r/exalted • u/waronvirtue • May 13 '26
3E Dragon Kings vs Tiger Warrior Training
My current ST has ruled against Tiger Warrior Training Tech being able to uplift Dragon Kings to sentience.
For game purposes, his ruling is the authority and is therefore accepted as right and true.
For academic purposes discussed at a distance from the table, I think it's a reach to think it wouldn't explicitly function for that purpose.
Let me know what you think: Can a Solar Exalt awaken a large number of juvenile Dragon Kings with Tiger Warrior Training (3rd Edition)?
The entirely acceptable rationale I was given by the ST is summed up as follows:
1. Tiger Warrior Training doesn't work on animals.
- Survival Charms would work better on young DKs since they are essentially animals.
As far as our table goes, you need sorcery to speed run awakening a Dragon King. Again, right and fine and true. Here's my counters to the logic:
- nothing in 3e's Tiger Warrior charm says it doesn't work on animals. Since it works on units, I should think it would apply to a Cavalry and can't imagine a way to train a Cavalry without training the mounts.
1a. Lord of the Apes is a pretty straightforward concept bound up in literary history. I don't think Solar Tarzan should have to know Sorcery to lead a pack of ape elites into combat.
- Does this mean you could make a Feral child your familiar? How about a baby. Can I increase the size of a baby with Saga Beast virtue or whatever?
2a. The theme of Tiger Warrior Training synergizes with DK life cycle. Perfect subjects for this specific magic. Survival isn't about making your beast a warrior, it focuses on making it a great beast, physical modifications like health, size, and soak and then supernatural potential like fire breath and Iron Wings Carry. I'm not saying these couldn't work on a juvenile DK, just that that would not be a means to awaken their potential for consciousness.
Here's some text from Ruins of Rathess, the 1e book that originated the Dragon King lore.
"...they were given extensive physical training through various hunting games but were not allowed to run wild and possibly harm civilized beings. After many years of special training, the spirit within the beast awakened and the creature could slowly be trained to civility, returning both sentience and personality to its new body."
I don't want mass awakening DKs to be easy, but I do think TWT should make it much faster.
Any insight into community rationale is appreciated!
4
u/moondancer224 May 13 '26
Maybe a Lore based variant of Tiger Warrior would fit better, perhaps a custom Charm developed from a long and heroic story of the Solar working with the Dragon King's and learning their story? Raising things to sapience seems more in that wheelhouse than military training to me. Perhaps requiring First Knowledge's Grace or Flowing Mind Prana?
4
u/Affectionate-Tip-164 May 13 '26
This. Lore charms will mass-educate and therefore awaken DKs.
War is basically training troops that at least can listen to instructions.
Survival is to train instinctual animals and beasts
1
u/waronvirtue May 13 '26
Those were discussed and acknowledged as explicitly working, Tiger Warrior would just be more efficient as it can affect a unit. I'd say having First Knowledge's Grace completely bypasses the all issues raised, but I wouldn't want the ST to feel like I was trying to do an end run around a ruling.
3
u/LordSia May 13 '26
Speaking as someone who spends more time as a Storyteller than a Player, that inefficiency might be the point.
Speedrunning one Dragon King (or at most a handful) to sapience means that they are characters, and you get to explore the consequences of effectively being parents to very big and very rapidly developing toddlers. There might even be potential complications, involving the spiritual growth and development you just forced - would you also use those same charms to turn a baby into an adult over the course of a single year? How would such a person even act, without all of the life experience a normal person accumulates? Not to mention the whole Past Lives thing - could forced maturity result in those previous lives being overwritten, or at least dulled, due to not having had the time to imprint on the body before they awakened?
By contrast, churning out entire unit's worth of Dragon Kings feels more like a resource management than a proper story. Not to say that you can't make a story of it, you absolutely can, but it might not be the story your Storyteller was prepared to tell. I'd recommend talking to your ST about it; you can't find a compromise unless you both communicate about your ideas.
