FrivYeti/SolarsVsLionChallenge3

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ROUND THREE: OH, THE HUMANITY

Once again, it's initiative time. Anyone who could challenge the Lion here is long since dead, so he's pretty much guaranteed to win.
First And Forsaken Lion 41, Ninja Man 24, Eater of Kindred 12

The Lion, momentarily ignoring the force at his back, charged forwards once again, Essence lacing his sword. Spinning once, he brought it around in a single strike, the arena's floor rippling from the force of its passage. Eater of Kindred brought around his bow like a sword to block, only to have it throw aside as the blow tore him in half. He screamed once, torso landing hard on the ground as his legs buckled, and then was still.

The Lion once again splits his first action four ways, starting to attack Eater of Kindred, who can't hope to stop him, and triggers his Infinite Plentitude of Dark Destinies, because hey, why not? The Lion's first attack rolls a stunning 22 successes, dealing pre-soak damage of 68L, reduced to 50L. Eater of Kindred takes a whopping 21 health levels of damage, and dies. The Lion activates Agony-Savouring Spirit reflexively, spending 1 Willpower and rolling his Conviction, regaining 3 Willpower. (He probably should have done with with both Simian and Boy, but he was overconfidant. I did not at all forget the Charm). Now, only one Solar remains.

Spinning, the Lion charged towards Ninja Man. The nearly-invisible Solar backflipped away from Varan's Ruin, Essence blurring his already-faded form. The second stroke drove through him, Essence sliding away from it as Ninja Man reformed around it. Spinning, the Lion slashed through the Solar, splintering bone as Varan's Ruin gleefully sucked away his Essence. Ninja Man staggered backwards, only to have the Lion press his advantage and slice his head cleanly in half. With a grim smile, the Lion stepped over to the last, barely breathing Solar, and drove Varan's Ruin into her chest. His voice rang out over the arena. "If you wish to end my rule, the champions you send against me will have to be of... sterner stuff." With a mocking laugh, he turned, and strode from the field.

The Lion once again spots the location of the hidden Solar and uses his next three attacks to attack Ninja Man, still unblockable. Ninja Man perfectly dodges the first two, but is then too low on Essence to continue. Now, only his +7 difficulty to hit protects him. Attack #4 rolls 14 successes, leaving 7, and dealing 38L base. That reduces to 36 dice and deals 17 levels of damage. The Lion gives up on splitting and attacks with his full pool for his second action, rolling 19 successes (12 post-reduction). This deals 62L pre-soak, and 60L post-soak, for 27 levels of lethal damage. Ninja Man dies. The Lion activates Agony-Savouring Spirit again, because why not, and spends 1 Willpower to gain 4. Finally, he walks over to the incapacitated Princess and slices her head off. The Lion wins.

Overly Combative Simian: Dead
Invincible Sword Princess: Dead
Starry-Eyed Boy : Dead
Ninja Man: Dead
Eater of Kindred: Dead

First and Forsaken Lion: Willpower: 8/10, Personal 0/5 (77 committed), Peripheral 130/187 (31 committed). 8 perfect defenses remain.

Comments

This was a fascinating little project, Friv. Thanks for doing it. I'll be watching your rerun with TonyC with great interest as well.

A few things struck me as I watching this: first, it quickly became apparent to me that people who suggest soak is worthless in PC need to carefully read this series of articles. Relying on perfects or high-dice persistants turned out to be a dead-end (pun intended) strategy for this bunch - the Lion's Charms were simply too effective. However, once the perfect defenses failed, the general lack of soak among the group cost them heavily. I keep looking at the massive damage pools that the Lion was rolling once those defenses fell, and I think, "Man... what they wouldn't have given just for Iron Skin Concentration. 10L or 60L? I know which I'd pick..." Soak is a vital part of a seriously effective character, but especially so if perfect defenses are your only options.

Second, it seems to me that the Princess was doing much better during the first version of this scenario, due primarily to her counterattacks. I've become increasingly convinced that counterattacks are the real key to winning high-Essence combat, and I'd be fascinated to see what would have happened if someone in the group had had Steel Devil Style.

