[Raven Bloodmoon]

Here is some more fun stuff to ponder and yell at me for bringing up while I wair for my military friends to get online. I am working on adapting d20 modern guns to dnd but with more realistic rules. Currently, I am attempting to gather together a set of rules to govern the four firing modes--single, semi-automatic, three-round burst, and automatic fire. Here is what I have so far.

Single Round Fire

Everytime you pull the trigger, a single round fires and the weapon must be reloaded. Because reloading a weapon generally takes at least a move action, only one shot may be fired per round with such a weapon.

Semi-Automatic Fire

Everytime you pull the trigger, a single round fires and the escaping gasses in combination with a spring mechanism ejects the spent casing and chambers another round. Semi-automatic weapons are capable of firing as many times in a round as you have attacks.

Three-Round Burst Fire

Everytime you pull the trigger, three rounds fire at your target. Each bullet makes a seperate attack roll at a -2 penalty to determine if it strikes the target. This counts as a single attack. You can make as many three-round-burst attacks in a round as you have attacks. If you do not have a full three bullets remaining, it fires all remaining bullets.

Automatic Fire

As long as you hold the trigger down, the weapon fires continuously at its full rate of fire (RoF). Each weapon has a listed RoF measured in shots per round. When using automatic fire as an attack action, the weapon fires half of its RoF at your target; if using a full attack action, it fires its full RoF at your target. Each bullet fired at a target resolves its attack roll individually at a -6 penalty. If you do not have enough bullets remaining for an entire attack action or full round attack, the gun fires all remaining bullets.


Now I still need to speak with oen of my friends who recently wrapped up a tour in the army about what sort of proficiencies would be most appropriate. My gut is telling me that there should be a Pistol, Longarm, Heavy Weapon, and Exotic Weapon proficiency as well as a Three-Round Burst and Automatic Fire proficiency, but this is all very tenative until I learn more about what it is like to shoot such weapons. Until then, please comment.

[Darius]

Three round burst you might want to give bonuses to hit at close range as thats what it designed for- assaults , you get the three rounds out at a faster cyclic rate than normal auto fire so the last bullets on its way before the barrel starts to rise from the recoil ,giving you a better chance to hit a moving target - most modern assault rifles 3rnd bursts can put at least 2 bullets into the chest area of a mansized target at 100m!

Sounds about right for the skills , but what weapons would Exotic cover? , things like AT weapons and stuff would be covered in Heavy weapons!

[Dthclaw]

Instead of Pistol I would say Small Arms. Firing an SMG is not that different from shooting a handgun; the only real difference is the SMG can be fired on automatic (which requires a steady hand more than specialized training).

Your mode system is identical to the one in the MSRD (with regards to semi-auto/3 rd. burst/full auto) so I would just use the feats from there.

For exotic, some ideas:

Mortar
Possible energy weapons
OICW (depending on how 'new' the OICW or equivalent is in yer campaign)
Non-gunpowder firearms (Gauss weapons)
Caseless weapons
Exotic weapon attachments (Combine Assault Rifle secondary, anyone?)

By no means exhaustive. Just a few that come to mind immediately.

[Darius]

Dthclaw, on Apr 19 2006, 11:48 AM, said:

Instead of Pistol I would say Small Arms. Firing an SMG is not that different from shooting a handgun; the only real difference is the SMG can be fired on automatic (which requires a steady hand more than specialized training).


For exotic, some ideas:

Mortar
Possible energy weapons
OICW (depending on how 'new' the OICW or equivalent is in yer campaign)
Non-gunpowder firearms (Gauss weapons)
Caseless weapons
Exotic weapon attachments (Combine Assault Rifle secondary, anyone?)

By no means exhaustive. Just a few that come to mind immediately.

Fireing an SMG is way different from fireing a pistol (Of course , the movies would tell you different ) , it may look cool blazeing away one handed with a smg but you cant hit anything - hence the use of 2 hands to hold one.

OICW is just a rifle/GL combo - most systems put those in longarms , mortars are usually heavy weapons.

How about "Non-Lethal" weapons for exotic? Tasers , net guns ,sonic and flash guns , microwavers?

D

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Awesome ideas, guys. Thank you millions. I figured that pistols and machine pistols would be the Small Arms (I'll definitely change it to that). Submachine guns, rifles, assault rifles, and shotguns are Longarms; machine guns and other big freakin' guns will be considered heavy weapons. Exotics would be things like nets, tasers, and any interesting "energy" weapons that appear, though these would be limited to realistic weapons. Sorry guys, no enygmatic blasters.

So, darius, no penalty on 3-rnd burst fire? See, these things I do not know. I'll nix that from the rule. does the rule for automatic fire look right? I figured it would a tad less accurate than just firing a single round at a target, but the extra chances of hitting make up for it all.

Oh, I forgot to describe how I planned on treating firearm damage. As with modern, I'd have them deal ballistic damage and stipulation that ballistic damage ignores any AC bonuses from archaic armor forms, as I am reasonably certain that guns can shoot through chainmail. As for modern armors, I am not certain just how to treat them yet. They might work better as providing a sort of damage reduction, perhaps? Changing an amount of lethal damage to nonlethal? What do you all think?

[WoeTheSinner]

I can see what Darius is trying to say about burst fire but just in terms of game balance you will either need to include a negative penalty or require a feat with a lesser penalty, much like two weapon fighting adding an extra attack in a round is a very powerful thing.

