Blaque/SolarHouseRules

The Princes of the Earth Ain't Always so Hot

With the introduction of Exalted: the Sidereals and discussions on the FixTheSolarCharmTrees page on this site, I have been figuring out how I would be changing rules I would use in future Exalted games. This is part of my list of personal feels that Solars need in order to be "cleaned-up". I will admit these guys are flat-out powerful as is. They don't need all that much change, but some Charms are still a tad cluky or odd, and so I think they need some tweaks.

And stuff like that. So without further ado, let's get this going. Opinions are always welcome of course. And stuff.

Solar Anima Banners

Overall, Solars have potent anima abilities, which emphasize their heroic, sun-born nature very well. However, two have come under a lot of fire over the near three years since the game's inception, the animas of the Dawn and Night Caste Solars. These are my takes there:

Dawn Caste - This now works of a modified version of The Tomb of Five Corners version. The genral summary is as follows:

• Botch results in the person fleeing, without taking care to defend themselves.
• Failure results in the person fleeing, but will defend themselves if given the need.
• Simple success allows the person to act, but they still have a -2 dice pool penalty.
• If the character rolls more then the Exalt's Essence in successes, then she successfully fights the powers of the anima off.

Another addition is that this Charm is now compatable with a lot of the fear-inducing Charms,s ince this is the only anima in the entire game that doesn't stack with Charms, which I find rather irritating.

Finally, the Dawn anima no longer only effects normal mortals. Basically, how it breaks down is that any sort of animal or animal-level competence creature flees automatically. Even trained mastifs, warhorses, adn wyld-mutated critters will flee in terror of the Dawn's might. Also, most sentient creatures are effected by this anima. Overruling the coreobok basically, the Dawn anima will effect Exalted, God-Blooded, Fair Folk commoners, sentient ghosts, gods, elementals, and even inteligiant demons. The only things prolly not effected by this will be Fair Folk nobles, Deathlords, and Demons of the Third Circle. Basically, the stuff that's effing hard to scare nayhow.

This gives the anima the effect of just being more useful, and therefore, justifying its mote cost compared to toher effects.

Zenith Caste - With the new Dawn power, this bares noting. I actually am keeping this the same. THey already get lotsa cool anima stuff. However, against beings that can't fail Valor rolls, these things are treated as automatically botching the roll and flee in terror fo the Zenith.

Twilight Caste - This really doesn't need all that much changed. The main thing is that 10s count twice, which is more a clarifacation then a ruling. And you can stunt it or add dice to it using Virtues. Fun things like that.

Night Caste - This one is really annoying because the Day Caste version I think should be identical. The muffling effect now costs 5 motes, or 10 if you want ot do it with Peripheral Essence and not glow.

Eclipse Caste - This needs some clarifacations really. It mostly works as normal int he book, with these things being expressed a bit more:

• The diplomatic immunity doesn't extend to the Underworld. There were no real leaders there for the Eclipses to visit, and the Underworld was a rather meager threat until after the Contagion. However, most Deathlords will still honor it until they feel its no longer useful, such as seen by the Mask of Winters and the Lover Clad in the Renmant of Tears in Castebook: Eclipse.
• Eclipse (and Moonshadows) pay double their own costs when purchasing foreign Charms. So 20 most of the time, 16 for Charms based on favored or Caste Abilities.
• Solar Winds can use their own Charms to replace pre-equisites for other Charms if need be. This can only be done with dice-adders based on the same trait as the Charm they are substituting. For example, an Eclipse can use Excellent Strike to replace Stoking Bonfire Style if she wants to learn some Terrestrial Melee Charms. However, she can't use it to replace Sense the Deadly Flow, since it is both based on Dexterity and a dice-adder that adds to more stuff.
• This means that Solars can't use alternate Charms to get Finding the Spirit's Shape-based Lunar Charms, of course. Note that Shapeshifitng, the spirit Charm folks suggest, can't be used because of the fact that it isn't based on Charisma, or even an Attribute.
• Eclipse pay the elemental surcharge on Terrestrial Charms in addition to the double-cost of foreign Charms.

And that's that for that area of things.

Comments

For the Dawn Caste power, why not use the revision in Tomb of 5 Corners? - Quendalon

Good point. I guess if it works, it works. Stuff - Blaque

I'm using your dawn-caste anima rework, and quoting it in a list of rules. Hope you don't mind, please complain if you do, and I'll... err... well, something
-- Darloth

No complaints. Quite happy that someone likes it actually^_^

Stuff. Blaque

For using solar charms as prerequisites I assume this is handled on a case by case basis? -BogMod

Purty much. Though, overall, I think that if its the exact same Charm, only the different Exalts' vesion, it shouldn't be overly redundent. Most often, it'll be just the basic dice-adder.

Stuff. Blaque