Off beat weapons!

[The Artist Formerly]

When I was formulating a package of tricks for Resonence, a Analitical Genius character using a super light power armor system in combination with sound based super science, Daniel Stoker suggested using sub sonics to aggitate air into a wind rush (as the spell) effect. It made sense and I liked having a nonlethal way to deal with group attacks. So I added to a list of proposed design mods for my armor suit.

The basic suit was the mass market cyber wire exoskeleton that Archmedies sells, plus a micro fusion power plant (with the reduced price) and a ultra basic flight system and sound computer. The GM allowed me to upgrade a bit and strech my budget for style rather then power. Very cool.

But I'm finding that I'm using Daniel's suggested weapon system more then any other at my disposal. When I play Heroes, I try very hard not to kill. Rule bending and combat god style building is pretty easy for me, D&D or Rifts, making stuff extra crispy dead takes little imagination for me. Part of why I moved on to psionics in Rifts. If I'm going to play Heroes Unlimited, I want to do something that doesn't rack up a body count. It's more engaging of my imagination.

The coolness of this weapon is that it allows me a nifty variable threat response. I've used it to contain a rioting crowd, keeping them from harming themselves after they got all out of hand, and I used it to keep a leaping nasty demonish critter from tearing my head off and crapping down the hole where it used to be. With the crowd, I turned it into a wide area effect and made approching dangerous without turning rocks and broken glass into shrapnel. And against a leaping opponet, one trying to remove my head, a tight concentraited beam sent him flying into a concreate wall. It's a really useful weapon.

So I was wondering, who else has a unusal weapon or combat tricks they'd like to share.

[Sir_Spirit]

Sound?
Bah!
Anyone can use sound as a weapon, but how many can use silence as one?
And just to be clear, I dont' mean as a tool for sneaking up upon people, but as a direct weapon......

[ZEN]

If by Silence you mean anti-sound, thats a sort of molecular dampening field in effect.. yeah if it was strong enough it could cause something like Hyperdensity from PU1, stopping the molecules in their tracks.. if it was strong enough to stop atomic particals in their tracks, well that would be a dangerous weapon indeed.

[Jefffar]

I had an NPC in one of my games who used everything as a weapon. He'd throw manhole covers at the PCs, smash them with parking meters and once dropped a car on one. Superhuman strength is a nice thing.

But I doubt that's what we're thinking about with this thread.

I've had a few characters who've played with the rather interesting selection of less lethal shotgun ammunition in their weapons.

[Scooter the Outlaw]

At current, I'm trying to get a few weapons for my HU2 character 'Downforce'. Because one of her super powers is Sense Death & Destruction, she is incapable of killing people (seeing the blood on her own hands would drive her insane), and so has to devise techniques for dealing with them in alternative ways. You end up with some pretty 'different' weapons.

The first thing I want is the Clay Bazooka (for those familiar with Z Gundam, yes, I'm a Rick Dias fan). This is pretty simple; it's a bazooka with a clip at the back that fires giant cartridges of gooey stuff. The stuff, whatever it may end up being (fire foam is starting to look attractive, but if anybody knows anything that will be sticky, gross, immobilizing, and even temporarily blinding, by all means tell me!), should provide a convenient (for me) yet annoying (for the target) method of slowing down villians without pumping a bunch of bullets into them.

Secondly, I'm looking to make the 'Cardiac Arrest Rifle'. This thing is made to look as badass as possible, like a modern anti-tank rifles but with a way bigger barrel (something in the range of 60-90mm, just to look ridiculously huge). The thing is, instead of firing a bullet, all it does is make a lot of noise, smoke, and look scary. The effect I'm looking for is similar to the Big Bore guns in Rifts; when you point it at the enemy, they roll against Horror Factor; when the triggers gets pulled and you don't think you dodged, just the fear of getting hit by such a huge bullet makes you poopy yourself and lose a melee action or two. It's strictly intimidation, but will provide a convenient distraction.

The other thing I have in mind right now is an hexagon canister; when thrown into the air, it keeps itself paralel to the ground (like a frisbee) and fires six cords out to cover a fair area (30-50 ft., hopefully). Pulled behind and between these cords is some kind of high-durability net. When the net is over the bad guys, Downforce uses gravity manipulation to suffenly make it incredibly heavy and drop it on the targets in the area, holding them all down.

Otherwise, I'm always looking for ideas so I'm sure I'll be back to this thread to rip you good people off.

