Not Bad.

Pretty productive today. Didn't get as much done as maybe I would have liked, but overall, pretty good. My boss hasn't returned my calls, though, and neither has the vet, so that's really annoying. Cleaned my rat cage and my computer hard drive, and my nails are all shiny black. The paint job isn't as nice as it's been in the past, but I blame the mediocre quality of the polish as much as my lack of practice.

I'll probably polish off some more from my to-do list before I hit the sack this morning.

EDIT: Yup. More computer work got done, including finally properly installing and patching my friggin' camera that I've had for months now, and reinstalling my photo editing software. No writing, but I did go ahead and watch Donnie Darko and Hackers again. Kind of nostalgic, which is really funny, because I didn't get Hackers near the peak of its popularity at all and DD is an 80's movie made in the oughts, which is actually something I love, even if the movie is only 'pretty good'.

I have some writing I specifically want to do. I wonder if I'll do it during work downtime, or if I'll just do it at home. Guess it depends on how I feel. I'm glad things went so smoothly; when they go well like that, it's kind of an ego boost. ^_^

More Exalted

Still on a kick, it looks like. I'm sorely tempted to stat out the cast of Street Fighter and SNK in terms of Exalted. Ryu would be a Dawn Caste Solar, Chun-Li seems like she might be a Sidereal of some kind, considering she masquerades as a lot of different roles. Akuma is an Infernal, probably a, well, akuma. Iori would be an Abyssal, Blanka would be a Lunar. I haven't given it a lot of thought, though.

Autobot stuff later tonight an the Edit.  

The Edit!

( Work aside, where I reach my boss, am threatened, and subsequently decide to just quit early. )

My emotion is still accurate - pretty cheerful, considering. I've been there way too long. Might have been nice to have left on good terms, but actually, I don't think anyone leaves on good terms. So. It's more important that I did everything correctly.

I did some reading on Alchemical Exalts, and like I said, they're one of the more difficult factions. Every other group has a really granular power-set, an entire tree of powers that stems from a single ability. So, on your brightly colored fantasy super could have a set of powers just based around Melee, Dodge, or Archery. Even better, Linguistics, Occult, Academics, Sail, and all the rest have their own powers, too. These are your main abilities, puchaseable based off your Skill ranks and your Essence (powerstat) level, but Alchemicals are totally different.

While they've still got the kind of LEGO building block Power thing going on, their abilities stem from Attribute scores and are grouped by theme rather then by skills. This is the conceptual bases for why things might get complicated, but most other Exalt types get bonuses in the form of dice-adders, or Charms that add dice to your abilities in certain circumstances, or perfect effects that just work unless certain special conditions are met. Alchemicals don't have those abilities, but they're the abilities that more potent Exalts are made of.

Instead, they're machine-peeps. That means that, first of all, you can swap out Charms because they're not learned, they're actually machines socketed onto your clay-and-metal bodies. Second of all, they act like machines, so they tend to replicate special abilities that you can't expect to scale up with your own powerlevel, accept to feed them more energy. It's more like, instead of "Add X dice up to double your Skill+Attribute." it's "Does X dice per mote of essence spent, using your roll of Skill+Ability", where another module will give you, "Aims, giving you bonus dice dending on essence spent", so you're using your batterys to power your skillz.

Alchemicals also tend to have a lot of layered effects, so instead of just being a supereffective swords-person, you're probably only going to be as technically skilled as (the very best of) mortal warriors. OTOH, your focus on Attributes makes you stronger then just about anything, and you're still walking into battle with an electrified artifact sword with a cloud of toxic smoke wreathing you, along with a laser crossbow and rocket boots.

Because of the wonkiness of the Alchemicals, it took me a while to figure out if you wanted a generic warrior, what kind of abilities were must-haves. You know the type - you need to be able to defend yourself, and some attacks are going to be staples of combat, and I think I've got an idea. Non-combat is more nebulous, and the metal ladies and gentlemen get some real solid medicine charms and what have you. It's surprising that I've had the book for so long but never really looked at the powers. I was really stuck on the setting, and when we played, we tended to play Solars anyhow.