SolarLore/LastHero

LastHero - Solar Lore

Back to LastHero

Essence Concentration Prana

 Cost: None
 Duration: Permanent
 Type: Special
 Minimum Lore: 1
 Minimum Essence: 2
 Prerequisite Charms: None

By focusing on her anima and compressing it around or inside her, the exalt who learns this charm will have an edge similiar to one who has learned Ox-Body Technique. She is able to draw upon greater reserves of power to aid her in battle. For each purchase of this charm, the exalt chooses to either gain +3 personal essence or +7 peripheral essence or +2 personal and +3 peripheral essence. This charm can be taken a number of times equal to the chosens lore rating.

Unconquerable Will

 Cost: 3 motes per dice
 Duration: Instant
 Type: Supplemental
 Minimum Lore: 5
 Minimum Occult: 5
 Minimum Essence: 3
 Prerequisite Charms: All-Encompassing Sorcerors Sight, Wyld Shaping Technique, Emerald Circle Sorcery

The chosens understanding of the flow and behavour of essence and the nature of reality has truly gone beyond anything a mortal mind could ever hope to understand. She sees the world not as objects, but as flows and shapes of essence, knowing the outcome of events before they transpire by the patterns before her. She is able to funnel her blows, her charm and her wit by pure will, forcing the essence of the world to accomodate her will. For every 3 motes spent, add one dice to an ability roll chosen when this charm is activated. This charm can supplement as many abilities as the character can pay for. The maximum number of dice that can be added to a single roll is equal to the Solar's relevent Attribute + Ability of whatever roll she is adding dice to. This charm is explicitly able to be put in combos with charms of different abilities.

Timely Grace of the Heavens

 Cost: 10 motes, 1 willpower
 Duration: One Scene
 Type: Simple
 Minimum Lore: 5
 Minimum Occult: 5
 Minimum Essence: 4
 Prerequisite Charms: Unconquerable Will, Saphire Circle Sorcery

The exalts divine will flows out from her, reshaping things subtly so as to aid the chosen in her chosen task. Flaws in her opponents armour become more serius, leaves whistling past at the right moment, or her sheer will and essence empowered frame shaping her actions. When this charm is activated, the Solar gains a number of extra successes on all actions relating to Strength, Dexterity or Stamina equal to her permanent essence for the rest of the scene, this exculdes damage rolls. This charm is not stackable with Trancendant Understnading of Grace.

Trancendant World Forging

 Cost: 10 motes, 1 willpower
 Duration: One Scene
 Type: Simple
 Minimum Lore: 5
 Minimum Occult: 5
 Minimum Essence: 4
 Prerequisite Charms: Unconquerable Will, Saphire Circle Sorcery

Reaching out with her mind, the Solar twists the minds of those around her so that they hear her words and tkae the complete meaning that the Solar wanted. With such a frim idea of her will, and her every word flowing into peoples souls like liqued honey, there is very little that the exalt can not accomplish with a few minutes converstaion with the right person. When this charm is activated, the Solar gains a number of extra successes on all actions relating to Charisma, Manipulation and Appearance equal to her permanent essence for the rest of the scene. This charm is not stackable with Trancendant Understnading of Grace.

Understanding of Aeons

 Cost: 10 motes, 1 willpower
 Duration: One Scene
 Type: Simple
 Minimum Lore: 5
 Minimum Occult: 5
 Minimum Essence: 4
 Prerequisite Charms: Unconquerable Will, Saphire Circle Sorcery

The exalts essence flows from her mind, swirling around enigmas and revealing their meaning to the Solar. Her senses easily pierce most attempts at disguise, with only the masters of deception evading her notice. When someone speaks, one thousand replies rush into her head, her able mind easily picking out the most suitable. When this charm is activated, the Solar gains a number of extra successes on all actions relating to Perception, Intelligence and Wits equal to her permanent essence for the rest of the scene. This charm is not stackable with Trancendant Understnading of Grace.

