HowToEnrichCattleProduction
Here's the situation. I'm a Chosen of Battles with Charisma 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 4, Craft (Fate) 3, Occult 4, Linguistics 3, Performance 2, and three dots of the college of the Gauntlet. My Essence is 3. I am not especially good at astrology: I don't have any astrology-affecting Charms or any long-term astrology-boosting astrological effects. However, I have two weeks of time and an overwhelming need to improve the efficiency of a particular tribe of Southern cattlemen.
First, I need to make sure I know what I'm doing. Using the various resources at my command (Efficient Secretary Technique among them) I learn that the tribe I want to affect consists of 384 mortals, their patron the Thirst of Ten Thousand Babes (an Essence 3 milk god), and the Thirst's four God-Blooded priests (each with Essence 2). To affect all of them, I would need to ultimately spend 13 effect-roll successes (5 for a population between 100 and 1000, plus 8 for the four entities with Essence 2... the Thirst's Essence doesn't apply, because the Thirst is obedient to the laws of heaven).
To succeed in such a massive undertaking, I'm going to need to work smarter and harder both. The next step is to plan the destiny out. I roll Intelligence + Craft (Fate) with a difficulty of 2, since the God-Blooded have an Essence of 2. I spend a point of willpower for an automatic success, so with my pool of seven, on an average roll I get four successes. Four successes, however, simply isn't good enough, so I abandon the day's work and start anew in the morning. I repeat this process until I roll luckily -- eight successes. Subtracting one (for the difficulty of 2) leaves seven excess successes.
Now, I draw up horoscopes for the herders whose lives I plan on enriching. My Intelligence + Occult pool is 8, so an average night I gain four successes. I'm working hard, here, though, so I spend another point of Willpower, channeling it through my Conviction of 5, and describe to my ST the extreme measures I'm taking (a two-die stunt). The difficulty of the roll is 1, and with my die pool of 15 I can expect seven successes. Seven is the maximum I could hope for under the circumstances. Even if I were to roll fabulously well and score eleven successes on this roll, I would have to abandon the extras: I can match, but not exceed, the excess successes on my planning roll. Further, if I rolled poorly, I'd have to go back to the planning stage before trying to compute horoscopes again; horoscope computation must immediately follow planning.
Now, the real work begins -- the petition. I create the petition using my Wits + Linguistics pool of 7, and I spend a willpower and channel it through my compassion of 4, and I do a one-die stunt of some kind. Total pool is 12, so an average of six successes. My well-drawn petition means that the difficulty of the prayer roll is only 1. This takes a full day of calligraphy and selecting clever choice phrases and so on.
I contact some associates in my faction and explain the importance of enriching the herders. Over a period of three days, I acquire four cosignatures for my petition.
I compose a hymn in honor of Hu Dai Liang and pray for endorsement, which I receive (a simple Charisma + Performance roll, difficulty 1 because I'm sacrificing a Resources 5 purchase worth of goods... routine on my Salary of 3). Finally I don the Resplendent Destinty of the Gauntlet I've kept about me for some time now, and three days of ritual later I begin the nine-hour process of transmitting the request to the pattern spiders.
Time to make the prayer roll. The base Charisma + Performance pool is 5, plus four for my cosignatories, three for Hu Dai Liang's endorsement, 3 for the lengthy prayer, and 2 for a stunt. I also spend another point of Willpower and channel it again through my Conviction of 5. The total number of dice: 22, with a difficulty of 1. On average, I get 11 successes, giving me three (11/3, remainder discarded) extra effect dice.
So, the effect roll. I get four more dice from my preparations (two each from the planning and the horoscopes: seven successes on each of those rolls, and 7/3 with the remainder discarded is 2) and three for wearing the destiny of the Gauntlet while working. That's ten extra effect dice, plus the basic pool (Essence + College) of 7, making 17 total dice. I spend yet another Willpower for an extra five dice in the pool, giving me 22 dice. Finally, one (and only one) of the four other Sidereals I cajoled into cosigning my petition is willing to throw her weight behind the effect and accompany my prayer. Her Essence is 3, like mine, but she is not initated into the College of the Gauntlet (she's a Chosen of Serenity, and interested in other things), so she isn't eligible to advance the prayer herself. She makes her difficulty 3 Charisma + Performance accompaniment roll, and so her Essence of 3 adds to my effect pool. This gives me a final effect pool of 25 dice, which yield 12 successes.
I'm disappointed. As I learned back at the start of the process, I would need 13 successes just for the Scope I'd wanted. However, 12 successes is still something to work with.
