Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

The thing to remember is Eiko has Black Wind so when she took a new action she got it at fill dice. when Molly parried she had to deal with this:

Multiple Actions
Exalted vs World of Darkness uses the multiple action rules from V20 Dark Ages. If you don't own that
book, they work like this:
When you want to perform more than one action at a time, you must first declare how many actions you're going to take. Then, the first suffers a –1 die penalty, and also raises its difficulty by +1, with each action afterward increasing the penalty and difficulty by one additional point. If this would push the difficulty higher than 9, then no more actions can be taken. Additionally, when using multiple actions, no more than
one action may be an attack.


Just having a lot of dice to throw at problems can compensate for the other person being supernaturally fast enough to pull full actions but only to a point. That difficulty increase hurts

Dive it is for the stunt, I thought it sounded too confusing when there was also a flying person in the scene, but thinking abo9ut it that should work.
-Im not a WoD mechanics expert, but I do have both V20 Dark Ages and ExWoD accessible to me, and I think you are misreading that.

Multiple actions are for doing multiple things. A single Parry action applies to every parry in that combat turn.
Parrying multiple enemy attacks does not impose a dice penalty on your dice pool, unlike in canon Exalted 2E. Nor is it intended to in ExWoD; there's a ExWoD sidebar that explicitly states that multiple attacks are not supposed to overwhelm an Exalt.
Multiple Opponents
Exalted vs World of Darkness doesn't use the rule
for multiple opponents found on page 276 of V20.
Burying an Exalt in enemies may be effective due to
sheer weight of numbers, but the Chosen have no par-
ticular difficulty dancing through swarms of foes and
striking them down.


This is in contrast to vanilla Ex2, where if you didnt take the appropriate flurrybreaker, a mob could kill you simply by overloading you in a turn. A bunch of enemies all attacking in the same turn would pile up dice penalties to the point where a mortal would kill you.
The infamous 5 mortals with sledgehammers problem.

One enemy could do much the same thing with a flurry charm.

Essentially, by the rules you are quoting Molly would have either
■Full Defend at 20 dice and DC3 OR
■Attack at 19 dice and DC6(BSM) and Parry at 18 dice and DC5(Dark Sun + BSM)

Still well in "Can't touch this" territory.
At least for this opponent, anyway. Against a greater akuma we'd be popping shintai from the start.
 
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-Im not a WoD mechanics expert, but I do have both V20 Dark Ages and ExWoD accessible to me, and I think you are misreading that.

Multiple actions are for doing multiple things. A single Parry action applies to every parry in that combat turn.
Parrying multiple enemy attacks does not impose a dice penalty on your dice pool, unlike in canon Exalted 2E. Nor is it intended to in ExWoD; there's a ExWoD sidebar that explicitly states that multiple attacks are not supposed to overwhelm an Exalt.



This is in contrast to vanilla Ex2, where if you didnt take the appropriate flurrybreaker, a mob could kill you simply by overloading you in a turn. A bunch of enemies all attacking in the same turn would pile up dice penalties to the point where a mortal would kill you.
The infamous 5 mortals with sledgehammers problem.

One enemy could do much the same thing with a flurry charm.

Essentially, by the rules you are quoting Molly would have either
■Full Defend at 20 dice and DC3 OR
■Attack at 19 dice and DC6(BSM) and Parry at 18 dice and DC5(Dark Sun + BSM)

Still well in "Can't touch this" territory.
At least for this opponent, anyway. Against a greater akuma we'd be popping shintai from the start.
No, you definitly have to parry each attack seperatly.

That's why the multi-defence Charms are such a big deal.

Exalted do not take additional penalties for trying to defend against multiple enemies at once, but even without that the action-economy is brutal.
 
-Im not a WoD mechanics expert, but I do have both V20 Dark Ages and ExWoD accessible to me, and I think you are misreading that.

Multiple actions are for doing multiple things. A single Parry action applies to every parry in that combat turn.
Parrying multiple enemy attacks does not impose a dice penalty on your dice pool, unlike in canon Exalted 2E. Nor is it intended to in ExWoD; there's a ExWoD sidebar that explicitly states that multiple attacks are not supposed to overwhelm an Exalt.