Finally, it seems to me that the real difference between the two sides is the effective Essence level at which each side is operating. The Solars are using Charms with Essence requirements in the 2-3 range, by and large - only Starry-Eyed Boy seems to be using any Essence 5 Charms regularly (though I admit to not remembering the Essence minimum of Hurricane Combat Method). By contrast, though, the Lion is operating almost entirely on Essence 3-5 Charms, and also makes the most out of his "inapplicability enhancer," which has to be at least Essence 7. A lot of the end results come, I think, from this difference. If the Solars were able to compete at the Essence 5 level across the board, it might well have been a different outcome. (But then we'd need actual, y'know, Essence 5 Charms for them to have and all.)

Once again, this was tons of fun. Well done. - Hapushet

I agree, this was really awesome, and I liked the attention to detail and so forth. However, I think a few of the character builds may have been nonoptimal. Firstly, ALL of the Solars were martial artists, wearing no armor and so forth (see Soak comments above). At the vert least, if OCS has mastered Celestial Monkey, he could be stomping around in Superheavy plate and wielding a Grand Daiklave instead of being naked.

A second comment I'd like to make is that Solars, while awesome, don't have it all. In fact, I've got an idea for a character who could at least stand up to the Lion, and it's a LUNAR. An Essence-6 Lunar with a dex of 15 and massive abuse of the charm Snake Body Technique (which *I* would argue cannot be blocked) would probably mess up the Lion's opening attack badly. the Lion winning initiative every time was pretty crushing too. Aren't there charms that let you win initiative automatically?

There are indeed Charms to let you win Init, and the Lion has them. I'll have to check, but I don't think they need to be activated before the Initiative roll. Regarding Soak, Invicible Sword Princess and Eater of Kindred were both use Reinforced Breastplates, because past that the mobility starts to be a problem, and Starry-Eyed Boy had Four Magical Materials form; they all had 16+ soak, and still got flattened. Without serious soak-monkery, that won't help much.

Snake Body is a dodge; being non-perfect, it couldn't affect the Lion's perfection-enhanced attacks. Good thought, though (that Charm is killer). - FrivYeti

Oh, silly me, I forgot to mention another reason Lunars are awesome. They can build Combos out of any charms they want! So simply combo Snake Body Tech with Flowing Body Evasion, and not ONLY will this be a perfect dodge (assuming a single success is rolled), but some such as myself would argue that the EXTRA successes on the FBE dodge roll ADD to the counterattack of the Lion hitting himself. Burly! Only a cost of a willpower, plus 11 essence and 1 Wp per dodge (though a Lunar's cult can assist slightly in this, as well as any stunts). A Lunar with Willpower 10, Essence 6, and highest virtues 5 has essence 26 + 64 = 90 essence. The Lion would prooooobably decide attacking someone else is a better idea though, after his first attack rebounds on himself for 80L minus his soak, which can't really be higher than like 40. --Prions

Yep, that would do some damage. The Lion would have to trigger soak Charms to drop damage, would get hurt. Of course, then he'd drop his sword, activate Writhing Blood Chain Technique, and kick the crap out of the Lunar, but hey, it's one step ahead of what happened to the Solars. ;) I would say that the Snake Body dodge would still need to beat the Lion's successes to trigger, mind you. - FrivYeti

Those are just my opinions, of course, and my hat is off to FrivYeti for his ingenious efforts. --Prions

I personally thought the solars could have been built better. So when's the re-run of this? - Kalgalath

You want better-built Solars? Put your money where your mouth is and build them yourself (as TonyC is doing). The Lion's strategies will change, but I'll still bet on him. - FrivYeti

You know, I just want to say that this was an awesome read. It sure opened up my players eyes when I showed them the print out and they read it. They decided then that they are going to stay in the East and not liberate the south. hehe. This was awesome and I enjoyed following it the past week or two. - Savare

What about the various anti-charm things from the PAoC tree? Why can't someone start using things like Sequential Charm Disruption to cancel the Lion's CMoS form? The roll shouldn't be that tough (10 successes?, but doable with a combo), and suddenly he's one-third the killa. Simalarly, since you're blowing a combo anyway, why not disrupt his initiative-winner, or even HIS charm disruption of the Rune? If you've got two people ready to cancel his charms, and get rid of his persistent 10 brawl attacks and CMoS form, the Lion is really much more of a big cat. - GregLink, providing suggestions to those designing their own team of 5 Solars

Flatly impossible. Sequential Charm Disruption would require you to disrupt the entire Combo, at a cost of 77 motes and a Willpower. The Solars don't have that kind of Essence to spend. Good thought, though. - FrivYeti

Is it? With an Eclipse powered up by the Abyssal/Alchemical Peripheral Essence enhancers, I don't think it's that far off. And really, if, in the first round, you can stop his combo usage for the turn, the Solars have a mighty round to really beat the heck out of him by sucking down those perfects (before his init!) and really beating on him. Sure, it limits the Eclipse to that single-round usage, but it could work, and really, getting the initiative on him and pulling him down for that first beat-out could be a grand thing. - GregLink, just saying that it isn't impossible

Eek - a blood drinking Eclipse - where is this world coming to =) - Hugh

Peripheral Essence enhancers is generally... not worth it. There are some other more efficient ways. If you go with custom stuff, oh, that's real easy. If you limit yourself to canon twinkage... the best one I think is reducing your expenditure in the first place. Think about what a SMA can do with Earth Dragonblooded Ways and a level 5 Jade Hand. Here's a hint. /Mnemosynis/Issue2 . Sure it's only good for 4 turns (the fifth is actually the set-up round), but in 4 rounds the issue would've been decided anyways. Now what I can really use help with is Dancing With Strife Technique from Cult of The Illuminated book. Since I don't have it and nobody around here has it, someone mind giving me the short version? - TonyC

Basically you gain Willpower point After Successfully avoiding a hit - Sounds Pretty Broken for me, just like Joy in Adversity i'm not sure if it's supposed to work while using a perfect defense, if so it's gonna cause long and rather boring Duels in most cases. - Hugh

Sounds like broken indeed. But I shall shamelessly use it. What are the prereqs and cost? Any weird thing in the text? - TonyC

It's Brawl 3, essence 3, costs 3 motes, it's reflexive and instant... and works only if you successfully defend against an attack that does minimum 5 successes or solar's essence (whichever is higher). It gives back 1 willpower, but not more than your temp willpower. It requires 'irrepressible bravery tactic'.

The charm 'irrepressible bravery tactic' is brawl 3, essence 2, costs 3 motes per success, reflexive and instant... basically, this charm allows you to convert your stunt die into successes, you don't roll it, bonus die from daredevil and signature style merits count as stunt die for this charm. This charm requires 'Thunderclap Rush attack'.
~ Haku

The charm Sequential Charm Disruption does not allow you to end any form charm. So yes you could counter his comboes, but his CMoS form would still be up. And that is still 10 persistant brawl attacks. DragoonDrake

Hi there! I thought of some of the Lore charms in CB: Twilight. One of them blocks the use of essence in an opponent. As the circle are more in numbers, one of them might specialize in that. I think that would be a significant improvement for them if it is successful. What do you guys think? Clebo

For clarification, it is the Occult charms (Power-Draining Whisper and Power-Disrupting Blow pg 73-74). Now, the only problem is that while the Lion is using his charms, most of them are persistant charms rather than instant. Not to mention, this charm can not be used as part of a combo, so her utility would be just running this and being annoying to the Lion. I think she could be a lot more useful if she was casting spells like Thunderwolfs Howel which is unblockable without countermagic really. --Savare

Actually Power Disrupting Blow is Comboable, However the Essence+Willpower costs are just too high, and you still have to hit the Lion for that to work anyway. I can see The Lion using a Costume Version of this charm though - it's well in his capability - Maybe the Days or years long Supression version. - Hugh

Ah, sorry for not being specific. I was talking about Power-Draining Whisper. Trying to Land Power-Disrupting Blow would be next to impossible I think. Unless it was a team effort and they had lots of luck. Especially with thetwilight trying to hit it. -- Savare