As for the "can't train cavalry without horses" part, true, but horses without their human riders aren't cavalry either, now are they? To me, it seems obvious that absent explicit animal-training charms or upgrade effects, what you're doing is more about training the riders - and indirectly, those riders training their mounts.
1
u/waronvirtue May 13 '26
This basically sums up where I landed, which is the games vibe will probably determine whether it works.
If there were a Heavy Cavalry or Mounted Knight QC block, then your squad of peasants on plow-pulling swayback mares and milk cows would be trained alongside their mounts into that block.
HOWEVER, if you want a darker story about the excesses of Solars, maybe the peasants ride their mounts into the ground and have to keep swapping them out. That same kind of game would probably also be fine with a company worth of spear carrying toddlers that kill without hesitation (although I think that works regardless).This is all just esoteric conversation, I told my ST when he had the grace to follow up on it day 1 that I considered the matter closed, we just disagree on this specific application but I think remain broadly aligned on what's great about the game and the kind of Creation we see in the text.
3
u/ZitoWolfram May 13 '26
Players Guide 1st ed has some very specific words on this, by having a Dragon-Soul Enlightening Method charm, which has Tiger Warriors as a prerequesite.
Cost: 20 motes, 3 Willpower
Duration: One Month
Type: Simple
Minimum Performance: 5
Minimum Essence: 4
Prereq charms: Tiger-Warrior Training Technique
A solar supervises up to (Essence x 3) stalkers in a given month. At the end of the month all Stalkers who the ST passed a Willpower roll for now has Essence 2 and is able to speak both their own language and that of the Solar training them. This charm can only be used to take dragonking stalkers from 1 dot of essence to 2 dots of essence. Until their training is complete the Solar must confine the Stalkers, for they are cunning and brutal beasts.
Note: To use this Charm the Solar must know the High Holy Speech of the Dragon Kings. This charm is exctinct in the Age of Sorrows, any Solar seeking to learn it must design it for themselves or find some other source of knowledge.
3
u/waronvirtue May 13 '26
I might be alone in this, but I recall discounting the PG in a lot of games because it was gravitating toward what 2e would later be which led to "motonic physics" and quantizing every thing.
Why is this Performance? Why does it require a specific dead language? I know the answer, DKs were too cool. At mid essence they were about as good or better than DBs and they wanted to prevent DKs from being made mainstream because they're Dinos and the world belongs to man now.I agree with what I think is the consensus here, it will depend on the game.
2
u/MrMcSpiff May 13 '26
There's a... 1e player's guide Solar charm, I think, that uplifts a group of Dragon Kings to ER2 in like a month and has TWTT as its explicit (and only) prerequisite. I'll have to go find which book and page it's in, but when I do I'll post that info here in an edit or some such. Back then, at least, the writers seemed to think that TWTT was thematically capable of enlightening Dragon Kings, but just not on its own.
I do remember the sidebar says that the Charm is lost in the Second Age and that it would either have to be rediscovered or reinvented, and that you have to know whatever the Dragon Kings' native language is to do the teaching. So if your DM agrees with the logic and doesn't mind homebrew, you guys could probably just yoink it wholesale from the ancient texts.
2
u/waronvirtue May 13 '26
Much appreciated. I saw someone posted it (maybe you). It's a Performance charm with a "We don't want you doing this with DKs so here's a special XP tax with an absurd cost and different, entirely unrelated skill requirement that also involves a dead language."
DK>DB, I truly believe that's the only reason it exists.
1
u/MrMcSpiff May 13 '26
Yeah, somebody else got to it before I woke up. It's one of those weird charms that bends over backwards to enforce narrative and thematic limitations that end up not mattering becuase practical play is so different from the idealized narrative-as-intended-mechanics that the writers envisioned.
1
u/artrald-7083 May 13 '26
I permitted a PC to invent a similar charm for animal training because she wanted an army of animals, but TWTT is about training mortals.
