Difference between revisions of "OptimizingAstrology"

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	Well, regardless, this is a pretty amazing write-up.  Who did it, now? --UncleChu		Well, regardless, this is a pretty amazing write-up.  Who did it, now? --UncleChu
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		+	I wikified the text here, but it originated on the rpg.net forums by someone named "(un)reason". -- [[Wordman]]

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Revision as of 04:26, 8 February 2007

The initial text of this page is based on a forum entry written by (un)reason. Much of the text from that entry is used verbatim. Some has been culled from comments. As such, this page should be considered "his" (inasmuch as any wiki page has an owner). I have no idea if he uses the wiki. In any case, it's a wiki page, so edit it.

One of the big complaints about the sidereals book, repeated many times, is how hard to understand astrology is. Since I believe I have managed to get a decent handle on it, here I will be attempting to show as many ways as possible to use your stats, and charms to maximize the effect, and minimize the problems.

Ingredients

Now, lets look at the ingredients we have to create a character designed for optimum efficiency at astrology.

Attributes

The attributes used in astrology are Intelligence, (planning destinies and horoscopes, ) Charisma, (prayer roll) and Wits (making the petition) This means that for a starting character, mental should be primary, and social secondary, leaving physical stats last. Improving these will increase your power and reliability.

Abilities

The abilities that are used directly in astrology are craft(fate and calligraphy) occult, performance, and linguistics. As linguistics is seriously short on charms that enhance it, while craft is not, it is best to take a high rating in craft(calligraphy) rather than linguistics if you want to be a powerful astrologer. Apart from that, this part is easy to work out as well. The higher your scores in these, the better. Other abilities are peripherally connected, having charms that enhance your rolls in some way, so buying them may be useful as well, but this will be covered in that section.

Backgrounds

This is less essential, as none of them connect directly to your astrological prowess. However, if you do not have a decent resources/salary, you will have difficulty getting the materials necessary to make a proper petition, or sacrifices, which will put you at a distinct disadvantage. Allies, backing and connections within the bureau's and factions are also useful Getting co- and counter-signitories may be complicated, but the power it adds is considerable. A few hearthstones and artifacts can also enhance your capabilities. If using a first age artifact, like the orerrey in Rathess, savant will enable you to add dice on your roll to use it.

Charms

There are many charms that enable you to enhance astrology in some way, and this list, while comprehensive, is probably not complete. This is the area that will probably be most subject to additions and arguments. Those caveats aside, lets get going.

Archery

• Many missiles bow technique. If you are short on time, or lacking in materials, you can use this to stunt the drawing up of the petition. Shoot an arrow and have it turn into a petition mid-flight, and head straight up to heaven. There are plenty of variations on this theme you can use.

Awareness

• Wise choice. As APF(C). What good is power if you use it unwisely?

Bureaucracy

• Terminal sanction. If you want to get hold of a hard to find god, and get their assistance, use this. Just be careful you don't make powerful enemies in doing so.
• End debate. Use this to disrupt others attempts to get petitions signed. If you are in the loom of fate, with the pattern spiders, you can use this to actually disrupt the process of praying to the pattern spiders, stopping another sidereals astrology attempts entirely.

Craft

• Elegant patterns of fate, Excellent implementation of objectives, implicit construction methodology. Will all aid normally on the craft(fate) roll for planning, and the second two will also aid on calligraphy rolls to create the petition These charms are absolutely essential to any serious astrologer.
• World-shaping artistic vision, Elemental vision. these two aid as applicable normally Makes affecting high essence spirits and DB's a little less onerous.

Dodge

• Duck fate, Trouble reduction strategy. This lets you avoid any undesirable effect. So by using this, you can dodge pattern spider bite if you roll successfully against diff 3 (their essence score.) Very handy if pulling a 10 paradox dice übereffect. By using trouble reduction strategy, you can extend this effect to one or two of the other people involved as well.

Endurance

• Heartless maidens trance, one direction evocation. Eliminating wound penalties is always helpful. Even two dice can be the difference between a comfortable success, and not quite enough to do everything you want.

Investigation

• Auspicious prospects for fate. Won't help the actual rolls, but good for knowing when to use your power. And after all, knowing when to use your power is just as important as having that power.
• Research assistant invocation. Will be helpful when it comes to making the horoscopes, and drawing up the petition, especially if you are using linguistics to make it rather than craft(calligraphy).

Larceny

• Sidereal shell games. Very handy for those rolls that you can't get a normal dice adder for, like the intelligence+occult one, or the wits+linguistics one. Lets you get help from creatures that wouldn't normally be of any use to you.

Lore

• Systematic understanding of everything, the methodology of secrets. Covered in the book itself. Best used to get a bonus to the essence+college roll, rather than the preparatory rolls. Of course, if you take a long time, and sleep between each roll, you could get the bonus on all of them. But if you already have applicable specialties for the abilities, this would be a waste of time.
• Of the shape of the world. Now this one is completely obvious. Another "must have", and probably the single most useful charm for astrology.
• Of horrors best unknown. Use this, and it'll lower the TN for rolls to put even more unpleasant effects on the victim. Brrr.

Medicine

• Earth and sky bargain. You can make powerful allies with this charm, who may be helpful later.

Occult

• Mark of exaltation. An extra success on occult and performance rolls? Again, its not much, but every little counts.
• Innocuous maneuver. More aid in getting help.

