General Exalted Thread

[azoicennead]

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.

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Your forgot the third option: they give you something solid to start from regardless of your final thought process.
I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had thought processes for determining how to handle a roll that are the same as written rules because of those rules. It's something like 75% of the mechanics I handle.
But hey, the mechanics are the same as my thought process, so they're not needed, right?

 

[Cosar]

I think the best practices is having both tables to give examples of how much certain things should be weighted as well as examples to show how you should combine modifiers as well as deal with outliers.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

Your forgot the third option: they give you something solid to start from regardless of your final thought process.
I can't begin to tell you how many times I've had thought processes for determining how to handle a roll that are the same as written rules because of those rules. It's something like 75% of the mechanics I handle.
But hey, the mechanics are the same as my thought process, so they're not needed, right?

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I don't see that happening here. The factors it tells you to think about are the ones you'd be thinking about anyway, I think.

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.

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You're very welcome, of course. I don't really have the time or energy to review in detail, but here are some thoughts. They might be a bit negative because I tend to be nitpicky and because I'm generally suspicious of these unification efforts.

-10 billion dollars seems like an excessively large amount for a single dot of Capital. Wikipedia says that there are three buildings in history that cost more than that to build.
-Requiring people to commit excellencies and other supplemental Charms on extended rolls seems like a bad idea. Building artifacts is already hard without having it shrink your mote pool by 10.
-I don't like the lack of stunt bonuses. It's no tragedy if things vary a bit by table.
-Good call on willpower spending.
-Not sure how Finesse 0 is supposed to work under 3e extended roll rules. Do you get 3 successes when you roll 2?
-I don't like the idea of Generations. Feels bad to have your gear, which is part of your legend, which you have Evocations for, etc, become obsolete.
-Some of Glorious Solar Arsenal's repurchases should probably be separate Charms, so as to make character sheets clearer.
-I don't like Holistic Miracle Understanding. Mote pool expanders are rarely a good idea.
-Clay and Breath Practice is cool, but doesn't feel very Solar to me.
-I like Redoubt-Raising Gesture.
-Wonder-Forging Genius could let you create minor magical items quickly, at the cost of having them last only as long as your mote commitment. Like its prereq, but with more flexibility.

 

[azoicennead]

I don't see that happening here. The factors it tells you to think about are the ones you'd be thinking about anyway, I think.

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Okay. And what would they do, in your mental process?
Charts like this exist to give you an idea of what they do.

 

[Kuciwalker]

I don't really have the time or energy to review in detail, but here are some thoughts. They might be a bit negative because I tend to be nitpicky and because I'm generally suspicious of these unification efforts.

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Nitpicking is appreciated.

-10 billion dollars seems like an excessively large amount for a single dot of Capital. Wikipedia says that there are three buildings in history that cost more than that to build.

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Yeah, I'm trying to figure out that number.

-Requiring people to commit excellencies and other supplemental Charms on extended rolls seems like a bad idea. Building artifacts is already hard without having it shrink your mote pool by 10.

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I don't like the way that Excellencies are basically just free dice for anything that lasts much longer than a scene. For long-duration projects I want 20 dice to represent substantial exertion not just, you know, the default. Similarly, for the rest of the Charms if the cost isn't committed then I don't see the point of giving them mote costs in the first place.

-I don't like the lack of stunt bonuses. It's no tragedy if things vary a bit by table.

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Yeah, this is probably correct. And if the system assumes a 1-point stunt then I can just raise Finesse back up to compensate.

-Not sure how Finesse 0 is supposed to work under 3e extended roll rules. Do you get 3 successes when you roll 2?

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Yes. I agree this is weird. The change was just to offset the lack of Willpower.

-I don't like the idea of Generations. Feels bad to have your gear, which is part of your legend, which you have Evocations for, etc, become obsolete.

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Maybe Hypertech (artifacts) should be immune, plus a Charm and/or mechanic to upgrade your gear if it's mundane.

-I don't like Holistic Miracle Understanding. Mote pool expanders are rarely a good idea.

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Maybe it should just offset the cost of Invention Implies Mastery then. I was borrowing from the way Surprise Anticipation Method lets you recoup the commitment cost of the Keen (Sense) Technique charms, eventually leaving them permanently active for free. This lets you (gated by roleplay using your equipment) accumulate more and more different gadgets, Batman-style, all of which you are proficient in.

-Wonder-Forging Genius could let you create minor magical items quickly, at the cost of having them last only as long as your mote commitment. Like its prereq, but with more flexibility.

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That works!

 

[Irked]

I don't see that happening here. The factors it tells you to think about are the ones you'd be thinking about anyway, I think.

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I find an actual table to help prime that intuitive pump. And I think "What do successes beyond 'average expert-level result' look like?" is a question that's hard to form intuitions about, at least for me - and it's a repeated complaint I've seen elsewhere, too.

No system's going to be all things to all people, of course, but it seems like it's a lot easier to just use the examples and disregard the table, if that's all you want, than vice-versa.

 

[linkhyrule5]

Fundamentally, the reason I want a Bureaucracy system is... well, the same reason I haven't managed to finish mine yet - because I don't even know where to start.

 

[RemoteScholar]

Fundamentally, the reason I want a Bureaucracy system is... well, the same reason I haven't managed to finish mine yet - because I don't even know where to start.

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Start with scope, whenever possible. If you can define what you want the system to cover in broad terms, you can break it down into chunks that more easily dealt with once at a time. Is managing group mechanics, like a group of soldiers lead by your Exalt, something you want your system to cover? That's one thing you can design. Do you want to cover non-violent actions from say, one branch of a dynastic House making political overtures towards another? You can work on that too. Just don't try to cover Everything_That_Is_Bureaucracy at once or you'll go nuts because bureaucracy in Exalted seems to broach/include at least 2 or 3 different topics. You don't even have to define everything at once, just start small and work your way up (or you might say, start with broad ideas and get more specific). Just don't lose the forest because you're trying to catalogue every single tree.

That you said you haven't finished yours yet seems to imply you've done some thinking about it already. What do you want to see Bureaucracy handle or do in games you play in? Like what is missing that you want to see? Everyone seems to have a unique perspective on it.

 

[veekie]

I find an actual table to help prime that intuitive pump. And I think "What do successes beyond 'average expert-level result' look like?" is a question that's hard to form intuitions about, at least for me - and it's a repeated complaint I've seen elsewhere, too.

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Basically that. Tables help immensely as long as they stay human readable, and be used to guide and inform.

As for committing motes to extended excellencies, you got another problem - not getting in the way of gameplay. Take Craft, the system currently in place is that you could entirely make artifacts while actively engaged in adventures and playing along with the rest of the group, and probably SHOULD in fact, go gather exotic components and the like as you work.

Committed motes means that when you start crafting/projects/workings, your whole group pretty much shuts down and waits for you to be done, because you're going to be basically useless for the time period, unless like Wyld Shaping, it requires them to hold the fort while you pull stuff out of the primordial mass and they cannot just opt out into the fortified manse.

The solution is less committing motes and more of introducing a mix of immediate-scale and extended-scale action types for a given Ability. You wouldn't be very concerned over paying 10m for a month long task, but paying 10m, for a task that takes a few hours every month is different, as you'd be gainfully engaged in the plot in the mean time.

Recreating the 15 minute work week from D&D isn't exactly healthy for a game. Put enough barriers in and players won't be paying the price, they'd just hole up somewhere until they finish, and become optimal again, OR they just take one look at it and drop those abilities entirely, since they get in the way of play.

 

[Shyft]

@Irked , Building on @veekie 's point-

After a while, 'motes' stop being a meaningful dramatic resource. They are too finely grained and specified for use in moment-to-moment gameplay. Most high-cost effects under the 2e model only HAVE costs to say, discourage the use of Peripheral Motes- as well as using them in action sequences.

