Enhancing weapons with natural abilities

[kirbwarrior]

A race I've made in another system, called the D'Voir, has the ability to cover their weapon in fire, ice, or lightning. It's a small bonus, but enough to make a difference. For simplicity, lets go with fire, and i can figure out the others from that.

Any weapon that has reach (aka more than c) will do +2 burning damage when used by a D'Voir. At first I'd thought it'd be simple, but nothing quite works right. I don't know if this should be applicable to ranged weapons...

Innate attack with link plainly causes just 2 more damage, but armor counts against it also, when it should only apply once to the whole damage.

With follow-up it would do the same if the weapon didn't get through armor, which would most likely stop the fire also.

Follow-Up and Contact Agent would give it a quasi-magical feel, but would it work to light a dead log on fire?

Also, can link and follow-up even be applied in this manner? How, and what else can, if so?

[blacksmith]

You need Power Ups: Imbuments. It is this.

[Kuroshima]

Originally Posted by blacksmith

You need Power Ups: Imbuments. It is this.

Yep, it's EXACTLY this. It's a hole in the system, and very hard to fill without the Imbuements subsystem. Also, if you like the framework, I wholeheartly recommend Pyramid #3/4: Magic on the battlefield for the Perfect Defense article, that expands it to Defensive (Armor and Shield) Imbuements, and to a lesser extent Pyramid #3/12: Tech and Toys for Psi-Powered Imbuements (Classifying the Imbuement Skills along the lines of the Psionic Powers) and Pyramid #3/13: Thaumatology for The Mystic Knight (3 new Imbuement Skills, though one of them is in the odds and ends section, as well as an Imbuement focused template for use in DF, and a small set of perks)

[bea_bumble]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Innate attack with link plainly causes just 2 more damage, but armor counts against it also, when it should only apply once to the whole damage.

Why do you say that? Swinging a sword that is on fire will not make the sword swing harder, so your basic damage really need not be higher. Check out linked effects on B381:

"Some attacks have a linked effect.
This is a second type of damage or
other effect that occurs simultaneous-
ly with the primary effect. Make one
roll to hit, but resolve all damage and
resistance rolls separately for the pri-
mary effect and the linked effect. An
example of a linked effect is a grenade
that inflicts both a crushing explosion
and a blinding flash of light on deto-
nation. A person in armor might be
blinded but unhurt, while an unar-
mored person with eye protection
might be wounded but not blinded."

So, someone might have flame-retardant armor that helps protect them from the burning damage, but offers little protection from your sword. If you want to model your successful melee attacks creating an opening for burning damage, though...

With follow-up it would do the same if the weapon didn't get through armor, which would most likely stop the fire also.

Follow-Up and Contact Agent would give it a quasi-magical feel, but would it work to light a dead log on fire?

I don't think Follow-Up would work to light an object on fire unless the attack penetrated the object's DR, so probably not. You might try creating two innate attacks totaling the amount of damage that you want to deal, one of them being a Follow-Up from the melee attack so that a successful attack always deals some burning damage.

So, instead of, say, Burning Attack 4 (Melee Only, Link [Melee Weapon] +10%, Whatever else you want), you could take:

Burning Attack 2 (Melee Only, Link [Melee Weapon] +10%)
AND
Burning Attack 2 (Follow-Up [Melee Attack])

You might just house-rule an enhancement for the follow-up attack that allows it to deal damage even if DR is not overwhelmed by the melee attack. (That is, if the melee attack deals damage, the burning gets through, but if the melee attack doesn't deal damage, you can still roll your burning damage, but you must roll it against all of the target's DR. This way, if a target has good protection vs. melee attacks but poor protection vs. fire, you can still deal your fire damage even if you cannot penetrate its armor.) I'd say about +20% for this.

... This is complicated, though: You could also just make the special enhancement for one SINGLE Burning attack... "+10% Half of damage ignores DR if linked melee attack successfully penetrates DR." Increase to +20% if all of the damage gets through.

Also, can link and follow-up even be applied in this manner? How, and what else can, if so?

Yes, they can. According to... Somewhere? I think it was by the GURPS Official FAQ, you can Link an innate attack to a weapon. Follow-Up can be linked to a weapon the same way it can be linked to a natural attack (teeth, claws). Imbuements will work very well for what you want to accomplish, but may also be rather expensive and will require skill rolls and FP costs and the like. If you just want to have a flaming weapon, you can just use innate attack with Link (+10% if it can only be used with another attack, +20% if the flaming attack can also be used alone as a burning attack).

