White Wolf Publishing

It's mentioned in one of the Stickies as a common topic, with a link to a topic discussing it... but that topic has zero links to topics explaining what it is. My guess from the name and what of the discussion I can comprehend is that the default of 7 health levels and other aspects of the combat system conspire such that there's not a wide range of results from attacks between "trivial" and "you die", but I have a feeling there's a bit more to it than that.

Except insofar as being combined with #3 makes it especially problematic. It's an extra channel of highly lethal attacks you have to defend yourself against, but which uses rules outside the standard attack/defense/damage/soak mechanics to deliver the deadliness. This makes it doubly hard to deal with if you don't have your perfects and surprise negators in order to prevent it from happening in the first place. I can't rely on soak as a backup like a I can with most attacks, I need a way of escaping in my arsenal as well. It's a mundane attack channel on par with bad-Touch.

Check for "paranoia combat". Essentially the system is so lethal that characters without paranoia combo's which are things like surprise negators, perfect defences, etc, are utterly boned if they run into someone to attacks them using anything like optimum tactics. Thus, the optiumum defensive strategy is to turn things into a mote attrition contest, using perfect defenses, until one or another side runs out of motes.

This is, in general, as exciting as watching paint dry-- but if you don't do it, you'll be dead on the first tick.

now the Ink Monkeys have tried to fix some aspects of this, with things like overdrive pools that give you motes that can only be used for offensive moves, but it really doesn't solve the fundamental problem, which is pretty much inherent to how Exalted works rules wise and could only be changed by a full on tear down of hte system, IE a third Edition.

The Tale of Paranoia Combat

Bob: Hey dude, look, I can kill you in 1 hit for 0 motes, or kill you 200 times over if I spend resources.
Steve: Well, shit. Uh, I take all these soak and DV charms.
Bob: I spend resources and kill you 200 times over. That's a shit way to defend.
Steve: Okay, that sucked. I take all the efficient absolute defense effects and stick them in a combo! Now you can't kill me! Oh, and I'm getting a grand killstick too.
Bob: Shit, I can't kill you. I better get that combo too.
Steve: Crap, now everything is boring mote attrition since neither of us can die until we run out of motes, and we're not spending any motes in order to make each other spend motes, because spending motes when motes are our lifebar and 0 motes is enough to threaten death is stupid.
Bob: Fuck.


Appendix A: Lethality (or: Why This Can't Be Fixed And We Can't Have Nice Things)

Steve: Since perfects are what's driving the mote attrition and making things boring, how about we nerf them so the game's got some risk and excitement again?
Bob: Then we're going to die instantly. Remember when I killed you 200 times over?
Steve: Fuck.
Bob: Hey, how about we make it so we don't die instantly?
Steve: Right, we just have to rewrite everything in the game that can make us die instantly, which is, like, every single rule ever written about combat, or close enough.
Bob: Fuck.

Nezumi, you poor dear, you know not what you have wrought.

But yes, you have stumbled across one of the major problems with the Exalted combat mechanics as they are written.

And now I can see Chung's name down at the bottom of the list of people viewing this topic. I will be expecting the rant about 2/7 filters and Shaping defenses to be appearing shortly.

EDIT: Ninja'd by the blue buddha baby.

In all seroiusness this is really one of THE problems of exalted, to the point that I'm still trying to decide whtehr I want to run my next campaign using the rules system or my hack of M&M 3E. It's a huge, 500lb gorilla, and there's no real way to patch it, because if you patch one part, everything else falls apart, but if you try to patch everything, welcome to "rewrite from bottom up and wait five years to get all the splats redone".

This should be in a sticky note somewhere.

ATM i'm still kicking around;

1) All characters receive an amount of natural B/L soak equal to their essence.
2) Perfect weapons no longer receive a +2 to a single value and 2 +1 values. They instead receive three +1 values.
3) Reduce the value of O tag weapons by 1 more or less across the board (reason following)
4) Weapons with the P tag cannot have the O tag. They are mutually exclusive. Weapons with both loose the P tag.
5) Change min damage to be Attackers Essence - Defenders Essence (min 0. Min 1 for anyone with essence 2 or higher).
6) Increased hardness value of more artifact armor(1 for light, 2 for medium, 3 for heavy(spit ball values))
7) Any Exalted activating a charm which carries a flaw of invulnerability also carries with it an additional tax; such unquestionable perfection is difficult to maintain, for in the end all exalted are still flawed by the mortal canvas on which they are painted. Each use of such charms causes stresses between the body and the higher soul, requiring more and more essence overcome. Every time such charms are activated within the same scene a cumulative one mote surcharge is applied to further uses of perfect defenses. This surcharge is reset to 0 at the end of a scene. A character whom activates Seven Shadow Evasion 4 times in a scene would be subject to a 3 mote surcharge to the next use of Seven Shadow Evasion. Gods and Ghosts not effected by such constraints, even if they were once exalted.
8) Dual Wielding; wielding an offhand melee or martial arts weapon while wielding another in the main hand provides the character with a +1 PDV against melee attacks.


