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.
Ammunition
There are two ways to track ammunition for ranged fighters in Exalted. The first is to keep track of how many arrows, throwing knives, and so forth the character has on him, taking pains to retrieve ammunition and weapons from fallen enemies, or ensuring the character arrives with more than enough arrows to suit his needs.
A less math-intensive and more dramatic method is to periodically make a roll to see if the character is running out of ammo. This roll should occur every five rounds or so, though modify this up or down if the character hasn't been shooting much, or has been spraying volleys of missiles into enemies.
As more-skilled characters tend to waste fewer shots, roll Archery or Thrown with a mounting -1 penalty each time it repeats. Failure indicates that the character is out of ammunition, and must resort to other means of combat, or scavenge more ammunition by some means. Increase the penalty to -2 if the character is using very limited ammunition stockpiles, such as a bundle of javelins or pouches of firedust charges.
Scavenging for more ammunition is a (Wits + [Awareness, Survival, or War]) action with a difficulty dictated by the Storyteller based on availability of the needed sort of ammunition nearby. Scavenging more arrows might be difficulty 1 to 3 depending on the battlefield, scavenging rocks for a sling is almost certainly always difficulty 1, and scavenging firedust is likely impossible on most battlefields.
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.
| Mount | Speed Bonus |
|---|---|
| Austrech | +2 |
| Camel | +3 |
| Horse | +4 |
| Mammoth | +1 |
| Simhata | +4 |
| Tyrant Lizard | +2 |
| Yeddim | +1 |
Combat: Mounted fighters employing close-range weapons enjoy a +1 bonus to withering attacks against non-mounted opponents of human scale, or +2 against battle groups not armed with weapons with the reaching tag. Mounted fighters also enjoy a +1 Defense bonus against attacks from close-range weapons wielded by non-mounted opponents, so long as those weapons lack the reaching tag.
Unusual Mounts: Some rare mounts render these rules unsuitable. Flying mounts, such as the giant hawks employed by the famed hawkriders of Mount Metagalapa, grant no combat bonuses, instead offering only superior mobility. Enormous mounts such as mammoths, yeddim, or tyrant lizards prevent their rider from being attacked at all by short-range weapons not possessing the reaching tag, unless opponents first use a miscellaneous (Dexterity + Athletics, difficulty 3) action to climb aboard the huge mount (this counts as the character's movement for the round). However, riders atop such mounts similarly cannot attack opponents on the ground with short-range weapons which lack the reaching tag.
Attacking Mounts: Mounts generally don't have their own Initiative track, though the Storyteller may waive this if it seems appropriate (such as a Fair Folk noble entering battle on the back of a behemoth more dangerous than its rider). Unless a mount has its own Initiative track, all withering attacks against it are considered to target its rider. Decisive attacks can be used to target mounts with the intent of killing them out from under their riders; in many circumstances, however, the unhorse gambit is a more effective option.
Equipping and Fighting with Mounts: Characters may obtain specialized defensive equipment designed for mounts, called barding. They may also wish to equip their mount with weaponry such as fortified crowns, horns, or fixed lances.
In general, barding for mounts works exactly the same as armor for any other character—light, medium, and heavy barding is available, with the same traits as armor for humans. Barding's mobility penalty is applied to the mount's Speed bonus, and in certain cases might even turn it into a speed penalty (such as with heavy barding on a mammoth). In the likely event that a barded mount isn't tracking Initiative, it's suggested that barding subtract raw damage from incoming decisive attacks against the mount (-2 for light, -4 for medium, -6 for heavy).
Weapons, by contrast, give access to special advantages. Horns or spikes grant the gore technique used by ox-dragons, aurochs, and other horned beasts (p. 568). A lance, by contrast, is a heavy weapon detailed on page 585; mounting it to the saddle makes it impossible to disarm, and enables the impale technique. To impale an enemy, the character must make a withering or decisive attack with a fixed lance after moving two consecutive range bands toward her target; this adds +5 to the attack's raw damage if withering, or +3 if decisive.
Commanding the mount to attack or use an attack technique uses up its rider's combat action. This is considered an attack action, and can be placed in a flurry.
Tacking and Barding Mounts
Mounts usually need saddles. Working at speed, it takes a master stabler five minutes to tack a horse—a process that involves affixing a blanket and saddle, bit and bridle, crown and boots. Barding, similarly, is applied after tacking, and even the fastest cataphract requires a minimum of five minutes to fully deck a destrier in armor. After that, if the animal is to carry any special weapons, they take a minute each to affix.
Mounts of a similar size to horses—agata, claw striders— take about the same amount of time to equip. Larger mounts such as mammoths or tyrant lizards take twice as long. Page 591 has the rules for characters themselves equipping armor; rushing a mount's equipment uses those rules.
Stealth
Stealth is a powerful advantage in battle, affording the opportunity to strike when an opponent least expects it, or when he doesn't realize he's in danger at all.
All stealth attempts consist of opposed rolls, generally (Dexterity + Stealth) against (Perception + Awareness). Stealth rolls can easily take penalties if the conditions aren't amenable to sneaking or hiding—dry underbrush, bright light, and scant cover can all make stealth more difficult. Likewise, Awareness rolls can take penalties due to cluttered or noisy environments (such as market crowds or stormy nights)—Stealth and Awareness are both very context-governed Abilities.
