Onyx Path is pleased to kick off a new series about creating characters for the game lines we’ve published. Today, Bill Bodden dives into Exalted 3rd Edition. If you’re itching to try Exalted, check out Bill’s new character!
To me, Exalted 3rd Edition is about larger-than- life characters: heroes who serve their gods as pawns in the never-ending struggles and intrigue that punctuate creation. The struggle may be heroic or nefarious, but in the end all that matters is fame and glory. The Exalted are characters who were either created to be heroes or were born of heroes so the gifts for performing extraordinary deeds are contained within them.
After reading through the examples, I decided I wanted to come up with an Exalted character to play in an upcoming game. First, I browsed through the introduction and flavor text in the Exalted 3rd Edition rulebook to get a better idea of the setting. In an interesting twist, the default character type in the core book is the Solar Exalted. In the game’s backstory, the Solars were mostly killed off by the Dragon-Blooded. Solars were cursed ages ago by enemies they defeated. Subsequently — and over many, many years — many of the Solars began to grow drunk with power or go mad, and so the Dragon-Blooded Exalts — and others — went to war and defeated the Solars. It’s this background into which new Solars step, and the air of suspicion and mistrust surrounding Solars makes for a challenging environment.
To start creating my character, I flipped to page 120.
Step One: Character Concept and Caste
The Dawn Caste are, first and foremost, warriors, and I want to kick some butt in this upcoming game, so I settled on the Dawn Caste, summarized on page 139. They highly favor martial skills, so hopefully I can pick out things that will mesh well together. I decided on the name Ayesha for my character. I’ve chosen “Child of Lightning” as her sobriquet, so I need to make sure she’s fast!
Step Two: Select Attributes
My Dawn Caste Solar is very clearly a fighter, so I’ve ranked Ayesha’s Attributes accordingly. Physical is primary, Social is secondary, and Mental is tertiary. Checking in at the Character Creation Summary on page 127, I see that I have eight, six, and four dots respectively to spend in these three attribute groupings — plus the default dot in each.
The heroic nature of the setting gives me plenty of dots to play with, so only her Perception and Intelligence — at two each — are at average levels for a normal human. Ayesha is going to be a combat specialist, and her above average Dexterity should help her in combat.
I want more Perception than Ayesha currently has, and for that I need to dip into my Bonus Points pool. Another dot of Perception — one of Ayesha’s tertiary attributes — will cost me four Bonus Points. Ayesha now has three dots of Perception. I also spend three points to give Ayesha another dot to Strength, which is one of her Primary Attributes so it costs a little less. After buying up these two attributes, I still have eight Bonus Points left.
The breakdown of Ayesha’s Attributes now looks like this: Strength 4, Dexterity 4, Stamina 4, Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 3, Perception 3, Intelligence 2, Wits 3.
Step Three: Abilities
Next, I select Abilities which are sorted into two groups for ease of reference: Caste Abilities and Favored Abilities. My Dawn Solar’s Caste entitles her to pick five from Archery, Awareness, Braw/Martial Arts, Dodge, Melee, Resistance, Thrown, and War. Since she’s a warrior, but also Dexterity-minded, I choose Archery, Awareness, Brawl, Dodge, and Melee.
For Ayesha’s Favored Abilities, I choose Athletics, Medicine, Ride, Socialize, and Stealth. Next, I need to choose one of Ayesha’s Caste Abilities as her Supernal Ability — that’s the one thing she does best, the thing that her legends are based on. If I want her to be a speedy, nimble warrior I’d have to go with Melee, but the limitation here is that I can’t have an Ability higher than three without spending Bonus Points.
I have 28 dots to spend, and no default dots to rely on this time. The final score looks like this: Archery 3, Athletics 2, Awareness 3, Brawl 3, Dodge 3, Medicine 2, Melee 3, Ride 1, Socialize 2, and Stealth 3. I also take Integrity 1, Presence 1, and Resistance 1 to round out the Abilities.
