Rules for juicing up TW weapons' range/damage/etc.

[dark brandon]

I feel like the people in my games keep using the same 2-3 TW weapons over and over again. They usually represent the best combination of damage type, PPE efficiency, damage and range.

I've always found the prospect of TK rifles interesting, but the damage is usually quite low. I'm curious if there are any rules out there for modifying book-based TW weapons, and where they can be found?

I would allow a TW to increase the damage of a weapon based on their level and skill.

Throw in a penalty depending on how much of a damage increase.

Like with a Lightning rod, I'd require the TW to increase the damage from 1D6 to 3D6 if they are at least level 3 and maybe make a roll based on one of their tech skills at a -10%. I'd probably throw in a cost of an additional 15% of the original cost of making the weapon and an additional +10% mana recharge.

So (For simplicity sake), I may ask a 3rd level TW to roll 2 out of 3 times on an Electronic skills at a -10% best 2 out of 3 times. If they do it, the weapon now does 3D6MD, cost him (Assuming it costs 100 credits, cause I don't feel like getting out the book) an additional 15 credits in materials and costs him 2 extra PPE points to recharge to use it.

If he fails, then the weapon can't be upgraded right now and maybe roll % next time it's used for some random effect, like instead of imperivous to energy, he takes only 1/2 damage from it. I don't wanna screw the player so I figure after that combat, he's able to make his repair.

[Talavar]

Some TW items can be increased by upping their device level. For example, a number of TW items do damage based on the spell Call Lightning, a spell which scales per level. A device level one TW item would do 1d6, a device level 10 would do 10d6, but be more costly to make.

Some TW items however, don't have this easy scalability, and TK guns are one of them. Since the original spell doesn't do any damage, it's basically a GM call if they can be tweaked to do more. Since the guns are already tweaking the spell, maybe sacrificing range, or a greater PPE cost, or both to get extra damage wouldn't be out of line.