Welverin said:
So has anyone had a chance to test out the Power Combat rules yet and can report on their effect on play and what effect they have on the speed of combat?
Power Combat both rapidly speeds up Exalted combat and dramatically alters the feeling of Exalted combat as well. What was originally a resources game where you attempted to outlast an opponent's motes (or just blat him if you're clearly superior) has turned into a far more lethal set up.. with defense being critical more because you don't want to outright die in a few hacks... there's a larger feeling of threat than before.
First and foremost, Essence is quite simply the most powerful stat currently out there now. Before it was good as a pre-requisite for Charms, and it gave additional motes and powered up some opposed checks ("target saves vs your Permanent Essence" stuff)... now your minimum damage is based upon it. Pinging for 3 or 4 or even 5 is far different than pinging for 1. Heroic Mortals cry, Sidereals weep... and Solar players max out their flaws so they can start at Essence 4 without completely gimping themselves.
Rate has a dramatic effect in speeding up play. Instead of making 8 attacks at 8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 dice, your power players will now be making 4 or 5 attacks at 13,12,11,10,9 dice.. with some of the fastest weapons in the game. Not rolling an extra 3-5 attack pool per round definitely helps, and without the 1 ping damage, you can roll a third or fourth the attacks and still produce the same damage output- limiting actions per turn actually speeds up combat in this regard.
Initiative has changed as well... originally you could delay, wait to hear what your opponent did then react so that you could get a free nearly unavoidable attack in there (You attack twice and defend three times? Fine, i defend twice and attack FOUR times!). Now, you can do this, but you suffer based on how long you delayed. If you go on 20 and your opponent goes on 10, choosing to attack based on what he'll do will cause you to take a hit to your attack rolls by the amount of initiative counts you waited. Your sneaky attack will suffer a -10 penalty. It's fair, and it promotes action rather than simple reaction. The race for 0 ends with Power Combat, thankfully.
The rest is basically gravy- nice gravy but with less impact than the two above issues.
We did our first Power Combat a couple weeks ago. The lineup was as follows:
Zenith w/ Daiklave,
Night w/ bow,
Eclipse w/ Daiklave,
Moonshadow w/ Daiklave,
two NPC Dawns (one daiklave, one longsword)
NPC Twilight w/ mace
vs.
1 Dawn w/ Daiklave
2 Teodozji (First Circle Demons)
12 Dragon-Blooded (Medium Armor, shortswords/longswords/couple daiklaves/couple powerbows)
That's a total of 22 combatants (21, if you count the fact that the Moonshadow walked out, leaving his party to fight without him). 22 combatants in Exalted in the old rules would have taken a good 6 hours- we did it in 3 hours of gaming (with a solid amount of roleplay during the fighting, not hours of silent rolling). 15 bodies dropped in 15 seconds of Exalted Time.
Surprisingly however, the combat wasn't horribly lethal for the Solars, despite the fact that their foes were rolling twice or three times the ping they originally did. Only two "Good Guys" died. The Night Caste, died, and that was when he was shot with sufficient force by a Wood Aspected Exalt that he flew off a balcony and landed on his back in the middle of the general melee. He took a greatsword and a chopping sword to the chest while on his back, and died. The NPC Twilight also died, riddled with rapidfire arrows from the Wood Aspects (they are seriously nasty if left to their devices!)
There was an additional casualty in the session later on, but I chalk that up to a bad choice and a couple bad rolls rather than Power Combat.
But, yes, the combat did seem much speedier than I expected.
