Plasma Wand
Plasma wand. by Iczer
Picture a tube of shaped and pulsed magnets maintaining an open 'bottle' of magnetic fields. add an electric charge and push a volitile, electrically reactive gas and you have the plasma wand.
When active, the plasma wand creates a plume of highly ionised and directed gas. Being struck by a plume of this gas is relativly harmless from an assault weapon point of view (as much as a steam burn, perhaps 1D4 damage), but the eyes are very sensitive to it. targets shot in the face need to make a saving throw (16+ PE bonuses apply) or be temporarily blinded (-6 to all combat manoevres, double normal damage. blindness lasts for 2D6 minutes)
The more tactical use is as a anti electronics weapon. unshielded or lightly shielded electronics suffer from the ionised gas. Typically one melee round of exposure has a flat 60% chance of destroying the contents of a typical hard drive, 30% of shorting out a vehicle's electronic systems and 100% of shorting out exposed electrical components. Environmentally shielded objects, without conductive protection, remain impervious.
Metal objects saturated in the ionised gas becomes uncomfortable to handle. Guns in particular will have a 30% chance of touching off ammunition.
Plasma wands come in all shapes and sizes. The smallest is the size of pen, and can fire only a 3 second burst for about 1 foot. It is used as a close in antipersonnel 'suprise' attack, and usually resembles a pen. a larger version requires it's own 4 inch screw in gas cylinder, but can only maintain 15 seconds of burst before the battery runs down.
A 'sword' sized version shoots 4 feet of the flame for around 60-80 seconds. The mechanism is around a foot long and can be installed in other objects.
A cannon style version, said to be able to shoot for 30 feet is projected but it's weight is less than feasable.
An arrow version is also available, and can be fired by regular bow, a crossbow or custom made gas gun. the shaft remains lit for the duration of the flight, or can go off on impact. an optional arrow head can be fitted to penetarte light barriers (like the shell of a standard terminal, or the hood of an automobile)
