General Exalted Discussion Thread IX: Errata is Combo-Ok!

[Lix Lorn]

I had a long post talking about this, but the forums ate it. The gist of it was yes, your math shown here is right, but it's not translating up into higher dice pools like you think it does, and you should check out Anydice.com to see how the probabilities play out.

I don't know how to use that site, but... I'll take your word for it, because 10d10 SHOULD be four successes...

[meschlum]

Wait, what? It's that time again?

Fine. Errata comments, from the Raksha perspective.

Thanks White Wolf, for messing up all the Fair Folk Ring Crafting charms even more. They all have options to create Perfect things, which no longer exist.

I'm sure you're happy that behemoths are now even more the go-to personal protection and overwhelming murder device. It's going to make everyone love the Raksha so much there will be absolutely no more flame wars about how they're horribly broken and should never be played.

It would be simply lovely if your errata could avoid contradicting itself on the same page, though that's not specifically a Fair Folk feature. See: combo willpower costs versus Form charms. Also see: minimum damage ping versus examples for soak with automatic damage and dice.

Social-fu is cackling maniacally, but you knew that. Emotion Weaving Style is particularly happy and will send out a thing wearing the Assumption of Love of Hamsters to you, as requested. Whipped cream will cost extra, though.

Some actual errata for us would have been nice, but there's no reason to assume the Raksha are more welcome here than in Creation, apparently. Fixing minor typos and the like does not count. Preventing use of Charms if the prerequisites are missing means that All Consuming God Monster Style wants to visit and rip up your couch, and we don't really feel like stopping it. Don't even think of what Grace Magic feels about that, unless you have an oddly non-mortal attitude towards acid and splinters.

Anyone facing off against a user of Imposition of Law is going to adore the new Stunt rules, since if they make a 5 attack flurry and fail to stunt each one... they miss! We're all for more storytelling and less fighting, though enforcing it via the fourth wall is something we rarely try.

Thanks for clarifying the rules on temporary Health Levels. We now have lots of extra Bad Touch attack technology, and our behemoths are as pointlessly fragile as ever.


Oh, wait. A verdict? At basic (non-Raksha) player level, this seems mostly harmless. Fair Folk are going to need more house rules to be able to deal with anything Creation-related. It's a good first step towards creating a distinct product line...

I mock. Mostly. And anticipate flames if the unerrataed Fair Folk numbers are actually examined.


Orb of Battle

This strange gemstone, wrested from the ravening Hannya outside Creation, has odd properties from the creation-born perspective. It implants itself in the body of the first person to touch it, melding with their flesh until it cannot be seen. At least, no one has ever commented about the weird gem-like growth appearing on the chest, back, wrist, or shoulder of its bearer.

When invoked (by calling out its name and posing in a frightfully embarrassing manner), or when it feels its host in endangered, the Orb will grow wildly, covering the host in a shell of protective armor. Depending on the Orb, this shell can appear to be normal chitin or other natural armor stuff - or consist of a very short skirt and many frills. For the record, being alien, the Orb has no notions of shame or gender.

Upon being warded by the Orb, its host becomes a nigh unstoppable weapon of massive devastation, capable of resisting the strongest blows from the Exalted and returning world shattering strikes that are nearly impossible to recover from.

Most Orbs draw on the power of their host, and this significant drain on their resources limits them in many ways. However, some Orbs exist for a higher purpose, and are empowered by great and ancient beings, presenting themselves as representatives of lost Lunar civilizations, stranded members of races from other worlds, and the like. These Orbs come in numbers, and the power they convey to their bearers is seemingly infinite - and free.

At least, as long as the Orb bearer continues to act in the interest of the shadowy entities (often looking like cats or other harmless animals. Plushies are popular too).

4-dot Behemoth
Assumption of the Person's Heart - the Orb merges with its host and will remain in place until one of them dies.
Assumption of Angel / Vampire Bat / Protoplasm form - the Orb can convey 2-5 points worth of mutations to its host, switching them on and off as convenient.
Knife Hand Dream - the Orb's main limb behaves like a Grand Goremaul, only with +5 damage. If the Orb is empowered, it does Aggravated damage, skipping that silly 'Lethal' stage completely.
Armament of Flesh - the main limb also gets somewhere between +2 to +4 to Accuracy, and possibly a bonus to Rate.
Armament of Flesh - the off limb of the Orb is like a shield, and grants +2 to 4 to defense.
Surpassing Excellence - the main limb has another +2 'just because' to Accuracy and Damage, as does the off limb.
Surpassing Excellence - the Orb can anticipate incoming blows, and helps its host dodge them.
Opalescent Gossamer Raiment - the stuff of the Orb also cancels some incoming damage, providing a soak of 24B/24L to 27B/27L
Blade Turning Skin - even Aggravated damage matters less, as the Orb conveys soak of 2-5A
Hundred Hand Style - the Orb conveys incredible quickness to its host.

