Attacks

When you attack, choose:

• withering: I am targeting my opponent’s narrative control to change the flow of this fight; or,
• Decisive: I am spending my narrative control to permanently harm my opponent.

Diegesis

Diegetically, there is no distinction between withering and decisive attacks. For your character, every attack is an attack is an attack – they are all intended to harm.

The withering/decisive distinction is purely narrative. Imagine that the fight is a storyboard; the distinction asks you to choose, are you adding a normal fight panel, or one with a climactic blow?

Withering Attacks

A withering attack is a projection of killing intent. Controlling space with footwork, feinting to get a strike, or forcing the opponent onto the defensive are all withering attacks. Most cinematic fights are composed mostly of withering attacks.

Resolving a Withering Attack

1. Roll ([Strength or Dexterity] + [combat Ability] + Accuracy) against the target’s Defense. Your target gains 1 Onslaught. If you succeeded, proceed to step 2. If you failed, end.
2. The attack’s raw damage is equal to (Strength + weapon Damage). Proceed to step 3.
3. Subtract the target’s Soak from the raw damage to get the effective damage. An attack’s effective damage cannot be reduced to less than the weapon’s Overwhelming. Roll the effective damage as a pool and proceed to step 4.
4. Gain 1i for landing a successful attack. Then, for each success you rolled on the effective damage roll, your opponent loses 1i and you gain 1i. End.

Crash

If your attack reduces a target to 0 or less Initiative, you have “Crashed” them. Your target gains the Crashed status.

If you force an opponent into Crash, you gain a Break bonus of +5i, on top of the regular Initiative you gain.

Shift

If you can Crash the person who forced you into Crash, you not only gain the regular Break bonus for forcing someone into Crash. You become Shifted, which lets you roll Join Battle again to gain even more Initiative. A powerful bonus!

Decisive Attacks

A decisive attack is a terrific finishing blow with deadly consequences. It might be stabbing someone through the gut, a desperate all-or-nothing rain of blows, or any other such attack that inflicts permanent harm on your target.

In a movie, the decisive attacks are the ones that hit with major impact, the kind of blows where the camera slows down or the screen goes all wonky.

A decisive attack cashes in your narrative control (Initiative) to inflict permanent harm. Having done so, the flow now shifts to your opponent to respond – if they survived.

Resolving a Decisive Attack

1. Roll (Dexterity + [combat Ability]) against the target’s Defense – note that you are not adding Accuracy (but don’t worry, Lot-Casting Atemi does this for you automatically). Your target gains 1 Onslaught. If you failed, proceed to step 2. If you succeeded, proceed to step 3.
2. If you fail your attack roll, you lose a bit of Initiative. If you have 11+ Initiative, you lose 3. Otherwise, you lose 2. End.
3. If you succeed on your attack roll, your raw damage is a pool of dice equal to your current Initiative. Check your target’s Hardness. If your raw damage is greater than your target’s Harndess, proceed to step 4. If your raw damage is equal to or less than your target’s Hardness, proceed immediately to step 5.
4. Roll your raw damage as a dice pool. DO NOT DOUBLE 10s – this is the only roll in Exalted that, by default, does not double 10s. Each success you roll inflicts 1 level of damage to the opponent’s health track.
5. Reset to base Initiative. End.

Defense

Every character has two methods to avoid harm: she can get out of the way, or she can try to block the attack.

Your Evasion represents your ability to get out of the way.

Your Parry depends on your current weapon, and represents your ability to block an incoming attack.

Your Defense is the higher of your Evasion and your Parry. This is the difficulty to hit you. You are always assumed to use your best available defense against all incoming attacks.

Onslaught

Onslaught is a penalty you get from being attacked, regardless of whether the attack hits or misses. In the narrative, this is meant to represent “stagger” or “beatdown” – it is supposed to represent the fatigue of defending against several incoming attacks without being able to catch your breath.

Each point of Onslaught reduces your Defense by 1. Onslaught is also used as a resource for some Charms and techniques.

Your Onslaught resets at the start of your turn. Note that this means that if your opponent is able to act after you one round and before you the next, they can capitalize on your Onslaught before it has a chance to reset – a mean trick.