[2.5] How to Make Non-Conan-the-Barbarian Characters Viable in Combat?

[Serpent Axis]

Despite having ran and played several Exalted games over the years, I still feel quite the "noob", probably because most of these games were short-lived and thus I never got past a certain "level" in Exalted, namely where you get to the higher Essence ranks and start dealing with truly epic scenarios.

Having played and ran only successions of one-shots and one couple-of-months-long Series also means that I never really got too deep into understanding a lot of things about the system.

One of the things I always wrestle with (now that I have no group and just sit and make characters for my own personal fun, because I'm a sad, sad person) is making certain kinds of characters who are capable of holding their own in a combat.

In the one time I got to play a Dragon-Blood I made an Air-Aspected assassin of House Iselsi in service to the All Seeing Eye. Her thing in combat was a combination of martial arts and Thrown Charms in combo with the Night Breeze Style from the Scroll of the Monk.

…Which is when I found out that you can make an Exalted character that is incapable of beating a single Extra.

Simply put, I couldn't hurt a fly because my Damage output was pathetic even when I threw all I had at something.
I also get cucked by the dice a lot (to the point where the Storyteller actually flipped and yelled at me "I can understand a player rolling a botch, but you actually roll nothing!") so in the rare occasion where rolling a lot of successes on an Attack would give me something akin to a viable Raw Damage pool, fate would rob me of that as well.

Which is when I just figured that all the anime-style delicate-looking-but-deadly concepts just don't work unless they have very specific Charms and Artifacts that allow them to dish out a big enough Damage pool that they can actually get some hurt into an opponent, and the best and most viable character types are just the big Conan with the biggest Daiklave and Strength trait.

There are all kinds of character concepts and ideas that interest me, both as NPCs for games I'll never run and PCs I'll never actually play.

I had thought of a Sidereal who uses the Dreaming Pearl Courtesan Style or a Dragon-Blood with the White Veil Style (I mean, doesn't use the White Veil Style, which does not exist, of course), the kind of delicate-looking-but-actually-deadly characters.

Thing is, how do you make such characters viable, guys?
If you have a Strength score of 2 and want to use subtle weaponry like fans and sashes or whatever is appropriate to Dreaming Pearl / White Veil, how the hell do you ensure a Damage pool that can actually hurt anything with armor?
Even using some of the soak-reducing Charms of these styles, it seems that any opponent wearing anything more than a wooden bucket on their heads can still eat away all the damage you would dish.

[Flinty]

The trick is to find the outstanding advantage some combat styles offer. Guys running around in big armor and with big weapons are often the best build at direct combat (Solar Meele op!), but other styles offer other advantages. Let's take a look at some of the examples you brought up.

Dreaming Pearl Courtesan is not as strong as good old fashioned armor and heavy weaponry on a direct battlefield but that makes sense. It's a style based around using everyday objects as weapons. It lets you fight very efficiently at the drop of a hat while wearing a fine evening gown, while the fierce warrior, away from his daiklaive and plate is doing rather poorly. Of course Solars can just summon their stuff from Elsewhere.... but others don't have it quite as easy. Given the overtures on SMA Dreaming Pearl Courtesan had ans its subtlety it allway struck me as a style developed by Sidereals, specifically Chosen of Serenity as a sort of precursor to Sapphire Veil of Passions Style. That said DPC has some very potent charms. Not only does it allow you to animate parts of your dress as weapons and creates powerful flurries, the charmtree lets you reduce the speed of your attacks to one. Think about that. Yes your attacks suck damage wise (but in my experience damage rolls often come down to minimum damage anyway... may just have been the soakintensive group I was with though) but you can make 25 of them in the time it takes a solar with a daiklaive to get one action. If they don't have Bulwark Stance they are toast. Of course if they do have bulwark stance this charm becomes alot less impressive. That's generally the thing with Exalts and solars especially. Fighting styles that are not basic "I hit harder" you get from your meele charms usually rely on some sort of "gimmick" (onslaught penalties, crippling effects, sickness effects, mental influence, whatever) to be effective... which an exalt can usually immubnize them to to some degree, "devaluating" the combat style. As a ST you have to make sure that only special opponents you want to be a specific counter to your char can simply handwaive his great advantages away.

