My Problem With Chargen

[JohnDoe244]

How is it meaningfull when the dawn is there and could handle it all by himself? Because if enemies don't auto-hit melee 3 dex 2 guy they can't hit him and he almost certainly ignores onslaught.

I don't really see the appeal of forcing everyone to be so specialised in their own area of competence that it's barely worth the rest of the circles time showing up when they do their thing.

Probably because the Dawn can't win the combat by themselves?

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.

[Sandact6]

Your math is terrible Sandact.

3/3 Melee with no specialty is landing that Decisive 95% of the time with a Full Excellency. 98% if one of the Dawn's attacks was Smashing. 99.8% if they spend Willpower.

The circumstances of actual play matter.

https://anydice.com/program/20b2d

Show your proof. I could even tell even not using the program that 13 dice has around a 50/50 shot of hitting defense 7.

I'm also not using willpower as that's moot. An enemy can do the same to their defense bringing the odds back to the same again.

Circumstances do matter. I mentioned that in my post even. But you also agreed to a cutline. If they don’t make a cutline, then you need to start changing things a bit.

A Circle of 3/3s can take down Octavian. It's absolutely not the case that you need 5/5 to participate in combat.

Assuming a 3/3 has a +1 defense weapon for 4 base defense and is using a decisive.

You have a 48% chance to hit Octavian’s defenses. Octavian has a 92% chance of hitting yours. Using an excellency is moot in this case, as Octavian is one of the enemies that does have some form of excellency and will cancel out any form of excellency based defense boost.

Hell, even if I’m generous and subtract some of Octavian’s dice pool on the basis that it’s an accuracy bonus for let’s say 11 dice, the chances of him hitting are still 81%.

And the same for social scenes.

Social is far more variable when it comes down to things. An opponent’s Resolve can skyrocket or plummet to the point where a 3/3 isn’t super crippling. Sure you’d want to go higher, but I don’t often need to worry about instantly being splattered against the wall. Also if I really wanted to, I could pop a willpower and ignore a pretty wide variety of social attacks, no charm needed.

[JohnDoe244]

https://anydice.com/program/20b2d

Show your proof. I could even tell even not using the program that 13 dice has around a 50/50 shot of hitting defense 7.

Defence 7.
Dawn attacks. Onslaught -1.
Defence 6.
Dawn One Weapon Two Blows. Onslaught -2.
Defence 5.
Dawn top of round attacks, decisive for 5 health levels. Onslaught -3, Wound Penalty -1.
Defence 3.

3 Dex plus 3 Melee plus full excellency is 12 dice.

As I said, your math is whack.

https://anydice.com/program/5e8d

You have a 48% chance to hit Octavian’s defenses. Octavian has a 92% chance of hitting yours. Using an excellency is moot in this case, as Octavian is one of the enemies that does have some form of excellency and will cancel out any form of excellency based defense boost.

And now consider the actual circumstances of play. Where one of you will be combat focused and the fact that Octavian is trying to fight you five on one.

And you get something like this where the 3/3s beat Octavian into the ground.

A fifty percent chance of hitting rolled four times is two hits a round. A 92% chance of hitting, split between five combatants means your PC is getting hit once every 5.4 rounds.

[Sandact6]

Well it's broken to Hell and back again for me and my current group, and several other groups I've played with, and many people I've talked to on the forums. There's countless threads with people bringing this up and the only response is the advice to not worry about giving players a fun challenge, but rather go hard on the consequences of their trivial victories. Which is not good advice when for one, you can very easily just focus on the consequences of non-trivial victories, and two, you don't want to learn this enormous complex system to just end up skipping it.

Don’t have that issue. I tailor my enemies specifically for my group and been remaking various system facets as they grow to offend me (Solar charmset, battlegroups). Likewise, I’ve picked up many tricks that have worked well for both myself and my group when it comes to narration. I do not have your problems.

The thing is if I have a gun to my head and am forced to use the printed charmset, I can still go ahead and craft something my players and myself enjoy using methods I set for myself.

If you get incapped you can bounce back too, later that day even.

Except when I’m incap I’m unconscious/helpless, and if the enemy wanted me dead they could put a bullet in my skull and I could nothing to stop this. This is the contrary to both Social which lead to bad situations rather than immediate death or mental which *can* have immediate death, but I often hope that’s from a series of bad rolls rather than a binary one off.

That's silly, why would you never benefit from the Cataphract's wound penalties, or onslaught penalties, or prone from smashing, or grapples, or disabling their weapon with a disarm gambit, or poison, or anything like that? Any number of those things in combination won't just drop a cataphract's defense, it'll drop it straight to zero.

Because balancing encounters starts from looking at the full starts and comparing them before any other factors are in play. All those things are conditions needed to fulfill in order to make a combat easier.

Also if I want to do those creative things then most of them will involve landing decisive (for wound penalties) or gambit (decisive accuracy). The exception is smashing, which is legit but what many people consider fairly overpowered. An infinite amount of possible variables could happen in combat, but you need to start with the base stats before deciding on whenever or not to adjust the scores or to tell the PC’s they need to stack the deck.

Say what you will, but this method has worked for me for nearly a decade, and new ST’s I tell this to thank me almost immediately as it simplified their lives, along with the 3 die rule. I have what works well for me for a very long time, it has worked well for others I have told it to, I don’t see any reason to change.

If you're in a social scene you don't want the Dawn going anywhere near persuade actions. If you screw that up that argument you just made becomes invalid, you need to hit those arguments the first time, or not at all. So the Dawn's best and most tactical course of action in the Social Influence game is to lay back and keep his mouth shut.

You just summarized the crux of what I want to avoid in my games. When I make things I want everyone to be engaged, especially in the two big areas of Exalted (Combat and social).

If you're using the published enemies, what makes you think you can't contribute? A guy with melee 3 can't meaningfully contribute when the minimum competancy of foes you face is Octavian, no, true, but against the vast majority of what is in the books, you can.

I never said they can’t contribute ever. I just warned them that if you’re expecting to go up against Octavian you’re in for a bad time. Unless you do serious deck stacking, then you’re nothing more than free initiative to Octavian and getting in the Dawn’s way.

The thing is, I want everyone to contribute some way in a fight to keep my players engaged. If this means a player can do other things during a battle such as holding the seal on the demon gate so Octavian’s legions don’t spill into Creation, cool. If another player wants to join in and not feel like a putz, then I welcome that as well.