Trancendant Understanding of Grace

 Cost: 30 motes, 3 willpower
 Duration: One Scene
 Type: Simple
 Minimum Lore: 5
 Minimum Occult: 5
 Minimum Essence: 5
 Prerequisite Charms: Timely Grace of the Heavens, Trancendant World Forging, Understanding of Aeons, Adamant Circle Sorcery

The root of Creation is essence, and it is essence that the exalted command. A Solar who learns this charm, sends her mind and will out into the essence of the immediate area, sensing everything, feeling everything, her blows guided and supplemented by Creation itself. For the duration of this charm, the exalt can never be surpirsed, and will be aware of any being that comes within her essence x 10 yards, add the exalts permanent essence in automatic successes to all rolls except damage for the duration of the scene. When this charm is activated, the characters eyes blaze with golden light, and an aura of command and respect surrounds her. Everything just accomodates her perfection, she dodges attacks by the slightist movement, finds the slightest hole in her enemies defences, sees patterns where others give up etc.

Comments:

A worthy alternative to the various 'sun' and 'stunt' pools that have been suggested, although I would suggest you limit to Essence instead of lore, since that parallels the abyssal charm, and also stops Essence 2 characters from picking up an extra 35 motes of peripherial essence.
-- Darloth

Seconded. Also, I'd tend towards 4 personal and 8 peripheral (or 4 and 7, if 4,8 is too much for your blood) - GregLink

Neat concept, and I'd also tend towards the Essence limit - but why make only ever Personal or Peripheral? Is there a blanace reason? - FrivYeti

Changed to permanent essence. I made it give 3 and 7 becuase that is what an extra dot of essence gives, 3 personal and 7 peripheral, but if you want to modify those numbers in your own games feel free. I said only one version becuase its based on the way you try to compress/concentrate on your essence, however, feel free to modify that for use in your games, also, the charm is supposed to behave like Ox-Body for magic, and I think you only get one type of Ox-Body, if you have a choice. - LastHero

Actually, you can choose which version of ox-body with each pick of the charm. At least you can with Solar ox-bodies...
-- Darloth was fairly sure of this before it came up, but is now wondering. Must check book later.

Ox-body Technique allows you to choose a different version each time you take it, by the book. Some of the example Exalted characters in the back even have weird combinations of health levels that could only be achieved by buying different versions. - IanPrice

Well, you now pick what kind you want each time you take the charm. - LastHero

I like the idea of Essence-Concentration Prana, but I don't think its quite good enough. I'm comparing it to the Abyssals Essence Engorgement Technique, which gives an extra 10 motes of peripheral. I *might* take this charm if it gave 10 motes. If you want to keep the comparison to ox-body technique, you could offer 3 options, which would *not* be locked in: 5 extra personal motes, 3 extra personal and 5 extra peripheral, or 10 extra peripheral. Just an idea.-Madwand

Again, I've got to second and say that I'm thinking 3,7 is underpowered. Perhaps if, when you slept, you could re-allocate whether you got the 3 personal or the 7 peripheral, it might help a bit, but still, I do think it's slightly low... - GregLink

You have to remember that Essence Engorgement can only be filled by drinking blood, whereas Essence Concentration counts as regular essence. Although I think I agree that it should be 4 motes of personall (changed), seeing as so many people think it should be 8 motes, it now is. A third option has now been added. - LastHero

I preferred 3/7 myself. All of the larger ones have restrictions, and I don't think extra motes should be -that- easy to come across.
--Darloth

Unconquerable and Transcendent are nice charms, and I do think Solars need this kind of ability to live up to what the storyline says they should be. However, taking into account that these charms affect everything the Solar does, I believe they are slightly undercosted. 3 motes would be a reasonable cost for Unconquerable, to my mind, and 30 motes plus 3 willpower a good cost for Transcendent. I've gone for multiples of 3 because there are three different kinds of rolls: physical, social, and mental. Another thing you might want to consider doing is splitting the tree up, making seperate charms for the three different kinds of roll, as prerequisites for Transcendent. - IanPrice

I know what you mean by the prerequisites, I really didnt think that 6 was enough, I shall start my thinking on this and return when I have some charms to add. In addition, I just realised that 8 motes that are normal when Abyssals get 10 that can only be refilled by drinking blood was bad, thus, the number of motes has been reduced. - LastHero

