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Okay, I skipped a little bit of time. The rest is, honestly, filling in the blanks; pencilling in Abilties, assigning final ratings in Attributes, giving a little mechanical representation to Kilroy's story through Backgrounds, and the like. I enjoy it, but writing it down gets long and I had some stuff going on. I thought about sparing you, but letting stuff go unfinished bothers me even when it's pretty inconsequential like this so I'm sitting down with my coffee to has out the finer points.
As of the last entry, we had all of Kilroy's Charms assigned, and that's actually the tough part because those are derivied from Abilities. I've done a lot more math than I have to on this, and especially in hindsight I've realized that, for sub-paranoia combat games, you can usually get by with a few solid guidelines. Besides the biggest EXP holes, your real problems are going to stem from getting distracted. Besides my biggest advice, "Buy Essence 3 and defensive Charms", my other peice of advice is, "Keep your eyes on the prize". Like many card games, Charms interact with each other so, basically, takes some time to look them over and find what you want to do and once you've got your bases covered, go for it. Exalted rewards a fair amount of concept specialization - if your game will support it, don't be afraid to invest in what you're interested in. Exalted's biggest problem is how invested you have to be in combat to survive as the power level escalates, though. Enough of that, though.
From last entry, let's bring up the scoreboard on our remaining points, shall we? We bought all our Charms last time.
Attributes - Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Unassigned - 8/6/4
Favored Abilities Left - 4
Ability Points Left - 19 (Cap:3)
Backgrounds Left - 7
Charms Left - 0
Virtue Points Left - 3 (Cap:4)
Willpower - Set to 5
Bonus Points Left - 0
Essence - 3
Abilities: (Underlined Abilities are Caste or Favored)
Dodge: 5
Occult: 5 (Specialty: Essence Flows 1)
Martial Arts: 4 - Due to how many MA Charms there are out there, we'll favor this one. It's core to the concept. (Specialty: Fighting Defensively: 2)
Let's buy the rest, starting with laying out Caste and choosing Favoreds.
The big secret is that I've kind of already done this, so I'll put my rationale but you'll have to trust that I've done the math of moving everything around already. There's no way to get around how finnicky this is, really.
Lore: 3
Investigation: 0
Medicine: 2
Craft: 0
Those are Caste, and there's no getting away from them. I actually love Craft, but Kilroy's not a crafter. In my secret gaming heart, I'd love to spend more on Medicine right out of the gate for the concept, but I'm out of Charms and low on Abilities. I have 4 more Favoreds - the trick is to find the ones I'm going to invest in down the line - which makes perfect sense.
Linguistics: 2 (Riverspeak - primary, Low Realm, Old Realm) (Specialty: Calligraphy 1)
Resistance: 3
Athletics: 3
Awareness: 3
Some of these make sense, and others I could drop. Resistance has a lot of good Charms, Awareness is really good for someone who spends a lot of his time in contemplation of his surroundings and getting in touch with shit. I feel like Integrity would be here if it were a perfect world - like if I were totally dedicated to the concept and it ever got used. At my table, it doesn't. Athletics does all the time and also fits the character concept in terms of what Kilroy will actually be doing. There's no shame in this. I only have 3 Ability points left. I'm going to throw Integrity a bone and give it all three.
Integrity: 3
I'm never going to do any more with that unless I feel like I need to buy a shaping defense or whatever. At least I've got something there, it fits his character, and it influences his passive DV. You'll notice that even though I've bought Awareness to 3, I've not bought any enhancers for it and canny players will observe that it's not just 'see what's around' but also (and more frequently, I've found) part of the pool for your initiative. It is what it is - I already have Reflexive Sidestep Technique, so hopefully I don't get pasted on a bad Init roll. There are other things I want, like any kind of social skill (though he was kind of brought up in the woods), Survival, some Crafts, Investigation, maybe Ride or something. They're abilities that would round him out, put him in the world a little. At this point, Kilroy is defined by his strengths as well as by his curious weaknesses. For me, there's no reason not to role-play his deficiencies - I remember that when I first played him, he was easily flustered by social events and situations.
I've invested 2 points in Linguistics, which nets me 2 additional languages. He's from the river province and gets Riverspeak for free - it's his native tongue. He was tutored in the Occult and in Lore aggressively, so Old Realm is a rare language read by sages that Kilroy understands. He's also familiar with Low Realm - the provincial cant of most of the world. So he can speak the equivilent of Latin or ancient Greek, but looks like a real cad at a cocktail party in the Realm. He's also a scribe, uncommon in that he can read and write, but also write very nicely. That's how he makes his living and, basically, he can make a decent living anywhere he goes. You'll also observe the Specialties - as of 2.5 errata, you get four at character creation. I dipped two into Martial Arts (which I assume will just bump the DV), one in the specialty of his profession, and one into his highest dice pool in his Occult specialty. Originally, he had his in MA with the same Specialty, Medicine in Fevers/Chills (which never got used - the Occult is more appropriate) and Occult (geomancy) which was used once. I feel that Essence Flows makes way more sense in the setting even though Geomancy is a big deal. These Specialities just work a little better.
