[beastman420]

j was wanting to know if i could enchant crossbow bolts and how to do it i do not have my core kn hand thanks

[Namikaze]

This topic again.

Short answer: depends on your GM's preference.

Long answer: do a search on the forums.  You'll find HUGE debates arguing the merits and flaws inherent with allowing alchemical projectiles.

[Mirikon]

RAW, you can do them with Timed or Command preparations, not contact (you touch the thing when you load it). And trying to weasel this with having a drone load your crossbow for you, or saying you timed the preparation when you made it so that it goes off exactly when you hit the target, and thus allowing you to shoot someone and then do fireball on them in the same action is going to get you phonebooked until you stop trying to break the game.

Now, you could enchant a bolt with a Fireball preparation, shoot someone (or something) with it, and then set it off on your next pass. But you're getting into murky waters here. My advice? Remember that everything you can do can be done against you, and there's more of 'them' than 'you'.

[Sendaz]

The Street Grimoire has brought back the Anchoring Metamagic (pg 152) which can allow you to attach a spell to a item however it involves more from yourself, paying Karma and you can only have a number of Anchored spells equal to your Initiate grade, so no whole quiver of uber-bolts unless you are talking Harley level initiating.

Plus the Anchored version of Contact trigger is much better defined as being activated either when a living aura, a previously assensed aura, or any aura not belonging to the spellcaster comes into direct physical or astral contact with the anchor.   So this can be one you can handle this a bit more safely yourself, but a spirit crossing through astrally could potentially trigger this so keep this in mind. If you are going after a specific target that you have seen (and assensed)  before you can set to that aura so less chance of misfire.

The anchored spell is still treated as quickened spells so wont get through wards and such, can be attacked astrally/dispelled.

[Triskavanski]

Street Grimore also talked about about using preparations, not anchored spells, on arrows and knives. This is usually command trigger types, but could be done with touch.


One of the biggest oppositions you'll face is people who see things like the Mystic Theuge (From DnD) as overpowered, as the view I've seen around here is that they end up believing that you're launching spells at the level of a sorcerer who's ranked up.

At Start, you have 6 ranks in Alchemy. 6 Magic. Specialization in Alchemy for Touch Triggers. This nets you a total of 14 dice. Now assuming we're buying hits here for the average, That gives you 3 hits. Now the most powerful Spell I've seen for arrows is Punch.

Here is a place where a GM has to make a rule. Would that +1 come before or after the normal spell drain. In other-words, lets say you went force 6 (Punch is -6 drain). This would make drain 0 from the spell. This could result in 0+1 = 2 or it could be 0 = 2 + 1 = 3, because you have to take 2 drain at minimum. We'll go with the more powerful option for you here, and assume its the 2 drain, rather than the 3.

So the item now rolls to resist with 6 dice. Meaning on average its going to get 1 hit, by using the buying hits as average. So your three hits now becomes 2, making your arrow cast at 8 dice. It will also last 4 hours. Meaning you can make 10 of these in 1 hours time.

Now comes shooting the arrow, or bolt. Assuming its a crossbow, we could go with heavy crossbow. 10p, -3 AP 5 ACC. Its pretty powerful isn't it?

to hit the target you have you make a touch attack. So assuming your high stat is in Int/Cha or Wil, you've got 5 AGI (Assuming human, possibly higher if elf.) archery up to 6, and +2 from a specialization

This puts you at 13 dice to hit. Not too bad. So following what average is, you get three dice to hit the target. Lets just skip this guy's defense roll assuming you've got the drop on him first.

Now your bolt hits, dealing 10p -3.  Because it was a touch attack after all, so no additional damage from higher hits. We'll say this guy is completely unaugmented. But has 3 body, and is a total scrub with only Armored clothing.

So its 10p vs 6 resist. = 9 dmg
The Punch spell then goes off, with 2 hits, resulting in 7s vs 3 resist. = 7 dmg

Mein gott! That looks really powerful doesn't it? you did a total of 16 damage against a total scrub guy who had some of the worst armor in the game and got the total drop on him. Much of the complaints against it use something along these lines right here.

Now lets change a few things around.

