December 12, 2010. The day the world ended.
Or was supposed to, according to the long plans of a Baali elder. The ritual was perfectly performed each time. Each one perfectly spaced out according to his use of the Long Count calendar. But of the two dozen spirits that emerged from the portal, only a few were mighty warriors or grand manipulators, and even among those few, none desired to end the world.
Not that the old vampire knew that. For right after the spirits emerged, a grand flood of unbelievable power collapsed the portal and annihilated the vampire and those descended from him for three generations!
And now upon the world step a mere five people, but with power such as the world has never seen before. Drawn together by ancient spells of undreamed of potency, the world itself conspired to have these people meet. What shall they do? How shall the world be changed by them?
Those are stories yet unwritten.
Hello, Elliquiy, it's me, with a second attempt at running a group game. I don't think I did too good a job on the first one, but I'm going to try again. And hope I do better this time.
As the hastily written narrative above mentions, this is going to be a game where a small number of modern day people get world shaking power in the classic World of Darkness.
Now, for this one, it's going to be all EXP char-gen, using the last errata, and the Exalted Modern abilities and charms from Shards. Specifically, you will have 667 exp to build a character with, backgrounds costing 3 Exp per dot, doubled for the fourth and fifth dots. With three exceptions. Everyone can start with Mentor 5 representing the sorcerous tricks that your last incarnations played to make sure that their next incarnations would be ahead of the game. Celestials are set to Essence 3 and Terrestrials 4. The Dragon Blooded also get Breeding 5.
Merits and Flaws are out, doubly so for certain classic WoD Merits.
Mentor 5 in this case represents a gestaltic knowledge base taken of the whole circle, such that you can learn any of the charms in your core book as though you had a trainer, can set up a self-initiation into sorcery, and generally learn things from past memories. Not that they necessarily knew all those charms and abilities, but they had a long, long, long while to speculate and plenty of favors to call in.
And if you want to take any Exalted era artifacts, remember to also buy a cache egg. Explanations for things from Shards and cache eggs available upon request.
Craft works a bit like Linguistics. With each dot, you get another craft. Extra crafts can be purchased as specialties.
The next couple of spoilers are going to be general and specific rules things, neither of which are likely to be comprehensive. Most, in fact, were gotten by either trying to unify mechanics that I could think of, referring to handy books, and referring to wikis.
If things seem biased towards Exalts, yeah, they are. It's intentional. The Baali might not have gotten the ending they want, but even a few Exalted is the end of the world as we know it.
Linguistics Dots give a language family. I'm going to be a bit permissive about where the line drops for applicability of a family. Just don't try taking Proto-Indo-European, unless you like knowing dozens of ancient languages. A single language can be purchased as a specialty.
"Don't drop the explosive" would take no penalties. Building a computer would take heavy penalties. Trying to convince a person like this will always add 4 to their MDVs.
Charms that rely on the Wyld can be used anywhere, but cause a response analogous to the Paradox of mages. Roll Essence, with more successes generating worse results. A botch tends to mean that reality accepts the result, but not always. The effect has the keywords of Counterattack and Shaping. Personal Shaping defenses will only protect the Exalt against direct changes. If you get a horde of monsters intent on destroying what you created, Integrity-Protecting Prana won’t help you there.
Exalted resist most mental effects with MDV. Illusions are resisted with Per+Awa instead, and they would be the usual exception. They also do not take aggravated damage from the claws and fangs of supernatural beings, absent powers that make them aggravated.
The sheer power of the Exalted is easy to track in this beggared age. Proper supernatural sight lets the tracker add the Exalt’s Essence in successes to track them. Of course, most beings with a quarter of a brain would be wary of such powerhouses.
Because of the broken nature of the world, it is harder for the Exalted to enter other realms, but the other supernatural residents would often envy the ‘difficulty’ of the Exalted. Crossing over is a dramatic action (speed 6, DV -2 in combat) that costs the Exalt (Gauntlet-Essence) motes, to a minimum of one mote.
