Weakest heroes and villains who can hack it in Exalted without Exalting

[BitVyper]

Where "hack it," means "have a non-negligible affect on the setting without getting instantly vaporized by the Bronze faction or something." Imported characters are considered to have fates unless they have a power that would subvert this. They will not Exalt unless they personally can find some way to force it. Characters arrive in 2E Exalted with nothing but basic equipment and a printed out copy of the wikipedia entry on Exalted.

[Spamotron]

Which Edition? While the basic premise of the Exalted Host stays the same their in setting power varies a bit. I believe the most common ranking strongest to weakest is 2nd Edition (Because of Perfect Defenses and ludicrous plot device Sorcery), 3rd Edition, 1st Edition.

[Pendaran]

Which Edition? While the basic premise of the Exalted Host stays the same their in setting power varies a bit. I believe the most common ranking strongest to weakest is 2nd Edition (Because of Perfect Defenses and ludicrous plot device Sorcery), 3rd Edition, 1st Edition.

1st edition is full of perfect defenses and plot devices just fine, there's also no gigantic sweeping retcon/reboot of the setting or anything like that between 2e and 1e. Plenty of crazy things happen in the 1st ed exalted setting material at that, they just don't always get stats. It would be 2nd/1st, then a huge gap and 3rd.

The whole point of third was a considerable reduction in power level.

[BitVyper]

I said 2E, but feel free to answer for whatever edition you like.

[Nik Hasta]

What kind of power level are we looking at here?

I vaguely recall stuff like punching rivers into reverse or something similarly esoteric.

... initial punt, Kenshiro?

[Pendaran]

What kind of power level are we looking at here?

I vaguely recall stuff like punching rivers into reverse or something similarly esoteric.

... initial punt, Kenshiro?

In 1e and 2e, the power scale basically starts at comics Captain America, then eventually ramps all the way up to "kill conceptual beings with your fists". There's like a huge scale, I'm saying ;p

Honestly as long as they were smart about it, characters all along a wide variety of oomph could have some non negligible impact on the setting. It really depends what is meant by that. Improve living conditions in a city? Defeat a major nation? Get into a fistfight with the Ebon Dragon? Rally and unite a bunch of empowered people to do a thing?

[BitVyper]

To be non-negligible, I'm thinking something that would at the very least get a notice put on some random bronze faction Sidereal's desk to have a resplendent destiny get them put in jail or happily married off or something (not that this necessarily means that said Siddie has the time to deal with it or will deal with it personally). I feel like anything COMPLETELY beneath the notice of the bronze faction is not really upsetting any status quos.

Edit: I mean not that they necessarily have to be oppositional to the Bronze Faction, just that that's about the scale I'm thinking of for a minimum entry fee.

[Nik Hasta]

I'm still not sure on what the metric for success here is... what do those things mean in terms of power Bit?

[Sharpandpointies]

Feeling a tad thin on that, myself, not being an Exalted fan. Can we get a rundown on an example of someone from the setting with the power to fulfill the thread expectations? And how that translates?

[Pendaran]

To be non-negligible, I'm thinking something that would at the very least get a notice put on some random bronze faction Sidereal's desk to have a resplendent destiny get them put in jail or happily married off or something (not that this necessarily means that said Siddie has the time to deal with it or will deal with it personally). I feel like anything COMPLETELY beneath the notice of the bronze faction is not really upsetting any status quos.

Edit: I mean not that they necessarily have to be oppositional to the Bronze Faction, just that that's about the scale I'm thinking of for a minimum entry fee.

Right, but there are tons of ways to upset the status quo. You can pull off some of them just as a heroic mortal really if you manage to get enough followers or like, jack the Perfect of Paragon's gear ;p Or just claw to a position of leadership in the Guild, or etc.

[BitVyper]

Well, getting gear on par with the Perfect of Paragon is a pretty significant feat in itself. That's sort of like saying "what if they activate the Penitent." Plus attunement to an artifact (if it requires attunement) isn't something a person without at least some basic ability with essence (or who can learn) should be able to do, and operating a manse is a whole thing too.

I suppose to be fair, using the phrase "upset the status quo" is maybe not the best idea when games are generally taking place at a time when the status quo just went completely out the window. I have a view that the setting is set up in such a way that the actions of heroic mortals are generally not allowed to amount to much, but I mean if you think someone like Captain America can say, liberate Paragon, don't let me stop you from saying so.

Feeling a tad thin on that, myself, not being an Exalted fan. Can we get a rundown on an example of someone from the setting with the power to fulfill the thread expectations? And how that translates?

