What would be the best why to add guns into D&D? Nothing to extreme, I thought about using Iron Kingdom’s gun system. Would this work or would the damage out put be too high? Would loading time and loading checks balance out the damage out put? I don’t want guns to edge out bladed weapons or even bows that’s why I’m think the IK’s system might work.
Fizz
What would be the best why to add guns into D&D? Nothing to extreme, I thought about using Iron Kingdom’s gun system. Would this work or would the damage out put be too high? Would loading time and loading checks balance out the damage out put? I don’t want guns to edge out bladed weapons or even bows that’s why I’m think the IK’s system might work.
Fizz
I'm not familiar with Iron Kingdom's gun system, but other gun rules I've seen, such as in D20 Modern, Call of Cthulhu, and DM's Guide are not unbalancing at all. If I remember correctly, the damage for black-powder weapons is usually 1d10 to 1d12 and they take approximately 6 rounds to reload. Given that a heavy crossbow can do as much damage every other round, there is no danger of firearms edging out bows or crossbows. About the only real reason to use a firearm is for flavor (e.g. pull out your pistol and fire, then throw it away and draw your sword)
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I allowed firearms in both my 2E Spelljammer and my 3.0/3.5 Realms games (those damn gnomes of Lantan...). Know what I found out? No one cared. My players were happy to stick with their enchanted swords and spells. The very few times I had an NPC with a firearm (I think those always were found in Spelljammer- giff mercenaries and the like with starwheel pistols and arquebuses) there was nothing unbalanced about it.
Say you've got a player who wants to use a pistol. Both the Renaissance era firearms in the DMG (pistols and muskets) require an Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat to use without penalty. If the player is willing to make that sacrifice to use it, he's still dealing with a weapon that does the same damage as a heavy crossbow, with worse range and the same standard action to reload. Not only that, but in addition to the bullets the character also has to keep a supply of gunpower on hand to use the pistol, *and* keep it dry, or else the gun is just an extra three pounds to his encumbrance. The only advantage to a pistol over a crossbow is that it has a higher critical damage multiplier, but how often will that actually be used?
Unless you're introducing firearms from a higher level of technology, I think you'll be fine.
I use a variation of the 2nd edition gun rules in my campaign. Essentially when you roll damage its possible you get to roll more often. With the weakest and most common gun in my campaign you roll a d10 for damage - if you roll a 10 you get to roll damage again and add 10 to the second roll if you happened to roll 10 a third time you'd roll yet again. Better guns require exotic weapon feats but have a slightly higher spread of possible extra damage results.
While this system works something I'm strongly considering for my next campaign (when I upgrade my homebrew to 4th edition) is having guns do touch attacks - but if I went this route they definitely would not have the potential to do extra damage.
My actual experience with guns at the table has been mixed. Initially poor character design resulted in my players claiming the guns where too weak to be worth it. I strengthened the guns just as some of the players where really getting a grip on just what you can do with a lot of range weapon feats and they became to powerful. I've moved back to my original position and their maybe a little overpowered, mainly because its possible to get ones hands on magic items and abilities that significantly increase the speed to load weapons like heavy crossbows and guns meaning that their weak point of being slow to reload can be minimized.
Actually, issue #321 of Dragon has an article about firearms in D&D.
Just some random tid-bits...
Damage ranges from 1D8 to 1D12 depending, range increments vary from the 50' pistol to the 200' rifle, most have x3 crit multipliers, and most require a standard action to reload, but if upgraded with breachloading, the weapon can be reloaded as a move action. Powerhorns carry 2 lb of gunpowder. (1 oz is required per shot) And a bandolier has slots for up to five potion/powderhorn sized items. (9 slots total if he wears two cris-crossed)
Funny to find a thread about this as I just started a new character who will be using a rifle. Thus my Dragon reference. ^ ^;;
-Kurocyn
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ARTILLERY
No gunpowder in my campaign so we wound up with Da Vinci Steam Cannons (Damage: 20d6, Range Limit: 1 mile, weight: 1/2 ton).
