Exalted Rework Part 17: Dragon-Blooded Mechanics

The Dragon-Blooded make for a very different game type than Solars.  First of all, they're 'smaller', as in, they don't take up as much narrative space.  A Dragon-Blooded game is unlikely to outgrow a Direction, and thus can more intimately interact with their setting.  As Mortals are much closer to their skill level, Mortals can be viable challenges, Love Interests and NPCs that cannot simply be overwritten with powerful charms.  Perhaps most importantly, the Dragon-Blooded have a society, and so games involving them will tend to be more social and less combative, generally, though there is some irony in that Dragon-Blooded charms generally lean toward combat power.

In design, also, the Dragon-Blooded differ from the Celestials: Aspects are a substantial flavor that a player buys into when they make the character: the Aspect defines both Anima and stunting style, as well as providing a certain set of immunities and powers.

Terrestrial Exaltation Powers:

Fortitude of the Dragons: Terrestrial Exalted are immune to disease, infection and blood loss. They heal rapidly and will recover from minor injuries in a few days, severe injuries in a few weeks and from death’s door in a month.
Terrestrial Anima: The character has an Anima Banner which they may ignite at will. It fades at the end of the scene, or after fifteen minutes. While ignited, the character’s elemental power and Exalted nature is unmistakable to any who look on them.
Anima Flux: While your Anima Banner is up, you radiate a destructive elemental corona which harms anything within a few yards besides your possessions. Though the elemental aspect will vary, it does about as much damage as an open flame and will harm similar sorts of materials, as well as enhancing your combat prowess.
Great Curse on the Terrestrials: Your Resonant Virtue is inherently flawed by the Great Curse. When your Limit Breaks, your Resonant Virtue echoes through your elemental nature, driving you to irrational acts based on that concordance. These are usually harmful to the character, their motivations or things they care about, but only last a scene.

Terrestrial Aspect Core Powers:

Air Aspect:
Glory of the Air Dragon: While your anima banner is ignited, you are surrounded by a whirlwind of snow, ice, hail, rain, lightning or perhaps merely raging winds. The whirlwind provides lift, allowing you to jump even further and preventing you from taking falling damage.

Earth Aspect:
Glory of the Earth Dragon: When your anima banner is ignited, you are surrounded by an aura of hovering stalactites, gemstones, sandstorms or phantasmal magma flows or avalanches. Your anima also hardens around you, granting you Improbable toughness and an immunity to damage from falling earth and stone, such as avalanches or collapsing buildings.

Fire Aspect:
Glory of the Fire Dragon: When your anima banner is ignited, you are surrounded by a howling inferno of crackling sparks, sheets of flame or simply a great bonfire. Your anima burns not only with Anima Flux, but with fire, igniting anything you wish burnt, including anyone foolish enough to touch you. You are also immune to any fire that does not originate from sorcery or a charm.

Water Aspect:
Glory of the Water Dragon: When your anima banner is ignited you are surrounded by a typhoon of surging tides, shredding rains, or pounding waterfalls. While your anima is ignited, you are never harmed or hindered by water. You can breathe it, swim in it at your normal running speed, walk upon its surface and even fight within it or fire a bow through it.

Wood Aspect:
Glory of the Wood Dragon: When your anima banner is ignited you are surrounded by a halo of whirling leaves, crushing roots and scything branches. While your anima is ignited you are immune to plant-based toxins, thorns and other environmental effects from plant life. You may also become poisonous yourself, your touch causing numbness, paralysis and, with prolonged exposure, death.

I've also expanded on the Background-type Assets, especially adding more Merit-types.  I haven't replicated many of the Dragon-Blooded Specific Backgrounds yet, though it wouldn't be hard to work out Retainers, Command, Arsenal or Family.  Connections is less of an appropriate Asset unless the connections are extremely significant.  Note that Breeding is completely gone, though Legendary Breeding might be an appropriate (primarily social) Asset.

Terrestrial-Appropriate Assets:

Artifact:Weapons and Armor: Artifact Weapons and Armor provide +1 to Combat. You may have up to 2 Artifacts stacking this bonus. One Asset slot can represent both a weapon and armor for style purposes. Weapon and Armor Artifacts are highly obvious when used or worn publically, marking the bearer as supernatural at the very least. They will usually have a secondary supernatural effect as well that may be peripherally related to combat but will not be a direct bonus (Void Sheath/Summoning Loyal Steel etc would be appropriate secondary effects).
Non-weapon Artifacts: These will usually have fairly broad-reaching powers and special effects and will be obvious, possibly simply when carried around, almost certainly when used. Most Non-weapon Artifact effects do not require Essence expenditure unless they are both potent and direct.
Social Position:While most casual memberships to organizations can simply be hand-waved, this Asset represents a position of substantial influence within a large organization of significant power, such as a guild merchant who runs her own successful caravan, or even a Guild Factor, a high-ranking and respected Immaculate Monk, or a captain in the Realm or Lookshy’s navy. This is also appropriate to represent someone of significant political power within a city who is not its ruler. Social Position Assets also provide substantial wealth, servants, contacts and some allies.
Familiar:This Asset provides an animal companion who is an extension of the character. The animal character can communicate with the character silently if they are in physical contact with each other, and more openly in speaking distance to each other. The Familiar cannot communicate with other beings unless it would have the ability to do otherwise. In addition, once per game when the character with 0 Essence Points touches their Familiar, they regain 1 Essence Point.
Manse:A magically designed building placed on a significant conglomeration of Dragon Lines. A place of power that your character and your character alone is attuned to and possesses the Hearthstone to, in addition to possessing the resources, allies and followers to maintain the building. The building itself was likely designed with a purpose (to be a library, fortress, observatory, training dojo, crafting workshop or whatever), and provides +1 to relevant Skills while within it, as well as a potent charm-like effect as part of the Hearthstone. In addition, once per game when the character runs out of Essence Points and is in contact with the Hearthstone, they regain 1 Essence Point.
Thaumaturge:You are skilled in Mortal Magic. You know Basic Formulae for all 11 Arts (Alchemy, Astrology, The Dead, Demon Summoning, Elemental Summoning, Enchantment, Geomancy, Husbandry, Spirit Beckoning, Warding and Exorcism and Weather Working) and have a solid learning foundation for learning more. You are likely a master in at least one of these Arts as well. Your skill in these unusual areas has likely earned you fame enough to support yourself through your work or with patronage. Though these magics are small next to the power of Charms, you also have a very solid grounding in the occult knowledge to learn Sorcery, and are probably capable of self-initiating.
Enchanting:
You possess multiple qualities that people find alluring and attractive. These need not be directly physical. The majority of people you interact with will remember you and will generally want to please you, though only a few will be willing to risk harm to themselves for your favor. You will often be sought as a companion, advisor, concubine or spouse by the rich and powerful, if you are not one already (and perhaps even if you are).
Genius:You think extraordinarily fast, your problem solving skills are unmatched. You may call for a Genius Moment when your character is faced with a problem. The game pauses while you talk with the other players and the GM out of character, figuring out what the best course of action with the knowledge you have is, which your character concludes instantly in in-game time. The GM is within their rights to prevent this Asset from being used if it is inappropriate to a situation (you don’t have time to think right now!) or if it is being overused.
Master of Deception/Trustworthy:You either are an exceptionally skilled liar or so incredibly sincere that nobody can bring themselves to doubt you. Most characters will believe you and give you the benefit of the doubt. Note that betraying this trust will give them cause to doubt, but you may be able to get away with multiple small lies before sentiment completely turns against you, especially if you do something extremely helpful and can make it seem like you were misinformed rather than deliberately lying.

Sorry I've been slow, I've been working on "real" games and real projects, but I'll try to keep this ball rolling as much as possible.  I've started work on the Lunars and more or less completed the Dragon-Blooded, I may pause work on the Lunars to do the White and Black Treatises at some point.  Oh, I should talk about Necromancy sometime too, even though it's really just dead sorcery.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave questions or comments as always!

Exalted Rework Part 16: Custom Charms

Canon Exalted talked a lot about Custom Charms, but I never really saw them made.  While there were tons of examples of charms you could have, since it was a game about being hugely powerful, trying to figure out where to draw lines with Charm design was challenging at best.  Since most of the game-established limits were mechanical or dice-based, we still didn't have good ideas of the limits of Solar (or any Type) power and where to draw lines.

That said, Custom Charms are very much necessary for defining unique powers and adding in effects that whatever idiot developed the charm list didn't think of.  However, there need to be limits.  Fortunately for the Rework, we don't have any of those pesky mechanics to define power limits, we just need to define the Narrative stops for each Exalt Type.

A few basic rules of Custom Charms:

• You never get a bonus to Conflict Resolution from a Passive charm, not even under extremely limited circumstances.  In general, non-Excellencies don't provide bonuses to Conflict Resolution at all.
• Charms should have a choice point in their power: either their power is only accessible when your Anima is Ignited (and thus is very obvious) or some other complication is necessary (such as Invisible Statue Spirit's requirement of stillness).  Dragon-Blooded Charms don't have this disadvantage, but instead have the limitation that they don't provide blanket Impossible Stunts.
• If a charm invalidates a previous effect the character had access to (such as all the Solar charms permitting Improbable Acts or All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight for Twilights), it should lessen the choice point on the invalidated effects.
• If the Charm has a use that is capable of a time-limited or instantaneous but dramatic expression of power, it should cost Essence.
• Passive Charms cannot directly prevent Enemy Goals from occurring if you lose a Conflict.  It's reasonable for Active Charms to prevent specific goals or effects at the cost of Essence (IE: Block mental influence on mortals around me at the cost of 1 Essence, for example).

Usually, a Custom Charm will provide specific Impossible stunts or blanket Improbable Stunts, or possibly a specific extraordinarily powerful effect at the cost of Essence.  For prerequisites, Charms should normally have Essence requirements based on their overall power.  Essence 3 is typically the minimum for any charm that directly affects dozens of people.  Essence 4 Charms allow persistent breaking of the laws of physics (like flying) or supernal, but still fundamentally human powers (like having senses 100,000 times better than a normal human... but still the same 5 senses).  Essence 5 is where Charms start being able to make blanket statements about a Solar's power, such as "I see through all deception."  It is at this level that Charms begin to provide mythic powers, such as hearing whenever one's name is spoken, being able to make anyone who looks upon you fall in love with you, or being able to immediately understand how anything you lay eyes on was constructed.  Above Essence 5, charms remain on this scale, but become broader and broader in application as restrictions that should be in place on Essence 5 charms (I hear my name... whenever it's said in a city I have control over, Everyone falls in love with me... if I fit their orientation) start to fall away.  By Essence 8+ the power arms race is such that you really should be just doing whatever you want assuming you've bought charms to allow you to do it.

