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Old 11-11-2014, 12:16 PM   #23
Kromm
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Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Montréal, Québec
Default Re: Throwing Lots of Knives

Remember that thrown weapons can be dodged, blocked, and parried – even people without Parry Missile Weapons can parry them. They do not bypass parries and blocks (like bullets do), or even just parries without PMW (like arrows do); most have good odds of being avoided. Remember, further, that the canonical Fast-Draw list mostly limits you to weapons that inflict thrust-1 or thrust damage plus Throwing Art bonus, with a ST stat of 5-6 limiting the maximum useful ST to 15-18. So what we're actually talking about here is spamming lots of attacks in the 1d-3 to 1d+4 range (1d is a fair proxy), missing with some, having several avoided, and hitting with a few that won't cope well with any significant armor. The best that can be said about it as a tactic is that you can annoy lots of enemies and might get lucky.

By contrast, archers might fire only two or three arrows with their tricks, but they have cheap ways of getting high effective ST, and weapons that have more range and better basic damage. They're routinely dumping 1d+6 or more much further downrange on a similar points and equipment budget, and their targets can't parry. Also, arrows are cheap and light, giving even shuriken a run for their money.

And yeah, except in unusual circumstances, one well-aimed attack to a soft part of your enemy is more effective than all of this, and a lot easier on ammo.
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