I’m also allotted four Specialties. Specialties are things that give you an extra die to roll for that skill when the specialized conditions are at work, and they are open-ended. There’s no list to pick my Specialties from, so I’ll need to come up with something that compliments Ayesha’s existing Abilities without being too broad. To compliment her Abilities, Ayesha’s Specialties will go into Archery (long-range shot), Melee (swords), Awareness (ambush), and Stealth (reconnaissance).
I want Ayesha’s Abilities to be better than what she has currently, so I’m going to spend a few Bonus Points here to bulk up her rules. First, I’m putting another dot in Archery, which will cost me one Bonus Point. I also put another point in Melee to lift that Ability to four, and an additional point in Resistance, for a total of two more Bonus Points spent.
My total point spend at this stage, which includes adding a dot to two Attributes, is now 11 out of 15. Not bad! I’ve spent more than two-thirds of my Bonus Points, so I’m going to be a bit more cautious going forward.
Step Four: Merits
I have 10 dots’ worth of Merits to acquire, and I’ve decided to use these to work in Ayesha’s backstory. Ayesha has been a fighter all her life, and she’s well-acquainted with commoners. I am leaning toward creating a character who champions their causes whenever and wherever she can.
I check the Merits’ listing on pgs. 157-58 and, after further reading, I invest the first three dots in Manse 3 — which also gives me Demense 2 and Hearthstone 2 for free.
Exalted Healing is free, so I take it and laugh heartily. The rest of Ayesha’s Merits look like this: Danger Sense 3, Fast Reflexes 3, and Language (Low Realm) 1.
That adds up to my 10 starting points in Merits.
Step Five: Charms
Charms are immensely cool: they offer a fantastic way to customize your character, provide a great handle for describing action in-game to help build excitement, and they can allow the Exalt to do some amazing things. The list starts on page 250 and runs for some 175 pages. It’s long, but it’s worth it to read through them all.
That said, there are a LOT of Charms. Choosing 15 seemed daunting to me at first, but the more I read about them, the more excited I became. My choices became more difficult because there were so many great options and I wanted them all!
I finally settled on these:
Wise Arrow (Archery)
Phantom Arrow Technique (Archery)
Graceful Crane Stance (Athletics)
Sensory Acuity Prana (Awareness)
Surprise Anticipation Method (Awareness)
Fists of Iron Technique (Brawl)
Reed in the Wind (Dodge)
Reflex Sidestep Technique (Dodge)
Flawless Diagnosis Technique (Medicine)
Excellent Strike (Melee)
Call the Blade (Melee)
Ox-Body Technique (Resistance)
Master Horseman’s Techniques (Ride)
Perfect Shadow Stillness (Stealth)
Blinding Battle Feint (Stealth)
You may find that some Charms will be appealing enough to make you want to re-arrange your Attribute and Ability scores to take better advantage of what they offer, and the guidance offered in the book encourages this!
Step Six: Intimacies and Limit Trigger
Intimacies are the things that the Exalt cares deeply about, from her personal moral code to her dearest friends, right on down to her bitterest enemies and deepest hatreds. I must choose four for Ayesha, but could choose more if I wish. From time to time these Intimacies may be eliminated as things change in-game, so having more isn’t a bad thing. It helps clarify my character’s motivation, and gives the Storyteller more tools to introduce new plots and intrigues.
After reflecting on what I’ve got so far, I decided that Ayesha’s defining Intimacy is that she loves children and will do anything in her power to protect the innocent from harm. Her Major Intimacy is that she cares for creation and hates to see it plundered greedily and wastefully. Her Positive Intimacy is that she does what she can to lift her teammates’ spirits, and her Negative Intimacy is that she despises The Wyld and the Chaos it represents.
Limit “is a measure of stress, self-doubt, and instability” within each Solar, and the closer they get to their Limit, the more endanger they are. Intimacies, which I’ve just defined above, work hand-in- hand with Limit. When a character knowingly acts against one of her Intimacies, there is a chance for that character to gain points toward her Limit. Limit Triggers, then, are the event that may cause a Solar to go over the edge, activating the curse laid upon their kind by the enemies of the gods whom the Solars had defeated.
I decided that an appropriate Limit Trigger for Ayesha, would be when she’s humiliated by friends and allies. Once she has accumulated 10 Limit Points, she will suffer a break; its timing and effects will be at the Storyteller’s discretion.
