Thus Spake Zargrabowski/FightingThePrimordials
The Primordials are dead or imprisoned, and death or imprisonment changed them, so it's not entirely relevant. but here's my thoughts.
How long did the gods train the Exalted for?
How fast do you get XP when the Celestial Incarna are directing your workout routine?
What kind of gear did the soldiers of the Primordial War use?
I mean, say you have an Essence 8-9 Solar and his Essence 8-9 Lunar mate, both in the best warstriders and wielding the best weapons Autocthon could make, both with hundreds of Charms and dozens of Combos, with a support force of 100 Essence 6-7 Dragon-Blooded in mid-grade (for Autocthon) warstriders, with 100 Charms and 20 Combos. All of them have crazy rule-breaking Essence batteries, time to charge up before the fight and the support of magical weapons of mass destruction to help them close with their foes by sweeping away hordes of lesser enemies. Plus the Sidereals are rigging destiny in their favor.
Say you have 300 of those combat detachments -- could they fight the Primordials?
Is that really what it looked like? I dunno, but I mean, it sure could have looked that way. It's entirely plausible from what we know of the setting.
- Do you agree that there is some potential inconsistency (or at least ambiguity) in the current picture of the Exalted/god/Primordial dynamic?
There's plenty of ambiguity. It happened 5,000+ years, 1 apocalypse and a wholesale rewriting of history ago. Everyone involved is dead, irrevocably changed, or a god and not talking. Why again does this issue merit discussion at length in the rules?
- Thanks for the response, GCG!
No problem. I'm sorry to seem like an ass, it's just that there is a fractured sort of logic to what I'm up to, and mostly that's trying to detail the most relevant parts of the game and setting first. That's why the D-B book comes first, FrEx. A history you'll never discover fought by people whose names you'll never learn using weapons you'll never own seems very low on the priority list.
Geoffrey C. Grabowski\\ Exalted Developer, WWGS\\ raindog@white-wolf.com
On 1 Feb 02, at 18:11, Dave and Les Turner wrote:
- As I said in my response to Bryan, I totally understand this. But why not simply *leave* the Exalted line at 5 dice? What if 5 was the max.? That's probably more in line with my pet peeve.
Because I didn't want that? I wanted a clear path to transhuman power outlined by the mechanics (even if it isn't necessarily developed), and I wanted a clear parallel to kuei-jin spiritual development.
- God help me if I ever have to roll this many dice. I had no idea that things could get this crazy. Remind me again why we want stats to go above 5? *joke*
That's why, if do a First Age game, it will have a new mechanic. =) Note the if there, please -- this is really just me talking about ideas I play around with when I'm bored.
- Ok, now THIS is what I mentioned to Deirdre. This is the "killer app" that goes a long way to convincing me that the implications in the text might be the right way to go. If Exalted were much more powerful in the First Age, then the odds even out a bit for the battle with the Primordials.
They were vastly powerful. I dunno if they used mecha in their battles, or what exactly their battle order was. What is sure is that the Celestial Exalts of the First Age were extremely mighty. Canonically, we know they engaged in terraforming, wrested Creation out of Chaos and built vast defensive grids of magical weapons to protect it, created artificial life and commanded spells like Benediction of Archgenesis.
The First Age was not a fantasy setting, though I think its average inhabitant was an "agrarian peasant" in some absurd sense of the word, because their world wasn't based on the need to organize thousands of people to accomplish important tasks, and so they never really industrialized or modernized. They just lived on the Big Rock Candy Mountain courtesy of the Overmen.
- I'll disagree with the "history you'll never discover" bit though. In my campaign, I intend for the PCs TO discover this history, so I want it to be good. :-)
Just make it up. I'm planning on leaving the pre-Usurpation period pretty nebulous.
Geoffrey C. Grabowski\\ Exalted Developer, WWGS\\ raindog@white-wolf.com
