DrLovemonkey's Holistic Lunar Review

[DrLoveMonkey]

Hey all! DrLoveMonkey here! Last time we had a big exalted kickstarter, I wrote this*. Because Dragonblooded have, over the years, become my favourite splat of Exalted, even as my appreciation for all of them grew. It started out analyzing combat differences between Solars and DBs and it became a thread reviewing DBs in general and particularly contrasting them with Solars. Why would you want to play a weaker exalt basically. Over the course of that thread people seemed to appreciate it, summarizing the different abilities and the elements, their personalities. Fire aspects being powerful but fragile if they started losing, ect. It makes it easier to read through the charms yourself when you do go through them, and gives you inspiration for your characters, I think anyway.

I got some requests to do that again when Lunars/Realm came out. So here it is. I'm going to break things down into headings because I feel it helps people absorb information and it makes it clearer to read in general. I'm also very open to being corrected, love to fix any mistakes, and I'm open to discussion, but if it starts to pollute the thread TOO much, I will ask people to take it elsewhere.

This guide is both for new players just getting into Exalted, and wanting to know what the deal is with Lunars, as well as veteran players getting into 3e Lunars who want a summary of their changes and what's dope about them. (Hint: it's a lot. A lot is dope.)


Housekeeping

First let me do some housekeeping, as it were. THIS thread, thank you Sunder, made me realize something. Playing Exalted almost weekly for very nearly most of my memorable life, I entered that previous thread with a lot of assumptions. Without realizing it I had gone from my first Wyld Hunt to a scarred old vet of many sessions where I saw beloved characters die and some players literally flip tables in frustration with Solar mechanics. Many with literal cheers and punches to the ceiling in triumph as well. Either way though, I went into that analysis with an idea that I knew Solars were still going to be totally unstoppable in any way if they wanted to be, even from chargen. I kind of came around, but not enough, my hidden biases were still stopping me from seeing the full picture.

I gave a very favourable, although I think understandable, reading to Thunderbolt Attack Prana, I assumed for some strange reason that 5 Essence 5 master Dragonblooded hunters wouldn't have taken any ox-bodies, and that among many other things is just stupid. I started coming around at the end but I don't think I ever really admitted that. With 3e mechanics even BS fully optimized Solars aren't invincible out of the gate. So thank you, again, to the developers that made this system and this setting happen, and for letting my old prejudices die so that the new generation of terrestrials doesn't have to have that same feeling of helplessness. Speaking of...

Why Wouldn't You Want to Play a Lunar?

We're actually going to start this thread off VERY strangely, with a little clip of why you would wan't to play Solars or DBs! Because I realized in my last thread that I was kind of making all these contrasts with Solar charms that kind of just made it seem like "Dragonblooded charms are awesome! Fuck yeah! Solars suck!" and that is not my intention here, nor was it really there. I think. So before we dump on the two exalted we have, lets see why we'd still want to play them.

One reason is that, being ability exalted, their charms are just different, in cool ways. Lunars won't have a whole tree of charms to be an expert archer, you still CAN be an expert archer, but your really specific bow and arrow tricks won't be nearly as prominent there as in the ability exalted trees. No arrows bursting into trees because there's no guarantee that the Lunar will even be using a ranged attack with a lot of charms, much less an arrow. So that's a fun concept you can lean into with other exalts that you can't with Attribute ones.

Solars are super cool, especially now. Before a lot of their charms, to me, seemed just a bit bland, because of the kind of less flashy nature of their powers. Apart from a few instances of summoning sunfire, their ability to get huge dice and attempt impossible feats wasn't doing it for me so much as I might have liked, I think. Then came the Lunars and the DBs, and suddenly the Solars power got put into a new light. There IS no Dragonblooded version of Nine Aeons Thew, there isn't even a Lunar one, and the Solars can get it off of character gen. Their ability for a starting Solar to easily rip a house-sized boulder out of the ground and hurl it at a skyship is a power that is uniquely Solar.

From a story standpoint Solars also represent ultimate freedom. No setting constraints on background or giant institutions that pressure you to join up. Apart from the Cult of the Illuminated..kinda. You can be anyone, from anywhere, who does anything.

