03-22-2011, 02:40 PM | #11 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
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03-22-2011, 03:10 PM | #12 | ||
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
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Just don't make it free, being able to turn into a red dragon is awesome, but since it's a 10,000 point creature it is going to require a HUGE energy supply to cover the difference in CP to turn into the dragon (perhaps one of those manastones) (as per the shapeshift spell). Alternatively have it turn them into a red dragon of equivalent age to the user (which will likely still be powerful, but in 'just post hatchling' stage), or if you are feeling partciularly generous, both. |
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03-22-2011, 03:24 PM | #13 | |||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
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Also, a larger number of nifty little items seems to be the sort of thing they like.
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03-22-2011, 03:42 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
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I actually like handing out the 'immensely powerful but one use' items in my games. Ironically my experience is that PCs find it awesome to get them, dutifully write them down on there character sheets, and then refuse to use them except to threaten people because 'I only have ONE!'. For one particularly epic fight I awarded the party archer an 'arrow of annihilation' which destroys a 50 meter sphere at point of impact, he still has it ~300 quests later, and the most he has ever used it for was to knock it and THREATEN to use it. Last edited by starslayer; 03-22-2011 at 03:47 PM. |
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03-22-2011, 06:57 PM | #15 | ||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
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On the other hand, even SM +1 is dangerous. SM +4 or more is fatal, usually. An endless stream of explosive missiles, killer spells and focused melee attacks. Aimed at vitals, armour gaps and eyes. Quote:
Indeed, how do you think the PCs killed the 150 meter long dragon in the first place? The issue is that they're rather have items they can use to attack conspicious foes while remaining SM 0 and able to take cover themselves.
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03-23-2011, 07:28 AM | #16 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
Does anyone have any thoughts regarding how powerful a smokepowder weapn made from dragonbone could be? The powder is REF 0.5 and the weapon could tolerate more 'chamber' pressure than TL8 weapons.
How much recoil can a ST 12 human cope with? How much damage would that be?
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03-23-2011, 08:30 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: Oct 2006
Location: Chagrin Falls
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
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As to what kind of recoil / damage a given ST can support, why not just model it on the recoil & St numbers for other firearms? For a first pass, the critical decisions should (IMO) be chamber pressure (P), bore (Axc), barrel length (L) and projectile mass(M). This should give you approximations of F=P*Axc=M*a, allowing a final V for a known L. V, with M, gives both momentum and kinetic energy (at the muzzle), which are needed to figure out range and collision characteristics. If these numbers make it too powerful, apply leakage past the projectile or a time-pressure profile to tone things down a bit.
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03-23-2011, 08:48 AM | #18 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
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So for a man portable weapon, you're looking at something probably equivalent to "the biggest blunderbuss ever hauled by man". If the dragonbone is lighter than bronze or steel, possibly a little bigger than the biggest blunderbuss ever hauled by man :) Quote:
The .600 isn't really much more practical, but has a history that extends back closer to the original gunpowder era. The .600 Nitro Express double rifles weighed in at 5dx2 pi++ 16.4 lbs, RCL 7. I'm not sure why, but it has the same damage and better range than the .700 - I'm going to go ask if that's errata or not. These are ST 15 and 14 guns (respectively), so a ST 12 wielder could sort of manage them a little bit, and are I think an excellent benchmark for the upper end of the "OH MY GOD" range. The Nitro Express .470 is considered actually practical, and does 8d+2 pi+, is 14.2 lbs, ST 12, RCL 5 These weapons are using cordite, so REF 0.8 compared to your REF 0.5 - I'm not sure what replacing the Cordite with your smokepowder would do to the statistics.
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03-23-2011, 12:50 PM | #19 | ||||
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
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What I need to know is how much recoil impulse is plausible to assume that a ST 12 man can handle? If we're using a ca 15mm diameter, 300 grain spherical bullet (or 12mm, 150 grain, whichever works out with the best GURPS stats) with enough windage to avoid having to take extra time to load a muzzleloading smoothbore pistol, how fast can we propel it with REF 0.5 powder without making it more than ST 12? How long does our barrel need to be to get that kind of velocity? How much improvement do we see if we use the same bore and bullet, but make it a rifle with a longer barrel? Since the´PCs can make Wands of 6d Explosive Fireballs fairly trivially, I'm not all that worried about the damage of a dragonbone pistol. But if it doesn't meet certain performance minimums, they'll simply not bother with it.
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03-23-2011, 01:13 PM | #20 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Magic items made from Great Red Dragon's corpse
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dragon, forgotten realms, magical items, smokepowder |
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