Exalted vs World of Darkness interest check

[RSGAlex]

But unlike Forge Out of Chaos, this is Digital and I have a copy. And soon, I should also have the time to run things. So, the skinny, one of the Ex3rd writers decided to do Exalted Vs the World of Darkness, a scrapped idea from the planning of Shards of the Exalted Dream. Scrapped because of the space they felt they'd need to actually do the idea right. Well, now a free lancer, this guy went and did it because he wanted to.

And I did something like this, though a much cruder and quicker hack way back when. And I guess I want to try again with these strange rules. (Also, I have more books than before.) So, here's the pitch, first IC, and then OoC.

It's been only a few days since the world stopped making any fucking sense. The specifics of your part in Willie's burning down, exploding, and killing some monster spirits are blurry at best, but that's also a good thing. A lot of people died taking down that monster. Of course, now you're in the shittiest but roomiest apartment known to man feeling hung over, listening to a fucking strange blonde whistle a tune as she waits for everyone to collect themselves, perhaps recover some modesty, and listen to a strange tale. See, excluding her, everyone in the room is the reincarnation of a sworn brother/sisterhood of adventurer-researchers who were onto the secrets of a flying island called the Scar. (Only she used lots more technobabble.) Unfortunately, there was a miscalculation, and their attempts wiped out everyone but the one junior note taker at the back. Now, to discharge her guilty conscience, she's pulling the new incarnations of the old group together, pointing them at their old notes, and washing her hands of the matter.

Then a fucking cyborg phases through the door and chaos erupts.

OOC

The rambly paragraph gives a quick summary of both why the group's together and two immediately obvious act one group goals. Either go and refine those notes and claim whatever it was that killed your last incarnations or go and make sure that the assholes targeting you for them get it into their heads to stop trying to bother you for those same notes while trying to do whatever it is you really want to do.  That whatever can be negotiated after some players get an approval, though.

Now onto the stuff that will probably make or break the idea for plenty of people. Content. Given the nature and power of the Exalted, even in this hack, it's going to be the Grindhouse of Darkness as far questionable content is concerned. You know, basically it's either going to be played for kink or it's supposed to be an overwrought and x-treme INYOFACE deal because the old world of darkness was many things, but subtle and nuanced was rarely one of them. So feel free to bring the lack of subtlty and kinks that move you down the columns on the right; you don't have to be good, just not as bad as the fuckers currently running everything.

Finally, posting. Right now this is probably going to hit my limits of what I can do because work's picking up. So I may only be able to do limited posting once or twice a week until things slow down, and then I can pick up more. So right now, slow is fine by me, and we can see about doing things faster in the next few months. Plus this is an interest check. I have no idea if anyone's interested in this, especially the peculiar version I have in mind.

Now if you read this far, you're either interested or skipped some stuff. Either's good. Let's talk about what you, a potential player would need. First, get the actual fan book, right here. Then you either want one of the WoD 20th cores or a good wiki for lots of the missing stuff. I'm going to steal from most of them for things not in V20. Read up, throw out ideas, and let's get cuhrazy.

[AndyZ]

Keeping an eye on this ^_^

[GunmetalDreamer]

I'm going to need a little time with the books (I'm woefully behind on WoD), but I'll flag for "Interest" now.

[RSGAlex]

I'm going to need a little time with the books (I'm woefully behind on WoD), but I'll flag for "Interest" now.

If it helps, it's Old World of Darkness and I should expand a bit on how things have happened for those in the know. The Week of Nightmares happened, but the fall out was calmed in the Underworld, so things are mostly backed to normal. Mostly. The Avatar Storm doesn't rage, but there are locations where it's definitely still a thing. And that's that as of a few weeks out.

[AndyZ]

I'm toying with the idea of a Dawn who started out as a gymnast, has no real reason to have combat skills beyond the Exaltation, and is still bright and cheerful despite everything.  She'll still be a combat beatstick, but with none of the accompanying aggressive personality that one would expect of one, although her personality may adjust further over time.  It's a bit of a stretch of an idea, but seems like a lot of fun in my head, and wondering if you'd be cool with that.

[RSGAlex]

It's interestingly doable from a mechanics point, and also from a character point. Got a good idea for the knowing the supernatural part, and perhaps what kind of stuff it was that got the gold for her?

[AndyZ]

Basic Exaltation idea I'm playing with is that she was a peaceful, friendly girl who witnessed the supernatural (maybe Sabbat vampires attacking a bunch of humans), maybe just started out trying to throw something at one of the Sabbat vampires and doing amazingly well, then proceeding into an epic fight sequence.  Mechanics-wise, she'd still have normal stats for an Exalt, just that she was severely lacking in various Abilities before the Exaltation.

Still pondering, though.

[RSGAlex]

An update for both those in the thread and anyone watching. My schedule should open up at the end of this week, so I'll have more time to do stuff.

[RSGAlex]

Okay. My week of nine to twelve hour shifts is over and I'm going to be more relaxed and able to do stuff. But that's and confirmation isn't the only reason I'm posting this. There's new charms, new rules, new new new. Right here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/exalted-vs-world-24706220

I had more, but the fatigue got to me and I forgot. Sorry.

