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“Every Sidereal is a master of the martial arts, even on his first day in the dojo.”
— Obviously not true, but we can appreciate the commitment to cementing Sidereal identity in the setting.
The weapons and armor selection for this style is rated 4/10. Yes, there’s a wide variety of them, but they’re all basically smashfists. No swords, spears, axes, or whips. On the other hand, it works with any armor, letting you mix and match with Immaculate styles that allow armor without having to worry.
1.Lotus Eye Tactics
This is great, as it immediately lets you know who is an extra and who isn’t. 10/10 entry level Charm that doesn’t lose usefulness even if the game goes to Essence 6+.
2. Lion Mouse Strategem
Needs another style to really shine, but this is super helpful for stealth types. 7/10 because as an Illusion, it can be ignored by paying Willpower.
3. Sifu’s Useful Fingers
Another absurdly useful and mote-efficient Charm that provides metagame knowledge. You’re going to let me add 5 to someone’s Dodge MDV, which is probably only like 4 to begin with? For a one mote commitment? This might actually be too good. 10/10.
4. Throne Shadow Form
At 5 motes, this is one of the cheapest Form Charms, and manages to be useful in a broad variety of situations. Of course, you get what you pay for, and it is a little incomplete by itself. The downside of this Form is that you have to be with your teammates for it to be any good, but tabletop gaming convention is that in most of your fights, you will be. It's adequate, and certainly beats having nothing, but if you have access to other Form Charms that offer status immunity, penalty negation, mote generation etc. those will probably be used instead. 6/10.
5. Shadow Lost in the Court
This is… underwhelming. I understand that after providing #2, LMS, it would be silly not to provide something that actually attempts Stealth, but this is one of the most underwhelming Stealth Charms given the power of native Stealth Charms for most Celestial Exalted, and given that Air Dragon Style lets you directly turn invisible pretty early on in the tree. 3/10.
6. Pneuma-Sealing Strike
Effectively a save-or-die that only costs 4 motes. It is Crippling, so it shouldn’t pose a threat to Exalted enemies past the first campaign, but just the threat of this can force others to spam defensive Combos so they can use their Crippling defenses. if you don’t have Charms, it forces a Strength+Athletics roll, which penalizes non-physical types. It’s a hard counter to Sorcery, should anyone be crazy enough to try to cast when enemy martial artists are nearby. 9/10.
7. Deadliest of All Weapons
This will almost never work on the Exalted, since it’s a Poison, but it’s a handy if roundabout way to mess with mortals or spirits. It also aids interrogations where someone knows they can’t beat you and is trying to lie their way out. 7/10.
8. Clear Eyes Defense
Pretty good, though the fact that people can see you physically counterattack makes it less than perfect. It’s unclear whether your counterattack against a mental influence ignores distance — can you read someone’s prepared Linguistics-based attack and hit them whenever you feel like it? Broken if so. 7/10 (10/10 for Sidereals, for whom it’s a perfect defense, or if abused to bypass distance)
9. Welcoming the Uninvited Guest
In terms of potential effect, this is far and away superior to almost all other “see the invisible” Charms because it lets your whole group see them. Being its own action is obnoxious, and comparing your Dex + MA to their Dex + Stealth is only an even contest, but at least it’s fast. 8/10.
10. Finger-Stealing Handshake
This is cool, but at 10 Charms in this is not very useful. At the point at which an Exalt has 10 Charms in Celestial Martial Arts he shouldn’t consider extras anything more than a speed bump. Stealing someone’s pawns is very Sidereal-ish, but it’s not very powerful for how deep in the tree this gets. 6/10
11.World as Weapon Mastery
It’s thematic and it’s powerful. Unfortunately the most powerful Charms that Throne Shadow has to combo with this are Pneuma-Sealing Strike and Deadliest of Weapons, but being able to throw curveballs like this in the middle of combat is occasionally useful. 7/10.
Overall, Throne Shadow is very useful. One or two of the Charms are underwhelming, but all of the Charms up to the Form Charm are useful and two of them are brokenly good. The downside is that things like Clear Eyes Defense are either broken (good) or broken (bad), depending on how they are interpreted. Charm trees in general are supposed to get more useful and more powerful the more heavily you invest in them, but that isn’t at all the case here. Breakpoints are at 3 Charms (for non-Sidereals), 6 Charms for Pneuma-Sealing Strike, or 9 Charms for Sidereals (grabbing Clear Eyes Defense + Welcoming the Uninvited.) In campaigns where you must learn up to the Form Charm before learning another martial art, Throne Shadow is quite decent, coming in at 4 Charms, nearly all of which are useful.