[X] Plan: Desires fulfilled
[X] Plan: If Looks Could Kill
-[X] Molly:
—[X] Counter Conceptual Interposition, 16 XP
—[X] Verdant Emptiness Endowment, 20 XP
—[X] Sinner Boiling Stare, 12 exp
—[X] Egocentric Perception Application: Mental Attributes - Occult, 8 XP
—[X] Appearance 4, 0 XP
—[X] Charisma 5, 1 XP
—[X] Manipulation 5, 1 XP
-[X] Lydia, 15 XP spent
—[X]Excellence of the Tireless Psychopomp (Stamina), 3 XP
—[X] Excellence of the Tireless Psychopomp (Perception), 3 XP
—[X] Excellence of the Tireless Psychopomp (Strength), 3 XP
—[X] Charisma 5, 1 XP
—[X] Manipulation 5, 1 XP
—[X] Perception 4, 1 XP
—[X] Wits 5 dots, 1 XP
—[X] Awareness 2, 2 XP
-[X] Tiffany, 17 XP spent
—[X] Wits 5, 1 XP
—[X] Perception 5, 1 XP
—[X] Lore of Awakening 4, 15 XP
-[X] Olivia, 15 XP spent
—[X] Virtue P'o 5, 7 XP
—[X] Charisma 4, 1 XP
—[X] Manipulation 3 , 1 XP
—[X] Intelligence 5, 1 XP
—[X] Expression 2, 2 XP
—[X] Subterfuge 2, 2 XP
We let a Sun aligned Implement hit us while we didn't defend at all and then we hid while we were at a grand penalty of -1. A perfect defense can't help against stupidity. A defense cant help you if you don't use it.
In that scenario we could have actually made the attack and fired the perfect defense. A reflexive charm activation doesn't impact the action economy the same way an attack and defense action do.
Also, it tells us the grade of attack we can expect if something goes really wrong. As it stands someone with a perfect and those damage dice could kill us in two attacks and we'd have no recourse whatsoever.
We've been surprised multiple times by the presence and capabilities of our opponents. It takes one surprise of this type to put us in a deeply unpleasant place at best.
We have both multiple health bars and wound penalty reduction. We only have a -1 dice penalty until we are literally nearly dead. we roll 20-24 dice in a combat pool and can transform into a form that literally can't take wound penalties
Penalties compound, and when we get stuck in high tempo stuff healing becomes complicated. We also have to worry about attack flurries and mobs. CCI is good for stopping perfect attacks, but also for stuff like no selling all damage from a single source type or any type of damage from a particular person for a turn at a time.
So you can say "No Bullets" and be immune to them but not to knives for the turn if under heavy fire, or point at the boss and declare they can't hurt you while you dedicate all of your actual actions to offense. It can make a huge difference in how a fight plays out.
That would rely on a Zenith mirror Abyssal to have less than three stamina and us to roll particularly well with 9 dice. so pretty doubtful
We have a good amount of difficulty modifiers and he wasn't exactly built for combat. Additionally, he didn't make his threat until he felt the fight was turning. Doing a little bit of damage and then killing him an instantaneous attack he didn't see coming doesn't afford the same opportunity to try shit as he otherwise received.
2.1) Molly gets a perfect defense in Ablation of Brass and Fire. Yes, it only works in urban environment. I posit that it is more than good enough. Most our activities happen in such areas. And Lord of the Land ability of shintai allows us to form urban environment around us when in shintai, which is the most likely use case for a perfect defense
A large number of our actions have very much not, and once we have a perfect defense we're unlikely to pick up a second. It also has an unimpressive secondary by comparison. Can be used to block an arbitrary number of attacks as long as they happen on the same turn and you make a good call on the source.
One of the biggest mechanical threats we've talked about is how multi action penalties can pile up. If someone pops a flurry on us CCI would stop it and let us attack with no penalty. With ABF we'd still have to choose between full defense or tanking the vast majority of the attacks with heavily penalized defensive actions.
We have to work around this problem pretty regularly, pretty much every boss fight where we've been targeted by adds would've benefited.
That's well worth a difference of 4 exp. It's substantially more valuable than say one of the homebrew dice substitution charms or an attack that we can barely hit anyone with.
Yes the ego charms would help, but you're talking about spending 2 motes to get a dice pool we can then toggle excellency on. Setting it up would take the majority of our per turn mote spend and displace our other setup options. All for the privilege of something that doesn't synergize with our build.
Pretty sure we have a ruling that we can't use TA on charm effects, only weapons, just to name one example.
