Wordman/ScratchPad

Deathlord Book

• Essence 6 Excellency charm that allows reflexives of that ability to be used without a combo, provided you would still meet the Essence and Ability pre-reqs if they were increased by 5.
• Essence 9 charms should start to merge abilities together, requiring charms from multiple ability trees.

The Contest

The Maidens each pick a champion and give them a specific artifact related to their purview, then set some goal for the champions. The champions don't know what the goal is.

• Present as articles describing the artifacts before describing the contest.
• Examples of contests
• Side moves between the Maidens as an adjunct the the Games of Divinity. Perhaps the artifacts are addictive?

Improvisational Magic

Game-altering house rule (or maybe an Occult tree of permanents that allow it?) that allows exalts to use charm effects without actually knowing the charm.

• Only usable on instants.
• Must meet charm prereqs for Ability, Attribute, Virtue and/or Essence.
• Occult score must be two dots greater than the minimum Essence for the charm.
• Mote cost multiplied by (1 + 0.5 * charm's minimum Essence requirement). That is, 1.5 for Essence 1 charms, 2 for Essence 2 charms, 2.5 for Essence 3, etc.
• One willpower must be spent the first time improvisational magic is used in a scene.

Disarming Style

The style was developed to use the weapons of an opponent against him. The few that have fought against this style know this, and most realize that the best defense against it is not to use a weapon at all. Few of its charms can be used against unarmed opponents, and for this reason the style is not particularly popular. Even its masters usually consider it a secondary style used to augment more general techniques.

A martial arts style that is really based on disarming. The disarming mechanics are very funky and could be played with in cool ways.

Disarming (-2 or -4): Knocking a weapon out of someone’s hand has a -2 external penalty with a close combat attack or -4 using ranged. If the attack hits, it inflicts no damage, but the victim’s player must reflexively roll (Wits + the appropriate wielding Ability) against a difficulty of the net successes on the attack roll. For every success by which the victim fails to meet the difficulty, her weapon fl ies one foot away from her grasp. Retrieving a dropped weapon is a difficulty 1 (Dexterity + wielding Ability) roll and is only possible if a character can feasibly do so. Duels fought over looming chasms or aboard a ship might not afford such a luxury. Note that characters cannot be disarmed of their natural weapons (fists, feet, claws, fangs, etc.), nor can they have weapons taken from them that are actually strapped to the body such as a cestus or tiger claws. If players regularly take advantage of disarming as a prelude to executing a helpless victim (instead of using the maneuver for dramatic purposes), the Storyteller should feel free to raise the penalty imposed by the technique. With a flurry, it is possible for an attacker to disarm and then use a retrieval action to take the weapon for himself, provided he has hands free to take it. Doing so almost always involves a stunt.
C = Clinch Enhancer Must be used for clinching wielded through Martial Arts.
D = Disarming Adds additional +2 Accuracy when used to disarm an opponent.

• Need to see if one of these exists already. Probably does.
• Can use any weapon (to allow use of captured weapons), but some charms only work with disarming weapons (or, perhaps, sai explicitly).
• Charms that always use disarming, but in ways that allow more standard mechanical MA effects (such as soak enhancement, counterattacks, clinch effects, etc.)
• Something that turns successful parries into disarms (Resplendent Sash Grapple as example)
• Ranged disarm augmenter.
• Something that deals bashing in addition to disarm.
• Form eliminates roll to resist disarms, or perhaps allows the artist to give the target a DV bonus in order to reduce successes on disarm resist?
• Charms that play with weapon recovery

• At least one charm useful against unarmed attacks (maybe one that uses sai as clinch enhancers).
• Charms progressively more "magical". Ultimately something like call the blade in reverse (i.e.
• If wounded by a weapon, a connection is created allowing the weapon to be more easily disarmed, and to wield it even if artifact attuned to someone else.
• Something that allows increased movement based on grabbing tossed weapons during a disarm and moving with them?
• A metaphysical "disarm": deattuning target artifact weapon

An Anti-Demon Style

A celestial martial arts style that a solar might have made to fight demons, using a much different approach than MartialArts/VermillionSentinelStyle. Uses the imagery of the various templates for summoning demons against them (four charms, one for each virtue, but can be learned multiple times, one for each template -- idea should be that demons use twisted versions of Virtues, and the charms "un-twist" them back to normal). Mechanics to interact with the rules that use them somehow. Possibly manipulating Limit of the demon, etc. Possibly manipulating or using virtues as well.

