Both of this post's styles are nakedly inspired by media of enormous quality. The fire-aspect style, here renamed Atomic Dragon Fist, owes its existence to the Firebenders of Avatar: the Last Airbender.
I don't talk about what a watershed series that was often enough. If you're not familiar with it, I won't sell it short by merely summarizing it here. There's really no substitute for watching the whole show, and seeing as it's the holiday season, I suggest you treat yourself.
The Firebenders are "the bad guys" for pretty well the entire run, with a few notable exceptions towards the end, and they're fantastic. First, even their foot soldiers are living flamethrowers with genuinely creepy armor.
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| I know it looks like old boy is about to get wrecked but... Trust me, totally opposite situation |
Rocket feet
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| Fire coming out of both ends. Strangely craving curry now... |
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| Told you old boy was fine |
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| Funny, "Fire Sprinkler" didn't sound like a very intimidating attack |
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| This isn't even as scary as she gets |
The Fire Nation, however, offered a more diverse threat than just their living flamethrower army. You didn't think our 12 year old protagonist was going to get off that easy did you?
(Seriously, this kid deals with some shit in the course of this show)
Because I'm leaving out the really great stuff, like this one girl Ty Lee who can punch your superpowers away by blocking your chi meridians
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| Believe me, that is extraordinarily painful |
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| But for real though, you need to watch this show |
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| Where's your god now?! |
I wanted to capture as much of that beautifully animated fight choreography as possible with the mere written word. So I added a touch more "punch" to the descriptions to really drive home how awesome they looked and felt, and just how big and explosive an impact they had
As far as the strategy of the style, I had to dig into one of the best-designed games ever made, Magic the Gathering, and pull out some concepts that made the fiery Red colored cards so much fun to play.
Red is an interesting color in magic; it's got a lot of cheap, fast little creatures (goblins are the popular choice), combined with beefy flying creatures (dragons). It tilts crazily towards offense; many creatures have 1 Toughness, or die at the end of the turn they're summoned. It's spells are largely direct damage, which deal (you guessed it) damage directly to creatures or players, and land/artifact destruction.
It struggles with enchantment removal, drawing cards, or the more esoteric elements of game control. But it excels at speed and control through destruction.
The Sligh deck is where Red first really came into it's own; it cemented the idea of the "mana curve" in tournament strategy by creating a deck that curb-stomped you before most decks got going. Although "quick kills" existed before Sligh, it was the first deck to routinely get the coveted "five turn kill". It achieved this with a quick rush of small, efficient creatures, coupled with direct-damage spells aimed at removing defenders. It was a deck made of otherwise sub-par commons which, because of it's skillful design and superior strategy, became a hyper-efficient killing machine.
So what do you get when you combine Sligh's lightning-fast killing process with the flashy, explosive and fire-spready attacks of the Fire Nation up there? Well, you get a style like this one; specializing in gaining environmental control of the battlefield by setting it on fire and drinking the resulting chaos to fuel it's arsenal of cheap, broad-Facing attacks.
It's Ultimate Technique is another "Weird Ultimate"; the idea is that it closes the foe's Chakra and opens a corresponding Chakra on you, although it's a bit less clean than that. It's super cheap, and you can tack it's power onto any other attack in the style, making it a strange and powerful tactical toolkit that adds a new dimension of value to every other Technique in your arsenal.
Atomic Dragon Fist
Novice
Fire Discipline Motion
- Cost: 3
- Rank: 1
- Facing: 6-9
- Effect: Blast a gout of flame from your striking limb. Creates a Rating-1 Fire Hazard at the point of impact. Note that this will set a struck foe on fire.
- Keywords: Offensive, Ranged, Element Control (Fire)
- Skill: Power
Burning Piston Strike
- Cost: 3
- Rank: 1
- Facing: 0-5
- Effect: You move with startling speed; blocking, dodging, throwing leg-sweeps or punching with machine-gun swiftness.