Starting with the Crossbow bolt. Now you're not  doing touch, so you get 12p vs the 6 resist, netting you 11 dmg this time around just from the bolt. Now this time the bolt was filled with NarcoJect. That is 15 stun damage vs 3 resist. In other words a total of 26 dmg, without using the "game breaking magical arrows"

Of course this is just a mook that we're doing this to.

Personally I'm more inclined to go with the "rule of cool" on this sort of thing myself. And while I don't find it too terribly powerful, I recognize that it could be a bit too much, and thus say that while you can do this, the necessary modification you'd need to do with the arrow makes it unfit to do its normal damage.

Cause hell, if you're making an artificer you need something 'cool'. My artificer archer would prep several arrows, most of the time failing the make them due to unlucky rolls, that the DM eventually had to go "You know what.. Here, the arrows defense roll cannot be any higher than half its dice. That should let you have at least an arrow or too."

Overall, being an artificer is like being a level D aspected mage with 2 points in his skill and 6 magic.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

As an aside - chemical resistance is Body + Will.  So Standard Mooktastic there would have 6 dice (2 likely successes) against the Narcoject.

[Mirikon]

Trisky, as a long time D&D player, I can attest that the Mystic Theurge is not overpowered. This is because even if they have Wizard spells and Cleric spells, they can still only do one at a time. You try and make it so that they can cast a lightning bolt and Inflict Serious Wounds on the same turn, and we'll have issues. Let me tell you, though, that Punch isn't the most powerful spell you could put on a bolt, not by a long shot. Most powerful spell you could put on a bolt would be Fireball, since the spell would go off the moment it made contact (no scatter), nuking the target and everyone around him. And that isn't even counting when some bastard decides to put a preparation on an injection bolt filled with narcojet, or something even nastier.

Now, if you're at least a second level initiate (which you'd have to be to get Anchoring), then you deserve to do something sweet, since that is a lot of Karma invested in getting to that point. But this has the potential to get out of hand very quickly if a GM doesn't clamp down on it hard. Personally, I find the best spells to do as preparations aren't combat spells at all, but rather spells that require sustaining, such as Heal, Increase [Attribute], Increase Reflexes, Physical Barrier, and so on. Spells that are unopposed, generally only need a few hits to work, and have to be sustained to have any decent effect. An artificer can be an utterly badass support mage, and rely on a Predator to do his talking for him when it comes to combat.

[Triskavanski]

Actually, Quicken Lighting Bolt and Inflict Serious Wounds allows you to do on the same turn as per the rules in just the main handbook.

The reason Punch is more powerful that Fireball is the amount of drain you'd take. Fireball is force -1. So making a fireball of a force 6, you're taking 6 drain per use. Again assuming that you're a human, and you made will or cha/logic your high stat, you'd have a drain protection of 11, giving you 2.75 hits to reduce the drain. Which means you take 3 stun damage generally.

Again this is all the assumptions of that you're getting hits equal to the buy hits chart.

Now after hitting, you're going to have to bypass a threshold of 3 for the spell to go off. Which means on average, the spell is going to fail, due to only having 2 hits and being unable to break the threshold.

As for the injection bolt, you had to replace the arrow head for the preparation. So.. you couldn't use injection head. At least thats what I'd make up for my ruling on this sort of stuff. Simply put, you have to create a head that makes it improper to use the arrow for damage, but still lets you have the cool stuff, even as difficult as it is to make and could be difficult to use.


EDIT:

Basically my ruling would be that you can use normal preparations on arrow heads. Doing so removes the damage of the arrow due to the modifications needed to be able to use it like this. Crit glitching would trigger the spell on you as you touched the arrow. Glitching would allow the target a second defense check to avoid the spell. You only need a touch or grazing attack to trigger the spell. No additional hits are added to the effect of the spell from firing the arrow/bolt.

This allows the rule of cool, right at the start, without having to spend 29 karma on  two initiations. Getting the two initiations allows you to be slightly safer, and can pick up your arrows again. Just.. well.. Watch for PDA.

[ZeConster]

Now after hitting, you're going to have to bypass a threshold of 3 for the spell to go off. Which means on average, the spell is going to fail, due to only having 2 hits and being unable to break the threshold.

I haven't really checked the Enchanting rules: where does it say this? Because when casting indirect area spells normally, scoring 1 or 2 hits simply means the spell scatters before going off.

[Triskavanski]

ah, miss read that one. So the fireball is likely to go places you don't want it to go.

Still the drain makes fireball cost prohibitive. Trying to cast at a lower force increases the chances of failure in enchanting, casting too high and you're going to take quite a hit to your drain.

 

[Mirikon]

Actually, Quicken Lighting Bolt and Inflict Serious Wounds allows you to do on the same turn as per the rules in just the main handbook.

And by the time you are actually able to Quicken Lightning Bolt as a Mystic Theurge, you're going to be at least 16th level, and have access to 7th level spells, which are far more devastating than those two spells combined.

The reason Punch is more powerful that Fireball is the amount of drain you'd take. Fireball is force -1. So making a fireball of a force 6, you're taking 6 drain per use. Again assuming that you're a human, and you made will or cha/logic your high stat, you'd have a drain protection of 11, giving you 2.75 hits to reduce the drain. Which means you take 3 stun damage generally.

Um, drain isn't the basis of which spells are more powerful. And for something that is F-1, cast at F6, you'd resist 5 drain per use, FYI. Also, remember that enchanting things takes a number of minutes equal to the force, so you get more 'bang for your buck' with AoE spells.

Now after hitting, you're going to have to bypass a threshold of 3 for the spell to go off. Which means on average, the spell is going to fail, due to only having 2 hits and being unable to break the threshold.

Nope. Reread the spell section of the book. You roll against a threshold of 3 to avoid scatter. The spell still goes boom, just acts more like grenades.

Basically my ruling would be that you can use normal preparations on arrow heads. Doing so removes the damage of the arrow due to the modifications needed to be able to use it like this. Crit glitching would trigger the spell on you as you touched the arrow. Glitching would allow the target a second defense check to avoid the spell. You only need a touch or grazing attack to trigger the spell. No additional hits are added to the effect of the spell from firing the arrow/bolt.

This allows the rule of cool, right at the start, without having to spend 29 karma on  two initiations. Getting the two initiations allows you to be slightly safer, and can pick up your arrows again. Just.. well.. Watch for PDA.

Except this isn't what proponents of the 'magic bolts' have been talking about. And without Anchoring, the only way contact bolts work the way you seem to want is if you are using a crossbow and have someone's drone load them for you (assuming the drone's hands don't ruin the preparation by scratching it). Because Contact works on your aura, as well, so once you put the thing down, if you touch it again, it goes off. 'Rule of cool' is nice and all, but there are a lot of 'cool' things that would simply break the game if allowed, and there's drektons of 'cool' available inside the rules if someone is clever, so I see no reason to change things up.

[ZeConster]

Um, drain isn't the basis of which spells are more powerful. And for something that is F-1, cast at F6, you'd resist 5 drain per use, FYI. Also, remember that enchanting things takes a number of minutes equal to the force, so you get more 'bang for your buck' with AoE spells.

Not if you Enchant with a Contact Trigger, though.



Triskavanski: I thought the whole point of Enchanting was that you had a few hours to recover from the Drain after making the preparation, though. Let's try a scenario:

• You make a Force 9 Fireball preparation with 14 dice and reagents used to set your Limit to 6. If you use Second Chance, there's a 93.50% chance of success, with an average Potency of ~3.01 if you succeed.
• Drain is 9S (10S with Command): with 11 Drain resist dice, that's an average of 5.33S (6.33S with Command) post-resist. After 2 hours of rest with Body 3 and Willpower 5, you'll have an average of 1.13S (1.77S with Command) remaining, without using a second point of Edge. Throw in Quick Healer, and it's 0.59S (1.02S with Command) on average.
• After those 2 hours of rest, even at Potency 1 you'll still have an hour left before it starts decreasing.
• Assuming the average Potency of 3, there's an 81.89% chance of no scatter, 12.72% chance of 2d6−2m scatter, 4.62% chance of 2d6−1m scatter, and 0.77% chance of the spell fizzling. With Force 9, that means 12.72% x 2.78% + 4.62% x 8.33% + 0.77% = ~1.51% chance of the spell not hitting the place where the arrow landed.

