Editing Exalted Sorcery (section)

==Introduction==

Do you want to play a Sorcerer? Don’t know why you should, or why you shouldn’t, make a Sorcerer or a dabbler? Want to know what spells you need to handle carefully, lest your GM smack you around? I’ll be going over the basic mechanics of Sorcery, what they mean in practice, and then some comments on the spells themselves and Sorcery in general.

To use Sorcery you need to know at least one of the three Sorcery Charms: Terrestrial, Celestial, or Solar. These are Occult Charms, and they have high essence requirements: 3,4, and 5. You must also know at least one spell, which you learn like a charm but with a much longer learning time required. You then spend an appropriate amount of willpower: 1,2, or 3 depending on the Sorcery Charm being used, and then spend the essence cost of a spell that you know of the appropriate Circle. Terrestrial Sorcery lets you cast Terrestrial spells, and so forth. I do not believe that you can learn spells from a higher circle than you know the Charms to, and you cannot learn a Sorcery Charm higher up the ladder than your Exalt Type. Terrestrials can only learn Terrestrial Sorcery, Lunars and Sidereals are limited to Celestial and Terrestrial Sorcery, and Solars can learn any.

Once you have spent the will and motes for the Sorcery Charm and spell, you immediately spend an action to shape the spell. Until the spell is cast, you may not take any other action, or split your action, or use any Charm. You must depend on others to defend you, on persistent defenses that you put up earlier, or on armor, artifacts, and your anima power. You cannot move or talk either. If you take damage, there is a roll to see if you lose control of the spell, and botches have side effects similar to countermagic. If you are casting a Terrestrial spell, only one turn of shaping is necessary. You may cast the spell on your next action, which still forces the restrictions of spell usage on the character. Only on the turn after casting may the character act normally. Celestial spells require 2 shaping actions before casting, and Solar spells take 3 shaping actions. Some spells are rituals, that may take much longer, and during a ritual any motes spent on the spell are considered committed until the ritual ends.

There are also countermagic spells, special spells that can be used with a single action. It still counts as casting normally during the turn the countermagic is used, so no splitting actions and no other charms. Countermagic can be used in one of two ways. Either it breaks a single spell being cast or in effect in its radius, or it shields you from any incoming spells until the end of your next turn. You suffer a penalty to combat actions during the next turn. Spells broken by countermagic of the same circle shatter into storms of essence, doing damage based on the circle of the spell broken. Higher circle countermagic snuffs out spells of a lower circle completely.

Ok, that’s the mechanics for Sorcery. Now, what those mechanics mean. First, sorcery is very will intensive. Only somebody who uses combos a lot will burn will faster. They are also mote intensive, but since you can only cast at best once every two rounds the total mote usage isn’t extraordinary compared to combat. You are very vulnerable when casting. You cannot depend on armor alone to protect you or attackers will just split for ping damage, nor can you tie down others to be constantly protecting you. That leaves persistent defenses. All characters who intend to cast in combat need at least one persistent defense, be it Flow Like Blood, Five Fold Bulwark Stance, Ebon Shadow Form, and others. Also, the longer you spend casting the more likely the opposition is going to spend more effort on stopping you, as canny opponents will know when you are casting a Celestial or Solar spell due to the added shaping actions. Countermagic is often the cheapest spell in the circle, so Sorcery against a Sorcerer is generally a loosing proposition in a one on one fight. You are going to spend more motes throwing spells than the other guy is going to spend countering them. The exception is Emerald Countermagic, for which the area effect version is quite expensive compared to the average spell cost in the Terrestial Circle. Out of combat, the social and utility spells are very expensive compared to their charm equivalents. Also, there is no way to hide casting, so many people are going to be very wary of dealing with a casting Sorcerer, which is a problem that social charms do not have.

Now, for a spell overview. First, combat. Sorcery is not very good at combat. Most attack spells have normal attack pools with no way to boost them. They usually only attack once, so perfect defenses are very effective as you spend less than half the cost of the spell in defending against it. A target with a pair of persistent defenses up (Solars/Abyssals) or somebody with a high dice pool (Lunars) is nearly immune to most attack spells. Damage is usually decent, but the best way to compare is to take the cost for the spell and compare the spell’s effect to a basic combo with the same cost. Excellent Strike   Hungry Tiger Technique or Wise Arrow   Fiery Arrow Attack or Dazzling Flare Attack with a good artifact weapon are appropriate comparisons to make. Then recognize that the Sorcerer is only attacking once every few rounds.

Next we will cover buff spells, spells that improve the target in some way. Several of these can only be cast on the Sorcerer. These are pretty good spells, as most have no charm equivalents, but they require setup time as they don’t last very long. Also, if your GM believes that countermagic breaks all spells in its area of effect they are mostly useless as a single countermagic will drop every buff spell you have up. There is canon backing this version of countermagic, as the actual spell text is unclear. The buff spells that only affect the caster are great for dabblers, characters who only learn a few spells to augment their combat or other abilities. Social spells are a mixed lot, some are very nice, some are distinctly inferior to printed charms. And then there are a lot of spells that do strange things, and their quality is very variable.

One important thing to remember about casting significant duration spells everyday is that you only recover, at most, 2 and a half will every day on average. That means that casting more than a pair of terrestrial spells or a single celestial spell everyday will cause a net loss of willpower over time. Keeping more spells than this up every day is not viable unless your GM allows you to stunt taking a bath and eating breakfast.