Thus Spake Zaraborgstrom/SolarVsSiderealCharms

Re: [Exalted] Sidereal vs Solar

I thought about this some while cleaning.

I don't like writing absolutes.

I just don't.

For example, in every discussion like this---including the WW forum discussion that spawned this thread---someone brings up that you can technically make new Charms for Sidereals. Find lost Charms. Quest for the Maidens. Whatever. And yes, this is true. I don't want to write "you can never have any new Charms ever," when what I mean is "you shouldn't have new Charms unless it makes your game better."

It is generally going to be hard to understand anything I write if you assume that I balance things with CAN and CAN'T. I balance things with EASY and DIFFICULT.

So . . .

There are five factors mentioned in this thread. Some of them aren't actually my affair, since I didn't write the Character Creation or Traits chapters. All of them are things balanced by EASY or DIFFICULT, not by absolutes.

And!

It's true that that makes it really hard to give an absolute evaluation of raw Sidereal combat competence.

So here's what I suggest.

1. Custom Charms.
2. The need to participate in the Bureaucracy.
3. Powers like WSAV designed for kung fu fate agents rather than Kombat.
4. Solar Charms are older.
5. Solars have few Charms at the Essence level for Sidereal Martial Arts.

Since it would be great to discard these as factors, let me summarize what the Sidereal Charms would look like if I had discarded them as factors during the creation of the Charms.

1. If Sidereals could have custom Charms, then the whole paragraph in Geoff's outline about "short trees, with few prerequisites, some missing Charms, and a quick route to the top---but that's all you ever get" goes away. You can simulate this best by giving Solars 1.5x as many Charms.
2. If Sidereals didn't have to participate in the Bureaucracy, then their character creation rules would be "ronin, plus astrology." So I'd recommend using that for this kind of test.
3. If I cared about Kombat rather than games, then WSAV would probably be a top-tier Charm that made your TNs always 6. So, use that. Assume you need all the Craft Charms.
4. If Solar Charms weren't showing their age, Sidereal Charms would on average cost about 20% again more motes. They were lowered in the final draft (6->5, 12->10, and misc. costs as seemed apt) on the data that whenever Solar Charms were adjusted, they were expected to wind up a little better and cheaper. Power Combat did part of this.
5. If you can't figure out where Solars go at Essence 4+, either give them Sidereal Martial Arts (which is DIFFICULT instead of CAN'T in part because I knew there'd be some period of time before the Solars got high-Essence Charms published)---or rule out both Sidereal MA and the Essence 5+ Solar castebook Charms. Since I wrote Sidereal Martial Arts in good part to outline the kinds of effects you start seeing at that Essence range, it's a little mean to accuse them of being better than what anyone else gets.

It might be an unfair comparison. Sidereals with 8 Charms, 20% higher mote costs, 7 Backgrounds, 25 Ability dots, limited WSAV, and no SMA against the buffed Solar Exalted with 15 Solar Charms, reduced Charm costs, but some limits on splatbook Charms---that's a very different comparison than the current version, even if you also get to totally ignore all the stuff about custom Charms, bureaucracy, Solars showing their age, and Charm thematics.

If it's an unfair comparison, then I think it's also going to be unfair to totally ignore the reasons that Sidereals are gimped---

So, well. ^_^

Rebecca

P.S. I think the reason that I object to just dropping the custom Charm issue and the bureaucracy issue and so forth is that it amounts to a flat statement that that balance is wrong.

I gave Sidereals some advantages in exchange for custom Charms and having to deal with an entrenched bureaucracy. Yes, they can work around both---but working around these things takes energy. Either the amount of energy it consumes is about right for the advantages they got in exchange, or not. In short, either I did that balance right, or not.

Saying that "these issues are too nebulous to address, so let's assume they don't matter" is saying that the Sidereals are not balanced. Because it means that everything they got in exchange for those handicaps is free. ^_^

[...]

Solars with custom Charms are more powerful than those that can't make custom Charms.

The Solar billing says that they can make custom Charms---that they are as powerful as Solars who can do so.

