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As for comparable creatures in other lines, I'd probably go with a Noble from Nobilis - acting on a completely different paradigm to mortal effort. Or possibly one of the stronger Rakshasa from Exalted - the ones that are an area, a story and the actors within it at the same time (almost as if one set of game authors were adapting the work of another).
Flavivirus fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 00:06
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Rand Brittain posted:Honestly, I don't find the idea that all changelings who increase their powers are moving towards becoming True Fae, or that all True Fae were once human, very gripping. I like it as one possible end-point of a Changeling's evolution, but I actually quite dislike the way it's implied to be the only path subsequent to a high Wyrd score, other than reversing back down the ladder. The Changeling metaphor works pretty well in most cases but that particular corner of it is kinda "you can either draw strength from your traumatic experiences and inevitably turn into the thing that hurt you, or refuse and get stuck being the damaged creature they made you forever." Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 00:08
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Ferrinus posted:2E exalts, sure... but 2E low-level exalts? You start with like ten Charms in that game. People literally just brought up how bad you can break some of the White Wolf and Onyx Path game's with knowledge of the mechanics. Do you really think that Exalted 2E in all of it's gonzo appeal and age doesn't have some absurd potential there? Keep in mind that the standard of power in 2E Exalted is way higher in the CofD/NWoD. You can start out with a Solar or Abyssal that deals flat unhealable aggravated damage per attack that can't be dodged or soaked even by perfect defenses. It then escalates until everything that takes a solid hit basically gets turned into chunky salsa in a turn or two. Flavivirus posted:As for comparable creatures in other lines, I'd probably go with a Noble from Nobilis - acting on a completely different paradigm to mortal effort. Or possibly one of the stronger Rakshasa from Exalted - the ones that are an area, a story and the actors within it at the same time (almost as if one set of game authors were adapting the work of another). Yeah, those are probably better examples now that I think about it. Archonex fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 00:10
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Archonex posted:You seem to...Uh, take this a bit seriously. You're talking to Ferrinus (mistake 1) and you mentioned Mage (mistake 2).
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Jan 25, 2017 00:10
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Archonex posted:People literally just brought up how bad you can break some of the White Wolf and Onyx Path game's mechanically with knowledge of the mechanics. Do you really think that Exalted 2E in all of it's gonzo appeal and age doesn't have some absurd potential there? Yes, because I know Exalted 2E. Optimizing it is actually extremely boring and your end goal is just attacking ~5 times per turn with big stats while automatically dodging every attack. You don't really get any gonzo Pun Pun poo poo (until you're so high level that you formally qualify for it and then you just buy the Do This Crazy Thing power and push the button)
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Jan 25, 2017 00:14
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Why you care so much - person making every other post for the last page and a half
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Jan 25, 2017 00:14
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Daeren posted:You're talking to Ferrinus (mistake 1) and you mentioned Mage (mistake 2). At this point I sincerely regret at least one of these mistakes.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:15
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Like it'd be cool if as a Changeling you could transcend into being a human story rather than a hosed up cautionary fairy tale, standing as an inspiration to others and feeding off of compassion and happy endings. It's very frilly and feel-good for what is ostensibly a horror game but ask me if I give a poo poo. 
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Jan 25, 2017 00:17
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Also, it being possible for a changeling to become a true fae does not mean all true fae used to be changelings.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:18
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Like it'd be cool if as a Changeling you could transcend into being a human story rather than a hosed up cautionary fairy tale, standing as an inspiration to others and feeding off of compassion and happy endings. It's very frilly and feel-good for what is ostensibly a horror game but ask me if I give a poo poo. Isn't that like a positive and happy version of what a Beast eventually becomes? At least one of their end games is all about turning into some horrific story made manifest.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:19
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Archonex posted:Isn't that like a positive and happy version of what a Beast eventually becomes? Maybe, yeah, I haven't made any in-depth study of Beast. Also it would be the perfect setup for a Changeling and Promethean buddy comedy and who could possibly not want that?