I suggest first splitting up the effects that Transcendent Understanding covers, at least into a charm each for Physical, Social, and Mental. Possibly into one each for each attribute. Another approach, possibly more appropriate for Solars, would be to base the prerequisites on each Caste's set of abilities, making one charm for each Caste set which can give the effects for those abilities. Then Transcendent Understanding could be the pinnacle, with costs and effects as it stands now. - IanPrice

It's not unreasonable at all for a non-combat Solar charm to be better than it's Abyssal counterpart. Abyssals are supposed to have non-combat charms that arn't quite as good as what Solar's get. In addition, the "disadvantage" of only allowing the charm to be refilled by drinking blood isn't really a disadvantage at all, considering that is generally how they have to refill their pool anyway, in Creation. It would not be at all unreasonable to give a Solar 10 or even 12 completely undisadvantaged motes from a charm. In the end though, I suppose everyone is going to have a different opinion on balance for a charm like this. -Madwand

By canon, getting extra motes is really, really hard. Not quite hard, but really hard. If you're not abyssal, the best anyone can do to my knowledge is a level 5 hearthstone in a skinmount amulet... That gets you 10 motes, the same as increasing Essence does for a solar. That is why I am firmly against charms that grant easy access to unrestricted "I just have more, cause" charms. Perhaps there should be some, but they shouldn't be both unrestricted and large. At 3/7, it's roughly equivalent to half a dot of essence, sheer mote-wise. Now... Also by canon, Abyssals can get a blood pool that is rather fuzzy in utility. Certainly, you can use charms from it, but noone to my knowledge has comfirmed whether you can commit artifacts from it. Even if you can, you need to drain motes to fill it, which IS a very real limitation. Assume a circle of abyssals, each with 2 levels of the blood pool and nothing in it, attack a village. Most likely, they'll run out of extras before they run out of space. And people -notice- when an entire village is drained of blood. It also counts wholely as peripheral, you don't get a choice. The ability to choose which you want, the fact that we're certain you can use them for artifacts or other things, and the ability to regenerate them from stunts, charms, time, hearthstones, anything, and I think it's easily better than the abyssal version. Thus, I see no reason to increase the number of motes.
-- Darloth

Something similiar went through head. It originally was either 3 or 7, I know it is probably better than the Abyssal version, but Abyssals get better versions of Solar charms. Also, I'm pretty sure you can commit from the "blood pool" because, aside from the fact that it can only be regained through drinking blood, it cunctions as normal peripheral essence. The text of the charm (I believe) is that it increases your peripheral pool by 10, which can only regained through drinking blood. I have a small inkling to make it a flat out 2 personal and 3 peripheral. But really, I'm not too bugged about it being better than Blood Feasting Technique, 'cause the Abyssal charm that ignores wound penalties is far superior to anything similiar that Solars have. - LastHero

Ah, you misunderstand me. I like it this way, it -should- be better. I am simply saying it is already better in its present form, and as such does not need and should not be increased yet further, which is what MadWand is suggesting.
-- Darloth

I believe I'm right in saying that the Alchemical Exalted also have a charm which boosts their peripheral pool by 10 with no catches bar the fact that they must commit a mote from their personal pool to install it (as is the case with most of their charms so this is no biggie) which is utterly superior to the Abyssals blood trick and from which artifacts most certainly can be committed. I think the charm is fine as is personally although I do kind of dislike the ability to take both personal and peripheral essence, but meh. One tiny modification I'd make is linking it to the Exalts Lore rating rather than permanent essence, given that it seems a product of transcendent understanding which while arguably reflected by essence seems more the province of Lore to me. Also it serves a mechanical purpose as the Twilight is forced to "squander" XP on Endurance to keep his durability up through multiple Ox-Body's, so too should the Dawn squander XP on Lore to keep the mystical mojo juice flowing. ;) - Injektilo

Admittedly, almost all alchemical charms have an install cost... But you can't ACTUALLY have that many charms. Their personal pools are not massive, and while they can easily get lots of peripheral through that charm, they'll run out of actual charms to use it with. Okay, so their anima abilites are really nice, but even more so than other exalt types, alchemicals are limited by their Essence, because personal essence is a hard and quite restrictive cap on the sheer number of charms that they can mount at any one time.
-- Darloth