In order to reach that power level, they need custom Charms.

The system does not provide a good way to make them.

So in order to reach their full potential, they have to be able to make custom Charms, which the system does not define well.

Now, you're probably thinking, "That's okay. The necessary power level is exactly as undefined as the actual power level."

Unfortunately, by reading an outline that said, "the Sidereals will exchange that power for something else," I forced the system to define itself. This creates the instability you deplore regardless of "who'd win?" The Sidereals could be weaker than heroic mortals, and as long as weighting custom Charms was a factor in their design, they would make other Exalts' mechanics inadequate by the terms of your argument.

The Sidereal mechanics, simply by existing, set an implicit weight on the power of custom Charms. By looking at the problem and assigning it a weight, I've created an implicit mechanical value for custom Charms. Either they live up to that value or they don't. It doesn't even really matter if you know my design process or not.

As soon as I was told in my outline to trade away custom Charms for something, Solar Charms became inadequate to capture Solar power level, because the ability to make custom Charms became part of the balance---which balance is not just "Sidereals are less powerful than Solars" but rather "Sidereals are exactly as powerful as Sidereals should be, which includes being less powerful than Solars."

In practice, you understand, what I expect this to mean is "if there's an effect in a fatsplat that Solars should have, stick it in their trees. They are not the mysterious unable-to-shoot-down-arrows Exalted of the Sun. I'm going to go ahead and write independent actions for Sidereal MA on the assumption that Solars pick up some equivalent somewhere. I'm going to go ahead and give Sidereals their pattern-spider secretaries on the assumption that if a Solar needs to know trivia they can get a Sherlock Holmes Charm and deduce it. Etcetera."

But sticking to pure theory, well, what it means is, if you have Sidereals in your game, your game has been affected by my assumptions regarding the power of Solar custom Charms, and yet you can't build those Charms in a solid fashion with the rules provided. This is, as you point out, broken.

Comments

Toram: I found these postings by Rebecca on the RPGnet forums. Having read them, I now feel that I can more clearly see why I've generally been uncomfortable with the balance of many Sidereal charms; there were explicit design decisions made during their construction that I feel were ill-considered.

Here's why:

1. Sidereal charms were made more powerful to compensate for the fact that Sidereals cannot create custom charms.

This justification is lacking because there have never been any guidelines published for how to create and balance custom charms, especially at higher Essence levels. The power of custom charms is therefore going to vary widely between games. As Rebecca concludes at the end of her post, this is indeed broken.

2. Sidereal charms were made more powerful to compensate for the fact that Sidereals need to put up with the celestial bureaucracy.

This justification is lacking because the degree to which the bureaucracy is a hindrance is going to vary widely between games, and even within the same game as the world evolves. It is entirely possible that the celestial bureaucracy could be reformed or even disbanded during the course of a campaign - or it could just be something the Storyteller doesn't want to pay attention to. In either case, the effect is to throw the power balance of Sidereal charms out of whack. Forcing the Storyteller to run the bureaucracy a certain way in order to maintain the system's mechanical balance is an unnecessary restriction on the game's flexibility. The disadvantage of the bureaucracy is better compensated for by granting extra charms and backgrounds during character creation; these benefits can be far more easily adjusted if necessary.

3. "Powers like WSAV designed for kung fu fate agents rather than Kombat." (*)

This is simply poor design. Exalted is, in many cases, a combat-heavy game. If the designers know that a given power would be unbalanced if used in combat, it is their responsibility to limit the power so that it cannot be so easily abused. Powergamers will always find obscure combinations of powers that throw off the balance, but something this obvious should have been caught in playtesting.

(*) See comments for additional discussion.

4. Sidereal charms were made more powerful because the Solar charms were too weak, as published, and have needed to be buffed over time.

This is backward thinking; this Sidereal book is a companion to the original Solar one, and should be balanced to play in conjunction with it. As things stand, if the Storyteller doesn't want to use the Power Combat rules, the Sidereal charms become broken. Even with the Power Combat rules, many of the Solar charms are still showing their age, and need buffing (IMHO). This book should have given charms that balanced appropriately against the officially published Solar ones, and not against yet-to-be-published Exalted 2.0 ones.

