Floating daggers, The Death of a Thousand Cuts Options

[hyzmarca]

Somehow, an interesting concept has turned into horrible minmaxing idea #127659 due to a blatent deficiency in the rules.

Take a knife, imbed a sustaining focus in the hilt, cast levitate on it. The result is the ability to attack anyone within your line of sight almost instantly, so long as you don't pass through any wards.

Now, this is balanced by the low damage code of levitated objects. With six sucesses on a force six spell a magic 6 magician can only get 3M damage from his knife He can get 7M with a force 6 power focus, but that skirts focus addiction and is very expensive.

Some might argue that weapon bonuses should apply. The rules are silent on this. If so the dikoted couger fineblade will do 6S for the starting magician, 10S if he has a force 6 power focus. However, the way the rules are worded suggest that bonuses don't apply. Either interperation is possible.

Unlike fling, there is no ranged combat test. Therefore no way to dodge and no way to stage up the damage. No dodging makes sense from a realism standpoint. The mage can adjust the trajectory of the blade at will. No staging is unrealistic but makes sense from a game balance standpoint.


Now, here is where the rules start to really break down.

Controling a levitating object isn't an action, as far as I can tell. The rules don't say.

If controlling a levitated object doesn't use up an action then one could theoretically stab a person an infinite number of times in a combat turn. This is simply stupid, so there is some calclation to be done.

Take a 20cm knife, 6 sucesses, and 6 magic. One stab is an in and an out so 6*6/(0.2*2) = 36/0.4 = 90 stabs per combat turn.

Quick! Resist 2M 90 times.

It is just insane.

Reason tells us that stabbing a person with a levitating knife must be a free action, even if it contradicts the rules.

The average opposition will be wearing 1 or more points of impact armor, reducing the damage code of the floating dagger to 2M.

A body 6 character will average 5 sucesses on a resistance test, meaning that the floating dagger is usually no better than a stickpin against sammies, trolls, and most other physically oriented characters.

The key word is usually. Being a free action the mage can stab someone with his floating dagger once per combat phase every combat phase no matter who is taking it. This adds up. Even the bigest meat-tanks will occationally take a light wound or worse.
For the Body 3 a light wound is guarenteed if he doens't throw in combat pool. This can be used to whittle away enemy combat pool.

It also makes a wicked sniper's tool. A magician can put his dagger anywhere that he can see with infinite percision. The only protection from the floating dagger is full cover. A magician could easily remain hidden while turning his prey into a pincushin.

With a couple of grades of initiation and a higher force version of levitate, a power focus, or a combonation of these, the floating dagger becomes very deadly.

Force 8 spell 8 magic and 6 power focus = 11M per combat phase and potentialy 3 times on the mage's own phase. If you allow weapon bonuses to apply then it is potentially 9S without the power focus.

The best part about it is that the flying dagger is unaffected by spell defense and shielding, allowing one to quickly and safely wear down magical oppsition. Magicians rarely have much body, anyway.

Of course, there is always the risk of losing the xpensive high force sustaining focus. But self sustaining is always an option if you don't plan on doing anything else. The primary advantage of the focus is the ability to ensure maximum sucesses in safety.

In reality this doens't matter. Since most characters will wear armor 1 success is as good as 6 unless you have a very high magic rating.


EDIT: To be very evil, try levitating a weighted length of monowire instead of a dagger. It works great if the GM allows weapon bonuses to apply and there is no danger of severing your own limbs by accident.

[toturi]

Remember the levitating straw men argument a couple months back? Yes? I argued that doing all that complex levitating consistuted a skill check. So in fact you are making a Complex Action of using a skill.

[Angelone]

Little nitpicking here, I thought you couldn't dikote Fineblades because they got their bonus from the monocular(?) edge and the dikoting would take that edge off.

It could work, but pretty sure you can't "freely" control a levitated item like that. Don't have my book handy, but pretty sure you have to concentrate on levitation, so you'd be using an action.

[mfb]

nixing the dikoting of fineblades is a common houserule, but there's nothing in canon about it.

[Ancient History]

Minor detail: If the sustaining focus is in the knife, it turns off once it leaves contact with you.

Minor Detail #2: You couldn't control the knife once it was out of your line of sight.

[Ol' Scratch]

A few problems.

1) Levitated objects do a flat amount of damage; it doesn't matter what the object is, how heavy it is (as long as it falls within the limits of the spell), or what it's made of. It will always do (Movement Rate / 10)M Stun damage, though the GM can allow it to be Physical instead if its particularly sharp and dangerous (such as the case with a knife). That's it. Monowire, daggers, a feather... it doesn't matter. So a Force 6 spell cast by a Magic 6 magician with six success on his Spellcasting Test willl only do 3M Stun or 3M Physical damage if its sharp or dangerous. End of story -- no valid debate by the rules as written.

2) Using the spell is a Complex Action. Sure, you may be sustaining it, but the act of controlling it is still the same. No, the rules aren't explicit, but they're clearly implied. If it worked like you desired it to, the spell would have been broken from day one, as it doesn't require any kind of Sustaining Focus or anything else to try and take advantage of it. Sometimes you just have to use common sense.

3) Dodge and Damage Resistance Tests are still valid, as the rules do not say that the target is denied these tests, especially the last one (and if it did, there'd be no point in bothering with a Damage Code to begin with). But, assuming you want to ignore that and be silly, then you have to apply that twisted logic both ways -- you don't get to stage the damage up either. Thus it only takes four 2's on a Body+Combat Pool test (since they're doubtlessly wearing armor at least one point of armor) or better to completely ignore the feeble attack. And if your target is someone that can actually be hurt by that, you'd have been better off just shooting the guy instead.

[Demosthenes]

Magic fingers now, or just Use (Skill), would do the job far more handily than Levitate. And you'd get to add the weapon bonuses too...
With loads of TN penalties (sustaining, etc) of course... :silly:

[Aku]

what would happen if you were to leviate that knife high above somebodies head instead, and let it free fall straight down onto a rlatively stationary target instead? (ignoring ofcourse, few if any knifes are areodynamic enough to not rotate in air as they fall)

[Jrayjoker]

So, just levitate a bunch of sharpened lawn darts over them and let loose.

No wait, just shoot the fuck out of them.

[hyzmarca]

[Ol' Scratch]

It doesn't take the same effort -- no Drain to deal with. But it does (or at least should) take the same amount of concentration to control it.

[Ancient History]

Ah, Doc Funk. Keeping me honest as always. :dead: