Moriakul's page

In discussions with players new and old, I have noticed what I regard as a basic misconception or wrong focus with respect to pursuing supremacy in the tactical aspects (or crunch aspects) of DnD. Because the game--especially Pathfinder--is heavy with statistics, players tend to become focused on them. Because the game, as life, rewards specialization, players tend also to become focused on specialization--specifically, the optimization of a particular build and its method of combat. Neither of these foci is inherently wrong, but I encounter a common phenomenon as a result: The build that can counter my build is "broken" or "overpowered" or "an exploit."

Experienced gamers will recognize this fallacy well. "That's just part of the game, man. You can't be strong against everything. There's always a build out there that'll counter you. It's like rock-paper-scissors." But for those who are new to the game, or those who have not thought about it at a fundamental level, allow me to describe the dynamic at work:

Foundational to all tactics, all military science, is the notion of capabilities assessment. The heart of any military brief on an enemy force is the "capes brief," the capabilities brief. In these assessments, you learn what tools the enemy has at their disposal, how far their radars can see, how far their missiles can reach, how many troops they have, what command and control (C2) structures they have in place, how long they can fight at a stretch before they must rest or resupply, etc. This is the work of military intelligence: what are the enemy's capabilities right now, in this operating environment?

Warfare, then, can be to a large extent boiled down to capabilities arithmetic. For each enemy capability, you provide a counter-capability, and a counter-counter-counter-capability to their counter-counter-capability. You attempt to match your capabilities to theirs, canceling one another out, such that yours is the force with offensive capabilities left over when all the arithmetic is done.

In DnD, you see this immediately. At its essence DnD is a small-scale tactics game with custom configurable units, each built from a menu of abilities which combine to create capabilities. The enemy has the capability of making attack rolls. I’ll neutralize that by combining proficiencies, gear, and stats to create a high armor class and HP. They have armor too, so I need a high attack bonus to overcome it. The right proficiencies, gear, and stats will give me that. The notion of capabilities arithmetic is not foreign to any player; the issue is that players who don’t realize they’re performing capability balancing will only answer the obvious capabilities, and will find themselves surprised and frustrated by unusual capabilities. Moreover, this is to some extent inevitable due to the need for specialization.

Again, in DnD as in life, specialization pays dividends through efficiency. Specialization produces surpluses. A generalist character will never achieve as high an attack bonus or damage output with any particular weapon as fighter with a given weapon specialization. As such, a party of four generalist meleers may theoretically have far greater damage output than a single specialized swordsman, but the day they run into an armor class they can only hit on a natural 20, they are useless, while the lone specialist still hits and does damage reliably. Put that sword specialist in a party with other specialists—a crowd control specialist (wizard), an environmental threats specialist (rogue), a healing specialist (cleric), all of whom can also do some damage when needed, or who can help to keep that swordsman alive for a longer period, and now you have the same general damage output as the party of generalist fighters, but you also have capability answers to specific high-end foes. This is the classic adventuring party.

Essentially, the game rewards and indeed requires the building of a small team of highly specialized units designed to be very elite against the most common threat capability profiles. You must have a tank, you really need a crowd controller or area damager, you can’t survive without good healing, etc. If these capabilities are not well built, then the party will not survive even the common and typical encounters.

However, having built this party of specialists—having built the party the game demands, if the players then encounter a threat capability for which they have no answers, it feels cheap, or exploitative. It feels “OP.”

“Spring attack is OP.” Why? “Because it’s cheap and there’s no good counter for it. The enemy jumps in and jumps out, doesn’t even provoke AOOs. He can whittle down even my well-constructed fighter from a distance and I never even get a chance to fight back.” Well, you could just use a ranged weapon. “Yeah, but ranged combat sucks unless you sink a bunch of feats into it.” Same as melee combat. “Well, sure, but melee is more commonly useful than ranged. If you’ve got to pick one, you have to pick melee, and then there’s nothing you can do about kiting enemies. And that’s just Spring Attack. Don’t even get me started on Fly-By attack.”

Here, now, dear reader, is the true heart of the matter: This is the game. This is the central challenge of DnD, even more than maneuver/position, problem solving, or even min-maxing. Capability balancing is the core gameplay mechanic. So, you can either respond weakly to it, or you can embrace it and see if in fact solutions exist, and if in fact those solutions are not quite so costly as they may at first appear.

The weak response is all too common. “House rule, the DM doesn’t use Fly-By attack.” “Gentleman’s agreement, we don’t use Grapple.” “No mind control in this campaign.” “I don’t attack my players with archers because they’ll rage-quit.”

A lot of players are risk averse. They want to win by eliminating any chance that they might lose, so that they may play without anxiety. If the only response you can tolerate to a given threat capability is overmatch--the notion of complete dominance, the complete negation of it as a threat--you will have to cut portions of the game out, because character generation does not allow for one character or even one party neutralize completely all threats. Furthermore, if you do choose to play this way, eliminating from the game's rules any threats which your extant characters are not specifically designed to counter, then you’ve eliminated much of the tactical gameplay and reduced a potentially complex game into a simple numbers game, in which whoever has the higher stats (in the few remaining gameplay dimensions) is virtually guaranteed to win. You move the game away from Chess toward Tic Tac Toe, and in the process you excise much of the fun and reward that comes from playing and winning a complex tactics board game.

Proceeding on the supposition that you would prefer to win the game by playing better rather than by eliminating all the parts for which you don’t immediately and automatically have easy answers, let me propose that to you that the notion of capabilities assessment, once recognized and consciously engaged, offers a key to successfully battling those “cheap” builds and tactics.

Do you know what “covering fire” is? It’s a form of “suppression fire.” Do you know what “suppression fire” is?

At the operational level, suppression fire is fire which reduces a specific enemy unit's effectiveness below that necessary to interfere in a friendly movement or operation. The blue force commander might call for artillery bombardment of a red force surface-to-air missile emplacement with no strict intention of destroying it, but simply to lay upon it such violence that enemy missileer crews cannot effectively target and engage blue aircraft. The bombardment lasts just long enough for blue helos to insert ground forces on an objective. Are some of the red force missions batteries destroyed or neutralized? Perhaps. But that’s a bonus. The blue commander was not actually targeting them yet; he doesn’t need to. All he needs to do is prevent them from interfering in one specific step of his current maneuver, and the suppressive bombardment accomplishes that. Using a suppressive fire mission has some advantages for him. He does not need precise targeting coordinates for the red anti-air assets. He does not need a laser designator painting them for precision strike. He does not need elite, highly specialized strike aircraft (Wild Weasels or heavy bombers supported by sophisticated electronic warfare). Precisely targeting the missile batteries, or delivering such widespread devastation as to ensure they are destroyed without having target coordinates down to the meter, would be a complex and sophisticated operation of its own, requiring many expensive resources. If all he needs is to insert a Ranger or Recon unit, a battery of 155mm Howitzers firing a suppression mission is sufficient. The ground unit captures their objective, and then as a bonus captures and destroys the missile batteries as well, because why not? The anti-aircraft missiles aren’t hardened against a ground attack from behind red lines.

