Help me think of this (EWP) exotic weapon please

[randomhero00]

Not 100% sure DnD has anything like it, but I've seen it somewhere. I *know* I've seen it in animes. Its like wire they throw and cuts when they pull. Seen it in helsing. What's that weapon called? What inspired it?

Would the whip be the closest thing? Or maybe a whip that deals lethal dmg?

[TroubleBrewing]

I don't think there's any way to accurately model Walter's monofilament wire attacks in D&D. Maybe in BESM, but I don't think there's a 3.5 version.

[Fhaolan]

It's typically called Monomolecular wire or something similar. There is actually a real material called monofilament, which is used in jewelry-making and so be careful looking it up under than name. :) The idea being that the wire is *so* thin that it is effectively infinitely sharp.

It shows up in a lot of different sci-fi fiction stories/universes and is pretty common in cyberpunk-like settings.

In D&D terms, you could probablly get away with building it as a whip with the Vorpal magic property, and just fluffing the description.

The danger of this stuff in a game is making it *so* good that nobody would use anything else. You end up with a Tippyverse-like setting where every building's security system is mono-wire 'blenders' occupying every empty space and so on.

[Seerow]

There's a monofilament whip in Shadowrun for sure that I know of (as well as a monofilament chainsaw which is ****ing awesome). I mention this because you posted in the general roleplaying forum rather than D&D...

[Razgriez]

Mono-filament wire is what your thinking of, sort of a cross between a wire garrote (A weapon designed for choking) and a very thin, flexible, and sharp whip.

In truth, creating such a weapon for DnD, is hard, because what you see in anime... well...overpowered in a standard DnD game... Here's a test idea for what you may want...

Monofilament wire (Exotic Melee weapon) DMG: 1d4 (All sizes, due to the wire being so thin) Proficient users may deal Slashing OR Piercing damage. Non-proficient users may only do slashing damage. Can perform Trip and Grapple attacks, from range, gaining a +4 bonus to do so. An enemy who fails their check, takes the weapon's damage due to their struggling causing the wire to cut deeper. Has reach
*Inherently dangerous: Due to the wire's thin size, and difficulty of use, it posses a risk of danger to the wielder even. On a natural one, the wielder takes damage from the whip.

In other games:

BESM is easier, because BESM weapon creation rules would let you factor in all the key bonuses and flaws for such a weapon, and BESM is quite able to run extremely high powered campaigns.

I know the Warhammer 40,000 series of games and RPGs, Eldar make heavy use of Monomolecular and Mono-filament weapons, from their standard armament, the Shuriken Catapult (and variants) which fires essentially a cloud burst of tiny shurikens, to the deadly "Night Spinner" cannons which fire mesh clouds of drifting monofilament wire which cuts enemy units to ribbons. And of course, it's also used in the infamous "Harlequin's Kiss", a punching weapon that sends a mono-filament wire inside the victim, and then proceeds to act as a blender on all of it's major organs.

[Mr.Bookworm]

Not to mention that D&D at least pays lip service to reality with it's weapons, and monofilament wire of the type depicted in Hellsing is blatantly impossible. Real monofilament wire is rather less exciting. Have you ever seen one of those clear, thin fishing lines? That's monofilament (called as such because it's made out of a single fiber of plastic) wire. It's also used in jewelry, has a few medical applications, and isn't environmentally friendly. Badass, right?

Even if you could manufacture some (literally) magical material that could do the razor floss thing in a fantasy setting, it still wouldn't work like it does in Hellsing, simply because there's no way to swing the stuff around without a weight on the end (Shadowrun's monofilament whips have a weighted tip that you use to direct the wire, for example, probably inspired by Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic).

If you want a wire-like weapon, a garrote might be your thing.

EDIT: And here's a handy xkcd strip illustrating the principle.

[ericgrau]

You'd probably looking for a carbon nanotube, a few atoms thick. But in spite of its incredible strength to weight and relative durability compared to its thickness it would still probably snap pretty easily from being so thin. Maybe a few (hundred?) of those bundled together for more strength but less sharpness. Incredibly difficult, slow and expensive to make, even with modern technology.

So... model it as an expensive magic weapon?

[Fouredged Sword]

Vaprial Garrote with a per day of that cleric spell that lets you expend it's duration to roll a nat 20 automaticly. One round to prep instant stealth kill.

[TroubleBrewing]

Vaprial Garrote with a per day of that cleric spell that lets you expend it's duration to roll a nat 20 automaticly. One round to prep instant stealth kill.

Well, not necessarily a kill. A critical threat, to be sure. But if you don't confirm, if the creature has no discernible anatomy/is immue to critical hits... Then there's the issue of a critical hit simply not being enough to one-shot... Well, anything at high levels. What if they have armor with fortification on it?

Incidentally, in the Hellsing manga, Walter is shown using this on what are clearly undead, meaning that whatever effect it produces, it is not a critical hit in D&D terms.

[Anxe]

There's a homebrew made for it on this very website. Here it is, 13_CBS's Wire Warrior

EDIT: This is a D&D class. And it's also a class, not a weapon. The weapon is pretty hard to use without taking at least one level in Wire Warrior. You can still easily design a build based around other classes if you like I think. You'd just have to splash the Wire Warrior class.