So probably around 8 sessions ago I bought a disruptor pistol. I really didn't want one but since I could I did. I then jury rigged it to need only 1 advantage to crit and mounted it on my character's left wrist. I already had a x-30 lancer on the right wrist. I thought wrist mounted pistols would be cool and allows me to still wield my Virbro-Axe with out having to juggle around weapons. I've never used the disruptor pistol until this past session.

The party is exploring some uninhabited forest planet and we're attack by two Ackleys (the monster obi wan fought in the arena in episode 2) So I go first and shoot it with the disruptor pistol and roll 1 success and 1 advantage. Good enough for a crit. So I roll the d100 and get a 96 + 40 (vicious) + 30 (lethal blows). Needless to say it was a pile of ash.

It just felt cheap and I'll probably retire it to the ship's armory.

So what weapon should I get to replace it?

Could very well be that you ashed a minion and shouldn't feel too OP, though that's a nasty roll.

I find it funny (in the "odd" sort of way), that you are shooting something you not only tweaked down to Crit 1, but tacked +30 crit on top of the already impressive +40 that comes with the weapon, and then were disappointed when it did what you wanted it to...

Could very well be that you ashed a minion and shouldn't feel too OP, though that's a nasty roll.

Just as a quick note... it would have done the same thing to a super powered nemesis had he gotten the exact same roll.

But, yeah... buy the most powerful weapon in the game... tweak it to be more powerful... take talents to make it more powerful... then wonder why it does exactly what you wanted it to?

I'm confused.

I've only ever brought a disruptor into the game I'm running one time, and it was to instill a real sense of dread in the PC's. A sense of "I don't want to get hit with that even if I'm super tough."

I made it pretty clear that these things are "super illegal off to the spice mines of Kessel if one is even found on your ship," and so after they finally defeated the adversary they got rid of the gun.

The problem with disintegrating is, if you use it on an enemy, you won't get anything from that enemy. This could include their gear, a datapad, information, etc.

There is the legality issue. There is also the becoming a target issue. If you use this weapon, logically I would attack the person with the disruptor if seen. Very bad people will also want the gun.

As to the OP's question, why bother replacing it? Won't you just tweak and get disapointed with whatever weapon you choose?

Darth Vader said "no disintegrations". He even accompanied it with a stern finger wagging.

Why would you argue with Darth?

TBS,

Don't forget... This guy's also swinging around a vibro-axe (jacked up with attachments and mods, to be sure). So I doubt this is the first time he's insta-wrecked someone. This latest kill is just "interesting" because its a disintegration.

I have to agree with the sentiment of "too powerful" that it seems at odds with the effort put into making the weapon that dangerous in the first place.

Three ranks of Lethal Blows is a fair investment in terms of XP and talents. Heck, just getting the weapon is an investment, unless the GM very foolishly just handed it out to the players. I'd be more surprised if the weapon wasn't quite capable of taking down opponents with alarming ease, seeing as how the minimum crit result you could get is "Crippled" according to the weapon's game text, meaning anything below a 31 on the percentile dice is still gonna mess the target up.

It's akin to a Force user PC getting their hands on a lightsaber and then tossing it aside the first time they tear through a group of minions.

I keep one in my Slicer's backpack, given the lack of combat skills, wounds and defence that I don't have in a universe that seems to be hell bent on mauling, shooting and harassing a mostly inoffensive computer nerd travelling to one festering, uncivillised dump after another.

Its a bit of a last resort of 'DONT TOUCH ME!'

Our group found one last game. My doctor immediately urged (with more than a hint of panic) everyone to get rid of it or leave it be. Surprisingly, the group had no qualms with selling it.

Yep, my Wookiee got one a few sessions ago and sold it right away. Accepted a pretty low price for it, too, just to be rid of the thing. Don't need that kind of heat!

Disruptors are only as illegal as many of the other things that PCs tend to own. Smuggling Compartments on a starship being one of the most common Restricted things that many PCs have no problem with owning. Disruptor pistols are also rather easy to conceal, so I'm really surprised so many people are quick to be rid of them.

HappyDaze, you sound like your speaking from a player viewpoint rather than a character one.

Kaosoe's doctor probably would think of the damage a weapon like that would do to a lifeform and not like it for that reason.

Just because you can do a thing, or in this case use a weapon, doesn't mean you should. Like using chemical or biological weapons, some characters will think disruptors are vile weapons and not use them.

HappyDaze, you sound like your speaking from a player viewpoint rather than a character one.

Kaosoe's doctor probably would think of the damage a weapon like that would do to a lifeform and not like it for that reason.

