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Character Generatiion (And Stuff I Missed)
Sep 04, 2006 In Short. The Manual of Exalted Power: Dragon-Blooded provides detailed setting information on the powerful Dragon-Blooded factions along with new character creation rules and Dragon-Blooded specific Charms for players to choose from.
Original SA postgood Storyteller System game.I know this is a bit late so let's get right into it.
Part The Third: Character Generatiion (And Stuff I Missed)
First thing’s first! Alien Rope Burn pointed out I skipped theSoutheast, which is in fact, upon further review, adamn shame cause it’s some of the newest stuff and it’s absofuckinglutely bonkers.Whereas in the old versions the Southeast was, from what I can tell, basicallynothing, here we get some detail about what a cross-section of the two different poles looks like: it combines the South’s mineral riches with the East’s fertile land - and at the heart of it all, the Dreaming Sea, an ocean pouring in from beyond creation and some pretty damn strictly Wyld/Fair Folk territory. Everything you could want is here - crops, spices, gems, precious metals, you name it.
So of course it’s only natural that any and all city-states around here aree getting swallowed up by upstart empires looking to stranglehold this chunk of Creation. There’s empires, intrigue, Fair Folk running amok, rogue gods, cults, and monstrous, weird beasts warped by the Wyld and the Dreaming Sea.
Seriously, it kind of fucking owns. Sounds like a good campaign setting if the Scavenger Lands weren’t like, right next door.
So what are the hotspots? Well, we’ve gotKamthahar, capital of the empire of Prasad. It’s got caste and clans with their own walled compounds in the city. Reminds me a lot of Ragnarok Online PvP, actually. Dragon-Blooded rule the city, but here the Immaculate Philosophy is warped into thinking that the Dragon-Bloods are actually gods. UNSURPRISINGLY Immaculate Monks don’t like this and sometimes show up to throw down with Monks of the ‘Pure Way’, as they call it.
There’s alsoChampoor, a city cloaked in eternal night on the coast of the Dreaming Sea. It’s that way because there’s anactual goddamn water dragon ruling the city. She also runs one of the few courts of like-minded gods left - the corrupt Court of Secrets. The city’s criminal classes forming priesthoods to dark gods and undersea elementals, and pretty much everyone and their mother has some sort of divine magic to do their day to day workings. Combatting rivals, transporting goods, or just good old-fashioned brawling. In exchange, they make sacrifices to these gods, in the hopes they won’t be the one caught without godly back-up.
Ysyr is a city built on First Age ruins, full of people warped by unregulated sorcerous engines that kept the old city of Pinnacle running. These people are now attuned to the power of sorcery, but only a few of them can actively tap into and master this gift - easily identified by their physical perfection thanks to sorcery, while those that can bear lesser mutations, marks of servitude and slavery, for you’re either a sorcerer or a slave.
On the isles just on the coast of the Dreaming Sea isPalanquin, which might be my favorite of the cities. Propped up by the
Have I mentioned how fucking killer the art is recently? Cause like, holy shit.
At the top you have a temple city - full of religious types that see themselves closer to Heaven than the other land-locked cities - an attitude supported by the City of Blue Gauze, a city that trades with Palanquin and is full of cloud-folk. The city itself has nobles who have cloudfolk blood and thus a “otherworldly beauty and capricious nature.” Though it’s stated Palanquin isn’t as powerful as it once was, given the sorcerer-kings of Ysyr conquered it about a hundred years ago. At the center of the city though is a defunct gateway that’s said to lead to Heaven, but instead leads to something far more sinister - Zen-Mu, the fallen celestial capital of the ancients. Probably not a good idea to go there now, though it’d make one hell of an adventure.
Last on our quick romp around the Southeast and get to Character Creation isVolivat, a city carved out of the sea in the first age, resting a hundred fathoms below sea level, kept dry by a pump and dam system that functions to this day. Rising out of the sea are towering spires where alchemists create artificially fertile miniature gardens of Eden.
