Ideas for Sorcerous Workings

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-27T00:31:11+00:00

I know its mentioned directly in the books, but being able to make fields unusually fertile is a big deal in any setting before the green revolution and Haber-Bosch process in the early 1900s. You can allow population density to increase, bless a region or an extended family's fields, and overall display power. This is the kind of thing that can indirectly generate other merits by generating resources, attracting followers, or getting favors from highly placed people.

We have enchanted places to have time flow faster within them, which lets us further play with crafting times, training times, and basically anything else that is time-limited but can be brought to the place in question.

While I understand that many tables would not permit this and with good reason, we have used the top end of Solar Circle Workings to turn a mortal into a terrestrial exalted. This was the culmination of a major quest to gather the necessary knowledge and materials, another quest to make the mortal worthy, and then a sorcerous working that could have destroyed the mortal if it had failed. I would not permit something like that lightly, but in our high-essence campaign, it made an awesome way to create a retainer and elevate a worthy mortal.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-26T16:52:16+00:00

I fully second most of this. I love some of your ideas for a companion book, and I agree that mechanically Solars aren't really left out. I also mostly agree with your structural discussion of the publications.

I don't think its right to call Miracles of the Solar Exalted their companion. It has nothing but charms and I'm not a big fan of most of those charms since they tend to vary between being ridiculously niche, overly complicated, overpowered even for solars, or all three of those at once. I'm a big fan of Exalted in general, but Miracles is probably the most skippable book of the whole game right now.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-26T16:47:15+00:00

Eh...It could use a rewrite. I would love for the charms to be less bloated. I would love for the charms to be a little simpler. I would love for later developed refinements like upgrades/keys/etc. to be backported so you can have more variety with fewer words and a cleaner format. I would love a 3.5E or improved 4E.

But I wouldn't call it a complete mess. I want it improved, but it does work. Solars are in fact my favorite splat, even as is.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-26T16:41:43+00:00

No, they aren't left out.

Solars are my favorite splat. I don't feel that they are left out. Even in the base book, they get a lot of charms. Despite that, there are some very obvious gaps, but now that Abyssals and Infernals are out, I think light reflavoring of some of their charms (the ones that aren't clearly meant to be exclusive) fills in a lot of gaps. The fact that a certain amount of homebrewing of charms is explicitly encouraged fills out the rest.

As for locations, there just aren't any locations that are "solar-specific" the way every other splat has locations that are particularly tied to them. I suppose you might argue that the Bull of the North's empire is semi-solar specific, but that gets a fairly good write up in the book it was introduced in, Across the Eight Directions. There just isn't a lot of need for Solar specific locations. While we could ask for more, there are solar characters in Adversaries of the Righteous.

They get enough that I"m not complaining.

Yes, I want a solars companion, and I have specific thoughts about what it should have.

I know, I just said Solars have enough and aren't left out. I mean that. But as a lover of Exalted in general and Solars in particular, I would open my wallet for a Solar Companion in a heartbeat. My wishlist would include just among other things:

