Nekomimi-Maiden/LunarIntelligence
Contents
Crafting
Den-Planning Intuition
Cost: 2 or 5m; Mins: Intelligence 4, Essence 3
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Any Intelligence Excellency
The Lunar's plans take shape with great rapidity. This supplements any Intelligence-based dramatic action, such as designing a manse, forging objects or artifacts, planning strategies for war, and so on. The action is sped up by a factor of the Lunar's Essence (thus with Essence 3, a strategy session that requires one hour to undertake is complete in twenty minutes, a manse receives three rolls per month for designing rather than one, and so on]
The cost is 2m if the action is measured in hours or less, or 5m if in days or longer.
Weaving Spider's Alacrity
Cost: -- (+3m or +5m1wp), Mins: Intelligence 5, Essence 5
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Den-Planning Intuition
A Lunar's thoughts occur with the lightning speed of flowing moonsilver, fluidly adapting as surely as the moon's face changes. This augments its' prerequisite; for a surcharge, the Lunar may add her Intelligence to the speed factor (raising it to make such projects occur (her Essence+Intelligence) faster.)
The surcharge costs 3m if the action is measured in hours or less, or 5m1wp if in days or longer.
Unlimited Aptitude Achievement
Cost: --, Mins: (Attribute) 5, Essence 4, Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Flawless (Attribute) Focus
A mortal's ability is limited by the least of his natural aptitudes; a Lunar's excellence overpowers this flaw. This is a set of three charms, for Dexterity, Perception, and Intelligence. The Lunar who takes one of these charms may always use the relevant attribute when rolling it for a crafting roll, even if another attribute is inferior, rather than rolling the lowest attribute. She may still choose to roll the inferior attribute, such as if she wishes to benefit from its' specialties or utilize its' supplementary charms or excellencies.
Bower-Building Practice
Cost: -- (+1m), Mins: Int 5, Ess 3, Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Den-Planning Intuition
The creations of the Stewards inspire wonder in all who witness them. When creating any object, the Lunar may invest in it a social attack as if it were a written communication. Her Intelligence replaces her Linguistics for the purpose of relative appearance. The Lunar can imbue charms into it to supplement the social attack for a 1m surcharge, as if those charms explicitly allowed written communication; the motes are committed until the social attack is first made, then expended.
At Essence 4, the Lunar may extend the production of a mundane object to make it a one-dot artifact, or add a one-dot artifact's construction time and effort to another artifact, at which point it carries the social attack indefinitely; the social attack may only target any one character once, however.
At Essence 5, if she makes it a 2-dot artifact, it works on each target once per scene, regardless of whether they have already been targetted for it.
The social attack-bearing "artifacts" produced by this charm may either tap into ambient essence, or require a commitment of 1m per dot from the bearer. In the former case, they must remain fairly stationary, such as being built into a structure such as a statue or gate. While possessing the usual artifact resistance to normal damage, toppling their housing will disrupt the flow of essence and shut them down.
Ingenious Design Precocity
Cost: --; Mins: Intelligence 6, Essence 5, Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Impossible Intelligence Improvement, Inevitable Genius Insight, Den-Planning Intuition
"Impossible" is the self-imposed limitation of an insufficiently advanced mind. The Lunar's genius outstrips her understanding of mortal abilities; refusing to accept that she "cannot" undertake a task, her incomparably brilliant mind fills in the gaps of her knowledge. The Lunar may now consider all ability prerequisites for dramatic Intelligence-based actions to be met by her Intelligence rating, augmented by any relevant specialties, for determining what manner of tasks she is able to perform; for example, with an Intelligence of 6, she is permitted to attempt to engineer a 3-dot Demesne [rating+3 required in Lore+Geomancy and Occult+Geomancy], or craft a 4-dot artifact [rating+2 required in Craft, Lore, and Occult].
However, her progress is hindered by her intellectual shortcuts and bypassing of the full understanding; she suffers a -1 external penalty on all relevant rolls for every missing ability dot. Assuming the above Lunar has 5s in every required ability, she takes a -2 external penalty on all rolls to engineer the demesne [missing one dot of two abilities], or -3 to craft the artifacts [missing 1 dot in three abilities].
Taming the Argent Sea
Cost: 20m1wp, Mins: Intelligence 5, Essence 3, Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious, Wyld
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Any Intelligence Excellency
The light of Luna conquers the Wyld, bringing its' chaos into Creation as a force of creation and innovation, not dissolution; so too may her Stewards give form to the chaos without permanency or loss of fluidity. This charm is a dramatic action taking one hour in any Waypoint of the Wyld the Lunar metaphysically owns; the Lunar reshapes the landscape, redefines the context of the area's mutating tendencies, and quells the potency of such, using an Intelligence+Occult roll, with a difficulty dependent on the chaos of the region; difficulty 1 in Pure Chaos, 3 in the Deep Wyld, 5 in the Middlemarches, and 7 in Bordermarches.
