Missing Terrestrial Martial Art Fivefold Shadow Hand Style

[medem0n]

There is no data for Fivefold Shadow Hand Style from Scroll of the Monk

[angelwick]

The challenge with this MA style is that it can only be completed once with your primary element of choice: Breeze (Air) The Forgotten (Wood) Mountain (Earth) Mist (Water) Smoke (Fire)

First you learn the appropriate Apprentice Gesture for your elemental aspect. You can also learn other Apprentice Gestures as separate Charms as well, but as we progress along our elemental path, we learn that we have the option of learning other Apprentice Gestures free of XP charge.

Then we can learn the Adept Gesture for our elemental aspect (and then any others for which we may have purchased the associated Apprentice Gesture for early.

After the Adept Gesture of out aspect, we then get to branch out and learn two kata Charms associated with our element, then also the Form Charm for the the MA style. Then after learning all three of these Charms, we can then finish off with the terminal Charm of the Style.

But Wait! There's more!. Here's where the style kinda curves in on itself.
Once you learn the Form Charm, that opens up the style and allows you to learn the kata Charms for the other elements. Then, once you learn both katas for that other element, you also get to use that element's Apprentice Gesture for FREE. Thus opening up a shortcut to get to that new element's Adept Gesture Charm.

Sounds too good to be true right? RIGHT! There IS a catch. Each kata Charm combines aspects of three elements (your primary aspect and two others for example). To mechanicalize this, we're introduced to a new specialized Charm Keyword, Shared-[Element]. You are only allowed to learn kata Charms that are outside your elemental aspect which have the Shared-[Element] Keyword that is associated with your elemental aspect. So for example, Shared-Smoke.

So, if I were to chose the Smoke path of this MA Style, my Charm course could go something like this.

Smoke Apprentice Gesture Smoke Adept Gesture Fivefold Shadow Hand Form The Mysterious Death (kata) The Unexpected Death (kata) Shadow Palm Invocation

That completes my Smoke path, but let's say I wanted to back it up a bit after I learned the Form Charm. I want to learn new katas. But I'm limited to only the ones that have the Shared-Smoke keyword. So, along this path, that means that I can only pick up:

Nothing But Wind (breeze kata) White Breath in the Cold (mist kata) Foolish Inattentiveness (Mountain kata) The Nameless Assassin (Mountain kata)

Hey LOOKIE, I now get to use the Mountain Apprentice Gesture for FREE. If I wanted to jump the gun, I could have spent the XP anyway, but I didn't want to, and my patience paid off.

So now I can pick up Mountain Adept Gesture.

But what about the rest? Well, I'd have to pick up the other three Apprentice Gestures to get their respective Adept Gestures, then I can pick up the remaining four katas that I'm missing to become the ultimate Fivefold Shadowhand Mastah!!!!!

But would Anathema be able to accommodate such a complex Charm Tree structure?

[angelwick]

Hmmm... I'm looking at this again out of curiosity. I've seen before that Charms cam be used as prerequisites no matter where they are in Anathema. Perfect example is a Custom solar Resistance Charm that I made up that calls for Ascendant Battle Visage as a prereq.

I think the best way to go in this case is to look at Fivefold Shadow Hand Style as five separate Styles, separated by elemental aspect:

Breeze (Air) The Forgotten (Wood) Mountain (Earth) Mist (Water) Smoke (Fire).

As such, we can then make clever use out of some of the more complex conventions I've seen in the canon Charm code.

Starting at the top:

Apprentice Gesture can either have no prerequisites (if it's the first purchase), or it can have the two kata Charms of the same element as prerequisites. This, I think, will be the most complex and difficult to pull off. If it's even possible. From what I've seen, in the Anathema code, Charms either have prerequisites, or they don't. If this part cannot be done, then it may have to be omitted in this adaptation.

Next are the Adept Gestures. Simple enough, they follow standard conventions of requiring the Apprentice Gesture of the same element.

Now, here's where things start to get interesting. The Fivefold Shadow Hand Form only requires ONE of the five Adept Gestures. Ideally, this would be the one from the primary element of the practitioner, however, for simplicity of adaptation, we can say any one. I've seen this done in things such as the Infernal Heretical Charms requiring only one from a list of Shintai Charms. So I think this is doable. Then, also, this would mean that this Form Charm would then theoretically only be required in one of the 5 instances of this 5 path style.

