Editing Mnemon Explains Solar Combat (section)

==Defense==

===Active Defence===

With a few specific necromantic exceptions, it's pretty difficult to win a battle if you're dead. Given that we Exalts as a culture tend not to deal with weaponry smaller than ourselves, this can be a harder prospect than it might first appear.

Have you read what that ugly little blonde woman Arianna has to say about Not Dying? Good. Her advice is sufficient for those not particularly interested in battle to survive if it is thrust upon them. I'll assume that you've followed her advice and have a reflexive defence charm at the very least. If you're serious about battle, I hope that you've got at least two different defences (of whatever kinds) that you can layer.

Defence is the most powerful form of combat - since Solars have the best defence, they are the strongest combatants. Solar defence (and defence in general), has a few key aspects:

#Having more dice. Being hit can be absolutely disastrous - you have a lot more to lose from rolling poorly than the attacker does. In general, you want to make sure you can bring 2.5-3 times more dice than there were successes on the attack roll. This can be done through dice adders, layered defences, or both (as well as sneakier techniques like reducing the number of successes through shields, martial arts charms and the like).
#Creating multiple decision points. One of the key benefits of layered defences isn't extra dice so much as giving you as the defender multiple opportunities to decide what you want to do. For instance, let's say Invincible Sword Princess is attacked by a crushing 14 success attack. She has Fivefold Bulwark Stance and Flow Like Blood active. Normally she might be intimidated enough by this to use a Perfect Defence, but she doesn't need to make that decision straight away - she can use Flow Like Blood and see how it goes before making a decision. She rolls a lucky 8 successes on her 10 dodge dice, and thus has 6 successes left to go. At this point, she could choose to use Heavenly Guardian Defence, her perfect parry, for guaranteed safety, or use Fivefold Bulwark Stance and hope to get more than 6 successes on her 17 parry dice, or even use Golden Essence Block to boost her Fivefold Bulwark Parry further! She goes for the Fivefold Bulwark, and successfully parries. By layering her defences, Invincible Sword Princess has been able to make informed decisions about which defences to use, and in this case got out of a big attack for nothing. If she'd flubbed her Dodge and got only 1 success, she could still have used Heavenly Guardian Defence for perfect safety.<br>If you're curious, this is one of the reasons I, along with everyone else, HATE you people. We can swing at you for hours before getting a hit. This is why, eventually, I will just incinerate you with first age weapons of mass destruction from far away.
#Have backup defences. It's fairly obvious that active defences - parry and dodge - are superior to passive defences, particularly soak. That doesn't mean you should turn your nose up at soak, however. Soak is what makes the difference between a successful attack wounding you and killing you, and thus you should have it unless you've got a very good reason not to. Instant Soak charms in particular provide yet another layer of defence - imagine Invincible Sword Princess above flubbed her parry roll and was hit despite ample opportunity not to be. At that point she could still use Iron Kettle Body for some extra soak.

That's the core principle, but how do we actually get there? Let's look at a few specifics.

The most basic layered defence pattern: Dodge + Dipping Swallow

This tactic won't actually let you attack, but it will keep you alive when you're in real trouble, and only requires two charms: Golden Essence Block and Dipping Swallow Defence. When you're attacked, Full Dodge. If your dodge fails, activate Dipping Swallow Defence for a full-pool parry. This can be fairly cheap in motes, and will generate a lot of defence dice.

Reversing the process is a bit more expensive, but gives you a better chance to act. If you win iniative, attack once or twice, and save one or two actions for dodges. When attacked, use Dipping Swallow Defence first, then one of your dodges if that's not sufficient. If you lose initiative, use Dipping Swallow Defence when attacked, and if that fails, Full Dodge. If your initiative comes around without you having to have full dodged, take as many attacks as you feel comfortable with (probably 3-4 if you were last in the turn, 1-2 and saving 1-2 dodges if there are enemies who still haven't acted).

