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Artifacts And Hearthstones

Exalted is filled with potent artifacts and intricate manses, but the focus of the setting should be on the players, not on the equipment that they have gathered. Power Ceiling attempts to avoid a “hoard of magic” mentality by limiting the spread of powerful artifacts.

Note that these revisions are not designed to reduce the power of individual artifacts; those are fine. Instead, they make it so that characters do not focus on creating ever-larger numbers of artifacts to win their fights for them, and explain why most major opponents will not wade into combat armed to the teeth with various Artifact 5 objects. Most PCs should not be affected by these rules at all, until very late into a chronicle.

Artifacts

When someone attunes to an artifact, they are not merely swinging around a hunk of metal; they are aligning the Essence flows of an immensely complicated magical construct with those of their own soul. These flows of Essence coil through a character’s anima and souls, and can conflict with one another if too many are brought into proximity to one another. This is reflected as follows:

• No character may be attuned to more than twelve total dots of Artifacts
  • Any artifact that is used on an individual level, but requires no motes of commitment, counts as Artifact 1 for this purpose (ex: Slayer Khatars).
  • Any artifact which is large-scale and draws all of its power, or all but 1 mote of its power, from a Hearthstone counts as Artifact 1 for this purpose (ex: skyships)
  • A Level NFrivYeti/A Artifact counts as Level 6 for this purpose, unless it falls into one of the above categories.
• No character may be attuned to more than one Artifact of Level 5 or above.
  • Any Artifact which counts as Level 1 for the purposes outlined above counts as Level 1 for this restriction as well.
• Any artifact made from the wrong Magical Material counts as +1 level for this purpose. If the Exalt is using another artifact or effect to harmonize with the artifact as though he were the correct Exalt type (such as a fivefold harmonic resonator), this penalty does not apply, although that artifact or effect must be counted seperately.
• If an artifact incorporates a smaller artifact as part of its rating, the smaller artifact’s dots are not counted (ex: a character with Elemental Dragon Armor does not need to count the dots of their Elemental Lens seperately).

Manses

Manses have similar issues to artifacts, but in many ways they are even more restrictive. With a Manse, a character is deliberately channeling vast amounts of energy through their Essence in order to quickly recover and draw on the power of the demesne on which the Manse is built. These restrictions are similar to the ones for Artifacts, as follows:

• No character may be attuned to more than twelve dots of Manse.
• No character may be attuned to more than one Level 5 Manse.

General Rules

In addition to the restrictions above, artifacts and Hearthstones have one additional rule – if two of them provide bonuses to the same trait or die pool, only the larger trait is added. Bonus successes count as two dice for the purposes of determining which bonus is higher. For example, a character with Wings of the Raptor and Hearthstone Bracers will have the Dodge DV bonus of the Wings override the dodge pool bonus of the bracers, while a character with both bracers and a Hearthstone that boosts her Crafts would only gain one bonus. Exceptions are noted below:

• Artifacts that provide soak should be divided into armor and natural soak bonuses – generally, actual suits of armor provide the former, and everything else provides the latter. The character uses the largest of each bonus. (Ex: A character wearing lamellar, with Hearthstone Bracers, adds both soak bonuses to her total).
• Certain artifacts are specifically designed to add their bonuses to an existing bonus. Examples of these are Silken Armor and Perfected Kata Bracers. These artifacts typically have a higher rating and attunement than artifacts that do not stack. ST discretion should be used.