Hey Game Fans, today we’re going to take a stab at making a character for Exalted 3rd Edition. This is after 3 solid reads of the relevant chapters and digging into the nuts and bolts of everything but charms (that’s a big chapter). We’re going to do a bit more than we usually do because Exalted has such a mythic feel, you can tell stories that are larger than life, and that means we’re going to be doing things slightly out of order. We promise to double check our math and hopefully get everything right, but we make goofs once in awhile too. So let’s dig into this article and get things started. If you’re curious what we’re talking about and don’t know what Exalted is, check out our First Looks article Here.
Step 5: Charms
Whoo, boy, now we’re in it. Charms are the superpowers that separate mortals from Exalted and they bring a lot of potential mayhem to the table. Every Ability in the game has a host of Charms associated with it. Also as an option, an Exalted character can either pick up Evocations from Artifacts by trading in one of their starting charms (on a 1 to 1 basis), and they can pick up Martial Arts Charms (if they meet the prerequisites) and Sorcery spells the same way.
Every Charm has prerequisites, usually a combination of Essence Rating and ability level. Some Charms have additional requirements in the form of other Charms that you have to have in order to access more powerful Charms. Most Charms also have additional costs to activate in the form of Essence Motes or Willpower, and we’ll cover those when we dig into Charms a little heavier. Charms are an incredible dense topic and you’ll probably end up doing the same thing we did, going back to the drawing board a half a dozen times before deciding on the Charms we thought were important to this concept.
Notes
Note 1: Some of our ratings will not seem like they match for the Charms we selected, but that gets resolved through the use of Freebie points in an upcoming step.
Note 2: Well, we went back and forth on this idea a lot and really came down to 2 ideas for this character. The first option was to go completely bonkers with the Single Point Shining in the Void Style of Martial Arts because the character as envisioned is a Wandering Master of the Martial Arts. The second option we considered involved a lot of back and forth about grabbing Charms from several different trees. Ultimately, it came down to not being able to generate a coherent grouping of Charms from those trees and we ended up going with Option 1. That means we picked up the following 9 Charms:
Gathering Light Concentration
Shining Starfall Execution
Single Point Shining into the Void Form
Fatal Stroke Flash
Liquid Steel Flow
Void Slicing Wind
Horizon Swallowed Star Flash
Six Demon Scabbard Binding
Blinding Nova Flare
In addition, we pick up the Charm Striking Cobra Technique to help pass off the cover identity that we’re a master of Snake Style (which with 4 dots and 4 Dexterity, isn’t a hard sell). To Round out the Charms, we pick up 2 Athletics Charms Monkey Leap Technique, and Increasing Strength Technique. We also grab 3 Resistance Charms, Durability of Oak Meditation, Ox Body Technique, and Body Mending Meditation. There a lot of Charms we ended up and passing on for a few reasons, but we can always pick up most of them with experience points.
Step 6: Intimacies and Limit Trigger
There are two similar concepts to define at this stage, Intimacies and Limit Trigger. The Intimacies are the connections to things, places, people, and ideas that your character holds dear. Like a father remembering fondly his children’s birthdays, or a scorned lover nursing his hatred and revenge, these are links to the larger world of Creation that help anchor your character to it. They come in differing degrees (mostly emblematic of the strength of the connection to the Intimacy) and can be positive or negative.
Limit Triggers are a different sort of thing. In the prehistory of Creation, the Exalted were created to destroy a host of evil, truly powerful creatures. In doing so, they were cursed by the entities they destroyed and this is a lingering burden that every Exalted feels. The Limit Trigger is basically how your specific Exalted is influenced by the Curse and when your Limit is reached, the Curse strikes at an astonishingly unhelpful time. Every Exalted reacts to the Limit Trigger differently, and they manifest in a variety of different ways.
Notes:
Well, Rey has been built with a couple of ideas in mind. The first one of his Intimacies is a Principle “We can be better people, and make the world a better place.” He believes that down to his bones and will die furthering that ethos. It’s a defining trait for him. The other Principle he holds a belief in is “Everything Happens for a Reason.” Call it Fate, call it a Fatalistic view of how the universe works, but he doesn’t believe in coincidences, and tends to focus his worldview on the here and now.
