Weapons to kill a Vampire

Blunt Vorpal:

Actually, its hard as hell to stake a vampire.   -3 and requiring 5 successes? 

Hang on, hang on, it takes 5 successes?  When did this come into play?  BOTH my WoD and Requiem books say 3 success to stake a vamp and torpor him?!

When did this become 5 success?

they changed it in the errata, because they noticed it is way to easy to stake things (and somewhat unrealistic... if you trying to take that thing into consideration).

And 5 successes is more in line with the rest of the system.

Already mentioned was the use of overwhelming firepower provided by modern guns. When I ran a Vampire Hunter Chronicle, if the players got into a tough situation, then would unload hundreds of rounds in the general direction of the vampire. If they fail to put the vampire down with that opening salvo, chances are the vampire is going to run away as fast as possible, or is way to tough for them to fight, and they should become nervous.

Ravenchild:

You could always liquify UV light and put it in a bullet....
no.... wait , I forgot.....THATS F-ing RETARDED

LOL


  There is a spell in  MtAw  using Forces 5 to create sunlight, there's also a spell using Prime to make imbued items.....

Speaking of weapons to kill a vampire with, I thought I'd throw this quandry out there:

Nail Guns.

So, ok, here's why its a quandry.  According to Armory, a Nail Gun deals +0L (well +1 but then -1 for being improvised) in melee, but it deals an extra automatic point of damage on a success.  Furthermore, it uses Strength + Firearms.  (Honestly, every dedicated firearms user should probably grab one of these for that alone).  There are no notes about vampires whatsoever, so it seems reasonable to assume, then, that they'll take normal lethal damage for being nailed. 

However, when you get to modifying it so the plate is always pressed and thus can be used at range, it says to treat it as a generic revolver (I think the .22).  If you use the stats of the gun, does the "deals bashing to vampires" trait get ported over with the rest of the gun stats?

If it does, then it should logically deal bashing in melee as well, so why isn't it mentioned anywhere?  A nail is a nail after all.  It either causes severe enough tissue damage or it doesn't.  There'd be a weird disconnect if it dealt lethal in melee and bashing at range.  How far does the nail need to travel before it becomes bashing to a vampire, etc., etc.?  Of course, if it does deal Lethal at range, then you have to deal with the fact that it is the single best Firearms based weapon you could possibly use against a vampire (assuming to want to take more than one shot, since Crossbows need 3 rounds of you getting killed to reload), so much so that everybody who can use a gun and is even aware of vampires as a threat should probably own and carry a modded one (and its a hell of a lot easier to carry around than a crossbow anyway).

I honestly wouldn't know which way to rule it if someone in one of my games wanted to try a nail gun for that purpose, so I'm curious as to what others would rule in their games.

mplindustries:

I honestly wouldn't know which way to rule it if someone in one of my games wanted to try a nail gun for that purpose, so I'm curious as to what others would rule in their games.

if a nail gun is lethal then so are APS rifles who shoot darts...

A titanium spork.

This is a story about how I shot myself in the knee when I was seventeen and why I dislike hospitals.

There are a number of different kinds of nail guns. The small and highly portable type that work like glorified spring loaded staplers are a far cry from those which use an air compressor in order to punch the nails into a surface. The Armory book probably doesn't draw a distinction between individual models, but if they're listing the damage as 1L, I'd have to assume that it's intended to describe compressor powered models. Which are of limited use in a fight, since the compressor, while mobile for many models so that it can be brought from job site to job site, is not something easily carried around and certainly not something that could be concealed.

I was employed as a carpenter for a few years in high-school and the early part of my college education. Did mostly cabinetry, although other custom jobs were sometimes taken on as well. Generally lighter work; furniture, cabinets, mantle pieces and banisters- not the framework for a house. We used a number of nail guns of varying sizes and types- most of which had been heavily modified in a manner that made them more versatile or appropriate for the job at hand, generally as a result of removing or circumventing safety features. The pressure sensitive plate "safety mechanism" was trimmed off and sautered into place so that the nail gun could be fit into corners that it otherwise would not get into and so that, if necessary, a nail could be fired from a couple inches away and end up mostly where it was intended to go.

