Finishing Attacks
Finishers (aka ‘finishing attacks’) are, in magical girl shows, generally accompanied by stock footage -- often long stock footage. If they have their own musical leitmotif, that’s a good sign that a given attack is a finisher. “Moon Healing Escalation!” “Precure Pink Forte Wave!” “Lyrical Magical Jewel Seed Seal!” Finishers literally represent final blows, the ultimate attacks that turn monsters of the week to dust and send the lieutenants of darkness running back to their masters. If a character uses a Finisher and fails to KO their opponent, their opponent may immediately use a Finisher in response, so plan accordingly! Finishers can otherwise only be activated above or below a certain morale threshold, and managing one’s morale over the course of a fight in order to access one’s Finisher at the right moment is one portion of the tactics of our game. A given henshin form has 2 finisher slots by default, and more may be bought for 5 character points per slot.
Finishers are assigned a threshold number based on their Power Level, which determines the distance a character’s Morale must be from 0 to use them. For instance, if a Finisher has threshold of 80, it means it can only be used if one’s Morale is either 80 or above, or is -80 or below. On the positive end of the range, this represents a triumphant finale to a battle, fueled by confidence. On the negative end, then the Finisher becomes an act of desperation, the last attempt at victory when all other options are exhausted. When activating a Finisher, the critical chance always takes the absolute value of a character’s Morale (so -80 Morale would be treated as 80 when calculating critical chance). Immediately after a Finisher has been resolved, hit or miss, damage or not, one’s Morale is reset to 0.
| Finisher PL | Morale Threshhold (+ or -) |
|---|---|
| 4 | 60 |
| 5 | 65 |
| 6 | 70 |
| 7 | 75 |
| 8 | 80 |
| 9 | 85 |
| 10 | 90 |
If a character’s target (or any of their targets, making Area Finishers quite risky!) survives the Finisher, they’re given the option of using their own Finisher in response, regardless of their current Morale (though this window of opportunity is only for their next action and does not carry on past that). They don’t necessarily have to target the one who failed to finish them off, but it’s considered polite combat etiquette to do so, rather than to use the opportunity on someone else. If they are going to use an Survival Finisher on another target, they should OOCly ask for consent first.
That means that there are three ways to activate a Finisher: sufficiently high Morale, sufficiently low Morale, or surviving someone else’s Finisher. Of note, no matter how many Finishers one survives, a character may never use a Finisher two rounds in a row. This will usually only apply to a boss mode situation.
As characters grow stronger, older Finishers often become used as Specials later on. This is common in magical girl series, where the first few Finisher attacks (Moon Tiara Action, Precure Pink Forte Wave) can be fired off casually much later in the series. When characters grow to that point, they can opt to just take the current attack and change it from a Finisher to a Special, adjusted accordingly to fit within the attack point guidelines for Special attack construction.
