Survival
Charms
Friendship With Animals Approach
Cost: 3 motes
Duration: One Scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
1
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: None
Through the use of this Charm, the
character can deal well with nearly any wild animal. The character must be
within one yard of the target per point of her Essence. Herbivores and smaller
omnivores will become somewhat docile, even letting the character pet or handle
them.
Predators are less susceptible to this
power, and most will simply let the character pass unmolested through their
territory. This power does not work on sentient animals, animals that are
trained to attack or animals that are insane from pain, hunger or disease.
Spirit-Tied Pet
Cost: 10 motes, 1 Willpower,
1 experience point
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Friendship With Animals Approach
By handling an animal, feeding it, petting
and scratching it and otherwise interacting with it, a character who knows this
Charm can forge a permanent magical bond with the beast. Each time the
character uses this Charm on the target, it is as if he gained a point of the
Familiar Background with the target animal as the Familiar. So a character who
wished to tame a tiger would have to use it at least three times to cause the
beast to become well-disposed to him and an additional two times to gain the
ability to see through the beast’s eyes and communicate with it. Obviously,
using this Charm on animals such as bears, tigers and tyrant lizards can be
problematic, as they will not allow themselves to be handled, even under the
effects of Friendship with Animals Approach. A strong wrestling ability or a
willingness to raise the animal from a cub is useful in such instances.
Characters cannot have more than one Spirit-Tied Pet at a time.
Poison-Resisting
Meditation
Cost: 4 motes
Duration: One scene
Type: Reflexive
Minimum
Resistance: 3
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: None
The character’s metabolism is strengthened
by Essence, allowing him to easily endure the effects of toxins. The player may
add a number of automatic successes equal to the character’s Stamina to her
Stamina + Resistance roll to resist the effects of poison. Though even the
hardiest Exalted can still be slain by massive doses of poison while using this
Charm, they are largely invulnerable to poisoned food and envenomed blades.
Characters need not invoke this Charm before exposure to poison — they may call
upon its effects after they are exposed but before the Stamina + Resistance
roll is made to survive the toxin.
Use of this Charm allows a character to
withstand incidental toxins such as spoiled food. A character under the effect of
this Charm may also consume without penalty a number of drinks equal to his
Stamina.
Illness-Resisting
Meditation
Cost: 6 motes
Duration: One day
Type: Reflexive
Minimum
Resistance: 3
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: None
While the Exalted are little-affected by
disease, they can still become sick. Fevers can slow them at critical moments.
Further, while the
This Charm allows the player to add a
number of automatic successes equal to her character’s Stamina to the Stamina +
Resistance roll to avoid contracting an illness. Further, the player may add a
like number of automatic successes to her character’s daily Stamina + Endurance
roll to overcome an illness she has already contracted.
Bestial Traits
Technique
Cost: 8 motes
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Spirit-Tied Pet
Through the use of this Charm, a character
can gain the traits of her Spirit-Tied Pet. Each use of this Charm allows the
character to gain a single characteristic. Obviously, animals have too many
characteristics to easily model them all. Typically, the character will gain
the ability to climb rough surfaces, fall great distances without damage,
survive in difficult conditions or strike for lethal damage or gain one or more
Keen (Sense) Techniques or Unsurpassed (Sense) Disciplines. A character who
wishes to imitate her poisonous animal companion must imitate both the bite and
the poison (two characteristics) and gains a bite as poisonous as the
companion, not as poisonous as the companion if it were the size of the
character.
Characters may not gain abilities that
require gross physical changes — a character with an eagle companion cannot
grow wings, and a character with a tiger companion cannot gain camouflage
stripes. Characters must have an Spirit-Tied Pet to
use this Charm.
Hardship-Surviving
Mendicant Spirit
Cost: 5 motes
Duration: One day
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
3
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: None
Through the use of this Charm, the character
becomes able to survive in even the most hostile conditions without special
preparations. Blazing heat or terrible cold are no danger to the character, nor
are hypothermia from rain or water exposure, trench foot, snow and sand
blindness, leeches, mosquitoes and other potentially deadly biting insects —
the character is perfectly at home in a harsh wilderness environment.
