Random Custom Charms

[Cryoseraph]

So I have thought up two new Solar charms (and one mirror). Both need proper stylistic names and some judgement on balance.


First charm is a high Essence and High Lore/Larceny charm. I'm ball-parking Essence 5 and Lore/Larceny 5, probably with Order-Affirming Blow for Lore and and maybe Stealing From Plain Sight for Larceny. The reason for these is that the Charm allows Solars to force their Will upon the Underworld and their bodies to respire Essence normally down in the Underworld. I'm also ballparking the Cost at 20m, 1w, maybe 2w instead. It sounds high, but since it gives someone access to recovering Essence they wouldn't otherwise have at all. This would need to stay committed to keep up the respiration, and releasing it immediately would halt any respiration occurring. Abyssals would have a mirror for this to allow them respiration in Creation.


Reasoning fluff-wise: The Underworld is a reflection of Creation 'above' it. And any reflection needs light to exist. It is upon this principle that Solars long ago developed a costly but useful Charm to allow them to survive on long or dangerous treks into the Underworld. The Lore version of this charm takes precise understanding of Essence to manipulate how your own body treats the ambient Essence around it. The Larceny version involves learning how to steal minutes amounts of Essence from the environment and take it into themselves. The Abyssal Mirror for this is this version instead: Death is everywhere, and every moment in creation involves some small death in some way, as millions of insects, and trilions of bacteria die at any given moment. An Abyssal learns to harness that minute death Essence and focus on it to respire in Creation. Lore and Larceny reasoning is the same.


Second Charm is a Solar Mirror to a favorite Abyssal Charm of mine called Cadaverous Torpor Technique (adds extra Incapacitated levels equal to Stamina rating, buyable up to Resistance rating times). I want to create a slightly better equivalent for Solars involving the -4 health level area. However, -4 and conscious is easily better than Incapacitated, so how do I balance this? Less stacking allowed? or less than Stamina levels given with each purchase? I'd ballpark it at 2-3 levels each purchase.


I think access to more health levels makes PCs more viable and gives much better scenes of fighting to the bloodied end instead of such a wounded level being the minor speed bump to death. Much better for the great Solars of the past who fought for days straight.

 

[Inverse]

I'm probably shouldn't say anything and wait for everyone who's authoritative on this to discuss it, but that's never stopped me before.


Shouldn't a Solar ability to gain essence in the underworld mirror the Abyssal's ability to gain essence in Creation? Instead of Abyssals drinking the blood of Creation-born, something like Solars drinking the X of ghosts? On the other side of the argument, if Abyssals don't have to drink blood then they loose tons of emo, which kinda sucks


I don't know enough to say much about the second charm, but it seems your idea for Solars is always going to be more powerful than the Abyssal one. *Shrugs*

 

[ghoti115]

Second Charm is a Solar Mirror to a favorite Abyssal Charm of mine called Cadaverous Torpor Technique (adds extra Incapacitated levels equal to Stamina rating, buyable up to Resistance rating times). I want to create a slightly better equivalent for Solars involving the -4 health level area. However, -4 and conscious is easily better than Incapacitated, so how do I balance this? Less stacking allowed? or less than Stamina levels given with each purchase? I'd ballpark it at 2-3 levels each purchase.
I think access to more health levels makes PCs more viable and gives much better scenes of fighting to the bloodied end instead of such a wounded level being the minor speed bump to death. Much better for the great Solars of the past who fought for days straight.

I understand the want to change the charm to add -4 health levels, but a Mirror should be an exact Mirror. Since Abyssals have the original version and mirrors of both Ox-Body Technique and Body-Mending Meditation, I don't see a good reason to not have a Mirror. If this is coupled with Body-Mending Meditation then your hero can appear to rise from the "dead".


The only thing I would drop is the ability to appear as completely dead (it just doesn't seem to fit for Solars). Also, it give the option of someone discovering the unconcious body hours after a battle has ended.

 

[Cryoseraph]

Well, obviously I'm in support of Solars on both of these charms. The ideas are specifically from thinking about Solars spending long periods of time in the Underworld and interacting with Abyssals a lot. I've seen the unhappiness in players on dealing with the lack of Essence regeneration in the Shadowlands and Underworld, and I'm unhappy with the desperate reliance on Manses and Hearthstones that most fall on to solve it. The first charm is a push towards finding a different way to handle it. Twilight and Night Castes seemed the most deserving for such a power, so Lore and Larceny are picked (this could be changed to better fit other abilities, Occult could make sense). The biggest control issue is making it not an auto-buy for any Solar who play with ghosts or Deathlords. I use high prerequisites and a high commitment cost to try and offset this. Both could easily be increased. Arguments for above mortal Essences could be made (though that pushes it into the realms of First Age or high-powered games only) and I could easily see higher commitment costs being set, as its hard to say which where the balance is between a large available but non-refillable pool of power and a small but refillable pool of power is.


I see this as an obvious step above the slow feeding Abyssals make (though a little Manse rating and a soulsteel artifact and they have it easier too). That's why I could see Abyssals have a mirror of it, as it lets them access Creation in a similar way, less available oomph, but with more flexibility on eating/drinking people. This could be one way they try to escape their doomed ecistence, or a way to go under deep cover that much better (Resonance still present though).