Mechanics for an Essence 2 Exalt using an ordinary Orb (12 committed motes)

Natural Soak +25B/25L/2A
2 mutation points. Huge is good, gives temporary health levels, more damage, and more soak.
Natural Attack with Speed 6, Accuracy +4, Damage 16B/3, Defense +1, Rate 3.
Natural Attack with Speed 5, Accuracy +2, Damage 0L, Defense +4, Rate 3.
A +2 Dodge specialty.

Not bad. Essence 3 makes things better:

Natural Soak +26B/26L/3A
3 mutation points. Huge is good, gives temporary health levels, more damage, and more soak.
Natural Attack with Speed 6, Accuracy +5, Damage 21L/3, Defense +1, Rate 3.
Natural Attack with Speed 5, Accuracy +2, Damage 5L, Defense +5, Rate 3.
A +2 Dodge specialty.


An empowered Orb requires no committed motes, and gives at least the following (working from a Heroic Worker with Heart Stopping Numinous Power):

Natural Soak +27B/27L/5A
5 mutation points. Huge is good, gives temporary health levels, more damage, and more soak.
Natural Attack with Speed 6, Accuracy +5, Damage 21A/3, Defense +1, Rate 3. (Add another +2 to anything but Accuracy)
Natural Attack with Speed 5, Accuracy +2, Damage 5L, Defense +5, Rate 3. (Add another +2 to anything but Defense)
A +2 Dodge specialty.

If the being granting the Orb its power is serious, Accuracy and Defense can be boosted, and higher bonuses granted.

[tonberrian]

I don't know how to use that site, but... I'll take your word for it, because 10d10 SHOULD be four successes...

It's simple, really. For Exalted dice pools in particular, counting 10's twice, you want to write "output [count {7..10, 10} in xd10]", where x is how big you want the dice pool to be (though it doesn't seem like it can handle anything 15 dice or over). This will tell you the probabilities of however many successes. It can output the results in a number of different forms, including the probability of an exact number of successes, of getting at least a certain number of successes, or at most a number of successes. For help, you can check out the documentation or function library buttons on the side.

[Lord Raziere]

guess what everyone.

since 2.5 is out now….everything aside from Exalts are now actually threats and therefore playable! I can now actually see Gods, Fair Folk and Demons fighting Exalts, rather than just being curbstomped.

sure I know they are still weaker, but the game is now actually closer to what I thought it would be like when I first got it.

[aetherialDawn]

guess what everyone.

since 2.5 is out now….everything aside from Exalts are now actually threats and therefore playable! I can now actually see Gods, Fair Folk and Demons fighting Exalts, rather than just being curbstomped.

sure I know they are still weaker, but the game is now actually closer to what I thought it would be like when I first got it.

By Ahlat, YOU ARE RIGHT!
Also, this means that Summon Elemental and Demon of the First Circle are even more the Best Spells.

[Lord Raziere]

and that now you can play God-Bloods, Demon-Bloods and such that can actually fight Exalts.

and that Enlightened Mortal Sorcerers can summon up things that could actually kill you.

Ghosts…….They don't have excellencies, nor do they have spirit charms anymore, and neither do they have any thing Fair Folk have, so they are screwed there, I think

as for Dragon Kings and Jadeborn…..yea….they are still kinda on the weak side….but at least Jadeborn can get Alchemical things. Dragon Kings are just plain screwed.

but y'know what this really means? Dragon-Blooded can actually fight against Celestials. Which means Kalectro Stelvana can actually be the Exalt that fits him the most: Air Aspect, and still tell the story I want to tell with him.

[Kyeudo]

On the subject of whether or not lethality has actually been fixed or not, I want to consider whether the death spiral still exists. One of the big problems that drives the paranoia paradigm is that one hit pretty much decides the fight, whether or not it kills you in one swing. So, I'm going to take a look at whether you can take a hit and not be considered on the slow path to death. I'm going to be thinking out loud so that anyone who sees a flaw can jump in and point it out.

