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In Short

On the downside, a lot of the information presented here is very basic. The capabilities of the various Exalted are likely to be replaced by future products. Those who already own the 1E “fatsplats” know everything that is presented here and could likely do just as well with a rough guess at how older charms translate to 2nd edition.

Newcomers to Exalted will find this to be an excellent book for quickly creating and understanding other types of Exalted, though only in the form of a rough outline.

The Physical Thing

The Ideas

The Appendix contains complete rules for the Mandate of Heaven mini-game, which plays in a similar manner to normal Exalted combat but between geopolitical entities. This could be anything from warring boroughs to political maneuvering between empires. The system is easy and fun, though I wish there were even more options.

Under the Cover

This is just a very basic introduction to the book, laying out what each chapter will cover. Frankly, it’s wasted space as the chapter titles themselves are self explanatory.

Chapter One The Dragon-Blooded 35 pages.

Chapter Two The Lunar Exalted 22 pages.

Chapter Three The Sidereal Exalted 20 pages.

Chapter Four The Abyssal Exalted 36 pages.

I’m going to discuss all four of these chapters as a clump, because the way they go about presenting material is exactly the same. The chapter starts off discussing each type of Exalted in general terms. For those that don’t know, the Dragon Blooded are the Terrestrial Exalted. They are the weakest individual Exalted, but the most numerous and currently in control of much of the world. The Lunar Exalted have an anthropormorphic flair – they’re beast people who once worked with the Solars in running Creation but now live in the fringe of civilization. Natural shapeshifters and tricksters, their abilities are a mix of fury and deception.

The Sidereal Exalted manipulate destiny and work behind the scenes of the Exalted universe. Their abilities focus on altering fate and subtly guiding Creation. Finally, the Abyssal Exalted are spawned from darkness and dread. Each serves a powerful immortal master, and spreads suffering wherever they tread. Their abilities focus strongly on the undead.

The actual overview of each Exalted type is brief – between two and five pages. While those familiar with Exalted wont read anything new here, the overview serves as a helpful reminder for each type of Exalted. A GM who hasn’t touched Lunar Exalted for a long time might forget that his Lunar NPC should have a tell indicating she is something more than human. As a GM tool to speed NPC creation and the like it’s very nice.

Next, example NPCs are presented. Each group gets about five NPCs. These NPCs are archetypes focused around a given Caste, moon type, or other distinguishing classification for that type of Exalted. They’re pre-statted in compact stat blocks clearly meant to be used as plug and play NPCs. Once again, for a GM who just needs some general NPC stats this works great and can be a very useful resource.

The entire rest of the book is composed of compact charms for use with other Exalted types. There’s not enough meat here to actually play these other types of Exalted, but as a resource for Storytellers who need flavorful charms for the NPCs they just created it works just fine. Let me give you two examples to get a flavor for it.

Here’s an Abyssal Charm, note the simple format meant to make it easy for the Storyteller to just pick up and use. Piercing Ghost Barb Cost: 6m, 1wp Type: Simple Duration: Instant Combo: Yes Minimum Ability: Archery 5 Minimum Essence: 3 Effect: Speed 4, DV -2. The Abyssal fires a ghostly arrow that ignores unmoving solid matter, ignores armor and may hit dematerialized spirits.

Here’s a Sidereal Bureaucracy Charm End Debate Cost: 10m, 1wp, 1hl Type: Simple Duration: Instant Combo: No Minimum Ability: Bureaucracy 5 Minimum Essence: 3 Effect: Prayer strip Charm. This Charm instantly ends any debate process, forcing a vote or the dropping of the subject, as appropriate. Alternately, the Sidereal may cause any bureaucratic process to be stopped cold (requires a successful [Intelligence + Bureaucracy] roll, difficulty [Sidereal’s Essence x2] to restart it). Finally, the Sidereal’s player may instead roll (Strength + Bureaucracy+, difficulty (target’s Essence), to use this Charm to impose the effects of Icy Hand permanently. The Sidereal may always use Temperance with this Charm.

That’s it, the book is mostly full of abbreviated Charms just like these. Plug them into the example NPCs and you’re set. The only real problem I see is matching up prerequisites to the NPCs, but I suspect that once a Storyteller gets familiar with this book and the Charms in it they’ll have no problems.

