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Exalted: the Sidereals

These are just some minor house rules and changes to the official Sidereal stuff.

General Sidereals stuff

• A Sidereal may choose to reduce the number of dots he has in a given preassigned ability to 1. This results in the Sidereal being considered somewhat undereducated and possibly even incompetent in various important matters and likely restricts his Salary. A Sidereal without any dots in a given ability he is supposed to have is considered to be especially inept. A sidereal may not ignore more than 5 dots of abilities in this way.
• The freebie costs for Colleges are exceedingly high. You can purchase extra dots of Colleges for 4pts (3pts if of your Maiden's House).
• You can choose to add your College rating to an appropriate Fate Planning pool, as a simple bonus. This stacks fully with bonuses from Elegant Patterns of Fate, and has a somewhat similar effect. Also, high college ratings entitle you to more access to fate planning records and information.
• There are Terrestrial Manses in Yu-Shan, but they are all exceedingly powerful and range from level 3 to level 5. They are usually in the control of the Bureau of Nature, however, but some Sidereals manage to acquire such manses.
• If you purchase a high Salary, be sure to read the second paragraph of the background carefully. If you start with mortal equipment worth more than Resources 3, you are breaking the Law of Heaven. This includes things like starting with Perfect Articulated Plate, and such. This is a serious law and the Sidereals don't accept many excuses; most Sidereals avoid even the appearance of breaking these guidelines.
• The Sidereal anima (third tick on page 110) can also detect the entranceways to Sanctums, though it doesn't give the Sidereal any way of entering such locations without further magic.

Arcane Fate

• Just as a general guideline, the Sidereal has to accumulate 20 successes on a Charisma + Presence roll (with the -3 dice penality) in order to gain a given person as an acquaintance in play. Each of these rolls must be made on separate occasions, and the Sidereal looses one success from his pool for every time the subject forgets the Sidereal and has to be reminded. This is a completely separate roll from any other social functions, and only applies to actually gaining an single individual Acquaintance. Due to the damage to the Mask, a Sidereal cannot use charms to affect this roll.
• I am ignoring the "one turn" interval. The first roll to forget a Sidereal is made at one minute. The other intervals are unchanged:
  • The Sidereals normal "-3 penality" to be remembered doesn't apply all at once. It slowly builds up, instead.
  • The Intervals: One minute (+0), one hour (-1), one day (-2), one week (-3), one month (-3), one season (-3), and one year (-3).
• The process of forgetting does not begin the very second the Sidereal steps out of sight, but rather once his presence on the people fade. As long as a Sidereal remains with a group more or less all day, they will only have to make two rolls every night to forget his presence when they sleep.
• Any being with Essence 3 or higher has a +3 bonus to the above roll to remember the Sidereal, and will not totally forget the Sidereal in any event.
• The /events/ that the Sidereal undertook are not forgotten, only the actual Sidereal himself. Low Essence individuals tend to attribute the actions to someone else, either a phantom individual whom no-one knew or an appropriate individual. High Essence indivudals tend to remember it as "some strange and powerful being", and might recognize the Sidereal if they see him again, though not be able to place from where.

Sidereals and the Future

The Sidereals have a number of ways to gain knowledge of the future; a few are detailed below.

• A Sidereal with a college rating is considered to have relatively free access to the plans for the general flow of fates under that destiny as long as he has some regular contact with the Bureau of Destiny. The highest levels of college even give him access to some of the destinies planned by the Maidens and command influence over various important destiny planning sessions.
• The Loom of Fate is a great source of spontaneous information on the future that the Sidereal might not otherwise have guessed, and can sometimes even subtly hint at the activities within Creation of those outside of Fate (from the ripples in fate they leave).
• Of Truths Best Unspoken allows a Serenity, Battles and Secrets caste Sidereal to work together to obtain a vision of the future (albiet usually from a particularly dark future), while Of Things Desired and Feared allows the Sidereal to discover weaknesses and particular efficient paths of the future. Both of these charms can be used to simulate different types of prophecy.
  • Of Truths Best Unspoken is more traditional prophecy, and doesn't really need more explanation. It should be noted that this prophecy is somewhat limited in ways; a Sidereal can give you information on various things, but only once a month at best, and he will have to go off and join with two other Sidereals in order to do such. This is PROBABLY the source of Sidereals knowledge of who becomes a new Exalted and when.
  • Of Things Desired and Feared is the "target based" prophecy, most useful when a Sidereal is using his prophecy for a specific goal. I.e., a Sidereal has a goal, and learns what fate demands of him in order to achieve it. The Sidereal can share this with others, indicating that "the path to victory will ultimately lead to the ruin of us all, if we insist on pursuing this course..."
• Similarly, a Sidereal can use astrology to influence fate in fairly impressive ways, making various parts of destiny more likely to come to pass in a different way and then use this knowledge to simulate prophecy. If a Sidereal has placed a curse on a Solar's enemy, so that his doom will come during the annual feast, he can then instruct the Solar to work his plans toward that particular date to take advantage of the astrology.
• One of the best sources of knowledge of the future, however, is Elegant Patterns of Fate. When combined with a bit of misdirection on where the information comes from, this allows the Sidereals to provide somewhat misty and not-entirely-accurate information on the Future. If the Sidereal has submitted a plan indicating that the Prince will come to the aid of the Solar circle he advises, he can then advise the circle as to the importance of this Prince to their future, with some knowledge that even if the details of his plan gets changed the basic gist will most likely remain. Sometimes, however, the Sidereal's plans will get more completely over-tracked -- an "incorrect prophecy", in a way.
• Astrology and Elegant Patterns of Fate work /very/ well together, with each reinforcing the other. This can almost allow a Sidereal to provide a line by line description of what is likely to happen, overall, in a given situation.

Sidereals and New Charms

I do not allow new Sidereal charms to be created. I highly recommend that most Sidereal characters have either Occult (Sorcery) or Martial Arts as a auspicious ability.

Charm Changes

• Unwavering Well-Being Meditation: You recieve the extra soak even if your opponent has an Essence value greater than your Temperance. This soak explictly stacks with the soak from Optimistic Security Practice. See Exalted: Sidereal, Page 133.
• Defense of Shining Joy: If you use your Dexterity + Performance to dodge attacks, you do not gain your Essence rating in extra dice. See Exalted: Sidereal, Page 150.
• Impeding the Flow: This charm gives you a Perfect Success on a free reflexive parry roll. This is still not considered a perfect defense, and only means that he gains successes equal to his full dice pool. See Exalted: Sidereal, Page 157.
• Auspicious Prospects for (Caste): Once per session, you may invoke this charm to say, "Auspicious Prospects tells me...," and have its message be true. The message should be vague; the Storyteller will fill in the details, and might overrule certain suggestions. See Exalted: Sidereal, Page 163.
• Of Things Desired and Feared: This charm requires a Secrets caste Sidereal, not Serenity. See Exalted: Sidereal, Page 168.