Performance

• Perfection in life. Use to regain the willpower spent powering the effect roll.
• Song of spirit persuasion. Same as sky spirit demand, with the additional benefit of memory erasing. Get a good counter signatory, without having to pay, and reduce the chance of nasty consequences (of course, if you they do find out what happened afterwards, you will have to face even nastier consequences, but that makes a good storyline. )
• Heart brightening presentation style. More dice on the prayer roll. Always handy, especially if combo'd with hot eyed snake whispering. Gotta love that synergy. Another must for the serious astrologer.

Presence

• Presence in absence technique. If the leader of the ceremony has a substantially lower charisma+performance than one of the assistants, they can use this to bump it up.
• Force decision. Another good one for getting more assistants, and co and counter signatories Very helpful

Resistance

• Red haze. An extra die on all rolls if trying to defend against creatures from malfeas and the underworld? Well, every little counts.
• Water and fire legion. Another spirit persuading one. See above.
• Storms eye stance. If using effects in the field and you get pattern bitten, use this to make all your enemies suffer the same effects. Won't work if you get essence neutralizing venom'd, or knocked out by the effect, since you wont be able to spend the motes, but the others can be transfered to horrible effect.

Ride

• Spirit-shape companion, Godly companion. A good familiar can be a big help when doing effects that require lots of preparation, especially when you are trying to get the help of other spirits and exalts. Sometimes you just don't have time to do all that making offerings, calling in favors, and stuff yourself. In addition, it is possible that they might be able to enhance you with their spirit charms, (although that is a something to look into some other time. )

Sail

• Salt into ash sleight. Useful in trying to affect the destiny of a water spirit.
• Five ordeals odyssey. The essence boost provided by this charm is very useful, especially as it also boosts your allies. If they are sidereals as well, and act as cosignatories, that can give you lots of extra dice on your effect roll.

Socialize

• Life without compunction: Use this to avoid censure for abusing your powers, in the same way that you avoid harm from pattern spiders with duck fate. Wipe out nexus, and get your back slapped for doing the world good.
• Hot-eyed snake whispering: Reduce the TN for your prayer rolls. See heart brightening presentation style.

Survival

• Adopting the untamed face. If you are trying to affect the destiny of an animal, the automatic successes granted by this can be a real help.
• Sky spirit demand. Another social aiding effect.

Sidereal Martial arts

• Charcoal march of spiders form. This is a big help in hurried use of astrology. You could draw up the petition, make the prayer roll, and the effect roll, all in one turn, without splitting your dice pool, and use a separate set of charms to enhance each of these actions. The spider may weave fate faster than any person or machine.
• Water spider bite: Very useful if you want to use lots of charms to enhance your rolls. By siphoning off someone else, you can have far greater essence reserves, and avoid the anima flare penalties.
• Astrology interruption method. You know what this does. bye bye, unwanted effects.
• Soul fire shaper form. Now this is unbelievably useful Not only will it add up to 5 dice to your effect roll by itself, but it will also enhance most of your other dice and success adding charms as well. Yes please.
• (Type) exalt ways. Both the success adding and the anima power copying are very useful here. The Venus and night animas are particularly useful The first to enhance your prayer roll, the second to allow you to use lots of enhancing charms, and not suffer the penalty for anima flare. Combines well with soul fire shaper form. 10 automatic successes, or 20 if using the Venus anima with a performance booster, is probably the biggest single bonus you can get.
• Essence disruption infectious atemi, Gentle touch of the wicked hand. Make a disease that somehow makes the victim more vulnerable to astrology, or magical manipulation in general. Given their power, your imagination is the limit to what horrible things you can do with this.
• Spiritual perfection. Perfect negation of any disabling effect? Another, considerably cheaper and easier way to negate harm from pattern spider bite. But then with twice the ability prerequisites, and way more charms needed, you'd expect that.

Colleges

To gain the greatest amount of power and versatility for your XP, it is best to get 1 in as many colleges as possible. Raising them to 5 costs 30xp, and all it does is give you 4 more dice for 1/25th of your astrology rolls. It is far more efficient to buy up essence, abilities, attributes and charms, which will enhance all of your uses of astrology, and have other uses in addition. Of course, this will mean that you cannot have many assistants, and your effects are more likely to get shunted off if someone else puts effects on someone you are already affecting, so once you have a reasonable amount of power, you may wish to specialize, especially if you want to gain access to your greater sign. In addition, some resplendent powers are highly useful if you want to use further astrology effects. Most of these are listed below. As with the charms list, this probably is not complete, and anyone spotting any others is strongly encouraged to help out.

• Structure of the mast. If there are more sidereals around than can officially add to the effect roll, the others can still help out, by hanging around and using this.
• Stronger than this job. If you are doing a really long preparation for a powerful effect, use this to enable yourself to work non-stop, and gain dice bonus's on all your rolls.
• Apologetic feint. More dice on your prayer roll, or attempts to get aid of others.
• Instant genius style. Draw up a horoscope immediately after fate planning, without any equipment That saves you a day.
• Seer. The single most useful power, especially in groups. Used on each other repeatedly, to gain ever more powerful seer destinies, building up power for the final roll, you can build up unlimited dice as long as you have tons of time, and don't botch any of the rolls.
• Celestial intervention appeal. If its an emergency, and you need to get an urgent counter signatory, use this to get hold of an appropriate god. Don't use it unless it is an emergency, or you are prepared to use some control charms to force their consent.
• Record obtaining inquiry. Yet more dice on the prayer roll to contact the pattern spiders.

