General Exalted Discussion XII: One More and Get a Free Deathlord

[Exthalion]

Actually, you can inflict crippling effects with Principle-Invoking Onslaught.
The core rules specifically allow for Coup de Grace attacks that inflict various sorts of maiming; it's just that you can only inflict the natural Crippling effect if you dealt enough damage to kill the person anyway (you can decide to just kill them, too, if you want.) It basically replaces the normal "You would have taken X damage, enough to kill you" with "You take any number of lethal levels, and a Crippling effect."

Disfigurement that reduces appearance is specifically called out as an option.

Now, this isn't necessarily useful in combat except for some very unusual situations (for example, weakening someone before they get to do something that happens upon their death... And there are only a tiny handful of charms that do that...)

I could have sworn you were allowed to do crippling just by taking a dice penalty.