All of the above. "Rules for mundane interaction with organizations."

Alright well, you have to start thinking about what you need and what you want the system to look like- and then you have to try to model expected player behavior and responses. The latter is not going to be easy.

Generally, unless you have a good group, most people aren't going to be interested in having a 'side game' to play between actual play sessions. This is where Mandate of Heaven and Masters of Jade fell flat. However, that doesn't mean a side-game is bad.

So once you start asking yourself what you need, you can ask a few other questions- like what are organizations supposed to do?

Are they boxes full of metaphorical loot? (Backgrounds they can give you). Are they big movers and shakers on the world stage? Can they accomplish anything on their own, or are they game abstractions?
 
Alright well, you have to start thinking about what you need and what you want the system to look like- and then you have to try to model expected player behavior and responses. The latter is not going to be easy.

Generally, unless you have a good group, most people aren't going to be interested in having a 'side game' to play between actual play sessions. This is where Mandate of Heaven and Masters of Jade fell flat. However, that doesn't mean a side-game is bad.

So once you start asking yourself what you need, you can ask a few other questions- like what are organizations supposed to do?

Are they boxes full of metaphorical loot? (Backgrounds they can give you). Are they big movers and shakers on the world stage? Can they accomplish anything on their own, or are they game abstractions?
Honestly, I was thinking I'd steal a trick from corporate law and make them characters, if rather strange ones.

Because that's what they tend to be, usually. They're opponents or allies, they have their own agendas that may or may not actually align with any particular member of that organization, and there's usually more than one mind you have to change to move them. You definitely can't "wear them". And you can slot weird characters wherever you need them in a story, mechanically, and there's plenty of existing abstraction for characters - so playing with an organization doesn't turn into a side game except insofar as any social scene does. An organization is just one big "NPC."

So they'll have their own set of Traits, and their own Backgrounds (that, yes, you can loot), and they'll act like characters do, if a lot slower and with somewhat different rules. And leading an organization is a lot like playing a mentor, in that you have to convince a "different character" to do what you want to do.

Honestly, maybe it's my CS roots showing, but I was thinking as implementing them as some sort of "recursive character", where each tier is made up of sub-organizations. And of course there'd need to be rules for abstracting away that level of detail - you don't want to have to completely fill out ever tier of the Guild or the Realm (or the Technocracy, for that matter) - but they'd still exist in the same way that you can implicitly throw Crippling attacks on someone's fingers, say.
 
So you basically give something similar to 3E Invocations to the artifacts, and balance them against other Charms in a more-or-less standardized power level?

No. I mean, "we define an acceptable spell for characters to use which defines an acceptable statline for a superior-to-mundane magic weapon". Then, a daiklaive is a permanently instanced object of that kind. "A red-jade daiklaive" is a permanent way of using Burning Blade of the Sorcerer, which is a spell which makes a flaming sword shaped from Fire Essence (or perhaps you want a different kind of red jade daiklaive - one which means that mundane weapons and arrows that try to strike the wielder superheat if parried, which is a solid form of White Hot Guarding Sentinel which creates a golem of white hot metal that defends the sorcerer).

The number inflation of artefacts is not desirable. Therefore artefacts should have powers other than "bigger numbers". However, it is also undesirable to develop special subsystems or - heaven forbid - start giving each weapon its own Charmset. We have a stated design goal to ensure each subsystem is necessary and to minimise the amount of dev testing required and avoid combinatorial hell.

Therefore, since sorcery already requires the development time to devise weapon-summoning Charms that are balanced (as Wood Dragon's Claw is one of the sig sorcery powers), we can equate the sorcerous summoned weapons to the powers of combat-focussed artefacts. Because we are obliged to make the spells balanced for general use (since Terrestrials and mid-Enlightenment gods can get TCS), artefacts with sorcerous power-scale are also balanced for general use. They don't have to be direct buffs, too - consider the green jade blade that when quenched in the blood of your foes brings the plants and vegetation of your kingdom to early harvest (Gathering the Harvest). Consider what that does to a second age ruler.

And hey, that means a wonder of the High First Age built for a Solar lord with the power of an Adamant Circle spell is what is professionally known as "fucking terrifying". Like, "I have a spear that when thrown wipes out a city, my Hindu mythology death spear brings all the boys to the yard, etc etc" [1].

[1] Costs include having to keep the spear in a shrine to the sun and feeding it huge amounts of Solar essence or it'll turn on you and annihilate you too.
 
