Rulings/WhenDoEntropicEffectsOccur

Date asked: 7 Aug 2006
Rule set: Second Edition, First Edition somewhat
Rules area: When do entropic effects take place in combat, and how easy are they to defend against?

This came up in the course of discussion, and in a game a long time ago, causing much friction. The essence of the problem is just when entropic effects, such as those caused by Five Shadow Feint, resolve, and how do they act with regard to Pool and DV resetters like DSD? FSF lacks an indicator of which step of combat resolution is is used in, but I would assume, as a Charm being used by the attacker it is used in step 1 of combat resolution, as the rules state on page 145 (Second Edition Core), under "Step One: Declaration of Attack", "At this time, the player also declares any Charms or other magic that will improve the attack." However, as an entropic effect, the Charm would most likely take effect in Step 5 of combat resolution.

In a sample situation, Walks with Ghosts strikes at Unyeilding Ox with her daiklave, activating Five Shadow Feint as she does so, for 10m, reducing Ox's DV by 5. Unyeilding Ox declares his intention to parry, and activates Dipping Swallow Defense. Walks rolls her attack, scoring 12 successes. At this point, Ox's DV needs to be calculated. He ignores penalties as per the rules of DSD. "It allows the Exalt to ignore all penalties that apply to her parry DV when resolving that attack." (Second Edition Core, pg 193.) Will this apply against an entropic effect or not?

The following books may provide assistance on this:

• Exalted Second Edition
• Exalted Storteller's Companion, Second Edition"
• Exalted: The Abyssals (First Edition)
• Scroll of the Monk (Second Edition)

Discussion

Dice pool reducers take place when the dice pool for whatever Attribute or Ability it is invoked against is calculated. The order of modifier boxed text (Exalted: Second Edition p. 124) details in what order the bonuses and penalties are applied. Effects that cancels penalties technically isn't a bonus nor a penalty. If it becomes necessary to figure out in which step in the order of modifier, against entropic magic and other internal penalties, it's probably in step 4, the same step when you add the magical penalties in. Against external penalties apply such effects at Step 6. DSD and SOW should cancel all relevant penalties, regardless of whether it comes from mundane (such as enviromental penalties) or magical sources (such as entropic charms). People worried about having their Excellency-boosted pool being eaten away by entropic charms should keep in mind that you can get more dice than your cap. It's just that normally anything over your cap is wasted. This may change once the Abyssal 2e book is released. - TonyC

Another place this question comes up: Fleeting Wings of Dust from First Pulse Style, as well as Shrouded Claw Attack from Hungry Ghost Style. It's particularly important to know what step of combat these are resolved in: whether they halve the DV in step 1 when they're declared (thus affecting only the pre-charm value), in step 2-4 (affecting virtue channeling, willpower expenditure, and the second excellency), or in step 5 or 6 (affecting all possible bonuses, including stunts). My inclination is to say that all effects of an attacker's charms are applied in step 1 when they are declared. - IanPrice

I think the canon answer to this is that you calculate DV exactly when it is used, and when you do so you use the "Order of Modifiers" table on page 124. Step 4 of this table ("Apply Magical Penalties") specifically mentions "entropic effects". DV is actually used in combat step 5, where "the target's DV is always the last" of the external penalties applied to the attack (pg. 148). In the example with Ox given above, I think what happens is that Five Shadow Feint applies during in the "Apply Magical Penalties" of the "Order of Modifiers", but DSD has special rules that prevent such a penalty from being applied. Note that DSD isn't really a "magical bonus", so isn't applied as part of the "Apply Magical Bonuses" step, but rather works in both of the "apply penalties" steps. - Wordman

So, as an example: Schmendrick buys 1 success from Essence Triumphant on his defense. As a success, this would be applied in the final step, after magical penalties to the dice pool (such as the above halving effects)? Similarly, would the above effects halve the number of dice rolled to add to DV with Essence Overwhelming? Or would they halve the successes on those dice? Or neither of the above, applying the successes on that roll to DV in the "bonus successes" step? - IanPrice

