Complications

Systems and Conflict: Glossary | General Structure | Combat | Complications | Battle Groups | Social Influence | Disease | Crafting

While Combat details all the nuts and bolts of combat in Exalted, there are a few other unusual complications that may arise from time to time, which certain sorts of characters are likely to specialize in.

Gambits

Gambits are a special sort of decisive attack. Rather than inflicting Health Track damage, gambits are used to execute special maneuvers which can significantly shift the course of battle, such as disarming or unhorsing an opponent.

Four "universal" gambits are detailed below, but gambits are customizable—if a player wants to do something crazy during combat that the rules in this chapter don't cover, and the Storyteller is left going "I have no idea how to represent that"—it's generally good to make it a gambit. Some Charms require gambits to execute. Forthcoming supplements will also contain new situational gambits—for example, there might exist gambits that represent fighting the corpse-fortress Juggernaut, allowing characters to disable parts of the behemoth's gigantic undead body, bit by bit.

To execute a gambit, the player must declare what he's attempting and then make a decisive attack against his opponent. If the attack fails, he loses Initiative as normal (p. 191). If it succeeds, then he rolls Initiative. Rather than inflicting Health Track damage, however, this roll is trying to match the gambit's difficulty rating. If it does, the gambit goes off! If not, then the Gambit is unsuccessful. Regardless of the gambit's success, the character loses a number of Initiative equal to the gambit's difficulty + 1. A character cannot attempt a gambit whose cost would place him in Initiative Crash.

The following maneuvers are presented as examples of how gambits work:

• Disarm (difficulty 3): A successful disarm gambit allows the character to knock an opponent's weapon out of his hand, flinging it away to short range. Retrieving a disarmed weapon normally requires moving to the weapon's location and using a draw/ready weapon action to reclaim it.
• Unhorse (difficulty 4): A successful unhorse gambit allows the character to knock an opponent off his mount. An unhorsed character suffers one level of bashing damage and is rendered prone, and the mount usually flees in the confusion. This is generally an easier and less-costly option than trying to target a mount with a decisive attack to kill it. (While this is perhaps unrealistic, players generally don't enjoy having their trusty horses shot out from under them, especially if the animal is a familiar. Storytellers running especially gritty games may want to allow the unhorse gambit to be used to shoot mounts out from under riders as well as forcibly dismounting opponents, at difficulty 5.)
• Distract (difficulty 3-5): The character leads, threatens, or feints his target into the path of an ally's decisive attack. The attacker declares an ally (who is not in Initiative Crash) as the beneficiary of this distraction; that ally gains the Initiative the character loses as a result of successfully executing this gambit. The transferred Initiative must be used to attack the gambit's target on the ally's next turn, or it is lost. A character can only benefit from one distraction bonus at a time.
• Grapple (difficulty 2): The character seizes her opponent in a clinch, limiting his movement and gaining the opportunity to do truly severe damage. Grapples are a bit more complicated than other gambits, and are explained in greater detail below.

If you want to design your own gambits, it helps to keep the following guidelines in mind:

Gambits are always delivered via decisive attack, and so they need to have a definite target. Gambits are mostly there to give a framework for advantageous maneuvers that are difficult to balance if characters can do them over and over again (such as disarming; if disarming could be attempted nonstop at no cost, it would either be incredibly powerful—which produces odd, unenjoyable battles in which everyone loses their sword constantly—or would need to be weakened to the point of uselessness for balance's sake). Finally, remember that 7 successes on a decisive damage roll is normally enough to incapacitate or kill—if your custom gambit is difficulty 7+, then its primary advantage over a normal decisive attack is going to be that it doesn't reset Initiative, unless it is custom-designed to be used against something with more than 7 Health Levels, like a behemoth.

Grapples

While most martial arts battles in the world of Exalted consist of a ballet of devastating striking techniques, some unarmed fighters learn to specialize in holds, clinches, slams, and other wrestling moves; such attacks are also a long-standing staple of self-taught brawling masters, and are dangerous to underestimate.

