Dodge character Vs the undodgeable

[Lioness]

Do you mean that in the playtest SSE had no limit?

A lot of charms had more than one playtest iteration and Seven Shadow Evasion was controversial due to it being a classic "you just fail" perfect defence and the aforementioned issues with Cascade of Cutting Terror. Willpower being the sole limit of SSE's availability created unintended consequences for the stunt mechanics.

How do people rate Flowing Body Evasion?

It's very powerful and (to me) a compelling argument why Lunars shouldn't have Supernal. May also explain why the Legendary Size mote drip is necessary.

[The Wizard of Oz]

Crazy awesome, it’s approximately Adamant Skin Technique if Adamant Skin Technique said “or subtract your (Stamina + armor soak) from the post-soak damage of a withering attack.”

I don't think it's quite that good, although I guess it's close.

Evasion ratings are much, much lower than (Stamina+Armoured Soak) can be.

Our Solar has a Stamina+Armoured Soak of... I think 16? Something like that. So against a high-damage attack, that's reducing final damage by about 7.

Evasion caps out at 6 if you really max it out.

I have a Snake-totem Lunar with Dex 5, but as I use Snake Style my Parry is 6 and my Evasion is 4.
I'm not intending to buy up the tree to get Flowing Body Evasion, because I just don't really use my Evasion that much.
Potentially reducing final damage by 4 is very good, but not good enough that I'm going to deliberately lower my Defence by 2.

Whereas Adamant Skin doesn't care if you use Evasion or Parry.

And it doesn't cost Willpower.

On the other hand, Flowing Body Evasion is Uniform.

So, yeah. A strong choice if you're rocking a really high Evasion, but in my experience, Lunars rarely have high Dodge (by which I mean none of the Lunars I've played with; although obviously this charm may mean Lunars put much more XP into Dodge than they did previously).

[Isator Levi]

Flowing Body Evasion subtracts the Evasion you applied against the attack. If you used the Excellency to boost it, you take that amount from the damage.

It also still qualifies as a successful Dodge, for any other Charms that matters to.

[Calboon]

It's very powerful and (to me) a compelling argument why Lunars shouldn't have Supernal. May also explain why the Legendary Size mote drip is necessary.

Would you be willing to go into more detail on this? At essence 3 a lunar won't have access to this for the first 25 sessions of a game. In my experience that means for most groups it might as well not exist since no player is ever going to get it, so it seems wierd to use as a balance point on anything one way or another.

[The Wizard of Oz]

Flowing Body Evasion subtracts the Evasion you applied against the attack. If you used the Excellency to boost it, you take that amount from the damage.

Quite true (and if anyone's wondering if Isator is correct in his reading, he is, I asked Vance about it when the charm was previewed).

If, say, you have Evasion 5 (Dodge 4 and Dex 5), and say "the sword goes through a hole that opens in my body, which then closes again in a flash of quicksilver; please Ms ST can I add my Stamina of 5 to the cap?" to get a +1 stunt, then boost your Evasion to 11, then yes, you're almost certainly taking no damage. Even if they do get 11 successes on their roll to hit, you take 11 off their damage successes and I personally have never done more than 11 damage in one hit (at least, not after Ruin-Abasing Shrug).
And you don't even need to reset the charms.

But that's costing you 15 motes, and then maybe a wp. It's not cheap. So in reality, you won't want to do that every round.

So, again, I think it's good. Suitable for the Lunar's main "perfect" Evasion charm. But I don't think it's "Crazy awesome," because it's expensive (in both motes/wp, and I suspect Experience. It's possible it's near the beginning of a tree, but as it's an Essence 3 charm, I suspect it's not).
Like Adamant Skin, Heavenly Guarden Defence and Seven Shadow Evasion, it has its strengths and weaknesses.

It also still qualifies as a successful Dodge, for any other Charms that matters to.

Indeed, and there will probably be some synergy there. It seems likely that Flowing Body Evasion sits on top of a defensive suite, though I don't know if it'll be an Evasion suite or a more general Defence suite.
(Can anyone think of a Martial Arts charm that does something on a successful Dodge?)

I wonder if Flowing Body Evasion will be the choice of Lunar PCs who want a very strong Dexterity-based defensive suite and are willing to invest heavily in it, and if there will be a cheaper, easier, but less powerful Parry defence with less synergy with other Dex charms.

I was wondering if there would just be a Defence-based "perfect" and a Soak-based "perfect", since Lunars don't use Ability charms, but as Flowing Body Evasion is just an Evasion charm, I imagine there will also be a Parry charm.
(Otherwise, I'd better invest in more Dodge!)

I'm also interested in how a Lunar soak-based "perfect" will work, as Flowing Body Evasion is already reducing actual damage. But then, I guess so does Heavenly Guardian Defence, yet Adamant Skin still exists (and is fairly different).

May also explain why the Legendary Size mote drip is necessary.

Yeah, there's no mobility penalty for being a Stegadon. Combine your Evasion of 5 (or 6 if you really max it) with a Siege Lizard's soak of 20, and with Flowing Body Evasion you're not going to be very worried about Withering Attacks, as long as you can pay for it.
But with mote drip and the desire to also boost your attacks, that's not going to last long.

Willpower being the sole limit of SSE's availability created unintended consequences for the stunt mechanics.

TBH, with lethality cut sensibly, being able to ignore the first 5 attacks against you seems both over-powered and dull, regardless of stunt mechanics.

At essence 3 a lunar won't have access to this for the first 25 sessions of a game. In my experience that means for most groups it might as well not exist since no player is ever going to get it

In my experience Essence 3 is a pretty irrelevant gatekeeper, because I've not seen an Essence 1 or 2 PC for years.
(I'm going to say... 6 years? 7 maybe? Could be 8.)


Which is not to say you're wrong per-se, but unfortunately, people's games are so different in terms of XP level, length, etc, that I don't think the Devs can really count on one XP level being most common in games.

[DrLoveMonkey]

I feel like “There’s no mobility penalty for being a Stegadon is the Exalted equivalent of “There’s nothing in the rule book that says a walrus can’t play water polo.”

Edit: which is to say it’s a line that a Lunar says before transforming into one and then smashing through an army camp with impossible grace, not that it’s a stupid technicality that should’t exist.

[The Wizard of Oz]

Damn straight.

[Lioness]

Would you be willing to go into more detail on this? At essence 3 a lunar won't have access to this for the first 25 sessions of a game. In my experience that means for most groups it might as well not exist since no player is ever going to get it, so it seems wierd to use as a balance point on anything one way or another.

If you treat this less like a dodge charm and more like a resistance charm that (coupled with a high soak) can shut down overwhelming on withering attacks for several rounds (as many as you have willpower), a lot of starting characters simply won't be able to deal with that because their Overwhelming is low due to their weapon selection and might not have an obvious solution to that due to their choice of fighting style and that's a really undesirable thing to do with a starting build.

Similar Solar charms for comparison

-Iron Kettle Body which only halves post-soak withering damage and depends on the opponent rolling 1s to do more than that.
-Aegis of Invinicible Might which reduces post-soak withering damage by (Stamina) but doesn't come into play until after you've used Adamant Skin in response to a Decisive Attack then requires 8+m/or decisive attacks every round to stay active.