Virtues: 2 of 5 remaining. (2 to buy Temperance from 1 to 4)
Temperance: 4
Conviction: 2
Valor: 2
Compassion: 3
I made a mistake earlier. I imagined that Virtues were capped at 3 and they started at 0. They start at one and they're capped at 4, meaning I have one BP left. I'm going to go ahead and spend it on Compassion and spread the rest of the dots out. Conviction was the 'do whatever I was going to do anyhow' Virtue, and it's been a little depowered in the errata. I'm a fan of Compassion, though. Temperance was Kilroy's bag, though, and I'm happy with this.
Let's hurry up and assign Attributes. Make no mistake, these are extremely important because they'll influence all of your dice pools. They're just not important to what you're buying, so we put them off until we know what we're going to want to do well in. Dexterity is basically your prime combat stat - it influences all of your attacks and your DV. Since combat is already pretty deadly if you connect, you basically focus on 1: avoiding being hit and 2: hitting someone. Strength tends to be kind of tertiary. Kilroy is a social joke but a brilliant thinker, so we're going to prioritize Mental, secondary Physical, and tertiary Social. Breakdown's 8/6/4 and Attributes start at 1.
Intelligence: 4
Wits: 4
Perception: 3
-
Strength: 2
Dexterity: 4
Stamina: 3
-
Charisma: 2
Manipulation: 2
Appearance: 3
Like I mentioned before, his Intelligence is not capped. The upside is that his Wits and Perception are both above average. Maybe I should swap Perception and Wits, but Wits is the Join Battle pool and since I don't have any other modifiers, might as well bump it one. Kilroy isn't especially manipulative or charismatic, but I do enjoy the idea that he looks a little more attractive than average. I'm vain that way. We can figure out our pre-equipment DVs and pools, now, then we'll finish up with Backgrounds. Using last time's equations, we have:
Mental Dodge Value: [Willpower + Integrity + Specialty + Essence] / 2 = 11
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 = 6
Parry Defense Value (PDV): (Martial Arts + Dexterity + Weapon Value) / 2 = 5 (Because of Kilroy's Specialty, which I assume will apply almost always.)
Personal Essence: (Essence * 3) + Willpower = 17
Peripheral Essence: (Essence * 7) + Willpower + (Sum of All Virtues) = 40
Join Battle: = 7 dice
These are about as good as I can get without intentionally maxing things out. 40 is a very good amount of peripheral, but not really exceptional if you've bothered to spend anything on willpower and you bought your essence up. Clearly the way to go is Essence, here. It's also clear that Will and Integrity purchases made a big difference with the MDV. For DDV, Essence fills in the role of weapon value and Kilroy doesn't have weapons yet, so it's marginally higher than his PDV. I included the Join Battle roll because it's going to be used frequently. 7 dice isn't amazing, but without modifiers, he's pretty on the ball. The max, after all, is 10.
You'll notice I haven't talked about Backgrounds, and Backgrounds are important. Solars just don't get that many and Kilroy's story doesn't really tie him to the world in a measureable way - that's because when I first wrote him up, I didn't know all that much about the world. He's not rich or well connected, and he doesn't have an impressive panoply in the way that some character (types) are likely to have from the get-go. Here's what he has:
Backgrounds: (of 7)
Artifact: 1 - Orhichalcum Smash Fists
Allies: 1 - Sister and training partner, Nadia
Mentor: 2 - His mentor - a minor god who's been masquerading as a mortal teacher.
Resources: 2 - As a scribe, calligrapher, and occasional sage.
Influence: 1 - People know him and respect him in his village. Kilroy's has some minor influence as an educated individual and martial artist.
I don't know too much about his mentor's prowess, but she's not an Exalt so I rounded at 2. Nadia later Exalted as a Lunar, but at the beginning of the games, she was an extremely competent mortal martial artist. At least, in terms of dot abilities, she was more competant than Kilroy (another reason to have him listed at 4 instead of 5 dots).
Neither Kilroy nor his mentor know the name of these beautiful Orhichalcum Smash Fists - they appear to be part of a larger set, but his mentor has no idea where the rest now reside. Only this humble artifact remains. These gloves plated in unaging leather and shining golden metal extend most of the way to the elbow and are stamped with the motif of a rising phoenix from the base to the knuckles. In order to avoid too much notice, when he wears them, Kilroy fights with his arms and hands wrapped in linen cloth. Kilroy does not yet realize they were made and belonged to his previous First Age incarnation, Distant Phoenix.
