Balancing considerations of guns and lasers being relatively common.

[Almarck]

The title asks what I need to know.


I am in the middle of planning for a campaign setting where modern guns, lasers are common place (relative to normal settings). I am using the pfsrd's entries on firearms, modern fire arms, and all technological guide materials except pharmacy.

I want to know what steps I need to take to ensure that melee is still viable enough an option and not completely overshadowed despite the lack of advanced technological options for meleeing at the same time encouraging ranged combat. What Proficencies need to be changed and how to treat technological weapons in terms of enhancements given that most lasers strike touch and have the automatic special rule.

Other information: the setting is a hypothetical question about what happens when numerous alien species (and robots) get stranded in your mostly traditional d&d setting for around 20 years. Technology is still mostly confined to small scattered pockets since the aliens are abut more and more it starts to seep out and make its way else where. But I don't know if that should in fluency things too much.

[BWR]

Details, details, details: we can't answer this without them.

What does 'relatively common' mean?
How many people have firearms? Say you have 1000 warrior types - how many would have firearms? Are they common enough to be the primary weapon of armies? Are they so rare only rich people can afford them, yet enough people have them that you as an adventurer have probably seen one in action at some point?
An army with rifles will probably beat an army without, but high-end monsters and adventurers are still kings of the battlefield.

If you allow all types of firearms, from simple matchlocks to advanced lasers at the same time...hoo boy. Obviously, the more advanced stuff is better. How many laser guns to flintlocks are there? The ratio of matchlocks to modern revolvers?

How many aliens? How many types? What sort of industrial base do they have (do they have finite tech resources or can they build new stuff)? Are they familiar with D&D magic and monsters? Have they been aggressive? Has some random dragon or high-level mage taken over the place? What are their goals? What do the aliens feel about this world?

Which D&D world are we talking about? Are they pretty open and used to strange stuff like Eberron or FR? Are they insular and low-powered like DL? Are they low-magic and resource poor like Dark Sun? Do they already have some tech and other weird stuff like Golarion or Mystara?

[Almarck]

Traditional fantasy world. But more specifically... Let's say midtier because my experience with settings is minimal. Not low power but not lacking on magic availability either.

as for hard numbers the number of aliens is undecided upon. But I imagine that atleast a few cities with industries have been built in the past 20 years. They can replicate the tech but
Only to a limited degree as not everyone is an engineer. I think most of said alien cities feature basic Interne but only within each city.

The alien ships have no unified purposes. some colony. Some military. The total numbers of which are all undefined because I am not a demographics major.

Also flintlock and basic blackpowder weapons were skipped entirely in favor of metal casings. But laser weapons are rare as low tier magic items while rifles and such are pretty common. Enough that small and lucky armies might use them to replace marksman but not enough to be a primary weapon all solders get.

[stack]

Touch AC and dex to damage are the two biggest items. Touch AC becomes extremely valuable when everyone targets it, making dex builds firmly superior. Armor becomes useless unless you house rule some partial value factoring in. At the same time, Deflect arrows finds its relative value skyrocketing as a feat.


If you go guns everywhere, note that gun training moves to level 1 for gunslingers, meaning that everyone will be tempted to dip.

Verisimilitude-wise, those with access to advanced firearms and energy weapons shouldn't have a reason to go melee most of the time, trying to get them to do so would be a matter of rules and mechanics, not actually making sense unless you natural pages from Dune.

[Almarck]

Well technology guide adds some new armors that apply to ranged touch attacks but they don't quite work against ballistics due to technicalities.

I'm thinking to discourage ballistics being the solution to everything that to either rule only energy weapons resolve on touch... or that certain armors resist gun fire better. Like all medium and heavy armors negate the touch ac rule at least partially for everything but lasers which habe their own armor that resists them.

There's also forcing melee s thing throwing monsters at them that go straight to melee.

[Snowbluff]

Here's a tip: Don't use PF's gun rules!

Done. The 3.5 DMG has rules for guns, or take away misfires and touch attacks. Melee weapons exist despite archery, and they will exist despite firearms.

[Arbane]

Energy Resistance and Protection from Missiles-type spells become VASTLY more valuable.

If you want to keep melee weapons relevant, you're going to need to defenestrate any ideas about 'realism' and nerf the hell out of guns. There is a reason no modern military uses anything but guns as primary weapons these days.

[Almarck]

Those are all very good points.

