FlowsLikeBits/CustomCharmAdvice
I was a bit saddened by the lack of Custom Charm advice in 2E. So I decided to start a discussion on it and tap the collective wiki-brain! This was somewhat influenced by TheMyriadOfShades/CharmTheory, which is quite good, although it relates to 1E, but the theory still holds. This mostly relates to Solar charms at the moment, but possibly could be expanded in time. I'll start off with some general principals, and some specific questions.
Feel free to comment under individual points
General Principals
Charms should be usefull without a combo, or be really good:<b> This is partly due to the fact that DV isn't really sufficient protection. An equal enemy can get past it just by rolling above average. Given the fact that weapon damage is now quite high, this is a bad thing. Thus, you usually need to reserve your charm for defence. Thus offensive charms need to make up for this. A charm that's only usefull in a combo or against weaker opponents is probably to weak for a Solar charm.
<b>Most non-scene length charms should be combo-ok: Anything that isn't should be very powerful. Similary, combo-basic charms should be quite powerful. A good example of a Combo-Basic charm, that should be Combo-Basic is Arrow Storm technique.
Charms generally shouldn't be Obvious: Solar are the most human, so their charms should mostly look, well, human. There are obvious exceptions to this, but generally, a charm that just has you do a human action really well shoudn't be obvious. I mean obvious as in: Obvious it's a charm, not Obvious that something happened. This applied fairly inconsistently in the text. In some cases, it seems like Obvious refers to the fact that the charachter must take an action to use the charm, even though the action is one a normal human could attempt. Fury-Inciting Presence is oddity, althoug Immanent Solar Glory is the worst offender. Also, Spider Foot Technique is Obvious, while Feather Foot Technique isn't. I'd only make it obvious is there is obvious effects, just because the person is doing something obviously supernatural shouldn't make the charm obvious.
Really specialized charms should be really good: Basicly, a charm that only matters in really specialized or rare situations should not have silly restrictions on it's use. Otherwise, no-one will take them. Also, highly specialized charms shouldn't be supplemental, to make them a bit more combo-friendly. It's not clear what happens if you have a combo with an inapplicable charm. Spirit Cutting Attack
Specific Questions
The question is, how does one create balanced custom charms? One obvious example is to use existing charms as a guide. This section asks some question s in that direction. Here we assume one can re-image the charm to fit with the theme one wants.
Charm Tech between abilities?: The question to ask here is: Is this ability more powerful here than in it's native tree?
Charm Tech between types?: Could you base a charm on a charm used by another type of Exalt?
- This is usually more a question of theme than anything else.
Comments
Feel free to comment on individual points, although general comments can go here.
