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General Exalted Thread

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Sanctaphrax said:
The Godbound Art Pack is out and free.
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Can't you make a thread for it? This is the Exalted thread. I appreciate that the two games share similarities and may appeal to the same people, but it's still a different game. Presumably if you made a Godbound thread the people who are interested here would be interested there.

Godbound may be cool and all, but it's not "the other Exalted Third Edition." It should go in its own thread rather than keep being mentioned here.
 
Omicron said:
Can't you make a thread for it? This is the Exalted thread. I appreciate that the two games share similarities and may appeal to the same people, but it's still a different game. Presumably if you made a Godbound thread the people who are interested here would be interested there.

Godbound may be cool and all, but it's not "the other Exalted Third Edition." It should go in its own thread rather than keep being mentioned here.
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Thank you!

(was trying to think of a polite way to say it)
 
Okay, maybe more helpfully: I've taken stabs at civ-management systems, which were... not overly well received elsewhere. For entirely legitimate reasons, I think, and I need to revisit those at some point.

But one of the things that's been pointed out upthread is that you might not want all that - you might just want some sense of what 10 successes on a Bureaucracy roll buys you. So suppose you did something like this:

All Bureaucracy rolls to get an organization to perform some task start at Difficulty 1, modified by the tables below:

How well does it fit with the bureaucracy?
  • +0: Directly in line with the bureaucracy's purpose. (Getting a driver's license from the DMV. Paying a fine. Filing your taxes.)
  • +2: Tangential to the bureaucracy's purpose, or uncomfortable for the bureaucracy. (Getting a payout from your health insurance company. Acquiring additional funding for your committee. Revising your taxes to show that you overpaid.)
  • +4: Contrary to the company's purpose, or actively contrary to the Intimacies of most of its members. (Convincing the IRS that, despite your relative wealth, they should actually pay you money. Using the money in a fund to fight hunger to instead pay for your crop subsidies. Repurposing a committee intended to revise your nation's charter of government to, instead, invent a new government out of whole cloth.)
How much work/how expensive is it?
  • +X, where X is the Resource value of the thing being affected.
Alternatively, for actions that don't make sense as a Resources expenditure:
  • +0: things requiring only trivial effort by a single clerk.
  • +1: things requiring the work of a person or two.
  • +2: things affecting up to a few dozen people - a single Guild branch office, say.
  • +3: things affecting up to a hundred bureaucrats - the government of a medium-sized city, say.
  • +4: things affecting a thousand or more bureaucrats - a major reorganization of the government of Nexus, say.
  • +5: things affecting tens of thousands of bureaucrats - cutting House Cynis out of the Realm bureaucracy, say.
  • +6: things affecting hundreds of thousands or millions of bureaucrats - reforming heaven, say.
How sensible is the bureaucracy?
  • -1: A small, well-organized, highly-efficient team.
  • +0: An ordinary bureaucracy.
  • +1: A corrupt, bloated bureaucracy.
  • +2: A byzantine, unnavigable bureaucracy.
  • +3: Yu-Shan.
How involved will you be in making sure the thing gets done?
  • -1: Constant supervision and involvement, such that it would be difficult for you to focus on other things.
  • +0: Available.
  • +1: Absent.
Those factors give you a base difficulty: 1 + (some modifiers). That difficulty also tells you how long the task will take to resolve, if the roll succeeds:
  • 1 or less: Instant.
  • 2: A few minutes.
  • 3: A few hours.
  • 4: A few days.
  • 5: A few weeks.
  • 6: A few months.
  • 7: A few seasons.
  • 8: A few years.
  • 9: A few decades.
  • 10: A century.
  • 11: Several centuries.
  • 12+: An Age.
One option for extra successes would be to accelerate these results - say, move one step up the time ladder for every three extra successes on your roll. And of course, there are going to be two basic caveats: (1) a bureaucracy can't provide more resources than it has, and (2) a bureaucracy needs a reason to listen to you before it'll do the thing you're shooting for. That might be your chance to use your overwhelming social skills to get a foot in the door ("Listen, you don't know me, but give me five minutes and I'll save you five hundred obols a year"), or it might be that you're the legit leader of the organization (or at least have the ear of the guy who is) - but no, "I roll Int + Bureaucracy to get the Guild to dissolve, which they do despite having no idea who I am."

