Revision as of 22:25, 3 March 2005

Persimmon Ocean of Joy Style

This is another style made to the specs of MartialArts/MACreationGuide, with Clebo's rules also being kept in mind. Comments are welcome!

This is a "borderline" Celestial-rank MartialArts style; its pinnacle reaches into the realm of advanced Martial Arts. It treats the seven-section staff and the weighted chain as unarmed. Other Martial Arts weapons may be used with its techniques, unless they stipulate that they function with unarmed attacks only.

Budding Flower Fist

Cost: 2 motes

Type: Supplemental

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 3

Minimum Essence: 2

Prerequisite Charms: None

The name of this Charm comes from the intricate Essence plumes that trail Exalts' arms as they use it; they resemble ink falling through water or vines festooned with flowers. The Charm permits the Exalt to use Essence to put into action his knowledge of body mechanics, making his strikes precise and sure. On a successful attack, this Charm converts a number of damage dice up to the user's permanent Essence into successes automatically. The remainder of the dice must be rolled normally.

Blossom-Laden Palm

Cost: 4 motes

Type: Simple

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 4

Minimum Essence: 2

Prerequisite Charms: Budding Flower Fist

The Exalt activates his victim's nerve centers with a sequence of rapid strikes, filling him with pleasure. On a successful unarmed attack roll, the Exalt's player rolls Wits+Medicine. The victim receives a penalty to his initiative equal to the number of successes rolled for a number of turns equal to the Exalt's permanent Essence. In addition, when first affected by this Charm, the target must roll Temperance or become bewildered, performing all actions at half his dice pool (rounded down and before splitting). He may try each turn on his initiative to overcome this effect. Once the character overcomes this bewilderment once, he is no longer affected by it, though the initiative penalty may remain.

Ripening Treasure Application

Cost: 6 motes

Type: Supplemental

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 5

Minimum Essence: 3

Prerequisite Charms: Blossom-Laden Palm

The Exalt lays a seemingly innocuous touch on his opponent with an Essence-wrapped fist. Damage is rolled normally, but the attack is such that it does 1 Health Level of damage after soak the moment the strike connects, then 2 Health Levels the next turn, and so on, increasing by one each turn, until it inflicts the amount of Health Levels that were rolled. This technique can only be used unarmed.

Peaches of Immortality Form

Cost: 7 motes

Type: Simple

Duration: One Scene

Minimum Martial Arts: 5

Minimum Essence: 4

Prerequisite Charms: Ripening Treasure Application

While this Charm is active, the Exalt's body glistens with the Essence of immortals. Wound penalties are halved. The costs to use the prerequisite Charms for this Form are also halved, and the Exalt may soak aggravated damage with his full lethal soak. This is a Form Charm and is incompatible with armor.

Honeyed Tides Technique

Cost: 4 motes

Type: Reflexive

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 3

Minimum Essence: 2

Prerequisite Charms: None

The Exalt can exert his Essence to slow an attack to a dreamlike arc, as though it were forcing through deep water. As a result, the Exalt can change a lethal attack against himself into bashing. This has all the implications it would seem to: the damage can be blocked barehanded without any unusual techniques, it is soaked as bashing, and so forth.

Sinking Topaz Essence Shape

Cost: 2 motes

Type: Simple

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 4

Minimum Essence: 3

Prerequisite Charms: Honeyed Tides Technique

The Exalt performs a normal attack. He may exchange extra successes out of his damage pool to instead root the victim's Essence to the ground; for every two dice exchanged, the victim is unable to move his feet for one turn. This Charm may only be used on creatures with Essence greater than 1, and is ineffective on targets with greater Essence ratings than the character. A victim immobilized by this effect can still move with the use of Charms, but must end the turn in the same place that he began.

Seductive Nectar Strike

Cost: 3 motes

Type: Reflexive

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 5

Minimum Essence: 3

Prerequisite Charms: Sinking Topaz Essence Shape, Blossom-Laden Palm

This Charm holds the secret of redirecting an attacker's energy; the Exalt learns to ride the power of an attack to strengthen his own without ever coming into contact with the attack he is drawing from. In response to a hand-to-hand attack, the Exalt's player may roll Dexterity + Martial Arts. If he receives at least four successes, the Exalt may perform a Martial Arts attack against someone other than the attacker, adding the attacker's extra successes to his own attack pool. This attack behaves like a counterattack - it is resolved after the attack roll but before damage, it cannot respond to or be responded to by any other counterattack Charm, and so on.