Dragonblooded, on the other hand, might not have that same power, but they have very cool an unique powers nonetheless. Their iconic elemental manipulation and teamwork themes make for characters who are more closely integrated into their environment, and nobody has a giant culture of people who are likely MORE powerful than your starting PCs like the DBs have. They also have a power scale that I think makes a lot of their problems more interesting and challenging for smart players who want to feel really engaged.

Okay, so we got all that? Let's dump on it now by talking about how friggin awesome Lunars are.

Attribute Exalted

Lunar Exalted are what's called Attribute based exalted. This means that instead of basing charms off of their ability values, they base it of of their attribute values, and that, in turn, changes everything. For one, there's only 9 attributes, and 25 abilities, which means that, all things being equal, each attribute covers almost 3 times as much as an ability. So that means that they have 3 times the number of charms in each attribute as other exalts have in an ability right? Nope, not really. Actually what's way more common is that their charms just do 3 times as much.

Take their decisive multi-attack charm for one, Octopus and Spider Barrage. It lets you do up to 5 decisive attacks, based on essence, and even switch between abilities for each attack! Comparing that to the Solar decisive multi-attack...well...which one? Brawl and Melee have kind of similar ones, Martial Arts is all over the place, and Thrown and Archery don't have anything comparable. Dragonblooded even less so. So a Lunar can do with OaSB in Archery or Thrown or even MA something that Solars and DBs just can't, and then they turn around and do it for Brawl and Melee just for fun.

This diversity in power, and wide applicability is HUGE and shows up all over the Lunar charmset as, I think, their greatest strength. Forget shapeshifting, shapeshifting is just an aspect of this broad power expressed in it's own special way. Lunar spearfighter loses her spear? No worries, hands are almost as good. The foe takes to the air? Whatever, pick up a bow, the charms work there too. Don't have a bow? Throw the spear then. The freedom to pick isn't absolutely limitless, but because the Lunars don't even use abilities for their excellency caps, the absolute most you're losing is 5 dice, and likely closer to 3.

This is especially true because even their excellencies are exclusively attribute based. Either adding up to (Attribute) dice or (Attribute + Other-Attribute) with a proper stunt. So any ability that you have less than 5 dots in is really not losing you many dice in comparison to your pool. Going with a fully maxed out mundane light attack on a 3 dot ability vs a 5 dot one is going from 24 dice to 22, that's hardly anything.

Character Freedom

This freedom is almost mind-boggling coming from an ability exalt. Do you defend yourself with evasion most but get hit with an undodgeable attack? Who cares! Your parry is almost as good anyway!

It doesn't just give you freedom within your character creation though, it gives you freedom to change your character on the fly. A bit anyway. Say you're a Full Moon Lunar and you are a sneaky stealth archer, you hide in the shadows at the edge of a forest and pepper Realm caravans with lightning fast ambushes. Then let's say you've been playing this character for a while and you really kind of like the idea of just getting in there and mixing it up with a pair of daggers instead. As a Solar or a DB you'd either have to start trucking down a path of huge xp investment, or change characters, or just wistfully imagine how cool it would be. For a Lunar that's like, maybe 9xp, which can be Lunar xp, and bam, you're ready to go mix it up in melee. Happy hunting you newborn master of all things blade.

It's totally pervasive, every charm purchase, every attribute dot increase, makes you better in a thousand different ways. The only time you would ever need to diversify your investment, or make a new character, is if you wanted to be good at talking, or thinking, instead of fighting. Even then unless you really wanted to be mega good at talking it wouldn't take much investment to be awesome at it.


Unfortunately this post is already so long that most people probably won't read it, so I need to stop before talking about Shapeshifting and get into a little more numbers. After that I'll go down each road of say, Influence or Heart's Blood, or War, and see how they do each compared to the other exalted. It's going to be a big chunk each time so it'll take a while between posts, but hopefully this can help out aspiring Lunars as well as some older Shahan-yas. This thread is not starting out nearly as focused as the last one but maybe that's fitting? Hopefully it isn't MUCH worse anyway.



*Check it out if you're interested, but read the "housekeeping" section in this post before you do.

[Sunder the Gold]

Speaking more about why you wouldn’t want to play a Lunar...

