The official mechanic is at HouseRulesOnIntuitiveMagic.  This page is for hacking,

Intuitive mages should probably be fairly wimpy in relation to adepts, especially since they're out there interacting with the mundanes all the time in the Real World.

Most of the Spirit Charms seems to work fairly well (if the caveats of our metaphysics are applied).  There are charms for healing, physical activity, combat (and being scene length, they compete well with guns), and divination.  More can certainly be added.  However, due to the general nature of the charms, it's very important to take the advice which comes with them: figure out what sort of spirit or magical creature might be in your character's ancestry, and flavor your charms appropriately.

Mages have an internal and an external essence pool (the external essence pool is what makes a mage stand out in astral space), access to Spirit Charms, and two favored skills, including access to charms in those skills.  Mages have an Essence of 2, which can't be increased by normal means.  The essence pool sizes are at ExaltedHackingEssencePools.

Almost all mages take Occult as a favored skill, though Physads tend towards Athletics and some other physical skill, and many Shamans have Survival, Awareness or Socialize.

Most mages have take the following Occult charms:

Red Tide Fills the Inner Sea: (Occult 1, Essence 2)
The mage sacrifices a bashing health level, and rolls Stamina + Occult.  The number of successes is the number of motes added to the internal essence pool.

Gathering the Mantle of Essence: (Occult 2, Essence 2)
The mage sacrifices a point of temporary willpower, and rolls Willpower + Occult.  The number of successes is the number of motes added to the external essence pool.

Spirit-Detecting Glance: (Occult 1, Essence 1)
For 3 motes, the character can percieve unmanifested spirits for the duration of the scene.  This charm leads to many other astral-space charms.

Journey on the Sea of Wind: (Occult 3, Essence 2)
The mage spends a willpower point, propelling himself out of his physical body and into the astral plane.  When he leaves his body behind, his personal essence pool stays behind too: all he's got is his peripheral pool, which means he'll be taking damage every time he casts a spell while projecting.  His personal essence pool decays by 3 points per hour while he's not paying attention to it; if it empties completely, the body dies.

In low mana zones, a mage's external pool may be stripped away, forcing him to expend a point of willpower to cast any spell.  In addition, low mana zones may slow or stop the replenishing of the inner pool, forcing the mage to burn his own body to replenish them.

Spending motes from the Peripheral Essence pool used to be safe, before the Horrors came, but now causes problems from Taint: see ExaltedHackingTaint for rules.


ExaltedHackingCharmToSpellConversion

ExaltedHackingIntuitiveConjury


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This perhaps should be under ExaltedHackingTaint, but intuitive magic is supposed to nuke you with taint.

My own thought was that intuitive mages have to use some from both pools to fuel any spell, and the peripheral pool was tainted in tainted areas, so in low mana zones you need to spend willpower to get peripheral essence motes, and when astrally projecting (leaving your pool behind) you need to spend bashing levels to get personal essence motes.  Do with what you will.  --jesse

Just a thought:

Temperance is losing all the teleportation stuff.  It might pick up conjury and the two essence mote generating charms (it already has "feeding" for spirits to regain their essence, which isn't exactly in character for born mages).--jesse

The essence-generating charms fit great, as well as Astral Projection/Perception (replacing feeding and teleporting, respectively).  I'd make Conjury a set of Occult charms, I think.  --bts


Red Tide combines interestingly with Touch of Grace:  gain [Sta+Occ], spend 3, repeat until full.  It may be that Red Tide should cause an Aggravated health level instead.  --bts

Eep.  That would make it effectively useless.  Tristian Goodfellow has both, and a pool of 7, so it's a slightly gainy exchange, but definitely not certain, and the gains are no better than what a little stunting would do.

Here are some possible fixes:  it costs 1 wp to use up to sta times.  You must use it onscreen (not in downtime), so it's not useful as a repeaditive process unless you're wasting your onscreen time with it.  It causes you to obviously bleed, so you're not going to be doing it in polite company, unless you're already obviously bleeding, in which case "polite" brobably vanished a while ago.  It doesn't actually give you more motes, it decreases the cost of your next charm use.

one or more of the above would porbobaly work.  I don't think there's a "must be healed by natural means" maker for damage already in exaulted, or I'd propose that, too, though it seems a little cumbersome.

--jesse cox.
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I wouldn't call it *useless* with Agg damage (Exalted's marker for "must be healed by natural means"), but it sure is less useful.  I think a way to balance it is to reverse the mechanic: you specify how many motes you want, then soak that much bashing damage (Stamina helps, armor doesn't).  Also, it's a Simple charm. --bts