This is in contrast to vanilla Ex2, where if you didnt take the appropriate flurrybreaker, a mob could kill you simply by overloading you in a turn. A bunch of enemies all attacking in the same turn would pile up dice penalties to the point where a mortal would kill you.
The infamous 5 mortals with sledgehammers problem.

One enemy could do much the same thing with a flurry charm.

Essentially, by the rules you are quoting Molly would have either
■Full Defend at 20 dice and DC3 OR
■Attack at 19 dice and DC6(BSM) and Parry at 18 dice and DC5(Dark Sun + BSM)

Still well in "Can't touch this" territory.
At least for this opponent, anyway. Against a greater akuma we'd be popping shintai from the start.

I am pretty sure you cannot take arbitrary numbers of parrying actions once you pay for one otherwise that could lead to silly narrative match-ups and mechanically it would rather cheapen supers-speed like Celerity and Black Wind.

Vampire: I use my mastery of chi to move with unholy speed and hit you you three times in the span of 3 seconds
Random Mortal: I'm just going to parry this round but since I am only doing the one thing I can match that

That mortal above should not be able to parry (or dodge) every single time the elder vampires hits.
 
V20 Dark Ages
V20 Dark Ages p322 said:
Multiple Actions
Sometimes, you'll want your character to perform
multiple actions in a single turn. For example, if your
character is attempting to listen in on a conversation
at a salon while simultaneously going unnoticed by the
patrons, that could be two actions.
If you wish to take multiple actions in a turn, you must
decide before taking your first action. The first action is
taken at +1 difficulty, and at -1 dice. Each additional
action receives a cumulative +1 difficulty, and -1 dice.
You cannot take an action as part of a multiple action if
the difficulty would be increased to 10 or higher. Addi-
tionally, only one action per turn may be an attack action.

Johan faces two royal guards in his escape from the castle. He
wishes to push through them and crash through the door, but he also
wants to avoid their spears. In essence, he's taking three actions.
First, he wants to avoid their spears. So his Dexterity +
Athletics action is taken at -1 dice, and +1 difficulty. Sec-
ond, he wants to slam through the guards. That's a Strength
+ Brawl action, taken at -2 dice, +2 difficulty. Lastly, his
effort to smash the door will be a Strength + Stamina feat of
strength, taken at -3 dice, +3 difficulty.
The rest of the players at the table opt to take single actions,
while Johan's player blows on his dice for good luck.
The Storyteller is final arbiter on multiple actions. If a
series of actions is not logical in the scope of the narrative,
she may determine they cannot be performed as part of
a multiple action.

ExWoD p33-34
Multiple Actions
Exalted vs World of Darkness uses the multiple ac
-
tion rules from V20 Dark Ages. If you don't own that
book, they work like this:
When you want to perform more than one action
at a time, you must first declare how many actions
you're going to take. Then, the first suffers a –1 die
penalty, and also raises its difficulty by +1, with each ac
-
tion afterward increasing the penalty and difficulty by
one additional point. If this would push the difficulty
higher than 9, then no more actions can be taken. A
ditionally, when using multiple actions, no more than
one action may be an attack.

Design Note: This version of the 20th Anniversary
multiple action rules was chosen chiefly because while
multiple actions can be exciting and useful in moder-
ation, watching characters roll out attack after attack
after attack slows play to a crawl when it happens every
turn. Many Exalts can trivially generate enormous dice
pools, and the "split up your dice pool between your
various actions" version of the multiple action rules
were a recipe for disaster in that respect.
 
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To quote on defence, partial and total from V20 p275:
Block, dodge, and parry can be performed as part of a multiple action in your character's turn (punching then blocking, shooting then dodging, parrying then striking). Using a multiple action to act and defend is advantageous because your character can still accomplish something in a turn besides avoiding attacks. Rather than having to divide your dice pool among multiple defensive actions, you may declare that your character spends an entire turn defending. The normal multiple-action rules are not used in this case. Instead, you have a full dice pool for the first defensive action, but lose one die, cumulatively, for each subsequent defense action made in the same turn. It is still difficult to avoid several incoming attacks, but not as difficult as trying to attempt multiple things at once
So while only defending would only take light penalties, making an attack and multiple defences per round would definitly suffer the full penalties.

