Retractable Claws and Elemental Fists, oh my!


Homebrew

Scarab Sages

This week, a few augment alternatives to the ol' Bone Blade

Sovereign Court

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These seem a little powerful:

* The Bone Blade doesn't give 1.5x weapon specialization. Only natural weapons do that, to compensate for being a 1d3 unarmed strike weapon, that scales up only very slowly with Improved Unarmed Strike.

* The retractable claws are Operative but yet you allow 1.5x weapon specialization, instead of the usual 0.5x weapon specialization.

* What proficiency covers these? Basic or advanced melee?

* Can you add fusions to these implants? Natural weapons somewhat justify their 1.5x weapon specialization by not allowing fusions, so DR and incorporeal require extra feats etc. to overcome.

* Does it take an action to ready these? It seems to be (intentionally?) very hard for operatives to draw hidden weapons (always swift or higher) and make a trick attack in the same turn (requires a full attack, so need weapons already drawn).

Sovereign Court

But on a more positive note. I like the basic idea, it's got nice clarity to it. Operatives really need some more close combat options than trying to navy seal alien dinosaurs with a survival knife. I'm actually in favor of no-action-to-draw melee operative options because they should be able to surprise shank someone.

Scarab Sages

Ascalaphus wrote:

These seem a little powerful:

* The Bone Blade doesn't give 1.5x weapon specialization. Only natural weapons do that, to compensate for being a 1d3 unarmed strike weapon, that scales up only very slowly with Improved Unarmed Strike.

* The retractable claws are Operative but yet you allow 1.5x weapon specialization, instead of the usual 0.5x weapon specialization.

* What proficiency covers these? Basic or advanced melee?

* Can you add fusions to these implants? Natural weapons somewhat justify their 1.5x weapon specialization by not allowing fusions, so DR and incorporeal require extra feats etc. to overcome.

* Does it take an action to ready these? It seems to be (intentionally?) very hard for operatives to draw hidden weapons (always swift or higher) and make a trick attack in the same turn (requires a full attack, so need weapons already drawn).

Thanks for the feedback!

Both augments are natural weapons that the receiver is proficient in, but they do not automatically get Specialization for, they must spend a feat at or after 3rd level.

I wrote the retractable claws to be 1/2 level to damage, but I can double check for clarity.

Natural weapons don’t seem to have a weapon category.

No fusions unless a mechanic for adding fusions to natural weapons becomes available.

Because they are natural weapons no action is required to ‘draw’ them.

Sovereign Court

Belabras wrote:
Both augments are natural weapons that the receiver is proficient in, but they do not automatically get Specialization for, they must spend a feat at or after 3rd level.

I'm not sure why you want to call them natural weapons. They're manufactured, so they're not natural. They just happen to be implanted. Since they're manufactured, you can add fusions and that's actually a good reason why you'd want them. You can scale the damage dice to be in line with other (one-handed) melee weapons, and call them Basic or Advanced as appropriate.

I'm not sure about your "must buy a feat" idea. There are a few uncategorized weapons, mostly shuriken, but natural attacks are basic melee weapons, right at the top of the chart. So without a feat, all classes would just get the 1x weapon specialization (or 0.5x, since it's operative).

Belabras wrote:
I wrote the retractable claws to be 1/2 level to damage, but I can double check for clarity.

You could even split them into two variants: small discreet operative claws and big brutal berserker claws. Because if you're not a Dex-based fighter, you probably don't want the operative trait since it halves your weapon specialization.

Belabras wrote:
Natural weapons don’t seem to have a weapon category.

Natural weapons are a bit weird (see Ring of Fangs debate), but basically, they're a variant of unarmed strike that ignores most of the downsides of unarmed strikes. So they're basic melee weapons, you can't enchant them, they have 1d3 damage but accelerated weapon specialization. I don' think you should be able to keep the accelerated weapon specialization if you get rid of the downsides (no fusion, small die, even with Improved Unarmed Strike).

There's a bit more info on natural weapons in the Universal Monster Rules for Alien Archive 3.

Belabras wrote:

No fusions unless a mechanic for adding fusions to natural weapons becomes available.

Because they are natural weapons no action is required to ‘draw’ them.

Like I said, they're not natural, so I don't think they should be natural weapons. And that's an advantage. If you added for example big honking berserker claws, as a vesk you could consider getting those instead of your natural ones, so that you can enchant them with some of the good fusions (Opportunistic, Holy, Ghostkiller).

I'm not sure they should be free to draw. Bone Blades are a swift action to extend, meaning you can't extend them and Trick Attack in the same round. Getting past that limitation means that you can go from not showing any weapons to making a trick attack in the first round of combat, which is currently almost impossible. That's worth a serious price.

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Likewise, for elemental flesh - since you're not stuck at 1d3 damage dice, you shouldn't be getting 1.5x weapon specialization. I do like the idea of them though, although Vanguard is probably going to make the acid one look rather bad soon..

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Keep working at this, the core idea is good, it just needs a bit more polish to be totally in sync with the logic of the official rules.

Scarab Sages

Thanks Ascalaphus. I’m happy with them as written, but I appreciate your passion here. I would encourage you to write your own, using whatever you’d like from the material here (heck, you could work from scratch if you like). I am by no means the final arbiter on what people might want in their home brew, just someone who likes to play with the system.

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