General System Structure

Creation is an enormous, diverse place where almost anything might happen—and need to be resolved by the players and Storyteller. Although Exalted has many rules, they almost all refer back to a simple resolution system, explained below.

Time

Exalted has five general measurements to describe the division of time within the game, progressing from the largest to the smallest unit:

Chronicle—A complete game focusing on a continuous series of characters or events. Similar to the full run of a television series of cycle of books.
Story—A discrete portion of narrative that often takes several sessions to play out. Stories generally have an overall goal or framework, such as "Overthrow the satrap," "Find the ancient ruins of Lost Zarlath," or "Escape from the Wyld Hunt after being ambushed and trapped in the city."
Session—A single evening of gaming, generally encompassing several scenes.
Scene—A segment of action and roleplaying that takes place without a cut in time and location, like a scene in a film. A scene takes as few or as many rounds as are necessary to resolve events—in-setting, a scene might be as short as a few minutes or as long as a few hours.
Round—A unit of time used to measure combat scenes, considered long enough to take one action. A round normally lasts about three seconds in combat situations, but could potentially represent more time during fights involving large battle groups. The point during a round when you declare your character’s action is called your turn.

Existing outside of this scale of progression, there is also: Downtime—Time between scenes or sessions that pass without roleplaying, which is narrated in an abstract fashion—"Three weeks later, you finally arrive in Nexus," or "My character spends the remaining days before the festival rigorously practicing martial arts on the mountaintop."

Dice

The Exalted Storyteller system uses 10-sided dice; each player should have at least 10 dice of her own, though dice can be shared in a pinch. 10-sided dice can be purchased at most hobby outlets, or from online retailers; alternately, countless free virtual dice-rolling applications are available online.

Traits

Rather than generating dice pools, characters occasionally generate static values—fixed ratings which are recorded on the character sheet. These are normally used to determine the difficulty for hostile individuals to act on the character—for example, a character's Defense rating determines the difficulty of attempts to attack her. Exalted has the following static values: Evasion, Parry, Defense (which is equal to the higher of Evasion or Parry), Resolve, and Guile.

Characters possess a variety of traits describing their innate capabilities, trained skills, and other measurable qualities, such as their Strength, Intelligence, and Stealth ratings. Most traits are rated in dots (•) ranging from 1 to 5, much like the "five-star" system critics use to rate movies, wherein • is a low or poor rating, •• is average, and ••••• denotes superlative excellence at the outer edge of human potential.

Dice Pools

When a character takes an action in Exalted, her chance of success is represented by her dice pool, which is normally formed by combining the most logically applicable Attribute and Ability that pertain to the task. For example, a character attempting to pick a lock (a task requiring nimble hands and criminal expertise) would combine her Dexterity rating with her Larceny rating. Assuming she has Dexterity 3 and Larceny 2, she then has a dice pool of 5 dice.

Which Attribute and Ability should be combined to attempt an action is generally up to the best judgment of the Storyteller.

Determining Difficulty

Having determined what dice pool to use, the Storyteller then considers the task the player wants his character to attempt and assigns it a difficulty rating.

As great heroes, Exalted characters are assumed to possess abundant confidence and competence. Tasks which run-of-the-mill individuals in Creation would consider challenging (such as picking a lock or removing a patient's appendix without killing him) are ordinary fare for heroes. Such tasks are appropriate for difficulty 1.

Performing challenging tasks under significant duress (such as picking a lock or removing an appendix in the dead of night, without sufficient light, in the midst of a howling storm) is appropriate for difficulty 2.

Tasks which might daunt even heroes, by contrast, are appropriate for difficulty 3. Examples might include plucking a gem from a nest of writhing serpents without being bitten, or breaking a man-eating horse born in the depths of the Wyld so it accepts the hero as its rider. Performing such tasks under significant duress (such as plucking the aforementioned gem while the temple collapses around the intrepid thief, or breaking the man-eating horse in the midst of a raging forest fire) are appropriate for difficulty 4.

Near-impossible feats, even by heroic standards, are appropriate for difficulty 5. Examples might include reading a letter in pitch blackness by feeling the texture of ink on the paper, leaping over the rail of a sorcerer's flying chariot to land safely in a hay cart hundreds of feet below, or running for three consecutive days and nights without succumbing to exhaustion.

Rolling the Dice

Automatic Actions and Difficulty 0

Many actions that a character takes aren't dramatic at all, and aren't worth breaking out the dice for. A character can generally lace up her boots, navigate stairs, and cook breakfast without needing to roll to determine success—she's simply assumed to be competent at things she does on a regular basis, and the story moves on.

Sometimes, however, thanks to magic, penalties suffered by enemies, or very low static values, characters may occasionally find themselves attempting a rolled action with at difficulty 0. Treat this as a difficulty 1 action which cannot be botched. The most common sources of difficulty 0 are low-Defense combatants suffering penalties due to armor or magic.

Now that you know what to roll and how to determine the difficulty of an action, here's how to read the results.

Roll a number of dice equal to your dice pool. Each die that shows a 7, 8, 9 or 10 is considered a success. In fact, each die showing a 10 usually counts as two successes (this is known as the Double 10s rule). For an action to succeed, the player must accumulate a number of successes equal to or greater than the action's difficulty rating.

Success: To return to our earlier example of the lockpicking hero: Let's say she's picking the lock at twilight in the midst of a storm. The lighting is poor and the rumble of thunder masks the sounds of the tumblers turning. The Storyteller determines that the action is difficulty 2. Since the character possesses Dexterity 3 and Larceny 2, the player rolls five dice against difficulty 2, garnering results of 1, 3, 6, 7, and 10—three successes. The door opens.

Successes in excess of the number required are known as threshold successes. In the above example, the thief succeeded with one threshold success. Threshold successes are relevant to certain actions detailed later in this chapter, such as combat.

Failure: If the roll generates no successes, or generates fewer successes than the difficulty set by the Storyteller, then the action has failed. Depending on whether it makes sense, the character might or might not be allowed to attempt the action again. In the example of the thief, the Storyteller might rule that the character may attempt to pick the lock again, but now hears a guard approaching—if she doesn't succeed this time, she won't have time to hide before the guard comes into view.

Botch: If the roll generates no successes and one or more dice come up showing a result of 1, the action has botched. A botch means that the action has failed in such a way that it dramatically complicates the story—perhaps the thief's attempts to pick the lock have caused her picks to break off inside, jamming the lock so it cannot be opened at all! The character will have to find another way to reach her objective.