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I love Exalted, and have been happily running it for a while. The only problem I tend to have is the power curve; while starting characters and mid-experience ones do brilliantly, the NPCs of the setting are so awesomely powerful that excuses need to be created for why they aren't around somewhere.

To that end, I am trying this modification. I'd love to hear thoughts, complaints, and suggestions.

Changes: Essence

Reaching Essence 6 now requires a full year of meditation and being 250 years old. Dragon-Blooded cannot reach Essence 6 without incredible and suspicious means. No Exalt can reach Essence 7. Existing Essence 7 Charms will be toned down in power and will become Essence 6 Charms.

Godly Essence Scale: Existing Essence 9-10 Gods are reduced to Essence 7. Existing Essence 7-8 Gods are reduced to Essence 6. Existing Essence 6 Gods are reduced to Essence 5. Any existing gods of Essence 5 or less remain the same. The Elemental Dragons of Air, Fire, Water, and Wood are Essence 8. The Five Maidens and the Earth Dragon are Essence 9. Luna and the Unconquered Sun are Essence 10. There are no godly Charms past Essence 6; existing Charms just improve due to higher power.

Demonic Essence Scale: First Circle Demons are Essence 2-3. Second Circle Demons are Essence 4-6 (reduce Essence 8 to 6, Essence 6 and 7 to 5, and Essence 5 to 4). Third Circle Demons are Essence 7-8; Fetich souls are Essence 9. Primordials remain Essence n/a

Fair Folk Essence Scale: Fair Folk cannot have more Essence than their (Willpower + 2 - Mutations); in addition, they cannot have Essence higher than 7. Fair Folk Charms stop at Essence 6.

Dead Essence Scale: Ghosts cannot advance past Essence 4. Deathlords are Essence 7-9 (reduce Essence by 1). Deathlords cannot learn Charms past Essence 6; again, their increased Essence is used only for Attribute and Ability maximums, Charm effects and mote pools.

Mortal Essence Scale: Mortals cannot pass Essence 3. Even that is astoundingly rare.

Dragon Kings cannot advance past Essence 4 without spirit merging; Essence 5 with merging.

Changes: Age

Mortals: Without magic, mortals typically live to be about 80. Magic can extend a mortal's life up to 500 years, in theory. Any more requires them to transcend their mortality.

Dragon-Blooded: Dragon-Blooded roll for aging as normal, but the difficulty never stops increasing; that is, every ten years, increase it by 1, until it is failed. In addition, after 400 years, they die automatically (unless their aging is slowed). Age-Staving cordials increase their lifespan by 25% by causing them to only require rolls every 12.5 years, and letting them live to 500. Certain hearthstones and artifacts can further extend this (see below), up to a maximum of 1000 years.

Sidereals: Sidereals cannot live past 2000 years. No effect can extend this. (This means that, at the present time, all Sidereals from the First Age were 500 years old or less during the Usurpation.)

Lunars: Lunars cannot live past 2000 years. This may be extended by age-staving cordials and magic, up to a maximum of 2500 years. (This means that, at the present time, all Lunars from the First Age were 1000 years old or less during the Usurpation.)

Solars: Solars cannot live past 2000 years. This may be extended by age-staving cordials and magic, up to a maximum of 2500 years.

Age-Affecting Magics: Peaches of Immortality prevent someone from aging. Mortals do not age for 50 years, Dragon-Blooded for 100 years, and Celestial Exalts (except Sidereals) for 200. Once affected by a Peach, no more peaches or other age-stopping effects may be used, although age-slowing effects may. The Peaches are the most powerful age-stopping effect in Creation. If less powerful effects are used, only the most powerful loss is applied overall. (For example, if Mnemon prevents 10 years of aging, and later uses a Peach of Immortality, she will prevent 90 more years).

The most powerful artifacts can only halve aging speed. No magic may do more. Hearthstones that halve aging are Level 3, but Level 4 or 5 versions may not be created. This stacks with age-staving cordials and other age-slowing effects. A character may not reduce her total aging rate to less than 1/4 of the usual, and normal aging caps apply.

Results

Starting characters do not change in power, nor are the maximum power levels that most games can reach affected. Only NPCs should be weakened by these changes. (Note: This does slightly reduce the power of Summon Second or Third Circle demon, but that doesn't worry me much.)

Thoughts?

It makes those still at the top to special. There are first age Lunnars right now who are probablly stronger then Luna, the Maidens don't just not reign in the Sidreals because they're lost to the world in their creakhouse, but because they can't - because they're smaller things then the greatest of their creations. It makes the Unconcquered Sun specal - he's stronger then you can be, rather then a being that you;re quite likly to surpass, able to rule the heavens only because you don't care to. So basicly, I don't like it. -Dasmen

