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I found myself with some spare time, today. Like, not all that much, but some! In any event, instead of doing NaNo like I was supposed to, I went and clarified in print what my 'Exalted Alternate 3rd Edition' would probably look like.
I'm just going to post the tl;dr version right now, because I remember how huge those other posts got and what I wrote earlier today was two thousand words.
Martial Arts :
Not technically Charms. Neither is Sorcery, actually. They're internalized Essence works, sort of proto-Charms, formed by great workings at the beginning of the high first age. Martial Arts are learned by taking Merits, and the Merits form what would look like a Charm Tree if you wrote them out. This version attempts to explain why different Exalts and even mortals get to make use of martial arts abilities. The minimum ability for many of these is going to be Brawl.
Abilities :
I want to drop Occult, Thrown, Craft, Linguistics, possibly Integrity, and possibly Awareness. Of course, if I can figure a good way to keep one of those (probably Awareness, but maybe Integrity) then the breakdown for castes and aspects is made easier. Occult gets lumped in with Lore, and turned into a Merit : Occultist as a pre-req for the Merit : Sorcerer or Necromancer. Linguistics is turned into a bevy of Merits, as is Craft. Integrity and Awareness Charms are shunted into other Charm Trees. I'd turn MA into Brawl. So there.
Crafts :
Basic crafts are elemental, and many of their Charms are shunted into Lore. Most Craft Charms suck, anyway. I had some good names for some of the advanced ones, though.
Merit : Magitechnologist, Merit : Genesis Engineer, Merit : Vitriolic, Merit : Fate Spooler, and Merit : Geologist seemed pretty catchy.
Advanced Merits will often have other Abilities or Merits as a pre-req. Basic Merits will probably have minimum Attributes. Like, Geologist has Craft Earth, Magitechnologist has Craft Air or Fire, and Genesis Engineer might have Lore, Medicine, and Merit: Occultist or Merit: Craft Wood. Vitriolic may not have much of a pre-requisite, but I bet learning it is still real interesting.
I bet crafting magical materials probably gets a merit, too. Or not! I don't know, yet.
Attributes :
I figure we just switch to NWoD and turn Appearance into a Merit. Dropping Appearance from the roster of abilities probably helps the social combat problem.
Backgrounds :
Most of these just become Merits. They do the same thing, and otherwise we just have two generally similar setups competing for design space. Resources, Contacts, Striking Looks, the whole shabang. Some of these are likely to become 'dumping ground' Merits for when you're not sure what to do with your Merit points. Artifact, Striking Looks, and Resources are popular.
If you want to see the comprehensive write-up and larger reasoning for this stuff, just say so and I'll make it available. Brent, you already have access, so don't bother. It's in Google Drive like it usually is. Mind the typos, I did it in WordPad and didn't clean it up.
I'm just going to post the tl;dr version right now, because I remember how huge those other posts got and what I wrote earlier today was two thousand words.
Martial Arts :
Not technically Charms. Neither is Sorcery, actually. They're internalized Essence works, sort of proto-Charms, formed by great workings at the beginning of the high first age. Martial Arts are learned by taking Merits, and the Merits form what would look like a Charm Tree if you wrote them out. This version attempts to explain why different Exalts and even mortals get to make use of martial arts abilities. The minimum ability for many of these is going to be Brawl.
Abilities :
I want to drop Occult, Thrown, Craft, Linguistics, possibly Integrity, and possibly Awareness. Of course, if I can figure a good way to keep one of those (probably Awareness, but maybe Integrity) then the breakdown for castes and aspects is made easier. Occult gets lumped in with Lore, and turned into a Merit : Occultist as a pre-req for the Merit : Sorcerer or Necromancer. Linguistics is turned into a bevy of Merits, as is Craft. Integrity and Awareness Charms are shunted into other Charm Trees. I'd turn MA into Brawl. So there.
Crafts :
Basic crafts are elemental, and many of their Charms are shunted into Lore. Most Craft Charms suck, anyway. I had some good names for some of the advanced ones, though.
Merit : Magitechnologist, Merit : Genesis Engineer, Merit : Vitriolic, Merit : Fate Spooler, and Merit : Geologist seemed pretty catchy.
Advanced Merits will often have other Abilities or Merits as a pre-req. Basic Merits will probably have minimum Attributes. Like, Geologist has Craft Earth, Magitechnologist has Craft Air or Fire, and Genesis Engineer might have Lore, Medicine, and Merit: Occultist or Merit: Craft Wood. Vitriolic may not have much of a pre-requisite, but I bet learning it is still real interesting.
I bet crafting magical materials probably gets a merit, too. Or not! I don't know, yet.
Attributes :
I figure we just switch to NWoD and turn Appearance into a Merit. Dropping Appearance from the roster of abilities probably helps the social combat problem.
Backgrounds :
Most of these just become Merits. They do the same thing, and otherwise we just have two generally similar setups competing for design space. Resources, Contacts, Striking Looks, the whole shabang. Some of these are likely to become 'dumping ground' Merits for when you're not sure what to do with your Merit points. Artifact, Striking Looks, and Resources are popular.
If you want to see the comprehensive write-up and larger reasoning for this stuff, just say so and I'll make it available. Brent, you already have access, so don't bother. It's in Google Drive like it usually is. Mind the typos, I did it in WordPad and didn't clean it up.
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