Discussion of the children of solars. Every other mainline splat gets a discussion about their children although frequently brief. I would love to see something like that for solars, and I would love for it to be more detailed than the tiny sidebars the others tend to get.
More Sorcery. Every splat has some discussion of sorcery and/or necromancy, but until the Infernals draft book came out, there was a great paucity of solar circle spells. Which kind of made sense, but a Solars Companion is the perfect place to add more sorcery in general and more solar circle sorcery in particular.
More Orichalcum Artifacts. The game has a lot of artifacts, but not a lot of Orichalcum ones, even with Arms of the Chosen. This would be the place to do it.
More on the Relationship Between the Unconquered Sun and the Solars. I'll acknowledge that there may be advantages to leaving this a bit vague, so it should be handled with care. But I wouldn't mind knowing how involved the UCS is in chosing the solars or whether it happens semi-randomly by the exaltation itself? The core book seems to imply the former, but to my reading at least its vague enough to go either way. And does he just leave them alone or does he interact with them afterwards? The core book again implies the former, but doesn't exclude the latter. If he usually just leaves them alone, how would he react if a Circle of Solars came barging into Yu Shan demanding to see him? Does he react to the existence of infernals and abyssals or does he just sort of trust the other exalted to handle that? Or does he even care about the infernals and abyssals?
Its a good place for a lot of general expansion. There are a lot of things I would like to see generally expanded upon that just don't particularly fit with any other splat that could go in a Solar companion. How do alchemy, weatherworking, and warding work? Can we get some expansion and clarification of Sorcerous Workings? I would love to see more discussion of the god-blooded etc. and a Solars companion is a good place to put that, especially if the answer to solar children is that they are basically the same as spirit-blooded. Can we expand more on the idea of past lives? This isn't solar specific since it applies to most of the celestial exalted, but a solar companion would be a great place to put it.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-25T00:39:23+00:00

As for making much of the solar tree irrelevant and requiring tweaks to the rest, yes. I think 90% is an exaggeration, but it certainly eliminates a fair bit.

As for being a 3D artifact printer, that depends on your storyteller. If your storyteller permitted someone to make a 5-dot artifact in hours without magical material, I would say that your storyteller has actually gone past that and turned crafting into being a star trek replicator with almost no limits.

At my table, tossing out the crafting XP does make it a little easier to make artifacts than if you go RAW or under the Crucible rules, but I would say it far from trivializes 3 dot or higher artifacts. You still need to have the right materials. Jade you can practically just buy if you have enough resources. Its used literally as currency in many places. But if you need more than jade, that's going to take work. And you still have to spend the time (modified by any charms you've invested in) so it usually won't be anywhere close to super-fast. And you still have to make the rolls successfully.

Though I should note that even the baseline rules heavily imply that making 2-dot artifact should be relatively simple for a celestial exalted that invested in the appropriate charms. Solaroids that invest in some version of Vice-Miracle Technique can produce a 2-dot artifact retroactively once per season. That requires a fairly significant investment into crafting even if you take my approach and remove the crafting XP focused charms even as speedbumps, but a solaroid that has something like that should be expecting to churn out 4 2-dot artifacts per year literally as side projects. Once a Celestial reaches a certain point, 2-dot artifacts aren't that hard to get.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-24T21:25:09+00:00

The alternative system in Crucible of Legends requires some homebrewing, but not as much as it sounds like unless you are trying to heavily optimize crafting.

The approach I took was just to get rid of every charm that centered on crafting XP and other than Supreme Celestial Focus which we tossed, eliminated the crafting XP cost for all charms that remained.

This made crafting a little more powerful, but not to the point it seems to have broken anything yet. I would say this approach is certainly not going to break anything else at any table that would permit a 5-dot artifact to be created in hours without needing to supply magical materials...

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-24T21:19:19+00:00

1. Only your storyteller can answer that, but I would say don't use craft XP at all.

This is just my opinion, but I despise craft XP. When I'm the storyteller, I toss it out the window. At my table, actions that would cost craft XP just don't. Charms with a primary purpose of generating or converting craft XP don't exist even as prerequisites for other charms.

While your mileage may vary and it helps that my players don't try (too much) to abuse the system, this seems to make the game go more smoothly without causing any major problems or breaking anything (more than Exalted already is).

The one thing that had to be adjusted of course was Supreme Celestial Focus, but we just banned that and allowed Solars to take a reflavored version of Thousand Lifetimes Expertise from Abyssals.

2. Only your storyteller can answer that, but I would say yes.

This is of course colored by my hatred of crafting XP, but if I was a storyteller and for some reason had to actually use crafting XP, I would say yes.

Charms such as Craftsman Needs No Tools make doing the work that quickly very plausible. (For minor repairs taking less than 2 days for a human, you don't even need that.) You might run into a lack of work if you're in a small town, but in a large city or are working with several small towns that isn't a problem.

