Benjamin Herder’s thread about his Leech’s grenade launcher got me wondering: What other “Jindoshian” inventions have groups created or want to create?
In ours, the Lurk wants a collapsing compound bow and arrows. That’s the base idea. He’s tossing around arcane arrowhead designs like Garret has in Thief (who wouldn’t want those?). There’s also the idea of having the bow contain a ghost and it doesn’t fire physical arrows, but instead electroplasmic arrow-shaped shards of the ghost, in all its rage, essentially shaving off bits of the once-soul with each shot. They would pierce most non-warded armors and instead of physical wounds, the arrows rip through the target’s soul, leaving blackened wounds akin to frostbite. For ghosts it would be as if they were struck with an arcanely-enhanced ghost weapon. We’re still figuring out details, such as what the magnitude would be*.
They also want true silencers (rune-covered tubes attached to the barrels) that suck the muzzle flash and report into the ghost field. On the other side, it’s loud and flashy, so anyone who happens to be attuned will definitely notice. One balancing penalty we thought of is each silencer counts as 1 load, due to the size. In any case we love the idea of a crew wearing darksight goggles thwip-thwipping a gang of scumbags in the dark!
There’s also a set of boots and gloves that allow for Spiderman-like movement, but that’s only a fledgling idea.
We have ghost grenades (trapped, pissed off spirits are released), the Crowkiller hull and lighteater armor (lights dim as it sucks away illumination).
(Forgot this!) *Is there a cap on magnitude when figuring quality?
Re:cap
There are limits. Not necessarily hard limits, but certainly a limit to what would remain to be useful. See the hurricane example on the Magnitude page; sure you can create an 11 stress effect, but it’s not especially useful (due to trauma at 9 stress). So the example shows how you might offer the player what they want in those cases with a mitigating factor
For rituals, I get it. It’s for the quality magnitudes in crafting. The ballpark was 12 for the sexy spirit-strike bow was 12, I think. That’s fine if it works that way, as the player can just drop a bunch of coin. I just wanted to make sure before I charged him a ton of money.
12?! Not that you asked, but my understanding of that spirit bow you described sounds puts it closer to 6 – but I digress.
The limit is typically your Tier +2 (see crit result on Crafting Roll), but the text goes on to clarify: “You may spend coin 1-for-1 to increase the final quality level result of your roll (this can raise quality level beyond Tier +2).” so I think a 12-quality item is fine, even if your evaluation seems overboard to me.
We went with 4 quality, 3 force and 3 range, so it was 10. Not sure if you’re supposed to factor in range for a magical bow, but it made sense as you are shooting never-ending spectral arrows from a block away. Personally, it’s a pretty bad-ass relic-style weapon, so I feel it should cost a lot.
First off, take all the +1’s for bringing the player’s ideas to life 🙂
Second, 10 is actually a great assessment after rereading your descript…
Area 0 and Range 3? yes.
Quality separate from Force though? Sounds pretty harsh! I think I’d have rated either one at 5, and moved on to the drawback, but since you were favorable in your evaluation of Quality and Force anyways, it seems fine. And its not just a bow; but a foldable one, so that should count for something (another 1 or 2 makes sense, based on how small it folds).
Of course this is oddly similar to quality separate from force. :shrug: Guess I proved myself wrong 🙂
I added Force because of its armor-piercing and extra damage. If it was just a powerful bow I would’ve gone lower. Depending on the sustainability of the “ghostliness” (as a drawback), we may lower the cost. It’s pretty costly (and evil!) to jam angry dead people into a weapon and shoot them at others.
He might just go with a clockwork bow that fires arcane arrows.
We did this before the final rules dropped, but our Leech built herself a syringe gun, for when she wants to get someone high who is waaaaaaaay over there.