Editing Mnemon Explains Solar Combat (section)

===Versus Specific Opponents===


====First and foremost - know your enemy====

OK, so you've got the best Investigation, Bureaucracy and Socialise charms in the game. You might not personally have them (after all, by now I've probably spent all your charms on defences and Cascade of Cutting Terror), but someone in your Circle should. Have a chat with them.

Significant enemies don't just drop out of the sky. While it seems certain locations have the ability to manufacture practically unlimited numbers of daiklave fodder, that's simply not the case for Exalts, Gods or significant monsters.

For monsters and local gods, ask around the populace - there should be legends, superstitions, and religious practices that give very important clues to the nature, habits and powers of your potential foe. While obviously villagers and farmers may not be able to tell the exact difference between highly skilled monsters striking quickly and a God relying on Principle of Motion (they're just flavours of "Oh Dragons it's killing them all!), your Circlemate with Ten Magistrate Eyes is a transcendently gifted detective, and should be able to deduce relevant information. I suggest you practice the phrase "OK Mr ST, what would Sherlock Holmes deduce from this evidence? Because Impossibly Reckless Gambler just rolled better than Holmes ever could."

For Exalts, this goes doubly so. While you can't always track every lone assassin, Exalted aren't silent nobodies. They're famous people. Rock stars. You think Abyssals strap on those revealing outfits and wacky titles so that nobody will know who they are? Lunars go to great lengths to stake out their territory, so that EVERYONE knows not to barge in. Dragon-Blooded travel with troops, servants, slaves, harems, walk around openly in superheavy plate, and constantly engage in operations requiring vast logistical support.

Abyssals and Lunars are much like monsters. Find survivors of their attacks, and question them closely. Did the Abyssal slaughter with daiklave or necromancy? What form did the Lunar take? Did they fight any actual soldiers, and if so how did they change their tactics. Again, frightened peasents aren't the best source of information, but you can learn a great deal about the capabilities and accoutrements of the enemy with Investigation charms. Finding residents of Shadowlands or members of a Lunar's tribe can get great results with Social charms. Remember Lunars and Abyssals are territorial - for different reasons, but an Abyssal is tied to her Deathlord and Shadowland - find the territories. Find out for certain if you're facing a lone Exalt or a Circle.

Dragonblooded are by far the easiest to track. Never, ever let yourself be thinking "where the hell did that Wyld Hunt come from?". Wyld Hunts are big logistics exercises - troops need to be raised, moved, fed, possibly supplemented with local levies, sufficiently equipped etc, as with any company of soldiers. Their Dragon-Blooded have servants, panoplies of magical equipment, and are extremely distinctive. If passing through a city with a Realm garrison or Thousand Scales branch, they'll probably requisition local troops and supplies, and will be obligated to dine or meet with the local Dynsatic authorities. Have contacts that can tell you when a Hunt moves through a hub point like this. Question servants, soldiers, town gossips. Bribe, use charms, stunt. Find out their names, aspects, armaments (Dynasts take their weapons to dinner), which schools they went to (Heptagram Sorcerers? House of Bells soldiers? ANYONE could be a Cloister of Wisdom graduate and know Immaculate Martial Arts, not just monks!). Find out tales of any previous Hunts they may have been on. Have they been summoning demons or elementals? Who are they bribing (there's *always* bribes)? Learn their tactics. Find out what they're trying to requisition, and hit it with the Indolent Official Charm. When they leave town and come looking for you, hit their supply train with the Indolent Official, or the entire Hunt with the Foul Air of Argument. If you can, Heart's Price a member of the Hunt and suborn them.

