Am I reading this right? (a question about dice caps)

[Persell]

So, a question has come up about Charms and dice pool caps. The core book says that no Charms (excellencies or otherwise) can ever increase a dice pool more than Attriute + Ability. I understand that this differs for different Exalt types (be it Ability with Lunar, Essence with Sidereal, etc.), but we're having trouble wrapping our minds around it right now.


So, with the Dragon-blood Charm Five Dragon Blocking Technique (p 190) it says you add half of your Essence to your PDV. Say I'm a Essence 6 DB, and I use that charm, so I get +3PDV. Let's say that my Dodge is 3. So, can I use my excellency to get my PDV higher?


Could someone break this down for me?

 

[Persell]

That is a fun question. To be honest. We do not know. Nobody does. There are a lot of charms where it is not really clear what the writer meant. For example monkey style is extremely overpowered if you let the charms and excellencies raise the DV seperatedly and extremely crap if you don't. Same for the pinnacle of sidereal melee etc. etc.


White Wolf never said anything about it and a lot of people assume that the writers of later supplements did not know about the DV hardcap at all as many fans don't.


I'd advise you to do case by case houserulings as those effects can become extremely potent. Be upfront with the players about it and tell them that the ruling can change if the future if that one charm dominates combat. Which is possible depending on which charm we are talking about (the dragon blooded charm is probably not a candidate, that is, if the dragon blooded in question is not water style immaculate monk).

 

[nero1]

No
combination of Charms can increase a Solar Exalt’s dice pools by more than this amount. Charms that add automatic


successes or remove penalties do not count as increases to a dice pool unless otherwise stated.

So i guess the DB Charm and the excellency stacks to calculate the cap. THe answer is then: "you can at the most raise the DV to +3". BUT, read further.

For unrolled activities such as DV (see p. 146), Mental DV (see p. 172) or feats of strength (see p. 127), Charms


increase a character’s static rating by adding to (the relevant Attribute + Ability). This bonus increases the (Attribute


+ Ability) pool, not the final result of any calculations, so if the (Attribute + Ability) is divided in half, the bonus rating


will be applied before the division, not afterward. [...]


Regardless, no combination of Charms, including the First Excellency, can increase a static rating by more than


half the (Attribute + Ability), and Charms that remove penalties do not count as increasing the character’s static rating.


Treat Willpower as an Attribute for this purpose. If there is no applicable Attribute, Charms can add only a number


of dice equal to the character’s Ability.

So your DV is (Dex+Melee+Defense)/2. You use the first Charm and raises to +3 your DV, but you cannot rise it further since you already capped the limit.

 

[wordman]

This breakdown of what the defense rules actually say (with an associated page on several versions of what they actually mean) might be of some use. Probably not, but maybe. Note: this page hasn't been updated with errata, which has removed the more glaring contradictions.


In your example, the stats that matter are: Martial Arts 3, Essence 6 and specialties (which you don't mention so are assumed to be zero). Note that Dex doesn't matter for terrestrial dice caps. Note also that Dodge doesn't matter for PDV. The DB cap is Ability + Specialty, which, in this case, is 3. Assuming the portion of the rules that say that DV is capped are intended to be correct, and assuming that the limit uses the dice cap for the type of exalt (rather than using Ability + Attribute generically), this would mean that DV could only be raised by half of the cap. In this case, that would be +1.5 DV. So, even though the charm says you can add +3 to PDV, it really only only can add 1.5. IMO, any time a charm says to "add half of X" to DV, it's easier to instead add X to the base calculation prior to division by 2, as this makes the rounding make more sense. In other words PDV becomes = (Dexterity + Martial Arts + Specialties + Defense + min(cap, charm bonuses) + other dice bonuses) / 2.


As Safim mentions, that formula is only one interpretation of the rules (albeit one that I think is the canonical intention). There are many others. Picking one over the others can change your game radically.


One lesson to take from this, btw: terrestrials need specialties. If he had three points of applicable specialties, his cap would be 6, not 3. This cap is one of the main reasons DBs are (mechanically) inferior to celestials.