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The number inflation of artefacts is not desirable. Therefore artefacts should have powers other than "bigger numbers".
How do you model then superior weapons? By "superior" I don't mean outright Artifacts, but just a weapon that is better that it's baseline counterpart, such as the classic +1 longsword in contrast to an Artifact weapon like the Vorpal Blade. Special materials (jade, soulsteel, adamant...)? Superior forging technique/infrastructure? Rituals? All of them?
 
How do you model then superior weapons? By "superior" I don't mean outright Artifacts, but just a weapon that is better that it's baseline counterpart, such as the classic +1 longsword in contrast to an Artifact weapon like the Vorpal Blade. Special materials (jade, soulsteel, adamant...)? Superior forging technique/infrastructure? Rituals? All of them?
Isn't that just an Exceptional or Perfect equipment?
 
Honestly, I was thinking I'd steal a trick from corporate law and make them characters, if rather strange ones.
That's a good starting point.

Let's say we've got three main categories of things that define an Organization:

1. Stats. These are numerical ratings across a few categories. Categories include, but are not limited, to the following:
a. Size is relative to the local standards, and is used for a lot of brute-force effects (the Guild has substantially larger Size than pretty much anyone else economically, and can therefore leverage it to crush foes in trade wars). It also effects how many Subsidiaries an Organization can have.
b. Centralization/Autonomy is a scale. More centralized Organizations get bonuses to top-down effects, but penalties to bottom-up ones. More autonomous Organizations have the opposite.
c. Corruption. More corrupt organizations require additional resources to get stuff done, are easier to bribe, etc.

2. Directives. These are written descriptions of the Organization's primary goals, ideals, and culture. Directives strongly effect what actions and Organization can take: Organizations get bonuses to actions in keeping with their Directives, but penalties when acting against.

3. Traits. These give an account of any miscellaneous, weird resources that can be effectively quantified or used. Things like having wealth far above their ordinary size, having access to some kind of sorcerous backing, or being secretive. Traits allow the organization to perform new types of Actions that would be otherwise impossible, grant bonuses, or in some other way modify the ordinary rules for character interaction or Organization interaction.

Okay, so what can Organizations do? One of the big problems with having as large a scope as you want is that it can easily render–as Shyft brought up–organizations too clunky or abstracted to really function effectively within a game. What I'm going to propose is a tradeoff, one that adds some extra complexity overall, but makes for more engaging interactions within an actual session.

So, here we go:

There are multiple different ways of interacting with an organization.

The first way is to interact with a Representative. This is an individual character: an employee you come across during an encounter, perhaps, or an otherwise nameless NPC who happens to be the face of the Organization in that moment. Representatives have their stats based off of the larger Organization (with some small variation). More corrupt organizations have more corrupt employees, more autonomous organizations have more engaged employees, etc. Generally speaking, you aren't going to be getting much out the Organization directly with this: you can bribe a guy for information or such, but it won't do much to interfere with the Organization proper.

The second way is to interact as a Manager. Managers are placed in charge of some facet of the Organization, up to and including CEO/King/whatever. This effects a few different things. In the first place, Managers have a finite pool of Dice to throw at problems: over a given period of time, they have Dice equal to their Size that they'll need to divide among whatever Actions they're trying to accomplish. Better Managers can get bonuses/dice tricks applied here, but the Organization itself is a limiting factor: no matter how skilled a Manager is at bureaucracy, they can't do something with nothing (unless, of course, they can with a Charm). Depending on the scope of the position, Managers have different Actions available (someone in charge of R&D can only do R&D, someone in charge of a spy network has a lot of latitude, but doesn't control troop movement, etc.). Taking actions at a scale larger than the Size of the Organization is difficult, giving it a big penalty.
Managers can (and are often encouraged to) give Dice (resources) to their Subsidiaries. Subsidiaries are essentially smaller (as in, less Size) Organizations that are part of the bigger one, although they can have some deviation in stats, Traits, and Directives. Dice thus given are multiplied, allowing for more overall projects to be done better with the same resources. Since they're smaller, the won't be able to handle truly big projects, but they'll be more efficient at handling the smaller ones.
More centralized Organizations can have more layers of Subsidiaries but fewer Subsidiaries per level, allowing for far more efficient top-down management. More Autonomous Organizations, on the other hand, can have more Subsidiaries per level but fewer overall, with a larger multiplier effect on dice passed down, resulting roughly the same overall resources but an easier time improvising by lesser Managers.
PCs who are a Manager can try to manage up, convincing a superior to give them more resources, better sub-Managers, etc.