Merits and Flaws

The following can contribute to the creation of an even more powerful astrologer:

• Legendary attribute, Driving passion, True paragon, Signature style. All of these can get you additional dice for various rolls if chosen well.
• Prodigy. (the double favoring version) Handy both for the additional die to roll, and ease of learning. Particularly useful when applied to crafts, as you get the XP discount multiple times.
• Virtue specialty, Vice. Since the virtue influencing effects have a similar purview to these, altering your effective rating under certain specific circumstances, you can simulate or counteract their effects with a well chosen blessing or curse. Used on yourself, you can also get hugely increased benefits when virtue channeling.
• Born to rule, Enchanting feature. These could in theory get you another die in prayer rolls, but its tricky to see what the pattern spiders would consider enchanting, or superior to them.
• Favor. Can be handy in obtaining co and counter signatories
• Legendary artifact. Hmm. Mantle of Brigit anyone? Do I need to spell out all the oh so wrong ways this could benefit you.
• Priest (6 point version). Get even more cool special effects from the pattern spiders, above and beyond their job. Those extra motes would really come in handy in using power while maintaining a resplendent destiny.
• Lucky. Get a bad roll after spending loads of time, effort and essence to improve your chances on an important effect? No sweat. Given sidereals discount in getting this, at least 1 point in it is a near must-have.
• Disciple. If the disciple is another sidereal, or even a solar or lunar, then they are a readily available cosignatory. Of course, they may not be that powerful, and may be more trouble than they're worth.
• Greater curse. Be very careful if you have this. It will cause problems if you use astrology frequently. ST's, think carefully about how much you want to assign and remove this in game according to your characters actions.
• Beacon of power. Very crippling for a subtle sidereal, as it pretty much prevents you from using charms to enhance your powers, or while under a resplendent destiny.

In addition, the following merits for others deserve special consideration where astrology is involved.

• Blurred fate. Note that this isn't as impeding as it first seems, as it only affects divination ( the Int+Occ horoscope reading) not the effect roll.
• Call of the blood. This can penetrate a resplendent destiny and other sidereal disguises at inopportune moments, resulting in paradox. Be careful about casual sleeping around when assuming other identities. Sidereals do travel around a lot, and this is particularly likely to become an issue for chosen of mercury and Venus

Rules Index

Contacting the college. P205 2nd column, bold text+p218, 2nd column, table.

Effect roll. P208 1st column, bold text+p219. Activating effects. P208, 2nd column. Determining effect. P208, 1st column, bold text. Effect modifiers. P209+219. Formulating the effect. P208, 2nd column. Players must state the goal, type, and central target of the roll in advance. P208, 1st column.

Effects. Buying effect duration. P211 2nd column. Buying effect power P212 1st column. Buying effect scope. P210-1 Canceling effects. P212 2nd column. Multiple effects. P212, 2nd column. Targeting effects. P210. Types of modifiers and how they stack. P210, 1st column.

Extended prayers. P207, 2nd column, bold text +p218

Mortal astrology and sidereal effects. P213 1st column, sidebar.

No sorcerous senses, charm, or spell can discern the effects of sidereal astrology. P205 2nd column.

Petitions. P206-7, p218 Cost of materials, p206, 1st column, Calligraphy p 206, 2nd column, (note, there is an inconsistency between the numbers given here, and the ones in the procedure table. ) Cosignatories, P206-7 Counter signatories P207, 1st column. Preferred sacrifices p207, sidebar.

Resplendent Destinies. P215-8. A specific destiny always has the same persona. P216 1st column. Being what you aren't. P217 1st column. Discerning sidereals under a RD. P216-7. Donning a destiny takes a turn of concentration and a willpower point. P216 1st column .If the character ever uses up all their successes, the destiny ends immediately. P216. 1st column. Once a destiny ends, that specific persona is forgotten normally and cannot be revived. P216 1st column. Other sidereals see a RD user normally. P216 1st column. Resplendence paradox. P217, text and table. RD's Cannot impersonate a real person. P216 2nd column. Sidereals do not buy power, and always spend 2 succs on scope. P215 2nd column. Using resplendent powers. P217-218.

Sidereals cannot affect other sidereals with astrology. P205, 1st column, sidebar

The Cost. Censure. P212-4. Dissipating paradox. P215 Gaining Paradox. P214. 1st column, p217, table. p219, table. Pattern bite table. P215, 1st column.

Wanting, ceasing, and walking outside fate. P216 2nd column, sidebar.

Where do the stunts go. P210 2nd column, sidebar.

Character Creation

Well, now we have a list of most of the ingredients that go into making a powerful astrologer. However, ingredients are wasted if not used in the right amount. The current list is rather daunting, and you will not be able to get hold of all of these effects, particularly the charms, for some time. So, for your benefit, I will sift through the list, and show you how to create an starting character designed for maximum capability at using astrology. Note that this is min-maxing, and the resulting character will be seriously weak in other areas, so using this character in an actual game is not recommended

Caste: All of the abilities concerned with astrology fall under Venus and Jupiter Since the greatest proportion fall under Venus, and their anima power adds automatic successes to the prayer roll, this gives them an edge over the other castes until you get to a power level where you can buy (type) exalt ways. So I will choose them.