- Keywords: Versatile
- Skill: Agility
Fire’s Friend Attitude
- Cost: 3
- Rank: 1
- Facing: 0-3
- Effect: Your flesh hardens into pliable armor, blunting attacks. If used to increase Endurance or otherwise defend against Fire-based dangers, increase the power of this technique by 1 additional Rank.
- Keywords: Defensive, Element Resistance
- Skill: Endurance
Expert
Dragon’s Breath Attack
- Cost: 7
- Rank: 2
- Facing: 6-9
- Effect: Blast a searing stream of fire from your striking limb; or breath it out like an exhaling dragon. In addition attacking, spreads a Rating-2 cloud of cackling of Fire onto up to (Rank achieved) Elements or Characters.
- Keywords: Offensive, Ranged, Area Attack, Element Control: Fire
- Skill: Power
Afterburner Fist
- Cost: 7
- Rank: 2
- Facing: 0-5
- Effect: You hit with inhuman speed; the impact can crack concrete. You can further empower this strike: for 2 additional Prana, it ignites the foe with a Fire Hazard equal in Rank to your blow.
- Keywords: Offensive (Element Control: Fire)
- Skill: Agility
Fire God’s Hunger
- Cost: 7
- Rank: 2
- Facing: 0-4
- Effect: Your soul attunes to the primal element of fire; your skin hardens into a malleable shell, and your motions move with the fluid grace of flame. If used to increase Endurance or otherwise defend against Fire-based dangers, recover (Rating of the Hazard d10) Prana in a Pool of your choice and increase the Rank of your Endurance against that Hazard by an additional +1.
- Keywords: Defensive, Element Absorb (Fire)
- Skill: Endurance
Master
Comet and Volcano Attack
- Cost: 22
- Rank: 4
- Facing: 6-9
- Effect: Launch a sparking stream of pure energy from your extended limb or from any of your Chakra. In addition to the strike, creates a (Rating=Rank achieved) Explosion disaster at the point of impact. The intense heat of this blast sets the entire Battlefield and everything in it aflame with a Rating 4 Inferno Hazard.
- Keywords: Offensive, Ranged, element Control (Fire)
- Skill: Power
Soul-Irradiating Strike
- Cost: 13
- Rank: 3
- Facing: 0-5
- Effect: Your strikes glow with lurid neon as you twist your Prana into toxic patterns. If you damage the foe, you can further empower this strike: for 3 additional Prana, it poisons their Chakra, causing 2d10 Prana to drain from their bodies in ribbons of multicolored energy.
- Keywords: Offensive
- Skill: Agility
Lightning Charming Maneuver
- Cost: 13
- Rank: 3
- Facing: 0-4
- Effect: You absorb the kinetic force from strikes with fluid movements and precise redirection of force. In addition to the defense provided by the Technique, if used against an attack using Prana blasts, lightning, fire, or other pure expressions of energy, you may totally absorb the blast’s energy into your body and redirect it.
- Roll 1d10 per Open or Awakened Chakra: this determines how skillfully you redirect the flood of magic coursing through your body. If your total equals or exceeds the Cost of the redirected Technique, you perfectly harmonize the energy and may unleash the Technique once this round.
- Such pure energy attacks are completely absorbed, even if your defense is otherwise inadequate to stop it.
- There is tremendous danger if you don’t perfectly redirect the stolen energy: If you roll less than the original cost of the Technique, it erupts from your body in a sizzling explosion of discordant Prana. You suffer any remaining cost beyond your result as damage.
- Keywords: Defensive
- Skill: Endurance
Ultimate
Drawing from Hell’s Cistern
- Cost: (4+)
- Rank: -
- Facing: -
- Effect: You charge your body with discordant vibration. When you infuse an attack with this Technique, if it damages the foe, it inflicts an additional 1d10 Aggravation per 4 Prana spent towards a Spiritual Imbalance.