Golden Form of Celestial Wine

Cost: 5 motes

Type: Simple

Duration: One Scene

Minimum Martial Arts: 5

Minimum Essence: 4

Prerequisite Charms: Seductive Nectar Strike

While this Charm is active, the Exalt's Essence forms an intoxicating miasma in the air. Everyone else within Essence yards is affected by it, unless they also know Golden Wine of Heaven Form or any of the other Form Charms of Persimmon Ocean of Joy Style. Those affected receive an initiative penalty equal to the Exalt's Martial Arts and two dice from all Dexterity and Wits pools. Characters cannot use more than one martial arts Form Charm at a time. The outside-the-body Essence manipulations that this Form requires are impossible if the character is wearing armor.

Fruit Bends Branch

Cost: 3 motes

Type: Reflexive

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 3

Minimum Essence: 1

Prerequisite Charms: None

The Exalt may parry weapons (but not other lethal attacks) unarmed at his full pool. On a parry with any successes, the weapon is weighted down with Essence; each time it is affected by this Charm its weight (and the Strength requirement to use it) is increased by one.

His Own Accord

Cost: 3 motes

Type: Supplemental

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 4

Minimum Essence: 2

Prerequisite Charms: Fruit Bends Branch

The Exalt grapples his opponent, twisting his arm in such a way that he must be thrown or suffer a shattered joint. In addition to the damage of an unarmed Martial Arts attack, the opponent must choose whether to take a penalty to Strength equal to the Exalt's permanent Essence (this lasts for the duration of the scene) or to be thrown forcefully away, which doubles the attacker's damage pool before soak is applied.

Flying Autumn Defense

Cost: 2 motes

Type: Reflexive

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 4

Minimum Essence: 3

Prerequisite Charms: His Own Accord, Blossom-Laden Palm

The Exalt ripples away from an attack as leaves before the wind. The Exalt can dodge a single attack with his full Dexterity + Dodge pool. For each success on the roll, the Exalt moves a yard away from the attacker. Unless the attacker is unable to follow, however, this does not prevent the attack.

Petal-Carrying Current Form

Cost: 5 motes

Type: Instant

Duration: One Scene

Minimum Martial Arts: 4

Minimum Essence: 4

Prerequisite Charms: Flying Autumn Defense

The Exalt may parry lethal attacks unarmed. In addition, when he completely parries a weapon, he may reflexively perform a disarm attempt, with extra successes on the parry adding to the disarm pool. The Exalt adds his permanent Essence to his bashing soak and initiative score. This is a Martial Arts Form Charm and follows those rules. Armor hampers movement too much for it to be compatible with this Charm.

Persimmon Ocean of Joy Inspiration

Cost: 2 motes

Type: Special

Duration: Special

Minimum Martial Arts: 5

Minimum Essence: 5

Prerequisite Charms: Peaches of Immortality Form, Golden Form of Celestial Wine, Petal-Carrying Current Form, one other complete Martial Arts style

This Charm may be placed in a Combo with its three immediate prerequisite Charms and no others, as though those three Charms had an Instant duration. A Form activated in conjunction with this Charm is compatible with other Martial Arts Form Charms, as though it were not a form at all. When a Character learns this Charm, he may choose one of its three prerequisite forms and place them in a Combo for free. This is an advanced Charm; by no means can a Terrestrial learn it.

Alternative Version:

This Charm may be placed in a Combo with its three immediate prerequisite Charms and no others, as though those three Charms had an Instant duration. A Form activated in conjunction with this Charm is does not dissipate when another Form is activated subsequently, as long as that Charm is also activated in conjunction with this. When a Character learns this Charm, he may choose one of its three prerequisite forms and place them in a Combo for free. This is an advanced Charm; by no means can a Terrestrial learn it.

