Exalted: The Dragon Blooded is a 296 page hardcover book detailing the Realm and Dragon Blooded Exalted. It is roughly evenly divided between setting information and new rules, with the former at the front and the latter at the back, consisting primarily of new charms. Dragon Blooded is an expansion for Exalted, and does not contain all of the rules needed to play.
Appearance:
Although appearance is subjective, the cover of Exalted: The Dragon Blooded is in my opinion the best of the line so far. It is burgundy in color, with two darker bands containing Dragon Blooded symbols on the top and bottom, and a lighter band displaying signature DB characters as Exalted did with Harmonious Jade, Dace, Swan, and other notable Solars on the core rulebook. In the center is a stern looking water-aspected Dragon Blood who is glossier than the background. On the inside of the covers, both front and back, is a map of the Blessed Isle which provides much more detail than can be seen on the main Exalted map in the core book.
The art on the inside is consistent with the core rulebook, black and white drawings mostly consisting of tall pictures which take up half a page vertically and wide pictures that take up half a page horizontally. I like the art contained in this book, although I suspect if you dislike the artwork of the Exalted line so far this book won’t make you change your mind. The pictures in general provide a good impression of what a Dragon Blooded might be wearing in public, in combat, and in a formal setting such as school; I especially liked some of the pictures of the younger Dragon Blooded, (p. 104, 112, 126, 130) as well as the pictures representing an example of a Dragon Blooded of each aspect. (p. 164-172)
The font is laid out in the two-column format with bold headings of various sizes to denote settings and black and gray side boxes for important information that doesn’t fit in the flow of the writing and notes to the reader.
Content:
Dragon Blooded is divided into seven chapters, the first two of which cover useful setting information and the last five of which are more oriented on rules and charms, although there is some overlap; the Martial Arts section, for example, contains a section on training with the Immaculate order and the Storytelling section as always contains content that could be better described as advice than rules.
Chapter 1: Setting
The setting chapter opens with a history of the Dragon-Blooded empire up to five years after the Empress disappears. Although it does not explicitly state where the Empress disappears to this can actually be divined from one of the short fiction introductions that preface each chapter. The history is reasonably plausible and a pretty interesting read. Among other things it manages to paint a reasonably sympathetic picture of the Empress and the Realm as a whole, which is useful if you aren’t planning on using the Realm as a generic “evil empire” for your game. The history also explains why the Realm has been falling apart of late; basically, political decisions made by the Empress to form the realm and preserve it created a very inefficient government that was mostly held together by the direction provided by an absolute despot. Now that the Empress is gone, everything bad about the system is getting worse and the uncertain political climate is destabilizing with no clear leader. About two pages after the history ends there is a timeline, ala the one in Scavenger Sons, that takes up two-thirds of two pages.
After the history comes a section on the Realm itself, covering many aspects of life including clothing, slavery, the legal system, and a brief passage on each major region of the Realm. Although none of the regional descriptions are enough to run an adventure in without major fleshing out, there’s enough information that you can answer basic questions the players might have and have something to work with if they surprise the storyteller by traveling there.
Each major branch of the government is also described in this chapter, including the Ministry (a really ineffective parliament), the Legions, the Immaculate Order, the All Seeing Eye (the DB intelligence agency), and the Deliberative. (the law making body) Although it’s hardly key to the chapter I found the fact that debates in the Deliberative sometimes degrade into brawls rather amusing, especially when it was noted that the guards generally let the brawls resolve themselves instead of intervening due to the risks involved in getting in the middle of a huge mass of fighting Dragon Blooded.
There’s a lot to cover in this chapter, and to a certain extent that can be a disadvantage to a storyteller simply because it makes pulling out information quickly difficult. It can also be very dry reading; the material covered often doesn’t lend itself to being especially exciting, although Dragon Blooded politics can be rather interesting at times. On the other hand, there’s no shortage of material to work with; there is a lot of good solid content packed within the first 80 pages of the book and if you’re running a game in the Blessed Isle it can be extremely useful.
Chapter 2: The Dragon-Blooded
Chapter 2 focuses on the Realm from the perspective of the Dragon Blooded. It opens with a description of each house, essentially an extended version of the one provided in the core rulebook. Each house receives about a page and a half covering their current status politically and economically, where they are going, and a list of important individuals within the house. For Dragon Blooded players, the bloodlines and major people sections could be especially useful in determining where you stand.
After the house summaries comes a section on what life and society is like for the Dragon Blooded of the realm. There’s information here for Dragon Blooded of all ages, ranging from school life to marriage to retirement. The sections on schooling and on sorcerers in society are especially large, and after reading this chapter I couldn’t help but feel an urge to run a campaign of school aged DB children; the storyteller’s chapter later on even provides rules for dealing with younger characters.
Chapter 3: Character Creation
If you’ve seen the Character Creation section of the core rulebook, there’s not much to be said about this one; it’s a short (8 pages) section that provides a step-by-step guide to making a DB character. Dragon Blooded get fewer attribute points, favored abilities, and charms compared to Solars but significantly more backgrounds. (12 points!) One thing of note to Exalted players is that, although non-Dynasty DB only receive the standard 25 points of abilities, Dynasty DB start with an amazing 35 points of abilities to distribute. Dynasty characters also have certain minimums in some attributes common to the Dragon Blooded, to represent the martial and social focus of the Realm.
The extra abilities and backgrounds make the Dragon Blooded reasonably powerful in their own rights, although compared to Solars they still have pathetic essence pools, fewer charms, and weaker charms than the Solars.