Remember most ranged weapons (other than Chakrams) can be used to fight with the Thrown OR Melee abilities, so Thrown users might find it worthwhile to invest in Melee and Dipping Swallow Defence.

Not quite so good: Parry + Shadow Over Water

Shadow Over Water looks pretty similar to Dipping Swallow Defence, so this should work the same, right? Not quite - Shadow Over Water has a problem, as does non-charm parrying.

Firstly, many Dodge charms, like Shadow Over Water, stipulate that they must be activated BEFORE the attacker rolls their attack. This means you can't parry first and THEN decide to use Shadow Over Water - you must use Shadow Over Water first, so you're likely to use it more often than you would Dipping Swallow Defence, costing you more motes. This isn't a huge problem if you know how to stunt, but it is annoying. Check with your GM, though, since ignoring this rule is probably the most commonly used house rule of all! Lots of GMs find the houserule useful because they forget to ask about defences before they roll.

Secondly, unlike aborting to a Full Dodge, aborting to a parry only gives you a single parry, so it's a LOT less safe when faced with multiple opponents, or a skilled opponent given to multiple attacks.

That being said, though, this is still a great way to layer lots of dice, and for anyone not using Melee, well, it's what you've got. It works well if you win initiative (in which case you can attack once or twice, and then just save a couple of parries). If you lose initiative, you'll only have one parry, so be careful which attack you use it for - it might be better to take a hit from a moderate foe to save your parry for the bone-crunching attack of a more powerful enemy.

For those of you using a bow, remember you'll need to use a good stunt in order to parry at all. However, ranged combatants can often rely on Shadow Over Water by making good use of other defence strategies, like intelligent use of the terrain, items like shield bracers or Windhands hearthstones, and other measures. See below.


====Bulwark Stance====
''don't do us the favour''

This is a terrible charm. While it theoretically might let you defend against many attacks at full pool, in the vast majority of situations, it's not going to be as good as Full Dodge + Dipping Swallow, since it'll provide less dice. Unless it's a very large number of attacks, just using Dipping Swallow is better, since you'll still get your action. You can't even combo it, so forget comboing it with Shadow Over Water for a poor man's stacked persistent. Even if you do end up using it once or twice (say, you have Flow Like Blood already up and want to parry a thousand arrows or something), do yourself a favour and buy Fivefold Bulwark Stance as soon as you can, since it's better in every way.



====My first Persistent Defence====
''Flow Like Blood''

You don't need to start with a persistent defence (in fact, it's less efficient than using your bonus points to buy high Abilities and then picking up Essence 3 and Flow Like Blood with XP), but they're so staggeringly useful that if you fancy yourself a combatant at all, you should get one as soon as you can.

Chances are, the one you'll pick up is Flow Like Blood. While Fivefold Bulwark Stance has some key advantages, Flow Like Blood is much more reliable, and is useful for every character. Flow Like Blood protects against attacks you're unaware of, and also allows you to dodge when you wouldn't otherwise be able to (for nasty fun, lure an enemy onto a narrow ledge or tight corridor where he can't dodge but you can).

Its key weakness is that as a Simple charm, it consumes an action to activate, and can't be activated before your initiative. Combined with the fact that as a non-Instant charm it can't be placed in Combo, this means you won't be doing anything else on the turn you activate it. Hence, the key is to activate the charm BEFORE combat - generally at the first sign of trouble. Even if you don't actually end up in a fight, you should be able to stunt back the WP quickly, and regenerate the motes via hearthstone or rest before the next scene.

For Melee fighters, the beauty of Flow Like Blood is that BOTH your defences can come from charms, leaving your action entirely for attacks. Generally you'll use Flow Like Blood straight away against any incoming attack, and then Dipping Swallow Defence against anything that gets through that. If your initiative comes up before you've been forced to use Dipping Swallow, you may feel confident enough to use an offensive charm instead, especially if all your enemies have already acted (otherwise, save a parry or two). Ranged fighters who aren't in melee can emulate this without using a charm at all if they have a Windhands Gem, which will give them a parry against any ranged attack made against them.

