Gun Mods
It's a question that is always asked sometime or another in D&D: Can we have guns?
I can't particularly blame the players for this. It's a decidedly male impulse; we like the ability to point at something and have it die from a range, I suppose. Generally, I dislike including them in my game. It's difficult to make them fit naturally and unsurprisingly, they're often overpowered. Here's my solution to that.
First of all, if the players get a gun, then they are 1000% better off selling it at every point. Something this powerful will have to be a sunk-cost from the start. It can only be shot every other round, ammunition is either pricey or unavailable in town, and the gun can be jammed in certain events, leading to costly repairs
The upside to having guns is that they are really powerful. At minimum, they do 1d8 worth of damage for pistols and more for 2-handed guns. You can hold a torch, shield or other weapon in your offhand, but that is much deadlier, which I'll get to in a second.
A while back, I saw a Bandit's Keep video about adapting other subsystems to D&D to freshen things up. One of the recommended changes was for guns. It said to adopt the rules from a TSR gun-slinging game, which uses a d100 for attack roles instead of the d20. This allows for specific designations of hit location (Fallout-esque, one might say) The concept stuck with me, so I made my own:
| d100 roll | Result |
|---|---|
| 01–10 | Head |
| 11–30 | Torso |
| 31–50 | Arms |
| 51–60 | Legs |
| 61–95 | Miss |
| 96-100 | Weapon Jam |
You effectively have around a 60% chance to hit at any point under ideal circumstances. This number stays flat, regardless of armor class. It levels things out, at the severe cost of upkeep. You can see that there's a 5% chance for the gun to misfire and jam in some capacity, which will force repairs and adaptation.
In the event that the weapon is fired under risky circumstances, such as dual-wielding, high wind and storms or whatever, we use this table:
| Roll | Location |
|---|---|
| 01–05 | Head |
| 06–20 | Torso |
| 21–35 | Arms |
| 36–50 | Legs |
| 51–60 | Near‑miss |
| 61–75 | Ricochet |
| 76–85 | Misfire |
| 86–100 | Total miss |
Yes, it's kind of a cop-out to punish the players for using the gun, but I'd rather be draconian and loosen restrictions (provide more ammo, have a gunsmith indebted to them or something) than let them take over the game.
Here are some further clarifications
- 1-in-8 of complication based on location (broken leg, disarmed, etc.)
- If victim wearing helmet: Halve incoming damage to head.
- All powder weapons need one full combat round of reloading per shot.
This isn't a perfect system, but I really like how the discrete die system works, and it makes for a different feel than simply "d20 + number." I wonder what other systems you can mess with like this?