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Heroic Exalts: Saviours of Creation?

Alright, this is a gradually hardening idea for the Heroic Exalts; the Exalted of 'no god'. My draft concepts are going to flitter about here until they harden up into something, hopefully, awesome.

Posits

1. Autochthon manages to connect to Creation without a war happening. Assume that Yugash gets cowed or something.

2. Autochthon gets woken up.

3. Autochthon discovers Great Curse, fixing will be slow and problematic.

4. Autochthon creates Heroic Exalts to keep other Exalts from tearing world apart while he tries to fix things.

Charms

Heroic Charms are based on their Backgrounds.

Backgrounds: Allies, Artifact, Backing, Cipher*, Contacts, Familiar, Followers, Influence, Library, Manse, Mentor, Reputation, Resources, Savant, Style*.

Cipher: The Heroic Exalted are meant to be grand heroes, but this brings danger. The friends and families of an Exalt can become pawns of dark forces, and a person can be made vunerable by striking at their roots. Autochthon did not wish to force the Heroics apart from society, and so he made... arrangements.

Cipher acts upon the Loom of Fate, blurring the lines that connect the character to others. While these lines are still present, they are difficult to find. Any attempt to uncover details about the character's life, past, information networks, friends, or the like suffer a difficulty penalty equal to the character's Cipher score. The character becomes a mysterious hero.

Style: Gives pool of 'stunt dice'. No more than one per roll may be used. Per day, I think?

/HeroicCharmPosits - Some thoughts in advance on how these Charms may work, as I meander through them.

Castes

There are five Castes of the Heroic Exalted. Each character gains their three Caste Backgrounds, and then may choose two Favoured Backgrounds. (Heroic Exalts will have two Favoured Abilities.)

Advocate Caste: Friends and family, the Advocate Caste are natural gatherers, working to unite groups of people. (Backgrounds: Allies, Contacts, Influence)

Champion Caste: Masters of the self, the Champions act as tireless warriors, defeating evil and acting to protect the people. (Backgrounds: Cipher, Reputation, Style)

Journeyman Caste: Artificers and workers, the Journeymen act to improve the world, fixing it so that people will have a reason to be good. (Backgrounds: Artifact, Manse, Resources)

Regnant Caste: Lords and masters, the Regnant Caste rules, giving people a strong and noble figure to follow. (Backgrounds: Backing, Familiar, Followers)

Scholar Caste: Researchers and mystics, the Scholars seek to understand the world, and use their knowledge for the betterment of society. (Backgrounds: Library, Mentor, Savant)

The Limit Mechanic

Because everyone has a 1-10 limit mechanic.

The Impositions of Autochthon

Comments

The Heroic Exalted, I'd imagine, are the "Chosen of No-one" presented in Autocthonians, I'm guessing? If so, I've had a few thoughts on them. Firstly though, is that they'd use Adamant as their MM. I like the Charms from backgrounds idea though, but due to Exalted's love of fives, you should try to develop a fifth caste. Just my two cents. - Trithne

Hmm, maybe everyone should use Adamant. It does fit, don't it? This is still, as earlier mentioned, very rough. - FrivYeti

Background Charms? Way cool, I've suggested this before but never bothered to write it. Curious to see what you do. Arcane? Lame as hell. Exalted are not Arcane, except Sidereals who are damaged. Fifth Caste? Yes. Rule of fives! Also I think you'll get some mileage out of looking through the hardbacks for Backgrounds. There are a lot of them. I don't really buy the journeyman caste as a heroic archetype. Maybe there is some mythology that is worth looking at, here. - willows

Actually, I'm going to play with Arcane a bit. *grins* A bit of the old, and enough new to make it properly different. :) And maybe I should go with enough Backgrounds for six Castes, to make it properly Autochthonian.... ah, screw it. Five it is. - FrivYeti

Sifu. Sorcery. 'Nuff said. -- GregLink

The Sorcery background is made of 90% EVIL, and 10% ink. ;) That said, maybe a nice Library should pop up. - FrivYeti

