Powers/Imbuement: Gambit's Power

[Varyon]

Late to the party (but not nearly as much as the thread necromancer was), but I'd be tempted to do something like the following:

Innate Attack 3.5 points/level burn (Delay, up to 10 seconds +10%; Side Effect, Fragile:Explosive +65%; All or Nothing, must explode -30%; Melee Attack C, Cannot Parry -35%; Power Modifier -10%) [5]/level

Then just give it enough damage to reliably drop whatever you're throwing with it to -5xHP*. You will need either a dedicated Extra Attack (with Single Attack -60%) or a custom Technique (built on Rapid Strike) to be able to both imbue the item and throw it on the same turn, likely using Throwing Art. Time your Delay to make it occur on impact (I'd allow a Perk to do this reliably), and you'll cause it to explode, dealing damage equal to 6dxHP. For reference, a standard playing card would have around 1.2 HP - two levels of the above would allow you to reliably imbue it and you'd deal, rounding down to 1 HP, 6d cr exp when it popped. You could technically imbue something with up to 13 HP if it fails the HT-3 roll to avoid gaining Fragile and critfails its HT roll against knockdown/stunning, but that's not something to rely on. Note I opted for fixed damage; you could build it where it called for rolling damage, if you prefer, but I opted for reliability.

All or Nothing calls for -10% if it requires a Major Wound, but Sorcery suggests the GM give more of a discount if it calls for something more. I feel calling for one of Critical Failure on an HT roll for a Major Wound, a failure by 3+ on a Death Check, or reaching -5xHP* is worth -30%.

Technically the above would also work on a hostile character, provided you deal enough Injury. I don't recall if Gambit was able to do that; if not, you may want to add on a Limitation.

*I treat -5xHP as the same as a failure by 3+ on a Death Check, as both have the same effect - instant death (failure by only 1 or 2 results in a Mortal Wound). I also feel that, at that level of Injury, whether or not the Side Effect is resisted is enough of a moot point that we can treat it as automatically having worked. Of course, considering that dropping something to -5xHP in a single attack should result in a -30 to the HT roll to resist the Side Effect (I feel the penalty should be -1 per 20% of HP rather than a flat -1 per 2 HP), that's probably a safe assumption.

EDIT: Technically you could build this cheaper as a Crushing Attack with No Blunt Trauma and No Knockback, but I think using Burning Attack is more thematically appropriate. I'd probably treat the explosion as Incendiary to make up for "overpaying" just to stay in-theme.