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Savar
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Joined: 14 Feb 2015
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 Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 5:06 pm Post subject: |
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using the bow part would use less resources if one could recover the bolt (non self destructing) then the energy/gas of the blaster.
if the environment was resource low or restricted. |
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Dredwulf60
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Joined: 07 Jan 2016
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| Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 7:30 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: |
I can see the traditional hunting weapon thing, but I don't see that a Wookiee out adventuring around the galaxy would need to hunt for food very often. But there's definitely an honor or some cultural aspect with it because from RotS it does seem to be a distinctively Wookiee weapon. |
It could be as simple as that...an honor/culture thing.
Like WWII Japanese officers with Katana (typically the mass-produced Gunto versions.)
Like Nepalese soldiers, like the ghurkas carrying their distinctive kukris.
Like Sikhs carrying their kirpan daggers.
Like Scotsmen in full highland garb carrying their sgian-dubh.
In each case it CAN be used as a weapon, but in modern practice there's usually a more effective weapon readily available. But that's no reason to ditch the honor of culture and tradition. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 7:51 pm Post subject: |
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That's a good question/ Would it require both skills, or just one? ANd if just one, which one?
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 10:56 pm Post subject: |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | I also kind of like the over/under option, as it does give the bowcaster a lot of flexibility. I'd be inclined to fiddle with the stats a bit.,, make the blaster portion 5D (as a regular blaster rifle), with the crossbow "defaulting" to 4D for a regular quarrel, but with explosive or other gimmick quarrels available... something like vanir's. |
The problem with 5D Damage is that Han's Heavy Blaster Pistol does the same amount of damage (per WEG's stats). Increasing the damage is based on the scene from TFA, in the battle at Max Kanata's castle. Han borrows Chewie's bowcaster and takes out two stormtroopers with one shot, by hitting a piece of rubble between them and blasting them with shrapnel, then says "I like this" while handing it back to Chewie. The implication is that the bowcaster can do something the heavy blaster pistol can't. Within the limitations of the scenario and the WEG stats, the most likely candidate is increased damage.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 11:01 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Plus if the 'underslung blaster' is so "uber", why wouldn't every character buy them, rather than going for regular blasters? |
Same reason vibro-blades are more common than lightsaber, despite being a more formidable weapon.
Seriously, g, we just discussed this exact issue all of two pages back. I don't mind discussion, but I dislike having to reiterate a point so recently made.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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CRMcNeill
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 11:14 pm Post subject: |
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| vanir wrote: | | Base damage 4D energy and physical damage, targets use lower resistance value. |
I fail to see why a crossbow would deliver both energy and physical damage. If you wanted to deliver energy damage, I would suggest something like the blast-tip from an Adumari blastsword that delivers a shot of blaster enegy on contact.
| Quote: | | Fragmentation 4D 0-2m radius. |
This seems awfully flimsy, almost like you are just giving it a blast radius because it is a frag weapon, without really thinking through how it would be applied in combat.
| Quote: | | Plasma 5D+1 for 2 rounds |
Is this supposed to be an incendiary weapon?
| Quote: | Explosive tip 5D
Shaped charge 6D |
Why bother with explosive tip?
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2016 11:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | garhkal, there are the strength rolls to aim and re-cock that don't make the weapon practical for everyone. |
To be clear, the recocking rule on my stat applies only to the crossbow, not the blaster rifle. The blaster rifle is roughly equivalent to my proposed marksman blaster rifle over on the Some Thoughts about Blaster Weapons topic, semi-auto with a lot of power at the expense of ammo capacity.
| Quote: | | CRM, something not clear from your stats is what skill(s) does this require? Is it a dedicated bowcaster skill for the over and under, or is it blaster for the blaster and bowcaster just for the crossbow? |
Good catch. If we are going by the RAW, it would be Blaster for the over and Bows for the under. Now, if someone wanted to make Bowcaster an Advanced skill that stacked with those two...
| Quote: | | It's been over 20 yeas since I read the Daley novels and the original film novelizations. Who did first name it "bowcaster"? |
It was first named by Daley, in Han Solo at Star's End, IIRC, so the name actually predated ESB (1979 vs. 1980). It wasn't called a crossbow until ROTJ, and has never been called a bowcaster on screen.
| Quote: | | I can see the traditional hunting weapon thing, but I don't see that a Wookiee out adventuring around the galaxy would need to hunt for food very often. But there's definitely an honor or some cultural aspect with it because from RotS it does seem to be a distinctively Wookiee weapon. |
I could even see it being that these are hand made only by Wookiees and only for Wookiees, and the only way a non-Wookiee comes into possession of one is by taking it off a dead Wookiee.
And any non-Wookiee with a bowcaster had better have a good explanation when another Wookiee asks where he got it.
_________________
"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Dredwulf60
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2016 1:53 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: |
I could even see it being that these are hand made only by Wookiees and only for Wookiees, and the only way a non-Wookiee comes into possession of one is by taking it off a dead Wookiee.
