Thought: Anima as the source of Essence recovery

[Kyeudo]

So, 3e has the five motes per turn Essence recovery as part of its underlying combat paradigm and then we have anima banners as a genre-inspired tell-tale sign of supernatural might. What happens if we combine the two?

Suppose that instead of just getting five motes per turn "in combat", you get five motes per turn at the Bonfire level, three motes per turn at Burning, and one mote per turn at Glowing. Now you have to choose in a fight: stay concealed or ramp to full power.

This obviously makes Charms that cost anima levels more expensive, but does it have any other disruptive impacts? Would this change the dynamics of social interaction?

[BlueWinds]

I love the idea. It seems a very organic way to cause combat to ramp up, from light charm use to heavier blows as combat progresses. It is slightly strange when combined with "spend 5m in an instant to raise your anima level" - I can't entirely articulate why, but while I'm recovering 0m / round, spending 5m on one action feels different than doing so when I'm regaining 5m / round.

How does this work for spirits that don't have animas? Do they stay at 5m/round always? If so that'll make them more powerful than they were previously. I'd be tempted to say "flat 3m/round if you don't have anima" - make Exalts better in very long or very serious fights, but disadvantage them when they need to stay hidden.

It will also mean that Exalts will have fewer motes available in combat as a whole, especially at the beginning while they decide whether or not flaring is needed / acceptable.

I'm ok with those changes to balance, and paying anima levels for charms always bothered me - I've removed the concept entirely in my compact charm rewrite, so no issues to be found for me on that score.

[PenDragon]

Back in 2e I made a hack to just that effect. Gone was personal an peripheral, an Exalt's Anima defined how quickly she respired Essence. The Rates were just as you proposed, 1m for Glowing, 3m for Burning, 5m for Bonfire. There were a few other Anima hacks as well, like providing general soak/hardness, the ability to see, strike and kill demons, and some other "You'll need this to fight the Primordials" additions.

It was a very effective hack, no reason it shouldn't work for 3e if that's what you're after.

[ManusDomine]

EarthScorpion is doing this with his Exalted hack, and so am I in mine.

It works rather well in both of them.

[Elfive]

Two thoughts: First, Night Castes need to be accounted for. Everyone forgets the ninjas.

Second: If you're seeking to avoid nerfing the exalted while keeping this thematic tie, perhaps you could compensate by having the bonfire regeneration be more than five? So spirits would get a flat five per round, while exalts would swing between one and, I don't know, ten? Ten might be a bit high... You get the idea.

[Ketrus]

That severely nerfs Exalted that have a good reason to stay hidden (Solars and Lunars), as the mote regen is pretty essential to remaining in a fight. If you're okay with giving the Dragon-Blooded, Exigents, Sidereals, etc., such a significant leg up, then sure, go for it. I might go so far as to say it means a Solar isn't an Exalted-level threat in combat unless they pop their anima, because that continual low-level spend is such an important part to how my players have chosen to play. At least a Lunar can just, you know, turn into a dinosaur.

In a fight, a 0/1/3/5 regen rate means that a Solar has one of three combat strategies for significant threats: escape immediately, try to end it in a single blow, or spend 15+ motes on Join Battle + First Action to immediately gain full regeneration. I feel like this system undercuts the drama and strategy around choosing your charm uses carefully, because it makes the division between fighting quietly and going loud MUCH deeper and much more immediate. Glowing at the 1 mote level is going to give you away anyway, and 4 motes a round could very well be the difference between life and death. There are few cases in which it doesn't make sense to go iconic.

A follow-up question: does this extend to hourly regen as well? I mean, if you're only getting a drip of one mote an hour, that SEVERELY curtails the spend an Exalt is capable of, and heavily incentivizes hearthstones.

[RCa]

EarthScorpion's hack (which is how I was first introduced to this) for 2E removes all combat-time mote regeneration other than animas. Spirits don't regenerate motes in combat time (unless they're one of the rare and powerful spirits that have access to an 'anima' of their own, which is going to be weaker than an Exalt's and maybe only equivalent to the glowing level). This is part of what makes Exalts terrifying: they can keep on going, and recover incredibly fast (because a minute out of combat with your anima up is enough to fully refresh your mote pool). Spirits need to use their larger starting pools to beat down an Exalt fast or they lose.

