natural weapons

[Johnny Angel]

I'm having some confusion regarding how innate attacks and natural weapons (i.e. horns, fists, etc) interact with some of the combat rules. Currently, my questions are the following...


For the purpose of breakage, how do you determine the weight of something like a Striker (Characters p. 88)?


If an innate attack which is also part of the body (i.e. horns, hands, arms, tail, etc) is used to parry a weapon attack, does it take damage?

[Dwarf99]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

I'm having some confusion regarding how innate attacks and natural weapons (i.e. horns, fists, etc) interact with some of the combat rules. Currently, my questions are the following...


For the purpose of breakage, how do you determine the weight of something like a Striker (Characters p. 88)?


If an innate attack which is also part of the body (i.e. horns, hands, arms, tail, etc) is used to parry a weapon attack, does it take damage?

1) ST of the character
2) No but it might deal damage if you have destructive parry (I said might because I'm not certain.)

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

If an innate attack which is also part of the body (i.e. horns, hands, arms, tail, etc) is used to parry a weapon attack, does it take damage?

Only if you take a limitation (from martial arts) - it builds the striker into an existing limb so that the limb takes damage when the striker is damage, and the striker is crippled when the limb is crippled.

It's used for "Iron Arm" type training.

[SuedodeuS]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Only if you take a limitation (from martial arts) - it builds the striker into an existing limb so that the limb takes damage when the striker is damage, and the striker is crippled when the limb is crippled.

It's used for "Iron Arm" type training.

Almost there. For a striker to take damage on a Parry, it would need to have both Limb (MA47) and Cannot Parry. If it just has Limb, it can parry as though it were a weapon. If it just has Cannot Parry, it will only be injured if it is explicitly targeted (as it cannot be used to parry at all). If it has both, however, then you can use the Limb to Parry, but it parries as the limb rather than as a Striker. Another aspect of unarmed attacks is that the enemy can do damage if he successfully defends against your attack, but this doesn't occur for Strikers. For Strikers to suffer this, I'd consider it as being rolled into Cannot Parry. To separate it out, I'd say consider Cannot Parry as -30% and Brittle (can be damaged by an aggressive or armed parry; suffers -3 to parry swung weapons) as -10%. For limbs, Cannot Parry is instead -25% if you benefit from the damage bonus when you use it for an aggressive parry.

All told, this means a Shin Striker is probably something like Striker (Crushing; Brittle -10%, Cannot Parry -25%, Limb -20%) [3]. In theory Clumsy -2 would be there to represent the -2 penalty for kicking, but as anyone who buys this would most likely already have kicking at full skill that seems abusive.
A tail would be Striker (Crushing; Brittle -10%) [5], likely with some additional modifiers (Clumsy, Limited Arc, etc) so the reduction for Brittle actually means something. Of course, now that I look at it, Brittle on a Crushing Striker doesn't mean anything unless you grab Weak or something similar (only multiples of -20% result in an actual price reduction).
Horns would be something like Striker (Impaling; Clumsy 2 -40%) [5]. They are weapons, and thus can Parry and be Parried as such, but they're a little inconvenient to use.

[Johnny Angel]

Thanks for the feedback. To give a little background as to why I was asking: I was talking to a friend about an arena battle he was having. His opponent's character is able to use their arms to parry via some sort of perk or advantage taken from MA which turns the limb into a striker.

It seems a little odd to be able to block a sword with an arm and not have the arm take damage.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Johnny Angel

Thanks for the feedback. To give a little background as to why I was asking: I was talking to a friend about an arena battle he was having. His opponent's character is able to use their arms to parry via some sort of perk or advantage taken from MA which turns the limb into a striker.

It seems a little odd to be able to block a sword with an arm and not have the arm take damage.

Because it's impossible to do in reality. It's clearly a cinematic or exotic ability.