First, a custom charm (and how to adapt it to non-Solars)

Sorcerer's Burning Chakra (***)

The power of even a weak site of supernatural is easy compared to seeing the subtler flows of individual magic. A Solar that knows this charm has mastered that strenuous task.

System: Spend one Essence and one Willpower. For the rest of the scene any supernatural power that does not attempt to cloak itself becomes visible and recognizable as such to the Solar. This may allow the Solar to counter-act certain effects they may not have thought to, say by using Graceful Crane Stance to counter the thaumaturgic rotting of a wooden floor. This charm's activation may be lessened in two ways.

The essence may be waived if the Solar's caste mark is allowed to burn forth as part of activating the charm. The Willpower may be waived if the Solar has previously used All Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight to attune to a different realm of existence. Similar charms exist for other Exalted types with similar relations to their version of All Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight.


Glories of the Past (***** untyped)
In ages past, the might of the Exalted host was unmatched; this charm recalls a small portion of that umatched power.

Whenever the Exalt is called upon to use a die pool that involves Essence, the Exalt may roll an additional die or add an additional success if one of their own charms is not the reason for Essence to be involved in the die pool. In addition, when resisting powers, consider the Exalt's Essence to be one higher before looking at the resistance table.


And a summarized trio of Countermagics as Ancient Sorceries:

Leaden Countermagic: Any Exalted Occultist can protect herself from hostile sorcery, but only a student of Ancient Sorcery can manage to protect others. Upon learning this Ancient Sorcery, the Exalt can use Protective Countermagic, applying the normal limits for their countermagic and substituting a point of Essence for Quintessence. In addition, the sorcerer may spend at least 3 Essence to turn this protection into a stifling web. For every Essence spent, the countermagic attempt protects another person. This effect may be applied to other Countermagic Ancient Sorceries.

Quicksilver Countermagic: Any Exalted Occultist can protect herself from hostile sorcery, but only a student of Ancient Sorcery can manage to turn spells back upon the caster. Upon learning this Ancient Sorcery, the Exalt can use Offensive Countermagic, paying the quintessence cost with Essence. It can only reflect immaterial curses and the like unless multiple turns were used to build the pool of successes on the effect. In addition, the sorcerer may spend additional points of Essence to lower the number of successes needed to successfully counter an effect on a one to one basis. This can be applied to other Countermagic Ancient Sorceries.

Diamond Countermagic: Any Exalted Occultist can protect herself from hostile sorcery, but only a student of Ancient Sorcery can manage to rend apart the magics of the night-world. Upon learning this Ancient Sorcery, the Exalt can use Unweaving, paying any quintessence costs with Essence. In addition, the sorcerer may spend 5 Essence to show an echo of the countermagic of the first age. For (perm. Essence) rolls instead of merely overcoming the target's successes, each success rolled on the countermagic turns one of the target's successes into a 1, potentially turning a standing effect into a botch. Unweaving an effect in the presence of the originator will result in some kind of backlash. If applied to other kinds of countermagic, this effect is not targeted, but instead sprays around the world; only the one doing the countermagic and people being protected are going to be targeted by the wash of rent magic.

[AndyZ]

I hope this kicks off.  The idea is fun.

[RSGAlex]

Same here. I haz a plot, after all. And bad references like the man with the flying sword Zhōngxīn Bùbài.

[HairyHeretic]

IIRC there was a modern Exalted setting floated in the Shards of the Exalted Dream release. Is this very different?

[AndyZ]

Very different.  This one is set up to play very well with the rest of the World of Darkness, with new Charm rules set up.  It's free, though.

[Lustful Bride]

Kind of fascinated by this. I love the idea of fighting against the forces of darkness as a Solar or Dragon Blooded, and as the book says "Tossing a Solar Grenade right into the World of Darkness. Fuck you Kain, here comes the Sun."

Though I feel like the initial intro post could be done a lot better as I had to reread it a few times to understand what this thread was about. I still don't know who Willie is. And while Grindhouse is what it could inevitably be, I do feel that some good atmosphere is important, the players will be a source of light in a world of darkness, monsters, and horrors that treat humanity like cattle, and may be trying to free mankind from its shackles.

[HairyHeretic]

Is it just Solars or do all the other types of Exalted exist as well?

[Lustful Bride]

Is it just Solars or do all the other types of Exalted exist as well?

I have the PDF, (but you can find it here) or you can get it here, just scroll down and click the pdf link

It has Solars, Lunars, Sidereals, Dragon Blooded, and Abyssals as the Exalted.

It also suggests not using Hunter the Reckoning (As hunters in that setting are pretty much already diet Solars) and I agree. It would make more sense to use Hunters from Hunter the Vigil, as they could make great NPC allies to help bring new Solars into the fight against the dark forces and would be more than happy to accept superpowered help.

"We got vampires, werewolves, magicians, ghosts, fairies. Its about damn time we got a superhero on our side!"

