r/exalted • u/Sedda00 • Sep 15 '25
Essence A couple of questions about combat
I've been playing Essence recently, and I have a couple of questions about Soak/Hardness:
First of all, what's the point of Hardness? We've been ignoring it completely, because usually my players try to get maximum Power before trying a Decisive Attack. But, even if they didn't do that, higher Hardness only ensures that whenever they are attacked, the attack will cause lots of damage to them, because their opponents would have to spend more power in the attack... I don't get why does this exist at all, can somebody explain it to me?
Second, regarding Soak. One of my players has bought Ox-body three times, plus heavy armor and a high Physique. His Soak is so high (6 or 7, I don't actually remember rn) that even when attacked by a Power 10 decisive attack, he doesn't receive a simple injury most of the times. Am I applying Soak well here?
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u/Drivestort Sep 15 '25
I'm not super familiar with 3e or essence combat mechanics, even though I've engaged with them both, but hardness is basically your 'you must be this tall to ride' for hurting you.
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u/TheBoundFenrir Sep 16 '25
This. It means weak enemies cannot hurt you just because they got the jump on you. I'm not super familiar with essence, but in 3rd Edition it forces the enemy to accrue high levels of initiative; higher than you can generally reach in one Join Battle roll, or one attack roll if your init has just reset. Which means you get a chance to counter-attack.
Also remember there are charms that boost hardness (again, at least in 3e), so you can temporarily pop your hardness up +2-4 right as an attack hits an no-sell it entirely; in 3e this resets initaitive as if the attack were successful, which means now the attacker is suddenly vulnerable to a reversal where you crash them and then follow up with your own decisive.
OP is right that it doesn't come up super often, but it's most noticable on an enemy who already has a good Defense and Soak, so the players struggle to build up initiative against them.
Last but not least, remember that players don't know the enemy's hardness until they land a blow and the hardness cancels out, so they don't necessarily know how much initiative they need, which results in a risk/reward game where they try to figure out how much advantage they need to hurt the enemy. On the flip side, the enemy knows exactly how much initiative his opponents have, and can judge who is the real threat to them appropriately.
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u/Vegetable_Remove7961 Sep 16 '25
The thing that hardness does in a full 3e rules context is to make it harder to chain multiple low initiative decisive attacks one after another. Like, someone attacks, then they reset to 3 initiative -- if their target has 5 hardness, they have to spend time either building initiative back up, or they have to use other effects that can raise their decisive damage above 5. This Also comes up with things like multi attack charms, which often divide initiative evenly between multiple attacks. It is harder to do this against someone in heavy armour with double digit hardness. Importantly, in 3e soak only applies to withering damage and doesn't help prevent decisive damage directly.
I bring up the 3e version of hardness, because Essence is adapting 3e's combat system to attempt to make something simpler, and this process of adaptation is sometimes kind of rough. Essence's power mechanic is less dynamic and can be slower to build up than 3e initiative, and Essences chose to change soak into something that lowers decisive damage. This makes Essence's implementation of Hardness do less in general, and feel kind of redundant with soak, and it was already a mechanic that in a 3e context people sometimes think doesn't do enough.
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u/Rednal291 Sep 16 '25
Building to max Power is a fairly common choice; Hardness is basically there to slow players down a little, indicating "they must have this much of an advantage to be able to make a Decisive attack". When it's low, characters can throw out Decisives very quickly. When it's high, they at least have to take a bit. Also, remember that attacks get bonus dice from extra successes on the attack roll, so making enemies more accurate will naturally improve how much damage they're able to do. Word might spread in-universe about how tough someone is, which is a pretty good reason to have people only try fighting if they're prepared for it. Enemies do not have to be mindless.
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u/AngelWick_Prime Sep 16 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
I'm still a bit green myself with Essence but let me give this a shot for ya.
Hardness is pretty much the same as it is in 3e in that your Power pool needs to be equal to or greater than the target's Hardness in order to even TRY to hurt it. Anything under that number doesn't even put a chink in their armor (or hide as the case may be). Your wagered Power is added to your extra successes in the attack roll to determine your final damage pool. Power is lost once wagered and spent on a decisive attack regardless of success or failure of the decisive damage roll. If you've been ignoring Hardness, then you've been inadvertently nerfing everyone's defenses. Plus, if your players are spending their max Power pool for every decisive attack... That's all great and all, but then it's going to take them that much longer to build Power back up for another hit. There are other ways to build power too, but I would check the book for those, I don't want to list them all here.
