Latest revision as of 01:17, 6 April 2010

Strange Solar Tricks

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A place where I plan on listing the bizarre applications that you can apply your charms to.

1. Use Touch of Blissful Release on enemies either before combat or during, to give them narcotic penalties (useful if your enemy is ignoring wound penalties already)
2. Use Underling Promoting Touch on the leader of any Wyld Hunt that has cornered you; watch the rest of his companions rip him apart (since the rest of the Hunt must succeed at a Willpower roll at difficulty of your Essence+1 to NOT react to him like they would to you)
3. Use Flawless Pickpocketing Technique to plant ridiculously unwieldy items on a target before combat starts -- folding ships are a good one. (assumes ST allows for Flawless Pickpocketing Technique to be used to 'plant' things as well as to take things) The back spikes on artifact armour are a great place to hang things -- they'll be effectively out of reach of the armour wearer unless the target is a Lunar or other shapeshifter. A good way to use your Essence-Union Darts, if your target is a dodge-monkey but not too Perceptive! Or just hang small bags of offal on the guy's armour  ;)
4. Stabbing yourself in the chest with a daiklave or grand daiklave and triggering Essence-Gathering Temper while wearing heavy plate. Works best post-PC for mote recovery, pre-PC for damage avoidance. - FrivYeti
5. Fury-Inciting Presence to get hardened warriors to abandon their position and come attack you. - FrivYeti
6. Easily-Overlooked Presence Method to sneak away in the middle of a pitched battle. - FrivYeti

Comments

Hmm. I'm not convinced about Underling promoting Touch: It says 'Individuals will treat him with the respect and deference they would normally reserve for the Exalted who used the charm (or for any other powerful magical being, if they are not aquainted with the target's Benefactor)' Which I would interpret to mean that it gives the subject an Aura of power and majesty, just like you have: Not that it makes them immediatly think he's associated with you. He would, instead, suddenly be imbued with great majesty and power, which they might well attribute to be a blessing of the dragons as he kicks your ass. - Molikai

Ah, but the "respect and deference they would normally reserve for the Exalted who used the Charm" consists of a certain amount of wariness and a greater amount of ass-kicking. If they treat the "promoted" individual in the same fashion, they'll warily kick his ass. Vargo Teras

Precisely! The Wyld Hunt gives Celestial Exalted deference-on-a-daiklaive and are presumably familiar with your Anathema nature if you have to resort to this trick! Thus get the members of the Hunt to treat one of their own as a Celestial Exalt >:D -- JadeSerpent (who admits that some of these would get stopped by a ST who doesn't like 'out-of-genre' power use)

I wouldn't allow Underling Promoting to work that way because I think it just makes the target more, ya know, respectable. If people hate you, it won't make them hate the target too. It just won't work very well. What you're suggesting is more an Abyssal Charm, and a very nice one at that. But it's not Solar. - Telgar

It's not a "more respectability" so much as confer the feel of "your essence of station" or "the mantle of your position" upon another. In Immaculate Doctrine that would be a station/position that is thoroughly demonized, hence the result listed above. -- JadeSerpent

I would say that you would need a branching Charm off Flawless Pickpocket to do that with it. I would require it. Anyway, added a couple concepts. - FrivYeti

You know FrivYeti me and the crew and WODIRC were just discussing the Essence Gathering Technique trick a few days ago and decided it's dumb. But we did invent a new artifact: the Essence Fountain Plank. You smack yourself in the face with it a bunch while using EGT and you regain MOTES REALLY FAST! WOOOO! - Telgar

It is dumb; personally, I dislike it, hence why it didn't appear in the SolarsVsLion fights. However, according to the rules, it works. Not sure what I think about that, really. The Charm itself is a bit odd. (Like the plank, though. ;) )- FrivYeti

I accully have to disagree with you. That are plenty of stories where the magician wound themselves as a scarifice for greater magical power. - Dasmen

Yes, as part of a ritual or in the casting of a spell. I think that's fairly well represented in the payment of Health Levels for certain spells and Charms. Hitting yourself in the face with a plank is rarely considered a good way to gain anything but a concussion and a broken nose. - Telgar

That seems more like life-drain then scrifice. Scrifice is bashing your face into your sheild till you see red, or cuting off your finger, or carving runes into your own flesh, all of which look really good as stunts when you attack yourself and use Essence-Gathering Temper. - Dasmen

The carving of one's self is a classic 'This guy is psycho' device. Most recent example I've seen just off-hand includes the Agent Smith-possessed Zionite in Matrix Revolution... Tends to come across as a ritualistic behaviour which could be construed in a mythical setting as a form of chiminage... It seems to be a case of seeing how it's presented... The wearing of armour would be something that would negate the chiminage-ness of it... -- JadeSerpent

