FaeGlade Plural
Semper Legens
- Location
- Land of Bureaucracy
- Pronouns
- Plural/They
Lot's of games separate "armed combat" and "unarmed combat" into separate skills.
Even games that do not usually disincentive being good at both by offering no particular benefit if you're good at both.
Personally, I do like sticking to separate combat abilities for "unarmed combat" and "armed combat". However, that does not mean a character should not be good at both. Being good at both should offer a distinct advantage beyond "you can fight if you lose your weapon".
In the frame of Exalted 3E, this would have ideally be done by making Brawl offer a bunch of benefits to someone who fights with Melee. Given what others have so aptly described here, knowing how to use your whole body (=unarmed combat) in a fight offers several advantages
- you can better exploit your enemies mistakes when they leave an opening
- you can better defend yourself from certain attacks
- you can engage in a brawl/grapple if the opportunity arises
- you learn to perform joint-locks and other such techniques against your enemy
Now, the astute reader may notice that those are all things Solar Brawl offers anyway. Yet the paradigm of "can't use charms of one ability to augment the usage of another" prevents you from using many Brawl-charms to augment Melee (or vice versa).
Well, that isn't fully accurate. While supplemental charms can not be used to augment the usage of another ability, there is no such rule for reflexive charms. And Brawl has several reflexive charms:
Now, you can argue that design-intent for many of these charms was that they would only work off Brawl-based attacks. Since I'm no intercontinental mind-reader, I don't know. But to me, this actually looks like a good incentive for a Swordmaster to get Brawl 5 and get some charms there. At some point, this cross-investment is bound to be more effective than buying more Melee-charms.
Now, could that have been done better?
Definitely, they could have made it clearer, introduced the Bridge-Keyword to Brawl as well, or actually merged both abilities. But to me, it actually looks like there's design-space in this edition that incentives being good at unarmed fighting, even if you rely on a weapon.
Oh, and there's no issue with combinatorial hell here, since I was talking exclusively about a combination of Solar charms, no cross-splat charms were involved.
Even games that do not usually disincentive being good at both by offering no particular benefit if you're good at both.
Personally, I do like sticking to separate combat abilities for "unarmed combat" and "armed combat". However, that does not mean a character should not be good at both. Being good at both should offer a distinct advantage beyond "you can fight if you lose your weapon".
In the frame of Exalted 3E, this would have ideally be done by making Brawl offer a bunch of benefits to someone who fights with Melee. Given what others have so aptly described here, knowing how to use your whole body (=unarmed combat) in a fight offers several advantages
- you can better exploit your enemies mistakes when they leave an opening
- you can better defend yourself from certain attacks
- you can engage in a brawl/grapple if the opportunity arises
- you learn to perform joint-locks and other such techniques against your enemy
Now, the astute reader may notice that those are all things Solar Brawl offers anyway. Yet the paradigm of "can't use charms of one ability to augment the usage of another" prevents you from using many Brawl-charms to augment Melee (or vice versa).
Well, that isn't fully accurate. While supplemental charms can not be used to augment the usage of another ability, there is no such rule for reflexive charms. And Brawl has several reflexive charms:
Iron Battle Focus makes you immune to Onslaught penalties.
Wind and Stones Defense raises your Defense by your opponents onslaught penalty.
Heaven Thunder Hammer works after a decisive attack, but nothing says it has to be a Brawl-attack (you ought to be at close range though, else the attack this charm creates fails to connect).
Thunderclap Rush Attack is a combined movement and attack, which can be useful for getting into melee range and starting at an advantage.
Reckless Fury Discard can raise your Defense by the number of 1's an opponent rolled - this can be quite mote-effective.
Solar Cross-Counter is a decisive counterattack that doesn't reset your Initiative and bases it's damage off the damage you just took - this is different from Melees Solar Counterattack, which does a normal decisive attack, including a reset.
Burning Fists Burial could apply to a Melee (or even Archery- or Thrown attack) on account of being Reflexive instead of supplemental.