Defence 7.
Dawn attacks.
Defence 6.
Dawn Peony Blossoms.
Defence 5.
Dawn top of round attacks, decisive for 5 health levels.
Defence 3.

3 Dex plus 3 Melee plus full excellency is 12 dice.

As I said, your math is whack.

https://anydice.com/program/5e8d

Circumstantial bonuses as mentioned previously. The base is the most important thing, as enemies may have ways to nullify these reductions. If you do, then you can’t rely on these and you’re screwed. This is circumstantial as well yes, but a critically important one.

My math holds up within the contexts.

And now consider the actual circumstances of play. Where one of you will be combat focused and the fact that Octavian is trying to fight you five on one.

And you get something like this where the 3/3s beat Octavian into the ground.

It’s funny you link this Octavian battle, because it only proved my point about Steel Devil I was having with Lovemonkey at the time too. Let me say the same thing I did back then in paraphrasing: If you have no reliable way to hit defense 7, you are screwed.

A fifty percent chance of hitting rolled four times is two hits a round. A 92% chance of hitting, split between five combatants means your PC is getting hit once every 5.4 rounds.

I’d rather my character to be more meaningful to a battle than purely be a coin flipper who stacks onslaught, only to be immediately rendered irrelevant by those who have some method of ignoring onslaught.

I’ve also been through in detail why I didn’t think the battle was indicative of anything. A lot of the beefs I had in that thread also hold up here. Hell, this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. So is there anything new to add to this, especially when the old thread is added? Because if not, then I don’t see any point in retreading old ground.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Don’t have that issue. I tailor my enemies specifically for my group and been remaking various system facets as they grow to offend me (Solar charmset, battlegroups). Likewise, I’ve picked up many tricks that have worked well for both myself and my group when it comes to narration. I do not have your problems.

The thing is if I have a gun to my head and am forced to use the printed charmset, I can still go ahead and craft something my players and myself enjoy using methods I set for myself.

I can't fathom how you don't see an issue. You of ALL people should see that there's an issue. Was the intended design to make something that doesn't work well, but you can head to the forums and beg Sandact to give you something that will?

It's not even like the book doesn't have any suggestions, it does, and they run directly contrary to your own. They say that pools greater than 10 dice should be rare, "such ratings should be uncommon and noteworthy, even among the ranks of the Exalted".

Except when I’m incap I’m unconscious/helpless, and if the enemy wanted me dead they could put a bullet in my skull and I could nothing to stop this. This is the contrary to both Social which lead to bad situations rather than immediate death or mental which *can* have immediate death, but I often hope that’s from a series of bad rolls rather than a binary one off.

Even death in combat is from a series of bad rolls. If you've got, I dunno, two ox bodies with only 1 stamina, you're rolling with 11 health levels. Anything less than 20 decisive damage is highly unlikely to kill you, and add to that the emergency button of canceling up to 5 damage if you have to. So an adversary has to build up to 20+ initiative, which everyone can see and realize the danger, and wither him out of it, and then his turn has to come around again, launch the decisive, and hit, and roll in at least the top 15% of his curve.

That's the combat game, is trying to stop adversaries from releasing decisive attacks while they have harmful levels of initiative. You need 5/5 for that if all the enemies have 12+ accuracy attacks, but most enemies have 10 or less, even the supposedly dangerous ones.

Because balancing encounters starts from looking at the full starts and comparing them before any other factors are in play. All those things are conditions needed to fulfill in order to make a combat easier.

Most of them are conditions that automatically exist in the combat system. You have onslaught penalties, everyone applies onslaught penalties, the only difference is that some people apply several when they attack, some only apply one, nobody applies zero.

You don't even need them most of the time. In the corebook three antagonists have a defense of 7, nine have 6. Of those five have some way to cancel onslaught penalties, although only 3 of them can do it without spending initiative to do so, which is expensive and impossible to do while crashed. Also onslaught penalties are the only penalties they cancel, except for the Abyssal, who can cancel all penalties.

The other 60 antagonists, and I didn't count things like regular cat or ration or venomous snake, all have 5 or less. If you have 3/3 with a regular sword, not even a daiklave, you can stunt and excellency for 16 withering attack dice, and 14 decisive attack dice. If your ST stunts the defense of enemies every time treat that as an effective 14/12 then. Twelve dice is plenty to hit a bare defense of 5.

But it's not even a bare defense of 5, because it's not like enemies who don't have 7 parry get any more immune to onslaught/wound/whatever penalties. So that bloodape who lost a clash last round and hasn't gotten to go to reset his defense yet is sitting so low you basically automatically hit. Or if he got hit with a decisive that dealt at least 2 damage, he's now sitting at 2 parry. Which is so low that even your 3/3 guy is going to debate if it's worth spending motes to try and hit him.

You just summarized the crux of what I want to avoid in my games. When I make things I want everyone to be engaged, especially in the two big areas of Exalted (Combat and social).

I think you should try to avoid it. I just don't think everyone needs to be 5/5 combat monsters to avoid it in combat, when using printed antagonists.

I never said they can’t contribute ever. I just warned them that if you’re expecting to go up against Octavian you’re in for a bad time. Unless you do serious deck stacking, then you’re nothing more than free initiative to Octavian and getting in the Dawn’s way.

I disagree, I fought Octavian with a Dawn using the worst MA in the game, and nothing but 3/3 allies and he got wrecked. Adding additional enemies on Octavians side would help him from getting wrecked, but also give the guys who can't easily blow past Octavian's boosted parry something to blend themselves.

The thing is, I want everyone to contribute some way in a fight to keep my players engaged. If this means a player can do other things during a battle such as holding the seal on the demon gate so Octavian’s legions don’t spill into Creation, cool. If another player wants to join in and not feel like a putz, then I welcome that as well.

I also agree with that, I think it's really cool and leads to fun engaging scenes. If you're using the antagonsits as printed though the guy needs to have like, dex 2, combat ability 0, no armor before joining into combat makes him feel like a putz.

Circumstantial bonuses as mentioned previously. The base is the most important thing, as enemies may have ways to nullify these reductions. If you do, then you can’t rely on these and you’re screwed. This is circumstantial as well yes, but a critically important one.

