Exalted: Arena

[Zeesun]

Cutting Edge is broken OP. 1m for 3 soak negated, every attack? And Speed of Light is the most efficient JB booster in the game at 1m per 1 success.

Razor of the Sun is ok enough, Overwhelm is a terribly op mechanic especially for Single Pointers. You didnt include the text of Edge of Morning Sunlight.

Appreciate the feedback! Speed of Light used to just be 'double up to Essence 9s' on a JB, but that honestly felt pretty meh given that I was still capping it at Essence.

I've been contemplating capping Cutting Edge some, and I may do that. I did reference Piercing as an ability costing 1i when balancing it, but that initiative might be quite a bit more expensive than I was factoring in.

Edge of Morning Sunlight is as the normal Solar charm.

Sunbeam's Charms are strong on purpose, given how much effort my players put into acquiring it and making it out of Orichalcum specifically, but you may be right that it's veering into OP, even more than like...the rest of the build is with Single Point and all.

[Alistair]

Appreciate the feedback! Speed of Light used to just be 'double up to Essence 9s' on a JB, but that honestly felt pretty meh given that I was still capping it at Essence.

I've been contemplating capping Cutting Edge some, and I may do that. I did reference Piercing as an ability costing 1i when balancing it, but that initiative might be quite a bit more expensive than I was factoring in.

Edge of Morning Sunlight is as the normal Solar charm.

Sunbeam's Charms are strong on purpose, given how much effort my players put into acquiring it and making it out of Orichalcum specifically, but you may be right that it's veering into OP, even more than like...the rest of the build is with Single Point and all.

It's really not more expensive. 1i and 1m are equivalent to each other in terms of efficiency. And these Evocations imo are not really five-dot Artifact material, if anything they're 3-dot Evocations (directly enhance the user's capabilities without veering too much into the blatantly supernatural until getting to the final Evocations). Nerfing them further would pretty much make the investment very undesirable.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Well, the idea was to put Earth Dragon into a -2 wound penalty, which would have meant that she gets to roll 5 dice against Air Dragon's 11 on every roll to rush or oppose a disengage, tosses out full excellency'd decisives at 13 dice against an Evasion of 8, and effectively gives our withering attacks +2 raw damage from threshold successes. Air Dragon has no useful decisive enhancers besides the excellency, so she'd have needed to build at least 24 initiative to have an over 80% chance for a killing blow, which would've taken her 5 successful attacks on average at OWV 3. 5 turns is just way too many opportunities for the Athletics excellency's exploding 10s to do something unexpected and cause her to get stuck in melee with a tetsubo-flinging maniac.

That is very true, but you're assuming Air Dragon gets stuck when the Air gets into melee, and that isn't necessarily true. Since you have a turn of warning before Earth catches up by succeeding a rush, you can take a full defense. If you haven't been using your excellency on your high accuracy attacks, which you shouldn't be except maybe 1m for the excellency effect, you should have enough motes to full excellency your defense as well when they close to attack. At THAT point, Earth doesn't stand a fantastic chance of hitting you with the tetsubo. Even if they do hit you though, if you've been building up initiative while burying them, they're not going to change the turn order, so you then do a standard flurry of rise from prone and disengage once more, getting a free success on the disengage.

Of course if Earth does miss that one attack, then the next round Air is going to Wind Dragon and flurry an attack with a disengage again.

And all of THAT is assuming that you're just fighting duels in Exalted, which I think only ever happened once in our group since we started playing 3e. In group combats the ability to disengage and just sit outside of the melee while keeping your max accuracy attack and not having to waste a turn disengaging is pretty good. Then again maybe nobody plays exalted the way my group does, I have no idea. I've been shocked before by people saying that their circle of Solars god wiped out by a bunch of mortal hunters using no special tactics, and I can't imagine how that happened

Either way I am absolutely sick to death of discussing Fire and Air Dragon styles, I do look forward to you pitting Water and Wood up against Bloodapes though. I suspect that Water won't do very well if she wins join battle and starts out with a decisive attack. If it can't kill an ape she has to muscle through 8 attacks in a row before she gets to go again, and I don't see that happening without a ton of luck.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Appreciate the feedback! Speed of Light used to just be 'double up to Essence 9s' on a JB, but that honestly felt pretty meh given that I was still capping it at Essence.