So, for some quick examples:
  • Getting a driver's license: Base 1, in line with the purpose of the DMV (+0), costing resources 1 at most (+1), requiring me to be available (+0), from a typical bureaucracy (+0): difficulty 2, requiring a few minutes.
  • Paying reasonable taxes on an income of Resources 3: Base 1, in line with the purpose of the tax bureau (+0), plausibly costing Resources 3 (+3), requiring total attention (-1), from a bloated bureaucracy (+1): difficulty 4, requiring a few days.
  • Not paying taxes on an income of Resources 3: Base 1, uncomfortable for the taxation bureau or outright contrary to its purpose (+2), avoiding Resources 3 of payment (+3), requiring total attention (-1), from a bloated bureaucracy (+1): difficulty 6, requiring months of focused work.
  • Requisitioning gear for my army from an appropriate government agency, while I command them in the field: Base 1, in line with purpose (+0), costing Resources 4 (+4), with no attention (+1), from a normal bureaucracy (+0): difficulty 6, requiring months of focused work.
  • Reforming heaven: Base 1, contrary to Intimacies of those involved (+4), affecting millions of gods (+6), targeting Yu-Shan (+3), requiring focused attention (-1): difficulty 13, requiring an Age of constant effort. With 19 successes, you might get that down as low as a few hundred years!
 
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Dif said:
Yes yes, and they also can't decide what the definition of "mortal" actually is anymore, so I'll prefer to stick with the one where the low-end of the system has a modicum of sense and classification.
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That's fine, but probably not the most useful tack to take when directly commenting on the consequences of 3e rules.
 
Irked said:
Okay, maybe more helpfully: I've taken stabs at civ-management systems, which were... not overly well received elsewhere. For entirely legitimate reasons, I think, and I need to revisit those at some point.

But one of the things that's been pointed out upthread is that you might not want all that - you might just want some sense of what 10 successes on a Bureaucracy roll buys you. So suppose you did something like this:
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Hate to be a wet blanket, but this has the same excessive-codification-and-complexity issues that make me hesitant about bureaucracy systems in general.

Which reminds me, after thinking about it some I've worked out my issue with the system you posted earlier. It just doesn't feel worthwhile. It's complicated, there's an inherent decker problem, and it demands serious attention from both player and ST. Which would be fine if there was a big enough payoff, but...there doesn't really seem to be. Even when everything works swimmingly, it doesn't seem all that much more fun or satisfying than just freeforming it.

Also, I think these difficulties are generally a bit too high. Difficulty 5 lets you read by touch; ordinary tax evasion shouldn't be harder than that.

Omicron said:
Can't you make a thread for it? This is the Exalted thread.
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I honestly don't have that much to say about Godbound. But I figured people here might appreciate me passing on the announcement.
 
Sanctaphrax said:
Hate to be a wet blanket, but this has the same excessive-codification-and-complexity issues that make me hesitant about bureaucracy systems in general.
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His system is literally a bunch of charts. It maybe a but dense, but that's not the same as being complex, and having over-dense modifier charts is better than having nothing.

Liking the charts, myself. having guidelines for "what do extra sucesses mean/do" has been a fan request for white wolf games for forever. It's actually something I would like to see for all skills that don't already have a subsystem.
 
But thats functional, fast to use for bureacracy in games which don't center on bureacracy and is about as hard to use as Feats of Strength. No nested conditionals, straightforward additive lookups.

Probably stealing that for my saturday game to give it a spin and see how it goes.
 
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Sanctaphrax said:
Hate to be a wet blanket, but this has the same excessive-codification-and-complexity issues that make me hesitant about bureaucracy systems in general.
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It's a list of example conditional bonuses/penalties and example difficulties. GMs already do something like this in their heads on an ad-hoc basis every time a roll is called for. For example, that chart is more or less what I did already, with some different numbers due to different competency assumptions.
 
Kuciwalker said:
So it's easier to commit tax fraud against a more efficient bureaucracy? :p
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The system seems to be geared towards getting things out of bureaucracies, not avoiding putting things into them. If I was using this system to try to represent avoiding attention (keeping the Wyld Hunt from figuring out my Circle's location, for example) I would probably invert or alter a lot of the Difficulty scales, with Size becoming "how many peoples worth of material I need to subvert" and gaining a bonus based on how byzantine and corruptible the system is.

Edit: For reference, I like it. I think a lot of the numbers would need tweaking to be more in line with expectations of what mortals should be able to do, but it seems like a solid system to build charmtech out of.
 
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Kuciwalker said:
So it's easier to commit tax fraud against a more efficient bureaucracy? :p
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Yeah, that's legitimately a flaw of it. My intent is more that interacting with a vast and sprawling bureaucracy in any capacity is more difficulty, buuuuut that's a fair point. It bears thought!

(On the other hand: a small, dedicated team is going to also get the +4 resistance bonus for having intimacies to The Thing We're Supposed To Be Doing. A vast, sprawling, and highly-corrupt organization might not. The net is going to be that the small team is still harder to get past.)