This magic protects the character even if
he personally is not prepared for the environment. A character using
Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit is at home on a glacier if he is bundled in
the warmest clothing available or if he is clad in nothing but silk slippers
and a pair of pantaloons (though he may have difficulty walking over ice in
silk slippers). Note that this Charm does not protect against the most hostile
of environments — ocean survival, underwater survival or the extreme elemental
effects near the elemental poles. To exist in those environments, characters
must use the Element-Resisting Prana Charm.
Trackless Region
Navigation Charm
Cost: 7 motes
Duration: One day
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Hardship-Surviving
Mendicant Spirit
With this Charm, the character can find his
way safely and surely through even the worst terrain. The character (and a
number of persons following him equal to twice his Essence score) can travel
through even the worst terrain with ease. Travel through most terrain (forest,
light marsh, rock and sand desert) is about as fast as if the character was
walking over flat, level ground — characters will travel about 20 miles a day.
Travel over very harsh terrain (muskeg at high summer, glacier, bayou, dense
scrub or fresh-growth jungle) is at half this speed.
Food-Gathering
Exercise
Cost: 3 motes per person
Duration: One hour
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
5
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Trackless Region
Navigation Charm
A character with this Charm will never go
hungry. In a hour of foraging for food, she can gather
enough nuts, berries, edible tubers, slugs, bugs and small animals to make a
large meal for a number of people equal to her Essence score. Note that this
skill typically does not involve hunting game, and so, the character does not
need a hunting tool such as a spear, sling or bow — the character will probably
not bring back anything larger than a rabbit.
Storytellers may wish to make it more
difficult to gather food in certain environments (deep sandy desert and pack
ice, for example) but should not impose a penalty greater than halving the Exalted’s take. This is, after all, magic.
Unshakeable
Bloodhound Technique
Cost: 8 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One day
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
5
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Hardship-Surviving
Mendicant Spirit
The character can track anyone in the
wilderness, following the most minute signs and,
sometimes, nothing more than a magical intuition of where the target has gone.
The character can track anyone through any terrain, so long as the trail is
fresh enough. Over difficult terrain for tracking (open ocean, rocky desert,
grasslands), the trail remains fresh for typically one day per point of the
tracking character’s permanent Essence. Over terrain more amenable to tracking,
it can be two or even three times that long.
This ability can be foiled by the Traceless
Passage Charm. If the target is using Traceless Passage, then the tracker and
target resolve the matter as if neither was using magic.
Eye-Deceiving Camouflage
Cost: 6 motes
Duration: One day
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Hardship-Surviving
Mendicant Spirit
Trough the use of this Charm, the character
can conceal himself or an object no bigger around than his Essence rating in
yards so well as to be undetectable. In order to gain the benefit of this
Charm, the character must spend one hour camouflaging his position or the
object to be concealed. So long as the character stays still and takes no
violent action, he will not be seen. Note that a character or object camouflaged
in this fashion is essentially fixed in position. If the character moves
suddenly or at great length, the effect is disturbed and the Charm ceases to
have its effect.
Camouflaged objects or characters can be
found after a number of hours of intensive searching in their immediate area
equal to the camouflaging character’s Essence score or by a character with
Unsurpassed (Sense) Discipline or some similarly powerful perception power
whose player succeeds in a Perception + Awareness roll against the character’s
Intelligence + Survival. Note that camouflage covers scent and other detection
methods as well as visual stealth.
Traceless Passage
Cost: 5 motes per person, 1
Willpower
Duration: One day
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Unshakeable Bloodhound
Technique
Through the use of this Charm, the
character can make his passage and the passage of additional persons equal to
his Essence score totally traceless. They cannot be tracked by conventional
means, not even with the aid of tracking animals or other tracking aids. Only
characters with the Unshakeable Bloodhound Technique Charm can follow them, and
even then, it’s played out as if they were tracking him without magical
assistance.
Element-Resisting Prana
Cost: 10 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One day
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Hardship-Surviving
Mendicant Spirit
Through the use of this Charm, the character
becomes able to survive in any environment. The character can survive in
extreme environments, such as the extreme heat and toxic fumes within the
caldera of active volcanoes, can exist underwater with no ill effects and can
even exist without danger in conditions as harsh as those of the elemental
poles. While this Charm is active, the character adds her Endurance to her soak
when she takes damage from elemental sources such as cold, fire and lightning.