The third way is as an Employee, which should be pretty obvious, manifesting much more as background Dots on your character sheet.

Organizations can take actions in a bunch of different ways, all reasonably narratively abstracted (see Reign for a good reference). Generally speaking, actions are overseen by some member of the Organization, getting a bonus based on their stats but using the Dice assigned by the Manager. Actions also receive a bonus based on the Traits involved.

Thoughts?
 
How do you model then superior weapons? By "superior" I don't mean outright Artifacts, but just a weapon that is better that it's baseline counterpart, such as the classic +1 longsword in contrast to an Artifact weapon like the Vorpal Blade. Special materials (jade, soulsteel, adamant...)? Superior forging technique/infrastructure? Rituals? All of them?
wheeeee lesser artifacts yo

they be made from lesser magical materials

they be havin' teh artifact statlines

they be costing resources

they no r xp tax
 
they be havin' teh artifact statlines

Actually, probably not once these systems are implemented - or at least, raw artefact statlines won't be radically better than good quality steel. The baseline for "made of magical materials" is going to be "a little better than a mundane version" - but there's a real limit to what 'harder and stronger' can actually provide since the 'act like they're feather light when it benefits the user' is dead and gone.

Yes, if you want a massive oversized hammer that you handle like a feather, you either have to be as strong as balls, using your native Charms, or using an Artefact whose power is devoted to "making this thing light" [1].

It means that when Lookshy displays its wealth and power, it does it with legions of pikemen in full jadesteel armour that's made so it's only a bit more protective than normal plate, but much more comfortable and lighter due to the weight savings - not by being magictech Spartamerica.

[1] I have no sympathy at all to all those poor disappointed waifs who now find it harder to swing around weapons larger than they are. Swinging a hammer which weighs several metric tonnes is a privilege, not a right.
 
[1] I have no sympathy at all to all those poor disappointed waifs who now find it harder to swing around weapons larger than they are. Swinging a hammer which weighs several metric tonnes is a privilege, not a right.
Ennh. That feels like it's leaning too far to the "no fun allowed" region to me.

I mean, yes, Exalted is a world of fallen heroes, a broken age after a solid three, maybe four apoclaypses depending how you count. It's a world where the people who are supposed to be running the world are up playing the cosmic XBox instead, where Heaven is no better than Earth and only better than Hell by dint of not having Adorjan in it, a world ... well, a world of darkness.

But it's also a world where great glowing heroes run around blocking mountains with a blade of grass, and a world where - and I know half this thread hates this example - the sun is a giant transforming mecha.

It's okay to have a little silliness here and there. If "lighter than it should be" is an artifact power, it really should be borderline free - because swinging around a sword bigger than you are a time-honored fantasy trope and "let's inject reality into this daydream of heroics" is really, really boring.

Exalted's reality should come from consequences, not from the powersets. You can do ridiculous things (and you shouldn't have to shell out the 8xp for a Charm to pay for lots of them), and some of them are going to be rather goofy because they're being played by ... well, players. And then, yes, the consequences will come back to bite you. But ... mm, I want that genre and mood shift. It works better that way, moving between goofy/glorious golden antics and "turns out this world is real."
 
Tangentially, rather than tagging on bigger numbers, the best means of showing "exceptional/perfect weapons" to me is always how many ways something can be used for as a tool or equipment beyond killing somebody quickly.

Like yes, your sword can cut men deeply, but can it chop ironwood planks and remain sharp, or pry open a marble door without bending? Your large hammer can strike mighty blows, but can the head be used as a small anvil, or heavily anchor a small boat without rusting? That is an exceptional weapon, one that reduces the amount of preparation/gear you are required to lug around because being a resilient masterwork also makes it a functional multi-tool.
 
No, that doesn't make sense. If i buy a sword from a master blacksmith, i want something really good at killing, not a shovel. If anything, using a weapon like that will damage it.
 
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How many resources should they cost? Perfect weapons cost two more resources then the usual version, and the lesser wonders are even better than that.
Yeah, we basically scrap and redo the Fine/Exceptional/Perfect system, since frankly Perfect equipment is essentially Artifact-tier as-is. Fine stuff has a +1 specialty dice in a relevant area, Exceptional has two, and Perfect is replaced by lesser artifacts. Eg: Keris's Fine-quality lockpicks (when given time to work +1), or Exceptional-quality maps (Secrets of a Lost Age +1, Manses and Dragon Lines +1).
 
