AlchemicalCharmIdeas
Strength Charm: A hydrolic device in his shoulder allows him to buy extra damage for melee allacks up to his Strength and make it harder to parry his attaks, as it only helps over-hand swinging motions brawl or MA attacks made with this charm are clumsy and suffer a -3 dice penalty. It was based off a Lunar charm whose name I don't really remember, it did't have the Brawl/Melee penalty, but it was the second charm in the tree, not the first like this one.
Dexterity charms: Hydrolics in his arm allow him to attack twice as his forearm kicks back like a jackhammer (copies One Weapon Two Blows, but with a slightly higher Essence cost), can also be used to destroy inanimate object, especially those made of stone.
Drill: (prerequiste was the previous Dex charm) The hydrolics in his arm are refitted to allow for the deployment of a sharp drill. His brawl/MA attacks do lethal damage and halve soak.
He also has a three dot Reaver Daiklave that can be used in different modes as parts ot it's blade mechanically move around to form different types of swords. Rules wise he can spend an action and 5 motes to shift around the weapons statistics. So he could, for example, take away from his Damage and add to Defense, of take away Accuracy and add speed. This also allows him to use his Drill arm with his Daiklave.
Stamina charm: By spending absurdly high amounds of essence, he can have nano-machines within his body repair his chassis at incredible speeds.
It's always useful to create dice adder charms for any kind of Exalted. However, the die adder Charms should probably cost at least as many motes of Essence as the common Anima effect of being able to spend 3 motes to add a die to a check involving a favored or Caste Attribute. Even then, they can only double their Attribute. An examination of the flavor of the Alchemical Charms presented in Time of Tumult reveals that the limitation for dice adding Charms should probably be Attribute + Essence, or Attribute with Essence as the duration.
- Er, dice adders at 2m per 1 are already fairly expensive -- inhibitively so, even, for all but a few cases. I can see no situation in which I'd spend 3 motes per die for a single action. Especially since one can spend 3 motes a die for Essence turns for a large majority of a character's Attributes. If anything, I can see an upgrade that would make their Anima power scene long. There's no reason for anyone to buy a die-adder at that cost, though, especially considering Essence could be Installed elsewhere.
- For what it's worth, I do agree that Attribute+Essence seems like a good limit, if not straight Attribute. _Jabberwocky
- Well, that's true. Seeing as how my players rarely spend Essence in the first place, it's difficult for me to gauge how expensive things are at times. At any rate, I took your advice and simply changed them down to 2m per die. - Darzoni
- I feel rather silly for presenting my original premise of the limiter being Attribute + Essence and a cost of 2 motes per die for adders, largely because it shows a distinct lack of research into existing examples of Alchemical Charms on my part. If Dynamic Reaction Enhancement SystemAlchemicalCharmIdeas/I> is any example to model things after, then it is 1 mote for 2 thingies and the limiter is that you cannot spend more motes of Essence than you have dots of the relavent Attribute. So functionally, if you had 5 dots of Dexterity and used DRES, you could not spend more than 5 motes in a single activation of the Charm, but you would get +10 initiative at the cap. Assuming that a Solar utilizes a similar charm and has Dex 5 and Wits 5, then the Solar would also get a +10 to his initiative because of their own limiter. This to me, implies that Alchemicals are as efficient as Solars are in terms of dice adder charms, but the Alchemical 'SFX' Charms (such as <i>Personal Gravity Manipulation Apparatus) are radically different from the things the Solars do with their SFX Charms. -Darzoni (3/31/04)
What I would do is simply have a single Charm per Attribute category (like, Corporeal Infrastructure Actuator for the Physical one), which either allows you to buy dice at the 3-mote rate, or if you're able to buy dice for an Attribute already, you get 2 dice per 3 motes. Fits with the theme that Alchemical Charms are both multipurpose and more in the nature of expanding abilities than granting new ones. Also, it's never a perfectly efficient Charm because no Alchemical Caste has all its Caste Attributes in one category, which is cool. - willows
- I like the idea of creating three charms for the Attribute categories. Perhaps it could be one charm in the write-up and function like the template-style charms (pick one of many variations that function essentially the same)? - Darzoni (3/31/04)
I'm speculating what exactly is the guiding philosophy behind the design of Alchemical Charms? I suspect there's a core set, which involves dice adders for each Attribute only and then higher up the tree you have things that enhance specific Abilities. Then there's the fact that you have things like Personal Gravity Manipulation Apparatus. I'd hazard a guess that anything an artifact or First Age wonder can do, an Alchemical can do with a Charm. - Darzoni