Just because you can do a thing, or in this case use a weapon, doesn't mean you should. Like using chemical or biological weapons, some characters will think disruptors are vile weapons and not use them.

Yep Yep. Nothing left for that late thug's poor family. Despicable things, disruptors.

Blasters aren't pretty ways to die either, most of the estimates I've read of the good old 'Heavy Blaster' pistol and similar energy weapons put them somewhere around 5000 joules of energy.

Putting that into perspective, something like a .45ACP round will deliver around 450 joules at point blank, which is enough to blow off smaller extremities, hollow out someone's brain pan and leave nice big holes in someones torso.

Ramp that up a bit, a 12G slug will hit with around 4200J and that's enough to tear off arms, legs and 4-5cm hole through someone's torso, hit them in the head and it's probably going to come right off.

So, what the blaster lacks in sheer rate of fire 'dakka', it kind of evens out in the 'making stuff dismembered' category that starwars is sometimes famous for when people start swinging around their laser swords

People you hit are probably going to have some massive holes in them.

At least when disruptors get slung around, the cleaner can deal with the mess with a dustpan

The problem with the high illegality argument is the same as the problem with arguing for longer prison sentences. Once you've reached the point of sufficient deterrence, more has no effect. If someone is willing to risk a year jail sentence for something ridiculous like beating up another person, (seriously - what rational mind thinks a few minutes violence is worth being put in a small room and isolated from friends and family for a year), then making the sentence two years or eight, isn't going to increase the deterrence value. Similarly if the PCs are all illegal smugglers, then further illegality isn't much of a deterrence. In most games, if you get caught and arrested for smuggling, that's not going to be much different for a player than if they get caught with a disintegrator. You're either out of the game or you pull a jail break.

...a few minutes of violence that can have years of repercussions for the victim. Knasserll, I work at a trauma hospital. I see what a "few minutes of violence" can do to people. It's not pretty.

Your "few minutes violence" that isn't worth a 1 year jail term according to any "rational mind" (i.e., you) can leave the victim broken and damaged for life.

Why should those scumbags walk free after 12 months when their victim is left suffering for the rest of their life?

So probably around 8 sessions ago I bought a disruptor pistol. I really didn't want one but since I could I did. I then jury rigged it to need only 1 advantage to crit and mounted it on my character's left wrist. I already had a x-30 lancer on the right wrist. I thought wrist mounted pistols would be cool and allows me to still wield my Virbro-Axe with out having to juggle around weapons. I've never used the disruptor pistol until this past session.

The party is exploring some uninhabited forest planet and we're attack by two Ackleys (the monster obi wan fought in the arena in episode 2) So I go first and shoot it with the disruptor pistol and roll 1 success and 1 advantage. Good enough for a crit. So I roll the d100 and get a 96 + 40 (vicious) + 30 (lethal blows). Needless to say it was a pile of ash.

It just felt cheap and I'll probably retire it to the ship's armory.

So what weapon should I get to replace it?

Some folks here have been less than charitable in their posts, basically saying you brought this on yourself. I find this completely redundant, given your open admission and expressed regret. From the ranks in Lethal Blows it sounds like your character is an assassin or marauder (assassin/gadgeteer, yeah?), so I'm also a little baffled that people find it odd that you built your character to be good at killing.

As soon as you discovered that your build killed the challenge (and thus fun) it sounds like you took steps to ditch the advantage the game provided. To me that's the most important part of your post and it's something I find commendable. Nice one.

Replacement? I'd go the opposite route. You've got your axe when you run into really dangerous stuff, so why not replace the disrupter with a stun weapon? Or Ion Blaster? Or entangling weapon?

...a few minutes of violence that can have years of repercussions for the victim. Knasserll, I work at a trauma hospital. I see what a "few minutes of violence" can do to people. It's not pretty.

Your "few minutes violence" that isn't worth a 1 year jail term according to any "rational mind" (i.e., you) can leave the victim broken and damaged for life.

I'm familiar also with the consequences. My point was that the perpetrator is seldom being rational - no-one would normally trade a few minutes of violence for a year of being locked up if they sat down and thought it through. Ergo, they're not being rational. And if they're being irrational enough to not consider one-year of their life being taken away as a result of losing their temper, then they're not going to be any different if the sentence is two years.

You appear to be lecturing me as if I'm condoning violence or trivializing consequences. Nothing in my post does so.

Why should those scumbags walk free after 12 months when their victim is left suffering for the rest of their life?

I didn't say anything about that. I simply pointed out that long prison sentences don't really work as a deterrant. Few people in unplanned violent crime are thinking rationally at the time, and those who do plan crime expect to get away with it or they wouldn't do it. The prisons are full of people who either weren't thinking at the time, or thought they wouldn't get caught. I imagine there are extremely few prisoners who are there by choice.