Chapter 4: Traits
The Traits chapter contains descriptions for the backgrounds that are different for Dragon Blooded than they are for Solars, interesting rules that make the DB anima harm nearby individuals when they flare and for a spell that lets a circle “bond” together for increased capabilities, and a two page section on aspect along the lines of the core book’s section for each Solar caste.
Many of the Dragon Blooded backgrounds are stronger than the equivalent Solar backgrounds; a Solar with 5 points in followers, for example, will begin with 100 followers where as a Dragon Blooded with 5 points of command begins with 500 soldiers under his command. The Dragon Blooded also begin with significantly more artifacts than Solars. To help offset their smaller essence pool there is a background called Breeding, which increases a player’s essence pool, with the side effects of making the anima more readily flare and increasing the chance of the character’s offspring of being Exalted at high levels. The social/familial backgrounds (reputation, breeding, family, command) do a very good job of letting a player determine where his character fits within the society of the Realm.
Chapter 5: Charms
There are a lot of charms in this section, which weighs in at 50 pages. Every ability comes with 5-8 charms, averaging around 7 per charm. The Dragon Blooded charms are very martial in nature and have several charms that help give their followers a share of their capabilities or provide support; for example, one archery charm lets a Dragon Blooded shield his compatriots from ranged fire by shooting a wave of arrows that intercept any incoming missiles. Even abilities that are not necessarily military in nature have several charms that are useful in combat; for example, lore lets a character shoot bolts or bursts of elemental energy, awareness has charms that can decrease someone’s senses or make their charms more effective, and performance has a charm that can give a group defense against magical mental attacks and ranged attacks.
Although they are generally weaker in raw capability, many of the Dragon Blooded charms are surprisingly effective for their cost. One archery charm, for example, permits the attacker to fire up to his permanent essence in arrows per round, at the cost of one mote per extra arrow. This permits a DB with a permanent essence of 3 to make 3 attacks for 2 motes; a Solar attempting the same feat with Trance of Unhesitating Speed would pay 10 motes for such a feat. (note, however that Trance has no limit to the number of arrows fired, although the cost increases rapidly) In this case, however, the high cost Dragon Bloods pay to raise their permanent essence keeps this feat under control; other charms generally have smaller effects or are more expensive.
Also of note is the fact that Dragon Blooded can activate Reflexive charms on the same turn as other charms without a combo, making them much more capable of defending and attacking simultaneously. On the down side, Dragon Blooded using a charm of an ability attuned to an element other than their own suffer a one mote penalty cost in addition to the normal charm costs.
Thankfully, the “spend motes to re-roll” charms are reasonably few, even if they do exist; after reading the Storyteller’s Companion I was afraid that this would only exaggerate the problem Exalted has with large quantities of die rolling interrupting play. There’re a lot of cool charms in here and no ability gets shorted in charms.
Chapter 6: Martial Arts
Martial Arts covers the Five Glorious Dragon Paths, the martial arts of the Immaculate order. Each path (one per element) comes with a description of the training involved, a signature weapon that receives certain bonuses when used with the style, and an 11-13 charm long tree of very powerful martial arts charms.
Each Martial Arts tree is associated with it’s own element instead of Earth, the element of Martial Arts, so it can be used by non-Earth aspected Dragon Bloods without the non attuned element penalty. Dragon Blooded are encouraged to study their own element’s martial arts tree by paying the out-of-attunement penalty for all charms including their own elements if they follow another path before completely finishing their own tree, but it is possible for them to follow any path they wish. One important aspect of completing a path is that completing it trains the Dragon Blooded in the use of that element to the extent that if they complete an elemental path of an element other than their own, they can use charms of abilities associated with that element without the one mote penalty.
This section also explains that martial arts charms are universal; a Solar could use the elemental martial arts here and a Dragon Blooded could use the Snake or Tiger martial arts of the core book and Caste Book: Dawn, although a trainer is usually required. I don’t quite understand why animal martial arts are the domain of Solars instead of Lunars, but irregardless this expands the number of styles available for martial artists quite a bit. Dragon Blooded martial artists can be very deadly indeed, but thankfully the Immaculate charms cost more experience to advance than the standard ones so Immaculate players won’t rapidly surpass other DBs in combat ability.
Chapter 7: Storytelling
The storytelling section provides advice for the storyteller regarding running a DB campaign; how useful this will be depends entirely on the storyteller. Also included are the rules for the optional “family” background, really useful answers to some common questions (how long Terrestrials live, for example), rules for running a multigenerational game (tricky, but a really cool concept), and rules for playing Dragon Blooded children.
Misc
In addition to the contents already described, Dragon Blooded contains the usual opening fiction, a short chunk of story at the start of each chapter, the map of the Blessed Isle, a character sheet and index, and a one-page advertisement for the next product to be released. Although I personally don’t feel strongly about the fictions in WW books in general, several of the ones in this did include juicy bits about the sudden resurgence of the Solars and what’s up with the Scarlet Empress which I rather liked, although I wish they’d just told me outright in the storyteller section of either this book, the core book, or the Storyteller’s Companion.
Conclusion
On the whole, I’m pleased with Exalted: The Dragon Blooded. If your campaign isn’t actually running in the Blessed Isle much of the material won’t be of immediate use, but it will give the storyteller a much better understanding of who the Dragon Blooded are. Dragon Blooded also provides a storyteller or player with lots and lots of DB charms, which is likely to be extremely useful given that the Dragon Blooded are the most common of the Exalted. It won’t provide a storyteller with adventures like Time of Tumult did or provide the juicy plot hooks and detailed locations of Scavenger Sons, but for players playing a Dragon Blooded or storytellers wanting to flesh out the Dragon Blooded, run a campaign in the Blessed Isle, or looking for Dragon Blooded Charms it is invaluable.
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