Revision as of 08:08, 5 April 2010

Solar Melee Charms

by CorlanDashiva

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Weakness Finding Strike</b>

 <b>Cost: 3 motes per +1 damage
 Duration: Instant
 Type: Supplemental
 Min. Melee: 4
 Min. Essence: 2
 Prereqs: Fire and Stones Strike

With this charm the Solar is able to locate the least well protected areas of the foe. This charm increases the post soak minimum damage by 1 for every 3 motes spent, to a maximum of the Solar's Dex+Melee rating, or a maximum of the Solars Essence against armours made from the 5 magical materials. This charm must be declared before the attack is rolled, and if the attack fails then all essence spent on this charm is lost.

Pinpoint Accuracy Technique</b>

 <b>Cost: 5 motes
 Duration: Instant
 Type: Supplemental
 Min. Melee: 5
 Min. Essence: 2
 Prereqs: Weakness Finding Strike

This technique allows the Solar to go one step further. More heavily armoured foes are restricted in ways that can be exploited by one who is trained to do so. This charm adds a number of dice to one melee attack equal to the sum of the mobility and fatigue penalties on the target's armour. This charm explicitly allows you to exceed your normal dice adder limits.

Armour Destruction Method</b>

 <b>Cost: Special
 Duration: Instant
 Type: Simple
 Min. Melee: 5
 Min. Essence: 3
 Prereqs: Weakness Finding Strike

The Solar moves with surety and understands instinctively how the armour of his foes was constructed and how to break it. By charging his weapon with essence and striking the armour he can sunder it along lines of weakness invisible to the naked eye. Those watching see the weapon glowing as brightly as the sun before it strikes and the light spreads out over the armour, leaving cracks in it's wake. When using this charm the Solar makes a melee attack which deals no damage to the target, but instead damages the armour. Work out the number of damage dice as normal applying only the soak of the armour. Each damage dice left causes the armour to lose one point of soak, with soak being removed from bashing and lethal categories equally. If the soak is reduced to 0 then the armour is useless, although a good blacksmith can repair it. The cost of this charm is equal to the average of the bashing and lethal soaks for mundane armour and is equal to the sum of the bashing and lethal soaks plus the cost of attunement (in motes) for magical armour. This does mean that an armour you have already damaged is cheaper to use this charm against.

Wanton Destruction Style</b>

 <b>Cost: 4 motes
 Duration: Scene
 Type: Simple
 Min. Melee: 5
 Min. Essence: 3
 Prereqs: Pinpoint Accuracy Technique, Armour Destruction Method

This charm allows the Solar to use his attacks to weaken the armour of his foes, even if they are made of one of the 5 magical materials. His weapon leaves trails of essence that leave jagged rips through the armour of his foes. Each attack he makes that deals damage while this charm is active reduces the target's armour's lethal and bashing soak by 1 points each. This charm cannot reduce armour soak to less than the wearer's essence. All damage lasts only until the end of the scene, and armour made from the 5 magical materials “heals” at a rate of 2 soak (of each type) per turn. In addition, while this charm is active the minimum dice dice of damage after soak is applied is equal to half of the Solar's Essence, rounded up. This charm is considered a form charm and cannot be used at the same time as any other form charm.

Comments

Just for a bit of background, one of the players in my campaign has been getting fed up with not being able to do much damage against heavily armoured targets - Octavian being the most recent - with his teeny weeny (though still fairly potent) daggers. So he asked me if he could get some armour-defeating melee charms. We've been tossing a few ideas around over the past couple of days, and CorlanDashiva's been good enough to actually sit down and write some ideas of his own down that are along these lines.

