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D&D Campaign setting help

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ackblom12:

--- Quote from: Narr on 13 Jan 2008, 17:16 ---Even with the "drawbacks" to guns as you've made them, a character with high base attack bonus and a lot of dexterity would be next to unstoppable given enough ammo.  Make everything single-shot sort of like crossbows, and make reloading a move-equivalent action (again like crossbows).

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What you just told me was that my current build is too powerful, but I should make them have a much faster ROF. I think I might be misunderstanding what you're suggesting.


--- Quote from: Kid van Pervert on 13 Jan 2008, 15:16 ---The problem with guns is that they're more or less advanced versions of crossbows, and as any halfway seasoned player will tell you, 99% of the time crossbows fucking suck compared to longbows or even shortbows, which do (marginally) less damage but can be fired multiple times in a single round. If all your guns are muzzle-loaders (and it sounds like that's the case) then they basically are to crossbows what a two-handed sword is to a longsword, plus added risk of critical failure and less accuracy. Adding in revolver tech would significantly change guns for the better, but might also break them.

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My main problem with introducing revolvers and the like is that in that case, I'm basically going to be doing nothing but making bows with gunpowder. After all, part of what I'm trying to accomplish is a fun and viable alternative to bows and guns in a world where guns have just been introduced in a viable fashion, not necessarily a replacement for them.

Then again, I'm not real sure how I had managed to completely skip over the whole issue of mutiliple attacks in a round. To be fair though, having a weapon that is an almost guaranteed hit along with the higher damage and crit damage is going to be a nice opener. Definitely something I need to think about though.

MusicScribbles:
So, are we talking flintlock pistols and other assorted black powder weapons? You could essentially make these guns work in a completely different way from how those of our world do.
You could give them a gearlike mechanism (Which is much more steampunk) that can be upgraded with different kinds of gears, making these guns highly personalized. This is just an idea though. What I'm trying to say is that what you do with guns should make them identifiably different from bows and crossbows and ranged magic attacks not just cosmetically, but statistically as well, creatively even. So that they don't replace bows and crossbows, make their failing be their complete and utter unreliability, or maybe you need constantly replace the parts. What ever it is you do, make them fun to play, because I've used guns before in D&D (One of the handbooks has them, I think it might be the Epic Level Handbook.) and they just didn't enough different from other ranged weapons except that they were extremely uncommon as well as their ammunition. Bows and crossbows can be enchanted, so can guns be technologically augmented?

KvP:
Have you thought about instituting an Arcanum-style magic / tech opposition? If you're open at all to more complex tech and such, having spells cast upon a gunner give penalties would be a smart balancing mechanism. The more complex the tech, the more (and more severe) penalties you can accrue. Muzzle-loaders, being rather simple, would get maybe a -1 to hit penalty or the gunner would get -1 AC when he comes into contact with magic. A flamethrower, on the other hand, might explode. This would apply to both beneficial and harmful magic, so if a PC wants to carry around a hand gatling cannon, he'd better be ready to drop it as soon as he gets hit with a magic missile or a haste spell.

The problem with that approach, which is apparent to anyone who's played Arcanum, is that by and large magic is more versatile, practical and useful than steampunk tech, and if you're making your characters choose between magic and tech tech still won't really be a good option. The best method would be figuring out a happy medium.

MusicScribbles:
That sounds along the lines of Mage: The Ascension, which would be more of a battle between magic and technology, which in that case you can just play Mage with the Middle Ages variant, but Old World of Darkness stuff is hard to find because Vampire and Werewolf were so much more popular that they made New World of Darkness, and they took Mage and made it angsty and derivative.
I would make this steampunk tech thing a power to rival magic, but not give them minuses against eachother. Maybe tech stuff could have advantages over magic because it is a more powerful kind of arrow, but it is more unstable. Magic on the other hand could have the ability to perfectly counter this, and so on, which is why gun-related feats would be so much fun.
If you can somehow make guns that use gears and steam instead of gunpowder, and then let them be augmented with new gears and such like you would imbue or enchant a bow, this would be awesome.
Piercing arrows, and deep-impact bullets.

Alex C:

--- Quote from: Narr on 13 Jan 2008, 17:16 ---Anyway, Warlocks are overpowered.  I don't see how anyone could claim otherwise.  After I got Ammon Jerro in NWN2, he was responsible for the vast majority of my total damage done, despite the fact my favored soul raped things up to that point.  It's basically the ability to cast a powerful nearly unavoidable attack every round with medium base attack bonus and the ability to wear light armors with no penalties.  Take the right eldritch blast feats and you can cast what's essentially a fireball every single round, which is completely absurd, especially if the DM is one that likes to spot your party in situations where resting isn't really viable.  When were they even introduced on paper, by the way?  I was unaware of them as a class until I saw them pop up in NWN2.

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They've been in the PnP game a pretty long time now; they were added in with the Complete Arcane book. They were found to be mildly underpowered and were subsequently buffed, actually. Why? Because a fireball every round isn't that good unless you're playing a computer game where battles are always constricted into tight areas within your Ability's attack range due to the limitations of a computer monitor, especially when you consider that the Wizard has already crafted his own Wand of Fireballs by this point and has moved onto Cone of Cold, Horrid Wilting and Negative Energy burst by the time you've started matching his Fireball's damage potential. In pen and paper archery focused characters can routinely slaughter Warlocks for the majority of the game. Here's why: A level 12 Warlock's Eldritch Blast deals 6d6 and is subject to spell resistance, firing into a melee and cover modifiers, so it's almost but not quite guaranteed damage, which is nice, but since it's a standard action you can't fire it off more than once a round even with Haste on, EVER, unless you have the Quicken Innate Spell feat (which takes forever to pay off), and even then the archer still has the range advantage. Seriously, 21 damage on average? A round? Unless you're hitting a whole swarm of critters that's not very good, and even then you're better off with a hardcore disabling spell from a Mage or Sorceror; it's not nearly the game changer that a Sleep type affect can be. I've seen level 1 Orc Barbarians who deal more damage than that in a round while raging, and if something's within Cleave range it will be to multiple targets as well. The bow deals physical damage and therefore can't a effect a wider range of enemies, but the bottom line is by level 5 you can threaten damage with it twice a round and gain another attack at level 6 as a fighter and once you gain the appropriate prestige classes you're often tripling a Warlock's single target damage output in any given round with a decent build and bow. In all honesty, Warlocks are good for about 5 levels at which point true casters pwn the crap out of them like they do everything else past a certain level range. That's just D&D for you. As a general rule, if you're a powergamer and not a Cleric, odds are you're doing it wrong.

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