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Jan 25, 2017 00:20
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My favourite depiction of the True Fae is their writeup as True Gods of the Thorns in Imperial Mysteries. It's stated that the Exarchs exterminated them all aeons ago, but that it had basically no effect because all the True Fae are from the fallen realm of time and fate so can time travel as much as they want. They show up whenever and wherever they like and when people mention that they got wiped out aeons ago they're like "oh, probably. I assume someone's going to kill me eventually. Anyway, don't give a poo poo, see ya"
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Jan 25, 2017 00:21
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They're not from a "fallen" Arcadia, really - in fact, they're from one which never fell, or recovered from having fallen in the far future, or something.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:29
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Ferrinus posted:They're not from a "fallen" Arcadia, really - in fact, they're from one which never fell, or recovered from having fallen in the far future, or something. Doesn't their write have mountains of rampant speculation in it? There is like 5 different theories and then the book just throws up its hands and implies they might not even be supernal entities anyway from what I recall.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:36
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LordAbaddon posted:Doesn't their write have mountains of rampant speculation in it? There is like 5 different theories and then the book just throws up its hands and implies they might not even be supernal entities anyway from what I recall. Before the Fall, the gods of Arcadia were capricious and powerful. Expressions of the progression of events in Time through story given limits by Fated oaths, they defined themselves by the oaths they swore — to other Gods, to concepts, to aspects of Fallen reality and to individuals. By the rights afforded to them in ancient promises, they entered the material world to search for audiences and actors in their mad plays. Arcadia is now tamed, the modern Fae encountered by mages mostly expressions of the meaning of Time and Fate to humans, but somehow the Old Gods of Thistle keep coming. They are of Arcadia, the realm of Time, and mere inconveniences like their home no longer existing and the creation of the Abyss won’t stop them from exercising their right to take playthings from the world. The nature of their origin is a hotly-contested front in the Ascension War — the Dhatu they hail from are variously in the distant past before the Fall, the far future after humanity has gone the way of the Dragons, an alternate timeline in which the Exarchs never conquered Arcadia or sometimes multiple options at once. It goes on a bit further but the upshot is that either there's another Arcadia or there are regions of Arcadia to remote from human understanding for mages to be able to navigate to through the Supernal normally - trying to follow them home gets your soul torn up by the Thorns same as if you were a regular mage or human.
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Jan 25, 2017 00:43
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Ferrinus posted:Yes, because I know Exalted 2E. Optimizing it is actually extremely boring and your end goal is just attacking ~5 times per turn with big stats while automatically dodging every attack. You don't really get any gonzo Pun Pun poo poo (until you're so high level that you formally qualify for it and then you just buy the Do This Crazy Thing power and push the button) That's a direct consequence of your meaningful interactions being with similarly powerful beings though and a combat metagame totally designed around the ability of everyone who matters to say No to anything you do cheaply over and over again though. Optimization boiling down to maximizing the efficiency and frequency of cheap "good enough" attack spam and the duration of your regenerating essence HP-bar, and the complete pointlessness of gonzo offensive combos in 2E aren't because Exalted are weak or because the potential for such combos don't exist- it's because anyone who can't deal with such things is not credible opposition to begin with, so they're at best a luxury that lets you more quickly dispatch irrelevant fodder. NWoD supernaturals often don't even have access to the sorts of effects that would let them begin to oppose a purpose-built starting 2E Exalt. On the other hand describing a True Fae's power in their own domain as equivalent to a low level Solar Exalt because Wyld Shaping Technique/Sorcery exists is at least similarly dumb, because the range of capabilities and general context is also completely different than it would be in Exalted.
