i'm starting to plan my later build for my pixie adept unarmed specialist and i t seems my options are thinning out. i've already got lots of sexy dice pools, but when i run into walls and tanks punching isnt very...effective.

to date i've been thinking about grabbing elemental strike (acid) to solve that problem. my other idea is to get gauntlets and add a weaponfoci like a drill spike to deal with vehicles, but i dont know how weapon foci work exactly. any comments suggestions?

If you want to break through walls, I recommend Elemental Strike (Blast) and Smashing Blow. Against vehicles, maybe Elemental Strike (Electricity) for the chance to disable the vehicle temporarily. Other than that, I'm not sure what else is good against vehicles.

well actually ive borken through a wall in less than 2 seconds in a decent house so thats not as much of a problem as the tank. specially cuz tanks in SR 4 2072 are legit with no holes for pixies to abuse. much to my dismay. still i thought acidity would pretty much be a kryptonite for most hard things and its a lot more versatile.

would elemental strike (acid) damage me at all? or does the punch just have the properties of acid?

I recommend investing in an Autocannon.

+ Improved Ability: Heavy Weapons 3.

No, you do not get hurt by your own elemental strike. That would make the power far less useful, don't you think? You might still hurt your hand when you punch the tank, though, if your GM is into that kind of detail.

Any element type that does physical damage works equally well against vehicles for purposes of damage. Acid is no better than fire, light, blast, or whatever else, as long as the element does physical damage and assuming that the vehicle does not have a bonus to resist that type of element. If the element does stun damage, then you cannot damage the vehicle with that type.

thats why i thought acid would work better than electricity because its not as common thus less protection from it. and our DM has banned emps and their like because they're broken as fuck in the matrix world. as for spreading out my abilities its already too late, im already deep into unarmed territory and i only have like 3 karma at the moment.

btw, my pixie has 4 str and 3 body and my DM isnt too woried about my hand being hurt. i even punched through someones cup by accident and he didnt mention my hand hurting so yeah

I'm a fan of the Blast element, because you have a higher chance of knocking down someone, and there is no non-magical defense against it of which I'm aware. Plus, you can destroy an object in one hit if your Magic rating is high enough.

Lots of Critical Strike, when punching for 12P base even most tanks will learn not to get near that character.
But beyond that there plenty of wacky things to do, Attunement, so your Pixie's animal friend can become
nearly as BA, or the various centering methods, to use Attribute juggling or boosting.

All fun things.

Level 4 bone density bioware. STR/2+3P damage. You'll have to get killing hands for elemental strike, but combine that with martial arts styles and you can do STR/2+6, with the full +3DV. A human throwing around 9DV base punches would be, uh, interesting.

Penetrating strike, smashing blow, and critical strike.

I would not do acid as acid is fairly weak against items especially for combat spells/magic as it only lasts that 1 attack (ie no ongoing damage)). I would go for ice because you can freeze a road and watch vehicles keep sliding with no chance of stopping. Not everything has to be a direct attack.

i like that thinking. do you think a DM would go for ice weakening structures or vehicles? or is that just a movie thing? cuz then they could shatter easily (this is assuming i take ice)

Cold makes structures more brittle. But there are several limitations that make it next to useless in combat :

- you need very low temperatures to achive meaningfull results (think liquid nitrogen). Some effect has been noticed in siberia with -50 to -80 Celsius temperture, but it's more on the material fatiguse side (structure losing their ability to flex and soak vibrations)
- you need to cool down the material to it's core, and it usually takes time (especially with things like inches-thick vehicle armor. One square yard will weight something like 150 kg for each inch of thickness. That's a lot of matter to cool down, espcially with composites that aren't exactly good thermal conductors.
- even when it's weakened, there's still some strength remaining - otherwise very satellite out there would burst from micrometeors impact. Space is cold.

By RAW Blast as a Elemental Strike option does not work well. An Unarmed Attack does not have a Force. Thus all Force-based enhancements are null, this leaves only the halving of Impact Armor. I have seen however a houserule to use MAG instead of force for the benefits. You should check with your GM, if that is the way he will do it.
Ice as an elemental effect does not last any longer than acid as such an effect. Running up to a vehicle and punching it is bad enough. Forcing it to do a crash test while you're next to it amounts to suicide IMHO.

