MartialArts/IrresistablyTemptedGamblerStyle

Irresistably Tempted Gambler Style

by DeadManSeven

Introduction

This style was an experiment in weird meta-mechanics (coins, a deck of cards, using the dice as randomisers) to make a style inspired by Cait Sith and similar characters from CRPGs, who's randomness make them both very powerful and very weak at the same time. I don't think it's really designed for proper combat, but if anyone wants to tell me about a character that's used this style, I'd love to hear about how it stacks up against more dependable styles like Snake and Violet Bier.

Background

This little-known style, also know as Chance and Chaos Style, relies heavily on luck and randomness to deliver very powerful results for very little payment. However, because of its unreliability and lack of similar discipline that other styles require, it has never been regarded as a truly serious style. In the Second Age, it is only known by a handful of Sidereals, and practised by even fewer of them, as they generally prefer to be the movers of fate, rather than to be moved by it.

Small items that have some relation to chance or fortune (such as dice, cards, mahjong tiles, etc.) are treated as unarmed attacks for this style. In the hands of a martial artist using Charms from the Irresistably Tempted Gambler Style, these weapons have the following stats:

Acc: +1 + [Essence / 2 (rounded down)]

Dmg: 0L + [Essence / 2 (rounded down)]

Def: -1 + [Essence]

Rng: 15 + [Essence x 3]

Rate: 1 + [Essence]

All Charms in this style allow the use of armour. Fate, after all, favours the prepared.

Charms

Playing the Odds

Cost: 1m

Duration: Instant

Type: Reflexive

Minimum Martial Arts: 1

Minimum Essence: 1

Prerequisites: none

Opening herself up to the flows of chance and chaos in Creation, the martial artist can gain a sense of the possibility of something ocurring or not ocurring. The Storyteller is not required to tell the player any more than descriptions like 'almost certain,' 'not likely,' or 'even odds', although occasional flashes of insight ('The next card in the deck is a black six.'; 'Bribing the guard will allow you passage into the barracks.') may be dramatically appropriate from time to time.

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Sour Luck Method

Cost: 3m

Duration: One turn

Type: Reflexive

Minimum Martial Arts: 2

Minimum Essence: 1

Prerequisites: none

The character can bring down bad luck upon her opponents, forcing the odds against them. For every 3 motes spent on this Charm, one of the character's opponents gains +1 difficulty on a roll of the player's choosing. This Charm can be used a number of times equal to the character's Essence in a turn.

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Armament Denying Technique

Cost: 5m

Duration: Instant

Type: Supplemental

Minimum Martial Arts: 3

Minimum Essence: 2

Prerequisites: Playing the Odds, Sour Luck Method

The martial artist makes an unarmed attack against one opponent, and allows chance to cripple them. Their weapon may be knocked from their hand, the straps from their armour may burst undone, their feet may become tangled or caught, or some other situation will arise that causes them difficulty during the fight. The effect is left up to the Storyteller to decide, but they are encouraged to make the effect of the attack as unpredictable as possible.

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Irresistably Tempted Gambler Form

Cost: 6m

Duration: One scene

Type: Simple

Minimum Martial Arts: 4

Minimum Essence: 2

Prerequisites: Armament Denying Technique

The martial artist becomes a focal point of both good and bad karma, manipulating chance as she pleases. Any Sidereals or pattern spiders in [Essence*100] yards will be able to sense the user, although they won't be able to identify what is happening unless they are familiar with the Chance and Chaos Style. While this Charm is active, the martial artist can reflexively spend one mote to see the results of a dice roll made against her. This cost must be paid before the dice are rolled. She can then choose to spend 2 motes per die showing either a 9 or 10, to convert it to a 1. She can also use this effect on her allies, paying the same costs and instead reversing the change, making 1s and 2s become successes. This Charm can only affect rolls made in combat; nudging fate is easier in the chaos of battle.

Also, her luck in avoiding attacks and other ill effects increases in her favour. She acts as if she was behind 50% cover (+2 difficulty to hit) as happenstance casually turns blows aside.

More than one Martial Art form cannot be active at the same time.