Time is the much more relevant Dramatic Resource, but in my experience running Exalted, nobody wants to track time intervals. It HELPS SO MUCH, but even if it DOES help, nobody wants to actually DO it. They just want their shit to Get Done and Move On. "I make a Roll, it's Done. Move On. Don't ask me to figure out how many Xs I can fit into a week!"

I on the one hand really like knowing how many Xs fit into a week, but that doesn't always suit a given table.

Anyway- Basically after a certain point, court charms should probably dispense with formal mote costs. I think at the core, the intent is to make the Anima Flare really notable, and little else. Exalted WANTS you to be a glorious god king, in the spectacular sense...

 

[Broken25]

Anyway- Basically after a certain point, court charms should probably dispense with formal mote costs. I think at the core, the intent is to make the Anima Flare really notable, and little else. Exalted WANTS you to be a glorious god king, in the spectacular sense...

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Honestly, i think if you want to make necessary to flare your anima to activate a certain effect, you should explicitely say so. "This charm requires to be at mark/aura/iconic anima". Makes the whole thing easier to balance.

 

[veekie]

Theres anima level costs...

 

[Giygas]

Yeah, Motes spent on long dramatic actions only makes everything harder to balance, with nearly no gain. Aaand i just gained another idea to make easier to do something with some of my homebrew.

*Sighiing sounds, sounds of adding more homebrew to the homebrew pile*

And Broken25 gives us a wonderful way of eliminating the only gain, which would have been the lack of subletly of using such charms with peripheal motes.

I also had something else to say, and maybe give some commentary about the Kuciwalker's modified systems, but a growing headache stops me from doing so. (Seriously, whats up with me and headaches in these days? I am sleeping better, but i get more headaches?)

Fundamentally, the reason I want a Bureaucracy system is... well, the same reason I haven't managed to finish mine yet - because I don't even know where to start.

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First things first, follow RemoteScholar advice: it is good advice, dah.

Second things second, search for burecracy-like systems in other games, and then copy and adapt the fuck out of them. Creativity is copying without seeming to copy, after all.ù

Also, i mighty have wanted to insert a comment about the table of bureacracy difficulty, the lack of meaning of difficulty, and the meaning of external penalties, but then i am going to ramble without any coherence.

 

[Dark Ness]

I am wondering, can anyone point me in the direction of the document that is supposed to contain the mote reactor hack rules and such? Because I can't find it.

 

[Scia]

I am wondering, can anyone point me in the direction of the document that is supposed to contain the mote reactor hack rules and such? Because I can't find it.

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The old rules from last year are the following

"((New hack introduced; "Mote Reactor Exaltations". All Essence is Personal, and stunts no longer regenerate motes. Instead, Exalts get two automatic stunt rewards per action whenever their anima is flaring - 1-dot (4m/action) at the caste-mark level, 2-dot (8m/action) at the aura level and 3-dot (12m/action). Characters can freely choose whether to take motes or wp as their automatic rewards.))

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They should have been in Alephs or ES homebrew docs but it seems that it got misplaced into the Kerris docs.

 

[Sanctaphrax]

Okay. And what would they do, in your mental process?
Charts like this exist to give you an idea of what they do.

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I find an actual table to help prime that intuitive pump. And I think "What do successes beyond 'average expert-level result' look like?" is a question that's hard to form intuitions about, at least for me - and it's a repeated complaint I've seen elsewhere, too.

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Thing is, the table is basically telling me to do what I would do anyway. Except with slightly-too-high numbers.

I don't like the way that Excellencies are basically just free dice for anything that lasts much longer than a scene. For long-duration projects I want 20 dice to represent substantial exertion not just, you know, the default. Similarly, for the rest of the Charms if the cost isn't committed then I don't see the point of giving them mote costs in the first place.

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You're gonna need to rejigger the math pretty seriously, then. Canon difficulties were written with excellencies in mind.

Maybe it should just offset the cost of Invention Implies Mastery then. I was borrowing from the way Surprise Anticipation Method lets you recoup the commitment cost of the Keen (Sense) Technique charms, eventually leaving them permanently active for free. This lets you (gated by roleplay using your equipment) accumulate more and more different gadgets, Batman-style, all of which you are proficient in.

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I wouldn't use that precedent if I were you. Especially not for something as breakable as infinite Artifact usage. Seems likely to create some pretty degenerate characters.

 

[Irked]

Thing is, the table is basically telling me to do what I would do anyway. Except with slightly-too-high numbers.

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So, that's great! But not everybody can whip out an intuition quite that readily, and the table's more for them. I'm including myself in "them."

The other advantage of a clean breakdown is it helps identify exactly what your Charms do. If you clean up a corrupt bureaucracy via Bureau-Rectifying Method, then if nothing else, you get a -2 to the difficulty of any future rolls against it.

Taking a spin at re-curving this thing, in light of the fact that one success is surgery/lifting an anvil. (I think I forget that because of how much it irritates me. "Let's make virtually every human task take one success! That'll make non-combat investment meaningful.")

Spoiler: Revised difficulty

Starting difficulty is 0, i.e., "only fails if you botch."

How well does it fit with the bureaucracy?

• +0: Directly in line with the bureaucracy's purpose, or in line with a majority of its members' Intimacies. (Getting a driver's license from the DMV. Paying a fine. Filing your taxes.)
• +1: Tangential to the bureaucracy's purpose, or uncomfortable for the bureaucracy, or irrelevant to a majority of its members' Intimacies. (Getting a payout from your health insurance company. Acquiring additional funding for your committee. Revising your taxes to show that you overpaid.)
• +3: 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/2, round up, 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 affecting up to a few dozen people - a single Guild branch office, say.
• +2: things affecting up to few hundred bureaucrats - the government of a medium-sized city, say.
• +3: things affecting up to few thousand bureaucrats - a major reorganization of the government of Nexus, say.
• +4: things affecting tens of thousands of bureaucrats - cutting House Cynis out of the Realm bureaucracy, say.
• +5: things affecting up to 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: 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: 0 + (some modifiers). That difficulty also tells you how long the task will take to resolve, if the roll succeeds:

• 0 or less: Instant.
• 1: A few minutes.
• 2: A few hours.
• 3: A few days.
• 4: A few weeks.
• 5: A few months.
• 6: A few seasons.
• 7: A few years.
• 8: A few decades.
• 9: A few centuries.
• 10+: An Age.

Revised examples:

• Getting a driver's license: Base 0, 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 1, requiring a few minutes.
• Paying reasonable taxes on an income of Resources 3: Base 0, in line with the purpose of the tax bureau (+0), plausibly costing Resources 3 (+2), requiring total attention (-1), from a bloated bureaucracy (+1): difficulty 2, requiring a few hours.
• Not paying taxes on an income of Resources 3: Base 0, uncomfortable for the taxation bureau (+1), avoiding Resources 3 of payment (+2), requiring total attention (-1), from a bloated bureaucracy (+1): difficulty 3, requiring days of focused work.
• Requisitioning gear for my army from an appropriate government agency, while I command them in the field: Base 0, in line with purpose (+0), costing Resources 4 (+2), with no attention (+1), from a normal bureaucracy (+0): difficulty 3, requiring days of focused work.
• Reforming heaven: Base 0, contrary to Intimacies of those involved (+3), affecting millions of gods (+5), targeting Yu-Shan (+2), requiring focused attention (-1): difficulty 9, requiring centuries of constant effort.

That's probably still not as low as "diff 1: major surgery," but darn it not everything can be diff 1. Also:

Spoiler: Speed and opposing actions

A character can attempt to complete a task faster by declaring, in advance, that he will increase the speed of his action by some number of "steps." For every step by which he improves the speed, the difficulty of the task increases by two - so, to reduce a task from seasons to months would be +2 difficulty (for a total of 8), and to reduce it to weeks would be a +4 difficulty (for a total of 10). This does not count as part of the base difficulty of the task, and so it does not move the task up the time scale.

