White Wolf Publishing

Have a high passive defense value to try to protect yourself from most damage. This is the "2" part, because you announce your DV in step 2. Have a perfect soak or other perfect defense that activates in Step 7 so that, if you fail to defend against an attack with your DV (somebody manages to get through it), you can activate your late-step perfect to negate damage.



A full-fledged 2/7 Filter also has a combo of surprise-negator and perfect dodge/parry, but those are only used when somebody announces in Step 1 that they are using a bad touch Charm. If it's bad touch without surprise, just use the Step 2 perfect that keeps you from being touched. IF it's bad touch with surprise, activate the combo to negate and dodge/parry to avoid being touched. If it's surprise but it's not bad touch (so damage is all you're afraid of), let it through your step two and activate your step 7 perfect soak, since perfect soak doesn't care about surprise.



In combat, this will save you the maximum motes because, against non-surprise attacks, you will mostly pay nothing as your passive DV blocks all hits. When they surprise attack you for damage, or they get lucky and get by your DV, you spend 4m on your perfect soak. You've already saved a lot because you only spend active motes when somebody gets by your DV. You're still safe if they whip out bad touch because you CAN protect yourself in STep 2, and you save motes unless they use bad touch.

Step 2 perfect defense + step 7 perfect soak.  Seven Shadows Evasion, Heavenly Guardian Defense, Iron Skin Concentration (may not be viable post-errata), Adamant Skin Technique, etc.  Most efficient defense in the game.

DV == Defense Value (your passive defense target number)



SSE == Seven Shadow Evasion (step 2 perfect dodge, applicability-trumping)



HGD == Heaven Guardian Defense (step 2 perfect parry, applicability-trumping)



AST == Adamant Skin Technique (step 7 perfect soak, neutralizes all damage that might possibly be inflicted from any source related to this attack for the remainder of the combat steps of this attack)

TLAs are annoying.

Win.

Man, I feel nostalgic. When I invented this thing, there were still people claiming Essence Flow was a good Charm for your primary combat ability, defending Obsidian Shards of Infinity and looking forward to the release of Sidereals.

Just out of curiosity, what's your opinion on Essence Flow these days? Did Supreme Perfection of (Ability)'s discount make it any more palatable?

I also find it really useful for those Abilities which you don't want to bother putting it into combos for, like Larceny, Craft, Investigation and Ride. Things you may have to roll outside combat and don't really want to bother building a combo for them as you only need to use a single other Charm with it at a time.

Nah. Narrativists and Rule 0 Fallacy, mostly - "It's OK if it's broken, the GM won't kill you until the plot demands it" and "It's OK if it's broken, the GM will fix it".

Doesn't this set up burn you if your opponents are running with late-step bad touches?

Ah, forgot about that bit. Mixed it up with the charm use declaration. My bad.

Put it this way, Leo: as-written, the pinnacle charm of OSOI allows a one-Charm kill on Sol Invictus that bypasses the Aegis of Unconquerable Might - and all other defensive powers, for that matter - by skipping the battle and presuming the outcome, then making that reality.



If anything's 'worse' than as-written OSOI, it's beyond retarded.

People are stupid, and yes.



You want to know why I hate the rule 0 fallacy and narrativist arguments in mechanical threads, you can trace it back to there.

Actually, it's so good it create a new tier of build.



The same way that having a perfect put you in a distinct category, and that a full paranoia combo does that yet another time, and that 2/7 filters reign supreme over those, the 2/7+LBD make a mockery out of the regular 2/7 builds.



From the paranoia level up, your motes are your life point and are invincible as long as your pools aren't empty. So it's just about efficiency, and the 2/7 is much more efficient than the regular perfect spamming. But with LBD your filter become so efficient that your mote bleed rate can become negative against some opponents. That means total invincibility.

And that's not just some very weak opponents either, an E3 Solar has the tools to do that to the Ebon Dragon (yes, a primordial) or the Unconquered Sun.

Not completly as there are weaknesses : you can force the step 2 perfect ( good luck to do that for less than 3 m) or overload the reactor max 20m.
But yeah, LBD is that powerful.

It needs to be 1 mote, or (OppEssence-YourEssence) min 1, at worst.

I think that he means the OSOI arguement

Bu-but it's so PWETTY! *wiggle, wiggle*

Not much more than the perfects, or the late step filters.

Having it means that those who don't are hardly a threat, but they can have it too!



Also, as Xeloss said it's beatable. If you are attacking 6 times at 50% accuracy overall, the opponent spends 6m to defend and wins 9m for those time you missed. So if you are 3 to attack like that, the opponent spends 18m and wins "27", except the Reactor keyword brings him down to 20, so he's only at +2m per action. Now add just a bit of accuracy or volume of attack, and you can break the dodge reactor by overloading it.

When you are fighting group vs group, it's "everyone gangs up on 1 opponent until he dies, then move on to the next one" faced with those defenses. With regular paranoia, it's "spread out your attacks to make as many opponents as possible spend the Xm to flurry break", so basically the opposite.



Of course when 2 such builds are in solo combat, it tends to be "whac-whack-whack, well, that was a real waste of time, let's do something more productive now" because they can't really harm each other.

Has anybody had a chance to work through the 2/7 in the presence of Overdrives and etc?

That makes the start of the Primordial War more believable, at least.

I used to think SPB is the most balanced SMA in Scroll. In my defense, I was young and naive back then ;)