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Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells - Vehicle and Starship Combat - Part IV

Artwork by Louis Glanzman

How about the starship's weapons you ask?

Weapons


Vehicles and starships can sport a great arsenal of weapons. Some of them have heavy machine guns, missile launchers, flamethrowers and some even have laser guns, blaster cannons and even somo more arcane armaments the Overlord can come up with.

In game terms, vehicle’s weapons work just like character weapons, although the Overlord must pay attention to the Scale in which they are being used.

Specific Weapons


Imaginative Overlords can easily make use of the weapon tables in Chapter 3: Equipment and Credits to come up with all sorts of weapons for their vehicles and starships, and that’s what we expect then to do. However, we present below a few specific weapons that may function a little differently to spicy things up and give inspiration for Overlords and players.

Proton Torpedos


These advanced missile weapons are used on the most battle ready starships to take down the toughest opponents. The have a long range and usually punch 5d6 points of damage. Some even rarer models do more damage (up to 10d6) or even have tracking engines that halve the Difficulty to hit their targets. The problem is that they are a one use only item and are really hard to find outside the Galactic Overlords’ arsenals.

Traction Beam


These weapons are used to prevent a vehicle from escaping and for capturing enemy ships. The tractor beam emits a strong gravitational pull against the objects it is pointed against, possibly looking it into place or pulling them back to be captured. In game terms, a traction beam has normally a medium range, but it does not cause actual damage. If the attack is successful the attacker rolls 2d6 and that’s the Difficulty for the Maneuverability test the target must make. If this test is successful, the target vehicle suffers no ill effects. Failure rolled above the Maneuverability score means the ship is pulled a distance category closer to the attacker. But a failure within the Difficulty score only means the target ship is locked in place.

Disintegrator


Terrible weapons devised by the cruel Galactic Overlords during the Cleansing Wars, these weapons are capable of turning entire starships into mere particles. Only the most potent ships can carry such guns, since a single fire drains so much energy that smaller starships could completely shut down. In game terms, these weapons have a long range and requires a Maneuverability test from the target, in order to avoid being disintegrated instantly (the Overlord may rule that very large ships suffer 10d6 points of Hull damage instead of being completely disintegrated).

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