This is the second of two articles about including firearms in a fantasy role-playing game. This article covers a shop selling firearms and seven separate firearms using the 4E Dungeons and Dragons rules system. The previous article discussed including firearms in terms of game balance, tone, and philosophy. Neither article is intended to be comprehensive but tools for a better game.
Schwarz’s Gunsmith Shop
A recent addition to the city is Schwarz’s Gunsmith Shop, owned by a controversial wizard, which sells firearms.
What People Know
A character knows the following information about Schwarz’s Gunsmith Shop with a successful Streetwise skill check.
- DC 14: Several months ago the wizard Bernadette Schwarz, who practices a curious kind of magic, opened a shop which sells various kinds of firearms.
- DC 15: The shop is doing a brisk business.
- DC 16: Schwarz herself supposedly practices a kind of magic which combines clockwork technology and magic to produce interesting results. The firearms she sells are some of the results – while not magic the firearms are not magic themselves, magic went into the research and creation of the weapons.
- DC 17: The city’s military is bullish on the use of the weapons, the city guard is ambivalent (because they want the weapons legally limited to themselves and the military) and the established wizards of the city are opposed, though they lack the clout to close the shop and stop Schwarz.
- DC 18: Schwarz is part of an alliance of wizards who practice similar magical techniques and sell similar magical clockwork items. The alliance is called the “mechamancy guild.”
- DC 19: A minor skirmish several months ago saw a unit of the city’s military trashed. Their enemies were using firearms. As a result, the city made a deal to equip its own military with firearms. Part of that deal allowed Schwarz to establish her shop.
- DC 20: Dangerously advanced weapons are sold in the shop to people Schwarz and apprentices Kotter or Zoller trust.
- DC 21: The established wizards of the city dislike Schwarz and the shop, however they lack the influence or unity for force the issues legally. So they are independently seeking an “extralegal” solution.
The Firearm Shop
Schwarz’s shop occupies a large building, with thick walls, at the boundary between the city’s commercial district and warehouse area. It is a former foundry Schwarz and her apprentices converted for use of the forge and the security offered by thick walls. The shop is unadorned, has bars over the windows and includes an indoor shooting range.
Kotter (male dwarf, 5th level Wizard, unaligned) and Zoller (female human, 7th level Wizard, good) are in the shop on most days, working on firearms and attending to customers while Schwarz (female human, 18th level Deceptive warlock, unaligned) is out assuring the “powers that be” she is not bent on world domination. Kotter is more personable than Zoller, who prefers to tinker with the weapons, though both are adequate salespeople.
Firearm Rules
Botch (Optional): A firearm explodes on a botch, inflicting its normal damage on the operator, with no saving throw permitted. Refer to the individual weapons for specific damage and this destroys the weapon.
Encounter: A firearm functions as encounter weapons for the sake of simplicity. It is not possible to reload a firearm during combat, but the character reloads the weapons between combat encounters.
Feats: Firearms are simple ranged weapons and do not require special feats to operate.
Fire Attacks: A loaded firearm will explode, as per a botch, if targeted by fire based magic and the operator fails their save and takes fire based damage.
Flintlock: A flintlock mechanism has a piece of flint on the end of a short hammer. When released by the trigger, the hammer moves forward, the cover of a pan with the priming powder opens and the flint to strikes a piece of steel, creating a spark which falls into the pan, igniting the otherwise protected powder.
Gunpowder: This dark colored powder is highly combustible and is used to fuel firearms by providing the motive force for the projectile.
Matchlock: A matchlock firearm holds a wick, match or taper in a clamp at the end of a small curved lever. The clamp drops down if the trigger is pulled, lowering the smoldering match into the flash pan and igniting the priming powder.
Rifling: This is the process of making spiral grooves in the barrel of a firearm, which imparts a spin to a projectile around its long axis. This spin serves to improve the bullets aerodynamic stability and accuracy and is reserved for advanced weapons.
Short Firearms and Long Firearms: Short firearms may be operated with one hand and long firearms require two hands top operate.
Wheellock: Is a mechanism for firing a firearm. It was the next major development in firearms technology after the matchlock. The mechanism is so-called because it uses a rotating steel wheel to provide ignition.
