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Okay, I've been producing a lot of word count in this direction for a while, but it's time to wrap this puppy up. Part two didn't really need to be written, but I wanted to get a lot of that shit out of the way and, in fact, it actually kind of changed the way I view making characters in a really small way. There's not too much to say here, especially since I made a general update post last evening, so I'll put the bulk of the writing under the cut and get started.
The first thing I'm going to do is immediately start making some sub-optimal mechanical decisions in favor of character flavor. First of all, like I've said before, I'm going with Martial Arts instead of Melee when Melee is objectively better forever. Solar Melee is an amazing one-stop shop of great attacks, great weapons, and great (perfect) defenses. Kilroy started with Snake Style and Solar Hero is basically repurposed Brawl, but Solar Hero is kind of my concession to mechanical rigor - if Kilroy were being built to be played in a game right now, I would opt for Solar Hero with no hesitation. Luckily, the errata buff Solar Hero for the purposes of Solars only, so it's not as weak a choice as it could be. I really like that. It makes me happy. Weirdly, I'll be buying almost no actual Charms from the style at creation though.
Next, I'm not buying Terrestrial Circle Sorcery at char gen. I know that I could, and I'm not, and that makes Kilroy look like a really odd Twilight. He's going to be a guy with high Twilight Ability ratings but with his Charms bought almost exclusively from Favored - not Caste - Abilities. This is completely a concept thing, make no mistake. Still, Occult isn't useless without Sorcery - Kilroy is still adept at thaumaturgical sciences, and a high Occult at char gen gives him access to the powerful All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight.
As of the errata, Solars are no longer limited to having a majority Favored/Caste Charm purchase at character generation, so I would be best off selecting as many non-Favored/Caste Charms as I could and buying them with my free 10 Charm purchases. Dodge would going to be the big, big winner here, because I'm going to buy that sucker up to 5 with BP, buy a bunch of Charms right away, and leave it un-Favored. I say 'would' because it's still not going to push half my Charms even though it could have.
I'm not buying the Lore-bolt right away, even though it's cool and I'm including the stats here.
The most noticeable thing is that Kilroy won't be starting the game with Intelligence 5 even though he could. (And it's easier then before with the errata saying he can do it with points assigned at character gen.) Kilroy is smart - really smart - but he's not actually the smartest. In fact, he's rarely the smartest in the room. He works really hard and finds a lot of success and has a lot of powerful benefactors, but he doesn't have the most raw talent. That's really only one dice in an already large set of pools, though. Int gets used in a lot of rolls, and effects the motes he can spend for the pool, but it's not actually a pre-req for anything so the amount of actual effect this will have is very little.
All of that said, I think we're ready to begin. Let's start by listing our available resources.
Attributes - Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Unassigned - 8/6/4
Favored Abilities Left - 5
Ability Points Left - 28 (Cap:3)
Backgrounds Left - 7
Charms Left - 10
Virtue Points Left - 5 (Cap:4)
Willpower - Set to 5
Bonus Points Left - 18
Essence - Set to 2
First: Raise Essence to 3 (Bonus Points Left: 11)
I think a lot of people start dicking around with their Attributes. This is the second most important thing for Alchemicals and Lunars and maybe the least important thing for Solars. (Dexterity is the most important stat, and after that it's a grab bag based on your game. I feel like once you know that, you can set that shit aside for the time being.) The only reason it's important for Lunars and Alchemicals is because Charm purchases are made off of them. For those Exalt types, Charm selection is key, followed by making sure you have the right values. For everyone else, it's Charm purchase then Abilities (or for Infernals, Essence and Abilities matter for dice pools only). Raise your Essence first. For every purchase now, we know our Essence is set to three.
Second: Find your critical Charm selections and check your DV pools.
