Somori/SolarDiceAdders

With the some of the info on ExaltedSecond, my brain decided to come up with what I thought might end up in the books.

A seperate copy of this tree is present in every ability, so Mastery of Melee and Mastery of Dodge must be bought as individual charms and any later charm must be bought for an ability the Solar has bought the prerequisite charm for.

Mastery of (Ability)

Type: 
 Social Abilities: Simple
 Other Abilities: Supplemental
Minimum (Ability): 2
Minimum Essence: 1
Cost:
 Combat Abilities: 2 motes per dice
 Noncombat Abilities: 1 mote per dice
Duration:
 Social Abilities: 1 scene
 Other abilities: Instant.

Add dice to all (Ability) rolls during the duration.

Wondrous Mastery of (Ability)

Minimum (Ability): 5
Minimum Essence: 4
Prerequisite: Mastery of (Ability)
Cost: 3 motes per dice
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental

As Mastery of (Ability) but instead of adding a dice for each 3 motes paid, convert a dice in the pool to a success before rolling.

Unthinking Mastery of (Ability)

Type: Supplemental
Minimum (Ability): 6
Minimum Essence: 6
Cost: Difficulty + 2 motes, or 3 motes per success.
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite: Mastery of (Ability)

When attempting an uncontested roll, the Solar may use this Charm to automatically succeed at the task with a standard success. When he is defending a roll (parry, dodge, Awareness check against Stealth) that is contested by another Exalt, he must spend 3 motes per required success to automatically succeed at the task. This charm may not be used if he is initiating a contested roll.

Sublime Mastery of (Ability)

Minimum (Ability): 7
Minimum Essence: 7
Prerequisite: Unthinking Mastery of (Ability)

As Unthinking Mastery of (Ability) but the Solar achieves a Challenging success. This charm may be learned for half it's normal XP cost.

Legendary Mastery of (Ability)

Minimum (Ability): 8
Minimum Essence: 8
Prerequisite: Sublime Mastery of (Ability)

As Unthinking Mastery of (Ability) but the Solar achieves a Legendary success. This charm may be learned for half it's normal XP cost.

Supernal Mastery of (Ability)

Type: Supplemental
Minimum (Ability): 10
Minimum Essence: 10
Duration: Instant
Cost: 10 motes
Prerequisite: Legendary Mastery of (Ability)

Do not roll the dice pool for this (ability) check. Instead, every dice in the pool is considered to have rolled a 10.

Comments

I'm a little concerned about Wondrous Mastery, it looks kinda like it is a generalised Lunar dice adder, but as I don't have the book I can't double check that. I'd prefer not to -- Somori

Alright, let's see: First, the general rule has been that it's harder, not easier, to do social stuff; Social Charms are to date more expensive (although longer-lasting) than combat Charms. I would say 1 mote for Combat (Offense), 1 mote per 2 dice for Combat (Defense), and 3 motes per die for Social. Wonderous Mastery of Ability is both based on Lunar Charms and really expensive; mechanically, a die conversion is not much better than a die adder; I'd suggest just pushing the cost up by 1 mote per die if you want it, or dropping it altogether (unlimited die conversion is sort of a Lunar trick). I'm not sure I understand Unthinking Mastery, and the rules are going to run roughshod over it; in a lot of places, difficulty modifiers are put in place to make the difference between a standard and legendary success, and that's going to muck them up pretty badly. Could be misunderstanding, though. - FrivYeti

That'll teach me to go off memory instead of rereading everything. I was under the impression Social got a discount in order to encourage people to use Social responses to challenges. Dice conversion seems like it should be a necessary step in going from rolling huge dice pools to saying "I succeed.", of course, I may be thinking this is a little more powerful since I tend to give out task difficulties before players use Charms. At which point, you can easily just buy up the success, even though it can get expensive. Anyway...

Basic difficulty/success stuff, you get a difficulty set, say 3 for a challenging task. If you get 3 successes on your dice you have a Standard success. If you get 8 successes, you have a Legendary success on a challenging task. The Unthinking Mastery tree allows you to get a success of the relevant level no matter the difficulty (with a cost dependant on that difficulty). For example, a Dex 4, Athletics 6 Solar is holding onto his enemies braid while dangling over the side of a mountain. Difficulty 5 Athletics roll to let him get back onto the ledge before his enemy cuts her hair off. He can either roll the 10 dice, use the dice adder or drop Unthinking Mastery on it with a cost of 6 motes to simply clamber up onto the ledge. If the same Solar had Dex 4, Athletics 8, he could either roll 12 dice or use Legendary Mastery to automatically get a Legendary success and push against the wall, swinging himself up and over his opponent then getting a free attack as a result.

This is all based heavily on my view of high-Essence Solars. They do not personally fail. Period. The only way to beat one is to force him to take an action that will hurt him when it succeeds, or to attack what he cares about most. -- Somori

Ahh, fair enough. No complaints with the high-Essence Charms, then. And social effects tend to be less expensive compared to scene-length combat effects, but they still cost a crapload (3 motes per success for Perform, 2 motes per die and a Willpower for Presence, and so on.) - FrivYeti

I agree with FrivYeti, your comabt dice adder is too expensive. It should be 1m or 2d/m for offence and defence. Adding dice in combat is already too expensive for solars really. Making it more so is not good. I might also suggest that in fact all the non-combat adders become scenelong. An instant boost to Stealth or Ride seems a little weird, for example. Possibly they should be more expensive to reflect this. 2m per dice for scenelong is probably workable, though I'm not sure you can find a 'generic' cost that suits all abilities.

I think Wonderous Mastery of (Ability) requires both too high prerequisites, and isn't good enough. The current Solar success adders do just that. They add successes, not convert dice to successes (which is, as you note, the Lunar way). I say it's prerequistites are too high because we see charms like Masterful Performance Exercise, Ten Magistrates Eyes and Flawless Handiwork, all of which add successes and all of which are low down on the trees (tree starters infact) and are Ess 1. Again, I'm not sure that you can find a generic cost, but I suspect 3m/per success added is about right for most abilities.

The following charms, I again think your pre-requisites are too high. While they do have the proviso of being 'Over and above the difficulty', the benefit they give is small for solars of that ability and Essence, who have access to the dice adders as well as success buyers. While they are cheap (both in terms of motes and xp), I think in general solars at that level would get far more mileage out of charms that do things that no ammount of successes will let them duplicate. In additiin, certainly for defensive applications, a charm that simply grants success, such as Seven Shadows Evasion is probably going to be cheaper to use. - Kraken