Weapon Restrictions

[virgil]

Many systems/genres allow for power to be external to the character, the most notable of which that comes to mind are weapons. What kind of rules or even setting conventions are good ideas to use to keep PCs from always using the most powerful weapon they can find in the book? Of particular note are settings/campaigns that alternate between urban and wilderness adventures; Firefly, travelling Shadowrun, Deadlands, etc.

[Psychic Robot]

Powerful weapons often include caveats such as being...

1. Dangerous to wielder.
2. Rare and expensive.
3. Powered by rare and expensive ammunition.
4. Inherently evil.
5. Illegal.
6. Morally questionable.

[CCarter]

In modern day games it tends to be availability or legality (or concealability). Cost is often also a factor.

Some systems might require some sort of merit or advantage to get access to some weapons (e.g. silver werewolf whackers in Werewolf), while others leave this up to GM fiat as to availability (Palladium with its huge catalogues of gun porn in weird setting expansions).

A specific weapon skill might be needed to use a powerful weapons as well (e.g. exotic weapon proficiency to use bastard swords...or to use rapiers in 4E).

A couple of systems use ability score minimums for some melee weapons - again Exotic Weapon Proficiency: bastard sword comes up [Str 13+], but Tunnels & Trolls has STR/DEX requirements for every weapon. GURPS and Talislanta both have Str requirements for most melee weapons as well, IIRC.

[kzt]

Legality is the most common, plus cost. SR does a really terrible job of it, as SR weapons are both far too cheap and I've never even heard of a PC who ended up trying to buy machineguns from a KE undercover sting.

[K]

One of the easier methods to make trade-offs. FOr example, back in 2e DnD small weapons were faster and you'd go first in the initiative while large ones were slower but did more damage.

[Josh_Kablack]

Well there really shouldn't be a straightforward answer to which is the "most powerful".


In general weapons have

• Damage to target (including inflicted statuses and debuffs)
• Accuracy (possibly including specials like 4e inescapable)
• Penetration (in some games this is subset of Damage or of Accuracy, but in other games you have stuff like Ghost Touch or NND that negates various binary defenses )
• Defense (possibly including immunities to statuses)
• Buffs (temporary powerups to the wielder like the 3.0 Oathbow or the Sword of Omens giving Lion-O Sight Beyond Sight)
• Speed (possibly initiative mods, rate of fire, or movement mods)
• Reach/Range (possibly including modifiers to range penalties)
• Acquisition Cost (including purchase price, training difficulty and magical attunement )
• Use Cost ( this could be ammunition / exhaustion / Heat / risk of self-damage / risk of collateral damage )
• Concealability / Ease of Transport
• Social Acceptability ( here in the contemporary US of A, it's often okay to carry one or more firearms, yet it's just about never okay to carry any sort of explosive you crafted yourself. )

[shadzar]

What kind of rules or even setting conventions are good ideas to use to keep PCs from always using the most powerful weapon they can find in the book?

Frankly the 10-day waiting period of recent years for the real world and such things is the first step in that direction...

cost, legality, availability. these are about all there is.

the easiest way is do NOT make them available.

In older editions of D&D, the treasure was placed in a manner that would make sense for the treasure to be there. High-powered weapons didnt just flow like a river for everyone to have them unless made to do so.

in an old west game where everyone wears guns, then preventing people from getting guns wont work, you jsut have to prevent them from getting the "best" guns.

fantasy you just dont litter magic weapons everywhere from treasure troves to stores. do NOT have ye olde majik shoppe.

[hogarth]

Make the PC buy any equipment with power points, a la Hero System. Then if you're investing everything in a powerful weapon, you're making trade-offs elsewhere.

[RobbyPants]

Depending on the system, as situations change, your most optimal weapon also changes. There are times when your most optimal weapon might be a knife, a silenced pistol, an assault rifle, a sniper rifle, or a rocket launcher. Other times, these weapons could be liabilities, if you build that much detail into your system.

Of course, other factors mentioned above will dictate which particular assault rifle is the best.

