Bagpuss
Legend
Cowpie Zombie said:
I'll have a go.
Chrarles Ryan has said D20 Modern's firearms were designed with game balance in mind as opposed to reflecting reality, and it also attempts to reflect cinematic reality rather than real life.
All firearms are pretty similiar so that players would not all use the 'best' firearm available, strange that in D&D there are weapons that are obviously better, why in D20 Modern do they need to be so bland? Any way this is not the case as in for example in the handgun catagory Glock 20 being "masterworked" is better than any other handgun, there really is no reason to pick any other handgun.
No rules for weapons failures, recoil, and other things that would actually differenciate between weapons and make gunplay in the game more fun and interesting, without adding much to the complexity, as already demonstrated in other D20 games that were out before D20 Modern, and under the OGL. He suggests they reinvented the wheel, partly to avoid using Open Game Content from other publishers.
He points out that Automatic Fire doesn't even reflect cinematic reality.
You fire 10 rounds, of which only 1 round can ever hit, even if you are firing at point blank range at Monster bigger than the broad side of a barn. A target that akes up the whole of the 10' x 10' target area will be hit once, yet four smaller targets that fill the same area will each be hit once. So where did the other three bullets go in the first case, let alone the other 9?
Charles Ryan said that this is because autofire is treated like a fireball or grenade, such that a dragon still only take 10d6 damage from a fireball, no matter how much of it is in the area, that's fair enough, but bullets are individual items, surely it would make more sense to model it like arrows or magic missiles? Its a case were design balance has gone too far.
Burst Fire is even worse, in reality and in film burst fire tends to make attacks more accurate not less. In D20 Modern it makes it less likely you will hit, and worse if you don't have the Feat it does no more damage, all those other bullets just vanish into thin air. So lets shoot at our barn again if we have a Burst fire weapon and we are standing 10ft away we are less likely to hit if we fire 3 rounds at it than if we fire one.
There's more stuff but that's a summary. His main point seems to be balance has been pushed too much at the loss of fun, accuraccy and tactical options.
(Me talking now, not the article now) One thing I think they got right in D20 Modern about autofire is that its a Reflex save to avoid being hit, when autofire is used the skill of the user doesn't really improve the chance of being hit by much its just bad luck if you get hit while in the 'danger space'.
The fact that D20 Modern is such a poor model of realistic gunfire is even weird when you consider Charles Ryan was behind "Millenium's End" which has probably the most well researched and accurate models of gunplay in any RPG.
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