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Shards of a Broken Sun [Deprecated; see link in final post for remake]

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Baughn said:
Especially with high damage output demons running around. I'm having a fun time trying to balance that.

So... I've already decided, but what do you think the difficulty of a called shot on the knee of a charging demonic bull is? Because that has become an issue.
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Called shot with a -1 or -2 External penalty. It would depend on how difficult I want the fight to be, and I'd probably hit the demon with a penalty to its movement based on the damage of the attack if it hit.
 
azoicennead said:
Your GM was kind of a dick. I'm sorry.
(Also, unless that was a really impressive manse, you should have had hours, if not days, to get [Manse] miles away - assuming this is 2e and after Oadenol's Codex, otherwise it was just dickery.)
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He Instantly brought the Manse from "Full Health" to "Fucking Exploding" in a single flurry, so he basically did the equivilent of blow a fourty meter hole in a dam and watched it crumble to pieces in seconds.

It was a really, ridiculously minmaxed Bronze Faction assassin who was going after my Solar for her showing herself while opposing an attempt from a major Demon to get summoned without bindings. As in "He literally has nothing that doesn't make him a better killer". To the point where "Second Circle Demon is dropped in front of him, he kills it in one tick"

Then when I got wise to his melee blenderness, I stealthed and started throwing rocks at him, that's when he decided to blow up my manse, then Ducked Fate the consequences, which the GM placed as "He teleports out of the area of effect, which is abut three miles"
 
Alectai said:
He Instantly brought the Manse from "Full Health" to "Fucking Exploding" in a single flurry, so he basically did the equivilent of blow a fourty meter hole in a dam and watched it crumble to pieces in seconds.
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Right, I go that.
By the mechanics in Oadenol's Codex (pages 50-51 and page 62), that means he did (Rating x 20) damage (Rating) times, causing Essence Buildup to start. A 3-dot Manse takes 5 days to finish Essence Buildup, at which point it explodes*. A 4-dot Manse takes 5 hours, and a 5-dot manse takes one scene. Unless your manse was made of Explodium, that's not how manses work. That was your GM's decision to fiat your character to death being made obvious.

* I missed the paragraph saying manses only hit (Rating x 100) yards for (Rating x 5 + 5) Aggravated damage, rather than (Rating) miles.
 
azoicennead said:
Right, I go that.
By the mechanics in Oadenol's Codex (pages 50-51 and page 62), that means he did (Rating x 20) damage (Rating) times, causing Essence Buildup to start. A 3-dot Manse takes 5 days to finish Essence Buildup, at which point it explodes*. A 4-dot Manse takes 5 hours, and a 5-dot manse takes one scene. Unless your manse was made of Explodium, that's not how manses work. That was your GM's decision to fiat your character to death being made obvious.

* I missed the paragraph saying manses only hit (Rating x 100) yards for (Rating x 5 + 5) Aggravated damage, rather than (Rating) miles.
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He did something like 130 health levels (He had something on the lines of 30 base damage thanks to all of his layered spells and charms, and he attacked eight times against an immobile target), but yeah, the rest was bullshit.

When I protested (Strongly), I was told in no uncertain terms that I had no grounds to argue with the ST's interpretation of the rules, and if I didn't like it, I could just fuck right off the game. So I did.

Doesn't mean I liked it, as I enjoyed that character and had a lot of XP too.
 
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Alectai said:
He did something like 130 health levels (He had something on the lines of 30 base damage thanks to all of his layered spells and charms, and he attacked eight times against an immobile target), but yeah, the rest was bullshit.

When I protested (Strongly), I was told in no uncertain terms that I had no grounds to argue with the ST's interpretation of the rules, and if I didn't like it, I could just fuck right off the game. So I did.

Doesn't mean I liked it, as I enjoyed that character and had a lot of XP too.
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That honestly sounds like the kind of thing that a GM would do in response to you trying waaaaay too hard to OMH them.
 
Hey, thanks to your questions about Perfect Dodging things i remembered a question i had to ask: everyone using a pierce ability has apparently a single chance of hurting us even if we use a perfect effect(Explanation of the "Mechanics" found here by Baughn), but what would happen if we used two differents charms with two different effects to defend ourselfes?