To all those saying the difficulties are screwy: yeah, probably. Where would you crunch it down, if you were going to?
 
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Sanctaphrax said:
Hate to be a wet blanket, but this has the same excessive-codification-and-complexity issues that make me hesitant about bureaucracy systems in general.
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Wet blanket away! My goal was to put Bureaucracy about on par with most of the other Abilities that already get systems. I don't see how this is a lot more complex than most of those - "Add a couple of situational modifiers" was about the simplest I could think of. And obviously in play, people would just guesstimate difficulties, just like they do for every difficulty table ever - but at least this would give something to calibrate those guesses against.

What would you prefer? Like, I have a hard time getting simpler here without literally just providing a handful of examples, with associated difficulties and times - and if that's all you want, I mean, I provided that too.

Which reminds me, after thinking about it some I've worked out my issue with the system you posted earlier. It just doesn't feel worthwhile. It's complicated, there's an inherent decker problem, and it demands serious attention from both player and ST. Which would be fine if there was a big enough payoff, but...there doesn't really seem to be. Even when everything works swimmingly, it doesn't seem all that much more fun or satisfying than just freeforming it.
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So the next stage of that project - which depends on the stage you saw, which was flawed and needs revision - is to link bureaucracies directly to a unified sorcerous working/craft/bureaucratic project system, such that command of a bureaucracy lets you pull off large-scale public works-type stuff. I didn't post that part, because the feedback made it clear I had flaws going into it - but that's the intended payoff.

Having played a small-empire-level game, having some sense of how much of that kind of stuff you can do, and how much it strains your organization to do it, would have been pretty valuable.
 
@Irked : you pretty much did what i would have done to any other difficulty, so good job.

I would have said something more coherent/relevant/discussive, but i have this big headache right now and i plain cannot do it.
 
Anything that leaves me with less to remember on my own and/or keep track of is great!

I think the tax evasion/tax fraud example is a tricky one to consider because there could be SO many modifiers or at least variables to keep track of, so it's super hard to determine how abstract or vague you want to simulate such an action. Intent is in the mix too- are you merely exploiting loopholes in order to pay less than you otherwise would (tax evasion, which is legal), or are you straight up redefining things as things they aren't because you technically can get away with it if no one bothers to look at your balance sheets with more than a cursory glance(aka "creative accounting/tax fraud" like overvaluing assets and undervaluing liabilities, which you can help justify by keeping/paying off an "expert" on hand who deals with asset type X all the time, so they MUST be valuing things honestly, right?).

Canonically, is there a god-of-taxes?? I can picture a whole sub-branch of a game of Exalted dealing with social stuff related to tax evasion. Sorry, not trying to complicate the discussion, I really like the chart (@Irked)! I had to take a lot of accounting is all.
 
RemoteScholar said:
Canonically, is there a god-of-taxes?? I can picture a whole sub-branch of a game of Exalted dealing with social stuff related to tax evasion. Sorry, not trying to complicate the discussion, I really like the chart (@Irked)! I had to take a lot of accounting is all.
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The Department of Taxation is likely an entire section of the Bureau of Humanity, although arguably the Bureau of Heaven also has claim on the position (given that the Unconquered Sun takes a tithe of all prayer income).

It is therefore likely that there is both a Department of Terrestrial Taxation under the Bureau of Humanity, and a Department of Celestial Taxation which serves under Ryzala (the Shogun of Paperwork) who had the previous sun-god Auditor-General replaced by one of her proxies due to the power that control over Heaven's funds provides.

It is also likely that the Department of Terrestrial Taxation and the Department of Celestial Taxation are in a cold war where Ryzala has tasked her pawn in gaining total control over taxation while the Bureau of Humanity is aggressively fighting back backed by the money gods and the government gods. The Bronze Faction has split with Ryzala over this issue because they require regular access to the well-honed and functional Department of Terrestrial Taxation, which means that Gold Faction is deliberately sabotaging this even though in the long run arguably it benefits them more to leave taxation in the hands of the Bureau of Humanity.
 
Ya know, for some reason this has always bugged me, buuuuut

How the fuck would a god of Taxation work?

Like I can get Gods of Cities, Wars, Rivers, Grain Fields, Diseases, stuff like that, but Taxes I have difficulty wrapping my head around.
 
The_Reptile_ said:
Ya know, for some reason this has always bugged me, buuuuut

How the fuck would a god of Taxation work?
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... really simply?

They sit around making notes on taxation. They make records on the taxes collected by mortal nations and on tax evasion and the like, and mail the records to Heaven. They audit the taxation records and check that the same amount of money is collected in tax as is paid in tax. If more tax is collected than is paid, that indicates that numerology is breaking down and the god needs to intervene to remove the surplus money which has suddenly popped into existence or vice versa.

