SolarEndurance/DariusSolluman

Dragon-Body Technique
Cost: None
Duration: Permanent
Type: Special
Minimum Endurance: 3
Minimum Essence: 3
Prerequisite Charms: Ox-Body Technique

Fighting an Exalt that is coming to the fullness of their power is a frustrating affair. They do not die easily, and until their aegis of self is broken, lesser attacks are meaningless.

Add a new Impervious Health Levels track. This track is above your -0 HLs, and is designated by an I. Each time you take Dragon-Body Technique, add a new Impervious Health Level, and lose either a -0, two -1 or one -1 and two -2 Health Levels.

It requires 2 levels of damage from a single attack to eliminate an Impervious Health Level. Any remainder damage left is negated. An attack with a secondary effect based upon dealing daamge, if that damage is entirely negated, has the secondary effect negated as well.

A Solar may not take Dragon-Body Technique more times than they have taken Ox-Body Technique.

When using a Charm with a Health Level cost, the Solar treats Impervious Health Levels as only a single level for paying the cost. They may opt to have the damage skip their Impervious Health Levels, and start at the -0, then move down as per normal. In this case, they suffer from the wound penelty, but still have the protection of the Impervious Health Level.

Impervious Health Levels heal as if they were two -0 Health Levels. They require twice as long to heal naturally, and any effect which instantly restores Health Levels most restore both at once to have any effect- any remainder is lost.

God-Body Technique
Cost: None
Duration: Permanent
Type: Special
Minimum Endurance: 5
Minimum Essence: 4
Prerequisite Charms: Dragon-Body Technique

Fighting an elder Exalt is actually terrifying; watching as the heaviest of axes glance away, leaving not a mark upon their perfect flesh. Watching as the greatest devestation barely marks them. Until they are broken, they are invincible divinities.

Add a new Eternal Health Levels track. This track is above your Impervious HLs, and is designated by an E. Each time you take God-Body Technique, add a new Eternal Health Level and lose either an Impervious Health level, a -0, two -1 or one -1 and two -2 Health Levels.

It requires 4 levels of damage from a single attack to eliminate an Eternal Health Level. Any remainder damage left is negated. An attack with a secondary effect based upon dealing daamge, if that damage is entirely negated, has the secondary effect negated as well.

A Solar may not take God-Body Technique more times than they have taken Dragon-Body Technique.

When using a Charm with a Health Level cost, the Solar treats Eternal Health Levels as only a single level for paying the cost. They may opt to have the damage skip their Eternal Health Levels, and start at the -0, then move down as per normal. In this case, they suffer from the wound penelty, but still have the protection of the Eternal Health Level.

Eternal Health Levels heal as if they were four -0 Health Levels. They require four times as long to heal naturally, and any effect which instantly restores Health Levels most restore all four at once to have any effect- any remainder is lost.

Comments

I posted these to RPG.net earlier; they're meant to emulate the Deadly and Serious Wound Levels of Nobilis in Exalted.

There's some definite concerns about them- in particular, I'm not fully happy with the normal HL cost of gaining these Charms. I feel something like it is neccesary, but... murr. Unhappy about it at the moment. DS

This sort of throws the balance out of whack for those who rely on ping damage. Well, replace 'sort of' with 'completely'. How the heck are you supposed to beat someone with these 'special' health levels if they invest in artifact armor and a decent defense? To me, at least, it seems like most Exalts can't, and those that would be able to do so would have to be specially crafted just to that purpose. When a single charm requires an entire build to counter, you know there are issues. --Ketrus

Well. PC ping tweaks this a bit. Well, alot. I think they're fine, with PC. Though I might up the essence on them a bit. - Scrollreader with his 2 Koku

I'm not sure how it follows that a build requiring a specialized counter to exploit it's weakness is unbalanced. There's a number of both Charms and damage dealing methods (HTT, F&SS, Grand Daiklaive +12 Dmg) that punk soak right in the jimmy. Or armor ignoring Charms. Or indirect effects that don't rely on dealing damage (such as Soul Mastery, Soul Cleaving Strike, etc).

