This thread is primarily for me to post GM notes and information, if I forget things or just need to impart information
This message was last updated by the GM at 22:34, Mon 18 Apr 2022.

Reference your character sheets and Biographies..

When I return your draft character sheets to you there is one thing you need to do and one thing that has an additional benefit for doing so.

The must do is to set your sub-attributes as you want them.. I just divide and arbitrarily assign the points.. you can juggle the points assigned within an attribute as long as you stay within the limits and constraints as per the "Attributes and Sub-Attributes" section in the Rules

The should do is to write up the character Biography, taking the elements you wrote in response to the questions on the questionnaire, the responses to any questions I posed,and any salient points from any discussion that have taken place. I some case I may provide some outline, or I may just leave it all up to you.

As per the "Gaining More Points" section in the rules.. writing up a good Biography will get more points for doing so, as will having a character portrait(Trump) and writing an "In Character Diary" or blog even..

I'm sending the Character sheets out via WeTransfer links sent via rMail.. please return them the same way.. I might get to using the RPoL character sheet facility as I get more familiar with the site's capabilities.

Additional Notes
1) You should also look at "Stuff" - the website under "Creating Characters" has a sightly better description than the rules (strangely)
2) You should also define equipment/possessions you want.. if you suddenly need something and it's not on your character sheet then you don't have it.
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:30, Wed 20 Apr 2022.

I’ve had several people comment on the way I layout attributes and sub-attributes out on the character sheets, it’s one reason I rewrote the “Attributes and Sub-Attributes section in version 1.9 of the rules (current version downloadable from the website – Note the downloadable version is *always* the most up to date version of the rules, hence why if I change the version I update the “News” page).
When you receive your character sheet the block for a given attribute will look something like the block below

Psyche (21) R5<10+15><21+21>

Reading the block from top to bottom you have
1)     The governing main attribute, in this case Psyche, then a Rank, in this case Rank5, then 2 blocks both in the form of <base+bonus>. The first block is the “general” sub-attribute calculation, and the second block the sub-attribute points allocation.
2)     The General Sub-Attribute, which just reflects the calculated values from the block above
3)     The remaining sub-attributes which fall under this attribute

I always write the sub-attribute values as <base+bonus> as it just makes the maths easier when allocating points, as it’s easier to make a column add up to 21 than the whole set add up to 42.

You will note that in the set above, there are 8 sub-attributes and I have just arbitrarily allocated 2 points as base and 2 points as bonus to each <2+2> which makes <16+16>. This means that as the calculated values are <21+21> there are points that can still be allocated.
So for example

Psyche (21) R5<10+15><21+21>

Now let’s look at a slightly different example, suppose instead of being 21, the Psyche value was 24

Psyche (24) R5<12+18><24+24>

In this case the 2 columns equate to <24+24>, so the arbitrary allocation uses up all points. But this is just an arbitrary allocation by me and may not actually reflect what you had in mind, so you could re-arrange to

Psyche (24) R5<12+18><24+24>

OR

Psyche (24) R5<12+18><24+24>

Both are equally valid; it just depends on which best reflects your character concept.

Repeating this here just so people don't miss it..

Cathal and Alana are also PC/NPCs. Their backgrounds are well established as are their abilities. They will interact In-Game.
Natsuki is a possible PC, but most likely will stay as an NPC. She will also interact In-Game.
Anything in serif orange italics is and Out-Of-Character(OOC) comment FYI
This message was last edited by the GM at 13:51, Thu 16 Mar 2023.

Just a reminder .. the Game does have a wiki ... of sorts..

From the wiki

Character Improvement
As in a regular Amber game you have the ability to improve your characters.. gain new powers(or sub skills), abilities, and improve attributes (or rather their sub-attributes).

For new sub-skills, like "Mind Walk the Summoned Sign/Pattern Sight" this requires 2 things, having the requisite amount of CP available to pay the CP cost, and expending the requisite amount of effort/time to learn the skill. It may also require some coaching/guidance from a requisite teacher.