I've been contemplating capping Cutting Edge some, and I may do that. I did reference Piercing as an ability costing 1i when balancing it, but that initiative might be quite a bit more expensive than I was factoring in.

Edge of Morning Sunlight is as the normal Solar charm.

Sunbeam's Charms are strong on purpose, given how much effort my players put into acquiring it and making it out of Orichalcum specifically, but you may be right that it's veering into OP, even more than like...the rest of the build is with Single Point and all.

As a cap-bursting join battle enhancer it's pretty cheap at 1m for up to (Essence) non-charm successes. It also has some overlap with Sensory Acuity Prana. Even if it added (Essence) non-charm dice instead that would be a lot closer to a good balance, I think.

Cutting Edge is probably fine as it is though. There's a crap ton of enemies in Exalted that don't even have armor, so it's not useful at all times. I might change it to higher of (Essence or 3), again not that it matters for your guy. Also don't forget that Piercing attacks cost 1i and lower your defense until your next turn as well, but I still think it's reasonably balanced for 1m.

Of course on the other hand he's an Essence 3 Dawn with Thunderbolt Attack Prana, Melee and Single Point so balance is more or less up to you coming up with some insane BS to throw down anyway.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

I do look forward to you pitting Water and Wood up against Bloodapes though. I suspect that Water won't do very well if she wins join battle and starts out with a decisive attack. If it can't kill an ape she has to muscle through 8 attacks in a row before she gets to go again, and I don't see that happening without a ton of luck.

Water's actually done now - she did Quite Well but not Earth Dragon well. The two-opponent setup did force her to forgo the strategy her style actually wants her to use, but I think it's a testament to the style's power that she managed to soldier through without even activating her Form. (Expect a detailed writeup later.)

[DrLoveMonkey]

Water's actually done now - she did Quite Well but not Earth Dragon well. The two-opponent setup did force her to forgo the strategy her style actually wants her to use, but I think it's a testament to the style's power that she managed to soldier through without even activating her Form. (Expect a detailed writeup later.)

Well that’s good. Wood probably won’t end up activating their form either just because the reflexive condition is so hard and it’s not really that great at lower essence anyway. Wood Dragon Vitality and Eyes of the Wood Dragon might carry it through, but with only light armor WDV is going to drain motes fast and since Blood Apes don’t wear armor the piercing effect isn’t helpful. Soul Marking Style is going to be a risky venture too, you really want a friend around if you’re going to be doing something like that.


This is all making me want to run a game where every player is an Immaculate and they go around navigating the politics of spirit courts and wrestling hungry ghosts.

[Zeesun]

As a cap-bursting join battle enhancer it's pretty cheap at 1m for up to (Essence) non-charm successes. It also has some overlap with Sensory Acuity Prana. Even if it added (Essence) non-charm dice instead that would be a lot closer to a good balance, I think.

I like it; do you mean 1m for 1 non-Charm dice? In essence (pun...not intended), turning it into exclusively a cap-breaker?

Cutting Edge is probably fine as it is though. There's a crap ton of enemies in Exalted that don't even have armor, so it's not useful at all times. I might change it to higher of (Essence or 3), again not that it matters for your guy. Also don't forget that Piercing attacks cost 1i and lower your defense until your next turn as well, but I still think it's reasonably balanced for 1m.

I'm glad you think so! It's limited applicability was very much by design, and I like your proposed modification.

Of course on the other hand he's an Essence 3 Dawn with Thunderbolt Attack Prana, Melee and Single Point so balance is more or less up to you coming up with some insane BS to throw down anyway.

