A new use for swords?

[SDragon]

I was with my dad awhile back, and he was showing off his new softball bat Not being a big sports fan, I was impressed when I noticed the balance on it, which reminded me about the need for balance in swords. Some thoughts and ideas were swirling in my head for awhile, that eventually amalgamized into thoughts of Buster Swords. Later, when we were at subway, I was imagining anime-style swordfights, with the protagonist of these imaginings weilding, of course, a Buster Sword. Knowing that the weapons for anime characters tend to be very distincitve, I decided this particular Buster Sword had a large ring for a pommel, to properly balance the sword out. Then a thought struck me:


What if the protagonist decided to grip the ring, and throw the sword as a ridiculously oversized shuriken?

The more I thought about that, the more it seemed to be a really cool idea for RPGs. After a little while, I came up with some hard-and-fast rules for such a stunt, which are as follows:

You may throw a Slashing weapon a distance of 1 hex per point of STR (after the weapon's min. STR requirement). For each subsequent time throwing a weapon in this fashion, the distance is reduced by one hex, cumulatively.

Since these are hard-and-fast rulings, they most likely aren't properly balanced. Thoughts are very much appreciated :)

[limetom]

This is actually already covered in the rules:

Throw Anything [General]
In your hands, any weapon becomes a deadly ranged weapon.

Prerequisites: Dex 15, proficiency with weapon, base attack bonus +2.

Benefit: You can throw a melee weapon you are proficient with as if it were a ranged weapon.  The range increment of weapons used in conjunction with this feat is 10 feet.

Normal: You can't throw a melee weapon without taking a -4 penalty unless it has a range increment (such as a handaxe or a dagger.

Since thrown weapons can be thrown to a maximum of five range increments, you're looking at a 50 ft. range with this feat.

The Player's Handbook II also has a feat which lets you throw shields, but I don't feel like printing it up.

While I was unable to find it in the Player's Handbook, Throw Anything does mention that you can throw melee weapons even without the feat.  So, unfortunately, your stunt is already covered, at least under D&D v3.X rules.  A better stunt might be something to increase the range of a thrown weapon to something beyond five range increments, because as far as my knowelge goes, this isn't already covered.

[SDragon]

Oh.

Can anybody find in the PHB where it says you can throw melee weapons?


Edit- Nevermind, I found it.....

[SA]

This immediately reminded me of the first episode of Naruto.  Now that was a big shuriken.

[Xeviat]

I'm working on some throwing rules that I'll definitely share with you once they reach a level of "doneness" that I find reasonable. The idea is based upon the notion that a traditional push in d20 is an opposed Str check, with distance determined by 5 ft. + 1 ft. per point Str check won by.

Thus, I think throwing a creature would reasonably be the same distance, since it is simple. Throwing objects would be done by establishing "strength scores" for objects based on weight (possibly modified by other factors, such as overall density) so that a creature could throw an object which they could lift as a light load a reasonable distance.

The goal is to have it be built to use the fewest tables as possible. One table would be required to reference the "strength score" of an item, based on weight, with simple modifiers based on few factors, while the thrower would use their str+size modifier. I'll be comparing the throwing distances of objects like footballs and shot-puts, which I can easily look up.

I do believe that if an object can be lifted as a light load, it should be manipulatable (spell check says that's a word ... heh) in one hand, and thus able to be thrown or used as a weapon. If it is balanced enough, it should be able to be used as a reasonable weapon (a sharpened iron slab wouldn't be reasonable, but if the balance was primarily at the point it is held, it may be).

I'm all for crazy anime goodness entering D&D, as long as it doesn't stretch normalcy for the setting or the gaming group. My tolerance is pretty high (my first campaign ended with one player's Barbarian becoming a werewolf and focusing on the curse, eventually becoming a were-direwolf and wielding a large-sized scythe in hybrid form).

[SDragon]

It doesn't sound too dissimilar to mine, except I included a bit to represent a sort of fatigue from too much throwing.

Actually, that's one thing that bothers me about d20-- with a few exceptions, it assumes that if you can do something once a day, you can do it as often as you want. Even a fighter would tire from hacking up kobolds, eventually, but the rules don't acknowledge that.

[Xeviat]

Currently, when a fighter is out hacking Kobolds, they're losing HP, which represents fatigue.

Ideally, a fighter should be able to take standard actions for a number of rounds equal to their Constitution score (I'm going to assume that Move+Standard is as exerting as Running). Every round you spend not using a standard (a double move is fine), you gain one round back. When you run out of this time, you have to start making Endurance checks to resist fatigue.

But, this would have to be applied to Casters as well, otherwise it would only further weaken non-casters.

[SDragon]

They're losing HP, even if the kobolds aren't hitting them? I mean, theoretically, even if the fighter's AC was high enough to force a miss on anything less then a crit, and even if each kobold had only one strike before it was killed, the fighter would take damage on every 20th kobold, but it could be a different story, in practice.

[Stargate525]

Why am I now seeing combat beginning with huge musclemen spinning around and chucking swords like the hammer-throw instead of the traditional first volley?

Admittedly, that would be a bit more fearsome... Someone has to stick this into a barbarian culture that relies completely on the sword.

[SDragon]

Whoa, I didn't even think of what this would be like in mass combat. That's freakin' awesome@