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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hirou" data-source="post: 6292258" data-attributes="member: 6776023">Hello, first post here. Stumbled upon Zeitgeist about a month ago, became fascinated, bought the whole path and now preparing to run first module with a group of 6 just this Sunday.We discussed the Player's guide a lot with the group, and the most heated topic was, surprisingly, the firearms rules. The rules that are presented in the book and our problems with them are as follows:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Default rules - firearms have brutal 2, high crit and reload standard. Statistically, they are 1 point above crossbows in terms of damage, but without feats are mostly once-per-encounter use. So, you spend, say, 25-30 gp for a carbine or rifle and get a net +3 or +4 average bonus damage on your 3[W] daily power or even less on encounter powers. Not bad but definitely not outstanding.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Gunsmoke and Mishaps - guns release smoke and can backfire. Now you get the same tiny bonus damage and a chance of self-damage on top of that. Oh, and maybe concealment, that may be handy, but did you really pick that pistol to be able to hide? Nice flavor, but not that much interesting.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Killing tool - this is where things go south. It sounds good - +2 dice of damage for the (suggested) price of requiring 2 move actions to reload. Even on per-encounter basis, adding 2 dice of damage to your nova burst sounds good... until you consider 2 things. First, I dunno about you, but I tend to have my bad guys somewhat competent and comparable in wits to PCs. Any minion monster with a carbine suddenly gains an encounter attack of 3d8. 4ed mechanics says that 4 minions should be exp-wise a normal battle for one PC... anyone wants to receive 12d8 salvo in the face on the first round of combat? Even factoring in the misses, this is very likely to bloody or outright knock out the 1st level character. And it's not all. Look at that table on page 16, with all firearms listed. What's the very first line? That's right, grenade. Attacks with which basically become '3d10, Burst 1 within 5, half damage on miss'. If I'm not mistaken with the math, that's roughly 12 damage on average, factoring misses, from one opponent, from one grenade. Remember what I said about a small team of 4 minions? That's ~50 damage for you, incoming. I think kobolds will soon rule this poor world...</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Threat of force - you get "always readied up" attack on any creature entering the square within 30 feet of you. If you allow to make the same attack as Reaction(or Interrupt) to any other action that normally provokes an attack of opportunity (say, an enemy makes a ranged attack near you), you can enact the "Han shot first" scene from Star Wars, which makes me really like this option, but it's a bit situation-dependent. It's deadly for common folk if we suppose that they're minions (first shot - first kill), but doesn't change the situation much for PCs.</li> </ul>So, all in all, the firearms rules presented in the guide simply does not make firearms attractive to the players. At best, they act the same as reflavored crossbows, with nothing really distinguishing. Right now we're discussing the alternative mechanics - every attack with firearms gets built-in +3 power bonus to hit roll, with high crit and reload standard (or maybe 2 move actions). The reasoning can be defended from different angles: firearms are easier to aim and shoot, bullet is faster than the arrow and therefore harder to dodge, bullets pierce armor. It's a power bonus, so it's not possible to stack this with to-hit bonuses from Warlord, for example. +3 value is under discussion, but it's basically slightly below the above-mentioned bonus from competent warlord, but big enough to be substantial. And it allows a bullet to punch through hide armor (AC+3) on immobile target with a roll of 10, if we want to have some real-life comparison.So I have 2 questions for fellow players (and maybe, hopefully, the creators of this wonderful AP):<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What was your impression of firearms in your game? Which rules you've used and how that played out?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What do you think of the suggested change? Is this too powerful? Too simple? Not needed at all?</li> </ul></blockquote>

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