Lightsabres and Monomolecular Whips

[Der_Renegat]

Im thinking about how to use high-tech weapons like:

lightsabres (as in StarWars),
monomolecular whips (as in Appleseed the movie or Jonny Mnemonic the Gibson shortstory)
or
vibrating weapons,

essentially weapons that cut more or less everything.


I see three ways of doing this:

1. Mark Humphreys (in his starwarsquest conversion) gave lightsabres the ability:
cut through anything 15
i guess you augment this ability with your lightsabre fighting ability ?
Im not sure i like this, it seems as if your fighting training is secondary....
I mean does the lightsabres ability to cut everything augment your fighting capability or is it the other way round ? Or does it matter ?
If my use lightsabre 5M is augmented by cuts everything 15 – thats 7M.
If i augment cuts everything with use lightsabre – thats 18....

2. I think it makes great sense to use edges in modern/high-tech campaigns, so all those weapons would have a huge edge, maybe 10 ?

3. extremely powerful weapons have an inbuild mastery shift, as in starwarsquest.

Can somebody enlighten me ?

Christian

[MikeSands]

I think that any of those plans would work. The only reason to choose one over another would be personal taste as to how you want the lightsaber to feel in play.

Personally, I'd go for #1.

In terms of the question you raise in #1 about base & augment abilities, characters could use either their 'use lightsaber' or 'cut through anything' as the base ability and augment with the other, as appropriate. The only reason to pick one above the other would be if it didn't apply, for example if the lightsaber was being used for sparring, then 'cut through anything' would presumably not apply, on the grounds that you wouldn't want to decapitate your sparring partner.

[Minx]

In cases like this its often good to use the Magic rules for stuff thats, basically, magic. (I mean, come on, something that cuts through anything..? ;)

So a Lightsaber would be (at least on my table) statted as a Magical Item, with sub-abilities like "Cut through anything" and, dunno, "Look cool and flashy". In instances where you want to highlight these abilities, just use them as magical abilities, which go against a basic resistance of 14.

So, Like and Han are standing in front of a thick emergency air lock with "Fucking tough" 5W3. You would need a big bomb to go through that. But, luckily, Luke has his trusty lightsaber (It´s a good one he build himself and thus has "Cut Anything 5W") in his pocket and tries to cut a hole in it. With a rating of 5W against a default resistance of 14, the door´s no problem.

M

[Brand_Robins]

So, Like and Han are standing in front of a thick emergency air lock with "Fucking tough" 5W3. You would need a big bomb to go through that. But, luckily, Luke has his trusty lightsaber (It´s a good one he build himself and thus has "Cut Anything 5W") in his pocket and tries to cut a hole in it. With a rating of 5W against a default resistance of 14, the door´s no problem.

It also works for things that can't be cut through -- like force shields and the like. They're just magic as well, and so get to defend with their full value.

[Der_Renegat]

"Fucking tough" 5W3

*lol*
brilliant ! ;-)

In cases like this its often good to use the Magic rules for stuff thats, basically, magic. (I mean, come on, something that cuts through anything..? ;)

Well remember in the StarWars world or the Appleseed-world this kind of wondertechnology is reality!
If the ability says cut through everything theres actually no need for further describing or restricting.
I dont see a need for treating this like magic...

Christian

[Brand_Robins]

Well remember in the StarWars world or the Appleseed-world this kind of wondertechnology is reality!
If the ability says cut through everything theres actually no need for further describing or restricting.
I dont see a need for treating this like magic...

The reason for treating it like magic mechanically is that magic faces different resistance values than non magic.

If your lightsaber has "cut through anything" 20 and is defined as being "special" (Be that magic, the force, ultra-tech, or whatever) then when you go to cut through yon fucking tough door you face a difficulty of 14.

If it is not defined as being "special" then it faces a difficulty of 5m4.

In this case "magic" just means "better than things that normal people can use at overcoming the non-special world."

[Mike Holmes]

Yep, what they said.