In regards to increasing Attributes/Sub-Attributes, this also requires 2 things, having CP available to spend, and a "Qualifying Event", for example, walking the Pattern for the first time.

It does also mean that if you're learning a skill or working to improve a sub-attribute, you need to specify that your character is doing so and the proportion of their "working" time they are spending doing so. It may also require you to "Role-Play" gaining the skill or attribute.. it depends on the skill or attribute.

If on a character sheet update you have a set of square brackets with a number in it pre-fixing a skill it indicates that this skill is in development with the figure representing the number of points currently spent in development. When the requisite number of points have been spent, due to the requisite amount of effort having been spent to complete the skill development, the square brackets will disappear.

Worth remembering at this point that a 1pt increase in an Attribute is at least 2 points to spend in sub-attributes. So if you have a Psyche of 15 and you increase it by 1 to 16 then the general sub-attribute goes from <11+11> to <12+12> but the sub-attribute points go from <22+22> to <24+24> which is actually an increase of 4 points.

All this means that you all now have points to spend.
Firstly you have 10 'free' CP points to add to your totals. This pays for the "10 Pattern Imprint(Carnelian)" power you now have (which should be noted on your character sheets).
Secondly you all have +3CP to add to your totals.

As walking the Pattern is a 'Qualifying Event' you may all now spend up to 4 CP on increasing your attributes. Points can be spent on Psyche, Endurance, and/or Strength, in any combination up to a maximum total of 4 points. Send me a PM with your spends and queries if you have them.

At any juncture where I award CP there is the opportunity to also gain bonus CP, above anything I may award for 'general' story progression. The main criteria for bonus awards is "furthering the story", but I may award for other reasons. Bonus CP can either be banked or spent on current skills or stats depending on what qualifying criteria there may be. Bonus CP awards will always be hidden behind Private or Secret Text labels.

I should also note that "the frequency/volume of posts" isn't necessarily the key to "furthering the story", it's the contents of the post that counts.

A quick explanation on "learning" to Mindwalk the Summoned Sign.
To manifest the 'image' of the Pattern to use it you have to create a 3D representation of it in space, effectively you're putting together a 10,000 piece 3D jigsaw which you 'mentally' have to hold together as you do it.

When you initially attempt this you have no idea how to do it, and everybody does it slightly differently, the same way every body does every job slightly differently, even if they've been trained to do it, because everyone is an individual. So Run#0 is the process by which you work out your own personal technique for manifesting the image.

After that it's simply a matter of practice, but as with learning all things, that takes time, and you make mistakes during the process, which in this instance causes the image to collapse, so you have to start again. The time for each 'run' is therefore the time it takes to achieve a successful manifestation.

The more runs you complete the better you get at doing it (less chance of making a mistake) so the faster you get. Hence the time it takes you to complete each manifestation run, i.e from the point at which you start working till the point at which you successfully manifest the image, comes down for each run, until it reaches your 'normal' default value.
The default value also depends on which Pattern skills you have, so it comes down further once you acquire Shadow Walk, and then again when you acquire HellRide. It also depends on the number of points you have in these skills.

Each 'run' also gets less tiring until it reaches its normal default. The first run(Run#0) is particularly mentally tiring simply because you're not used to the process and you have to work things out. If you've every coded a really complex algorithm or had to work out the code from scratch to solve a complex problem, or spent 6 hours writing essays in exams, you'll have a good idea of exactly how mentally exhausting this is.

In terms of Game Mechanics, at least in term of Exhaustion, Run#0 counts as Medium exertion at double cost (so approximately 2 hours of work moves you up the scale by one step). Each of the next 5 runs reduces the cost by 0.2 (so x1.8 for Run#1, x1.6 for Run#2, etc) until it reaches its default normal level of medium exertion. Note that keeping it in mind once you have the image manifested counts as light exertion, at least for basic Pattern abilities - Pattern Sight, Shadow Walk, Pattern Search, Manipulate Probability, Shadow Shift Items.

