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General Exalted Thread

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So, who likes weird, trans-humanistic Infernal Charms?

Cost: 3m, 1lhl
Mins: Essence 3
Type: Simple, Obvious
Keywords: Combo-OK
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: Dim Irrelevancies Unveiled
Malfeas sees all in his world-body, the suffering of the serfs as they are ground between his falling layers, the ennui of the Unquestionables and the petty rivalries of the Demon Lords. And yet he still could not care one iota.

When this Charm is activated , the Infernal's eyes melt and boil as emerald fire fills the Infernal's sockets, steaming gore pouring down their face. While under the effects of this charm, the Infernal gains the benefit of the Solar Awareness Charms Keen Sigh Technique and Unsurpassed SIght Discipline. They are also immune to all sight based crippling effects, the imperishable eyes of the King of Kings proof against all such ailments. This charm can be repurchased, allowing them to see through objects as if they were not there for one action at the cost 2m.
Once again, Revlid's Metagaos charms are used as a balancing point. It costs less motes than the two Solar Charms it is based off, 3 compared to the 5 for both effects, but it costs a health level, is available at Essence 3 and after 2 charms and it is obvious.

So very, very painfully Obvious.

I'm also not sure if the upgrade should be its own charm or not, but eh, Infernal's get a lot more growth of individual charms than most, so I'm not sure.
Cost: 20m, 1wp
Type: Simple
Keyword: Combo-Ok, Obvious, Sorcerous
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: Crystal Facet Thoughts, Will-Crushing Force.
She Who Lives In Her Name is 999'999'997 individual orbs of crystal, yet she moves as a singular whole.

With this Charm the Infernal extrudes one of his Shard-Selves into a mortal by Will-Crushing Force. The Infernal immediately loses all the benefits of that particular shard as it enters the mortal's body. This kills the mortal and replace their mind and soul with that of the shard mind; replacing their motivation with the intimacy it was created from and an intimacy for purpose with which they were made. An Infernal can create up to (Essences) of these weaker copies, who must obey them like a bound Demon, and if they are banishd, return to the Infernal's mind.

A Shard-Slaves such as these are Creatures of Darkness and have an awakened Essence score of 1 and calculate their Essence pool like a spirit and have a number of Spirit Charms relating to the purpose they were made for equal to the Essence of the Infernal who made them.

It is possible to create more powerful servants at the cost of flexibility; This charm can be enhanced, as the Infernal adds more Shard-Minds to the broken mortal, adding up to their (essence) in Shard-Minds for 5m each. This grants the Slave-Self essence equal to the total number of Shard-Minds added, as well as adding an extra charm per Shard-Mind given. One shard-Mind must be chosen as the core, forming the motivation and purpose, while the supplementary Shard-Minds just add their intimacy they were created from to the core Shard-Mind.

A Shard-Mind may be reabsorbed by the Infernal if it is within (essence)x 10 Yards, the body of the mortal flashes with white fire as it turns to ash, the memories of its time spent apart reintegrating seamlessly. If Self-Slave is killed, the Intimacy it was made of flees to the Infernal with no memories, save of those relating to its final moments. The Intimacies that it was comprised of take 5 days to recover from the trauma and in that time the Infernal cannot use them to enhance their actions or to resist mental influence until they heal.

If the Self-Slave is killed with a spirit-killing charm or the like, however, the effect is much more drastic; the Infernal immediately gains limit to the Shard-Minds killed as the psychic shock assaults their mind. Those intimacies that were slain are utterly destroyed, the infernal losses those Intimacies completely and utterly.
So, guess who has been reading Eclipse Phase? This is supposed to balanced around Splintered Gale Shintai; its more powerful, but it has a higher risk. But I'm still pretty ehh about it. To be honest, I don't particularly like it; I mean I see the use of it, and how it compares to Splintered Gale Shintai, but I don't think its balanced enough or particularly interesting enough to be used. Maybe if it affected Artifacts like power armor or Warstriders, maybe with an upgrade or a repurchase, I'd think better of it. But right now I think it isn't all that great.

Cost: -
Mins: Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Keywords: Obvious
Duration: Indefinte
Prerequisite Charms: (Yozi) Mythos Exhulant
The Yozi are worlds unto themselves, each step, each breath defining their reality. It is no wonder that the Wyld still shudders in memory of their passing.