- The Imbalance’s Mechanical penalty targets a Chakra. It’s Dramatic penalty is based on that Chakra’s negative emotional association.
- For every point of aggravation you generate, they lose an equal amount of Prana from the targeted Chakra’s Pool.
- More than merely damaging the foe’s flow of Prana, this Technique draws it into your body, empowering you with their stolen magic.
- If the Chakra you targeted corresponds to one you possess which is slumbering, it Awakens at Refresh 2, Pool 10 and fills with the Prana you stole.
- If you have a corresponding Awakened or Open Chakra, it is filled with the stolen Prana.
- If the amount of Prana you stole exceeds your Pool’s capacity, or if you rob a Chakra that is Closed on your meridian, then you’ve got a choice to make; allow the stolen Prana to dissipate, or stuff it into an underdeveloped Chakra and suffer from an Imbalance.
- The force-fed Chakra has Pool 10 and Recovery 0; while Prana remains within it, you suffer a Rank 2 Imbalance corresponding to it’s negative emotional association.
- Keywords: Offensive, Infuse
- Skill: Agility
...
Obviously, the newly-christened Unearthly Gift style is based on that titan of influential anime/manga works, AKIRA
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| Perfectly summarized in the above image |
Again, this is best experienced for yourself. The movie is a breathtaking piece of animation, and the manga is a feast of visual storytelling. Both were created concurrently under the creative genius of Katsuhiro Otomo and will melt your face off the first time you experience them.
I steal from Otomo's masterpiece a lot actually; the Radioactive Scorpions owe a lot to Kaneda's bike gang, just to give one example. But nowhere do I steal as brazenly and thoroughly as with this style.
One of the narrative hinges of AKIRA is the slow realization of power by the fledgling psychic demigod Tetsuo. He's captured by a shadowy government organization in the opening scenes and experimented on to unlock his psychic potential, freeing himself in a spasm of creepy telekinetic powers after they manifest.
His powers, and ambition, grow through the story. Unfortunately, godhood takes an awful toll on him, and his body begins to mutate uncontrollably under the strain of his newfound power. I won't spoil it completely, but it begins with this and just ratchets up the body horror from there:
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| Reminder: this is as tame as it gets |
For Unearthly Gift, my first run at the style had every Technique unleashing mutative psychic feedback on the user, almost guaranteeing that they'd mutate unless they stuffed themselves with body-shriveling drugs. The redesign instead offers the mutations as the "undisciplined" way to access the style's powers; a secondary costing Technique for those that learn the style, or a primary for weird outland mutants with unstable psychic gifts.
The style does more than mirror Tetsuo's powers in the film: the tiers reflect the order in which they manifest as his gift begins to consume him. Just in case you thought I was slouching through this robbery.
Strategy-wise, the style is extremely defensive, with a powerful element of control. All the Expert-level Techs use control rather than offense, meaning you starting character's defining power is about how they manifest battle control, rather than how dangerous an attack they can launch.
There are alarmingly dangerous offensive Techniques, but they're higher on the cost curve than their equivalents in other styles; this style plays best at a long game, building and charging the game-changers for the mid to late rounds as your counter and resist the foe's early offense.
Unearthly Gift
Note: the Techniques of this style can manifest as psychic powers to non-martial artists. When used as psychic powers, they generate Aggravation towards a Hideous Evolution Physical Imbalance. The amount generated is as follows:- Novice-1d10
- Expert-2d10
- Master-4d10
- Ultimate-7d10
- Expert: Rank 2
- Master: Rank 4
- Ultimate: Rank 7
Mechanical: Focus
Dramatic: Your flesh rebels, evolving in hideous and stomach-churning ways. Horns of bone rupture from your skin, your muscles knot and swell into distended nodules, sense organs sprout from your corrupted flesh like daisies. These changes are rapid, turning your body into a churning mass of weird tissues and sickening growths.
