r/exalted

Aloha, all!

Pure mechanics: the Counter Conceptual Interposition Key for this charm it allows you to Clash with it, but doesn't specify whether it becomes reflexive. It seems like charms that use your Combat action when clashing or counterattacking specify they do.

So to clarify: Regardless of what you do on your turn, you can spend 9 motes to reflexively clash an attack with this, dealing no more than Essence damage if successful.

As I prepare to play an infernal in my group's current campaign, Principle Invoking Onslaught is probably my go to decisive attack, here are a few ideas I've had for it. Let me know if they exceed the limit of this absurd attack Charm.

I turn people into paintings of themselves.

I turn people into pigs that explode into fully butchered and barbecued, ready to eat portions.

I create a door that opens in the path a target attempting to kill me or someone else and they disappear into it.
--When I next activate Counter Conceptual Imposition, the door reappears, opens, and the previous target emerges mid attack to damage the attacker and die by absorbing the clashed attack for me.

The target's feet explode into roots that dig into the earth and the rest of them contorts into a tree covered in leaves that immediately take flight as butterflies.

The target becomes ensconced in a SWLIHN style crystal sphere and flies into the sky, never to be seen again.

The target becomes a baby.

The target becomes a harmless mundane beast of some kind.

After offering last rites to a dying person and hearing them pray for their family to have wealth and good fortune after their passing, I blast them into a pile of Resources 4 jade dust.

Like at what point can you really take what you pick. Coral is an animal and some fungus are so close that scientists argue they should count. I've read about some Lunar PC taking Some Hive Organisms. Jellyfish as a statement. Just bugs as a whole are also odd. Basically this can be broken down into 3 parts. Are there any arguments for fungus. Are there any arguments against animals that don't feel like animals such as Barnacles. Finally any ideas for actually interesting combos for chimera. My current Lunar is a Golden Zebra + Green Peafowl.

Edit: So it looks like most are saying if the build and player can make a good argument for a serious build a fungus can work but ask the dm first.

You can skip this one, trust me, this is the single most forgettable SMA ever written and for a perfectly valid reason

Sapphire Veil of Passion
Glories of The Most High - The Maidens of Destiny page 27-32

Theme: passion, sex, ownership.

What can you do?: grapple, mind control and own people.

Pre Form: you can analyze and opponent, you can dodge any attack and teleport to the attacker as long as he is within ~200 km, that includes social attacks afterwards you are perfectly glued to the attacker, an expensive perfect parry and a bit more attack and defense number modifiers.
Ohh and a scene long effect that gives an intimacy of lust toward you on a hit, this will come in handy later.

Form: 

• you levitate a few cm above the ground
• if an attacker has any intimacy toward you (positive or negative) they need to fail a compassion check to attack or pay 1wp per attack and an enemy does not want to run out of wp when attacking because… 
• when you hit an enemy with 0 wp or 0 motes (you have some tricks that burn motes in other charms) you knock them out for several hours
• You also regain 5 motes when your DV refreshes

 

This is nice, but a bit disjointed, the mote regen is tacked on, not even a fluff to explain it, the main point of this form charm is to drain your opponents wp so your social attacks will be more impactful, this would have been enough for a CMA but from a SMA this just feels plain and boring, even the individual PAoC forms had more uniqueness.

Pre capstone: 

• on a hit you can transfer all unnatural mental influences or all sickness and poison effects to the target
• if you grapple anyone they get a very strong intimacy of lust and you grapple hard
• When you knock someone out you can give them a second motivation to love and obey you and rewrite his memories to think it was always so, you also technically own the victim
• You can debuff a grapple victim
• You can make perfect attacks against people you debuffed and mind controlled

 

Capstone: your form charm is enhanced, you get ~3 reflexive MA attacks per round, you attack at a range of ~60 meters, all wound penalties you cause are external penalties due to being too sexy.
Well, it isn’t the worst capstone charm, but definitely the worst SMA capstone charm, this is a pure number crunching charm and not even interesting numbers, having extra reflexive attacks is great but… what does it have to do with the theme? 

Magicalness: by itself besides the long range teleport this is pretty tame, it is described however as a lightshow and a half with ribbons of light and threads of sapphire but those are just for show, the effects by themselves are pretty normal for exalted. 

Rating: a deep C, this is a pure “how do you fight” if the user goes deep into building a harem of mind controlled slaves this can be a weak B but there are plenty of charms, sorceries and abilities for that, it is a purely mechanical, balanced and tame style.

Once again a bit more of a background to explain, you can of course skip this but you can also just not read the post as well so… let’s go.
This is the only 2.5 SMA published after the Scroll of The Monk, due to how mechanically unstable the SMAs in the Scroll were; most storytellers avoided using them. In this book we got 2 CMAs Crane and Disco Ninja both were designed with the late stage 2ed mechanics and balance, this is the SMA that was meant to get the same, a balanced, mechanically stable SMA.
Crane style is one of the most memorable and flavorful CMAs probably fighting Disco Bandit in the top 5, both had a combination of interesting mechanics and stable well thought unique effects. So why did this style come out like this? It took all the wrong lessons from how broken the Scroll of The Monk SMAs were, the problem was the balance not the unique flavour and outlandish over the top antics.
In many ways this was the predecessor for 3ed SMAs, a more powerful CMA, not inherently different in scope or reach just in power level.