[AndyZ]

Concur about not bringing in Hunter: the Reckoning characters, but vehemently disagree about bringing in Hunter: the Vigil characters, or anything else from Chronicles of Darkness (aka nWoD).

[RSGAlex]

This opening is a thing I should save to serve as a reminder of why I shouldn't post on the next to last night of a 51 hour week that followed a 46 hour week. Now, lemme go and answer a flurry of activity that I was definitely not expecting. So from the top we have the original series of posts. Nothing to say there.

Then we come to HairyHeretic's first question. To add on to AndyZ's explanation, it is a rather extensive sort of backport of Exalted themes and types to the Old World of Darkness (or specifically the 20th anniversary edition versions of the old WoD) in mechanics and milieu. So charms rated by dots, a tendency for scenelongs and lower costs with harder (compared to normal Exalted) regen. As of the companion, all the types that we've had complete mechanics for are in.

(As an aside, that book is here https://www.patreon.com/posts/exalted-vs-world-24706220 if you need it again, both are free as they're fan works.)

For LustfulBride, yeah. Like I said. I had an idea but was probably a bit too fatigued to properly bring my idea across. There is no Willie. I just wanted a simplistic name for a bar type place and saw a Slick Willie's on my way to somewhere and boom. Simple incident to reference and boom. Opening post. I was also going to joke about the one mortal in the WoD, but then I realized that it would run into Tremere chantry numbers. Which were crazy. So you do have a good point about the atmosphere. But I will agree with AndyZ, the state of the OWoD just clashes too much with the Vigil to really bring in proper. Kinda like why the book recommends Wraith over Orpheus.

[Lustful Bride]

This opening is a thing I should save to serve as a reminder of why I shouldn't post on the next to last night of a 51 hour week that followed a 46 hour week. Now, lemme go and answer a flurry of activity that I was definitely not expecting. So from the top we have the original series of posts. Nothing to say there.

Ah I see.

For LustfulBride, yeah. Like I said. I had an idea but was probably a bit too fatigued to properly bring my idea across. There is no Willie. I just wanted a simplistic name for a bar type place and saw a Slick Willie's on my way to somewhere and boom. Simple incident to reference and boom. Opening post

Ah I see. I have actually thought about this very system a few times since I first learned of it, and I think one of the more fun ways that the characters could meet up is if things went the route similar to the Terminator. Where a vampire kill team is actively hunting down a weak or exhausted Solar who has been a pain in the ass for the local camarilla. They seek refuge somewhere and are about to be jumped by the vampries, when suddenly other Exalted step in and make their presence known. It turns out the vamps thought only one Solar was active, when they actually had a group, and all of them have now met one another thanks to their efforts, almost like it was written by fate no less.  ::) Curious no?

scene I am referring to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4kfqmv2PoQ

I was also going to joke about the one mortal in the WoD, but then I realized that it would run into Tremere chantry numbers. Which were crazy. So you do have a good point about the atmosphere. But I will agree with AndyZ, the state of the OWoD just clashes too much with the Vigil to really bring in proper. Kinda like why the book recommends Wraith over Orpheus.

Ahh I see. Personally I just really like the Badass Normals/Kickass Muggles among the hunters of the Vigil and some of the factions and groups among them fascinate me. I do think that some of them could be ported over to provide Hunter contact, maybe go a route more similar to John Carpenter's Vampires where hunters know they don't stand too much of a chance against vamps and have to fight smarter and usually against younger vampires unless they have a true advantage in some form or another. Most hunters get killed within the first week as they make too much noise. 

[RSGAlex]

Just to be sure though, what is your opinion about ash trays? Actually seriously, Tiger Warrior Training a close enough equivalent, a dash of hedge enchantment or alchemy, and you can make a scary force as long as you got some skills of your own.

Also while the terminator scene is a good inspiration, and one that I might have taken a few cues from subconsciously, I wanted a little more wiggle room in the villains aspect an also I think I saw something else that had inspired me. Just completely forget what.

EDIT: Additional thought.  The shih and Strike Force 0.

[HairyHeretic]

I'll have to have a look at it.

Would you be able to give a quick blurb on how the different Exalts fit into the setting though? Would the Lunars align with the werewolves, the Abyssals with the vampires, or is it much more open than that?

[AndyZ]

As of the startup, they're really JUST coming back, with nobody really knowing what's going on yet.  At least, that's the impression I got.

[Lustful Bride]

I'll have to have a look at it.

Would you be able to give a quick blurb on how the different Exalts fit into the setting though? Would the Lunars align with the werewolves, the Abyssals with the vampires, or is it much more open than that?

The Exalted are finding their own equilibrium. The Dragon Blooded were always there, watching things from the shadows, protecting the bloodline and occasionally fighting with the creatures of Darkness. Especially were creatures and the Kindred of the East.

Lunars are usually accepted into Were tribes but seem out of place, and feel different than other weres.

Abyssals are indeed usually drawn in by vampires, but in one instance in Australia an Abyssal seems to be taking control of the local camarilla."

