Wulf Ratbane
Adventurer
ledded said:
Sounds like a very good argument to make sure your muzzleloaders use linear, not bell-curve, damage ranges; and to save the bell-curve damages for masterwork powder/shot/firearms.
Wulf
[Grim Tales] Muskets
- Thread starter Serps
- Start date
Sounds like a very good argument to make sure your muzzleloaders use linear, not bell-curve, damage ranges; and to save the bell-curve damages for masterwork powder/shot/firearms.
Wulf
HeapThaumaturgist
First Post
Hrm. I'm using Improved Linear, for the most part ... but part of that was an effort on my part to make firearms pretty lethal in this game (since they're getting heavily penalized on reload). In fact, one player has decided to back up his musketoon with a crossbow recently.
The pistoleer was pretty strapped for cash and only had three pistols. Two of which were .20 cal pistol-daggers. Which segeways nicely into:
Most of the strange weapon types of the period I'm leaving as standard weapons. Most didn't work spectacularly when they worked at all, so I didn't want to make them Exotic Weapons (and therefore 'better'). The pistol-daggers, for instance, weigh as much as a regular pistol but do 1d6+2 as opposed to 1d10+2, and then they're also standard daggers. Didn't see any reason to force him to take a feat for that.
I haven't introduced duckfoot guns, but if I did I would probably have them resolve something like a GT shotgun. So THUS:
Duckfoot (4 barrels) | Damage: 1d10+2 | Range: 5ft. | Reload: 8 | Notes: Spread
Spread: Duckfoot pistols have a wide, if somewhat uncontrollable dispersal pattern. A duckfoot targets a single 5-foot square in the first range increment. Targets caught fully in the area of effect of this spread do not recieve Dex., Defense, or dodge bonuses against the duckfoot blast, but otherwise an attack is rolled normally. The duckfoot affects an additional 5-foot square per range increment, to a maximum number equal to the barrels of the weapon. The area of effect of multiple squares is always a straight line perpendicular to the shooter.
I'd say the penalties outweigh the benefits. It's pretty effective out to, oh, twenty feet, but beyond that the fact that you can't AIM it reduces the utility.
I might arm a badguy with one of these some time, give them something interesting to play with. The fact that I'm going to track powder and shot will keep them from opening up every battle with it.
Additional barrels with their own firing mechanisms I'll probably just make heavierlarger and allow them to use them X times before reloading and keep it to a small caliber. THOSE I might make Exotic, but from what I've read they weren't so useful as to totally dominate the gun market.
So far price has worked for me to control weapons. Not that I purposefully went for that, but they started off with little cash and the pistoleer needed LOTS of guns to maintain fire for more than a round or two. He found himself broke with 3 guns. Last night they fought some guards armed with musketoons and pistols (guarding a diamond mine) and the entire party forgot to loot the bodies beyond grabbing all the guns and shot they could get their paws on and high-tailing it before they got caught.
Of course it was only the second actual battle they've had. The first time one character got mauled savagely by giant badgers. This fight, I confirmed a critical on a musketoon and rolled near-max damage. Ouch. From full HP to -3 Con in one shot. Some quick work by the ship's surgeon got him back on his feet, but they were a touch scared by that. Of course earlier he had confimed a critical with one of his 1d6+2 damage dagger-pistols on a guard and the guy flubbed the MDT save (mandatory on criticals) and dropped like a bad habit.
It seems like games based on the Modern/GT rules are the most fun at our table. I absolutely loved our short-lived Blood and Vigilance supers game. This has been even more fun. An entire 6-hour session and only the one combat. We had a tense hour-long situation where the party snuck back into town under cover of Disguise +10 spell (cast by the Wizard's mentor) to convince the 2nd mate's family to hide them. Y'see, the whole ship was branded pirate by traitors in the ranks and they had to sneak on board this other ship in the middle of a whole neighborhood of folks that knew them. So we were rolling spot checks (to see if their disguise failed) then Reputation checks (with bonuses to see if locals knew them) ... then some quick Bluff checks when those two went badly. SO MUCH good RP.
