3e Modifying Withering and Decisive attacks.

[u/waronvirtue]

I'm wondering if I can tweak the base combat to streamline some things, withering and decisive attacks especially. Rationale is at the bottom. All feedback is appreciated, especially insight into the collection of charms that would most need ground up rewrites.

The Major changes simplify Withering and Decisive Attacks.  Hardness is merged into Soak, Soak now only applies to Decisive Attacks in two ways, see below.

Initiative
Initiative can also be acquired by attempting combat relevant actions that are not attacks or Gambits.  Begging for your life with a bribe, using Sorcery, moving a boulder to prevent foes from pursuing you, trying to calm things down, attempting to hide, etc.  In combat, all of these actions, successful or not, will accrue initiative equal to the base attribute of the roll you make.  The Storyteller is the final arbiter of whether an action you take is combat relevant.  Special exceptions for the Defend Other and Full Defense Actions are as follows:
Full Defense accrues 3 Initiative.
Defend Other accrues 5 Initative.

Attacks
On your turn, when you declare Attack, you target a foe and decide if it is Withering or Decisive as normal.

Withering Attacks
These exchanges are meant to be expressions of martial dominance that drive a target into a position where they can be critically injured or killed. 

Roll your attack pool (typically Dexterity+Attack Ability+Weapon Accuracy bonus) like normal.

If your attack hits, you steal initative equal to:
your Choice of Damage Attribute (typically Strength) or Weapon Damage bonus + Threshold Successes + 1 (+ any Crash bonus).  There is no damage roll or soak applied at this time.  You gain this amount and the target loses this amount.

On a Miss, you still gain an amount of Initiative equal to your Intelligence as your understanding of your enemy’s defenses grows.

Weapon Damage
Mundane Weapons have a damage values of 2/3/4 for Light/Medium/Heavy weapons respectively. Artifact Weapons have values of 3/5/7.

Decisive Attacks
Imagine how your character fights.  Do they plan out their combos and predict their enemy’s counters like a martial chess match?  Do they try to overwhelm with ferocity until the foe’s body or spirit fails them and then pounce on their weakness?  Do they flail around just hoping to get lucky?  However they fight, Decisive Attacks are the moment you’ve been waiting for, checkmate, lucky shot, or the instant a muscle cramps while they try to parry leaving an opening for you to pierce.

Once you declare a Decisive Attack it resolves as follows:

1. Confirm with the Storyteller if your current initiative total is higher than the target’s Soak.  
   1. If it is, roll your initiative pool and deal damage equal to successes.
   2. If it is not, then your attack tinks off their armor but you will gain Initiative equal to your Intelligence.
2. An armored character may convert up to their Soak lethal damage levels to bashing.  This does not reduce total levels of damage dealt and bashing damage that exceeds target’s total health levels will wrap around to lethal (and even aggravated) as normal.
3. Once you successfully deal damage with a decisive attack, you reset to base initiative.

Gambits
Gambits are assigned to various Abilities, so Grapple would fall under Brawl and Martial Arts, Unmount could be any attack Ability or Ride, Disarm could be any attack ability or Larceny, etc. Gambits work exactly like decisive attacks, you just roll your initiative, but they are always a flat difficulty (like Distract) or equal to the target’s defense (like Disarm).

• A Gambit costs a number of initiative equal to its difficulty on a success.  Failing a gambit results in you gaining only 1 Initiative.  
• A character’s Excellencies can be applied to Gambit rolls only if the Storyteller deems the Gambit falls under an Ability for which they have an excellency, such as Disarming with Larceny or or Unmounting with Ride. 
• Weapon tags may broaden their applicability, like a Whip adding Grapple to your melee Gambits.
• Gambits do not deal damage directly but may result in indirect injury. Shooting a chandelier down from a ceiling might knock prone and restrain an ideally positioned target, but the ST may decide it also brains him or sets him on fire.  For secondary complications like this, “charging” the player additional initiative based on the hazard damage is appropriate and if the Gambit deals 3 or more levels of damage their initiative should reset to base.

Grapple
Grappling is a special type of Gambit which works as follows.
When a Grapple is declared, the Grappler rolls their Initiative pool as normal for a Gambit against the target’s choice of their Evasion or Parry.  

