Underpowered Guns in d20 Modern (rant, long)

This is example is just loosely based on an actual gaming experience.

Consider an elite soldier, manning a .50 heavy machinegun (an M2HB, for example), entrenched behind sandbags, in a roughly circular clearing in a forest, about 100 feet in diamenter, of fairly level terrain. He is wearing a tactical vest, carrying an MP5 submachinegun, and is in perfect health.
For the stats: Strong Hero 3/Soldier 3, Str 16 Dex 18 Con 16, HP 65. His defense is 24 (+4 class, +7 armor, +3 dexterity). He has partial cover against enemies shooting from the forest. Among his feats are: Advanced Firearms Proficiency, Burst Fire, Weapon Focus (M2HB), Medium Armor Proficiency, Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot. His equipment is a mastercraft M2HB (+1 to hit), an MP5 machinegun (which is already mastercraft), a mastercraft combat knife and a mastercraft tactical vest (+1 to defense).
His full attack is +11 with his M2HB (2d12+2, from the specialization of the soldier advanced class), +10 with his MP5 (2d6), or +9 with his combat knife (1d4+5, +2 from improved melee smash strong hero talent).

Now, our other character is an unmounted, completely out of place, medieval knight. He is carrying a bastard sword, a heavy steel shield and he is wearing full plate armor. He is also in perfect health.
For the stats: Strong Hero 6, Str 18 Dex 16 Con 16, HP 60. His defense is 26 (+3 class, +9 armor, +3 shield, +1 dexterity). Among his feats are: Exotic Weapon Proficiency (bastard sword), Heavy Armor Proficiency, Lightning Reflexes, Weapon Focus (bastard sword). His equipment is also mastercraft.
His full attack is +12/+7 with his bastard sword (1d10+7, +3 from improved melee smash strong hero talent).

The knight is attacking the machine gun position, coming from the forest. The soldier only notices him when he enters the clearing, 55 feet from his trench, when combat starts. The soldier rolls better initiative and goes first.
His options, at this point are:
- Shooting the area where the knight is, which he must roll to hit AC 10. He can only miss if he rolls a 1 (which could be considered the event of the gun jamming, or some other outside ocurrance that disturbed him). The knight's reflex save is +8, so, he has to roll a 7 or better to negate the damage, which is fairly easy (70% chance).
- Use the burst fire feat and shoot directly at the knight. Since he is flat-footed (even though he knew he was going to get shot...), his defense is reduced to 25. His attack is reduced to a +7 (-4 from burst fire). He has to roll an 18 to hit the knight (a lowly 15% chance).
In either event (unless the soldier rolls and confirms a critical hit with his burst fire option, a less than 5% chance), the knight is still standing, and, the chances are good that he is still unscathed.

The knight goes next. Since his fast movements are not a factor in this battle (his full plate and shield are doing all the work), he decides to run towards the soldier's position, jumping the trench at the end of his movement (we'll not go into detail at this point, but it isn't hard to perform this leap if the knight has maximum ranks in the jump skill).

The soldier goes again, and he is in a very bad situation, with a sword wielding, full plated warrior already inside his trench, threatening his square. The knight is still without his dexterity bonus to defense (from running), and his defense is 25. The soldier's options at this time are:
- Shooting the area where the knight is, same as above.
- Use the burst fire feat and shoot the knight. His defense is reduced to 25 from the run action. His attack is reduced to a +8 (-4 from burst fire, +1 from point blank shot). He has to roll a 17 to hit the knight (only 20% chance).
In both cases, he provokes an attack of oportunity from the knight. He can also:
- Draw his knife and attack the knight, with which he needs a 16 to hit. It is actually better to stab a man in full plate than it is to shoot him with large caliber machine guns.
- Take a 5-foot step and draw his MP5. He can shoot the knight without automatic fire with this weapon, having to roll only a 14 to be able to inflict 2d6+1 points of damage (from point blank). This is perhaps his best option.

Chances are the knight is still standing after his action.

