Two major things:
One, the Lore charm that allows you to train yourselves and others to skills and valors they don't have. It's (relatively) easily to gain a huge amount of skills in a short amount of time.
Also, using the artifact that lets you store spirits and steal powers from them. You gain a whole boatload of cool powers (such as extra willpower, motes, the ability to fly, extra actions, soforth) with no real drawbacks; the greater celestials up the food chain would object more to the 'regular' services most summoners put spirits through than imprisoning a spirit for a couple of weeks.
I don't see any real drawbacks to using these things extensively and they'll make your character way more powerful out the gate than intended. Am I reading this right?
Exalted Second Ed Min-Max
Moderator: Moderators
Re: Exalted Second Ed Min-Max
The training charms are very, very awesome, yes. Of course, being weighed down by XP debt for the duration of the campaign can be a huge pain - past a certain point, particularly if your circle members are specialising, more dots in abilities just don't matter; it's the charms and combos that increase your character's power, so abusing XP debt WILL slow down your rate of mojo-accumulation overall.
Yasal crystals are cool, too... and pissing off some spirit's boss by imprisoning him and sucking him dry for power, while it might be a serious consequence in other games, is just a nifty plot hook in Exalted.
Exalted handles exploits like that quite well, I think, in that the game all but expects you to do crap like that, at least as Solars.
Yasal crystals are cool, too... and pissing off some spirit's boss by imprisoning him and sucking him dry for power, while it might be a serious consequence in other games, is just a nifty plot hook in Exalted.
Exalted handles exploits like that quite well, I think, in that the game all but expects you to do crap like that, at least as Solars.
Re: Exalted Second Ed Min-Max
Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
*Wood Dragon Claw
*Incomparable Body Arsenal
*Unbreakable Bones of Stone
*Faithful Ally
*Summon Third Circle Demon
Celestial Circle Sorcery
Imbue Amalgam
Sorceror's Irresistable Puppetry
* Spells with a '*' are not necessary but are recommended for this build
If you sink the bonus points into extra essence and a skill rating into Occult, you'll be almost golden. Not quite though; you still need to come up with Resources 5 and unfortunately you spent all of your bonus points. Fortunately, this should be easy to come by into play. If not, go adventure for a little bit. And by a little bit, I mean a little bit. There are lots of ways to gain money in this game--it doesn't even break a little bit if you gain too many. If you have Invulnerable Bronze Skin and Wood Dragon Claw, you won't even come close to sucking. To avoid getting nasty stares from everyone, you'll probably want to spend two (three?) background points getting yourself a Deception mask. If you want to disguise yourself but end up with really brute strength, get a Soul Gem and the Summon Third Circle Demon.
Go hunt down creation for the biggest, baddest mortal creature you can find. You don't want a human being. It'll just imperil your goodness and they suck, anyway. You want something like a Tyrant Lizard. Now get an intelligent mortal (it can be a willing human--you can return them to their boring lives soon).
Once you have the money and the monster, do these things.
Cast Imbue Amalgam on the intelligent mortal. Give it a Temporary Essence of 5, a Lore of 5, a willpower of 3, and a War of 5 (costing you 42 motes so far). Give it a total of 11 charms. This entire process will cost you 75 essence. You want both of the training charms for War and Lore.
Take a nice, long time-out and train the crap out of the Monster. If your ST gives you lip, boost its intelligence first and tell him to shove it. Give it everything you can.
When you're done training the Monster, cast Imbue Amalgam on that thing and then boost its points as you feel like. I don't know the conversion for 1st Ed to 2nd Ed speed, but you want as much as possible. Don't bother giving it charms or boosting Intelligence, Wits, Charisma, or Manipulation. And for god's sake don't friggin' give it any willpower or real honest-to-god essence. Since the thing is infinitely loyal to you, failing your roll won't really have any immediate negative consequences, but you do not want to be missing the gravy train of sweet stat replacement. It's a good idea to give the Monster terrestrial sorcery, especially the mote-heavy ones. The best thing is that since this monster is an extra, you don't have to worry about the training costs or anything.
Stow yourself somewhere safe and haul coal for awhile. Take care of your cult if you need something to do--everyone wants a background dot in this ability. You won't be doing any real adventuring anymore in your own body, which is awesome. Possess the Monster Amalgam, which should be wicked easy for you; they (should) only get two dice and you get at least 8. Next, pick up your soul gem. Summon one of dem' Purple Demon Hos and use the shapeshifting ability. Then while you're a humanoid shape, lock your form in using a deception mask. Awesome.
