Right, so, I've been trying to come up with a setting for what I want to do, and I figure I should actually try to get help.
@ManusDomine, I figure you'd be somewhat interested in this, but I'm putting it up in general because other people might want to contribute.
On the Monday after next, my roleplaying group's DM is going to be out of town for that week's session. Our campaign has been more social focused, and the characters have been getting along surprisingly well for how our group normally plays, so several of us are interested in a single session of PVP. I want to use this as an opportunity to introduce them to Exalted, and since the entire point is combat without much story behind it, I actually feel fairly confident in my ability to do it as my first time as a Storyteller. Since they don't care really care about the game yet, and know how complicated chargen can be, I offered to set up a situation where there are five chargen (plus Essence 3 without using bonus points) Dragonblooded Immaculate Martial Artists in a free-for-all, who are mechanically identical other than their aspect and style, so they can basically pick directly on which element sounds cooler to them, and the only difference will be the actual supernatural powers derived from that. I'm here to ask for help in refining exactly how things are going to be set up, both with the setting and the characters.
My basic idea is that they are part of an experiment in refining the Sworn Brotherhoods, and that by taking a perfect circle of one of each of the five Aspects and training them to both have the additional Elemental enlightenment the Immaculate styles provide, and to be perfect equals everywhere but their elements, it is possible to make their essences align better, and turn the dice on the spell into autosuccesses if it is cast while they are all fighting each other, as they connect through battle. This is something I will point out to them is explicitly a conceit to make it sensible five relatively young and weak monks will be fighting each other at full lethality, and that both the part where they can't actually kill each other during it and the boost that results from it are not something that genuinely work in the setting.
The general setup would be three fight scenes, if we have time for that much in the five to six hours our session lasts. In the first, they are all in a sparing ring, unarmed and unarmored but with the artifact equipment they still have motes committed to around the edges of it, being supervised by their teachers and the sorcerer who will be binding them. They are told to each activate their form charms and anima power simultaneously to help the coordination, and then let loose on each other as hard as they can in those conditions. Then, once all but one of them has been knocked out (including being 'killed', since the conceit is they can't actually kill each other during this), the last one meditates on the combined power surrounding them all, and they enter a shared dreamscape. Here, they play representations of their lingering mistrust for each other, who are genuinely trying to destroy each other. The dreamscape will be a very simplified 'Creation in miniature', with a hill in the center, sloping down to a lake to the west, a desert to the south, a forest to the east, and a tundra to the north. Each of them will appear where their respective elemental poles would be represented, and the place should be large enough to allow the range of the bow to be an influence, but not large enough that it takes far too long to get to each other. I was thinking a half mile radius, but I keep doubting and wondering if maybe that's too large. There is enough cover everywhere that Stealth can be employed, but also enough clear space that the center, at least, should have a clear line of sight to every other starting point. Also, in order to ensure they can find each other eventually, they can do the Essence roll to locate each other, even though they don't have a Loyalty score yet. After only one of them is left, which can be seen from the outside in their animas, the daiklaive that belonged to Sakuya from Exalted Becoming will be put in the ring, she will manifest in the dreamscape as she was at her moment of Exaltation (played by me), easily kill the last of their distrust, and then the five of them, who are actually them instead of just a part, will turn up in perfect health, as the Loyalty 21 Sworn Brotherhood this was meant to make, and probably win, but with difficulty and maybe some losses. Then they'll wake up, get an explanation of how the introduction of a common adversary helped align their goals even more than just removing their differences, how they have the daiklaive to use, and the session will end.
This will hopefully result in an appreciation of both the Dragonblooded as impressive in their own right, and of how strong the Solars, who they're actually meant to play, are. I'm using Sakuya because I don't trust myself not to build to counter them, and she's a relatively unoptimized build from another source that is used as an example of how powerful starting Solars should be.
As for the base character under the aspect, I am deliberately not giving out free excellencies, so the only way the favored and aspect abilities matter is that they mean I can select MA and Integrity as favored, and put four freebie points into raising them both to five, because the Immaculate Order focuses on Martial Arts both as themselves and as meditation practices, so those should be high. They have a +3 MA specialty in their respective style (which I'm not sure if that's restricted enough, but this
is an introduction), and the fourth one is to Immaculate Philosophy in Lore. I set physical Attributes to 4/5/4, using up eight more freebie points, then set Willpower to 10 and spent the last of the eighteen points on raising Temperance to 4. Mental is 3/3/3 and Social 2/3/2, and the rest of the virtues are at two. I put Breeding and Artifact both and 3, and set the artifacts to Signature weapon, Armor, and Hearthstone bracers for those who had rating 2 artifacts for their weapons.
The reason I listed that out is because that's basically fixed, unless someone can convince me otherwise. What I need is help with the details. How should I distribute the rest of their ability and background dots? I was thinking Awareness, Athletics, Connections, Dodge, Mentor, and Stealth all at three, but I'm not sure there, and that still leaves several ability dots anyway. Is the arena a decent size? Do they get any kind of bonus for distance when they attempt to hide, or a bonus to finding one of the others hiding for knowing generally where they are thanks to the oath? I reread Shyft's essay on vision and the one on Stealth, because google did not help at all, but I still don't have any idea if either of those conditions matter. Which houserules should I use? Is there anything obvious that I'm missing? How much did I underestimate the burden of being the Storyteller if I'm having so much trouble with something this simplified? Help?
