- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Can't use personal milestones to buy new charms, and new excellencies are explicitly full charm purchases, not repurchases
A Desperate Measure (Worm/Exalted Quest)
- Thread starter Amazing Abzan
- Start date
- Crossover Superhero
I meant minor milestone my bad.
- Location
- Denial
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Surely craft 1 + excellency is strictly worse than craft 2 though? It's the same number of dice on craft rolls but craft 2 also gives access to a bunch of charms we can start purchasing.
E: Side note I noticed we don't have access to any charms at craft 1 (beside excellency), then I looked through the whole charm section and unless I'm missing something the only craft 1 charm in the whole book is the Strawmaiden Janest Exigent charm Prodigous Bounty.
Last edited:
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's worth noting that ability increases are harder to come by than charm purchases as well. I'd caution people from thinking that charms are always the way to go. You need abilities to qualify for charms, after all, and having a bigger base dice pool makes your charms better.
I'll move it back to as was than. The thought on my end was they are mechanically identical but the Excellency would make every potential dot of craft worth more. Though the rarity of ability increases makes that moot.
- Location
- New Zealand
I wonder if learning navigate might be a good option here?
As mentioned, using Eurus as a mount requires navigate and some navigate charms could synergize well with Eurus if we want to make the Wind wolves a core part of our hero identity.
As mentioned, using Eurus as a mount requires navigate and some navigate charms could synergize well with Eurus if we want to make the Wind wolves a core part of our hero identity.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The current second place plan, "Sagacity has many uses," puts a point into Navigate. I believe it is the only plan currently proposed that does so
- Location
- florida
Navigate is right up there with sagacity in the "wow they put a bunch of random stuff in here didnt they?"
-As the crow flies; Go places fast no cost
Strikes me as a good navigate charm. Getting places in the nick of time is always handy.
at navigate one there IS the solar charm
-Ship Claiming Stance; A boat you claim gains a reserve of 2 power and 2 will you can claim
But the ACTUAL seller is the upgrade.
-Ship-Self Awareness; Commit two motes, the ship no longer requires crew to sail, and will never wreck regardless of damage, it is not invulnerable but it IS unsinkable.
Combining Ship-Self Awareness and Fathoms fed spirit sounds hilarious to me, since you can never be knocked off your ship, and your ship can never sink...
-As the crow flies; Go places fast no cost
Strikes me as a good navigate charm. Getting places in the nick of time is always handy.
at navigate one there IS the solar charm
-Ship Claiming Stance; A boat you claim gains a reserve of 2 power and 2 will you can claim
But the ACTUAL seller is the upgrade.
-Ship-Self Awareness; Commit two motes, the ship no longer requires crew to sail, and will never wreck regardless of damage, it is not invulnerable but it IS unsinkable.
Combining Ship-Self Awareness and Fathoms fed spirit sounds hilarious to me, since you can never be knocked off your ship, and your ship can never sink...
Listen, rebranded Squeler made tinker ship vs Leviathan
- Location
- florida
To quote one of my players "So can I just fly this airship into people at maximum speed and run them over?"
As regards martial arts charms...
It's a shame that White Veil Style doesn't exist as it kinda works with the image of the mostly-harmless talk-y cape. If it existed it'd probably allow us to look innocent as someone mysteriously gets bruises all over themselves or divert attention when an ass-kicking needed to happen. However it doesn't exist, so Taylor can't learn this style.
That said, what are you thinking, should we work on Crane Style (defense-oriented, gives bonuses for teaching with its capstone I hear) or some variation of Solar Hero Style?
I mean, I'm not in love with this but it covers stuff we do actually want covered so it's probably worth the tactical votes and it gets us closer to the fun stuff anyway. If I read the information page correctly we can expect to get Exalt milestones pretty much every arc (so long as we keep inspiring people, but I figure that's kind of our job isn't it?)
[x] Plan: Sagacity has many uses
-[x] Buy the first dot in an ability
--[x] Navigate
-[x] Increase an ability
--[x] Sagacity
By the way, what would an addiction-cleansing charm look like? Would it require Sagacity 2 or 3?
