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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Leatherhead" data-source="post: 9278942" data-attributes="member: 53176">Honestly the primary problem with guns is that people overthink and overdesign them mostly due to the design philosophy of weapons.Every D&D weapon is designed, in large part, mindful of the myths of the weapon in mind. Swords are a noble's weapon meant for fighting other people, so there are like a billion magical swords just lying around in every official adventure (after all, only nobles could afford enchanting that many weapons). Axes are the savage weapons of brutes, and therefore barbarians have abilities that are specifically designed to work with greataxes but not greatswords. Staffs are the weapon of the wizened, so they also function as a magical focus for wizards. Daggers work with sneak attacks, but your fists don't, because assassins use daggers in the night, while martial artist make a big show about punching you in the face. And this also applies guns. Guns are thought of as weapons of little skill needed and immense power output, to the point where they violate the rules of all other kinds of combat, obsoleting everything else. What happens when people consciously or subconsciously work this idea into the rules of guns, is that people put too much power in the gun itself,  and not enough in the character wielding the gun. Which is totally backwards compared to every other weapon in the game. Swords and bows are mundane and lethal, yes, but even mundane martial characters do impossible things with them, like interrupt someone else's turn and attack 8+ times in a fraction of a second (hi to you, Samurai) or boost the power of a single attack to do over 4X damage (Pick any Rogue). So naturally, when you make a weapon that is supposed to break the rules of the weapon subsystem, it breaks the rules of the weapon subsystem. They just don't jive, because they aren't supposed to jive.So how are you supposed to put a square shaped weapon into a circle based hole? You don't. Instead you look for a subsystem that fits better. You want an object, that deals significant burst damage, can't be significantly boosted by the character using it, and has limited uses? You want a magic wand. One shot takes one charge. "Reloading" the wand (with whatever frame of time you want)gives you another charge. You could even have special guns with multiple charges (like double barrel guns). You can set the damage to be however high you want. You can set the default accuracy to whatever you want. You can customize the damage type, area of effect, exactly how much noise and flash and even smoke they give off. Basically everything is fair game once you stop designing the gun as part of the weapon system.Or, you can just make them slightly tweaked copies of crossbows that make a loud noise. If you are more interested in making the character using the gun more important than the gun itself.</blockquote>

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