From now on, there is only a slim chance the unlucky soldier will win the battle. Being unable to fire his machine gun without provoking an attack of opportunity, he either has to keep taking 5-foot steps and shooting with his MP5, without burst fire, or use his combat knife. And there is a high probability that the knight will just get tired and sunder the MP5 before he gets to inflict much damage.
I cannot begin to imagine what is exactly happening when the soldier misses the knight. Is he dodging the bullets? Or perhaps the anti-aircraft rounds are bouncing off his medieval armor and shield (which would seem to be generally the case, since the greater defense bonus comes from them)?
Realism aside (to put it lightly...), I want your thoughts on this. Is this really how it happens, or am I missing something in the rules? Or, if this is correct <sigh>, do you have any sugesstions on how the rules should be changed? My friend and I are working on a complete d20 based modern setting (with a sci-fi tone), and we want firearms to be deadlier than this.
I know this system is supposed to be cinematic or whatever, but these two characters are at the same level, and the guy with fewer feats and only a basic class undeniably has the upper hand in the battle, which sounds wrong to me.

One method is to change the autofire rule.
I houseruled it as an opposed roll... Attacker's BAB sets the Reflex DC.

Let's say your hapless soldier only rolled an 11 on his attack roll when he saw the knight...
With his +11, that would make the Reflex DC 22, to avoid it.

Fixes to that stuff

First of all I think the d20 superheroes RPG Deeds Not Words handles it best when it comes to modern day vs. middle ages. Non-modern armor...such as plate mail...is very...VERY ineffective vs. modern weapons. They use a variant of the "Armor is DR rule" in which all armors have a DR and a BDR....Ballistic Damage Reduction.

In the non-d20 RPG, Cyberpunk 2020 the rule is any shot to the head does x2 damage once it gets through a helmet on a normal hit. CP 2020 is one of the most realistic combat systems for modern combat out there...yet also very complicated if you don't play the system a lot. In my own d20 Modern (homebrew Cyberpunk style campaign) I make all firearms do the following damage based on caliber which I broke down into 4 categorys.

Light Pistol: 2d4
Medium Pistol: 2d6
Heavy Pistol: 2d8
Very Heavy Pistol: 2d10

And thats just for pistols. I wanted to make it so that even at high levels if you are this suped up cyberneticlly enhanceced combat god..."if some drek head gang banger hopped up on some 'lace is wavin der piece at ya head...you should still worry. You're cybernetic...not Superman" as one of my players said in character one time. I think with some minor tweaking I did with d20 Modern it made it grimmer and felt more like Cyberpunk 2020 in many respects.

I hope this helps somewhat.

Aries

The HMG will take, on average, 4 hits to bring down the knight, assuming no critcal hits. The Sword does 12 HP damage per hit vs the HMG doing 15 HP vs the MP5 doing 7HP. So either you need to increase the damage of guns, or have fewer HP.

Doesn't D20 Modern have a Con Based Massive Damage rule? If the Solder can roll 17 on his HMG damage, the Knight must make a Fort save (DC = damage) or die.

My Suggestion: use the T20 combat option: No class defense bonuses. Use the Stamina (HP)/Lifeblood (CON) system, where all attacks do damage to both, but the armor only reduces the Lifeblood done in the attack.

Getting rid of the class defense bonuses will double the solders chances of burst fire hitting the knight on the first round. T20 halves the armor bonus of the archaic armor and shields against firearms, also improving the soldiers chances.

In T20, assuming similar characters, the HMG (does 2d12) against the knight. The Knights AC is 16 (+4 armor, +1 shield +1 Dex) - vastly improving the to hit chances. When hit, the knight takes 15 stamina (out of 60) and 5 lifeblood (out of 16). If the soldier gets a critical the knight takes 30 lifeblood, enought to kill him outright. Is that more along the lines of your thinking?

