The Zat gun from Stargate

[Herolover]

I thought I would chime in and give my $.02 worth.

Normally I hate D20 games, but had heard a lot of good things about Spycraft (What the Stargate D20 is based on) so I picked up Stargate D20

 

That Zat gun:

This "gun" causes the target's molecules to loose their electrical charge.

 

1-shot on person: Might knock them out, definantly cause them discomfort.

1-shot equipment: No effect on non-electrical equipment, but would short out any electrical equipment.

2-shot on person: 90% of the time it would overload the person's nervous system unless they had developed a resistance to the Zat which is possible.

2-shot on equipment: See above

3-shot equipment or person: At this point the electrical charge on the target's molecules have been so disrupted that the atoms of the target can no longer maintain themselvs and the atoms literally fly apart. The target appears to disentigrate.

 

Obviously there are several different effects going on here.

1) You have a normal EB which damages people only.

2) You have a suppress on electrical current.

3) You have a major transform or an RKA to represent the disentigration (Actually in HERO Major Transform and RKA basically the same thing.)

 

So how do you right up the Zat. I am not going to post it here right now, but I will work on it, but for the time being I will give you the basics and some of you may do it for me.

 

1) Elemental Control. With three slots. Alls slots or cumulative.

Slot 1 will have a normal EB. Of the top of my head I would say 8d6.

Slot 2 will have a Suppress vs Electrical energy.

Slot 3 will have a 3 1/2d6 Major Transform (transform into nothing.)

 

The Zat uses the multiple attack rules so that when a person shoots the zat all three attacks either hit or miss together.

Slot #1 means a soft target (person) has a chance to be knocked out and with cumulative they most probably will on the second shot. Slot #2 provides for the short circuitiing of electrical equipment. Slot #3 provides that given enough shots the Zat will disentigrate anything.

[Herolover]

The Staff Weapon

 

The Staff Weapon is actually harder to do than the Zat because it is a lot harder to judge how much damge it does.

 

Staff Weapon facts.

1) In melee combat it is used as the equivalent to a a quarterstaff.

2) It fires "focused plasma." This is able to penetrate most forms of Body Armor easily.

3) The Staff is notoriously imprecise. It is very difficult to aim even for those that have training with the Staff and it is very difficult to hit one target and not another if they are close by.

4) Those that master the Staff can use a "burst" mode. This is an autofire attack and the "plasma" comes bright like incendiary bullets allowing the shooter to aim better.

5) In D20 terms the Staff weapon does about 3x as much damage as the SGC's submachine guns.

 

Okay so how do you writeup a Staff Weapon.

1) Due to the nature of the Staff Weapon it is bought as WF: Staff Weapon for 1pt and cannot be purchased as part of a 2pt group

2) The Staff weapon is imprecise and provides a -2 OCV.

3) The Staff weapon is armor piercing.

4) "Burst" mode is a special attack only usable by those that have WF: Staff Weapon and several combat skill levels related to the Staff Weapon. It adds autofire (x5) and provides a +2 OCV to the weapon.

5) Now the hard part is damage. I assume that a .50cal is 3d6 RKA. I feel that the Staff Weapon is significantly more powerful than a .50cal, luckily the Staff Weapon is AP. So I say 3d6+1 RKA, AP.

Yes, this is a major attack and I could possible see it going even higher, but not much.

 

Using the 3d6+1 RKA, AP number you see that the average Staff shot will do 12 BODY. This means that someone with 10 DEF (cut to 5 for AP) will take 7 BODY. Chances are they will be unconscious or atleast seriously wounded.

 

Now, I know what some of you are gonna say. "Yeah, but I have seen SG-1 get shot on the show." For this I have two replies.

1) They are the stars of the show. The GM did, as is his right, use dramatic license.

2) Are you sure it was a full on shot and not a graze? How do you know the guy shooting them didn't "roll bad for his damage."

[Aroooo]

Re: The Staff Weapon

 

The Staff Weapon is actually harder to do than the Zat because it is a lot harder to judge how much damge it does.

 

Staff Weapon facts.

1) In melee combat it is used as the equivalent to a a quarterstaff.

2) It fires "focused plasma." This is able to penetrate most forms of Body Armor easily.

3) The Staff is notoriously imprecise. It is very difficult to aim even for those that have training with the Staff and it is very difficult to hit one target and not another if they are close by.

4) Those that master the Staff can use a "burst" mode. This is an autofire attack and the "plasma" comes bright like incendiary bullets allowing the shooter to aim better.

5) In D20 terms the Staff weapon does about 3x as much damage as the SGC's submachine guns.

 

Okay so how do you writeup a Staff Weapon.