For those unable or unwilling to use Dipping Swallow Defence, remember that you can use Reed In the Wind to add dice to your Flow Like Blood dodges - which, if you're willing to invest the motes, can be sufficient to not worry about parries at all, and save your entire action for attacks. Archers and Thrown users will probably want to use the terrain and other passive defences to cut attacks down to size, and use offensive charms rather than Reed In the Wind.

Finally, this is one of the most stunty charms you dastardly Anathema have. Have you ever stuck a daiklaive into someone only to have them slip off it effortlessly, unharmed? Well, neither have I, but I had an underling do it, and he didn't look happy.



====For the Meleeists====
''Fivefold Bulwark Stance!''

Fivefold Bulwark Stance has a couple of nice advantages over Flow Like Blood - firstly, it tends to give a few more dice (due to more applicable specialties and the Defence bonus on weapons), and secondly, it's Reflexive, so it's not as vital to get it up early.

If you're attacked before your initiative, and you have your weapon ready, activate Fivefold Bulwark Stance and Full Dodge. From nothing to layered defences instantly! If you win initiative, activate Fivefold Bulwark, attack once or twice, and save a dodge or two.

If your weapon isn't ready, and you lose initiative, you're in a bit of trouble. You'll have to Full Dodge until you can get a chance to ready the weapon on subsequent turns - try stunting your Full Dodge to get a stick or other improvised weapon into your hands, and if your GM goes for it, activate Fivefold Bulwark Stance, and then switch to your real weapon as soon as you get an action. Otherwise, run like a squealing Ledaal until you're in a position where you have a hope of winning initiative and readying a weapon.

Once you've got Fivefold Bulwark Stance up, on the next turn, activate Flow Like Blood if your initiative comes up and you haven't been forced to Full Dodge. Otherwise, you can keep Full Dodging whenever an attack gets through your Fivefold Bulwark before your initiative, or attack (possibly with an offensive charm) and save a couple of dodges if your initiative comes up without you needing to Full Dodge. You can use Shadow Over Water in place of Full Dodging if you want to make sure you can attack, but remember you need to activate it BEFORE the attack, so you either need to use it on every attack, or just gamble on only using it on the attacks you think will be big ones (if your GM houserules the dodge charms to work like the parry ones, just use Shadow Over Water and don't bother Full Dodging unless you're low on motes).

Fivefold Bulwark is no good against attacks you're not aware of, however, so beware ninja. Also, particularly hardass GMs might insist that the talk of "golden arcs of essence guiding the blade" in the charm description is always true - in which case it's a poor choice for discreet battles in such games.


====Perfect Defences====

These are some of the most potent charms Solars have - defences that can stop any attack, no matter how powerful. However, they're the charms you'll want to use least, owing to their expense.

Perfect Defences, in as much as they have a definition, are defences that are not rolled against the number of successes on the attack (in the case of Solar defences, not rolled at all, they just work), and that are capable of defending against Perfect Attacks.

Seven Shadow Evasion's main advantage is that it only costs motes, so if you've got plenty of motes and not much willpower, it's an excellent choice. It's also useful in that it doesn't require a weapon (or Melee charms), and unlike Heavenly Guardian Defence, doesn't result in a broken weapon if you're using a mortal blade and you're attacked with overwhelming force. However, it's vulnerable to undodgeable attacks (though your ST might rule it works against certain attacks that are undodgeable because of their area of effect), and crucially, must be activated before the attack roll. It's likely to cost you a lot of motes (since you need to use it before you know how bad the attack is), but it's required for Flow Like Blood, and it's a lot better than NOT having a perfect defence when you need one. If your GM houserules the dodge charms, it becomes a lot more useful, especially if WP is in short supply.