Perhaps contains one charm slot that is filled with a different charm, depending on caste, harnessing the particulars of the caste in a specific way vs. demons (the zenith one, for example, could be a supplement allowing channeling of their anima ability through a form weapon, maybe wood aspects turn blood of the demon against it as poison). Maybe the second charm in the tree. The first gives a generic demon-fighting perspective, the second teaches how to personalize opposition to demons.

Somewhere along the line (maybe the pinnacle), allows permanent destruction of demons, perhaps similar to SolarOccult/Dorchadas.

1. A 1 die demon specialty in every ability? Every favored and caste ability? Would need to be expensive, maybe committing willpower.
2. Charm(s) based on Compassion templates. Only need to learn one.
   1. Ecstatic: love
   2. Functionary: obsession
3. Charm(s) based on Conviction templates. Only need to lean one.
   1. Horror: delusion
   2. Hunter: restlessness
   3. Vizer: desire to own
4. Charm(s) based on Temperance templates. Only need to learn one.
   1. Courtesan: degradation
   2. Slave: emptiness
5. Charm(s) based on Valor templates. Only need to lean one.
   1. Killer: lust
   2. Warden: Possessiveness
6. Form: Add Virtues to various traits when fighting demons. Add Essence dice to resist demon effects. Completely useless against non-demons (or perhaps choose a single one of the Virtue effects to count against all targets at activation).
7. Effect that channels anima, so changes based on the type of exalt.
8. Something that messes with demon Limit.
9. Permanent demon destruction.

NPCs

• Recipe for Disaster: abyssal
• Icily Cool Breath: alchemical

The Harvest

A campaign based around a group of sidereals who suddenly launch a series of "purges", bringing spirits who have been slacking to trial, and manipulating unexpectedly harsh sentences. Many get cast down and turned to starmetal, which the sidereals have "coincidentally" arranged to have discovered and brought to them. Why?

Lytek's Cabinet

Lytek's Cabinet adapts the ruleset of Spirit of the Century (also known as FATE 3.0) for use in the setting of Exalted. Spirit's interlocking character structure, aspects and much of its pulp sensibility work well for Exalted-like games, though their flavor is somewhat different that canonical Exalted gaming.

Rather than calling this adaptation "Spirit of Exalted" or something similar, the name of this system was taken from the setting's actual "spirit of exaltation": Lytek.

Sources

A number of other attempts have been made to meld Exalted and Spirit of the Century, all of which had some influence on this adaptation. Sources include:

• The FATE 3.0 SRD
• The Exalted setting
• Spirit of the Exalted
• Conversion to Spirit of the Century
• Spirt of the Unconquered Sun
• Wheel of Exalted Fate
• Aspects instead of stunts
• Exalted PDQ conversion

Goals

This variation has the following goals:

• Stick to the basic FATE 3.0 system as much as possible.
• Use as little of the Exalted mechanics as possible.
• Tune FATE 3.0 to handle the higher power level of the Exalted storyline without breaking it.
• Allow longer campaigns than those typical for Spirit of the Century. As a practical matter, this means thinking more about character advancement.
• Make martial arts at least as important as it is in Exalted, preferably with more focus on their dramatic aspects (feuds over styles, student/sifu relations, etc.)
• Handle sorcery-level effects elegantly.
• Avoid essence bean-counting.
• Handle mass combat.

Character Creation

1. Memories of the First Age - each has to involve another player's character, and while the PC had that memory, the other PC didn't, at least not initially
2. Memories of the First Age - each has to involve another player's character, and while the PC had that memory, the other PC didn't, at least not initially
3. Youth
4. Exaltation - possibly a required aspect here related to caste. Could be that anima flares could be how you gain fate points with such aspects.
5. Since Exaltation

Stunts

Excellencies

When using an aspect with a given skill add +3 instead of +2? Must learn for each skill.

Enhancement

One for each skill; can grant self an aspect related to the skill for the scene?

Astrology Based Aspects

Character can claim the influence of a sign.

Secret Techniques

Characters can get along just fine using aspects and stunts as normal; however Lytek's Cabinet offers an additional choice for characters that mix the two together in the form of secret techniques. Each technique is typically centered around a philosophy or teacher (an aspect) that provides access to a group of special effects (stunts) more cheaply that usual, but at the cost of obligation, philosophical restrictions, feuds, and other drama related to the technique.

