TonyC/SolarsVsLionSystemSideTurn1

The First and Forsaken Lion smiled grimly as he looked across the ruined and twisted landscape. A good place to fight his longtime rivals - they should be a greater challenge than that pathetic crew that challenged him just weeks before. He saw Invincible Sword Princess settle into the Flowing Mirror of Opposition technique. A wise beginning. Then the Student flicked his hand in an unmistakeable gesture, and the Lion frowned. This should not be tolerated.

Princess immediately declares Impermanence combo use. She activates Thunderclap Rush Attack and Flowing Mirror of Opposition for 4m total, so she goes first and Lion's weapon speed and accuracy bonuses are nullified. She then uses Summoning The Loyal Steel (another 1m) to bring her daiklave to her hand before init is rolled. Student declares Chi Disruption combo use and activates Distracting Finger Gesture attack, substracting 5 from Lion's init and preventing him from taking multiple actions.

The others choose to wait for init to be rolled.

The init rolls (1d10 + precalculated speed + charm):

Stone Monkey: 7 + 19 + 9 = 35

Princess: 10 + 14 + 7 = 31

Mandala: 5 + 7 = 12

Student: 2 + 10 + 10 = 22

Diplomat: 3 + 7 = 10

With an estimated init of 1d10+56-5, looks like Lion goes first.

The rest has been moved to an 'errors' subpage, for the curious. The proper continuation goes here.

TonyC/SolarsVsLionOops1

Moving with the frightening speed granted to him by the Charcoal March of Spiders, the Lion flicked his hand three times, letting three small bone darts formed. As he raised his hand to throw, he let out a wail of unholy fury, a wail so powerful that it rattled even the magics holding the Charms of the combatants at bay from the spectators, causing them to cover their ears in pain. As the wail screamed across the battlefield, the Lion followed it with a series of throws, each needle multiplying a score of times in the air, until the sky seemed to be blotted out by ivory death, falling towards the Student.

This combo has two major parts. Withering Dirge and the Thrown attacks. I'm going to edit both FrivYeti's and my parts, interweaving them and shuffling them to form a coherent flow of events.

Alrighty, the Lion is working properly now. He declares and activates his entire Thousand Shards of Oblivion combo; first, Thunderclap Rush for 3 motes, and then Withering Dirge for 20 motes. Withering Dirge will cause 10L damage automatically to everyone who can hear him, which can only be soaked with soak Charms and Stamina. It's not an attack, so it can't be defended against. *evil grin* - FrivYeti

There's actually no clear-cut interpretation on how Withering Dirge work. Opinions are split between Withering Dirge being an attack and it not being an attack. Let's examine the reasoning behind each and the result. Exactly which one you use doesn't matter, I suppose, as long as you are consistent. Personally, I treat it as not being an attack, but I have no idea how FrivYeti deals with it, so I actually prepared two sets of responses.

• Withering Dirge is an attack because there's a person actively using it to directly cause damage at somebody. When the person stops using it, the damage stops. If you treat this as an attack, then you treat it like any other attack. Meaning that you get ping damage, but the damage is rolled. HGD, due it's applicability-trumping aspect, stops Withering Dirge for one person. It can also be used to trigger Essence Gathering Temper and Willpower Enhancing Spirit. If this is the case, then the Solars respond as follows:

Stone Monkey goes to 5-Dragon Standstill combo and uses HGD.

Princess uses HGD.

Mandala decides that the risk is worth it and just takes the damage and hopes he can make the roll to continue casting.

Student uses Adamant Skin Technique and Essence Gathering Temper.

Diplomat uses Reality-Fixing Caress combo and activates AST and EGT.

Alternatively....

• Withering Dirge is NOT an attack because it's all enviromental. Just like causing a forest fire to kill that Wyld Hunt chasing you through the Forest of Doom is not an attack as far as Exalted is concerned, so is Withering Dirge is not an attack. And just like Immunity to Fire will let you walk through that forest fire unscathed, so is being deaf (or dead) lets you ignore Withering Dirge. In this case, you can't defend against it using HGD. Well, maybe if you stunt it really well you can stunt using HGD to chop your ears off, but I recommend that only as a last resort. Since this is an enviromental damage, damage is not rolled. Rather, victims simply take all damage. Period. On the other hand, with a high-enough soak, you can soak the damage down to zero. Withering Dirge ignores armor soak though, so this isn't as easy as it looks. Anyway, for this case, the Solars respond as follows:

Stone Monkey does nothing. Between his Stamina 5 and Perfection of Earth Body, he has 10L soak, thus Withering Dirge does nothing to him.

