Exalted's Overall Power Levels

Cryoseraph

Cryoseraph

Junior Member
So a thought occurred to me just a little while ago. In the fluff of Exalted a lot of effort is put into separating Celestial Exalted from the Terrestrials is levels of power. But at this point, six of the seven Exalted types are Celestials, while only Dragonblooded are at the Terrestrial level. Underneath the Dragon-Bloods has a similar spread, as the 'heroic mortal' level includes all types of God-bloods, Dragon Kings, and Mountain Folk. I don't know Fair Folk well enough to classify them, but they range from mortal dangers to prime enemies for Solars, so I'm guessing a bit above DB levels.


The power level is reflected in both Sorcery and Martial Arts. DBs access the Terrestrial powers regularly, and can access Celestial levels with effort (MA) or with artifact-level bonuses (Sorc). Mortals must go through efforts to access just Terrestrial levels, as do most of the lower Essence channelers. Celestials rightly get easy-enough access to Celestial powers, with each set then getting special access to their specialties (MA, Sorcery, Necromancy), while the specialties of others lie in the tough-as-nails area to get. So DBs are the only ones left to drool over generic Celestial powers while mastering the Terrestrial levels quickly enough.


So what gives? Did they theorize other Terrestrial levels way back when but never thought any up? Have they gone back on that level-system and just want to bump up DBs higher than some god-blooded boy? Or am I missing some vast power set that easily makes one of the lower groups peers with the Dragon-Blooded? Should Alchemicals have maybe been Terrestrials, but they gave them too much juice to call them that after they were written?
 
The point of the fluff is that there are masses of DB in Creation (more than 10.000 in the fallen second age, millions in earlier eras), whereas there are only app. 150 Solars, 50 GSP and 100 Deathknights, as well as 300 Lunars and 100 Siddies.


As for different types of terrestrial exalted, fluff-wise the elemental castes of the DB are described to be vastly more different from each other than the castes of the celestial are...hence the 1 mote elemental surcharge on non-aligned DB charms. This would come across better if they went for thematic elemental charms in the way of GSP charms than the ability based ones we have now...
 
Shaped Fae Nobles can challenge a Terrestrial, but will more than likely get splatted by an advanced Celestial, unless they are kitted out to the T, and even then they might go squish. Unshaped are a little nastier, and a little more nebulous.
 
I agree from the fluff standpoint that Terrestrials easily out-number the Celestials, but the Celestials have in Creation (not including Autocthon) 700 different guys in Canon, but 28 different types of them through various Castes. And out of the 10,000 Terrestrials, only five aspects. No one else gets the term Aspect applied but them. The Celestial Exalted are all written in such a way to bring them all into a group, a kind of higher brotherhood. They even have Lytek to watch over them (not opening up any cans of worms involving him, just saying he exists to add fluff to the Celestial process.) Dragon-Blooded, being the only Terrestrial Exalted, only have each other. Even in large numbers, the diversity is much less. The god of Inherited Might, Parad, is much less powerful than Lytek, and he does not even control when the Dragon-Blooded get their powers. This almost reflects the lack of oomph that DBs have compared to Celestials. While part of this oomph is power, and is rightfully lower, a lot of it is also individuality and style, which does not need to be nearly so lacking.


Would expanding on the aspects help? Would adding aspects help? Should the Deathlords make Corpse Element Terrestrials? Should Vitriol-aspects get made? Can Steam, Lightning, or Oil Terrestrials come out of Autochton too along with the Alchemicals?


What throws me off is maybe the stance made for Alchemicals being the lowest strength of Celestial power vs. being a stronger form of Terrestrial power. They are created en-masse, come from the people, and seem to share a lot of style of camraderie with the large group of DBs. But they are made the peers of Solars, Lunars, etc. instead, figures who are easier seen as individual heroes, almost clashing against the 'for the people' of Alchemicals.


Would it have hurt Alchemicals to treat them more like the DBs? Did they need God-Machine Protocols (Celestial Sorcery) specifically so bad? Or could they have been fine, if not better, with their powers leaning towards the cooperative styles of the only Terrestrial Exalted?


Because, really, who doesn't want those robot Exalted to transform together into one awesome attack or similar situation?
 
I have to admit, I don't really see what it is you are trying get across...