Combat is dangerous in Exalted, and it's easy to find yourself a fine red mist if you pick wrong and the ST gets (un)lucky. To that end, we look to our defense first. Now, I've already stated that I'm not building for a Chungian paranoia combat scenerio because if we were, we could just ignore everything anyhow and go home. It's not fun. I feel it's enough to cover the bases and just to make sure that there's something there for the next several games and I don't have to sweat too much. There are a few things that short-circuit everything and ruin the game, and those things are perfect mental attacks and certain shaping attacks. I know that my ST doesn't favor these effects (and will probably never run a social attack), so I can probably ignore these for now. If I didn't, Integrity's first Charm selection in its tree is a great buy. I'm probably not going to buy it. For flavor reasons, I will probably have an acceptible Integrity rating, though. I want the option to defend there if I want it.
Our pools, including Essence, look like this after the errata:
Mental Dodge Value: [Willpower + Integrity + Specialty + Essence] / 2
Mental Parry Value: (Relies on a social skill I won't have - I'll never be trying to roll this and this value represents a hole that could be exploited.)
Dodge Defense Value (DDV): (Dexterity + Dodge + Essence) / 2
Parry Defense Value (PDV): (Martial Arts + Dexterity + Weapon Value) / 2
Personal Essence: (Essence * 3) + Willpower
Peripheral Essence: (Essence * 7) + Willpower + (Sum of All Virtues)
Will has a pretty big effect on Essence pools and one defense value. Essence, as we see, has a huge effect. Not buying Essence 3 first results in a lower Dodge DV, but also a hefty 10 points of Essence which is a lot of Charm activations. What we also see is that buying Virtues and Willpower with BP also effectively results in 1 Essence per BP. Previous to the errata, where Willpower was the result of your two highest Virtues, Virtues were a big (sleeper) winner in what to spend your BP on because buying two up to 10 resulted in both peak Willpower and a 2-for-1 Essence bump. They're cheaper now, though, so I consider it a trade off - especially since you don't tend to do too much with them after the game starts.
Since MA effects Parry but has shit defense Charms in Solar Hero, we acknowledge it'll probably be high but we look at Dodge first. Besides Excellencies, it has only 5 Charms, making it a great candidate to dump from our Favored's lists since they difference between Favored and OoC (Out of Caste) won't result in a huge XP hole. It's still critical, though, because in those 5 Charms we actually cover ground in three different ability venues - Awareness, Athletics, and Dodge. (Reflex Sidestep Technique, Leaping Dodge Method, and everything else.) In this tiny tree, the minimum ability purchase is 3, and its strong powers are 4 and 5 (the perfect dodge and the onslaught penalty negator). I feel like setting our Dodge to 5 right away is a clear choice. I'm making the call on setting it to OoC right now, which means Ability BP costs are 4 here.
Dodge: 5 (Ability Points Left: 25, BP Left: 7)
That's not a lot of BP left, I know. And we still have a lot of stuff to buy! It gets worse.
Willpower: 8 (BP Left: 4)
Fuck. Wait!
Martial Arts: 4 (Ability Points Left: 22, BP Left: 3)
Stop!
Occult: 5 (Ability Points Left: 19, BP Left: 1)
Virtue (Temperance): 4 (Virtue Remaining: 2, BP Left: 0)
Why did I do this? Well, using the BP to bump Awareness might have been good and using it to bump Willpower or Martial Arts to 5 would have been better than buying Temperance up. But Temperance is key to the character concept and I know I won't spend even a shred of XP on Virtues after creation. I also didn't feel that walking into the first game with three 5-rank Abilities looked very good, and a Will of 9-10 looks strange to a lot of people. So, I'm basically making some concessions to the setting. This is a little like not bumping my Int to 5 from the get-go. Three dots in most Abilities will be fine, and Kilroy is clearly a talented martial artist and occultist. But why Occult 5 specifically? Because I know for a fact that I'll get there for Solar Sorcery eventually and because I need 5 for All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight and if I'm going to not buy Sorcery initiations, I still want a good Charm in Occult, plus it's really good.
Let's pick out some Dodge and Occult Charms then.
