Looking at the mechanics I'm hoping we can get a reprieve on the order of operations since without one our loot becomes incredibly hard to use.
Assuming we get one and roughly use the crafting rules from that link, my thought is to go all out and burn two major arc villains on Daniel's buff once we have the craft charm.
Emanations could sort of represent a god, though I'd prefer to use whatever DP is already using for that if we can. For now I'll just sue those mechanics though.
The bulk of the effect would come from the splendor mechanics since we can make those and it suits the sort of buff I'm envisioning here.
We use the sword as the mystic token to carve the splendor on, and use the gossamer to infuse it as our token of victory/impossible juice for whatever that's worth in bending the rules.
Ideally this lets us meet the conditions for a 4 dot adornment, because you need a trophy infusion to improve past 3 dots.
That would give us 9 element points, 1-6 must be form, 3-6 root, up to 5 mystic.
I'll assume 2 for root, imminent violence for the sword and dreaming for reasons that will be clear in a moment:
I'm not sure what chimerical damage should mean in this setting, but something close to being able to fight without pulling punches or permanently damaging people who don't deserve it would be appreciated by someone like Daniel. The glamor resistance is nice too.
I think it's arguable that a Yin alignment from the sword makes this reasonable, especially with gossamer involved.
The real meat is the root element stuff though, because it has these as options:
The first of those is basically a flatly superior alternative to an exalt's key ability. It's not an excellency, but it's the next best thing to it.
For a sword adornment the obvious application is melee + dex, with a fighting style specialty to maximize applicable dice if that's a thing.
There are all kinds of great abilities here, but I'd still be tempted to get this twice if it weren't for the existence of sacred protection.
We keep talking about issues with mind magic/reading and mortals. With SP and a dream character element he has a constant immunity to it while holding the sword.
The base description calls Splendors solidified ancient sorcery, so I'm hoping that it's as close to a charm as it's practical to get.
It's so good that buying lots of character to get immunities is potentially viable, though mixed damage types lowering the defense quality is an issue. I prioritize the mind stuff always being as strong as possible, so I'm avoiding it.
This leaves us with 1 point left for mystic elements, which is sort of unfortunate but only a few are good anyway so it's not too much of a loss.
The safest bet is to double down on sword things with this:
So if Daniel is fighting someone with his sword he can botch and always adds 2 bonus successes to any successes he does roll, which will be rolled against Diff 4 most of the time.
It's a shame that the mind protection is so expensive. If I could pull another point without a flaw we could get that to a constant -3 difficulty to all attack rolls with another character choice.
The other potentially interesting option here is this:
As an adornment this ability is less useful unless the chimerical stuff gets translated in a particularly useful way here.
If this would let him throw around nearly real illusions or temporary modifications made using charged nevernever goop it'd be a lot of added utility.
Honestly looking at the Arcana rules I'm just disappointed. The traits are all for a physical brawler, despite the spiritual options. Which are describe as having differences in their ability to physically engage with reality but mechanically emanations are barely any different.
It's basically just that they can also teleport to their master independent of the keystone and use an infernal's kingdom as their spirit realm. Which they pay for by taking a century to reform when killed compared to the year and a day of a phantasm and having all the other weaknesses of the type.
That said, they can still take regular merits so we can theoretically build what is essentially a stand with the Arcana baseline focused on brawl, some utility, and facilitating some specific magical trick.
I won't stat the whole thing, but here's what we're working with:
For the features we'd get this by default and for free:
For the others:
So he doesn't need a sword for his sword.
For occult or whatever is needed for its gimmick ability.
I'm thinking something sensory related. If possible give it dots in divination directly at creation, with the 6-point flaw version of this:
Set to "Can only be used to the immediate benefit of the Sword's owner".
Use the extra points on the path, and take the full seven points in allowed merits to buy these:
From
here.
If the sword can't play Mysterious Ways games itself, then the god within could still at least sort of fake it by looking at the present and near future to guide Daniel around.
