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Comments on the White Crane Style

Thanks for posting this, Jabberwocky! I'm somewhat awed by the sheer number of variant Crane charms and trees floating around. I may have to cannibalize bits of the other trees to improve my own. Also, I need to update this version, as I already have a more recent one posted on EC. - Quendalon (Aug. 20, 2003)

OK, I've updated the tree. I'm still not entirely happy with it, especially the three pinnacle charms. Anyone have any suggestions on tweaking any of the charms in the tree? - Q

Right now, I'd say "Up the power." It's practically at the Terrestrial level. Make it more combo-able, tweak some of the charms to have a duration of Instant. I'd also make less of it reflexive. It's really a great style for Terrestrials right now, but as a Solar, I'd be reluctant to take it when other styles could get me comparable defense. \\ -- DaveFayram

Shoot, I thought I had the more recent Compendium version. My apoligies. Yeah, if you want to update this page if you make any additional changes to the style, I'd be pleased as a peach. Incidentally, I linked your name to your wikipage, since that seemed like a reasonable thing to do. ~Jabberwocky

Dave: OK, the power will soon be upped! It's funny, comments on the style keep bouncing from "it's too weak!" to "it's too strong!", and it can be hard to keep track. Also, somehow I missed the fact that you can only Combo charms of Instant duration, so that needs fixing. Maybe a perfect defense charm should go in here somewhere, or a perfect counterattack? In any case, Plumage of White Jade should be either instant or scene-long, and One Thousand Wings and Crane Awaits the Tiger need to be rewritten or replaced - I like them, they're just about the only charms left from the original write-up, but they're a bit bland. And in the form charm, I'm thinking of swapping out the ability to block lethal damage for the ability to inflict it, as done in some of the other Crane Styles; bird bones just aren't thematically appropriate for blocking big heavy things like weapons.

Jabberwocky: no worries, upgrading to the new version was no trouble at all. In fact, updating the charms on the wiki is so easy that I'll just do all of my charm updating here, rather than on the various message boards. And thanks for the name linkage, it's very reasonable indeed! - Quendalon

Okay, several changes to the style. One Thousand Wings is out, Ride the Wind's Breath is now a prerequisite to the Form Charm, and I've added Crane Takes to the Air and Ear-Boxing Technique. Changes have been made to Crane Form, Plumage of White Jade, Lofty Perch Stance, Crane Awaits the Tiger and Faultless Heavenly Crane. Hopefully this will beef up the Style enough to make it worth buying. What do you think, Dave?

(Aug 24 2003) Removed Crane Takes to the Air, and made changes to Ride the Wind's Breath, Lofty Perch Stance, Feathered Whirlwind Method and Crane Awaits the Tiger.

(Aug 29 2003) Rewrite of Ride the Wind's Breath to use elements from Autumn Leaf's Descent; rearrangement of Charms to move various items up the tree. (tweak, tweak, tweak)

(Sep 19 2003) Changes to Ear-Boxing Technique, Crane Awaits the Tiger and The Faultless Heavenly Crane.

(oct 2 03) I really like the new Faultless Heavenly Crane. It's hot. While I liked the image of One Thousand Wings, it was weak - could it be something like a weakened version of Protection of Celestial Bliss, that allows you to store up reflexive parries and/or dodges?\\ The standing-in-water and unstable-surface Charms are neat, though specialized; I'd almost like to have a walking-on-water Charm internal to the tree so you could be guaranteed the ability to use them to their full effect. But that might be a little too broken(:\\ What I see here is a tree with really solid defensive abilities, and a few exotic powers that are amenable to some neat stunting, but a little difficulty with synergy, particularly regarding Strike Upon the Stones - with so little damage potential, unless you're an unusually beefy Crane stylist or swiping out-of-style Charms, you're going to have a hard time knocking your foes down to take advantage of them. Lofty Perch Stance is the other stickout Charm - its ability is very cool but very weak; what if it allowed you (in addition to its extant power) to knoch people down with extra effectiveness, reflecting the disparity between your preternatural balance and their mere mortal ability?\\

