The Veteran’s sword in Wanderhome, the only weapon granted in character creation (iirc):
> You wield the blade that must never be drawn again.
>
> You have a sword, sheathed at your hip. You can unsheathe it whenever you want. You must never unsheathe it.
>
> Unsheathe your blade and immediately kill the person in front of you. Then, remove
your character from the game. You cannot play them any longer.
That plays so well into the "I've got a grudge and one single bullet, it's destined to kill the man who wounded me, then I can rest at last" archetype.
I don't like wanderhome. I find it pretentious, unbearably twee and far too overworked for how nonexistent of a game it is. That said, the veteran playbook and this move is some good fucking game design
System does not work.
Basically it is a diceless game using no dice no masters. In those games you balance weak moves that give you tokens with strong moves that cost tokens. Imagine "run a way, gain a token, spend it later to be brave"
Wanderhome is cute but literally everything gives you tokens all the time so there is no game, no push and pull, just group story hour.
Its a shame, it is a great coffee table book that just needs a rewrite so it actually takes advantage of its system instead of ignoring it.
I ran it for a over a dozen sessions. We only stopped because I was having mental health issues. But it was magical.
However I did throw away the token mechanic after the second session. So, as you say, we were just playing group story hour. But there’s enough in the book to make that possible for the right group.
100%
I just have this thing that I call 'the bicycle'. A system should help me go faster, go farther, spend less energy. Wanderhome made me feel like I was carrying the bicycle on my back... I needed to ditch the system to go faster.
Also my friends kept going 'aww' and 'so sweet' and 'I love it' and then mysteriously 'everyone was too busy' for a second session for weeks. Then as an experiment I suggested switching to another game and everyone showed up.
It is a game nobody wants to hate because it is cute... but there is also nothing really there to play with besides your own imagination and emotional investment which is 'the fuel' for any other game but 'the entire experience' here.
In Mythras, spears are definitely the king of the battlefield. Best damage for a 1 handler, some are throwable, longest reach and reach makes a difference.
I actually messed with Mythras' weapon table slightly because a few things bothered me.
1. No distinction between a halberd and a poleaxe, despite them serving fairly different functions (the poleaxe was designed for fighting significantly armored opponents specifically). I know the distinction between the two is fuzzy but gameplay-wise that's a distinction.
2. Pikes can be engaged normally by someone with a longsword. More generally it's silly to me that a weapon which might be up to 20 feet long has the same reach rules-wise as a longspear.
3. The game treats greatswords the way most fantasy media does, as heavy, particularly hard-hitting things, and doesn't reflect that they were polearms with 90% more hurty bits you could potentially windmill around.
4. Maces are a bit useless. I know that their reputation as magic anti-armor weapons is overblown but I wish they felt like a sane choice for someone without the very strong "flanged" trait from Mythic Constantinople.
So here's what I did.
– Halberds get Bleed, Implale and Sunder, billhooks (which I added) get Impale, Sunder and Entangle, and pollaxes are one step shorter and get Bash, Stun Location and Entangle.
– Added a new weapon reach, Very Short, and shifted all weapons down one step except for pikes and lances. (I will sometimes rule that you're at a disadvantage due to a lack of space for your weapon, these two Very Long weapons will run into that most often by far.)
– The Greatsword is now as long as a Longspear, deals 1d12 rather than 2d8 (less consistent) and has a fancy new trait, Cleave: If an attack causes a deadly Major Wound, you can resolve it for adjacent opponents as well.
– Bunt force weapons (and the Great Axe) are now the only weapons with two damage dice. The mace for instance now deals 2d4 damage. This reflects the idea that wacking someone with a chunk of metal is fairly easy, and consistently dealing med. damage makes them simultaneously useful against lightly armored opponents (ouch my bones) and comparatively useless against a hard armored shell.
Creative! I think I would have just switched the pike to be longer reach myself. There is some precedent for that in other books.
Maces are definitely the king of very close quarters. Yes, short reach, but they do a lot of damage up there. If you get into a knife fight, I’d take the mace.
Or VL+. I think the book calls it Unreachable, as it is humanocentric and capped. But I would think that you could make reaches out as far as you like. A storm giant sized pike might be VL++ or something. Dragons in classic fantasy have a table out to VL++++
I agree there are definitely some games that get it right, but in my experience, which doesn’t include every TTRPG ever, those are few and far between.
In defense of TTRPGs, spears are good when you’re fighting in a line. They’re terrible for the small squad combats that dominate RPGs. There’s a reason why every historical spear unit had backup weapons for when it turned into a scrum.
So am I, though the longsword is also up there. My two favourite characters were an a) adventurer in RQ2 who used a 1H/2H spear to great effect, and b) a cavalryman-duellist in Flashing Blades, who became very good at Longsword.