Also, in the case our exaltation will be able to "unlock the infernal charms", will Amu be able to learn/invent heresy charms? Becuase, should the answer at the first question of this post be positive, Emerald Angel Unfurling could become a very useful charm.
 
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Giygas said:
Hey, thanks to your questions about Perfect Dodging things i remembered a question i had to ask: everyone using a pierce ability has apparently a single chance of hurting us even if we use a perfect effect(Explanation of the "Mechanics" found here by Baughn), but what would happen if we used two differents charms with two different effects to defend ourselfes?

Also, in the case our exaltation will be able to "unlock the infernal charms", will Amu be able to learn/invent heresy charms? Becuase, should the answer at the first question of this post be positive, Emerald Angel Unfurling could become a very useful charm.
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Integrity Protecting Prana is much better anyway.
 
Alectai said:
Integrity Protecting Prana is much better anyway.
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Yes, it is. But we know that everyone with Pierce and very powerful entities can nullify our Shaping/Perfect protections(Even if only one time in the case of Pierce), thus it is better having redundancies(should the GM say to us that is actually useful) to make their live difficult and make our life less miserable.
 
Skelm said:
So, I've been thinking about which combat charms we should purchase, assuming that Amu is going to get into more fights eventually.

I'm going to assume this is after hell week is over, as 4-6 charms simply isn't enough to compete with actual military equipment. I'm also going to assume that harmonizer equip forces can handle anything weak but numerous, so this will be focused on handling single powerful enemies, like Samael, or other bosses.

I've restricted this to war, thrown and archery for now, since there are so many melee and martial arts charms. I may do them later.

@Baughn Are we using the official Solar Hero Style, or are we using the Fist of the Daystar rewrite?

War

Since the Dawn solution, war has also served as a sort of generalised combat ability, with several charms that apply to personal scale combat, rather than whole battle fields, in particular:

Elegant Dance of Bow and Blade
War 3, Essence 2

Allows Amu to reflexively (mid-action) switch between any weapon she has available, including nothing for martial arts. The first switch in any action/flurry is free, all subsequent ones cost 1 mote.

This is not an amazingly useful charm, except that it's the prerequisite for the next two:

Dawn King's Strife
War 4, Essence 3

This charm allows all Dawn caste Excellencies and Infinite (Ability) Mastery's to be cross applied. Unlike the next charm, this does not even come with a surcharge.

Combined with an Infinite (Ability) Mastery, probably in war, this would allow her to maintain peek human (8-10) dice pools in every combat ability for the whole scene. With the next charm as well, or appropriate training, Amu would have dice pools in the 18-20 range.

The comment below this charm in the original Ink Monkies blog post strongly implies that this is supposed to allow one invocation of Infinite (Ability) Mastery to enhance all Dawn caste abilities at no extra cost:


Supreme Martial Instinct
War 4, Essence 3

For 1 mote and 1 willpower, this charm raises Amu's rating in all Dawn case abilities to match whichever one is currently the highest, for the rest of her current action/flurry. These increased ratings also increase the dice caps on excellencies accordingly.

With this charm, combined with the previous, Amu will automatically reach the limit of excellency enhanced competence at every method of fighting, even with no training whatsoever, for as long as she can pay the willpower cost.

We definitely need to get the first two charms and an Infinite Mastery, but the third one is less obvious. If we intend to use an ability lots, we would still need to buy charms for it, which means purchasing the dots like normal.

Thrown

Joint Wounding Attack, which we already have, is the big one here. For two motes, it imposes a penalty for the rest of the scene equal to the amount of damage taken. Unlike raw damage, this is something that can't necessarily be duplicated by e.g. tanks. Since most things powerful enough to need Amu are going to have much larger quantity of health then dice, this charm allows her to utterly cripple an enemies ability to attack and defend well before she could deal enough damage to kill it, in turn making it much easier for both her and the JP's to hurt the target.

The two other potentially useful charms are Observer-Deceiving Attack, which makes the target pass a difficult check to notice the attack in time to respond and Falling Icicle Strike which doubles damage on an unexpected attack. Neither of these can be applied to other abilities.

The best throwing weapon in the core book is a javelin, which give a bonus of 1 to the attack roll, has base damage of (Strength+3) and halves the effect of soak (Does the piercing tag still do that?).

