TonyC/InvincibleSwordPrincessOldComments

Comments

Might I suggest Steel Devil Style for free parries/counter-attacks, it's kind of limited, but if linked to a perfect defense, ISP can reply tit for tat without paying for the counterattacks and I wouldn't say taking a -single- SMA charm would be cheating... the trick is to find complimenting weapons, which you'll run into even now. ~ Haku

PS - I should note that Death Parrying Stroke and Life Severing Blow -works- even with NON-martial arts combos/attacks as they ARE reflexive charms. And that 5 Dragon style does compliment VBoS very well, due to its charms and style weapons ~ Haku

Thank you for the suggestion. I completely forgot about Steel Devil Style. However, I won't use Death Parrying Stroke and Life Severing Blow for flavor reason. As for 5 Dragon, too expensive for its ability. Invincible Sword Princess is already dipping into 6 different styles, possibly 7, not including the basic Melee. I don't know how effective the end result will be against Lion, but it'll be a beauty to behold. - TonyC

I dunno, I think Five-Dragon could definitely be worth it. I think all you'd want would be Five-Dragon-Force Blow. Granted, it's Simple, but it looks like Simples are not a staple of her arsenal, so it fills a potential Combo slot. Couple that with a reaver or grand daiklave, and it's a very inexpensive way to produce a lot of damage. I don't have the Lion's stats handy, unfortunately, so I don't know if a base damage of 38-44L (numbers assume Strength 5, Essence 5, and ISE) would pierce the Lion's soak effectively. - David.

Steel Devil Style is very useful, reflexive counter-attacks + parries are always nice, as they don't eat into your actions. As for 5 Dragon, it's mainly 5 Dragon Forces Blow, that's the single most damaging charm you could fit into a MA tree, double the raw damage? With strength 5 (which can be higher with strength increasing exercise - up to essence 5), grand daiklave (11L), you could be looking at 21L, before successes or charm boosting. And for 2 motes, it 'jumps' up to 42L, and if you combo it with a extra MA action charms and some sort of defensive charms... Remember, the Lion only has 26L soak before charms or special effects.
~ Haku

You might also want to note that ghost-seeing blind fold works -beautifully- until it's soaked with the blood of a blind person. Which means that blind exalt better not bleed on his blindfold. ~ Haku

Excellent point on Five-Dragon Force Blow. I'll have to reconsider and recompute just how much essence Princess has in her pool after all the committed stuff. Steel Devil, on the other hand, is not useful here. The restrictions just don't play well with the other charms she has. - TonyC

Hmmm... point, but you'll need to spend essence just to do any form of counter-attacks when the Lion guns for you. Against exalts or powered beings, counter-attacks are beautiful; mainly because you can't counter them and you have to spend defensive actions, which has be charm produced or reserved just to defend or risk getting pinged to death.
~ Haku who likes to think of CA as part of the spam technique.

How are you going to get the weapons to all match? Unless ISP is fighting barehanded... she's not going to be able to use alot of those MA charms, and if barehanded, her melee charms get disengaged. ~ haku who is a tad worried here about those charms.

- Mwahahahaha!!! No, look, I'm writing the charms down right now. I haven't actually built the actual combo and I think I'll go with tactics 3 and watch the cherry blossoms fall, but the style weapon thing is not a problem. - TonyC (who's going to clear the comments soon.)

Heh! Well... one way of getting a decent combat stats 'barehanded' is to use the PG's version of Wood Dragon's Claws, which allows you to reflexively hot-swap 20 points about in the stats at the start of any turn, up to Occult + Essence in any single stat. If you're using classic combat, it can get... very potent (speed+7, accuracy+7, damage+6, defense+0). It's power drops if you're using rate as you have to factor that one in there. ~ Haku

What, no specialties? - Quendalon

Ooo, good catch. I was so wrapped up in the magic stuff I forgot about the basics. - TonyC

Shouldn't Brawl still be favored? Also... I think Willpower 10 would be nice for the Princess. But then again... I still haven't fully understood your WP regaining strategy and the combo yet. So many Charms! - sssssz

--- How the combo works --- Okay, say the set-up's done. Turn 1, we roll init. Princess immediately activates the combo and use Thunderclap Rush Attack and Flowing Mirror of Opposition. This forces Lion to also activate his combo. Lion also have a "I go first" charm too, so he'll win the roll-off, but Flowing Mirror negates a weapon's accuracy. This is -4 dice to every single attack Lion makes and Lion makes a lot of attacks. Let's say Lion goes after Princess and uses his uber-attack. Princess Solar Counterattacks him, commands Flying Silver Dream to go after him, MA Counterattack him barehanded, activates Power Reaping Prana and on average trades 1 WP for 11 motes. She then activates Dancing With Strife and trades 3 motes for 1 WP and gets an extra WP due to hearthstone. She then perfect dodges the attack. If the attack is undodgeable, recalling Flying Silver Dream is reflexive and then she uses HGD. If Lion wants to keep dancing, she'll happily accept. Anyway, now it's her turn. Flying Silver Dream is hovering, attacking Lion independently, meaning that she's unarmed. Meaning she can use her MA extra action and simple charms. She gets 5 MA attacks (at 23 dice minimum) doing double base damage and can't be counterattacked. This cost 18 motes, but Princess is not worried, because between stunts, hearthstone, and the essence/wp regaining charms, starting next turn she'll be breaking even.

What scares me is that Lion could replicate this easily by discarding Varan's Ruin and going unarmed, but if he does that, he loses his HGDs and hopefully the other solars can exploit this somehow. - TonyC ---

Things That Needs Clarification

• What are the new Power Combat stats for Flying Silver Dream? There are two versions in the wiki. Friv, which one to use or do you want to make a new version?

