Basically this.

Your Exaltation is your magic sword. It allow you to do imposible things. But you still have to know how to wield it.

If it can auto-train the wielder, honestly it loses the whole point of looking for an appropiate champion in the first place. You may as well select at random.

Think about this from the POV of a transcendent weapons development program - you want to pick people who are very likely to think "let's make war upon the creators of the world" is a good and workable idea and have a reasonable plan for going about doing that once handed real ultimate nuclear fusion power over people with decent mundane combat skills. The mundane combat skills are, really, not all that important from the POV of murdering the creators of the world with a transcendent spiritual weapon, but a good can-do attitude and particular disregard for the odds of success are quite relevant.

There's usually a correlation between people who have world-class skills and the necessary type of personality who will pick up the golden sword and go "Yeah. Yeah, let's go kill God.", of course. But the old master, complacent in their ability and place in the world, who desires nothing more than for the status quo to continue, will probably get passed over by a Solar Exaltation for the angry urchin with a chip on their shoulder and the burning desire to overthrow their local oppressive overlord.
 
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The mundane combat skills are, really, not all that important

This is, of course, wrong.

Your Supernal combat skill is a direct function of your mundane combat skill*, because that's how Solar Essence works. You want to pick skillfull people because what made them skillful for mundane tasks will make them skillful for wielding their Exaltation.

*(And actually, it applies to all Exalts, although that's more a quirk of the mechanics that something intended, i think).
 
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This is, of course, wrong.

Your Supernal combat skill is a direct function of your mundane combat skill, because that's how Solar Essence works. You want to pick skillfull people because what made them skillful for mundane tasks will make them skillful for wielding their Exaltation.

Let me rephrase. You're a Solar Exaltation. Because we're constructing a testing scenario, you don't have access to an ideal candidate who is both very likely to perform your intended function and has all their necessary prerequisite combat skills maxed out. Your pick is between a very motivated person who is very likely to enthusiastically jump into the task of stabbing God in his component souls until he dies with Melee 3, and a dude who is very comfortable where he is and doesn't particularly feel like doing anything interesting with Melee 5.

A Solar Dawn can go from Melee 3 to Melee 5 instantly at the cost of not a lot of XP, and he will probably be able to do it extremely quickly once he accesses the past-user combat data archive you're helpfully carrying around which serves as a way to preserve institutional knowledge and act as a user manual to the fancy transcendent golden killing machine. Which do you pick?
 
The old tired swordmaster doesn't have Melee 5. Maybe he had it. But you can't keep at the edge of human perfection without constant training.

Then place our example character on the day he retires from his job, if you like. Doesn't particularly affect the scenario. My point is, there are things you look for in the hosts of your titan-killing golden weapons, and their mundane combat skills are not the most important thing. Those can be brought up very quickly. Favoured/caste cost for abilities is, really, not that high.
 
Can a man not possess power without being an asshole only worthy of being punched @Darmani?
If that wo/man isn't consistently written as acting as a controlling asshole with no accountability, sure. but even 'the good guys' of exalted exploit lessers. The First Age and many "good guy" characters use slavery. Demetheus 1es good old boy ended up "teaching a queen a lesson about rulership" that had her sleeping with him for a week. No problematic intimidation there, right?

Kejak the super secret department head of an nigh unaccountable political/spy body using subodinate female as some messed up means to justify himself and engage in further control and so on.
Consistent. But uncomfortable besides the 'kewl' part. its like how satan is from paradise lost but miss little things like his reign in hell being bullshit, his degredation into a dragon and that time he rapes someone. Because obviously that's too venal and petty for the grand villain.

Beneath it all are people with all the petty pathetic lameness that implies. And that's usually reason one the Exalts (or gods) aren't to be regarded as unimpeachable moral authority even with all their insight, wisdom, and genuine virtue.
 
Consider Hiko from Kenshin. If ANYBODY in Kenshin was Melee 5, it was that guy. He curb-stomped people like it was going out of style. However unlike Kenshin he had no driving need to overthrow the government. He didn't care. He just trained because he did like his style, and he made pots because it was a living.
 
Then place our example character on the day he retires from his job, if you like.

That's an oddly specific scenario. But ok.

I would, of course, choose the Melee 3 dude.... except, of course, that i am not choosing myself. I am designing a choosing algorithm.

