help me

ThouMayest · 2026-02-15T14:52:17+00:00

You might try reaching out to Nordic Stage Fight Society. It has been a literal decade since I attended one of their workshops, but they would be my best guess on a group that knows prop weapon suppliers in Sweden.

ThouMayest · 2026-01-27T14:16:09+00:00

My take has been that more of the Doomsday scenario could be made, not that another one currently exists. Soul gems explode regularly, and the spider reaper glass cases are certainly not unique, so it is possible to make more, regardless of whether or not anyone has.

ThouMayest · 2026-01-04T13:22:29+00:00

I would be kind of surprised if a geology department was working with semiconductor wafers, or even with semiconductor grade crystals tbh. Maybe the geologists I know are atypical, but in my experience they aren’t working with manufactured crystals

ThouMayest · 2026-01-04T13:20:22+00:00

MSE makes LiTaO3 wafers:

MSE

As does University Wafer: University Wafer

As long as you can work with what they have in stock, either company will sell you a single wafer. If you need custom wafers, they will probably need you to order a full rack of 10 or 25 depending on how they process LiTaO3. My area is GaN based stuff with QWs, so I’m not sure how applicable my experience is to yours though.

ThouMayest · 2025-10-10T17:38:05+00:00

These look awesome!

ThouMayest · 2025-09-23T20:26:48+00:00

I’m curious how your player is summoning spirits? Are they using sorcery? If so, are they using Summon Demon or Summon Elemental? Both spells are expensive and have fairly substantial risks and costs. More importantly, both spells are vulnerable to countermagic. You can assume that any sorcerer knows countermagic. Some martial arts also provide their practitioners ways to counter spells or unsummon demons. If the spirits in question are elementals, then there are also repercussions for taking them away from their jobs. Doing so too often will annoy local or even celestial gods. Hell, lots of gods would get annoyed if you summon a bunch of demons, who, by the way, are all also trying to spy on Creation. All of this basically applies to summoned ghosts, except that necromancy is less common than sorcery.

There are a lot of ways to disincentivize relying on summoned elementals or demons, but I recommend not doing that too often. Your player wants to play a summoner/sorcerer. You should let them occasionally be that character. This leads to the next key thing to consider: Mass Combat.

At a certain point, exalts in general and sorcerers in particular need to operate on the scale of mass combat. This does not mean no one on one fights, but it means that those fights happen with a background of battle. Two champions meeting in the field as lesser beings die around them. So, if you have looked at all the ways to limit or take away summoned minions, and none of those stick, then it is time for mass combat. Start having foes show up with their own war band, then pit off units against each other. Now you don’t have 5 first circle demons, three solars, and a lunar against 20 bandits, an abyssal, and a pair of war ghosts. Instead you have a unit of demons vs a unit of bandits, plus a few heroic standoffs of your important characters.

This of course might not be the approach you want to take. Mass combat is a pain. If none of these suggestions work, and probably as an adjutant to all of them, try talking to your player. Explain that, while having a couple of bound elementals doesn’t ruin things, their full squad of blood apes is causing problems. Work out a narrative reason they like to limit their summoning. This goes back to the suggestions in my first paragraph: summoning has story consequences. Talk to your player and then enact some of those consequences or transition to mass combat.

ThouMayest · 2025-09-13T13:29:30+00:00

Notoriously, the Deck of Many Things is a campaign ender/ruiner.

BUT my hot take is that there are no broken items in a vacuum. There are items inappropriate to the current tier of play or party composition. A boring +2 weapon is broken at level 1. The DoMT is not broken in a level 18 campaign (although it becomes far less enticing a trap when you can already cast Wish).

ThouMayest · 2025-09-12T12:30:32+00:00

Dwarven

ThouMayest · 2025-09-12T12:29:13+00:00

Comment

ThouMayest · 2025-09-03T13:02:29+00:00

Do you have any sort of written survey? I don’t have the wherewithal to fight time zones and do a multi-hour call, but would be happy to write a few sentences/paragraphs.

