Tony Vargas
Legend
One major bit of common wisdom about firearms is that they are an 'equilizer' - they're fairly easy to learn to use, not that expensive, and depending on the period, could defeat armor.
One thing to keep in mind with D&D damage, though, is that 'deadly' doesn't necessarily mean huge damage. A knife is a deadly weapon, but D&D only gives it a d4, a small handgun might reasonably do similar damage. You might want to narrate more firearm damage as not actually hitting, too...
To model that, you'd want to make the lethality hinge less on skill (level). In 5e, weapon damage scales a bit with primary stat, and a lot with Extra Attack. A modern firearm can certainly be fired very quickly. Consider giving guns a RoF, of 3 or so. If you have extra attack, you get one more , not 3 more. Between that and BA guns can get fairly deadly in indifferent hands without being wildly OP in skilled hands.
Put all that together - modest damage, high RoF, and narrating damage that doesn't drop the target as missing, and you might even get action-movie-like scenes out of it.
Oh, and don't forget to give that bad guy you thought was down a big SA so he can one-shot-kill the secondary character just when we thought everything was going to be OK.
One thing to keep in mind with D&D damage, though, is that 'deadly' doesn't necessarily mean huge damage. A knife is a deadly weapon, but D&D only gives it a d4, a small handgun might reasonably do similar damage. You might want to narrate more firearm damage as not actually hitting, too...
To model that, you'd want to make the lethality hinge less on skill (level). In 5e, weapon damage scales a bit with primary stat, and a lot with Extra Attack. A modern firearm can certainly be fired very quickly. Consider giving guns a RoF, of 3 or so. If you have extra attack, you get one more , not 3 more. Between that and BA guns can get fairly deadly in indifferent hands without being wildly OP in skilled hands.
Put all that together - modest damage, high RoF, and narrating damage that doesn't drop the target as missing, and you might even get action-movie-like scenes out of it.
Oh, and don't forget to give that bad guy you thought was down a big SA so he can one-shot-kill the secondary character just when we thought everything was going to be OK.
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