Sawn-Off Post: Firearms in Los Tronos
Short post, the first in an inevitable series as I attempt to post something, just not something very long.
The subject today?
GUNS
Now that I have your attention, let's start with a brief overview of how I run armor, mechanically-speaking.
"Each piece of armor you wear grants you a pool of armor dice. When you take damage, you may roll any of your armor dice, reducing incoming damage by the total. After an armor die is rolled, it is broken, unable to be used again unless repaired."
So far, so Black Hack...roughly. Here are some example pieces of armor from the vaguely GLOGlike game I'm running these days.
- Sturdy bracers (2d4 armor)
- Bronze breastplate (d10 armor)
- Plumed copper helm (d6 armor)
- Shield (d8 armor)
This game isn't set in Los Tronos, but the milieu does share some gritty weird swords & sorcery vibes. So I'd expect armor to still be pretty important in either game.
Firearms in Los Tronos are something akin to the arquebus or the slightly-later caliver. Again, we are vibes-based at Kludge Kauldron: it's a clunky smoking fuming proto-machine that blasts targets with a big, slow ball of lead. So rather than aim at realism, I'm aiming at a vibe...
Vibe Check: Guns Kill People
In the armor system I outlined above, someone wearing a serious panoply (bracers, helmet, greaves, breastplate, shield) has a lot of ablative armor. They have a lot of staying power in the relatively short, brutal, low HP combats you find in OSR games, mine included. However, armor has nothing to do with whether or not you get hit...
So if you get hit by a gun, I want it to punch through your armor; I want it to be devastating. Alongside that, I like the idea of it wrecking your armor too! How can we model this?
Start by treating guns like other weapons: you've got an arquebus (d8 ranged), 'nuff said. Then, slap a new property on there, called matchlock, which we'll define like so:
"Targets roll 1 armor die when hit, just to see if anything breaks. This weapon's damage cannot be reduced by armor."
Is it armor-piercing now? Yes! Is it devastating the HP pool of any poor sod on the other end of the barrel? Well, not necessarily; you could, as always, roll a 1. So let's edit matchlock:
MATCHLOCK (WEAPON PROPERTY)
Targets roll 1 armor die when hit, just to see if anything breaks. This weapons' damage cannot be reduced by armor, and on any odd roll, damage is treated as maximum.
Final Notes
The final version of matchlock A) ignores armor, B) might break armor, and C) has a very high average damage for its die size.
Reloading? I look to inspiration from Last Gasp Grimoire! You can fire a given firearm only once per combat; reloading in the fray is just not going to happen. That's fertile ground for a class feature. Someone should write an Arquebusier class someday...