Attributes: Since two of the attributes needed are mental, and one is social, I will put mental as primary, and social as secondary. I will boost them each to 5, and distribute the remaining points fairly evenly among the others.

Abilities: Now here is where it starts getting tricky. As a member of the cerulean lute of harmony, I need to have awareness 2, bureaucracy 2, craft or performance 2, linguistics 3, lore 3, martial arts 2, medicine 2, occult 2, presence 2, socialize 3, stealth 1, and archery, melee or thrown 1. This uses up 25 of my points, leaving only 10 left to distribute as I choose. First, since it is the most useful, and keeps me out of the way of danger, I will choose archery as my required combat ability. Next, as they are the most useful abilities, I will buy occult up to 3, performance 3, and craft(fate) and (calligraphy) at 3 as well. This uses up 8 of my points. The remaining two, I will assign to martial arts, and bureaucracy, to help meet charm prerequisites, and round off the character.

Backgrounds: Another hard set of choices. A salary of 3 is a must. You'll need it for all the offerings you will have to make in your line of work. The rest should probably be distributed between allies, backing and connections. These will be a good deal of use when it comes to getting assistants, favors, and co and counter signatories.

Charms. Now, we have a lot to choose from here. Given the diversity of requirements, it is probably best to have a few charms from a lot of different abilities, rather than concentrating in one or two. Thankfully, the generally pyramidal structure of sidereal charms is pretty accommodating of this.

Essential charms for any serious astrologer are elegant patterns of fate, excellent implementation of objectives, heart brightening presentation style, hot eyed snake whispering, systematic understanding of everything, the methodology of secrets, and of the shape of the world. The various dice adding and TN reducing effects granted by these will add many successes to your roll, and the social adders also make getting assistance so much easier. This leaves 5 charms left to choose. I'll go for perfection in life, mark of exaltation, and a trio of world shaping artistic visions with the specialty of " humans", since they are likely to be what I am manipulating or facing most.

Virtues: Since getting what you want in astrology is very much a matter of patience and determination, conviction and temperance are the virtues that are the most useful So they get the greatest amount spent on them.

Colleges: For maximum versatility in what things you can affect, and resplendent effects you can gain, it is best to have 1 dot in as many colleges as possible at starting character level. While it is slightly more XP efficient to just get high scores in a few colleges to start with, doing so means you will be less likely to get the chance to actually use that power, as there will be fewer things to apply it to. Probably the most useful resplendent effects fall under the ships wheel, the quiver, and the sorcerer, so I will put 1 in each of these. The other 4 must go in the house of leisure. Probably the least fitting college for this character is the lovers, so I will put 1 in each of the other 4. Unlike abilities, backgrounds and virtues, there does not seem to be any cap on how high you may raise colleges with your starting points. If you were so inclined, and willing to spend all 18 of your BP on it, you could start off with 2 at 5.

Bonus points: Since it is so useful, both in itself, and in making charms more powerful, a high essence is a must. This uses up 10 of the bonus points. 1 has to go to raising lore high enough to use OtSotW. The other 7 would probably be best spent further improving needed abilities. Since it will boost both craft abilites, I'll spend two points to get the specialty "taking extra time+3" and put the remaining specialty point in performance "poetry." as it will add to the prayer rolls. Since buying up the specialties gets you more dice per point spent than buying up abilities, I'll spend another two on boosting performance and occult "horoscopes+2" The remaining 3 will go to increasing my calligraphy to 4, and performance to 5.

This means that the final character sheet looks something like this.

Caste: Venus. Concept:Ultimate astrologer

Attributes:

Str:2 Cha:5 Per:1 dex:3 Man:2 Int:5 Sta:2 App:2 Wits:5

Abilities

Archery 1, Awareness 2, Bureaucracy 3, *Craft(calligraphy 4, fate 3)taking extra time+3, *Linguistics(old realm, high realm flametongue, riverspeak) 3, *Lore 4, *Martial arts 3, Medicine 2, *Occult 3 horoscopes+2, *Presence 2, *Performance 5 poetry+3, *Socialize 3, Stealth 1.

Backgrounds: Allies 3, Backing(bronze faction)3, celestial manse 1, Connections (cerulean lute of harmony 3, forbidding manse of ivy 2), salary 3.

Colleges:The ships wheel 1, The ewer 1, The musician 1, The peacock 1, The pillar 1, The quiver 1, The sorcerer 1.

Charms: Elegant patterns of fate, Excellent implementation of objectives, World shaping artistic vision x3; Perfection in life, heart brightening presentation style; hot eyed snake whispering; systematic understanding of everything, The methodology of secrets, Of the shape of the world; mark of exaltation.

Virtues: Compassion 2, Conviction 3, Temperance 3, Valor 1 Essence 3, Willpower 6. Personal essence 12, Peripheral essence 33

With these stats. I have a usual dice pool of 11 for craft fate, 10 for the horoscope roll, 13 for the prayer, and 12 for the petition As long as they are being used on humans, the TN for the planning, horoscope computing, and effect roll are 4. I can add up to 3 extra dice to the craft and prayer rolls, and reduce the TN's and/or create a perfect success if I choose. I can get an additional automatic success for the prayer roll, and, if in heaven, the horoscope one as well. The base dice pool for my effect roll is only 4, but I can add 3 to it with the methodology of secrets, plus all the bonuses gained from the earlier steps. Using all the dice adders, and gaining perfect successes where possible, but without any helpers, or stunt bonus's, this gives me an average of 17 successes on my effect roll. More than enough to create any reasonably sized effect, affecting the entire population of a city for centuries, or country for years.

