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Severance of Mystical Attunement

Celestial Cicle Sorcery
Cost: 20/30

Severance of Mystical Attunement literally disrupts attunement and essence use within a certain area, easily turning the tide of large battles or even duels. The caster spends 20 motes of essence, and sets off a blast that rips and disrupts the Essence of attuned artifacts within (Essence*10) yards. The blast is centered around the caster (who is also affected by this spell unless they spend an addition 10 motes at the casting); all in the area of the spell must make an Essence+Resistance roll difficulty of the caster's Essence or have all of their artifacts immediatley unnattuned. Summoning and banishing charms such as Summoning the Loyal Steel, Void Sheath Technique, and Void-Banished Mail may be used reflexivly to combat this charm with an Essence roll at a difficulty of 1.

Characters who cannot banish their weapons may make a Wits+Athletics roll difficulty the caster's Essence to drop their weapon; if this roll fails, they must make a Strength+Athletics roll difficulty of (the strength requirement of the artifact), although this only applies if the character has a Strength of 3 or more. Characters wearing artifact armor must make a Strength+Athletics roll difficulty equal to the caster's Essence to not be immediatly knocked prone. Characters wearing artifact armor that stay standing must make a Strength+Endurance difficulty of the armor's artifact rating every turn until they are able to reattune or remove the armor and must make a Strength+Athletics roll difficulty of the armor's artifact rating to move at all. The mobility and fatigue ratings of the armor are doubled, although the wearer of the armor still recieves the soak of the armor(minus any magical material bonuses the armor gives); armors with 0 mobility penalty or fatigue have a mobility penatly or fatigue rating of 2. Characters who attempt to weild an unattuned weapon must make a Strength+Athletics roll with a difficulty equal to the weapon's artifact rating every turn to coninue holding it and suffer a -2 to Speed, Accuracy, Defense, and Rate; these values can fall into the negative (minimum Rate is 1). The duration of this effect is the caster's Essence in rounds and when the duration is over the characters must forcefully reattune the items by spending double the regular attunement cost. Artifacts that do not have actual attunement costs and only have activated abilities simply cannot use the abilities for the duration of the spell. This spell may not be dodged or parried.

Comments

Ok, this is my first spell I have made up for Exalted and a lot of my friends think it is pretty cool. I made sure and clarified a lot of things with the spell because I game with some very smart people who are very good at getting around the effects of spells. I also do not know of any rules for using unattuned weapons and armor so I just kinda did some impromptu stuff but if someone knows where some rules are then I would happily at least look at them. I am going to make a Solar Circle version of the spell as well in time. DayisDawnreaver

Cleaned it up a bit. Hope you don't mind. ^_^ - Caelene

Of the top of my head, I think this spell need a slight change in mechanics. Having to roll a difficulty measured on the same scale as the nuber of dice makes it almost impossible to succeed. (what I mean is, usually when you roll at a difficult against someones essence, you usually get a pool of 2 traits, not 1). Second off all, I would prefer if the caster made a roll, since he is the active participant. (preferaböy occult + int agains a diff of the targets Essence.)

I think the idea is quite good, but I also think it may be overpowered.. My reason for this are the foloowing. Lets list scale the sorecerous circled as power 1, 2 and 3 respectivly. There is A weaving protocol that does a similar thing (hence roughly on power of 1,5 on the above scale) and it only effect automata and low level power armor, and then only by increasing it's mobility penalty, and messing with artifacts is what weaving does best.

Also, part of the proble is that, At least As far AS I know and as I read the rules , unattuned artifacts can't be Weilded at all.

Don't take this to harsly. This is your first spell and I am a damn Chrunch deamon sometimes ;). -Azurelight

I would make the caster roll something lik eint+occult against a diff of the target's essence if the spell targeted but it is instead an area of effect and if I were to still institute the roll it would require the caster rolling about 20 times in most uses of the spell. I belive one thing I could do to balance the spell would be to make it so that instead of the caster making the same roll as everyone else (as is implied) I could make it so that unless they spend the 30 motes they automoatically fall under all effects of the spell. Now if I were to make a terrestrial version spell I would make the caster roll Int+Occult, which I will probably create a targeted version for terrestrial.

