Bernard's Swordsmanship

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Bernard's Swordsmanship (x6) "Hey man. You ever think of making your own style of swordsmanship? I mean I know it's cool to study the work of the great masters, but comeon, man, you could be one of those masters! Tiger-claw, Judo, Karate. . . people could be talking about Bernardsmanship next thing you know! Bernardsmanship? We could work on the name a bit, but it's cool. We have time. What we gotta do is give you some flair. Express yourself through your ass-kickery."

--Sensei Bruce Flynn

1) Blood is Power "So you're all about sacrificing yourself to hurt others, right? Help others? Solid, man, but you could help people by hurting bad guys. We've gotta add some new functionality here. Be adventuresome."

System: May spend a single health level on any attack to add two automatic damage.

2) Life Siphon "So I know you're feeling a little down on the whole blood power thing these days (I should probably give you a little more time between sessions), but here me out. Let's make some synergy with the last skill. With some metaphysical ingenuity, and a lotta meditation (you know, introspection and all that), we can maybe let you steal the life energy you've been channeling back! It's almost overwhelmingly middle-road!"

System: Spend a willpower and roll half your damage (Rounded down). For each point of damage done, you may move one damaged health level one step through the healing charts. Aggravated becomes lethal, lethal becomes bruised, bruised is healed completely. So three damage can either heal a level of aggravated, or three levels of bruised.

3) Auspicious Parry "I happen to know your favorite parts of any given martial art are the counter attacks. Now don't tell me I'm wrong or anything, because I've already been thinking about this awesome new technique having to do with riposites. So I figure we're using magic anyway, right? So why aren't we just breaking the rules? We could work in a highly defensive stance that parries all incoming attacks. It's like a chain right? A close circle that feeds upon its own strength getting stronger and stronger."

System: Spend a willpower, for a round you may roll to parry any number of incoming attacks. This includes bullets at difficulty 9.

4) Withering Blade "I think we're kinda at the point where you could kill most mundane mortal things on earth. Congrats, man! Really, though, that's not what you have to worry about these days. You need a way to attack your foe's energies directly. Suck the will right out of 'em right?"

System: Spend a willpower, redirect all but one of your damage to a pool that you know the enemy is using (default is willpower unless you have information that they have other pools. This damage penetrates physical armor.)

5) Dance of the Dervish  "Okay, really this kind of thing is really where stuff gets real, dude. We've gotta get your turns down, man. Pivot, spin, pivot, spin. You'll really pick up some speed if we get this down. This is the final step, man."

System: You may take 2 actions with every sword dice pool.