mirror of Sharp Light of Judgement Stance. The Mask of Winters; • For three motes and one Willpower, he can perfectly parry any attack for the rest of the scene at a cost of three motes per attack. Such parries do not count as Charm usage. • For two motes, he can slay with a single successful hit anyone who has a permanent Essence less than 5. Yeah. Those are some charms right there. An Abyssal has nothing like that in their arsenal. At best they can use their Soul-Cleaving Wound Charm to get their enemy down to below Essence 5 so the true bad guy who matters, the Mask, can insta kill them. Or the Mask could just do it himself, I mean he has the charm and 3x the mote pools at least. Now lets look at all those things that hosed up Abyssals. Deathlords have none of them. Deathlords recover motes in Creation perfectly fine- nothing says they don't-, they do not have to be in the trappings of the dead, and they do not suffer for using Creation-based Hearthstones. I am not going to talk about Artifacts or any of that, because as they are technically supposed to be NPCs, that doesn't really matter, though in a lot of ways MoEP: Abyssals certain reads like MoEP: Deathlords. So in Comparison to Abyssals, Deathlords; -Still have the weakness of using Mirrored Charms, BUT; -Access to Solar Charms means they have been constantly on the edge of the Power Curve, and don't have to worry about those Abyssal charms weighing them down. -Are perfectly fine in Creation. A Deathlord's greatest use for an Abyssal is essentially using him to sit in a palace in the Underworld as a guard while the Deathlord handles all the Creation stuff. A Glorified Security Guard, basically. Definitely not a Knight, just a semi-warm body to be put there as a theft deterrent. Like a Scarecrow or something. This is leaving out Resonance, which is the Abyssal Limit Condition. Which in addition to all it's ways of getting it, including just having a Positive Intimacy for someone alive, praying to a God, or talking back to a Deathlord, the Neverborn can also just decide you need Resonance, and you then are given the honor of rolling against it. Deathlords suffer Resonance too, but considering there's no one higher to talk back to they can avoid at least some of it. One of the ways to get rid of Resonance is the Neverborn controlling you for an entire scene. You are beholden to them because if you don't you can end up exploding in Resonance, killing a mortal you like, then the Neverborn take control of you and have you stab someone else. If you want to be super technical and keep the Master-Slave thing, the Abyssal-Deathlord Relationship is Slave-Overseer, and the Abyssal-Neverborn is Slave-Master. The Deathlords can do whatever they want but technically they probably don't OWN the Abyssal. They just have mostly free reign to gently caress them however they please. I'm probably forgetting some stuff that I could continue with, but this is what it is how I remember
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Feb 1, 2014 04:07
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Wait. Deathlords, who are ghosts, have an EASIER time operating in Creation than the Abyssals, who are still alive humans? 
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Feb 1, 2014 04:33
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Zereth posted:Wait. I think, hypothetically, Deathlords still obey all the rules that apply to ghosts. Which means they don't even exist in Creation under the light of day, if I recall correctly. But yeah for the most part a dedicated Deathlord can probably find a way to do just about everything they want to do all by themselves.
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Feb 1, 2014 04:36
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Zereth posted:Wait. There is literally nothing saying they suffer from the Trappings of Death, don't regain motes, or anything like that. The book goes out of it's way to describe the pains of Abyssals but never says 'also Deathlords suffer these' or even implies it, much less that they even suffer the normal problems of ghosts, so as far as can be told? Yup, they are far better at wandering around in Creation then those guys they decided to turn into their servants. This is also why a Solar working for Oblivion is better. None of those pesky weaknesses.
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Feb 1, 2014 04:39
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I always took the Deathlord thing as the writers being unwilling or too busy to offer a proper statblock and just glued together enough powers and things to say that it's powerful enough. I don't have my Abyssals book on hand though.
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Feb 1, 2014 05:47
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Neph apparently went off his medications when he wrote Abyssals, because he wanted to make sure they'd be dark and edgy or something like that.
