Editing Exalted Power Combat 101 (section)

=== Hardness ===

A gnarled and spined wooden spear hurtles from its hiding place, flung by the mechanism tripped by Alakra's unwary foot.  The Exalt's keen senses notice the barb just as it is about to strike him, and a burst of golden essence ripples over his skin, shattering the spear into a thousand sun-bleached splinters.

<i> Having succeeded his roll, Alakra notices the trap and may defend himself against it.  Deciding to look tough about it, he decided to allow the spear to hit him, at which point he will use a soak charm to save his precious health levels.  The ST declares that the spear does 7 lethal base damage, and asks how the unarmoured Alakra intends to soak.  The Solar activates 'Durability of Oak Meditation' for 3 motes, gaining not only +9 lethal soak (for a total of 10 in conjunction with his 2 stamina), but a Hardness of 8 against this one attack. </i>

<i>Because the raw damage of the attack is less than Alakra's Hardness (7 < 8), he ignores the attack entirely--it does not even roll the normal one die of minimum damage.  The hardness would also have allowed Alakra to ignore the attack if the raw damage had been equal to it--8L. </i>

<i>If the spear's raw damage was 9L, it would have been above the hardness, but still less than Alakra's soak of 10L.  Hence, while he could not have ignored it, he would only have taken the minimum damage of 1 die.  Remember, Hardness applies <b>before</b> soak. </i>