Generic play test with the hardest hitting raw weapon (grand goremaul)

Example (Current)(0 motes)
Venomous Words (essence 4), vs Leaping Crane (essence 5)

Venomous Words attacks Leaping Crane with his Orichalcum Grand Gore Maul. His pools are min maxed (its exalted) to 5 dex + 5 stamina + 3 specialty + 3 accuracy =16 dice.
Leaping Crane has a dodge dv of 7 and attempts to dodging.

On average Venomous Words rolls 8 successes, one goes through to raw damage. Venomous words has a strength of 4, making his raw damage 21L/5.

Leaping Crane has Stamina 3, and is wearing orichalcum buff jacket. His armor soak is 9L, which is being pierced,leaving 5L soak. His natural lethal soak is 2. Leaping Crane will soak 7 damage, leaving 14 dice. On average, he will take roughly 5.6 damage from the attack, leaving him over half way to dead.

If Leaping Crane somehow spent motes to increase his soak by 5, he would still be hit by 9 damage die, on average about 3.6 damage.

Example (Proposed)(0 motes)

Venomous Words attacks Leaping Crane with his Orichalcum Grand Gore Maul. His pools are min maxed (its exalted) to 5 dex + 5 stamina + 3 specialty + 3 accuracy =16 dice.
Leaping Crane has a dodge dv of 7 and attempts to dodging.

On average Venomous Words rolls 8 successes, one goes through to raw damage. Venomous words has a strength of 4, making his raw damage 21L/4.

Leaping Crane has Stamina 3, and is wearing orichalcum buff jacket. His armor soak is 9L, which is no longer being pierced. His natural lethal soak is 2(stamina/2 round up) + 5(essence). Leaping Crane will soak 16 damage, leaving 5 dice. On average, he will take roughly 2 damage from the attack, leaving him wounded.

If Leaping Crane somehow spent motes to increase his soak by 5, he would reduce damage to 0. Minimum damage would be calculated as the attackers essence (4) minus his own (5) with a minimum of 1 or O value(whichever is higher). Since 4-5=-1, we use the 0 Value instead of 4 (vs the cannon 5). On 4 damage dice, Venomous Words can expect 1.6 average damage. Had he used a more accurate weapon and been soaked to nothing, he would only get a single damage die, but he might also be hitting more often to compensate.


Note
A less aggressive version of this would only use the changes for O/P tag exclusivity and Minimum Damage Calculations.

I'm leery of 7, not for it's effect, but for it's justification. It should probably just be a natural byproduct of perfection that the Charm becomes more expensive over time, rather than something involving Fate. Infernals are completely outside of Fate, for instance, and they can only be constrained by its limitations through their own volition (that one Ebon Dragon Charm). Furthermore, Malfeas the location is as much outside of Fate as Malfeas the Yozi.

Just change the reason they get more expensive to something less at odds with how the game works.

Thats fine, will update. Was trying to throw sidereals a bone, but i guess their own errata should be doing that instead.

Done and agreed.

So, to sum up my goal its


A) reduce the damage of most weapons, notably two handers. Reduce O values throughout. Remove P from weapons with O. Over accurate weapons get nerfed slightly.
B) recalculate minimum damage so that two 'peers' can have a long fight (essence 5 vs essence 5) without resorting to chain PD, where as an elder can still squash an upstart all the same(essence 7 vs essence 4)
C) make the O tag more important, since Ping damage in many situation is far lower. These weapons are inferior to non O weapons in other ways though, so they dont become an immediate 'requirement' (that just makes new issues).
D) Hopeful Results of A/B/C: because not every enemy will always use super accurate weapons (you will see more O based weapons) overall, fewer hits land. Those that land hit for less top end damage, and the minimum ping amount will on a whole be lower (people with O weapons will still get some decent ping damage). In general, grazing hits are far less deadly.
E) Artifact Armor Hardness will come into play more often for Light/Medium Armor (where as currently, its basically a joke that only really helps vs things like Anima Flux on DB), since the values go up slightly and damage comes down slightly.
F) PD's become ace cards, vs 2/7 constant batteries. They eventually become more and more taxing.


Addendum Thoughts:

A) Should Perfect Defenses be stuntable (i.e return motes)? I think to a degree this permits large 'battery' style gameplay with PD's.
B) I would also add the following

8) Dual Wielding; wielding an offhand melee or martial arts weapon while wielding another in the main hand provides the character with a +1 PDV against melee attacks.

Basically, your run of the mill character is going to get mangled if any decent attack lands. So, unless you either turn into an insane monster tank with regenerative powers or perfect everything odds are you are going to die horribly at some point unless your ST is nice enough to step in and say 'your only knocked out, not dead' or something.