Difference between revisions of "CombatPrimer"

Revision as of 13:16, 28 December 2004

It’s an EXALTED COMBAT PRIMER!

Make an Initiative Roll at the beginning of each round, based on your choice of weapon. Add your Base Initiative (equal to Wits + Dexterity – Wound Penalty) and your Weapon Speed to the roll of a ten-sided die.

It’s Your Turn! What do you do?

Declare how many actions you’re going to take. You don’t need to announce what action you’re taking until you actually take that action (so you can hold actions for defensive purposes just by, for instance, splitting five ways and only attacking twice, and then ending your turn), at which point someone who has delayed their action may interrupt.

Note, you can also hold your action until you decide to go, at which point you interrupt whoever was supposed to go. Holding your attack is not a good idea if you’re going offensive; you’re in effect missing your window of opportunity to attack. For every initiative tick you voluntarily wait to act, it is a -1 to any offensive actions.

You’re Attacking! Huzzah!

A) Roll your Attack roll. This would be your Attack Dicepool (Dexterity + Ability + Weapon Accuracy). Get at least one success to continue on! B) Now, success will be removed due to cover/shields. Then, a Dodge or Parry may be rolled, which will take away more successes. You must have at least one success left now in order to make a successful attack! C) Determine Damage Dicepool! Take the Base Damage (Strength + Weapon Damage) and add that to your remaining successes from the last step. Make sure to note the damage type! D) Check for Hardness! If your opponent has Hardness more or equal to your total damage dicepool, you attack doesn’t do anything! E) Remove the soak! We subtract the target’s soak from the dicepool, depending on the type of damage. If it would take away all your dice, you still get to you’re your Permanent Essence in damage dice, since you did land a successfully attack. F) Then you get to roll all the dice you have left. TENS DO NOT COUNT AS DOUBLE SUCCESSES, AND YOU CANNOT BOTCH ON THIS! For every success, one health level is removed from your target.

What If You Get Attacked Before Your Turn Comes Up? Uh oh!

A) Do Nothing. You take the hit, and hope your soak/hardness saves you. B) Full Parry. Roll your Dexterity + Melee + specialties dicepool, to reduce successes from your attacker’s attack pool. . This will defend against more than one attack for the turn, but at an increasing penalty and is limited by your weapons Rate. The next attack against you will be dodged at (Parry Dicepool –1), the attack after that will be at –2, the fourth attack will be at –3. This will take up your entire action for the turn. C) Full Dodge. Roll your Dodge Dicepool (Dexterity + Dodge + specialties + Essence) dicepool, to reduce successes from your attacker’s attack pool. This will defend against more than one attack for the turn, but at an increasing penalty. The next attack against you will be dodged at (Dodge Dicepool –1), the attack after that will be at –2, the fourth attack will be at –3. Again, like with Parrying, if you dodge, that’s takes up your action for the turn. D) Use Reflexive Charms/Combos/Etc. Why defensive charms are a good thing.

What If You Get Attacked After Your Turn Comes Up? Oh no!

A) Do Nothing. Like above. B) Use a Held Defensive Action. Why keeping an action for defense when you split your dicepool is a good thing. Each of these actions is just a simple Dodge/Parry roll, and they are not Full actions (they don’t affect the next attack). However, if you have two actions left over, you can both Parry AND Dodge an attack. Unlike held attacks, these are not offensive, and thus are not penalized for being held. Note, you can only parry or attack as many times as equal to your weapon’s Rate. C) Use Reflexive Charms/Combos/Etc. Like above.

How Modifiers Are Applied

1) Apply Bonuses. (Stunts, equipment, specialties, etc. Not Charms!) 2) Apply Negative Modifiers and Penalties. (Splitting your dicepool, wound penalties, range, etc.) 3) Apply Charm Modifiers. (The dicepool limit is still based on the dicepool prior to Step 1.) Multipliers are NOT affected by other modifiers! If you have two affects that double your damage, they TRIPLE your damage, not quadruple it. If you have a charm that adds dice to your damage, those dice are NOT doubled by a multiplier.

Dave’s Orichalcum Rule of Exalted!

Decide on what your doing. Then describe it to me, please. Stunt it people! ANYTHING is possible if you make it sound cool enough! If you can impress us, you can break the rules of the game! Plus, it will make the game interesting for the other players! Some ideas: how everything looks and any particular sensations anyone is feeling while combat goes on, how your character feels emotionally, cool things going on in the environment around you, or even just wording your stunt in a haiku. You have complete freedom of dramatic editing while stunting: if you want something like a cart or a rooftop to be nearby or such, IT IS. Don’t worry about the details. Each Stunt gives 1-3 dice depending on how cool it was, and this bonus applies to every action you make that’s part of the stunt. Stunts, if they succeed, also give back essence motes (two motes per each die gained by the stunt), or you can trade in the motes from a 2-3 dice stunt for a temporary Willpower dot! So be cool and do awesome stunts! You have my insurance: if you try a stunt and still fail, nothing bad will happen because of that particular failure. I want you to be risky and try exciting stunts, instead of being afraid.

Dave’s Moonsilver Rule of Exalted!

Charms can change these rules all around, so make sure you know them! Use the charm cards for a quick browse! They will add dice, give instant successes, add soak, etc. Remember, stunting a charm can even make its effect more useful. Make sure to record your essence uses and keep track of your anima flare!

Advantages of the Exalted

Exalted don’t suffer the -2 penalty for not having any dots in a certain ability, and neither can their dicepools be reduced below their Permanent Essence, except by Wound Penalties.

Okay, so when can I use these charms?

