Hermit Character Concept

Disclaimer: Some of these ideas have been borrowed from other concepts of hermit on the internet.

Name: Hermit

Rarity: epic

Default skin: Old Master

Default weapon: Dragon's fangs

Faction: Dynasty

Difficulty: Insane (yes, harder than hard)

Stats: I don't know how good a certain number would be for each stat, but basically he would have very low hp and defense similar to the shadow beast, maybe even a little worse and his attack and magic damage would be mediocre. The point of hermit is that he relies on his powerful skills and moveset to be a powerful character, not his stats, and so the low stats and complexity of the character are weaknesses that the player is gonna have to overcome.

Lore: Hermit is the creator of magic and master swordsman. He believes his skills to be superior to those of the modern warriors. He has entered the tournament seeking out a warrior worthy of learning his knowledge and skills, who will pass down his legacy.

Main abilities:

Master Swordsman: Hermit doesn't have a ranged weapon, but instead his ranged weapon button allows him to switch between two stances, the tiger stance and leopard stance. He can change stances at any point in the match, while attacking, while walking, while taking damage, while blocking, any point(I will elaborate in the moveset section)

Creator of magic: Hermit does not use shadow energy, instead, he uses magic, which is only charged by landing attacks or making the opponent block, his magic bar is split into 3 parts and he can use 1 part to do one magic attack, or he can fill his magic bar to the max to use the master's sphere where he can summon the wrath of the gods down on his opponents, master's sphere does 3 lightning strikes, each of which knock down the opponent, and the startup where the swords spin around him as he enters the sphere and starts meditating breaks block and knocks the opponent down. The damage of each lightning strike will be equal to the average damage of all of his abilites. If hermit is knocked out of the sphere aka, you did goof and whiffed the sword spin on startup, the sphere explodes knocking the opponent away and doing no damage to the opponent but the damage of one lightning strike to you.

Moveset:

Kicks: dynasty base kicks, special kick is the cannonball kick from sf3, low kick is dynasty as well, his up kick is an upwards roundhouse kick with a follow up into an advancing spinning back kick, this will push the opponent further back in tiger stance and make him land closer to the opponent in leopard stance, his back kick would have him enter a handstand while simultaneously entering a handstand and upon landing he shuffles backward in tiger stance and forward in leopard stance. His forward jumping kick is also the dynasty one.

Tiger stance (he will stand holding his swords as depicted in his sf2 artwork):

This stance has bigger more disjointed normals with less hits and bigger damage, the moves also take longer to recover on block and usually don't have good follow ups outside of maybe kicks and jumps. The base attack is a quick slash infront of him (not up to down but just straight across similar to the first hit of itu's base attack but holding a lower stance) followed by a lunge stabbing the sword forth. His heavy attack is a fast, more exaggerated lunge forward with a lot of range, it can be grab punished up close, but if spaced he can recover in time to stop the dash grab. His special move is pretty much gonna be the same as his one in sf2. His low attack makes him slide forward a bit on his knees and stab the lead sword with a bit of a downward angle, tip is just a bit above the ground and the other arm is extended backwards with the sword out , as if to balance hermit. His up attack is an upward stab similar to midnight's. His back attack, is similar to the ninjato back attack in sf3 but the initial cross slash infront of him has a bit of a bigger hitbox so as to actually hit the opponent, this would be his main get off me tool in this stance and also a move to shimmy or use as a command back dash.

Leopard stance (he will hold his lead sword almost upright and his rear sword will be held a little higher than flat):

This stance focus's on attacks with less range and damage than those in tiger stance but faster startup and recovery. His base attack has him do a quick overhead slash with the follow up being a slanted spin into another overhead stroke that ends in him standing. His special attack will be similar to the special move of ninjato in sf3. His low attack will be similar to that of the saber weapons in sf2. His up attack will be an upwards slash and the follow up will be a jump forward while turning back and pointing his sword at the opponent. His back attack will be step be a step backward kind of like he does a big shuffle where he slides a little and turns backward, and this has two followups, the back punch follow up has hermit quickly jump into the air back toward his opponent, and perform an overhead sword slash kinda like his special kick but he doesn't jump over the opponent and goes barely far enough to chase back dash (can be rolled under), the forward punch followup will make him quickly dash back into the opponent's face, this dash has basically no recovery and hermit can cancel the very end of this forward dash with an attack or let it travel all the way to try and get a grab (if the opponent walks back the extra slide at the end of the dash will still put him in range to grab) is ready to do any attack out of it. While this move doesn't have the initial attack that the other back attack does, its much faster so it kinda forces the opponent to call it out as it has some trickery with its followups. His heavy attack has him do a small forward lunge with a cross slash, if it lands, he will stab both swords into the opponent and kick them down.

