Welp, I had a thought.
What about doing Shield as a power pool?
The basic 'Shield' power is a toggle power and a defensive buff, a big one, but it only covers about a hundred-eighty degree arc, centered around the direction the toon is facing. If you make it relatively large, like a hoplite shield rather than a buckler, you can probably look rather decent with only two new animations for that - 'block left' and 'block right'. Endurance cost should be low, but that's balanced by the fact that any two-handed animation causes the power to be turned off and put away before it can even start. One-handed attacks, like the SS pool's Jab, would be modified to only execute using the right arm - I think this should be fairly simple, if it hasn't been programmed for other reasons already. The storage and activation animations are simple reversals of each other - they're sort of medium speed, not particularly fast or slow.
The other starting power... I dunno, honestly. Maybe a melee bash with a chance to knock down? Sort of a body-check motion.
The level twelve power would be a throw - so-so range and accuracy, but good damage.
And the level twenty? 'Folding Shield'. If you've ever seen one of this sort of fan, or the first episode or two of Escaflowne, you can probably picture how this works. It's just like the starting shield power... only its activation animation is almost instant, and it switches itself back on automatically.
That comes to... six animations, assuming none of those exist already, one of them extremely simple, and two new renderings. How many of each do the other powersets use?
Ja, -n
(ETA: you could even cut it to four if you narrowed the shield's effective arc...)
===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"
What about doing Shield as a power pool?
The basic 'Shield' power is a toggle power and a defensive buff, a big one, but it only covers about a hundred-eighty degree arc, centered around the direction the toon is facing. If you make it relatively large, like a hoplite shield rather than a buckler, you can probably look rather decent with only two new animations for that - 'block left' and 'block right'. Endurance cost should be low, but that's balanced by the fact that any two-handed animation causes the power to be turned off and put away before it can even start. One-handed attacks, like the SS pool's Jab, would be modified to only execute using the right arm - I think this should be fairly simple, if it hasn't been programmed for other reasons already. The storage and activation animations are simple reversals of each other - they're sort of medium speed, not particularly fast or slow.
The other starting power... I dunno, honestly. Maybe a melee bash with a chance to knock down? Sort of a body-check motion.
The level twelve power would be a throw - so-so range and accuracy, but good damage.
And the level twenty? 'Folding Shield'. If you've ever seen one of this sort of fan, or the first episode or two of Escaflowne, you can probably picture how this works. It's just like the starting shield power... only its activation animation is almost instant, and it switches itself back on automatically.
That comes to... six animations, assuming none of those exist already, one of them extremely simple, and two new renderings. How many of each do the other powersets use?
Ja, -n
(ETA: you could even cut it to four if you narrowed the shield's effective arc...)
===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"