Combat Talents by thematthew

To begin with, I'm reposting the 2 varients of Smash and Grab I made, since it is a kinda lame talent and it would be nice to give it a facelift.
Smash & Grab (2.0) [+1] Standard Attack
Roll 1d8 and deal that much damage to target. If the result is 6 or more you gain a pip and the opponent loses a pip, if the result is 3 or less you are stunned until the end of your next turn.

(Hulk) Smash and Grab [-2] Standard Attack
Deal 2d8 damage to target, if either comes up 7 or higher the target loses 1 pip and you gain 1 pip.

Now for the newer stuff, when I made:

Hey, I think you dropped this! [-9] Standard Utility
Target enemy is scavenged for the rest of the battle. While scavenged you gain half of the pips spent by the target, minimum 1, and you gain 1 pip whenever it gains pips.

Spoiler:

I was originally thinking of it as an alternative pip 'theft' idea, now I realize that it might be fun to have the scavenger classification of guy. One who's combat strategy is to get pips, and do better because that's what he does.

Without further ado:

Scavenger

Spoiler:

Here's another one I worked out with Ramsus:

Grenadier

Spoiler:

I love Look! A Decoy very much.

Changelog:

Added in Grenadier
Added Coin Toss to the Scavenger.

I rather like the "Hey, I think You Dropped This!" talent. Scavenger is a neat effect. I feel like we should definitely have more long-battle types of moves. I just wonder if it's to powerful...

And on a side note, there's no real way of knowing how a monster's pips are going to work on a monster to monster basis. I mean technically as a DM I could go and increase the pip value of my monsters by a factor of 3 and everything would work the same. I think that was one of the reasons that Stairc didn't want too many abilities that are based on enemy pip values. Of course it will work fine many of the monsters I'm putting in the compendium, since I tend to make the pip values similar to player pip values simply because I want moves like these ones to become official moves.

It's just harder (but not impossible) to judge how balanced a talent is when dealing with monster's pip-gain, since up to this point, both monsters and players have been constructed without too much thought to the monsters' pip-gaining practices. While players use pips specifically for their moves. I've seen monsters that use pips much more radically through some neat use of traits. Such as using pips as their HP value, or as temporary HP, resistance, as a counter that only goes down until they explode, or other neat ways. Basically I guess I'm saying that monster pips can be quite different from player pips. Still I don't think that this move is particularly unbalanced, and I've always enjoyed pip-batteries, might be hard to get it 'officiated' though...

I figured that monster pips are weird, that's why scavenge just gives you half of what they spend, and that's it. It makes the GM think about if he wants to do something bigger and risk you getting a big hit out of We Hates it Forever, or just do something to gain some pips or such limiting it to 1 pip. It's a mechanic designed to get something out of being punched in the face really hard.

Basically it was made as an alternative to Smash and Grab's mechanic, where it didn't steal pips from the target it just got some of what it already had used.

Honestly if anyone has any question about why I did something the way I did, they can ask and receive the bounty of my madness. And by that I mean some kind of explanation, I try to temper my crazy with logic after all.

So, apparently some people heard I did this and wanted to see it, so without further ado:

Here is a quick redo of the Blood Weapon designed to make it a bit better, while still keeping the Warlock flavor.

[0] Blood Weapon - Minor Utility [Inspired by Chris Pauly] [Reformatted by thematthew]
You lose 10 hp. If you do, you conjure a Blood Weapon in your hands. You can dismiss the Blood Weapon as a free action. While you are wielding a Blood Weapon, you cannot use your other combat talents. Instead you may use the combat talents below.

[+2] Crow Claw - Standard Attack
Deal 1d10 damage to target creature.

[+1] Douse in Blood - Minor Utility
You lose 5 hp.

[-1] Sanguine Cyclone - Standard Utility
Deal 1d12 to target creature and all creatures adjacent to it. If you are bloodied, gain hp equal to the result as well.

[-2] Blood Curse - Standard Utility
Up to 6 target creatures are affected by your blood curse(save ends). Creatures under your blood curse take 1d8 damage whenever you lose hp or take damage. The blood weapon vanishes.

[-5] Eviscerate - Standard Attack [Inspired by Ramsus]
Deal 3d8 damage to target creature. If you are bloodied, deal 5d10 damage to that creature instead.

Basically the updates did 3 things:

1) Sanguine Cyclone now heals you if you are bloodied, allowing the weapon to not completely murder its wielder, but ensuring it won't get you back to full health ever. Kinda a clinch move, since the weapon wants you to be bloodied just enough.

2) Eviscerate now deals d10s if bloodied. This raises the average damage up to a whopping 27.5, but comes with the drawback of needing to keep yourself just bloodied. Also it is a -5 move, so it should be better than Furious Rage.

3) Added in Blood Curse. This power is the current idea for an ultimate with the blood weapon, since it combos well with Blood Weapon in addition to the various warlock abilities that hurt you. I feel it is reasonably comparable to a souped up version of Barter in Blood as a Standard action.

My analysis of the talent is in the Breaking the Unbreakable thread, page 13 post 10 if you are interested in reading it.

This thing is AWESOME... That is all, this is the official version, the one in Art of War is just it's beta version that they forgot to update into this awesomeness. :3

Glad you like it.

I do like that version of the Blood Weapon better than the original. Before now it just didn't seem on-par with the other weapon summons. I might even recommend making the -5 ability deal D12s actually, considering that:

1. This attack should be better than Furious Rage, just as you said

-and-

2. This is a weapon that costs you 10 life to get out in the first place.

It looks good as is though.