Firearms

Celebrim · May 15, 2019

jasper said:
I wonder if mythbusters ever tried the exploding barrel trick? Is gun powder packed tight enough in a barrel so it a BIG BANG or is just a BANG and you are ducking flying hoops?

There are enough incidents in history where there was a "BIG BANG" as a result of stored gun powder, and enough still extent ruins where the damage from the explosion is observable in all or in part, that I think we can establish that for enough weight of dry, well stored, finely ground and well compounded gun powder, there is in indeed a "BIG BANG". It won't look like a Hollywood explosion (which is typically mostly gasoline), and it won't be as brisant as an explosion from a high explosive, but it will still lift the walls of your star fort into the air or turn your giant man-of-war into a pile of splintered debris.

Celebrim · May 15, 2019

Satyrn said:
The hardest part for me was figuring out how shotguns can work. My solution was to give them the highest damage of the any firearm (or melee weapon), but gave them an incredibly short normal range (20 feet) . . . and then instead of having disadvantage at long range, it deals half damage.

CoC has always used a similar approach.

Satyrn · May 15, 2019

Celebrim said:
CoC has always used a similar approach.

I did not know that. I came about my solution by considering and rejecting every 3rd party D&D shotgun rule I found.

The process did serve to inspire my solution, although I think I only settled on it when I simultaneously decided "you know what, I'm just gonna make the sniper rifle good at long distances by giving it disadvantage at normal range instead." My sniper rifle and shotgun, then, are distinguished mechanically from the rifle and pistol by not having disadvantage at long range.

Fenris-77 · May 15, 2019

5e already has a great shotgun mechanic. It's called burning hands. OK, so that's maybe more Blunderbuss/Sawed off and I'm halfway kidding, but it still works. AOE isn't an awful way to do that. Unless you're talking about a modern shotgun, all the solutions that feel right are going to be short to very short range, and I'm not even sure I'd bother with S/L for a Blunderbuss, which isn't effective at more than 30 or 40'. If you are talking about a modern shotgun firing the equivalent of buckshot, then that kind of gun certainly does have clear S/L range brackets (roughly 100/200') although you could represent that with differential damage rather than disadvantage on the TH roll.

Satyrn · May 15, 2019

Fenris-77 said:
5e already has a great shotgun mechanic. It's called burning hands. OK, so that's maybe more Blunderbuss/Sawed off and I'm halfway kidding, but it still works. AOE isn't an awful way to do that. Unless you're talking about a modern shotgun, all the solutions that feel right are going to be short to very short range, and I'm not even sure I'd bother with S/L for a Blunderbuss, which isn't effective at more than 30 or 40'. If you are talking about a modern shotgun firing the equivalent of buckshot, then that kind of gun certainly does have clear S/L range brackets (roughly 100/200') although you could represent that with differential damage rather than disadvantage on the TH roll.

Yeah, I'm talking a modern shotgun (although I responded to someone who definitely meant blunderbuss), although I was aiming for more a video game stereotype of a shotgun than a real world version. And I considered burning hands-like effects, too, but I still wanted the weapon to function as much like other weapons as possible: essentially, I really wanted it to be an attack roll against a single target so it plays nice with class features like Extra Attack, etc.

Fenris-77 · May 15, 2019

Satyrn said:
Yeah, I'm talking a modern shotgun (although I responded to someone who definitely meant blunderbuss), although I was aiming for more a video game stereotype of a shotgun than a real world version. And I considered burning hands-like effects, too, but I still wanted the weapon to function as much like other weapons as possible: essentially, I really wanted it to be an attack roll against a single target so it plays nice with class features like Extra Attack, etc.

In that case my personal preference would be to differentiate damage rather than use DAd at range. It makes the shotgun feel very different from a rifle without having to make changes that don't reflect the actual firing of said weapon (like no range DAd but full damage). So call a SG something like 100/200 (or whatever) and 2d6/1d6 damage. I think that does a pretty good job representing how a SG is different from a rifle that's (just for comparison) 200/400 2d6 with DAd at long range. Obviously I just spitballed the numbers, but the mechanic feels right, to me anyway.

Satyrn · May 15, 2019

Aye, that's indeed what I did. ( Although It's simply half damage at long range instead of different damage dice, so that Dex and other damage modifiers are also affected)

Celebrim · May 15, 2019

Satyrn said:
I did not know that. I came about my solution by considering and rejecting every 3rd party D&D shotgun rule I found.

There are tons of bad gun rules out there. My personal pet peeve is when someone models shotguns as area of effect attacks. You can pretty much guess right then and there that they've never fired a weapon, much less have particular expertise that they are bringing to the rules. I suppose if you were trying to model shotguns as they appear in B rate movies where one pull of the trigger and all the bad guys in the room leap into the air and fall backwards, that might make sense...

Morrus · May 15, 2019

Celebrim said:
There are tons of bad gun rules out there. My personal pet peeve is when someone models shotguns as area of effect attacks. You can pretty much guess right then and there that they've never fired a weapon, much less have particular expertise that they are bringing to the rules. I suppose if you were trying to model shotguns as they appear in B rate movies where one pull of the trigger and all the bad guys in the room leap into the air and fall backwards, that might make sense...

It’s about as realistic as anything in D&D combat is.

Fenris-77 · May 15, 2019

A Blunderbuss has a spread of 6 to 10' at 30 to 40' of range. That sounds an awful lot like an AOE effect to me. Obviously this isn't true of more modern shotguns, but it's not a silly way to model a Blunderbuss type weapon.