Exalted combat: one year in, what do we think?

[serGregness]

That's because Brawl sucks at Withering attacks (or rather, it's designed for a long-haul building-up-onslaught penalties).

The archer in my game rolls usually rolls this:
10 + 5 (accuracy) + 1 (specialty) + 2 stunt = 18 dice, enemies at -1 defense due to Wise Arrow. So vs. DV 4, that's 5 bonus successes. 5 + 12 + 3 = 20 damage dice, -10 soak = 10 damage dice, averaging 5 successes. For 1m.

So that's half the health track, for 1m. Spending more to hit with the excellency isn't super efficient, but maybe she sets up her ally for their next attack (who now benefits from onslaught), or rolls a little lucky on her attack / damage dice, or uses one of the other Archery charms, or something. 10 levels each attack is a bit of an exaggeration, yes - not every attack takes off a size, but enough of them do that the BGs always die first because they're easy to kill with withering attacks (read: don't make you vulnerable to crashing), provide initiative (read: make killing big bads easier), and are often tied in with the other goals of the combat beyond just winning (evil fey escapes? Go hunt him down. Goblins reach the village? That sucks a lot).

Edit: You're right I shouldn't have included Athletics in the list of ways to get a ton of withering damage, my bad.

I mean, you say "Brawl sucks at Withering attacks" but then your example is with an archer relying on artifact gear to put out equivalent damage. To play my example out to the end point like you did, the brawler would be rolling 17 dice for three or four threshold successes, meaning the brawler's final damage is 9 or 10 dice, basically matching the archer for the same 1m investment.

My point is that almost all the combat abilities have only very limited ways of boosting withering damage, and if a circle spends a full 40% of their collective actions for the turn getting a whopping 7 initiative out of the battlegroup they've kind of done their job, since that's two attacks that the actually threatening enemies didn't need to spend resources defending, and initiative that those threatening enemies didn't have stolen from them. You've basically set up kind of a game of chicken, because while you pulled some initiative out of the battlegroup, the group didn't actually get much less threatening by only losing 1 die off their stats, and the enemy solo combatants had a round to build their own initiative. So, sure, you're more dangerous, but so are they.

[BlueWinds]

Sorry, will you clarify this some more, because I'm not really seeing how it's possible. A Size 2 group of Battle-Ready troops has 10 soak, and 9 magnitude. Solars certainly have enough decisive charms that they can bust through that fairly trivially in one turn, but boosting withering damage to the point where you get the 18+ dice of post-soak damage you need to reliably one-shot a point of Size is much harder. Brawl has it the easiest (ignoring White Reaper for a moment since killing battlegroups is kind of its thing), I think, since it has Fists of Iron Technique, and Rampage Berserker Attack. RBA is 1/scene, so killing the hell out of a battlegroup with it seems legit. An Essence 2 brawler, with 3 strength channeling a Defining intimacy through FOI ends up with a base damage of 6 + threshold successes (7 damage from mundane fists, 3 strength - (10 -6)). They have a Defense of 5 (with Average drill), meaning you need to roll 17 successes on your attack roll to have a reasonable shot of blasting through their first Size band in one shot.

This is, uh.... not as trivial as you make it sound.

That's because Brawl sucks at Withering attacks (or rather, it's designed for a long-haul building-up-onslaught penalties).

The archer in my game rolls usually rolls this:
10 + 5 (accuracy) + 1 (specialty) + 2 stunt = 18 dice, enemies at -1 defense due to Wise Arrow. So vs. DV 4, that's 5 bonus successes. 5 + 12 + 3 = 20 damage dice, -10 soak = 10 damage dice, averaging 5 successes. For 1m.

So that's half the health track, for 1m. Spending more to hit with the excellency isn't super efficient, but maybe she sets up her ally for their next attack (who now benefits from onslaught), or rolls a little lucky on her attack / damage dice, or uses one of the other Archery charms, or something. 10 levels each attack is a bit of an exaggeration, yes - not every attack takes off a size, but enough of them do that the BGs always die first because they're easy to kill with withering attacks (read: don't make you vulnerable to crashing), provide initiative (read: make killing big bads easier), and are often tied in with the other goals of the combat beyond just winning (evil fey escapes? Go hunt him down. Goblins reach the village? That sucks a lot).

Edit: You're right I shouldn't have included Athletics in the list of ways to get a ton of withering damage, my bad.

