White Wolf Publishing

I love Exalted, but I have a hard time convincing my players to enjoy it as much.

One of the main things that crop up every time is Healing Times and Training Times. Both get a big sigh, and I have a hard time convincing them (and myself) that it doesn't interrupt the flow of gameplay.

I mostly am the ST, but I'm recently able to be a PC. I find that I still don't mind still, but do recognize them as a hiccup in game flow.

I'd like two responses for this.

1)How do you handle Healing/Training times in your game WITHOUT Houserules.

2) What Houserules has your group come up with to lessen/ignore/rebalance Healing/Training times.

Help in this matter will greatly breathe more life into my current game, as well as all future games.

The current boss completely ignores training times, and puts enough time between fights that everyone heals from the like three damage they took. If I ever run a game, I'll try to use training times just to see what the big deal is against using them.

This is pretty much the approach I'm taking with everything in a game I'm running at the moment. Until it causes a problem, it's getting played by the book.

An example is that one player is a Lunar No Moon Sorceress. We've gained 27 xp up to this point, and she wants to learn her first dot of Linguistics to learn a new language, and then learn a new Spell. She has yet to spend any xp.

Without a mentor, she would require 6 weeks to learn the language, and then 2 weeks to learn the spell. The ST has already given her a book that counts as a mentor for learning the language, dropping her learning time to 3 weeks as normal. She's gotten 2 weeks of training since she begun 20xp ago. Chances are we'll be done the current story arc before she can learn the spell.

Is the intention that you only spend xp in between major adventures?

The Lunar I just mentioned wanted to play a Medicine Woman. She was very dismayed to find there was no Lunar Charms that helped a Healer concept. The ST worked with her to make some alchemical potions that sped up my Dawn Caste's healing.

If I took Body-Mending Meditation, I'd essentially deprive her of her concept.

The last couple of Exalted games I ran, I used healing times and training times straight-up, by the book.

With the help of a spreadsheet and a Creation calendar, it wasn't too hard to track training times and healing times. The inclusion of training times meant we forced ourselves to have downtime between adventures to train. That was nice, since we saw some growth of our characters and the world. On the other hand, we probably could've abstracted it and done okay. On other other hand, abstracted training times would've lessened the impact of Training Charms.

(Houserule: We allowed character to force the use of Charms they had all the mins and prereqs for, for 1wp per use, for use of it for one action or less.)

The inclusion of healing times made it so those with healing Charms feel pretty badass. Body-Mending Meditation got plenty of good use. On the other hand, with the downtime we got (and we were a pretty sneaky group, so combat wasn't terribly often), healing times didn't actually come up much.

Not an issue in my games, there are very few times where the PCs have to do something right now or everything will be doomed. And even if that does occur then failure is always an option. A shitty option, but an option none the less. If PCs don't want healing time they can learn charms to speed healing or if they don't want to do that they can try not to take damage in the first place. Exalted combat is known for its lethality so I'd highly recommend the second option. If the PCs want to learn new magic or skills to help them develop then the players can try to find a way to arrange time for it. It's not my problem if they can't find a way to gain a respite to train, it's theirs. Plus, most of my games occur over a time span of two to three years at a minimum (in game, out of game maybe six months to a year).

If you're looking for Lunar healing Flesh-Sculpting Art from GotMH:Luna allows the user to repair Crippling effects so you can theorize that there's a health level replenishment charm that might branch off from that, but yeah, Lunar charms outside of smashing stuff are a bit lacking.

I am no Lunar expert, but I do recall they have the ability to reproduce any substance they encountered (even magical). You might branch of that that they might be able to develop antitoxin/serum to counter any poison/dissease and secret it for future use...

Thanks everyone!

You got me to realize that these limitations are there for you to (in-game) overcome. Healing Times got you down? Buy charms/artifacts/manses to deal with it.

And I also realize that the training times put an important limiter to how often you can learn things. Preventing you from being able to spend your xp mid-battle to get the perfect Charm for that exact moment. Xp is intended to be spent in between story arcs.

However, has anyone seen, or made any Lunar Charms that assist in healing? I'd still like our Medicine Woman healer to have her cake prior to the Lunarrata.

There is the one - Flesh-Sculpting Art, in Glories: Luna. Tends to bypass an awful lot of Medicine rolls, though, unless you're opposed by a Crippling effect that makes outside healing more difficult.

Stories need not be constant action. Especially in investigative, intrigue, or espionage stories. I once had a player learn athletics charms after battling a ranged opponent and being forced to withdraw. The rematch was more to his satisfaction.



You have to learn the prerequisite charms. You get to keep them, just like Power-Awarding Prana, but once the motes are uncommitted you lose the ability to use the charms. However, I'd be careful about allowing players to share charms like this, you might want to restrict this to mortals and just make a custom charm for healing others. Power Awarding Prana specifically only targets Essence 1 mortals, I'm not sure if the author of Sharing the Gifts of Luna was aware of this and made this useable on anyone on purpose or if that was an accident. Judging by the text of the charm I'd say it's probably an accident.

