Weapono Foci, What are the limits in 4th Options

[Prime Mover]

Only weapon foci examples been able to find are in Street Magic under formula section which lists wooden staff and vibroknife (not sure but I don't recall ever seeing vibro weapons stated in SR, do remember them being in BT).

So have player asking if could make mono whip foci? Were do you draw the line?

EDIT: Actually went back and looked, vibroblades were in cannon comp.

[Ancient History]

Heh. I've fielded questions where somebody wanted to turn a truck into a weapon focus and run people over with it.

The answer is, any item can be a weapon focus. Any. But it only works when used in melee combat. If you decide to enchant a car, then your troll adept has to actually pick it up and use it as an improvised melee weapon for it to be used as a weapon focus.

[Prime Mover]

[Ol' Scratch]

The line is any ranged weapon or item deemed absurd by the GM. The last bit is one of the perks of a roleplaying game with a live person as the referee and rules interpretor.

[venenum]

In for laughs only game, i once had my troll adept, enchant the dwarf decker as a weapon focus, didn't work out to well, he was always running a way.

[Glyph]

[Irian]

Personally I would say that a monofilament whip is ok, but it just does the damage of a normal whip against ghosts. So a monofilament whip as a weapon focus doesn't do 8P against ghosts, perhaps (STR/2)+1P or something like that :-) But as this isn't stated in RAW, it's of course a house rule.

[Kyoto Kid]

...my new baseball player adept, Moonlight Graham, has a Louisville Slugger as her WF.

[Ol' Scratch]

If you're going to start ignoring the physical stats of a weapon focus used in astral combat for whatever reason, you may as well just house rule that you ignore them for all weapons and just use a single stat. There's no real justification for ignoring/adjusting the stats of a monofilament whip while not doing the same thing for a sword or baseball bat.

[DTFarstar]

I think the confusion is coming from a monofilament chainsaw being turned into a club in astral combat. It's done that way because of the chainsaw needing fuel, not because monofilament needs power. So, no need to nerf mono-whip in the astral. No power needed.

Though I would say the chainsaw seems more like an axe than a club to me, what with the bladed parts, but that's just me.



Chris

[FriendoftheDork]

[Adarael]

Well, sorta. That's the logical way to do it. But given the immense difficulty or cost (it's either super hard or costs way more) in actually enchanting the weapon focus monowhip, he'd probably need it custom-made. It's definitely not something anyone would make regularly, owing to cost, time, and trouble.

[Glyph]

Mundane telesma give -4 to the dice pool when enchanting, so the final product would likely be more expensive to reflect the added difficulty. Still far from impossible, though, and some traditions, such as hermetics and chaos mages, enchant mundane telesma all of the time. A monofilament weapon focus won't be that unusual.


@FriendoftheDork:
If your adept is contemplating melee combat with spirits using a weapon he is defaulting on, then don't worry about the possibility of him doing 8P damage - worry about keeping his character alive.

The monofilament whip itself is very unforgiving of glitches and (even worse) critical glitches. Hope this guy has lots of Edge.

Spirits tend to have bonuses to Agility and Reaction, in addition to dodge and melee skills equal to their Force. Hitting one at all is far from easy once you get to Force: 3 or better. And some of them have energy aura, so successfully hitting them means that you resist damage.

[Adarael]

Don't forget that the object resistance of the monowhip (about as highly processed as can be, given that the attacking surface has to be made with nanotech) is added to the base 16 successes required for enchanting. It's not just that you're losing dice, it's that it takes a lot longer, too. It's even harsher if you're playing with the "rolls made must be equal to or under the dice pool of the tester" rule.

Enchanting a mundane sword is one thing. Enchanting a nanotech-created weapon is another thing entirely.

[toturi]

But if you are getting one at chargen, you are not enchanting one per se. You are simply getting one and the rules are the same whether you are getting a monowhip focus or a katana focus.

Anyway, the problem is not monofilament whip at low skill levels.. but monofilament whip focus at high dice pools. Even at skill 1, a softcap Agility adept with counterstrike, combat sense and a weapon focus can throw a lot of dice. A mystic adept is even better with almost no chance of glitching.

[FriendoftheDork]

To Adarael, and toturi:

I know that it would be more difficult to create, but he's not creating he's buying. And by RAW there is no price difference between a force 1 monowhip and a force 1 dagger.

However to reflect the time and cost to make one I will make it more expensive to purchase. Since there is a penalty of -1 per force on the enchanting check, and price is based off force, I'd say a monowhip (-4) would cost as much as a weapon of 4 higher force. Thus a force 2 monowhip (availability 10, increased to 12 for monowhip) would cost 60k nuyen (20k+40k). Since that's a heavy investment it would probably be wiser to buy a spear, knife, sword or similar crafted item despite the lack of strength.

An aspected enchantment would probably be sold for cheaper on the "shelves" (-20k, minimum 10k), although a monowhip that only works at night or when singing psalms just may not be the thing.


To Glyph: He's only going to use it against astral enemies (at least until he gets a decent skill), against physical ones (including materialized high-force spirits) he'll blast them away with APDS. Astral spirits don't have energy auro or similar attacks, they just have their astral combat skill and possibly natural weapons.

As it is, if he takes astral perception he will only be able to do charisma/2 damage to them, and his dice pool will not be greater either (9 or so without edge). With that many dice he'd be unlikely to glitch often anyway, since he already has max agility.

In astral form even an air elemental only has 6 dice to defend with, since it uses logic instead of agility in astral space, thus even by defaulting Uzz can outdo it in melee combat. Not to mention the damage, a force 3 air elemental has what.... 2 base damage?
(charisma/2)

[Glyph]

You're missing a few rules. Astral spirits use Force for all Attributes in astral combat (pg. 177). Yes, that would still give it only 6 dice to defend with, but with 3 IP in astral space, it might use full defense as an interrupt action when attacked.

However, astral combat uses Willpower as the linked Attribute, and there is NO defaulting for that skill. So there will be no "defaulting to his incredible agility" if he plans to use a weapon focus solely for astral attacks. Plus, with the way you have gimped it and tripled the price, he might as well give up on the whole idea.

Which he should, anyways. If he has the means to deal with materialized spirits, then leave the astral baddies to the mage. Otherwise, he will be taking the proverbial knife to a gun fight against any projecting mage, or spirit of man with the innate spell power. A +2 reach means nothing against a mana bolt.

[FriendoftheDork]

[Fortune]

[DTFarstar]

I was under the impression that spirits stats were the same whether manifesting or not. I thought it was just mages that went with mental stats when projecting. You know, since they left their physical bodies behind, whereas spirits ARE their natural bodies and don't normally go physical.


Chris

[FriendoftheDork]