And i am pretty sure that i have limitations while creating such algorithm. A Solar Exaltation will be drawn, first and foremost, to people that resonate with solar Essence. Such is it's nature. An excellence is one of the characteristics that resonate most with it. (Although not the only one).
 
If that wo/man isn't consistently written as acting as a controlling asshole with no accountability, sure. but even 'the good guys' of exalted exploit lessers. The First Age and many "good guy" characters use slavery. Demetheus 1es good old boy ended up "teaching a queen a lesson about rulership" that had her sleeping with him for a week. No problematic intimidation there, right?

Kejak the super secret department head of an nigh unaccountable political/spy body using subodinate female as some messed up means to justify himself and engage in further control and so on.
Consistent. But uncomfortable besides the 'kewl' part. its like how satan is from paradise lost but miss little things like his reign in hell being bullshit, his degredation into a dragon and that time he rapes someone. Because obviously that's too venal and petty for the grand villain.

Beneath it all are people with all the petty pathetic lameness that implies. And that's usually reason one the Exalts (or gods) aren't to be regarded as unimpeachable moral authority even with all their insight, wisdom, and genuine virtue.

Are you consistenly doing your best to interpret what I say as being against your vision of Exalted?

Because I pretty clearly stated that he was not a nice person, he's not an asshole but the is certainly not a nice person either.

Chejop Kejak and his Bronze Faction are the Technocratic Union hunting you because you made the mistake of not fitting in, they are the NSA monitoring you because they have to be better at preventing terrorism amirite guys? They are the Abjad pruning the "bad fruits" of the tree to make it strong.

Chejop has personally murdered many Sidereals, Solars, Lunars, Dragon-Blooded, Demons and many other. He has a kill count larger than the entire Realm's legions, he orchestrated the fall of mankind's greatest era and sequestered himself in Heaven when the Contagion cut through Creation, he keeps valuable artifacts hidden and rules through misdirection, he rules the entire world from the shadows, making puppets of emperors and queens.

Is this not enough for you?
 
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That's an oddly specific scenario. But ok.

I would, of course, choose the Melee 3 dude.... except, of course, that i am not choosing myself. I am designing a choosing algorithm.

And i am pretty sure that i have limitations while creating such algorithm. A Solar Exaltation will be drawn, first and foremost, to people that resonate with solar Essence. Such is it's nature. An excellence is one of the characteristics that resonate most with it. (Although not the only one).

Remember that the seeker algorithm needs to pick people who would a) be willing to go make war upon the creators of the world, living worlds in themselves so complex their souls are sapient and have souls which are themselves sapient and b) are likely to be effective at doing so, being generally competent and well-practiced sorts.

IMO, generally speaking, if you have a limited pool of candidates and can't find an a+b, you'll go for a over b, because part of your function is to make b extremely easy to achieve for someone who is chosen, while there is no similar helper function to turn a skilled but risk-averse and unmotivated dude into someone willing to challenge the embodiment of a radioactive fusion reactor to a fistfight or try to conquer a Dyson Sphere.
 
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Sure.

The thing is, the Incarna aren't omnipotent. While creating their superweapons, they had limitations, just like a missile designer.

It would be nice to create a self-guided drone with perfect IFF. But of course, such a thing is impossible. You can only get an aproximation.

You can't create a Solar Exaltation that chooses un-solar-like people*. Fortunately, Solar-like characteristics are pretty much what you want anyway. (Ie, driven and skillful people, that will mostly satisfy both a and b).

*(This is easy to prove. Alchemical Exalts are choosen by people, and yet, if the choosen soul doesn't properly resonate with the personality of their intended caste, the procedure just fails).
 
Sure.

The thing is, the Incarna aren't omnipotent. While creating their superweapons, they had limitations, just like a missile designer.

It would be nice to create a self-guided drone with perfect IFF. But of course, such a thing is impossible. You can only get an aproximation.

You can't create a Solar Exaltation that chooses un-solar-like people*. Fortunately, Solar-like characteristics are pretty much what you want anyway. (Ie, driven and skillful people, that will mostly satisfy both a and b).

*(This is easy to prove. Alchemical Exalts are choosen by people, and yet, if the choosen soul doesn't properly resonate with the personality of their intended caste, the procedure just fails).

So, a Solar who starts out relatively unskilled, gets Exalted and then crash buys Melee from 3 to 5 using the power of his newfound template is not particularly out of scope, yes?
 
