Intuitive mages are fairly wimpy in relation to adepts.

They can take Dragon-Blooded charms and Spirit Charms.  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 Spirit 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.  When an Intuitive Mage becomes an Adept, DB charms can be converted to the closest Adept equivalent.

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 charms:

**Red Tide Fills the Inner Sea**: (Temperance 1, Essence 2), Simple, Instant.
The mage specifies how many motes of Essence he wants, then soak that much bashing damage.  Stamina helps, armor doesn't.

**Gathering the Mantle of Essence**: (Temperance 2, Essence 2), Simple, Instant
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**: (Temperance 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**: (Temperance 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 HouseRulesOnTaint for rules.

Intuitive Mages' most significant ability is easily their relationship with the spirits of the world, detailed at HouseRulesOnIntuitiveConjury

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This is an official mechanic; comments are welcome, but please keep hackign to ExaltedHackingIntuitiveMagic.

Clarification, as I realized that I perhaps should have done this before getting eaten last run:  is Journey on the Sea of Wind Simple?  Reflexive?  And what happens when body dies--does the astral body have to start paying 3 motes per hour in its stead, and fade away when it becomes empty? --Tristian Goodfellow

JotSoW is not only Simple, it should have "and breaks all continuous concentration-required effects" as part of its description.
When the body dies, its Essence pool continues to decay; when it empties, the spirit fades or becomes a ghost or something --- certainly nobody's seen them any more after that.  If something happens to drain the body's Essence faster, like a Vampire bite, yes, that kills you faster.  --bts

That all sounds pretry reasonalbe, though I'm surprised that external influences (like the vampire mentioned) can suck Essence from you astral form out through your body.  I'd have thought the vampire would have to eat the astral form.  I'm also slightly confused--what charms/etc are there that require continuous concentration? --jwc

Um, it can't --- read what I wrote again.  The vampire sucks Essence out from your body, which is where your Personal pool continues to live while you're projecting: "If something happens to drain the body's Essence faster...".  Charms which require continuous concentration: Well, Affinity Element Control, for a start.  --bts

Ok, rereading...is this correct?  When astrally projecting, if your personal pool empties, you die--the body is dead, the astral form fades.  If the body is killed, the personal pool sticks around, continuing to drain slowly.  The astral form sticks around, but has no body to go back to to rejoin with its personal pool, so it will fade out when the personal pool empties.  Does the question "where is the personal pool of the dead person" make sense?--jwc

Yes.  And here's the answer: the personal pool of the dead person is in the life in his body, just like before.  If, for example, Tristian is projecting and Bob cuts his throat, Tristian will die pretty quickly: minutes at most.  Brain death will set in within ten minutes, for example.  But individual cells will be alive for hours, even days.  They continue to maintain the aura, and the essence pool held within it.

Alternately, the personal pool gets up and starts walking around with the lower soul (i.e. Hungry Ghost).  This requires several nonspecific circumstances, including desecration of either the corpse or the person, and a healthy dose of (bad) luck.  One side effect, though, is that the personal pool then never empties, so the astral form, the mind-ghost, is sustained... at least until the Hungry Ghost cuts the cord.  --bts