Revision as of 08:06, 5 April 2010

Charging Rhino Style

Name: Charging Rhino Style
Level: Celestial
Armor: None
Weapons: Fighting Gauntlets, short swords and their artifact counterparts.
Not many sights in nature can match the fearsome charge of an adult rhino, it's mass and single minded determination (Or madness) makes it unstoppable and every straight-thinking hunter will do his best to become hidden, or distant, or both.
Martial artists of this style pride themselves on their renowned determination to prevail at all costs and their fearsomeness in combat.
As persons, these artists are usually stubborn, conservative and relatively emotional.

Rhino's Righteous Anger

Cost: 2 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Min. Martial Arts: 3
Min. Essence: 1
Prereqs: None

An angry rhino will never cower in the face of danger.
By activating this charm, the character can re-roll a single valor check, even one caused by his foes' charms. The second roll always counts. This charm can only be used once per turn.

Blood-shot Eyed Determination

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

Once provoked, even pain and damage will not slow a rhino's charge.
Ignore all wound penalties for the duration of the turn on which this charm is activated.
This charm does not affect penalties caused by things other than damage, and does not work against charms that cause greater penalties.

Rapid Charge Technique

Cost: 1 motes
Duration: Turn
Type: Reflexive
Min. Martial Arts: 3
Min. Essence: 1
Prereqs: None

The speed of a rhino often amazes those who first witness it.
In the turn when Rapid Charge technique is activated, the martial artist may move up to his full sprinting speed without losing his action for the turn. Of course, this charm can only be used to attack or otherwise advance towards an enemy, never to flee or even retreat momentarily.

Charging Rhino Form

Cost: 5 motes
Duration: Scene
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 2
Prereqs: Rapid Charge Technique, Blood-shot Eyed Determination, Rhino's Righteous Anger

When a martial artist reaches this level of control, he truly internalizes the nature of the rhino in conflict – Unwavering, unstopping and destructive.
The martial artist inflicts lethal damage with his unarmed attacks as well as with weapons that usually cause bashing damage.
This is not a choice and in order to pull the strike to bashing damage the martial artist must reduce his attack by 2 successes.
The Rhinos thick hide is also emulated in this form, and the martial artist gains his essence in Lethal soak, bashing soak and hardness.
All attempts to parry the artist's attacks are reduced by his martial arts rating (dodges are unaffected).
The martial artist can move his full sprinting distance without losing his action. The martial artist adds his essence in dice to all his parry rolls and subtracts his essence from all his dodge rolls when this form is active, this addition does not count towards the charm-dice maximum.
Finally, an artist cannot flee the battle while this form is active, nor can he become fearful and de-activate this form in order to flee without a temperance roll with a difficulty equal to half his essence, rounded down.

Resilient Rhino Hide

Cost: 6 motes, 1 willpower
Duration: Scene
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Charging Rhino Form

A Rhino's hide can withstand great amounts of damage.
The martial artist's skin hardens and becomes rugged and thick.
For the duration of the scene, he can soak lethal damage with his bashing soak.

Heavy Hide understanding

Cost: None
Duration: Permanent
Type: Special
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Resilient Rhino Hide

The martial artist fully internalizes the rhino's sacrifice, losing his mobility and the ability to dodge his foes for greater protection.
He can use the charms of this style with armor.
While he is using armor, he cannot dodge an incoming attack, Even if under the effects of Flow Like Blood and similar charms. Even a perfect dodge cannot allow him to escape an attack (Applying the 'Application of Perfection' policy).

Unstoppable Charge of the Rhino

Cost: 3 Motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Charging Rhino Form

The artist kicks the ground and launches forward, like a rhino in his madness charging to tear his foes apart.
Attacks made with this charm are completely unblockable, and their amazing speed reduces the dodge pool of a foe by the artist's essence rating.
Perfect parries like Heavenly Guardian Defense still work, as per the perfect charms rules.

Fearless Rhino Warrior

Cost: 2 Motes, 1 Willpower
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Unstoppable Charge of the Rhino

An artist in the height of the rhino style is completely fearless, nothing can make him cower.
When activating this charm, an artist perfectly succeeds in a single valor check, even if it is generated by magical effects. This is a perfect effect.

Horn-Emulating Punch

Cost: 1 Motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Charging Rhino Form

The artist channels essence through his form and his attacks strike with amazing power.
The successes rolled on the attack roll are doubled for the purposes of calculating damage.

Insistent Aggressor Charge

Cost: 4 motes, 1 willpower
Duration: Instant 
Type: Extra-Action
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Horn-Emulating Punch

A rhino, when his foe still stands, will incessantly keep attacking, never dropping the charge.
An artist using this charm moves faster than any human can, charging, spinning around and charging again.
The artist can make his essence rating in extra attacks (Note that all extra actions must be used as attacks).
The artist may not split his dice-pool in a turn they use Insistent Aggressor Charge.