Watch the waters at all times. Know the local Dragon Blooded powers in your area, but honestly, we've been draining the Threshold of talent for years, bringing anyone worth a damn home for the Civil War. It's likely that if you're killing Dragon Blooded (and if you've read this far, you should be), they'll send for help from the Isle. Barring the rare intervention of the Sidereals, that help will come by boat. The Realm is a NAVAL power. In the Scavenger Lands? One of the safest civilised places from the Wyld Hunt - they're rare and paltry throughout the Scavenger Lands, owing to Lookshy and the hostility of the people. However, the Wood Fleet of the Realm has full access to the many, many rivers, which means if you're within a day of a river, you're in danger. Know where the fleet is. Find out whether nearby detachments are Dragon-Blooded heavy or not. Find out if Earth Fleet or House ships are being escorted about by the Wood Fleet. Have a high enough base damage to knock holes in Triremes.
Elsewhere? Keep your wits about you if you're near the ocean. Make contacts with sailors and fishermen. Be careful near the Lap, Chiraoscuro, Yane, Kirighast, Cherak and other costal cities that are loyal to the Realm.
In Halta? Easy. Most Dynasts in the area will be supporting the Linowan. Make friends with some Haltan Commandos, who'll be keeping tabs on them anyway.

In general, make sure your less-combatitive Circle members are using their incredible powers to full advantage. With your charmset, there's no reason a large force should ever be able to sneak up on you (barring Abyssal Labyrinth tricks). You should ALWAYS be able to turn the tables on anyone hunting you. Learn everything, then dissect their efforts, slowing and obstructing them until they are weak, dividing them if possible. Then strike without mercy.

In battle, try to identify capabilities as quickly as possible, using Awareness, Occult, Lore (Tactics) or whatever else you can stunt. Never underestimate the power of All-Encompassing Sorcerer's Sight for developing this information.

If you can, learn of any custom charms your enemy may have, as well as unique artifact or hearthstone powers. Obviously I can't give you any advice on what they might be, so always be ready for surprises.



====Dragon Blooded====

Dragon Blooded are substantially weaker than Solars, but they're still Exalted. If you're tactically aware, you'll likely carve them up, but underestimate them and you will regret it. Dynastic Dragon-Blooded are numerous and well-resourced, and religiously inclined to kill you on sight. Outcaste Dragon-Blooded are as varied as Solars, but you will have an advantage against them in that their equipment is no better than yours.

Loath as I am to suggest it, consider diplomacy with Lookshy. They're power-armoured thermoptically-camoflagued military ninja. I'm sure you'll get on just fine.

Dragon-Blooded have poor parrying ability (other than with actions as normal), and rely heavily on armour and Dodge. Many of their defences fail against Charm enhanced attacks, so don't be afraid to use your offence charms - the exception being a powerful charm called Defence Against Anathema Technique that raises the difficulty of your charm-enhanced attacks against them. If you meet such a foe, try unenhanced attacks or simply blow past it with Accuracy Without Distance or Cascade of Cutting Terror.

Archers will love fighting Dragon Blooded. Their reliance on armour makes them perfect for raining target arrows on.

Dodge is their most potent defence ability. While it affords them few dice, they have some particularly nasty tricks. The one that frequently trips up beginning Solars is Safety Amongst Enemies, a dodge charm that allows them to reflexively redirect any attack to an adjacent person with a relatively easy Dodge roll. In general, do NOT engage a Dragon Blooded who you suspect may have this charm (which is quite common) with more than one person, or range-attack an already engaged Dragon Blooded, unless those engaged can happily defend against redirected attacks. It is best not to enhance such attacks, but simply rain easily defended attacks upon the target until they cannot afford the mote cost any longer. Also watch out for Arrow Consuming Flame Defence, which incinerates any incoming wooden arrows (use Phantom Arrow or metal Thrown weapons), and Virtuous Negation Defence, which allows them to take the place of an ally being attacked within five yards. Finally, Hopping Firecracker Evasion lets them leap half their running distance away after a successful dodge - either pursue or switch to ranged weaponry.

