VaticanT/SolarPerfectHouseRules

Here's my fix for the Perfects... All Perfects now add 1wp to their costs. However, they defend against ALL attacks in a flurry, not just one. So, a trade off of a different cost (that isn't in the same economy as other defenses) for a power increase. Also prevents Spam attacks being the only method of dealing with Perfects. New restrictions: All Perfects now have two restrictions based on their Flaw; one is an immediate mechanical restriction, and one is an applicability flaw, restricting their use in certain scenarios.

Conviction

Restriction: When someone uses a defense with a Conviction flaw, they must attempt to attack the person who prompted the use of the Perfect for 2 actions, moving directly towards them and employing any means at their disposal.

Applicability: You cannot use a defense with a Conviction Flaw if you are currently going against your motivation.

Compassion

Restriction: When someone uses a defense with a Compassion flaw, they may only make attacks doing Bashing Damage for 2 actions.

Applicability: If you have killed someone in this scene, you cannot use a Defense with a Compassion flaw.

Temperance

Restriction: When someone uses a defense with a Temperance flaw, they cannot move for 2 full actions.

Applicability:You cannot use a defence with the Temperance flaw if you initiated the conflict (ie forced the Join Battle roll)

Valor

Restriction: If you use a defense with the Valor flaw, you must attack the greatest apparent threat on the field for 2 actions.

Applicability: You cannot use a defense with a Valor flaw if you actively tried to avoid this conflict.

Comments

VaticanT - I must say I'm not entirely convinced your arguments for how these help are true and complete. Have you play-tested these? One one hand, they drastically increase the perfect defense in power, and on the other, they very much railroad the character using them into certain behaviour. Due to the high likelihood of needing a perfect defense every two actions, you can easily railroad someone using them into certain behaviours, regardless of how appropriate those behaviours might be. More worrisome is that you might have swung the pendulum the other way, insomuch as while before, attack-spam was the best way to get through a perfect (or draining them of motes), you've now limited it to draining them of motes and willpower, as attack-spam is now functionally impotent. -- GreenLantern

That's kind of the point. I don't like Perfects as the backbone of 2nd Ed combat strategy. I also didn't like that only High Rate attackers could have any meaningful effect on a Perfect Weilder. The idea with these rules is to bring Perfects back to being more like they were in 2nd Ed - something to be used on Mega-attacks, not constantly. If you want to rely on your Perfects, you run the risk of become extremely easy to predict - and therefore trap. The idea was to make doing things like, you know, spending essence on your defence, as well as all those charms that remove penalties, seem a little more appealing. With the addition of a Willpower cost it's not in the same economy as those other Defenses. Note that the ideal use of a Perfect now is against a dangerous looking attack - be that a flurry of Spam Attacks or one big ugly one. -- VaticanT

Honestly, these beefed-up perfects are more likely to be the backbone of my strategy than the basic ones, if I were playing in a game with these rules. Now the only way to run someone out of perfects quickly is a lot of low-speed attacks powerful enough to warrant perfecting away. Regaining willpower is pretty easy through stunts, and there are charms for that too. And Sidereal blessings, if I can arrange for them. In other words, I consider the power boost greater than the cost increase. The applicability changes you've made don't seem like much of a nerf to me, just a change. The original flaws of invulnerability were equally restrictive, if less mechanically explicit in the cases of Conviction and Compassion. Only Temperance is even slightly less desirable.

Consider that in charm design, 3-5 motes and 1 willpower are about equivalent. In base second edition, say I'm getting attacked by 3 people at once, each with magical flurries of 5 attacks. To use a perfect defense on all 15 attacks would cost 45 motes! No way! For a mere 15 motes, I could use a reflexive DV-refresher on each - still very costly. What I'd rather do is use Bulwark Stance, and have my full DV against all of them for only 5 motes. Compared to the ineffeciency of costing 3 times as much or more, I'd rather use non-perfect defenses pumped as high as I can make them go, unless my opponent is using a Perfect Attack or making my defense inapplicable. Even in the case of a perfect attack, most characters can wear armor and thus take small hits easily. So the arrow hits with 0 attack successes, big deal - it has 8 damage, which doesn't pierce my hardness.

With your version, let's say the same scenario comes around. Now, it's only 9 motes and 3 willpower to defend against all 15 attacks, perfectly. It's still more expensive than the other methods, but not nearly as much more expensive. Much more worth considering just because of a high attack dice pool, for instance. So, this is just one Exalted-player's opinion, but I think your changes have the opposite effect from what you want - IanPrice

While I think I'm tending to agree with the comments on them costing willpower and blocking entire flurries, I -do- quite like the applicability bits. I'm still not sure about the after-use restrictions and perfects, I have yet to settle on a solution I like, but the pre-applicability things are quite nice, they may enter my calculations...
-- Darloth

The power boost is all relative to the kind of attacks you're facing. If you can regenerate 1 WP per action by your enemies, then yes, you can rely on these perfects; the Willpower economy in my game is fairly limited. I can't think of another way to do it without the "Spam tactics" taking over. As for the Restrictions and Applicabilities, they're all more restrictive - because each flaw includes both kinds of restrictions seen in the Initial offering. I'm not implying you get to choose between them. That was to make Perfects more uniform in their character. I agree, there is a problem insofar as a single attacker and defender facing each other can probably sustain the use of these for quite a while, but I don't know how you can come up with a system to counter that. -- VaticanT