I will become God-Harem King of the World! [Highschool DxD/Exalted] (CLOSED)

[Diller]

I'm not sure I would call "threatening to murder Issei's family to give him a reason to fight him" chill. Mind you, that might have been only because Issei was his fated rival and refused to fight, I don't remember any similar behavior later.

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It was. He was trying to rile Ise up so he would fight him.


But otherwise Vali and Ise are actually kind of friendly rivals. They've dough together several times and are now both part of [DxD].


Of course if we give Vali a good enough fight he's going going to get excited.

Excited Ali does things like go Juggernaut Drive on us.

 

[megrisvernin]

I saw it as the classic "rile up your adversary so he has a stronger fighting spirit and fight better". And in Vali's defense his family situation sucks, so he has a distorted view of it.

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I think Issei would take a very very dim view of that request after being threatened in that way. Probably accept & then upon winning crippling Vali in a way that he couldn't be a threat to him....and not kill him purely because for every additional year Vali lived was a year the next holder of his Sacred Gear wouldn't harm Issei or those he cared for.

 

[Alexander]

I think Issei would take a very very dim view of that request after being threatened in that way. Probably accept & then upon winning crippling Vali in a way that he couldn't be a threat to him....and not kill him purely because for every additional year Vali lived was a year the next holder of his Sacred Gear wouldn't harm Issei or those he cared for.

Click to shrink...

Compassion 5. Meaning Issei will not cause unnecessary pain.

It will however cause him to do a "Asura's interrupt" to Vali if he tries that shit.

 

[Larekko12]

Cutting attributes is problematic cause exalted stats are not linear.

 

[Diller]

I think Issei would take a very very dim view of that request after being threatened in that way. Probably accept & then upon winning crippling Vali in a way that he couldn't be a threat to him....and not kill him purely because for every additional year Vali lived was a year the next holder of his Sacred Gear wouldn't harm Issei or those he cared for.

Click to shrink...

Alexander said he's basically impossible for us to beat. If we had balance breaker, we might be able to beat BB!Vali.

Then Vali starts grinning at because of how much fun he's having and goes JD on us. Suddenly we have to fight the form Vali used to beat Fenrir. The same Fenrir whose one of the top 10 strongest beings in the world that has the likes of Indra,Vishnu and Typhon on it.


Make no mistake we haw a long ways to go to match Vli as he is now and he's only going to get stronger as time goes on as well.

 

[megrisvernin]

Compassion 5. Meaning Issei will not cause unnecessary pain.

It will however cause him to do a "Asura's interrupt" to Vali if he tries that shit.

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Fair point. It just occurred to me how much our Issei has diverged from his canon counterpart.

"By the way, I heard that Mittelt is living with you." He smiles in a mischievous way, holds out his pinkie and wriggle it. "Did you two already do it?"

You stare at him. "I refuse to answer that question in a public place

"You did. You did." His smile grows even wider. Is this really the leader of an entire race?

Oh right, they fell from Heaven because they were horny. "Why do you care anyway?"."

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Our Issei has the common sense & perhaps a slight distaste at the thought of him discussing having sex with women he loves to a stranger.

This is significant, if only from how others might judge the difference in their behavior from canon! Issei & Exalted Issei!. Exalted! Issei doesn't come off as objectifying women like his canon counterpart(talking about his conquest) & he appears tactful & refined.

More importantly Exalted! Issei is dismissive & perhaps even critical of Azazel for making such statements. He has an expectation of Azazel to present an at least different outward appearance to those outside his faction, & finds it hard to believe someone with such high rank would act such a way. I'd imagine canon! Issei responding to it like "Oh yeah! She's great in the sack! Did you know she liked tying people up?"

Given that our Issei is rather dismissive of societal expectations when it would get between him & making a girl happy I think there's something more going on. The only motivating factor I can figure is that Issei wants to present himself as a "a person worthy of the affection of multiple girls" & that this means he has to take into account the expectations & image other people prefer to have when dealing with him. In other words Exalted! Issei's theory of mind & sense of empathy is much more developed than his canon's counterpart. He not only can predict somewhat accurately how others expect him to act(the women he cares for anyways) he is inclined to do so to make them happy & has internalized it enough that those attitudes are part him even when dealing with other males, perhaps especially when guys make comments his prexalted self would have made.

