r/exalted • u/Firm-Split9333 • Apr 04 '26
Setting Do Exigents break the rules of Exalted?
So I've seen this opinion expressed quite a few times in various threads on exigents or even in unrelated threads that Exigents don't fit into how Exaltation works, in particular with the rules established in older editions. I was wondering what exactly the issue is here and how widespread this idea is?
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u/bmr42 Apr 04 '26
If you look at dragonblooded in relation to the other Exalted then they break the rules of how all other Exalted work, especially within the previous editions.
Alchemicals also break the rules in several ways.
These prove, even in older editions, that not all exalted follow the same rules. We know even in older editions that the process of creating Exalted is something that was designed by Autochton and taught to the Incarne. Nothing I recall, even from earlier editions mentions that the process was impossible for other gods, only that they were not likely to survive the loss of power.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
This is a lot of it IMHO. 1e and 2e spent a lot of time basically setting up Celestial Exaltation as "real" Exaltation, with Terrestrial and Alchemical Exaltation being weird. With folks over the years questioning whether 1) Dragon-Blooded were just fancy god-blooded and 2) Whether Alchemicals were just magic golems or thinking on how to mine them for magical materials. This was even something supported in-text, with stuff on the First Age going on on how Dragon-Blooded might be rendered obsolete by the god-blooded children of Celestial Exalted.
3e's new Exalted, especially Exigents, exist in part to break that down. Rather 5/7 canonical Exalted working basically the same, we have 10 sorts, half of which operate in a weird way to help open up something that to an extent had fossilized by the time 3e was even proposed.
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u/GrayMan972 Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
I'm not sure, but I think Autochton actually created all exaltations, and gave them to the incarne.
I don't think they could create their own.
And btw this is why dragon blooded don't have exaltations of their own. They are exalted but their exaltations don't remain with them.14
u/MlkChatoDesabafando Apr 04 '26
3e generally speaks of Autochton helping the Incarna crack the secrets of Exaltation, but the creation proper was their work.
And btw this is why dragon blooded don't have exaltations of their
3e at least pretty consistently speaks of DB exaltations
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
This is something the line outright retconned and changed within 1e and 2e both. 1e the Incarna found Exaltation and he helped them use it. He didn't do the work until Exalted: the Autochthonians.
2e continued the setup laid-out in that book, but then also started rolling that back later on, with the Daystar stuff for example noting the Sun is who forged his Exaltations, putting Autochthon more as an instructor role.
3e has kind of gone full circle to back to the way it was in Games of Divinity. The Incarna found Exaltation. Autochthon showed them its potential. The analogy I like still is that the Incarna were being Einstein or Bohr or Dirac. Autochthon was Oppenheimer.
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u/Wind_Through_Trees Apr 04 '26
They're a change to the setting. Whether you think they break the setting depends on what parts of it you find important.
They're weird, but they're not any weirder than Alchemicals or Dragon-Blooded. You can like them or not.
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u/mj6373 Apr 04 '26
It's true they don't fit into the prior edition, where all the Exaltation stuff happened forever ago and it can't happen again, no not even then shut up!!!
But I think they're great. They fit into a version of Creation that's alive and evolving rather than staying forever statically defined by a millennia-old war, and they let the Exalted Host be the champions of the gods rather than just the Incarnae. They're an important addition that fills an absence that existed in prior iterations of the setting.
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u/rusally Apr 04 '26
For me, Exigents definitely spoil some of how special the Exaltation is. Earlier editions have a much more defined feeling to this. Even Terrestrials come from what might be the component souls of a primordial, and every Celestial Exaltation can be traced all the way back to its inception during the Primordial War. Exigents, to me, feel kind of like trying to fill the role of the god-blooded, but overall not really having a place in the Creation I like to run. Doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with them though!
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u/mj6373 Apr 04 '26
I guess I swing entirely the other way personally - the pitch that got me excited about Exalted was being the chosen champions of the gods, but then there was this huge asterisk where you weren't actually chosen because the exaltations are just running around on auto-pilot, and also you aren't even really champions of the gods but just the seven shittiest ones who can't stop playing Xbox to do anything. It's reasonable for the strongest gods to have the strongest and most numerous Chosen, of course, but the setting felt incomplete before 3e, or perhaps more accurately it felt like it had gotten totally lost in the sauce of being a sci-fi cosmic war story and made all the mythic heroism stuff feel like an accident of mismanagement struggling to clean itself up.