I'm very likely to drop touch ac hitting from ballistics and make only the lasers do the touch ac thing which is negated by even basic energy resistance for most things. (clustered shots does not apply to energy damage overcomming resistence)

I do question though by what do you mean "nerf the hell outta guns"? There's a lot of different ways to nerf guns, the least of which is making sure misfires happen more frequently.

Also, why remove misfires? Aren't those a big thing that makes them unreliable and thus slightly weaker? I can remove the touch thing just fine and not feel too bad about it but I am hesitant about removing misfire.

P.S. I lost my DMG a while back, so I don't know how to find the firearm details for 3.5. I don't recall them being particularly memorable though.

[Arbane]

I do question though by what do you mean "nerf the hell outta guns"? There's a lot of different ways to nerf guns, the least of which is making sure misfires happen more frequently.


If guns hit harder, more often, and at longer range than anything else (which they do in the real world), nobody will use anything else. D&D's a bit notorious for having some weapons just be Better than anything else, and those are the ones everyone uses: longsword, 2-h sword, spiked chain, possibly guns.

And if they aren't vastly superior, hey, good way to spend those centuries of technological advancement, aliens. :smalltongue:

[Almarck]

To be fair, said aliens crash landed and most of the survivors are not weapon affectionados. They primarily all used energy weapons of various degrees up there.Guns are more the result of adapting to a sudden lack of infrastructure and compensating for it without having the resources to say, build more lasers, which are definitely better than guns in most ways (except being easily shutdown by energy resistance with no way to overcome it).

Actually, here's a thought. If there were no guns outside of straight up energy weapons (all resolve at touch, but as energy damage, no overcoming resistances), how'd that work?

[ericgrau]

Two methods:
1. Guns and lasers can't be enchanted. Everyone prefers guns and lasers at low level, including NPCs. And perhaps as a high level backup weapon. But otherwise they become obsolete at high level and the old ways are preferred for characters.

2. Balance guns and lasers with melee. Increase melee weapon damage to match or don't let gun/laser damage get excessively high. Even if guns and lasers do more damage than arrows and guns get enchanted, melee will still probably do more damage. So while there will be more ranged focused builds, melee will still survive as an option.

As for ranged touch attacks on guns or lasers, they aren't new to PF. Ranged weapons have a pretty easy time hitting anyway due to all the ways to boost attack bonus so it boosts damage a bit but not by an incredible amount. Just remember to not allow the feats that aren't supposed to work with ranged touch attacks. And remember that more hits means more damage, so keep that in mind when you're balancing damage outputs in the above two points. Though applying energy resistance tones back the damage, especially if it's fire damage.

[Prime32]

I do question though by what do you mean "nerf the hell outta guns"? There's a lot of different ways to nerf guns, the least of which is making sure misfires happen more frequently.

Also, why remove misfires? Aren't those a big thing that makes them unreliable and thus slightly weaker? I can remove the touch thing just fine and not feel too bad about it but I am hesitant about removing misfire.Let me put it this way: How many times does an lv1 character need to fire a gun as part of learning how to use it? How many lv1 characters can survive a gun misfiring in their face?

PF's gun rules have very little in common with how guns actually work, or why they became popular. For one thing, crossbows were far better at piercing armor than early guns were, and had plenty of maintenance issues of their own.

[mvpmack]

I'm planning a D20 modern (probably using very little of the D20 modern rules, but we'll see) game, with some elements that buff guns (to add a little more threat of lethality and encourage more realistic tactics). There are some very easy ways to limit the power of firearms:

1: Limit or eliminate sources of Dex to damage. You don't have to completely remove Dex to damage, just make it much harder to come by. Anyone wanting Dex to damage should have to get into situations to perform it effectively, rather than getting it all the time (much the way sneak attack currently works, but you don't have to limit it that much).

2: In a given setting, only especially exotic weapons should hit touch AC. In my modern setting, I opted for slightly more realism (some armors only work against some types of weapon, et cetera). Unless you're very sure of what that will do in your setting, I advise having no commonly available weapon capable of bypassing armor and/or natural armor.

3: Empower melee more. Tome of Battle has very little to help ranged characters, so by allowing it, you improve melee substantially. Anything that allows melee characters to close space with ranged characters -- whether that's magic items, alchemical draughts to improve movement speed, martial maneuvers to give extra movement, or added feats or class features that allow melee to deal with terrain will help melee out.

In general, the main issues with ranged weapon dominance come from PF. In 3.5 there are fewer ways to break a ranged build, and most of them involve either spellcasting or sneak attack.

