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Attilargh
2009-06-09, 02:11 PM
As you might have noticed if you frequent the Gaming forum, I'm not particularly fond o (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113879)f the gun rules of Iron Kingdoms. So, after a bit of procrastinating, I fixed them.

This is not an effort to make any sort of realistic gun rules. As I said in the other thread, I probably wouldn't know realism if it shot me in the knee. I'm just trying to make firearms that are a reasonable alternative to melee, or at least not inferior to everything.

Now, brave Homebrewers in the Playground, go forth and tell me why my effort will never work! :smalltongue:


Firearms

Pistols and longarms
Firearms are divided into two categories based on their size:

Pistols
A pistol is typically a one-handed firearm less than two feet in length, but exceptions exist. Reloading a single-shot pistol is a swift action that provokes attacks of opportunity.

Longarms
A longarm is a firearm longer than two feet, and typically are built with a stock. Rifles are two-handed weapons, but can be fired one-handed at a -4 penalty to the attack roll. Reloading a single-shot rifle is a move action that provokes attacks of opportunity.

Table 1: New Simple Weapons
{table=head]Weapon|Cost|Dmg (M)|Critical|Range Increment|Weight|Type
Ranged Weapons
Musket|100 gp|1d8|x3|100 ft.|10 lb.|Piercing
Pistol, musket|50 gp|1d6|x3|30 ft.|4 lb.|Piercing[/table]

Table 2: New Martial Weapons
{table=head]Weapon|Cost|Dmg (M)|Critical|Range Increment|Weight|Type
Ranged Weapons|||||
Blunderbuss|60 gp|1d12|x3|30 ft.|12 lb.|Bludgeoning and piercing
Carbine, military|175 gp|2d6|19-20/x3|100 ft.|8 lb.|Piercing
Clockwerk Arms pepperbox|125 gp|1d6|19-20/x3|40 ft.|6 lb.|Piercing
Pistol, military|100 gp|1d10|19-20/x3|70 ft.|4 lb.|Piercing
Pistol, small|75 gp|2d4|19-20/x3|40 ft.|3 lb.|Piercing
Radcliffe quad-iron pistol|110 gp|1d12|19-20/x3|20 ft.|5 lb.|Piercing
Radcliffe twoshot rifle|220 gp|1d8|19-20/x3|120 ft.|8 lb.|Piercing
Rifle, long|150 gp|1d10|19-20/x3|140 ft.|10 lb.|Piercing
Rifle, military|200 gp|2d6|19-20/x3|160 ft.|12 lb.|Piercing
Rynnish holdout pistol|60 gp|1d6|19-20/x3|20 ft.|2 lb.|Piercing
Rynnish walking stick|110 gp|1d6|19-20/x3|20 ft.|3 lb.|Piercing
Vanar liberator|400 gp|2d8|19-20/x3|190 ft.|16 lb.|Piercing
[/table]

Blunderbuss: The blunderbuss is a large-caliber firearm designed to shoot a barrage of shot and shrapnel. Instead of proper shot, the blunderbuss may be loaded with scavenged scrap instead. This halves the price of ammunition, but if a natural 1 is rolled on an attack roll, the blunderbuss will misfire and be destroyed, dealing 1d6 damage to the wielder. Reloading a blunderbuss is a move action that provokes attacks of opportunity. Ammunition cost: 1 gp per 5 shots.

Carbine, military: A military carbine is a cut-down version of the military rifle, usually issued to mounted troops. A military carbine uses the same ammunition as a military rifle.

Clockwerk Arms pepperbox: A four-barreled pistol that uses a clockwork mechanism to rotate a new barrel to the firing position after the previous has been fired. The pepperbox can be fired four times before reloading, but unlike other pistols, reloading the pepperbox is a full-round action that provokes attacks of opportunity.

Musket: An early precursor to the modern rifles, a musket is a muzzleloading long gun with an unrifled barrel. A musket uses the same ammunition as a long rifle. Unlike breechloading firearms, reloading a musket is a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity.

