What "level" of firearms do you prefer in RPGs?

[TKVNC]

Truly the best way to put things into a game is authentically. I think guns that effectively one-shot are good. You learn to play around it, rather than bullet-sponging everything.

The catch is that handling that requires that the game be specifically balanced around it: If guns are effectively one shot, they need to be sufficiently impactful to justify that, able to kill or severely injure an opponent in that one shot. If they do 1d10 damage to an opponent with 200 HP, this is effectively meaningless. All ranged weapons, really, are sensitive to this kind of thing. Whereas melee weapons resolve themselves into DPS, ranged weapons are highly dependent on stopping power for their value: Will they be able to actually win the fight while it is still an actual ranged battle, or do they do an insignificant fraction of damage before the battle inevitably devolves into a melee anyway? Nowhere is this more apparent than if you only get one shot.

Mount and Blade does a good job with missiles, they really can decimate entire armies (as they should), so you have to plan accordingly. Yet, melee, and cavalry still have very specific uses.

[rusty_shackleford]

Just give everyone cool exosuit armor so you can use guns and high-tech energy weapons and not having everyone die in a single hit

[WaterMage]

"Animals" qualify as human-scale targets

Depends on the animal. An animal can be a rabbit or a freaking polar bear. Either way, let's suppose that WoD werewolves and vampires existed. Do you deny that a .338 LM rifle with silver-bathed rounds would be devastating against the werewolf and a shotgun with dragon breath rounds against the vampire?

Just give everyone cool exosuit armor so you can use guns and high-tech energy weapons and not having everyone die in a single hit

That only works on sci fi settings. Wouldn't work in a weird west setting for eg.

[stormvermin]

Honestly, whether or not firearms exist, I don't think you'd realistically want to be fighting something like that melee weapons ANYWAY. Hell, take the typical opponent of a generic fantasy RPG: A dragon. In a vidya game, you're typically hitting it with your sword until it dies. Visually, this looks manifestly stupid, because a dragon is ******* huge, and trying to stab it to death with your sword is like a squirrel trying to stab somebody to death with a toothpick. If you actually wanted to fight a dragon in a serious way, you'd be using siege equipment or at least a lance from horseback. You will notice in the movies, people do not fight dragons with their swords, because on-screen, it would look ******* ********.

broke: the adventurer sticks the dragon to death with a sword
woke: swords do fuckall, trebuchets and ballistas are the only way to combat a dragon
bespoke: the only one who can deliver us from the dragon is the divine hero, Lord help us all

On topic, I don't like futuristic weapons, especially when the weapon becomes basically a magic wand. My personal preference is late 1800s/early 1900s firearms as I enjoy shooting guns designed in that era irl the most.

[DemoGraph]

broke: the adventurer sticks the dragon to death with a sword
woke: swords do fuckall, trebuchets and ballistas are the only way to combat a dragon
bespoke: the only one who can deliver us from the dragon is the divine hero, Lord help us all

That's why I always play lightning bolt throwing mages or rogues inserting poison into sacrificial maidens.

[Norfleet]

Depends on the animal. An animal can be a rabbit or a freaking polar bear.

Even a polar bear still qualifies as a human-scale enemy. I mean, they're clearly tougher than a human is, but weapons that are meant for humans still meaningfully affect polar bears, and even elephants.

Either way, let's suppose that WoD werewolves and vampires existed. Do you deny that a .338 LM rifle with silver-bathed rounds would be devastating against the werewolf and a shotgun with dragon breath rounds against the vampire?

I don't know the details of WOD werewolves and vampires, but the thing with werewolves and vampires is that they aren't really beyond human-scale, they just have supernatural invulnerabilities that, once penetrated with such improvised modifications, do not really leave them that much stronger.

It's not like you're trying to fight a Brontosaurus (or a dragon) with an AK-47.

Just give everyone cool exosuit armor so you can use guns and high-tech energy weapons and not having everyone die in a single hit

That only works on sci fi settings. Wouldn't work in a weird west setting for eg.

I mean, they've got Steampunk Exosuit Weird West, so that's a thing.

[Demonic Fate]

My favourite gun style is near-futuristic, somewhere between "Kel-Tec but they're snorting even more cocaine" and clean sci-fi like Ghost in the Shell or Mass Effect. Aggressively streamlined designs inspired by icons like the FN P90, Kriss Vector, Walther P-2000, and so on - shiny and full of space materials, but still recognizably firearms with bullets and recoil and all of that noise, not pew-pew laser guns.