Princess is kinda in limbo. Iron Skin Concentration will either soak all damage or does nothing at all. The new ISC in PG reduces damage to minimum damage, which, since this is an enviromental effect, is zero. On the other hand, charm text (which PG does not change) describes Iron Skin Concentration as hardening one's skin, which does nothing against Withering Dirge, which works through hearing and basically drains your life without touching you. It probably works, since ISC is like minor-AST now. Lucky for me, this is FrivYeti's headache. I just say Princess activates Iron Skin Concentration and let him worry about it.

Mandala can't afford taking all 10L of damage. He aborts his spell and goes to The Golden Bee's Sting combo, activating AST. He has to make a roll to dissipate the spell's energy harmlessly, but unless he has really bad luck, the roll is trivial.

Student activates AST, but he can't use EGT.

Diplomat also activates Reality-Fixing Caress combo and activates AST.

Lion's soul-tearing wail is highly effifacious. All those within earshot are affected. The weakest amongst the observers found their way to the Underworld, despite distance and protective charms. Yet Solars are made of sterner stuffs. Although Diplomat is coughing blood, and Student's bleeding from his ears, all five press on undaunted.

In the end, we decided that WD is not an attack. Thus the following.

Stone Monkey does nothing. His 10L soak absorbs the damage without problem.

Princess uses Iron Skin Concentration to give herself infinite soak. Since we've decided that Withering Dirge is not an attack, ping doesn't apply and she soaks the entire damage. I'm not sure whether ISC works that way, but since the new ISC is like a minor Adamant Skin Technique, I'm leaning to interpreting it that way. 3m.

Burning Mandala aborts his spell and uses his The Golden Bee's Sting combo instead. He makes his Wits+Occult roll and gets three successes. The spell dissipates harmlessly, if spectacularly. Like Princess, he also uses ISC to soak all the damage. 3m.

Student doesn't have ISC, too bad. He uses Adamant Skin Technique instead to soak up the damage. 5m+1w+1HL.

Diplomat activates if Reality-Fixing Caress combo and uses AST. 5m+1w+1HL.

Technically, Iron Skin only works against attacks, but I'll allow it. :) - FrivYeti

And now we move to the Thrown part of the combo.

The thrown portion of the Combo has been revised as follows, and he's leaving Charcoal March of Spiders up, as there is no Extra Actions in it:

Cascade of Cutting Terror (5), Incomparable Assasin Method (2), Precision of the Striking Raptor (12), Joint-Wounding Attack (3), Ivory Spine Attack (1), Aid of Ill Wind (20, increases the range increment to 550 yards), (43 per attack). In addition, the first spine will have Mastery-Of-Poison added to it, for a further 10 motes, 1 Willpower, and a health level of damage. If the first spine hits, Student has to make ANOTHER Stamina + Resistance check, at Difficulty 8. If he succeeds, he takes 4 levels of poison damage. If he fails, he takes 16 levels of poison damage. If the first attack fails to kill Student, Lion will continue to use Mastery of Poison, but he's not going to keep using it against anyone else.

Total Combo Cost: 23 + (43 x3 = 129) + 10 = 162 motes. There are three attacks in total. This is a lot more expensive and mildly less effective, but hopefully it will do.

I'm keeping the first three attack rolls, and Student can keep his first poison resistance roll. Attack rolls 36 suxx, 33 suxx, 36 suxx. If Student dies, the other attack(s) loop over to Burning Mandala again.

Personal Essence 25/35 (47 committed), Peripheral 46/194 (34 committed), Willpower 5/10, Health 35/36. - FrivYeti

There were several minor adjustments here as FrivYeti, who is merely human, tries to figure exactly what he needs to overwhelm Student's SCD. I chose to delete them and the discussions about them because it really amounts to "is it high enough?", "mmmm, nah, you need to pump more motes into it", "okay, how about now?", "yeah, that'll do". The one point that might be important is whether you need three combo activations or just one. That part is in the Comments section. If it needs three activations, then Lion's at a disadvantage, as Student can then disrupt/redirect two of them and take the hit from the last one and hopefully survive it. Given that we want to move on, unless Friv wants to rework his combo, I'll assume it works as he intended. - TonyC

The Thrown part of the combo is pretty simple to handle. It's undodgeable, and if you get hit, you die, either from sheer damage or from the two lethal poison coating the needle. The obvious answer is HGD. Unfortunately, being a focused martial artist, Student doesn't have HGD. So he has to use Adamant Skin Technique to absorb the damage and hope his Stamina + Resistance will carry him through. The AST is not a big deal. But the chance of Student surviving the poisons is very very slim.

