Latest revision as of 16:11, 8 June 2010

Dragon-Blooded Line Infantry Charms

By Alec Austin

Premise

This is a collection of the kind of charms that I imagine the Dragon-Blooded focusing on before the Usurpation, when they were the foot soldiers of the war against the Primordials and servants of the Celestial Exalted, not the rulers of Creation.

• back toCharms/DragonBloodedCharms
• back toCharms/AlecAustin's Charms

Design Philosophy

The basic idea behind the creation of these charms is that, as written in the DB book, the Dragon-Blooded, while pretty good at helping each other out, are actually better support characters in a circle of Celestial Exalted. This frustrated me, and I decided that this weird skewing (DB's being better at supporting solars than supporting each other) might stem from the fact that they were never meant to be groups of individual heroes in the first place, having been forced into that role by the Usurpation, and that the charms that bothered me were supposed to be used for unifying groups of DBs with their Solar masters.

These charms rely much more heavily on the collective power of the group than individual heroism, which, I feel, better fits original role of the Dragon-Blooded in the celestial hierarchy.

Charms

• Air Aspected Charms Charms/AlecAustinAirCharms)
• Earth Aspected Charms Charms/AlecAustinEarthCharms)
• Fire Aspected Charms Charms/AlecAustinFireCharms)
• Water Aspected Charms Charms/AlecAustinWaterCharms)
• Wood Aspected Charms Charms/AlecAustinWoodCharms)

Comments

There are more Earth-aspected Charms than there are in any other element, so I'm holding off on them for now.

-AlecAustin

AlecAustin, why do you feel that DBs are better at supporting Solars than at supporting each other? I don't see how you draw that conclusion. -- DaveFayram

With One Mind works much better when the people linked together have perpetual or easily purchased defenses. Scene-long dice adders are likewise much more effective when used in conjunction with perpetual defenses or other easily-purchased actions instead of by characters who have to split their actions. Those two sets of normal DB charms are among their most effective, and when some of your best charms work better when you're teamed up with a different kind of Exalt than when you're in a group of your own kind, it makes me wonder what's going on.

I'm not arguing that this is canonical in any way, mind. This is just my idea as to what DB charms looked like before they became rulers of the world.

-AlecAustin

So many of your charms are free to use. Why did you choose to not include a cost with them? The archery charm that allows extra attacks (lots of extra attacks) in particular I would think warrants an expenditure of essence. --Tyrrell

It's a concept/design thing. The charms in the DB book all require essence expenditure, are all fairly cheap, and many of them can be more effective than these charms if the DB is acting alone or is in a small group. Their only real downside is that DBs have tiny little Essence pools, and therefore can't reliably keep on using them over and over again.

The downside for these charms, on the other hand, is that they're much less effective when you don't have 4-5 other people with the same charms in your sworn brotherhood or combat unit. Sure, Sea of Righteous Fists is great... until someone kills two of your pals, at which point you lose +2 initiative and +2 dice on all brawl actions. And when you're alone, it's only +1 init and +1 to die rolls-- you can't spend Essence to make it more effective. Instead someone else in your group has to spend XP, and in the case of some charms, be taking the same action as you. This makes these charms great for disciplined units of soldiers who have tiny tiny Essence pools, and kind of crap for the feuding, selfish, and treacherous Dynasts of the Scarlet Empire. The various dice-adder charms in the DB book, on the other hand, are great for the soldier whose unit just got annihilated by a Primordial looking at them, and now has to fight off a swarm of Blood Apes alone.

You don't have to agree with my reasoning, but I did have reasons for making most of the charms free.

-AlecAustin