That is not to say Exalted! Issei wouldn't make lustful comments in the company of just say Rias's Peerage, but he wouldn't do so in the presence of strangers since he's quite aware it might harm his friends reputation by association with him. He's also less inclined to do so for the girls, like Asia, that would feel uncomfortable or nervous at those kinds of comments. As they become more comfortable with him & laid back in their sexuality I can see him freely making those comments, letting them know how openly he finds them attractive.

I had this mirror moment of Exalted!Issei talking to his canon self & finding him uncouth & not aware enough of his surroundings. Both factors reducing his status in Exalted! Issei's, as they important skills for someone who claims to want to be a "harem king".

 

[Alexander]

I had this mirror moment of Exalted!Issei talking to his canon self & finding him uncouth & not aware enough of his surroundings. Both factors reducing his status in Exalted! Issei's, as they important skills for someone who claims to want to be a "harem king".

Click to shrink...

A meeting between Exalted! Issei and Canon Issei would be a thing to behold.

My first personal theory about why Canon Issei is like that is because the unresolved sexual tension is driving him crazy.

The second is that the Author doesn't know how to write character development.

 

[Ubylkoen]

[X] "Huh, Well if I get the go ahead from the Gremory Clan I don't see why I can't help you out, heck, there are a couple of other things I can think of that you may find interesting and should be able to help with, but until then nice to meet you Azazel-san, nice to know there's someone reasonable in charge of the Grigori."
-[X] "One last thing, Azazel. This Hakuryuukou. What kind of person is he?"

 

[megrisvernin]

A meeting between Exalted! Issei and Canon Issei would be a thing to behold.

My first personal theory about why Canon Issei is like that is because the unresolved sexual tension is driving him crazy.

The second is that the Author doesn't know how to write character development.

Click to shrink...

I've heard an excellent theory on similiar characterization for Saito of Familiar of Zero. The bumbling way Saito acts is as much making him a conduit of wish fulfillment for readers. Something like "look at this idiot getting all these women. Hell I could do better than him & probably get lots of women too without half the pain" pushing up sales for male readers. An Issei who is polite & respectful to women, knowing that describing them in terms of appearance or attributes makes them think he is objectifying them & carrying only for their bodies is a mistake & causes them pain would be more than some males can manage. Sadly far too men only think of women as objects, or care about their own pleasure far more than a female's.

That the media assumes a lot of guys are clueless about women makes the issue worse, catering to those who think only of women as objects & causing the problem to propagate itself.

 

[Brandark]

A meeting between Exalted! Issei and Canon Issei would be a thing to behold.

My first personal theory about why Canon Issei is like that is because the unresolved sexual tension is driving him crazy.

The second is that the Author doesn't know how to write character development.

Click to shrink...

A bit of both , I think. Most of the LN chapters are from canon Issei's view , so we are hearing his thoughts while we are reading.

Issei's thoughts are...like a much younger kid . He has absolutely zero ability to conceal what's going on inside his mind and does other childish things like ascribing sound effects to things happening around him , so on and so forth.

He is also hyper excited , all the time , as is evident by the majority of sentences ending in exclamation mark. This can be ascribed to the sexual tension theory.

As for the lack of character development , Issei has an extremely one track mind. No matter how dire the situation he is in , he just can't stop thinking about girls and oppai , at all. It was certainly novel in the beginning , but the author tried to milk it for comedic effect in every volume afterwards , which made it quite aggravating. No matter what kind of events Issei has to go through , as long as the author thinks Issei's perverted thoughts are a good source of comedy , he will remain his ridiculously over the top self.

So it's not that the author cannot write character development , he thinks lack of character development will sell his novels better in this instance. Or it may be the editor's fault , too. Either way , the result is the same.

 

[megrisvernin]

A bit of both , I think. Most of the LN chapters are from canon Issei's view , so we are hearing his thoughts all the while we are reading.

Issei's thoughts are...like a much younger kid . He has absolutely zero ability to conceal what's going on inside his mind and does other childish things like ascribing sound effects to things happening around him , so on and so forth.

He is also hyper excited , all the time , as is evident by the majority of sentences ending in exclamation mark. This can be ascribed to the sexual tension theory.

As for the lack of character development , Issei has an extremely one track mind. No matter how dire the situation he is in , he just can't stop thinking about girls and oppai , at all. It was certainly novel in the beginning , but the author tried to milk it for comedic effect in every volume afterwards , which made it quite aggravating. No matter what kind of events Issei has to go through , as long as the author thinks Issei's perverted thoughts are a good source of comedy , he will remain his ridiculously over the top self.

