Homebrew Sword School - Shattered Sword

[username]

Take a look around: Everything’s going down the tubes, falling apart, stopping. That’s entropy, the fate of the multiverse. A lot of folks think that’s a terrible thing, but not the disciples of the Shattered Sword, who accept Entropy into themselves and learn to swim with the flow rather than against it. And when you swim with the flow of a river you can steal a little extra power from it for your strokes, so do Disciples learn to steal power from themselves to do the same to their foe, breaking their will, their strength and even reality itself. The harder a sod tries to hold on, the more likely it is things will slip through their fingers.

Larceny is the key skill for the Shattered Sword School; one must learn the way to steal the physical before they can hope to steal the metaphysical. Adepts of the School specialize in powerful but swift blows with Two Handed weapons, forgetting defense in exchange for strikes that break all barriers. It is said the first warrior to walk the path of the Shattered Sword was an illiterate barbarian on a primitive world, who gave everything he had and more for the good of his clan. These days, the School has been adopted by the Doomguard as an expression of their beliefs on the nature of entropy.

A character entering the first level of any class progression that offers the Diamond Mind sword school can choose instead to gain access to the Shattered Sword sword school from that class. The inversion holds true as well, with classes with the Shattered Sword style being able to substitute in Diamond Mind instead. This choice applies only when entering the first level of a class, and applies to all levels in that class's progression afterward.

Level 1: Apprentice

-Weapon (Two Handed): Use Two Handed weapons with your Martial Maneuvers.

-Action (Disarm): Use Disarm actions with your martial maneuvers. The benefit from this special attack applies to your next standard attack unless stated otherwise; that attack may not be a special attack.

Level 2: Initiate

(-2*)Shatter Self: If this special attack hits, roll a d10 for each time this restriction is taken. Each number ties to a characteristic: 1 Intelligence, 2 Wisdom, 3 Willpower, 4 Strength, 5 Dexterity, 6 Constitution, 7 Charisma, 8 Fellowship, 9 Composure. Your characteristic corresponding to the number rolled is decreased by 1 for the rest of the scene. If a 10 is rolled, you may choose the characteristic dropped.

(2*)Shatter Strength: If this special attack hits, roll a d10 for each time this advantage is taken. Each number ties to a characteristic: 1 Intelligence, 2 Wisdom, 3 Willpower, 4 Strength, 5 Dexterity, 6 Constitution, 7 Charisma, 8 Fellowship, 9 Composure. The target’s characteristic corresponding to the number rolled is decreased by 1 for the rest of the scene. If a 10 is rolled, you may choose the characteristic dropped.

Level 3: Journeyman

(-1)Skill (Larceny): As part of this attack, make a Larceny test against the Static Defense of the target. If it fails, the attack fails.

(2*)Shatter Courage: If this attack hits the target, both you and they must test against a Fear rating equal to the number of times this advantage was applied to this Special Attack. You must test against this Fear even if you are normally immune to Fear effects, although if the target is Immune to Fear they do not need to make the test.

Level 4: Master

-Mastery (Shatter Grip): Gain two free raises to the test whenever you make a Disarm attempt.

(2)Shatter Reality: If this attack hits, both you and the target must roll Perils of the Warp as if you had both cast a beneficial spell.

Level 5: Grandmaster

(4)Shatter Life: If this special attack hits the enemy, after damage is calculated you may choose to spend your hits points in order to increase the hit points lost by the enemy in a 1 to 1 ratio. This increased damage may not cause Critical Damage, but you may go into Critical Damage yourself in order to increase the hit points lost by the target.

[username]

Made a few small changes to this. Made some slight wording changes on Shatter Life, although it may need to be updated a bit to remove the option to Critically Damage yourself. It doesn't specify a location (I suppose you'd roll) and it might be read as not having a limit, which is not intended since you're spending the points in a sense you can't spend what you don't have. It wouldn't work if you tried to spend critical damage from a location with a Darksteel Heart for instance, since that can't get any so since you take 0 it inflicts 0. HP is still fine to spend though.

Bitter and more intentional change was to Shatter Courage. Fear tests are nasty, especially repeated fear tests due to stacking debuffs from them until the opponent can't do anything. With that in mind, it now acts like Shatter Reality where both you and the target need to make the test. Since immunity to fear is much easier to come by than immunity to Perils, I also added a note that your own Fear Immunity won't apply for your test on Shatter Courage, but the opponent's will. Hopefully this will balance things a bit, but feedback is appreciated. The old phrasing was:

(2*)Shatter Courage: If this attack hits the target, they must test against a Fear rating equal to the number of times this advantage was applied to this Special Attack.

Also, I wonder if Shatter Strength is OP. From what I've seen of it, it is very nasty since it can be done multiple times. Sure, half the time you'll be hitting things like Fellowship that likely don't matter but being able to directly tank someone's characteristics adds up, especially if applied multiple times. It was originally costed at (3*), but it was talked down based on feedback to (2*) because of the randomness. If need be, I could remove the * so you can just take it once. That way you can't stack it; lowering 5 characteristics is likely going to be crippling for anyone just by percentages, not to mention if it could be done multiple times. Perhaps if it says 2* it could be that a characteristic can only be lowered once. Alternatively, it could be just 2 and always apply to the target's highest characteristic, since that is likely to be the one most important to their set-up.  So the different ideas as options to change it: Higher Cost, Applying once only, Being able to be put on an attack 1 time only, and 1 time per attack but always targeting the highest characteristic.

(3*)Shatter Strength: If this special attack hits, roll a d10 for each time this advantage is taken. Each number ties to a characteristic: 1 Intelligence, 2 Wisdom, 3 Willpower, 4 Strength, 5 Dexterity, 6 Constitution, 7 Charisma, 8 Fellowship, 9 Composure. The target’s characteristic corresponding to the number rolled is decreased by 1 for the rest of the scene. If a 10 is rolled, you may choose the characteristic dropped.

(2*)Shatter Strength: If this special attack hits, roll a d10 for each time this advantage is taken. Each number ties to a characteristic: 1 Intelligence, 2 Wisdom, 3 Willpower, 4 Strength, 5 Dexterity, 6 Constitution, 7 Charisma, 8 Fellowship, 9 Composure. The target’s characteristic corresponding to the number rolled is decreased by 1 for the rest of the scene. If a 10 is rolled, you may choose the characteristic dropped. Each characteristic may only be dropped once per scene via this advantage.

(2) Shatter Strength: If this special attack hits, roll a d10 for each time this advantage is taken. Each number ties to a characteristic: 1 Intelligence, 2 Wisdom, 3 Willpower, 4 Strength, 5 Dexterity, 6 Constitution, 7 Charisma, 8 Fellowship, 9 Composure. The target’s characteristic corresponding to the number rolled is decreased by 1 for the rest of the scene. If a 10 is rolled, you may choose the characteristic dropped.

(2) Shatter Strength: If this special attack hits, the target’s highest characteristic at time of the attack is decreased by 1 for the rest of the scene. In the case of a tie for highest characteristic, the target may choose which of the tied decreases.

I'm leaning a bit toward the 4th option right now, but please let me know what you think.

[Amanojyaku]

I tend to agree. "Highest characteristic" leaves very little chance for chicanery. "In case of tie, target chooses" might be a bit cruel, though.