Flash Step

[Varyon]

So, over in the Fantasy Martial Arts Starting Abilities thread, a tangent came up about Flash Step*, and I had a realization. I've always tried to come up with ways to build it based around Warp, which is supremely frustrating due to all the oddities of that trait... but one of Fred Brackin's comments caused me to think more on the fact that Flash Step is not teleportation, and thus building it based on such is doomed to failure. The important bits of Flash Step are that a) it's a Step, leaving the character able to act immediately after doing it, b) it typically involves a long distance compared to a typical Step, and maybe even to the character's normal movement rate, but outside of extreme circumstances is still on the tactical rather than strategic scale, and finally c) it involves the character functionally vanishing from view - but this aspect isn't 100% reliable.

For the first two parts, we're looking at Enhanced Move: Ground**, modified to only apply to the character's Step distance. Of course, to do that, first we need to make it so it applies to Step in the first place; this typically calls for Second Nature +150%, which is made up of Instantaneous Acceleration (you don't have to run for several seconds to get up to full speed), Perfect Maneuverability (when going faster than your nominal Ground Move, you don't have to deal with things like turn radius and the like), and Retains Speed (you can use your current speed to calculate Step, rather than your nominal movement rate). The first and last are both necessary for our Flash Step, but the middle arguably isn't - there are plenty of cases where Flash Step seems to be limited to moving in a more-or-less straight line (even then the character seems to be able to chance Facing freely at the end of the Step, but Step lets you do that anyway, and I think retaining that is probably fine), so at the base our Flash Step would just use +100% here. Step Only on Basic Move I think typically gets assigned somewhere between -50% and -80%; my honest inclination here is to have it cancel out the +100% of the above. Call it Flash Step +0% - each level of Enhanced Move (Flash Step +0%) doubles your Step (only) and if your resulting Step exceeds your Basic Move (which will occur at Enhanced Move 4 at the latest) you are subject to the High-Speed Movement rules. Improved Flash Step +50% means you aren't subject to High-Speed Movement rules regardless of how much your Step exceeds your Basic Move.

Now we come to the last part, the bit that makes it seem as though it were teleportation - vanishing from plain sight. Invisibility or Obscure doesn't really work here, because the target is possible to see, just difficult. But just giving them Chameleon doesn't really work, because that won't let them actually vanish from sight. So how to do it? Well, Dungeon Fantasy introduced a mechanic called (confusingly) Backstabbing, which allows a sneaky character to vanish at the start of combat (fluffed as "I was already hiding when we started, honest"), and reappear during the actual fight behind the nearest foe. Delvers to Grow (and possibly the DFRPG before it) extended this to allow its use during combat via the Vanishing Act power, allowing you to disappear for a few rounds (with a successful Stealth roll at a penalty) and then reappear behind any foe you could have reached during the time you were missing. It does have the problem that you just need to succeed at the (penalized) Stealth roll to be able to get behind someone for a free sneak attack, but I have ideas on how to fix that.

Vanishing Act requires getting to cover in order to break the foes' line of sight, but what options would allow this from a stand still? A smoke bomb would do a classic "ninja vanish," and Obscure would allow for that (although you'd want it to have Defensive unless you are alright with having your own vision obscured for the first couple of yards of movement, and Stealthy unless you actually do vanish in a puff of smoke)... but how much would be enough to justify being able to use Backstabbing? Would you need a full 10 levels, or would 1 suffice? For that matter, would Chameleon work here - and would you call for 1 level (just enough to break up your profile and make you hard to see), 5 levels (enough for to see -10 when standing still), or 10 levels (enough for -10 to see when moving)? Personally, I'm leaning toward Chameleon 1, in no small part because that means Chameleon 1 [2] + Vanishing Act [8] is worth an even [10]. I think treating it as allowing for instant movement (Vanishing Act normally uses up a turn to get to cover and vanish, rather than letting you immediately Step behind a foe and stab them) but only having the disappearance last for a moment works out to a wash.

We've now got (or at least will once I get some weigh-in's on what the minimum would be for such) a power that lets us use Backstabbing to disappear more-or-less instantly, and one that lets us move a long distance as a Step - and the two combined cover the functionality of the Flash Step. But what if we want a character who can use Flash Step but isn't any good at Stealth? Or just one who is better at Flash Step than his Stealth skill would imply? For the latter, I'm thinking of allowing a Flash Step Technique; it would be Easy and buy off that remaining -5 for [5], but only for Flash Step, not for typical uses of Backstabbing. For the former, perhaps combine that with One Task Wonder? With One Task Wonder letting you roll at DX to use Stealth for Flash Step, then Vanishing Act and the Flash Step Technique getting rid of the penalty, this would allow the character to Flash Step at DX+0 - those who want their Flash Step to be more effective than this at getting past enemy defenses would need to actually invest in Stealth rather than relying on OTW. Does this all sound appropriate?

*While I'm using the term from Bleach, it's something that shows up in a lot of shounen media - the user has a quick burst of movement so fast only exceptional foes can actually track them (thus they functionally disappear), then reappear elsewhere (typically right behind their target) and deliver an attack.

**Characters with Flight or Amphibious (or Aquatic for that matter) would instead use the Flying or Swimming variants. For a character who can use Flash Step in several environments, I'd probably let them take Alternate Abilities (I would do similar for one with normal Enhanced Move in multiple environments).