Then we have the ten Kata Charms, two for each element. This also adds a bit more complexity because each of these katas combine 3 elements (your primary and two others) to create the effect that each kata offers. To represent this, there are five new keywords for this Charm tree. One for each element, Shared-[Element].

The trick with the katas is that they have two different branches of prerequisites that can be fulfilled in order to learn them. One, the more simple path is to learn the Adept Gesture of the element that is the same as the primary element of the kata. The trick is when you want to bend the path back into itself and learn kata charms that are NOT of your primary element. For this, you need the minimun of the Fivefold Shadow Hand Form. Now, with these Shared-[Element] keywords, not all of the remaining 8 katas that are not of my primary element are immediately available. By my count, without picking up additional Adept Gesture Charms, each elemental path here only offers at most 4 additional kata Charms outside of the practitioner's primary element (see my Smoke path example above).

Now, I don't think that Anathema offers the ability to list keywords as prerequisites. To circumvent this, each non elemental kata could list its like elemental Adept Gesture as its primary prerequisite, then we can also list Fivefold Shadow Hand Form AND the primary elemental Adept Gesture as the second option for prerequisites. Thus meeting the requirements for both primary and secondary options.

Finally we have, the terminal Charm of the style, Shadow Palm Invocation. Just as the Form Charm, SHI is available in all five paths of this style, and thus only needs to be listed once in any of these paths. Prerequisites would be listed as Fivefold Shadow Hand Form AND both katas from the same element. Again, simplifying for possible restrictions within Anathema's code. Technically, the requirements should be the Form Charm and the two katas from the primary element. But some of this stuff can be managed by the GM too. I'm just looking for a potential way to get this Style integrated into the program...

Any thoughts from the Dev Team?

[angelwick]

Thinking a bit more, I think it may reflect the rules for the Style a bit better if there were 5 separate iterations of Shadow Palm Invocation, the terminal Charm. This could then reflect the fact that this style needs to be completed by the primary element of the martial artist.

The big question in the possibility of integrating this style into Anathema would be how to work the prerequisites.

As seen in the Heretical Charms, Anathema can accomodate a "pick one" or a "pick some" scenario as with the Shintai requirements. Standard would be "need this" or "need this and this". However, some of the loop-back Charm requirements would fall more under a "this or these" scenario as is the case with the katas (this = same element Adept Gesture, these = Fivefold Shadow Hand Form and a compatible adept Gesture from a different element). Then we have the Apprentice Gestures would fall under a "something or nothing" scenario. No prerequisites for the first purchase OR both katas of the same element.

If we were to keep with the original thought of keeping one iteration of Shadow Palm Invocation, then that would introduce a "this and Pick one group" scenario. Meaning, Fivefold Shadow Hand Style AND both elemental katas.

So, this would boil down to the question of whether a "these or these" situation can be accomodated?

Code-wise, something like using multiple selectiveCharmGroup tags might work... Put in the two elemental katas into the group and make it a threshold of 2, meaning that both would be required.

But to make it a "these or these" kinda thing, I'm thinking we might need to have something like this:

selective charm group threshold 1 selective charm group threshold 2 kata 1 kata 2 / selective charm group selective charm group threshold 2 kata 1 kata 2 / selective charm group selective charm group threshold 2 kata 1 kata 2 / selective charm group selective charm group threshold 2 kata 1 kata 2 / selective charm group selective charm group threshold 2 kata 1 kata 2 / selective charm group / selective charm group

But, then there's the root question. Would this work, or would this break Anathema?

@UrsKR, @JMobius, any thoughts?

[UrsKR]

Selective Charm groups with 2 out of 2 required boil down to 2 required Charm, no need for the special construct. As for the rest of the construct you texted out, I can't make out the structure. Please reformat for readability.

Apart from that, no general thoughts from me, as I don't care for the style too much. If you think it could work, please implement it and send us a pull request or come back with more direct questions.