Heavenly Guardian Defence is one of the best charms in the game. It costs WP, making it difficult to use often, but will defend against unblockable attacks without problem, and can be used AFTER a full dodge or Flow Like Blood fails. It still involves contact between weapon and attack, however, so try stunting the use of an improvised weapon against truly powerful attacks if you're using a normal weapon you don't want to break. This charm's main disadvantage is that it requires the atrocious Bulwark Stance.

Adamant Skin Technique is the worst of the three perfects. It costs motes, WP and a Health Level, and must be used before the attack! It also only protects against damage, so if you're hit by an attack that has an additional effect, you're out of luck (whereas the above two charms could avoid it entirely). On the other hand, it DOES save you from non-attack damage, like falling - and honestly, I can only recommend it if you're planning to leap on your enemies from an airship or somesuch. IF, however, your GM houserules Adamant Skin Technique to be useable AFTER the attack roll, it actually becomes very useful to those with persistent defences, since you can use it to save your gleaming golden hide when you just got a poor roll on Fivefold Bulwark and/or Flow Like Blood and your opportunities to use the other perfects have already passed.


====A final note on Dodges and Parries====

The most important thing to remember is that you can only dodge each attack once, and parry each attack once. The key is to have multiple dodges and parries available, and choose the right ones at the right time. The very best option is to have Flow Like Blood and Fivefold Bulwark active, using Heavenly Guardian Defence if Fivefold Bulwark doesn't look like it'll be enough after your Flow Like Blood dodge.

However, anything that lets you do more than just put your faith in one dice roll is good, especially for those without Melee, and we'll discuss some of those below.


===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!




===Combos===

While I'll go into combos a bit deeper later, I thought I should mention them here because you poor Solars are so terribly disadvantaged when it comes to them, not being able to use your Reflexive charms freely and all.

What? Yes, my reflexive charms are jokes compared to yours. Go on, keep taunting the woman with the superweapon stash.

Anyway, the key advantage of putting defence charms in combo is that most such charms are Reflexive - meaning not only can you put them in combo with charms from any ability, but you can choose whether or not to use the charms freely after activating your combo. This not only allows you to layer more defences, it means you're not "locked in" when you choose to use a charm. For instance, if you use Heavenly Guardian Defence as part of a combo against a powerful attack early in the turn, yet choose not to use it on a weaker attack later in the turn and are hit, you can still use Iron Kettle Body and Essence Gathering Temper to bolster your soak and recoup some of your essence costs. You can even put two Reflexive defences of the same type - for instance Dipping Swallow Defence and Heavenly Guardian Defence - into combo, and use whichever is appropriate for a given attack.

Look out for synergistic combos such as Iron Kettle Body + Essence Gathering Temper - since Essence Gathering Temper is based off pre-soak damage, it doesn't matter if you then soak the damage down to nothing. Hence, if you've got Stamina 3, Essence Gathering Temper + Iron Kettle Body (a total cost of 3 motes) is usually free (note that Iron Kettle Body + Essence Gathering Temper, or the far superior Iron Skin Concentration + Essence Gathering Temper usually allows a large Essence *profit* when using the updated charms from the Player's Guide).


===Other tactics===

A number of charms will reduce your attackers' dice pools, such as Terrifying Apparition of Glory or Snake Style. They're very useful, but remember to remind your GM that you're using them BEFORE he rolls attacks against you.

The Windhands Gemstone is exceptionally useful for anyone planning on using the scenery to stay out of reach, since such behaviour provokes ranged attacks.

Your opponents might be clever enough to see you're putting them in a bad place, tactically speaking. The Presence and Performance abilities can taunt them into pushing ahead regardless (mock those hot-tempered Cathaks!).

Sorcery can be particularly helpful, especially if it can be cast before combat, giving the Sorcerer plenty of opportunity to stunt their motes back. Impenetrable Frost Barrier, for example, costs 20 motes for Essence x 2 difficulty added to ranged attacks made against those protected by the barrier - and since most character should be able to stunt 4 motes back a turn, most of this cost can be quickly recovered by an enterprising sorcerer.