I'm running a campaign that takes place in the "real world" or our world and the characters are playing themselves. Does anyone know any good sources for modern weaponry and soldiers/police. I'd also be interested in stuff like improvised weapons if anybody has any suggestions.
I believe the DMG has the entries for firearms and improvised weapons.
As a general rule, weapon and monster values should be in line with the officially published content for the sake of balance, but you could have them scale with magical items. Wands make a good analog for advanced firearms. However, mixing high powered rifles with standard D&D Attack mechanics is a recipe for trouble.
If you are wanting a larger deviation than that, then you may want to use an entirely different system, such as Shadowrun or d20 Modern.
I will say that, as much as I'm all for just reflavoring content, having a story overtly set in the "real world" is going to be challenging if you don't have the addendum of, "but then a bunch of real-ass magic started happening".
I will say that, as much as I'm all for just reflavoring content, having a story overtly set in the "real world" is going to be challenging if you don't have the addendum of, "but then a bunch of real-ass magic started happening".
One of my longest running campaigns (from 3.5e) was set in a post-cataclysm real world. Basically, a bubble of Fantasy Physics enveloped the planet and rendered modern technology inert. No conventional electricity, combustion engines, or other such innovations. Very basic things continued to work, and some forms of technology were recreated through artifice, but the first year or so of in-game time was spent exploring how 7+ billion people struggled to cope with total infrastructure collapse. Unsurprisingly, it didn't go well for most people. There were a lot of little interesting things that came up through that journey, such as how much it would suck to be living on the 14th+ floor of a high rise apartment building with no elevator, especially if you had to work around some form of disability. We discovered that the global effect was a bubble when we tried to take a spelljammer into space and lost control of it in the upper atmosphere as though we had hit an Anti-Magic Field.
Modern weapons ( and armor) are not well translated into DnD. While DnD has rules for firearms they were originally based strictly on renaissance firearms with loading adjustments similar to heavy crossbows for the same reasons (real world firing rates of 1-4 shots/minute or 1 shot very other round at best). Because of the weak powder large balls were used so anything but graze was likely to either kill you outright or do enough damage that you typically bled out. However the balls were low enough energy that plate armor and breastplates could frequently stop the bullets and the padding underneath prevented most impact damage. By the 1700s powder had improved enough that most armor couldn’t stop the balls so armor basically disappeared. The firing rates were still about the same (4/min for muskets, 3/minute for rifles) but the higher speeds of the improved powder allowed the ball size to drop (from .70 to .90 cal for arqubui to .55 to .75 for military muskets to .30 to .45 for “Kentucky rifles”. The big changes in the 1800s were breechloading, metallic cartridges and ( in the 1890s) smokeless powder. The cartridge and breech loading finally allowed for rapid fire matching and occasionally beating the speed of a highly trained archer (12-18 arrows/minute) bullets as small as .22 cal were ( and are) used but standard “man killing” ammo was still .36 to .56 cal.while ranges extended out to over half a mile for the most powerful rifles. Smokeless powder increased the power of guns tremendously. This caused a shrinkage in caliber, an increase in range and an increase in lethality. The use of larger magazines and the invention of fully automatic weapons sent the rate of fire through the roof. Typically today you can spect a bullet to mushroom to 2-3x it’s nominal size on impact and to blast shatter a shock zone roughly 3-4 times the mushroomed size through the body. Fairly literally it goes in the size of a finger and blows out the back the size of a fist. Full metal jacket military rounds typically don’t mushroom but smaller calibers often tumble from the impact deceleration while larger calibers are capable of punching through multiple targets if they are lined up - each target getting a shock blast along the flight path roughly 3x the bullet’s caliber. A modern fully auto weapon is capable of firing 60 bullets in a single round, each capable of doing far more damage than an arrow ( granting if the arrow hits well it can do killing damage) . The listed damages and ranges are reasonable adaptations to the DnD game but are not truly realistic. To keep the range of impact roughly historically accurate 1800s weapons should probably have a D12 for damage and 20th/21st century weapons a D20. This allows for the single shot death out to cases like Cole younger who was hit with between 8 and 11 bullets in the north field raid and survived.
As Sposta mentioned, there's UA for modern magic, but there's also a section for firearms (renaissance, modern, and futuristic) in the DMG, however anything beyond renaissance weaponry is *incredibly* powerful for 5e (a revolver deals a whopping 2d8).