Dragon Blooded Thrown: Is actually one of the better DB charm trees imo. You can make self repeating attacks and combine your thrown charms with Elemental Bolt Attack which can make for really silly situations with cooperation where you have a bullshit amount of powerful elemental bolts attacking for turns on end. In the end this charm tree also depends on flurrying alot and onslaught penalties.... you can easily go up to 12+ attacks hitting your opponent per round. Also keep in mind that this is a ranged style. Combine this with movement charms or artifacts (Wings of the Raptor for example) and you can easily stay at range, while defensive thrown charms (and the air aspect anima banner) provide ample protection. Quite insane charm tree, really. Sure you will likely only deal minimum damage against high soak, but do that nearly 10 times a turn and we are speaking about 20 dice of damage which non tick long perfect defenses are worthless against. Again DV penalty negators make this less efficient.

White Veil Style: Is a great style but it doesn't do well in actual combat. Mostly because many of its charms are supposed to use as sneak attacks that don't really establish combat. It's meant for subtly poisioning your opponents and bringing them low that way, not for actual hand to hand altercations.

If you really want to have styles that look like the char using them is mostly unarmed and using elegant movements with devastating effects (and maybe a good dash of weirdness) you pretty much have to go for Sidereal Martial Arts.... at which point they can easily keep up with a Dawn Warrior (SMA even more op than Solar Meele.... oh well... "scene long perfect defenses")

If you deliberatly want to change the power balance allow for called shots that circumvent armor, that way they can still dish out damage. Not as much as a good daiklaive hit, but their (often) low speed can make up for that.

[Darksider]

I also get cucked by the dice a lot

Dude, seriously, leave the 2016 alt-right slang back in 2016. Don't use that stupid term here again, thanks.

[BjornTheFellhanded]

Strength has less of an impact on combat effectiveness than Dex. Artefact weapons are a big boost, but there are also light, elegant ones available.

What I'd suggest: Focus on upping your attack pool (ability dots, specialties, accurate weapons). There are some damage boosting charms for most combat abilities for Dragonbloods (don't be afraid to look outside your element). Consider attempting to acquire a non-jade weapon (there are small and subtle ones in the books; Oadenols Codex has a combat fan example). Both Orichalcum and Moonsilver add +2 accuracy, which is slightly better than Jade's +1 Damage overall.

[Serpent Axis]

Flinty: Thanks, those are good suggestions. Interesting post. I did actually use the combo of Elemental Bolt + Loyal Weapon + Persistent Hornet Attack + Night Breeze stuff, but it seemed like I had to get lucky with attack successes for the damage to be viable. Even with multiple ping hits I had difficulty hitting - and I had Dex 5 and Thrown 5 with a specialty in Elemental Bolt Attack.
I like the other stuff about Dreaming Pearl though.

Darksider: as a half-Iraqi Jew from the Middle East I am most certainly not "alt-right" anything, I caught that slang off a female streamer I gamed with once. Didn't know it was "their" word.

Bjorn: Quite the steep cost for attuning outside of your type's material, though, plus it can fail can't it? Anyway, I feel you kind of need both high Accuracy and Damage in order to do anything to anyone that sits anywhere between the level of "unarmored farmer extra" and "Solar Exalt with Perfect Defense and Artifact armor". The problem - especially for the Dreaming Pearl Sidereal - is the low Damage values. Especially if I want to be more subtle and not use bombastic Artifact weaponry, I feel like I get screwed over by the Charms that enhance those kinds of weapons but give very little to ordinary, subtle weaponry that sounds cool on paper (like flowing sleeves and sashes, etc).

[BlueWinds]

"Only ping, all the ping" (also known as 'light weapons, don't care about strength) can certainly be a viable combat style in 2.5. Stop trying to compete with heavy weapons, and as others have said, play a different game.

Your main advantage with light-ish weapons will be speed 3 (use Jade!) with great accuracy and high rate. With speed 3, you can time things around other people's actions - flurry right after them, then attack again once before they act again. Not only has their DV not reset from your last flurry, but as far as they're concerned, your DV never went down. Don't try to boost your damage, keep your attacks small and free. You get to spend 100% of your motes on defense, while it's never worth their effort to use defensive charms - what, blow 6 motes to raise my DV? There are 4 more attacks coming in the next three ticks alone! Leave the damage boosters at home.