Let's start with some average combatants for the system. No, not mortals. We want people who are actually expected to survive a fight, so we'll use two identical Solars. To make them more average and not ultra-twinked, I'll start with stats I can get at chargen without spending bonus points.

Since Dexterity is still god, we will have Dex 5, Str 2, Sta 4 Solars with Melee 5 and Specialty 3. They will have Essence 2, Willpower 5, and basic virtues (Valor 4, Conviction 3, Compassion 1, Temperance 1, if it matters). For gear, they will have Resources 3 and four total dots of artifacts rated 3 or less. For exact equipment, let us just split the artifact dots into an orichalcum reinforced breastplate and an orichalcum daiklave. We'll consider variations on the various 2 dot daiklave types to see if any of them are particularly more lethal than the others. Resources 3 allows our fighter to have a tower shield. Since they have ended up sword and board fighers, their specialty will be (Sword and Shield +3), making the specialty applicable to both attacks and defense.

Alright, so, now to constructing the dice pools. Our fighter has a lethal soak of 14, a Parry DV of 9, Willpower 5 and a combined Essence pool of 39 motes. Since we have a few sword options to try, here's the possible attack pools:
Daiklave: Speed 5, Accuracy 15, Damage 7L/2, Rate 3
Reaper Daiklave: Speed 4, Accuracy 17, Damage 6L/2, Rate 3
Reaver Daiklave: Speed 5, Accuracy 15, Damage 10L/2, Rate 2

So, let's start with the vanilla Daiklave. Solar A swings at Solar B, both get a 2 die stunt, 17 dice vs DV 11. He hits 14.1% of the time, or a little better than once per 10 swings. If Solar B has taken an attack at Solar A and so has a -1 DV penalty, he's at DV 10 and so gets hit 23% of the time or one in 5 swings. These numbers hold the same for the Reaver Daiklave, so on to the Reaper Daiklave. It's 19 dice make it hit 24.2% and 35.4% of the time, respectively.

Solar A now hits Solar B. Now for the tricky part. If we assume only one success on the attack, 14 Soak vs a maximum of 11L damage from the whole bunch means that we get soaked to ping regardless of which sword we are using. In this case ping is 2 because of the overwhelming tag. 42% of the time we take one health level of damage, 9% of the time we take 2 health levels, and 49% of the time we take none. Out of 10 hits like this, we could expect about 6 health levels of damage.

However, if I'm doing the math right, these 1-success-over-DV hits willmake up only 8.9% of attacks. 12.7% of the attacks will instead be garnering more than one success, so we have to consider the possibility of damage from extra successes. At 6 successes over, the Reaver Daiklave's damage potential goes up, with the Daiklave following at 9 successes over and the Reaper Daiklave following at 10. Looking at the numbers, 6 successes or more over occurs only 0.3% of the time, with 8 successes or more occuring almost never. The Reaper Daiklave's numbers are a little different, but 10 successes occurs almost never. Now that we have some data and it appears to be insignificant to overall combat strategy, we can stop crunching damage numbers for now.

So, now let's define a little more about our actual fight conditions. Since bother are melee fighters with the same movement rate and attack speed, we may as well have them effectively stand still and trade blows. Since both are attacking each other, let's assume they both have a perpetual -1 DV penalty from actions so that we can just use one DV figure from now on. I don't want to crunch flurry numbers just yet, so we'll carry that assumption further and they are just making single attacks at each other. Under this model, the most effective weapon we have considered is the Reaper Daiklave, so we'll discard the other two for the time being.

So, each action one takes a swipe at the other. He has a 35.4% chance to hit with every attack and each hit has a 51% chance to do one or more health levels of damage. Multiplying those together, we get an 18% chance that an attack will inflict damage, close to 1 in every 5 attacks. With the expected rate of damage output, we could guesstimate that a fight would then last about 50 attacks, but we'd be wrong because of wound penalties.

Solar A just suffered enough damage to give him a -1 wound penalty. His DV is now down to only 9 and his dice pool is now down to 18. He now has only a 14.8% chance to inflict damage with an attack and suffers injury from 24.7% of attacks.

Another wound brings Solar A to a -2 wound penalty. He now is injured further 31.6% of the time, but only has a 11.7% chance of returning the favor.

A final wound brings Solar A down to his -4 wound penalty. He takes damage 43.1% of the time and can only dish it out 6.5% of the time.