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I'm running a campaign that takes place in the "real world" or our world and the characters are playing themselves. Does anyone know any good sources for modern weaponry and soldiers/police. I'd also be interested in stuff like improvised weapons if anybody has any suggestions.
I believe the DMG has the entries for firearms and improvised weapons.
As a general rule, weapon and monster values should be in line with the officially published content for the sake of balance, but you could have them scale with magical items. Wands make a good analog for advanced firearms. However, mixing high powered rifles with standard D&D Attack mechanics is a recipe for trouble.
If you are wanting a larger deviation than that, then you may want to use an entirely different system, such as Shadowrun or d20 Modern.
You can also look to the Gunslinger subclass from Critical Role for some more firearms options beyond what is available in the DMG.
Additionally, you could change the flavor of Eberron content to fit more into an urban fantasy style.
I will say that, as much as I'm all for just reflavoring content, having a story overtly set in the "real world" is going to be challenging if you don't have the addendum of, "but then a bunch of real-ass magic started happening".
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One of my longest running campaigns (from 3.5e) was set in a post-cataclysm real world. Basically, a bubble of Fantasy Physics enveloped the planet and rendered modern technology inert. No conventional electricity, combustion engines, or other such innovations. Very basic things continued to work, and some forms of technology were recreated through artifice, but the first year or so of in-game time was spent exploring how 7+ billion people struggled to cope with total infrastructure collapse. Unsurprisingly, it didn't go well for most people. There were a lot of little interesting things that came up through that journey, such as how much it would suck to be living on the 14th+ floor of a high rise apartment building with no elevator, especially if you had to work around some form of disability. We discovered that the global effect was a bubble when we tried to take a spelljammer into space and lost control of it in the upper atmosphere as though we had hit an Anti-Magic Field.
Good Times.
Modern weapons ( and armor) are not well translated into DnD. While DnD has rules for firearms they were originally based strictly on renaissance firearms with loading adjustments similar to heavy crossbows for the same reasons (real world firing rates of 1-4 shots/minute or 1 shot very other round at best). Because of the weak powder large balls were used so anything but graze was likely to either kill you outright or do enough damage that you typically bled out. However the balls were low enough energy that plate armor and breastplates could frequently stop the bullets and the padding underneath prevented most impact damage. By the 1700s powder had improved enough that most armor couldn’t stop the balls so armor basically disappeared. The firing rates were still about the same (4/min for muskets, 3/minute for rifles) but the higher speeds of the improved powder allowed the ball size to drop (from .70 to .90 cal for arqubui to .55 to .75 for military muskets to .30 to .45 for “Kentucky rifles”. The big changes in the 1800s were breechloading, metallic cartridges and ( in the 1890s) smokeless powder. The cartridge and breech loading finally allowed for rapid fire matching and occasionally beating the speed of a highly trained archer (12-18 arrows/minute) bullets as small as .22 cal were ( and are) used but standard “man killing” ammo was still .36 to .56 cal.while ranges extended out to over half a mile for the most powerful rifles. Smokeless powder increased the power of guns tremendously. This caused a shrinkage in caliber, an increase in range and an increase in lethality. The use of larger magazines and the invention of fully automatic weapons sent the rate of fire through the roof. Typically today you can spect a bullet to mushroom to 2-3x it’s nominal size on impact and to blast shatter a shock zone roughly 3-4 times the mushroomed size through the body. Fairly literally it goes in the size of a finger and blows out the back the size of a fist. Full metal jacket military rounds typically don’t mushroom but smaller calibers often tumble from the impact deceleration while larger calibers are capable of punching through multiple targets if they are lined up - each target getting a shock blast along the flight path roughly 3x the bullet’s caliber. A modern fully auto weapon is capable of firing 60 bullets in a single round, each capable of doing far more damage than an arrow ( granting if the arrow hits well it can do killing damage) . The listed damages and ranges are reasonable adaptations to the DnD game but are not truly realistic. To keep the range of impact roughly historically accurate 1800s weapons should probably have a D12 for damage and 20th/21st century weapons a D20. This allows for the single shot death out to cases like Cole younger who was hit with between 8 and 11 bullets in the north field raid and survived.
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This UA from WotC might help: (https://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/UA_ModernMagic.pdf).
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As Sposta mentioned, there's UA for modern magic, but there's also a section for firearms (renaissance, modern, and futuristic) in the DMG, however anything beyond renaissance weaponry is *incredibly* powerful for 5e (a revolver deals a whopping 2d8).
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