[Almarck]

Well, the guns can't explode since we're skipping the early firearms rules and heading straight to advanced firearms, which includes things like rifling. Misfire causes a jam and make a weapon broken, but doesn't cause explodes results.

I'm thinking, the simplest solution might be to create more advanced melee weapons... I mean, obviously a normal sword is going to be no match for a sub machine gun, so, to encourage melee, use more powerful melee options, right?

I'm talking in the realm of Lightsabres and Power Weapons sort of things. They'd be treated as "Technological weapons" and have the rules to back them up. (Drain power to have their bonus effects work, whatever those effects are)

Note, in the Tech Guide there's specifically Technological armor that negates Ranged Touch attacks as though they were granting AC but is terrible against melee and normal ballistics. I think that you could enchant them and have their stats boosted higher, too.

And, I'm auto ruling only 1 source of Dex to damage applies so no multi stacking Trench Fighter with Gunslinger.

[mvpmack]

Do misfires in PF seriously have a chance of exploding the weapon? I won't say that there's 0 chance of it happening, but assuming the character doesn't make a gross failure while loading the gun, there is no way that a trained operator would destroy a black powder gun in real life due to a misfire. I would throw that out the window because there's absolutely no way people would design their guns or powder horns to do that.

Rifling isn't what makes guns feed better, and at D&D combat ranges, it hardly matters. All that matters to make a reliable gun is a reliable feed and a reliable charge, which is all about cartridges and firearm actions that feed the round cleanly into the chamber and seal it every time.

Probably my biggest gripe with d20-related guns is how combat actions work. You spend one attack to shoot one shot, and there's no variance on time to fire for handguns versus a rifle with a 24-inch barrel. The only reason to carry anything less than the biggest gun shooting the biggest bullet is if you want to use automatic fire, you want to shoot two guns at the same time, or you need to conceal your weapon. Even then, you want to use the biggest gun with the biggest bullets for that mission, so enormous handcannon magnum revolvers become the best concealed weapons since they still only take a single action to shoot, and unless you're high level you're only shooting five or six shots before the battle is probably over.

But as far as melee goes, just use ToB or the PF remake of ToB (I don't know the name) and melee is magically fine. They have swift action gap closers, big damage standard attacks, and all sorts of ways to make life hell on ranged opponents, plus even defensive maneuvers against spells and ranged attacks.

You can also limit enchantments of certain types to melee weapons, or add new ones to melee weapons. And don't forget, if nothing else, that ranged attackers do provoke attacks of opportunity when they shoot, and they don't threaten like melees do.

[Fouredged Sword]

Ok, here is my take on it. It works much like it did in history, guns displaced the crossbow due to cost, but crossbows still remained useful for a long time due to better accuracy at range.

You have 4 groupings of weapons.

Melee weapons - no change. Getting up in someone's face and power attacking is a valid idea for big burly men with swords.

Traditional ranged weapons - These have long ranges compared to guns, but do not target touch attacks. They are tricky to master and are easier to block. These are mostly seen in the hands of dedicated masters of their arts. Changes - All bows get +1.5 str to damage as two handed weapons. Hand crossbows get .5 str, light crossbows get +str, and heavy crossbows get +2xStr due to mechanical advantage and being a three handed weapon to load (2 hands and a leg). Bolt aces are deadly snipers who use heavy crossbows to deal lethal damage at range.

Black powder firearms - Basic firearms are SIMPLE weapons. Advanced firearms are martial weapons. The guns everywhere rules apply to the cost. These are the bread and butter of most armed groups and armies. An army is composed of about 20% carvery armed with melee weapons and revolvers or pistols, 50% of the force is armed with muskets as ground forces, supported by halberd wielding ground troops (20%). The remaining forces are the commanders and leaders who are normally equipped with advanced guns. Change from the rules - Basic firearms don't get dex to damage nor can you use deadly aim with them. That is restricted to advanced firearms. The muzzle loaders are just too imprecise for such aiming.

Lasers - Lasers are very specialized weapons. They should cost a LOT and are hard to come by. They should have the following advantages and disadvantages.
A - magazines - Lasers should be a move action to reload and hold 50-100 shots in a power pack.
B - Lasers should have long range increments and be touch attacks at all ranges.
C - Lasers should deal large amounts of base damage, say 3d12.