FIREARMS
| Level | Weapon | Range | Damage | Price | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | Matchlock Pistol | 15/30 | 1d10+3 | 520 gp | 8 lb. |
| 3 | Matchlock Arquebus | 20/40 | 2d6+3 | 680 gp | 16 lb. |
| 4 | Wheellock Pistol | 16/32 | 1d10+4 | 840 gp | 5 lb. |
| 5 | Wheellock Musket | 21/42 | 2d8+4 | 1,000 gp | 10 lb. |
| 7 | Flintlock Pistol | 18/36 | 2d6+5 | 2,600 gp | 4 lb. |
| 8 | Flintlock Rifle | 23/46 | 2d8+5 | 3,400 gp | 8 lb. |
| 8 | Blunderbuss | N/A | 2d6+5 | 3,400 gp | 8 lb. |
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Note: It is beyond the scope of this article to provide rules for canons or barrels of gunpowder.
.
Matchlock Pistol Level 2
A short firearm operated by a matchlock mechanism.
Lvl 2 520 gp
Weapon: Ranged Simple.
Enchantment: None
Critical: +1d6 plus
Power (Encounter • Firearms): Ranged 15/30; attack vs. Reflex; 1d10+3 damage and if a medium sized or smaller targets fails a Dex check (DC 16) they are knocked prone.
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Matchlock Arquebus Level 3
A long firearm operated by a matchlock mechanism.
Lvl 3 680 gp
Weapon: Ranged Simple.
Enchantment: None
Critical: +1d6 plus
Power (Encounter • Firearms): Ranged 20/40; attack vs. Reflex; 2d6+3 damage and if a medium sized or smaller targets fails a Dex check (DC 16) they are knocked prone.
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Wheellock Pistol Level 4
A short firearm operated by a wheellock mechanism.
Lvl 4 840 gp
Weapon: Ranged Simple.
Enchantment: None
Critical: +1d6 plus
Power (Encounter • Firearms): Ranged 20/40; attack vs. Reflex; 1d10+4 damage and if a medium sized or smaller targets fails a Dex check (DC 16) they are knocked prone.
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Wheellock Musket Level 5
A long firearm operated by a wheellock mechanism.
Lvl 5 1,000 gp
Weapon: Ranged Simple.
Enchantment: None
Critical: +1d6 plus
Power (Encounter • Firearms): Ranged 21/42; attack vs. Reflex; 2d6+5 damage and if a medium sized or smaller targets fails a Dex check (DC 18) they are knocked prone.
.
Flintlock Pistol Level 7
A short firearm operated by a flintlock mechanism.
Lvl 7 2,600 gp
Weapon: Ranged Simple.
Enchantment: None
Critical: +1d6 plus
Power (Encounter • Firearms): Ranged 18/36; attack vs. Reflex; 2d6+5 damage and if a medium sized or smaller targets fails a Dex check (DC 18) they are knocked prone.
.
Flintlock Rifle Level 8
A long firearm operated by a flintlock mechanism.
Lvl 8 3,400 gp
Weapon: Ranged Simple.
Enchantment: None
Critical: +1d6 plus
Power (Encounter • Firearms): Ranged 23/46; attack vs. Reflex; 2d8+5 damage and if a medium sized or smaller targets fails a Dex check (DC 18) they are knocked prone.
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Blunderbuss Level 8
A medium length firearms operated by a flintlock mechanism which produces a blast effect.
Lvl 8 3,400 gp
Weapon: Blast Simple.
Enchantment: None
Critical: +1d6 plus
Power (Encounter • Firearms): Ranged Weapon (blast 4); attack vs. Reflex; 2d6+5 damage and if a medium sized or smaller targets fails a Dex check (DC 18) they are knocked prone.
.
Normal Bullet Level N/A
Ammunition 1 gp
32 bullets, 2 lds, simple lead bullets without enchantment.
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Thunder Bullet Level 3
Ammunition 260 gp
Power (Arcane * Ammunition)
Special: +1d6 thunder damage, target pushed 4 squares.
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Black Powder
Combustable Material 20 gp
Powder (Combustible * Ammunition)
This is enough powder, for a firearm, for 10 shots.
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Making Powder: Making powder for a firearm requires a Nature or Arcana skill check, DC 20. It is possible to Take 10. A success creates enough powder for 10 shots.
