Difference between revisions of "Golden-Armour-Of-The-Sun"

Revision as of 08:06, 5 April 2010

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Golden armour of the Sun

• Circle : Emerald
• Cost : 15+ motes
• Duration : 1 scene

This is a unique spell created during the First Age as a co-operative spell affecting only the Solar Exalted. This spell relies on the blessing of the Unconquered Sun to function and as such can not be learned by by other type of Exalted. Those Solars who have performed actions deemed inappropriate by the Unconquered Sun should be extremely carefull when invoking this spell effect.

The caster calls upon the US to toughen his skin and that of his circle mates, to turn aside the attacks of their foes. The caster must be the initial target for this spell, plus allies up to the casters permenant essence may be targeted if desired. This spell can only be cast in Creation, it will Fail if cast in a Shadowland. The spell can only be cast when the sun is in the sky (in the same way as Unbreakable bones of stone), though it need not be visible - i.e. heavy cloud does not prevent this from working. The caster can be inside buildings or under ground when casting the spell, but the sunlight must be able to get into the casters location - windows or cracks in the rocks etc.

Mechanically this spell increases the targets soak as follows;

Bashing  : + 3x Permenant Essence
Lethal  : + 2x Permenant Essence
Aggravated  : + Permenant Essence

This spell may be cast on a number of extra targets up to the permenant essence of the caster at a cost of 5 motes per extra target. It is explicitly stackable with armour or charms that increase soak, but it is not stackable with Invulnerable skin of Bronze. The soak created by this spell counts as natural soak against attacks that ignore armour / piercing attacks / or charms soakable only by natural soak. Finaly as this is a rapid spell to cast, the effects of this spell occur at the end of the turn in which it was cast.

Comments:

First off, it's bad practice to put things such as this on a top-level page... A more appropriate place would be either EldmarGolden-Armour-Of-The-Sun/GoldenArmourOfTheSun (probably the most common) or SorceryGolden-Armour-Of-The-Sun/EldmarGoldenArmourOfTheSun (my personal preference, for some reason). As a followup to that, using '-'s in a page title makes it harder to find for anyone else using the wiki, as it's again non-standard practice. For more information on such things, please read BestPractices.

You didn't have a link to EldmarGolden-Armour-Of-The-Sun/Sorcery from SorceryGolden-Armour-Of-The-Sun/Eldmar (where most people will look) or anywhere on the main Sorcery page, so I added a link to here from the Sorcery page on the general principle that if you're putting it up, you want people to be able to find it. I havn't done anything for SorceryGolden-Armour-Of-The-Sun/Eldmar, that's up to you, but it'll probably only get direct hits if people know they want spells by you personally, rather than just browsing for spells.

Finally, the spell itself... I realise (now) from reading your index page that it's Emerald circle, but it doesn't say this anywhere on the page itself, and it would probably be helpful if it did. Aside from that, it seems rather underpowered compared to Invulnerable Skin of Bronze for example. I know it scales up with Essence, but by the time you get to Essence 5 and it's nicely powerful, you can probably do better (and faster) for only a single scene by using resistance... And even if you can't, most other spells can be cast much earlier than directly in the scene you need the armour for. Final question - does it work when it's all cloudy? The fluff about sunlight seems to indicate that the light would be necessary (and probably flow inwards and congeal/crystallize into armour in some amazingly cool fashion, bonding with the power of the magic) but the literal interpretation of 'when the sun is in the sky, though it need not be visible' would mean that it would work anytime during the day, as long as you have some light-passable connection to the outside.

As a suggestion that might make it a bit more effective, perhaps give it a speed equal to that of Flight of Separation, which would make it activate at the end of the turn in which it was cast, not at the caster's initiative next turn. That would give it more combat utility while still making it clear it's a spell not a charm, but even then, it feels a little like a super-resistance charm rather than a sorcerous effect. I'm sure with a bit of fluff and some tweaking this can all be fixed, and new spells are always good, so keep it up.
-- Darloth

(Oops, forgot to mention it was me who added newlines and fixed the bold tags so your little table of effects looked right. Hope you don't mind -- Darloth)

• • No I dont mind thanks for the work you did. Unfortunately I was using my bosses computer - his machine is the only one with internet access in work, he was going out for lunch, but came back early and kicked me off so he could go on the net. He doesn't mind us using it but when he says go, you go so I just hit save and thought I would come back to it later. so thanks again.

• • Also as you prob noticed I am pretty new to this site, though not the game itself, so I thought that EldmarGolden-Armour-Of-The-Sun/Sorcery/Golden-armour-of-the-Sun wasn't a top level page, I guess I must have mis read stuff. is it to late to change it? because I have a few spells, Character sheets and artifacts just waiting to go up when I get time to use this infernal machine .. I dont have net access at home at the moment unfortunately. so appologies for the blunders!
    • Wiki-links are not paths... you can't do EldmarGolden-Armour-Of-The-Sun/Sorcery/Golden-armour-of-the-Sun, it just doesn't work. You can only ever have one slashlink deep... EldmarGolden-Armour-Of-The-Sun/GoldenArmourOfTheSun for example. You can certainly change it, just copy everything here, put it there, and delete this lot, replacing it with #REDIRECT EldmarGolden-Armour-Of-The-Sun/GoldenArmourOfTheSun , then, if anyone follows an old link, they'll end up at the new page anyway.

• • Finally with regards the spell, yes I agree its underpowered, although I didn't get chance to finish writting the description of the mechanics so it does improve a little, this is the first version of the spell that I presented to my ST, I nearly cried when he got rid of the agg soak and reduced it to 2x essence for bashing and 1x essence for lethal. The idea I had was that the sunlight fused with the spent essence to make your skin harder, and your skin colour actually changes to a golden colour, that was why I decided that it could only be cast underground or indoors if there was a way for the sunlight to actually pass into the room or cave/tunnel but I didn't want to comment on cloud cover or weather conditions because as you said the spell is already underpowered. I like the suggestion of reduced casting time, I wouldn't have thought about something like that. Personaly I believe that the strengths of this spell lie with its ability to be cast on a group of people in one casting and also its stackability with armour and other soak increasing charms.
    • It seems over-costed... 5m per other person just seems excessive, especially given the costs for spreading charm-based effects. The effect as you say isn't vast... Also, has he -SEEN- ISoB? With his revisions to this one, that spell gives greater soak until you get to essence 7, lasts longer, and is just as obvious if you're turning your skin shining solar gold. It has a roughly equivalent disadvantage (weight) but seems generally better. It also grants pretty nifty hardness. This spell should be cheaper... perhaps 15+1 or 2 per person, and it needs a higher person-limit. If you want to make it more interesting, have the first Essence people cost +1, the next set +2, and so on, until it's simply too expensive. Spells often don't have an upper limit.
      -- [[Darloth]

• • The Resistance charms I believe are not stackable with anything except themselves, where as this spell creates a natural soak in adition to the physical armour, and counts as natural soak for attacks that state they can only be soaked by stamina. So that ups their usefullness and makes them a bit more powerfull. Skin of Bronze is great, but at 20 motes and 1 willpower per casting it can get expensive if you are powering up your circle. This can give them a nice little boost at a lower cost (esp in willpower) which means the sorcerer can still do something else in the fight. I have been working on a theme at the moment for a set of spells that may only be cast by or on Solar Exalts, this is just one of them. So anyway thanks again for the help and comments. Anything constructive even if its - your spell is bad because.... - are always accepted, thats how we learn afterall. Eldmar
    • Some of them are stackable with other forms of natural soak... it's just armour they dislike. Some of them even stack with armour.
      -- Darloth