[d20 Modern] The lost art of knife-throwing and the Legion of Henchmen

[JPL]

Just watched "Desperado."

That angry man who throws knives? I like him.

But 1d4 damage / crit 19-20? Man, that's not going to kill anybody...

I wonder if that throwing-guy prestige class from The Complete Warrior would port over to d20 Modern?

Any ideas on how to make this a viable character option?

Some tough slogging at lower levels is to be expected, I suppose...

I also just watched "The Rundown." Bullwhips are also pretty groovy. Might look into porting the Lasher over, too...

Deadly mastery of unusual weapon = interesting henchman.

 

[takyris]

Why not just use Soldier levels? 1d4 +2 Strength +4 Improved Specialization +1 Mastercraft, 18-20/x2 (with Improved Critical from Soldier levels) equals, what, an average of 9.5 damage per round, and a Strong3/Soldier10 would crit, doing an average of 19, about 15% of the time.

I can think of two feats that I'd consider adding:

Natural Thrower (Dex15, BAB+4 or so): When you throw a weapon at a target that is 30' or closer, you may treat your attack as a melee attack for all feats and class abilities that specify melee attacks (ie, Streetfighting, Melee Smash, Power Attack).

And/Or

As Good as a Gun (Dex15, Quick Draw): You may use any ordinarily gun-specific ranged attack feats, such as Double-Tap or Burst-Fire, with light throwing weapons. If a gun-feat normally uses additional bullets, you must have additional throwing weapons, (ie, an extra knife to double-tap, two extra knives for burst fire).

 

[JPL]

Why not just use Soldier levels? 1d4 +2 Strength +4 Improved Specialization +1 Mastercraft, 18-20/x2 (with Improved Critical from Soldier levels) equals, what, an average of 9.5 damage per round, and a Strong3/Soldier10 would crit, doing an average of 19, about 15% of the time.

I can think of two feats that I'd consider adding:

Natural Thrower (Dex15, BAB+4 or so): When you throw a weapon at a target that is 30' or closer, you may treat your attack as a melee attack for all feats and class abilities that specify melee attacks (ie, Streetfighting, Melee Smash, Power Attack).

And/Or

As Good as a Gun (Dex15, Quick Draw): You may use any ordinarily gun-specific ranged attack feats, such as Double-Tap or Burst-Fire, with light throwing weapons. If a gun-feat normally uses additional bullets, you must have additional throwing weapons, (ie, an extra knife to double-tap, two extra knives for burst fire).

Hmm...good thoughts as always, Taky. Where are those feats from [or did you just make them up]?

[A henchmen who "fires a burst" of tomahawks. The players will love me.]

I've been looking at my playtest files for Blood and Fists II...treating each weapon as a martial arts style [purchased as a feat] could give you a lot of bang for your buck and make a well-trained archaic weapon expert a more playable option [if your campaign is such that it's OK to have a hero bring a knife to a gunfight, cause he's reeeaal good with a knife].

I should go pull up Archaic Weapon Master from the Urban Arcana SRD, too...that might be useful...

 

[takyris]

Hmm...good thoughts as always, Taky. Where are those feats from [or did you just make them up]?

Just made 'em up. But was borrowing in part from M&M, which doesn't specify "Melee Only" on its version of Power Attack. It makes perfect sense to "Power Attack" with a really big beam of energy in M&M and it makes sense (to me) to allow Power Attack on a weapon that you throw and add Strength to damage on.

The trick, as always, is to balance "give this guy the ability to force a Massive Damage save on someone", which seems fair, with "don't make it absurdly easy to do tons of damage". I wouldn't trivially allow Power Attack with a gun, because Double Tap works in much the same way, and because guns are powerful enough (can be used at a distance from behind cover with no penalty) that Power Attack might be too much. Throwing weapons aren't really all that useable from behind cover, though, so letting Power Attack work for them sounds reasonable (again, just to me).

In an Action Movie d20 Modern game I played, one of my players' PCs was nicknamed "the blender", after we watched him in action. No soldier levels, even. He was something like Strong/Fast/Tough, and he combined two-weapon fighting, decent strength, improved melee smash, and streetfighting to do an absurd amount of damage with a pair of knives. He was only decent while throwing them, but man, if he got a full-round melee attack on someone, it was a thing of beauty.

