BrilliantRain/HunterSkycutter

Hunter Skycutter

Artifact 3 --By BrilliantRain

Appearance: This weapon looks like a four foot long boomerang made of one of the Five Magical Materials. It has a hand grip at each end and, while it is primarily balanced for throwing, it can be used as a daiklave should it be nessisary.

Powers:
|| ||Speed||Accuracy||Damage||Defence||Rate||Range||Minimums|| ||Ranged||+0||+3||+5L||NBrilliantRain/HunterSkycutter/A||1||40||Dex 3|| ||Melee||+3||+2||+5L||+2||NBrilliantRain/HunterSkycutter/A||NBrilliantRain/HunterSkycutter/A||Dex 3||

Attunement: 8m (any)

• Boomerang Technique: The Grand Skycutter returns to the user's hand right after it finishes any ranged attack, regardless of the success or failure of the attack.

• Boomerang Attack: When you miss someone, either through straight failure or a dodge on their part, you may pay 3m to have the boomerang make a second ranged attack against the same person on it's return trip. This attack is made at -3 but it approches from behind, so some defences may not apply and anyone who has never seen this method of attack before may be suprised. Regardless of the success or failure of this attack, the skycutter returns to the hand of the owner at the end of the round.

• Hunter's Boomerang: All Hunter Skycutters have an aura power that is dependant upon what material the boomerang is made of. The stat bonuses apply to both hand to hand and ranged stats.

• • Demon Hunter: These Orichalcum weapons get +1 Speed, +1 Accuracy, & +1L damage and when 3m is spent it activate it's aura for an instant, the blazing golden light causes the weapon's damage to be aggrivated against creatures of darkness (demons, abyssals, undead, basically anything that the Zenith caste ability effects).

• • Prey Hunter: Moonsilver Skycutters get +2 Accuracy and when 3m is spent to activate it's aura of mottled white light for a scene, the attuned user may pick any target they have wounded with the sky cutter and it will follow them and attack them once every round, just as if the user were attacking them with the Skycutter, until the target is dead or the Skycutter gets to it's maximum range from the attuned user. The attuned user of the Skycutter cannot enhance the the automatic attack of the Skycutter with charms. If the attuned user is a Lunar, the fallen opponent counts as having been hunted by the Lunar for the Heart's Blood ritual.

• • Attack Hunter: The minimalist Starmetal Skycutters get a +2 to defence, and, by spending 3m to activate it's subtle glittering aura for an instant, may use it to sever the threads of fate that bind an opponent's ranged weapon to it's target. When these threads are cut, they have a tendancy to cause the weapon to snap back to the attacker, with painful results. This means that, if the attuned user activates this power by spending 3m, after declaring a parry, but before rolling it,and they succede in fully parrying the attack, it hits the person who made the attack. If the user fails to fully parry the attack it hits the user. Note that this parry does not reduce the number of successes on the attack, regardless of who it hits.

• • Army Hunter: Most Jade Skycutter are constructed with Blue Jade, but any color of Jade is permissible when constructing an Army Hunter. The Jade construction causes the skycutter to get +3 to Speed and +30 to Range. By paying 3m to awaken the skycutter's elemental fury for an instant, the attuned user can create a small elemental tornado. This tornado can be targeted anywhere within the normal range of the skycutter, uses a normal Dex+Thrown roll to hit, affects everyone within 4 yards of the targeted area, and has a base damage of 4L.

• • Bounty Hunter: The Soulsteel Skycutter knows the scent of life and irristibly lusts after it, thus giving it +1 Speed, +1 Accuracy, +1L Damage and, when it's inky black aura is activated for a instant (3m), doubles it's base damage.