Gods are bureaucrats. Their job is to make observations on a phenomenon and ensure that it's happening properly - and to act to intervene using their powers if there is a problem with the way the phenomenon functions. Nothing more. Thus, a god of taxation has to ensure that tax occurs when tax is meant to happen, and report if things go wrong, acting to hold things together until the Loom fixes the error.
 
Irked said:
Wet blanket away! My goal was to put Bureaucracy about on par with most of the other Abilities that already get systems. I don't see how this is a lot more complex than most of those - "Add a couple of situational modifiers" was about the simplest I could think of. And obviously in play, people would just guesstimate difficulties, just like they do for every difficulty table ever - but at least this would give something to calibrate those guesses against.

What would you prefer? Like, I have a hard time getting simpler here without literally just providing a handful of examples, with associated difficulties and times - and if that's all you want, I mean, I provided that too.
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Yeah, that's what I want. I prefer the examples to the table for calibration, mostly because they're looser and less codified.

I think tables like this one usually take away more than they add. It's very hard for a table to have better judgement than a GM who has a few examples at hand, so they're usually not that useful in play. Either they duplicate your own thought process (in which case they're not needed) or they contradict it (in which case they can actually be problematic).

We could have similar tables for any number of things, from tracking to animal handling, but I don't think it would really add anything to the game.

Irked said:
So the next stage of that project - which depends on the stage you saw, which was flawed and needs revision - is to link bureaucracies directly to a unified sorcerous working/craft/bureaucratic project system, such that command of a bureaucracy lets you pull off large-scale public works-type stuff. I didn't post that part, because the feedback made it clear I had flaws going into it - but that's the intended payoff.

Having played a small-empire-level game, having some sense of how much of that kind of stuff you can do, and how much it strains your organization to do it, would have been pretty valuable.
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I'll keep an eye out for that. I'm not too keen on unifying craft and workings and bureaucracy, but I'll try to keep an open mind.
 
All that talk about Bureaucracy systems and whatnot convinced me to try to produce at least one mostly-complete charm tree for the Modern conversion. So obviously I chose... Engineering instead of Politics or Logistics.

I'd like to thank @Irked and @Sanctaphrax in particular; I have brazenly stolen Irked's Charm format as well as some of the text from his Charm rewrite, and I have also lifted (with occasional modification) from Sanctaphrax's Craft rewrite.

Macro-scale actions generally involve Capital, an abstract resource measured in dots that are roughly equal to $10 billion.
  • Capital comes in two varieties: committed and uncommitted.
  • Committed Capital is fixed into some particular form like a factory, or a bunch of workers and cranes; uncommitted Capital represents fungible financial resources.
  • Capital is generally neither produced nor consumed, merely transformed; spending financial resources to buy something is represented as committing that Capital.
  • Committing Capital takes a while, and can take the form of buying a thing, hiring people to build a thing, etc. - these have different advantages and disadvantages, and doing them successfully and faster is the hook for Abilities.
  • There are opportunities to gain or lose Capital, but they require narrative investment, so characters can't just repeat a mechanical process to get arbitrarily many resources.

  • Charms that boost a roll for an extended action generally commit their motes for the entire interval, and Charms that boost the entire action are committed until the action is complete (or fails). This particularly includes Excellencies.
  • Charms with an Instant duration are exempt (and will usually be Reflexive instead of Supplemental). Excellencies now have a duration of (Supplemented Action) rather than Instant.
  • Charms with a duration longer than Instant also commit any Willpower cost.