I posted a list upthread of what enemies have the ability to nullify which penalties, and it's a small list. Also those antagonists that do have those abilities are not going to be alone...and the guys that they bring to the fight to help them will not have those abilities.

It’s funny you link this Octavian battle, because it only proved my point about Steel Devil I was having with Lovemonkey at the time too. Let me say the same thing I did back then in paraphrasing: If you have no reliable way to hit defense 7, you are screwed.

My mind boggles at this. Octavian was basically dead by the end of round 2, the Dawn landed bot DAT and TAT on him in the first two rounds, even though Octavian was specifically reserving defensive resources to full excellency against the Steel Devil, and the worst damage to a PC was 4 Lethal levels, less than half of their total.

"Oh well DUH DrLoveMonkey, thank you for proving that one lone antagonist dies like a bitch to 5 PCs"

Okay, let's not make him alone then, what shall we add to aid Octavian in his battle against the Solar Exalted? Perhaps anuhle, the demon spiders spawned by Octavian's ichor. They have a Defense of 4, no way to negate any defense penalties, and a 10 die attack that deals 13 damage on a hit. They also have a charm that only triggers on a successful dodge, as if anyone rocking a 14 die attack, like the 3/3 PCs are, will fail to hit one of those things.

Okay but hang on a second here, because it appears to me that if I add anuhle to the combat, the guys who have trouble hitting Octavian's Invincible Iron Bastion boosted parry have targets that they can very meaningfully contribute to battling. We're adding those things to stop Octavian from dying like a little bitch in round 2, so it's not like adding them is suddenly going to push things too far and lead to an instant TPK either.

[JohnDoe244]

A lot of the beefs I had in that thread also hold up here. Hell, this isn’t the first time we’ve had this conversation. So is there anything new to add to this, especially when the old thread is added? Because if not, then I don’t see any point in retreading old ground.

Bro, you didn't make this thread and I didn't quote you into it. You came here to debate of your own accord. If you don't want to retread old ground... stop posting? Like, your point is made?

I haven't made a new point all thread -- I've just collected together my various offtopic tangents from other threads into this one (where I'm on topic).

The only new idea here is DLM's proposed Character Creation Houserule. (I'll get to that.)

Most of them are conditions that automatically exist in the combat system. You have onslaught penalties, everyone applies onslaught penalties, the only difference is that some people apply several when they attack, some only apply one, nobody applies zero.

You don't even need them most of the time. In the corebook three antagonists have a defense of 7, nine have 6. Of those five have some way to cancel onslaught penalties, although only 3 of them can do it without spending initiative to do so, which is expensive and impossible to do while crashed. Also onslaught penalties are the only penalties they cancel, except for the Abyssal, who can cancel all penalties.

The other 60 antagonists, and I didn't count things like regular cat or ration or venomous snake, all have 5 or less. If you have 3/3 with a regular sword, not even a daiklave, you can stunt and excellency for 16 withering attack dice, and 14 decisive attack dice. If your ST stunts the defense of enemies every time treat that as an effective 14/12 then. Twelve dice is plenty to hit a bare defense of 5.

But it's not even a bare defense of 5, because it's not like enemies who don't have 7 parry get any more immune to onslaught/wound/whatever penalties. So that bloodape who lost a clash last round and hasn't gotten to go to reset his defense yet is sitting so low you basically automatically hit. Or if he got hit with a decisive that dealt at least 2 damage, he's now sitting at 2 parry. Which is so low that even your 3/3 guy is going to debate if it's worth spending motes to try and hit him.

Pretty much this. I agree with all of this. Now time to argue with DrLoveMonkey:

Was the intended design to make something that doesn't work well

I'll be honest here DrLoveMonkey: I like your insight. I really appreciate your posts. But I strongly disagree with the premise of your thread here.

Now Exalted 3E isn't a perfect game. There's wonky stuff in it. Character Creation isn't a problem though.

Character Creation holds your hand and walks you through step-by-step. It flings sidebars at you. It lays sample Solars at your feet. It's completely transparent with NPC design and game difficulty.

Step One of Character Creation isn't "Spend Bonus Points". It's "Concept and Caste". Character Creation literally begins "Take some time to think of heroic archetypes you enjoy" (then it gives you some classic archetypes as examples). Heck, before step one there's a whole page of character creation advice.

If one ignores everything written in the book, and lets their players just drop a bunch of random five dots on the page, then yes, that'll cause problems. Going "oh, it's only 13% of my Bonus Points" is going to cause problems. But if you're going to ignore everything in the book, that's not the book's fault. That's your fault for being a munchkin.

If you're doing what you're supposed to do "whether you're beginning your first Exalted game or your hundredth", namely "before you begin, ask your Storyteller about her plans [...] consider the sorts of epic feats you want your character to perform [and] try describing your concept verbally before you begin, to give you a better idea of your character's strengths and weaknesses [to] nail down [...] assigning dots and selecting Merits and Charms", then you're not going to end up with a cardboard non-character with seven disparate Abilities at 5.

You don't need a scaling XP system to punish PCs for going deep into multiple Abilities.

You need to encourage the folks in your Storytelling Game to make interesting people to play, and not Mumorpuger Murder-hobos.

Exalted isn't oWoD. oWoD is about normal people in extraordinary circumstances, so starting play with a 5 is bad form -- "the best in the world" is not a "normal person".
Exalted is about exceptional people. It's fine to be "exceptional", but you still have to be a person.

So sure, your Twilight can be a burly blacksmith who practices with the swords he forges three hours a day (so when he meets a pirate, he can kill it). By all means, take Craft: Weapons 5 and Melee 5. But if you're a burly blacksmith, you probably don't have Occult 5. Or Medicine 5. Or Socialize 5.

Players should be able to justify their fives. And their ones. Your Burly Blacksmith is not Strength 5 Dexterity 5 Stamina 1. You get hit with a rolled-up newspaper and sent away in shame to try again.

Because the rules aren't the problem.

Ignoring and abusing the rules is the problem.

****

The absolute state of your random dot smear in the OP is a shining example of this.

"You have average strength?"

Yup.

"And average endurance?"

Yup.

"It's fair to say your physique is of secondary importance?"

That makes sense to me.

"Then you can't be the most graceful person alive who's also the greastest swordfighter in Creation!"

