Avatar World and Art: The Waterbender

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBE_FZ5wBY8&feature=player_embedded

Guess what? I have waited FOUR. FUCKING. MONTHS. to use this song. I've been sitting on this song since a couple days after I wrote the original batch of waterbender moves, because I thought it sounded great for a waterbender post. And then I didn't DO any waterbender posts for a long time. Especially the beginning of this song makes me think so much of the desolate, barely-holding-on feel of the Southern Water Tribe, or the Prox tribe in the Golden Sun games, or the ice-blighted world at the end of Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. It says Water to me. It's quiet and slow and calm, yet sad.
ENJOY IT.

Hey, I have Avatar World stuff! And better than that, Waterbender stuff! I finished The Legend of Korra, so I finally felt comfortable re-writing the waterbender moves. See, I didn't want to go near them until post-LoK cuz, I mean, I'd have to be an idiot to leave out the stuff done by a primarily-Water Avatar. Turns out she didn't do very much creative with her power :/ I wish Hama were here.
But things are good! And I've finished writing, and I have art, and I get to use my Waterbender song I've been sitting on (and in the meantime I totally found another one :/). If you're only here because you like art, just scroll down.

Water: You have a small supply of Water you bring with you. These tokens are used to fuel your Waterbending abilities. You can carry up to 3 Water by default. Replenish your Water whenever you come across a sufficiently-sized body of water.

Codifying the tokens in with a move like Sympathetic Tokens does. If you're using Water directly from a body of water instead of your own supply, being in the presence of that body of water basically just counts as an infinitely-replenishing source of Water.

Waterbending: When you psychically manipulate water in combat, spend 1 Water and roll+Fluid. On a hit, choose from the list. On a 10+, choose 3. On a 7-9, choose 1. You may pick a single option multiple times.
     * Deal 1 harm.
     * Impose a tag on a foe.
     * Impose an environmental tag.
     * Get the spent Water back.
If you take the harm option multiple times, it is considered one large attack for purposes of ignoring armor (even if it narratively considered multiple strikes).

Altered it a touch. I suspect the most common strategy will be: on a 10+, pick 2 and get the water back, on a 7-9 pick something and lose the water. It does, however, allow for someone with almost no water left to be conservative, and for someone with a lot of Water to go all out. I'm actually feeling rather comfortable with that balance now where I was hesitant before. I imagine this'll be important to watch balance-wise when it hits the table.
Also fixed my "to attack" weirdness by saying that you roll when you do it in combat. Waterbending out of combat is just done or it's the place for a custom move.

Moon-Chosen: When the moon has risen, you have +1 Fluid (max+3).

Unchanged! Turns out I like this one.

Icebending: You can control ice as if it were liquid water, and can shift water to ice (and vice-versa). When you bend ice in combat, roll Waterbending with Keen instead, and add the following option:
     * Deal 1 harm an impose the tag Frozen to the target.

Very simple. You roll with a less-optimal stat but get a more powerful option to use - but remember that that option doesn't exactly help more than once, since once they have the tag, it doesn't help to keep applying it. Instead, this actually gives incentive to targeting multiple foes, since you can freeze up a bunch of guys while hurting them. Feeling much better about this move.

Streaming: When you deal harm with Waterbending, you may spend a number of Water up to your Fluid score. For each Water, deal an additional harm.

And this is the "I really really hate you" move. It looks super-powerful, but it's actually not too bad I don't think. If you can carry three Water, spend one to Waterbend, get a 10+ and pump all three into harm, add your remaining Water in, you're dealing 5-harm - enough to easily kill a single enemy, but you're completely drained of Water now and the stars kinda had to align for that to work right. Performed near a body of water, this is very powerful, but that's true of waterbenders in the show as well - and there's a reason that pro-bending banned streaming water like this.
I am worried about the balance here of course, but it's not a sustainable weapon really.

Healer: When you take time to cover a wound with water and lay hands upon it, roll+Natural. On a 10+, the wound is visibly cured and 3 harm is healed. On a 7-9, 1 harm is healed but the wound is visibly unchanged.

Also totally happy with this. Also, if you don't have any Water remaining you obviously can't do this since you can't "cover a wound with water."

Okay, that's technically six moves with Water. Now, that means 5 actual functional moves, but you know what? I'm writing, like, THREE freaking sub-playbooks (Blood-, Plant-, probably a Phases- one that expands on ice and vapor) about various advanced bendings for this guy. You can all just deal with it.

Also I have this super exciting cross-Bender sub-playbook idea based around a move called Weatherdance. It's under development, but I'm very excited to share it.

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And the art! I'm so thrilled with how this came out.

Chance are, Blogger just resized the sucker. If you want the full version, deviantArt didn't try to change it on me.
http://horn-head-o.deviantart.com/art/Waterbender-360100145

Here's the original sketch for it:
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b330/maxdxam/Waterbender_Sketch_zps47e35cd0.png

Anyway, this sketch was actually done as a personal sketch in our sketchbooks for my Drawing 101 class, so I guess it's technically gonna get graded. I'm so happy with it, it does EXACTLY what I wanted. the proportions aren't ridiculous (I made sure with the height, though his fingers are a bit long), things are dynamically posed, the water is really damn convincing even with some slight warps in the lines cause by my digitizing process.

The outfit is based ever-so-loosely on the Water Tribe outfits, loose-fitting with triangular ends and a trim. However, I didn't want to do an exact clone of the water clothes - again, trying to avoid being so direct with my plagiarism. You're not gonna see arrows on the heads of my airbenders. Anyway, it turned out perfect in every way I wanted, and I'm highly considering putting this on a shirt for me to wear.

As for it's use, I DON'T think I'll be using this as the playbook image! Instead, this is giving me a bit more of an impression as an in-text illustration. We'll see how much art I can actually make though before I finalize a decision like that. Regardless, I'm super-happy with it and hope you like it too.

Seeya later folks. Like always, I appreciate any feedback I can get!
End Recording,
Ego.