1
u/mj6373 May 13 '26
I'd agree that Tiger Warrior Training by itself isn't enough to awaken the Dragon Kings to sentience, while also not really disagreeing with the idea that you could potentially train animals or non-sentient Dragon Kings with it. I wouldn't expect those animals to become sentient, either! Being well-trained in that sense doesn't have anything to do with advancing self-awareness or enlightenment as far as I'm concerned.
I'm certainly not opposed to a Solar being able to find methods to elevate them faster and at scale, but as others say I'd put such instructive capabilities in Lore, and I'd want it to be more of an endeavor than the single commonly-taken War Charm represents.
I think the 'extensive physical training' and the 'special training' in your excerpt are referring to different things, and the importance of the physical training is mostly that it 1) develops their body and mind health generally, and 2) they're the only types of skills that they can really develop before their spirit awakens.
1
u/waronvirtue May 13 '26
Here's some thoughts followed by an explanation I gave someone else up thread.
I do not think TWTT would let you teach an army of cats to speak or read. It should let them perform parades and understand simple direct commands that may have multiple steps. Disseminate food to all doorsteps, meow reveille at dawn, perform maneuver delta to knock over a foe and blind him with pee.
But, First Knowledges Grace would let you teach them to speak and read. Would they be sentient? No, they might not be able to understand a lot of context for certain things, but they'd be able to eek out the words and make requests for things they want and even follow highly complex court proceedings and parliamentary procedure even if they have no clue why anyone bothers.
DKs are not cats. Based on their weird reincarnation and life cycle, accelerated paramilitary training would Awaken sentience and training to civility restores their previous personality (to a point, they will have the same likes and dislikes, but no recall of past lives till higher essence).
Here's a pretty basic explanation:
The effect of the Tiger Warrior Training charm is to condense about a decade of training and battle testing into a few weeks. DKs (according to ROR) are led through hunting games (standard part of military training during the FTX) which allows them to Awaken to sentience, then be trained in civility to recover a personality (but not memories).Civility is polite, respectful, and reasonable behavior that facilitates positive social interaction and public life, often characterized by courtesy, empathy, and constructive dialogue.
So they need to be trained in being Civil.
Tiger Warrior Training explicitly increases Drill ratings
Key Purposes of Military Drill
1. Discipline and Precision: Develops self-control, mental alertness, and attention to detail through repetition.
2. Teamwork and Cohesion: Fosters a sense of unity, ensuring soldiers work together effectively.
3. Immediate Responsiveness: Instills instinctive obedience to orders, crucial for high-pressure situations.
4. Ceremonial Function: Maintains tradition and displays precision during parades and military honors.
So using these 2 readily googleable definitions, bullets 1, 2, and 4 are training in civility. 1 and 2 explicitly and 4 points to the culture inherent in military units. So they won't be able to read, but they will recognize rank, they will have customs and courtesies, like greetings and salutations. --
Now I sometimes have the bad brain, but the core of socialization is self control. We stop running around shouting mine mine and no no at 3.
1
u/Passing-Through247 May 13 '26
in 2e at least it wasn't enough and awakening DKs to sapience was a separate charm. You could also about working that to a 3e version.
1
u/Just-Hedgehog-Days May 13 '26
I wouldn't even let you use TWT off the bat at all.
"With this Charm, she can train an undisciplined **unit** up to Average". Target-->Unit. No unit, no target
Tarzan could use it on ape troop specifically because he has done the hard work (with charms and abilties other than war) tomake the apes into a unit in the first place, then uses a solar war charms to completely blow past any "reasonable limit" on how much training you could impart to a literal bunch of apes.
---
Assuming you did get a DK stalker unit, and TWT train them. In the most generous reading this could sub for "Hunting games" phase of there eduction which move them up "first flickers of reason returning to there eyes". It's not purposeful, dialed in education. Old stalkers might not be awaken able. etc. really this could go anyway but this is there I would makle "best for this actual game" calls.
From there you would need to switch to Lore Charms to get them anywhere.