... So it really is kind of hard to talk about Custom Charms, but hopefully the guidelines and examples are good enough to work with.

Tomorrow I'll post some Dragon-Blooded Charms (again assuming that I get to post here at all, next week is going to be bussssyyyyyy)...

Exalted Rework Part 15: The Last Solar Charms

After today I'll run out of Solar charms.  I may also be back to working on a real project, and if so then updates here will be a bit more sparse.  Dragon-Blooded Charms are now on the way, though writing out 40+ charm descriptions gets a little bit tedious, so I've also been poking at the Lunars, conceptually.  I don't know what their First Excellency gets that Solar/Terrestrial doesn't, yet, but I think that Lunars are going to have to lose attribute excellencies, since we don't have attributes any more.  Fortunately we can also eliminate the knack/charm distinction (though I liked the knack system) because charms no longer have timing rules.  Anyway, Solar Charms.

Stealth & Deception Charms:

Flawlessly Impenetrable Disguise: (Essence 2) Passive: You may, with a few minutes work, disguise yourself as literally anyone. You can change your height, skin texture, hair color, eye color, apparent gender, apparent age, height, voice scent and speaking style. Mortal human senses cannot penetrate this disguise, though certain animals can. At Essence 4, you may alter your apparent Essence Score (up to half or double) and can mimick supernatural appearances, allowing the character to pass as a demon, god, ghost or elemental. At this Essence you can also perfectly imitate anyone you are at least passingly familiar with, though you do not gain the imitated character’s powers, knowledge or skills.
Stealing from Plain Sight Spirit: (Essence 2) Passive: Your pickpocketing, sleight of hand and casual robbery skills are not limited by reason. You can steal objects without touching them (though they must be reachable) and without being noticed, provided there was an instant that the object was unguarded or unobserved. You can also steal things from out of the hands of extras, they will not notice the item has been stolen until it becomes obvious or until another character points it out to them. This charm never works on attuned artifacts or constructs made of a persons’ essence.
Door-Evading Technique: (Essence 2) Passive: Your breaking and entering skills are not limited by reason. You can pick mortal locks without tools and pass through any portal you are capable of opening without opening it. You are capable of picking locks that should not be pickable (such as supernaturally secured locks or first age Essence-attunement locks), but this may require a Conflict with the lock.
Mental Invisibility Technique: (Essence 2) Passive: Your Stealth is not limited by reason. So long as you are not engaged in combat or otherwise have direct attention or are being actively sought, you can vanish from the minds of all onlookers. Extras will never notice you and forget you were ever there. Heroic characters must have their suspicions raised enough to declare that they are searching for someone. They must either beat you in a Conflict or pay 1 Limit to overcome the supernatural mental effect that commands them to ignore you.
Invisible Statue Spirit: (Essence 2) Passive: When you are still, you become completely imperceptible to all senses besides touch. Unlike Mental Invisibility Technique, this charm is genuine non-existence from those senses, not merely a trick of the mind, and so can be used when people are on alert for you. The invisibility fades immediately if you move from your position or take any offensive action, and fades a few seconds after you are touched or bumped into.
Mist On Water Attack: (Essence 3) Passive: When you initiate a Combat Conflict by making an attack against a target who is completely unaware of your presence, if you win, you can declare that the victim does not know who attacked them or from where, as the surprise attack takes them out of the fight immediately. If you lose, you can inflict a single Significant Injury complication on them. If the target is an Extra, you can kill or knock them unconscious them, silently and imperceptibly, without their allies even knowing.

A major design intent with these charms was to allow characters with them to do a lot of stuff but to not ruin plots with them.  I felt it necessary to remove the obnoxiousness that was Disappearing from the Mind's Eye, so a lesser version (that only works on Normals and Extras) was folded into Mental Invisibility.  Mental Invisibility and Invisible Statue combine to make very effective stealth, but that's two charms worth of commitment.  Mist On Water Attack was kind of meant to take the entire Thrown tree, which was built around assassination, and put it where it belonged, which was not combat charms.  I  just don't agree with silent assassinations of key enemies, it's not a very satisfying end to a big epic story.

Travel Charms:

Flashing Thunderbolt Steed: (Essence 2) Passive: Any natural, unowned animal that you know how to ride instinctively submits to you. Your mount never tires nor panics and is never at any risk of harm from natural terrain or roads. You will never fall from your mount, even when unconscious or asleep, only when slain. If your Anima Banner is up, your mount travels at quadruple its normal speed and can run all-out on unstable terrain or liquid. This charm only functions on your mount so long as you are one of its riders (or are nearby it with intent to return soon, for instance if you’ve temporarily leapt off to climb onto a behemoth to slay a Fair Folk Cataphract).
Worthy Mount Technique: (Essence 2) Passive: While your Anima Banner is ignited, you are capable of impossible feats of horsemanship, while it is down you are merely capable of improbable feats. No matter the mount, they are impossible agile, graceful, strong and confident, a willing extension of your will and prowess. Your horse might leap from tree branch to tree branch chasing down your foes as you stand in the saddle prepared to leap off, fight for a moment in midair and land on the horse’s back.
Invincible Admiral Method: (Essence 2) Passive: You and any who sail under your command are guarded from the dangers of the high seas. Any who consider you their commanding officer will not be swept overboard, even during storms, nor suffer scurvy, sunstroke or other afflictions, nor will their ships be at risk of sinking from wear or weather. This protection always applies to your ship and spreads to others so long as they remain at a distance where the other ships could see your ship given smooth seas. When you navigate a ship and prepare its course, it travels perfectly on that course at maximum speed, avoiding any and all hazards that you are aware of on the way, regardless of wind or doldrums. Other ships under your command can follow your course safely as well. Ships under the influence of this charm can still be harmed by deliberate action or unknown threats: Storm Mothers, mutinies or running aground of reefs they were unaware of, but otherwise this is perfect protection.
Ship-Claiming Stance: (Essence 2) Passive: Your ship is an extension of yourself. While your Anima Banner is up, you can perform Impossible feats of naval skill, while it is down you can still perform Improbable ones. This charm, additionally, allows you to supernaturally claim any ship that has reason to recognize you as its owner. Your ship will hold together against catastrophic damage (long enough to see you to the nearest island), and you can literally turn it around on nothing, no matter sea or conditions, and it travels at approximately triple the speed it 'should'. You are even capable of running your ship with no crew besides yourself and other such unreasonable feats.

So Travel Powers aren't that useful in a lot of RPGs.  When we can sideline several months of travel into ten, fifteen seconds of gameplay, we don't care a lot that it takes forever.  So sometimes GMs imply that if you don't get there right now something bad is going to happen.  Also, Exalted more than most games has a habit of characters getting too big for the party and running off to do their own things before rejoining the party when they deal with something big, and for things like that it's good to have a personal travel power.  Thus, these charms.  I won't be shy about saying how terrible Ride Charms were in core Exalted, so I've dramatically reduced the requirements to actually get an effective travel power out of them.  Sail was always a bit better but only useful on land, so it took a little bit less effort to adapt.

Social Perception Charms:

Judge’s Ear Technique: (Essence 2): Passive: This charm permits you to to know the immediate goals of a character you are dealing with, in person or in writing. This also will inform you if their dealings with you are honest, dishonest or somewhere in between, though it will not identify specific lies. It will also inform you if their goals suddenly shift.
Know the Soul’s Price: (Essence 3, Judge’s Ear Technique): Passive: After getting to know a person, you know their ‘price,’ what it is they will do anything in exchange for. While this does not directly identify the character’s Motivation, it likely comes close to it. This Charm can also be used to guarantee someone’s loyalty for no less than a Season, should you provide their Price to them.
Courtier’s Eye Technique: (Essence 2): Passive: Studying the currents of relationships and body language, you immediately understand social dynamics of situations you enter. This will not necessarily provide perfect details (you would know that two people are close, but might not be sure if that was because they were friends or if they were having an affair), but you will immediately understand who has power over whom, who likes whom and who dislikes whom when you walk into a room or hear them talk about others. This charm also allows you to smooth over minor faux pas and breaches of etiquette you make perfectly, you will never give offense unless you deliberately intend to.

Social Perception is powerful stuff in Exalted, Judge's Ear Technique was known for a while as 'The Charm' in my group because I ruined several plots with it on my social-tertiary character.  For this version I've actually toned it back a bit and made it more like Insightful Buyer Technique (I think it was), which is still very effective but no longer perfect-lie-detector status.  Know the Soul's Price was always a cool charm that was never really worth taking, I felt, so I tried to make it easier to use.  Courtier's Eye, finally, also contains Mastery of Small Manners as well as its original incarnation, allowing you to chat a few people up and immediately know the score.

Organization Charms:

Fury-Inciting Presence: (Essence 2): Passive: You possess an aura of command, inspiration or charisma. When you call upon people who share at least one intimacy with you to follow you or to stand down, they will do so, and they will treat you as their leader and trust you implicitly: their morale will be far stronger than their rag-tag origins would imply.
Commanding the Ideal Celestial Army: (Essence 3): Passive: All who who consider you their commanding officer are your hands and eyes. All soldiers who consider you to be superior to them on the chain of command resist disease, starvation, exhaustion and dehydration so long as they receive any food, water and rest and remain within 1 hours’ communication with you. In battle, you are aware of the location and condition of all your subordinates, and orders you convey reach them instantly.
Deft Official’s Way: (Essence 2): Passive: You may, after spending a few hours working with or as part of a bureaucracy, speed up or slow down its overall efficiency or only one piece of legislation or paperwork by a factor of three. This charm lasts so long as you spend fifteen minutes a day interacting with the bureaucracy and wear off one week after your final contact. Your influence is subtle and it will not be apparent that the cause of the speed up or slow down is you. If you work with the bureaucracy for an extended period, you may more permanently affect its functioning.
Tiger-Warrior Training Technique: (Essence 3) Active: Spend 1 Essence when taking a week-long dramatic action to train 100 or less soldier extras who share an intimacy with your or have an intimacy for you. These soldiers need not initially be warriors, the might be peasants or bandits. After each week’s training (which requires no less 2 hours of your time per day), they are braver, stronger, more skilled and more loyal. After a month, even the greenest troops become Tiger Warriors, elite soldiers brave and skilled enough to dive into the teeth of Hell, the Underworld or the armies of the Wyld.
Legendary Scholar Curriculum: (Essence 3) Active: Spend 1 Essence when taking a week-long dramatic action to teach 100 or less students who share an intimacy with you or have an intimacy for you. Pick a non-combat skill that you have rated at 3+ that you wish to teach. Teaching fresh students to become mortal masters of this discipline takes one month, but they improve dramatically with each week.
Wise-Eyed Courtier Method: (Essence 2) Passive: After spending several days work with or among a discrete social group (an organization, household, occupational group or ruling class, but not an entire city or nation), you can create a single belief, emotion, taboo or fad among them. Your work will be subtle and tracking its origin back to you is impossible for a mortal to achieve. Note that the belief occurs within the group, not within individuals within it, it is very likely that no members of a group would believe that they were all animals transformed into humans, but they would all think that everyone else in the group, possibly everyone who they didn't personally think was an idiot, believed it.