The sub-attributes which determine how quickly you can workout how to manifest the Image (Run#0) are not the same as for actually manifesting the image once you have a basic technique for doing so. So some of you will find that once you have worked out how to manifest the image, the time to actually manifest it is a lot less.

Okay some notes on the basic lesson plan(s) Cordelia
The lesson plan as outlined consist of 4 parts.

• a)Learn to shield your thoughts and emotions,
• b)Engage in Psychic Combat yourself, which will allow you to both control, manipulate, or if necessary kill another person,
• c)Analyse your own mind to detect engrams and memory blocks, and potentially deal with them,
• d)And deal with the consequences of when you invade a weaker or unshielded mind and get swallowed by/swallow it.

basically 4 lots of 40 hours.
The books are a lesson plan, a syllabus for you to work through, some of which you can do on your own but a lot of which will need you to work with somebody else.
In this vein the first 25% of lessons (a), (b), and (c), you can work through on your own but to complete (a) and (b) you're going to need to work with somebody who has the relavent training, and if you hadn't picked up on it, both of your Chaosite peers have the training already.
Dealing with lessons (c) and (d) are more complicated, and both require the events in question having occurred. There is a further complication with (c) in that a sufficiently more powerful psyche can impose a memory block or engram that you can neither detect nor attempt to deal with.

There is another slight complication in that the lesson plan is both mutable and self mutating. As you work through the lessons and learn how to do what's contained on your own the structure of what's there and how to access it will implicitly change, but the basic access mechanism is probably similar to that of a 'mind palace', you just think about the subject you want to know about, or just think about the lesson plan in general and you will sort of get a contents page and then be able to access the relevant sub lessons by subject from there.

In regard to lesson (b) there are 3 ways in which psychic combat can be initiated

• a)Accepting a Trump Contact (although a sufficiently powerful psyche can force the acceptance of a connection)
• b)Look directly into the eyes of another person. Note this can occur at a distance equal to (Psy:SA+Psy:Perc)/2
• c)By physical contact (skin-to-skin)

With the exception of (a), since you're automatically in mind-to-mind contact, you explicitly have to initiate a mind-to-mind contact, or attempt to.

The lesson comes with an explicit warning, "Psychic combat is both difficult and dangerous, primarily because until you decide to attempt it and engage the other mind you have no idea of what you're going up against. Just because somebody appears human doesn't mean they are.
For minds of approximately equal power it can be a slugging match, and the stronger mind may not necessarily win out.
Against a mind which is considerably stronger, then it will be over very quickly, in what ever manner it turns out.
The problem with using a trump of a person or accepting a trump call is that it bypasses a lot of the other safe guards and puts you in direct mind to mind contact, its why accepting unknown trump calls is exceptionally dangerous."

Character Improvement - block 2

Your day of "Trump Training" brings us to another point of character updates

What Cordelia has covered in the context of Trump are 2 basic Trump Tricks
Self Identification (1 point cost)
Trump Portal (3 point cost)

Given the context of the days exercise you now all need to add the following line to your powers block
[01] Trump Portal
And deduct 1 CP from your available pool.
Further points spend in Trump Portal will require you to practice creating and using Portals.

Note:For Natalie, Cassandra, and Rhiannon, this is a +1 gain given they already have the skill. It will require practice forming portals by calling people to be able to add the last point to complete the skill. Note also that to create larger portals you need more than the base skill.. For each point about the base you can increase the size by 1%

Note:For Natalie, Cassandra, and Rhiannon. Once you acquire the 'create full trump' ability, you get any points spent on Trump Portal back, as it is a 'free' ability once you have this ability, or to put it another way, you can't acquire the 'create full trump' ability without mastering this basic trick. The same applies to having 'Trump Caller Id'.

If you want Self identification then you need to spend both the CP and 8 hours practising calling people for which you'll need the relevant Trumps.
Note: This does not apply to Natalie, Cassandra, and Rhiannon, as this is a 0 points cost skill that comes with the Trump Artistry skills Caricature/Panorama/Figurine/Mock-up)

Note: There is another Trump Trick, Sense Trump, which is a 5 point skill. The Trump Artists already have this ability for free. Anybody can develop this trick if they wish to, but you'll need to roleplay doing so and send me a PM as to how to go about it..