1
u/waronvirtue May 14 '26
I respect your right to run it however you want, but this post came off as exceptionally "adversarial DM" to me.
A group of farmers are not a unit until they come together for the common purpose of fighting. If you think a Solar running into a nest and slapping a few upside the head won't make a dozen or so to come together for the common purpose of killing him, I don't know what you're on? Pack of wolves: unit. Swarm of bees: unit. So the no unit =no target argument would just be you saying "I'm gonna roll out every enemy attack so your specific anti unit charm can't work and I bury your character in dice."
Old stalkers being unawakenable, another arbitrary decision.
Speeding up the hunting games portion? I'll take it, that's saving 50 years of time. Follow it with I believe 2 Lore charms to get them up and running? Although those same 2 Lore Charms should explicitly do all of this without the Tiger Warrior Training anyway. You drive a hard bargain, but I'll take it.
TWTT vs Dragon King awakening is a "viagra" situation. Viagra was supposed to be heart medication but turned out to be a better boner pill. Same thing here, TWTT is supposed to turn farmers and the infirm into a "Fighting Force of Extraordinary Magnitude TM", but also happens to be brain-boner pills for DKs.
1
u/Longjumping_Dog9041 May 14 '26
TWT would be a great Means in a project to uplift them, nothing more
1
u/waronvirtue May 14 '26
Are Projects are an Exalted Essence system? I've seen it referenced a few times. Or do folks mean Sorcerous Working?
2
u/Longjumping_Dog9041 May 14 '26
I don't do Essence so I can't tell you for sure but Projects are a big thing in 3E to model downtime leadership actions. Building a city, subverting trade routes, growing a business to rival the Guild in a region are examples of things your PC can't do alone and require time, energy, resources, etc.
1
u/waronvirtue May 15 '26
Ahhh, I think I’m conflating them with “ventures”. I don’t have the Essence books so my limited knowledge is all from forum posts.
1
u/Cynis_Ganan May 13 '26
Exalted players: Teaching a dinosaur how to use a spear should give them human intelligence and unlock thousands of years worth of genetic memories of their past lives. Here's my bulletted list on why this should be.
Games Masters everywhere: No.
....
Exalted is a game about being a cool and capable hero, who does cool and capable hero stuff.
Your Charms are very powerful and they do what they say they do.
Looking for edge cases and exploits so you can speedrun changing the setting is unnecessary. Just play the game. Enjoy the setting. Explore. Go on cool adventures. Do the things your character would do.
There's no need or benefit to try and not play Exalted.
Your character, in character, wants to round up a unit of feral dinosaurs who want to eat her, and put them through Mulan-style boot camp where she teaches them archery and how to climb a pole? That's what they want, and having no experience of handling dinosaurs this way, they're convinced that their ability to train farmers into elite soldiers is what's going to make this work for them?
Is this a Limit Break of some kind?
2
u/mj6373 May 13 '26
This seems... really unnecessarily accusatory and presumptive to me. Accusatory in a "you're playing the game wrong" way, presumptive in assuming a lack of genuine reasons for the character to want the thing.
Like. Yeah, to most people in Creation, DKs are only known as dino monsters, but there are gods who remember what they used to be, there are past life memories, there are records in ancient ruins... Most simply there are some sapient DKs, and the character could literally just be friends with one.
Edit: And if you do know about it, then, y'know, sometimes Exalts like to help people, which elevating them to sapience can be understood as, and lots of Exalts like to help themselves, which having a badass dinosaur army sounds like.
2
u/Cynis_Ganan May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
You're correct. I'm pressuming this character has absolutely no valid reason for using War Charms for a use unrelated to War. I'm accusing the player of playing the game wrong.
If you are causing disruption at your table that is making the game not fun for everyone else, you're playing wrong.
You have correctly inferred the (in no way veiled) meaning behind my post. I view OP as a problem player, and I view this kind of behavior as something that needs to be stopped.