Organization Charms were a bit of an oddball category for me that I realized I needed to put in because those Eclipse Charms were actually really cool, if you could use them, and I didn't have space for a lot of War or Training Charms either.  They mostly work they way they did in core, though Wise-Eyed Courtier now covers all three of the original charms it did.

And that's all our Solar Charms.  I think that so long as characters gain them more slowly than they did in canon (though I don't have any sort of experience system worked out) that that's enough.  Depending on how Dragon-Blooded are looking tomorrow I may either post about Custom Charms, a subject I think is woefully lacking in discussion in Core Exalted, or give some examples of how the Dragon-Blooded have come out.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave questions or comments!

Exalted Rework Part 14: More Solar Charms

Dragon-Blooded Charms finally have a general format: provides X benefits, if you are a Y Aspect, you can also do Z.  Sometimes there are multiple combinations of Y and Z  Annoyingly I'm having to either make up a lot of charm names or repurpose them because the canon ones are all super direct and literal.  Also I'm noticing that the Dragon-Blooded really don't have a lot in the way of Social Charms, which I think I'm okay with, it helps make their internecine rivalries more slap-fighty.  Finally, I'm creating 'bending' charms so that you can be a character from Avatar the Last Airbender.  Because it's good source material and I really don't see why such charms shouldn't exist.

Anyway Solar Charms!

Essence Manipulation Charms:

Chaos-Repelling Pattern: (Essence 2) Passive/Active: While your Anima Banner is ignited, a large area around you functions as if it were In Creation. Unless directly tampered with by a hostile entity of equal or greater essence than you, it is not inimical to you or any other natives of creation (though it may be strange and terrifying). Also, you have the ability to shatter permanent Shaping Effects on others with a touch, including Wyld Mutations, Fair Folk Graces and Sidereal Astrology. Doing so costs 1 Essence per target. You may need to win a Conflict in order to touch the target if they resist.
Wyld Cauldron Technology: (Essence 3, Chaos-Repelling Pattern) Active: While in areas of the Deep Wyld, you may shape the raw chaos into forms of your liking. You may craft land, people, wealth, artifacts, or anything else to your liking, as well as stabilizing any such areas as being part of Creation.  This takes a lot of time, usually in the order of weeks.  At Essence 4, you may perform such acts on Bordermarches and Middlemarches, transforming more stable areas to suit your whims and altering its flora, fauna and population to suit your desires. Before Essence 5, all things you change and create lack an internal Reality, and will dissolve back into the Wyld if they do not interact with the things of Creation more than once per season. After Essence 5, your will and work keeps them stable. Know that the Raksha hate this charm and those who use it, for it is inimical to them and all they stand for.
Spirit-Cutting Attack: (Essence 2) Passive: You may perceive and physically interact with dematerialized spirits, including Ghosts, Demons, Gods and Elementals. You can also perceive the entrances to spirits’ Sanctums, though you may not necessarily gain entrance to them.
Ghost-Eating Technique: (Essence 3, Spirit-Cutting Attack) Passive: When you slay a creature, you may declare you are terminating that creature’s existence, consuming their essence. You gain nothing from this, but the creature slain is ended utterly. It cannot reincarnate, reform, rise as a ghost, or be remade by the being it is a component of. This is the charm the Solars used to slay the Primordials at the Gods’ behest, creating Oblivion and the Neverborn, for the Primordials existence was such that even this magic was not enough to completely extinguish them.
All-Encompassing Sorcerer’s Sight: (Essence 3, Spirit-Cutting Attack) Passive: Similar to Glory of the Twilight but in all ways greater, while the character’s Anima Banner is ignited, the character is perfectly aware of the essence around her, able to immediately identify any creature’s Essence Score (anything with a 4+ is obviously supernatural) and easily analyze the function of any artifact or charm that they are aware of. Invisible and dematerialized creatures are not only visible, but identifiable. Stealth still functions against a character with charm active. While a Twilight Caste’s anima banner is not ignited, they gain the benefits of Glory of the Twilight.
Sun’s Wrathful Rays: (Essence 2) Passive: You are armed with the light of the sun. While your Anima Banner is up, you may strike out with sorcerous blasts of holy light, leaving you never unarmed.

These are a combination of what were originally Lore and Occult Charms.  Wyld Cauldron Technology gained significant power due to the removal of having to roll, so I added the much slower rate.  Spirit-Cutting Attack provides the basic means to interact with and fight Spirits, Ghost-Eating Technique lets you obliterate them.  All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight is a very useful charm for anyone, even more for Twilights now that it replaces their Anima Banner and provides them with their Anima Banner power while their anima is down.  Sun's Wrathful Rays is a completely custom charm (thus why it's marked in Red), but doesn't feel inappropriate to certain character concepts.

Healing Charms:

Flawless Diagnosis Technique: (Essence 2) Passive: The secret ways of the body are no longer secret to you. After a few minutes with the victim of any malady (poison, disease, infection, madness, curses or sorcery) you know exactly how to cure it, as well as any possible methods of alleviating symptoms, prolonging the patient’s lifespan or reducing their suffering.
Wound-Mending Care Technique: (Essence 2) Passive: You do not need simple medicines or tools to heal injuries, your Essence is both balm and bandage. You also eliminate any risk of complications from uncertain medical procedures you perform: while the treatment might not be successful, a patient will never be worse off than before you helped them. That you do not need instruments reduces preparation times, but not the actual time required to provide care. Also note that this does not allow you to speed a patient’s recovery time, nor allow you to perform procedures you do not know how to do. This charm does not allow you to substitute it for the effects of any uncommon medical ingredient.
Body-Purifying Admonitions: (Essence 3, Wound-Mending Care Technique) Active: Spend 1 Essence while treating a willing patient. You may utterly banish a single malady affecting the target, no matter its origin. Depending on the harshness of the malady, treatment may take as long as several days. This charm can be used to regrow lost limbs, eyes, or other traditionally impossible injuries.
Instant Treatment Methodology: (Essence 3, Flawless Diagnosis Technique) Active: Pay 1 Essence when taking any action to treat or heal heal. This reduces the required time for the action (even a major disruptive surgery or Body-Purifying Admonitions to restore a lost limb or eye) to 5 seconds. It does not speed the recovery time of the patient.
Anointment of Miraculous Health: (Essence 4) Active: Pay 1 Essence when taking any action to treat or heal. Their recovery time is immediate upon the treatment being administered, whatever ailments were healed are gone instantly and the patient is returned to the picture of vitality.

Medicine Charms are extremely powerful, even in a game with no direct damage system.  The ability to save allies and mortals is among the most miraculous things the Exalted can do.  Which is why there's actually a substantial tree of Medicine Charms rather than just a single 'bink you're better' charm.  I feel like creating the lines between these charms also lets you define what sort of supernatural healing you provide: do you simply know how to cure them, no matter what?  Do you lay hands and heal?  How far does your healing power extend?  There should probably be some Craft: Genesis charms here too, but I think those can be custom charms (which really every Essence 5+ charm should kind of be).

Physical Prowess Charms:

Increasing Strength Exercise: (Essence 2) Passive: You are superhumanly strong. This is literal physical power, not the general destructive ability of Heaven Thunder Hammer. This allows you to engage in Improbable acts of might with your Anima Banner down and Impossible acts with it ignited, such as lifting up a burning building to save those trapped within, moving a great caravan or pushing open an impossibly massive but indestructible door.
Graceful Crane Stance: (Essence 2) Passive: You are supernaturally graceful and can leap great distances. your gymnastic agility is no longer limited by reason. You may now perform Improbable acts of agility while your Anima Banner is down and Impossible Acts while it is ignited. You can walk tightropes on your hands, gracefully flip out of a wagon rattling down a mountainside land on your feet or roll smoothly back to your feet after being thrown by an ogre. Additionally, your jumps carry you great distances, approximately five times your normal jumping distance.
Lightning Speed: (Essence 2) Passive: Your mobility and agility surpasses the speed of mortal eyes. You can move Improbably fast with your Anima Banner down and Impossibly fast with it up. You can move so quickly as to appear to teleport, and you may travel at great speeds over modest distances.
Feather-Foot Style: (Essence 2) Passive: Your effective weight and traction are no longer limited by reason. You may perform Improbable Stunts of this type with your Anima Banner down and Impossible stunts with it up. You can walk or run surely on snowflakes, falling raindrops, water, lava or a floor of writhing maggots as well as run on vertical surfaces or upside-down (though you cannot stand still on them, movement is key). You are also capable of gaining traction on thin air, though only long enough to jump.
Racing Hare Method: (Essence 3, Monkey Leap Technique or Feather-Foot Style or Lightning Speed) Passive: You can travel long distances quickly under your own power (how the travel occurs is up to the player, but it is not significantly impeded by any obstacle short of the Great River). Doing so is tiring, requiring a night’s rest after the travel is complete unless you spend 1 Essence.
Eagle-Wing Style: (Essence 4, any 2 of Graceful Crane Stance, Lightning Speed and Feather-Foot Style) Passive: While your Anima Banner is ignited, you can fly and glide, though not as fast as you would travel on foot. You treat 20 feet above the ground as the 'equilibrium' you drift down to.  You can rise higher than that temporarily, however.
Creation-Crossing Comet Style: (Essence 5, Racing Hare Method) Passive: If you use Racing Hare Method while your Anima Banner is ignited you can fly at around 500 feet altitude. This movement mode is never tiring.

