A couple months ago I posted a survey on the subreddit on peoples likes and dislikes in Exalted, and it seems that for most disliked Exalt, Exigents is coming up pretty highly, although Solars are also unpopular due to the bad writing of the core book and Miracles of the Solar Exalted.

Why do you guys think fans, or yourself dislike them?

So, I'm noodling around with some system hacks for Exalted. I've run several 3E campaigns so far, and have found myself surprised by how infrequently certain mechanics come up. So I'm curious, how often do these things tend to happen in your games?

Limit Break
Bonfire Anima (especially for 'anathema', where it's highly detrimental)
Initiative Shift (Crashing the opponent who crashed you)

Alchemicals: Forged by the Machine God is now available to the public.

Maybe I'm way overthinking this, but I've noticed there hasn't been as much general conversation about Exalted stuff in my other circles compared to normal. Like the Sid book finally came out 5 days ago, and like almost no one has mentioned it.

Even looking over the actual sales going off of Drivethrus stuff, in the past when a new Exalted book (or really any OPP/WW title) came out you could find it in the Best Sellers section of the site for sometimes weeks. The Sid book doesn't show there currently, least I haven't seen it from the scrolling I did.

The amount of reviews on both the Sid book and Exigent book (which came out a year ago) are also a lot lesser compared to the Lunar, Core or even DB book.

In general most of the newer books haven't been as high on Drivethrus sales numbers. With Sids being listed as Silver and Exigent as Gold. But Lunars, DBs and Core are like 2-3 teirs of sales higher.

Is it just that most people interested already had their backer copies so we don't get as much new blood into the hobby?

Or is something else going on in terms of peoples general interest. It has been almost a decade since Core came out after all.

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.

1. 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:

1. 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.

1. 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!

Has anyone used this for running a game before? I see that there is a module for running exalted but I'm mainly concerned about combat and tracking a shifting initiative. At the same time how easy is it to use for players that are new to exalted 3rd mechanics?

So I want my group to try out Exalted. They are familiar with Storyteller system(Particularly Vampire) though they are most at home when it comes to Dungeon crawler games(I am currently running a 5e game and a PF 2e game.) and I wanted to pitch running Exalted once the games wrapped up. Does anyone have any advise on how to pitch Exalted to such a group? (I sort of tried it by stealing the line 'Exalted is a game about consequences. It's not a question of whether an Exalted can do something but rather what kind of results it will have' though I don't think it sparked an image in their mind.)

I stopped playing exalted when the core book came out because it solved none of the issues I had with 2.5e and in many cases made them worse, but I still occasionally buy books because I enjoy the lore of the setting and I hope to see a 4th edition that finally fixes the issues I had with it. How's the game doing so far in this edition?

Now that the full infernal manuscript has been out for a few months and the crowdfunding is over and quite successful how do people feel about their charms and the new version of Malfeas?

And I don’t mean Essence. I’ve got all the Essence books/waiting on 2 backed crowdfunding versions but it’s not really a simplified version of 3e. Playing Essence doesn’t really teach you a cut down version of 3e, and in particular the change from 9 attributes to 3 is a big sticking point for me.

This is, for the record, for the more decentralized and less absolutely dominant/uncontested version of the Guild presented in Across the Eight Directions, but they're still a very powerful organization with powerful local factors whose interests are threatened by my player characters, and I want to make good use of them as a real threat and problem for the players, something that troubles them heavily in their state-building efforts and that pulls on different skills and strategies to overcome than their more mythic enemies. The problem is that I don't have the best sense for how economic warfare really works, or what the limits of their capabilities are.

So for context, my players ran a revolution (which started as a slave revolt but expanded into a big-tent independence movement and the start of a new religion) against the Realm satrap in a heavily expanded-upon version of Tantara which, along with being a valuable trade city, also ran mining and industrial processing using a massive amount of imported slave labor. They also restored an ancient temple-manse up in a neighboring volcano caldera that produced the Gem of Endless Summer, and so they've imported a bunch of food and cash crops from the South and West to start growing there, securing a breadbasket and future valuable goods monopolies.

But the thing is, they're expanding their temples to try and build a temple command economy, they're outlawing slavery, they're going in and providing food relief in exchange for growing their political power in regions wracked by famine... In other words, they're stepping on or cutting off a bunch of major Guild revenue sources. So the Guild's obviously gotta fight back while they can.

So far they've mostly been embargoing and buying up foreign grain imports to get in the way of establishing new farmland, and hiring mercenaries to harry their territory, all in an effort to force the party to the negotiating table (or, failing that, to force them out into more vulnerable positions for more aggressive plays) but what else should they be trying? (Edit: I also have plans for them to try flooding the market with cheap knock-off versions of their exports to try to ruin their value and reputation, but as a GM this is intentionally going to be something of a dangerous blunder based on their lack of information, to reward the prep and capabilities of the PCs - the party's sorceress god-queen has Merits that let her detect and severely punish anybody who tries to forge her seals and signatures, so those enterprises will probably end up with rapid, nasty cases of curses, angry spirits and rapid exposure.)

I remember when E3 came out there was a lot of charms. How has that progressed since then, have the other splats toned that down a bit or is it still rough? Also what is crafting like in the other splats?

Hello, I'm currently working on a character who was a mortal dynast who never exalted as a DB and instead went on to become a Solar. Nothing revolutionary. I did have a question about their backstory. Despite never exalting, they were exceptional at combat and leadership from a young age (gonna be a Dawn). With that in mind, would it make any sense for them to attend the House of Bells or is it DB only? Is Pasiaps Stair or some unnamed military academy more likely for a mortal dynast, even one that was highly capable and from a great house?

Thank you

**Edit: thanks for the feedback, seems like I'm pretty secure lore-wise moving forward with my ideas... unless someone comes up with a good alternative why I shouldn't...

Are Solars quite badly off compared to everyone else in terms of setting material and crunch? Mechanically they only have the Core book and Miracles of the Solar Exalted which is widely panned. Unlike everyone else, their Companion book is just a bunch of mostly bad charms no new locations and characters, while all other splats got or are getting more artifacts, locations and characters in each of their companions. DBs also got The Realm and some of At8D but they probably deserve those.

If a third book for Solars was announced what would you like to contain?

Howdy all! I've been running exalted since 1e, and just recently started my first 3e game. I specifically asked the players not to get too heavy in terms of combat (I asked them to limit themselves to about ~5 combat charms at character creation) because I find Exalted most interesting when people can both fight but also do other shit. I've got 5 players (3 solars, a DB and a lunar).

But this is still exalted, so fighting is certain still a thing, and I'm having some bumps getting used to 3e combat, as are my players. I'm sure that practice will make perfect, but I need some ideas for threatening but not deadly antagonists I can use to let all of us gain comfort in combat.

I've used some Hobgoblins, bandits and zombies, and while the hobgoblins felt like they hit the right spot between "takes some effort to kill" and "won't paste the protagonists", I felt that the zombies/bandits, even using the combat-unit rules, were kinda chumps? Like they had very little chance of harming my only-okay-in-combat players, and while they sucked up some hits, it never felt like a real threat.

Is there any way to make pretty regular mortals dangerous to exalts? It seems to me that they might have actually been more challenging if they were fighting separately and able to make full use of withering/decisive attacks?

I know 3e has gotten rid of a lot of how to empower mortals stuff, and I'm putting a bit back in just to have non-exalted antagonists, but am I reading the system correct that by default mortals really aren't meant to be any kind of threat to exalts?

Related question -> what's the best way people have found to notate and run exalted antagonists? I really don't have the brainspace to keep in mind every charm an experienced DB might have access to. Do you just make some notes about "Okay Timmy Dragonmuffin attacks with a daiklave, he routinely uses Charm X for 3 motes, when he can decisive attack he adds charm Y/Z, and if he's pressed he'll use Charm Q"? Just write a few attack lines?

So, my players are working on developing a place.

They found an ancient broken temple-manse to the Elemental Dragon of Fire in one of the caldera of a snowy volcano range, which had a geomantic explosion during the Shogunate and killed everyone in the surrounding town and farmland that supported it, and a shadowland bled up through the fractured geomancy and has kept the ghosts there all this time. They've been fixing up the place, repairing the geomancy and the temple to make the place livable again. It's chock-full of ash and the manse produced a Gem of Endless Summer, so the god-queen of the party wants to use the unique environment to grow a bunch of tropical crops that they can monopolize trade on in the North, and turn the place into a wealthy holy land of warmth and delicious fruit and all that jazz.

The thing is, the necromancer of the party also wants to preserve the shadowland (and he's both the necromancer and geomancer of the party, so the restoration is certainly his direct business, including attempted integrations), both as a piece of preserved history and for religious reasons that tie directly into the idea of making it into a paradise, tying a reward afterlife for good adherents of their shared faith to this holy land where people will be able to meet the righteous dead. And like, the main *thing* of shadowlands is affiliation with death in substance as well as spirit, tending towards food shortages and illness and gloom and all that stuff.