Well, a couple players I know used a combo of EGT an Willpower Bolstering Method while having a Gem of incompareable wellness. You cannot die and you regain essence and willpower. If I rember right one of them even had a helmet crafted that had spikes on the inside... psychotics... This is why the GoIW is outlawed in all of my games. ~ Insanewizard

You outlaw people buying (several) expencive effects because in conjuction they're cool? Do you also punish players who think up good combat tactic... Dasmensomewhat bemused

Actually, it sounds like IW's just outlawed the "Never Die" hearthstone, partially because it's also an "Infinite Essence And Willpower" stone. I can maybe see using EGT and WBM with self-mutilation - perhaps by ignoring your own armor? Actually, that sounds pretty cool - but it's well known that the Core stones are overpowered. "Cool" is a great principle on which to base what to allow, but Infinite Power Is Boring. Generally. ~WillCoon

Wearing a hat with spikes on the inside, solely to take advantage of a game mechanic, is cool? ...DeathBySurfeit

No (though one with a tube that sucked out your spinal fluid to fuel its dark inhuman magic would be... but that would be a bit abyssmal for a solar artfiact). I just dislike the idea of outlawing something simply because its useful. Level five Hearthstones should be useful, after all - they cost five background points. - Dasmen

It sounds to me, however, that the stone was outlawed for being Not Cool - i.e., rather than being Useful, it is a Source Of Infinite Power, and in a lame way (come on, at least make the "helmet with spikes" into a headband - retaining the spikes, of course, to grant yourself Infinite Ammo). I agree that level five hearthstones should be powerful - costing bonus points in addition to background points - but the fact remains that the core hearthstones are more powerful than other published hearthstones, to an arguably unreasonable extent. Essentially, if you want Infinite Power like this, you'd better be prepared to buy level six. ~WillCoon

Somethings are meant to be plot devices. Eye or Autocathon, a stone where you can't die, hello, does grabowski have to spell everything out for the power-gamers!! stroke the ego, go right ahead. Its no fun to play a character that has no consequences. Think up great combos, develop powerful charms, we are all for that. but being a twink is being a twink. and anyway, i hope at least the character with the GoIW somehow got it from Fakaru's wife and didn't just have it from the start or some other petty quest. Now fakaru would be rather pissed and as he is an ancient spirit, good luck! GoIW, heals 1L/turn? if so, just do more than 1L/turn, when they are dead, as everyone always does, loot the body. oh look the stone is gone? not reforming anymore. or have someone steal it! there is always a way to screw the powergamer! Madoka

I refuse to use any more tabs... But I'm replying to Madoka, in the GoIW 'thread'. First, removing the stone doesn't stop them reforming. You must remove it and keep destroying the regenerating body until the attunement fades, typically about an hour. However, I believe that exalted is one of those games where if they so choose, a character may declare: "I do not wish to be hit/hurt/killed/damaged/poisoned/etc". I do not think this aspect should be removed. By all means, it should be carefully regulated, but I think it should be there. Not for -every- character, as it often is in Nobilis, for example, but for those that truly want it and spend the opportunity + cost for it. I would not allow the spikey-headband, because I don't believe it agrees with the fluff - hurting yourself isn't going to provide useful essence or willpower, that's not solar. Abyssal, maybe, but the solar ones certainly seem to be about getting annoyed and then getting even with whomever it was hit you. Also, such spikey accoutremants would cause constant pain, which means constant penalties, unless you're also committing essence to pain-reducing charms. Which has other disadvantages, such as being detected more easily. However, I have digressed from my topic. - Back onto my discussion of characters lacking in standard consequences - Admittedly, characters such as these cannot and (aside from making them look cool every once in a while) should not be opposed in the normal ways. Yet everyone has levers, and they are no exception. Even if they have no friends or families who are dear to them, they have a manse, or a weapon, or somesuch. They can still be captured, and if someone needs to oppose them, their abilities are something to hang a plot around or develop interesting play with, rather than something to be looked down upon as powergaming. If ever a game was meant to let you play such concepts while still having other, lesser powered characters around and involved, it was Exalted. I do not think that aspect should be removed.
-- Darloth

There are ways to deal with toys, agreed! In my first game the way I dealt with a hearthstone-laden Abyssal during our first clash with a strike force of Deathknights was to disarm the fellow, in a catch-it-myself manner, and force 10 motes through the weapon in as fast and discordant manner as possible (our GM allowed me to roll to "force" a botch on the attunement ritual, and it worked -- all 3 Hearthstones in his weapon popped and it wiped the artifact clean of ANY attunement by being badly scoured by Solar Essence; though the artifact was otherwise unharmed, of-course) -- JadeSerpent