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Okay, welcome back! I spent yesterday doing totally different Exalted things - read: updating our current game wiki with my new cool, completely unoptimized Alchemical character Proof Against Obsolescence and reading weak Victorian fiction. I'm going to get into this entry really quick and, once again, I'll be placing it under the cut for people who don't need pages of Exalted 2.5 mechanical writing (which is probably most of you). This is the one where I start getting into the admittedly basic and slightly tedious math of character creation.
I've been breaking my White Wolf/Onyx Path character building into two major sections these days - pre-bonus point and post-bonus point. You can spend BP at literally any point in character design, which is really important to remember when you're buying Charms in Exalted (which you'll see today), but it's more of a conceptual design process than a literal "assigned dots then bonus point spending" linear path. I find this non-intuitive, and it's a design trap that's easy to fall in. The first of many we'll find.
Because we're here, you have to assume a certain degree of mechanical awareness, but I'm writing from the perspective of vague knowledge of broad mechanical and conceptual issues. Like, knowing that you have to buy individual spells exactly like Charms, you know the general difference between Castes of Solars here, just the stuff you'd generally need to formulate the concept for the character that we addressed last time.
Not all WoD games are the same in how characters are built. Exalted will assign a fairly rigid number of character points that are assigned on a 1-to-1 level and then assign you more flexible 'Bonus Points' or BP that you trade in at various levels of value to build the rest of your character. Presumably this is to create a certain base level of capability but, in practice, there's not much of a reason besides understanding that this is a legacy rule. World of Darkness pre-GMC does not use BP. The same method of assigning character points happens first, and the Storyteller (ST) assigns a somewhat arbitary number of Experience Points (XP) which the player uses to buy ratings up. The XP that the player recieves in character creation functions identically to how it functions when the game has started. (I'm not getting into post-GMC right now, since it has no bearing on mechanics used in Exalted.)
There are some things to know about assigning character points in Exalted. Any values I list that differ from the Core book are utilizing values listed in the Scroll of Errata.
First, as of the 2.5 Scroll of Errata, players building Solar characters can assign Attributes up to 5 without BP and without penalty. What we'll see is, if you're going to max out an Attribute, your incentive is to do it right away.
Second, character points for Abilities are capped at 3. This is important for two major reasons. The first is that raising an Ability 4 or 5 at character creation requires spending BP. The second is that players are assigned 10 Charms before BP need to be spent, but many Charms that are available (and, in many cases, critical) can only be purchased when the character has ratings of 4-5 in an Ability and an Essence of 3, which means that you will almost certainly be juggling character points and BP at the same time. Similarly, no character points are assigned to buying up Essence ratings, once again requiring BP be spent.
These facts make a liar out of me. I apologize! Assigning Bonus Points will literally be the first mechanical thing we do. I will make a case for players understanding this as being automatic for every character they ever make in just a bit and, thus, almost like not assigning points at all.
Third, the player should have a pretty good understanding of what Charms they want before even beginning to assign character points and filling in dots. Charms and spells often alter or utilize unexpected dice pools, and the player will want to be aware of those pools and basic defense values. That means I'm going to be breaking out some charts. (Lame, yeah, I know.) You also want to know how XP and BP will work later on.
We'll actually be selecting our Charms before assigning Ability points, because you don't want to be looking through Charms and finding you're all tapped out of points and you actually needed an Ability at 5 when you've got it stuck at 3.
Time For Numbers
Prices for Bonus Points are listed on the character summary page on 84-85 but prices for XP almost randomly on page 274. God only knows why they did that. The layout is as bad in Exalted 2 as in any WoD book. Which is to say that it's abysmal.
All Attributes start at 1 and are bought up. Cost to do it with BP is 4.
Costs to buy up Attributes 2-5 in XP are: 8, 12, 16, 20
Abilities are 1 BP for Favored, 2 for non.
Base XP for Abilities from 1-5 are: 3, 4, 6, 8, 10.
All Favored Abilities must be purchased up to 1 at creation, and all of their costs to buy are one less. (N/A, 3, 5, 7, 9)
BP for Virtues and Willpower are 1.
