A New D&D Revolution: Nations & Cannons Core Rules Review

Sparky McDibben

Adventurer
This one has a fun story from playtesting. It turns out, it's pretty important to for these types of features to have a rider discouraging use on "a creature with an intelligence of 3 or less." Otherwise, your player might suggest putting their buddy in a headlock to bluff a moose...
Now that's my kind of player!

Seriously, it's my fave class symbol outta ALL the class symbols in 5E as a whole.
Agree!

Alright, y'all, it's the MAIN EVENT!!!! The FLINTLOCK FESTIVUS! The BLACK POWDER BONANZA!!!! It's....the FIREARMS RULES!!!!!!!

And fortunately, y'all can follow along on this one! See, since they published the Core Rules, the dev team has kept iterating on the Firearms Rules, so they posted the updated rules on their subreddit. There's a GMBinder link in the post, so if you want, you can take a gander. For that reason, I'm not going to go into my usual depth on this, simply because you guys can go and look.

So basically, firearms do a ton of damage, but you don't get to add your Dex mod to the damage, and you have to spend some time reloading (see the Prime & Load action on page 4). You can use an attack to reload, per these rules, so a fighter after 5th level can fire with their first attack, then reload, but you can't move on any turn you've reloaded.

So what this does is create an interesting dilemma for the PCs. You can get a truly bonkers first salvo off, but then it's a decision point - do we switch to melee and wade in? Or draw a backup pistol and keep to the edges? Or chuck a grenade? Even better, each character will have a different set of incentives weighing on them. And your kit really matters in how you approach combat, too.

Now, firearms have several different properties which help balance them out. Let's run down a few of these:

Bayonet: You can use a bonus action to slap a big ol' pointy piece of metal on the end of it and stab a fool. The damage of the bayonet is listed in parens, and having a bayonet on something gives you disadvantage to ranged attacks with it

Capacity: How many balls does it hold (no, not bullets; bullets haven't been invented yet)

Misfire: The real controversial one. Every blackpowder weapon has a misfire score, expressed in numerically in parentheses. If your roll is under that misfire score, your weapon suffers a misfire. Note that misfire scores are either 1, 2, or 3, and a misfire simply means your weapon needs to be cleared with a tinker's tools check (DC 8 + Misfire score). Failing that check means your weapon is busted.

Misfires, then, are a way to balance out the intense damage of musketry by giving the player a gamble: You're betting that the really good damage from a blackpowder weapon is worth the small chance that the weapon might go off.

Now, the typical feedback on misfire mechanics is that they punish characters who use those weapons more than others (so fighters, for example, who with Action Surge at level 5 can potentially make two attacks with a musket). But you're not taking damage, and remember how there's a built in tension about what to do after your first volley? You can always switch to a backup weapon and go to town, and even better, that backup weapon can be another blackpowder weapon (though usually you can only get one long weapon).

So the devs balance out the misfire penalty on multiattack users by simply giving them more options than to keep attacking with a risky weapon.

There are also several weapons designed to be used in close combat - including shotguns with the Spread and/or Point-Blank properties. Note that unless you have the Quick Flint fighting style, you still have disadvantage to use these weapons when an enemy is within 5 feet, which means that those weapons are maximally effective only if you have taken that fighting style.

And that's really it for firearms - it's a pretty simple hack of the 5E rules. Instead of doing 1x damage every round, you're doing 2.5x - 3x damage every other round, with potentials for misfiring helping the dice keeping things interesting.

There are still several different subsystems we haven't gone over, like Wargear, armor, tools, and grenades, so let me cover these in brief.

Wargear is an interesting system whereby you can pick up extra bits of gear that give you specific, small bonuses. There are five "slots" for wargear: head, shoulder, chest, waist, and feet. Each has four options, each one giving bonuses that range from character-enabling to neat.
For example, the head slot could be taken up by a fur hat, which gives you advantage on saves to ignore the effects of weather. Or you could take the tricorne, which gives you +CHA modifier to your hit points. There are so many options on for these that the mix-and-match options are great. Even better, it's difficult to see someone being able to mix-and-match in a way that the resulting character looked strange, instead of cool. It's a fun little system and I love it.

Armor is mostly unchanged from 5E. The plate armor equivalent is a steel cuirass, which is the only heavy armor available. The game expects you to go for medium or light armor.

Tools are mostly unchanged as well, but there a few new items. One is a vent pick, which is really just adventuring gear. It lets you take a bonus action to try clearing a jammed weapon. Another is the munitions kit. This lets you manufacture your own ammunition and grenades, and there is some ambiguity here. If I'm running this, you need powder and lead to make ammo with this thing - no free reloads! Otherwise, this is a really cool way to ground a resource into the character's inventory. So if you really need to put the screws to the PCs, let them sacrifice their munitions kit to avoid damage...and then realize they can't reload until they replace it. Cue the Evil DM laugh...