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Feb 1, 2014 06:17
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Vadoc posted:Neph apparently went off his medications when he wrote Abyssals, because he wanted to make sure they'd be dark and edgy or something like that. Everyone says this and it can be true, in fact I'm pretty sure he said that himself. But it's not really dark and it's not really edgy. It's just...bad. There's no 'edgyness' in it, and at some points it seems almost farcical in it's constant desire to grind your face into the ground for wanting to play an Abyssal.
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Feb 1, 2014 06:22
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Frankly I think the desire to make Abyssals dark and edgy is part of the problem. It seems to make so much sense. Solars are, well, solar, they represent the sun and heroics and goodness. Abyssals are the opposite of that, so of course that makes them super dark, they like Alice Cooper and sleep until noon and swear at their moms. But in Exalted, the sun isn't inherently 'good'; it represents law and order, and it's certainly mighty, and Sol Invictus himself embodies virtue (not that same as goodness in Exalted) so it's considerably more complicated. You can't just take a Solar and slap him in black armor and purple eyeliner. Solars are already evil, and good, and dark and alternatively heroic. Abyssals shouldn't be the opposite of anything. They should share there basic mechanics and a desire for heroism with Solars, given their origins. I mean yeah, when you live in a literal necropolis you're going to have the occasional skull on your armor, and that's okay, but I think the 'hero of the dead' angle is way deeper and more appealing than 'Solars painted black', which as an idea is pretty bankrupt to begin with. 'Solars painted black' presumes that Solars will naturally gravitate towards healthy, heroic things given a chance which is false. Solars will do whatever the gently caress they feel like if given a chance. Abyssals channeling the distinct flavor of their Deathlords is actually kind of a cool twist on that - they're defined by their obligations in the same way a Solar is defined by his freedom. I think Abyssals can still be villians insofar as the motivations of the dead conflict with the motivations of the living. In general, the living want to prosper, and raise children, and not die. The dead want to keep doing the same thing they've been doing forever no matter how insane, they want to be worshiped, and they also hate Joe that guy sucks he killed me dead and those motivations are going to conflict a lot of the time. The Deathlords are going to be ghosts after all. They are still bitter and dramatic and powerful, even if they're not inherently evil, so armies of skeletons are still perfectly viable. Abyssals have relationships with ghosts instead of people, and I'm okay with painting that as unhealthy, so long as there's enough room for me to play a character who thinks that it's healthy and it doesn't make him sound completely batshit. Ghosts are different enough from living people that defining a whole splat by their relationships with them should be enough without making them murder engines of the Hate Police.
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Feb 1, 2014 08:15
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Mendrian posted:Frankly I think the desire to make Abyssals dark and edgy is part of the problem. I generally agree with this, although I'm not too sure about painting relationships with ghosts as unhealthy in a game that's supposed to evoke Confucian mythological vibes. The Immaculate Faith is absolutely against it and is going to call it heresy and have a bunch of reasons why it's terrible for everyone involved, but a socially-oriented Abyssal being able to come up to a Dragonblooded house and say "I talked to the founding Matriarch of House Cynis and she wants you to all get your poo poo together and oppose this thing that's happening" and have her show up that night and agree with you because you talked the Hecatoncheires that was going to absorb her into loving off somewhere else and building ghost aqueducts. Maybe painting it as unhealthy is okay, but at least give it more attention. And yeah, another problem with Abyssals is the casting of the combat-oriented ones as specifically Killfuck Soulshitter the Murder Engine. Having them and their charms too focused on raw BLOOD SKULLS MURDER ruins the deconstruction the game has going where virtually every combat-oriented exalt is a potential murder engine of the hate police waiting to happen.
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Feb 1, 2014 09:15
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Neverborn: Son, I saw you were doing perturbed in a killbaby zone. Do you know what the fine for that is?