Step Seven: Bonus Points
Remember all those bonus points I already spent? I have a total of 15 bonus points to spend per page 124. The downside is that bonus points work like experience points, in that most bonuses are more expensive to buy than during character creation. I plan to give Ayesha extra Willpower dots — because who can’t use more Willpower, right? I’ve already spent 11, so I only have four left. Four Bonus Points is enough to by Ayesha two more dots of Willpower, so that works out great, and brings me up to 15.
Step Eight: Finishing Touches
Ayesha’s Willpower starts at five dots. I increased that to seven dots by spending bonus points from the previous step. I can also/instead spend experience points later to buy more Willpower.
I need to have seven health levels available, and the character sheet provided on page 635 will make keeping track of that easier.
Essence Rating of all starting characters is one. That will increase, slowly, with time and experience. Essence is the spiritual/supernatural power Exalts use to perform miraculous feats. Peripheral Essence is the easiest to tap into, as it lies on the surface. Personal Essence represents an Exalt’s spirit. Ayesha’s Personal Essence Pool contains 13 Essence motes. Her Peripheral Essence Pool holds 33 Essence motes. Essence does replenish itself over short periods of time, so spending it usually isn’t an issue.
Now, Ayesha is a fully, fleshed out character who’s ready to play! I still need to work out details like her starting equipment and review her rules with my Storyteller. Additionally, my party should work on aspects of their relationships to one another, how they’re inter-connected, and where their loyalties lie.
Interested in Exalted? You can check out the Exalted 3rd Edition rulebook, the Tomb of Dreams Exalted 3rd Edition Jumpstart, or visit our latest Kickstarter for the Dragon-Blooded: What Fire Has Wrought supplement for more information about what we’re up to!
Comments
20 responses to “Character Creation: Exalted 3rd Edition”
I think this is a great series, but for Exalted in particular, it almost seems like it was intentionally done to be a sub-optimal CC.
Not going for any 5s, spending BP on Attributes and non-caste/favored Abilities, going for 2 close combat Abilities (Brawl/Melee) and a ranged one, Having no Integrity, etc…
I understand that not everyone is an optimization monkey, and maybe the series intention is not so much give guidance to new players, but to just stoke the imagination with someone’s character, but it would be cool if it could be both.
My 2c!
Thanks!
As overpowered as everything is in Exalted, why would anyone ever need to min/max? It’s not like any of White Wolf/Onyx Path’s games are like competitive or anything.
I think that the description of the commonality and rarity of the various attribute levels on page 148 of the core should be the authority. Is your character concept to be the strongest man in the world? Then he should have a 5 strength. Otherwise, go lower.
That would be a more valid criticism if there was a big narrative difference between 4 and 5. There isn’t, you´re just gimping yourself.
You can easily create a character that has an experience point value of over 100-200 XP less than a character that is not even Min/Maxing, just not being obtuse about how the advancement system goes.
A Min/Maxer would get a 5/5/1 spread for Primary Attributes. The most sub-optimal spread is 4/4/3 (which was the chosen one here). The Min/Maxer can be 5/5/3 in three sessions worth of Solar Exp. The sub-optimal guy would take 8 sessions to catch up, thats almost 3 times as expensive.
Spending 4 BPs to get Perception from 2 to 3 has an XP value of 2. Using the same to get 2 Favored/Caste Abilities to 5 has a value of 8! That is 4 times as much! Why not wait for 2 sessions and raise your Attribute? Those 4 points, can make you a Martial Artist, a Multimillionaire, Have a powerful Artifact, Have an awesome Familiar, A Exalted Retainer, an amazing Ally, a great Mentor, Folloers, Contacts… Or go from being elite to being a legendary master in 2 skills. So much to expand either your mechanical or narrative puissance can be purchased with those 4 points. But you just raised a practically invisible mechanical and narrative widget by one point.
You say the game is not competitive, and that is partially true. But if you were playing a game and the ST gave another guy 150xp more at the start wouldn’t you be a bit miffed?
Sub-optimal characters will probably start being overshadowed from the start, and after a few sessions that will be clear.