Adventure Hooks;
- What’s All the Hubbub, Bub: The characters, while crossing the city on other business, see an excited crowd in front of a new shop. It is Schwarz’s Gunsmith Shop and a new type of firearm will soon go on sale. Things turn ugly when a wizard, driven to desperation by hate for the three wizards operating the shop and people purchasing the firearms, begins throwing fireballs into the crowd.
- Bang, Bang, You’re Dead: Assuming the party has never encountered firearms before, they are surprised when the weapons are used on them in an otherwise a standard encounter.
- Three in the Head, You Know He’s Dead: The character’s investigate the murder of a nobleman, who was killed with a weapons unknown to his family and associates, but which left several round holes in his forehead and several small balls of lead in the back of his brain. The investigation leads to an assassin who purchased a firearm from Schwarz’s Gunsmith Shop.
A bunch of these are just seriously, completely crippled by not being real, actual weapons that use my stats and conceivably could be bolstered by my powers. I don’t think anyone would pay 680 gp to do 1d10+3 damage once per encounter and get the privilege of micromanaging both gunpowder and bullets for my attacks I can only use once per encounter anyway. Seriously, dispense with the gunpowder and bullets. The ones that do 2d6+5 and 2d8+whatever are okay. Characters wipe their ass with prone but I suppose the obtuse attribute check does kind of sort of offer a better chance of knocking a dragon on his ass than a saving throw would. With a flintlock pistol. Until paragon tier where it is exactly the same as a saving throw and it doesn’t even matter because all the weapons are outdated by then.
Seriously, okay, I don’t get this. This stuff is ready to cry MY VERISIMILITUDE for gunpowder and botches and shit, but we can totally accept that a dragon who weighs a ton will fall right flat on his ass when we shoot him with a pistol. That tells me there’s rules here we can excise to bring everything to 4e levels of ridiculousness and not just “the parts I wank about.”
The Blunderbuss is one of the better ones because it is blast 4 and conceivably somebody exists who may actually be able to buy it and not immediately feel like a Will Farrel character. Blast 4 isn’t easy to come by for every class, but I don’t even know if a Rogue can shoot one of these given the weird proficiency rules. You had more or less the right idea with making them encounter type items, but then you mess that up.
A bunch of the rules associated with these things are totally pointless as I said above. The proficiency is somewhat strange. Why do we even need this rule? If a Wizard wants to flush coinage down the toilet for one of these, just let them do it. Just let everybody shoot them, it’s easy to do. “Any character can operate any of these weapons.” As it stands, I both can’t take a feat to gain proficiency but they’re also military ranged weapons so only specific characters can use them, and those characters have better shit to do. Oh and botches. That is so lovely. I just love having my weapons explode for no fucking reason but MY VERISIMILITUDE right after I shoot Argmarg the Ancient in his chest with my pistol causing him to tip over because his dex bonus is drinks ass from a straw.
What is the “appropriate save” for having my gun explode on me if somebody shoots fire magic at me? Does this mean it only explodes if I take damage from powers that force saving throws? Does this mean only continuous fire damage would trigger it, or would a baby dragon farting on me cause me to erupt in a brilliant display of my own worthlessness anyway? Does this mean I always roll a saving throw whenever my weapon is in contact with fire? Or I guess maybe you’re confusing this with D&D 3.5 where we got reflex saves whenever the wind blew by. I don’t know. I just. I don’t know.
I guess they become better if, unlike me, you actually went with WOTC as they set the item rules completely aflame and danced over its ashen remains. So then I can’t buy a flamefucking fucksword and I have cash and everything I can buy is useless anyway so I might as well buy one of these, so long as the GM is still providing me with actual items that don’t suck for free.
I expected to be blown away by the serious magnitude of your firearm rules after that last article with the like 20 footnotes, and son, I am disapppoint.
Actually, you could take Weapon Proficiency (one of these firearms) if you are a wizard who really wants a gun
But I can’t take special feats to use them. But I can take the proficiency feat to use them. Then what the fuck does that even mean though. Why is it there.
You mean “do not require special feats to operate”? I imagine he meant that anyone proficient with a gun can use it without taking a You Need This Feat To Pull A Trigger feat or somesuch.
I can sort of see that then.
Please in keep mind, in terms of timeliness of this response, that I am living in Eastern Europe and am 8-hours ahead of the Eastern U.S. time zone.
