Originally posted by limaxophobiac
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DrLoveMonkey just posted a fight where a bunch of 3/3s took down Octavian. The action economy is a powerful thing.
Now imagine Adamanthus riding Mata-Yadh. He's guarded by a Cataphract riding a unicorn. He has a lorelie lieutenant. And an Size 4 army of hobgoblins led by a buck ogre.
If you are all 5/5, the hobgoblin, buck ogre, and lorelie just aren't worth running. Unless you say these are Super Fae with a static +5 to all their dicepools. Even Adamanthus is scenery for your fight against Mata-Yadh. (Mata-Yadh can be soloed by a starting level Dragon-Blooded, so it's not going to lose against a bunch of 5/5 Solars but it will last three or four rounds and is worth rolling out.)
If you have a party built the way I'm suggesting:
The 5/5 Dawn fights the behemoth.
The 5/4 Night fights the Cat.
The 3/3 Eclipse beats on the Lorelie.
The 3/3 Zenith squares off against the buck-ogre.
The 2/2 Twilight takes on the army of hobgoblins.
With Onslaught, even the 2/2 Twilight can reliably land decisives attacks on the Cat.
The 2/2 Twilight, assuming a medium mortal weapon, no speciality and no onslaught, hits the behemoth 78% of the time with Willpower and a Full Excellency. That's nothing to sneeze at.
You can run this literally as a straight white-room knock-down fight without interesting stuff to do and it works straight out the book. Throw in something like an imploding manse for the Twilight to fix mid-combat and give the Eclipse the chance to convince the Lorelie to betray Adamanthus and join the heroes and you've got yourself an Exalted game, baby!
Compared to:
The lorelie rolls 11 dice of damage against your Soak of 15 for nothing.
The buck ogre rolls its 6 dice grapple against your resting Parry of 7. Then it flurries its 8 dice shield bash... oh, you spend 1m to Dipping Swallow Defence? Gain 1i.
The hobgoblin battle group subtracts their soak of 5 from your 30 damage... and you kill a hundred fae with a single swing.
Adamanthus, fae lord, conqueror of cities, scurge of Creation whose legend is carved upon his very skin... can't actually hurt you in combat.
What's the point of the Dawn turning up to fight Mata-Yadh if the Twilight's three dot retainer can solo the beast?
What's the point of the Zenith's Supernal Presence if the Dawn just 1/1/5'd their tertiary and threw two BP into Presence?
****
And in the lead up to fight Adamanthus you can fight the other stuff in the Antagonist section!
That wild pack of Silverwrights can't hurt your awesome Dawn caste, who gets to feel like a powerful warrior. But they can tear your bookish Twilight to shreds -- use War Lion Stance. But wait, there are Immaculates about -- do you flare into the Invincible Fury of the Dawn and risk bringing the Wyld Hunt or do you hide your full strength?
Your Twilight glimpses the hidden Wyld Mutant Assassin with their awesome Perception Awareness pool because not every party member is rocking 11 dice here.
Your Eclipse negotiates safe passage through the tainted forest with the haughty King of the Wood who wants the fae gone.
The chimera is so dreaded that it drives men to cannibalism to avoid waking one. If your Dawn is so good at combat that you can wrestle one into submission then that is awesome. But if every member of the party, including the bookish nerd, can also flex on them then the fact that you can outclass this fell beast is kinda "meh". Why are you here? What's the point of you?
You all get to be good at what you're supposed to be good at. Instead of everyone being a 5/5 fighter and every random encounter being a gang of five Octavians or Abyssals with all your Charms. Or random T-rexes that mysteriously have a super-powered +5 dice buff.
I don't want every fight against the fae to be against Cataphracts. I want to use Buck Ogres. I want to use Chimeras (brother). I want to use Silverwrights. And hobgoblins. And beautiful, deadly, lorelie. And with a Mirror Flag and an Iay in the group, I can and it's not pointless. And Volfer gets to be meaningfully better at the thing he's supposed to be good at.
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