Chapter Five The Solar Exalted 9 pages.

The first question that pops into everyone’s mind is “Why is this here?” It’s here to help the Storyteller quickly build NPCs. An example Solar of each Caste is presented along with a long list of Charm packages to choose from. Has the Solar been living in the forests to the East? Take the Anti-Wyld package! Does she use a bow? Take the Archery 1 package! Simple, helpful, and another great Storyteller aid.

Appendix The Mandate of Heaven 26 pages.

This is a complete rules system that allows players or characters to take control of a geopolitical body and guide it’s faith. On a basic level the rules are meant to allow players to exert control over crafting their Exalted saga. The Dominion they are in might suffer from drought, corruption, or any other sort of problem based on what happens during the Mandate of Heaven round. Next Exalted session the characters will be faced with that problem.

This mini-game is meant to be played during normal session downtime in increments based upon the pace of events in a campaign. This means it could be played after just about every session or only once or twice in an entire campaign.

There are two big benefits to this mini-game. First, it gives players a sense of really changing the world. Second, it allows players to show the Storyteller exactly what sort of Exalted games they want to play by using rules that turn a Mandate of Heaven round into an Exalted game session. All that, and it’s fun. Unfortunately, there are some internal mechanical problems that make me really question whether the Mandate of Heaven game will turn out as described.

Here’s how it works. One or more Dominions are created depending on what region the game is focusing on, how many Dominions the players can control, and other such factors. Each Dominion has Attributes, Skills, and Virtues very similar to those of a player character. Depending upon the Magnitude (read it as Level or Power) of the Dominion it gets a certain number of points to allocate to all three of these categories. The attributes are Military, Culture, and Government. The skills are all the appropriate character skills, such as Bureaucracy and War. The Virtues are the same as the normal Exalted Virtues.

The Dominion’s rating in its Attributes and Skills is meant to reflect the actual Dominion itself. So a Dominion with a high War but low Government and Culture could be a bumbling, inefficient bureaucracy whose citizens are all too busy repairing and operating a couple of First Age Magitech cannons to do anything else. Or it could be a new dictatorship that largely allows anarchy to reign in day to day life, but maintains a strong military through fear and intimidation of its own citizens.

Dominions have Virtues, and while that seems strange at first it works very well. The Virtues represent the culture and ideas of that Dominion. The Dominion also has a Virtue Flaw, and gains Limit. The whole combat system is creating events for your opponents Dominion to try and deal with. When they ignore those events (ie, they can’t deal with them) then they quickly start to gain Limit. When Limit reaches 10 society starts to break down and majorly bad stuff happens. The kind of majorly bad stuff that results in a fun Exalted session.

So, this is effectively a simpler version of normal Exalted combat complete with attributes, skills, and virtues. The book even has a number of Charm-like actions for the Dominions to perform, complete with unnecessarily complex names. On the whole this seems like a fun way to handle geopolitical entities competing with one another during the course of a campaign, and I’d definitely use these rules if I was going to run a longer term Exalted game set in a single area.

Players can spin these rounds of Dominion conflict into actual Exalted sessions. If a PC is controlling the events of a Dominion (rules are given for their doing this) then if the use a stunt on an action and spend 30 motes of their essence and 3 Willpower they can turn the stunt into an Exalted game session. The rules, unfortunately, are conflicted about whether this is an actual game session or just a scene’s worth of play. 30 motes and 3 Willpower is a pretty hefty price to pay for spinning a game session into existence, and for a scene worth of play it seems like a harsh cost. Further, I don’t see how this is even feasible unless the Dominion mini-game is handled at the very start of a gaming session. Otherwise there is no time. Besides, even if a GM promises to do it “next time” the Dominion events are meant to be incorporated into the normal campaign anyway. While spinning a Mandate turn into a game session is a neat idea offering more character control, it just isn’t implemented well.

There's a little bit more to Mandate of Heaven play than i'm going into here. PCs can substitute their capabilities for certain Dominion abilities at times, Dominions can stunt, and Dominions have their own Willpower to work with. I hope you have the flavor of it though. It looks like a lot of fun to play with an interested group, and those already familiar with Exalteds mechanics will take to it easily.

My Take

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