I'm not sure what level I'd put it at. ES had 2/4/6, matching 4m to the standard stunt. For a 3E equivalent I'd make it 3/5/7, or might make it 2/5/7 or something to increase the jump between glowing and burning. This means you can flare your cast mark for a slight drip, actually become really obvious for the "standard" combat-time regeneration, and go full totemic and practically yell "A SOLAR IS HERE" in order to completely break the mote economy over your knee.

Nights can pay 2m to 'flare' their anima without it actually being visible.

3E charms which shed anima levels for bonuses can screw this up. ES's hack just lets you raise your anima reflexively, which obviously doesn't work for anima-shedding charms' implicit cost. They also potentially screw things up by removing one of the downsides of flaring your anima. There's a difference between "I really need to win this fight, so I'll go full totemic even if it means I'm going to be on fire for the next hour" and "I really need to win this fight, so I'll go full totemic ... then shed it when the fight is over and vanish".

[BlueWinds]

3E charms which shed anima levels for bonuses can screw this up. ES's hack just lets you raise your anima reflexively, which obviously doesn't work for anima-shedding charms' implicit cost. They also potentially screw things up by removing one of the downsides of flaring your anima. There's a difference between "I really need to win this fight, so I'll go full totemic even if it means I'm going to be on fire for the next hour" and "I really need to win this fight, so I'll go full totemic ... then shed it when the fight is over and vanish".

This is one of the reasons I dislike anima-spending charms. They remove the "oh shit, I flared during a fight for my life and now I'm glowing like a sun" and replaces it with "I need to make an excuse to use one of my charms." But only if you're in the right ability that lets you do it easily.

[Ghosthead]

What about a lesser slope at 2Dim,3Glow,4Burn,5Bonfire? Some basic flow from even your invisible anima, and less slope between Exalts at different anima levels. Is that still significant enough to achieve what you're looking for?

[Ketrus]

Even if this could be balanced, I don't know if the game really needs another system to remember at combat time, especially for the ST who has to track the animas of multiple characters.

[Kyeudo]

Two thoughts: First, Night Castes need to be accounted for. Everyone forgets the ninjas.

What about them needs accounting for? They can burn peripheral without lighting up and they become unrecognizable when they go full totemic. Seems to fall into the system well enough.

Second: If you're seeking to avoid nerfing the exalted while keeping this thematic tie, perhaps you could compensate by having the bonfire regeneration be more than five? So spirits would get a flat five per round, while exalts would swing between one and, I don't know, ten? Ten might be a bit high... You get the idea.

Spirits tend to have some pretty deep Essence pools to start with. Perhaps spirit Essence recovery could have some sort of tie to their domains, so that War gods regained Essence on battlefields and wood elementals when in contact with living plants?

In a fight, a 0/1/3/5 regen rate means that a Solar has one of three combat strategies for significant threats: escape immediately, try to end it in a single blow, or spend 15+ motes on Join Battle + First Action to immediately gain full regeneration.

Mathmatically optimal strategies, but rarely does real play see white room conditions. You may not like the consequences of fleeing, a single hail mary strike may fail, and you may not want to reveal yourself. Maybe you are protecting an Immaculate-aligned village from Octavion. Maybe you find yourself fighting off the satrap's pet pack of lions as you try to sneak into the palace to assassinate him. Maybe you underestimate your opponent because you don't know he is an Exalt as well.

The numbers were just quick off-the-top of my head to illustrate the idea.

Perhaps changing how the anima banner ramps up would be a good companion idea. Maybe if it only ever went up by a single level in a single round, so you couldn't flash from Dim to Totemic instantly.

I feel like this system undercuts the drama and strategy around choosing your charm uses carefully, because it makes the division between fighting quietly and going loud MUCH deeper and much more immediate. Glowing at the 1 mote level is going to give you away anyway, and 4 motes a round could very well be the difference between life and death. There are few cases in which it doesn't make sense to go iconic.

