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Appearance The book is a massive tome with 400 pages of glossy paper and full color illustrations. The cover consists of a wrap around image with the five signature characters displayed on the cover. The characters, logo and red banner all stand out from the background as they have a glossy coating. On the end papers are a map of Creation showing major locations and, unlike the 1st edition, a scale. The beginning of the book has an eight page comic and each chapter has a two page full color comic narrating a scene from Creation while not being directly related to the chapter's topic. These comics replace short pieces of fiction from the first edition. This The chapters themselves are well laid out with a good text density. Within each chapter there are numerous text boxes highlighting important concepts that would pehaps be lost in the text. The artwork is of a very consistant quality and has a generally manga feel to it.
Setting Exalted is a post apocalyptic world set 750 years after the fall of a decadent magical transhumanist empire. The chapter begins with an overview of the history of Creation beginning with its formation by the Primordials. These ur-gods were overthrown by the Incarnae, the current gods of the setting, when the Incarnae used the Celestial Exalted as their army. A curse was placed on the Celestial Exalted by the Primordials resulting in greater and greater excesses by them until the Terrestrial Exalted rose up in rebellion and overthrew the Celestial rulers. The Terrestrials took over Creation and have ruled it with varying degrees of success to this day. Most of Creation has a quasi Asian feel to it making it significantly different than most other fantasy role playing games, and while there are European elements they are taken from non-medieval sources. A drawback to the setting chapter is that the history of the setting is recounted in a factual manner, while in subsequent Manuals of Exalted Power which are written from the point of view of the specific Exalted, the vilification of certain Exalted types is heavily ingrained.
While in many fantasy games the magic systems is either hand waved or the designer uses real world science to describe it, the metaphysical system of Creation is integral to the setting of Exalted. Everything in the world is made up of motes of Essence which are aligned and influenced by the five elements: Air, Fire, Wood, Water, and Earth. These elements directly influence the setting as they exist at the edges of a flat world, with the element of Earth at the center, and as one moves from the center of the world the influence of the element grows until the physical world dissolves into the pure element. Another significant departure from typical fantasy RPGs in the use of a heaven based on East Asian examples, rather than a small pantheon of omnipotent deities, where two huge bureaucracies run Creation and are staffed by very human acting gods.
A considerable section of the chapter discusses the Scarlet Empire of the Terrestrial Exalted. This is the single largest nation, and nominal antagonist, in the setting. The four other directions in Creation are discussed as well examining general geography, appearance of residents, and politics. More detail is given on the Scavenger Lands, which is where initial games are assumed to be set, discussing the megalopolis Nexus and surrounding cities.
The main inspiration for the second edition does seem to lean more towards the manga end of the scale. This is an improvement over the pervious edition in that the tone does not vary quite as much from gritty Howardian to high powered anime fantasy. The inspirational materials section is still replete with non-anime and manga sources ranging from epic poems to more recent fantasy novels.
Characters Characters in Exalted are the Solar Exalted. These were the rulers of the now fallen empire and have been magically imprisoned for nearly 1000 years. The prison has been broken and the souls of the Solars have been released to inhabit mortals. The Solars are divided into castes based on the role they fulfilled in their empire. The Dawn caste are the warriors and generals, the Zenith are the politicians and priests, the Twilight are the sorcerers and engineers, the Night are the spies and enforcers, and the Eclipse are the diplomats and censors.
In addition to attributes and abilities, Exalted characters have Virtues and Motivations. The motivation is an epic goal a character wishes to accomplish and they can regain willpower based on acting towards fulfilling that motivation. Virtues are a personality mechanic in which four virtues are rated and can lend dice to certain actions. They also can compel certain actions depending on the strength of each Virtue. For example, a high Compassion score could compel a character to free slaves and resisting these impulses can cause temporary insanity in the form of a Limit Break, where the character acts in a certain manner depending on his highest rated Virtue.
To a degree Exalted suffers from a common design theme in White Wolf games of characters having supernatural powers, their use entails negative consequences. In Exalted, this is the result of the Terrestrial Exalted spreading negative propaganda about the Solars. The default area of Creation where games take place is not directly ruled by the Terrestrials thereby allowing the characters a bit more freedom in using their powers.
