Melee Charms
Dragon-Graced Weapon
Cost: 1 mote
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Melee: 2
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: None
The character with Dragon-Graced
Weapon can impart special properties to the melee weapon in hand by merely concentrating
for a moment. The effect on the character’s weapon is based on his elemental
aspect, as described below. This effect is instantaneous; the Exalt must pay
Essence for every attack, and he must do so before making his attack roll.
Air: Fierce winds surround the weapon, knocking your foe off
his feet. A successful hit means the enemy takes normal damage and her player
must succeed at a Dexterity + Athletics roll at difficulty 2 or have her
character knocked prone.
Earth: A thunderous shaking of the earth accompanies the
weapon’s strike. The enemy loses two dice from all dice pools for physical
actions until he’s done with his next turn.
Fire: The target bursts into flames and, on his next action,
must soak another 4L damage from fire. This damage is
separate from the normal attack and without any extra successes added. The fire
gutters out after one turn.
Water: The target is gripped in a drowning embrace. Next turn
(or this turn, if he hasn’t acted yet) subtract 3 from his initiative total as
struggles to clear water from his lungs and throat.
Wood: Thorns cover all the striking surfaces of the weapon,
and it increases the damage of the attack by +2L.
Ghost-Fire Blade
Cost: 2 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Melee: 3
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms:
Dragon-Graced Weapon
Ghosts and dematerialized
spirits cannot be hit by ordinary weapons. Though many powerful weapons can
strike those immaterial beings, warriors caught without that kind of armament are
in great danger when facing spirit foes. This Charm allows a Dragon-Blooded
warrior to call upon the Dragon of Fire to enchant his weapon, allowing it to
strike immaterial creatures normally. The character must spend the Essence and
activate the Charm before making her attack, and her player must still roll to
hit the creature as if it were material. This Charm provides no additional
bonus beyond allowing the character to hit dematerialized spirits.
Refining The
Inner Blade
Cost: 3 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Melee: 4
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms:
Dragon-Graced Weapon
With a few seconds’
concentration, the Exalted can conjure up a weapon created entirely from his
favored element. This weapon has the same qualities as an ordinary weapon of
its type; it also has the qualities of a weapon enchanted by the Dragon-Graced
Weapon Charm. As the weapon is created out of raw elemental matter and Essence,
it does not last for long, but a combatant can be sure that it will remain
intact until the end of his current battle. When the scene ends, the elemental
weapon dissipates, evaporating into a sparkle of light and a whiff of the
character’s aspected element. The conjured weapon can
be any sort of melee weapon.
Stoking Bonfire Style
Cost: 1 mote per two dice
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Melee: 2
Minimum Essence: 1
Prerequisite Charms: None
The Exalt with this basic Charm
learns how to lend the ferocity of fire to his weapon’s blows. His hand becomes
steadier, and his strike truer. Add two dice to the character’s Melee dice pool
for every mote spent; however, a Dragon-Blood cannot more than double his Melee
Ability with this Charm. The player must declare that his character is using
this Charm and spend the Essence before making the attack roll.
Portentous Comet Deflecting Mode
Cost: 3 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Minimum Melee: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Stoking
Bonfire Style
This particularly costly Charm
is also particularly effective. Fiery sparks leap from the Exalted’s
weapon, interposing themselves between the Exalt and a potentially deadly blow.
Spend the necessary Essence and roll Dexterity + Melee after an opponent’s
hand-to-hand attack. If even one success is achieved, regardless of how many
successes the Dragon-Blood’s opponent achieved, the attack is blocked
completely. The Charm may be invoked after the opponent’s player makes his
attack roll. This Charm provides no protection against sorcery or attacks
enhanced by Charms.
Deadly Wildfire Legion
Cost: 1 mote per 2 dice + 1 mote
per subject
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Minimum Melee: 4
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: Stoking
Bonfire Style
With this Charm, you briefly empower
a group of your allies to attack at greatly improved effectiveness. They are
surrounded by a fiery halo when this empowerment occurs, and the tips of their
weapons scorch the air as the blades cut through their opponents’ defenses. You
may ensorcel one ally per mote spent, to a maximum of
your Essence Trait; you must spend additional Essence to improve their Melee
Ability, by two dice per mote spent. You cannot add more dice to your allies’
Abilities than you have in Melee, nor can you more than double their effective
Melee.
Threshing Floor Technique
Cost: 2 motes + 1 mote per
targeted ally
Duration: One turn
Type: Simple
Minimum Melee: 5
Minimum Essence: 2
Prerequisite Charms: Stoking
Bonfire Style
There is a practical limit,
imposed by geometry and space, on the number of people that can attack a single
target at once. Although it is unlikely that a Dragon-Blood has ever
participated in grain threshing, this technique was so named due to its
similarity to that activity. Only five foes can possibly effectively attack a
single target simultaneously, and that number is greatly reduced should a
target find himself in a defensible position ― his back against a wall,
for instance, or standing between two trees. With
Threshing Floor Technique, the only limit to the number of attackers that can
assault a single foe in one turn is the amount of Essence the Dragon-Blooded
spends. The Exalt designates a target and spends 2 motes of Essence to activate
the Charm and 1 mote of Essence per attacker. Then, so long as an attacker is
within her ordinary movement distance from the target (that is, [Dexterity +
12] ÷ 2 yards), she may make a melee attack at the designated target on her
normal action; she dashes in, makes an attack normally and then pulls back to
her previous position. Characters so empowered are not required to attack the
target on their action, though, if they do not, the Essence spent to enable
them to do so is still lost. Likewise, if the target is slain, Essence spent to
empower characters who never got their shot is also
still lost.