Pistol, military: A heavy, powerful pistol commonly issued to military officers. Ammunition cost: 2 gp per 5 shots.

Pistol, musket: A one-handed version of the musket. The musket pistol uses the same ammunition as the small pistol.

Pistol, small: Due to its handy size and relatively low price, the small pistol is a popular choice for self-defense. A small pistol counts as a light weapon for the purposes of two-weapon fighting. Ammunition cost: 1 gp per 5 shots.

Radcliffe quad-iron pistol: The quad-iron is a heavy, four-barreled pistol that fires all four barrels at once. The damage listed on Table 1 is the total damage of all four barrels. Unlike other pistols, reloading the quad-iron is a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity. Ammunition cost: 5 gp per 5 shots.

Radcliffe twoshot rifle: A peculiar rifle with two charges in a single barrel. One bullet is fired per attack. It is possible to load both shots into the rifle as a standard action that provokes attacks of opportunity. The twoshot rifle uses the same ammunition as the long rifle.

Rifle, long: A typical rifle used throughout the Iron Kingdoms. Ammunition cost: 2 gp per 5 shots.

Rifle, military: A powerful, rugged rifle developed to reliably kill senemy soldiers dead. Ammunition cost: 3 gp per 5 shots.

Rynnish holdout pistol: A very small pistol designed to be easily concealed. A Rynnish holdout pistol counts as a light weapon for the purposes of two-weapon fighting. Ammunition cost: 1 gp per ten shots.

Rynnish walking stick: A pistol disguised as a walking stick. Due to its length, this gun requires two hands to be aimed effectively. However, a Rynnish walking stick can be fired one-handed at a -2 penalty to the attack roll. Recognizing a Rynnish walking stick from a normal cane requires a DC 18 Spot check. The Rynnish walking stick uses the same ammunition as the Rynnish holdout pistol.

Vanar Liberator: Obviously Khadoran in design, this is the heaviest, deadliest and outright scariest rifle available in the Iron Kingdoms. Ammunition cost: 6 gp per 5 shots.


New Feats:

Speedloader [General]
Choose one type of firearm. You can reload this firearm exceptionally fast.
Prerequisites: Weapon Proficiency with selected firearm, Dex 15
Benefits: The action required to reload the weapon changes: A full-round action becomes a standard action, a standard action becomes a move action, a move action becomes a swift action and a swift action becomes a free action.
Normal: A character without this feat requires the action listed in the weapon description to reload the weapon.
Special: You can gain Speedloader multiple times. Its effects stack.

A fighter may select Speedloader as one of his fighter bonus feats.

Cieyrin
2009-06-10, 10:44 AM
Alrighties, my thoughts as a fellow lover of the Iron Kingdoms, and particularly of their gun rules, is I think the weapons reload a little too fast. I mean, looking at the hand crossbow, it takes a move action to reload, which is fairly equivalent to pistols. The same for longarms, which are akin to heavy (or great crossbows, in the case of the liberator :smallbiggrin:) in my mind, which take a full round action to reload. I see you've also implemented a gun version of Rapid Reload (even including the non-replacement of the fighter bonus feat section, btw), which I usually allowed for guns, anyways, as seriously, why should it be so uncommon an ability that you can only get it by being level 6 in pistoleer or rifleman? It should take some training to learn to shoot and reload as fast as a bow but not necessarily be that specialized.

Since you haven't mentioned it, are we still treating all small arms as exotic and requiring Exotic Weapon Proficiency(small arms) (getting all small arms proficient with one feat, as per the Character Guide) or are we making them Martial Weapons? My understanding of the fluff of the Iron Kingdoms is that, due to the expense and expertise required to make guns, let alone producing them in any great number to outfit the Khadorean and Cygnaran armies, kinda leaves them a bit expensive and uncommon outside of the hands of the military and (naturally) adventurers, hence Exotic weapons (which, if i remember correctly, are any weapons that need special training to use, so including guns).

