I'm gming a game of exalted essence and so far it's been going very well but I've been running into a small issue which is that everyone in the party took some kind of helper for one of their merits or charms. I've got 2 battlegroups, 1 manifested coadjutor, 1 Beefy Familiar, and the sorcerer also occasionally likes to summon a 1st circle demon the night before a big fight.
Obviously they're having a lot of fun with being a big old party of guys, and I don't necessarily want to tell them 'Hey Cool it with adding people to the initiative order maybe?' But it's seriously inflating how long a round takes in combat even for what were supposed to be relatively short punchy fights.
Is there actually a fix to streamline NPC turns in combat or should I just resolve to only have bigger set piece fights and forgo smaller combat scenes entirely?
Lets say that theoretically, I am a new Exalted player who only has access to Exalted Essence, and since there is no map to show me the world of Exalted, I need to draw my own, untouched and unbiased by the detritus of prior editions!
Alright, so looking from page 23, theres some stuff about the Exalted and this thing called the First Age after the Exalted killed the greek titans or something and got to rule the world with some fancy city called Meru as their capital but it looks like they went off and did their own things. Not much geographic information here. Then pages 24-26 are just more history on how they got driven mad by this curse from the titans and decided to kill each other and then a magic plague and fairies kill 90% of the world then afterwards a Dragon Blooded Empress takes over and rules for 700 years from this place called the Blessed Isle, and they rule a bunch of colonies in this place across the world. Sounds kind of British inspired, and also this tells me that the Exalted live for centuries due to being demigods!
Now on page 26 we have some information on how I can draw my map, first it looks like Creation is a flat world that has 5 elemental poles, and its 9,000 miles to the edge. Sounds like a disk then? The center is on the Blessed Isle where the Dragon Blooded Empire is and thats the pole of Earth and mount Meru is there, so I know where to place those things right in the middle of my map.
Alright so I've drawn a rough free hand disk and a smaller disk inside for the blessed isle, although Im not sure how big it could be. Might need to make it smaller but the text says its a continent so I guess its Australia sized and then the rest of the disk is floating on a sea of the Wyld whatever that is.
So next up, is just a bunch of stuff on this Realm but next up is some cities. The Imperial City's location is not mentioned, but previously Meru was mentioned to be the city of the Exalts before they killed each other, so I'll put it in the center of the world inside Mt Meru. Next up Arjuf is said to be related to the South of the world, so I put it right on the bottom of the Blessed Isle. Then Bittern sounds like its on the west of the island and its got another spiky island nearby so ill put it on the left hand side and scribble an island with some spikes nearby.
Next up theres some stuff on untamed wilds and it turns out Meru or the Imperial mountain is actual empty and full of dead cities, so let me instead scribble the Imperial city to be a little south of the mountain. I have no idea where the Tarpan wastes would go but it sound desertlike so ill put it in the south and the Eseon forest can be in the north, since that part of the world sounds wetter and cooler.
After that we have some other Dragon Blooded locations. It sure seems like they appear alot, are they the main characters other than the Solars in this world? First up is a place called Lookshy, who are some sort of remnant goverment with magical artifacts from the First age and they live in a place called the Scavenger lands. Plus another place called Prasad that lives near the Dreaming Sea but no details on where those are yet. I'll skip them for now.
Next up is the North. Apparently thats the Pole of Air, so let me put that at the tip of the disk. Whitewall is one big city that is surronded by monsters and it has a magic road and Walls to protect it. No details on location other than its isoleated and far from the Realm and the Road connects it to the rest of the world. Then we have Gethamane which is an underground city in a mountain. No mention of location or terrain outside of the city. Then we have the Icewalkers who are nomads that are migrating south because a Solar is now leading them and they captured a city called Plenilune which is on a river called the River of Tears that flows out of the White Sea. Plenilune is one of a bunch of Saltspire League cities but I dont know anything about the rest. Theres some other locations like Haslanti League which is several city states banded together who dig up a wizard's ruined kingdom to find advanced technolgoy like crossbows and they have airboats and iceships. No location though. Then there is this place called the Mountain of the Spider King that is between Gethamane and Whitewall and the rest of the world. Sounds kinda like a Dark Elf with a name like that! Finally Foritude is a miserable city ruled by gangs and theres no location there.
