Catching up on convo:
The thing is I have always rolled Multiple Actions like this since it is (as far as I have seen him playing) the intent of the author of the EXvsWoD book. More to the point there is no rule anywhere in the books about Exalts treating Dodge or Parry differently from mortals. There are rules about the type of damage you can soak, there are even rules about how exalts treat multiple attackers (Exalts unlike everyone else natively do not take penalties just for fighting more than one person at once) but there is no part of the splat book that says 'Exalts treat types of action as one action unlike other people'.
So to keep within the system, something I want to do because this system is still new to me, I have to make a ruling on how parry/dodge works for everyone. Given the narrative and mechanical implications of going with the 'action type' ruling I do not feel it would be reasonable to change how I have always been rolling these things.
I havent seen Holden playing, and cant really spare the time.
And like I said, Im very much not an expert on WoD mechanics, so Im working off my understanding of the books as read thus far and trying to reconcile it with the Dresden Files, where multiple attack rounds are very much a factor.
Still, your table, your rules.
Most of those are minor threats, because we can boost our soak easily high enough that it takes extremly unlikely rolls for a regular Malk, Formor or lesser Rampire to actually damage us.
And we have enough health that a few scratches going through are not the end of the world.
But if we stand still and let these people attack us, then yes, everyone is a potential threat.
I have read the vision in ExWoD.
Every Exalt can do shit like that, kill a few surprised vampires while blinding them with sunlight.
It would take a special build to survive after the first shock has passed though, that part of the scene is not in the snipp
Using the Jade Dogs as a benchmark, where senior gang members have combat Trait 3 or higher, and juniors Trait 2.
5x Dex 2, Firearms 2 vanilla mortals with giggle switches on their Glocks(an auto sear is illegal, but roughly $20 to manufacture iirc) and 30-round high capacity magazines in a driveby. Or, say, backing up someone else.
That is five people throwing 14 dice attacks at DC 6/8. Damage 5.
Even with the shield, a 2 die stunt and full Excellency, by the attack of the fourth guy we're rolling 16 dice to defend at DC8.
Senior-equivalents would be worse, as would be the addition of ARs or AP/SAPHEI ammo.
Worth recalling that we've seen something similar happen to us with Gorfels and his mooks, and they werent even expecting us.
Which is precisely the scenario that worries me now.
The vision presented there was not consistent with a kamikaze style strike.
Else there'd be nothing more remarkable about it any more than a bunch of Hunters doing the same thing while anointed in garlic oil and holy water.
That is the correct theory.
But then Molly starts cheating, because she is an Exalt:
Base difficulty of our Defensive Action?
Much lower because we have our folding shield.
Difficulty of everything when we are wet is lower, difficulty if we are just trying to escape from something is much lower, we get additional dice when it's cold, etc.
Most supernaturals outside of Mages don't really get difficulty adjustments like that.
And often enough we don't even have to defend ourselves.
Hitting either VLE or Steelskin is enough to just ignore mooks with handguns or blades, the chance that they wound us is low enough that we don't have to waste actions on them.
And all this before we have even bought many combat-relevant Charms.
We can get the good stuff and be even harder to overwhelm.
Not even the expensive Eye of the Hurricane, we just get the Darkness
Mooks here range from mortals with firearms, zombies, superzombies and spectres through bakemono, fomor servitors, fae hirelings, uberghouls and all the way up to Outsider cornerhounds.
The current ruling makes us much more vulnerable than was my ongoing understanding.
COMMENTARY
1)Gonna note that messages are modified by context.
Thats why I wasnt really bothered about the writein; a situation where the Minister of Hell gets away is going to come off differently from one where he gets True Killed with his crew.
We cant really determine what message we're sending until we deal with South Works permanently.
2)The fact that these akuma dont know about the limits of the Rite of Renunciation this makes them all very, very young.
Given that shikome can pull mythological succubi shit on even experienced kueijin, these guys would have been putty.
I wonder if this is a new strategy, or an old one.
3)For kueijin to rise, the Po has to escape Yomi Wan and reunite with the Hun
in the material world. This number of young, ignorant akuma suggests that someone has been hunting freshly risen chih-mei and selling them off to Emma-O and possibly other Yama Kings before they can be recovered by legit Jade Court members and given the rudiments of an education.
Which means either an akuma infiltrator sworn to Kakuri, or just some amoral SOB.
There's always been some traffic in kueijin slaves, but its always been the sort of thing that gets you outlawed and ganked.
That too is a pipeline to shut down by using the Crown on one of the akuma at South Works and passing information along via Brother Dev and maybe the shen of Chinatown.
Make it an extra cost to hit Emma-O with for pulling this shit, and reducing his supply of patsies.
5)Didnt realize we had faces in our armor. Eww.
Wonder if there's a prescribed color.
High rolls on everyone here.
Gard is certainly getting an eyeful. Then again, mercs.
I cannot really think of many that would stop as you say 'borderline gods', in fact I can only think of one, the Carpenter Threshold and that one is special because of what family lives there.
Also worth remembering that
1) If your threshold is weak enough, some supernaturals can bruteforce their way past it.
Dresden himself experienced this with Victor Sells' demon in book 1.
2)Some supernaturals are allowed past the threshold by Law to do you harm.
What Law, I have no idea, but some phobophages, like the monster under the bed types, apparently can freely enter and leave homes where their victims inhabit as per the short stories Zoo Day and AAA Wizardry.
3)As Vito Malvora demonstrated in White Night, and the Eebs demonstrated in Changes, no home, no threshold.
Someone making a serious run at you will have few compunctions about tossing an incendiary at the house to burn you out.
Or a gas leak, or something similar.
If you dont have the mojo to shut down that sort of physical vector, you die or come out from behind them.
The ones who can do, but it's worth noting that fooling the threshold effect isn't easy or necessarily worth it for a lot of creatures.
Also involves putting family members in the line of fire, and vastly increases the number of people you have to protect day to day.
And assumes that none of the family members who live in the house cant be talked or deceived into inviting or taking someone or something past the threshold. That kid who makes a new friend and invites them home, for example. Accepts a gift from someone, or receives something in the mail, like when Sells mailed Dresden a magical scorpion.
Then there's all the routine visitors in Western society. The phone/cable guy. The plumber. The exterminator.
As a defensive measure, its not worth the trouble for White Council wizards who can build seriousface wards and other protective measures. Even lesser talents canonically dont rely on the threshold alone if they have any options; its just one layer of several defenses. Anna Ash had wards in Proven Guilty. Hell, so did Butters in Ghost Story.
Even the Carpenters have an angelically warded panic room.
If you are spookyside and already living with family, its a useful bennie to offset some of the other risks.
And if you have no magical skill or resources, its much better than nothing.
But its most definitely not worth building your life or defenses around.
It depends on how the ability works. If it's intellectus, then I don't think it would be limited by the threshold. If it's "I extend myself into shadows", then yes. Still, every time we are outside of our family's threshold, it's likely Anduriel is listening.
Even intellectus requires that you ask the proper question. If you dont, you could easily miss it.
And I am reasonably sure that Yama Kings do not have intellectus.
Its possible that Molly is enough mojo to fuck with Anduriel's surveillance; we know that Mab canonically is.
Even if she isnt, Anduriel cannot afford to spend all his time spying on Molly; we're far from the biggest fish in the pond.
And his time/attention is finite.
Anduriel certainly isnt giving away information for free to a Yama King anyway.