I spoke about this in another thread, but the powers of the Lunar Exalted are fundamentally transgressive and dishonest in a way I’m not always comfortable with.

That’s a good thing! It sets them apart and accentuates their unique experience and themes, and provides an important contrast to the dishonesty of the Sidereals and the transgressiveness of the Abyssals and Infernals.

It makes the Solar Exalted more distinct. I appreciate the Solar Exalted even more now for being fundamentally more forthright in their powers, and how much easier they can be heroic while being sincerely themselves.

And of course I love the Terrestrial Exalted for being humbler, easier to challenge, more society/brotherhood oriented, hereditary and dynastic, fathers passing down legacies to sons, and balancing five different elemental powers.

Now that the Lunar Exalted are finally a properly defined thing, I more fully appreciate all three splats. The Lunars were a painfully missing contrast in previous editions.

The Lunars aren’t everything I’m ever going to want, and that’s good, because they can’t be everything without becoming nothing. Now they provide what Solars and Dragon-Blooded can’t while enhancing Solars and Dragon-Blooded by their inability to be either of them in return.

[Isator Levi]

Lunar Exalted are what's called Attribute based exalted. This means that instead of basing charms off of their ability values, they base it of of their attribute values, and that, in turn, changes everything. For one, there's only 9 attributes, and 25 abilities, which means that, all things being equal, each attribute covers almost 3 times as much as an ability. So that means that they have 3 times the number of charms in each attribute as other exalts have in an ability right? Nope, not really. Actually what's way more common is that their charms just do 3 times as much.

Take their decisive multi-attack charm for one, Octopus and Spider Barrage. It lets you do up to 5 decisive attacks, based on essence, and even switch between abilities for each attack! Comparing that to the Solar decisive multi-attack...well...which one? Brawl and Melee have kind of similar ones, Martial Arts is all over the place, and Thrown and Archery don't have anything comparable. Dragonblooded even less so. So a Lunar can do with OaSB in Archery or Thrown or even MA something that Solars and DBs just can't, and then they turn around and do it for Brawl and Melee just for fun.

This diversity in power, and wide applicability is HUGE and shows up all over the Lunar charmset as, I think, their greatest strength. Forget shapeshifting, shapeshifting is just an aspect of this broad power expressed in it's own special way. Lunar spearfighter loses her spear? No worries, hands are almost as good. The foe takes to the air? Whatever, pick up a bow, the charms work there too. Don't have a bow? Throw the spear then. The freedom to pick isn't absolutely limitless, but because the Lunars don't even use abilities for their excellency caps, the absolute most you're losing is 5 dice, and likely closer to 3.

This is especially true because even their excellencies are exclusively attribute based. Either adding up to (Attribute) dice or (Attribute + Other-Attribute) with a proper stunt. So any ability that you have less than 5 dots in is really not losing you many dice in comparison to your pool. Going with a fully maxed out mundane light attack on a 3 dot ability vs a 5 dot one is going from 24 dice to 22, that's hardly anything.

Plus the way that any one Attribute can develop in a greater variety of directions than most Abilities can.

Like, in Dexterity you've got a range of pursuits that encompasses what a Solar would need to have dots in Archery, Brawl, Dodge, Larceny, Melee, Stealth and Thrown to get at, in addition to being able to make copies of yourself or turn into an environmental hazard.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Speaking more about why you wouldn’t want to play a Lunar...
Now that the Lunar Exalted are finally a properly defined thing, I more fully appreciate all three splats. The Lunars were a painfully missing contrast in previous editions.

The Lunars aren’t everything I’m ever going to want, and that’s good, because they can’t be everything without becoming nothing. Now they provide what Solars and Dragon-Blooded can’t while enhancing Solars and Dragon-Blooded by their inability to be either of them in return.

It's funny you should mention that, not since first reading the 2e core has a book made me want to play Solars like What Fire Has Wrought. The Realm seemed like really good, solid villains/heroes. The contrast in charm power made me look at DB athletics and think that I probably liked it more than the Solar one in general, but I could definitely see myself missing the ability to go full Superman.

Plus the way that any one Attribute can develop in a greater variety of directions than most Abilities can.

