They shouldn't have made the 2e Solar anima powers while high off their asses. As is they were pretty game breaking to start with. Between Eclipses stealing moves and the invincible Twilights it got pretty bad.
The problem is Lunars have always had a bunch of 'nerfs' to their Shapeshifting, the chief one is 'The Tell'.
Personally I just think it should be a charm tree you invest in like anything else. That way its easy to make sure it's as strong as other charms because you can balance on a case by case basis. If you want your lunar form to be stealthy, invest in a stealthy transformation charm. Want to take someones face? Get that charm. Etc
I agree mostly, though I feel a baseline ability is good since it does give Lunars a bit of unique flavor.
Maybe the baseline knack could be some sort of appearance shifting (still retaining human form) and the charms upgrade that/build up to full-on shapeshifting?
Eh, I feel flavor should be done through charms. Like Green Sun Nimbus flare is at its heart just a damage adder, yet it still has a lot of flavor. No reason you can't do the same with lunar charms. Maybe they have a charm which causes their arm to swell with grotesque muscle a la Toguro when the strike, or they have a ranged damage dealer which involves them spitting acid that sort of thing.
I mean it was written in 2eism as a way to get my point across since I'm not as familiar with 3e. Could you maybe provide some context and constructive information instead of just insulting my work?
Honestly Mutations are much the same, just called 'Supernatural Merits' though the balance is a bit different.
According to you, you're trying to fix something that you don't actually know anything about.
Just. Fuck 3e. Fuck it. This is so dumb.
This, harder than anything I can possibly express.
...why? It lets you have a Solar-equivalent dice cap by showing how in touch with your attributes you are. It's a damn sight better than "Attribute+Essence/2".
The 2e (Attribute) Dicecap was fine. It is even more fine in 3e where excellencies should be free for favored attributes.
...no, no it's not fine. That is half the Solar cap. It's weaker than the Dragonblooded have ever been. Unless you're arguing that Lunars should just autolose to Solars, which is the mechanical result of this.
It worked because they had charms to boost the cap, and they could have 9 charms and have an excellency for literally everything, versus a Solar needing 25. They also could use Warform and DOE to boost cap, so at 5 a combat spec Lunar actually could add more dice than a Solar.
And now the Lunars can...have 9 Excellencies too, unless they've wildly changed something for them. And don't need to cap boost, because, you know. Solr grade Excellency. Like, what is the problem here? Solar Excellency, 9 Attributes, the criteria, given the Solars, is likely to be "Does the Lunar Caste/Favor the attribute? If so, Excellency. Do they have a Charm? Excellency."
It boosted physical attributes, as the extra dots it gave were considered natural for all purposes, which would include dicecaps.
This also annoys me. If it were two attributes out of the three in caste and then choose two to favor out of the remaining 7, and they can't be in the same category, it would be fine. But noooooooooo fuck people who want to specialize entirely in one type of attribute. They don't get that.
....Yeah, kinda agree. Solars don't get locked out of Caste Abilities they don't choose.....
Oh my god stop bitching. It's not even out yet, you have no idea how any of this works, how the XP will work out, what their Charms look like. Stop deciding everything is terrible based on stuff like the Excellency doesn't do literally exactly what you want it to do from a hideously broken edition. Lunars were awful in Second Edition. They were jokes compared to the Solars, they had dull Charms, couldn't compete, not really. Meanwhile, those previews seem pretty darn interesting!
Solars and Lunars are gonna have a similar amount of Charms though, according to the Ask the Devs thread! So Solars get more Caste+Favored, for 10/25. Lunars get 4/9, yeah? Which, unless some attributes get way, way more Charms than others, means the Lunars probably have, if anything, more favored Charms total.
Oh. no, I get that. I just am thinking about the Lunar who specializes in Intellectual or Social or Physical. It seems weird to not be able to favour all three in a category.
At a guess, having all three is probably redundant? Or you can probably Caste 2/Favor1? Do we have an actual Dev source that you can't Caste Perception+Int, and then favor Wits? Or are people jumping to wild, ridiculous conclusions?
Yeah, and that locked Lunars into a One True Build problem where any combat build that didn't revolve around the warform and Relentless Lunar Fury was a mug's game. That's why TAW ditched it in favour of an Attribute + Essence/2 setup. 3e's approach of Attribute + Stunted Attribute is pretty good too, certainly in the 3e environment going forwards where Excellency calculations aren't quite so central, Essence is a lot harder to raise, and Lunars are just plain allowed to potentially match Solars blow for blow.
