Weapons
Designing a Weapon.
When crafting a weapon the base difficulty is equal to its Size 1 for pocket, 2 for Jacket, 3 for large. 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 its Category. A weapons Category is equal to its size ( Small=1 Medium=2 Large= 3) + Special qualities.
Weapon Size
The vast majority of weapons will come in one of three sizes: small, medium, and large. Small weapons are of pocket/coat concealability, medium weapons have trench coat concealability, and large weapons are not concealable. Large weapons also require two hands to wield.
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 or any form of Potence.
Small - Does not exist
Medium - Jacket sized: Crossbow – 2 traits 2 lethal
Large – Unconcealable: Ballista - 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)
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
Heart Seeking: Can only be added to a Pocket-sized Piercing weapon, that does not have the throwing tag. Deals an additional damage. Can only be crafted by creatures with Kindred Lore 2
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
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
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. Such weapons have the following statistics:
Small Improvised Weapon -1 Trait/ 2 Health Level; Bashing
Medium Improvised Weapon -2 Traits/ 3 Health Levels; Bashing
Large Improvised Weapon -3 Traits/ 4 Health Levels; Slow, Special Weapon Traits
Explosives
The base core of a created explosive, using the craft rules (vs. 5 traits with one retest against) is an explosive with the following traits: a radius of two steps, does three bashing damage, concealability Jacket, Unstable tag. Explosives always go off at the end of a round unless otherwise noted. Creation of explosives is a Craft (Weapon) challenge. Defusing a bomb is security challenge equal to one DC less than crafting the bomb under most circumstances. If the crafter so chooses, he may make a detonator separately in which case the bomb will have a difficulty to diffuse equal to that of the DC to make the detonator. If one wishes to overlap explosives for effect, this is identical in difficulty to making a better bomb. Otherwise there is no effect to making several explosives detonate over an area.
Craft Modifiers:
DC +1, Increase size, add two steps, add 2 bashing
DC +1 Explosion converts one level to lethal
DC +1 Explosion converts one level to ag, does one less level of damage and loses a step
DC +2 Reduce concealability to P
DC +1 Remove unstable tag
DC +2 Grenadable: Grenades do one less damage, taken off the most virulent type of damage done.
DC +1 Fireable grenade.
Unstable tag: The explosive detonates when it takes a level of damage. Do not drop.
Grenades
Grenades always go off exactly one combat round after they have been thrown. If you wish the grenade to be targeted on the same round in which it goes off, it is a standard athletics vs. defense challenge. Failure in this challenge causes the grenade to explode in the hand of the thrower. You only get the effect of one grenade per throw.
Typical issue grenades do 3 bashing and one lethal damage. Grenade launchers: Hitting the appropriate area with a grenade launcher is a Firearms test against five traits. Likely this will succeed. Anyone in the area that was hit with the launcher will take damage as normal on the explosive tick.
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 challenge against the dc to create the bomb 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 a specific object do not significantly harm structures.