Volivat was flooded over during the Great Contagion in an attempt to quarantine the city, nomads found the city, reactivated the pumps, and found many relics and texts of the former Exalted, deciding to shape themselves in the image of the city’s founders. They call themselves ‘Yennin’, Children of Ten Fathers, and an ancient formula found allowed for the creation of offspring with up to ten fathers, each contributing to the birth of a single child. This basically allows them to pick and choose the best qualities in aGattaca-esque Ubermensch, only the best of the best contribute to the next generation, which hashilariously fucked over clan/family bonds and any sense of separate family lines, mentioned as being “largely incomprehensible to outsiders.” Because of this, though, Volvidat have some of the strongest mortals in creation. “Enhanced by the combined strength, wit, and Essence of eleven parents, the greatest Yennen champions are a match for the sorcerer-princes of Ysyr and the Dragon-Blooded warriors of Prasad.”
So, that’s the Southeast! It doesn’t such - quite - as much as Scavenger Lands, but where it sucks, itreally sucks. Now, onto some actualcrunch.
Character Creation
Like all the chapters, this one is a prelude to a story. Unlike the others, though, this is a short one-page story involving a Liminal - I mentioned how they’re sort of like ExaltedPrometheans, but this is one of the stories I actually really like, and it actually sells me on the idea of playing one of these composites. It tells of Echoing Breath, a liminal hunting down the ghosts of Dragon-Blooded that hunt the land - coming face to face with the one who fave her her own patchwork face.
It helps, again, that the art is kind of bad-ass.
So! Characters! Exalted gives us a brief primer on the basics of putting together a character for its system. To put down in words what you want your character concept to be, the pump your DM/ST for information that’ll make it easier to put together a concept for a specific character in that chunk of Creation, and, most importantly, to think larger than life. It then goes into a quick overview of the Storyteller system - though not a whole lot, it simply gives us an overview of how abilities and attributes are rated (1-5 dots), with one dot being poor, two being average, three being average, four being exceptional, and five being masterful. While the setup is closer to oWoD’s arrangement of attributes than nWoD’s - for example, Composure isn’t here, and the whole idea of Force/Finesse/Resistance isn’t applied, it plays like relatively modern Storyteller - as explained previously, your dicepool is the combined number of Ability + Attribute d10s, with modifiers from miscellaneous things like Charms and the like. Unlike standard Storyteller. You then roll those dice, and any dice that comes up 7-10 is a Success, with 10s counting double. The way the math works out on that is that, onaverage, you’ll want about double the dice for the number of successes you want to roll, barring other factors.
The first step they give you is to figure out your Concept andCaste. Figuring out a simple beat to sketch your character from. I’ll use my own character from my currently-running Exalted campaign as an idea. Grasping the Sky With Hands Outstretched (‘Grasping Sky’ or ‘Sky’ for short) is a man who called the far-western city of Onyx his home. Rising through the rankings of Onyx’s own military - to near the highest one could get without taking the long nap. Having found out the truth of Onyx’s death-based culture (and a Soulsteel forge using ‘missing’ souls from the city as power), Sky decided he didn’t want anything to do with Onyx - and became an Exalt as he was forced to fight the undead legionaires of Onyx on his way out. Now, he wanders the lands as a travelling warrior, hoping to right wrongs and ease his own peace of mind. The original concept being a Ryu-esque Wandering Warrior who had a reason he didn’t want to go home.
Now that the concept is done, we figure out the Caste. Sky’s was easy - I wanted him to be a peerless fighter, so I made him a Dawn caste, but a quick overview once more of the Solars, since it’s been a hot minute since we went into them.
- Dawn: your Fighter. Warriors and champions without peers.
- Zenith: your Paladin. Equal parts fighter and holy man, commander of armies, leaders of men.
- Twilight: your Wizard. Loremasters, occultists, and sorcerers with access to world-shaping magic.
- Night: your Rogue. Assassins and thieves, they are as deadly as they are stealthy - and there are none stealthier.
- Eclipse: your Bard. Travellers, diplomats, and socialites without equal, who can cast magic in a pinch.