Virtues are Ratingx3, Will is Ratingx2.
Will starts at 5, now, so it costs (12, 14, 16, 18, 20) to buy up.
Essence is 7 BP. It starts at 2.
Essence is Ratingx8, so a rediculous (24, 32, 40).
That's not surprising, Essence is a critical power stat.
Here's what we know - Abilities are actually quite cheap in Exalted. What I consider that to mean is that in terms of narrative weight, they're actually quite unimportant. This is why I think it's perfectly acceptible to start with ranks that would be extremely high right out of character creation - when you begin, you're already basically a hero - that's why you Exalt. The difference between Favored and non Abilities is pretty marginal - a total of 4 exp if both start at rating 1 from ratings 2-5. But, it's still 31 points to purchase an out of Caste Ability from 1 to 5 with XP - the same as 4 Favored Charms, so it's still something to keep an eye on.
If you suspect you're going to end up with an Ability discrepancy, try this. Find Abilities you'll need, but not more than at rank 3 for a pretty long time. Like, if you don't think you'll be buying a lot of Charms for them, but want some points. Lore, Linguistics, Ride, Sail, Crafts, and Survival are common here, as are out of concept social abilities and stuff you're only ever going to buy an Excellency in. Save BP in buying critical Favoreds up since BP are at a Primium, but use assigned points where possible since those are 1-to-1. Try to keep your BP to raising Abilities above 3. It's more important to put Abilities you're going to be buying lots of Charms for in Favored because they're discounted at a flat rate of 2 per Charm.
Willpower and Virtues are pretty important sources of free extra dice and contribute to the Exalt's Essence pools. Willpower, in particular, is used for Combos and is particularly important. It's practically free at creation, and the difference between BP and XP is insane, so buy it up to at least 8. STs tend to get crabby at ratings 9-10, so whatever. But, very seriously, do not ignore Willpower. Usually you'll have a few points leftover to kick somewhere and WP and Virtues are great returns on BP investment. Almost always better than Abilities.
Essence is - by far - the most critical. It's a big investment at 7 BP, but it's basically mandatory. Just assume you start out with Essence 3 and 11 BP. First, a lot of basic Charms require it, from Dodge to Melee to Martial Arts to literally everything. You will buy Essence 3. It's just a matter of when. Since it's forgone, let's look at XP differences. It's difficult to get a read on the value of a BP since it's a flat cost. For Favored Abilities compared to XP, it's averaged at 6 to 1. Out of Caste is a fairly marginal 3 to 1 (making buying OoC Abilities with BP almost the worst bang for your buck in the game). For Essence, it's almost 4.5 to 1. The only better value per cost is Willpower at 16 to 1, but Will isn't even close to as important. (Though it's an infinitely better deal.)
That's unprecedented. Now. Not everyone's going to hit Essence 5, but it's not unreasonable to assume you could get up to 4. If you stick around at 2 and your friend buys 3 - then you both proceed to purchase up to 4 with XP, you'll have spent 56 and they'll have spend 32 - the 24 point difference is 3 Favored Charms, plus being unable to buy Essence 3 Charms at Creation, putting you behind on what is close to at least a geometric power curve. There's literally no reason to not buy Essence 3 mechanically unless nobody is allowed to. Don't make this mistake.
Like Willpower, most Storytellers start to get crabby when beginning characters start out with arbitrarily high ratings in critical attributes. Unlike Abilities, which are relatively cheap, Essence has an extremely high game footprint. That means you probably can't get away with Essence 4 at creation.
The big loser here is Charms. First of all, they alone of all the costs in the game possess a static purchase cost. They're always 8/10 exp, and they'll make up the vast bulk of your purchases when you're not saving up for a higher Essence rating. The most basic Excellency dice-adder and the most insane, Essence 5 capstone Charm cost the same point value. The BP value is better than it used to be (3 and 4 instead of 4 and 5) but it still crunches down to 2.6/2.5 BP to XP value. Only buy Charms with BP is you absolutely need them at creation or don't have anything else you need. Since you'll be buying your defensive Charms and Abilities up the very first thing after Essence and Willpower, if you absolutely need new Charms, you've probably fucked up or your game is rediculously dangerous. More likely is that you've bought everything you really need - if so, have fun!