So, as usual, even a starting character in exalted is capable of epic feats. The question is, how do you advance from there, to even greater things?

Character Advancement

To continue single-mindedly maximizing fate manipulating power, and work through just how much XP it will cost to do so, I will be using the sample character above as the base for my calculations. A less optimized character will have to pay slightly more XP to get these capabilities.

So without further delay, lets look at our priorities.

1: Essence. Raising your permanent essence provides easily the biggest single benefit to astrology. It both improves your effect rolls, and adds to the power of your dice and success adding charms. This aspect of it becomes less significant if you acquire soul fire shaper form once you reach essence 5, as it enables you to imitate having essence 10 for the purpose of your rolls and charms. However, once you get into essence 6+ levels, you start getting other benefits, as the cap on your other stats starts increasing, and your essence pool continues to expand. In terms of efficiency, it is probably best to choose one of two paths. Either advance to essence 5, and concentrate on getting charms to increase your power further for a while, or get your essence as high as you can as fast as you can, so you can raise your other natural dice pools to superhuman heights as well.

Cost to get essence 5:63XP Cost to raise essence from 5-10, 315XP. Total, 378XP

2: Attributes and abilities. Here, the stats you should focus on are intelligence, performance, craft(fate) charisma, and occult, in approximately that order of importance. Intelligence adds to both the destiny planning and horoscope reading, so it is twice as useful to raise it. Craft (fate) and performance are equally useful in boosting the power of the effect, but prayer takes less time and is essential, while destiny planning takes time and is optional, so performance is the next best to raise. Charisma has the same usefulness in adding to the dice roll as performance, but costs twice as much XP per dot, and will not help you gain access to charms, and so is not quite as efficient to raise, particularly at low power levels. Occult is the least useful because the benefit it provides is limited by the result of the craft (fate) roll, which means it will be the least often used of the stats, and so it should not be increased to a level where it will provide, on average, more successes than the craft (fate) roll. Fortunately, craft has rather more dice adders and TN reducers than occult, so this is unlikely to be an issue.

While raising wits and linguistics/craft (calligraphy) is useful, it is not as useful as the other stats because it provides no further benefits if you roll more than 6/8 successes, unlike the others, which continue to add yet more dice to the effect roll if you get lots of successes So once you have a dice pool big enough that you can reliably roll 8 successes (16, 10 if TN is reduced to 4), you should not bother spending more XP on this, unless you actually want to be better at languages and writing for their own sake, rather than to boost your astrological skills.

Similarly, other attributes are not particularly relevant, and other abilities are only useful for the charms they provide. So they should probably not be raised beyond 4 or 5 (apart from martial arts), enough to meet the prerequisites. But since 19 of the abilities have at least one charm that is useful, you have a lot of freedom in exactly what order you develop them in.

Cost to raise useful stats to 10. 475XP

3. Charms. You have a lot of different ways you can get these. Since my sample character has already gained all of the really useful ones, the direction developed here is very much a matter of what other stuff you want your character to have. The big choice, is whether to get lots of MA or not. The sidereal MA have easily the most impressive boosting powers, with things like (type) exalt ways, and soul fire shaper form. However, to get these, you need to learn a regular MA style, which will take a good 70-100xp that is of no direct benefit to your astrological skills. So you should choose early if you are going to put off MA until you have filled up on all the other useful charms, or concentrate on getting high power in it. Another important choice is if you are going to concentrate on affecting humans, or spirits, exalts, etc. If you are not going to bother with spirits, there are quite a few charms you can leave out until you've got everything else.

Cost to buy up all the useful charms in various abilities, including prerequisite charms and abilities, mentioned in part one, excluding MA: 826. Cost to master 5 dragon style(as it is the smallest MA style yet known) and gain all the sidereal MA charms mentioned above, not counting multiple purchases of (type) exalt ways: 327. Note that unlike the previous figure, this one is subject to change, as more useful MA effects may be developed or learned.

4: Colleges. As mentioned before, the way colleges work means that your first priority should be getting 1 in all of them, as this gives you the greatest versatility, both in scope of your own powers, and your ability to help other sidereals. Once you have done this, you should probably choose one of the following routes, depending on the way you want to develop.

• Generalist. Don't bother raising them further until you start running out of charms and stats to improve.
• Specialist. On the other hand, when you do decide you need the extra dice, penetration, and ability to have more cosignatories a high college score provides, it is probably best to concentrate on improving them to maximum one at a time. If you are in a group of astrology-centric sidereals, in an astrology-centric game, this works especially well, as you can each concentrate on different colleges, alternating leaders depending on who would provide the highest dice pool, but getting the benefits of each others high essence scores all the time.
• Animist. Concentrate on raising the colleges of your house, so you can gain access to your greater sign. Works best if you also put a lot of effort into MA, since that will allow you to reduce the XP cost for regaining the lost essence and willpower point considerably. Not likely to be used if you are playing an astrology-centric game.

Cost to get 1 in all colleges. 90xp. cost to get from 1 to 5 in a college. 30xp. Cost to get from 5-10, 105xp. Total cost to raise all 25 colleges to 5. 840xp.