Assuming that a character has successfully concealed himself, he may then attempt to make an unexpected attack. Unexpected attacks are either an ambush or a surprise attack.
An ambush is defined as an attack against a target completely unaware of the attacker's presence—generally only possible during the first round of a fight, against a target with a lower Initiative value than the attacker. An ambush attack completely ignores the target's Defense; the target is considered to have Defense 0 against the attack.
A surprise attack, on the other hand, is an attack launched from hiding against an opponent who knows he's in battle and who is actively on the lookout for attacks, even if he isn't sure exactly where all of his opponents are at the moment. A target faced with a surprise attack suffers a -2 Defense penalty against that attack.
Attempting to re-establish surprise is a combat action that cannot be placed in a flurry.
A character in stealth cannot take Rush actions. If he wants to move normally in combat for more on movement in combat) while maintaining concealment, he must have some adequate place to hide in the spot he's moving to, and must make another reflexive (Dexterity + Stealth) roll when he moves, to keep from being spotted while moving. If this movement crosses wide-open terrain with no appreciable cover, the Stealth roll's penalty climbs from the usual -3 (for attempting stealth while already in combat) to -5.
Hold at Bay
A permutation of an ambush, to hold someone at bay is to succeed at an ambush without attacking, choosing instead to hold the target hostage for a number of rounds. The character points her weapon at her target's vital organs; the target knows he will suffer a deadly attack if he so much as moves, allowing the character to speak her mind before battle commences. The character may interrogate, threaten, cajole, or otherwise detain her opponent for a number of rounds equal to the difference in their Initiative. If the target chooses to struggle or try to escape before these rounds are finished, the character may make an immediate decisive ambush attack against him with onerous results: not only is the target's Defense set to 0, but his Hardness is set to 0 as well, and the attack gains +5 automatic damage. If the character chooses to attack her target before the rounds are up, he may defend normally.
If the target chooses to cooperate, the hostage-taker's Resolve and Guile are at +1, while the target's are each at -2 until the specified number of rounds have passed. When the hold at bay rounds have passed, if the target has not agreed to surrender, both roll Join Battle to determine who will act first, with the hostage suffering a -2 penalty to his results. If the hostage-taker wins, she can immediately execute a standard ambush attack.
A dramatic overview of Hold at Bay:
The character's ambush may be an elaborate trap: she arranges for her target to be in a certain room at a certain time, and sits in a darkened corner with a crossbow aimed at the door. It might also be a spur of the moment grab: a Night Caste reaches out of an alley to snare a passer-by and put a dagger to his throat. In all cases, for a character to be held at bay, he must be intelligent enough to feel fear, or otherwise competent to understand a threat. The action won't work on mindless automata, beasts, or mindless monsters. While holding a person at bay, his mental faculties are concentrating on survival, or on looking for a way out, so his Resolve and Guile is weakened, while the person holding him at bay has the social upper hand. In this type of scenario, the target will generally agree to all simple commands such as "Turn around" or "Move over there" which do not directly cause him harm, but can still resist agreeing to things which would harm him or deprive him of safety. When the character's control rounds end, if the target has not surrendered, the new Join Battle roll reflects a shift in the drama, at which one character or the other figuratively blinks. If the target wins this roll, it means he's seized a moment to fight for his life. If the character holding him at bay wins, she can continue to talk for a number of rounds equal to the new Initiative difference, or she can choose to attack. In this case, the target is only at Defense 0.
Go to Ground
Sometimes a character needs to get out of a fight, but surrender isn't an option and the hopes of escaping by way of a withdraw action seem slim. In these situations, the character may attempt to escape the fight by going to ground. A character who goes to ground is attempting to hide somewhere on the battlefield and to avoid detection until the fight is over (and, hopefully, any hostiles have left). In order to attempt to go to ground, a character must already be in stealth. His player must then declare he is attempting to go to ground, and then make a successful (Dexterity + Stealth) attempt to maintain concealment over the next three turns. The first roll is at a -3 penalty, the second at -4, and the final roll at -5. If all of these rolls successfully defeat the (Perception + Awareness) rolls of the character's enemies, he is considered so well hidden that there is no hope of finding him until he voluntarily emerges from concealment.
This climbing difficulty can represent either the increasing difficulty of maintaining a single hiding place in the face of concerted efforts to find the character or the risk of moving about from hiding place to hiding place to evade searching opponents. Players are encouraged to think about how their characters attemp to go to ground, and to stunt appropriately—they'll need all the help they can get to deal with the penalties.
A character who goes to ground successfully, but then emerges from hiding to re-join the fight in the midst of the same combat, re-enters the fight in Initiative Crash, at -10 Initiative.
Uncountable Damage
Sometimes an avalanche sweeps an entire town off the side of a mountain. Sometimes a manse is converted into a geomantic bomb. Sometimes you're standing beneath the miraculous floating mountain Metagalapa when suddenly it falls on you. These situations produce uncountable damage—apocalyptic destruction totally out of scale with what combat resolution, environmental hazards, and Health Tracks are designed to deal with.
When a character is subjected to uncountable damage, the Storyteller decides what happens to him (usually death, although in some cases it might be reasonable to permit a roll to reduce a sure demise down to mere incapacitation). Luckily, the Chosen have a number of Charms which allow them to deal with uncountable damage, such as Adamant Skin Technique.