Latest revision as of 20:45, 8 June 2010

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Lunar Charms

With all deference to BestPractices, I simply don't have the energy to convert all these Charms into fully-fledged Charm write-ups. Instead, they use the following shorthand:

Charm Name (Attribute): Type; Min. AttrHapushet/Min. Ess.; Keywords; Charm Effect [Prereq.

]

• General Charms
• Shapeshifting Charms
• Crafting Charms
• Body Enhancement Charms
• Hand-to-Hand Combat Charms
• Unarmed Combat Charms
• Armed Combat Charms
• Ranged Charms
• Defensive Charms
• Survival and Healing Charms
• Insight Charms
• Concealment Charms
• Interaction and Knowledge Charms
• Mass Combat Charms
• Sorcery Charms
• Spirit Charms
• Deadly Beastman Transformation

Commentary

One of the nice things about doing this has been to take a good long look at the state of Lunars as they are currently, halfway between 1E and 2E. A number of things almost immediately pop out from the Charmset, some good, some bad, and most seeming to demand a great deal more examination as Lunars 2E is (hopefully) being written.

First, the good:

• Excellencies have vastly empowered the Lunars. A single Charm can affect as many as 7 or 8 different Abilities, more than making up in breadth what they might lack in power. The 1E comment that Lunars are "specialists" is clearly bunk in 2E, which is all to the good. The generalist Lunars now make a solid counterpoint to the specialist Solars, allowing their traditional pairing to make a great deal more sense.
• DBT has been rendered less important. The STC includes several Charms which were, in 1E, only accessible in DBT form. Not one includes the restriction now. If the STC's hints at easily accessible, generic Attribute boosts across the board are borne out (and I have assumed they will be), the scene-length Att boosts will likely take up much of the slack that a less-important DBT will leave behind.
• Social Attributes are no longer the illogical "shapeshifting" dump stats. The sidebar in the STC makes clear that Charms which affect certain Attributes will, unless something very odd is happening, be placed within that Attribute. Now, if you want to be able to see in 360 degrees, you'll be using a Perception Charm, not a Charisma one. This is entirely to the good.
• Partially as a result of the above, most of the trees no longer wander frustratingly between Attributes or even Atrribute categories.
• Lunar soak is still very solid. They are able to trivially (more or less) get Hardness 15, a respectable number under just about any circumstances. Their ability to reduce damage after ping has been calculated will also make them exceptionally hard to kill.
• Appearance Charms. Enough said.

Now, the bad:

• The STC chose to leave the dice-converter Charms as separate Charms, and moreover, to leave them continually varying in cost. Given the existence of Excellencies, and the strict statistical adherence to cost in Exalted 2E (i.e., buying 2 dice is equivalent statistically to buying 1 success, thus success-buying costs twice as much as buying dice), this is completely ludicrous. I chose to change the matter, and I sincerely hope the writers will as well.
• In 1E, the writers chose to cover their egregious lack of social Charms by tying shapeshifting to the social Attributes. Since that decision has been undone, the social stats are woefully short on Charms. Conversely, Dex is once again the uberstat, as some formerly social-tied Charms have now been moved to Dex. For those who are interested, here's a breakdown of the total number of Charms per Attribute in my conversion, including the Excellencies and other "generic" Charms:

||Attribute||Charms||Attribute||Charms||Attribute||Charms|| ||Strength||25||Charisma||17||Perception||26|| ||Dexterity||38||Manipulation||13||Intelligence||23|| ||Stamina||27||Appearance||8||Wits||23||

• It's not clear how the Lunars would have survived the Primordial War. Their only perfect defense is usable only once a tick, so a pretty basic two-attack/perfect-attack/soul-falls-off Combo will basically wipe out any Lunar you come across. Obviously, perfect defenses changed significantly between 1E and 2E - we can only hope that the writers will notice this little issue.

All in all, a lot of the changes hinted at in the STC give me great hope for a solid revised Charmset when Lunars 2E finally makes its appearance. In the meantime, I hope this conversion will get the job done.

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