While so mutating, your Effort reverts into Ferocity; no higher functions are possible while your form writhes in bodily chaos. At the GM’s option, tool use is limited or impossible. You can still use Techniques or psychic powers, as your instinct to power is uniquely preserved by this nightmarish new form.
Training: Characters who manifest psychic mutations may train themselves in their proper use, if they can acquire Kharma and purchase them (the mutation’s access acts as a sort of teacher). These characters may choose to accept aggravation in lieu of empowering these Techniques with Prana, granting them a dangerous secondary well of power.
Transformation: If both you Focus and Effort would be reduced to 0 or below from penalties, you transform irrevocably into an Artificial Demiurge. The power of this Demiurge is derived from the final Rank of the Imbalance which annihilated your humanity.
Novice
Destructive Force
- Cost: 4
- Rank: 1
- Facing: 4-9
- Effect: You extend your killing intent into the world, the invisible force causing sudden and eerie destruction. This manifests as an invisible ranged strike, crushing or lacerating the foe.
- For the additional cost of 5 Prana (or +1d10 Aggravation) you can extend this telekinetic shockwave to encompass everything in the same battlefield, applying the result to every foe, element and even the terrain.
- Keywords: Offensive, Ranged, (Area Attack)
- Skill: Agility
Telekinesis
- Cost: 4
- Rank: 1
- Facing: 0-6
- Effect: This power allows you to grab and lift objects and persons with the power of your mind alone. The default use of this Technique is defensive; you puppeteer yourself away from attacks, floating with an alien grace.
- If used purely for movement or lifting, counts as a Power action when lifting or an Agility action when moving yourself.
- Keywords: Defensive (Ranged)
- Skill: Power (Agility)
Prana Leak
- Cost: 3
- Rank: (1)
- Facing: (4-7)
- Effect: You twist you foe’s Prana into worthless patterns, disrupting and annulling it’s power. This cancels a foe’s Technique, wasting the Prana invested in it, unless they spend an additional 3 Prana to re-focus it’s integrity against your interference.
- The values in brackets are for using this Technique as an Endurance action.
- Keywords: -
- Skill: Endurance
Expert
Telegraphic Reflexes
- Cost: 7
- Rank: 2
- Facing: 0-3
- Effect: You twitch and pull your body out of harm’s way in unsettling spasms, responding to the foe’s strikes with an unnatural instinct. The defense offered by this Technique is Sustainable.
- If this defense is overcome by an attack empowered with Prana, you absorb 1d10 Prana per Rank of the Technique. These are captured from lingering expended Prana and do not reduce the foe’s Pools. They fill any available Pool.
- Keywords: Defensive, Sustainable
- Skill: Agility
Psychometric Harmony
- Cost: 0/(7)
- Rank: -/(2)
- Facing: -/(3-6)
- Effect: You attune your mind to the world’s spirit, drinking in it’s ambient Prana. This has one of the following effects:
- For the non-bracket cost (0): Once per turn, you may absorb ambient magic from your surroundings. For each Open or Awakened Chakra, if there is a corresponding abundance of it’s associated element in the surroundings, immediately gain 1d10 Prana in that Chakra’s pool as you sympathetically attune to its energy.
- “Abundance in the surroundings” is up to GM discretion, but if the description of the Battlefield or it’s Elements clearly contains the elements under consideration, then this should be sufficient to qualify.
- This cannot harmonize with corrupted, toxic, cursed, or unholy elements.
- For the cost in Brackets (7): it can instead act as a Senses action; this manifests as a kinesthetic feeling of connection with your surroundings. Additionally, you can read the memories of the surrounding Battlefield as you would your own, up to (your lifespan) backward in time.
- If used to hide in your surroundings, you tend to simply inhabit areas where others fail to notice. This allows you to be selectively visible and audible to only those of your choosing.
