Lunars

[Learned Hand]

Are actually good now. And interesting. And have an ammusing array of social combat charms that seem better than the solars'. Mwah hah hah

[johandenerad]

Curse you! I still await my book.

[bravesirrobin]

Goddamit. I knew this would happen. 2nd ed was supposed to not do the same thing 1st ed did. Where, because the solar book came out first and they weren't too clear on everything, solars ended up notbeing as cool as other types of exalts. and other types ended up overpowered. sigh.

what kind of stuff are we talking about?

[Learned Hand]

The charm I already mentioned was pretty awesome.

There's a low level charm that makes social attacks surprise attacks, and there's also one that lets you give someone one of you intimacies or your motivation, in one shot, for essence days. You whisper to them in their sleep so they can't defend against it. Which sounds tough until you realise that they're lunars so can get anywhere.

However, they're not overpowered.

For one, they're not the all-rounders that solars are. They're mainly fighters, and a lot of their social combat charms are physical combat-based. The others are quite often things for spies and assassins to use - being able to change someone's motivation for a few days will make them your assassin, but it won't change the world in the way solar charms will. It makes sense that the few things they specialise in, they do better than solars - otherwise what's the point.

Secondly, their charms and essence are a lot more expensive, and their limits on dice adding are fairly restrictive.

Also, if you look around you can find equivalents to their high powers. I was tutting an an essence 4 charm that renders both DVs inapplicable until I realised that there's an essence 3 charm in Righteous Devil Style that does just that, with the added bonus of not being able to miss. I'm sure that making charms that mimic any social effect of the lunars won't be too hard, and not out of order. There are charms in the lunar book that mimic solar charms to the letter, e.g. AESS

The being able to turn into devils and behemoths stuff is cool, but the former is essence 4, and the latter has a size limit until essence 7. DBT has been depowered

Basically, Lunars are now playable as things other than 'barbarian who kills stuff'. They've introduced the concept of stewardship, which suggests that Lunars must want to protect or improve something as a motivation, and made the Silver Pact's mission 'help mortals to help themselves without relying on exalts' as opposed to 'destroy civilisation'. They have social charms, where they didn't before, to reflect the fact that they're not *just* killing machines. But they're still not as strong as solars (although canonically they outnumber them 2 to 1 now)

[luke]

Do they have a 4th Excellency a la Terrestrial War Reinforcement or Essence Auspicious?

[Learned Hand]

Their Excellencies are all based on attributes. They have the same 3 as solars.

They have something that let's them have a speciality in an attribute. Examples include 'long term schemes' or 'martial arts'

They also have an attribute equivalent to infinite (ability) mastery. It needs a wp to activate, but of course having mote-less access to a dex excellency is a lot more useful than having free access to an ability excellency.

[johandenerad]

Can you add up to (Attribute) or (Attribute+Specialty) with dice adders?

[Learned Hand]

I don't know and I can't find out quickly. The former, I assume.

You also get to use attribute specialty's in fun way, like improving soak for an instant by upping stamina, or damage, by upping strength, or fucking with MDVs via appearance (there's also a scene long charm that let's you increase the max MDV modifier to 6, which could be fucking lethal coupled with an appearance excellency)

[Olaf]

Dex specialty in MA? That's sick.

[johandenerad]

How about "Combat"?

[Learned Hand]

The rules say a single ability ot something that crosses several abilities.

Something that is 4 abilities is a bit too much.

[luke]

How about "Tuesdays"?

[bravesirrobin]

You have assuaged my fears. It all sunds very cool.

How do shapeshifintg charsm work? What's the tree structure look like?

Do they have some awesome athletics and/or stealth effects? Cos those seem like very lunar things to me.

Also how come they outnumber solars two to one? That's crazy.

[Olaf]

luke said:

How about "Tuesdays"?

Someone give that man an XP.

[Learned Hand]

bravesirrobin said:

You have assuaged my fears. It all sunds very cool.

How do shapeshifintg charsm work? What's the tree structure look like?

Do they have some awesome athletics and/or stealth effects? Cos those seem like very lunar things to me.

Also how come they outnumber solars two to one? That's crazy.

Shapeshifting charms are called knacks and don't count as charm usage. The trees are short- normally about 3 and often have quite cool, high essence effects at the top. For instance, there's a 3 charm tree affecting the speed of your shapeshifting that allows essence 5 lunars to change reflexively every tick - so they can become a fly to dodge your sword and then a beastman to kill the fuck out of you one second later, before becoming an eagle to fly away. Then there's the whole behemoth thing.

DBT itself gives you an extra dot in each of the physical attributes, and you can spend up to your (essence+4) dots on mutations from the core book, the lunar book and -annoyingly- they Wyld book.

There are some very cool stealth effects - I can't remember much but one essence 4 charm makes it impossible for anyone who is looking for you to see you. They can spend 2 wp to momentarily bypass the effect but then have to (a) work out what's going on and (b) manage to stop looking for you. I haven't checked out the athletics stuff.