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Jan 25, 2017 01:15
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A starting 2E Exalt can perfect dodge for a while or unleash a couple big attacks, which is weellllll within the remit of basically any of the main line 2E supernaturals, or of demons or beasts. You have to adjust a bit for the fact of flurries being available to everyone in one system but being unheard of even if you're using superpowers in the other, but superhuman offense and defense until your points run out - and, indeed, careful hedging and optimization around the fact that your enemy has bullshit nope buttons that work irrespective of your accuracy or damage - can comfortably describe the combat paradigm of either game.
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Jan 25, 2017 01:25
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LordAbaddon posted:I'm gonna stop you right there. It is true that sufficiently powerful Changelings can become True Fae but it has never been stated that this is where all or even most of the True Fae come from. In fact it is impossible for this to be true since we then run into a chicken and egg scenario with the True Fae where Changelings had to exist to make True Fae, but True Fae had to exist to capture Changelings. There is a specific paragraph where the book* posits that the first True Fae was a regular human (or group of humans) that wandered into the Hedge/Arcadia and, to survive, became the True Fae. Which only kicks the can to "then where did the Hedge/Arcadia come from" but, well, *either Rites of Spring, or Equinox Road, I can't recall which
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Jan 25, 2017 01:51
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LordAbaddon posted:I'm gonna stop you right there. It is true that sufficiently powerful Changelings can become True Fae but it has never been stated that this is where all or even most of the True Fae come from. In fact it is impossible for this to be true since we then run into a chicken and egg scenario with the True Fae where Changelings had to exist to make True Fae, but True Fae had to exist to capture Changelings. This is true. Given that the rules for playable True Fae state that the winners inevitably ascend to become something else I always figured that that meant that by modern times the only True Fae really left were former Changelings. Since old ones would inevitably either get killed or ascend. My mistake, regardless. Edit: Or not, in fact. Apparently I totally missed the "first true Fae" thing when reading through the books. LGD posted:That's a direct consequence of your meaningful interactions being with similarly powerful beings though and a combat metagame totally designed around the ability of everyone who matters to say No to anything you do cheaply over and over again though. Optimization boiling down to maximizing the efficiency and frequency of cheap "good enough" attack spam and the duration of your regenerating essence HP-bar, and the complete pointlessness of gonzo offensive combos in 2E aren't because Exalted are weak or because the potential for such combos don't exist- it's because anyone who can't deal with such things is not credible opposition to begin with, so they're at best a luxury that lets you more quickly dispatch irrelevant fodder. NWoD supernaturals often don't even have access to the sorts of effects that would let them begin to oppose a purpose-built starting 2E Exalt. I admitted that comparing the True Fae to an exalt was a bad comparison. The Raksha are probably a better example if you have to go with Exalted, though. They're pretty much the True Fae in spirit. Only with a bad soul and reality devouring habit on top of the abductions into slavery. Also, there's no hedge present to stop them from sodomizing reality. Like you mentioned in your posts it's also kind of hard to compare the settings since the beings in them are mechanically and canonically operating on entirely different scales of power. I mean, even if you tried it quickly becomes apparent that a mid to late game Exalt would crush anything in the NWoD and probably just about anything in the OWoD. The 2e and 3e core books even point out in a blurb that they're wielding what would be considered literally mythological power by many of the heavy weights in later eras. Shards of the Exalted Dream and Dreams of the First Age are really good examples of what I mean. They give a peek at possible charms past essence 4/5 charms and show what they're like past the core book stage of power. A mid range Abyssal Exalt in the modern setting variant is given a charm that literally lets them turn everything from his or her position to the horizon into a smoking crater with nothing but a semi-automatic pistol. And that's not even the highest power setting that specific charm goes to. Once you hit either essence five or six (I forget.) you can literally spam explosive bullets that create necrotic explosions almost nearly a mile in size. That's downright apocalyptic in it's usefulness when it comes to combat against things without perfect defenses. Never mind crushing just about any monster in one of the WoD settings. It's total nerdy fan wankery to try to match them up either way. I just used the Exalted as an example for my comparison because it was the first tabletop game that sprang to mind that could potentially act at that level of world altering power. Archonex fucked around with this message at 03:20 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 01:56
