Special Weapon Effects

Bonus Damage –Many weapons deal a bonus amount of additional damage whenever they successfully hit a target based on the skill of the user, or sometimes based on environmental effects. Some weapons even deal additional damage to specific locations on the target, such as the Railpony rifle.

Concealable –Smaller weapons, such as pistols and small SMGs, can be concealed beneath armor or clothing. Weapons marked as concealable give a +10 bonus to sneak rolls made to hide them in this way. The sneak roll made to conceal a weapon is the perception roll that must be made by any character looking for it to spot that weapon. (They have to be looking for concealed weapons to spot them at all.)

The first condition that will cause an opponent to disintegrate is if the energy weapon deals enough wounds to the target area (after DT and damage per wound is fully accounted for) that it would cripple that area even if it had been previously unharmed. This occurs frequently on critical hits or when fighting against weaker or less well equipped opponents.

The second condition that’ll cause a target to disintegrate is if the attack deals enough damage to outright kill the target or maim the extremity being targeted (with or without factoring into account existing damage); some GMs may prefer to rule that maiming a limb disintegrates only that limb, rather than the whole character.

Electricity –This weapon has an electrical effect that disrupts spell matrices and can hit multiple enemies connected by water.Weapons with this effect deal an additional 3d12 damage to every location on a target once as an ongoing damage effect (see Chapter 7) to any enemies they’ve successfully hit during that round. This damage ignores any armor that is wet or that contains metal, but DT due to natural toughness, leather, cloth, or hide armors still apply.

Electrical weapons deal additional 6d12 damage to any robots or spell-matrix driven devices whenever they would otherwise deal damage, and the damage dealt at the end of the round increases to 6d12 (total) against such devices. Any spell matrices affected by electrical damage – devices such as pipbucks or powered armor suits – will automagically shut off to preserve their data immediately upon receiving damage from any weapon with this effect. This means that a pipbuck affixed to a limb will only shut down if that limb is hit, or otherwise will not shut down until the damage at the end of the round is dealt. Powered armor will thus shut down if the wearer is hit at all by such an attack. Deactivated devices can be reactivated by spending two actions, though this process requires either a licensed technician’s key (as per the level 30 perk) or a combination of a repair roll MFD ¾ and a Science roll MFD ¼. Some devices have built in fail-safes that can reactivate them by other means.

Fire –This effects deals 3d12 damage to every area on the target for 1d4 combat rounds. This damage occurs at the end of the round. Ponies on fire may try to extinguish themselves with an AGI roll, MFD ½, provided that they have space to roll around to put out the fire or that some other means of extinguishing themselves is available. Rolling around to put out a fire counts as two actions. Jumping into water is much faster and requires no agility roll. Fire ignores any non-metallic armor. Characters wearing powered armor or metal armors take no damage from this effect unless the attack carrying the effect penetrated their armor; fires inside powered armors will be extinguished by automagical repair talismans within one combat round (AFTER dealing damage).

Poison –This effect can vary, depending heavily on the type of poison being applied. Weapons listed with this effect are capable of delivering any type of poison that is available to be applied.The two most common variants are manticore poison and giant radscorpion poison, though other sources of natural poison (nightstalkers, bloatsprite variants, etc.) are also relatively common. Zebra poisons may also grant a weapon this effect, and are renowned for being quite potent – many of them are very deadly.

Giant radscorpion poison causes an END check versus poison with an MFD of ¾ every time a character is hit with it, and if failed causes that character to take 1 wound per turn to either the head or torso (whichever is less wounded) per round until they fall unconscious. Outside of combat the rate of progression is slower, and characters only take one wound per minute to the head or torso until they fall unconscious. It is not usually deadly, and use of an antidote or antivenom immediately halts its effects. If a character remains poisoned and unconscious for over an hour, they must roll END MFD ¾; failures will die in the next 30 minutes unless they receive an antidote and advanced medical care – a rejuvenation potion or stronger medicinal item or treatment and an MFD ¾ or medicine roll will suffice. Successes will recover on their own, though their rest will be unpleasant. Critical failures die horribly within the span of five minutes.