This charm permanently expands the Infernal's ability; when the Infernal's Anima Banner flares to the 11-15 level, he automatically benefits from the Solar charm Chaos Repelling Prana, as reality around them warps to the reality of a world-forging God-Monster. This effect endures as long as the Infernal's anima stays at that level.

Malfeas: Plant life turns metalics as the light of the Sun is tinged green, brick and morter becomes that of the demon city and puddles of water take on the mien of Vitrol while fire burn green

Cecelyne: Sand leaks from cracks in the earth and in buildings, small puddles of water and the like evaporate and the temperature grows hot and stifling while shrubs and plant life wither and yellow.

She Who Live In Her Name: Fire burn pale and the world around the Infernal re-arranges itself so that it is more symmetrical, more perfect as cobbles stones move themselves into perfect rows, the branches of trees from match each other and rain drops fall at the exact same speed.

Adojran: The wind picks up and flashes with hints of crimson, even in door, and a hush descends over the area, making sound seem distant. Stone seems to erode slightly, their surface scratching.

The Ebon Dragon: Light dims, shadows grow long and the darkness deepens

Kimbery: Indigo ice forms on every surface, water turns cold and bitter, the garish colors of the Great Mother floating on the surface. crevice and holes fill with this water while it trickles from cracks in stone and buildings.

These effects are cosmetic and fade once this charm deactivates or the Infernal leaves the area bar a few purely cosmetic changes. E.g the sand on beach remains silver, veins of brass remain in stone work or water tastes bitter etc.

At Essence 4 this charm automatically upgrades at Essence 4, the effects extending to (essence) x 10 Yard, and again at Essence 5 to extend the effect to (Essence) x 100 Yards.
This is more thematic and fluffy than actually balanced. The power to define one's reality and the reality of the world around them is something universal to Primordials, and as their Chosen, the Infernals can mimic their prowess to a more limited degree. I was actually debating whether or not to have this effect be (Essence) x10 Yards from the get go rather than be an upgrade at Essence 4, and I'm still on the fence really.
 
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For Self-Shard Shintai, I think you might want to do what @EarthScorpion did with Kerisgame and her weird soul pantheon stuff and instead balance the charm around the equivalent for demon summoning. Make it cost more and/or risk more at the benefit of having more predictable tools you can wield in getting your projects done.

This is in fact an extended computer science joke, since you're summoning autonomous parts of yourself which you can task to work on things in a way so that they are eternally loyal to you and largely predictable. And because it's Sorcerous, you can basically forget about them and have them work in the background, invisible to the main character.

That's right. You're making daemons in the computer science sense. :V
 
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MJ12 Commando said:
For Self-Shard Shintai, I think you might want to do what @EarthScorpion did with Kerisgame and her weird soul pantheon stuff and instead balance the charm around the equivalent for demon summoning. Make it cost more and/or risk more at the benefit of having more predictable tools you can wield in getting your projects done.

This is in fact an extended computer science joke, since you're summoning autonomous parts of yourself which you can task to work on things in a way so that they are eternally loyal to you and largely predictable. And because it's Sorcerous, you can basically forget about them and have them work in the background, invisible to the main character.

That's right. You're making daemons in the computer science sense. :V
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Presumably at least one of them would be responsible for managing your personal postal service.
 
Yozi Elevenies (eww, the German word sounds much better)!

Malfeas
Hate
Brass clamors
Indignation fills me
I turn upon myself
Disgust

Cecelyne
Justice
Lies deceive
Weak are trampled
Only power is eternal
Law

She Who Lives In Her Name
Harmony
Components together
Beautiful systems arise
Order perfects the world
Hierarchy

Adorjan
Desire
Fleeting, dancing
Surging, blowing, all-encompassing
Turns all into joy
Silence

The Ebon Dragon
Darkness
Brings safety
Shrouds the world
Uncounted mysteries contained within
Shadows

Kimbery
Love
Children play
Honor their mother
Failure calls for discipline
Spite

(Note that this post only exists so I can contribute without contributing homebrew; because I'm bored out of my mind and just sort of found myself writing the two first, so I finished it up and posted them here. :V)
 
Had another thought building on my previous post about Buy-in, and game expectations.

As of Exalted 2e, there is a fundamental flaw in how a lot of the non-combat game works: We have very little idea how long it takes to complete a given action, and we have no idea how long a given effort will endure.