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Double or Nothing Strike

Cost: 2m

Duration: Instant

Type: Reflexive

Minimum Martial Arts: 4

Minimum Essence: 2

Prerequisites: Irresistably Tempted Gambler Form

Closing her eyes and shutting off influence from the outside world, the martial artist allows fate to direct her blows. This can allow for devestating consequences, but whether it is against herself or her opponent is always unknown.

The motes to power this Charm must be spent after an attack is made, but before soak is applied. The Storyteller takes a coin (or a die with an even number of sides, or some other random event that has exactly even chances of ocurring), and the player predicts what will happens (heads or tails, odds or evens, etc.). If the result is correct, the character doubles her raw damage. If it is incorrect, the damage is instead halved (rounded up).

However, this Charm is an exception to the 'one application per instant' rule, and may be re-applied a number of times equal to the character's Essence. Multiple correct predictions stack, doubling the entire pre-soak damage pool each time; however, multiple incorrect predictions half the damage pool (rounding up). This Charm can reduce the character's minimum damage to below their Essence.

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Incurring Karma Method

Cost: 4m, 1wp

Duration: Instant

Type: Supplemental

Minimum Martial Arts: 4

Minimum Essence: 3

Prerequisites: Irresistably Tempted Gambler Form

Issuing a quick prayer to chaos, the character strikes her opponent with a perfect success (all dice are successes) and doubling her base damage (not including the extra successes). However, then the hand of chance is held against the character. Some time in the near future, she will suffer an unfortunate turn of events to pay for indebting herself to chance. The Storyteller is, of course, encouraged to make this occur at an appropriately crucial time, and to manifest in an appropriate manner. Subduing a spirit with this Charm may cause a later faux pas within the spirit's court, striking down the wall of a castle may bring stray stones upon her and her allies, or killing a mighty foe with this Charm may ensure they rise as a hungry ghost bent upon revenge. The character cannot make use of Incurring Karma Method until the botch has occurred and chance has righted itself.

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Drawing Fate Technique

Cost: 10m, 1hl

Duration: Instant

Type: Simple

Minimum Martial Arts: 5

Minimum Essence: 3

Prerequisites: Irresistably Tempted Gambler Form

The character allows herself to be a conduit for chaos, and then uses that power to attempt to turn the tide of battle. This technique can allow the martial artist to completely reverse the flow of a fight, for good or for ill. It is not a power to be used lightly.

On activating this Charm, a bright corona of light surrounds the character with a colour associated with her Caste. Like Irresistably Tempted Gambler Form, activating this Charm will alert any Sidereals or pattern spiders within [Essence] miles to its use. The light surrounding the character will concentrate itself into forming a playing card, created of Essence and tinged with the colour of her anima banner, in her hand. The card is very clearly magical in nature, and is intangible to everyone except its creator. Every Exalt that learns this Charm calls up cards that are a unique set, and the artwork (especially on the picture cards and the aces) is often a personal reflection of the user of the Charm.

Take a regular shuffled deck of 52 cards, and draw one. The card determines what effect the Charm has. Each suit has its own correlation, with the numbered cards showing the strength of the effect. They are as follows:

Cups (Hearts): The suit of life and harmony. Drawing a card from this suit will restore the body of the character, healing the card's number in health levels in the order of bashing, lethal, then aggravated. This can heal the health level lost while activating this Charm.

Coins (Diamonds): The suit of money and finance. In combat, the currency is motes of essence. Drawing a card from this suit will restore the card's number *3 in motes, filling the personal pool first. This can restore the motes used to activate this Charm. Also, it might cause the character to gain more motes than she can hold. In this case, excess motes bleed away, with 5 being lost every turn until the character has returned to her regular level or below. Bled motes don't add to the character's anima display, but are lost regardless of how many motes the character spends for that turn.

Staves (Clubs): The suit of toil and the worker. Drawing a card from this suit will bolster the character's spirit, giving her the strength to go on. It restores half the card's value, rounded down, to the character's Willpower. This may put the character's temporary Willpower rating above her permanent one (but not above ten), but excess points disappear at the rate of one per day, unless at least one point is spent during that day, until the character is back to her normal level.