Background based Charms sound interesting... Couple of questions about that... Are you thinking of having the background be bought with exp or earned through roleplaying or what? Either way is possible, but are kinda different approaches I guess (with one being more like how other Exalted buy their abilities and attributes they base their charms on and the other...um... not being like that). Similarly, backgrounds are stuff that can be lost a bit more easily than other Traits (like Resources can be spent, Followers can die, Artifacts can break), although some are a bit more permenant (like Breeding & Savant fr'instance). Basing a Charm on something that can regularly be lost and regained seems it might need a bit of thought to make it balanced and as useful as other Charms (sorta like basing Charms on HL or Temporary Willpower)... This looks really fresh and different tho -- Call

Well, I've always felt that Backgrounds should have the same sort of protection that Abilities do. That is, if your Followers are killed, you get new ones, as long as you weren't a complete dunce about it. And yeah, I usually go with Backgrounds being bought with experience (current rating x2) in my games, based on the oWoD, so I didn't think of that issue. I believe the PG talks about that? - FrivYeti

The Charms deriving from Backgrounds I see as both supplements and creators. Charms built off Allies increase their abilities, but they also assist in finding new ones. Charms of Resources provide wealth where there is none, possibly by simply making it that you have something of value to others, not necessarily money. Charms of Influence are pretty easy.

Essentially, the -potential- loss of a Background to the vagarities of Fate doesn't exclude you from the Charms it provides, it'll probably make them more useful, in fact. - Trithne, who fixed your spelling of "Bureaucracy" It's a horrid word.

Background protection does make sense actually - whether its through Backgrounds being fixed or Backgrounds "regenerating" back to their levels after a little bit of time - especially if people are paying exp for them. I could see it getting a little freaky if really pushed (like, someone burns down your Manse or Library and you fortuitously find a new one in an eyeblink of in game time), though that's admittedly a really extreme example. I'm not sure whether it'd be better to handle that through Charms (like Trithne suggests - if I'm understanding correctly), as an innate power of Heroics, as a fixed rule that applies to everyone or just to make it something that an ST and Players can decide between themselves. It'd probably depend on the precise interactions between losing Backgrounds and losing capabilities (like, any or none at all) and how much you wanted to push making Heroics vulnerable to attack through their Backgrounds - in terms of as a game tactic and as a Storytelling device.... You're right btw. the PG does offer an optional rule on Background Costs (Exp Cost = total number of dots taken * 3) on pg17, actually in the middle of a half page section about "Background Protection" and "Gaining and Losing Backgrounds". - Call, going off on a tangent

The placement of Familiar in the caste labeled as "ties to the self" strikes me as a bit off. Maybe a shuffle - Resources to Advocates, Reputation to Champions and Familiar to Journeymen? I kinda like the idea of the "mysterious hero" everyone's heard of but truly knows nothing about... - Hapushet, intrigued by Background Charms as well

Ooh, good thoughts. I've shuffled around the Backgrounds a bit. I like Reputation and Cipher being in the same group. Hammers home the difference between Cipher and Arcane Fate. - FrivYeti

One more thought: You currently have these guys Favoring only 1/5 of their Charmset, which puts them on the same "totally gimped" level as Lunars. I'd strongly suggest giving them all 3 Caste Backgrounds, and letting them Favor 3 more. They don't really need to Favor Attributes or Abilities, especially not if you take my suggestion and give them Charms that let them buy some kind of semi-Favored Abilities/Attributes (yes, I know that pains them at chargen, but you said you wanted them at the low end of the Celestial scale) later on. - Hapushet

Mmm. True. *thinks about it* I want them to have some Favoured Abilities to begin, though. *hrms* On the other hand, the general Celestial rule seems to be nine favoureds, which I forgot. *shakes head* I can actually give them more Favoured and Caste and still have room left over. Good point! - FrivYeti

One problem.

the regent caste...

Uh I thought the heroic exalted MADE no claims of leadership

No FALSE claims of leadership. An interesting aspect of the structure of these Charms is that, in order to use their Charms to lead others, the Heroic Exalts have to already have Backing or Followers. In other words, only when they are leading can they become better leaders. They have to earn it first. :) - FrivYeti