It's okay to have a little silliness here and there. If "lighter than it should be" is an artifact power, it really should be borderline free - because swinging around a sword bigger than you are a time-honored fantasy trope and "let's inject reality into this daydream of heroics" is really, really boring.

Do you want to balance the game around the idea that "hitting someone with a metric tonne of metal moving as if it was massively lighter but still hitting just as hard" is an easily accessible thing for players? Something that's perma-on as a free basic property of artefacts?

I don't. I want to specifically de-escalate away from rocket tag - and that means pricing "hitting you with a tonne of metal moving close to the speed of sound" appropriately as the "yeah, you're dead if that gets a solid hit" effect that it is. Therefore, you represent a character who's swinging around a weapon larger than they are as someone who's burning lots of motes to be able to do that, which means the character is quickly exhausted by that but utterly wrecks faces while it lasts. In essence, this is specifically designed to make someone carrying a sword as large as they are someone who is scary. Because that indicates they're specced for being able to cause a lot of damage quickly.

Nothing says tiny waifs can't use large hammers, but without active magic use they're going to need the Attributes to do it. 150cm tall women can use giant hammers - but they're going to tend to be built more like Olympic shotputters than Summer Glau. And people who see them can go "Hmm, Reaction + Awareness tells me that this girl is swole, she's Physique 5 and could break me over her knee even if she only reaches my chest".

Or are you suggesting that "a metric tonne of metal moving at just under the speed of sound" does less damage if it's being swung by a character rather than just being a random chunk of "fuck you" coming off the environment? Should mortals and non-combat Exalts just go "owie" and fall down like it was some floaty Monty Oum fight where everything is purely cosmetic and none of the characters feel like they have any real weight?
 
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Therefore, since sorcery already requires the development time to devise weapon-summoning Charms that are balanced (as Wood Dragon's Claw is one of the sig sorcery powers), we can equate the sorcerous summoned weapons to the powers of combat-focussed artefacts.

This is entirely bass ackwards. You define artifact weapons as balanced for general use and then any Sorcery Spell which summons/emulates the use of weapons can steal artifact stats, not the other way around. Since, as you said, you have to balance both anyway the order of operations isn't really important here.

However, one order of operations makes certain that Sorcery retains the utility of being something unique because it allows you to expand sorcery spells beyond just "effect which would be balanced as a permanent artifact with a one use cost".
 
@DayDreamer: Honestly, that seems way overcomplicated for what we actually need.

When I said "model them as characters," I wasn't kidding. Leave the "Physical" attributes for later when we actually have a mass combat system, but there's no reason an organization can't have "Mental" and "Social" attributes. Abilities include the abstracted efforts of all "assist other" actions, which may need to be rewritten or elaborated on - so an organization as a whole might have an effective Lore 5 if it has enough Lore 4 people in it, say.

Organizations have Principles and a Motivation (though probably not Virtues, metaphysically), and you play on those to get them to do what you want. Interactions with organizations usually are resolved through Bureaucracy, and precisely how you do that - paperwork with Linguistics Charms on them, directly talking to various managers, whatever - is abstracted away. As a general rule, you can't actually affect the organization through targeting any particular member - but organizations will usually have Principles that look like "Respects (Chejop Kejak)" or "Unflinching Obedience (The Scarlet Empress)", so you can target those important people and then let organization respond organically. (Use the same rules as for a character caught between Virtues or Intimacies, I think.) Alternatively, Bureaucracy Charms in particular let you target the organization-character itself, without going through that intermediary.

(Note that since Principles already come with a dot rating, you can easily have a grassroots anarchistic organization with no particular leader but a bunch of two-dot respected gurus, or an absolute monarchy ruled with an iron fist represented by a five-dot principle, under the same system.)
 
However, one order of operations makes certain that Sorcery retains the utility of being something unique because it allows you to expand sorcery spells beyond just "effect which would be balanced as a permanent artifact with a one use cost".

I'm sorry, where did I say you didn't have to pay for artefact use?

If you want to ignite your red jade daiklaive and draw out its white-hot heat, you better cough up the motes - or base it around a spell which has a duration of "until dismissed".
 
Or are you suggesting that "a metric tonne of metal moving at just under the speed of sound" does less damage if it's being swung by a character rather than just being a random chunk of "fuck you" coming off the environment? Should mortals and non-combat Exalts just go "owie" and fall down like it was some floaty Monty Oum fight where everything is purely cosmetic and none of the characters feel like they have any real weight?
Honestly? Maybe they should. Lethality's already a massive problem in Exalted. Turn it down five notches and give everyone who matters - anyone who you bother to represent with health levels instead of "it's an extra" - have animesque durability - represented either by high soak or just turning down the damage on warhammers and whatnot. You can keep most of the medieval "holy shit being a mortal sucks" feel just by keeping the painful recovery rules and making infection and disease nasty.
 
