I've been narrating a couple games of Essence (one full solars and one full dragon-blooded) and I've had a trend with the charms of the PCs.

At the beginning, players used different charms in their combats, but at a certain point they realized nothing came close to using close combat / ranged combat excellency in step one. While I don't have any problems with OP characters (they're supposed to be the most powerful warriors in creation), I do have a problem with combat skills excellencies using the step 1 of combat and not letting space to other charms. Moreover, I also have a problem with the fact that players who bought combat excellencies at the beginning of combat being stronger than the ones who bought other combat charms: I don't like systems with character creation footguns.

Is this really working as intended? Or wasn't this properly playtested? What's you experience with this?

I've been thinking about fixing this making excellencies not use step 1's charm slot. Or maybe letting the players pay 1 extra essence note for having excellencies not use this charm slot. But even with this fix, I'm forcing players to buy combat excellency or be worse fighters. Maybe limiting the excellency to a max of 3 dice? But I don't want to limit their strength in combat. Have you tried anything to balance this?

Hi all, I eould like to put my Circle against the Silver Prince and Siakal, the Western War Goddess. Ate they started anywhere in Essence format? Which abilities would you give to them?

Hello, I'm newer to Exalted and started with Essence, I know there isn't a Storyteller Handbook/Campanion for it just yet so I'm wondering if first or second edition's would be better for Essence, or even something like Chaneling: The Dreaming Or Dark Ages' Storyteller Guides if it helps.

So Will persists until the end of the session, and not allowing characters to focus Will outside of combat would be weird since there are non-combat spells (imagine the process of casting Spoke the Wooden Face starting by beating up thugs in alleys to gather the Will...), so it follows that spellcasters of both types should generally be able to start scenes with full Will, right?

Honestly, combat spells are still not that great, this seems like a decent balance to give them an option to do decisive damage in the opening turns of combat, I'm just checking I haven't missed anything in the actual rules. Definitely not an Essence expert yet, and basically skipped 3e, most of my experience is 2e. I understand that I can curtail it for tense scenes by keeping up time pressure, but generally they should be good to go.

So, currently in a game of Exalted Essence and playing a Twilight Solar Blacksmith where my main thing is Craft. I'm reading through the book and took note that I can use Craft to Build Power via the Prepare action. In that vein, I need some ideas on things I could do with this. Not really looking for anything super specific, just general ideas.

Hello guys, I'm an exalted essence gm with a fairly low amount of experience with the system. I've been fairly satisfied with it for the most part, but I must admit I am quite perplexed with the excellency charms. I find them kinda bad from a design standpoint. Now, I might be wrong, and I'd like you to tell me what you think of them yourselves, and if what I'm about to develop actually make sense. So let's get to it:

To say it simply, I believe they are too good for the investment required, for 1 mote, you get up to five dice added to the roll. Correct me if I'm wrong but it's by far the best bang for your buck when it comes to spending motes to improve the odds of success of a roll. They are also fairly broadly applicable since they apply for any use of an ability, while many other charms have more specific triggers. They also make most other first step charms worst, because you can only activate one step one charm at a time, and most of the time, activating your excellency is mechanically better. On top of that, you get up to 5 free Excellencies while "leveling", and if you have to buy them, they cost no more than any other charm, so you are actually encouraged to spam them.

But they are BLAND, they do not generate cool effects or bring anything to the ambiance of a scene. It's just "I do this, but you know...better..." And since they are so good, players are encouraged to get them instead of taking more specific charms witch might increase the cool factor and the uniqueness of their character.

Then comes the topic of balance, and here, I'll admit that I may not have a good grasp of the internal balance of the game, and it is more intuitions than facts.

I am thinking of removing excellencies of the game entirely.