All in all, spending a single point of Edge and 120¥ gives a straight-out-of-chargen character a chance of over 90% of successfully using a Force 9 Fireball enchantment on an arrow, provided whoever shoots the arrow hits their mark.

[Triskavanski]

Actually, Quicken Lighting Bolt and Inflict Serious Wounds allows you to do on the same turn as per the rules in just the main handbook.

And by the time you are actually able to Quicken Lightning Bolt as a Mystic Theurge, you're going to be at least 16th level, and have access to 7th level spells, which are far more devastating than those two spells combined.

The reason Punch is more powerful that Fireball is the amount of drain you'd take. Fireball is force -1. So making a fireball of a force 6, you're taking 6 drain per use. Again assuming that you're a human, and you made will or cha/logic your high stat, you'd have a drain protection of 11, giving you 2.75 hits to reduce the drain. Which means you take 3 stun damage generally.

Um, drain isn't the basis of which spells are more powerful. And for something that is F-1, cast at F6, you'd resist 5 drain per use, FYI. Also, remember that enchanting things takes a number of minutes equal to the force, so you get more 'bang for your buck' with AoE spells.

Drain is one of the two parts of what is a powerful spell for these purposes. You've got to have a certain amount of usefulness in the spell. If you have the ability to nuke an entire city from orbit, but you take force +10000 drain, need to sacrifice a two headed baby, erase yourself from existence if you die, and have to have the help of forty other casters just to preform the first part of the ritual... Well, that isn't a very powerful option. It looks powerful, but its completely unusable.

Not saying that a fireball is unusable, but its for the most part impractical in terms of making an "arcane archer" character.

The drain of a F-1 spell is 5. However, FYI, touch adds +1 to the drain, making it 6 drain per use.

Now as you've said, it will take 6 minutes to make 1 arrow. So, if you don't have a lot of time to prepare, probably best to go for bank and use the fire ball arrow.

But time to prepare? In 1 hour you can make 10 force six arrows if you did nothing else.

at 11 dice to resist drain, You're getting 2-3 on average resisted per arrow

So for the Punch Arrows (20 or 30 drain), you're typically capable of shrugging off most of the drain from creating these guys, depending on how the DM rules the +1 drain from a touch prep. Meaning, at the most, you'd probably only need to rest for an hour after making these arrows.

But fireball arrows, would be a total of 60 drain. At 2-3 resisted, you're generally taking 3-4 stun damage per arrow. thats 30-40 stun per hour. Of course you'd have to stop and rest that off, possibly forcefully so after about 2-3 arrows. Your ability to make them also goes down more dramatically than the punch arrows.

Going lower isn't really much of an option either. a force 1 preperation, has a 33% chance of failing regardless of how many hits you get. Force 2 is also pretty high up there. So, you're wanting to make maybe a three at the lowest, at least what I'd say.

In addition to that, because you've got an elemental, you now have to go through Armor + fire protection, resulting in less damage dealt. Though, you do have a nice little rider that there is a possibility of setting something on fire.

Now after hitting, you're going to have to bypass a threshold of 3 for the spell to go off. Which means on average, the spell is going to fail, due to only having 2 hits and being unable to break the threshold.

Nope. Reread the spell section of the book. You roll against a threshold of 3 to avoid scatter. The spell still goes boom, just acts more like grenades.

Basically my ruling would be that you can use normal preparations on arrow heads. Doing so removes the damage of the arrow due to the modifications needed to be able to use it like this. Crit glitching would trigger the spell on you as you touched the arrow. Glitching would allow the target a second defense check to avoid the spell. You only need a touch or grazing attack to trigger the spell. No additional hits are added to the effect of the spell from firing the arrow/bolt.

This allows the rule of cool, right at the start, without having to spend 29 karma on  two initiations. Getting the two initiations allows you to be slightly safer, and can pick up your arrows again. Just.. well.. Watch for PDA.

Except this isn't what proponents of the 'magic bolts' have been talking about. And without Anchoring, the only way contact bolts work the way you seem to want is if you are using a crossbow and have someone's drone load them for you (assuming the drone's hands don't ruin the preparation by scratching it). Because Contact works on your aura, as well, so once you put the thing down, if you touch it again, it goes off. 'Rule of cool' is nice and all, but there are a lot of 'cool' things that would simply break the game if allowed, and there's drektons of 'cool' available inside the rules if someone is clever, so I see no reason to change things up.