Note: Anybody can learn any of the Basic Trump Tricks.

For those who have completed Mindwalk #Run3 , you can spend up to 2 CP on attributes. You can spend 1CP on Psyche and/or 1CP on Endurance:mental (spend is on Endurance but raises the End:men sub-attribute by 2)
You also need to add the following line to your powers block
[01] Mind Walk the Summoned Sign
And deduct 1 CP from your available pool.

Note: Rhiannon having completed enough Mindwalks to get under the half hour point gets +1 point in the ability and +1 CP as an offset. Everyone will gain this at the appropriate point.
Note: Mindwalk the Summoned Sign/Pattern Sight is a 5 point skill but learning it is a 3+2 skill. The 'under 30 minute barrier' means that Cordelia will tell you what comes next, thus the first half has a 3point limit, of which you get 2 points automatically..

Your CP gain since your last award is outlined below.
Everyone gains 4CP

Some Notes on Pattern Sight and Sense Trump
So the first thing to note about 'Pattern Sight' is the last word 'sight'..
So the main use of Pattern Sight is to examine things you can see..
The limitation is that your ability to actually determine that a person possesses some form of ability or what their genetics may be, or to determine that an object is not mundane is that they have to be within 2*(Psy:SA+Psy:Perc) ft.
To actually be able to identify what the meaning of any information in an aura may be is that you have to have encountered that aura signature previously and know what that signature means.
Beyond this distance objects and people obey the ‘square law’ rule, so the more powerful the object the further away it can be detected, thus the Pattern can be detected from 100*(Psy:SA+Psy:Perc) ft
It is also possible to read a person’s or object’s aura that is completely covered or obscured (such as behind a door) but you need to be really close to do so (Psy:SA+Psy:Perc) /4ft

For those people who have Sense Trump, their ability to actually detect Trump objects is actually considerably greater, but they have to be specifically looking for Trump objects or be close to them. In the former case, a single Full Shadow Traversing Trump card can be detected from 5*(Psy:SA+Psy:Perc) ft, whilst in the latter case (Psy:SA+Psy:Perc) ft.
A full Trump deck, when actively looking can be detected from 25*(Psy:SA+Psy:Perc) ft, or 5*(Psy:SA+Psy:Perc) ft. Minor Trump Artefacts fall into this category.
Beyond this the multiplier can be anywhere from 75 upwards for active detection or 25 for passive but it depends on the strength of the Power possessed by the object.

Further notes on Pattern Sight and Sense Trump
As indicated in the post above, Pattern Sight allows you quantify a persons aura, and detect items of power, or items to which a power, such as a spell, has been applied.
The general caveat is that you need to know what the aura of the item is to know which power has been applied, so if you're not familiar with the aura of a Trump item then you wouldn't be able to identify other items which also had a Trump aura.
The second caveat is that you need to be able to see the item, although items of significant power, such as the Abyss, are visible even when not directly visible, although proximity and the actual item power plays a significant factor.

For example, a Trump deck placed in the draw of a sideboard, would be visible, or its aura would be visible, to a person using Pattern sight in the room a few feet from the sideboard. However, if the person were in a corridor on the other side of a foot thick stone wall, then the Trump deck wouldn't be visible to Pattern Sight.
To a Trump Artist or somebody possessing the 'Sense Trump' ability the Trump deck, as a source of Trump energy would be 'visible' in both scenarios.

Let me give you another  analogy. Consider a village of 50 of so houses in the middle of no where on a dark stormy night. Standing in the middle of the village a person with Pattern sight may be able to see one or two street lights in the direction they were looking, but if the street lights in the village were considered Trump sources, then to a person with Sense Trump, it would be like looking down on the village from 50ft above it, tiny pin pricks of light visible spread out across the gloom.