PERSONAL FIREARMS
Allowed my wizards the MAGEPISTOL (wizard inserts magic spell components in silk pouch clicks the gun to armed an pulls the trigger) They cost a 1000gp per castable spell level.
One capable of being used to cast a third level fireball or lightning bolt comes with a 3,000gp pricetag. Its near impossible to get a Pratt & Whitney for love or money these days.
metamagic feat-quicken spell and quick action allow you to fire twice in a round as long as you have your magic components ready.
Come on Fatespinner no Iron Kingdoms input?
Fizz
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Well, I love guns in D&D.
I'm my world dwarves are the only ones with guns. Their fortresses are protected by cannons. Guns are used almost exclusively for defense of the mountain kingdoms, to ensure they do not fall into the hands of other races.
I also did not want guns to use real world black powder. Instead they use a secret alchemical mixture. Two small glass cylinders are contained inside a single brass tube. When these cylinders are broken the alchemical agents inside mix and produce a small explosion (or a big one for a cannon), which forces a lead ball in the end of the brass tube to shoot out the barrel of the gun.
These guns use high damage output, 2d6/3x for a pistol, and 2d8/3x for a rifle.
However, there is a downside. Proper use requires a thorough cleaning between shots, since alchemical residue remains and is quite dangerous. Cleaning takes two minutes (20 rounds). You can fire your weapon 1d10+3 times (rolled by the DM in secret) before your weapon explodes in a misfire damaging the shooter for half damage (regardless of the die roll for the attack). If not cleaning properly, it takes a full round to reload.
Now, if anyone has fired real life black powder weapons (I have many times), you learn real quick to give your gun a thorough cleaning between shots. Black powder residue does remain and is quite dangerous. After several shots it can indeed explode on you, destroying your gun and injuring the shooter. The whole reload process for a black powder rifle, for instance, can take a full two minutes (that's what I can get when I hurry). Someone who is more proficient can clean and reload a black powder rifle in maybe a minute or there abouts. A feat could be made to allow faster clean times to make the gun more palatable.
Now I am sure some will say "No way." But that is the reality of those guns. Pirates carried several guns in combat. They would fire one and drop it and draw another and fire it and drop it then draw another until they ran out. Then they pulled the cutlass and chopped their opponents apart. They didn't have time to clean and reload in battle.
Anyway, the high damage is offset by its dangerous and finicky ways. It is hard to get one, but when the PCs find themselves staring at a dozen orcs lined up taking aim with dwarven rifles there are going to be some questions... if the PCs survive. Now if the fight lasts past 4 rounds the guns start exploding and could be quite humorous... until the mage takes 48 points of damage from a lucky hit.
Oh, and one last thing. I do NOT require an Exotic Weapons feat for guns. They are Martial Weapons, requiring some training, but otherwise rather simple to use.
I use firearms rules in some campaigns but not in others, depending entirely on the flavour I'm trying to maintain. I have found that simpler rules for firearms work better than more complex ones, and that therefore virtually every version of the rules I have seen are too complex (for me).
My campaign has a variety of types of firearms, ranging from Simple to Exotic.
The Simple weapons are the Light Pistol and the Musket. To get a Light Pistol, take the stats of the Light Crossbow, and change the damage to 2d4. Leave everything else (range, crit, reload time) the same. They can be fired one-handed without penalty, but require two hands to load. To get the Musket, take the Heavy Crossbow, and change the damage to 2d6 (I think - I would need to check when I got home to be sure). Again, everything else stays the same; Muskets usually require two hands to fire effectively, but can be fired one handed with penalties, as with the Heavy Crossbow.
The Martial weapons are the Heavy Pistol, the Rifle, and the Blunderbuss. The Heavy Pistol is much the same as the Light Pistol, but does 2d8 damage, and has a better range (I think). Likewise, the Rifle is much the same as the Musket, but does 2d10 damage (again, I think - it's two steps better than the Musket). I forget exactly what I did with the Blunderbuss, but it does lots of damage, has a big critical modifier, and a short range.
