LunarCombatStrategies

Here is the list of Lunar Strategies. Please add or comment! -Clebo

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Lunar Strategies

1. Aggravating Lunar. Any Full Moon Lunar uses Wound-Knitting, armour for only protection, but it uses Five-Dragon Fist to inflict serious damage on opponents. In addition, Five-Dragon Blocking Technique and Form is used.

2. Forceful Lunar. Any Full Moon Lunar uses Wound-Knitting, armour for only protection, but it uses Five-Dragon Force-Blow to inflict serious damage on opponents. In addition, Five-Dragon Blocking Technique and Form is used. Authors: Tyrell and Clebo

3. Even More Aggravating Lunar. Full Moon who'se DBT includes Lightning Speed and the Flight Gifts. Who uses arrows. Lots of arrows. If they start to lose a fight, they run, faster than you can keep up. Author: DS

4. Master MA Lunar: Apply the flying Lunar's movement to a Full Moon with Charcoal March of Spiders. Note that they can skim around and inflict even greater penalties to hit with their obscene movement rate. Now add in movement Charms from Air Dragon Style, specifically Hurricane Combat Method. Ice the cake with Savage Moonsilver Talons, and what you have is a Lunar that can reduce armies to a fine pink mist, all alone. Author: Alienated-One

5. Snake dodge Lunar: More standard executions include the good old stratospheric Dexterity, triple-specialized and maxed-out Dodge Lunar who gets Snake Body Technique. It may not always be usable, but it comes in quite handy when you get to punish a Melee monkey or a Martial Arts fanatic. Jumping Spider Attack? I think not; you take that hit instead. My 20-dice pool for this Charm says that you will as well, but just to be sure, I'll convert 12 Dexterity dice into automatic successes with Bending Before the Storm, and I get to roll another eight. Same goes for the good old three-year standby of Essence Venom Strike and Armor-Penetrating Fang Strike. Author: Alienated-One

6. Fight like a mortal (or a DB, for that matter). Rely on winning initiative and splitting pools - two things Lunars have the potential to really excel at, with their astronomical dice pools, success-swappers, and unholy initiative. High-Rate moonsilver claws lend themselves well to this, but reachy weapons like spears can work, just favor Dodge for defense, since Rate will become a limiting factor for you. Supplement your held defenses with things like Wary Swallow Method for pre-initiative defense, Feline Guard Technique (though that Charm needs a lot of hugs and surgery), and Snake Body Technique. Abort to full dodge frequently, wait for the right time to land that crushing attack. Bowing Reed Technique is your friend. Author: David.

7. Lunar's Lunar. DBT lots. Soak and regen charms/gifts to taste. Clinch. Hyena Jaw Technique. Bear Embrace method and/or Mighty Bear Crush as needed. Hold for prey's Stamina in turns. Garnish with other charms from Unarmed Combat IV. Full Moon, Lightning Speed, and Panther Stride Stance are all helpful in a "You can hide, but you can't run," sense. Author: Tardach

8. (Variant on the above) Cow-Crusher! Drop EVERY DBT point into Strength. At Essence 3, you have Strength 16 (18 if you bought one Horrifying Might Gift at Essence 1). Unmoving Bear Defense lets you dodge while clinching(at full pool + Essence, if you split your pool, just at Essence otherwise). Spine-Breaking Technique + Mighty Bear Crush kills your opponent pretty thoroughly, especially if Cunning Porcupine Defense is up (24L, piercing? Yikes). Note: This only works in Power Combat; otherwise, you need Dexterity to start the clinch. - FrivYeti

9. Ninja Interior Decorators Required. Lunar with Gem of Adamant Skin and full regen gifts of DBT. Throw in lots of Ox-Body. -BogMod

Comments

For the Lunar strategy don't you mean five dragon force blow? (double base damage and do knockdown for 3 motes) rather than five-dragon fist? Tyrrell

Well, both strategies are very useful and effective. I was going more for the cruel aggravated damage that Five-Dragon Fist inflicts. Furthermore, the cost of a health level is much less impeding for a Lunar with regenerational abilities. I'll put your version up too.. :-) -Clebo

Much better than Five-Dragon Fist for that strategy is Essence Venom Technique, IMHO. A little more costly to use (I can't remember if the revised cost is 7m1w or 7m1hl), but it's Comboable. - David.