My experience is the opposite of you - this combat style, used by both my Solar and another Dragon Blooded PC, was by far top-dog - slower (Speed 5-6) heavy weapon weilding powerhouses couldn't touch us. Combat went pretty slowly sometimes, but we almost never took damage. 100% of motes available for defense is pretty powerful when you can rely on flurries and timing for your offensive needs.

[Sandact6]

Part of the reason (aside from 2e MA power issues) is that White Veil and Dreaming Pearl need a drastic boost in power to be comparable to native combat charms for Lunars or Sidereals, let alone Solars. This could be extended to a lot of MA's in general where using them is a character choice over an optimization one. If you want to make it work you'll need to do some extensive work, like possibly converting a lot of the charms from 3e down to 2.5e.

Heavy armour is still annoying in 2.Xe if you don't ping spam. If you need a buff to Elemental Bolt use Elemental Lens so the damage of the charm doubles.

[BjornTheFellhanded]

[
Bjorn: Quite the steep cost for attuning outside of your type's material, though, plus it can fail can't it? Anyway, I feel you kind of need both high Accuracy and Damage in order to do anything to anyone that sits anywhere between the level of "unarmored farmer extra" and "Solar Exalt with Perfect Defense and Artifact armor". The problem - especially for the Dreaming Pearl Sidereal - is the low Damage values. Especially if I want to be more subtle and not use bombastic Artifact weaponry, I feel like I get screwed over by the Charms that enhance those kinds of weapons but give very little to ordinary, subtle weaponry that sounds cool on paper (like flowing sleeves and sashes, etc).

The cost is double for attuning outside your material, yes, but as you are dealing with small weapons, the load will still only be comparable to the larger artifact weapons. There is also a chance for failure, but if you go that route the second excellency can help tremendously.

But if you don't want to go for an artifact weapon, that's fair enough.

Is sorcery an option? Either from you or a friend, the spell Ritual of Elemental Imbument can give a mundane weapon a permanent damage boost.

[Lioness]

I've observed 2.5 as having something of an encounter design problem.

In 2.0 Storytellers who weren't completely insane refrained from giving a paranoia combo to every NPC because it was acceptable to not have an absolute form of defence if one of their PCs ambushed them or rolled well. When soak and health levels became the primary form of defence its less absolute nature meant there were a lot of moments where Storytellers didn't take a moment to step back and ask "is this any fun?" instead dragging out a fight scene that was a forgone conclusion before join battle was rolled.

So check your ST isn't unintentionally stacking the deck way against low damage characters.

[Serpent Axis]

Thank you all, guys! Your insights are excellent and you've helped loads in understanding the system a lot better.

Good points, BlueWinds.
And I agree, Lioness.

Thanks again everyone.

[webkilla]

When I ST I always demand that my players make sure that their characters have at least one basic means of self-defence. It could be something as simple as a Melee excellency

then after we get started and everyone has more or less settled into how they want their character to be able to defend themselves - it could simply be creative use of a defence charm - then we build from there.

[emeraldstreak]

…Which is when I found out that you can make an Exalted character that is incapable of beating a single Extra.

Simply put, I couldn't hurt a fly because my Damage output was pathetic even when I threw all I had at something...

Which is when I just figured that all the anime-style delicate-looking-but-deadly concepts just don't work unless they have very specific Charms and Artifacts that allow them to dish out a big enough Damage pool that they can actually get some hurt into an opponent, and the best and most viable character types are just the big Conan with the biggest Daiklave and Strength trait.

Depends. There are viable "light weapons" builds, however not all of them are well-characterized.

Say, a character with 30 Strength. He'll throw needles for 31L piercing, damaging enough, but why needles? Why not another throwing weapon with the Piercing tag? Why not a goremaul, which looks great on a character with 30 Strength?

Then consider a Solar with Thrown for Cascade of Cutting Terror, and the artifact needle that makes unblockable attacks. Cascade makes undodgeable attacks, the needle unblockable, together they have a purpose and there's a reason now why a character will use this needle and not something else.

At this moment you may think "Once again only Solars get the cool stuff", but this isn't true. All Exalts have some good light weapons combinations, Dragon-Blooded included.

[Flinty]

.... what kind of exalt does have a strength rating of 30?

[Lioness]

.... what kind of exalt does have a strength rating of 30?

Probably one with a lot of mutations.

Emeraldstreak has a particular approach to Exalted that's always reminded me of this.

[emeraldstreak]

That's not nice, Lioness.