very fine superfine blades?

[onetrikpony]

Can there be such a thing as a very fine quality (b274) Superfine blade (ut163)?

Do the quality modifiers for melee weapons and blades stack with the technology modifiers from ultratech?

[The_Ryujin]

Originally Posted by onetrikpony

Can there be such a thing as a very fine quality (b274) Superfine blade (ut163)?

Do the quality modifiers for melee weapons and blades stack with the technology modifiers from ultratech?

No, Super Fine is a quality modifier and the next tier up from Very Fine and Hyper Dense is effectively the next step up from that though Ultra-Tech does muddle this quite a bit.

Super Fine should read: Melee weapon quality option. A Super Fine blades gets -3 to break, +2 to cutting and impaling damage and adds a (2) armor divisor. Costs 6 times the listed amount. LC4.

Now for the most part GURPS assumes that blades are made from steel as a default and cheap, fine and very fine are just just different grades of steel. Super Fine probably represents the most high end steels we can now make like nano-crystal steel which in turn is still just steel, just really good steel. In hind sight it would of been helpful if it had different material options to make blades out of like High-Tech did though to be honest, only Hyperdense seems like it would actually be better then steel at making a blade. Nanocompsite and especially diamondoid would be light enough to reduce the damage you could do.

[onetrikpony]

thanks Ryugin,

So Vibro and monowire *can* be combined with very fine etc?

[The_Ryujin]

Originally Posted by onetrikpony

thanks Ryugin,

So Vibro and monowire *can* be combined with very fine etc?

A Vibro blade can be of any quality up to Hyper Dense but can not be added that a monowire blade or a nanothorn one.

Oddly monowire blades seem to be both a quality and a material modified and kinda is it's own thing. It should probably reduce the likely hood of breakage by -3 at lest.

Might need to take a look into cleaning up melee options as a future topic for my blog heh.

[Flyndaran]

Monowire is pure on superscience, so can easily be adjusted to fit whatever setting the GM wants to evoke.

Thematically, it seems to be a superlative for sharpness and toughness for its microscopic size. So a GM may not want to have Superfine step on its toes in that regard.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Monowire is pure on superscience, so can easily be adjusted to fit whatever setting the GM wants to evoke.

Pretty much.

But I'd seriously wonder about monowire blades that aren't made of pretty high end materials - something after all stops the magic sharpness from cutting into the blade it's *attached to*.

[Phantasm]

Seems to me the progression was meant to go: Fine -> Very Fine -> Superfine. Above Superfine, things get wonky.

IMO, it looks like options like Monowire and Vibroblade sit outside that spectrum. Hyperdense seems to be more of a material component, making it mutually exclusive with Bronze, Iron, and Orichalcum, among others, though I can see the logic with making it the next step above Superfine, especially since Vibroblade is able to stack with both Superfine and Hyperdense. Monowire is explicitly incompatible with Superfine and Vibroblade, but is also explicitly superscience, so I wouldn't put it on the progression.

[myrmidon]

The text for Superfine says:

Originally Posted by Ultra-Tech, page 163

Superfine blades are advanced alloy, ceramic, or crystalline blades superior to steel.

This seems to indicate the material rather than the quality. (This would apply to Hyperdense [UT164] as well.)

This is compared to the text for Fine and Very Fine, for which the header is:

Originally Posted by Low-Tech, page 59

"Weapons of Quality"

This obviously seems to refer to quality.

[Flyndaran]

Ultra Tech has "issues" and uses lots of "fluff" wording while Low Tech stuck more with historical examples and realistic technology.
They have very distinct voices, so don't really mesh with each other well.

[myrmidon]

So does the Fine and Very Fine definition in Low-Tech refer to material or quality? Is my understanding correct that material and quality are two different categories of an object?