The other question I would have is how do you handle it in other games? Shadowrun by default has a large amount of time needed to learn things and heal up if you get shot. Paranoia it's often easier to shoot yourself in the head and let a clone take over then deal with healing up. Most games have an aspect of healing and/or training times, right down to D&D with slowly healing HP over time. So the question I'd have is what is different about down time in Exalted that makes it apparently worse to the players, compared to the downtime in almost every other game?

That's how I tend to play it, though generally speaking my very friendly Fiend is always happy to lend a helping hand to a worthy enterprise. Now won't you try one of his apples, their nice and gold, to match your anima.

If you want to be a Lunar Healer, especially one that heals others quickly what you want to do is take all the Lunar heal-self charms and then purchase a Cup of Flowing Blood (Artifact ***). Or just use a Resplendent Satchel of Healing with a Hearthstone.

Simply put, travel. If I run a "low" powered game where PCs don't have the ability to scoot across Creation at superhuman speeds, then travel is a great way to allow for healing and training times. I simply write the story to involve a fair amount of travel in between major incidents.


One of the best house rules I ever wrote was allowing PCs to spend experience points with three die stunts. By and large one of the coolest moments of any game I've run was when the party's Dawn Caste walked up to the Mask of Winters at the gates of war-torn Lookshy and laid the best speech I've ever heard that player muster, dump the rest of his experience points, then lock swords with the world-ending tyrant.

I only know that name as a Werewolf: the Apocalypse gift. Was it a charm in 1st Ed?

Personally, I tend to forget about healing until reminded of it by my players... a lot like how I "handle" the Knockdown and Infection rules. I'm trying to keep those systems more in mind so that I can actually form some opinions on how they play out, but that's a goal for my next campaign.

Training times, I let players bypass on Charms for (Charm Essence) +1 WP, although that just gets them the charm at the end of the scene instead of instantly, so they don't try to use it during combat. On other things, I'm just super generous with what I count as a "Mentor", and let my players write training into their recent history. "You were learning about Riverspeech by hitting on girls in the Guild Caravan you travelled with the last month and a half? Yeah, OK, you probably had time to have been doing that during the trip." I enforce Essence training times, but I'm thinking about changing that because the gigantic time sink hasn't been too great for my games.

Both as an ST and as a player, I feel that healing time needs to be something that remains an obstacle. Putting oneself in danger has consequences, and being bed-ridden for a while helps drive home this concept. That and healing time makes having a character with Medicine charms INCREDIBLY cool and makes them feel that the investment into those powers is useful for more than performing miracles on the odd mortal extra. In addition, a good ST will find options for drama, conflict, character and plot development while folks are healing up. Say you barely came out of that trapped-to-hell tomb (tm) seriously banged up yet alive and flush with the spoils of your expedition, then suddenly find out that there is a large army of the dead bearing down on the village you're resting in. If you were at full strength, this would be a fight but you'd probably win. At near death's door, the choice to be the hero in the face of very probable death becomes a much more complex and harder decision.

As for training times, this can sometimes be an issue. Sure, there are plenty of charms that help expedite training, and sometimes it's appropriate to the story that a character has to spend the time to develop their awesome instead of just having it handed to them (and yes, hard work and investment DOES make the reward feel better). However, sometimes training certain things does just bog the story down unnecessarily. I personally feel it's up to the ST to gauge when something SHOULD take time and effort learn and when to throw the PCs a bone in the form of an available teacher with training-effect charms or something similar.

As for a house rule, my group implements one which states that if you succeed on a stunt, you can forgo the normal reward and instead apply it to lowering the training time still required on a corresponding stat (charm, skill, attribute, etc) you're trying to learn. The idea is that utilizing your skills and talents in real-world situations, and what's more being AWESOME at it, hones your abilities just as well if not better than simply training. It's possible to even "spontaneously" learn a new ability this way, though our group limits how often this can happen to once a story per character. And yes, our ST calls shenanigans on doing things to force rolls just so we can stunt and shorten the training time.

Ok, so why wasn't Lick Wounds and Mother's Touch ported into 2ed? They're exactly what I'm looking for.

You still have to roll Medicine to properly and completely diagnose an injury before you can heal it.

Though unfortunately, Flesh-Sculpting Art doesn't restore health levels and there is no canon upgrade that lets it do so.

I've tried writing a number of custom upgrades along those lines, but I've never been satisfied with them.

The procedure for 2e Lunars was, justifiably, chucking the vast majority of first edition material into a fire and walking away from it as it blew up. Some sacrifices were made, while some things managed to glide by while still being not so great (Ferocious Biting Teeth, I'm looking at you. Yeah, you may be usable with any attack now, but you've still get far less utility than the basic effect of Piston-Driven Megaton Hammer). Maybe when the in-depth Lunar errata hits... someday. Someday.