Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon
[(Generator DR)*(Generator Area)*(Hilt power cell weight)*(Hilt power cell time)]
[2*(Force blade surface area)*(Generator power cell weight)*(Generator time)]
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Now that I'm back home and can access my books, let's look at this. Looking at UT, we can't use barrier force screens for our calculation, because those fail to note how much power they consume - I assume they're all meant to use the nebulous "external power."
Using a personal force screen should work for us; note here we can get rid of the (2) divisor, because we aren't going from more-efficient power cells to less-efficient ones, we're directly comparing C to C. Something that conforms to the body would have a surface area of 21.35 square feet, as per the Pyramid armor design articles. A C-cell lasts 15 minutes, and the personal force screen provides DR 60 and weighs 2.5 lbs. A force sword, meanwhile, weighs 2 lbs and a C-cell in it lasts only 5 minutes. It also has Reach 1,2, which implies a length of perhaps 1.5 yards rather than the 1 yard I assumed above; we'll boost surface area from 0.2 square feet to 0.3 square feet. So:
60*21.35*C*5
0.3*C*15
The weights of the C-cells cancel out, so we're looking at DR 1423.33. However, I think I messed up with the initial equation - most of the factors are where they should be, but I have hilt time and generator time reversed - the less time the force blade lasts on an equal amount of energy, the stronger it should be. So, swapping those above, we're actually looking at DR 4270. The hilt is around the same size as the personal force screen (2 lbs vs 2.5 lbs), so we don't need to worry about losing efficiency there. I'd be inclined to cut DR in half to account for pumping half the energy into creating the annihilating energy, for DR 2135. However, to make my suggestion of reducing damage linearly with reduction to DR easier to use, let's make it DR 2000 - every -250 to DR is -1d to damage.
And, of course, here we come to the bit about "anything that can break the force sword will destroy the hilt and wielder." It's DR
2000. Anything that does that sort of damage is going to have enough "splash" to basically liquefy the wielder. If you're dealing with characters in heavy power armor fighting with force swords, of course, they can probably survive the splash effects, but I really don't think the hilts would.
EDIT: Whoops, I thought it was weird that swapping the times only gave x3 to DR. I must have messed up on the math (I suspect I did x15 and then /15, rather than x15 and /3), because the starting DR is actually 12,810. Even if we assume 80% of it goes into creating the 8d(5) burn effect, that's still DR over 2500.