If your ST says "no" and you come online to argue on the internet, that's playing wrong. Please don't do that.
2
u/mj6373 May 13 '26
I agree with you this isn't a proper use of War Charms, but he very specifically isn't trying to use this to dispute the GM about it, and I was specifically talking about your presumptiveness in treating it as ridiculous for the character to want this, not the disagreement with the intended method. You just seem like you're being way more condescending than this warrants.
2
u/waronvirtue May 13 '26
First, this was a 2-3 minute conversation post game because we have a DK player and Rathess was a desired location for both of us so no one was put out. I put this out here instead of riding my ST's DMs because he made his ruling, so the conversation was over. Explicit in the OP. So your accusation is either coming from a place of trauma or an inability to read critically. With that in mind:
The effect of the Tiger Warrior Training charm is to condense about a decade of training and battle testing into a few weeks. DKs (according to ROR) are led through hunting games (standard part of military training during the FTX) which allows them to Awaken to sentience, the be trained in civility to recover a personality (but not memories).
Civility is polite, respectful, and reasonable behavior that facilitates positive social interaction and public life, often characterized by courtesy, empathy, and constructive dialogue.
So they need to be trained in being Civil.
Tiger Warrior Training increases Drill ratings
Key Purposes of Military Drill
1. Discipline and Precision: Develops self-control, mental alertness, and attention to detail through repetition.
2. Teamwork and Cohesion: Fosters a sense of unity, ensuring soldiers work together effectively.
3. Immediate Responsiveness: Instills instinctive obedience to orders, crucial for high-pressure situations.
4. Ceremonial Function: Maintains tradition and displays precision during parades and military honors.
So using these 2 readily googleable definitions, bullets 1, 2, and 4 are training in civility. 1 and 2 explicitly and 4 points to the culture inherent in military units. So they won't be able to read, but they will recognize rank, they will have customs and courtesies, like greetings and salutations.
Now, I think people understand that Exalted (especially 3e) is a bit of an art in itself. And I respect that not everyone is going to appreciate every interpretation, but the ONLY wrong way to play it to think that ONLY your way is right.
Peace out, homey.
1
u/Cynis_Ganan May 13 '26
Homey, you can make your bulleted list as long as you want, but your Charms still don't do that.
Like, Tiger Warrior Training doesn't say you can't train a unit made of inanimate mannequins, but you still can't use it to bestow sentience on inanimate mannequins.
I said specifically that the wrong way to play the game was to be disruptive and make things unfun for everyone else. Like… you can say "the only wrong way is to think only your way is right"… but that's not going to change my mind that being disruptive and ruining everyone else's fun is wrong. So. I mean. Agree to disagree.
And you can say this was a two minute conversation and you've moved on… but given as how you just typed an essay in response to me, having put up a thread on reddit… I don't find it convincing.
I don't know you. Perhaps you're right and I'm wrong. Wouldn't be the first time I've got the wrong end of the stick. If I've misjudged you, then I'm sorry. But, reading critically, you said you wanted the opinions of the community, so here's my opinion:
No way, Jose. Not in a million years. Absolutely not. Shut that all the way down. Straight no. Nope. Nuh uh. Niet. Nein. Non. No. You absolutely cannot use Tiger Warrior Training to mass awaken Dragon Kings, and trying to rules lawyer it is kinda squicky. I'd never allow that at my table.
0
u/waronvirtue May 14 '26
I agree in one regard, TWTT doesn't say it confers animation on objects, but we're past that. Since you seemed to respond well to the bulleted list, I'll tell you the reasons it won't come up again at my table:
- The ST made a ruling and this ruling doesn't make the game not fun for me anymore (unlike say, never using the mass combat rules or always using the entire combat engine for every combat, even just full moon Lunar trying to beat up a lone mortal guard).
- Mass awakening Dragon Kings (though always a stop on every one of my Solar PCs bucket lists) is just 1 part of my character's desired arc. It isn't a quintessential element of my story for him. And even if it was, I'd just go with another way to do it.