Well, you can only do one charm per round, for starters. You can repeat a single charm for that turn if it’s reflexive (only one per ‘instance,’ i.e. only once per attack, etc), but you can’t do a different charm. When in the round you can use it depends on it’s Type. The Types are: A) Simple: Your character does this once on his turn, and it takes up his entire dice-action for the round. B) Reflexive: You can use this whenever you want to in a round, and you can repeat it multiple times in that turn. You have to pay the cost each time you repeat it. C) Supplemental: Used when doing something else, normally to add dice. Can be repeated multiple times in one turn, but the cost must be paid for each use. D) Extra Action: Gives an extra action. Can’t split this action’s dice pool.

Dragon-Blooded break the One-Charm-Per-Turn rules, and can use as many Reflexive Charms as they want without spending their “one charm per turn”, but they still have to pay the activation cost. Thus, they don’t need to add Reflexive charms to Combos.

So, what’s the Dicepool Splitting thing?

How you do multiple actions a round. However, depending on how many things you do, each action gets a penalty to their respective dicepools. The first action is at –(number of actions taken) and each action after it gets one more –1. For example: 2 Actions: -2, -3 3 Actions: -3, -4, -5 4 Actions: -4, -5, -6, -7 5 Actions: -5, -6, -7, -8, -9 6 Actions: -6, -7,- 8, -9, -10, -11 7 Actions: -7, -8, -9, -10, -11, -12, -13 Your can’t do that many actions, unless you have dice in the last dicepool. A stunt will add dice to all of your related dicepools, when you split. Thus, a one die stunt adds a die to all your dicepools when you split, if all those dicepools are part of that stunt.

Shields and Cover

Shields and Cover automatically remove successes after an attacker rolls their dicepools. Generally, it’s more effective against Ranged attacks than Hand-to-hand attacks.

Damage and Soak

There are three types of damage, and three types of Soak. Bashing is softer blunt trauma, such as one might get from a fist fight, while Lethal damage is the much scarier wounds one would receive in a sword fight. Aggravated damage is quite rare and generally magical in nature, being particularly nasty Aggravated damage. Soak subtracts itself from the relating pool when you’re attacked with one of these types of damage. As Exalted, your Stamina adds to both your Lethal and Bashing soaks, and your armor also adds to both. Your armor’s lethal soak is your Aggravated soak. Note that some particularly nasty smashing weapons produce a shocking blow that bypasses your armor somewhat. These are Piercing weapons, and against them your armor’s soak is halved.

Grappling Somebody

You must make an unarmed attack with the following stats: Spd -6, Acc +0, +0B, +0, Rate 1 (Piercing attack) The Attribute or Ability used can be Strength or Dexterity + Brawl or Martial Arts. This attack can be both dodged and parried. This first attack is only to start the grapple, and does not do damage. Extra successes now will add to the attacker’s damage roll once he is able and decides to do damage. If the opposing character has an action, he can make an opposing clinch roll to gain control of the clinch or escape it. As the clinch continues, both make checks on each successive turn, at the highest of the two character’s initiatives. This is the dice action for both characters that turn. Whoever wins the clinch roll (greatest number of successes) can choose to escape the grapple or take control and do damage. If he decides to take control of the clinch, he can choose to crush his opponent to do (Strength + extra success from the clinch roll) in bashing damage or hold his opponent without doing damage. If you decide to escape a clinch, you can throw your opponent back a number of yards equal to your strength or knock him prone. A character with multiple dice actions for that turn might make multiple clinch rolls. When one character has more actions than his opponent, he makes clinch rolls against his opponents last clinch roll for the turn (the opponent does not reroll, the number of successes is fixed until the end of the turn). Each of these actions is considered a separate clinch attempt.

Regaining Essence

You regain 4 motes to your temporary essence pools per hour while partially relaxed, and 8 motes per hour while fully relaxed.

(The only thing I have left to explain is healing and how different types of damage move down the character sheet… I think. Anyone else have anything they’d like to see me add?)

--KingLeon

COMMENTS

1) Does "if you have two actions left over, you can both Parry AND Dodge an attack" mean that a player can use two held actions to both parry and dodge the same attack? Does it just mean a player can parry up to his weapon's rate and then start dodging?
2) a)How far can a character move in a round? b)Specifically, if a character splits his actions, then can he get a huge movement range by using each action to move? c)Even more specifically, if I have an opponent move toward me, take a swing at me with a melee weapon, and I successfully dodge it with Hopping Firecracker Evasion(DB dodge charm), can he then move toward me again in the same round, or have I just nullified all the melee attacks he would have been able to make against me with his other actions that round?
-- Qzujak49

1. The first interpretation. Also, you are not required to parry first. You can dodge 5 times and parry once if you want, assuming you have declared six actions. However, keep in mind that each attack can be parried once and dodged once.
2. a. Classic rules say the maximum distance you can move while still doing something else is (Dex+12)/2 yards. If you spend your entire turn sprinting, you move (Dex * 3 + 20) yards. Given your questions, it seems you don't have Exalted Players Guide, so I won't confuse you by giving you the optional rules. Charms, artifacts, spells, and hearthstones may override this.
2. b. No. See 2.a.
2. c. If he hasn't reached his maximum movement, he can close in and try again. Of course, you can just Hop again away. Keep in mind that Hopping Firecracker Evasion doesn't actually dodge the initial attack. It lets you relocate yourself without using up your movement rate after you successfully dodge the attack.

I'm fairly sure wound penalties don't apply to init, even in power combat. In addition, I believe you can only parry and dodge the same attack if you have a charm to do it with... Although you can do both to any single attack, it was always my interpretation (although right now I can't quote a rule or pageref on this) that you could only spend one defensive action per attack.
-- Darloth