Disadvantages
A - Lasers are exotic weapons
B - Lasers are expensive to buy, but power packs can be recharged somehow.
C - Lasers deal FIRE damage, meaning that it is REALLY easy to render them almost harmless though magic.

Basically the story of the world is as such.

Basic fantasy world with bows and arrows exists. Heavy and light crossbows are the weapons of armies, supported by armored horsemen (to charge crossbow formations) and pike (to counter horsemen).

Aliens crash. They introduce laser weapons. These are VERY dangerous in mass combat due to their range and base damage. They get caught up in local politics and inevitably ally with a world power for protection. They use their laser weapons in support of this power. The aliens then discover that there are a LOT of things out there that flat out laugh at lasers. Wizards, demons, dragons... Lots of things don't burn. The aliens lose several battles and their tech starts to fall into other hands. Lacking serious tech industry, they don't have the resources to introduce super advanced weapons like railguns, they instead introduce black powder rifles very early.

The locals from other factions get beaten, badly. A rifle far outstrips a crossbow in the battlefield. The opposing side gives up on armor (useless vs the firearms) but manages to steal some black powder and rifles. They lack the precision to make rifles, but instead create basic firearms. These weapons are really easy to make and use. Though they are not as good, they gave the non-alien side enough of an edge to re-balance the two sides.

Now, in a uneasy truce caused as both sides attempt to gain an edge over the other side, who will come out on top? Will out hero's embrace the new or master the older arts?

[Vhaidara]

Do misfires in PF seriously have a chance of exploding the weapon? I won't say that there's 0 chance of it happening, but assuming the character doesn't make a gross failure while loading the gun, there is no way that a trained operator would destroy a black powder gun in real life due to a misfire. I would throw that out the window because there's absolutely no way people would design their guns or powder horns to do that.

The only time you risk blowing it up is after you already misfired and broke the gun. So you're firing a broken black powder gun.

[Almarck]

Uh, no offense Fouredged, but alot of what you request involves me rewriting entire weapon tables that already exist on the energy weapons front.
Here are the lasers (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/weapons/technological-weapons)

Also, I don't think traditional ranged options really, well, need support any further. They're already quite powerful as it is. I'm mostly concerned with melee being underwhelming.

In pathfinder, lasers are very, well, simple weapons when it comes down to it. Their damage is a little stronger per "Bolt" than gunpowder weapons, but it's always elementa (which is easily shutdown by resistance to the appropriate energy. Even something as low as 5 points makes laser use difficult) l and touch. Also, lasers have the power to easily "Automatic" attack, or burn lots of munitions to make lots of iterative attacks to enemies in a line. Mind, this is how it is for "basic" lasers. There's more advanced stuff that does what you kind of recomend (except 50-100 magazines. because charges are universal energy storages and easily reloaded with battery packs)

Also, some of it is seemingly nonsensical. Basic firearms, well, unless you mean something else specifically are blackpowder weapons. Those earn their distinction as exotic weapons because of how unweildy they are to shoot and fire. Comparatively, a rifle is simplistic and childishly simple. I think by advanced firearms, you're talking about assault rifles and submachine guns, or heavy weapons and not the overly simple bolt action or small magazine weapons such as revolvers and lever action rifles

But anyways, yeah. Anyways, only Early firearms, as in muzzleloaded blackpowder weapons that require a plunger and a minute to load, and really mishandled technologyhave a chance to explode.

To explode an early firearm, you have to misfire once, getting your weapon in the broken condition and not bothering fixing it. Broken increases your misfire range and is more or less the gun having obstructions or malfunctions inside the barrel. THEN while it is still malfunctioning, you attack with your gun and it misfires yet again; this is what causes it to explode. So in other words, you have to intentionally fire a firearm that is no longer working properly in order for it to blow up.

As we are not using early firearms, this rule is already unneccesary by default since only early firearms suffer exploding results..

Also, I just contacted my players and, well, only one of them is interested in going to be a gunslinger. Everyone else for some reason is interested in traditional fighting or close corridors combat with a laser weapon as their offweapon.

[Sam K]

You could take the fallout approach and make ammunition and spare parts very rare/expensive.

If you skip balistic weapons (the aliens may have moved past that, and lack the knowledge/desire to re-invent gunpowder weapons) and make the firearms energy only, energy resistance becomes a balance of sorts. It's much easier to get energy resistance than it is to get generic damage resistance. Energy weapons would be very efficient against low level military targets and civilians, but elite forces and adventurers will often have high resistance to energy attacks (especially if energy weapons are restricted to one or two damage types), requiring different ways to combat them.