Something I just realized, speaking metaphysically in the world: Unshakeable Will should require Terrestrial Circle Sorcery as a prerequisite, the intermediate charms should require Celestial Circle, and the final one should require Solar Circle. Reading Bo3C, I realized that seeing the world as Essence flows in the way you described is something which happens as a result of Sorcerous initiation. Also, don't worry about having cross-ability prerequisites; there's precedent for it in the Martial Arts style "Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style," which requires Performance charms for some of its techniques. - IanPrice

I was kind of thinking that they might also need Sorcery as a prerequisite, so now they do. Although, now that it has another prerequisite I am kinda tempted to lower the permanent essence requirement, seeing as it is only a dice adder and it has 6 prerequisites and requires 2 abilities at 5. And in response to Injectilo, although Ox-Body requires endurence, the Abyssal version of an essence pool increaser is related to essence, so fro now, it stays. - LastHero

If we're going to compare them then it's also a Survival charm, it's not as though they parallel each other in many ways. The way I see it is that whilst a certain amount of skill in survival (well, not very much at all really) is required to learn to harness the power of essence in blood harvested from living creatures, whilst an increase in Essence allows them to gain more power from the blood, whilst this is charm is a result of increased understanding and therefore a function of high your Lore rating is. I've always thought that charms being linked with Essence rather than the ability from which they flow was daft in all cases anyway, particularly when like Essence Engorgement Technique they have no, or very few, prerequisites as it allows you to nab it and use it with the same effectiveness as someone who's devoted to that ability and similiar abilites. When they're deeper in the tree linking them with Essence makes more sense to me. But... that's just me, another rebuttal and I'll shut up ^_^ - Injektilo

Well, as I see it, many Alchie charms have an install cost becuase they are generally comparable to Solar charms, and almost all of them has more than one use, anyways their personall pool is join with Solars/Abyssals, its not that low. Ok, final modification, it is being reverted to Lore. It was originally intended to be an essence version of Ox-Body, so it follows ability. Also, seeing as their are more comments on that charm than my entire page, does anyone have any thoughts about the other charms, -- LastHero out.

It'd be kind of pointless to lower the Essence requirement of any of them except for Unconquerable Will, due to the Essence requirement of the Sorcery charms. Emerald requires 3, Sapphire 4, and Adamant 5 anyway. - IanPrice

It was only Unconquerable Will I was meaning, so what do you think? -- LastHero

Matching the Essence requirement of the kind of sorcery that is the prerequisite would be fine by me. - IanPrice

Done. -- LastHero

An observation that I've made after flicking through the Dragon-Blooded book is that the efficiency of dice-adders stays the same across the board, it is merely the prerequisites and the actual scope of the dice-adder that change. Example: Stoking Bonfire is kind of the baseline for Terrestrial dice-adders, here we see both the scope (Ability + Specialty) and efficiency (1 more/2 dice) of their dice-adders and this stays true for all of them IIRC. To further illustrate my point I use Deadly Wildfire Legion as an example: In all ways is DWL superior to Stoking Bonfire, it's scenelong, adds to both attack and defense and affects multiple people, yet the efficiency remains the same. From this I would surmise that a higher requirement version of Excellent Strike (say... Ess 3 Melee 4) would provide dice for the entirity of the scene, and would be costed identically to Excellent Strike (1 mote/1 dice). So basically in a long winded and daft fashion what I'm trying to say is that Unconquerable Will is too inefficient and that it should stick to the 1/1 costing of Solar dice-adders, it is inherently superior in scope and power to Excellent Strike but it should be costed identically, only of course with more heft prerequisites - Injektilo

That is indeed interesting, I suppose I could get away with that due to insanely high requirements of Unconquerable Will, compared to Excelent Strike. And I suppose that you could argue that its vast usefulness is offset by haveing six prerequisite charms, an essence of 3 and two abilities at 5, no small feat, even for a CotI Solar thats quite a bit of investment just to add dice. It could instead add succeses after you have rolled in a fashion similliar to the first Solar Craft charm. I'm not sure. For now i'll lower the cost as that involves less typing :p -- LastHero

