General Exalted Discussion Thread IX: Errata is Combo-Ok!

[Mr.Bookworm]

So why is it that the order for best excellencies goes Solaroid>Dragonblood>Alchemical>Lunar>Sidereal/God?

Much as I love them, it seems wrong that Dragonbloods and Alchemicals (who are supposed to be the two lowest exalts in power structure) are more mundanely competent than celestials.

Breakdown of Excellencies

Spoiler

Show

Infernals have the best Excellencies in the game, flat-out. They can apply it to anything, if they can fit it into the thematic restrictions of the Excellency, and they get the (Attribute+Ability) dice cap of Solars. In addition, their 2nd Excellency is an upgrade, not a separate Charm. They also get several other amazing Charms branching off of their First Excellency.

Solars and Abyssals have decent Excellencies. While they're split up by Ability, they have a great dice cap. They're not amazing, but it makes Solars/Abyssals good in areas they choose to specialize in.

Alchemicals have amazing Excellencies. They get Attribute-based Excellencies, which are only behind Infernal-types in terms of broadness. They also get the Solar dice cap and have several great Charms branching off of their Excellencies.

Lunars get pretty good Excellencies. They're Attribute-based, so they're broad. Their dice cap is only (Attribute), though.

Sidereals have odd Excellencies, but overall are relatively decent. They're Ability-based and their cap is horrible (Essence), but they can add successes up to (Essence), not just dice. The Fateful Excellency, however, is amazing, and makes their 1st Excellency less crappy.

Dragon-Bloods have pretty great Excellencies. Their dice cap is (Ability+Specialty) and they get to add two dice for every mote spent on their 1st Excellency. Their 2nd Excellency isn't as good, but combined with (Ability) Specialty Focus from TCA, it'll let you get off a free success on every roll within your specialty. Not shabby.

Except Charm design doesn't take place in a vacuum.

Infernals have the best Excellencies in the game, but they pay out of the ass for those. Besides the obvious "must purchase once for every dot of Essence", they have meandering Charm trees that work along thematic lines. If an Infernal wants to grab Malfeas' "I can ignore terrible damage" Charm, first he has to give up his ability to ever sleep well again. He can't just dip into the Resistance tree and grab a Charm or two like a Solar can.

Solars and Abyssals have merely decent Excellencies, so you laugh at them, up until the point where the walk up and murder you in the face, because every single other Charm they have is amazing.

Alchemicals have great Excellencies, but again, look at the overall structure of Alchemical design. They are forced into specialization by having to commit motes merely to use their Charms. In return, they get broad overall abilities.

Dragon-Bloods have pretty great Excellencies, up until the point where you look at the size of their mote pools.

And so on and so forth.

An E5 Solar can't drop tacnukes with their native Charmset like an E5 Dragon-Blood can, but the E5 Solar would still beat the hell out of the DB.