Allows you to throw non-weapons with the same type of skill. As an added bonus, it also grants a damage bonus for those thrown objects that are already considered missile weapons.

Also ... see my edit above.

ok, because it would be out of context forget about me asking WHAT and imagine i edited it to say HOW does it do that you nitpicks *grumbles*

and again, i'd say that that was what attribute and skill/training and experience are supposed to do . .

What skill training allows you to consistently pick up pretty much any portable object and effectively use it as a weapon ... every single time? We are talking about anything from a paper clip to a playing card to a tooth brush to a bowling ball ... every single time.

Missile Mastery is on top of any skill involved with throwing normal weaponry.

I understand that there are people in the real world that can do this type of thing with one or two, or even four or five different objects, but an Adept with Missile Mastery can pick up anything and use it as effectively as a mundane person trained to a similar level of skill uses a throwing knife.

i'm probably just arguing to be arguing and arguing semantics . . but shouldn't power-throw be the thing that makes things just do more ouchies when thrown by you?
anyone can pick up basically anything to use as a weapon . . yes, the street-samurai can actually do that too . . so he is using a hair-ping . . if he is that frigging good he can stab you in the heart or something with it . . there's rules for the improvised weapons somwehere as far as i remember . . let's say power-throw does the thing about ballistics and aerodynamics to add just more oomph to the thrown object than you would get out of it purely by skill and attribute . . then what/how does missle mastery actually do to let it do even more ouchies without actually changing anything at all?

I think that ultimately we don't really know what missle mastery does. It's not well described and anything we say (using aerodynamics, incredible skill, etc.) is just conjecture on our part. So we can't say definitively if this is magical in nature or not. I've been unable to find any related texts that support the idea that MM imparts magical properties on a projectile. There is circumstantial evidence supporting the idea that the projectiles are not magical, in the statements about weapons foci, etc.

Depending on whether you're a strict constructionist (nothing allowed unless expressly stated) or a loose constructionist (everything allowed unless expressly forbidden) you might see this as a loop-hole to hand-wave that these projectiles are magical and therefore bypass immunity. In my mind (and my game, if I had one), the projectiles would not be treated this way.

I have always assumed that Missile Mastery was basically like an extended distance strike in that it basically punched outward and negated friction for an object. Because if you could negate air resistance, then you could throw any object of a given size just as well as any other given that it fit in your hand well.

Improved Thrown Weapons would allow you to plot trajectory and Power Throw is basically magic velocity boost.

That is the only way I can think of it working and not make my head hurt.

Chris

Really doesn't make a difference how the magic works (It's Magic!). It is only important to know (in this discussion anyway) that none of the Adept Powers would instill any sort of magical nature or power to the actual weapon itself. The thrown weapon, regardless of powers used, will always be non-magical.

I know, Fortune, but as a scientist at heart, it kills me to leave something unexplained if I can figure something out.

Chris

now i wonder if the electric elemental effect one can chose for his hands would work through a weapon that consists of a good conductor such as metal O.o

so swords, lead-pipe-clubs, knives, daggers, metal-chain-whips and pole-arms ? O.o
that's what i meant *g*
and just to irk you and because i have no idea of physics other than the ouchies going away from me . . metal thingies that get thrown? *runs*

I´ve ruled that the "unarmed weapons" work, because the player in question wanted a weapon focus.

Based on that experience I strongly suggest keeping the ban of real weapons from a game balance POV. Unless you want WH40k style power swords to go with your Arsenal powered armor. Max. strength, Elemental Attack(Electricity), weapon-focused Combat Axe...

@KK - That has actually come up before, and while my grasp of the subject is probably much weaker than yours as it was just an academic curiosity that I satisfied at one point, the basic ruling I came up with is that for a spirit on an orbital or sub-orbital flight using it's movement power one point of force has to be used in stabilizing/centrifigal motion for every point of Force used to speed the shuttle forward. It's not great... but it's better than sub-orbital flights exceeding the speed needed to leave earth's gravitic field. It also neatly takes care of the "Why doesn't it fly off into space at the higher speed?" question by making it basically accelerate the motion due to gravity by the same factor it accelerates the forward motion.

Chris

EDIT: Have I ever mentioned I can derail any thread with little to no effort? How the hell did we get here?

...I think I threw the piece of rebar on the track first.

I'm sticking to the real physics when it comes to space in my campaigns. One of the few places where I don't have to deal with magic screwing with an elegant system. Damn, us hard science minded types need a little haven from the improbable once in a while.

[/derail]

Just to throw in my 2 cents, its magic, who cares how the magic works, it just does. We don't talk about how mages are able to cast a lightning bolt, so why care about how an adept is able to throw packing peanuts for damage. It works, the end. And since the weapons merely are stated as doing (str/2)P then they aren't magical, since it doesn't say they are.

make a female and have it look like an old granny so she can carry hair-pins and knitting needles around O.o

Make a huge troll with a filthy dredlocked beard that has colonies of bugs living in it, and throw them.

...I'm known to be ruthless sometimes.

...it's just that I've heard the phrase used so many times (not only here on DS) that it has come to the point of it becoming somewhat cliché. When it is applied in the context of dealing with a natural physical effect (not in this thread so much) the empirical part of me winces sometimes.

You could of course rule that the Spirit movement power works on orbital items by focusing all available ions/energy into a thrust vector, causing the vehicle to speed up, rather than having the wasted energy bleed off in other ways. It could also magically enhance the output of the engine, causing the speed increase, though of course that one relies on the age old "it's magic!" to function...