Solars don't know what they are, but tend to usually have been wronged by the supernatural and suddenly have powers, so they migh think they are a super hero or blessed by God and decide to war on the darkness, some die because they don't know not to spend all their essence, some live to fight another night, recovering essence in sunlight and growing stronger with each survived battle.

[Cessali]

So I've finally nursed a concept to health.  Submitted for reflection is Vera Hemmingway, Twilight Caste, formerly attached to the Progenitors before she went off the grid.

Spoiler: Click to Show/Hide

Dr. Vera Hemmingway is a talented physician, an oncology specialist of some repute; she could not deny the irony when she learned her mother was diagnosed with cancer, and could not herself contribute to her mother's care. She was a prominent and oft-relied-on unEnlightened assistant in her research hospital's greater work; her superiors offered her no leave, and Vera did not ask for it.  Sometimes, she initially reasoned to herself, there were sacrifices that had to be made.  Family for all of humanity.  If normal people like herself couldn't help push the boundaries of science forward, without the assistance of high-concept nanotech, then what good was it to anyone?  This was front-line stuff, making people better off, and maybe she wasn't directly fighting against the weirdness of the world, but she was doing her best to help people who needed it, and that was more important than her own personal desires.

That said, Mary Hemmingway was the lynchpin of her family, keeping her often-squabbling sons and daughter in contact with one another.  Vera was the only 'successful' one of her generation, and while she was able to help with the bills that her mother faced, her siblings' resentment only grew as the burden of her day-to-day care fell on the rest of them (her father having died some years back as the result of a cataclysmic heart attack).  Signing a check once a month and scattered Facetime conversations weren't enough to soothe her conscience, and when news reached her that her mother's cancer had reached Stage IV, she finally broke down and asked for an extended period of leave -- which she was granted.  When Vera came off the plane, her brothers' reception was somewhat frosty -- but Mary, even loaded up on chemotherapy and pain medication, still recognized her daughter.  It was a heart-wrenching moment; Vera's experience identified several signs to her eyes that her mother's time was very limited.  A few days, perhaps.  And the doctors and nurses all denied it, ignorant of the insights her own clinic had garnered because they weren't part of the established knowledge base.  Faced with the choice of trying to convince her mother's medical team from a well-practiced and oft-rehearsed course of action or sitting back and trusting to them against all the evidence of her senses, Vera found in herself a strange insight: she knew exactly how to save her mother.

And so, subtly hijacking a number of supplies from a few hospital rooms, and misdirecting an entire shift's worth of nurses, Vera found herself eight hours later having cured her mother's incurable illness with insulin needles and acupuncture techniques she had never before studied, radiant with a subtle aura of daylight.

She didn't stick around to savor her work.  There would be questions to answer that she had no answers for.  Was this a hemophage talent?  No, she could walk in the daylight.  Was this alien biology at work?  No, it was ridiculous.  'Energy' and 'Essence' weren't things you could use to cure cancer.  Was this genius?  Yes, but it made absolutely no sense to be able to do this with ancient Chinese medicine she had never studied!  She turned off her phone after the first few congratulatory messages and got herself blazing drunk for a few nights, then... well, something else happened, and things became that much weirder.  The gun that had skittered into her hands at the dive bar -- Wally's?  Walt's? -- had felt like a natural thing in her hands, which was really the second-worst thing someone in her position could really think... right?  Or maybe she was just in denial about having become something worse than a faith-healer or a homeopathic drug dealer: a crack practitioner who could -make- it work, but only when -they- did it.

Intimacies:
I have sworn the Hippocratic Oath.
I am generally the most knowledgeable person in the room.
The Progenitors (Doing the right thing in general)

[RSGAlex]

To add on since I was at work, the only really established ones are the Dragonblooded. Chapter 8 of the main book (p132 on) is all about this in greater detail. But I'll hit some highlights for giggles. Can't meaningfully Embrace the power of the Exalted, but you can ghoul most of them once they're Chosen. It does little for the Chosen, except Abyssals for whom it does almost exactly nothing. It can blood bond, but other than that nothing. Exalts can fight back against being fed on, and with the obvious exception the blood of an exalt is worth triple. A solar with no ox-bodies is worth 21 aggravated HLs per exsangunation. Do not want.

The book notes that while no Exalt suffers from the Delirium, pants shitting terror is a pretty reasonable response to a Crinos charging in your direction. The fact that Exalts can, as a group or individuals, can make binding deals with totems is likely to alarm the Garou. The companion has some notes for the benefits of things that Exalts don't have, but that Totems tend to give. It can be interesting and means certain rituals can include Exalted. Lunars definitely don't feel anything like any shapeshifter in the Spirit World, and Lunes vouching for them can be helpful. Unfortunately, calm and measured approachs aren't the bread and butter of the Garou, and violence a first reaction. Things go well or horrible with little middle ground here. Only one Wyrm spirit likes Abyssals and it's the one that tends to scare the crap out of everyone.

