As it says, I'm looking for opinions on a homebrew maneuver. It hasn't been introduced in my game world, as I am interested in what people have to say.

"Spirit Strike
The martial practitioner has honed his skills to the point that he is able to strike energy entities. A character with this maneuver has learned to use his melee combat skills in a way that bypasses the Immunity to Normal Weapons of a spirit and other such creatures. In game terms, they may spend a free action to declare this technique, and they may make an attack of will, substituting a melee combat skill of their choice, with a -2 penalty, for Banishing on the Banishing +Willpower Attack of wills test. The attack of wills is resolved as normal, using Charisma as the base damage of the attack."

Thank you in advance for all opinions.

Edit: removed the requirement for learning.

You mean you actually have someone in your group who is a mundane melee specialist?
Can't see much of an issue allowing that rarity some legroom.

I was looking forward to a conversation about Spirits of Man getting everyone on the various planes together to form a union, in order to be mutually beneficial to one another by providing a spirit-communal Edge pool with which to resist being summoned.

First, I'd lose the "needs three levels" bit and replace it with a prerequisite for the Focus Will and Vicious Blow maneuvers.
Second, I'd change it so that you had to use Willpower as the attacking stat (with a +2 from Focus Will) and Charisma for determining damage if the spirit is less than tangible, or their true attributes if its a more solidly materialized spirit (such as an Earth or Beast Spirit). They can continue to use their normal unarmed combat skill or Astral Combat, whichever they prefer.

It's basically teaching mundanes how to use Astral Combat, which is a skill that's a lot more sensible than giving mundanes access to a skill that genuinely requires magic talent. Because if they can use Banishing, they should be able to use Counterspelling, too. And if they can use those, they should be able to use the other skills as well.

I agree with getting rid of my requirement, as it almost seems superfluous, and isn't congruent with other maneuvers. I just thought it would be too powerful to most minds without a requirement.

The ability isn't giving non-mages access to Banishing, it's making Attacks of wills better, which mundanes can already do, though not effectively with Banishing being the only way to add 2 sets of numbers to the test. I also didn't think it should be able to be done at full value, either, like Vicious blow, so I added the -2 penalty. Attacks of will already use Willpower as the offense stat.

In this case, it's not letting them do something new, it's making a subpar ability all characters can do better, if they want it to be.

Hmmm. That sounds like a good hook for a magic-heavy group. Too bad I don't have that currently.

Attacks of Will and shock gloves already exist.

Besides, in this setting anything technique that bypasses "Immunity to Normal Weapons" by definition kind of has to be magical in nature...ergo you would need to be awakened to do this. It doesn't make sense with the fluff of the setting, and a mundane martial artist should understand that a)that is a crappy character build, and b)a mundane going into melee with a spirit is a bad idea.

I think a good question to be asking is "who is actually better off using this than Shock Gloves?"

Shock gloves would be Unarmed+Agility for 5S vs. 1/2 armor. Plus you get the taser effect.

This would be Unarmed+Willpower-2 for ChaP vs. 0 armor.

So your dice pool is adjusted down by (2+Agility-Willpower). Assuming you were going to hit anyways, the change to damage will be (Cha-5)+(Willpower-Agility-2)/3+Force/6.

That's...unlikely to be a positive trade. Unless you are a very VERY specific sort of character - high Charisma, high Willpower, and low agility - this is less effective than shock gloves, and you have to pay for it. And this is compared to shock gloves, rather than to something like a stun club or monofilament whip that just blows it out of the water (and let's not talk about how much worse this is than just shooting the spirit with a taser, either).

Don't forget that shock gloves may only need to touch, so +2 to their attack roll might apply. But, that's not the point. The game is already full of subpar options, unless used by specific characters. Especially in the Martial arts section of Arsenal. Who would want vicious blow, when you can just get hardliner gloves? It doesn't have to be useful to everyone, just to a few characters who can use it. I dont think it's game breaking, because of the reasons you mentioned, and it expands the usefulness of an option no one realistically uses.

Thank you for your opinion.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, just that you don't need to worry about it being overpowered. I would even drop the -2 penalty.

IMHO, this option blurs the line between mundanes and the awakened too much. ItNW is supposed to give you an edge against physical threats, so any way to bypass it from this angle undercuts the basic concept of the power.

So, what exactly are you trying to accomplish with this maneuver?

To better a bad option everyone already has access to, which is Attack of Will SM 94.

Edit: Anyone can do an attack of will, but only mages have access to it with two stats contributing to the test. I don't want to make it a straight better option, because, obviously just stunbolting is better for the mage, and doing anything with elctricity is better for the average street sam, with or without this ability. But giving the option to faces or technomancers to be able to hurt a high force spirit when they get stuck in a corner is not a bad thing, in my opinion.

So you're looking for an Attack of Will errata, actually. Well, I'd rather tackle this head-on instead of forcing players to spent even more Karma in order to make the option viable (from your point of view).

My suggestions:

1. Mundanes are allowed to take Banishment as a Knowledge skill. You could rule that this counts for Attack of Will-purposes.

2. Switch Banishment+Willpower to Charisma+Willpower.


Personally, I agree with TheOBB . Mundanes are not supposed to do well against spirits.

Ohh there are a ton of ways to fight spirits, mundanes should just know better than to get into melee with spirits. Stick-n-Shock, APDS, FAB, and such are all great tools for dealing with spirits, or you know, geek the mage that conjured them.