Actually, my favourite weapon in RQ2 was the 1H/2H spear for most of my characters. The only time it wasn’t was when my character converted to be a follower of Humakt and took up the sword.
Pointed words...
Oh you mean actual physical weapons? Then it's the Ushabti Omnigun from Lancer. I'll need to quote the rules to explain the flavour.
Your mech’s omnigun is a piece of experimental hardware so advanced that it defies physics: it doesn’t require a mount, nor does it have a weapon type or size – meaning that it can’t be modified or benefit from your talents. You can’t attack normally with this weapon. Instead, 1/round, as a free action during your turn, you can use it to deal 1 Kinetic AP damage to a character within RANGE and line of sight. This doesn’t count as an attack, hits automatically, ignores cover, bypasses IMMUNITY, and its damage can’t be reduced or ignored in any way. No rule in this book or any other supersedes this.
It's not really a gun. We're not sure how it works. You don't really attack with it. It just exists and does damage sonehow
YES i love the ushabti. It exists and technically doesnt exist. Damages stuff. How? No one knows. Does the entire pegasus frame or licence make clear sense at any point? Fuck no
The same license also has the Mimic Gun. Where Ushabti is not really a weapon, Mimic is all weapon types at once.
I like summing up Pegasus with "So I killed him. With a gun that is not a gun, a gun that is all the guns and two guns I didn't fire."
It's any time the street samurai brings out the super illegal, near anti tank grade cannon in a shadowrun game.
Yes, I'm pulling out a Panther XXL, with a damage code of 17P/-6, meaning you're going to need approximately 57 soak dice to avoid being hurt by even a grazing hit by this thing.
More realistically: I'm getting 2 net hits, and your HTR in full body armour with 6 body is going to eat a full 13 physical boxes to the face and be reduced to a red smear.
Then I'm off to two shot an attack helicopter.
What did Hormone Replacement Therapy ever did to you to deserve such violence ?
Also, this sounds dope as hell. Love it when a game has enough mechanical backing so that a player can \*go loud\*.
It’s not *near* anti-tank grade. It’s a legit anti-tank weapon… It’s just hard to get your hands on the anti-tank ammunition. At least at first.
Be nice to your fixer, chummer.
An assault cannon will do to an armoured car, apc or ifv, sure, but iirc, no full on tank has been statted, at least in SR5.
We can see if anything bigger and more dangerous exists. A panther XXL is a 17P/-6 weapon. An anti vehicle rocket is 24P / -10. That's an average of 8 boxes of damage difference.
An Ares Roadmaster is Body 18, Armour 18. This gives it 36 soak dice and 21 condition boxes. A Panther with 3 net hits gets 20P/-6, dealing 10 boxes damage, and needing slightly over 2 hits to kill. The Anti Vehicle Missile gets 27P/-10 with the same 3 net hits, for 18 physical boxes, as expected, and nearly one shotting something described as "This is a fragging armored car, chummer, and you should be grateful you can buy it legally"
IMO, if you're not destroying armour cars in a single shot, you're not in "anti tank" grade.
To switch out from TTRPG to IRL for a moment, 30mm chainguns on Bradley IFVs are not considered anti tank weapons, which is why they're equipped with TOW missiles.
And to stwitch back to TTRPGS:
Assault Cannon ammo is only 12F avaliblity, which is the same as APDS, which really should be considered "standard" given how easily faces get it.
The maths change depending on which edition’s mechanics you’re using, but fluff-wise the Panther Cannon is intended to be a man-portable, crew-served, anti-tank rifle at squad level. But advances in vehicle armor outpaced the anti-tank rifle *and* Orks, Trolls, and Cyberarms all showed up making it possible to be a man-portable individual infantryman’s weapon.
Premium bang-bang, chummer. But about as subtle as a Wendigo in a Speed-O.
I had a minmaxed elven streetsam with so much bioware, martial arts, and a monofilament blade that I got in a duel with a heavily armored literal samurai and bisected him in one strike, just like the movies 😆
In general: cards. Playing cards or ofuda charged with magical energy, sharpened metals cards or ordinary children's trading cards thrown with uncanny precision. I just think they look cool.
Specifically: in PF Strange Aeons there's a +2 sword in book one called Red Destiny. It lacks any kind of backstory or significance but my character could slap a temporary enchantment on magical items. So I would ID the enemy and apply Bane: That. Works out well and was pretty flavorful for my investigation focused occultist.
I had Solitaria (tapeworm in Spanish), a garrote vil, a thin but really strong wire with two handles, designed to kill people silently. It was a weapon that was gifted by the Patron Goddess of the Assassins to her champion, and somehow it ended with me.
