General Exalted Discussion V: Our Armies are Pants

[Indon]

There is no category for that because that's not what Knacks are supposed to do. That's Charm territory. If you want an immediate in-combat effect, use a charm.

Charms don't do Lunar shapeshifting.

Knacks aren't knacks because they aren't attacks. They're knacks because they involve shapeshifting. They're a special category of Native charm-like ability that, in fact, likely exists because it predates the concept of the Native charm in the Exalted ruleset.

An attack that involved shapeshifting would not be a Charm. It would be a Knack, because it involved shapeshifting and should not be learnable by the likes of Eclipse castes, regardless of what it did mechanically with that shapeshifting.

If it wasn't learnable by others, it wouldn't be a hero style. They would just be a particular cascade of Dexterity charms!

If the hero styles were defined by the ability of other beings to learn the style, rather than the presence of an innate style, then Alchemicals would have one, because there are iconic Alchemical styles that other types of Exalt can learn.

But the book says there's no Alchemical hero style because there is no martial arts charmset that comes naturally to the Alchemicals, not for any other reason.

And given that the cascade would follow fairly unique rules regarding shapechanging as a martial weapon, it'd already follow fairly distinct rules more appropriate for a martial arts style than for "a particular cascade of dexterity charms", even if it's limited to beings that can shapeshift.

Another thing that bothers me is that you can't use the style itself to do this. You have to go to other charm tree's. Shouldn't a Martial Art be entirely usable solely with it's own charms+excellencies?

In general, I'd say it would depend on the intent of the martial artist who designed the style. It'd be easy enough for a martial artist to design a style to synergize better in specific situations, and that shouldn't be forbidden.

That said, that's probably not the intent of Snake Style, or else it'd have more interesting fluff.