So, a Solar who starts out relatively unskilled, gets Exalted and then crash buys Melee from 3 to 5 using the power of his newfound template is not particularly out of scope, yes?

That's fine, yes. Although it would probably take some training.*

(What i am oposed the most is the idea that you can Exalt and your skills inmediately rise.


*(In 3e, training of caste skills is considerably more faster, but not instantaneus. I mostly agree with this).

(Also, training skills using only past live knowledge is fine, but it should give limit. Although that's only my personal rules).
 
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Bluntly, Solar Exaltation in particular errs on the side of the heroic drive to do things over having the skill to do them. Exaltation either provides that skill, or grants an ease of learning that allows the fresh Chosen to rapidly acquire that skill. It wants people who have goals, and whether they already have an appropriate skillset is just... A nice bonus, I guess.

This is obvious, when you think about it; the potential for rapid growth inherent in the Solar Exalted is one of the great characteristics that makes them such a threat to the status quo. A Solar is not, ever, a problem you can afford to ignore, because if you do they will rapidly snowball out of control. That's what Solars do.

This is also entirely desirable, because one of the core character concepts for Solars is that of the young upstart who, through heroism and savvy, triumphs over the old masters. One of the most common understandings of how you Exalt as a Solar is, "you try something stupidly awesome that by all rights should kill you, but the passing Exaltation liked your moxie, so all of a sudden a blazing reactor of hero-magic latches onto your soul, and the scales tip."

It is both reasonable and entirely appropriate for Exaltation's to grant skills to the people they choose. When a peasant is driven too far by the abuses of the Scarlet Empire and storms the alehouse that a Scale of mortal Legionnaires commandeered as a barracks, armed with only the grieving fury for her dead husband and the murdered dream of a child, a hefty stick, and childhood memories of playing at being heroic Dynasts, now poisoned by the reality... It is entirely possible that all of a sudden her brow shines gold, she takes a single, steadying breath and settles into a form she cannot name but remembers in her bones, and proceeds to splatter the walls with blood and brain-matter in an orgy of exquisite violence.
 
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One of the core aspects of an Exaltation is that it grants you montage training powers. So the ability to put the pedal to the metal of what is important, as it'll help you once you start trying
 
Kerisgame Homebrew: Sasi's Soul Pantheon
So, we've seen quite a lot of @Aleph's Keris and her soul pantheon, but Keris is not the default for an Infernal using the soul pantheon rules I've devised. She's effectively devoted vast amounts of time into working on her pantheon, and spends hours daily meditating to interact with her souls, keeping them friendly and well-inclined to her. Amusingly, since what Keris is doing is mechanically meditation, the time she puts into playing with her souls is actually a form of personal therapy little different than the time that an Immaculate monk spends meditating to control his desires and focus his mind. What Keris does by focussing on her desires and her wants and her drives and getting them to play nicely together and not pull each other's hair is effectively time spent getting her mind and her desires in order.

Most Infernals are not going to spend so much time focussing on their own psychological stability, and so their soul pantheons are going to be rather less cooperative and useful. They're also going to be more "classically" demonic - which is to say, they're not going to all be little (sometimes) adorable (usually) bratty children and are instead going to resemble normal Exalted demons more.

As an example, here's what Sasi's nascent soul pantheon looks like. Which says rather more about her than she'd like others to know.

The Blasphemer in Gold, the Seat of Sin
Second Soul of Lady Sasimana

The po soul of Nemone Sasimana has supped upon the succor of the Yozis, and has bloated in ways the souls of men were not meant to. Now, when the Blasphemer in Gold manifests within her soul-world it is a creature out of the night-terrors of Immaculate children. Pale skinned and grey-haired, like its greater self, it drapes itself in tattered golden robes and wears a demonic mask. Upon the forehead of the living mask is painted a sun, which is sometimes yellow and sometimes green. Its hands and feet have long, claw-like fingernails that are often caked with blood, and serve to contrast its lush female form.

The Seat of Sin is a cowardly creature that flees from strength but viciously attacks weakness. It is not clever, but it has a certain base cunning that makes it dangerous for a thing that otherwise resembles a beast. The other souls fear it, for it will attack them seemingly at random and lose interest only when they beg for mercy. At other times the Blasphemer in Gold will simply stalk the soul-world, seeking out its favoured vices - and to that end, the other souls leave offerings to it which seem to sate its envy and greed.