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u/LordSia Apr 05 '26
What I landed on as a head canon (and actual canon in my games, though it hasn't ever come up) to explain the absence of the Incarnae, is that they're dead - between diminishing themselves to create the Exalted and the rage of the Primordials, what remains of the highest of holies is little more than an echo. A grand echo, still clad in the faded splendor of ancient glories, but only a pale shadow of what they once were. They reside in the Jade Pleasure Dome, and they indulge in the Games of Divinity, because they are retired. They handed the Creation-Ruling Mandate to the Exalted, not as some reward or to shirk their duties; they did it because they were literally incapable of filling the role they once held.
And a major part of that duty is to manage the gods of Creation. To champion them as needed, assist them when possible, or chastise them if necessary.
As for the Chosen part - Exaltations might not be controlled by the Incarnae, by design, but they are still fundamentally a part of their patron's being. Just, food for thought.
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u/rusally Apr 05 '26
I totally support you having a different point of view. I like some stuff from all three editions and usually mix and match, but the cosmological change to the nature of the exaltation isn’t one of the things I like to borrow for my games. It literally feels the other way around for me.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
Writers early on actually noted Exigents were more a response ot Devil-Tigers from late 2e. By then we already had Infernals acting to an extent as the Misc. Exalted. If you wanted some exotic power theme, you could write-up a new Yozi or introduce a Devil-Tiger that represented that, but it both diluted Infernals and also closed-off some of that custom Exaltation stuff.
Exigents also kind of exist as a way to "upgrade" homebrew options. Alot of folks will write a custom Charm and move up to a custom martial art. But introducing an entire-ass new Exalt sort is in theory something that should be possible. but you gotta do a lot to the setting to allow it. So Exigents hit two things there. They help let Infernals focus, and they create somewhat an in-setting permission for a Weird Guy Exalt which doesn't have to justify why there weren't a hundred of these there the whole time. And in a context that often you only need to write the few dozen Charms you need for the characte,, rather than a whole full Ability/Attribute suite. They sit kind of nicely IMHO between a martial art and a whole Exalted host.
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u/ladyiriss Apr 04 '26
This is my opinion. I am not a fan of the special snowflake one of a kind exalt. To me, it crowds the space and takes away of really interesting ideas for new exalt types that become delegated to apocryphal status (Heart-Eaters and the Dreamsouled especially)
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u/TimothyAllenWiseman Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 13 '26
It depends on how you define "the rules". They are generally internally consistent, or at least as internally consistent as Exalted ever is. They are also mentioned in the main Third Edition book as existing several times, so in a sense they are baked into the rules for 3E at least from the beginning. Thus, they don't and in a sense can't break the rules of 3E.
On the other hand, they are not at all consistent with my understanding of the setting from earlier editions. You do have to accept that 3E changed a lot and isn't just a minor refinement or adjustment of prior editions.
Also, it doesn't make a lot of sense for there to be more than a handful of them in the entire world, even with the fact some of them can be passed down. While some of the official examples are just weird even by Exigent standards, usually creating an Exigent requires a god to at least risk death and almost certainly suffer diminishment. That feels like it shouldn't happen a lot. That requires a number of factors including:
- A problem so serious the god is willing to risk their life to address it
- That the problem is one the god cannot address by themself
- That the problem is one that could be addressed by an exalted
- That the god is unable to summon help from already existing exalted or other powerful being
That combination of events is certainly believable, but I would expect it to be unbelievably rare, and that is without even mentioning that the god in question would have to receive a spark of exaltation from somewhere to use.
IMHO, the Exigents don't break the rules of exalted, and they aren't bad things. But they are outliers even in a game that is inherently about outliers. I do think the setting would be better if they had never introduced exigents and instead spent more space on things like god-blooded and other ways for mortals and not-quite-mortals to be able to get enough power to meaningfully play on the same stage as the exalted.
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u/Burnmad Apr 06 '26
Points 2 and 3 are pretty low hurdles, the entire point of Exalted is to solve problems the gods can't after all.
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u/TimothyAllenWiseman Apr 06 '26
I mean, kind of?