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Ferrinus posted:A starting 2E Exalt can perfect dodge for a while or unleash a couple big attacks, which is weellllll within the remit of basically any of the main line 2E supernaturals, or of demons or beasts. You have to adjust a bit for the fact of flurries being available to everyone in one system but being unheard of even if you're using superpowers in the other, but superhuman offense and defense until your points run out - and, indeed, careful hedging and optimization around the fact that your enemy has bullshit nope buttons that work irrespective of your accuracy or damage - can comfortably describe the combat paradigm of either game. Nah, even if you adjust for flurries (and other differences in systems- which could potentially be a pretty fraught issue) one of the paradigms has superhuman defenses and offenses that generally encompass and surpass what the other is trying to do, while creatures in the other paradigm frequently don't have good tools to deal well with things a starting Exalted character could do like "I create a narrative effect that dictates you are unavoidably hit with enough arrows to deal instantly fatal levels of aggravated damage, trump ways you might have to ignore physical attacks entirely (like being dematerialized), and then consume your soul (if you're a spirit or someone for who that matters)." I mean maybe I missed all the perfect defense analogues nWoD creatures get, but I don't think so. And that's what a really basic and not actually terribly expensive "big attack" from a starting 2E Exalted could be, but usually isn't because it's a really bad strategy within the combat metagame relative to throwing up some persistent dice adders to supplement your regular attacks and stunting as many perfect defenses as possible (and note that it doesn't take too long to get to the Essence 4 "I touch you and your soul falls off for easy consumption" effects). Again though, it's sort of a silly Goku vs. Superman comparison because the contexts and systems are so different- all I'm saying is that the argument for new Exalted not being able to do crazy poo poo on a par with strong nWoD supernaturals because the combat metagame turned out to be a series of boring battles of attrition between similarly powerful peers is a pretty bad one. LGD fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 02:59
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My preferred answer to the Arcadia question (which has since been answered) is that the question is incoherent when its subject doesn't really do the linear causality thing. It's asking the chicken/egg question of something that is chicken, egg, dinosaur, rotisserie-cooked, hot primordial baryons and heat-death radiation depending on its narrative stylings.
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Jan 25, 2017 03:09
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LGD posted:Nah, even if you adjust for flurries (and other differences in systems- which could potentially be a pretty fraught issue) one of the paradigms has superhuman defenses and offenses that generally encompass and surpass what the other is trying to do, while creatures in the other paradigm frequently don't have good tools to deal well with things a starting Exalted character could do like "I create a narrative effect that dictates you are unavoidably hit with enough arrows to deal instantly fatal levels of aggravated damage, trump ways you might have to ignore physical attacks entirely (like being dematerialized), and then consume your soul (if you're a spirit or someone for who that matters)." I mean maybe I missed all the perfect defense analogues nWoD creatures get, but I don't think so. And that's what a really basic and not actually terribly expensive "big attack" from a starting 2E Exalted could be, but usually isn't because it's a really bad strategy within the combat metagame relative to throwing up some persistent dice adders to supplement your regular attacks and stunting as many perfect defenses as possible (and note that it doesn't take too long to get to the Essence 4 "I touch you and your soul falls off for easy consumption" effects). nWoD creatures now get quasi perfect defenses now on the order of "I take 1 damage max no matter what" or "I blur out of your attack range reflexively" although they generally have hard or soft caps on how many times you can use 'em per scene. I'm mostly familiar with 2E solars, but "I decree you are unavoidably hit and killed" doesn't sound like a chargen or near-chargen effect and the other stuff is just freaking Ghost-Eating Technique, come on. Obviously a starting 2E exalt is much more powerful out the gate than a starting nWoD character even with 2E cranking the dial up, but I can't imagine "a low-level exalt" scans as a deadly foe appropriate to the heart of an old god of thistle's demesne to any group of supernaturals that have been playing and accruing XP long enough to plausibly stumble into it.
