FrivYeti/HighEssence

High-Essence Charms For All Exalt Types

Note: These Charms have been created as an alternate High-Essence mechanic, creating a (hopefully) simplified way of handling many Charms. As such, two important limitations exist in any setting that uses these Charms. If you want to use them without those limitations, the management will not be held responsible for balance problems.

Limit #1: There are no Charms above Essence 5 outside of these Charms, and any Essence 5 Charms that have increased effects at Essence 6 canonically no longer do. This means that most Sidereal Martial Arts do not exist as listed, although those that stop at Essence 5 still exist, as does the concept. Limit #2: No Combo may contain more than (Permanent Essence x2) Charms. Charms may be added to Combos after they are created, but may not be removed from them.

These Charms are, like the Excellencies, identical for every Exalt type. Solars, Sidereals, Terrestrials, Abyssals, and gods purchase them for Abilities. Lunars and Alchemicals purchase them for Attributes. Fair Folk do whatever they do with Excellencies.

Fourth Excellency: (Ability) Essence Refinement</b>

<b>Cost: None Mins: (Ability) 6, Essence 6, Type: Special
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisites: Any six Charms of this Ability, including any Excellency and any Essence 5 Charm.

Essence is a powerful force, but most characters can barely scratch the surface of its capability. However, as the character grows in might, she also learns to channel her Essence more efficiently.

This Charm permanently reduces the cost of all Charms in this Ability by 1, to a minimum of 0. This applies to each activation of each Charm in the Style. Once the character reaches Essence 8, this reduction increases to 2 motes per Charm. Finally, at Essence 10, this reduction increases to 3 motes per Charm.

Fifth Excellency: (Ability) Essence Co-ordination</b>

<b>Cost: None Mins: (Ability) 7, Essence 7, Type: Special
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisites: (Ability) Essence Refinement

As characters expand their understanding of Essence, they learn to combine their flows of Essence with ever-reducing effort. While they must still practice to transform themselves, they can do so with far greater ease. Once this Charm is purchased, the character need not spend 1 Willpower to activate a Combo containing only Charms of this Ability. If the character's Combo contains Charms of multiple Abilities, this Charm must be purchased for every Ability so contained for the Willpower cost to be negated. All other rules of Combos still apply, and the Combo is just as obvious to the viewer.

Sixth Excellency: (Ability) Essence Internalization</b>

<b>Cost: None Mins: (Ability) 8, Essence 8, Type: Special
Keywords: Flow
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisites: (Ability) Essence Co-ordination

Over time, a character can learn the true nature of Essence, allowing them to force patterns of Essence through their natures more easily. Whenever the character activates a Charm, she may spend +2 motes to cause the Charm to become a Flow Charm (Charms with the Flow keyword do not count as Charm activation for the turn.) This cost must be paid for each activation of the Charm, and cannot be reduced by other Charms. At Essence 10, this cost is reduced to 1 mote per activation.

Seventh Excellency: (Ability) Essence Empowerment</b>

<b>Cost: None Mins: (Ability) 9, Essence 9, Type: Special
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisites: (Ability) Essence Internalization

As a character approaches the pinnacle of power, she learns that all limits can be transcended. The character doubles all limits for die bonuses, mote expenditures, success adders, and ratings increasers from all of her Charms. This also increases the limits that each Exalt type has in place for Charms in general (for example, Solars can now add (Attribute + Ability) x2 dice in total to die rolls). This has no effect on the cost of these Charms; only the maximum expenditure is altered.

Final Excellency: (Ability) Essence Perfection</b>

<b>Cost: None Mins: (Ability) 10, Essence 10, Type: Special
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisites: (Ability) Essence Empowerment

When a character reaches the pinnacle of potential, all things become clear to her. Her mastery over her Ability is transcendant in nature, and cannot be countermanded. Whenever the character rolls dice for this Ability, all dice are considered to be automatic successes. In addition, any automatic successes granted to the die rolls by other Charms are doubled, as are all static ratings related to the Ability. The character may choose to waive this capability if she so desires.

Comments:

The desire to post something along the likes of "wtf?!11 dis sux0r" is disturbingly strong, but I have to say that... controversial, maybe, but why would you -want- to do something like this? Because PCs will only ever reach 5, and it makes highessence enemies easier to handle/predict/etc? The problem is, it also makes them much less interesting, and much less scary. I agree that the whole 5 levels of essence otherwise require vast amounts of conceptual charms, but even with this system, an essence 10 opponent is still going to obliterate anyone essence 5 or below, they'll just do it rather cheesily by rolling endless amounts of really high success numbers.
-- Darloth

�Friv - On a less 'why' note, I'll take the implementation to task. In particular, while these are, at first glance, at least an interesting outline of how high-essence things can be worked out, you explicitly note that these are all the same for all Exalt types. That's where my massive, radioactive beef comes in. See, even at Essence 1, the Terrestrial charms are different from the Solar. Slightly more mote efficient, but also capping out much more quickly. Each Exalt-type has their own shtick charm, such as Infinite Mastery, Essence Auspicious, et cetera. Here, you've made no note of 'theme' charms, nor that Exalts could have varying costs or limits on these charms. To me, that's where all the character lies. In particular, I've always believed that as Essence scales, each 'step' of a Solar is much farther than that of a Terrestrial. Thus, what a Solar can do at Essence 3 (Flow Like Blood, for example), a DB could only design as an Essence 4 or 5 charm. Thus, Solars, even young ones, can easily be the match of trained DB's. Similarly, as Essence scales, I'd expect that things Solars can do at Essence 5 are only attainable by DB's at Essence 7, which is their functional maximum. These charms imply otherwise, and while not only 'homogenizing' the different Exalt types, also imply that each is, at some fundamental level, on similar footing - which is entirely untrue. While I actually like the concept, and think it could enhance the game, not detract from it, if I were to implement it as a full system - perhaps as an optional chapter of 'Sol Invictus' or something, I would want to consider spicing these up with varying power levels and effects based on Exalt type. -- GreenLantern

I agree wholeheartedly with GL - Azurelight