On other mechanics, I'm wondering a bit about the change of some of the damage dice, as they seem to have all been pulled back from the Character Guide. I'm glad to see you kept the crit range (as that's what really draws me to Iron Kingdoms guns, that beautiful 19-20/x3 crit range), but I don't know about changing some of the damage dice. For the specialty weapons, it was kinda silly to apply bonuses and penalties instead of changing the dice but for others i don't necessarily see that point of changing the damage. For instance, why change the blunderbuss and quad-iron damage from 4d4 to 1d12? You changed the damage from reliably doing around 8-12 damage to 6-7, which is kinda the point of having multiple shots going off at the same time. That can be said of the majority of the rest that went down from multiple dice to a single die, the reliability of multiple damage dice over the variability of a single die. The musket is basically the weapon of choice of the backwoods bum, his shotgun, more or less. It's classic to see him either miss horribly (a roll of 1-2 on a d12) or do some massive damage (10-12 on that d12). Dropping it back to d8 x3 makes it little better than a slow firing longbow and who wants one of those, other than the novelty of having a gun instead of a crossbow?

Idk, in general i think the guns were better as they were damage-wise, except for the specialty weapons. The pepperbox dealing a d6 and the revolving rifle (unmentioned, i notice) doing 1d10 are pretty good. The liberator and the visloski rifle (also unmentioned for whatever reason) i think should be doing 3d6 and 3d4, respectively.

Them's my 2 coppers. Take as you will.

Attilargh
2009-06-10, 12:18 PM
Alrighties, my thoughts as a fellow lover of the Iron Kingdoms, and particularly of their gun rules, is I think the weapons reload a little too fast. I mean, looking at the hand crossbow, it takes a move action to reload, which is fairly equivalent to pistols. The same for longarms, which are akin to heavy (or great crossbows, in the case of the liberator :smallbiggrin:) in my mind, which take a full round action to reload.
What I think you're forgetting is that you have to expend considerable effort to reload a crossbow. Pretty much the only way to create a respectable hand crossbow is to make the bow from steel, and I think you agree that it should be easier to reload a breechloading firearm than to arm that kind of a weapon.

Also, I'm just biased against reload times like that. If a gunslinging character has to spend a round reloading, he's less useful than a wizard out of spells half of the battle. And to be brutally honest, he's not that useful while he's shooting, either. The guns as written deal pretty poor damage compared to two-handed warriors, and if you take the reloading times into account, they're dealing less damage per battle than a humble bowman. And to add insult to injury, neither melee or archery requires as much money or as many skill points as gunslinging. :smallannoyed:

Speaking of skills, I've ditched both the Craft check to reload and the Concentration check to keep your cool while doing so. I found them pointlessly fiddly and unfair; A Wizard doesn't need any skill checks to read a scroll unless he gets shot while doing it.


(even including the non-replacement of the fighter bonus feat section, btw)
Oops! Caught me there. :smallredface:


Since you haven't mentioned it, are we still treating all small arms as exotic and requiring Exotic Weapon Proficiency(small arms) (getting all small arms proficient with one feat, as per the Character Guide) or are we making them Martial Weapons? My understanding of the fluff of the Iron Kingdoms is that, due to the expense and expertise required to make guns, let alone producing them in any great number to outfit the Khadorean and Cygnaran armies, kinda leaves them a bit expensive and uncommon outside of the hands of the military and (naturally) adventurers, hence Exotic weapons (which, if i remember correctly, are any weapons that need special training to use, so including guns).
Martial, as it says on the table. The basic mechanism of the gun is just so simple it really doesn't deserve the Exotic label, and looking at almost all the art in my IK, Warmachine and Hordes rulebooks I just can't agree they're rare, either. I mean, the World Guide's cover alone depicts four people carrying pistols, and random backwood Farrows seem proficient enough with their guns to make it into Hordes: Primal.