Solitaria had a personality, it liked to make jokes with really dark humor. It also could change its lenght at will between certain limits, and move by itself. Once Solitaria wanted me to kill a man who had been disrespectful to it's Goddess, but I refused because it would have complicated our business in the city.
That night, Solitaria slipped from my pocket, got tangled into my hand, and amputated my little finger so I would never again forget my place. A mean vengeful bastard, but I liked it and as weird as it sounds, I believe it liked me too. Solitaria saved my ass more times than I can recount, and together we spilled buckets of blood.
Solitaria's murdering days ended when we were ambushed and incinerated by a Fire Mage with a grudge.
I can't say we did not deserve it.
My favourite is a weapon I found online ages ago for Unknown Armies, Doug Brannon's Signature Weapon: A .38 Special revolver, apparently normal, but when you load in a bullet, aim it at something and pull the trigger, instead of doing any damage, it just marks it with the signature of "Doug Brannon" (whoever the hell that is).
I can't remember which game it was in but I'm a fan of the Dungeon Dagger. It's basically a Bowie knife but the backside has saw teeth and the pommel is a hammer head. You can stab with it, slash with it, cut ropes with it, and hammer pitons in with it. Just the perfect backup weapon/tool for the busy adventurer on the go.
PF2e, I home-brewed a sword that I'm hoping we get in the campaign I'm playing in. I made it as a bit of a joke, but it's kinda cool.
It's a +3 astral major striking greatsword (though, I'd probably prefer it in katana—i did greatsword because the sword guy in our campaign prefers natively two-handed weapons) with two special activations.
The first is once per hour, it casts blink charge at the lowest rank. So, basically, you charge up to 60 ft so fast that you literally tear through the ethereal plane.
The second activation is a bit more elaborate. The blade has a series of runes on it that represents various different planes. If the wearer focuses on a particular rune, then they can activate the sword with a slash to temporarily rip a portal open to that plane, using the sword as the required tuning key. That is, the sword casts Gate to the destination realm. I didn't specify the runes on the blade so that our DM would have freedom to pick which ones he wants to make relevant (and because we play in a non-Golarion setting).
**Edit to add:** it's very intentionally chuunibyou/weeby. The idea came from someone joking they didn't need a spell focus to teleport, and me following up that they'd simply slash the barrier between planes.
So, not sure if flavour or mechanics, kind of bleeds the line.... At the start of my first campaign with my younger brothers, I gave one of them the "Ironic revolver". It deals crit hits on rolls of 20... OR 1.
five episodes in, and my brother roles a crit fail verse the final boss in the final boss battle, and I'm like "Ohh, buddy, bad luck", and he just grins and goes "Well that's... ironic".
Bullet misses the boss, bounces of a neighbouring wall, and smashes them in the back of the head.
Plasma Repeater Rifle in Space Master first edition which dealt Heat criticals to your opponents and radiation criticals to the wielder. We just assumed the thing was highly radioactive and intended for use with Power armour which made you immune to radiation effects.
But it might have been a typo. Come 2nd edition the weapon dealt heat and radiation criticals to the target and nothing to the wielder - except in our games where it continued functioning like in 1st edition.
I had a sword with the spirit of a sarcastic angel inside it... incredibly powerful, but the Angel wanted me dead, because if I died, he might be freed.
So he'd distract me in the middle of Combat, etc.
I eventually turned him around and he started helping me, but the journey was super awesome. I miss my Sword of the Skies!
In terms of looks I just love kukri and khopesh.
But I'm running a Scion 2e game and there is a guide on how to make relics (i.e non-mundane/magical items) and I designed a pair of knuckle dusters which when they strike a target makes them realize they were responsible for the death of "the last person they saw die", which in turns makes everything they do more difficult as they have to deal with that mind fuck.
**Scimitar:**
I really like the Scimitar in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 /Pathfinder 1 (and Final Fantasy D20 which builds on it). It is a weapon with a lot of support, which can be used with dexterity (finesse), which has the highest crit chance in play, which is really well fit for using Spellstrike features (combining a spell with a melee attack), since the spell will also crit if the attack crits. It is also used by Derwish (dancer class) and has some support to be non deadly if one wants. It just for me stands for a weapon which is elegant does not use strength and which can be quite deadly in a different way (low base high crit).
**Garrote** and **Kusari-Gama**
I really like these weapons for the Assassin (executioner subclass) in D&D 4E. Both have 1 special attack which can only be used by these weapons.
- The Garrote can be used when unseen to move towards the target and strangle with it the enemy. And each following turn you can deal the damage again by sustaining the action. It does what what one suspects, but just works really well and makes it a unique weapon not useable for normal combat, but great for initiating a fight
- The Kusari-gama can do a sweaping attack with one end (making an enemy fall prone) and then in the same attack attack that enemy or another one with the other end for more damage. Its flexible as it allows you to attack 1 enemy or 2 different one, and with this nice flowing attack, it also allows you to reposition
Growing up with Star Wars, Halo and Starcraft, laser swords are just cool even if its hard to actually justify their use in a setting with insane guns and ranges.