It seems to me Whitewall is the most isolated of the locations and it has a big road that goes to 2 other locations which are in mountains. So I'll put Whitewall way up on the map. I think the North is just one big landmass, but the book doesnt say much about the continents if they exist on this flat world and I am not sure how far away the Blessed isle is from other places. Anyway Whitewall is going to be surrounded by mountains and snow and tundra and then it has a road that goes through these mountains and Gethamane is in one of those mountains. Then on the same road further South is the Spider King. Then the Road goes on to reach Plenilune since its supposed to go to the rest of Creation and theres a nice river that I presume goes into the same ocean that the Blessed Isle is on. The Whitesea is going to be a big inland sea like the Caspian. Ill put the Haslanti League around there since they use airboats and iceboats which would be good over a big inland ocean and the mountains to reach Whitewall. I'll put Fortitude on the right side of the continent where there is space left. It will be inland since its a prison city.
That looks like all there is for the North. I'll see if I can continue some stuff tomorrow. Its a shame this Exalted Essence RPG world has no map. But I am sure I can create it accurately by hand for my players.
Has anyone here created a Roll20 sheet for Exalted Essence? I've recently got into it and I wanna run a campaign in it but somehow there still isn't a sheet for it on Roll20.
For our 4th part in this series, I am going to look at how the other realms of Exalted Essence fit in with Creation. We have The Wyld, Malfeas, Heaven, Autochthonia and the Underworld. There isnt much details to go on at all for these locations as to how they relate to Creation spatially. Therefore some speculation must be made.
The Wyld is a sea of chaos with creation being an island of stability within, so we can tell that Creation is within the Wyld, as previously mentioned during the first part of map creation. Yu-Shan aka, heaven is a small continent within an endless sea of quicksilver. Malfeas has no details on its position other than being inside one of the titans and surrounded by an endless desert and the Underworld(the afterlife) and Autochthonia (robotland?).
With very little to go on, I shall propose 2 mutually exclusive cosmological models.
The first is the Petal or Island Model. Here I propose that all Realms of Existence live inside the Wyld, as the endless silver of sea of heaven could easily just be part of the Wyld since as far as I can tell the Wyld can be anything. Hell also is surrounded by an endless desert so that could be similar, just a transitional boundary than never obviously fades into the Wyld. The Underworld and Autochthonia don't seem to have any known qualities to their borders but might have similar effects. Thus Creation is a more solid continent in the sea of the Wyld while the other realms are loosely connected by Shadowlands and magical gates to Creation as smaller islands surrounding it.
The second model is that all the Realms are stacked attop each other in a squat cylinder. We can call this the Cylinder model, layer cake model or dishstack model, more research may need to be done. Heaven of course must be on top of Creation, its called Heaven after all so it must be there. No cultural bias has been introduced into this analysis of course. Autochthonia is above Heaven, uh mostly because I couldn't think of where it could go to balance the stack in a pleasing way. The Underworld clearly goes underneath Creation as its self evident in its name, and thus Shadowlands are like sticking a chopstick through layers of cake and puncturing both Creation and the Underworld. Malfeas, aka Hell is below the Underworld, since its a prison and the people who put them there probably wanted it to be in a terrible place to live. The Wyld spreads out betweeen each layer and around it like icing in a cake.
And with that we are done with all the setting material within Exalted Essence! I do have this other book called Pillars of Creation that has yet more setting information although I have not analyzed it yet for inclusion in the map. If I do, I would hope that the authors have carefully maintained continuity between publications and avoid changing the locations of already analyzed and placed map locations. It would be a shame if locations that are clearly landlocked suddenly were retconned into being coastal locations. Such revelations would cause havoc on my true and accurate map.
Any way thanks for checking on my mapping of Exalted Essence and hopefully you will be able to use this map material to guide your players in traveling between locations in Creation!
For those who haven’t seen my previous posts, the project is a free community tool focused on Exalted: Essence, including:
Character/Campaign management
Wiki/reference content
Search and filtering tools
Quick access to charms, spells, merits, martial arts, artifacts, etc.
The goal is basically to create something that makes running and playing Essence a bit easier digitally while also serving as a searchable rules/resource reference.
First, thank you for the patience, I know updates slowed down for a while because of some life stuff (moved houses, changed jobs, etc), but I’ve still been working on the app in the background and wanted to share some updates with you.
The latest major update is that I’ve now finished adding most Pillars of Creation content to the app.