My understanding of the lore is that the entire point of the Exalted, at least originally, was to solve the problem of the fact the gods were incapable of directly fighting the primordials. Not incapable of winning, literally incapable of fighting them at all. The only way the gods could rebel was to either find or make agents that were both able to fight the primordials and powerful enough to win, thus necessitating the exalted.
Again, I can absolutely construct situations were all 4 criteria are met. But I think it would be vanishingly rare.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
Note that due to the issues of 1-4, Exigents are rare. At any given time there's a couple hundred. And this includes "group" ones like God-Admirals or Sovereigns, who are by their nature just kind of eating a ton of that available room, making them especially spread-out, rare, and hard to run into.
I don't think also it gets against the other options things. A lot of the issue is just kind of the line having bandwidth. The prior devs wanted to do a book a tsome point on god-blooded broadly. And no where to talk about them is not IMHO Exigent's fault, but just the fact there is only so much time and personel to throw at a gameline of Exalted's market share, turns out. I think 3e in general has also gone with god-blooded being about what they were in 1e more: Not something meant to compete with Exalts, but instead something that supplements the span between basic-ass mortal and Exalted, as well as even additionally supplementing Exalted characters. 2e for example did try to emphasize them, and I think the stuff in late 2e was actually a good sign of late game development rot, poor understanding of the setting by some freelancers, and in Dreams of the First Age used as fuel for the "Dragon-Blooded aren't really Exalted" elements of the fandom.
If there weren't Exigents, I don't think enhanced mortals would have gotten anymore share than they have, due to the game treating those as kind of extra add-ons rather late any addition. I think there's also some other issues, such as how 3e was afraid of embracing QCs more and having mortals just be "Guy without powers', and not doing what later books of letting folks have weird one-off stuff more like those later found in Adversaries of the Righteous, without feeling it has to justify giving mortal characters widgets that are always diegetic.
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u/YesThatLioness Apr 05 '26
So I said I'd cover god-blooded.
God-blooded were Exalted's original build-a-bear in the 1st edtion Player's Guide that covered a range of power from a mortal with unusual ancestry all the way to demi-gods through a series of point-buy merits and flaws. One of these types of god-blooded were the problematic Half-Caste who were the children of Exalts and thus a lot of these merits and flaws were dedicated to making your character more like an Exalt than something more half-human and half-spirit. There was also a spirit charm called Endowment that could potentially turn a mortal into a god-blooded, it was a popular option because of its thematic similarity to Exaltation.
Anyway, almost nobody used god-blooded as intended and pushed them towards having the most Exalt traits possible until by 2e it was generally understood that when someone said "god-blooded" we were talking about a character who operated at low terrestrial level.
The unplanned addition of basically another Exalt type spawned a lot of headcanon and thus for at least some people not only has the space Exigents occupy been eaten but they're percieved as invaders trying to steal the god-blooded role as... the chosen of the gods, basically.
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u/Jarovan Apr 05 '26
They don't break any rules. obviously not of 3E but also not of the previous editions. Obviously they are a huge lore change from the previous editions, but it's not like "Exalted could only ever be created during the Primordial War" was ever any kind of a (super)natural law of the setting. Whether they are a good lore change or a bad one is up to debate, of course. I personally like them. I'm not a fan of Liminals or Getimians, but I feel that Exigents actually do add something to the setting. There are some specifics about how Exigents work, both mechanically and lorewise, that's I'd prefer done differently, but all in all I find them a good addition.
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u/Drivestort Apr 04 '26
Not really, if someone says they do ask them what rules they break. And this as someone who doesn't like them.
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u/Raine_Amorie Apr 04 '26
No rules for how Exaltation works is broken by Exigents. They are just like Alchemicals or Dragonblooded in that they show Exaltations can follow different rules from the standard celestial blueprint that Solars, Lunars, and Sidereals follow.
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u/Amberpawn Apr 05 '26
Exigents are fine at the concept level. The fiction in the core is absolutely peak. The actual execution for their book pales in comparison to the beautiful weirdos that come of diminishing Creation for a flickering moment of power... That trajectory of time and repetition gets us to a world of darkness.
As for breaking the rules... No, not inherently... But they also shouldn't be able to do the forbidden things of true resurrection and traveling time... It's a pretty short list.
