So, I'm working out ideas for a Bloodborne-inspired "blood magic" Discipline. I actually have ideas for quite a few Maneuvers, because Bloodborne has a considerable number of things that can be used for Maneuver chains. And when I say "inspired," I really mean "shamelessly ripped off game mechanics" for a significant number of them.
So far, I've pinned down a good number of ideas for Maneuvers. Two firm Stance ideas, based on the Rally mechanic and the Chikage sword, two firm Counter ideas based on the Visceral Attack Caryll Runes, three firm Strikes based on the Bloodletter mace, the Quicksilver Bullets from HP "emergency" option, part of the actual Visceral Attack mechanic proper and quite a few ideas for Boosts revolving around the concept of Quicksilver Bullets.
While I haven't hammered out the exact numbers yet, the Rally Stance would give a delayed damage pool with a capacity equal to either full or half IL and make attacks remove damage from the delayed damage pool at a fixed rate of damage dealt to damage removed. Acts a lot like DR at higher levels and mitigates the HP costs all over the place by putting them somewhere they can be recovered easily. The Chikage based Stance would be taking a few points of damage each round to add Constitution modifier and/or IL, possibly for different numbers(Con to attack, IL to damage?), to all attacks.
For the Visceral Attack Counters, one would refresh Boosts, where the various Quicksilver Bullet based things go, while the other would restore HP
and grant temp HP. A possible third could be pure damage at a lower level, dealing the same damage as the higher level ones, but lacking extra effects to make it worth keeping for anything other than Maneuver spam at higher levels.
The Bloodletter-based Strike would eat HP and heal for the total damage dealt by the Strike, with extra reach for the Strike and for 5-10 Rounds(1/2 IL?) after making the Strike and keeping some of the damage bonus on the Strike for that same duration. The Quicksilver Bullet Strike would add damage to a ranged attack with an ammo-using weapon, with crossbows and firearms having the shot put directly into the weapon, skipping reloading as a separate action from the Strike. This would cost HP based on the base damage of the weapon and be a multiplier of the damage, technically usable to instantly load and fire a cannon at the cost of being effectively hit by said cannon. The part of the Visceral Attack mechanic in a Strike would basically be a super-feign, using a ranged weapon to cause a rather different save to avoid being rendered Flatfooted, and thus subject to the Counters and possibly Boosts with a Flatfooted target requirement.
The Quicksilver Bullet based Boosts would make up specialty ammo, including being able to make thrown weapons like daggers. Similar to the instant-loading Strike, the cost would be proportionate to the weapon used and the damage improvements would be multipliers. An Oil or two with flat damage that apply to melee weapons could also work. The fluff I'd use for the Boost-restoring Counter would also fit in with a few oddball tricks, like changing damage from Maneuvers to Acid and Con-poison instead of... I suppose that Fire is the main energy type fit, with all the explosions involved. Physical damage would still be a major component, obviously.
Hmm... The smallest official Discipline is 20 Maneuvers, while the largest is 27. Here, I have concrete ideas for five to seven Maneuvers, as well as stuff for a category of Boosts which can easily cover another three or four Maneuvers. Having the Acid and Con-poison as a set of higher-level replacement Maneuvers gives rise to a set of replacement Maneuvers that actually act as a choice of which version, because Poison Immunity is common enough that having a Con poison be a significant chunk of the damage makes it worth actual consideration between low and high level, while the chances of an enemy having both large Acid resistance and large DR that isn't bypassed by Silver, Adamantine or Magic is
very low.
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An idea I'm considering right now, thanks to a thread on GiantITP, is a Discipline that's made up of networks of Maneuvers that feed into eachother. Lots of use of "If you used X maneuver immediately before this one, add Y to this Maneuver's effect." Or the other way around, with the Maneuver specifying how it alters other Maneuvers in the Discipline. The point of this is being a partially customizable Kata setup, where a series of Strikes, Boosts and Counters have different effects when done in immediate succession than when they're used alone. This models proper martial arts better without going full Heron Marked with it.
A bit of an example with an existing Discipline would be if using Burning Brand while in Holocaust Cloak gave a larger, multiplier, range increase instead of Reach, while using Searing Charge
immediately after Burning Brand would cause a Lance-like damage increase to Searing Charge. Chains of particular Maneuvers having greatly increased effect over the initial forms of each. Holocaust Cloak in general would grant added effects to Maneuvers based on the fire lingering in place.
Merging it with the above idea, using the Bloodletter-based Strike with the Chikage-based Stance would extend the range of the Strike even farther and increase the scaling value for the Strike itself, but not affecting the lingering bonus damage of the Strike. Preceding the Bloodletter Strike with one of the Quicksilver Bullet Boosts would add a variant of the effect of that Boost to both the initial Boost and the lingering damage buff. This results in chaining Strikes, Boosts and Stances to get much larger overall effects, enabling a constant series of large damage attacks in a near-cyclical pattern of Maneuvers that keeps going until there's either not an enemy in reach or a refresher is missed. Or the character runs out of health to fuel it, in this case.
Basically, having the
Clockwork Warrior variant of Initiation as emergent behavior of optimal play, instead of hard rules forcing it. And it also has the nifty advantage of promoting staying in a Discipline, as you build up chains of Maneuvers that increase eachother's effect, building up a set of moves that you want to cycle through as much as possible because of their value. But setting up more cycles for better versatility can be just one Maneuver away, so you can end up dumping seven Maneuvers and two Stances into Desert Wind just to be able to use fire for every combat application and several utilities.