Does this include something like "making Harmonious Presence Meditation/Blazing Glorious Icon/anima effect work over the internet" or does that happen automatically? Tangentially related, would something like God-Mind Algorithms (computer works perfectly, perfect connection to wifi, has full battery, can stunt to make mundane tech do stuff it really shouldn't like use GPS system in a car to turn on a crane) get a personal mode upgrade to extend the 'perfect wifi connection' to Taylor's audience so her message comes through loud and clear? "Normally my computer is a potato but when watching Zenith's stream it works great!" sort of deal.
The System! /joke
Pros
- They're Nazis, punching them in the face is basically a public service.
- They're based out of downtown where the still-economically living part of the city is, which will probably get Zenith the appreciation of people with healthy wallets and connections
- Strong probability that Coil helps facilitate encounters with E88 to keep stirring the pot
- I like the chance of getting Bitch to help us work to shut down their dog fighting rings
Cons
- They have a deep bench and just taking capes off the board is an inconvenience until it isn't
- A cape fight downtown can cause problems for everyone we probably don't want (Protectorate can get away with tearing up a busy downtown intersection in a cape fight but chooses not to. An independent they want to bring in house would struggle under normal circumstances to remain minimally affiliated)
- We don't have a power set to make meaningful change in E88's structure as-yet.
- Organizational charms to curse their ability to operate
- Additional combat charms to introduce them to the beat stick
- ability to detox their drug customers, intercept their gun shipments or otherwise impair their criminal enterprises
- ability to figure out where they're actually vulnerable, rather than just where they're visible (recruiting Tattletale should help with this)
- Strong probability of Coil mucking things up
- Daniel Hebert is vulnerable to retaliation
- Artifact silk vest, guardian spirit and regular mortal bodyguards ought to be sufficient for anything short of a sniper or car bomb
Pro
- A well-timed Mists of Eventide could do a lotof work here
- We would need to know when and where to strike, which seems like the justification for 'recruit Lisa/crow spies/invisible snoop demons' to me
- Their capes are difficult to talk down, but their footsoldiers are probably a fair bit easier; membership isn't entirely voluntary and even if we don't crack their innermost circle, the outermost circle, the gang members standing on street corners selling drugs or keeping an eye out for cops etc, are vulnerable to a sustained social campaign.
- Also if we can remove the gang the money Lung is skimming from businesses for protection rackets we can probably convince people to reinvest into hiring new workers or doing facility improvements to help stimulate the economy
- Training to punch out Lung probably counts as training to strangle Leviathan or something (this is more aspirational than practicable)
- Removing human trafficking is a big PR win for anyone, letting the Protectorate take the W gives us leverage to ask for something moderately big if we wanted to.
Cons
- They may recruit a Bomb Tinker if we wait too long.
- The PRT and Protectorate are unlikely to try to dislodge Lung from his roost without prompting
- There is a non-zero chance that Lung might take the field if an Endbringer shows up
Pros
- We're fairly-well acquainted with the Undersiders from a meta perspective and I think most of them can be fitted for white hats of some version or another
- Grue; give custody over his sister and he'll be a good Ward. Probably move out of town to avoid complications.
- Bitch; I think we can move her from 'villain' to 'rogue' without too much difficulty, we'd probably want to hire a lawyer to contest things like the manslaughter charges. Get her a stipend to train dogs for rescue work and set her up on a farm out of town with a handful of minders/assistants, have her show up at natural disasters with Brutus & Angelica hauling away rubble and Judas sniffing out injured and I think we're golden
- Lisa...probably needs to """disappear""" for a bit, at least until Coil is dealt with. If we can make it look like she managed to escape while the other Undersiders were getting bought off while slapping her with a Disguise of the New Face that'd probably simplify a few things.
