Editing Mnemon Explains Solar Combat (section)

===Passive Defence===

====Soak====
''the competitive advantage''

"But Mnemon" you say, sunlight leaking out of your golden mouth "I want to be a tough-guy, with none of this wimpy not getting hit."

Well, I have a few things to say, and you won't like many of them. First, you're whining, and I hate whiners. Secondly, the LEAST powerful foes of consequence you'll face will be my mother's disgusting brood, and they're going to be swinging half-ton magic clubs at you. You're not going be able to shrug those off indefinitely, you'll take at least one die damage from each hit. Thirdly, virtually everybody who dislikes you has attacks that cause non-damage inconvenience, so the fact you'll take ping damage by toughing it out will be moot when you're a stunned, unlucky, ugly little goldfish who nobody loves with veins that are filled with fire. Plus some goth girl will have all your essence.

So your plan isn't going to work. Go buy Shadow Over Water and stop complaining. We can't buy Shadow Over Water, and we're always having goth kids take our essence. Pretentious bastards.

I do have good news, though. See Invincible Sword Princess over there? The girl who was laughing at you while you were buying armour and soak charms? She won't be laughing when you're dragging her pretty Incapacitated backside out of combat when some Wyld Hunter gets lucky and she botches her Fivefold Bulwark parry. Soak isn't good enough to keep you safe by itself, but it's cheap, and can save your life, so why not have it?

Firstly, you need to understand that Soak has diminishing returns. It's not a dice pool, so you can't split it for extra actions, you don't roll it, so there's no randomness to protect against, it's just a total you apply against incoming damage. If your soak is equal or higher, you take one die damage. If the damage is higher, you take the difference. As your soak gets higher, there'll be less attacks that actually need that much soak to be reduced to 1 die. So when looking at what it'll cost you to get a certain Soak, try to guess how many attacks you'll likely suffer that need that much soak, and whether you've got cheaper options.

What's a good level of soak? Arianna, curse her for always summoning Alveua when I want her, recommends 10L soak if you can get it. This is just above the lowest amount of damage a Str 3 character with a daiklaive can do, and well above what most mortals will do (a 3 Str mortal with a straight sword would need 4 successes to do 10L damage). You can get that soak with an orichalcum reinforced buff jacket and Sta 2. It won't be sufficient if you're hit by a Cataphractoi's 17L+ lance attack, but it's certainly better than having only 1 soak in such a circumstance. You can also get soak in this region with slightly heavier mortal armour (like lamellar or a reinforced breastplate), and a touch of magic soak, such as from Iron Skin Concentration. The charm Glorious Solar Plate provides 10L soak, so most Solars will have 11-12L soak counting their stamina while using it.

If you're looking for heavy-duty soak, you probably want around about 15L. The easiest way to do this is get 10L as above, and then use Iron Kettle Body to add your resistance to your lethal soak when you're attacked. Alternatively, you can get an orichalcum reinforced breastplate, which provides 12L, and then have a stamina of 4 for 14L, and reinforce that with magic. Artifact plate is generally not worth the cost, unless you have access to supplements (such as Exalted: the Outcaste) that detail Dragon Armour or similar.

If you're willing to spend the motes, Durability of Oak Meditation, Spirit Strengthens the Skin and Iron Skin Concentration can let you add up to your Stamina + (Resistance * 2) to your lethal and bashing soak, as well as letting you use your full stamina for lethal soak. This (along with Iron Kettle Body for big hits) lets you add a LOT of soak, but it takes precious time - it's best used when you're sure trouble is coming, because it takes at least three turns to activate, and two of the charms are Simple - it's no good at all when you're ambushed. You also cannot use armour with Iron Skin Concentration, which is essential in this stack, since otherwise you gain only Bashing soak.

Consider Starmetal armour - the commit cost is more expensive, but it makes you effectively immune to minimum damage. That being said, Starmetal is exceptionally rare, and the GM is under no obligation to allow it (not to mention angry Sidereals turning you into a loveless goldfish).


In general, don't worry too much about mobility penalties for armour. You'll only expect to get 1 less dodge success for each -2, so penalties up to 4 are probably something you can live with. However, if you have a low Athletics, this might cause you problems using the scenery to your advantage. In that case, I recommend raising your Athletics, NOT investing in charms that lower penalties. If you’re going to use mortal armour, try to get Exceptional quality armour in order to lower the mobility penalty.

Sorcery is a fantastic source of soak, particularly Invulnerable Skin of Bronze. This spell provides 6L soak, compatible with armour and charms, and allows you to completely ignore any damage below 6L (not many attacks, but environmental damage, Terrestrial Animas and the like are common enough to make this very useful, especially if you think it's funny to lure your opponents into bonfires).