Character Improvement - block 3

Completing the Expo Opening day brings you to the next story milestone and thus some more CP

For those having completed enough Mindwalks to get under the half hour point you get +1 point in the ability and +1 CP as an offset. Everyone will gain this at the appropriate point. Rhiannon should have this already and I applied it to Cathal's Character sheet before passing it to obsidianherz.

Once you have completed your first significant 'Pattern Sight' viewing you get +1 point in the ability and +1 CP as an offset.Rhiannon probably needs to apply this gain and I applied it to Cathal's Character sheet before passing it to obsidianherz so he doesn't.

Note: Mindwalk the Summoned Sign/Pattern Sight is a 5 point skill but learning it is a 3+2 skill. The first half has a 3point limit, of which you get 2 points automatically, and the second a 2 point limit of which you get 1 automatically. The remaining points you need to apply from your pool

Your CP gain since your last award is outlined below.
Everyone gains 2CP

Once you complete Mindwalk the Summoned Sign/Pattern Sight you can spend up to 2 CP on attributes. You can spend 1CP on Psyche and/or 1CP on Endurance:mental (spend is on Endurance but raises the End:men sub-attribute by 2). To complete it you need to be able to identify all the basic signatures Human, Chaosite, Amber, Pattern, Logrus, Shapeshifter, Magic, Trump. You're likely to have difficulty with the Chaosite/Shapeshifter distinction so for the time being I'm allowing you to ignore the differentiation as to which one is which (there is an in-game method of doing so..).

Character Improvement - block 4

The completion of the Pattern Demonstration Excursion and the Expo and Carnelian Balls brings us to the next story milestone and thus some more CP

Note: Mindwalk the Summoned Sign/Pattern Sight is a 5 point skill but learning it is a 3+2 skill. The first half has a 3point limit, of which you received 2 points automatically, and the second a 2 point limit of which you get 1 automatically. The remaining points you need to apply from your pool (if you haven't added the second free point based on the Excursion to Elysium and the Pattern Classes then you need to do so.)

Your CP gain since your last award is outlined below.
Everyone gains 4CP

Once you complete Mindwalk the Summoned Sign/Pattern Sight (i.e you've allocated all 5 points to the skill which you can do once you have the last outstanding Aura which is the Logrus) you can spend up to 2 CP on attributes. You can spend 1CP on Psyche and/or 1CP on Endurance:mental (spend is on Endurance but raises the End:men sub-attribute by 2).
This message was last edited by the GM at 22:25, Sun 10 Dec 2023.

The Trump Lesson Plans and Learning to use Trump around the Mansion/Intense Trump Interference
In the 'Basics of Trump' thread where Cordelia presents the Trump Lesson Plans to the Trump users she says the following


Lesson 1 - Learning to Shield yourself from local Trump sources
Lesson 1(a) - Shielding so you can use your 'Sense Trump' ability
Lesson 1(b) - Shielding so you can 'Tap' an ethric Trump source to create a Trump.

The lesson is about how block out local Trump sources, as in objects that radiate Trump so that you can either detect other nearby sources or 'Tap' an etheric source to create a Trump.
Local generally means 'on your person' or within a few feet, and the strength of the Trump source is dependent on its capabilities, so a single non-shadow traversing trump is trivially weak and easy to shield against (for the sake of argument 1 candella), a single shadow traversing trump is fairly strong (50 candella), whilst a full 56 card deck or weak artifact is very strong source (3000 candella).
This is not the same as a full Trump block where you just cut off all 'Trump' sources, this is a selective block where you 'mask out' any interfering source you're not interested in.

Cordelia in her initial instructions says you need to be an environment where there is no interference and start with a single full Trump, such as the Mansion Trump, 50ft away from you. Rhiannon found this hard enough in the Octagon Tower in Elysium, the Mansion, as indicated in the original threads relating to 'Trump Blocks' and blocking trump, is a different kettle of fish entirely.

To put it bluntly you are not going to be able to work on any of Cordelia's Trump exercises, especially the latter ones, until you've worked through and developed the ability to selectively block Trump sources, which means you're going to need to be at least half a mile from the Mansion to even work on the Lesson. This means either working somewhere in the garden/estate or somewhere else entirely. You will not be able to work on these exercises with any success in your room in the Mansion.