Swords (Spades): The suit of death and destruction. Drawing a card from this suit will wrack the character with pain, causing her the card's number in levels of unsoakable, unavoidable lethal damage. This damage will never kill her (extra levels of damage beyond Incapacitated are simply ignored), but it is capable of knocking her out, unless she has magics that allow her to continue functioning in such a state. Aside from not being fatal, these lethal levels of damage are identical to any other lethal wounds the character incurs, so while the damage the character takes from the charm cannot kill her, any subsequent wounds gained in combat might.

Also, the picture cards function slightly differently to the numbered cards. These are their effects:

Knaves (Jacks): The Betrayers. A Knave functions like drawing the ten of the same suit, but its effects are passed on to the character's enemies. The Knave of Swords is sometimes called The Redeemed.

Queens: The Balancers. Queens function the same as drawing a ten of the same suit, but all its effects are passed on to everyone in the fight. The Queen of Cups is often called The Peace-Maker, while the Queen of Swords is sometimes referred to as The Mistress of the Dual-Edged Sword, or the Black Plague Bitch.

Kings: The Victors. Kings function the same as drawing a ten of the same suit, but its effects are given to the character and all her allies.

Aces, again, have a slightly different function to both number and face cards. Drawing an ace functions the same as a ten of the same suit, but its effects do not need to occur immediately. Instead, the character may store the card Elsewhere for up to 52 days after using the Charm (but can still choose to use its effects on the same turn as the card is drawn instead, without storing it), and can bestow its effects upon anyone she chooses. Drawing forth a stored card requires a dice action. The character cannot use Drawing Fate Technique again until the ace's effect is spent.

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Chance and Chaos Stance

Cost: 10m, 1wp

Duration: Special

Type: Simple

Minimum Martial Arts: 5

Minimum Essence: 3

Prerequisites: Double or Nothing Strike, Incurring Karma Method, Drawing Fate Technique

The character blindfolds herself (or simply shuts her eyes), trusting completely in chance to strike her targets down. She suffers no pentalties for loss of sight, for she is now completely in the hands of fate, but opening her eyes at any point will end the Charm.

At the beginning of each turn, before initiative is rolled, the player rolls a single die, and multiplies the number shown by her Essence (a ten, whether showing a 10 or 0, is always counted in this case as 0). This is her total dice pool for whatever action she takes during the turn, regardless of actual scores or penalties (including wound penalties). Charms that increase dice pools cannot give extra dice, and multiple action Charms cannot provide extra actions (although if such Charms have secondary effects, these can be benfitted from if the Charm is used). Split actions do not incur any negative, but a character can't split her pool any more times than half the number of dice she has available for the turn (rounded down), and is still subject to rate restrictions in attacks, and the maximum distance she can move turing a single turn. Chance and Chaos Stance can only be ended at the beginning of a turn, before the character has taken any actions. This does allow her to see the results of the initial roll before deciding to end the Charm.

The character can use the dice pool generated by this Charm only for combat and combat-related actions (such as dodging, balancing, riding a mount, etc.); it cannot be used outside of combat.

Comments

I really suck at critting MA styles, so I'll confine myself to one comment. I think your Form is extremely, :extremely overpowered, :especially considering that it requires only 3 MA and not 4 like the majority of Forms. To be honest, I think it would be acceptable only if you took away the second effect entirely -- so that the Martial Artist only gets +2 DC to hit and the 1mote see-other-people's-rolls thing.~ Shataina

The Form might work better if it's scalable - i.e., spend 2m per 10 you want to convert. Then again, I'm usually trying to cripple MA wherever I find it, as Grandmasta will tell anyone. ^_^() I also feel warm and fuzzy since, if memory serves correct, I suggested the name. Not sure if I'm comfortable enough with it to allow a PC to have it, but it's a cool enough schtick that I might swipe it for an NPC in my Sids game. ~ WaiyaddoNoDan

That's an awesome idea. I was thinking of just changing it back to only 1s and 10s, but paying for each die converted is much much better. Consider that how it works now. I did a little bit of cleaning up on a couple of Charms, clarifying what was going through my head that I didn't put down when I first wrote it, and added some fluff to Drawing Fate Technique. Finally, I don't think it's a PC-oriented style at all, really. It would take an amazingly patient and fluid GM to deal with it outside the hands of an NPC. - DeadManSeven