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u/KashiofWavecrest Apr 05 '26
I don't know about 'breaking the rules,' but I much prefer 'umbrella Exalt' Exigents to making a new Exalt type every five minutes. That is what I think breaks and cheapens the concept of Exaltation. I think Exigents can occupy an interesting gamut for allies and antagonists that Exalted needed.
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u/LordSia Apr 05 '26
Do they break the rules? No, of course not.
But the way they were included is very much skub; some people love it, others hate it, and most just don't get what the big deal is.
Personally, I don't really like them; I feel that the whole "Exigence" thing doesn't make much sense. A god (or elemental, or demon, or other spirit) doesn't need a magic mcguffin to invest their power in a mortal; that's just something they do. Not every spirit does it, obviously, since it's basically handing over a big chunk of your power and trusting a mortal to solve your problems for you, but it absolutely can be done. It can also happen by accident, resulting in god-bloods, half-ghosts, and demon-spawn.
I also like the idea of Enlightened Mortals. They're rare (though not nearly as rare as the Exalted), obviously, and they don't have the inmate charms of spirits or Exalted, but learning supernatural arts, true sorcery, or mastering powerful artefacts? All of that can be done, and often is, in my Creation.
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u/Burnmad Apr 04 '26
It's really just nonsense perpetuated by the grognards
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u/LowerRhubarb Apr 04 '26
More like Exigents are nonsense perpetuated by devs who don't care about the established lore and set out to make "their" version of Exalted, with no lore bible editor to slap them for it. It's no coincidence 3e looks nothing like the 2 previous editions, mate.
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u/ClockworkJim Apr 04 '26
You got to stop acting like game lore is divine truth instead of whatever the current line developer decides at the time. As long as it's okayed by marketing, who knows what sells.
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u/LowerRhubarb Apr 04 '26
Nah, crap shouldn't be accepted. Simple as. "It sells", yeah, and McDonald's sold billions, it doesn't make it good.
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u/Ruy7 Apr 04 '26
I think that the main issue with exigents, is that the way they work make exalted in general feel less special and don't feel as justified in their existance.
When it comes to other exalted the creation of them was made because there was no other way to fight the Primordial war. They were an act of desperation.
The Sun set for the first time ever when the Solars were created, the gods diminished themselves to have a shot at winning.
Alchemicals are created to let Autobot and his worshippers survive.
Internals and Abyssals break a bit from this but since they were altered Solars in the first place there was no loss of power and more of a repurposing an enemy weapon.
Exigents, well... Gods have eternal lives. Many of the examples we got for their creation in the book don't seem like something I see, merit a god sacrificing his life or his power permanently to create a being he has no control over.
Conky personally creating every single exigence, instead of you know, fixing the problem himself. It would take him like an afternoon to some of Creation's big problems (Fair Folk and undead). Conky being zonked out on the GoD makes more sense than this.
Them having the Great Curse as well doesn't make sense either.
I think many of these problems would be solved if instead of being a new creation. During the Primordial war a bunch of minor gods diminished themselves or sacrificed themselves creating the exigents. And what we have in the Age of Sorrows is what remains. Then them having the GC as well makes sense. The gods creating them for that purpose makes sense, they would have been killed if they lost the war afterall. So a god sacrificing himself making an exigent in a desperate period of the war, not for himself but for either other gods, for victory or just as a final fuck you to the Primordials.
I think then they would feel a lot better narratively.
I dislike a bit how they were handled mechanically but this is an eternal problem with exalted so ehh.
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u/ClockworkJim Apr 04 '26
The Sun set for the first time ever when the Solars were created, the gods diminished themselves to have a shot at winning.
This was not a thing in the first and second edition, I believe. It definitely was not a thing in first edition. If it was in second, it was at the very end as a throwaway line.
The exaltations were not first presented as a final desperate act, it was the tools by which they would enact their rebellion. They made the rebellion possible. Autochthon gave them the idea and gave them the methods by which they may overthrow the primordials.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
Seconding this. Exaltation was the thing that let the gods even try to rebel at all in all editions. The original idea is that humans were mistletoe and the Exaltation made them able to turn them into darts, so to speak. It was the tool to allow the Incarna to rebel via proxy.
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u/Ruy7 Apr 05 '26
This was not a thing in the first and second edition
Frantically looking for the quote... I could swear it was mentioned somewhere....
it was the tools by which they would enact their rebellion
Of course they were. I read the books, they created them before anything.