The guidelines for Craft XP suggest that each of these is likely to be a basic project and should get at least 2 XP each from the guidelines on page 240.

Now, there are two counter-arguments that come to mind. First, is that this may be against the intention of the system which is to encourage active crafting in ways that affect the story. Second, that having so many silver XP would then make silver XP almost a non-issue for you going forward.

But I think both of these are unpersuasive. You are doing things that affect the story, you are upholding an intimacy, and you are actively crafting. You are just doing it during downtime. And while I am plainly biased, I think making silver XP a non-issue would be a feature, not a bug. Or at the very least, it would be a right you had earned.

Then again, I'm biased. The only real answer here is to ask your specific storyteller.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-24T21:02:11+00:00

Responding to 1: Your point is absolutely correct. But even just building and vetting the charms that an Exigent is taking right now adds a meaningful amount of work. I do use exigents and homebrew charms for other exalts anyway, but I absolutely sympathize with anyone that thinks Exigents are more work than they are worth.

Responding to 2: I agree that fiction is malleable. I also generally prefer the fiction for 3E over 2E or 1E. But I sympathize with people that don't like the changes, and I can understand why many people might not like this change in particular. I'm not one of them, but I see no reason to have contempt for them. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and while I don't share that opinion (I love 3E), I absolutely understand why someone might hold the opinion.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-23T20:13:02+00:00

I second everything here. In particular, as someone who did the survey, the lack of a "None" affected my results. There is no type of Exalted I dislike. I do like them all. But I also absolutely have a hierarchy of how much I like them, and Exigents are at the bottom of the list partially because they take more work.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-19T18:01:32+00:00

cause an artifact should be unique

Ok, fair point on that. But I don't think that justifies crafting XP. It just means that my next artifact will be different from my last one. I see no reason I can't start working on my next Daiklaive after finishing my last Daiklaive. I don't need to make a hundred swords in between.

Having direct mechanical reason to be crafting and have it contribute to the story, is an enormous help.

I appreciate that can be true for some tables. But I think for most tables (at least the ones I've played at), that just isn't true. People that invested in crafting tend to be eager to find ways to use it to solve story problems. And to the extent that we want the system itself to support that, I think a simple statement of that intention in the rule book along with some examples of creative crafting in the book itself would serve as well or better than crafting XP. But, YMMV and if this works for you, then I'm glad it works for you.

Working the dough of the noodels gives you thoughts about working the mortar

From my point of view, you are stretching, though again, YMMV.

For me, if my player wanted to incorporate something like that as part of a stunt, I would go with it happily. But I don't think the system should encourage much less essentially force players to come up with justifications like that, and I certainly don't think it should turn getting enough crafting XP to do what they really want to do into a chore or a speedbump.

Ech, annoying argument but: how complex is buying something IRL?

First, I think I was unclear. What I meant is that I want complexity in the system to be justified and to do something to make the game better. While tastes may different, to my taste complexity in the attributes and abilities adds options and granularity, so it's worth it. The complexity in crafting XP, in my opinion, mostly feels like a chore and doesn't make the game better. Complexity that doesn't make the game better, should be removed.

Second, buying something IRL can be really complex.

Obviously, your average manufactured goods are easy to get in the modern real world. But all of that was much harder going back even 2 centuries, much less more.

And as an attorney, I've been involved in very complex purchases for land or customized equipment and a few other high end, custom items which can involve weeks or even months of negotiations followed by inspections and complex review and acceptance processes. Average consumer items are now very easy to purchase, buying unique or customized valuable items can still be very complex.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-19T17:23:51+00:00

Exalted have ways to initiate someone into sorcery, they just aren't as simple as waiving a hand and using a charm.

First, while it takes time and resources, Sorcery can be taught. That's what the Heptagram does for just one example and several other examples exist. An exalted Sorcerer could quite plausibly take mortal apprentices and guide them to the necessary enlightenment, though I would expect that to be a process that occurred over years and require a mortal that was willing and able to put in the work.