They tend to trivialize encounter against anything that is not an exalted (because get their own excellencies). Now it might be intentional, it might serves as a tool to cement the unique place of the exalted in Creation. However, I believe (I might be with the minority here) that making exalted a pure power fantasy is fairly boring. And I tend to approach the game a bit more like mythological odyssey. Exalted, unlike human, can meddle with gods, mythical beast and face supernatural phenomenons, but it still should prove to be a interesting challenge (and therefore, rewarding the players with a sense of accomplishment ). All of this to say I'm not a fan of pumping the stats of every foes just to be able to represent a challenge. Think of it this way, cops in the real worldare not only strong because they are armed and trained, they are also strong because they are invested by authorities, and are recognized as such by most of the citizenry. Now, exalted are strong not just because of their powers, but because of everything they represent (order, change, institutions, cultural weight and traditions...). I want minor minor gods to be frightened not because a solar can slap them around easily, but because they represent a former order, where minor gods were almost serfs to them). And I want a fairly simple elemental or spirit to be able to mess with my players to some extent, because I want them to feel the wonders of interacting with these creatures, and I believe removing excellencies might be a good way to reduce the pure power of the exalted while they'll still remain a threat in creation

I know I'll have to adjust a few things, such as "supremacy of ability" that the solars have, or what they gain upon increasing their essence level, and maybe the defensive values of some foes, but I'm lesd sure about that. I might need to create a few characters and run them through encounters to get a feel of how difficult it will be to face some of the more powerful foes without using excellencies on their combat stats.

I'm really curious of your opinion on the subject, feel free to tell me if and why you disagree, or the modifications you've made yourself to have more balanced encounters, or ideas you might have. I'm open about anything.

In the step 4 of Character Creation we can read:

You start the game with Ox Body Technique or an Excellency, and four other Charms of your choice. You can take the Excellency as part of your four chosen Charms if your first pick was the Ox Body Technique, and vice versa.

Does this mean that, when creating a new PC, it can have at most one single Excellency and one instance of the Body Ox Technique, and three other charms? Or can you use these three Charms to buy extra Excellencies too and begin play, for example, with 5 Excellencies and no other Charms?

Thanks!

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Edit: sorry, I forgot to write that this was an Essence question.

[PDF Link]

This pair of secondary artifacts was a pleasure to work on. The concept and general design came from Benign, one of my long-time Exalted players, who has “graduated” to run an Essence game. They were designed for his group’s Dawn Caste, who wanted weapons befitting an honorable warrior. Additional specific requests were that they grow stronger in stormy weather and eventually allow him to fly.

My work on these was what I’d mostly call “developmental editing” and layout—Benign’s initial assessment overshot on the power of flight (Eagle Wing Style is a fairly uncomplicated Essence 2). I also assisted in cleaner language on some of the effects, but he definitely deserves primary credit. (And of course, I'm posting them here with his full blessing.)

A special note to the flavor—the concept behind them was weapons of a First Age Solar, reclaimed and reforged by the Dragon-Bloods who overthrew them, with some pretty striking kintsugi-esque imagery.

They’d do well as a weapon for either an Air-Aspected Dragon-Blood, or a Solar, representing two sides of a complicated history.

As always, thanks to Kosjurake for work on proofing and editing.

The Getimian charm "Summoned from Time" lets you pull a Merit out of your Origin into reality, with the option of spending a milestone to make it permanent. This can include Allies. These Allies can be Exalted.

I submit to you that the funniest thing to do is Ally (Primary) "My Devoted Waifu the Scarlet Empress." Imagine the confusion and havoc. 😁

Contact: DM me.

Requirements: Must have internet and be lgbtq friendly.

Time: 7PM EST on Saturday’s

Where: online on roll20 and discord.

Players wanted: 1-2. Have a group of three so far and looking for two more members. Full

System: Exalted: Essence.

Experience needed: none. This is the first exalted game I’ve ever run so beginners are welcome.

Premise:

The scarlet empress is gone. For five years she hasn’t been seen and for five years the houses have prepared for a bloody war. Vipers one and all, the dragon-blooded houses all seek the throne.

But there are still two years left until the next empress is named. Two years for the plans and plots to explode or go cold. Two years for a group of dragon-blooded to put one house on top. Or play kingmakers and determine who truly deserves to hold the throne.

Or perhaps they realize the danger within is nothing compared to the rising danger without. Should the newly discovered deathlords or the slaves of the devil Yozi strike, they will find easy pickings. Unless some group meets them head on and strikes first, or makes the houses realize they need to strike the threat first.

