D&D 4E New 4E Class: Gunner?

[med stud]

Lizard, I think this thread is better of without opening a can of worms (the healing rates).

Cadfan: Yeah, I understand that sentiment. I have thought about myself, and I think it has to do with Hollywood's treatment of guns as death rays. I haven't seen many movies where people get shot and don't die immidietly or in seconds. IRL, gun wounds were hard to treat but many people survived getting shot numerous times.

 

[Lizard]

Lizard, I think this thread is better of without opening a can of worms (the healing rates).

Cadfan: Yeah, I understand that sentiment. I have thought about myself, and I think it has to do with Hollywood's treatment of guns as death rays. I haven't seen many movies where people get shot and don't die immidietly or in seconds. IRL, gun wounds were hard to treat but many people survived getting shot numerous times.

You obviously watch better movies than me. I can think of countless action/adventure flicks where the hero is "just wounded". It might also be I don't think of realistic movies as "game fodder", but over-the-top stuff is.

 

[med stud]

You obviously watch better movies than me. I can think of countless action/adventure flicks where the hero is "just wounded". It might also be I don't think of realistic movies as "game fodder", but over-the-top stuff is.

Realisticly speaking, most people don't die immidiatly when shot. There is always the "shoulder wound" of some movies, where the hero gets hit and keep going, but in most of the action movies I can think of, the hero survives because he doesn't get hit. Then, of course, reality is not a good thing to base damages on since it very unforgiving, but the lethality of an old gun is probably not much higher than the lethality of an arrow. Pure speculation from my side.

 

[trancejeremy]

In the old magazine from GDW, Challenge, there was long-ish article on the survivability rate of being shot in real life (they were defending their house system, which gave PCs a ton of hit points). It was based on this sting operation along the US mexican border in the 70s or 80s - apparently a lot of criminals were preying on people crossing over, so a group of police pretended to be illegals and waited. They got into a lot of gunfights.

The general gist of the results was that if you weren't killed right away by the shot (which was rare), the chance of survival was very high.

Anyway, I think guns in fantasy can work, they are certainly in a lot of fantasy computer and video games. The MMORPG I play, Sword of the New World, even has a Musketeer class (to go along with an otherwise D&D assortment).

 

[Pale Jackal]

I recall reading an interview with some SWAT officer (or some such) and he noted that with your adrenaline up, you can concievably live for three more minutes after being shot in the heart.

 

[kennew142]

Guns break D&D for me because for some reason I can rationalize someone getting shot full of arrows and continuing to fight, but after a bullet wound or two I figure you should be done.

Maybe that's my own flawed logic (an arrow pretty much screws you up in real life just like a bullet), but its how I imagine things.

That being said, yay retheming! If you want a gunwielding class in your game, this is a great way to go about it.

I love guns in D&D.

D&D hp do not reflect (or at least solely reflect) physical damage. Getting shot with a gun is pretty much the same as getting shot by an arrow. If a bullet doesn't kill you, it grazed you or passed through tissue (no organs or bones). I understand having pet bugaboos however. I have my own I must deal with.

I agree about retheming. I am hoping to start a 4e modern fantasy campaign once I'm familiar enough with the rules to do it justice. I'm hoping that many of the archery powers can be rethemed as gun powers (or allowed to work with guns). I was going to try D20 Modern for this campaign (no matter how much I dislike that system) before the 4e announcement. Now, I will just have to wait.

 

[TwinBahamut]

The idea that guns are more lethal than other weapons is pretty much one big myth. People can survive gunshot wounds, and other weapons were all engineered to kill. If you get stabbed with a sword, you are not any better off than a guy who got shot. Being nicked with a sword and being grazed by a bullet are pretty much the same thing.

I think the perception mostly comes from the difference between the classic Shakespearian sword death, where the character lingers on long enough after getting stabbed to deliver a speech, and the modern Hollywood "random minion shot by a hero's bullet" who dies instantly. The problem with this is that it is based on artistic style, rather than the actual truth of the weapon.

 

[The Eternal GM]

I assume that if guns don't appear in the DMG or some similar source that they'll be in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide in the form of smoke powder weapons, no?

As for the class, I'm not sure... Just doesn't seem to have anything going to call it's own really.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I dunno, I think the Gunslinger could really come into his own, if we moved away from a rifle-based class to a duel-wielding, multi-target, run-and-gun Wild-West style Gunslinger.

He could be based around using his guns to target multiple-enemies normally, being able to read the movement of enemies (he knows how fast guns are, so he knows it is best to read the movement of a person about to fire a gun), all variety of gun-tricks, etc.

 

[Cadfan]

TwinBahamut- No, the difference, for me at least, is that getting grazed by a sword seems a reasonable prospect for a swordfighting hero, but people mostly don't get grazed by bullets. They get shot. I can visualize a character in a duel getting minor cuts and lacerations all over his body, but avoiding getting actually impaled. But how many times, per fight, is it realistic for a bullet to do minor damage?

I'd see them as the same if there were something in the rules that said that a sword wound of over 10 damage was a stab through the torso. But that's not how it is.