This poll has been burning in my head for a week or so, but I had trouble coming up with the options. I wanted choices but not to many or to narrow.

So really who here takes the risk on a melee weapon that risked damaging yourself on a critical glitch or geting tangled up on a regular glitch. But the pay off in my mind is great.
A DV of 8 with an ap of -4 and a reach of 2.
The wire retracts into the weapon’s haft when not in use making it easily concealible

I rather enjoy it when my elf street samurai pulls out his monowhip when foes close into melee.
Hell he even has a modified arm slide that holds the monowhip's haft instead of a gun. As the weapon is clearly small enougth when not deployed givin its concealibility bonus is the same as a hold out pistol.
My street samurai has only average strength as he also pulls double duty as the party face and that ate up some BP.

But I'm curious as to who else takes the risk that come with the weapon, who thinks the risk is to great. And who had tried it in the past but paid the price.

I haven't played that much SR4 yet, but I have put together a lot of builds, and the monofilament whip is a good choice for high Agility/low Strength characters - it is a perfect fall-back weapon for a guns guy, or any other character with a low Strength. It is extremely concealable but very effective. And the risk isn't too much, since you can negate a critical glitch with Edge. I do recommend a high skill for it, though. And one disadvantage is that it uses the exotic melee weapon skill, so specialization is not available for it.

In SR3 I would give them to my NPCs fairly often. My Pc's were usualy strong enough that the mono whip was a step down.

Just barely played my first SR4 PC for the first time tonight. He has str 10 so the mono whip is pretty much useless.

It does have an attractive concealability though. Probably the greates damage potential in the smallest package of any weapon in the game.

My current character is a low strength high agility type.
He started with an agility 6(2) and 4 ranks in the monofiliment whip. He has raised the skill to 5 and purchased a reflex recorder for it. Hasn't glitched yet and I think at this point it is very unlikly to happen when there is no edge to spare.

Maybe Arsenal will add some rules for "specialization like bonus" on exotic weapon skills that don't allow for specializations. Hey I can dream can't I?

...of course, this thread would not be complete if someone did not mention that age old Twink favorite-The Monofilament Whip Weapon Focus. Don't leave home without it (which is not a problem if you have a point of cyberware for your Adept assassin, and carry your Mono-Whip-Focus around in a finger-tip compartment).

AFE

I see the specialization on Exotic Weapons sorta like Unarmed Combat specializations. Attack and Defense, though I dont know about any others...

And here, I always thought the twink favorite with regards to the mono-filament whip was to reel it out just one meter instead of two, and sustain a limited-target telekinesis spell on to the counterweight, keeping it at full distance from the haft and the line perfectly taut so that it can be wielded as a reach 1 sword with the damage code of the whip but without the drawback. (Usually combined with a touch-range sustained damaging manipulation with the elemental effect of light, to get the full effect.)

Nah, the twink favorite is to reel it out all the way and then cast levitate on it and use it as a DV 8 -4AP flying weed whacker.

Critical glitches are rare and burning an edge will stop major damage to your character. The advantages of using a monofilament whip out way the disadvantages. Even better is a monofilament strangle wire.

This is all assuming you are a stealth based character like a sam.

The whip is a nasty piece of work, ive used it before, and seen it used. Ive also seen it glitch once. But the guy had his forearm replaced, so it was all good.


I find its even useful for above average Strength characters...even a character with Strength 4 or 5 and a sword won't be doing as much damage as this guy, and without the massive AP on top of it.* Its just a good weapon, if you take a skill high enough to wield it properly, and have a decent Agility.




*Until everyones favorite weapons glazing system is maybe re-implemented, much to the joy of GMs around the world!!!( )

A "yes and will" here. It's the weapon that got me into SR.

It becomes more and more unlikely a monofilament whip will glitch/critical glitch the more dice you get. So unless you have a low dice pool/real lousy rolls, you won't be seeing glitches at 6 base skill + 5 Agility + maybe weapon focus bonus 2 + maybe adept Improved skill 3, for a total of 16 dice.

tpturi beat me to it. The whip even helps you avoid a glitch by adding two dice to your roll unless you really want to apply the reach to your opponent.

The fact that it can be run out of a fingertip compartment pushes it over the edge, for me.

And yeah, the fact that a critical glitch is amazingly rare with a dice pool of 12 or so means that those horrible moments won't happen too often.

From my math:

The probability of rolling no successes on 12 dice: .77%
The probability of rolling 6 or more 1's on 12 dice: .79%

So the odds of rolling no successes *and* 6 ones look to be pretty slim.

One wonders how they train to be that efficient with the monowhip. Perhaps only a lucky few survive monowhip 101 .

Never used one with my chars. Never fitted, roleplaying wise .

I had a character in SR3 who dual wielded mono-whips. He never sliced himself up, though it was always an ending I knew would happen eventually.

When/if he comes over to SR4 he will probably keep on swinging.

After seeing Johnny Mnemonics in the nineties, I've always wanted a Monowhip. But it had too high avaliabilty in SR3 and wasn't that good compared to a troll with a dire-coated axe (or whatever).

Now I'm gonna build a character with one soon enough.

BTW an off topic question: Does the monowhip slice through ALL materials or just some? Why, why not? I mean in the movie it sliced flesh and metal as a hot knife through butter, but then it was defeated by some run-down metal fence!

In the game it doesen't appear to do much damage to structures and items, is that so?

Yep. In the game it sucks against objects.

It doesn't deal much damage to structures because the hole it makes is so very thin. A hole in the wall as wide as paper is thick isn't much.
The way I envison the weapon in use makes cuting through a wall very difficult. The weighted tip guides the wire and that tip needs to go past your target to get a good hit. You can't do that on a wall but could on fence, lamp post or other such objects.