Incomparable Harvest Exultation

Cost: 7 motes, 1 Willpower

Type: Extra Actions

Duration: Instant

Minimum Martial Arts: 6

Minimum Essence: 6

Prerequisite Charms: Persimmon Ocean of Joy Inspiration

With this Charm, the Exalt is swept away by the intoxicating Essence flows he manipulates, and goes into a bacchic frenzy. The Exalt must perform his permanent Essence in unarmed attacks - or convert the additional actions to parries or dodges, which the Exalt can use later in the turn, at the cost of gaining a point of Limit per action stored in this way. Actions stored for defense can be split into cascading parries and full dodges. Any victim of one of these attacks is dazzled and bewildered by their fragrant Essence charge - for the Exalt's Martial Arts in turns, they must roll Temperance or perform all actions at half their dice pool (rounded down and before splitting.) Unlike the bewilderment of Blossom-Laden Palm, this effect is lingering; resisting the effect only negates it for that turn.

Persimmon Ocean of Joy Tactics

Use your three Forms. In combination, you get these benefits:

• Your wound penalties are halved.
• Your core attack repertoire is made cheaper.
• You can parry lethal attacks barehanded.
• You can soak aggravated damage with your natural lethal soak.
• Everyone around you is slowed down considerably, making their reactions poorer and their attacks weaker.
• You are significantly speeded up; you act before many people, and can perform counter-disarms reflexively.

The speed advantage you gain is essential here; if you must battle with your Forms incomplete, favor Petal-Carrying Current and Golden Wine of Heaven over Peaches of Immortality.

If you do not feel the need to slay your opponent, Sinking Topaz Essence Shape can set you up to get out of a sticky situation with relative ease. It also allows you to pin an opponent in one place so that you can step in, attack, and retreat out of his range; this is probably more useful against younger Exalts who have not yet learned counterattacks and independent ranged attacks (never trust a Snake master; this tactic will only annoy him.) Flying Autumn Defense will allow you to escape multiple attacks of a pinned Exalt, but will not save you from one who is free. Combining Ripening Treasure Application with Sinking Topaz Essence Shape is extravagant, and without an enhancement like Budding Flower Fist it can fail completely, but it does give you the opportunity to cause an opponent to die in your absence. This is stylish as well as useful.

Comments

Looks pretty neat and original. I like the Charm names. But where's the Form Charm? - Quendalon

Thanks(: I've finished out the tree, and am hoping or more comments on it. I haven't formatted it properly yet, or put in things like MartialArts or Essence prereqs or activation costs. Thanks to Mapache for the Style-of-many-Forms idea; here I've taken it in a different direction. - FourWillowsWeeping

Three forms... is this Sidereal level? - Quendalon

I put a clarification in the top regarding that. - FourWillowsWeeping

Budding Flower Fist looks good. Blossom-Laden Palm seems overpowered due to the temperance break point, and I’m not sure the pleasure-induced initiative penalty feels right in any case; maybe it should inflict a dice penalty instead of or in addition to the initiative penalty (though stacking the penalties may warrant bumping it up the tree). Ripening Treasure Application is a very interesting way to sucker an opponent. Peaches of Immortality Form is very odd; I’m not sure what to think of its combination of benefits. ... hmm, more later. - Quendalon

I'll reexamine that tree; it's the first of those developed, and it doesn't feel quite as good as the other two do. I see your objection to Blossom-Laden Palm... I'm going to go with your dice penalty idea, once I figure good flavor text for it. The mathematics behind Ripening Treasure are seriously frightening; it's a pretty strong Charm. Also, the Forms are a little misaligned, I think, and I'll probably want to be shuffling effects between them until they feel right. There's a little too much diversity between the Charm mechanics at the moment even though the imagery is very strong. I haven't made any changes yet, but expect them. - FourWillowsWeeping

My primary objection with Blossom-Laden Palm regards the Temperance limit; Temperance 1 Exalts aren't that uncommon. This is awfully crippling for a very low-level Charm that has no defense.

OK, comments on other Charms... first, are all of the Form charms unusable with armor? Only Peaches of Immortality Form specifies that armor doesn't work with it. Sinking Topaz Essence Shape seems backward; I understand that the idea behind the charm suggests that low-Essence targets don't have enough Essence to lock them down with, but it seems unbalanced that it's so easy to lock a high-Essence target into place as well. There ought to be some defense or limiting factor here. Honeyed Tides Technique is a really cool idea. Maybe it should have a non-Instant duration though; if you're thickening the air with Essence, it seems to me like it should affect all attacks, not just one. Seductive Nectar Strike is odd; I don't quite grasp the in-character justification for the charm. How does being attacked by enemy A leave enemy B open to your counterstrike? Maybe this just needs clearer flavor text. Golden Wine of Heaven Form is neat. I'd include some sort of dreamy movement with the Form's scent though, to give it more of a Martial Arts feel. - Quendalon

