Exalted: Shadow and Steel, Discussion I: We are making this happen

[Arhra]

OK, debated combat lite system:

First off the intent is basically to add special effects to attacks through stunting and charms to make it more than a raw damage race. Defences have exploitable weaknesses for that reason. Also hoping to make Dex less of a god-stat.

An attack is abstracted to 'anything offensive I can do in five to twenty seconds' to give more freedom on what it is. No flurries unless combining an attack with a different action. All multiple action things just subtract a number of dice from all pools equal to the number of actions taken.

You can use any number of charms in a round. The attacker must declare all charms they intend to use to modify an attack before rolling any dice. They don't have to use them, but there's a one mote charge for every unused charm at the resolution of the attack. There might be a lmit on the maximum number of motes you can spend on a single attack.

Instead of DV, you roll the dice pool for your applicable defence.

The defences are Dodge/Parry/Armour. You can apply up to two, but the second one has its pool halved. The secondary defence must be later in that list than the primary.

If both rolls are less than the Attack Roll, the attack hits.

Dodge: Dex + Dodge + Essence
Parry: Dex + Melee/Martial Arts + Weapon Defence Bonus
Armour: Stamina + Armour Rating

The armour rating is huge compared to other bonuses.

Each defence has a weakness to a certain type of attack. You get affected by it if you chose to apply that type of defence.

Dodge - Area Denial: You need to be able to move to dodge. All attacks force you to move a short distance as the enemy decides. The intent is that if you're dodging each round and not stunting or otherwise trying to break out, you'll eventually get pinned down. Exotic Area Denial attacks might be something like a grenade. It is usually resisted with Wits.

Parry - Onslaught: Attacks where having to stick your weapon in the way causes problems. The fencer having to give ground before a concerted attack or that guy just whalloping you so hard you go sliding backwards. Usually resisted with Strength.

Armour - Bad Touch: An attack where you really don't want the enemy to come into physical contact with you. Abyssal essence draining charms for example. Tripping or initiating a grapple is the more mundane example. Usually resisted with Stamina.

Stunts or charms will generally apply one or more of these.

Soak works the same, with our variant ping rules. However, extra successes on your attack roll do not increase damage. Armour soak will get tweaked to represent this. Hardness probably also needs a fix.

Probably going to reduce weapon damage.

Perfect defences only cost 1 willpower, can be used at any time, halve all damage you take and the attack cannot Incapacitate or kill you. Probably also removes the weakness of that defence type. Tempted to include also adding 1 Limit.

Other things under debate: Fleshed out called shot options, adding the ability to trade in raw damage and instead inflict a penalty like breaking an arm.

Basic idea is to try and give people a lot of stuff to do in a single round and try and win by stacking up interesting inflictions on the enemy instead of just reducing their HP to zero.

Main drawback is most combat charms need to be rewritten. However, since combat charms are disproportionately represented in Exalted, the simplificaiton means less should be eneded and they should be wider reaching.

EDIT: For reference, equal sized dice pools mean about a 50% chance of hitting.

EDIT2: Special effects on attacks generally only apply if you use a defence that's vulnerable to it. A powerful blow that causes sends you flying applies to both Armour and Parry defences for example. If you successfully Dodge, you're fine.