A character can also increase the speed of a task after rolling, but at that point it requires four extra successes per time step of improvement.

Sometimes characters will have opposing bureaucratic aims: they may be competing to seize control of a single fund, for instance, or one of them may be trying to clean up a bureaucracy while the other one keeps it profitably corrupt. Such cases are not simply opposed rolls, as the bureaucracy itself may favor one action over another; in such cases, then, both characters roll for a bureaucratic action as normal. If only one succeeds, then that character gets his aim; if neither succeeds, then the status quo is preserved. Otherwise, if both characters succeed, the character who completes his action first achieves his goal. The slower character, or a character who fails this roll, may abandon their current attempt and try a new approach at any time (raising the difficulty of the roll appropriately for their new speed), but the difficulty of the roll increases by +1 for each such attempt a character makes. (This does not count to the base difficulty, and so does not raise the time required.)

Note that these rules significantly favor characters who work with bureaucracies. Players who wish to overcome bureaucratic resistance are well-advised to either hunt down and remove anyone who starts a counter-project, or to first build Intimacies in the organization for the changes they wish to create.

Example: Alice is trying to clean up a moderate sized bureaucracy - which is uncomfortable for the bureaucracy (+3), which is rather large (+2), and corrupt (+1), despite her constant supervision (-1) - difficulty 5, taking months of work. She rolls and grabs six successes - enough to succeed!

A few days later, Commissioner Bob - who gets regular kickbacks from the corrupt agency - becomes aware of Alice's new action. He begins moving to counter her - but because the bureaucracy is not actively opposed to corruption, he's rolling at difficulty 3 instead - a few days of chatting to the right people will cut Alice out of the loop.

Alice has a couple of options. She could murder Bob before the time limit; that'd shut down his influence. She could meet with the bureaucrats and inspire a love for their jobs, and a deep-seated honesty - which would not, in itself, root out the inefficiencies and corruptions, but would create the kind of atmosphere where she could manage a much easier roll. Or, if she's a Solar, she could reroll (difficulty 6) and declare declare three time improvements (difficulty 12) - with the right Charms, she can find a solution in a matter of hours.

 

[Kuciwalker]

• Getting a driver's license: Base 0, 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 1, requiring a few minutes.

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I would love to live in this state.

(I kid, I kid)

 

[Irked]

I would love to live in this state.

(I kid, I kid)

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Hey, apparently getting a driver's license is as hard as removing an appendix!

 

[Giygas]

Hey, apparently getting a driver's license is as hard as removing an appendix!

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Nobody said that you must survive getting either the license or having your appendix removed!

Also, for your Difficulty numbers please consult 1E. It is somehow much saner and descriptive than both of the succesive editions.

Incidentally, Removing an Appendix would have been a difficulty 3 roll in the first edition (Challenging: treat serious diseases such as Malaria, Yellow Fever, Dysentery, Smallpox, Syphillis and Cholera. Perform internal surgery to remove or repair failing or damaged organs.) (The difficulty 5 rolls are all about curing the incurable, such as cancer, tubercolosis and the plague)

 

[Aleph]

Kerisgame 65! In which Keris finally overcomes the one foe she cannot slay. She also very nearly walks right into a heavily guarded Realm treasury, and sure, she got turned away, but she walked right up to the door and demanded she be let in without an access pass and wasn't arrested. Rathan is a lot more powerful than I've been treating him, and I need to start making better use of her Kimmy social tree. She also drops a gentle reminder that for all of Keris's relative laxness in certain areas; she does view herself as a Green Sun Princess, does have ambitions and plans that are separate from and perhaps even at odds with Sasi's, and is willing to take action towards them. Like sparking a full-scale Tengese rebellion against the Scarlet Throne, which she will be arguing for with increasing insistence depending on how the Realm Civil War goes in the future.

There is a crapload of extra stuff for this session, and I'm not even posting all of it since a fair chunk was to do with Vali and Zanra, who I want to leave mysterious until they arrive in case we decide to change them a little in the time between now and then. I'll probably post the missing chunks whenever that happens.

Aleph: I've had some breakthroughs with defining Rathan, and... no wonder he's the polar opposite of Calesco, when summarised like this.
Aleph: Looking over the notes I have on him - his grudge-holding, his childish wonder, his generosity, his attention-wanting - a common theme basically just seems to be that... Rathan is the most emotional of her souls. Whatever he feels, he feels absolutely and with no restraints - not quite in the way of Haneyl's fire dancers; he's not overwhelmed by it and still has his intellect alongside it. But he does basically seem to have a single-track mind, emotionally speaking, and dials it to 200%.
Aleph: If he's happy, he's overjoyed and a smiling cherubic angel who is honestly the best out of all of them at making Keris happy just by proximity. If he's calm, he's lazy and content and at peace. If he's upset... well, we know what happens when he's upset.
Aleph: And the other side was, heh. He's privilege. He is literally the privileged, entitled mindset of someone in power who just doesn't have "I am wrong" as a mental tool. People like... what's her name, that girl who demanded she get into university with sub-par grades and decided that it was reverse racism that was keeping her out when they said no. He can be generous, in the manner of the privileged where they're being charitable for themselves rather than the people they're giving to. But he's fundamentally privilege culture (while Calesco is all about social justice and caring more for the weak than the strong, lol).
Aleph: Amusingly, in being her emotional side... he's basically The Chick.
Aleph: lol keris ur gender roles
Aleph: they r weird
Aleph: srsly keris what is up with ur psychology
Aleph: I should do a little mini-essay on What Ur Souls Say About U once Vali and Zanra show up.
EarthScorpion: And then there's Haneyl, who's... not privileged despite being a princess, and in fact spends a lot of her time worrying about proper standards.
EarthScorpion: ... indicating she's actually noveau riche middle class pretending to be upper class.
Aleph: Oh, Haneyl. You're noveau riche. Rathan is true nobility. No wonder you don't get along very often.
Aleph: Heh. This does give me a better handle on Rathan, I think. And it makes him rather fun. Because he can be horrible, yes, but in a good mood he can also be amazingly sweet. And then someone criticises him, and #masculinitysofragile.
Aleph: ... though Rathan's approach to real-life masculinity is to turn his nose up at it. Especially the part where you're not meant to show your emotions.
...
Aleph: ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED: GIRLFRIEND'S KID NO LONGER HATES YOU!
Aleph: ... hee.
Aleph: There is something inherently endearing about a woman who is warier about walking into a ten-month old's playroom than charging at a four-storey-high ten-headed cannibal giant that eats souls and also the people they belong to.
EarthScorpion: Heh. The existence of Keris's children is going to be the final thing to win over Aiko. At least once they become playfriends.
Aleph: Hee. Also lol, Keris did it again.
EarthScorpion: Oh?
Aleph:

Keris shifts uncomfortably. "I... okay," she sighs. "I won't upset the Order. I do want to avoid a Wyld Hunt, if I can," she admits. "And I wouldn't want to make your job harder."

She frowns. "Actually, what is your job?" she asks. "I know mine is to ruin the Dynastic trade out of An Teng, but you're working with the Tengese themselves, aren't you?"

