Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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But Exodus TTRPG doesn't use XPs for level up but it is "milestones".
We know a 5.5 adaptation of each franchise is possible, for example Star Wars, but those players options to be totally compatible with standars 5.5 is a different thing.
I suppose the solution to my concerns is to add a variety of monsters and enemies that are resistant or immune to ballistic damage but vulnerable to melee damage, so that players will still be interested in the crunch/players options for monks and barbarians.
Or just not use products you don't like and don't try to "fix" other peoples' games.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
"Exodus doesn't use XP for level up, it uses milestones."
Not sure. Haven't seen or read the book because they sold out before I had a chance with it, and no I will not pay a scalper. I will say as a DM who does Planet of the week D&D, I prefer using milestones over XP. I do track the XP sometimes internally but I like the use of milestones as it allows for other options besides lets be murder hobos for XP.
Can I just lay face down in the snow and mumble, "you choose what you play" "Expedition to Barrier peaks" and "the whole game is not subject to your personal tastes," and people get what I mean?
I have gone through this convo so many times in the past 30 years. Guns, Sci-fi, and the like have been in D&D longer than i have been alive.
He/Him. Loooooooooong time Player.
The Dark days of the THAC0 system are behind us.
"Hope is a fire that burns in us all If only an ember, awaiting your call
To rise up in triumph should we all unite
The spark for change is yours to ignite."
Kalandra - The State of the World
Make sure you roll over at some point, frost bite of the nose can get nasty
"But a right power balance is not so easy if the characters are shooters with modern firearms or sci-fi guns."
Modern firearms makes medieval combat impossible in reality, and unmanagable in simple game mechanics.
An m1 garand has an effective range of 1500 feet. At 5 feet per one inch grid, you need a table thats 25 feet long to handle that sort of combat.
It will take a melee combatant 50 turns to close the distance with the m1 wielding opponent, at which point, your game table is modeling trench warefare, and youve got hundreds of combatants dying on both sides during an engagement. At which point, youre wargaming. Where 1 piece on the map represents a platoon or division.
Dnd was invented by a bunch of wargamers who said "what would this look like if one piece was one person, instead of a platoon?"
And the way to make it workable and playable is to close the ranges and distances, and make it melee centered. Ranged weapons dont do as much damage. And high power magic is limited in slots per day.
The only way to have "modern firearms or sci fi guns" in a dnd combat map, and have it NOT be a completely one sided destruction is to have "guns" that dont act like actual modern guns. Give them effective ranges of bows and crossbows and similar damage too.
Its like when you play Call of Duty long enough and you start to realize every firearm, from the 9mm pistol to the fifty cal sniper rifle, takes at least two hits to kill someone. The claymore mine in call of duty cant kill anything beyond 5 feet. In reality it has a kill radius of 200 feet. But in game, thats not how modern firearms work. its the only way to make a GAME where folks pretend to be runnig around with firearms and survive for any length of time. To make them gamable, they completely and totally nerf the guns until they are little different than hand crossbows and archers.
If you change the mechanics such as range, damage, rate of fire, to directly model modern firearms in dnd, you will sweep most combat encounters.
If you increase damage rate, how can anything out damage you? If you increase effective range, how can melee ever close with you across no-mans-land?
Most ranged attacks are either 120 or 60 feet in dnd. Thats short enough that combatants can close with you in a 2 turns of dashing. An m1 garand with 1500 foot range is basically invincible in that world.
Its a game. It has a whole bunch of limitations in place to make it playable, to make the map fit on a table, to make it fun. Modern firearms in that setting is like someone setting all their scores to 30. It just breaks the game.
“Effective range” is pretty different from “range you can hit a moving target at while you also are running all over the place”, especially in a skirmish context rather than a full scale military engagement. How often do your encounters happen in a context where you’ve got even a football field’s length of distance between either side at the outset?