• If the target chooses Evasion, move on and resolve the Grapple normally
• If the target chooses Parry and is armed with a weapon, the initiator must use a stunt or suffer 1 level of damage during their attempt.  The damage type is bashing or lethal based on the weapon.  Alternatively, the Initiator may switch to a Disarm Gambit and the target’s defense is reduced by 1. This also requires a stunt or the Grappler suffers 2 levels of damage while grabbing the naked blade or blunt instrument mid swing.  If the Grappler continues with the Grapple attempt, they resolve it normally.

Resolving the Grapple
If the Initiative Roll is successful and exceeds the target’s chosen defense, they are grappled.  The initiator’s remaining initiative is spent purchasing rounds of Control.  Each round of control costs 2 initiative.  The Initiator can purchase no more rounds of control than their Strength Score.  Any remaining initiative can be held in reserve for a later attack or spent immediately as part of a Decisive Savaging Attack, Throw or Slam.  In this latter case, their initiative resets normally.

• Savaging Attack. The Grappler makes a Withering or Decisive Brawling Attack in the form of eye gouge, throttling, even grinding their face into a stone wall. The target has a Defense of 0 against Withering Savaging Attacks.  Decisive Savaging Attacks deal Bashing damage but may deal lethal damage with a suitable stunt.
• Throw/Slam.  The Grappler slams the target to the ground at their feet or hurls them bodily to a point in close range.  The Grappler immediately forfeits all remaining rounds of control. A Withering Throw/Slam is resolved like a Savaging attack against the target’s Defense of 0.  The Grappler steals 2 additional points of initiative per round of Control forfeited.  A Decisive Throw/Slam rolls 1 additional die of damage per round of Control forfeited.  The damage of a Decisive Throw/Slam is bashing and ignores up to the Grappler’s Strength in Soak.  Once thrown or Slammed the target is Prone.  Decisive throws and slams can deal lethal damage if the target is smashed into particularly deadly setting elements like spiked floors, a phalanx of ready spearmen, etc. 

Disengage
Disengaging is the default assumption for movement in combat.  When a creature attempts to move out of close combat, enemies can reflexively attempt to stop them by rolling Dexterity+Athletics agains the moving creature’s Evasion.  A creature can choose to dedicate its combat action to Disengaging.  If it does it rolls Dexterity + Dodge and adds successes directly to its Evasion total.

Notes:
“Velma hits him with a shovel” is a trope this supports.  You can play a combat averse nerd with a high Intelligence, and every time your throwing dart or walking stick misses you’ll still gain a fair amount of initiative. Assuming you don’t get shoved in a locker, by round 3 you could have 18 initiative to give someone a whack.

Charms and effects that inflate soak are great, however, they will continue to feed your foes initiative and as the pools increase, the more costly they’ll be to completely shrug off.  This feels good to me.  Tanks will reliably tank for 4-5 rounds and then start getting their heads caved in if the foes aren’t being dealt with sooner.

As successful withering attacks now always result in initiative changes, but those changes are always the same number between attacker and target, bookkeeping should be made a little easier.  If an attacker does 5 withering and crashes the target, he goes up by 11 and the target goes down by 11.  Crashes are less crippling as misses still accrue initiative to pull you out of the hole.

Armored characters are way less likely to die outright. Even if they do get meteor attacked, the armor rolls down the damage type, but they can be incapacitated just as easily.  This makes taking prisoners or having NPCs wake up on the field after a few hours to return in some later story a lot more likely.

[u/blaqueandstuff]

I think there's something to be said that withering attacks are themselves a tad over-complicated when in the end it's to move Initiative around. So cutting-out the damage rolls for them is not actually a bad idea. You would have to go and tweak the way a lotta withering-based Charms work though, but that seems something you're on board with.

Decisives are a tad over-complicated I think. Bashing/lethal are barely "real" difference in 3e and basically exist out of legacy IMHO, since someone at Incapacitated with either is most of the time sitll out of the fight save for Liminals. I think just making Hardness the threshold like it is, but Soak maybe just reducing the damage done would be simpler. Only because right now Initiative can get pretty high and so all the fiddly converting won't really matter much. If you take 14 bashing you're usually as out o fthe fight as taking 14 lethal.