Dragon Blooded Melee is simply not very good. Their best trick is their scene-length dice adder, which is the sort of thing that terrifies people who don't understand layering defence. However, at a maximum of +8 dice (4 being more common), you probably should be OK provided you're careful with your defence. Incidentally, that charm is one of many that effects multiple people, so if you can identify the one who used the charm, kill her and be done with it. They have a slightly nifty trick allowing more than five people to attack a single target, so watch your weaker Circlemates if a Meleeist drives for them with a troop of soldiers. They also have an extra action charm. Kill anyone stupid enough to use it in front of you. Don't bother disarming them, as they can likely conjure an essence-blade. Finally, they have a reflexive parry charm that will block any attack if they roll so much as one success...except attacks powered by charms. So either they're using an expensive charm and you're spending nothing, or you're spending and they have no reflexive parry. It's all good.

Dragon Blooded Brawl is awful. It improves slightly with Aspectbook Water, but honestly, either you're a clincher yourself, in which case you'll probably just out-dice them with Dragon Coil, or you'll know that you never ever want to be in a clinch anyway, and thus you don't care what they could theoretically do to you if you ever let them clinch you. Just be aware that a DB brawler who is clinching can suck more people into the clinch.

I'll only discuss one Terrestrial Martial Arts style, Five Dragon Style. It's not bad - one of the entry charms, Five Dragon Fortitude, is extremely popular, allowing the DB to buy Instant soak. This is good for the DB (they don't die), but is hardly a bad result for you, as it's more precious essence down the drain for them. The Form lets them use Bashing soak for lethal damage, so your average practitioner is quite tough. They can hit hard, including with doubled base damage or aggravated damage, but both Charms are Simple, so defend and then kill the user.

Both Dragon-Blooded ranged trees are excellent, however. Both are capable of making attacking the Dragon Blooded and her allies very difficult with ranged weapons, including a ranged counterattack in both cases. Neither Accuracy Without Distance nor Cascade of Cutting Terror are particularly dismayed by such difficulties, of course, but in general it's best to try to have your hand-to-hand fighters close with ranged Dragon-Blooded, and kill them swiftly. Of special note are two of Thrown's best tricks - Loyal Weapon, which allows them to use any weapon at all (including daiklaves or direlances) in place of a thrown weapon, and a charm that allows them to hide multiple Thrown weapons Elsewhere, reflexively releasing them as attacks. The first is the one to watch out for - apparent Meleeists could easily be dangerous Thrown users (watch Air aspects in particular). The second is surprising, but very expensive for the Dragon-Blooded, so if you survive the attacks, they will likely be easy to defeat.

In general, Dragon Blooded defence is poor. In order to take any offensive action at all, a Dragon-Blooded will need to expose themselves. Watch out for Safety Amongst Enemies, but you can usually cheerfully murder any Dragon Blooded who has taken an offensive action, ESPECIALLY those who've used a simple charm.

The Immaculate Martial Arts are far more dangerous than the secular abilities of the Dragon Blooded (though never make the mistake of assuming a given Immaculate doesn't have a backup complement of secular charms). However, do not overestimate them. Proper application of tactics will see them fold; while powerful charms, designed by the cunning of the Sidereals as a perfect fit for the Dragon Blooded, they are not the equal of Solar magic.

Air Dragon is by far the most dangerous of the Immaculate styles. It not only allows withering storms of chakrams, but it boosts the accuracy and dodge of its practitioner, and has several area-effect charms that are not attacks, and thus quite difficult to defend against. If possible, use Accuracy Without Distance and target arrows to kill the Air Dragon as quickly as possible, though Cascade of Cutting Terror will serve. If the Air Dragon uses her chakrams rather than one of her area-effect charms, maul her without hesitation or mercy using anything that comes to hand. Consider the Air Dragon a priority target.

Earth Dragon is not as dangerous, but it is deeply problematic for Melee fighters. Earth Dragons can hit extremely hard, so do not be hit. They can (at expense), reflexively parry and break any weapon used against them; only attack them with a weapon that you are prepared to lose (like, say, arrows, or essence weapons, or an exceptional weapon from the bag you're carrying for the purpose). Earth Dragon does have two non-attack effects, including an area effect (which isn't too bad, doing a little bashing damage and knocking you down), and a rather nasty attack that causes the ground to swallow up multiple targets. Both are Simple, and both require the targets to be on the ground - if possible, avoid the ground when fighting near an Earth Immaculate. The best strategy is to simply rain ranged fire down on the Immaculate and kill them as swiftly as possible, though removing them from the ground robs them of their best weapons; scenery modification and stunting are key here. Earth is also a priority to slay.

