Editing Mnemon Explains Solar Combat (section)

====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.