Ww1 trenches were 100 to 300 yards apart. Ww2 germany found most engagements were 200 to 300 yards. Vietnam saw most engagements happening at 25 yo 75 yards. Afghanistan 300 to 600 yards.
If every encounter is in a dungeon, or a jungle, then engagement ranges would track like vietnam and you can handwave the differences away. But get above ground, in open terrain, with clear lines of sight, and your player with the sniper rifle is going to want to use his weapon at a thousand yards, and the dm is going to have to railroad them so they can never do that.
Now as far as my campaign engagements, if someone has a ranged weapon, i try to start at their non-disadvantaged range. If the enemy dashes, the player might get in a couple shots before minis go on the map and we start wargaming.
But they get their shots. Their targets are usually just off the edge of the grid map. I can do theater of the mind for a couple turns so the player who put all their feats into long range attacks gets something out of it.
But the guy with a rifle? Thats 20 or 30 turns before the melee enemy can dash across no mans land. That changes thr entire encounter. The sniper is the only one doing anything for all that time. I need to add 50 goblins or other canon fodder for the sniper to shoot at so the main force can get in melee range and fight the rest of the party so they have something to do.
It doesnt work with modern weapons or space ray guns. The ranges break the game. The damage breaks the game. Reskin crossbows, call them firearms, and call it a day. But theres always that push for a little more damage, a little more range, and a little less playability.
Expedition to the Barrier Peaks came out in 1980 (and has been remastered as recently as 2024), and is consistently rated as one of the best adventures of all time. City of the Gods came out in 1987. Spelljammer came out in 1989 and retained a sufficient cult following it continued to poll as a desired revisit, ultimately getting a 2022 update. I am sure I could find plenty of other official sources spanning multiple editions if I was going to look it up instead of rely on memory (I know 4e had tech weapons, for example, but cannot recall which sourcebook created them).
You can pontificate all you want, but we now have 46 years of data showing that DMs are more than capable of solving all the problems you raise. That doesn’t mean one has to allow such weapons, and there are certainly going to be some DMs whose skill level renders them incapable of solving the problems that might come up. But it does mean it is a bit silly to sate as a truth the game “doesn’t work” with their inclusion. It very much does, as evidenced by decades of data.
Don't forget in buildings in general, or in the streets, or in caves, tunnels, etc. So, we've already established that at least half and probably more of typical D&D encounters aren't impacted by the range factor. As for your "thousand yards", how often have you had encounters happen out in plains or other environments where the party could see a threat coming from that far out?
Honestly, sounds like a bit of a frustrating table to play at if you're a melee character, if you're going to consistently be told you have to sit and wait your turn while the shooters get to work. If it works for your group, well and good, just seems like a good way to make a lot of builds feel marginalized.
To be clear, I'm not saying modern firearms wouldn't be a game-changer on the macro worldbuilding level, but even through a lens of realism a small group wandering through various terrains until they encounter a threat is not going to be able to reliably engage at extended ranges. It works for armies because a) IRL there's a strong reliance on "throw enough lead the enemy has to catch some of it" over everyone making targeted shots the way they do in games, b) several dozen individuals moving together are much easier to pick out at a distance than the relative handful commonly deployed in D&D to keep things moving- seriously, I'm playing in a Tyranny of Dragons campaign and the part where we went to the temple was more than a bit of a slog with how many kobolds got fielded, even with the DM keeping most of them "off stage" until prior ones had been killed- and c) as a corollary to the first two point, armies have to find relatively open spaces to move through, while again those have very much been the minority location for encounters in all of the D&D campaigns I've been in.
ah yes, lets bring real world mechanics into a setting with magic and game mechanics baked into lore. Your M1 Grand in D&D has the following stat line:
range max of 240 not 1500. Modern weapons are in D&D and have been since the 70s, and they follow D&D rules, not the real world.
Ace: "Effective range” is pretty different from “range you can hit a moving target at while you also are running all over the place”, especially in a skirmish context"
Gothicshark: "ah yes, lets bring real world mechanics into a setting with magic and game mechanics baked into lore."
