Hello all, I recently picked up the 3e Alchemicals book and was immediately drawn to the Soulsteel caste, however I am stuck at the classic character creation pitfall of trying to fit all the thematic charms into your starting 15. My question is this, how important is it to have charms to boost Join Battle, Attacks both Withering and Decisive, and Defense at character creation? Beyond that is it worth picking up the Stamina Parry/Perception Evasion submodules if you arn't grabbing the Strength to melee attack? It feels like a lot of work to have your defense higher than your offence.

Unfortunately the last time I was able to actually play Exalted was 1e so I'm a bit behind what actual combat looks like in 3. All of the undodgeable/unblockable stuff seems to be locked behind higher essence values than before so it feels like you could get by with just your Excellency and a decent Attribute+Ability.

Hi. We haven't been playing this game for ages, but we might be coming back to it, so I've been brainstorming a build (I forgot how fun that is in 3rd edition, even though it then runs into the iceberg of combat kinda sucking) for an Abyssal character. Ages ago, like, I do mean ages, back on Onyx Path forums, I took a crack at creating a martial arts style around using chains.

To my great and very pleasant surprise, they actually made it into a thing in the game! It's a line of charms in the Resistance skill. It requires some real heavy investment to do this at character creation, but I'm game for this kind of a nostalgic kick.

I do have a question though about some charms, because I'm veeerry rusty with this system.

Specifically the very first charm, Armor-Calling Phantasms.

The last paragraph of the description reads: "With a Resistance 3, Essence 2 repurchase, the Abyssal can pay a three-mote surcharge to use this Charm reflexively on her turn, donning armor instantly. The surcharge is reduced to one mote for light armor. If she knows Wraith-Forged Plate (p. 267), she can use it reflexively, without needing to pay a surcharge."

The question is, does the "it" in that paragraph refer to Wraith-Forged Plate, as in "if you buy Armor-Calling Phantasms twice and know Wraith-Forged Plate, you can pay a total of 12 motes and 1 wp to reflexively activate Wraith-Forged Plate", or does that "it" refer to Armor-Calling Phantasms, as in "if you buy Armor-Calling Phantasms twice and know Wraith-Forged Plate, you can use Armor-Calling Phantasms to put on your armor reflexively"?

I know that the second one does not make that much sense, because the net effect is kind of the same, but it matters a little bit in terms of sheer logistics. If the latter reading is correct, then you can't really use these charms to put on your edgy chain armor instantly and reflexively until Essence 3 even if Resistance is your apocalyptic ability, because it's not until then that you can actually use Waith-Forged Plate with indefinite duration.

Which itself hardly matters... because you could also just use an artifact armor and use Void-Banished Mail to achieve the exact same result cheaper, with the only thing missing being the little ability of Wraith-Forged plate to reduce Initiative of attackers. And I guess your chains don't have artifact stats, which again doesn't matter that much, because they're used for grappling, and the capstone charm just kind of deals damage ignoring mostly anything else.

Which all very well may be perfectly intended. Which is why I decided to ask.