To clarify, and in the process, discuss, I ask this: You're claiming that some Lunars are stronger than Luna, as of the second age? You're claiming the Chejop Kejak is, in any way, more powerful than his patron Maiden (or worse, the Maidens)? Right there I have to disagree. Unless you can provide some strong canonical evidence, that's never how things went in my head. Yes, you can get real close to them in power. Yes, you can be a might in your own right, ready to take over the weaving of the Loom of Fate if all else goes wrong. But to claim that you're in any way equal in power? That's like claiming an Essence 10 Alchemical would be as big as Autocthon himself. Sure, an Essence 10 Alchemical might be a huge metropolis to rival Lookshy, but to rival the entirety of Autocthonia? No way. Same thing with Solars - sure, as a super-Solar, you can pretty much bring anything you want to bear, but if the UCS comes a'knockin, he's got more perfects than you've got ego, and that's a lot of ego. When the Solars beat the Primordials, they didn't do it because of their individual awesomeness - they did it through the combined actions of nearly 1000 Celestial Exalts, operating as a combined and organized military force, with thousands of terrestrial officers beneath them. The same thing goes true with the incarna - if the Celestials want to take them out, it is possible, it just can't be reasonably done by one Solar - it's going to take a number of Exalts, working in concert. -- GreenLantern

Essence ten Alchemical taking on Autocthron, no, Solars taking on the Sol Invictus, yes - Autocthron is the weakest of the Primordials, the Unconquered Sun is mearly the stongest of the gods. He has Essence ten, Virtue six sprit charms (through being a ruls-monkey and taking virtue specallties in charms) - there were first age solars with Essence ten Ability ten charms in whatever it was they specalized in. If a perfect circle of essence five being can walk over one essence ten one, you know that essence ten being doesn't belong to the same class of beings. - Dasmen

But high-essence gods start getting -effects-, rather than charms. The Sun probably has Perfection. As in, everything. Ever. (Possibly not unrolled perfection, such as HGD, but certainly all attacks count as perfect, all defences can (if they beat successes) defend against perfect.) In addition, being a god rather than an exalt, he doesn't have to pay attention to dice caps. Ahlat ignores 'mortal' limits for his essence score if I recall correctly, and has abilities and such higher than an exalt of his essence would be able to manage. I expect the Sun is worse, and dripping in things like "suffers no multiple action penalties for the first 25 actions in a turn"... gods/demons/spirits usually aren't powerful because of their charms, they're powerful because they just ARE. Lesser gods and such have to make up for these advantages with custom charms and such, but as you go up the power scale, things tend to start picking up narrative scope powers. At least that's my experience.
-- Darloth

That, and Dasmen incorrectly assumes that FrivYeti and TonyC's wonderful Solars vs. Lion fight is in any way representative of the canonical power structure. That fight was severely limited by the lack of published Essence 8+ charms. The Lion was really restricted to SMA as his power base, and SMA is only a few charms, and max out at Essence 7 at that. The Lion was really operating at a near Essence 6 level, with a Mantle of Awesomeness bringing his effective Essence to 10, without all the cool charms that should come with it. Unlike Sidereals, we know that Solars and Spirits can build new charms, at whatever Essence they'd like. Hence, I dispute and hopefully disprove your argument that a perfect circle of Essence 5 Solars can take down an Essence 10 being. Having done that, I then note that there's no reason having a Virtue 5 (or 6) cap makes Spirit charms any less powerful than a bunch of Ability 10 charms - in some sense, it might make them better. Having spent less XP to bring 4 virtues to 5 (or 6) is much cheaper than bringing 4 abilities to 10, and that's assuming you only bring melee, dodge, resistance, and archery to 10. If you really want to be all-around, Exalts are paying through the nose for high ability scores, while spirits can buy all their high essence charms without worry. -- GreenLantern

Oof, I set off another discussionfight. Alrighty, here's my thoughts on the matter - currently, we don't actually know what high Essence Charms look like past Essence 7. We do know, based on spirit Charms seen to date, that powerful godly Charms tend to have higher Essence requirements than Virtue requirements. We haven't seen past Essence 6, but they could easily hit Essence 10 and still only require 6 in Virtues. At the moment, I would assume that a Circle of Essence 6 Solars, Sidereals, or Lunars could handle their patron. In this variant, I would suggest that they still can. Exalts are just as powerful at Essence 6 (possibly more so, since they have more time to buy Charms and powers at Essence 5), and the Incarna are weaker than before. It's not that the Incarna can't defeat any one of their Chosen - it's that they can't defeat the 100 or 300 of their Chosen. - FrivYeti

It has been stated by the developer that a perfect circle of essence five solars can beat the Unconquered Sun, so if your version of Sol Invictius can't be beaten by a five essence five solars, then this argument is pointless as we aren't arguing cannon, but taste. = Dasmen

Since we're talking canon, and you claim that it's been stated "by a developer", the question is where? I'm seriously willing to retract my position if there's some place in any of the books that says so. Heck, I'd still consider it if we can find said statement anywhere. My bigger concern is that this is an argument of fact, and people are making claims based on fallacious or vacuous evidence. In my experience and interpretation of the Incarna, it would take a number of Essence 5-7 Exalts (5-10?) to take out an Incarna. Especially helpful would be a smattering of Exalt-types, with a Sidereal or two laying down astrology, and the Solars doing the heavy lifting. I'm also in total agreement with FrivYeti on this one as well, as his interpretation 'jives' with mine, in both feel and scope. Hence, I ask you to provide some support for your claims and interpretation, because it's always helpful to have people on the same page. -- GreenLantern, seriously trying to get some forward progress on this, rather than "well, it's all subjective"

I was under the impression that the developer post in question was that a Circle of high-Essence Exalts could take down Sol Invictus. I consider 6 to be the changing point, as it's the point where Charms start to explode in power. However... why does that affect anything? Essence 5 characters in this alteration are identical, and Sol isn't stronger than before. So where does the change make him able to run roughshod over Solars? - FrivYeti