blood lines and treasure control

Beholder Bob · Sep 23, 2003

I'm about to run a early steam era / fantasy world with firearms and have thought of a possible problem. Most folks seem to suggest that the firearms should be 400-4000 GP, which I would say is fine since they are the new technology and so very valuable. This opens the door though. Forget the treasure, strip the pistols and rifles off of the dead bodies! Now there is the real treasure.
The solution I'm thinking of is that firearms are magical, but not to the same degree as a +x weapon. Firearms are allied with family bloodlines, using pacts made in the family past (with fire elementals???) to power these firearms. Anyone of the "johkster" blood line can fire the pistol, but no one else can. The firearms MUST have the family crest in relief/marked on the weapon. A peasant can have a firearm (he came from a family that has slid down on hardtimes, had a member in a royal military position and so earned a firearm, what have you) - but it is not an immediate treasure item. Family lines become important, and perhaps I could have your family line have other effects as well. Also, if an alliance/deal with fire element is possible, then what of the other elements? Perhaps a steam engine is the result of a water elemental?
What do you think? Is it too hokey an excuse to keep firearms from being the majority of treasure value? Suggestions?

Kid Charlemagne · Sep 23, 2003

I think that's a really cool idea - but I don't think that there's really a huge issue to be addressed. After all, in most encounters, your foes have pretty valuable equipment; masterwork armor or weapons, etc.

Some enemies will have lower quality or poorly maintained weapons that may function alright, but not be terribly appealing to a buyer - think of a beat up 80's car versus a new one - the old car can go just as fast, or accelerate as quickly, but it will breakdown more, and you might not get more than $500 for it, compared to 10X that much for a newer vehicle. The bandits and criminals that PC's are likely to get weapons off of are more likely to have poorly maintained gear, I would think.

Don't overdo it, though: Players like nothing less than the idea that their DM is messing with their looting.

Beholder Bob · Sep 23, 2003

Kid Charlemagne said:
I think that's a really cool idea - but I don't think that there's really a huge issue to be addressed. After all, in most encounters, your foes have pretty valuable equipment; masterwork armor or weapons, etc....Don't overdo it, though: Players like nothing less than the idea that their DM is messing with their looting.

Good points. It is the immense $ starting value (a base $400 pistol is worth more then a masterwork greatsword). Perhaps make it not usable so long as there are still living relatives of that bloodline, and give it a resale value much lower (plus, every pistol sold has a unique coat of arms or symbol). The firearms of bandits (firearms for them would be rare, most would only be able to use x-bows) would likely be in poorer condition, although the firearm would have immense value and meaning to the bandits family line unless plucked from the last living member of a bloodline. As a player, I do not enjoy DM's messing with my treasure either, but I must have a way to keep an encounter with 3 riflemen being the equiv of 3000 GP before cash and non-firearm items are added in. PC's with a shopping cart of pistols to sell is enough to give me seizures.

Stormborn · Sep 23, 2003

My first thought is that your estimate for prices on pistols is a bit high, although I too have seen lots of sources that agree with you. When determining weapon prices there are a couple of things to consider. Are they in use by the millitary? Are they mass produced? Are they a well known technology, or a carefully guarded secret? And perhaps just as important: How easy is it to get ammo and how much does it cost?
In the setting you mention, the idea that firearms are carefully guarded secrets of the major houses/bloodlines would certainly justify the price. If you want to make them less usable to your PCs, just have each house use a different caliber, or make soemthign else in the mechanics of the gun essentially different. Which might be the case if these are little cottage industry weapons where people are tryign to figure out how they work by observation and applied physcis. In such a setting the gunsmith would be a valuable commodity, like a black smith in the early middle ages.
If they are "infernal engines" powered by eldritch energies that brings up some new issues. What do they fire? And what damage do they do? A water based house might have bullets that do +1d6 of lightning damage, or have other magical effects. Perhaps if the "wrong sort" of people use the weapons they do damage to the weilder, not the target. Kind of a curse/booby trap. It would make the guns all but useless in the worng hands. Unless of course smart PCs with good Diplomacy skills could ransom them back to the right family, perhaps through a mediator.
So far we are talking about weapons that are probably made to order, for a house or an individual. Millitary weapons would have to be different. Unless they are bound to a certain Religious or Knightly Order, most weapons in use by the army would have to be used by everyone. Footsoldiers come cheap, guns don't. Bandits, pesants, and the like would not likely have guns. But, crossbows would be fairly cheap, and when compared to early firearms like matchlocks would be almost, if not AS, effective, and would likely be safer.
If you want firearms to be something special, use the whole bloodline/family line mystic attunment idea. It will add a lot of flavor to your world, and give it a really unique spin.
Otherwise, just make firearms worth about as much gp as a craftsman could make in a year and make ammo hard to come by. Then the poor could have guns, of poorer quality maybe, and bandits who deserted from millitary units would certainly have firearms.
In Lock and Load from Iron Kingdoms not only are firarms expensive, but require a skill check to load and clean. That might be another solution.

