With RPGs where the mortals have little impact on the world the changes are all small in the short term, but in the longterm could be monumental, however some of the changes are going to have huge side effects and others not much. In Dungeons and Dragons, clearing out a clan of orcs in a abandoned keep has major local effects but little national or international effects. But they do exist. The orcs preyed on the area farms and caravan routes, removing them allows the farms to grow and prosper, trade to pass unhindered, locally. Nationally, the kings does not divert troops to police the troubled region, leaving his forces stronger and better able to defend or attack. Simple side effects. In a few years the area is doing much better and the area grows and supports more people and taxes revenues. But the heroes take e treasure and they spend it, stimulating the economy. Then they go look for more treasure. The heroes are stronger, have better armour now, better training and next time they strike another target and another and if they stay in that one nation, that nation is starting to have major effects because of the players. The key is to realize that nothing happens in a vacuum and that every action has an effect that may not be visible and that they work both ways. For example, the orcs were sent to this keep not by accident, their shaman knew that there was a burial ground that the keep was built on and the primary mission of the orcs was to quell the spirits. The orcs were doing that but were killed by the heroes before it was completed. Now every corpse within a mile of the keep gets inhabited and roams the area with intelligent direction. The twenty orcs that were butchered are the first ones. The corpse of a cow hanging by the tree to drain the blood out also animates. The heroes in the city don't realize this and when they come back, the undead army has grown to fifty before they come back and the entire area is now devoid of farmers and trade routes. Now when they clear out the area, people will not resettle because of the poor reputation of the area, but a clan of orcs has no such problem. Cause and effect.
That is from a less powerful perspective. The more powerful the character group the greater the effect and the wider the region affected. In Exalted the starting characters are essentially demigods and they have to potential to be more powerful than the gods and the curve of advancement is steep; they quickly advance from local power to national power to world power. And because of this, every action that they do has a greater affect. Just by acting in public they gain instant notoriety everywhere. Much like a King or Superhero or high level Dungeons and Dragons character. What are these effects? Certainly neutral and allied powers start with asking questions about what you are doing today and how it affects your nation. Roughly analogous to the concern of the Prime Minister of India worrying about who gets elected in America; it's on the other side of the world, but it will affect everything that they do.
So understanding how the player Characters will affect the landscape of the setting and alter the world to their whims, we see how important their advisories are. If they are too weak the offer no challenge, if they are too strong they make the story bad, unless it is the point, but that is not a good way to run a game. So how do you make a protagonist a threat?
One way is to fight them with goals. The two fight but are never in contact with each other, the protagonist just offers impediments but is otherwise faceless, like for example a faceless government or culture with ingrained bureaucracies and armies that oppose the characters. The opponent can be actual armies or it can be public opinion and cultural attitudes. "Slavery? There is nothing wrong with that, it is the way the world works, indeed, without slavery our country would starve and the factories would go silent." Change in this case that attack and the culture is the opponent to be overcome.
But games are not as fun if there is not someone to defeat and that usually means combat. And then comes the difficulty of balancing the encounter. How to make the encounter real and winnable but also challenging. Which is my difficulty. It can be conquered by looking at the numbers. All characters have four basic values important in combat: attack, defense, damage, and armour. They can be expressed as a number and it is a good idea to calculate these numbers for each character. For Exalted these numbers are easier to find and finesse. Attack is a combination of the dexterity, skill and weapon. Damage is a combination of strength and weapon used. Defense is already calculated as either a parry or dodge defensive value and armour is also similarly static. Combat is best run when there is a conscious consideration of these numbers. The attack value is the dice rolled, but in this case the number is that divided by two to get probable successes in a dice role (Dex 5 and Skill 5 mean at attack value of 5). The attack value is compared to the defensive value which is static and not rolled. The closer to the defensive value the two numbers are the harder it is the character will hit. Similarly, damage and armour has the same effect, the closer the numbers are the less likely that they will be hurt and the longer the combat. Basic example: Str 5, Dex 5, Skill 5, damage 5. Attack value 5, defense value 5, damage value 5 Armour 5 vs. bad guy, attack value 4, defense value 4, damage value 4, armour value 4. Statistically the combat is one sided, the challenge is not easy but inevitable, not guaranteed though. Ten dice are random and statistically average 5 successes, have to overcome four defense, but the roll could be 10 successes or none. The damage adds additional successes and armour value reduces the dice rolled. The health of the opponent also tells you how long the fight will be. Low health means quicker fights.
In Exalted there are Charms that add to the mix and many of them add dice to the character. Modifying the DV and the ArV of an opponent and modifying the character's AV, DV and DamV. This makes comeback potentially harder or easier. In the above example with a character who can have double the attack would quickly wipe out the presented foe. Instead of a projected on success, 6 would occur, damage would increase by 6 and wound potentials would go up too, shorter overall fights. This is a good thing, because fights should not be drawn out and short one sided fights are entertaining. When the big fight comes, it is possible to have an opponent that stretches the character but it is important that the character feels that they can hit them and do damage them. Fighting impossible opponents is not fun, unless they can't hurt them either and it forces players to work together to win.
There are a few roleplaying games out there and they all have different rules, but some of the rules are transferable. When it makes sense to do so, do it. For example, in a Star Wars RPG there is a rule that extras fight in groups and add to the overall. So here is a neat extra rule for Exalted. Extras can fight in groups up to five, which makes sense as five is a theme in Exalted and the smallest group in an army is a five man team. They all have to have the same basic stats. Every additional man adds 1 dice to the attack roll and health is added together too. So a group of five extras role four extra dice an attack, but attack as one. When they are hit, damage could wipe out more than one person. So a particularly damaging attack could wipe everyone out or just one or more people. Each loss of a person reduces the bonus by one. Damage is increased because the chance to hit is increased. Multiple targets can be removed with single arrows, because it is fun to think that you shot two or three people with one arrow, it is cool! Mass effect spells affect everyone in the group equally, if the spell does not kill, it could reduce the life of the group enough to remove one group with one hit easily.
The key to combat is to provide a fun interlude and make the characters feel like they are Heroes or even better Superheroes. One reason why I find this difficult, combat that is and making it fun is that I don't always have a good record of the player's character's stats, so it is important to keep on top of that. Exalted already has rules for mass combat, which can be applied to single fights, but the rules are completely different, use different stats and are complicated.
The AV and DV strategy work for Social Combat as easily as it does for physical combat.
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