Firearms

There have been some excellent threads on here lately about firearms and ways of implementing them into your DnD game. Some of the ideas really sparked my interest and imagination. I have been wrestling with a balanced way to impliment them while still touching upon some of the ideas that have been presented. So here is my first stab at it.

Constructive criticism and feedback is both welcome and appriciated!

Fantasy Setting Firearms (exotic weapons)

Pistol:
ranged touch attack
range increment 25' maximum range x4
-6 to hit (non proficient)
-2 to hit (proficient)
damage d8 (crit x3)
damage (vs medium or better armor) d8 (crit x3) non-lethal
clean & reload (non proficient) 2 full round actions + 1 standard action
Clean & reload (proficient) 2 full round actions

Musket:
ranged touch attack
range increment 50' maximum range x5
-6 to hit (non proficient)
-2 to hit (proficient)
damage d12 (crit x3)
damage (vs medium or better armor) d12 (crit x3) non-lethal
clean and reload (non proficient) 2 full round actions +1 move equivelent action
clean and reload (proficient) 1 full round action + 1 standard action

Note: Firearms will be a very rare and expensive, new technology.

I think firearms should be simple weapon. It is much harder to learn how to use a bow than a pistol.

I like the non-lethal damage with medium and better armors.

If the pistol and musket only do that little damage, then the projectiles should give some damage in addition.

I go with Martial. Although my stats might go more like:

Pistol, 2d6, 19-20/x3 10' Range, 5 Standard Actions to Reload, Cost: 200gp

Musket, 3d6, 19-20 30' Range, 10 Standard Actions to Reload, Cost: 400gp

Possibly with a Misfire on a 1. Fairly primitive firearms designed to be fired off at the beginning of combat before the swords come out. I think the numbers are pretty close to what Iron Kingdoms uses, although I found the Craft check to reload too cumbersome.

Yeah, I think the designation of crossbows as simple weapons demonstrates that firearms below in the same category: Being a pain in the ass to load doesn't make a weapon hard to aim and fire.

But I do like the idea of representing the loading difficulty not just with long, AoO-provoking reload times, but with skill checks. That's how it's done in Iron Kingdoms: You need to make a low-DC Craft (gunsmithing) check in order to successfully load a gun.

If you want to make reloading a task that takes a variable number of rounds depending on user skill, though, you could go with a threshold mechanic similar to what Thieves' World d20 uses for spellcasting: Your reload check result needs to total up to a certain (rather high) number in order to complete the task, but when you don't make that total, you get to save the result and add your next check to it. So if the reload threshold for a particular weapon is 40, a soldier with a total +10 for the reloading skill check won't ever be able reload in a single round, but he'll usually make it in two. A rookie who only has a +5 will generally take three, unless he's lucky. And you could complicate things a little further for the unskilled by making a check result of less than 10 a critical failure, in which they spill their powder or whatever an lose any reload progress they've made.

Anyway, it'd obviously add some hassle and bookkeeping to a gunfight, but the added tension might be worth it.

As for treating gunfire as ranged touch attacks, the idea looks good on the surface, but when it was discussed before, a number of weird consequences and illogical results were pointed out. Simply put, it doesn't seem reasonable that an ordinary gun should be able to effortlessly penetrate any and all armor, including adamantine, magical force fields, and the shells of giant monsters.

...But it certainly makes sense that they'd have a better chance of penetrating those things than bows and slings. So I'd suggest either giving each type of gun (or ammo?) a penetration rating that they can subtract from a target's armor, or just letting all guns treat their targets' armor as if it was half what it really is.

You do realize that the stats for your guns are actually worse that the standard crossbows in the Players Handbook. The only thing better about your musket is that it has a d12 instead of a d10 but that wouldn't really help it because the heavy crossbow could be fire then reloaded then fired agian in the time it would take to fire then reload your musket. Meaningin the same amount of time a crossbow could do 2d10 where your musket would only do 1d12 and have a penalty to attack while doing it. Also a crossbow is a simple weapon where your guns are exotic weapons so that make then even worse.

I have one question about something that seems inconsistent between your two guns. Why does a pistol take longer to reload than a musket.

Several suggestions to improving your guns:
-Remove the whole nonlethal damage if medium armor or better thing. Having that doesn't really make any sense because if crossbows don't have that problem then guns most definately would not.
-Power up your guns. I personally made my guns twice as good in one stat or have them not have as many limitations.
-I would keep the penalty to attack but that means you need to power up your guns in another area further.
-I personally would keep them as exotic weapons but would do as suggested above.
-Make the range longer, otherwise they wouldn't be very attractive to take since they would have shorter ranges than the crossbows (if I remember the crossbows' stats right).