Manticore poison causes an END check versus poison with an MFD ½ to resist its effects. If failed initially, the affected character is paralyzed. In combat, characters may roll once per action versus the MFD to continue to resist this poison until they have passed or failed three consecutive times. Critical successes and failures count as two consecutive successes or failures respectively. If they can succeed three times in a row, the poison’s effects wear off the following round of combat. If they fail three times in a row, they remain paralyzed for the full 1d4 hours unless they receive external medical assistance. More doses can extend the length of the effects, and do not prompt additional END rolls if the character has already failed. Antivenom or antidote can halt its effects within 12 seconds of ingestion, even if the character has already failed three times in a row. If the afflicted is dosed with poison again during this 12 second gap, it will not affect them further. Antidote prevents re-poisoning for the applicator’s medicine rank in minutes, rounded down to the nearest five minutes.

Other types of poison are described where appropriate, be it in the zebra recipes section or in the monster stat block of the creature that produces it.

Rads –This special effect means that the weapon’s ammunition was radioactive! All creatures or characters that have damage dealt to them by a weapon with this effect receive 25 rads worth of radiation for every 10 points of damage dealt. The target’s radiation resistance comes into play as normal (unless that source of radiation resistance would have been destroyed or otherwise nullified by the damage in which case it does not comes into play).

Weapons with this special effect that deal damage in an area irradiate all characters or creatures within their radius equally; use the maximum damage dealt to determine how much radiation is released. All characters within double the radius of the explosion also receive radiation, but only half as much as those actually in the blast radius (round down).

Scoped –Mounting a scope on most weapons will increase that weapon’s effective range (not so for shotguns, SMGs or MGs), at the cost of 1 unit of additional weight and increasing the SATS cost by 5. They generally cost between 100 and 200 caps. In game terms, mounting a scope on a weapon will increase that weapon’s range increment substantially. Pistols and automatic rifles increase their range increment to 150 feet, and rifles increase their range increment to 300 feet. Weapons with a range increment already in excess of 150 feet quadruple their range. For big-guns, the equivalent of a scope is (usually) a range-finder.

Shock –Weapons with this effect are incapable of dealing lethal damage. On a critical hit, they deal 1d10 wounds to the target area. Like normal non-lethal damage, these weapons will render limbs completely numb if they deal enough wounds to have completely removed the limb and impose normal crippled-limb penalties. Just because it’s not lethal doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt!

Any spell matrices affected by electrical or shock damage – devices such as pipbucks or powered armor suits – will automagically shut off to preserve their data immediately upon receiving damage from any weapon with this effect.

Silenced –Weapons with a silencer or suppressor are harder to detect when fired, enabling the user of the weapon to more easily remain hidden.Perception checks made to detect poniesusing silenced weapons are one step harder than they would otherwise be (the base detection MFD is now ½ instead of ¾). Bows and crossbows are particularly silent – the base perception check to hear them is MFD 1/10. This bonus can also be applied to sneak rolls made to avoid detection immediately after firing a silenced weapon. Adding a silencer or suppressor can be done to any small gun that isn’t a shotgun; doing so increases the SATS cost by 5 and adds 1 to the weight. Silencers cost between 50-100 caps for single shot weapons, and between 200-500 caps for automatic or burst fire weapons (technically these are called suppressors, not silencers). Shotguns, flamer-fuel using weapons and energy weapons cannot be silenced.

Timed – Some weapons (usually explosives) function on a fuse. This means that they can be set to go off at differing times up to the maximum listed length of their timer. Dynamite, for example, can be set to go off as long as 12 seconds after its fuse is lit and it’s thrown. Attaching a timer to a placed explosive or a large piece of ammunition (like a balefire egg) will give it this special weapon effect.

Placed – Mines and most other placed explosives will detonate whenever a character or creature wanders within 5 feet of the charge. The explosive detonates and deals damage within its radius at the end of the round during which it was triggered. Placed explosives can be triggered remotely if noticed by way of shooting them, or throwing an object (like a rock) and striking them directly. They can also be disarmed, if a character is careful about it, using an explosives skill roll MFD ¾. Failures trigger the explosive. More complex explosives may have a higher MFD to disable. Hiding a placed explosive is a sneak or explosives roll MFD ¾, and detecting such an explosive is a perception roll of the same difficulty.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1034