Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

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lbeaumanior
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Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

Unread post by lbeaumanior »

Greetings,


I have many questions about magic weapons in Nightbane:

1. Can a Darkblade receive the spells Charm/Enchant Weapon? And will it double its damage against supernatural foes?
2. An enchanted weapon wielded by a Nightbane against a Nightlord, will quadruple the damage?


Thanks
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thorr-kan
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Re: Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

Unread post by thorr-kan »

You missed Temporary Ritual (level 9).

It doesn't say one way or the other. In my game, these three would only enchant mundane, not magical items. Darksteel weapons are magical.

Nightlords take x3 damage "from all attacks at the hands of Nightbane..." so I would say unarmed attacks from Nightbane do x3 damage. Armed attacks do x2 damage. No crossover.
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Re: Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

Unread post by Warshield73 »

We had a discussion about Darkblade Weapons a few months ago. Some of the points made might be of interest to you. My reading of the text is that the Dark Blades are as enchanted as they can be. In general you can't add new enchantments to a weapon after its creation. If a mage has spells that effect a weapon or natural abilities that grant a power to that weapon.
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Re: Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

Unread post by drewkitty ~..~ »

lbeaumanior wrote:Greetings,


I have many questions about magic weapons in Nightbane:

1. Can a Darkblade receive the spells Charm/Enchant Weapon? And will it double its damage against supernatural foes?
2. An enchanted weapon wielded by a Nightbane against a Nightlord, will quadruple the damage?


Thanks

Weapons weilded by NB do not recive the double damage bonus done by NB hand to hand attacks.
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lbeaumanior
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Re: Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

Unread post by lbeaumanior »

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:
lbeaumanior wrote:Greetings,


I have many questions about magic weapons in Nightbane:

1. Can a Darkblade receive the spells Charm/Enchant Weapon? And will it double its damage against supernatural foes?
2. An enchanted weapon wielded by a Nightbane against a Nightlord, will quadruple the damage?


Thanks

Weapons weilded by NB do not recive the double damage bonus done by NB hand to hand attacks.


Thanks, any page number or quote about it?
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Re: Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

Unread post by drewkitty ~..~ »

NB only get the double damage bonuses to hand to hand attacks with hand to hand attacks.

Weapon attacks are not hand to hand attacks.

Very much the definitions of the words apply. So there was no need to put it in the books.
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Axelmania
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Re: Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

Unread post by Axelmania »

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:Weapons weilded by NB do not recive the double damage bonus done by NB hand to hand attacks.
..
NB only get the double damage bonuses to hand to hand attacks with hand to hand attacks.

Weapon attacks are not hand to hand attacks.

Very much the definitions of the words apply. So there was no need to put it in the books.

Er, well, let's review?

Pg 175 "take triple damage from all attacks at the hands of Nightbane and Guardians"
Pg 177 "take double damage from the attacks and Talents of the Nightbane, and from the energy powers of the Guardians"

I could understand why some might get the impression that CJ would mean for the damage multiplication rules for Lords/Princes to be identical other than severity (2 or 3)

But we can certainly take this super literally:
    1) only hand strikes from Guardians/Nightbane do extra to Lords. No kicks or energy powers or talents.
    2) ALL attacks from Nightbane do extra to Princes (Talents are just a form of attack, no need to list them separately)
    3) only energy powers from Guardians do extra to Princes, no multipliers for punches/kicks.

World Book 1 (Between the Shadows) also notable discusses the Night Avatar:
    pg 73 "Even in astral form, Night Avatars take triple damage from attacks by Nightbanes and double damage from all supernatural creatures and magic weapons".

They might be a special case though.
Perhaps they only take x2 (still supernatural) instead of x3 from Guardians.?
Nightlords and normal (non-Astral) Avatars don't specify "magic weapons" at all, AFAIK.

That actually reminds me of Dopplegangers (main 160) so maybe Astral Avatars are like the Dopplegangers of normal ones?

World Book 2 (Nightlands) examples:
    pg 26 "triple damage from the hands of Nightbane and guardians" (also 29,30,34
    pg 27 "triple damage from attacks at the hands of Nightbane and guardians"

So 27 just reprinted from WB1, while the others abbreviated (dropping "attacks at the") perhaps to save on ink.

We should keep in mind the followup here (for the x2) is "all attacks made by supernatural creatures".

