UnifiedProjectMethodology

Unified Project Methodology

Or: Projects In Celestial Essence Supported Stories (PRinCESS)

This is a method to unify the Craft and Leadership rules in Exalted Third Edition. The intent is to create something more accessible than Craft, but more structured than Leadership.

Project Rating

Projects are used to provide you with new Story merits. Projects are rated with dots: 0-5, then N/A. The project’s dot-rating is always the dot-rating of the merit level you are upgrading to.

• 0-dot: flavour-only projects. Completed without a roll at ST’s discretion.
• 1-dot: Difficulty 1, goal number 2, roll once/week.
• 2-dot: Difficulty 2, goal number 5, roll once/month.
• 3-dot: Difficulty 3, goal number 25, roll once/season.
• 4-dot: Difficulty 4, goal number 50, roll once/year.
• 5-dot: Difficulty 5, goal number 100, roll once/decade.
• N/A-dot: At Storyteller discretion.

You must already have a merit one level lower than your goal, which will be replaced by the new higher-level merit. If it is impossible to have a merit at the level of your project, you will need to replace one type of merit with another.

Example: A character has a one-dot Ally, and they want to improve to having a three-dot Ally. They cannot have a two-dot Ally under the normal rules - instead, they engage in one project to replace their one-dot Ally with two-dot Connections, then another to replace their two-dot Connections with a three-dot Ally.

If you want to create a powerful artifact from scratch, you will need to complete projects that create lower-levelled components or prototypes along the way (a 1-dot project, followed by a 2-dot project, and so on). Repairing a First Age mechanism is represented by a project to upgrade the dormant device (typically a 3- or 4-dot artifact) to its higher-levelled active state.

Supporting Merits

You may choose one or more of your suitable Story Merits to help you complete the project. These Supporting Merits will make it easier to complete, but you will lose one dot from each of them upon completion of the project.

You may offer Supporting Merits to other characters to help with their projects, but a merit can only be a Supporting Merit to one project at a time.

Project Types & Slots

There are three types of project:

• Leadership: starting, joining, leveraging, or expanding organisations. Limited by Bureaucracy.
• Creation: creating artifacts, manses, expensive items, or sorcerous works. Limited by Craft.
• Cultural: social influence against organisations with Principled Organisation Methodology. Limited by Socialise.

You may not have more project-dots of each type on the go than you have dots in its limiting Ability.

Progressing Projects

You roll against the project’s difficulty once per elapsed in-game time period. You may also roll for a single project at the end of each session (or for every ~4 hours of play), but does this will not allow you to complete the project before one of its time periods has elapsed.

Roll [Attribute]+[Ability]+[Specialisations]+[All Supporting Merits], against a Difficulty equal to the project’s dot-rating. The Attribute and Ability used is determined by the nature of the stunt used for the roll.

When you accrue successes equal to the goal number, the project completes and the merit is upgraded. Lose one dot from any supporting merits used in the project.

Complications

If you fail when making a project roll at the end of a session, a complication occurs. The ST should create a scene or segment of the next session where you deal with an unexpected challenge to the project’s success.

• If the challenge is dealt with especially well, you get a bonus project roll.
• If the challenge is dealt with satisfactorily, there is no further effect.
• If the challenge is dealt with badly, you will lose a dot from a Supporting Merit. If you have no Supporting Merits for the project, the project will fail and must be started again.

Special Project Types

Conversion Projects

You can quickly turn one Merit into another with a conversion project. The contributing Merit is removed and replaced with either:

• Another Merit of the same rating. The project has a dot-rating of (old Merit - 1).
• Another Merit with a rating one lower. The project has a dot-rating of (old Merit - 3).

Hostile Projects

You can use a hostile project to attack the Story Merits of another character. A hostile project has a rating one dot lower than the Merit being attacked. If successful, the Merit under attack will have its rating reduced by 1. You need a starting Merit that is no more than one level lower than the Merit being attacked; this is not lost when the project completes.