Mu Nenra, the Guide to Lady Sasimana
Fourth Soul of Lady Sasimana

Once an agata champion whose jousting and philosophy alike won him glory and repute in the fighting arenas of Malfeas, Mu Nenra was taken by the Priests of Cecelyne after he slew the centipede behemoth Valak before an audience of ten thousand. Such skill drew the eyes of the Unquestionable and so he was made a coadjutor. The Yozi essence has twisted him, and though he remains a beautiful wasp, he has shrunk to the size of a large dog and is now formed of milk-white stone.

Mu Nenra is a poorly suited coadjutor for Lady Sasimana. Though his philosophy is occasionally of interest to her, the vainglorious champion made a poor impression on a manipulative socialite - and worse, she does not respect him as a 'mere' first circle demon. He is sometimes of use for she appreciates someone to bounce ideas off of, but he has little influence over her actions. Moreover, with the genesis of her other souls his influence has dwindled even further and now he fears what may happen, trapped within a tiny world with five other souls - and her monstrous po.

Kalaska, the Princess of Law
Fifth Soul of Lady Sasimana

Within the darkness of Sasimana's soul there is a cave-shrine made of blue glass and engraved with endless laws. There dwells Kalaska, the Princess of Law, who has the seeming of a young girl of perhaps eight or nine years of age. She looks much like her greater self, though her eyes are a bright blue and under silver robes she wears ill-fitting armour made from the same glass as her shrine. When Kalaska speaks, her word becomes law. As a result, she says little save when she is scared, though she is not quiet and hums and sings meaningless songs. When she wishes to communicate without passing judgement, she creates blue glass tablets that hold the words she cannot say.

For all her imperious nature, fear holds Kalaska closely. Only within her place of law is she safe - if she leaves it, her armour cracks and splinters. Unexpected changes inflict pain on her, and sometimes the cracks spread from her armour to her flesh. She hates to accept the influence of others, and will cite her endless made-up laws and rules whenever she perceives a threat. Around her, criminals and oathbreakers find that they suffer the symptoms of hay fever, for the miniscule fragments of glass that sliver from her pale hair seek out those who show no respect for their own words. She has made herself a little desert fox-akuma from the sand that coats the floor of her cave, and she loves the creature dearly. It advances ahead of her and trails in her wake, for it has several bodies - though one can usually be found in her arms. She is somewhat neglected by her greater self and bullied by the other souls, especially La and the po who will threaten her beloved pet to get her to comply.

Seresa, the Mother of Shadows
Sixth Soul of Lady Sasimana

Though the true form of Seresa is an obviously female shadow-figure, she looks as she wishes. Her favoured form is a curvaceous woman in her early thirties, with dusky features and long hair the deep blue-black of the sky after sunset. She is frequently pregnant with The Things That Dwell In Shadows, though such pregnancies last but a single night. Her growing brood swarms around her, playing the stolen reflections of musical instruments and accompanying her in her gentle songs. Her touch leaves an oily residue and around her fires burn black, casting darkness rather than illumination.

Seresa is a mother figure and a seductress in equal amounts. Among the Mother of Shadows' many indulgences are compassion and love, and she is the kindest of Sasimana's souls - though sometimes she is too lost in decadence to make time for others. Within her quarters wine runs freely and narcotic smoke boils and churns. She is always prepared to console anyone who seeks her out, though her consolations often involve drowning the mind in drugs and pleasures than resolving its issues.

Marenolo, the Pivot of Understanding
Seventh Soul of Lady Sasimana

A male figure made from luminous colourless crystal from whose shoulders a hundred hands of light sprout, Marenolo is a scholar and a gentleman. His vast and cool intellect devours the warmth from his surroundings, and so water freezes and identical snowflakes fall from the sky around him. The Pivot of Understanding is himself blind, but that means nothing to him for with his countless hands he feels and examines the world around him, and so knows it intimately. His cave is where Sasimana stores her notebooks and own work on sorcery, and he is her archivist and scribe. Despite his blindness he produces elaborately illustrated work, though his concept of beauty more relates to the geometric patterns of the ink than the landscapes of Creation.

Marenolo's curiosity knows no bounds. Sasimana has already made the private decision that he will never be allowed to roam free within Malfeas, for he would no doubt swiftly be thrown into the sky by Orabilis. The restrictions on the Green Sun Princes leave him surly and rebellious, and he whispers to his greater self, tempting her to indulge her own curiosity in things better left untouched.

