Technology: Firearms

These rules are heavily inspired by the work started by Ken Hood, which can be found [www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=26737#post420428 here]. However, those rules are not nearly comprehensive enough to cover the full possibilities of firearms, and most d20 rules fall far short of what would be ideal. With that in mind, I'm going to be borrowing heavily from Borderlands, as well as using a facsimile of Pathfinder's "race builder" rules, to build a set of rules for customizable guns.

Overview

Firearms in Trinity have been relatively ever-present, being an expression of Technology once it begins showing up. It's entirely possible to find ancient guns built by the Arkeyans, the Ronkans, or other civilizations that have been lost to time. In modern Trinity, guns have become a common part of life, and their use is near-ubiquitous among those that aren't specialized in melee combat or Forces that oppose Technology.

Guns are dangerous, and it's relatively easy to become proficient in their use. However, guns are also ranged weapons, which means that they can hurt your allies in a tight situation. While most people realize that guns are superior in most ways, they have several drawbacks that make most cautious to use them. There's a reason swords are still more common: it's almost impossible to accidentally cut your allies, and even if you do, you won't turn them into paste the way most guns of any strength will.

Complexity, Type, and Subtype

Every gun falls into one option from three main categories: complexity, type, and subtype. These are explained here.

Complexity

Complexity has three ratings.

• Basic
• Advanced
• Complex

A basic firearm is incredibly easy to learn to use, and has few moving parts or complicated pieces. Every component on a basic firearm has an obvious function, even to those unfamiliar with guns.

Advanced firearms are harder to use, usually due to having multiple firing options, more complex loading mechanisms, or unexpected functions that aren't obvious at first glance. Advanced firearms will sometimes have accessories attached that don't have a clear function unless you know what you're looking at.

Complex firearms are the most difficult to use, requiring familiarity with their function. While these weapons still retain the "point and click" interface that makes guns popular, their more advanced settings and more complicated Technological functions mean that just pointing the gun at someone and pulling the trigger may make all sorts of interesting things happen, depending on the weapon's settings. The full functionality of a complex firearm is difficult to ascertain from cursory inspection, even for someone proficient in other complex firearms.

Complexity and Proficiency: Firearms begin simple and basically identical across types, then explode into diversification as technologies become more sophisticated. For this reason, firearm proficiency feats are a bit unusual, and the more complex the firearm, the more specialized the proficiency becomes. See the Feats section at the end of this page for more information.

Type

Firearms have six general types.

• Pistol: Versatile class of weapons usually suited to short-to-medium range combat, typically with fast reload speed. Sub-types include auto-firing machine pistols with larger magazines but lower accuracy, middle-of-the-road repeaters, and revolvers with longer range and higher accuracy but slower reloads and lower ammo capacity.
• SMG: High rate of fire and low recoil, good at close range and decent at medium range. Usually lower per-round damage than pistols of lower level, but greater rate of fire means higher DPR, and tend to have high capacity magazines.
• Shotgun: Fire multiple pellets, effective at close range but lowest accuracy of any weapon type. Examples include single-barrel fast-firing weapons with larger magazines, medium-range weapons with low spread, and multi-barrel weapons with huge per-shot damage but slow rates of fire and frequent reloads.
• Rifle: Versatile medium/long range weapon. Examples include accurate, high-damage semi-auto weapons, general-purpose burst or automatic rifles, and high-capacity light machine guns with heavy recoil. Special assault rifles can fire grenades or rockets with standard rifle ammunition, though at a cost of multiple rounds per shot.
• Longgun: High-damage, accurate weapons which are most effective at long range, usually with very limited magazine size and slow rates of fire. They are almost always equipped with scopes, and often have a bonus to Critical Hit Damage.
• Launcher: Powerful shoulder-fired weapons with many positive firing characteristics, but low ammo capacity, long reload time and expensive ammo. Subtypes include high-velocity cannons, low-velocity cruise missiles with devastatingly high damage and shotgun-like spread launchers.

Type for firearms is akin to creature type: it defines a number of variables and is often referenced by other mechanics, but alone does not tell an individual much about a firearm.

Type and Ammunition: Each type of firearm has its own type of ammunition, but ammunition is interchangeable between firearms of the same type. For instance, if you normally carry SMG ammunition and find a new SMG, your SMG ammo will fit into the new weapon (but see below).

Subtype

Firearms have three subtypes, which can be applied to any type of any complexity.

• Projectile: A projectile weapon uses physical slugs to do damage.
• Hybrid: A hybrid weapon uses a combination of charged energy and a physical component to deal damage.
• Energy: An energy weapon uses charged energy focused through a crystal or other apparatus to deal damage.

Subtypes and Ammunition: Each type of ammunition is divided into these three categories - for instance, you could carry projectile SMG ammo, hybrid SMG ammo, and energy SMG ammo. Most firearms are constructed to only take one type of ammunition, so a standard SMG would only take projectile SMG ammo.