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Combat as a Dragon-Blooded

There are unique tactics in combat for each sort of Exalt. For Celestials, these are broken up into more or less four categories; Abyssal combat, Solar combat, Lunar combat, and Sidereal combat.

For DB's, however, there is no generic Dragon-Blooded combat. Each aspect approaches combat in its own way. You might say, "Oh, hell no, I can favor another aspect's combat ability."

But, you know, you'd be wrong. That 1 mote surcharge on every charm, with your teeny tiny essence pool, means that if you're using out-of-aspect charms, they'd better be few and far between.

Anyway, I decided to write up the 4 tactics for each aspect below. I say 4, not 5; this is inspired by Mailanka's own write-up for Air-Aspects, and there's no need for me to repeat what she's already said better than I can. (His write-up for the Air-aspects can be found here: DragonBloodedTactics)

Tactics of Pasiap

The first thing to note is their anima ability; at a cost of 5 motes, they can soak Lethal damage with their full Stamina. This is the first hint of a strategy you will see often and repeatedly with the chosen of Pesiap; Soak, Soak, Soak. Their martial art has an incredibly good soak charm (even for a mere Terrestrial charm), and you'll note their favored abilities include Resistance and Endurance; soak is something no Earth-aspect should ever lack. (This is slightly less handy with the EPC ping rules, but....)

Frankly, you have to keep in mind the nature of Earth-aspects; slow, strong, patient - willing to take the time to strike at the correct moment, rather than rushing things through. This is important when you take into account their abilities - AWareness doesn't seem like the almighty combat tree, but...

-Entombed Mind Technique (Ess 2) -Sense-Destroying Method (Ess 3) -Essence Disruption Attack (Ess 4)

You'll note that these are the sort of broadly useful charms that appeal to a combatant who has the soak to make combat last indefinitely - Entombed Mind Technique takes time to enact, but will put your target into a deep sleep. (5 minutes is a really long time in 3-second combat round, so this requires generousity on the ST's part.) You'll note an Earth-aspect is the definite sort to befriend someone to the point where they can use this charm, and take the opportunity to assassinate them. Not only those with Stealth as favored abilities are assassins.

Sense-destroying Method is useful in any sort of situation; the penalties associated with blinding your oppontent (one turn per point of perm ess.) are nice (-1 penalty to attacks vs. your DB, or the blind-fighting penalties if your sxx's exceed their perception, in which case they lose 2 sxx's on all attacks.)

Essence Disruption Attack is a more high-end charm, and encourages your opponent to wear down their essence reserves - it's the sort of charm that pretty much cancels out Stunts as a means of recovering Essence, and condemns your opponent to a steadily shrinking essence pool. Again, this favors the sort of DB that can weather an ongoing battle, to take advantage of the time when your opponent finally runs out of Essence - none of the above 3 charms are especially potent "Run in and bash them apart" charms.

Next are your Craft charms. The most obviously helpful charm is the Flaw-Finding Examination; make a disarm attempt against your opponent's armor or weapon as normal, but double your successes. If mundane armor/weapon, it's destroyed. Given that the difficutly of a disarm is only 3, this means you need to score only 2+ successes to leave your opponent disarmed or disarmored - either reducing their ability to attack you, resist you, or make them waste time recovering their weapon. You can see how this plays up the "Wait for the right time, wear them down, break them apart" strategy that tends to embody Earth-aspects.

Endurance: Ox-Body requires no explanation. The various Earth meditations are eminently helpful if you plan on going assassin-style; the ability to endure conditions that no one *should* be able to endure is exactly the sort of thing that lets you get into unexpected places (like sleeping at the bottom of your target's favorite lake until he visits it to meditate, and then emerging from the still waters to break the stupid fuck's neck before he ever realizes that he's not alone.)

Unfeeling Earth Meditation / Untiring Earth Meditation both kill wound penalties; very few charms do this. They're amazingly useful (especially given that they further enhance the use of Ox-Body; remember, every Ox-Body level moves up a category when you use Wound-Penalty Negating charms.)

I need not go into details about Unflagging Vengeance Meditation. It rocks. Unfortunately, it has like 6 prereq charms, so you won't be seeing it in use too soon.

Martial Arts; I'm going to talk about the 5DF, here, not the Glorious Dragon Styles. After all, we're talking about normal earth-aspects, not immaculates. (Besides, do I really need to go into detail about how to kick ass with an Immaculate? "Activate your fucking charms, swift.") Remember, this MA is compatible with armor - soak, baby, soak.

5 Dragon Fortitude is your first charm, and a reflexive one at that (meaning you can use it all you want, baby, any time.) 1 mote adds 2B or 1L to your soak for an attack, and is compatible with armor.

Your second charm in the tree is scene-length already, and you're adding Essence in dice to all your parries (including bare-handed), be it with Martial Arts or not. Just so we're clear, you have a scene-length parry-booster, reflexive soak boosters, and armor. Do you see where we're going with this "Wear down your opponent and live forever while you're at it" theme?

Your anima is now replaced by your form charm; for the same 5 motes, you're still getting to use your full stamina to soak. You also, however, get to do lethal damage with your MA attacks, and other misc. shit.

There are more kick-ass martial arts charms in this "mere" terrestrial form, but I'll leave the list at that, since there are other trees to describe, and you've gotten the idea.

Last is Resistance. Aside from the obvious Defense-from-Anathema method (which is just whoop-ass, but doesn't really fit in with the Thematics)... you have three important charms. Strength of Stone will boost your strength and stamina each by one for the remainder of the scene, at a cost of 2 motes. (More than a little useful; that's +.5 HL's of damage, +1B/.5L soak[+1L if using the 5DForm or your anima], and the other bonuses of having a higher stamina, since charms that increase soak or wound penalties tend to cap at sta. or sta+end). Impervious Skin of Stone adds 2L/2B per 1 mote for the /scene/, capped at Essence. Mountain Toppling Method increases your strength by 5 for one turn, while using a Jade weapon.