Ringing Anvil Onslaught
Cost: 8 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Extra action
Minimum Melee: 5
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Threshing
Floor Technique
With this Charm, a
Dragon-Blooded character can keep a foe entirely off-balance until he is slain,
if his skill is sufficient to the task. The Exalt using Ringing Anvil Onslaught
designates a single target, and his player rolls the character’s Melee Ability
(no Attribute is added). For each success, the Exalted gains an extra attack
against the target this turn. The Dynast cannot gain more extra attacks than
his Melee.
Fire
Incites Water To A Riot Of Clouds
Cost: 2 motes + 1 mote per turn beyond the
first
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Melee:
2
Minimum
Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Dragon-Graced
Weapon
Seen by some as a refinement of
Dragon-Graced Weapon, Fire Incites Water to a Riot of Clouds allows the Dragon-Blood
to channel her connection with the element of fire through a metal weapon and
into a body of water to generate a large volume of
steam. The moment the Exalt activates this Charm and plunges her weapon into a
body of water at least two feet deep, huge roiling clouds of white steam surge
from the water around the Dragon-Blood’s weapon. This steam isn’t particularly
hot and cannot be used to scald others, but it is highly effective at dampening
opponents and creating a dense, billowing curtain of fog through which enemies
cannot see. Due to its thickness, this fog is equal to fog at night on the
visibility table, limiting those caught in it to a maximum of three yards of
murky visibility. The Exalt’s weapon generates another
10 yards of steam each turn it remains in the water. The steam will tend to
roll away from the Dragon-Blood, and in the absence of any prevailing wind, the
character can make a Willpower roll (difficulty 3) to
control which direction the cloud of steam billows.
Using this Charm to supplement an attack
on a water elemental inflicts aggravated damage.
Blinding
Spark Distraction
Cost: 2 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Minimum Melee:
3
Minimum
Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: Dragon-Graced
Weapon
It is common in the course of combat for
clashing weapons to give off sparks. This Charm gives the Exalt the ability to
elicit a strategic spray of sparks into her opponent’s
face any time their weapons clash.
The Dragon-Blood can use this Charm any
time she parries an opponent’s metal weapon with her own or whenever her weapon
hits anything metal or stone in the course of combat. Essence multiplies what
would normally be a few flying sparks into a crackling blue and gold spray aimed
right into her opponent’s eyes. The opponent will be blinded the following turn,
subtracting two successes from all attack rolls made for him. The player
of the target of the spray of sparks gets a reflexive Wits + Dodge roll to have
his character turn away from the spray of sparks. If the roll succeeds, the
Exalt is down only two dice on his next turn’s attack roll instead of
two successes.
Spirit-Branding
Blade Technique
Cost: 4+ motes
Duration: Essence in days
Type: Supplemental
Minimum Melee:
4
Minimum
Essence: 3
Prerequisite
Charms: Ghost-Fire Blade
The Dragon-Blood channels Essence to her
weapon on an attack, and if that attack succeeds, not only does the Exalt cause
lethal damage with the blow, she also marks the target with a smoking brand
that can lead the Exalt to her target should the target escape. The brand is
difficult to hide and smolders through any clothing or fur that hides it. While
the brand cannot burn through metal armor, it can make the armor tremendously
hot — so much so that it’s intensely uncomfortable to
wear next to the skin. Every three turns the target keeps the mark covered with
armor, he suffers one level of bashing damage (which may be soaked as normal).
This mark is plainly visible to all who see it, including mortals (who see it
as a red and inflamed tattoo), but the brand also remains visible if the target
becomes invisible or takes on a new form (making it very helpful when dealing
with Fair Folk and Lunar Exalts). While marked by the spirit brand, the target
cannot lose his pursuers using non-supernatural evasion techniques, and his
player suffers a three-die penalty to all Stealth and Survival rolls.
A trail of black spirit smoke pours from
the brand, which is visible to any who can perceive dematerialized spirits or
Essence effects. This plume of smoke rolls in the direction the target
traveled. It cannot be touched or smelled, nor can it be dissipated by wind, by
hands or bodies passing through it or by any natural means. The burning mark is
usually in the shape of the Dragon-Blood’s weapon, although some advanced
combatants have learned to deliver a more personalized brand.
Style-Countering
Meditation
Cost: 5 motes
Duration: Varies
Type: Simple
Minimum Dodge:
4
Minimum Melee:
4
Minimum
Essence: 2
Prerequisite
Charms: None
This Charm allows the Dragon-Blood to
adapt perfectly to an opponent’s combat style. By watching and analyzing an
opponent in combat for no fewer than five turns (during which she can do
nothing else), the Exalt reads the subtle strengths and flaws in the target’s
fighting technique and adjusts her own combat style accordingly, exploiting the
target’s weaknesses and defending against particular strengths. Roll
Intelligence + Melee (or the appropriate Ability). This Charm lasts three turns
plus two turns per success, during which the Dragon-Blood gains a bonus of one
die per point of permanent Essence on all Dodge and Melee rolls made by her
character against that one studied target.
Versions of this Charm exist that use
Brawl or Martial Arts in place of Melee, but the minimum requirement of 4
remains the same, and all versions require Dodge 4. The Melee, Brawl and
Martial Arts versions of this Charm must be learned separately. These versions are
still Melee Charms. They simply analyze an enemy’s use of different combat
Abilities.
Due to the complexities and mental
demands involved in reading and analyzing a target so thoroughly, the Exalt can
use this Charm no more times in a scene than she has points of Intelligence.
This is a dice-adding Charm.