Combat Alchemicals

[Kyrn]

No it doesn't.  You have to purchase MA charms with bonus points, thus limiting you to a max of two without taking flaws.

 

[lowguppy]

I'm building an Alchemical, and I had to build a goddamned spreadsheet to get a decent picture of what my options really were. I basically came up with the most efficient clusters of charms to do different things then compared them. I'm trying not to combat twink, but in Exalted its hard to not at least twink a little and still have a useful character. Here's my clusters that I came up with for combat:


Basic Combat:


DEX Sustained Dex Augmentation


DEX Dynamic Response System - I prefer getting just the dodge function


DEX Dynamic Reaction Enhancement - Efficient init. pumping


Basic Ranged Combat:


PER Aim Calibrating Sensors


DEX Transmodal Rapid Targeting System - Is this the easiest extra-action charm to get or what? Especially if you need the sensors for a bow or pulse-cannon anyways.


PER Dedicated Harmonic Targeting - less necessary, but shooting through walls rocks, comboed with optical enhancement and the right sub-mods you can make a pretty scary sniper.


-If you're in the mood, with these charms, 5 STR, both augmentations, and 5 athletics you can throw just about anything smaller than a Yeddim at 3+ targets, ignoring obstacles, with deadly accuracy. Too bad there isn't a Lotus Matrix for solar thrown charms...


Or you can just pick up a gyroscopic chakram and wreck hell for just a couple charms.


Ranged (Pulse Cannon):


PER Aim Calibrating Sensors


STR Essence Pulse Cannon + most of your bonus points in submods


STR Interceptor Spark Emitter - Frickin' Point Defense Lasers, bitches!


-Doesn't mind having the Ranged charms for all out beastiness, but rocks pretty hard without. The essence battery submods are pretty handy.


Armor:


STA Sustained Augmentation of Stamina


STA Exoskeletal Armor Plating - Stacks with armor = Twinky-hot


STA Aegis Integration System - Drop for 5 dot artifact armor if you're taking this charm.


The melee stuff has generally been talked about, though I have to mention the (material) synthesis wave emitter if you're getting a STR augmentation for other reasons. Its a pretty easy way to buff your melee, or if you take soulsteel you can regain a mote when you use it. Its more for dramatic effect, cuz when you turn on the soulsteel, it says you mean business. The following charm that lets you build artifacts out of you sounds cool, but artifact is easier to get than charms, so I don't see it being worthwhile unless you have something really crazy that you're using your artifact dots for (combat airskiff+essence capacitor+5 dot armor)


There's also some pretty decent stand-alone charms that can fill up the last slot or two for combat:


STA Essence Shield Projector - extra soak that stacks and a shield


STA Strain Resistant Chassis - (Ox body tech) more levels never hurts.


The Specialty charm is tempting, but you have to commit a mote for every dot of specialty, so you could get 6 dots of melee specialty, but you'll be running at almost no personal essence if you do.


Oh, and you pretty much have to drop for the 3rd dot of essence if you want to do anything cool, especially if you use power combat.


I wouldn't go for massive soak, because you'll never do it as well as a Lunar in beastman form with both soak gifts, especially if they take the regen gifts too (and if they're feeling really gross, Gem of Adamant Skin). You can get a pretty healthy amount of soak with just the few charms mentioned for a good "tank" loadout though.


On a side note, take a couple dots of occult and grab the first weaving charm once you reach 4 essence. The two best protocol are the essence draining one mentioned, and the one that lets you swap out charms on the fly. It requires 4 clarity, but its what can make Alchemicals truly as flexible as they sound.


In conclusion, efficiency is the name of the game with Alchemicals 2-4 charm arrays that you can swap around for different combat loadouts like ranged, melee, mixed, tank, etc.


I think I may have put too much thought into this stuff.

 

[Persell]

Actually I kinda disagree with you, I think the hugest benefit alchemicals have is a steady high soak and an easy access to regeneration... and those are the edges i would count on cause mano a mano every celestial is going to rip you a new one, at least if he or she is twinked to the same extend.

 

[Quchu]

Heheh... An Essence 5 Alchemical twinked out for damage taking can have natural soak of 19L/27B or armor soak of 32L/35B, 27 HLs and one Lethal HL and five Bashing HLs healed every turn... And that's only with Charms.


Without Essence Ping in Power Combat, I'm not sure how anything beside Solar Circle Sorcery or something of Godspear scale can take those Alchemicals down. Well, within a week.