A single success lets her define the basic layout of the land and quell the chaos some; the area mutates those present as if it were one step closer to Creation [bordermarches double the time interval between mutation checks instead], and these mutations follow a script of the Lunar's devising. She selects up to 20 points of mutations; anyone subjected to mutation within the region selects from that list, and upon acquiring [15-her Essence] points of mutation, they effectively 'adapt' and need not check for mutation within her owned regions. Finally, these mutations do not inhibit the character's viability within Creation.
She may spend additional successes to improve the value of the landscape; an additional three successes on the base roll ensures verdant fertility, arable land, jungles with wondrous game and plantlife. Six successes further improves the landscape above the three-success level, filling the earth with rare and valuable gems and ores similar to but distinct from those within Creation; silvers that glow in the light of the moon, iron that hums once smelted into steel, and so on. The wonders produced within her landscape are subject to withering inside Creation, as normal, barring the use of other charms to stabilize their existence.
This dominion carries two restrictions. First, these changes last only so long as the Lunar metaphysically owns the waypoint. Should her ownership lapse, these changes fade at the rate of one success per month, until the area reverts to a normal Wyld waypoint. Secondly, she may only reshape a given landscape once; if she wishes to produce new wealth, she must move on and claim another waypoint. Some Lunars of the Shogunate era lived nomadically, claiming new landscapes and producing wonders, then moving on and letting them fall back to the Wyld.
An Essence 4 repurchase of this charm expands its' potential; the charm loses its' Wyld keyword, and she may reshape [but not improve] lands within Creation that she metaphysically owns as if it were the Bordermarches. In addition, in either landscape of at least arable quality, she may use this charm for precise geomantic restructuring, permitting her to manufacture a Lunar-aspected demesne, costing one success per level, two for the 4th and 5th levels. An additional success may be spent to make it Sidereal or any Element, but production of Solar aspected demesnes may not come from this charm, as oppositional as Luna and Sol's powers are to each other.
The limitation on reshaping a landscape is relaxed in Creation, as she cannot simply mass-produce wondrous wealth and ores within it, only restructure the land and produce a demesne.
Comments
For one, I love the idea - I've hated Solars' grip on the speedup offered by CNNT for a long time, and am glad to see Lunars get in on the action. Given the Lunars' propensity for being generalists, the ability of this charm to broadly affect intelligence based actions is welcome as well, as is the lowered boost. The only thing that concerns me, however, is the activation cost - varying between 5 and 10 committed motes for what could well be a /very/ long time. Months, even. Given that the Solars are committing so few, and in general, this isn't that splashy of an action - at best, a 5 Ess, 5 Int Lunar could expect a x10 from this - not much, compared to an Ess 3 Solar. Thus, my claim is that it should be reduced greatly in mote cost in some fashion. My preferred way might be to remove any increased cost from the upgrade charm, thus giving you a 5m flat fee for speedup. -- GreenLantern
--You'll note the duration of Instant rather than Indefinite; just like a Solar using Craftsman Needs No Tools pays 7m1wp every interval [which is Ess x3 faster than normal) rather than committing 7m for the duration of the crafting project, the Lunar pays 5 [or 10m1wp] at every interval of their crafting project. Just like CNNT, it basically says "Okay, I'm going to take a dramatic crafting action, but instead of a season, the roll will represent a season divided by [Essence / Ess x3 / Ess+Intelligence]. Just like the Excellency motes (instant) spent on the crafting aren't committed for the duration, so too with this charm.". Also, the addition of Intelligence as a factor allows it to be modified; with a third excellency combo [14m2wp, exactly twice the cost of a Solar using CNNT, not to mention +1 more expensive charm and a 5xp combo], that 5 Int, Ess 5 Lunar can equal an Ess 5 Solar's crafting speed. Assuming, of course, the Solar doesn't note "Hey, that's only one charm deep, and it's only Essence 3; I could make an improvement that lets me flurry a crafting attempt and make two or more rolls at a smaller pool per interval" -Nekomimi-Maiden
- First off, good reasoning. I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't see some of those earlier. At the same time, a strict interpretation of the wording of charms indicates that even if the charm is instant, the motes are still committed for the duration - at least, that's how I've always read it. The usage of an excellency to help is nice, but as you noted, that's two full charms, and a combo, to roughly equal what Solars get with one charm. Again, not sure how comfortable I am putting Lunars that far below. -- GreenLantern
Perhaps a charm that helps them when they are doing crafting in the Wyld? -BogMod
--Hm, thought that was covered, but suppose I can certainly try that. One that reduces the difficulty based on the degree of Wyld [-1 bordermarches, -2 middle, -4 deep, always Diff 1 in Wyld or some such?], another branching off that lets you reduce the resources cost for your mundane creations and Moonsilver artifacts by a similar degree... -Nekomimi-Maiden
- While I hate to see more Wyld stuff in Lunar trees, it is one of their schticks. And frankly, something to reduce resource costs would be neat, as a counterpoint to Needs No Tools - something about not even needing materials. Plus, it would also counterpoint the glory that is Solar Lore in the Wyld for manufacturing. -- GreenLantern
