DragonBloodedMelee/Darloth

• Charms
• Darloth

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Kicked Fire Kata</b>

<b>Cost: 3 motes
Duration: Instant
Type: Reflexive
Min. Melee: 4
Min Essence: 2
Prereqs: Stoking Bonfire Style, and a reflexive parry adder charm as yet unwritten

With this charm, the Dragon-Blooded erupts into action much like a fire that sends forth sparks when it is violently disturbed. When attacked in melee combat, the user may reflexively roll their full Dex+Melee+other relevant bonuses. If they achieve more successes than the attacker, then they are considered to have made a counterattack with exactly the same number of successes as the original attack, even if the Dragon-Blood obtained more successes on their roll.

This charm may -also- be used supplementally after a successful melee parry. If it is invoked, the character can exchange the parry for an automatic counter attack with a number of successes equal to those originally gained by the attacker.

This is a counterattack charm, and cannot be used against any other counterattack. In addition, this counts as a parry, although it in no way helps to defend, and thus the user loses any chance to actually parry. This charm is fully compatible with dodge, however, and does not require the user to be hit by the original attack.

Example: Teiia the Ten-Tailed is struck before her initiative by The Lord of Evil Nastiness, who achieves 4 successes on his attack roll. Teiia rolls her Dex+Melee+Specialities+Sword defense bonus, and gets 7 successes. Thus, she makes an immediate counter-attack against The Lord of Evil Nastiness with 4 successes. As per normal for counterattacks, both attacks are resolved before damage is applied.

(However, if Teiia had been struck later, and had parried completely, she could still choose to invoke this charm and lose the parry, converting it into a 4 success counterattack as above. Obviously, this method is safer, as you know before you use the charm whether you will get a counter, but Teiia is naturally impetuous.)

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Comments:

I know that this is rather a basic charm, but currently dragon-blooded have nothing small to allow them to parry out of turn without aborting. While they shouldn't have it as easy as solars, if they get an almost-perfect but brittle defense, then it seems reasonable to give them a limited reflexive parry as well. I'm a little unhappy with the name, as that would fit much better for a counterattack charm, so if anyone has any better suggestions, please speak up!
-- Darloth

I'd prefer a reflexive 2-1 parry adder. DB's dont do stuff with their whole pool. They might even have a persistent parry equal to Melee + Specs derived from PCDM. - Telgar

I agree with Telgar. As it stands, you've written a substantially more effective Charm than one Lunars have for a similar objective (Feline Guard Technique costs 3 motes, has a fistful of limitations, and, IIRC, requires Dex 4). That comparison aside, full-pool reflexive defenses for DBs seems contrary to how DBs are "supposed to work". It's something that seems more suited to Essence 3 or 4 for DBs, and that's an Essence level where it seems more appropriate to delve into more intensely elemental effects than to focus on dry, Solary, pure-mechanics stuff. - David.

I only just noticed (tonight) that the lunar charm was so... well. Bad. I have decided that this is indeed inappropriate, and the D-B's just won't get full-pool reflexives. Which is strange, considering they get a full-pool near-autoparry, even if it is brittle to charms. I considered moving this to after Portentous-Comet, but even then, it's so much better than the lunar one, I'm thinking I'll have to delete this page (and use Telgar's dice-splitting athletics charm, possibly with a reflexive parry-adder or a parry-reroller). My reasoning was originally based on the fact they get several other fairly high power charms, even with restrictions, and that the Storyteller's companion and a few bits of source material suggested they got reflexive parries somewhere... Checking my sources again, just to confirm I havn't misread something. Thanks for the swift input though. I noticed this myself, and I'm not going to properly read FixTheLunarCharmTrees to see if that helps much (I -now- go with the opinion lunars are underpowered, at least in some areas. Active defense, for example. But that's definately just an opinion) -- Darloth didn't realise the charm was so out of place, even though it clearly is

Feh. I really did misread bits, although the Storyteller's companion is a -very- bad source of ideas for new DB charms. Perhaps someone should write some better suggestions somewhere. One thing though, the 'double ability+spec score for a whole scene' charms all seem to have vanished since the time DBs didn't have a proper splat, and they were in more than one place. Many apologies for adding this, I will try and redeem matters by making a more appropriate charm. Now the only problem I have is that I don't know whether this should come off Stoking Bonfire or Portentous Comet, and whether it should be called Stirred Fire Stance or the current name.
-- Darloth

I like the idea of the new Charm. I'd suggest a few changes, though: Alternately, say that the Dragon-Blooded reflexively parries with his full pool, but that the successes on the parry roll do not affect the successes on the attack. Instead, if the Dragon-Blooded meets or exceed the successes on the original attack, leftover successes roll over into a counterattack. With those changes, though, I like this Charm quite a bit. As for what it should branch from, I would suggest creating a first-tier parry reroll Charm. Kicked Fire Kata could stem from Stoking Bonfire Style and the reroll Charm. You could probably make the reroll Charm compatible with Kicked Fire Kata, too. Bland though it be, there's probably also room in the DB Melee tree for a reflexive dice-adder, and I could see a Charm that allows the Terrestrial to exceed the Rate of his weapon (probably at a mote(s)-per-Rate cost), perhaps for the sole purpose of making a full parry. At one time, I considered a Charm not unlike Dragon-Graced Weapon, though with a defensive bent, but I pretty much came up blank on that. - David.

Thankyou for the tree suggestions, but I'll leave the mechanic as it is for the time being. I know it's fairly powerful for the DBs still, but I definately want to keep some direct relation between the strength of the original attack and the strength of the counter. Your changes would make it much easier to counter a small attack very well, and harder to counter a good one well.
-- Darloth

...um. What's it do? You need to clarify that. Badly. - Telgar

There, does that help? (I knew it was a little wobbly to begin with, but I didn't think it was -that- bad.)
-- Darloth is planning to move some of these comments soon.

Perhaps you could call it "Leaping Cinder Kata," referring to the cinders which leap out of the disturbed fire and burn the person who kicked it. - IanPrice

I think "Kicked Fire Kata" sounds a lot cooler than "Leaping Cinder Kata", personally, though I can't speak to Darloth's feelings on the matter. :) - David.

I could, yes. Thanks for the suggestion. However, I finished this charm to my satisfaction several ages ago, and if I hadn't been happy with the name, I would have changed it by now. ^_^
-- Darloth