Mages can mess with Essence and even the Exaltation itself. The first is merely a Prime 5 Spirit 5 effect to do transformations to Quintessence, while the latter is a bad idea at best. Beyond the Exaltation itself fighting back with the equivalent of Aerte 10, it's also probably Vulgar As Fuck to any paradigm and without four spheres at 5 means you are trying this with a likely Very Angry exalt trying to put you sixteen feet under. I once did a long write up of things an Exalt can do with their Excellencies and Hedge Magic. If anyone wants, I can clean it up and repost here. Some is pretty funny.

Wraiths are likely to be very surprised to see any Exalt in the underworld and most Exalts won't have too much to do with Wraithly society as a whole. The exception is Abyssals (of course), as they can probably get a small army of twisted spectres to follow and then lower the gauntlet to the living world to really set them on their foes in a bad way.

Changelings have more support from Sids than you might expect given their forebearers. There is also a chance they're going to take in any Lunar that discovers them without knowing what they are. Note, the ambiguity is intentional. With just about any mix of knowledge in there, the changelings are likely to try because, hey. Low Banality tendency ho.

Don't worry too much about Demons. Read if you want the intended, but things will be a little different here. Some of both kinds of Mummy are around, and they will be up for some very jolly co-operation with Solars. As well as any non-Abyssal exalt, though a bit less with the wyld Lunars than say, Sidereals.

The Wan Kuei will have Opinions on the Exalted once they know, as a whole. It will be hi-larious.



And Jarick, interesting idea. I like the first two Intimacies, especially.

[AndyZ]

Oh, and may I request a starting city?  Or should we assume that our characters will be gathered together even if from other cities?

[RSGAlex]

Sure, make a request. If nobody did I had a place to start in, but go ahead everyone.

[AndyZ]

Oh.  I was asking WHERE we were going to start, but...how about Miami?

[RSGAlex]

Oh, in that case my idea was in Texas. San Antonio specifically. If that matters to people.

[AndyZ]

No objection, but I don’t really know the area.

[RSGAlex]

There's a joke to be made about the size and how nobody does.

[Jefepato]

Are you still looking for players?  I'm intrigued, but I need to flip through the PDFs and figure out some ideas*.  (I'm pretty familiar with both Exalted and WoD, but I haven't read these Exalted vs. WoD things at all yet.)

*and also catch up with posting in a couple existing games, but I should be able to manage that pretty quickly

I once did a long write up of things an Exalt can do with their Excellencies and Hedge Magic. If anyone wants, I can clean it up and repost here. Some is pretty funny.

Can you tell us more about this?  I don't remember too much about WoD hedge magic.  (Any particular WoD books worth looking at for that stuff?  It's been a while.)

[RSGAlex]

I am still looking, so submit something if you want. As for hedge magic, it's in Sorcerer Revised, but that's badly edited so I'll give out some house rules for it (and also mention that the merit is discounted as of the companion to 5 points if you don't get discounted). Your dot rating limits the normal max effect you can get from a normal non-ritual effect. Base difficulty lets you get any number of aspects for paths with aspects, but only the first dot. Each dot of each aspect after raises the successes needed by 1. Rituals let you do one of three things. The first is that it lets you use a higher aspect or otherwise greater effect for one part of a path.

Say you have Healing * and a ritual called "Mind over Matter" that lets you do Bashing healing at ** and Pain at *. So you can not only block out minor pains, but also actually heal some bashing injuries after a 30 min ritual of meditation or so.

The second possibility is that it lets you do something related to a path, but not exactly in the path. This is what the book's Hellblade ritual lets you do, although the example is slightly undercosted. (It enhances damage done instead of doing damage, a similar ritual in Fascination might let you shift one person's dots in a social attribute to another for the duration.) The third possibility is that it just messes the number of successes needed to pull off one effect; the more general the effect the lower the benefit. Perhaps a hedge super scientist has the ritual "Jumpjet Overcharge" and it lets her add her path rating in successes to determine how far and fast a jump jet jump will take her, but it's calibrated for a specific jumpjet and is limited by 100 ft max and self and 20 lbs of stuff. Once she's at Conveyance *** that means that preparing this ahead of time makes that basically automatic if she limits her speed to about 30mph. If it's a very specific effect you could get something as big as straight up doubling your successes; my example is a ritual I'm calling "Battle Readyness Prayer" a Conjuration ***** that requires you to inscribe a set of prayers in specific order on up to 6 bits of your combat kit. Your successes rolled are doubled for the purposes of its hilariously impractical 13 successes needed. But if you pull it off, your six items appear from anywhere within a 5 mile radius, attempt to put themselves on you or in your grasp as though they had good human handlers, and if you continue to spend WP will continue to put themselves on you if you have something that takes more than one turn to don.

Mechanically, you can minmax your way to about **** in any one path if you put all your BP and some flaws into it, so that's the high water marks I'll cover with some estimates on each path.

Alchemy at this level lets you make exliers/drugs that can grant two dots of an attribute, or one to multiple or get some kind of minor supernatural effect (beyond the benefits of say Str 7 do for a person). Alchemy rituals are different because they only have one real effect, -1 difficulty and +1 Alchemy for determining how long a concoction takes to make. It's normally rating in days, so a known alchemic ritual will always take one day less and if you are skilled enough to already knock it down below a day to potentially an hour or so.

