Breath Weapon uses what Skill now?

[Sanctaphrax]

Mm. If you deny yourself a capability that the game allows you access to, I think you ought to get FP for it.

But it does appear that you're right about parrying with natural weapons.

The guy with Fists-based flame breath and no Toughness can't parry as well as the guy with Fists-based knuckle blades and no Toughness.

That problem is built into the rules for parrying. It exists for characters with canon Claws too. And for Pure Mortals.

I'd kinda like to do something about it, but aside from just houseruling it I don't know how. It's beyond the scope of the custom power.

Any suggestions?

I guess I could add an addendum to Natural Weaponry saying that it always counts as justification for a Fists parry. But that's just heavy-handed and weird.

[sinker]

Agreed, that would be a weird solution.

But it does appear that you're right about parrying with natural weapons.

The guy with Fists-based flame breath and no Toughness can't parry as well as the guy with Fists-based knuckle blades and no Toughness.

That problem is built into the rules for parrying. It exists for characters with canon Claws too. And for Pure Mortals.

The reason why it's coming up now though is that the way it appears from your power, the guy with fire breath (although fire breath is a poor example in this case because your power clearly states that you can't take Defensive weaponry and Ranged weaponry together) can pick up the ability to parry by paying a refresh. Which is completely RAW for a stunt, but a little under-powered for a power and a little weird overall.

I just took a step back for a second and realized something though. This isn't my argument. I actually have no problems with Defensive weaponry as it stands (other than the fact that I'm still not sure if it's worth the refresh as I outlined a few posts ago and as you pointed out earlier that's a personal issue). I'm just incredibly good at playing the devil's advocate, and that's what I saw other people saying.

[Sanctaphrax]

Oh, goddammit.

Defensive Weaponry and Ranged Weaponry are supposed to be compatible.

Bit of a failure on my part there.

Anyway, regardless of your true opinion, I appreciate the feedback. It's useful.

Can you think of a minor benefit that I could add to Defensive Weaponry that would make it feel more worthwhile?

Because with this many people saying it isn't worth a whole refresh, I feel as though I ought to listen.

Maybe letting you make normal unarmed attacks with Weapons too?

[sinker]

I'm honestly pretty conflicted as to whether it's worth the refresh or not. Again, from a purely mechanical perspective it's pretty powerful. It moves an entire skill under another skill. I just don't see it as being real practical.

[Sanctaphrax]

Edited again.

Renamed Defensive Weaponry and expanded it to let you use Weapons for all unarmed attacks, barring compels. It's not actually a terribly significant upgrade, but it makes the upgrade look more impressive.

It's not a perfect solution, but since no one has proposed a better one...

Also expanded the array of options for area attacks.

I think I've covered pretty much every natural weapon I can think of, now. So this power might just be complete.

Of course, it has a truly excessive number of options now. But they're all very simple. I don't think it'll be a problem.

Don't hesitate to point out if there's something wrong, though.

Crossposting this to Custom Powers thread.

NATURAL WEAPONRY [-1]
Description: Your body contains or can produce some kind of weapon or attack.
Note: You have to pick one type of weapon (eg. fire breath, metal claws, three-foot tusks) when you take this power.
Skills Affected: Fists, Weapons, Guns
Effects:
Natural Weaponry. Your body contains a weapon with a rating of 2. This weapon has a no range, is not capable of spray attacks, benefits from Strength powers, and is wielded with the Fists skill.
Potent Weaponry [-1]. Your natural weapon has a rating of 4.
Integrated Weaponry [-1]. You may use your Weapons skill to attack, defend, maneuver, and block unarmed or with your natural weapon.
Ranged Weaponry [-1]. Your natural weapon has a range of three zone and is capable of spray attacks. It may be wielded with the Fists, Weapons, or Guns skill. It cannot be used with the defense trapping of Weapons unless you possess the Integrated Weaponry upgrade.
Area Weaponry [-1]. Your natural weapon may be used to make zonewide attacks.
Selective Weaponry [-1]. (Requires Area Weaponry) You do not harm yourself when making a zonewide attack against your own zone with your natural weapon.
Explosive Weaponry [+1]. (Requires Area Weaponry) Your natural weapon may not be used to make attacks that are not zone-wide.
Imprecise Weaponry [+1] (Requires Selective Weaponry) You suffer a -2 penalty to the accuracy of any zonewide attack that you make with your natural weapon.

[Selrach]

First, does Area Weaponry require Ranged Weapon?

Second, I feel like this might be a little under powered...because the advantage of a breath weapon is supposed to be that you can use it indefinitely, but I feel like that would rarely come up.  I humbly plug my suggestion for having the Weapon Value of Breath Weapon scaling off one of the lesser used skills like Endurance, Might or even Conviction. This would make the ability scale better into later refresh and make it about equal to channeling in base damage.