I mentioned early on that Athletics charms are dear to my heart, here are the final versions of them.  I'm pretty happy with Increasing Strength, Graceful Crane, Lightning Speed and Feather-Foot, Racing Hare is designed to be a very simple personalized Travel Charm (subsuming Mountain-Crossing Leap Technique, which in Core was simply a rather inferior Travel Charm), Eagle-Wing Style is a greater expression of mobility, and Creation-Crossing Comet Style is a custom charm that builds on Racing Hare Method.

Physical Perception Charms:

Crafty Observation Method: (Essence 2) Passive: When investigating an area, you gather information quickly and without a trace. You can perform the equivalent of 15 minutes of searching a specific area you can see without interacting with it.  This search takes a few seconds. You will not gain information you could not have accessed without taking substantial actions, but you will gain all other action. For instance, when searching a room, you would immediately know everything in a large chest of drawers, but not the contents of a locked chest (though if you were a skilled locksmith, you would know how to pick the lock). If you were at a murder scene and a victim was lying face-down, you would know what form the wounds on their front took, as well as the exact posture they were laying at. This charm does not provide the means to analyze information, only the information.
Keen Sense Technique: (Essence 2) Passive: While your Anima Banner is ignited, your natural senses increase to impossible levels, while it is down they are merely preternaturally sharp. With your Anima Banner down, you can focus your senses become about 10 times as sharp as a human's: you can read a book from across a room, hear whispers clearly from twenty feet away, and identify familiar people by scent before they enter a room.  With your Anima banner ignited your senses are approximately 100 times as sharp as a normal human’s: you can track by scent, clearly hear conversations through thick stone walls, recognize the faces of people 500 yards away at night, and identify a subtle poison in a meal of extravagant spices (in addition to identifying all of the spices). You never suffer from the use of these heightened senses (you would not be deafened by a scream next to you while listening through a stone wall or blinded by a sudden explosion while staring into the night). You also will not notice things with your heightened senses unless you are deliberately seeking them.
Unsurpassed Sense Discipline: (Essence 4, Keen Sense Technique) Passive: Your Keen Sense Technique is enhanced, with Keen Senses being active when your Anima Banner is not ignited and the following-level senses (approximately 10,000 times sharper than a normal human’s) being available while it is: You can read by touch, gauge a stranger’s mood by scent, read lips from several miles away and eavesdrop on conversations several blocks away on a busy street. Like Keen Sense Technique, you will not necessarily notice things with your heightened senses unless you are deliberately seeking them.
Surprise Anticipation Method: (Essence 3) Passive: You have a sense for danger. You become aware of a potentially harmful situation you were not aware of with just enough time to attempt to avoid it if you act immediately. You can only become aware of potentially harmful situations if you have the senses to become aware of them, though you need not be awake for this charm to function. For instance, if you were asleep and an assassin fired an arrow at you from a window, the charm would wake you up with enough time to react. If you were shopping in a bazaar and a dematerialized spirit attacked you, the charm would not function, unless you had some way of being aware of a dematerialized spirit. If a harmful effect is subtle enough that you might miss it, such as an invisible arrow being fired at night, you become aware that something harmful is approaching you but not necessarily what it is or where it is coming from.
Eye of the Unconquered Sun: (Essence 5) Passive: While your Anima Banner is up, you are immune to deliberate deception, including but not limited to: lies, Gossamer illusions, sorcerous illusions, stealth of any sort, mundane disguises, invisibility, shapeshifting, Sidereal Astrological disguises, Supernatural compulsions or compelled beliefs that force them to deny reality. You are aware of the effects that are attempting to deceive you, but you may ignore them. If any effect attempts to overcome this effect, you passively add +3 to your Conflict Score to contest their deception.

Today we end with Perception Charms, notably drawing from both Investigation and Awareness charms.  Crafty Observation Method is a valuable tool for both infiltrators and investigators, Keen Sense Technique contains all three of the original Awareness charm versions, though at limited forms unless your Banner is up.  Unsurpassed Sense makes you absurdly perceptive, though both of the enhanced senses charms require that you be deliberately looking for things, to prevent the problem of 'Why didn't I hear him sneaking up on me?'  As much as this somewhat reduces the effectiveness of these charms, it helps preserve narratives.  Anyway, if you don't want to be snuck up on take Surprise Anticipation Method, which is greatly improved by not being treated as a charm use.  Eye of the Unconquered Sun is mostly an example of how insane Solar Perception gets at high levels, though it notably is both a Social and Physical Perception charms.

Tomorrow I'll finish up the list of Solar charms with Stealth and Deception, Social Perception, Travel and Organization Charms.  I may toss in Solar Hero Form and Snake Form as freebies, too.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave questions or comments as always.

Exalted Rework Part 13: Solar Charms

So I haven't got any rants for today, so I figured I'd just post a good third of the Solar Charms I've written with a little bit of commentary between sections while I try to figure out how to categorize Dragon-Blooded Charms.

General Charms:

(You may take these charms multiple times, each time you do, pick a different category the Excellency can be used with. Example Categories: Combat, Physical Prowess, Social Perception, Social Influence, Applied Knowledge, Sorcerous Power)

First Solar Excellency - Essence Overwhelming: (Essence 1) Active: Pick a general category of endeavor. When you engage in Conflicts of that category, you may spend 1 Essence to add +2 to your Skill.
Second Solar Excellency - Essence Triumphant: (Essence 1) Active: Pick a general category of endeavor. When you engage in Conflicts of that category, you may spend 1 Essence to guarantee that your goal occurs, even should you lose the Conflict. You may not do this if your Goal is Overpowering (ie. killing or overwhelming Motivation).
Third Solar Excellency - Essence Resurgent: (Essence 2) Active: Pick a general category of endeavor. When you engage in Conflicts of that category and you lose, you may spend 1 Essence to not lose any Sacrifices you bid in order to succeed. This charm cannot be used to affect Conflicts which you win.
Infinite Solar Mastery: (Essence 4) Passive: Pick a general category of endeavor. When you use the First Solar Excellency relating to this endeavor, you may spend more than 1 Essence. Each essence spent after the first adds an additional +1 to the skill.
Solar Essence Flow: (Essence 5) Passive: Pick a general category of endeavor. You now win ties in that endeavor. If this ability is contested by another ability that grants winning ties, you tie normally, but instead gain +1 to those Skill Rolls.


The First Excellency really is meant to be your go-to Excellency. The Second and Third are nice supplements, but unlike Core are really their own things, not just stylistic choices. Infinite Mastery and Essence Flow are basic mechanical enhancements.

Combat Charms:

Summoning Loyal Steel: (Essence 2) Passive: You may hide your weapons and armor Elsewhere, even Artifacts, allowing you to appear unarmed and making it impossible to steal your weapons. This charm also prevents you from being disarmed.
Sandstorm-Wind Attack: (Essence 2) Passive: While your Anima Banner is ignited, you never run out of ammunition and your weapons never break. You can create bolts or arcs of energy (with any sort of cosmetic effect you desire) with your weapons rather than striking normally, and you may throw melee weapons and have them return to your hand.
Flashing Vengeance Draw: (Essence 2) Passive: Your attack speed and precision is not restricted by reason, you may perform Improbable stunts of this type even when your Anima Banner is not ignited, and you may perform Impossible stunts when it is. You can strike opponents on opposite sides of you simultaneously with a single weapon, or carve your initials in an your opponent’s flesh before he has time to bleed, or strike your opponent five times while he’s mid-blink, returning your sword to its sheath before he opens his eyes.
Iron Whirlwind Attack: (Essence 3, Flashing Vengeance Draw) Active: You may spend 1 Essence to defeat all Extras with any reasonable chance of engaging you in combat, in addition to forcing a Moderate Injury Complication on all Exalted or Heroic enemies in the area.
Heaven Thunder Hammer: (Essence 2) Passive: Your offensive force is not limited by reason, and you may perform Improbable stunts of this type even when your Anima Banner is not ignited, and you may perform Impossible stunts when it is.. You can smash through walls with bare-handed punches, cut down ancient trees with a single swing or create massive craters with swings of a hammer.
Blazing Solar Bolt: (Essence 3, Heaven Thunder Hammer) Active: You may spend 1 Essence when engaged in combat against against Creatures of Darkness. In addition to any other effects of the Conflict, the Creatures of Darkness will suffer a significant wound or death, at the GM’s discretion.
Fivefold Bulwark Stance: (Essence 2) Passive: Your blocks and parries are no longer limited by reason, you may perform Improbable stunts of this type while your Anima Banner is down and Impossible stunts while it is ignited. For example, you may parry nonphysical attacks, block massive explosions with a shield, knock away falling buildings with the flat of a sword, and straight block swords swung by colossi (the ground beneath you might buckle, but neither you nor your weapon will budge).
Heavenly Guardian Defense: (Essence 2, Fivefold Bulwark Stance) Active: You may spend 1 Essence when you lose a Combat-type Conflict to cancel an injury or death caused by an opponent’s Overpowering Goal. This does not prevent damage from your own Complications, nor will it prevent negative effects which do not pertain to physical harm. You still lose the conflict, but you are merely defeated. You may not activate this Charm if the Conflict in question did not support your Motivation.
Iron Skin Concentration: (Essence 2) Passive: You can parry blades and arrows with your bare skin, and your toughness is not limited by reason. You may perform Improbable stunts of this type while your Anima Banner is down and Impossible Stunts while it is ignited. You can still be injured, but can manifest moments of flawless invulnerability.
Adamant Skin Technique: (Essence 2, Iron Skin Concentration) Active: You may spend 1 Essence when you lose a Combat-type Conflict to cancel an injury or death caused by an opponent’s Overpowering Goal. This does not prevent damage from your own Sacrifices, nor will it prevent negative effects which do not pertain to physical harm. You still lose the conflict, but you are merely defeated. You may not activate this Charm if the Conflict in question did not support your Motivation.
Shadow over Water: (Essence 2) Passive: Your defensive agility is no longer limited by reason. You may perform Improbable stunts of this type while your Anima Banner is down and Impossible Stunts while it is ignited. You can dodge so swiftly that opponents don’t even know where you’ve gone, flitting through hails of arrows or sprays of acid untouched, appearing behind your enemies even they are certain their blows are landing.
Reflex Sidestep Technique: (Essence 2) Passive: You are reflexively aware of Combat Conflicts that other characters attempt to enhance with the Subtlety Complication. The subtlety automatically fails and you may declare a goal and complications as normal.
Seven Shadow Evasion: (Essence 2, Shadow over Water) Active: You may spend 1 Essence when you lose a Combat-type Conflict to cancel an injury or death caused by an opponent’s Overpowering Goal. This does not prevent damage from your own Sacrifices, nor will it prevent negative effects which do not pertain to physical harm. You still lose the conflict, but you are merely defeated. You may not activate this Charm if the Conflict in question did not support your Motivation.
Heart’s Blade Perfection: (Essence 3) Passive: Choose a weapon-based combat style. While your Anima Banner is ignited, you can form these weapons out of raw Essence. While fighting with non-Artifact weapons of this type, you gain +1 to your Combat Skill.