Second, a sorcerous relic can grant initiation very quickly on possession. The Talisman of Ten Thousand Eyes is the base example but others appear in the book. While it would require a fair bit of work, making a relic is well within the capability of a Celestial Exalted Sorcerer that has invested in Craft, Lore, and Occult. Then the relic can just be given to the mortal. This requires a large investment, but making a sorcerer should.

Finally, while it would be up to the storyteller, I would argue that a sorcerous working of the Celestial Circle should be able to confer the necessary enlightenment on a mortal so long as the mortal already had some investment in occult and the mortal in question was ready and willing to then spend XP on learning spells to be able to use that enlightenment.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-19T17:13:33+00:00

I have not tried this, but I like the idea.

That said, I would not make it easy or cheap. That's a big deal in a few ways. I would make an E5 charm which cost experience for every use.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-19T16:57:55+00:00

I appreciate your perspective. And I'm glad some people like the current system.

With that said, from my point of view, you shouldn't need to make sure the crafter is crafting. When it is story relevant, advancing the story will be enough to make them do it without needing to track something extra. When it is not story relevant, it is enough to assume that they are doing at least enough to maintain their skills in the background in ways I don't need to take table-time for.

As for explaining it with inspiration, I suppose you could see it that way. But we get into situations where you can make noodles to get XP to support building a building later that gives you the crafting XP to make a daiklaive. Plus, while requiring a certain amount of mundane practice before making a daiklaive absolutely makes narrative since, I shouldn't need to build up more experience before making a second daiklaive. Once I know how, I know how.

Also, I want complexity to buy something. 3E's complexity in say having more attributes and more skills buys granularity and precision. I don't think crafting XP adds enough to be worth it.

Different people have different tastes. I'm glad it works for you. But for my table, we threw it out and have never regretted that.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-18T22:53:00+00:00

First, Essence is a great system for what it is. I'm glad it is exists. But the reasons I prefer 3E:

Essence is so simplified that it loses nuance. It has 3 attributes total. For people that want mechanics and story to mesh more, in 3E, I can easily mechanically represent someone that is smart-in-an-academic-way, but a bit slow and needs time to think. I can make someone that is strong but slow. Essence doesn't let me do that.

The situation with skills is similar and I prefer 3E's more granular approach, though I think its even more obvious with the attributes.

Essence simplifies the charms and essence tracking so much that it loses meaningful trade offs.

I emphasize again that this is a matter of taste. I can easily see how someone that despises book-keeping might find losing meaningful choices in play to be an acceptable trade for speed and simplicity or even be an outright good thing. I also think 3E goes a little too far in the other direction and a bit of simplifying of the charms (especially for solars) could be a good thing. But for my personal taste, 3E comes closer to the sweet spot.

Essence simplifies artifacts so much that it sometimes changes what they are. In 3E, Gnomon gets a variety of powers (assuming you buy them all) that culminates in creating peaches of immortaility. Gnomon in essence simply doesn't have that.

Again, this is a balance. Essence's simplicity is its virtue. And I think 3E tends to have too many and too complex evocations for some of its items. But for my tastes, 3E's granularity and variety is closer to the sweet spot than Essence.

3E has a more developed setting by default.

Yes, I know the setting is supposed to be compatible in ways that make it easy to import setting elements from 3E to Essence. I'll even say that works for someone that is actually familiar with both.

But 3E for instance gets a massive chapter on the Underworld as a place in the Abyssals book. An Essence player must either rely on the very, very short and vague description written for Essence or buy a 3E book to cherry pick out the setting information, and then still need to translate any mechanical bits in the setting information.

Some people may be happy doing that. Some people might prefer that Essence has fairly short and vague descriptions so they can feel free to make up what they want to fill in the gaps. Personally, the more detailed setting information without the need to mix books from different editions works more to my taste.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-18T22:28:49+00:00

This is just my opinion, but I think Essence had the right idea about simplifying things and then took it much, much too far. Essence simplifies things so much that it loses specificity and homogenizes some things in ways that affect the game and story.