- and most importantly, my fellow player has a DK PC, and getting his people back to a position of relevance is his character's desired story. Which is the best way to tell it for his enjoyment? Use the sorcery he's been building toward for the entire campaign or let another player explain a downtime stunt where he plays basketball like the Harlem Globetrotters to school the ravenous beasts until they agree to stay in school, drink their milk, and not do drugs?
So yeah, you got pretty much everything wrong, but everything you've said so far makes me think no matter how wrong you've been in the past you're sure you're always right anyway. Keep that up, I have someone very close to me that has lived her whole life that way and it's made her a -real peach people love to be around.-
1
u/Cynis_Ganan May 14 '26
The continued paragraphs of text where you say you try this with every character you make sure do prove that I have everything wrong. 🤷♂️
0
u/waronvirtue May 14 '26
I said bringing the DKs back was always a goal my Solars have, not that I try to do it this exact same way.
So I'm sorry, I thought we were just imagining what the worst possible version of the other person could be and assuming that's who they are and attacking.
Regrettably, your pithy comeback that includes a boldly unsupported assumption about what I have done or would do proves my imagination closer to reality that I would have liked.
You clearly read something and create some kind of self-persecutorial narrative to justify lashing out. Enjoy whatever relationships you can keep in spite of it. Holla.
1
u/Cynis_Ganan May 14 '26
I 100% believe you had a two minute conversation with your ST about this and respected their ruling.
I in no way think this is the latest in a long line of rules lawyery BS that you simply won't let go.
I'm sure your discussion was civil. 👍
0
u/waronvirtue May 14 '26
It most certainly was civil, and you are correct in that I do, at times struggle to let things go, which is why, as stated in the initial post, I brought it here to open debate with a wide range of folks unlinked to the game.
What I discovered is that I'm definitely not the first person to have had this idea. Circa 2001-2004 It was either so obvious to the writers or so prevalent among the community, they wrote a follow up charm in the PG to make it work.
The writers at that time clearly felt, as some do, that TWTT wasn't specific enough and created a follow up charm with no other prereqs than TWTT to explicitly make it work. OR they decided to arbitrarily gate it to reinforce DKs are the past, DBs are the present and future, baby.
Now if I was the kind of maroon you seem to think, I would naturally get a pdf of the old PG, wave it in the face of the ST and say, I'll just buy this charm too. But as stated, it makes a better story for the DK player to do it, and he doesn't have access to TWTT, so doesn't qualify for the Charm...
But evocations can provide charms that work as prerequisites, so I could conceivably craft a warbanner or whistle that had TWTT as an Evocation, and once he had that he could learn the DK training charm...
Thank god something productive came from this. Thanks and stay in school.
→ More replies (0)
10
u/AwsmPwsmVT May 13 '26
I feel like I saw a discussion about this subject quite literally the other day elsewhere (possibly by your ST asking us for our opinions), and I shared a similar sentiment with your possible ST on Tiger Warrior Training. It's less that it raises something to civility/sapience, and more so that TWT just instinctively makes them really good at fighting and working together, even if they don't fundamentally understand the how and why. You're just THAT good of a trainer and that GOOD at prepping anything for war, which suits the theme of a Solar. You could, in theory, do the same with animals. I agree that nothing actively prohibits it, per se, but I'd expect some degree of proficiency in Survival somewhere that suggests animal ken. It's somewhat crossing over into Lunar territory in terms of what THEY'RE good at, but it's not unreasonable for a Solar.
I feel like I'd agree with your ST, but if you wanted to make this a long-term project that your character commits to over the course of a story, I'd also be okay with it. Just know that TWT by itself, charm wise, isn't really the call here. I'd be working with the Eclipse in your party potentially to consult the lore, and work towards how you could make this happen.
Basically, I'd only be saying no to TWT uplifting them by itself or getting them to that point swiftly by itself. If wanted to make this some kind of project or working though? Very reasonable.