My lack of forethought in checking the pressure prior to using a nail gun to do some finishing work on a piece of light pine is what caused me to shoot a nail clean through the material I was working with in order to lodge it into my knee. The hospital trip was expensive, while being simultaneously quite a letdown when it came to the expectations for a level of care I had attributed to modern medicine. An orderly sat on me and a nurse borrowed a pair of vice grips from a maintenance guy, then I got a prescription for antibiotics.

Having physically used nail guns that had been modified so that they could be fired in a manner that circumvented the safety features though, I can say that it makes sense for them to do lethal if properly used and bashing if they are not. Nails fired at targets any distance away tended to rather quickly lose force over even moderate distances. Further, the idea of aiming a  nail gun at anything more than a few feet away becomes pretty quickly absurd- the nail gun itself has almost no "barrel", the nails aren't designed for accurate use as a projectile and they pull all over the place. Firing a nail across a room to hit a wall twenty feet away usually resulted in the nail spiraling so badly that it would rarely even hit point-first, often several feet to the side of where it had been aimed and generally with so little force that it barely nicked plaster. And this was while using an air compressor set to maximum.

The portable staple-gun type nail guns couldn't even manage that.

Loxosceles:

This is a story about how I shot myself in the knee when I was seventeen and why I dislike hospitals.

I actually rather enjoyed that story, but there is another kind of nail gun that basically takes the best of both worlds: the electromagnet nail gun.  To my knowledge, they are plenty portable and can still shoot nails at speeds upwards of 1400 feet per second.  Its basically a rail gun with no barrel.  So it is high powered enough, but obviously you are right that there is no rifling.  In Armory it used the stats of the generic .22, which is 1L, so it'd basically be a +0 weapon.  Oh, and the .22 has ranges 5/10/20, so you're pretty much dead on with the range thing.  Of course, I'd wager you'd still get a nasty wound from a nail hitting you butt side first after breaking the sound barrier, so I don't know that tumbling matters.

Despite the book's brief explanation, it's hard to create a consistent, principled explanation of why vampires suffer bashing from firearms -- especially considering the wide variety of firearms and ammunition, the similarity of some gunshot wounds to wounds caused by melee weapons which uncontroversially are said to cause lethal damage, etc. In light of (or despite) that difficulty, I can't think of a decent argument as to why a fired nail (regardless of velocity) should cause a vampire lethal damage while hollowpoints, sabots, armor piercing rounds, buckshot, and flechettes fired from firearms cause bashing damage.

Fikealox:

In light of (or despite) that difficulty, I can't think of a decent argument as to why a fired nail (regardless of velocity) should cause a vampire lethal damage while hollowpoints, sabots, armor piercing rounds, buckshot, and flechettes fired from firearms cause bashing damage.

I'd accept that decision, but how do you reconcile that the same nail in melee would deal lethal?  Or should that be changed to?  Does that mean lots of small stabbing weapons should deal bashing to vampires?  Daggers, perhaps?  How far do you take it?  This is precisely why I'm torn on ruling it either way.  I'm just glad its not come up yet.

Just use the Hack that all Weapons deal (B) Damage. 

I really don't think there's a principle that can be inferred from the simplistic, somewhat arbitrary rules which will clear up all inconsistencies in these 'borderline' cases, so any decision is going to be unsatisfactory and arbitrary on some level. It could go either way, like you said. For simplicity's sake I'd probably just concede to the impossibility of finding a guiding principle, and make a ruling on a case-by-case basis according to the needs of the chronicle (a bit like combat hacks, I guess :)).

basically the way I rule it:  If the weapon does damage by piercing the flesh rather than slashing the flesh it's bashing to vampires.  So I break the RAW and make archery not targeting the heart does Bashing as well, as do piercing daggers, rapiers, etc.