We'll take Version II, it seems to work. - FrivYeti

• If Rain of Unseen Threads picks up a weapon lying on the ground and uses it to attack, does Five-Dragon Force Blow still affects it? What if the weapon is a grand daiklave, which is a style weapon for Five-Dragon Force Blow but not for Charcoal March of Spiders?

Um. I'd have to reread the Charm. I would say that Five-Dragon Force Blow would still apply generally; does Rain of Unseen Threads require weapons picked up to be in-form? If so, no combining with a grand daiklave.

• Reading the text, I think sending Flying Silver Dream and calling it back are reflexive actions and take no time. Right?

I believe so, yes. - FrivYeti

• Power Reaping Prana requires the user to have Essence Discerning Glance up to be able to perceive the flow of Essence. I've substituted Ghost-Seeing Blindfold, which gives the effect of All-Encompassing Sorcerer Sight. Is this okay?

Yeah, I'd give it to you. :) Any Essence-sight seems valid. - FrivYeti

• The combination of Dancing With Strife, Power Reaping Prana, and Stone of Revolutionary Dog seems broken. Which is exactly why I'm using it. If I got this right, then whenever Lion attacks, I use Power Reaping Prana (multiple times, if necessary) and convert WP to motes, use the motes to power a perfect defense and counterattacks, and then use Dancing With Strife to convert the remaining motes back to WP, gaining an extra WP thanks to Stone of Revolutionary Dog. Now, there's several ways Lion can get around this perpetual motion machine. One, don't attack Princess, or two, don't use essence around her. Still.... is there some canon rule that prevents this?

Sadly, no. That is a perfectly valid and truly obscene combo. Congrats. - FrivYeti

• Friv, I've deliberately left the social-fu charms empty. Since this is supposed to be the "direct combat" version, how about a gentleman's agreement not to use social-fu? Because if not, I have this great visual of Student with 20 Performance autosuccesses pulling a Memory Reweaving, or, if I feel like it, Divine Performance Style plus Hypnotic Tongue (stunting a caress as part of a dance would be so easy).

Yeah, that makes sense. Otherwise we end up in a social-fu race: Can Student get the Memory Reweave up before the Lion activates Elegant Tyrant's Majesty and unleashes 31-die Soul-Flaying Gazes. (Actually, that would be a pretty devastating counter. Hey, Student, you lose ten Willpower and have to obey me. Grah!) ;) - FrivYeti, who just realized that Irrestible Succubus Style would make the Lion become Appearance 10 and make people roll Temperance or love him. Yikes.

Actually, that does benefit you guys - I forgot that there's an anti-social Fu Charm in the Abyssal book (Scathing Cynic Attitude). Regardless, we'll keep it in the realm of direct effects. :) - FrivYeti

From one Power-Combatant/twinker to Another Very Nicely Done =), Thank you and Friv for this Cool little Project.

A few comments if i may -

May i Suggest getting Surprise Anticipation method to avoid getting hit by Flowing Evasion Assault without being able to use HGD ? you seem to have some xp to spare =).

Regarding Flying Silver Dream, yes the sending/recalling is reflexive but there are a few things you should consider - FSD acts on your own initiative which means you can't send her to defend/attack for you ahead of time, it has a movement limit so if the lion wishes to open some distance you might not be able to recall her all the way to you for HGD, The Lion can knock FSD from the air, forcing you to grab the sword again if you want to command it. Adding Summoning the Loyal Steel Charm to the Combo helps fixing most of the problems.

Note you need princess to be in close range if you're using Flowing Mirror of Opposition - not sure if your strategy involves keeping distance or not.

I'd approve Power reaping prana usage with Ghost Seeing Blindfold in my games but that's Friv Call here.

I might have misread you're combo but it seems as u're using two counterattacks against one attack which is like Dual dodging or parrying one attack (though i believe the fact Flying silver can't fly before your initiative. settles this anyway).

Regarding Social Fu - It would be safe to assume the Lion is immune to that or it would be silly. After all i'd say Standing in the middle of a shadowland, Hearing the Voices of the Malfeans and suffering from Endless Torment is all the Evidance one needs to shake off the Illusion, Memory Reweaving or not =). And Friv Soul Flaying Gaze is as broken as Dancing with Strife combo is to me though there are ways around both - Go blind for Soul Flaying gaze for example. the Combo is problematic but Given the Perfect Nature of the Lion's attacks he can go with "probing" attacks scoring no more than 4 Undodgable/unblockable Success to avoid Dancing with strife Usage - It's ugly though. - Hugh

The issue of applying counterattacks from multiple sources to a single attack is still rather fuzzy. It's not explicitly outlawed by the rules, and it seems that a fair number of Exalted players or Storytellers think it's alright - probably because it's not an insignificant investment to get access to multiple counterattack sources (at least, ones that aren't mutually exclusive - Steel Devil Style, IIRC, forbids the character from using other counterattacks while benefitting from it). - David.

Rather than giving FrivYeti more headache, I've decided to remove the Snake MA charms and avoid the issue. Besides, that one counterattack per attack sounds reasonable, actually. Anyway, I added in Surprise Anticipation Method in, since while Flowing Evasion Assault isn't a problem (exalts can defend against attacks from behind using charms), Blow Concealing Gesture (Ebon Shadow) is. - TonyC

Why not multiple counterattacks per attack? There's a Sidereal MA Charm at Ess 6 which on its own gives multiple counterattacks versus a single attack. It seems valid that you could use multiple lower-level counterattack Charms to do the same thing, since "one counterattack per attack" is a statement clearly contradicted in the canon material. -TheMyriadOfShades