Here's what Exalted do not have to deal with:

• Multiple Opponents: A character who battles multiple opponents in close combat suffers attack and defense difficulties of +1, cumulative, for each opponent after the first (to a maximum of +4)
That part is not our problem.
 
To quote on defence, partial and total from V20:

So while only defending would only take light penalties, making an attack and multiple defences per round would definitly suffer the full penalties.

Here's what Exalted do not have to deal with:


That part is not our problem.

Thanks for pulling this up

@uju32 I do get how you thought that one action is enough to parry all attacks, the use of 'spears' in that quote is needlessly confusing, but logically if one is being attached by three people who are giving their full attention to the task, or one person three times in 3 seconds because they are just that fast one should not be able to parry it as easily as a single attack from a normal speed human.
 
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It is the exactly same thing in Dark Ages (P. 344) by the way:
Full Defense
You may choose to forgo other actions in the turn and dedicate your character's action to defending. Instead of using the normal multiple actions rules, roll his full dice pool against the first attack. Reduce each subsequent defensive roll by one die for the rest of the turn, cumulatively. If you have no dice, you cannot roll. There's no difficulty penalty when using full defense.
You take no difficulty-penalty if you only defend, against multiple attacks, only the dice-penalty.

That does very clearly mean to me that you do take the usual penalty if you use multiple defence-actions in a turn where you don't exclusivly defend.
 
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No, you definitly have to parry each attack seperatly.

That's why the multi-defence Charms are such a big deal.

Exalted do not take additional penalties for trying to defend against multiple enemies at once, but even without that the action-economy is brutal.
Under that interpretation, literally every vampire with Celerity or Black Wind is a mortal threat.
Which is diametrically opposed to the core vision of ExWoD.
I am pretty sure you cannot take arbitrary numbers of parrying actions once you pay for one otherwise that could lead to silly narrative match-ups and mechanically it would rather cheapen supers-speed like Celerity and Black Wind.

Vampire: I use my mastery of chi to move with unholy speed and hit you you three times in the span of 3 seconds
Random Mortal: I'm just going to parry this round but since I am only doing the one thing I can match that

That mortal above should not be able to parry (or dodge) every single time the elder vampires hits.
Thats because its meant to.

The premise of ExWoD involves fresh Exalted walking into the dens of old bloodsuckers and murdering them en masse.
Literally the first short fiction for ExWoD I recall is a single newly exalted Solar with a cheap knockoff katana and a horseshead murdering his way through a vampire club with a lot of experienced vamps.

Under this interpretation, a single Vampire with Celerity 2 is now a mortal threat, and a group of them will kill you.
 
That's why it's so important to cheat.
Like getting high soak, or get the Charm that allows for reflexive defence, or raise the difficulty of attacks against you by stuff like Faster than Sight.

A vampire is vastly more squishy than we are, because they can't easily increase their Health-levels and because they can't soak Aggravated nearly as easily as an Exalt, but on the pure offence it takes a good build to match a Vamp with Celerity or Black Wind.
 
EDIT
Hell, a group of mortals is now a mortal threat.
Even if you are combat specced, with a DC4 shield, stunting and burning Essence to get started with a 20 dice pool at DC6, a bunch of mortals will get you to 15 dice and DC9 just by shooting at you with Glocks, and they arent burning Essence or Chi to do so.

If instead of Glocks, they show up with ARs with giggle switches...
 
Under that interpretation, literally every vampire with Celerity or Black Wind is a mortal threat.
Which is diametrically opposed to the core vision of ExWoD.

Thats because its meant to.

The premise of ExWoD involves fresh Exalted walking into the dens of old bloodsuckers and murdering them en masse.
Literally the first short fiction for ExWoD I recall is a single newly exalted Solar with a cheap knockoff katana and a horseshead murdering his way through a vampire club with a lot of experienced vamps.

Under this interpretation, a single Vampire with Celerity 2 is now a mortal threat, and a group of them will kill you.

A mortal threat in that they might be able to inflict some lethal wounds before being turned into red mist, also the alternative is to let Joe the mortal dodge just as well against a vampire with Celerity 4 as against another human and that is much, much more problematic from a mechanical standpoint in WoD and in Dresdenverse alike since it makes super-speed far less useful against mortals, of which there are a lot more of them Exalts.