The second charm is another matter entirely of course. my biggest reason I don't want the mirror of Cadaverous Torpor Technique to be an exact mirror is that extra level of Incapacitated sound right for an Abyssal (appearing dead), and the extra bits of the charm add to it. Solars don't mesh well with that idea, and so the extra bonuses of passing for death are dropped for instead the basic access to extra health levels. Granted, they are health you can still fight with, which is a huge bonus, but -4 is not a great position to be in. That lowers your move speed to 1 even if you have Dex 5, and lowers your perfect dice pool of Att.+Abil. at 10 to an average 6. Any lesser skills may just not succeed. Now, everyone gets one of these, but its commonly just a little speed-bump towards getting dead, and few suffer the -4 over being unconscious and dying. If anyone should get one last bit of fight in them using the health level system, shouldn't it be Solars? Lunars have a way to stay alive until turned to dust or killed with Aggravated, this just gives a Solar a fighting chance.


As for the balance of the charm to its mirror, that is what I want help finding. Torpor Technique gives an Abyssal Incapacitated levels equal to its Stamina. It is a stackable charm up to (Resistance) times. Someone dabbling in it can get 2-3 levels maybe 2 times, leading to 4-6 extra levels. This is in addition to Ox-Body, which give between 1-3 health every time. If someone is focused on this charm, they can get 25 extra Inc. levels. Total levels from basic health and full quantity Ox-Body is 22 health levels. That is one beefy Abyssal, but he's perfectly legal and canon mechanically. By comparison, if we limit the Solar mirror to only say 2 levels of -4, if allowed to stack the same way, it is 10 extra health at most. Much more viable for combat maybe, but until you buy Ox-Body to an equal level, it's very sub-par to Ox-body itself. So with these numbers in mind should it stay a static increase, with more or less health each time? Should it stack as easily?

 

[ghoti115]

I think I understand what you are trying to accomplish with the Mirror. It might work, but it might be better to come up with a custom charm based off of the Abyssal Charm. Below is an idea that I had while thinking about this over the weekend. Some things to keep in mind when reading, since wound penalties are internal penalties, an Exalt will always be able to roll at least Essence dice.


Fighting To The End Technique


Cost: -; Mins: Resistance 1, Essence 1; Type Permanent


Keywords: Stackable


Duration: Permanent


Prereq Charms: None


This Charm can be purchased up to Resistance + 1 times. The first time the Charm is purchased it simply allows the Solar to remain conscious when they have reached the Incapacitated Health Levels, though they will suffer at -5 to their actions. For each additional purchase, it adds extra Incapacitated levels equal to Stamina rating.


Solars with Essence 3+ who have this Charm are protected from a knockout blow, whether it is from a magical (Charms, Artifacts, etc.) or non-magical source.

 

[Cryoseraph]

Okay, I've been thinking about these two charms some more. If I were to leave the Solar Mirror to Torpor Technique as using Incapacitated levels, I would add two extra things. First would be that it requires Body-Mending Meditation as a prerequisite. Secondly, after the first purchase and reaching Essence 3+, the cost of Body-Mending Meditation is reduced to 5 motes. It is not just in the nature of Solars to not die when people expect it, but moreso for them to get back up quickly. Maybe after 5 purchases and hitting Essence 6+ Body Mending Meditation no longer has any cost, just like the environmental Survival charms I'm basing this idea off of.


As for the 'Respire essence in the wrong place' charm, I've been thinking about more engaging costs than just high commitment. At the very least, I want both Solars & Abyssals to suffer the -2 penalty for feeling the wrong essence inside them that Abyssals suffer for being in too much Creation. They are also doing this purposefully, and no amount of Soulsteel can filter this, so there is no way to remove this penalty via normal Abyssal methods. And the same applies to Solars for their version.


The next thought for the respiration charm is that maybe it should have a building cost. If you take damage or willpower loss for the charms due to the pain of the essence inside or the high level of focus to keep your essence flowing the wrong way, then I would lean with the intervals actually being every hour, as both can be recovered easily enough over a couple of days. A scaling commitment of motes might balance it out, but seems a bit blase. Lastly, there could be a Limit/Resonance gain about every day, especially appropriate for Abyssals as they would be walking Sins of Life by that point. And Limit could be easily gained by the dark urges such death essence shoves into a solar. Once you hit ten, shit goes off, and your commitment probably ends.


Lastly, after thinking about what charms mesh well with the respiration charm, I think the Integrity charm Unconquered Hero's Faith may be a better prerequisite for Abyssals, and the theoretical mirror of that charm for Solars sounds easy enough for a pre-req for Solars to respire Underworld Essence. Thoughts?

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

You do know that using Chaos-repelling Pattern a Solar can cause the area around him to behave as if it's in Creation, thereby allowing him to respire essence, even in the Underworld?

 

[Cryoseraph]

You do know that using Chaos-repelling Pattern a Solar can cause the area around him to behave as if it's in Creation' date=' thereby allowing him to respire essence, even in the Underworld?[/quote']
After looking up Chaos Repelling Pattern, it is true that such a power exists, though only at a rate of 8m/hour, not very good for respiring essence by itself, but it does establish a conceptual 'beachhead' for my establishment of the Respiration in the Underworld Charm. Though the Underworld is the only one that does not offer respiration in its location, so obviously while the charm could also function in stranger places, it is only of actual value in the Underworld, unless I missed some harsh rule about Malfeas or the Wyld have spots of no respiration.


A very good pre-req. for the charm I think in the Lore category. Sweetness, thanks.

 

[Red Shadow Claws]

while it's 8 motes per hour, it also allows you the use of all your wonderful Heathstones while in the Underworld, and prevents the shifting Chaos of the Wyld from mutating your immediate surrounding, since they act as if you were in Creation, though it doesn't protect you from the Unshaped and other Wyld beasts.


So if you have hearthstones, you can basically 'commit' those 8 motes, and respire the rest of your essence without a problem even in the Underworld. And not just you, but anyone who is close to you can as well.