Reviewing the data I accrued before, I see that the 384 mortals and 4 God-Blooded are divided up into three smaller clans of 108, 127, and 149 mortals each, led by one, one, and two God-Blooded (respectively). While I can't affect the entire tribe, I can bless the one of the clans, which consumes five successes for the mortal population and two more for the lone God-Blooded in that clan. That's seven successes, which leaves five. Making the effect last a full year should be sufficient, and costs two successes of Duration. The three remaining successes go into Power, making it a once-per-scene effect.
"I pronounce that the herders of the Argle Clan in the Bargle Tribe of the Fargle Valley be taken into the College of the Gauntlet and there be subjected to the Blissful Idiot Blessing upon their husbandry, on a near-constant basis, for the next year."
For the next year, whenever a herder in the Argle Clan makes a Wits + Craft (Animal Husbandry) roll, the difficulty will be reduced by one, unless he has to make two rolls in a scene for some reason.
The blessing isn't all I hoped for: I wasn't able to include the neighboring Cargle and Dargle clans, but still, it's done. The Argle Clan should enjoy a period of remarkable plenty.
Step by Step
Basically, if that doesn't help, its a step-by-step process.
1) Pick an effect. What do you want to do?
2) Pick a College that works for this effect.
3) Make the petition itself.
4) Perform optional steps such as Destiny Planning, Horoscope, Ritual Behavior, etc.
5) Optional prayer-enhancements such as Stunting, Charms, Extra time.
6) Prayer roll, determine success number.
7) Make Effect roll.
8) Divide Effect successes among Duration, Scope and Power.
9) Roll Paradox.
Telgar, Cappadocian Primogen
C'mentations
Good idea. I think a walkthrough is a valuable thing to have hanging around. Esp. for this. Domino
I think you're calculating difficulties wrong: Exalted does this slightly differently from AEonverse. On a diff 1 roll, you subtract no successes. On a diff 2 roll, you subtract 1. So you'd have *slightly* better effect than this: Well, it would really only mean you'd have to work a bit less hard to get the petition that good.
Whoa, you're right. Silly me. Fixed that. Jeffwik
Some more mistakes I noticed reading through this example...
- First, and only a minor point really: I don't understand the association between being a good farmer and The Gauntlet. How does being brought into that constellation help them be prosperous farmers?
- The petition only reduces the difficulty of the prayer roll to 2. It starts at 6 (and cannot be reduced by sacrificing resources as with normal prayers). It is reduced by 1 because the Sidereal is considered a priest, though. And the successes reduce the difficulty by a further 3 points, to 2.
- Extra successes on the prayer roll are rounded up after being divided by 3. This prayer should add 4 dice to the effect.
- Similarly, the horoscope planning successes are rounded up (although the petition ones round down). Thus they add 3 not 2 to the effect roll.
- The sidereal in the example spends a willpower to add his conviction to the effect roll. As a ST I would argue that it is in fact the spiders doing the effect so you can't spend virtues or willpower to add to the dice rolled just as you cannot stunt this roll.
- The Chosen of Serenity who adds her weight to the effect roll shouldn't be able to. She doesn't have the college at 1 or more (p209).
This is all fresh in my mind from writing my Sidereal Astrology Calculator (Form-fillable Version). So if I have got any of this wrong please let me know so I can change them.
- I would argue that any roll you can describe what's happening as the player, you can get a stunt bonus on. If the Sidereals book specifically says something about not being able to stunt on it, then I would house-rule that to mean you don't get Essence or Willpower back for it, but you can still get the other effects of a stunt - bending the rules and bonus dice. - IanPrice
I know this is pretty basic, but I fail to find in the book where it says that the number of successes in astrology dice rolls to be divided by 3?
-- Nabeshin
It's always good practice to sign your comments. An informative summary is good too. The info you're looking for is on page 219 of the Sidereals book, half way down the left column, under the heading Precomputed Horoscopes and Preplanned Fate, where it notes that every 3 successes on the appropriate rolls yield +1 die to the effect roll. More detail is given on page 209, Destiny Planning and Precomputed horoscopes. To summarize, the successes from the actual astrology roll (referred to as the effect roll) are not divided by 3, but since you often need many more dice for this roll than you can reasonably expect to naturally have, you must accrue other bonuses, and most of these bonuses are limited or divided in some way.
-- Darloth
- Thanks Darloth. And sorry for not signing my previous comment, I completely forgot about it. Shame on me.
