I would appreciate it if you could expand on this at your leisure.
All sort of things. Luminous Interceptor Defense being a pseudo perfect via a mechanic that I'd consider mechanically dubious at that mote cost, given Exalted's general issues with keeping it so you can hit people, its form being the least form like form charm I can think of, Coruscating Prism Defense being a step one reflexive charm (for those not familiar, that's when you declare your
offensive charms), etc.
There's also some costing issues: Lucent Circuit Technique is flat out better than the Infinite Dodge Mastery, and I'll talk more about Shining Bolts Prana below.
Isn't that kind of the point of being in a warstrider?
Lemme phrase it this way: do you like rocket tag? Note that 64B was the
minimum raw damage. Its actually about
20 higher, because warstriders tend to 10+ strength at the low end, a 20 at the high. So damage at the high end, before threshold sux (which also get doubled) is 104B. Warstriders give you a maximum 30 soak (most give low 20s). And you use your own health levels. This is the definition of perfect or die.
But warstriders being broken and exasperating the existing lethality issues in Exalted to a insane degree isn't exactly news. There is the concern a Lunar can take a warstrider goremaul and wreck you with it, but that's a separate thing that come with letting warstrider tier weapons into personal scale. Let look down to something the style heavily incentivizes: grand beam weapons. Note that higher artifact rating boost the styles power, so the artifact 5 for such weapons is a good thing here. It also allows for a personal output of about 30 damage an attack, which is more then anything but a soak monster can tank. Where this gets bad is when you combo in something akin to Hungry-Tiger Technique, which multiplies threshold sux, which then get multiplied again by Shining Bolts Prana. That will add around 10 damage a hit to an attack, boosting average damage output to 40 per round. For most characters, that's perfect territory, but its actually 2 motes cheaper then a perfect for solaroids, and 4-5m cheaper then for a celestial, solidly tilting mote economy in your favor. That not ideal. Alternatively, you can use Illuminated Stroke Attack (from this style) for a flat boost of 10 to damage, though that is not as good mote economy wise. Further, the next charm in the style allows for a scene long boost of accuracy to 5, effectively negating the only real disadvantage of using a grand weapon in the first place.
Guess I'm looking for something with an MA with a more general Alchemical theme; magitech weapons in general, instead of just a subset.
Oh. Um. Look, here's the issue with what your asking for:
Define, mechanically, magitech weapons.
I'll save you some time: the only thing that seems to define a magitech weapon is that it has a repair rating. Further, thanks to WotLA, there are so many artifacts that fit the definition that you need dial down what the style encompasses as weapons wise just to keep a solid theme (and MA's live or die on their themes). Further, an issue with this kind of style is that its a small step from this to a style that 'makes swords more swordy'. Its not a great precedent.
If I was to build a magitech style, it would be something that generates effects by over stressing weapons (forcing the repair mechanic into play), and generating 'munition' type resources (akin to the White Reaper Style) to cause effects. Hmmmmmm....
You know, I've always liked the fluff for Reaver Daiklaves despite them being mechanically shit, but I've just never been able to find a decent MA (or any canon MA, even) that actually uses them as form weapons.
Eye of Heaven (Debris of the Fallen Races) uses orichalcum reaver daiklaves as a from weapon. Its a pretty solid style.
What;s so great about Crystal chameleon, anyway? I remember it's charms feeling more constrained/situational than usual for a CMA.
Its big thing is letting you sling unexpected attacks by virtue of flash banging your enemy into not seeing you. Beyond that it lets you move fast, has a decent external penalty inducer, a perfect and a good multiple action charm. All said and done, its a solid style.
There is no contradiction between what VBoS says, and what "daiklaves" in an MA form weapon description means. It just so happens that VBoS doesn't say anything about daiklaves.
The artifact version of a sword is a daiklave.
Given that VBoS explicitly says sword, NOT straight sword, it's safe to assume all sword types and their artifact equivalents apply.
Especially since the entire style was pretty comprehensively errataed and that wasn't changed or clarified.
These are separate readings of the same text, and quite frankly their both valid. VBoS has ridiculously broad form weapons, all said and done. Looking at that list though, its clearly meant to invoke a classic wuxia master. Going by that, the straight sword is the obvious choice to round them out, if you are restricting. The charms themselves have more in common with the high precision, hit weak points, internal damage school of classic martial arts, which don't match well with the classic wuxia master theme. My personal list is knives, straight and slashing swords. Artifact wise, that means standard and reaper daiklaves: reavers are to broad and messy to evoke the proper feel, and the goes doubly for grand daiklaves.
