Weapons

Designing a Weapon.

When crafting a weapon the base difficulty is Concealable weapons are crafted at Difficulty 2 and Unconcealable at difficulty 3. THe difficulty increases by one for each special quality added to the weapon.

Damage Limit: No Weapon Manufactured or Unarmed can be made to do more than 6 damage

Weapons Guide

Weapons are designed in three parts: Weapon Size, Type and Special Qualities. Any weapon in the hands of a skilled user will provide a number of Weapon Traits (typically one to three) to be used in a challenge. Further, all weapons do damage on a successful hit. THe Difficulty of creating a weapons is based on the weapon crafting chart. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sYkLL14wzB8clj077MJl1xFdRZWiRyfzenjq17pYXJc/edit?usp=sharing

Weapon Size

The vast majority of weapons will come in one of two sizes: Concealable, and Unconcealable. Concealable weapons are of pocket/coat/trench coat concealability, and Unconcealable weapons are to big to hide, they also require two hands to wield and will often draw attention when carried in public.

Traits

Weapons just provide traits. Note that you cannot have a skill item and weapon. The weapon is your skill item. There are no skill items for Melee, Firearms, Defense, or Brawl.

Weapon Types

Unarmed

0 traits 1 Bashing

Weapons:

Edged: Special ability: Grants 1 additional trait

Small - Pocket Sized: Dagger – 2 trait 1 lethal

Medium - Jacket sized – Long sword/ Arming Sword – 3 traits 2 lethal

Large - Unconcealable - Great Sword – 4 traits 3 lethal

Piercing: Special ability: Can be used to stake if made of wood.

Small - Pocket-Sized: Stake – 1 trait 1 lethal

Medium - Jacket sized: Short spear – 2 traits 2 lethal

Large – Unconcealable: Long Spear– 3 traits 3 lethal

Axe: Special ability: Deal 1 extra damage against armor

Small - Pocket Sized: Hand Axe– 1 trait 1 lethal

Medium - Jacket sized: Fire Axe–– 2 traits 2 lethal

Large – Unconcealable: Great Axe – 3 traits 3 lethal

Blunt: Special ability: Damage does not wrap around to lethal on beings that take lethal. Can be used to KO mortals.

Small - Pocket Sized: Sap– 1 trait 1 Bashing

Medium - Jacket sized – Bat – 2 traits 2 Bashing

Large - Unconcealable – Sledgehammer – 3 traits 3 Bashing

Staff/ Chain: Special ability: The police will not bother you about a staff weapon, Chain weapons can be concealed as though they are one size smaller.

Small - Pocket Sized: Chain/nightstick – 1 trait 1 Bashing

Medium - Jacket sized – Cane – 2 traits 2 Bashing

Large - Unconcealable - Staff – 3 traits 3 Bashing

Shield: Removed. Works like bashing weapons.

Small - Pocket Sized: None

Medium - Jacket sized – None

Large - Unconcealable - None

Crossbow: Special ability: Crossbows get 1 additional medicine retest when used to stake. It may be used on any staking attempt and *refreshes* automatically. Crossbows cannot be used with Might/Persistence or any form of Potence.

Small - Does not exist

Medium - Jacket sized: Crossbow – 2 traits 2 lethal

Large – Unconcealable: Heavy Crossbow - 3 traits 3 lethal

Bow: Special ability: Bows are combinable with Potence as long as they are Potence rated and can be used to stake

Small - Pocket Sized: Short bow - 1 trait 1 lethal

Medium - Jacket sized: Longbow – 2 traits 2 lethal

Large – Unconcealable: Great Bow- 3 traits 3 lethal

Ballistic weapons: Deal more damage than other ranged weapons but that damage is halved against kindred with Fortitude 1. If shot with a Medium or Large gun. Humans will die if nothing is done within 1 minute.