Dodge: Essence Triumphant (2nd Excellency)
Dodge: Infinite Dodge Mastery (Infinite Excellency)
Dodge: Reflexive Sidestep Technique
Dodge: Flow Like Blood
Occult: Spirit-Detecting Glance
Occult: All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight (Charms Remaining: 4)
Some notes about what I'm doing here. If I weren't buying Infinite Dodge Mastery at char gen, I'd probably have opted for the 3rd Excellency which, for static values, adds half the ability you've got rounded up to the value resulting in a 3 point bump for 4 motes. Infinte Mastery will bump 3 for 6, but with the Infinite Mastery, you can commit 6 motes instead of 3rd Excellency's 8 motes to improve your DV by 3. Reflexive Side Step and Flow Like Blood are basically personal choices - I could have totally opted for the Perfect effect (and if things were more lethal I'd probably buy Side Step, Leaping, and Seven Shadows Evasion instead) but for what I'm doing, this feels fine.
And that's my Occult Charm. It's Detect Magic Shit, which is strong. I only have 4 Charms left, though, so what do I buy?
Martial Arts (Solar Hero): Fists of Iron Technique
Martial Arts: Essence Overwhelming (1st Excellency)
Resistance: Durability of Oak Meditation
Medicine: Essence Triumphant (2nd Excellency)
The tradeoff for all that Dodge is slightly less ass-kicking. You might drop Resistance for Athletic's Graceful Crane Stance and Medicine seems kind of out of place - and there's no Linguistics here, but I don't really need Linquistics Charms as much as I like them. I feel like order of purchase will be focused on Sorcery when I finally get it (Countermagic, transportation, bones of stone or brass skin, then raising a manse), but picking up Lore Bolts one and two, Infinite Excellency for MA, and buying up the tree, and one or two Medicine, Resistance, and Athletics when it seems appropriate is the order of the day. Eventually all of the Dodge Charms get bought. For a long campaign, it ain't nothing. I don't feel like I'm missing something critical, which is important. The skills that need to be bought can all get purchased up to three or whatever.
The Charms are the major thing but this is exhausting to write up, so I'll finish it tomorrow.
The first thing I'm going to do is immediately start making some sub-optimal mechanical decisions in favor of character flavor. First of all, like I've said before, I'm going with Martial Arts instead of Melee when Melee is objectively better forever. Solar Melee is an amazing one-stop shop of great attacks, great weapons, and great (perfect) defenses. Kilroy started with Snake Style and Solar Hero is basically repurposed Brawl, but Solar Hero is kind of my concession to mechanical rigor - if Kilroy were being built to be played in a game right now, I would opt for Solar Hero with no hesitation. Luckily, the errata buff Solar Hero for the purposes of Solars only, so it's not as weak a choice as it could be. I really like that. It makes me happy. Weirdly, I'll be buying almost no actual Charms from the style at creation though.
Next, I'm not buying Terrestrial Circle Sorcery at char gen. I know that I could, and I'm not, and that makes Kilroy look like a really odd Twilight. He's going to be a guy with high Twilight Ability ratings but with his Charms bought almost exclusively from Favored - not Caste - Abilities. This is completely a concept thing, make no mistake. Still, Occult isn't useless without Sorcery - Kilroy is still adept at thaumaturgical sciences, and a high Occult at char gen gives him access to the powerful All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight.
As of the errata, Solars are no longer limited to having a majority Favored/Caste Charm purchase at character generation, so I would be best off selecting as many non-Favored/Caste Charms as I could and buying them with my free 10 Charm purchases. Dodge would going to be the big, big winner here, because I'm going to buy that sucker up to 5 with BP, buy a bunch of Charms right away, and leave it un-Favored. I say 'would' because it's still not going to push half my Charms even though it could have.
I'm not buying the Lore-bolt right away, even though it's cool and I'm including the stats here.