1) Due to the nature of the Staff Weapon it is bought as WF: Staff Weapon for 1pt and cannot be purchased as part of a 2pt group

2) The Staff weapon is imprecise and provides a -2 OCV.

3) The Staff weapon is armor piercing.

4) "Burst" mode is a special attack only usable by those that have WF: Staff Weapon and several combat skill levels related to the Staff Weapon. It adds autofire (x5) and provides a +2 OCV to the weapon.

5) Now the hard part is damage. I assume that a .50cal is 3d6 RKA. I feel that the Staff Weapon is significantly more powerful than a .50cal, luckily the Staff Weapon is AP. So I say 3d6+1 RKA, AP.

Yes, this is a major attack and I could possible see it going even higher, but not much.

 

Using the 3d6+1 RKA, AP number you see that the average Staff shot will do 12 BODY. This means that someone with 10 DEF (cut to 5 for AP) will take 7 BODY. Chances are they will be unconscious or atleast seriously wounded.

 

Now, I know what some of you are gonna say. "Yeah, but I have seen SG-1 get shot on the show." For this I have two replies.

1) They are the stars of the show. The GM did, as is his right, use dramatic license.

2) Are you sure it was a full on shot and not a graze? How do you know the guy shooting them didn't "roll bad for his damage."

 

Again, pretty much in line with the other SGC conversations going on lately. Your commetns did bring up an idea. Treat your 'burst fire' as skill, written as a compound power/naked advantage:

 

Staff Weapon Proficiency: Naked Adv: AF(5) plus +2 OCV; only with Staff Weapon, 0 END. (Don't have time to fire up HD and do the math, but you get the general idea.)

 

Aroooo

[Southern Cross]

Re: The Zat gun from Stargate

 

It's possible that all the members of SG-1 (including Daniel Jackson & his temporary replacement Jonas Quinn) have a few levels of the Combat Luck Talent.

[Aroooo]

Re: The Zat gun from Stargate

 

Probably. When designing weapons based on movies/TV/etc. you almost always never use the main characters as examples of what happens when you get hit. Of course, the opposite is true as well. The 'accuracy' is always somewhere in the middle.

 

Aroooo

[IKerensky]

Re: The Zat gun from Stargate

 

Hello,

 

resurrecting this thread as I am preparing a Stargate one-shoot.

 

The Fire-Lance is definitely not armor piercing : it cant destroy a lump of wood. Its damage is mainly fire/energy and PRE.

 

The P.90 is supposedly stronger, and a MMG definitely is (as Teal'c switch his lance for a MMG when larger opposition is espected ).

 

It does a lot of STUN and people usually bleed to death from hits... but not a lot of insta-kill... except on NPC...

[Tom Carman]

Re: The Zat gun from Stargate

 

Since someone already performed the thread-necromancy:

I am a bit dubious about the description of effects on the Zat. My take on it was that a single hit was almost always a KO, and a double was almost always fatal. This is assuming that the target had no resistance to the Zat, which nearly all Tok'ra and Goa'uld seemed to have.

[sinanju]

Re: The Zat gun from Stargate

 

Since someone already performed the thread-necromancy:

I am a bit dubious about the description of effects on the Zat. My take on it was that a single hit was almost always a KO, and a double was almost always fatal. This is assuming that the target had no resistance to the Zat, which nearly all Tok'ra and Goa'uld seemed to have.

 

And the SG-1 team. They once zatted Col. O'Neil SO THAT he could then stand and stagger out to the DHD and dial up the gate while the lingering charge from the zat kept the hostile energy bugs away from him!

 

Apparently, if you're exposed to enough zat fire, you build up a tolerance--kinda like Iocaine powder, I guess....

[Tasha]

Re: The Zat gun from Stargate

 

Here's the writeups we used in our SGC game that ran a few years.

 