I don't like that, so I'm going to try breaking the rules. - TonyC

As soon as the first bone needle leaves Lion's hand, Student moves. So fast, mortal eyes and the less martial exalts only see him disappearing from his spot and appearing right behind Stone Monkey. With a glance of contempt, Lion adjusts, and the storm of bone needles rushes to Student's new location, as if it has been aimed there all along. But Student isn't intending to escape the storm. Rather, he puts his left arm on Stone Monkey's shoulder blade like so. His right hand pushes Stone Monkey's right elbow up as he kicks Stone Monkey's knees and causes him to kneel slightly. By the time Student's done, he has made Stone Monkey turn his orichalcum staff like a giant windmill, swatting the incoming storm down while Student matches his movement behind him perfectly, letting no part of his body exposed.

Student uses Leaping Dodge Method (4m) to move so fast the human eye can't follow. We see this kind of stunt happening all the time in anime. This isn't an actual dodge, but since the combo is undodgeable, who cares? But the next part of the stunt is Student using Stone Monkey to make the perfect parries he needs. Again, kung-fu movies do this kind of stunt all the time, and if Jackie Chan can do it, surely a Solar can. FrivYeti describes a similar stunt (hiding behind some sort of cover) as letting someone dodge Cascade of Cutting Terror, so I'm sure he'll allow this too. Probably the combo will require HGD to parry but Stone Monkey has them and will use it if allowed. - TonyC

Alright, lesse... I'm willing to allow that stunt. The Student can roll a dodge, and Stone Monkey can roll a parry. I'm not going to let Stone Monkey use HGD, though, since it specifies only being useful against attacks that are targeting the user. 2-die stunt for Student, 1-die for Monkey. - FrivYeti

Geh. I was not expecting having to roll anything. I mean, if you look at the combos, they're all perfects. Oh well, I'll do what I can. First, I'm requesting that you reroll the attack using Accuracy 56. Sorry for making you this, but if I can't use perfects, then I need every edge I can possibly get, because as you can see, the first hit will kill Student from the poison. Second, Student will abort to full parry and full dodge. He has two full dice action thanks to Gem of Perfect Mobility, so he can do this. This make two parries and a dodge, but since there's two different people doing the parries, this is okay. For precedent, Virtuous Guardian of Flame works exactly like this. IIRC (I'm at work, book at home). And there's a guardian demon that works similarly. Next, ah, crap, I have to get back to work. I'll do the rest after I'm done later tonight. - TonyC

Stone Monkey Reflexively activates Blade of The Battle Maiden to add 10 dice to his MA attack and parries and aborts to full parry. 20m+2w.

He parries with 23 dice, 22 dice, and 21 dice (I'll have to double check if PoEB affects parries). 9 successes, 10 successes, and 6 successes.
Student aborts to full dodge with 22, 21, and 20 dice (Essence 10, yay). 11, 13, and 12 successes respectively.
Student aborts to full parry with 16, 15, and 14 dice. 12, 4, 5 but plus 10 autosuccesses each from Chosen of Endings Sidereal Ways for 22, 14, and 15 successes respectively. Totals: 20, 23, 18 without counting the second parry, or 42, 37, and 33 counting the second parry.

FaFL's total rolls are as follows: 25, 26 and 21 success. Enough to get past the first parry and dodge, but Student's second abort shuts it down. Well played. Go ahead, Solars who haven't aborted. :) On a side note, my apologies for the very long delay - FrivYeti

On the other hand, had the stunt not generate enough successes, let's see exactly when Student will go down.

Student: 2HL down (1 committed to charm), personal 0/15 (24 committed), peripheral 44/91(1 committed), wp 7/9.

If stunt fails (not keeping the previous Resistance roll, btw, since I want to add Temperance to the more difficult roll):

First attack: AST 5m+1w+1hl. EGT 1m. Minimum damage is 11L (10L base + 1 extra success). Rolling that, I get 20m back. If damage is higher, I'll roll the differerence. Spending 1w to add Temperance to first Resistance roll. 1st Resistance: 7 successes. Stunt: 3, 6, 9. Second Resistance: 4 successes. Stunt: 8, 4, 3. Student dies unless he gets 3 stunt dice instead of 2.