Wyatt, I appreciate a passionate response and I regret letting you down. Some of the specific points I address below. That said, I had to read your post twice to understand what you were getting at in some places and I still don’t know what you mean by the Will Ferrell comment.
Military Weapons v. Simple Weapons: This was a typo error on my part and it is as simple as that ultimately. The entry was meant to read “simple,” and it has been corrected to read “simple.”
Botch: Perhaps not all rules for firearms have included this feature, that the weapons explode on a botch, but the majority of them do. It is a traditional way of creating the weapons in terms of game mechanics and it does speak to tendency or the real weapons to explode, maiming of killing the operator, under certain circumstances.
Target Moved: As for pushing and moving a target, I agree that moving a huge and heavy target is silly. However, no power I am aware of that moves (or slides or something similar) a target takes the size and weight of the target into account. For example, “Positioning Strike Rogue Attack 1” reads “Hit: 1[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and you slide the target 1 square.” There is nothing in the text about the size or weight of the target impacting or influencing how or if they are moved. This kind of thing is best decided by the individual GM.
Level, Cost and Damage: Until yesterday, all the weapons had been tagged as one level lower than how they appeared when the article went live at Nevermet Press Tuesday morning. However, Sunday evening I let myself have some self-doubt, experienced a mild panic attack and readjusted them all one level higher. That was a mistake and I’ve lowered the weapons down by one level. This effects the cost, but not the damage.
Ammo: The cost of bullets is included here for the sake of completion. By comparison, the PG includes the cost for 30 (1 gp) arrows and the weight of that bundle (3 lpds). Keeping track of this in a regular game is up to the individual player and GM.
“I still don’t know what you mean by the Will Ferrell comment.”
I was alluding that anyone who bought one of these would’ve felt stupid about their investment.
“It is a traditional way of creating the weapons in terms of game mechanics and it does speak to tendency or the real weapons to explode, maiming of killing the operator, under certain circumstances.”
But what’s the point of this? The items don’t need this drawback. 4e as a system doesn’t care about this kind of simulation, it is balanced towards gameplay effects. Right now all the weapons are perfectly functional and, for some reason, now they’re green. Um.
“This kind of thing is best decided by the individual GM.”
You missed my point. I was trying to illustrate the fact that the botch rules and the “explodes when burnt” don’t fit into 4e, just like 4e doesn’t have rules against pushing gigantic things across a room with your pinky finger. 4e doesn’t create “realistic” rules where they impair overall play. (At least until recently, nowadays it kinda has its head up its ass in a few places.)
Any time you want to create a 4e mechanic solely to uphold some inane standard of realism, don’t. Even WOTC’s botch rule, which is actually pretty decent, thinks about how it services the game mechanics and balance first, rather than being added “just because we needed a botch rule.”
Botch: There is no definition of “botch” in 4e, so you need to explain that. Especially in situations where you’re rolling multiple attacks.
Fire magic: ” if targeted by fire based magic and the operator fails their appropriate save and actually takes fire based damage.” This doesn’t make sense in 4e. There is no save versus damage. If you wanted to actually have this rule make sense in 4e, it’s as simple as saying “If you take any fire damage…”
Prone: Fireballs from a wizard don’t knock things prone. I’m not sure why a gun should. There are powers that take size into account, however.
I’m really just at odds with why Wizards AND Blackpowder/Flintlock/Matchlock are involved in this. I enjoy the flavor about having Wizards involved in a different version of fire arms, but then when you involve real world science like rifling and gunpowder, I’m not exactly sure why Arcane magic is involved to begin with. I prefer something specifically in one direction or the other, not something that flounders between the two.
These are pretty much useless. I am not going to lie. If you can’t use your own powers with the weapon, you are pretty much not going to want to take them. Really, Guns should just be upgraded versions of crossbows with higher damage and longer reload times. Having the whole, “You can’t reload a gun in combat” thing here seems really dumb. If you could reload a crossbow, you could reload a gun (it just takes longer). Essentially, the way you should do this is by making the technology of the firearm dictate reload time and then allow feats, like the crossbow ones, which can reduce reload time by one step. I.e. a Move becomes a minor, standard becomes a move, full becomes a standard and so on. Unless you use a system like this, Firearms are going to be pretty much meaningless. Also, all weapons should have a proficiency bonus. I don’t care that guns didn’t necessarily need a lot of training to use, if you have the training, you should get a bonus for it. If you want to simulate the idea that a peasant, with a gun, could even take down some of the most powerful Knights, I would add in an exploding critical system to your guns, like that which is used in some other RPGs. When you roll a nat 20, you do max damage on the first die, then, on the second die, if you roll max damage again, you just keep going until you stop rolling max damage. That is my 2 cents. Enjoy.