When I said "model them as characters," I wasn't kidding. Leave the "Physical" attributes for later when we actually have a mass combat system, but there's no reason an organization can't have "Mental" and "Social" attributes. Abilities include the abstracted efforts of all "assist other" actions, which may need to be rewritten or elaborated on - so an organization as a whole might have an effective Lore 5 if it has enough Lore 4 people in it, say.

Organizations have Principles and a Motivation (though probably not Virtues, metaphysically), and you play on those to get them to do what you want. Interactions with organizations usually are resolved through Bureaucracy, and precisely how you do that - paperwork with Linguistics Charms on them, directly talking to various managers, whatever - is abstracted away. As a general rule, you can't actually affect the organization through targeting any particular member - but organizations will usually have Principles that look like "Respects (Chejop Kejak)" or "Unflinching Obedience (The Scarlet Empress)", so you can target those important people and then let organization respond organically. (Use the same rules as for a character caught between Virtues or Intimacies, I think.) Alternatively, Bureaucracy Charms in particular let you target the organization-character itself, without going through that intermediary.

(Note that since Principles already come with a dot rating, you can easily have a grassroots anarchistic organization with no particular leader but a bunch of two-dot respected gurus, or an absolute monarchy ruled with an iron fist represented by a five-dot principle, under the same system.)
What exactly do Principles do, and how does that effect the organization? What timescale do things resolve at?

Like, what you're describing doesn't seem to solve a lot of the core issues with an Exalted-scale bureaucracy system, which is that it still basically resolves to "guess on your own how hard an action will be, how many resources it'll require, how the internal politics might shake out, and what the repercussions will be." It makes some sense for the use case of "PCs are interacting with an external organization," where they'll need to figure out the internal politics and manipulate accordingly, but I have no idea how this system would work out for PCs who end up in charge of an organization, especially if they have a billion dice to throw at Bureaucracy.
 
I'm sorry, where did I say you didn't have to pay for artefact use?

If you want to ignite your red jade daiklaive and draw out its white-hot heat, you better cough up the motes - or base it around a spell which has a duration of "until dismissed".

...okay? But that doesn't actual address my problem with your idea at all. (Hint, its very little to do with mechanics.)

Further, this makes Sorcery even less useful. Since apparently every single spell can be emulated with a Thing. Which, apparently, you can acquire without spending XP because I presume you can craft them. In which case being a Sorcerer is distinctly suboptimal on top of being bland.
 
Further, this makes Sorcery even less useful. Since apparently every single spell can be emulated with a Thing. Which, apparently, you can acquire without spending XP because I presume you can craft them. In which case being a Sorcerer is distinctly suboptimal on top of being bland.
... uh

if you are going to make a solid-state spell in the form of a sorcerous artifact that has the same effects

then generally, right

you need to actually know the spell
 
Or are you suggesting that "a metric tonne of metal moving at just under the speed of sound" does less damage if it's being swung by a character rather than just being a random chunk of "fuck you" coming off the environment?
Umm... Yes? Exalted draws hard differences between environmental vs. directed phenomena. There's a Survival Charm that would let you Riverdance in the middle of a blast furnace no problem, but wouldn't protect you from having some asshole put out a cigar on your forearm.

I'd be more interested in seeing someone think up interesting fluff and knock-on effects of this than just rip it clean out of the setting by forcing players to go burn out their entire mote pool just for a few turns of Hammertime, while also potentially encouraging DMs using your system to give enemy NPCs fuckhuge weapons that pulp PCs with every swing because, for those guys, going nova is a much more viable option since they're not expected to survive the battle anyway.
 
So, this forum wasn't the only place I posted my War charms to for feedback, and one of the more interesting bits I got was from the lone(!) respondent on the onyx path forums: they said that Mod-Dispersing Rebuke and Courage Shattering Clarion felt a little divorced from the Solar's actions. Now, the low-hanging fruit solution is to just add a clause along the lines of 'When the Solar or a battlegroup acting on her orders ...', but I'd like to find something a little more interesting than that if I can.

Now, when I was first kicking around ideas for those two charms, I was originally looking at something like a special social attack vs the target's Resolve that dealt Magnitude damage (representing enemy soldiers running for their lives), but went with the version from my post because I was worried it would feel more like it should be a Presence charm than a War charm. I still like the idea though, and it rather thoroughly addresses the 'wait, what is my character actually doing, here' question.