As far as I can remember I believe that protocols are an autochthonian thing and I do not know anything about autochthonians and thus don't factor in their abilities in comparison. I do feel that it is a very difficult spell to resist as the diff is always going to be at least 4 but the way I picture celestial level spells is at about this powerlevel as I have found that most terrestrial level spells are more useful that celestials ex: Death of Obsidian Butterflys, Flying Guillotine, Sprouting Shackles of Doom and I am trying to make a spell that really jumps out and says 'Wow, I would like to take Celestial Circle Sorcery just so I could have that spell." The only spell I have experienced this with thus far is Spawning of Monsters.

I'm just not sure about fighting with unattuned weapons and armor as in the core book it is stated the attunement really only makes them lighter and so I figured I would bootleg some stuff up as there are no rules on trying to use an unattuned item and if you were just unable to use an unattuned item this spell would be completely unbalanced as anyone in an artifact armor would be unable to move due to the weight and would technically not get any bonuses for it. So to rebalance the spell in that aspect I made some minor rules for trying to use a weapon or armor unattuned and it may even be best to make unattuned weapons do bashing instead of the regular lethal to put more wieght on the importance of artifacts being attuned to fully use them without making them unusable when not attuned.

I think the best stat to be added to the Essence roll would be resistance and is something I would highly consider but I also have to factor in that Essence rolls in themselves are very rare and are as far as I have seen only Essence and generally when something comes down to a contested Essence roll it is targeted rolls their Essence diff the targetees Essence rating although there are few examples of this that I have seen they do exist and if I were shown other examples of contested essence rolls in the books as a precedant I would be far more willing to tac on a modification to the roll. And I of course am fine with your suggestions as if I did not desire them I would not have asked for input. ^_^ DayisDawnreaver