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Jan 25, 2017 03:25
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Ferrinus posted:nWoD creatures now get quasi perfect defenses now on the order of "I take 1 damage max no matter what" or "I blur out of your attack range reflexively" although they generally have hard or soft caps on how many times you can use 'em per scene. I'm mostly familiar with 2E solars, but "I decree you are unavoidably hit and killed" doesn't sound like a chargen or near-chargen effect and the other stuff is just freaking Ghost-Eating Technique, come on. Well yeah, I agree, a low level Exalt would not be a reasonable challenge and said as much from the get-go. Such a character would be a one-trick pony, and someone built to be a narrow instant death attack combo dude with otherwise extremely narrow capabilities sounds like a pretty garbage boss to me. But that combo is just Trance of Unhesitating Speed + Accuracy Without Distance + Essence Arrow Attack (Dazzling Flare- assuming opponent to be a "creature of darkness"), plus a couple of Lore charms. Or really just AWD + Trance + whatever you need to actually kill your target, which is usually something accessible to an Essence 3 Solar (the point of the lore charms isn't because I think you'd think Spirit Cutting Attack or Ghost-Eating Technique were particularly impressive, it was to demonstrate that there are pretty obvious and easily accessible counters to many of the tactics that could be used to negate physical attacks- and it's not like leaping dodges and opponents that took multiple rounds to beat to death were unforseen challenges for 2E Exalts). I'm sure that there are much better combos available, especially once you add a panoply of 2E gear, it's been ages since I even thought about Exalted 2E and optimizing the best instant kill combos out of chargen against people without perfect defenses was pretty quickly recognized as a huge waste of time, and what is "good" depends a lot on your assumptions about how things like soaking damage actually translate over/dice in Exalted being better than nWoD/etc.
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Jan 25, 2017 04:23
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Oh, "narrative construct" made me think you were using one of the later/weirder exalted. The thing is, "you are hit by a bunch of unavoidable aggravated damage" (I'm not sure the multiattack aspect is even particularly salient here, since this is acombat system in which any old mortal can attempt a multiattack and the actual multiattack charms just let you do it with less of a penalty) isn't really remarkable by the standards of a majority of the 2E lines. So baby chosen are basically going to come off like a new kind of monster with unusually high numbers rather than precedent-shattering, context-warping gods.
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Jan 25, 2017 04:44
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Ferrinus posted:Oh, "narrative construct" made me think you were using one of the later/weirder exalted. The thing is, "you are hit by a bunch of unavoidable aggravated damage" (I'm not sure the multiattack aspect is even particularly salient here, since this is acombat system in which any old mortal can attempt a multiattack and the actual multiattack charms just let you do it with less of a penalty) isn't really remarkable by the standards of a majority of the 2E lines. So baby chosen are basically going to come off like a new kind of monster with unusually high numbers rather than precedent-shattering, context-warping gods. Really, I think the thing that the Solars would do to wreck the nWoD would just be... be Solars, culture heroes whose powers are decent for destroying monsters and who are amazingly good at drawing together armies of humans to their cause. A Solar who decides to hunt vampires might be someone like Blade, but they could just as easily turn a city's human population into hunters. All of them. As far as I'm aware, Solar recruit-and-train power didn't really reduce that much from 2 to 3. And when you try to assassinate the shining prophet who has roused humanity to take back the night, they have Solar combat abilities as well, because the rabble-rouser Solar definitely has the combat skills so they can train their followers in them. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 05:44