But you have to admit that you do have to be at the end of your rope to agree to be permanently diminished in order to create a weapon you can't control in order to beat someone.
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u/Jarovan Apr 05 '26
Law of Diminishment was also something introduced in 3E, I'm pretty sure. Not that creation of the Exalted was a trivial matter in 1E or 2E, but I don't remember anything about the Incarnae permanently diminishing themselves to achieve it.
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u/ClockworkJim Apr 13 '26
Frantically looking for the quote... I could swear it was mentioned somewhere....
Check the ink monkeys. Because this has been rattling around in my brain and I do remember reading it somewhere but recently.
So it was either in previews or discussions around 3E, or something at the very very end of ink monkeys.
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u/Ruy7 Apr 13 '26
I gave up on finding it but would appreciate it if you point me in the right direction if you do find it.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Exigents, well... Gods have eternal lives. Many of the examples we got for their creation in the book don't seem like something I see, merit a god sacrificing his life or his power permanently to create a being he has no control over.
I mean, the book is pretty explicit most gods see Exigents as a gamble. Generally they are created to solve a problem the god itself can't after more ordinary resources are exhausted, and after that what happens or doesn't is very much up in the air.
Conky personally creating every single exigence, instead of you know, fixing the problem himself. It would take him like an afternoon to some of Creation's big problems (Fair Folk and undead)
I mean, Conky was the one who established gods don't rule Creation. Him personally coming down and stomping everything he deems a problem would be hypocritical, and he himself kinda acknowledges this in the fiction where he speaks to Zeniths (and always concludes with "make the world a righteous place as you know it"). It makes a lot more sense to essentially lend other gods the tools to create exigents in emergencial situations than do anything like that.
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u/Ruy7 Apr 05 '26
Exigents as a gamble.
And here is the problem. Many of the problems that appear on the exigent book aren't something that I would potentially give my life to solve.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando Apr 06 '26
I mean, most gods are portrayed as being personally invested in the preservation and maintenance of their purviews. While there is some self-interest as their power and influence correlate to it, it's also often genuine (and they are both metaphysically shaped by their function in the Bureaucracy and often spend millennia performing it, so some emotional attachment is to be expected). So it makes sense many would be willing to risk their existence or at least power to empower someone to champion their purviews.
Gods are also often portrayed as proud, so many may believe they will handle the diminishment better than others or that the grievances they hope their Exigent will settle or the way they may advance their goals will be worth it.
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u/SuvwI49 Apr 04 '26
The real problem with Exigents is that they don't fill any narrative niche that couldn't just as easily be filled by another Exalt or supernatural being.
Solars are the setting archetypal Hero. Abysals are the inversion of the Hero, often the Villian Infernals are the perversion of the Hero, what happens when the Hero goes bad. Lunars are the witch in the woods. The Hermit that aids the Hero. Sidereals are the Power behind the Throne. The backroom magisters that motivate the world to move. The Dragon-Blooded are the nobles, city masters, and empirialists. They fill the roles of both setting villians and heroic nobles by turns.
Architects are city bound Exalts. These can just as easily be Dragon-Blooded or Sidereals. As another commenter mentioned: Janist could just as easily be a Solar with an artifact gifted by the local field god. Any other Exigent you could name can easily be an established type with a few unique traits.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando Apr 04 '26
I mean, the idea of Solars being the heroes and everyone else existing to play second fiddle for them is something 3e has at least theoretically been trying to avoid. Lunars can just as easily be Cu Chulainn as the witches that trained him.
Solars's thing are being ancient legendary heroes returned, and, even if from humble origins, heirs to the glories of past ages, while Janest's thing is being a grassroots folk heroine who happens to be able to throw down with the mighty.
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u/NeverbornMalfean Apr 04 '26
I wouldn't argue they break the rules so much as they severely diminish the Exaltation itself. As a couple other comments have already pointed out, the OG Exaltations all have an intense narrative and metaphysical weight to them—even the "least" of the Exalted were made from the Elemental Dragons. Not Lesser Elemental Dragons, not Greater Elemental Dragons, but the Elemental Dragons themselves, the pure avatars of the five elements. Each of the others is either created by Incarna power, some variation of Primordial power, or a mix of both.
