Requesting help with Dragon Blooded Characters?

[Citadel97501]

Hello all, I was hoping someone had some tips for digesting the dragon blooded book? I have run a number of Exalted games, and never had much trouble seeing tactics and what not for other exalted types, but the Dragon Blooded book seems to be quite a bit more dense about the interactivity of the charms. So I come hat in hand to ask for some direction from all of you.

[DrLoveMonkey]

One thing I might suggest is to treat every tree as kind of segmented by element, they tend to have themes along that way. For example Wood melee is all about disarming and parry bonuses whereas fire melee tends to be more about just attacking six times in two turns and dealing tons of fast damage. You’ll also notice that a lot of charm trees have synergies with eachother in that way, for example Wood has a thing for Stamina, which is why one of the wood melee charms adds stamina to damage.

From my experience they also tend to be less big on combining effects than Solars actually, is there any particular tree you were interested in?

[Citadel97501]

All of them, basically I just need to know some of the capabilities as I am the primary reader as is normal for the ST. So I just need to know what to keep on the look out for and what might be a trap for players.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Well I once wrote an enormous thread directly comparing DBs to Solars, but I’m not sure how much of that will be useful to you.

One thing you might want to be cautious about is crossing three elements for a character. What I mean by that is if your character is a Earth aspect, don’t take the Wood aspected charms in the primarily Water aspected tree. At the very least make sure two of those lineup unless you’re very familiar with the charmset.

Another thing as an ST is that DBs start at Essence 2, but don’t get Supernal, which means that until Essence 3 you don’t have to worry about anything other than their Essence 1-2 charms. Also their capabilities compared to Solars are fairly reduced charm wise, and with smaller motepools they might run out faster. On the other hand their merits section is quite powerful, with bonus dots and easy to justify stats. I’ll try to write something better when I get to a computer.

[JohnDoe244]

Aura is important for DB charms and you're locked into your own Elemental Aura at Bonfire. Generally this means you want to use Balanced charms alongside charms of your own Element, but there's shenanigans to be had by triggering Aura then going Bonfire to switch.

Nothing Deebs can do is really that powerful. Merits are probably more powerful than native charms.

We've had a couple of threads about DB swordsmen that might be worth a look:
http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...e-sword-dynast

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...-melee-focused

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...cs-savvy-folks

And charm cascades:

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/1297480-madletter-s-charm-cascades-lunars-solars-dragon-blooded

[DrLoveMonkey]

Yeah I don't think there's really anything you need to worry about. As long as you understand how Aura works the Dragonblooded aren't going to be doing any crazy shenanigans. Definitely not before Essence 3 anyway. Like if you're concerned that they have a charm that can wipe out an entire battlefield in one shot, they do, but it's Essence 5 and requires a lot of setup. So there's really nothing that should concern you as far as that goes. They also have a lot of charms for ignoring environmental penalties, but if you've been running Solars who have even more charms for ignoring ALL penalties I can't imagine it will be a problem.

The only real traps are buying a lot of aura charms for an element that isn't your aspect, which can work but it takes a lot of finesse and usually you want to be in-element for whatever tree you're using. That becomes MUCH easier with the less combat focused trees or the more mute trees like Stealth and Larceny. There's some trees with more limited options as well, which might not feel so good.

For example if you were playing a Fire aspected brawler. You can either just use all the Water charms that don't require a Water Aura, or you could try to stop yourself from going bonfire and even use the Water Aura ones, or you could do both of those things, and then when your bonfire triggers you immediately switch to Fire aura and can activate Erupting Fury Barrage next turn, but that's pretty advanced as far as elemental manipulation goes. If you want to be nice, safe, and easy, you just pick what combat ability you want, look at the excellency, be that element and only pick that element charms, which is almost impossible to screw up.

There's also some things they do differently, like how DB lore has a big chunk of the tree dedicated to meditating inside or near a powerful elemental expression, so maybe that's something to look for.


Below is just a list of a few choice charms that do things Solars find difficulty doing, just in case that's more what you meant. It's not comprehensive.

Wind Carried Words, a charm that lets DBs communicate instantly over huge distances.
Soaring Zephyr Flight, a charm that lets DBs fly for long periods of time at low cost outside of combat.
Dragon's Twitching Whisker, a charm that gives a DB a roll to notice somebody with a negative intimacy towards them when they get nearby.
Elemental Bolt Attack, a lore charm that lets you shoot lightning or fire from your hands
Safety Among Enemies, a dodge charm that lets you redirect an attack against you towards another target


Most of those are Essence 3+ though and I'm not sure if that's helping.

