Thursday, March 3, 2011

The Auger

This terrible weapon has killed many fell beasts.  Once a foe is hit with it, it is slowly, inexorably screwed in until death results.  The wielder is defenceless while turning it.

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Roll to hit.  Death in 10 rounds. Wielder has unarmored AC and can't use a shield.

Haven't tried this one in game.  what do you think?  It seems the key is how many rounds, too short and it's a death ray, too long and it's useless unless you're fighting Galactus.

5 comments:

  1. I think the longest combat I've run was something like 8 rounds.

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  2. Crap, I'm probably thinking of all the back and forth between 6ish so players and the foe rounds.

    So, what do you think might work here 5 rounds? 3?

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  3. Maybe you establish how many "screws" are required to kill a creature - perhaps each screw of the augur drains a level. A foe trying to resist it gets a save each round but can't do anything else - and his chance to save gets lower as he loses levels/HD. If he rolls particularly well on a save (beats it by X amount), he reverses it - doesn't return a drained level, but does get the augur on step closer to being removed. This would take somebody out of the fight, cause lasting damage, potentially kill the victim and create some tension during combat.

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  4. That's more complicated than I was shooting for. No escape from this except to knock off/kill the wielder.

    Although, you do give me the idea that instead of a set number of rounds to death it could take x number of rounds, where x is the target's HD. That works great for big creatures, but seems worse for little things, a death ray.

    Although, maybe for little things that would be balanced by the fact it isn't worth opening yourself up to attacks as wielder if you can just kill it with your sword in two rounds. Thanks for the comment.

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  5. Gives a whole new meaning to the expression "Auger in".

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