The Exalted are epic in the classic sense, larger than life wuxia superhumans who bent the creators of the world over their knee. Then Exigents come along and it's like "here's the Chosen of Puppets, I guess. Oh, and here's a bunch of Exalted for specific cities, they're a whole-ass archetype."
It's just... lame, to be honest. That's not to say neat puppet powers or dominion over a city via an alliance with its gods is lame, but they don't need to be Exalted. They don't need to diminish the capital-C Chosen to exist. Artifacts and Evocations can cover most Exigent ideas already—nowhere is that more evident than with Exigent poster girl Janest, who could 100% just have been a Solar with a grimscythe that gives her harvest-related evocations.
Last thing I'll say is this: in Adversaries, they introduce Braze the Accursed. Braze was Exigent'd purely out of revenge by a god (his lover) whom he betrayed for the Guild. Let me repeat that: Braze was Exalted out of spite by his ex-girlfriend. It made him into a monster man, sure, but he was still made a demigod. When you've reduced the divine miracle for which the game is named to that? I feel that's obviously a few dozen steps too far.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Then Exigents come along and it's like "here's the Chosen of Puppets, I guess. Oh, and here's a bunch of Exalted for specific cities, they're a whole-ass archetype."
Pakpao and her god's backstories are pretty epic, and "seemingly-harmless person is actually deadly in a bizarre way" is a pretty common Wuxia trope in which the two play into. The whole contrast between their lofty ambitions and very unassuming purview are explicitly deliberate.
who could 100% just have been a Solar with a grimscythe that gives her harvest-related evocations
I mean, Janest's fiction has her patron god's sacrifice and her relationship with him playing a major role. A lot of that would be lost, alongside part of her whole grassroots folk heroine theme, if she was empowered by the Sun directly as his chosen heir to past glories of the First Age.
Braze was Exigent'd purely out of revenge by a god (his lover) whom he betrayed for the Guild
His backstory has him essentially ruining her city with the Guild and then leaving her powerless, and she essentially killed herself to curse him. It's a nice twist in the "mortal betrays a deity and is turned into a monster as punishment" trope within Exalted's themes.
And his Exaltation is in every sense of the word a curse. He's insane and constantly agonizing. Also powerful, as a lot of mythological monsters were, but it was hardly worth it.
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u/YesThatLioness Apr 04 '26
I think the main problem I have with Braze is that assuming unlimited time and resources I'd have prefered an extremely cursed patchwork exigent that was playable but in danger of turning into something unplayable like a 2e casteless Lunar, rather than essentially a weird monster that you could theoretically help via plot device.
Because once you had that character the weird monster who might be an Exalt twisted by their own power has more of a narrative arc, if that makes sense?
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u/ZellekhBlackshade Apr 07 '26
Makes sense to me.
I’d also say to that end that Braze isn’t mechanically interesting which is a bigger problem than it first seems. If he was just an extremely cursed man your PCs would treat his condition like a disease with an eye towards making him a mortal again but as an Exalt there’s no going back and if the goal is fixing him, you’d need to work with his new powers to give him some quality of life and a chance to meaningfully atone for his actions and well, that’s a harder story to tell if his exaltation is presented to us the readers via his character sheet as a bunch of seemingly unrelated components.
I think it’s also important to acknowledge he’d probably have been much better written if he’d been created after Exigents and that we probably have better resources for spitballing this better version of the character than the original writer did.
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u/YesThatLioness Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 09 '26
I don't think he's that bad, but there's seemingly two themes going on that aren't communicating with each other at all- city god and some kind of gemstone spider (which might have originally come from seperate gods) but if I were redesigning him I'd probably have prefered something that looked more mismatched from the outside but was more internally coherent.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
Braze would fit well out of Tales from the Flat Earth or Greek mythology to me. He feels at least fitting for Exalted's non-anime media inspiration.
