Attribute Excellencies

The fact that Lunar Exalted get Attribute Excellencies has some important repercussions for their tactics.

Every Lunar character qualifies. Other Exalts need at least minimal training to gain Ability Excellencies, but every character has a rating of at least 1 in every Attribute.

Attribute Excellencies are powerful. Because they apply to Attributes and not to Abilities, Lunar Excellencies are incredibly broad. Possessing the Dexterity Excellency is far less limiting than having the Melee Excellency. You can use the Dexterity Excellency to aid an unarmed attack, catch the bow thrown to you, fire from that bow, dodge the attacks on you afterward and carve a stone knife that you can later throw with the Excellency as well. All the other Lunar Excellencies are equally broad in scope, though they are not all as purely useful in combat.

Attribute Excellencies' can increase values that Ability Excellencies cannot. Excellencies can increase static values, such as Defense Values or a character's (Strength + Athletics) rating for lifting things. Lunar Excellencies can increase these values, but these Excellencies can also increase a character's Attributes directly. Using the Stamina Excellency to increase a character's Stamina lasts only for an instant, but that's long enough to apply the improved soak against an attack. Increasing Strength with the appropriate Excellency doesn't help a character hit the opponent (except in clinching), but having a greater Strength for just one instant also increases the attack’s base damage. Increasing Appearance for an instant improves a character's Mental Defense Value against a single social attack, or it degrades a target's Mental Defense Value against the character’s social attack.

Lunars cannot increase some values that others can. Some static values do not include an Attribute in their calculation. Most notable of these is the Dodge Mental Defense Value, which comes from (Willpower + Integrity + Essence). Although Solars may use the Integrity Excellency to increase this value, there are no Willpower Excellencies. This creates a weakness in Lunar mental defenses, because the Dodge Mental Defense Value is naturally the strongest. There are some cases when only the rating of an Ability matters. Lunar Exalted will never write the most eloquent letters, because they cannot increase their Linguistics as a static value.