[Exalted 2e] Buff/Support Character

[PersonMan]

Alright, I was wondering if there are any good charms/backgrounds/whatever that I can use to assist other party members?

I(well, my ST) has the Basic, Lunar and Abyssal books. Anything apart from those...well, I'm not sure what he'll say about it.

It'll be our first game, so if you have general advice that'd be good too.

[Reynard]

It really depends what areas, combat, homecare etc. And what Exalt type.
Got any leaning towards a specific Chosen? An Abyssal won't have much for you, I imagine, and could have issues with Resonance.

[Kyeudo]

The most general advice is to learn Sorcery. Spells are generally the best way to hand out useful effects to other characters. Still, you'd want the Black and White Treatises if you're going to do a sorcerer. The core book has so few spells in it.

[Tengu_temp]

There is a music-based martial arts style in Scroll of the Monk that has a lot of buffs and debuffs. It's not very good, though.

[Reynard]

I traditional SotM fashion, it's broken in every which way at once.

Some things:
War: Coordinated attacks can be deadly in combat. Hell, take a specialty in them. Provided you yourself can avoid getting up close and personal, you can provide lots of help.

Medicine: Meh. You can't really speed up Exalted healing, though there was an Errata'd mutation for buying it twice. Mostly good for saving mortals.

Craft: Support your troops by building weapons of mass destruction. Note that craft is either terribly impractical or horribly broken, with little to no middle ground.

Sail: Airships. Feck yeah.

[Terraoblivion]

In general unless you're a Dragonblooded or an Abyssal you won't be doing much in the way of buffs or debuffs respectively, it is generally not something Exalted focuses on. However, normally you will not focus on a single aspect of life and that leaves plenty of room for support by doing something that isn't the focus of the game, but is still useful. This could be to be a diplomat who smoothes things over and ease the way for your circle of beatsticks or to be a scholar who can find information about your finds in a first age ruin. For that matter it could be a legbreaker who can enforce the will of the circle when words fail in a politically oriented game.

As far as Exalted is concerned, support means doing something useful that isn't quite the main focus of the group. It's a rather different paradigm from more purely combat focused games like D&D. That being said the one place you can definitely go to for support is Sorcery, it has many amazing effects that tend to be indirect enough in the Emerald Circle to not quite stand on their own.