Also, consider that the ability ratings can just be a lot higher. I mean, you could give the light sabre 10W4 cut through anything. Then it's a +9 augment when fighting somebody, or a 10W4 vs, 10W3 when going through that door.

Actually, depending on how you read the rules, you could probably get away with rating a lightsabre even higher than that. I could see 10W6 or so even. That's still only +13 in a fight, it's just really good at cutting through things that aren't dodging away from it. It's not even all that imbalancing if that's the worry. I mean, presumably everybody's then running around with "Blasters that Make Big Holes 10W3" or so.

Mike

[Der_Renegat]

I think i go with Mike.

Interesting how this all makes sense when you compare lightsabres with monowhips. I mean how much cut through everything is a lightabre?
It all gets clearer when you think of it as a staging of cutting ability

knife
ceramic knife
welding laser
monowire
lightsabre
etc.

Christian

[WiredNavi]

Lightsabre (as follower-type magical item)

Keyword: Energy Sword 5w1
-- Cut Through Anything 5w2
-- Block Energy Weapons 5w2
-- Quiet But Ominous Hum 5w1

The key is to make sure that the abilities don't get out of hand in _both_ power and active applicability.  Like someone said, Cut Through Anything is awfully powerful, but can't be used except as an augment unless you're not actually fighting anything.  Great for getting through a wall, a blast door, or the bottom hull of an AT-AT, but if you're trying to fight another Jedi, all it's going to do is augment you.  Same with Block Energy Weapons - it's great to augment your Jedi Swordsmanship skill if someone's firing blaster bolts at you, but not much use straight up.

Personally, I'm a big fan of integrating 'magic' abilities with 'normal' ones.

[soviet]

Jinx wrote
Like someone said, Cut Through Anything is awfully powerful, but can't be used except as an augment unless you're not actually fighting anything. Great for getting through a wall, a blast door, or the bottom hull of an AT-AT, but if you're trying to fight another Jedi, all it's going to do is augment you. Same with Block Energy Weapons - it's great to augment your Jedi Swordsmanship skill if someone's firing blaster bolts at you, but not much use straight up.

This is exactly what I had in mind; the weapon abilities are intended for augments in most situations (eg a fight), but if the focus of the story becomes 'can Luke poke a hole through that bulkhead?', then you could use the ability straight up.

I don't much like edges and 'equipment bonuses' so I tried to represent everything as just abilities, albiet with a 'mostly just an augment' proviso.

Der_Renegat wrote
extremely powerful weapons have an inbuild mastery shift, as in starwarsquest.

I did this basically in anticipation of using simple contests for potshots and most ranged combat, and being worried about the potential weediness of the resulting injury effects. I may well be wrong to worry about this, and may even end up not using this rule.

Thanks

soviet / mark humphreys

[nichughes]

Also, consider that the ability ratings can just be a lot higher. I mean, you could give the light sabre 10W4 cut through anything. Then it's a +9 augment when fighting somebody, or a 10W4 vs, 10W3 when going through that door.


Mike

As an alternate approach you could give it no rating at all, simply state that this is an ability of the item. Just as the ability to chop down trees is inherent in an axe and you do not assign it a rating.  Or to put it another way - no self respecting light sabre would fail to cut through anything.

The craftsmanship of light sabres does seem to be narratively significant (I seem to recall Darth Vader commenting on it) so for these items to have ratings to represent their relative quality. Which is not the same as saying they all have a fixed rating in cut through anything.

--
Nic

[Der_Renegat]

As an alternate approach you could give it no rating at all, simply state that this is an ability of the item. Just as the ability to chop down trees is inherent in an axe and you do not assign it a rating. Or to put it another way - no self respecting light sabre would fail to cut through anything.

Wow! Smart answer, Nic!

I have one little problem with this. Some abilities of items are so much out of our experience that its hard to say, what this item can really do...especially when you have real existing stuff, like tank cannons, for instance.
I dont know what this thing is capable of, but a rating gives me a clue.

Christian