Similarly, if a fire team needs to retrieve a wounded member from a road, and are taking fire from a building a couple hundred meters away, they could employ close air support to obliterate the building, but need they? Would it be sufficient just to deliver such a hailstorm of suppressive small arms fire against the enemy’s position as to prevent the red force from firing effectively on the two men who then dash out to retrieve the casualty? In most cases, this is absolutely sufficient. It is not risk free. Obviously, a JDAM into the enemy’s building would destroy the threat and allow the blue fire team to retrieve their casualty entirely (or as good as entirely) unthreatened. But this sort of close air support is expensive in terms of precious battlefield resources. Is the air asset available? Is there a higher priority mission for that JDAM? Are there threats that would put the CAS aircraft at risk? Does the team have a JTAC qualified to call in an air strike danger close to blue forces? How long will it take? Does the casualty have that long? In the time it takes even to answer these questions, to determine that a CAS mission is feasible, could the casualty have been retrieved with comparatively little risk with a simple execution of covering fire? “Cover” is a barrier which places a potential target in defilade, i.e. prevents enemy weapons from reaching their potential target. “Covering fire” is suppressive fire at the tactical level, fire that serves in place of cover, preventing effective hostile fire against exposed personnel by making enemy weapons employment excessively dangerous for a short period. Covering fire might not be as good as actual cover, and certainly not as good as the complete negation of the enemy’s capabilities, but it might be sufficient to accomplish the task at hand. And what does it cost but ammunition? No one had to learn a new skill or carry an additional tool. The cost in resources is relatively small.

These are examples of neutralizing an enemy capability not by overmatching it, not by having some friendly capability that completely cancels it out, but simply by disrupting it to the point where it becomes ineffective or too inefficient. Often, like covering fire, this level of effect, this suppressive approach to an enemy capability, can be bought relatively cheaply.

For instance, many players worry about grappling enemies and Grabbing monsters. Pathfinder has an excellent grappling system incorporated into its excellent Combat Maneuvers system, and because of this, grappling is very accessible to players and DMs alike. Fighters hate it because it bypasses their carefully crafted AC and hampers their ability to maneuver and use both hands. Spellcasters hate it because it forces concentration checks or worse. Rogues hate it because it ties them down. Is it really so bad, though? Does it really cost the party that much to buy one wand of Grease for the arcane spellcasters and the UMD rogue to share? A Grease spell does not negate all grappling, but it doesn't need to. It just needs to change the rate of success enough to make grappling more costly than beneficial to the enemy. If the Kraken is constantly having to re-Grab your tank because it fails a larger percentage of its grapple checks, it's wasting actions, doing less damage. Its whole game-plan was based on a quick snatch, or a single-tentacle snatch. Now it's spending its whole action economy just trying to keep hold of one character, and meanwhile your team is unleashing hell. Sure, being a slippery bar of soap is not what your fighter's player envisioned as his heroic destiny, but sometimes it's just what the situation needs. And it's sufficient to suppress the enemy's primary offensive capability.

Addressing the Spring Attack kite, do you really need to be able to tie him down completely, to negate his strategy, or is it enough to disrupt it? In Pathfinder, a trip attack is made as a combat maneuver in place of one iterative attack. If you’re a meleer, you have a good CMB even without specializing feats. Ready an action to trip the enemy. He springs, triggers the trip. He hits you with his AoO, but you’re a fighter. You can soak a few attacks. If the trip lands, he goes down adjacent to you and his Spring Attack is canceled. He might still make his attack, but he ends his turn prone in your threatened space. So you've taken two hits, but the initiative is now back to you, for a full attack against a prone target. Instead of receiving one per round and dishing one per round, you're taking two this round and dishing four. Furthermore, on his turn, barring some special features that most characters don’t bother with, he has to waste a move action just to stand up. Now, he can make one attack, but afterward he will still be in your threatened square, or he can move away, provoking an attack of opportunity from you, and then the dance begins again. So we're really talking two attacks from him for five attacks from you, or three attacks from him for eight attacks from you, whenever the trip succeeds.

Will the trip always hit? No. But need it? If he’s kiting you, it’s because he can’t stand toe to toe with you, dares not soak your full attack. Furthermore, you are a fighter with more feats than you have fingers and toes. Do you really need another feat for another +1 damage on your Master Sword, or can you spare a feat for Improved Trip? Being tripped has a significant effect on the action economy of a wide range of mobility-based combatants. The expenditure of one feat might give your party just what they need to disrupt such tactics, making them too risky or inefficient to use against you. In the above scenario, it removes his attack of opportunity, making the balance of attack actions one for four or two for eight in your favor whenever the trip hits, and the trip hits more often thanks to the feat's bonus. He won't pursue that math. You've negated his tactic.

Again, the objective is not overmatch. The objective is to find build elements or tactics which efficiently disrupt enemy capabilities just to the extent necessary for us to win.

Now, if you are tasked with hunting an enemy with one of these capabilities, such that the only victory criterion is a complete defeat (kill or capture) of the monster in question, then a suppressive or disruptive approach may not be sufficient.

For instance, when faced with a creature that makes Fly-By attacks (aerial spring attacks), it might be sufficient to counter this capability simply by giving everyone a ranged weapon. If every mundane combatant has a bow and every spellcaster has a wand or spell, even if no one is specialized in ranged combat, that steady trickle of ranged attacks and damage could easily be sufficient to make Fly-By attacks unprofitable. If the party can march along at Move speed while delivering three or four moderate hits every round, and the monster can only make one attack per round, it will likely be an unsustainable tactic. And this is all presuming that the party can’t simply stand under a tree or against the wall of a building, which makes Fly-By attacks geometrically impossible for large monsters.

These techniques, though, do not force the creature into a no-retreat contest. Once it becomes obvious that the creature can’t win the fight on its terms, it should retire from the battlefield. If it is strategically or operationally necessary to kill or capture the creature and prevent its escape, then simply making its Fly-By ability insufficient to defeat the party does not solve the greater problem. It might be a part of the solution, but in this example the real problem is the creature’s Flight capability. In this scenario, do we now see a need for overmatch, for a capability which completely negates the creature’s advantages of flight? Are we SOL if our party doesn’t have an even better fly speed than the enemy?

