Howdy folks,

I'm looking for some advise and I hope y'all can lend a hand.

I'm currently working on a campaign for my wife and a friend. Our friend would like to make use of daggers and throwing daggers/stars as their primary weapons of choice. Their character is going to be an Entertainer / assassin in training.

However, I'm trying to figure out how to make throwing daggers worth using in a world where there's mixed tech. They're in a post-apocalyptic type setting, so like Fallout in some respects, you're gonna have people with makeshift guns, swords, and the like. (no energy weapons).

Does anyone have any suggestions how I could make this work, so that the player can stay true to the character vision without having to eventually switch to guns?

Thanks in advance for any help.

First thing that comes to mind is ammo consumption; in my Fallout theme, I have all guns able to run out of ammo on 3 Threat, and "extra reloads" aren't a guarantee to find. That means that suddenly a character could have a nice Encumbrance 4 makeshift club, instead of a useful Combat Rifle...

Make ammo rare or expensive in your world and you give folks a reason to use reusable, retrievable throwing blades.

1 minute ago, DarthGM said:

First thing that comes to mind is ammo consumption; in my Fallout theme, I have all guns able to run out of ammo on 3 Threat, and "extra reloads" aren't a guarantee to find. That means that suddenly a character could have a nice Encumbrance 4 makeshift club, instead of a useful Combat Rifle...

Make ammo rare or expensive in your world and you give folks a reason to use reusable, retrievable throwing blades.

Nice idea! I am certainly going to make that an issue. We've come from gaming systems where we've glossed over the importance of ammo and actually purchasing/finding it, so that will certainly help.

However, what do you think about damage rating/stats for throwing blades?

They don't seem nearly as deadly as other weapons, though we've all seen games where they are used to great effectiveness.

Don't have them do a lot of damage, maybe Brawn +1 or +2 at the most, but give them lower crit ratings. A weapon like this could be very worthy of using...

Throwing Dagger - Ranged (light, if applicable), Brawn+1 Damage, Range (Short), Crit 2, Enc 0, Limited Ammo 1

Maybe allow it to be modified to have Pierce 1 and/or Vicious 1 and you have a weapon that does low damage, but high chance to crit. That means that it will outright kill a minion if you crit with it, and could be very harmful (but not very lethal) to Rivals/Nemesis/PCs, which fits the classic trope for such weapons in media.

I'd make it encumbrance 1, to line up with the knife (CRB91). Besides, it's bulkier than a coin, right? And Ranged (Light) weapons should be encumbrance 1–2 (CRB199).

Fair point.

48 minutes ago, c__beck said:

I'd make it encumbrance 1, to line up with the knife (CRB91). Besides, it's bulkier than a coin, right? And Ranged (Light) weapons should be encouraged 1–2 (CRB199).

If they are meant to be thrown as the standard attack I would have them be a pouch, bundle, or bandolier of knives and treat it like gun ammo.

5 minutes ago, dresdinseven said:

If they are meant to be thrown as the standard attack I would have them be a pouch, bundle, or bandolier of knives and treat it like gun ammo.

I'm basing the Limited Ammo 1 on the stats given on the GenCon module character sheets.

2 hours ago, dresdinseven said:

If they are meant to be thrown as the standard attack I would have them be a pouch, bundle, or bandolier of knives and treat it like gun ammo.

CRB page 200: " If you’re dealing with a thrown weapon such as a grenade or throwing knife, it should have a Limited Ammo rating of 1…. "

In addition, if you want a bandolier, I'd take a page from the backpack (CRB page 94) and the backpack of holding (CRB page 146); have the bandolier allow you to carry 6 encumbrance worth of thrown weapons for only 1 encumbrance, price 20, rarity 2.

2 hours ago, c__beck said:

CRB page 200: " If you’re dealing with a thrown weapon such as a grenade or throwing knife, it should have a Limited Ammo rating of 1…. "

In addition, if you want a bandolier, I'd take a page from the backpack (CRB page 94) and the backpack of holding (CRB page 146); have the bandolier allow you to carry 6 encumbrance worth of thrown weapons for only 1 encumbrance, price 20, rarity 2.

I like that idea. It gives the feel of useful equipment items for the daggers.

I really appreciate the discussion on this, guys.

So what do you think about the Pierce / Vicious / Accuracy quality on the daggers like DarthGM mentioned earlier (and I spotted on the gen con sheet there)?
I can see different qualities for different daggers, or at the least, that'll give our friend something to look toward to saving up for higher quality daggers in the future.

Having a variety of daggers is a neat idea, I probably wouldn’t create them all immediately but rather wait to see how the first ones go.

Pierce is definitely going to help you cause a Wound or two, all characters have at least 1 Soak with 3 being average, probably only 1 or 2 ranks of that.

Vicious I would reserve for very special daggers/stars.

Accurate is an awesome way to show that the dagger is designed for throwing and weighted well, it will also help trigger Crits thanks to the possible extra advantage, definitely only 1 rank of that.

Ascian Throwing Daggers from SWRPG were brawn +1 , enc 1, pierce 2 weapons iirc.