This is the third of what should have been a two part series about including firearms in a fantasy role-playing game. This article covers the design plan that went into the development of firearm rules for 4E D&D. The first article discussed including firearms in terms of game balance, tone and philosophy. The second article covered a shop selling firearms and seven separate firearms, employing the 4E Dungeons and Dragons rules system. None of these articles are intended to be comprehensive, or definitive, but to provide tools for a better game.
In school, math teachers teach students short cuts to get to the solution of a problem. However, while using the short cuts is not technically cheating, students are required to “show your work” in a step-by step manner on mathematics work.
This column “shows the work” in an effort to answer questions and address objections raised in the comments of the previous two articles.
First things first.
When it first appeared, the second article had two genuine errors. The first was incorrectly identifying firearms as martial weapons when they are simple weapons. The other resulted in the weapons listed at one level higher than they should have been. Both issues are corrected.
In terms of game design philosophy, firearms should be available for those who wish to use them and be easy to employ. Firearms are not magical, though dangerous enough to be game changers. They need not be realistic, but should not be silly. The material generated must comply with 4E rules, SRD license requirements and a reasonable word count.
Now, on to the particulars.
Moving a Target: Having the firearms potentially knock people around is an attempt to give them a cinematic feel. In movies, gunshots often knock victims off their feet. It is arguably silly to have large and heavy targets moved by a gunshot. However, similar text in the PHB does not take size or weight into account on these issues and the purpose of the Gunplay articles 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.
Powers with Weapons: Owning and using a firearm does not automatically inhibit or aid any other existing power anymore than owning and using a normal sword inhibits or aids powers… except for those requiring a martial weapon in the case of swords or requiring ranged weapons in the case of firearms. Does it need to expressly written out firearms are usable with powers requiring a ranged weapon? Descriptions of swords do not include the statement they are usable with powers requiring a martial weapon.
Proficiencies and Feats: Firearms are usable by anyone, so feats are not required and the weapons are in the simple ranged class. However, this does not mean anyone is automatically a good shot – so there is no proficiency bonus.
Weapon Damage: The table at the bottom of page 42 of the DMG provided the damages and while not a perfect fit, it is “close enough for government work,” to coin a phrase. Firearms are dangerous. Further, the brutal descriptor for weapons is not part of the 4E SRD. It is perfectly acceptable for a home game to use the term.
Ammo: The cost of bullets is included to be complete. By comparison, the PHB includes the cost for 30 arrows (1 gp) and the weight of that bundle (3 lpds). Keeping track of this in a regular game is up to the individual player and DM.
Explosions and Botches: Not all rules for firearms have included this feature, that the weapons explode on a botch (a natural 1 on a d20 roll), but the majority of them do. It is a traditional way of creating the weapons in terms of game mechanics. This is now an optional rule. Even so, it does not make sense for a loaded firearm not to explode if it suffers fire damage. Firearms are not actually magic items and thus are not subject to any spell, power or what-have-you which would alter a magic item. Making loaded firearms magically resistant to fire would, by definition, make them magical and thus defeat much of the purpose of writing them as definitively not magical. However, adding an enchantment to resist fire, which means they do not explode on a botch or when hit by a fire attack, is simple though it increases the weapon’s cost by 560 gp.
Realism v. Verisimilitude: These are not realistic firearms and the rules are relatively simple. There are no rules for getting the powder wet, the amount of smoke generated by a shot, bullets ability to puncture armor, having the gunpowder in your powder horn explode if you are hit by fire magic, cleaning firearms and so forth. Related to this is the question of reloading firearms. Reloading firearms in combat at least opens one to an attack of opportunity and arguably could require a special skill challenge. Designing them as encounter weapons is not realistic, though it does keep things simple and hopefully moving quickly in the game.
- edited by Jonathan Jacobs