Seriously, using monowire is no big deal.

Your chances of glitching on a 12 die pool (including critical glitches) is less than .8% - and if you reroll your failures it drops even lower.

Your chances of critically glitching are so miniscule that it's not even worth worrying about for a skilled character with some Edge lying around. And if you benefit from Guard, the chances go actually to zero.

That being said, the damage breakeven point of the monowhip is about Strength 9 vs. the Combat Axe, so unless you're a cyber-tusker chances are a monowhip is the most damaging melee weapon you can have.

The only problem with this weapon is that it interacts with the Exotic Weapon Rules - which are contradictory and non-functional. But even at a worst case - where the lack of possible specializations means that you're out 2 dice of attack vs. someone using practically any other melee weapon - the fact that it has +2 Reach over any other weapon that is remotely as concealable as it is almost makes up for it.

The monowhip is hands down the best melee weapon, and anyone who seriously wants to kill people in melee combat should check it out. The only thing that comes close is the stun baton.

-Frank

I prefer the stun baton for the electrical effects and nonlethal damage. But a monowhip most definitely rocks, especially since it means you can dump those enhancements you would have put into strength onto your agility, a much more heavily loaded stat.

And you're a big hit at parties. Cause you bring your own glowstick!

The reasons I see against a monowhip:

1. Not as intimidating. Yeah, it's more deadly, but there's something about a 9' tall troll with a 6' axe.

2. Exotic weapon. So you are limiting yourself in a way you don't with, say, clubs, which lets you pistol whip, pick up a 2x4, etc. But really, who cares?

2a. It's not very useful as a backup weapon. If you're a monowhip wielder, you gotta focus. You can't just pick up blades (katana) 1 for 6 bp, and be reasonbly good. You need to get at least skill 4 or so to avoid the risk.

3. Possible failure, but that's really not the case unless you're in a bad situation. Now, if you're looking at using it when you have 7 boxes of stun in a poorly lit room with shriekers going off, you might not want to pull it out, but that's rare enough to risk, I think.

4. Someone can disarm you simply by explaining how it is technically impossible for something to truly be a single molecule wide.

5. Johnny Mnemonic jokes.

Anyone here ever think for even a moment they might call it monofiliament whip even if it wasn't a true monofilimant wire? Isn't it possible they could have a thin ultra sharp wire that is far thicker then a "monofilimant wire" but they call it monofilimant because the name sounds good?

And to be fair, only the sentence about the shoelace is directly quoted, the rest is paraphrasing.

(My SSC is in the attic right now, under several boxes. Googled it, and found someone on a WH40k forum who had quoted that sentence almost verbatim, but had used the word monomolecular instead of monofilament, which made it the exact opposite of what Hermes was trying to say.)

Thanks Frank

RP: It was the shoelace part that rang the bell. i'd always liked that part.

Monomolecular also has a quote out there, which is roughly,

"It isn't that it's made out of one molecule so much as it's just one molecule in size. A piece of chalk is 'Monomolecular' since the only thing that makes it up is chalk, but you can't cut somebody's head off with it."

Chalk up another one to Frank.

::Headslap::



I've always run it under the impression that it wasn't truely monomolecular, but that it was thin enough to do what they wanted. Monomolecular is marketing exageration. That works with my concept of SR: marketing has overcome physics to give the people what they want.

Now here's a thought: what if you magnetized your counterweight, setting it up so that the handle repulsed the counterweight when activated, and attracted it when stored using a reversable electromagnet? This could help keep the wire taunt.

Stupid idea that's probably been done before...

Monowhip with a stun baton on the back end. Choose your damage.

Next stupid idea... non-mono conductive whip. Monowhip skill and reach, stun damage (only). Not sure there's much of a point to it with SNS, but it might come in handy.

In previous editions, I think it was described a "near-monomolecular". In SR4, it is simply called nanowire.

So save the buckyballs for Abe, Babes, and Rollerblades.


Besides, monowhips will always run a distant third behind house-ruled lightsabers and gunblades.

personally, i say the defiance taser is competitive with the monowhip for melee too, but that's just me

8S (e) damage, -half AP versus impact. no reach, but the electric part and the part where it ignores half AP rather than just a flat rate of 4 points is nice. also, threshold to hit is one lower iirc (you only have to touch)

of course, imo it should also be possible to jury rig the taser to act like a whip, thus dealing 8S (e) damage with a reach of 2. this would probably require an exotic weapon proficiency (which really should use groups instead of specific weapons, imo, but that's a whole different matter).

presumably they have chosen not to do that so that the whips skill group didn't become everyone's first choice for melee, thereby devaluing strength to almost nothing for anyone who isn't an unarmed combat adept.

From experience, I can tell you reach doesn't work like it does in SR for soft weapons, so othat's the real oversight. I liked the way reach worked in previous editions. The way it works in 4th is a bit wonky for my tastes. It's like they felt they couldn't leave reach off so they just shoved it in however they could.

I expect arsenal will fix this with maneuveurs, some way for a person to close with the enemy. or maybe I just have to make house rules. But when you have a reach weapon; you have the advantage until your opponent closes. A hard reach weapon works kinda like reach did in previous editions, but a soft reach weapon like a whip or a rope dart (my experience) is more like a short rande thrown weapon that comes back when you tug on it. It only keeps your opponent at reach so long as they fear it, and It's really easy to close. They also need that distance to get up striking speed.

And you can't parry with a soft melee weapon. It's physically possible, I suppose, but it's not practical. I would never allow a character to parry using a monowhip.

One thing I haven't yet had in a character was the monofilament whip concealed in the cyber-finger.

Now I need to go write up a character.