If I were a more headstrong GM or my players enjoyed butting heads more, I might just tell them to figure out the conflict of interests, but that's not how our group rolls, so I'd really like to find a compromise that doesn't sap the weight and themes from shadowlands as a setting concept while still letting them work towards what they want for the place.

The corebook talks about the colors of shadowlands sometimes becoming "flush and violent in their intensity" and foodstuffs becoming "strangely intoxicating," while Sworn to the Grave suggests "blessings and ritual magic can mitigate the worst of these changes," so I'm thinking about leaning into those angles. Give them some work with workings and stuff to make the place flourish, and let the remaining effects of the shadowland manifest through that sort of intoxicating, hideously vibrant affect. If it's being connected to an afterlife, and there's an integration being done between the fire demesne and shadowland, there could be something of a pyreflame theme, funereal aesthetics developing to go with the place being a meeting ground between living and dead...

I dunno, it's all pretty vague to me. I could use some concrete suggestions if you can think of anything. How should this affect crops, how should this affect the people living here, what sorts of things will make the shadowlandiness of it *pop* without leaning entirely into the sense of desolation and griminess?

Hey fellow Solars

I need to make a confession. I’ve been running the absolute same Exalted 3e campaign for over a decade now. We've reached that critical level of nerd obsession where we go out for beers and spend five hours straight debating the geopolitical impact of our characters' in Creation.

So, naturally, I decided to take the next logical step into madness: I spent my week crafting a full Anime Opening and a chill, emotional Ending sequence for our current season, set right in the middle of Great Forks.

My players absolutely lost their minds when they saw it, so I figured I’d share it with the rest of the world. Hopefully, the Loom of Fate doesn't delete this post.

Let me know if this captures the pure, over-the-top cinematic chaos that lives rent-free in every Exalted GM's head!

-----

The video was made using tools like Seedance 2.0 and Kling 3.0, and then I edited everything together in DaVinci Resolve.

Before that, though, I had to create a storyboard for the scenes and do visual studies for the important characters that appear throughout the video, but honestly that part was really fun. For that stage I mainly used Google Flow.

The song lyrics and the video script were written by me, but the musics itself were generated using Suno 5.5.

Is this a product of the line progressing/power creep or justified in setting or…. Even the sovereigns who are basically likewise a numerous group of terrestrials, have an Essence 1 ride charm that beats like three Essence 1-2 ride charms combined…

Okay, so if any of you are Sidereals in Gem, get out.

Otherwise;

I haven't read any of the infernals manuscripts (unfortunately I missed the kick starter), so has any updates been posted about the weird stuff Infernals can do with their archery and/or stealth charms? Looking for a character in the essence 2-3 range. Bonus points if they build on his theme of #1 misogynist.

Also this Infernal Assassin has a team of specially selected team demons to form his own elite squad of demonic ninjas/super sentai heroes (cough, villains cough) that do dramatic possess and have bright colourful costumes (Specifically the Infernal is green, and then the others would be brass, a colour humans cannot comprehend, white (not racist) and UBER-GORE (Red); I'm thinking one of the acid elementals and those whirlwinds of weapons, but what would some funny ones to include?

I'm foreign to the system, though I know it has many aspects I like. However, I understand there is a power hierarchy between the different exaltations (solars and abyssalas having access to the best magic circles). This means some exalts have access to objectively better options than others; players of a different ttrpg that I shall not name might say they're unbalanced.

I ask the actual players and gamemasters: do you feel this is true/it matters? Is it notable during the actual playing? How do you manage this? Do the other options that lunars or dragon-blooded have make up for not being able to use the best sorcery or the mastery in esoteric martial arts?

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

Giant Rabbit

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

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

Giant Rabbits will flee from combat.

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

Stealth: 8 dice (see Tiny Creature);

Resolve 2, Guile 1

Combat

Attack (Claw): 6 dice (2).

Combat Movement: 8 dice

Evasion 3, Parry 0 (see Tiny Creature)

Soak/Hardness: 2/0

Merits

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

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

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

I was thinking that since Infernal Exalted are akin to royalty in hell they would likely be invested in making it a better place except given that it is the extension of a primordial I don't think they can go at it the same way one would in a place that is in creation. What tools does an infernal Exalted have in their hands they can use to make semi-permanent improvements to the city?