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Aleph: she did not actually technically promise
Aleph: that she wasn't going to steal the ships from the harbour
Aleph: and then she smoothly changed the subject to a related one before sasi could ask any follow-up questions
Aleph: (I don't think Keris actually notices when she does that)
Aleph: (she's just so naturally evasive that she does it instinctively in combat and in conversation)
EarthScorpion: Kerissssssss
Aleph:

Sasi: "Stop doing that."
Keris: "???"
Keris: "Doing what?"​

...
Aleph: Sigh. Dammit Keris. I have a feeling she might be going to scare Sasi accidentally next year.
EarthScorpion: Mmm? Oh dear.
Aleph: At least unless Keris has bought Sapphire Sorcery, Demon of the Second Circle (as her first purchase therein) and Raise the Puissant Sanctum by then. Hmm. Or Monstrous Manse-Mother, I guess.
EarthScorpion: Oh. I thought you were going for "monstrous manse mother will scare her".
Aleph: Nah. The thing that will scare her is if Keris hasn't, because then when she finds the Sister that's in a Wyld Zone, she's going to go "fuck the manse is broken" and then "Sasiiiiiii, come help me reverse-engineer the blueprints for these manses and then use your sorcery to rebuild this one after I murder everything in the Wyld Zone with Wyldeater!"
Aleph: And then she's going to murder everything in the Wyld Zone singlehandedly while Sasi is waiting outside and possibly watching, because Keris has not quite grasped the fact that some forms of showing off do not make people impressed so much as intimidated.
Aleph: Oh, Keris. She's semi-frequently going to pop back to Malfeas and be like "yo Ligier, I found another Wyld Zone packed full of raksha, I can has borrow Wyldeater plz for murdertime?"
Aleph: And Ligier will be like "no use my waypoint-collapsing engine this time I want to see how well it works", and Keris is all "but but but then I barely get to murder anything :c" and Ligier is like "deal with it".
Aleph: ... huh, actually. Would that hoover up the wyld zone but leave the remains of the manse (and the jade) still in Creation? Does it basically just suck all the Wyld essence up and revert the terrain to Creation? Because that would be very useful, since Infernal terraforming is probably going to do less-than-good things to the demesne.

Keris: "So you want me to carry the Pyrian shrine (in my soul) to the middle of the waypoint, and then guard it for like an hour while it charges up. And not kill too many things so that it gets maximum yield."
Keris: "You realise my style of 'guarding' involves murdering everything attempting to damage it, right?"
Keris: ":c"​

EarthScorpion: The Little Sister is probably utterly wrecked. Like, the geomancy is just plain fucked. It's not like the powered down one where some geomantic work could shift the dragon lines back into position, or the Wood one which would require work to change the aspect from Wood to Water.
Aleph: Ah crap. Hmm. Well, it's probably worth reverse-engineering a blueprint from the others anyway. If nothing else, I might be able to find another nearby demesne that I can connect to the geomantic grid.
Aleph: Okay, just working out what Keris has left to do before heading back to Malfeas.

THINGS TO DO BEFORE HEADING BACK TO MALFEAS

- Raid Agenete, steal the silver, steal the ships, burn the docks.
- Capture a raksha pirate ship to give the Shashalme (possible one-session thing; useful way to offload that debt and have some more "little Keris" RP).
- Offload fleet at the Isle of Gulls for repair & storage away from keruby.
- Learn Jupiter's Embroidery Style for Lilunu.​

Aleph: ... I can't say I don't like the image of the Baisha towing a dejected raksha pirate ship (lol Flying Dutchman) behind it with all the hatches nailed shut with cold iron and the crew imprisoned by bars of the stuff.

not!Davy Jones: "Do you fear death?"
Keris: "No." *stabs him*​

Aleph: Heh. You know, for all that she's a Green Sun Princess now, Keris still has a very Nexan-street-rat attitude to fights. That is to say; if you're going to fight, fight. If you're going to talk, you get stabbed repeatedly mid-sentence, because she has no respect for dramatic tension or the deep and complex nuances of her enemies' backstories.
Aleph: She also considers that shanking the other guy before he's ready and indeed preferably before he's actually pulled his weapon out is not only fair game, it should be encouraged.
Aleph: ... Keris is basically the sort of antagonist who is very unfair to a group of heroes in your standard fantasy cartoon series, and who the Protagonists probably lose several members to before they catch wise and start treating her like a lethal threat in every engagement.
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. And yes, it's true, the fleet in her soul is suffering extra keruby-based degradation.
Aleph: Yeah. I think she's probably going to strip the Baisha down to a skeleton crew, leave as many as she can with the fleet to repair them (and later crew them), and then pick up more crew in Malfeas.
Aleph: ... bluh. Need her to learn a shipbuilding style and teach it to people so that they can be repaired in her personal variant of the style.
Aleph: Hmm. She may come up with a name for that specific style of patterning she's starting to use as a signature. You know, the abstract one that brings to mind waves and wind and mangroves.
Aleph: Well, it's not a single pattern. More a style like, hmm... like Celtic knots. Many different types, but distinctly recognisable as that "family" of art.
EarthScorpion: Mmm, yes.
Aleph: Latin, I think. Some combination of the Latin words for "wave" and "wind". Named in the Malfean style.
...
EarthScorpion: So, how does Keris feel about what her souls say about her and what they feel about her?
Aleph: Oh, hmm. Hmmm. Well, let's start at the top.
Aleph: Keris knows the snake is her po, and what the po is. The seat of emotion, the wellspring of passion and instinct. Hers is, uh... a giant snake. She supposes that means she has really strong instincts and passions? Which seems fair. That it will even attack her... is something she hasn't (yet) put much thought into (pending the Trust Your Instincts short), but it would probably unsettle her a bit that... apparently her instincts can turn against her.
EarthScorpion: Also, it's beautiful
Aleph: Heh. Yes. She likes that. If part of her is going to be a giant monster, she's pleased that it's such a gorgeous one.
Aleph: Moving onto her Fourth Soul; Keris does consider Dulmea to be a part of her, I think. A more independent part who is also her own person, but... hey, all Keris's souls are their own people. They're still part of the greater her that she considers her "self" - as her hun - to be merely the first among equals in and wow, I don't know if Keris has actually sat down to meditate on this (and perhaps she should) but her mental self-image is weird.
EarthScorpion:
EarthScorpion: Oh, Keris. She's literally become more than she can handle on her own.
Aleph: She's simultaneously thinking of herself as a baby Unquestionable with seven+ souls and... almost heretically toying with the notion that she's the fetich of an infant Primordial that's the combination of all her souls, of which she is only one, because she doesn't feel like a Greater Self so that must be some emergent thing from how sometimes her other souls prod her to do stuff.
Aleph: If she does sit down to meditate on this she might get a bit freaked out for a while and start wondering if "the Greater Keris" is going to form a jouten in her Devil-Domain or something. And she would fight tooth and nail against the view that she was the Greater Keris, because she doesn't feel any different and it makes her edgy to think of herself that way.
EarthScorpion: ... no, Keris, don't wonder if Greater-Keris is cute
EarthScorpion: Hmm, I wonder if her experiences with forking are causing any weirdness there, and if she's wondering if she's just a limited facet of the greater-Keris.

Keris: "... can I have a Keris Shintai?"​

EarthScorpion: Actually, sigh, a Keris Shintai would merge the imagery of all her souls into its form.
Aleph: Heh. Yes. Sasi would get a headache talking to her about this, lol. Especially since... annoyingly, Sasi is aware that she probably has to defer to Keris's judgement on this stuff, because Keris has explored it a lot more than she has.
Aleph: Man, this stuff is totally going in the extras.
Aleph: But yes, getting back to Dulmea, Keris considers her very much a part of the Greater Keris, and is basically using her as a downloaded sense of caution and superego. Who she <3s, obviously. If you brought her attention to the fact that she's grouped together her ideas about motherhood, caution and poison, she would consider that perfectly natural. Obviously mothers need to be cautious and patient and calm, and poison is the careful measured way to kill someone, so they go together really well!
EarthScorpion: Fate: "Why would you consider motherhood to be poison?"
Aleph: Keris: "It's not that those two are linked to each other, it's just that both of them are linked to being calm and patient and cautious and smart."