The stats are below:
Nameless Orhicalcum Smash Fists - (Strike): Speed: 5, Accuracy: +2, Damage: +5/2, Defense: +3, rate: 3, Tags: M, O
That's it! I know I promised Lore Charms, but this took fucking forever. Next time!
As of the last entry, we had all of Kilroy's Charms assigned, and that's actually the tough part because those are derivied from Abilities. I've done a lot more math than I have to on this, and especially in hindsight I've realized that, for sub-paranoia combat games, you can usually get by with a few solid guidelines. Besides the biggest EXP holes, your real problems are going to stem from getting distracted. Besides my biggest advice, "Buy Essence 3 and defensive Charms", my other peice of advice is, "Keep your eyes on the prize". Like many card games, Charms interact with each other so, basically, takes some time to look them over and find what you want to do and once you've got your bases covered, go for it. Exalted rewards a fair amount of concept specialization - if your game will support it, don't be afraid to invest in what you're interested in. Exalted's biggest problem is how invested you have to be in combat to survive as the power level escalates, though. Enough of that, though.
From last entry, let's bring up the scoreboard on our remaining points, shall we? We bought all our Charms last time.
Attributes - Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Unassigned - 8/6/4
Favored Abilities Left - 4
Ability Points Left - 19 (Cap:3)
Backgrounds Left - 7
Charms Left - 0
Virtue Points Left - 3 (Cap:4)
Willpower - Set to 5
Bonus Points Left - 0
Essence - 3
Abilities: (Underlined Abilities are Caste or Favored)
Dodge: 5
Occult: 5 (Specialty: Essence Flows 1)
Martial Arts: 4 - Due to how many MA Charms there are out there, we'll favor this one. It's core to the concept. (Specialty: Fighting Defensively: 2)
Let's buy the rest, starting with laying out Caste and choosing Favoreds.
The big secret is that I've kind of already done this, so I'll put my rationale but you'll have to trust that I've done the math of moving everything around already. There's no way to get around how finnicky this is, really.
Lore: 3
Investigation: 0
Medicine: 2
Craft: 0
Those are Caste, and there's no getting away from them. I actually love Craft, but Kilroy's not a crafter. In my secret gaming heart, I'd love to spend more on Medicine right out of the gate for the concept, but I'm out of Charms and low on Abilities. I have 4 more Favoreds - the trick is to find the ones I'm going to invest in down the line - which makes perfect sense.
Linguistics: 2 (Riverspeak - primary, Low Realm, Old Realm) (Specialty: Calligraphy 1)
Resistance: 3
Athletics: 3
Awareness: 3
Some of these make sense, and others I could drop. Resistance has a lot of good Charms, Awareness is really good for someone who spends a lot of his time in contemplation of his surroundings and getting in touch with shit. I feel like Integrity would be here if it were a perfect world - like if I were totally dedicated to the concept and it ever got used. At my table, it doesn't. Athletics does all the time and also fits the character concept in terms of what Kilroy will actually be doing. There's no shame in this. I only have 3 Ability points left. I'm going to throw Integrity a bone and give it all three.
Integrity: 3
I'm never going to do any more with that unless I feel like I need to buy a shaping defense or whatever. At least I've got something there, it fits his character, and it influences his passive DV. You'll notice that even though I've bought Awareness to 3, I've not bought any enhancers for it and canny players will observe that it's not just 'see what's around' but also (and more frequently, I've found) part of the pool for your initiative. It is what it is - I already have Reflexive Sidestep Technique, so hopefully I don't get pasted on a bad Init roll. There are other things I want, like any kind of social skill (though he was kind of brought up in the woods), Survival, some Crafts, Investigation, maybe Ride or something. They're abilities that would round him out, put him in the world a little. At this point, Kilroy is defined by his strengths as well as by his curious weaknesses. For me, there's no reason not to role-play his deficiencies - I remember that when I first played him, he was easily flustered by social events and situations.
I've invested 2 points in Linguistics, which nets me 2 additional languages. He's from the river province and gets Riverspeak for free - it's his native tongue. He was tutored in the Occult and in Lore aggressively, so Old Realm is a rare language read by sages that Kilroy understands. He's also familiar with Low Realm - the provincial cant of most of the world. So he can speak the equivilent of Latin or ancient Greek, but looks like a real cad at a cocktail party in the Realm. He's also a scribe, uncommon in that he can read and write, but also write very nicely. That's how he makes his living and, basically, he can make a decent living anywhere he goes. You'll also observe the Specialties - as of 2.5 errata, you get four at character creation. I dipped two into Martial Arts (which I assume will just bump the DV), one in the specialty of his profession, and one into his highest dice pool in his Occult specialty. Originally, he had his in MA with the same Specialty, Medicine in Fevers/Chills (which never got used - the Occult is more appropriate) and Occult (geomancy) which was used once. I feel that Essence Flows makes way more sense in the setting even though Geomancy is a big deal. These Specialities just work a little better.