As a counter-example, while Excellent Strike and all other Solar attack dice adders are 1/1, Golden Essence Block and Reed In The Wind and other defense dice adders are 1/2. Thus, there is a precedent for something which is "more useful" getting a less favorable cost/effect ratio. Unconquerable Will is arguably many times more useful than any charm which can add to only a single ability for a single purpose. Therefore, if you lower the Essence cost, I say you should add a willpower cost. Not per die, but say, if you go to 1/1, 2 willpower per turn to activate the charm, and during that turn the motes can be spent on any ability at will. This would also be consistent with Sorcery, which requires Willpower expenditure to activate the charm and then Essence to power the spells. - IanPrice

Thats a nice idea but I think that 2 willpower is a bit too expensive, I would probaably only make it 1 will, there is no way that charm is inline with a celestial spell. And as a counter-counter argument, it was errated (I believe) that Golden Essence Block cannot increase your parry pool beyond your normal pool, so thats a moot point, however Reed in the wind is under no such restriction. You must remeber that Excelent Strike and Golden Essence block add to different things, attack and defence. All Solar attack dice adders add 1 dice per mote, so I dont think we need to worry about having a charm that is inneficient. -- LastHero

Reed in the Wind is TOO under a restriction. A harsher one, actually. Golden Essence Block specifically can conjure an entire parry pool, which is typically higher than Dex + Melee. Since Reed in the Wind doesn't specify, it's capped to Dex + Dodge like any other solar dice-adding charm.
-- Darloth

It was never an errata; GEB and RitW have always had the standard Solar dice-adding cap.

1. "...cannot parry any attack with more dice than her regular Melee dice pool..." - From the text of Golden Essence Block.
2. "A character cannot gain more dice than her regular Dexterity + Dodge dice pool." - From the text of Reed in the Wind.
   

What I am saying is:

1. 1/2 is used for charms that add only to defense. These charms affect one ability, the prerequisite one, as normal.
2. 1/1 is used for charms that add only to attacks. These charms affect one ability, the prerequisite one, as normal.
3. Your charm could add to either attack or defense.
4. Your charm could add to more abilities than it requires as prerequisites.
   

Therefore, if you want to balance Unconquerable Will, its cost must remain high. It cannot be as effecient as the others, is what I'm saying. I know the willpower cost I suggested is prohibitive; that's exactly the point of it. This charm ought not to invalidate charms like Excellent Strike and Golden Essence Block. For abilities with their own dice-adders, those really should be better than this.

- IanPrice

You must remember that Excelent Strike and Golden Essence Block have no prerequisites and have a minimum ability and essence of one. Unconquerable Will has a minimum ability of 5 from 2 abilities, a minimum essence of 3 and 6 prerequisites. -- LastHero

Okay, let's do some bonus points/experience math here. Essence 3, 7 charms (you get 10 starting), and 5 in two (favored) abilities is... let's see... very possible with starting Bonus Points, without even taking Flaws (11 bonus point cost). Getting one dot and a starting charm in all Abilities is... not (1 dot in every ability can be done with starting Ability dots of 25; 15 bonus points + 8 flaw points can only buy 7 additional charms, and that's in favored abilities, meaning that at best 8 more charms would be needed, at 10 experience points per charm).

A basic dice-adder for any ability, as you noted, is an Ability 1/Essence 1 minimum charm with no prerequisites. However, these dice adders rarely add without conditions. I also have precedent for a multiple-ability charm being more expensive: Listener-Swaying Argument in Presence. It adds to Presence, Socialize, and Bureaucracy checks to persuade people, and costs 1 willpower + (2 motes per die).

In short, no, the prerequisites do not balance this extremely powerful charm out. Thus why I made my initial comment. Thus why I stick to my guns that this should be a very very expensive charm.

