Dodge character Vs the undodgeable

[Therian]

Quick question: If you’re a character whose focused on dodge charms, what do you when you’ve got a bunch of Death of Obsidian Butterflies coming at you? I might be missing something but I don’t see an effect that removes the quality like Heavenly Guardian Defense. Is there a charm I should be looking to get to close that defensive gap?

[BrilliantRain]

Seven Shadow Evasion can be used to Dodge ANY attack, full stop. This would presumably include attacks that normally cannot be dodged.

[Heavy Arms]

I would personally rule the Seven Shadows Evasion is the go to here; not sure if there's a developer comment making that more clear but it seems to be the intent of the Charm.

Rumor of Form, and Vaporous Division are both functional depending on the attack in question since they reduce the effectiveness of an attack rather than dodging it (both would work against DoOB).

Probably missing a few others.

[DrLoveMonkey]

How many is 'a bunch'? For a stop-gap there's Seven Shadow Evasion, Vaporous Division, Living Bonds Unburdened and Harm-Dismissing Meditation that can all work to varying degrees. Those all in some combination should get you through most encounters with undodgeable attacks. Even a Solar is going to have a really hard time casting a DOOBy every turn, turn after turn. If you're going up against like, 4 twilights who all know that as their control spell in the same combat* then really the only options I think you have are to either pick up a medium melee weapon and mitigate the damage you take with a parry defense, and/or just get really aggressive and crash them since DOOB is perilous and can't be cast while in crash.


As an ST though I wouldn't think that a houserule that allows one of the dodge charms to act like HGD does to be unreasonable though.

*What did you do to your ST?

[Therian]

I would personally rule the Seven Shadows Evasion is the go to here; not sure if there's a developer comment making that more clear but it seems to be the intent of the Charm.

Rumor of Form, and Vaporous Division are both functional depending on the attack in question since they reduce the effectiveness of an attack rather than dodging it (both would work against DoOB).

Probably missing a few others.

Yeah I don’t know if those apply to attacks that are undodgeable. That would be great if they did though.

[Therian]

How many is 'a bunch'? For a stop-gap there's Seven Shadow Evasion, Vaporous Division, Living Bonds Unburdened and Harm-Dismissing Meditation that can all work to varying degrees. Those all in some combination should get you through most encounters with undodgeable attacks. Even a Solar is going to have a really hard time casting a DOOBy every turn, turn after turn. If you're going up against like, 4 twilights who all know that as their control spell in the same combat* then really the only options I think you have are to either pick up a medium melee weapon and mitigate the damage you take with a parry defense, and/or just get really aggressive and crash them since DOOB is perilous and can't be cast while in crash.


As an ST though I wouldn't think that a houserule that allows one of the dodge charms to act like HGD does to be unreasonable though.

*What did you do to your ST?

Actually I just showed up for my first game and the Circle was going up against the nation of Ysyr Ana’s we ended up coming up against a bunch of mortal sorcerers.

[TheCountAlucard]

Seven Shadow Evasion works against any attack, "without contest." It dodges the undodgeable, because saying "wait, but the attack is undodgeable" is contesting it.

[Heavy Arms]

Yeah I don’t know if those apply to attacks that are undodgeable. That would be great if they did though.

They do. Undodgeable attacks don't turn off all Dodge Charms without a special keyword or rule in them. If a Dodge charm reduces Decisive damage, it works even if the attack is undodgeable.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Actually I just showed up for my first game and the Circle was going up against the nation of Ysyr Ana’s we ended up coming up against a bunch of mortal sorcerers.

Oh weird, did they actually get off their castings? It's basically impossible for a mortal to roll 15 successes on a shape sorcery spell. It's actually still really damn hard to even roll 7 or 8, even with special rituals, and even if they were a cadre of the greatest mortal sorcerers ever with fully maxed stats and stuff. Normally for a mortal with 4s in their attribute/ability, counting them among the greatest mortal sorcerers in the direction, it'll take 4 turns to cast it just once.

Edit: Um, I just realized I might have come across as all "bluh bluh, how could you get hit by a lowly mortal?" Or something. I more meant that unless there was only 1-3 PCs of various powers they were probably using some special exceptions to be able to cast so quickly.

[BrilliantRain]

I would personally rule the Seven Shadows Evasion is the go to here; not sure if there's a developer comment making that more clear but it seems to be the intent of the Charm.

Rumor of Form, and Vaporous Division are both functional depending on the attack in question since they reduce the effectiveness of an attack rather than dodging it (both would work against DoOB).

Probably missing a few others.

This logic sounds good to me too.

[Isator Levi]

I would personally rule the Seven Shadows Evasion is the go to here

Seven Shadow Evasion is the one old perfect defence Charm that came through mostly intact, in the sense that it is an absolute defence against any attack. It's balanced against Heavenly Guardian Defence and Adamant Skin Technique (Charms whose defence is not absolute against sources of damage that are not arbitrarily high) in that, unlike them, it can only be used once per scene, unless reset by using Reed in the Wind to dodge three decisive attacks, or with the Dawn anima power.

I would also note that Seven Shadow Evasion, while functioning as Dodge's answer to arbitrarily huge damage, is a less efficient choice than the other two, as its text makes no provision for using it against such not counting as its one use per scene. Like, it's actually cheaper (and more certain) to use Heavenly Guardian Defence to deflect a mountain being dropped on you than it is to defend against a really good sword fighter, because you don't need to spend Initiative on it; you spend the motes, and you're laughing. You can use Seven Shadow Evasion to dodge that attack, but then are stuck when it's followed up with, well, something like Death of Obsidian Butterflies.

[Lioness]

Quick question: If you’re a character whose focused on dodge charms, what do you when you’ve got a bunch of Death of Obsidian Butterflies coming at you?

Sadly, this is a symptom of the playtest getting leaked before we got Sorcery and Evocations. I'd previously valued Seven Shadow Evasion based on Cascade of Cutting Terror if I'd known Terrestrial Circle Sorcery was going to have undodgable attack spells I'd have made more of a case for characters who prefer not to get hit.

[Therian]

Sadly, this is a symptom of the playtest getting leaked before we got Sorcery and Evocations. I'd previously valued Seven Shadow Evasion based on Cascade of Cutting Terror if I'd known Terrestrial Circle Sorcery was going to have undodgable attack spells I'd have made more of a case for characters who prefer not to get hit.

Yeah, I was also in the playtest although we were focusing on the core rules and social charms. It was very unfortunate how that turned out. I guess I'd never noticed it before but it is surprising there is no way to remove undodgable effects with the Dodge tree as it seems like you should get the best defense for your investment with it.

[BrilliantRain]

I asked Vance about it.

http://forum.theonyxpath.com/forum/m...21#post1278321

[BrilliantRain]

You could also use HGD as a basis for a custom Dodge charm that lets you remove the Undodgable descriptor from an attack. Or maybe a repurchase of Reflex Sidestep Technique that lets you treat Undodgable attacks as Unexpected ones or something.