THE AUSTERITY CHAINSAW

What it does

• SWEEPThe swing carves a 180° cone and strikes everything standing in it — and unlike every other melee weapon, that cone never widens. See FIXED REACH below.
• NOT SWUNGYou do not swing it. You lean it into whatever is in front of you and hold it there, juddering, until that thing is in pieces — so there is no arc to watch and no slash to read. What tells you it is working is the shiver in your hands and what comes off the body.
• FIXED REACHIts reach and its arc are the tool's, not yours. MIGHT drives every other melee weapon deeper and INTELLECT reads every other one wider; neither does a thing here. It covers exactly what it covers, at level one and at the cap alike — so the only way to use it is to walk into the crowd with it.
• EXECUTESIt does not damage what it reaches, it takes it: the blow lands at 6× whatever that body was holding, past its armour and past the crit roll, so it kills anything it touches on the first bite whatever its level. A BOSS is the exception and takes the ordinary blow above. The price is charged automatically — a kill that far past a body's health pays only a fraction of its experience and its drop, so this clears a room without paying you for it.
• BOTH HANDSIt takes the off hand as well, so you carry no shield and no bag while it is drawn. That is what the extra damage is paying for — a two-hander is forged above the budget line every one-hander sits on, because the alternative to carrying one is carrying a fifth piece of armour.
• SHREDSIt neither cuts a body in two nor crushes one — it takes it apart. A blow that overwhelms a body leaves pieces of it across the floor and nothing to fall over.
• PRICED FORAbout 1.4 target a swing. That is what the damage budget assumes it reaches, which is why a wide weapon carries a smaller blow than a narrow one of the same level.
• CRIT WEIGHTA critical hit lands for 1.9× — a flat trait of the melee class, the same on every weapon in it. Your build earns the crit CHANCE; the class fixes what a crit is worth.
• SALVAGEIt melts down: the merchant pays double what an ordinary piece of its worth fetches.

A dropped copy carries 20 swings of wear. At zero it does not shatter — it falls into the bag unusable until a repair kit mends it, and the hero draws the best thing left.

A fresh find in the hands of a hero who has spent no stat points — the piece itself, with nothing of the wielder in it. Your own STRENGTH, DEXTERITY or INTELLECT lifts these from there, as does an item level found deeper than the requirement.