Perhaps I will do a follow up column in the New Year discussing how I got to this article, as compared to the first column which argued for the inclusion of firearms in the game in general terms.
Shinobicow: I am not certain what you mean by “If you can’t use your own powers with the weapon, you are pretty much not going to want to take them.” Possession and use of a firearm should not inhibit a character’s ability to use or employ any other power, spell, ability or what have you. Having the guns be an encounter weapon is a way to balance issues – for one thing, it is simpler than having to write rules for reloading the weapons during combat (and dealing with issues like inviting attacks of opportunity) and limits the guns ability to do excessive damage and become “game breakers.” It is also possible for characters to take weapon proficiency and weapon specializations feats in firearms to improve their ability to use the weapons – it is just not required.
Bartoneus: This is the subject for a future column and beyond my ability to fully address here, but I have never entirely understood why any sense of technology and magic are automatically assumed to be hopelessly antithetical. However, for purposes of this article, my thinking it that magic was used to make gunpowder production safer (magically inhibiting fire and sparks), removing weaknesses in the metal (reducing but not eliminating the problem of firearms exploding), remotely testing the firearms (so if they do explode, they do not blow off the testers face), divination (“Will this design work as intended, yes or no?”) and so on. Magic, to my way of thinking, is another method of getting things done, but that does not preclude it from having general and practicable applications which can be combined with technology and technical production. This, however, is a matter of aesthetics and thus is an intractable problem. You and I will have to agree to disagree on this subject at least.
Dave T. Game: You are correct, fireballs do not knock people prone. Having the firearms (potentially, depending on the results of the saving throw) knock people around was an attempt to give them a cinematic feel. In movies people shot are often knocked off their feet. Also, I hope that most of the people who read this article know enough about D&D and gaming to understand the concept of a botch without having to have it explained to them. However, I concede the point about fire attacks. My thinking was that the saving throws for fire based attacks are not all the same, but I also over thought the phrasing of that sentence. It has been reworked.
Wyatt: I would have caught as much grief for not including a “they explode on a botch” rule as I did for including it. Even if I were willing to concede the point about the firearms exploding on a botch, I am not willing to concede them exploding if they are targeted by fire magic when loaded. It does not make any sense to me that a loaded firearm, packed with gunpowder, would not explode if hit by a fireball, fiery arrow, wall of fire, etc. Nor do I think I am holding up an “inane” standard of realism. Some of the other adaptations of firearms I’ve seen include rules for getting the gunpowder wet, the amount of smoke generated by a shot and to my mind excessively complicated rules for reloading the weapons during a combat (such as inviting attacks of opportunity).
(More later, I’m doing this at work…)
Some of the comments are being repeated, does anyone know why?
@Robert: it looks like “Latoya Bridges” comment is just spam.
@All: Wow, calm down, folks. If you don’t like the ideas lined out in the article, I’m sure constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated, but the tantrum of profanity and labeling of things “useless” and “dumb” strikes me as juvenile. Take deep breaths and maybe pay attention to your blood pressure before commenting. Keep in mind that not everyone is looking for the same thing from 4E or any game. It is fine if you wouldn’t use this set of rules in your game, but that doesn’t mean that they have no value.
@Wyatt: I’m not sure, but I think Robert’s post was available for NMP contributors to read before it went live. If so, it seems like your energy might have been better used working through some of the issues that you are finding with it before it went live. You made some decent points in your rant–the one that sticks out to me is that not all creatures would conceivably be knocked prone by a gun blast–but for me as a reader, these got drowned out by the ridiculous amount of cuss words and the generally angry tone of the comment.
[eats popcorn]
Charles Dickey: Thank you for your support. I am old enough and distant enough not to be too rattled by this and if I’m willing to put something out there, I should be willing to take my lumps. Some of the points are well made, some not so much. But to live an engaged life is a bit like living inside a rock tumbler. None the less, thank you.
Jonathan: Thank you for all your support.