 

[lowguppy]

Alternately, a starting lunar with 3 essence can get 27/27 soak (armored) 6/6 hardness, 1L and all bashing regen'ed a round and similar 20 extra -2 health levels. Mind you that sacrifices all offense, but even after topping up stamina they can have pretty brutal str and dex. If they can muster a few points of flaws they can add a hearthstone like Gem of Adamant Skin and be just about unkillable (Agg, as for everyone else, is their Achilles heel). Getting an Alchemical to 5 essence takes a while, let alone buying all the charms to reach those levels. They can do it, but Lunars do it better.


If I was building, lets say an Essence 4 pure combat Alchemical it would be based around Weaving, draining essence, and shooting people through walls from obscene distances several times for gross amounts of Agg, for example:


Transmodal Rapid Targeting (5 seperate targets at 3 motes each)


Dedicated Harmonic Targeting (3/target)


Celerity Enabling (4 actions of any kind for 5 motes + 1wp)


Optical Enhancement w/Telescopic and Mass Penetrating submods,


Essence Pulse Cannon w/pattern disruptor [3 motes], other mods)


With Celerity Enabling that's 2wp, 8 motes, and 3 per target to pour as much essence as you have left in Agg into them through walls hundreds of yards away. With TRT is 1wp 3 motes, and 6 per target. That's one hell of an alpha strike.


That's with 9 charms. If you could find 10 points worth of flaws and forego the Celerity Enabling Module you could theoretically start with that badness... you'd even have a couple slots left over for defenses or essense resevoirs. That's ignoring any artifacts they might have. You could probably find artifacts to replace the optics and still rock some heavy armor and have dots left for other toys.


Sadly, or fortunately, the concept I'm working on wouldn't devote that much energy towards sheer destruction, nor are there 10 pt.s worth of applicable flaws for Alchemicals. (at least not that I've been able to find)


Edit: after some quick math, with a couple essence resevoir charms you could, in one turn, give 7 Agg each to 5 targets that are pretty fucking unlikely to get a chance to dodge that shit. If you fire up a starmetal anima you can bring that to 8+successes, 11+ if you don't have to get them through walls... Gwoss... That's burning all your essence, but just imagine: "Before you can put a hand on your weapon, Returning to The Maker explodes in a super-nova of essence as his banner ignites, once your vision re-adjusts you see that wisps of smoke and ash are all that remain of the five foes that previously stood before you."


I think moments like that are why we play Exalted.

 

[lowguppy]

Oh, and if you're wondering, you could alternately attack a single target at a maximum range of 200yds through all sorts of shit and have close to 60 peripheral essence at your disposal with which to disintegrate the very pattern of their being. Ouch.

 

[Persell]

Actually, the exalted combat rules somehow don't really favor high damage attacks. In combat exalt vs. exalt you usually only drain your own essence pool with high power attacks while the enemy applies some very efficient defense charm.

 

[lowguppy]

Well, you could also spread out that much firepower over several scenes, I'm just saying its there if you need it, or get an opening. Because sometimes pinging a giant Oricalcum lion isn't enough, and you need to bust out your Rising Phoenix Strike (or whatever custom combo) to pour 76 raw damage into it so you can really roll some frikkin dice after its 20 soak is applied... then get swatted in the face, but still, I cleaved its fucking face in half!


I think I might've gotten off topic there, but that's the story of my sig line. I guess what I'm saying is that there's nothing wrong with being able to dish out gross amounts of Aggrivated damage, and its one thing the Alchemicals can do without too much trouble, and with a little patience you can do it with a pretty well balanced character.

 

[Flagg]

you need to bust out your Rising Phoenix Strike (or whatever custom combo) to pour 76 raw damage into it so you can really roll some frikkin dice after its 20 soak is applied... then get swatted in the face, but still, I cleaved its fucking face in half!

Please describe what Combo you've built that lets you deal 76 dice of damage with 3 Charms. Outside of an extrememly lucky roll, I don't see it.


-S

 

[Quchu]

The highest I can think of is about 60 from maxed Strength, Oric anima power, Grand Daiklave, TAS and PTA. And 14 Bashing damage from Electro... what was it? Anyway, that shock Charm.

