BrassLeviathan/BurnishedMirror

Burnished Mirror Style

Name: Burnished Mirror Style
Level: Celestial
Armor: As long as it's mobility and fatigue 0
Weapons: Hooked Swords and their artifact counterparts or unarmed.
At the height of the first age, between spiritual purity and the darkness that followed, perhaps as a whim of the Maidens, an Eclipse-caste martial artist has envisioned a martial arts style based on the idea of reaction and careful action, on returning the favor or the curse, and on the power of illusion.
The Burnished Mirror style was never widely spread, only a handful of years remained since it's conception until the beginning of the end of the Deliberative, and the Eclipse who invented it - Forel Gour (nicknamed Sphinx of Dreams) was reluctent to share his new invention.
Practitioners of the style often cloth themselves in a myriad of reflective surfaces, from mirrors to polished steel to Orichalcum lenses.

Evaluation of the Mirrored

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

The martial artist observes his opponent, noting his posture, his clothes, his weapons, the way essence courses through his body, and knows what he is facing.
Roll Perception+Martial arts, for every success on this roll, the martial artist knows one of the following details about his adversary: Remaining Health Levels, martial arts rating, speed, base damage, essence rating (but not remaining essence in pools), which style he practices and his highest virtue.

Careful Reaction Technique

Cost: 2 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Min. Martial Arts: 3
Min. Essence: 2
Prereqs: Evaluation of the Mirrored

The martial artist gauges the efficiency of his opponent's attack, and his body moves to meet that offensive with adequate power.
A parry empowered by this charm will always have at least as many dice as the attack it is aimed at with the following exception - The martial artist cannot gain more extra parry dice than his martial arts rating, if his regular pool is not enough to match the offense.

Burnished Mirror Form

Cost: 5 motes
Duration: Scene
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Careful Reaction Technique

As he learns the first lessons of the Burnished Mirror, the martial artist realizes that reality as we know it is but a figmant of our imagination - Sorcerers bend this reality with willpower and essence, and many others change it just by existing.
What is real, in the martial artist's perception, are the other souls in the world, specifically his opponents. The martial artist now knows how to ignore all the unnecessary details of the world, and act directly against the essence of his opposition.
When this form is active, the martial artist gains his essence in dice added to all Socialize, Bureaucracy or Presence rolls that regard one-on-one interactions.
He adds his martial arts to his dodge pools, since he can more easily see the flow of battle from his opponent to him. Lastly, if his opponent is a martial artist himself, the practitioner of the Burnished Mirror style may adopt any single form advantage from his opponent.
Note that the artist copies form effects, not how these effects work on his foe. (For example - When fighting a Snake Style practitioner, the Burnished Mirror may select to increase his soak by /his/ martial arts, reduce the attack pools of his offenders by /his/ essence or increase his speed by /his/ martial arts rating)

Reflective Mirror Attitude

Cost: 4 motes
Duration: Scene
Type: Reflexive
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Burnished Mirror Form

The martial artist mimics all his opponent's movements, matching his body to his foe. For the rest of the scene, all parry attempts benefit from the effects of Careful Reaction Technique, but one can activate Careful Reaction Technique to double the bonus (and break the former limit of dice added).

Perfectly Reflecting Mirror

Cost: 3 motes, 1 willpower
Duration: Turn
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Reflective Mirror Attitude

The martial artist attunes himself to the flows of essence through his opponent, and no longer has to /attempt/ to parry his offensive, he succeeds.
For the duration of the turn in which Perfectly Reflecting Mirror is active, the martial artist may automatically and perfectly parry all physical hand-to-hand attacks against his person from a single opponent, specified when the charm begins. Hand to hand attacks powered by charms are rolled normally, but the martial artist recieves his essence in automatic successes on his parry rolls against these attacks. This charm does not function against sorcery or ranged attacks. Also, unblockable attacks cannot be parried by this charm without a well described stunt.

Stepping Out of Reflective Pattern

Cost: 3 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Supplemental
Min. Martial Arts: 4
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Burnished Mirror Form

The martial artist learns to break his rhythem of reaction as easily as maintaining it, and he is able to surprise his opponent with an attack.
Treat this attack as if it is made from behind - characters who have no charms to negate this penalty or a persistant defense are unable to parry or dodge it.