Grapples are initiated through a grapple gambit. Upon succeeding at the gambit, the grappler makes a control roll, which determines how long she can keep the grapple locked on. This is an opposed (Strength + [Brawl or Martial Arts]) roll between the grappler and her target. Should the target win or tie, then the target escapes the grapple on his next turn. Should the martial artist win, she gains control of the grapple during her current turn, and for a number of additional rounds equal to the number of successes by which she beat her target. After those turns elapse, the grappled target automatically escapes the grapple. A grapple will also immediately end if the grappler suffers Initiative Crash.

While grappling or being grappled, both characters suffer a -2 penalty to their Defense and cannot perform flurries. Victims caught in a grapple cannot take movement actions, and suffer a -1 penalty to all attacks, or a -3 penalty to all attacks using two-handed weapons.

Positioning, Movement, and Common Sense

Movement in Exalted is heavily abstracted, and as such, requires a bit of common-sense adjudication. Changing position relative to one character may easily change an individual's position relative to other characters as well—if you advance from short to close range toward two swordsmen fighting each other, then you're now close to both of them, not just the one you advanced on. If you retreat away from those same figures, from short to medium range, then you're now at medium range from both—and at long range from the bowman behind them, who is himself at short range from the swordsmen, but on the opposite side of the battlefield.

Likewise, certain forms of unorthodox movement may obviate certain kinds of difficult terrain. A Lunar Exalt that transforms into a bird, for example, will be able to easily fly over most kinds of difficult terrain, while certain Charms make normally-difficult terrain easy to navigate. Ultimately, use common sense.

Each time the grappler suffers an attack and/or damage from any source, she forfeits one turn of control of the grapple. For example, a wrestler who clinches an opponent and wins the control roll by a margin of 5 successes will maintain control for 5 additional turns. In that same round, she is attacked twice; one attack misses, while the other inflicts 3 points of Initiative damage. Because she was attacked twice and damaged once, she forfeits three turns of control—the victim will now escape after only 2 turns. During each turn in which the grappler maintains the clinch, including the turn on which she initiates it, she must choose to apply one of the following effects: she may savage the opponent, restrain and drag him, or throw him. She may also release him at any time. She can take no other movement or combat actions so long as the grapple persists.

Savage: The grappler injures her opponent, choking him, wrenching his limbs, stretching his joints, or bashing him into nearby scenery. The savage action applies withering or decisive damage to the grappled opponent without chance of failure or opportunity for defense. If the grappler chooses to inflict withering damage, she makes an unarmed attack roll against Defense 0 for the purpose of determining extra damage. Again, this attack hits the opponent automatically, even if the character generates 0 successes on the attack roll. With a decisive attack, no attack roll is necessary—just roll Initiative, apply damage, and reset to base as usual.

Restrain/Drag: This action uses up two rounds of control, and can't be used if the victim wins the control roll. The attacker locks the victim up in an immobilizing hold. This inflicts no damage, but prevents the victim from taking any action at all on his next turn. While restraining her opponent, the character may take a movement action, and in doing so, drag the victim with her. This might be used for abductions, to haul a target out from behind cover, or perhaps even to drag an individual into an area that is harmful to the victim but harmless to the attacker (such as a Water Aspect Dragon-Blooded pulling an opponent into a river to drown him).

Throw/Slam: The grappler ends the clinch prematurely, slamming the victim into the ground or a nearby surface within close range. This inflicts damage in the same fashion as savaging the opponent, with the following difference: the attack's damage dice pool is boosted by 2 dice per turn of control forfeited by ending the clinch prematurely if withering, or by 1 die per turn if decisive. The opponent is left prone by this maneuver. A throw/slam maneuver can only benefit from a maximum of up to (Strength) turns of control forfeited; any greater number of turns are simply lost with no benefit. Decisive slams normally inflict bashing damage but can inflict lethal damage if the chosen impact point is particularly deadly (such as into a bonfire, or onto a spike).

Release: The attacker simply releases the clinched victim without harming her. Release is a reflexive action rather than a combat action, and may be performed at any time.

