Wise Turtle Publishing

I read "Weapon" on page 56, but I'm curious as to how that applies to run-of-the-mill (or special) weapons a character might pick up. For example, your hard-boiled P.I. has his trusty +2 revolver knocked away, leaving him unarmed for the purposes of shooting. However, later in the melee which ensues, he manages to snatch away the thug's generic pistol and shoots him with it. Should I give a modifier to the roll, or since the thug's weapon isn't special, offer no modifier? What about specialized ammo?

Each die in OVA seems to be a pretty big deal, so how might you suggest handling the "little bits"? From what little I know of the system, it seems that a 9mm and a .44 should be the same, unless signature weapons. However, a shoulder-mounted railgun or the like...what about those things?

I think this has been discussed in the past, and it's always a tricky question when you include facets of a character in the point-buy portion that can be lost or changed in play.

But I've thought about this a lot, and here's my take on it, both for the current OVA and the Revised Edition.

OVA 1e: Create a new Weapon "ability" on the fly. In fact, if the thug had a weapon to start with, you should already have it statted up. Either way, use the stats of the thug's Weapon and not that of P.I.'s Weapon Ability. After all, part of the cost of all the nice Weapon benefits (including free Perks) is that the weapon can be lost. Replacing it with a grunt's weapon simply isn't difficult enough.

OVA Revised: Basically, the new Attack Ability is like having a Power Move Suite, but instead of being limited to signature Endurance draining moves, it covers all of your characters offensive techniques. A character may have a Weapon Attack, a Barehanded attack, a Sweep Kick attack, and a Chi-Blast attack. They all use the level in Attack as the base Damage Multiplier, and only differ in the Perks and Flaws they include. So if your character loses a specific Weapon attack, he only loses the benefit of that Weapon (Usually Extra Damage, Armor Piercing, that sort of thing.) He can still fall back on his base Attack Ability. Thus, taking a thug's weapon would only add a new "attack" to the suite, with the base Damage Multiplier being the same, and only the assortment of perks and flaws changes. This reflects what happens in cinematic storytelling of all kinds. The hero loses a gun? He simply switches to kicking butt with his FISTS. But taking a thug's gun would let him perform ranged attacks again.

Of course, if you don't want such a well-rounded character, it's possible to buy Attack at something low (like +1) and build a variety of specific attacks with a bunch of Extra Damage perks and the Weapon flaw.

If you plan to play in a campaign where weapons are swapped out willy-nilly (as in high-fantasy dungeon romps) I'd encourage you to leave out Weapon entirely and simply have a list on the side for equipment. Stat out each weapon as if it were its own character. This even applies for the Revised Edition, just replace where I said "Weapon" with "Attack." Attack would be reserved for innate offensive ability in this case, and would probably stack with your accumulated weapons.

Finally, here's a quick guide to what the Levels in Weapon would be. OVA is not a literal game, though. It's perfectly plausable for a character to have a +3 pocket knife or a grunt to have a +1 Rocket Launcher. Just go with your gut.

+1 Knife, Club, Small Caliber Handgun (Small, dinky weapons)
+2 Sword, Mace, Handgun (Mundane but damaging weapons)
+3 Finely Crafted Sword, Really Cool Pistol (Cool heroic weapons)
+4 Meticulously Crafted Greatsword bigger than you are, Super-Awesome Rifle bigger than you are, Rocket Launcher (Awe-inspiring equipment.)
+5 Excalibur, BFG (Definitive, iconic weapons that are the greatest of their kind.)

Thanks! They way I was leaning was if you buy Weapon, it's "part" of you and that while it can be taken away and/or lost, it eventually comes back. So, if you want to have a run-of-the-mill pistol and it's just a way you "take care of business", but isn't what you're known for (unlike Harry and his trademark .44), you don't take anything in Weapon and merely fall back to Combat Ability. I love the idea that I don't have to model each and every little piece of gear. So, in the aforementioned dungeon-romp, I'd say that if you lost your generic sword (the one that you paid nothing for in bonus dice), any weapon you pick up will be the same, unless the GM makes it more special (such as the wizard's Doom Blade). One could argue that a dagger and an ogre's battle-axe are very different, but as you pointed out, Knick the thief's obsidian rune-dagger is much more important (and cooler!) than Ogre # 3's axe. I'm not sure if I want to have a list for each weapon as it ends up nitpicking gear too much. If you lose Soul Splitter and have to use the troll warclub, so be it. You just use Combat Ability/Attack. The downside is that in a grittier game, having fists and guns do the same amount of damage can seem silly (NOTE: If I'm way off on my thinking, please let me know! )

On a side-note, we've made a power in our setting called "Forecasting" where you can see the souls of others (the world goes all negative-gray with the barest details and souls burn brightly), allowing you to detect anything with a soul. If you're really good, you can recognize the emotional states of souls. Things such as familiarity can make it easier to do the those things. Archeo-cybernetic equipment boosts the perception distance, but not anything else (for this any difficulty for distance would be drastically reduced). How would you handle this? Is there a Power or such that you suggest? We were going to make it whole-cloth, but wanted any input you might have.

Hmmm in my opinion this seems similar to Psychic, but I would buy it as a Special Ability to create a different power.

I usually made "normal weapons" a lot less reliable than "signature weapons". Sure they're temporarily useful, but they are easily damaged/broken/lost, and have few shots left. Also, without Hammerspace it's not easy carrying many of them!

markodude wrote:Hmmm in my opinion this seems similar to Psychic, but I would buy it as a Special Ability to create a different power.

I read Psychic and it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. The difficulty chart is a definite, but the actual "This is what it does", will have to be customized, which is fine because OVA seems like it's made for customization.

markodude wrote:I usually made "normal weapons" a lot less reliable than "signature weapons". Sure they're temporarily useful, but they are easily damaged/broken/lost, and have few shots left. Also, without Hammerspace it's not easy carrying many of them!

This is a very good idea. I might make a list of gear; I'm not sure. Each die seems like it's pretty beefy, unlike a game like Cyberpunk 2020 where a die or a couple of +/-'s won't always be all that special.