Amu, when merged with Ran and using the above war charms to apply Infinite Mastery, would get 20+1 dice to attack. As this is a surprise attack, the opponents Defence Value is 0 and she gets 10.5 threshold successes. The damage dealt is 6 (base damage) + 10.5 (accuracy bonus) - Soak/2. This would normally be halved by the damage roll (on average) but Falling Icicle Strike reverses that. Joint Wounding Attack can then turn this into a penalty for the rest of the battle.

This charm combination takes total of 4 motes to use, requires one more dot in Thrown and none of the charms used have extraneous prerequisites. There Is No Wind can also be used to remove all penalties to the shot, for another 3 motes.

Unfortunately, the difficulty to notice Observer-Deceiving Attack is reduced by one each time it is used, so this strategy is only useful for the first four attacks at most.

I believe that Amu's heart beam counts as a throwing weapon, in which case it would negate the need for ammunition and would probably do more damage.

Archery
Archery has two main damage enhancers: Essence Arrow Attack, that adds (Essence+4) damage to an attack, and Lambent Bolt of Annihilation, which explodes dealing (Essence) damage within (Essence*5) yards.

As with throwing attacks, a bow has +1 accuracy, so Amu+Ran gets 21 dice to attack. Unlike the throwing attack, this is probably not a surprise attack, as she has a very poor stealth rating, so the accuracy bonus averages (10.5 - DV). Piercing ammunition for bows has a base damage of (Strength) and halves soak. The total damage dealt by the initial attack is then (3 + 10.5 - Soak/2 - DV)/2. The explosion then deals (4 - Soak)/2 damage.

This causes significantly less damage then the corresponding thrown attacks, largely due to a lack of surprise attacks, and for a much higher cost of 7 motes plus three more if using There Is No Wind.

This implies that archery is inferior to thrown when fighting a single target, at least for the first few shots.
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A very good analysis, but I have a couple points.

Thrown has comparatively less range so it requires us to be fairly close to the target. You are right that Thrown has better dps for the beginning of combat because it is built to be a close up ambush fighting style or a dirty trick during a fight using melee or martial arts. It falters in larger scale battles or against foes that good (wits+awarness)

Also in exalted obtaining stealth is a roll off between the targets (wits+awareness+2) and the attackers (stealth+dexterity+stunt) with a bonus of 2 auto successes (which is worth 4 dice) if they are obscured from view or invisible, this should be fairly easy to get in an urban environment fighting from archery ranges. Even with no dots in stealth we are going to be rolling an average of 4 successes before stunt dice. That is pretty damn good against a foe that isn't focused on sensory information especially if they are going to be eating external penalties from being in a fucking warzone, and having hundreds of threats to keep track of. It is also the same difficulty to notice Observer-Deceiving Attack Not great but still something fairly viable.

It should also be noted that Joint-Wounding Attack has the martial keyword so we could apply it to archery attacks as well.
 
Some more dice rolls. Don't mind me.
Giygas said:
Yes, it is. But we know that everyone with Pierce and very powerful entities can nullify our Shaping/Perfect protections(Even if only one time in the case of Pierce), thus it is better having redundancies(should the GM say to us that is actually useful) to make their live difficult and make our life less miserable.
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Any given weakness can be used once, yes. You're assuming they all know different weaknesses, and for that matter that they all know precisely one.

All "Pierce" means is "They are able to get past some defences".
Baughn threw 8 10-faced dice. Reason: Dodge Total: 38
10 10 4 4 4 4 2 2 2 2 7 7 4 4 5 5
 
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Hmm... 3 successes on eight dice, not great, but not poor either. That's still solidly action-hero level evasion.

Assuming Matou spends a willpower, that's pretty comfortably enough to dodge a falling bullhead man or a conventional attack.
 
Ahhhh.

Yeah, looks like he used to be a stern judge of the dead, and then he took some Black★Rocks to the knee at Sufficient Velocity.
 
Alectai said:
Hmm... 3 successes on eight dice, not great, but not poor either. That's still solidly action-hero level evasion.

Assuming Matou spends a willpower, that's pretty comfortably enough to dodge a falling bullhead man or a conventional attack.
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I realised after a minute that it could be misinterpreted, yes. You don't roll for dodge in this system at all; that was Dex + Athletics for a direct attack on the bull, plus a stunt, minus a 1-point penalty for—

<Rock> What the hell are you doing?