[serGregness]

My experience has been slightly different, that battle groups are better sources of initiative than named characters.

What, you say?

Well, just that dealing 7+size levels of damage* with a withering attack in order to gain 6i (1i base + 5 for Initiative Break from reducing them a dot in size) has been far easier than hurting named, dangerous opponents. No defensive charms, low DVs**, no ox-bodies***. Basically, all the PCs kill the battle group for initiative, then make a huge decisive attack and murder the named characters afterwards.

My house rule so far is "add +Size to the BG's defense, double the existing Size bonuses to soak / attack rolls (not magnitude or raw damage, though)." Makes BGs a much tougher nut to crack, and actually occasionally threatening****. I prefer The Iliad over Musou - demigods can kill scores of enemies, but they will be killed if isolated or caught on the wrong side of the gates by an army.

* Brawl, Archery, Melee, Athletics and MA all have their own ways to accomplish this, but it's not a huge investment.
** +1 defense bonus from average drill doesn't compare to an attack pool of 12 + Excellent Strike, especially if you start adding onslaught to it.
*** +Size to magnitude only starts mattering when you start making the entire battle about the BG. Size 1 or 2 doesn't mean that much.
**** This depends very much on how your characters allocate stats, which seems to be a persistent disconnect in discussions like these. My PCs all have 10+ attack dice and 5+ passive defense, even the non-combat focused ones. If your players' numbers are different, this house rule may not work for you.

Sorry, will you clarify this some more, because I'm not really seeing how it's possible. A Size 2 group of Battle-Ready troops has 10 soak, and 9 magnitude. Solars certainly have enough decisive charms that they can bust through that fairly trivially in one turn, but boosting withering damage to the point where you get the 18+ dice of post-soak damage you need to reliably one-shot a point of Size is much harder. Brawl has it the easiest (ignoring White Reaper for a moment since killing battlegroups is kind of its thing), I think, since it has Fists of Iron Technique, and Rampage Berserker Attack. RBA is 1/scene, so killing the hell out of a battlegroup with it seems legit. An Essence 2 brawler, with 3 strength channeling a Defining intimacy through FOI ends up with a base damage of 6 + threshold successes (7 damage from mundane fists, 3 strength - (10 -6)). They have a Defense of 5 (with Average drill), meaning you need to roll 17 successes on your attack roll to have a reasonable shot of blasting through their first Size band in one shot.

This is, uh.... not as trivial as you make it sound.

[BlueWinds]

While the armies of narratively irrelevant mortals (or, "the soldiers of Bob" as opposed to "Bob, the mercenary Warlord with a grudge against the circle") in Exalted shouldn't be completely dismissed (they can potentially bleed away your initiative or stab to death a crashed character), they generally should be used as more a backdrop and hazard, akin to a building being on fire. They make the scene more dramatic and slightly more dangerous, but they're not really a main opponent and really shouldn't be.

My experience has been slightly different, that battle groups are better sources of initiative than named characters.

What, you say?

Well, just that dealing 7+size levels of damage* with a withering attack in order to gain 6i (1i base + 5 for Initiative Break from reducing them a dot in size) has been far easier than hurting named, dangerous opponents. No defensive charms, low DVs**, no ox-bodies***. Basically, all the PCs kill the battle group for initiative, then make a huge decisive attack and murder the named characters afterwards.

My house rule so far is "add +Size to the BG's defense, double the existing Size bonuses to soak / attack rolls (not magnitude or raw damage, though)." Makes BGs a much tougher nut to crack, and actually occasionally threatening****. I prefer The Iliad over Musou - demigods can kill scores of enemies, but they will be killed if isolated or caught on the wrong side of the gates by an army.

* Brawl, Archery, Melee, Athletics and MA all have their own ways to accomplish this, but it's not a huge investment.
** +1 defense bonus from average drill doesn't compare to an attack pool of 12 + Excellent Strike, especially if you start adding onslaught to it.
*** +Size to magnitude only starts mattering when you start making the entire battle about the BG. Size 1 or 2 doesn't mean that much.
**** This depends very much on how your characters allocate stats, which seems to be a persistent disconnect in discussions like these. My PCs all have 10+ attack dice and 5+ passive defense, even the non-combat focused ones. If your players' numbers are different, this house rule may not work for you.