[Wumpus]

Make the PC buy any equipment with power points, a la Hero System. Then if you're investing everything in a powerful weapon, you're making trade-offs elsewhere.

Which pretty well works as a game mechanics force until the end of the first conflict when the opposition is looted. Doesn't even vaguely work from a story level. (Well, Rambo didn't start the movie with a gun, so he can't pick one up the first time he comes across it...?????)

[Murtak]

The answer to this depends a lot on your setting. Shadowrun for example works with a combination of legality, availability, price and stealthiness. The best guns are expensive, hard to get and provoke a bigger police response. If you run around with a minigun all the time you will eventually get hit by a SWAT team or even by a yakuza gunmen sent to make sure you don't make them look like they can't police their neighbourhood. This works pretty well, as long as you don't violate the basic assumptions of this setup: Money is tight, cops can kill you, illegal guns are hard to get.

In DnD weapons are balanced differently: all martial weapons are equivalent. A greatsword is no better than a greataxe, just different. And for the most part, this system works. It breaks as soon as you want, for example, a high culture to have superior weaponry, because as soon as the first of their soldiers is killed you have a barbarian with superior weaponry.

You could also balance weapons by having them be largely secondary to your skill. If any decent hit will kill you, having a better weapon only becomes relevant if faced with special circumstances. A sniper rifle would be valuable for being able to shoot at a distance, a pistol for being concealable and an assault rifle for offsetting a miss chance.

In short, which method to use will depend largely on the assumptions and restrictions inherent to your world and those you are willing to add for the sake of balance and variety.

[hogarth]

Make the PC buy any equipment with power points, a la Hero System. Then if you're investing everything in a powerful weapon, you're making trade-offs elsewhere.

Which pretty well works as a game mechanics force until the end of the first conflict when the opposition is looted. Doesn't even vaguely work from a story level. (Well, Rambo didn't start the movie with a gun, so he can't pick one up the first time he comes across it...?????)

The way it works in Hero/Champions is that you can pick up whatever weapons you like, but if you want to keep them beyond the current adventure you have to pay for them. It may not make sense by D&D logic (where you're expected to steal everything from everyone you defeat and keep the "good stuff"), but it makes sense from the standpoint of most fiction genres (where protagonists like Conan or James Bond or Spider-Man or Captain Kirk aren't expected to bring equipment from one story to the next). So it depends what kind of story you're trying to tell in your game.

[kzt]

This works pretty well, as long as you don't violate the basic assumptions of this setup: Money is tight, cops can kill you, illegal guns are hard to get.

The problem in SR is that that money isn't that tight (because SR illegal weapons are cheaper then governments pay for legal weapons in bulk in the RW) and illegal guns guns are not hard to get.

The main limitation on big guns in most SR games is that deploying heavy weapons will attract unfavorable attention. It's part of the whole "what kind of game is SR" issues that SR has.

[Murtak]

The problem in SR is that that money isn't that tight (because SR illegal weapons are cheaper then governments pay for legal weapons in bulk in the RW) and illegal guns guns are not hard to get.

I assume you are ignoring availability and the rules for acquiring items on the black market then? Mind you, those rules are quite clunky and I usually gloss over them, but by RAW you can expect to easily pay multiples of the book price for anything with a double digit availability.

The main limitation on big guns in most SR games is that deploying heavy weapons will attract unfavorable attention. It's part of the whole "what kind of game is SR" issues that SR has.

Depending on your kind of game, yes, that may be the biggest restriction. If you stay at all close to the default theme of planning heists the opposition will always have bigger and more guns and so a prolonged shootout will never be desirable. If you run a street level game or a campaign set in one of the warzones cash may be an issue. And if your runners fly from country to country for their runs or are pressed for time availability may be the biggest obstacle.