[Bruno]

A dead, dry log is made of wood, is combustable, and has ablative DR. You can set it's DR layer on fire with enough fire, at which point it will end up burning into the regular HP. It's one of the hazards of being combustable. Note that matches don't set logs on fire under normal circumstances - you set fire to tinder, which sets fire to twigs and small branches, which then sets fire to your log.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by bea_bumble

... This is complicated, though: You could also just make the special enhancement for one SINGLE Burning attack... "+10% Half of damage ignores DR if linked melee attack successfully penetrates DR." Increase to +20% if all of the damage gets through.

I like this the most. I don't really know much about imbuements (lack of book), but it sounds like it might be more complicated than necessary. The idea was to be like Flaming Weapon, where the damage is considered one chunk instead of two the burning damage would happen even if there was enough DR to protect against the attack but not the bonus damage, if that makes any sense.

Can anyone give a quick synopsis on imbuements, just so i can know if i would absolutely need it? (I do plan on getting most GURPS books, but im not stinking rich :P)

Also, i didn't know that's how ablative DR works with Combustible. I'll have to reread the Basic Set again.

Thank you for all your help, everyone.

[Edges]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Can anyone give a quick synopsis on imbuements, just so i can know if i would absolutely need it? (I do plan on getting most GURPS books, but im not stinking rich :P)

To be honest, I think the best synopsis of Imbuements in this case is:
It costs $5 and has exactly what you're looking for.

But to be more specific, it has an advantage that lets you "imbue" a weapon with extra power(s). It lets you pick and choose ways to power up a weapon. So if you want to shoot a homing bullet from an ordinary gun, you can make that character now. If you want to be able to cover your weapon in fire, ice, or lightning, you can make that character now.

You could probably house rule something instead. But for $5, you may as well have something with all the bugs already worked out.

[munin]

Actually, if the only thing you want to do is add extra damage to weapon attacks, then imbuements don't do anything you couldn't do with a regular Follow-up ability. The imbuements that add damage specifically state that they are adding follow-up damage, so if follow-up damage isn't working for you, neither will imbuements. I'd just go with a Follow-up ability -- it's what it's for:

Elemental Weapon: Burning Attack 2 points (Follow-up, Any weapon, +50%; Incendiary, +10%) [1]* + Fatigue Attack 2 points (Follow-up, Any weapon, +50%; Freezing, +20%) [9] + Burning Attack 2 points (Follow-up, Any weapon, +50%; Surge, +20%) [1]*. 11 points.

An imbuement however can, for example, add the Surge enhancement to a weapon's entire damage, and then add additional lightning damage on top of that.

* Alternative Attacks (×1/5 cost) to Fatigue Attack.

EDIT: A real munchkin would replace the two Burning Attacks with Burning Attack 2 points (Follow-up, Any weapon, +50%; Incendiary, +10%; Selectivity, +10%; Surge, +20%) [1]*, saving 1 point.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

Can anyone give a quick synopsis on imbuements, just so i can know if i would absolutely need it? (I do plan on getting most GURPS books, but im not stinking rich :P)

Essentially, it allows you to apply enhancements and alternate damage types to otherwise mundane weapon attacks. So, for example, if you wanted to be able to grab a gun, any gun, and turn its bullets into incendiary, armor-piercing, homing rounds, this is the book for you. They do explicitly have an incendiary (aka "flaming") attack and an electric attack. I don't see an ice attack, but depending on what you want it to do, I doubt it would be hard to figure out.

To be clear, this is not the same as innate attack. A guy with innate attack can, for example, make a flaming sword and hit people with it. A guy with imbuements takes a sword and turns it into a flaming sword.

[blacksmith]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Essentially, it allows you to apply enhancements and alternate damage types to otherwise mundane weapon attacks. So, for example, if you wanted to be able to grab a gun, any gun, and turn its bullets into incendiary, armor-piercing, homing rounds, this is the book for you. They do explicitly have an incendiary (aka "flaming") attack and an electric attack. I don't see an ice attack, but depending on what you want it to do, I doubt it would be hard to figure out.

That is because ice is weird and reasonably not a direct attack mode. There is a reason why ice missile spells do crushing or impaling damage not some freezing damage.

Now if you really wanted a follow up freeze attack, I would say probably use a toxic attack. If you really want to you could try corrosive.