Fate: "..."​

Aleph: Next up; Echo!
Aleph: ... ooo. *wince* Echo. Yeah, Keris still remembers Calesco's words here. Her sense of fun and whimsy and desire to be loved (which Echo doesn't actually show much of, hmm) is, uh... the part of her that murders people and hurts everything it touches.
Aleph: ...
Aleph: ... yeah, Keris does not like thinking about that, and would probably dive overboard to avoid talking about it.
EarthScorpion: Isn't Rathan the desire to be loved?
Aleph: Mixing up Principle, Charm and Urge. Echo is Be Loved/Silence In Her Wake/Follow Keris. Rathan is Get Revenge/Carmine Mantled Emissary/Proclaim Innocence. Though, hmm. Echo does get very upset when Keris is unhappy or risks her relationships and losing the people she loves. Echo is the desire for love, I guess. Rathan is the desire for attention. Echo is happy because Sasi loves them and they love Sasi, no matter where Sasi is at the time. Rathan is happy if Kasseni is staring at them and can't look away, because they're all she's thinking about even if she doesn't love them and they hate her.
EarthScorpion: Oh, Echo. Also, she made the szelkeruby as the worst cupids as an expression of her own desires as friends.
Aleph: Heh. True. But yeah, Keris is not comfortable with the fact that her happiness and joy hurts people. And prodding her about that would, uh
Aleph: ... be a fantastic way to drive her into a killing rage, actually.
Aleph: Like, wow. A few pointed barbs at that particular sore spot and she'll be ready to murder you to shut you up, unless you're Calesco, in which case she'll shout at you to go to your cave and then go storm off into the Marsh and stab a bunch of trees until they catch fire, which happens regrettably often in the Marsh even if you're not stabbing them with any magic.
EarthScorpion: Haneyl: "That's what trees do."
Aleph: it's... it's really not, haneyl
Aleph: well
Aleph: like
Aleph: maybe your trees
Aleph: but not normal ones
EarthScorpion: Haneyl: "Mine are normal ones. That's how most trees in the world work."
Aleph: *facepalm*
Aleph: Anyway, Rathan. So Keris has put her emotional side, her innocent aura and her VENGEANCE together. Like Dulmea, this is actually pretty intuitive to her. Of course her grudges are justified - she's the victim here. And of course her revenge is the most emotional part of her. She wants revenge because her feelings were hurt, after all.
Aleph: ... actually, at a deep down level, Echo might be intuitive. Because... hasn't Keris always hurt the things she loved? She hurt Ogi and she killed Rat and maybe her village wouldn't have been attacked if she hadn't been there...
EarthScorpion: Oh, Echo. Echo understands a lot more about her position in the hierarchy than Keris wants to acknowledge.
Aleph: Oh Keris, more like. She's never even thought that last part consciously, but... she came from Baisha and now everything is wonderful and she's an Exalt. And everyone else who came from Baisha is probably either dead or a slave; why did she get to survive and flourish where they didn't?
Aleph: But this is touching the sort of deeply buried insecurity that brings the knives and spears and TEETH out, so let's hastily move on.
Aleph: Haneyl, then! We've spoken a lot about what Haneyl means as part of Keris. She's another of those intuitive-to-Keris souls that reveals a lot about how she thinks. In fact, Haneyl does so even more than Dulmea and Rathan (and Echo). Greed, possessiveness... and the sincere drive for self-improvement? Not something most people would consider a natural fit. But it makes perfect sense to her.
Aleph: It comes down to hunger. Fundamentally, to Keris, you can only afford to be generous if you have enough already. If you're hungry, you can't give away food; you have to fight for every scrap. If you're cold, you can't share your space, you have to kick people out and defend your fire and blanket. Cling to what's yours and always reach for more - that's the only way to claw your way up out of poverty. Improving yourself; bettering yourself, means never lacking in things. Then - then - you can start being compassionate (more on that with Calesco). But letting go of your things risks losing everything, and the more you have to lose the further you have to fall.
Aleph: Keris is a little worried by Haneyl sometimes, though. Her greed is by far the most aggressive of all her souls; the loudest and the most headstrong and demanding in what she wants from Keris - both in materials and perhaps more so in behaviour. Maybe that's part of her nature - her Urge compels her to claim all that she can, even control over Keris herself - but it unsettles Keris that some part of herself wants to overtake all the rest, regardless of the harm it would cause.
EarthScorpion: Haneyl is the soul probably... mmm, she's the first post "I'm a GSP, not a street rat" soul.
Aleph: Yes. And it really shows.
EarthScorpion: If Keris had chosen another way, Haneyl wouldn't be Haneyl.
Aleph: Heh. An interesting hypothetical for another day.
EarthScorpion: In fact, mmm, both Haneyl and Calesco are more "princessy" in Keris' eyes. Rathan owes at least as much to a Nexan gang boss in her eyes.
Aleph: Calesco is in many ways a reaction to Haneyl, heh. Which again harkens back to Keris's axiomatic view that charity is something that only rich people can do. Fundamentally, to her, you cannot afford to be kind unless you are secure. It's a form of power, in some ways. A thing that the strong can do to - or rather do for - the weak. The street rat in her would balk at the idea of kindness from someone in poverty with everything to lose and nothing to gain - and perhaps that's why Calesco has some street rat in her. Or maybe her dirty fighting is just because she sees the awful truths of the world and thus doesn't bother with the lies about fighting being noble or fair.
Aleph: But yes, Calesco is her messenger, and her compassion, and her understanding of how horrible the world can be - and they're all interlinked in a way that challenges Keris. Calesco is the bit of her that interacts with the world - that has to interact with the world - in a way that renders her unable to ignore the injustice and cruelty there. Which she reacts to with kindness towards the weak who suffer it and with bitterness towards the strong who allow it.
Aleph: Calesco is definitely the soul that pushes Keris off-balance the most. Dulmea and Rathan she understands, Echo she doesn't like to think about and Haneyl pushes Keris to act and worries her. But Calesco is the one who, as a core part of her nature, calls the powerful out on their lies - and that means that Keris doesn't see much of her kindness, because Calesco is driven to ask her the hard questions.
EarthScorpion: Heh. There's the axis of pushing-Keris - Haneyl, Calesco, Echo.
Aleph: Specifically the girls, I note. The boys - well, the boys-and-Zanra - are her more passive half.
Aleph: ... keris your gender roles are really weird. Your emotional side is Rathan, your hyper-lethal killer is Echo, your active souls are the girls while the passive ones are the boys. Hmm. This was probably set by you and Rat. "I'm the muscle, he's the mouth", etc.
[VALI, ZANRA AND HOLISTIC SOUL-HIERARCHY STUFF CUT TO AVOID SPOILERS]
...
EarthScorpion: Oh, Dulmea. She does insist that all the children know the proper ways of acting as angyalkae.
Aleph: Oh yeah! That was something else I wanted to do back in Malfeas, heheh. I had a thought that was a thing that was funny.
Aleph: [Games of Divinity, pgs 110-111]

Those who listen to [an angyalka] hear the beat of moments within their soul and know what they have lost - an hour from a life of valor, perhaps, or five minutes from a life of shame. To those that like their nature, the song of the angyalka seems beautiful. To those that despise themselves, it is painful - either denying their self-image or confirming it.
...
The truths of the angyalkae's song sound to the spirits of the world as much as human ears. The earth rests peacefully, secure in itself. Water ripples uneasily, aware of its forgetfulness and unsure of what it has forgotten. Fires burn the angrier for knowing their own rage, and winds blow more subtly, commending themselves on their guile.

Click to shrink...

Aleph: So firstly, that second part is totally valid thaum for Time-Strung Harpist Style. Keris can play a song to a fire to make it flare, for instance. And secondly, in AESSing the innermost melody of a person's very Essence and then playing it, Keris has basically taken this to a whole new level that even angyalkae would probably be in awe of (and that's discounting the fact that she can get as many successes as the best mortal alive has dice). So she should totally go hunt down Dulmea's old assassin house and introduce herself.
EarthScorpion: Keris: "I'mma gonna steal you."