A final note: Characters cannot grapple any opponent where a grapple simply doesn't make sense given the relative scales involved (so grapples would be inapplicable against an army of a hundred Realm legionnaires, or against the Mask of Winters's corpse-fortress Juggernaut; likewise, a toddler can't effectively grapple a grown man, nor could a grown man grapple an eight-ton tyrant lizard).

Crippling

The Chosen of the gods heal most injuries perfectly. It takes a truly profound wound to even leave a scar as a reminder, much less to permanently cripple an Exalted hero. Moreover, crippling injuries can change a character's image and concept, ruining a player's enjoyment—he didn't sign up to play a one-armed boxer, or a prince with no nose!

As a result, crippling injuries are voluntary in Exalted, and may be taken at the behest of the player controlling a character. Your character won't lose an eye, a hand, or a limb unless you want him to.

So why would you want that? You might decide that losing an eye would be a cool long-term reminder of an epic duel. Or you might think it's better to suffer a terrible, debilitating injury than to die. While crippling injuries are difficult to mend, they're not impossible once Exalted physicians or gods with powerful healing miracles enter the picture. Here's how it works:

Once per story, a player whose character has just suffered physical damage may choose to ablate it by accepting a crippling injury instead. The character must take a minimum of two Health Levels of lethal damage to accept a crippling injury, after the damage negated. If this would leave him Incapacitated or dead, he instead simply marks off his last health box before Incapacitated.

1-2 Health Levels: By negating this much damage, the character suffers maiming that impairs the function of some body part or sense. He might lose half the fingers on one hand, or an eye, or half a foot.

3-4 Health Levels: By negating this much damage, the character loses an entire sense or useful extremity. He might be blinded completely, have his tongue cut out, lose a hand, or suffer maiming of his generative organs.

5 health levels: By negating this much damage, the character loses a limb—most of an arm or a leg, gone.

A character's wound penalties are doubled for the rest of the scene in which he suffers any crippling injury by negating 3 or more health levels of damage. Accepting a crippling injury is basically accepting debility in the name of either producing an interesting plot hook, or attempting to save a character from death. Storytellers, it's usually poor form to have enemies immediately finish off a crippled character, though you know the needs of your own story best. See the Amputee, Blind, Deaf, Mute, and Sterile flaws for the permanent effects of crippling injuries.

Being Prone

Certain attacks (such as Smashing attacks made by hammers, or being thrown by a grappler) can leave a character prone—knocked forcefully to the ground. A prone character must take a rise from prone combat action to regain his footing. As long as a character is prone, he suffers a -1 penalty to his Parry, a -2 penalty to his Evasion, a -3 penalty to attacks, and cannot take any movement actions other than to rise from prone. He also automatically fails all attempts to resist dash and disengage actions.

Clash Attacks

Clash Attacks are a special roll used when two characters attack one another on the same tick. In these situations, the quality of a character's defensive prowess becomes irrelevant— victory goes to the fighter whose strike is superior. Clash Attacks ignore both characters' Defense. Instead, the two attacks act as an opposed roll. The character who accumulates more successes wins, striking his opponent, while the loser's attack is thwarted. If a Clash Attack is withering, then it adds the threshold by which the winning fighter beat his opponent's roll to its raw damage.

A successful withering Clash attack adds 3 additional points of Initiative damage after damage is rolled. A successful decisive Clash attack adds one additional automatic point of Health Track damage after damage is rolled. Finally, in addition to suffering damage, the loser of the Clash Attack suffers a -2 penalty to his Defense until his next turn.

Mounted Fighting

Opponents fighting from horseback (or from atop any similarly-sized mount) enjoy a number of advantages and a few disadvantages over combatants on foot.

Movement: Mounts are generally faster than human warriors, particularly when moving at a charge. As a result, most mounts grant a movement bonus to rush, disengage, and withdraw actions. These bonuses are listed in the stat block of any creature suitable as a mount as a mount's Speed Bonus, and the most common Speed Bonuses are summarized below. The Ride Ability replaces Athletics and Dodge for any movement rolls made while mounted.

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