Cordelia in her initial instructions in the lesson indicates you start small, 1 full trump at a distance, which you bring closer until you can form and hold the tap with it on your person. Once you can do this you use 5  cards, then 10, then half a deck, then the full deck.
It'll take you about 8 hours, of mental grind to get to the point where you can locate the source beyond the interference (for a single card at 50 ft), and a further 8 hours, to reach the point where you could draw the trump energy necessary to form the tap. The is classed a Medium Fatigue at double cost (half duration) for the purposes of how tiring it is. Drawing a Full Trump is a Medium Fatigue Task, so the fatigue level drops as you get better at shielding out the interference.

The same is True for the 'Sense Trump' ability, except in this case you need 2 cards, one about 10ft from the other. In this case you are trying to detect the presence of the further of the two cards, which is being masked by the source in front of it (given that the sources are the same strength you will automatically detect the nearer card, so in a situation where you don't know there are 2 cards 10 feet apart, you can't selectively block the 'further' card as you don't know it's there in the first place). There is also a 'reverse case' where you have a single card 10ft in front of a 10 card stack. In this case the strength of the stack will mask out the single card, so in this case you need to mask out the 'stack' to be able to detect the single card.

It is also worth noting that if you are not carrying one of Cordelia's full trumps (or any shadow-spanning trump), such as the Mansion Trump, and are more than half a mile from the Mansion, then you can still create non-shadow spanning Trumps, subject to the standard Trump creation rules and timescales (so you could create trumps of your rooms and/or a place in the Garden/or where ever you're working.

Once you have the full 'Mindwalk the Summoned Sign/Pattern Sight' ability then, again if you're more than half a mile from the Mansion, and not carrying one of Cordelia's full trumps, then you can work on the 'Imbue Power' ability, which is forming a trump tap and then pulling the Trump 'thread' through the image of the Pattern so that it acquires a 'Pattern Patina' which enables the creation of a shadow spanning trump, whether that be a sketch, durable sketch, or full trump, subject to the standard Trump creation rules and timescales.

Sleep and Exhaustion
This is the example for the rules which illustrates the fatigue, exhaustion, and recovery rules. I'm posting it here as a reminder, and since it's come up during Sarah's induction.

So how does all this work In-Game? Let’s look at an example, using an Amberite who has an Endurance of 12 and is Rank 5.
This would translate to a Stat block which may look a little like this..


Taking the Ranked Block from above and plugging the numbers in..


But what do those numbers actually mean?
Let’s say that our Amberite is either a Lord of the Manor, or a typical office worker. They spend their day in meetings, moving about, talking to people. Nothing particularly stressful. So after 25 hours their level of “tiredness” or exhaustion would move from “Fine” to “Fatigued”, after another 25 hours it would move to “Tired”, and after 75 hours to “Very Tired”. So after more than 3 days they could really do with taking a break and getting some sleep.
Consulting the “Recovery” table, our starting point is “Very Tired”. This mean that after 240-15=225 minutes of Sleep we move down the scale to “Tired”, a further 150-(15/2)=143 minutes moves it to “Fatigued”, and a third block of 80-(15/4)=77 minutes moves it to “Fine”
Now let’s assume that our 10 hour day is not quite as boring and mundane, so equates to “Light” activity. We also work out for a couple of hours (80min of Medium + 40min of Heavy).
We now have to consider the “work out”. We have ½ a block of Heavy and 1/3 of a block of Medium. Now Heavy has about 1/3 the duration of Medium so if we convert the Heavy to medium (multiply by 3) we get 1.5 blocks of medium, which if we add to our 1/3 block takes us to 2.1 blocks. But we need to factor in the 10 hours or 5/6 of a block of light activity. Converting this to medium (dived by 3) gives us about 1/3 of a block, for a total of 2.4. So we move from “Fine” to “Tired”
But we now spend the evening relaxing (sedentary rest), before possibly getting some sleep. A starting point of “Tired” means we need (150-(15/2))*1.5=215 minutes of sedentary rest to move us down a level. Therefore by the time we actually go to bed, we’re somewhere between “Fatigued” and “Tired”. If we assume worse case, and use “Tired” again 143 minutes of sleep moves us to “Fatigued”, and a further 77 minutes moves us to “Fine”.

