/exg/ - Exalted General

I imagine it would only be useful for surprise dickpunching Rakasha or making obscene amounts of money with dreamstones. Could be a good background for a Lore supernal.

Forgot to mention - the one person who REALLY loves this build, is the Sorcerer with Burning Raptor. Given that you can essentially feed him unlimited willpower that can exceed the maximum of 10, his birdies will really burn.

>that can exceed the maximum of 10,

Nope. Even with Willpower that exceeds your current maximum, it can't go over 10.

>Willpower points gained in certain ways can raise the total number of points in your character’s Willpower pool above his rating, to a maximum of 10.

Still, he does appreciate it.

>play this tutorial: jyenicolson.net/exalted/. It'll get you familiar with most of the mechanics.

Someone needs to update the OP with the internet archive link to this.

>Will-Bolstering Method
With this Charm, the Lawgiver may bolster the mind and spirit of her charge, lifting him up with inner strength. Upon paying this Charm’s cost, the Exalt may transfer up to her Essence in temporary Willpower to another character. In addition, roll a single die and add any successes to the recipient’s Willpower. The Exalt must always transfer at least one point of Willpower from herself to her target when using this Charm. Will-Bolstering Method can explicitly increase a character past his maximum Willpower, and even past a rating of ten.

No, he, really, really appreciates it.

Another problem: The bullet point where you get Willpower back for successfully casting a spell does not have that clause.

All his Burning Raptors will whittle through his "excess" WP.

Yeah, one at a time. So if you buff him to 20 willpower, and he casts three raptors, they'll do init + 20, init + 19, init + 18, etc. I'd be more than happy with that.

Of course, if he takes the Ifrit pact, he can get the merit that would exempt Raptor from a willpower cost once per scene (or is it day) to make the willpower last longer.

Really, what you don't want him to do is Limit Break.

Empowering Shout
Cost: 3m; Mins: Presence 5, Essence 2
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Impassioned Discourse Technique
Even bound in chains, the Lawgiver can inspire a subject
to the heights of prowess. This Charm is a simple turn-
length action in which the Solar exhorts a character to
his true greatness. Such a character gains a +1 non-Charm
bonus to one Attribute and Ability until his next turn. The
Solar might call upon a strongman to lift rubble from a
trapped family, increasing his Strength and Athletics by
one each, or empower her guardian to strike swift and
true, increasing his Dexterity and Melee, and so on. The
Solar may also choose instead to raise her charge’s Defense
by one, but if this raises it past seven it counts as dice
added by a Charm. Empowering Shout does not stack.
At Essence 4+, the Exalt can use this Charm to grant +2
to one Attribute and Ability or +2 to a Defense.

Pretty decent at lower essence, gets crazy with that E4 bonus, and it applies to characters who are already at att5ability5.

And then there's

Favor-Conferring Prana
Cost: 5m, 1wp; Mins: Presence 5, Essence 4
Type: Simple
Keywords: None
Duration: Indefinite
Prerequisite Charms: Empowering Shout, Underling-
Promoting Touch
This Charm copies the effect of Empowering Shout, but
allows the Solar to empower an ally indefinitely. The sub-
ject’s Attribute and Ability ratings may not be increased
past five with this Charm, nor may he begin to learn
Charms or magic he doesn’t truly qualify for. Because this
is a different Charm than its prerequisite, it may be used
in conjunction with Empowering Shout.

At E4, you take a novice and give them a +8 to anything. It'd be more useful in combat if the base charm weren't Simple, but it's still effective.

anybody know of an algarel flamepiece?

where can I find stats for first circle demons?

if you put a pebble down the barrel of a firewand would you expect to get a musket? or a pipebomb?

why is sweet cordial worth so much?

Only one of the Sidereal Martial Arts. It was a fancy one that made you be stuck between dreaming and the real world.

Expect to get? Neither; probably a pressurized spray of flame, like putting your thumb over a hose.