I'm glad to see you kept the crit range (as that's what really draws me to Iron Kingdoms guns, that beautiful 19-20/x3 crit range), but I don't know about changing some of the damage dice.
Mostly they were brought down a tad because the guns are no longer being shot every other turn. Considering how melee people get Str to damage and Power Attack, I probably took it too far - it probably won't break anything too bad to use the old values.


For instance, why change the blunderbuss and quad-iron damage from 4d4 to 1d12? You changed the damage from reliably doing around 8-12 damage to 6-7, which is kinda the point of having multiple shots going off at the same time.
A good point, although I must point out you shouldn't compare the damages like that. A by-the-book blunderbuss dealt about ten damage every four rounds (which is, I'm sad to say, kinda very bad), while my blunderbuss deals anything between 1 and 12 every round, averaging to 26 over four rounds.


That can be said of the majority of the rest that went down from multiple dice to a single die, the reliability of multiple damage dice over the variability of a single die.
In general, I wanted the really big hits to be more frequent. To use the blunderbuss as an example, the probability of getting max damage on a roll is now 8.33%, while it used to be as low as 0.39%. While it's true that a spread weapon like that should, by all logic, be more reliable, I personally find it much more fun for it to be a huge lead sneeze that can do anything from winging the opponent to blowing him across the room.

At other times, I just ran out of dice I could use, as I had made the Vanar Liberator deal 2d8 damage and really didn't want to either up it to 2d10 or use those damage bonuses that pretty much no other 3.5 weapon uses. And that's the story of how the long rifle got that 1d10. :smallredface:


Dropping it back to d8 x3 makes it little better than a slow firing longbow and who wants one of those, other than the novelty of having a gun instead of a crossbow?
Well, that's muskets for you: Slow, heavy and in the end, not all that efficient.

Finally, I dropped the revolving rifle because I find it a bit silly (Well fine, I'll do it. It's not like the twoshot rifle is any better. :smalltongue:), and the Vislovski I passed because it's pretty much just a heavy long rifle with no flavour text.

Finally, many thanks for reading and taking the time to post comments. I was afraid this post would fall into the obscurity of the second page soon. :smallsmile:

Ędit: O-kay, I think this post fills my smilie quota for the month. :smalleek:

Mike_G
2009-06-10, 06:50 PM
Speaking of skills, I've ditched both the Craft check to reload and the Concentration check to keep your cool while doing so. I found them pointlessly fiddly and unfair; A Wizard doesn't need any skill checks to read a scroll unless he gets shot while doing it.


Totally agree on that. Anything that doesn't provoke a concentration check to cast shouldn't provoke one to reload.




Well, that's muskets for you: Slow, heavy and in the end, not all that efficient.


I agree.

Flintlock muskets were less effective than a bow in the hands of a trained archer.

Wellington asked for archers to fight Napoleon, but by that late date, trained archers didn't exist. I think a company of the Black Prince's longbowmen would have shot the Old Guard flat.



Finally, I dropped the revolving rifle because I find it a bit silly


It existed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_revolving_rifle)

Attilargh
2009-06-11, 02:54 AM
Flintlock muskets were less effective than a bow in the hands of a trained archer.
Granted, the technology level of the Iron Kingdoms is more on the lines of caplock or needlelock firearms, even for the muskets. Also, the one thing a musket has going for it against bows is that it is much easier to learn. Which it isn't, as it stands.


It existed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colt_revolving_rifle)
No, you don't understand. The revolving rifle doesn't have a revolving chamber, it's a rifle-sized pepperbox. Kinda like this one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pepperbox_gun_tula.jpg), only three-barreled and presumably longer and bulkier. And even though there's an actual example right there, I still find it a bit silly.

Ravens_cry
2009-06-11, 03:21 AM
Maybe you should include these (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_gun). They were quiet, and provided a far faster firing rate then muskets, yet were contemporary.
Just an idea.

Cieyrin
2009-06-11, 11:26 AM
Hmm, I guess I can see your point about breachloading being faster than loading a crossbow but I just find it kinda awkward to have to spend a swift action to reload, as you're still limited to one shot per round, you just can run for your next bit of cover before taking a shot. It just feels like a weird distinction between a swift action and a free action reload, that's all.

