MartialArts/RipplingQuicksilverStyle
Rippling Quicksilver Style
Background
Disciples of the Rippling Quicksilver Style practice fluid, limber movements. The style provides excellent benefits for dodging attacks, withstanding punishing blows, slipping out of holds, and snaring opponents in holds of one’s own. However, Rippling Quicksilver stylists gain no benefits to ordinary attacks or parries, and the style’s defensive attitude generally limits its use among warriors and soldiers, making it more to the taste of sorcerers, courtiers and scholars. This is a Terrestrial style.
This style’s Charms treat entangling attacks with nets and cloaks as unarmed attacks. None of these Charms are compatible with armor.
- By Quendalon
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Charms
Skittering Silver Droplet
Cost: 3 motes Duration: Instant Type: Reflexive Min. Martial Arts: 3 Min. Essence: 2 Prereqs: None
Borrowing the resilience of quicksilver, the character bounces safely away from harm. She adds her Essence rating to her dodge pool against a single attack. If the attack lands (whether or not it actually inflicts any damage), she immediately moves directly away from the attacker, covering a number of yards equal to her Martial Arts score. This movement does not count against the character’s movement rate for the turn, and may take the character out of melee range if the attacker doesn’t have enough movement left to keep up. This is a hopping defense (see the Exalted Player’s Guide, p. 201-202).
Silver Slips Through the Fingers
Cost: 2 motes Duration: Instant Type: Reflexive Min. Martial Arts: 3 Min. Essence: 2 Prereqs: None
Like quicksilver, the character cannot be held; the more tightly she is grasped, the more easily she may escape. When making a contested clinch roll, her opponent does not get to add his Strength or Dexterity to his dice pool. If the character wins, she automatically escapes the clinch; she may not choose to maintain the clinch or inflict damage on her opponent, nor may she knock her opponent down or back.
Silver Accepts Steel
Cost: 3 motes Duration: Instant Type: Reflexive Min. Martial Arts: 3 Min. Essence: 2 Prereqs: None
Resilient as liquid, the character accepts a blow with the surety that it will do her no lasting harm. She adds her Martial Arts score to her bashing and lethal soak against a single attack.
Rippling Quicksilver Form
Cost: 6 motes Duration: One scene Type: Simple Min. Martial Arts: 4 Min. Essence: 3 Prereqs: Skittering Silver Droplet, Silver Slips Through the Fingers, Silver Accepts Steel
Upon assuming this Form, the character's muscles loosen and relax; she adopts a fluid, responsive pose, utterly open and sensitive to threats to her person. While the Form Charm is active, the character adds her Essence rating to her initiative score and to all of her Dodge pools. She may reflexively dodge attacks as well, with each reflexive dodge pool starting with a number of dice equal to her Essence rating. Rippling Quicksilver Form is incompatible with the use of armor. A character may not use more than one Martial Arts form-type charm at a time.
Unbroken Mirror Defense
Cost: 5 motes, 1 Willpower Duration: One scene Type: Simple Min. Martial Arts: 5 Min. Essence: 3 Prereqs: Rippling Quicksilver Form
Like a pool of shimmering liquid, the character’s body absorbs cuts and blows without suffering harm. For the duration of the scene, the character adds her permanent Essence rating to her bashing soak, and may soak lethal damage with her bashing soak. In addition, the character gains Hardness against bashing and lethal damage equal to her Essence rating.
Clinging Silver Stream
Cost: 2 motes Duration: Instant Type: Reflexive Min. Martial Arts: 5 Min. Essence: 3 Prereqs: Rippling Quicksilver Form
The character clings like liquid to an opponent’s skin, making her grasp all but impossible to escape. When initiating or attempting to maintain a clinch, she adds her Essence rating in automatic successes to her Dexterity + Martial Arts roll. If successful, she must hold her opponent without inflicting damage.
Ineluctable Fluid Strike
Cost: 4 motes, 1 Willpower Duration: Instant Type: Simple Min. Martial Arts: 5 Min. Essence: 3 Prereqs: Rippling Quicksilver Form
Like liquid, the character’s attack flows around all obstacles. She makes a single unarmed attack using her Dexterity + Martial Arts, and adds her Essence rating to the difficulty to parry that attack. If the attack hits, subtract the character’s Essence rating from the defender’s soak.
Thousand Shining Droplets
Cost: 3 motes, 1 Willpower Duration: Instant Type: Reflexive Min. Martial Arts: 5 Min. Essence: 4 Prereqs: Unbroken Mirror Defense, Clinging Silver Stream, Ineluctable Fluid Strike
Strike a puddle of quicksilver hard enough and it shatters into a thousand droplets. But when those droplets flow back together, the puddle is as it was before, unharmed and serene. Immediately after being struck by an attack that inflicts at least one health level of damage, the character shatters into a mass of ghostly images that circle and swirl like breeze-torn mist. She reforms at the start of her next action; until then, the character’s quicksilver Essence renders her immune to most attacks. She may only be affected by area-affecting attacks and by attacks that cannot be dodged, and even then, she adds her Essence rating in automatic successes to her dodge rolls. She may reflexively dodge attacks with these automatic successes even if she does not have an action available.
Comments
kewl i think i have to make an NPC with this to Frustate my PC's for a bit. - Issaru