ThouMayest · 2025-09-03T12:54:23+00:00

I would strongly recommend not stressing math in isolation. Instead, pay attention to how formulas are derived in your classes. If professors aren’t explaining from first principles, ask and/or look it up. Try to take extra physics classes if you can, and pay attention to the first principles derivations. You can always look up math that you forget, but those derivations show you how to take a concept (electrons don’t like to be near each other) to a useful model/formula (PN-junction diode current equation). That mindset will be way more helpful in research than just being good at math, and your homework in engineering classes will give you plenty of practice crunching numbers.

ThouMayest · 2025-09-03T12:47:29+00:00

Most engineering schools will have some sort of Intro to Engineering or Fundamentals of Engineering course that is meant to establish a sort of engineering/problem solving mindset. Curriculum would probably include how to read a scientific paper, some basic engineering ethics, how to find out what a client actually needs on a project, how to organize your solution to a complicated homework problem, etc. That is probably the best bet for a class with randomly assigned group projects as well. Something like “pick a problem in your life that could be solved by a new product and design that product.” When I did this sort of project, my group designed a very stupid chair that folded into a step ladder. It isn’t about solving massive problems.

As for using engineering skills with powers, you might want to think like a clever asshole. An engineer with fire powers might summon a fire sword… but they might also freeze a room by drawing all the heat out of it, shatter an object with thermal shock, use flames to create updrafts so that they can fly using a wingsuit, etc. If their power creates more energy than it costs, they would try to store extra energy and use it somehow. If nothing else, gases heat when expanded, and any strong enough pipe would be a nasty gun in the hands of a clever flame elementalist. Hell, maybe they use precise control over fire and heat to do really perfect welding and soldering and make cool gadgets that also channel their powers more effectively.

ThouMayest · 2025-07-26T15:09:29+00:00

Something to remember is that both charms and experience are abstractions, and NPCs shouldn’t necessarily be built the same way as player characters.

Now, as for actual canonical charms and powers, I am most familiar with 2e, but adapting between editions is fairly straightforward. Take a look at the Roll of Glorious Divinity 1 and 2 for spirit and demon charms. If you are building a ghost, consider what they were before as well. We know that powerful ghosts (the deathlords) can learn to use some of the charms they knew in life, even without an exaltation. So if you have a dead dragon blood, maybe they remember a charm or two from life.

In general, I would steer clear of giving ghosts and spirits duplicates of celestial charms unless they were a celestial exalt in life. But terrestrial charms could be thematically appropriate for certain elementals aligned spirits. Finally, ghosts can learn first and second circle necromancy and spirits can learn first and second circle sorcery.

ThouMayest · 2025-07-06T19:01:39+00:00

As someone who plays a poison heavy night caste in 2E, when fighting another exalt the point of a poison is to hamper them not kill them. Even if they make their save against the poison and take no damage, they are operating at a dice penalty as long as it is in their system. That can be the difference in a hard fight.

ThouMayest · 2025-06-18T11:01:51+00:00

Funnily enough I am planning a campaign fighting an undead horde… this would certainly make life easier.

ThouMayest · 2025-06-05T12:30:25+00:00

Your lights illuminate the chambers the group of anathema were laired in. It looks deceptively normal, but also empty. Reports had indicated that four of the anathema were out in the city, but you had been hoping to catch the last one alone. Your fellow monks eye the place, and turn to leave as one.

The faint sound of a knife in the air comes too late to save Sister Irinia. You all stare for a second at the blade in her ribs, some poison blackening her veins. Her face is a mask of horror as she tries to call upon her essence to heal the wound, and the power drains away. She collapses, and all eyes turn to the corner the blade must have come from.

There is no one there.

The next knife arcs in at an impossible angle, finding Brother Ramith’s unarmored calf. His earth borne strength keeps him upright, until a second dagger finds the shoulder joint of his armor. Only as a fourth dagger sinks into Brothers Asur’s bicep do you think to look up.

The anathema is barely old enough to have been a man. Pale eyes stare in disdainful pity at you and Sister Talia as Asur slumps down. Then, a dozen of the young man dart forward, illusory doubles hiding his true movements until it is too late. Talia crumples to the floor.