Which the bull tried, and failed, to dodge. It does have a shitload of penalties at this point. Let's see what happens next.
Baughn threw 4 10-faced dice. Reason: Lift a bull Total: 21
3 3 8 8 2 2 8 8
Baughn threw 6 10-faced dice. Reason: Grab an annoying girl Total: 40
4 4 7 7 7 7 10 10 6 6 6 6
 
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Black Impulse: Monday's Turmoil: 4
  • Sidestory
    • Black Impulse

    The bull was five metres away. Four. Then three, cracking the asphalt with its steps.

    A sharp crack echoed through the street, a bullet grazing the edge of the bull's knee and eliciting a pained moo. Then another—she shot twice, quickly—from her hands, which were tightly curled around a massive gun. She was going to stop it. The bull was losing its balance, right knee reduced to a bloody ruin by the second shot, but now she had to sidestep.

    The bull half stumbled, half fell towards her. It would come too close to Hiro for comfort, but that was unavoidable; it was twice her size, maybe a thousand times her weight, and she couldn't safely stop it. She poised herself to jump away. If he was so unlucky that it fell on him, he'd be crushed—

    She couldn't let it get near him at all!

    "Get away!" She shouted, throwing herself at the bull's wounded leg while mentally screaming and pushing her way through fog—cursing herself for her foolishness. They crashed into each other, the bull roaring in agony as her backpack hit its ruined knee with a sickening snap.

    A moment later, so did she. The straps on her backpack tore, the bull's massive momentum easily sending her back the way she'd come. As the world twisted like a whirligig, she had just enough time to realise that Hiro had gotten away before she crashed into the ground, and even the shock of feeling her face scraping against asphalt wasn't enough to stop a burst of relief.

    Then the bull crashed down on top of her, pinning her to the ground.

    She threw every drop of energy she had into pulling herself out. Uselessly. The best she could manage was to free a single, clammy hand, which she quickly used to form another gun. If she couldn't get away, she could at least kill it—quickly, before it—

    "Now, none of that," the bull rumbled, grabbing her hand with bone-crushing pressure from one of its own. She trashed, trying to get free, but it wasn't giving her the slightest bit of leeway. "That hurt. About like this, I imagine."

    Moments later the description was no longer metaphorical, and her eyes widened in shock as she felt her hand being mangled. Somehow it didn't hurt, but she could feel the bones being crushed, muscles and tendons ripped from their sockets. She could hear it, too.

    "Hmm." The bull repeated its actions with her other hand, and a foot, then pushed her against the wall. Its voice was a low rumble, deeper than any she'd heard but still easily understandable. It sounded almost… disappointed. "I was expecting more screams. You are certainly a tough little spirit."

    If she wasn't screaming, it was only because of shock. Why wasn't she bleeding? There should be blood—What was she going to do? She couldn't shoot it, not without hands, she couldn't run away even if the bull had stayed outside of easy grabbing range, which it hadn't. It had already crippled her—Rock, help!

    Rock seemed to have gone away. She stared at the bull as it continued its lecture, tears gathering in her eyes.

    "So are you a sinner? Or are you not?" The bull rumbled at her, tapping her remaining foot menacingly. "I look up, and I see a sinner beyond compare, but after catching her I find she's as pure as the driven snow. That is not how this is supposed to work."

    It shifted position, pulling its wounded knee forwards for inspection. To her horror, she saw it was slowly knitting itself back together.

    "It is a mystery." It scratched at its wound with one enormous hand, poking at oddly shaped shards of bone that went amorphous at its touch. She watched, unable or unwilling to look away, until it stopped and, narrowing its nearly glowing red eyes at her, closed its hand around her remaining foot. She nearly screamed in anticipation—she did let out a little yelp—but then it stopped, halfway.

    "But you did assault me, which should have been sufficient sin on its own. It always has been before. Sinner, I know not how your mind has twisted itself to escape my eyes, but it shall not avail you for long. Your own actions have ensured I have the time to spend, and your nature ensures that I need not risk your death."

    Snap. Crackle.

    "Not interested in talking? We shall see."

    Pop.