Increasing the cost of Sidereal charms by 20% and nerfing WSAV as described would be one way to try to fix things. However, I'm not sure that it's the only badly broken charm (see /TranscendentHatchetOfFate) --Toram

Toram, at least one of your rebuttals is outright wrong. WSAV breaks in Exalted Kombat, a non-roleplay arena situation, where it is trivially easy to choose WSAVs that guarantee that you'll have a TN 4 on all your rolls. In real games, it is practiclly impossible to do this. - willows

Not necessarily. One (Gold) Sidereal in a game I'm in has (IIRC; MetalFatigue will correct me if I get this wrong) both "While helping Solar Exalted" and "While in front of her Students", as well as a third that I don't remember clearly. Since she was the Mentor of the PC Eclipse, her target numbers were down to 5 almost any time she showed up, and went to 4 on a number of occasions. I think the argument still holds that WSAV is a very powerful effect for a 2/2 charm with no prerequisites, that can be taken repeatedly. I do apologize for not catching the difference between Combat and Kombat, however that thread had over 400 messages, and I'm on a slow connection; I used a search to pull out just Rebecca's posts. --Toram

That's like saying that the Specialty system is broken because a character could take three Melee specialties in "armed combat" and have three more dice than other people. Sure, you could do it that way, but both examples rely on a Storyteller approving the condition. The Charm's text, combined with Rebecca's remarks on what an acceptable WSAV condition is, make it fairly clear that the condition breadth considered appropriate is dependent on the Storyteller (and the players, in most games, I'd wager). Your example sounds like a Solar game with a Sidereal NPC, and from the looks of it, that NPC has WSAVs that will pretty much automatically apply anytime she's in the game. If that's the case, that's just as bad an example of the Charm's power as Exalted Kombat is. Now, reducing TNs isn't as powerful as you think, IMHO. Remember that reducing TNs is basically what Sidereals do instead of add dice. They can't add 8-10 dice to their pool the way Lunars and Solars can. Yes, TN-reducers do have that cool "all dice win!" side-effect, when stacked, but that's very expensive. It seems to me that your complaints are based on uses of the Charm that don't jive with the text and intent of the Charm. - David.

Those are two WSAVs that only work for that fellow when he is on-screen. If he were a PC, the Charm would look a lot more balanced, because hanging out with Solar neophytes is not his only duty. Basically, Sid Charms are balanced, like all fatsplat Charms, for PC use! If you try to use NPCs to measure their balance, it is like trying to find the length of a piece of string using a pomegranate.

What's that you say? Measuring a piece of string with a pomegranate doesn't make any fucking sense? Sometimes life is perplexing. - willows

This may be another point of disagreement in charm/mechanic design philosophy. IMHO, charms are IC effects, and should be agnostic to OOC information, such as whether the user or target is a PC or an NPC. That's why it bothered me that one of Rebecca's justifications for THoF's effect said that a PC was ten times likelier to throw off their fate. Still, I'll acknowledge that WSAV could vary anywhere from "way too powerful" to "wimpy", depending on how broad or narrow a vision the Storyteller allows. --Toram

How do you propose that Charms be agnostic to the identity of their user? Isn't the way an ST uses a Charm always dramatically different from that of a player? I don't know anyone who accounts XP for NPCs, so that dramatically reduces the cost of using Charms that cost XP, for them. I don't suppose you'd want there to be two versions of a Charm, depending on the user, but since it is so obviously impossible to guarantee that a Charm is equally useful from either side of the GM screen, shouldn't you expect them to be consistently balanced for player use? (You could logically also expect them to be balanced for NPC use, but this would make the game less fun, methinks.) - willows

Parenthetically, all your complaints have been thoroughly rebutted in the rpgnet thread you are quoting, and i really don't feel like reproducing those arguments. Furthermore, I think it was somewhat poor netiquette on your part to drag such a tedious argument into yet another forum without thoroughly familiarising yourself with the full content of the argument in its original place. That can only breed duplicated discussion, redundant arguments, and bad blood on every side. - willows