[Almarck]

So, I figure I might as well update:

I've got my first session through last night. Only one player is using guns at all despite the fact that energy weapons and easily reliable firearms are a thing. Granted, I have yet to introduce laser weaponry that they can reliably use.

Ballistic weapons by the way are treated "in story" as mass effect style magnetic weapons, just using pathfinder rules for damages. It's a flavor justification. Cheaper than lasers with most of the benefits, right?

Anyways: I have another request. What do people feel about "heavy weapons"?

[prufock]

Just jumping in to make a quick point: attacking touch ac becomes quite a bit less meaningful if you use the class defense variant from Unearthed Arcana. I use this plus armor providing DR (at 1:1 even) for my Weird West setting (see signature). It works surprisingly well.

[Almarck]

I don't have access to that unless it's on an SRD somewhere, I am afraid.

[Muninn]

It's in the d20 srd under the variant rules section. Not sure if pathfinder has their own version or not.

Class Defense bonus:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/defenseBonus.htm

Armour as DR:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/armorAsDamageReduction.htm

[Almarck]

Hm, well, I see how it is. Probably not going to do that.

Well, I guess it's fine. Bullet proof armor is a thing in setting though, being "better" against ranged attacks and causes ballistic weapons to resolve on full AC.

[Karl Aegis]

Real lasers strike almost instantly and are invisible, so they should be hitting both touch AC and flat-footed AC. They also shouldn't give any indication of where the attacks are coming, so an attacker is capable of getting multiple rounds of attacks against an opponent before they are found. They also cause profuse bleeding on anything they hit, so stopping some rider effect would need a Heal check. If they aren't doing all of this, your lasers aren't really lasers.

[Kraken]

Real lasers strike almost instantly and are invisible, so they should be hitting both touch AC and flat-footed AC..

Touch AC sure, but it shouldn't be flat footed any more than gunpowder weapons should be. When you're dodging bullets, you're not looking at the bullet mid-air to try and get out of the way, you're looking at the shooter to see where they're aiming. Same with energy weapons, if you see someone swing a rifle barrel in your direction, you're not going to care as much about what's going to come out of the barrel as much as you care about getting out of the way of whatever that might be.

[Karl Aegis]

Touch AC sure, but it shouldn't be flat footed any more than gunpowder weapons should be. When you're dodging bullets, you're not looking at the bullet mid-air to try and get out of the way, you're looking at the shooter to see where they're aiming. Same with energy weapons, if you see someone swing a rifle barrel in your direction, you're not going to care as much about what's going to come out of the barrel as much as you care about getting out of the way of whatever that might be.

It's a laser. You just wave it in the general area of your enemies and it cuts through them. Dodging is impossible.

[Almarck]

Actually, lasers tend to work odd in Pathfinder.

While they don't hit at flatfooted AC, they do weird things with how the system presents them. Specifically, creatures with as few as 10 points of fire resistance can near completely negate the damage of the beam because it's treated as fire damage. On the plus side, lasers punch through transparent shielding effects and glass. There's other damage types too that have the same effect.

And at the speeds being shot at, the difference between bullets and energy projectiles are quite minimal for the characters as is. What you're trying to do is dodge the shooter's aiming of you. "Waving it in a general area" doesn't quite work since it's not a "beam"

[Forrestfire]

To play devil's advocate here, I don't think that much needs to be changed to make melee still viable in 3.p's ruleset. I'm going to look at two examples from other works of fiction to help explain why:


Warhammer 40k: In 40k, melee combat is still useful because while guns are great and all, the melee combatants are just too damn fast and hard-hitting to deal with entirely at range. When you have a space elf running at you faster than your eyes can track them, wielding a sword that cuts through all solid matter like a hit knife through butter, your highly advanced laser flashlight isn't going to mean much. Same for the Space Marines, who merely shrug off most gunfire on their way to punching you in the face with a power fist that can turn battle tanks into piles of scrap. Overall, guns are still useful and the main engagement method, but people who are good at melee don't really care, because the guns just aren't good enough to keep up.

Tower of God: In the manhwa Tower of God, guns have a different problem. In the eponymous Tower, the air/magic gets more and more dense as you climb, and guns have the issue of being able to impart limited force on their bullets. Eventually, a gun just stops being effective, because all the fighters worth fighting have adapted to the denser reality around them, and fight as normal. The main ranged weapon in the Tower is actually spears, because of this. Someone can throw a spear with n power, or shoot a gun with m power, and as you climb, n stays the same, while m goes down because the guns just don't keep up.