In the meantime, enjoy your wickedly high dice pool rolls--if you had enough time to kill during Monster Creation, you should be rolling like 8 dice even in things you don't care about. If you did something smart, like stack 8 dexterity ability points on top of a Monster's already enhanced dexterity and then back that ass up with a 15 strength and some martial arts dots... well. Whoa. And if you have brains, you still have Wood Dragon Claw.
In conclusion, you are awesome. But this combination still isn't as relentlessly badass as some of the things you're EXPECTED to do in this game (such as, say, Sidereal Martial Arts) so I don't know how excited I should be. Oh, well. You'll be a lot stronger than any Solar Exalt is expected to be, so who cares?
* For non-idiots, a good solution would be to actually give this spell to your Amalgam and have them cast it, what with their temporary essence. Once again, I don't know how much essence these things start with. If you want to avoid an argument with the ST, give it a charm that increases its motes. Or just shuffle around your schedule. Whatever.
*Wood Dragon Claw
*Incomparable Body Arsenal
*Unbreakable Bones of Stone
*Faithful Ally
*Summon Third Circle Demon
Celestial Circle Sorcery
Imbue Amalgam
Sorceror's Irresistable Puppetry
* Spells with a '*' are not necessary but are recommended for this build
If you sink the bonus points into extra essence and a skill rating into Occult, you'll be almost golden. Not quite though; you still need to come up with Resources 5 and unfortunately you spent all of your bonus points. Fortunately, this should be easy to come by into play. If not, go adventure for a little bit. And by a little bit, I mean a little bit. There are lots of ways to gain money in this game--it doesn't even break a little bit if you gain too many. If you have Invulnerable Bronze Skin and Wood Dragon Claw, you won't even come close to sucking. To avoid getting nasty stares from everyone, you'll probably want to spend two (three?) background points getting yourself a Deception mask. If you want to disguise yourself but end up with really brute strength, get a Soul Gem and the Summon Third Circle Demon.
Go hunt down creation for the biggest, baddest mortal creature you can find. You don't want a human being. It'll just imperil your goodness and they suck, anyway. You want something like a Tyrant Lizard. Now get an intelligent mortal (it can be a willing human--you can return them to their boring lives soon).
Once you have the money and the monster, do these things.
Cast Imbue Amalgam on the intelligent mortal. Give it a Temporary Essence of 5, a Lore of 5, a willpower of 3, and a War of 5 (costing you 42 motes so far). Give it a total of 11 charms. This entire process will cost you 75 essence. You want both of the training charms for War and Lore.
Take a nice, long time-out and train the crap out of the Monster. If your ST gives you lip, boost its intelligence first and tell him to shove it. Give it everything you can.
When you're done training the Monster, cast Imbue Amalgam on that thing and then boost its points as you feel like. I don't know the conversion for 1st Ed to 2nd Ed speed, but you want as much as possible. Don't bother giving it charms or boosting Intelligence, Wits, Charisma, or Manipulation. And for god's sake don't friggin' give it any willpower or real honest-to-god essence. Since the thing is infinitely loyal to you, failing your roll won't really have any immediate negative consequences, but you do not want to be missing the gravy train of sweet stat replacement. It's a good idea to give the Monster terrestrial sorcery, especially the mote-heavy ones. The best thing is that since this monster is an extra, you don't have to worry about the training costs or anything.
Stow yourself somewhere safe and haul coal for awhile. Take care of your cult if you need something to do--everyone wants a background dot in this ability. You won't be doing any real adventuring anymore in your own body, which is awesome. Possess the Monster Amalgam, which should be wicked easy for you; they (should) only get two dice and you get at least 8. Next, pick up your soul gem. Summon one of dem' Purple Demon Hos and use the shapeshifting ability. Then while you're a humanoid shape, lock your form in using a deception mask. Awesome.
In the meantime, enjoy your wickedly high dice pool rolls--if you had enough time to kill during Monster Creation, you should be rolling like 8 dice even in things you don't care about. If you did something smart, like stack 8 dexterity ability points on top of a Monster's already enhanced dexterity and then back that ass up with a 15 strength and some martial arts dots... well. Whoa. And if you have brains, you still have Wood Dragon Claw.
In conclusion, you are awesome. But this combination still isn't as relentlessly badass as some of the things you're EXPECTED to do in this game (such as, say, Sidereal Martial Arts) so I don't know how excited I should be. Oh, well. You'll be a lot stronger than any Solar Exalt is expected to be, so who cares?
* For non-idiots, a good solution would be to actually give this spell to your Amalgam and have them cast it, what with their temporary essence. Once again, I don't know how much essence these things start with. If you want to avoid an argument with the ST, give it a charm that increases its motes. Or just shuffle around your schedule. Whatever.