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Feb 1, 2014 09:29
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That basically sums up my feelings on Abyssals as well. The Deathlords and the Neverborn have, through two editions, been portrayed as generally terrible beings without a lot of redeeming features, largely motivated by spite and vengeance and a desire to drag the world screaming down into the void, which has resulted in Abyssals being pigeonholed into two main character arcs: 1). Be a huge dick. 2). Redemption quest. Which is kind of bullshit. It's boring and derivative, especially for a setting whose major selling point has often been "Not a Typical Western Judeo-Christian Fantasy Setting."
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Feb 1, 2014 09:31
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I'm pretty sure it says right in the MOEP: Abyssals that if a Solar charm hasn't got a mirror you can make one up. Which is not an excuse for how forgotten they were after their source book was published, but ignoring that seems a bit silly when it's encouraged that you do so. Ravening Mouth of (Ability) is fairly potent mote recovery. Abyssal mote recovery being tied to how much damage they inflict is an interesting concept, but then they gimped it in the errata by putting caps on it (which are reasonable-ish) and trying to dump drained motes into an overdrive pool. This is a problem because like Stallion Cabana said, they have gently caress and all options for acquiring an overdrive pool. Abyssals need some house-ruling to function well, but they are easy common sense fixes. You can get around a lot of the limitations by being creative (For instance, there's a sail-charm that turns your ship into a Shadowland for mote respiration, and you can still get a decently sized Cult without pissing anyone off.) 'Trappings of Death' is silly, but it also gives justification for having Death Knight fashion sense (SKULL BRAS FOR EVERYONE!) Dropping the pointless penalties for Creation-manse and Hearthstones and ignoring Spectral and Avatar keywords is really easy. Ignoring Trappings of Death for the most part (although really, why wouldn't you wear cool deathknight stuff unless you were intentionally undercover?) is also easy. That one I like to at least pay some lip service to though. Resonance is a weird can of worms to me. I think it can be done well, but probably isn't often enough to need a serious overhaul. I mean, if we're talking RAW, well, we're not talking about 2.5. So the obvious house rules have to be considered. With the death of Mirror as a concept I hope the Abyssals can really grow into their own. They weren't the only splat to fall prey to "Must Be Worse Than Solars" mindset, it was just the most obvious since they literally had worse versions of Solar charms. Giving Loyal Abyssals ways to be Heroic without trying to stop being Abyssals is something that is DIRELY needed. It's possible, you can do it, we're doing it in a PBP game right here on this forum. But there's pretty much no support for that kind of story in the text.
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Feb 1, 2014 09:43
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The problem with Resonance is that it was literally created as a way to recreate something out of some anime. Like, that was literally the reason it exists, because there was this thing in some anime about a vampire who was ~so dark and edgy~ that mirror shattered and holy symbols warped in his wake and so when they made Abyssals someone was like "man we've gotta throw that in there." While I'm not about to argue that Exalted isn't anime as hell there's a difference between making a game that has anime trappings and putting stuff in your game solely to make it more like one of your animes. I do agree that part of the fun of being an Abyssal is getting to goth it up. Skulls bras for everyone, dudes included.
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Feb 1, 2014 09:51
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Kai Tave posted:The Neverborn have, through two editions, been portrayed as generally terrible beings without a lot of redeeming features, largely motivated by spite and vengeance and a desire to drag the world screaming down into the void Compared to the Yozis, the Neverborn are obviously big fat angsty zeros with all the things that made the Yozi secretly big fat angsty zeros, and the Neverborn are basically all identical and do nothing except take a personal interest in loving over the player characters and, rarely, the Deathlords. The Neverborn should be interesting and have subordinate ghost-souls, or maybe even be comprised of a new type of spirit. At the very least, they should be individualized.
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Feb 1, 2014 10:01
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I feel like the neverborn have no real role to play whatsoever beyond cryptic motivation behind the Deathlords. Everything they do the Deathlords should be doing instead. The Neverborn have no business being tutors for the PCs or what have you. The only reason they were featured as an option for direct servitude in 2e was because the Deathlords were relentless hypocrites. Edit: I could see them as cryptic god - beings actually but only as you say if the were differentiated.