The Exotic Weapons include things like the doubled pistol (two barrels side-by-side, with two firing mechanisms, and so forth), the Blunderbuss Pistol, and a few other things.
I don't use any 'funnies' with firearms - there is no chance of misfire (I leave that as flavour, as with any other miss), there is no 'exploding damage', and no armour penetration. Basically, they are just weapons like any other.
The reload times I use for firearms are admittedly unrealistic. There are two reasons for this. To justify a longer reload time, and remain balanced, I would have to increase the damage, or the critical modifier, both of which would make firearms far too powerful for weapons of their class - the Martial firearms in particular are already at the edge of acceptable.
The other reason is that in practice it doesn't actually matter. I have found that the only real use to which firearms are used is as a fire-once solution at the start of combat. That done, the party will then discard their guns and rush in to melee. So, it doesn't matter if the reload time is a Move action, a Full-round action, or six Full-round actions. (Actually, the Sharpe novels are forever going on about "three shots a minute in any weather", which suggests two Full-round actions. Of course, those were professional riflemen, which may or may not imply the Rapid Reload feat.)
The other reason is that in practice it doesn't actually matter. I have found that the only real use to which firearms are used is as a fire-once solution at the start of combat. That done, the party will then discard their guns and rush in to melee. So, it doesn't matter if the reload time is a Move action, a Full-round action, or six Full-round actions. (Actually, the Sharpe novels are forever going on about "three shots a minute in any weather", which suggests two Full-round actions. Of course, those were professional riflemen, which may or may not imply the Rapid Reload feat.)
That is basically how they were used historically (fire once, then melee), outside of military units. I usually handle firearms pretty much as described in the DMG; the only changes I make are 1) requiring separate Exotic Weapon Proficiency feats for pistols and muskets, 2) increasing the reload times to two full round actions (in line with the quote above; Rapid Reload reduces this to one full-round action) and increasing the critical multiplier to x4, and 3) allowing a "double-barreled" option for pistols that can fire two shots before reloading for +100gp (each barrel must be reloaded separately).
I ran a campign in which there was a lot of traveling between alternate prime material planes. One of the characters got his hands on a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol (I used the firearms rules from Call of Cthulhu d20), and it turned out not to be particularly unbalanced, even when he took Point-Blank Shot and Rapid Shot as feats. Because we had some fun:
* On high-tech worlds, his gun worked normally.
* On slightly lower-tech worlds, he found that for some reason he had to cock the pistol manually for each shot: it wouldn't fire at the pull of the trigger without jamming.
* In standard fantasy worlds, it was prone to misfiring.
* On lower-tech worlds, it didn't function at all.
Player frustration was kept at bay because when the pistol wasn't working well, his magic sword was, and as the magic sword lost its enhancement value on the higher-tech worlds, the pistol would work that much better.
This is all highly unrealistic, but it added endless amusement when we starting extrapolating possible effects on mixed tech-level worlds. And it spurred a great quest to find a technomancer wizard who could enhance the pistol so it would work on low-tech worlds.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
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Come on Fatespinner no Iron Kingdoms input?
Fizz
I didn't see this thread until now!
Personally, I think the IK firearms rules are balanced just fine. They make firearms pack a lot of punch (which they should) but they aren't so vastly overpowering as to make other weapons obsolete.
I think that giving firearms the 19-20/x3 critical range is what really makes them stand out. A gunshot might not do anything more severe than most arrows if it punches through a muscle or skin, but if a high-velocity bullet strikes a vital organ or a bone... ye gods! The trauma inflicted is substantial. Since bullets have a tendency to punch all the way through a target (as opposed to arrows which simply stick in), the threat range is increased. A shot with a bow that would have lodged in the chest becomes a critical shot through the heart when fired from a gun.
In short, yes, I think the IK gun rules are balanced just fine for normal fantasy use. I think that the fact that IK gunpowder is magical in nature (and can thusly be suppressed or negated by dispel magic and antimagic field) also serves as a balancing factor.