On Triumphant: yes, that's how I read it. On Overwhelming: the mechanics of First Excellency for static values are so different than everything else that it is tough to tell. As a guide, I'd look at the fact that it is the number of successes actually rolled that effect the dice cap, not the number of dice. This suggests that it is the successes of the roll that matter, not how they were generated, and therefore are applied like Triumphant (and, therefore, immune to the halving effect). On the other hand, consider a case where you are one die away from hitting your dice cap for DV, and you use First Excellency and get three successes. This counts as six dice against the dice cap, but you can only use one of them. Can you use the successes or not? They only thing that really seems legitimate is to conclude that rather than generating successes, the Excellency is instead adding to the pool, which is then divided normally. This would lead to the opposite conclusion (i.e. that halving would effect First Excellency bonuses). - Wordman

The Order of Modifiers list is incomplete and cannot be used as a definitive guide to the mechanics of bonuses and penalties. (See the GSS/2nd Ex/Essence Flow/infinite attacks glitch for one example.) In this particular case, I think that a Step 7 that includes applying magical success penalties must be assumed to exist. Consider the following scenario for why:

Solar Sam is attempting to determine who committed a murder. He uses the Second Investigate Excellency to buy an automatic success on his Investigate roll. Unfortinately for Sam, Abyssal Anna used an entropic Larceny Charm that negates (her Essence) in successes on any Investigate roll to identify her.

Anna's Charm is hardly out of line for an Abyssal Charm of fairly low power. However, if we take the Order of Modifiers at face value and assume that magical success penalties are applied during Step 4, then Sam's one purchased success will trump any arbitrarily high rating for Anna's Essence. Moreover, Steps 1-5 all specifically mention dice bonuses and penalties - the fact that Step 6 separates out bonus successes implies strongly that success penalties should be applied separately as well, and after the bonuses (following the pattern established with Steps 1-4). - Hapushet

In other words, you are suggesting there should be a Step 7: Apply External Penalties on that chart. This probably makes sense. Even so, is something that halves DV a internal or external penalty? Also, in my previous comment, the analysis of the First Excellency also turns out to imply that the Second Works the same way, because it runs into the same dice cap issues as the First does. - Wordman

Actually, after some consideration, that's not quite what I think. What I actually think is that there should be a Step 6: Roll the Dice, a Step 7: Apply Bonus Successes and then a Step 8: Apply External Penalties. As for the other question, the answer is neither: it's a DV penalty. However, I think one could make a reasonable argument for replacing "roll the dice" with the halving effect of creating a static rating, which would mean that you apply DV Bonuses in Step 7 and then Apply DV Penalties would logically fall into the Step 8 slot. - Hapushet

As an addendum to the above, I direct you to pg. 148 of the 2E core, under the heading Putting it All Together, wherein you may read, "When confronted with an attack, establish the base values for Dodge DV and Parry DV. Most often, these will be positive numbers, but if the particular mode of defense is prohibited, then the value is 0. Next, add any applicable bonuses to each value, followed by any applicable penalties. With all calculations complete, the highest of these two numbers is the DV used..." (emphasis mine). - Hapushet

Mostly agreeing, but two problems with what you are just saying: 1) page 185 makes it very clear that most DV bonuses from charms are not really "external bonuses", but really work like internal bonuses, crashing into dice caps. 2) There is no real distinction between "DV penalty" and "external penalty". They mean exactly the same thing. I've been working on a page dealing with all this. It's not finished, but this discussion suggests that it's worth unveiling now. It even mentions same missing steps in the order of modifiers, so we must be getting close to the truth. -- Wordman

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of the roll Charms play in DVs. I don't think the restriction on pg. 185 is a dice cap - I think it's just a limitation on DV bonuses. The reason why I suggest this is the way the 1st Ex interacts with DV. You do not add dice to the pool for calculating DV - you roll the dice, and the successes are capped by pg. 185. This suggests that attempting to shoehorn the DV cap into the general dice pool bonus cap is inaccurate, and will eventually lead to compromises in Charm assessment elsewhere. I think it's worth mentioning that all the variable bonuses to DV - Charms, stunts, Virtue channels, wounds, cover - are applied after DV is calculated from the base pool, either by separate rolling or direct modification. The result, I think, is that DV really is intended to be its own thing, and limitations on it should be considered their own thing as well.