I have Dex 5 Melee 5.

*

You don't just get 28 dots to doodle next to Ability names. You're mechanically representing the character you will be narrating in the game world. And you are given abundant resources to realize your vision.

[Sandact6]

I can't fathom how you don't see an issue. You of ALL people should see that there's an issue. Was the intended design to make something that doesn't work well, but you can head to the forums and beg Sandact to give you something that will?

I have, not from lack of trying. I even extensively made an example how how to build opponents and charms in my ST Guide, including on how to best gauge the difficulty for your encounters. Everything I’ve said in this topic has been an extension of what I’ve said back then.

It's not even like the book doesn't have any suggestions, it does, and they run directly contrary to your own. They say that pools greater than 10 dice should be rare, "such ratings should be uncommon and noteworthy, even among the ranks of the Exalted".

Told to before, I don’t ascribe to that. I’ve explained why already.

Even death in combat is from a series of bad rolls. If you've got, I dunno, two ox bodies with only 1 stamina, you're rolling with 11 health levels. Anything less than 20 decisive damage is highly unlikely to kill you, and add to that the emergency button of canceling up to 5 damage if you have to. So an adversary has to build up to 20+ initiative, which everyone can see and realize the danger, and wither him out of it, and then his turn has to come around again, launch the decisive, and hit, and roll in at least the top 15% of his curve.

Him getting to the point of 20 initiative needed to kill me means he would’ve likely needed to farm the initiative from me ahead of time. Him landing a lucky decisive in this case means the series of bad rolls were him getting enough initiative to actually launch that attack. Even if they had rolled somewhere in the top 15% percent. If this happened at the table I’d be somewhat salty yes, but I’d live with it.

That's the combat game, is trying to stop adversaries from releasing decisive attacks while they have harmful levels of initiative. You need 5/5 for that if all the enemies have 12+ accuracy attacks, but most enemies have 10 or less, even the supposedly dangerous ones.

At the beginning, but as time goes on power attracts power. Read the previous posts for more details.

Most of them are conditions that automatically exist in the combat system. You have onslaught penalties, everyone applies onslaught penalties, the only difference is that some people apply several when they attack, some only apply one, nobody applies zero.

You don't even need them most of the time. In the corebook three antagonists have a defense of 7, nine have 6. Of those five have some way to cancel onslaught penalties, although only 3 of them can do it without spending initiative to do so, which is expensive and impossible to do while crashed. Also onslaught penalties are the only penalties they cancel, except for the Abyssal, who can cancel all penalties.

See bold for my point. That’s the situation my advice tries to address Lovemonkey. Also see previously: If I want my attacks to matter more beyond just being an onslaught stacker then I feel that should be within my own right, because otherwise it feels like it devalues my own character. How many times do I have to say this?

The other 60 antagonists, and I didn't count things like regular cat or ration or venomous snake, all have 5 or less. If you have 3/3 with a regular sword, not even a daiklave, you can stunt and excellency for 16 withering attack dice, and 14 decisive attack dice. If your ST stunts the defense of enemies every time treat that as an effective 14/12 then. Twelve dice is plenty to hit a bare defense of 5.

Don’t really consider stunts as enemies often pull them as well, leading to a net zero. Only in the cases of level 2 and 3 stunts this is an exception, but that’s an exception and not the norm.

But it's not even a bare defense of 5, because it's not like enemies who don't have 7 parry get any more immune to onslaught/wound/whatever penalties. So that bloodape who lost a clash last round and hasn't gotten to go to reset his defense yet is sitting so low you basically automatically hit. Or if he got hit with a decisive that dealt at least 2 damage, he's now sitting at 2 parry. Which is so low that even your 3/3 guy is going to debate if it's worth spending motes to try and hit him.

Circumstantial modifiers.

I think you should try to avoid it. I just don't think everyone needs to be 5/5 combat monsters to avoid it in combat, when using printed antagonists.

Nope. Been working well for years, see no reason to change.

I disagree, I fought Octavian with a Dawn using the worst MA in the game, and nothing but 3/3 allies and he got wrecked. Adding additional enemies on Octavians side would help him from getting wrecked, but also give the guys who can't easily blow past Octavian's boosted parry something to blend themselves.

Lovemonkey the reason why I said it didn’t prove anything was twofold:

1. I said Steel Devil only excelled against a target that was already so far gone that any other MA would work just as well if not better. In fact it’d be only viable by using gang up tactics. You literally proved the point I was making in the Steel Devil thread.
2. You used kids gloves that entire battle.

Here, let’s try another battle when Octavian is going all out. Here are the conditions:

1. I will be using your setup mentioned here. PC’s are assumed Essence 1.
2. Stunts will not be used to calculate pools except join battle. This is because most of the time the pools will have net zero, but for join battle it can be important.
3. I will be using the anydice program to calculate the 50% average of a roll and will be applying that to any and all rolled actions. All results will take the number closest to 50% Rerollers (such as reroll 1s) will instead be counted as adding one die per 10 dice as that is the average.
4. The battlegroup will be a large an empty manse belonging to Octavian. Octavian is guarding a hell gate within the manse that when open will summon his army to Creation, but won’t be opening until an hour from now. Because of a mysterious Sidereal elder, all of Octavian’s minions in the manse, only leaving him in a large circular room, long in diameter.
5. Octavian begins in the center of the room. He will engage the players in banter but will draw the line and immediately roll join battle once they enter short range. Starting at short range should be nothing unusual.

Now let’s begin.

Octavian rolls join battle, 10m full excellency, blows 1WP. Half of 12 is 6, +1 is 7, +5 is 12, total 15i.

Steel Devil Dawn uses Naked Fang Draw for +2 successes on the roll, then adds an excellency for another +3, total of 13. Dawn chooses to dump into charge, getting 7i.

Players all go at once, full excellency 6m each, 12 dice total, 6 average. 7 with stunt. 10 total for each.

Oct 15i 100m 10wp
PC1 10i 55m 5wp
PC2 10i 55m 5wp
PC3 10i 55m 5wp
PC4 10i 55m 5wp
SDS 7i 52m 5wp 8Charge


Round 1
==============
Octavian takes one movement action back towards the portal and uses Mountain Breaking Roar with full excellency against the Dawn. Dawn activates full excellency in response. Average of 8 successes, hitting the Dawn two over. The attack hits with a damage of 6, immediately putting the dawn in -2’s. Octavian remains at full initiative.