The NS-7 PDW "Cassette player" from Planetside is a good example:



Majority of the nu-Deus Ex games' guns also hit the sweet spot for me:



Other than that, lever action is also immensely satisfying. There's an Overwatch hero that fires one and it's the most fun, but otherwise they're very rare in FPS i think. (I imagine RDR has some but I don't care for Rockstar game design).

[WaterMage]

It's not like you're trying to fight a Brontosaurus (or a dragon) with an AK-47.

BTW, in PF1e, Brontosaurus are CR 11. An Adult white dragon, CR 10 .338 LM could kill both with difficulties both imo. That said, no one constantly engages with dragons and other legendary creatures every day in fantasy. Even in dumbed-down fantasy like Skyrim. Most enemies that you fight are not dragons.

[Norfleet]

You will notice that even Chad Gippity admits this is a very difficult shot and anything other than such a very precise hit produces very little useful effect and most likely pisses it off. Especially when you consider "called shot to the brain" is not a part of most RPG rulesets. You're aiming for a target the size of a walnut attached to a long neck of an erratically moving animal, and this is BEFORE it has spotted you and become enraged.

[WaterMage]

You will notice that even Chad Gippity admits this is a very difficult shot and anything other than such a very precise hit produces very little useful effect and most likely pisses it off. Especially when you consider "called shot to the brain" is not a part of most RPG rulesets. You're aiming for a target the size of a walnut attached to a long neck of an erratically moving animal, and this is BEFORE it has spotted you and become enraged.

But we are talking about a CR 11 creature (CR 11 creatures are meant for a group at 11th level to fight in PF1e) being killed in one hit by probably the strongest rifle cartridge below anti-materiel rifles. If someone will hunt them, they would probably use an AMR and be a very experienced hunter, not I, who only shot paper at firing ranges. Honestly, IRL a very experienced hunter with a .338 LM rifle would have a higher chance of OHKilling such a creature than a 13th-level wizard with a finger of death spell on AD&D/3.5e... Besides, the hunter can engage the creature over a thousand yards away. The creature would have zero chance of detecting the hunter.

Besides, we are looking only to bullets. Someone that makes mercury fulminate in relatively large quantities can easily overpower even most D&D high-level spells, and it is not a hard thing to do; it is literally 18th-level tech. 500 g of Hg(CNO)₂~mercury fulminate tied with some metal to serve as shrapnel would deliver .75 MJ of energy. With a detonation velocity of ~4,250 m/s (13,779 feet/s to Americans) and probably throwing shrapnel at supersonic to hypersonic speeds, it would treat even the thickest fantasy armor like paper. I do believe that in single-target damage, it would be much more powerful than even high-level D&D spells. But in AOE, it is less powerful than large AOE spells. The downside is that such a "grenade" would be more dangerous than even Warhammer magic.

[WaterMage]

About the level of firearms that I particularly prefer, is this :



Not an RPG, but imo Hunt : Showndown is the game with the coolest-looking guns. Orders of magnitude better than Bethesda guns. And note : This game was made by Germans, while Bugthesda is American.

In turn-based RPGs, I think that UnderRail has the best guns. In real-time RPGs, I think that Fallout: New Vegas has the best guns.

[swbgtoc]

RPG or not I like flintlock guns. Also I like magitech guns, and I like them both combined

[UltraFan123]

Not sure if related to the topic, but if the fantasy setting has guns, then it could theoretically have tanks too. And I don't just mean the steam tanks of Warhammer Fantasy.

2 or more armored warhorses drawing a massive protected chariot with an equally massive gun attached to it. Or a heavily armored elephant carrying said chariot on its back.

If the magic in the setting is sophisticated enough, then the war animal can be replaced with an iron or adamantite golem with the massive guns attached to it.

[WaterMage]

I agree, UltraFan. Also, we could have undead carriages. Imagine how cool undead bison carrying galloper guns or war constructs would be. And crazy **** like the Warhammer Hellcannon. Imagine the most powerful dwarf cannon. Infuse it with black magic. Bind a daemon to it. It literally is so powerful that it destroys the veil between reality itself when it hits an enemy.


Chaos daemons have lots of powerful stuff. Eg - Iron Daemon


Is daemonology + mechanical constructs in the most baddass way possible.

[WaterMage]

What I particularly don't understand is the following. Why include muzzleloaders in a game if they reload faster than breechloaders? Eg - Avowed :



Risen 3 :



These weapons literally have a higher fire rate than when I fired a .30-06 bolt-action rifle IRL. EDIT : Just put a "experimental trapdoor" and make it breechloader. Would be easier to animate.