Okay, so Smash Mouth picks up a car and hurls it at our hero, Captain Azure. Is the damage that the Captain's force field will Soak based on S.M.'s Brawn plus the Brawn of the car? I assume the car gets Growth (Size) bonuses, correct?
What about picking up a lightpole or ripping an I-beam off a wrecked building? What does Damage done with those start on - the wielder's Brawn plus ?? The I-beam's Soak? Hits?
I get the distinction between Light and Heavy Improvised Weapons, but I feel like the details aren't fleshed out as well as they might have been. MOAR EXAMPLZ PLZ KTHANXBAI
The difference between light and heavy- I usually do as "can it easily be lifted/thrown with one hand?" If the answer is yes, treat it as Light, if the answer is no, treat it as Heavy.
Light = Wielder's Brawn = DM
Heavy = Wielder's Brawn +1 = DM
There is no adding of size bonuses, etc. The size part is taken care of by Area attacks for things that do x4, x5, or x6 damage (assuming the object is big enough).
For large objects that grant an area, does it have to be a burst? The text doesn't specify, it just says "it may be an area effect". However the chart on page 26 only mentions Small, Medium and Large Bursts. If you do something like throw a car, could it be an equivalently sized Line instead of a Burst?
Ah, I think I see - it isn't how heavy an object you're wielding so much as the fact that you CAN wield it in the first place. So the weapon isn't there for more than an extended arm's reach, unless you're throwing it in which case the fact that you can pick up and throw a motorcycle means you'll do as much damage as, well, as someone who picks up motorcycles and throws them.
Basically, yes, that sounds right. Although you can get a +1 DM from a heavy improvised weapon, but what "Heavy" means will vary depending on your own Brawn.
Though, now that I think about it, there's always the situation where improvised weapons are used to parry/deflect... say stopping someone's energy beam with the I-beam you're holding. In that case, they might be more like "Improvised Cover" with a smaller proportion of Hits/Soak. Maybe?
I agree, though I'm not sure you need to reduce the Hits/Soak of the object; a car you hold in front of you is still the same car and provides basically the same cover as if you hid behind it while it sat on the ground. So if you're using a large object for cover and carrying it with you because you're strong enough to do so, that seems legit to me. They typically can still attack around it with a called shot.
I need to give that some more thought, it hasn't come up for us yet. Thanks for the idea!
Improvised Cover wouldn't mean you hide behind a car. It would mean you rip the door off the car and use it, or you tear up the sidewalk and use that. A car would just be regular cover.
Can I please clarify, if a character with Brawn 5 hits with a sledgehammer (DMx3), and rolls say a 10 on his 2d6 for damage, his total damage would be 10x3 +15=45.
But if he was using a car instead (counting as a light improvised weapon), his total damage would be 10x5=50 (plus the small burst)?
For calculating damage done to the car being used as a weapon, do I use te Collateral Damage table, or the stats for a car in the vehicle section?
Regarding how the sledgehammer vs. car works, yes you are exactly right.
Regarding how damage is done to the car, it is up to the Narrator and how s/he wants to deal with it at the table. The third option is "just describe what happens to the car".
As a Narrator myself, I'd tend to only use the Car Stats if that car were especially important. Otherwise, I'd use collateral damage rules or hand-wave it.