I've got a few more ideas of how to go about it now than I did the first time around, so I'm gonna knock around a few ideas and see if one of them goes someplace interesting. There is one other thing I'm a little worried about, and it's that the social attack direction might also end up feeling too much like an actual, direct attack which seems like it'd be out of place for War.

So, like I said, I'm gonna bat around some ideas, but do you guys have any thoughts or feedback?
 
... uh

if you are going to make a solid-state spell in the form of a sorcerous artifact that has the same effects

then generally, right

you need to actually know the spell

Ah. So ARTIFACTS are a complete waste of time. If you can cast the spell on demand already what possible benefit is there to being able to do the same thing but with much more expensive reagents?

Look, I understand where you are coming from. Wanting to reduce combinatorial hell is why I came up with my Martial Arts = Innate Artifacts idea.

But for me, Sorcery is not meant to be a combat power. It was never meant to be a combat power. You don't get to play a 'combat mage' in Exalted. No, neither a D&D Wizard nor Nanoha Takamaichi are valid character concepts for the game. Sorry, Exalted does not have to be all things to all people and some character concepts just are not going to be supported.

If you want to be a guy who fights you use Charms, and you fight in a way that resonates with your origin (Solars fight like Solars, Dragonblooded fight like Dragonblooded, and so on). If you don't want to fight like a Solar, don't play a Solar. It's as simple as that. And no, you don't get a magic way of exceeding your limits like some version of Samuel Haight. Queen K'tula was a wretched failure who twisted and deformed herself and accomplished nothing more than making herself miserable. Solars are allowed to have limits and to be massive fuck ups.

Sorcery exists in my setting to allow you to accomplish large scale things that are non-thematic (but not exclusive to the themes of another splat) for your splat and can't be codified into Charms. Charms should be snappy, singular effects that express simple concepts. If your Charm has more than three paragraphs of text, its probably not a good Charm. Generally when you engage Sorcery you are engaging entire new subsystems based around the spell to do stuff that is thematic to the genre of Exalted but not necessarily to the thematics of any individual origin. Summoning Demons, for example, is very thematic but not one splat should have exclusive access to it. The same is true for animating corpses, conjuring elementals, forging golems and so on. Yeah, certain splats may be better at it than others (and thus have Charms keyed to it) but just because you play a Solar doesn't mean you can't get an army of zombies; you're just not going to have the ability to command them like an Abyssal will.

Similar effects that should be available to all PC origins include stuff like summoning equipment (yes, I think Glorious Solar Saber should be a Sorcery, not a Charm), traveling in general and especially travel between realms, Wyld-shaping, geomantic manipulation, communing with spirits, scrying/divination/counter-divination and so on.

You can certainly have combat spells, but they should be a bitch to use, incredibly situational and noteably less potent than what your baseline PC origin would do in the situation. A Solar who wants to destroy a city should have his army sack it and salt the fields, not gesture and nuke it with emerald fire or acid rain. An Infernal who wants to destroy a city should either unleash a horde of demons or transform into a kaiju. A Sidereal should curse the leadership with bad luck and internal strife and so on.

So I reject the idea that spells should be 'balanced for combat' at all. Spells are for doing stuff that isn't thematic in a half-assed manner or having the few good effects that work well with your splat powers. Spells are for the general toolkit of High Fantasy Magic that every PC origin should have access to and not be exclusive to one type. They should be weaker than Charms, more inconvenient and encourage PCs to act in strange and disquieting ways.
 
Ah. So ARTIFACTS are a complete waste of time. If you can cast the spell on demand already what possible benefit is there to being able to do the same thing but with much more expensive reagents?
I'm curious about this world of yours where:

a) everyone is a sorcerer, and
b) the only way to get artifacts is by crafting them yourself.

Please elaborate! It sounds fascinating. Can you go into more detail on the reasons why there aren't Dragonblooded craftsmen making Cherub Shrines for Realm officers who, shockingly, aren't sorcerers and don't or can't learn Sorcery, but don't need or want to because all they need is Infallible Messenger to communicate and coordinate with other regiments? How about those Sapphire or Adamant-scale artifacts in ancient tombs? Are they all just sort of... missing, presumed gone? There's no situation where a player might just prefer to have an Artifact than learn the spell, as a mechanical difference, because their character is a warrior rather than a sorcerer and they're only interested in that one effect?

tl,dr: much strawman, very false dichotomy, wow
 
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