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so, we have a big chunk of xp to spend. i was talking to paul, and it occured to me that we don't have a coherent party set up yet, more of just a hodgepodge. as we work more together we would naturally start to specialize and cover the areas of weakness in our party. so, i'm setting this thread up to discuss party xp spending, party rolls, and party dynamics.

1-what rolls do people see their character fulfilling, and what roll or use would you like to branch into?

2-how do you see the other players? and where do you think they could best spend their xp?

3-how would you like to see the party develop? should people become specialists? should they all be generalists? should they use diplomacy to get stuff done, or combat?

4-what direction would you like to see the party move toward in terms of story and flavor? how close do you see us becoming? are we friends, business partners, what? how much loyalty do we have to each other?

1- I am going to work more on upping lore/occult/medicine and my charms will either be in those skills or Wood Dragon... I see myself working towards interacting more with the small gods and trying to improvise a modified faith that combines Immaculate and Heresy.... also want to work on improving my magitech crafting although I am beginning to wonder at the point of it... apparently crafting artifacts requires NPC status in order to have access to the overwhelming power, materials, and location required because a PC with that much would be over powering I guess

At this point basically no one has access to the sort of facilities really needed to make much use of magitech. There are only I think 2 active factory cathedrals in all of Creation at this point. One is controlled by the Realm and works -way- under First Age production rates, perhaps producing a single warstrider every 5 years. The other is controlled by Lookshy and is only half-operational and is primarily used for maintenance.

The main challenge to magitech is that it has basically 0 infrastructure right now. The Exalted of the First Age built up for almost two thousand years before magitech became commonplace. Some of the ruins of that are left, but they'd need to be rennovated before they could be used, and most of the ruins of factory cathedrals are on the Blessed Isle itself.

I think that we should be more diplomatic, just so we don't cause harm to the innocents. I am working on socialize at the moment, but not after this week cause I still want the perfect soak. I am starting to realize that out of the party I may be the best spokesman.


As far as our inter character relationships, with Jade Sage I wouldn't be that close to him. He wants to repair/maintain things, and for example I really wanted to punch one of the Warstriders just to see how much damage I could do to it. Haley's character I just don't know much about, I don't know her motivations or history. Paul's character I view as being the most inhuman, not in a bad way though. EPR is just a damaged young girl with strange powers, she needs watching over.

I don't care how people spend exp, or focus their character. Expect for Paul, he needs some out of combat stuff, but he may of have done that by now.

Thing is what skill then is used just to make artifacts... I was under the impression that it was magitech and I understand not making a warstrider due to the effort required (although I disagree that a person is not capable of doing it with charms if there are charms that can make an entire manse)...

Craft (Elemental) is used for the vast majority of artifacts. There's nothing magitechnical about a daiklave or a suit of lamellar armor made of moonsilver.

Magitech almost entirely applies to High First Age artifacts of extraordinary complexity. Airships, warstriders, flying cities, biomagitech (items integrated into a living creature) and the like.

well I still like the idea of working on warstriders in the far future (for making motivation possible) but can I do the biomagitech without the whole cathedral?? obviously not on myself most likely (surgery on ones self is too risky) but maybe someone would like an extra hearth mount or some such... and since we split up the elements which skill(s) would I need? do I always use earth/fire since I would be working with the magical materials which are all metal/stone??

I plan to max my social skills performance, presence, and warfare in the long run. For now I need to work on 2 more charms so I can stealth, and parry sneak attacks.

i'm sort of waiting to answer my own questions for a bit, as i feel that as a moonshadow it is my role to pick up the slack and/or do what no one else can.

it looks like we have ranged taken care of, with jade on bow, sa'rel on thrown, and ǁʔeḳa !ʔakhã (blood tooth in sandawe, what i named jason since he dosn't have one) has the energy spear thing. Hand to hand is pretty good too, with dino, zas'el, and ǁʔeḳa !ʔakhã covering that.

social is looking like adam on buraucracy (and socialize?), EPR on linguistics/performance, ǁʔeḳa !ʔakhã on presence and possibly performance (if he has xp at some point), and sa'rel on presence (and the only one that actually has a real, honest to goodness social charm. two, actually).

stealth is covered pretty effectively by epr, sa'rel, and oddly, dino. and adam scrapes by on this one despite lack of specialty.

athletics is coverd by the melee group.

artifacts are looking pretty good between npc avilister, and jade.

