Howdy All,
I really love steampunk and i'm thinking about putting together a magic vs. technology sort of game in the future. However, the weapons in Guns & Gears are a little too renaissance/1600s and I'm thinking more like the 1800s. Below is a link demonstrating my tweaks to turn repeating crossbows into repeating firearms.
1.) The first thing I expect people to say is: These are objectively superior to crossbows/other weapons. Yes - they are. While I value balance I also want a level of feel and verisimilitude that, unfortunately, will make certain weapons just obviously worse than others. I'm ok with this sacrifice as long as that imbalance is not game disruptive.
2.) Because of the ubiquity of guns in a steampunk setting, my assumption is that they're actually the "go to weapon" for just about anyone - along with knives and other close combat weapons. Flavor wise, traditional melee weapons are really only used by experts or in certain specific contexts.
3.) I think most of these tweaks work - more or less reskinning the repeating crossbow - however dealing with automatic weapons is proving more difficult. I've looked at d20 modern's take on auto-fire and burst fire as well as Starfinder's take on fully automatic weapons. So far, I'm more in the d20 modern camp but it still requires the pounding out of details to ensure that the automatic rifle is not game breaking/game disruptive.
Does anyone have any thoughts they'd like to share that you think would be helpful? Thanks!