Ranged Weapon Focus, A magegun. Options

[De Badd Ass]

Dameleon suggested that a taser dart could be turned into a weapon focus. Seems like a taser with trailing wires like the Defiance EX Shocker keeps the dart connected to the user. I assume the whole taser, wire, dart assembly would have to be the focus.

This would give adepts a short range (20 meter) weapon for astral combat.

"Pretty thin, huh?", asks Sergeant Roger Murtaugh.

What do you think? :rotfl:

[kzt]

[Samaels Ghost]

Don't know. It might be hard to do (Enchanting wise) but it MAY be possible. But is the whole thing considered to be a focus, or just the dart? That's where it could fall part. It would need to be the whole thing.

[Aaron]

[Cabral]

You can definately enchant a Defiance EX as a weapon focus to be used as a club. Whether you could use it as a stun baton is iffy, and a taser is even more so.

[Cold-Dragon]

I would think the electrical component of those weapons would bypass the immunities of spirits since it's not a genuine physical attack - mind, the weapon itself would certain apply, just not the current. ;)

But then one could argue a grenade should work equally well from the explosion if it includes flames. *shrugs* So who knows.

at least Street Magic brought back the 'I use my supreme stubbornness to kick your ass, spirit' back as an option. You can play rock paper scissors with spirits again that way.

[hyzmarca]

I prefer the old trick of stuffing a devil rat into a potato gun and launching it at the spirit. If you're lucky the two will be forced into astral combat and that's just funnier than a taser focus.

Or you could scale it up a little and make an actual mage gun.

[Cold-Dragon]

I think that's basically a modified anchor focus, possible with a spirit bound to it, in the form of a gun, or you use use the gun and the spirit and skip anchor. Entertaining prospect of binding.

[The Jopp]

My suggestionn is that any weapon foci MUST use the characters physical attribute to deal damage. Most weapons have STR/2+Weapon. Hi-tech weapons that have their own damage code use technology that is no part of the character.

Monowhip, tazer, stun-baton, shock-glove: All of these have a fixed damage value and would therefore be unsuitable as a foci due to the way damage is dealt.

Grapple gun is a stretch as the weapon ITSELF is the foci, not the grappling hook or the line.

[hobgoblin]

[Rotbart van Dain...]

[JRDobbs]

Any mage that is willing to spend the karma to bond a taser weapon focus with a 20 reach, and which does the damage of a pointy dart, should be allowed to. As they say, a fool and his karma are soon parted.

/Skepticism that electricty damage works on the astral.

[Cold-Dragon]

[Samaels Ghost]

[De Badd Ass]

[Cabral]

[xizor]

if you notice, you can get +21 (+20 for reach and +1 for weapon foci) dice for just 23 karma :)

at this point, the extra 5 dice cease to matter

[Cold-Dragon]

nevermind me, had a silly answer that might have been stupid instead...carry on aiming the tazer up your nose! ^-^

[Jaid]

i'm just curious...

i see a lot of people making comments as if a reach of 1 means the weapon can reach 1 meter.

now, maybe i'm just missing something, but i don't recall reading anything to that effect in the books so far...

[Cold-Dragon]

Technically, when you get into the gritty of melee combat, you come into a meter or two to fight - this is not a constant. you are ducking, weaving, pulling back and charging forward and such. weapons have varying lengths, however, so in a sense, th reach says what 'meter' you are in the most with the attack, and thus you may have an advantage with that because of where it puts you with your opponent. It's hard to hit someone with a knife when they keep you at bay with a sharp spear, for example. You aren't neccessarily 2-3 meters apart, but that is pretty much going to be the rough size of your combat area.

ANd when you think about trolls, it makes sense there too - with arms that friggin long, they can put their hand on your head, let you flail fists pointlessly, and then crush your skull when they get bored! ^-^

[hyzmarca]

Looking at the real life counterparts of the weapons in the book gives us a reach/length ratio of about 1reach/meter. This isn't exact, of course; there is some deviance. Still, it is usually accurate to the nearest integer.

[Jaid]

ok, so it's basically just an assumption that everyone is making then... there isn't really anywhere that it says that's how it works (like a person with a reach two weapon can't make attacks any further away than a person with a 1 reach weapon or anything), it's more of something that happens to fit rather accurately and is very likely the method they use to determine reach, basically...

[Cold-Dragon]

Yup, pretty much. To be mean and use DnD terms, reach is your threatened area for Attacks of opportunity - so it's a good thing those don't exactly exist in SR.

[De Badd Ass]

[knasser]

Well weapon focus rules explicitly depend on Reach, so it is a melee weapon only unless you want to start giving ranged weapons a de facto reach which is what we are doing here. If you want to say that reach doesn't apply to ranged weapons well fine - I'd agree, but then there goes the projectile weapon focus. Choose one or the other, I'm afraid.