In our Rogue Trader game, my Missionary has become the group's bard. Quite literally. He has a guitar, high fellowship, perform (musician), and spends time writing songs about the exploits of the band. He has taken to abandoning his old shotgun in favor of carrying his guitar into combat.

In keeping with the "no idea is too crazy" feel of the game, I've decided I would like to try to get the guitar modified to act as a weapon in some way. My first thought was to have it modified to act as a sonic grenade type weapon, but I'm not decided.

However, I thought I'd see if y'all had any ideas?

Well the Noise Marines of the Emperors Children have suspiciously guitar shaped Sonic blaster which they nicked from the Laer (if I remember correctly) so the technology certainly exists in the 41st millenium. Possibly your missionary could have picked up an AdMech experiment or non-Chaotic xenos version of it.

SJE

The Boy Named Crow said:

If he has a decent weaponry skill i'd say turn it into a power axe.

E.X.A.-Puggy said:

Depending on how MeTaL he is, it may already be one. But yeah, I was going to go with Power Weapon or chainblade or something. Chainblade could potentially be disastrous, though.

Disastrous but high-larious. I guess it would depend where you put the chain blade part: on the neck/fretboard is just asking for trouble...

I'b be tempted to turn it into a Shock weapon of some sort.

Thanks for the input!

I like the power-field concept. The character does have a melee focus. I'd also like to hear any other ideas on possible non-weapon upgrades/attachments anyone has.

well not really a weapon upgrade just an item upgrade

perhaps get a better type of guitar, best quality could come from a material that can withstand an orks skull for instnace without breaking

go with the old EL KABOOOOONNNNNG bit

Built in amplifier for both the music and the character's voice.

Effect similar to how stubbers work, preventing eavesdropping instrumentation from working.

An effect allowing it to disrupt communication devices in an area - so enemies can't communicate with one another.

He could take a skill in encryption, so he could deliver messages through sound and notes which would require a cryptographer to break.

Perhaps you could talk to the gm about allowing you to make music checks vs enemy fellowship tests to negate the effects of persuasion/charm/blather and similar skills/talents used against the party.

Jack of Tears said:

I think you mean "stummers"*, not stubbers: stubbers are (generally cased) SP weapons. Stummers are devices that use signal analysis and destructive interference to damp sound in an area.

*Stummer: from "schtum" (as in "to keep schtum about something"), a loanword from one of the (other) germanic languages, probably yiddish, although I'm not certain about that

Alasseo said:

Perhaps, perhaps not. I think it would be considerably harder for such equipment to work with a little stubber fire to mask the sounds.

Thanks for the input everyone.

Alasseo said:

Seriously, what was the point of this response other than "The item you're thinking of is a stummer"? Anything beyond that is pointless and pedantic. Yeah, I got the name of the item wrong, oops, move along.

Alternatively you could allow him to modify his guitar so that it gains similar weapon capabilities to that of the El Mariarchi guitars from Once upon a time in Mexico .

Alasseo said:

It would be very hard to eaveson someone if they've shot you, though.

The Boy Named Crow said:

I hade thought that a possibility might involve heavy augmetic reconstruction of the lower face and interface of the instrument with the Vox system, possibly allowing you to produce an unsettling effect similar to the subsonic dirges of the Tech-Priests.

Then again, that's just me wanting everyone to be brought closer to the Machine God.

You and my GM both. He's way to attached to his humanity, though.

Thanks for the ideas, everyone. With any luck, my PC will soon be tearing up the battlefield with his auditory might.