 

[Persell]

Well, you could also spread out that much firepower over several scenes, I'm just saying its there if you need it, or get an opening. Because sometimes pinging a giant Oricalcum lion isn't enough, and you need to bust out your Rising Phoenix Strike (or whatever custom combo) to pour 76 raw damage into it so you can really roll some frikkin dice after its 20 soak is applied... then get swatted in the face, but still, I cleaved its fucking face in half!
I think I might've gotten off topic there, but that's the story of my sig line. I guess what I'm saying is that there's nothing wrong with being able to dish out gross amounts of Aggrivated damage, and its one thing the Alchemicals can do without too much trouble, and with a little patience you can do it with a pretty well balanced character.

First of all, I side with stillborn and I am pretty sure you can't get 76 damage from a three charm array without rolling stupidly good. And then again, doing lots of damage is rarely the point in combat exalt vs. exalt. stacked defenses usually reduce you to pinging anyway and versus a solar it is just a way to deplete your essence and willpower pool fast.

 

[lowguppy]

It might've been four charms, lemme try to remember...


I know it was based on Hungry Tiger Strike and Thunderbolt Attack Prana, so that each success was doubled, then the pre-soak damage was doubled.


I think I had 5 DEX, Oricalcum Reaper Daiklaive, 5 melee +3 Axe specialty, Hearthstone Bracers, maybe used Excellent Strike, so I was rolling around 20 dice to hit, avg 10 successes, Hungry Tiger makes 20 + 4 STR + 10 axe = 34, doubled before soak 68, so it would've only taken a little luck (or motes for Ex. Strike) to get over 70 raw damage there. I'm also a little fuzzy on what my exact damage was, but I know that it soaked 20 and I still rolled more than 40 dice.


I think I also had One Weapon, Two Blows for the aesthetic of hitting on the way up too (hence, Rising Phoenix), but just for an essence ping.


Again, this was foregoing all defenses (I had just been Essence pinging and using my reflexive dodge or parry before this) and even after giving it 16 levels and cleaving its face in half it still responded by batting me aside like a ragdoll and incapacitating me through my high-teens soak. I can't say it was the most advisable maneuver, but like I said, moments like that why we play Exalted.

 

[Persell]

It might've been four charms, lemme try to remember...
I know it was based on Hungry Tiger Strike and Thunderbolt Attack Prana, so that each success was doubled, then the pre-soak damage was doubled.


I think I had 5 DEX, Oricalcum Reaper Daiklaive, 5 melee +3 Axe specialty, Hearthstone Bracers, maybe used Excellent Strike, so I was rolling around 20 dice to hit, avg 10 successes, Hungry Tiger makes 20 + 4 STR + 10 axe = 34, doubled before soak 68, so it would've only taken a little luck (or motes for Ex. Strike) to get over 70 raw damage there. I'm also a little fuzzy on what my exact damage was, but I know that it soaked 20 and I still rolled more than 40 dice.


I think I also had One Weapon, Two Blows for the aesthetic of hitting on the way up too (hence, Rising Phoenix), but just for an essence ping.

The average of 20 die is more like 7 successes than 10 so you must have been rolling extraordinarily lucky to get the damage anything close to that and if I remember correctly then we were speaking about alchemicals...

 

[lowguppy]

You'd think that needing 7-10 for a success would mean a 40% of your dice are successes, but when you factor in a 10% chance of getting two successes on a 10, it actually works out to just about half your pool in successes on average. That, and you could always blow motes on Excellent Strike and/or channel a virtue for more dice,

 

[Flagg]

Just out of curiosity (since you've professed not to be a twink, yet have admitted to using mathematical analysis to get the most efficient combinations of Charms, and brag about rolling upwards of 75 dice of damage in an attack), is the powerlevel of this Combo typical amongst the characters you play, and those of the rest of your group?


-S

 

[lowguppy]

Well, that character was the first I made, and he was a little on the twinked side, but I did build a lot of style into him as well. As for power level, that was after spending at least 30 xp (maybe 5-8 a session?) though I imagine if you really wanted you could probably build that combo into a starting character. I wouldn't say that sort of damage is typical of our group, but each character usually does one thing just plain better than anyone else in the party. My defenses relied on that one reflexive parry, and Invulnerable Skin of Bronze, while the Lunar had gross str and gross soak, and did much more damage without blowing essence, the others had some non-combat abilities that we'd have been boned without. Exalted involves a lot of combat, there's no way around it, so you really have to devote a good chunk of any character to combat prowess. I actually just posted a thing about twinking for balanced characters in this very forum, so go give that a read, we've gotten a little off topic here (apologies to the OP)