Perfection of the Charging Rhino

Cost: 8 motes, 1 willpower
Duration: Scene
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 4
Prereqs: Insistent Aggressor Charge, Thrusting Horn Understanding, Fearless Rhino Warrior, Heavy Hide understanding

At the peak of the Charging Rhino Style the artist becomes like a rhino in all things, a true force of nature.
Unable to feel fear, the artist automatically succeeds in all valor checks during the scene.
Also, emulating the rhino's ability to swing obstacles aside with his horn, an artist using this charm can reflexively parry all attacks against his person, he must be able to perceive the attacks in question and he must attack at least once in a turn to activate this effect.
Opponents who are parried in this fashion are thrown back the character's martial arts in yards and must roll Wits+Athletics at diff 2 to remain upright.
Finally, the artist ignores all damage penalties during the scene in which this charm is active.
The form charm must be active in order to activate Perfection of the Charging Rhino.

Talk about this style

Too powerful. Very, very nice, and wonderfully themed, but sadly, it just does too much. I'll try and break it down into more useful comments later, but just on a read-through, this style does everything. By the end of the tree, you're wearing heavy armour, can still benefit from flow like blood (although you lose a few dice) have a reflexive scenelong parry against everything as long as you attack, are ignoring valor rolls, cause knockback on parries, ignore damage penalties, can use (artifact) shortswords, inflict lethal damage with anything, get added dice on parries which don't count against charm limits, inflict +MA difficulty against any opposed parry, can move up to full sprinting speed with no penalties, and get + twice your essence to your already sky-high soaks!!!

I've seen sidereal martial arts that give less bonuses. Seriously. And that's just the form charm and the pinnacle charm + the soakbooster... after ALL of that, you've STILL got the ability to get multi-attacks, unblockable attacks, extra-damage attacks, and more!

Even a character with all of the melee tree and all of the soak tree would be hard-pressed to equal this style, let alone exceed it.

That said, I shall try and provide some more specific commentary as to what I think is overpowered, where, and why:

Pre-form - all looks good, although very uncomboable, that probably fits the style's theme.

Form charm - Way, way, way too many effects. I know, you've balanced most with some disadvantages, but for just 5m committed and at MA 4 Essence 2, there are just too many here.

• The lethal+notchoice is a minor effect, in theme, very nice, should probably be kept, it's certainly nothing to worry about.
• +Essence to all soaks inc. hardness - this is a moderately powerful effect, but most forms have at least one +Essence style effect, and it makes sense. Keep this too.
• +MA to all parry difficulties - now, here's where the first big problem is. Most MA forms do have a +MA style bonus, but it's usually in DICE, not difficulties/successes. Admittedly, it only applies to parries, but that's little consolation, +5 difficulty against parries is a BIG bonus, ESPECIALLY on a scenelong... If it were in melee, I'd be considering a willpower cost for this effect alone. It would certainly cost more than 5m... I'd probably end up putting it around me4/e3, with a cost of 6-7 motes. Why am I quoting melee in a MA tree? Because it is said that MA should be slightly less powerful, considering. I don't think such a powerful effect is appropriate for a form already doing other things... if you really need to keep it, at least drop it to +Essence difficulty.
• shift Essence dice from dodges to parries, ignores dice limit - Another fairly nice but not gigantic power... but we've already got 1 tiny 1 minor and 1 really huge power, it's beginning to seem too much, for a charm that costs ONLY 5 motes and lasts a scene.
• uncompensated disadvantage - cannot flee without deactivating, hard to deactivate form... this perhaps makes up for the 'extra' power of shifting dice from dodge to parry(and yes, that -is- an advantage, especially if a character never dodges, it's just not as large as straight-up adding dice) but certainly doesn't make up for the +difficulty effect.

Well, there's the form charm. But what's this? Another scenelong, just below? soak bashing with lethal, you say? Powerful, for sure, but appropriate for where it is. I might add another mote of cost as it has +Ess to the resulting soaks, but in general, it's okay. On its own at least... But...

when combined with the "Wear any armour" charm, it becomes a really, really nasty combination. Soak L with B is usually a way for MAists to step around the NoArmour limitation... if you can wear armour AND soak L with B, you're going to be seeing really, really big soak scores. Let us consider an artifact buff jacket, not an uncommon exalted armour, with 10B soak(12 if orichalcum, but hey). Let us also consider a stamina 4, ess 3 character. They now have 20B soak, before bashing-soak charms, some of which do stack with armour, and they're soaking everything with it. Their lethal soak would have been 15L.

the disadvantage - can't dodge except with dodge-enablers isn't really that big a disadvantage, considering that anyone relying on dodge will have both of those charms. It's in theme for the style though and makes the wearing-armour thing seem less broken, it's mainly the combination of soak L with B that causes problems, as I say. For even more ick, consider that warstriders are technically armour too(although most GMs will just laugh at you if you try that), and ISoB stacks fine with armour, which is more worrying as +12B +12H soak will make this build really, really powerful.