Moving through Mirrors

Cost: 4 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Stepping Out of Reflective Pattern

The martial artist is able to momentarily sustain a dimension that connects all mirrors and reflective surfaces in his sight, and is able to move through that dimension to shorten distances.
As long as there is a reflective surface or a mirror near his destination (which must be in his line of sight), the artist can instantly appear there.
This charm does not function in darkness, but even starlight may suffice.
A reflective surface can be an armor buckle, a polished shoe, a plate of steel or even calm waters.
This charm /can/ be used to appear behind foes, if a suitable surface is existant on his back, and the character will gain all benefits of attacking from behind.

Warped Mirror Technique

Cost: 1 mote per decoy, 1 willpower
Duration: Until Countered
Type: Reflexive
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Burnished Mirror Form

The martial artist learns to misdirect, to warp reality in a fashion that disorients his opponent.
When he activates this charm in the beginning of a turn, a blinding flash of light is seen, and then there are not one, but many images of him surrounding his opponent.
In the beginning of every turn (including the one in which this charm is invoked), The opponent should roll a reflexive Wits+Essence roll to determine where the real body is, every success on this roll negates one of the decoys. When an opponent manages to negate a decoy, it disappears.
The martial artist cannot spend more than his martial arts in motes to activate this charm, and also cannot activate this charm more than once per turn.
For every decoy that the opponent fails to see through, increase the difficulty of all his attacks, parries and dodges by 2. .
The decoys remain in existance until they are all seen through by the martial artist's opponents, at which point the martial artist may activate the charm again (but not before they are all destroyed).

Nightmarish Visage

Cost: 5 motes
Duration: Scene
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 3
Prereqs: Warped Mirror Technique

The martial artist sees into the heart of his opponent and finds an entry into his fears.
For the rest of the scene, his opponent will see him as his deepest fear - Whether as his long lost love ressurrected, his beloved father with his throat slit, a monster of terrible appearance or even an abstract concept like 'The loss of my fortune', conveyed directly into his mind.
The opponent rolls valor in the difficulty equal to half the artist's essence (Rounded up). He cannot spend a willpower to negate the outcome of this roll. Should he fail, for the duration of the scene, the difficulty of all attacks and parries against the martial artist rises by the artist's Essence rating. If the opponent succeeds, the charm has no effect on him.
This charm has no effect on creatures who cannot fail valor checks (automata, the dead, etc.).

Invoking the Mirror's Heart

Cost: 15 motes, 1 willpower + 1 willpower to end the charm
Duration: Varies
Type: Simple
Min. Martial Arts: 5
Min. Essence: 4
Prereqs: Nightmarish Visage, Moving Through Mirrors, Perfectly Reflecting Mirror

This style, in the first age, was regarded many times as the dark brother of the Pearl Courtesan, and this reflects best in the peak of the style.
The martial artist understands that the world is but one reality, and one not extremely stable at that. All mirrors are no longer objects which reflect light, but windows to another dimension, infinitely smaller than Creation but which contains everything reflected in every mirror or surface of Creation.
The martial artist learns to place his soul within this other dimension, behind every mirror, and from this haven, which he deems more real than reality, being made of pure essence, he can create a physical reflection of his self.
The martial artist's body turns to a shimmering statue of reflective material, usually the material that is associated with his Exalt type - A solar might become a statue of polished, flexible orichalcum, a Lunar shimmering moonsilver, etc.
The mechanical effect is as follows - firstly, the penalty for splitting the character's dicepool is reduced by his essence. The character may also use a single split action to initiate a full parry (or restore that pool to it's maximum), needing only a fraction of his attention to react and reflect all which is around him.
The character may parry lethal damage unarmed without a stunt, and inflicts lethal damage with his hands. His unarmed attacks benefit from the magical material bonus appropriate to his Exalt type.
The user adds 12L/12B of natural soak to his person, and is invulnerable to non magical elemental attacks, he doesn't even need to breathe. Consequently, his poison resistance rolls are increased by his essence in automatic successes, and he cannot ever be poisoned by inhaling poison.
This charm can be stopped only when spending another dot of willpower, for it is a highly addictive and intoxicating state.
For every scene remaining in this Mirror-dimension beyond the first, the martial artist must roll willpower of growing difficulty (at difficulty 1 for the second scene, 2 for the third, etc.), failing this roll means abandoning all physical existance and, in fact, dying, for the moment the artist dies, his essence stops sustaining the mirror-dimension and it collapses, destroying his soul, this is also true to a case in which the user is killed while this charm is in effect. His Celestial shard is invulnerable to this effect and moves on.

