Committed Essence and Anima Banners

[fhgwdads05]

Does Peripheral Essence committed towards the activation of one's Anima Banner?


Say you have a Solar with a Peripheral Essence pool of 28.  She has 16 motes committed to Artifacts. How would the mechanics her Anima Banner activation work out?  Would she simply start at Level 2 as soon as she spent her first mote of Peripheral Essence?  Or would she never be able to reach Totemic?  I'm personally leaning towards the first possibility, but I really don't have much of an idea other than what I'm going on out of logic.

 

[Jukashi]

This is a pretty common question. The answer, as I understand it, is that it activates the anima banner when initially committed, but doesn't matter thereafter.

 

[fhgwdads05]

So the Solar in my example would never be able to reach Totemic (16+)?

 

[Gtroc]

you can cause the personal essence to flare just by declaring it if I recall correctly.

 

[fhgwdads05]

Yes, but that's an exception.  Let's just say that the player didn't want to cause her Anima to flare through Personal Essence.  Would this character not be able to reach Totemic because her current Peripheral Essence pool doesn't have enough motes to be spent to do so?

 

[Gtroc]

unless they stunt and get some of the non committed peripheral essence back, or use an essence regaining charm.

 

[fhgwdads05]

unless they stunt and get some of the non committed peripheral essence back, or use an essence regaining charm.

That's not really an answer....  


Or I just don't understand it fully.  Elaborate?

 

[Jukashi]

Also, since Exalted can just spend a mote or two to willingly go into bonfire mode, you'd only have to spend a few motes beyond that to go Totemic.


If your character is trying to avoid showing the full power, then yes, they won't be able to... until, as Gtroc says, they use some essence-regain method and use those motes. Stunting to regain essence is presumed to happen all the time, so, they should be regaining at least 2 motes every action if the player's not lazy.


It's how many motes spent that activates the anima, not how many below your maximum capacity you are.

 

[fhgwdads05]

Okay.  But the principle remains the same, that the Solar won't ever go Totemic unless she has somehow found a way to circumvent her decreased mote pool (by refilling it with Stunts or what have you).

 

[Sherwood]

There are Charms that recover motes as you go thur combat, such as Essence Gathering Temper.  Quite a useful add-on, IMO

 

[fhgwdads05]

Yeah,  I neglected to add them to the list.  >.>


Nevertheless, the principle remains the same.

 

[Gtroc]

pretty much yeah, but then she will go up in esence eventually I presume? but with out using stunts or essence regaining charms there would be no going totemic, save if they use personal to do it. yes...

 

[fhgwdads05]

That character was just an example .  I do happen to have another character who I originally thought might end up in the same situation, but it turns out he won't thanks to a Skin-Mount Amulet .

 

[Moonsilver]

This seems to be a cop out method to avoid your cast and anima flaring. Though you may actually want the anima powers. I would count them as already on there way to activating. So if your personnel essence was 14 and you had 14 motes in artefacts, spending one mote would make your caste mark glimmer.


You need to think about the power levels. What is the ST doing allowing so many artefacts to be available? As the characters get more powerful you would get more artefacts, but it is also reasonable to assume that the players are putting their essence up which stops this becoming a problem.

 

[FluffySquirrel]

Moon.. .. it's hardly a 'cop out' .. .. they're not reaching totemic because they haven't spent enough motes.. just like -every other- exalt who doesn't spend 16 motes >.>


As for thinking about the power levels.. well.. thats what the commit cost of the artifacts is there for in the first place, they have less motes cause they have more artifacts

 

[Haku1]

This seems to be a cop out method to avoid your cast and anima flaring. Though you may actually want the anima powers. I would count them as already on there way to activating. So if your personnel essence was 14 and you had 14 motes in artefacts, spending one mote would make your caste mark glimmer.
You need to think about the power levels. What is the ST doing allowing so many artefacts to be available? As the characters get more powerful you would get more artefacts, but it is also reasonable to assume that the players are putting their essence up which stops this becoming a problem.

The poor PC in question is a dragonblooded... ;


He's loaded down with artifacts and is only essence 2.... but yeah... this is a common situation with Dragonblooded who like to have fancy stuff.


Also, fhgwdads05, what is said here is true... if you have enough attunements that you have less than 15 motes available in your peripheral pool, you won't reach iconic level, without mote recovery of some sort...


You'd need to -spend- 16 motes peripheral to hit iconic. That's how my Dragonblooded PC in Tome's game HIT iconic and still managed to have a full mote pool. Stunted EVERY single spend mote back.

 

[Arthur]

I didn't notice he was talking about Aria u.u


Poor DBs. Have to write 1MB posts whenever they want to attack just to recover the lost Essence. Just kidding, Haku. Your stunts are great.

 

[Jukashi]

You could avoid going totemic that way, but if you do then you'll just run out of essence before everyone else and get crushed. So, y'know, not really an advantage.

 

[Arthur]

Yeah... anyway, Solars rule.  :lol:

 

[Haku1]

I didn't notice he was talking about Aria u.u
Poor DBs. Have to write 1MB posts whenever they want to attack just to recover the lost Essence. Just kidding, Haku. Your stunts are great.

^__^


Yeah... but this carries true for all exalts. Especially with Celestial exalts and their expensive excellencies when they do flurries...  :twisted:

 

[Arthur]

I didn't notice he was talking about Aria u.u
Poor DBs. Have to write 1MB posts whenever they want to attack just to recover the lost Essence. Just kidding, Haku. Your stunts are great.

^__^


Yeah... but this carries true for all exalts. Especially with Celestial exalts and their expensive excellencies when they do flurries...  :twisted:

You adulterated my post's size u.u


But true, stunts are valuable. For sorcerers, they are essential to recover Essence (got it? Essential/Essence :lol: Yeah, bad joke) and WP.

 

[Moonsilver]

Ok I see what Fluffy is getting at. Prehaps I was overacting. As long as this is not used to avoid caste mark flaring etc my point was moot.

 

[fhgwdads05]

I didn't notice he was talking about Aria u.u
Poor DBs. Have to write 1MB posts whenever they want to attack just to recover the lost Essence. Just kidding, Haku. Your stunts are great.

I actually wasn't talking about Aria. >.>


I was referring to Biohazard, where myself and others included have Dragon Armor and a plethora of other Artifacts (Haku got it right ). I just managed to circumvent having that happen though by picking up a Skin-Mount Amulet .

Ok I see what Fluffy is getting at. Prehaps I was overacting. As long as this is not used to avoid caste mark flaring etc my point was moot.

It doesn't change when a caste mark flares.  Just if you can reach a certain banner level when you have a bajillion motes committed .

 

[Coyotekin]

That was a tricky one, but as I understood it the artifacts in questions took the motes into themselves and therefore the motes no longer counted towards being used by the owner. So if you wanted to flare up you would still have to do so as if you had no artifacts at all. Otherwise I think that would get to be a serious nuisance for the Exalt that has many motes committed to artifacts and walks around looking like Mr. Burns after his weekly treatment.