So, each of the five 'shrubs', Speed, Power, Parry, Dodge and Soak has a tier 1 which gives you stunts and a tier 2 that gives you a nifty active ability. Perfect Defenses are partially intended to get players away from thinking about killing opponents and more thinking about beating the situation, because I firmly believe that killing a villain shouldn't be the most effective way to stop them. The entire Overpowering Goal system is designed to prevent that. Heart's Blade Perfection is a stylistic charm designed for characters who don't want to get an Artifact weapon or don't have a good narrative way to get an Artifact weapon.

Social Influence Charms:

Respect-Commanding Attitude: (Essence 2) Passive: You may perform Improbable Stunts of public speaking and performance (judged based on the responses of your audience) while your Anima Banner is down and Impossible ones while it is up. In particular, non-Heroic entities will always listen to what you have to say and will agree with you unless it directly conflicts with their Motivations or Intimacies. Note that this is not mind control and does not hypnotize or override the will, this is simply extraordinary charisma and beauty of performance or oration.
Heart-Compelling Method: (Essence 2) Passive: When speaking or performing, you can inspire others to feel certain emotions. That your words (or performance) is the source of these emotions is obvious, but that these emotions are supernaturally compelled is not. You may single out individuals to feel these emotions or apply them to all who experience your work, but you cannot disguise the emotions you put forward: a speech that evokes unthinkable rage in a given individual will be recognizable to any observer as a speech that might be upsetting, even if only one person was supernaturally compelled. Heroic and Exalted targets can avoid the emotion by exiting the area, gaining Limit or engaging in Conflict with you. The emotion is supernaturally compelled for a scene, but might last longer.
Hypnotic Tongue Technique: (Essence 2) Passive: You may give irresistible but reasonable orders to extras and other weak-minded individuals. They will obey to the best of their ability and never question why they did so. Reasonable orders include favors, information and aid but not putting themselves in danger, even possible danger (such as giving the Solar their weapons while they are alone together). Heroic individuals are immune to this Charm. This Charm need not be subtle: shouting “CEASE!” at a rioting street would also be effective.
Memory-Reweaving Discipline: (Essence 3) Active: When speaking or performing, you may spend 1 Essence to instill a permanent belief in your audience (such as "You love me," or "The Realm is Evil"). If you have an Intimacy (or Motivation) in agreement with that belief, then your audience gains an Intimacy for it as well. That you are the one who has convinced them of this belief is obvious to all who watch or listen, or who ask afterwards. These beliefs may be untrue ("Mnemon is a demon disguised as a Dragon-Blood"), and if presented with undeniable evidence to the contrary, your audience will grudgingly abandon them, though if there is any doubt they will hold fast. Non-heroic entities will always accept these new beliefs, where Heroic targets can avoid falling under your spell by leaving the area, gaining Limit or engaging in Conflict with you.
Majestic Radiant Presence: (Essence 3) Passive: While your Anima Banner is ignited, extras are in utter awe of you, whether this be worshipful or terrified will depend on your actions. When engaged in Conflicts of social influence, while your Anima Banner is ignited, your majesty must be respected: other characters are incapable of dismissing or ignoring your words, limiting their stunts (and perhaps encouraging certain Complications).

Here I display my intent toward Social Combat. Social Conflicts are a thing, played out through debates and shouting matches and arguments, and sometimes through direct combat as well. Here we also see that you can voluntarily gain Limit to avoid supernatural mental effects. Finally, of course, while social charms just plain work on non-Heroic individuals, anyone Heroic can either flee the area (possibly facing social consequences) or directly challenging the Solar using the charm, either to a physical or social Conflict, some way of refuting the statement being made.

Fortitude Charms:

Integrity-Protecting Prana: (Essence 2) Passive: While the character’s Anima Banner is ignited, this charm renders the character completely immune to all forms of harmful Shaping that directly alters their mind, body or spirit, including Wyld Energy, Sorcerous Transmogrification, Primordial Magic or certain Shaping-based charms. Note that this is superior to the Lunar Exalted’s tattoos in that it permits harmless or beneficial Shaping effects (beneficial from the Solar’s point of view, this charm is defined by the Solar’s internal idea of their own strength), and provides protection against mind and soul-affecting. This does not protect against attacks enhanced by Shaping or created by Shaped constructs, it simply prevents the character from being straight-up turned into a newt or a rock or a cloud of butterflies.
Righteous Lion Defense: (Essence 2) Passive: Define an ideal, based on the character’s Motivation or an Intimacy. The character’s dedication to this ideal is absolute, no matter what charms, supernatural influence or enemy Goals are applied, the Solar will never forsake or betray it. This charm may be purchased twice. Should the Solar ever achieve their ideal, this Charm accepts a new one at the beginning of the next story.
Temptation-Resisting Stance: (Essence 2) Active: Pay 1 Essence after you have lost a Conflict where your opponent's Goal involved you betraying your Motivation. Your opponent’s goal is negated. Any Complications are played out as normal. You may also use this charm to spend Essence instead of Limit when resisting supernatural mental influence.
Transcendent Hero’s Meditation: (Essence 3) Active: Pay 1 Essence. You break any and all externally imposed restraints on your mind with an echoing shout, restoring you to full mental clarity. Any sort of illusion, mind control, enforced emotion or unnatural servitude is shattered, allowing the Exalt to make their own decisions about their actions. This Charm has no effect on Limit Break.
Immunity to Everything Technique: (Essence 3) Passive: While all Solars are naturally resistant to harm, you are completely immune to environmental dangers to your body. Poison, acid, suffocation, starvation, dehydration and extreme temperatures and supernatural weather are all harmless to you, unless inflicted directly and deliberately by a being of equal or higher Essence. This grants no immunity to any direct attack of any sort, though it may allow you to resist secondary effects of the attack.
Trackless Region Navigation: (Essence 2) Passive: Your wilderness survival abilities are no longer restricted by reason. Groups that you lead travel swiftly and safely through the harshest of conditions. You can feed yourself off of the land’s bounty, no matter how improbable, and can lead others to find food as well, making long treks through dangerous lands with no supplies reasonable and possible. Your can also track and pursue quarry through the wilderness with only the barest hints of a trail.
Friendship With Animals Approach: (Essence 2) Passive: You can communicate with animals, and they with you. This does not make normal animals intelligent enough to understand the full range of human concepts, and many animals (especially wild animals) lack patience or self-control. Animals will only ever attack you when driven to near-insanity with hunger, fear or anger or if trained to do so. If you raise and train animals, you can supernaturally enhance them, making them larger, stronger, smarter and braver.

I have combined Integrity and Resistance into a single Skill called Fortitude because I think that in general they tend to go together (upon reflection I think Sidereals split them up? Mercury gets Resistance and Saturn gets Integrity, but they're together for both Earth Aspects and Zenith/Midnight/Malefactor so that's enough for me). There's also a few Survival charms in there because this feels like the appropriate place for them. In general these charms are defensive or stunt-based, so there's not a lot to say.

Crafting Charms:

Chaos-Resistance Preparation: (Essence 2) Passive: Things you create are dramatically tougher than they have any right to be, requiring absurd efforts to destroy or forcefully dismantle when outside your possession and being completely indestructible while in your possession. In addition, such objects resist the twisting touch of the Wyld and other Shaping effects, being completely immune to them so long as it is in your possession (or you are inside it, if the object is a structure such as a castle or building). Should you abandon the things you have created or gift them to others, they require ten times the effort to affect with Shaping than they would normally, but may be affected.
Shattering Grasp: (Essence 2) Passive: With this charm, you may undo any work of physical craftsmanship. Disassembling or destroying any crafted object is a specific Impossible Stunt you may take. This requires your Anima Banner be ignited. The only restriction is that large constructions take significant time to demolish, and anything crafted of the Magical Materials will take you no less than an hour’s uninterrupted work and may take much longer. Lesser objects, such as swords, armor, shields, doors, windows or clothing may be disassembled or destroyed with a touch.
Craftsman Needs No Tools: (Essence 3) Passive: So long as your Anima Banner is up, you can use it to shape and modify raw materials into the things you craft, and you do so at blinding speed. You need neither forge nor smelter, hammers nor saws, chisel nor grindstone, cauldron nor fire, though such things don’t hurt. Reduce the time needed to craft any object you make by a factor of 5, by 10 if you have the proper tools. The exception to this is the Magical Materials, which you work at 5 times the normal rate, but still require the proper tools. You can also repair anything you understand the creation of, flawlessly, sealing over cracks and repairing broken parts to be as if they were new, including things which could not otherwise be repaired, such as broken glass or fragments a burnt letter.
Mastery of the Maker’s Art: (Essence 4) Passive: Pick Magitech, Genesis or Wyld. You may now perform crafts of that discipline. Magitech is the craft of animating intelligence, microfilaments, advanced automata and cybernetics. Genesis is the craft of living creatures, mutations and artificial evolution. Wyld is the craft of Shinmaic resonance, Reality stabilization, chaos mechanics and of making the impossible exist within Creation. You may take this charm multiple times, each time unlocking a different advanced Crafting Discipline.

We end today with Craft Charms. I went over the existing craft charms and came up with these, most of which are combinations of several charms. These are primarily stunt charms. In general, crafting will probably not require Conflicts, rather requiring quests to go and gather unusual materials. Mastery of the Maker's Art is intended to replace the old 'multiple crafts' system because that kind of got out of hand, and really while you can teach Magitech and Shinmaic Resonance to Heroic Mortals, they're not going to truly internalize it because they don't really have the ability to access it. Mortals, by this scope, and maybe even Dragon-Blooded, aren't really craftsmen, they're technicians.