Second Attack: AST 5m+1w+1hl. 1st Resistance: 1 success. Student dies.

If the remaining needle(s) is targeted at Mandala, Mandala uses HGD to parry them.

Having barely survived Lion's poisonous assault, Student does not feel it's time to press the attack yet. He shouts, "Stall!" as he, Stone Monkey, and Burning Mandala shortens the gap between the group and Lion.

Still running towards Lion, Invincible Sword Princess hears Student's shout and frowns. Surely when it comes to blade against blade, she is a match to Lion. Yet as she looks at Lion, her heart leaps to her throat. Terrible describes First & Forsaken Lion as the word cat describes a tiger. With an act of will she commands, "Fly, Silver Dream! Defang him!" Heeding Student's shout, she continues by flicking her fingers at five directions instead of at Lion's heart as she wished. Invisible threads shoot from her fingers and tie themselves to the greatswords scattered across the courtyard. She finishes with a knotting motion and five greatswords stand from the ground.

Diplomat meanwhile climbs ever higher, senses alert for trouble.

Princess goes first, despite my narrative liberty. She commands Flying Silver Dream to disarm Lion. This means she needs to make a Valor roll due to Heart Stopping Mien. She rolls 3 dice and gets 3, 6, 7. One success, good enough. The Silver daiklave attempts the disarm with a pool of 30 dice. Being an object with no mind, it is not affected by the HSM's pool reduction. Twenty success, but at difficulty 3, so only 18 counts. Lion can parry or dodge or both as he wishes. At any rate, Princess then spends 8 motes for Rain of Unseen Threads to pick up 5 of the dozen greatswords. She then wastes 10 motes on Five Dragon Force Blow, which must be spent due to the combo rules, even when it gives no effect. She then continues movement until she's right next to Lion (1 yard).

The others basically move closer, or in Diplomat's case, up. Diplomat is stuck with Reality Fixing Caress, so she can't attack. Burning Mandala will either use the Sorcery Capturing Cord to unleash Gaia's Rebuke or, should Lion actually gets disarmed, he will use his Thrown combo. I'll do it after the disarm is resolved.

The Lion smiled slimly as the flying daiklave moved towards him. For a moment, he considered trying to bat it out of the air, but as it dove instead for his knife, he chuckled softly. "I think not, child." Shadows coiled around him, even as his knife shot out to defend himself, and as darkness surrounded him, pulling the blade off-course, he spun and struck back.

The Lion is going to continue being overconfidant, because that is very much in character for him. ;) He spends 3 more motes, continuing his Combo, and triggers three Charms: Fivefold Shadow Form and Vengeful Riposte. Flying Silver Dream loses 16 dice to hit, reducing his attack pool to 14, and the Lion uses his Perfect Talon Dagger to throw up a 28-die parry. If that succeeds, attacks become automatic successes on an attack roll against Silver Dream, which might knock it out of the air. The Lion gets 15 successes to parry.

However, I am granting a 1-die stunt for Dream's attack. After that, feel free to unload either Thrown or the Gaia's Rebuke, based on the result of your own roll. :) - FrivYeti

Personal Essence 22/35 (47 committed), Peripheral 46/194 (34 committed), Willpower 5/10, Health 35/36.

Lion easily turns Flying Silver Dream aside but the essence-sighted may see that Invincible Sword Princess is absorbing some of the essence flux. She laughs softly as Flying Silver Dream swiftly dodges Lion's riposte. "Bring out your true blade, Lion. That paltry thing belongs in the kitchen, not in a battlefield. Or are you saying that's where you belong too?" With that, she slashes at Lion's back, silver daiklave shimmering into existence in tune with the motion. Yet at the last moment, she turns her grip so that instead of striking, she merely caresses Lion's back with the flat of the blade.

First, Princess spends 1 WP and uses Power Reaping Prana. She rolls 11 dice and gets 3 successes, getting 6 motes back. Anyway, we reroll the disarm with the new pool of fifteen (14+1 stunt) dice and get 8 successes. Due to the difficulty of a disarm, only 6 counts. With 15 successes, Lion's parry succeeds. Riposte turns the extra successes into autosuccess for a counter. 9 success. Luckily FSD has an inherent difficulty 2 to hit and an inherent dodge pool of 12. Rolling 12 dice, I get 8 successes, which, combined with the difficulty 2, is just enough to make the attack miss. (There's a stunt dice that I didn't bother rolling, btw.) Not that it matter, thanks to Summoning The Loyal Steel.

