General tips: Melee combos should always include the first or second melee excellency. Besides adding melee dice or successes to your attack rolls, it also helps keep your dv up when defending between your actions. Adding a reflexive defensive charm is also helpful- since its a reflexive charm, you only need to activate it as needed and other than an increased xp cost to purchase the combo, there's no reason to not add it. If you are not attacked (and thus do not require the reflexive defensive charm) it costs you nothing, as you only pay the cost of the charms you actually ended up using during the combo.
Abyssals should additionally strive to activate ravening mouth of (appropriate ability from archery, martial arts, melee or thrown) before unleashing their combos or include it in combos they expect to activate as their first action (since its a reflexive charm, one only needs to spend the essence to activate it on the first use of the combo in a combat). This allows them to regain essence equal to the number of health levels they cause in damage to their opponents. Given how many motes these combos can cost, being able to regain some of that back would be quite helpful!
Abyssal Combos:
Fate Sealing Kiss of Oblivion:
charms included: second melee exellency, elegant flowing deflection, savage shade style, ravening mouth of melee, ebon lightning prana, falling scythe attack, vengeful riposte
Prerequisites: Athletics 3, melee 5, essence 3
XP cost: 21 xp
The abyssal moves faster than the blink of an eye, rushing at an enemy and slicing through him with a wicked attack. The attack is considered unexpected (dropping the target's parry and dodge dvs to 0) and does piercing damage (half armored soak). If this attack is done before the start of combat, the abyssal's attack hits first, regardless of the outcome of the join battle roll. (If multiple characters activate a “hit first” charm, then they do a join battle roll to see which of them hits first).
The attack roll gets one bonus success automatically (before defense is applied), and the abyssal can spend 2 motes for an additional success, and may purchase additional successes up to a limit of half his dex+melee. Extra successes on the attack roll count twice for the purposes of determining pre-soak damage, and after soak is applied, the post-soak damage is doubled. The abyssal regains a number of motes of essence equal to the amount of health levels of damage he inflicted on his target (to a maximum of the target's total number health and dying levels).
Until his next action, when attacked he can use elegant flowing deflection to negate any penalties to his parry dv, and can spend motes to increase his parry dv (every 2 motes spent increases his parry dv by 1), up to a total of half his dex+melee (round up). Additionally, he may use vengeful riposte to counterattack those who attack him.
Example: Bringer of the Coming Darkness, a dusk caste abyssal with a str, dex, and essence of 4 and a melee of 5, happens upon a trio of dragonblooded (each with stamina 3, and two levels of ox body, giving them 4 extra health levels for a total of 11 health levels) in jade superheavy plate(+15L/+15B). Recognizing him for what he is, the dragonbloods understandably freak and move to attack him. Bringer activates this combo, striking who he believes to be the leader first. Moving impossibly fast, his grand daiklave (speed 5, acc +4, +12L/4 damage) tears into the terrestrial exalt. Due to the attack's speed, the dragonblood's DVs are 0, and he has no reflexive defensive charms to help him. Bringer decides to go all out, spending the maximum number of motes he can to increase his attack roll result. His pool for this attack is (dex+melee+essence, which is 4+5+4) 13, but he can buy a number of successes equal to half his dex+melee round up at a cost of two motes per success. He gets six successes to hit, and purchases an additional 5 successes. Adding the bonus success from falling scythe attack, he has twelve successes total. Since his victim's DV is 0, he hits with twelve successes.
Because of the savage shade style part of the combo, the twelve successes he got on his attack are doubled. This combined with his strength of 4 and the grand daiklaive's damage of 12L gives him a raw damage of ([12×2]+4+12) 40L. Since this damage is piercing, the dragonblood's soak from his jade armor is halved, making his total lethal soak from armor (15/2 rounded down=7) and stamina (natural lethal soak for exalts is half stamina, rounded down=3/2=1) 8. This reduces the post soak damage to 32. Unfortunately for the dragonblood, the falling scythe portion of the combo doubles post soak damage, meaning the attack is doing 64L! Bringer gets the expected 25 successes on the damage roll, which is 11 more level than the dragonblood had (11 health levels and 3 dying levels from his stamina for 14 total levels)! The Dragonblood explodes in a cloud of blood and gore from the force of the hit, covering the deathknight and the dragonblood's shocked companions in crimson mist. In addition, Bringer regains 14 motes of essence back from the attack. Though he caused 25 levels of lethal damage, the dragonblood only had 14 total health and dying levels to convert into essence. Given the combo has cost him 20 motes and 3 wp to activate, overall, he's only lost 6 motes of essence so far (though he's still spent 3 points of willpower!).
Until Bringer's next action, he can activate elegant flowing deflection and the second melee excellency to boost his defense and counterattack them with vengeful riposte should the remaining dragonbloods attack him. Given how quickly and easily he dispatched their leader, the remaining terrestrials are understandably hesitant…
After the initial devastating attack, the abyssal has the second melee excellency, elegant flowing deflection, and vengeful riposte to help defend themselves until their next action, which would be in four ticks. This is because the speed of the combo would be 4 from ebon lightning prana. All in all, this is a high speed combo that provides an extremely hard hitting first strike in a combat that can very likely pay for itself in terms of essence cost. Even after his initial attack, vengeful riposte lets him attack anyone who dares attack him until he goes again.