Projects represent a generalization of the Sorcerous Workings system from the base game, and also replace the Crafting system. They have a bunch of small differences from the base Workings rules:
  • Projects are first rolled at the conclusion of one interval. (Normal Extended Actions roll at the beginning, and can be completed instantly if that roll's successes meet the Goal.)
  • Rolls do not benefit from stunts, although Storytellers are encouraged to require stunts for each roll. This prevents the balance of the math from being substantially affected by small variations in Storyteller generosity or player creativity.
  • Rolls cannot be enhanced by spending Willpower for a success, because this was otherwise a complete no-brainer and also makes botches impossible.
  • No non-Excellency Charm or any other effect can ever enhance, boost, improve, or in any other way modify a Project roll or reduce a Project interval unless it explicitly overrides this rule.
  • Before you override the above rule, you should think very carefully and look at this chart to see what effect it would have on the setting.
Ambition and Circle:
  • Each type of Project will generally define what types of actions fall under which Ambition and Circle.
  • The Circles are renamed Mundane, Terrestrial, and Celestial.
Finesse:
  • Instead of 1/3/5 Finesse is now 0/2/4.
  • The ranks are labelled Reckless, Careful, and Perfect Finesse.
  • Some projects or effects can have a Finesse bonus or penalty. A +1 Finesse bonus allows a project to count its result as if attempted one step higher, and a -1 penalty as if one step lower. There are no levels below Reckless or above Perfect, so a bonus means Reckless is unavailable and a penalty similarly prevents Perfect from being attempted.
Means:
  • Each type of Project defines what sort of additional Means are available.
  • Means can never go above 10.
Complications:
  • Complications now work based off of Finesse rather than only being triggered by botches.
  • When a Project is attempted at Casual Finesse, each roll that succeeds but below the threshold for Perfect Finesse accrues a complication.
  • When a Project is attempted at Reckless Finesse, every roll, regardless of success, that falls behold the threshold for Perfect Finesse accrues a complication.
Beyond the Boundaries
  • In general, Initiation Charms for the Circles either do not exist or are not yet known. All Projects at the Terrestrial and Celestial tiers are performed using the "Beyond the Boundaries" rules.
  • The normal complication rules for higher-Circle Projects are suspended; they obey the modified complication rules described above.
  • Thus Terrestrial Projects have 3 month intervals by default, and Celestial Projects have 1 year.

  • A structure requires at least one dot of committed Capital to produce. (If it doesn't, it's not worth handling as a project.)
  • In addition, if the structure is or will be economically valuable, it generally requires an additional dot of uncommitted Capital to purchase land rights, materials, and so on. This will become a committed dot once the Project is complete.
    • Clever players can come up with a way around this by either finding valuable structures to build that the market has missed, or by managing to convince a buyer that a worthless structure is in fact useful.
    • See also: Market rules / Charms, which are Not Included In This Post sorry.
  • A structure by default is an Ambition 1 Mundane Project with a modified interval of 3 months. (This means 1 year for Terrestrial Projects and 3 years for Celestial.)
  • Most locations and jurisdictions will have a permitting process as well as a period during which people can object to the construction. In a modern nation, construction in an urban area or of a an environmentally sensitive facility (like a power plant) will require a process of at least 5 years, with an option for someone who doesn't like you to extend that indefinitely.
    • Hook for a Bureaucracy or Politics rules / Charms, again Not Included In This Post.
  • Building a structure in an exotic location such as on a floating platform or buried under a mountain is Ambition 2.
  • Building a structure in an extreme location such as at the bottom of the ocean, in a volcanic caldera or in space is Ambition 3.
  • Building a structure out of hypermaterials is +1 Circle.
  • Building a manse out of mundane materials (as opposed to hypermaterials) is +1 Circle.
  • Building a manse requires a Scientific Project (Not Included In This Post) to map the essence flows.
  • Standard demesnes are always at least an exotic location, and a Greater demesne will necessarily be an extreme one.
  • Building an N/A Manse is +1 Circle.
Means
  • Structures have a base of 5 means.
  • If you commit twice the base required committed Capital in advance, you double that to 10 means.
  • If you realize after the Project has started that you are going to need additional Means, each single Means costs one additional dot of committed Capital, which must remain committed for the entire remaining duration. Thus incremental delays incur quadratic costs.

Working on it! The general idea though is that you rarely have a project to build an item; it's almost always a project to design an item (a new model of tank or whatever). This project produces, as a side effect, a prototype; there are some Charms that encourage you to actually use this prototype and make it better.

I am not entirely sure how these will actually be advanced, but the basic idea is that vehicles each have a "generation number" and that in order to increment that number you need a certain amount of actual combat data on the vehicle (or a much larger quantity of non-combat testing). In modern terms a Generation represents about 10 years of technological progress.

Advanced Generation provides a few advantages:
  • The vehicle with the higher Generation automatically gets double-10s on damage rolls.
  • A battle group of vehicles is denied its Size bonus to Soak against an attack from a vehicle two generations or more advanced over it.
The idea here is to let Solars potentially start a Gundam-style iteration battle where each side keeps trying to one-up the other by produce newer and better warstriders.

Additionally, none of the penalties apply to regular infantry combat, to provide something of an equalizer and to encourage a different style of combat from technologically backwards factions.

And these are the actual charms, which I've split into categories. In my conversion, Engineering is a caste ability for Dawns as well as Twilights and a Supernal Dawn Engineer is supposed to be viable. These Charms are supposed to enable Solar Tony Stark or Solar Gundam Pilot/Engineer, but with realistic recognition of the infrastructure requirements.