Third, why can the integrated weapons Power only run off Weapons? I mean if my natural weapon is eye beams, wouldn't it make  more sense to defend with Guns and for claws wouldn't it make sense to defend with Fists? I think trying to separate out the different trappings into different skills  is a noble pursuit, but not really worth it. This makes the powers less useful as it requires a player to tie more skills into its use and by extension makes it even more expensive.

Fourth, I laughed at the idea of Melee Weapon with the explosive power but no ranged. 

P.S. Eye beams still rule.

[wyvern]

Explosive melee weaponry would be perfect for something like a phoenix, though!  Just make sure to pick up immunity to fire.  But you were going to do that anyway, right?

[Sanctaphrax]

1. Not anymore! Elephants should be able to trample crowds if they want. (Imprecise Natural Weaponry, -2 Refresh.)

2. As I said before, I don't want to make this a complex multi-skill power. It should just give you a weapon, period. Also: infinite ammo is not the big draw of Breath Weapon. Being armed while unarmed is. Also: Channeling should be more damaging than Breath Weapon, barring Strength/stunts.

3. Integrated Weapons is optional. If you are using a Fists weapon like claws, you don't need it. And Guns has no defense trapping. That is why it is only for Weapons. (Not sure what you mean about separating the trappings into different skills. This power never uses more than one skill.)

4. Believe it or not, making that possible was one of the main reasons for this edit. A living tornado would use Potent Explosive Selective Natural Weaponry at a cost of 3 refresh.

PS: They do indeed.

[Selrach]

@2: Channeling does do more damage potentially...You get focus items and you can take mental stress and/or consequences to further turbocharge it. What I meant was that it would be about equivalent to a base evocation.  As for the multi-skill question, every time I have seen the power posted there has been nothing from stopping you from taking all the upgrades. I assumed that ranged attacks would default to fists and ranged to guns. Are you saying if I make a character with Claws and then later he discovers he can shoot them like missiles, that this ranged attack uses Fists?

@3: Why can't it add a defense trapping to another skill? Also the name bugs me, because to me it implies that claws are not part of a character's body. Also it seems a bit redundant unless you really want to use Weapons. From the way this power is described you can just use fist and this power justifies blocking most attacks ( my claws are diamond hard or I'll just blind him with my eye beams). I can understand what you are going for with this Power flavorwise, but I am not sure if an Weapon 2 that can not be disarmed and is always with you is worth 2 refresh. As for the name maybe something like, Weaponlike Weapons or something. Maybe Weapon Shaped? Dunno needs thinking.

@4: Had no problem with this, it is just when I read the power the first thing that popped into my head was an exploding fist, which made me giggle.

P.S. Damn right.

[sinker]

Are you saying if I make a character with Claws and then later he discovers he can shoot them like missiles, that this ranged attack uses Fists?

Makes sense to me.

@3: Why can't it add a defense trapping to another skill? Also the name bugs me, because to me it implies that claws are not part of a character's body. Also it seems a bit redundant unless you really want to use Weapons. From the way this power is described you can just use fist and this power justifies blocking most attacks ( my claws are diamond hard or I'll just blind him with my eye beams). I can understand what you are going for with this Power flavorwise, but I am not sure if an Weapon 2 that can not be disarmed and is always with you is worth 2 refresh. As for the name maybe something like, Weaponlike Weapons or something. Maybe Weapon Shaped? Dunno needs thinking.

You should read the last two pages. It's all about whether or not Integrated weapons/Defensive weaponry works. I'm still not sure.

[Selrach]

I have read the last two pages

Funnily enough, it seems we are mostly sitting at the same place on this...The I Dunno let me think about it stage. Basically I was just throwing in my .02 on this...

[Sanctaphrax]

2. Yes, you can attack at range with Fists. Superman's eyebeams are probably Fists-based, since to the best of my knowledge he has no skill with weaponry of any sort.

And this power is not supposed to equal the damage output of Channeling. Pretty much nothing is. There are good reasons for that.

3. Yes, the name sucks. If you have a better idea, I want to hear it. Bear in mind that any idea needs to be expressible in this format: Potent Ranged X Natural Weaponry. For convenience reasons.

This power is balanced against being unarmed, not against being armed. This can make it weak in games where players can use whatever weapons they choose without worry of losing them. This is unfortunate, but it's better than the alternatives.

It's not impossible to add a defense trapping to Guns, but there is no logical reason for this power to do that.

The main benefit of Integrated Weaponry isn't really the weapon 2, it's the unification of Fists and Weapons.

[Selrach]

I think I wanted to have the option to add a defense trapping to Guns because I wanted to...So this point will no longer be pursued.

Hmm will think on better name for Weaponlike Natural Weapons.

I still think scaling the weapon value off a skill has some merit, but I fluffed my defense roll (ran out of ideas and arguments) and so I am taken out of this conflict with the moderate consequence "Silenced with Logic" for now anyway...