Personally, I think the IK firearms rules are balanced just fine. They make firearms pack a lot of punch (which they should) but they aren't so vastly overpowering as to make other weapons obsolete.
Well said!
I'm currently running the updated Witchfire Trilogy for a group and two of the characters are aiming for the Rifleman PrC, while another is planning on multi-classing to gunmage, so the firearms rules are used a lot. The players have all figured out rather quickly that while the guns make a great opening volley, they've only got one (maybe two shots if they're shooting at thralls from a distance) before they have to drop their guns and pull out their maces and swords. So while the guns pack a punch in IK (which they should) there is nothing unbalancing, at least when using the material in the Character Guide. (However some of the new fire arms from the No Quarter magazines may make the game a little unbalanced).
They have some basic rules for firearms available for download here.
Keeping in mind that I still only play 2E, not 3x, the only way I've ever allowed or seen firearms in a "fantasy" game was when Gnomes (inventors and mechanics) occasionally "invented" one and needed an adventure group to escort them out to help test the beastie. The problems are predictable but still entertaining.
Other than that, I leave them out of the mix. Game balance may or may not suffer; that's usually a matter of how well the DM handles the rules and such. I always have the most problem with players taking up too much time comparing notes on guns of all sorts, and sometimes taking entire game sesisons arguing the merits of various types of firearms from Saturday Nights Special purse pistols to 16" naval artillery. Very boring, very time consuming and not matter how harsh I treat their characters in game as punishment for it, the players never get the hint...ergo, no guns.
I personally don't disagree with Lawgiver. In fact the only reason I allow fire arms in the Iron Kingdoms game is because of the setting itself. Fire arms are not common place, and typically only characters with a mercenary or military backgrounds are going to have relatively easy access. Plus there's the cost of the bullet's and upkeep on the guns themselves.
Though I've yet to have the players comparing notes on guns. This is probably due to the fact that the Iron Kingdoms has a limited amount of fire arm types, and most are hard to get a hold of, not much to compare or talk about.
Any other setting, I would never allow fire arms.
I've been reading a few threads about guns recently, and I thought I'd have a go at statting up some of my own for an island based homebrew I'm working on. Firearms aren't widely available and are definitely not available to island tribes, mainly used by the explorers, pirates and settlers. As many people have mentioned here, the intent is a shot from a firearm or two at the start of combat, then charging in with a cutlass.
I've made firearms simple weapons because I like the idea that anyone could be dangerous with them. The way I balance this is that it is difficult to clean and reload the weapons properly, and there is a misfire chance. This is all still in the draft stage and has had no playtesting. Some things will probably change, and I've only just increased the crit range from x3 to 19-20/x3 today. I've never played IK or any other games with guns in them, and have only recently started looking at the rules from various products.
I'd appreciate any feedback, and feel free to use these rules if they suit you and your group.
GRINDOR'S GUNS
One-Handed Simple Ranged Weapons
Pistol: 250gp, 2d6 piercing, crit 19-20/x3, range 50 ft., weight 2 lb.
Two-Handed Simple Ranged Weapons
Musket: 500gp, 2d8 piercing, crit 19-20/x3, range 150 ft., weight 7 lb.
Firearms are relatively simple weapons to aim and fire, but require training and expertise to properly clean and maintain. Even the highly trained are not immune to the perils of using firearms.
After firing a shot, a firearm should be cleaned before it is reloaded. It takes two full-round actions to clean a firearm, and another full-round action to load it. Cleaning or loading a firearm provokes attacks of opportunity. Normally, this would mean that it takes three full-rounds, provoking attacks of opportunity each round to correctly reload a firearm. However, the cleaning stage can be skipped, but it is not advisable to do so.
Each time a firearm is fired without first cleaning it, there is a cumulative 20% chance of a misfire. Cleaning for only one full-round provides no benefit, although, by taking the Firearms Proficiency feat, you reduce the cleaning time for firearms by one full-round, and the cumulative chance of a misfire decreases to 10%. The Improved Firearm Proficiency feat speeds cleaning and loading further.
