Exalted has this lovely mix of crunch and flavor. I like the munch, I enjoy it, but there are definitely points where I'd like Exalted to run faster. I want combat to be more cinema and less dice-tallying. I want the system to connect to the genre a bit better. And I want it to help me resolve conflicts, because I am into that.
Thus, this mod. It's mildly inspired by Nobilis, vaguely Fair Folk-ish, and borrows some from another system my friend and I designed. It needs some work, but it's playable.
Standard disclaimer: This is not going to be all things to all people at all times. It isn't even all things to me at all times. It's an interesting restructuring of the game which will work for some games and play-styles and not others. (Not applicable in California, Oregon, or Tajikstan. Contents may have settled during shipping, and so forth.)
You can play with this mod in two ways.
The first option is to play it without dice. Stunt points for actions are compared directly. Tactics under this scheme are all about resource management.
The second option is to play with dice. Here, wherever I say “stunt points,” read “stunt dice.” Stunt dice are always rolled opposed, using Exalted's standard dice semantics. Tactics under this scheme mix a bit of risk mitigation with resource management. Also, if you're playing this way, only ever roll stunt dice when they're opposed. Penalties and stunt die costs are simply removed from the character's pool.
All characters have six basic traits: Compassion, Conviction, Temperance, Valor, Essence, and Heart.
Virtues are primary traits now, because kung-fu is about the punch, but also about the emotion behind the punch. Essence is unchanged; characters have an Essence pool, as per normal. Heart is Willpower, cosmetically renamed because “willpower” makes me think of not eating chocolate-chips, as opposed to taking over the Realm.
Virtues come out a bit differently under these rules. They don't denote “how much” of that virtue a character has, but rather, how important their manifestation of that virtue is to Creation (alternate reading: “how significant it is to the story.”) It's possible for a deeply empathizing, really very nice person to have a Compassion of 1. Conversely, Hands of Ash and Blood, the infamous Abyssal torturer, has a Compassion of 5. The way he understands and interacts with other sentient beings is very, very important to his story—it additionally happens to be not very nice. Players define the nature of each of their character's Virtues.
Each Virtue has its own damage track. Characters get two damage boxes for each dot they have in a Virtue. Additionally, dots of a Virtue are assigned to character elements, depending on the Virtue:
Intimacies, Desires, Sins, and Ideals all have ratings, from one to five. You can assign dots however you like. For example, a character with Conviction 5 could have one five-dot Desire or five one-dot Desires. There are reasons to do each, as you will see.
Essence and Heart work just like they do in normal Exalted. Characters have an Essence pool, calculated normally, and a Heart points, which can be spent in the familiar ways.
Excellencies are things that Exalts… excel at. They don't have to match up with standard Exalted abilities, though they can (they can also be more flavorful and character-specific). Excellencies have a rating, up to a maximum of the character's Essence.
Charms are taken straight out of the Exalted books. They retain their Essence and Charm prerequisites, but no others. (Naturally, they change in other ways to fit the system as well.)
Remain unchanged, with the exception of Artifact. Artifact doesn't exist. Rules for creating Artifacts are detailed later.
Use the standard rules. Give character half as many points in Excellencies as they have starting skill points. Points in Excellencies cost four freebie points each.
Under these rules, conflicts of fists and swords are resolved with the same mechanics as debates and games of gateway. The stake each character has in a conflict should be defined before it starts.
Before your character joins a conflict, we have to answer a couple of questions. The first question is: why? Find a Desire, Intimacy, Sin, or Ideal which supports your character in this conflict. It becomes your Drive in this conflict, and the Virtue it's associated with becomes your Core Virtue for the conflict.
The damage track for your Core Virtue is your damage track for the conflict. Your other Virtues will come into play, as well.
The second question is: what's at stake? What's your character trying to achieve? What happens if she wins? What happens if she loses? Figure this out before you start.
Players narrate their Stunts in the familiar way, and then support their narration with Stunt Points. By default, all Stunts start with a number of Stunt Points equal to an appropriate Virtue, as defined by the nature of the Stunt:
The Virtue used for a Stunt is independent of a character's Core Virtue for the conflict.
Additionally, as part of a Stunt, players may opt to:
Players of Exalted characters can also enhance their Stunts magically:
Exalts are not limited in how much they can empower their Stunts through magic.
There's no initiative or join battle system—it isn't necessary. Play simply starts with the initiator of the conflict, and moves clockwise (or, if you prefer, counter-clockwise) around the table.