All players take a range band towards Octavian and rush. Really it doesn’t matter what they do here, but might as well give them something to do.

Oct 15i 80m 9wp
PC1 10i 55m 5wp
PC2 10i 55m 5wp
PC3 10i 55m 5wp
PC4 10i 55m 5wp
SDS 7i 47m 5wp 8Charge (5/7)

Round 2
==============
Octavian acts again. He immediately runs into the group and activates Principle of Motion. He makes a decisive attack against PC1 with Horizon-Hurled Stars. Octavian spends a full excellency. I’ll assume +3 dice from Octavian is accuracy and call his decisive accuracy 11. Hits with 6 successes, 11 with excellency. Durability of Oak lowers the damage to 13, but Octavian still breaks hardness. The attack deals 6 damage to PC 1. He is then launched into the Steel Devil Dawn, hitting him for half the falling damage. Four levels split between the two of them hits their incap, both are immediately out. Since Octavian beat a significant opponent, he activates Reigning Terror Majesty to roll join battle. I’ll assume each PC has three Resolve. He rolls 7 dice, +3 excellency, players activate their own integrity excellency to boost to 6. Octavian gains 7 successes and rolls join battle again, gaining +6 initiative. We’ll say he blows a WP too for +7.

Octavian acts again. This time he makes a withering attack against player two, blowing a willpower and getting a max excellency, getting 12 successes, five over defense. Raw damage is 24. -13 from soak, -2 from oak, that’s 9 damage dice. Five damage average.

Now all the other PC’s attack. They attack with F&SS, Excellent Strike, and full excellency. 8 successes normal each. Octavian defends against none of them. All of them go through, dealing an average 4 damage each. 12 damage done.

Oct 3i 36m 7wp
PC2 15i 43m 5wp
PC3 15i 43m 5wp
PC4 15i 43m 5wp
PC1 10i 55m 5wp (DESTROYED)
SDS 7i 47m 5wp 8Charge (DESTROYED)

Round 3
==============
Players all go first. PC2 attacks with F&SS, Excellent Strike, and full excellency. 8 successes normal each. Octavian doesn’t defend with anything but normal parry. Attack goes through, 4 damage. This crashes Octavian.

Sensing blood, PC3 and PC4 immediately decide to try and finish this. They both make a decisive attack against Octavian. Their 12 accuracy is enough to easily hit with three threshold successes. 18 damage die each, averaged to 8 each, 16 total. This is enough to plunge Octavian into the -2’s, not bad.

Octavian on his turn goes all out. He activates Falling Tower Rain against PC2, pulling out all the stops. A full excellency on the attack plus a willpower (to ensure full excellency). PC2 attempts to defend via Dipping Swallow, full excellency, and a WP to cancel out Octavian’s own. Octavian hits with 12 successes against the players 8. 19 times 4 is 76 raw damage. 76 – 13 = 63. Average damage of 32. This crashes PC2. Octavian doesn’t gain the initiative aside from the one point to hit and break, but this does give him initiative shift. Rolling join battle gives him +6i, so with the +9i we had before that means he’s back up to 15i.

Octavian makes a decisive attack against PC2 with Horizon-Hurled Stars. He has a base pool of 9, full successes added, 9 total. Attack hits with 5 successes base. After lowering the raw damage by two via Durability of Oak Falling the damage is 5, another 4 added for the lethal levels, total of 9. Average of 7 falling dice is 3, so a total of 12. He decides to knock PC2 into PC3, this is halved between them, knocking them medium distance away, prone, and at their -4 health level.

Oct 3i 1m 5wp (16/31)
PC2 -7i 28m 4wp (Crashed: 3 turns, 6/7, Prone, Distance: Medium)
PC3 3i 28m 5wp (6/7, Prone, Distance: Medium)
PC4 3i 28m 5wp
PC1 10i 55m 5wp (DESTROYED)
SDS 7i 47m 5wp 8Charge (DESTROYED)

I’m not going to continue at this point, but two PC’s are KO’d, two are on death’s door, and one of them is now living in fear. Are the three able to beat him? Maybe, but Octavian made a pretty through mess of them.

You know what I don’t like though? That even with wound penalties, Octavian has a pretty good chance of telling me to fuck off the instant he activates Invincible Iron Bastion. Yes he takes onslaught and drains with initiative, but for three successes he can essentially tell all of the other peanut gallery to toddle off. If you added something like two demons who had ranged weapons who’d stand behing Octavian? Then forget winning. The results would be the same, the PC’s down about 12m each (assuming one demon attacking them). There would be no point for the -4’s to approach. You’d be shot dead the moment you tried, or just serve as initiative pumps for Octavian.

I posted a list upthread of what enemies have the ability to nullify which penalties, and it's a small list. Also those antagonists that do have those abilities are not going to be alone...and the guys that they bring to the fight to help them will not have those abilities.

When, not if, you meet an antagonist that can parry things without penalty is the moment you’d be miserable. Hell, Octavian had the deck stacked against him and he still managed to get the Solar group a boot to the balls they’re unlikely to forget anytime soon.

You don't need a scaling XP system to punish PCs for going deep into multiple Abilities.

You need to encourage the folks in your Storytelling Game to make interesting people to play, and not Mumorpuger Murder-hobos.

Thank you.

[JohnDoe244]

"Once an enemy has attacked Octavian"

I mean, if you are straight-up going to cheat to try to kill the players, sure.

"The Dawn full Excellencies Parry"

For 12. 12 is four higher than 8 (not two lower). Your cheat move even should have missed. Your math remains whack.

"He is then launched into the Steel Devil Dawn"

12 is higher than 11 too.

"I’ll assume each PC has three Resolve"

Why would you assume the social and mental primary characters have 3 Resolve? And, you see how Octavavian beats them by one and you don't have the PCs spend from their completely untouched Willpower pools (whilst Octavian does spend Willpower)? That's because your example fight is hilariously one-sided. Almost as if you're trying to make a point when your own (wrong) numbers don't support your argument.

****

50% of rolls are below the average. 50% are above.

Rolling more gives you closer to normal results. (Flip a coin once and you might get 100% heads and 0% tails. Flip it a million times and it'll come out 50:50.)