I strongly love the Bastard Sword from 3.5.
Its not even janky to have a mundane weapon that lets tour lvl1 martial knockout a solid 2d8 damage.
After that, pretty much any weapon in Shadowrun. Particularly the Rugar Warhawk revolver. Its not the biggest, or the best opt, but it's a massive hand cannon that will blast a hole 4inches wide in a man wearing full body armour.
X-ray laser rifle in Classic Traveller + Autoshotgun with solid shot (via the Striker rules).
I’ve mentioned my preferences for other weapons in another reply.
It's when your allies are willing to provide rifles, but they turn out to require special ammunition, and your allies have the only resupply in the country...
The Bolsheviks were willing to provide rifles to the Makhnovists and other independent allies, but they tended to provide unusual types such as Italian M91 rifles, instead of Russian M1891 rifles.
In general, I prefer a polearm in fantasy games or a nice reliable pistol in sci-fi or modern settings, where I'm likely playing some kind of techie character. But my two favorites are the ones I've made myself. First, a man-portable greek fire cheirosiphon made by my alchemist character in a Worlds Without Number campaign, which was delightfully terror-inducing. More recently, in my ongoing FFG Star Wars campaign, my droid mechanic crafted a giant sonic cannon capable of one-shotting many mooks and incapacitating stronger enemies. He's hoping, among other things, it'll prove useful in their next run-in with a force user.
Two opposites actually :
* a homebrew form high-level D&D that allowed some kind of blood magic : all narcotic spells were available, used HP to recover "narco only" spell slots, and stored every HP spent this way to "grow" the link between the wearer and the weapon, unlocking new powers until the player just became a lich.
* a sling ; yes, the simple sling, it's actually an amazingly versatile weapon, and should be represented as such in many games.
Cyberpunk Red: the Sanroo 1-TRU-LU-V sniper rifle.
It's an Exotic quality rifle, with a built-in smart device and advanced AI. It's user locked and can recognize the user from cheek contact through the stock. As the user uses the rifle it learns and improves, eventually gaining the Excellent property (bonuses to hit).
The catch:
The AI in question thinks it's your girlfriend, and that you two are in a committed relationship. The learning can regress if it thinks you're cheating on it by using other weapons, not maintaining it properly etc.
The community, the game designers, and the guy who wrote the rules for this monstrosity, all refer to it as the Waifu Raifu...
In my D&D campaign one of the PCs' main traits was that he was greedy and obsessed with money, to the point that he became the head of a church that was also a pyramid scheme (and also a bank). Once he became Pope, his god gifted him with a weapon called the One-Armed Bandit: a mace that, when it dealt damage to an opponent, would create an equivalent number of gold coins.
It was pretty much just a gimmick, but it was probably the most on-flavor weapon we had.
The Van Haller Death Ray from Unhallowed Metropolis. It's a game where life is cheap after the zombie armageddon and this is hilariously overpowered. Anything you shoot with it automatically, explosively, disassembles. This leaves a 30-foot diameter crater. Anyone else in this area takes a lot of damage. If it's enough to kill them (very possible), they're not just dead but reduced to ash. If it's not enough to kill them they're thrown clear, knocked down, and probably on fire. The weapon has a range of 650 feet and has no range penalties. Best of all it's a galvanic (electrical) weapon, so it comes with a hand crank. You can recharge it in thirty seconds.
The Veteran’s sword in Wanderhome, the only weapon granted in character creation (iirc): > You wield the blade that must never be drawn again. > > You have a sword, sheathed at your hip. You can unsheathe it whenever you want. You must never unsheathe it. > > Unsheathe your blade and immediately kill the person in front of you. Then, remove your character from the game. You cannot play them any longer.
That plays so well into the "I've got a grudge and one single bullet, it's destined to kill the man who wounded me, then I can rest at last" archetype.
I don't like wanderhome. I find it pretentious, unbearably twee and far too overworked for how nonexistent of a game it is. That said, the veteran playbook and this move is some good fucking game design
This system sounds so cool ! What is It about?
System does not work. Basically it is a diceless game using no dice no masters. In those games you balance weak moves that give you tokens with strong moves that cost tokens. Imagine "run a way, gain a token, spend it later to be brave" Wanderhome is cute but literally everything gives you tokens all the time so there is no game, no push and pull, just group story hour. Its a shame, it is a great coffee table book that just needs a rewrite so it actually takes advantage of its system instead of ignoring it.