So do we use real world mechanics to defend firearms being in dnd or not?
Caerwyn: "You can pontificate all you want, but we now have 46 years of data showing that DMs are more than capable of solving all the problems you raise."
This is how they solved it:
Gothicshark: "Your M1 Grand in D&D has the following stat line: Rifle, Automatic -- 2d8 Piercing 8 lbs Ammunition (Firearms), (Range 80/240), Reload, Two-Handed, Burst Fire, Slow"
they "solved" modern firearms in dnd by reskinning crossbows, dropping the range and dropping the damage, dropping the rate of fire. Just like i said:
Sun: " The ranges break the game. The damage breaks the game. Reskin crossbows, call them firearms, and call it a day."
Cause an m1 garand in accurate game terms is probably 800 foot range without disadvantage, 8d6 piercing damage per hit, and gives the shooter 3 attacks per turn at level 1, and 6 attacks per turn at level 5. With armor piercing rounds, an m1 could pierce steel plate nearly half an inch thick.
Regular ammo will go through a steel helmet like butter. So the guy wearing plate armor and 20 ac, you now have to realistically say his ac is 10+dex cause he might as well not be wearing anything.
I dont see "bypass all nonmagical armor" in the m1 garand stat block. Realistically, it should be there.
Modern firearms are orders of magnitude more powerful than any weapon in the Players Hand Book. The only way to bring them into the game and not completely destroy balance is to nerf them until they are some version of a bow. And when the player asks for a firearm and i tell them to reskin a bow, they always ask for increased damage and range because it wouldnt be "realistic" if a firearm did the same damage as a bow. I suppose i should simply tell them not to expect realism in a world where magic exists.
Ace: "As for your "thousand yards", how often have you had encounters happen out in plains or other environments where the party could see a threat coming from that far out?"
I am currently running a "coastal" campaign. The party is mid level and they have a warship. So, its come up where you see the enemy at great distances.
The extra damage is typically 1-2 per shot, an insubstantial amount. Further, both the rules and common sense tactics mitigate this minute extra damage. Weapon malfunctions (baked into multiple iterations of firearm in multiple editions of the game. Encounters that mitigate their slightly higher range. Ignoring the actual firearm rules because they are not “realistic” then throwing a fit because your made up imposition of realism causes problems. Ignoring the fact firearms are very loud, and thus give you an excuse as DM to royally ruin the party’s day with reinforcements. Actually enforcing ammunition rules, particularly if the ammo is hard to make or find.
Not wanting firearms for aesthetic reasons is a perfectly valid choice - that’s a choice I typically make in my games. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, and if you were making that point, I think most folks would be accepting of that. But that is not the point you are making.
Saying they are fundamentally and objectively incomparable with the game, when almost five decades shows otherwise? Trying to shift the blame onto players by accusing them of “power gaming,” when any halfway decent DM can use the infinite tools available to them to mitigate anything players can throw? Complaining about made up problems not actually reflected in the rules for the content you are complaining about?
It kind of seems like you’re blaming your incorrect view of the system and players for personal issue. And, so long as you are aggressively insisting on ignoring the real rules and blame shifting, I am not sure there is anything else that can really come of this dialogue.
The big game changer with firearms was armor penetration ability, not range. And 5E rules don't incorporate that aspect in the first place.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
"The extra damage is typically 1-2 per shot, an insubstantial amount"
If that were insubstantial, they wouldnt ask for it.
If that were true, everyone defending firearms in dnd would accept a reskinned bow with same damage.
Its not insubstantial. The extra damage is exactly the point of wanting a firearm in the first place.
"Saying they are fundamentally and objectively incomparable with the game, when almost five decades shows otherwise? "
Modern firearms are incompatible with dnd mechanics. The only way they dont completely break the game is if you nerf them until they stop acting like modern firearms and start acting like longbows.