In my 2e games, I rarely ran into a situation where once I started spending peripheral I ever stopped until the fight was over, so there being a narrow band between quiet and loud seems to match well with my experience.

A follow-up question: does this extend to hourly regen as well? I mean, if you're only getting a drip of one mote an hour, that SEVERELY curtails the spend an Exalt is capable of, and heavily incentivizes hearthstones.

I wouldn't suggest that. I know how important passive, quiet recovery is to a game with resource management.

What about a lesser slope at 2Dim,3Glow,4Burn,5Bonfire? Some basic flow from even your invisible anima, and less slope between Exalts at different anima levels. Is that still significant enough to achieve what you're looking for?

That might be a good idea.

[LazzerusThanatos]

I just remembered that this thread was a thing, and that I had my own way of doing mote regeneration in my game. I haven't gotten a real chance to see it in motion, as my game is fairly new, and I'm playing with new-to-exalted people, but my thoughts on the matter were drawn to the idea that one's will is important when trying to suffuse things like sorcery, right? Which is why all spells cost at least 1 willpower to cast in addition to their sorcerers motes. It occurred to me that Willpower was given plenty more to do in this system, seeing as how you can spend it for defenses, successes, social resistances, sorcery. I didn't like that it was a flat 5 motes a turn, so I said "Why not, let's give willpower one more thing it can do! And I don't mind everyone doing one more roll a turn that can't be buffed by any means."

So while I enjoy my idea, others may find that it slows their game by a bit too much, so user discretion is advised. I'd say slap the thing on a custom charm and make it an evocation if you want to see how well someone uses it:
At the end of each round, anyone still participating in battle rolls dice equal to their permanent willpower. The number of motes they regain at the beginning of the new round is equal to twice the successes they rolled. 10's count as 1 success.
This made willpower even more useful to buy at character gen, but it still offered the possibility that someone with say, Perm. Will 7, could gain no motes what-so-ever, or they could force the essence around them to suffuse to their will and gain 14. It's one more roll for everyone, but it makes motes management a lot more interesting, since you can't meticulously plan your combos and how to go about spending essence since you don't have a base regen.

[notanautomaton]

So, 3e has the five motes per turn Essence recovery as part of its underlying combat paradigm and then we have anima banners as a genre-inspired tell-tale sign of supernatural might. What happens if we combine the two?

Suppose that instead of just getting five motes per turn "in combat", you get five motes per turn at the Bonfire level, three motes per turn at Burning, and one mote per turn at Glowing. Now you have to choose in a fight: stay concealed or ramp to full power.

This obviously makes Charms that cost anima levels more expensive, but does it have any other disruptive impacts? Would this change the dynamics of social interaction?

Ima steal this, though I had already had the general idea, from Earthscorpion's anima reactor homebrew.

[Morangias]

This is one of the reasons I dislike anima-spending charms. They remove the "oh shit, I flared during a fight for my life and now I'm glowing like a sun" and replaces it with "I need to make an excuse to use one of my charms." But only if you're in the right ability that lets you do it easily.

This is tangential to the main point of the thread, but my understanding of anima-shedding Charms frames them as the exact opposite - not a risk mitigator, but rather something you only use when you have no choice but to throw caution to the wind. After all, you have to build up your anima before shedding it, and by the time you've dispersed it, enough people could have seen it to draw attention. Sure, they won't be able to pinpoint your location afterwards, but the anima banner fades from iconic to nothing within an hour anyway - not that much time for tracking. Unless someone looking for you is literally within an hour's distance, of course, but if that's the case, you've got more serious problems than anima shenanigans.

[Anasurimbor]

This is going to break all kinds of things. Combat is balanced around that 5m drip. Requiring a Bonfire Anima to get it makes both Larceny (for not looking like a Solar) and Melee (or some other means of being able to dump it quickly) even better than they already are. It also substantially reduces the power of non-Exalts. Social Influence, OTOH, is very much balanced around not having constant easy essence regeneration. Any idiot with an excellency can occasionally be exceedingly convincing, but they cannot offer the effortless charm and continuously piercing insight of a dedicated socialite.

This also makes hearthstones pretty much worthless.