Do I have to spend a stunt to have a blaster rifle?

Page 126 of the Mindjammer core rulebook states:
Do I Have to Spend a Stunt to Have a Blaster Rifle?
No, you don’t. Purchasing a weapon as an extra is a way of giving you mechanical advantages like weapon ratings, attack bonuses, or weapon aspects. If you’re not concerned with such advantages and simply want to describe your character using a certain weapon purely for colour, your GM may allow you to do so as part of the gear you automatically get when taking the Melee or Ranged Combat skills.”

But … How much damage does the weapon do if the character picked it up off the ground (or the corpse of a foe) and hasn’t spent the points on it? (the weapon itself is written up on the next page, but costs two stunts.)

In my opinion, the issue of spending a stunt applies only to the character creation phase. After that logic should apply. If the character finds, steals, is issued, etc. a blaster rifle then they have a blaster rifle. A regular, full stat blaster rifle.

I can’t point to any rule that specifies that, but it seems to be logical, and, as GM you can do whatever you want anyway.

My reality is currently only one player. Even though he often works with allied NPCs, it made sense to make his character more powerful than the average starting character because he is ultimately alone. So we altered the rules to suit.

Yeah, if something is found in the course of play, its reasonable to assume they have it.

However you could also play it the other way - they’ve found a weapon that isn’t the same as what they already use, so any superiority advantage it might give is lost by virtue of being unfamiliar with it.

or you could compromise, and say that a blaster rifle found in the course of play will only cost 1 stunt (instead of two) in order to acquire ‘full proficiency’ with. That way, at the end of the session (usual point for a minor milestone) they could re-adjust their stunts/refresh to take it right away, or wait until you have extra points to spend)

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From Children of Orion:

“What If I Don’t Want To Pay the Full Cost
For a Piece of Equipment?
The equipment costs in this chapter indicate the points of
your extras budget you must allocate to that item if you want
to incorporate it in a major way into your character and get
rules-mechanical advantages from it in play. But what if you
don’t want to do that? What if you’ve spent your extras budget
and just want to pick up an item of gear you’ve found lying
around or in a store or outlet somewhere and make quick use
of it for a scene or two?
In Mindjammer, this is fine! The rules mechanical effect
of a piece of equipment depends less on the functions and
properties it has in the Mindjammer universe, than on the
importance you want to give that piece of equipment in play.
At its simplest, an item of equipment just lets you describe
yourself doing something you couldn’t do without it. For
example, if you pick up a Holoprojector (page 37) in play, you
can immediately describe yourself as creating holographic im-
ages. You don’t have to spend any of your character or extras
budget: you just pick up the equipment, and (assuming you
know how to use it) describe what you do with it. That doesn’t
affect the game rules at all.
However, if you want, you can spend a fate point to invoke
that Holoprojector (or the images it creates) as an aspect, and
get a bonus or a reroll, or otherwise describe the invoke’s effect
in play. You could also use, say, your Technical skill to create
those Holoprojector images as advantages, and then invoke
them for free, without paying a fate point. You could even use
your Resources skill to “buy” (or otherwise acquire) a Holopro-
ject from an appropriate “outlet”; at that point, it acts just like
a situation aspect or other advantage, and your first invoke of
it is free.
None of the above requires you to spend your extras budget.
However, if you want to gain an in-game, rules-mechanical
effect from (say) that Holoprojector above and beyond what
we’ve described above, that’s when you need to spend points
from your extras budget (or maybe even your character
budget—talk to your GM!). In Mindjammer universe terms, it’s
still the same Holoprojector, but now you’ve defined it in rules
terms so that it plays a greater role in your character’s story and
has a greater effect in play. For a 1 stunt spend, for example,
that Holoprojector can give you a +2 bonus on your Technical
skill to create holographic images as advantages.
You can come up with these equipment abilities yourself, us-
ing the rules given in Mindjammer (page 102). In this chapter,
we’re describing what we think are cool items of Venu equip-
ment, and giving you examples of extras budget spends you can
make to take advantage of them. But you can always use them
just as simple items of gear to let you describe yourself doing
cool stuff, or as aspects you can invoke or compel in play.”

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