If putting a pebble down the muzzle of a firewand got you a musket, people would use them as muskets. However the explosive force from firedust that the amount required to make cannons powered by it is so massive that they're only used like that in the richest parts of the south, where they build cannons sized like houses.

Stick a pebble down a firewand and you're probably going to do damage to your gun.

thought so, thanks

I just homebrewee Giant to count as an Ox-Body for the appropriate amount of stamina, and not count towards the ox-body cap. Works well enough I think.

ghost tea, sorta

So do you guys think it's highly recommended to take multiple levels of Ox-Body now? The massive difference between the normal 7 health levels and all you get with 5 Ox-Bodies is pretty staggering.

3e core antagonists section

If you're prepaed to jury-rig then any 2e book with demons - CoCD: Malfeas, Book of Sorcery - Demons, etc.

How does Steel Devil Style actually work? Looking through it, it just doesn't seem that powerful. Getting Double/Triple attacks in against serious combatants just seems so unlikely.

It's a normal flamepiece, but with algarel, a demonic firedust substitute. Even in 2E they were basically the same thing.

Buh? You can spend Charge to generate parries, and then turn those parries into AOE decisive attacks. On a full-Excellency high-attack penalties-punishing assault with your light artifact weapons, you can literally chain Charms until you run out of Essence and Willpower and turn just about anything into so much red mist boiling away in the light of your anima.

Double/Triple Attacks won't proc too often against Exalts, but they're fucking devastating so that's for the best.

Hell I don't even understand Double Attack Technique.
It's a simple charm that makes a "normal withering attack." Okay, got that.
On that attack, if you get X successes, you are treated as if you landed two attacks. That X at first reads like it'd be their defense. But it's really their defense with an onslaught penalty applied. In other words, X-1. But nothing before here said you launched two attacks. The charm just makes a normal withering attack with some potential bonus damage.
I think that's very poorly written. I only understand it now that I've written this post.

It seems you need your Dex + half Charge to be greater than X-1 to get any damage benefit from this charm.

So uh...
Steel Devil Strike doesn't say you don't reset to base initiative. So I assume you do reset to base Initiative after using it?

I really, really want to play an Exalted game.

I want to play a powerful general and be challenged with what problems that it brings and presented with the spoils of my victories...

If only more people were up for a power romp and not content with being merely mercenaries at the whim of someone else...

Question: Herolab works well to create characters in M&M 3e... are there any programs that help in the creation of Exalted 3e aswell?

in what way does the old dead whitewolf forum sync to its archive?

like how do I convert a link to find it's backup?

Attacks from Double and Triple Attack Technique incur onslaught penalties as normal, meaning that with the form up, at Dexterity 5, Essence 1, and full Charge, you're paying 2m to inflict a -2 or -3 onslaught penalty and if they have Parry 6, you need 11 successes on a withering attack to add 9 damage. For 2m. If they counter by pumping their defense with an Excellency they're probably safe, but anyone who can't or won't do that is going to get fucking massacred. Crashing opponents increases your Charge, too.

About that onslaught penalty - have a friend with Falling Hammer? If you want to piss off your ST, start with 5 in Brawl, MA (Single Point), and MA (Steel Devil), stay in Single Point Form, delay after your sword, have your sword use Triple Attack Technique and then Falling Hammer Strike dropkick as your own action. Round two you start hitting the full Triple Attacks and it's over. It's stupid expensive and requires two attuned slashing swords, and you miss out on a lot of Steel Devil benefits (it really wants that Form up) but there aren't a lot of things that have an answer to triple-stacking unending onslaught penalties that open them up for Triple Attack Technique.

You can always succeed on rushes always with Seconds Between Strife, which is useful even without a setup to take advantage. Basically you're getting a huge benefit to Athletics without having to invest in that tree.

Twin Blade Defense is, this is really important, a SECOND PARRY. You have to buy it out of your Charge, but you DON'T have to worry about the diepool limit of your first parry, meaning if you have the Charge you can block anything with a number incoming.