[angelwick]

I realize that under normal circumstances that a selective charm group with 2 out of 2 required would be the equivalent of having 2 required Charms. However, in the case of the final charm of the style, there are 5 different ways you can get there. In addition to the Form-type charm, you need both kata Charms for the Element that you originally chose to focus on. So, it would not be Form plus ANY 2 kata Charms. It would be Form plus both earth katas, OR Form plus both air katas, OR Form plus both fire katas, etc. So, to try to express that in code, I tried to do something like this:

<selectiveCharmGroup threshold="1">

    <selectiveCharmGroup threshold="2">
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.NothingButTheWind" />
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.DisappearingAssassin" />
    </selectiveCharmGroup>

    <selectiveCharmGroup threshold="2">
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.WhiteBreathInTheCold" />
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.FatalKiss" />
    </selectiveCharmGroup>

    <selectiveCharmGroup threshold="2">
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.MysteriousDeath" />
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.UnexpectedDeath" />
    </selectiveCharmGroup>

    <selectiveCharmGroup threshold="2">
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.CatDisguise" />
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.LaughAtEnemysAim" />
    </selectiveCharmGroup>

    <selectiveCharmGroup threshold="2">
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.FoolishInattentiveness" />
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.NamelessAssassin" />
    </selectiveCharmGroup>

</ selectiveCharmGroup>

The theory I was trying to test was if one of the 5 inner selective Charm Groups with threshold 2 would satisfy the parent selective Charm Group, which only has a threshold of 1. The inner 5 groups each contain the 2 kata Charms for each element. I was trying to express something that says you need all from group A OR all from group B OR all from group C, etc. Unfortunately, when I tried to start Anathema after setting this up, I was met with an error when compiling the Charms. So in order to leave myself with a working concept, I resorted to the two separate selective Charm Groups, each with a set of 5 Kata Charms and a threshold of 1.

If this were to work, then I could also set it up for the kata Charms to have their alternate requirements as well: that being that the other 8 Kata Charms that are outside the original chosen element can be learned after picking up the Form-type Charm for the Style. The additional stipulation to this that would require something similar to the above is the so-called "compatibility" of each element to each kata. Each of the 10 Katas combine aspects from 3 of the 5 elements of the Style to create each of their effects. Outside of one's chosen element, only those who have chosen to follow the path of one of the other 2 elements in a Kata may learn that Kata. I was thinking of expressing this by having another "groups within a group" scenario like so. I'll use one Kata as an example. The Charm, The Unexpected Death is one of the Kata Charms from the Smoke path of Fivefold Shadow Hand Style. So characters who follow the Smoke path can pick up this Charm via their standard path progression after learning Smoke Adept Gesture. However, others who follow one of the other 4 paths of the Style can learn the Smoke-based katas after picking up Fivefold Shadow Hand Form. The stipulation is this: Unexpected Death uses a combination of Smoke, The Forgotten and Breeze. So therefore, only those who follow the Forgotten or Breeze paths of this MA Style may take this back road to learning The Unexpected Death. To try to express this, I would use The Forgotten Adept Gesture and Breeze Adept Gesture, each combined with the Form Charm to define these alternate routes to learning this particular Kata:

 <selectiveCharmGroup threshold="1">

    <charmReference id="Terrestrial.SmokeAdeptGesture" />

    <selectiveCharmGroup threshold="2">
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.FivefoldShadowHandForm" />
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.ForgottenAdeptGesture" />
    </selectiveCharmGroup>

    <selectiveCharmGroup threshold="2">
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.FivefoldShadowHandForm" />
        <charmReference id="Terrestrial.BreezeAdeptGesture" />
    </selectiveCharmGroup>

 </ selectiveCharmGroup>

The more complex hurdle would be the alternate requirements for the Apprentice Gesture Charms: On one hand you can pay the XP as per normal and learn any of the other 4 Apprentice Charms you want. On the other hand, you can take the alternate route to learning the 4 other Apprentice Charms by learning the 2 kata Charms that are associated with the element you are trying for. Once you succeed in learning both Kata charms for an element via the alternate route, you then also gain access to the Apprentice Gesture of that element without having to pay the XP for it that you normally would have to pay.

I fear though that this final twist for this Style is something that would require more elaborate modifications within the core code. Allowing learning of Charms without XP. As a workaround, GMs can grant XP bonuses upon learning 2 kata Charms outside a character's chosen path.

[UrsKR]

Thank you, I see it now. IIRC I commented on this elsewhere - it looks like something worth having, if you find someone to code it for you.