Post originally by Jean-Paul Cardier at 2003-04-14 17:09:50
Converted from Phorums BB System

"First off, anyone who plans on making a D&D style fireball slinger is out of luck. Although there are a few flashy spells that seem like they should be pretty potent in combat a close reading of the mechanics show that they are much, much weaker than charm powered attacks. Some may applaud the fact that WW is tring to break the standard fantasy wizard mold but shouldn't the rules be broad enough to accomadate different approaches to the genre? Furthermore, unless a player is familiar with the rules they might not realize how weak their spells are and could become discouraged when they're ineffectual in combat. "

Not at all, in my experience. I have been ST'ing my group in Exalted for over a year now, and the two Twilight Sorcerers have more than kept up their end of combat.

You have to match the spell to the job. Death of Obsidian Butterflies is a great Extra Killer, but it doesn't do incredibly well against 1 single powerful villain. If the villian has only OK dodge/parry use Flying Guillotine. The base damage is 18L! If you hit, you'll get some off of the base. If the bad guy has great dodge or parry, use Titan's Icy Breath or Thunder Wolf Howl, neither of which allow for dodge or parry, per the Bo3C Errata. That means that BG will need HGD to parry them, because of the inapplicability of Seven Shadow Evasion. Soak too high? Use Internal Flame, which paralyses all that cannot completely cancel all wound penalties.

The main problem with running a spell caster in Exalted is that they are slow. 1 turn to cast, 1 to release for the Terrestrial Circle. 3 total turns for Celestial, and forget about casting Solar spells with a 4 turn cast time.

The work arounds are three: 1. Play a Twilight. The after damage ability helps quite a lot if you get hit. 2. Use a persistent defense, and high soak. You can get a very long lasting persistent with Virtuous Guardian of Flame, though it is expensive, and Invulnerable Skin of Bronze is great, particularly stacked with armor and/or Gem of Adamant Skin. 3. Use an Artifact that helps your cast time, like the Crucible of Tarim or Spell Capturing cords from Castebook Twilight. If you can store a spell for later, get that artifact, or make it if you need to.

Any questions?