These two settings share a key factor with D&D and Pathfinder: namely, Melee is just better at dealing damage. There is not much that will weather the blows of a charging, pouncing barbarian, or a power attacking greatsword strike. Melee adds Str bonus, guns do not add Dex bonus without resources spent on it. Even with the neat tools you have in PF for ranged combatants to match the damage output of melees, the low-level characters and NPCs aren't going to have them. Sure, a specialist with a bunch of levels will be able to match the damage output of dedicated melees, but at that point, you're basically comparing PCs with other PCs or threats that are supposed to be on their level. Eventually, the melee fighty types just outfight guns. On a large scale, melee might have died down as the main combat tactic, but for the specialists? The adventurers? The people who, in the end, matter to the fate of the country or world and all that jazz? They're probably in situations where most fights are close quarters, and using melee weapons is probably one of the best ways to go about winning those fights.

[Ashtagon]

Real lasers strike almost instantly and are invisible, so they should be hitting both touch AC and flat-footed AC. They also shouldn't give any indication of where the attacks are coming, so an attacker is capable of getting multiple rounds of attacks against an opponent before they are found. They also cause profuse bleeding on anything they hit, so stopping some rider effect would need a Heal check. If they aren't doing all of this, your lasers aren't really lasers.

Real lasers are mostly weapons designed to blind their victims, and have been built in both single-target and narrow-cone effect weapons.

While they may well cause bleeding, lasers as presented in movies are certainly no worse than the bleeding caused by a decent axe. I'd just call it fire damage and be done with it as far as special effects go..

[Snowbluff]

Real lasers strike almost instantly and are invisible, so they should be hitting both touch AC and flat-footed AC. They also shouldn't give any indication of where the attacks are coming, so an attacker is capable of getting multiple rounds of attacks against an opponent before they are found. They also cause profuse bleeding on anything they hit, so stopping some rider effect would need a Heal check. If they aren't doing all of this, your lasers aren't really lasers.
Well, firstly that doesn't mean anything about touch attacks, and secondly it doesn't necessarily mean a touch attack. The characters in DnD are pretty much super human, and can still dodge things they shouldn't be.

[Almarck]

Update. So, I ran my first encounter with my players facing down a load of gun toting soldiers. As it turns out, letting your players fight enemies with high ballistics skill basically makes them nigh unkillable. Especially when you give them normal cover to hide behind. That +4 AC bonus is crazy. Misschance is about as good too.

About the only threatening enemy was the "Elite" soldier I put in and even then he got cut in half.

I'm kinda convinced that it's not an issue about using firearms as is (so long as I have them dropped as rewards, or keep their prices low.)

[Forrestfire]

Overall, they're no more scary to adventurers as normal ranged weapon-users. That is, not incredibly so, unless it's someone very good, or measured in large piles of dice.

[Almarck]

Well, I'm not using optimized stats blocks, or throwing heavy weapons yet. I am going to say they'll probably run in terror when thet learn about the real high end high tech weapons. I mean, when you think about some of them, they do kinda make most damage casters seem obsolete. That rocket launcher for example...

[Andion Isurand]

Admittedly its not Pathfinder, but...

Depending on how advanced your ballistic and energy weapons are...
If you wind up using a style similar to what can be found in d20 modern / d20 future...
I would consider making mono-edge and oscillating blades available.

Assertion #1: Using an oscillating blade increases the base damage of a slashing melee weapon by 1 size category.
A one-handed "High Frequency Sword" has a listed damage of 2d6 and a weight of 2 lbs.
Assertion #2: Using a monofilament edge increases the base damage of a slashing melee weapon by about 4 size categories.
A mecha's "Panther Claws" deal the following damage (based on mecha size):
Large 2d6, Huge 2d8, Gargantuan 4d6, and Colossal 4d10

Two progress levels later, a mecha's "Tiger Claws" (monofilament edges) deal the following damage:
Large 6d8, Huge 8d8, Gargantuan 10d8, and Colossal 12d8.


So basically, futuristic medium-sized blades can conceivably deal the following base damage (if using d20 future with 3.5):

Oscillating Monoedge Dagger: 4d6 base dmg.
Oscillating Monoedge Longsword: 8d6 base dmg.
Oscillating Monoedge Katana: 8d8 base dmg.
Oscillating Monoedge Greatsword: 12d6 base dmg.

