On Flashing Draw Mastery

On Flashing Draw Mastery

This may be the Charm that started it all. Before I ever came up with the Martial Keyword, I knew that I was going to need to fuse the combat abilities together to make them worthwhile. This was one of the first Charms conceptualized: a ‘lightning draw’ Charm in Thrown that would apply to all your different combat abilities. A character with Flashing Draw Mastery may use Thrown—the art of fast eyes and faster hands—to improve his weapon drawing techniques in other combat abilities, signifying the linked nature of combat abilities and the way in which buying up Charms in one combat ability teaches you martial techniques and martial logic which carries over to your other fighting techniques to create a kind of snowball effect, thereby making purchases in any Dawn Caste ability apply toward your total character concept. Because of this design—which is demonstrated in the rest of the Charms you see here, as well as throughout the errata—all of the Dawn abilities may be seen as important and valuable to making your character the ultimate combatant, in the way that other Castes’ abilities all help to facilitate the standard character concepts of those particular Castes. This Charm also marked the beginning of my interest in making Join Battle an important and active part of your combat strategy, as evinced by several other Charms.” —Ø

Join Battle has always been a bit of a tricky issue in Second Edition. There are plenty of Charms out there to help you win it, but if you play the ‘Join Battle Game’ and lose, the penalty tends to be things like death via Kill Combo. A lot of players are willing to simply sit out Join Battle, accept whatever their base dice pool gives them, and keep their Charm selection free rather than taking a gamble they might lose. The Flashing Draw series ups the stakes on Join Battle, granting rewards for winning—and penalties for losing—that make opting out a dicey proposition. Dawns should play to win at combat, from the very beginning.” —H