There are like five kinds of grenades, everything from a regular grenade (portfire) to smoke grenades, to gas grenades (stinkpot), flashbangs (flash bombs), and incendiary (firepot). These all have Misfire scores around 2 (the smoke grenade's is only Misfire 1), with the portfire having Misfire 3.

The last thing are the artillery rules, and, well...who needs dragons? These bad boys will do up to 18d6 ballistic damage, and ballistic damage is not reduced by regular resistance to weapon attacks. So, uh, wish the barbarian "good luck," I guess! Even better, the PCs can take over artillery and start trying to use it. Don't get attached to your villains, folks!

Alright, next time we'll check out Gambits, the spells that are not spells!
 

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Speaking as someone who’s been tinkering with a set of firearms rules for a napoleonic fantasy setting, I counsel you to think hard about how easily your system can be broken by a PC who just goes into every combat festooned with 17 pre-loaded pistols, and so neatly bypasses the loading time that you’re trying to use as a balancing factor.
 

Sparky McDibben

Adventurer
Speaking as someone who’s been tinkering with a set of firearms rules for a napoleonic fantasy setting, I counsel you to think hard about how easily your system can be broken by a PC who just goes into every combat festooned with 17 pre-loaded pistols, and so neatly bypasses the loading time that you’re trying to use as a balancing factor.
I was only able to get three pistols at most, each doing 1d12. How did you get to 17?
 

I was only able to get three pistols at most, each doing 1d12. How did you get to 17?
17 was just a random absurdly high number. It could have just as easily been 18, or 29.

Firearms are balanced, in these rules, by having them do more damage but being slow to reload so you fire with them less often.

Any sensible PC (especially one with Extra Attack) will then, of course, make sure they are carrying as many loaded pistols as possible at all times, so that they can just fire and discard pistols as they go, therefore largely (but not entirely, due to the 1/round object interaction limit) bypassing the balancing factor of loading time. The idea is that the enemy runs out of hp before you run out of loaded pistols, at which time you can sit down and load them all again at your leisure. Alpha strike is the oldest tactic in the PC handbook, after all.

Balancing weapons across time like this is pretty tricky. The system isn’t really designed for it.
 

TwoSix

Master of the One True Way
Misfire: The real controversial one. Every blackpowder weapon has a misfire score, expressed in numerically in parentheses. If your roll is under that misfire score, your weapon suffers a misfire. Note that misfire scores are either 1, 2, or 3, and a misfire simply means your weapon needs to be cleared with a tinker's tools check (DC 8 + Misfire score). Failing that check means your weapon is busted.
It's definitely a missed opportunity if there isn't a feat that lowers the misfire chance called "I'm not throwing away my shot." :)
 

Sparky McDibben

Adventurer
17 was just a random absurdly high number. It could have just as easily been 18, or 29.

Firearms are balanced, in these rules, by having them do more damage but being slow to reload so you fire with them less often.

Any sensible PC (especially one with Extra Attack) will then, of course, make sure they are carrying as many loaded pistols as possible at all times, so that they can just fire and discard pistols as they go, therefore largely (but not entirely, due to the 1/round object interaction limit) bypassing the balancing factor of loading time. The idea is that the enemy runs out of hp before you run out of loaded pistols, at which time you can sit down and load them all again at your leisure. Alpha strike is the oldest tactic in the PC handbook, after all.

Balancing weapons across time like this is pretty tricky. The system isn’t really designed for it.
Oh, I gotcha! I was excited because I thought you had found a loophole in the mechanics and I was about to make "Pennsylvania" Dutch, my Patriot / Predator mashup!

The wargear system explicitly reins this in. You can only use weapons you have equipped (otherwise they're somewhere in your kit, so it's an action to dig them out), and wargear affects how many weapons you can run around with equipped.

I think the max I got to was either three pistols and a longarm or four pistols. Of course, if you're carrying grenades or melee weapons, you have to make tradeoffs from that number.

It's definitely a missed opportunity if there isn't a feat that lowers the misfire chance called "I'm not throwing away my shot." :)
Actually Rifle Expert does lower Misfire chance! So do certain Marksman techniques, etc.
 

Flagbearer Games

5e Publisher
Speaking as someone who’s been tinkering with a set of firearms rules for a napoleonic fantasy setting, I counsel you to think hard about how easily your system can be broken by a PC who just goes into every combat festooned with 17 pre-loaded pistols, and so neatly bypasses the loading time that you’re trying to use as a balancing factor.

This is actually very much intended! The idea is to capture the heroic fantasy of folk heroes like Daniel Boone, Nancy Hart, or Peter Francisco ambushing a patrol of Redcoats in the forest. Players take on the role of an irregular half-platoon of partisans, rangers, and spies; characters that cut above your average Continental, brimming with flintlocks.