If you really want to annoy your opposition take the ludicrously expensive Distance Strike. Your dice pool will almost be twice as effective.

Don't forget to pick up martial arts, at least if your GM will let you. That's another +3 DV.

well, if elemental strike wouldn't be effective, i was considering getting weapon foci. maybe spiked gauntlets? i have no melee skill just unarmed so it would have to fit in that category

Don't get me wrong elemental strike is effective. Blast and ice just aren't that good. I'd take sound/electricity against living targets and fire/acid/light against objects.

Hardliner gloves, brass knuckles and maybe even shock gloves would work. AFAIK there are no stats for spiked gauntlets.

What no pixie dualwielding monofilament whips?

well to be honest, so far in this campaign there hasn't been a single living target that i haven't crippled or ko-ed in 1 blow. all i am really worried about is vehicles and rock like substances that are bigger than me. i haven't read much but from what i've gathered (and please correct me if im wrong) weapon foci can have a purpose and iwas thinking of having a leather fist casing that would have a sort of drill spike that could be activated whose primary purpose is to destroy vehicles and walls and miscellaneous big rocks.

weapon foci add their rating to the attacker's dice pool and make it easier to harm spirits. If you already have killing hands, only the dice pool modifier is something new. For me they are a bit expensive for that. I'd go with elemental strike, critical strike, smashing blow, martial arts, 'ware an possibly improved ability(Unarmed combat) to destroy barriers and vehicles, but trying to roundhouse-kick a battleship may not be such a good idea if you're not Chuck Norris.

i've already got 6 in killing hands and ive got 3--(4) str and i've invested in carromeleg 2 for the surprise test modifier (stealth kills ftw). what's smashing blow?

Smashing Blow is in Street Magic. It doubles your base DV for purposes of damaging obstacles (not critters or vehicles). It helps the most if your Strength is high, since it only affects the base DV.

haha well i'm a pixie so i'm not so sure that's the best bet.

whimsical thought: would sneaking up on someone w/ a demolitions charge (tiny), sticking it on them (palming) and then running the hell away be a possibility? maybe invest in demolitions?

Sure, that's possible. That would be a Palming skill test assuming that you don't want the target to know that you planted the charge. Of course, if you meant that you want to plant the charge on a vehicle, then I don't think you'd need to use Palming. Just stick it on and run, assuming the charge has some kind of adhesive or magnet to stay on the vehicle.

What's your obsession with destroying stuff? Maybe the next run won't involve blowing stuff up.

The Base DV is STR/2 +modifiers without net hits. So it does not matter if the strength is high or if you have lots of critical strike other bonuses. Wg´hat is your base DV anyway?

Darn, I always thought smashing blow doubled stuff like killing hands and martial arts bonuses and such.

Would be nice if it worked that way, but it would be obviously way overpowered.

well that would make more sense. i'll probably try to see if i could get my DM to make house-rules on elemental strike or something. or i could invest in demolitions and stealth up to ppl or vehicles and just plant bombs and what not. i do specialize in stealth after all.

I guess maybe. Just seems somewhat less worth it if it is only going to add 2-3 extra DV in very specific situations.

Are you saying that Critical Strike counts as part of base DV? I'm not sure if that's the case; seems too good if it does count.

Edit: I just remembered that the power costs 1 point. Maybe doubling Critical Strike bonuses and martial arts advantage bonuses isn't so overpowered. I do admit that the idea is pretty cool--being able to smash through almost any obstacle in one punch.

does killing hands max?

Any power that does not specifically list a maximum rating has a default maximum equal to your Magic rating.

shit so i maxed it. hmm so it seems i can only find things to up my dodge, maybe get weapon foci, or multiclass into demolitions.

Killing Hands has no rating, it can only be purchased once.... either you do physical damage and affect spirit ITNW (with it) or you do not (with out it)... it is a binary power

Keep the Faith

Tymeaus is right. Sorry, I didn't read carefully about which power that vacrix was asking. Heh.