In actual play, you don't take the middle value. Try rolling it out.

If a 3/3 gets unlucky, there are four other PCs.
If Octavian gets unlucky, that's it.

Stunts aren't a wash. There's three levels of stunting.

Rerolls don't add dice, they change the success curve. (Delete out a zero from your custom AnyDice to simulate reroll 1s.)

Is there some reason the PCs waste a turn Rushing Octavian, who can't attack them? Instead of, say the Dawn engaging then the others moving in? Or using Defend Other? Or Social Influence? Or even Full Defence? Could you try rerunning the fight without giving Octavian a free turn?

[DrLoveMonkey]

I have, not from lack of trying. I even extensively made an example how how to build opponents and charms in my ST Guide, including on how to best gauge the difficulty for your encounters. Everything I’ve said in this topic has been an extension of what I’ve said back then.

Okay, so there is an issue. What do YOU think the issue is?

Don’t really consider stunts as enemies often pull them as well, leading to a net zero. Only in the cases of level 2 and 3 stunts this is an exception, but that’s an exception and not the norm.

So why is 14 dice not enough to hit defense 5?

Circumstantial modifiers.

They're circumstantial modifiers that the PCs have the power to introduce and control.

Lovemonkey the reason why I said it didn’t prove anything was twofold:

1. I said Steel Devil only excelled against a target that was already so far gone that any other MA would work just as well if not better. In fact it’d be only viable by using gang up tactics. You literally proved the point I was making in the Steel Devil thread.
2. You used kids gloves that entire battle.

Here, let’s try another battle when Octavian is going all out. Here are the conditions:

1. I will be using your setup mentioned here. PC’s are assumed Essence 1.
2. Stunts will not be used to calculate pools except join battle. This is because most of the time the pools will have net zero, but for join battle it can be important.
3. I will be using the anydice program to calculate the 50% average of a roll and will be applying that to any and all rolled actions. All results will take the number closest to 50% Rerollers (such as reroll 1s) will instead be counted as adding one die per 10 dice as that is the average.
4. The battlegroup will be a large an empty manse belonging to Octavian. Octavian is guarding a hell gate within the manse that when open will summon his army to Creation, but won’t be opening until an hour from now. Because of a mysterious Sidereal elder, all of Octavian’s minions in the manse, only leaving him in a large circular room, long in diameter.
5. Octavian begins in the center of the room. He will engage the players in banter but will draw the line and immediately roll join battle once they enter short range. Starting at short range should be nothing unusual.

Now let’s begin.

Octavian rolls join battle, 10m full excellency, blows 1WP. Half of 12 is 6, +1 is 7, +5 is 12, total 15i.

Steel Devil Dawn uses Naked Fang Draw for +2 successes on the roll, then adds an excellency for another +3, total of 13. Dawn chooses to dump into charge, getting 7i.

Players all go at once, full excellency 6m each, 12 dice total, 6 average. 7 with stunt. 10 total for each.

Oct 15i 100m 10wp
PC1 10i 55m 5wp
PC2 10i 55m 5wp
PC3 10i 55m 5wp
PC4 10i 55m 5wp
SDS 7i 52m 5wp 8Charge


Round 1
==============
Octavian takes one movement action back towards the portal and uses Mountain Breaking Roar with full excellency against the Dawn. Dawn activates full excellency in response. Average of 8 successes, hitting the Dawn two over. The attack hits with a damage of 6, immediately putting the dawn in -2’s. Octavian remains at full initiative.

All players take a range band towards Octavian and rush. Really it doesn’t matter what they do here, but might as well give them something to do.

Oct 15i 80m 9wp
PC1 10i 55m 5wp
PC2 10i 55m 5wp
PC3 10i 55m 5wp
PC4 10i 55m 5wp
SDS 7i 47m 5wp 8Charge (5/7)

Round 2
==============
Octavian acts again. He immediately runs into the group and activates Principle of Motion. He makes a decisive attack against PC1 with Horizon-Hurled Stars. Octavian spends a full excellency. I’ll assume +3 dice from Octavian is accuracy and call his decisive accuracy 11. Hits with 6 successes, 11 with excellency. Durability of Oak lowers the damage to 13, but Octavian still breaks hardness. The attack deals 6 damage to PC 1. He is then launched into the Steel Devil Dawn, hitting him for half the falling damage. Four levels split between the two of them hits their incap, both are immediately out. Since Octavian beat a significant opponent, he activates Reigning Terror Majesty to roll join battle. I’ll assume each PC has three Resolve. He rolls 7 dice, +3 excellency, players activate their own integrity excellency to boost to 6. Octavian gains 7 successes and rolls join battle again, gaining +6 initiative. We’ll say he blows a WP too for +7.

Octavian acts again. This time he makes a withering attack against player two, blowing a willpower and getting a max excellency, getting 12 successes, five over defense. Raw damage is 24. -13 from soak, -2 from oak, that’s 9 damage dice. Five damage average.

Now all the other PC’s attack. They attack with F&SS, Excellent Strike, and full excellency. 8 successes normal each. Octavian defends against none of them. All of them go through, dealing an average 4 damage each. 12 damage done.

Oct 3i 36m 7wp
PC2 15i 43m 5wp
PC3 15i 43m 5wp
PC4 15i 43m 5wp
PC1 10i 55m 5wp (DESTROYED)
SDS 7i 47m 5wp 8Charge (DESTROYED)

Round 3
==============
Players all go first. PC2 attacks with F&SS, Excellent Strike, and full excellency. 8 successes normal each. Octavian doesn’t defend with anything but normal parry. Attack goes through, 4 damage. This crashes Octavian.

Sensing blood, PC3 and PC4 immediately decide to try and finish this. They both make a decisive attack against Octavian. Their 12 accuracy is enough to easily hit with three threshold successes. 18 damage die each, averaged to 8 each, 16 total. This is enough to plunge Octavian into the -2’s, not bad.

Octavian on his turn goes all out. He activates Falling Tower Rain against PC2, pulling out all the stops. A full excellency on the attack plus a willpower (to ensure full excellency). PC2 attempts to defend via Dipping Swallow, full excellency, and a WP to cancel out Octavian’s own. Octavian hits with 12 successes against the players 8. 19 times 4 is 76 raw damage. 76 – 13 = 63. Average damage of 32. This crashes PC2. Octavian doesn’t gain the initiative aside from the one point to hit and break, but this does give him initiative shift. Rolling join battle gives him +6i, so with the +9i we had before that means he’s back up to 15i.