As for the martial weapon bit, I'm apparently blind *adjusts specs a bit* -_-

For skills, dropping the concentration check is good my book. I think the Craft check should stay, though, just for both flavor and you have to know at least a little about guns to know that the powder is all set and you didn't ruin the packet when you were hurriedly shoving it in there to shoot that damn charging bear. It's a bit more complicated then shoving a quarrel into a slot and pulling the string back on your crossbow that takes a bit of technical understanding. You're not gonna ruin the crossbow or quarrel by hurrying, you could misfire with the gun and have the thing blow in your face, especially if the damn thing gets dirty. I should know, I've had it happen to me ~_~.

For the other damages on the guns, my only personal beef is with the specialty weapons that they went all 2nd edition w/ applying bonuses and penalties to the stock weapon. As you said, since you can't do Power Attack cheese with the guns, I agree the original damages were pretty good, even with reduced reloading times. Like I said the first time around, I think the reduction of the pepperbox from 2d4-2 to 1d6 makes perfect sense, as they both have a range of 1-6 damage. The same for the revolving rifle, reducing it from 2d6-2 to 1d10, again same damage range of 1-10. The same kind of logic can be applied more or less to the Visloski and Vanar, from 2d6+2 to 3d4 and 2d8+2 to 3d6, respectively, maintaining more or less the same damage ranges. Yes, it's not DMG damage standard but we're not doing size changes on the weapons (which I don't think would realistically work well, anyways, given the different method of firing guns have compared to melee and non-powder ranged weapons).

For the musket, I see your logic but I'd almost make it common place enough to make it a simple weapon, so you can have that commoner running around w/ his trusty musket. Probably involve maybe decreasing the cost to 75 gp, puting it just over the cost of a heavy crossbow.

For the revolving rifle, i kinda like it. It just fits, given it comes from Clockwork Arms. i think i'd rather have the Revolving Rifle than the Radcliffe Two-Shot, as hey, it looks cooler and i get that 3rd shot off before the reload, which I probably wouldn't bother with during a combat, given how long it takes, what with disengaging the clockwork to get at the barrels and reloading each one. That said, multi-barrel weapons like the revolving rifle, pepperbox, two-shot and quad-iron should probably take longer than the single barrel guns do, as I couldn't see even a character with Speedloader fully reloading a pepperbox in a single round AND firing it. That's beyond ridiculous.

On a final note, I notice it says at the end of Speedloader that it stacks. So you're saying I can take it multiple times per weapon? So 2 Speedloader (Vanar Liberator) for shooting that monstrosity at bow rate? Kinda ridiculous, if you ask me.

@Raven: We're not creating new weapons, we're modifying existing gun rules for the Iron Kingdoms, specifically from the Character Guide.

Them's my 2 coppers. Take as you will.

Attilargh
2009-06-11, 01:53 PM
For the musket, I see your logic but I'd almost make it common place enough to make it a simple weapon, so you can have that commoner running around w/ his trusty musket. Probably involve maybe decreasing the cost to 75 gp, puting it just over the cost of a heavy crossbow.
Soungs fair enough. Done!


That said, multi-barrel weapons like the revolving rifle, pepperbox, two-shot and quad-iron should probably take longer than the single barrel guns do, as I couldn't see even a character with Speedloader fully reloading a pepperbox in a single round AND firing it. That's beyond ridiculous.
Very good point, added exceptions to the multi-barrel guns.


On a final note, I notice it says at the end of Speedloader that it stacks. So you're saying I can take it multiple times per weapon? So 2 Speedloader (Vanar Liberator) for shooting that monstrosity at bow rate? Kinda ridiculous, if you ask me.
I have to be honest with you, the mental image is pretty stupid. (And it will get stupider once I write down the feat that allows for one-handed reloading!) However, I'm worried that if the feat doesn't stack, anyone with a third iterative attack would fall back to bows.