PreviewMaterial/PlayersGuideOverview
A breakdown of its contents:
Introduction: Includes a lexicon, and specifics about heroic mortals, interestingly enough. Moreover, it includes a sidebar that is absolutely hysterical entitled "I Have Moral Objections," written to those who consider the concept of a game where some people are mechanically better than others to be evil and fascist.
Chapter One: Merits & Flaws: Some twenty plus pages of Merits and Flaws, some of which are really cool, some of which are sort of mediocre. I really like the ones that modify backgrounds (such as Hidden Manse or Damaged Artifact).
Chapter Two: The God-Blooded: A chapter that gives a run-down both setting and mechanics-wise on the god-blooded, which is a general term for those who are born from the union between mortals and high-Essence creatures of some kind. There are splats for God-Blooded, Demon-Blooded, Ghost-Blooded, Half-Castes (the children of mortals and high Essence Exalts; they are Golden Children, Moon-Born, Star-Blessed, Shadewalkers and Dragon-Touched) and Fae-Blooded.
There are specialized Backgrounds (Inheritance and Patron) and Merits & Flaws for them, as well as some rules additions to Spirit Charms to take God-Blooded into account. There are also some flat-out new Charms, including a new Path of Arcanoi that allow Ghost-Blooded to mimic the traits of true undeath. So. Cool.
Finally, there are rules for Akuma, the Resplendent Slaves of the Yozi, including the Investiture of Infernal Glory and a sidebar on the Broken-Winged Crane. THe chapter ends with Notable God-Blooded in Creation, and a bit of Storytelling Advice for the children of the gods.
Chapter Three: Mortal Thaumaturgy: This chapter gives us Cool Stuff on mortal sorcery. It begins with a setting history and current-day organizations of mortal sorcerers. Then, we have a selection of splats: Scavenger Lord, Savant, Village Shaman, Black Cultist and Holy Man. This is followed by character creation, including unique Merits & Flaws for mortal sorcerers.
The second half of the chapter is all about Thaumaturgy. There is an interesting section on sources of Essence for mortals, including some new Charms that allow Exalts to imbue mortals with some of their motes of Essence in order to make it possible for those mortals to work thaumaturgy without resorting to their own health levels, temporary Willpower points or blood sacrifice.
Mortal Thaumaturgy is broken down into three types: Arts (things that anyone can do with Occult, but sorcerers are often better at thanks to practice and XP), Sciences (magics that can be performed once the sorcerer has purchased the formula or procedure, for 1 XP each) and Rituals (specific rites that must each be purchased, performed with Occult).
Chapter Four: The Dragon Kings: Brilliantly written, this section gives a history of the rise and fall of the Dragon Kings (including their role in the original faith of the Unconquered Sun), as well as rules for playing them. There is also a Solar Performance Charm here used to give Essence 1 Dragon Kings a second dot in Essence, making their normal spiritual evolution from mindless beasts into aware sentients happen much more rapidly than normal.
This chapter also includes modern-day hold-outs of Dragon Kings and even touches on Dragon Kings in Yu-Shan. THen, we get a section that describes how the advancement in Essence evolves Dragon Kings, step-by-step, followed by splats for each of them (Pterok, Raptok, Anklok and Mosok). Also included are character creation rules, followed by the Ten Paths of Prehuman Mastery and Artifacts of the Dragon Kings.
Chapter Five: The Exalted: This chapter focuses on the Exalts we already know. It begins with a section titled Exalted Power Combat that is basically a wonderful grab bag of rules updates. This section really goes a long way towards applying the mechanics skill that our developers and writers have developed with experience and multiple sourcebooks to the rules in the core rulebook.
Combat is clarified and improved in a number of ways. There is even a chart that includes all of the martial art styles and what weapons are considered to be "unarmed attacks" with eacch of them (Snake Style gains the seven-section staff and hook swords).
Equipment is changed somewhat, so that hand-to-hand weapons now have a Rate, and some weapons are considered to be Piercing (that is, they halve worn armor). Hearthstone Bracers now grant a 3-die bonus to all Dodge attempts by the wearer, regardless of what kind of metal they are made of, and in addition to their other, normal effects.
A ton of Charms are updated, from many of the Solar charms that give extra actions being changed to a flat cost of 3 motes/attack to things like Feather-Foot Style and Spider-Foot Style durations being a scene. There are four pages of these changes, and they are drawn from a huge variety of sources.
After this section is the Mail & Steel, which is the mass combat rules. Units are basically considered characters and each unit has specific traits.
The chapter then touches on Martial Arts, including the Trinity of Perfected Understanding (basically applying the concept of three "Circles" to Martial Arts). INcluded are details of the Three Initiations, including the one that allows mortals to use supernatural martial arts.
There are a couple of new styles: Crimson Pentacle Blade Style (a polearm, spear and shield Terrestrial style which includes "directional postures," specialties that exist only while the character is using the martial art form), Celestial Monkey Style (a totally unarmed Celestial style that forbids its practitioners from having Virtues above 3, but - at its apex - permits the practitioner to wear any armor and still use the style), Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style (a fan, sash, cape and whip-using Celestial style that fascinates and uses seemingly harmless things as deadly weapons) and the Righteous Devil Style (a flame-discharge weapon using Celestial style that augments the capabilities of firewands and the like using Celestial fire).
The chapter ends with a small section on Elder Exalts, including a "downtime" XP award.
Appendix: Writing in the Age of Sorrows: This is the appendix that details the styles of writing in the setting, including several pages of ideographs that represent sounds ("cha", "fu", "le", etc) in both High Realm and Low Realm.
There we go! :-)
- Oakthorne at RPG.net