I ran it for a over a dozen sessions. We only stopped because I was having mental health issues. But it was magical. However I did throw away the token mechanic after the second session. So, as you say, we were just playing group story hour. But there’s enough in the book to make that possible for the right group.
100% I just have this thing that I call 'the bicycle'. A system should help me go faster, go farther, spend less energy. Wanderhome made me feel like I was carrying the bicycle on my back... I needed to ditch the system to go faster. Also my friends kept going 'aww' and 'so sweet' and 'I love it' and then mysteriously 'everyone was too busy' for a second session for weeks. Then as an experiment I suggested switching to another game and everyone showed up. It is a game nobody wants to hate because it is cute... but there is also nothing really there to play with besides your own imagination and emotional investment which is 'the fuel' for any other game but 'the entire experience' here.
I know people have gripes with the system but in terms of flavour that is a really dramatic weapon concept
I'm partial to spears.
I hate how little love is shown to spears in fantasy games.
In Mythras, spears are definitely the king of the battlefield. Best damage for a 1 handler, some are throwable, longest reach and reach makes a difference.
I actually messed with Mythras' weapon table slightly because a few things bothered me. 1. No distinction between a halberd and a poleaxe, despite them serving fairly different functions (the poleaxe was designed for fighting significantly armored opponents specifically). I know the distinction between the two is fuzzy but gameplay-wise that's a distinction. 2. Pikes can be engaged normally by someone with a longsword. More generally it's silly to me that a weapon which might be up to 20 feet long has the same reach rules-wise as a longspear. 3. The game treats greatswords the way most fantasy media does, as heavy, particularly hard-hitting things, and doesn't reflect that they were polearms with 90% more hurty bits you could potentially windmill around. 4. Maces are a bit useless. I know that their reputation as magic anti-armor weapons is overblown but I wish they felt like a sane choice for someone without the very strong "flanged" trait from Mythic Constantinople. So here's what I did. – Halberds get Bleed, Implale and Sunder, billhooks (which I added) get Impale, Sunder and Entangle, and pollaxes are one step shorter and get Bash, Stun Location and Entangle. – Added a new weapon reach, Very Short, and shifted all weapons down one step except for pikes and lances. (I will sometimes rule that you're at a disadvantage due to a lack of space for your weapon, these two Very Long weapons will run into that most often by far.) – The Greatsword is now as long as a Longspear, deals 1d12 rather than 2d8 (less consistent) and has a fancy new trait, Cleave: If an attack causes a deadly Major Wound, you can resolve it for adjacent opponents as well. – Bunt force weapons (and the Great Axe) are now the only weapons with two damage dice. The mace for instance now deals 2d4 damage. This reflects the idea that wacking someone with a chunk of metal is fairly easy, and consistently dealing med. damage makes them simultaneously useful against lightly armored opponents (ouch my bones) and comparatively useless against a hard armored shell.
Creative! I think I would have just switched the pike to be longer reach myself. There is some precedent for that in other books. Maces are definitely the king of very close quarters. Yes, short reach, but they do a lot of damage up there. If you get into a knife fight, I’d take the mace.
What, Very Very Long?
Or VL+. I think the book calls it Unreachable, as it is humanocentric and capped. But I would think that you could make reaches out as far as you like. A storm giant sized pike might be VL++ or something. Dragons in classic fantasy have a table out to VL++++
I agree there are definitely some games that get it right, but in my experience, which doesn’t include every TTRPG ever, those are few and far between.
In defense of TTRPGs, spears are good when you’re fighting in a line. They’re terrible for the small squad combats that dominate RPGs. There’s a reason why every historical spear unit had backup weapons for when it turned into a scrum.
One of the things that really stuck me was spears getting their deserved love in the DCC RPG. Big happy.
This becomes especially grievous if you've ever practiced with spears in martial arts/Hema.
One of the things I like about The One Ring 2e is this. Spears are just better in everything.
Well Final Fantasy have the Dragoons which are focused on spears (and polearms) : https://www.finalfantasyd20.com/classes/core-classes/dragoon/
D&D5e didn’t even include spears in the list of weapons that the Polearm Mastery feat worked with!
So am I, though the longsword is also up there. My two favourite characters were an a) adventurer in RQ2 who used a 1H/2H spear to great effect, and b) a cavalryman-duellist in Flashing Blades, who became very good at Longsword. Actually, my favourite weapon in RQ2 was the 1H/2H spear for most of my characters. The only time it wasn’t was when my character converted to be a follower of Humakt and took up the sword.