Dulmea: *facepalms*​

Aleph:

Keris: "Also you should all be totes proud of Dulmea, she's awesome."​

Aleph: ... aww. In all honesty, she probably will be on her absolute bestest best most Mama-Approved civil polite graceful elegant behaviour ever to wow them all with AMAZING MUSIC and SUCH POISE and VERY ASSASSINATION SKILLS.
Aleph: ... and then, yes, steal them.
EarthScorpion: Of course, heh, she knows Dulmea and she knows how Dulmean honour works. They won't abandon their master. So she needs to either do it legitimately and get the house to sign on with her with the permission of the master, or she needs to leave them masterless and looking for someone new to serve.
Aleph: Keris: "Yo. Pretty horse dude. I wanna buy your assassins."

Lamulis: "... you... what?"
Keris: "Well, actually I want to steal your assassins, but this seems to be one of the very rare cases where buying them is actually easier."
Lamulis: "..."​

...
Aleph: Heh. This right here. This is why Keris likes cities. Mortal Keris could parkour her way around Nexus. Pirate Queen Keris considers it almost insulting not to.
...
EarthScorpion: Hmm. If Keris had stayed a Street Rat and rejected being a princess, her hunger soul would be a cheeky cheerful liar and trickster who gets their hooks into people to rip them off - Metagaos and TED - and her messenger soul would be a thing of burning bright truths (Adorjan and Malfeas).
Aleph: Sigh. That Haneyl and Echo would have gotten along well.
EarthScorpion: Well, that Haneyl would have been utterly, utterly untrustworthy. Willing to do anything to ensure she got fed, without pride or dignity or morals.
Aleph: ... Keris would once again be made very uncomfortable by her.
EarthScorpion: Heh. Also, probably wouldn't have anything to do with Sasi. That might wind up with alt-Calesco, a painfully-bright burning exemplar of perfection.
Aleph: Who probably wouldn't be between Haneyl and Echo anymore.
EarthScorpion: Sigh. Oh, Echo. The way she expresses her urge is by being someone who loves Keris unconditionally and who always finds her fun things to do.
EarthScorpion: Meanwhile, Rathan expresses his urge by... well, being a spiteful little brat who never lets go of a grudge. And Haneyl expresses Keris' greed by wanting Keris to be the best and have the best things (also, as part of Keris, she naturally gets the best bits of that as it's her hard work that's pushing Keris to actually be not-useless!)
Aleph: Well, technically his Urge is to Proclaim Innocence. The grudge thing is "merely" a defining element of his personality. And he can let go of a grudge! Just... only once it's been paid out in full.
Aleph: Heh. You could probably circumvent his revenge by paying him homage and attention and making an incredibly elaborate, humiliating, sincere and expensive apology that involves you publicly grovelling a lot where everyone could see you agreeing that he was in the right and you were in the wrong.
Aleph: He'd like that enough that he'd probably let you off unless it was something really major.
EarthScorpion: Haneyl still doesn't understand that. Calesco does understand that - she just refuses to do it. Echo both understands it and would be willing to do it - she just can't be bothered.
Aleph: *snrrk*
Aleph: dammit eko
EarthScorpion: ... oh, Calesco. TLA is hers. That means all her Compassion works like TLA Compassion.
Aleph: Yyyyup. She loves Keris, and wants to help/teach/hurt her.
EarthScorpion: Haneyl: "... does that mean you love Rathan?"

Calesco: "I love all of you. I just also hate him."​

Aleph: Keris: "I hope all my children love each other as family, even if you argue a lot."

Click to shrink...

 

[Irked]

Nobody said that you must survive getting either the license or having your appendix removed!

Also, for your Difficulty numbers please consult 1E. It is somehow much saner and descriptive than both of the succesive editions.

Click to shrink...

That may be so, but the goal is to put together rules that play nicely with 3e, y'know? Even if 1e's scale is better, if it's a different scale that doesn't help much.

I think 3e's difficulty compression is dumb - hitting a mortal soldier in combat is significantly more difficult than bronze-age surgery! - but I'd still rather play as nicely with it as I can.

***

So, while I'm tossing systems around: this is the combined Craft/Sorcerous Working system that I was planning to merge large-scale bureaucratic actions into.

Spoiler: Summary

These rules attempt to merge Craft and Sorcerous working into a single set of rules. In general, these rules borrow from the existing rules for sorcerous workings, though several details have been changed to better fit the combined purpose. These rules do not produce results that are statistically identical to those for craft or sorcerous workings as published in the corebook, but they (hopefully) serve roughly similar narrative roles.

As an added benefit, these rules also extend/are planned to extend craft to large-scale Bureaucracy actions and public works projects – things at the scope of "build an irrigation network over most of my country," where an individual Solar's Craft Charms are, perhaps, less directly relevant.

Spoiler: Projects and workings

These rules provide guidelines for three different kinds of task: craft projects, bureaucracy projects, and sorcerous workings (or simply workings). Craft projects, bureaucracy projects, and workings share many rules; any time the rules below reference "a task" or "an effect," you may assume that they apply equally to craft and bureaucracy projects and workings. Other rules will specify that they function only for one sort of task or the other; in particular, many Charms are only effective on craft projects.

In general terms, a craft project is a thing: a manufactured good, object, or structure. Swords, siege engines, boats, bridges, palaces, and irrigation networks are all craft projects. Many craft projects are mundane, as the previous list suggests, but this need not be so; daiklaves, warstriders, manses, and other magical creations are also developed as craft projects. At the heart of any craft project, though, is A Thing: a particular physical object that can be touched, wielded, broken, or stolen. If a player wishes to describe his task as a craft project, he must be able to explain what the thing is that he will build – and, generally, from what components he will build it. Bureaucratic projects are also often Things, but they are generally Things beyond the scale of what you would make yourself.

Workings, by contrast, are creations of sorcerous artifice. While they may benefit from rare components and magical ingredients, they rarely require them, relying instead on the innate powers of the sorcerer for their reality. As a result, sorcerous workings are rarely physical in nature – or, at least, their physicality is incidental to the magic. This makes them well suited to tasks that affect living beings, or large regions, or that simply declare true facts of the world. In general, workings are more difficult to steal or destroy than projects; once done, a working cannot be undone, though counter-workings might try inflict other effects that stripped the original benefits. (A land blessed to be unnaturally fertile, for instance, could not simply be made infertile again – but it might also be imbued with magically fertile locusts, to much the same effect.)

Some examples may help clarify this distinction. A craft project might build a flying house, but the structure of the house itself would be the project, and if that structure was significantly changed, the house would cease to fly. By that same token, it would be difficult to take an existing house and cause it to fly via a project. By contrast, a preexisting house might be enchanted to fly with a working, and the resulting house might be renovated and remade as normal from that point on. Similarly, to grant a person their youth again would be a working; to augment a person with a magical prosthesis would more likely be a project, because the prosthesis could be cut off of the unfortunate recipient. To create a manse that magnifies the rays of the sun over a city, blessing its crops, would be a project – because the effect is grounded in the manse, which can be destroyed – but to simply declare a land fertile would be a working.

Spoiler: Properties of tasks

Any task, whether project or working, has the following four statistics:

• A Circle of effect. An effect's Circle describes, broadly, how powerful or broad-reaching it is. Effects come in four circles: Marble, Emerald, Sapphire, and Adamant. Any character may attempt any Circle project, but the Emerald, Sapphire, and Adamant Circle workings require Terrestrial, Celestial, and Solar Circle sorcery, respectively. Marble circle workings require the Thaumaturgy merit or any level of sorcery. Every Circle specifies a base difficulty for actions of that Circle.
• An Ambition, which describes how impressive the effect is within it Circle. Every Circle is divided into three Ambition levels, with a higher Ambition number representing a greater feat for that Circle. So, for instance, an Ambition 3 Sapphire working is more impressive than an Ambition 2 Sapphire working, but less impressive than an Ambition 1 Adamant working.
• A Finesse level, which describes how much control the character has over the details of the effect. Finesse is always rated 1, 3, or 5. While a player always chooses in general terms what his character wants to accomplish, higher Finesse allows much finer-grained determination of how that affect is accomplished. By contrast, lower Finesse leaves the details of the effect to the Storyteller.
  