For what it's worth, I don't go to the RPGNet boards, so this is the only place that I'm going to see this stuff. The issue involved does interest me, for a degree of separation (I don't play with the Siddies), so I don't mind it being reproduced at all. ~BerserkSeraph

Ditto for me. I only found the RPGNet discussion via a backlink posted to a WW forum discussion on THoF. I'm not a member on either of those forums, and I don't really have time to actively participate in more than one place...so this is my one and only outlet to post my own take on what Rebecca said (and I noted it as my opinion). You're free to disagree with me, of course, but resorting to invectives probably doesn't further the discussion. I did read all of RSB's posts on that thread before posting, and if I get the time, I'll try reading the couple hundred replies, but quoting very much non-ZaraXXX material here probably wouldn't be good either. It's also worth noting that I'm fairly close to agreeing with RSB's own analysis on discarding the "factors" she used; I just feel that actually discarding several of them would have improved the resulting product. --Toram

I may simply not see why these potential power differentials are necessarily broken. If an ST wants to run a game in which the Celestial Bureacracy isn't a significant limiting factor, Solar custom Charms are weak, and it's easy to bring your WSAV into play, they may do so, in the knowledge that it makes Sidereals more powerful than Solars of similar experience levels. Equally, if they wish to make the Celestial Bureaucracy a heavy burden, give most Solars two or three custom Charms which are more effective, in their areas of specialty, than any comparable general Solar or Sidereal Charm, and arrange situations where a WSAV of "against multiple targets" or "while wearing white" can't be used, they can do so, and know that their Sidereals may be less powerful than Solars. I'd rather have the system set up so that the factors can be played with in this manner than make power adjustments all take the form of "I want Solars to be more powerful, so I'll give them an extra (Willpower+2xEssence) in Peripheral Essence. Vargo Teras

The problem arises if I want to run a game without Power Combat, or with a weak bureaucracy, *without* making the Sidereals overpower the Solars. Because the Sidereal charms were made more generally powerful/efficient to compensate for these factors, I would then need to go back and nerf all the Sidereal trees, charm-by-charm. If they had instead only compensated for those factors by granting more stuff at character generation, it would be far easier to adjust. --Toram

I think that if you run a game with them you will find, as I did, that playing a game with a weak bureaucracy has the opposite effect you expect. That is, it makes Sidereals weaker, rather than more powerful, because many Sidereal Charms are much more useful in a bureaucratic setting than otherwise, and with their small Charm set, these form a significant organ of their strength. Also, with the exception of the Martial Arts, I am not under the impression that the combative Charms are significantly affected by PC. VBoS is another matter that has its own flamewar, though. - willows

"Pliant" or at least "non-obstructive" would have been a more accurate choice of word for my intent than "weak". I don't have my PG with me, but the Solar Brawl, Resistance, and Endurance (particularly Essence Gathering Temper) trees all had significant (and much needed) combat effectiveness buffs in Power Combat. --Toram

I run a game where the Celestial Bureaucracy has little to no actual effect on anything and Yu-Shan has only appeared in background miniscenes and as a motivational tool for one or two of the PCs. I have not found that this impacts the Charm Balance at all. Of course, I've had maybe...three activations of Sidereal Charms over the course of the entire game, which has run for two months. Despite that, there is no true balance issue between Sidereals and Solars. Especially not due to a single Charm. WSAV requires ST regulation. Obviously. So do HGD and Wyld-Shaping Technique. Requiring the ST to use common-bloody-sense is nothing new. Yes, if you allow a twinkish player utter freedom to buttrape the system, you have some power issues with a few Sidereal Charms. But the same applies for Lunar Charms and Dragon-Blooded Charms and Abyssal Charms and Solar Charms. You can't expect WW writers to design everything at the lowest possible level of ST/Player competence and intelligence. That would utterly ruin the game! Just accept that WSAV needs regulation. So do specialties. - Telgar