I am satisfied with the article as it stands now. As with all things, YMMV. But it is after 10:30 where I live and I have work tomorrow.
Приатенден
@Charley
“If so, it seems like your energy might have been better used working through some of the issues that you are finding with it before it went live.”
And then I could’ve had this discussion in private and resolved nothing because as you’ve shown, you come from the position that all rules have a place in 4e so long as some nebulous third party enjoys them. From that point of view the article would’ve gone live exactly as it is right now, because somebody out there wants exploding once-per-encounter low-damage guns that don’t mesh with the game’s attack powers and are opposed by attribute checks.
Absolutely optimal way to spend my energy, I agree.
@Celty
“I would have caught as much grief for not including a “they explode on a botch” rule as I did for including it.”
Anyway who groks how 4e works under the hood would know that rules for having your gun explode on you when targeted by extremely common attacks are not desirable within the 4e design space. If you wanted to have this, you could have done something like giving Vulnerable 5 to Fire Damage while wielding the guns – which is still a really unnecessary drawback, but fits better. It abstracts the effect of “your gun is dangerous to have around fire” while not blowing you out of 600+ gp and giving your enemy 2d6+whatever bonuses.
Now that we’ve got a plausible (if unnecessary) drawback on the drawing board (Vulnerable 5 fire), would you actually accept it as a plausible design solution, or do you intend that destroying the weapon, thereby negating the investment in it (even the Rust Monster poops your money back out after eating your stuff) is the desirable outcome? Answer and explain why.
“Nor do I think I am holding up an “inane” standard of realism.”
Tell me what exactly is thrilling about having your gun explode, when one of the over 9000 creatures in 4e targets you, the obvious guy who is holding something that explodes, with a fire attack, one of the most common damage types. Absolutely nothing else in 4e is this inconveniencing to attempt.
This is for a reason, which I’m sure you can guess at. If you try.
Like I said, the weapons aren’t powerful enough to merit this drawback. And making them more powerful or cheaper or absolutely anything you do to them, does not merit that drawback. It is a terrible drawback. You ARE holding up an inane standard of realism because there is literally no other reason to have this drawback but to uphold an inane standard of realism. Are you trying to balance the power of the weapons? No because they’re not that powerful. Is this rule actually tactically interesting in any way due to its realism? No, you just get to explode harder than usual when something torches you, and you lose cash.
Celt: While I’m not a big fan of “agreeing to disagree” without a much longer discussion on the point, I do see where you’re coming from and can understand it – thus, agreeing to disagree. However, my point was more that if you’re going to include Arcane into the equation, you should be gaining something substantial from it. All players of D&D are going to have the base assumption that fire + gunpowder = boom. Your statements for what the Wizards are doing to improve the firearms are great ideas, but when I look at the rules it looks like the Wizards are failing terribly.
IMO if you have the Wizards making the guns safer with Arcane magic, that would be a great chance to eliminate the fire/botch/exploding rules and make the guns 100% safe. Why? Because of magic, baby! The concept of Magic and Technology are not antithetical, but having them overlap in murky ways doesn’t gain you much from the technology OR the magic. I think that when world building you have to make your decisions matter and get as much impact out of them as you can.
“However, for purposes of this article, my thinking it that magic was used to make gunpowder production safer ”
And yet you somehow think this same magic can’t make firearms that don’t explode on the user? That can be reloaded within a combat scenario?
[considers... touching this with a 10-foot pole]
nice work guys. I haven’t seen this kind of discussion in months – no.. eva! reminds me of the old “4E is Teh Suxxorz” posts from 2008. Really enjoying this debate.
So, assuming Encounter powers don’t work, especially when they explode in your face – @wyatt and others – how would you implement firearms then?
I probably wouldn’t. 4e just doesn’t give them much of an area to coexist with what’s there – functional magic attacks such as those of the Warlock, Wizard and countless other classes provide reliable ranged punch, you will never get melee classes to carry “backup weapons” because it is pointless to do so and the classes which could use firearms are using bows and crossbows, and we’ve got this silent agreement, I suppose, that we have to keep that shit viable. If we want to have pistols and rifles in the same setting we have commando elves running around with wooden bows they make out of goat guts, it ain’t easy. I believe it is possible, but they won’t look super attractive. We just have to accept that from the start, that every class in 4e already says “crossbow” and “longbow” and if it doesn’t, we aren’t gonna make a big splash.