Earth’s Unceasing
Beacon
Cost: 2 motes
Duration: One scene
Type: Reflexive
Minimum Survival: 2
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite Charms: None
By means of this Charm, the Exalt can
instantly know in what direction the Elemental Pole of Earth lies, at least in
a general sense. The player must make a Perception + Survival roll for the
character. With even a single success, the character will have a general idea
(able to point in the direction of) of where the Pole of Earth is located. Each
additional success makes this sense of direction more precise; with three or
more successes, the Exalt will know exactly where the pole is in relation to
his current location, with sufficient clarity to be able to navigate with the
aid of a compass and map. Any additional successes beyond three may be applied
as bonus dice to any rolls involving navigation or plotting a course, until the
end of the scene.
Storm Warden Concentration
Cost: 6 motes
Duration: One day
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
3
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit
This Charm
protects the invoker from the adverse affects of natural weather. The Exalted
may move through heavy winds without being impeded by them, travel through a
sand- or snowstorm without being blinded or spend a stormy night with no
shelter without fear of becoming waterlogged. The
Salamander’s Touch Technique
Cost: 1 mote
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit
Through the use of
this Charm, the Exalted can light small, controlled fires. These are normal
fires in every way. They can cause no damage by themselves, but if allowed to
blaze out of control, they can be as dangerous as any other fire. The fires
this Charm can light are limited to normally flammable materials. The Charm is
useless against water-soaked wood or other noncombustible substances.
Unquenchable Conflagration Technique
Cost: 10 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Salamander’s Touch Technique
When all the
available wood is soaked or, worse, when there is no wood to be found, even the
most skilled survivalist can find herself forced to live without heat and
flame. This Charm allows the Exalted to cause a fire of up to bonfire size to
spring into existence with but a gesture. The fire will burn for a complete
scene, even in high winds or driving rain, but it will not spread unless
normally flammable materials are introduced. This power cannot be used as a
direct attack.
Sun’s Flaming Tongue Attack
Cost: 15 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Minimum Survival:
5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Unquenchable Conflagration Technique
Through the use of
this Charm, the Exalted rains down solar fire upon a single opponent. After
investing the required Essence, make a Willpower roll. The fire does a number
of points of lethal damage equal to the Exalted’s
Survival score, plus one point of damage per success on the character’s
Willpower roll. This power can strike at a range of line of sight. Against
demons, ghosts or other creatures of the night, the damage is aggravated. This
attack cannot normally be blocked or dodged, but the targets may have Charms
that allow them to do either in their defense.
Game-Snaring Huntsman’s Method
Cost: 1 mote per
die
Duration: One day
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Survival: 4
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite
Charms: Hardship-Surviving Mendicant Spirit
When invoking this
Charm, the Exalted names a single breed of animal, which may include “human.”
He then crafts a snare appropriate for trapping the species of interest. For
each mote invested in the Charm, the Survival roll to create the snare is
increased by one die. In addition, for each mote invested, the targeted breed
suffers a one-die penalty to detect or escape the trap. The trap will not be
triggered by any species other than the one named. This trap cannot be used to
snare a specific specimen, but instead, affects the first member of the species
that encounters it.
Game-Snaring
Huntsman’s Method cannot be used to create a trap that will innately do damage,
such as spikepits or deadfalls. It can only be used
to enhances snares, pit traps and the like. If
incidental damage is done to a target in escaping the trap, then the trap may
still be eligible for the Game-Snaring Huntsman’s Method.
Devil-Pit Technique
Cost: 2 motes per
die
Duration: One week
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Survival:
4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Game-Snaring Huntsman’s Method
The Devil-Pit
Technique functions in many ways like the Game-Snaring Huntsman’s Method. The
Exalted names a breed of animal to be targeted by the trap. The roll for
creating the trap is increased by one die for every 2 motes invested in the
Charm, and the targeted breed suffers a like number of dice in penalty for
rolls to detect or escape the trap. The trap will not be triggered by any
species other than the named one, nor can it be set to trap a specific
individual.
Unlike the
Game-Snaring Huntsman’s Method, Devil-Pit Technique can be used to enhance
traps that are designed to cause damage or death to their targets, rather than
restrain them. A trap enhanced by the Devil-Pit Technique does one die of soakable lethal damage per 2 motes invested in the Charm. This
damage is in addition to any damage a normal trap of the design might do.