So, just to get Resistance covered... we can have, at ess. 3, for 3 motes of essence committed, a +3B/2.5L soak bonus and +1 strength. This is nice.

You may add in Element Protection Form (earth) to give you an Essence bonus to your soak for the scene (3 motes) against metal weapons (no exception is made for 5MM, but charm-enhanced attacks are immune to this as they're immune to the bonus from SKin of Stone.)

....Okay, so, Chosen of Pasiap /soak a lot/ and /wear you down/. These are the guys who will take their time picking and pinging at you - and they can, because between their super-soak, very-nice-parries, I-Blind-Your-Ass charm, and Armor-Destroying / Instant-Disarming charms, you're going to have a difficult time mounting an effective offensive. Naturally, their biggest weak point is the EPC ping rules. Their super-soak doesn't help much against that. It would not be unfair to give them one-half of their Lethal soak as Hardness; I do believe that was the standard used to assign Hardness to armor in the EPC.

Tactics of Hesiesh

Oh, those silly Chosen of Hesiesh.

Now, you don't have to look /too/ hard to see the interacting combat skills here - Dodge and Melee are the big'uns. Athletics traditionally has an "I jump on you" charm, but really, that's missing the point.

What's important is to keep one charm name in mind; Hopping Firecracker Evasion. Not because that charm is amazing or anything, but because the name sums up the Fire-aspect's method of attack. You jump, you hop, you leap, you dodge, you avoid - you should be moving around the field of battle like a god damned firecracker.

Falling Star Maneuver is the obvious athletics charm here, for a straight-up damage bonus. However, what's likely more important is Bellows-Pumping Stride, which will double your speed for the scene at the cost of 1 mote. Combined with Incense Smoke Ladder and/or Dancing Ember Stride, you can navigate to positions that your opponent simply can't hope to match - running up walls and hanging out on the cielings, or just jumping into the sky and hovering there for a round or two. Whatever you choose, this is Evasion Number One. Evasion is important; maintaining a handy position relative to your opponent can be the difference between life and death. (Make him follow you up a cliff face; Threshold Warding Stance will let you dodge on a three-inch outcropping; what the fuck's /he/ gonna do?) Not to mention, after all, the old tried-and-true method of "Attack and RUN THE F*** AWAY! RUN! RUN!" If you're fast enough (or, hey, maybe you just use Dancing Ember Stride to keep you up in mid-air while the other guyis looking down a sheer drop) you may be able to pull off a drive-by and not even get attacked in return.

I need not go into detail about the dodge tree; it dodges. Arrow Consuming Flame Defense is nice if you use your Athletics to put you in a spot out-of-reach for melee combatans and all they've left are arrows. Smoldering Karma Strike is a nice combination with Safety Among Enemies; combined with Smoldering Karma Strike, you can do some decent damage to large groups of enemies. For a dragon-blood, anyway.

There's even less to say about the Melee tree than the dodge tree. You have a sword; now it's a really well-swung sword. Dragon-Graced Weapon is probably one of my favorite charms in the tree; don't overlook it.

Don't overlook presence; Glowing Coal Radiance will keep extras from flooding you, and Aura of Invulnerability is no joke - 3 motes for +1B/1L soak, +3 bruised HL's.

... I have no idea how to use Socialize in combat. There's a reason for that; Socialize is handy for things /related/ to combat, much like certain Presence charms (like Warlord's Convocation) are. When you need to gather a fang of DB's, you use Warlord's Convocation. When you need to get the imperial treasury to issue them all jade armor, you whip out the socialize charms. Phantom Fire-Warrior Horde is a basic presence booster, useful for those Mail and Steel rolls.

The Fire-aspects are our charismatic leaders, remember - and one of the things a good trooper does is get his subordinates the equipment they need. (Or, you know, fuck with the morale of enemy troops - calling for negotiations with the enemy is a great opportunity to fuck the guy's with Brother-Against-Brother Insinuation left-and-right, and then go back to your camp and plan out your attack while your enemies are all losing cohesion in the ranks.)

Essentially, your fire-aspect is running, leaping, and hopping all over the place - be it to evade his opponents one-on-one, or to manage his unit (and with Swift Legion technique, he can bring his unit to bear all about the battlefield in a timely fashion.) He is not a soak monster, nor does he approach things patiently - he's the guy you send in fast to wreak havoc and run back out again. Obviously, fire-aspects are meant to work in groups more than any other Exalt; no one else shares their abilities so thoroughly (DB's can share their melee bonuses, dodge bonuses, speed bonuses, temporary bruised HL's - they're /built/ to work in groups; either with other DB's, or with groups of mortals. Even a handful of extras become a scary thing with a well-rounded fire-aspect herding them on.)

Comments

Any suggestions for Water and Wood combat tactics?
--BrilliantRain

I'd -love- some Wood tactics. In my opinion, their charm-set is the least flexible... I know there's a damage-adder in ride, but it's hardly useful most of the time unless you have an anima-immune familiar... which isn't so unlikely, but Thrown gives you armour, reflexive defenses, increased offence, and even some other stuff. Archery just doesn't compare by the book. (Although various custom charms, notably Telgar's dragon-blooded addons, often fix that)
-- Darloth

Myself I'm having problems coming up with really good tactics for Water aspect DBs. I get that they can grapple really well, but how do they do defence? Near as I can tell they just got one the one defensive charm.
--BrilliantRain