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Feb 1, 2014 10:08
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mistaya posted:With the death of Mirror as a concept I hope the Abyssals can really grow into their own. They weren't the only splat to fall prey to "Must Be Worse Than Solars" mindset, it was just the most obvious since they literally had worse versions of Solar charms. So what should Abyssal Charms look like? I mean an Abyssal medic's not just going to zip into the hospital and fix you up, he's going to give you a skull for a hand or something. What's the difference between an Abyssal hero and a Solar hero?
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Feb 1, 2014 10:13
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Bigup DJ posted:So what should Abyssal Charms look like? I mean an Abyssal medic's not just going to zip into the hospital and fix you up, he's going to give you a skull for a hand or something. What's the difference between an Abyssal hero and a Solar hero? I would think Abyssal Medicine would primarily be about healing Ghosts, so whatever effect that has on the living would probably be pretty unsettling and metal. Abyssals are heroes of the dead and of the Underworld. They are like natives there and their interactions with the living should be weird, fleeting, or disturbing.
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Feb 1, 2014 10:19
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Abyssals are heroes of the Underworld but I think the more important aspect to focus on is that Abyssals straddle the line between Creation and the Underworld. They essentially have dual citizenship. They're anomalous even by the standards of the Underworld which isn't even a thing that's supposed to exist and only got created when the Solars told the world to divide by zero when they killed the unkillable. So I like the idea that an Abyssal's charms may in fact provide slightly different results depending on whether they're applying them to living people and the living world or to ghosts and the Underworld and that they can leverage them accordingly. The same charm that assuages (and bespells) angry ghosts with fleeting memories of their mortal life may terrify (or enlighten) mortals with visions of their death.
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Feb 1, 2014 10:56
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Mendrian posted:Edit: I could see them as cryptic god - beings actually but only as you say if the were differentiated. Yeah, sort of these cryptic deities the Deathlords worry about appeasing. I really like the flavor of the Hecatoncheires, and would like if those were bound to them, possibly serving them directly and maybe having a special insight into the thoughts of the biggest dead things. Kai Tave's idea sounds like a way to rehabilitate the Mirror keyword. The charm has two different effects depending on whether it is applied to the living or the dead. Maybe healing/fixing up/improving ghosts and turning people into abominations are the same charms, as are leading an army of skeletons and terrifying a mob of people. Maybe even a charm that allows you to appear standing next to a ghost you have a positive intimacy with that also allows you to appear right behind someone you HATE and stab them.
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Feb 1, 2014 11:17
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Those are the sorts of examples I was scrabbling for and coming up empty on, thank you. I'm fine with Abyssal charms having destructive or disempowering effects on the living world because that's what happens you try and apply death to living things, y'know? It doesn't usually work so well. But ghosts are people too, and if Abyssals are their champions then it stands to reason that Abyssal charms shouldn't necessarily function the same when applied towards them or the Underworld.
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Feb 1, 2014 11:53
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A little consideration that sprung to mind - has anyone else thought of decoupling the Death Lords from a single common origin point at the usurpation? Allowing them to be the superghosts of huge notable people from many times and places would open a lot of new ground for varying motivations and power levels between them. Make the eldest of them ghosts of leaders of the Great Old Races who fell defending the Titans in the god-wars, becoming the first of the undead as their essence became one with the new world and they rose again driven to avenge their masters. Or perhaps more connected to discovering what it even means to be undead and bringing the new enlightened truths found on the edge of the void to the world. Move on to victims of the major conflicts of the First Age, and the excesses of its decline, who hold some mix of romantic attachment to its wonders and disillusionment with its decadence. A lot would fall into the current backstory of exalts at their height slain in the usurpation, wanting to rebuild their old empire or simply punish the traitors who dethroned them. You could then slip forward to lords from the Shogunate who saw the futility of their age of warring states slowly grinding each other into dust over generations. (And perhaps provided the initiative to collapse the whole thing via the contagion) Then on to even younger lords born at the dawn of the Second Age who, while less potent and entrenched by their predecessors, are more driven to action by their closer connections to the problems of the present day. Being a knight in service of any of these would put under a very different experience. A_Raving_Loon fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Feb 1, 2014 |
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Feb 1, 2014 17:18
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I actually really like that idea a lot. Basically anything that adds more depth to the whole Abyssal/Deathlord relationship is helpful.