Tomorrow, more charms. I'm still trying to grind my gears to get DB charms flowing. They've got to be scaled down a step or two from Solars, while still being valuable in their context.

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave questions or comments, as always.

Exalted Rework Part 12: Mortals

I know I said I'd do Solar Charms of some flavor today, but I realized a little bit after yesterday's post on DB's that Mortals are actually something I need to put some serious thought to.

You see Solars for a baseline, or rather a ceiling-line.  They are the biggest.  They are the strongest.  I can safely just say 'they do this insane stuff' and leave it at that, so long as I've gone insane enough.  The other Celestial Exalted are mostly defined by how far below the Solars they are.  Abyssals and Infernals are not below the Solars.  Lunars are very slightly below the Solars.  Sidereals are a ways below the Solars but make up for it a little bit by having Astrology and SMAs.  Alchemicals are around Sidereal Level but with just good stats and weapons rather than Astrology and SMAs.

Dragon-Blooded don't compare well to Solars.  They're really cut from a different cloth.  I could argue that both Sidereals and Alchemicals are too, but I'm talking about DBs and Mortals today.  The Dragon-Blooded are best defined as the best of the worst: they are the greatest of the Common character types, and so defining what they can do is less about comparing them to Solars (which I'd been doing) and more about comparing them to Mortals.

Mortals are the lowest tier of theoretical Exalted play, in practice I've never heard of anyone actually running a Mortals game as anything more than a prelude to Exaltation.  Mortals come in 3 categories, which I intend to keep: Extras, Normals and Heroes, but I want to both clarify and expand all three of these categories throughout lower tiers of Exalted Character Types for the Rework.

The "lower tiers" consist of Humans, Humans Plus (Crafted Races, Mutants and Beastmen), Mountain Folk, Dragon Kings, God-Blooded of all flavors (God-Blooded, Half-Caste, Demon-Blooded, Ghost-Blooded and Fey-Blooded), Gods, Elementals, Demons, Ghosts, Fair Folk and at the top of the heap, the Dragon-Blooded.

Extras occur in all of these groups.  Extras exist when the GM does not have time to come up with names, faces, backstories and is not interested in doing so.  Extras, however, are a narrative conceit, not an in-character one.  There can be extras among the Mountain Folk and Dragon Kings, or Elemental extrs, Demon extras or even, if you're a group of Solars fighting the Ebon Dragon or the Avatar of Oblivion or something, Dragon-Blooded extras.  "Extra" is GM shorthand for 'characters who I don't care about and won't give the screen time for you to care about'.

Normals are Extras with plot relevance.  There is a common mistake (and I'm guilty of it myself) that any time an Exalt asks a Mortal their name, the mortal suddenly becomes a Heroic Mortal.  This is understandable and it's fine if it happens... sometimes.  But it's important that there be normal mortals who have names and faces and hopes and dreams... but aren't heroes.  They are the ones who weep tears of gratitude when the players save them, they are the ones who plead with the players not to kill them when they are threatened by them.  In the Rework, Normals generally have Skills at 1 and no assets worth speaking of, unless they are in a position where they must have that Asset (a high-ranking priest or a weak-willed monarch, for instance).  The majority of God-Blooded, Humans Plus, Mountain Folk, Gods Elementals, Ghosts, Demons and Fair Folk also fall into this category.

"Heroic Mortal" is a term that Exalted uses that, in the core game, is primarily mechanical in definition.  "Heroic" in the core game means "gets 2 successes for rolling a 10 rather than 1," and that's honestly a terrible definition, so I'm changing it.  In the Rework, what defines a Heroic character is their Virtues.  Normals do not have Resonant Virtues.  While they may be kind or determined, self-controlled or brave, they are not bound by the heroic demands of the four virtues and they do not draw strength from them.  Heroic Mortals (and Gods, and Demons, and Elementals, etc), do.  Players are assumed to be playing Heroic Characters, and, indeed, Celestial Exaltations are incompatible with non-Heroic souls, or perhaps the Exaltation Shards naturally charge the latent virtues of their bearers.  Nevertheless, Heroic Mortals should stand out among mortals.  They should have heroic motivations (though smaller-scale than those of the Exalted), substantial skills and be potent individuals in their own right.

Note that in Exalted, Heroism is not goodness, and that all four of the Virtues can be turned to evil.  Heroism is greatness of spirit, a desire to change the world, and the will to see that desire made real, whether that desire is the abolishment of slavery or the slaughter of one's enemies.  Low-tier Heroic Villains make for good antagonists for starting Exalts, whether they be Mortals, God-Blooded, Gods themselves or even Demons or lesser Fair Folk.

For the Rework, the Lower Tiers are further divided into non-Essence-wielding and Essence-wielding categories, that is Mortals and Mortals Plus vs everything else.  Heroic Non-Essence wielders receive a special Asset called Willpower, which they get a number of points of equal to 3 + 1 per Resonant Virtue.  Willpower can be spent for two things: A Willpower point spent allows a Heroic Mortal to take an Improbable Stunt, or allows them to win a tied Conflict (unless their opponent has an ability that lets them win instead).  Willpower refreshes like Essence, with Virtuous Deeds.

There are a number of Non-Essence Wielder Assets as well, most notably Enlightened Essence.  Technically a character with this is an Essence-Wielder, but they retain their Willpower pool, which they can also now spend to spend 1 of their Essence Points, assuming they have Charms or sorcery to use with it.  Mortals can still raise their Essence to 3, and learn Terrestrial Martial Arts or Sorcery, though each of these requires an Asset to learn.  Without ceasing to be a Mortal, Mortals never gain active control over their Essence.

Combined with the Complication system, Mortals actually are fairly potent combatants in the reworked System.  The ability to win ties is a very specific +1, and is functionally the 'Mortal Excellency'.  They are very limited in their stunts, as they must be, unless they are pushing themselves to their limits, when they are still very limited, but less so.

Essence-Wielders follow the standard pattern of "May spend Essence," though notably only the Exalted have Anima Banners to ignite.  All of these have access to Charms (or things that resemble them in functionality, such as Arcanoi or Shaping).  Gods, Demons, Elementals and Fair Folk normally have very specific powers (or, in the case of the Fair Folk, are limited to specific powers by their shaped form), as do their children, where Ghosts, Ghost-Blooded, Half-Castes, Mountain Folk and Dragon Kings have powers that they have personally chosen to learn, though from a broad list available to those of their type, more like the Exalted.

What does this tell me about the DBs?  Directly, not much.  Most Heroic Mortals will, on average, be able to manage Conflict Scores of around 5 or 6, maxing their mechanical power at 8, if they want a true victory, winning ties (Skill 3, the mortal cap, +4 Ultimate Sacrifice + 1 Recent Virtuous Action).  That's high enough to be a valid challenge to most Dragon-Bloods with their current mechanics.  Dragon-Blooded will need only a handful of mechanical bonus effects, my primary Charm focus can be in giving them broad-spectrum Improbable and specific Impossible stunts, things that Mortals will never do, and a wider range of power than most spirits will have.

Okay, with that I've gotten a lot of my thoughts on the less-played character types out on paper and a bit better idea of what I need to do with DB charms.  Tomorrow will probably be on to talking about Solar Charms unless I'm struck by more inspiration for something else.

Thanks for reading and please feel free to leave questions or comments.

Exalted Rework Part 11: The Dragon-Blooded

So I'm going through the various Exalt Types in order of Manual of Exalted Power release, and I'll try to convert the non-MoEP books in between.  Mostly the hard part is Charm conversion, since Artifacts and spells don't need much work, and any sort of flavor stuff I'm leaving almost completely as is.

All that said, the Dragon-Blooded are posing some interesting design problems.  While I'm pretty happy with how the Solars turned out, they win ties in their Caste's chosen 'focus' area, their Animas have minor stunt and mechanical effects, their charms are primarily stunt-based and overall they are very awesome and kick as lot of ass.

Dragon-Blooded are, by design, lower power than Solars.  They are still awesome heroes, but they use less Special Effects budget and are closer to street level.  And while a simple statement of 'Dragon-Blooded Skills cap 1 point lower and their First Excellency is only +1 rather than +2' deals with the mechanical side of that, while opening the Manual of Exalted Power for them, I am struck by how extraordinarily specific their charms are, a design point that runs counter to how I'm trying to design Charms.  There's also the Thousand Correct Actions book, which basically gives the Dragon-Blooded the Leader keyword on every single charm they have for no reason I can really discern, so I assume someone just said 'hey the DBs should be really good at mass combat,' at then wrote it.

There's also the problem I've made for myself of Aspect Abilities.  For the Solars it was fairly easy to just say "Dawn Castes are good at these kinds of things, Zeniths at these kind of things, etc" because the Solar Castes are in fact just Fighter, Priest, Mage, Thief, Diplomat.  Dragon-Blooded Aspects are much more... arbitrary in their design.  Air Aspects get Occult and Lore (Okay so they know stuff) and Stealth (Know stuff and are sneaky) and Linguistics (Know stuff and know languages and are sneaky) and Thrown (So, they know stuff, know languages, are sneaky and throw knives).  It doesn't help that the canon Example Air Aspect is an old soldier who is not an especially impressive sorcerer, scholar, diplomat or ninja.

So I feel like the Dragon-Blooded aren't intended to be particularly restricted by Aspect choices.  They're supposed to be the Special Effects you pick and maybe determine a little bit of your personality.  But from a design side that's a little bit problematic, because if you don't get ANYTHING mechanically from your Aspect, it becomes nothing more than glorified Special Effects.  Since we don't have Favored Abilities or the Out-of-Aspect Cost increase, the rework allows Dragon-Blooded a great deal of flexibility of personal design.  Ultimately the way I intend to encourage DBs to focus in the skills related to their aspect is by providing minor bonuses (usually in the form of further enhanced stunts) on Charms of types that their Aspect should be good at.  Example: A Stealth Charm makes all Dragon-Blooded who use it a hazy blur and muffles their sound and scent, for Air Aspects it also covers their tracks and eliminates any trace of their passage.  Thus, any DB who wants to learn charms to be sneaky can learn to be sneaky, Air Aspects are just a little bit better at it.  I believe that this minor encouragement will be enough to preserve Aspect focus.