Virtues: 2 of 5 remaining. (2 to buy Temperance from 1 to 4)
Temperance: 4
Conviction: 2
Valor: 2
Compassion: 3
I made a mistake earlier. I imagined that Virtues were capped at 3 and they started at 0. They start at one and they're capped at 4, meaning I have one BP left. I'm going to go ahead and spend it on Compassion and spread the rest of the dots out. Conviction was the 'do whatever I was going to do anyhow' Virtue, and it's been a little depowered in the errata. I'm a fan of Compassion, though. Temperance was Kilroy's bag, though, and I'm happy with this.
Let's hurry up and assign Attributes. Make no mistake, these are extremely important because they'll influence all of your dice pools. They're just not important to what you're buying, so we put them off until we know what we're going to want to do well in. Dexterity is basically your prime combat stat - it influences all of your attacks and your DV. Since combat is already pretty deadly if you connect, you basically focus on 1: avoiding being hit and 2: hitting someone. Strength tends to be kind of tertiary. Kilroy is a social joke but a brilliant thinker, so we're going to prioritize Mental, secondary Physical, and tertiary Social. Breakdown's 8/6/4 and Attributes start at 1.
Intelligence: 4
Wits: 4
Perception: 3
-
Strength: 2
Dexterity: 4
Stamina: 3
-
Charisma: 2
Manipulation: 2
Appearance: 3
Like I mentioned before, his Intelligence is not capped. The upside is that his Wits and Perception are both above average. Maybe I should swap Perception and Wits, but Wits is the Join Battle pool and since I don't have any other modifiers, might as well bump it one. Kilroy isn't especially manipulative or charismatic, but I do enjoy the idea that he looks a little more attractive than average. I'm vain that way. We can figure out our pre-equipment DVs and pools, now, then we'll finish up with Backgrounds. Using last time's equations, we have:
Mental Dodge Value: [Willpower + Integrity + Specialty + Essence] / 2 = 11
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 = 6
Parry Defense Value (PDV): (Martial Arts + Dexterity + Weapon Value) / 2 = 5 (Because of Kilroy's Specialty, which I assume will apply almost always.)
Personal Essence: (Essence * 3) + Willpower = 17
Peripheral Essence: (Essence * 7) + Willpower + (Sum of All Virtues) = 40
Join Battle: = 7 dice
These are about as good as I can get without intentionally maxing things out. 40 is a very good amount of peripheral, but not really exceptional if you've bothered to spend anything on willpower and you bought your essence up. Clearly the way to go is Essence, here. It's also clear that Will and Integrity purchases made a big difference with the MDV. For DDV, Essence fills in the role of weapon value and Kilroy doesn't have weapons yet, so it's marginally higher than his PDV. I included the Join Battle roll because it's going to be used frequently. 7 dice isn't amazing, but without modifiers, he's pretty on the ball. The max, after all, is 10.
You'll notice I haven't talked about Backgrounds, and Backgrounds are important. Solars just don't get that many and Kilroy's story doesn't really tie him to the world in a measureable way - that's because when I first wrote him up, I didn't know all that much about the world. He's not rich or well connected, and he doesn't have an impressive panoply in the way that some character (types) are likely to have from the get-go. Here's what he has:
Backgrounds: (of 7)
Artifact: 1 - Orhichalcum Smash Fists
Allies: 1 - Sister and training partner, Nadia
Mentor: 2 - His mentor - a minor god who's been masquerading as a mortal teacher.
Resources: 2 - As a scribe, calligrapher, and occasional sage.
Influence: 1 - People know him and respect him in his village. Kilroy's has some minor influence as an educated individual and martial artist.
I don't know too much about his mentor's prowess, but she's not an Exalt so I rounded at 2. Nadia later Exalted as a Lunar, but at the beginning of the games, she was an extremely competent mortal martial artist. At least, in terms of dot abilities, she was more competant than Kilroy (another reason to have him listed at 4 instead of 5 dots).
Neither Kilroy nor his mentor know the name of these beautiful Orhichalcum Smash Fists - they appear to be part of a larger set, but his mentor has no idea where the rest now reside. Only this humble artifact remains. These gloves plated in unaging leather and shining golden metal extend most of the way to the elbow and are stamped with the motif of a rising phoenix from the base to the knuckles. In order to avoid too much notice, when he wears them, Kilroy fights with his arms and hands wrapped in linen cloth. Kilroy does not yet realize they were made and belonged to his previous First Age incarnation, Distant Phoenix.
The stats are below:
Nameless Orhicalcum Smash Fists - (Strike): Speed: 5, Accuracy: +2, Damage: +5/2, Defense: +3, rate: 3, Tags: M, O
That's it! I know I promised Lore Charms, but this took fucking forever. Next time!