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Yeah, what makes a starting Exalt scary to powerful nWoD things isn't how hard they can hit, it's the other society or narrative scope powers they can do. A very easily acquired socialize charm in Exalted 2e lets you change the beliefs of an entire group of people by talking to ANY member, even the janitor. They can flawlessly tell when someone is lying to them, they can disguise themselves so well that you need powerful magic to even get the chance to ROLL to notice them. They can bring a bureaucracy to a standstill, they can make things happen blazingly fast. They can turn a handful of random people into fearless elite soldiers in like a week. They can easily tell exactly what someone REALLY wants from an interaction, and can perfectly negate any mental influence hostile to them. All of this is easily accomplished by a 0xp chargen character (well, probably not all at once, but any given part of that). A starting Solar could easily turn into the President, talk to a member of congress over lunch, and have the guiding principles of Congress change such that they both believe in and really hate Supernatural Group X. And that's just Solars. Sidereals can actually be even MORE threatening to supernatural power bases than Solars, since they get even more bullshit society/reality warping charms, and often at very low essence scores (Wise Choice is a cheap, low requirement charm that can tell you basically anything if you word it right. It is literally IMPOSSIBLE to hide anything from a sidereal)
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Jan 25, 2017 06:01
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So, I sort of backed myself into a corner. I'm STing a Mage game, and the Moros is putting together a Gothic rock/metal band that will have its songs secretly be cult-indoctrinating messages. She's doing this on behalf of a Demon, whom gave her a nifty gun in exchange for doing so. Over the course of the auditions, this blond-haired fuckboy auditioned for guitar, and was generally mediocre so the Moros passed him by. Then he came back the next day, claiming to be his twin, and auditioned for guitar. Similarly mediocre. This process would go on about four or five times, and each time the kid would show up looking slightly different but not in any way talented. Eventually the Moros peered out into the audition line and saw two more guys looking exactly like them waiting to audition. Eventually two of them were in the room at once; Carriless and Connor (They've all had names starting with C). Carriless was actually pretty good at keyboarding, which is what finally set the Cabal's Mastigos off. She peered into Connor's mind and saw a normal life, until he got a sudden impulse to go audition for this band. She also looked at their Sympathy, and found that all of the Cs have incredibly strong sympathetic bonds. The Acanthus was finally intrigued as well, and saw that they had an incredibly tightly woven fate. They let them go with the intention of following them, and the session ended there. It was only later that I realized I wasn't prepared for what these guys actually were. My assumption and plan was that Carriless got a hold of some imbued item that allowed him to summon and control alternate versions of himself, and that opened him up to Abyssal influence. But if that was the case, shouldn't the PCs have noticed by now?
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Jan 25, 2017 13:52
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Alternative explanation: one of the Seer ministries has a servant race that's made of entirely identical people - Hive-Souled I think? I'm not sure what benefit could be gained from this - maybe this is a group of Hive-Souled whose master died, and have standing orders to investigate mages without knowing why. E: I think they get better at actions the more of them are present, which would explain the increased keyboard skills when the two were in the same room!
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Jan 25, 2017 14:16
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Hive-Souls are a thing, yeah; 219-220 in the Seers book. They don't have a rule about getting better when more of them are present (they get better at teamwork) as written, but that idea in and of itself could be fun. Another idea would be that this person is a result of a shattered timeline. They're all the same person and, until recently, were the same person. Then some magical disaster (perhaps a botched Acanthus Awakening or a temporal fracture caused by a piece of Infrastructure) refracted the guy's personal history so that possible C's are all flooding reality. Rather than recognize each other for what they are, each knows that the other has some sort of direct personal connection and simply assumes they were brothers. After all, they remember the same home, same family... All the more worrying, there might be more C's being produced at all times; just an endless lineage of alternate C's, getting slightly more diverse as the refraction of the timeline expands in a Fibonacci-level rate of increase. Within a very short time, the whole world could be drowned beneath a tidal wave of blonde fuckboys; like being in the cheap seats at a Russian rock concert. Plus, for now, most of the C's produced are benign as the timelines are fairly close together, but as they spread out and get more diverse, worse things might start crawling out of the prismatic time fracture.