As Far as the armor is concerned, I say you keep the same system DnD has always used, jsut with "balistic armors" offering AC vs ballistic wepons. Missing an AC in DnD does not mean you missied the target all together it jsut means you did not damage him. Now I understand that if you get hit by a 50 cal rifle int he chest you bette rhave some uber armor protecting you...but you could just specify certain weapons as having the "Armor Piercing" quality...which ignores 10 points of ballistic armor or some such thing...

[Jimp]

I think that for the three-round burst you should have no penalties at close range, like Darius mentioned, but have penalties for ranges beyond maybe 15ft? 20ft? I can't be sure on distances because I don't know much about guns

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Welcome back, Woe!

Well, the thing is that I am trying to make it fairly realistic, and guns by nature are pretty unbalanced when it comes to killing things. Really, getting in a firefight is not going to be something that people look forward to, because getting shot is really, really bad. Now, as far as using 3-rnd bursts, I am still looking at using a seperate proficiency for that, as well as for full automatic. That should allow enough combinations of proficiencies to keep things like pistols and machine pistols seperate in game terms.

As for armors, I like you idea. Less change to the rule structure. Just add another type of Armor Bonus that applies to everything, including ballistic damage. And Armor Piercing makes a lot of sense, considering there are rifles intended for just that purpose, such as the 50cal AMR....

And as far as penalties beyond a certain range, I would use a single range increment or something suitablely close to 100m, as Darius has indicated that they are extremely accurate out to at least that range. Two bullets out of three in the chest of a man 100m away is pretty good.

Oh, and just to address anyone scared of balance issues, remember that the bad guys hav guns too. It's not man with minigun vs. orc with sword. That's just rediculous

[Dthclaw]

Fireing an SMG is way different from fireing a pistol

If you're foolish enough to fire one at full-auto, yeah...

OICW is just a rifle/GL combo - most systems put those in longarms , mortars are usually heavy weapons.

I think you could really argue both ways for them. The OICW is, at its core, just a rifle/grenade launcher, but a lot of the 'extra' capabilities I would argue make it at least a partially-exotic weapon (like the bastard sword, but with bullets). Ditto with mortars - you have to have some pretty decent training to use one accurately. Any twit can drop a mortar shell in a tube and lob it at some poor bastard, but there's a lot of teamwork, coordination, and mathematics that go into firing one.

How about "Non-Lethal" weapons for exotic? Tasers , net guns ,sonic and flash guns , microwavers?

Those would be good, if you're talking about exclusively non-lethal. Not much extra training to fire a beanbag at someone.

BTW, Masers are most definitely NOT non-lethal, unless they are so low powered that they're ineffective at any distance beyond knife-range. Energy longarms such as the prototype PHaSR (yes, it is an actual weapon; I'm not ripping Star Trek) would be a good non-lethal energy weapon.

Oh, I forgot to describe how I planned on treating firearm damage. As with modern, I'd have them deal ballistic damage and stipulation that ballistic damage ignores any AC bonuses from archaic armor forms, as I am reasonably certain that guns can shoot through chainmail. As for modern armors, I am not certain just how to treat them yet. They might work better as providing a sort of damage reduction, perhaps? Changing an amount of lethal damage to nonlethal? What do you all think?

Mmm, ballistic damage...

Modern body armor I would say offers its protective value against ballistic damage but not slashing or piercing (if you are going to add ballistic as a type). This would accurately reflect the fact that a tactical vest will probably stop a bullet but is useless against a knife.

Oh, and just to address anyone scared of balance issues

Why would we be scared of them? Its generally assumed that others will have at least as good a weapons as the PCs, and you'd be surprised how well a Wizard will still deal with gun-toting characters (especially if you disallow enchanted firearms! Iron body, anyone?).

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Okay, so modern armor has an AC bonus and a Ballistic AC bonus? That could work. +1/+5 etc., I guess. As far as artillery pieces, I think those are still a ways away, and I just DARE a player to try to pick one up, point it at a dragon, and plop a shell in....

[Darius]

Dthclaw, on Apr 20 2006, 10:03 AM, said:

[

How about "Non-Lethal" weapons for exotic? Tasers , net guns ,sonic and flash guns , microwavers?

Those would be good, if you're talking about exclusively non-lethal. Not much extra training to fire a beanbag at someone.

BTW, Masers are most definitely NOT non-lethal, unless they are so low powered that they're ineffective at any distance beyond knife-range. Energy longarms such as the prototype PHaSR (yes, it is an actual weapon; I'm not ripping Star Trek) would be a good non-lethal energy weapon.

.

wasn't talking about microwave death rays but non-lethal crowd control weapons ie- http://www.globalsec.../010302-npr.htm

http://en.wikipedia....e_Denial_System
try a google for "Microwave crowd control weapons"

[Dthclaw]

Oh, whoops. I thought you were referencing masers. Completely different... my bad.

You could also throw gel guns into the mix (or whatever you want to call them; they fire a non-lethal round that explodes into a thick, immobilizing gel/foam on impact). Not sure if that would fall under longarms or exotic.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Somehow, I don't think that changing the ordinance a weapon uses changes the proficiency required for that weapon. Heavy weapons are big things like anti-tank guns and machine guns. The rest should fall into one of the two other categories, i'd think.

[RedSlayer]

I'm just curious as to why the Modern Firearm feats are unacceptable? It seems to me to have everything you would want, including the autofire function (and feats), the bursts, and generally good weapon groups.

Did I miss something?

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Hmm...Red raises a good point. Thank you. Unless anyone else has any objections, perhaps those would do just fine, because i can't recall my reasoning for abandoning the system already in place...