Obsidian Shards: Another Reflection

JiveX:

I was thinking bigger like...
well
1: Permanent Crippling effect of some kind
2: Invert Motivation
3: Forget all your intimacies  (litterally both loose and forget)
4:I dunno
5: Loos Identity (see negative effects of one direction invocation but NO ONE remembers you).

That kind of thing.
I was thinking the commitment requirements and the nessecity of having the mirrors present near you as well as needing to be activated out of combat Simple (dramatic action), would sufficiently balance things.

Oh, did you have it as a dramatic action? I missed that. That would definitely help, and it would play nicely into the Sidereal theme of getting exponentially more powerful the more prep time they've got.

I dunno as far as those penalties. They're a little too broad and completely character changing for my taste, but like I said, with some balance work, I think this could be a great way to go with the charm.  And as much as I'd love to try to hammer out something more solid, my lunch break is just about over. I'll be remembering this for when I get OSoI style ready to be used by some NPC Sidereals in my game.

God DAMN, nice job man. You kept all of your bones.

This looks extremely solid. There are some minor issues with precise rules wording, but in general it looks like it doesn't allow any absurd infinite bullshit loops.

When you say 'stunned for X misc actions' what does that mean? 'Stunned' has a defined mechanical meaning in the combat chapter - something that can happen when you take more levels of damage than your stamina - but it isn't usually defined in miscellaneous actions.

I will warn that there's nothing stopping the Sidereal from calling up a shard with Draw Forth One Shard and then commanding it to dump all of it's motes and willpower, draining the victim dry. In other words, Draw Forth One Shard in it's current form is a Bad Touch and must be defensible via perfect attack.

Jon Chung:

3. Shouldn't Breathing on the Black Mirror be rebuilt into a Charm that actually does something rather than simply invoke GM fiat?

I honestly don't think that's particularly necessary. It's a plot device that the characters can deploy to shape the game in directions suitable to them; it does clear and useful things. The exact manner in which the details fall out is fuzzy, but it doesn't just invoke GM fiat, it deploys GM fiat. Very different.

Kukla:

Jon Chung:

3. Shouldn't Breathing on the Black Mirror be rebuilt into a Charm that actually does something rather than simply invoke GM fiat?

I honestly don't think that's particularly necessary. It's a plot device that the characters can deploy to shape the game in directions suitable to them; it does clear and useful things. The exact manner in which the details fall out is fuzzy, but it doesn't just invoke GM fiat, it deploys GM fiat. Very different.

That's even worse. Exalted is not a game that's made up of ST Fiat charms. There's a reason Exalted uses the word storyteller instead of game master.

DShomshak:

As an area attack, Black Shards Fall Like Ice is quite useful in mass combat, in which the martial artist acts as a solo unit, commander or sorcerer. Apply the Charm as a 5L ranged attack against a targeted unit; it always hits.

As of Scroll of Kings, that's actually a substantial downgrade.  As an area effect, it should instead apply full damage to every soldier caught within the blast radius; in the case of mortals, that means it kills them all.

Lunar moonsilver tattoos and other supernatural defenses against Shaping

Sing it with me, folks: Lunar moonsilver tattoos do not block Shaping effects.  They block shape-changing effects.

Chaos-Repelling Pattern, and similar Charms, block its effects.

It is not clear to me why this is true.

This Charm operates largely by Storyteller's fiat.

That's an exceedingly dangerous line to put in any Exalted product- not because the players can use it on their enemies, though that's bad enough, but because the enemies can use it on them.  "Sorry, guys, all your plans are ruined- but hey, he died!" isn't the kind of thing that players should be totally powerless against forever.

I mean, if the ST is going to invoke ST fiat, I don't see why they need a charm to do it.  The whole idea behind charms and rules is that they provide the ST with a way to run the game that doesn't rely on fiat.

Yeah, I cede my position. You're right - it needs to have well defined mechanical effects for what happens when someone else uses it. When a PLAYER uses it, it's fine if it's fiat-esque, but not when an NPC uses it.

Kukla:

Yeah, I cede my position. You're right - it needs to have well defined mechanical effects for what happens when someone else uses it. When a PLAYER uses it, it's fine if it's fiat-esque, but not when an NPC uses it.

Wait a second. Hold up. Are you telling me, that through reasoned arguement and your own judgement, you changed your mind and conceded a point? But what about turning this thread into a hate filled bitchfest about ST fiats, and when they are appropriate? Isn't that what always happens when two people disagree on forumns...hmmmm....


Careful folks, the interwebs. They be a-changin'.