Total cost to raise all 25 colleges to 10: 3465XP

Complete cost of all these stages. 5471XP

So for a normal character, depending on starting stats and favored abilities, it would take somewhere between 5500 and 6000 xp to get all this. And that still leaves plenty of room for improving other stats, and getting other charms and spells. Looks like you are not going to run out of things to get any time soon. Of course, more than 2/3 of this is colleges, so it is possible to get almost full power for less than half that. But that is often the case. You get most of the power fairly quickly, and then have to work really hard to find more little edges.

Applying Astrology

Well, we now know what we need for astrology, and how much it costs. However, this knowledge is useless if not used, or used wrongly. This section covers how to apply its powers best, gives advice on when to use, and when not to use them.

Choosing an effect

There are 8 different mechanical effects you can apply with astrology, arranged in groups 4 of 2. Lets see what merits and flaws each has:

• Target number alterers: Artless prodigy blessing and sloped floor curse. These will increase or decrease the amount of successes by, on average .1 per die. This means that, like sidereal TN reducers, their effects become more significant and noticeable the bigger the recipients dice pool is. They also alter the chances of getting a botch in a way that the other effects do not. However, they are not guaranteed to have any effect, and are less stackable than the other types of effects. Positive uses of them are more stackable than negative uses and this should be taken into account when applying several effects to a high essence being. They loose effectiveness when faced with charms that convert dice into automatic successes, which bypass their effect, so using them on lunars is a bad idea.

• Difficulty alterers: Blissful idiot blessing and Ruin wthout faliure curse. These alter the amount of successes by a flat amount of 1 success per effect. This means that they are more significant when the recipient has a low dice pool. In terms of getting optimum significance you should use this if they have a usual dice pool of 9 or below, and the TN alterers when they have a dice pool of 10 or above. The difficulty increasers stack without problems, however the reducers will have problems if the roll is difficulty 1 and unopposed, as difficultys cannot normally be lowered below 1. When setting the condition for the blessing, it is therefore a good idea to make sure that it can apply to the rolls, especially if it is of low power. Having the influence for the week or day wasted because it was applied to a roll that didn't need it is not good.

• Willpower affecters: Hound chases rabbit blessing, heart-piercing curse. Unlike the previous effects, these do not alter the chances of success or failure Instead, they make the consequences of the success or faliure more severe. This is a more subtle way of influencing peoples behavior, but can become very effective at high power levels, where the recipient can spend willpower to ensure a success, and then gain it back immediately due to the blessing each time. They stack well, both with other willpower affecting effects and other blessings and curses, and using them on high essence beings in conjunction with those can produce terrifying results. One important point to remember when using these is that the recipient must have a reasonable chance of success or falfailure, otherwise they will not activate the effect. This is especially significant when using heart piercing curse on high power creatures, as without other efforts to reduce their chance of success, the curse will almost never apply. Similarly, if the difficulty is so high that even spending a WP does not give you a reasonable chance of success, hound chases rabbit blessing is of no use. Another is that if the recipient is at full or no temporary willpower, they will have no further effect, so high power effects can sometimes be temporarily exhausted or worked around. These therefore have the most significance when the recipient has a decent chance of both failure and success

• Virtue influencers: Fortified spirit blessing and name destroying curse. Unlike all the other effects, which change the result of actions directly, these will rarely have a direct influence on rolls made, unless the recipient is virtue channeling. Instead, they are more likely to influence the way they behave, and the actions that they actually take. When used at low power, they make people behave in an out-of character way occasionally, while high power and scope effects can significantly change the behavior of an entire country. This is probably the easiest to use in a contrary manner, making "blessings" that hinder, and "curses" that aid. A high compassion can save an enemy's ass at a crucial point in a battle, while a lowered conviction can make a group of people easer to lead. It stacks reasonably well, with virtue raising effects working together better than lowering ones, as dice pools cannot normally go below 0. They are probably the most effective at low power level subtle manipulation of events, compared to the others, which can seem useless if you are making lots of applicable rolls in a single scene (such as combat)

When to use it, and when not to use it

Astrology, even more than sorcery, is not something you can pull off rapidly. However, unlike spells, the amount of time you spend on it is very much up to you, and by splitting your dice pool, it is possible to pull off effects in a single turn and still perform other actions. It is also a very bad idea to use it as a last resort. Its incompatibility with anima flare means attempting to use it when your other powers are exhausted are likely to be met with failure If you are expecting serious trouble, and want to use it for a death curse, it is best to perform it in advance, and then unleash the contagious effect when you are in trouble. Remember, astrology is mostly useless on non-natives of creation.

Astrology is best used when you want to exert control over beings, and cannot be around all the time. Its long-term and essence free nature makes it easy to have large amounts of effects up at the same time, on lots of different creatures. Although it is most likely to be used on humans, don't underestimate what you can achieve by enchanting animals, plants, spirits, and creatures as well. Learning creative applications of the college purviews is a must, especially if you only have a few of them, and need to find one that can affect a person in the way you need.

Astrological effects that you want to perform will generally fall into one of a few categories:

• Subtle influencing of large numbers of low power beings over a long period of time. For this, use of virtue and difficulty altering effects is probably the best option. Large scope and duration and low power is probably the best way to go about things. When influencing a country, it is best to have several effects working on different sections of the population, with complementary effects. This divides the number of extra successes needed due to high essence beings into manageable chunks, and allows you more precision and subtlety in your control. Remember, that each individual will only be able to have one effect on them at once. Make it count, and don't be afraid to cancel and replace effects to adapt as the situation changes. Leaving an effect running unattended once it has accomplished its goal could result in all kinds of unexpected and unpleasant side effects.