So it's not that the author cannot write character development , he thinks lack of character development will sell his novels better in this instance. Or it may be the editor's fault , too. Either way , the result is the same.

Click to shrink...

Definitely parts of the second. I've heard arguments that given the way Japan was emasculated after World War 2 with what was formerly a very aggressive male dominated culture it's led to some very odd trends in their culture.

Felix on SB commented that

I almost had a minor in Japanese culture (enough to get technically an East Asian Languages and Culture concentration for my actual minor, but most of my classes were about Japanese culture) and literally had one class that was all about this.

In the end we "concluded" that the most popular Porn/Hentai genres in a culture really expose what kind of innate fantasies are fostered by said culture. And in Japan's case, the "castration" of the entire country after world war 2 had immense impact on what originally was a very macho culture. The rampant Kawaii-fication of Japan actually is a byproduct of this, and is an expression of the "Culturally enforced impotency" of the country as a whole. This also ties into the WW2 atrocity denials and the militant nationalism, actually making things worse, as it's an endless cycle of reacting to said impotency yet then exacerbating it by trying to sublimate the cultural tension and stress.

TL;dr - NTR, Harem, and Rape Hentai are so popular in Japan because they speak directly to the most commonly held fantasies of Japanese Men, which can be linked to their cultural restructuring post WW2.

Click to shrink...

 

[Brandark]

Definitely parts of the second. I've heard arguments that given the way Japan was emasculated after World War 2 with what was formerly a very aggressive male dominated culture it's led to some very odd trends in their culture.

Felix on SB commented that

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That's a very interesting theory. Never heard this one before.

It explains quite a few things , come to think of it. Like why females can heap abuse on males in anime/manga/LNs for little to no reason and get away with it.

 

[ZipLopz]

Congratulations! When it comes to deliver hits, you have reached the level of Expert, which is stronger than Disciple but weaker than Master! There are few Martial Arts you can't master now.

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Is that a History's Strongest Disciple Kenichi reference that I spy?~

[X] "Huh, Well if I get the go ahead from the Gremory Clan I don't see why I can't help you out, heck, there are a couple of other things I can think of that you may find interesting and should be able to help with, but until then nice to meet you Azazel-san, nice to know there's someone reasonable in charge of the Grigori."
-[X] "One last thing, Azazel. This Hakuryuukou. What kind of person is he?"

 

[iamnuff]

The wordings of the vote are quite vague , it doesn't say anything about other sacred gear users. There are a lot of other things he should be interested in , like our Exalted status and its implications , our personal brand of magic , our research into various things , including the evil chess pieces.

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he doesn't know anything about any of that.

all he knows about us is that we have Boosted Gear, telling him we know people like us is basically the same as saying "unique sacred gear users"

theres no way it could possibly be taken to mean anything else.

don't drag Ruby and Yang into this.

 

[iamnuff]

Compassion 5. Meaning Issei will not cause unnecessary pain.

It will however cause him to do a "Asura's interrupt" to Vali if he tries that shit.

Click to shrink...

threatening to harm your family makes putting a stop to that bullshit pretty fucking necessary.

forget about cutting off a hand, those get replaced all the time in stories.

either snip his spine, or just kill him.

I don't want to play the sort of character who can just laugh off a threat to the people he cares about, by giving the person making the threats a slight beating.

either make him physically incapable of carrying out the threat (crippled or dead) or make him so afraid of us that he wouldn't dare to even stand on the same street as them, just in-case we got the wrong idea.

 

[Smuthunter]

Fair point. It just occurred to me how much our Issei has diverged from his canon counterpart.

Our Issei has the common sense & perhaps a slight distaste at the thought of him discussing having sex with women he loves to a stranger.

This is significant, if only from how others might judge the difference in their behavior from canon! Issei & Exalted Issei!. Exalted! Issei doesn't come off as objectifying women like his canon counterpart(talking about his conquest) & he appears tactful & refined.

More importantly Exalted! Issei is dismissive & perhaps even critical of Azazel for making such statements. He has an expectation of Azazel to present an at least different outward appearance to those outside his faction, & finds it hard to believe someone with such high rank would act such a way. I'd imagine canon! Issei responding to it like "Oh yeah! She's great in the sack! Did you know she liked tying people up?"

