Four Souls - The Power of Vectron Compels You!

[Traskus]

Alternate to Elemental Gearbolt

An expression of divine providence without risking the perils of the warp. Dealing with umbral and warp-based opponents tends to be a bad idea up close, so priests around the wheel developed a method to dispatch them at a distance. It is an ancient kata, rivaling in age and often compared to Elemental Gearbolt. Primitive weapons such as bows were used when Four Souls was developed, but disciples use the techniques in modern weapons as well.

The key skill of Four Souls is Forbidden Lore, demonstrating the esoteric and hidden knowledge they employ. Those who learn this path use it to protect others. Those who master it take the fight to the warp itself.

Level 1: Apprentice
Sacred Arrow: Your ranged attacks are magical.
Action (Called Shot): Use Called Shot actions in trick shots. Any attack-related advantages applied to this Trick Shot are applied to the attack that benefits from the called shot bonus.

Level 2: Initiate
(-1) Soul Sacrifice: You must spend a resource point as part of this attack.
(3) Spiritual Healing: The shooter may spend any number of resource points as part of this attack. If the attack hits, the target does not take damage and loses that many corruption or insanity points to a minimum of the previous multiple of 10 (15 can be reduced to 10, 29 can be reduced to 20, etc.). They retain any mutations, disorders, or other complications of corruption or insanity unless they were gained in this scene.

Level 3: Journeyman
(-1) Skill (Forbidden Lore): As part of this attack, make a Forbidden Lore check against the target's Static Defense. If it fails, the attack fails.
Four Souls: You can choose for your ranged attacks to deal E damage. If you do (and the attack wouldn't deal E damage already), it deals +4 damage.

Level 4: Master
(5) Sever Life: The target hit by this attack cannot recover hp for the duration of the scene.
(-X/-4) Shattered Jewel: If this attack hits, lose X hp. For 4 points, you may take 1 critical E damage to the gizzards instead.

Level 5: Grandmaster
(3) From Whence It Came: You must spend a hero point as part of this attack. If the target is hit, this attack qualifies as a ritual to prevent resurrection such as against (including but not limited to) daemonhosts. The ritual lasts until the end of the scene.

[Traskus]

Phew. Probably my fastest creation of gun kata from idea to posting. Obviously inspired by Inuyasha but also by generic exorcist lore and dark heresy's "holy" powers. Pilfered some stuff from an abandoned kata on tapatalk, but not as much as when I had the idea.

[Lestat]

Going from top to bottom, and doubling back when a later skill needs to be compared to an earlier one:

SPOILER: Click to show

(-3) Caged Bird: If this attack hits, lose a resource point. If you have 0 resource points, this attack cannot be used.

This is just too efficient. You only need 5 negative points to reach a 10 point attack, the idea that 3/5ths of the payment is worth one pseudo hit point isn't really equal. -3 point restrictions don't even exist in book 1 and book 2, and the -2 restrictions that do exist are things like "once per session", "deal no damage", "-10 static defense for a round", "only use while grappling", "only use against those unaware". These are real significant restrictions, something that half the exaltations in the game probably wouldn't notice in an average fight like losing one resource point per round being worth MORE than that doesn't really add up.

(3) Spiritual Healing: The shooter may spend any number of resource points as part of this attack. If the attack hits, they lose that many corruption or insanity points. They retain any mutations, disorders, or other complications of corruption or insanity unless they were gained in this scene.

Who is they? It might seem obvious, but are you shooting an arrow at something, and cleansing it like everything else, or are you passively removing your own corruption just by shooting? If it's the former then unlike most healing abilities you have no way to stop dealing damage to the target with your attack limiting the use.

Four Souls: You can choose for your ranged attacks to deal E damage. If you do (and the attack wouldn't deal E damage already), it deals +1k1 damage and is treated as a magical attack.

There are passives that give damage with some conditions. There are passives that let you deal E damage on trick shots (but not all attacks). There are advantages that let you deal magical damage. This deals as much damage as the strongest of passive damage boosts, applies E damage all the time, and hands out magic damage to top it off. And most of these comparable abilities come at level 4, not 3. 1k1 damage all the time is already unheard of, but it is also stacked on top of non-negligible boosts that make sure you can spam guns at anything. The level 1 passive might as well not exist, and it inherently competes with the final advantage because you can already kill almost anything with conditional death. It seeks to invalidate the top and bottom ends of the same gun kata. Even if this applies only to trick shots it'd likely be overtuned, but at least it would bring it down an order of magnitude.

