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First Draft

Essence Overwhelming The Infernal can (add? reroll?) up to their (Limit? Att+Ab? Att+Virtue?) in dice (at Solar costs).

Essence Obeying The Infernal can buy 'successes' by stealing them from others. The successes they steal need not be related to the Ability they are using, but it is more expensive to do so. (one-and-a-half Solar costs for the same Ability, three times Solar costs for a different Ability)

Essence Ordering The Infernal can buy dice to reroll, by stealing successes from others. (Half the price of Essence Obeying).

Brainstorming

Down here goes random thoughts, rather than polished and well written ideas.

Specifically, it is brainstorming on what the Infernal dice schtick will be. Since dice schticks now seem primarily concentrated in the Excellencies, generic charms that exist for every Ability, this is sort of neccesary.

Further, I'm making some assumptions: A) Everyone will have a basic dice adder. B) The other two Excellencies will be dependent on Exalt-type, but generally fall under 'certain success' and 'recover from failure' motiff.

Thus, we need a dice cap limit for Infernals. Here's what's been used in the past:

• Solar / Abyssal: Attribute + Ability
• Lunar / Alchemical: Attribute
• Sidereal: Essence (but can ALWAYS add dice up to dicepool + Essence, making them resistant to dice stealing tricks)
• Dragonblooded: Ability + Speciality
• Fair Folk: Virtue

In Willow's Infernal project, he used Limit as the dice cap for Infernals. I rather like that idea, but mUrielw didn't seem to care for it at RPG.net. I've presented it here until a consensus arises on an alternative (Solar? Based on Yozi served? Something else?) -- DS

Well, I can see three problems with using limit 1. It veries to much. On a good day, you can be very strong, on a bad day, a Heroic Mortal can own you. 2. It donesn't reflect growing power. People make choices on skill and attribute buys to reflect what their good at. Sidreals and Fair Folk move away from this, but the power of their magic doen't refelct their skill, but something else entirly, so that makes sense. 3. The Great Curse is a CURSE. The Malfeans twisted it so that it could bind the their exalts to them, and the Yozi should be able to do the same, but in that cause limit grows with disfavor, which would be screwy to base your power on. - Dasmen

Those are good mechanical reasons why a Limit-as-die-addder-cap would be bad. But those all can be thematic in the appropriate context; and the purpose of having Limit as the, uh, limit in the first place would be highlight the anti-Virtuous nature of the splat. For other takes on the Infernals, that's very cool and thematic. For this particular take, it doesn't work. The Infernals are extremely Virtuous, and hold in contempt cowardly, licentious, unprincipled and uncaring actions as much or more than anybody else. They should interact mechanically with their Virtues in some way - I posted in the main Charm page how I'd like to see a lot of Charms interact with the Virtues of others, but there should also be interactions with their own Virtues. I have some cool ideas on a CurseBoXPInfernalExcellency/Resonance-replacement called Penitence that I'll post to the Traits chapter for criticism.

As for what should be the dice adder cap, the most obvious one would be to go with Attribute + Ability, since that's not just the Solars' but Abyssals' cap. There are alternatives. One might be either Attribute + a relevant Virtue or Ability + a relevant Virtue, probably minus that Virtue's current Sin (uh, see the Penitence thing when it's up). Each Ability would have a different Virtue to add to its First Excellency's die adder, presumably within a rough schema like Valor for attacking abilities, Conviction for withstanding abilities, Temperance for understanding abilities, and Compassion for creating and improving abilites, taken metaphorically enough that each Caste has at least three Virtues relevant to its Caste Abilities. This would leave either one Ability with no affiliation, presumably something they really like or really dislike (I'd go for Occult, seeing as the Yozis have an ambivalent relationship towards it, and hey, why should die adders be all that important for Occult anyway? But the case for others can be made), or one Virtue with an extra ability (I'd say Conviction since it really fits with their character.) I'd lean towards dice rerolling rather than dice adding, because it fits in with the idea of repairing a broken world, but that's a rather trifling difference in any event.

I very much like the Second and Third Excellencies. --MUrielw

Mm. Re: 1, tis true. Re: 2, tis true, but I'm more iffy on that as a reasoning. Re: 3, Limit doesn't have to be a purely bad thing. Look at Clarity for the Alchemicals.

Clarity isn't limit. It has no relation to limit. It's like comparing apples and and rubies, their both red, and kind of round, but they aren't really related. - Dasmen Who sent this via a Ranged shaping action from several waypoints away..

Yeah, but neither is Resonance limit. In fact, as a Primordial-spawned Exalt, you're conveniently guaranteed not to have limit, but instead, some mental link directly to your patron. That's related to a personal theory of mine, that the great curse isn't just cursing the Solars with insanity - it's removing the mental link to perfection that they had pre-primordial war, and thus, their ability to control themselves. After all, absolute corrupts absolutely, unless your brain is tied directly to the unconquered sun, that is. It makes perfect sense to me, then, that Infernals would want to cultivate the equivalent of Resonance/Clarity, perhaps known as "Understanding" or some other term. Unfortunately, acting in a 'human' fashion reduces this, forcing Infernals to follow the will of their masters if they wish to acheive their full potentials, and distancing them from humanity - much as clarity, resonance, and limit do to the other Exalt types. -- GreenLantern

The only problem with your theory (well, not the only one, as their is nothing to suggest that the Exalts every had such a connection with their patrons) is that Resonance IS the great curse. It was spacificly stated to be the great curse, twisted from it's origonal form, yes, but still the great curse. Abyssmals don't have limit for the same reason Sidreals don't have limit, the curse don't take the for of a great passion driving you to madness, but a constant twisting of your cahrater. - Dasmen

Let's carry this on over at BoXPInfernalsBoXPInfernalExcellency/Ch4 , where I'm coming up with a fluff justification for the Sin and Penitence thing to be a GC variant will be easy. --MUrielw

I think the Infernals should have a general charm structure that's most similar to the Sidereals than all other exalts. Why? Sidereals are those who warp reality in the most daily way, much like how I see Infernals do it (even if through other mediums and through other powers). Secondly, Sidereals are in many ways the 'true' servants of the Celestines, more directly involved with Yu Shan and Creation than any other exalt. I think the Infernals should be on par with that, switch Celestines with Yozis. I think their limit should be similar, but with a dark/destructive twist which I have yet to come up with. --BrassLeviathan

Most certainly. If anything the Sidereals should be looked to as something from which we need to differentiate, since they're so similar by default in many ways. --MUrielw

It should be noted that we now know how the 2nd Ed Excellence Charms work and yhat the same ones are held by all the Exalted. I see no reason not to just have the same three, with the same costs and so on. I see no reason to rename the Excellencies for the Infernals. So we should just have First, Second and Third Excellencies and mechanically they should be identical to the ones that Solars have.

HOWEVER, that doesn't mean we can't have some neat other Charms. For instance, Solars get the Infinite (Ability) Mastery Charms. Infernals could get some neat version of those. Perhaps their version commits X motes and reduces the cost of all Excellencies by their Penance (or Limit what have you) and after Essence 4 you get the free use of a certain Excellency outside of a Combo. Epsilon