On their turn, each player declares their stunt, including any Charm and Excellency use (using Excellencies does not count as Charm use), and collects SP. You can then spend this SP in two ways:
Every character performs one Stunt per turn. The SP from this Stunt may be split up however the player wishes: she can defend herself from each attack leveled at her exactly as much as she wants, and she can split her SP among however many attacks and targets she wants to. If she performs a 50SP Stunt, she can attack 50 targets with a measly 1SP pat, or attack one target with a devastating 50SP blow (she can also attack that one target with 50 measly 1SP pats, if desired).
Note also that attacks are resolved on the defender's turn, not the attacker's. In other words, it's impossible to find yourself in a situation where you've spent all your SP, someone attacks you, and there's nothing you can do about it. (You can, however, find yourself in a situation where you're being attacked, and you can't perform a powerful enough Stunt to repel all the attacks. This is why Exalts take damage.)
If your character's damage track goes to zero, you have two options. Option one: give in and lose the conflict. Whatever you decided your character was trying to achieve in the conflict, she doesn't get.
Alternately, you can burn a permanent point of your Core Virtue for the conflict, and keep fighting. Your damage track refills, albeit to two fewer boxes than before. Remember how you picked a Drive (an Intimacy, Desire, Sin, or Ideal) to base your participation in the conflict on? This is why. If you chose to burn a point of your Core Virtue, your Drive takes the hit, its value dropping by one. Narrate what this means:
Note that while the specific effects a psychological, there is almost certainly a physical event (especially in a fight) which pushes a character over the edge. Maybe one of the children she's trying to protect is struck down—watching it happen, she draws away, unable to deal with the scene. And then draws up her sword once more.
If your Drive is valued at one point, and you choose to continue fighting, you lose the drive completely. Cross it out (but do not erase it). This sends you into limit break. Disengaging from the conflict is no longer an option, until your Core Virtue is knocked down to one permanent point.
If a character is knocked down to zero permanent points in any Virtue, they are either dead, insane, enchanted, or in some other way probably unplayable.
Damage boxes heal naturally at a rate of one level per scene. If the character succeeds in a conflict to re-assert that Virtue, she is healed completely. Additionally, after coming out of a Limit Break, characters are healed of all damage (This does not restore permanent Virtue loss. That's why it's called “permanent”).
Artifacts are written up like small characters. They have Virtues and Charms, but nothing else. Additionally, there are two costs associated with an Artifact:
You buy Artifacts by spending points from your character on the Artifact, instead. As Artifacts are almost always fairly specialized, you get a slight bonus: you get two Artifact Virtue points for every point of Virtue (or freebie equivalent) spent on the Artifact. Additionally, every 1 mote of attunement cost, 1 mote of draw cost, or 3 SP of draw cost grants one freebie point to spend on the Artifact.
You don't have to fully flesh out the elements of an Artifact's Virtues (though you can!). Instead, provide a short description on how the Artifact manifests that Virtue.
Interestingly, Spells are treated just like Artifacts.
Stances represent perhaps the most ethereal Artifacts. They are similar in nature to Martial Arts Forms—indeed, Stances often contain Martial Arts Form charms. The best description for them is that they are modes of existence—philosophies which may be wielded as well as a blade. Stances often have high Draw costs and low Attunement costs.
A note on Charms: If a Character has an Artifact which contains certain Charms, she may learn other Charms which require as prerequisites ones contained by her Artifact. However, this ties her knowledge of those Charms to the Artifact itself. If the Artifact is a physical object, and it is lost, she will lose access to those Charms until she learns the prerequisites.
A note on disarming: Artifacts (be they daiklaves or spells) can be disarmed. When an attack is made, the attacker simply specifies that it's a disarming blow. If the attack succeeds, the artifact is considered disarmed, and the defender must pay the Draw cost to re-arm it.
These are loose rules. Charms will probably have to be individually adapted, at least slightly. In general:
Quickly coming up with stats for bunches of mooks and the like is easy. Pick a number between about 10 and 50, and call it the threat's Intensity. This is the most SP a threat can spend in a turn. Now pick up a bunch of counters: say, between 50 and 300 (you might consider having 10s counters and 1s counters). This is the threat's longevity—when it's out of SP, it's done.
If the PCs start tearing through a threat, toss another one their way, at the same time.
Raksha do not have Virtues, they have Graces. These are similar, but slightly different: the difference is explained in the Fair Folk book. Treat Shaping combat as a conflict using these rules. When interacting with normal actions, assume that the SP a Raksha spent on a given Shaping is the number of SP that Shaping has, as a mortal threat. The Raksha may choose how to spend these SP in the cycle of normal actions.
Sidereal Astrology is a longer topic, which I'll cover somewhere else.
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