TheDude:

Wait a second. Hold up. Are you telling me, that through reasoned arguement and your own judgement, you changed your mind and conceded a point? But what about turning this thread into a hate filled bitchfest about ST fiats, and when they are appropriate?

I know, right? I've been very happy with the tenor of debate and discussion on these forums lately.

There are situations where ST fiat is a reasonable mechanic for a charm. I'm not super concerned about it taking that form when PCs use it, because - well, a lot of things fundamentally resolve that way. Even something as simple as the super-awareness charms are a little fiat-y. Can you use them to track people by following the unique pace of their footfalls through the city streets, even though you can't see them? What if they're consciously altering it? Well, make up a difficulty, roll, and go. Any time when the DM is making up numbers off gut instinct, GM fiat is happening. This is just a larger version of that phenomenom, and here as then, the ST is working within defined parameters that give structure to their decision-making.

So, basically, ST fiat happens, there are times it's appropriate, there are times it isn't, and declaring by fiat that 'you lose' obviously isn't one of them, so I cede my untenable position. :)

This is nice Dean. I don't think it's perfect, but it's amazingly better than the original. I can work with this and throw out a couple of house rules and it would be perfect, whereas before the style needed such a massive rewrite I didn't even want to bother.

Just a few thoughts.

Draw Forth One Shard - really, the duplicate needs to have his own Essence pool. Summoning up someone to use the same Essence pool as the target just doesn't work for me - it seems a little too strong offensively, and it kind of sucks to duplicate yourself. Since, with your charm, a Sidereal can only summon one duplicate of a person anyway, having them draw on the same Essence pool isn't as necessary.

Obsidian Shards of Infinity Form - this one looks good. However, I'm leery of a 1 mote perfect defense and flurry breaker, even if it can only be used once per tick. I would keep the cost the same, but remove the perfect defense part. I would allow the user to perfectly defend with the action, but in addition to the mote they would have to spend a point of willpower.. However, they could spend one mote to activate the teleportation effect - essentially giving them a one mote, reflexive flurry breaker, which I think is good enough.

Echoes of Infinity - cool charm! The one thing I would change - the initial shards created by Black Shards Fall Like Ice should already be treated as steel anyway. When this charm is activated, they should instead be treated as being made of First Age materials so, for example, when attacking them you have to roll dice rather than simply getting automatic damage successes.

Cracked Obsidian Restoration - This is really the only one I have a beef with. The difficulty to remove Solar Circle effects should be a lot higher than it is. This is only an Essence 4 charm and should not be able to shut down Solar Circle Sorcery as easily as it does. At Essence 4 you're probably getting 14 dice (5 Dex, Martial Arts and 4 Essence) in your pool. Getting 3 successes and ending a Solar Circle Sorcery effect is trivially easy. I would probably jack up the difficulty to end an SCS effect to 10 (and put Celestial Circle at 7 and Terrestrial Circle at 4). This way it's still possible to end a SCS effect at Essence 4, but you're going to need to wait until Essence 7 before you have a better than even chance to getting rid of SCS.

As a comparison, Spell Shattering Palm (in the Prismatic Arts of Creation style) can also end sorcery. The minimum difficulty to end Solar Circle Sorcery is 8 (Sorcerers Essence + Spell Circle). The charm is also an Essence 4. However the dicepool is a lot smaller than yours (Dex + MA instead Dex + MA + Essence). All that it does is end Sorcery effects and it costs double the Essence that your charm does. Cracked Obsidian Restoration however does a lot more than just end spells - it also heals, cures derangements, mutations, crippling, poison, shaping, disease, etc etc. It should be harder to shut down Sorcery with this charm than Spell Shattering Palm.

Otherwise, looks pretty good!

AnubisXy

Bump for great justice.

Much to respond to, and I think I spotted my well-gnawed tibia over there... Though we do seem to be making progress. Thank you, one and all. (But, I can't continue this much longer; other calls on my time are coming due.)

The chief critiques and debates seem to rest on a few issues. I'll try to take 'em on as I go through the Charms again.

ENTIRE STYLE: LIMITS OF SHAPING AND DEFENSES AGAINST IT.
I reread Integrity-Protecting Prana and it gives examples such as creating a snake inside a person's stomach or turning his armor to lava. OTOH, it also says that if Wyld effects create something that incidentally happens to be dangerous (the hundred-headed snake with burning chalcedony eyes), IPP does not apply. (No mention of changing the ground under someone's feet, or moving a person without altering him.) This leaves a gray area, of things in between direct attacks and just-in-the-neighborhood menaces. Evoking an environmental effect, I think, goes on the just-in-the-neighborhood side: You don't target a specific person, you just create something and hope that people in the area take damage from it.