[acreRake]

... a bazooka with a clip at the back that fires giant cartridges of gooey stuff. The stuff, whatever it may end up being (fire foam is starting to look attractive, but if anybody knows anything that will be sticky, gross, immobilizing, and even temporarily blinding, by all means tell me!), should provide a convenient (for me) yet annoying (for the target) method of slowing down villians without pumping a bunch of bullets into them.

This reminded me of one of Mister Bionic's weapons. He was a fairly goofy character from the TMNT Adventures book (the one with the death traps.) His non-lethal weapons really gave a 3 person team of HU characters a run for their money. Especially nasty was when he fired the "goo gun" into the window of a players sports car, he never could get that stuff off.

ANYway, i had a weapons/hardware character a loooong time ago that used an all-terrain snowmobile and weapons based on creating supercold temperatures. One weapon was a gun that froze the air into supercold blades around a metal pellet and fired via magnetism.

[The Artist Formerly]

The first thing I want is the Clay Bazooka (for those familiar with Z Gundam, yes, I'm a Rick Dias fan). This is pretty simple; it's a bazooka with a clip at the back that fires giant cartridges of gooey stuff. The stuff, whatever it may end up being (fire foam is starting to look attractive, but if anybody knows anything that will be sticky, gross, immobilizing, and even temporarily blinding, by all means tell me!), should provide a convenient (for me) yet annoying (for the target) method of slowing down villians without pumping a bunch of bullets into them.

The Spaf-foe 650 Pie Gun of Darkwing Duck fame, with expand-O Wham-O pies!

Hehe. Maybe a rotary grenade launcher such as the one from Terminator 2. More concealable then shoulder mounted weapon, and 40mm grenade is still pretty intimidating and has good range. Plus you don't need to modify a delivery system they already have grenades that launch gas and fire supprecent foam. And if push comes to shove you can always load it with explosive rounds too, making the weapon a bit more flexible to your needs. It's a low tech weapon, though military in nature, very poor armies and para-military forces are able to deploy them in one fashion or another. Since you're not playing a tech head, that makes it more attainable and you're character will be better able to maintain it.

For the warhead, what you need is 'super science' foam that's sticky and expands when in contact with air. That way you'd have two methods of use. A air burst style to muck up an enemy's position (think 'group of thugs firing guns at you from behind a parked car' kind deal) and direct impact version. It will sting the target like hell from getting hit from the projectile, but like a bean bag shotgun launch the damage isn't as sever as the knock down. And once you've knocked them down, the goo from the round then helps restrain them. The foam is a bit super sciencey, but it's a super hero game, and everyone from Mr. Fantasic to Iron man to the Web, to those guys from the DC animated shows who fly around on playing cards have used something of that sort so it's a pretty stock aspect of the super science/hero game.

Plus you can always use tear gas, Palladium as of yet still unname knock out gas, explosive rounds, fire retardant and I'll bet their is a flare variant for this weapon. One gun that helps you deal with six differant functions. Handy, no?

Secondly, I'm looking to make the 'Cardiac Arrest Rifle'. This thing is made to look as badass as possible, like a modern anti-tank rifles but with a way bigger barrel (something in the range of 60-90mm, just to look ridiculously huge). The thing is, instead of firing a bullet, all it does is make a lot of noise, smoke, and look scary. The effect I'm looking for is similar to the Big Bore guns in Rifts; when you point it at the enemy, they roll against Horror Factor; when the triggers gets pulled and you don't think you dodged, just the fear of getting hit by such a huge bullet makes you poopy yourself and lose a melee action or two. It's strictly intimidation, but will provide a convenient distraction.

Good. While I was working on Resonence's arsenal, one of the links I found was to a sound generator that agitates people, make them afraid. Intended for home security. I use it for crowd control and talking punks with guns out of making the most painful mistake of their lives. Again, you'd be streching normal tech, but it's beliveable, plausable, so it shouldn't be too big a deal, even if you're not a gear head character. Mine generates a horror factor of 11, which I can either just emit (everyone in range feels it from me) or I can direct a beam of it at a single person.

Another idea might be to make the gun generate a concussive blast of air or fire something like a Nerf Football to knock them down. Again, sting like hell, but shouldn't be harmful in any meaningful way.

[Sir_Spirit]

How about Static Marbles?
They bounce aroudn liek rubber balls but then start stickignto anything that moves, the more/faster is moves they more they stick to it.
Very good for taking down speedsters....

[Jefffar]

Did I just hear someone refer to a 40 mm repeating grenade launcher as concealable?