--fje
The pistoleer was pretty strapped for cash and only had three pistols. Two of which were .20 cal pistol-daggers. Which segeways nicely into:
Most of the strange weapon types of the period I'm leaving as standard weapons. Most didn't work spectacularly when they worked at all, so I didn't want to make them Exotic Weapons (and therefore 'better'). The pistol-daggers, for instance, weigh as much as a regular pistol but do 1d6+2 as opposed to 1d10+2, and then they're also standard daggers. Didn't see any reason to force him to take a feat for that.
I haven't introduced duckfoot guns, but if I did I would probably have them resolve something like a GT shotgun. So THUS:
Duckfoot (4 barrels) | Damage: 1d10+2 | Range: 5ft. | Reload: 8 | Notes: Spread
Spread: Duckfoot pistols have a wide, if somewhat uncontrollable dispersal pattern. A duckfoot targets a single 5-foot square in the first range increment. Targets caught fully in the area of effect of this spread do not recieve Dex., Defense, or dodge bonuses against the duckfoot blast, but otherwise an attack is rolled normally. The duckfoot affects an additional 5-foot square per range increment, to a maximum number equal to the barrels of the weapon. The area of effect of multiple squares is always a straight line perpendicular to the shooter.
I'd say the penalties outweigh the benefits. It's pretty effective out to, oh, twenty feet, but beyond that the fact that you can't AIM it reduces the utility.
I might arm a badguy with one of these some time, give them something interesting to play with. The fact that I'm going to track powder and shot will keep them from opening up every battle with it.
Additional barrels with their own firing mechanisms I'll probably just make heavierlarger and allow them to use them X times before reloading and keep it to a small caliber. THOSE I might make Exotic, but from what I've read they weren't so useful as to totally dominate the gun market.
So far price has worked for me to control weapons. Not that I purposefully went for that, but they started off with little cash and the pistoleer needed LOTS of guns to maintain fire for more than a round or two. He found himself broke with 3 guns. Last night they fought some guards armed with musketoons and pistols (guarding a diamond mine) and the entire party forgot to loot the bodies beyond grabbing all the guns and shot they could get their paws on and high-tailing it before they got caught.
Of course it was only the second actual battle they've had. The first time one character got mauled savagely by giant badgers. This fight, I confirmed a critical on a musketoon and rolled near-max damage. Ouch. From full HP to -3 Con in one shot. Some quick work by the ship's surgeon got him back on his feet, but they were a touch scared by that. Of course earlier he had confimed a critical with one of his 1d6+2 damage dagger-pistols on a guard and the guy flubbed the MDT save (mandatory on criticals) and dropped like a bad habit.
It seems like games based on the Modern/GT rules are the most fun at our table. I absolutely loved our short-lived Blood and Vigilance supers game. This has been even more fun. An entire 6-hour session and only the one combat. We had a tense hour-long situation where the party snuck back into town under cover of Disguise +10 spell (cast by the Wizard's mentor) to convince the 2nd mate's family to hide them. Y'see, the whole ship was branded pirate by traitors in the ranks and they had to sneak on board this other ship in the middle of a whole neighborhood of folks that knew them. So we were rolling spot checks (to see if their disguise failed) then Reputation checks (with bonuses to see if locals knew them) ... then some quick Bluff checks when those two went badly. SO MUCH good RP.
--fje
HeapThaumaturgist
First Post
Not using any misfire rules beyond natural ones and Action Points. I think that 5% is more than a big enough chance of FAILURE, I don't think catastrophic failure should be that common nor should it be random. -I- get to activate the critical failures ... heh heh heh.