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That second dot of temperance makes a big difference. Just don't take another one or we'll start turning into a monk.

A meeting between Exalted! Issei and Canon Issei would be a thing to behold.

My first personal theory about why Canon Issei is like that is because the unresolved sexual tension is driving him crazy.

The second is that the Author doesn't know how to write character development.

Click to shrink...

He does come across most like the desperate virgin variety of pervert. He's not really all that sex-obsessed in the larger scheme of things, he just really wants to get to first base!

Definitely parts of the second. I've heard arguments that given the way Japan was emasculated after World War 2 with what was formerly a very aggressive male dominated culture it's led to some very odd trends in their culture.

Felix on SB commented that

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Huzzah for psychoanalysis. And a touch of politics! Just what I was looking for in my wish-fulfillment harem-series power fantasy quest! :notfunny:

 

[Diller]

He does come across most like the desperate virgin variety of pervert. He's not really all that sex-obsessed in the larger scheme of things, he just really wants to get to first base!

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Well he has gotten cockblocked a few times and he's actually a bit embarrassed by his perversity and being known as the oppai dragon.

threatening to harm your family makes putting a stop to that bullshit pretty fucking necessary.

forget about cutting off a hand, those get replaced all the time in stories.

either snip his spine, or just kill him.

I don't want to play the sort of character who can just laugh off a threat to the people he cares about, by giving the person making the threats a slight beating.

either make him physically incapable of carrying out the threat (crippled or dead) or make him so afraid of us that he wouldn't dare to even stand on the same street as them, just in-case we got the wrong idea.

Click to shrink...

There's a reason Alexander said Vali is pretty much impossible for us to beat as we are now. Even if we had balance breaker Vali could still kick our ass if he went all out.

Plus Vali would want to fight us more if we crushed him.

 

[noahgab1133]

[X] "Huh, Well if I get the go ahead from the Gremory Clan I don't see why I can't help you out, heck, there are a couple of other things I can think of that you may find interesting and should be able to help with, but until then nice to meet you Azazel-san, nice to know there's someone reasonable in charge of the Grigori."
-[X] "One last thing, Azazel. This Hakuryuukou. What kind of person is he?"


I think vali might enjoy a sparring match. at least to test out our strength. once we reach balance breaker which canon issei who was much weaker at the time used to not only take vali's power for his own but managed to beat the shit out of balance breaker vali hen he might just go to hell with it full power. And now the idea of bright wanting us to take the power of high level artefacts and sacred gears as our own using the infinite life force of draig to compensate for the cost of taking said power. imagines the 4 part excalibur and vanishing gear equipped to issei boosted gear and the horror shock and dismay at him acquiring their power for his own. Glorious solar bullshit indeed.

 

[megrisvernin]

So this makes me wonder Alexander. Can we assume Issei is beginning to act more reserved & respectful in his class? Basically he doesn't make nearly so many mindless comments, or remark on girl's bodies like he did in canon at least in front of others outside his inner circle?

This might be a problem for Issei soon. Culturally Japanese has an ideal of a submissive, ever collected & loyal woman so that actually provides great cover for why Issei isn't being swamped with girls yet. Sort of an enhanced "slut shaming" tendency for those who violate it that I notice in certain parts of the United States. Guys have to initiate everything, it's a mark of pride for a girl to get a guy to ask him out versus having to do the reverse.

But I take it the way Issei is now acting in the last update has been a steady development for him, a gradually improvement of his social awareness & reduction in the number of lewd comments he makes especially now that he has a release of sexual tension with Mittelt. An attractive male who has a nice personality, polite & thoughtful will make Issei even more of a target. I'm betting that by now rumors have started to spread about the two girls Issei walks to school with are both blonde bombshells & that he's at risk of being "taken".

I doubt any of them will go as far as to ask Issei "out", but there will be a clamoring whenever there are group projects to partner up with him & a number of them will try to look "wistful & lost" in front of him, trying to motivate Issei to help them out with their apparent problems. Some of them might go so far as trying to look provocative or show off their girls in various moments to tempt him(allow doing so in a way that occurred "accidentally" of course.

 

[Smuthunter]

I think vali might enjoy a sparring match. at least to test out our strength. once we reach balance breaker which canon issei who was much weaker at the time used to not only take vali's power for his own but managed to beat the shit out of balance breaker vali hen he might just go to hell with it full power.

Click to shrink...

