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The Powers Of Enlightened

Alright, a rambling, free-flowing essay helped me when I was designed the Heroic Exalted, so let's see what it does here. This is halfway just a plan to get a few ideas down on some semi-permanent space before I lose them entirely, and halfway an insight into my confusing and drifting thought patterns. So.

I started this thing back in June, and at the time it was based around two concepts. The first was that, while I love Exalted and will never stop playing it, I was starting to feel wistful for games that could be more local and regional; something where the players might feel challenged beating up twenty thugs, but wouldn't be challenged by five or ten. Secondly, I had been watching bits and pieces of Hong Kong Kung Fu, and the idea that, in Exalted, you can't go training for power was at odds with a lot of plot threads bubbling in my brain.

Since then, I have played through Jade Empire, and seen in it a bunch of the ideas I was looking for. However, I had gotten stuck on the martial arts of the system, and so we come to here. What do the five paths of power in this setting contribute, and how should they work?

Why Five?

When I first sat down to work on this setting, there were only two power branches: Knacks and Techniques, Kismet and Essence, luck and training. However, early on I decided to add thaumaturgy, since it's pretty much awesome. Not long afterwards, Savants got added (I blame Girl Genius for the initial thought) to be a way to get fun magic artifacts into the setting. Finally, I hit on Avatars, since it seemed like a good idea, and rounded out the proper fivefold harmony thing. Still not sure about it, though.

Knacks

The first step, and the easiest, was Kismet. I wanted to have a route for characters who didn't want to go the Awesome Martial Arts path and who still wanted to be useful. The simplest was to alter the way that characters are tied to destiny. In this, I drew heavily on the themes of Adventure!, another White Wolf product.

Unfortunately, I think I overdid it. As it stands, Knacks are very useful - too useful, in fact. If I want the Martial Arts, which have costs to use, to be competitive, they'll have to be more powerful than I was hoping to have them. Kismet is powerful in its own right; the Knacks have to be balanced as permanent traits.

The solution, I think, is to have minor side-effects to having a Knack. You are tying yourself to a certain behaviour pattern according to Destiny; by doing so, you make opposing that behaviour more difficult. This will probably only apply to the Passive Knacks; they seem stronger than the Active ones anyway.

Understandings

Here, I am happy. Savants are bizarre, their stuff is bizarre, it doesn't overcrowd the setting because one savant can't usually fix or modify another's stuff, so older things get gradually broken down rather than spreading the way that technology does. I doubt that savants will be a popular player choice if this thing gets off the ground, but they're setting-critical, so there you go.

Kismet and Essence

One first draft idea that I'm going to do away with is exactly how Kismet works. As defined, Kismet identifies people with the capability to alter fate. I started by saying that these people are rare. But this is a bloody high-kung fu wireworks magic-tossing artifact building zone! The trick here is: should everyone important at all have Kismet, or only people who are exceptional? At the moment, I'm leaning towards the latter. All PCs and a handful of NPCs use Kismet. Some NPCs have very low Kismet ratings, which they don't raise with experience (because Kismet is not something a character consciously chooses to get more of).

The other problem is the way that Kismet interacts with Essence. The whole idea of the martial arts and of thaumaturgy is that anyone can learn them; it takes dedication to advance. But if you require Awakened Essence to learn these things, you're stuck from the get-go. Besides, that adds an extra layer of requirements to these two paths, and if Martial Arts is the main path, that requirement should NOT exist. So everyone gets Essence 1 automatically, and people can raise it with focus and dedication. Generally, anyone who's going to go above Essence 2 or 3 is someone important, and will have a Kismet score.

Martial Arts

Ok, my first draft for the martial arts was wholly unsatisfying to me, so let's recap what I want in my kickassery.

1) People who train are awesome fighters. This being a strange kung fu world, they are also better socialites. Everyone can kick ass in a pinch.

2) It is easy to take the first steps down a martial art, but requires increasing devotion, focus, and harmony with the ideals that a path represents to continue. Thus, you are not likely to be a master of many paths, although you can easily be an adept or student of many paths.

3) Paths should reflect the ideals that create them.

4) Paths should be modifiable, but only by the badass who have advanced far enough down them. This should be doable within a typical player's career, though.

My first draft completely failed Point 4, is a bit dubious on Point 3, and is not so hot at Point 1. I got caught up in the social aspects of the martial arts, to the point that a character with Str 1, Dex 1, Sta 1, and no combat abilities above 3 could become a master of a martial art. That's stupid.

New plan: Every martial art is connected to one Attribute, one combat Ability, one Virtue, and two miscellaneous Abilities. These must be rated at 2 for Student, 3 for Adept, 4 for Master, and 5 for Pinnacle. Using this system, it's easy to reach Adept. Attribute 3 and Virtue 3 are very doable for character creation, for multiples of each, and three Abilities isn't that hard to work through. Reaching Master or (yikes) Pinnacle takes a lot more dedication.

Changing a Martial Art requires Essence 4. You choose one of the five aspects, and create a new Student Form for the altered Martial Art. Some of the Techniques (those that didn't base off the changed aspect) still work. They can be easily altered as prerequisites for the new Style. By doing this repeatedly, you can create entirely new Styles. Yay!

Avatars

Ah, avatars. Do I want them? I think I do, but in what way? Are Avatars:

a) People with spirits living inside them, who can come forth and use their powers?

b) People who get powers from spirits?

I'm thinking (b), but how does it happen? It certainly shouldn't be something common or easy. Otherwise, the world is overflowing with magic and crazy and power. Maybe, first, I have to figure out what I want in gods. But I have rough ideas there, so I'll just keep working on this.

1) Gods can give super-powers to Avatars. These powers require the Avatar (or prospective Avatar) to meet certain conditions. A given god has one grantable Charm per dot of permanent Essence; gods also have lower Essence scores than in core Exalted, to keep them on par with the weaker heroes. Actually, no. One Charm per dot of Essence past one; each Charm can only be given to someone whose Essence is one less or better (so, an Essence 2 God can only grant one power, and that can be granted to anybody.) These powers are supernatural Charms possessed by the gods in question. The Avatar still has to spend the experience. Avatars can't just 'learn' Charms, and gods can be touchy about giving away their magic. Why, though? Is there a limit on how often a god can grant a power? Soft limit or hard? There's definately some sort of limit... hm. Going to have to consider this. Avatar powers are flashier and more supernatural than Martial Arts Techniques, but not actually more powerful; just more versatile, due to lacking trees. However, this is balanced by the need to appease the god who grants you the power.

The more I think about it, the more I want avatars to exist. Next question, though: Can anyone gain these powers, or is there a limit? Stronger powers require higher Essence, that's fine, but can gods empower anyone? I'm thinking possibly yes, but with problems; it weakens a god to grant their power to someone, so they don't usually do it.

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