Heroic Mortal Health Levels

[magnificentmomo]

Second Ed Source p.81 Grim and Gritty: Playing Mortals. At the bottom it says to adjust health levels (among other things) when the Heroic Mortal Exalts, but I couldn't find anything saying that Heroic Mortals have less than 7. In the back the sample antagonist mortal hero actually has 8: two zeros.


So what are a PC heroic mortal's health levels supposed to consist of?

 

[Ledaal Kajiri]

They have the same as an Exalt...unless the Exalt has Ox-Body. The reason for adjusting Health Levels on Exaltation is the possibility of taking Ox-Body as one of their initial charms.

 

[dmoonfire]

Basically, you were reading the section on how to upgrade a heroic mortal to solar. So, you select your charms and adjust health levels (if you took Ox-Body). I think somewhere I have rules for doing the same for mortal to DB and mortal to Lunar.

 

[Ker'ion]

There isn't a choice saying that I use them as random NPCs.

 

[cyl]

I use them both as antagonists and prelude, but if I were to build a new campaign, I wouldn't do much besides RP the transition phase between heroic mortal status and exaltation... even if the phase is 3-5 sessions long.


Mortals are just too fragile in this world.

 

[dmoonfire]

I've run two mortal to exalted campaigns so far. Both of them have been pretty fun and while the mortals are more fragile, they can still do an awful lot of stuff. In our case, the first arc actually had normal, Mass, and Social combat and three of them sucessfully took out a Blood Ape. Yeah, not as impressive as a Solar.


The other thing I found is that playing a mortal before powers cuts down on the "damn, I'm so awesome from the get go" and helps a bit with the hubris.

 

[magnificentmomo]

There isn't a choice saying that I use them as random NPCs.

Oops sorry. I was doing this at 5 in the morning central time, is there any way for me to add another choice after it starts? I am a bit of a forum noob.

 

[Decurion]

Our current game is sort of a "heroic mortal" game.  It's a slight hack of the 1st Ed Godblooded rules.  I happen to love it.  We aren't fighting demons (well, there were the Blood Apes) but we do fight Yozi cultists and hungry ghosts and whatnot.


The stuff that Exalts use for warmups, you know?


We even killed a Dragonblood.  It took some doing, but we did it.


Anyway, I disagree that the world of Exalted is too dangerous for heroic mortals, it's a matter of what you choose to do.  There are what, 13 deathlords and 50 Abyssals, and millions of folks in Creation who are just mortal sleazeballs who deserve a good kick in the head.  Unless you're looking for the deathlords and Abyssals, they aren't likely to notice you.


Unless you do something Stupid.  Capital S stupid, not run of the mill stupid.


You just need an ST who refrains from assuming that the big nasty critters running around Creation are the norm, and players that don't go chasing after stuff they can't handle.  Besides, the fun (for me) of Exalted is the roleplaying, not just the Great Cosmic Powers and the combat sequences.

 

[magnificentmomo]

...There are what, 13 deathlords and 50 Abyssals...

I thought that the DLs captured 150, half, of the essences?

 

[Decurion]

...There are what, 13 deathlords and 50 Abyssals...

I thought that the DLs captured 150, half, of the essences?

Didn't they have to split with the yozis or something?  Whatever.  The point I was making, which is that there is a lot of Creation where they AREN'T, is still statistically valid.

 

[Flagg]

They got about 150, and had to fork 50 over to the Yozi.

 

[Decurion]

They got about 150, and had to fork 50 over to the Yozi.

Veering slightly off-topic from the thread, I read the 1st Ed Player's Guide's section on Akuma.  Have they done anything else with them?  It was really open-ended.  Did they ever provide sample Akuma or any more details?

 

[Persell]

The only stats for a sample akuma is the dragon blooded akuma in the west book (Lintha family).  Other then that I don't know of any hard rules besides what's in the 1st ed players guide

 

[dmoonfire]

I suspect they might be making at least a *splat for it. At GenCon 2005, when 2e came out, they mentioned that they were going to do a surprise fatsplat, and at the time, the only thing they didn't do was Akuma.

 

[Ledaal Kajiri]

The only stats for a sample akuma is the dragon blooded akuma in the west book (Lintha family).  Other then that I don't know of any hard rules besides what's in the 1st ed players guide

Indeed. And apparently he can do things like SUMMON YOZIS. Yeah. Uhm...perhaps a little too much, to my mind. Though if you ignore that one little detail he isn't too bad. Suffers some of the usual WW sucking at giving NPCs stats to back up their age and so forth when compared to the chart for xp by age, but not nearly so pathetically as many...and some seriously sick tricks considering he was a DB. The whole access to Solar Circle Sorcery seems to back up the good old Sorcery is of the Yozi's thing from the Autocthonians book, and further hinted at elsewhere, like the Black and White Treatise. Of course the source of Necromancy being what it is, 'tis rather unsuprising if Sorcery is something of the Neverborn's living bretheren.