• Controlling an individual, or small group of high power or significance beings, molding the course of their lives. Slightly easier to do than the above, and less likely to put you in conflict with other sidereals who have different plans for the area. Remember, that the greatest number of effects that you can have on one person will be 10, and in practice it'll probably be less than half of that. Affecting the destinies of the people around them as well goes a long way towards getting the desired result. If you are going for detailed control over an individual, you will need to make sure that you can touch them, to transfer the contagious destinies. Stealth powers, setting yourself up as a friend/ally of the person or disguise abilites are a must. This becomes a little less problematic if affecting a small group (like a party) with the same destiny. If the people you are trying to influence are powerful creatures like solars, mere destiny manipulation may well not be enough to produce the desired results. Using other charms, like of horrors best unknown and force decision, will be useful, as will personally taking part under a resplendent destiny. Again, don't hesitate to change effects to adapt to a situation.
• Influencing a crucial event. Here, the most important things are scope and power. Often, you will not have the time to do all things you want, so different effects on all sides of the event should be prioritized depending on what you have time to do. Make sure you cancel the effects afterwards, especially if they are high power ones. Disguise/stealth abilities are even more important here than in the previous category. You will need to be able to get around and touch people unnoticed, so cover stories are a must.

Resplendent Destinies

Of course, learning how to manipulate the destinies of others is only half of astrology. Just as important is learning how best to alter your own destiny. Here of course, you have additional options, thanks to the powers of resplendent destinies. This is one of the big advantages sidereals can have, exchangeable long term power-up effects that don't require any committed essence. So having a good set really helps. This also has quite a bit of significance if you are playing a sidereal in a mixed group, and enhancing the other players with ascending effects, but since you cannot give other characters resplendent effects, you do not have the same range of choices.

General advice

The first thing to remember is that you are operating on a limited special effects budget. You can only have up to one effect per point of permanent essence, and you have to split that between long term resplendent identities, short term resplendent identities that will be used mainly for the powers they provide, and ascending power-up effects. It is unwise to have more than one long term resplendent destiny based identity at a time, because of this, and because of the far greater chance of discovery if you have several identities going around in the same place. If you do want lots of long term alternate identities, you should Ceasing to Exist Approach instead, which removes a lot of the hassle of establishing the persona's social relationships in the first place, makes it a lot harder to penetrate the disguise, gives additional benefits like changing your charms and anima banners appearance, and doesn't give you paradox if it is penetrated. Only use a resplendent destiny for this purpose if you are planning on spending more than a fifth of your time as that persona. Unlike when you are manipulating others, it is nearly always best to go for all your advantages when setting up effects on yourself. A one-time price of a few extra dice of paradox is a small penalty when compared to the benefits of getting a willpower point back every time you succeed a roll, or an automatic success, especially in combat, or some other situation where you are making a lot of rolls in a single scene. Similarly, you should build up as many effect points as possible for your short term resplendent destinies, as you can go through them alarmingly quickly.

If you are planning on using lots of destiny effects on yourself, and changing them around fairly frequently it would be a good idea to set up a section of your character sheet devoted to them. Something like this would help you keep track of all of them:

College:
Type:
Duration: (probably best to do this in date started and the date it will finish, as vague timekeeping on this is a bad idea)
Effects: (either the number of power points left if a resplendent effect, or the type of modifier and the conditions in which it applies if ascending or descending)

When making ascending effects, try and keep the area that they can be applied to broad. While not as crucial as with WSAV, as you can cancel and change them around, setting their conditions so they apply to as many of your rolls as possible is still a good idea. Making sure that those conditions overlap, but are not identical is also important.

Sample destiny sets. These will be designed with essence 5 in mind, as it is the highest rating that PC's are likely to have, and allows a decent selection, while still making each choice important.

Straightforward combat twink

Here, you should have, fairly obviously, the sword and the shield, with as many effect points as you can get. Hero's iron skin and Minimum legal defense competence are absolute lifesavers which you will get tons of use out of, particularly if facing things with much higher initiative scores, (which is most other exalt types actually, particularly DB's and lunars) and you don't want to have to abort to defense or use up your charm for the turn to save yourself. Tears of the blade is incredibly useful, both for intimidation purposes and dealing with nearly unkillable bastards using protection effects like a gem of adamant skin or incomparable wellness, while wounded lion strength can turn the tide of a fight. Apart from that, there are not many resplendent effects that are directly useful in combat. Stronger than this job can help in extended battles, and thug fist or chains of adorjan can be pretty nasty, but sidereals real skill lies in co-ordinating fights, rather than direct participation.

For ascending effects, a high power willpower regainer is probably the best choice. That way, you can either gain an automatic success on most rolls, costing nothing, or power rather more charms than usual. Since you need to succeed, it would be a good idea to stack with one or two enhancing effects. If fighting unarmed a TN reducer would be best, since sidereals have no TN reducing brawl or MA charms. If you have the essence regaining charms and a high virtue, boosting that even further and doing lots of channeling is a very good idea. 6 extra dice, and 12 motes regained 5 times, with no willpower cost for doing so sounds like a damn good deal to me.