...let's not go there again, at least not in this thread. My thermal shielding is still in cool down mode from the last time this topic was discussed.

[/derail]

Does Immunity to Normal Weapons protect from falling damage, or damage from a vehicle crash?

Not that I know of, as neither of those are considered to be weapons.

I agree with that. For me, intent is the key in this type of situation.

Poppycock. The creature's immunity can't distinguish intent.
Creatures are given immunity from natural weapons because they are not of this world and, as such, have immunity to all but the most dreadful of trauma because this world does not affect them as it does us.

Why would a creature's immunity from natural weapons not apply in a car crash, but apply if an adversary was driving that car?

When you start getting into semantics about the most literal of translations rather than putting yourself into the world and asking "why?" it begins a long, slow decent into the world of rule whoredom.

I don't care. Intent works fine for me, and you'd have to work hard to find an example that would make me question it.

Here's a question. Jakkie is an Adept that has Killing Hands, which neatly bypasses a Spirit's ItNW. Just before he gets a chance to attack a big old nasty Spirit that is bothering him, Killjoy the troll Tank scoops him up and swings him bodily at the Spirit. Does Killjoy benefit from Jakkie's Killing Hands and bypass the Spirit's ItNW?

If Jakkie is focusing and using his Adapt powers, then yes, of course. I'd probably have them use some sort of co-ordinated attack.

However, if Jakkie is as caught off guard as the spirit, then of course not. Just as if Jakkie were unconscious it wouldn't apply either. Melee combat, especially for the most martial arts of inclined Adepts, is not just "I hit you, you hit me" as the BBB states, but it is a ballet of moves, feints and counter maneuvers. That is where Killing Hands apply. It isn't enough that Jakkie spent the points on the power and so his hands are forever killing, but it is that he has learned how to internalize his magic so as to use it to make his punches pass through his opponents guard and armor.

Adepts are as Awakened as any mage, they just turn their magical energies inwards. Subsequently, when they fight they are not like the chromed sammies whose titanium bones and dermal plating are secondary to the attack at hand, but rather are cognizant of everything that is going on with their bodies. That is the nature of an internal, magical discipline.

Once again, that is not thinking about the fight as a fight, but rather as a set of numbers to be manipulated. It is the difference between playing a role and playing a character sheet.

To give an example of intent being called into play, I'll use the one I gave above: If a spirit is along for a ride with his mage and gets into a car accident, his ItNW doesn't apply. But, if that mage is possessed by a rival shaman, or kicked out of the car by a skilled combat monster or a rigger takes control of the car, and they get into the same accident, it would apply?

That implies the creature's ability can read minds or judge unnoticed intent, or that the talent is not based upon the physics of the Sixth World, but rather on intellectual indeterminants, or, more likely, not wanting your players to cheat at the game.

Thanks for the lesson.

If Killjoy (a mundane) is making the attack, it doesn't matter how aware Jakkie is, the attack is based on Killjoy's efforts and abilities alone. The metahuman body is no more magical in a mundane's hands than a can of tomato soup. Just as Killjoy could not pick up and use (to full magical effect) a Weapon Focus, he would gain no bonus from swinging an Adept wildly about the place.

Now, if it were indeed a coordinated effort, whereby Jakkie himself was making the attack, the his Killing Hands would apply.

As to your comments on 'intent'. See my last post. I don't care if it is extra effort. It wouldn't come up often enough to bother me, and I like the idea of 'intent' as I see it.

You'll also note that at no time did I state that I use this rule in my games. I very well might, but if that were the case it would be discussed with my Players. I don't play with Players that cheat, so I guess I don['t have to worry about that kind of stuff.

I don't think the intent rule is the best way to resolve the situation. It creates too many unanswerable questions. Like if I intend to crush a spirit with a car crusher, is the crusher a weapon? If I intend to dump a big load of rocks on top of the spirit, are the rocks weapons? If I intend to burn down a building with a spirit inside of it, is the fire a weapon? Is the burning building a weapon?

It also gives too much room for playing whining. What will you do when your players decide to activate the car crusher "for no reason," thus trying to make it kill the spirit without intent and not become a weapon? If they dump rocks on the ground "just because" are you going to want to argue with them that they're actually intending to kill the spirit?

I think the wording of the rule is pretty clear: it applies to weapons, not non-weapons you intend to use as weapons. It's easy to adopt a clear, rules-based definition for this: if something has a damage code in the book, and it isn't magical, it's definitely a normal weapon.

Beyond that, you should simply use common sense. Is a 2x4 with a nail in it a weapon? Sure. Is a claw hammer a weapon when you hit someone with it? Of course. A shovel? Again, yes. But what about a car? No, that's a vehicle. And a car crusher is a vehicle crusher, not a weapon. A load of rocks is a load of rocks, it doesn't make sense to classify a whole truckload of them dumped at the same time as weapons... Maybe if you threw a rock or bashed someone with it, you could count it as a weapon, but there is simply no room in the word "weapon" for impromptu objects that cannot be wielded.

Using this rule, a tank's cannon is always a weapon because it has a damage code, and a tank's treads are not a weapon. Under the intent rule, someone could fire the cannon at random, and it would ignore spirit immunity because they weren't actually intended to hurt the spirit. Or worse, they could target something behind the spirit, saying that the intend to shoot a building, so the tank cannon is not intended as a weapon against the spirit, so it ignores immunity... It also allows the incongruous result of the spirit surviving being hit by the tank when the driver intends to kill it, but if the driver hits the spirit by accident when backing up, the spirit gets no immunity. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense IMO.