One should note here that Core Rulebook at no point says it is necessary to kill a monster in order to earn the rewards of character advancement. It uses the word "defeat." A party gains XP for "defeating" monsters in an encounter. And if the monster flies its lair, the party gains its loot hoard as well. A DM should assess well whether or not a dominant defeat, a kill or capture, is necessary in order gain full XP rewards, as this is not the letter of the law, and the structure of his campaign--the availability of certain powers, how he generally runs the behavior of certain monsters, etc.--will greatly affect whether kill/capture is a baseline victory condition or a superlative one.

If your DM plays monsters like videogame monsters which, once aggro'd, ne'er retreat but fight madly to the death even in an obviously losing situation, then k/c can be the baseline victory condition for full XP. If, however, your DM plays monsters more realistically--if, for instance, nonsentient predators attack the party in the mindset of predators, when their instincts indicate that the party is viable prey, and flee when the risk becomes excessive--then simply driving off an attacking monster might be a more appropriate definition of "defeat" for your campaign--especially if he has not furnished the party with a lot of abilities dedicated to immobilizing fleeing monsters or dramatically mobilizing the party.

If your DM is a big ol' meanie (like me) and has made flight non-trivial and difficult to gain as a Player Character capability, and he treats monsters realistically in terms of their tendency to play it safe, attack from the position of best advantage, use their own capabilities to maximum advantage, and retreat in the absence of an ideological or other motivation to be suicidal commitment--if all of this, and then he presents you with the challenging of hunting a flying foe to death or capture, then this should be presented as a problem-solving challenge. This should be a specific mission with the promise of greater reward than he would give for simply "defeating" such a monster according to his own normal rules. If the DM has specifically made an overmatching countercapability unavailable to the party, and is still asking you to dominate a principal capability of the enemy, rather than merely disrupt or suppress it, he is probably trying to get you to think creatively and engineer a solution from the game environment. This is when you begin constructing anchored grappling lines and arbalest-launched nets, or using Speak With Giant Eagle to negotiate air support.

Or, if you're my party, you teledrop (party dimension door or teleport) onto the back of the monster in flight. Those who keep hold of it deliver full attacks with the Grappled condition (i.e., at -2 and one-handed only). Those who fall off, the wizard dimension-steps again to catch them, and when the creature dies, he casts levitation to lower it and its remaining riders to the ground. (At level 16, flight is still only available to the two mages who can cast it as a spell, and only some of the rest even have Feather Fall devices, so when they teledrop onto a monster a thousand feet in the air, they are genuinely taking a risk. It's great fun.)

One may ask, is this not an artificial challenge, though? To artificially limit what the players can do and then ask them to do it anyway? Isn't that a bit cheap?

Snidely, I might remind one that Dungeons & Dragons is not real. It's a game. But I would never do that, because it would be rude. The point I would be making, though, is that DnD, like any game, is definitively artificial. A rule set is a set of restrictions. A game, any game, is a set of artificial restrictions under which the players must solve an artificial problem. A tabletop RPG offers greater freedom than other games, but it is a game only to the extent that it is limited. If the only limit was your imagination, then you would be in the contest of the gradeschooler: "My guy's strength is a thousand!" "Yeah, well, my guy's strength is a million!" "Ok, my guy's strength is infinity!" "Infinity times two!" "Infinity times infinity! Infinity squared!" "Infinity to the infinity power!"

This is not a game in any meaningful sense. It goes back to another question entirely, which is, what kind of game do you want to run and play in? Is it really an exercise of imagination to import rules to circumvent puzzles? Is it really an exercise of imagination to win at chess by adding laser sharks as a playable piece? One could say that it is, but it is a child's exercise, no different from the pseudomathematical explosion of the ten-year-old. In any real game, the rules are fixed and confined, structured to test the ability of the player to understand them and to see solutions within their framework.

This is a cooperative venture, to be sure. The DM must be a part of it, recognizing the limits he has imposed and rewarding players for faithfully and skillfully playing within those limits, especially if they create solutions he did not anticipate, especially especially if they create solutions which make his carefully crafted challenges trivial to defeat. The players are many, and the DM is one. There will be plenty of times when they play his own game better than he does. That should be a moment of celebration for all involved.

Meanwhile, the players are obligated to accept the game the DM has offered, once negotiations are complete on that matter. Play the game offered and enjoy it, or choose to play elsewhere. (And do the latter, if you must, with grace and mutual understanding, rather than after flipping the table.) If you ask for and the DM accepts a full Pathfinder splat kit with a hundred and seventeen classes and forty playable races, then so be it. But if the game the DM is offering is more restricted, and he declines to import a splat spell called Negate Spring Attack just because your build is weak against Spring Attacks, this is no imposition on your imagination. Rather, this is an invitation for you to use it, to solve the problem in a more skillful and more creative way.

Rest assured that the two approaches to the game are not equal. The childish tendency to write around any challenge that requires a moment's thought to defeat is just that, childish. The player who embraces restrictions, who says to the DM, "No no, don't make it easy. There's a solution to this. Just let me think for a moment…" is playing a superior game, with superior rewards. Believe it.

Your ability to play at this higher level is greatly expanded by a conscious understanding of foundational principals like capabilities assessment. Seeing the enemy as a set of capabilities, and recognizing that capabilities don't always have to be overmatched, but can be degraded or suppressed just enough to change the balance of a situation, will help you make decision at character generation and in play about the real value of various tools and abilities, and will allow you to be more versatile even with a specialized build, or will allow you to create a generalist build more effectively--not by simply spreading your numbers thin, but by carefully choosing a few specific tools which can be used in clever ways to undermine a wide range of enemy capabilities.

Sorry, been busy. Thank you for your question. It touches on a subject about which I have some passion, as you will see. As it is not specific to firearms, I've separated it here.

All I do is the opposite of whatever is the popular consensus or common behavior. In this case, that expresses as using less rules rather than more. If I run true Dungeons and Dragons, I run Pathfinder Core Rules only. And I mean it. The Core Rulebook and its errata only. I.e., only what's under the Core Rulebook menu-tab of this page: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/

If I run a modern game, I cut rules out, rather than add them in. Cut out all the magical classes and magic items. Most operators are primarily of the Fighter class, with Rogue or Ranger dips (minus the Ranger supernatural stuff). Most self-taught street fighters can be covered by Barbarian or Rogue. Monk can give your game a bit of exotic flare. You could say I've added guns, but the whole point of this thread is that I'm actually not adding guns in any rules sense. I'm using ("reskinning," if you will) the rules that players already know and play smoothly, which cover guns perfectly well. Composite bows. Feats like Rapid Shot to account for automatic fire. Area of effect traps like "Storm of Arrows" to cover suppressive fire. Why add a mechanism like a Will save against suppression when you don't have to? Imagine what it would be like to get shot at, and then have your mooks act appropriately. Cover is already in the game. There's already mods for the Prone condition and High Ground.