The problem is that D&D (and D20 in general) is balanced to provide characters who can withstand a few solid hits at 3rd to 5th level. This makes for an exciting combat. D&D then allows characters to add hit points, and magical damage powers to keep this balance. D20 Modern and all of the other modern/future games don't provide much in damage enhancements for their character. So the usual manner of providing balance is to fix the characters HP. Either through a WP/VP system (See Unearthed Archana or Star Wars) or by providing a strict Massive Damage rule (See CoC and D20 Modern(?)).

I've seen some d20 rules that treat firearm attacks against archaic armor as ranged touch attacks. This would go towards the idea that firearms made plate armor impractical on the battlefield.

D.

blaskowicz said:

I know this system is supposed to be cinematic or whatever, but these two characters are at the same level, and the guy with fewer feats and only a basic class undeniably has the upper hand in the battle, which sounds wrong to me.

Click to expand...

If you change your situation to a first level knight versus a first level soldier, you'd get the opposite result. The problem isn't the damage done by weapons, its making the battle between high level characters. Regardless of what you make the weapon damage, you can come up with a similar result just by upping the character's levels.

Besides, whose gonna setup a single heavy machine gun with less than 20 yards clearance between it and total cover. That's just a contrived example.

I do, however, agree that the autofire rules are whacky. I do something similar to the other poster and set the save DC based on the attacker's attack bonus (varies slightly based on the area being sprayed).


Aaron

How about getting the Suppressive Fire and Improved Autofire feats from Ultramodern Firearms d20?

Suppresive Fire allow to designate an area (5-foot square for semiautomatic firearms; 10-by-10 area for firearms using autofire attack) you've just attacked. If anyone is inside that area leaves or moves within (from one square to another square inside the area), you can make a ranged attack using one of your AoO.

Of course, Improved Autofire just increase the DC from 15 to 20.

I'd opt for Burst Fire if the above don't work and he's still coming at me. Oh, and don't forget to use Action Points.

Aaron2 said:

If you change your situation to a first level knight versus a first level soldier, you'd get the opposite result. The problem isn't the damage done by weapons, its making the battle between high level characters. Regardless of what you make the weapon damage, you can come up with a similar result just by upping the character's levels.

Besides, whose gonna setup a single heavy machine gun with less than 20 yards clearance between it and total cover. That's just a contrived example.

I do, however, agree that the autofire rules are whacky. I do something similar to the other poster and set the save DC based on the attacker's attack bonus (varies slightly based on the area being sprayed).


Aaron

Click to expand...

I do not think the damage is inappropriate, 4d12+2 (with burst fire feat) is a lot of damage. As you agreed, the problem is the poor rules for autofire. The penalties are too high for the burst fire option (due to recoil, I suppose).
But, my friend just got the d20 future book, and, while looking at the weapons, I noticed that there is the same penalty for burst fire when using a laser rifle, which shouldn't have any recoil (I may be wrong on this, since I just got a quick look at it). I also notice that the damage of these ultra-tech weapons doesn't increase significantly (only a single die in most cases).
These facts indicate, to me, that the writers have a clear intention of keeping ranged weapon fighters at the same level of melee weapon fighters, which shouldn't be the case in a modern or futuristic setting.
We are discussing many of your options for our setting, thanks for the feedback so far, and keep them coming!

Dumb example, but, did you see the movie "The Rundown" starring that wrestler?

For most of the movie,the wrestler guy fights against people with guns, bare handed. And he wins.

Blade would be another example. Though he's part vampire.

But yeah, the gun rules in d20 Modern are pretty bad. I don't expect them to be realistic, but they just don't make much sense a lot of the time, like the example you gave.

Personally, I would ditch the d20 Modern combat system in favor of spycrafts. That's what I do.

Basically, armor makes you harder to damage, not hit, as it absorbs damage. And armor often has a weakness to certain damage types. For instance, archaic armor has a weakness against firearms, and is only half-effective. The Knight would probably still make it to the Soldier, but he would have been hit a number of times, so his WP would be down.

How can you make a laser weapon fire in automatic fire mode?