A question on force weapons and gun blades

[arxhon]

I am in agreement with Mike here, myself.

If the gun is ultra powerful, then why bother with the sword and melee at all?

I think they are doing it because it's cool. To each their own. :-)

[Mike Holmes]

I think they are doing it because it's cool.

Which is totally valid. It just doesn't seem to require a lot of rules to adjudicate if it's just for color's sake.

Mike

[arxhon]

I concur with you again, Mike. Extra rules/double maneuvers to cover something that effectively is one action seems a bit much (unless there is a chance of the gun misfiring or something) i.e stab and pull trigger at same time. One extra damage is more than enough in TROS. When you think about it, 1 point of damage is a lot. People seem to forget this, being used to games where 50-100 life/hp isn't uncommon.

I'm wondering what game they were playing in before, and if this weapon was a standard weapon in that system, or if it's something they made up because it was cool to do. The reference to FF8 makes me think it is a home-brew item.

One trouble is that once a lot of players get used to a game having a certain level of power, they get cranky when you "take it away" from them porting to another system: "This gun did 100 damage before! What do you mean it only does 5 now!", forgetting that maybe 5 damage is 95% of a creature's life capacity, whereas before 100 was 50%-70%.

[Jasper the Mimbo]

We were using 3e D+D. The gun blade used the rules for the parthinian rapier out of the Van Richten's Arsenal Ravenloft suplement. Not terribly powerful under those rules. More for style than anything else. Actually, the reason we changed was that we wanted more realism. I know, sounds strange concidering. Gunblades, Force swords, Realism. One of these things is not like the others. Oh well. Style over substance is really part of the mood of our game anyway.
Oh, BTW, we decided that the trigger pull is a manuver that can be done after any successful thrust on the second exchange of the round that targets the same area as the thrust. It costs 2 cp to initiate and has a difficulty of 7 (It's point blank but the trigger's in a slightly acward position when it's being used as a sword.) It's basically impossible to defend against but can be soaked normally. So far it's a nearly always fatal blow. We still haven't come up with solid rules for the force blade.

[svenlein]

One idea for the force blade would be to represent it by the magic item rules on the other thread in here.  Just give it some SAs and that should take care of it.  When its SAs are going then it glows and gains power, otherwise its just a normal sword.

This is the simplistic method, if you want to make it a simulation of a sword with glowing energy to cut through stuff.  I think the ideas proposed above are very good.

Scott

[arxhon]

we decided that the trigger pull is a manuver that can be done after any successful thrust on the second exchange of the round that targets the same area as the thrust/snip/

I like it. Very elegant solution.

[Lance D. Allen]

Heh. Am I the only one who sees a maneuver like so:

stab the gun blade straight through someone (level 6 wound or so) and fire at the guy directly behind them. High difficulty, but I doubt the other guy's gonna be dodging, as he probably didn't expect it.

Brutal.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Lance,

Saw it in an article in Sorcerer's Apprentice, a magazine dedicated to the role-playing game Tunnels & Trolls, ~1980.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Welcome back!