The game does a poor job of conveying that actions outside of 'Live on camera' time or 'combat' have any kind of meaningful duration. Oh there are examples like how Investigation takes 15 minutes, or broken up into three five-minute chunks, etc. But there's no real solid reference point that the whole fanbase can grab on to outside of deriving conclusions from training time and artifact crafting intervals.

As for the second point, let's say Joe Exalt raises a nation. They take however many actions or scenes it require to 'complete' to their satisfaction and he no longer needs to take active effort to build it.

How long does that nation last?

Well, the books don't tell you directly, but I feel safe in saying that the elements of culture and society would last anywhere from 1-5 scenes, because you spend [Conviction] scenes eroding or building intimacies and policies. In practice though, a nation's component courts 'changing its mind' so freely is actually un-fun and not assumed. It's also worth noting that a lot of intimacies are intended to be self-reinforcing or correcting, as per the relevant paragraphs in the 2e book. Changing someone's mind without magic is slow.

So more accurately, Exalted in general assumes inertia. Something will continue on indefinitely until acted upon by an outside force. The development and interaction of these outside forces are up to the Storyteller.

Consider a mining town- the Storyteller could easily say the mine plays itself out over the course of a campaign, which is an event that 'acts' upon the mining town, necessitating a reaction by its leadership. The ST could easily say that the mine will endure long enough to not matter in the scope of their game- it will persist indefinitely as a mining town.

A roving bandit army could see its riches and want to sack it, or a local lord could want to buy it. All of these things are actions that are taken against or in relation to the mining town.

This ties further into one of the core themes of the game in that you can make lasting works, even if you lack specific magics or great feats of the First Age, but you are not guaranteed permanent works. Active effort to guide anything is the thematic, optimal strategy of Creation. This is most evidenced in the conceit of 'Solar Point of Failure'.
 
I ended up writing out some of my thoughts on raksha in another thread, so I'll paste it in here:

GardenerBriareus said:
I think part of what kills my ability to feel sorry for him is the Renegade segment way, way back. When Grayven used the Ophidian's Eyes on Nabu, he found no emotion in him whatsoever besides avarice. That says not-good things about the sort of creature Nabu is, and makes me doubt that he even has the capacity to think of others as having inherent value.

My comparison to a raksha was rather deliberate - I see Nabu as an inhuman entity that obsessively pushes the role it's chosen for itself, using the people around it as ornaments and bit players in its own personal little drama. Nabu is The Elder Sage, Protector of the Weak, and so he filters the entire world through the lens of that persona. OL disapproves of The Elder Sage's actions - clearly, this makes him a villain to be defeated, because The Elder Sage is Wise and Good and Knows What Is Best. Likewise, Nabu takes such a cavalier attitude toward his membership in the JL because they're not 'friends' or 'allies': the Leaguers are just the latest set of secondary cast members in The Tale of the Wise Sage, and thus only matter in how their actions enable (or inhibit) The Wise Sage's exploits. He may protect people, but only because having a panel where the village chieftain thanks The Wise Sage and gives him a chance to prove his character by denying any reward helps with the story.

The world around Nabu is a perfectly orderly, perfectly linear realm which progresses seamlessly from scene to scene of his life's story - and whenever reality fails to meet that expectation, he either goes into denial or gets upset.

A major part of this is his treatment of Nelson. After all, Nelson is the young seeker of knowledge who frees The Wise Sage and allows him to return to the world. That is his role, and if he doesn't play the role then the whole narrative starts to crumble. Kent Nelson can only fulfill his role if he is either:

A) The Wise Sage's Apprentice, in which case he only needs to interact with The Wise Sage.

B) a largely-ignored footnote, the "suit of clothing" Nelson described himself as to the Team - in which case him indulging in independent action is an active detriment to the role.
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Disregarding the specifics of the described scenario, this hits in on a lot of my ideas on how to redo raksha - they're beings that live inside a constructed story, and what makes them inhuman and dangerous is the fact they have little to no capacity for understanding the world around them save through the lens of their chosen narrative. While the idea of raksha wearing their constructed persona like a biohazard suit to exist inside Creation is still fairly accurate, the simile I'm using here adds the genre/narrative conventions of their chosen story as being like a peephole they view Creation through.