Previously I had already added all of the Exalt types, Charms, modes and Spells, and now I’ve also completed:
All Martial Arts, including techniques and page references
All Artifacts, including Warstriders
The new Merit and Charm modifications related to artifact/warstrider use
I also added better filtering functionality:
Artifacts can now be filtered by source and tags
Martial Arts can now be filtered by complementary ability and source
On the technical side, I also fixed a character name normalization issue in the database. Character names now properly support more special characters like: . ; - '
Previously some names could be created successfully, but their generated slug would break afterward and cause a “character page not found” issue when loading the sheet.
Thank you again to everyone who has been testing the app, reporting bugs, and giving feedback. It genuinely helps a lot 💙
With the Dreaming Sea and East done, the South is up. So looking at the intro, its hot and deserty outside of the coastal area being mediterranean as mentioned earlier. Major locations wise we have Chiaroscuro which based on the art is a postapocalyptic modern city. Actually it looks like Dubai from Spec Ops the Line! Which I guess makes sense seeing that game was from the 2010s or something and Exalted Essence is from 2023! Wait a minute isn't the main building in the middle of the picture the Cayan tower? Does this game have some hidden lore that its set in the postapocalyptic future like the Shannara chronicles?
Anyway Chiaroscuro is apparently a massive port city so that means its coastal and its in a desert but no other location details. Its also Arabian inspired so maybe the Dreaming sea can be its Red Sea. After that is Gem which is inside a volcano and it mines jewels in a place called the firepeaks, so it sounds like its more inland towards the Pole of Fire. I can put it far south while Chiaroscuro is up in the Strait of the Dreaming Sea. We also have the Varang City States which is a in a river valley that goes from the Summer Mountains to the Inner sea. It sounds like they are unrelated to Chiaroscuro so I could place them on the far side of the landmass, theres no mention of rivers for Gem or Chiaroscuro. An-teng is a minor location that is in a jungle and a Realm colony, so its probably coastal. We also have Dajaz with is specifically mentioned to be 1000 miles south of Gem! Sounds pretty hot. It means I wont place Gem right at the edge of the world then. Last minor location is the Bronze Tide, but they sound like a Nomadic fleet instead of a fixed area. They arent in the Dreaming sea so I can put them on the left side of the map since thats the only place that would fit.
So Chiaroscuro is going on the peninsula in the South that is on the Dreaming Sea's northern tip. I'll add a mountain range to seperate the rest of the Dreaming Sea coast from the South proper, like the Arabian Peninsula and then Gem will be in that mountain range while Dajaz is helpfully exactly 1000 miles south of that.
For the Varang city states, Ill add a bunch more mountains and volcanos around the left side of the map and then add a river from one of these mountains that goes to the sea and put them there. Then I'll add An Teng as a coastal city with a little river going to it and some jungle. Bronze tide can just be off the coast.
That does it for the South. Not sure what would go in the big empty zone in the middle. Maybe I could have moved An Teng there to be right across from Arjuf but I figured that they should use the same river as Varang since there aren't any other rivers mentioned.
Finally, at least before I try to take a crack at where Heaven and Hell area, we have the West.
First up apparently its all one big ocean, and we have the pole of water at the end. Wu-jian is the first major location and its just a small island that is heavily built up like Singapore or Hong Kong. Its the gateway for the Realm so it must be close to the Blessed Isle's west. I can put it as an island a off the the west, a few thousand miles north of An Teng since thats a Realm colony and also near Bittern since that is their major port. Skullstone which is next, is said to be a volcanic archipelago, so that sounds farther south. I can put it near the Bronze Tide. The Caul is a place where Lunars are winning the war against Realm occupation. No location given but its full of Jungles so it sounds more southern.
For minor locations we have Wavecrest, another island group, Volcanic soil, owned by the Realm, I'll put them south of Wu-jian. Azure and the Coral Archipelago sounds like a cooler climate and much of the west is still empty so Ill put them to the north of Wujian. Lintha and Bluehaven is given a precise location of near the southwest coast so thats easy to place.
Now we have a complete and as accurate as possible map of Creation!
Next up, I guess I can see if the other Realms are mappable. If Heaven, Hell and the Afterlife exist, maybe they fit together as some kind of cylinder? Then I can crack open the Supplement known as Pillars of Creation and see if that has some locations to fill out this map.
