D&D 5E Magiteck guns?

[Tales and Chronicles]

So I'm watching a playthrough of Final Fantasy 15 and the magiteck infantry of the evil empire has put me to peace with the concept of technology going together with magic and other fantasy elements. I guess my biggest gripe was more with the ''steampunk'' archetype and the gonzo/weird science vibe that I felt to0 wacky in my fantasy. Anyway.

So, if I wanted to put guns in my settings without making martial weapons redundant (I dont care for realism, let it be clear) how would you do it? The ones if the DMG are a little too strong, even if you try to make it harder to buy them or get ammos.

For the moment I also have in mind to make Machinery their own weapon proficiency, so at level 1 only fighters and artificers would be able to use them. At least that my idea.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

i think if you balance the damage with martial weapons, it will be fine.

I like the idea of only some classes getting firearms, but I’d include Ranger and rogue in the list.

 

[Charlaquin]

Weapons that the target saves against instead of the user making an attack roll.

 

[jmartkdr2]

So the goal is: guns shouldn't be better than the existing weapons you could get at that point in the game.

So if you want players to be able to build gun-focused characters form level one, guns shouldn't be better than any of the weapons in the PHB. Honestly refluffing a crossbow is probably the best option here. If guns aren't starting weapons because they're rare or expensive, they should be as good as the other rare or expensive items in the game. The DMG has some black-powder guns that are pretty balanced if you don't get them for a few levels which is handled by making them cost hundreds of gp. If they're as hard to get as rare magic items, they should be as powerful as rare magic items.

For magitech in particular, you could take a leaf from the artillerist artificer and make them shoot cantrips. Just let them key to dex (because ranged weapon) and don't have them scale to character level (but you can use Extra Attack with them). Or, if the user is a caster, they just effectively get an extra cantrip known.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I had in mind of giving them a smaller damage die, but with a new damage type: penetrating, that would make it superbly rare to resist or be immune to, since nobody has a features to gain resistance to Penetrating damage, only spells of features giving immunity to all damage would have an effect.

 

[GMMichael]

So the goal is: guns shouldn't be better than the existing weapons you could get at that point in the game.
. . . Honestly refluffing a crossbow is probably the best option here.

I was gonna say, "so, bows?"

A magitech weapon should be the equivalent of a wand or staff of Damage Doing, since I would assume it requires about as much effort to create one. Which wizards are going to hate, since the fighters are now doing their shtick. . .

The conclusion of the logic is that ALL weapons become cooler, hence Final Fantasy's weird 80-pound revolver-swords (or whatever that thing was). Actually, that minds me of a particular piece of cover art.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

In Harry Turtledove’s Darkness novels his magitech analogues for could be charged/reloaded by minor necromantic magic. It’s an interesting take on things that might be cool to drop into a FRPG campaign.

You didn’t need a Necromancer per se, just the right “cantrip” and a dying human nearby…

 

[Blue]

If you reskin crossbows as guns, they are nice and balanced and have characteristics you want.

It's like in a swashbuckling game I was thinking about. Instead of trying to reinvent D&D combat math or block off a large number of options, I just reskinned all of the armors a lot lighter in look.

 

[Steampunkette]

Keep an eye out on the Voidrunner's Codex. It's gotta have new guns and stuff to be all Sci-Fi.

Lasers, Blasters, Sonic Disruptors. Stuff.

You could take one of those and refluff the description to make it magic. And since it's coming from ENPublishing, it'll have gone through a few balancing passes.

 

[cbwjm]

I think PF2e guns have relatively low damage but roll an extra die when they crit. If you have something like a pistol (1d8) and rifle (1d10) then they'll do damage similar to a bow or crossbow but become more effective on a crit. Then allow different ammo to be loaded into them to change up the damage type.