Armed and Ready Discipline

Cost: -; Mins: Engineering 1, Essence 1
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: None
  • Your weapons and equipment are always in perfect condition and fully loaded with ammunition.
  • You can don any armor in a single round.
  • When rolling Join Battle, with a plausible stunt you can retroactively declare yourself to have been carrying a weapon the whole time.
Armored Scout's Invigoration

Mins: Engineering 3, Essence 1
Prerequisite Charms: Armed and Ready Discipline

No change from the base game.

Glorious Solar Arsenal

Cost: 5m, 1wp; Mins: Engineering 4, Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Armed and Ready Discipline

Create a hypertech weapon out of glowing essence that shines with the color of your anima.

Special: When you purchase this Charm, choose a library of (Essence) different hypertech weapons. The weapon created with this Charm must be one of them. Each time your Essence increases, you may add an additional weapon to your library.

Special: If the you also know Glorious Solar Armory, you may activate it at the same time as this charm. In that case waive 1wp off the total activation cost.

Repurchase (-): Learn a thematic evocation for one of the weapons in your library. (No repurchase limit.)

Repurchase (Essence 3+): You may reflexively spend 1a to summon an additional weapon from your library.

Repurchase (Essence 4+): You may add one artillery-scale weapon to your library, and a second at Essence 5. The weapon must be of a type ordinarily mountable on self-propelled artillery platforms.

Note: The last repurchase is worded kind of awkwardly; the intent is just to prevent someone from creating something ridiculous like naval artillery or bigger.

Glorious Solar Armory

Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Engineering 4, Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Glorious Solar Arsenal, Armored Scout's Invigoration

Create and reflexively don hypertech heavy armor out of glowing essence that shines with the color of your anima. You gain the benefits of Armored Scout's Invigoration at no cost. If you activate this Charm while already wearing armor, increase any of that armor's traits to match the traits of hypertech heavy armor, and reduce this Charm's cost by (the number of motes committed to that armor)m.

Special: Heavens-Blazing Aura: Reduce the damage of any energy-based Decisive ranged attacks against you by (greater of Essence and 3).

Special: Unbreakable Sustaining Grip: Your limbs cannot be severed, and your joints cannot be damaged.

Repurchase (-): Learn a thematic evocation for the armor. (No repurchase limit.)
Invention Implies Mastery

Cost: 5m; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 1
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: None
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: None

Enhances: A Project to design a new personal-scale weapon, armor, or tool.

Effect: So long as the motes remain committed, you may use the prototype produced by this Project with the Engineering Ability instead of the normal Ability to use that item. This only works for uses where the item is the essential component, not those where it is incidental; it would apply to attacking with a firearm or playing a musical instrument, but would not enhance a speech given through a microphone. This Charm never applies to the use of created software or a general-purpose computer. If the commitment is ever released, this effect ends permanently with respect to the item.

Upgrade (Essence 2+): This Charm may be applied to the creation of an individually piloted vehicle such as a tank, warstrider, or fighter jet.

Special: If you do not know this Charm but find yourself in imminent danger where one of your inventions is necessary and no one else is available to use it, you may instantly learn this Charm (going into XP debt if necessary) and reflexively apply it to the invention.

Holistic Miracle Understanding

Cost: -; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 4
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Data-Gathering Concentration, Immaculate Golden Engineer

For each scene spent using a piece of equipment you constructed to which you have motes committed (including motes committed through Invention Implies Mastery), you may retroactive lower the mote commitment by 1m. If the equipment is used to support a Major or Defining Intimacy, instead reduce the commitment by 2m. Upon learning an Evocation from the equipment, reduce it by 3m.

Note: the use of the equipment must be important to the resolution of the scene to qualify.

Golden Prototype Superiority

Cost: 5m; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 2
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: None
Duration: One Project
Prerequisite Charms: Invention Implies Mastery, Wonder-Forging Genius

Enhances: A Project to design a new item.

Effect: The prototype produced counts as one Generation advanced over the mass-production model.

Data-Gathering Concentration

Cost: 5m; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Golden Prototype Superiority

Choose a device you have invented that you expect to be used in the scene. This scene fulfills all field experience requirements for prototyping the next Generation of that device.

My rewritten Redoubt-Raising Gesture is half the reason I ended up doing these in the first place, because it has always bothered me that that is not a Craft Charm.

Omniscient Surveyor Meditation

Cost: 5m; Mins: Engineering 2, Essence 1
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: None

The Solar can evaluate potential construction sites at a glance.

Trigger: You begin a Project to construct a structure.

Effect: You may make the first roll immediately, rather than after the end of the first interval. This roll will never produce complications, even on a botch, and the project will never suffer complications related to the qualities of the ground it's built on. In the event that the project is completed within a single roll, it still requires half of the interval for actual construction to complete.

