sol invictus.indd

CHAPTER 1 • CHARM DESIGNincreases drastically. There’s a simple reason forthis: a character’s resource needs rise faster than herpool of resources. Temporary Willpower increasesvery rarely, and motes increase by only a smallamount when Essence goes up — while charmsquickly go from costs of 1 or 2 motes up to as manyas 20. For this reason, resource management toolsare increasingly important to powerful Exalts.Stunting is, of course, an important tool for Exaltsof all power levels. Under Power Combat, anExalt who stunts once every turn will generallyrecover 4 motes or 1 Willpower each turn; giventhe standards for a two-die stunt, it is reasonableto expect characters to stunt at least this often (andprevious comments have indicated that canonicalCharms are indeed written with this assumption inplace.) This provides a level of resource recoverysufficient to fund most Charm usage at low Essencelevels.As the Solar increases in power, her need for motesand Willpower will start to outstrip her stuntrecovery. By Essence 3, a character is likely to use6 motes or more in a turn; by Essence 5, most Solarswill spend well over 10 motes and one or moreWillpower during each round of combat. Morepowerful Exalts are also likely to commit muchhigher levels of Essence to powerful atifacts andscenelong Charms. As such, alternate means ofresource replenishment become necessary.The one canonical mote recovery Charm for Solars(Essence-Gathering Temper) provides a goodtemplate for other such effects. Like this Charm,other Charms that regenerate motes or Essenceshould typically appear in an ability without directattack or defense abilities. This helps encouragecharacters to diversify their skillsets, and ensuresthat no combat ability becomes too strong thanksto a powerful resource regeneration effect.Essence-Gathering Temper is near the limit ofmotes regenerated by a single effect; other Charmsprobably shouldn’t exceed its limit, and effects thatprovide motes easily should provide fewer.RULE CLARIFICATIONS FORHIGH ESSENCE COMBATFully Independent Actions. The independent action,introduced in Exalted: the Sidereals with the CharcoalMarch of Spiders Form, is a natural evolution of theExtra Action concept. Instead of receiving a singleaddition dice action, the character receives an entireturn’s action. Charms which grant IndependentActions follow the rules on page 187 of Exalted:The Sidereals.In addition, Charms of the Independent Actiontype have several specific restrictions. Charms ofthis type do not consume the character’s standarddice action unless otherwise specified, though theymust be activated on the character’s initiative.They do count as the character’s Charm use fortheir “standard” action that turn. They may notbe used as part of a Combo. Independent ActionCharms are treated as equivalent to Extra ActionCharms in all circumstances where the latter areforbidden; this includes activating an IndependentAction Charm while you already have access toIndependent Actions from another effect.Finally, initiating a spell, continuing a spell,and casting a spell are each considered a singleIndependent Action for purposes of these Charms.These actions each have a duration of one turn,so they cannot be performed simultaneously —you can’t use Independent Actions to launch aTerrestrial Circle spell on the same turn you beganto prepare it. However, you can use IndependentActions to perform other activities while the spellis being prepared. Therefore, someone with twoIndependent Actions could use one to begin castinga spell while using the other to defend. If she stillhad access to two Independent actions the nextturn, one could be used to unleash the spell whilethe other was used to defend; if not, her entiredice action would be consumed by unleashing thespell.25