The thing about BP to XP is that it's not really a perfect measurement - BP are more valueable the more you go up the scale. Using BP to fill in one dot abilities, bottom-level Virtues, or just buying Willpower up to 6 actually creates a way worse BP value. BP values for Essence is reasonable considering you will actually probably be able to buy up to Essence 5 in a long enough campaign. However, to value of BP here is more in terms of how pricy the lump-sum cost of Essence is in terms of lived game time and Charm purchase oppertunity cost. That's very hard to manage. Willpower, however, is unlikely to be purchase past creation for most people because the value isn't usually there. (It does effect static values for MDV, but that's the only thing that having a high generic value is typically used for.) Since you're probably not in a situation there purchasing Essence to 5 with BP is feasible, Essence value per BP is more like 3.5 to 1 or, if we figure Essence 4 in since it's technically able to be purchased, 4 to 1. Where if you can only reasonably purchase Willpower 8, the value drops to 14 to 1 - our original numbers for Essence.
This puts Willpower way out in front in terms of value, which is great if you're using Willpower a lot. (Combos are free now, so the value of Willpower has actually gone way up since the errata for 2.5 while the cost has actually gone down - incentivising players to purchase it in droves.) Essence is used for everything, though, so its value is considerably greater than the XP to BP ratio. All this shows us is an XP hole - an element of system mastery that newies are likely to fall prey to. The objective isn't really to get the best possible deal, but where you know that you'll almost always buy something, it makese sense to get the best deal possible. Fiddling around with Abilities pales compared to Essence. The idea here is basically to make sure you're not falling into build holes at creation.
For Essence, it'd be like showing up to your first game and, at the end, the ST is handing out points. You get 4. Your friend gets 16. You'd be upset, since you were both just hanging out and playing. That's the difference between 2 and 3 - if it happened twice.
I've pointed out that this can be fixed just by not implementing scaling point costs and switching from BP to XP at creation and doling out character points as normal. The above math has nothing directly to do with building Kilroy except that I won't want to be showing my math every step of the way when I'm writing about that. Instead, I'll only be writing about my non-optimal build choices from the mechanical perspective, and everything else will basically be conceptual.
I've been breaking my White Wolf/Onyx Path character building into two major sections these days - pre-bonus point and post-bonus point. You can spend BP at literally any point in character design, which is really important to remember when you're buying Charms in Exalted (which you'll see today), but it's more of a conceptual design process than a literal "assigned dots then bonus point spending" linear path. I find this non-intuitive, and it's a design trap that's easy to fall in. The first of many we'll find.
Because we're here, you have to assume a certain degree of mechanical awareness, but I'm writing from the perspective of vague knowledge of broad mechanical and conceptual issues. Like, knowing that you have to buy individual spells exactly like Charms, you know the general difference between Castes of Solars here, just the stuff you'd generally need to formulate the concept for the character that we addressed last time.
Not all WoD games are the same in how characters are built. Exalted will assign a fairly rigid number of character points that are assigned on a 1-to-1 level and then assign you more flexible 'Bonus Points' or BP that you trade in at various levels of value to build the rest of your character. Presumably this is to create a certain base level of capability but, in practice, there's not much of a reason besides understanding that this is a legacy rule. World of Darkness pre-GMC does not use BP. The same method of assigning character points happens first, and the Storyteller (ST) assigns a somewhat arbitary number of Experience Points (XP) which the player uses to buy ratings up. The XP that the player recieves in character creation functions identically to how it functions when the game has started. (I'm not getting into post-GMC right now, since it has no bearing on mechanics used in Exalted.)
There are some things to know about assigning character points in Exalted. Any values I list that differ from the Core book are utilizing values listed in the Scroll of Errata.
First, as of the 2.5 Scroll of Errata, players building Solar characters can assign Attributes up to 5 without BP and without penalty. What we'll see is, if you're going to max out an Attribute, your incentive is to do it right away.
Second, character points for Abilities are capped at 3. This is important for two major reasons. The first is that raising an Ability 4 or 5 at character creation requires spending BP. The second is that players are assigned 10 Charms before BP need to be spent, but many Charms that are available (and, in many cases, critical) can only be purchased when the character has ratings of 4-5 in an Ability and an Essence of 3, which means that you will almost certainly be juggling character points and BP at the same time. Similarly, no character points are assigned to buying up Essence ratings, once again requiring BP be spent.
These facts make a liar out of me. I apologize! Assigning Bonus Points will literally be the first mechanical thing we do. I will make a case for players understanding this as being automatic for every character they ever make in just a bit and, thus, almost like not assigning points at all.
Third, the player should have a pretty good understanding of what Charms they want before even beginning to assign character points and filling in dots. Charms and spells often alter or utilize unexpected dice pools, and the player will want to be aware of those pools and basic defense values. That means I'm going to be breaking out some charts. (Lame, yeah, I know.) You also want to know how XP and BP will work later on.
We'll actually be selecting our Charms before assigning Ability points, because you don't want to be looking through Charms and finding you're all tapped out of points and you actually needed an Ability at 5 when you've got it stuck at 3.
Time For Numbers
Prices for Bonus Points are listed on the character summary page on 84-85 but prices for XP almost randomly on page 274. God only knows why they did that. The layout is as bad in Exalted 2 as in any WoD book. Which is to say that it's abysmal.
All Attributes start at 1 and are bought up. Cost to do it with BP is 4.
Costs to buy up Attributes 2-5 in XP are: 8, 12, 16, 20
Abilities are 1 BP for Favored, 2 for non.
Base XP for Abilities from 1-5 are: 3, 4, 6, 8, 10.
All Favored Abilities must be purchased up to 1 at creation, and all of their costs to buy are one less. (N/A, 3, 5, 7, 9)
BP for Virtues and Willpower are 1.
Virtues are Ratingx3, Will is Ratingx2.
Will starts at 5, now, so it costs (12, 14, 16, 18, 20) to buy up.
Essence is 7 BP. It starts at 2.
Essence is Ratingx8, so a rediculous (24, 32, 40).
That's not surprising, Essence is a critical power stat.
Here's what we know - Abilities are actually quite cheap in Exalted. What I consider that to mean is that in terms of narrative weight, they're actually quite unimportant. This is why I think it's perfectly acceptible to start with ranks that would be extremely high right out of character creation - when you begin, you're already basically a hero - that's why you Exalt. The difference between Favored and non Abilities is pretty marginal - a total of 4 exp if both start at rating 1 from ratings 2-5. But, it's still 31 points to purchase an out of Caste Ability from 1 to 5 with XP - the same as 4 Favored Charms, so it's still something to keep an eye on.
If you suspect you're going to end up with an Ability discrepancy, try this. Find Abilities you'll need, but not more than at rank 3 for a pretty long time. Like, if you don't think you'll be buying a lot of Charms for them, but want some points. Lore, Linguistics, Ride, Sail, Crafts, and Survival are common here, as are out of concept social abilities and stuff you're only ever going to buy an Excellency in. Save BP in buying critical Favoreds up since BP are at a Primium, but use assigned points where possible since those are 1-to-1. Try to keep your BP to raising Abilities above 3. It's more important to put Abilities you're going to be buying lots of Charms for in Favored because they're discounted at a flat rate of 2 per Charm.
Willpower and Virtues are pretty important sources of free extra dice and contribute to the Exalt's Essence pools. Willpower, in particular, is used for Combos and is particularly important. It's practically free at creation, and the difference between BP and XP is insane, so buy it up to at least 8. STs tend to get crabby at ratings 9-10, so whatever. But, very seriously, do not ignore Willpower. Usually you'll have a few points leftover to kick somewhere and WP and Virtues are great returns on BP investment. Almost always better than Abilities.