Awareness is a bit weak. we've all got good scores, but epr is the only one with any detection charms, so we might want to shore that up.

Same for occult/sorcery. Several good scores, but only Jade has sorcery, and he's the one that is technically the least useful, as new spells cost more for him, and he can't advance it to celestial. this one needs work. unfortunately, as the other high occult one, i have only distant plans for sorcery, and no one to teach me higher level stuff. i could learn terrestrial from jade, and Eye and Seven Despair could teach me necro i guess, but that all takes alot of time.

people that haven't already probably should shore up mental defenses, if only so that we don't have to fight you when you turn against us unexpectedly.

Surprise attacks are an issue. I suggest the dodge or awareness surprise response charms get a looksee. 8pts for never being surprised again. highly worth it. currently no one but me has it, and i only now got it. lucky i'm not dead, with my shit defense and health pool.

niche environments are possibly an issue. Lore charms for shaping wyld/underworld, survival for... survival, and integrity to resist wyld are all worth looking at on the off chance xp ends up floating around, and assuming anyone would bother to think about getting them IC before they are screwed by not having them.

so. despite the breakdown, i'm not sure what that leaves me to do.

The Sidereal Mentor is able to teach through Celestial Circle Sorcery. Technically, also, Avilister is a Celestial Circle Sorcerer and Shisa (the cat Lunar) is a Terrestrial Circle Sorcerer.

i guess if they are willing to help, then the sorcery thing isn't a total wash. i still would prefer to have a celestial circle sorcerer in party to travel with us. or everyone could rip out a piece of their soul for thael to make spells out of.

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as far as intimacies go:

dino- with him treating her more kindly than he treats the rest of the party, and after their trip, epr is quite attached to her monster. she takes care of him and treats him like a large stuffed animal that kills things, though often this means ignoring the fact that he exists apart from her and has a will of his own.

jade-is entertainment. he does strange things, and is different from the rest of the party. his irritation at her presence and actions only serves to make him more ammusing to her. she sometimes worries about him, as he is so much weaker than the rest of them, at least in terms of raw power.

ǁʔeḳa !ʔakhã- scares her on a subconscious level, as he represents a power that could destroy her, and which her soul runs from. his lack of compassion also makes her dislike him, though sometimes she confuses it for her type of compassion, and at those times she likes him better. when not frightening her or confusing her, he is entertaining, and she likes his golden spear.

sa'rel- is a mother/sister figure, or perhaps representative of all the loving townsfolk that she will never see again. either way, she desperately wants sa'rel's acceptance, and will do nearly anything to get it. however, she only partly understands sa'rel's desires and commands, making epr's life difficult. however, epr's extreme desire to please sa'rel gives the night caste young woman a chance to improve the world using the abyssal as a tool, or to simply abuse her power and betray the girl's trust.

zas'el-epr sees him as a comforting figure of safety. he will protect the weak and innocent, as that is what he has always done in her presence. and in her mind at least, she still needs protecting. though she sometimes feels an instinctive need to hide her intent from him, as though somewhere in her subconscious she knows that if he knew what she truely represented he would destroy her.

avilister- avilister = tool.

rainbow man- hope, trust, and caretaker.

liege- quickly becoming an unwanted captor as she comes to understand more of what he is, and more about the nature of the world and her role in it.

neverborn- hates them right back. and feels pity for them at the same time.

or everyone could rip out a piece of their soul for thael to make spells out of.

I am always interested in hearing more about this option... mmmm

I guess this is the best thread to post my question to.