I'll stop after this comment, but I really still think it's overpowered. I'm glad you raised it to 4MA, but still .... I think that the problem is that when you play a lot of Exalted, you frequently forget just how powerful success can be, and limiting this to NPCs doesn't do anything about its raw power. Taking just half the effects: since you can use this to cause :any of your allies to succeed at :any action ... what else do you need? Remember those descriptions of what 5 successes can do in the core rulebook? What's stopping the MAist from having this form on any time anyone she knows has to do anything, and giving them tons of extra successes? "Oh, I have a test I didn't prepare for. No worries, let's call in the Irresistably Tempted Gambler!" "Whoops, I gotta break out of this jail; I better make sure the Irresistably Tempted Gambler visits me!" "Hey, Irresistably Tempted Gambler, I really gotta convince my wife I'm not running around on her. Can you arrange to be, you know, nearby at the time?" Your Form is like a dice-adder, only better, and it applies to :any roll for :multiple people. I'm not saying it's a totally inappropriate idea for a Charm for this style (whose concept, incidentally, I really really like although I have to admit I only read up to the Form), but I think it should be right around the last Charm in the style, have significantly more limitations concerning what rolls it can affect, and cost at least a Willpower and a Health Level.~ Shataina

Maybe cap the bought successes / failures at MA or Essence? In any case, unless your dice come up all 1's and 2's, I can't see it being a huge problem. It's just the bastard child of a TN reducer and a success-adder. Now, I'd lean towards making them mere successes, instead of 10's, because those double successes add up fast. I think the balancing factor is that it's only useful for your allies if they're rolling lots of 1's and 2's.

Perhaps if the user had to pay motes for allies before their rolls, making it more gambler-ish? ~ WaiyaddoNoDan

I think I has the solution. Limiting the rolls to only combat and combat-related stuff (the same sort of restrictions that are on the pinnacle) should bring it into line. After all, a brawl is really the only place where more than five successes doesn't regularly guarantee you winning. I also like the idea of naming a roll to affect before it's rolled; I'll go make those changes now. I'm not a huge fan of the idea that Martial Arts can be used as a substitute for anything else - Ebon Shadow is about as far as I'm willing to let it tread on other Charm trees (and really, taken on its own, Ebon Shadow is nowhere near as good as stealth or athletics as actual Stealth or Athletics Charms are), so thankyou for pointing out the exploitable bits in this style. :)

Also, I think I've got someone lined up this Monday to give the style a playtest, so hopefully then I can see how things work in play, as opposed to how they work on paper. - DeadManSeven

Question about the form Charm: does the ability to see the results of a dice roll also give the martial artist the ability to tactically act on those results? For example, could a Solar with the form charm active spend one mote to see an attack roll made against him, then, based on the results of that roll, decide whether and how to defend against it? (Come to think of it, can you do that under normal circumstances? I've confused myself...) -Everyl

I'd say you can choose to alter your defence, based on how good (or bad) the roll looks. If everyone in your game is generally rolling all their dice out in the open, I'd take out the part about spending a mote to see what the roll looked like. The Form as written assumes a bit that the GM is going to be rolling their attacks in secret or behind a screen or whatever. As for what happens normally, I think it comes down to preference in individual groups, myself. - DeadManSeven

Gorgeous Style, one I'm very fond of. As a brief consideration, however, the Swords effect of Drawing Fate Technique is extremely brutal; have you considered changing it to half the card's value rather than full, in the manner of Cups? This might be a little more prudent, in my petulant opinion...DeathBySurfeit

I did think about that for a little while, but then I decided to go with a 1:1 ratio for damage, with the caveat that the most it will ever do is knock the user out, not kill them. Also, I think the deterrant has got to be pretty brutal to balance out something like everyone on your side suddenly regaining 30 motes, or being able to restock your combat-sorcerer buddy's pool of Willpower, or smiting all your enemies with ten levels of unblockable, unsoakable, unavoidable lethal damage. For a style based around gambling, the rewards have got to look really good, but the losses have got to hurt. :)

Also, I'm glad you like it. Getting feedback is fun! - DeadManSeven