Like, in Dexterity you've got a range of pursuits that encompasses what a Solar would need to have dots in Archery, Brawl, Dodge, Larceny, Melee, Stealth and Thrown to get at, in addition to being able to make copies of yourself or turn into an environmental hazard.

I think that kind of design also freed up the developers to do a lot of cool stuff. With ability exalts you can include a lot of nuance in things like accuracy boosters to give each ability their own flavour, but when you have to write just one accuracy booster for every combat ability it lets you sit back and go "Okay, welp, that base ability is done. What awesome cool stuff can we start putting onto this charmset now?"

[Asoral]

Top stuff, but I just had to drop by to mention that you saying "Their ability for a starting Solar to easily rip a house-sized boulder out of the ground and hurl it at a skyship is a power that is uniquely Solar." since with Boulders-as-Pebbles Attitude and Surging Thew Technique which are both Str 2 Ess 1 charms with no prereqs allows the Lunar to do the same. As in smash a house to pieces and throw it or throw the whole house at someone up to two extra range bands beyond the normal distance you could throw it with no initiative or accuracy penalties

Or just throw a circlemate at the skyship. I wonder whats the default range of throwing a person at different dots of Strength

[DrLoveMonkey]

Top stuff, but I just had to drop by to mention that you saying "Their ability for a starting Solar to easily rip a house-sized boulder out of the ground and hurl it at a skyship is a power that is uniquely Solar." since with Boulders-as-Pebbles Attitude and Surging Thew Technique which are both Str 2 Ess 1 charms with no prereqs allows the Lunar to do the same. As in smash a house to pieces and throw it or throw the whole house at someone up to two extra range bands beyond the normal distance you could throw it with no initiative or accuracy penalties

Or just throw a circlemate at the skyship. I wonder whats the default range of throwing a person at different dots of Strength

Haha, that IS true, but unless I’m misreading something an Essence 1 Lunar can’t totally ignore strength requirements of such a feat like a Solar can.

Which is good, if you need somebody who exalted yesterday to grab a three story tall hunk of granite and hurl it to the horizon, that should be a Solar. If Lunars could do that kind of thing, at least if that was a trend across all abilities, you would never, ever want to play a Solar again because being a Lunar already makes you so much better in so many ways.

Any boulder that a Lunar CAN pick up and throw any distance is a usable weapon against airborn targets, that alone is legendary from essence 1.

[Zelbinnean]

It's funny you should mention that, not since first reading the 2e core has a book made me want to play Solars like What Fire Has Wrought.

That's interesting to me. My reading of the DB and Lunar manuscripts had the opposite effect. To me they have very strong ideas about giving good numbers/variety of Charms, but not an excessive number; they stand in stark contrast to how badly the Solar Charmset is bloated and needs a solid pruning/revision at this point.

Also the very obvious DB and Lunar themes just make it clear how the Solar Charmset has no real solid theme aside from "do things best." Which I get that's a major Solar Thing but as implemented it just feels...generic, and to me that's uninspiring. Like, a lot of it boils down to "throw the best possible math at problems for maximum efficiency and maximum result" and to me that really brings me out of an in-setting mindset if I look at it too closely. It's like...optimized, but ultimately rather flavorless.

[DrLoveMonkey]

That's interesting to me. My reading of the DB and Lunar manuscripts had the opposite effect. To me they have very strong ideas about giving good numbers/variety of Charms, but not an excessive number; they stand in stark contrast to how badly the Solar Charmset is bloated and needs a solid pruning/revision at this point.

Also the very obvious DB and Lunar themes just make it clear how the Solar Charmset has no real solid theme aside from "do things best." Which I get that's a major Solar Thing but as implemented it just feels...generic, and to me that's uninspiring. Like, a lot of it boils down to "throw the best possible math at problems for maximum efficiency and maximum result" and to me that really brings me out of an in-setting mindset if I look at it too closely. It's like...optimized, but ultimately rather flavorless.

Yes I get what you mean. I should clarify that reading Lunars and DBs ALSO made me want to play them, more than Solars, but they just kind of gave Solars a place in my mind. Before that there were kind of bland and bloated, and they still are, but now contextually their supreme power and straightforward skill is unique to them.