Force-Rending Strike gives you a reflexive Clash-attack, which can be the best defense in some cases. It's available at lower Essence than Fervent Blow, Melees Clash-creator, but it's more expensive and only works against decisive attacks (so it's objectively worse TBH).
Blade-Rebuking Wrath is another Clash-creator, with the advantage that it hurls the enemies weapon away instead of doing damage. Fittingly enough, that'd be bad for someone who relied on Melee exclusively.
One with Violence gets a honorable mention. It explicitly only works off Brawl or Martial Arts, but since it only triggers when you crash an enemy that allows you to corner them with your melee weapon, then hit them with an unarmed strike to take the wind out of them, and then finish them off (attack with Melee, crash them with Brawl, get extra initiative for a decisive attack)
Dancing with Strife Technique just gives you willpower for a good defense, regardless of where it came from.
Cancel the Apocalypse works after crashing an enemy, so regardless of how you do it you can deactivate one of their combat-charms
Lightning Strikes Twice works just fine for augmenting Heaven Thunder Hammer.
Striving Aftershock Method just increases your base Initiative, regardless of what you used for the decisive attack.
Superior Violent Knowledge can work just fine to augment a Melee-attack.
Heaven Fury Smite even explicitly works with any viable ability, and just gives you an extra attack after crashing an enemy.
Ascendant Battle Visage augments a bunch of Brawl-charms, but also heavily boosts rushing and makes you immune to being crashed from long range. This also benefits melee.
Wind and Stones Defense raises your Defense by your opponents onslaught penalty.
Heaven Thunder Hammer works after a decisive attack, but nothing says it has to be a Brawl-attack (you ought to be at close range though, else the attack this charm creates fails to connect).
Thunderclap Rush Attack is a combined movement and attack, which can be useful for getting into melee range and starting at an advantage.
Reckless Fury Discard can raise your Defense by the number of 1's an opponent rolled - this can be quite mote-effective.
Solar Cross-Counter is a decisive counterattack that doesn't reset your Initiative and bases it's damage off the damage you just took - this is different from Melees Solar Counterattack, which does a normal decisive attack, including a reset.
Burning Fists Burial could apply to a Melee (or even Archery- or Thrown attack) on account of being Reflexive instead of supplemental.
Force-Rending Strike gives you a reflexive Clash-attack, which can be the best defense in some cases. It's available at lower Essence than Fervent Blow, Melees Clash-creator, but it's more expensive and only works against decisive attacks (so it's objectively worse TBH).
Blade-Rebuking Wrath is another Clash-creator, with the advantage that it hurls the enemies weapon away instead of doing damage. Fittingly enough, that'd be bad for someone who relied on Melee exclusively.
One with Violence gets a honorable mention. It explicitly only works off Brawl or Martial Arts, but since it only triggers when you crash an enemy that allows you to corner them with your melee weapon, then hit them with an unarmed strike to take the wind out of them, and then finish them off (attack with Melee, crash them with Brawl, get extra initiative for a decisive attack)
Dancing with Strife Technique just gives you willpower for a good defense, regardless of where it came from.
Cancel the Apocalypse works after crashing an enemy, so regardless of how you do it you can deactivate one of their combat-charms
Lightning Strikes Twice works just fine for augmenting Heaven Thunder Hammer.
Striving Aftershock Method just increases your base Initiative, regardless of what you used for the decisive attack.
Superior Violent Knowledge can work just fine to augment a Melee-attack.
Heaven Fury Smite even explicitly works with any viable ability, and just gives you an extra attack after crashing an enemy.
Ascendant Battle Visage augments a bunch of Brawl-charms, but also heavily boosts rushing and makes you immune to being crashed from long range. This also benefits melee.
Now, could that have been done better?
Definitely, they could have made it clearer, introduced the Bridge-Keyword to Brawl as well, or actually merged both abilities. But to me, it actually looks like there's design-space in this edition that incentives being good at unarmed fighting, even if you rely on a weapon.
Oh, and there's no issue with combinatorial hell here, since I was talking exclusively about a combination of Solar charms, no cross-splat charms were involved.