Talk about this Style

Eheh. Yep, me again. I think this one is better balanced on the whole though ^_^

I've still got lots of questions and suggestions though, so I'll list those below:

• Armour at 0/0 - is this natural or after bonuses? I'd suggest natural only, or just say 'light', that being a class of armour. Or, if you want to allow some charm-fiddling, how about light armour which has fatigue/mobility of 0?
• Burnished Mirror Form - When do you pick the effect? Once when the charm is activated? Seems reasonable.
• Reflective Mirror Attitude - Does this stack with Careful Reaction Technique? I personally would suggest it does, it's already capped at accuracy dice, so allowing up to MA * 2 extra parry dice if they're choosing to spend charms and essence on each attack seems like an apropriate tradeoff.
• Perfectly Reflecting Mirror - Does this work on unblockable attacks? I would suggest that it should not, although the fragile-against-charms and hth-only limitations are rather major. Still, it's a MA available technically to anyone who can get to celestial level, so even heavily limited turn-long applicable-autoperfects might be still too powerful, at least for essence 3.
• Warped Mirror Tech would be much simpler if it only worked on one opponent at a time, and if you could only reactivate it against -that specific opponent- after they'd all gone, but were free to activate it against others.
• Nightmarish Visage is rather... underpowered, compared with the rest of the tree and for its place. diff 2 valor check isn't too hard, so it'll be succeeded at fairly often, and even if a target fails, it's only +Ess difficulty to attacks. I suggest either making the failed-effect nastier (affecting parries as well, perhaps?), or adding a +1diff(or -1 die or something) even if they succeed.

But all in all, another really nice and strongly themed style. Keep up the good work and all ^_^
-- Darloth

Thanks again :) I need this kind of feedback. Lets see what I did with this bunch of feedback:

• Armor at mobility and fatigue of 0 means only very light armor or exceptional equipment (The only artifact that does this is the Silken armor, I believe). Whether or not I will allow charms to tweak down other armors is entirely case by case, ST's choice. I lean towards not allowing it.
  
• Yes, once you activate the form, or once you engage a new opponent. I would allow it with a Dex/Mani/Int martial arts roll during a fight, but only before init is rolled on a new round.
  
• Added a note about cumulative usage of Reflective thingie.
  
• No, unblockable attacks will not be blocked by this, without a very well described stunt, anyhow.
  
• Warped mirror will be meaningfully weakened if it's only usable against one opponent. So I doubled the difficulty penalty for that single opponent. This is becoming a very duel-centered style.
  
• Nightmarish Visage - Raised the diff on valor checks to Essence instead of half-essence-rounded-up, and enabled the penalty for parries and not only attacks.
  
• Dude, no feedback on the final charm? It's the most controversial piece of MA I made in a long time! :)
  

Thanks for the feedback. --BrassLeviathan

.. well, I think a difficulty 2 valor roll is already hard enough personally, never mind when it bumps up to diff 3 at essence 5.. diff 3 means that on average.. a valor 5 character is going to fail, and success removers on all attacks for a scene are quite nice :) So yeah.. I thought it was fine the way it was before... .. and just noticed it adds difficulty to parries against the martial artist too.. good god, I'd say that charm is way overpowered now.. FluffySquirrel

Since you two are so very contradicting in your outlooks, I'm going for middle ground - The difficulty will go back to it's original state, but the penalties will still work for both attacks and parries. --BrassLeviathan

diff of (Essence) is certainly too hard... assume people have 2-5 dice, and remember they might spend a willpower for +1 success. In retrospect, half-ess is probably about right.
-- Darloth

Warped Mirror was already powerful, I was just pointing out how it could be clarified. If it was originally meant to work on all opponents at once, then it was probably overpowered. After all, you can always use it on more than one person just by activating the charm again, it's reflexive. As of now... It -looks- bad, but seems appropriate, since wits+essence is never likely to be smaller than 4... nasty if you have low wits though. Why not perception, out of interest?
-- Darloth

Wits feels more right - Wits is what saves you from ambush, wits is what keeps you on your feet when someone trips you, it just feels more right that when someone tries to elude you it will be more about your quickness of mind and not how well your eyes can see. --BrassLeviathan

More adjustments :

• Changed the cost of Moving through Mirrors to 4 motes from 3 motes, 1 willpower. I don't think the charm warrents a willpower cost.
• Edited the text of Warped Mirror Technique, nothing mechanical.
• Added two minor flavour changes to Invoking the Mirror's Heart - The martial artist can inflict lethal damage when unarmed, and parry lethal damage. (I just thought, hack, the guy is made of orichalcum). Secondly and more meaningfully - his unarmed (not even form weapon) martial arts attacks get the magical material bonus for his material. --BrassLeviathan