As a result, raksha can be both confounding and predictable to the mortals who try to interact with them, because they don't possess any kind of morality as understood in Creation - mechanically speaking, they don't have normal Virtues or a Motivation. Instead, their behaviors are influenced by the rules of their personal narrative and the qualities they've ascribed to their persona. These act a bit like Kerisgame Principles, but with a slightly broader scope and the stipulation that they're all essentially 4 or 5 dots in intensity; instead of being opinions on things, they're a mix of character attributes, narrative rules, and story-important background events that drive the persona's actions. To be very meta and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, raksha walk in the door with a thinly-disguised FATE sheet and pray the rest of their Exalted campaign won't notice.

The intended outcome is that raksha with "benevolent" (or at least non-antagonistic) personas can often get ordinary people to buy into their narrative early on, coming across as either spectacularly lucky/skilled heroic mortals, someone with supernatural powers like a Sorcerer or godblood, or even a Terrestrial god. Exalt, or other big figure. They seem human.

At least at first.

However, the inherently different motives that drive them will inevitably create a situation where the raksha's actions frighten, disgust, or otherwise make mortals react in a way that doesn't match up with their intended narrative - and that's a big problem. Not only because it probably means that the locals are going to be markedly less friendly and accommodating, but also because raksha are straitjacketed by their chosen narrative. The more reality drifts out of alignment with their internal script, the closer the raksha gets to having a breakdown. Creation always exposes them in the end, because it's just too big and has too many parts for them to control.

More on this after I sleep.
 
... Sleep didn't work out so well.

Anyway, more about raksha.

Raksha deal with this weakness in various ways.

Some try to craft personas with broad, simple narratives which can dodge around some of Creation's unfortunate complexities. They cast themselves as strange beasts, creatures so inhuman as to limit the possible responses mortals could have. A great warrior that blocks a trade road, refusing to pass until either he is defeated in single combat or his armor is wetted head to toe in the blood of those who try and fail. A creature shaped in a caricature of the human form, which springs from shadow to sever the tongues of liars with a pair of giant shears. A living sword that drives its wielders to greater and greater heroics until they are crushed by the advancing weight of expectation, and a new 'owner' picks the blade from her predecessor's corpse. A strange old woman who offers to forge wondrous new limbs for the crippled, or carve magical stone eyes for the blind, but secretly curses those she 'helps' to suffer further maimings for her to then fix, until they are nothing but shambling assemblies of stone and wood and shining brass going through the motions of their former lives. A well-dressed stranger met on the road by night that offers riches to the man who can answer his question, and scars the faces of those who cannot.

Essentially, they try to escape the problem by being something that doesn't have to worry about most of the range of the human experience; in theory, as long as they stick to their role (easy enough), nobody will come along and try to engage them in a way their narrative can't handle. Who would bother to try and reason with giant Grendel, of twisted face? Who would show compassion for the red-handed woman that kills newly-married men?

This is where you get raksha that take after urban legends, cautionary tales, and/or urban legends, and again - in theory, it gets around the issue of having Creation push their stories out of whack and drive them mad. Unfortunately, it comes with several downsides.

First, these personas are designed to be narrow and one-note, which means that they can't really adapt to changing situations or handle curveballs without breaking character, in which case they get punched in the dick even harder than if they'd had their narrative violated by an outside force. They're more like video game NPCs than complete beings, and that means that once the locals have learned their patterns it's not hard to devise countermeasures against them. After the first few times a cripple accepts the old woman's offer and ends up becoming the Tin Man, everyone learns to just ignore her and now that raksha's narrative is stuck in the opening chapter. The red-handed woman can't murder new husbands once the village starts a tradition of having all men wear drag and be addressed with feminine pronouns on their wedding days[1]​.

More worryingly (for the raksha), playing a monster makes them stick out like a sore thumb, and while a few try for benevolent roles[2]​, the majority don't see any point in risking complications and just choose roles that involve a nice simple predator/prey relationship with mortals. Which means they will attract negative attention, and once somebody consults the local shaman he'll probably know they're dealing with a raksha. By avoiding one issue, they attract another.

More to come.



[1] Which serves the purpose of making settlements near the edge of Creation be weird and superstitious and averse to outsiders (since they don't know the rules), and gives a little encouragement for the Storyteller to pepper more civilized regions with neat little traditions.