Octavian makes a decisive attack against PC2 with Horizon-Hurled Stars. He has a base pool of 9, full successes added, 9 total. Attack hits with 5 successes base. After lowering the raw damage by two via Durability of Oak Falling the damage is 5, another 4 added for the lethal levels, total of 9. Average of 7 falling dice is 3, so a total of 12. He decides to knock PC2 into PC3, this is halved between them, knocking them medium distance away, prone, and at their -4 health level.

Oct 3i 1m 5wp (16/31)
PC2 -7i 28m 4wp (Crashed: 3 turns, 6/7, Prone, Distance: Medium)
PC3 3i 28m 5wp (6/7, Prone, Distance: Medium)
PC4 3i 28m 5wp
PC1 10i 55m 5wp (DESTROYED)
SDS 7i 47m 5wp 8Charge (DESTROYED)

I’m not going to continue at this point, but two PC’s are KO’d, two are on death’s door, and one of them is now living in fear. Are the three able to beat him? Maybe, but Octavian made a pretty through mess of them.

You know what I don’t like though? That even with wound penalties, Octavian has a pretty good chance of telling me to fuck off the instant he activates Invincible Iron Bastion. Yes he takes onslaught and drains with initiative, but for three successes he can essentially tell all of the other peanut gallery to toddle off. If you added something like two demons who had ranged weapons who’d stand behing Octavian? Then forget winning. The results would be the same, the PC’s down about 12m each (assuming one demon attacking them). There would be no point for the -4’s to approach. You’d be shot dead the moment you tried, or just serve as initiative pumps for Octavian.

I have to say that was a masterful use of Octavian's, all else aside, extremely good tactics. I didn't even realize you could excellency Mountain Breaking Roar, but looking at it I guess he can just add successes to any roll.

I will be using the anydice program to calculate the 50% average of a roll and will be applying that to any and all rolled actions. All results will take the number closest to 50% Rerollers (such as reroll 1s) will instead be counted as adding one die per 10 dice as that is the average.

This however is awful. If I'm trying to hit a defense of 5 with 10 dice and roll 4 times, I don't hit every time just because the average on 10 dice is 57%. I actually miss two of them, on average, but now we're stacking sets of numbers. I know you know math, I KNOW you know this. Also as John says your opening move was invalid, and only just barely scrapes over the 50% line for hitting the Dawn, if he'd spent a willpower or gotten a higher stunt it would be under even.

When, not if, you meet an antagonist that can parry things without penalty is the moment you’d be miserable.

Two of those three enemies are a Tyrant Lizard and Fakharu, the Tyrant Lizard, neither of which has any way of boosting their defense, they just ignore the penalties. If you're fighting them with your 14 dice, you will hit them quite often. Assuming Fakharu isn't just flying above you out of range peppering you with poison breath, but that's an entirely different issue.

Even if you didn't though, even if they were broken strong so that you couldn't contribute with only 3/3 they're the only enemies that don't work. So we have 65+ that do work, and 2-3 that don't, versus 2-3 that work and the other 65 that don't. You might as well say that everyone should be packing huge explosive furedust weapons because you might run into Gredlidaka, who outside of massive incineration only get stronger the more damage you deal to them.

[DrLoveMonkey]

Hmm also on further thought the two characters who got incpped could have accepted a crippling wound and still been in the fight and keep going.

Also that opening move, Steel Devil has a post roll, cap bursting party booster that you’d think would be appropriate there.

[Sandact6]

"Once an enemy has attacked Octavian"

I mean, if you are straight-up going to cheat to try to kill the players, sure.

"The Dawn full Excellencies Parry"

For 12. 12 is four higher than 8 (not two lower). Your cheat move even should have missed. Your math remains whack.

Octavian takes one movement action back towards the portal and uses Mountain Breaking Roar with full excellency against the Dawn. Dawn activates full excellency in response. Average of 8 successes, hitting the Dawn two over.

With full excellency, 8+5 = 13 successes compared to the Dawn’s 11. Even if I made an error that still hits.

"I’ll assume each PC has three Resolve"

Why would you assume the social and mental primary characters have 3 Resolve?

Because all of their other stats basically combined to a total of 6, for three base. Quick and simple.

And, you see how Octavavian beats them by one and you don't have the PCs spend from their completely untouched Willpower pools (whilst Octavian does spend Willpower)? That's because your example fight is hilariously one-sided. Almost as if you're trying to make a point when your own (wrong) numbers don't support your argument.

Two reasons:

• WP spam results in net zero gains most of the time. A PC can blow a WP, NPC can pop it in return.
• It’s hardly indicative to what I see in actual play.
• Still proved my point of Octavian not being used to his full potential, and proved my point of what a miserable hell it is when Sho Nen Hiro is gone and the peanut gallery needs to be mopped up.

50% of rolls are below the average. 50% are above.

Rolling more gives you closer to normal results. (Flip a coin once and you might get 100% heads and 0% tails. Flip it a million times and it'll come out 50:50.)

In actual play, you don't take the middle value. Try rolling it out.

No. I acknowledge things can be different in play, but they are capable of swinging from one extreme to the other. I kept my life simple in this calculation and it’s what I use to judge my own player capabilities. It has worked for me for years. If you want to resolve that battle, go ahead. I’m not.

Stunts aren't a wash. There's three levels of stunting.

Those two are wildly variable. Level 1 stunts are consistent, thus I used them.

Rerolls don't add dice, they change the success curve. (Delete out a zero from your custom AnyDice to simulate reroll 1s.)

Fair, but within the context of the battle I don’t think they’d matter overly much.

Is there some reason the PCs waste a turn Rushing Octavian, who can't attack them? Instead of, say the Dawn engaging then the others moving in? Or using Defend Other? Or Social Influence? Or even Full Defence? Could you try rerunning the fight without giving Octavian a free turn?

Social influence is outside the context of this simulation, and would at most drain willpower (And before you said Exalted isn’t like that, this is a white room simulation to illustrate a combat example, not a fully fleshed out game).

Full defense wouldn’t have mattered overly much. The Dawn still would have been capped because of his wound penalties by the attack. The other PC’s would have parry 9 after full defense. Attack resolves the same.