Like Pen says, it kind of starts at Captain America, but to put that in perspective: Any old Solar with the right charm can train up an army of slightly-below peak humans inside a month or two. And a big part of why all the solars aren't just being hunted down and murdered is because the wyld hunt is falling apart. In the middle tiers of power, you get things like punches that make hundred metre-wide craters and a buttload of esoteric deja-fu type martial arts where you punch someone so hard their parents never met, plus some DBZ flash-stepping stuff, including an ability that will let you just flashstep an entire mile to counterattack someone. Or Archery that will let you hit someone from the other side of Creation, or grappling that lets you throw people into hell. Or Sorcerers that can just go make their own Creation with blackjack and hookers. At the upper tiers, there's world enders, and Raksha who really want to break the entire concept of time (but probably can't). There's a ton of factions with armies of supernatural beings all kind of either waiting for their chance to swoop in and score a big win or trying to maintain the status quo, or trying very hard to look like they want to win for their dark masters while not actually winning so much that their dark masters get what they want.

Speed is a bit nebulous, but it's not hard to demonstrate that a given Exalt can react to things like arrows shot fast enough to travel a few miles in a second, or respond to a bazillion super fast attacks, so like, probably in the supersonic range pretty much as soon as you start dealing with actual Exalted combat.

[Pendaran]

There are various attacks and defenses that are well beyond supersonic, I'd note.

I suppose to be fair, using the phrase "upset the status quo" is maybe not the best idea when games are generally taking place at a time when the status quo just went completely out the window. I have a view that the setting is set up in such a way that the actions of heroic mortals are generally not allowed to amount to much, but I mean if you think someone like Captain America can say, liberate Paragon, don't let me stop you from saying so.

In general no, but in some specific ways they can matter a fair bit. Again for instance, the Guild, who have managed to broker enough spirit and ghost deals and patronage to be able to function and mess around. Clawing your way up to the basically mostly mortal leadership of that would let you leverage status quo changey stuff.

[Pendaran]

I think basically the top end of Exalted power oomph in 1e/2e is best summed up this way. At one point a being broke parts of themselves to unleash an attack that wiped out whole concepts from reality, retroactively, as far as the sheer damage it caused. The Exalted beat the holy living crap out of said being.

Now, that's a very rarefied air of power, compared to most of what's floating around, but basically that's the top end.

[BitVyper]

In general no, but in some specific ways they can matter a fair bit. Again for instance, the Guild, who have managed to broker enough spirit and ghost deals and patronage to be able to function and mess around. Clawing your way up to the basically mostly mortal leadership of that would let you leverage status quo changey stuff.

That's true. Do you have anyone in mind that would be a good fit for getting control of the Guild and deal with the various factors that can come into play there? There's obviously a lot they have to learn to deal with on the fly, and I feel like the problem with being a single heroic mortal who amasses that much influence in the Guild is that you also become something of a tempting single point of failure for it.

There are various attacks and defenses that are well beyond supersonic, I'd note.

Yeah, I'm not too clear on the speed algorithm for Exalted, to be honest.

I guess I should also note for everyone that one of the big things Exalted brings to the table in terms of abilities is the Perfect Defense. Within the game's framework, a perfect defense is a trick Exalted can do that just sort of says "no" to a given attack no matter where it sits on the setting's scale of power, and there's no argument about whether it works or not. Someone throws the moon at you and you block it with a pencil. The GM might rule that your pencil breaks though.

[BitVyper]

I think basically the top end of Exalted power oomph in 1e/2e is best summed up this way. At one point a being broke parts of themselves to unleash an attack that wiped out whole concepts from reality, retroactively, as far as the sheer damage it caused. The Exalted beat the holy living crap out of said being.

Now, that's a very rarefied air of power, compared to most of what's floating around, but basically that's the top end.

Yeah it gets a bit wonky at the top end to because while Creation is just a single world, it's basically a cosmos of its own, and kind of feels like it's probably conceptually as "strong" as a universe. World Spiral certainly draws an equivalence there. I once heard someone kick around the idea that the thing SWLIHN destroyed was "spheres" in the sense of reducing Creation to one flat world from the cosmos it may have been. I liked that idea, especially with it being spheres, since they're her thing.

A friend of mine played with this a bit by having the main villain of her game be a Sidereal who'd somehow made it to our not-Exalted setting and just completely freaked out over how fragile our world was and tried to lock absolutely everything down as hard as he could for our own good.