[2] Enigmatic robed figures that take in wounded travelers, binding their injuries with herbal poultices and sending them on their way come morning, pressing a cryptic message into their hands as they go (which then leads them on a journey that ends in the lair of another, more powerful raksha that the "healer" serves). Hunters with shadowed faces that save children lost in the forest, and receive the offerings left by grateful parents at the shrine on the edge of the wood. Essentially, they play minor figures and supporting characters in larger stories, willingly sacrificing the role of protagonist in exchange for relative security.

Naturally, Sidereals often bogart their role of faceless support NPC, most other raksha consider them total pussies, and they often end up under the thumb of a more powerful entity or are otherwise exploited. Barring a particularly vicious punishment levied by someone, you won't find any but the weakest of raksha slumming it like this.
 
A while back I remember seeing a charm that described a way for elder dragonblooded to raise the breeding of other DBs at the risk of killing them. Was that in this thread?
 
frozenchicken said:
A while back I remember seeing a charm that described a way for elder dragonblooded to raise the breeding of other DBs at the risk of killing them. Was that in this thread?
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It's name is Jade Purity Crucible Strike, and it is from Dreams of The First Age. It's redundant and you should use sorcery instead, which is far more in-theme and also shouldn't have the chance of your PCs dying instantly when it's used on them.

(instead it should inflict crippling effects on them so they can be the crippled results of failed experimentation)
 
ManusDomine said:
It's name is Jade Purity Crucible Strike, and it is from Dreams of The First Age. It's redundant and you should use sorcery instead, which is far more in-theme and also shouldn't have the chance of your PCs dying instantly when it's used on them.

(instead it should inflict crippling effects on them so they can be the crippled results of failed experimentation)
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Wait. There's a sorcery spell for that?
 
Shyft said:
No, it's just that Sorcery has a better thematic/metaphysical grounding for stuff like raising Breeding and similar projects. 'Charms to do everything' is a late 2nd-edition design problem, a fair amount of it started in DoTFA, then Glories Most High, and then the 2.5 Solar Errata.
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What's wrong with 'Charms to do everything'?
 
Accelerator said:
What's wrong with 'Charms to do everything'?
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Because Charms are not meant to do everything. Charms are an extension of your personal capabilities. Infernal Charms are weird and abnormal when they act like sorcery, which is why the Sorcerous keyword is an Infernal-only quirk. Charms are there to enable your splat's archetype and function.

Sorcery, by contrast, is larger scale and more esoteric power that allows you to go outside your splat's themes and do things appropriate for a sorcerer-king or a decadent wizard.


More generally, of course, it is necessary to discuss Breeding and its role in the game before we can really talk about what is appropriate for how DBs raise it.

As it stands, the way it gates charms and increases your mote pool is terrible because it can only be bought at chargen, so it sets up perverse incentives to make high Breeding characters abnormally common in PC games. This is a bad incentive.

Hey, fun alternative consideration. WW already had a blatantly unfair system where lines of descent which get weaker over time determine the power of your character. The difference between Generation and Breeding, of course, is that oVampire is built around Generation and is explicitly set up so PCs can murder their way to the top through soul cannibalism.

So what if one of the ways the Dragonblooded Great Curse operates is that the cursed power lets them steal Breeding from other DBs by killing them, if they have higher Breeding than you. Slay an enemy general in a duel? Well, you're clearly a better soldier and you get to snatch his Breeding. Murder a political rival with a knife to the back? Reap double rewards. Drown your better-bred sister because you've had enough of your parents favouring her? Ding! Breeding++!

After all, weren't most of the great heroes of the past horrific murderers by modern standards? This way, your DB can become a great hero too! :V
 
EarthScorpion said:
Because Charms are not meant to do everything. Charms are an extension of your personal capabilities. Infernal Charms are weird and abnormal when they act like sorcery, which is why the Sorcerous keyword is an Infernal-only quirk. Charms are there to enable your splat's archetype and function.

Sorcery, by contrast, is larger scale and more esoteric power that allows you to go outside your splat's themes and do things appropriate for a sorcerer-king or a decadent wizard.


More generally, of course, it is necessary to discuss Breeding and its role in the game before we can really talk about what is appropriate for how DBs raise it.

As it stands, the way it gates charms and increases your mote pool is terrible because it can only be bought at chargen, so it sets up perverse incentives to make high Breeding characters abnormally common in PC games. This is a bad incentive.