The most common secret techniques are martial arts styles, but other types exist as well. Martial arts play a larger role in Lytek's Cabinet than even in Exalted, but have a different flavor, focusing more on the drama of competing styles and schools, making the teacher more important and so on.

Learning Secret Techniques

Every secret technique is linked to exactly one skill. In order to begin training in the technique, a character's rating in that skill must be Good or better.

Characters must gain some type of narrative access to the technique. That is, no one can begin to train in a secret technique until the story allows them to do so. Perhaps the character finds a secret book of wisdom, or joins a particular religious sect, or meets a mysterious teacher. Even the stories created as part of character creation can provide this, but some rationale for why the character can learn the technique must exist.

To start training in the technique, the character buys an aspect related in some way to the technique (referred to here as the technique aspect). This can be done using an aspect gained a character creation, or any other time the character is allowed to choose a new aspect. The technique aspect cannot be learned via a shuffle (see "Improvement", below).

How to invoke the technique aspect depends on the technique, but should be fairly obvious. Like all aspects, however, the technique aspect should be chosen such that it can be compelled as well. Some typical ways to do this include:

• The technique implies some kind of stricture that must be followed that may sometimes be inconvenient. This might be a philosophy, religious rules, a code of conduct or even a general expectation like "tiger warriors never back down from a fight". If this is enough to complicate the story, the aspect can be compelled.
• The aspect is related to a specific teacher, and it can be compelled like any other aspect relating to a person.
• The aspect is related to a school or other organization that has a reputation, political obligations or conflicts with other organizations. For example, maybe the Order of the Gold Mantis has a blood feud with the Snake Fang Guild. This might color interactions between members of these two schools in ways complicated enough to act as compels.
• The technique may contain a known weakness that makes certain tasks more difficult. For example, a technique based on aggressive, loud attacks might have trouble being subtle or stealthy. Or, a technique might leave a "signature" that would lead back to the character, and so on.

Note that those who know of the character's technique aspect can often use many of these same reasons to tag it. (A Snake Fang Guild member, for example, might call out a known Gold Mantis member, or use the tenants of her order against her.)

To complete training in a secret technique, the character must spend a stunt advancement on it (see "Improvement", below). This "technique stunt" allows the character to gain the benefit of two standard stunts (specific to the technique). This "two for one" stunting is the primary benefit of secret techniques. Some techniques may also allow the "technique stunt" to be expanded with further advancements. The "technique stunt", however, always counts as only one stunt for the purposes of the maximum number of stunts allowed to a character, no matter how many benefits it provides.

Martial Arts

Terrestrial Martial Arts

Terrestrial martial arts tend to be based on a applying a lesson from nature to combat. They typically teach being like something: the bending of a tree, the fall of leaves, the stance of an animal. These arts must be based on either Fists, Athletics, Bow or Weapon. Terrestrial arts tend to be the most formalized and nearly always have some kind of weakness. The stunt provided by a terrestrial style always provides two benefits based on combat or athletic stunts. In rare cases, other types of of stunts might be used (such as a terrestrial style based on horse-mounted combat), but such styles are the exception, not the rule.

Any character can learn terrestrial martial arts, but those without access to magic (e.g. mortals) must put up with much more narrative restriction, usually involving a formal school or other strict organization.

Celestial Martial Arts

Celestial martial arts tend to be based on emulating something in combat. They typically teach becoming something: an animal, an ideal. These styles work as terrestrial styles do, but after the technique stunt is purchased (providing the standard two effects), the character can later spend an enhancement to expand the technique stunt to include another effect (again, specific to the style).

Only the exalted and more powerful spirits can learn celestial martial arts. Terrestrial exalts will typically need to deal with more narrative restriction in order to use such techniques.

Sidereal Martial Arts

Sidereal martial arts tend to be based on changing the world using a metaphor. They typically teach wielding something abstract: a symbol, a concept. These styles work like celestial martial arts do, except they have no limits on which skill the technique is based or what types of stunts can be included in a given style. That is, the technique stunt of a sidereal style will always contain the same benefits, but those benefits can be based on any skill at all.

Only celestial exalts and very powerful beings can learn sidereal martial arts. Celestials that are not sidereals must put up with much more narrative restriction, almost always involving sidreals in some way.

Astrology

Anyone can use. Sidereals gains some free aspect for astrology, easier learning.

Based on constellation. Can throw an aspect onto someone. Or can allow you to "see the future" enough to gain some bonus when someone else uses a particular aspect?