So, now for some gut evaluation of what wound penalties mean. The first two wounds will take about 10 swings to recieve, the third and fourth wounds will take about 8, and the fifth and sixth will take about 6. The seventh and effectively final blow should follow within 2 to 3 rounds. So, average number of swings for Solar B to kill Solar A is 27ish attacks if I haven't made any egregious errors of logic here.

This scenario seems reasonable for the most part. The odds of losing more than one health level are fairly low and the first wound penalty recieved does not seem to greatly drop your chance of survivability. So, it looks like, for at least this set of weapons and armor, we have a solved 0 mote lethality problem. Before declaring it fixed for the whole system, we'd need to actually try to break it, but I'll save that for a later time.

What occurs to me here is that I can achieve mote positive combat by adding in a few defensive Charms. Let's say that Solar A has Adamant Skin Technique. Each attack only has a 35% chance to deal damage, or once every 3 rounds. Each round, he gets a single 2 die stunt, giving him back 4 motes each time. On any round where his opponent actually hits, he uses Adamant Skin Technique. His three round mote output is 8 motes, but his three round mote intake is 12 motes. Mote neutral combat is possible as long as the opponent does not hit you more than 50% of the time. Solar A is effectively immortal unless Solar B uses Charms to change the numbers significantly.

We may have achieved a paradigm where you must force your opponent to actually spend motes to defend himself by spending motes youself. I like this idea better, but more theorycraft and/or playtesting is needed to tell if this is actually the case and actually possible.

My mind already attempts to improve Solar A's defensive suite. Suppose that instead of an orichalcum reinforced breastplate, Solar A is wearing a starmetal reinforced breastplate. Solar A's resources are suffciently freed up that he can get the Lore and Wits to attune and get the bonus (or he could get an orichalcum five-fold resonance adapter with the BP he didn't spend). It would lower his soak from 14 to 12, but that doesn't greatly increase the odds of suffering more than ping significantly and lowers ping to 1 die. This not only drops his chance to getting injured to only 30% on any given hit instead of 51%, but now we can use Iron Skin Concentration instead of Adamant Skin Technique. Our expected three round mote outlay drops to only two motes, an improvement of 6 motes and we are still immortal. If our opponet hits 100% of the time, our outlay is only 6 motes, leaving us 6 motes in the positive so long as he does not deal more than ping damage.

So, now that I'm tired and can't think straight, what Charms does Solar B need to use in order to force Solar A into mote negative combat? The starmetal armor trick could be disrupted by using a bigger weapon to get over soak (but then you generally have to reduce your odds of hitting and then on top of that Solar A has the new Durability of Oak Meditation to juice his Soak by a no-longer-trivial amount), but what about Adamant Skin Technique's automatic step 7 filter? How do you force this guy to spend more than 12 motes in three rounds without spending more than 12 motes?

[aetherialDawn]

How do you force this guy to spend more than 12 motes in three rounds without spending more than 12 motes?

Stunt something other than flat offense, to apply a penalty - instead of attacking him, attack the ground and force him to flurry in a non-advantageous action along with his attack, thereby lowering his defenses a little bit more. (Or he doesn't attack, which is also good. Or he just eats the penalty, which is also good.)
This applies also to trying to set up a benefit for yourself.

Disarm him and his foolish soak-reliance, if he relies on soak alone.

Use a scene-long charm such as my very favorite charm, Panoptic Fusion Discipline (+3 dice to every attack and +1 DV, for 4m! And it's reflexive to activate!) assuming your mote pool is large enough that reducing it with a commitment still leaves you plenty of room (You're a Solar, so this is usually the case.)

That's off the top of my head for things which don't require ongoing mote expenditure. (Scene-longs only spend the motes in a previous set of 3 actions, so long as you maintain enough mote gain and pool size... Which it looks like you will.)

[Kyeudo]

Stunt something other than flat offense, to apply a penalty - instead of attacking him, attack the ground and force him to flurry in a non-advantageous action along with his attack, thereby lowering his defenses a little bit more. (Or he doesn't attack, which is also good. Or he just eats the penalty, which is also good.)
This applies also to trying to set up a benefit for yourself.

If you don't attack him and he takes his action to reasert his position after your ground attack, you have effectively done nothing.

Disarm him and his foolish soak-reliance, if he relies on soak alone.

Disarming was not buffed by the revision. It is currently very difficult to disarm a competent combatant. You are more likely to just give him a free attack on you.