 

[malladin]

I think the best direction, thematically, to go with this concept is with multiple attacks rather than extra damage. If you took two weapon fighting you could (GM permitting as its a bit of a stretch of the rules) throw two a round. How a bout a feat (or just plain new skill use) that lets you stock up throwing knives in teh gaps between your fingers and 'reload' with a sleight of hand skill check to 'roll'the knife into a throwing grip position in a similar manner to how stage magicians get coins to 'roll' across the back of their fingers. I think I'd personally make it a new skill use to do it in a move action and then a feat to make it a free action.

In terms of what material is already out there, our Martial Avengers book has a couple of new talent trees that might fit the bill. The strong hero's Athletics talent tree concentrates on throwing and jumping whilst the Fast hero's accuracy talent tree will give you a better aim. There's also a sneak attack talent tree for the fast hero that might benice, particularly if used in conjunction with a feat I swa (in AEG Feats I think) which lets you attack one opponent as if flat footed if you attack with a knife that you've just quick-drawn in the same round.

cheerio,

Ben

 

[ledded]

Some good ideas that I have written down myself, Takyris and JPL. Hey, JPL, use the Weapon Master and the masteries from BnF2 and you could get one frighteningly good knife thrower out of that...

<snip>The trick, as always, is to balance "give this guy the ability to force a Massive Damage save on someone", which seems fair, with "don't make it absurdly easy to do tons of damage". I wouldn't trivially allow Power Attack with a gun, because Double Tap works in much the same way, and because guns are powerful enough (can be used at a distance from behind cover with no penalty) that Power Attack might be too much. Throwing weapons aren't really all that useable from behind cover, though, so letting Power Attack work for them sounds reasonable (again, just to me).

Well, using power attack for a thrown weapon makes perfect sense to me also, but for the same reason that it could never be used for guns does.

Being someone who learned how to throw tomahawks (yeah, I know, a stupid thing to learn but hey, it's fun) you *can* throw one harder but with less accuracy, and it has a distinct effect on the target (in my case, often a large sheet of plywood).

But take The Rock shooting a .38 special, and me shooting a .38 special, and no matter how hard The Rock flings the gun around, his bullet is going to hit the target with very little difference in force than mine.

In an Action Movie d20 Modern game I played, one of my players' PCs was nicknamed "the blender", after we watched him in action. No soldier levels, even. He was something like Strong/Fast/Tough, and he combined two-weapon fighting, decent strength, improved melee smash, and streetfighting to do an absurd amount of damage with a pair of knives. He was only decent while throwing them, but man, if he got a full-round melee attack on someone, it was a thing of beauty.

We were doing a playtest of BnF 2, and we each made 1 non-BnF character and 2 Bnf characters so we could see how well/badly they balanced.

One of the non-BnF guys at 14th level held his own quite well against a 15th level super-stacked BnF wrestler, mainly because he was *

 

[ledded]

Some good discussion I will be borrowing from guys. Oh, JPL, the BnF 2 Weapon Master with some of the masteries (hard weapon) would make for a very lethal knife thrower, dontcha think?

<snip>
The trick, as always, is to balance "give this guy the ability to force a Massive Damage save on someone", which seems fair, with "don't make it absurdly easy to do tons of damage". I wouldn't trivially allow Power Attack with a gun, because Double Tap works in much the same way, and because guns are powerful enough (can be used at a distance from behind cover with no penalty) that Power Attack might be too much. Throwing weapons aren't really all that useable from behind cover, though, so letting Power Attack work for them sounds reasonable (again, just to me).

I totally agree, just based off of the mechanics of what power attack is.

I learned to throw tomahawks a while back (yeah, I know, a stupid thing to learn but I was into a 'learn anything about a weapon that looks interesting phase'. I watched too many westerns as a kid.). You *can* throw harder, sacrificing accuracy for extra punch on a target because you use more strength than technique.

But no matter how hard you point the gun, it doesnt matter if it's The Rock or Sean William Scott firing it, the .38 special is not going to see any appreciable difference in energy transfer to the target. Other than using a bigger gun, increasing accuracy (weapon spec), or getting more criticals, there really isnt a feasible way to cause more damage with a single firearm shot. I guess I've never heard of a good excuse for a 'power attack' for guns, and most of the ideas I've heard involve extra bullets... with double-tap, burst fire, etc why would you need it anyway?

In an Action Movie d20 Modern game I played, one of my players' PCs was nicknamed "the blender", after we watched him in action. No soldier levels, even. He was something like Strong/Fast/Tough, and he combined two-weapon fighting, decent strength, improved melee smash, and streetfighting to do an absurd amount of damage with a pair of knives. He was only decent while throwing them, but man, if he got a full-round melee attack on someone, it was a thing of beauty.