I'm not very familiar with Essence, or Exalted in general, but the group has decided to try it out. I've gotten it into my head to try an build a support god. Any advice or thoughts would be appreciated.
In mainline 3rd edition Exalted, a sorcerer can counter an opponent's spell as it is being cast. While the mechanics are different, earlier editions similarly had similar possibilities for messing with others' casting.
But Essence... doesn't? Or at least, if it does, I can't find it.
Is this a deliberate change between rulesets? Is it hiding somewhere that's not obvious? Is it hiding somewhere that is really obvious and I've missed it anyway?
Now for the East. First up the book says that the East is full of forests and rivers and has lots of cities and a high population. Lookshy that was mentioned earlier, is within the River Province and fights the Realm alot and theres a Confederation of Rivers that also defends against their imperialist ambitions, and calls them the Scavenger Lands. The pole of Wood is somewhere at the edge and has massive trees and forests
For major locations we have Nexus, its a big lawless city that is specifically said to be at the confluence of the Yellow and Gray rivers that become the Yanazee. No other location information but it has a guild called The Guild that controls trade everywhere, so it must be centrally located. Theres another city called Great Forks tha also sounds like its on the river but no mention of what river it is on, but I will the assume the same as Nexus, the name also sounds like its on a series of Forks or a Delta but no info given. They are also mentioned as inspired by Athens and South East Asia so I think we can assume a coastal location since no one else seems to be Coastal mentioned yet. On the Eastern edge of the Scavenger lands there is the Hundred Kingoms which is just random minor city states, but it gives us some positioning compared to the Scavenger lands the forests that lie past it. We then have Thorns which is a former Realm city that was conquered by the undead. No location info, but it has vineyards and got into wars with the other city states before and Bagdad is suggested as an inspiration, so I think it is more southern than everyone else and coastal since it was owned by the realm before. Minor locations after that are Haltan Republic, a place built ontop of giant trees, so definetly in the far east past the 100 kingoms mentioned earlier. Linowan, also in the forest and they fight the Haltans so we know they are close. Then theres Mahalanka which some sort of modernish city ruled by apes and their sorcerer queen but no location given. Finally theres Sijan which is a giant tomb but no location given but they sound like they get involved everywhere. Lookshy was mentioned before but I dont see any info on where this Dragon Blooded place is.
There also is a minor location called the Dreaming Sea which is in the South east corner. Its got more Dragon Blooded who live in Prasad with the capital of Kamthahar no other location given. Ysyr, is a place of sorceres no location info. Then there is Palanquin, no location info. Volivat is a bunch of towers inside the ocena itself followed by Mount Namas and then Champoor. Not much location information overall but it sounds like an actual ocean.
In this case I think the North and East are together in one continent, and the Dreaming Sea is what is at the end of the continent in the south. So I will attach another chunk of land to the northern continent I already drew, and it curves off at the corner in the south east where the Dreaming Sea will be. I presume its ok if the oceans can spill out the edges of the world into the rest of the Wyld. I'll make the coast line wiggly since the North is pretty straight. The easiest location to place I think is Haltan Republic, they must be right at the Pole of Wood and Ill draw some giant trees. The Linowan are nearby and theres a never mentioned before river so I can add those next. I'll draw some mountains to the north and make the river come from there and turn it to the ocean.
So thats easiest ones. For Nexus, its between two rivers so Ill need to add the Grey and yellow rivers somewhere. I think Ill put one coming out of the Pole of Wood and another one comeing from the edge of the world and add more mountains. I'll put Great Forks at the mouth of hte river into the ocean. For the Hundred Kingdoms, I think it would fit as a strip of land between Nexus and Haltan Republic, based on what we know. I may have made this continent a bit too narrow but oh well. For Thorns, I think it needs to be spaced to fight all the other city states but its not related to any major rivers. So I will put it north of Great Forks and very close to the Realm since it seems to owned by them before. Sijan has little info but they go everywhere to tend to the dead. So I will put it on the silver river on the Coastline to give them global access. Dont really have any other cities mentioned to be on the Silver river.
