Extreme Charm Simplification Idea

[SagaciousAscendingHero]

I had an idea I wanted to run past you all; what if the only charms were Excellencies? There may be a few things that couldn't be done any more or things that need exceptions.


Martial Arts - I'm tempted to make an exception for MA styles, but the problem there is non-MA fighters would be severely handicapped. But the downside to not putting in an exception is Sidereal's place as MA masters kinda gets nerfed. I think I will try without the Styles for now.


Sorcery/Necromancy - Obviously this one will need an exception and I'll keep them around, but make it a non-charm function that grants access to spells.


Social Fu - Natural and unnatural influence will be solely determined by the use of an excellency or not.


Special effects (like Graceful Crane Stance, for instance) can be simplified down to requiring a Dex+Athletics roll, backed up by a minimum essence expenditure into any Excellency.


Anything else that I haven't addressed?

 

[Greenstalker]

Bad idea for various reasons. For once if you make them just all excellencies than noone can improve their hardness or soak (they are not dice rolls so can't be improved with excellencies). Also in this way only lunars and alchemcials can improve their damages (not sure about infernals) Without perfect defenses or perfect attacks you need to spent more mote on excellencies to get higher results which will drain essence quicker than you can stunt. Just excellencies make solar-others gap even bigger since not only they get higher bonuses, they also get it cheaper. This also destroy concepts of each exalted type like dragonblooded being team-players, sidereals being fate-bending magicians, lunars being shapeshifting-survivors or solars being awesome.

 

[wordman]

Uncouth is basically this idea, with the dials turned up slightly.

 

[Revoke]

Unfortunately, Exalted mechanics (in particular, charms) are very strongly coupled with its setting and fluff. As an off-hand exampled; infernals are transformed profoundly by their enlightenment, which is represented by increasingly powerful permanent duration charms. Sidereals have sideways and esoteric ways of doing things, and this is represented by their charmset. Therefore, if you attempt to reduce the complexity of the rules, you need to have some way of encapsulating these differences and flavor, or you loose something significant. There's just such a range of weird powers (wyld shaping, beastman breeding, flight, making an army of zombies burst out of the ground, dragging an entire city across the landscape...and so on).


Also, I rather like Uncouth, from what I've read (I admit that I haven't read it particularly thoroughly). But it illustrates that if you intend to have anything like the range of effects available in a massive, bloated set of powers like the exalted charms, you're not going to end up with something significantly simpler to use. It might even be more complex to use, from a player's perspective (you can certainly end up with something more balanced, though).


I guess what I mean is, it would be alot of work to do a good job of it.


On the subject of your actual question; you didn't mention sidereal astrology, resplendancies, or lunar knacks and shapeshifting. There's also the issue of the powers of spirits (of all kinds) and the fair folk.


I suppose it would be easier to do if you just had to worry about solars, and hide everything else behind the GM screen.


Also: if you're willing to abandon charms, you might be better off using an entirely different system. I like the look of the Exalted Strands of Fate conversion.

 

[wordman]

Also: if you're willing to abandon charms, you might be better off using an entirely different system. I like the look of the Exalted Strands of Fate conversion.

Which is here.


I also recommend my Anima Prime hack to Exalted's setting.

 

[Virjigorm]

I agree that the depth and breadth of the charmset is necessary within the setting and to balance the power levels of different Exalt types.


On the other hand, if you wanted to play with the idea, you could restrict non-excellency charms by requiring a tutor to learn them. Basically, anything except excellencies could not be learned without a teacher who knows the charm instructing the character for the whole period of standard training time for the charm. You'd have to restrict the charmsets of NPCs to reflect the inconvenience of this, and Solars would be at a significant disadvantage. The Eclipse anima power could become very overbalanced in this case, as they would be able to learn new charms from virtually any essence-user.