Hope this helps
Blackmage

I appriciate all the feedback and suggestions, this kind of dialog will help ensure the final version will be the best it can be.

notjer: the reason I chose to make them an exotic weapon proficiency is that I want it to further enforce how very rare they are and because sure anyone can pick it up and use it, I wanted to clearly define the benefit of being a highly trained user. I would welcome suggestions on a better way to reflect this other than the reduced to hit penalty and clean & reload times.
I am open to increasing the damage but I figured it would be better to start at a lower amount and work out all the other details first as damage would seem to be the easiest to tweak.

Phindar: Those stats are interesting but do your guns work as a ranged touch attack as this is an aspect which I am trying to preserve?

GreatLemur: I must admit the skill checks do make a certain amout of sense but part of my goal in this is to keep the rules simple as possible (which may or may not actually be possible lol).
The nonleathal damage to medium or better armor was intended to help offset the ranged touch attack aspect of the design. Do you think the ranged touch attack does not need to be balanced in this manner?

Blackmage: Yes I know the damage isn't that great but I figured once I manage to work out the rest of the details the damage would be the easiest part to tweak. The penalty to attack was in response to numerous posts in these forums about how horribly inaccurate weapons of this type were alleged to be. The pistol takes longer to clean and reload than a musket because pistols were supposed to be much harder to clean prior to reloading do you feel this is false or an uneeded detail? I chose a shorter range as a starting point because of the many posts I have seen claiming that the weapons of this type were atrociously inaccurate what would you suggest as a more reasonable range?

Thanks everyone, keep it coming!

*edited for terrible typing skills.

Well as long as the damage is increased the range doesn't need to be improved that much. It just needs to be slightly longer than the crossbow.

Or you could keep the short range but make so firing it doesn't make so they are open to AoOs. Personally I like longer range guns but thats because I'm more of a sniper loving guy.

Also personally I wouldn't make them ranged touch attacks. If you are going to make them ranged touch attack making the damage nonlethal against medium or better armor doesn't really make sense what so ever. Making it a ranged touch attack means it will ignore armor and go right through it. While making it nonlethal agianst medium or heavy armor basically means the armor stopped the attack and the force is just sent in. Thats a major discrepancy.

If you decide to keep the whole nonlethal against medium or better armor you are going to have multiple problems.
1)It will be almost completely useless against anyone wearing medium or better armor.
2)Why would it be useless against a halfling wearing a breastplate when it could go right through a Ancient Wyrm's scales? That just doesn't make sense.
3) Also dealing with the same problem in #2. Why would it be useless against a breastplate when it would deal lethal damage agianst someone in +5 studded leather? Again it just doesn't make any sense.

Hmm, well I really like the ranged touch attack component I must confess. I guess I need a way to articulate that Natural Armor still counts as armor. So no, I don't think it would or should just go through dragon scales etc. I don't think it is unreasonable for light armor to be treated differently than medium or heavy armor. Just think of medium or heavy armor the equivilent of wearing kevlar vs. modern firearms sure it probably won't kill you but it certainly leave you writhing on the ground with severe bruising and possible broken ribs. Sounds like you could call it non-lethal damage to me.

Why not just have the weapons ignore the first x points of armour or shield bonus to AC that the target has. Similar to how AP ammo in d20 modern ignores the first points of DR.

I too like the ranged touch attack, but I think you have severely underpowered the gun. In the real world, the humble musket and pistol were sufficient to render the heavier armours completely obsolete.

The rules given in the DMG seem sufficient, with the addition of making it a Ranged Touch Attack.

As in all things, if it becomes a little overbalancing in favour of the gun-toting PCs...then give the same toys to a bunch of kobolds.

Imagine, two lines of 10 alternately firing kobolds lined up, firing from ambush, with a Ranged Touch Attack of -1 (+1 bab +1 size, +1 dex -4 nonprof) attacking the average low to mid level party with a Touch AC of about 10-14. In the surprise round the party is flat footed, thus have an average AC of 10. On average 8 of the 20 kobolds will hit, at 1d10/x3 per hit, even mid level parties are going to feel it, particularly the mages. In the first round, perhaps 6 kobolds will hit. Etc.

Whatever...