And any non-Wookiee with a bowcaster had better have a good explanation when another Wookiee asks where he got it. |
I've seen that approach in other games and universes, and it's very weak. There's nothing special about a crossbow. It's literally a primitive weapon by galactic standards. There's nothing special about a blaster, obviously.
There's certainly nothing special about any armorer in the galaxy taking the two and combining them. It just may be that the wookiees are the only ones who regularly *want* to do so.
But if reality tells us anything about the subject, it's that there will always be knockoffs of anything that's successful. So logically, the only reason that it's exclusive to wookiees is that:
A) only wookiees see any value in it.
b) hardly anyone else in the galaxy has given it much thought, because no one has really seen it's value in action; apparently Han hasn't until TFA and he's been around one for years. This is likely because wookiees, although beloved by Star Wars fans, are probably not all that common a species in the galaxy at large.
I could imagine someone else making a 'Castabow'; with a crossbow over a blaster and marketing it. And what precisely would happen? Wookiees would run around the galaxy trying to track them all down and intimidate people who use them insto stopping? Kill them and destroy the cursed knock-offs? This is the species that its legal to enslave in the empire right?
More logical that the wookiee bowcaster is a cultural *version* of a weapon that probably exists elsewhere as well. Like a Kukri is a special sort of knife...but there are many types of knives in the world.
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I fail to see why a crossbow would deliver both energy and physical damage. |
That's easy. Isn't the RAW description involve a physical dart surrounded in a sheathe of energy?
Perfect; if it hits armor that is really good at stopping physical projectiles, then the energy blast is going to be the thing that gets you.
if it hits armor that is really good at stopping energy, then it's the physical projectile that punches through.
| Quote: | | Quote: | :
Fragmentation 4D 0-2m radius. |
This seems awfully flimsy, almost like you are just giving it a blast radius because it is a frag weapon, without really thinking through how it would be applied in combat.
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Increasing the damage is based on the scene from TFA, in the battle at Max Kanata's castle. Han borrows Chewie's bowcaster and takes out two stormtroopers with one shot, by hitting a piece of rubble between them and blasting them with shrapnel, then says "I like this" while handing it back to Chewie. The implication is that the bowcaster can do something the heavy blaster pistol can't. Within the limitations of the scenario and the WEG stats, the most likely candidate is increased damage. |
It seems to me that the most likely candidate is some sort of small blast radius effect. Hits a piece of rubble between them....takes out two stormtroopers with one shot. |
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Naaman
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2016 7:32 am Post subject: |
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From a purely fluff/story driven point of view, I rather like the idea of the bowcaster being a wookiee specific weapon. In my opinion, such a weapon should have a major advantage and a medium drawback. In other words, it should be good enough that a wookiee character would want to have one, but not so great that every character MUST. GET. BOWCASTER. A couple of ways to do this:
Make a strength requirement (any character with less than 4D in strength must succeed at a moderate strength roll to even operate it...etc, etc).
Make it difficult to stay in the fight (requires several actions to reload, as well as having a relatively low capacity, say... 10 shots or less).
Make it require a special skill (i.e. the bowcaster skill) while also making it tactically inferior to a blaster rifle or the like (limit the number of shots possible per round to 2... or even 1). Furthermore, the rule could dictate that only wookiees can begin play with the bowcaster skill, and any non-wookiee must find a wookiee to teach him how to use the weapon.
In any case, I feel that whatever the drawback is, the benefits (which should be damage, in my opinion) should generally outweigh them.
For whatever reason, I feel like the bowcaster (should be) to wookiees what a lightsaber is to Jedi. It should be special, and somewhat envied by those who do not have ready access to it; though it should not come without it drawbacks (of which, the lightsbaer has plenty).
I really like CRMcNiell's idea, though, I probably would not use it in light of the fact that I want bowcasters to be something a little bit different.
My current feelings on what the bowcaster should be are as follows:
Model: Bowcaster (Unique)
Type: Wookiee energy crossbow
Scale: Character
Skill: Bowcaster
Ammo: 6
Cost: 4000 (generally not available for sale)
Availability: 4
Fire Rate: 1
Range: 3-10/50/150
Damage: 5D+2
Game Notes: Each bowcaster is hand made by the wookiee who wields it as a rite of passage during the ceremony of adulthood. A wookiee's bowcaster is not only a weapon used for protection, hunting, and defending the clan, it is also a mark of honor and accomplishment. The bowcaster delivers a high energy, high impact quarrel sheathed in plasma. This combination of a solid projectile and energy blast creates a hard hitting, armor penetrating impact that most materials cannot resist. The technology responsible for the devastating firepower of the bowcaster is a secret closely guarded by the wookiees. When resolving damage dealt by the bowcaster, a character wearing armor always uses the lowest armor rating (energy or physical). In addition, when rolling damage against a target larger than character scale, increase the bowcaster's damage by 1D, partially offsetting the scale bonus provided to larger targets.