Also I don't bother with concentration to reload under stress. The two round reload time is punative enough that reloading is almost never performed IN combat to begin with. We have three PCs (can't get a 4th player
) and only one of them was carrying a single firearm into battle. The other is a pistoleerish fellow with a brace of guns and when they're empty the last two are pistol-daggers and he dives into melee with those. The other player is a Black Company-style Wizard, who mostly runs around trying to pull off a spell or two, then falls back on his memorized spells for whumpage. His CON is big, his Spell Energy is big, his HP are big, so he doesn't actually worry much about taking big subdual damage, he's just Student of Wizardry so anything more than a sharp fart at two paces takes 2-3 rounds. He's wonderfully useful OUTSIDE of combat, so the player has no complaints.
The last is our Charismatic/Dedicated jack-of-all trades type (odd combination, that). He used to carry a single musketoon into combat. First time that happened he found he had one shot and then his pants were down for two full rounds. He didn't like that at all, but he's got crap BAB and can't see his way to paying for a brace of pistols himself so he's now taken to carrying a crossbow as well. HONESTLY I think crossbows should have a higher reload time, but that would totally break melee weapons to the system, then.
--fje
Also I don't bother with concentration to reload under stress. The two round reload time is punative enough that reloading is almost never performed IN combat to begin with. We have three PCs (can't get a 4th player
) and only one of them was carrying a single firearm into battle. The other is a pistoleerish fellow with a brace of guns and when they're empty the last two are pistol-daggers and he dives into melee with those. The other player is a Black Company-style Wizard, who mostly runs around trying to pull off a spell or two, then falls back on his memorized spells for whumpage. His CON is big, his Spell Energy is big, his HP are big, so he doesn't actually worry much about taking big subdual damage, he's just Student of Wizardry so anything more than a sharp fart at two paces takes 2-3 rounds. He's wonderfully useful OUTSIDE of combat, so the player has no complaints. The last is our Charismatic/Dedicated jack-of-all trades type (odd combination, that). He used to carry a single musketoon into combat. First time that happened he found he had one shot and then his pants were down for two full rounds. He didn't like that at all, but he's got crap BAB and can't see his way to paying for a brace of pistols himself so he's now taken to carrying a crossbow as well. HONESTLY I think crossbows should have a higher reload time, but that would totally break melee weapons to the system, then.
--fje
ledded
Herder of monkies
HeapThaumaturgist said:
I think that Improved Linear works pretty well, it's very hard to model the various inconsistencies that can happen with firearms of the era we are talking about (and again, sorry for the long anecdotes Wulf
). Personally, I used a similar system except I'm a little bit closer to the d20 Modern model because of the ability to perform double-taps and whatnot with multi barrel weapons, though I'm starting to change my mind on that.Yes, realisitically they would only be truly useful in a boarding situation where guys are packed in a tight mass where you could just aim for the center and let fly; from what I've read they were quite bad for anything resembling accuracy. I do like that effect though, thanks.
Again, I've read that many of them, even into the percussion era, tended to be either a little lacking in accuracy or just a bit harder to aim/use, though I've read a good bit of conflicting viewpoints on it. But like you say below, one of the big limiters for multi-lock/multi-barrel weapons was price, especially in any age prior to mass-production. Darned expensive to fit almost twice as many working components into close to the same space as a single, and design it well enough to take the stress of repeated firings.
Sweet. That sounds like a good job by the GM. Heck, we've played Modern so much with such great versimilitude that when we play other genres I have to nudge the players into remembering that they *should* loot the bodies on occasion, which is a nice change from our D&D days
.I have to agree. I'm looking more and more into GT (great stuff Wulf, BTW) for ideas for a similar campaign we've been cooking up that will feature a wide variety of genre elements, from Renaissance to Steampunk, pirates screaming down from the skies on one-man gliders from their Dirigible hidden in the clouds, etc. I've loved BnV every time we've played it.
Similar Threads
Enchanted Trinkets Complete
Recent & Upcoming Releases
-
June 18 2026 -
October 1 2026
