Difference between revisions of "MartialArts/WingedSerpentStyle"

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Winged Serpent is a complete martial arts style which branches off from Snake Style after starting with the same basis. It shares Hook Swords as form weapons with Snake, but instead of the other weapons which Snake style uses, Winged Serpent allows the use of any weapons intended to be used as a pair. Winged Serpent style is not normally compatible with the use of armor, but one of the charms it teaches allows its use.

This style was created by me, IanPrice, intended so that a character I am playing might invent it after she Exalts, probably as a Solar. However, it is a potential variant branching off of Snake Style which could be invented in any number of ways.

Striking Cobra Technique</b> - Canon Charm

<b>Serpentine Evasion</b> - Canon Charm

<b>First, Second, and Third Martial Arts Excellencies</b> - Canon Charms

<b>Winged Serpent Form</b>

<b>Cost: 6m
Minimums: Martial Arts 5, Essence 3
Type: Simple
Keywords: Obvious, Form
Duration: Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Serpentine Evasion, First, Second, and Third Martial Arts Excellencies

The serpent moves sinuously, and when granted wings its flight is the same as its slither. The winged serpent may weave through the air deceptively, strike from unexpected angles, or guard itself with its wings. When imitating these qualities in this form, the Martial Artist may pay 2m per DV point to enhance a flurry, or a defense against a single attack. A flurry so enhanced reduces the DV penalty caused by one for each 2m spent, up to the Martial Artist's Essence (minimum 0). A defense so enhanced adds 1 to either DV per 2m spent, up to the Martial Artist's Essence, and this allows Lethal and ranged attacks to be parried unarmed without a stunt.

Shining Serpent Scales</b>

<b>Cost: -
Minimums: Martial Arts 5, Essence 3
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: N/A
Prerequisite Charms: Winged Serpent Form

Sometimes a Snake must grow a new skin. After learning this charm, a Martial Artist may use any charms of Winged Serpent Style while wearing armor.

Furious Wingbeats</b>

<b>Cost: -
Minimums: Martial Arts 5, Essence 4
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: N/A
Prerequisite Charms: Shining Serpent Scales

Sometimes, flight requires rapid flapping of the wings. This charm emulates the way no single beat of the wings is wasted. Whenever the Martial Artist is using Winged Serpent Form, she may pay 1m per die as a reflexive non-charm action to reduce all multiple action penalties to her dice pools from her current Flurry by up to her Essence. This does not count as a dice bonus from charms, since it reduces a penalty instead of adding dice.

Unfolding Fangs</b>

<b>Cost: 2m
Minimums: Martial Arts 5, Essence 4
Type: Supplemental
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Shining Serpent Scales

With its mouth closed, a snake's fangs fold back into its head so it does not pierce its own jaw. They unfold only when ready to strike, and so does this martial artist's Essence unfold. An attack enhanced this way gains a damage bonus equal to her Essence and is considered lethal if it would not otherwise be. This charm may only be activated if Winged Serpent Form is active.

Tail-Devouring Serpent</b>

<b>Cost: -
Minimums: Martial Arts 5, Essence 4
Type: Permanent
Keywords: None
Duration: N/A
Prerequisite Charms: Unfolding Fangs, Furious Wingbeats

The snake consuming itself is a symbol of the infinite. The cost of Unfolding Fangs is reduced to 1 mote.

Sinuous Winged Grace</b>

<b>Cost: 4m
Minimums: Martial Arts 5, Essence 4
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Winged Serpent Form

Perfected Essence allows a graceful defense to deny even a perfect attack. This charm causes a Perfect attack (such as Accuracy Without Distance) to lose its perfection; if its attack successes are reduced to 0, it misses normally. However, this charm is meaningless against a normal attack.

Fallen Feather Guard</b>

<b>Cost: 4m
Minimums: Martial Arts 5, Essence 4
Type: Reflexive
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Winged Serpent Form

The winged serpent hides its fragile, slender body behind a wall of meaningless feathers. An attack intended to prevent any possible escape sees it has trapped only these, while attacks which pierce any guard pierce through to empty air. This charm allows the Martial Artist to apply her full Dodge or Parry DV even if the attack normally renders such a defense inapplicable. This applies to both mundane and magical inapplicability, as long as there is an attack roll to defend against.