Hey, fun alternative consideration. WW already had a blatantly unfair system where lines of descent which get weaker over time determine the power of your character. The difference between Generation and Breeding, of course, is that oVampire is built around Generation and is explicitly set up so PCs can murder their way to the top through soul cannibalism.

So what if one of the ways the Dragonblooded Great Curse operates is that the cursed power lets them steal Breeding from other DBs by killing them, if they have higher Breeding than you. Slay an enemy general in a duel? Well, you're clearly a better soldier and you get to snatch his Breeding. Murder a political rival with a knife to the back? Reap double rewards. Drown your better-bred sister because you've had enough of your parents favouring her? Ding! Breeding++!

After all, weren't most of the great heroes of the past horrific murderers by modern standards? This way, your DB can become a great hero too! :V
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Problem with that is that the words 'charms are extensions of your natural abilities' is only really accurate for Solars. I fail to see how 'extensions of your natural abilities' lets you shoot bolts of elemental power, shapeshift, manipulate the elements, and such.
 
EarthScorpion said:
Hey, fun alternative consideration. WW already had a blatantly unfair system where lines of descent which get weaker over time determine the power of your character. The difference between Generation and Breeding, of course, is that oVampire is built around Generation and is explicitly set up so PCs can murder their way to the top through soul cannibalism.

So what if one of the ways the Dragonblooded Great Curse operates is that the cursed power lets them steal Breeding from other DBs by killing them, if they have higher Breeding than you. Slay an enemy general in a duel? Well, you're clearly a better soldier and you get to snatch his Breeding. Murder a political rival with a knife to the back? Reap double rewards. Drown your better-bred sister because you've had enough of your parents favouring her? Ding! Breeding++!

After all, weren't most of the great heroes of the past horrific murderers by modern standards? This way, your DB can become a great hero too! :V
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Alternately, if you subscribe to the Dragonblooded Exaltation being the blood of legendary heroism rather than the eugenics thing, you can just allow Breeding to be bought up during play after suitable deeds have been accomplished. (Although even then its role as a game statistic needs to be diminished.)
 
Accelerator said:
What's wrong with 'Charms to do everything'?
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The problem here is twofold, the first being on a setting-level: Charms are integral pieces of a character, learned techniques which illustrate how they perform self-made miracles and interact with the world. The key points there are Learned and Interact, because it assumes a level of self-taught effort or applied learning from a teacher, and engaging with the greater setting to express itself on the character and the means she uses to grapple with its myriad wonders and dangers.

There is no "I Rule A Nation Prana" the character can achieve which conjures up a custom-built land and people to lord over, you actually have to go out and find and "liberate" one by force, installing yourself to wrestle with its pre-existing conflicts. Character traits can't skip training times by internalizing "My Strength Is Now 10 Dots Forever Technique" and never care about Attributes again. You can't learn to expel your anima as a Familiar or allied spirit bound to you, you have to go get one with its own personality and foibles and earn its trust and loyalty first. Without having to actively Pursue goals and personal advancement in the setting at-large, and assuming that a character can simply sit down and Think Up whatever tools, connections, social influence, materials and abilities they wish, whenever they feel like with no attachments or tie to the world around them, there IS no game to be had. You get effectively freeform "white room" thought-experiments in a walled sandbox with occasional dice-rolling.

On a mechanical level, it comes down to the fact that once Charms are capable of doing Anything, there is no reason to purchase anything but a Charm. The entire structure of the game begins to break down because of it, when every 8xp curtails the need to ever use the rest of the XP chart ever again. Why do you need to raise Attributes when you can simply double your damage, your Initiative, your Weapon Accuracy (to avoid dice-caps) for the scene? Why power-quest for a mutation or god-endowment when you can gift a comparable permanent buff to yourself, no strings attached? Why invest in other Abilities besides your primary 5s, when you can buy Charms which let you apply your Ability dice to things you don't have? Why do you need to buy MORE Charms when you can buy a Charm which gives you a full set of Other Charms for a while? Why invest in Sorcery or other exotic subsystems when you can buy a Charm which mimics its strongest effects outright?

