Okay, so let's talk about Solar Brawl.
Solar Brawl
Solar Brawl is widely considered one of the most powerful Charmsets in the entire game, and it's also a very large set, which gives us an opportunity to look at how Ex3 constructs Charmsets, how Solars are designed, and why they're so overpowering.
Fundamentals
There are four Solar Brawl Charms with Prerequisites of "None," forming the root of the ability tree. They are Fists of Iron Technique, Ferocious Jab, Vicious Lunge, and Thunderclap Rush Attack. FoIT is a simple damage enhancer, but it's
incredibly efficient: For just 1m, you add between +1 and
+9 damage (it "ignores soak," which is somewhat different, but since it ignores untyped soak it's effectively the same as adding raw damage). The closer you are to the end of the curve, the better the Charm is. And because it keys off Intimacies, that means that the first thing Brawl is saying is:
It wants you to care. Solar Brawl is not a style for dispassionate professionals. It can
function as basic self-defense tools, but that's not where it's strong. FoIT's strength scales directly with how much your
personal beliefs, connections and passions are at stake in this fight. That can mean caring about your opponent - if you have a Major Tie of Hatred or Friendly Rivalry or "I Must Surpass Them," you'll be stronger than against some random assassin who jumped you in an dark alley. But you will be
strongest if you just start the game with something like a Defining Principle of "I exult in violence." That means FoIT will always add +5 damage for 1m at E1, and will grow stronger with your Essence rating. But it
also means that your optimal Brawl Solar is
always going around with a Defining Principle that people can tap for social influence to get them to act unwisely. You'll be extremely easy to provoke into fights, for one thing.
That's the first narrative-mechanic interaction of Solar Brawl: To be the strongest Solar Brawler, you should be deeply emotionally invested in the fight, and that's something that will remain true
outside the fight and that people can use to manipulate you, but that you can use in turn to reject influence that oppose the source of your investment.
Vicious Lunge, meanwhile, is 1m, add +1 NCS to a grapple attack roll and (higher of Essence or 3) dice to the Initiative roll to confirm that grapple, which is a mild improvement in efficiency, but is really just the gatekeeper to the grapple tree. We'll talk more about Ferocious Jab later. As for Thunderclap Rush Attack, it's crazy. TRA lets you move a range band without using your reflexive movement to make an attack,
regardless of your place in the initiative order. The attack cannot be clashed, and does not have to be a Brawl attack. TRA is
omni-compatible. For 3 Brawl dots an one Charm, you get to always act first in a fight scene, or can keep it in reserve to fuck with an enemy's expected timing. TRA is once per scene
per target, and resets for a target every time you crash them. Multiple opponents? Just TRA all over the place. Single opponent? Just crash them and you get to use it again. It costs 3m. It's ridiculous.
What is Thunderclap Rush Attack saying? Well, again: This Charm requires only three dots and has
no prerequisites. What TRA is saying is that Brawl fundamentals can serve as
universal fundamentals, that the Solar Brawler hits first, hits hard, and can use their basics in Brawl to gain the initiative for an attack from any ability, enabling synergy with Martial Arts and Melee. And more importantly, it's saying Solar Brawl is faster than you. "Regardless of her position in the turn order." TRA has a short range limit, but within that short range - if anyone dares to engage you in close combat, essentially - you always get to go first, or twice in a row, or to fuck with an enemy's timing, and it's a card you can reset and play again easily at least once per fight.
Defense
Solar Brawl has the following defensive Charms: Iron Battle Focus, Wind and Stones Defense, Reckless Fury Discard, Solar Cross-Counter, Force-Rending Strike (with Intercepting Fury Smite as an upgrade), Blade-Rebuking Wrath, Dancing With Strife Technique, Wicked Dissolve Dust. What do these tell us? Well, for one thing, there are
far fewer defensive Charms than offensive Charms. Second, there's only a limited number of "bread and butter" tricks here compared to, say, Solar Melee. Iron Battle Focus lets you spend 3m to ignore
further onslaught penalties until your next action after having been
already attacked (but still suffer -1 from the first one). It's turn-long, so it's efficient if you're going to be suffering attacks from multiple sources, but by contrast Dipping Swallow Defense in Melee lets you spend 2m to ignore
all Defense penalties against one attack. That's generally a better Charm in a duel.
Wind and Stones Defense, meanwhile, is a very strange Charm at first glance. It costs 3m and increases your Defense
by your opponent's onslaught penalty. Again, in a duel, this isn't very good. It's only more efficient than the Brawl Excellency if the enemy has -2 onslaught or higher, so (again, at first glance), this Charm will only be worth it in battles with lots of characters on both sides, where people are likely to stack up huge onslaught penalties. There's a catch we'll get to later.
Reckless Fury Discard is another funny Charm. 3m, 1i, Perilous: Activate this Charm after your opponent's attack roll and raise your Defense by the number of 1s on the enemy's attack roll.
These are Charm dice. That means that if you have
already maxed out Defense up to your cap, you cannot gain any benefit from this Charm. But if you haven't, and your opponent rolls two 1s or more, then suddenly this becomes an efficient, post-attack damage adder. You just have to not max out your defense deliberately, and hope the enemy rolls poorly. Notably, this Charm takes precedence over attack Charms that reroll 1s, which means it
specifically counters Excellent Strike from Solar Melee. The Charm sets are designed in relation to one another.