I'd make the arguement that these Charms let soaking be a viable primary defense again. DS

I can see it, in PC, with increased permanent essence. An Essence 4 charm that offers (admittedly limited) immunity to an Essence 4 ping? Dunno, it seems a little too powerful. I agree with the 'viable primary defense again' thing, though. It gets hurt, badly, in PC, but I was looking at the charms from a primarily original-rules-perspective. And as for 'build requiring specialized counter', my problem wasn't that a build based on these charms would require a counter, it's that the charms themselves are as powerful as many defensive builds. Alone. Not quite "invincibility in a can", but too much for too little. My sense of discontent is admittedly vague, and I have no hard mechanics logic to back this up--just a feeling that it swings the game balance too far in the direction for which it aims. I could just be off my rocker, though. Wouldn't be the first time. --Ketrus

Personally, I don't think soak should be a viable primary defence. I think the game is set up to try to avoid this, but to make it a necessary secondary defence. The reaons for this is that soak doesn't have many of the disadvantages of other types of defences. It doesn't require an action, it doesn't care if your surprised and since there are 2 types of it, you need a combo (agg damage + armor bypassing) to get past it. You'd have to make aggravated damage much more common to count soak as a viable primary defence. The secondary effects of agg damage(it takes forever to heal) make this undesirable. (Personally, I consider this kinda a bug. It would probably be better to make agg defeat regeneration & bypass soak, but heal like lethal otherwise.) Anyway.

As mentioned. I think this is NASTY without PC. It effectivly converts soak to harness in that case, as you HAVE to exceed their soak to have a chance of damaging them. With PC Dragon body isn't to bad, as en Essence 4 ping can beat it. God-Body is nasty, as it's almost immune to pings. (2.5% chance at essence 4. That would be a long combat. Never mind having multiple boxes) The problem is, these are really nasty vs people who can't by damage successes, but not usefull against those who can. One possiblity would be to make them reduce dice of damage, AFTER soak. Kinda like a secondary soak. This way, it wouldn't matter if people were buying successes or not. -FlowsLikeBits

Maybe I'm just slow... I just don't see the problem in saying 'You want to hurt Galstaff of the Golden Skin? You need to hit him as hard you as you can.'

To get a single Eternal Health Level requires greater commitment to the style of defense than getting Heavenly Guardian Defense or Seven Shadows Evasion. And, to really get your millage out of the Eternal Health Level, you have to /not/ block when the uberdeathCombo is coming at you- so you can counter with your own uberdeathCombo.

I just... Eh. I don't get it. A standard Solar Melee Build using FFBS would, I think, thump a similiar build that relied on GBT as it's primary defense. 'ES + HTT + F&SS + Grand Daiklaive' vs 'Take it and ready a counter attack (the mantra of the Soak First defense style)' = Roughly 8 successes, doubled to 16, +12 (Weapon) +3 (Strength) = 31 successes. If Soak First has Superheavy Orihalcum Plate, he can reduce that to 'just' 16 dice- enough to casually pierce the Eternal Health Level (or, if he bought up 4 with F&SS to break said level, just to outright slay).

Yes, this is a powerful defense against plink-based styles. I'm not realy weeping for 'em- Invincible Sword Princess shouldn't be the only way to fight. DS

Sorry. I'm talking more about non-melee based offences. This makes 'buy successes' mandatory. Also, note that your 'counter' requires a combo, which the Soak First build does not. Defeating a 'defence' based strategy just requires Excellent Strike and a high degree of skill. Honestly, I disagree that 'multiple weak attacks' are less valid than 'one mega attack' provided a similar degree of skill backs up both strategies. Thats probably a different argument however. The other difficulty with this is that it stacks well with defence based strategies. I.e. you can become invulnerable pretty quickly. Before, the idea was that if something got by your defences, it would hurt a little. Not with this.

My point is that other than melee, most abilties don't have ready access to a 'buy damage successes' ability. No to mention other exalt's tree's. MA does somewhere(I bet), but I would hate to make those arts mandatory. Frex Solars Archery and Thrown both lack a buy damage charm. Brawl is gimped anyway, so I won't mention it. They both tend to use extra-action charms instead. (Or Rain of Feathery Death for Archery). The difficulty is that god body requires an attack to exceed the defenders defence+soak by a fair amount, that is unlikely to happen with relativly equal(i.e. challenging) opponents.

