[Black Company] telekenisis to do damage?

[Imperialus]

Bit of background first. I have my players fighting former (normal D&D) PC's. These wern't praticularly nice PC's and one of them had that necromatic spell from Book of Vile Darkness that caused a targets hand to rip from it's body and then turn into a wraith. I'm just getting them around to fighting him now and I would really like to re-create the spell since it was something of a signature for him.

I'm not looking to animate the hand afterwards, that's a little too far out of the range of a 8th level mage but I'm thinking that Telekenisis base (DC 15) + 200lb. mass (DC+15) + Grapple (DC+15) targeted only on the hand should work...

Next question though, how much damage should that do?

 

[Henry]

I don't even see that in the range for an 8th level Black Company Wizard, for that matter. I'd almost think it to be a "Destroy" effect, either alone or joined with Telekinesis, because you're not just moving the victim around or causing damage, you're ripping their hand off, and it takes more than 200 lbs. of force to rip someone's hand off, under normal circumstances.

 

[Imperialus]

good point. Turns out I didn't even need it. Last session the group had a full platoon slogging through a sewer system and were completely stymied and took more than a few casualies (though no PC's ) by a single mage/scout using a heavy crossbow, ghost sound, the spell that I forget the name of where you communicate with animals, some pitch, sharpened stakes and a few low level create energy fires . It almost got to the point that they were acting like a US infantry platoon in Vietnam, firing off vollies of crossbow bolts at any noise they heard. It was great.

 

[Henry]

Ah, yes - that's Black Company for you.

By the same token, my players in a BC demo game I ran, LOVED the lethality, when they were able to outright kill two or three people in an ambush, and there was even a recreation of the Croaker/Raven vs. The Limper/Whisper scenario, when they (6th level and damned scared) snuck up on a 16th level Wizard and "geeked" him before he could utter a single spell. Had they missed, things would have been... dicey.

Conversely, the group wizard had three fingers hacked off when he foolishly charged a berserker with a battle axe, so they took their licks, too.