Deadly Serpent Precision</b>

<b>Cost: 10m, 1wp
Minimums: Martial Arts 5, Essence 4
Type: Simple
Keywords: Combo-OK, Obvious
Duration: Instant
Prerequisite Charms: Fallen Feather Guard, Sinuous Winged Grace

Having learned the secrets necessary to avoid death, the Winged Serpent stylist learns next to inflict such a strike on her enemy. The martial arts attack supplemented by this charm is perfect (hitting even if no successes remain), and renders one form of defense (Parry or Dodge DV) inapplicable, whichever one is higher.

Infinite Deadly Venom</b>

<b>Cost: 20m, 2wp
Minimums: Martial Arts 5, Essence 5
Type: Simple
Keywords: Obvious
Duration: Scene
Prerequisite Charms: Deadly Serpent Precision, Tail-Devouring Serpent

The venom of the serpent does not cease to flow until it is dead, and winged serpents die harder than regular snakes. She regains motes equal to her Essence when her DV causes an attack which rolled at least one success (or which had a dice pool less than her DV) to miss. As these motes are gained, 3 of them may be traded for 1 willpower point instead. This can happen only once per action.

Comments

Hmmm... I don't think I like the idea of a Style not having its own pre-form Charms. I see Martial Arts styles as self-contained things. Furious Wingbeats seems too good... actually, the large number of permanent charms in this style worries me. I haven't read it too closely, but it seems like a single charm (the Form) becomes all you need to activate to be a very effective combatant. -szilard

Also, Tail-Devouring Serpent doesn't quite work. Consider that there may be multiple attacks defended against. -szilard

• The idea to bring this style out of existing charms was based on the fact that Solar Hero style (known as Solar Brawl charms in 1E) has extra offshoot charms that are not strictly part of the style.
• The idea of only having to activate the form to become effective is exactly what I was going for. I could be convinced to increase the mote expenditure for the extra abilities the permanent charms add to it though.
• Why does that make it not work? It is supposed to allow a lot of Essence recovery, with the downside that it commits 20 motes.

-IanPrice

Solar Hero Style is a martial art that has some extra (non-form) Solar charms built off of it due to it being a 'native' Solar style, something which Snake explicitly isn't (and building an entire other style off of it with a second form charm rubs me the wrong way. As far as TDS... Huh? How does it commit any motes, let alone 20, when it has no cost? Also what happens if you successfully defend multiple attacks - can you get more essence back than you put in? What happens if you successfully defend one attack but not another, do you get anything back? As written, it is unclear on these points. - szilard

Brainfart. I thought you were commenting on the pinnacle charm. For TDS, the effect of the form it refers to can only apply to one attack. I have edited the form for more clarity on this. As for rubbing you the wrong way... then don't use it in your games. Makes perfect sense to me, since 90% of the hard styles of martial arts out there (and I've trained in 4) use the same first three or four katas. Besides, my ST already approved it up to the form, so for the game I'm in I'm not worried about that aspect of the theme. - IanPrice

Also, I have added a cost for Furious Wingbeats, and an extra cost for Unfolding Fangs. The reason these effects, and Tail-Devouring Serpent, are permanent charms enhancing the form? I don't want to have to create a huge combo to use everything at once. - IanPrice

Reading all of this, looks like our fight should be interesting. I suspect that the trial will suggest that some of this style is a bit too powerful to be a celestial style. In particular, I think the following will prove unbalancing:

• Tail-Devouring Serpent will turn out to provide way too much for its requirements. If the cost of Unfolding Fangs and the form defense buff was 2m and TDS lowered it to 1, that might be better balanced, although given the pinnacle charm, perhaps not.
• Celestial Martial Arts should pretty much never contain perfect effects, particularly those that also completely strip away both kinds of defense. I don't think any published charm does both.
• The ability to use all the permanent effects at once will be a bit too uber.
• The ability to use all the permanent effects at once in addition to a combo will almost absurdly powerful.
• The essence regen from the pinnacle, particularly the defensive part of it, will be vastly to high, and the willpower exchange will be game breaking.

