Wouldn't it be better for the general gun rules to let the guns ignore ridiculously (20-40) much of the armor/natural armor and shield bonuses of their targets but not all.
My motivation is not balance issues,(I would shot balance repeateadly in the head at any given opportunity at my games as I think it plain wrong to enforce it),but logical ones.
It's logical that a gun should have nontouch armor class penetration like 20 or so (varying with the types of the guns and situations like double for two handed, half for light and +4 per +1 magical bonus and -2 per range increment above first)but if it flat out ignores the nontouch armor class a creature with 100 NA shouldn't get hit as easily as the same with 10 NA.
Layer after layer after layer of plating should stop a speeding bullet eventually or at least they should slow it down.Also there is no reason the bullet bullet shouldn't penetrate after the first range increment,it should just less.
It is relatively easy to implement this logic to firearms (it can be done in basically three lines)and the ammount of simulation it adds makes it worthwhile.
Can it be made official?Even as an optional rule.I think that after a time most of the people who implement guns will be using it.
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Are you sure your not thinking of hardness instead of natural armour?
Most things don't even have 40 natural armour to begin with so any kind of special ruling like that doesn't come into play. Heck, the Tarrasque only has 35, which is the most I could find at a quick glance. I don't think that most creatures with more then 20 points of natural armour are going to care that much that you hit them given the other abilities and huge pile of hit points they tend to have.
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It's logical that a gun should have nontouch armor class penetration like 20 or so (varying with the types of the guns and situations like double for two handed, half for light and +4 per +1 magical bonus and -2 per range increment above first)but if it flat out ignores the nontouch armor class a creature with 100 NA shouldn't get hit as easily as the same with 10 NA.
Layer after layer after layer of plating should stop a speeding bullet eventually or at least they should slow it down.Also there is no reason the bullet bullet shouldn't penetrate after the first range increment,it should just less.
It is relatively easy to implement this logic to firearms (it can be done in basically three lines)and the ammount of simulation it adds makes it worthwhile.
Can it be made official?Even as an optional rule.I think that after a time most of the people who implement guns will be using it.
I agree. 1pt of shield/armor penetration per Gunslinger level would sound about right, IMO. Basically, it scales up as you go higher in level, as the AC of monsters scale up.
Natural armor is complicated: if the monster is made of metal, like an iron golem, they should retain it, otherwise it's ok.
Ok, I didn't have a pickle but I had a raw lemon, so let's do this..........
Let's say:
1pt of shield/armor/natural per gunslinger level for all creatures except undead and constructs, in which case it's 1pt of shield/armor per gunslinger level; I would also extend this against objects for 1pt of hardness per gunslinger level. This is reduced by 2 pts for each increment above the 1st, same amount as attack roll penalties.
This way you don't end up with hordes of 1st level commoners/peasants slaying Great Wyrm Gold Dragons... :P
First I am sure I am not thinking hardness but natural armor.
The point is that the designers have obviously thought that guns can penetrate through almost anything.
A fullplate armor gives a +9 to AC and a tower shield gives a +4.With a +3 bonus (a medium to high bonus) each the collective bonus to AC would be 19.I just chose 20 as the base in order to express the great penetration but in a more realistic example base penetration 10 would be enough.Although this would mean that the gunslinger wouldn't do what he was intended to do (penetrate everything).
To make the penetration of weapons a level based ability and not let them have penetration themselves is plain wrong both logically and from the intention perspective.