  For some actions – particularly mundane or bureaucratic actions – Finesse makes little sense; a character may not care about the fine details of the palace he has chosen to build, or at least, those details may be no more than flavor touches with no meaningful consequences. In such cases, Finesse instead represents how carefully the task is performed. A Finesse 1 task is performed as quickly as possible, with reckless haste; in a large task, this likely leads to needless death or waste. A Finesse 5 task is performed with extreme care and caution, conserving lives and material. A Finesse 3 task is somewhere in between: a mix of reasonable speed and care.
• A level of Means, which describes, broadly, the quantity of resources provided for an effect. As a player's available resources increase, his Means also increases; in desperate straits, a player may instead find his Means reduced. By default, a project has 0 Means.

Spoiler: Time

Tasks take differing amounts of time to complete, depending on their complexity (as measured by the task's Circle). A task's Interval is the minimum amount of time a character must spend generally working on a task before attempting to finish the task. The Interval for each Circle of task is as follows:

• Marble Circle: varies.
• Emerald Circle: one week.
• Sapphire Circle: one month.
• Adamant Circle: one season.

Some effects will say to reduce or increase a task's Interval by some number of time steps. If any such effects apply, combine all effects to determine the total number of time steps "up" (faster) or "down" (slower) the scale that the task should move. Then, move up or down the following table appropriately:

• One second.
• One minute.
• One hour.
• One day.
• One week.
• One month.
• One season.
• One year.
• One decade.
• One century.

Spoiler: Putting it all together

First, decide what it is your character wants to accomplish. Based on that goal, determine the Circle and Ambition from the following pages that most closely fits your desired outcome. Decide how much control you want over the outcome, or how carefully you work; this will determine your Finesse. Note any effects that would modify your Means, again using the table below. Finally, determine the Interval for your chosen task.

You're now ready to begin working. Your character must spend a period of one Interval working on his task. If this would take more than one day, he must spend at least a few hours per day working on the task in order to count those days towards the Interval. After working for a period of one Interval, the character rolls an appropriate die pool; this is typically (Intelligence + Occult) for a working, ([Relevant Attribute] + Craft) for a craft project, and ([Relevant Attribute] + Bureaucracy for a bureaucratic project. (Common Attributes for Projects are Intelligence and Dexterity, but Storytellers may substitute others that they feel are more relevant.)

To determine the difficulty of this roll, begin by finding the base difficulty for the chosen Circle. For instance, Marble Circle actions have a base difficulty of 0, while Solar Circle action have a base difficulty of 9. Add the chosen Finesse to this number; thus, a Finesse 1 Solar Circle task is difficulty 10, while a Finesse 5 Solar Circle Task is difficulty 14.

Finally, subtract your available Means from the difficulty; if your total Means is negative, this does increase the difficulty. As normal for a difficulty X roll, X-1 successes will be lost from the roll. (So, for instance, if you roll 8 successes on a difficulty 3 task, only 6 of those successes apply.)

Tasks do not follow the normal botch rules. Instead, if a roll produces fewer successes than (Base Difficulty - Finesse), plus at least one 1, some complication in the task is introduced. The roll may still succeed - with high Means, it's very possible to get the final difficulty below (Base Difficulty - Finesse) - but there's guaranteed to be some complication. Perhaps a mob of angry locals approaches the manse, or a flaw in its design requires regular prayer and cleaning in order to function. Perhaps the artifact develops an unintended personality, or the bureaucracy grows a splinter faction, or the newborn deity develops some unintended Intimacies. Generally, these problems should not in themselves end a task, but they mar its final product or make completion difficult.

Example: on a Sapphire Circle project (base difficulty 6), a Finesse 1 roll has complications if it fails to produce at least five successes (and produces at least one 1), while a Finesse 5 roll has complications only if it fails to produce at least one success (and produces at least one 1).​

Based on your chosen Circle and Ambition, your task will have a Goal Number (GN), a total number of successes that you are trying to gather on an extended roll. If your first roll produces sufficiently many successes (after subtracting those lost for the difficulty), you have completed the task. Otherwise, check how many times you have rolled for the task already. If you have rolled at least five times, you have failed and must abandon the task (or at least start over). If you have not yet rolled that many times, you may work for another period of time equal to the Interval and then roll again, adding your successes to those produced previously.

Spoiler: Circles and ambitions in detail

• Marble Circle (Base Difficulty 0)
  • Ambition 1 (GN 1, one hour):
    • Sorcery: Start a campfire in the pouring rain.
    • Crafting: Simple personal-scale equipment: a staff, a rough dining set, a handful of arrows.
  • Ambition 2 (GN 1, one day):
    • Sorcery: Tear a loaf of bread into two loaves of bread.
    • Crafting: Complex personal-scale equipment: a sword, a suit of armor, a cart, a canoe.
  • Ambition 3 (GN 5, one day):
    • Sorcery: Minor, unreliable divination, on the scale of reading tea leaves or entrails.
    • Crafting: Complex team-scale equipment: a trebuchet, a bridge, a five-man fishing boat, a simple house. Impressive personal-scale equipment.
    • Bureaucracy: Organize the creation of a same-difficulty Crafting task. Organize the theft of a horse.
• Emerald Circle (Base Difficulty 3)
  • Ambition 1 (GN 5):
    • Sorcery: Permanent, simple, small scale alterations (i.e., a road). Bind minor magical creatures.
    • Crafting: Complex neighborhood-scale equipment: a trireme, a row of simple houses. Impressive team-scale equipment. Impressive team-scale equipment.
    • Bureaucracy: Organize the creation of a same-difficulty Crafting task.
  • Ambition 2 (GN 10):
    • Sorcery: Minor wards. Scrying. Create mutations.
    • Crafting: Complex village-scale equipment: a warship, a stockade. Impressive neighborhood-scale equipment.
    • Bureaucracy: Organize the creation of a same-difficulty Crafting task.
  • Ambition 3 (GN 20):
    • Sorcery: Permanent, simple, medium scale alterations (i.e., a village). Create a new species. Establish communication across realms of existence.
    • Crafting: Complex town-scale equipment: a massive sailing vessel, a fortress, a palace. Impressive village-scale equipment. Artifact 1 trinkets.
    • Bureaucracy: Create or destroy a Minor Intimacy in your organization. Raid a rival organization of Size 1-3.
• Sapphire Circle (Base Difficulty 6)
  • Ambition 1 (GN 25):
    • Sorcery: Major wards. Permanent limited supernatural advantages for a creature. Summon a Second Circle Demon. Entirely transform a room, or create illusions over a village.
    • Crafting: Artifact 2.
    • Bureaucracy: Increase a Minor Intimacy to Major, or decrease a Major Intimacy to Minor, in your organization.
  • Ambition 2 (GN 30):
    • Sorcery: Permanent significant supernatural advantages for a creature. Transform a spirit. Rework a local ecosystem. Permanent, meaningful, medium-scale alterations.
    • Crafting: N/A.
    • Bureaucracy: Raid a rival organization of Size 4-6. Utterly destroy a rival organization of Size 1-3.
  • Ambition 3 (GN 35):
    • Sorcery: Create an entity of scale with a Second Circle Demon. Grant a building mobility. Permanent transportation across realms of existence.
    • Crafting: Artifact 3.
    • Bureaucracy: Increase a Major Intimacy to Defining, or decrease a Defining Intimacy to Major, in your organization.
• Adamant Circle (Base Difficulty 9)
  • Ambition 1 (GN 40):
    • Sorcery: Transform an area the size of a city. Restore youth. Transfer souls.
    • Crafting: Artifact 4. Cap a minor demesne.
    • Bureaucracy: Raid a rival organization of Size 7+. Utterly destroy a rival organization of Size 4-6. Organize the capping of a minor demesne.
  • Ambition 2 (GN 50):
    • Sorcery: Create impossible or metaphysical changes in an area the size of a city. Transform a being into a different type of being (i.e., demon to god).
    • Crafting: Artifact 5. Cap a major demesne.
    • Bureaucracy: Organize the capping of a major demesne.
  • Ambition 3 (GN 75):
    • Sorcery: Alter the world, or remove a city-sized area from it. Create a being of scale with a Third Circle Demon.
    • Crafting: Artifact N/A.
    • Bureaucracy: Utterly destroy a rival organization of Size 7+.

