Here's another:

Gen 4 Level 35 'Charge' A well trained mercenary is also very knowledgeable of his or her energy weapons and can manipulate them to his benefit. Gather energy within your energy gun and release it in one powerful blast. The capacity of the charged energy is limited up to a certain multiple of the weapon's drain rate.

usage: charge
example: charge 50 Mumble

It kind of works like discharge, but requires an energy gun (provided it's loaded) and instead of an post-use wait state, it has a pre-use wait state. The charge level and the wait state are both determined by the drain rate of the weapon. Let's say we used the example as stated above and the weapon we use has a drain rate of 10 units/shot. We are gen 7ish and our charge level limit is a multiple of 5. So we type 'charge 50 Mumble' and we see.

Your plasma gun begins to emit a high pitched humming…

5 seconds later (of wait state)

You unleash a powerful blast of energy at Mumble! The damage is roughly 5x the damage of a normal attack (without damage reduction calculations)

Specifics: -Random body position attacked -Gun's dice and player's base hitroll is used for the basic damage -Gun's weapon type has no effect on attack (I would think particle guns would make this too powerful) -There is no post-use wait state after releasing energy.

I like that idea. Also, what you can do is if you have some weapons specialized, that it slows down the wait state time let's say half a second per level.

Also to maintain balance if you use Charge it has some potential to overhead your weapon and blow up causing damage.

As to the weapon specializing, I think the damage increase it'll provide will be good enough. I mean, half a second per specialization level is quite a large number, especially since it will reduce the wait state by a set number. (This equals 0 wait state on lower charge levels.)

As to maintaining balance by having the weapon overheat, I don't think 'charge' is overpowered in the first place. Although, I do like it.

I like this one. It would make me strongly consider using energy weapons with my Merc, and give the class more flexibility, which I feel they need. Merc in generally really should be a class that you can play in many different ways and be very versatile.

Something I've often thought is that high gen, like say 7, is that a Merc should be able to train a skill of another class. Like train Knight and get behead, or train Barb and get cleave. Maybe they'd hafta infiltrate the Barb guild and torture the guildmaster or something.

I was thinking in the terms that plamsa weapons do have a tendency be chaotic and can backfire and blow up on you. as for the wait state, I never thought about that the state would be 0. No there will still be one, I considered with specialization that it would be a bit less since they are experts with it and know how to Charge a good shot.

Very interesting idea. I agree that mercenary should be a more versitle class. As for a mercenary being able to learn or teach skills/spells other then their own is asking for alot of exploiting and unbalance. This charge skill you talk about just could be the answer mercenary is looking for. Not only does it fit the class as a futurstic type of skill but I myself have always thought of a mercenary having a more powerful attack then hamstring. I would suggest a differant name then charge and I would also suggest making it a remort skill.

1. If I could get my mercenary to train behead and or cleave and I wanted to remort as a knight or barbarian. What good would that do? Having mercenaries allowed to break general Tempus rules would be blasphemy! Although, I don't really mind it either. Hm.

2. Specializing in the weapon already has its benefits. But I can see how it works in to reducing wait state. (Just not by a whole lot).

3. Mercenaries do have a more powerful skill than hamstring. It's called wrench, but it's not always useful (as should be.)

4. Changing the name of the skill is not so imperative. But how about 'charge weapon'? !!

5. I did suggest it as a remort skill. Re-read the initial post.

6. What would you suggest the name should be rather than charge?

6) How about Haduken?

Oh my god! YES!

Haduken it is! No really, the name you gave it works fine. The funny thing about realms is: Sometimes you can agree with what someone has wrote and not agree with something else and then they have something negative to say about it.

In a old Mega Man X game you could use a code and Haduken! Would kill any mob in one hit.