Taking others requires thaumaturgy, or sorcery for a more durant or versatile portal. Any personal shaping defense will protect an Exalt from some of the nastier bits of the metaphysics of other realms. More importantly, even without such protections, the Exalted may always use their powers.
Effects that reduce traits are Crippling effects, and can be healed as such. Some may also be Shaping effects.
Finally, and perhaps obviously, things like the Delirium and the Mists don’t affect the Chosen.
Sphere Magic is a Shaping Effect, however covert effects do not count as Shaping in and of themselves.
Using Correspondence to pull a gun out of a jacket won’t be shut down by anti-shaping powers. A Life transformation will always be defendable by a personal shaping defense, as the transformation is Shaping, regardless of the vector.
Essence converts to quintessence on a 1 to 5 ratio, 1 to 10 if the quintessence can take advantage of the aspected essence.
The Immortality merit can be nullified by any Exalted charm that can kill spirits. Non-Exalted charms that kill spirits, say CMA, merely damage the soul of the mage.
Vampires don’t like the Solar anima, but discounting charms or sorcery, it doesn’t affect them as does the sun. As opposed to the anima of a Fire aspect, which does affect them like fire. This is because, as you may know, it is fire.
The blood of the Exalted is soaked in essence, and can be quite dangerous for vampires to imbibe. Or quite useful. Direct injections of Exalted essence tend to be the same, only moreso. Thankfully, direct injection of Exalted essence usually fades at a point a night.
Sorcery can alter the vampire’s curse. Terrestrial can create minor bloodlines easily, Celestial major bloodlines easily, and Solar... well, who knows?
Solar essence can quickly kill a vampire, and for little gain as many would see it. Drinking the blood of a Solar means that the vampire need not, and indeed is not capable of, resting, although the lethargy during daylight is not abated. For each blood point ingested, the vampire need not spend a blood point to rise for one night, although the blood sucker risks the Exalt’s Essence in dice of aggravated damage per blood point ingested. A direct injection of Solar essence does the Exalt’s Essence, or the number of motes transferred in aggravated levels. For perhaps obvious reasons, Solar essence fades from a vampire’s body immediately, and not over several nights.
Thieving Talons of the Magpie can not steal Exalted Charms or Sorcery.
The Exalted can not carry the nature of any kind of were-creature. They can, however heal deformities of the Metis and the Black Spiral Dancers, although why one of the second group would ever consent to such a healing is a mystery.
No, I’m not going to say anything about the Lunars here. Fnord.
The Shadow of a normal Wraith is always treated as having Compassion 1 and no positive intimacies for the purposes of Exalted charms.
Non-abyssals need to develop specialized charms or necromancy spells to fully interact with all of the conditions of Wraiths. Abyssals treat wraiths as mortals, and the Shadow as a rather persistent Crippling effect that continually reasserts itself.
Or, should they infect a wraith with Whispers, the Shadow is a conduit for the even more torpid Neverborn.
Once, the Exalted warred with and nearly destroyed the progenitors of the Changelings, drawings oaths from them that echoed across the host, indeed well into the future. Indeed, having defeated the greater fair folk of the past, the powers of the lesser fair folk of the current age are laughable to the Chosen.
An Exalt may undo the effect of a cantrip that affects them by rolling Willpower+Essence. Even the greatest of the Changeling’s works will be undone with four successes, and most require far less.
As a point of scant comfort, the Exalted do not have Banality to undo the Changelings.
The Exalted are a strange thing for the Imbued. All of their powers treat the Exalted as nothing more than mortals, at least until the anima comes out.
Then the Exalted can be affected by some of the Imbued’s abilities. Most worryingly for the Hunters, their Edges can not lessen the Exalted. Well, most worryingly once the Hunters know of the Exalted.
The Chosen are beyond the Ren hekau, as part of their nature is unfathomably older than the languages of Earth.
Also, see the comment about Mages and Immortality. Mummies suffer in the same way.
Are wholly different from the Classic World of Darkness.