In short, the content of the CRB is extremely good. It's as close to a perfect refinement of the third edition DnD system as you're going to get. When you add expansions to it, like any other system it becomes ungainly (3ed is already crunch heavy. It doesn't need more math.) and unbalanced (My Rogue/Monk/Paladin core rules build is already doing over a hundred DpR at level 14. We don't need Pun-Pun ).

"But you're limiting creativity!" No, I'm requiring creativity. If a player says "I want to be able to fly," instead of just adding a rule that lets him fly, I say, "Okay, here's the rules. Here's the different forms of flight that the game offers. Come up with a way to get there. Go on a quest. Build me a character who dreams of flying and searches the world for a way to accomplish that."

"And what about the DM? If you cut out half the game--or 90% of the game, if we count all the splat--how does the DM keep it fun? If all of your players in a modern setting are just playing flavors of Fighter, what's the point?"

The point is Content. And by Content I don't mean more rules, and a million prestige classes and advanced classes that all subtly rehash the concept of a martial warrior. I mean DM's Content. Creativity. Story. Texture. Heck, you could give me a team of four Fighters with basically identical builds, representing four operators in a modern setting. That's fine. I'll differentiate them just by skill points. I'll have one do Survival, one do Heal, one take a driving/vehicles skill, and one take a JTAC skill. Just with that little differentiation, I've given each one a unique role in the party--if I do my part.

If. I. Do. My. Part. Like knowing what a JTAC is. If you have a character whose job is to call in close air support, do you have the player Roll To Call In Close Air Support, or do you go download an old copy of JFIRE, and a DD-1792, and offer him a chance to come up with a legit air strike? Do you challenge him to get the radio comms right for a rotary-wing 5-line while you roll withering machinegun attacks against the party's dwindling cover and HP reserves?

Do you have your party Roll To Sail Ship, or do you challenge the party sailing expert to come up with a tactical plan to stay upwind of the enemy, maneuver for the stern approach, steal their air, and strike from the position of maximum advantage?

This relates to a basic principle of skill challenges: the roll tells you how well it's done, but the player has to tell you what he did. "Oh, God, he's been shot! There's so much blood! He's in negative HP and dying! What do you do?!" "I roll Heal to stabilize!" "That's a pretty good roll. You did something well; I hope to God it was the right thing. So, what did you do?"

Your players won't always have these answers. The average gamer hasn't been through a TCCC course. He doesn't know what a C-A-T is, or a JFAK, nor how to use one. This is your chance to teach, or to learn together. Reward players for bringing new knowledge to the table. Reward them for contributing texture, rather than just die rolls. And whatever the players contribute in that vein must be overmatched tenfold by the DM. Running an adventure with sailing? Read the entire Horatio Hornblower series, do some online research, and take a weekend sailing lesson. This is you doing your part.

Tabletop games, like videogames, are about bringing players experiences they've not had before. The more you know, the more experiences you've had, the more you have to offer in place of just rules.

"Well, I've never been sailing, but I have my imagination." It's not the same. High fantasy without real knowledge leads to thinness. A flood of flash and spectacle upon which the players feel they're riding as in barrels down a river. Real knowledge, experience, and research makes your world feel heavy and rich, and it makes the players' actions feel like they're biting into that soil, like they're tilling up the earth of your creation. When they walk into a shop and you tell them there's a spider-person weaving clothing of golden thread, that's a nice image, very fantastical. When you can describe a warp-weighted loom, and the two old women passing the shuttle back and forth through the warp yarns, and the sounds and smells of it, your research shows. Your world feels instantly heavier and richer, more real, and more present. And this is all the moreso for your characters' actions. When your player rolls to build a snare, and you describe him selecting sticks, whittling and drilling them, harvesting and preparing cordage, and at last carefully assembling an Ojibwa bird snare, he feels the weight of his character's skill, the richness of it. He can do a google search to see the thing he made. It feels real. And it feels eminently more badass than "a snare." And who knows: he might end up on a wikiwalk learning all about other kinds of snares. Next time, he might be the one telling you about how he makes a figure-four deadfall, but with this one modification to make it better for trapping fantasy-gerbils or what have you. You can't buy that kind of player investment. You have to inspire it.

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None of this is to say I don't like crunch. The above principle makes a game like 5th Edition DnD bearable. Tolerable. But I can't really enjoy a game like that because the crunch side of it doesn't give me enough to do. Pathfinder, by contrast, is rich with opportunities for the min-maxer, the munchkin, the Gamer.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, restricting the rule-set promotes crunchy play rather than stifles it. When the game is open to all manner of add-ons, then, as I said initially, players will tend to solve capability problems by importing capabilities. They want to hit harder? They'll take the Hits Harder Advanced Supplementary Alternate Prestige Class.

What I've witnessed in my CR-only game is that players have taken the core rules to staggering heights. Because the game system is limited to one book, they've been able over the years to learn it thoroughly. No one has to stop and look up the nitty gritty of combat rules, like what provokes AoOs or whether a particular effect stacks. They play quickly.

Furthermore, they play well. They have developed sophisticated, efficient TTPs (tactics, techniques, and procedures) for various types of encounters, they can shift from one tactic to another smoothly, they're experts at managing delays and ready actions to create group combos... They play as a well-oiled unit, slickly slicing up enemy formations and delivering massive amounts of math damage on target.

"Math damage" is what we call the ridonkulous numbers that result from smart, skillful crunch play, when the wizard dimension-door-drops the party on top of the enemy, the monk/paladin smite-Greater-Grapples it into the pinned condition, the attack specialists each deliver a full attack worth 150 HP, and then the Cleric touches it with Destruction to finish it off. Another example: we recently did a calculation and determined that our party wizard is capable of delivering something like 41 melee attacks per round. And not light hits, either. He's a Conjuration-spec wizard with Augment Summons. If he max-rolls for 3 Greater Fire Elementals, they're each swinging at +21, 2d6+9+Burn per attack. 6 of those per round would be powerful enough, but add Haste. He summons as a full round action, so the elementals arrive and act just before his turn in the next round. He uses a free action to tell them to delay, so he can cast Haste on them and the rest of the party. Then they attack, so that's potentially 9 attacks, now at +22. Then look at the fact that they have Combat Reflexes. And a DEX of 27. And a 15' reach around a 15' space. Picture the charging orc horde, and these three elementals summoned in their midst. Every NPC that departs a threatened square on a move action without beating an Acrobatics DC of 41 triggers an AoO.

