Laser Guns and Plasma Swords!?

In his Introduction to The Gygax 75 Challenge, Ray Otus very specifically warns me:

If you are an inveterate tinkerer and are trying to redesign your system as you create the setting, or if you create a setting that will force you to redesign some elements of the system, you are committing to a lot of extra work and you may have trouble finishing within the expected time frame of five weeks.

Given that I want lasers, plasma swords, and Halfling Cleric/Thieves in my campaign, I find myself in a predicament. To which Otus states:

If you find yourself in this predicament, I have a suggestion. Ignore the problem for now. Go ahead and build out your campaign setting and assume the things you need are in the system.

Well, I could do that…but, fortunately I have been trying to figure out ways of emulating firearms and the like in D&D for years. Rather than seeing these additions and house rules as extra work that may endanger my ability to finish this experiment in a timely fashion, I see this as an opportunity.

One of the things I actually like about 5e is a tactical choice it gives spell casters when it comes to damage spells:

• Automatically do damage but risk missing a “to hit” roll.
• Automatically hitting but risk the target making a Saving Throw to take no damage.

I see laser guns as a way to give every class an opportunity to make the second tactical choice. Unlike cantrips, however, guns can only be fired so many times before they run out of whatever you consider to be ammunition.

Again, 5e is a nice source of inspiration here. Take a look at the description for a Wand of Magic Missiles:

This wand has 7 charges. While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 or more of its charges to cast the magic missile spell from it. For 1 charge, you cast the 1st-level version of the spell. You can increase the spell slot level by one for each additional charge you expend. The wand regains 1d6 + 1 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the wand’s last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the wand crumbles into ashes and is destroyed.

The item has a certain number of charges that are required to be spent in order to use it. At the end of every day, a certain number of those charges are regained; however, if the number of charges are reduced to zero, there is a chance it is destroyed.

I think this is a good model for thinking about how a laser gun might work. Since a quiver can carry 20 arrows, I think that might be a good number for a rifle and we can half that for a pistol. At the end of the day, the laser gun recharges; however, the batteries are notoriously unstable when completely discharged and destroy the gun on a ‘1’ on a d6.

The damage a laser gun does, like every other weapon, is based on class:

• Fighters 1d8
• Clerics and Thieves 1d6
• Magic-users 1d4

Things like cover would give a target a bonus on their Saving Throw:

• Shield (when facing into the shot): +1
• Partial Cover: +2
• Half Cover: +4

When it comes to Plasma Swords, it is all about the cool factor. They function exactly like a normal sword except that only spell casters can get them to “unsheathe” themselves. I did say, however, that I wanted players to be able to deflect laser shots with a plasma sword. Simple: those wielding a plasma sword get a +2 on their Saving Throws when shot at with laser guns. This is in addition to any other cover they may have.

One other thought that might be interesting to play test: Armor can be allotted toward normal combat or as a bonus to a Saving Throw against a laser gun. Thus, the Imperial Riflemen could all wear Plate that give them a +6 on their Saving Throws against being shot with lasers, but gives them an AC 9 when in melee. That +6 (or +4 or +2) could be divvied up however the purchaser wants (+5/+1,+2/+4,+3/+3, etc). It adds another wrinkle to tactical choices at the table.

Guns & SWCL (St. Haralmbos the Hieromartyr)

Yesterday was the Feast of St. Haralambos, also known as the man who would not die. He was a 3rd century priest when he was arrested at the age of 103 or 113 depending on the source. He was subjected to multiple tortures: flesh stripped from his skin, dragged by horses, iron spikes driven into his flesh, flames, etc. He not only endured it all, but miracles poured forth from him convincing many who witnessed these things to become Christian. Admittedly, I struggled to find a way to apply St. Haralambos’ story to RPGs.

Yesterday was also a very busy day for me, so in the end a gave up and let my Saintly Saturday post pass. Then, as I was going to sleep, a thought came to me about Damage Resistance. This then led me to think about my own attempts to use it (despite my negative experiences with it while playing 3.5) in an attempt to remedy D&D’s weakness for simulating why armor disappeared from the battlefield once guns were introduced. I playtested DR and guns and it was not fun.

The impetus for this is a campaign that keeps boiling up every now and then as a consequence of meditating upon the lives of the saints: a fantasy version of Alaska.

As folks who have been reading this blog for the past several months know, my Gamer ADD has been surprisingly focused upon SWCL its possibilities. I have been pleasantly surprised by how forcing oneself into the minimalism of SWCL how easy it is to express really complicated ideas and worlds.

So, my tired, Haralambos-addled brain started to wonder what would happen if I were to apply SWCL’s minimalism to guns in an attempt to emulate the transition away from armor that happened when guns became prevalent?

The problem is Armor Class. D&D’s combat is all about over-coming armor and guns made armor largely irrelevant. Thus, there has to be a minimalist way that guns can ignore AC. As far as I am concerned, the simplest mechanic to use would be the Save.

In other words, guns would operate much in the same way that a Magic Wand works in SWCL:

Magic Wand: cast one 1st level magic-user spell (chosen by referee), 3 times per day.

The one 1st level spell that does damage is Magic Missile:

Magic Missile:
Range: 250 Duration: Instant.
A magic dart unerringly strikes a single target for 1d6 damage.

This, of course, bears little resemblance to a muzzleloader: the range is off as well as the accuracy; however, this allows for some fiddling to make this "Magic Wand" function more like an 18th century musket or pistol.

SWCL gives bows a Range of 100 ft. Of course, this seems historically inaccurate. An English Longbow probably had a range of around 400 yards. Two things to remember, however:

• Bowmen did not fire at individual targets in battle, they fired at an area in volleys.
• The Range given in SWCL can be interpreted to be either short range or point blank range and therefore its effective ability to target individuals could be increased to upwards of 300 ft. which seems reasonable given combat conditions.

Napoleonic era tactics had 100 yards as the outside effective range for a volley of musket fire. This would place an effective SWCL range for targeting individuals at 25ft. Given the classic image of the 18th century duel, this sounds fairly reasonable.

Muzzleloaders are infamously inaccurate, so targets should be able to make a Save in order to avoid damage.

In terms of frequency (given the short range and the Save) and given the time to reload, it could be ruled that a gun may be used once per combat.

Thus, what we are left with is the following:

Muzzleloader:
Range: 25 Duration: Instant.
A gun that may be fired once per combat. Target must make a Save or take 1d6 damage.

Meditating on Firearms in D&D

So, following up on my recent thoughts about firearms, here are some simple concepts that could accompany the idea that the main defense against firearms is not armor but saving throws.

All firearms have three ranges:

• Short: full damage, save for half-damage
• Medium: full damage, save for no damage
• Long: half-damage, save for no damage

Cover (and the Referee gets to decide what is Cover and what is not) makes all ranges into Long Range.

Therefore, there are two main ways to modify how aspects of a gun function: adjust the Range or adjust Cover. This allows a huge variety of mechanical ways to express various “tech-levels,” barrel lengths, calibers, accessaries, etc. For example:

• Shortening or lengthening ranges is an easy way to express the relative effectiveness of a gun. A muzzle-loader would have a much smaller range increments than a 21st century sniper rifle.
• Different saving throws (if one uses the saving throws from B/X, LL etc. instead of the “one-size fits all” approach of S&W) can be assigned to different calibers. For example: "Poison or Death" could be used for the smaller end (.32 or 9mm) and "Breath Attacks" could be used for the higher end (.50 cal) and/or shot guns.
• Armor Piercing rounds could reduce Cover to Medium Range
• Scopes could reduce ranges to Short and Medium (Medium = Short, Long = Medium)
• Sci-fi weapons like plasma guns could only have a Short Range (however long the Referee wanted the range of a plasma gun to be).
• etc.

Let the world building commence!

Saintly Saturday: St. Vladimir, Equal-to-the-Apostles of Kiev

Today is the Feast of St. Vladimir of Kiev who is given the moniker Equal-to-the-Apostles, which is given to those saints that aren’t normally seen as apostles (such as monarchs and women), but whose life declared the Gospel of Christ in such a way that led many to baptism. In the case of St. Vladimir, the Rus followed their monarch to Christianity.

Born Volodimir and a pagan, St. Vladimir was not unfamiliar with Christianity as the grandson of St. Olga. Nevertheless, there are many histories of how brutal Volodimir was. For nine years he reigned in Kiev before he got involved in a civil war within the Byzantine Empire. He came out of that experience as a baptized Christian, with a marriage to the Emperor’s Daughter Anna and with the title Tsar (meaning Caesar).

Nonetheless, he diligently spread the Christian faith and ordered idols (which he had made of the pagan gods he once worshipped) scourged, dragged through the city and thrown into the Dnieper River. The history of the Russian people as Orthodox Christians in many ways begins with St. Vladimir. He died from illness in A.D. 1015.

One of the primary gods that Volodimir famously made an idol of silver and gold for (one which he shortly thereafter destroyed) depicted what could crudely be described as the Slavic version of Thor — Perun. As the highest god in the Slavic pantheon, Perun was understood to be the god of thunder and lightening. Unlike Thor, however, he did not have a slavic version of Mjolnir. Rather, he had a bow with which he shot “thunderbolt stones” which could be found buried in the earth. Weapons and devices made of these thunderbolt stones were believed to provide protection from various calamities such as bad luck, evil magic, disease and (of course) lightening.