- I imagine Lisa would be quite willing to help bring down Coil if nothing else
- Alec; I figure if we can work out a deal where he gets paid a stipend to help transport at-risk individuals to the Birdcage and otherwise just hangs out in a secure apartment playing video games and flirting with the delivery boys he'll not be a problem while still contributing to the greater social good. (I doubt the PR teams would welcome him showing up somewhere near cameras)
- We can probably get some or all of this information from the PRT due to affiliate status (Grue is known, Bitch is fairly well-documented, Alec is at least suspected)
- Going after the Undersiders indirectly pokes Coil
- They're seen as 'low priority' criminals until the bank robbery so it's less overtly dangerous to be seen tackling them rather than 'alright, now the Merchants are gone I am going to go punch Kaiser in the face'
Cons
- Pokes Coil, strong likelihood of interference
- Not making the streets safer as directly as going after larger gangs would (human trafficking, drugs, weapons, etc) so probably not playing to Taylor's Ambitions as strongly as we might otherwise be able to do
- Tattletale probably knows approximately what we did with the Merchants, she probably would try to interfere with us if she got the heads up we were looking at dismantling her little island of safety (though 'try to interfere' is not the same as 'try to stop')
- Ideally I'd like something like Know the Soul's Price before talking to the Undersiders. This is less a problem and more of an inconvenience but it still chafes a little to leave potentially strong allies on the table like this
Pros
- We can eventually have good tools to help the Travelers
- Genesis would benefit from being able to walk again and I don't think that's a repair that would be undone by her power
- Ballistic just wants to go home, or at least for the nightmare to be over. Sounds like a prime beneficiary of Hastening the Night's End or similar charm
- Krause....I got nothin', but I imagine Taylor can think of something (she's got the talky bits in her noggin and all). Ultimately all the messed up stuff he did can be tied back to 'trying to do the best for Noelle (in a very ill-advised way)', and if we can demonstrably deliver on helping with Noelle's condition that likely buys us a lot of slack with him
- Noelle is...kind of a biggie. In 2e I'd have a few charms suggesting what to do with her, ranging from fixing her mental state, seeing if we can undo the physical mutations and cement her loyalty. Now I'm wondering if a Working isn't the better way to go about it, trying to put the genie back in the bottle (or rather, drawing her dose of the Cauldron Formula out of her and back into a bottle). This is something we'd need to get done with a fair bit of study of the parahuman condition though, both regular and Cauldron/Case 53.
- Sundancer I'm hopeful we can gainfully employ as a thaumaturge, either making Orichalcum or doing some sort of solar ritual with her port-a-sun.
- We have some time before they show up, and might not show if we deal with Coil fast enough
- Dealing with them is dealing with a Simurgh plot (IIRC heavy Essence use throws off precognition, not sure if that works for this quest or not)
- Dealing with the Travelers probably frustrates Coil
Cons
- Dealing with them is a dealing with a Simurgh plot. Expect things to get rough for a while.
- Dealing with the Travelers probably means interacting with Coil in some way. Hopefully he's out of the picture by the time they become relevant
- Krause.
I'm sympathetic to them, but we're not ready to deal with their problems yet. I recommend keeping an investment into Sagacity and related charms in plans going forward.
Even if we can't get Lung to disband the ABB and turn himself in for trial (which, you have to admit, is a bit of an ask) we can still probably respectfully point out ways that he could run his gang to make it less of a blight upon society and more of a force for good. What worth has a king in a hovel?
Still, Mists of Eventide are probably the way to go though.
If we go hard early he's still fairly squishy. I just don't think Taylor has the inclination to go from 0 to Murder fast enough for that to be a go-to the first few fights, after which the combatants likely have one anothers' number and the ramp goes a lot faster. Alternately we saw good success with poison and there are demons that offer some fairly exotic poisons. If, for example, we task a demon to poison his dreams and convince him that the only balm to his nightmares is at the bottom of the ocean...well, even if he survives he's out of Brockton Bay long enough for us to clean up his now abandoned gang.
I do like the idea of a mascot (mask-ot?)/chibi Zenith, but I fear that may need to wait. Still, unless there's a more pressing need on something, I daresay our next Personal milestone can be expected to go to Craft, right?