Zat'nik'tel (AKA Zat Gun or Zat): (Total: 294 Active Cost, 123 Real Cost) EB 7d6, 50 Charges (+1/2), NND (ForceFields and Force Walls; +1) (87 Active Points); OAF (-1), STR Minimum 1-5 (STR Min. Cannot Add/Subtract Damage; Str Min 5; -3/4), Limited Power Body Recovers 1 body/1 minute (-1/2), Cannot Use Targeting (-1/2), Limited Power Power loses about a third of its effectiveness (Not vs Goa'uld Force Screens; -1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4), Beam (-1/4), Reduced By Range (-1/4) (Real Cost: 17) plus Drain BODY 5 1/2d6, Delayed Return Rate (points return at the rate of 5 per 5 Minutes; +1/2), 50 Charges (+1/2) (110 Active Points); Linked (EB; -1/4) (Real Cost: 88) plus Entangle 4d6, 0 DEF, Cannot Be Escaped With Teleportation (+1/4), Works Against EGO, Not STR (+1/4), Takes No Damage From Attacks All Attacks (+1/2), 50 Charges (+1/2), BOECV (Standard Defenses apply; Use OCV to target; +1), Range Modifiers Apply (-1/4) (97 Active Points); No Defense (-1 1/2), OAF (-1), Limited Power Power loses about a third of its effectiveness (Not vs Goa'uld Force Screens; -1/2), Limited Power Power loses about a third of its effectiveness (Only after target is Knocked unconscious; -1/2), Cannot Form Barriers (-1/4), Beam (-1/4), Linked (EB; -1/4), STR Minimum 1-5 (Str min 5; -1/4) (Real Cost: 18) [Notes: When body x2 is exceeded and after the 3rd shot hits, the body disintegrates]

 

Shak'nel: (Pistol version of the staff, used in movie not really in show) (Total: 57 Active Cost, 17 Real Cost) RKA 2d6, +1 Increased STUN Multiplier (+1/4), Armor Piercing (+1/2) (52 Active Points); OAF (-1), STR Minimum 5 (STR Min. Cannot Add/Subtract Damage; -3/4), Beam (-1/4), Real Weapon (-1/4), 10 Charges (-1/4) (Real Cost: 15) plus +1 Shak'nel (5 Active Points); OAF (-1), Real Weapon (-1/4) (Real Cost: 2)

 

Staff Weapon: (Total: 137 Active Cost, 35 Real Cost) RKA 3d6+1, Armor Piercing (+1/2), 20 Recoverable Charges (Recovers Under Limited Circumstances (1 Charge/10 minutes or Complicated Powercell Change); +1/2) (100 Active Points); OAF (-1), STR Minimum 6-14 (STR Min. Cannot Add/Subtract Damage; Staff Blast Str Min 10; -1), Required Hands Two-Handed (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4), Beam (-1/4) (Real Cost: 25) plus -------------------- Next Ability Doesn't Stack: for up to 1 Active Points (Real Cost: 0) plus HA 5d6, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2) (37 Active Points); OAF (-1), STR Minimum 6-14 (Str Min 15 for Staff Strike; -1/2), Limited Power Hand to Hand Attack (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4), Range Based On STR (-1/4), Limited Power Power loses about a fourth of its effectiveness (Weapon Maxes out at 10d6 Damage from any additions; -1/4) (Real Cost: 10)

 

Heavy Staff Weapon: (these are the detachable weapons that are on Death Gliders, Teal'c detaches one and uses it in one ep) (Total: 130 Active Cost, 30 Real Cost) RKA 4d6+1, Armor Piercing (+1/2), 20 Recoverable Charges (Recovers Under Limited Circumstances (1 Charge/10 minutes or Complicated Powercell Change); +1/2) (130 Active Points); STR Minimum 15-17 (STR Min. Cannot Add/Subtract Damage; Staff Blast Str Min 16; -1 1/4), OAF (-1), Required Hands Two-Handed (-1/2), Real Weapon (-1/4), Beam (-1/4) (Real Cost: 30)

 

---

I also included the Hero Designer prefab that we used in the game. It has writeups of all of the weapons that the d20 book mentioned that the SGC used.

 

Tasha

 

PS I might write up the Zat differently now, but that writeup does keep to the spirit of what we saw in the show while staying true to 5e's rules.

[Major Tom 2009]

Re: The Zat gun from Stargate

 

This is obviously the pre-retcon 'zat, as the disintegration capability was

written out of it towards the end of Stargate: SG-1's run on TV.

 

 

 

Major Tom 2009

[Tasha]

Re: The Zat gun from Stargate

 

This is obviously the pre-retcon 'zat, as the disintegration capability was

written out of it towards the end of Stargate: SG-1's run on TV.

 

 

Major Tom 2009

 

for probably the same reason that I always wanted to ditch it. Killing characters permanently is a bad thing to do to for storytelling esp if you have a weapon that can be counted on to destroy an opponent. I mean what really kept the Goa'uld from triple tapping SG1 and any other Tau'ri they ran into. So I could see why the zat was toned down.

[Tom Carman]

Re: The Zat gun from Stargate

 

And the SG-1 team. They once zatted Col. O'Neil SO THAT he could then stand and stagger out to the DHD and dial up the gate while the lingering charge from the zat kept the hostile energy bugs away from him!

 

Apparently, if you're exposed to enough zat fire, you build up a tolerance--kinda like Iocaine powder, I guess....

 

Or maybe it could be turned down, for use as a torture device or long-range equivalent of a cattle prod.