Moneha, the Eagle and the Spider
Eight Soul of Lady Sasimana

Moneha has two bodies, and both are Moneha at once. One is a woman with the head of an eagle, while the other is a spider the size of a cat with a woman's head. The spider is fair-featured and beautiful in a Realm way, with scarlet hair and sharp teeth. She offers deals, information, and other such aids. The eagle comes for those who break the terms the spider dictates, and those who fall under her power are swallowed whole. Oaths and promises are Moneha's business, though she considers herself above such deals and always makes sure to leave her a way to back out of any arrangement. When she is nearby, spiders and birds make common cause and the arachnids weave their webs around nests to keep them safe from insects.

The Eagle and the Spider respects nothing that she cannot own; not her greater self, nor the Unquestionables, nor even the Yozis. She cannot offer her aid freely and her tongues burn red-hot if she would try. When Sasimana would deal with her, she must come with bribes and payment - and this she does reliably. Hence, despite her lack of respect Moneha does have a certain fondness for her greater self and bargains more kindly than she would with another. Still, Moneha would ensnare the world if she had the means and Sasimana is always cautious around her, for they know each other as mother and daughter.

La, the Apostate Dragon
Ninth Soul of Lady Sasimana

Bald-headed, orange-robed and whippet-thin, La could almost be an Immaculate priest. Then the onlooker looks into his slitted eyes and sees the texts praising the Yozis tattooed across his skin and hears his squirming words which call men to cast down the gods and realise the nature of this apostate. He is as yet immature and cannot assume his full draconic form, but what men assume are his robes are instead his wings and he hides his claws beneath gloves. La reshapes the world with his words, twisting it in countless small ways. Men become cliches of themselves, and his blood spawns malformed mockeries. When he preaches, the text crawls across the pages in nearby books, and clothes reweave themselves to fashions more pleasing to the Yozis. His very presence is a blasphemy to Heaven, and gods find his touch burns like acid.

Within his shrine-cave, La works on revising the Immaculate Texts. He believes that the truth is concealed within them, an unknowing prophecy buried deep by the Sidereals who wrote them, and that in truth their tales of the past of Creation - ruled by demon-worshipping Anathema - are instead tales of the world to come. He sees a glorious future ahead, and presses Sasimana to make it a reality. One day she will be an Anathematic demon-queen, vizier of the Yozis, ruling Creation in their name. His forked tongue spills words about her revenge that will be complete when the faith of the Realm is turned to the Yozis and the Dragonblooded kneel before her.
 
It seems to me that after reading Jenna's opening fiction in Ex3 that your Exaltation making you way better at fighting seems like a thing that happens. From a writing perspective, it's evocative of certain tropes and facilitates the plucky young hero thing in a fun way, so I'm conceptually on board with it, but what stops it from totally taking over the narrative, for it to work that way?

I'd probably, by default, restrict it to certain situations. So if your character's Dawn Caste past life memories boost your Melee from 2 to 5 at character creation and we discuss how that represents this, I'm probably cool with it. We'd have to have another conversation before I'd let someone do that kind of thing again outside of a really big moment like Exaltation, but I could be convinced.

Otherwise, I'd maybe treat Past Lives as a sort of Mentor merit, which is already handwavey a bit, and you could ask me if their past live possesses a particular skill to pass on during downtime. I might be generous with my answers, but if it's working according to a merit I will be very firm about not handing out this kind of benefit casually without the merit. I'd probably want something to be going on with the past life in question to make it a bit more interesting than just a free easy trainer. Maybe it's like Flowing Mind Prana and you have to accept an intimacy to get trained which might force your character to behave certain ways and all.

Basically I think it's a good idea to not overthink it (which I guess I might be doing...) in the sense that one doesn't need to get super crunchy, they just need to ask how interesting something is, if it serves the story and if it's fun for the player, because Exaltations are weird, wondrous things and they can work in mysterious ways.
 
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Keris: *drags Sasi to family therapy*
Oh, there is going to be quite an arc when Keris finds out about Kalaska's living conditions. She's been lying to Haneyl in her letters and pretending that she has a giant living space and servants and courtiers and knows all about problems like organising jousting tournaments and building castles, when in fact she's got a little room in a Domain the size of a house and her problems run more along the lines of La and Marenolo getting into screaming arguments in the communal space while Moneha threatens her pet and Sasi neglecting her in favour of Aiko.

When this comes out, Keris is going to be pissed.
 
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