Conjuration here can do a good amount of weight, distance, or numbers, and has fine control like a human hand. Half-ton, half-mile, under a dozen of the same thing, like that. So Gate of Babylon-ing somebody with ten comedy half-ton swords is possible but takes 12 successes and four turns per roll at diff 8 and a WP if you have't prepared the weapons.

Conveyance lets you go five miles, at 60MPH, with yourself and two people's worth of stuff for only 9 successes. For 11 successes you can teleport there (at 60MPH speed) and for 12 teleport to an unknown destination.

Divination has no rituals, and assuming that there's nothing good enough to alter things, gets you questions for 10 years either way, fairly easy to entangle from the symbolism, and it gets you a good amount of detail if nothing's been deliberate and well hidden. 9 successes at diff 8 (9 at 9 for extraordinary science types, but they tend to get clearer answers).

Enchantment is only rituals, so you may want to spend some BP on buying rituals so that your first stuff isn't just making rituals to then do. At **** you can get actual magical effects, but somewhat limited. If you're stuck for a good effect, look at one and two dot supernatural powers. So perhaps your Ring of Atlas grants two Str, but when you're pushing yourself at lifting things you also get 2 successes, and you need to keep it charged by burying it whenever it's not worn and the sky is clear.

Fascination improves social attributes and makes people charmed or interested in the target. Four points of one social attribute, usable on a good sized group of people, and it won't fade soon. You can also use this enhanced charisma, manipulation, or appearance to convince somebody to do something, but if they resist the hold goes down by a whole level per success on the resisting roll, so be careful.

Fortune is curses or blessings and at this level you can make a sizable related group (say a football team or extended family) have several months of what can be life changing luck in either way.

Healing is really too complex to give a quick summary, so I'll say that the best thing you can do is lower wound penalties by 2 at this level. Most other effects are probably more easily done with Exalted charms.

Hellfire is fun, but again, you're usually better off with combat charms unless you really want one of its tricks. Like you can hit 10 square feet of area at 50 feet away, and if you bought the decay extra you're getting rid of 3 lbs of non-living external material per success on 8 dice per casting. It just takes one WP, 9 successes, and 4 turns per roll needed to get those successes.

Mana Manipulation is pretty worthless for Exalts, but you can use it to deny people one of their special resource per two success on a casting roll. Not too worth the WP or the turns spent casting.

Onieromancy is dream manipulation. At this level of maxing out you can use something as 'common' as a prized possession and send a specific dream (as many times as you rolled successes) as opposed to generic things like last level's Nightmares (the flaw). It also lets you not need to be in the dream as of last level.

Shadowcasting lets you fight with Darkness. It lets you become super scary at this level, and somebody this good at both Fascination and Shadowcasting can be Exalted levels of scary. You know if the Exalt is good at it and had a 1 dot charm. Still, not normal darkness, and probably an emotional or mind effecting power, so....

Shapeshifting has no rituals, and Lunars probably are ultra disinterested unless they have qualms. At this level you can do as much as a half-human type shift (so a bipedal wolf at averaged size, not a wolfman at human size) or give yourself wings and a beak for a less extreme but still at this level change, also do the change to another person,  the shifts don't have to be unrelated if you're going to perform all at full power.


Summoning Warding and Binding is a big mix of effects and technically ritual only, so I'm not going too far in. I'll just say that as a ritual of this level you can summon 4 cars or 4 technomagcially enhanced toys if they can move. You can ruin most things days with a -4 penalty ward or a circle that needs a contested WP roll to get past.


Just get the book for Weather Control. It's the absolute most complex by far and has lots of costs that make conjuring a storm take a while to happen and takes way too much WP.

[HairyHeretic]

Are you thinking just Solars for the PCs or will other exalted types be available to play?

[RSGAlex]

Any kinds of Exalts, even night folk if you are willing to suffer the slings and arrows of being whatever you are.

EDIT: Also, if anyone's interested in the Qiao, I have some house rules for getting them.

[RSGAlex]

Okay, so it's been a long bit (or at least a short bit and some change) so I'm going to give this one bump before letting it rest in peace. So, what do you need to know? Well, one, you should have some idea 'bout the Classic/Old World of Darkness to about the Week of Nightmares because that's the base setting. Pretty much everything is on the table, so pitch ideas.

Also, read the thread for the previous discussion stuff. I'm not a vampire, so I'm not the most sanguine about this bump's potential impact.

[Ironwolf85]

I've been running around in two old world of darkness campaigns. One mage, one vampire, and my characters have survived long enough to get pretty damn powerful.
A hard drinking, hard fighting son of aether who thinks he's an action hero through the power of SCIENCE!

and a powerful Tzeemezee surgion.

Glad to see this be bumped!
what do you need in terms of help and characters?

[RSGAlex]

I mostly need players. I also probably need to brush up (more) on the history of the WoD and that, but that its own little thing.

[Ironwolf85]

well count me in, I'd need to bone up on exalted. but I got o-WoD and n-WoD mostly understood now.
for everything else there's a wiki, so whacha got planned man?

