Revision as of 08:07, 5 April 2010

Dreams And Nightmares Style

By Falcon

Background

Dreams And Nightmares Style is an exceptionally rare martial art that is revealed to its practicioners in seemingly random dream sequences. Users of this style adopt a swaying stance that flows strangely through a series of postures, each suitable for attack and defence in different ways. At the heart of its technique, Dreams And Nightmares is a reactive style, emulating the phantasms it's named after - wherever your opponent attacks, you are not, whatever attack you make, is not the one he expects, and whenever your strikes land, they are the thing your enemy fears most.

It is most commonly practiced by powerful dream spirits, who have a much easier time learning the charms than anyone else, but occasionally a martial arts master begins to get the dreams that will eventually unlock the secret of Dreams And Nightmares Style. Where these dreams come from is unknown, but almost all practicioners believe that they are the only person who studies this particular form. The exceptions are the powerful dream spirits who are the most advanced wielders of the art, and the demon Makarios, the Sigil's Dreamer, who has harvested more advanced techniques than anyone else from his dream-trade.

Game Info

This martial arts tree is kind of complicated. First of all, it is very difficult to learn. A being who wants to learn it must first have martial arts as a favoured ability. No one else has the combination of mental and physical potential that this discipline requires. Then, they must raise their martial arts ability to 4 and their Essence to 3. Then they pay the experience to learn the first charm, and gain a random one that they don't already know. They will later have the dream that inspires them to learn the technique. Once they have all the lesser techniques and have raised their martial arts to 5 and essence to 4, the next charm they learn from this 'tree' will be the form.

There are exceptions to this. Dream spirits can learn whatever charm they want when they learn a charm from the 'tree', although they must still master all the lesser techniques before the form. Also, a dream spirit with the Dreamscape or Dreambane charm can use it to teach a specific technique they know to someone who wants to learn it, avoiding the randomness. Dream spirits also lower both the martial arts and Essence requirements by one, and do not need to favour martial arts to learn these charms.

The lesser techniques make reference to the 'rank' of a practicioner of Dreams And Nightmares. A practicioner's rank is equal to the number of lesser techniques they know. As a practicioner's rank increases, he learns new abilities within each charm, as specified by each charm. Note that even if he uses different abilities within a charm within one turn, a being still counts as using only a single charm. Combo them as if they were separate charms, though.

Falcon - Yes, I know it's tricky, confusing, etc. Think of it as a challenge, or just don't combo it with anything.

Example: Nine Resplendent Dragons knows Stalking Night Terror, and no other Dreams And Nightmares charms. He is rank 1, and can only use the rank 1 ability under Stalking Night Terror.

Later, Nine learns Peaceful Repose Touch. Now he is rank 2, and can use the rank 1 and 2 abilities in Peaceful Repose Touch, and the rank 1 ability in Stalking Night Terror. If Stalking Night Terror had a rank 2 ability, he could use that as well, but it doesn't, so he can't.

This martial arts form is quite short, as spirits cannot usually learn essence-based martial arts beyond the form. Makarios and 'those powerful dream spirits' may know additional charms, maybe even beyond the form as special cases, but no one else knows them. Not even the Sidereal sifus fully grasp this style.

Terrestrial Exalts cannot learn Dreams And Nightmares at all - their essence is too tied to material things. Also, mastery of this form does not count for learning advanced Sidereal martial arts. (Unless, of course, some Sidereal manages to learn all those advanced techniques I haven't made up and properly master the style.)

Charms

Peaceful Repose Touch</b>

<b>Cost: Varies
Duration: Varies
Type: Varies
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: None

In a dream of still pools and trees made of silence, the character learns how to bring sleep through gentle use of pressure points and essence manipulation.

Rank 1 (1M, Supplemental, Instant)\\ With a gentle brush of your hand, you can bring peaceful sleep to those who suffer nightmares. After one use of this charm, the recipient (who must be asleep when the touch is delivered) will suffer no bad dreams or restless sleep for the rest of the night, and will awaken refreshed. They get a bonus die on the morning Conviction roll to recover Willpower.

Rank 2 (1M, Supplemental, Instant)\\ By investing your touches with essence, you can now bring peaceful sleep even to those who are awake. Although someone who resists this ability can shrug it off easily, a willing target will be sent to sleep just as if you had used the rank 1 ability. This power defeats insomnia and stimulants (although a target jacked up on crack may not wish to sleep at all) but is ineffective against things which do not sleep at all.