Unstoppable Charge - this isn't a perfect, which is good. But it's clearly as close as you were comfortable getting with a martial art. Unblockable, -AND- dodges are reduced by essence. Still, it's costly and Simple... On its own, I would be fine with this, high up a MA tree where it is it seems okay. Added to the many other rather-nice effects this tree has, it's beginning to seem like the tree as a whole suffers from the same many-many problem as the form does.

Fearless Rhino Warrior - Hmm... Not sure how to consider such an effect, they're rare. But, it seems good, so I'm okay with this one too.

Horn-Emulating Punch - costs only 1m, but is way up the tree, much more expensive to combo... Yes, this is appropriate, and fits the style again.

but then, we get to use shortswords... why, exactly? You're already doing lethal damage, and a fair amount of it at that. Why do we need to use shortswords in this style? It's a weird thing to see, and I'm honestly not sure why it's in here - if you really want to have unarmed attacks doing more damage, I would suggest a scenelong damage adder here instead. I'm against MA forms automatically coming with style weapons, but you could also set shortsword as an in-style weapon just in general. That would let people with the melee-score to know how to use one use it with the charms.

Insistant Aggressor Charge - seems fairly appropriate, not -too- many attacks, it's again a nice ability for the near-top of a style like this.

and then, the pinnacle.

Scenelong. Reflexive. Only 6motes 1will.

What does it do? Well... A scenelong parry. The melee scenelong parry is 3m, 1w, and the dodge one is the same (as well as being non-reflexive.) That right there would make the cost of this charm appropriate for a MA style, they don't often get full-pool scenelongs, so one might be appropriate at a pinnacle. When combined with the parry-knockback, and must-attack limitations, that feels about right. By the way, is that Wits+Athletics against knockdown reflexive? I'd assume and hope so, but stating is always good for clarity.

But it doesn't stop there, it does rather a bit more. Auto-success at all valor rolls for the entire scene! That's powerful by itself, highly so, and I'd give it its own charm and its own willpower, personally, although a little lower down a tree.

And, finally, ignores all damage penalties, for the entire scene. Well, that's also very nice - I'm assuming here that you mean damage-only penalties, much like the previous charm? It's not a major power, sure, but combined with the other effects this charm has, it's worth upcosting it.

But, in general, I'm okay with the pinnacle too. My problem with the style is that between ALL of these effects, it seems to do just about everything you could ever want from 1 MA style, and is mid-celestial rather than sidereal.

I hope this massive block of critique helps rather than annoys, and just in case it wasn't clear, I -do- like the style and the theme, it's obvious you've put more effort into making the style represent the animal than many I've seen.
-- Darloth

Thanks for the feedback, I Really appreciate it, and agree with most of it. here's the first wave of adjustments I did, following the feedback:

• Destroyed the Thrusting-Horn understanding, added short swords as a viable style-weapon in the first place.
  
• Changed the form's third power from raising the difficulty of parries to just reducing parry dice equal to the martial arts of the Rhino-practitioner.
  
• Resilient Rhino Hide - dropped the +essence soak effect, technically making this identical to Snake Style's Essence Scales and Fangs (minus the no-weapon limitation in Snake Style's version). Also added a willpower cost.
  
• Heavy Hide Understanding - Alright, even flow like blood and Seven Shadow Evasion won't help the rhino-dude now. Can never ever dodge when wearing armor. This is a /major/ setback, as dodges are half the available defenses of a warrior, this effectively changes the whole balance of the style and probably is the most major change I performed here.
  
• Increased the pinnacle charm's cost to 8 motes, 1 willpower from 6 motes, 1 willpower. And changed it to simple. It takes a while for the martial artist to enter the mental and emotional state of the Rhino.
  

What do you think now? More opinions will be warmly welcome. --BrassLeviathan

Seems almost right to me now... Although, with Resilient Rhino Hide now costing a willpower, I might add the +Essence back in... I'm not sure. Without the availability of dodges, having a silly-high soak seems more reasonable, and without armour, an extra +Essence soak will only overpower if you're a sidereal with Soul Fire Shaper. But that breaks most martial arts, so it's usually wise just not to think about it.
-- Darloth