That doesn't specify 'hands' so even reading super-literally, it should get a x2 from kicking, from talents, and even using weapons. It's still a supernatural creature making the attack, even if they're not actually touching you skin-to-skin.

I'm thinking "from attacks at the hands" (later abbreviated to "from the hands") could possibly be meant in an equally broad sense. Like the expression "he will die by my hand" ... it doesn't have to literally mean "I'm going to punch or strangle him to death", it can also mean "I will wield a sword or gun and stab/shoot him".

We know from stuff like Enchant weapon (pg 148) that there's no need for supernatural stuff to impact directly to have supernatural extended effects. An enchanted bow that fires a non-chanted arrow, the arrow is still going to do double to supernatural creatures.

If that's possible, then why wouldn't a table thrown by a Nightbane do x3 damage a table would normally do to a nightlord?
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Re: Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

Unread post by The Beast »

lbeaumanior wrote:Greetings,


I have many questions about magic weapons in Nightbane:

1. Can a Darkblade receive the spells Charm/Enchant Weapon? And will it double its damage against supernatural foes?
2. An enchanted weapon wielded by a Nightbane against a Nightlord, will quadruple the damage?


Thanks


Palladium seems to have an unwritten rule that multiple multipliers aren't multiplied together (I swear this sentence didn't start off this way). Instead you add one to the multiplier for every additional multiplier beyond the first. So for example, if you get double damage from attack from behind and roll a Nat 20 and you then roll 10 points of damage the total damage done isn't 10 * 2 (attack from behind) * 2 (Nat 20), but 10 * (2+1).
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Re: Darkblades and Charm/Enchant Weapon questions

Unread post by Axelmania »

MARCH 1st EDIT: just noticed that page 78 of Nightlands says Darkblades ignore AR, so that's probably the standard "full power" rule, with a mere "-3 to AR" just being the "reduced power" option in HU to make them less scary.

That said, Nightlands 76 says they're "nearly indestructible" in contrast to HUGMG's "indestructible" (period!) so they seem to be stronger in other dimensions in THAT respect (Rifts Dark Conversions ALSO makes them indestructible).

The Beast wrote:Palladium seems to have an unwritten rule that multiple multipliers aren't multiplied together (I swear this sentence didn't start off this way). Instead you add one to the multiplier for every additional multiplier beyond the first. So for example, if you get double damage from attack from behind and roll a Nat 20 and you then roll 10 points of damage the total damage done isn't 10 * 2 (attack from behind) * 2 (Nat 20), but 10 * (2+1).


That's only been explicitly stated for critical hit multipliers merging into a single additive multiplier

Magical modifiers (x2 to supernatural, or x2 from metal weapons) don't say anything about following that, so I'd apply them separately after summing crit-factors and not as +100% increments

lbeaumanior wrote:Can a Darkblade receive the spells Charm/Enchant Weapon?
And will it double its damage against supernatural foes?

To answer the 1st question, pg 133-134 says nothing about being unable to cast the Charm Weapon ritual on already-magical weapons, so I'd allow it to be cast on them and improve their damage against supernatural foes.

I expect it's common for Night Priests to learn this ritual at 2nd level and be instructed to cast it on Darkblades before planned attacks.

It's a good thing rituals can't be put on talismans, or I'd expect the nightlords to outfit hounds with such talismans!

As Thorr points out, there's also Temporary Enchantment (pg 141) which lasts weeks, so 9th level Priests of Night would probably be casting these on darkblades all the time to buff them.

It might be a lot more useful to enchant guns with this and hand those guns out to preeverts / corrupt police though. Most nightbane are already going to be in too much trouble from a hound in melee combat so they'll just run away, but if cops can wound them x2 with guns, running won't be as helpful.

There's also nothing I can see prohibiting stacking these spells (rules SOMEWHERE prohibit doubling up on the SAME spell, I'm pretty sure... probably in FAQ or one of the other games though, not in NB itself) to get x4 damage on Nightbane too.

Enchant Weapon could in theory boost that to x8 but at 13th level it would be pretty rare. It also means you might have humans / NB using this x8 combo against hounds/hunters.

You don't get the x8 against body armor though, so it might create incentive for NB/Hounds to use cover or actually wear armor, as they usually do not.
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