Yeah, I figure it's more a case of 'any movement is significant' rather than 'here is a class of 20 baby sorcerers'. If we see more than one or two students at a time (for something expected to take years-to-decades of life without training boosters) I will accredit a massive infrastructure push and a plethora of promising students more than "oh dear, yon Ifrit Lord is a choosy sort that only deigns hand out their teachings to the Right Student".
Committed mote for now, becomes automatic as we improve Essence?
Taylor, get the right charms and you would not need to prevent them from relapsing, you could invent heroin without adverse effects. Also inventing the dinosaur that pisses it optional
"There had to have been less disgusting ways to do this."
"Oh, a dozen easily."
"Then why not go with one of those?"
"Tradition!" *starts humming*
I assume that the Excellency gives [Attribute + Ability] extra dice rather than just [+ Ability] dice. Even if we were looking at Finesse + Craft that's another +2 dice, and if we were Forcing it it's another +5 (possibly higher if we stunted to take advantage of ambitions). Provided we're just trying to do good mundane stuff ("This sandwich shall determine the fate of the city, best make it a good one" etc) we're rolling a very respectable number of dice even just picking up the basics.
I agree that getting more Craft helps get more charms going forward, but 1+excellency is better than 2 and no charms in my opinion.
I low key want to convert one of the ships to a 'get there fast' disaster response platform. I'm not sure how fast we can make it go from A to B but anywhere coastal (or semi-costal if there is reasonable ship-to-shore infrastructure) we can quickly move supplies within a day or two to reduce the impact of Leviathan's attacks is less damage done to the global economy. I presume we'd be able to tap Squealer (new name pending I hope) to help with it too, even if it's just "made this ship its own little port facility and made the engines go Vroom in a big way so you're not piddling around in the Atlantic when you need to be in Singapore by morning".
I figure it's a question she may have thought of already and have some ideas on what she'd need to make the ship operational and stuff.
I don't think it's impossible, but Coil would be a tough nut to crack without knowing his intimacies and even knowing them... He's pretty sociopathic. A lot of the things we'd like him to stop are very important to him.
Last edited:
- Location
- Denial
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm leaning toward crane style largely due to the relatively small number of milestones it would take, 6 minor milestones to fully learn it, and the fact that it seems to fit in with Taylor's current build. Righteous Devil Style would be nice to pick up too but it is somewhat harder to justify since it needs Ranged Combat and Glorious Exalted Bolts is right there threatening to make that ability redundant for us. White reaper style would be nice for fighting groups, it's just so hard to justify spending all those milestones that could otherwise be building up our abilities giving us acces to the best charms.
For something so focused and narrow I could see a sagacity 1 charm tbh. If "Addiction" counts as a disease or Injury then Master Physician Technique could cover it, otherwise we'd have to call on Amazing Azban to offer something homebrew.
MASTER PHYSICIAN TECHNIQUE
Prerequisite: Sagacity 3
Through efficacious treatments, the Exalt may tend grievous injuries and defeat pestilences. Commit 1 mote for the duration of treatment. Using appropriate tools, the Exalt may spend a scene treating a patient, accomplishing one of the following effects:
• Treat a diagnosed disease. Treat as a venture with three obstacles and a time scale of three sessions or scenes of downtime. Mundane diseases are typically difficulty 3, while particularly deadly, esoteric, or supernatural diseases may be difficulty 5 to achieve the same effect. Some supernatural diseases such as the Great Contagion may not be treated by this Charm.
• Treat injuries. Make a Sagacity roll with double 9s against difficulty equal to the total levels of damage in their patient's Health track. Success allows the patient to treat the scene as if it were a recovery scene and regain all lost Health levels. This may heal aggravated damage.
Body-Sculpting Essence Method (Upgrade, Sagacity 5, Essence 3): The Exalt may restore a patient to health in the time it takes to lace boots. Complete a treatment action which would take a scene in a handful of moments. Once per story, unless reset by treating injuries or disease without using this upgrade.