The list goes on, but the root flaw derives from the fact that by trying to encompass everything, the inner workings of the character themselves and the chargen process does not ultimately matter so much as the list of Charms they can amass, wield and activate at one time. It becomes a single, load-bearing mechanic trying to uphold the entire game on an ever-sprawling series of codified 8xp purchases, and trying to adapt around that instead of defusing it (such as by making everything cost motes, or by forcing characters into spending XP on something Besides Charms (which will instead be used buying prerequisites used to buy Charms later)), the very Moment that something interacts with that mechanic, entire characters simply "switch off" or detonate the game around them. You see this in 2e Combat, where 0 motes mean you are primarily defenseless and subject to rocket-tag, or the 1e Eclipse Anima allowing them to gobble up every niche from Lunar Shapeshifting to Spirit dematerializing to Fair Folk living inside people's minds and more, making the strongest concept for anything under the sun being an Eclipse caste pretending to be that thing, not actually Playing that thing.

Generally speaking, for a game as complicated as Exalted tends to be, trying to dole out the entire game in bite-sized chunks does more to harm it and the enjoyment of it than it adds anything but a sense of "gotta collect them all" in the minds of the players. Because the moment they aren't buying Charms anymore, it means they have conceptually-stalled out and the game is over.
 
Accelerator said:
Problem with that is that the words 'charms are extensions of your natural abilities' is only really accurate for Solars. I fail to see how 'extensions of your natural abilities' lets you shoot bolts of elemental power, shapeshift, manipulate the elements, and such.
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Because when you're a supersoldier who has the blood of dragons flowing through his veins and who unleashes cascades of elemental fury on the world when he exerts himself, "wrecking shit with elemental powers" is a natural capacity of yours. You are using your shit-wrecking capacity combined with your talent with the sword to wrap your blade in your anima for Dragon-Graced Weapon, or just pure exhaling your dragon-heritage breath or casting it from your hands for Elemental Bolt Attack.

Likewise, Lunars are shape-shifting witch monsters. It's not a Charm which lets them change shape - it's an innate property of the splat, which Charms then redirect and hone (this is much more noticeable in TAW, because it isn't neutered by the requirement to kowtow to Eclipses).
 
Cost:- (2m)
Mins: Melee 3, Essence 2
Type: Permanent
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: Permanent
Prerequisite Charms: Kissed by Hellish Noon, Sun-Heart Furnace Soul
When Ligier ire is raised, massive flares of green fire erupts from his sun-body, engulfing entire districts in an emerald conflagration that scorches his Greater-self's brazen hide.

Malfeas laughs at the ticklish sensation.

This Charm permanently enhances Green Sun Nimbus Flare; any close combat attack enhanced by Green Sun Nimbus Flare can now attack targets (Essence x 2) away from the Infernal as waves of emerald fire leap from the swing of Daiklave or green fireballs explode from striking fists and feet. By spending 2ms, these attacks can be further enhanced, allow the emerald flames to reach targets (Essence x 10) yards away.

Ranged attacks are enhanced differently; when enhancing a ranged attack with Green Sun Nimbus Flare, the Infernal may chose to pay an extra 2m to empower it further. When the attack hits something (not necessarily its target, an Infernal who cares about collateral best be careful with this charm) emerald fire explodes out from the point of impact, engulfing an area of (Essence) Yards wide, inflicting the same attack onto anyone or thing in the area.
So, Infernal Azula? Infernal Azula.

Beyond the shout out, this charm enhances your melee attacks like a weaker Iron-Raptor Technique for free, and functions as mirror to Iron Raptor Technique at about the same price. It also has a decent-ish ranged enhancer, but I'm still not sure if that shouldn't just be stuffed into another charm all together.
Cost: 1m
Mins:, Essence 2
Type: Simple (Speed 3)
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: Crowned With Fury
Malfeas doesn't care about his blades; he doesn't give a damn if they are the legendary Daiklave of Victory or if they're a piece of pig iron hammered into something in the vague shape of blade, they will hear his command and obey.

Or else.

This charm is functionally the same as the Solar Melee Charm Call the Blade, save that the Infernal barks an order for the blade to return to his hand, bellows at it like tantruming toddler with all his fury or just glares at it meaningfully until it gives to his silent demands, the emerald crown of this charm's Prerequisite manifesting in the usual manner.
Nothing special over here, just an infernal re-working of Solar charm. There only cosmetic differences really, but those are important as well.
 
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