MartialArts/PAoC2

Wherein Prismatic Arrangement of Creation is updated

So, you've got some maidens...

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Like JI and PENG and LU and ZHOU.

All charms of this style have the Obvious keyword, creating, if nothing else, showy displays of Essence.

Deadly Starmetal Offensive, Orichalcum Sheathing Stance, Flickering Moonsilver Approach, Five Jade Fury</b>

Cost: unchanged.

Duration: Essence x 5 ticks.

Deadly Starmetal adds its statistics to the normal statistics for the character's unarmed strikes. This is not considered a dice bonus from charms. It does not enhance the Speed of attacks, instead improving the Rate by 2.

Orichalcum Sheathing creates 12 hardness as well as adding 12 soak. It applies the Lethal soak and hardness it provides against Aggravated damage as well, since except for not restricting MA use it is treated like armor with 0 mobility and fatigue penalties.

Flickering Moonsilver creates an internal penalty to defense pools, so DV is reduced by half the character's MA score.

Five Jade reduces MA attack speed by 1. Use post-soak damage dice to determine the automatic damage successes added. There is no roll to resist the knockback, nor is there a roll allowed to avoid knockdown if the knockback is applied.

<b>Four Magical Materials Form (HOU TUI)</b>

Keywords: Form-type

<b>Demense Emulation Practice</b>

Health level cost is lethal.

No Combo keyword.

The damage added is dice, soaked seperately, with seperate minimum damage.

<b>Demense and Manse Form</b>

Keywords: Form-type

<b>(Type) Exalt Ways</b>

Health Level cost is lethal.

Duration: Essence x 5 Ticks.

<b>God Ways</b>

Keywords: Social

Speed 4 in social combat or war, Speed 10 in normal combat.

Instead of having a difficulty of Essence, this is a social attack. It is unblockable and applies unnatural mental influence which cannot be resisted by spending willpower immediately. Instead, after each minute, both the victim and the aggressor may spend up to 2 willpower. If the victim is willing to pay more than the aggressor, the victim is freed. If they payment is equal, both roll their permanent Willpower, and the winner decides whether the attacker stays.

<b>Games of Divinity Form</b>

Keywords: Social, Emotion, Form-Type

The compassion check preventing attack may be suppressed as normal with willpower. This prevents the victim from using anything to cause lethal or aggravated damage to the form user.

Addiction must be tested against only if the compassion check was successful, but must be checked for even if the compassion result was suppressed. Addiction prevents any kind of attack as long as it is suffered, because harming the form user would prevent her from continuing the form. This does not prevent the victim from defending herself, nor does it prevent passive effects such as a Dragon-Blood's anima flare from causing harm, but the victim will try to prevent her own passive effects from doing such harm if possible without taking her eyes off of the form user.

Addiction may also be suppressed with a willpower point.

A maximum of 4 willpower each must be spent on each of these effects, which constitute unnatural mental influence, after which the victim becomes immune for the remainder of the scene.

<b>Charm Redirection Technique, Sequential Charm Disruption, Spell-Shattering Palm, Astrology Interruption Method</b>

Keywords: Combo-OK

Type: Reflexive

These charms work only if the character can apply a Martial Arts Parry DV equal to or greater than the Essence of the person using the charm, combo, spell, or astrology to be countered or redirected. Each such effect these charms are applied to counts as an attack for purposes of onslaught penalties, even if there would normally be no attack involved, because the character must extend herself to parry the Essence.

<b>Soul Fire Shaper Form</b>

Keywords: Form-type

The one "free" use of a prerequisite per turn will be taken to mean "without cost."

When this form pays for its prerequisites, it pays all of the Essence costs, but not the Willpower costs.

Using a prerequisite of this form with the cost reduction is still a charm use.

<b>Prismatic Arrangement of Creation Form</b>

Keywords: Form-type

Doubles Join Battle dice pool.

Reduces the Speed of all actions by 1.

Discovering something hidden within the Essence x 10 yard radius of perception is always possible, with a roll of Perception + Awareness, adding Essence automatic successes. Attacks are an exception: the user of this form is perfectly aware of them, and this is considered a defense.