Rank 4 (4M, Supplemental, Instant)\\ As you approach mastery, you can deliver the essence of sleep to a target using your unarmed attacks. Whenever you hit someone with an attack enhanced using this ability, the target must make a reflexive Stamina + Endurance roll with a difficulty equal to your Compassion. If he fails, he suffers a -1 Dex penalty for the rest of the scene as supernatural lassitude overtakes his system. Anyone whose Dex is reduced to 0 in this way falls asleep as if the rank 1 ability had been used on them. This ability has no effect on things which do not sleep at all, or who are protected from mental exhaustion by charms, spells, etc..

Stalking Night Terror</b>

<b>Cost: Varies
Duration: Varies
Type: Varies
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: None

A series of nightmares, each more unnatural and terrifying than the last, gives the character new insight into the meaning of fear. A horrific torture session at the hands of an imaginary nemesis teaches them the art of evoking that terror in their enemies.

Rank 1 (Constant)\\ The experience of learning this charm tends to render people somewhat blase in the face of fear. They have seen what the darkness of dreams holds, and the torments of Creation pale in comparison. Once you have learned Stalking Night Terror, you always add your Conviction in dice to any rolls ro resist fear, terror, shock, or other things at the Storyteller's discretion.

Rank 3 (3M, Reflexive, Instant)\\ As your insight into terrible dreams grows, you learn to show others what you have learned. As someone attacks you, you may fix them with a stare of utter malignancy and unless they have the courage of the gods, their blow will falter. You may use this ability on anyone who attacks you. They must succeed in rolling their Valour against a difficulty of your Conviction or they will lack the courage to follow through and the attack will not hit you. This charm works on one attack at a time.

Rank 5 (5M, Supplemental, Instant)\\ At the pinnacle of your power over fear, you can reach into the minds of your opponents and distill their fears into essence that you lace about your body the moment before you strike them. Whatever their weakness is, you will find it. Whatever their bane is, your hands strike like it. They will see all their nightmares come true as your strikes fall on their body and soul. Any attack enhanced with this charm does aggravated damage. In addition, survivors tend to have nightmares for some time, and mortals tend to acquire serious psychological scars.

Ephemeral Presence Technique</b>

<b>Cost: Varies
Duration: Varies
Type: Varies
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: None

The character dreams of strange realms which do not obey the same laws as Creation, which have only two dimensions or as many as twelve. In considering himself in different possible states of being, he learns to achieve some of those states when he returns to the waking world.

Rank 1 (4M/die, Reflexive, Instant)\\ With a thought, you can invest yourself briefly with the power of dreams, making your body slighty insubstantial and moving with a languid grace that makes time seem to stretch out. Whenever someone attacks you, you may convert their post-soak damage dice to automatic failures at a cost of 4 motes per die. You may not convert more dice this way than your rank. When used against a power that converts damage dice to automatic successes, each use of this charm reverts one automatic success to a normal die of damage, and each use of the other charm will convert one automatic failure back to a normal die.

Rank 3 (5M, Reflexive, Instant)\\ Using your insight into dream, you make your location indeterminate, both everywhere and nowhere for a short moment before Creation reasserts its pull. This provides an impenetrable defence, as only the most talented assailants can strike at everything and nothing simultaneously. You may use this charm to automatically dodge an incoming attack that you are aware of. This is an explicitly perfect defence, and may be used to avoid undodgeable attacks.

Rank 5 (6M + 1W, Reflexive, Instant)\\ With mastery of alternate dream selves, you refine your skill with your indeterminate location. This ability works exactly like the rank 3 ability, except that by exerting your will when you become indeterminate, you may reappear somewhere else up to (Temperance) yards away, including behind your attacker or on the other side of physical barriers.

Phantasmal Body Methods</b>

<b>Cost: Varies
Duration: Varies
Type: Varies
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: None

There is nothing unusual about the dreams that teach Phantasmal Body Methods, except that although the memory of what they are about and what they teach is clear, no one can ever remember the characters who teach them the arts. When this charm is used, people's memories of the character are often hazy and indistinct, even if they used the charm to make themselves more distinctive.

Rank 1 (4M, Reflexive, Instant)\\ It is often difficult to remember exactly what characters in dreams look like, and the simplest application of this charm allows you to call on the essence of dreams to mask your identity. You may activate this charm immediately upon leaving someone's presence and their impression of you will begin to fade. Although they will remember the particulars of your meeting accurately, and they will know they talked to/fought with/had sex with someone, within a few minutes their knowledge of your identity will be gone from their mind.

Falcon - I have no idea how this would work with Sidereals. It also seems kind of powerful, but then again a really good disguise skill will have the same effect, or one of many Abyssal charms, or the Arcane Fate, so...