Use a scene-long charm such as my very favorite charm, Panoptic Fusion Discipline (+3 dice to every attack and +1 DV, for 4m! And it's reflexive to activate!) assuming your mote pool is large enough that reducing it with a commitment still leaves you plenty of room (You're a Solar, so this is usually the case.)

This one might work. I'll have to see if you've hit the 50% accuracy mark with it. I'll run the numbers in the morning, along with a test to see how viable that starmetal armor trick can be made. How many Charms does it take to get?

[aetherialDawn]

If you don't attack him and he takes his action to reasert his position after your ground attack, you have effectively done nothing.

If he fails to attack you and succeeds in removing all penalties, then yes, there is essentially no net change. However, it offers the possibility of breaking a stalemate, especially if you can find something that can't simply be re-asserted out of (Collapse a building or cause a cave-in on someone with a low Strength+Athletics. Perfect soak is nice, but you could still end up buried.)

Disarming was not buffed by the revision. It is currently very difficult to disarm a competent combatant. You are more likely to just give him a free attack on you.

It's not exactly easy to hit someone at all. The point here is to force the other person to spend essence. He may know that he can just soak out your attack, but disarming will probably let you force his hand several steps earlier - and while he has health levels to absorb a few normal hits, and ping damage might not work out, these people can't really afford to lose their tools. Again, it's one way to force a response.

This one might work. I'll have to see if you've hit the 50% accuracy mark with it. I'll run the numbers in the morning, along with a test to see how viable that starmetal armor trick can be made. How many Charms does it take to get?

I believe it requires an Awareness Excellency, Awareness 4, and Essence 2.
I believe that the Awareness surprise-negator also needs an Awareness Excellency, so that's another handy combat charm to pick up. Unexpected attacks seem to be as nasty as ever, by and large.

Speaking of which, Establish Surprise and make an unexpected attack. The roll is difficult, but it's not unthinkable that it would be easier to make than an attack, and you then get a very solid hit if it does succeed. Main problem is that it probably requires a flurry to pull off, so you do drop your DV slightly. Thankfully, we have this 12 motes per 3 actions sitting around, so we can probably handle an action of vulnerability to test the opponent's defenses.

If you can get to Protection of Celestial Bliss, than you no longer take DV penalties for attacks made with the relevant weapon.
Flurry him into the ground.

[Ifni]

Math chatter @Lix Lorn and anyone else who's interested:

Spoiler

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I don't know how to use that site, but... I'll take your word for it, because 10d10 SHOULD be four successes...

10d10 does average to four successes. And in your previous example (2 dice), yes, you have a 36% chance of getting no successes, a 16% chance of getting two successes, and a 48% chance of getting exactly one success (this is assuming damage dice so no doubling on 10s). This corresponds to an average of 0.16*2 + 0.48 = 0.8 successes, as expected (0.4* number of dice).

What's not true is "if you roll ten dice, you will get slightly more than 6 successes, on average, even without doubling tens". Without doubling tens, your average number of successes on 10 dice is 4, and your probability of getting 6+ successes on 10 dice is ~17% (for the record: ~37% to get 5+, ~62% to get 4+, ~83% to get 3+, ~95% to get 2+, ~99% to get 1+).

Also, in random Exalted math trivia:

-2 dice is the worst possible pool for your chances of getting a botch. Only slightly, but your chances of botching do in fact increase going from 1 die to 2 dice (from 10% to 11%).

-Rolling a pool of n dice twice, and taking the better result, will on average outperform a single roll by ~(3/4) (3/8) sqrt(n) successes (taking 10s to double) - the approximation is only moderately good for n=1, but it's accurate to better than 5% for n=2-4 and better than 1% for n=5 or higher. The Third Excellency is better than this would suggest, of course, because you get to see the initial result before you decide whether or not to use it, but it gives a sense of how rerolls compare to just adding dice/successes.

EDIT: Forgot a factor of 2, derp. See post two down for an explanation.

[aetherialDawn]

Math chatter @Lix Lorn and anyone else who's interested:
-Rolling a pool of n dice twice, and taking the better result, will on average outperform a single roll by ~(3/4) sqrt(n) successes (taking 10s to double) - the approximation is only okay for n=1, but it's accurate to better than 5% for n=2-4 and better than 1% for n=5 or higher. The Third Excellency is better than this would suggest, of course, because you get to see the initial result before you decide whether or not to use it, but it gives a sense of how rerolls compare to just adding dice/successes.

