Balancing a homebrew Anti-Material Rifle

[Silus]

Ok so I've got this weapon I'm working on for my homebrew world and after crunching the numbers I realize that it's probably too powerful.

As it stands, the weapon is like this:
Cost: 3,500g-10,000g (Depending on location)
3d8 Damage
18-20/x4 Crit
Range: 80ft
Misfire 1-2
Capacity 1
Weight 30lb
Type B&P
Full Round Reload (Unaffected by Rapid Reload)
Full Round Fire
Non-Quadrupeds (ie: Bipeds) take a -2 to hit and are knocked back 5ft and are prone after shooting. Quadrupeds take no penalties (Due to stability). Firing while Prone for bipeds incurs no penalties.
Counts as Adamantite for purposes of bypassing DR, regardless of ammo type used
Inherently counts as Construct Bane, does not possess an Enhancement Bonus (Counts as +1 for purposes of Bane damage)

The rifles, called Golem Stoppers, were designed to do just that: Put down constructs. Everything from Clockwork Creatures to wild Animated Objects. Slow to fire, slow to reload, but nightmarishly powerful in the right hands.

Problem is, I feel that the rifle may be TOO powerful. In light of reading the Trench Fighter archetype for Fighters, a Centaur Trench Fighter with a Golem Stopper and 18 Dex, at level 8 with Improved Critical and Weapon Specialization (Why WOULDN'T you pick those up?) is looking at doing (12d8 + 36) + 2d6* on a crit on a construct. That's a damage range of 50-144 at level 8 every two rounds at touch AC.

So how can I keep the same feel of this thing but make it more...manageable?

*(+4 Dex, +2 Weapon Specialization, +3 Bane) = +9 x4 = 36

[BloodyMartian]

Damage 2d12
Crit 20 x2
Range 130ft
Magazine 1 shot or 5-10
Weight 30 - 50lbs
If shot without a scope -1 to hit
If shot while not prone DC 25 STR check or be disarmed and knocked prone
Ignores Hardness of materials
Overcomes DR of creatures with the construct type

[Sayt]

Honestly, without the capacity to make iteratives, I wouldn't worry that much. Even with improved Critical, you're only, statistically speaking, going to be criting once every six rounds.

And to be honest, in 3.5 a Great Crossbow was basically the same, barring 1d8 less damage and 1 point of crit multiplier.

[Brookshw]

I'm not familiar with PF, but for 3.5 I wouldn't blink at that. If its really that concerning just drop down the damage some.

[heavyfuel]

You would probably get better results at the Homebrew forum. But since we're already here:


Honestly, without the capacity to make iteratives, I wouldn't worry that much. Even with improved Critical, you're only, statistically speaking, going to be criting once every six rounds.

And to be honest, in 3.5 a Great Crossbow was basically the same, barring 1d8 less damage and 1 point of crit multiplier.

This sums it up pretty well. There's no reason a seasoned adventurer (read, someone that makes 3+ attacks per round) will want this.

This weapon, as it stands, is better used by weak NPCs that have no other way of dealing significant damage to a Construct. So 3d8, 18-20*4 per 2 rounds averages at 16.79 dpr, if they confirm every threat... This isn't going to down a high-ish CR construct any time soon.

Against non constructs, that's 9.79 dpr. Again, not impressive.

It doesn't allow for Str to damage for higher damage output, and the lack of iteratives AND the loss of half your rounds is just too much. All in all, I'd say this is too expensive for what it does.

[squiggit]

This weapon is... Not very good.

At low level, for instance, you're doing 3d8 (average 12) every other round. Someone with a musket equipped is going to be doing the same damage on average ( 1d12 every round ). If you have any damage source that activates on a hit (dex to damage, flaming, etc) you lose outright because the rifle user gets to apply it twice as often.

It's better against constructs obviously, but by the time you have 6 bab even that's in question: the musket user is going to be doing the same damage as you per turn while apply iterative damage bonuses four times as often. At this point the only reason to use the weapon is to save money on ammo (which can be reasonable if you need a lot of adamantium bullets).

And it just goes down from there. The weapon is decent at low levels, eh at mid levels and basically a nonoption endgame.

The only potential exception here being a musket master who can reload the weapon as a swift action and dead shot with it every round. Even then you still suffer from not getting to apply bonuses to damage multiple times.

[Silus]

You would probably get better results at the Homebrew forum. But since we're already here:



This sums it up pretty well. There's no reason a seasoned adventurer (read, someone that makes 3+ attacks per round) will want this.

This weapon, as it stands, is better used by weak NPCs that have no other way of dealing significant damage to a Construct. So 3d8, 18-20*4 per 2 rounds averages at 16.79 dpr, if they confirm every threat... This isn't going to down a high-ish CR construct any time soon.

Against non constructs, that's 9.79 dpr. Again, not impressive.

It doesn't allow for Str to damage for higher damage output, and the lack of iteratives AND the loss of half your rounds is just too much. All in all, I'd say this is too expensive for what it does.

Aww...I kinda wanna strike a balance between "Holy crap that thing is really stupid powerful" and "Eeeeeeh I don't wanna use that". Like...something that the players might want to actually use.

Increase the capacity size and eliminate the whole Full Round fire/reload thing maybe?

[aleucard]

Try and compare it to what someone would do to get a good anti-Construct weapon with normal methods and enchantments. Since this presumably works in AMF, maybe an added 5-10% utility cost. Remove the 1 shot/2 rounds requirement, that's kinda stupid unless if you want this thing to hit hard enough to be worth ditching the extra round of attacks. I'd say that bolt action would be comparable to a regular crossbow (including it being reduced to a Free action with RR) and swapping magazines on the multishot version would be comparable to a Repeater Crossbow. Maybe make it so that it allows the application of SA damage to constructs and removes the range restriction on SA as long as it's got a scope, and limit it to the first increment if it don't.