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Jan 25, 2017 14:45
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Maybe the first guy was Fated to show up to the audition, do really well and that was going to be his big break to stardom that would change his life forever. Somehow, he hosed up and that didn't happen but the Fate was too strong and it didn't go away. Instead it just kind of pinged off and is flying around like balloon with a hole in it, slapping "will do really well at rock band auditions" onto people and horribly rewriting their existence to be more like his. It's getting slowly better at it over time as it self-corrects the mistake that led to fuckboy #1 failing the audition, but also each iteration gets more and more like him. In the end, people are going to be turned into literal copies of him but with 5 dots in Expression (Rock Band). Who knows when it will stop? Maybe one of them becoming a famous rock star will be enough? Maybe it has to be the original? Maybe the broken self-replicating Fate is too far gone and now it's more like a broken-down Ananke and it'll never stop on its own.
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Jan 25, 2017 15:28
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MalcolmSheppard posted:My preferred answer to the Arcadia question (which has since been answered) is that the question is incoherent when its subject doesn't really do the linear causality thing. It's asking the chicken/egg question of something that is chicken, egg, dinosaur, rotisserie-cooked, hot primordial baryons and heat-death radiation depending on its narrative stylings. I've always read this as "yes, obviously, but - equally obviously - there's no reason that this would result in either game somehow enjoying primacy over or otherwise interfering with the other".
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Jan 25, 2017 15:59
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Axelgear posted:Hive-Souls are a thing, yeah; 219-220 in the Seers book. They don't have a rule about getting better when more of them are present (they get better at teamwork) as written, but that idea in and of itself could be fun. Flavivirus posted:Alternative explanation: one of the Seer ministries has a servant race that's made of entirely identical people - Hive-Souled I think? I'm not sure what benefit could be gained from this - maybe this is a group of Hive-Souled whose master died, and have standing orders to investigate mages without knowing why. So, what happens if alt-timeline Hive-Souls get into the same reality? I think that's where I'm going to go: a timeline shattered and sent a poor soul into spacetime, except that Soul was a Hiver. The original Hiver (Carriless) now has a lot more bodies with different memories, and some of them want to go to this audition. That resonates with the rest of them, so now Carriless (who has 'ascended' to be a meta-Hive-Soul in charge of two Hive-Souls) has to find out how to get a handle on this before the timeline spits out an infirm body and ends up potentially killing everyone.
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Jan 25, 2017 16:07
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 Edit: drat. Somehow I left Australia off. Loomer fucked around with this message at 18:41 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 16:20
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Out of curiosity, in that last pie chart did you consider Hollowers as part of the Trad slice or Unaligned slice?
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Jan 25, 2017 17:28
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Spector29 posted:So, what happens if alt-timeline Hive-Souls get into the same reality? I think that's where I'm going to go: a timeline shattered and sent a poor soul into spacetime, except that Soul was a Hiver. I must admit, the idea of "I have to figure out time travel before alternateMe gets cancer" is pretty great. Axelgear fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 17:28
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Joe Slowboat posted:Really, I think the thing that the Solars would do to wreck the nWoD would just be... be Solars, culture heroes whose powers are decent for destroying monsters and who are amazingly good at drawing together armies of humans to their cause. A Solar who decides to hunt vampires might be someone like Blade, but they could just as easily turn a city's human population into hunters. All of them. As far as I'm aware, Solar recruit-and-train power didn't really reduce that much from 2 to 3. I always figured that most Solars would be busy off outside reality dealing with the heavier poo poo if they were around in the NWoD/CoFD setting. Lunars would probably be busy in the Shadow keeping some of the more insane and insanely powerful spirits contained. And if the Neverborn aren't around to corrupt them any more the Abyssals would probably not give that much of a poo poo what was going on outside of the (potentially literally infinite in size) Underworld since there's always more souls coming in and something more to conquer and dominate. Stuff like the Helminth are stuff that'd challenge a circle of established Exalt's. Or Abyssal alternate dimensions that are trying to eat reality, assuming they could pop into one. It's basically what Malfeas wanted to do to the world in 2E anyways. No way in hell they'd ignore that. Or a major incursion of the True Fae into reality. Or