In HoH:S on page 38 one can find the spell guidelines for throwing a stone at one's target dealing LVL of spell amount of damage as base.
In my campaign, I have a player who wishes to create a Re Te spell in which he throws a sword at his enemies. But he became distraught when I said that he needs an extra magnitude for affecting metal weapons as per ARM5 155. Where he sulked that adding 1 magnitude would hampen his penetration and make this spell inefficient and instead decide to use stone swords as it will not be an additional magnitude.
My questions to this story comes here:
Would you allow the spell without that extra magnitude or would you hold the +1 Magnitude to affect metal instead of stone?
Would you give any special benefit as it is a sharp metal sword that is thrown?
Would you think it would be appropiate to say that the sword has a greater chance of shattering if it was a stone sword hitting a hard object (shield, metal armor, building)?
If the spell is using Finesse, it doesn't need to Penetrate.
Metal absolutely does require the extra magnitude.
If the spell is using Finesse to substitute for a skill, a thrown weapon skill in this case, it is absolutely reasonable to rule that just as using the mundane skill is more difficult, so too the Finesse roll is more difficult.
He'd be much better off hurling a stone spear!
BTW, stone swords and spears should not do nearly as much cutting or piercing damage as iron or even bronze versions, especially versus armor. (Suggested rule: Soak from armor is doubled. Better yet, just treat it as a hurled stone object.)
If you want the stone sword to shatter, then sure. I would recommend only doing this when the character rolls up or botches. Extra die rolls suck. But if the spell is not using Finesse and is resisted, I recommend not worrying about it, unless there's a botch, in which case let the chips fall where they may!
Erik's spell looks good.
FWIW, I'm surprised that there are no spell guidelines for wielding weapons with Rego and Finesse.
Probably because there's no practical use for this. The weapons would run into magic resistance, and against peasants throwing rocks or pillums of fire is much easier.
Quick thought - Throwing a sword is an odd thing to do. It's very cinematic but practically a sword isn't balanced at all for being a projectile and you're unlikely to hit anything with the blade, .. Well unless it's guided by magic. Reducing the chance to hit properly seems reasonable if using finesse.
If the spell is guiding the sword then it's all viable.
Entilzha, the guidelines in HoH:S are for finesse based attacks, so penetration should be moot, but aiming is problematic as people have already suggested and the ease factors to hit should be pretty high.
So by adding a sight range for +10 levels, i can toss any sword that I can see that is not held and hurl it. Say I see a sword 30 paces away and an enemy stand 15 feet further away, I can use sight range to toss that sword at the enemy who will be within zero range increments?
Yes you certainly could make that spell, I don't see any reason why not. You could make an argument that the aiming roll should be more difficult in this case, I don't know if I would.
I'd argue that the damage on the sword is...excessive.
The base 15 guideline from HoH:Societates is +15 damage with a range increment of 20 paces. Why is the sword in the Indolent Duelist of Vilano +20? Because it's a sword and you're applying some part of a damage bonus the weapon normally has? Seems inconsistent with Invisible Sling of Vilano which does +5 damage, but doesn't include the sling bullet's damage, which would be another +4. Also the +1 to affect metal shouldn't also get a damage increment bump...
It should be added that there is no such thing as a stone sword, because stone swords would shatter when they are used to any degree, being essentially crystalline instead of malleable as metal, and their fragility is a function of their length- which is why an axe head is much easier than a long blade to gain a mechanical advantage with stone.
As stated above the increased damage is for two reasons; to compensate for its decreased accuracy and because sharp things are inherently more damaging than non-sharp things of the same mass moving at the same velocity.
given the same aiming roll (excepting aiming the penalty caused by the spell) and the same defense score Indolent Duelist of Vilano will create a damage total 2 greater than a rock throwing spell 5 levels lower created from the same guideline. It will also miss on three results where the lower level rock throwing spell won't.
I think that a better argument could be made that the spell is under powered than over powered.
I think you could argue that finesse based attacks are under powered.
But my point is that the spell is based on something other than the RAW. You're adding something to the spell to increase damage, because you think it should add damage. And while that's a reasonable proposition, it probably fairly applies to all ammunition used with the finesse attack guidelines, and not just swords, specifically.
Finesse based damage is under powered, because Attack Advantage doesn't exist, and you have to roll twice, once for hitting and once for damage with opposed rolls for defense and soak. There's a lot of potential for botching there, and exploding is often mitigated due to the large amounts of soak combatants can have.
Can you back that up with something other than core book page 116? It makes more sense to me to treat invisible sling of vilano and this spell as missile weapons.
Can you backup your interpretation with something in the rules?
So, page 86 says that what happens when an attack hits is specified within the spell. If a bullet flung with Invisible Sling of Vilano hits, the bullet inflicts +5 damage. It doesn't say to calculate the finesse based attack and use the derived totals to determine Attack Advantage or resolve as mundane combat, adding 5 to the damage inflicted.
That's not to say I'm against your interpretation, I'm just saying that the RAW is pretty clear here. Invisible sling of Vilano and other aimed attacks are checked with rolls at the following points: if they are cast successfully, then to see if they hit, and then finally a roll for damage. It would be arguably simpler to use Attack Advantage, and it would provide some additional benefit to improving Finesse as an indirect means of increasing damage, but those are house rules to adopt, not RAW.
"treat as an attack total" added to the obvious requirement that one can not adjudicate a spell without reference as to what it does doesn't seem as crystal clear to me as it seems to be to you.
I should probably change my spell to eliminate the ambiguity.
Pretty clear that you use Finesse to generate an attack total to see if it hits. For the result of the hit you resolve it per the spell, and the guidelines upon which it is based. They say do +X damage, not add damage bonus to attack advantage.
For base level comparing a +x damage versus a spell that uses attack advantage we are comparing attack advantage to the result of a stress die added to both the spell damage (p116) and the soak (p181). It is clearly more advantageous to use the attack advantage. I should adjust the base level or damage by a magnitude to compensate.
Erik, I do mot like the name of your spell. It should be "Indolent Duelist of Andreva" the name of the magus who invented it. Vilano had nothing to do with it. Why does he get credit? Does Andreva have no pride or ego?