Creating a bowcaster takes 1 month of dedicated work (8 hours per day), and three successive difficult repair rolls (roll once every 10 days; a failure negates the last 10 days' progress). The materials required to make the bowcaster cost a total of 1500 credits. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2016 2:12 pm Post subject: |
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| Dredwulf60 wrote: |
| Quote: |
I fail to see why a crossbow would deliver both energy and physical damage. |
That's easy. Isn't the RAW description involve a physical dart surrounded in a sheathe of energy?
Perfect; if it hits armor that is really good at stopping physical projectiles, then the energy blast is going to be the thing that gets you.
if it hits armor that is really good at stopping energy, then it's the physical projectile that punches through. |
Additionally, if its delivering Both, does that mean 2 separate damage and soak rolls? One roll using the highest value versus the worst protection?
Also why don't more weapons use that combination?
| Dredwulf60 wrote: |
It seems to me that the most likely candidate is some sort of small blast radius effect. Hits a piece of rubble between them....takes out two stormtroopers with one shot. |
True, or it had a grenade like tip at the time..
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2016 12:52 am Post subject: |
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| Naaman wrote: | Cost: 4000 (generally not available for sale)
Availability: 4 |
I've been considering increasing the cost and availability rating for non-Wookiees, so this works too.
The only problem here is that a low fire rate contradicts what we see in the films. The only time Chewie ever fires his bowcaster (until TFA) was in the lead-up to the speeder bike chase on Endor. He snapped off multiple rounds in very quick succession to take out the fleeing scout bike, and there is no evidence of a cocking action.
This is actually one of the first documented examples of Lucas screwing over the EU. Brian Daley's novels came out roughly the same time as ESB, and were quite specific about the bowcaster being pump-action, which ROTJ completely ignored.
| Quote: | | Range: 3-10/50/150 |
Agreed. The RAW range is laughably low if the bowcaster isn't an over/under weapon.
The benchmark for the bowcaster's damage (per the films) is the 74-Z Speeder Bike, which has a Body of 2D (4D when adjusted to Character Scale). This was why I went with 6D, but 5D+2 is workable.
| Quote: | | In addition, when rolling damage against a target larger than character scale, increase the bowcaster's damage by 1D, partially offsetting the scale bonus provided to larger targets. |
This I don't get. What's the reasoning behind it?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2016 1:14 am Post subject: |
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| Dredwulf60 wrote: | | That's easy. Isn't the RAW description involve a physical dart surrounded in a sheathe of energy? |
But what I'm discussing here is not the RAW's version of the bowcaster. It's a heavy blaster rifle with an underslung high-tech crossbow. There is no mechanism in a crossbow to sheath a quarrel in energy, and basic quarrels would be solid state, or vibro-edged at best.
| Quote: | | Quote: | This seems awfully flimsy, almost like you are just giving it a blast radius because it is a frag weapon, without really thinking through how it would be applied in combat.
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??? |
Seriously. WEG put at least some thought into how to use hand grenades, but there is nothing in place to calculate degree of miss for something like this. What sort of skill roll would you need to just get close enough (i.e. you missed, but by less than two meters)? Is the warhead proximity detonated, or contact detonated? Since we're talking about a linear-firing weapon (as opposed to a ballistic firing one like a grenade launcher), a missed shot with nothing to hit could fly right by and detonate far behind the target.
If nothing else, combine the frag and explosive tips and give it the same stats as the Micro-Grenade from GG10.
| Quote: | | It seems to me that the most likely candidate is some sort of small blast radius effect. Hits a piece of rubble between them....takes out two stormtroopers with one shot. |
This is fine by itself, but not when taken as part of a larger body of evidence. The simple fact of the matter is that the bowcaster's shots are indistinguishable from that of blasters, both in appearance and sound. There is also film evidence of characters being killed or injured by near-miss blaster hits that hit walls or nearby terrain, which then shrapneled the bystander (see the Cloud City foot chase for one).
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2016 4:14 pm Post subject: |
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Another thing i just thought of.. With the 'over-under' version of bowcasters, if a planet has laws against high powered "BLASTERS" would a bowcaster count, cause of the 'under' side? Or would it class more on the powered crossbow side??
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Naaman
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| Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2016 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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The extra penetration that I gave it is a new rule I've been experimenting with. It punches through personal armor, why not materiel?
I'm honestly torn between 5D+2 and 6D for the damage, so I went with 5D+2 and gave it a penetrating effect.
So the overall deadliness is a little lower against soft targets, but it affects armored targets with a similar effect to a higher demage code. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2016 6:42 pm Post subject: |
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For that 'penetration effect', why not leave its damage AT the book listed 4d, but allow it to ignore up to say 2d of physical armor protection.. Has the same effect against stormtroopers, but is not making it a much deadlier weapon to unarmored targets.
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