If you can, you should look at the d20 future material (and d20 modern) for yourself.

[Almarck]

I actually did consider doing that, but I never really... knew D20 modern had those. I'm not likely going to add any future weapons without having to make them run on "charges" of some sort, but thanks for the info.

The idea I was going with was "Power weapons" in the style of Warhammer 40k. Everything then has "increased damage" and to keep them competitive with guns had "armor piercing" ratings that made them, well, you get the idea.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Gun rules are fairly unrealistic
1) Modern guns are dangerous due to rate of fire and/or range. When you can squeeze a shot per second even as an untrained civilian, you will eventually hit something and a trained sniper could hit someone 2 miles away. DnD gun rules don't include that.
2) Modern guns don't penetrate all armor - otherwise there wouldn't be such things as body armor or tanks. They only penetrate what they could pierce - and fantasy metals not only are a lot tougher than medieval steel but can be magically enhanced to boot. I.e. a magically treated +5 adamantine plate has hardness 50 and 310 hp while nonmagical steel one has hardness 10 and 100 hp - a little bit of difference there, no?

Guns are hard to make
A sword is a single piece of metal where a millimeter or two off the specs is irrelevant - most people could make a crude sword. A modern gun is made up of half a dozen pieces much more complex than the sword - and if you're off-specs, it might blow up in your hand. IRL, some 150 man-hours in an all-up factory are needed to make it, while a couple hours in a smithy are enough for a sword.



EDIT:
Forgot to mention that strong characters could carry bigger guns. I'm now imagining a goliath blackguard with 30ish strength using a GAU-8 Avenger to bring peace doom at 360 tank-piercing shots per round.

http://s2.wallippo.com/thumbs/300x250/a-10-avenger-0b1cfcfb4b92c24ee8df296bc722e50c.jpeg

[Kraken]

while a couple hours in a smithy are enough for a sword.


Nitpick. With two hours of shop time you'd still have a metal club. Making a single iron sword using pre-industrial techniques would take a week or two, assuming an 8 hour work day. And this is all just for the blade, then you need to make the grip, pommel, and guard, though these are at least areas that are easy to skimp on if you're really pressed for time. I don't know much about it, so I'm not sure how much time casting would save (if any), but you're also going to get a much lower quality blade by using a cast metal. This is why cast metal was typically used for making things like bells and cauldrons, and not weapons.

[Solaris]

Real lasers strike almost instantly and are invisible, so they should be hitting both touch AC and flat-footed AC. They also shouldn't give any indication of where the attacks are coming, so an attacker is capable of getting multiple rounds of attacks against an opponent before they are found. They also cause profuse bleeding on anything they hit, so stopping some rider effect would need a Heal check. If they aren't doing all of this, your lasers aren't really lasers.

At the ranges characters usually play in, bullets strike pretty much instantly, too. So do arrows and crossbow bolts. Like Kraken said, you're not really dodging the laser beam itself (any more than you're dodging the bullet, the arrows, or the bolts), you're moving yourself out from where the opponent is aiming.
If you don't believe me, get a laser pointer and a buddy with good reflexes. Try to tag him and keep the beam steadily trained on him at a range of about thirty feet or so when he's actively avoiding being 'shot'. Sure, you could just sweep it across him - but unless the weapon is explicitly described as instantly cutting through material, that's going to accomplish approximately nothing.

If anything, a laser would cause less bleeding than an axe or sword because it'd cauterize the wound.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

1) Computer-guided lasers can hit a missile moving at mach 5 at a range of 200 kilometers. That's real-life, not hypothetical.

2) A sufficiently powerful laser doesn't cauterize the wound; it makes its target blow up via explosive vaporization.



Of course, that's a shipboard laser weighing multiple tons powered by a 200 MW nuclear reactor.

[Almarck]

At the ranges characters usually play in, bullets strike pretty much instantly, too. So do arrows and crossbow bolts. Like Kraken said, you're not really dodging the laser beam itself (any more than you're dodging the bullet, the arrows, or the bolts), you're moving yourself out from where the opponent is aiming.
If you don't believe me, get a laser pointer and a buddy with good reflexes. Try to tag him and keep the beam steadily trained on him at a range of about thirty feet or so when he's actively avoiding being 'shot'. Sure, you could just sweep it across him - but unless the weapon is explicitly described as instantly cutting through material, that's going to accomplish approximately nothing.