Fire Dragon is a poor style. It can create a rather high difficulty to hit, but what of it? Without armour, its practitioners are extremely vulnerable to even grazing blows. They have reasonable offences, but you would expect that. Either ignore the Fire Dragon until he runs out of essence after three or four turns, or kill him swiftly with ranged attacks or high-damage Melee blows. Obviously, don't clinch them (Fire Aspects typically being deadly to clinch).

Water Dragon is not the most dangerous of the Immaculate Arts, but it is the best - they're just so bloody hard to kill. They have good soak, can reduce your dice pool to attack, but most importantly, have a charm called Bottomless Depths Defence, which prevents all damage to them for a turn. It is a costly charm, and they can't use it indefinitely, but it is extremely annoying (in fact, the developer originally suggested an erratad cost of 3 Aggravated Health Levels a turn, and the Player's Guide changes it to all attacks doing 1 dice damage). They can create an area-effect attack by striking someone, so keep them away from your more vulnerable friends. Their pinnacle charm allows a rather damaging area-effect non-attack damaging technique, but it's not too bad if you have decent armour soak. All in all, it's best to completely ignore anyone you suspect may have Bottomless Depths Defence. Take them prisoner when the battle is over (though they do have a charm that lets them shrug out of restraints). You COULD kill them, but it's so terribly tedious.

Wood Dragon is pathetic. If in actual combat, kill them whenever it's convenient. They will slowly regenerate, so make sure to finish them. Their pinnacle charm has a chance of automatically killing you, so I suggest not being hit by it, but it glows green in obvious fashion, so it's not going to be a surprise. Outside of combat (and often during the beginning of the combat, or when the Wood Dragon is trying to escape), they have an exceptionally annoying charm called Unbreakable Fascination Kata. Ensure your reflexive defences are up early, as when they start the charm, nobody - nobody - is doing anything until the Wood stops dancing. It's extremely irritating, but it breaks whenever there's an attack, so you're unlikely to be hurt.


====Abyssals====

I have rather bad news for you here - the Abyssals are just as good at killing things as you are. Maybe slightly better. I won't go into their tactics at length here, because you'd find them hauntingly familiar. Layered defences, punishing offences, perfect attacks and defences...familiar? Only they're better resourced.

Of course, there are slight differences. Their clinching is more dangerous. They don't have your supreme army-killing Archery. Your Zenith can burn them, as can some of your Melee charms. They tend to go in more for magically summoned armour than actual natural soak.

Essentially, though, you're fighting yourselves. This likely means that you're not going to have any easy fights against Abyssals - these guys are your heroic rivals. Try to outnumber them. Try to disadvantage them. Punish any that use offence charms without a combo flare.

====Lunars====

Lunars are very frightening.

On the bright side, the loathsome furballs, like any other animal, are more frightened of you than you are of them.

The name of the game for the Lunars is big dice pools. Their war form gives them Dexterity, Stamina and Strength, and some nice side benefits (like regeneration). They have a few good charms, like a Melee cham that makes parrying difficult, an attack redirection charm, some murderous clinch charms, and some very nasty social charms that mess with your virtues. They are very likely to attack you many times with large pools, while keeping some nice big dodges in reserve. Alternately, they might go on an attacking frenzy, relying on soak and regeneration to stay alive.

Lunars are one of the few character types without really good reflexive defences - they've got a couple, but are short Perfect and persistent defences. They're too tough to do well against with a middling hit, but it might actually be worth unloading your finishing combos on them fairly early on. Waiting for an opportunity (like a Simple or Extra Action charm without combo flare), could help, but you're actually quite likely to hit with a big attack, and often it takes a VERY big attack to put a Lunar down. Coincidentally, Solars tend to be the people who can dish out the biggest single attacks. Leaping Tiger/Thunderbolt Attack Prana, Accuracy Without Distance, and Cascade of Cutting Terror are again key tools, as is a properly layered defence.

