Oh, I forgot about Knowledge of Respect and Harmony. Also, azoicennaed? While it is plot armor, it is also perfectly believable. Consider what saber knows: servant assassin, supposedly the weakest servant in direct combat, is holding her off through skill and speed and she can't get a hold of his style. His presence is difficult to track and he has damaged her armor, leaving an opening to take advantage of. That is time to retreat, wouldn't you agree?
That's probably because she initially underestimated the threat, allowing him to gain an advantage that she couldn't shake - which is normal for Exalted combat.
Also yeah, I'm not saying that he could take Celestial Exalts as a human. That would just be silly. A decent spar yes, possibly a moment that they couldn't afford to lose in battle. I sincerely want to know all of this.
Normal for Exalted combat. It's a downward spiral after the first hit - it makes the next hit more likely, which makes the next hit more likely, and so on. When you have 7 health levels (which means you can take 7 damage) before buying Ox-Body Technique, and a fucking gauntlet does Strength +5 dice of damage (before soak, admittedly), that means you're probably going to last only a few hits - if you're lucky (or you have a fuck-ton of soak).
Health is -0/-1x2/-2x2/-4/Incapacitated (before OBT, because that's variable) - that means one HL of damage inflicts a -0 wound penalty, two inflicts a -1 wound penalty, 4 inflicts a -2 wound penalty, and 6 inflicts a -4 wound penalty. These penalties apply to dice pools and to your DVs
after the pool has been divided by half. So, if Saber has a Parry DV of 8 (Dex 5, Melee 5, Swords +3, Daiklave Defense +2, total pool of 15), and the first hit took off 4 HLs, she's down to a DV of 6 - which, with a pool of 5+5+3+2=15, False Assassin has a
77.277% chance of hitting. If he only dealt 2 levels of damage, that still puts his chance of hitting at 63.473%. That's before taking into account how nasty flurries are in Exalted (especially flurries that ignore multiple action penalties).
Thanks! Would that pierce Knowledge of Respect and Harmony? It is a skill that exists to make it so knowledge of assassin's style and techniques are totally opaque.
It's fine as fluff, but mechanically doesn't work with the system (because of combat transparency; the target knows how many dice are being used, how many attacks are being made, and how much damage they deal). I'd represent that as a way to halve DVs or make attacks unexpected (either directly, or a bonus to re-establish surprise), because you do something that catches your opponent by surprise because your style is so opaque.
