I already posed question this to my Conquest of the Universe Kickstarter backers. I'm putting the final touches on the big playtest packet, and I just haven't been able to decide which way to go on beam weapons and firearms. The way Ultimate Combat handles firearms is a little quirky and might not fit a space opera milieu, and the Technology Guide treats them as treasure, more like magic items. So I'm considering carefully how this should be handled in a high-tech setting. Here are the three general categories of solutions I am looking at:
1. Treat blasters and firearms like any other weapons. Try to to keep AC bonuses tamped down. Ignore the UC version of firearms, the Technology Guide, and everything else.
Pros: Simple. No re-balancing of core options required. Might not fit genre conventions, since armor is not all that common in space opera.
Cons: Slightly weird in some corner cases, like blaster rifles versus leather armor.
2. Use the Technology guide versions. Blasters are touch attacks, like magic wands. Introduce options to boost AC situationally.
Pros: Plug-and-play for using other technological items in your CotU games, and the reverse.
Cons: Weird in other areas, like armor being almost useless against the primary weapons. Raises questions I don't want to have to address about beam blades. Serious re-balancing issues, as those weapons were balanced as treasure, not as basic sidearms for low-level characters.
3. Adapt the Anachronistic Adventurers variant. Firearms and beam weapons get to roll critical confirmations against touch AC, making them deadly, but not able to completely ignore armor.
Pros: I've always liked this approach to dealing with Pathfinder's quirks.
Cons: Now that UC and the Technology guide are out, and Owen is (ahem) working for Paizo, this is no longer a widely used approach.
Thoughts?
Personally I'd say to use the Technology Guide with a splatter of option #1.
As far as I've seen the Technology Guide pretty well received and available for free online so it has the advantage of familiarity and conformity so no need to jump into that territory.
That said, since the technological items are basically a new form of wondrous items and technologically a little more hard scifi than pulp it wouldn't be too far-fetched if weaker versions were available as basic weapons that work differently and are reasonable to have at level 1.
If armor being useless against energy weapons is a problem then what about some sort of deflection armor being the more common armor in such situations? I would imagine that if lasers became the norm the nature of armor would change as well.
Long story short; I think new armor similar to scatterlight armor and weaker lvl 1 energy weapons would do the trick.
If armor being useless against energy weapons is a problem then what about some sort of deflection armor being the more common armor in such situations? I would imagine that if lasers became the norm the nature of armor would change as well.
That's fairly standard in the pulp tradition as well. It's actually easy enough to handle, simply by creating another +N armor enhancement that says "this armor bonus granted by this item applies to touch AC as well," similar to that of ghost touch -- in fact, I'd probably just add it as a rider to ghost touch armor, saying that ghosts can't penetrate force fields either. (Cf. mage armor.)
That's fairly standard in the pulp tradition as well. It's actually easy enough to handle, simply by creating another +N armor enhancement that says "this armor bonus granted by this item applies to touch AC as well," similar to that of ghost touch -- in fact, I'd probably just add it as a rider to ghost touch armor, saying that ghosts can't penetrate force fields either. (Cf. mage armor.)
If armor being useless against energy weapons is a problem then what about some sort of deflection armor being the more common armor in such situations? I would imagine that if lasers became the norm the nature of armor would change as well.
Or just a new kind of metal or armor. In the Technology Guide the scatterlight armor does this. I mention this because I really would be sad if laser shielding was exclusively a magic property.
Alternatively you could have some kind of deflector plating to armor that allows for laser DR or something.
I had a long post but the site ate it so here's the long->short of it;
I'm not scared of touch AC weapons if there are reasonable defenses against it. I say this because I already deal with guns where the gunslinger doesn't track ammo and ammo costs and it never was a huge problem. Even if guns were everywhere I'd much rather build around that assumption than demand a new gun system so that I can bring a knife to a gun fight. If there are laser beams and light sabers everywhere and I'm a strength melee build I'm going to carry a hard light shield or wear scatterlight armor or an insuit or get some deflectors on my armor (I'm sure there are other anti-energy weapon items in the Technology Guide but I cant think of any off the top of my head). I'm not going to go into melee when people are shooting laserbeams and wonder why my full plate isn't working. TL;DR: I think baseline armor or mundane armor properties that are reasonable to get that defends against energy weapons is the best option. YMMV of course.
I do however hope that there are some new technological melee weapons that add my strength bonus to damage because I'd really hate for a technological game to turn into 'go Dex or go home'.
I also wanted to add that in a space opera campaign, my assumption was that I would reduce Technology Guide items to 10% of their original cost as per the 'guns everywhere' rule in Ultimate Combat. I assumed this because they are priced and treated as wonderous items/magical items because they are rare on Golarion. I also assume that recharging is just a matter of plugging your gun into a wall at the inn and you can get batteries at your local Abadar-Mart. I dont' expect for Conquest of the Universe to conform to that expectation but I did want to note it in case that was relevant.
It will be "guns everywhere."
If I go with the TG version, one idea I had was to apply a quality such as ballistic (+1) or dispersal (+2) to suitable armors.
Personally I would say to go with the AA rule set. Broken Earth used similar rules and I think it helps a lot in games where firearms aren't the newest thing on the block.
I presume that ballistic applies the AC as touch AC against firearms and dispersal is the same but against energy weapons? Seems reasonable assuming these are nonmagical properties.
I presume that ballistic applies the AC as touch AC against firearms and dispersal is the same but against energy weapons? Seems reasonable assuming these are nonmagical properties.
That was my thinking. The baseline would be about +1 for light armors, +2 for medium, +3 for heavy, with some variation according to the armor's purpose. And few armors would be equally effective against firearms or energy weapons.
Broken Earth, eh? I need to check that out.