A few Charms combine to make this Style just plain stupid. Â The first one, of course, is the very first Charm in the tree. Â This Charm, for one mote, allows you to redirect an attack against the person you are defending to you. Â For an Essence 1 Charm of any variety -- much less one in Terrestrial Martial Arts -- that is ridiculously good if used with any degree of strategy at all. Â It essentially constitutes you being able to perfectly defend others, albeit at the cost of having to then deal with the attack yourself. Â
The next really ridiculous Charm in this tree is Purity of Purpose Attack, which makes your attack perfect in the same way Accuracy Without Distance is perfect, so long as you roll at least 1 success on the attack. Â For a Terrestrial Martial Art Charm, that's ridiculous. Â Now, they try to balance this obvious excessive power for its station by making it cost an experience point. Â This doesn't balance the Charm, though, it simply ensures the overpowered Charm will never be used, because spending a point of XP on a single attack is just silly, no matter what it does. Â So instead of balancing properly, this Charm ends up being both too powerful in theory given its type, Ability, and requirements, AND useless in practice. Â Good job on that one.
Next up is Verse of the Martyr, a day long Charm that ONLY costs you 15 committed motes and your LIFE. Â In return for this, all virtue channeling done during the day gives you extra successes instead of extra dice, and you twist fate so whatever you're doing stands a chance of success, even if it normally would not. Â This is another example the problem with Purity of Purpose Attack, sadly, and perhaps in an even more pronounced fashion. Â The effect is RIDICULOUSLY powerful, giving you not only what amounts to a nice chunk of automatic successes on any turn you care to spend a willpower, but the Ability to REWEAVE FATE at a level even Sidereals can't really do without walking up to the Loom and weaving it directly or planning it out in a committee and sending instructions to the Pattern Spiders; that's patently retarded for a Terrestrial Martial Art that's a mere Essence 3. Â I wouldn't expect a SIDEREAL Style to be able to reweave Fate like that. Â The ridiculous cost of 15 motes and your LIFE doesn't balance this, it once again simply ensures you'll never use it. Â Ridiculous effects aren't balanced by ridiculous costs, it just means the Charm is problematic on two fronts.
And finally, the rest of the Charms in the tree pretty much suffer from terminal triteness, not being particularly interesting, useful, or cool at all. Â The tree overall has no synergy what so ever, and the only real unifying theme is "suicide for your master," which might SEEM cool, but really, really isn't.
Poorly thought out in almost every way, totally unthematic, and an excellent example of crushing consistency of any variety. Â Any Style that lets Terrestrial Martial Arts practicioners casually rewrite Fate pretty much deserves an F, everything else is icing on the cake of its failure.
The next really ridiculous Charm in this tree is Purity of Purpose Attack, which makes your attack perfect in the same way Accuracy Without Distance is perfect, so long as you roll at least 1 success on the attack. Â For a Terrestrial Martial Art Charm, that's ridiculous. Â Now, they try to balance this obvious excessive power for its station by making it cost an experience point. Â This doesn't balance the Charm, though, it simply ensures the overpowered Charm will never be used, because spending a point of XP on a single attack is just silly, no matter what it does. Â So instead of balancing properly, this Charm ends up being both too powerful in theory given its type, Ability, and requirements, AND useless in practice. Â Good job on that one.
Next up is Verse of the Martyr, a day long Charm that ONLY costs you 15 committed motes and your LIFE. Â In return for this, all virtue channeling done during the day gives you extra successes instead of extra dice, and you twist fate so whatever you're doing stands a chance of success, even if it normally would not. Â This is another example the problem with Purity of Purpose Attack, sadly, and perhaps in an even more pronounced fashion. Â The effect is RIDICULOUSLY powerful, giving you not only what amounts to a nice chunk of automatic successes on any turn you care to spend a willpower, but the Ability to REWEAVE FATE at a level even Sidereals can't really do without walking up to the Loom and weaving it directly or planning it out in a committee and sending instructions to the Pattern Spiders; that's patently retarded for a Terrestrial Martial Art that's a mere Essence 3. Â I wouldn't expect a SIDEREAL Style to be able to reweave Fate like that. Â The ridiculous cost of 15 motes and your LIFE doesn't balance this, it once again simply ensures you'll never use it. Â Ridiculous effects aren't balanced by ridiculous costs, it just means the Charm is problematic on two fronts.
And finally, the rest of the Charms in the tree pretty much suffer from terminal triteness, not being particularly interesting, useful, or cool at all. Â The tree overall has no synergy what so ever, and the only real unifying theme is "suicide for your master," which might SEEM cool, but really, really isn't.
Poorly thought out in almost every way, totally unthematic, and an excellent example of crushing consistency of any variety. Â Any Style that lets Terrestrial Martial Arts practicioners casually rewrite Fate pretty much deserves an F, everything else is icing on the cake of its failure.
Is it some favorite new thing of bringing up old threads where Joseph is writing stuff?