Anywhoosits, there's a 40 mm round on the market now that basically fires a hand held stun gun that smacks into the target, sticks a couple of prongs in to stay there, and delivers one jolt strong enugh to keep the guy on the ground about every 2 seconds for about 15 minutes . . . or something like that.

The beauty of this sytem is you don't need to keep sending pulses in with the saser, you can reload the grenade launcher and deal with the next target.

[The Artist Formerly]

Did I just hear someone refer to a 40 mm repeating grenade launcher as concealable?

In comparison to a shoulder mounted weapon, yeah. It's trench-coatable.

Anywhoosits, there's a 40 mm round on the market now that basically fires a hand held stun gun that smacks into the target, sticks a couple of prongs in to stay there, and delivers one jolt strong enugh to keep the guy on the ground about every 2 seconds for about 15 minutes . . . or something like that.

The beauty of this sytem is you don't need to keep sending pulses in with the saser, you can reload the grenade launcher and deal with the next target.

See, more useful then a rocket launcher thingy.

[MrTwist]

I routinely use uncommon objects as weapons. Maybe it's just my love for Moo-Gi-Gong that causes me to do that. I like to come up with innovative means of taking people down.

As far as consistantly used innovative weapons, I'm not so good at that. A player in a Shadowrun game I used to be in created something called the "Napalm Acid Cannon". It shot out an extremely sticky substance that burned like napalm, but also was composed of strong acids. While it burned it would slowly eat through armor. Scary stuff.

Now for non-lethal and sound related. Create a weapon that disrupts balance by messing with the inner ear somehow. Or a weapon/scanner that somehow identifies what frequencies are required to set up a destructive vibrations in inanimate objects. Then the weapon could fire a blast of sound that disarms people.

I also remember reading about sounds outside the normal hearing range of people can influence emotions. Maybe some research into a 'pacifier' gun that blasts sounds intended to reduce aggression. Or even induce apathy. Or you could even discover the mythical 'brown note'.

Since Vibration has the intangibility sub power, maybe even design a system for the armor that can project an adequate vibration onto an inanimate object that does the same thing. You could walk through walls, make someone's weapon intangible so it slips out of their hands, etc...

Just some ideas.

[MrTwist]

Sound?
Bah!
Anyone can use sound as a weapon, but how many can use silence as one?
And just to be clear, I dont' mean as a tool for sneaking up upon people, but as a direct weapon......

There was a character in the '80s Strikeforce: Morituri comics named, appropriately enough, Silencer, who could absorb sound; creating an area, large or small, of complete silence.

She used to kill the invading Horde aliens by "silencing" their hearts. Not quite sure how THAT works...

Johnny Chronic

Probably had something to do with nullifying vibrations, like 'silencing' the heart beat. Still doesn't quite make sense though. Chock it up to a creator's right to ignore laws of reality that makes their stuff less cool.

[The Artist Formerly]

Sound?
Bah!
Anyone can use sound as a weapon, but how many can use silence as one?
And just to be clear, I dont' mean as a tool for sneaking up upon people, but as a direct weapon......

There was a character in the '80s Strikeforce: Morituri comics named, appropriately enough, Silencer, who could absorb sound; creating an area, large or small, of complete silence.

She used to kill the invading Horde aliens by "silencing" their hearts. Not quite sure how THAT works...

Johnny Chronic

Well, sound is vibration, movement at the molecular level, so stoping it cold might literally stop someone's heart. Maybe.

[JTwig]

Chock it up to a creator's right to ignore laws of reality that makes their stuff less cool.

Thats the right I GM by.

[seniahkwah]

My current party contains two heroes with Magnetism so after the Analytical Genius suggested this it saw alot of use, ball bearings, lots of them. it's the human shotgun. On the sound note another character made timed "bombs" which would start to vibrate at the perfect (in this case most destructive) speed of whatever they were attached to. This was also the group that saw the use characters as weapons as the best thing to ever happen. We ended up shoting the tin man in our group out of a cannon, and hitting the target.... best natural twenty ever!

[GaredBattlespike]

I found a nasty little toy to really ruin someones' day...
A had a Hardware PC who loved 'gimmicks'. Little things you'd find on Batman's Utility Belt. One of mine was a 'perfume spray bottle' that actually held Liquid Nitrogen with a micro-frezzer seystem to keep it liquid.
When I was captured by a villainess(Miss-Fashion) who controlled clothes(including our costumes to tie us up). I mentioned that she smelled like a guy. She got mad and used my 'perfume bottle' and wound up with a face full of Liquid Nitrogen. I yelled "Hockey!!!" when she took the damage. It was, after all a 'face off'....