Weapon foci, Do they need to be for weapon skills? Options

[Eyeless Blond]

I've got a brawler adept I'm working on, grew up in the streets of Chicago. Is it possible to buy or build a weapon focus for his Brawling 6 skill, say a pair of enchanted brass (or even orichalcum) knuckles? I'd rather do that than force him to pick up Edged Weapons instead and get a Dikoted sword focus.

[Nikoli]

I'd say go for it, use the Hardliner gloves as the basis for the damage.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Exactly. The Hardliner Gloves are just a stylish and concealed form of brass knuckles. Stun Gloves work nicely that way, too, but they're a bit clunky and obvious.

You should be able to do it with a regular pair of gloves and/or boots if you like, too, but you'll lose any bonus damage. But if it's what you're going for, it should work nicely.

[Eyeless Blond]

Ugh. I just went through the MitS enchanting rules, and good Lord they suck for making low- to no-Reach weapon foci, and are just generally cost-prohibitive for adepts to boot. Looks like marginal utility costs are gonna kill this idea.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Eh? Enchanting your own foci is about as cheap as it gets as long as you either secure an Enchanting Shop or rent one. If you spend enough time to create the orichalcum and virgin telesma you should use, the Karma costs are even cheaper than standard weapon foci.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Let's see...

It takes a base time of 40 days to find one unit of raw copper, silver, gold, and mercury. This is lowered by your Talismongering (4) successes, and lower still if using Metallurgy as a complimentary skill. Assuming Talismongering 6 and Metallurgy 4, that's only about 10 days on average.

As long as your Intelligence is 4 or higher, you can refine all four units simultaneously. This takes a base time of 10 days, lowered by successes. The TN is 4, so that's cut down to 2.5 days.

After that, you spend 28 days and then make an Enchanting (4) Test since you're refining four units. If successful, you now have one radical per success per unit. If you double the time, your Enchanting Test drops to a TN of 2 giving you more successes, and thus more radicals. Let's use the double time; that gives you an average of five units of radicals each.

From there, you spend another 28 days producing orichalcum. One radical of each element is needed, and each success on your Enchanting (10-Essence) test produces one unit of orichalcum. Repeat until you run out of radicals or have as much orichalcum as you want. Save three units of radicals for the telesma; you get a bigger bang for your buck that way, and save time in the process.

You then have to spend a base time of 60 days designing a formula. The target number is the Force of the focus you're going for, and you use Enchanting for the test.

Once you have all of that done, you're ready for the telesma itself. Spend 30 days creating the focus and make an Enchanting (6) Test and lowered significantly by all the orichalcum, radicals, and virgin telesma you're creating. You'll easily get the TN down to 2, giving you an average of 6 days for the process.

After that it's just a matter of bonding it with Karma. It costs 8 Karma per force, lowered by the same things in the last test plus -1 per two successes on an Enchanting (Force) Test.

A simple Force 3 weapon focus will only take a couple of months, if that long, and cost you 100,000 nuyen (for the Enchanting Shop) and easily only 12 Karma or so. Compare this to the 9 Karma and 370,000 nuyen (the equivalence of about 74 Karma using a 5,000Y:1 ratio) you'd have to pay for a premade focus.

If your GM is really generous, you can even shave off a single unit of Orichalcum, sell it, and use the cash-for-karma rules (assuming a 5,000:1 ratio) to effectively lower the Karma cost by 8 points with an extra 4,000 nuyen in your pocket to boot.

[Eyeless Blond]

(Edit): Hmm, I guess didn't notice a few of those rules. N/M then.

[Smiley]

[malichai]

Thanks for fully explaining that entire process, Clockwork, I really appreciate it. You answered a ton of questions I had about the whole thing.

[Lindt]

So needless to say, weapon foci are wickedly powerfull for a reason. At least thank your self for them not having any reach. Cost goes up exponentially for that.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Not when echanting. There's no change to target numbers or First Bonding Karma costs.

[BitBasher]

Well damn, guess I'll fix that if a player ever tries enchanting. hasn't happened yet, as they typically dont have nearly the downtime to try it.

[Eyeless Blond]

Agreed. I really think that the first bonding cost should be (Reach + 5) * force, to make it more in line with the rest of the foci and their corresponding Karma cost in SR3.

[Zazen]

[Ancient History]

Nowadays, if you can get a nugget of natural orichalcum, a weapon focus is no problemo.

Additionally, certain rare materials allow a focus to be made faster or easier. A stone toad's stone, for example; herbs from the Tunguska crater, Joshua tree wood, etc.

[Eyeless Blond]

That was one thing that confused me. Can you really just go out and *find* a whole bunch of gold, just sitting there on the ground? Isn't that just a little, um, stupid?

[Lindt]

nope. 'S why raw radicals are so expensive, especally the rare ones.

[Ancient History]

That is why, Eyeless Blond, you have to go to the correct area and hunt for it. There's not a huge number of places where you can find gold just sitting about, but you can find traces of gold that are too small for commercial excavation and prospect for them easy enough. Hell, you can take out a sieve and pan for gold in a crystal clear Californian stream if it floats your boat.

[kevyn668]

Or get an Elemental or Spirit to use its Search power. :)

[tjn]

Actually, to echo what Ancient History said... you can just walk around and eventually find gold in the Sierra Nevada or in the Mojave area in the current day.

The reason why there aren't people doing just that is that the time, effort, and money put into finding surface gold just isn't economically feasable. It would cost more to find the gold then the gold would be worth.

But given the demands that enchanting works under, and that quite likely nature that gold from mines wouldn't be useful to mages, that economic feasibility might just change in the Sixth World.

Then again, I'd probably peg the Sierra Nevada as being just as magically potent as the Mojave... just not as innately hostile.

[A Clockwork Lime]

[Kanada Ten]

[A Clockwork Lime]

I can see it for a few, but when you have the ability to pull in 365,000 nuyen a year on average (and still enough to maintain a High Lifestyle by just working half a year) just by looking for gold... well, I just don't see it.