Ahahahaha no. Don't forget that Issei was riding on the MONSTER BOOST with a power multiplier of 0 or so just to get into the same ballpark as Vali. Unfortunately enough, we got nerfed pretty seriously in that respect when we gained the Exaltation and we haven't gotten close to becoming powerful enough as a Solar to make up for it.

 

[EternitynChaos]

mhmm, All thing considered our fighting Vali atm is going to be a case of seeing how far we have to go and giving us a rival, hell I could see Vali bugging us to have monthly fights just so he can see how fast we grow, and if he knows we are trying to get stronger so we can protect those we care about already he probably won't feel the need to try and raise our fighting spirit like he did in canon.


Also he may very well be up to teaching us, after all, the more we know, the better our fights with him will be, and he is ALL about the awesome fights. Hell I think both he and Azazel are going to be impressed at just how far we have been able to come in what, about a month? maybe less since we awoke our SG and realised we needed to get stronger.

Also Alexander has come right out and said that Azazel is just like he is in the mainline, which means he's a chill bro who won't fuck us over. hell he's another person I wouldn't mind learning from, so that's someone we can learn Norse magic from early AND someone who can teach us Fallen Angel magic and maybe Angel magic, depending how that works on top of crafting on Earth etc.

 

[Indrik]

Ahahahaha no. Don't forget that Issei was riding on the MONSTER BOOST with a power multiplier of 0 or so just to get into the same ballpark as Vali. Unfortunately enough, we got nerfed pretty seriously in that respect when we gained the Exaltation and we haven't gotten close to becoming powerful enough as a Solar to make up for it.

Click to shrink...

This has certainly been one of my main concerns in this quest. No offense to Alex, but it is clear both by his own admission and his use of the system that he is not at all experienced with Exalted. Mechanically, it is entirely incompatible with DxD and that leads to awkward situations like these because the GM isn't veteran enough to create the necessary house rules (such as flat training - see Sojiko's Conquest Quest on SB for an example of an expert Exalted player/GM running a quest).

For all of the hype about a Solar's powers (and they are very powerful), they are balanced against their own universe and take a significant amount of time to achieve this vaunted power. There is a reason that Solars have a lifespan of 5000 years: it can take decades or centuries to develop high essence which blocks the most powerful charms and sorcery. A newborn Solar is very vulnerable and the quest format and crossover exacerbate this - the training times are just too long for the speed of the DxD narrative. Not to mention the intentionally horrible and unoptimized for anything stats.

Yes, Issei is greatly superior to his canon base (in charms, abilities and social attributes, if little else at the moment), however base Issei was not the one who faced any of the significant events in canon. It was always Boosted Issei with anywhere from double to thousands of times base Issei's physical and magical abilities. This quest's Issei has access to none of that and yet is still being forced to follow and confront canon antagonists. The power differential in DxD is simply too high for a new Solar. The Primordials were killed by armies of Solars supported by further armies of Lunars, Sidereals, and Dragon-Blooded, but if you follow the canon route, Issei will soon enough be facing beings that while not fluff equals would probably be statted in Exalted terms fairly similarly. Stats in Exalted only go to ten, but they are not at all linear so wide ranges of power can be compressed into higher ratings without the further delineation of charms as unique powers. DxD abilities, while not capable of all Exalted feats, are typically far more individually versatile as well nor do they explicitly depend upon a very limited numerical resource (essence) that can not be easily improved. Once Issei's essence is gone, he is essentially reduced to moderately superhuman at best even at his current maximum of 5 dots in everything. That does not at all compare to DxD's innate, always on powers possessed by gods, dragons, superdevils, etc..

There is a reason Exalts form teams for campaigns - most effectively with one of each caste: they require the synergy and cooperation to have any great effect. Yes, Solar Issei will learn faster and improve his actual stats beyond canon Issei's imagination, but it is in no way equivalent to canon Boosted Gear's doubling without centuries of preparation. Even then, it would require an entirely different and indirect play style compared to canon Issei's 'punch until it falls down' method.

 

[Diller]

Ahahahaha no. Don't forget that Issei was riding on the MONSTER BOOST with a power multiplier of 0 or so just to get into the same ballpark as Vali. Unfortunately enough, we got nerfed pretty seriously in that respect when we gained the Exaltation and we haven't gotten close to becoming powerful enough as a Solar to make up for it.

Click to shrink...