We just finished a BnF 2 playtest, and we each made one non-Bnf character and two BnF characters, so we could see how the guys who only used the core rulebook, urban arcana, and MPC 1 & 2 (our standard set of 'rules') would balance/get creamed.

One guy, a 14th level tough/strong type with 2 cleavers, held his own against a totally min/maxed Totem Warrior wrestler who was a grappling damage fiend. Mr Cleaver did pretty well, too, and ended up losing the match by decision, but not by too much.

I had a 13th level Tough/Strong/Enforcer who went up against a 15th level Contemplative Master who had all kinds of crazy mystical ki feats and whatnot. Once I finally laid hands on the guy, my 13th level dude was able to maintain a grapple long enough to put him out (after giving him quite a smack on the first round by gaining initiative and putting all the sucker punch/knockout punch/IKP/streetfighting damage on him right away... if we had been using MDT rules instead of WP/VP the BnF guy wouldnt have made it into his first action). Sure, my guy took a ton of damage before he ever got close to the martial artist, but with 8 levels of tough that was what he was best at doing.

So with the right combination of just the base classes you can come up with a character that is incredibly deadly with melee weapons on his own.

Oh, I agree with you Malladin. Having checked out Martial Avengers (pretty good stuff, BTW) there are several talent trees that would be beneficial to someone who wanted to be a knife thrower. Make sure you take Quick Draw though

 

[JPL]

Some good discussion I will be borrowing from guys. Oh, JPL, the BnF 2 Weapon Master with some of the masteries (hard weapon) would make for a very lethal knife thrower, dontcha think?

See...you're out there having high-quality playtests, and I can't even get a game on the schedule for May.

Having watched "The Rundown" and an Ultimate Fighting Championship video in one night, I'm leaning towards combining the two. The PCs are all fighters from various backgrounds and styles --- BJJ, Shootfighting, Muay Thai, Sambo, etc. --- who are now training under the same teacher [a grizzled old streetfighter a la Kris Kristofferson in Blade or Sam Elliot in Roadhouse] as No-Holds-Barred fighters.

To pay the bills between bouts, they do a little bounty-hunting, a little bodyguarding, a little freelance headbreaking...and they end up in South America waay over their heads with the local mine owner chasing them through the jungle.

I'm thinking about making the henchmen sort of a who's-who of henchmen...show the players pictures of that knife guy from Desperado, Bolo Yeong, Al Leong, Jaws from James Bond, Randall "Tex" Cobb, Tyler Mane...I want to run this just like an action movie.

 

[ledded]

See...you're out there having high-quality playtests, and I can't even get a game on the schedule for May.

Having watched "The Rundown" and an Ultimate Fighting Championship video in one night, I'm leaning towards combining the two. The PCs are all fighters from various backgrounds and styles --- BJJ, Shootfighting, Muay Thai, Sambo, etc. --- who are now training under the same teacher [a grizzled old streetfighter a la Kris Kristofferson in Blade or Sam Elliot in Roadhouse] as No-Holds-Barred fighters.

To pay the bills between bouts, they do a little bounty-hunting, a little bodyguarding, a little freelance headbreaking...and they end up in South America waay over their heads with the local mine owner chasing them through the jungle.

I'm thinking about making the henchmen sort of a who's-who of henchmen...show the players pictures of that knife guy from Desperado, Bolo Yeong, Al Leong, Jaws from James Bond, Randall "Tex" Cobb, Tyler Mane...I want to run this just like an action movie.

*That* sounds like fun. Admittedly, there was much less role-playing in our game tests than we are used to, but it was fun to put different configurations of guys against each other in different terrain environments and watch what happens.

More often than not, though, it was the uber-grappler that won every time. Just like the old-school UFC, once they get you to the ground...

The idea of henchmen with their own unique signature weapons sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe add in a burly ex-professinal baseball player, carries a big bat around and throws baseballs at people, except his baseballs have a lead core at their center.... hee hee

 

[Tellerve]

Throw the baseballs? Nah, just tosses 'em in the air and then *crack* hits a line drive into their head

Yeah, those darn brazilian jujitsu guys just takin' over the UFC. Good to hear though that it is pretty much even for BnF2. I'm looking forward to it for sure after just recently finally getting BnF1.

Tellerve