Overall I prefer the DB unique and discreet abilities, also I do prefer their power power most of the time. Looking at Lunars I like their more compact and versatile set of powers compared to Solars, as well, but for me they’ve helped to give Solars a place in my head. My group should be maybe starting anDB game as soon as the Realm drops so I’ll have more context then.


Tonight I should post shapeshifting for the review.

[Zelbinnean]

Tonight I should post shapeshifting for the review.

Really looking forward to this. Loved your past threads. The DB thread in particular gave me really good ideas and insight on building my current DB character.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Really looking forward to this. Loved your past threads. The DB thread in particular gave me really good ideas and insight on building my current DB character.

Aww thanks! What’s your character like? It might help me with summarizing things for Lunars.

[Isator Levi]

Also the very obvious DB and Lunar themes just make it clear how the Solar Charmset has no real solid theme aside from "do things best." Which I get that's a major Solar Thing but as implemented it just feels...generic, and to me that's uninspiring. Like, a lot of it boils down to "throw the best possible math at problems for maximum efficiency and maximum result" and to me that really brings me out of an in-setting mindset if I look at it too closely. It's like...optimized, but ultimately rather flavorless.

Apart from looking at the Charm set as a whole as a mix of surpassing puissance, specific culture and folk hero feats, and golden sun fire imagery, I think it helps to try and look for flavour that is specific to each Ability.

For instance, in Melee I see a theme of harmonious bond between hero and weapon, whereas Brawl has a rough-and-tumble brutality in it that culminates in something like ripping an enemy's heart and having it burst into flame in your clenched fist.

[Zeesun]

Echoing the good Dr's feelings, Solars feel so much more special, so much more spectacularly straightforwardly powerful now than they did before. I love it. Their charm-set is like staring into the sun.

Bringing it back to this thread's topic, though, I really love when you did the mechanical comparisons and context-dependent strength discussion between Solars and DBs, such as pointing out how many DB charms are about building further on advantages you have to earn first. I'm quite looking forward to seeing those done for Lunars in comparison to both Solars and (even more importantly imho) Dragonblooded.

[Sunder the Gold]

Apart from looking at the Charm set as a whole as a mix of surpassing puissance, specific culture and folk hero feats, and golden sun fire imagery, I think it helps to try and look for flavour that is specific to each Ability.

For instance, in Melee I see a theme of harmonious bond between hero and weapon, whereas Brawl has a rough-and-tumble brutality in it that culminates in something like ripping an enemy's heart and having it burst into flame in your clenched fist.

And Thrown is about being a ninja trickster.

I wonder... imagine if the Sun had something like 25 divine children and each of them reflected one of the abilities and each Solar Ability Charmset reflected one of those children in turn. Like a prototype echo for how Abyssal Ability Charm trees might each take direct inspiration from a Deathlord.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Okay, time for....

Shapeshifting

So in the past shapeshifting was a really defining factor for Lunars. In fact in previous editions it was a bit too defining. The Lunar charmset was kind of all over the place, and had a habit of doing a lot of the stuff that Solars did except just worse because Solars are the best. That gave rise to a term called "Silver Solars" which was maybe a little unfair but not exactly untrue. What Lunars did have though, was shapeshifting, which was so cool that everyone wanted to play them anyway.

Shapeshifting in 3e has become a lot different, more balanced, but still an amazing extra-charm ability that any exalt has to date. Solars get Supernal, DBs get a bunch of smaller benefits, and Lunars get this, and it's probably the best one. Not by a landslide though. Sidereal Astrology will be coming out in a few years and then we'll see if it can keep up.

To look at shapeshifting, I'm going to ask the reader to forget about non-excellency charms. All of them, just pretend that Lunars do nothing but shapeshift and excellency, and there's not even any charms to make your shapeshifting better. Compared to 3e though we have an easier time acquiring shapes, which is really nice.

To start out with 3e is a lot more balanced in shapeshifting to your character, because your dicepools can't exceed what you could get to with your excellency anyway. That's good, it means that the shapeshifting doesn't have to be balanced around giving a bespectacled No Moon the power of a giant dinosaur. Let's take a look at how that hashes out with a favourite animal of mine, surprisingly not a monkey, but the humble bear. There's a LOT of theorycrafting in it, so feel free to skip.