Anyway, Princess finishes her movement. After 51 yards, she's technically is 1 yard behind Lion. This doesn't give her any advantage though, as Lion is perfectly aware of where she is and can turn around etc, etc. She spends 1m to summon FSD to her hand as she uses her original action (Rain of Unseen Threads give 5 extra actions, which are all used. But her original action has not been used for anything yet) to deliver an attack with a pool of 20 dice. Due to combo rules, she must spend another 2m for Five Dragon Force Blow, which will give her a base damage of 42L. Respectable, even against Lion (thanks David, Haku). Except that this is Exalted, so Princess shows her contempt instead by using the "marking an enemy" maneuver (increase difficulty to 3, do NO damage). Hah! Rolling 20 dice (30-10 due the HSM). Ah, crap. 7 successes. With difficulty 3, only 5 successes counts. Stunt dice, if any, is 8, 6, 6. Lion may dodge and parry as normal. If Lion uses any charm in reaction, Princess spends a WP to absorb essence again. If he counters, Princess will defend appropriately and then, since it's still her init, sends FSD flying again. However, since FSD already acted, it can't attack this turn.

The Lion chuckled, through his anger, at the mocking tone of her voice. "For you, my sword will be drawn, once your... friends... have been dealt with. They are not worthy of so much as seeing Varan's Ruin. For them, a kitchen knife is all that is required - for they are no more than food to me." He spins at her leap, bringing his knife around to block her blow, twisting it to counter-strike.

The Lion's going to be using his persistant parry. I'm going to call that a one-die stunt, which is also gutsy, so there are six successes hanging around. With a 28-die parry, plus one for his counter-taunting stunt, the Lion rolls 21 successes (the WW dieroller seems to like him in situations when he's already favoured), and bats her sword aside, creating a 15-success counterattack. Mark off her defense as appropriate.

A casual flick of her wrist and she lets Flying Silver Dream hovers by itself. She makes mystical slashes in the air with her fingers instead as she slides around Lion's counterattack like silk caressing the skin. "A lady asks you to dance and you jilted her. Truly, Lion, you are no gentleman," Invincible Sword Princess responds.

In a sense, I was really glad Lion responded this way to my taunt, because had Lion ignored her, Princess is screwed as she'd have no way to regain motes and WP. Speaking of which, that's also why I chose not to attempt to damage Lion. The thought of Lion letting the attack hit and then using Pain Eating Focus + perfect soak to trade 1w+1hl for 80 motes scares me. I can't risk another Thousand Shards of Oblivion combo. Anyway, Princess first sends Flying Silver Dream away so she can burn 1 WP for Power Reaping Prana. Rolling 12 (11+1 stunt) dice, she gets 5 successes. At this point I was torn for a few hours, since Princess is getting really low on WP and motes. I almost decided to just take the hit with ISC and regain everything using EGT and WES and then have Diplomat's Reality Fixing Caress heal the damage afterward. I mean, she's stuck in that combo, so might as well get some use out of it, no? Wrong! At the last minute I remember that FrivYeti used Mastery of Poison in the combo earlier. That charm pretty much makes being hit an instant death proposition. So I decided not to risk it.

So Princess instead uses Seven Shadow Evasion for 6m and then uses 3m for Dancing With Strife to get 1 WP. Hearthstone adds another WP to that. At this point Princess has 19m (after adding the stunt reward) and 5 WP.

Burning Mandala does nothing. He takes off his belt, which is the Adamant Sorcery Capturing Cord. That's his dice action.

Diplomat spends the minimum 8 motes for the Simple and Suplemental of her combo which does... nothing at the moment. If somehow Lion manages to hurt Princess, Reality Fixing Caress can heal her, but since Princess has all three perfects, that's unlikely. If Lion does hurt someone, I may spend more motes.

Location summary: Lion at the center. Mandala, Monkey, and Student roughly 33 yards away. Diplomat is off the side, 50 yards away from Lion and 32 yards up. Princess is a yard behind Lion (in a straight line to the three Solars).

To do: although stunts have been awarded, the rewards (essence/wp) hasn't been added up. Will do that soon. Also, FrivYeti, remember to award Lion some stunt dice yourself, and if successful, recover essence/willpower.

Righto. Lion regains 2 motes, Student regains 4 motes, Princess and Monkey regain 2 motes, and Mandala and Diplomat don't.

Lion: Personal Essence 23/35 (47 committed), Peripheral 46/194 (34 committed), Willpower 5/10, Health 35/36.