It should also be noted that a Circle of Exalts is a lot more powerful than the sum of its parts, it's almost midnight for me and I do not have time to write up an example so the best I can do is point you guys to this channel of people including the creator of the supplement playing it (He's in City of the Bull God). They use the multiple action rules with each Dodge or Parry counting as its own action.

Anyway given the very late hour over here I'll talk more about this in the morning.

Good night guys.
 
EDIT
Hell, a group of mortals is now a mortal threat.
Even if you are combat specced, with a DC4 shield, stunting and burning Essence to get started with a 20 dice pool at DC6, a bunch of mortals will get you to 15 dice and DC9 just by shooting at you with Glocks, and they arent burning Essence or Chi to do so.

If instead of Glocks, they show up with ARs with giggle switches...
Yes, getting in a situation where multiple people with assault-weapons get free shots at you is a terrible fuck-up.

As an Exalt you have multiple ways of surviving anyway, but ideally you avoid it.
Aside from the defensive options mentioned above, Erupting Fury Rebuke would instantly explode all those gun, for example.

It was the same problem back in Creation, where multiple attackers required the right Charmsto deal with and Exalted are less powerful today, not more.
 
That's why it's so important to cheat.
Like getting high soak, or get the Charm that allows for reflexive defence, or raise the difficulty of attacks against you by stuff like Faster than Sight.

A vampire is vastly more squishy than we are, because they can't easily increase their Health-levels and because they can't soak Aggravated nearly as easily as an Exalt, but on the pure offence it takes a good build to match a Vamp with Celerity or Black Wind.
Thats not the design intent. Notice the lack of flurrybreakers in every Exalt writeup.

Literally no Exalt charmset is set up to survive a situation where their charmset has no flurrybreakers and the opposition has access to multiple actions in a combat turn.
Besides maybe the Lunars and their combat regen.

And we're just talking Molly here, the Infernal.
Lydia, by these same rules, would get ganked by a single Dharma 4-5 kuejin.
And while she's not a Celestial, she's still supposed to an Exalt.

A mortal threat in that they might be able to inflict some lethal wounds before being turned into red mist, also the alternative is to let Joe the mortal dodge just as well against a vampire with Celerity 4 as against another human and that is much, much more problematic from a mechanical standpoint in WoD and in Dresdenverse alike since it makes super-speed far less useful against mortals, of which there are a lot more of them Exalts.
1)Mortal threat as in kill you in that encounter.

2)Joe the mortal doesnt operate under the same rules as Joe the Exalt.
Note that in ExWoD, mortals dont even have lethal soak unless they are wearing armor.
Meantime, Exalts soak Agg with Stamina iirc; they certainly soak lethal.

Anyway given the very late hour over here I'll talk more about this in the morning.
Good night guys.
Good night.
 
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Thats not the design intent. Notice the lack of flurrybreakers in every Exalt writeup.

Literally no Exalt charmset is set up to survive a situation where their charmset has no flurrybreakers and the opposition has access to multiple actions in a combat turn.
Besides maybe the Lunars and their combat regen.
Every Exalt has a Charm that allows them to reflexivly dodge or parry all attacks for a number of rounds.

That is the anti-flurry option.

Also I think some perfect defences can work against all attacks in one turn?
If all those mooks empty their guns while Ablations of Brass and Fire allows us to ignore them, then they propably won't get a chance to reload
My laptop is already out, will look it up tomorrow.

Joe the mortal doesnt operate under the same rules as Joe the Exalt.
Note that in ExWoD, mortals dont even have lethal soak unless they are wearing armor.
Meantime, Exalts soak Agg with Stamina.
Yes, the Exalt has multiple advantages.

They soak everything equally, they don't take penalties just from being engaged by multiple oponents and they have a variety of Charms to avoid being overwhelmed by mooks.

But they are not inherently immune to well-prepared foes ambushing them.
And they were never supposed to be.
Exalted, even in E2, die against multiple good or many decent opponents if they don't have the right Charms to avoid that.
 
