A Different Take on Imbuements

[naloth]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Having access to these Techniques depends on the campaign. Typically, the Unique Technique Perk is sufficient to gain access to any one Cinematic Technique for one skill. Having access to a single Technique for all skills costs [3], all such Techniques for a single skill costs [5], and all such Techniques for all skills costs [15].

This seems a bit low for what you can do with them. I'd suggest making it an advantage (perhaps 25 or 40 points) that you can take limits against such as category (only certain weapons or weapon skills) or quantity (only 1-4 techniques).

An Imbuement Technique is built as follows - find the Enhancement you wish to add to the attack and apply a -1 per +10%. This is a Hard Technique, and has a built-in cost of 1 FP.

Using Enhancements and Limitations is great. There are tons of modifiers already created and adapting them for this seems like a good idea.

The mechanics of Techniques, though, are problematic. First off, Techniques are rather cheap, and even though you've capped the effective level, it's just not much of a point investment compared to what you could do with Imbuements or other advantages. Second, this encourages high skill since everything is based off the skill value. Third, 4 techniques would pay for a skill level anyway. Any trickshot archer would invest mostly in skill and put the bare minimum required to use the Technique (zero if they can be defaulted, otherwise 2 points per trick).

What they did with Imbuements probably works better here as well. Make them skills (D/H or D/VH) with a penalty as above for use and a mandatory weapon skill specialization. I'd make a single attack using the lower of your Imbuement skill or weapon skill.

You may spend more (or no) FP on the attack - divide the modifier by the number of FP spent (treat 0 FP as 0.5 FP).

Having to calculate this for each skill is a bit annoying, but something that can be done in advance. I'm just use a flat -5 or -10 to ignore the fatigue cost, applied to the Imbuement skill prior to assessing if it's lower than your weapon skill. For increases Powers 161 already lets you add +1 skill per point of fatigue.

Optionally, a character can imbue his weapon, rather than each individual strike. Instead of paying the FP cost (and taking the penalty) on each strike, the character instead rolls against skill floated to Will, and suffers a -1 per +5%. The effect lasts for 1 minute - when the minute is up, the character must either let the ability lapse or make another roll. This actually uses the same Technique as the single-strike version, so you can build up from there rather than having a new individual Technique. Non-attack Imbuements are also possible, and typically use this trend.

I like the idea here, but I'd have to try it out to get a feel for it. You definitely get a lot more for each FP.