System The task resolution system for Exalted is a fairly typical dice pool mechanic of attribute plus ability. Taking lessons learned from 1e, in second edition 10s give two successes, and botches only occur if no successes are rolled and a 1 is showing. This dice pool can be modified in two primary ways. The first is in the application of bonuses which can come from several different sources. Two of the most common ways to increase a dice pool are through the use of Charms (more on those later) and stunts. Stunts are where the player describes their character’s action in an evocative manner and the Storyteller then awards bonus dice. The second is through penalties which are in the form of internal and external penalties. Internal penalties subtract dice from a player’s pool and external penalties subtract successes from the roll.
Charms are the primary magical powers of the Solar Exalted. These powers are divided by ability and provide different types of enhancements. Once again White Wolf took lessons learned from the first edition and modified the mechanics and organization of Charms. In the first edition each of the 25 abilities had Charms that were mechanically identical but had different names, increasing the number of items to be looked up. In this edition, all of the Charms with the same mechanical effects were unified in nomenclature, called Excellencies, making the Charm trees much simpler. In addition to consolidating the Excellencies, some “speed bump” Charms were removed, or merged with other Charms, as well. An additional level of complexity in Charms is added by the Combo mechanic. Without a Combo, only one Charm can be used per action, but with a Combo Charms can be combined, allowing multiple Charms to be used. An oddity of organization occurs in the Charm chapter with a very informative section on combat tactics, required reading for any Storyteller or new Exalted player, buried in between the Charm descriptions and the Sorcery section. There is no reference to it in the Combat chapter, where this reviewer feels that it belonged.
Physical combat is broken up into ten steps. After initial initiative is determined play progresses in a variable way. Each action taken in combat has an associated speed which then determines when the character acts next. A light fast warrior can attack more often than a heavy slow one with the trade off being the lighter attacks do less damage. A list of actions is provided with their associated speeds and DV penalties. An attack is divided into ten steps, some of which are not resolved in every attack. These steps in most attacks blur together in a logical progression and only really come to the fore when the timing of specific Charms come into play.
Social combat uses the same mechanics of physical combat with only slight variations.
Mass combat uses the same mechanics as well. Units, generally, add dice to their commander’s pools.
In Play This playtest review is based on an eight session game I ran with experienced players who were new to Exalted. The game I ran was loosely based on the scenario, “Spirit Exiles of the Western Ocean,” in the first edition book, Time of Tumult.
Overall the game went very well. Character creation ran fairly smoothly and was helped greatly by the inclusion of the creation summary guide on pages 84-85. It took quite a while to create characters but it was less time than to make characters for another system heavy game, D&D 3.5. Most of the time in generating characters was spent with the players asking questions as to how mechanics worked and how to build competent characters. During the first couple of session this reviewer allowed players to redistribute points as the group discovered what worked and what didn’t so to better match their character concept.
The first session included some combat which proved to be a bit confusing. The main problem we ran into was tracking initiative. For the first combat we tried the dice method which consisted of setting a die to the speed of the action and ticking backwards to zero. This caused all sorts of confusion for both me and the rest of the group. For the next combat we tried the column method mentioned in the book and found that was slow as well. Then along came the fan created battle wheel, which White Wolf, quickly adopted. This is a graphical representation where players move counters around the wheel. We used a fan created one with separate rings to track DV penalties as well. The use of the battle wheel was a huge time saver for our group and has lent tactical depth to the game as players can see when other combatants act and can plan accordingly.
Charms were easily grasped by the group. Some of the players went fairly in depth into the Charm trees while others stayed mostly with Excellencies at character creation. Now after the conclusion of the chapter all of the players have seen the benefits of Combos and most of them have at least two or three Combos. In addition to Charms our group found that Sorcery is very potent and is well balanced by the cost to learn and use compared to Charms.
Social combat was never used in our game even though half of the game was spent in social situations, and many of them would have been valid uses of social combat according to the boxed text on page 170. These situations were simply role played out without using dice as this reviewer felt it would hinder actual dialog. After further reading of the social combat section, specifically the social stunts boxed text on page 173. This reviewer now feels comfortable enough to incorporate social combat without invalidating actual dialog in the encounter.
Summary Exalted is an excellent example of an epic high fantasy role playing game and the second edition has come a long way and addressed many of the problems inherent in the first. Utilizing a different set of starting assumptions and inspirations White Wolf has managed to produce a game that takes a fresh look at epic fantasy. While there are many quality supplements available for Exalted a very enjoyable game can be had with just the core book.
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