In 5th Edition, there's a spell called Blade Barrier. How extraneous. My wizard-playing friend invented it, only bigger, meaner, mobile, sentient, and on fire. Just by reading the stat block on his summons. "Combat Reflexes... wait, what's his Dex? And his threatened area is what? Holy cow..." That kind of thing warms my heart.

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So, yes, we have more fun with the crunch, because people actually play the game, rather than write their way around the game. And we have more fun with the fluff, because I make sure to bring good fluff to the table, and encourage the players to do the same. They don't feel constrained by the rules because the game world and story are constantly expanding their horizons.

So you're starting a game, and you're tempted to use Pathfinder? I encourage this. And I strongly recommend you do what I do. Start with (and, if I may be so bold, stick with) just the Core Rulebook, and if they're new players, start at level 1. Starting at level 1 further reduces the amount of rules anyone has to learn.

It means you'll have to pull back on some common player assumptions. Level 1 PCs are not heroes. They're slightly above-average locals, usually youngsters. They may have the potential some day to become heroes, if the stars align and they believe in themselves, but it starts with fending off just a few goblins, or getting themselves and the caravan out of a bad snow storm alive. This is how you introduce new players to the game or ease into a crunchy system like PF. Start small. Keep the camera low and close. Make the challenge very confined, in terms of rules and difficulty, and bring it to life with texture, additional victory criteria, choices, gambles, personalization of story.

Have you ever been out in a bad snow storm? Have you ever just been out in the woods, in the dark, when it's really cold? Have you felt your body shivering to stave off hypothermia, felt air so cold it bites all the way down into your chest with every breath? Have you heard the kind of silence of the woods in the dark of night when it's that cold? When your toes go rubbery inside your boots, and rubbing them together creates a dull squeak that cuts through the silence? Have you heard the snap of limbs breaking under the weight of ice in the dark? Can you make your players feel each point of health as you tick it off while they roll and reroll and reroll to get that fire going? If not, maybe go find some woods this weekend and just park your car and roll down the windows and sit for an hour or two. You never know what you might learn that you can bring back to the table. The things that happen to PCs in DnD are really scary. Consider doing something that really scares you, just so you can describe to your players what it feels like to be really scared--not in language you gleaned from your favorite novels, but in your own words, gleaned from your own experience.

***

You asked about house rules. I can think of a couple, off the top of my head, in an eight-year-long core-rules-only Pathfinder game:

My Conjuration-specialist wizard is a Contract Summoner, which means for each type of sentient summons, one individual of that type is his contracted agent. For instance, the first Hound Archon he ever summoned was a particular Hound named Lumiel. If he ever summons groups of Hound Archons, he gets Lumiel plus however many others. Crunch-wise, the only difference is that he can give gear to Lumiel, and it remains persistent. Lumiel reappears with that gear each time he is summoned. Fluff-wise, though, it's fantastic. He often summons Lumiel during down-time, for advice on battling evil when he doesn't have the party paladin on hand, and for martial advice when the party fighters aren't around. They are fast friends. And after years of that relationship, Lumiel taking hits in combat really matters. Was this really an added rule? You could say so, but we didn't really add any new mechanisms to the game. Just named some of his summons and let him put equipment on their sheets.

My half-elf Ranger is half-human elf rather than half-elvish human. We shifted his racial traits a little more toward elf than human, because he was raised among his mother's people. Again, crunch effects largely negligible. One fewer skills, in exchange for he meditates rather than sleeps, generally. On balance, I suspect he gave up more than he gained. But it served a fluff purpose, and we wrote no new rules for it. Just swapped some racial features already extant in the core rules.

And we have custom items. I gave each of the plank-owning characters (i.e., those characters who were present in the first session and remained with the game consistently thereafter) unique artifacts somewhere in the level 10-15 range (so, after about 4 years of play). But their effects are system-native.

The fighter got a glass eye which auto-confirms critical hits on some weapons in the same manner as Bless Weapon, and grants him permanent dark vision and rounds per day of True Sight equal to his HD.

The Ranger got a new version of his halberd which gives a +4 to tracking checks, but also requires the DM to apply a DC to any tracking task. So the DM can say that following tracks on the rocky bed of a flowing stream is stupendously hard--say, a DC of 55--but he can't just say it's by fiat impossible. And with a good roll, that Ranger at level 17 can hit a Survival check of 55. Its final power is that it even allows him to follow tracks that lead into other Planes. So if someone he's tracking uses a Planar Travel effect, he can, with a sufficiently high Survival roll, follow them into that other Plane. (Note, the weapon does not provide him with a way to get home from that other Plane.)

The Wizard received a Mirror of Life Trapping. It is bog-standard as per the Wondrous Item of the same name, except he discovered that there was already someone trapped in it: a beautiful, mysterious (and naked, because rules is rules) woman whom he has determined (over the couple of years since) to be a profoundly powerful witch, who apparently became trapped in her own mirror. She teaches him magical secrets and provides guidance and knowledge to which he would not otherwise have access. Forbidden arts and such. To a properly played Wizard, knowledge is worth far more than a staff of blastin' stuff.

Oh, and one may use STR or DEX, whichever is higher, for ranged attacks within one range increment.

And that's really it. Three house rules and some items, none of which are particularly game-altering. We play things straight. Nobody has plot armor. Nobody has plot-powers. Including NPCs. It's by the book, RAW (rules as written), core-only.

***

Just remember that the game is meant to abstract real world concepts, not recreate them or model them faithfully. This expresses in two ways:

First, Dungeons & Dragons, and by extension Pathfinder, are intended to model not a realistic event, but a heightened retelling of an event. Not your high school history text, but The Illiad or Beowulf. Not Black Hawk Down, but something more like John Wick or Die Hard, where certain characters survive countless life-threatening encounters by the grace of being The Protagonist, The Hero. When trying to decide where to apply realism, keep the concept of the Epic (in the classical sense) in the back of your mind. Your story is playing out in the present tense, but it is the events as they would have been recorded by Homer.

Second, as you apply the rules, and you're deciding how to handle a particular situation, remember that the game system is meant to make the mathematical modeling simpler, rather than more complex. Less granular, rather than more granular. This is especially true of d20 systems like Dungeons and Dragons. Pages and pages of Shadowrun nitty gritty are rolled up into the elegant Attack Roll vs Armor Class of 3rd Edition. Don't undo all that work. Whether you're adjudicating automatic gunfire or negotiations with a dragon, first think about whether you need a crunch rule at all. Is there in fact something that needs to be adjudicated in that sense, or is this just a storytelling/roleplay event? If dice absolutely must be rolled, think about how simple you can make it. Let the players come up with the plan, and only roll dice as necessary to see how well they execute the critically risky steps of their plan. Finally, for each step where dice must be rolled, try very hard to use a rule that's already in the CRB, rather than invent one.