It's funny. On account of his Resistance Supernal he's really focused in on popping Single Point, using Essence-Gathering Temper to keep mote economy up, and layering on scene-longs that give him compounding combat advantage that lets him just -equalize- stuff. With Pain Tolerance and 4 Ox-bodies, wound penalties don't -really- slow him down that, that much either. I don't know if he understands the amount of outrageous Doomcombo murder he could inflict if he really wants to, but since I, as his Storyteller wouldn't like it as much if he just instagibbed everything* instead of being a nigh-unkillable implacable death-machine of dramatic tension, I'm not complaining!


*Admittedly, though, at the risk of being left super vulnerable if the combo didn't do enough to swing the fight in his favor.

[limaxophobiac]

Razor of The Sun
Cost: 4m; Mins: Essence 2; Type: Supplemental Keywords: None Duration: One scene. Prerequisite Charms: Cutting Edge

Light pours through any crack, no matter how small. This Charm supplements a successful attack made with Cutting Edge; Sunbeam’s Overwhelm value against that opponent is increased by (Essence) for the remainder of the scene.

How is this supposed to work? It says it supplements a successful attack and it's suplemental so RAW you'd have to announce it before you roll the attack, is it supposed to work like that and do nothing if you miss?

If you want to be able to activate it after successfully hitting I think you need to make it Reflexive.

[Zeesun]

How is this supposed to work? It says it supplements a successful attack and it's suplemental so RAW you'd have to announce it before you roll the attack, is it supposed to work like that and do nothing if you miss?

If you want to be able to activate it after successfully hitting I think you need to make it Reflexive.

Good catch, thanks!

[BrilliantRain]

Generally speaking, 3e charms which don’t need to be declared in advance all specifically say that and when they can be activated.

[Sorcerous Overlord]

When's the Water Bender fight coming out?

[aluminiumtrioxid]

When's the Water Bender fight coming out?

I'll have time to write it up today, if everything goes well.

[aluminiumtrioxid]

Terribly sorry for the delay, I had some stuff to take care of. Let us proceed, shall we?

Water Immaculate:

Attributes: Str 3 Dex 5 Sta 3 | Wits 4
Abilities: Water Dragon 5, Awareness 4, Athletics 4, Brawl 3
Charms:
Water Dragon: Flowing Water Defense, Rippling Water Strike, Drowning-in-Blood Technique, Shrugging Water-Dragon Escape, Water Dragon Form, Theft-of-Essence Method
Brawl: Become the Hammer, Blade-Deflecting Palm
Awareness: Precision Observation Method
Resistance: Ox-Body Technique

Another very conservative spread. A 2/4/5 spread probably lets you play to your style’s strengths quite a bit more – with an in-form base soak of 15 and the option to layer another +5 on top via Impervious Skin of Stone without ruining your Aura, you can almost certainly soldier through a sustained assault at base initiative after landing a strike that was meant to wound rather than kill.

However, you lose out quite a bit in mote efficiency compared to Earth who can wait with the ISoS activation until after she sees the raw damage pool coming her way, and Rippling Water Strike goes from a middling Charm to an outright bad one. Not to mention that you already have very effective ways to avoid being hit altogether between Flowing Water Defense and Blade-Deflecting Palm, which means that pre-attack soak boosting is way more likely to result in wasting motes than it is with Earth Dragon and her Parry 2.

The combat:

It’s actually not super important for Water Dragon to win Join Battle – she has a very good chance to weather an all-out assault from two apes between Flowing Water Defense and Blade-Deflecting Palm enhancing her defenses beyond the excellency, so dropping an opponent right out of the gate is less of a priority for her than it was for the other combatants. Nevertheless, 4m is hardly preposterous for what could be a significant advantage, so she buys two auto-successes and rolls another six for a total of 11i. The apes roll 1 and 4, respectively.

TURN 1
Water Dragon at 11i, Ape #2 at 7, Ape #1 at 4.

She rushes in and attacks Ape #1 in the hopes of getting a crash, using Flowing Water Defense and 1m on the excellency. Since we’re not in Aura, Rippling Water Strike would only get us +2 raw damage, which is quite terrible, so we’re holding it back despite the fact that our opponent is very close to getting crashed. Our anima goes up to glowing, and we’re entering Water Aura at the end of the turn.