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Feb 1, 2014 17:30
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mistaya posted:I'm pretty sure it says right in the MOEP: Abyssals that if a Solar charm hasn't got a mirror you can make one up. Which is not an excuse for how forgotten they were after their source book was published, but ignoring that seems a bit silly when it's encouraged that you do so. I couldn't find this, if it is then that is reasonable but without it and considering the way Neph said 'do not do Mirrors because I want to do them' with regards to later charms it seems that if it is not listed as a mirror it does not have one. mistaya posted:Abyssals need some house-ruling to function well, but they are easy common sense fixes. You can get around a lot of the limitations by being creative (For instance, there's a sail-charm that turns your ship into a Shadowland for mote respiration, and you can still get a decently sized Cult without pissing anyone off.) 'Trappings of Death' is silly, but it also gives justification for having Death Knight fashion sense (SKULL BRAS FOR EVERYONE!) You are allowed Cult 2, according to the book. More then that and it is said the Deathlords come down on you for gathering Worship. If you have more then Cult 2, you are not allowed to have Liege (Which is one of the actually fairly useful backgrounds. It's basically 'worse Infamy' but it's still good.), and if you do it anyway and have a Cult over 2 and a Liege, the ST is supposed to, at some point, have the Deathlord Find out and remove one of them. There is no ability to hide it, it clarifies, they WILL know. A Rank 2 Cult gives you 2m an Hour in Mote Recovery. At 25 hours in a day you get 50 motes a day, provided you start with 0 at midnight. This is half the regeneration of someone 'at ease, but not completely relaxed', and a fourth of someone sleeping. That's assuming the other person has no Hearthstones- because you eat penalties for that-, or whatever. It's not so easy. As for Sail Charms, that's true, but it also falls into the constant 'How often are you at Sea', thing that always plagues charms like that in Exalted. I have a friend who played a Dawn Caste Sailor and realized it was a bad idea to favor Sail when the game quickly moved out of the West, because the West has a ton of Oceans but not too much land. It's true that most of this can be fixed with House Rules, but it's almost an insidious thing. Everyone talks about Infernals being terrible with regards to chapters 1 and 2 and it's better of ignored. Everyone went 'Man, Sidereals are hosed.', everyone called Lunars 'Boring and useless'- this one I think is false but is a different discussion-, and most of those were true to some degree or another, but no one ever seemed to notice that the majority of the Abyssals book seemed to be trying to convince you to play a different character, or at least talked about it. mistaya posted:Dropping the pointless penalties for Creation-manse and Hearthstones and ignoring Spectral and Avatar keywords is really easy. Ignoring Trappings of Death for the most part (although really, why wouldn't you wear cool deathknight stuff unless you were intentionally undercover?) is also easy. That one I like to at least pay some lip service to though. Resonance is a weird can of worms to me. I think it can be done well, but probably isn't often enough to need a serious overhaul. I mean, if we're talking RAW, well, we're not talking about 2.5. So the obvious house rules have to be considered. I'm actually going to talk about Trappings of Death here. What are they? Whose trappings of death? Is it the character's cultural ties, or the ties of the culture they are in, or something else? Everyone has different 'trappings of death', in the colors of death or the material used or all that. I mean Viking Trappings of death aren't the same as Japanese aren't the same as Christan, for example, so there's no way Creation has one statement of 'trappings of Death'. But it doesn't seem often talked about. The weirdest part about the trappings of Death is it works to remove the individuality of Abyssals, because the lack of talk about trappings of Death means the safe option is 'skulls'. Which is perfect when you want to make Storm Troopers outfitted by the local Hot Topic. Not the best idea for some guys you're supposed to be playing. I consider the 2.5 stuff to be RAW though. I cut out what I didn't realize have a response/didn't have to respond to because it wasn't a discussion against it.
