Darloth/PowerfulExcellencies

This page is a work in progress to organize yet ANOTHER attempt at making exalted play right.

Right, of course, is defined by my opinion, but I've never been happy with the core of the game, especially the fact that taking action is so often a bad thing unless you have a very detailed set of defenses and countermeasures to back it up. It's supposed to be heroic!

Premise

Excellencies are fun, but at the moment very limited. They're not mote efficient, they're not easy to use as they clog up your precious charmslot, and they come with all sorts of weird restrictions. Plus, they're expensive to buy (as you tend to need so many) and they're generally realized quite badly in my opinion. Let's see what happens if we just take off all the restrictions and give them out for free?

Execution

(prenote: I'll use favoured ability here, but it applies equally to favoured anything else, attributes, virtues, etc.)

For all beings who have excellencies and corresponding favoured ability choices, all excellencies for favoured abilities are given free at character creation, even if they do not possess the minimums for purchasing them (see below) - they become available for use as soon as these minimums are met. The "extra" charms, such as Infinite (Ability) Mastery etc, are not granted free, and must still be purchased.

All excellencies have the flow keyword, and can be used without counting as charm use at any time.

For solars, the Blah Essence Flow charm has become useless, and is removed. However, Infinite Blah Mastery now works to automatically reduce the cost of the designated excellencies almost all of the time. To prevent it from being far, far too powerful, motes committed towards the Infinite Mastery for a combat ability must be specified as Attack or Defense, and reduce the costs for excellencies only for that facet. If a solar swordsman at ess 4+ really wishes to commit the vast sum of motes that a full dedication to having +Many successes on both attack and defense now requires, they are welcome to do so, and I believe it will still remain a viable tactic especially against things that don't use many other charms. This change also normalizes the fact that Infinite Mastery was better on Melee or MA than it was with Dodge, Stealth, or anything else.

This systemtweak uses Telgar's varient excellencies listed here, even if he intended them for 1e instead of 2e. They should maybe all be reflexive, to match the feel of ease-of-use that this mod is intended to generate.

Lunars use the additions below:
Instinctive (Attribute) Prowess</b>

 <b>Cost: 1 mote per die
 Duration: Instant
 Type: Reflexive
 Min Attribute: 1
 Min Essence: 1
 Prereqs: None

Drawing on the naturalistic insight granted by Luna, the Chosen taps into an instinctive grasp of the task at hand, adding 1 die per mote to any roll using the attribute in question. However, they are limited to adding only as many dice as the governing Attribute.

(Animal)'s Peerless (Attribute)</b>

 <b>Cost: 1 mote per die
 Duration: Instant
 Type: Reflexive
 Min Attribute: 1
 Min Essence: 1
 Prereqs: None

This charm is referred to using an animal which exemplifies the attribute in question (for example, Bear's Peerless Stamina, or Snake's Peerless Quickness), and converts one die on a roll governed by an attribute into an automatic success. It synergizes well with the Instinctive Prowess, and they are usually used together, effectively adding 1 success per 2m spent. If used in this way (and -only- when used simultaneously in this manner) they can provide a base level of competance even in the face of overwhelming penalties - this excellency can convert dice provided by Instinctive Prowess to successes before negative modifiers are counted, and so a Lunar faced with -35 dice could still roll their Essence in dice, and add (Attribute) successes on top of that.

Predicted Results

An exalt - ANY exalt, will never be defenseless in combat, always having access to magically fuelled defenses. Although perfect attacks can still strike, the utmost NEED for a perfect defense will now be reduced - an attack that barely hits can probably be deflected with a surge of motes channeled through a defensive excellency, and even a low essence solar has access to a vast amount of potential defense or attack successes if they are willing to spend enough motes. This means that combat between most types of exalts will become more than usual a mote-war. This should hopefully cut down on the gamewarping effects of perfect defenses and also reduce the potential for combat to continue unchecked, as more spending on both sides should result in people running out rather than ticking over constantly. It does however make the rather rare mote-regainers much more powerful, especially for solars who have the capacity to spend as much as they have.

I think this is a pretty awesome idea. It seems natural, I suppose, that Exalts should be able to 'brute force' success through massive Essence expenditure - and with the Flow descriptor, the combination of First an Second Excellencies can pretty much assure success if the player is determined enough. Which, upon reflection, is a form of player empowerment that I really really like. Consider the idea adopted for my next campaign...DeathBySurfeit, who misses you! How's Japan?