Per EPG, Lunars can't learn Sidereal MA, so the "Master MA Lunar" strategy needs some revision. --MF

I find there to be something deeply troubling about the fact that most of these Lunar combat strategies don't actually involve Lunar combat Charms. When it's seriously being suggested that an optimal combat strategy for Celestials involves Five-Dragon Style, something is far wrong. -- AntiVehicleRocket

I see a couple of ways to interpret the fact that two of the four (one is invalid, after all) rely on MA. One - people haven't yet caught on to how the developers meant Lunars to work. Two - people don't like the way the developers meant Lunars to work, and want to try to use them in a different way. Three - Lunars don't work right. I think it's really a combination of the three, but for a while now I've been leaning towards interpretation Three. Custom Charms, of course, can completely solve this, though there seems to be some disagreement over what's appropriate for Lunars and what isn't. Funny thing, though, is that no-one seems to be adding Lunar strategies to this. I guess I'll go ahead and add one now. - David. has a fever, and the only precription is still more cowbell!

I can understand your issue MF, but I think it's fair to allow any strategies that are understandable. The illegal strategy is ok too, because each game is individual, and some brave STs ut there might allow SidMA for Lunars. Furthermore, David, I think that your strategy is a bit too general. The purpose is to make things easy for the ST to handle mutiple Exalted NPC Combat. Your text is a good read for how to build a Lunar, not really a simple and easy-to-use strategy. Perhaps you can divide it into several simple strategies? Clebo

The page only asks for Lunar combat strategies, so I think cut-and-dried NPC strategies for STs along with tips on builds for PCs are appropriate. Perhaps it should be divided into sections for players and for Storytellers, so that everyone can benefit from the accumulated advice here? - David. fever, cowbell, etc.

David, you are correct that these strategies are useful for players too, and your text is nice of STs as well. However, the initial purpose was to make STs life easier by simply stating X charms and how they interact. This question a writer should ask is how many different combinations are there within my strategy? If there are too many, more than two, the human mind is very poor at handling it, depending on experience of course. If you have a lot, write them as many instead, for ease of reference for beginning STs and players. In your defense, Lunars' strategies are difficult to power up, without the explanation of how it is build. My suggestion is to include a totem animal. This could give a nice and neat indication on how the Lunar is built. Clebo

In response to AntiVehicleRocket, the strategies I write are in no way intended to be optimal, and others do not have to be as well. Most storytellers need to adjust the opposition to challenge different levels of characters' combat abilities. Also, some presumably cheap tricks might be the doom of a Dawn whose weakness is there. Furthermore, one who can use several strategies is a powerful enemy indeed...Clebo

Added a new strategy. Clinching was the downfall of the Bull of the North in my game. I dunno. I've heard I must have made him a pussy, but I mean... Brawl is his tertiary combat ability, and he needs a lot of Performance charms as well. Even then, the best he'd have is Dragon Coil technique, which is okay, but much less cool in the context of grappling with a 9 foot tall killing machine with a whole tree of clinch charms. Basically, I think Lunars are the best wrestlers in the game. If they can get inside the bows, swords, and fists, I think they can probably own anything, with the possible exception of a Deathlord. - Tardach

FrivYeti, I do not think that Unmoving Bear Defense actually provides you with a dodge like you think it does. It merely adds essence to your dodge rolls and lets you perform a dodge action without having to move. You still have to provide the dodge action somehow. -BogMod

Er actually not only is it reflexive charm (and thus likely to "build from 0"), but explicitly states "If the character has no dodge action, he may use his Essence as his dice pool in a dodge attempt." -Vaegrim

Yes, but you can't split your actions while in a clinch I thought? Thus the split to do whole pool + ess thing doesn't really apply. I might perhaps be wrong though there. -BogMod

Well, in classic combat not only can't you parry or dodge, you can't even use non-soak combat charms during a clinch. But since FrivYeti specifically stated the strategy's intended environment was PC, I'll run on that assumption. If you take the Clinch revision rules to mean they replace the old rules entirely, then the only mechanical defense prohibition on a clinch comes with it's rate of 1 (meaning no aborting to full parry without another weapon, or a charm). Otherwise the only limit is that you're standing there, wrestling with the guy; a problem that UBD seems to address perfectly (almost like it was meant to? ...hmm) - Vaegrim

The bottom part of the new clinch rules says if you had multiple actions you could make multiple clinch rolls. I always took this to mean that you couldn't split your actions but if you had a charm such as the form charm for Charcoal March of Spiders then you could do other things with your actions but the general roll while in a clinch took up ones entire action that turn with to dice splitting allowed. -BogMod

Erm... don't you think that's a lot to extrapolate from one sentence (considering it didn't say anything about the actions being independent)? I mean... couldn't it just as easily be explaining how the technique works if a player manages to surpass the rate of 1 (like with charms)? More to the point.. if a clinch necessarily takes up the entirety of your dice action and forbids splitting, what would the point of assigning it a rate be? - Vaegrim

More when you are in the clinch itself. Right in the middle it says that each turn on the highest initiative of the two they both make a clinch roll and that this roll is the dice action for all in the clinch. -BogMod