Should be challenging to keep my Schmendrik alive, especially without combos. - Wordman

I disagree on the perfects (Righteous Devil style - Azure Abacus Meditation; existing celestial level perfect attack which nullifies both defenses), but you may be right on the essence regen. At least from TDS. I don't think the pinnacle is far out of line for a 5/5 charm, but I may have to remove the damage -> motes part. - IanPrice

Mods made... I don't want to overdo it. - IanPrice

Hmm. I thought I made this comment earlier, but maybe I never saved it. Azure Abacus is parriable with non-perfect charms and is also Simple, which makes a big difference. Additionally, the willpower cost of Deadly Serpent, which usually acts as a decent limitation on such charms, is rendered essentially meaningless by the pinnacle charm. As for the pinnacle, the health to motes effect wasn't the broken part. As originally written, the charm was a persistant combination of Hungry Ghost Form, a defensive version of Essence-Gathering Temper with no cap on how many motes it can regain per action and a version of Willpower-Enhancing Spirit that is cheaper, does not require a roll and doesn't require being injured. This might be OK for a sidereal form, but seems over the top for celestial style, particularly the willpower part. Since the entire style is built to avoid needing combos (a somewhat dubious practice, IMO), this might seem like it isn't that big of deal, but using this style with combos and the willpower regen would be game-breaking. Some of that would go away if the permanents had riders in them that prohibited combo use during actions where the permanent effect was used. -- Wordman

VBoS. Joy in Adversity Stance. However, a cap of once per action, and making Deadly Serpent Simple, would be fine by me. I have done so. I have also made DSP nullify only one form of defense, whichever is highest. Also note that in the last change I did, I already changed it so that there's only 3 things that can be done without a combo in the form (flurry DV penalties, DV boost, flurry dice penalties). I also revised Furious Wingbeats to be 1m/die. I am now revising the DV penalty adjuster and the DV bonus in the same way. - IanPrice

You're right about JiAS, which has on average the same regen rate and is not capped. Really, I think the broken part is the willpower thing. If the original charm was reinstated, with the damage -> motes effect restored (perhaps even with a higher regen rate), no mote regen limit, but the willpower effect was removed, you'd be in business. You could probably also reduce the wp cost of the charm by 1 if you did this. Well, and perhaps add a 1wp cost to Sinuous Winged Grace. Since a master of this style doesn't rely on combos, he'd still be able to outlast his opponent in high level combat even without the willpower regen. - Wordman

The power balance on this one is very strange and hard to judge; I'll have to see it in action. I do have one comment, though - why require all three Excellencies? Forcing someone to take both First and Second is basically requiring them to throw a Charm away for no gain. - FrivYeti

Prerequisite charms represent a learning curve, in my mind. This style teaches perfection, so it requires learning all there is to know about excellence. The Lore tree does something similar. I also don't really share that opinion; it's a small gain, but it's a kind of flexibility. There are times when I'd prefer to have the dice, and there are times when I'd prefer to have a reliable number of extra successes. - IanPrice

Lore only requires two Excellencies, which allows you to pick up an adder and a re-roller. It's your tree, I just thought I'd mention. Mathematically, there's no situation in which it's worth it to switch back and forth between First and Second Excellencies. - FrivYeti

This is mostly true, but not totally. The chance of getting x/2 successes on x dice averages to closer to 0.48 than 0.5, so Second Excellency has a 2% advantage, which is about 4 times better than the house advantage on the pass line in craps; however, that's only on average. There may be cases where the average result doesn't cut it. For example, suppose you have 10 dice and someone tells you that you can either roll them, or buy one success for two dice, but you need six successes. Using the buy successes method, you can never succeed, but your chance of rolling six or more successes with those dice is something like 39%, and you could score as many as 20 (with a vanishingly small probability). -- Wordman