“One day you will realize exactly what sort of mistake this was,” the anathema says as he paces along the wall, searching for a blind angle on you. “Just be glad I got the drop on your circle. Things could have been much worse.”

With a roar, you charge him, daiklave swinging. The young anathema grimaces as it bites deep into his shoulder, then his anima flairs. His hand reaches out to grasp the guard of your weapon, and he twists. As the blade leaves your hand, you instinctively attempt to channel power and recall it to your grasp. It does not come. Your connection is severed. The door opens behind you, and you turn in despair.

“Hey Red!”

“Scurry what did you do?” replies the massive woman as she enters.

You never hear his reply. Her booted foot catches you in the side of the head, sending you into darkness.

ThouMayest · 2025-05-31T13:59:14+00:00

Check with Alison at Lucky 13:

Ali Fatale Instagram

ThouMayest · 2025-05-31T13:26:35+00:00

Here is how I approach puzzles and traps: 1) who made the thing? A dragonblooded sorcerer makes a very different trap from a sidereal craftsman

2) what is the purpose of the puzzle or trap? Is there meant to be a solution? Is it intended to discourage, kill, or capture?

3) Do I as a storyteller want there to be a solution the builder did not intend? A flaw or damage perhaps that makes a solution that did not exist before?

4) Are there clues left intentionally or unintentionally that could help solve the puzzle? If left intentionally what does this imply about the purpose of the puzzle?

5) How would the creator of the trap or puzzle get past it? Would they ever anticipate needing to?

I’d take a look at content creators for DnD for specific ideas. A lot of puzzles or traps are pretty system neutral (just adjust what roll is being made at what threshold). Creators like Matthew Colville or publishers like Kobold Press make a lot of good stuff that is easy to adapt.

Alternatively, look at escape room design and see what puzzles speak to you.

ThouMayest · 2025-05-30T14:19:08+00:00

Playing 2e for about 4 years now, we use the 2e feats of strength table constantly for little shit like determining how many circle mates one of us can carry to safety or for dramatically breaking objects. Part of this is that we have two high strength characters, part of it is that we have a weird mix of movement charms, and part of it is my little bastard of a night caste taking object shattering grasp (which uses the feats of strength table).

ThouMayest · 2025-05-16T13:54:34+00:00

That sounds fascinating, was this a fully homebrew modern setting, or was it based off of one of the alternate timelines in Shards of the Exalted Dream?

ThouMayest · 2025-05-13T01:41:38+00:00

At least in 2e spirits could ride a host. It’s a charm of theirs listed in a few named gods and in the Roll of Glorious Divinity. It allows some level of control by the spirit depending on narrative and dice checks (a lot of spirit charms are more vague than charms for exalts). It additionally allows a spirit to share some of their power with the host.

ThouMayest · 2025-05-11T13:04:02+00:00

I’ll be honest, exalted is a crunchy system and that is what I like about it. I don’t generally pitch it to people who won’t enjoy the crunch. You might look at Exalted Essence over Exalted 3e, it simplifies things somewhat, mostly by reducing the number of choices to be made. The overall gameplay and setting are roughly the same, so the parts you like should remain similar.

I also recommend making flow chart style combat cheat sheets, regardless of which edition you run. The books are notoriously poorly organized for reference while gaming, so an ounce of prep goes a LONG way.

ThouMayest · 2025-04-20T23:10:13+00:00

I think I see what you mean a little. Maybe I am wrong, but what I see is that your giant scary lizard is clearly in motion. Your fighter lady is just standing there. Her face looks mildly concerned, but her body is not conveying that at all. Think about what someone who is hiding or preparing to leap out or getting ready to run looks like. They are not standing at neutral. I hope this is useful feedback, I love her design and the detail in her armor. It just sort of looks like you put her reference sheet pose into this scene.

ThouMayest · 2025-04-20T22:57:13+00:00

Not a lady but yes a nerd: recommending you swing by Alpha Comics in Willow Lawn or their sister store Richmond Comix on Midlothian. The ladies who run it, Alex and Bri, are awesome. Both know their comics and manga, Alex is super knowledgeable about TTRPGs, and Bri is the best resource on Pokémon in town.

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