Accepting the premise that Perun was, in fact, just an idol made by human beings to explain natural phenomena, these “thunderbolt stones” must have a different origin. Indeed, according to modern science, they are fulgurites and belemnites. In context of a FRPG, this opens up the door to some good old fashioned science fiction/fantasy mash-up world-building. In ancient times, for example, there could have been a massive war between aliens and what are popularly known as “the ancients.” Artifacts from this era litter the land. One could even tie in the existence of magic to this event: thunderbolt stones are the source of all arcane magic in the world.

This, of course, leads to the possibility of introducing things like “Thunderbolt Guns” into the game. As I have mused in the past, D&D doesn’t do firearms very well. This is because its combat premise (better armor makes you harder “to hit”) does not reflect what happened historically once firearms are introduced. The logic of D&D would assume that plate mail would still be a viable option for soldiers on the battlefield because they wouldn’t get hit as often with bullets as someone who was simply wearing combat fatigues.

I have yet to see any house rule that allows for guns that completely satisfies me. I did play test the Leather = DR1, Chain = DR2 and Plate = DR3 where guns get to ignore the DR. It just didn’t flow like I hoped it would. The implied tactical choice wasn’t as interesting as I hoped and in the end the extra mechanic just slowed things down enough that I am not really interested in playing with that house rule any more.

Thus, I am still interested to see if there is a simple system that can help introduce guns into D&D that can easily emulate the tactical realities of the 18th century when armor had mostly disappeared from the battlefield because firearms happened.

The idea of Thunderbolt Stones being the source of arcane magic in a FRPG world, the old musings of Aos at The Metal Earth as well as my recent delving into the world of Swords & Wizardry Light got me thinking on a completely different tangent: why not treat firearms like fireballs?

Armor in all its forms is ineffectual against guns. Thus, on average, someone using a gun only needs to hit an AC 9 to hit your average guy clad in plate mail; however, just like when that same plate mail-clad guy gets hit with a fireball or dragon’s breath or a charm person spell, he gets a saving throw. Depending upon the type, range and caliber of the weapon this save could be for half-damage or no damage at all. For example, due to the inaccuracy of muzzle-loaded firearms, anything beyond point blank range might be a save for no damage, but anything close-up would at least do half.

I think this ticks all the boxes for me: it doesn’t radically mess with the D&D combat system, it uses extant mechanics everyone is familiar with, it doesn’t over power guns and yet emulates why on a field full of guns no one bothers to wear any armor.

Saintly Saturday: Synaxis of All Alaskan Saints

Today is the Synaxis of All Saints of Alaska (where Synaxis means gathering). On this day in 1794, Russian missionaries first set foot in Alaska. Today specifically remembers the two protomartyrs of America: St. Peter the Aleut (the first American martyr) and St. Juvenal (the first martyr on American soil). Those of you who have read this blog in the past may remember that I wrote about St. Juvenal a couple of months ago.

At that time, Gamer ADD caused me to start contemplating an FRPG setting based upon 18th century Alaska, where the colonial powers of Ruthenia and Albion vied for control over Alakshaq and the various native peoples. Here is another tremendously cool map for inspiration:

My preferred ruleset for this Gamer ADD-fueled endeavor is B/X (effectively emulated via LL). There is one major problem with this, however. While armor was still in limited use on 18th century battlefields (cavalry units still donned breast plates, for example), it was largely absent. The reason for this absence was the effectiveness of the most common weapon on 18th century battlefields — the gun.

For better or worse, D&D has never been very good at emulating the impact of the gun on combat. Even as armor technology has endeavored to literally stop bullets, soldiers on contemporary battlefields choose to go sans armor because the advantages in mobility and maneuverability outweigh the advantages of wearing armor.

As written, in D&D there are two basic mechanisms that can be used to try and emulate the effectiveness of guns: the "to hit" roll and the damage roll. In my opinion, neither works.

• If guns have a bonus to hit, it incentivizes heavy armor — the opposite of what happened historically.
• If guns get a bonus to damage it unrealistically inflates the damage done by guns. Question: which would you rather take a direct hit from, a flintlock gun or a sword? I am guessing that the vast majority of us would choose the gun over the sword because we would have a much better chance of surviving.

This means that if I want to use my preferred ruleset, I'd have to do some serious house rules. One possibility is to experiment with this idea, where armor = damage reduction. This way, guns could ignore certain amounts of that damage reduction. Thus, it can function as all other weapons do — the same "to hit" and same damage — while doing what guns historically did — render armor on the battlefield meaningless.

I'll end with a pair of questions:

• What is your favorite attempt at introducing guns to D&D?
• What is your favorite ruleset (preferably FRPG) for emulating guns?