Comments

This was inspired by Tsukishiro's crecent moon sword (I dunno what it's actual name was) from Flame of Recca as well as a few other Anime boomerangs.
--BrilliantRain

Hmm.. it's an interesting concept, I'll admit. My only real question is should the ranged attack have rate 1? My guess would be it would be possible to "Xena" the thing, bouncing it off of multiple enemies, thus giving you a higher effective rate than the one throw per round indicated. Perhaps 2? - GregLink

well first of all I'm not totatlly finished with it, as I think the stats need

some tweaking. Second, since the basic Skycutter has a rate of 2 and grand weapons are usually bigger and slower, I gave it a rate of one. Thirdly, you can still "Xena" it using charms, like Reaping the Bloody Wheat (CB:Dawn, pg 75), or possibly even stunts, depending on your ST. --BrilliantRain

Me again, with comments. I'm liking the color text, but I'm a bit concerned that some (almost all) of the '3m bonus powers' are a bit much. and by a bit, I mean a heck of a lot. In particular, Agg damage for 3m is a lot, especially considering that you also get the stat boosts. Similarly, with Moonsilver, the way it's worded, you can theoretically add charms to it, even though it's still attacking from a distance. Whic his wierd, and would allow weird things because Lunar charms often work on multiple attack types. As an example, consider using your moonsilver claws in melee while your moonsilver Skycutter is off harassing someone. Activate a Lunar attack charm twice, and have it affect both? Next up - Starmetal. Kindof cool, but also a little powerful. Not as bad as the others, at least. Finally, doubling one's base damage, and making something piercing, and adding +1 damage is pretty big. I mean, we're talking +6 to +7 damage here, plus halving opponent's armor soak, for 3m for the scene? That's huge. Almost as huge as Agg damage, admittedly, but yeah. Personally, I can see these effects being within reason, but I'd almost want a 10m commit, and a 5m activation cost for them. -- GregLink

Yeah, I made a few goofs when I wrote a few of the things down. It should be mostly fixed now. --BrilliantRain

12L+sux Piercing damage against anything is almost universally better than 6A+sux unpiercing damage against nasty things only (and I'm not sure abyssals count, it's always been iffy.)
-- Darloth thinks the soulsteel ones are still a little above par compared to the rest. Except possibly starmetal, which cheats far too much. Also needs to be clarified - does this mean the defence doesn't reduce successes, or just causes a 0 success attack against the attacker with his/her own weapon?

I'd agree with Darloth that +6L and piercing is a bit better than just Agg damage against icky black things. I might be happier if it were only the simple +2 damage (or better yet, -2 soak), plus the peircing. That way, mechanically, they tend to reduce soak about the same amount. In one case, natural soak doesn't apply, reducing soak by maybe 3-5 points. Similarly, with piercing, and almost anyone wearing some sort of armoring gear, it'll be the same reduction. Thing is, then the Soulsteel is useful on anything, and the Solar is only useful on certain things. Since really, while people tend to think of the Solars as "anti-evil", that's not really true at all. I mean, the darkness that they're fighting now didn't even exist when they were first designed and created. Honestly, the only reason that it's "Darkness" it's because it's the opposite of Solar light. I mean, if it were the Sidereals-turned-deathlords, it wouldn't be all about blackness, it'd all be about something else, because Darkness isn't the opposite of "Starriness". Having said that, making something with such a strong first-age feel have a Solar-specific anti-deathlord/anti-darkness feel seems not quite appropriate. I'd suggest going with something a bit more "Supreme" and "Solar"-y, such as automatically converting damage dice to successes, or halving defensive successes. -- GregLink,with a personal campaign against the theory that Solars are automatically the enemy of the dead. They're not - they're the enemy of the Yozis, and demons, but the dead didn't exist when the Solars were conceived of...

Ok I've toned down the abyssal attack and better defined the sidereal parry. Does everything else look ok? --BrilliantRain

Siddy parry is much better now it's all or nothing. You might want to state whether the 3m has to be spent before or after rolling though. I'd strongly suggest before.
-- Darloth

Well obviously it needs to be after declairing the parry but before rolling. Clarifyed. --BrilliantRain

I like it. Just my 2 cents, I think the Soulsteel should probably be called 'Bounty Hunter' instead of 'life hunter', of course it's meerly prefrence. ~StarHawk

I like that. The pun works nicely. Changed. --BrilliantRain