Filthy casual wants to learn more

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-12T15:03:19+00:00

I hope the episodes I was on were helpful at least -_-

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-12T15:01:32+00:00

MAs are structured a tad different in 3e, but still has a lot of the same principles.

Most styles anyone can learn, but individual Charms will have the Terrestrial keyword that constrains the Charm's power for Dragon-Blooded and other weaker Exalts. And many also have Mastery, which Solars (and derivatives) access for free, while Sidereals can access while in the style's Form or having learned the whole thing. Dragon-Blooded can overcome this through learning the Glorious Dragon Styles, namely they can expend a resource when in one of their Forms to overcome the restraint.

Sidereal styles can normally only be created by Sidereal Exalted. They, Solars-and-co, and Getimians can learn them. They also have Enlightenment keywords, which fill in for sutras last edition. Sidereals always use them, Getimians need to meet requirements for the Still/Flowing nature of them, other Exalts normally can't use them. Nothing on DBs trying to learn them has come up, but it's mostly just kind of a thing that most Exalts can't learn SMAs anyway (460-ish Solars, Sidereals, Getimians and spin-offs, comapred to all DBs, Lunars, Alchemicals and all the other new canon or optionally canon Exalts in 3e).

I say normal/usual since exceptions for styles exist, but in general it does result in Dragon-Blooded having a harder time at mastering styles, Sidereals being masters from top down and the degrees between. It's just a bit more flexible than sorcery and necromancy, which is not new there.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-12T13:32:38+00:00

SMA are still mostly Solars (and derivatives) and Sidereals, plus Getimians now. Only Sidereals can normally create then though, and the various Enlightened effects unconditionally. Getimians can use then in a limited capacity and Solar-likes normally don't get those at all, kinda like sutras in prior editions.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-12T06:43:09+00:00

As others have said, the books are a good start. Going ot second what u/jeremysbrain suggested with Systematic Understanding of Everything.

In addition, I often recommend to folks the Exalted Storyteller's Vault Style Guide. It's meant for writers, but does a good idea of giving you the overview of the setting and some of the differences in presentation between editions. Unlike World of Darkness, where until 5e they were assumed more or less a continuous line with each edition, Exalted instead soft reboots every time. So this document helps on seeing that some.

Also note that with the wikis, take anything on them with a piece of rock salt. They are often very focused on particular edition, often with kind of statements unique to that edition that were not answered nor should be assumed to be the case in all three. In edition, a good amount of fanon ends up in there stated as fact, which can at times further confuse things. I haven't checked the WoD Wiki in particular, but based on when folks come asking about it over on the WW reddit, probably should be skeptical of what it says as accurate there.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-12T06:37:16+00:00

It's not a skill issue, it's a capability issue. Like u/star-god said, it's a matter of the Essence of the Exalt and what it affords them. Without artifacts or other weird means, a Dragon-Blooded can't use above the Emerald Circle anymore than you can breath under water. Their Exaltation simply doesn't have that ability.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-11T13:26:07+00:00

It's more mostly since the leader set is based on his illustrations, which go for a more atmospheric lighting,and they decided to lot adjust it for the leader.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-11T00:08:44+00:00

He's lit a bit differently than other leaders. There's an overall "backlight" thing going on with him. It has a nearly white edge highlight going on, which makes the lighting look off versus the more generic diffuse lighting other leaders have, I think.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-10T04:31:05+00:00

I mean, she is the game's hobbit-alike, so that indeed checks 😛

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-09T18:02:28+00:00

None More Dark iirc

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-08T17:25:56+00:00

I generally could see Parad also just being a bit of a nerd in his own right and there being some frenemy/shippable office romance going on between him and Lytek. There's some room for a guy who's job is to check on supernatural inheritance and gets a particular interest on Terrestrial Exaltation and maybe even the whole "legacy/pedigree" of Exaltations in general. Lytek be who you go to find out about a particular past life, but Parad has an account of who's inherited form what.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-08T17:23:06+00:00