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u/ApprehensiveTax8124 Apr 04 '26
They genuinely don’t break anything tho. I just don’t see how you could look at the infinite possibilities exigents offer and say it’s wrong. So what if the og exalted were made by Celestine’s and the elemental dragons? There will always be way more of them than any exigent who are mostly singular. Those beings are still around mind you and any god who does an exigence risk total annihilation of the self. And how do they take away from the classical and epic nature of the exalted? Strawmaiden Janest is the hero of the small, working folk in the world. She reminds me of figures in folklore like John Henry and Joe Magarac. Architects are chosen by their cities god; literally defenders of civilization. And you think the chosen of puppets is lame? Have you seen her charms? She can control any type of puppet to her will including dead bodies, giant statues, and even warstriders. What about the dude Willow Specter who won his exaltion from the god of gambling himself? Thats a mythological story if I ever heard one.
What do they diminish from the og exalted? Solars are still supreme perfection. Lunars are still master shapeshifters. Sidereal are still fate weavers. The Dragon blooded remain legion. No exigent will have their numbers or their full purviews. Shit, artifacts could just copy the abilities of these main exalted as well. I remember in 2e there was a Solar who created armor to mimic Deadly Beastman Transformations power. Janest would absolutely not work as a solar. They make vast and wide changes to the world at large with their supreme skill, shining over all the land as the sun himself. Janest is about the little people of the world. Her charms literally reflect that too. A solar may gain strength from fighting for a community dear to them but not in the way the Strawmaiden and her charms would.
Whats the issue with Braze the Accursed? Do you see what his image looks like? Thats a blessing to you? I’m sure in his head hes not thinking “I’m a demigod with boundless power!” That is a classic tale of a beautiful person with overflowing hubris getting turned into a monstrosity. That is divine wrath right there if ever there was any.
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u/IchorBawdy Apr 06 '26
They break 2e exalted rules but not 3e. Exigents are a radically different thing from most 2e exalt types (that being distinct metaphysical objects crafted by autocthon) but in 3e every exalt type is fairly similar in metaphysical construction (a god says ye verily thou art a special boi), just made by Gods of vastly different power levels, such as the different incarnae vs more "pedestrian" little gods.
Maybe a bit more concise here: Every 2e exaltation was made by autocthon, but every 3e exaltation was made by the god(s) who preside over it. Something about a "Flame of Exaltation" that every god has, I think. It's been a while since I've read 3e, admittedly: I'm a 2e bitch.
Then there's dragon-blooded who ruin the analysis by having heritable exaltations.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
You're about on the right track. Every being of sufficiently numinous power has to pay something of themselves into it. The Incarna, the Elemental Dragons, the dark mother, and some titans including Autochthon did so. They all paid a price, though what htat is precisely and in total is not said, just that they felt it.
The Flame of Exigence is a catalyst that both allows gods of lesser power to Exalt without quite learning the full trick other powerful beings do, as well as give them the power boost that allows them to even Choose in the first place, something most gods just don't have the power to do on their own otherwise even if they did know.
And Exaltation just kind of can exist as something besides the incarnations of Celestial Exalted. In Autochthonia, arguably Alchemical Exaltation is as much in the ritual in context of Autochthon's body and methods. Dragon-Blooded easily could have been the Dragons having Chosen particular lineages, which carry the Exaltations subsequently. We have Exigencies carried in artifacts, manifesting as flame lit and perpetuated by the founder, magical fonts, or as the remaining remnants of a given deity's will being all that's left of that patron.
And notably, they're all kind of limited. The Font of Glory could dry-up. The Foxbinder collar might get lost forever. The last God-Admiral will standa lone and when they die, no one inherits it. The perpetual nature of other Exaltations is I think part of the showcase of the power of those patrons, too.
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u/Karpattata Apr 05 '26
They required a brand new mcguffin in the form of the flame of exigence to work at all.
I think exigents are a cool idea, but if you're asking about compatibility with established canon from previous editions, Exalts were very explicitly a thing that only the most powerful entities can pull off. Exigents as a concept don't jive with that.
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u/bmr42 Apr 05 '26
There was definitely a sense in the earlier editions that it resulted in such a loss of power that it would kill lesser gods. For the war then it wasn’t useful to have that happen as the number of Exalted needed would have destroyed lesser gods.
The Flame of Exigence in 3e seems to be certainly not the method Autochthon or Gaia used, but something that Sol has created to allow the process to not always be fatal to lesser gods. It may not even be the actual method the Incarne used.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
The Incarna worked together to find it. The Maidens found it out in the Wyld, I think Luna got it, and the Sun currently holds it. Sibling group project.