Comments

Some questions/concerns:

• Five Jade Fury- Are you keeping the "black jade' effect that adds auto sucesses to attack rolls? Also, you added in an irrestible knockdown effect to the charm's effects and I'm not sure why.
• Soulfire Shaper Form- As you have it written, when the form is up the martial artist can make as many reflexive uses of the pre-requisite charms free of an essence cost, as he wishes. Is that your intent?
• Demense Emulation Practice-I see no reason not to make the charm combo-basic. Also, is the additional damage rolled or automatic. If it's automatic, then I feel that the ability to modify it with an excellency overpowers the charm.
• Games of Divinity Form- To clarify, a character needs to spend a total of 8 willpower, 4 on the compulsion and 4 on the addiction, to ignore the effects of the form for the scene? Do you get to ignore the compulsion once you spend 4 will on it? Under the old rules, the 'not harming the practioner' power didn't exist as a function of addiction, so what i'm about to ask didn't come up. Now that you've added it, do the martial artist's opponents recieve any sort of bonus to resisting the charms effects if the martial artist is taking immediate hostile action (eg, stabbing him in the eyeballs with his pointy starmetal fingers) against them? I don't have the resources on hand to check for a precedent from similar social effects.

-Ambisinister

• Anything I haven't noted as changing, doesn't change. I decided not to type up the complete charms here, because I was lazy.
• I did forget that Five Jade Fury added attack successes as well as damage successes, but since there's no soak involved there, that didn't need clarifying. As for the automatic knockdown, it's a logical clarification (in my mind) of the automatic knockback, and saves on rolling. Knockback and Knockdown didn't have clear rules in 1e, whereas 2e does have them. In 2e, if you are knocked back, you are also knocked down by default, because knockback is a cinematic alternative to the knockdown effect of getting hit really hard. This normally happens when the raw damage of an attack which hits exceeds your Stamina + Resistance. However, it's only a difficulty 2 (Dexterity or Stamina) + (Resistance or Athletics) roll to resist this effect, no matter how much damage is dealt. Trip attacks can be made in the same way, by accepting a -2 dice internal penalty to your attack roll, the roll must be made if the attack hits, regardless of damage. (I have clarified that the knockdown is part of the knockback, above)
• Soul Fire Shaper Form explicitly allows ONE free use of any one of its prerequisites each turn. I am interpreting "free" to mean "without cost," and stipulating that this doesn't include the Willpower cost. If you'd rather it mean "without charm action," I could go for that too. It's going to be one or the other, not both. And it's going to stay just one like it is in the book.
• Demense Emulation Practice adds dice, not auto-levels. This couldn't be Comboed at all in 1e, and I see no reason to make it so now. As for Excellencies and Essence Flow, this isn't something I made up to add to the charm, it's something that happens to be true in 2e because Essence Flow exists. Besides, long-term dice adders (such as Body of War Meditation boosting Dexterity) could always modify this roll in any case.
• Games of Divinity Form: yes, a total of 8 willpower to resist the seperate effects. The addiction was not clearly worded in 1e, nor was the "no harm" compulsion. This charm was worded such in 1e that your opponent could have suffered no penalty at all while locking you in a dungeon chained to an albino. I decided to make it resistable with willpower like most 2e social effects, and also pump up its explicitly stated power level. Thus, the specific behavior restrictions: because they can't bear to do real harm, they can't do more than bashing damage to you if they succeed the compassion roll. If they are addicted, they can't bring themselves to stop you from performing the thing they are addicted to, although they will defend themselves so they can keep watching it. Spending willpower allows you to shrug off the burden of the feelings and do something more active about the guy attampting said eyeball stabbing. Preventing you from defending yourself would obviously oppose your motivation (most people's motivations require them to be alive to complete them), but preventing you from doing anything proactive against me is usually fine.

Hope that helps. - IanPrice

Your clarifications are indeed helpful. I just wanted to make sure where the rules were going a) because i like to know what's going on and b) because i'm going to be competing against this in the near future. Some notes on my notes.

• knockback/knockdown- due to ambiguity in 1e, I definately delineated between the two because knockdown came with the prone penalty and knockback simply meant you were further away. I neglected to look at how 2e treated the system before commenting, which, in retrospect, was kind of a silly thing to do. Something to think about because I know it will come up in our match; how does five jade fury's knockdown interact with dance of the hungry spider's resistance to knockdown effects?
• I knew soul fire shaper form allowed one use. I wasn't sure if your version allowed only one use as it seemed like it was allowing more. That's why I asked. Incidentaly, according to the charm text, the free use of one of the prequisites didn't count as a charm action. I think the way you have it written, however, nicely balances the fact that it doesn't need to supplement a parry any longer.
• As for games of dvinity, i'm still rough on 2e social combat, so I just wanted to be sure as to how the charm worked.

-Ambisinister P.S. Can you take a look over at MartialArts/CharcoalMarchofSpiders2e ? I'm have some issues with patching all the charms over.

I'd say Dance is treated as a perfect defense, thus takes precedence. So I can move you, but I can't make you prone. Glad you like my change of Soul Fire Shaper. I didn't think it was a change at first, but then I checked and saw you're right, so I guess in 1e it made them both free AND not charm uses... *shudder*. Um, no, not when you have DV all the time, thanks. I'll go check your CMoS, and comment now... - IanPrice