[AndyZ]

Still around, and I'd be happy to put a char together if we get folks.  Mostly I've just been dealing with winter and then spring.

[RSGAlex]

The setup goes like this. A few days ago the world stopped making sense (or as much sense, backstory depending) and in fighting off some impossible spirit-monster from whoknowswhere you were part of a group that ended up burning down Willie's. Somehow. The details on everything are a bit blurry. As is how you got into this huge, but shitty apartment. A strange blonde woman is waiting for everyone to wake up, because she has a bombshell to drop. Everyone being in Willie's at the same time wasn't coincidence. Your last incarnations were investigating the secrets of a strange flying island called the Scar.

The last secrets they had uncovered cost lives, notably their own. But they set up contingencies so that you can pick up their work. And its about then that the cyborg busts in.

[HairyHeretic]

Well, I'm still interested

[RSGAlex]

Well, I'm still interested

Good. Hopefully this time we get enough to start.

well count me in, I'd need to bone up on exalted. but I got o-WoD and n-WoD mostly understood now.
for everything else there's a wiki, so whacha got planned man?

I just also remembered.
Main Book: https://holdenshearer.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/Exalted-Versus-World-of-Darkness.pdf
Supplemental: https://www.patreon.com/posts/exalted-vs-world-24706220

It explains what's in the modern age, but the Exalts were far in ages past, ruling and living in an age of wonders and horrors beyond measure.

[Cessali]

Still interested, the Twilight concept I put up-thread still my PC of choice.

[RSGAlex]

Good. Hopefully I also get the numbers to look over and we get started soon (tm)!

[Ironwolf85]

guessin we pissed off the technocracy at some point.... if iteration X is sending a hitmark like this.

[RSGAlex]

Not necessarily. They're just after those notes because of prognostication. (Of course, you could also have cheesed off the Technocracy, in which case your death during the note retrieval is just a bonus.)

[Cessali]

Sheeeeeeeeeeeet

People should totally put out concepts!  Talking about these things make them more vibrant.

Dr. Vera Hemmingway, Twilight Caste

Dr. Vera Hemmingway is a talented physician, an oncology specialist of some repute; she could not deny the irony when she learned her mother was diagnosed with cancer, and could not herself contribute to her mother's care. She was a prominent and oft-relied-on unEnlightened assistant in her research hospital's greater work; her superiors offered her no leave, and Vera did not ask for it.  Sometimes, she initially reasoned to herself, there were sacrifices that had to be made.  Family for all of humanity.  If normal people like herself couldn't help push the boundaries of science forward, without the assistance of high-concept nanotech, then what good was it to anyone?  This was front-line stuff, making people better off, and maybe she wasn't directly fighting against the weirdness of the world, but she was doing her best to help people who needed it, and that was more important than her own personal desires.

That said, Mary Hemmingway was the lynchpin of her family, keeping her often-squabbling sons and daughter in contact with one another.  Vera was the only 'successful' one of her generation, and while she was able to help with the bills that her mother faced, her siblings' resentment only grew as the burden of her day-to-day care fell on the rest of them (her father having died some years back as the result of a cataclysmic heart attack).  Signing a check once a month and scattered Facetime conversations weren't enough to soothe her conscience, and when news reached her that her mother's cancer had reached Stage IV, she finally broke down and asked for an extended period of leave -- which she was granted.  When Vera came off the plane, her brothers' reception was somewhat frosty -- but Mary, even loaded up on chemotherapy and pain medication, still recognized her daughter.  It was a heart-wrenching moment; Vera's experience identified several signs to her eyes that her mother's time was very limited.  A few days, perhaps.  And the doctors and nurses all denied it, ignorant of the insights her own clinic had garnered because they weren't part of the established knowledge base.  Faced with the choice of trying to convince her mother's medical team from a well-practiced and oft-rehearsed course of action or sitting back and trusting to them against all the evidence of her senses, Vera found in herself a strange insight: she knew exactly how to save her
mother.

And so, subtly hijacking a number of supplies from a few hospital rooms, and misdirecting an entire shift's worth of nurses, Vera found herself eight hours later having cured her mother's incurable illness with insulin needles and acupuncture techniques she had never before studied, radiant with a subtle aura of daylight.

She didn't stick around to savor her work.  There would be questions to answer that she had no answers for.  Was this a hemophage talent?  No, she could walk in the daylight.  Was this alien biology at work?  No, it was ridiculous.  'Energy' and 'Essence' weren't things you could use to cure cancer.  Was this genius?  Yes, but it made absolutely no sense to be able to do this with ancient Chinese medicine she had never studied!  She turned off her phone after the first few congratulatory messages and got herself blazing drunk for a few nights, then... well, something else happened, and things became that much weirder.  The gun that had skittered into her hands at the dive bar -- Wally's?  Walt's? -- had felt like a natural thing in her hands, which was really the second-worst thing someone in her position could really think... right?  Or maybe she was just in denial about having become something worse than a faith-healer or a homeopathic drug dealer: a crack practitioner who could -make- it work, but only when -they- did it.

