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View Full Version : How would you do multiarmed characters?



Lea Plath
2012-03-11, 10:44 AM
So, I was wondering about how people would balance multiarmed characters in diffrent games or if you guys know of any examples?

I know in Shadowrun you can have up to 6 arms (changling, double shiva arms) and the penalty for that is that if you want to fire or attack with all the arms at once, you have to split your dice pool between all the arms. And without the ambidexterity perk, each attack that isn't in your main hand suffers the off hand penalty.

And if I was to do it in fate, I would probably lose some refresh, and then I can perform up to 3 actions which require 1-2 hand simultaneously, with a - penalty to each action after the first.

So how would you guys do it?

Starshade
2012-03-11, 12:30 PM
D&D 3.5 got the Thri-kreen race in the Expanded Psionics Handbook, and that race simply threat the two extra hands as just another offhand attack, and allows for taking the Multiweapon fighting feat in the Monster manual instead of the Two weapon fighting feat.
Since it's a human size bug with Psionic powers, I'd think it would pose no real issue, but I dont got the experience to intepret it's stat, and its the only 4 armed D&D race statted out spesifically for player race in the books I own/got access too.

jackattack
2012-03-11, 06:17 PM
You may need to come at this sideways.

If you are interested in shooting four guns simultaneously in four hands, see if the DM will count that as an auto-fire attack instead of four individual attacks. This might limit your character to firing at only one target, or using auto-fire "spread" rules, but hopefully it gets you the flavor you are looking for.

For melee, you might have to live with "two-handed" fighting, but consider that you are alternating (sets of) arms with each attack. So one round you might attack with your sword and dagger, and the next round you might attack with your mace and axe. You also probably get to ignore being disarmed at least once, since it would be an "extra" weapon.

If you buy skill levels with points, consider buying some levels based on the availability of an extra limb or two. (And see if you can get a small discount as well.) Some skills (especially dexterity-based mechanical skills) should benefit from having a third or fourth hand.

If you can't get around multiple-hand penalties or limits on how many hands you can use per round, see if there is a way to get more actions per turn. The special effect is that the extra actions represent the extra limbs.

I hope this helps. Good luck.

Worlok
2012-03-11, 06:24 PM
... like I do everybody, frankly. :smalltongue:

No, jokes aside, having four arms is as much of an advantage over having two as having two is over having one: Right off the bat, you can hold more things at the same time, and you can pretty much still function like a two-armed character while, for example, swimming, climbing, or whatever else we'd usually need both hands for. Your balance, of all things, would probably be slightly better, seeing how you always got at least two arms to rebalance your standing, and so on.

Thing is, for four-armed races, this is just as natural as having two arms is for most of us, and somehow getting extra arms tacked on at some point during your career as a character is mainly just an issue of how quickly you get used to it. In any case, hand-eye-coordination and whatever else relates to using those is typically learned at some point during infancy or childhood, and the closest thing to a drawback I can think of is somehow taking a slice out of the characters advancement in the early stages of his or her life with extra arms - say, the human fighter-type in the party learned to fight with sword and shield when he was young, while his creepy insectoid flanking buddy went into the art of utilising four sword-hands at once to maximum effect, this taking somewhat longer than it took his bro to master blade-and-boarding due to it requiring just a little more effort. The one who lost one arm some day might overcompensate, getting a prosthetic and an extra robot set to never be dis-armed as easily again, but would then come to the realisation that what amounts to having yet another set of nature's most efficient missile launcher, and a metal one at that, takes some amount of learning how to use it, too.

The result would be somewhere along the lines of a level adjustment that you can buy off at some point by essentially taking one level twice, like in that one variant rule for 3.5, or maybe hitting second level (or the next one, anyway) taking about 100 experience points (or an equivalent amount of relatively non-permanent extra hardship early on) more than it would someone of another race. Or maybe a temporary penalty to balancing and movement checks, where such factor in, that then wears of upon the character in question working out the quirks. Just nothing big, and most importantly no static long-term drawback except maybe extra body-weight or being a slightly bigger target under certain circumstances, with the character still coming out on top in the long run, as utterly regardless of exactly how you look at it, multiarmed characters come with a huge plus factory-installed, and such should be felt, and most certainly valued as a benefit, in my opinion, but not hurt. What do you think, everyone? :smallredface:

Andion Isurand
2012-03-11, 07:00 PM
Obah-Blessed template from Dungeon Magazine 136 is a fun one to look at.

+2 Str, +4 Dex, +2 Con, +4 Cha
one extra pair of arms
multi-weapon fighting bonus feat
+2 LA

-- or --

+4 Str, +6 Dex, +4 Con, +6 Cha
two extra pairs of arms
multi-weapon fighting bonus feat
+3 LA


can't be added to a creature that already has more than four arms

Urpriest
2012-03-11, 07:29 PM
I think the idea that more arms=more actions is a little silly, unless you've got a creature that's also able to split its concentration supernaturally well. In general I'd say things like two-weapon fighting are best represented as allowing qualitatively different tricks rather than just more attacks. So having multiple arms would likely be handled in a similar way.

GreenSerpent
2012-03-11, 09:48 PM
There are rules in the MM for playing a four-armer Sahuguin.

Now a 4-armed Sahuguin with Obah-Blessed for another 4 pairs... HEHEHEHEHEHEEE...

Lea Plath
2012-03-12, 05:50 PM
How about knocking them up to 6 arms? :P

And I was thinking, bonus to climbing because of strength to weight ratio, and penalty to swimming due to water drag and arms getting in the way of each other.