I second Tymeazs's post. Maybe you are thinking about Critical strike (the power that augments your unarmed damage), this one has a maximum rating of your Magic.

@Base DV: What's the base DV for someone with bonelacing? It's (STR/2+x)P just like it's (STR/2+Critical Strike Rating)S/P for someone with the aforementioned power, at least IMHO. Since the description never mentions the modified DV, I assume that it is the base DV. The modified DV results after adding the net hits of the attack.

Yep, In Agreement... Base DV is the DV before adding in Net Hits from the attack...

Keep the Faith

If smashing Blow only changed STR/2 to STR this power would be way too expensive. For 1 PP you could get 4 levels of Critical Strike which work all the time. A unaugmented STR-maxed troll only gets +5 from Smashing Blow against those pesky doors. Barring any means of raising the augmented maximum the highest bonus anyone could get is +7.

@vacrix: Could you post your character so we can see what you consider to weak against static objects?

My interpretation of base DV includes the Critical Strike adept powers as well as bone lacing augments, Penetrating Strike and the various other abilities that raise the DV of the Attack... Modified DV is the result of Net hits from an attack...

Sorry if I was being a little obtuse earlier... For 1PP the ability to double your DV for Smashing Blow is just about right the way it is...

Keep the Faith

I just wish it worked on vehicles. I can totally charge up and smash down a bank vault door, but the side of a stationary vehicle is way too different for me to tackle. Heck bump its PP cost up to 2 or something, but let smashing blow work on all inanimate objects.

Then again I want elemental strike to work with distance strike, why because I think it would look cool.

It would indeed look cool...

Keep the Faith

I'm curious. How does a parked or immobile vehicle not count as a "barrier or other static structure"?

Generally if something can move it isn't a static structure. But of course if you want to get technical the frame of a vehicle is a barrier in the same way that the wall of a building is a barrier.

Personally I don't see why the ability wouldn't work on all inanimate objects, because for all of them you could claim them being barriers because in order to break an inanimate object you go and look up its barrier rating and so on.

They were probably concerned about breaking of guns.

Now that would take balls... punching the gun instead of the person holding it.

Why would that be a concern? It sounds like something they should encourage. There is a martial arts maneuver that allows you to break weapons (including guns) so why would a 1 PP power not help you out with that? Personally I think it sounds like a decent way to render someone a non-threat. Then again, for the effort in destroying the gun with your bare hands, I guess you could have just done an S damage punch and knocked them out.

Guns you can probably break, they have a barrier rating. A vehicle has hardened armor, which while similar to is not actually a barrier rating. You damage vehicles bu doing boxes of damage like against a person, barriers you destroy X meter holes as you up the DV of the attack.

And yet if my Troll (or whatever) is beefy enough and can dish out a DV in the mid teens, why would that not hurt said vehicle? It will do actual damage (assuming it bypasses the Hardened Vehicle Armor Comparison)... just as it would to a wall or other obstacle, the Smashing Blow just adds additional power to the DV...


Keep the Faith

I can see Smashing Blow requiring a stationary target, in order to allow the 'building up of chi', but I too don't see how a metal door on a parked car is any different from a metal door on a facility.

Indeed...

Keep the Faith

I don't make the rules, I just read them and use them.

Smashing blow is a breaking through a barrier test, you calculate total DV compare it to the barrier rating and that determines how big of a hole you blow through the wall. Barriers have a barrier rating and a structure rating. Vehicles do not have a barrier rating or a structure rating they have armor and body. Vehicles get damage through straight up attacks not by using the breaking a barrier test. This is good in some ways since the absolutely retarded rule on bringing down barriers with guns. 2dv per bullet, effing brilliant I go full auto get 1 success and I compare 20DV vs the barrier. My SMG hits about as hard as an anti vehicle missile would.

Since vehicles do not have a barrier and structure rating you can't do a damage the barrier test, there are just no stats to go against. Feel free to houserule it, but them's the breaks.