Similarly, I wonder whether its true that DV penalties and external penalties are the same thing. External penalties are explicitly defined as things that eat successes off of rolls. In and of themselves, DVs are not rolled, so I'm not sure it's safe to call a DV penalty an external penalty; it might open up too many possbilities for conflicting mechanical referents. - Hapushet, who is willing to move this conversation to DissectingDefenseValue if its more appropriate there

I would say that page 185 is fairly clear when it describes how die adding charms interact with static values. "This bonus increases the Attribute + Ability Pool, not the final result of any calculations." So the 3rd Excellency, along with any other die adding charms should interact with static DVs in that fashion. The section goes on to note that the First Excellency is a bit of an exception, and as such I don't think it should be used as a benchmark for die adding charms. Similarly, the text on pg. 102 seems to indicate that virtues are added to the pool, not treated as stunts. -Ambisinister

Here's the issue though: DV Charms don't actually work like that. Other than the Excellencies, I cannot think of a single DV enhancement Charm that actually adds to the calculating pool. All of them add directly to the derived values. Trying to make them work that like involves either a) reading into them that +1 DV actually means +2 dice to the pool as Wordman is being forced to do over on his page, or b) cutting the functionality of every non-Excellency DV boosting Charm in half. Neither is a good idea. Moreover, the text on 147 argues a different path - the path that follows both intuition and logic: "When Essence Overwhelming aids DV, the player rolls the dice and adds successes to the DV like a stunt. Essence Triumphant adds its successes directly as points of DV. Essence Resurgent allows players to add half the Ability to the dice pool from which the DV was derived." Note that last bit - though it obviously suffers from a bit of editing confusion where the end result (half the Ability added to DV) is confused with the mechanics (the Ability is added to the pool), it's the only one of the three where adding to the pool is referenced. Otherwise, it says to add the successes directly to DV, which is what we all do anyway. Given that the system rules and the Charm rules were written by two different people, I think using the interpretation that maintains greater integrity with the system is the superior option. - Hapushet, who could swear that he's seen text saying to roll Virtues, but can't find it currently

Since DVs are calculated from a dice pool to begin with, and the text of the second excellency itself says "each two motes spent increases the effective (attribute + ability) rating by two," (also page 185), and the text of the first excellency itself says "each success increases the effective (attribute + ability) rating by two," (page 183) although the word "pool" isn't used I think it's safe to say that it's the base, pre-division calculation that is being affected. Just like Wordman has been saying. - IanPrice

The problem is that, contrary to what Hapushet said, all of the excellencies mention both adding to pools and adding to DV directly. Also, in saying "I cannot think of a single DV enhancement Charm that actually adds to the calculating pool", I think you are actually favoring the pool adder interpretation. That is, when a charm says "+1 to DV", this is to what page 185 refers when it says "for unrolled activities such as DV, Mental DV or feats of strength, Charms increase a character’s static rating by adding...". But, whatever. In revising the "success adders" section of my page, it seems to me that the rules are ambiguous enough that either interpretation can be defended. In choosing between them, I think it may come down to this: how do you want success adders for defense to work? And I think this might be Hapushet's point: if you treat a success adder as enhancing DV post-calculation, success adders for defense then work like success adders for offense. Is that desirable? If you get hit with a magic beam that reduces your defense pool to zero, do you want Second Excellency to be able to save you? If you hit someone with a magic beam that reduces their defense pool to zero, do you want Second Excellency to be able to save them? - Wordman

Personally, I don't want inapplicability to be part of the "penalty" discussion. It's specifically called out as "not a penalty, it just treats it as 0." But I do want there to be the possibility of charms that exceed the normal DV cap, just like success-adders on offense can exceed the dice cap's limits - IanPrice