And nerfing them is exactly what dnd has done. The stats for the m1 garand looks nothing like what that rifle can do in the real world. It was nerfed exactly because it is incompatible.
Also, firearms were optional rules until 2024, i believe, so saying theyve been around for five decades without the context of being official or not, is playing fast and loose with history.
I started playing second edition. I think i can count on one hand the campaigns i saw where the dm allowed firearms. And when they did allow firearms, it was always nerfed firearms, similar to bows and crossbows, not stats anywhere near an accurate representation of what a modern firearm could do.
"Trying to shift the blame onto players by accusing them of “power gaming,”"
Then use the exact same stats as a bow or crossbow and everyone is happy. You insist the damage difference is insubstantial, therefore you would gladly give up the extra damaege, right?
If your dm said reskin a bow as a firearm, you would gladly go along with it?
Or would you still push for that extra damage, even while saying its "insubstantial"?
A power gamer wants every last point of damage. If its insubstantial and you arent power gaming, then use the same damage as a bow/xbow.
Armor penetration, yes. Which is why i said an accurate modern firearm stat block would have to say it ignores all mundane armor cause it will just punch through studded leather and plate.
D&D is a game, with game mechanics not based in reality. You realize that a house cat in D&D can kill a normal person with scratch attacks fairly easy.
Commoner AC 10 HP 4 (1d8) Club. Melee Attack Roll: +2, reach 5 ft. Hit: 2 (1d4) Bludgeoning damage.
Cat AC 12 HP 2 Scratch Scratch. Melee Attack Roll: +4, reach 5 ft. Hit: 1 Slashing damage.
if you have 3 cats vs 1 human the cats win every time. So don't talk to me about how a real world weapon works, this is a fantasy table top game stress game. If I wanted firearms I would have stayed in the USMC, also as someone who has shot a USMC M1 no random civilian can hit the broad side of a barn with it, without training and practice. Also make sure to wear proper shooting gear, and saftey gear because a real M1 kicks and barks with a sound that can rupture your ear drum.
Game and reality should not be mixed. The game is inspired by popular media anyway. Guns don't kill heroes until the end of the film, shot by a missle no problem walk away slowly with a dramatic fireball behind you. Nuclear bomb, find a fridge.
D&D has always taken film as the inspiration for game mechanics, the Monk class is litterally built because of the popuarity of TV shows like Kung Fu with David Carradine. Guns work like they do in TV shows and Movies. Stop trying to fit reality into fiction.
D&D in a nutshell perfectly showcased with this anime scene.
https://youtu.be/iWR7Q5i0JpQ?si=-xI9QCSKygUqNqmp
"D&D is a game, with game mechanics not based in reality."
Dnd is a game that requires balance to be playable.
And as far as "realism" goes in discussions aboit firearms in dnd, it always goes something like this:
Dm: you can reskin any bow/xbow as a firearm.
Firearm enthusiast: but it wouldnt be realistic if firearms did same damage as a bow. An extra couple points is insubstantial.
Dm: ok, if realism is what you want, your muzzleloading firearm fires once, and then takes 3 rounds to reload.
Firearm enthusiast: dnd is a game, you can expect realism in a game with magic.
Dm: then in a world of magic, firearms do exact same damage as a bow or xbow.
The firearm enthusiast simultaneously demands realism to justify more damage, but dismisses realism to avoid a much slower fire rate.
Its never about more damage or power creep they say, but it always somehow results in a weapon that does more damage than anything else comparable in the phb.
If we wanted things to be realistic, firearms are too noisy, and without proper maintenance, they can cause dangerous malfunctions. These malfunctions can be caused relatively easily through magic, even low-level magic.
Even if firearm technology is known, magic wands will be preferred because they are lighter and require no maintenance, in addition to being more resistant to magical sabotage by hostile spellcasters. Right now, what we need are enemies with bulletproof resistance but vulnerable to "old-school" combat, properly justified so that monks and barbarians remain useful.