The other great challenge of the Dragon-Blooded by design is teamwork.  The Dragon-Blooded are both mechanically and conceptually designed to work together.  The system I've written doesn't, at present, allow for Conflicts where people line up on different sides to help one another, it's a one-on-one system.  I'm currently planning for this to be the unique strength of the Dragon-Blooded's Excellency charms: that, if they have an appropriate Excellency, they can spend Essence to add to an Ally's Conflict score, in addition to having their stunts be encourage to be overall synergistic.

Speaking of their Charms and Stunts, I suspect that the reworked Dragon-Blooded Charm Trees (charm shrubs, really) are going to look very little like their canon counterparts.  As I mentioned, canon DB charms are very, VERY specific in their utility, with a large number of 'using X ability for Combat' effects.  Honestly, I don't like those.  I mean, sure, Three-String-Sword Prana is cool, but why make your Exalts pay tons of essence just to be cool?  Just let them do the zither blaster martial artist thing from Kung Fu Hustle and be done with it.  What I take away from it, though, is that Dragon-Blooded are specialized.  DB Combat Charms will usually be focused on picking a fighting style and improving one's skill with that specific combat style (gaining Improbable Stunts), non-combat Charms will provide Improbable Stunts within shallower ranges than Solar Charms.  Both will usually also provide very specific Impossible Stunts based on elemental attunement rather than sheer skill.  Dragon-Blooded won't have access to generalized Impossible Stunts.  It feels a bit cruel, but I've gotta make the distinction a real one somehow.

I hope to have the Dragon-Blooded rework finished sometime next week, but in the mean time I'll probably be posting more Solar Charms and talking about the intention behind them.  I might get into some thoughts I have for Lunars, too, who I'll be doing after I finish DBs.

Thanks for reading!

Exalted Rework Part 10: Virtues

Of all the systems in core Exalted, Virtues were the most ambitious and the greatest failure.

Intended to be a mechanical definition of a character's heroic nature, because they relied on the GM calling characters out on counter-virtuous behavior, they were rarely used, except to allow a character to get a larger Essence pool or a more effective way to spend Temporary Willpower to boost their stats.  Players would play to the level of virtuousness they felt their character should have, no matter what their stat sheet said.

One of the handful of posts I put in this blog before starting the Exalted Rework was about rules and how they encourage behavior.  The behavior the Virtue rules encouraged was, assuredly unintentionally, for players to ignore them.  Part of the reason for this is the volume of numbers involved.  A GM who is supposed to be keeping an eye on players' actions for virtue content must consider first whether any given declared action by a player would be considered counter to any of the four virtues, then try to remember if the character taking the action has any of those virtues rated 3 or higher.  In a group of 4 players, that is 12 numbers to remember for essentially every action declared.  It's simply too much work, isn't it.

However, the Virtue system is a good idea, and is far too worked into Exalted's world for it to simply be excised, so I have instead adapted it to the Resonant Virtue system.  Rather than keeping track of numbers, characters and GMs only need to know a simple binary: is it resonant or not.  Furthermore, because both Essence Recovery and +1 bonuses to Conflicts are granted by virtuous action in concordance with a Resonant Virtue, players are encouraged to remind their GM of their Resonant Virtues with some regularity.  This doesn't wholly eliminate the problems, but it mitigates them.

The other big problem with Virtues in canon Exalted was how poorly they were defined.  Each virtue was given less than half a page, mostly a quick list of examples of things it aided in and things you had to fail a check to do.  I think the biggest mistake of the Virtue system was to frame the Virtues as advantages rather than disadvantages with advantageous uses.

Virtue is not easy, indeed, Virtue is what makes heroes heroic.  A character with no Resonant Virtues is not a hero, not even a dark hero.  All things in Creation are defined by Virtue, even the Primordials had and obeyed the calls of the four virtues, save one: the Ebon Dragon, who is, instead, defined by his utter lack of virtue.  The four Virtues derive from four of the Shinma, the god-concepts which were necessary for the Primordials and the Raksha both to come into being.

Compassion is the virtue of kindness, it opposes suffering.  Compassion is a judgmental virtue: when the Compassionate sees others causing suffering (thus breaching Compassion themselves), they are moved to stop them.  Compassion does not mean a belief in equality, freedom or any of the ideals of modern earth, it simply cannot stand to see others suffer, physically or emotionally.  Compassion is not cerebral: even should a compassionate person know that killing someone might save hundreds of lives, Compassion forbids sending them to the Underworld.  Heroic Acts of Compassion are usually self-sacrificing: giving of oneself that others might not suffer, or opposing those who cause suffering.  Compassion is probably the rarest of the Four Virtues in Creation.

Conviction is the virtue of commitment, it opposes doubt.  Conviction is a proud virtue: it only governs a character's own actions and thoughts, and cares nothing for the actions of others.  Conviction's unwavering certainty is a two-edged sword: while it makes the character certain in their actions and beliefs, it also weakens their ability to change or accept new information; Conviction is the virtue of zealots and fundamentalists.  Conviction is stubbornness: it is a violation of Conviction to back down from a goal, relationship or belief.  In particular, it is a violation of Conviction to apologize or admit that one was wrong, even if they failed.  Heroic Acts of Conviction are acts of great risk taken in the name of a sworn goal, especially those choices that others might hesitate to make or would back down from as unnecessary.  Conviction, as the font of Motivation, is the most common of the Four Virtues in Creation.

Temperance is the virtue of restraint, it opposes corruption.  Temperance is a judgemental virtue, like Compassion, it is a violation of Temperance to allow others to be corrupt.  Temperance is about self-imposed restrictions.  It is Temperance that leads a monk to a life of chastity, and Temperance that causes him to judge his brother who breaks his vows harshly.  It is not a violation of Temperance to allow a friend to break a restriction they have not placed on themselves, but it is to allow them to break a restriction they have.  Temperance considers the basic principles of interaction: honesty, fairness, justice and moderation to be restrictions that all have placed on them.  Heroic Acts of Temperance revolve around keeping one's word or adhering to one's code despite great challenges, or opposing deep-rooted corruption.  Resisting the offer of the mate of your dreams, your heart's desire or a criminal act that you'd never be caught doing because the option violated your principles would be heroic acts of Temperance.  Temperance is a rare virtue in Creation, comparable to Compassion.

Valor is the virtue of hope, it opposes retreat.  Like Conviction, Valor is a proud virtue, the valorous are not compelled to punish the cowardly for their weakness.  Valor is, in many ways, the simplest virtue, it simply demands that one never back down.  This is separate from opposing surrender (which is more a matter of Conviction), a Valorous character can accept when they are beaten, but will not let themselves give up until exactly that point, nor turn down a challenge, even if that challenge is worded as an insult. Valor inspires us to be brave and push ourselves to be greater than we are and demands we prove to those who doubt us that we are great.  Valor is by no means a strictly physical virtue, either: speaking up before a king with the power to command you be executed with one missed word requires as much valor as hurling oneself into the teeth of a beastman army.  Heroic Acts of Valor include risking one's life, reputation or hopes on a mission against strong or terrifying enemies. Valor is less common than Conviction in Creation, but much more common than either Temperance or Compassion.

Once again thanks for reading, tomorrow I'll talk about the Dragon-Blooded and some of the design questions I'm asking myself about them, including the purpose of the elemental aspects and how mechanic-less charms will work for the Terrestrial Host.

Please feel free to leave questions or comments below!

Exalted Rework Part 9: Sorcery and Martial Arts

Exalted's Sorcery and Martial Arts are, mechanically unique elements of the game.  From a flavor perspective, in combination they spell out much of the game's mixed fantasy flavor: Sorcery is extremely powerful but highly specific in its effects, Martial Arts is an extraordinarily broad field with near limitless effects but requires practitioners to decide what they wish to focus on and build from there.  Sorcery is a primarily mental discipline, Martial Arts are a primarily physical discipline.  Both concepts are hard-coded into the nature of the Essence of Creation.  Removing or discouraging players from involvement with either of them would dramatically weaken the setting.

So I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about how to make two extremely mechanically detailed systems work in a game with much less of the system to support them.  Both have entire sourcebooks dedicated entirely to their premise and a couple hundred little chunks of them (either spells or charms).

Let's hit Sorcery first.  The first Exalted character I played for any length of time was a Twilight Caste and I eventually learned Sorcery, though the only spells I ever made heavy use of were Infallible Messenger and Stormwind Rider (I should note that the other Terrestrial spell that I think is extremely powerful, Demon of the First Circle, wasn't made available to me).  For the most part, combat Spells simply didn't do enough for their high costs and were at best inefficient or at worst ineffective against Exalted opponents.  Combine this with the fact that I was constantly thinking "... or I could spend that experience on more Charms," and I felt that Sorcery was actually dramatically underpowered for its opportunity costs.  In later games I ran I reduced the experience cost of Spells by half and this more or less ameliorated the opportunity cost problem, though not the combat potency problem.  In truth, Sorcerers who aren't binding hordes of demons to their will just aren't that much more dangerous than they would be if they were just Exalts.  The exception is to mortals: even Terrestrial Circle Sorcerers will totally wreck your mortal buddies.  Between Death of Obsidian Butterflies, Flying Guillotine, Corrupted Words and Droning Suggestion, Sorcerers can pretty reliably physically or socially destroy mortals.  This is, I'm pretty sure, deliberate.  If you're playing an Exalt, getting just tooled around by Sorcery is kind of BS, but Mortals are kind of intended to be the putty in the hands of the Exalted.

Mechanically, each level of Sorcerous Initiation is an Asset.  Spells must be learned from teachers or spellbooks, but have no further cost.  Spells cost no less than 1 Essence per Circle and usually require Improbable Stunts to avoid (for Terrestrial circle spells) or Impossible Stunts to avoid (for Celestial and Solar circle spells), assuming avoidance is possible at all.  In addition to the actual effects of the spell, which occur narratively, if the spell aids in a Conflict the Sorcerer is involved in, they gain +1 to their Skill per Circle of the spell.  This can be stacked with Complications and Excellencies.  Note that the spell must directly and narratively contribute to the Conflict.  While Death of Obsidian Butterflies might win you an argument, it isn't actually actually adding to your side in the conflict, though Stormwind Rider would aid in a chase and Curse of Slavish Humility would aid in intimidation.

Due to the Demon Summoning spells' power, I've added a clause to them as well.  Since 'battles of will' aren't actually particularly fun to narrate (they're mostly squinting and grunting) and we don't really have the stats for them, that part of these spells is changed to the following:  Whenever you summon a demon with equal or lesser Essence, you must defeat the demon in a Conflict to prove your superiority.  The conflict must be of a sort appropriate to the demon summoned.

