CharmRelay/ConditionalCharms
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The twenty-fourth theme is Conditional Charms
These are SolarCharms. Conditional Charms have a special bonus when some condition is met; for instance, Glorious Solar Saber has special damage properties when attacking creatures of darkness. The condition these Charms operate under should have something to do with the user's Caste; for instance, one could make an Archery charm that caused one's arrows to turn into fiery bolts at the time of day associated with the Caste.
River Floods the Cracked Plain (TedPro)
Cost: 6 motes Type:: Supplement Duration: Until released Min. Brawl: 4 Min. Essence: 2 Prereqs: None
While grasping an opponent, the Exalt floods the opponent with Solar Essence, which fills the newly-opened energy points of the target. The effects of this influence of Solar energy vary by the Caste of the user.
- Dawn Essence will be terrifying and awestriking to the victim: once freed, the victim must make a Valor roll or flee for the rest of the scene.
- Zenith Essence will cause the target to be floded with life energies - undead, Deathknights, demons and other beings which are not from Creation or Yu-Shan must make a Compassion roll or fall into a helpless trance for the scene, while gods and living beings of Creation feel a mild sense of calm.
- Twilight Essence frees the flow of knowledge in the target: each turn, the target will answer a single question honestly and openly unless the target succeeds on a Conviction roll.
- Night Essence baffles and mutes the senses, blinding and deafening the subject until the hold is broken.
- Eclipse Essence is sublimely pleasurable, and not at all painful, even if the subject is taking damage, and the subject must make a Temperance roll each turn to attempt any action to escape.
In all cases, the difficulty of any Virtue roll is the Exalt's Essence. This Charm does not affect beings with a higher Essence than the Exalt.
Incurvature of the Scholar's Soul - willows
Virtuous (Caste) Aegis (Wohksworth)
Cost: None Type:: Permanent Duration: Special Min. Presence: 4+ Min. Essence: 3 Prereqs: Majestic Radiant Presence
Bearing a grace denotive of their noble lineage, the Exalt's very presence instills doubts in gathered opponents that their own righteousness is of comparable stature. When making a particular Virtue or Willpower roll in response to the Exalt's action, opponents of lower or equal Permanent Essence must immediately spend a point of temporary Willpower and then roll at +1 difficulty, or else fail outright. If they have no temporary Willpower, they are assumed to have botched, rather than failed.
This roll affected by this Charm varies by the Caste purchased; Dawns challenge rolls in Valor, Zeniths in Temperance, Twilights in Compassion, Nights in Conviction, and Eclipses in Willpower. This Charm may be purchased multiple times (its prerequisite increasing by one each time) but the first purchase must match the Exalt's Caste.
Diapason of Virtuous Tools - haren
- Cost: None
- Duration: Permanent
- Type: Special
- Min. Lore: 4
- Min. Essence: 3
- Prereqs: None
Through understanding of the harmonics of anima essence through orichalcum, an Exalt can accomplish things previously impossible with artifacts, though the exact effect changes with the type of anima.
- Dawn The time needed to attune the particular flows of a weapon is instant.
- Zenith attuned items know justice, and punish attempted thieves by blazing with divine light and fire (1 unsoakable Lethal die and they likely drop the item).
- Twilight Castes may spend two less essence to attune any artifact of orichalcum.
- Night The appearance of attuned artifacts appears dullen and items of mundane materials.
- Eclipse Never need to roll to attune artifacts of other Magical Materials.
Righteous Heavenly (Element) Mandate (Quendalon)
Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower Type:: One scene Duration: Simple Min. Presence: 5 Min. Essence: 4 Prereqs: Majestic Radiant Presence
The Solar Exalted are the rightful masters of Creation, and the four corners of the world bow to pay them homage. Each Solar Caste has an elemental association, and with this Charm, a character may draw upon that association to compel that element’s obedience. A character invoking this Charm gains a bonus to her lethal and bashing soak equal to her Essence against attacks and elemental damage involving that element. For purposes of this Charm, metal counts as earth, while fists, teeth and other natural weapons count as wood. In addition, the character adds her Essence rating in dice to all of her Bureaucracy, Performance and Presence pools against elementals and Dragon-Blooded associated with her caste’s element.
While this Charm is in effect, the Solar’s anima rises to the coruscant aura level, and takes on cosmetic characteristics of the related element. The Dawn Caste is associated with fire, the Zenith with earth, the Twilight with wood, the Night with water, and the Eclipse with air.
Comments
Hi there! I'm confused about two things here. First, who gets to choose theme? Second, theme 24, is it necessary that the charms must be conditionalized on caste? I mean, the theme is very nice, but it's very hard to develop charms that have five different conditions or options, without being stereotypical. Also, solar charms tend not to be very caste-specific, which increase difficulty here. -Clebo
- In all Crunch Relays, the person who completes the previous relay chooses the theme for the next one. This is why it is a relay rather than just a "collective charm tree". In most cases, this means five entries, but it varies by relay. (In Martial Arts Relay's case, for example, the person choosing the theme may also choose a cascade size and structure.) Once a theme is completed, it is archived and generally considered done with. -Ben-San
- And yes, it is necessary that they be caste-stereotyped. The whole point of my themes is to force you to think about how to depict a fairly narrow theme in several interesting ways. - willows
I like this choice of theme, even though I really can't think of any charms for it
-- Darloth
Suggestion: Five Charms, one in each of the five Caste Ability groupings, to spread the fun out some more. - Moxiane
- I'm not too fond of that suggestion, as it has the same problem as "one charm per type"; that is, no one can build off anyone else's creativity, which seems to obviate the need for a Relay at all. But whatever. - willows
The Diapason of Virtuous Tools sounds good, except I can't really see much point in the Dawn caste one, which seems much less useful to me than the others (which are all great by the way). Given it only divides the normal time to attune by your essence, at essence 10.. it's still going to take you 2 minutes to attune to a new daiklave, making it still useless in battle.. so.. whats the point? Maybe if it was instantaneous attunement to weapons, it could then be useful in combat or such... or maybe a full round action to attune? FluffySquirrel
Admittedly, that was one I wanted to be careful with, but it seems to me that Dawn's should be able to quickly attune and switch out weapons. I'll see about maybe changing it when I get home. - haren
- Haren, why not just make the attunement process instantaneous? Even then it's just barely on the same level as some of the other Caste benefits the Charm provides. - Quendalon
- I think the Dawn and Eclipse version is much weaker because they only have one use, whereas all the others have uses forever. I suggests a flat +1 damage or accuracy bonus for Dawns, and a flat +1 dice pool bonus for anything in line of the item's purpose for the generalist Eclipses. -Clebo
Willows, Incurvature of the Scholar's Soul looks cool, but it seems like, if I'm reading it right, it has a big balance hole. Night Caste Solars get double the Essence replenishment from meditation, Manses and Hearthstones in most cases, which vastly outweighs the benefits to other classes. Maybe I'm misreading. -TedPro
- You're not misreading. It just looks like a much, much better Charm for Nights - until you notice that it doubles Essence rewards from stunts! The idea behind this Charm is that it'll provide a noticeable benefit in the scene where your anima is at the right stage and you're regenerating, but if you're actually in the spotlight, then you can basically use very expensive Charms for free. - willows
I woke up this morning, saying, "Jesus Christ, that Charm I wrote last night was really weak! I'd better do something about that." I'm generally wary of Permanent duration effects, but it seems like the best solution in this case. _Wohksworth