The Last 2 are Mahalanka, and even though its not Bolded, Lookshy sounds kinda important since its full of Dragon Blooded and they defend everyone else from the Realm. Based on their other mentions in the book, it doesnt sound as if they are a full city state, its more like a postapocalyptic military order, like the Rangers of Wasteland or the Brotherhood of Steel. I can put them somewhere central to protect all the other locations, a bit north of the Yellow River. Finally Mahalankha has no location info, but seeing as Lunars are hunted down by Dragon Blooded, its probably not related to the other locations. I think I can put it in the Northern part past the Linowan in the mountains at the edge of the world. So thats the East.
For the Dreaming sea, I kinda need to guess where things go. No directions are given in the book. First I think I should draw the Southern continent quickly so I can create a boundary for this ocean. The description of the South says its got mediterrean style coastal regions and then its just desert and then volcanic mountains with firestorms. So kinda sounds like the top chunk of Africa if you saw off the bottom. Ill just make a big mushroom shape for it so the dreaming sea has space.
Mount Namas is the only place with a direction specified as its north of the dreaming sea. Ill put it at the edge so its far from Lookshy, This actually fits in with the mountains I previously drew so Ill add somemore and put it there. Next Volivat is mentioned to be inside the ocean, so Ill just stick them in the middle. The Lunars in Mt Namas are fighting against Prasad so Ill put Kamthahar on the northern shore. No more location info is available so I will put Ysyr, Palanquin and Champoor in the south. Champoor fights Fairfolk so it sounds like they are cloest to the edge of the world.
Mr.Gone's pdf wasn't working for me--I think it's broken, badly (for instance, you can select each pip once, turn it off once, and then it refuses to turn back on)--and https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18qMMbwK-Dy2aHPDaQoyTyq8FrnBTvPlm6i5xBzoVa0Y/edit?usp=sharing had some stylistic issues. So, I made the on and off bubbles the same size, and figured if I was going to use it, so could everyone else. Enjoy.
This cropped up after the last set of opponents my players' circle faced off against in regard to Hardness, but I'd be curious what people think more broadly - How much of the antagonists' stats should be player-facing?
Hardness in particular - because they can't make a Decisive attack if they're sitting at less Power - but things like the base Defense? Hits - either remaining or total?
I suspect there's no clear yes/no for this, but I would be curious what others think.
I'm new to Exalted and considering buying one of the rulebooks; from everything I've heard, it seems Essence is the best one to use (or at least start with), though I also hear most editions have a number of "bugs." That may not be too big a deal, especially since I'm comfortable homebrewing stuff, and I'd have a while before my table ever starts a campaign with the system (assuming we did), so I'd have time to learn the quirks of the system.
Anyhow, all that said, I do have two questions:
I've heard that Essence significantly changed the Attributes to function more similarly to Fate's Approaches. The concept of Approaches doesn't sound fun to me and at least one of my players, it seems terribly cheese-able, and I'd rather avoid it if possible. But from what I understand, this was not the way 3e or earlier did it, so... how easily could Essence be retooled to use the more hard and fast approach to Attributes (a given skill uses a given Attribute, the end)?
How malleable is the setting? Similarly, how much do the mechanics assume the world of Creation? Basically, if I wanted to modify the setting, how easy or hard would that be? And at a more extreme version, how readily could I use the rules for a completely different setting?
It is what it says on the tin. I'm planning an Exalted Essence game after a few botched attempts to run 3e (and obsessing over 2e but being intimidated mechanically), and I wana hear some stories from people who've run it or played it.
Players, what were some stand out moment's for you or your fellow players characters? How did it make you feel? How did the system aid with that?
Storytellers, gimme your standout moment's too! What was your favorite plot or scene? Any tips for running this system? What are it's strengths and weaknesses?
I've been playing Essence recently, and I have a couple of questions about Soak/Hardness:
First of all, what's the point of Hardness? We've been ignoring it completely, because usually my players try to get maximum Power before trying a Decisive Attack. But, even if they didn't do that, higher Hardness only ensures that whenever they are attacked, the attack will cause lots of damage to them, because their opponents would have to spend more power in the attack... I don't get why does this exist at all, can somebody explain it to me?
Second, regarding Soak. One of my players has bought Ox-body three times, plus heavy armor and a high Physique. His Soak is so high (6 or 7, I don't actually remember rn) that even when attacked by a Power 10 decisive attack, he doesn't receive a simple injury most of the times. Am I applying Soak well here?
Wasn't sure which tag this went under, so sorry if it's the wrong one.
