Trithne/Thoughts

This is a page where I bote down anything that I've thought of over the last few hours or so. Comments are welcome, but this isn't a discussion page, just somewhere for me to jot down notes and see what people might think. This note-taking is usually part of my house-rule making process.

The Thoughts

Today, one of my players was telling me about a Martial Art he was designing. The Wiki has a glut of Martial Arts, but that's not the point. It got me to thinking about stuff, and my mind sorta carried on from there and all over the place, mainly on what the Charms are, what the Martial Arts are, and on how I could implement this in my game.

Ideas:

•Merge Martial Arts and Brawl (Like Ex2) Replace with something (Maybe Ex2's "War", maybe not)

•Convert "The Root of the Perfected Lotus", "The Bulb of the Perfected Lotus", and "The Blossoming of the Perfected Lotus" into Charms of a sort, as pre-requisites to learning a style (Similar to what's already in place, but more assignitive).

Attributes

"Appearance" doesn't need to exist. Anyone who'se seen the new WoD has seen that they've done away with this, and replaced it with "Composure". I think I might do the same to my Exalted game. I'm debating internally about wether to do the same thing to the mental Attributes, Changing "Perception" into "Resolve", and snowballing "Perception" into "Wits". As for appearance, there's things called Merits and Flaws (Abyssals will now need to have the appropriate Merit or Flaw before proceeding to Essence 4 under this system). "Composure" serves as "Stamina" for social combat, providing a defensive Attribute.

Abilities

Brawl and MA don't need to be separate, at least not with all the other stuff I ws thinking of today. In short, I agree with merging them in Ex2. (I'm not so confident on Endurance and Resistance. They -are- different things, although similar. I don't like "Integrity", and one of my houserules negates it anyway.

Martial Arts

The Martial Arts are supernatural, yes, but everything in Exalted is. Look at the canon styles for Solars (Snake, Tiger and Mantis). They're combat styles that are augmented by using Essence. It's no more amazing than say, the Melee trees. Admittedly, my copy of Sidereals is in the mail system, so I'm yet to properly give the Sidereal MA the run-down. Terrestrial MA are like everything else: Die-adders, etc, and physical improvement of the action through Essence Augmentation. Celestial MA are more esoteric, the Essence being used for other interesting things, but it's still just using Essence to make you better. Can't comment on Sidereal MA.

However, I'm unsure what to fill the gap with. "War" from Ex2 seems like a decent option, and would be placed as such:

•Solar - Dawn.

•Abyssal - Dusk.

•Lunar - War cluster.

•Sidereal - Maiden of Battles, "Unarmed" goes to the Mainden of Endings.

•Alchemical - Warfare.

•Infernal - Forsaken.

•Dragon-Blooded - Earth (They now lack a personal combat charm, but a good with armies, which kinda makes sense).

Now, the "Unarmed" Charmtree will be changed too. At the base level, it includes the existing "Brawl" tree(s), and a separate tree that goes as follows:

Root of the Perfected Lotus → Terrestrial Level Martial Art

↓

Bulb of the Perfected Lotus → Celestial Level Martial Art

↓

Blossoming of the Perfected Lotus → Sidereal Martial Art

An alternative is to simply place the various MA trees as other "Unarmed" trees, like what currently exists with MA as it is. I'm also aware that Celestial Exalted don't need the Bulb or the Blossoming technically, so this is very touch-and-go here.