Revision as of 08:07, 5 April 2010

Incandescent Razor Style

Background

The art of the Incandescent Razor focuses upon speed and penetrating power. The style supports a lithe, athletic fighting technique, but affords no margin of error in its use, as it holds little in the way of defense. Its practitioners resemble the blades that they wield: bright, hard and sharp, but ultimately fragile.

This style’s Charms treat attacks with daggers and throwing knives as unarmed attacks, including thrown attacks using these weapons. None of these Charms are compatible with armor.

• By Quendalon
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Charms

Edge-Dancer Stance

Cost: 3 motes 
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Min. Martial Arts: 3
Min. Essence: 2 
Prereqs: None

This Charm sharpens the character’s reflexes in that crucial moment when she walks the line between failure and success. After making an Athletics or Dodge roll, the character may reroll her dice pool and choose the result she prefers. A character may only use this Charm once per roll.

Steel Cuts Deep

Cost: 2 motes 
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Min. Martial Arts: 3
Min. Essence: 2 
Prereqs: Edge-Dancer Stance

With this Charm, the character charges her hand with Essence to deliver a punishing blow. This adds the character’s permanent Essence to the pre-soak damage total of a single unarmed attack.

Incandescent Razor Form

Cost: 6 motes 
Duration: One scene 
Type: Simple 
Min. Martial Arts: 4 
Min. Essence: 2 
Prereqs: Steel Cuts Deep

The character takes on the deadly stillness of a poised blade; her eyes glint like metal. For the rest of the scene, she adds her permanent Essence score to her initiative. In addition, her unarmed attacks inflict lethal damage, she may parry lethal attacks unarmed without a stunt, and she increases the rate of her thrown weapons by one. (If using Power Combat, this also increases the rate of unarmed attacks and parries by one.) A character may not use more than one Martial Arts form-type charm at a time.

Needle Pierces Cloth

Cost: 3 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Min. Martial Arts: 4 
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Incandescent Razor Form

Even the finest armor has its seams. This Charm guides the character to strike the weakest point on the target, so that her next unarmed attack ignores half of her target’s armor soak. This is a piercing attack.

Whirling Razor Somersault

Cost: 4 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Min. Martial Arts: 5 
Min. Essence: 2
Prereqs: Incandescent Razor Form

As the whirling blade cuts the hand that grasps it, so too may the disciple of the Incandescent Razor harm those who would lay hands upon her. When the character successfully dodges an attack, she may use this Charm to move up to six yards away from her opponent, and simultaneously make a counterattack with a throwing weapon (if she has one available). The counterattack uses a number of dice equal to the character’s permanent Essence + any extra successes on her dodge roll. This Charm may not be used to counterattack against any other counterattack Charm or effect.

Coruscating Furnace Strike

Cost: 3 motes per die, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Min. Martial Arts: 5 
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Incandescent Razor Form

The character's hand or weapon glows a brilliant white as she strikes, like steel blazing in a forge. After soak but before rolling damage, the character may convert lethal damage dice to aggravated damage at a cost of three motes per die. The number of dice converted may not exceed the character's permanent Essence rating.

Blazing Essence Blades Technique

Cost: 3 motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: One scene
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 5 
Min. Essence: 4
Prereqs: Coruscating Furnace Strike, Needle Pierces Cloth, Whirling Razor Somersault

With this Charm, the character calls forth blades of white fire from her own Essence, which fly forth like sparks from struck metal. For the rest of the scene, whenever the character wishes to make a throwing attack, she may reflexively call forth a white fire knife by paying one mote. These must be used for throwing attacks. A white fire knife has an accuracy equal to the character’s Martial Arts, a damage bonus equal to the character’s permanent Essence, and a range interval equal to the character’s (permanent Essence x 10) in yards.

This Charm does not create an attack; you must have an attack ready from another source in order to use a white fire blade. However, attacks made with these knives are automatically considered to be Charm-enhanced attacks, and thus ignore attack rate restrictions.

Comments

Note: this tree is still in progress. It will probably stay quite short though. In order to generate the multiplicity of Terrestrial trees that I desire, I'm going to limit them in size to make them easier for me to create. - Quendalon

Okay, the first draft of the tree is done. Feel free to tear it apart; I wrote most of it without access to my books, so I'm sure that a lot of numbers need tweaking. - Quendalon

Ummm... cool! Quick question, what is the limit to the number of Blades created by Blazing Essence Blades Technique? Cuz I can see a lot of potential abuse with a no rate restriction! Or have I missed something? - nikink

Thanks! I've rewritten the Charm a bit to clarify; you can create as many blades as you want, but you still need to deal with multiple attack penalties. I've also tweaked the Charm a bit for a larger initial investment. Let me know if that solves the problem, or if it's still overpowered. - Quendalon