Editing Mnemon Explains Solar Combat (section)

====Melee====

Solar Melee. Well.

More Wyld Hunts than even I care to admit have ended badly when the newly-exalted child picks up, oh, I dunno, a shovel, declares "I am the Invincible Spear Princess", and proceeds to kill everyone. It's terribly humiliating when your own nephew is decapitated by a prancing thirteen year old with a garden implement.

Solar Archery is the supreme offensive ability, but overall, Melee is peerless. You have no idea how jealous the Cathak are of your charms. I've already covered the sheer excellence of the thing at defence, so let's talk a bit about using it to kill people.

For a start, Melee is where the biggest base damages are. Reaver Daikave. Grand Daiklave. Yet if you want, you have weapons of greater finesse at your disposal, such as the Direlance, or, well, virtually anything other than a bow or a chakram. Even if a weapon is nominally for another ability, you can almost always use it with Melee. The flexibility of choice is enormous.

That being said, I recommend the Reaver Daiklave, for its value on the accuracy and damage front, and because it leaves an off-hand free for Brawl or Thrown. You're Solars, you don't need the extra Speed or Defence, really. Cleave our mutual foes up and feed them to the Panic Monkeys.

Your strategy is really quite simple. Have stacked reflexive defences, dodge and parry, and then attack as many times as you have dice for. When your opponent is vulnerable, assault them with an offence charm or combo and destroy them.

Let's look at the charms.

The Excellent Strike tree is the core offence tree. Excellent Strike itself is a very basic dice-adder. It's too expensive and inefficient for sustained use, but it's a key part of combos.

Hungry Tiger Technique is an excellent charm, exactly like Ferocious Jab for Brawl. It doubles your successes for the purpose of damage, and hence can wickedly punish those with poor defences, and will never add less than 1 damage. If you're doing nothing else with the essence, put Hungry Tiger on each attack and stunt the motes back.

Fire & Stones Strike is an exceptionally good charm, especially for anyone relying on doing minimum damage. Because it converts damage dice to automatic successes, spending one mote on each attack guarantees a health level damage with any successful attack, allowing virtually any foe to be swiftly whittled down.

Of the multi-attack charms, only Iron Whirlwind is really any good. One Weapon Two Blows is too easily defended against, while Peony Blossom is too expensive. Only buy this tree if using the Player's Guide fixes (Peony Blossom 3m/attack, OWTB reduced to 2 motes).

The Retrieve the Fallen Weapon tree has some great charms buried behind some fairly useless ones. Retrieve the Fallen Weapon and Call the Blade simply aren't worthwhile - disarms are extremely difficult in Exalted, and if you don't have your weapon in reach, grab an improvised weapon, and defend with that while running over to pick up your primary weapon. Summon the Loyal Steel is very useful, however. Glorious Solar Saber is only really useful when facing an enemy who can break weapons (like an Earth Immaculate). Iron Raptor Technique and Sandstorm Wind Attack are not particularly useful - better to use Cascade of Cutting Terror with a javelin in the off hand. However, Blazing Solar Bolt and Corona of Radiance are excellent for fighting against the dead.

For offence, the Golden Essence Block tree offers access to counterattacks, with both Solar Counterattack and Ready in Eight Directions Stance. Solar Counterattack is great either in combo, or against enemies you're fairly certain you don't need to use a charm to defend against - it's an easy way to drain an enemy's defensive resources, especially if their attack makes them vulnerable. Ready in Eight Directions Stance's key weakness is its duration - it can't be put in combo - but it's a bargain at five motes, and can greatly discourage attacks against you. It's perfect for when you're ambushed - Full Dodge and Fivefold Bulwark the first turn, then Full Dodge and RI8DS each turn after that.

Counterattacks are almost always better than extra action charms, because they are similarly priced or cheaper, and as Reflexive charms, let you do whatever you like with your dice action. Iron Whirlwind won't give you more than about 5 attacks, but Ready In Eight Directions Stance lets you attack as many times as you like with your dice action, and then counterattack every single attack - you could easily get 10 attacks or more from such a strategy. Neither charm needs to be declared until you are actually attacked, so you'll never waste Solar Counterattack, and will always get at least one counter from Ready In Eight Directions. Using Ready In Eight Directions to dramatically counter and kill a lesser foe may also discourage later attackers, which could be extremely useful if you're relying on Full Dodge or Shadow Over Water rather than Flow Like Blood.

The downside to counterattacks is that your enemy chooses when you can use them. You may want to invest in Presence and taunt the enemy.

Sample Combo: Crushingly Overpowered Smite Excellent Strike + Hungry Tiger Technique + Fire & Stones Strike + Thunderbolt Attack Prana + Heavenly Guardian Defence, 13xp. Assuming Strength 3, for 19 motes + 1wp attack with +10 dice, successes doubled for damage, 3 damage dice auto succeed, total HL damage doubled.