Once you’ve chosen your concept and Caste, it’s time to figure out what yourAttributes are. Much like in standard Storyteller fare, You’ve given three categories, and asked to allocate each one to Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary, split among Physical (Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina), Mental (Perception, Intelligence, Wits), and Social (Charisma, Manipulation, Appearance). In Blue Book nWoD/CofD, you’re given 5 points for your Primary, 4 points for your Secondary, and 3 points for your Tertiary. That’s chump change, this is Exalted, motherfucker. Exalted gives youeight points for Primary,six points for secondary, and
four points for Tertiary. You’re a demigod among men, and you’re gonna damn well have the stats for it. As always, the first point is free. Like CofD, the fifth point doesn’t cost you double - and Exalted encourages you to take a five if it fits with your style.
Of course, I had to go into the next chapter to find this, but points for the attempt, OPP.
Then we get toAbilities, which is really where the differences between 2nd Ed and 3rd Ed start to shine. Abilities are your ‘skills’. They’re divided up in general areas of knowledge, with 25 (Or 26. depending how you count Martial Arts, but we’ll get to that much later) skills in all: Archery, Athletics, Awareness, Brawl/Martial Arts, Bureaucracy, Craft, Dodge, Integrity, Investigation, Larceny, Linguistics, Lore, Medicine, Melee, Occult, Performance, Presence, Resistance, Ride, Sail, Socialize, Stealth, Survival, Thrown, War. From these 25, you pickten. Five of which come from your Caste, and five of which come from personal preference, calledFavored. Caste and Favored abilities are important for a couple reasons. The first is the ability toExcellency these rolls, adding dice to them by spending points from your Mote Pool (again, something we’ll cover later). You can never more than double these rolls, but it works in pretty much all circumstances you would want it to. The second is that Favored/Caste abilities have lesser experience requirements than their peers - it’s generally easier levelling up one of your chosen abilities to 5 dots than the others, and charms for your Favored/Caste abilities cost significantly less, when you add it up. The book provides us with a handy summary of who gets what Caste abilities.
Now, here’s why I like this. In 2e, each Caste got 5 abilities with no overlap. This 1: Made things a bit cookie cutter with character generation, 2: Made it harder for one caste to fill another’s role, and 3: Had the side effect of making Eclipse feel really useless since they got a lot of the more “situationally useful” skills, like Ride and Sail . WIth this setup, there’s enough overlap that while each Caste is still distinct, they can nominally fill each other’s roles - an Eclipse has access to Sorcery, a Zenith can pick up Socialize and be the diplomacy specialist or specialize further in combat trees and be the bruiser instead of having someone play a Dawn. About the only thing that has very little overlap is the Night Caste’s schtick of being extremely stealthy, but even that, to some degree, can be covered by an Eclipse with a focus on Larceny. Thirdly, it just allows more diversity - picking five out of seven charms for each of the Castes, with five others favored, gives everyone in the party a wider range in terms of character expression and utility - although, it is recommended for the classes that aren’t Dawns pick up some form of combat ability or charm.
Once you’ve picked your ten abilities, you pick one of your five Caste abilities to be yourSupernal Ability. This is your most powerful ability, it’s the one in which your Essence (which is a rough gauge of your power level, from “newly Exalted” to “the ultimate demigod”.is ignored for meeting prerequisites to obtain charms. I’ll be honest, this is most useful at chargen, getting a headstart on the bigger charm trees, but maybe I wasn’t using it correctly, maybe there’s just too many charms I’ve been dealing with, but Supernal has not really helped me stay appropriately ahead of the curve in terms of abilities. It -does- let you get some sick shit early, which we’ll cover when we start covering Charms.
Once you have your Caste, Favored, and Supernal Abilities locked in, you split 28 points between them. Unlike Attributes, Abilities start at 0, and no Abilities can be raised above 3-dot without spending some of your end-of-chargen bonus points, and Favored abilities must have at least one dot. You can put dots in abilities that aren’t your caste/favored, and the book actually recommends you do this now, since it’s easier than buying them later. After that, you assign four ‘specialties’. Which give you a bonus dice on checks when the circumstance is met. Specialties can be or broad or as narrow as you want, though the Storyteller is specifically said to have the final say, and there has to be cases where they can’t apply that would come up in play. Some skills, notably Craft and Lore, come with a specialty baked in - with the caveat that you have to use that specialty for those skills. All others, you can use without invoking your specialty if you need to.