Not to mention Vali going all out on us will result in our very very brutal and quick ass-kicking. We are nowhere near ready to fight Juggernaut Drive Vali.

 

[EternitynChaos]

That is somewhat true, however I would note that we have had multiple hints that things won't be going the normal progression thanks to Bright's tinkering and the fact that Issei has raw super dragon power running through him as well as Exalted Essence, add to that the Evil Pieces and our own project we have multiple things that could act as boosters, plus with Ddraig there we may be reading as an Exalt a lot older then we really are.


Also there is Boosted Gear, as it is now its not much compared to the mainline version however not only has it been tinkered with by Bright so that it evolves faster, its been tweaked that with evolves more, plus there is the whole Humanoid dragon thing in the background that may play into things And we have already seen that we can get expansion charms to improve things, I would not be surprised if we got one to improve the time we can use our stat boost for, or if we got a Charm similar to the Lunar Warform charm later on.


But anyway, what I mean is Alexander is a good GM, he's willing to listen to his players and he's got experience running various quests, have some faith, I don't think he's going to let us down on this one.

 

[Indrik]

No, I agree the quest itself is great. Exalted just isn't a great system to model DxD and and the interaction is very clunky without a lot of work on the GM's part. The massive nerf of Boosted Gear is an example of the basic incompatibility.

DxD was founded upon Boosted Gear's hax and thus all other characters are built against its example. It isn't necessarily a bad thing that Issei is becoming a different person to cope with the crossover-induced changes (I actually prefer this Issei over canon personality wise), but it means that efforts have to be taken to moderate the extreme of DxD canon. For instance, despite being so-called eternal rivals equal in power (and in canon, Issei was the weakest user of Boosted Gear ever), there is literally no chance for Issei to directly face Vali in direct combat as occurred in canon. He lost yes, but it would be a far more even fight than this quest. Even still, Issei is essentially being forced into a lower-key but still comparable confrontation of this sort. These divergences have to be considered and properly weighed against the character's actual current ability, not just their potential.

Notice that, while we have manipulated the the variables of each fight, every confrontation has still come down to a fight of some sort or another. Dohnaseek, Raynare, the spar with Yang, etc. That direct confrontation is just part of Issei's character and the character mechanics essentially invalidate it as a viable option while the canon narrative simultaneously pushes that as the primary means of overcoming obstacles. It is an essential conflict in the collision of the two sources.

 

[megrisvernin]

This has certainly been one of my main concerns in this quest. No offense to Alex, but it is clear both by his own admission and his use of the system that he is not at all experienced with Exalted. Mechanically, it is entirely incompatible with DxD and that leads to awkward situations like these because the GM isn't veteran enough to create the necessary house rules (such as flat training - see Sojiko's Conquest Quest on SB for an example of an expert Exalted player/GM running a quest).

For all of the hype about a Solar's powers (and they are very powerful), they are balanced against their own universe and take a significant amount of time to achieve this vaunted power. There is a reason that Solars have a lifespan of 5000 years: it can take decades or centuries to develop high essence which blocks the most powerful charms and sorcery. A newborn Solar is very vulnerable and the quest format and crossover exacerbate this - the training times are just too long for the speed of the DxD narrative. Not to mention the intentionally horrible and unoptimized for anything stats.

Yes, Issei is greatly superior to his canon base (in charms, abilities and social attributes, if little else at the moment), however base Issei was not the one who faced any of the significant events in canon. It was always Boosted Issei with anywhere from double to thousands of times base Issei's physical and magical abilities. This quest's Issei has access to none of that and yet is still being forced to follow and confront canon antagonists. The power differential in DxD is simply too high for a new Solar. The Primordials were killed by armies of Solars supported by further armies of Lunars, Sidereals, and Dragon-Blooded, but if you follow the canon route, Issei will soon enough be facing beings that while not fluff equals would probably be statted in Exalted terms fairly similarly. Stats in Exalted only go to ten, but they are not at all linear so wide ranges of power can be compressed into higher ratings without the further delineation of charms as unique powers. DxD abilities, while not capable of all Exalted feats, are typically far more individually versatile as well nor do they explicitly depend upon a very limited numerical resource (essence) that can not be easily improved. Once Issei's essence is gone, he is essentially reduced to moderately superhuman at best even at his current maximum of 5 dots in everything. That does not at all compare to DxD's innate, always on powers possessed by gods, dragons, superdevils, etc..

There is a reason Exalts form teams for campaigns - most effectively with one of each caste: they require the synergy and cooperation to have any great effect. Yes, Solar Issei will learn faster and improve his actual stats beyond canon Issei's imagination, but it is in no way equivalent to canon Boosted Gear's doubling without centuries of preparation. Even then, it would require an entirely different and indirect play style compared to canon Issei's 'punch until it falls down' method.

Click to shrink...

In fairness the Doubling mechanic of canon Issei's power is...terribly unbalanced. Exalted runs on a very different style physics engine then the rest of DxD & if we were designing an OC quest there is no way I'd support using a dirty mix of the two. As it is I feel this quest is take the core question of "What would it take for Issei to win in his world without his plot shields & author mandated victories". Followed by would a Solar Exaltation be enough?

The objection you raised is quite valid. That is a Solar Exaltation takes decades to truly power up, centuries & millenia to master their power. With the powerful factions & groups taking an interest in Issei the answer to that is "try hard, make allies & whenever possible cheat!"

We're grinding Issei hard, focusing on his core competencies, despite the allure of other traits that might him more balanced. He's allied himself with Rias & is building his core team to assist him. Most importantly we're rely on the most broken of Exalted mechanics that you don't often see in comparable games, "Social Attacks!" to get us help.

Enough enemy mooks for Raynore to bury us under ranks of exorcist priests. Castigate & call her out for her deception, forcing her into one on one single combat. Need support from the local bureaucrat as you try & build up your allies? Use social attacks to make them agree with your plans. Have a Great Family of Devils looking to become hostile. Probably a good idea to Social Fu them.

In the course of all of this, we've turned canon Issei into someone who aspires to be worth the attention of the women in his life. We've had him avoid cheap powerups & author fiat to win & we've gotten him surrounded by attractive women without once using a social charm to convince them to sleep with us.

 

[EternitynChaos]

Also, one thing that will speed up our stat training is when we get our combat skills up enough to be able to afford to buy other things and we get the Lore and War training charms, with those we will be able to raise our stats in a week per dot, up to 4 *until we get the expansion charm for them* plus we can do the same for our allies and they don't need xp for it, they can go into xp debt, it also works to teach them various skills quickly and charms etc.

 

[Smuthunter]

Also, one thing that will speed up our stat training is when we get our combat skills up enough to be able to afford to buy other things and we get the Lore and War training charms, with those we will be able to raise our stats in a week per dot, up to 4 *until we get the expansion charm for them* plus we can do the same for our allies and they don't need xp for it, they can go into xp debt, it also works to teach them various skills quickly and charms etc.

Click to shrink...

That will help but it won't solve the problem. Until we hit essence 6 we're still capped at 5 dots in everything, which is peak human abilities or close to it. But our enemies are way beyond peak human beginning almost immediately after the fight with Raiser, and unlike us they don't need to expend essence to get to that point.

We do have one thing going for us right now though, and that's Boosted Gear. We haven't even unlocked Balance Breaker yet but our Overdrive pools already triple our maximum mote capacity. That is stupidly broken by the standards of most games I can think of and we're just beginning to scrape the surface of what we can do with dragon power.

 

[megrisvernin]

I'll run a vote count in a few minutes although the choice is pretty clear.

 

[Diller]

That will help but it won't solve the problem. Until we hit essence 6 we're still capped at 5 dots in everything, which is peak human abilities or close to it. But our enemies are way beyond peak human beginning almost immediately after the fight with Raiser, and unlike us they don't need to expend essence to get to that point.

We do have one thing going for us right now though, and that's Boosted Gear. We haven't even unlocked Balance Breaker yet but our Overdrive pools already triple our maximum mote capacity. That is stupidly broken by the standards of most games I can think of and we're just beginning to scrape the surface of what we can do with dragon power.

Click to shrink...

Not to mention if we can purfiy our sacred gear by dealing with our predecessors and the curse of hatred then we can get access to Driag's full power without having to use juggernaut drive. Seeing as Draig would be in the top 10 strongest beings on the planet(excluding GR) which has people like Indra,Vishnu,Typhon, and Fenrir on it that's a MASSIVE power boost.

Also who says we have to fight alone all the time? Getting more allies and completing our reverse engineering of the evil pieces will only boost our chances of survival


Hell we don't even know how our balance breaker will increase our powers yet.


If we continue to work our ass off then we'll be able to make it though mostly intact.