If anything, a laser would cause less bleeding than an axe or sword because it'd cauterize the wound.

Depends on the type of laser I believe. Not all lasers are meant to cut. Some are meant to hammer the target with an intense burst of electrons. Othertimes, we're talking "bolts" of energy instead of beams. Think Starwars blasters.

Given the kind of mechanics the Tech Guide describes (lasers being able to be fired "semi-automatic", "automatic"), Lasers and other energy weapons are usually of the "bolt" variety, shooting a shortlived burst of energy.

Also, given that said lasers are hand held and are thus reliant on muscle control for accuracy, well, of course they aren't going to shoot down anti-aircraft missiles.

[hamishspence]

Real lasers are mostly weapons designed to blind their victims, and have been built in both single-target and narrow-cone effect weapons.

While they may well cause bleeding, lasers as presented in movies are certainly no worse than the bleeding caused by a decent axe. I'd just call it fire damage and be done with it as far as special effects go..

How about an anti-missile laser or an anti-shell laser:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser

but scaled down a bit - almost as powerful, but fitting into a rifle?

What would something like that do to a person?

[Abithrios]

How about an anti-missile laser or an anti-shell laser:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_High_Energy_Laser

but scaled down a bit - almost as powerful, but fitting into a rifle?

What would something like that do to a person?

Neither of those is remotely close to being man-portable.

Edit: A person hit by one of those would be deadsies.

[Almarck]

In Starwars, there's a distinction between Turbolasers and man portable blasters. with that in mind, consider that people in Starwars don't outright die from blaster fire on occasion, typically the more plot important people.

I think some of the heavy weapons come close to the concept, though probably the railgun and even then it's not enough dice. For reference, the single use rocket launcher does 12d6 half fire, half physical damage in an area and that's the strongest non energy, man portable weapon.

Now while I get that you guys have reasons for making the game more "Realistic" such as by striking at Flatfooted, Touch AC or insta-kill, keep in mind that even before energy weapons were a thing, people can survive high level casters. As much as I want lasers to be "all powerful", I do not want the harsh "realities" of weapons that are still currently in science fiction to really get in the way of having them being fielded. The energy weapons we're discussing are more Star Wars than anything else. and remember we're talking manportable. Anything only able to be used on an aircraft or mounted on a tank is automatically too big and the weapon fit for a high level boss encounter. We're talking stuff that a relatively experience soldier is able to be armed with and deployed en mass.


Oh, it'd depend on energy resist and how many hitpoints the target has, but in game mechanics, yes, someone can survive getting shot by one of those. If we count the damage as "fire", fire elementals probably get super charged after getting hit by one of those.

[Belial_the_Leveler]

Hey, how about this;

Ever heard of nuclear demolition charges? They're nukes at around kiloton range at most, weighing little enough to be man-portable by the average person. A fighter with high enough strength in DnD could use those as thrown weapons. So one fighter could throw around the equivalent of a thousand tons of conventional explosives.


What number of damage dice would that be?

[Almarck]

That's actually answered in the Technology Guide, though not exactly directly. No nukes, but there is a fission reactor that can be caused to go critical.

20d10 fire damage 20d10 bludgeoning, radius 250 feet, and then severe radiation. Granted that's a reactor at Colossal size.
Severe Raditation is a DC 30, 4d6 damage effect, PER ROUND you're in a irratiated zone, and even if you leave you take strength damage every day at the original DC. It's not treated as a disease, or poison either.

There's no nukes, especially not portable.

Regardless, I don't think that counts as a weapon since "reactors" are considered "Artifact" tier.

They're also not firearms, or lasers.

[Ashtagon]

In the spirit of overpowered man-portable weapons, I present exhibit A:

http://www.brookings.edu/about/projects/archive/nucweapons/davyc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54

[hamishspence]

Edit: A person hit by one of those would be deadsies.

But what kind of deadsies? Cut in half? Turned to a cloud of pink mist?

[Almarck]

Uh, can we not deal with nuclear firearms, mostly because that's the realm of things Dungeons and Dragons would call "artifacts"? I mean, there's not even any stats for those, mostly just high tech, but mostly conventional weapons.

[Almarck]

So, Cover bonuses really make the fact guns hit on touch in near range better easy to counter. I sent 20 guys against my party at all sides and won handily.


One thing I realized is that bows are virtually useless in this setting, but that's fine if you ask me.