Think VERY carefully about clinching a Lunar. If they don't have the clinch charms, it might be a good move, but chances are at best they'll outdice you.

Don't bother trying to run Lunars out of Essence, as it's generally a waste of time.


====Sidereals====

In general, a Sidereal does not want to fight you. Even the most skilled Sidereal warriors have responsibilities, schemes and jobs that they don't want to risk by brawling. However, sooner or later, the manipulation might end, and a Sidereal will be forced to do the job themselves.

Sidereals style themselves the masters of martial arts. This is somewhat true; in actual fact, Solar Martial Artists can be significantly more powerful due to their superiour suite of support charms, but the Sidereals have better access to martial arts than anyone else, and far more incentive. Every non-Martial Art Sidereal tree is the sum total of Sidereal charms in that area. They cannot make custom charms. This means the handful of charms in each Sidereal tree, while often powerful in specialised areas, is a dead-end road. Martial Arts are accordingly extremely popular amongst the Sidereals.

What Sidereals ARE the unquestioned masters of is running away. They are masters of disguise, can teleport away from bad situations (with the neat side effect of convincing everyone they were never there), are exceptionally difficult to even remember, and have numerous charms in the Journeys tree that are excellent for fleeing rapidly. If you intend to kill a Sidereal, ensure that they cannot afford to retreat. Make them commit to the battlefield.

Sidereals are also fragile. Few of their charms offer much soak, and the majority of their martial arts, especially the most powerful tier, the Sidereal Martial Arts, are incompatible with armour. This means, despite the superlative nature of Starmetal armour, armoured Sidereals are very rare. Furthermore, the Sidereal Ox-Body provides only a single -0 health level, making it barely worth its XP.

Finally, Sidereals have critical difficulties with Essence. While their pools are larger than those of the Dragon-Blooded, their charms are more expensive, and very frequently committed. Even with stunts and several mote-regaining charms, Sidereals are often only refreshing a very small pool, and thus can be quickly run dry again. Sidereals have some excellent defence charms - including a 3 mote reflexive parry that automatically defends against any non-perfect parryable attack - but they usually need to use them for almost any attack, since even the lightest kiss of a Reaver daiklave could be fatal for them. This means attacking them frequently can severely wear down their resources very quickly - it is usually an excellent idea to concentrate the Circle's attacks upon a Sidereal.

Sidereals have only two perfect defences - one in Melee, costing 5 motes and 1wp, which fails if used Outside of Fate (ie in Malfeas, the Underworld, the Wyld or Autocthon), and one in Dodge (in fact the only Dodge charm worth worrying about if they commit to battle) costing 10 motes (which can dodge pretty much anything bad, including social consequences). While obviously fighting a Sidereal Outside of Fate is ideal, this makes a Sidereal equipped with a parrying weapon harder to kill than others, since Sidereals can be easily pushed to less than 10 motes in their pools. In general, Accuracy Without Distance is an excellent deal against Sidereals, since it requires more resources for them to defend than it costs you. Cascade of Cutting Terror is not generally worthwhile, since the 3m reflexive parry charm is effective against it, though using CoCT to goad the 3m parry, before a circlemate attacks with Accuracy Without Distance is an excellent tactic.

Sidereal Thrown is quite odd. Nearly all of its effects are ruinous in some fashion to someone hit by them; do not be hit, and be careful, as their attacks may strengthen as you are wounded. Ensure you are not hit by the prayer strip attack - if someone is, ensure that the Sidereal does not have a free hand, possibly by clinching. Watch for the unblockable attack - it's best to Seven Shadows evade it, then brutally counterattack, as the charm is Simple.

Sidereal Archery is generally not dangerous. However, its Prayer Strip charm allows them to fire arrows with some interesting effects, including arrows that transform into boulders, and thus are unblockable. The per-arrow cost for this is negligible, so don't expect you'll win a perfect defence-vs-arrow resource battle, but the Prayer Strip charm is a hefty commitment cost. Thus, the Sidereal can be fairly easily ran out of resources by an unrelenting attack. Kill them as priority.