Martial Arts, by contrast, are a bit better balanced in core.  With a few glaring examples of poorly thought-through charms, the styles are mostly very interesting and coherent.  The challenge in adapting these is that they were, in core, highly mechanical, being basically just open charm trees that anyone could buy into.  Since our Assets are bigger than Charms, and charms are much less crunchy in their use, we need another way of incentivising players to use specific flavors of combat.  There's another factor that always bothered me about Martial Arts in Exalted, and that's the complete extraneousness of Terrestrial Martial Arts in a Celestial-scale game.

My intent with Martial Arts mechanically is to make each Style a single Asset.  They will generally have the overall format "While you fight with X weapons in Y style, you gain Z benefits."  These benefits will usually not be mechanical, but rather replace Combat Charms, allowing Improbable or Impossible stunts.  Martial Arts will also never require one's Anima Banner be up, though I may create Hero-Style expansion charms that do.

Terrestrial Martial Arts will usually allow for Improbable stunts or very specific Impossible stunts.  Celestial Martial Arts will have a harsher style restriction, rather than just saying 'fight like this' they will say 'you can't fight like this', but will provide broad-strokes Impossible Stunts that can be performed.  Sidereal Martial Arts will not only define weapon and movement styles, but will define mindsets and intentions that the character must match in order to make full use of the style's absurdly potent Impossible Stunts.

Terrestrial Martial Arts will  usually have Essence Requirements of 1.  Celestial Martial Arts will usually have Essence Requirements of 3, Sidereal Martial Arts will have Essence Requirements of 5 or higher.  This should also make Terrestrial martial arts more appealing to starting Celestial Characters, especially ones not looking to invest in multiple combat charms and willing to limit themselves to a specific combat style.

I don't have any good examples up for you guys (despite having pretty much everything in the Core Book reworked), but I'll try to get to some soon.  I also want to talk about Virtues a bit, which will be a bit less of reworking and a bit more of clarifying on my own interpretations.  A bit less novel, but important for comprehending my interpretation of Virtues as Exalted's version of Disadvantages.

I'll also start working through the Dragon-Blooded book, trying to get a feel for what a game where Impossible Stunts are much more restrictive, as well what Charms look like when they're elementally aspected, I may be performing slightly more dramatic surgery on their Charm trees to make them more elementally aspected but cross-skill or less elementally aspected and skill-specific.

As always thanks for reading and feel free to leave questions or comments!

Exalted Rework Part 8: Character Creation

So after a week, I've got a pretty solid idea for what a character sheet looks like. Let's go over it real quickly and talk about the elements I haven't had a chance to really clarify.


Name/Title
Concept
Motivation
Type/Caste
Anima Banner
Essence: I was tempted to say that characters start at Essence 2 and that's that, but I realized that doing so completely eliminates the prospect of characters starting out with Sorcery. As such, the Sorcerer's Option is possible to buy up your Essence to 3 by sacrificing 2 of your Asset slots. While this dramatically decreases your initial flexibility, the additional power provided by this may be worth it to some, especially those who wish to learn the strange and powerful ways of essence-shaping.
Intimacies: I considered whether or not to use Intimacies, I realized that they are an excellent character design shorthand that the original game simply did a poor job discussing. Characters should have between 3 and 5 Intimacies, little secondary motivations to care for, strive for or oppose. Intimacies are always nouns, and should always have a vector, written in parentheses, describing in two or three words the character's feelings for the noun, such as "Creation (Protective)" or "The Realm (Unrestrained Hate)" or "His Wife (Cautious Lust)". Such things help tell the story.
Skills: I noticed early on in my design that in character generation, since Skill rank is the primary deciding factor of conflict that the opportunity cost of higher Skill rank must be higher than it was in the original game, where your first 3 ranks all cost the same amount and the fourth and fifth ranks cost slightly higher. Ultimately, to cut down on the math I chose to do it for players. Celestial Exalted (who have access to Skills at 5) have a number of possible starting Skill Arrays, such as 53221, meaning One skill at 5, one skill at 3, two skills at 2 and one skill at 1. Terrestrial Exalted cannot have skills at 5, and so are more limited, and Heroic Mortals' Arrays are smaller still. (The math behind the arrays is triangular numbers. Starting with 28 points, a number I picked because it felt about right and happened to be the number of points characters got in 2nd Edition, each rank in each skill must be bought, so a Skill at 5 costs 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 = 15 of your 'points'. I further limited Arrays by necessitating that characters have no less than 5 Skills.)
Assets: Solars begin the game with 6 Assets. It 3 of these must be Charms, and probably 5 of them should be. If you use 2 of your Charm Slots to buy Essence 3, 2 of your remaining 2 Assets must be Charms.
Resonant Virtues: Heroic Characters (including all Exalted) have at least one Resonant Virtue. You may have up to 4. Resonant Virtues provide you with restrictions on your behavior that, if you break, you will suffer penalties until you can redeem yourself with heroic virtuous deeds. However, they also allow you to regain Essence and gain bonuses.

... and that's it. That's all that goes on your character sheet. Let's do a quick test run, we'll do Ryoka, from yesterday's examples.

• Name and Title: Ryoka, the Phoenix Knight (Titles are always a little presumptuous. This one is based on her Anima.)
• Concept: Warrior-Judge
• Motivation: Protect the mortals of Creation from Supernatural Threats (An unachievable Motivation, but one that clearly defines circumstances that will spur her to action)
• Type/Caste: Dawn Caste Solar
• Anima Banner: A gold and red Phoenix spreading its wings and rising
• Essence: 2
• Intimacies: Vakarin (her homeland) (Gratitude), Justice (Zealous Pursuit), Martial Perfection (Calm Desire) (Nothing really exciting here, Ryoka is the sort of character, like many, who will build Intimacies to characters and causes as a game goes on. That's fine since her motivation so clearly attaches her to the world.)
• Skills: Iaido & Chanbara (Combat) 4, CSI: Creation (Physical Perception) 3, Honor Unto Insanity (Fortitude) 3, Walks Among the Mighty (Social Graces) 2, "Just the Facts, Miss" (Social Perception) 2. (Ryoka uses a 43322 Array, demonstrating deep commitment to a relatively limited number of skills.)
• Assets: Fortitude of Heaven, Solar Anima, Puissance of the Sun, The Great Curse Upon the Solars, Glory of the Dawn, Sword of Heaven, First Solar Excellency (Combat), Flashing Vengeance Draw, Fivefold Bulwark Stance, Spirit-Cutting Attack, Courtier's Eye Technique, Crafty Observation Method (Ryoka has opted to just take 6 Charms, focusing, logically for a Dawn Caste, on Combat, with some perception charms as well as Spirit-Cutting Attack, which makes achieving her Motivation much less frustrating).
• Resonant Virtues: Temperance, Valor (Ryoka is tight-laced and proud, but self-controlled and fearless)
• Virtue Flaw: Honor of the Duel (Valor). Condition: Whenever Ryoka is insulted or her combat prowess is reasonably called into question. Limit Break: Ryoka challenges the offender to a duel to the death, immediately, no matter the circumstances or poor timing, and she will not permit an offender to back down. Anyone who attempts to stop or delay the duel will be challenged as well. She may be convinced not to kill someone if they are close to her or if someone who is makes a compelling argument, but will never let anyone off with anything less than beating them into unconsciousness after demonstrating her superiority: she will never hold back anything. Lasts until all challengers have been dealt with or Ryoka is beaten into unconsciousness. (Like any good Virtue Flaw this stands to harm both her allies and her reputation, as well as get her killed if she chooses the wrong opponent, though circumstances might also permit her to get away with killing someone who needed to die anyway. In any case, it makes her look irrationally vain and proud when it activates, which are good heroic flaws.)

That was pretty easy. Let's do Inori from yesterday's example real quick too.

• Name and Title: Inori, the Loving Priestess
• Concept: Prophet of Hope
• Motivation: Restore the Celestial Order (That's a pretty big one)
• Type/Caste: Zenith Caste Solar
• Anima Banner: Five golden pillars fanned out behind her, inscribed with the laws of Heaven in Old Realm script
• Essence: 2
• Intimacies: Simple Folk (Fond Caring), Corrupt Gods (Severe Disappointment), Music (Joyous Adoration), The First Age (Wistful Yearning)
• Skills: Voice of Radiance (Social Influence) 4, Unflinching Kindness (Fortitude) 3, Fist of the Righteous (Combat) 3, Beloved of Gods and Men (Social Graces) 2, Raised by a Witch (Medicine) 1, Love Sees Through (Social Perception) 1, Strength of Virtue (Physical Prowess) 1 (Inori uses a 4332111 Array, very similar to Ryoka's but with more skills on the lower end)
• Assets: Fortitude of Heaven, Solar Anima, Puissance of the Sun, The Great Curse Upon the Solars, Glory of the Zenith, Hammer of Heaven, Fallen but Unconquered, Past Life Memories, Enchanting, Respect-Commanding Attitude, Iron Skin Concentration, Spirit-Cutting Attack, Flawless Diagnosis Technique (Inori has chosen two Assets which fall into the old 'Merits' category. Past Life Memories gives her limited recollection of the truths of the First Age, in addition to reflexive familiarity with devices from that time and some idea of how they function. Enchanting represents her extraordinary beauty and singing voice, which is a natural but outstanding quality.)
• Resonant Virtues: Compassion
• Virtue Flaw: Love for All Things (Compassion): Condition: Inori or her allies are threatened by strangers, or her allies threaten strangers. Limit Break: Inori becomes unable to see the evil in anything. She will do her very best (including the use of mind-affecting charms) to convince everyone present that peace and unity can be achieved, treating friend and foe equally. She will respond to any violence against anyone present with violence, but only to incapacitate, she will also respond violently to attempts to remove her from negotiations. She is utterly blind to manipulation and possible betrayal. Lasts for several hours.

So this is around about what Solars will look like in the new system. Substantially shorter and less number-heavy statblocks than before, though looking over these I think we'll want to leave space on the character sheet to write out a quick description of each Asset, because as much as I love Exalted Charm names they're not always useful in determining what the charm does.

Tomorrow I'll talk about my plans for Martial Arts and Sorcery, two major but universal systems that really need their flavor preserved but a lot of their mechanics ripped out.