(in response to a post suggesting that all Exalts have a basic “hard to kill” power built into their anima)
Hmmm… brainstorming…
Okay, basically the idea would be to allow a player to put their anima banner up a level to gain Anima Health. You gain (Essence) Temporary -0 Health Levels. These levels can be expended to negate incoming HLs of damage (bashing, lethal or aggravated) at any time, but not preexisting damage. So if you take a hit for three BHL you could expend three anima health to negate that, or two and accept one BHL or none and accept all of them. You can’t expend them to fuel Charms or other magic.
You can also expend them to negate any Keyworded effect until your anima banner drops. It costs one anima health level per dot of Essence of the originating effect (or the rating of the Artifact, or a minimum of 1 for mundane sources). This negates the effect, not the source. So if you get Wyld mutated you can negate it as long as your anima is flaring but not make yourself immune to Wyld exposure without Charms or other magic. Note that you do count as ‘under the effect’ for the duration of your anima flare, so it still can’t be stacked unless it has the Stackable keyword.
Instead of normal effects, Anima Powers would be fueled with this special health levels. Each Caste/Aspect gets their own special effect that they can fuel with these. These effects would be primarily defensive in nature. For example:
* Dawn Castes can expend them to fuel a Perfect Parry, or to allow all nearby allies to ignore one Fear-based effect.
* Zenith Castes can expend them to ignore one ongoing source of environmental damage or allow nearby allies to ignore social effects from Creatures of Darkness.
* Twilight Castes can expend them to ignore all Shaping effects or disrupt one Sorcerous effect as a special defense action.
* Night Castes can expend them to make one Unexpected effect Expected or negate one sensory effect from detecting them.
* Eclipse Caste can perfectly defend against one social effect or expend them to fuel his ‘oath binding’ effect.
The basic idea is to play more into the shounen stereotype where you don’t go to full power in the first round of combat (like the anima reactor hack encourages you) and instead escalate it as you get hit by effects that would normally take you out of combat. Plus, it means that all Exalts have a baseline Oh Shit package in every fight so you don’t have to worry about being ganked just because you didn’t drop all your Charms into a Paranoia Combo.