Dawnreaver - another Crunch demon here, seconding Azurelight's comments almost entirely (well-said, Azure!). The spell itself has character, feel, and some interesting mechanics to go with it, but does fall into the 'too much' category, because the resist roll is just so insane. Historically, I've found that it's just better to either go with a 'real' resist roll that you actually have a chance at resisting, or make the effect less powerful and go with no resist. That middle-of-the-road really doesn't work well in most crunch demon's worlds. The issue, as Azure pointed out, is that when doing comparisons of things, you generally assume that a caster is facing someone roughly as experienced as they are. Thus, you've got an Essence 4 caster and an Essence 4 target (or targets), and to keep any of their artifacts attuned requires them to get all successes on their roll. Since Essence is neither an attribute nor an ability, you can't add to it with charms, excellencies, or anything else really. Thus, this roll is pretty much guaranteed to fail. (Something like less than 7% chance of success) Even with higher-Essence targets, such as an Essence 5 or 6 Exalt, they still have a very difficult time succeeding, which is extremely rare for effects in Exalted. Most effects are "Does not affect beings of higher Essence" and such. In conclusion regarding this, I'd say that it should either be something 'boostable' and large, such as Stamina+Occult, or Wits+Occult for the resist, at a diff of the target's Essence. In fact, I'd even allow substitution, such that you could use Stamina+Occult or Stamina+Melee for a Daiklave, and Stamina+Occult or Stamina+Resistance for your armor - after all, even Exalts who are not well-versed in the Occult are still very versed in the essence flows regarding certain things they use on a day-to-day basis. It makes little sense to be able to 'easily' remove Jubei's sword, for example. Sure, you could disrupt Jubei's armor, or any 'random' artifact he's got, but his sword? He's the master of the sword. You can't screw with that. Again, just my opinion. That should cover the first part of the spell. The second part is the 'oh, and you shut down Essence' thing. That really can't fly. That turns Exalts into mortals, effectively, if even for a brief period. One one hand, yes, it sounds like a great idea if you're an Usurping Sidereal, as you unleash this spell in a room full of Solars, and, in the next round (since you shielded yourself!) proceed to unleash a combo of Grandmother Spider Bite (or any other Extra-action charm) and... anything, into the room. Totally defenseless, with no artifacts to even help them, and no charms to save them, you can mow down even Essence 7 Solars. In practice, you should never, ever, be able to say "... you can mow down Essence 7 Solars". It gets worse from a strategic viewpoint. Putting a bunch of archers just outside the casting range, and those archers can use proper combos. Put a buddy sorcerer (Terrestrial, even) outside the range, and have him start casting just before you finish - fill the room with death. There's a lot of potential here for mass killing of Exalts, while removing their schtick. Yes, it's powerful. Sure, it makes you want to take Celestial Sorcery. But mass killing of Exalts, and removing their Schtick, is totally against the grain of Exalted, and should therefore be extremely difficult. Making sure the caster can't just buy his way out of the problem is a start (10m to ignore this effect would be great. Give that option to the targets and then we'll see how the caster feels), but even then, you have the problem of the archers and casters standing just outside the area of effect. Finally, doubling charm costs is just mean. Mean, but possible. If you were to remove everything else about this spell, and just leave something that doubled charm costs for (Caster's Essence) rounds, I'd consider that a pretty dang good Celestial spell. Sure, it's not as combat-awesome as some might want. But at the same time, that's not what Sorcery's about. Sorcery isn't a combat tool, primarily - it's for large-scale effects you just can't get with charms. Second Edition says it best when they define it as shaping, just like the Raksha use, really - it's large scale reality alteration, and so the goal isn't to make it combat useful, it's to get things done that can't be done otherwise. Making new forms of life, building manses from scratch, generating protective auras, summoning minions, and doing large-scale weaponry-like effects. Very little published sorcery (and there is a lot) does direct manipulation of opponent's Essence flows, or is truly useful in Exalt-on-Exalt combat. Even a Magma Kraken (great example of a gotta-have Celestial Spell, BTW) isn't great against Exalts - but it can literally take out a Castle. As always, just my 20 cents. -- GreenLantern

I agree with GL (and I am glad He agrees with me:)) Mecanically I would resolve it like This. The caster makes an unblockable mental attack with occult +perception and with an accurecy equal to his essence. Roll one and applie to all targets. If he suceeds, it works. ome the seconf part, I agree with GL. -Azurelight

Looking at the opinions of those I have shown the spell to it seems a general consensus that the second part of the spell makes it to powerful to be a Celestial Circle spell and I have thus banished it from the charm. I also made the roll to use the summoning/banishing charms difficulty 1 instead of their essence under the reasoning of a friend who thinks that it is going to be bad enough that they need to make a roll if they can use the charm at all along with spending the motes to banish it and return it. So in consideration of that it has been changed. Also the same issue is coming up with the initial roll and I have changed it as well. DayisDawnreaver

Pretty solid now, in most respects. I'm still a little off-put by simply de-attuning things as a concept, but that's personal preference interfering with crunch, which is a no-no. Otherwise, I can't really say anything against the spell on a crunch-level, as a result. If anyone who doesn't have so much investiture into the spell already would like to comment, I offer you the flag to carry on. FrivYeti? DeathBySurfeit? TonyC? Anybody? -- GreenLantern

Few screwy things. If wearing artifact armour, why are you rolling against the artifact rating for fatigue-like effects? Just treat the armour as a non-magical version for those purposes. With doubled Fatigue and Mobility. This is because some artifact armour has a really high Artifact rating owing to being hard to find or just powerful, but it's something like a silk dress. I'd like the spell better if they got to roll for each attuned artifact they are using, rather than a single roll for the whole lot. Other than that, all seems good. Deattuning artifacts is something I'd expect from Celestial Circle. - Trithne, who also cleaned up the spell text to bring it into line with the English language.