[2e Exalted] Lunar Exalted in a typical wtfExalted game

[Judging__Eagle]

I'm looking for some advice in building a starting character that can craft in Moonsilver in Exalted 2e.

The campaign has currently "aged" at least once by 5 years from where they last left off; and includes:

-Solar Exalt tank (heavy armour, god-kicking boots, great sword (no goremaul? prolly not enoug Str for it)); and their Lunar exalt ally
-Lunar No Moon gunslinger
-Earth Dragon Terrestial Exalt
-Human Mage, (recently) exalted as a Solar

There's been some big things go on; apparently the GM's <3on for Gurren Laggan means that the group also has a pair of Warstriders.

Additionally, some of the PCs (not the human mage) chose from packages of abilities that the GM wrote up; to give them more oomph. While then saddling them with an XP debt that at least 1/2 of all future XP costs must go towards.

I'm not really familiar with what they were using.

In any case, there's obviously potential for a somewhat powerful character within this campaign.

Some questions that I can think of asking include:

Attributes:
Str: 1 Cha: 5 Int: 5
Dex: 5 Mani: 1 Wits: 1
Sta: 4 App: 1 Per: 5

I've started (and will mostly be) a changing moon* caste, so the social attributes are automatically 'favoured' (or w/e Exalted! calls it), and I picked Intelligence as the additional 'favoured' attribute; since the concept is "mad scientist who is a shape changing monster."

*:Ok, Lunars who aren't Full and No Moon get the shaft of obscurity. That's shit. The concept I'm going for is a reincarnation of a First Age lunar scientist who had the brilliant plan of building a Moonsilver 'bridge' (an Elsewhere capable transporter/radio? I dunno how one could mechanically talk with Sol or Luna in Exalted!) to commune directly with Luna (looks like the base of a bridge whose arch stops half-way in the air; really it's a directional receiver and transceiver) so as to get advice directly from their Patron on how best to advise and assist the Solars.

Abilities:
Archery 1, Dodge 1, Thrown 3, War 3, Craft (Air 1; Fire 1; Water 1; Earth 1; Wood); Survival 2; Lore 1; Occult 1; Medicine 3

Specializations
[I dunno? Moonsilver Crafting? D:]

-How do I actually get Moonsilver crafting [can I give myself a high Renown and have one of my Specialties be in Craft moonsilver?]

-Would making a Warstrider out of MS make it better handling? or is making superplate out of MS, and being in power armour (equivalent) a better idea? [This current campaign started with some of the PCs getting warstriders of different sizes] I'm not sure exactly how weapons/attacks would work at warstrider scale

-Shapechanging Knacks... should I go for flexibility, and being able to turn into a Tyrant Lizard or Yeddim; or try to crack out my Deadly Beastman transformation's numbers?

-[Million Dollar Question] Can I completely side-step the ass backstory about how the shapeshifting Lunars no longer have fluid caste signs? I've been considering this character coming out of seclusion from the First Age only recently (emerging from stasis in their 5* Manse? I've got no idea), and having solved the problem of Wyld-related chimerism via moonsilver nanite implants that create always shifting caste signs (Full, Changing, No; mechanically). It's like having the protection from chimerism, and not being boned b/c of the No Moons blurring out three other castes.
^--and flavourfully, the character was originally of the waning moon (i.e. the "Silver Horned Watcher" aspect of Luna; a woman with a giant mane of hair, two silver horns growing from their head, obviously insane, wielding sickles); personally, I like the juxtaposition of the radical scientist being a follower of the most feral, and insane, of Luna's aspects.



Backgrounds:

I'm not really sure what is good; Cult's ability to refresh motes seems useful; Resources always seem good in WW games

If I want to make/repair actually useful stuff; like magical items; which sort of resource is best for that; a flat out 5* crafting manse (the 'bridge' mentioned above)? or is it not worth the time? (we can probably get down time in the future).

Charms & Knacks:

Finally; which charms and knacks should I be looking into?

There are apparently (from other threads here) perfect Dodge Lunar charms and perfect Soak Lunar charms that are awesome; which ones are they, or where should I look for them?

The prospect of the Crafting charms (Clay-Wetting Technique) to make moonsilver items seems appealing. Is this a waste of time? One can use XP to 'buy' training after all (honestly, this isn't a new thing in game systems; the Epoch larp which started in the early 90's still uses such a system when a player can't/doesn't want to write a suitable training story for the season's plot head to approve).

