Tattoo Weapons

[13eowulf]

I have got a few questions about Tattoo weapons:

Does each weapon have to have wings to have that feature, or if you have one weapon with wings can wings be activated for all weapons? Or does it have to be all of one type, like swords or axes?

Does Wings count towards one of the 6 active tattoos, or does it count as part of the weapon it is activated with?

If you have a bow does it come with arrows?

Is the bow of the T-Archer different then a normal weapon bow?

Does the Bow itself have to be flaming (or others) to inflict MD, or only the arrows?

Do you need multiple bow types for multiple non-power arrow types?
If not can you have multiple arrow types seperate from the bow?

Does the Rapid fire tattoo (rifter 52) have to be applied to each bow (if you have more than one), or does one apply to all? Does it count as a sperate activation or part of the weapon?

If you have multiple magic features of a weapon (Flames, wings, dripping blood all together, for example) do all features always have to be activated, or can you only pay the PPE cost to activate the features you want?

It has been argued to me that you cannot combine Flaming and Dripping Blood features, but it has also been argued to me that you can, which is correct?

Can one have a tattoo of novelty arrows, like Boxing Glove arrows, and still have them function (as they are magic), provided none are high-tech?

[Tor]

The ranged weapon ammunition limitation question is a good one. To guide us in this we have Atlantis, Splynn, and NPCs with tats in other books (England, Africa, Pantheons, for example).

Based on the description in Atlantis, you would only be able to create a bow by itself as a weapon tattoo. The mention of arrows is under "weapon with wings" which says there are 'usually' 4 arrows. Since winged weapons return automatically, this would be the ideal way to have your unlimited ammunition in ranged tattoo weaponry.

Even though the wording indicates these would be separate tattoos, the notes on pg 98 for the Undead Slayer count them as 1. Slayers can make 9 selections, start with 7 power tats, a flaming sword tat, and then the bow and arrow. 9+7+1=17 and they are mentioned as having 18 tats, so bow+arrow (or crossbow, I assume which comes with bolts) is counted as 1 tat.

This in spite of it having multiple features (wings, flames) and being effectively 2 weapons (4 arrows, 1 bow) so I guess no matter how many features you combine into a magic weapon, it only counts as 1 tat.

Another guide would be Galahad on Pg 109 of England. He's mentioned as having "marks of heritage plus following 30" with a total of 32. In spite of the phrasing, it appears that his marks of heritage were actually included in the list though, so we should expect it to total to 32, not 30. His turn dead heritage tat is among his powers, and a flaming sword (albeit modified) is included among his weapons.

Galahad has 4 animal/monster tats, 12 power tats, and 5 simple weapons. That's a total of 21, leaving 11 slots free to account for his magic weapons. His flaming shield we know is a single weapon, leaving us with 10 slots to account for the other 3 entries. His axes are mentioned as counting as 3, as are his sword, leaving us with 4 slots for his bow and arrows.

The phrasing for that is "two set" and "four flaming arrows in flames" (LOL). The arrows are winged. Now there's a couple ways to interpret this. First is that this counts as 2 tattoos, and the author miscounted, overlooking that he had included the Marks of Heritage amongst the tattoo list, and that it is only 28 tattoos in addition to the 3 marks of heritage.

I'm not sure how many tats Galahad should have at his level, he doesn't really follow the guidelines. Undead Slayers start with 4 simple tats (2 simple weapons, two animals) and Galahad has 7 simple tats (2 animals, 5 simple weapons). When leveling you either get 2 simple or 1 major, so at some point Galahad got only 1 simple, or if he got 2, maybe he lost 1 (maybe it was on the tip of his finger and he got that cut off and it didn't get mentioned).

Another interesting thing about Galahad is one of his simple weapons is simply "four ordinary wooden arrows". Maybe that's for staking vampires in melee, or maybe it's to use with a normal bow, or maybe he can use it with his Magic Weapon, I'm not totally sure.

Based on that Arrows-Alone guideline, each 4-piece set of flaming winged arrows he has could count as its own tattoo, and then the Magic Bow could also count as its own. Although this would conflict with the Undead Slayer stats which consider bow + arrows 1 tat.

Another NPC to look to would be Endiku on pg 64 of Pantheons who has 32 tats. He has 11 powers, 4 monsters and 5 animals. Minus those 20 and we're left with 12 slots to account for his weapons. These are annoying because they're spread out. Simple weapons are easier, he has 6 listed together on pg 64, and a shield listed on pg 65. Subtract those 7 and we're left with 5 slots to account for his magical weapons. Two bullets are listed on pg 65 and are straight-forward enough, a flaming polearm and a winged flaming throwing dagger. There are also two bullets on pg 64 to account for the 3 remaining tattoo slots. The first (his sword, a mark of heritage) is clearly only 1. This leaves us with his magic bow with flaming winged arrows. It is being counted as 2 tattoos rather than 1, which leads me to think that the bow and the (4?) arrows are SEPARATE tattoos. Yet again, an NPC's count conflicts with the count in Atlantis which considers them a single tat. Perhaps Atlantis should have said they begin with 19?

If you have multiple magic features of a weapon (Flames, wings, dripping blood all together, for example) do all features always have to be activated, or can you only pay the PPE cost to activate the features you want?

If they're combined into 1 tat I'd say it's an all-or-nothing deal. NPCs have shown that even if Atlantis didn't explicitly allow some magic weapon combos (such as how it shows flames+dragon+wings or blood+wings) that it may be possible to do so, though perhaps without PPE discounts requiring full cumulative cost and not a lower merged cost.