Essence is - by far - the most critical. It's a big investment at 7 BP, but it's basically mandatory. Just assume you start out with Essence 3 and 11 BP. First, a lot of basic Charms require it, from Dodge to Melee to Martial Arts to literally everything. You will buy Essence 3. It's just a matter of when. Since it's forgone, let's look at XP differences. It's difficult to get a read on the value of a BP since it's a flat cost. For Favored Abilities compared to XP, it's averaged at 6 to 1. Out of Caste is a fairly marginal 3 to 1 (making buying OoC Abilities with BP almost the worst bang for your buck in the game). For Essence, it's almost 4.5 to 1. The only better value per cost is Willpower at 16 to 1, but Will isn't even close to as important. (Though it's an infinitely better deal.)
That's unprecedented. Now. Not everyone's going to hit Essence 5, but it's not unreasonable to assume you could get up to 4. If you stick around at 2 and your friend buys 3 - then you both proceed to purchase up to 4 with XP, you'll have spent 56 and they'll have spend 32 - the 24 point difference is 3 Favored Charms, plus being unable to buy Essence 3 Charms at Creation, putting you behind on what is close to at least a geometric power curve. There's literally no reason to not buy Essence 3 mechanically unless nobody is allowed to. Don't make this mistake.
Like Willpower, most Storytellers start to get crabby when beginning characters start out with arbitrarily high ratings in critical attributes. Unlike Abilities, which are relatively cheap, Essence has an extremely high game footprint. That means you probably can't get away with Essence 4 at creation.
The big loser here is Charms. First of all, they alone of all the costs in the game possess a static purchase cost. They're always 8/10 exp, and they'll make up the vast bulk of your purchases when you're not saving up for a higher Essence rating. The most basic Excellency dice-adder and the most insane, Essence 5 capstone Charm cost the same point value. The BP value is better than it used to be (3 and 4 instead of 4 and 5) but it still crunches down to 2.6/2.5 BP to XP value. Only buy Charms with BP is you absolutely need them at creation or don't have anything else you need. Since you'll be buying your defensive Charms and Abilities up the very first thing after Essence and Willpower, if you absolutely need new Charms, you've probably fucked up or your game is rediculously dangerous. More likely is that you've bought everything you really need - if so, have fun!
The thing about BP to XP is that it's not really a perfect measurement - BP are more valueable the more you go up the scale. Using BP to fill in one dot abilities, bottom-level Virtues, or just buying Willpower up to 6 actually creates a way worse BP value. BP values for Essence is reasonable considering you will actually probably be able to buy up to Essence 5 in a long enough campaign. However, to value of BP here is more in terms of how pricy the lump-sum cost of Essence is in terms of lived game time and Charm purchase oppertunity cost. That's very hard to manage. Willpower, however, is unlikely to be purchase past creation for most people because the value isn't usually there. (It does effect static values for MDV, but that's the only thing that having a high generic value is typically used for.) Since you're probably not in a situation there purchasing Essence to 5 with BP is feasible, Essence value per BP is more like 3.5 to 1 or, if we figure Essence 4 in since it's technically able to be purchased, 4 to 1. Where if you can only reasonably purchase Willpower 8, the value drops to 14 to 1 - our original numbers for Essence.
This puts Willpower way out in front in terms of value, which is great if you're using Willpower a lot. (Combos are free now, so the value of Willpower has actually gone way up since the errata for 2.5 while the cost has actually gone down - incentivising players to purchase it in droves.) Essence is used for everything, though, so its value is considerably greater than the XP to BP ratio. All this shows us is an XP hole - an element of system mastery that newies are likely to fall prey to. The objective isn't really to get the best possible deal, but where you know that you'll almost always buy something, it makese sense to get the best deal possible. Fiddling around with Abilities pales compared to Essence. The idea here is basically to make sure you're not falling into build holes at creation.
For Essence, it'd be like showing up to your first game and, at the end, the ST is handing out points. You get 4. Your friend gets 16. You'd be upset, since you were both just hanging out and playing. That's the difference between 2 and 3 - if it happened twice.
I've pointed out that this can be fixed just by not implementing scaling point costs and switching from BP to XP at creation and doling out character points as normal. The above math has nothing directly to do with building Kilroy except that I won't want to be showing my math every step of the way when I'm writing about that. Instead, I'll only be writing about my non-optimal build choices from the mechanical perspective, and everything else will basically be conceptual.