Gambit rules are actually something in Crucible of Legend similar to your stuff here. Basically roll whatever (Attribute + Ability) that's appropriate, and characters can use whatever one they can get that's appropriate to to resist with their defense. Examples they give are (Dexterity + Larceny) for disarm and (Strength + Athletics) for dehorse. I think rather than categorizing things in prescriptive lists, being a bit just open on it is going to be simpler. And they suggest similar for defensive stuff. So Resolve against distract, or letting a target roll (Stamina + Ride) to keep on her horse against someone using the Strength-based dismount in the prior example. The section also includes suggestion a few gambits just don't cost Initiative (disarm, distract, unhorse) unless the character is especially important (harder to get your Lu Bu expy off of his Red Hair).

Your disengage stuff is actually straight-up something recommended in Crucible of Legend's optional rules. So no real issue there. I would say that probably Evasion could be modified, but it would be in a case of like, wound penalties and such. It's kind of harder to get away if you're limping or encumbered by armor.

As a tip, if you have access to it, I would give the Essence rules a look-over. They have bits and bobs of what you're trying to do here in them. Notably the recent Storytelller's Guide crowdfund on Backerkit has this idea in it called Essence Reforged, which does a bit with Soak and Hardness like you have here called Poise. Poise's concept basically is that whether an attack is withering or decisive is depending on whether a target is in a state called Break, where their Poise stat has been weathered-down and they're vulnerable. Characters in Break can work to get out, and once out, everything against them is withering again. Closest concept to me of that is the way Poise break works in Elden Ring or Sekiro. There would need to be some number tweaks since Essence uses lower numbers than 3e, but it's something that I have thought on being kind of neat to work with. It's not exactly 3e, but I think most the Essence books are quite "lootable" for things in 3e mechanically, so I do recommend giving them a look here and there. There's also the book Crucible of Legend, though that unfortunatley didn't quite do as agressive of system hacks as I would have liked.

[u/UnconquerableOak]

I take it you're borrowing from Essence with the generating initiative even from misses?

I do like the Essence system as it pretty much guarantees decisive attacks will happen by round 3 at the absolute latest.

I like it overall, though I do have some questions. Are you keeping the current damage and Soak numbers?

[u/waronvirtue → u/UnconquerableOak]

I'm pitching this to my ST exactly as I have it here and if he likes it we'll pitch it to the table and if the table likes it, I'll retool their charms as needed.

Since there's no benefit to "oversoak" I was thinking of just eliminating Hardness the value, but leaving the mechanic as I've described it above so I guess Soak numbers would stay the same.

I'm playing a solar grappler right now. At essence 4 my withering damage base is routinely 40+ (Str Inc Ex for Str 9, Dragon Coil Tech, Oak Curling Clinch, River Binding Wrath, Crashing Wave Throw), I can usually get the full 9 rounds of control, give those up for 36 extra withering damage and my base is like 13 with extra successes from the attack and it goes nuclear if I use Shockwave technique bumping the control damage to 53. The past 2 sessions I've pushed into Initaitve 70+ and dealt 30+ levels of damage. I zangief powerbombed one abyssal with Thunderbolt attack prana for I think 40+levels.

Make no mistake, I love the game as much as I question my sanity for doing so. But I want my whole table to feel like they're doing similarly well in the fight and the 5 to 7 step resolution to a single grapple makes me feel bad. Twice as bad since the other crafter made me a very nice artifact that lets me grapple as a counter attack... And I am routinely forgetting bonus dice I should be rolling, these numbers should be even higher. /humblebrag but I am getting diminishing returns on satisfaction with the loop.

[u/SuvwI49 → u/waronvirtue]

That's gotta be a rather target rich environment for you to be pushing 70+ init. How often are you crashing opponents? 

