ExMod/ModernAbyssalFirearms

D'oh! Okay, digging my notes back out :-) - Balthasar

Malicious Marksmanship Method</b>

<b>Cost: 12 motes, 1 Willpower \\
Duration: One scene \\
Type: Reflexive \\
Minimum Firearms: 5 \\
Minimum Essence: 3 \\
Prerequisites:  None \\

The gun is often seen as a brutal weapon, but Abyssals who know this Charm can inflict a variety of truly horrific deaths upon his enemies. Upon activating this Charm, the Abyssal's weapon has tripled range, and for 1 experience point each, the Abyssal can learn how to reshape his rounds into the ideal tool for his job.

Ghast's Fang: The bullet becomes as black as night and as cold as death, tearing the life from its victim like a rapacious ghoul and disintegrating flesh where it strikes. The Abyssal counts successes twice for determining damage, but only against living beings.

Nightsphere: Commonly used in stealth missions, such bullets explode into a field of utter blackness. If they strike a living victim, they do no damage, but a sphere of darkness envelops him for the Abyssal's Firearms in turns. This sphere stifles all speech, sight and hearing - the victim takes the Abyssal's Essence in penalties to all relevant rolls. Against inorganic targets, they burst into a sphere of darkness (the Abyssal's Essence) in diameter. This transformation is useful for eliminating sentries or spotlights.

Spirit-Eater: Bullets enhanced by this transformation can strike dematerialized spirits normally, and add the Abyssal's Essence in automatic damage dice to them. This effect is weakened against manifested spirits, and the damage is rolled, not applied.

Corrosive Venom: The victim's last moments will be hideous indeed, wracked by the agony of this poison. Bullets with this enhancement inflict arrow frog poison upon their victims, with +4 difficulty to the Stamina roll to resist the poison. Against inorganic creatures, the corrosive nature of the poison degrades their soak by 1 die per 2 damage dice rolled. This effect is cumulative, and works against armored opponents in favour of the first effect.

Shadow-Pinning Round: The Abyssal fires at his victim's shadow, and through mystical means, the bullet is reshaped into an ornate soulsteel needle. If it strikes the shadow, the victim is rooted to the spot, unable to move if it would affect the shadow he cast in any way. The target gets a Wits + Dexterity roll opposed by the Abyssals Dexterity + Firearms roll to shift his shadow out of the way before is is pinned. If anyone should destroy the needle, the spell is instantly lifted. The effect does affect the Abyssal himself, though, so an Abyssal employing this atctic ahd better not misfire. In addition, this Charm does not function in regions of near-total and total darkness, or in other conditions where shadows are indistinct.

Each transformation costs 2 motes per bullet. Other transformations may be learned, at the Storyteller's discretion.

Killing Storm Technique</b>

<b>Cost: 12 motes, 1 Willpower, 1 health level \\
Duration: Instant \\
Type: Extra Actions \\
Minimum Firearms: 5 \\
Minimum Essence: 3 \\
Prerequisites:  Unfilled \\
Author: Damarus

When using this Charm, the Abyssal makes an attack against every single being within range of him at once. These attacks use one dice roll, and they may be blocked or deflected as normal. If placed in a Combo, the mote cost of the Charm doubles. This Charm can only be used with fully automatic weapons, but for the brief and bloody duration of this Charm, they do not consume ammunition.

- Damarus

Comments

Um. MMM is broken. It's brizoken. Dobuling the levels of damage dealt (post rolling) would be alright, or the deadly bleeding (although decreasing the bleeding checks from minutes to turns would be both more dramatic and easier to implement), or the longer healing. However, all three in one Charm? For just three motes? DS

Got it. I felt it was too damn overpowered myself, but I didn't know exactly how much.

My fix would probably involve either allowing you to inflict one of the above for two motes. It's still unknown whether the Charm itself should be split into three separate Charms, each costing 2 motes, or into three separately activatable parts of the same Charm, still costing 2 motes. The former would be much harder on XP and cause Combo difficulty. i think I'll go with the latter.

Also, I think the minimum Firearms should vary for various applications, in that case. Making changes now.

- Damarus

I basically think that it's better to have three different, related Charms (this is what a charm tree is than it is to have a single Charm with kludgey bits like different effects that have different prereqs, particularly when those three effects are good enough to warrant a whole Charm each. IOW, I think you're making a poor design decision. - willows

Probably. Good thing I don't work for WW, int hat case. I was lookign through Abyssals, and some effects seem rather undercosted to me... Here we go again...

- Damarus

Well, I think there are ways to go about it... but making that particular Charm into a three-effect, complicated thing seems a little weird to me, particularly when the variations for other Abilities are individual Charms with varying costs, and differeng Abilities: Abyssals have their version of Hungry Tiger in Melee, and Crimson Waterfall Attack and Winter Strikes the Forest in Medicine. So you can basically duplicate this Charm with one HTT-style Firearms Charm, along with those two Medicine Charms, which are pretty high up their respective trees, IIRC.

If it were a pinnacle Charm, you could have stronger effects, a constant prereq, and in general a more elegant mechanical execution of the image you are working to convey (which is a good one; I like KST a lot too). Do you own Sidereals? I would suggest examining the Many Missiles Bow Technique, as this seems similar in form to that. - willows may critique hard, but he is only trying to help!

He does have a point, though. I was thinking that since nobody bothered to put any decent Abyssal Medicine Charms up, I might as well try and put the nasty wounds I don't ever want to see on people in the Firearms Tree. In retrospect, I might as well go for creating a new Abyssal Medicine branch dedicated to causing pain and misery through medical Charms.

- Damarus

I agree with Willows here, though I'd like add, there are some genres of essence-users in Exalted for which configurable Charms are more likely. Spirits, in particular, often have a small selection of Charms, but with a wide variety of customization. Perhaps, if your creative focus is mostly on death-powered Charms, you might want to give Arcanoi a shot.  :-) - Balthasar