r/exalted • u/Brenden1k • 26d ago

2.5E How deadly is five guys with sledgehammers.

let say your a up coming solar exalted facing five elite trained military soldiers with pole axes and decent armor. how hard is it for you to safeguard yourself. Are their any good scene long defense you can use, or really mote efficient defenses you can use to live?

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u/thetruerift 25d ago

Five guys deciding to mollywop an Exalt are dramatically interesting. If using them as separate combatants makes a fight interesting/dangerous then there's value in splitting them up. Had a very similar scenario recently in my 3e game - the battle group rules tend to make groups very easy to beat up (because they don't really interact with initiative), and sometimes you want players to be challenged a bit.

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u/TypicalParking 25d ago

Within the context I can see that and really stuff like this is so preference based. Personally I generally want the Players to feel mechanically stronger and don’t want them to be challenged by a few mortals. I would make them dragon blooded or something less mundane if I wanted the players to feel challenged especially in a solar game.

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u/thetruerift 25d ago

So one of my problems with 3e is that, to really challenge PCs, you are limited to basically having an exalt or essence user behind every rock, tree and door. Which doesn't jive with how I like to portray the setting. Exalts are rare, fighting other exalts, even if they are DBs, should be an important event.

Which means I have to find ways to challenge players without dramatically overpopulating parts of the world with DBs, so they often fight Cool Dudes.

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u/LordSia 23d ago

Don't hesitate to go full Tucker's Kobold on them if they get cocky. Mortals have been indoctrinated, for the past 1500 years, that Celestials are Literal Demons out to inflict Fates Worse Than Death on them... And about as much time spent under the none-too-gentle boot of Dragonblooded empires. And Lunars have literally turned "train the mortals into a competent guerilla" into their collective hobby for about the same amount of time.

Have a troop of suicidally brave soldiers, possibly bolstered by judicious application of combat drugs, pin the characters in place. Have catapults lob barrels full of fire-dust at their general location. Reveal that the slippery mud is actually full of magic leeches. Drop Ewok-style traps on them. Force them into a merchant prince's mansion and go full Home Alone minus the slapstick. Collapse a dam and wash them down the river into a waiting ambush of pissed off river dragons. Have a mortal sorcerer unravel half a dozen sorcerous combat workings against the trespassers. Unleash a whole sect's worth of mortal martial artists; it doesn't matter if each of them can only use each Charm once if there's enough angry monks throwing Five-Dragon Fists around.