- Keywords: Element Absorb (Fire, Water, Earth, Metal, Air, Wood, Holy)
- Skill: Senses
Snuff the Flame
- Cost: 7
- Rank: (2)
- Facing: (4-7)
- Effect: You smother the foe’s sorcery with your superior will. You utterly cancel a Technique you perceive, rendering it’s Prana investment wasted.
- Master level Techniques sear against this Technique, requiring an additional 5 Prana to cancel.
- Ultimate Techniques burn through this power; they cannot be canceled.
- The values in brackets are for using this Technique as an Endurance action
- Keywords: -
- Skill: Endurance
Master
Beckon Steel
- Cost: 13
- Rank: 1
- Facing: Any
- Effect: Your psychic gift bends electromagnetism to your whims, summoning a mass of nearby metal to surround you in a glistening halo.
- This Technique is more powerful with abundant metal to control. Increase it’s Rank by 1 (up to a maximum of Rank 4) for every Element or Vehicle composed primarily of Metal in the Battlefield as scraps and plates are wrenched off to answer your summons. (The initial Rank of shield is in a metal-poor environment: it represents a nebulous aura of ambient psychic energy and charged metal particles)
- The metal acts as a Shield of the final Rank: this effect is Sustainable.
- At your command, pieces branch off into missiles: when launching an attack, you may convert any number of Ranks of your shield into an equal-Ranked Offensive boost to your strike. These attacks are Ranged.
- Finally, you may focus the full might of this Technique on the surrounding metal instead (with an equal Rank boost, as described above). This levitates and reshapes it to your whims; count this as an Intellect action to create any mostly-metal tool of your choosing. You could transmogrify a length of rebar into a machine gun, or a pile of broken motherboards and metal scraps into a sophisticated cybernetic limb.
- Keywords: Element Control (Metal), Shield
- Skill: Intellect
Ghost’s Claw Grasp
- Cost: 13
- Rank: 3
- Facing: 6-9
- Effect: You reach out with the power of your mind and throttle a foe. This manifests as a Ranged Grab attack; you grab the foe with your telekinesis and can maneuver them as you please. As with all holds, this is Sustainable. Note that your limbs are completely free, as you’re holding them with psychic force.
- When used as a Power action, levitates or shapes objects at range with sheer psychic force.
- Keywords: Offensive, Grab, Ranged
- Skill: Power
Power Quash
- Cost: 13
- Rank: 3
- Facing: 4-7
- Effect: You disrupt and annihilate the foe’s magic, unmaking their maneuvers with invasive psychic force. This totally cancels a single Technique you can perceive.
- You must win a war of wills against the user of an Ultimate Technique to cancel it. The foe chooses between paying an additional 2d10 Prana or beating the Rank of the Technique with a Spirit action to overcome its effects.
- Keywords: -
- Skill: Endurance
Ultimate
Breath of God
- Cost: Variable
- Rank: 1+
- Facing: 8-9
- Effect: You tap into the universal generative breath; the first explosive act of creation in the cosmos. This manifests as an orb of shimmering blue energy; the Rank of the effect is based on your Prana investment, as below:
- 3 Prana: 1
- 7 Prana: 2
- 13 Prana: 3
- 22 Prana: 4
- 38 Prana: 5 (This is the power level when used as a Mutation)
- 68 Prana: 6
- 126 Prana: 7
- At the point of Impact, the orb explodes in a blast of incandescent light. This manifests as an Explosion Disaster, with a Rating equal to the Rank purchased (but not further modified by Effort, focus, Weapons or other modifiers, as the attack itself is).
- Rank 1-3 are Battlefield scale. 4-6 are District scale, blowing up entire neighborhoods. 7 Is Domain-scale, enough to level a city.
- As a strange benefit, any lingering toxic, cursed, polluted or otherwise harmful Elements or Hazards are wiped away in the destructive radius, effectively cleansing them.
- Keywords: Offensive
- Skill: -
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