On a small note, Lytek is the god of all exaltations, Terrestial included.
 
QuasiMortuus said:
I have to admit, I don't really see what it is you are trying get across...
On a small note, Lytek is the god of all exaltations, Terrestial included.
Click to expand...
Really I just want to hear people's thoughts on the power levels, with hope towards the focus of the discussion being on Terrestrial power levels.


Lytek is kind of a side-note, but all his focus is really on the Celestial Exaltations, as the Dragon-Blooded Exaltations don't get re-used, so require little to no effort on his part. The fact that there is a god made to handle 'inherited power', and that he used to be the rival/peer of Lytek, but no longer is (all that according to the Yu-Shan book, Parad is on 148-149) means that the potential is there for bigger and better things from DBs at least.
 
You know, I think the bit about Parad and Lytek is just not particularly well thought out on the writer's part.


That said, I was really hoping in second edition they'd rein in the alchemicals to be a lot more terrestrial in flavor and power level. I just don't feel like we needed another set of celestrial exalts. It really does feel like the writers initially planned to have more terrestrial exalt types, but changed their mind a little ways through the process of the first book.


I also kind of dislike that a lot of the things for dragon-bloods to do as players is learn things that make them more like celestrial exalts. There's maybe a little too much focus on martial arts and sorcery for my taste.
 
Well, other than easy access to directly tiered effects (MA and Pseudo-Sorcery), the only difference between Bottom of the Celestials and Top of the Terrestrials is the phrasing.
 
Much as I love Alchemicals (favourite splat), I do agree that they would fit the Terrestrial level better. Not just in how the exaltation works, but thematically they are based around more terrestrial concepts (the magical materials, industry) than celestial ones (the sun, perfection, the moon etc.).


I've also always thought that the current thematics for Lunars would work better at the Terrestrial level. If you took away all the references to a Celestial Body, renaming them the Feral Exalted or something, and then made a new Exalt type for the moon (maybe based around trickery, madness, and fluidity), then it would be better. You could have a trio of Terrestrial Exalt types, one based around the elements that make up Creation (Dragon-Bloods), one around the magical materials found within it (Alchemicals), and one around the life it spawns (Feral/Bestial).


I do also think that Raksha should either be upped in power-level, or a new class of them should be made, to compete at Celestial tier, providing a good challenge to Lunars and Sidereals, and at least an obstacle to a Solaroid, rather than the mere nuisances they are now.
 
I am glad I'm not the only one who sees the Alchemicals commonality with the DBs. It kind of makes me want to just drop their higher protocol charm and find a way to add cooperative-type charms to their repertoire. I can't remember off hand, do they have any direct attack style charms? Or would that be worthless with how many artifacts they always have?


My stance on the tier is kind of what started this too, but only because the DBs are struggling to hit a Celestial power through Martial Arts, while everyone else skips ahead as easy as can be.


Lunars being at a Terrestrial level sounds kind of weird to me, but if they could breed out via beastmen, I could see it. Heck, I want to see the rules for proper Half-Caste Beastmen put up to make it easier to create them. Give them the God-Body power or whatever its called and they can have a human and battle-form, just like their mama/papa.


And finally, I agree wholeheartedly that putting out a bit of Raksha scale would help tons. They are a terror during the Contagion sure, but they were also supposed to be the biggest daily threat to the First Age. And I just don't see the oomph that these battles sounded like. To be fair, those were sweeping tides of them, so maybe just figuring out some War-level glamours would cover it for describing such epic abilities. I'd still like to see the Fair Folk that challenged the Solars head-to head and threatened the Unconquered Sun himself before the Solars came to be.
 
The way that Alchemicals stride the divide of Terrestrial and Celestial power is no surprise. They are supposed to at the bottom end of Celestial power the way that Solaroids represent the top tier of Celestial power. On the mechanics side, you might be pleased to know that Dragon Blooded are to get Overdrive Charm tech now. Originally they weren't but the Ink Monkey crew have changed their thinking on that. Fair Folk were never really intended to be a an exalted tier threat they might have been somewhat of a danger in the far reaches of the expanded Creation in the First Age to mortals that got careless but not to the Exalted. They were a threat during the Contagion because of a lot of extenuating circumstances that doesn't really have to do with the raw power of the Raksha. Consider that the Solars are said to have the potential to surpass the Primordials and writers have described the relationship of the Primordials in the Wyld and the Fair Folk as whale swimming through so much krill.
 