- IanPrice

And? Its equally possible to start with Solar Circle Sorcery and destroy a city. Any character that focuses can be overpowered. Any character that decides to focus that much on thier occult and lore should be free to reap the benifits. Pour your points into Social-Fu and you can talk your way into taking over a kingdom, and then use your charms to create an army of fanatical blade wielding zealots. So, pour your points into Occult and Lore, and you can have a chance of completing stuff at a huge expenditure of essence. One mote per dice is not terribly efficient, even for a Solar. Compare this to the Alchemical anima power, which increases your attribute by one for every 3 (or 2 if you have a certain charm installed) motes and it lasts for your essence in turns. Thats an attribute increase, significantly better than an instant ability adder. -- LastHero

And it's not possible to start with Solar Circle Sorcery. It's specifically prohibited in the rules (Besides the fact that buying your Essence up to 5 would take 21 bonus points, almost all that you can get even with flaws - quite prohibitive). It's possible to know the charm for Adamant Circle Sorcery, but it's not allowed for anyone to know any Adamant Circle spells at character creation. Says so on page 100, in the section of Character Creation dealing with selecting Charms. "Characters can exchange a charm for a single Sorcery spell, but may not start the game with spells of the Solar circle." It's right near the top of the page.

Regardless of the scale of Sorcery, it does not add dice in a more effecient fashion than charms. Let's look at the closest thing to it: the Terrestrial Circle spell Invulnerable Skin of Bronze. Adds soak, much like several Resistance charms. It also adds Hardness; which Lunar charms give us a precedent of buying at the same rate as soak.

With Resistance 5 and Stamina 5, and the charms Durability of Oak Meditation, Spirit Strengthens the Skin, and Unfailing Tortoise Technique, a Solar can add up to 15 (an average of 10) to his Bashing soak, and soal Lethal damage with his Bashing soak score (meaning effectively 30 soak "dice" added, since its effect doubles for both kinds of damage). This costs 15 motes to add to the Bashing soak, and 1 mote each time Bashing soak is used to soak Lethal damage. A Gem of Adamant Skin (Manse 4) can make this "lethal soaked w/bashing" effect essentially permanent, in addition to massive Essence regeneration benefits of a level 4 manse and hearthstone. None of this requires raising Essence at all - bonus points would only need be spent, indeed, for the Gem of Adamant Skin. It takes two turns to set this up, because of using two Simple charms.

With Occult 5 and Essence 3, a character can pay 20 motes and 1 willpower to gain +12 bashing and +6 lethal soak, and equal hardness. That's effectively +36 "dice" of soak. However, there are two downsides to this:

1. 1. 1. 1. Sorcery is vulnerable to counterspelling.
         2. Willpower is much more difficult to get back than Essence, requiring at least a 2-die stunt, or fulfilling one's nature, or a full night of rest.

A point of Willpower is "officially" worth 3 motes of Essence, since that is the conversion rate given for Essence-users powering Mortal Thaumaturgy in the Player's Guide. This would mean 23 motes equivalent for 36 dice (About 1:1.56), as opposed to 15 motes for 30 dice (a 1:2 ratio). As you can see, Sorcery is both less efficient and more vulnerable than regular charms.

In regards to the Alchemical example, the only reason it's better than your charm is because it lasts for several turns. Your charm can add to any dice pool based on an Ability, so with its instant duration, it might as well add to an Attribute because the only things it can't enhance are Virtue rolls, Willpower rolls, and damage rolls. Besides that, different types of Exalted are not even supposed to be exactly the same in power level, so comparing Solars to Alchemicals is like comparing apples to apple-pears. They're similar in tastiness, but still different things.

Your charm may be based on knowing Sorcery, but it is not as vulnerable as it. That said, being a Charm and not a spell makes it more natural for the Solar performing it, and thus more efficient. If you were proposing this as a sorcery spell, I would be even harsher with my cost estimate, though I would take the fact that it would cost 3 willpower and 3 turns to cast into account.

As an Official Employee of White Wolf (tm), the rule I write by is that all games must have internally-consistent systems. This means that if there's this one charm that lets you add dice up to doubling your Attribute + Ability dice pool to any given Attribute + Ability dice pool, and there are also charms that do that for each individual Ability (which, mostly, there are), then the prior charm should have the same (or an equivalent) cost to acquire as getting all the individual Ability charms if it's to be just as effecient as them. Otherwise, it must</i> have some kind of downside. This could be the cost to use it, this could be a bad side-effect. Whatever it is, it must be there, or the charm would be unbalanced.