Right now i am a little lost as to what to make and need some help. I do not want to double up on what roles and skills people currently fill. So if someone could give me a run down of what people have and what might be needed currently that would be nice.

rydi wrote:i'm sort of waiting to answer my own questions for a bit, as i feel that as a moonshadow it is my role to pick up the slack and/or do what no one else can.

it looks like we have ranged taken care of, with jade on bow, sa'rel on thrown, and ǁʔeḳa !ʔakhã (blood tooth in sandawe, what i named jason since he dosn't have one) has the energy spear thing. Hand to hand is pretty good too, with dino, zas'el, and ǁʔeḳa !ʔakhã covering that.

social is looking like adam on buraucracy (and socialize?), EPR on linguistics/performance, ǁʔeḳa !ʔakhã on presence and possibly performance (if he has xp at some point), and sa'rel on presence (and the only one that actually has a real, honest to goodness social charm. two, actually).

stealth is covered pretty effectively by epr, sa'rel, and oddly, dino. and adam scrapes by on this one despite lack of specialty.

athletics is coverd by the melee group.

artifacts are looking pretty good between npc avilister, and jade.

Awareness is a bit weak. we've all got good scores, but epr is the only one with any detection charms, so we might want to shore that up.

Same for occult/sorcery. Several good scores, but only Jade has sorcery, and he's the one that is technically the least useful, as new spells cost more for him, and he can't advance it to celestial. this one needs work. unfortunately, as the other high occult one, i have only distant plans for sorcery, and no one to teach me higher level stuff. i could learn terrestrial from jade, and Eye and Seven Despair could teach me necro i guess, but that all takes alot of time.

people that haven't already probably should shore up mental defenses, if only so that we don't have to fight you when you turn against us unexpectedly.

Surprise attacks are an issue. I suggest the dodge or awareness surprise response charms get a looksee. 8pts for never being surprised again. highly worth it. currently no one but me has it, and i only now got it. lucky i'm not dead, with my shit defense and health pool.

niche environments are possibly an issue. Lore charms for shaping wyld/underworld, survival for... survival, and integrity to resist wyld are all worth looking at on the off chance xp ends up floating around, and assuming anyone would bother to think about getting them IC before they are screwed by not having them.

so. despite the breakdown, i'm not sure what that leaves me to do.

honestly though, doubling up isn't a big deal. everyone should be able to fight, just b/c of the nature of the game, so i would advise picking a combat tree to go with. personally, i would suggest melee, as it has a perfect defense in the tree, making it so that you don't have to branch into dodge or resistance if you don't want to. if you wanted to spend more points on it however, any of the trees are good. there are also benefits to taking purely defensive trees, such as dodge and resistance, not the least of which is being able to dodge/resist unexpected attacks.

other skills that could be useful:
awareness- mainly for the unexpected attack counter (makes it expected; dodge has one too)
some sort of social skill- (socialize, presence, performance, bureaucracy)
stealth/larceny- or both. we have no larceny, but it is only occassionally useful
investigation- absolutely no investigation in the party. good to have.
athletics- has some good utility movement stuff in it.
integrity- really a must have imo.
occult- we could use more occult, esp. sorcerers.

charms are more simple than they look at first glance btw. they look rather overwhelming, but once you get the hang of the layout and find the general themes running through the book it isn't a big deal. focus on rounding out defense (mental and physical; social is an option too, but not as important usually), giving yourself perhaps one attack (this might be as simple as buying an excellency in your attack skill), and then getting utility charms in your areas of focus.

Do note that we're employing a few house rules that make life a little better. Not the least of these is the "free reflexives" house rule. Essentially, any reflexive charm can be used at any time without counting as charm use. This does essentially negate the need to take (Ability) Essence Flow, and I'm working on a fix for that, but I'm not sure how balanced it'll end up being. This is an incredibly powerful buff to most charms, particularly defensive ones. The main reason for using this House Rule is to prevent combos from being the only way for combat to go. Now combos are as I think they should be (ie: SUPER OMGWTFBBQ DETH ATTACK!!!!111)

Also, we're using some house rules to make the Solar Resistance charms a bit more appealing, esspecially when compared to the Lunar soak charms, which are way better than the Resistance charms in the core book.

Finally, Familiar has been house ruled to be more useful (the default is almost useless).

A full run-down of the house rules for my game can be found here. The wiki page for my game can be found here and lists all the current PCs and has a brief description.