Treasures & Trinkets: Firearms
I’m considering running a western-fantasy D&D game, and what are cowboys without their guns?
New weapon qualities
Clip: After making an attack with a weapon with the clip property, roll the indicated die; if you roll a 1, the weapon is out of ammo and must be reloaded. Weapons with the clip property will always also have the load property, but you do not need to reload them until you roll a 1 on your clip die after an attack. You only roll the die once per attack power, after the power is completely done.
Spread: Whenever you make a ranged attack (yes, that means it has to be a ranged attack, not an area or close…) with a spread weapon and the attack has only a single target, if the attack hits then every creature adjacent to the target takes 1[W] damage. Increase this to 2[W] damage at 11th level and 3[W] damage at 21st level.
Unreliable: When making an attack roll with an unreliable weapon, if your natural d20 roll (before applying modifiers) is equal to or lower than the unreliable value given for the weapon, the weapon jams. You may not make any more attacks with the weapon again until you’ve spent a standard action clearing it. A weapon jamming does not prevent any portion of a given power from working, so for example if a power has a secondary attack and you jam while rolling for the primary attack you still get to make the secondary attack. In essence, the jamming doesn’t happen until after the attack is completely done. If you roll a jam but the attack would otherwise hit, it still hits as normal.
New weapons
Revolver
Simple one-handed ranged weapon
Damage: 1d8
Proficient: +2
Range: 15/30
Weight: 2 lb.
Properties:
Clip d6
Load Standard
Unreliable 2
Group:
Firearms
Rifle
Simple two-handed ranged weapon
Damage: 1d12
Proficient: +2
Range: 20/40
Weight: 7 lb.
Properties:
Load Move
Unreliable 3
Group:
Firearms
Shotgun
Simple two-handed ranged weapon
Damage: 2d4
Proficient: +2
Range: 3/6
Weight: 7 lb.
Properties:
Load Move
Unreliable 2
Spread
Group:
Firearms
New items
Ammo: ‘Nuff said
Speedloader: This circular bit of metal has six spots to hold ammo, and is designed to make it faster to reload a revolver. It takes a standard action to load a speedloader, but they may be loaded ahead of time. When using a speedloader to load a revolver, it takes a move action to load instead of a standard but the revolver’s unreliable rating increases by two points until the next time it’s reloaded.
New feats
Conservative Shot
Benefit: Once per encounter, when you roll a 1 on a clip die, you may reroll that die. You may also reroll a clip die by spending an action point.
Deadeye
Prerequisite: Weapon focus (firearms)
Benefit: You ignore the penalty for using a firearm at long range and treat all firearms as high crit weapons.
Rapid Reload
Prerequisite: Weapon focus (firearms)
Benefit: For the purpose of reloading firearms, you can spend a minor action as though it were a move action and you can spend a move action as though it were a standard action. For example, you can spend a move action to load a revolver, or spend a minor action to load one with a speedloader.
I like these! They seem fairly balanced, though it’s hard to accurately judge the effects of the Unreliable property. A few thoughts:
- All in all, great job, innovative and balanced.
- It seems like you’ve tried to balance up the splash damage of Spread with low range, load as a move action and unreliability. I’m still not sure that it’s balanced, splash damage is good and it is a simple weapon.
- Reload move, while balanced makes for static combat. The characters will probably tend to stand still to be able to make an attack each round. This would probably be offset by the Rapid Reload feat, but then again, that’s a feat that *everyone* in the campaign will take very early, thus in practice reducing load time and reducing the number of available feats.
- Deadeye is good, perhaps too good, high crit is a very deadly property.
- I love the clip rules! They mesh very well with the 4E philosophy of not having to keep count of anything but hit points.
- Where are the military or superior weapons? This makes a wizard as apt with firearms as a specialized ranger or fighter. While potentially unrealistic, I think that coming up with some specialized weapons to serve as military or superior would be great (Peacemaker, Derringer, etc).
I’ve made some firearm rules myself, though for black powder weapons and not for fantasy western, have a look at: http://polyhedral.wordpress.com/black-powder-weapons/
Jens Alm’s last blog post..The Gunmage IV – Daily Powers, lvl 1
I’m definitely… I don’t want to say worried… let’s say I’m keeping an eye on spread. It certainly has the potential to turn anyone into a controller, at least insofar as minion-sweeping is concerned. My gut says it will be okay, but I will be monitoring it.
One mitigating factor you might not be considering is that it also hurts your allies if you fire into melee. Not sure what my players are going to do, but I suspect melee combatants aren’t going to completely disappear.
I don’t really agree with you about high crit being that hot. Take, for example, a d12 weapon like the rifle. That’s an extra 6.5 damage/tier 5% of the time, or .325 damage per round per tier. Of course, average damage is only part of the story, since the damage is being added to a crit. Overall, I still don’t think high crit is that hot.
As far as reloading, once more I think that’s mitigated by the fact that not everyone’s going to be specializing in guns. In that sense combat won’t necessarily be so static because if someone is in your grill, you want to shift, reload, and fire, and you only get to do two of those three. With that in mind, I contend that the move reload doesn’t make combat more static– it forces more interesting decisions.
My intention is that guns should be good enough that everyone will want one and not mind using one when the situation calls for it, but also such that they don’t outshine melee weapons unless you put a bit of effort into specializing in them.
Actually, for that matter I fully intend for bows to be common as well. Cowboys & indians, y’know?
Oh, and I can’t really take credit for the idea for the clip property… It’s based off of an almost identical mechanic I saw somewhere else, but can’t remember. Probably either D20 Modern or Savage Worlds. I just remember it was a cinematic system that justified it as being difficult to keep track of how many shots you’ve fired in a hectic firefight.
Nice post! I’ve been considering trying my hand at some modifications for a sci-fi version of 4e.
Curious, but how are you handling the heavy lean towards “melee” from most of the classes (or will you be building your own)?
When we tried this the first time, we just used the base classes, but allowed “ranged” in place of melee, and the like, but it did make classes like the Warlord very good (ranged commanders strike is a very nice power)
I’m keeping most everything as is. I’m not going to have any magic items at all, so implements don’t matter, and people can use melee weapons if they like.
There is going to be one big change; no armor and no shields. Probably will put a damper on a lot of defender builds, but I think that’s a surmountable obstacle.
I immediately thought of all of the weapon upgrades in Bioshock when I read this….
That… and… well… when do you think we’ll see a Pact-Rifle? Heh heh.
How about a Colt of Corellon?
Good stuff Asmor.
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This is a very interesting idea.
I have a question though. In 4.0, when a character makes a ranged attack and is adjacent to an enemy the enemy gets to make an attack of opportunity against the character. How does this play into the firearm mechanics? Would said enemy get an attack, or would it not matter?
Of course they would but keep in mind if you’re wielding a ranged weapon you don’t threaten any squares, so you don’t get to make OAs– in other words, two gunslingers standing next to each other don’t get OAs off of each other.
That makes sense. I was asking it because I have been considering dropping one revolver into my 4.0 campaign, I still don’t have a good reason for it to be there though.