As for these charms... they don't quite feel right to me just yet, not sure what it is at the moment. I think I'll at least have to fiddle with the costs a bit before I allow them. Any comments from anyone else would be gratefully recieved though - might help me figure out why I'm not sure about them... - Garden

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Overall, I'm... not sure. I like the idea of using armor against an opponent, but your execution may be flawed. I'm not as sure about Pinpoint Accuracy Technique (diceadder based off of target's lethal soak). If I'm wearing something like Silken Armor from CB:Eclipse, that doesn't alter my movements any- what is PAT granting it's bonus from, then? A better mechanic would be, IMO, granting automatic successes equal to either the Fatigue and/or Mobility penelty of the armor, with a minimum amount based on the Solar's Essence. (Also note, PAT would make the Solar hypereffective at hitting someone in Artifact Superheavy Plate. As in, combo with Excellent Strike, and roll 40+ dice- which is more than the best FLB+5FBS provides).

Wanton Destruction Technique is interesting, although it certainly would add a bit of bookkeeping. That, and I think the Armor Destruction charms should deal consistantly with the 5MM armor- either both temporarily weakening them, or both not doing anything.

Weakness Finding Strikie is brutal. If your opponent has any amount of armor at all, it's going to be VASTLY better to use WFS than HTT. If your opponent is in Artifact Superheavy, your functionally adding something like eight to ten dice of damage for two motes. I've seen this sort of thing at work before- an archer with Target arrows took down a D-B immaculate in Superheavy that was tearing up the rest of my circle of Solars. If he'd had a better Rate of Fire, it would have been a one round down. Even more important if your facing something like a Sidereal- were if they soak all but one die, the die is meaningless.

Also, these charms feel like their much better at getting around armor than their Abyssal counterparts. I realize they work on an entirely different basis, but even so, the Abysall Soak-decreasers would be a useful thingy to guideline by. As would the Melee damage increasers- HTT and F&SS. - DariusSolluman

Sidenote- another tack to consider might be something like the Endings Form, what boosts your minimum post-soak damage roll. That would be most favorable to the dagger fighter- these are useful to any melee fighter. - More DS

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Increased cost of Weakness Finding Strike. Made Pinpoint accuracy work off of Mobility and fatigue penalties. Changed the cost of Armour destoying rather radically. Toned down the Wanton Destruction armour destroying a little and added a small amount of the endings form. This is why i love the wiki - I had vague Ideas and now have vaguely workable charms... - CorlanDashiva

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Nothing to do with the actual mechanics, just a random thought I had... It might be nice to have a high end charm on this tree with funky solarised effects, like golden light spreading out across the targets armour or something like that. Maybe along the lines of Armour Penetrating Fang Strike. I like pretty lights :) - Garden

Mm. I'm still really leary of the 'halve your opponent's armor' Charm. Especially since it's avowed point is to make a knife fighter more effective.

If I've got a knife (Str+3L), and I'm facing someone with Superheavy Orihalcum Armor (17L), my knife is effectively a Str+11L- meaning that with average (2 to 3) Strength, it's probablly not any more effective. However, if I'm facing the same armor with an Orihalcum Grand Daiklaive (Str+11L), it's suddenly Str+19L- and VASTLY more effective.

Basically, a flat reduction of soak favors big weapons more than little ones. Increasing the post soak damage favors little weapons more than big.

DariusSolluman

Ok, have completely changed the way WFS works... it now increases plinkage at massive cost. Should it be cheaper? more expensive? Any other thoughts on it? - CorlanDashiva

Naw, that seems about right to me- that's the same buy rate as Knockout Blow, and this has the added bennie of dealing lethal, with the added disadvatanage of a cap.

When does it have to be declared, though? If I know I'm gonna be hit with that attack, I'm going to be much more cautious fighting- in other words, is it declared when the attack is rolled, or on a success? - DariusSolluman

I'm thinking declared when the attack is rolled... Is there a standard rule for when supplemental charms have to be declared? - CorlanDashiva

It is normally when the attack is rolled, but it's also spelleed out explicitly, and can fall after the attack has succeded or failed. - DariusSolluman

Amended so that it must be declared before the attack is rolled - CorlanDashiva