Strength Excellency and Full Moon Lunars

[Praedoran]

Hello!  First post of mine and I think it's a fair enough question to ask everyone.


Strength Excellency seems to boost one's Strength for the purpose of one roll (because in the sidebar it states that it would add damage and clinch dice at the same time).


The question of mine is: Does this bonus get doubled in relation to the Full Moon Lunar's anima banner effect.


If so, this would allow them to pull off truly incredible feats of strength.  Say, a strength 5 (6 in Beastman mode), doubles his dice from burning motes (effective strength 12), and then doubles that from his anima banner, (24), before adding in his athletics (5) plus specialties (3):


Thus, letting him accomplish a feat of strength of 32.


So if this works, what exactly is a 32 feat of strength?  Lifting buildings?

 

[wordman]

First thing: in Exalted, the phrase "doubles" really doesn't mean "doubles". It almost always means "+100%" rather than "x2". So, if you have some rating (X) that is doubled by effect A (+100%) and doubled again by effect B (+100%), what you end up with (X + X + X), which is three times X, not four.


In the example you are giving, however, there is really only one "doubling" effect: the anima power. The excellencies are technically adding rating, not doubling anything.


In any case, things get interesting here. Using the First Strength Excellency, the rules for enhancing static values are a bit dumb, but assume the lunar has a strength of X. He spends X motes to buy X dice and rolls them to see how they influence a static attribute (that's the stupid part). For each success, the "effective attribute" goes up by two for the purposes of calculating the static value. On average, the roll will generate X/2 success, for an effective adjustment of +X to Strength. Because of the rule of 10, it's possible for this to actually generate as much as +2X to a feat of Strength.


The question here is what "effective attribute" in the excellency description and "doubles her Strength for the purpose of feats of Strength" really mean. Either you play it that a) the "doubling" applies to natural strength (i.e. takes place before the excellency) or b) it applies after the excellency is applied. In case a, the result would be (2X) + X = 3X. Case b would be 2(X + X) = 4X.


I can see arguments either way, but I can think of three arguments in support of case a.


One: if you use case b, then the benefit from the excellency ends up being +2X. A rule exists that no charm or combination of charms should allow a lunar to do better than +X. It's true that the anima effect is not a charm. It's also true that the excellency in this case is not adding dice which is what the capping rule covers, so this capping doesn't necessarily apply; however, the effect sort of allows the benefit of the charm to be doubled. While it doesn't decide the issue, the "charm limit rule" acts sort of as a guideline to suggest that case a might be the "correct" thing.


Two: Case a is closer to the Exalted standard for using +100% instead of x2.


Three, the clincher, IMO: The anima ability has the following rule "this effect stacks with other increases, but only by adding a factor equal to the original value, not continuing to multiply by two." This implies the the best the anima power can do is +100%. Though you could argue that the text of the excellency rules for increasing static values implies that they are actually altering the "original value" by increasing the "effective value" of the attribute (that is, it is as if they are adding dots to the rating itself), the presence of this rider in the anima rule strongly suggests this is not the intention.


Note also: suppose the excellency really did add +2X to strength (assuming this doesn't run into capping, which is unclear). Under case b, the result would be 2(X +2X) = 6X, which is insane. On the other hand, once you reach a certain point on the feats of strength table, it's not like going even higher really means that much.

 

[Praedoran]

Thanks


Great reply, well thought out and strong in supporting rules.  Thanks a bunch.

 

[Praedoran]

Thanks


Oops, double post, but a quick question: The rule you quoted means that adding in extra factors still works, but they only add to the multiplier not multiply after the effect takes place (2x+2x=3x)