Ergo, the American prison system is not about deterring crime. It's primarily there for two purposes - satisfying the desire for punishment on the part of victims / those on behalf of the victims, and generating profit for the privatised prison industry you have there. You could argue there is a rehabilitation motive but the spectacularly poor job of rehabilitation, repeat offender rates and that those running the prisons have a financial incentive not to reduce repeat offences, argue strongly against that. Plus you add to that victims and victims families who would campaign against prisoners being given opportunities because they consider the purpose of prison to be punishment, I believe that one can be discounted.

None of this is condoning violence as you imply. It's just stating interesting facts. I mention specifically the US prison system both because of its unusual privatised nature and because it has the highest incarceration rate in the world by a substantial margin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate). Rwanda comes in at number 6, a couple of hundred people per 100,000 lower than the US (a significant drop). Russia is at number 8 and Iran is at number 39 with a figure of around 280 prisoners per 100,000 population, compared to the USA's 716.

I didn't mean to take this into a side-topic and I didn't expect it to be controversial. I was just using it to illustrate why jacking up the illegality / consequence of disintegrators doesn't have the effect one might expect, with a relevant real-world example. The basic principle is that if a person is already taking a risk with a stake they consider unacceptable if they lose, then increasing the stake has no further effect. It's like if I choose to drive along a mountain road and there's a 500' drop on one side, making it a 1000' drop will add no further deterrence. I am making my decision to drive along it based on assuming I will not lose, not on the size of how much I will lose.

You seem to have read my post as trivializing violence. That was not in there at all.

Disruptor weapon are ultra lethal and very illegal. But they have many other drawback, among them:

• Disintegrating potential loot (it has been mentioned)
• No bounty if you are in the bounty trade (do you have a proof that he is dead ? No body ? Head ? Ear ? Something ?)
• Your players probably work as a team, considering friendly fire is always wise (as a GM I love to trigger friendly fire on despair and such)
• The moral problem of using a weapon that is considered as fragmentation ammunition are considered nowadays, even soldiers and other people in the "killing" business can have moral standard

I don't think disruptor weapons are a problem at the meta game level. They are more a problem at the game level, and so should be managed in game by the GM and the players.

knasserll, I'm sorry that I miss-read what you posted but I saw this:

"(seriously - what rational mind thinks a few minutes violence is worth being put in a small room isolated from friends and family for a year)"

I miss-read what you posted as arguing that a rational mind should not think that the punishment for being violent should be so harsh. I now realise you were talking about the state of mind of the perpetrator of the crime, and the lack of rationality that that implies at the time of offence.

My sincere apologies. My bad. I really misread that.

For what it is worth, after reading your message correctly, I kinda agree.

knasserll, I'm sorry that I miss-read what you posted but I saw this:

"(seriously - what rational mind thinks a few minutes violence is worth being put in a small room isolated from friends and family for a year)"

I miss-read what you posted as arguing that a rational mind should not think that the punishment for being violent should be so harsh. I now realise you were talking about the state of mind of the perpetrator of the crime, and the lack of rationality that that implies at the time of offence.

My sincere apologies. My bad. I really misread that.

For what it is worth, after reading your message correctly, I kinda agree.

Thanks for replying. I thought it might be a misunderstanding. I hope my post in response to yours was not an overreaction. Appreciate the response.

*hands Crimson Death a lit cigarette*
Was it good for you too?

As others stated don't use such a weapon with those mods and talents.
Honestly, even without the tweaking and talents a Disruptor weapon is dangerous enough, since every crit is minimum a 96 on the table.

Pick another blaster pistol,
ask your GM if there still is a miniaturized Proton Torpedo Launcher (Saga Edition, Galaxy at War) available on the market,
get an Ascension Gun including a grappling hook ...
or a Dart Launcher...

Here is an interesting question this brings up with me. Just because you have a talent that applies to damage like in this case do you have to use it? I mean it is your talent you should have control whether it comes into play or not. That is just my two cents on the talent.

I agree with getting a weapon like ion or stun weapon as it would give you some balance and go ahead and tweak it to be the ultimate stun weapon. That way you lose no loot, info, or bounty if you really put the smack down on the person. Of course again this is just my two cents.

Honestly I would just switch it to my off hand or least likely to use weapon and leave it be. Sometimes you have to have that one hit killer just to save the group if you wandered into something that can kill the whole group. However, since it is a narrative story I recommend talking to your gm and make it into part of the story of either a) getting rid of it or b) becoming known for using it and being that dangerous. Could lead to some interesting plot if someone starts gunning for you for being just that **** lethal.