Submission: Ars Magna

Name: Ars Magna
Cardtype: action
Cost: none
Capacity: none
Discipline: none
Clan: none
+2 stealth action
This vampire equips a melee weapon from your hand (pay cost as normal) and unlocks if successful. Put this card on this vampire. Once per combat round, this vampire may burn X blood to gain X additional strikes for that round, only usable to strike with a melee weapon.

Flavor text: "To win any battle, you must fight as if you are already dead."
- Miyamoto Musashi

Art notes: A sword fighter in combat-ready posture that gives the impression of sophistication and skill that his/her opponents do not possess. Facing either a group of lesser enemies or the 'camera'.

World of Darkness reference: none

How does this card address a compelling game need?:
Elsewhere on the forum there was discussion that melee weapons needed help in comparison to potence-combat and celerity guns. So I came up with this idea. The main ideas behind this are:
a.) to get rid of the weakness of weapons, that you need to waste an action to equip it (or use concealed weapon etc)
b.) Make it so that the vampire can, as the flavor text implies, win the combat even if it means his/her own destruction (no limit on additional strikes).
c.) since you pay to get additional strikes, no blood is wasted if enemy strike:combat ends. You can psyche etc. and try again.
d.) obvious synergy with taste of vitae is obvious

Created by: Juha Laukkanen

ps. 'Ars magna' = The great art



pps. I just realized all the different ways this combat may still fail, damnit...

Going with the "almost" anything to make melee weapons better, this is just slightly beyond the "almost".

For a non-discipline card you really can't have more additionals than would give. Rather, nerf it slightly:

"Once each round of combat this vampire can burn a blood to gain an additional strike after s/he would inflict damage with a melee weapon, only usable to strike with that melee weapon."

I'd love if the art for this depicted a street samurai sort of a character with leather jackets and stuff instead of a zen samurai, since it doesn't require disciplines or a capacity.

Kraus wrote:

For a non-discipline card you really can't have more additionals than would give. Rather, nerf it slightly:

(Striga is not a discipline, trololol)

Aight, lets look at the issues:
- loses to immortal grapple
- loses to aggravated damage (can't do additionals if you're in torpor)
- loses to maneuver to long range
- Need to have both this and the melee weapon in hand at the same time
- action needs to succeed (I originally put it at +2 stealth so that 2nd tradition may still block it, now Im not so sure)

If you get in combat with this guy unprepared, you're screwed. Same can be said about many other combat modules. I'd rather not reduce it to 'average' random combat card status. With OT you probably would have decks built around it at least. That's my aim. If not, what changes with melee weapons? Nothing again?

Multiple strikes depicts the "great art" of swordfighting. I really don't see what else could. Linear blood cost was meant to depict the "You kill me? I take you with me!" mentality.

Another thing to add might be "this vampire is immune to grapple cards" if we must nerf this card in some other way. I was considering introducing another card for that effect.

Bloodartist wrote:

Kraus wrote:

For a non-discipline card you really can't have more additionals than would give. Rather, nerf it slightly:

(Striga is not a discipline, trololol)

A single use card instead of a constant effect.

Troloetc

Bloodartist wrote:

Multiple strikes depicts the "great art" of swordfighting. I really don't see what else could.

Name: Ars Magna
Cardtype: Action
Cost: none
Capacity: none
Discipline: none
Clan: none
+2 stealth action
This vampire equips a melee weapon from your hand (pay cost as normal) and unlocks if successful. Put this card on this vampire. Melee weapons this vampire is equipped with do +1 damage, strike with first strike, and have "Strike: dodge, with an additional strike."

Flavor text: "To win any battle, you must fight as if you are already dead."
- Miyamoto Musashi
_________________
Additional strikes just feel like a madman hacking wildly to me, almost like a frenzy. Maybe something that expresses melee combat as an art and skill would be more apt.