Talk:Charms every exalt should have

Salty Dawg Method
You missed the "appropriate... actions". I debated it with the ST the other week and he says it means stuff that's relevant to boat stuff. After joking about how you could have your throne on a rowboat in a pond on a wagon.

Salty Dog Method (Sail 2, Essence 1, Exalted: \Core p236)

Man what. It's super cheap (3m!), you don't have to roll any dice you just get the maximum benefit applied to everything you do, it's scene-long with no requirements about when you can reapply it or how much effort it takes to get running in the first place. Hell, it's even a reflexive action. This is pretty much the god tier when it comes to reducing external penalties. The only problem? You've gotta be on a boat. In Exalted. And due to the insane damage that your average enemy can probably do to your boat and the spectacular crappiness of your Sail defenses, this charm is pretty much the only reason to want to be on a boat in the first place.

So in summary, this charm is possibly the most powerful charm in the game but comes with some massive downsides:

* you have to be on a boat * an enemy can try destroy the boat * and has a surprisingly high likelihood of succeeding * and has a farily good chance of knowing that destroying the boat is how you kill ocean-based Solars.

On another note, it is kind of hard to conclude that you can't use this charm in combination with Wyld-Shaping Technique. STAND ON A BARGE. RESHAPE THE WORLD.

There's also no real reason (except for the sheer omgwtfbbq factor) to conclude that you can't use it in combination with Craftsman Needs No Tools.

So yeah, watch out for this one. It's a good way to make up for the rest of Sail sucking, but WACKY SITUATIONS may result if you think about creative uses of a charm that reduces external penalties to everything as long as it's related to being on a boat.

Hell, just the fact that you can buy one charm and be automatically super awesome as long as you say "ARR" a lot is pretty wacky.

Scene-Long Defenses
I don't think Scene-long Defenses are necessary for most characters in this campaign, in solo combat we'll either be killing things so fast that essence drain is unlikely to be an issue or we'll be running away from something we can't risk using our DVs against. Only really important for someone who wants to be a general, as they will be the ones who determine the DVs for their combat unit. Also Dodge DV is shit tier, don't trust it because it lies. --VictorW

For clarification, dodge DV is shit because of the Infinite Mastery charms. Melee and Martial Arts allow you to attack and parry with a free massive dice pool, while using Infinite Dodge Mastery only buffs your defence. So you have to commit motes to an attack Mastery as well, to achieve the same effect. This roughly doubles the cost, charging up to 20 motes extra (committed!) based purely on a stylistic choice. Sigh --McLeith 23:44, December 29, 2009 (UTC)

Generic Defensive Combo: Soaring Crane Leap is optional, as Monkey Leap Technique is only one mote more for scene-long, allowing you to get [Strength + Dodge] x 6 more comfortably. This is a combo that all Exalts need to get to reasonably early to avoid dying, and (in solo combat) the game expects you to have this set of charms available every single round in order to avoid being splattered all over the wall. This also means that any other combo you build must at least contain SSE+RST+LDM... the so-called "Combo tax" of 10 xp. Luckily we're using mainly mass combat, in which you can use any reflexive you know at any point without need for combos, which means that any super mega damage combo you build can ignore the XP tax as long as you will only use it in mass combat or when you are 100% certain that you won't get killed halfway through shouting "FALCON PUNCH!" -- Vic

I did mention that the list is about Exalts in the First Age; it's intended to be a short summary of what a Solar with base competence looks like. Campaign-specific concerns and the exigencies of the Age just defeat its purpose. Let's keep the discussion of subtleties on the talk page. McLeith 05:12, October 15, 2009 (UTC)

Heavenly Guardian Defence
How can this be activated as an innate ability at Essence 5? All I see is Immortal Blade Triumphant, which is Essence 7 (and WAY underpowered).

Having spoken to Shawn we'll probably be making HGD available as an innate power around Essence 4-5 in this campaign. --McLeith 03:44, December 6, 2009 (UTC)

Protection of Celestial Bliss. Admittedly you only get a few innate activations (only one at essence 5!) and you have to use a charm activation to charge the innate ability capacity up again but it's still damn good value for money, especially once you hit essence 6. --VictorW

Lords of Creation
EW.

That is all.

Well, that and the fact that Increasing Strength Exercise is obviously not included in the charms that Unparalleled Acumen Meditation grants. OBVIOUSLY. (actually you are correct, but I am choosing to pretend that is not the case because it doesn't look intentional and also because EW SOLAR LORDS OF CREATION CHARMS LAA LAAA LAAA I CAN'T HEAR YOU TALKING ABOUT THAT CHEESY SHITE NO THEY DON'T EXIST LA LA LAAAAAAAAAA)

Okay, some of them are alright. But I prefer not to read the Solar charms section due to how utterly dreadful and cheesy half the charms in that section are. Again, ew. I'm not going to feel clean for weeks after looking at that thing. --VictorW 03:20, December 19, 2009 (UTC)

Oh christ, I just went back because I got to thinking along the lines of "maybe some of them are salvageable?"

And then I re-read Lion's Roar Recovery. INFINITE WILLPOWER, ALL VIRTUE CHANNELLING ALL THE TIME. I think I need steel wool to scrub the dreadful charm design out of my memory. So fucking glad the pair that wrote those charms got fired. --VictorW 09:38, December 19, 2009 (UTC)

We know how you feel about the charm writing in LoC. Did I recommend any broken charms? Aside from Glorious Halo of the Builder's Grace, which I noted is probably interpreted differently to how it's written.

As for Lion's Roar recovery you're assuming that there exists a storyteller who would allow you to continue stunting in such a fashion. Also, it costs 5xp to put it in a combo. --McLeith 12:44, December 19, 2009 (UTC)

A storyteller who wouldn't allow you to continue making a 2 die virtue channeling stunt every 14 or so actions? 2 die stunts aren't even supposed to be hard to achieve! Also, I'd consider Unparalleled Acumen Meditation to be pretty damn broken if it includes Increasing Strength Exercise. I guess it might be okay if it only activated at minimum strength? The thing is though, everyone and their mother activates both Graceful Crane Stance and Monkey Leap Technique in a combat worth a damn. So you're effectively getting, for free, 12 motes or more worth of what many consider to be the best charm in the Athletics tree on top of the 12 motes you'd otherwise have to expend in order to get every other charm active. All with no significant action or combo tax paid. I could accept it as vaguely balanced (though still kinda OP) if it didn't include Increasing Strength Exercise, but that really pushes it over the threshold into blatant cheese. --VictorW 20:53, December 19, 2009 (UTC)

Ok, the full-WP+some part is stupid. I've suggested a modification to Phoenix Renewal Tactic which might alleviate the problem, or/and the part about regaining a birrion WP should be cut from Lion's Roar Recovery. --McLeith 03:03, December 20, 2009 (UTC)