Nevermind the below. Math has been corrected.

Spoiler

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This chatter intrigues me. So on a 9-die pool, a reroll-take-best-result will generally get me a little more than +2 successes (square root of 9 is 3. Three-quarters of 3 is a little over 2.)

2 Dice: ~1 sux
4 Dice: ~1.5 sux
6 Dice: ~1.8 sux
8 Dice: ~2.1 sux
10 Dice: ~2.4 sux
12 Dice: ~2.6 sux
14 Dice: ~2.8 sux
16 Dice: ~3 sux
18 Dice: ~3.2 sux
20 Dice: ~3.35 sux

In other words: Rerolls are always more efficient than the second excellency from 8 dice on up. For sufficiently large pools of dice, they can add enough successes on average to start comparing with the maximum of 5 a Solar can normally add. The other excellencies will continue to be better for throwing giant amounts of power around all at once, but the Third is no slouch!

In other words: The Third Excellency does best when you have a small Attribute+Ability pool enhanced by large circumstantial modifiers such as specialties, tools, environment, and stunting. (Ability) Essence Flow tilts stunts back in favor of the First and Second Excellencies, of course, and Infinite (Ability) Mastery can mess things up, I'm sure.

(By the way, for combat fun, why not Wood Dragon Claw + Spirit Over Clouds Approach? Speed 5, Essence+Occult+Strength+Extra Successes damage, and unblockable! Just make sure nobody else is acting on the same tick as you are.
If you want to use the official variants, then we open up Air Dragon's Claw with Speed 4 and some range, Fire Dragon's Claw for ANOTHER, FREE+Essence damage, or Water Dragon's Claw to reduce armor soak and hardness by Essence. Or Earth Dragon's Claw for... Speed 6. And extra knockdown nobody ever tracks. And parrying without a stunt, as if people ever not-stunted.
Poor, poor Earth Dragon's Claw. I don't think I even really remember how knockdown is supposed to work.)

[Ifni]

Sorry aetherialDawn, I forgot a factor of 2 Figured I'd change it and nobody would notice, but you were too quick for me... the correct formula for the increase in the average is sqrt(n)*3/8, not *3/4.

(The number I gave originally is the average spread between two rolls. However, because there's an equal chance that the first roll is the high one or the low one, the average gain from rolling twice instead of once is half this. Just confirming this now by a different calculational method, will confirm or prove that I still can't do math at 6am in a few minutes.)

EDIT: Confirmed. So for example, the average result on 10 dice is 5 successes, the average result if you take two sets of 10 dice, roll them each once, and take the best is 6.19 successes. Gain is 1.19 sux, which is sqrt(10)*3/8 to a very good approximation.

Sorry for the mixup, I thought those numbers seemed oddly high, since the last time I looked into this I remembered the breakpoint (i.e. where it's better to roll twice than to add 4m worth of dice/successes, even before looking at the initial roll) being somewhere close to 30 dice. And yep, with the revised formula, 30 dice corresponds to just over 2 extra successes. Oh well

(The basic idea here is that the variance of the distribution scales like sqrt(n) for high n, so that sets the scaling of the average spread between rolls, which is what determines the effectiveness of rerolls. Once you know that, all you need to work out is the constant prefactor, and you can do that just by computing the result for any one value of n.)

[Weimann]

Given what 2.5 did to combos, the thread title is pretty funny.

[Guancyto]

I believe that the Awareness surprise-negator also needs an Awareness Excellency, so that's another handy combat charm to pick up. Unexpected attacks seem to be as nasty as ever, by and large.

Hmm.

I was about to come in and correct you here, but with the changes to the Combo rules, taking Surprise Anticipation Method will no longer kill you (except perhaps by Wyld Hunt, thank you Combo displays).

[TheCountAlucard]

I believe that the Awareness surprise-negator also needs an Awareness Excellency, so that's another handy combat charm to pick up. Unexpected attacks seem to be as nasty as ever, by and large.

SAM still sucks, because not only does it activate itself when it's potentially not wanted, but it is still fallible. Sure, it doesn't kill you by dint of making you unable to defend yourself, but it still has some gaping holes.

[Kyeudo]

If he fails to attack you and succeeds in removing all penalties, then yes, there is essentially no net change. However, it offers the possibility of breaking a stalemate, especially if you can find something that can't simply be re-asserted out of (Collapse a building or cause a cave-in on someone with a low Strength+Athletics. Perfect soak is nice, but you could still end up buried.)