[u/waronvirtue → u/SuvwI49]

Dragon Coil Tech, Shockwave Technique/Crashing Wave throw and Strength Inc Exercise routinely generate 30+ and a crash on round 1 or 2 (depending on whether SIX is active before combat). Then CWT and SIX will generate about 20 thereafter. My last SWT hit 4 additional targets and generated I think 68 initiative altogether.

this current combat had 2 Abyssals, a lunar sorcerer, a few corpse forged titans, a size 5 horde of undead, 4 or 5 mummies (functionally heroic undead with weird powers) and 2 giant teleporting shadow hyenas.

I crashed a target pretty much every time I landed a successful grapple followed by a withering throw.

[u/NovaPheonix]

I tend to dislike modifying the game to this degree, but most homebrewers will agree that reducing soak bloat is a good idea for speeding up combat. I personally like to use hardness as a damage reduction since it comes up very infrequently. I also push for a lot of technical knock outs at low init, which means the trivial combats end up being very short (still a few hours but that can vary based on size. The large army battles will always take 2-3 sessions).

The only time I considered using something similar to essence was when we had abnormal characters, like a serenities who did not want to attack at all (so they would never gain init unless I used an alternative) or other social characters.

[u/NeverbornMalfean]

Reducing Soak bloat is an admirable goal, but your solution really isn't the right one imo. Downgrading lethal to bashing is basically nothing in this game—either way, once you hit 0 HL you're going down. The only difference is whether someone needs to make a Medicine check to keep you from dying afterwards. If your ST feels the enemy would chop off your head to be sure you're dead then being full of Bashing instead of Lethal doesn't really matter at all—and conversely, if they feel the Wyld Hunt would patch you up afterwards to haul your ass to the Nail, being full of Lethal instead of Bashing doesn't matter either.

[u/waronvirtue → u/NeverbornMalfean]

I’m really surprised at this sentiment that incap bashing = incap lethal anyway. 

PCs don’t usually drop en masse. If your buddy falls dead, there’s no reason not to press a fight you are otherwise winning, but a buddy dropped and still alive has just become a big liability. So maybe you flee that fight or surrender so they’re spared. 

From the PCs side, dropping enemies is less likely to create outrage at the constant murders and the same “injure one to get 3 off the battlefield” strategy also applies. 

From the ST side, your villains have become that much more likely to be recurring. I know coup de grâce is easy to say, but Exalted tables probably expect a stunt for such a thing and that generally runs between distasteful and so goofy it undermines the game. 

And worst case, we just rule damage conversion only applies to significant characters. 

I’m open to alternative solutions if you can think of any. 

[u/SuvwI49]

So take everything I'm about to say as an expression of the mechanical consequences when compared to RAW, not as a value judgement on the changes themselves.

Your Initiative suggestion is almost word for word the "Build Power" action from Essence. Personally I happen to like the "Build Power" action and have seen it put to very good use when running Essence. When used in 3e Core it introduces a means to add Initiative to the total pool of a combat scenario, which is somewhat lacking in core. The specific focus on defensive uses seems like a good add in.

Your suggestion for resolving withering attacks will, on average, result in about 3x more Initiative per action getting moved than in RAW. This could have pacing consequences for combat, as well as tertiary consequences with Charm interactions. But these might not be bad depending on how they play at your table.

Your suggestion for resolving decisive attacks seems to take a page from other ttrpgs that have foregone rolling any attacks in favor of just rolling damage. Like your withering suggestion, this will have some consequences where Charm interactions are concerned. Much homebrewing in your future do I foresee.

Your suggestions for Grapple and Disengage seem sound. In particular the suggested Grapple resolution takes advantage of your already suggested change to decisive attacks.

Please be sure to come back and give us an update on how these changes play out once implemented at your table. Other's might want to borrow them if they work well!

[u/waronvirtue → u/SuvwI49]

My ST and one of the other more experienced players have both had a chance to look at the proposed changes. The other player has expressed a willingness to try them out as shown. The only additional change is a rebalance of weapons, scaling the damage bonuses down. At present I'm thinking 2/3/4 for Light/Medium/Heavy mundane weapons and 3/5/7 for Artifacts.

[u/SuvwI49 → u/waronvirtue]

Balancing the weapons like that will reduce the Initiative transfer per action that I described above, which given the way core is balanced is probably a good thing. If you have access to Essence, it might be worth your while to take a look at it. The weapon scale you are describing here is almost the same as what is done in Essence.