For comparison: What is the difference between a hypothetical Shaping attack that creates a volcanic eruption that fills an area with white-hot gas and ash; a hypothetical Dragon-Blooded Charm that rips pre-existing magma from the ground to fill an area with white-hot gas and ash; and a hypothetical Sorcery spell that fills an area with white-hot gas and ash? They all create an identical environmental effect. The gas and ash are all equally real and material once they are created. IPP makes a person immune to the first but not the other two? That makes no sense to me.

Posters on previous threads have argued that most if not all of OSoI's Charms should be Shaping effects. I'm willing to accept that. First, Shaping seems to be the fallback mechanic for anything that works weird changes to the world; and second, the style's core theme of alternate realities makes me think of the narrative-based powers of the Fair Folk. I'm provisionally keeping it, but... Is it worth the hassle? Can the styl function without it?

[If people think that IPP should protect against any conceivable attack based on Shaping, no matter how indirect, go ahead. It still doesn't make OSoI worthless; at least, no more so than Citrine Poxes of Contagion being useless against a foe who has Immunity to Everything Technique. I don't have a problem with weird attacks that bypass normal defenses being "brittle" when faced with one special but easily obtainable defense.]

As for Chaos-Repelling Pattern, I misremembered what it does. It does not prevent Shaping in any way; it just creates a zone in which the normal rules of Creation apply, instead of the Wyld, the Labyrinth or (presumably) Malfeas. It doesn't inhibit OSoI at all, and I've removed the reference.

Moving on to the Charms:

BLACK SHARDS FALL LIKE ICE: See above for Shaping issues. For the Commentary, I'll merely add the word "hypothetical," because I don't know offhand of any magical effect that specifically prevents a character from Shaping.

Irked is of course quite right about the mass combat use. Mass combat rules are so odd, though, that I think it'd be prudent just to ignore them and leave the issue to Storytellers who are bigger gluttons for punishment than I am.

RIPPLE IN THE SILVERED GLASS: Good reminder, all, on the limited effects and applicability of Lunar tattoos. It's just sort of a spinal reflex whenever Shaping comes up, but you're all quite right, they only prevent altering the Lunar's body.

REACHING THROUGH THE MIRROR: In this case, I'll grant that IPP applies, since it explicitly prevents attacks that are directly and specifically against a person from being unblockable and undodgeable. Change made. RTtM is about as direct and specific as you could imagine.

The full roster of supplemental effects (ranged, unexpected, all soak halved) is a lot for one Charm. Still, Snake Style has an Essence 3 Charm for agg damage and a damage adder, and an Essence 3 Charm for a (much shorter) ranged martial attack. But, those also have several prereqs whereas RTtM does not.

OTOH, Maw of Dripping Venom pretty much one-punch incapacitates anyone you hit, if you can manage a decent damage roll (and you can flurry it and Combo it, oy). There's no way to stop or block the mote drain except Don't Get Hit or Don't Take Damage. So... is the full RTtM roster of effects too much for an SMA entry Charm?

Yeah. Epimetheus is right: It is too much. And so is Maw of Dripping Venom. It is a foolish consistency that insists on repeating a mistake. Unless someone gives a firm and persuasive defense of the All Soak Halved aspect, consider it cut.

CRACKED OBSIDIAN RESTORATION: Good catch, AnubisXY, on the sorcery. I accept your suggested numbers, or something close to them.

OBSIDIAN SHARDS OF INFINITY FORM: Good request for clarification on whether the break-and-teleport counts as Charm use. No, it doesn't. Any further defense in that tick is up to the Sidereal, though, and as mentioned, the defense is pretty easy to beat. That's why it doesn't carry a Flaw of Invulnerability. Compared to Charcoal March of Spiders Form, OSoI Form is downright modest.

As for the "Immovable Object" aspect that has people hot and bothered: This illustrates the problem that in Exalted, you have to see how Charms interact not just with real effects, but with things that are entirely hypothetical. I hoped to forestall pseudo-clever strategies such as "My spell that fuses your feet to the ground stops all movement, so you can't teleport anymore." (No, this is an attack, so the martial artist spends the mote, breaks, and reappears elsewhere, unharmed.)

But, I take Aquillion's point. I used the wrong paragraph. No attack can penetrate the break-and-reappear-unharmed aspect; that's unambiguously a defense. For the teleport aspect and the weapon retrieval aspect, the Charm vs. Charm opposed dice roll should probably apply. Still, it should be difficult to beat the Form. Any ban on teleportation is likely to be phrased as absolute (why wouldn't it be?). Any ban on weapon retrieval would have to be defined as a perfect defense, though. And, if the martial artist should somehow encounter an area where Shaping is impossible, he's screwed. (I assumed the Shaping keyword would cover that, but it'd be best to spell it out somewhere in the style.)