A way to make this work would be to combine damage from a single opponent/turn for the purposes of this charm. I.e. an archer throws a bunch of arrows, but you combine the plinks together. I.e. if one person hits you a bunch, they have a chance to actually do damage. This gives them a reasonable chance to break through.

Correct me if I'm wrong here. The problem with soak based defences is that they are easily defeated by the attacker splitting their action. Correct? If you combine this with previous modification and a moderate bit of defence, I think it works. (sorry for this being long). Cheap attack spamming will stopped by the defence, while serious moderate damage attacks won't be as much. (Splitting 4 times has a pretty bad effect on die pools). This I think is fair. Even Invincible Sword Princesses need armor. (Well then need something to prevent them being splattered when something gets through due to a bad roll or being unparryable). -FlowsLikeBits,wow. darn analysis mode

I think you basically just told him, "hey, I don't like the way this Charm compensates for a weakness in soak that you intended to compensate for by writing the Charm-- could you gimp your own Charm to the point where to be viable it has to be under the protection of the active defenses you wrote this Charm so soak wouldn't need the protection of active defenses?"

Even with active defences, you still need soak. Just not as much. You can only really get away with a single defence early on or vs weak opponents. This should be the same way. My point is that some abilties (Thrown and Archery) get high damage values by extra action charms rather than damage success buyers. As is, this makes those types of effects pointless, as they won't get through. I think DariusSolluman was worried more about cheesy action splitting, rather than extra action effects. Assuming your opponent has essence 4, they need to hit you four times(4 pings) to have a reasonable chance of breaking god-body. Without god-body, soak isn't a viable defence, as any hit does damage. Even with my modification, they still need to hit you four times. Remember, your opponents is splitting 4 ways, so -4,-5,-6,-7. More than that if they want to defend somehow. How hard is it to defend vs a -7 attack? The other solution would be to just provide damage success buyers for all abilities. -FlowsLikeBits

Alright - so what are we looking at here? An attempt to make soak a viable means of not dying, especially against imbeciles that throw 20 different attacks in one round that all do 1L damage each. (Assume non PC). Much as many like the idea of having either few big attacks, or many small ones, there comes a point where eventually, people start having characters with 1 STR, just because they're doing nothing but ping damage anyway. This isn't a good thing, as what kind of uber Wushu Kung-Fu master has 1 Str? Seriously. So to that end, how can we prevent /too much/ ping damage? Perhaps a system that allows you to ignore XX pings per round? Something along the lines of 'when attacked, reduce the number of dice of damage by one, just before they are rolled. This may apply to at most Essence attacks per round'. This gives you a lot to work with, and even helps in PC. But that doesn't go along with the Endurance-based Ox-Body like system of this charm. So instead of applying to all HL worth of damage, we turn it around into a Solar-format. Something along the lines of ...

"Fueled by the Unconquerable power of the Sun, the Solar's body overflows with raw energy. In his unharmed state, the sheer perfection of Essence flowing through him allows him to shrug off small wounds as if they were nonexistent. Any time damage successes are rolled against the Solar, and such damage would remove a -0 HL, the Solar may roll a die. If that die is a success, reduce the number of damage successes by one. If this reduces the total amount of damage to zero, secondary effects that rely on doing damage do not activate."

Not necessarily the best basis ever, but it's relatively weak (only affects -0 HL, and only does one die of protection), but it also opens up higher-tree versions of it, that allow you to roll your Essence to reduce damage, or that work for -1, or even -2 health levels. It gives a similar effect to what DariousSolluman was looking for, and ping-dealers still have a chance to get through. Another idea would be ...

"When damage successes are rolled against the Solar, reduce the number of successes by one. This may only be done a number of times per round equal to the Solar's Essence, modified by their wound penalty"

This allows ping dealers to get through if they can simply do a number of hits (2-3 at low levels) and drops off rapidly in utility as the defender takes wound penalties, showing the "weakness in their defense". Similarly, instead of Essence, it could work a number of times per round equal to the defender's Endurance, modified by their wound penalty. Thoughts? - GregLink