Toram, our more accurate choice of words accords with my experience anyway. As for Solar Charms being revised, that is neither here nor there; the Power Combat changes brought a weak Solar combat strategy in line with the other, more viable strategies (making the soak monster more competitive against the Invincible Sword Princess), rather than increasing the splat's ability as a whole. I don't think that a revision of one weak strategy, particularly one that all splats but one are more or less abysmal at, makes for a very convincing case that "before PC revisions, Sidereals are unilaterally better than Solars." In fact, in light of the fact that Sidereal soak strategies are simpy terrible, and all their other combat strategies come out of the gate weaker than Solars', I think that the Power Combat revisions broaden the already-existing gap between Solars and the inferior splats.

Try building a Solar and a Sidereal ISP, for instance, starting with heroic mortals and providing each with double persistents and Major Extra Action Beatdown, by buying these features with the same amount of XP. You will find that the Sidereal loses on both mote investment and motes free, has to buy up an extra Ability if she wants to be able to improve her dodges, and is down a Health Level for the Melee persistent, or needs to master a complete Martial Art for the Celestial Monkey one with a sword. On top of this, unless she buys into a second Style, she can't credibly add dice to her attacks!

So, unless you're making some point that I have overlooked? - willows

A little correction to myself, after discussing with Kraken - Precisely minimal ISP builds (stacked persistents and a credible attack or two) will favor the Sidereal in actual effectiveness, if not in mote efficiency, since Sidereal trees are so stubby. Even without their bureaucracy advantages, they get out of the gate a lot faster than Solars do. The Solar advantage appears later on, when they begin to sling 40-dice attacks casually, and accumulate a variety of powers that Sidereals can't compete with (holy atomic fire! ranged melee attacks!) without dipping into advanced, and extremely costly, MA (which makes them the unconventional Martial Arts ISP...hmm...).

Dammit!! Once again agreeing with willows. The Sidereals look powerful at first, but then we have to take into account the "Julia Roberts" effect sidereal Charms have of making the Sidereals a One Trick Pony. Ok the numbers (character creation stats) the Sidereals have are comparatively large but they need them. If you're playing a Solar you don't have to wait till you have a full tree to be effective Sidereal pretty much does. Also they have less Motes to power their effects, and their Foul-Up-Insurance A.K.A Ox Body Technique is terrible so they don't get second chances in a "real" fight. Worst of all they have almost no buffs or adders in their Charm set. Also as a solar you don't need any stinkin permission to use your top teir Charms. Their Charms are not what gives them (Sidereals) power I assure you. Continuing yes you could have all kinds of ridiulous WSAV (Days of the Week for instance) if it's allowed (and i'm the sick person who does, but more on this later), but that is just one charm and w/o persistants you're getting ended very early in a combat with a solar who is even semi-versed in combat(as i'm sure any DB will tell you). That being said Sidereals, if you look deeper into them are not more powerful just different. On a different note as an ST you have got to look for ways to challenge PC's they will not always be obvious. Like above I mentioned that I would allow a PC (who was brave or foolinsh enough) in one of my games to take the WSAV of "Days of the Week". Fine i'd say and plan for an attack at nite (it's not a day now is it), or in the Wyld (Aww day and Nite are creation based concepts), in Malfeas (oh I'm sorry it only works on the days that are in creation this unfortunately is something altogether different) or somwhere else. The point i'm trying to make here is that if you're the ST don't close yourself to the possiblities even if at first it looks daunting, or flawed it may be fun. Nothing is as powerful as it looks on the surface. - Issaru D&D Players with the Wish spell have twisted me in ways I don't even like to think about.