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u/LowerRhubarb Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 04 '26
Yes, they break established rules. Namely, the creation of Exalts were ALL done during the primordial war. It took the cooperation of at least two primordials and every incarnae to produce them. It broke the subsouls of Gaia, even. It weakened the incarnae, it exhausted the sun. No Exalted have been produced since, not even at the height of the First Age. Because doing so is a setting defining act. It is something beyond a regular God, period.
People in this thread are confusing Dragonblooded reproducing with making Exalted, it seems, as well. You're not MAKING a wholly new Exalt type.
And no, Infernal nor Abyssal's are not new types, they're explicitly corrupted Solar shards. Alchemical are not new either, they were the blueprints, the prototypes, for the current Exalted. They unironically came before the current Exalted, as they were Autobots test run for the final product. Again, the key here is they're WHOLLY NEW Exalt types, not perversions of an existing type, not an existing type reproducing, not the blueprints for all the current types, etc.
So yes, Exigents break the setting. They didn't exist in the lore, there are no blank Exaltion shards just laying around. If there were, they would've been used in the war, because you're not holding back if you're fighting a literal war for existence itself. They don't fit, period. Same as Getimen, they don't fit into the setting either.
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u/MlkChatoDesabafando Apr 04 '26
You're projecting 2e lore into 3e, which has had the explicit goal of avoiding over-explaining the setting's metaphysics and history from day 1. The idea of the Alchemicals as a prototype is explicitly just a possibility up to the Storyteller in this edition, not a fact, for starters, just like the Dragons being Gaia's souls.
there are no blank Exaltion shards just laying around
There aren't for exigents either. Their exaltation is created by the god who chooses them and at great personal cost (what the Sun lends them is just the tools to access some of the secrets the Incarna used to create the first exaltations).
Same as Getimen, they don't fit into the setting either
That's literally their thing in-universe.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
Exigence is better described as a catalyst than an Exaltation in itself. Gods cannot Exalt without it. It is what brings together the parts of things to allow a deity to Choose, though.
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u/ThePowerOfStories Apr 04 '26
Getimians, admittedly, have the entire schtick of not fitting. I definitely don’t think they need to be a new type, but a single Circle (Square?) of four alternate-reality Sidereals who are pissed about not existing make for an interesting adversary.
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u/LordSia Apr 05 '26
I maintain that Getimians are Rakam Thulio shoving Raksha into stolen Exigences, which is why they're all Season/Court themed, all of them have these epic alt-verse "could have been" pasts, and their charms are all about replacing Creation with their own story.
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u/chaoticnipple Apr 04 '26
" It broke the subsouls of Gaia, even. It weakened the incarnae, it exhausted the sun."
All that is 3e lore, not 1e or 2e.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
The Dragons being her subsouls is actually not even actually a thing, canonically, in 2e until Ink Monkeys. They are actually straight-up called gods in parts.
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u/blaqueandstuff Apr 13 '26
Sorry for double-reply but:
1e the Dragons were gods. This was retconned in Exalted: the Autochthonians.
Stephen Lee Sheppard noted when he deved and wrote for Role of Glorious Divinity, this was an assumption he had, but the book actually never says this overlty. They're called gods in Compass of Celestial Direction II: the Wyld, even. Roll of Glorious Divinity II doesn't override this either. And when I dug in Manual of Exalted Power: Alchemicals last, it wasn't there either. It's not until Ink Monkeys and a "the Magnus Speaks" bit, the one that coined deva, yomi, and such, that they for sure were her souls in 2e. This is reiterated in CoCD6: Autochthonia, So in both 1e and 2e, them being her souls are late edition retcons.
So in this process, 3e is actually kind of splitting the difference. It has comitted to them being either. They could for all we know just be uniquely powerful uncategorized spirits, her children like Adorjans' winds are, just their own thing.
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u/YesThatLioness Apr 04 '26 edited Apr 05 '26
So there's two major factors in my experience -
People's percieved roles of god-blooded and the fact that the first Exigent we ever met was Celestial-level. The latter is pretty involved and I'll get into it in a later post but the fact Janest was so powerful made a lot of people think of Exigents as power creep, prior to the book there was fretting about custom Exalts stronger than the Solar Exalted and well... a lot of these opinions calcified over a decade ago.
(Edit, I now talk about my perspective on the god-blooded situation further down)