Staff Sergeant Silva Abigail Birgen

[MarcoSkoll]

Right. While I've tweaked a couple of Silva's stats, I'm not here to discuss that, but to poke at a couple of rules.

Firstly, revised rules for her bionic arm that make it less formidable.

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Left Arm:
This is a bionic with S60 and 4 points of armour. It incorporates a set of retractable fighting blades, a short-range flamethrower and a las-emitter.
All of these items can be drawn or holstered as a free action, can't be dropped, stolen nor switched between hands (i.e. they're very firmly attached to her left arm).

The fighting blades are treated as a single weapon with reach 2, Damage 2D6 and Parry Penalty 0%.

- These blades being a literal extension of Silva's body, she can wield them with exceptional finesse and dexterity. They use the parrying/counterattack rules for a buckler.
- The multiple "claw-blades" make the weapon capable of inflicting far more major injury than a single blade alone. As a result, hits from them are resolved at -1 BIV.

The flamethrower is treated as a Hand Flamer with shots 2 and reload X - reloading is a far too complex process to carry out within game.

The las-emitter is treated as a Short pattern Mars laspistol. It is designed to draw its power from its user to remove the need for power packs, and as such it has an infinite shots characteristic, but sustained fire can injure and tire the user. Each shot after the first made by the emitter in a single turn automatically adds +1 to the user's injury total.

Weapon destruction: While the mechanisms of Silva's arm are very robust, they are not indestructible - a sufficiently damaging attack may cause enough damage to render the weapons within unusable.
Silva must roll over the damage of any hit to her arm (after armour) on D10 + BIV, or one of the weapons (chosen at random) is destroyed.

~~~~~

I might still scrap the flamer completely, but it's no worse than a digi-flamer now (and given that it uses the shorter range of the Revised Armoury flamers, certainly not). The las has been changed to a short pattern las, so it's got a bit less range (and anyway, she seldom uses it over her shotgun).

The "claws"... I changed the D3 hits rule for -1 BIV. Still allows them to inflict pretty nasty wounds, but they can no longer inflict the rather nasty high strength triple critical hits like they've done once or twice, which is probably a good thing for my opponents.

The weapon destruction rules... I'm not entirely sure about them as they are.

I could speak against them by saying normally there's little chance of your laspistol getting damaged by enemy fire in game, and it feels a bit odd that it such a rule should really apply here, and that she's now being doubly penalised for a hit on her arm...

... but I could also say that if I am doing it, I don't really know about "a weapon chosen at random is destroyed". It doesn't seem right to say that every weapon should automatically be knocked out in the same hit, but also, it doesn't seem right to say that a hit should only disable one weapon.

I was playing with the idea of using something based around the "multiple hazards rule" that I wrote for the Revised Armoury, or the possibility of rolling a D6 for each weapon, and on a 4+ it's destroyed (and if they all come up 1, 2, or 3, she's got off very lucky).

~~~~~

The other thing I'm working on extending her fighting style further. I've got a few ideas for the rules that might go with a kick.

It'd probably be treated as a improvised weapon* with a longer reach, but no ability to parry. After that, the following occur to me:
*The large lump of metal she has as a right leg is quite a lot more formidable than most things that count as an improvised weapon, and she's prepared to use it as such.

- If it hits (and isn't dodged or parried), it has an effect like the Feint skill, conferring some kind of penalty to parries as the opponent is knocked off balance.
- An attack that has some kind of Knockback multiplier, with the chance of sending the opponent reeling backwards or falling prone.
- Some kind of combination of the above.

Or the last of the options I thought of was to simply treat it as a hammer that can't parry.

Any thoughts on those ideas?

[Myriad]

The arm weapons seem quite reasonable.  The blades have quite a few rules, but I'd still rather be stabbed by them than a power weapon.


As far as damage to the weapons go, the following springs to mind;
"If the arm is damaged, roll a dice for each weapon, adding one for each level of injury caused.  On a 6 (or maybe a 7, depending on how you want to balance it - I can see the point about weapons not normally getting damaged, but you do normally drop them if the arm is hurt), the weapon system is damaged and rendered unusable."

I'd try to keep the kick relatively simple, which would favour improved knockback.  A hammer profile is probably about right.

[precinctomega]

OMG! BOOBS!










... What?

Srsly, though, she looks fine to me.

R.

[MarcoSkoll]

Blarg. Well, as the forum's been very quiet, some food for thought about Silva's new big gun, Elise.

Silva also on occasion wields a variety of customised heavy weapons for high threat missions - these are often crew-served weapons such as heavy stubbers, autocannons and automatic grenade launchers which have been modified for use as a personal weapon, but in the absence of any specific mission parameters, she can normally be seen to default to her unique combi-bolter, Elise (named after her younger sister).

Primarily designed by Inquisitor Skoll, Elise is specifically built for Silva's use, being considerably larger and heavier than a standard human boltgun, at over a metre in length and weighing some 24 kilos, with a bullpup configuration and extended barrel (allowing an increased muzzle velocity over conventional configurations), a left-side ejection port to suit her handedness and gene-locked to only her use.
Capable of firing the full range of .75 calibre bolt rounds and accepting most standard magazine types, the weapon can be relatively easily re-stocked from Imperial Guard, Arbites or other similar Imperial armouries.

The bolter portion of the weapon is supplemented with an under-barrel grenade launcher, capable of firing high-velocity 40mm grenades from a three-round revolving magazine. While not capable of providing quite the same level of fire support as a full-sized drum or belt fed grenade launcher, it allows dug-in infantry or light vehicle targets to be effectively and rapidly engaged.

Elise is intended only to be used in high end "climax" or "boss" scenarios - situations where she would reasonably be expecting high resistance and wants/needs something meaner than her normal shotgun.

Name	Type	Rng	Mode	Acc	Dam	Mag	Rld	Enc	Spcl
Elise Bolter	Basic	C	S/2-4/-	-	X+1	24	3	80	CR
Elise GL	Aux	B	S/-/-	-	-	3	(1)	X	Man,CR

Gene-locked: Disabling this requires an Sg test at -80. (Or -20 for Marco, as he knows the code-key)

Ammunition loadout: Dependent on mission requirements, but a standard loadout is five standard bolt magazines, a 12-round straight magazine of Kraken,  a 12-round straight magazine of Wych-bolts, 3x frag grenades, 4x krak grenades and one each of incendiary, photon flash and hellfire grenades (expect to see Hellfire grenades in the next RIA). Protracted missions may increase these numbers.

It's a mean weapon, but it's designed to be and is only really for special "climax" type scenarios.

~~~~~

Also, while I've posted it elsewhere, Silva's updated character design in this thread too: