Celebrim
Legend
It depends on how much you are willing to handwave away versimlitude.
Classic 'Sci-Fantasy' like 'John Carter of Mars' does alot of handwaving in order to allow its hero to resolve most of his conflicts with a sword. My suspicion is that if you introduced most PC's into a Barsoom environment with the full John Carter range of technology (rifles and pistols with kilometers range and explosive shells) the PC's themselves would become the cause of the end of Barsoomian chivilry.
Other classic 'Sci-Fantasy' like Gene Wolf's various 'Sun' books approaches the same problem in a different way, but my suspicion is that removed from the constraints of story PC's would break the setting as well and you'd end up with more Sci-Fi than fantasy.
In order to make an autoloading pistol that fire explosive shells balanced with a sword you have to turn the pistol into a popgun. If you use anything like realistic firearms rules, and you have anything more advanced than wheellock muskets, you have to deal with 'Swords and Sorcery' becoming 'Firearms and Sorcery' because the swords very quickly will stop cutting it. And once they do, then you have to start dealing quite quickly with the maxim that, "God made men. Sam Colt made 'em equal.". Heroic Sci-Fi is very difficult to do with the same set of rules that you'd use for heroic Fantasy unless your players are willing to accept firearms with basically the same stats as a heavy crossbow (to say nothing of future tech). I haven't played Star Wars D20, but the old Star Wars D6 rules did a pretty good job. I wouldn't however try to stick lasers and assault rifles into regular D&D rules unless I wanted to slaughter PC's left and right.
Classic 'Sci-Fantasy' like 'John Carter of Mars' does alot of handwaving in order to allow its hero to resolve most of his conflicts with a sword. My suspicion is that if you introduced most PC's into a Barsoom environment with the full John Carter range of technology (rifles and pistols with kilometers range and explosive shells) the PC's themselves would become the cause of the end of Barsoomian chivilry.
Other classic 'Sci-Fantasy' like Gene Wolf's various 'Sun' books approaches the same problem in a different way, but my suspicion is that removed from the constraints of story PC's would break the setting as well and you'd end up with more Sci-Fi than fantasy.
In order to make an autoloading pistol that fire explosive shells balanced with a sword you have to turn the pistol into a popgun. If you use anything like realistic firearms rules, and you have anything more advanced than wheellock muskets, you have to deal with 'Swords and Sorcery' becoming 'Firearms and Sorcery' because the swords very quickly will stop cutting it. And once they do, then you have to start dealing quite quickly with the maxim that, "God made men. Sam Colt made 'em equal.". Heroic Sci-Fi is very difficult to do with the same set of rules that you'd use for heroic Fantasy unless your players are willing to accept firearms with basically the same stats as a heavy crossbow (to say nothing of future tech). I haven't played Star Wars D20, but the old Star Wars D6 rules did a pretty good job. I wouldn't however try to stick lasers and assault rifles into regular D&D rules unless I wanted to slaughter PC's left and right.
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