One Trick Pony? Sorry, Sidereals have more than a couple of tricks. As I understand it, they can't build on their existing body of Charms, except Sidereal MAs. This would be a great pity if MA couldn't do EVERYTHING, especially Sidereal MA. Sure, it might not do it as efficiently as a Solar's charm, but the Sidereal doesn't have to duck the Wyld Hunt once a week, nor rely on hazy half-memories of previous incarnations to think of his old charms. He just calls Chejop and spends a few weeks living the easy life before creating Chartreuse Shoehorning of New Charms Style. If their 'one trick' is Martial Arts, or fate-weaving, it's a hell of a single trick. I mean you could easily say that Solars have one trick - being excellent at mortal stuff - but I wouldn't call that a limit, exactly. Siddy Charms are written to be more powerful because of plot concerns and restrictions on their actions? Fine. Dandy. Where's my charm payoff for having to deal with the Wyld Hunt as a Solar? Or payoff for not being any good at Kung Fu (in a Kung Fu film!) for a Lunar? (And no, Being Able to Take DBT a half-dozen times isn't consolation; it's forcing any effecting Lunar into that one road of developement)

To rehash my THoF argument: Why should I have to make new Stuff to Keep Up with the Borgstroms? The splats should be balanced against one another, not against What The Writer Considers A Plot Concern. I don't play in RSB's games, so the Way She'd Do It isn't exactly a comfort. Just my bit of venom for today, sorry if it seems overblown- I don't like it when the people who are getting my money inform me that the burden of making their writing fit into their game system rests on me. ~ BerserkSeraph , as close as he gets to being snarky.

I'd like to also point out that the solar charm changes in the Player's Guide are not solely for Power Combat. They work extremely well with non-power combat, in many cases. Okay, there's a few which don't work or need shoehorning, but the straight upgrapes (hmm... may need to explain that term. Upgrade will do for now) are indeed appropriate and effective, and most of them do not need power combat to be in use to be applied to the solar charms.
-- Darloth

---

BS, Toram, whoever else is thinking about jumping in on this mess:

This is an argument where, like, experienced people who have used the Charms in games and know how they work have said "Sidereal charm brokenness is a huge illusion, folks."

And, as far as I can tell, the general response to this, from people who have not used the Charms in a real-game situation (not an artificial one like an isolated duel between monomaniacally optimized one-trick ponies), is "No! I am so confident from my reading of the Charms that this is not the case!"

Face it. Rebecca is a textual ninja! She makes you think things are true that are not true, and you are so convinced of them that you write lengthy essays asserting this! You have been taken in.

This is, like, bloody ridiculous. Please come back when you have an argument that has legs to stand on. - willows is so tired of this argument coming up again and again and again and again and again and again.

Willows, I'm willing to accept that you know what you're talking about, more so that I do. And yes, you're correct, you've got more experience with the system than I do. I don't appreciate being told that my opinion is valueless because I don't have the benefit of an active gaming group. If you can't accept that people who game less than you do might have any clue what the fuck they're talking about, stop posting - because it seems like you game more than pretty much everyone here, and nobody appreciates the 'mandate from on high' style of posting. It won't fly on a message board and god help me I won't let it sway me here. Use your experience to support your opinions, not to attempt to invalidate mine.

So please, please, I'm asking you to extend your oh-so-pressured-with-this-tedious-debate-with-the-ignorant-masses self, and tell me, in terms that you consider simple (Because I'm not that bright, being unable to sort through RSB's writing style and all) - Is 'only able to make new martial arts' really as much as a handicap as all that? It strikes me that Sidereal MA can do pretty much anything - CMoS offers shapechanging magic, superior maneuverability, soul-eating essence theft, mass-attack and solid defense (including defenses that penalize your attackers for having high initiative), extra actions... MAs can do a lot. I don't see the validity - admittedly from a nonexperienced standpoint - of the 'limited charms' excuse for raw charm power. ~ BerserkSeraph

I'm not really very concerned with the custom Charms debate; I dunno how that goes. What I do know is that, when they are actually in use for extended periods of time, Sidereal Charms are distressingly expensive and unreliable compared to those of any other splat, and this basically sucks for them. They really just aren't as good as they look like they are. - willows