The example characters we are dealing with are identical and locked in melee combat. If one can escape the building, the other one almost certainly can. If one can avoid being buried, the other can too.

It's not exactly easy to hit someone at all. The point here is to force the other person to spend essence. He may know that he can just soak out your attack, but disarming will probably let you force his hand several steps earlier - and while he has health levels to absorb a few normal hits, and ping damage might not work out, these people can't really afford to lose their tools. Again, it's one way to force a response.

I don't beleive you are actually familiar with the disarming rules. First, you need to hit your opponent despite a -2 external penalty - essentially you increase your opponent's DV by 2. That's going to torpedo your odds of hitting an evenly matched opponent to begin with.

If you do hit, your opponent must succeed on a (Wits + Appropriate Ability) roll with a difficulty of your threshold successes. Since you probably only barely hit him, he's basically rolling his full Melee attack pool minus a die or two against a difficulty of 1 to 3. 15ish dice is going to blow that out of the water.

Managing to get past both these rolls is going to be nigh impossible against any opponent who can match or exceed your own skill. And if you do succeed? He can generally recover his weapon with a miscelaneous action picking it up from the ground, since it flies only a few feet away and the character moves yards per tick. Congradulations, you have sucessfully caused you and your opponent to stop attaking each other for one round.

Again, more often than not, you are going to fail to disarm him and he gets a free attack on you.

I believe it requires an Awareness Excellency, Awareness 4, and Essence 2.
I believe that the Awareness surprise-negator also needs an Awareness Excellency, so that's another handy combat charm to pick up. Unexpected attacks seem to be as nasty as ever, by and large.

Speaking of which, Establish Surprise and make an unexpected attack. The roll is difficult, but it's not unthinkable that it would be easier to make than an attack, and you then get a very solid hit if it does succeed. Main problem is that it probably requires a flurry to pull off, so you do drop your DV slightly. Thankfully, we have this 12 motes per 3 actions sitting around, so we can probably handle an action of vulnerability to test the opponent's defenses.

Reflex Sidestep Technique and Suprise Anticipation Method both cost one mote, so you can get the expected outlay by this method to 11 motes if you never fail to establish surprise, but it is still mote positive.

I checked the probability tables and pushing our Solar B to 20 dice vs DV 10 gives him a 42% chance to hit. That's 4 hits out of every 10, or 32 motes spent out of 40 motes gained in a ten round frame. If you used both the surprise attacks and Panoptic Fusion Discipline, you get that up to 42 motes out, 40 motes in, so just slightly mote negative.

Provided, of course, that your Stealth beasts his Awareness roll every time.

If you can get to Protection of Celestial Bliss, than you no longer take DV penalties for attacks made with the relevant weapon.
Flurry him into the ground.

That would probably work. Fivefold Bulwark Stance effectively does the same thing as well. Both are beyond Essence 2 though, so what does the new Exalt do?

[aetherialDawn]

The example characters we are dealing with are identical and locked in melee combat. If one can escape the building, the other one almost certainly can. If one can avoid being buried, the other can too.

This is missing the point. If you attempt it first, it may be more difficult to avoid getting buried than it is to bring down the building, and you get to decide what part you bring down (mostly.)
It doesn't MATTER if you can't escape either - you aren't the one who got buried, and once he's buried he probably can't do it back that easily.

I don't beleive you are actually familiar with the disarming rules. First, you need to hit your opponent despite a -2 external penalty - essentially you increase your opponent's DV by 2. That's going to torpedo your odds of hitting an evenly matched opponent to begin with.

If you do hit, your opponent must succeed on a (Wits + Appropriate Ability) roll with a difficulty of your threshold successes. Since you probably only barely hit him, he's basically rolling his full Melee attack pool minus a die or two against a difficulty of 1 to 3. 15ish dice is going to blow that out of the water.

Managing to get past both these rolls is going to be nigh impossible against any opponent who can match or exceed your own skill. And if you do succeed? He can generally recover his weapon with a miscelaneous action picking it up from the ground, since it flies only a few feet away and the character moves yards per tick. Congradulations, you have sucessfully caused you and your opponent to stop attaking each other for one round.

Again, more often than not, you are going to fail to disarm him and he gets a free attack on you.

