So, I'm browsing through Rasputin Must Die, and I come to the modern weapons chart. And I think, "Wow! How crazy would it be to run a session in a WW1-esque fantasy setting where the PCs are soldiers fighting in a massive regional conflict?".
Magic is still there, elves are still there, dragons are still there...but there's also tanks, machine-guns, trenches, mustard gas and all the havoc of modern war.
How viable would this be as a concept? I brought it up to some friends, and one of them immediately pointed out how most AC would be useless (guns target touch AC) and how wizards would end up getting "hosed" due to lack of ability to defend themselves, and that people would favor rogues and rangers (and gunslingers, I'd imagine). I'm thinking of starting everyone at 10th level, giving everyone exotic weapon proficiency (firearms) and possibly houseruling that Mage Armor counts as AC against bullets (wouldn't be stretch to make all Deflection AC work against guns. Forcefields block bullets all the time in fiction).
How would having a guns-dominant setting effect the mechanics of the game? In the real world, the invention of firearms reshaped the battlefield and rendered many old tactics of war useless. It might end up doing the same in this campaign...
EDIT: I would very much appreciate it if people would abstain from recommending different games. I'm quite committed to running this in PF.
Unless you want the party and enemies playing in Civil War Style Volley lines, you need to pay a lot of attention to cover rules and landscape. Part of the reason why WWI went so horribly is because everyone was using 18th century tactics with early 20th century weaponry. These guns are modern, so they hit touch AC throughout all their ranged increments. So no brave charges of glory, since you might be shot a dozen times by each opponent by the time you get there.
So you need to give the parties ways of finding cover to boost their AC and raise those miss chances. Of course, they will also find their own ways of helping the situation (Obscuring Mist for example), but you will need to construct battlefields for the players. This can range from urban environments with walls, sturdy oak tables, and support beams to forests with threes, ridges, and maybe some old ruined stone pillars.
Of course, all this means that melee classes might feel left out. Adding bayonets that do not plug up the barrels might help (and getting str 16, dex 16 con 14 is not too hard on a 20 point buy, so it is easy to mix the styles together).
Oddly, monks might have it best out of anyone, as far as defenses go. Their wisdom goes to touch AC, and they have fairly easy access to catch arrows (yes...that obviously raises questions, but the rules are generic enough to count for bullets)
Also, you will have to decide very carefully on how to pick enemies. A single, large bruiser would be taken out fairly quickly, since they can hardly hide and most high CR creatures rely upon armor and natural armor. So instead, you need lots of medium mooks to make a challenge.
Thank you, this is very valuable advice.
I'm planning for the first encounter to be a charge across no man's land, but the enemies will concentrate fire on the PC's fellow troops (who are represented by the "troop" subtype stat-blocks from RMD, so are the enemies) and kill off a lot of them to show how devastating modern weapons can get.
Hmmm... nice, cinematic experience there. Maybe add some more classical fantasy elements like a knight mounted on a dragon, simply to show how ineffective it is by having the enemies focusing fire on it.
Add in a commanding officer to tell them "hey, don't get involved with that cutscene. You'll be massacred. Come over here where the GM put the CR appropriate fight". Have this commanding officer take a bullet and say some poignant last words in a character's arms, after which the PC will raise his fists to the heavens screaming "NOOOOOOO!"
Anyway, as long as you keep them away from the trouble, you can clean up leftovers of your cutscene battle by having some wizard panicking and throwing the equivalent of a mustard gas spell. But this is all me being silly now, isn't it?
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I think this could work out just fine. The rules are robust enough that they should support a wide variety of play stiles.
This is kind of making me want to play a Call of Cthulhu style game set in the trenches of WWI. I'd tell them there's no magic then, after some horrors of war, seep that dark magic into the mix...
Hey, guys. I ended up running this on New Years Eve, and the multiclass Magus 4/Zen Archer 6 massacred the entire enemy trench by herself.
Its not the holidays without a massacre.