[Meianno Yuurei]

One thing I am finding is that two or three Exalted can kill a thousand troops repeatedly (or one Dawn) and that getting the command bonus to attack rolls doesn't exactly help when you've lost everything before they get to go.

Battles of huge scale between thousands of men very much seem to come down to the Exalted on each side, in my experience.

I think this is working as intended. Mass combat in exalted is far more Musou series than anything else - the armies are more a hazard than an opponent, a hazard equivalent to a beefed up version of whatever combatant serves as their core.

Generally speaking, for those who have never played a Musou game, victory is gained by defeating the significant enemies and achieving objectives, defeat comes from either failing to protect objectives or from personal defeat through being slain. In this, the masses of enemy soldiers serve mostly as a death of a thousand cuts, complicating battles with the enemy officers (in exalted terms, significant characters, from a narratively important human to a Dawn caste in full battle frenzy mode).

While the armies of narratively irrelevant mortals (or, "the soldiers of Bob" as opposed to "Bob, the mercenary Warlord with a grudge against the circle") in Exalted shouldn't be completely dismissed (they can potentially bleed away your initiative or stab to death a crashed character), they generally should be used as more a backdrop and hazard, akin to a building being on fire. They make the scene more dramatic and slightly more dangerous, but they're not really a main opponent and really shouldn't be.

[The Wizard of Oz]

I haven't been able to participate in many games, but it was something that jumped out to me so I'm curious. How often after making a successful Decisive Attack are you immediately crashed by someone because you were reset to 3?

It certainly happens, but it's not something that happens all the time. Just sometimes. People still have Evasion/Parry after all, defence charms, soak, etc. You're definitely vulnerable to it, but it's in no way inevitable.
Also, if someone does take a decisive hit, in my experience they're frequently either dead or severely injured (and so on wound penalties), as people tend not to make decisive attacks unless they have initiative of about 13+, in my experience.

A short example from my last session:
Changing Moon and Eclipse PCs met Havesh the Vanisher while he was packing in his bedroom. Wouldn't let him leave peacefully despite his entreaties to live and let live. He used Thunderclap Rush Attack, attacked Changing Moon, missed. They both attacked him, and missed (but he used up his perfect dodge). Then he hit the Changing Moon with a decisive attack, Burning Fist Burial, and Heaven Thunder Hammer, sending her flying through a wall to smash into another wall, unconsious.
Then the Eclipse cut his head off in a single blow.
The fact he was on 3 initiative didn't make much difference there. It was his lack of Ox-bodies that was more the issue.

[Lioness]

One thing I am finding is that two or three Exalted can kill a thousand troops repeatedly (or one Dawn) and that getting the command bonus to attack rolls doesn't exactly help when you've lost everything before they get to go.

Battles of huge scale between thousands of men very much seem to come down to the Exalted on each side, in my experience.

It's more individual characters in general. One of the things we looked at in the playtest was comparing how effective a small group of named mortals was compared to the same thing rolled into a battle group.

[TheCountAlucard]

I haven't been able to participate in many games, but it was something that jumped out to me so I'm curious. How often after making a successful Decisive Attack are you immediately crashed by someone because you were reset to 3?

Almost never in my game, since the Dawn is using his anima power to reset to 4, and the Steel Devil PC facilitates his decisives through Steel Devil Strike and thus doesn't reset to base, but I'm guessing I'm not all that representative of games as a whole.

[MoroseMorgan]

I haven't been able to participate in many games, but it was something that jumped out to me so I'm curious. How often after making a successful Decisive Attack are you immediately crashed by someone because you were reset to 3?

[putty]

I think the idea is the guy who crashed you then is probably going to make a decisive attack, reseting him to base initiative if you're able to take the hit

[Irked]

Please bear in mind that I'm AFB and probably only half-remember these details. That said…

There's actually already a small handful of Charms to inject Initiative back into a fight, I think - for example, Tiger-Warrior's Endurance - as well as any effect that lets you reroll Join Battle. I seem to remember something in Performance as well, but I could be thinking of motes instead of Initiative.

There's a few - Shadow Victor's Repose in Stealth and Battle Path Ascendant in War are the two "JB again" effects I see offhand. Other effects (i.e., Blazing Solar Bolt) will let you make attacks without resetting, or reset to a higher base (i.e., Striving Aftershock Method).