Intimacies:
I have sworn the Hippocratic Oath.
I am generally the most knowledgeable person in the room.
The Progenitors (Doing the right thing in general)

Dr. Hemmingway, Character Sheet

Character: Vera Hemmingway
Player: Jarick

Nature: Architect
Demeanor: Soldier

Type: Solar
Caste: Twilight
- Regain Essence when learning a secret of the supernatural world, learn something that advances or protects an Intimacy, or teach
   valuable knowledge that helps another in some material way.
- Spend 2 Essence to disappear, reappearing some hours later at the boundary of a place of power.
Favored Caste: Night

Str   2   Cha   3   Per   2
Dex   5   Man   2   Int   5
Stm   2   App   2   Wit   4

Alertness   1   Animal Ken      *Academics   1
Athletics    1   *Crafts   (Gunsmithing) 3   *Computer   1
Awareness   1   Drive      1   Finance
Brawl         Etiquette   1   *Investigation (Database Research) 5
Empathy      1   Firearms (Handguns) 5   Law   
Expression      Larceny         *Medicine (Oncology) 5
Intimidation      Melee         *Occult      1
Leadership   1   Performance      Politics   1
Streetwise   3   Stealth         *Science   1
Subterfuge   1   Survival      *Technology (Medical Devices) 5

Arsenal 3 (Where the fuck does she come up with these guns)
Resources 3 (Freelance doctor for rent money)
Contacts 2 (Medical professionals)
Fame 1 (Hot-shot doctor)

Willpower 9
Essence 1
Essence Pool 10/10

* Excellence of the Setting Sun: Twilight (Craft, Academics, Computer, Investigation, Medicine, Occult, Science, Technology)
-- 1e: +3 dice to all attached rolls
-- 1e1wp: Double all attached rolls
* Fire and Stones Strike
-- After successful hit, 1e: add Ability rating successes to damage
**** Wholeness-Restoring Meditation
-- After several hours treatment, 2e: Intelligence + Medicine TN 8, cure any medical condition on success
* Speed the Wheels
-- Accomplishes all bureaucratic activities in fraction of normal time
-- 2e: Place blessing upon activity, all members of organization pushing it forward are -2 TN bonus


Solar Extra Skill Points
- Firearms +2
- Medicine +2
- Athletics +1

BP Spends:
[3] Arsenal 3
[1] Fame 1
[4] Willpower +4
[1] Technology +1
[1] Technology +1
[1] Investigation +1
[1] Investigation +1
[1] Occult +1
[1] Crafts +1
[1] Crafts +1
[1] Crafts +1

[RSGAlex]

Oh, completely forgot to actually post the comment last time. This is good as it was last time, and I think we had AndyZ doing something with an acrobat? I could search the thread, but who knows. Could have changed by now.

And I do agree with your second and third sentences.

[ObsidianShards]

How necessary is it to have the V20 books?  I've got the 2nd edition most of the Exalted books (still trying to dig up my Abyssals).
I'm very interested.  Sounds like this is more of a "regular" RP idea, without a focus in the "adult" material?  Or is it more "reality", where sex, drugs and rockin' roll happen, just like IRL?

Either way, I'm still interested.  I'm thinking of an Eclipse Caste Solar.  A retired military man, turned diplomatic liaison/spy.  On a diplomatic mission to the middle east/EU, he got a bit more then he bargained for.
Another political adversary/ally was getting a bit more success in their bills/laws then they really should and it turns out they made a literal deal with the devil and my character found out....only to be attached and almost killed.....bringing on his Exaltation.

[Cessali]

You really do need to at least have one copy of the cWoD main rulebooks (or to have played them at some point in your life), if only to have an idea as to how the ruleset works in general.  While Exalted shares a lot of DNA in common with cWoD/X20 systems (Willpower, add stat and skill for a dice pool, power stats), it's also definitely not a one-to-one conversion (variable TNs, different combat resolution mechanics, the Rule of 1).  The specifics aren't as important -- the rest of us will be happy to help you fill in the blanks as we go.

[RSGAlex]

V20 really has the base rules, but as long as you know about Nature/Demeanor and can look up some stuff for the backgrounds and examples of some of those things (although you're always risking it being inexact). I mean, the old Storyteller system had lots of things in common and the linked books have lots of the exceptions and things you need to know. Again, not everything, but some of it.

So you can somewhat do with just the ExVWoD books with some internet looking.

EDIT: And yes, sex, drugs, and rocking happen. Because it's the WoD.

[ObsidianShards]

I'll probably pick up the oWoD on PDF or something.  I gave all my books to my high-school buddies, when I went off to college.......probably should have kept them. <shrug>
Between the 5 of us, we literally owned all of the White Wolf books the various and sundry lines.  Trying to cram it all together and then put it in the Dark Ages....it was "interesting".

Then we moved on to Exalted....., after a stint into Abberent, so I'm more then passingly familiar with the Story Teller system, it's just been a few years since college, when I stopped playing. ;)

[RSGAlex]

Then there's a few things that might surprise you, but otherwise should be like getting back on a bike.