Shapeshifting

Lunar war form

Aspect includes concept of "tell".

Sorcery

Can invoke aspect for knowledge purposes, reputation, etc.

• Terrestrial: put aspect on yourself
• Celestial: put aspect on environment or others
• Solar: put aspect on players or story as a whole

Improvement

Each session gains either two shuffles or an advance. Shuffles are:

• Swap out an Average (lowest rung) skill for another not currently in the pyramid
• Change the places of two skills in the pyramid that are not more than one rung apart from each other.
• Swap out one aspect for another
• Drop a stunt that hasn’t seen much use, and pick up a new one.

Advances are:

• Advancing a skill one rank of the skill pyramid (or raise a Mediocre one into the Average level). At any given time, the "width" of any given level of the pyramid cannot be greater than one more than the starting width. Can't make the pyramid higher.
• If the "width" of every layer of the skill pyramid has been increased, advance one skill on each level up a rung (and pull one up from Mediocre to Average). This does raise the height of the pyramid, and represents a "quantum leap" in power level. This is roughly equivalent to raising Essence in Exalted, and should require the same sort of narrative.
• Gain a new aspect.
• Gain a new stunt, provided your total number of stunts don't exceed half your number of aspects (rounded up)

Zodiac

A listing, with full stats, for the 25 gods of the constellations. Each entry should follow some type of pattern, like a rise-fall-recover story maybe. One twist might be to posit them as the original Incarnae who were ousted by the current Incarnae, and the current backstory of Exalted is revisionist history. Maybe like a "competing pantheon". Maybe make use of the constellation/ability pairings.

Or, perhaps they are disjoint from Heaven in some mysterious way. Maybe someone tried to sanction them and it didn't work.

Needs to tie to the loom in some way.

Use resplendent effects of sign with motes for Endurance and Willpower for Paradox.

Important that they are the god of the constellation, not the concept itself.

The House of Journeys

The Captain

Sail

The Gull

Thrown

The Mast

Resistance

The Messenger

Ride

The Ship’s Wheel

Survival

The House of Serenity

The Ewer

Dodge

The Lovers

Socialize

The Musician

Performance

The Peacock

Craft

The Pillar

Linguistics

The House of Battles

The Banner

Athletics

The Gauntlet

Presence

The Quiver

Archery

The Shield

War

The Spear

Melee

The House of Secrets

The Guardians

Larceny

The Key

Investigation

The Mask

Stealth

The Sorcerer

Occult

The Treasure Trove

Lore

The House of Endings

The Corpse

Medicine

The Crow

Awareness

The Haywain

Bureaucracy

The Rising Smoke

Integrity

The Sword

Martial Arts

Exalted 2.5

A list of the edits I'd make to the core book to make it more consistent and generally better.

Pick a defense philosophy.

Embrace and extend keywords for charms. Expand the sections for the rules for each keyword, so that the same text need not be repeated in every single charm.

Create an explicit section for interpreting rules. Charm text -> keyword rules -> general rules.

Name general rules somewhat like charms.

Terminology changes.

Fix timing, clinching etc.

Goal for charms should be to have text say as little as possible.

Paths

A rewrite of exalted from the ground up, using "paths" that characters follow in a way that provide incentives for players to make them behave a certain way. That is, mechanics award players for making solars do things that would make the Unconquered Sun proud, making terrestrials walk the path of the Dragons and so on.

Paths would largely represent phiolosophies. There would be lots of them. Anyone could follow any path (but some get more out of particular paths than others). Paths would provide mechanical advantages not only for investing in the path, but embracing the code of conduct the path finds admirable.

Characters would have an affinity for one particular path of their choice. This would be loosely analogous to 'caste' in most cases. Some characters (noble fair folk, for example) might have multiple affinities, but these would be rare.

Paths would be collected into groups. For example, paths of Dawn, Zenith, Night, Twilight and Eclipse might exist in an Unconquered Sun path group. (Maybe this is a bad idea).

Some paths would provide more to people with affinities to paths in the same group. For example, anyone might walk the Dawn path, but someone with an affinity to a path in the same group (i.e. a solar exalt) would get more benefit from the Dawn path than someone with an affinity in the Terrestrial path group.

