TrithneSorcery/TreacherousTwistingOfPower
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Terrestrial Circle Sorcery
Treacherous Twisting of Power
Cost: 15 motes.
Duration: Instant.
Uttering a word of power and pointing a finger at the heart of her opponent, a Sorceror can cause her enemy's own Essence to betray them, fleeing from his grasp, wounding his spirit as they do so. The motes of Essence within his ability to pull in from the world around him burn in his soul as they bleed into his anima, causing it to flare up as they leave him.
The Sorceror makes a Perception + Occult roll to hit her opponent with this spell. The attack takes the form of a wave of controlled essence, and can only be parried by use of Charms, although it can be dodged as normal. As long as a single sucess is made, the spell hits and causes a chain reaction in his Peripheral Essence Pool. Roll one damage die for each mote in the target's Peripheral Essence Pool, reduced by their Natural Soak plus their Permanant Essence. Charms that improve Natural Soak can be used to increase this, as well as Perfect Soak effects. For each sucess rolled, the target loses 1 mote from their Peripheral Pool, which contributes to their anima flare. They also take 1 Lethal level of damage for every 3 sucesses rolled, rounded up.
Comments
Personal reaction? This is quite a bit more than reasonable for a Terrestrial Sorcery. With Peripheral pools easily over 30 in most cases, this has a very good chance of doing 15 lethal damage, ignoring armor, blasting away their reserves. My gut reaction is that if there were some way to have some semblance of soak or reduction, it might be better. Perhaps having the target reduce the number of successes by their Essence rating, due to the firmer stuff it is woven of? That'd reduce the damage and pool reduction a bit, and help ameliorate the catastrophic reaction you can get on a 50+ peripheral essence Solar... Still, I worry that it scales too well on high-Essence targets. Maybe even a simple "doesn't work on those of higher Essence" clause as well? -- GreenLantern
- I had been considering such effects, and have a few ideas.
- Does not work on targets with a higher Essence score. (heavy-handed, but reasonable)
- Cannot roll more dice than your own Maximum Peripheral Essence Pool.
- Permanent Essence applies to Soak. (Implemented because it makes sense)
You could make it so they only take 1 Lethal damage level for every 3 motes burned away like this, rounded down. That way, in the example given by GreenLantern, the victim would only take 5L damage, which combined with the loss/flaring of essence pools is still a significant loss, more in line with the Terrestrial Circle. I like that it's a Terrestrial spell, though, because with the flaring, it seems like a spell that could've been used in the Wyld Hunt to expose Solars for what they were. - KittenyKat
- Now that's a nice, easy way to do it. I should stop writing spells after a full day's work when I'm really tired. Also need to clear up the spell desc, as it's very unclear as to how and when Soak is applied. Done and done, although rounding up. - Trithne