14 dice roll 5 successes for a rather pathetic 4 post-soak damage, of which only a single die comes up as a success. We are so not getting a crash.

Ape #2 flurries, but we’re at a base parry of 8 after stunt so we don’t even need to spend motes on enhancing defense. First attack misses with 2 successes, second scores 6 and still misses against our post-onslaught parry of 7. Ain’t Flowing Water Defense grand?

Ape #1 also launches a flurry. We don’t want him to get further away from crash, so we spend 2m on the excellency, bringing us up to Parry 7 once more. He rolls 6 successes and misses, vindicating our investment immediately. We’re spending another 4m on keeping Parry 7 up for the second attack, but we’re proven to be over-cautious when he fails with a 4.

DING DONG NEXT TURN, regen 5, no anima.

TURN 2
Water Dragon at 13i, ape #2 at 7, ape #1 at 3.

Now we get to unleash Rippling Water Strike! We also spend 5m on FWD + the excellency for a total mote expenditure of 10, bringing us immediately up to bonfire. This proves to be tremendously useless because we get no damage out of it and our free bonfire effect doesn’t help in this situation at all, but hey, at least we look cool.

Attack roll hits with 10 successes against a parry of 4, bringing us up to an absolutely disgusting post-soak damage pool of 14 dice, of which we get 5 successes. Ape #1 is crashed.

Ape #2 attempts another flurry and fails against an un-excellency’d parry twice, with 4 and 3 successes respectively.

Ape #1 tries to claw himself back to relevance, but he fails with exactly 6 successes against the 2m excellency just like last time, then once again with 5 vs 7 for good measure.

DING DONG NEXT TURN, regen 5, anima does nothing useful.

TURN 3
Water Dragon at 24i, ape #2 at 7, ape #1 at -2

Water Dragon goes for the killing blow with Flowing Water Defense against a post-reset PoM double tap, 5m on the excellency to offset FWD’s attack roll penalty, and Drowning-in-Blood Technique. Ape spends a willpower, but she still manages to roll 6 successes vs a Parry of 5, landing an absolutely brutal 24 dice of damage with double 10s and rerolling 6s on the demon for a total of 13 damage, a score so high it would’ve killed a mortal twice over. Ape #1 is extremely dead.

Ape #2 flurries! First attack misses, but the second scores exactly 7 successes against Parry 7. Fifteen base damage would result in 7 post-soak damage dice, which is enough to crash her right out of the gate on an average roll, so she figures that using Blade-Deflecting Palm to force 2 rerolls is a good use of her remaining intiative – after all, she can still just pump a max excellency and, if needed, a Willpower into her defense on the next two attacks. Sadly, the two dice come up as 9 and 8, respectively – the hit still goes through!

7 damage dice roll 4 successes, vindicating our previous thought process, but moral certainty is cold comfort in initiative crash. And the ape has two more attacks to launch…

DING DONG NEXT TURN, regen 5, flux rolls a single success, changing precious little.

TURN 4
Ape #2 at 16i, Water Dragon at -3.

Another PoM flurry! Normally, if I was in a position to attack an opponent who’s sitting on -2 onslaught and is crashed, I’d attempt a grapple, but 8d against a pre-excellency parry of 6 is way too dicey. So ape #2 will just go with another withering. Water Dragon spends 2m to bring her Parry up to 7, but the ape rolls exactly 7 successes once more, and now we can’t even use BDP because we’re crashed. 7 post-soak damage dice produce 7 successes, painfully enough.

Confident in his ability to kill or maim with 24i, ape #2 launches a decisive as his second attack. Water Dragon spends 4m 1WP to bring her Parry up to 8. The ape misses with 3 successes; how anticlimactic.