I hope this gives you some ideas. I always welcome discussion, also. If I am delayed in responding, it is by virtue of task saturation, not lack of interest.

V/R

Guns are handled incorrectly in all games, usually by the addition of new or separate rules, classes, and other complexities. This is bad, and in 3ed/PF, it is particularly needless. The below demonstrates that the Core Rules are already sufficient to handle any and all ranged weapons, from bows to GAUs, smoothly, with no additional steps, and in most cases no additional rules or feats. Look for the numbered bullets for the Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF). Note that this is not an attempt to make guns "balanced with" medieval-style and melee weapons. Guns are generally superior battlefield weapons to their medieval melee and ranged counterparts and have appropriately supplanted the same in warfare and personal defense. However, the superiority of the gun stems not from anything so simple as "superior damage," but from other factors. Read on.

1) Guns are very simple. A gun is simply a ranged weapon which brings its own strength score. You should make a ranged attack (see below), but for your damage you use the gun's strength score.

For instance, a pistol might be a +2 STR pistol with a 1d6 damage die. The damage roll is 1d6+2 (+ other mods). This is the same as using composite bows, except your ability to apply the weapon's strength score is not dependent upon your own strength.

Firearm damage dice and strength scores need not be extravagant. The strong majority of people struck by pistol rounds survive with medical attention. A strong majority of battlefield casualties survive with proper Tactical Combat Casualty Care (or, in our case, good Heal checks and magic). (See Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support)

In the real world, most people are level 1 through 5. Most NPCs are level 1. Above level five, you're getting into heroic characters, based more on characters in epic poems than on realism. Some basic statistics: A modern pistol single hit should be fatal* to level-1 NPCS about 20-30% of the time, depending on cartridge used. A center-fire rifle single hit should be fatal* to level-1 NPCS about 70-90% of the time, depending on cartridge used. In reality this is very comparable to melee weapons. A pistol wound and a wound from a fighting knife have different physical profiles but very similar lethality.

(* "Fatal" meaning it should take said level-1 character from full health to -1 or lower HP, giving him the Dying condition, representing a wound which is generally incapacitating and will generally be fatal without medical intervention.)

Firearm range increments need not be extravagant either. A DM could keep it as simple as this: Pistol, 30 feet. Carbine, 100 feet. Precision rifle, 300 feet. One range increment is the distant to which a proficient user can get combat-effective hits without having to take special care. A more firearm-savvy DM running a game for gun-nerds could modify these based on the gun's configuration and optics and the character's feats, and could apply a maximum effective range based on caliber, but these simple numbers would serve perfectly well.

2) Gun and bow attack rolls should use DEX or STR (whichever is higher) out to one range increment.

Action shooting (quickly acquiring a target and addressing with volume of fire with a carbine, pistol, or bow at relatively close range) is very much an applied gross motor skill action, and that is really what 3rd Edition/Pathfinder means by STR. A stronger character is a better swordsman as a rule. He is also a better carbine shooter, better able to drive his rifle. This comports with reality. It takes a feat (Weapon Finesse) to replace STR with DEX in these scenarios.

What 3rd Edition means by DEX is applied fine motor skill action, specifically very sensitive actions such as picking locks. This applies to long range or extreme precision shooting, such as shooting a squirrel through the eye with a rimfire rifle, or having a perfect trigger press on a thousand yard shot.

To reiterate, this absolutely should apply to bows as well. A character should be able to use STR or DEX (at his option) out to one range increment for bow attack rolls.

3) Semi-automatic fire is already handled by the rules. Full Auto is the only thing that needs special treatment.

Semi-Auto fire is fully handled by iterative attacks and rapid-attack feats currently extant (Rapid Shot). Iterative attacks represent in abstraction the statistical likelihood of applying more effective damage to a target, moreso than they represent actual swings of a sword or arrows from a bow, one-for-one. Additional hits scored during a Full Attack Action represent the ability of a trained combatant to control recoil and achieve effective volume of fire from any given repeating firearm, be it semi-auto, lever-driven, pump-driven, etc. In any world where guns exist, any character with a proficiency and a base attack bonus will be training these fundamentals, just as all fantasy characters train the fundamentals of swords and learn to make combination attacks if they are proficient with swords.

Full Auto is another story. It should be treated as a full round action always. It should generate an Area effect, similar to a Hail of Arrows trap, making a single attack roll against the ACs of all exposed targets within the area. Most fully automatic fire is suppressive. It is not expected to generate nor often generates numerous hits on any one target.

You might make an exception for highly trained personnel who can direct fully-automatic fire with enough control to generate more hits on target than they would achieve firing semi-auto. This could work similarly to Two-Weapon Fighting. For instance, a select-fire M4 in burst or auto mode would allow a user to make a bonus attack roll at his highest bonus on a Standard Attack (e.g., after taking a Move action), and two bonus attack rolls at his highest attack bonus in a Full Attack action (before continuing with iterative, haste, flurry, and other attacks). However, the first bonus attack would always be at -6 (in a standard or full attack) and the second at -10. You could then offer a combat feat ("Mag Dump") which reduces these penalties so that the bonus attacks from automatic fire are both made at a mere -2 off of full attack bonus. This is a feat your tier 1 and 2 warfighters take (Tier 1 SOF, Marine RECON, EOD, etc.) by specifically being trained on and practicing magazine dumps on the range and controlled fully automatic fire in the shoot-house.

Some systems introduce a special rule for "suppressive fire," codifying that targets make a Will Save against being "suppressed" (i.e., not moving or returning fire for the duration of suppressive fire). This is not necessary. In a world of firearms, all characters are seeking cover whenever opportunity and doctrine permits (i.e., not to include late 1800s musket formations marching into the barrage, or WWI troops charging hopelessly across no-man's land). A DM should be able properly to represent a character either seeking cover and ceasing effective return fire, or risking getting ****ing shot. This is a matter of realistically representing the psychology of NPCs based on their stats.

If you want a special rule for suppression, simply apply the shooter's suppressive attack roll to each target on the target's turn. A target is any character in the affected area who exposes himself by his actions to less than full cover or, if exposed, does not move immediately to full cover as his first action on his turn. Such a rule would also be sufficient to cover suppressive fire from other types of firearms.

4) Guns make sneak-attacks more effective, but not so much moreso as you might think. The only change needed is to the range at which Sneak Attacks, Coup de Grace actions, and Assassinations (such as the Assassin's Death Attack) may be executed.

