TonyC/InvincibleSwordPrincessAnalysis
Invincible Sword Princess would've been awesome... had First & Forsaken Lion stood still and traded blows with her. <sigh> Which is a stupid stupid thing to assume in hindsight. After all, why bother trading blows when you can take her out simply by ignoring her and letting her run out of essence? Which is exactly what happened. (And boy was Princess mad. She really really hates being ignored.)
It would've been better to separate the Impermanence of Cherry Blossoms combo into two combos. One a defensive, combo, consisting of mostly Reflexive charms and the Flowing Mirror of Opposition Technique, and an offensive component consisting of Rain of Unseen Threads and Five Dragon Force Blow plus Heavenly Guardian Defense, just in case. She'll be able to control her essence expenditure better that way. I also think that there are a couple more alternate designs that's probably more efficient point wise. For example, using a pair of hooked swords and not bothering to get the SMA charm could probably save you a few charms. The visuals aren't as pretty though, but your mileage may vary.
Princess would also benefit from a movement booster of some sort. Like Stone Monkey, she was unable to keep up with Lion's movement rate. Ah well, lesson learned. - TonyC
From a general point of view, Invincible Sword Princess is an excellent example of the fact that straightforward fighting alone doesn't work properly at high Essence. When I first saw her sheet, and in particular her combo, my jaw hit the floor. It took a bit of thought to notice the Essence flaw in it; if she doesn't get hit, she can't keep it going. Still, she was definately a scary one. :) - FrivYeti
- My first thought on looking at most of these five was definitely to the effect of, "wow, those are bigger combos than any real character would have." Both because of the insane costs and simply because by the time of reaching 500 XP, most character would have wanted to develop some foundational combos along the way, which would probably get a lot of mileage even later. Obviously this principle ended up hitting ISP the hardest. (I still think she looked way cool in the opening round, though.) - IanPrice, jaw still agape at the coolness of that battle.