I’m not asking them to say Min/Max or die. What I’m saying is to give sound advice on how to CC so you can have a good grasp on the possible mechanical/narrative choices. Explain how BPs are good to spend in Favored Abilities and Merits, etc…
“You say the game is not competitive, and that is partially true. But if you were playing a game and the ST gave another guy 150xp more at the start wouldn’t you be a bit miffed?”
Nope.
To clarify: The GAME is not competitive. If the ST gives another player more experience and you are miffed, you are the one being competitive.
You are a paragon of selflessness and joyful bliss. You are probably alright with just letting anyone having anything they want to start their characters. So why have CC rules at all, right?
Games with rules to determine whose version of the outcome is true are inherently competitive. If they were not, you wouldn’t need rules, you would just talk it out and decide what is the best outcome for the story, or leave it to pure chance.
If the table’s Night wants to murder your Dawn’s wife and you want protect her, you both are competing for what version of the story becomes “true”. Just because there is no “win the game condition” it doesn’t mean there is no competition.
Nowadays there is this perception that any “competition” is bad, and denying any association with competitiveness is some sort of virtue signaling, and it blinds people to the normal understanding of human interaction.
Rules exist as much to give us a medium for interaction as to “keep things fair”.
I feel really confident in saying that a majority of gamers, specially gamers interested in a as crunch heavy game as Exalted, are interested in rules and their ramifications and implications.
Even the most “narrative is all that matters” of my TTRPG gamer, who have any interest in Exlated’s system, friends would choke on that disparity. Most of the people (not to say all) that I know who truly think narrative is all that matters, won’t touch Exalted 3e with a 10ft pole.
I challenge you to find random people, from your local gamer pool, for a table of Exalted with that premiss: that someone, specifically not them, is going to start with a year’s worth of gameplay character advancement more than they, just because they know a small subset of rules better.
I guess I feel like Attributes should *almost* be unchangeable after character creation. If your guy was just average strength at the beginning of his journey, then improving to the point of being the strongest man in the world ought to be ridiculously absorbing and time-consuming. In almost all ways, that’s not why you’re here. You should make those decisions at character creation and then focus on training Abilities and Charms after that (which makes narrative sense). It seems to me like the system as written takes this into account.
I just made a character with tertiary Social Attributes, but I wanted him to have 4 Appearance. I didn’t mind that this made his Presence 2, and I didn’t exactly mind that it made me give him a 1 in Manipulation, but I was glad to just drop 3 bonus points on taking the Manipulation to 2. That fits the character better than a 1. Was that a suboptimal choice? Maybe. I could have used my XP from my first couple of sessions to bump up the Manipulation, but that seems weird. Why would my character spend all that time becoming more manipulative? I didn’t think that Manipulation 1 perfectly fit him as a character, so I didn’t want him to start there.
I don’t see where the system is written as to support static Attributes after CC, it shas XP cost and training time for inceasing Attributes… So where are you getting this from? A system built with that idea would just say that attributes are final after CC, like AD&D or something.
It has been said many times, that actual using of Attributes during play can count as training time. So if your character goes through a story where he notices that his forthrightness and blitheness are prejudicial, and he forces himself and works on being more measured and reserved, it is very reasonable to raise your Manipulation.
If you are a Strength 1 famished street urchin that Exalts as a Brawl Supernal Dawn that now spends her time beating and twisting people up, and is constantly on a full belly, it is natural and reasonable that you could raise your Strength, Stamina and Appearance.
I can start at Perception 1 as half blind, deaf and anosmic 70 year old who Exalted as a Zenith, and as Essence flows through my Chakra and restore me, I raise my Perception accordingly.
I can say that the exposure to different cultures and modes of thinking expanded my horizons through my travels and raise my Intelligence.
Trying to hang out with the gang of bullying and ribbing outlaws and their repartee and actively participating for long enough could raise my Wits.
Just the passage of time, or a series of self confidence boosting events can be enough to raise Appearance.
All this to say nothing of intently, working out, studying, building confidence, changing attitude that will justify raising your basic capacity at being human.