Caretaker - one I think you sometimes forget is that, as a Dawn, you reset to higher base when your anima is flaring. I think by this point you should be resetting to 5.

Also recall that while in Crash, Crashing the guy who Crashed you not only gives you the bonus for Crashing him, but also brings you out of Crash, lets you reroll JB, and you get to take your turn again.

My only beef with this is that the guy who Crashed you is probably the hardest person to Crash back - because he's sitting on that +5i bonus, plus whatever he stole. That doesn't make it impossible to counter-Crash by any means, but it's a lot more of a gamble.

[The MG]

Also recall that while in Crash, Crashing the guy who Crashed you not only gives you the bonus for Crashing him, but also brings you out of Crash, lets you reroll JB, and you get to take your turn again.

Additionally, if you spend three rounds in crash without being Incapacitated, you automatically reset to base Initiative.

[TheCountAlucard]

Please bear in mind that I'm AFB and probably only half-remember these details. That said…

There's actually already a small handful of Charms to inject Initiative back into a fight, I think - for example, Tiger-Warrior's Endurance - as well as any effect that lets you reroll Join Battle. I seem to remember something in Performance as well, but I could be thinking of motes instead of Initiative.

Also recall that while in Crash, Crashing the guy who Crashed you not only gives you the bonus for Crashing him, but also brings you out of Crash, lets you reroll JB, and you get to take your turn again.

Also, my seafaring game's Brawl PC gives no fucks about amassing Initiative, as if he can power up first, he can pretty much deliver Hardness-ignoring decisive attacks every round after that. Likewise, the Steel Devil PC's largest concerns with Initiative come from how much he can funnel into his Offhand Charge or Steel Devil Strike at one time. They only care about what their personal Initiative is insofar as it buffers them against being Crashed, and determines turn order, and for the latter, they bought Thunderclap Rush Attack.

[Limited Reagent]

I've not crunched the numbers on any of this, or playtested it in combat, but the main places initiative 'spawns' into the fight are through the +5's you get from crashes and the +1's you get for landing a withering attack, right? Changing those numbers would keep a bigger stream of motes flowing into the battle. But would it hurt more than it helps, by trivializing other stuff like Minimum Damage?

That, or I think I remember one Resistance charm or another as letting you re-roll JB after launching a Decisive. Maybe a watered-down version of that for everyone, a no-excellency JB pool rather than resetting to 3, would bump up the numbers and keep things rolling.

I'd need to do lots of math and playtesting on both before I can officially recommend either, but I think I like the second option better thematically. It feels less cheesy and more variable than "You hit him and he explodes into a pinata of initiative for you. Then he hits you and you explode into a pile for him." which, while it fixes the mechanical problem, feels a little flat and ham-handed. Having a better baseline JB makes you better at fights, and having that be your initiative funnel throughout the battle instead of just at the beginning makes more narrative sense to me.

This makes me think of the Escalation Die from 13th Age. You could do something similar in Exalted, where, say, the amount of initiative you get back when you reset to base increases by 1 each round.

The problem with using JB pool for every time you reset to base is that it Wits and Awareness, which are already very good, become even better. And Awareness charms that boost JB become a lot better than they probably should be.

[Caretaker]

Back to the main topic, especially in regards to all of the Initative being drained out of a fight after ~3 rounds, what could be some good ways to inject some additional initiative and liven the party back up?

I've not crunched the numbers on any of this, or playtested it in combat, but the main places initiative 'spawns' into the fight are through the +5's you get from crashes and the +1's you get for landing a withering attack, right? Changing those numbers would keep a bigger stream of motes flowing into the battle. But would it hurt more than it helps, by trivializing other stuff like Minimum Damage?

That, or I think I remember one Resistance charm or another as letting you re-roll JB after launching a Decisive. Maybe a watered-down version of that for everyone, a no-excellency JB pool rather than resetting to 3, would bump up the numbers and keep things rolling.

I'd need to do lots of math and playtesting on both before I can officially recommend either, but I think I like the second option better thematically. It feels less cheesy and more variable than "You hit him and he explodes into a pinata of initiative for you. Then he hits you and you explode into a pile for him." which, while it fixes the mechanical problem, feels a little flat and ham-handed. Having a better baseline JB makes you better at fights, and having that be your initiative funnel throughout the battle instead of just at the beginning makes more narrative sense to me.