Small - Pocket Sized: Pistol - 1 trait 3 lethal 1 lethal to a kindred w/ fort

Medium - Jacket sized: Heavy pistol – 2 traits 4 lethal 2 lethal to a kindred w/ fort

Large – Unconcealable: Rifle - 3 traits 4 lethal 2 lethal to a kindred w/ fort

Special Qualities:

Each special quality adds one to the difficulty of crafting the weapon. Weapons with special qualities must be acquired in-game. The special quality that is added must make sense. ( No full auto swords or grappling guns, for example). Special qualities increase a weapons difficulty category by 1 unless otherwise stated.

 Armor Piercing: This weapon ignores Armor when it hits. Weapons (usually a type of ammunition for weapons) are highly illegal. 

 Expensive: Expensive weapons cost unreasonably large amounts of money or can only be acquired with large expenditures of Influence appropriate to obtaining the weapon (Adds one Weapon Category Trait)

 Perfect: Perfect weapons are for those whose budgets know no bounds. The sheer amount of money spent on such things far outweighs their actual utility. All Perfect weapons are also 'Expensive' which must be added to the weapon before 'Perfect' at normal cost. (Adds 1 trait to the weapon, but makes the weapon 2 categories higher to craft. Far and away more expensive, and usually the work of a storied master (Masamune, Svartálfar Sindri, etc.) Technically priceless

 Legendary: Stacks with Perfect and Expensive. +1 trait. Excalibur, Caeldbolg, Gungnir, etc. Adds an additional 3 to the weapon crafting category. 

 Fast: A Fast weapon will cause the user to act on the next highest celerity tier of initiative for the round. Note that this will not impact any other special abilities to the user of the weapon, just cause the user to be able to act earlier in the turn than normal. 

 Fully Automatic: Weapons with this quality can be used to unload a full clip of ammunition into a target five feet away or less (about two steps). Weapons used thusly deal two more levels of damage to their target on a successful hit. 

 Grappling: Weapons with the grappling quality can be used to establish a grapple using the melee skill.

 Reach: The weapon has a range of three steps from the player’s body or the distance of a reasonable prop. (must have said prop, this is a crazy obvious)

 Throwers: the weapon to provide one less damage and one less trait  but also allows it to be thrown at anyone in the same room using Athletics. +0

 Thrown: Weapons with this quality can be thrown at a target, with the same limitations as the Ranged weapon quality. Thrown weapons use Athletics for a retest. Weapons with this quality that are not being thrown use the Melee retest as normal. A weapon without this quality that is being thrown is treated as an improvised weapon of its size.

 Brawling: Weapons made with the brawling tag use Brawl instead of melee for retests. They are still weapons and do not count towards things that add to unarmed damage. 

 Potence rated:  Potence rating a weapon allows it to be used with Potence 5. Weapons without this tag are destroyed when wielded by a character with potence 5 who chooses to use it

  Incendiary: Weapon converts one level of damage to Aggravated. Counts as two tags

  Silver: Silver weapon deals Aggravated damage to most Were creatures 

  Gold: Gold inlays let the weapon function as a weapon, while still counting as gold for the purposes of bypassing damage reduction. Deals Ag to some were creatures and some vampires

  Cold Iron: Weapon is made from Cold Forged Iron. It deals aggravated damage to Changelings and Fey. 

  Stygian Steel: Weapon is made from Stygian steel. It deals aggravated damage to Wraiths.

  Laser-Sight: Lets a user tag an aim action. It cannot be combined with celerity. Increases the damage of a weapon by one on the following action. Only useable on Firearms and Crossbows.

  Durable: The weapon is made from tougher stuff. If a weapon breaking power is used on the weapon it holds together until the end of the scene. It still needs to be repaired between sessions. A weapon must be Potence rated before it can be made durable

Crafting

The difficulty to craft any given weapon is an Extended Static Challenge of a difficulty equal to its Weapon trait category. The difficulty increase to add additional weapons tags are listed above. No weapon may have the same tag more than once. i.e. a spear can be made into an expensive spear and have 3 traits but not an expensive expensive spear for four traits. See crafting table for difficulties

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Improvised Weapons

One can use almost anything as a weapon if one tries, but compared to things made as weapons, it’s not particularly efficient or easy. That said, sometimes the only thing one can do is pick up a chair and beat someone with it. Any weapon used without the appropriate Melee or Firearms skill is treated as Improvised. A character can never use "win ties" powers when attacking with improvised weapons. Such weapons have the following statistics:

Small Improvised Weapon -1 Trait/ 2 bashing Health Levels; Bashing

Medium Improvised Weapon -2 Traits/ 3 bashing Health Levels; Bashing

Large Improvised Weapon -3 Traits/ 4 bashing Health Levels; Slow, Special Weapon Traits

Oversized (car, Requires potence 5) - 6 / 6 Bashing; slow

Slow: Regardless of celerity, the character goes at the end of the round.