The common complaint about guns is that the rules don't allow for a sniper to make an instantly fatal head shot on a leveled character. This is true. The rules also do not allow for a knife to make an instantly fatal neck or heart shot on a leveled character. This is not a failure of the rules so much as a failure to understand the basic presumption of the rules: that the target is tactically alert and participant in his own defense.

In 3ed/PF, as in life, it takes one lethal hit to kill a character of any level. A foreign body to the heart is always fatal. A high level character is not more capable of enduring a heart shot or massive extremity hemorrhage. Rather, he has several layers of defense which prevent a blow from striking to his vital organs: His armor and dexterity to avoid all injury, and his HP which represents his ability to be active, instinctive, and strong, even when surprised, to twist away, flinch, or flex at the last moment to prevent the blade from reaching his heart, lungs, major arteries, etc. All characters not Helpless are presumed to have and to be using these various layers of defense to stave off death to the best of their ability. In readiness terms, goblins on patrol are at least at "Condition Yellow." They are at least making Perception checks for threats, and though they may be caught unawares, actually catching one so by surprise as to make him helpless even to flinch is so difficult as to be generally impossible. Where even the most instinctive defenses, the HP bar, are not available, a character has the Helpless condition, and is thus subject by the rules to Coup de Grace.

The failing of players and DMs is to realize that there are circumstances under which a character may be Helpless while conscious and mobile. Under what circumstances are a knife-assassination feasible in reality and fiction? The basic precondition is that the target be in "Condition White," completely unaware not only of the threat but that a threat may exist. An untrained, noncombatant character in a non-threatening setting--or even a trained character in a completely comfortable setting--where he may be approached with absolute stealth or with no absolutely recognition of threat could be subjected to a knife or even a sword/axe CdG depending on circumstances. We might call this the Altair CdG (think "Assassin's Creed"). A guard character who has no expectation of a threat (such as a perfunctory guard on a non-vital base deep within his own nation) may be subject to CdG by a rogue or Assassin who can execute a perfectly stealthy approach. We might call this the Sam Fisher CdG.

With firearms, what changes is only the precision with which the ranged attack can be applied. Whereas a bow can only be used to apply a CdG from within 10 feet, proficient characters could apply a CdG with a firearm out to a full single range increment. In combat, those characters with Sneak Attack or Assassination abilities would be able to apply such abilities out to a full single range increment as well. To incorporate snipers, one could allow a character with the appropriate feats to attempt a coup de grace at arbitrary range. This might take a bit of extra adjudication, but some simple guidance might be this: With Far Shot and Precise Shot as prereqs, a sniper could take a Sniper feat which allows him to make a ranged attack roll against a situational DC (determined by the DM based on the target's size, activity, cover, concealment, etc.) to score a CdG on a distant Helpless target.

Note that the "target" in this situation would be not a character, but a specific body part or object. One can generate some simple math for this: Base DC 10, minus 5 if stationary, plus 2 for the chest or 4 for the head, 8 for eye, ear, armor gap, etc. (from AC size bonus rules), plus cover (percentage of target covered, not percentage of victim covered), plus circumstance penalties by rule of 2s, such as shooting through glass, shooting without a rest, etc. Shooter is subject to normal range penalties, and to Combat While Mounted penalties if shooting from a moving platform. I'm not making these numbers up.

I'm just applying the combat rules which are already there in Core PF. But they generate nice totals. Taking an 800 yard lethal chest shot on a diplomat as he walks from his car to his front door (a standard sniper-assassin shot): DC 10+2, shooter at -7 for range (with Far Shot). That's an effective DC of 19. If that seems low to you, remember your probabilities. A modern scout sniper can hit that target on the first try perhaps 75% of the time, meaning he's rolling in the neighborhood of +14 on his attack. That's a level 7 fighter properly kitted and feated. That's about right for a highly trained, top notch scout sniper. A sniper-assassin, a Carlos Hathcock, must hit that shot every time, barring bad luck. He's rolling +20 on his attack, as befits a level 10-11 infamous sniper. It's actually quite fair, especially given the three feats the character has spent to access this capability. And it allows legendary (i.e., fictional) characters of the third quadrant, and demigod characters of the fourth quadrant (rolling +30 and above) to attempt "impossible" shots with reasonable confidence. (I.e., the "Wanted" shot.)

Summary: The ranged weapon rules--specifically, the composite bows--already provide a perfect template for workable firearms. Firearms simply supply their own strength score for purposes of damage rolls. The mechanics and feats are already there, for the most part. An archer or shooter should be allowed to make attack rolls with his Strength score out to one range increment. Even sniping/assassination and suppressive fire are already handled by the Core rules, if the rules are well understood and well applied. The only additional feats you might need for the vast majority of gunslinger gameplay are a Sniper feat to allow CdGs beyond one range increment and a Mag Dump feat to allow characters to benefit from select-fire capability in a targeted engagement.

Are these above the be-all, end-all of bows and guns? No. They're a demonstration that the Core Rules contains sufficient framework to play with these toys efficiently and without the inclusion of new material. There is plenty of room to tweak and add details to satisfy your level of gun nerdery, to the extent you can without bogging down your game. Examples follow:

You could change the number of bonus attacks allowed by Mag Dump or the number of suppressive attacks per target in suppressive fire based on the rate of fire of the weapons. A modern Gatling gun might roll three attacks per target in suppressive fire. Suppressive fire with a lever gun might only roll attacks against fifty percent of targets in the area of affect.

You could allow players to add upgraded optics, bed actions, and tune triggers, to improve their range increment. You could say that a high power scope costs a character one iterative attack per round, representing reduced rate of fire due to reduced rate of target acquisition. You could allow a player to stat out his carbine with a six-power scope on top and a 45-degree offset red-dot for close-quarters work.

Note, adjusting range increment is a finer way to tune a ranged weapon's attack roll than applying full +x/-x to attacks. In a game where weapons aren't magical, adding accessories and upgrades could grant +1 to +5 and other effects, working in place of magical enhancement boni and special magical qualities. However, in the real world a scope is not so much a +x to the likelihood that a weapon will strike and do damage as it is a change in the distance at which making a hit is feasible in a given scenario. If your guns can also be magic weapons, then mundane accessories should not add enhancement boni. They should modify range increment and other fine characteristics. Spending skill points to hand-load cartridges could also slightly improve range increment, or...

...using specific bullets (Speer Gold Dot for pistols, or Nosler Accubond in a high power rifle) might at +1 to the STR of the weapon, though possibly in exchange for less ability to penetrate hardened barriers.

Hardened penetrator bullets would grant a simple +1 or +2 to attack roll, as armor penetration is abstracted in the attack roll mathematics.

