SeraphLunars

Attributes

The problem with Lunar attributes is that they tend to pigeonhole the character. If you play a no-moon, you get experience and freebie breaks in mental attributes and almost half your charms have to be mental. Unlike all other Exalts and their favored thingies, you have no choice in the matter.

To fix this, I would give Lunars a choice of a single fourth favored attribute.

Abilities

Compared to other Celestial exalts, Lunars are deficient in abilities. Of course, it doesn't matter very much, because Lunars have attribute-based charms, but for the purposes of experience and freebie points, it would be nice to have a few more. I recommend giving Lunars eight favored abilities to distribute as they see fit, rather than five. Survival should be a mandatory favored ability.

Advantages

Backgrounds

A very wise game developer once said that a background everyone has to buy is not a background, and he was right. Mage: the Ascension had a similar problem with Avatar. For Lunars, the problem is Heart's Blood. In my opinion, Heart's Blood should be removed altogether and the maximum number of shapes a Lunar can have should be determined by permanent Essence. I recommend allowing a Lunar to have a number of shapes in their library equal to five times their permanent Essence. A starting Lunar should be assumed to have a "full" library, unless the player chooses to leave some slots open. It should be possible for a Lunar to have more shapes than their ordinary maximum - after all, I have a hard time imagining that even Essence six elder Lunars can only assume thirty shapes - but at the cost of one experience point per shape. These shapes are forever considered above and beyond the Lunar's ordinary maximum and will not be subsumed when the Lunar gains more slots with an increase in permanent Essence. If a Lunar is conservative with their slots, however, they should not have to purchase extra heart's blood slots until reaching Essence five or six.

Charms

I would reccomend reducing the experience cost of Lunar charms to equal the cost of Solar charms. As it is, it's just unfair. However, I would also give Lunars only a total of eight charms (Finding the Spirit's Shape plus seven more). I would remove Deadly Beastman Transformation altogether and make it a function of permanent Essence (see below).

The charm trees themselves also need a heavy rewrite, but I haven't got the time or the inclination to do it here.

Deadly Beastman Transformation

In my version of Lunars, Deadly Beastman Transformation is a function of permanent Essence, with each dot of Essence being equivalent to a single purchase of the charm. It costs two motes for a Lunar to assume their Deadly Beastman Form as a simple action that counts as the character's charm for the turn and five to assume it as a reflexive action that does not.

In this version, Tell is now a function of permanent Essence. I have no qualms about this, seeing it as the Lunar version of Abyssal appearance restrictions. The stronger a Lunar's Essence, the more obvious the beast becomes.

Comments?

I've looked at changing the number of favored abilities too and I don't think it is a good idea. First Lunars are not ability based and so get less from each favored ability. Another way to look at it is that Lunars get 1/3 and 1/5 of attributes and abilities as favored, while Solars get 2/5s of all abilities and no attributes as favored. Each favored attribute goes further in pure number than each ability. I also wouldn't give Lunars a fourth attribute for the same reason. It goes farther than one more ability. What I would change is the requirement that Lunars have to favor survival and actually balance so No Moons aren't screwed in charm selection. ~ Dalassa

Hearts Blood doesn't limit the number of shapes a lunar can learn. As I understand, it only determines the number of forms a lunar happens to start the game with. I can't think of any reason to limit the number of forms they can know, it's one of their few shticks. I like the idea of being able to select another favored attribute, but then I thought about it and realized that it made full and no moons favor HALF of the available charms. I think I'd go with letting them switch any attribute to favor instead of one of theirs, which has the added benefit of helping the poor changing moons who had to favor appearance. Myrlan

Re: Heart's Blood, I know. I think it's a silly background because, from a more powergamery perspective, its a waste of points. Why spend anything on it when you can just make a point of eating every useful animal that comes your way? I like your version of the favored ability deal and I'll think about changing my ways. -Seraph

That's true, it isn't a "power" background, but many players I know like the ability to get a few essential forms (that fly, swim, and dig) without dealing with the ST's whim (nope, not a bird within miles today...). I don't know who would spend the points for 4 or 5 dots of it, though. So would you still limit the total shapes, and how would you determine starting shapes if you removed heartsblood? Myrlan

Why not just set the number of forms somone starts with at a fixed value and then let them buy additional forms? If they want to go with less that's fine but you don't have to compensate them with tangible game points. I'm sure there are problems with it but none spring immediatly to mind. ~Dalassa

Starting forms is equal to maximum forms, unless the player wants to leave some slots open, which would be a good idea. That way if they come across some creature they just HAVE to eat or some situation they haven't got an animal for, they aren't in trouble.

I don't mean to be antagonistic, but I find it interesting that you said how that if you had serious problems with a game you should play a different one (HouseRules/Seraph), and then here you say that the lunar charms need a heavy rewrite. Perhaps it just shows the tenacity of Exalted players that the need for a complete power set rewrite is not a serious problem. Myrlan

It's cool. That's not antagonism, that's catching me in a bit of a self-contradiction. Personally, I consider Lunar charms to be... an exception to my usual rule. In my opinion, they're just awful. Besides, not every charm needs to be re-written. A few need to be removed, a few need to be altered, and a few need to be moved. - Seraph