Body-Purifying Admonitions (Upgrade, Sagacity 4): Using precision strikes to their patient's pressure points, the Exalt may force deadly poison from the body. Spend 1 mote. As a simple action, the Exalt nullifies a mundane poison hazard's damage to immediately cure a patient receiving treatment. Against supernatural and esoteric poisons, she must make a Sagacity roll with a difficulty equal to the hazard's damage rating. Failure refunds the mote.
Plague-Banishing Incitation (Solar): The Exalt demands the malaise leave the patient's body, initiating a miraculous recovery. When treating a diagnosed disease, spend an additional mote. The Exalt immediately cures the disease allowing the patient to recover by the next scene.
The first one should happen automatically I think, the second sound like a valid kind of personal mode to me but It's up to Azban ultimately
Excellency only gives +ability dice. Alchemical, Getimian, Lunar, and Liminal exalts can choose to give either + ability or + attribute but Solars are not among those so we are limited to +ability only. Given the maximum +10 bonus dice to a roll giving +ability&attribute would probably render any charm that gives bonus dice redundant in the face of excellencies.
Last edited:
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well I was thinking-
Uh, yeah, this. I'd count the physical effects of addiction and withdrawal as a disease, and the psychological effects as an intimacy (which means you can Solar social it away). I want to rely on canon charms when possible rather than making narrow homebrew.
HPM already works over the internet. God-Mind Algorithms is not something I've homebrewed yet, so I won't speak to what a personal mode would look like. If the thread has interest in a computer use/hacking charm, I'd be happy to homebrew an Essence version of God-Mind Algorithms.
Worth noting that it's currently January. The Travelers haven't even made it to Boston yet, never mind Brockton Bay.
Uh, sure, Essence 3 making the effect permanent seems reasonable.
- Location
- florida
...isn't introducing a bunch of homebrew the point of personal milestones?
While true we should probably not expect of QM to write pages of charms and how to develop them
- Location
- florida
Well the idea is we write charms yes?
...I think Master Physician Technique would be quite capable of healing addiction?
I would probably model addiction as a disease at least. And a solar can just yeet those out of someone.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I'm happy to write homebrew, but my point is that if you're looking for a charm that does something, I'm going to look at canon charms first and see if any of those fit. Then, if they don't, I'll do homebrew. So like an addiction curing charm, I think Master Physician Technique fits, so I'm just going to point you towards that rather than coming up with a more narrow (and therefore likely worse) addiction curing charm. If Master Physician Technique didn't exist, then I would homebrew something for you to use.
For personal modes, obviously we're doing homebrew. As you said, that's the point of them.
slybrarian
Creature of Fable
- Location
- A Far and Sunless Land
- Pronouns
- He/Him
There are plenty of Essence charms, either from the Solar or Universal sets, to cover the vast majority of our needs. We really don't need to be homebrewing all that much just because there's nothing with exact same name as a 3e charm. They tend to be broader to start with and often fit under more than one ability, and frankly the 3e (and 2e) Solar charm sets are a bloated, poorly-written mess to begin with.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Right, for narrow use cases where there's clearly nothing else that fits (like going without sleep or talking to animals) I'll homebrew. Otherwise, I'll direct you to canon charms. I'd encourage people to think in terms of "what effects do we need?" rather than "what 2e/3e charms do we want?"
- Location
- florida
The homebrewing of charms isnt something that is done in essence to make up for a lack of charms. There are so many charms.
The point of personal milestones is to let the players customize their character to be their own unique kind of hero. Essence has a section dedicated to crafting charms for exactly that reason.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Right, and when people vote to use personal milestones in that way, I'll homebrew something. When people are just looking for charms to buy, though, I'm going to default to the canon charms.
- Location
- florida
I one hundred percent agree.
Also just... having an established rule set. That both the player and gm can see, and the game creators said were "fair" and "balanced" is just. Incredibly helpful <.<
I fully intend to cleave to existing charms whenever we can as well, but to me personal milestones are... just really cool?
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I'm glad to hear it! If you ever have ideas for personal modes for Taylor, feel free to share!