See, that's a good response by my standards; thank you. It's all a learning process, for me - I'm just getting back into Exalted (I left the game as Lunars came out) and frankly, I'm still picking up the tenuous balance of everthing. I can see the expensiveness issue of Siddy charms, certainly (It strikes me as odd, by the way; you'd think they'd have moved towards 'more efficient' if only by considering the ways DBs use Essence) and their applicability is questionable (Shun the Smiling, for example...). My main interest was if the issues used to support the raw oomph (in those situations where they apply) of said Charms were really issues; they struck me as a bit overstated. I generally wouldn't accept the concern of anima flare as a balance factor for a Solar charm, for example - those things that inconvenience an Exalt are part of being that Exalt, they should no more offer a benefit than the presence of wound penalties ; if you screw up, you get murderized, and there's no payoff for that possibility. ~ BerserkSeraph

Arguments about relative experiences can go back and forth ad infinitum; there are too many possible permutations to be sure of any conclusion. The basis for my position is RSB's own statement that she designed the Sidereal charms to compensate the Sidereals for the aforementioned factors. If one discards or discounts one or more of those factors (as I do), the inevitable consequence given that premise is that the balance of the charms is wrong. For example, she explicitly set the Sidereal charm activation costs to balance against what she felt the Solar charm activation costs will end up being corrected to (perhaps in the next edition), rather than the Solar charms' currently official published values. I disagree with that decision. Other than drawing off RSB's statements of how she balanced the charms, IMHO, the only way to proceed would be to evaluate each charm individually, comparing it to published Solar and Lunar charms with equivalent prerequisites. That could take a while, and would open up other messy arguments, since the existing charms aren't consistently balanced themselves. --Toram

So, it occurs to me that each of Rebecca's defences boil down to one thing, "I wrote these Charms to precisely fit my understanding of the Exalted setting as imparted to me by our developer, including but not limited to the value of custom Charms, the weight of bureaucratic responsibility, and my expectation that these Charms will be used in a sensible manner." Frankly, I think that if you reject these premises, you are rejecting the setting, in which case I don't think that you can really argue that anything should be one way or another. - willows

To be fair, that doesn't strike me as precisely true. She also seems to be making assumptions about Solar Charms showing their age and the lack or existence of unwritten high-essence Solar Charms. While these assumptions might be based on information given to her by the developer, it is not clearly justified by information to which consumers have ready access. That is, whether or not this is part of the setting as imagined by the developer and writer, this stuff isn't all part of the setting as written, and the readers are not all telepaths. -szilard

Just so. I'm not so much rejecting the setting as attempting to maintain the freedom to vary it; and it will vary from game to game and ST to ST, unless the ST is RSB. Tying the power level of the Sidereal charm set to particular details of the setting puts the onus on the ST to run those aspects of the setting the way RSB envisioned them, or else risk breaking game balance. It might not break in every game, but it makes the system more likely to break, and that just makes it a bad idea in general. I guess the axiom I'm espousing could be summed up as:

It is a bad idea to tie a game system's core mechanical balance to aspects of the setting that might not be consistent across different games and Storytellers. --Toram

I have made substantial changes to canon in the games I run. I've played in games with substantial changes to canon. In both situations, I have had no difficulty at all with Sidereal power levels. When you actually PLAY with the Charms, it quickly becomes clear just how fucking ANNOYING using MAs for "everything" is. And how limiting the Sidereal Charm Set is. - Telgar

Especially the solar ones. Or, indeed, the lunar ones. Maybe we should do the reverse? I mean, I know it would take over twice as long (maybe three times as long) but would you be happier with the charm set that resulted, that's the question? It's certainly the approach I'm taking, albeit slowly.
-- Darloth

That's certainly something that I hope happens before Exalted Revised/2nd Ed comes out. When the fatsplats get written, each by different authors, over the span of so many years, it's really hard to make sure that charms and other effects are probably balanced between different books. Somebody needs to sit down and really take a long look at all the published charms, from all the books, and come up with a consistant metasystem for balancing them. Of course, there'll be oddball charms that don't "fit" properly, but those can be case-by-cased. Publishing this metasystem would also greatly help the custom charm issue. --Toram