 THE MIRROR DOES NOT LIE: Well, that seems to be okay, thank goodness.

VANISHED WITHIN THE GLASS: Even if you accept that forced movement can fall under IPP, Vanished Within the Glass can be dodged. By the RAW for IPP, therefore, that Charm does not apply, any more than it protects you against having a bag dropped over your head. Yeah, this whole Shaping issue is getting to be a pain.

DRAW FORTH ONE SHARD: The Charm does indeed have no clear method of defending against the application, any more than there's a way to stop Technique Mirror from copying someone.

Oh, all right. I'll add the opposed (Willpower + Essence) roll from Evocation from the Mirror. Also, there's that ever-lovin' hypothetical No Shaping Zone.

Incidentally, shards resist unacceptable orders. Under most circumstances, Essence channelers could reasonably interpret an order to purge all their Essence and Willpower as suicidal. So, I don't see cases like that as too much of a problem.

Stunning, though, was a goof. I should have checked the corebook: A stunned character is only at -2 dice to actions. If you wanted to harm a foe by wounding his shard, you'd do better to keep the shard at -4 wound penalty! So, how about that killing/incapacitating the shard or the original simply renders the other Inactive for one miscellaneous action, and then the survivor loses the transferred wound penalties? That should neatly forestall the whole "Copy then kill" strategy - there are easier ways to make someone Inactive for 5 ticks.

AnubisXy suggests cutting the shared Essence pool along with some of the sillier aspects of the original version. What do people think? And for that matter, cut the "Corsican Brothers" bit too. Is evoking a temporary twin cool enough -- and productive enough of neat story applications -- that the other "drawbacks" are just needless complications?

DRAW FORTH EVERY SHARD: I haven't studied Infernal Charms in depth. I noticed Fealty-Acknowledging Audience, but that still requires the GSP to gather a bunch of people and somehow make them express obedience. Do they have a snap-your-fingers, get-an-army Charm?

ECHOES OF INFINITY: D'oh! This should have specified that it supplies a Student's Sutra mote reduction for all Celestial and Terrestrial Martial Arts Charms bundled together -- NOT per style! Ex: If the Sidereal uses a Combo of, say, Snake Style's Striking Serpent Speed (and gets 7 attacks) and Heaven Thunder Hammer from Solar Hero Style, the final cost is 6m + 21m - 5m, not (6m - 5m) + (21m - 5m). So, maybe it isn't really that generous.

BREATHING ON THE BLACK MIRROR: Yes, it does have to be Storyteller's fiat, unless you throw out the original writer's intent completely and replace it with a whole new Charm. Which you can do, but please don't call it Breathing on the Black Mirror. It disrespects the author.

I do not have a problem with Storyteller's fiat. I realize it's anathema to the strict "gameist" perspective, but -- to turn about what somebody said -- Exalted has Storytellers, not Gamemasters. NPCs having Breathing on the Black Mirror is covered by the same rule a Storyteller should use for every aspect of controlling a world, where he can arrange whatever the hell he wants and can change it on the fly without the players being any the wiser: Don't be a dick.

Having one PC in a group use BotBM when the other PCs don't want to is a more serious issue, but easily solvable, I think.

First, the Charm is only usable in moments of crisis, so you can't use it to completely replace a conflict with a ST-designed narrative. The color text might punch this up.

Next, the "bug out" is the option that most directly affects other PCs. Having other PCs ride along could be optional: If the others don't want to go, they don't.

The Mirrors of Serenity and Endings can have opt-outs, too. The Sidereal may fail (with compensation), but his comrades might soldier on. After the Sidereal achieves the incomplete victory of his kamikaze run, his comrades can try to finish the job without him.

The Mirrors of Battles and Secrets simply add new factors to a situation. How the characters respond is up to them.

At base, though, the problem of one character hijacking a scene to take it in a new direction is hardly unique to Breathing on the Black Mirror. I've had players (and fellow players) do it lots of times, and they didn't need weird narrative-control powers for their characters. I've even done it myself once or twice, because I forgot not to be dick. So, I don't see this as an intrinsic problem with the Charm. YMMV.

Dean Shomshak 

DShomshak:

It is too much. And so is Maw of Dripping Venom. It is a foolish consistency that insists on repeating a mistake. Unless someone gives a firm and persuasive defense of the All Soak Halved aspect, consider it cut.

