Psionic ability Cause Decay

jaz0nj4ckal · Jul 27, 2014

Folks:
The other day one of my players had a Psionic with the “CauseDecay” ability; however, none of us knew how to handle it.

The book says
“This power works only against inanimate objects. Thepsionicist’s touch causes instant decay: metal rusts, wood splits, cloth fallsto dust. The DM rolls a saving throw vs. acid for the item touched. If thisfails, the item or maximum of 60 pounds of it – is consumed by decay within oneround”.

What does this mean when the player touches armor or aweapon? How should I handle this? I wanted to give penalties to AC when armoris touch, and I wanted to give hit/damage penalties to weapons when touched –however, I am not sure if there is an official rule I should use.

I am looking for suggestions on how to handle this.

Thanks
JJ

(Psi)SeveredHead · Jul 28, 2014

I don't know what source you copied-and-pasted from, but it doesn't work well with this forum. It doesn't just put black text on a black background, but when quoting I could scarcely read it due to all the font baggage.

jaz0nj4ckal said:
The other day one of my players had a Psionic with the “Cause Decay” ability; however, none of us knew how to handle it.

The book says “This power works only against inanimate objects. The psionicist’s touch causes instant decay: metal rusts, wood splits, cloth falls to dust. The DM rolls a saving throw vs. acid for the item touched. If this fails, the item or maximum of 60 pounds of it – is consumed by decay within one round”.

What does this mean when the player touches armor or a weapon? How should I handle this? I wanted to give penalties to AC when armor is touch, and I wanted to give hit/damage penalties to weapons when touched –however, I am not sure if there is an official rule I should use

A lot of 2e rules weren't clearly written, and psionics was also pretty bad at this.

By Rules As Written, you could destroy a weapon or piece of armor within one round. So not damaged armor, but no armor, and not a damaged weapon, but no weapon.

Of course, that's hideously unbalanced. I think I'd inflict a 1d6 point penalty to attack/damage or AC. (So a sword might take a -1 to -6 penalty to hit and damage, and armor would lose 1 to 6 points of AC up to its maximum value). A high roll could nearly destroy plate anyway (assuming plate is 60 pounds or less, that is). Even that's pretty nasty, but then this power does require a to-hit roll and a power check.

jaz0nj4ckal · Jul 28, 2014

(Psi)SeveredHead said:
I don't know what source you copied-and-pasted from, but it doesn't work well with this forum. It doesn't just put black text on a black background, but when quoting I could scarcely read it due to all the font baggage.

Odd - I used MS Notepad to copy and paste my text. Thanks for replying to my post anyway - sorry for the font baggage.

(Psi)SeveredHead said:
A lot of 2e rules weren't clearly written, and psionics was also pretty bad at this.

By Rules As Written, you could destroy a weapon or piece of armor within one round. So not damaged armor, but no armor, and not a damaged weapon, but no weapon.

Of course, that's hideously unbalanced. I think I'd inflict a 1d6 point penalty to attack/damage or AC. (So a sword might take a -1 to -6 penalty to hit and damage, and armor would lose 1 to 6 points of AC up to its maximum value). A high roll could nearly destroy plate anyway (assuming plate is 60 pounds or less, that is). Even that's pretty nasty, but then this power does require a to-hit roll and a power check.