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Feb 1, 2014 19:15
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Yeah I agree with most of your points. I'm not arguing per se, just offering my opinion. Not defining the whole Trappings of Death thing was a good idea. It lets you borrow funeral-dress from whatever place your character was from, or just be as creative as you want to. My Death Knight wears flowing white with a concealing hood, for example, with nary a skull to be seen, as that's how people in her village were buried. It's been altered to be much more combat-capable, and she wears chainmail underneath it, but I think the point is that dead people have a completely different fashion sense to living people. Creation isn't their home so if they're adventuring in Creation it's ok to make them stand out, the way a group of English Knights would stand out in Imperial China. (As long as the sneaky types still have ways to be sneaky, which they do.) RE: The Mirror description- it has a line in it about Solars and Abyssals being able to learn the mirrors of each others charms, and I took that to mean that you could create them if they didn't exist since there are quite a few non-mirror charms that I'm sure Solars could come up with sun-flavored versions of. But it seems like that isn't the case? I don't see any reason NOT to make up your own mirrors if you want something, though, it's not like it's hard to do. I don't care if one of the devs said not to do them because he wanted to (and then DIDN'T, so gently caress him.) 2.0 is RAW, 2.5 can't be RAW because it isn't finished. There's no Glories: Hell/Underworld to patch things up officially. Ink Monkeys did their best but fixing 2.0 was impossible and that's why we're getting a 3.0 fresh start instead of Errata Forever, and it's clear they didn't spend a lot of time on Abyssals when they were doing the fixes for 2.5. Houseruling Abyssals is mostly just ignoring stupid penalties (Avatar and Spectral, the -2 to things in creation) Personally I don't mind the non-respiring motes in Creation thing because that can actually be dealt with in the story in interesting ways but some groups might just ditch it. You can also keep Avatar and just get rid of the Underworld training trip thing, (maybe praying in a Shadowland is good enough to increase it.) Oh, and getting motes from actually being a vampire works fairly well, especially if you have that little 2 dot cult or better yet some kind of elemental buddy with quick healing who doesn't mind being snacked on. That limitation is meant to make it hard to be an Abyssal in Creation, which... makes sense. mistaya fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Feb 1, 2014 |
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Feb 1, 2014 20:22
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The problem is that I don't think, from a design standpoint, 'you don't get to use those things that are really cool' is a good penalty, or design thought. You want to make Abyssals worse in Creation for some reason, I would do it through making the charms more inefficient, with Motes, not WP, not just straight up 'you can't use these without horrendous penalties' or 'you have to play a guerrilla soldier unconnected from resources living on the land'. Something like an Excellency has a surcharge. But I wouldn't do this if they didn't regain motes normally. I would give them normal mote regain without dumb penalties and then say 'but if you use your Excellency in Creation you have to pay 3m per 2 dice' or something. I don't feel like it's a good design idea when most of the game is supposed to take place in Creation though I mean, this is why Solars are more useful for the cause of Oblivion. They get to use their charms without worrying 'man, if I use the Melee Excellency against this guy, what if someone worse shows up.' A Solar can assume he'll have recovered at least some motes. The 10 motes an Abyssal spends represents 5+ hours of effort. It seems weird to me. As for the 'draining' thing, that is honestly dependent on how people see Creation. A lot of the time Creation seems to be presented as a bunch of small, tiny population villages of various technological advancements with a few hub cities that are talked about in the Compasses. If that's the case, you might have 20 or 30 people in a village. or some equally small number. Most (all?) of these are probably going to be Extras, which means they have a total of 3 motes in their body, one per health level. And if you drain all 3 you kill them. An Abyssal using draining to keep themselves up in motes is wandering around killing entire villages and sucking them dry and barely getting full mote pools, hopefully keeping them with motes just barely enough to get to the next village where they repeat the process. I mean, sure, you can do it, and that's cool if you want to have an NPC Abyssal doing that, some strange death going from village to village as if it's a plague, with confusing wounds that no one understands as you hunt down the source of the 'plague', but that's probably not what EVERY player wants to do. And it becomes worse and worse as more Abyssals show up, because you're having to split your Mote Supply more and more ways. And that's what I meant by Trappings of Death. They should talk about Cultural Trappings in the write-up of the books, in the cities or nations they talk about. It gives you a place to start with your character if they come from there, or something to maybe build off of if they don't. I don't have a problem with the Abyssals having a problem in Creation, in theory. In theory it's neat. In practice it's a handicapping no other Splat has to deal with, including Infernals, that their Bosses don't deal with, and essentially makes you feel less like a Hero or Villain of Death, or even an Exalt, and again, more like a Hot Topic Storm Trooper Stallion Cabana fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Feb 1, 2014 |