His ties are a little trickier. He has two important connections in this world. First and foremost are his Children. Since his departure from the Realm and the graces of his former employers in House Vaneef, he has spent countless hours and days thinking about how to make amends to his children for leaving them with their mother. This is a major Intimacy for him because it’s a part of his life that he desperately wants to fix but has no idea how to go about it. The other Intimacy that is connected to that is their Mother. She’s a Dragon Blooded Exalted, and he knows in his heart that violence is probably going to erupt the first time they meet up again. With these two ideas in mind, we make the Intimacy with his Children a Major one, and the Intimacy towards their Mother a minor, negative one.
Rey’s Limit Trigger is one that i spent several days working out (huge shoutout to Tyler Carpenter who kept bludgeoning me over the head to encapsulate it in good words). Basically, Rey sees violence as the last possible resort to solving a problem. He’s terribly powerful and he knows that. He doesn’t want to hurt anybody that he doesn’t absolutely have to. His Limit Trigger is expressed as “Using Violence as a First choice when alternatives exist.” In many ways, violence is his dark side of the force. It’s a quick, expedient path to results, but the costs on his mind and heart are very steep and he knows that.
Step 7: Bonus Points
Every character gets 15 bonus points to buy up additional traits, attributes, charms, etc. There is a large chart on page 124 that gives you the cost breakdown by trait type. These points let you flesh out your character and provide a way to raise your abilities above 3 dots. This lets you either go deep in a character design, raising a few key abilities to 4 or 5, or you can go broad on your character and have dots in lots of different things. (You can actually spend these bonus points at any point along the character creation process and you might have to meet traits for other abilities. So long as you don’t spend more than 15, you’re golden).
Notes:
Rey spent most of his points quickly. 2 Points raised Shining Point in the Void Style to 5, and an extra point raised Snake Style to 4. Presence went to 5 dots with 2 points. Athletics and Integrity both went to 4 each for 3 extra points total. We’ve spent 8 points, and have 7 to spend. We raise our Artifact Sword to 3 for a point, and purchase an additional artifact (armor) for 3 more points. We also pick up Resources 2 for two points, and now we’ve spent 14 of our points. We’ve got a single point left, and decide to spend it on Contacts at the lowest rating. We think this gives us some sort of inside folk in House Vaneef somewhere that help Rey keep track of his children. 15 points spent, and we’re almost done building our character.
Step 8: Finishing Touches
There are a few more bits to finish up before your character is done. First you need to calculate your starting Essence (1), your starting Willpower, your Essence pools. Those are the mechanical things you to finish up, but there are some more questions to contemplate answers about. There’s a wonderful discussion on page 125 about how Exaltation affected your character and the relationships they had before and after. Take these questions to heart and see what makes your character different from others
Notes:
Rey’s background (described above) gives us a good look at how his view of the world works. He’s trying to find his way back to his children and leave the world a better place than he found it. With his extraordinary size and physicality, he’s used to being looked at as an oddity anyway, and he’s accepted that as a consequence of who and what he is. Rey’s a fairly quiet character who doesn’t go looking for trouble from anyone and would prefer to be unbothered by the rest of the world. Fate usually intervenes to keep his life interesting.
If Rey were a member of a circle, he’d probably be the bodyguard or protector of other Castes who are not as combat efficient as he is. Even then he’s a voice for calm and negotiation, only resorting to his terrible blade as a final, fatal recourse.
At this point, our character is complete and ready to play. There are a host of derived values and combat data to add in, but those are fairly straightforward to fill in. Check out our completed character sheet at the links below.
Some of you might be asking yourself, “okay, but what does your character look like?”
“Rey is nine and a half feet of corded muscle. A giant among men, he’s easily recognized by the bright blue eyes and the razor shorn blonde hair. He dresses in an unusual Buff jacket, made from the hide of some unknown animal, with a high collar and oversized shoulders.His Daiklaive hangs at his waist, almost eager to be drawn from its scabbard.”
We’re going to post a link to take a look at the character sheet for Rey later this week once we’ve put all the charms in. We used a Form Fillable Exalted 3e character sheet that we think we found on Reddit. We’re also going to provide a link to that Here, but claim no ownership or creation of it. . Game On, Game Fans.
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