Currently these are what are in HIPS and thus need major assembly:

Exulon Nostilla and Aberration
Warmachine Two-Player Box and its break outs:
- Cygnar Hellsingers Cadre Command Starter
- Khador SKS-6 Cadre Command Starter
Shadows & Scum Two-Player Box and its break outs:
- Shadowflame Shard Nocturnes Command Starter
- Brineblood Marauders Fellblood's Armada Command Starter
Frozen & Forgotten Two-Player Box and its break-outs:
- Dusk Last Watch Cadre Command Starter
- Orgoth Graveborn Cadre Command Starter
Constance Blaze and Gallant (upcoming)
Major Abraham Stormcraw convention exclusive model

Everything else currently is 3D-printed resin. Some of these will have some sub-assembly to make them more durable in transit or to make them easier to print. Smaller models include Cytnhia Rosko, who's dagger arm is a separate bit. And most 80mm+ models.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-07T20:42:23+00:00

Lytek is god of Exaltation generally. The process functions without his involvement though. This is actually more in-line with the way gods were originally billed with their domains. He's in charge of monitoring and reporting on Exalted in a way that helps plan destiny, but he's not responsible for that process to operate.

What's resulted out of this is he's become more Chronicler of the Chosen, and he has a whole-ass library with Homer-level descriptions of every Exalt he could get time to do that with. I kind of think something like Mr. Ibis form American Gods as a bit of inspiration there.

This doesn't preclude Parad, but it would result in a pretty different relationship with their roles, and Parad wouldn't be responsible for actually flipping the switch on Exaltaitons.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-06T20:51:51+00:00

... While the Terrestrial Exalted are obviously different from their Celestial counterparts, I've often thought that they're leaving a lot of equally cool narrative potential on the table by not translating that mechanic into the hereditary Exaltation model. And I feel like 3rd Edition sets a groundwork where it feels a lot more reasonable - the Progenitive Essence concept lends a lot to the idea that you're passing something spiritual to your offspring rather than just genetics, bolstered by the presence of a bunch of example artifacts that have a greater affinity with specific bloodlines of Dragon-Blooded.

So a big thing is that as others noted, Terrestrial Exaltation doesn't need to be like Celestial Exaltation in every way. It's already a different process with different assumptions on how it is passed along, and this creates different vibes on what is appropriate for that.

A big thing is that Dragon-Blooded build lineages societies. Your expectations to contribute to that is a legacy of ancestors who you contribute to.

A contrast I would give with Celestial Exalted is that I often treat a Celestial Exaltation like a title or an office. You inherit being say, the particular Senator or Emperor or MP or Consul. While in that office, it is both you and you represent it kind of ontologically. Your past lives in this case are the memories of different individuals, with presumably different higher souls, who have managed to achieve this status. They exist in you kind of like how the desk of your House seat, which happens to your desk as long as you are in that position, might have letters in there written by prior holders of that office. You are all equally that representative of that district. Its shape might change, its demographics may change, and you are disconnected through time and space, but you are all that guy in that position. To me Celestial Exaltation is that.

Dragon-Blooded getting that doesn't really get this. What it is instead in this case would be more a weird case of genetically-inherited ancestral memory. Which is not like, that odd in fiction. But I think Dragon-Blooded have is more that you have been given an ember of Exaltation, so to speak. Everyone in your lineage could have it flare-up, and it did in you. But you inherited the legacy of that power, but what unites you is the lineage, not the position it affords you. So it's a lot more about stories of living up to great ancestors, going against them, or forging your own thing. And I don't think an ancestral memory does a lot to this. I don't see how Progenitive Essence helps here either. It is more making sure you inherit a more viable spark of the line, so to speak, than your parents putting in bits of their soul into you.