While there aren't a lot of Temperance X Exalts, I would tend to argue that there aren't a lot of Valor X Exalts or a lot of Compassion X Exalts... this depends on how you play the game. Also, neither this Charm nor any of the others that you object to on the grounds that they 'cannot be defended against' are perfect effects; they are all-or-nothing effects tied to attacks. That said, you can definitely expect a lot of successes on the roll to activate this Charm; it might be kinder to reverse the factors and have duration decided by the roll and the penalty decided by Essence. That'll arguably be less gamebreaking. Hmm... yes, all three Forms should be unarmored. I'll make that correction. Thinking about Sinking Topaz, I think that it's displaying more mastery than Honeyed Tides Technique; I'm transposing them and putting in an escape clause or two. I reworded the flavor of Honeyed Tides to make it more single-attack-y. The flavor of Seductive Nectar is edited too... it needs a stronger name, one more relevant to its effect. Thanks again for the great commentary; it's really improved this style a lot. - FourWillowsWeeping

I'm glad that my comments have proven helpful! I'll continue on down the tree then... Flying Autumn Defense is really cool, but seems strong for such a simple Charm, especially in MA - as a dodging Charm, it shouldn't be the equal of an actual Dodge Charm of the same tree depth. I'd bump it up the tree, and move Fruit Bends Branch (another very cool Charm idea) down into that spot. To simplify Fruit Bends Branch, I'd just have each parry increase the weapon's Strength requirement by one. His Own Accord: is this explicitly designed to supplement the Throw special move? If so, you can simplify the results by just having the throw inflict extra damage if the target allows herself to be thrown. Petal-Carrying Current Form looks plain overpowered; it provides more benefits than I think a Form Charm should receive. I'm not sure exactly what abilities should stay because you haven't indicated what it should look like yet.  :) But based on the idea of a petal-carrying current, I'd go with the ability to parry lethal, the reflexive disarm (pretty strong), and add permanent Essence to bashing soak and maybe to one other thing (either dodging or initiative). - Quendalon

That sounds like a good revision regarding Flying Autumn Defense and Fruit Bends Branch; it's been implemented. (Theoretically, the real power of Flying Autumn is in its ability to move for free, which the Dodge Charm doesn't permit at all...) His Own Accord is inspired by an Aikido principle that, to my understanding, states that you cannot force a throw upon another person; the same motions applied to someone who resists should result in a joint-lock or break, depending on how forcefully the technique is employed. I'll read up on Throw later and see if I can streamline the Charm to some extent. You're absolutely right about Petal-Carrying Current Form; I think that I'll drop the lethal soak and the defensive actions bonus. - FourWillowsWeeping

Flying Autumn Defense resembles a DB Charm - I think it was Hopping Firecracker Evasion? - that has a similar effect. Finishing up... Persimmon Ocean of Joy Inspiration looks like a pocket version of Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Form, with its form-combining capability. I'm not sure I like having it infringe on PAoC's territory, especially since the wording allows you to combine all three of these forms AND a completely different Form. Incomparable Harvest Exultation is just plain weird. How does it manifest in terms of the setting to generate its complex of effects? Why does it impose Limit on the user? I like the Temperance roll, though, and I'd recommend using it for Blossom-Laden Palm instead of that Charm's current mechanic. - Quendalon

Incomparable Harvest Exultation is sort of like a bacchanal frenzy kind of situation; you have to override the craziness to use the Charm's intensity for something other than what you think would be fun to do with it (if that makes sense.) I'm thinking that I'll trust your judgement on the Blossom-Laden Palm situation as well. Persimmon Ocean definitely does step on Prismatic Arrangement of Creation's toes a bit; its wording is wholly deliberate. That one is something I'm really attached to, though; I'd consider the version that only makes the Forms compatible with each other, pending the nasty overlapping Form combinations that someone'll turn out eventually. There's this Combo that I really want to use - Honeyed Tides and Flying Autumn, where you send an incoming attack slogging through bullet-time, and then parry it with your outstretched hand and go soaring away to safety. - FourWillowsWeeping