(3/5) Sever Life: The target hit by this attack cannot spend resource points to recover hp for the duration of the scene. For 5 points, it also prevents recovery via the Regeneration trait.

Unlike most powers in this kata, this one is strangely restrictive with what it works against. Everything else talks about all kinds of things that might be construed as close enough to work 'Anything that feels like it's demonic toughness', 'Modrons fading away? Same as a Daemonhost resurrecting.' but here it only stops two kinds of healing, and only healing originating from itself. There are a million other passive healing sources close enough to the Regeneration trait, but this advantage sticks out among the design philosophy of the rest.

(-X/6) Shattered Jewel: If this attack hits, lose X hp. For 6 points, take 1 critical E damage to the gizzards instead.

Obviously nothing would normally require -6 points. The main use for this being -6 instead of -5 is that you can choose to take -5 hit points as a comparable alternative to -1 critical damage as a one stop shop for all your restriction needs. Once again this compares very unfavorably to Caged Bird as it's almost saying that -3 hit points for -3 restriction points is equivalent to losing a single resource point for the same upside. This comes much later as well, but is much weaker. It isn't bad at all, but when you're overshadowed you're overshadowed.

(5) From Whence It Came: Anything that is reduced to 5 critical damage by this attack is killed unless they burn a Hero point, even if they would normally not be in danger of death (for example, using R damage to a vampire). This attack qualifies as a ritual to prevent resurrection such as against daemonhosts and modrons.

A fair and understandable power you keep with you to use once against a particular BBEG, but the example given again shows how its uses are already mildly invalidated by earlier more efficient options. Your ranged attacks would never deal R damage to a vampire, and your attacks do magic damage already. It still serves as an example of what it works against, but it's a different kind of example of how multiple abilities that work towards the same goal can cause one to become comparatively less useful. Another limiting thing is that it's restricted to finishing blows, not earlier or later attacks, but only the final one, requiring coordination and tight knowledge of the enemy's hit points.

Overall the power is concentrated in a few smaller areas, and these areas stick out both among other gun kata for how powerful, universally useful, and non-situational they are, and how early they are acquired, but they also stand out within this same gun kata for how they eclipse similar abilities offered.

[Traskus]

I consider the restriction of "if you have no resource, you can't use it" to be worth something. Resource is a precious, well, resource. Its applications in combat can drain it quickly, especially on exalts with smaller pools. Exalts like chosen and prometheans can get resource quick in combat, sure. Atlanteans recover it slow or take a serious risk, vampires and daemonhosts are in melee so ranged attacks are almost a non-option. Vampires are going to be wary of this restriction, despite their large resource pool. Dragonblooded are limited quite a bit. I'll grant -3 is excessive. -1 feels insufficient for "there's a circumstance you can't use it, and every time you do you get closer to that circumstance." Bear in mind essence draining strike costs 2 points per resource you want to drain from targets and is the last thing get in that school. The gunslinger in this school puts that kind of danger on themselves whenever they use that disadvantage.

I would have said "get hippocratic oath or omnic crisis" but magitech gunman doesn't get clay pigeon or silent scope. Added a "no damage" bit.

Cut down damage bonus to something more thematic. The intent of lv 1 passive bonus and lv 3 passive bonus being similar is an investment. You get something serviceable at lv 1 and an upgrade at 3. Looking at gearbolt again I'll just bump "magic" to lv 1.

I wanted a cheap and expensive option for sever life. I also wanted other people to be able to heal them like healing spells. Looking at it, it's cumbersome and not thematic. But it's changed now.

I bumped the crit price of shattered jewel down to 4, both to be thematic and to give you room for another disadvantage if you want it.

The "r damage on vampire" clause serves as a readily understandable reference to explain an ability. No, I can't think of a specific circumstance where an E or magical damage attack not finishing off a target at crit 5 would come up right now but it is a thing that can hypothetically happen. I removed it because I don't want to barge in on cruel mercy's turf anymore.

I do want from whence it came to do more than it currently does to have more general use, so I'll take suggestions.

[Traskus]

Soul sacrifice reworded so now have to spend it to use it, not just if it hits.
From whence it came now mandates a hero point. Yes, I know it's a generic disadvantage but it's too good if you don't. It also requires actually hitting the target.

[Traskus]

Removed modrons from "from whence it came". They can't be banished by ritual, anyway.
Removed artifacts from "from whence it came". It needs to be more difficult than that to destroy an artifact.