[2E] Third Excellency

Q

Quorlox

Junior Member
How often do your players learn a Third Excellency?  How often is it used used?  The restriction that it cannot be combined with either First or Second Excellency seems to reduce its usefulness and I'm considering a permanent Charm that would allow for the Third Excellency to be combined with the first two, but I wanted to find out about how others view it.
 
I think third excellency comes more into play the more powerful the Exalt is, meaning, past Essence 6 cuz the more you can increase your abilities, the better that charm becomes for its cost.
 
The real power of the Third Excellency is that you only need to activate it once you are sure you need it. Defensively, it is Reflexive in Step 6, which means you can pump DV long after the attacker can reroll or do anything else about it, but only if it helps you. From this standpoint, it's efficient use makes it more useful for starting characters than more experienced ones, who usually have more essence to burn.
 
The Third Excellency is useful where you have a high natural dice pool in some ability, and while you typically aren't rolling in opposition to something/someone, you can't afford to fail.  Examples include Lore, Medicine, and Survival.
 
Yea, once your pool is high it becomes really, really useful. And for defence it is far more efficient than the other two once your skill increases to 4/5, as you add the skill again to the base DV pool before halving. At skill five, it's four motes for 2.5 additional DV, more efficient than the second and at a later point in the attack resolution, as mentioned earlier.


That actually is it's biggest advantage, even over it's efficiency: you get to choose to activate it after making the roll/applying the DV. That's a powerful thing to be allowed do with an excellency.


As a final note, DBs can apply the third excellency with the first two, and without a combo too. Cheesy? Well, they could use it with their limits, poor bastards. It's probably their most powerful one, for raw applicability.
 
I definively learned some stuff; the DV part is definitely important.  If the character has a 1-die specialty, you get +3 for 4 motes, assuming the Ability is at 5.  

Samiel said:
As a final note, DBs can apply the third excellency with the first two, and without a combo too. Cheesy? Well, they could use it with their limits, poor bastards. It's probably their most powerful one, for raw applicability.
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Is this in the DB book?
 
The excellencies are rewritten in the DB book for the DBs, and there is no mention of them being verboten in combos or in application to the same roll.


It's not as bad as it sounds, given the restriction DBs get to their first two excellencies. That's why I say the third is probably their most powerful, if not their most efficient (That'd be the first), although for them it's one mote cheaper too, at 3m. That makes it much, much more efficient for defence.
 
On the whitewolf message boards the authour of the charm section has mentioned that was an oversight; Don't expect to be able to use the 3rd with the other two once errata comes out.
 
A house rule we've come up with that makes the 3rd more useful, is that you only reroll non-successes. Basically it make it so that you're guaranteed at least as many successes as you had on the first roll. I know I'd hate to have rerolled and then get less successes. It makes sense with the way it works with DV.
 
Rerolling can be useful...and at a flat 4 motes, with the way most people max out their dice pools with the 1st excellency, it's actually rather cheap
 
You can't use 1st and 2nd Excellencies with the 3rd.


-S
 
Yeah, I actually prefer that house rule where it allows you to reroll dice that aren't successes.  Gives you a good amount of bang for your buck.  Good call.
 
Something I never understood was the 2nd excellency.


You get 2 dice for 1 mote with Dragon Bloodes = Much cheaper than Solars.


But.. in 2nd excellency, you get 1 success for 2 motes. What the hell? Its the same price as the solars have, when they are supposed to be cheaper.


That means you can choose to get either 4 dice or 1 success. Why would anyone in the world rather take 1 success than 4 dice, when 4 dice always average more successes than one?


I understand 2 dice or 1 success for the same cost, like solars have it, but DB's got one cheaper and one the same as solars, which must be wrong?
 
Zaramis said:
You get 2 dice for 1 mote with Dragon Bloodes = Much cheaper than Solars.


But.. in 2nd excellency, you get 1 success for 2 motes. What the hell? Its the same price as the solars have, when they are supposed to be cheaper.
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Is the 2nd Excellency supposed to be cheaper for DBs?  They don't need every Excellency to be better than Solars.
 
Then why in the whole world would -any- DB take 2nd excellency? It's like.. you have this great charm, 1st excellency, and then you have this worthless excellency.


And it says in the book that the DB's excellencies are more efficient.
 
Zaramis said:
Then why in the whole world would -any- DB take 2nd excellency? It's like.. you have this great charm, 1st excellency, and then you have this worthless excellency.
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Sometimes you want an autosuccess and 2 motes compared to 1 Willpower isn't a bad investment.  Since the 1st and 2nd Excellencies can be combined, it's not a bad investment.

Zaramis said:
And it says in the book that the DB's excellencies are more efficient.
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I don't have DB2, but in the Core book it just says that the 1st Excellency is more efficient, not that all Excellencies are more efficient.  It might be worded differently in DB2, but there's no reason all of the Charms need to be similarly enhanced.  I wouldn't mind if they were, but I'm not bothered that they aren't either.
 
It should be 1 for 1, thematically.  Heh, maybe only capped by the DBs speciality rating.  So the max they'd ever get in auto suxx would be 3.  Two less than a Solar would get while being more cost efficient than Solar, but still very limited.  Only applies to Specialties.
 
Willpower is almost always used to channel a virtue, from what I've seen. People find it a lot more reasonable than just one meager success ( one success is, after all, rather weak in this game.. )


And Ive made it 1 for 1 in my game, to make it on par with the 1st excellency.
 
Zaramis said:
And Ive made it 1 for 1 in my game, to make it on par with the 1st excellency.
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I don't stongly object, but I don't see a need for the change either.  Siderials have a reduced cost for the 3rd Excellency, but not 1st and 2nd.  Improvements in one or two Charms does not mean that additional Charms should be improved as well.
 
An improvement in the 3rd charm is a completely different thing. It doesn't make the others completely useless, or one of them.


THis does.


Can you see any player who wants to spend his 10 exp on buying a charm that gets him 1 success for 2 motes, when for the same amount of motes, he can get 4 dice?


It basically removes the second excellency from DB games, unless you have characters/players who want to make themselves gimped.
 
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