should there actually be "indestructible" weapons?

[Plane]

In terms of characters there's no 3e immunity anymore so you can't be indestructible in 4e, just have loads of DR or injury divisors.

It seems however there are certain Ultratech objects which enjoy this property.

UT164 Stasis Switchblade

Due to the stasis web,
the switchblade cannot be broken
and can be used to parry a force blade
or similar energy-based attack

UT166

a blade of annihilating energy extends from the hilt and is held in shape by a force field.
The blade cannot break

You simply could not make a "weapon as a character" this durable AFAIK.

It's possible to stat "creature made out of energy" and assign it stuff reflecting that like Diffuse or Insubstantial to supplement 'Injury Divisor' or Damage Resistance.

That stuff still needs to have HP though, so shouldn't the "force field" and "annihilating energy" within it actually have HP so they can be destroyed?

If you use Precognitive Parry to block lasers w/ any kind of material object there's always some kind of limit to what it can stop, so giving unlimited capacity seems strange.

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If we were to stat this in some way (ie there's a hypothetical laser strong enough to breach the forcefield and AE within it) can anyone think of guidelines on how we might stat it?

I was thinking there might be some means of backwards-engineering and estimate by the power demands the weapons have (like a power Cell per 300 seconds) if we subtract out the ongoing damage.

Like presumably since the damage can't break free, it has some kind of Force Field DR which protects against it's own burning damage, yet which does not provide Cover DR against that damage when striking others with it.

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How this "force field works" (it allows the energy to burn things outside of the force field yet inhibits the energy from spreading?) is pretty confusing.

Ultratech seems to have tweaked it too: critically successful parries (even unarmed ones?) no longer suffer from automatic Burning Damage anymore...

This in theory means "I can bare-hand touch the tip of your 7-yard Force Whip and I'm just fine".

This might be explained by somehow contacting the Force Field around the Annihilating Energy lightly enough to redirect it without actually touching it directly enough to move through it and make contact with that energy.

This of course further complicates "designing the force sword via advantages" since while Powers did introduce "Destructive Parry" to emulate Force Swords, it doesn't have that "except on critical successes" drawback.

Would that be like a -1% nuisance effect? Doesn't seem worth a full -5% since crit success defences are so rare.

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Assuming a "weapon as character" reflecting a Force Sword has something like Burning Attack (Aura) to explain it's contact energy, with subsequent rulings of "once per second" should a Force Sword be limited in 'damage per second' that way as well?

Originally Posted by Kromm

For the sake of game balance, Aura shouldn't damage anyone more than once per turn. Otherwise, you'll get silly results in close combat.
Measure "turn" from start to start: From when I start this turn until I start my next turn, a given Aura can hurt me only once, no matter what me and the person with the Aura do, either during the active part of my turn or during everything that happens afterward.

Aura (+80%) + Melee Attack (-30%) is worth +50% because it could affect all the attackers around you if they foolishly decided to swarm you in close combat.

We eyeballed that as being approximately equal to Area Effect, 2 yards, +50%, which always affects an area of similar size to "my hex and all the hexes around me."

The upsides "discourages attackers" and "requires no action" and the downsides "specific trigger condition" and "has no range" looked like a wash.

If you start adding what amounts to Rapid Fire to it, it soon gets out of whack . . . if you really want that, buy Rapid Fire and say the Aura can affect each person up to RoF times.

For instance, Aura (+80%) + Melee Attack (-30%) + Rapid Fire, RoF 3 (+50%) would cost +100% and be able to affect a given enemy up to three times (say, once for you punching him and twice when he punches you twice).

You can presumably hit someone multiple times per turn w/ a Force Sword, so if we treat it like a character who has 'aura' we should know how many levels of RoF the melee attack has.

I guess (to allow light-speed jedis) you could say it's ROF 300 (highest possible) so that it only ever comes up for people who can attack 301 times per second, but that seems a bit extreme, which is why I'm wondering if we could somehow estimate it to lower levels of the enhancement based on the weapon's power supply, cost and TL.

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UT96 also has sort of an "absolute" outcome of death if you're 'inside a solid object' when the exophase field generator is used. Is that also what happens if someone uses Negate Advantage on Insubstantiality while someone's in the middle of a wall?

It seems like maybe one could come up with some kind of intense damage number alternative to represent stuff like creatures who are Diffuse and might be prone to surviving that type of thing if re-materialized.

Especially since you could have partial outcomes like "my torso is through the wall but my head isn't" where it might be analagous to having a giant lance driven through the torso to the vitals (which some Unkillable things might survive)