Since she’s unlikely to turn this around with a single attack, Water Dragon spends 4m on FWD and 1 on the excellency – it’s better for her to steadily raise her initiative and slowly chip away at the ape’s in the hope that she can shoot for an initiative shift later, rather than trying to go all-out on offense and risk barely crawling out of crash without actually crashing the ape. 13d begets 8 successes, for a total of 7 post-soak, which yields 4 damage.

DING DONG NEXT TURN, regen 5, flux rolls a 10, battering the ape some more.

TURN 5
Ape #2 at 14i, Water Dragon at -5.

Out of willpower with which he could fuel PoM and seeing his window of opportunity pass, the demon goes for another withering attack against Water Dragon’s Parry of 8. At this point, I realize that FWD on the previous attack was overkill – when you face two incoming attacks, it has better returns than the excellency, effectively giving you 4m’s worth of enhancement against both attacks (and the attack penalty is irrelevant against a blood ape when you’re not trying to shoot for big damage from threshold successes), but with only 1 attack, you’re effectively eating the -3 attack penalty for no good reason, since anything above Parry 8 has strongly diminishing returns. My analysis is proven correct when the ape fails to connect with yet another hit, rolling 5 successes this time.

Water Dragon tosses Rippling Water Strike and a 1m excellency on her attack, and unfettered by a FWD attack penalty, rolls 8 successes. 12 post-soak damage dice turn up 8 successes – this means no initiative shift for us.

DING DONG NEXT TURN, regen 5, no flux damage.

TURN 6
Ape #2 at 6i, Water Dragon at 4.

Ape launches a withering attack against a Parry of 6 and fails to connect. Water Dragon is now in full-on mote conservation mode, relying on Blade-Deflecting Palm to save her ass if necessary. RWS is a very expensive toy.

Rippling Water Strike and a single mote on the excellency result in an attack roll with 11 successes and 15 post-soak damage, yielding 7 successes and crashing the ape.

DING DONG NEXT TURN, regen 5, no flux damage

TURN 7
Water Dragon at 17i, Ape #2 at -1.

Trusting in Drowning-in-Blood Technique’s ability to cover for the shortcomings of her low-ish damage pool, Water Dragon launches a decisive with 1m on the excellency. She scores 5 successes vs her opponent’s Parry of 3, and gets a bunch of 10s on damage, resulting in a total of 12 health levels of damage dealt. Ape #2 only makes a slightly lesser splat than his predecessor.

Final result: two dead apes and a self-satisfied albeit largely moteless Immaculate.

Notes:
- Water Dragon’s ability to weather large numbers of attacks with a comparatively low mote expenditure remains very impressive.
- Theft-of-Essence Method’s weakness against spirits is a large black mark on its record: sacrificing most of my gains from a Crash is not terribly attractive when all I’m getting for it is 2 motes while my opponent’s Charm usage is by and large not constrained by Essence expenditure.
- Still, between 3 potent workhorses and two strong tools in Exalt-vs-Exalt combat, Water Dragon might feature the largest number of useful Charms out of the early lineup of all the Immaculate styles.

[prototype00]

Thanks especially to DrLoveMonkey for running the 3v1 Deebs vs True (all Melee charms) Invincible Sword Princess Ess1.

That basically solved in my mind if it was possible to 1v3 at Ess1 vs 3 combat specced Shikari (no, unless you can defeat the second coming of Red Sonya, basically).

A bit/very late, but also apologies to any that I might have offended. Not my intent, but I love my silver demigods so!

[DrLoveMonkey]

That basically solved in my mind if it was possible to 1v3 at Ess1 vs 3 combat specced Shikari (no, unless you can defeat the second coming of Red Sonya, basically).

I wouldn't necessarily say that it's totally impossible, but I wouldn't count on it. You'd need one of the best combat builds and play it pretty perfectly with a little luck. I wouldn't consider even a combat characters inability to do it reliably at chargen as some kind of failure.

On the other hand consider that not only was the ISP Essence 2 in that scenario, and I also cheated on behalf of the Solar and used Hungry Tiger Technique on a non-crashed target, which isn't allowed.