Falling Star

Name: Falling Star

P/W/C Type: Wisdom

Appearance: Calls down a glowing ball of light from the sky that explodes on contact.

Description of Function: Weakens armor caught in the explosion radius for a short while.

Limitations: Easy to dodge, can't be used indoors, can't be used by people with Dark Affinity

Description (open) Description (close)

The user raises their hands or weapon into the air and summons an orb of light to fall from the sky. During the day the orb appears to originate from the sun while during the night it appears to fall from a star. The orb travels at a considerable speed until it hit something, at which point it explodes in a shower of shimmering light particles. The explosion lacks the full punch of an actual bomb, but it enough to trip up someone who is unprepared for the blast. Armor caught in the explosion appears to develop small cracks that shine with light, weakening the armor and making it easier to hurt whoever is wearing it for a short moment.

Falling Star, while powerful, is a little hard to use in combat due to the fact that it telegraphs its presence to anyone paying attention. Because of this, it's best used against a distracted or unaware opponent. Also since the spell falls from the sky, it is ineffective to use it on indoor targets. The spell itself can only be used once every couple of minutes and can't be used at all by someone with Dark Affinity.

My initial, preliminary impression of this is really, really good. I like this spell a lot, and it's even got canon-stuff; I don't know if it's enough to be considered borderline-canonical, but there are definitely roots in canon here. My main question is how long will this take to reach earth. We know it's traveling at a "considerable speed" from the heavens, but it's also "easy to dodge," which makes me wonder how long it'll take to actually hit something on the ground. Just a frame of reference would be nice; also, is this just traveling vertically straight down, or d'you think it doesn't matter enough to specify?

Let's see...to make it easy to dodge I'd say it takes...something between five and ten seconds-ish. Specifically, if you watch the spell be cast and look up, it'd be a small effort to jog far enough out of the blast radius to be safe.

As for angles, it depends on how and when the caster is casting the spell. During the day the spell originates from the sun, so depending on the time of day you'd have a different angle of attack. At night, you have a million stars to pick from, so the spell could come from an angle or straight down.

Oh that's cool. It feels weird to have something be so slow, when I just want this anime "SKY BOLT FROM THE SUN GRAAAAH" thing, but it makes sense as a drawback.

I figured it could be used as a spell to open combat with, something to disorient a group before they know you are there. It'd also be good for teamwork, an ally of the caster can fight an enemy and keep them distracted while the spell is cast. If the caster is really good, he or she can cast the spell from an angle where their ally can see and dodge it, but the enemy can't. Or they can just aim close to the enemy but not on top of them to merely catch them in the blast radius.

Oh ya, there are definitely options for using this spell. That's part of why I like it. :P

One question. I'm imagining this spell has having range roughly being 'anything you can see.' Is that about right?

Technically yes. While it's possible to drop this on the top of a mountain from its base, the further away you are from something the harder it is to aim the spell close enough to be effective. It is intended to be sort of long range, so what about saying that accuracy is only good within let's say....100 ft? I'm terrible with numbers like this, feel free to suggest something else. Or perhaps the range could be based on one of the PWC scores.

I dunno. Doesn't really feel like it'd fit Zelda. Not much precedent for meteorite projectiles in Zelda, with the few, few examples of anything falling from the skies being things that could cause terrible fates. Anti-armor properties doesn't really help the matter, given the lack of precedent for it in Zelda--how would it work? Does it just make armor really weak, letting weapons tear through it easily? Does it make weapons phase through it or something? Does it work on magical armoring effects? Too many details, too little time. I just don't feel like it'd be something I'd approve of.

I would say that it weakens the armor and makes it easier to damage the armor and hurt who is wearing it. Metal armor gives way to attacks more, leather armor would be easier to cut or pierce. It only works on physical armor though, magical shielding like Nayru's Love for example would be totally uneffected.

I feel like you're going to have a hard time trying to make an armor-reducing ability work within this roleplay. It's different in a game, where there's a finite health system that can get added or detracted from, but in a roleplay things are much more general, unfortunately. If we had an armor system, or any stat system, this might work, but in terms of "It makes the metal weaker" I feel like you might as well just say it destroys the armor entirely for the effect that would likely have.

Basically here's what I would suggest, and it kind of revamps the treasure. If you're fine with it, cool, if not, this will probably simply just not work.

I think you can remove the armor effect while having this still be useful. I would change it to more of an explosion type of thing. Make it so that if you hit the target directly, you probably will score some pretty good damage and at the very least knock them off their feet, if they're ready for the attack. If it lands near them, though, have there be a concussive effect that could throw people away from it, trip them, or otherwise hinder their progression.

Thoughts?

Yeah, it was an idea I thought was interesting but I can't really justify it outside of stats. I like the idea you came up with though, that would work well with it.

Alright. Can you make a new set of fields for us to look at, then?

Right, sorry about that.

Name: Falling Star

P/W/C Type: Wisdom

Appearance: Calls down a glowing ball of light from the sky that explodes on contact.

Description of Function: The user raises their hands or weapon into the air and summons an orb of light to fall from the sky. During the day the orb appears to originate from the sun while during the night it appears to fall from a star. The orb travels at a considerable speed until it hit something (taking roughly five to ten seconds to land), at which point it explodes in a shower of shimmering light particles. The explosion lacks the full punch of an actual bomb, but it enough to topple opponents caught up in the blast radius.

Limitations: Easy to dodge due to the fact that it telegraphs its presence to anyone paying attention, can't be used indoors since the spell falls from the sky, the spell can only be used once every couple of minutes, can't be used by people with Dark Affinity

I'm down with this.

Approved.

How large is the "blast radius"? About ten feet radius, twenty, large, small? Dark Affinity states that its users can't obtain treasures with the [Light] field, so I felt stating that here would be redundant. Finally, do you think that the "easy to dodge" part should be left open, for individuals to judge based off the "five to ten seconds" bit?

`Falling Star
Original: Spirit Adept, Spell - Offense
[Explosive], [Light]

W5: 20 rupees
W4: 30 rupees
W3: 45 rupees
W2: 50 rupees
W1: 65 rupees

The caster may call down a glowing ball of light from the direction of a natural source of light in the sky, such as the sun or the stars. This orb takes anywhere from five to ten seconds to impact the surface, depending on the caster's geographic location, and which point it explodes in a shower of shimmering light particles. This explosion is less powerful than an actual bomb, but it is enough to topple any opponent caught in the blast radius. Since the spell falls from the sky, it can't be used effectively indoors. This spell can only be used once every few minutes.

The blast radius I think would probably be about five feet. Everything else looks good.

I'm wondering if that's a little too small. That's smaller than an average person lying down, and when in combo w/ the "5-10" seconds bit, it's not even a question of running away, it's more of a "sidestep", which would make this useless as an offensive attack. Distraction/scare, maybe, but attack... not so much. If it's solely a distraction/scare falling ball of light you're looking for, we could take out the "5ft radius knock people over" bit and give it additional distract effects (i dunno, screams or w/e).

Or, you know, I could be spinning moonlight. Thoughts?

I'm terrible with estimating numbers like that. If five is too small, go ahead and make it ten feet or however large you feel it should be.