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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Capn Charlie" data-source="post: 7054216" data-attributes="member: 16046">Oh definitely, Savage/Military is a great combo.  I am thinking Sepoy troops.  Imagine having a bunch of savage aliens swear fealty to the Fargone Trading Corporation, get drilled in gauss rifles, then be thrown against the defenders of other primitive worlds, all the while gladly risking their lives for a chance at the plunder that we might consider shiny trash.  Love it.  As for power weapons, they make more sense than you might think.  Pneumatic weapons make a lot of sense in zero g environments, tight quarters on ships and stations (dangerous projectiles penetrating bulkheads...) and the enemy here is the lack of a gravitic center of reference.  In freefall a melee weapon would only deposit half of its kinetic energy to the target and recoil half of it into the attacker, if you punched someone in freefall you would both bounce away from each other.  Power weapons use compressed air to empower their strikes, making them a little more like rocket powered weapons than anything, putting more kinetic energy into the target than is recoiled by the user.  Moreover, they can be used for limited maneuvering or even configured to release a massive jet of air on impact, acting like a pneumatic jackhammer when you connect.  Silly, perhaps, but I think someone would buy it, so I think someone would build it, especially given the relatively low tech level required compared to other weapons.  I tried to stick with ranges that mattered and not go all silly, also lasers are hard in atmospheric environments, so I think you could just go with range straight out of the phb and it wouldn't matter, maybe use shortbow and light crossbow statblocks for archaic bow and crossbow.  As for other weapons, go with it straight as it lies.  Dagger 1d4, short sword (long knife) 1d6 (both light) swords at 1d8, two handed swords at 2d6, reach spears at 1d10 two handed, spears 1d6 thrown or melee with a shield.  With the other large weapon dice it is easy to feel like you want to scale archaic weapons to match, but that just makes modern weaponry less impressive.  Remember that the party is usually the few alien invaders in most scenarios, so just throw more hordes of (relatively) poorly equipped natives at them rather than buffing the weapons they carry.  For PCs choosing archaic weapons this can be a little disheartening, so consider some special story award weapons.  In my game I had a savage daht build a two handed sword out of this crazy alien metal and it did 2d8 and not 2d6.  For primitive firearms, don't be shy.  The joules delivered in a shot out of a laser or blaster rifle is on par with that from a high caliber rifle, just use those stat blocks.  2d6 pistols, 3d8 heavy rifles, heck even give them burstfire if you want.  The only thing that makes lasers and gauss rifles better than these weapons (subjectively) is their better performance in varying G and atmospheric environments (try shooting a cartridge in hard vacuum) and fantastic marketing by LaserCo (SUpplying the finest in beam laser weaponry for over two centuries, for when you want to deal with problems at the speed of light).  A savage character might even be allowed to call his flintlock or muzzle loader archaic for the primitive background bonus, but any more advanced and you're just using too modern of guns to call it.  (No way I'd let a guy with ww2 weaponry call it primitive and archaic).</blockquote>

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