Even so, most people who use firearms begin a fight by drawing and firing a loaded pistol or two, then dropping their firearms, drawing a melee weapon and entering the fray, only picking up their firearms and cleaning them properly after the fight is over.
Misfiring
When a misfire occurs, the user of the firearm rolls attack and damage as normal, but only takes the result of the attack roll into account if it is a critical hit. The user rolls damage as normal and adjusts accordingly if a critical hit is scored. Roll d% on Table: Firearm Misfires to see what happens to the firearm that misfired. If a critical miss is rolled while using a firearm, the user should also roll on the misfire table. If the result is a permanent misfire chance, this is in addition to the misfire chance for not cleaning the firearm and cannot be reduced, not matter how skilled the user.
Table: Firearm Misfires
d% ........ Result
1-20 ...... The firearm is irreparably destroyed.
21-50 .... The firearm suffers a permanent 50% misfire chance.
51-99 .... The firearm suffers a permanent 10% misfire chance.
100 ....... The firearm is completely unaffected.
FIREARM FEATS
FIREARM PROFICIENCY [GENERAL]
You are trained in the use and maintenance of firearms.
Benefit: For you, the cleaning time for firearms is one full-round action and the cumulative chance of a misfire is 10%.
Normal: Without this feat, the cleaning time for firearms is two full-round actions and the cumulative chance of a misfire is 20%.
Special: A fighter may select Firearm Proficiency as one of his fighter bonus feats.
IMPROVED FIREARM PROFICIENCY [GENERAL]
You have perfected the art of cleaning and reloading firearms.
Prerequisites: Firearm Proficiency, base attack bonus +4
Benefit: You can clean and reload a firearm as a single full-round action.
Normal: Without this feat, the cleaning time for firearms is two full-round actions and the loading time is one full-round action.
Special: A fighter may select Improved Firearm Proficiency as one of his fighter bonus feats.
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What would be the best why to add guns into D&D? Nothing to extreme, I thought about using Iron Kingdom’s gun system. Would this work or would the damage out put be too high? Would loading time and loading checks balance out the damage out put? I don’t want guns to edge out bladed weapons or even bows that’s why I’m think the IK’s system might work.
Fizz
When you’re talking about guns you have to consider the technology available and its effect on the game if you’re looking for magical variant iron kingdoms is a good choice or if you’re looking for a good example of progression of guns try knuckle duster D 20 wild West supplement put out by dog house press, these are the same folks are put out Sidewinder which gives a good realistic representation of firearms. What makes knuckle duster effective is the fact that gives you three versions of load times for the weapons themselves and their effect they have the default game time the fantasy time and finally the real time it takes to reload those weapons which is immeasurably helpful. There’s also aces and eights shattered frontiers another D 20 game that was killed by yanking of the open license.
My personal experience is that firearms do not disrupt game balance - provided they are available to both players and enemies. The damage output is not the biggest issue, it is the frequency and reliability with which they put out damage.
Since you are going with a system where guns need to be cleaned and reloaded, taking a lot of time, they are tactically one-use items that are dangerous to use to boot. The ability to potentially deal slightly more damage than a medieval weapon on the first round is absolutely negligeble except at low levels - where the blowing-up-in-your-face problem is much more relevant too. At higher levels, damage output and other combat abilities depend much more on the character than the weapon itself.
I run a game where characters have every type of modern and somewhat futuristic gun available to them (and the enemy), and despite being far more powerful than the guns you are considering using, these weapons are completely overshadowed by the characters' abilities. (The characters are level 12, and not at all minmaxed.)
I am inclined to say "don't worry about it", perhaps even that firearms so primitive are in fact not worth the bother. But, if flavor is what you're going for, then that isn't a problem either. The only concern (other than level 1 characters one-shotting eachother, but that can happen with existing weapons too) is when you use massive damage rules and the guns put out just enough damage to consistently require fortitude saves.