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Explosives

Raw Explosives

Creation of Raw Explosives is a Mentals(Craft (Weapon)) test at Difficulty 3. Raw Explosives have a Radius of 2 Steps, do 3 Bashing damage, Size Medium, and have the Unstable Tag. Explosives always go off at the end of a round. Defusing a bomb is Security challenge equal to one difficulty less than crafting the bomb. You may also make a detonator which is crafted with another Mentals(Craft(Weapon)) challenge at Difficulty 3 which gives the Explosive a set Mentals(Security) challenge at Difficulty 5 to defuse. Raw Explosives can be thrown but you must first throw a simple chop and if you lose, the Raw Explosives don't go off and are lost. There is no effect to making several explosives detonate over an area. Raw Explosives can be only be crafted with Influence (Underworld 2, Construction 2, Industry 2, or Emergency Services 2) and Resources 2.

Grenades

Grenades always explode in the Explosives tick of the ROUND AFTER they have been thrown, and at the very end of initiative. If you wish the Grenade to detonate on the same round in which its thrown, it is a Mentals(Athletics) vs. Difficulty 6. Failure in this challenge causes the grenade to explode in the your hand. If a target is in the radius of multiple Explosives, they only take the damage from the highest damaging one.

Typical issue grenades do 3 Bashing and 1 Lethal Damage, are Medium Sized and have a Radius of 3 steps. They can be purchased with either Resources 2 or Armory 2, and Underworld 2. Grenades can be crafted with a Mentals(Craft(Weapon)) with Raw Explosives at difficulty 3.

Vampires take half the amount of bashing from Explosives if they have Fortitude 1, but the Lethal from Shrapnel or Tags is not halved.

All Grenades/Explosives are One Time Use items.

Molotov Cocktails: Difficulty 2 to Craft. Deals 1 Aggravated damage. Can be crafted as an action in combat with Armory 1 or Underworld 2 or Street 2. Characters can only have one at a time and crafting them only produce one. All Molotov Cocktails have the Unstable tag. Taking ANY damage while wielding a Molotov will cause it to explode as the Unstable tag.

Grenade Launchers: Hitting the appropriate area with a grenade launcher is a Mentals(Firearms) or Physicals(Firearms) check against Difficulty 2. Likely this will succeed. Anyone in the area that was hit with the Grenade Launcher will take damage as normal on the explosive tick of the SAME ROUND they are fired.

Craft Modifiers:

+1 Bigger BOOM!: Increase size to Large, add 2 Steps, add 2 Bashing.

+1 Nail Bomb: Explosion converts 1 level of damage to Lethal (2 Bashing, 2 Lethal)

+2 Fire Bomb: Explosion converts 1 level to Ag, does 1 less level of damage and loses a Step. (2 Bashing, 1 Lethal, 1 Ag)

+2 Reduced Size: Reduce concealability to Small.

+1 Stable: Remove Unstable tag.

+2 Rubber Ball Grenade: Grenades will not kill, only knock enemies unconscious. Converts all damage to Bashing.

+1 40mm Grenade: Grenades are able to be launched by a Grenade Launcher.

-1 Unstable: The explosive detonates immediately if the wielder is damaged by any Fire or AoE damage.

Demolitions

The typical building will be effectively demolished with 6 levels of area effect damage applied all at once. Its worth noting that buildings take half damage from all bashing. A Security check against difficulty 3 is required to perfectly shape a charge in such a way as to cause it to do full damage to such objects. Attacks designed to target enemies do not significantly harm structures.