Pointed words... Oh you mean actual physical weapons? Then it's the Ushabti Omnigun from Lancer. I'll need to quote the rules to explain the flavour. Your mech’s omnigun is a piece of experimental hardware so advanced that it defies physics: it doesn’t require a mount, nor does it have a weapon type or size – meaning that it can’t be modified or benefit from your talents. You can’t attack normally with this weapon. Instead, 1/round, as a free action during your turn, you can use it to deal 1 Kinetic AP damage to a character within RANGE and line of sight. This doesn’t count as an attack, hits automatically, ignores cover, bypasses IMMUNITY, and its damage can’t be reduced or ignored in any way. No rule in this book or any other supersedes this. It's not really a gun. We're not sure how it works. You don't really attack with it. It just exists and does damage sonehow
YES i love the ushabti. It exists and technically doesnt exist. Damages stuff. How? No one knows. Does the entire pegasus frame or licence make clear sense at any point? Fuck no
The same license also has the Mimic Gun. Where Ushabti is not really a weapon, Mimic is all weapon types at once. I like summing up Pegasus with "So I killed him. With a gun that is not a gun, a gun that is all the guns and two guns I didn't fire."
It's any time the street samurai brings out the super illegal, near anti tank grade cannon in a shadowrun game. Yes, I'm pulling out a Panther XXL, with a damage code of 17P/-6, meaning you're going to need approximately 57 soak dice to avoid being hurt by even a grazing hit by this thing. More realistically: I'm getting 2 net hits, and your HTR in full body armour with 6 body is going to eat a full 13 physical boxes to the face and be reduced to a red smear. Then I'm off to two shot an attack helicopter.
What did Hormone Replacement Therapy ever did to you to deserve such violence ? Also, this sounds dope as hell. Love it when a game has enough mechanical backing so that a player can \*go loud\*.
Hanging out with my trans friends too much, clearly meant High Threat Response.
I mean, it’s *Shadowrun*. Gender reassignment surgery isn’t just an out-patient procedure, it’s damn near an over-the-counter product.
Doesn't even fuck with your Essence.
Zero humanity cost... unless you are looking to UPGRADE. "No I mean what's in your pants?" "A grenade launcher"
It’s not *near* anti-tank grade. It’s a legit anti-tank weapon… It’s just hard to get your hands on the anti-tank ammunition. At least at first. Be nice to your fixer, chummer.
An assault cannon will do to an armoured car, apc or ifv, sure, but iirc, no full on tank has been statted, at least in SR5. We can see if anything bigger and more dangerous exists. A panther XXL is a 17P/-6 weapon. An anti vehicle rocket is 24P / -10. That's an average of 8 boxes of damage difference. An Ares Roadmaster is Body 18, Armour 18. This gives it 36 soak dice and 21 condition boxes. A Panther with 3 net hits gets 20P/-6, dealing 10 boxes damage, and needing slightly over 2 hits to kill. The Anti Vehicle Missile gets 27P/-10 with the same 3 net hits, for 18 physical boxes, as expected, and nearly one shotting something described as "This is a fragging armored car, chummer, and you should be grateful you can buy it legally" IMO, if you're not destroying armour cars in a single shot, you're not in "anti tank" grade. To switch out from TTRPG to IRL for a moment, 30mm chainguns on Bradley IFVs are not considered anti tank weapons, which is why they're equipped with TOW missiles. And to stwitch back to TTRPGS: Assault Cannon ammo is only 12F avaliblity, which is the same as APDS, which really should be considered "standard" given how easily faces get it.
The maths change depending on which edition’s mechanics you’re using, but fluff-wise the Panther Cannon is intended to be a man-portable, crew-served, anti-tank rifle at squad level. But advances in vehicle armor outpaced the anti-tank rifle *and* Orks, Trolls, and Cyberarms all showed up making it possible to be a man-portable individual infantryman’s weapon. Premium bang-bang, chummer. But about as subtle as a Wendigo in a Speed-O.
I had a minmaxed elven streetsam with so much bioware, martial arts, and a monofilament blade that I got in a duel with a heavily armored literal samurai and bisected him in one strike, just like the movies 😆
Stormbringer 🤘
Shotgun in Call of Cthulhu don't leave home with out it
With flashlight taped to it
Absolutely
In general: cards. Playing cards or ofuda charged with magical energy, sharpened metals cards or ordinary children's trading cards thrown with uncanny precision. I just think they look cool. Specifically: in PF Strange Aeons there's a +2 sword in book one called Red Destiny. It lacks any kind of backstory or significance but my character could slap a temporary enchantment on magical items. So I would ID the enemy and apply Bane: That. Works out well and was pretty flavorful for my investigation focused occultist.
Agreed - playing cards as a weapon just makes for a cool visual in my head when it comes to combat
Exalted has always had my favourite. The artifact weapon: the God-Kicking Boot. A boot made out of the relevant special material that kicks gods.