The Gem of Adamant Skin converts all incoming Lethal damage to Bashing, making any strategy relying on Bashing Soak extremely effective - for instance, wearing armour, Invulnerable Skin of Bronze, Durability of Oak Meditaiton and Spirit Strengthens the Skin for an easy 38+ soak.

The only artifact in the corebook that adds to soak without being armour are moonsilver hearthstone bracers, but supplements include many more, like moonsilver wedding rings, jade Collars of Dawn's Cleansing Light, jade Thunderbolt Shields (Book of Three Circles/Savant and Sorcerer) and Silk Armour (Castebook: Eclipse).

Tactically with soak, there's two important concerns - what punctures your soak, and using the opportunities soak gives you.

Soak from armour is vulnerable to target arrows, which halves its value, so be ready to avoid the attack with active defences, or boost soak with Iron Kettle Body. Aggravated damage ignores all soak EXCEPT armour, so if aggravated is inbound, you might just want to use a perfect defence and be safe unless your armour is quite strong.

Finally, having more soak means not dying quickly - in contrast to someone relying solely on active defences, you'll probably not go down even on a lucky hit. This means you can probably last a couple of extra turns even in a battle where you're outclassed or in a severe environment, and if the battle turns against you, you can RUN AWAY in reasonable safety.

You may also want to consider attempting to attract attacks to yourself and away from more vulnerable circlemates. I suggest questioning the breeding of enemy Dragon Blooded, and accusing Abyssals of not being very angsty.



====Ox Body====
This isn't worth spending a lot of XP on, but it doesn't hurt. It's particularly useful if you have a lot of soak, since each extra Health Level is probably three more minimum damage hits you can sustain. This is especially important if you're relying on being hit as part of your strategy, such as with Essence Gathering Temper or Snake Strikes the Heel tricks, or if you use charms with a Health Level cost.

It's almost always better to take the -1, -2, -2 option for this charm, but if you expect you may not have a lot of time to heal between combats, think seriously about the other options - a -0 that heals quickly might be more useful to you, especially if you're likely to spend it once a fight on a charm with a HL cost.

However, extra Health Levels are NEVER a substitute for an active defence.

====Shields and other difficulty-adders====

Making your enemy's attacks more difficult is a wonderful thing. Shields are the easiest way to do so, and ranged attacks are particularly vulnerable to them. Just remember that you'll be expecting to lose a dodge success for every 2 dice of mobility penalty - so don't bother with tower shields, since a Buckler will effectively do the same job. Artifact shields, such as Shield Bracers or Thunderbolt Shields (both from supplements) don't have this problem.

Cover also helps, so manoeuvre yourself into positions where ranged attackers can't get a good shot, for an extra +1 - +4 difficulty.

The Stealth charm Blurred Form Style also adds difficulty to attack, even when you're discovered, though it works best on ranged attackers.

Other difficulty adders are mostly Charms and artifacts from various supplements - in particular, Ebon Shadow Form from Castebook Night adds your Essence to the difficulty to attack you.

Note, however, that if your attacker can only see you in murky light, they add one difficulty to their attacks, and if they can't see you at all, the difficulty increased by two. Try messing with your opponents' ability to see!

====Using the scenery====

This is one of the best defences available to you - not only can it make your enemies' life very difficult, but it's almost impossible to use without getting a +2 stunt!

The key to using the scenery to your advantage is the charm Graceful Crane Stance. Other Athletics charms are good (particularly Spider Foot Style and Monkey Leap), but no matter how good your Athletics is, you don't want to have to make balance rolls - that's for the enemy.

You want two things - height, and instability. Height means your enemies have penalties to their attacks AND defences against you - from -1 for a gentle slope to -3 for anything requiring hands to climb. The fun really starts when they scramble up to meet you, however, if you've got yourself somewhere nice and unstable, like a thin ledge, a bamboo branch, a shard of broken glass, a chandelier, a boat mast etc.

If your opponent is forced to make a balance roll, then it's an action, and they must split their pool if they want to do anything else. This means that they can't Full Dodge or use a Simple or Extra Action charm. For horribly evil fun, if you know Ebon Shadow Style, use Distracting Finger Gesture on them, which prevents them from splitting their action...meaning their sole choice is to balance or fall.

If you're particularly skilled, you might be able to get into a place where melee attackers simply cannot reach you, in which case you can range attack with impunity.

Obviously ranged attackers don't suffer these problems...in which case you go for cover!