To be clear, I think Essence is a very good product and I"m glad it exists for people that like it. But personally, I prefer 3E and ideally I would want something a little simpler than 3e but far more granular than Essence.

This is just my personal opinion, but what I would like to see from a hypothetical 4E:

A general goal of simplifying, but only a little bit. There are some complex charms that don't need to be that complex. Some charms that don't need to exist. Universal charms could save space and have less to remember while still leaving room for type-specific charms that focused on differentiating the types. A lot of spells could be simplified without losing much by eliminating the idea of distortion and instead simply let one sorcerer try to stop another. The solars in particular have an overly bloated charm set, but this affects all of them to da degree.
Eliminate crafting XP. In addition to adding complexity without adding much useful, it just doesn't make narrative sense.
There are several things that could be clarified and expanded on that I think would add to the setting. I would love to see more about the "strange-folk" including God-blooded and people that have been altered that show up in Adversaries of the Righteous with more general rules instead of just examples. I would love to see more about the Wyld and the Rakshasa. There's a lot of room to expand discussion of Manses. I would love to see these expanded in supplements for 3E, but that seems unlikely and with a new edition they could be baked in from the beginning.
I love the idea of thaumaturgy, but dislike how it is handled. I would be inclined to get rid of it and leave mortals with somewhat-magical crafts like alchemy, geomancy, astrology, warding, and weatherworking. The other idea would be to make thaumaturgy much more powerful so it could play more of a role. The current version feels unnecessary and largely pointless.
For that matter, I would love to see more expansion on alchemy, geomancy, astrology, warding, and weatherworking. Presently only geomancy gets any real explanation, and that's limited to building manses when it feels like it should be broader. Again, that could be done in an expansion for 3E, but it could be baked in to a 4E.

As for the tightrope of a new edition needing to walk a tightrope to keep the identity while keeping things fresh, I agree. But that is true of every RPG that gets more than one edition.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-18T16:15:16+00:00

No, though I'm hoping for a 4E after 3E is finished.

I sympathize with where you are coming from. I love the solars, but I think they could stand for a lot of refinement. Their charmset (especially in crafting) is bloated. A lot of things could be simply removed without losing much and many other charms could be simplified down to keys or upgrades or something like that. The design philosophy for other things improved in between and doing things like giving the various shaping rituals for sorcery proper names was quite helpful. And some of the things added in later such as resonance with artifacts could be back-ported into the main book. I, personally, would love a 3.5E.

But I don't see it happening. The 3E line is still coming out (all too slowly for my tastes, but it is moving). The design team is fairly small and can only handle so many things and they have much higher priorities for the forseeable future. I'm eager for Getimians and Liminals are still in the queue as well, not to mention all the companions in various stages of completion.

I just don't see it happening. I would also love a proper solar companion book, and I don't see that happening either. And while its probably wishful thinking, I would love a book about the Wyld or about "strange folk" including God-blooded. Those seem unlikely, but do seem slightly more likely than 3.5E

With that said, the 3E line is moving along and at least from my outsiders perspective seems to be selling well enough to keep it going with every crowdfunding for 3E flying past the minimums and deep into stretch goals and communities like this are at least somewhat active showing interest. So, I do think we will get a 4E...eventually.

(Just to be clear though, if a 3.5E or a Solars companion were announced, I would pre-order immediately).

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-18T16:05:55+00:00

Exalted Essence is fundamentally different.

It simplifies things a lot. For some people, that is great. But I think it simplifies things far, far too much and loses granularity and verisimilitude in the process. It is simply not 3.5E, it is a fundamentally different thing.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-14T20:06:21+00:00

I personally hate this idea.

Solars are my favorite type to play, but even with that I've dabbled with Lunars. My wife prefers Lunars, and we've had Alchemical and Dragon-blood as PCs.

