Xeriar/CharacterCreation

Character Creation

Xeriar/HouseRules - Back to House Rules

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There are a few character Archetypes for Character Creation. Everyone makes their mortal Self first.

Do not spend backgrounds, or bonus points on backgrounds, during character creation. You get them from your character's background.

Non-Celestials go by the Character Creation rules provided at Exalted Lite

Legendary Mortals:

• Attributes: 6/4/3
• Abilities: 4/3/2/1
• Virtues: All Virtues begin at 2, not one. Assign one remaining virtue dot.
• Bonus Points: 57 bonus points (Experienced 5) - May not be spent on Backgrounds.
• Legendary Mortals may not take flaws of any sort. Nor may they take Specialties.
• A Legendary Human is also often in posession of significant knowledge, reflecting inherent, spiritual ties to the occult. They have all Arts, mastering them at -2 Difficulty (they may not purchase specialties), without a need to learn them. This represents latent talent from their higher soul's past lives, and continues after their Exaltation.
• Apply your Shard when you Exalt (seeXeriar/ShardCreation )

Comments

Wait a minute... is the 53 BP for Legendary Mortals including the +30 for Shard? I'm assuming so, but it's not entirely clear, and the idea of a starting Celestial with 83 BP is utter madness. Also, how do these balance with "normal" characters of their types? -- AntiVehicleRocket

No more mad than starting a campaign with 200 xp. It makes for more decisive players, without trying to game for efficient building before the campaign even starts. Yes, it's a lot, I also aim for the higher end of the power scales and, what's listed is the default build for starting Celestials. -- Xeriar

Um, okay... well, my question is this, then: is it assumed that every starting Celestial (your typical Essence 2 or 3, just-fell-off-the-Exaltation-truck guy, although with this kind of starting BP there's no way the PCs are only going to start with Essence 3) starts with 83 BP? Or is it assumed that Celestials under this build are already experienced for a while? As it stands, this seems like a reasonable build for Celestials who have been around a while, but if this is a starting PC, where do they go? What do they do? I like high-power Exalted as much as anybody, but I also like PCs having room to grow, and having new characters who are very young in-game start with this much BP seems like it puts a hard ceiling on character skill development in the game. (Also, it makes the Dragon-Blooded total nonentities, since they start with, what, a quarter of a Celestial's BP? How does the Wyld Hunt do anything besides get messily slaughtered?) -- AntiVehicleRocket

In his defense (not that I'm a huge fan of this, but I'm in an odd mood)... presumably Normal and Heroic mortals could exalt as well, given the right circumstances. Also, note that Dragonblooded can begin with up to 46 bonus points... and a Wyld Hunt could easily have multiple 150+ xp Dragonbloods. -szilard

It's pretty heavily implied that only Legendary Mortals will Exalt as Celestials, though, or that PCs will always have been Legendary Mortals before they were Exalts. As for the DBs -- this is a fair point, but I'm not entirely sure I like the idea that all the really high-XP Dragon-Blooded are going to be off hunting Anathema and not, you know, governing their families and the Realm. Were I attempting to work with this power differential, I would be very much more inclined to increase the Sidereal presence on Wyld Hunt parties, so that it would be more Celestial-vs.-Celestial and not glorified mook fights. -- AntiVehicleRocket

I don't know... several of the characters in the castebooks seemed relatively inexperienced when they Exalted. Havesh the Vanisher would be a good example. - szilard

Oh, I'm not disagreeing with you that normal or heroic mortals should also be able to Exalt -- I'm just saying that this set of rules seems to be balanced around the idea that Celestials will always be Legendary Mortals before they Exalt, which needs to be taken into account as a balancing factor. -- AntiVehicleRocket

My campaigns tend to follow a pattern of 50% fights, half of those being serious encounters, and half again of those serious because of the strength of the opponents rather than the specific situation at hand. Challenges can be deadly enough without an actual opponent.

In any case, the first time I ran a campaign my PCs were around the 70 bonus point level. I think, of them all, one took a persistant defense and another took a perfect. I wanted a slightly higher starting scale so I chose 83.

Regarding antagonists, I think Exalted provides enough to work with up past a few thousand xp. But then, I'm the type to put Ahlat at the 600-year-old Solar level. -- Xeriar