After that, we get into Merits. Merits are yetanother beast I’ll cover later, but they’re simple enough to summarize - these are often your ‘intangibles’. Special skills, little quirks, things that set your character apart from the rest. Rest assured they’re similar to standard Storyteller fair - you have ten points to buy up Merits, that you can purchase at various dot ‘levels’. Naturally, there are some that you wouldn’t expect in CofD - Cult, Artifact, etc. But there’s still say, Mentor, Contacts, Resources, and most all the ones you’ve come to know and expect.
Next, you get your Charms. The Charm list is several miles long and I intend to cover inexcruciating detail when we get to that chunk of the book. Though I guess it’s worth mentioning right now that I think Charms in 3rd Edition are much,much better than their 2nd Ed counterparts. I know there was some complaints of not being able to untangle the flavor text from the effect of the attack, but I don’t think there’s much of an issue with 3rd Edition Charms as there have been in the past. For now, just know that Charms are how you do all the most ridiculous of Exalted stunts, and you’ll start out with fifteen. This is where Supernals come in handy, because there might be a charm you -really- like that’s Essence 2 (All the Exalted start at Essence 1) that you want. Said Charm can be picked up at chargen if it’s in your Supernal Ability. It’s important to note here that if you’re a user of an Artifact, a Martial Artist or a Sorcerer, you can exchange one of your fifteen starting charms for a Martial Arts Charm, Spell, or Evocation (Charms, but for Artifacts) on a one-for-one basis. It’s pretty nice.
Intimacies andLimit Trigger come next. Intimacies are the backbone of Exalted 3e’s Social System, and they’re the things you care about, for good or for bad. They can be a material thing; a place, person, an object (called a Tie) or it can be a concept, idea, or philosophy (called a Principle). All Solars must have -some- intimacies when they start the game. At least one Defining (a core part of your character concept), one Major (not as important as Defining, but still important to note), one negative (a thing your character hates) and one positive (a thing your character likes).
Limit Triggers are the way this book manifests the Great Curse of the Exalted. The Limit Trigger is a scenario in which your character accrues Limit, which may end up making things harder later - it’s, essentially, a situation your character never wants to find himself in. Naturally, a good Limit Trigger is one that has some flexibility - enough for it to come up once in a while, but no so common that it comes up all the time.
And then, to wrap it all up, we getBonus Points - 15 for your character to spend on rounding your character out, with a handy block of bonus point costs:
They explicitly make it easier to shore up your Tertiary so that your character isn’t -completely- lacking in an area you were forced to commit as a Tertiary attribute, but otherwise the rest of the fare is standard.
After that, it talks about the static values you’ll be putting together for your character. You get seven Health Levels, five Willpower, and a default Essence of 1, a Pool of 13 Personal/33 Peripheral Motes. After that, it goes into some roleplaying tips - thinking about who the character was before they Exalted, and that Exaltation is very much a life-changing event, and of course, to collaborate with your players so that you all aren’t bringing the same thing to the table.
And that’s it for character creation! I was gonna show off a sample character created in the book (Isthus Fithi, a Night Class former assassin on the run), but I’ve been wrestling with the interactive character sheet stalling out my PDF reader for about 90 minutes now and it’s honestly not worth it to fight through, so here’s that chunk since it’s not that long to read:
Next: Chapter 4: Traits, or “Maybe we should have put this somewhere else in the book instead of one hundred thirty pages in.”
Quantum Bob
Fear and Loathing
Validated User
They should of just reused the art from first edition, rather than commission new art that reflect poorly on the book.
Can't agree. First there's the licencing stuff that AliasiSudonomo mentions. Second, having skimmed the book, the art is mostly unproblematic at worst and really excellent at best. Actually, I think the book is beautifully illustrated, and there are only 2-3 peices that I don't really like. Of course, there is no accounting for taste, yaddayadda, but really 'reflects poorly on the book'? Not seeing it.