As well, I'm divided between Deadly Beastman's Transformation; or making some sort of Gun-Turreted moonsilver armour; and changing into a Tyrant Lizard to go all Dino-Blasters on opponents.

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[Silent Wayfarer]

*:Ok, Lunars who aren't Full and No Moon get the shaft of obscurity. That's shit. The concept I'm going for is a reincarnation of a First Age lunar scientist who had the brilliant plan of building a Moonsilver 'bridge' (an Elsewhere capable transporter/radio? I dunno how one could mechanically talk with Sol or Luna in Exalted!) to commune directly with Luna (looks like the base of a bridge whose arch stops half-way in the air; really it's a directional receiver and transceiver) so as to get advice directly from their Patron on how best to advise and assist the Solars.

It is entirely possible that Luna may tell you "figure it out yourself", since Luna is about self-sufficiency and independence. Not that you shouldn't make it anyway and include mind control laser functionality into it.

Abilities:
Archery 1, Dodge 1, Thrown 3, War 3, Craft (Air 1; Fire 1; Water 1; Earth 1; Wood); Survival 2; Lore 1; Occult 1; Medicine 3

As an Exalt, you don't take penalties for being unskilled in a roll and as a LUNAR Exalt you can add dice and successes with Excellencies. Consider this for things you won't use often and concentrate your points.

-How do I actually get Moonsilver crafting [can I give myself a high Renown and have one of my Specialties be in Craft moonsilver?]

Crafting (basic) artifacts in moonsilver is as simple as having Craft (fire) 5 and fulfilling various bullshit story requirements like refining your moonsilver by moonlight and other shit like that.

-Would making a Warstrider out of MS make it better handling? or is making superplate out of MS, and being in power armour (equivalent) a better idea? [This current campaign started with some of the PCs getting warstriders of different sizes] I'm not sure exactly how weapons/attacks would work at warstrider scale

Warstriders count as armor for all purposes save the attune time, so a moonsilver Warstrider gets the moonsilver MM bonus of 0 mobility penalty. moonsilver armor also shape shifts with Lunars, so you can be a Badassasaurus Rex if you want. That said I prefer moonsilver superheavy plate since it gives a lot of soak without being huge and clunky, and moonsilver celestial battle armor doesn't do as much for Lunars as it does for the other splats.

-Shapechanging Knacks... should I go for flexibility, and being able to turn into a Tyrant Lizard or Yeddim; or try to crack out my Deadly Beastman transformation's numbers?

Get all the Dex from DBT, it is your god stat.

-[Million Dollar Question] Can I completely side-step the ass backstory about how the shapeshifting Lunars no longer have fluid caste signs? I've been considering this character coming out of seclusion from the First Age only recently (emerging from stasis in their 5* Manse? I've got no idea), and having solved the problem of Wyld-related chimerism via moonsilver nanite implants that create always shifting caste signs (Full, Changing, No; mechanically). It's like having the protection from chimerism, and not being boned b/c of the No Moons blurring out three other castes.
^--and flavourfully, the character was originally of the waning moon (i.e. the "Silver Horned Watcher" aspect of Luna; a woman with a giant mane of hair, two silver horns growing from their head, obviously insane, wielding sickles); personally, I like the juxtaposition of the radical scientist being a follower of the most feral, and insane, of Luna's aspects.

Ask your DM. Seriously. Or just be Casteless, they're Full Moons 3 days/month, No Moons 3 days/month and Changing Moons for the rest. You don't risk chimerism if you don't shapeshift in the Wyld either. This is not a call we can make for you.

Backgrounds:

I'm not really sure what is good; Cult's ability to refresh motes seems useful; Resources always seem good in WW games

Artifact and Manse. Especially Manse. Any Exalt can get Resources 5 with limited effort. Cult isn't very useful past the point where you start getting extra WP back.

If I want to make/repair actually useful stuff; like magical items; which sort of resource is best for that; a flat out 5* crafting manse (the 'bridge' mentioned above)? or is it not worth the time? (we can probably get down time in the future).

A Manse 5 crafting Manse is the best bet, though I would strongly advise against a crafting focus. Lunars have few Craft accelerators, unlike Solars, and they can't make fantasy ingredients out of nothing like Solars can. So what you make is at the whim of your GM.

