This was an errant thought of mine, but what if you replace every instance of the word touch ac with flat footed? One thing to note before the discussion starts, because I can see this coming up immediately, is that firearms don't actually count as hitting Touch AC for effects. This means that they wouldn't count as hitting Flatfooted AC for effects in this instance as well, sorry rogues. Any other thoughts on this?
I never really liked the idea of guns hitting flat footed AC. That's pretty much saying that a fast moving target is no harder to hit than a slow moving target.
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I never really liked the idea of guns hitting flat footed AC. That's pretty much saying that a fast moving target is no harder to hit than a slow moving target.
No matter how fast you run, you can't outrun a bullet.....
Seriously though, I think while this would be thematically harder to explain, it might be more balanced in some instances than the current rules.
Of course, you'd end up with this sudden flip, where the monk who was currently nigh untouchable with firearm attacks is now getting hit by them every time, and dragons and paladins who used to be incredibly easy to riddle with bullets are now laughing as the projectiles bounce off their armored hides.
Ultimately I think you'd probably end up with the same dynamic, just different players on each side of the field....
Firstly, I truly hate firearms in my fantasy games, so I avoid them like the plague.
That said, I do play and run several modern and future campaigns as well. My take would be to model after what Star Wars d20 and Saga did: firearms hit your normal AC (just like everything else) but increase the damage across the board.
I've never had a gunslinger complain about hitting in my old west game, but they sure do gripe about their damage output. YMMV.
I think you would then need to consider all the mechanics of guns and the gunslinger. At higher levels, particularly against monsters but also heavy armored targets this benefit would be nearly meaninglyess as most of their AC is in armor and natural armor instead of dex. A lot of the nonsense around guns is supposedly balanced by the fact that the hit this much reduced touch AC. If you take away that benefit you vastly reduce the usefulness of firearms as written.
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I suggested this a year or so ago, I can't find the thread now.
The whole idea behind hitting vs flatfooted instead of hitting vs touch AC is supposed to be that armor can protect against bullets, but you can't "duck out of the way" of a bullet. That makes sense.
The way it currently works, bullets always penetrate armor/natural armor, but if you have a high dex, you can dodge bullets does not make sense. This isn't the matrix.
Armour protects against firearms, being fast does not.
I think you would then need to consider all the mechanics of guns and the gunslinger. At higher levels, particularly against monsters but also heavy armored targets this benefit would be nearly meaninglyess as most of their AC is in armor and natural armor instead of dex. A lot of the nonsense around guns is supposedly balanced by the fact that the hit this much reduced touch AC. If you take away that benefit you vastly reduce the usefulness of firearms as written.
The whole idea behind this is to reduce their power because they're too powerful.