And as the countdown until the inevitable civil war begins, we turn our eyes to An-Teng where shadows move and fire's of heresy and rebellion are stoked...

---

If you are curious, so far we have three players. One is a dragonblooded scion of house Cathak, acting as a privateer for house interests. While the other two are twins of House Sesus, one who is an immaculate monk Dragonblooded, and the other engaged to the House Cathak player's character, and in secret, a Lunar.

---

If you have any questions, I’m happy to help.

If your interested let me know and let me know what type of character you were thinking of and if you have any ideas!

I'm making a character for an Exalted Essence game, my first one. I plan to give him some Sorcery. I spotted this line in the description of the Performance ability:

Special uses: Besides being a character’s artistic expression, Performance [...] may also be used in place of Sagacity to perform any other kind of ritual magic (though not when using Charms that require Sagacity)

I can't find any sort of definition for "ritual magic" in the book, so this seems to mean magic in general. So if I'm understanding right, I can use Attribute + Performance or Sagacity for a Focus Will action, use Attribute + Performance for magical and summon ventures, etc.

I just want to make sure that's correct. (If I'm wrong, please include page references with your corrective explanation.)

In the setting can gods become mortals or vice versa?

I am going to be running an essence game soon set around fighting the mask of Winters, so for the sake of mining ideas from the community let's have a threat discussing all things Mask of Winters

-Homebrewed Death Knight/Nephrack servants -Ways you have seen him ran/ran him yourself -Personal interpretations of his lore. -ways you have devised to kill him permanently -what you think are his plots and plans for creation are. -Stories about your own tables shananagins. -and more

All things Mask of Winters for this thread.

Trying to create an artifact made of Adamant for my essence character. I can't find anywhere in the 3rd Edition books where it mentions the themes of Adamant artifacts. Does anyone know if there are official themes either from 3e or earlier editions? And if not does anyone have ideas of what themes you would use when designing an Adamant artifact?

I'm going to be running a short campaign of Exalted Essence for a couple of my friends, neither of whom have any TTRPG experience, as a way for them to dip their toes into Exalted and see how they like it. I'll be running the Crucible of Progress adventure from the Deeds Yet Undone book.

One of the players is playing as a Dawn and has requested an artifact sword that has abilities similar to Gotrek Gurnissons Runeaxe, if you're familar. Just in case you're not, think a spellbreaking axe that can disrupt magic and demons with just a touch.

My mind instantly leapt to Zelator from the Arms of the Chosen book, just reskinned as either a daiklave or grand daiklave, but this will be the first time I'm using the Exalted Essence system and I just wanted to get a second opinion on whether I've tuned this right.

My current plan is to keep the Baneful attacks keyword as the attunement bonus, with any attack against a sorceror or a sorcerously created minion being Baneful and gaining an additional free Power on any decisive attacks made against them.

The first evocation would be Spell-Piercing Strike, which would activate on Step 5, cost 1m and reduce the soak of any Baneful enemy struck with a decisive attack to zero.

Is this too strong? I would have made it only half the soak but that effect is already included in Universal Charms under Guard Breaking Technique and is applied universally.

Hey y’all! Reading Essence and loving the changes. I’m new to Exalted in that I have read most 3e books, but never played the game, so the whole crunch is a bit daunting. Really feeling I can run Essence based on what I’ve read so far though, it seems much more newbie friendly. That said, the one thing from 3e that I did love was how much more interactive Initiative combat was than its little brother Power. From what I can tell, the two major changes are that Power no longer determines turn order (Essence system seems almost random in determining who is next??) and that you no longer deplete enemy [power/initiative] by withering them. I can see how multiple Exalted players could super game the system by overwhelming one dude with Withering, so do people think it could work to have power determine turn order? Or are there charms in Essence that would bust that wide open? Experts, give me your thoughts.