The easiest approach would be to design your setting and say “crossbows and string bows are bullshit, nobody uses that. You’ve got ‘Gun That Reloads Slow’ for your crossbow and ‘Gun That Reloads Fast’ for your Longbow, and you’re going to use your imagination to make this shit work out.” This kind of reskinning does the job with more harmony. Just seriously don’t have crazy dung ages jungle men with their wood weapons out of nowhere pwning just as hard as the civilized dudes with guns. If you do have dung ages jungle men, their weapons use the Sling’s damage or something.
If I had to make entirely new weapons, I’d make them actual weapons. I think the design space can be opened to have firearms which deal damage types like 1d12 and 2d4, which are strong but fitting with the rest of D&D weapon damage, and which have keywords like Brutal attached. You might make a pistol that’s 1d8 one-handed +3 proficiency with move action reloading to simulate a really accurate gun but that’s sort of a slippery slope as a lot of players value accuracy over damage, particularly because most of their damage will come from small bonuses they accrue over time, not from the basic dice. The basic dice is gonna be multiplied by powers over time, so it matters less that it starts off at whatever size it starts off at.
As far as realism is concerned, we just don’t care. We’re playing D&D 4e, not GURPS, not D&D 3.5. In D&D 4e you have giant fucking swords the size of a whole dude that are adorned with the skulls of your fallen enemies, that only deal marginally more damage than some dude’s off-the-shelf longsword. Guns don’t have to be shooting at people for 3d8+10 because nothing in 4e kills anybody in one hit, even if it realistically should. We don’t care about realism. What we want is an abstraction. If our abstraction is “Guns must technically be more damaging than bows” then we can do abstract that with the 2d4 or 1d12 (I would be wary of the 2d6, but I wouldn’t rule it out) as they have marginally better odds of damage than the 1d8 and 1d10 have, particularly with Brutal. TECHNICALLY you have a better average with 2d4 than you do with 1d8, ESPECIALLY if it is 2d4 brutal 1. We can also play around with the ranges a bit.
I really will have to write a follow up column to this, to discuss how I to got to the “final” product, because this discussion reminds me of high school math teachers wanting me to “show my work,” so to speak. This hypothetical follow up may be ready before New Years Eve. I did not set out to spark controversy, but I am not offended or inhibited by it either. In the future I expect some of my work will generate controversy and some will not. By comparison, I do not believe the Interment column has had a response yet and that neither surprises nor disappoints me.
Length of the Article: Word count applied to how I wrote this article and that is a good thing. The word length for articles and columns posted to NMP is 1,500 and the second article in the gun series (the one we are debating) reached 1,422, which is approaching the upper limit. Having rules like the word count makes a writer focus and stay on target. However, even if that word count rule were not in place I would still have attempted to be succinct. I could have given each firearm a lengthy description, in an attempt to cover all possibilities and answer all possible questions. My experience in life, as a gamer and occasional game writer tells me this is a futile exercise, all you do it make the text denser and increase the likelihood of grammatical and mechanical errors.
Moving a Target: Yes, it is probably silly to have larger and bigger target pushed around by simple powers and effects. However, similar text in the PHB does not take size or weight into account on these issues and the purpose of my article was to provide firearms, not to correct oversights in the rules in the PHB. That said, the text has been modified to read “medium sized or smaller targets” to clarify this issue at least.
Damage: I used the table at the bottom of page 42 of the DMG to arrive at these damages and while they are not a perfect fit, I believe them to be “close enough for government work,” to coin a phrase.
Powers with Weapons: Again, there is nothing in the text which states that owning and using a firearm has any impact on a characters other powers. Do I really need to expressly write out that as ranged weapons they may be used with powers requiring a ranged weapon? Owning and using a firearm does not automatically inhibit or aid any other existing power anymore than owning and using a normal, mundane, sword inhibits or aids powers (aside from those requiring a martial weapons). Descriptions of swords do not require the statement that they can be used with powers requiring a martial weapon.