- IanPrice<i>, look for my name in Ghouls for Vampire: The Requiem, if you need proof I work for White Wolf.

Firstly, I HATE White Wolf's take on vampires, Masquerade was passable, but I cannot stomach Requiem, the setting is ok, but vampires seem to come off as whiny emo bastards. Now, onto the charms: The internal consistency of Solar dice adders is why I believe that Unconquerable Will should cost a mote per dice, also, to be honest, I dont care Jack shit if you work for White Wolf, there are so many broken charms already, not to mention that WW seem to favour Sidereals, and then there is the noticiable power creep....but, comparing it to Sorcery is not a fair comparison as Sorcery is specifically noted as being an incredibly innefficient way to do anything, its only advantage is that its powerfull and can do stuff charms can't. Also, a cotI Solar can easly start at essence 5 without flaws. As for your speak of a disability, I agree, but I think the cost should be 1 mote per dice, possibly with a disability of only being able to add the characters essence/lore/occult in dice.

Ian, not to knock you down a few pegs, but working for WW won't get you very far with many of us. Other than Exalted, there really isn't that much I'm fond of from WW. But that isn't relevant to this discussion at all. Moving on, your analysis is still mostly correct, but relies on two faulty assumptions, as far as I can see. The first is that your assumptions are for another game. Exalted isn't another game. It's a game where the adage of "Is it cool? Could it happen in an awesome movie?" trumps most anything. In this case, it's very easy to imagine an old sage who simply knows everything. Admittedly, and again as you suggest, this might require something - study, perhaps? A night of sleep to focus on what you're getting? But still, the idea is sound. Just because the numbers are tough to work out doesn't make it bad. Second, and far more quantifiable, is that Essence is so much more than things like Generation, Arete, or Level. Essence, thank heavens, is a non-linear thing. A single use of an Essence 3 charm is generally far better than three uses of an Essence 2 charm. An Essence 4 charm is often the total extension of an Essence 2 charm, doing things like autosuccesses instead of dice, at full pool, for the scene. Most of the die adders are straight Ability 1, Essence 1. We're two Essence points higher already, plus about 9 ability points, and a metric ton of prerequisites. Those prerequisites are far more imporant than you might think, because while our Jack-of-All-Trades Sage is out studying the Wyld, those same charm slots are buying the Dawn caste things like HGD, Solar Counterattack, and Resistance charms. The Zenith is out buying his way straight to Tiger-Warrior Training, and stopping to pick up Excellent Strike on the way. Sure, now the Zenith and I can both add to Melee rolls, and in theory, I have a 'broader' dice adder, but what about one charm from now? I can either continue up this tree, or start the Melee tree from the bottom. The Zenith is now able to be far higher up the Melee tree, getting more and more powerful charms as he goes. The Core book says it best when they point out that higher-tree charms are better, for the same XP. The Core book also notes that having a few trees 'mostly' started is better than one really flushed out tree, because you're so much closer to so much cool stuff. This charm helps solidify that. Sure, you spent 7 charms, 10 ability points, and a three Essence charm to get where you're at. But now what? It's 3m per die, and other people are getting what you are, for cheaper. And they've got well rounded characters, ready to pluck such precious fruit as Ready in Eight Directions Stance, that you'll get nowhere near. At the end of the day, you might have some dice, but the actual abilities of others will be so much higher. Overall, I've got to say that it's quite reasonable such an investment, reaching so high in a tree, is quite reasonable. After all, your 'pinnacle' is just a big 'ole dice adder, while other trees of equivalent investment have monstrously powerful and wide-ranging effects of their own. I mean, sure you can dice-add, but the guy next to you can heal grievous wounds in under an hour. Which one of you is going to recruit better? - GregLink

Yay, someone on my side. Erhm. Well, that is basically what I was getting at, sure you can add dice to any ability you like, but everyone else has powerfull abilities that do stuff that you cant do with a dice adder. Sure, you could rouse up the populace with your dice adding, or you could make them Tiger Warriors, a lot better. As a charm that is further into a tree than HGD or FLB, its still not a terribly useful charm, and by the time your essence 3, your into the field of scene length dice adders. -- LastHero