As I said before, Shadowrun has multiple limitations, and how well they work depends entirely on your campaign. But I have yet to see them fail completely. In my current campaign we have 4 PCs, each of them competent shots and 2 of them are complete gun nuts. One of them is still trying to get his hands on a gauss rifle, but did manage to eventually get an assault cannon as part of the payment for a job. The other nut mods the shit out of assault rifles, submachine guns and pistols. As for the rest of them, one uses the biggest gun he can legally get away with, which happens to be a machine pistol, and the other uses common, cheap guns, so he can throw them away when necessary and not even feel the loss of money.

I honestly couldn't tell you what the "best" gun is in that game. I can make an argument for hold-outs (easiest to conceal), light pistols (most likely to be legal, easy to get), heavy pistols (permits should be easy to get, packs a punch, easy to get), machine pistols (smallest weapon to use autofire), submachine gun (most firepower you can carry in one hand), assault rifles (most firepower you can pack in the firearms group, not yet big enough to escalate conflicts to SWAT teams), shotguns/sporting rifles (biggest single shot, may be legal or at least explained plausibly), machine guns (best anti-personell firepower) and assault cannons (best anti-vehicle weapon).

If your PCs end up running around with assault rifles and gauss cannons maybe the rules don't work for your campaigns. But in my games it has been a non-issue. Sure, the same character always wants to bring heavy weapons, "just in case". But that is one of four characters, and stems as much from the character's background as it does from mechanics. And the most used weapons so far have been heavy pistols, followed distantly by assault rifles. So for me the setup works nicely and I think it fits the default setting quite well. If you deviate from that setting though, all bets are off.

[Psychic Robot]

Make the PC buy any equipment with power points, a la Hero System. Then if you're investing everything in a powerful weapon, you're making trade-offs elsewhere.

You have no idea how much hate this idea engenders from me. Ran a game with something similar to the HERO system once. In the first five minutes of the game, a player went to a gas station and found a shotgun. Because it made sense in the post-apocalyptic future. And yet I had no stats for it because I didn't count on players looking for weapons when they had powers.

Yes, I could have said "no," but I didn't, and that was the end of that.

[hogarth]

Make the PC buy any equipment with power points, a la Hero System. Then if you're investing everything in a powerful weapon, you're making trade-offs elsewhere.

You have no idea how much hate this idea engenders from me. Ran a game with something similar to the HERO system once. In the first five minutes of the game, a player went to a gas station and found a shotgun. Because it made sense in the post-apocalyptic future. And yet I had no stats for it because I didn't count on players looking for weapons when they had powers.

Yes, I could have said "no," but I didn't, and that was the end of that.

That's a pretty shitty game system if you can't even make an educated guess what the stats for a shotgun might be.

[Josh_Kablack]

And in Superheroic HERO, that player is then expected to spend XP if he wishes to have his character keep the shotgun beyond the scene / session where he found it.

In Heroic HERO it can work either that way, or it can work like in 4e ( where you find stuff and the rules for it make no sense ) , or you can have a portion of your character points allocated to "gear" that changes based on what you're carrying for the current adventure.

[Psychic Robot]

That's a pretty shitty game system if you can't even make an educated guess what the stats for a shotgun might be.

BESM 3e.

[Josh_Kablack]

As an addendum to my first post, many RPG systems also have weapons which have utility or damage based on their wielder's stats/skills/abilities.

This is probably best known in the way that all versions of D&D from 2nd ed up through Essentials have used proficiency bonuses / non-proficiency penalties serve to offset increased damage weapons with either relative accuracy penalties or specific acquisition costs for such weapons


But 3e D&D has a couple other examples of this:

In 3e D&D, a rapier's 1d6 damage and 18-20 crit range is the same as a scimitar's 1d6 damage and 18-20 crit range, so for a lot of characters the two weapons are equivalent. However, the rapier's listing under Weapon Finesse, means that it can be a notably more accurate weapon for high-dex, low-str characters.

In 3e D&D, a dagger's 1d4 damage averages one point less than a sickle's 1d6, so the dagger is usually considered a less damaging weapon. However the dagger's 19-20 crit range means that the dagger can pull ahead in average damage per round at higher levels when bonus damage from Str, Enhancement, Morale, Favored Enemy, etc totals up to +18 or better.