hell, good aligned Abyssals would probably try to reform the Underworld into something less masochistic and insane once they took a good look at how batshit it can be. Y'know, the stuff that in Creation would be the stuff the Exalted would be expected to deal with as part of their job as management. Wiping out a vampire court would be the work of an evening or two and could be delegated down the line to some mortal flunky. The stuff that's inside what most people in the setting think is the sum total of reality is so low tier they'd mostly all be extras. And Exalt's are literally driven to achievement and to wield and display power. Essence Fever is a thing, and I can't help but feel that only the starting Exalt's or a high compassion one would stick around in the living world once they looked outside the spotlight that illuminates existence and realized that the darkness was nothing but an infinite ring of potentially godlike teeth waiting to close in. The effect of course would be that no one actually knows of or gives a poo poo about the Exalted until they chance across them in some alternate dimension. Or something makes them put in an appearance in all their glory and insane social manipulation. At which point people start coming up with new legends about the Crone, or Mithras and his hinted interactions with Rome, or the few times a Lune shows up to hand a quest out to some werewolf pack and give some advice before loving off to deal with some bigger issue. They'd basically be devices to drive the plot in NWoD/CofD's games. Since otherwise they'd end up either breaking the setting over their knee or end up fixing all of it's more low tier problems forever. Probably both. Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:41 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 17:34
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All exalts magically transported to the World of Darkness would find themselves barely superior to mortals since they're suddenly tracked in a vastly less magic-rich environment in which even a single mote of [whatever your magic bar is called] is a precious commodity rather than something you freely respire five or ten of by the hour. Abyssals, for instance, would probably have to rely completely on their fangs to recharge their power, and not simply wear the trappings of death but avoid the sun all together in order to keep themselves safe...
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Jan 25, 2017 17:40
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Or the fact that save or die powers aren't based on Shaping in this world, and there goes like 99% of their defenses.
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Jan 25, 2017 17:42
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Ferrinus posted:All exalts magically transported to the World of Darkness would find themselves barely superior to mortals since they're suddenly tracked in a vastly less magic-rich environment in which even a single mote of [whatever your magic bar is called] is a precious commodity rather than something you freely respire five or ten of by the hour. That's only within the confines of the living world though. It's pretty clear that outside of it it's magical as gently caress. They have the same workarounds that a lot of supers of that tier have. Like those super-essence pyros dudes in the Promethean line just pop into existence until they exhaust their essence supply. Or they could just one up them and grab an essence gem or hearthstone/manse and leech off of that as a way to substitute respiring essence. And Abyssals have a workaround for that anyways. Sprout some fangs and start eating people. Or just murder them if you're a Midnight or pick up the charm they have that does that. Or the dozen other ways they have to regain essence by inflicting harm on people. Plus outside of Sidereals Exalt's can always invent new charms to compensate. Hell, after a certain point having people believe in you literally gives you essence per few hours too since you're literally playing a nascent god. Now i'm wondering if they're still working on all the NWoD line equivalents for the new Exalt types. The Fae are getting an equivalent apparently and the Prometheans are too. Always made me think that the talk of a crossover might involve an option for that setting. At least, before they had to change it over to being Chronicles instead. Either way there's really no way to include them in the setting without using them as a plot device or having them be busy with slugging it out with the heavier things that are mostly off screen in all the game lines. Mulva posted:Or the fact that save or die powers aren't based on Shaping in this world, and there goes like 99% of their defenses. To be fair, Mage kind of makes a pretty good case for Shaping being nothing but the usual reality alteration tricks that occur in creation. That's literally all Shaping is in fact. Archonex fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Jan 25, 2017 |
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Jan 25, 2017 17:43
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Surely in the essence wasteland that is the WoD there's just no such thing as a hearthstone, your ability to even store more than a dozen-odd motes at a time is arrested by the incredibly hypotonic atmosphere you live and breathe in, etc.
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Jan 25, 2017 17:48
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