Bartoneus: My thinking that was the firearms are not actually magic item and thus are not subject to any spell, power or what-have-you which would alter a magic item. Firearms cannot be disenchanted because they were never enchanted in the first place. The workshop or laboratory where the firearm and gunpowder is produced may be under some permanent enchantment but that is not the same thing as saying the firearm is magic itself. Making loaded firearms magically resistant to fire would, be definition, make them magical and thus defeat much of the purpose of writing them as definitively not magical. Perhaps I should have explained this definitively in the article, but that would have added to the word count of what I hoped was a succinct, and knew to be a lengthy, article. That said, if I provide a follow up column I will probably include some minor optional enchantment to firearms (which would make them magical items) making them resistant to fire attacks and not subject to explosions on a botch.
Mikeloop86: In terms of magic making firearms safer, please refer to my above response to Bartoneus’s objection. In terms of reloading the weapons during combat, you are at the very least opening yourself to an attack of opportunity. Further, demanding that it be possible to reload firearms during combat seems to be pushing all of it into the “realism v. verisimilitude” area (which is admittedly Wyatt’s complaint, not yours) because that arguably should be possible and was possible in real history. But to keep things simple, and again keep the word count down, I chose to have them be encounter weapons.
Wyatt: I appreciate passion, but I also appreciate coherence. However, I have to read your posts two or three times to understand your point amid the hyperbole. As I stated in my first column, the firearms are meant to change things in a game, thus high levels of damage. I also do not believe I am allowed to use the brutal descriptor under these circumstances. As far as I can tell it, the brutal descriptor for weapons is not part of the 4E SRD. It is perfectly acceptable for a strictly home brewed operation to use it, but NMP has a license to use the 4E rules system so long as they ahead to a set of guidelines. I do not want to see the NMP license yanked and I damned well do not want to be the one responsible for the license being yanked. Further, I believe the brutal weapons descriptor is not particularly popular among many fans. Why should I use a feature that might cause harm to NMP and also aggravate the fans? While I may revise the damage in the future, I do not believe I will be use the brutal descriptor. Further, these are not realistic guns – I have avoided rules about getting the powder wet, smoke generated, generating special rules for bullets ability to puncture armor, using them as encounter weapons for the sake of simplicity, rules for reloading at all, having the gunpowder in your powder horn explode if you are targeted by fire magic, cleaning guns and the like.
To lighten the tone:
I know what you’re thinking. “Did he use fire his double barreled pistol once or twice?” Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a Schartz cubit length pistol with a rifled barrel, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
I took the name Schwarz from a historical gun smith and maker of gunpowder. It was only later I realized the name could lead to…
“I see your Schwarz is as big as mine.”
Lesson to remember. Anyone remember the series of posts about “Shemping” from Unclebear.com? – some of which were in Open Game Table Vol. 1? This may be an easy solution. Here something that may help shape the discussion:
4th Edition: Return of the Shemps.
Oh god you are hopeless. Have it your way then.
-Insert snarky comment here-
Less flippantly, what do the rest of you think of alter the damage of the weapons.
Matchlock pistol; 1d10
Matchlock longarm; 1d12
Wheellock pistol; 2d6
Wheellock longarm; 2d8
Flintlock pistol; 2d10
Flintlock rifle; 2d12
Less damage, but a more traditional spread.
Firearms in DnD…my knee jerk reaction to this is much the same as others. But With some thought about it and my own experience with adding more varied ranged weapons into fantasy venues, I am for this. But with exceptions.
I do not reject the presented thoughts and like them. And depending on the advancement of the civilization the types of weapons also work. But with any offense comes the inevitable development of a defense. History has shown this will…plate armor that was “Bullet Proof” since at it’s creation the armor was tested against a gun and found to protect against penetration.
But when it comes to a fantasy genre…there are more options. Exotic metals, strange materials, and even interactions with spells. Imagine if you will in the same town a gnomish inventor who is raising giant spiders. The towns people are scared of the spiders, but the inverter is making a curious type of clothing also: Spider Silk Vests. The vest does not offer much protection against swords and only marginal protection versus arrows. But versus bullets the AC value is quite high. In essence…a bullet proof vest.
This could then become an arms race between the two crafter’s. The man making the guns working to make an ever better weapon. While the inventor spurred on by the challenge making ever more effective armors and may even work on multi-threat armor, combining plates with the vests.
With an open mind…anything is possible in any game world. You just have to see the possibilities.
SyberSmoke, those are interesting points. And worth following up on. They were just beyond the scope of this article. Maybe in the future. Possibly in February.