Defend other is a bit funky, because it depends if the action still goes through when you cannonball the protector into the person they’re protecting. That’s a fringe case up to ST call, and I’m not searching through several hundred pages of an ask the devs topic.

As for combat, as I said, most start at short distance. That is not an unusual assumption to make, and I used Octavian’s abilities the best way I could think of given the circumstances.

Okay, so there is an issue. What do YOU think the issue is?

That we should’ve had an ST guide years ago.

As for the Solar charms? Use a rewrite. They’re square wheels otherwise.

So why is 14 dice not enough to hit defense 5?

12 dice to hit an enemy is alright, but compare that to your friend who probably has a 10-11 chance to hit at base, and can bloat their accuracy much higher if they really wanted to land it. They can control the RNG with far more leeway.

They're circumstantial modifiers that the PCs have the power to introduce and control.

If my only accomplishment for a turn was to waste motes and apply a point of onslaught to enemy which I had little hope hitting in the first place then I feel like I have wasted my turn by accomplishing nothing.

This however is awful. If I'm trying to hit a defense of 5 with 10 dice and roll 4 times, I don't hit every time just because the average on 10 dice is 57%. I actually miss two of them, on average, but now we're stacking sets of numbers. I know you know math, I KNOW you know this.

See my reply with John.

Even if you didn't though, even if they were broken strong so that you couldn't contribute with only 3/3 they're the only enemies that don't work. So we have 65+ that do work, and 2-3 that don't, versus 2-3 that work and the other 65 that don't. You might as well say that everyone should be packing huge explosive furedust weapons because you might run into Gredlidaka, who outside of massive incineration only get stronger the more damage you deal to them.

From what I said in the Steel Devil thread, it’d be a matter of when not if you run into such things, and the moment you do is the moment the roller coaster of fun turns into a brick wall.

Also that opening move, Steel Devil has a post roll, cap bursting party booster that you’d think would be appropriate there.

I used the exact builds you outlined in your own test. Dawn didn’t have in that, didn’t have it in mine.

If you also want to explore Steel Devil, go ahead. I won’t as we’ve already had this conversation.

[JohnDoe244]

With full excellency, 8+5 = 13 successes compared to the Dawn’s 11. Even if I made an error that still hits.

Except for the fact that you still literally can't use the Charm until Octavian takes an attack.

(But you're right, I'd misread your statement there.)

From what I said in the Steel Devil thread, it’d be a matter of when not if you run into such things, and the moment you do is the moment the roller coaster of fun turns into a brick wall.

Compared to, what, the hyper fun of not being able to use the vast majority of antagonists?

At least there is a roller coaster of fun turns.

You notice how Metroid fusion uses an enemy you can't hurt to build tension? You do that in Exalted. You fall back. You Disengage. Enter stealth. You use situational bonuses (like poison, traps, onslaught).

Yes, you're right, you will immediately stop feeling awesome when you fight one of the 3 opponents more powerful than you. That doesn't mean it's not fun.

(Unless you're ST sucks.)

[DrLoveMonkey]

That we should’ve had an ST guide years ago.

What would that Storyteller guide say about using the antagonists who are taking up huge amounts of book space, and for the antagonist based books it's player money as well? Just use the ones that are appropriate, and if the way your players spend 2bp that means 5 out of 150+ antagonists, and that's just too bad?

I think John is right that just squinting menacingly at a player who doesn't even mention swords in his backstory until they erase some of the 5 dots from their melee score is workable. I'm just tired of reading through so many antagonist writeups that seem cool, that have really fun games in them, and having to throw them away into the useless drawer because everyone tosses some throwaway line into their backstory about how they practice dueling for fun and to keep fit and that justifies their invincible fighting powers.

12 dice to hit an enemy is alright, but compare that to your friend who probably has a 10-11 chance to hit at base, and can bloat their accuracy much higher if they really wanted to land it. They can control the RNG with far more leeway.

If my only accomplishment for a turn was to waste motes and apply a point of onslaught to enemy which I had little hope hitting in the first place then I feel like I have wasted my turn by accomplishing nothing.

If you're throwing a 12 die attack at an opponent with 3-5 defense, you didn't just waste a bunch of motes to do nothing but apply an onslaught penalty. You apply an onslaught penalty regardless, and have, and might miss, but you'll probably hit and deal damage, or get the chance to roll on your gambit.

[Elenian]

I still find this discussion fascinating but I don't have a huge amount to add to it (though I'm curious whether other people share my impression that Lunars may be even easier to accidentally break the antagonists chapter with than are Solars.)

I did want to say something about this, though:

I will be using the anydice program to calculate the 50% average of a roll and will be applying that to any and all rolled actions. All results will take the number closest to 50% Rerollers (such as reroll 1s) will instead be counted as adding one die per 10 dice as that is the average.

This is a simplifying assumption, and, like any such assumption, it's going to introduce biases into your evaluation. If, as you say, you habitually evaluate things by making the assumption that random number generators always output their average result, that's going to skew in favour of, for example, single powerful combatants and against charms such as Double (/Triple) Attack Technique that payoff dice spikes.

[DrLoveMonkey]

I still find this discussion fascinating but I don't have a huge amount to add to it (though I'm curious whether other people share my impression that Lunars may be even easier to accidentally break the antagonists chapter with than are Solars.)

Why would that be the case?

This is a simplifying assumption, and, like any such assumption, it's going to introduce biases into your evaluation. If, as you say, you habitually evaluate things by making the assumption that random number generators always output their average result, that's going to skew in favour of, for example, single powerful combatants and against charms such as Double (/Triple) Attack Technique that payoff dice spikes.

It's much worse than that. Consider this, the average roll of a d20 is 10.5, so we'll assume 10 because 10.5 is impossible. A DnD fighter has 15AC, and a goblin has an attack bonus of +4, whereas the goblin has 14AC and the fighter a bonus of +5. On an average roll the goblin doesn't hit and the fighter does. Now run a fight of a fighter vs 10 goblins using the "If would miss on average, it misses, and if would hit on average it hits" rule. Now run it again rolling actual dice, and you'll find that the fighter actually misses close to 50% of his attacks, and the goblins hit close to 50% of theirs, even though an average roll on the die is a miss.