I think the arguement that god-body defeats ping is viable. The point of ping was to allow people to flurry the guys that liked to save a ton of actions for dodge/parry and still have a chance to deal damage, it also made the super-soakers have to think active defence. I also think dragon-body is fine, two health levels of damage to destroy one is fine, once you have this charm you are probably fighting guys with essence 3+, so this is not handicapped. With god-body maybe you might just want to make it a flat reduce damage after roll by one. This will make having dragon-body still necessary and the fact that you can take god-body more than once will increase its power. Also, even with its power and that fact that all exalted have ox-body, maybe this should be availible to all exalted, adding another level to combat. DragoonDrake

I'm a little hesitant to agree with you here, only because we're on different pages - I'm talking about core combat, not power combat. I agree that these charms aren't /too/ overpowered for PC, but in core combat, they're quite over the top. What are your thoughts in the context of single-die pings? - GregLink

Well on the thought of single-ping, these charms as written are far too powerful. Dragon-body may not be, if you make the stipulation that on a single die damage roll that the health level is marked off. God-body should probably be ran as I stated above, but may only be taken once and if a single die is rolled and succeed on damage than the health level should be marked off. How is that idea Greg? DragoonDrake

To be honest, I think you and I have a fundamental difference in what we think should be possible. I feel like it should be semi-possible to have something that really stops ping attackers. As I said, I'm especially sick and tired of players taking STR 1, just because there's really no chance you'll punch through anyone's soak dice, so you may as well go all-Dex, and just ping people to death. My hope would be that in non-Power Combat, where 1 ping is the norm, that there'd be a way to neutralize things a bit. Perhaps, as in one of my proposals above, this effect may only work Essence times per round? or perhaps Endurance times per round? That way, with a few attacks, you can still ping through, but as expected, it would require a real hail of arrows, or flurry of blows. Is there a middle ground where we can both be happy, with /some/ ping being stopped, but not all? - GregLink

Greg you were right, I didn't understand that you were trying to stop 1-die ping. With that said, just take god-body as I wrote it, minus the chance to bash through. Also if your characters are taking Str 1, I would watch what you let them carry/swing/wear. If you are the ST, then let them go walking through mud that makes the weaker characters be completely hampered and unable to dodge. Not saying that I am that mean or anything. Who am I kidding, I had my guys walk through sand up to their wastes so they could ONLY walk, no moving dodge, and a huge penaly on the swinging of weapons; all the while being attacked by DB's with Effortlessly Rising Flame. That was fun. So just take god-body, and treat it like starmetal armor. This really hampers Str 1 and archers vs. super-soakers, but if that is the case don't let your players use this charm. I personally would like to see if fleshed out and make it usable by all Exalts. DragoonDrake

Greg, how about instead of trying to make 1-die ping null, change it so that for each point of Str + ability that the attacker lacks to the targets End + Essence, increase the difficulty of the damage roll by one to a max of 9. Ex. Your Str 1, Melee 5 (total 6) attacks a Solar with End 5, Essence 4 (total 9) would then need a 9 on the damage die to deal any damage. Or just make it a flat 8+ on the dice to deal damage. It is just a thought, let me know what you think. DragoonDrake

You know, we really should break this off into a discussion of what could (and should!) be done in the world of charms that reduce ping damage. After all, ping is such an important aspect of the game that allowing it to go bye-bye easily will unbalance it horribly, but allowing it to exist can only spoil things at higher Essence anyway - after all, if one can easily imagine an Essence 5 charm that allows for a whole /lot/ of attacks, at low cost, then it's quite possible to ping even the Invulnerable Iron Lord to death in one round. What would such a topic be called, even? /Greg Link/Anti-Ping Charms? - GregLink

Let's go GregLink/AntiPing Charms, it would be easy to find and says it all. DragoonDrake

Or another thought would be to have them heal differently. Instead of healing like a bunch of -0 have dragon-body heal like a -2 and god-body heal like a -4, but still keep the instant heal penalties. DragoonDrake

To avoid/eliminate the threat of ping simply learn a resistance charm that brings minimum damage to 1. NailRat has a good example of this in his charms. The only way to roll more dice than 1 for ping is to do more damage than the target's soak or to have a charm that did automatic damage. I would say Solars, Abyssals and even Lunars have access to a charm like this. Solars and Abyssals because they can do pretty much whatever they want, and Lunars because no one soaks and regens like a good Lunar. Maybe even a martial arts based off of mountains, primordial beast creatures or anything godly tough could have this sort of charm in the style....Madoka