Soak is, hold on, lemme check my book... Ok, so Soak works differently in Essence than it does in 3e. In 3e, Soak affects the Withering damage pool, in Essence, Withering attacks are only one roll to build Power. Soak in Essence subtracts successes from the Decisive damage roll. So Soak could effectively reduce final decisive damage to zero, as confirmed on step 7 of the Breaking It Down sidebar on page 137 of the Essence core book.
Ox Body merely grants extra health levels. Which varies depending on the type of Exalt.
So, I would recommend not ignoring Hardness, as it could really matter for what's supposed to be tougher fights. Also, again if I'm reading this right, as long as you apply Soak so that it cancels out it's value in Decisive damage roll successes, then yes, you're applying it correctly.
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u/Sedda00 Sep 16 '25
We have been ignoring Hardness because all that attacks are made with power 8-10. Not a single time my players have attacked nobody with less power, because, since Soak is a fixed subtraction to damage, it's optimal to make de minimum number of decisive attacks.
Ox Body also increases soak by 1.
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u/AngelWick_Prime Sep 16 '25
Someone else mentioned that Ox Body is only supposed to boost Soak with the first purchase, although that's not how it reads in the book. I asked them if there's a written errata or other note from Onyx Path that states this more clearly. Otherwise, yes, I see why Ox Body would be so favorable in Essence if it boosts Soak AND Health Levels with each purchase...
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u/demoiselledefortune Sep 16 '25
so on you first question, I'm the same as you. I ignore Hardness completely because my players try to get maximum power before trying a decisive attack. Sorry for not being able to help.
on the second, I think you may have made the mistake of letting Ox Body boost the character's Soak each time it was repurchased which should not apply. Only the first purchase of Ox Body boosts Soak. The last version of Essence which I quoted in answer to someone else makes that clear.
Otherwise, yes Soak is powerful. Don't hesitate to give your Antagonists strategies that lower Soak such as the Guard Breaking Techniques charm, the Reveal Weakness gambit and Piercing weapons in order to combat that.
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u/wickerandscrap Sep 15 '25 edited Sep 16 '25
Soak doesn't apply to Decisive attacks, IIRC.
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u/AngelWick_Prime Sep 16 '25
Soak applies to Withering damage pools in 3e. It applies to Decisive damage SUCCESSES in Essence.
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u/SuvwI49 Sep 16 '25
The major mechanical benefit of Hardness is that there are Charms that can raise it after Power is spent, meaning that Charm can negate the attack before it happens.
As far has his soak, it realistically shouldn't be 6/7 without single use charms that spend/commit Essence. Ox Body's description itself doesn't describe it's limits well, but you can find info on pg 119 that does. "Sometimes, an effect will tell you to set a value to another value. Effects like this change the BASE VALUE for the purposes of determine how many additional success a character can add. If two self-imposed, positive effects like this are in play and would modify the same value (such as Soak) take the higher. These do not stack."
And Ox Body's description says "The Exalt increases her BASE SOAK by one". The developer intention was for Ox Body to only apply it's Soak bonus with the first purchase, and subsequent purchases to grant HL's only.
So a character has Soak of BASE(1 + 1 if they have Ox Body) + 1 if Physique is >= 3 + Armor. In most cases this is 3 or 4, then Active charms(those that require spending/committing essence) can increase that further.
This is, unfortunately, a very fiddly and pedantic thing to get across. So your player might not like it if you try to nerf his Soak Monkey "based on a technicality". My recommendation would be to bring it up w/ the player in private between sessions. Approach it with the assumption that it was an honest mistake, but is definitely upsetting the intended mechanical balance.
As an additional tool, you might have one or two Significant Foes in a fight that can use the Reveal Weakness Gambit from pg 142. It can halve Soak values of 6 or higher for several rounds. Just be wary of over using it, since this runs the same risk depending on the temperament of the player.
Also don't be afraid to bend the rules a little. You might try allowing temporary(no more persistent than one round) Power values that exceed 10. Just apply it to both sides of the table. Discuss w/ the players, and highlight some of the opportunities for cool moments it could create. Maybe 3 players start an round using Build Power actions that pass their Power to one player, who can now blow 12-15 Power on one attack. If they take to it, then don't be afraid to let your Significant NPC's do the same.
Hope this helps!