Adding a laser to a pistol does not affect its attack bonus, but might allow the character to make attack rolls from non-standard shooting positions, such as from the hip, without penalty. Adding a laser (e.g., a PEQ) would also allow a character to make attack rolls without penalty while using Night Vision devices.

A recoil compensator or muzzle brake might add +1 to attacks after the first in a full attack action.

Suppressors, contrary to most game rules, have almost no down-side. A suppressor reduces the sound signature of the muzzle blast significantly, generally eliminates muzzle flash, reduces recoil (marginally for rifles, dramatically for pistols), and increases range increment by about 10% (increases effective range while having no negative effect on accuracy). With a pistol or carbine, a suppressor is so effective at mitigating recoil that, like a recoil compensator, it might add a +1 to attacks after the first in a full attack action. With a precision rifle, a precision suppressor's +10% range increment becomes significant for sniping. At night, weapons without flash-hiders or suppressors might impose a penalty on shots after the first in an engagement, as the shooter is blinded and deafened. Suppressors would eliminate that.

Really, there's no downside to suppressors except cost and size/weight. So many games try to "balance" a silencer's stealth bonus with a penalty to range or damage, but this is inaccurate. In short, if you can afford a suppressor, and afford to carry it, you should. If your carbine is not suppressed, you're wrong.

Regarding stealth, suppressors significantly reduce the distance at which a gunshot can be detected by sound. As a rule of thumb, unsuppressed pistols can be heard by anyone within a city block, high-powered rifles by anyone within a mile or two (terrain dependent). With suppressors, pistols can be heard by people in adjoining rooms of a building or on the same property out of doors. Suppressed rifles and carbines can be heard by people within the same building indoors or on neighboring properties out of doors. Loading subsonic rounds might reduce a rifle's strength to that of a high-powered pistol (think 300 BLK subsonic loads), but will also reduce its suppressed sound signature to that of a suppressed pistol, while only marginally reducing its range increment.

The other aspect of silencers which a DM must consider is whether or not characters who can hear the report will recognize it as a gunshot. As much as they reduce the sound of a gunshot, suppressors also change its character, into a more pneumatic snap or hiss. Think of an 18-wheeler's pneumatic brake pistons venting. An enemy downrange of a supersonic suppressed weapon, such as a high power rifle or a high-velocity 9mm pistol, might still recognize the crack of the bullet's "sonic boom" shockwave as the bullet goes by, but may not be able to detect or identify the report of the weapon which issued it. An enemy hearing a suppressed carbine firing subsonic rounds in the next room may not even recognize it as an attack. It would sound like a gentle clattering, noticeable only to the attentive listener.

Drawing a pistol from holster or engaging with a rifle from sling arms is as drawing a weapon in the extant rules: a move action which may be concurrent with a movement, reduced to a swift action if you have the Quickdraw feat. This means that Quickdraw allows you to draw from holster or raise a rifle from sling arms and perform a full attack, and execute a five foot step (off the X, as they say).

Single-handed shooting of pistols and carbines carries a -4 penalty. Heavy rifles and shotguns, -8. Carbines and rifles also get heavy after one round, so for them the one-handed penalty increases by an additional -4 each round.

Magazine changes (speed reloads) on most modern personal weapons are a move action which can be executed concurrent with a movement, similarly to drawing a weapon from sheath/holster.

Magazine size and ammunition expenditure can be handled roll by roll for most single and full attack actions, but becomes more abstract for suppressive and full-auto fire. One full round of combat is six seconds (10 combat rounds per minute). One could assume that in suppressive fire, a trained combatant will be firing controlled bursts totaling one to two seconds of the six-second round. You can then calculate total ammunition expenditure from the weapon's rate of fire. A 600 round-per-minute weapon would expend 10 rounds per second. An M4 carbine would expend about 12 rounds per second, and an M240 would be similar. A GAU-21 or M2 (modern) would be 15 to 17 rounds per second. These high ROF machineguns might also earn two attacks per target in suppressive fire. A modern Gatling gun (GAU 17, 19, 8) may fire 30 to 60 rounds per second. These might be treated more like true area effects, such that they make a simple damage roll (on the order of, say, 5 or 10 bullets of the appropriate caliber), and exposed targets make a Reflex Save for half damage.

By the way, the discussion of heavy weapons inevitably leads to a discussion of vehicles. Remember, a vehicle is just a Huge or larger monster. You can stat it out like a monster. Armor class and HP need not be extravagant. Your average car can be taken out of commission with just a few pistol rounds or a couple of rifle rounds. One again, remember that it only takes one hit to kill any monster. The HP just represents that monster's size, and the relative improbability of your bullet or blade reaching one of its vital organs. In a monster, decreasing HP represents the creature's stamina declining, its reactions slowing, steadily increasing the likelihood that your next attack will slip through to heart, lung, or major artery. In a vehicle, it represents the deflective integrity of its overall structure. As the vehicle continues to take rounds that penetrate its armor, and becomes more riddled with holes, "sooner or later" one of those bullets will get into something mechanically vital. There's no need to write excessive new rules for vehicles. Just treat them as monsters with pilots and barding and move on.

Make your life easier, rather than harder. Use already extant Core Rules whenever you can.

Malfunctions should probably only occur on an attack roll of natural 1 except with a specifically low-reliability weapon (such as a crappy pistol scrounged in the field). Any proficient character is going know malfunction drills for his weapon as part of his proficiency, so it is not necessary to make him roll to clear his weapon. A better model would be for the DM to roll on a simple table of possible malfunctions to determine the cost of the malfunction in time and resources. For semi-automatic weapons, there are four basic malfunctions. Failure-to-fire, stove-pipe, and failure-to-go-to-battery each cost a move action to remedy. Failure-to-fire also costs the one wasted round as the shooter executes a "tap, rack, shoot". Double-feed requires a full round action to remedy and requires the shooter to strip and drop the current magazine and chambered round, so it costs all the rounds remaining in the gun at the time of malfunction. (In theory, he could recover the magazine, but it is likely that the magazine caused the problem, so he would not wisely reuse it unless he was otherwise out of ammo.)

Tactical reloads are a standard action.

Transition to a secondary (i.e., from carbine to pistol if the carbine goes down) is handled as a normal draw of pistol from holster, a move action which may be performed while making movement. (The primary weapon is simultaneously lowered to sling arms if it has a sling, or otherwise dropped or held in the weak hand. The latter means the pistol will be shot single-handed, with appropriate penalty.) With Quickdraw, as above, the draw becomes a swift action, allowing the shooter to transition to his pistol and finish a full attack action he began with his carbine.

These are all I can think of for now.