Path and path groups can be loosely conceptualized as if they were major arcana tarot cards. That is, as more of an archetypal ideal or concept. Some path groups:

• Racial paths (must have exactly one)
  • The Man
  • The Dragon King
  • The God
  • The Elemental
  • The Ghost
  • The Raksha
  • The Unconquered Sun
  • solar caste-like paths
• The Moon
  • lunar caste-like paths
  • chimera
• The Maidens
  • sidereal caste-like paths
• Gaia
  • the elemental dragons
  • dragon king-like paths
• Oblivion
  • abyssal caste-like paths
  • ghosts?
• Nemesis
  • infernal caste-like paths
  • demon template-like paths
• The Great Maker
  • caste-like paths
  • paths for First Age-like sciences
• The Wyld
  • fair folk graces
• The Celestial Bureaucracy
  • paths for virtues
  • spirit paths?
• The Religious Man?
  • something for the Immaculate Order?
• The Sky
  • paths for the constellations
• The Lotus Root
  • philosophy of terrestrial-like styles
• The Lotus Bulb
  • philosophy of celestial-like styles
• The Lotus Blossom
  • philosophy of sidereal-like styles
• The Primordial
  • sorcery
  • necromancy
  • weaving
  • shaping
  • shapeshifting?
• The Thaumaturge
  • mortal magic-like paths? Or, maybe start with these, and expand them into sorcery, sort of like schools

Exalted Prime

Exalted Prime (aka X′) hacks Christian Griffen's Anima Prime rules into the Exalted® setting.

Licence

Because Anima Prime is released under a Creative Commons licence, hacks to it can be released under the same license, making use of the original text as the hacker sees fit. Unfortunately, that is not an option for this hack, because the hack is also based on intellectual property of White Wolf's parent company (CCP hf), and the author is not authorized to released said property under a Creative Commons licence. Consequently, this work will reference material from Exalted and Anima Prime as much as is possible, rather than duplicate it.

Any use of CCP hf’s or Berengrad Games intellectual property, copyrighted material or trademarks in this work should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks. Exalted is ©1990-2011 CCP hf.

Sources

This work assumes the reader is familiar with:

• The main Anima Prime rules.
• The main Exalted rules.
• The concepts of the various "splats" of Exalted.
• The faction rules available from the Anima Prime website.

The Big Difference

The point of X′ is to keep as much of the Exalted setting and feel as possible using new rules. Using new rules, however, does change the setting in some ways. Most of these changes are minor, but one of them is fairly important: X′ embraces Anima Prime's concept of eidolons, and tweaks it to power large portions of Exalted's special subsystems, such as sorcery, shapeshifting, astrology, shaping, glamour, etc. In so doing, the "flavor" of some of these systems changes a bit. The result should be roughly similar, but doesn't match up exactly.

Because of this, this work is presented in an atypical order, with the more radical changes to the Anima Prime system (and Exalted's setting) first. Again, this assumes you are familiar with both of these games.

Eidolons

The eidolons presented in Anima Prime come in many forms, but are conceived as one "type" of thing. This changes in X′, which makes use of several genera of eidolon. Instead of one main Summoning power, each genus of eiodolon requires its own summoning power and often has restrictions on what type of character can learn it. These genera are:

• Invocations are summoned using thaumaturgy and sorcery, with the resulting eidolons called elementals, demons or spells.
• Banes are summoned using thaumaturgy and necromancy, with the resulting eidolons called necrotech or curses.
• Skins, when summoned, wrap around the summoner, giving the impression that the summoner has changed his or her own form.
• Signs, the most subtle of eidolon, are summoned with astrology.
• Scourges are summoned by masters of vitriol.
• Protocols connect to the machine realm of the Great Maker, with summoned eidolons called machine spirits, golems, elementals or patterns.
• Graces are summoned from dreams using shaping, and take the form of behemoths, adjurations or glamours.

As standard rules, except more than there are "sets" of powers for each genus.

Invocations

Skill: Sorcery
Restrictions: Only solars can access high level effects, etc.

Spells

a bound spell has a level and some traits, but the summoner can replace some or all traits during each summoning. The cost of this is that the spell comes with a built-in countdown timer.

Scourges =

should also be able to summon demons

Character Creation

Passions

• Compassion: as rules
• Conviction
• Temperance: If you have strike dice in your pool, but choose not to use them and manever instead.
• Valor:
• Succor, etc.

Marks

Marks/anima banner function differently based on type. When charge dice are gained anima mark lights. At certain levels, anima provides free passive ability, depending on character type.

Types

Each type (or maybe caste) gets a free power.