Those 3 points you spent could be way better spent elsewhere, for either mechanical or narrative reason. What are you getting out of being low-end average or high-end average on that Attribute? Is that going anyway inform how you roleplay this character in any meaningful way?
If you say your background is “well acquainted champion of the commoners” are you better served by having Perception 3 intead of 2, or by having Allies, Contacts, Followers or Influence among said commoners?
If you are the “Child of Lightning” Is it worth having Strength 4 instead of 3 or Having a bow of legend that shoots lightning / Athletics and Dodge 5 and actually be one if the fastest people alive / Ride 5 and a cool familiar and be riding the proverbial lightning?
BP are very mechanically and narratively valuable, and probably the worst way to spend them is by buying Attributes. There is practically no concept that is served by a 4/4/4 Primary Attribute spread that a normal 4/4/3 wouldn’t. Spending the points anywhere else will almost always be more either mechanically or narratively sound.
My critique is not only about mechanical sub-optimization, and it was never about min/maxing. It is about the overall quality of the CC example.
Well, I’m my character’s case, I could have purchased an awesome merit that lets me shoot fire out of my orifices, and another dot in an Ability or something. While those were cool, it fit my idea for the character better for him not to have Manipulation 1, and those other things could be learned during play in a satisfying way, so it worked for me.
I think a lot of your examples above – especially those that deal with exaltation – should already be figured into character creation. Aside from those, I’m not sure we’re not saying similar things. I also wouldn’t counsel someone to spend a lot of bp on Attributes. There are times when it seems like it is helpful to craft just the right character, but most times you’re better off buying more useful things like merits and Charms. And I agree that you *can* increase Attributes through the course of play, but I think the high cost of increasing those is tweaked correctly, which is what I meant when I said that the system as written seems to take this into account.
So I’m left not sure if there is an argument here. You seemed at first to be saying that 5/5/1 is superior to 4/4/3, but then later say that using BP to buy Attributes is bad. But what if I want 4/4/3 because the character isn’t even seeking to be the human paragon of two different Attributes while being terrible at another. I don’t want that to be who he is at the start of the game, and I don’t want it to be who he is later. So in that case, my character does not have 100 less XP, so I don’t feel cheated. In that way, I would say that I feel that the Attributes are *almost* static after character creation, since the expense of increasing them is so high in comparison to gaining new awesome Charms and whatnot, so I want to make sure that I get the Attributes the way I want them at chargen.
Neither 5/5/1 nor 4/4/3 need BP expenditure to achieve, they are both 8 dots of Primary Attributes in the optimal (5/5/1) and sub-optimal (4/4/3) spreads. One is worth 80 xp, the other 60 xp. But I didn’t even say anything about that. What I said was bad is going for 4/4/4, because you just spent 4 bonus points that could have been spent in many more interesting ways. There is practically no narrative, nor mechanical, difference between a 4/4/3 and a 4/4/4.
So why not spend in stuff that actually makes a difference? That is my argument.
I don’t know if you are familiar with Ex3, because I haven’t seen you around and seem to recall you mentioning being new to the edition in the Kickstarter, but the whole reason for Solar/Dragon Experience is so that you don’t have choose between super exciting Charm purchases and less cool things like Attribute raises.
You can’t use Solar/Dragon experience for Charm purchases (other than MA, Evocs and spells). So the rules earmark a kind of experience that motivates you to buy Abilities and Attributes during gameplay.
This was done because people would only buy Essence and Charms with Experiences, and people felt that the static state of Attributes and Abilities was unnatural. How could you go through so much and not expand your capabilities and skills.
So this idea that you should not buy Attributes with Experience is against the design philosophy that got us two kinds of Experience in the first place.
Attribute increase are expensive simply because they are mechanically very powerful. They are mechanical workhorses and, as such, are boring. Whats more exciting, going from Strength 4>5 or buying Dragon Coil Technique and Adamant Skin Technique? Its a no brainer.
But shouldn’t a very strong mine worker that Exalted and is now wrestling giants for breakfast not become one of the strongest people in the world? Shouldn’t s/he become a better grappler?
In recognizing that when asked to choose between magic and mundane, people will mostly choose magic the devs created a rule that lets you grow your mundane side without feeling letdown that you could/should have chosen more magic.