I'm still not entirely sure what the original poster is after here, but if the idea is to find more "terrestrial level" entities in the game, you might look at my (unfinished and untested) article on Wraiths.
 
I always thought the idea of Terrestrials per Primordial realms would be a cool idea -- considering how elemental (heheh, see what I did there. Heh. I'm clever.) DBs' powers are, adapting them to the aesthetics and themes of the Underworld, Autochthonia, Malfeas, &c shouldn't be too difficult. This might be a way to create more diversity in the Terrestrial Exalted rank.


Alternately, I once played with the idea of Heroic Exalted suggested in the 1E Autochthonians book. They would be the bottommost level among the Exalted, with seriously limited Charm set, though tremendously gifted in terms of martial arts. Sort of like Sidereals Lite, maybe? I found the idea cool enough, but never really did work on it (like most of my projects...).
 
Wouldn't most 1st Circle and some 2nd Circle Demons, along with Ghosts in general, be on par with most Terrestrials?
 
I like these extra thoughts a bunch. The Wraiths seem intriguing, though a lot more ambitious than I would have been, as my current ideas for Underworld DBs is just Terrestrial Mirrors for the most part. That and since they're mostly NPC antagonist level for any games I'm thinking of at the moment, I can skirt the need for more in-depth. But I like seeing that level of detail for the expansion of Terrestrials.


Dragon-Blooded getting overdrive charms does sound neat, as their low pools is always keeping them behind any chance of challenging most larger powers. Which fold into the next issue of theirs, how they handle Demons, Ghosts and angry Gods. The biggest problem for them is they basically can't normally. Out of the DB book, the only ones who can handle spirits smart enough to dematerialize and pick away at DBs are the Immaculate monks, mostly because they can hit the insubstantial ones still. Granted, !,000 Correct Actions might have given them lots of fun new charms, but I don't remember any of them helping them out on this front. Which is odd, as they were probably the ones fighting off hordes of 2nd Circles 'demons' and the like in the Primordial War, you'd think they had some basic power to keep spirits down permanent-like.


Spreading out the Terrestrial love to other realms does seem easy enough. 4-5 in the Underworld (Void seems iffy to me as a Terrestrial level concept, but them what to do with Earth Aspects?) Vitriol and maybe worse from Malfeas, and a good 6 elements from Autochtonia. And remember, all of the living types of can have elemental formed from them easily enough as well, which can lead to God-blooded forms of them as well, so more angles on how to bring these powers into play.


Though I weep for the poor woman that gets stuck birthing a half-vitriol baby.
 
Its funny that people think that Autochton will make his choosen at Terrestrials level. Fluff-wise which white-wolf focus on more than system, it doesn't make any sense that Autochton makes terrestrial level of exalted since he needs them not only watch over people but over his own body too. Also Autochton escaped from creation what if solars or gods find him while he is asleep? Could Terrestrial level exalted really protect him and people lives on him. From many fluff-point alchemicals as celestial power level with huge numbers make more sense.
 
Taking into account when Autocthon left, I could see the point to having a group powerful enough to handle Celestial level Exalted eventually coming in and causing trouble. And being able to produce more Exalts than the originals would give Auto' the numbers advantage.


Just to play Devil's advocate though, Terrestrials had their main strength in numbers, and the other known Primordial to be involved in Exaltation (Gaia) helped to make the Dragon-Blooded, via her sub-souls. And in the Gaian theme, they increase numbers by breeding and multiplying. If Autochton followed a similar style, but with his own theme, you could naturally build new Exalted to continue the increased power. Heck, if Autochton had had some way to see the Usurpation in action and learn from it, he would have realized the power of numbers can still outweigh the power of a mighty few. The level of cooperative charms and other combinatorial ideas for powers is still a great theme lacking from Alchemicals, and only really found in Dragon-Bloods. So is it just a sad cosmic fluke, like two ships almost crashing into each other in the dark, but never seeing each other.


Hmm, this makes me want to have the Alchemicals bump into the Realm or a strong DB brotherhood first, and then LEARN.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who are viewing this thread

Total: 2 (members: 0, guests: 2)
Back
Top