[The Wizard of Oz]

If you scroll down the forum for a while (or use the search function) a poster called Madletter (IIRC?) did a bunch of charm cascades, showing the elements and trees. I found it quite helpful and clear.

[Citadel97501]

Thank you all, that was very helpful. I will also be reading those other threads thank you again.

[JohnDoe244]

If you want to be nice, safe, and easy, you just pick what combat ability you want, look at the excellency, be that element and only pick that element charms, which is almost impossible to screw up.

I highly recommend this.

(The Immaculate martial arts styles are another reasonable option, but not as straightforward.)

Here's Madletter's thread:

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/main-category/exalted/1297480-madletter-s-charm-cascades-lunars-solars-dragon-blooded

[DrLoveMonkey]

The Immaculate martial arts styles are another reasonable option, but not as straightforward.

Oh, yeah those are great as well. Air requires a lot of support abilities and needs a bit of finesse to use in certain situations. Wood Dragon can also be a bit weird to use with the whole soul marking thing and health level manipulation, but the other three are pretty fine just standing there and slugging it out.

[Alistair]

Below is just a list of a few choice charms that do things Solars find difficulty doing, just in case that's more what you meant. It's not comprehensive.

Wind Carried Words, a charm that lets DBs communicate instantly over huge distances.
Soaring Zephyr Flight, a charm that lets DBs fly for long periods of time at low cost outside of combat.
Dragon's Twitching Whisker, a charm that gives a DB a roll to notice somebody with a negative intimacy towards them when they get nearby.
Elemental Bolt Attack, a lore charm that lets you shoot lightning or fire from your hands
Safety Among Enemies, a dodge charm that lets you redirect an attack against you towards another target


Most of those are Essence 3+ though and I'm not sure if that's helping.

Solars do Safety Among Enemies better than DBs do, with their own Dodge Charm at Essence 2, Drifting Shadow Focus. Elemental Bolt is basically just attacking with an Artifact Thrown Weapon, except it scales its damage extremely slowly (with Essence ups). WCW can be done with sorcery, so can SZF (much cheaper too). And DTW can be easily replicated through Solar Awareness Charms, without its limit on negative Intimacies only. So I'm not sure these are a good example of their unique stuff.

[Epitome]

Solars do Safety Among Enemies better than DBs do, with their own Dodge Charm at Essence 2, Drifting Shadow Focus. Elemental Bolt is basically just attacking with an Artifact Thrown Weapon, except it scales its damage extremely slowly (with Essence ups). WCW can be done with sorcery, so can SZF (much cheaper too). And DTW can be easily replicated through Solar Awareness Charms, without its limit on negative Intimacies only. So I'm not sure these are a good example of their unique stuff.

I for one would gladly trade Infaillible Messenger for a Charm that doesn't cost 1wp each time I want to send a message. Ideally one wants WCW for easy communication within extreme range and then Infaillible Messenger for communication beyond extreme range.

Elemental bolt isn't superior mechanically, but it's still unique thematically in that Solars can't throw fireballs or lightning bolts out of their hands without sorcery.

[Citadel97501]

Hey guys, I have been doing some more reading and looking over the stuff you guys mentioned, and I had a question? Am I missing something or did I see that you can have a 25 health level character at Essence 2 with some potent healing available from both Resistance & Martial Arts? Hell at Essence 3, you then add in 4 more on average?

This only uses 10 charms and seems actually stronger than similar builds from Solar Exalted? Not as potent as Lunars but still that seems damn impressive to me.

[The Wizard of Oz]

WCW can be done with sorcery

Wind-Carried Words is amazing. I'm still miffed that our one and only Dragonblood PC (air aspect) in our mixed Celestial game hasn't bought it.

[Alistair]

I for one would gladly trade Infaillible Messenger for a Charm that doesn't cost 1wp each time I want to send a message. Ideally one wants WCW for easy communication within extreme range and then Infaillible Messenger for communication beyond extreme range.

Elemental bolt isn't superior mechanically, but it's still unique thematically in that Solars can't throw fireballs or lightning bolts out of their hands without sorcery.

I absolutely agree! I'm just mentioning it's not really something Solars, Lunars, etc can't do, and I'd look more at things like Explosive Evidence Technique or w/e, though that's like E4 and thus doesn't help either.