The most noticeable thing is that Kilroy won't be starting the game with Intelligence 5 even though he could. (And it's easier then before with the errata saying he can do it with points assigned at character gen.) Kilroy is smart - really smart - but he's not actually the smartest. In fact, he's rarely the smartest in the room. He works really hard and finds a lot of success and has a lot of powerful benefactors, but he doesn't have the most raw talent. That's really only one dice in an already large set of pools, though. Int gets used in a lot of rolls, and effects the motes he can spend for the pool, but it's not actually a pre-req for anything so the amount of actual effect this will have is very little.
All of that said, I think we're ready to begin. Let's start by listing our available resources.
Attributes - Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Unassigned - 8/6/4
Favored Abilities Left - 5
Ability Points Left - 28 (Cap:3)
Backgrounds Left - 7
Charms Left - 10
Virtue Points Left - 5 (Cap:4)
Willpower - Set to 5
Bonus Points Left - 18
Essence - Set to 2
First: Raise Essence to 3 (Bonus Points Left: 11)
I think a lot of people start dicking around with their Attributes. This is the second most important thing for Alchemicals and Lunars and maybe the least important thing for Solars. (Dexterity is the most important stat, and after that it's a grab bag based on your game. I feel like once you know that, you can set that shit aside for the time being.) The only reason it's important for Lunars and Alchemicals is because Charm purchases are made off of them. For those Exalt types, Charm selection is key, followed by making sure you have the right values. For everyone else, it's Charm purchase then Abilities (or for Infernals, Essence and Abilities matter for dice pools only). Raise your Essence first. For every purchase now, we know our Essence is set to three.
Second: Find your critical Charm selections and check your DV pools.
Combat is dangerous in Exalted, and it's easy to find yourself a fine red mist if you pick wrong and the ST gets (un)lucky. To that end, we look to our defense first. Now, I've already stated that I'm not building for a Chungian paranoia combat scenerio because if we were, we could just ignore everything anyhow and go home. It's not fun. I feel it's enough to cover the bases and just to make sure that there's something there for the next several games and I don't have to sweat too much. There are a few things that short-circuit everything and ruin the game, and those things are perfect mental attacks and certain shaping attacks. I know that my ST doesn't favor these effects (and will probably never run a social attack), so I can probably ignore these for now. If I didn't, Integrity's first Charm selection in its tree is a great buy. I'm probably not going to buy it. For flavor reasons, I will probably have an acceptible Integrity rating, though. I want the option to defend there if I want it.
Our pools, including Essence, look like this after the errata:
Mental Dodge Value: [Willpower + Integrity + Specialty + Essence] / 2
Mental Parry Value: (Relies on a social skill I won't have - I'll never be trying to roll this and this value represents a hole that could be exploited.)
Dodge Defense Value (DDV): (Dexterity + Dodge + Essence) / 2
Parry Defense Value (PDV): (Martial Arts + Dexterity + Weapon Value) / 2
Personal Essence: (Essence * 3) + Willpower
Peripheral Essence: (Essence * 7) + Willpower + (Sum of All Virtues)
Will has a pretty big effect on Essence pools and one defense value. Essence, as we see, has a huge effect. Not buying Essence 3 first results in a lower Dodge DV, but also a hefty 10 points of Essence which is a lot of Charm activations. What we also see is that buying Virtues and Willpower with BP also effectively results in 1 Essence per BP. Previous to the errata, where Willpower was the result of your two highest Virtues, Virtues were a big (sleeper) winner in what to spend your BP on because buying two up to 10 resulted in both peak Willpower and a 2-for-1 Essence bump. They're cheaper now, though, so I consider it a trade off - especially since you don't tend to do too much with them after the game starts.
Since MA effects Parry but has shit defense Charms in Solar Hero, we acknowledge it'll probably be high but we look at Dodge first. Besides Excellencies, it has only 5 Charms, making it a great candidate to dump from our Favored's lists since they difference between Favored and OoC (Out of Caste) won't result in a huge XP hole. It's still critical, though, because in those 5 Charms we actually cover ground in three different ability venues - Awareness, Athletics, and Dodge. (Reflex Sidestep Technique, Leaping Dodge Method, and everything else.) In this tiny tree, the minimum ability purchase is 3, and its strong powers are 4 and 5 (the perfect dodge and the onslaught penalty negator). I feel like setting our Dodge to 5 right away is a clear choice. I'm making the call on setting it to OoC right now, which means Ability BP costs are 4 here.
Dodge: 5 (Ability Points Left: 25, BP Left: 7)
That's not a lot of BP left, I know. And we still have a lot of stuff to buy! It gets worse.
Willpower: 8 (BP Left: 4)
Fuck. Wait!
Martial Arts: 4 (Ability Points Left: 22, BP Left: 3)
Stop!
Occult: 5 (Ability Points Left: 19, BP Left: 1)
Virtue (Temperance): 4 (Virtue Remaining: 2, BP Left: 0)
Why did I do this? Well, using the BP to bump Awareness might have been good and using it to bump Willpower or Martial Arts to 5 would have been better than buying Temperance up. But Temperance is key to the character concept and I know I won't spend even a shred of XP on Virtues after creation. I also didn't feel that walking into the first game with three 5-rank Abilities looked very good, and a Will of 9-10 looks strange to a lot of people. So, I'm basically making some concessions to the setting. This is a little like not bumping my Int to 5 from the get-go. Three dots in most Abilities will be fine, and Kilroy is clearly a talented martial artist and occultist. But why Occult 5 specifically? Because I know for a fact that I'll get there for Solar Sorcery eventually and because I need 5 for All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight and if I'm going to not buy Sorcery initiations, I still want a good Charm in Occult, plus it's really good.
Let's pick out some Dodge and Occult Charms then.
Dodge: Essence Triumphant (2nd Excellency)
Dodge: Infinite Dodge Mastery (Infinite Excellency)
Dodge: Reflexive Sidestep Technique
Dodge: Flow Like Blood
Occult: Spirit-Detecting Glance
Occult: All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight (Charms Remaining: 4)
Some notes about what I'm doing here. If I weren't buying Infinite Dodge Mastery at char gen, I'd probably have opted for the 3rd Excellency which, for static values, adds half the ability you've got rounded up to the value resulting in a 3 point bump for 4 motes. Infinte Mastery will bump 3 for 6, but with the Infinite Mastery, you can commit 6 motes instead of 3rd Excellency's 8 motes to improve your DV by 3. Reflexive Side Step and Flow Like Blood are basically personal choices - I could have totally opted for the Perfect effect (and if things were more lethal I'd probably buy Side Step, Leaping, and Seven Shadows Evasion instead) but for what I'm doing, this feels fine.
And that's my Occult Charm. It's Detect Magic Shit, which is strong. I only have 4 Charms left, though, so what do I buy?
Martial Arts (Solar Hero): Fists of Iron Technique
Martial Arts: Essence Overwhelming (1st Excellency)
Resistance: Durability of Oak Meditation
Medicine: Essence Triumphant (2nd Excellency)
The tradeoff for all that Dodge is slightly less ass-kicking. You might drop Resistance for Athletic's Graceful Crane Stance and Medicine seems kind of out of place - and there's no Linguistics here, but I don't really need Linquistics Charms as much as I like them. I feel like order of purchase will be focused on Sorcery when I finally get it (Countermagic, transportation, bones of stone or brass skin, then raising a manse), but picking up Lore Bolts one and two, Infinite Excellency for MA, and buying up the tree, and one or two Medicine, Resistance, and Athletics when it seems appropriate is the order of the day. Eventually all of the Dodge Charms get bought. For a long campaign, it ain't nothing. I don't feel like I'm missing something critical, which is important. The skills that need to be bought can all get purchased up to three or whatever.
The Charms are the major thing but this is exhausting to write up, so I'll finish it tomorrow.
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1E was just as bad, it just had different mechanical points where the system breaks down. (I remember persistent stacked defenses were the thing.)
All I'm REALLY saying here is that Dodge is my key defense because MA's not that great. The rest is just hyper-finicky bullshit that nobody really needs to pull at this point.