    She squeezed her eyes shut so she wouldn't need to watch, trying her best to also ignore the weird feelings and ugly, wet sounds issuing from her legs. There was no way to stop the tears when, after finishing with her feet, it moved on to her knees.

    — — —​

    Crash.

    "Stay away from my sister, you… big ugly!"

    "Hiro?" She asked weakly, slowly opening her eyes. No. It can't be! He was supposed to be safe!

    The world swam into focus, giving her a view of Hiro, her little brother—chest heaving, holding the remains of a crate that he'd evidently—impossibly, he shouldn't be that strong—had smashed into the bull's head. He had dodged back to just outside of the bull's range, if it didn't… It could still reach her, if it twisted around. "No. Run away…"

    She didn't know if he'd even heard her. She felt dazed—nothing worked right. She tried to lift her arms, but she couldn't, her shoulders were ruined—

    Parts of the crate clattered to the ground around her. The bull ignored it, staring at Hiro with some incredulity.

    "Child," it rumbled. "Did you call this one your sister?" It paused, and he took a wavering step backwards. "I see that you believe that. You were acting in defence of family. However, child, I am afraid you are mistaken; this one has been misleading you—"

    "I'm not!" Hiro shouted at it, eyes full of tears but refusing to budge any further. He shook his head wildly. "I'm not… She is my sister! Maybe she's gotten scary, and pale and stuff, but she's still Mato! I've known her all my life, so stop hurting her!"

    He dug at the ground, picking up random pieces of garbage and throwing it at the bull. "Child—" It started saying something, then a piece of wrapping paper hit it in the eye and it had to lift an arm to defend itself. It held up under that assault for perhaps half a minute before getting up on one foot and roaring.

    "Enough! You may be an innocent, but do not believe that makes me defenceless. Desist from this lunacy, or else—"

    Crack.

    "You—"

    The bull twisted, just fast enough that the next hit from the—fireplace poker?—hit it on the side of its head instead of the back.

    Smash.

    "Oh, no. You weren't supposed—"

    Crash.

    The child she'd been trying to rescue, a girl of maybe ten years old, readied her metal bar for a fourth strike as the bull fell to the ground. Then she hit it again.

    Bang.

    And again.

    Slam.

    The bull's image started wavering. On the sixth stroke, instead of hitting it, the poker slammed into the asphalt—going through the its head—and tore itself from her fingers. Mato could see her looking around for it in a panic, for a second, but then the bull faded entirely from existence.

    "Oh god. Oh god—" The girl drew a raspy breath, staring at where the bull had disappeared, then spotted the two corpses and walked unsteadily towards them. "Sakura. Izayoi-kun. Oh god—" She was starting to hyperventilate.

    Her phone, sitting on the ground where the bull had disappeared, gave off a ping.

    Mato, through her wavering vision, saw Hiro crouching down in front of her. His face was a mask of fear. "Nee-chan. Are you—" He shook his head. She wanted to answer, but she was having trouble speaking. "What do I do?"

    "Oh god—" The girl had sat down on the ground, and was hugging Sakura's corpse to her chest, rocking from side to side. She seemed insensible.

    "Yui…?" Hiro said, his voice questioning. He turned to look at her. "Yui-chan! Call for help. You have to call an ambulance! Please!"

    "Who…?" Yui finally seemed to notice him. "Kuroi-kun? What are you doing here?" She blinked. "Oh. My phone—"

    "Here!" Hiro scrambled to give it to her. "Hurry, my sister needs help."

    "Sakura, too—" She took the phone, opening it with shaking hands. "Oh god. Sakura—"

    [ ] Write-in?


    A/N: Well, that was unpleasant.
     
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  • Sidestory
    • Damn. That was a True Demon, wasn't it?

    Because if that was a typical Demon at roughly Mato's level... Uh, shit.
     
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    Alectai said:
    Damn. That was a True Demon, wasn't it?

    Because if that was a typical Demon at roughly Mato's level... Uh, shit.
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    Typical demon, at roughly Mato's level. This guy would have had a decent chance at surviving that nuclear strike.

    To be fair, he was obviously old enough to have a bit of a personality. He may or may not be instanced. I haven't written his backstory; I'm not sure Yui will be summoning him anytime soon.
     
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