Here's another updated version.
Changes:
- Tweaked sidenote placement
- Added a "How to Play" section with definition for notation
- Changed onslaught penalties to apply after attack roll but before damage, and clarified counterattacks to still happen even if the attack roll fails
- Changed phase resolution to make Clash attacks work better and to say what happens if a character's incapacitated
I think the last item there should answer
@Irked's hypothetical: the Clashes would be resolved in order from highest (Join Battle, then Dexterity + Athletics as a tiebreaker) to lowest for each pair, and anybody who dies wouldn't Clash with anyone lower in that oder.
Page 9: The +3s on JB isn't quite right, unless you intend for an initiative shift to give you 6 initiative plus the result of the roll.
Page 10: The rules on driving yourself into Crash changed between the leak and the backer release:
If a character forces himself into Initiative Crash (such
as by using a Charm which costs Initiative to activate),
then the Initiative Break bonus is awarded to the opponent
most directly responsible for provoking the action
which caused the character to Crash, at the Storyteller's
discretion.
Also, Initiative Shifts are harder to get than you say: You can only do it
while still in Initiative Crash, not at any point later in the fight.
Page 11: The descriptions of the modified range bands seem pretty weird with the variable zone sizes. Four city blocks is not too far for semaphore flags to work! This also causes weirdness with weapon ranges, but I'm willing to accept that as a funky gameplay abstraction.
Also, difficult terrain in the original rules only halves your reflexive movement - disengaging, etc. get the -3 penalty instead of this, not in addition to it. This is important, because in the rules as you've presented them, disengaging doesn't actually
disengage unless you do it twice in a row, which is surely not intentional.
Sidebar 16: Why would you rush a guy who's already in the same zone as you?
Page 12: I'm pretty sure the -3 penalty to stealth only applies if you try to hide again while already fighting, and not if you're hidden at the start of the fight. Yes, this is very badly communicated.
Page 13: You're allowed to aim with a non-ranged weapon, too.
Also, I'm pretty sure you do get your last action if you get incapacitated on the same tick you act - unless this is a deliberate change you're making?
Page 14: Shanking a guy you're holding at bay is an ambush attack, not a surprise attack.
Page 15: You have to already be in stealth before you can start making Go to Ground actions.
Page 16: Just as a matter of formatting, I'd put "other simple action" at the end of the list, not in alphabetical order. Just as a matter of convention, "other" always goes last.
Technically, you can only move and then rush; you can't rush and then move.
Page 17: Difficult terrain doesn't give you a bonus to take cover; it just says that it's often easy (and so should usually have a low difficulty set by the ST).
Also, cover goes Light-Heavy-Total, not Light-Medium-Heavy. Changing the terminology will just mislead everyone who looks at your writeup and then looks at charms that talk about heavy cover.
Page 19: A withering savage automatically hits, even if you roll 0 successes.
Page 20: Why are steps 3 and 4 separate?
Echoing Irked that decisive attacks only cost 2-3i if you miss.
I'm going to disagree about when onslaught should be applied - more on this below.
Oh, and you should specify somewhere when charm costs are paid - presumably right after being declared.
Page 21: I think you should swap 7e and 7f so that, in the strange event that someone is somehow crashed by a decisive attack, the attacker actually gets the bonus.
Page 24: I don't think being hit by lightning is actually uncountable damage. I wouldn't call an avalanche uncountable, either, unless you actually get swept down the side of the mountain and buried - which would certainly happen to a real person, but standing your ground and swatting every stone aside with your daiklave is totally the kind of thing an exalt could do.
About onslaught: I don't think Double Attack Technique actually indicates that the designers intended for onslaught to tick up in the middle of attack resolution. I think it indicates that whoever wrote it said "The second attack benefits from onslaught because it's a separate attack, and I don't care that it's being resolved as part of the first attack. I will cheerfully ignore the rules implications of this because
that's the way I roll, baby." Let's face it, we all know that that's how the 3e devs roll. Besides, ticking onslaught up in the middle of attack resolution feels super-hairy, and given the option between a hairy interpretation of the rules and a clean one, I'll err on the side of cleanliness every time.
