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It is used to shape the land around manses/demanses to make them stronger or weaker. On its own it is pretty much useless.
The first degree of Geomancy lets you figure out if someone or something has essence, pretty much a weak detect "magic".
The second degree of Geomancy is almost completely useless, it lets you convert the next botch for a specific specialty into a failure.
The third degree of Geomancy is somewhat better, lets you make a specific specialty failure into a botch.

Geomancy is on page 139 of the core book and the rules for changing the rating of a manse is in Ordinals codex.

Geomancy is part of Thaumaturgy and is detailed in the core book and in Oadenal's Codex

First, an excerpt from Lords of Creation, Book 2 of the Dreams of the First Age box set:

Swallowing the Lotus Root
Cost: -; Mins: MA5, Ess 5;
Type: Permanent; Keywords: None; Duration: Permanent;
Prerequis: Any entire CMA Style, MA Essence Flow
The Solar hero has casually mastered the Terrestriall Martial Arts. The experience cost of Terrestrial Martial Arts Charms is reduce by four points and their training time is halved.

Now that out of the way, I'm thinking about the following house rule:
Once a Celestial Exalted has mastered an entire Celestial Martial Arts style, the costs and training times of all Terrestrial Martial Arts is halved.

This may actually encourage some of you (maybe) to learn these, particularly since TMA can then be taught to enlightening mortals.

For Paul:

If you're looking for stuff to buy, check out Emperor Ox Expansion, if you haven't. Its an Essence 5, Stamina 5 Knack that allows you to engage in mass combat as a solo unit with a magnitude equal to your Essence. You would become the biggest fucking t-rex evar.

Mostly for Cheyne, since he's running the DB side of things:

Water Dragon Form adds Essence to the user's "Martial Arts Ability" for the rest of the scene. A number of other charms use the MA ability as a basis for their affects (not the least of which is the MA Excellency). A good example is Earth Dragon Form, which adds MA to B/L/A soak and sets hardness to MA. With both forms up, would you then be adding (MA+Ess) to B/L/A soak and setting hardness to that increased value?

While I am in favor of it stacking like this, I must admit my reasons are entirely selfish. With the optimum (as far as I can find) selection of charms activated, this order of doing things would give my Elemental Exalt a hardness of 27 and a soak somewhere in the 70s. Just throwing that out there.

That said, I've already got an unmodified Resistance 6+ Dragonblooded charm that makes me immune to damage from stuff that isn't at least Essence 4/Artifact 4/Manse 4/Stuff 4. Most people at that power level are probably able to, at the extreme, pump out the 27 damage needed to ping me. Even without the stacking in this manner, my soak is still so high that I'll only ever take ping damage from anything less than point blank Total Annihilation or As In the Begining, even naked. Go go Earth Aspect :P

According to the core rules

"If a character has multiple effects granting Hardness, only the highest rating for each damage type applies."

Correct, however some of the ways that charms are described are additive.

I shall illustrate how I got to that number:

Earth Dragon Form (Sets Hardness to MA; Total = 7)
Perfection of Earth Body (explicitly adds Essence to hardness; Total now MA+Essence = 14)
Water Dragon Form (increases MA by Essence; Total MA+Essence+Essence=21)
Soul Fire Shaper Form (sets Essence to 10; Total MA+Essence+Essence=27)

i really don't think it needs much modification, mainly b/c it is 60+ charms to complete the various styles, and generally you need to complete a style before going on to the next one. i'm sure that with 60 MA charms, any celestial exalt will be incredible.

The question I had though is "Does Water Dragon Form actually add to the raw MA rating that then goes on to affect all those other stats, or is that only for dicepool purposes (which is very different)?

ah.

no.

when in doubt, use original values (or the enhanced spirit form values for lunars), not a modified value.

Ok, well, still Hardness 17 :P

Here is a quote from the core book regarding onslaught penalties

If a character is attacked multiple times by the same
opponent, each attack cumulatively imposes an additional -1
penalty to both DVs (called an onslaught penalty).

So no cheesing out by parrying one blow, then dodging another to avoid onslaught.

GOOD.

I would like to thank all leet gamrs for my intro to exalted last Saturday. I too can now spend endless hours discussing game strategy. I also know now why Paul H. could destroy both Tokyo and the Realm.