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"Paranoia Combat" is largely the brainchild of Jon Chung, a poster on rpg.net. You can see some of the basic implementations (and rationales) at this link. These solutions were established in response to the notion that Second Edition Exalted, as written, is too lethal — that is, there are enough things that will kill a non-maximized Solar in one action that ...

Exalted is very much a game where brute force is not supposed to be enough, and when brute force is not enough there are very few perfect effects to take into account. But here are a few pointers that could help challenge Exalted players. Remember that the Solars are no longer a United force and are young. A sufficiently experienced sidereal can overpower ...

It's a tricky question to answer, because the Exalted metaplot ends at a specific time, and that specific end time hasn't changed since the 1e corebook. A few products have extended the Exalted timeline -- "Return of the Scarlet Empress" is the latest to do so -- but these generally provide possible futures. The First and Forsaken Lion doesn't necessarily ...

This advice is fairly generic to "How do I stat NPCs in a system I don't know" to a large extent. Steal I: Look at stats for NPCs in campaign examples, see how they glue together, pick them apart, run them though some dice rolls, work out what you'd be missing if you were a player. Steal II: Look at the writeups for campaigns on the internet, char sheets ...

Been musing about an answer to this, and @Jadasc has given a good answer, I'll give some of my own thoughts on both the mechanics of paranoia combat, the culture it comes from, and its extended impact on the game. Essentially, as has been answered above, Paranoia Combat is the idea that all characters, regardless of their niche or chosen role, should never ...

They are perfect, or at least near-perfect, in what they have chosen to do. The drama from Exalted then comes in what happens when one of two events occurs: Perfect runs into itself. Abyssals, Infernals other Solars etc. have the same claim to perfection, if somewhat tainted. When those two forces collide, there's a story to be told. The perfection is ...

Recent changes to game system (available via the Scroll of Errata) have neutered passive lethality (the largest problem). Soak has become far more important, both due to its increased use and the cost increase on perfects. Many charms that granted soak have been improved (especially the Solar resistance line) and weapon and weapon stats from the Core book ...

Feng Shui, the HK action movie RPG by Robin Laws, uses a somewhat similar system. You roll initiative (Speed +d6 -d6) for the "sequence" and then a shot clock counts down; everyone moves on their shot count and then depending on how many shots it takes, you go again. Most normal actions (hit, shoot) take 3 shots but various powers and stunts take different ...

Set up a situation where your Dawn character has goals for the scene other than "kill the other guy". Maybe an important NPC is possessed by a ghost and goes on a rampage, but the NPC is the Dragon-Blooded Satrap of Plotopia and must survive. Your Dawn has to fight her, but can't just splat her. Divide the character's attention, so that your Dawn can't ...

While Solars are the most powerful exalt and can excel at what they choose to focus on, they always have flaws and weaknesses to exploit Great Curse The most obvious flaw a Solar possesses is the Great Curse, which is what causes them to turn into the biggest jerks in Creation eventually. There are tons of story elements that can be exploited by playing ...

Anathema is a term used by the Order since the end of the First Age to describe Celestial Exalted to describe the beings that turned the First Age into a tyrannical nightmare. It doesn't apply to the Dragon-blooded, because the Dragon-blooded are/claim to be the good guys and have a Creation-wide propaganda machine. Solars and Lunars who remember the ...

The book you are thinking of is almost certainly: Exalted: The Autochthonians. This was the 1st Ed equivalent to the Manual of Exalted power which also included setting information on Autochthonia and Alchemical Exalted. It also provided 3 separate scenarios on how the Locust Crusade could play out. It's been awhile since I've read them but if I recall ...

As has been mentioned above, the question is a tricky one. Officially, Exalted is less of a meta-plot, and more of a meta-setting. The authors have occasionally also stated - and in some books like Return of the Scarlet Empress made this explicit - that it's better viewed as a toolbox you can pick and choose from. For example, it's a much weirder game if you ...

If I understand the current Lunar errata spoilers, a Lunar should be able to, at essence 10, grow legs long enough to cross the entire distance in one step. Other than that, or some sort of perfect racing charm like the Unconquered Sun has or the Yellow Path suggestion I made, any eclipse-like character taking all the speed boosting charms they can get ...

I've run into this problem personally, and it can be quite difficult to cause limit breaks with any frequency. Challenging PCs to act against their virtues is definitely one way to build up limit, but there is one core source of limit you've skipped in your list: Each virtue flaw has specific limit condition that, when met, forces the character to roll that ...