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Feb 1, 2014 21:00
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Lymond posted:What I've read about the Deathlords and their relationships to Abyssals for 3E seems to be headed in the direction you want. Stephenls made a post about this a few weeks ago: That's a great Stephenls post, he's completely right about how Exalted needs way less Unambiguously Evil Big Bad Guys. The First And Forsaken Lion's original portrayal was only ok because he had no intent on invading or even threatening Creation; ruling the Underworld was his whole gimmick, and that showcased how the Deathlords were not devoted slaves to Oblivion's cause. Every writer afterwards missed the point entirely. That said, he's wrong on Peleps Deled.
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Feb 1, 2014 21:00
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If you're attacking anyone with an essence pool you can drain motes off them in combat in addition to your stunt motes (and then you can drain the body once you make the kill to top off.) It seems reasonable that Death Knights would be more active in regions or areas that had access to a nearby shadowland, or would make their own if they needed one. Draining extras isn't a reasonable way to get essence back, agreed. But there's a lot of things with quick-healing and big essence pools that you can make friends with if you want to go that route. It's not for every character, but it is an option. I really wouldn't mind if it didn't show up in 3E though.
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Feb 1, 2014 21:40
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I think it's important that the Abyssals remain unnatural to some significant extent, a perversion of death rather than a manifestation of death. It's the Liminals, after all, that are about "natural" death and the impossibility of true resurrection. Like I wrote some pages back, insofar as Abyssals are corrupted Solars rather than a completely original thing, they've got to be symbols of what humans think about death, what humans imagine death to be, how humans become obsessed with death, how humans attempt to circumvent death or cling to life despite the certainty of death, etc.
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Feb 1, 2014 22:58
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Ferrinus posted:I think it's important that the Abyssals remain unnatural to some significant extent, a perversion of death rather than a manifestation of death. It's the Liminals, after all, that are about "natural" death and the impossibility of true resurrection. So a Chosen of Saturn, a Liminal and a Deathknight all walk into a bar...
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Feb 2, 2014 01:25
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Calde posted:So a Chosen of Saturn, a Liminal and a Deathknight all walk into a bar...
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Feb 2, 2014 02:43
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Except for the Abyssal, because tiers are real, strong, and my friends.
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Feb 2, 2014 03:22
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Ferrinus posted:Except for the Abyssal, because tiers are real, strong, and my friends. technically it'd be the Chosen of Saturn in this case.
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Feb 2, 2014 03:49
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Calde posted:So a Chosen of Saturn, a Liminal and a Deathknight all walk into a bar... ...and overlook the Night Caste hiding in the corner.
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Feb 2, 2014 04:11
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You know, the tendency of Liminals to not die when they're killed would be a GREAT plot hook...
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Feb 2, 2014 06:05
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Has it been confirmed that Liminals are not in the Loom of Fate? It makes sense to me why they wouldn't, since they are horrible abominations created by desperation and madness. It would also explain how they have lasted so long in Creation.
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Feb 2, 2014 19:51
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| # ? May 28, 2024 04:09 |
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bartkusa posted:Can someone explain why Sijan is cool or makes sense? "Because the Necropolis of Litharg in Sandman," basically.
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Feb 2, 2014 20:02
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