Don't touch the arrow head. You put it on the arrow head. Don't touch it. Touch everything but the arrow head.  Because its the Arrowhead you've enchanted.

If contact worked specifically on aura, it wouldn't require a touch attack to make it go off. You would just simply need to get the touch preparation within the same square as the target. Like how a stun baton works. No matter how powerful the stun baton is, and how much conductive metal the other guy is wearing, if you cannot make a touch attack, you cannot do shocking damage from a stun baton. Likewise with the magic arrow/bolt.

Cause well.. If the GM is just going to go "Nope can't do it because of your aura!" ultimately, touch preparations are completely and utterly useless. Especially with Advanced Alchemy practices (Provided Advance alchemy gets you those trigger types)

Why?

Well one thing I've heard is "You've got to have this thing so you can make it so it triggers only when another aura other than your own comes within contact of the arrow."

Cause, well.. That means you cannot get in the same car as anyone else. Forget about walking down a busy street. An explosive pat on the back. Hugs from Hiroshima. Water has so much microscopic life in it. Anyone punching you or using a natural weapon..

My most favorite way though is Hugar, the Barbarian troll who chucks a kitten at you.

You basically force the alchemist into a position where if he uses touch preparations, He's a walking bomb or he can only make touch preparations  on the spot that he wants to use them. Heck, I don't think it would be that far of a step for GM's to ask for a number of rolls as well to make sure he doesn't accidentally set off the fireball in his face.

[Triskavanski]

Um, drain isn't the basis of which spells are more powerful. And for something that is F-1, cast at F6, you'd resist 5 drain per use, FYI. Also, remember that enchanting things takes a number of minutes equal to the force, so you get more 'bang for your buck' with AoE spells.

Not if you Enchant with a Contact Trigger, though.



Triskavanski: I thought the whole point of Enchanting was that you had a few hours to recover from the Drain after making the preparation, though. Let's try a scenario:

• You make a Force 9 Fireball preparation with 14 dice and reagents used to set your Limit to 6. If you use Second Chance, there's a 93.50% chance of success, with an average Potency of ~3.01 if you succeed.
• Drain is 9S (10S with Command): with 11 Drain resist dice, that's an average of 5.33S (6.33S with Command) post-resist. After 2 hours of rest with Body 3 and Willpower 5, you'll have an average of 1.13S (1.77S with Command) remaining, without using a second point of Edge. Throw in Quick Healer, and it's 0.59S (1.02S with Command) on average.
• After those 2 hours of rest, even at Potency 1 you'll still have an hour left before it starts decreasing.
• Assuming the average Potency of 3, there's an 81.89% chance of no scatter, 12.72% chance of 2d6−2m scatter, 4.62% chance of 2d6−1m scatter, and 0.77% chance of the spell fizzling. With Force 9, that means 12.72% x 2.78% + 4.62% x 8.33% + 0.77% = ~1.51% chance of the spell not hitting the place where the arrow landed.

All in all, spending a single point of Edge and 120¥ gives a straight-out-of-chargen character a chance of over 90% of successfully using a Force 9 Fireball enchantment on an arrow, provided whoever shoots the arrow hits their mark.

Yes, you should have a few hours to rest, typically speaking. However those hours tick away the time you have left on the preparations. So being able to make more within a shorter period of time with as little drain as possible allows you to have quite a bit more omph in your bags.

It takes minutes per level of force to make them, meaning the more powerful it is, the harder it will be to make.
Resting takes 1 hour for a Body + Will check. (Plus what other modifiers you can get)
Then you have travel time, if you're not making it on the field.



In your example here, its the arrow with touch?
But it could easily be replaced with a command trigger type
Or a a more cleverly placed fireball from an equal level sorcerer.

[Namikaze]

Have we not discussed this topic enough?  There are three separate threads I can think of that talk about this, with no resolution.  Was anything changed in Street Grimoire about this topic?  If so, let's talk about that and not about what we've already beaten to death.