Well, for now I'm reading up in W20-Book of the Wyrm, which seems to contain more about Banes and Formori, since we can make those as minions eventually and I am interested in empowering minions without giving them unstoppable super-cancer or complete madness as a side-effect.
Ah, the infamous 'their wombs defiled' book. An interesting read that one was.
Speaking of something interesting, I was trawling through the ExWoD Charm and I found this:
Avoidance Kata (••)
There are some problems whose best solution is to have not been there to get into them in the first place. The Sidereal can escape from danger (or just meeting tedious people at parties) by retroactively having been somewhere else all along.
System: Spend 1 Essence within the first minute after encountering someone socially or within the first two turns of combat. The Sidereal relocates immediately to somewhere else she might plausibly have been instead, and her magic amends destiny to patch up the inconsistencies as best it can, giving everyone involved new memories of the Sidereal not having been present where she was, and having been present where she now is… although they don't actually lose their existing memories of the Sidereal having been present before she absented herself, or not having been present before she appeared. Those old memories just… don't make as much sense as the new ones, given the amended circumstances.
This magic also doesn't remove the consequences of actions anyone took before the Sidereal made herself absent, so if she stabbed someone before vanishing, they're still perforated and bleeding, even though the Sidereal was never there to perform the stabbing to begin with. Maybe they just burst into cuts spontaneously? It happens sometimes.
The limitation that the Sidereal can only go somewhere else she might have plausibly been makes Avoidance Kata good for escaping danger, but bad for escaping confinement. A Sidereal who finds a group of inmates coming to murder her in her prison cell might have plausibly been in solitary confinement or the infirmary instead, but by that point it's implausible that she wasn't in jail at all.
Let me break down this Charms for you folks. This Charm is basically the Skyrim equivalent of 'Huh? Must be the wind'.
Let me give you an example:
Step 1: Vizier McSinister the Chosen of Battle successfully sneaks into a boardroom filled with Vampires. Vizier then uses this moment to successfully stabs the head-honcho of a Clan.
Step 2: Vizier then uses Avoidance Kata to basically '
suggests' reality that he might not be there in that same boardroom. In fact, he was never in the boardroom, he was on a floor below them acting as a janitor, blindfully sweeping the floor off dusts.
Step 3: The Vampires uses this lapse of causality to reason that 'Hey, our Boss just died out of nowhere. Don't you think it's odd?' 'No, man. He just suffered some Vampire heart attack or something. Sometimes it just happens you know?' 'Shiet, you right. Let's just clean the body. Before HQ sends the new one in town.'
It's bullshit, but do you want to see something (literally) groundbreaking?
Neighborhood Relocation Scheme (•••••)
The Sidereal summons a long cerulean prayer strip and binds it around her waist, where it becomes a band of Essence the color of a clear sky. She connects herself to the destiny of the landscape around her, and then begins to run, dragging the local geography along in her wake until it has been relocated to a more auspicious location.
System: Spend 3 Essence. The Sidereal connects herself to all geographic features and buildings within (Essence rating) miles (although she can target a smaller area, if desired), and may drag them somewhere else by walking or running: no other manner of conveyance is acceptable, although she can increase her running speed by as many forms of magic as she may have available. The Sidereal must soak one level of bashing damage each hour until she releases this Charm, which cannot be healed while it remains active.
This Charm isn't destructive. The relocated geography slides smoothly through the world, rerouting existing terrain around itself as it goes, and when it arrives in its new location, it integrates into the existing landscape in a way that makes sense. For example, a borough moved from one end of a city to the other would configure itself so that all of its sewage and electrical lines are still connected to the grid in a functional manner, and doesn't make complete hash of the city's roads. Likewise, the world "fills in" the missing gap left behind by the Sidereal's efforts with a new geographical arrangement that makes sense for the location, whether that means collapsing surrounding neighborhoods together, or simply creating a new patch of generic parks or woodland. Even the dragon lines reroute themselves so that a Dragon Nest relocated by this Charm doesn't have its power disrupted.
As far as the world is concerned, the new geographical configuration is the way things have always been; old land surveys and other records reflect as much, and people form new memories of the relocated land having always been where it is now… although they also retain their old memories of it having been somewhere else.
You can tow down an entire Skyscraper and put it in the middle of the desert and reality will try and reaffirms itself by saying: "Yeah, that shit looks legit, cuz." And no one, NO ONE will bat an eye. That Leylines that once a part of an enemy faction's territory? Oh, it's mine now. Let me just tug it into my lair where you can never have it again.
Gods themselves will turn green from envy from seeing what sorts of bullshit Sidereals can do.
It simply specifies it has to hit us, but it does not specify it has to do damage.
Counterattack Charms are so good with High Soak/Defense Value characters. You can get free Multiple Actions without having to spend multiple Essence per turn. I approve.