(Yes, some of the Bureaucracy examples don't make much sense without the currently-in-for-revision bureaucracy system. Ignore 'em.)

Spoiler: Finesse in detail

• Finesse 1: Storyteller control, though player chooses objective. Alternatively, work is done with extreme haste; while this does not affect the final quality, much will be wasted (and many risks will be taken) along the way.
  • Crafting: Storyteller chooses artifact Evocations, or all details of a manse/hearthstone.
• Finesse 3: Storyteller adds details to and refines player description. Alternatively, work is done with normal speed.
  • Crafting: Storyteller chooses artifact Evocations in line with player theme. Player may tweak manse aspect to something reasonable, but may not choose hearthstone. Player has limited control over manse features.
• Finesse 5: Player controls details, though with Storyteller approval. Alternatively, work is done with extreme caution, wasting nothing.
  • Crafting: Player chooses artifact Evocations, with Storyteller approval. Player may drastically alter manse aspect and chooses hearthstone and manse features.

Spoiler: Means in detail

Remember that you always begin with a base of 0 Means, modified by any of the following that apply:

• Useful Abilities:
  • +1: another relevant Ability at 5, or at 3+ with a specialty
  • +2: as above, plus useful Charms in that Ability
• Useful spells:
  • +1: one or more related spells
• Cooperation:
  • +1: Help at about the level of a worker capable of a similar project, or a trained lesser team (Craft and Sorcery only)
  • +2: Help at the level of an organization of workers capable of similar projects (Craft and Sorcery only)
  • +X: X successes rolled on a relevant Project Action (Bureaucracy only)
• Extra time:
  • -2: Each Interval takes one less time-step.
  • +1: Each Interval takes one additional time-step.
  • +2: Each Interval takes two additional time-steps.
  • +3: Each Interval takes three additional time-steps.
• Rare materials:
  • Impossible: No materials (Craft and Bureaucracy only)
  • -2: Poor quality materials (Craft and Bureaucracy only)
  • +1: Exotic ingredients.
  • +2: Extremely exotic ingredients.
• Infrastructure:
  • -2: No tools (Craft and Bureaucracy only)
  • +1: Second Age infrastructure.
  • +2: First Age infrastructure.

Spoiler: Charms reconsidered

I haven't yet had a chance to run the math on adapting Charms to this system, but here are some initial impressions for how one might adapt the existing Charmset to this system. Note that the resulting set of Craft Charms is much smaller – but "much smaller" is still a pretty good size.

• Strip out anything to do with granting slots, points, etc. Those are just gone.
• Arete-Shifting Prana: If you follow the core rules, your Craft dots count for all Craft projects; if (like me) you only require Specialties in each Craft field, rather than full dots, you have a universal Craft Specialty, which applies to all crafting projects.
• Vice-Miracle Technique: If you have completed at least one Sapphire Circle (or higher) task in the past season without using this Charm, you may complete an Ambition 1 Sapphire Circle (or lower) task instantly, without rolling. This working or project has Finesse 5. You may not use this Charm more than once per season.
• Wonder-Forging Genius: If you have completed at least ten Adamant Circle tasks since last using this Charm, you may complete one Ambition 1 Adamant Circle (or lower) task immediately, without rolling. This task has Finesse 5. You may not use this Charm more than once per season.
• Craftsman Needs No Tools: Your Marble or Emerald craft projects are moved two time steps up the scale. Ignore the "no tools" penalty on projects of any level.
• Thousand-Forge Hands: Your Sapphire craft projects are moved one time step up the scale. Repurchase: Your Adamant craft projects are moved one time step up the scale.
• Words-as-Workshop Method: As written; you create a supply of temporary craft projects.
• Shattering Grasp: Your disassembly of craft projects, of whatever level, are moved three time steps up the scale.
• Durability Enhancing Technique: As written.
• Crack-Mending Technique: As written.
• Object-Strengthening Touch: As written.
• Chaos-Resistance Preparation: As written.
• Breach-Healing Method: As written.
• The Art of Permanence: As written.
• Realizing the Form Supernal: 1/story. When repairing an object, reduce the Ambition required to do so by two steps, which can roll over to a different Circle (i.e., from Sapphire 3 to Sapphire 1, or from Sapphire 1 to Emerald 2).
• Celestial Reforging Technique: As written.
• Flawless Handiwork Method: ?
• Triumph-Forging Eye: As written.
• Supreme Masterwork Focus: ?
• Experiential Conjuring of True Void: ?
• Unbroken Image Focus: ?
• First Movement of the Demiurge: ?
• Essence-Forging Kata: As written.
• Inspiration-Renewing Vision: 1/story. Make a task roll, which requires no time and does not consume one of the rolls from your Means.
• Divine Inspiration Technique: ?
• Horizon-Unveiling Insight: Gain +1 Means on all projects.
• Holistic Miracle Understanding: Reduce the Ambition of all craft projects by 1, which can roll over to a different Circle as per Realizing the Form Supernal.
• Speed the Wheels: The Solar may use this Charm to enhance a bureaucracy project which is primarily administrative in nature (i.e., form requisitions are legal, manse construction is not). Reduce the time interval for that task by (Solar's Essence) steps.
• Foul Air of Argument Technique: This Charm targets the leader of any Bureaucratic Project, with the listed effects.

 

[Kuciwalker]

• A Circle of effect. An effect's Circle describes, broadly, how powerful or broad-reaching it is. Effects come in four circles: Marble, Emerald, Sapphire, and Adamant. Any character may attempt any Circle project, but the Emerald, Sapphire, and Adamant Circles require Terrestrial, Celestial, and Solar Circle sorcery, respectively. Marble circle workings require the Thaumaturgy merit or any level of sorcery. Every Circle specifies a base difficulty for actions of that Circle.

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Is there a typo here? It's just Workings that require Sorcery, right?

More generally: I need to sit down and spreadsheet out the odds, but I'm a little skeptical of the change to the way Means work. Also I think you've lost what was great about the original Workings system: you could decide where to put something on the basis of "which group of people do I think should be able to do this fairly regularly: Terrestrials, Celestials, or Solars?" But Terrestrials really ought to be able to craft Artifact 2s without reaching beyond their station, as it were.

 

[Anasurimbor]

-Not sure how Finesse 0 is supposed to work under 3e extended roll rules. Do you get 3 successes when you roll 2?

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Looking at the actual rules, I don't get where you could possibly see an extra success coming from. Were you using some house rule or "simplification"?

When determining a character's current success total, count only those successes that meet or exceed the action's difficulty.

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characters may occasionally find themselves attempting a rolled action at difficulty 0. Treat this as a difficulty 1 action which cannot be botched.

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On a slightly separate note, I have found it interesting how many people simply glossed over the section on extended rolls, assuming that they were unchanged since the dawn of time. They're closer to 1e's rules than 2e's oddly uneven ones. The difference is that 1e only counted the successes that exceed difficulty. (1e assumed that the base difficulty for an extended roll was 0.)

 

[Kuciwalker]

Looking at the actual rules, I don't get where you could possibly see an extra success coming from. Were you using some house rule or "simplification"?

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Actually, he interpreted my intent correctly, and I was guilty of the error: I had remembered the rules for extended actions as "threshold successes +1", because that's what they are in every situation except Difficulty 0.

That said, this would only actually apply to Finesse 0 in the first Circle.