Flurry answer: I'm pretty sure excellencies apply to individual rolls, so it would go 7/4/3. Luckily Infinite Melee Mastery, or similar, will make applying two dice to the entire flurry free once you can get it. Simple stunt answer: Stunts have to apply to entire flurries, otherwise the game breaks. This is because the ability to flurry every individual ...

The Locust Crusade doesn't happen in 2e by Default You can read a summary of the relevant forum posts from the designers on this blog: http://nobilis.me/quotes:not-the-locust-crusade It's also discussed here a bit: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?573339-Exalted-What-Part-Sucked-The-Most-About-The-Locust-War-(from-1E)/page8 So really, if you want it to ...

Yes, you are reading the rules correctly, one of the writers of the line specifically mentions the inability of excellencies to apply to sorcery on rpg.net here. This was part of the design decision to keep sorcery from being a combat platform which is elaborated on here, from the unofficial wiki. Yes, there are way around this. For instance, the Alchemical ...

Excellent question! To answer them in order: 1. Yes, you are reading the rules correctly You're not allowed to use any reflexive or supplemental charms while using a shape sorcery action. Not even with a combo. Which is kindof depressing. 2. RAW, no, I can't think of any way to get around that limitation Though, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist in ...

Sure, provided you can reasonably get on more armor ontop of it As far as I am aware, there is no rule against stacking armor provided you can physically put it on. Plus, The Scroll of Errata (p. 43) points out the following about tattoo armor: Question: Can tattooed armor stack with any other worn armor? Answer: Typically, yes. There are a ...

I'm going to have to go with not changing the clinch rules at all. Combat in Exalted is deadly. A lot of times I have seen characters die in one hit, because they used a charm and then couldn't use a perfect defense. Now, there are a couple of things you can do to mitigate the problems you are having with a single opponent getting grappled and then killed. ...

Grappling is often a problem in games and there are some approaches which help to lessen the pain and increase player options, while not lessening the severity of the situation: Carefully consider the effect of differing sizes and disallow the clinch if the variance is too great Require specificity in description of character placement in order to control ...

I don't have the mechanical knowledge to know how well your fixes might work, but I do know some of the reasons why clinches are supposed to be deadly and how beings in universe are supposed to avoid them. First, Exalted is balanced around the concept that you either have a defense against something that stops it from doing anything, or you don't and you're ...

The Exalted 2.5 errata has been released, which clarifies this. With the First Excellency, a Sidereal may add (Essence) dice, plus the ability to buy off internal penalties. With the Second Excellency, a Sidereal may add (Essence) successes.

Major Rewrite Following: It's supposed to be Essence. Every other Exalt has their Dice cap rules outlined before the actual charms begin (I checked Solars, Dragon Blooded, and Lunars, but I'm sure the others have them too), but this is missing from the Sidereal book, which leads to the unfortunate: Excellencies are the only things RAW that are explicitly ...

The Dragon-Blooded can do Sorcery by taking the "Terrestrial Circle Sorcery" Charm. It is on p134 of the Manual of Exalted Power - Dragon-Blooded. It is the same than the one for Solars, on p220 of the main book. Note that they cannot take higher Sorcery Charms than this one. As for the spells, this is actually described in the main book Character Creation ...

This is probably entirely unhelpful, but... play. I picked up a ridiculous amount of charm knowledge in my first campaign of Exalted simply because I had back and forth discussions of "oh man, I'm so buying this next" with the entire circle. Using castes to focus around themes (and, I find, focusing around a small number of main skills), should also help ...

For the first, as Brian mentions, make them have to decide between virtues, particularly their higher ones. However, as I've heard it, at least in exalted, the pairs are compassion/conviction and temperance/valor. In the first, the player must choose between people and their dreams, while in the second they must choose between restraint and fighting. Or to ...

See here Briefly (I quote directly from the thread): "Paranoia Combat - where Celestial-level characters absolutely must have a perfect defense available every turn, and thus have to use a Combo when using offensive charms"

Four part statement Have clinches deny your dodge DV but keep your parry DV. This makes them useful still but doesn't utterly cripple the person within a grapple. In addition, give throw a damage and/or a stun effect- there's no reason to ever throw your opponent unless a cliff or pit of fire is mentioned which is why no one does. Environmental effects. ...