I could swear that I read some where that you could throw 3 throwing knives at one time (or shuriken) but now I can't find it. Am I hallucinating or is this rule or what ever in the main rule book?

You're thinking of D&D, I believe. You can throw three shirken as one action in 3.0, at least.

shuriken. and, yes, that's D&D.

Speaking of strange throwing weapons, I've got a player who has built his character around the notion of throwing maces. I've got him rolling throwing-weapons/non-aerodynamic for them. Any feelings on what a damage code should be for a round metal ball on a short pole hefted across the room? (I was going to make him take the skill "Club Chucking" but decided a little bit of flexibility would help his character.

I'll say, make it a bit better than a brick - the rule for a brick is somewhere in there.

... just a sec.

I believe you can throw 1/2 your quickness or something like that.

I'll have to look this up in BBB as soon as I get home. Away from my stuff right.

I think there is something for that in the CC, but I'm at work and don't have access to it... anyone else able to check this?

The recipe for Three Knives @ One Time...

Required

Quick Strike
Quick Draw
Missile Parry
Off Hand Throwing

You start with two knives out, one in each hand before actions begin.
On the Quick Strike, toss one knife into the air above you and Quick Draw the next one. On first action, throw both knives in a single Simple Action. With Free catch falling knife, and use final Simple to throw.

Possible?

Dude ... that's totally sweet!

... okay, I just got back from my car. I have one of those mini-sledgehammers (about a foot long), and a few bricks.

I tossed them at the side of my car 5 times each. I'd have to say, when the hammer hits the car properly (the iron head hits), it does WAY more damage than the brick. On the other hand, when the wooden handle hits, it does less damage than the brick.

The brick gives more steady damage, but the hammer had more potential.

Doesn't Missile Mastery let you catch them items from the air with a free?

Thanks for the practical insight, El_Machinae. Please thank your car for sacrificing itself for the advancement of science...er...gaming. I suppose that rather than trying to change the power of the throwing mace attack based on some kind of "luck" test, I'll just start the base damage level of the throwing maces at L. More successes on the throwing weapons test will then signify a hit with the business end of the mace, rather than the stick end, signficantly increasing damage done by staging the damage code up.

I would just make the Range very, very poor. This would mimic the difficulty in getting a good hit.

Short: 0
Medium: Str/6
Long: Str/4
Extreme: Str/2

(STR+2)M should suffice.

Missile Parry lets you pluck items from the air, not mastery. Pretty easy to get them confused, though.

Anyway, that's really quite cool. 10 Cool Points.

Edit: What Zazen said.

On a related tangent, does anyone else find it odd that grenades and throwing knives use the same base skill?

heh, yeah. it'd honestly make more sense to use Athletics to throw a grenade; like they said in basic--a grenade is just a baseball that explodes.

...sounds kinda melodramatic, when you're not hearing it from your drill sergeant.

Was this the same car you ripped the door off of?

~J

Seeing as you can ready a number of throwing kinves / shiroken etc equal to half quickness as a single simple action, I think you could have more thn 2 ready given at a time. I'm guessing you can KEEp ready that same number- no reading dozens of them before a fight!
In which case you could thoretically throw 2 (though the gamne has no rule for this) as a simple action, and then do it again with another 2, assuming you had a qickness of 8.
Throwing 4 knives an action lacks the cool of juggling 3, but is perhaps more effective and doesn't require you to be an adept. Anybody with some Muscle Toners or Muscle Replacement could do it.

As for grenades and athletics, who said athletics had anything to do with sports like baseball? Grenades are probably as far removed from knives as shotguns are from pistols, but SR is odd like that- some skills cover much wider fields than others. If it bothers you, you can take a specialization in the skill, or even (as the GM) ban folks from buying the genral skill and REQUIRE the specializations.

What's all this talk about grenades, knives and other stuff? Throwing weapons? That's what the dwarf is for.

I always wanted to know, why can I hit someone dead on with a grenade using throwing rules without pulling the pin and like it's a blunt object real easy, no scatter... But if I pill the pin and throw it it scatters to hell and back?

according to SR3, you can specialize in athletics according to sport. ergo, athletics = throwing baseballs.

bitbasher, it's because grenades don't explode on contact; they explode when their timer runs out.

Actually mfb, grenades specifically have "impact" listed as a dentonation method for regular grenades in the BBB page 282. Not mini grenades, but under the category for normal hand grenades.

*shrug* then the best answer i can give is "because".

er... hrm. maybe because if you don't pull the pin, it doesn't matter how close to the target it lands? whereas, even with it primed for impact, it does matter. yeah, it's weird that it's easier to bean someone with a brick than it is a live grenade, but that's rules for you.

Grenades don't scatter that far. Aerodynamic grenades scatter 2d6-4(successes) meters and regular grenades 1d6-2(successes) meters, respectively. So if you get three successes on the attack roll, it's always on target, and it's not a roll anyone gets to oppose, either.

I actually have a player playing a ninjaesque character who was curious about how she might throw three knives at once. Y'know, like they do in the old ninja movies?
I wish I'd thought of the take out two, throw one in the air, throw two, grab the falling one and throw it strategy, if only for it's coolness But I basically came up with this instead....

Physical Adept Power:
Throwing Weapon Burst
Cost: 1 power point.

Allows the physical adept to throw three identical knife sized weapons (Defined in this case as no longer than 12 inches) exactly akin to a 3 round burst from an automatic weapon. Stage the damage code up by 1 (Typically L to M) and the power up by 3. All other factors, range, ability mods, etc, are identical to a single thrown weapon.

This gets really vicious when your ninja is using 3 dikoted knives with a 6 strength

rather than trying to limit the size of the weapon, i'd just limit it to L damage.

oh, and give it a cooler name. "dragon breath lights the eastern sky" or somesuch.

If you threw a grenade, would you allow someone to do "brick" damage to the opponent, and then roll scatter? That'd be pretty funny.

Allofasudden, you'd get people throwing grenades, with intent to kill.

i don't see why not. maybe -1 power from brick damage (-3 for minigrenades), as a grenade simply doesn't have the mass of your average brick. but, yeah.

er, wait. i'd allow the grenade to smack the target if the scatter were reduced to 0 with successes. i doubt even a troll could throw a grenade hard enough to bounce it a meter or more off of a metahuman.