Special: This Charm is an explicit exception to the rule that no effect may affect a Project roll.

Clay and Breath Practice

Cost: 6m; Mins: Engineering 3, Essence 2
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: None
Duration: One Project
Prerequisite Charms: Omniscient Surveyor Meditation

The Solar's architecture can compensate for the shoddiest of materials, building sturdy wooden houses out of shrubs and glass-covered skyscrapers with steel-reinforced concrete skeletons using pebbles and sediment.

Enhances: A Project to construct a structure.

Effect: Waive all requirements for any ordinary building materials.

Redoubt-Raising Gesture

Cost: 5m, 1wp; Mins: Engineering 3, Essence 2
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Clay and Breath Practice

The Solar is a master combat engineer; under her direction even the most hastily-constructed trenches and fortifications are impregnable.

Trigger: You or a nearby ally makes a Strategic Maneuver roll.

Effect: Choose a stratagem involving some kind of battlefield fortification, trench, or other defensive structure. You may make a second Strategic Maneuver roll using (Cognition + Engineering). The result of this is compared to the same enemy roll as the triggering, allied roll. If you achieve enough threshold successes to implement the stratagem, it goes into effect in addition to any other result of the original Strategic Maneuver roll.

Note: The wording here is a little tricky so here is an example of how this can work. Alice and Bob roll Strategic Maneuver against each other. Charlie, Alice's friend, activates the Charm. Alice rolls 3 successes, Bob rolls 5 successes, and Charlie rolls 7 successes. Bob's chosen stratagem goes into effect (presuming it costs 2 successes or less). Charlie's stratagem, opposed to Bob, also goes into effect (again presuming it costs 2 successes or less). If the two stratagems directly contradict each other attempt to average them in some way (for example if one stratagem says the combat starts at Long range while the other says at Short, it should start at Medium).

Craftsman Needs No Tools

Cost: 6m; Mins: Engineering 3, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Task
Prerequisite Charms: None

Make a roll to create or repair an object, even if you have no tools or workshop. You complete the work for this roll in a few seconds to a few minutes. If you do have tools available, reduce the cost of this Charm by 2m.

Note: This Charm does not apply to Projects, just ordinary assembly.

Tireless Workhorse Method

Cost: 10m; Mins: Engineering 4, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Task
Prerequisite Charms: Craftsman Needs No Tools

Make a roll to create or repair a large number of objects, or one structure of moderate size. You complete the work for this roll in a week or less. You must work continuously for the entire duration, and suffer no fatigue penalties for lack of food, water, or rest. Using this Charm you can outfit a Size 5 battle group with basic small arms in days.

Special: You may combine this Charm with Craftsman Needs No Tools to compensate for any lack of tools.

Words-as-Workshop Method

Cost: 5m, 1wp; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Craftsman Needs No Tools

Describe up to (Essence) hypertech tools you need to complete a task in Engineering, Science, Medicine, Occult, or Investigation. These tools come into existence; you need not attune to them to use them, though any other character must do so. These artifacts may grant non-Charm die bonuses or narrative capabilities appropriate to a two-dot hypertech item.

Special: You may activate this at the beginning of a Project of any type with a duration of One Project. This provides hypertech tools worth one Means.

Wonder-Forging Genius

Cost: TK; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 2
Type: TK
Keywords: None
Duration: TK
Prerequisite Charms: Words-as-Workshop Method

TK I know that this Charm needs to be here in the tree I just have no freaking idea what it should do halp

Thousand-Forge Hands

Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 3
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: None
Duration: One Project
Prerequisite Charms: Tireless Workhorse Method, Words-as-Workshop Method

The Solar's own labors are worth those of a thousand men.

Enhances: Any Engineering Project.

Effect: Your own participation in this project counts as one dot of Capital in the form of labor or construction facilities.

Immaculate Golden Engineer

Cost: -; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 3
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Wonder-Forging Genius

Trigger: You make an Engineering roll.

Effect: 1/scene. Your roll gains a free full Engineering Excellency.

Special: If this enhances an action that lasts longer than one scene, this charm is unavailable until that action is completed. In the case of a Project this is until the next interval.

Sun-Heart Tenacity

Cost: 12m, 1wp; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 5
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Immaculate Golden Engineer

Trigger: You exhaust your Means on an Engineering Project and have not reached the goal number.

Effect: 1/story. You may immediately make one additional roll towards completion of the Project.

Special: This Charm is an explicit exception to the rule that no effect may affect a Project roll.
Shattering Grasp

Cost: 6m; Mins: Engineering 3, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Task
Prerequisite Charms: None

You may disassemble a mundane object following the rules for Craftsman Needs No Tools, taking seconds instead of minutes or minutes instead of hours (relative to the time it would take using CNNT).

Special: This may be used to create an Engineering-based gambit in combat. Used against a character, this is a difficulty 5 gambit that destroys the target's weapon. Used against a vehicle TK when I have vehicle rules.

Crack-Mending Technique

Cost: 10m, 1wp; Mins: Engineering 3, Essence 1
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Task
Prerequisite Charms: None

Work with a destroyed mundane object for (10 - Essence) hours, or a like number of seconds or minutes if you also activate Craftsman Needs No Tools. You rebuild the object.

Special: You may activate this at the start of a Project to repair a device or structure, granting +1 Finesse. The duration changes to One Project.

Durability-Enhancing Technique

Cost: 6m; Mins: Engineering 4, Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Crack-Mending Technique

Touch an object no more than (Essence + 2) yards in radius. For the duration of this Charm, the difficulty to destroy it increases by (Essence + 1); such objects also resist fire, acid, and other damaging phenomena. Any such object you actually hold is nearly unbreakable, and if the object is armor it gains (Essence) Hardness.

Upgrade (Engineering 5, Essence 3): This Charm may be applied to an individually piloted vehicle such as a tank, warstrider, or fighter jet, granting it (Essence) Hardness.

Breach-Healing Method

Cost: 5m; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: One Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Durability-Enhancing Technique

You may activate this after a vehicle you are piloting or are a passenger on has taken damage. Characters that would be affected by the vehicle's hull penalty ignore it.

Special: This Charm deactivates if the vehicle's hull penalty increases.

Upgrade (Essence 4): 1/scene. While this is active, you may reflexively spend 1wp, 3a to repair up to 3 health levels.

Reset: You successfully repair a critical but damaged system on the vehicle, such as the engine or reactor.

Design Beyond Limit

Cost: -; Mins: Engineering 5, Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Wonder-Forging Genius

You are initiated into the Terrestrial Circle for the purpose of Engineering Projects.

Repurchase (Essence 5+): You are initiated into the Celestial Circle for Engineering Projects.

Special: Even if Engineering is your Supernal Ability, you cannot purchase (or repurchase) this Charm before meeting its Essence requirements.

Special: This Charm is not presently known to the Chosen, and the Essence patterns necessary to unlock it are too complicated for it to be discovered by accident. In order to learn this Charm, a Scientific Project (Ambition 2, Celestial Circle) must be used to unlock your Essence. Be wary of complications! Making this Charm generally available would require Ambition 3 instead, and complications should result in additional, story-based requirements (a la 2nd Edition's trials for sorcery).
 
As an addendum to the above, I also converted Sanctaphrax's A Hood On Death (from Tabletop - General Exalted Thread | Page 1017) into a system in the conversion:

Medical projects are a special case of Scientific Projects for developing cures and vaccines to illnesses. Medical projects can be attempted with either Medicine or Science, but in general attempts using Science suffer a -1 Finesse penalty. Finesse in these cases generally results in some number of unwanted side-effects, although a Reckless attempt with multiple complications may result in accidental release of a dangerous or drug-resistant variant of the disease.
  • Medicines that cure the disease (acting as exceptional tools) are Ambition 1.
  • Vaccines are Ambition 2, or Ambition 1 if the disease is just a small variation on something that already has a working vaccine (e.g. each year's flu).
  • Diseases that are the product of a biowarfare program or similar and are designed to be resistant to treatment are at +1 Circle.
    Diseases from supernatural sources, such as the Yozi or certain Charms of the Exalted, are at +1 Circle. This stacks with the biowarfare bonus.
  • Diseases that operate on a principle unknown to current medical science are at +1 Circle. For these diseases Medicine also faces the same Finesse penalty as Science. (Note: if a disease would be beyond the Celestial circle, it is categorically impossible to attempt a cure or vaccine.)
  • Discovering a new principle of medical science is Ambition 3, or Ambition 2 if the principle is being reverse-engineered from a disease. The Finesse of this project caps the possible Finesse of any cures or vaccines based on this principle. Science does not face the normal Finesse penalty for these projects.
  • Developing a new disease requires knowledge of the principle on which it will be based and is Ambition 2, or Ambition 3 if the disease is designed to be resistant to treatment.
This system makes offensive biowarfare somewhat easier than defensive on the research side, thus creating a strong incentive for espionage (so states can steal principles rather than reverse-engineering them) as well as for infrastructure and procedures to mitigate attacks while they are being cured. The system also attempts to make mortal efforts to cure diseases plausible without making them trivial; the (effective) requirement to research the the principles underlying a disease hopefully represent the time and effort needed to develop treatments for diseases like HIV.
 
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