My players was pissing off some gang members in their own home turf and one of the ganguers threatened one of the characters with a knife, a throwing knife . This character, a cocky street samurai with Agility 6, Reaction 7 and Improved Reflexes 2, dared the gang member to actually throw the knife, what he promptly did. Now the player in question, having the character ready for such a move, wanted him to catch the knife in midair and throw it back at the gang member face.
How is it done in Shadowrun 4e? Since I like players that take some risk and the street samurai is very quick, I choose to not expend much time fudging with the rules and stated that he needed to have 2 successes in a Reaction+Throwing test for each success by the gang member, this only for catching the knife, what he did with little trouble.
Now what do you think about this rule? Too easy, too hard? There is an official rule on this one?

Thanks! And sorry for the broken english.

Well, it is a Physical Adept Power (Missile Parry, .25pp per level) listed in the SR4A book, Page 196...
Mechanic is Reaction (+ Missile parry Dice; + Dodge if on FUll Defense) with a threshold equal to the number of hits the attacker scored on the attack. This mechanic could work (Minus the Missile Parry Power Obviously) for non-Adepts.

can never have too much of big trouble in little china its a classic

Hm.. maybe one could allow it for non-adepts with a slightdowngrade: The character has to anticipate the throw. So he shouldn't lose the surprise tests, OR has a full defense on to do it?

But yeah i am all for allowing it. A good GM never says no. (Well except they REALLY want something stupid).

Catching a thrown knife is DAMN hard. They're not exactly designed to be caught (well, not in a friendly way). Considering you need an adept power to even attempt it normally, it should be fairly prohibitive to do.

My suggestion: You have to ready an action, it's a complex action, and you roll straight reaction. You need to roll at least as many successes with just reaction as your opponent rolls on their entire attack roll. Of course, that means it would be nearly impossible to do and to get a half-decent change you'd have to spend edge (which makes perfect thematic sense).

Critical Glitch: free knife in your eye.
Glitch: no dodge.
Success: free knife *through* your hand.
Critical Success: you caught the knife.

It could be argued that Egg-shen's potion gave Jack Burton adept powers...

OTOH, I don't see much wrong with the OP's mechanic...I'd say threshold equals 2 x thrower's hits to catch it and each net hit after that goes toward hitting the thrower with a required interrupt to throw back.

I still think you should be penalized for trying, instead of dodging. If you don't catch it, you've definitely made things worse.

Feel pretty good. I'm not, uh, I'm not scared at all. I just feel kind of... feel kind of invincible.

Oh by all means...there's no corresponding defense was my thinking and I assume the OP's?

Ah, I saw 'Full Defense', so maybe it distracted me.

You could just Dodge, and then if you got a few net hits rule that you could snatch one out of the air. It's cinematic, and that's what's important.

But that minimizes (Kills) the utility of the Adept Power now doesn't it?

I'm just saying that dodging and catching are actions that run counter to each other.

When I was a kid my friend and I practiced at doing this quite a bit. We had blunt knives and actually got pretty good at usually blocking but sometimes catching the knives. I wont go into the bow experience, even starter bows fire arrows damn fast.(and the quasi blunt training tips hurt) The good ole days where you got hurt as a kid when playing and people chalked it up to a learning experience or boys will be boys.



I agree. I'd let them go for it and if they fail, they don't get any hits to dodge.




Does it actually have any utility now?

Hardly directly counter; like I said, you could put most effort into Dodging the attack and try to snatch a knife out of the air. I kind of rate that as 'TV Special Forces' level, where Adepts get the 'Manga Ninja' actions of blowing up a tank with a 1-inch-wide disc tossed as a lazy backhand with their eyes shut.
Honestly I had expected Adept-throwing to be more like FullAuto-ing shuriken, instead of accelerating paperclips to deal damage as per a .50 cal.

*shrug* If you think that trying to get in front of a knife to catch it doesn't interfere with getting as far out of the way as possible, do that in your game.

I think killfrenzy was more saying just dodge, and on a critical success the GM can flavor it into a catch.

I am not sure what his thoughts ar eon the not really dodging and going for the catch situation.

My thoughts are that there are more ways of catching something than standing directly in it's path, and that considering the rules allow you to take a bullet to the chest without taking even any Stun damage, even the kind of failure where you don't just miss grabbing the knife but manage to grab it point-first, you might defeat it with your Body+Armour.
Plus, Rule of Cool.

I can't understand the fuss over something that probably shouldn't come up all that often. I could understand, if people had similar Home-Rule-debates over catching a nearby grenade before it hit the ground and starting bouncing around like a loon.

I'd just make sure the character doesn't go around thinking he can do it willy-nilly, now. As a one time stunt to impress some gangers, when he knew full well a knife was about to be thrown, and wasn't trying to pay attention to anything else, fight other folks off, watch anything else in his peripheral vision, etc, etc? Sure, whatever. It was a cool stunt, it probably worked to get the gangers to chill out, and the Street Sammie got to feel like he was superhuman and badass (because he is). As a once-in-a-game thing, Rule of Cool trumps game balance and as long as everyone had fun it was a good thing.

But I'd make it clear to him it was a one time gig, and that he shouldn't go expecting to be able to pull it off when he hasn't got a held action like that, isn't ready for it, doesn't know exactly what attack is coming and from where, etc, etc. Don't go making him think it's a standard, reliable, thing he can do now, unless he's got points set aside for Latent Adept somewhere.

Indeed it does... Even Spec. Force Personnel use thrown weapons (Grenades/Knives mostly) on occassion, not that they go trying to catch them, mind you, but having the ability just MIGHT save your life even once...

It may only come up a time ro two (or three) but it is still a viable tactic for those who want to at least have a chance with such things...

To me, Missile Parry is all about catching grenades to throw them back. Looking badass while catching knives is nice, but dodging is just as easy.

You can't press a button if there's a knife through your hand.

I guess I look at combat sense at .5 magic per which gives bonuses to surprise tests and +1 reaction to dodge melee and ranged, then I see missile parry and its wonderful +1 die to catch slow moving objects and I see fail even at .25 points. It is thematically cool, but I do not think it is worth it without something else.

Except Jack was doing it before he ever met Egg Shen.

Like the early scene with the meat cleaver and the bottle. The accompanying dialogue also hinted that this wasn't the first time Jack was known for catching stuff that was suddenly launched at him.




-karma

It just took Jack's natural prowess and turned it up a bit.

There is no such thing as too much Big Trouble in Little China . .

Why do you believe this? Just because there's an adept power to do it more reliably doesn't mean it's in the purview of adepts only. I know a couple of jugglers that do work knives into their act and do that wierd cross over thing. Granted their not winging them at each other with intent to impale but I would imagine a lot of the same skills apply. There are no standard reliable actions in shadowrun other then breathing. If he wants to do it in the future by all means require him to make some rolls and even assign some dice penalties but please don't get into the business of requiring MAAAAAGGGGGIC to do somethign that there is a real life basis for even before taking cyberware into account.

Unless, y'know, you want to. It's your game.

Oh Sure... Combat Sense is definitely superior. But, even with Combat Sense, You cannot catch slow-moving missiles and return them according to the rules. If you want to do that, you need Missile Parry (or a house rule). It is not all that horrible in my opinion... Just 1 rank in it allows you to use that high Combat Sense to attempt a Missile Parry. Not bad for a .25 investment...

"Like I told my last wife, I says, 'Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it's all in the reflexes.'"