Animal Shapes

No Moon Combat

Let's say you have that bespectacled No Moon with a bear form. Her relevant stats will be 2 strength, 3 stamina, 3 dexterity and 5 int. Also she has 2 brawl. I'm also assuming she has the Int and Dex excellencies. That gives her the following profile for fighting:

Punch 9 (9 damage)
Soak 6
Parry 3

Actually decent for somebody who's not really much of a fighter. By exalted standards anyway, I know Brawl 2 represents a professional boxer yadda yadda, we'll discuss that later. When she shapeshifts into a bear though, it becomes this:

Bite 8 (Damage 15)
Claw 8 (Damage 11)
Soak 10/2
Parry 3

So, already, we're loving this. We take a tiny hit to accuracy in exchange for a bunch of soak, hardness that makes us immune to Dragonblooded anima flux, a huge damage boost and some unique abilities. BUT it gets way better, because the second we stunt in our intelligence, say by talking up how a bear's strength is paired with the intellect of a genius, the claw becomes THIS for free.

Claw 12 (Damage 11)

So now we have a choice of spending a single mote to full excellency our claw attack to 13 dice, or the bite for 5 motes. On top of that, because of Berzerker, as we receive wound penalties we actually get to start topping up our excellency for even cheaper because they're adding bonus dice. Thankfully we also get an extra 4 high damage health levels to do that with. Alright so clearly, even with the caps relating to your skills, as long as you're even a little good, shapeshifting is amazing. On the other hand, would a Full Moon ever want to do it?

Full Moon Combat

Yes, absolutely. For a Full Moon, let's say with 5s in every physical skill and 5 brawl, we have this profile, assuming an applicable specialty.

Punch 15 (12 damage)

Bite 11 (Damage 15)
Claw 11 (Damage 11)
Soak 10/2
Parry 6

Okay so like, we're getting hardness and damage, but losing accuracy. You also get this combo though; starting with an intentionally kind of weak Join Battle to make sure your opponent goes first, and just tank their first hit with your stamina excellency and parry. Then excellency your claw attack up to 21 dice for up to 10 motes, then excellency your base damage up to 13 with your strength excellency, plus enough overflow to do at least 5 withering damage. Then you switch into Crushing Bear Hug to launch an automatically successful grapple gambit with a bunch of bonus control dice for free. Then, because you just initiated a grapple you get to savage, so make it a decisive one with Mauling Bite for an extra +4 dice of lethal, and then since you probably knocked their initiative under yours, go again right away and release into a decisive Slam, dealing an additional +5 free dice of lethal damage. And all that for just 12 motes max.

So yes, also worth it as an easy way to get access to quite powerful effects that are totally free. If you're trying to save motes as a Full Moon there's no question animal shapes are a good choice.

Now recall that this is just a bear, not some giant powerful dinosaur, and recall that Lunar charms exist and can be used to both get the form of a Tyrant Lizard as well as combo with all of those effects. Unless you're actually fighting a Solar or a DB you don't even need them, you're just a badass animal with excellencies, which means that unlike normal animals your special moves can actually hit and combo into eachother.


I'm sadly out of time for this post, I might be able to get back tonight, but I actually have a lot more to say about animal shapes. Then we'll do human shapes. Then we'll be done Shapeshifting, you know, that thing that all Lunars get for free. Not a complaint at all, I'm glad it's awesome. Also as always if I made a mistake please correct me.

[prototype00]

I’ve done some thinking on Shapeshifting. Distilled into 2 categories, your options largely are:

1. Use the animal’s Accuracy. So for this most of the massive damage attacks have low accuracy, so you are better off selecting animals that have lower damage, more accurate attacks. Like Big Cats.

2. Use your own accuracy: If your Dex+ Brawl is good, just use your own, and you even get the bonus of +1 Accuracy if your pool is higher than the animal’s listed pool. (Doesn’t offset the +4 Accuracy lost from Light Weapons/Unarmed, but hey it’s something). On the upside, you get to have great soak/Heavy Weapon Damage better than a Tetsubo wielding Earth Immaculate without any investment in Str or Sta, you only need Dex. None of the penalties of heavy weapons/Armor either.

Edit 3. Screw everything about attacks, you just want a mobile Dodgy platform to shape Combat Sorceries from to burn down The Realm.