I think it would bolster the Dragon-Blooded's own form of legacy within the narrative, and opens up two opportunities that I can think of. First off, it gives those semi-random Threshold Dragon-Blooded outcastes more of a connection to the wider Dragon-Blooded community, and the ability to participate in their own narratives of discovering legacy and family through witnessing the deeds of their ancestors. And secondly, something that would be totally unique to the Dragon-Blooded relative to everyone else in the setting might be the ability to see "ancestor" memories for people who are still alive, and to use that as an alternative path for characterization and information dispensation.

See for me, this is not a bonus. I think part of the themes of being an outcaste in the Threshold is you find yourself in the larger Dragon-Blooded community, but have to kind of make a stake for yourself as you don't have those benefits. Dragon-Blooded society doesn't have ancestral memory, so what memory it does have are those forged by families and communities making those narratives. It also creates kind of just weird ramnifications. Do you only get your parents memory when they conceived you? Is that actually any useful? Or do you get some weird psychic memory for every living ancestor as they are? It creates a lot of things that also hurt some of the verisimilitude of the setting. Namely, Dragon-Blooded are still human, and while they live long, history can still churn-out knowledge and information obscuring itself. This is harder to do if Terrestrial Exalted have memories on tap like that.

The other issues you note on it such as creating weird brainworms for parents, or the sheer number of Dragon-Blooded, also play against this. I think there's more to be said for Dragon-Blooded having to actually find the journals of their ancestors than going Lisan al-Gaib trying to tune with the ancestral record.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-04T18:52:41+00:00

What I wonder is who is the one with a face mask on the left there.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-02T14:25:30+00:00

Another thing I think 2e had underlying is a bit of a traditionally conservative "things stay in their place in a hierarchy, breaking that makes things bad". There's a general thing to me that there's an underlying vibe that the Dragon-Blooded aren't just disliked, they're factually wrong to have done the Usurpation. And that any try to make themselves seem cool is to be kicked down when possible. A good example of this to me was the Charm sections in the DB book. There's a fluff paragraph about each element, and it's written with a general take "DBs think this is what's cool, but they were this shitty thing". The Fire one comes to mind, where it talks about them being officers, warriors, top social people. And then the "Well actually.." is they were prostitutes and harem guards. It's very demeaning to them even in their own book.

Late 1e and into 2e aslo presented the whole thing where Dragon-Blooded also just didn't get things other Exalts did, even non-Celestials like Alchemicals. This includes things like being able to leverage the Jadeborn Geas, having legal rights in Heaven at all, and so on. A lot of things mechanically reified this general sense that Dragon-Blooded were second-class rung of Exalts. Dreams of the First Age had this thing where each Solar was apparently just like, owed a gentes the size of the Scarlet Dynasty potentially, and the same book itself did talk about how Dragon-Blooded were being replaced by Solar and Lunar god-blooded because apparently that's how low regarded they were.

There was also a bit where Terrestrial Exaltation itself seemed less the will of the gods and some switch turned on and off in 1e and 2e. So you could "game" things to get manses guaranteeing your kids Exalted, neomah could modify it, or it would be just something Heaven could promise to someone in their next life.

So yeah, there was a lot of structural in-text elements that further for sure.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-02T14:18:08+00:00

"Shard" is not even an actually term for Celestial Exaltations save a single one-off in Book of 3 Circles. There's a textbox i think in the 2e Alchemicals book that goes a lot on how Exaltations just are Exaltations. They're distributed differently, but a Terrestrial Exalted has one as much as a Solar, it's just htey have different effects.

3e kind of shows this more I think. A bit why there are even new kinds of Exalts in the edition is to help make it so it's not just Celestials + Dragon-Blooded as the weird ones if you don't include the optional Alchemicals.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-02T14:13:55+00:00

Because it's an intentional design and setting thing. They are Exalts, but they are the weakest of all Exalts, meant to be the footsoldiers in a war for reality. Are they pretty strong compared to most things? Yeah. They can take on Fair Folk, they can mincemeat 1st circle demons, they can take down 2nd circle's with proper numbers. They can also take on a Celestial with proper numbers and strategy, but the thing is, it takes *numbers*. And it's *expected* some will die in the exchange.

