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!
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