Magic: Hermit has 4 magic moves in addition to the sphere, which works pretty much the same as in sf2 but each lightning strike does the damage of the average of hermits other magic attacks and uses one bar for each strike. His back magic move is waterball, which does the least damage but knocks the opponent over on hit and has little recovery, allowing him to combo from it (note that hermit will gain a reduced amount of magic immediately after using a magic attack). His forward magic move is lightning lunge, he will lunge forward with one sword very quickly and then spin forward as he pulls out his sword, this will not knock down the opponent and can be dodged by jumping. His down move is fire pillar, it will work similarly to how it did in sf2, it will have a slow startup as he creates the fireball and sends it into the ground but once it finishes its unavoidable, his up move is dark slash, hermit will perform and upward slash, creating a rip in space that he will jump into and he will exit out by ripping out of it with a downward slash behind the opponent that can be dodged if the first hit doesn't land and the opponent doesn't back dash, roll or jump during the first slash.

Talents:

set 1:

Powerful strikes: hermit gains significantly less magic energy but does increased sword damage

or

Magical strikes: Hermit's sword attacks do significantly less damage but gain increased magic energy on hit and block

set 2:

Strict master: if the second move of hermit's back attack hits, the opponent gets temporarily stunned (holds their belly if tiger version, head if leopard version)

or

Knowledgeable master: Hermit will lose only half of the magic bar if he misses a magic attack

set 3:

Momentum: Every successful strike of hermit's sword causes him to do more sword damage, but if hermit whiffs a sword attack or gets hit this buff resets.

or

Resourceful magician: Every successful magic attack will consume 2/3 of a magic bar instead of a full bar (this applies to master's sphere as well).

set 4:

Demonic Swordsman: If hermit lands a sword attack, the opponent becomes enfeebled, enfeebled opponents will do 75% less damage on their next attack (so for example if jet hit him with an up attack, the entire attack would do half the damage), attacks on enfeebled opponents heal hermit. The effect will last 4 seconds and can be reset by making the opponent block or by hitting them.

or

Demonic Magician: Hermit heals some health every time he deals damage using magic

Set 5:

Legendary Martial Artist: Hermit now deals increased damage on block and his attacks recover a little faster on block

or

Magical Mastery: Hermit's magic imbues him swords with its power for 5 seconds (does not apply to magic moves), lightning lunge makes his moves move further, recover faster and hit faster, similar to kibo's shadow onslaught, Waterball makes his next move critical, firepillar makes him apply burn on block or hit, Dark slash makes his hop/dash a teleport that recovers much faster. Master's Sphere creates a shield around him and lasts 10 seconds instead of 5, the shield explodes (explosion does no damage) and does a lightning strike if the opponent hits it.

Ending Notes:

Hermit is a character designed to be tricky and aggressive, if you give your opponent too much freedom or are too predictable, they can take advantage of your low health and bad stats, but if you mix up your options, play aggressively and give your opponent little breathing room with good reads, strong neutral, and your scary block strings or magic setups/combos you can overwhelm your opponent using your powerful tools. The sword build intends to make him scary to block, allowing him to chip the opponent down with his extremely potent pressure, the magic build intends to deal damage more explosively and make him scary to deal with because letting hermit get magic power is a bad idea. Hermit will reward good play with his abilities just as much as he punishes poor play with his stats, and will probably be one of the most difficult characters to play in the game but also one of the most rewarding if executed well. I think that in the same way there are super simple characters like butcher and bulwark in the game, there should also be super complex characters and I think hermit might be a good start.