I'm getting ready to start a new campaign in my homebrew take on Eberron, it's a world where lovecraftian cultists orchestrated world war one in order to enact a great ritual to try and free the Old Gods. They only partially succeeded and the ritual fused Earth with the elemental planes and the Feywild creating a new world called Thule. The setting is inspired by the Interwar period between WW1 and WW2 and so "modern" firearms are going to feature pretty prominently.
This brings me to my question, I know the DMG has rules for modern firearms and the research I've done says they're kind of hit and miss as is. However I'm curious as to how anyone has handled giving the modern weapons to enemy NPCs? If I take a Thug and swap out his heavy crossbow for a pistol is it really going to be that big of a difference?
Well you can literally do nothing but change the name of the action to "revolver" or whatever, so in that case it would be fine. I would not bother going to the depth of trying to retool the actual damage values and whatnot. The devs themselves have fudged the numbers of some monsters to keep them in line with expected damage rather than what their weapons would actually deal.
Actually, you can change the number values such as damage, range, and to-hit bonuses (I tested it with the Thug just now). DDB does take shortcuts with proficiency bonus and saving throws (which is annoying), but things like actions you should be able to plug in however you want.
As for how modern weapons would change things? Regarding your Thug example, they would get a slight bump in damage for each attack, but something to consider is, if they're fighting with a weapon that doesn't have the Reload property, are they still limited to only one attack, or can they make two now? If you limit it to one attack, it shouldn't be that big of a difference from before, but if you rule that they are no longer limited by Loading, then that does present a larger bump in difficulty. Another thing to consider is that their heavy crossbow does have better range than any of the modern firearms, so it wouldn't be a buff in every regard to make that switch.
Mind you, I haven't playtested any of this myself, but from a pure numbers perspective that is my take on the matter.
I'm getting ready to start a new campaign in my homebrew take on Eberron, it's a world where lovecraftian cultists orchestrated world war one in order to enact a great ritual to try and free the Old Gods. They only partially succeeded and the ritual fused Earth with the elemental planes and the Feywild creating a new world called Thule. The setting is inspired by the Interwar period between WW1 and WW2 and so "modern" firearms are going to feature pretty prominently.
This brings me to my question, I know the DMG has rules for modern firearms and the research I've done says they're kind of hit and miss as is. However I'm curious as to how anyone has handled giving the modern weapons to enemy NPCs? If I take a Thug and swap out his heavy crossbow for a pistol is it really going to be that big of a difference?
Well you can literally do nothing but change the name of the action to "revolver" or whatever, so in that case it would be fine. I would not bother going to the depth of trying to retool the actual damage values and whatnot. The devs themselves have fudged the numbers of some monsters to keep them in line with expected damage rather than what their weapons would actually deal.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Actually, you can change the number values such as damage, range, and to-hit bonuses (I tested it with the Thug just now). DDB does take shortcuts with proficiency bonus and saving throws (which is annoying), but things like actions you should be able to plug in however you want.
As for how modern weapons would change things? Regarding your Thug example, they would get a slight bump in damage for each attack, but something to consider is, if they're fighting with a weapon that doesn't have the Reload property, are they still limited to only one attack, or can they make two now? If you limit it to one attack, it shouldn't be that big of a difference from before, but if you rule that they are no longer limited by Loading, then that does present a larger bump in difficulty. Another thing to consider is that their heavy crossbow does have better range than any of the modern firearms, so it wouldn't be a buff in every regard to make that switch.
Mind you, I haven't playtested any of this myself, but from a pure numbers perspective that is my take on the matter.