Rank 2 (5M + 1W, Simple, Scene)\\ With a deep breath and a languid gesture, you can infuse your body with the essence of dreams. Nothing that happens to you seems real, and you have a curious detachment regarding your injuries, stemming from the odd confidence that they will all be gone come morning. You ignore any further wound penalties from the moment you activate this charm. In addition, should you be knocked unconscious or killed before the end of the scene, all of your damage will immediately be converted to bashing and you will spontaneously heal your Essence in health levels. This ends the charm, and you will wake a few minutes later. Anyone observing you at the time will be convinced your wounds are real, although if they later consult their memory they will realise they were inexplicably wrong.

Rank 5 (1W + 3M/point, Simple, Scene)\\ A moment of concentration and an elaborate series of flowing movements is all it takes to unlock the most powerful manifestation of the Phantasmal Body. By fully lacing yourself with dream-stuff, you may shift your form into something from dreams or nightmares. You may buy as many transformation 'points' as you have dots in Compassion + Essence. Each point may be used to buy one dot of an attribute, one rank of lethal and bashing soak, to convert your attacks from bashing to lethal damage, and so on. The Storyteller is advised to judge transformations and require an appropriate number of points for them. If stuck for ideas, try the Gifts in the Lunar book. These transformations remain for the rest of the scene, until you reactivate this charm, or until you will yourself back to normal.

Flowing World Methods</b>

<b>Cost: Varies
Duration: Varies
Type: Varies
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: None

Much like the Phantasmal Body Methods, the dreams that teach Flowing World Methods are nothing unusual. However, although the techniques and teachers are remembered, the setting of each dream remains wholly beyond the reach of even the greatest memory. Manifestations of this charm are quite obvious, often distorting perceptions or filling the area with phantasmal images appropriate to the effects being produced.

Rank 1 (4M/action, Extra Action, Instant)\\ In dreams, time is often a mutable thing. Learning to bend this to your advantage in Creation is easier than you might think, and you can accelerate your own pace while your enemies seem to be fighting underwater. When you activate this ability, you replace your normal action for the turn with as many actions as you are willing to buy, to a maximum of your rank.

Rank 3 (4M + 1W, Reflexive, Instant)\\ In the world of dreams, landscapes are relative, representing aspects of the psyche of the dreamer. A sufficiently talented student of Dreams And Nightmares Style can bring that malleability into Creation, except here it is his will that determines how the world is shaped. You may activate this charm reflexively whenever someone attempts to flee from combat. No matter how they run, by magic or physical means, they find themselves back where they started, in the same nightmarish situation.

Rank 5 (10M + 1W, Simple, Variable)\\ For a master of dream-arts, the whole of Creation can become his playground. By making eye contact with his opponent, the character can vanish in a rush of darkness and the sound of wings. A single raiton's croak, a sound of ill-omen, echoes in the wake of his departure and his target is gripped by a sense of fear and unease. No matter where that being goes, how far or how fast, the fear will not leave them. Only once they have returned to somewhere they feel secure will the character remanifest nearby, striking at their opponent just as they think they have reached safety. Because the character has become the fear that haunts his target, most things will be unable to affect him. However, he appears to those who can perceive spirits as a dark aura hanging around his target, and he can be struck by attacks that can hurt dematerialised spirits. Likewise, exorcisms will force him out, as will any effects that force spirits to materialise.

Dreams And Nightmares Form</b>

<b>Cost: 10 motes
Duration: Scene
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 4
Prereqs: Peaceful Repose Touch, Stalking Night Terrors, Ephemeral Presence Techniques, Phantasmal Body Methods, Flowing World Methods.

The character begins a never-ending series of flowing movements, always in motion and striking from a different angle each time. Her body takes on some of the consistency of dreams, untouchable and unassailable, and her strikes are as effective as people fear them to be.

While using this form, the character's statistics increase as follows:

• All soaks are boosted by her Essence + Temperance as the character's body becomes semi-solid. This soak counts as armour against aggravated damage, and as natural soak against armour-bypassing attacks.
• Martial arts attacks get extra dice equal to her Conviction as the syrupy flow of time aids the character against her enemies.
• Damage from martial arts attacks gets extra post-soak dice equal to her Valour as, like in a dream, the fears of her opponents strive to become true.
• All dodge attempts get extra dice equal to Essence + Compassion as her mercurial stance and constant movement slide effortlessly away from attacks. Note that this does not give you a dodge-from-nowhere. It only enhances actual dodges you make.

Comments

Falcon - Just a quick one to start. The thinking behind this style is that it is very difficult to learn, and very little use until you start to get good. However, once you are a master, you are very dangerous indeed. Like dreams - difficult to understand, hard to grasp, and full of useful stuff if you know where to look.

Hey! Very interesting! I love creativity like this. - Morpheus

I love the *idea* of this style, but it's very hard to digest, and the multi-effect Charms seem to mess with the system a bit much. With some free time, I might take a look at this and post a D&N2 for you to critique. &Arafelis

• Back to Falcon/Charms.
• Back to MartialArts.