- FourWillowsWeeping

Thanks for the comments! I'm glad you like the tree - positive feedback always warms my heart.  :-) I'm surprised that you think Lofty Perch Stance is weak, since I had a strange worry that it was too *strong*, though I'm not sure why I thought so. In any case, further consideration suggests that it should provide its bonus to Dexterity pools rather than to specific Abilities, and if the current bonus is too weak it could add Martial Arts instead of Essence. You're right about Strike Upon the Stones - it was designed primarily to use in conjunction with sweep attacks, and for some reason I thought that sweeps had a greater chance of knocking someone down than they do. I'm thinking of sliding Ear-Boxing Technique between Crane Dances Through the Reeds and Crane Form, and replacing it with a supplemental attack Charm that increases the chance of knocking someone down with a sweep. (Feather Skims the Waters, perhaps.) What do you think? - Quendalon

Simply allowing the Charm (edit: LPS) to apply to Dexterity pools in general would make it usable; Essence seems to be a good cap for its die-adding as well. I still haven't read up on advanced combat maneuvers... I'll get back to those soon. - FourWillowsWeeping

I'm thinking that Feather Skims the Waters could raise the difficulty to resist a sweep, maybe adding your Essence to it. (I like Essence because it ranges farther than MA and you can thereby get terrifying mastery out of it, but novices aren't too scary). - willows again.

Added "Feather Skims the Waters", moved Ear-Boxing Technique down the tree, and changed Lofty Perch Stance to boost Dexterity pools. Improvement? - Quendalon

What I was trying to say with Lofty Perch is that it would make sense for it to help you retain your balance, regardless of what it was that was putting your balance at risk (standing on the surface of a lake or the top of a hill of sugar, been sweeped yourself...). I pretty much disapprove of Martial Arts that have environment-conditional Charms (this is why I took issue with the 'ambient light' thoughts of /PrismStyle); it doesn't seem to make sense that the art of relying on oneself would evolve into an art of relying on other stuff (and clearly, when your pool to retain your balance is enhanced rather than unimpeded by your standing on a clothesline, you're relying on things, not dealing with them). Sorry if that was unclear. Otherwise, I think you have a good solid tree here, with possible non-combat applications, which is always a nice bonus (a big hole in the Sidereal styles here.) - FourWillowsWeeping

Thanks for the compliment! As to the environmental issue, I'd say that combat martial arts involve 'relying on other stuff' by dint of the fact that the moves of one's opponent are necessarily 'other stuff'. You can't parry something that isn't attacking you, to take the simplest example. Likewise, a counterattack Charm such as Snake Strikes the Heel relies on the actions and movements of the opponent; by definition, it can't be used without an understanding of the nature of the attacker's movements. Distracting Finger-Gesture Attack, like Lofty Perch Stance, functions through movements that defy the opponent's expectations. That's how I'd argue it, in any case; it's a good point to raise and one that I'd never considered as an issue in those terms. - Quendalon

I'm starting to wonder if I've overpowered Crane Form. It seems a bit excessive compared to similar defensive Forms, like Air Dragon Form. I'd originally thought that preventing the added dice from spawning reflexive defenses served as a balancer, but now I'm not so sure... after all, you can turn on Five-Fold Bulwark Stance and Flow Like Blood to give you free reflexive dodges and parries, and the Form doubles them both. This is especially relevant at the moment, since my group's Dawn PC is starting to move up the Crane charm tree.

More specifically, the options would seem to be as follows:

• Remove the parry bonus. (Dodge seems better than parry for a bird MA, if I have to choose.)
• Reduce the parry and/or dodge bonus from MA to permanent Essence.
• Keep the parry and dodge bonuses, but remove some or all of the other benefits.
• Leave it alone, because it's not broken.

Any thoughts? - Quendalon

I'd probably say just put in a clause about the bonus dice only being added once against any given attack. Other than that, this style's really cool =) - SMK

Just a note on the allowed weapons - I'm pretty sure the jian not a mechanically equivalent to the slashing sword, but rather it is actually [not just mechanically] the straight sword. Other than that, I like the style. I wouldn't say it overpowered; it better than Air Dragon, but that's a terrestrial style, so it should be.

I convinced Quendalon after we adopted Power Combat that the straight sword was more representative of the jian. Also, Air Dragon is a Celestial style. All of the Immaculate MAs are. - LiOfOrchid

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