Ketrus/StupidSolarTricks

Trick the First

Second Edition Ride is about the best thing to happen to Exalted in the history of the game. I'll demonstrate this by using only two Ride charms.

Let's say you've got a Solar who has:

3 Ride
5 Athletics
4 Presence
4 Survival

First Ride Excellency
Worthy Mount Technique

Graceful Crane Stance
Monkey Leap Technqiue
Soaring Crane Leap

First Presence Excellency
Majestic Radiance Presence

Friendship With Animals Approach
Spirit-Tied Pet
Bestial Traits Technique

Now, we don't really need Spirit-Tied Pet, a Familiar 3+ will do just fine. But let's assume that you've already started play, and don't have a familiar already. This is a trick anyone can learn, with time, so for maximum adaptability let's just take Spirit-Tied Pet. It still fits in the ten charms limiting a staring character, so a new PC is just as applicable for this trick as any other.

We'll say you get a relatively common Familiar, the Great Cat. We don't want the ST to catch on to the coming absurdity, after all, so let's steer clear of the numerically superior pets like the Tyrant Lizard or deranged First Age Lunar. Now, the Great Cat has a base strength of 6 and a base Athletics of 4. Over the course of 4 weeks, using the should-have-been-renamed Bestial Traits Technique, we increase his strength to 9 and his Athletics to 5. Then, hell, for the fifth week, let's give him human-like intelligence. So he can sing you a song.

What comes next is ridiculously obvious. We want our Cat friend to experience the joy of broken Solar Athletics charms, so we use the Worthy Mount Technique. For a 1 mote surcharge, we can allow our friend to use -any- reflexive charm. Including Graceful Crane Stance and Monkey Leap Technique. Now he can eschew his normal free movement action for a jump that goes twice as far as normal. Let's crunch some numbers.

His normal jump action is going to be (Strength + Athletics) * 2 horizontal yards, which is 28. With Monkey Leap, that becomes 56 yards, and he uses this leap every round as a free action. Now our Tiger is moving at a velocity of 56 yards per second, or roughly 114.5 miles per hour. If you also take Soaring Crane Leap, he can put on a burst of speed in between his actions that will make it 286 miles per hour... but let's stick to basics. Now, with Graceful Crane Stance, he can make these prodigious leaps while balancing on something no thinner than a human hair.

As I happen to know, a tiger's tail is thicker than a human hair, and supporting yourself upon one is probably a strength+athletics stunt of difficulty 5 or so, easily passed. If it hasn't occurred to you by now, I never -named- this giant cat. Well, he does have a name, and he'll be more than happy to tell you. After all, with enhanced, near-human intelligence and the Familiar 3+ ability to communicate, he sings it all the time:

"Their tops are made out of rubber / Their bottoms are made out of springs / They're bouncy, trouncy, flouncy, pouncy / Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun / But the most wonderful thing about Tiggers / Is I'm the only one"

All of this for only 5 applications of Spirit-Tied Pet, 25 hours of training over 5 weeks, 8 committed motes per scene, and all your sanity and self-respect. (For the Record, fast as he may be, the Yeddim with a similar setup can reach speeds of up to 450 miles per hour. And I didn't even touch on the charm that lets your mount FLY)

Comments

*flashbacks to the Sailor Pluto and Tigger Page, Brain Explodes * -- JohnBiles

*No comment... that was shamelessly EVIL... and yes, flying dumbo would be be in theory possible... ^_^;;; - haku