Firearms

[Raven Swords]

I'm having my PC's do a bit of time and plane travel and I'm going to take them into a possible future which includes firearms. Knowing my players I thought I'd write up some stats for the guns...

Please have a look at them and let me know what you think. I am having real problems with automatic weapons, but I’m fairly happy with everything else. Can you see any obvious problems or something I've missed?

Edited:
Sawn-off Shotguns have shorter range and profficiency bonus remains the same.
All weapons placed onto a single weapons table.
New weapon property (modern).
New armor table (to be completed).
New armor penetration rules.
Matchlocks require a match to be ignited.
Wheelock require winding up at the start of an encounter.
Arquebuss increased profficiency bonus raised to +2.
Added level requirements to the feat powers for improved balance.
Lowered all the damage codes slightly.
Seperated out reload times.
New weapon modifications.
Changed the modern Gatling gun name to Minigun to avoid confusion
Removed double barreled shotgun from flintlock list.
Renamed flintlock shotgun as Dragon gun.
Seperated out Cannon.

 

[erik_the_guy]

Armor: guns may be able to penetrate hide or even platemail armor, but probably bounce off god plate without leaving a dent. Give the guns an additional property: armor peircing. This is a numerical value for each weapon that has its own column (like proficiency or damage). The value in the column is the AC bonus from armor ignored by a weapon. A weapon with armor peircing 4 would ignore hide armor. Hide armor +1 would only grant a +1 AC bonus (the bullets ignore armor, not enhancement bonuses). Chainmail would only provide a +2 AC bonus. Is suggest an armor peircing value of 3 for a regular modern pistol (ignoring all light armor), up to around 8 for a magnum (penetrating plate armor).

Hollow point bullets: With a successful hit hollow points shatter inside the foe causing ongoing damage 5 (only allow these in more advanced campaigns). Hollow point bullets tend to shatter on armor, and thus lose the armor peircing property.

Kevlar armor: Identical to Hide armor, but effective against firearms. Reduces the armor peircing property of all bullets by 4.

Dwarven Weapon training: now adds a +2 bonus to damage with firearms.

 

[kalyptein]

Just skimmed through, but one thing caught my eye. Doesn't a sawn-off shotgun requires even less aiming than a normal shotgun? The range should go down as you have it, maybe even moreso, but the prof modifier should probably go up instead of down. I'm no gun expert, but that's my understanding.

 

[chronoplasm]

Wow. Those do some pretty sweet damage, but I suppose they have to what with the reload times and all.
Hmmm... Could that be tweaked a little bit so that reloading can be done as a movement or standard action?
That way:
Turn 1: Move and load.
Turn 2: Fire and move.
Or maybe that can be done with a feat or something?

 

[Ahrimon]

Modern weapons would punch through mideval armor, but renesance weapons would have about as much chance to punch through as a Xbow. There was a big arms race between armor and guns back then. Armor would often be tested by shooting it a couple of times to see how well it does.

But as history shows, guns won in the end.

 

[Sylrae]

There's a really in depth writeup for firearms in 3e. It only goes as far forward as the revolver though. but I could put it up in a day or 2.

seriously in depth. There's a dozen types of guns, some modifiers you can pay for (like double barreled) a misfire table... it rocks. and the weapons in 4e are done almost the same as in 3e. way easy to convert.

 

[Raven Swords]

That would be really hand if you could find that!

I was thinking of dropping the damage codes slightly, particularly with automatic weapons and introducing new martial powers to cover fully automatic bursts etc..

 

[Tzeentch]

The concept of "armor piercing" doesn't strike me as working well in D&D where Armor Class is a rather abstract measure of a character's ability to absorb damage, and is rather closely tied to some of the balancing conceits of the game.

If people balk at the rather high damage codes you could reduce them and add more properties like high crit or full auto being burst effects. D&D is very cinematic so aiming for Hollywood realism is probably a good goal (gunshots knocking people back, full auto gunfire being more a distraction or low damage AOE, headshots at extreme range, "just a flesh wound", etc)

Your doc looks pretty reasonable, and is mechanically simple to integrate into any campaign. I'd feel pretty good about allowing most of your percussion weapons in a straight D&D game as they are written. Most are side-grades for the longbow/shortbow, and are thematically quite interesting. At a glance they are not overpowering and have shortcomings of their own - as well as a built-in cutout with regards to ammo availability (something D&D 2e abused to a ridiculous degree with its already crummy guns being saddled with smokepowder costs).

If you want to present guns as the democratic force of ranged application of force and still have bows as the artisans choice you could always introduce a gearbow (compound bow) technology. Hmm ... that conjures an interesting campaign idea ... You could probably get some interesting ideas for magitech guns from Iron Kingdoms as well.

 

[Sylrae]

Light Firearms:
Pistol: Light, Flintlock: 75 gp. 1d8 dmg(s), 1d10 dmg (m), x3 crit, 60 ft, 6lb, piercing, malf* 1-3
Pistol: Light, Percussion Cap: 100 gp. 1d8 dmg(s), 1d10 dmg (m), x3 crit, 50 ft, 4lb, piercing, malf* 1
Pistol: Light, holdout percussion cap: 75 gp. 1d6 dmg(s), 1d8 dmg (m), x3 crit, 20 ft, 3lb, piercing, malf* 1

One Handed Firearms:
Pistol: Medium, Flintlock: 100 gp. 1d10 dmg(s), 2d6 dmg (m), x3 crit, 60 ft, 6lb, piercing, malf* 1-3
Pistol: Heavy, Flintlock: 137gp 5 sp. 2d6 dmg(s), 2d8 dmg (m), x3 crit, 60 ft, 8lb, piercing, malf* 1-3
Pistol: Medium, Percussion Cap: 137gp 5 sp. 1d10 dmg(s), 2d6 dmg (m), x3 crit, 50 ft, 5lb, piercing, malf* 1
Pistol: Heavy, Percussion Cap: 175 gp. 2d6 dmg(s), 2d8 dmg (m), x3 crit, 50 ft, 6lb, piercing, malf* 1
Pistol: Revolver, Percussion Cap: 450 gp. 1d8 dmg(s), 1d10 dmg (m), x3 crit, 50 ft, 4lb, piercing, malf* 1

2 Handed Firearms, Additions, and Malfunction Effects to be listed some time tomorrow.

 

[Raven Swords]

The concept of "armor piercing" doesn't strike me as working well in D&D where Armor Class is a rather abstract measure of a character's ability to absorb damage, and is rather closely tied to some of the balancing conceits of the game.

I agree it is unbalancing, I was thinking about introducing modern armout equivalents to compensate..

Flak jacket, Kevlar vest, Military gun suit, Power Armour. Somthing like that anyway.

If people balk at the rather high damage codes you could reduce them and add more properties like high crit or full auto being burst effects. D&D is very cinematic so aiming for Hollywood realism is probably a good goal (gunshots knocking people back, full auto gunfire being more a distraction or low damage AOE, headshots at extreme range, "just a flesh wound", etc)

I was thinking of expanding the feat gained powers to cover headshots and other fancy gun tricks as well as full auto bursts.

If you want to present guns as the democratic force of ranged application of force and still have bows as the artisans choice you could always introduce a gearbow (compound bow) technology. Hmm ... that conjures an interesting campaign idea ... You could probably get some interesting ideas for magitech guns from Iron Kingdoms as well.

Now that's a really good idea, maybe a kingdom using artificing and fire arms against magic users and monsters?