Also while crafting basic artifacts is easy, as mentioned above, if you use Magitech you will need fucktons of Abilities; 2 dots each in Craft (Air) and (Fire) to begin with, Craft (Magitech) cannot exceed your Lore and all Magitech needs a lot of Occult to craft as well. And as a Lunar you get dick for favored abilities. Enjoy paying out the nose for those dots. You will not be able to make or repair anything better than trinkets as a starting Lunar.

Charms & Knacks:

Finally; which charms and knacks should I be looking into?

There are apparently (from other threads here) perfect Dodge Lunar charms and perfect Soak Lunar charms that are awesome; which ones are they, or where should I look for them?

Perfect dodge is Flowing Body Evasion in Dexterity, perfect party is Beast Spirit Defense under Strength(?), there is no Lunar perfect soak, you just stack piles of regular soak which is nigh-impossible to bypass. It's all under Stamina.

Dex Excellencies are for winning at combat.

The prospect of the Crafting charms (Clay-Wetting Technique) to make moonsilver items seems appealing. Is this a waste of time? One can use XP to 'buy' training after all (honestly, this isn't a new thing in game systems; the Epoch larp which started in the early 90's still uses such a system when a player can't/doesn't want to write a suitable training story for the season's plot head to approve).

You're going to suck at it unless (even if?) you make a Herculean effort at it, which will probably cripple you at anything else. I would fob it off onto an NPC, but this is core to your concept, so I don't have any helpful advice here.

[fectin]

Basically, Lunars suck at crafting. Pretty much any other exalt will be better. IIRC, Lunars can't even build artifact 4 items until Essence 6, and artifact 5 takes essence 7.
Solars get to have nice things, now, by wanting them.
Sidereals are better than you (largely because they get access to the Savant background). Also, they can buy better tools and toys.
Fair Folk are better than you, and have things by wanting them.
Dragon-Blood get better starting packages and support staff, even though they suck.
Abyssals are like Solars with Dragon Blood advantages, and access to Necrotech.
I think even Infernals are better than you (if nothing else, they have Summon Alvuea-> win crafting forever), but I havent read that book in depth.

But yeah. Invest in a time-dilating manse with a gem of perfect mobility. It's probably your best compensation.

Oh, and look into sorcery. The build-a-mook spell is pretty sweet.

Also, Anathema character management is your friend. You want it.

[Judging__Eagle]

Ok, the whole "be an iconoclast Lunar" (i.e. what the Lunars book spells out as being the sort of Lunar Exalt that Luna prefers over status quo ones) got approved.

I can 'say' that I'm a 1st gen Lunar (and get no appreciable benefits aside from having been a witness for the 1st age; and then being mostly out of the loop for the next ~3,000 years in a Stasis/Crafting Manse.

There's a Solar mage-crafter in the group, so this can help him.

The next thing to figure out is a way to get to and from adventures, and this location. Maybe a hearthstone that can teleport/planeshift people?

Maybe that's part of the inherent time/space dilation/contraction of this hypothetical manse?

Also, Anathema character management is your friend. You want it.

Downloaded; I knew that there had to be something better than what the books presented.

[Silent Wayfarer]

The next thing to figure out is a way to get to and from adventures, and this location. Maybe a hearthstone that can teleport/planeshift people?

Maybe that's part of the inherent time/space dilation/contraction of this hypothetical manse?

Canonwise, the closest things to these are

1) Gates of Auspicious Passage, which are Manse 5-based, point to point gateways that work for several minutes after accumulating power for a week. Both ends need to be active and all of them are broken in the Second Age.

2) Travel Without Distance, Celestial Circle spell that teleports you and up to your Essence Magnitude of people your Essence x10 miles. It is useless for ambushes.

3) There's a Manse 5 pet rock which lets you teleport back home once a day or something.

4) There's a 5-dot Artifact which does roughly the same thing.

5) Yet another 5 dot Artifact gives you 1 mile radius teleportation as a misc. action, I believe.

Sorry for the vagueness, but I'm on deployment and AFB. In general, however, teleportation is really difficult in Exalted.

As a Lunar, the fastest way for you to transport people is to get in a moonsilver warstrider, turn into a giant flying animal, pile on the speed boosting knacks and mutations and fly them there. Swift Spirit of Winged Transportation carries a barge of stuff at 200 miles per hour and deposits it wherever you want.

[fectin]

200 MPH is pretty good for Exalted. You can get faster, but it takes some shenanigans. Remember though, that at that speed, it takes 40 hours to go from the top to the bottom of the map.

Hokay. So.
To get creation-wide transportation, especially if you already have a solar crafter, your best option is probably manses. Before getting in to the nuts and bolts of that though, if you want to really supercharge your manses, you'll want to take over The Lap. You probably know that, because you're from the first age. No-one else will. The Lap is in the south, and shows up on the map. It lets you make and unmake demesnes. You can also make manses explode. That is sheer brokenness, even if you don't abuse manse building.

Once you have that, set up a Sidereal 5 demesne near anywhere you'd like to go.

Next up, you'll need your solar to have doubled down on Wonder Forging Genius (Wonders of the Lost Age, p.6). Investing heavily in Wyld Shaping will also help. Uncapped demesnes count as wyld (bordermarches, IIRC), so you can either will up your manse directly (somewhat sketchy, because it stops being uncapped halfway through) or build a small populace dedicated only to the cause of building your manse.

You'll want a Home's Hearth hearthstone ("The stone can transport the bearer and his companions from anyplace in Creation to the manse in the blink of an eye. However, teleportation from the manse is limited to 100 miles’ range.") and at least one purchase of Alternate Locations. That gives you six different 100-mile radii to scatter throughout creation and travel between (takes an hour; once per day). With a little creativity, that cuts your max travel time down to about a day, and also gives you a great escape route. You've got five creation points left. You can spend them on 19 additional locations with a second purchase of Alternate Locations, or on various other manse-y abuses; there's really no wrong choice.

[Quantumboost]

I dunno how one could mechanically talk with Sol or Luna in Exalted!

Prayer is described in Exalted Second Edition, page 132. Gods universally have the innate ability to hear the actual content of individual prayers sent to them, if the Prayer roll is successful.

It's a Charisma+Performance roll, you need 7-(sacrifice Resources value) to be heard. A Charisma Excellency can help with that, as can having enough Resources to reliably spend bunches on a sacrifice. Pick up lots of Performance and you can routinely get Luna's attention, even without the priesthood thing.

[I dunno? Moonsilver Crafting? D:]

I'd imagine specializing in Moonsilver for Craft (fire) is something you could do, yes.

-How do I actually get Moonsilver crafting

If you mean crafting Moonsilver itself from the raw material, it's a second-degree Alchemy ritual (Oanedol's Codex, page 23). This means that you need Occult 2 and either 1 BP (which gets you three procedures) or 1 xp to learn it as a Procedure. If you have Resources 5, you can just have the stuff you need to process the raw material (Resources 4 for reusable equipment, Resources 3 for consumables). You could also light up to 14 motes on fire per pound produced to reduce those costs.

You can, presumably, also get minions who're trained in Occult and the requisite Procedure to do that work, but they'd need Resources instead of Essence.

Making things from Moonsilver is no more or less difficult than making Artifacts from any other Magical Material - you need Craft (appropriate subskill) 3, Occult 3, and Lore 3 to make an Artifact up to three dots. 4- and 5-dot artifacts are, as mentioned, out of reach for you until you're over a century old as a Lunar.

If I want to make/repair actually useful stuff; like magical items; which sort of resource is best for that; a flat out 5* crafting manse (the 'bridge' mentioned above)? or is it not worth the time? (we can probably get down time in the future).

Since you're playing a First Age Holdover, try to get the Savant background. It effectively lets you repair/operate First Age tech as if your Lore/Occult/Craft were higher, and can easily overcome the "more than 5 dots" requirements for high-Repair magitech.

Doesn't do much for actually making the stuff though.


I don't really know much about Lunars specifically, they've never really stoked my interest that much, so I can't talk about their Charms and whatnot. Everyone else's ideas so far look solid. TURN INTO A JET.

[Judging__Eagle]

"TURN INTO A JET."

well.... yeah.

The idea was more like Dino-blasters; but being a Roc analog with the ability to lug around giant laser guns; drop a cluster of 10m long iron poles from high altitudes; or w/e, is also a good idea.

Thanks a lot for the other pointers Quantumboost;

It's not that I can't find these details; it's that I've been going over the pages of the PDFs other players have to figure out what I can/can't do within this system/setting; and the things I want to find are just squirreled away among the reams of mostly useless text.