Some weird, awesome stuff came out in the 1980s (okay, I’m cheating, this one was inspired by something from the 1990s), that impacted my geek trajectory significantly. The Awesome 80s line of blog posts is about sharing some of the things I have been inspired to create by movies, shows, games, and literature of that decade. In this case, it’s the smallest imaginable longarm, the raucous circada.

Raucous Cicadas

The tiny disruptors known as “raucous cicadas” are the smallest longarms available, easily fitting in the palm of a human’s hand and possessing negligible bulk. However despite their tiny size, their recoil is so great that they still require two hands to fire with any hope of hitting a target—firing one with one hand is no different that trying to fire any longarm one-handed—you can pull the trigger, but there is no chance your attack will be effective.

A raucous cicada fires a concentrated column of the same kind of effect as is used to create force fields, and does bludgeoning force (BF), and is considered to have the force descriptor. Firing a raucous cicada generates a loud burst of sound, electromagnetic static, and even a compression wave of psychoactive energy that can be heard with telepathic senses. Characters receive a +10 bonus to Perception checks to hear this combination of sensory inputs, and once your fire such a weapon any Stealth check you made ends, and you cannot make another one until the beginning of your next turn. Additionally the recoil of the tiny weapon is disproportionately massive, and the firer moved 5 feet away from the direction of the attacked target. (This is not considered a guarded step, and provokes attacks of opportunity if it moves you out of a threatened square, but it is the same action as making the ranged attack so a creature can only make an attack against you for one of those two triggers.) On a critical hit, the attacked must make a saving throw against the raucous cicada’s critical effect save DC, or be thrown 1d4 x 5 feet back and knocked prone.

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