In order to challenge players, encounters are generally designed as asymmetric skirmishes with players battling significantly larger groups of British Regulars. These scenarios are almost always Hard or Impossible (by CR calculations lol) to account for the "burst damage" effect. The guiding principle is to let the players be a little overpowered—especially if they can get a surprise round—but to use the wargear system to limit the maximum number of loaded firearms the party can bring to bear, as Sparky said.
 

Weiley31

Legend
There's one more awesome thing about this class that I want to address real quick, and that's the 5th level feature, Pamphleteer. This lets you inscribe a gambit into a letter and mail it to someone. The gambit must only target one person, and must inflict either a curse or the charmed condition. I love this so much, y'all; it reminds me of something like Rights of the British Colonies. It also feels like something that should be possible with this class, and also I just love anything that lets me weaponize civil servants.
My fave ability from the class itself. The entire concept/idea is great and coming up for logical reasonings for some of the crazier spell ideas in a spellless setting is fun to do.

Modifying Memories? Your letter is "fudging" the details of an event or a truth.

Charming Somebody? You're playing up to their vain ego or telling such a fire joke/fact that the receiver now thinks your hella cool.

I'd be interested in hearing if someone thinks a Firebrand could work in standard 5e
Honestly, I'd allow the Firebrand as a standard option for a pc in standard 5E. A lot of the Gambits can still "work" in a magical setting. Summon Company would just summon a bunch of guys with crossbows/longbows/what not. Etc, etc, etc.
 


Sparky McDibben

Adventurer
Alrighty, y'all! Today we delve into Gambits!
why-gambit-is-the-worst

Pictured: The wrong gambit

Gambits are described as "a ploy or tactic used to gain the upper hand. Whether in a social setting or on a battlefield, when a person casts a gambit, they are using their wits and materials available to them to create a discrete effect." Essentially, gambits are cool things your character can do a limited number of times per day.

Or, to any 5E player, spells!

In the base (historical) rules, only two classes get gambits, and both of them are half-casters (firebrands and rangers), so neither of them gets slots above 5th level. (This is good, because while you get kind of get away with revivify, resurrection is going to draw some hard questions from Cotton Mather). The firebrand has a full-up list of gambits included in their class description. The ranger seems like you should be able to use the whole ranger spell list plus new ranger gambits (the rules make reference to reflavoring barkskin), but it's not actually stated anywhere that I can find.

The actual gambits themselves are scattered among all three pillars of play, with refreshing attention paid to social and exploration interactions. As an example, we have logjam, which lets you turn any given lumber-based obstacle into an impediment or a trap for your enemies. I think a skilled GM will have no problem creating all manner of interesting RP moments with these tools.

However, there are going to be some PCs who absolute hate this system, and those are the challenge-based players. For some folks (and I include myself in this camp), I don't want to found an intelligence network because I cast the intelligence network gambit, but rather because I put in the time, skill, and forethought to establish one. Furthermore, if I try to do this on my own without the gambit, can I? Or is it only available to those who have the right gambits?

That being said, as a GM, I cut the developers a lot of slack on this one. I love clever solutions to problems. I love it when the players make their own tools. But I have several players in my current group who just don't care. They want to "do the thing" and not have to think about it. They certainly don't want to have to research what a fougasse is. And so I think encoding these things on the character sheet is the best way to impart these bits of historical knowledge and interesting ideas, because it gives PCs a reason to care.

Moreover, the gambits also require forethought and setup - they pay off the best when you take the time to explain how they work. The fougasse I mentioned? It takes an hour to set up (and remains in effect for 24 hours) as essentially a large landmine or improvised mortar, while the material components are shovels and 60 gp worth of powder. So you can't just go, "I cast fireball," you have to actually plan ahead and then lure the bad guys where you want them, while praying everything goes according to plan and a deer or something doesn't wander in and accidentally vaporize itself on your super-deadly mine.

I think for me, the things that would make this section perfect are 1) a curated ranger spell list, so I don't have a player insisting they can use lightning arrow with a musket, and 2) a small sidebar to let GM's know that if your players want to do something that's like a gambit, they don't necessarily need the slot to do so...but they will need to double either the prep time or the prep cost, or both, to achieve the same effect. That way gambits don't limit player creativity, but spur it onwards, while giving GM's a touchpoint for damage, setup, and scale. Oh, and 3) more gambits which are just as cool as these are!

All in all, I've been looking for a low-magic version of D&D for a while, and this is one of only two rulesets that have really scratched that itch for me (the other being the great Adventures in Middle Earth supplement by Cubicle 7). That's hard to do, and damned if they didn't turn out an amazing design. Good job, y'all!
 

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