Ultimate Combat 2E Firearms rules speculation thread!

[Moppy]

Claxon wrote:

Which is something I wish Starfinder did, even if it was just narratively. Instead of having differing version of the same weapon at different levels, just have it be one weapon. You spend money either tweaking it yourself or paying someone else to do it to increase the damage (and maybe otherwise customize it).

I think having one item and increasing it makes a lot of sense with a magic item that has a destiny and that can grow with you.

For tech items, I feel makes more sense to get the new model each time, and sometimes you can't upgrade the old one beyond a certain level due to "annoying engineering limitations" so it's actually cheaper to start again.

Of course Starfinder has both.

[Squiggit]

Weapon customization feels like something that should have been in Starfinder, yeah. Instead with the way weapons are priced, they feel less customizable than ever. Different forum though.

FWIW, I agree that misfires aren't a particularly fun or interesting mechanic. Having a random chance to lose actions or potentially be forced out of combat just isn't something that strikes me as really compelling game design and you'd need to compensate for that somewhere else in the weapon's kit, which sounds messy too.

Also, while Pathfinder includes muskets, which often had serious issues, the game also has more advanced firearms that are much more reliable and don't really justify having frequent misfires as a baked in mechanic.

It just doesn't make much sense to me, both from a "is this fun for players" perspective and a "does it make sense to design all these new mechanics for a subset of a subset" perspective.

Though I also feel the same about partially penetrating AC or ignoring shields. It sounds like a lot of unnecessary juggling of bonuses in the exact way PF2 has tried to avoid. Better to just define some unique traits but keep them generally within the same framework as other weapons.

[Sauce987654321]

I don't want firearms to be mess with tons of bookkeeping or anything, so I wanted to capture that "gun feel" in the most simple way. I don't think they'll just reskin crossbows or something and call it a day, because what would the point be in giving guns an entire section of their own, then?

I wanted guns to ignore the shield raise action, because I thought it seems weird that enemies can use shield block and ignore a lot of the damage like any other weapon. Though I can easily see justification to not have this, since it works just fine against, for example, a Purple Worm spitting out huge sized boulders at you.

If even having a simple +1 or +2 to attack rolls seems odd, what if it instead were a bonus that adds to your roll for the purposes of scoring a crit? Like if you roll a 23 vs AC 15, the extra +2 would then allow it to score a crit. Maybe that's rather powerful for a weapon to have deadly/fatal or maybe it really isn't.

Opinions?

[Moppy]

I just noticed the phase arrow in the APG Eldritch Archer has armor penetration: a flat +4 to his vs a target wearing armor, and ignores circumstance bonus from shields. It's a 16th level feat, however.

[Sauce987654321]

Moppy wrote:

I just noticed the phase arrow in the APG Eldritch Archer has armor penetration: a flat +4 to his vs a target wearing armor, and ignores circumstance bonus from shields. It's a 16th level feat, however.

I didn't notice that was already a thing, actually. Then I'm guessing that's what firearms will look like, preferably with a lower bonus like +2 max.

[CrimsonKnight]

Sauce987654321 wrote:

Moppy wrote:

I just noticed the phase arrow in the APG Eldritch Archer has armor penetration: a flat +4 to his vs a target wearing armor, and ignores circumstance bonus from shields. It's a 16th level feat, however.

I didn't notice that was already a thing, actually. Then I'm guessing that's what firearms will look like, preferably with a lower bonus like +2 max.

a plus to hit could just be seen as being more accurate.

Leather armor +1 to AC so it gives a penalty to its user

[Nitro~Nina]

Honestly this whole "bullets ignore armour" thing sounds like propaganda spread by Alkenstar. In fact, part of me hopes that's the narrative reference in the new class. :P

I do like the sound of partial armour penetration though. It's more accurate to how they were back in the day. I also hope that they're default Martial but Uncommon, instead of Advanced, because the whole problem with guns is that it's not very hard for an army to get good at using them, at least not in comparison to something as resource-intensive as archery.

[Temperans]

I can definitely see firearms as martial but uncommon.

[Salamileg]

I honestly would love to see simple, martial, and advanced firearms.

[Moppy]

Simple firearms sounds like modern? If you're loading powder and shot separately that's the sort of thing that martial training represents. Maybe some lasers from Numeria might be simple?