Steel Devil Stylists tend to have lower Initiative because they keep converting it into Charge, but they make up for this in spades with how fast Triple Attack Technique pays off if there is anything mook-like or if you can manage an ambush or capitalize on onslaught or whatever.

Steel Devil Strike wouldn't need to clarify that you lose the Initiative you just used if you also reset to base. Natural language says you don't reset.

Iron Lotus Unfurling is broken against single-weapon users, by the by. Charge up, parry them, disarm them, decisive them, rush them, if they go for their weapon they trigger another decisive. It's two Willpower and only your Charge in damage, but that can be an 8+ number, it ignores Hardness, and since you're not resetting they've probably taken a fair amount of lethal and are now about to die to your regular straight-up decisve.

>need 11 successes on a withering attack to add 9 damage. For 2m.
You say that like you'll expect to get 11 successes on an attack. If your pool is 18 including light artifacts, a speciality, and a normal stunt then that'll happen but not often. You'll need to spend notes buffing your attacks. Also you're fully min-maxed for it.
Further that's not adding 9 damage in this example, that's adding 4. Without the charm you would've had 5 damage from extra successes. So you add 4 damage net, not 9.

I don't think the Double attack consumes the extra successes. Math time.

Say you're attacking someone with Parry 5, with a Double Attack. You have 5 offhand charge. You swing, and get 12 sux on your attack roll. You exceed their Parry, onslaught gets applied. Then you check your extra successes - 7. That's more than their current defence (4), so Double Attack triggers. It adds Dex + (Charge / 2) damage.

So your total damage is weapon damage + extra succcesses (7) + dex + (charge/2) - Double Attack has gained you + 7 damage.

>Buh? You can spend Charge to generate parries, and then turn those parries into AOE decisive attacks.

Huh? Sonic Slash isn't triggered from Twin-Blade Defence, it's triggered from Seconds Between Strife, and can only happen if the opponent moves away from you. Whether you can activate it is entirely dependant on your opponent. Plus, hardness is going to screw over that AoE a lot of the time - it's mostly only good for clearing mooks.

>On a full-Excellency high-attack penalties-punishing assault with your light artifact weapons, you can literally chain Charms until you run out of Essence and Willpower

Maybe, but if their defence is low enough that you can expect to double it on your attack roll, they're screwed anyway. You don't need any special charms for killing them, they've already lost.

>Natural language says you don't reset.
No, that doesn't make sense. Even in other Steel Devil charms, when you don't reset, they explicitly state you don't. Every time you don't reset with any charm, they explicitly say you don't. That's why Hammer on Iron doesn't work like Iron Whirlwind.

>Likewise, the successes used landing the second attack are not calculated as extra successes when determining damage.

Yeah, that sounds dumb as fuck. Mercenaries every time. "Power romps" are boring because either you're irrelevant to my assassin who can just kill the enemy general or the ST stops me and I'm irrelevant because we have to have a Big Battle instead.

It's not super-likely, but Triple Attack Technique -> Steel Devil Strike -> Empty Mind Strike -> Dervish Blade Frenzy -> Steel Devil Strike -> Empty Mind Strike -> Dervish Blade Frenzy -> Steel Devil Strike -> Empty Mind Strike -> Dervish Blade Frenzy -> Steel Devil Strike -> Empty Mind Strike -> Dervish Blade Frenzy -> Steel Devil Strike -> Empty Mind Strike -> Dervish Blade Frenzy -> Steel Devil Strike -> Empty Mind Strike -> Dervish Blade Frenzy to instantly annihilate someone (maybe if you ambush them for a defense of 0 for the first triple attack, and then it doesn't matter their onslaught is so fucking high) is fucking glorious.

>Sonic Slash isn't triggered from Twin-Blade Defence
Yes it is, with Iron Lotus Unfurling.

>you want to have different fun from me, it's badwrongfun

Whatever you say fampai

Steel Devil Strike doesn't reset your Initiative, even though other Steel Devil Charms explicitly say so, because technical language is not a feature of Exalted 3E and 1:1 comparisons even within a Style are not reasonable or accurate ways to understand the system.

Steel Devil uses only SOME of your Initiative, and clarifies that that Initiative is lost. It would not need to clarify if you reset to base, because you would lose ALL your Initiative. Natural language thus forms an implied sentence of "you do not reset to base Initiative after making this special decisive attack."

I understand that that's completely horrifying to read for anyone coming from any system written sanely and legalistically, but Exalted is not just not legalistic it is EXPLICITLY based on "what seems like it should be right is right, probably." In this case, the simple fact that Steel Devil Strike expends some Initiative means it isn't also expending all Initiative.

For 5 + (half Charge) to be higher than that X-1 is really fucking easy.

forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/898478-in-defense-of-bloat-praise-for-the-developers?p=899416#post899416

who wants to help me kill Holden

when Dervish Blade Frenzy says
>"If she has, she is able to attack with a Quadruple Attack Technique, which uses Triple Attack’s damage bonus and adds (Essence or three, whichever is lower) automatic successes to the post soak damage roll."
does it imply that you have to get enough extra successes to do the quadruple attack, or is this just a fancy name for a quasi-technique like with Cross-Blade Catch?

The natural language is out of control in this MA. On top of hay the writing style is different, like someone else wrote this and it was never edited to be like the other martial arts.

What you're telling me is that I'm supposed to intuit what the authors intended and read sentences that are not there. Thus despite Hammer on Iron Texhnique not saying I don't reset, I can mentally insert the sentence that I don't reset, and argue with my ST about why he doesn't see that invisible sentence like I do.

That's complete horseshit but unfortunately I believe it, knowing the devs.

>forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/898478-in-defense-of-bloat-praise-for-the-developers?p=899416#post899416

In other words, the devs are shit at technical writing, and instead of getting gud, just gave up.

It probably implies you need enough extra successes. On the bright side, their onslaught penalty is at least -4, so if they don't have Dipping Swallow/Shadow Over Water or similar (IE, any Quick NPC although to be fair a stiff breeze could kill half of them) you probably just need one or two if even.

>shouted not wrong but I need you to understand you're not wrong I'm just saying that when we did 2e okay listen you're not wrong but in 2e we got a lot of complaints now they weren't wrong and you're not wrong but we have less complaints now than before now hear me out you're not wrong but writing in flowery language is getting us fewer complaints and they're not wrong but it's fewer than the 2e complaints which weren't wrong so please understand you're not wrong but please believe me when I say it's better this way okay
You're not wrong just please okay you're not wrong YOU'RE NOT WRONG

Honestly, there are two issues at play:

Firstly, there is the matter of technical versus natural language. Technical language is much easier to skim, to grab a bit of info about how a Charm works in play. Natural language is, for some people at least, easier to read constantly; if you're reading through the thousand-ish Charms, it's a lot more bearable (for them) in natural language than technical. I would prefer the language be technical, so that I could quickly check on my Charms when I need to while playing, rather than adding the significant mental load of filtering out the fluff, translating the garbage to mechanics, etc. Holden, et al, decided not to do this.

Secondly, there is the matter of clarity in writing. For example, does Steel Devil Strike reset you to base? How do counterattacks work? And the other fifteen hundred different little ambiguities nobody is quite sure of and the devs won't/can't answer. It feels like every time I play Ex3, at some point somebody's like, "wait, how exactly does XYZ work?" This isn't necessarily a quality of technical versus natural language. It's a quality of the writers not properly playtesting the game to discover the places where ambiguities are causing Actual Play to slow down while people debate whether or not their Charms are as good as they think they are.

>What you're telling me is that I'm supposed to intuit what the authors intended and read sentences that are not there

Yes.

> Thus despite Hammer on Iron Texhnique not saying I don't reset, I can mentally insert the sentence that I don't reset, and argue with my ST about why he doesn't see that invisible sentence like I do.

No. Steel Devil Strike's special text makes an implication Hammer on Iron does not; I don't believe that someone smart enough to read at all is capable of mentally inserting the same implication in both Charms.

However, you can argue it, and if your ST is NOT smart enough to read, the Orichalcum Rule says you have won fair and square.

>That's complete horseshit

Yes.

>I don't believe that someone smart enough to read at all is capable of mentally inserting the same implication in both Charms.
>"Anyone who doesn't think what I think is STUPID!"

>Firstly, there is the matter of technical versus natural language. Technical language is much easier to skim, to grab a bit of info about how a Charm works in play. Natural language is, for some people at least, easier to read constantly; if you're reading through the thousand-ish Charms, it's a lot more bearable (for them) in natural language than technical. I would prefer the language be technical, so that I could quickly check on my Charms when I need to while playing, rather than adding the significant mental load of filtering out the fluff, translating the garbage to mechanics, etc. Holden, et al, decided not to do this.

Or they could have gone the D&D route (4e, at least) and had a nice bit of fluff in italics at the top of the charm, and then a short, clear, concise technical description of the mechanical effects after it.

People reading the book in one sitting can skim the fluff to get a general idea of the charm effect, and people looking to determine the actual mechanical effect can just read the mechanical effect, and not have it all tangled up with the thematics.

>Or they could have gone the D&D route (4e, at least) and had a nice bit of fluff in italics at the top of the charm, and then a short, clear, concise technical description of the mechanical effects after it.
Lots of the same kinds of fags whined about this too.

God yes, counter attacks. I can't believe they didn't explain how they work. They did it in 2e! But not here!

There's one issue at play: Exalted 3E is a lovable shitshow of a first draft accelerated into an actual finished product.

Natural language is not real. It's "Rich Thomas laid down the fucking hammer so we just stopped development and playtesting and cut out any editing runs." It wasn't a fucking design decision, it wasn't "let's write the game this way." They just ran out of time and gave up.

They have on staff an art director whose sole job is to direct the art, and their first pass had a bunch of stolen videogame copypasta and fucking Blender models. THEY NEVER REPLACED THE COVER ART. THE COVER IS WHAT THEY WERE CALLING A PLACEHOLDER FOR REAL ART. You think the system end of things went BETTER?

It's a testament to their creative skill that we got something as functional as we did, all personal loathing aside, but three people cannot an entire crunch-heavy intricate combat-focused cinematic system alone devise.

>Exalted 3E
>accelerated

Your language is not like our earth language.

Not that I disagree with your point.

>There's one issue at play: Exalted 3E is a lovable shitshow of a first draft accelerated into an actual finished product.
I don't know if I'd say first draft, but yeah, it definitely needed a good hard editing pass from somebody who wasn't under the table sucking Morke and Holden's dicks. Much of the stuff I've seen in terms of houserules are a) shockingly simple and b) so vital I couldn't imagine playing without them. It drives me insane. LCQA is the biggest offender here, but the loads of meaningless trash merits are there too.

I don't have playing experience with 3e. Please tell me what these houserules you're talking about are, and what LCQA is.

Three people on a project with this level of mechanical intensity, working in essentially overtime because they all had day jobs? Their original projections were fucking retarded. They needed another year at least with full-community open playtesting, another two because they are categorically against open playtesting despite it being literally God's personalized expectation-free gift to indie developers, which they are now.

It takes TIME. The bones of a system, sure, if you have good ideas you can get that quick enough even by your lonesome, but hammering out every vein and capillary is a grind and it isn't nearly as fun. Other RPGs solve this issue by having large teams or by doing rules-light systems. That's how you overcome the time gap. Exalted took neither approach. Exalted, perhaps in theme, was always attempting the impossible, so of course it fell short. Natural language is not the sun they reached for. It's Icarus' burn scars.

I assume LCQA = Linear Creation, Quadratic Advancement. Character creation (using bonus points) is a linear system; advancement (using xp) is exponential. It means that certain character builds (highly min-maxed) are mathematically encouraged by the system.

Removing the Martial Arts merit is a common one.
Using BP for advancement to get around LCQA another
Inserting in an actual Projects system instead of the pages of fluff
If more people actually played naval combat, they'd houserule that too, because the core rules are dogshit.

You're ignoring an Excellency added in for fun.

LCQA = Linear Chargen, Quadratic Advancement.

People call it BP/XP, but the problem's actually a bit broader (broader than LCQA, too). You can spend the same amount of points and get less of the same thing, which is a product both of BP/XP and your static starting pools (15 merit points, 28 ability points, etc). So we use flat BP houserules, which are a bit broader than just "you get 4 BP instead of however much XP;" they also reprice things a little so that there's no issues like that (e.g. E1 charms cost 4 BP even if they're not caste/favored, because E1 charms are all fungible out of your starting pool of Charms).

The other big one is merits. Most of the merits are just hot trash. They're not worth the points. We just basically say, "yeah, just pick up story merits (and languages, and mutations, and the conception one), the stupid D&D feat merits don't count, if you have leftover merit points and nothing you want to spend them on, maybe you could throw them at your GM later in the game when you get an interesting idea."

>Yeah, one at a time. So if you buff him to 20 willpower, and he casts three raptors, they'll do init + 20, init + 19, init + 18, etc. I'd be more than happy with that.
I don't think you understand.

Every time you successfully cast a spell, you regain 1wp. Flight of the Brilliant Raptor is normally willpower NEUTRAL. What you're doing, when buffing him up like that, is making it suddenly become a loss, by giving him a resource that gets spent without the normal recovery.

You massively, massively wasting your time giving him willpower like that.

> You'll need to spend notes

Well, yeah. 21 dice and TAT is neutral, though, so.

Or hit someone with less than Parry 6.

Thats not a /pol/ exclusive sentiment

>if you put a pebble down the barrel of a firewand would you expect to get a musket? or a pipebomb?
Neither, probably. All indications are that flamedust explodes with much less concussive force/expending gas than gunpowder, but significantly more heat. That's why it's so rarely used to launch projectiles, and never in man-portable form. Cannons that shoot via pressurized steam are more common than flame dust-driven projectiles, for example.

So, as a general rule, assume that flame weapons are powerful not because they do anything concussive like a traditional explosive, but because they impart huge amounts of instantaneous heat, like a gun that shoots a gout of superheated plasma or something.

The most likely thing that will happen is the pebble will stop the heat from escaping fast enough, warping the barrel and probably slagging the pebble too.

no, because init + 20 damage, init + 19 damage...are you retarded? who fucking cares he goes back to WP 10 in ten attacks?

>So do you guys think it's highly recommended to take multiple levels of Ox-Body now?
It's definitely worth it to take at least 1. The problem is that Ox-Bodies have a diminishing utility.

With your first Ox-Body, you're going from 7 to 10 - that's a little less than a 50% increase.

With your second, you're going from 10 to 13, which is only a 30% increase.

The percent just keeps going down from there. Going from 4 to 5 takes you from 19 to 22, which is really not a significant increase at all.

So, I'd recommend one Ox-Body for everyone, but beyond that? It gets increasingly niche and unnecessary.

Yeah. It's trading it being Willpower neutral, in exchange for massively ramping up its damage. And with the stupidly-good willpower regen charms in Integrity (plus the ability for Will-Bolstering to occasionally pull some out of thin air) keeping your buddy topped off after he shoots a couple of Raptors off isn't particularly arduous.

If your buddy has the Suzerein of Endless Flame merit, and chucks off three Raptors in battle (which is quite a lot), you'd be able to top him up again no troubles - he'd be down 2wp, and you gain +1 per scene, +1/day from sleeping, and another +1/day for meditating (which you can do instantly).

You're measuring the increase in total number of health levels, but not for how you can get better health levels of -0 or -1 with more purchases, assuming you have high enough Stamina.

I did think those merits like Absolute Direction felt out of place for Exalted. Thanks.