So basically what this says is that your average Amberite, if they're not doing anything classed as energetic can go 2 or 3 days without sleep without any serious repercussions. The more energetic they are the more likely they are to need sleep. Most Amberites will typically sleep 3 to 5 hours a night, not necessarily because they need to but because in the context of a 'human' society, where humans do need to sleep 8 hours a night, they sleep to fit into the 'normal' pattern enacted by the population at large.

Shapeshifters and Flying forms
This has come up before and it's sort of covered in the rules under the 'Demon Form' Optional rules under Basic Shapeshift but I've never really actually done some proper calculations until now...

So from an earlier discussion ref Basic Shape shifting and alternate forms ...

The one thing to bear in mind is that as a basic ability, the laws of conservation of mass applies. This means that when transformed into any other form you still weigh exactly the same, which is why alternate animal forms are typically large animals, vis horses, deer, bears, wolves, big cats (lions, tigers, leopards, cougars), and large dogs.

The problem with birds is that they are specially adapted to fly, they all have hollow bones to reduce their weight for their size.
Looking at the worlds 2 largest flying birds the Snowy Albatross and the Stellar Sea Eagle they have wingspans of 10ft and 8ft respectively and maximum weights of 28 and 20lbs.
So whilst you could assume the form of an Eagle (the Stellar Eagle when standing is just over 3ft tall), you would end up with a height of about 4'3" but a wingspan of 40ft. Taking off from anywhere other than a mountain peak would be almost impossible (the hang-glider principle, you drop off the edge and hope to achieve V2, which is the speed to achieve sustainable lift, before you smash into the ground below).
If you've not watched Canada Geese take off, go find a video, it's fairly enlightening.

More advanced shapeshifting abilities can be used to counter some of these problems.


Now having done some basic calculations there is an errant flaw in my own rules. A Demon at 40% of the weight of the Mid-Point of 'Normal BMI' for a human of the same height would still not be able to have true flight, even if they had the ability to lose 15% of their mass (the Base level that 'Adjust Structural mass' - See below - gives).  So a rule change (or two) is in order. The 40% now becomes 55%, which means Chaosites who are light enough can fly, whilst those who are heavier can only glide. Note also that the windspan increase to 5 times the character's height from 3 times.

Note also that you 'flight' speed, i.e the speed that can be maintained by flapping your wings, is twice that of your walking speed when flying level, and the same when 'climbing'. When gliding, assuming that you have true flight, your speed can be anything between 1 and 3.5 times, the latter applying in a steep and controlled descent.
For those who can only glide, the descent speed is dependent on your weight, the heavier you are the quicker you descend.

Note that once you get the Exalted 'Mimic Intirisic Powers' ability, or can buy an 'Alternate Form' which has the 4pt Ability "Capacity to Fly" this problem goes away. Mimic Intrisic Powers will allow the use of 'magic' or 'super natual' flight as possessed by Dragons and True Demons, for example.




Edit for minor updates as I've been playing with quadratic equations in Excel to generate some slope/descent numbers based on BMI midpoint multipliers
This message was last edited by the GM at 23:32, Thu 14 Mar.

Some Notes on Shadow Walking
Firstly, even from the original books and rules, Shadow walking relies in visual cues and small changes, and the changes have to be made 'out of sight' and then brought into view.
This mean you cannot go from a craggy hill valley deep in snow or a forest deep in snow to somwhere with no snow cover 'instantly' at least not in any controllable form, or at least not using Shadow Walking, and Hell riding requires travelling at speed, and Hell riding wouldn't work in a Pattern locked Shadow.
This means to get out of this shadow you have to slowly move through shadows with less and less snow until all the snow is gone.