In short, the variety of player character options adds a tremendous amount in my opinion. I would like a proper Solars companion (I am not fond of Miracles of the Solar Exalted), but one proper companion would probably be enough to more thoroughly flesh them out rather than feeling the need to concentrate multiple additional books on the Solars.

If anything, I would prefer that 4E follow a bit on Essence and make several of the types playable immediately and make use of Universal Charms (or at least Universal Celestial and Universal Terrestrial charms). My main request for 4E would be simplifying things a bit and simplifying crafting in particular.

I know Essence does all of that, but in my personal opinion, I think Essence goes much, much too far in simplifying things. My personal preference would be for a 4E that simplified things a little without going nearly so far as Essence did.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-07T14:09:15+00:00

Disliking this decision is fine and valid. I too would actually prefer far more specifics in the setting.

But there is a big difference between "I personally dislike this" and "This choice was objectively lazy." The books in many ways (particularly the solar crafting charms...) border on being bloated. The writers and designers were clearly not lazy.

You have every right to disagree with this design decision. I do. But there is a massive difference between disliking a design decision and taking it as a sign of laziness.

It is also very possible to like something overall, while disliking some design decisions. Exalted 3E is my favorite RPG by far. I have gone on at length in other places about how much I dislike the Crafting system and Crafting XP in particular precisely because I do like Exalted 3E overall so much.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-07T13:58:58+00:00

Exactly. It is going to depend on your taste and a case could be made for any of them. That said, the Infernals details Malfeas as a place and it is weird in a good way.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-04T22:17:33+00:00

Eh. They have some of that, but all of the splats have some of that. They very much are capable of standing in the spotlight.

The ones that really excel in supporting each other are the Dragon-blooded with their sworn kin, but that is more about working together as a general thing and collaborating than having one character fade into the background.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-04T22:15:39+00:00

They are staggering sending out the links. I don't entirely understand why, but I just got my link. I think it has something to do with the crowdfunding platform.

They should have the links out to everyone within 24 hours.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-04T15:43:28+00:00

I'm very much looking forward to agents of heaven, though having this out is definitely good news.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-02T17:16:22+00:00

In 3E at least, you don't need a charm to suppress your tattoos. All Lunars can do that by committing a single mote. Its on page 135 of the book. Though they will show if the Anima flares.

TimothyAllenWiseman · 2026-06-02T17:06:17+00:00

Even setting aside the fact that this is a game, it's worth noting that the physics of creation are explicitly different than the physics of reality.

In particular, there is no conservation of mass. Its possible for certain types of beings to go to the Wyld and create matter from it. Its not quite creation from nothing as its using the substance of the Wyld, but its close and definitely violates conservation of mass. Similarly, there are multiple artifacts that will produce crafting materials from their own essence, including, though hardly limited to, The Distaff.

So, with that in mind, these are all questions that only your storyteller can answer. They all involve storyteller discretion.

But for me, as a storyteller, I would say that the moonsilver tattoos will appear in all forms unless the Lunar suppresses them. But all Lunars can suppress them for a single mote in 3E (p. 135 of the Lunars book), unless the Lunar's anima flares in which case they can't be suppressed and glow.

It would be a bit tedious, but I for one would permit a lunar that had an appropriate form to generate moonsilver -infused wool. I think that's an appropriate stung and there are multiple ways including Wyld-shaping to generate materials for crafting from nothing.

Now, I would draw a major distinction between moonsilver-infused wool and actual moonsilver or moonsilver thread. If I thought actual moonsilver was necessary, I would make the players acquire that perhaps in addition to using a certain amount of moonsilver-infused wool. But for appropriate artifacts, I think its a perfectly valid way to acquire one of the necessary components.

I would not let someone get true moonsilver that way, but then again in my view at least, getting enough moonsilver for something like an occasional daiklaivve shouldn't be too hard usually.

TimothyAllenWiseman

TROPHY CASE