Military Coordinator

Here, you'll need to have a resplendent destiny or CtEA identity established, so you can interact fairly normally with the people you are training/advising/leading. The captain, banner, and sorcerer are best suited for this purpose. In terms of secondary destinies used for effects, you have a lot of choices. The captain, mast, most of the house of war, sorcerer and corpse are good ones. At high power levels, iron drill exercise can make tiger warrior training look weak, and at essence 6+, they can give ordinary people superhuman skills. This works especially well if several sidereals are working together. Structure of the mast is most useful if you are suspecting a one-on-one fight. Aspect of the bear and Battle carrying presence can be combined to make your troops completely immune to fear effects and fatigue. Heroic general presence and Tide of history also combine to make fearless inexhaustible troops. Knuckle cracking stance and weak spine effect also combine well.

Since there are so many useful resplendent choices, ascending ones will not be that necessary, nor will there be room for many of them. You should probably concentrate on putting effects on your protégé's, with different, complementary ones for each division. Difficulty reducers or willpower restorers would probably be the most useful at high power, while virtue raisers would provide the most benefit at low power.

Mental Master

Here, your role will probably fall under one of two types. The seeker of knowledge, and the teacher. The first will rarely need a resplendent destiny active, while the second usually does, particularly if you plan on occupying a regular post. The treasure trove is easily the best resplendent destiny for a teacher/academic, both in appearance, and granted powers. The captain, quiver, pillar, and key also make good choices. All of the disappearing effects like Everywhere and nowhere technique and Old fellows society luncheon are excellent for gathering information, although inconvenient. Never cease moving, Reading dead eyes, and instant genius style all have their uses. If trying to get information from others, Sweet flirtation style, Apologetic feint and Record obtaining inquiry can provide considerable aid.

In terms of ascending effects, low power ones are all you'll need, as you rarely have to roll more than once per scene. Probably the most efficient to use would be TN reducers on yourself, and difficulty reducers on your students. Virtue alterers are of minimal use, except in the case of very unruly students, and willpower has little effect in these cases.

Soul of the party

An important role for the chosen of Venus Being part of and directing the relationships in an area is both part of their job description, and something most of them enjoy. In many ways, they are the hardest hit by arcane fate. Their whole purpose is the creating and maintaining of love and relationships, and the difficulty in maintaining long-term equal partnerships has got to hurt. In terms of colleges, the house of leisure unsurprisingly contains most of the useful ones. In general use, they divide into two broad categories. The ewer, peacock and pillar mostly cover long-term relationships, while the lovers and musician aid in short term relationships and parties.

Here, a long term resplendent destiny is very helpful. In many cases, they will want to set it up to last for a human lifetime, giving them a fully integrated identity virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Additional identities are risky, but make control over an area so much easier. There are only so many friends you can maintain with one identity, due to issues of age, gender, and social class groupings. CtEA will get huge amounts of use here, as you can simply step in as a new identity, with all the social contacts and years of "friendship" that you need, rather than having to gradually build up trust. The socialize charms will also get lots of use. In terms of ascending effects, TN reducers of power 2 or 3 are probably the best bet over the long term here. Since you can know and control the situations of the people around you, it is relatively easy to determine what set of conditions will affect a person.

Obviously supernatural being

Sometimes, you want or need to show off, really make an impression. Being forgotten really spoils this. If you want to create lasting stories of your deeds, you really need a resplendent destiny. If you want permanent ones, you (again) need CtEA. However, both of these methods have a serious limitation, in the amount of peripheral essence you can spend without ruining them. So creative applications of resplendent effects are very necessary to redress the balance and create spectacular results.

For your identity, the sorcerer is the obvious choice, Both the appearance, and the powers are hugely useful, enabling you to shrug off nasty effects, look cool, and be remembered as doing so. For specific roles, the captain, messenger, banner, and crow make good choices, but others can be turned to the role of a supernatural being as well. The house of endings in particularly good in terms of powers. The greater signs are impressive, and blatantly supernatural effects, especially feathered cloak trick, which allows you to masquerade as a lunar, and chains of adorjan and tears of the blade, which are pretty obvious and terrifying effects. The effects of the shield, while not completely obvious, allow you to do things that it would be pretty hard for a normal human to pull off, and strength of the mast and field mouse rider are pretty blatant and impressive as well.

For ascending effects, a nice layering of full power TN reducers and willpower regainers work best, not only because they enhance your abilities on their own, they also reduce the cost of using TN reducing charms to get a perfect success. When you have a very limited mote supply, being able to get a perfect effect by spending only 1 or 2 motes, and regaining 1 of the willpower points spent on converting the roll increases your resources a lot, and just might give you a chance against a solar. With a clever combination of world shaping artistic vision's, of horrors best unknown, multiple overlapping willpower regainers, and a persistent regenerators like wood dragon form or earth and sky bargain, it is possible to almost completely eliminate the element of chance (as long as your dice pool is high enough that perfect successes will usually succeed against your opponents, as you won't regain the willpower unless you do) on your part. It would be very hard not to be impressed by that level of consistent power.

Comments

You can't use CMoS form to help astrology - you can't take mental or social actions while it is adopted, and that's all Astrology is. - IanPrice

Well, regardless, this is a pretty amazing write-up. Who did it, now? --UncleChu

I wikified the text here, but it originated on the rpg.net forums by someone named "(un)reason". -- Wordman