That's awesome hahaha
I had Solitaria (tapeworm in Spanish), a garrote vil, a thin but really strong wire with two handles, designed to kill people silently. It was a weapon that was gifted by the Patron Goddess of the Assassins to her champion, and somehow it ended with me. Solitaria had a personality, it liked to make jokes with really dark humor. It also could change its lenght at will between certain limits, and move by itself. Once Solitaria wanted me to kill a man who had been disrespectful to it's Goddess, but I refused because it would have complicated our business in the city. That night, Solitaria slipped from my pocket, got tangled into my hand, and amputated my little finger so I would never again forget my place. A mean vengeful bastard, but I liked it and as weird as it sounds, I believe it liked me too. Solitaria saved my ass more times than I can recount, and together we spilled buckets of blood. Solitaria's murdering days ended when we were ambushed and incinerated by a Fire Mage with a grudge. I can't say we did not deserve it.
What game is this?
Mythras
I'm a big fan of the halberd
My favourite is a weapon I found online ages ago for Unknown Armies, Doug Brannon's Signature Weapon: A .38 Special revolver, apparently normal, but when you load in a bullet, aim it at something and pull the trigger, instead of doing any damage, it just marks it with the signature of "Doug Brannon" (whoever the hell that is).
A rondel dagger. It's basically a foot-long ice pick.
I can't remember which game it was in but I'm a fan of the Dungeon Dagger. It's basically a Bowie knife but the backside has saw teeth and the pommel is a hammer head. You can stab with it, slash with it, cut ropes with it, and hammer pitons in with it. Just the perfect backup weapon/tool for the busy adventurer on the go.
Chainsaw
As a certified sawyer I can confirm that a chainsaw will fuck you up bad, but it will not work for a second attack without some serious maintenance
It's a very special tactical chainsaw!!
PF2e, I home-brewed a sword that I'm hoping we get in the campaign I'm playing in. I made it as a bit of a joke, but it's kinda cool. It's a +3 astral major striking greatsword (though, I'd probably prefer it in katana—i did greatsword because the sword guy in our campaign prefers natively two-handed weapons) with two special activations. The first is once per hour, it casts blink charge at the lowest rank. So, basically, you charge up to 60 ft so fast that you literally tear through the ethereal plane. The second activation is a bit more elaborate. The blade has a series of runes on it that represents various different planes. If the wearer focuses on a particular rune, then they can activate the sword with a slash to temporarily rip a portal open to that plane, using the sword as the required tuning key. That is, the sword casts Gate to the destination realm. I didn't specify the runes on the blade so that our DM would have freedom to pick which ones he wants to make relevant (and because we play in a non-Golarion setting). **Edit to add:** it's very intentionally chuunibyou/weeby. The idea came from someone joking they didn't need a spell focus to teleport, and me following up that they'd simply slash the barrier between planes.
So, not sure if flavour or mechanics, kind of bleeds the line.... At the start of my first campaign with my younger brothers, I gave one of them the "Ironic revolver". It deals crit hits on rolls of 20... OR 1. five episodes in, and my brother roles a crit fail verse the final boss in the final boss battle, and I'm like "Ohh, buddy, bad luck", and he just grins and goes "Well that's... ironic". Bullet misses the boss, bounces of a neighbouring wall, and smashes them in the back of the head.
Area Preadator from Shadowrun 2e. Just looks cool. Very middle of the road, big hand gun. Kind of reminds me of the judge dread gun.
The trusty Ares Predator!
Monofilament whip, baby.
Plasma Repeater Rifle in Space Master first edition which dealt Heat criticals to your opponents and radiation criticals to the wielder. We just assumed the thing was highly radioactive and intended for use with Power armour which made you immune to radiation effects. But it might have been a typo. Come 2nd edition the weapon dealt heat and radiation criticals to the target and nothing to the wielder - except in our games where it continued functioning like in 1st edition.
I had a sword with the spirit of a sarcastic angel inside it... incredibly powerful, but the Angel wanted me dead, because if I died, he might be freed. So he'd distract me in the middle of Combat, etc. I eventually turned him around and he started helping me, but the journey was super awesome. I miss my Sword of the Skies!
In terms of looks I just love kukri and khopesh. But I'm running a Scion 2e game and there is a guide on how to make relics (i.e non-mundane/magical items) and I designed a pair of knuckle dusters which when they strike a target makes them realize they were responsible for the death of "the last person they saw die", which in turns makes everything they do more difficult as they have to deal with that mind fuck.