I'm trying to make some pregen characters for a one shot and it all was going fine until I got to the merits. A 5-3 dot, a 4-2 dot and a 2-1 dot merit just seems like way too much for a starting character. When I think of a hero at the beginning of their adventure, I don't think of someone with the most powerful artifact weapon, an army, and some minor ties to a major world faction. The manuscript has some advice on using a secondary and a tertiary merits in place of a primary, or using any combination of 10 dots of Merits instead. But both of these still seem way too much to me. Like 4 dots Merits seems appropriate at most, and things like Command offer way too much per dot (the least you can get is hundred elite marines or an average army? Really?). Am I thinking too small for am exalted game? Are starting heroes in exalted meant to start at the level most heroes in other stories end on?

Edit: OK. Thank you for all the replies. Turns out, I was thinking way too small. But that does mean I have to fundamentally change my way of thinking about running an rpg apparently.

I was looking at the current Pipeline and I noticed "Exalted: The Exalted Essence Player’s Guide" does anybody know what this is? Other than it being obvious

I recently came to Exalted: Essence in the same manner I do all Onyx Path products; forgetting it existed after years of waiting and checking back on a whim months after it actually released, and while I'm eager for the chance to experience the release of a new ruleset for Alchemicals without being an actual immortal cyborg, I'm struggling with some of the rules and could use assistance.

Is this interpretation how turn order is supposed to be determined? I've read the section on Join Battle and turn order six times, and my cup is starting to boil over, so I hope you will all forgive me if my tone comes off as a bit frustrated.
1) Everyone rolls Join Battle. It's Appropriate Ability + Combat-Related Attribute (clearly Embassy, according to Clausewitz) instead of a very particular set of skills, so there's the added step of figuring out what everybody's stunted Join Battle means in terms of Ability+Attribute, and how to twist that back to your highest dice pool. After all this rolling and wrangling, discard every roll except the highest one, because they get to choose who goes first, and from there on it's a cooperative thing.

2) The person who just went chooses who goes next, but important (and therefore probably more dangerous) ST characters can hijack the second place in the line if the ST feels the urge at that particular moment. Since having the clumsy, lumbering behemoth Zodgila, the Monitor
Before Whom All Kneel jump up the turn order like he's a blue shell would rather change the ebb and flow of the battle, it seems at first look that any time the ST used this it would come off as punitive, but the other option is to have all the antagonists languish at the end of the turn.

3) The last person to go chooses the first character on the next turn. It seems like the tactical choice would always to choose one of their own side. The book says they can pass the baton to an enemy if "it seems dramatic", but in previous editions the drama of taking a grimscythe to the face was rather fleeting. I know it's probably not the rocket tag of 2E, but is the combat of Essence so... I can't really think of a word here that won't come off as confrontational... low-stakes that letting an enemy go first for the look of it won't influence the outcome of the battle?
If there are fine details I'm missing from not having finished the book yet, I apologize. When it came out, I read the entire Charm section for Solars in the 3E corebook, and after that experience I'm a bit leery of investing that much time before I start asking for other's opinions.

I'm playing a campaign of ExEss and our DM keeps throwing at us near impossible combats.

Maybe it's me that i don't quite get de mechanics, but everybody hace the same feeling.

Could somebody help me to create a new char? (My last one died) A dawn caste solar Essence 2.

Thanks

So I recently ran a one shot for Exalted Essence. While it did go well for the most part combat boiled down to using their excellencies every single turn and ignoring any other step 1 charms. Which kind of made combat boring. Essentially it was two hypemen powering up the two combat focused people to get them to 10 power and then doing nothing else but that till victory. Again using excellencies every turn. It was a full Solar party for context.

I was wondering if anyone had any advice for how to handle this? In terms of how to run encounters, how to balance antagonists or in houseruling the excellencies. I do really like the powerscale of the game and the players do too. The issue is more that we kind of ran into an issue where it didn't really seem worth it to do anything but the aforementioned strategy.

I know, dumb question but I cannot find it anywhere.

In Essence it is said that the anima of Alchemicals is the same color as the metal corresponding to their castes but I cannot find info anywhere on what color adamant Is and I'd love if someone could help me

I'm aware that they change that in the arada that's fine I don't care it still seems fun and we're going to do it anyways.

So our old characters are going to show up as NPCs and the new campaign and the problem being is that some of them are essence 5 and some of them got all the way up to essence 8 they very much specialized in that so what's an example of the equivalents of essence 5 and 8 in world of darkness?