This, however, is a good point, although I invite you to recall that it won't be 15ish dice because you lose your weapon's accuracy. Still, too many dice versus too small a pool, and it's fairly likely that trying to add dice/successes can be matched more efficiently by the defender's own excellency.

Reflex Sidestep Technique and Suprise Anticipation Method both cost one mote, so you can get the expected outlay by this method to 11 motes if you never fail to establish surprise, but it is still mote positive.

I checked the probability tables and pushing our Solar B to 20 dice vs DV 10 gives him a 42% chance to hit. That's 4 hits out of every 10, or 32 motes spent out of 40 motes gained in a ten round frame. If you used both the surprise attacks and Panoptic Fusion Discipline, you get that up to 42 motes out, 40 motes in, so just slightly mote negative.

Provided, of course, that your Stealth beasts his Awareness roll every time.

Difficult. However, since Panoptic Fusion Discipline is hilariously mote-efficient compared to his PD (4m once instead of 8m each successful attack) one could start using those spare motes on a Stealth Excellency... Or just spend them on a plain Melee excellency to press the dice advantage, especially since PFD's +1 DV boost aids your defensive chances too.

That would probably work. Fivefold Bulwark Stance effectively does the same thing as well. Both are beyond Essence 2 though, so what does the new Exalt do?

(Fivefold Bulwark Stance is E2, actually, so just use that and flurry.)
(Iron Whirlwind attack is also E2 if you prefer to use that route to get safe flurries. More expensive, though - not really all that safe to use.)

[Qwertystop]

I'm trying to build my first character, but there's something I don't quite understand about Charms. He's a Solar (Night Caste). Is he allowed to learn Charms from other Castes, or only Night Charms?

[TheCountAlucard]

I'm trying to build my first character, but there's something I don't quite understand about Charms. He's a Solar (Night Caste). Is he allowed to learn Charms from other Castes, or only Night Charms?

You can learn any Solar Charms you'd like, but Charms that fall under your Caste and/or Favored Abilities are cheaper to purchase with bonus points and experience than others.

[The Bushranger]

I have only one thing to say to all this.

Spoiler

Show

[Lord Raziere]

True True, math always makes my head explode, my worst subject it is.

I don't mind when its RPG math though. RPG math is simple compared to the math of the real world.

[Draken]

RPG math simply doesn't really ask for hidden parts of the equation or anything more complicated than the very (very) rare percentage, being limited to the four operations.

Math as a school subject is a pain in the ass (as far as I am concerned, I hated it) due to it shoving down your throat all the theoretical bits you will blissfully forget by the time your vacations are over and the next year rolls in.

[Rhyvurg]

I know you guys enjoy doing this, but this is why I tend to avoid Exalted discussion threads, I hate scrolling past huge posts where people debate dice probabilities, usually using Infernal Charms I know almost nothing about, because I don't play Infernals. Come on, this game was made for crazy-awesome stunts and dramatic action, not thirty pages of math.

[golentan]

I know you guys enjoy doing this, but this is why I tend to avoid Exalted discussion threads, I hate scrolling past huge posts where people debate dice probabilities, usually using Infernal Charms I know almost nothing about, because I don't play Infernals. Come on, this game was made for crazy-awesome stunts and dramatic action, not thirty pages of math.

But what about crazy awesome math stunts? I fail to see 30 pages of math and awesome as mutually exclusive.

[Xefas]

I hate scrolling past huge posts where people debate dice probabilities, usually using Infernal Charms I know almost nothing about, because I don't play Infernals.

What? I'm pretty sure they've only used Solars so far for this discussion.

Infernal Math is much more interesting.

[Andreaz]

SAM still sucks, because not only does it activate itself when it's potentially not wanted, but it is still fallible. Sure, it doesn't kill you by dint of making you unable to defend yourself, but it still has some gaping holes.

I presume you mean the attacks who are surprise without a roll, like 2.0 Ebon Lightning Prana. How many attacks do that now?

[tonberrian]

I presume you mean the attacks who are surprise without a roll, like 2.0 Ebon Lightning Prana. How many attacks do that now?

Um, Steel Fang Rebuke and Flashing Vengeance Draw, at least.

[Rhyvurg]

What? I'm pretty sure they've only used Solars so far for this discussion.

Infernal Math is much more interesting.

Well in this case you're right but ever since the Infernals book dropped it's usually been about them.

[Yuki Akuma]

Infernals has been out for a long time.

We're going on about the 2.5 errata now.