As for Solar Cross-Counter, Force-Rending Strike, Blade-Rebuking Wrath, Dancing With Strife Technique, Wicked Dissolve Dust: They're a special
decisive counterattack after being hit by
withering attack, a reflexive decisive-only clash, a cheaper reflxive clash that deals no damage but automatically disarms the enemy, an upgrade that enhances FRS if you use an improvised weapon in the clash and destroy it, and a Charm that lets you use a clinched enemy as a shield against a decisive attack. And Dancing with Strife, which is just an opportunistic reward Charm - it doesn't enhance your defense in any way, just gives you a Willpower drip if you ever successfully defend.
What does that tell us, all put together? That Brawl's primary defense is
relentless offense. Your very first defensive Charm tells you "I can't do anything to protect you against the first attack each turn, only further attack if the enemy dogpiles you." The next one increases your Defense by how much relentless assault the opponent is suffering from. The next one wants you to
not spend motes raising your Essence and gambling on post-attack raises. Everything else is some manner of "attack as defense," whether that's counterattacks or clashes or using a grappled (ie attacked) enemy as a human shield. Solar Brawl doesn't want you to
defend. It wants you to be relentlessly attacking, always on the offensive, willing to let your guard slip and take it on the chin, facetanking through enemy assault.
And that ties into the most important mechanic of Solar brawl.
The Onslaught Engine
If Solar Brawl was a Magic: the Gathering deck, this would be its nickname, the core mechanical keyword on which everything else resolves. I said above that Wind and Stones was strange and only sometimes worth it, right? Well, that's not quite true.
The most important Charm in E1 Solar Brawl is
Falling Hammer Strike. It's another 1m wonder, and its effect is simple:
The onslaught penalty inflicted by your attack does not refresh until the next turn. This is regardless of decisive/withering attacks, and regardless of whether the attack succeeds. As long as the Solar is
making a Brawl attack at you this turn, your onslaught doesn't regenerate. This is cumulative: You inflict -1 onslaught which doesn't refresh, which means your next attack leaves the enemy at -2 onslaught, then at -3 onslaught... As long as you don't
stop attacking, the enemy's Defense will eventually reach 0.
Now, that's not in itself as much as a killer app as it could be, because every splat has some means of reducing or negative Defense penalties, particularly Onslaught. But because you're spending 1m on that effect and the opponent is spending
more mitigating it, you're ahead on the mote game. That's not all, though, because of a very important Ex3 rules: A penalty that is
negated still
exists. If I have a -3 penalty from being poisoned, and I use a Charm that lets me "ignore poison penalties," I get to not reduce my dice pools, but a character who uses a Charm that says "add dice equal to the target's poison penalty" would still count the full -3 penalty for the purposes of adding dice. Why does that matter?
Ferocious Jab: 1m, add withering/decisive damage dice
equal to target's onslaught penalty.
Wind and Stones Defense: 3m, raise Evasion/Parry
by attacker's onslaught penalty.
Ox-Stunning Blow: 4m, 1i, 1wp: A finishing move that inflicts a potentially considerable penalty that lasts
until the victim's onslaught penalty wears off.
If this is the fourth time you attack your opponent, they have a -3 onslaught penalty to Defense. Even if they negate it, you add +3 dice of damage, and when they next attack you, you can spend 3m to gain +4 Defense. If you hit them with OSB, they suffer a penalty to attacks and defense that lasts until they can make you
stop attacking them.
Every time a Solar attacks you, your defenses grow worse, their attacks hit harder, and their Defenses become more efficient. Using Falling Hammer Strike + Ferocious Jab + Wind and Stones Defense every turn costs 5m,
exactly the amount of motes they regain every turn, so they can do this literally forever.
That's the core of Solar Brawl: Relentless continued aggression against a single target. No time or energy wasted on defense, tank through everything, hit faster and harder every turn while your defenses grow passively more efficient. If the enemy can shut you down for even one turn, prevent you from making an attack action, then it all resets to 0 and you have to build up the bonuses again. That's why you have Resistance and Athletics, it's why you have Thunderclap Rush Attack to move out of turn order and cross the distance, it's why your very first Charm tells you "pick an Intimacy that makes you really, really want to stay in that fight." And then start hitting, and. Just. Keep. Going.
...
This isn't the strongest aspect of Solar Brawl. I've already typed nearly 2k words on the topic, so I'll stop here, but I have not touched on either 1) Grappling, 2) The "attack from base Initiative engine" that makes it so you will never throw a withering attack again in your life, instead hitting decisives frome base, resetting and immediately doing decisives again, or on the passive buffs like Adamantine/Orichalcum Fists of Battle. There's a lot more to say and
@Kaiya would have more experience than me with the set.
But Solar Brawl is very much saying something, and it very much wants you to have a specific
tactic. You can pick one of several - grappling Solar doesn't necessarily want the same things as striking Solars, Heaven Thunder Hammer obviates a lot of the need for "build up" shenanigans, the set is large because it
contains multiple playstyles. But these playstyles are coherent "card decks" trying to achieve specific outcomes through specific tactics, and those translates to a particular fighting style
within the narrative.
Hope this was instructive.