Also keep in mind that we did survive and win some of those encounters you are worried about already.

Eiko the Elder Wan Kuei here would have cost us 4 wounds, not even quite getting into any penalties.
And we did beat Iku-Turso a while back, despite his tentacles allowing for multi-attacks as well.

With our soak in armor/steelskin enemies need to have a considerable amount of either base-damage or successes to be even worth parrying.
Mooks need AKs or shotguns to even have a realistic chance of scratching the paint so to say, even if we just stand around.
 
My interpretation of that example and the other rules, for what it's worth, is that a single defense action can handle a lot simultaneously but not sequentially within the scope of an exchange.

So two guys with guns or spears attacking at the same time bounce off a single defense action, but one guy attacking twice within the same frame of time gets to force another more difficult roll.

That balances the group combat problem with super speed without obviating it.

Five mortals with sledgehammers all act at the same speed so they get dunked on. Five vampires with celerity hit once against a regular defense, then collectively against a steadily weaker one until the exalt can't actively defend anymore.

In a way this has the opposite problem, where super speed is even more vital because whoever shows up with it immediately murders anyone without it.

This also fits with the need for the multi attacker rule for non-exalts. Their one defense roll against everything thrown against them a turn gets run into the ground, and that plus their crappy dice pools makes the issue of a mortal managing to fend off multiple attackers alone unlikely, to say nothing of one or more speed boosted vamps.
 
Every Exalt has a Charm that allows them to reflexivly dodge or parry all attacks for a number of rounds.

That is the anti-flurry option.

Also I think some perfect defences can work against all attacks in one turn?
If all those mooks empty their guns while Ablations of Brass and Fire allows us to ignore them, then they propably won't get a chance to reload
My laptop is already out, will look it up tomorrow.
1) Opened Eye of the Hurricane allows you to spend 1 Essence and 1 WP for a reflexive defence roll of Dex + Athletics.
That saves you the DC and dice penalty for attacking and defending in the same turn, and allows you to take other actions without incurring penalties to your dicepool. Its a 5 dot charm; its Solar cousin is also a 5 dot charm.

2)As has been pointed out previously? Infernal PDs im particular are limited by design.
One perfect defense will only work in cities. That one only when wet.
Not so mucn of a problem when you think that its a major opposition issue that you pop for big guys or extraordinary situations,

But if you need to fall back on expensive PDs against routine opposition, then its worth checking if we are playing the game right.

Also keep in mind that we did survive and win some of those encounters you are worried about already.

Eiko the Elder Wan Kuei here would have cost us 4 wounds, not even quite getting into any penalties.
And we did beat Iku-Turso a while back, despite his tentacles allowing for multi-attacks as well.

With our soak in armor/steelskin enemies need to have a considerable amount of either base-damage or successes to be even worth parrying.
Mooks need AKs or shotguns to even have a realistic chance of scratching the paint so to say, even if we just stand around.
Yes? By the rules being asserted now, we shouldnt have.

Eiko isnt an Elder-equivalent as far as I know/can tell.
We havent been looking at someone with the base transhuman trait maximums for Elders, as I expect to see with the Minister of Hell down at South Works.

If these rules hold true, then we shouldnt have beaten Iku Turso. Even in shintai. Not without being badly mauled, at least
Multiple action penalties against a notRaksha godmonster in 1v1 at E2?
Hell, multiple action penalties against Fomori combat servitors?
 
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1) Opened Eye of the Hurricane allows you to spend 1 Essence and 1 WP for a reflexive defence roll of Dex + Athletics.
That saves you the DC and dice penalty for attacking and defending in the same turn, and allows you to take other actions without incurring penalties to your dicepool. Its a 5 dot charm; its Solar cousin is also a 5 dot charm.
Here's the important part:
The Infernal applies the successes on this roll as a reflexive dodge against all attacks made against her of which she is aware during that turn.
Opened Eye, or Fivefold Bulwark does explicitly work against all attacks, not just one per turn.
That's why it's 5 Dots, that's why it is so important.
Because you get an automatic defence that can't be overwhelmed by numbers or extra-actions.