Maw of Dripping Venom is crippling or shaping. It really only does two things and the second thing is easily abused because it just gives way to many motes.

DShomshak:

OBSIDIAN SHARDS OF INFINITY FORM: Good request for clarification on whether the break-and-teleport counts as Charm use. No, it doesn't. Any further defense in that tick is up to the Sidereal, though, and as mentioned, the defense is pretty easy to beat.

Personally, I don't know why you wouldn't go for something that helps the style a lot more. Summoning obsidian mirrors would really help the form more than a single free perfect.

DShomshak:

DRAW FORTH ONE SHARD: The Charm does indeed have no clear method of defending against the application, any more than there's a way to stop Technique Mirror from copying someone.

As long as they share motepools, it's a shaping attack. The charm clearly make a clone that piggybacks on the original character. I'd make it an evil clone with a disadvantage because it's a clone.

DShomshak:

DRAW FORTH EVERY SHARD: I haven't studied Infernal Charms in depth. I noticed Fealty-Acknowledging Audience, but that still requires the GSP to gather a bunch of people and somehow make them express obedience. Do they have a snap-your-fingers, get-an-army Charm?

I was referring to an adorjan charm where you are a magnitude equal to your essence.

DShomshak:

ECHOES OF INFINITY: D'oh! This should have specified that it supplies a Student's Sutra mote reduction for all Celestial and Terrestrial Martial Arts Charms bundled together -- NOT per style! Ex: If the Sidereal uses a Combo of, say, Snake Style's Striking Serpent Speed (and gets 7 attacks) and Heaven Thunder Hammer from Solar Hero Style, the final cost is 6m + 21m - 5m, not (6m - 5m) + (21m - 5m). So, maybe it isn't really that generous.

No, not really.

DShomshak:

BREATHING ON THE BLACK MIRROR: Yes, it does have to be Storyteller's fiat, unless you throw out the original writer's intent completely and replace it with a whole new Charm. Which you can do, but please don't call it Breathing on the Black Mirror. It disrespects the author.

I do not have a problem with Storyteller's fiat. I realize it's anathema to the strict "gameist" perspective, but -- to turn about what somebody said -- Exalted has Storytellers, not Gamemasters. NPCs having Breathing on the Black Mirror is covered by the same rule a Storyteller should use for every aspect of controlling a world, where he can arrange whatever the hell he wants and can change it on the fly without the players being any the wiser: Don't be a dick.

Personally, I don't think it's a good charm. It's not interesting. At least with the sidereal charm that let you get whatever the hell you wanted, it was clear in saying you don't get it instantly. You still rollplay it. This removes that aspect.

DShomshak:

ENTIRE STYLE: LIMITS OF SHAPING AND DEFENSES AGAINST IT.

All this is reasonable.

DShomshak:

BLACK SHARDS FALL LIKE ICE:

All this is reasonable.

DShomshak:

RIPPLE IN THE SILVERED GLASS:

Better to be reflexive and remove it later than to get out of the habit. All this is reasonable.

DShomshak:

REACHING THROUGH THE MIRROR:

All seems reasonable.

DShomshak:

VANISHED WITHIN THE GLASS

This is actually one charm that Chaos-Repelling would, specifically, fix. Chaos Repelling ensures you exist in an area that works by the rules of Creation. This charm attempts to bend the area around you to act like Elsewhere. Chaos Repelling ensures that can't happen, and thus stops this charm dead.

Conversely, I don't think IPP would actually block this one. You could dodge it, but it isn't a shaping effect directly altering the player or his gear.

DShomshak:

DRAW FORTH ONE SHARD

"Shard, use your ultra-expensive death-combo on your progenitor!"
*Shard spends 30 motes and 2 wp on the progenitor*
*Progenitor spends 4m on HGD*
*Both have lost a ton of motes*

It's a significant issue even if you can't just tell them to purge.

What I do find amusing is that the best way to cope with being targeted by this charm is to immediately kill yourself, at which point your only disadvantage is that you're Inactive for 5 ticks and you've moved.

DShomshak:

DRAW FORTH EVERY SHARD

They don't exactly have a snap-your-fingers-get-an-army charm, but Eye-of-the-Hurricane Stance from Adorjan's tree makes being attacked by a huge swarm of enemies an advantage rather than a disadvantage, so it's sort of similar.

DShomshak:

ECHOES OF INFINITY

Nice fix.

DShomshak:

BREATHING ON THE BLACK MIRROR

More text explaining the function of the charm at the game table is probably sensible.