Perfect Mirror Essence Striking Armor

[Sheridan Boyce]

I've got an idea for some armor for one of the players in my upcomming DB game, which reacts to getting hit by lashing out with essence in a form that mirrors the offending attack, but as this is only the second artifact I've ever created, I wanted to get some imput from you guys.


Perfect Mirror Essence Striking Armor


Artifact â—â—â—


This brilliantly polished jade armor uses the wearer's own essence to lash out at any that peirce it's defenses, by creating a weapon of pure essence to inflict it's vengence.  Spear to a spear, fist to a fist, blade to a blade.


In game terms, anytime the wearer is attacked in hand to hand combat and there is leftover damage after both Stamina and armor soak is applied, the armor gets a free attack against the attacker, which automatically hits.  The pool consists of one automatic success for each base Essence the wearer has, plus one die per unsoaked point of damage.  Apply the new target's soak as normal.


In addition, the type of damage dealt the the wearer determines the type of damage dished out to the new target, a bashing attack is avenged with bashing damage and so on.


Each time the armor responds in this way, it drains a number of motes from the wearer, 1 mote for a bashing attack, 2 motes for a lethal attack, and 3 motes for an aggravated attack.  The wearer can respond with a lesser damage type at the lower mote cost, or can even decide not to respond at all.


Soak: 8 bashing, 5 lethal


I don't know about fatigue and that stuff, as well as commited essence totals, but as I said, I've only created one artifact, a sword fro my Solar character, so I could use some pointers on how that stuff is calculated, as well as opinions on the armor, it's cost and so on.


Thanks.

 

[Haku1]

I would suggest that the auto-hit be removed or else the armour is upgraded to at least lvl 4.


Also, note that since the armour consumes essence, this could be an -unwanted- drain on the exalt's resources that he could ill affort.

 

[Flagg]

At level 3, the armor it's based on would probably be level 1 or 2. Check the book for artifact armor, find one you like, and use those stats and MM bonuses.


Once you get this polished up a bit, submit it to Lore5. We need more stuff in there.


-S

 

[Sheridan Boyce]

The main reason I went with automatically hitting, was because, for the most part, the attacker isn't going to be able to avoid the attack anyway.  I guess it could happen enough to make it a big enough problem to actually merit only a 3 dot artifact.  I'll have access to Solars and the Players Guide today though, so I'll take a look at those.


Once I get things figured out I'll write up some fluff for it as well and submit it to Lore5.

 

[Sheridan Boyce]

After talking things over some with my players, who know more about the system than I, I've decided that the commitment will be 3 motes, the soak will be 8b/5L, and the fatigue penalty will be 0, and the mobility penalty 0 or -1, I need to referance the PG again.

 

[Lurker in Darkness]

After talking things over some with my players' date=' who know more about the system than I, I've decided that the commitment will be 3 motes, the soak will be 8b/5L, and the fatigue penalty will be 0, and the mobility penalty 0 or -1, I need to referance the PG again.[/quote']
You should probably increase that commitment cost, since the armor has such a powerful effect.


Besides, Fatigue and Mobility Penalty should be determined by the outlook of th armor. If it is dense and is many-layered, it should probably have a high fatigue value; if it's thin but cover most of the body, it should get a high mobility penalty.


The same goes for absorption. If it has lots of mail, it will absorb lethal (slashing & similars) quite well, but not bashing; whereas plate armor will be great at soaking bashing, and good at soaking lethal.

 

[Sheridan Boyce]

The problem I see with a higher commitment, is that each time you use the ability it costs motes, but that ability usually isn't going to amount to much more than ping damage, a meager damage here and there if you get lucky, but much of it will probably get soaked.  Obviously I haven't tried it out yet, so I can always tweak the commitment after seeing it in play.

 

[Navander]

Sheridan--


One major problem I see is that if you use power combat, the damage from the armor can be quite severe.  Ess ping can be quite annoying if you've attacked three times or so.  


Another problem is the attunement cost.  A celestial laughs at three motes commitment.  I know its designed for DBs, but one of the hallmarks of being a blood is having more artifacts than your puny essence can support.  I suggest having a 5 mote attunement cost.  That should compensate for the pay as you go effect of the armor.


The armor should NOT be able to mimic aggravated damage.  Furthermore, the armor really just breaks the rules.  Automatically hitting is an incredibly powerful ability.  I recommend letting the armor strike back with a number of automatic successes equal to the wearers essence.  This allows for a fairly well placed but weak attack that can be defended against by a capable exalt.  I'd make the base damage equal to your opponents base damage, continuing the "mirror" theme.  Furthermore, I'd make the armor cost 2 (possibly even 3) motes no matter what kind of damage is repelled.  Thats just to make it easier to keep track of.  Finally, I'd increase the soak to 9B/7L.  This makes it "worth it" to use this as your armor over something else (like all you jerks running around with exceptional lamellar).  


The thing to understand is that the ability to make free counterattacks is a HUGE ability.  Celestials have charms that can do it (three charms down the tree).  But if a celestial were to use a counterattack charm, thats all he gets on his turn.  The armor allows what amounts to a "free" counterattack charm no matter what else you do on a turn.  Of course, Bloods have free reflexives (which is I think where you're going on this one) but then their charms are significantly less powerful.  Vengeful Gust Counter, for example, only works on ranged attacks (and is really one of the best charms Bloods have).  


Then again, it's your game.  Thats just my two-cents.

 

[Sheridan Boyce]

I don't like the idea of using the attacker's base damage, as that seems even more powerful than the ability already is.  So how does this sound:


Soak: 9B/7L, Mobility Penalty: -1, Fatigue: 1, Commitment: 5


If the wearer is hit with an attack that exceeds the soak of the armor, the armor attempts to lash out at the attacker using the wearer's very essence.  The armor gets to make one attack agaisnt each character that overcomes it's soak per turn, using the highest amount of damage dealt.  The armor gets automatic successes to hit equal to the wearer's base essence, and does an amount of damage equal to the damage that surpassed the soak.  This can be parried or dodged if the attacking character is able to, and the damage is soaked as normal.


The armor reacts to bashing damage with bashing damage, to lethal with lethal, and to aggravated with lethal.  It costs 2 motes to respond in this manner, and the wearer can shoose to react with the lower damage type or not at all.


Edit: Changed the cost to a straight 2 motes regardless.