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Um I'm extremely confused on the application of these weapons now.
They damage anything, sd to sdc and md to mdc.
That's the easy part.

Um do they still bypass body armor? What about power armor??
Giant Robots? ??

Assistance is required and thank you for the input.

The write up definitely leaves a lot to be desired. The description indicates that they can cut through inert material, specifically starship hulls, which would be unharmed by phase beams. That would indicate to me that they do not bypass armor.

And yet the confusing part is it also says bypasses armor and can only be stopped by force fields etc.

I am looking for a mass decision to make my final choice on how they function in my game and would appreciate a Canon based decision.

Nether of which I have.

You are mistaken. The description of phase swords on DB2 p124 does not state that they bypass armor. It states that they inflict damage to supernatural and M.D.C. beings as described in the phase beamer description, but it is otherwise a melee weapon that inflicts damage to armor.

say652 wrote:Um I'm extremely confused on the application of these weapons now.
They damage anything, sd to sdc and md to mdc.
That's the easy part.

Um do they still bypass body armor? What about power armor??
Giant Robots? ??

Assistance is required and thank you for the input.

They are like magic blades that do their rated damage score to what they hit. If what is struck is SDC or SDC/HP it does SD; if the target is MDC then it does MD.

So a 3d6 blade will do 3d6 SD to a normal human while if it is struck on a Dragon it will do MD (in the rifts/3G settings).

While the "concept" of phase weapons would say it would pass through physical armor, the phase sword text does not support this.

Ok, so my nonarmor bypass ruling is the correct ruling for this weapon.
Yay.

yes. While phase beams bypass all forms of armor explictly, as mentioned in the discription of phase beamers at the start of the section, phase swords are merely blades that deal SDC to SDC and MDC to MDC.

Some other differences from other stuff like vibro-blades worth pointing out
*their damage might be utterly prevented by defensive Phase Fields
*their damage might heal slower from bio-regeneration like other phase attacks