Forums of the Megaverse®

Hey folks,

I was wondering if anyone here is the same as me and looks at the BtS2 Ghost Hunter weapons and thinks, "Well, that looks pretty pointless."? Maybe I'm missing something here, but most of them seem waaaaaay underpowered, especially when they can take a small number of damaging physical powers anyway. I'll go through my concerns, and see if people interpret them the same way, or if I've missed something.

a) "Fire an Empty Gun" ability (BtS2 51): Okay, this ability *does* sound useful, especially since you can create several bullets and do a lot of damage to entities and other supers you wouldn't normally be able to harm. I'm a little unsure about the damage, though, since the first line says 4D6, whereas later it says it uses the gun's own stats. So, I just take it to mean it simply creates free ammo that can harm anything for whatever you're using. This one's great!

b) Ecto-Slayer Shotgun: I know I posted about this about a month ago, but I'm still confused. Does this weapon do 1D6, and get a damage bonus of +1 every level (ie, 1D6+1, then 1D6+2,1D6+3), or is the *entire* damage increased each level? ie 1D6+1, then 2D6+2, then 3D6+3, etc? That seems to make more sense, although it can be very overpowered at the high levels, but around level 5 would give you a decent "supernatural shotgun" type weapon. If it stays with only 1D6, then I have no idea why one would even bother.

c) Ghost Gun: Energy Bolts do 2D6 against entities (4D6 in Astral Plane). TK Bolts do 5D6, but only 2D6+3 to entities. Correct me if I'm wrong but the TK bolts seem to always do more than the specific "entity-hunting" energy rounds?! The *only* time I can imagine someone would bother with the energy bolts is when the Ghost Hunter is in the Astral Plane and, since they can't take Astral Projection and the book has no rules for bringing others with you to the Astral Plane, they would *never* have an opportunity to go there.

Also, since the ghost gun uses ammo generated through the "Fire and Empty Gun" ability, yet their payload is 24, I assume this means a Ghost Hunter who is level 3 would have to use that power 4 times to get the gun full? That's not a problem, since the rounds last indefinitely, so you can load it during down time. However, do you choose the rounds in it (ie energy or TK) when you create them, or when you fire them?

Thanks for all your clarifications.

Regards,
RD

I would read the TK bullet as "4D6 or whatever the gun inflicts, whichever is less". Otherwise you'd have people using this to reload Boom Guns or naval cannons, which if possible ought to cost a lot more ISP. If you chose "whatever is more" (like Dream Weapons in BtS) then people would just choose whichever gun had the best range or RoF and there would be no incentive to use higher-damage weapons.

Even if it was D6+level damage instead of Level*(1D6+1) one advantage I could see here is by having very low damage to mortals, if a supernatural evil were mind-controlling an innocent to dodge in front of attacks aimed at them, that it would give them a higher chance of surviving.

Even with low damage, another advantage this has over simply using your TK round ability is that there's no duration, so you could charge the rounds and keep them stored indefinitely. You can't stockpile 'fire an empty gun' TK rounds like this.

Another advantage is that if someone steals your empty shotgun, they might have shotgun rounds, load the weapon, and use it against you. Whereas if you carry around an ecto-slayer shotgun, if someone else steals your weapon, they can't use it against you no matter what.

Since they look fake like props, you could also carry these around with less hassle from authorities, who would still hassle you for carrying unloaded guns you plan to load with TK.

Some entities could be immune to physical attacks (making TK useless) but vulnerable to energy attacks.

If you were shooting wild, you might also have friends enchant innocents with 'Impervious to Fire' so that the Ecto-Slayer Shotgun won't hurt them at all if they jump in front of it.

The ghost gun is similar: you might have a sorcerer friend enchant friendly targets with 'impervious to energy' to protect them from the energy rounds. The TK rounds should also be useless against any entities who are impervious to kinetic attacks.

I'm not sure when the physical damage vs astral travelers would even apply since they are immune to that stuff. You might need some other ability to affect them, like enchanting the weapon somehow.