In light of this, I think you should revise that position of yours a bit.
Which Hearthstone did the character end up with?
If you’re making a series on chargen, please tell people – as the book doesn’t do this either – that if you spend BP badly you end up having to pay far, far more XP to end up with the same character. Attributes cost the same no matter which dot you are buying with BP, while with XP the cost increases each time, so anything that you will be raising to 5 later, you absolutely have to do it now, because the gap between 4 and 5 is a lot of XP to waste.
Ooooo… this is a neat idea for a series! Looking forward to seeing some from Pugmire and Chronicles!
Am I wrong, or Primary attributes cost 4 bonus points and Tertiary 3, not vice versa ?
I’m enjoying this concept for a blog series, but it’d be nice if there were more story details to it. Just a set of stats isn’t very… inspiring. Ayesha’s been a fighter all her life — why, against what? What inspires her love for children, does she/her family have any? How did she come by that Manse? Etc.
I get buying attributes. paying two bp when you could have arranged it to only pay one by lowering something like athletics by one to put resistance at two, then buying athletics back up for one point. I get keeping things at a lower level but not wasting points.
Also without an explanation of your character’s background in depth, it’s hard to follow your choices. Child of Lightning, really? Why? You lack a good athletics score( at least three) and no movement charms so you don’t move that fast. Nor do you have extra attack style charms so you don’t attack that rapidly in a thematic sense like someone with one weapon, two blows and peony blossom technique could.
Not saying it’s a bad character but without a deeper explanation of the choices you made, it’s confusing. This is especially so as I thought this segment was to explore creating a character as a living breathing part of Exalted.
Please understand I mean this with the utmost respect as constructive criticism, nothing more. I appreciate your time and effort, thanks!
Sorry, second sentence should start with- I don’t get paying two bp
Man, all this min maxing seems silly to me. I don’t care if my character is 160 behind another PC! I just care if my character is able to embody my concept. Doubly so I mixed parties-when you’re used to rolling as a DB or a Lunar hanging with Solars, you quickly learn that this whole “parity” idea isn’t really necessary to have fun. The character started up above has breadth, has stuff to do both in and out of combat, can be direct or sneaky, and has a couple of intimacies that an ST can use to hook her into a story. She’s weak enough that a Wild Hunt is a deadly threa but strong enough to plausibly escape one. She has something to add to just about anything given circle.
Don’t sweat the XP. Exalted doesn’t have Cars, and starting off sub-optimized will make more things in the Core fun threats to overcome instead of greasy red smears in the first round, not to mention giving the ST an easier time gauging appropriate challenges for the party. There’s not much to criticize here.
…oy, autocorrect worked horrors, there.
You can be dismissive and say that it is all about min/maxing when there is any talk about optimization, but you’re just setting new players up for frustration in character advancement.
The aforementioned Child of Lightning with Athletics 2, if she wants any Charm in Athletics beyond Essence 1 will have to have Athletics 5. That will cost you 15 XP, which is at least 4 and easily 7 sessions worth of Solar Experience.
If you play at a weekly schedule that is anywhere between 1 and 3-4 months worth of gameplay, bi-weekly its between 2 and 6-7 months! That is just to meet the minimums to start buying the cool magics you want!
I’ve seen in it play, with my friends who went this route. After a few sessions my and another friend’s character where on our wanted track buying the cool Charms with regular Experience, and done shoring up a bit of the weaknesses with Solar Experience and moving to buying Spells, MA Charms, Evocations and Merits with Solar Experience, and the other 3, with their “well-rounded” characters had to spend months worth of experience shoring up their Abilities just to be able to get in the fun.
That is assuming most campaigns even last that long!
Whether you like or not, the system is skewed towards some optimization, with 90% of Charms requiring you have a score of 5 on the Ability. If you want to be obtuse and tell new players that their CC choices are all good and won’t affect their experience during play, you can. You are just not doing them any service.
It is not min/maxing to inform people that it is advisable to get 5s in things you want to shine in, because if you don’t, it will cost you a lot of time to do during gameplay, and the game might not even last that long. It is just common sense.