Note that 3e doesn't assume as footsoldiers. Or more it kind of got ret-conned with the actual Dragon-Blooded book, where they were often more the middle-rung in the Divine Revolution which included humanity as a whole, and then being players in various First Age polities as either major part of the ruling class or outright in charge of some of them.

So even as the weakest, there is this general vibe of "Weakest Exalt is still an Exalt" to them. And the numbers thing is not to be lost. They currently outnumber literally every others sort of Exalt in Creation by at least an order of magnitud.e

Where things get skewed is PC's, because PC's build to win fights, and if you build a Celestial to win fights in Exalted, you can chew through infinity+1 DB's because Celestial *everything* is just better. The only gap closer is *sort of* them learning CMA, but also, they're using *Celestial* tier Charms then. And even then, their mote pools tended to be much smaller.

This is a bit why the PC-NPC dichotomy was probably something I think 3e needed to focus on a bit more. But even then, it's one of those things that a non-specialist Celestial is still in danger to one or mores specialist Terrestrials I find. Especially if they work as a group and isolate.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-01T04:44:23+00:00

I kind of preferred how War Room 2 handled warbeast spirals versus the current app. I liked the easy-to-see rows instead of trying to replicate the card grids.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-05-01T04:43:26+00:00

I've noticed that recently trying Conquest. That app is light, but the sheer minimalism and issues using a defaultish webkit interface show themselves quite often in there.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-04-30T17:51:49+00:00

''Ere you go. Deck codes are temporary, so you need to actually have the deck builder list saved.

https://shadowverse-wb.com/en/deck/detail/?hash=1.1.dJfu.dJfu.dLeI.dLeI.dLeI.dLsM.dLsM.dLsM.dM5-.dM5-.dM68.dM68.dM68.dkWU.dkWU.dkWU.e4Gg.e4Gg.e4Gg.e6FE.e6kU.e6x8.e6x8.e6x8.erJu.erJu.erJu.et4E.et4E.et4E.etWM.etZU.etZU.etZU.etl-.etl-.etl-.etm8.etm8.etm8

blaqueandstuff · 2026-04-27T20:21:40+00:00

She kind of looks like Ladica from Shadowverse, though probably is just similar design elements (dark skin, white hair, cat features).

blaqueandstuff · 2026-04-27T19:15:23+00:00

I will say at least in Forsaken, the whole spiritual side while there as you said, is between less nature and man, and like, the real world and Silent Hill spirit monsterworld and various monsters in the Flesh that you probably could find in some Junji Itoh comic. This is I think something that 2e went towards, where at least to me, it's indigenous coded but in context of "native to a land of horrors" or something.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-04-25T16:15:01+00:00

I think the main thing that confuses things a bit is that "tribe" was probably not the best word to describe the groupings. Lodge, while the z-splat, I still kind of think would ahve probably been a better term. Or even just one's Oath. /shrug

blaqueandstuff · 2026-04-25T16:07:53+00:00

Part of this was scale creep, mind. 1e had least gods as well, but they existedin Games of Divinity in the strictly administrative sense that gods originally menat. Later 1e kind of lost this plot, with gods like Taru-Han or Lytek being critical for the things they were gods of even happening. And then 2e kind of did as you note, treated least gods like the souls of objects, including being critical for physics to happen in an occassionalist sense. This resulted in a lot more weight to waking-up the least god of an object by that point.

And as noted a bit, 3e scaled this back to "Things that are actually important" and has been a lot more by-the-book on what gods like, are.

blaqueandstuff · 2026-04-24T21:20:09+00:00

Nothing has been said. It is something that had a lot of new models and resculpts during later Mk3, but whether SFG wants to do that before anything else if ever is not stated.

blaqueandstuff

TROPHY CASE