2)As has been pointed out previously? Infernal PDs im particular are limited by design.
One perfect defense will only work in cities. That one only when wet.
Not so mucn of a problem when you think that its a major opposition issue that you pop for big guys or extraordinary situations,
Bloodless Murk can be used to both dodge one attack and teleport to a nearby shadow to avoid more attacks.
Who Strikes the Wind can be used against Essence +1 attacks if you spend 2 Essence on the use.

None of that is absolute, but it can get you out of a bad situation.
And again, you only need one action to change the field back in your favor in many situations.

One Erupting Fury Rebuke to break all the mortals toys and render them harmless, one Sun-Denying Spite to cover the battlefield in darkness and make ranged attacks against you impossible, one Faster Than Sight to make mortals loose track of you.

You have a lot of option to avoid bad situations, or to improve the situation if you do get into one.
And with an Exalts inherent toughness and a bit of help from Ox-Body you are extremly likely to get the chance to improve the situation even if you are somehow caught in an ambush.

I can't overstate how much squishier vampires can be due to their lack of extra-health and limited soak.

Eiko isnt an Elder-equivalent as far as I know/can tell.
We havent been looking at someone with the base transhuman trait maximums for Elders, as I expect to see with the Minister of Hell down at South Works.
Eiko is an Elder, or at least equal to one in some aspects (maybe thanks to investments).
She transformed into her Demon Shintai in 2 turns, that's a level 6 power.

If these rules hold true, then we shouldnt have beaten Iku Turso. Even in shintai. Not without being badly mauled, at least
Multiple action penalties against a notRaksha godmonster in 1v1 at E2?
Shintai plus VLE.
We had high soak and enough damage to kill it very quickly.
Also it wasted time by using that Breathweapon and rolling badly for it.

Okay, I'll stop arguing now because it's really too late for me.
But before getting further down in the details you have to keep in mind that we are already very capable for an Essence 2 Exalted.
Vampires need good weapons or Disciplines even beyond multi-action speed to have a realistic chance of injuring us.
Eiko could do it because Demon Shintai is a big boost, I think.
A Whampire would have much worse odds, unless they are fully combat-specced with both Celerity and high Potency to give their attacks the necessary impact.

Just calm down, keep in mind that it's not necessarily intended for young Exalts to solo Elder Vampires or groups of well-prepared mortals, unless the Exalt is pretty combat-focussed.
We are pretty combat-focussed, though not as much as an all-in Dawn or an Infernal with Lanka/Skinned Alive as favored could be.

Good night.
 
How exactly is movement speed modeled, mechanically? When Molly spends 1 Essence on Windborne Stride and triples her already tripled speed, does she get more actions, or is it a fluff thing that translates as increased difficulty for enemies to hit her/decreased difficulty for her to hit someone?
 
EXvsWoD said:
To briefly re-familiarize you, there are three movement rates: walking (seven yards per turn), jogging (12
+ Dexterity yards per turn), and running (20 + [3 × Dexterity] yards per turn)

Characters may reflexively move up to their walking or jogging distance on their turn, or use an action to move their full running distance. All Exalted powers that enhance a character's "movement" speed apply to all forms of movement (so if a power triples your movement, your walking distance becomes 21 yards, your jogging distance [12 + Dex] × 3, and so on). Ignore penalties for acting while moving, and assume that by taking multiple actions, characters can move their full run distance and still attack.
Movement speed affects how you can move around the battlefield. It does not directly effect other actions, but improved speed does allow things like easily closing to hand to hand with ranged attackers, moving to cover or breaking line of sight.

This means Molly can currently move 48 yards without dedicating an action in one turn and if she uses an action to run she can move 96 yards all without spending essence. If she spends 1 essence that becomes 160 and 320 for [Essence] turns.
 
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This means Molly can currently move 48 yards without dedicating an action in one turn and if she uses an action to run she can move 96 yards all without spending essence. If she spends 1 essence that becomes 160 and 320 for [Essence] turns.

Wow. Considering Shintai doubles her speed again, Molly might have to worry about the environmental damage caused by her breaking Mach 1 if she's not careful.

Speaking of which, if she hits someone going that speed, would the added momentum add damage, or is her movement speed entirely divorced from her damage output? (Though she'll probably damage herself just as easily at supersonic speeds)
 
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