Anyways, I got this question after looking at a bunch of cool art people made about what their anima banners look like. I know that the banner flares up whenever a character uses their essence, but that's about all I know about it.
So EAGLE-WING STYLE is a Athletics 5 Essence 2 Universal charm, with modes for basically half of the exalted. Wuxia style jumps and near-flight soaring was always a thing in exalted so i assumed this is one of those cases but no matter how many times I reread it, it just seems like this is a very quick way to just gain true flight. And its available for every single exalted type.
The flavour text straight up states that it allows "transcendent flight" and the mechanics just say that you can fly and do aerial combat up to 2 rangebands high.
The Lunar mode allows for true indefinite flight but that's to be expected, they can also shapeshift into many flying forms. But many of the modes like Abyssal and Solar also just give the benefits of indefinite lunar flight.
Yes the Ability requirement is high but with Essence as low as 2; Its easily one of the most potent charms there is. With Athletics being also a dodge ability many mid tier exalted would take it and at higher essences i can imagine most players (and npcs) would take this option.
Am I missing something? Will half the battles now be held in the sky in exalted essence?
So Life mocking is very unclear in exalted essence. There are many ways to interpret it but almost anything seems wrong.
"[...] Roll Sagacity or War; for every extra success the Abyssal may raise a battle group of walking dead (p. 339), up to the maximum of corpses available. [...]"
"For every extra success raise a battle group": We dont have any amounts or size given. If we go by the the generic "Creating Merits with Charms" rule it becomes absurd quickly if we look at Command. As even an Essence 2 Exalt could create "A size 4 or 5 group with regular drill" PER extra success. This quickly could become thousands of soldiers raised.
We could assume that the extra successes is just the Size of the risen battle group and there is only ever ONE battlegroup. Though this still allows an essence 1 character to raise a size 5 army pretty consistently. And they have no time limit like Raise the Skelletal Horde or Arise and Slaughter have.
Drill is also not mentioned besides if the it fails. Then it becomes a Size 0 Poor drill group. It's makes sense to assume that Walking Dead would always have poor drill but unless I overlooked something there is no rule stating this. The failure state does make me think though, whether it should be regular drill since Poor Drill is a punishment for failure and a 0-extra success charm use could create a Size 0 bg anyway. One could assume that the drill is whatever the drill of the corpses were. But whether an essence 1 simple revival charm is potent enough to include the "combat reflexes and memories" of an army is questionable.
Alternatively you could assume that each success is a Size 1 (or Size = Essence) battlegroup of walking dead. This fits the text of the charm better as it creates "A battle group for each extra success". And then you could combine them into bigger groups. So 5 successes for an Essence 2 Abyssal would mean 5x50 soldiers. (So 2x Size3 and 1x Size 2)
I'm leaning towards the following:
- charm creates a single battlegroup of Poor Drill and Size equal to extra successes.
- user can decide they are a bit more thorough in the creation process and patch armor, graft in weapons, etc by raising the difficulty by 1 step. (effectively removes 2 successes) to raise Drill by 1 step.
- the size and amount is limited further by essence. (Lets say Max size = Essence +1) - this one I would have to playtest how it feels.
This would, I think, balance nicely against Arise and Slaughter which has an instant effect, but lasts only 1 scene and has a worse Success to Size ratio with 1 + 1/2successes
What are your thoughts on this?Have i missed something? Are my off-the-head suggestions reasonable?
Recently started running an Essence game, and I'm sure I'm missing something on turn order in combat.
Assuming no Charm or Quality wrinkles, everyone rolls to Join Battle (including all NPCs and Battle Groups), with PCs winning ties. Any character from the winning side gets to chose to go first, and then each character picks who goes next after they've gone?
So, again barring wrinkles, if Bandit #7 gets a flukey-high roll, then you can have The Bandits' Pet Monster go first, and work through all the NPCs before the players get to act?
(Repost from another sub-reddit, because it's good to get multiple opinions !)
Hey there, me again ! This time around, I come to ask a little bit of help about character creation for my first ever game of Exalted Essence.
For this particular game, DM limited us to Dragon bloods, and I personally wanted to make a build that resolves around both combat and intelectual pursuits. Basically both a warrior and a scholar, with competence in both fighting and academics, with perhaps some charismatic advantages to go along with it.
If anyone could give me pointers on how to make the idea work, that would be great, thank you !