Hmmm...as you see this has started me on an interesting train of thought. Let us know what you decide Bob.

Beholder Bob · Sep 23, 2003

Stormborn said:
My first thought is that your estimate for prices on pistols is a bit high, although I too have seen lots of sources that agree with you. When determining weapon prices there are a couple of things to consider. Are they in use by the millitary? Are they mass produced? Are they a well known technology, or a carefully guarded secret? And perhaps just as important: How easy is it to get ammo and how much does it cost?....

It started out as a way to keep guns from being the bulk of the treasure found, but the method to do so is quickly becoming a cause of its own for me. I wanted a mix of "my family katana" sort of one of a kind only a few types of people can carry them and of only the pure folks, us knights, can carry these items. In order to have a firearm, you need a certain quality to your bloodline/honor. Once started, though, scoundrels can benefit from the firearms of their sires. Firearms would be rarely seen, and never mass produced. Crossbows are the standard used here, and bows are not in use. A special group of knight quality folks may be armed with firearms, but each would be bringing his own rather then getting group rate discount.
As to technology, I like the idea of wedding gunsmithing with arcana (fire element), but the end result makes the pistol do the 2dx or 3dx damage rather then additional effects. Cannons do exist and are rarely bound by a family/bloodline.
The element - water would be used for steam engines, air for dirgibles, and I'm still trying to figure out a good use for earth. The world is made up of a whole lot of ocean with floating land masses. Perhaps I'll let earth manipulation allow the steering of the land masses. Hmmmm.
Rather then using the firearm skill to load the weapon faster, I'll leave it to a feat to go faster then 1/2 rounds (pistol) or 3 rounds (rifle). Maintenance of a firearm determines the misfire results (a natural 1 or 2 requires a maintenance check).
Your right about selling the pistols (indirectly) back to the family, drats! I'll have to consider this.
Cool feedback! More, more, more,....(nope, I ain't greedy)

clark411 · Sep 23, 2003

Some alternatives could be

1- Being Rare does not Equate to being Valuable.
Supply and demand doesn't always work out perfectly in a society where only some people understand the technology behind the supply. If guns are rare, then they must be beyond the ken of the majority of the people. Either the people lack the technology to reproduce it, or lack the understanding of how gunsmithing works.
Thus, if you have a gun, 10 shots of gunpowder, and 10 shots... that's not huge. That's the equivalent to a flashy crossbow that can be shot 10 times and then becomes useless.

2. (extension of 1) Being Rare also means a limited market.
Perhaps in the right hands they are valued for the potential of reverse engineering them, or to those who have the knowledge of making gunpowder and bullets... but I'd reserve that for a higher type of merchant or a criminal element. Perhaps only the military and the scum understand how guns work.

This means that you either get involved with people you probably don't want to be involved with, or you sell it to the military... and assuming that you killed some other military bloke to get it, you may not want to sell it to them either. Social restraints are huge in DND where there's really nothing beyond a GP limit stopping people from making huge sums of money. Perhaps it's illegal for a civilian to kill any military person.. with the advent of guns, I'm sure something like this would come into play- as protection by law replaced protection by armor for the elite.

3. Sabotaging Your Secret Weapon
Finally, there's always the mechanical destruction of a gun in combat. If a soldier is under orders to disallow a person from getting his weapon, regardless the cost, his gun probably has an anchoring pin holding most of the fine mechanics together. Make guns have a pin that dismantles and severely damages the firing mechanics. Pulling the pin can be a free or move equivalent action. alternatively, overloading with powder and then having a "stopper shot" that'll block up and explode the muzzle of the gun is always a possibility.

Beholder Bob · Sep 23, 2003

clark411 said:
Some alternatives could be...
1- Being Rare does not Equate to being Valuable....
2. (extension of 1) Being Rare also means a limited market....

Hmmm. Good ideas. It is illegal to sell firearms without a writ from local authorities (and most gunsmiths would not be willing to buy guns with dubious pasts for fear of losing that writ). Found weapons are to be given to the authorities for a possible reward from the family who they belong to (or your arrest if you are suspected of killing a family member). You can not go about selling hundreds of firearms, each with a different family crest....
The requirements for making a firearm will keep them expensive, but I could lower the top end of the prices to a more reasonable amount.
Perhaps an illegal market could/should exist to realign the weapons, upsurping the royal/bloodline divine right to firearms.