I don't really see those as a meaningful concern. Or, rather, I count that under the 'niche' category. The point of extra health levels isn't to take easier penalties while wounded, it's to not-die to the first good decisive that slaps you while you're Crashed.

you must be the same genius as there is no diminishing return! what the fuck! you get three more health levels. every health level means enemies must build more initiative, which means more time, which is a really fucking precious commodity given how withering attacks work - the moment when your allies drop and you're facing five guys and gals is the moment you enter The Last Crash. health levels aren't even just flat additive, they're EXPONENTIALLY more valuable. the guy with 13 HL is way better off than the guy with 10 HL, and that separation is WIDER than the one between 7 and 10.

total Initiative is a tug of war, but your health levels are the shot clock that determines how long you get to pull for your side. once someone's time is up and the teams go uneven, it's usually fucked for whoever's shorthanded.

>Such a character gains a +1 non-Charm bonus to one Attribute and Ability until his next turn.
Empowering Shout provides a non-charm bonus, not non-charm bonus dice. Does that mean that it increases your dice cap for excellencies and other adders?

Yes.

Debatable. My ST ruled no, but it might work with yours

>there is no diminishing return!
There absolutely is, in no small part because every Ox-Body purchase has to be measured against the purchase of another combat charm or evocations, insofar as efficacy is concerned. A nearly 50% increase to your health levels is great - that's basically always worth a purchase, and helps anyone out significantly. 30% is going to be worth it to a lot of people too.

But 20%? 15%? You start having to measure those purchases against getting another dodge charm, another soak charm, another attack charm. They start providing diminishing utility - less of an effect on your survivability - compared to making it harder to build up that Initiative in the first place, or getting to pull harder for your side while you're standing, to use the tug of war analogy.

Ox-Body Technique is fucking rad, especially the first and second purchase, but you won't see me ever buying the fourth or fifth level of it except in really niche builds which actually rely on specifically taking damage or spending health for some reason.

It's a diminishing return because returns on charm purchases aren't absolute, they're measured against what you could have bought instead.

THANKS :)

...sorry for capslock, didn't notice it was on

Why are you measuring it in terms of percent increase of total health levels? Adding extra health levels requires that much more initiative be used to kill you whether you have 7 or 20

On the subject of BP/XP - does anything happen if you get rid of Solar XP as a thing? I mean, are there charms that key off it?

No.

People spend fewer points on things that aren't charms.

>does anything happen if you get rid of Solar XP as a thing?
People spend 100% of their XP on Solar Charms instead.

>I mean, are there charms that key off it?
You can use it to pay the activation costs of charms with an XP cost, instead of real XP.

>Yes
>No
Which is it?

ask your ST. I'd go with no, though.

Why wouldn't it increase cap? The charms affect is to increase an attribute and ability, the charm itself doesn't add dice

Natural language strikes again.

what is the point of a thaumaturgical dance to "make people mad at rocks" and can my player learn this in game?

if so do i need to somehow convince stanewald, the ravine of whispers, or shlin to teach it?

>People spend 100% of their XP on Solar Charms instead.
This is definitely not true. They don't spend 50/50 but most of my Circle is about 2/3rds Charms, in terms of BP expenditures. (Probably less if you count out spells/MA charms)

Admittedly, that's BP, not XP, which makes ability purchases way cheaper, comparatively.

Veeky Forums what are the rules for Martial Arts and off-hand weapons?
If I'm holding the style's weapon in my offhand, lets say a sword for Shining Point, can I still activate and transition into that style?
If I'm holding the the sword in my dominant hand, but a different weapon in my left hand, can I stay in Shining Point and strike with the sword on its own turn and my off hand weapon on mine?
How about the reverse? Can I keep the sword in my offhand, "drawing" it for a fast strike on it's "turn", while using my primary weapon while taking other purposes?

It doesn't matter what weapon you're holding. You just can't use non-form weapons with that style's skill or attack/parry charms.

Yes to all.

The only reason you wouldn't be able to use a Martial Art while wielding another, different weapon in the other hand is if the weapon specificially requires or forbids dual-wielding, such as Steel Devil Style.