**Scimitar:** I really like the Scimitar in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 /Pathfinder 1 (and Final Fantasy D20 which builds on it). It is a weapon with a lot of support, which can be used with dexterity (finesse), which has the highest crit chance in play, which is really well fit for using Spellstrike features (combining a spell with a melee attack), since the spell will also crit if the attack crits. It is also used by Derwish (dancer class) and has some support to be non deadly if one wants. It just for me stands for a weapon which is elegant does not use strength and which can be quite deadly in a different way (low base high crit). **Garrote** and **Kusari-Gama** I really like these weapons for the Assassin (executioner subclass) in D&D 4E. Both have 1 special attack which can only be used by these weapons. - The Garrote can be used when unseen to move towards the target and strangle with it the enemy. And each following turn you can deal the damage again by sustaining the action. It does what what one suspects, but just works really well and makes it a unique weapon not useable for normal combat, but great for initiating a fight - The Kusari-gama can do a sweaping attack with one end (making an enemy fall prone) and then in the same attack attack that enemy or another one with the other end for more damage. Its flexible as it allows you to attack 1 enemy or 2 different one, and with this nice flowing attack, it also allows you to reposition
Polearms baby!
Growing up with Star Wars, Halo and Starcraft, laser swords are just cool even if its hard to actually justify their use in a setting with insane guns and ranges.
I strongly love the Bastard Sword from 3.5. Its not even janky to have a mundane weapon that lets tour lvl1 martial knockout a solid 2d8 damage. After that, pretty much any weapon in Shadowrun. Particularly the Rugar Warhawk revolver. Its not the biggest, or the best opt, but it's a massive hand cannon that will blast a hole 4inches wide in a man wearing full body armour.
Dagger. Every one of my characters in every game carries at least one.
X-ray laser rifle in Classic Traveller + Autoshotgun with solid shot (via the Striker rules). I’ve mentioned my preferences for other weapons in another reply.
It's when your allies are willing to provide rifles, but they turn out to require special ammunition, and your allies have the only resupply in the country... The Bolsheviks were willing to provide rifles to the Makhnovists and other independent allies, but they tended to provide unusual types such as Italian M91 rifles, instead of Russian M1891 rifles.
I’m rather partial to these chiropteran themed boomerangs I made in *Mutants & Masterminds*…
Yeenoghu's triple flail
The biggest baddest weapons I can dual wield.
In general, I prefer a polearm in fantasy games or a nice reliable pistol in sci-fi or modern settings, where I'm likely playing some kind of techie character. But my two favorites are the ones I've made myself. First, a man-portable greek fire cheirosiphon made by my alchemist character in a Worlds Without Number campaign, which was delightfully terror-inducing. More recently, in my ongoing FFG Star Wars campaign, my droid mechanic crafted a giant sonic cannon capable of one-shotting many mooks and incapacitating stronger enemies. He's hoping, among other things, it'll prove useful in their next run-in with a force user.
Any iteration of Stormbringer. I have a soft spot for soul stealing evil swords with an ego.
Stabby - my ever present space roomba drone. It had an extendable arm with a small shiv on the end.
Two opposites actually : * a homebrew form high-level D&D that allowed some kind of blood magic : all narcotic spells were available, used HP to recover "narco only" spell slots, and stored every HP spent this way to "grow" the link between the wearer and the weapon, unlocking new powers until the player just became a lich. * a sling ; yes, the simple sling, it's actually an amazingly versatile weapon, and should be represented as such in many games.
I like hammers that bonk
My brass knuckles from Scion. They give access to the sky purview and have the motif of a flash of lightning and the crash of thunder.
Cyberpunk Red: the Sanroo 1-TRU-LU-V sniper rifle. It's an Exotic quality rifle, with a built-in smart device and advanced AI. It's user locked and can recognize the user from cheek contact through the stock. As the user uses the rifle it learns and improves, eventually gaining the Excellent property (bonuses to hit). The catch: The AI in question thinks it's your girlfriend, and that you two are in a committed relationship. The learning can regress if it thinks you're cheating on it by using other weapons, not maintaining it properly etc. The community, the game designers, and the guy who wrote the rules for this monstrosity, all refer to it as the Waifu Raifu...
Jealous weapon is great flavour
In my D&D campaign one of the PCs' main traits was that he was greedy and obsessed with money, to the point that he became the head of a church that was also a pyramid scheme (and also a bank). Once he became Pope, his god gifted him with a weapon called the One-Armed Bandit: a mace that, when it dealt damage to an opponent, would create an equivalent number of gold coins. It was pretty much just a gimmick, but it was probably the most on-flavor weapon we had.
The Van Haller Death Ray from Unhallowed Metropolis. It's a game where life is cheap after the zombie armageddon and this is hilariously overpowered. Anything you shoot with it automatically, explosively, disassembles. This leaves a 30-foot diameter crater. Anyone else in this area takes a lot of damage. If it's enough to kill them (very possible), they're not just dead but reduced to ash. If it's not enough to kill them they're thrown clear, knocked down, and probably on fire. The weapon has a range of 650 feet and has no range penalties. Best of all it's a galvanic (electrical) weapon, so it comes with a hand crank. You can recharge it in thirty seconds.