Sidereal Brawl has two potent charms, though at 5 motes they are somewhat expensive for the Sidereal. They have a supplemental attack charm that is unblockable and ignores armour, and a parry charm for which excess successes are counted as a counterattack. The counterattack is probably not fearful, given a proper defence array - attempt to provoke it with repeated attacks in order to exhaust resources. The unblockable attack is problematic, though Seven Shadows Evasion at 6 motes for a Solar is probably slightly more efficient than 5 motes for Sidereal to make the attack. Attack brutally and put the Sidereal on the back foot, try not to give them an opportunity to use the charm. The Prayer Strip charm is problematic - it can cause a great deal of aggravated damage that ignores armour unless you accept a certain reversal of fortune. It's probably best to simply accept the reversal - the cost of the charm is great, and you'll likely be able to kill the Sidereal and move onto correcting the problem caused relatively quickly. Sidereal Brawl is not a clinching art; thus Martial Arts aside, they are excellent targets for clinching.

Sidereal Melee is not daunting. It is generally an essence sink. Provoke its reflexive defence as much as possible. Its Prayer Strip charm is a persistent parry, but its cost is great. It will make hitting the Sidereal difficult, but make it easier to exhaust their resources.

Other tricks to watch out for are Sidereals transferring damage from themselves to you (a perfect defence will cancel the relevant attack and the transfer), a battle strategy that forces Essence costs up (best dealt with by killing the Sidereal responsible as swiftly as possible), or using a Stealth charm to raise the difficulty of all actions against them made by a single target (in which case have your allies mob them while you ignore them).

Martial Arts, however, are the mainstay of Sidereal combat. In general, they are not powerful charms, but are vastly varied. Everything said about Immaculates is relevant for the use of those styles (including Bottomless Depths Defence, curse it - Sidereals with this charm are just bloody tedious, though thankfully they cannot combo it, and thus aren't likely to mount a good offence). Violet Bier of Sorrows, their signature sword style, is powerful, giving many dice and allowing damaging attacks and high initiative, but is extremely expensive, and should be easy to wear down.

Dealing with Martial Arts as a whole is beyond the scope of this essay. Suffice to say, however, that the most powerful Sidereal Martial Artists are exceptionally dangerous (and will be high-XP characters, so thankfully rare). Immunity to Everything Technique defeats Citrine Poxes of Contagion, but otherwise be paranoid defensively about this style and slay its practioner swiftly. Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Style has various annoyances, including Charm cancelling and redirection, and the rarity of good soak, though in general the resource battle can be won against them.

Charcoal March of Spiders Style is arguably the most dangerous single tree in the game. Thankfully, the Sidereals are the weakest at using it (Lunars would be terrible beyond words, Solars might seriously consider it a viable alternative to their own combat trees). If you encounter a Charcoal March user, use Cascade of Cutting Terror and Accuracy Without Distance to kill them as swiftly as possible. If they show Bottomless Depths Defence, consider retreating.

====All the rest====
''Gods, Demons, Monsters and Raksha''

Most significant non-Exalted foes have fairly unique tricks, and invariably huge dice pools and soak. Fair Folk and monsters in particular rarely have charms (at all or of use against you), so if you follow basic defence techniques and hit them as hard as you can, you'll likely prevail.

Gods and Demons are somewhat more complicated. As always, be cautious of custom charms, as gods and demons very frequently have unique charms. They have a number of powerful charms at their disposal, including a charm that lets them hang Extra Actions for when they need them. However, in general, their charm technology is much poorer than that of the Exalted, so study them for their unique powers, and when aware of them, attack with proper mind for defence and unrelenting brutality.

Note that Gods also frequently have very high hardness ratings, meaning you need to have a high damage to even ping them.

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Original Author: Kasumi on RPG.net


[[Category:Exalted]]