I'm currently making a setting for my new game with an existing group and I want to have early firearms in the setting but I really don't like how quickly reloadable and how mediocre damage wise the Renaissance pistol and musket are in the base firearm rules. I want firearms in my setting to be more of the powerful and potentially scary but you aren't reloading it in the middle of the fight style (with the possible exception of something funky for artificers). So in most cases a pistol or musket is something that will get fired once at the start of a fight and then the players switch to a different weapon. To that end I was thinking of making the following stats to represent firearms in my setting I'm planning to give all martials access to proficiency with them.
Pistol 250gp 2d8 piercing Ammunition (range 30/90), long loading, Brace
Musket 500gp 2d10 piercing Ammunition (range 40/120), long loading, two-handed
Long Loading. Weapons with this property require an extremely long time to reload and once fired cannot be fired again until 3 actions are used to prepare and reload the weapon this requires you to be holding the weapon and have a hand free.
Brace. When more than one weapon with this property is wielded simultaneously and the wielder makes the attack action with a Brace weapon they may use a bonus action to make an additional attack with a loaded brace weapon in their other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.
Would these stats with their increased damage be enough for you as a player to want to carry a firearm as an opener? Are they scary enough damage wise that you would hesitate before charging around a corner into a group of guards who had readied actions to fire at you? Does the fudged two weapon fighting rules for the pistols work ok? Should I add a rule to remove melee disadvantage for the pistol? Will they encourage shenanigans like using illusions or some such to get opponents to fire and leave themselves vulnerable to a charge?
Any feedback to help mechanically enable my vision appreciated.
I think for Long Loading, the intent seems to be that it can't be done in-combat, so I would just change it to having a reload time of 1 minute, rather than give it any more complex description than that.
I think you also don't really need the Brace property. The idea of the weapons seems to be that they're powerful enough that you would spend your opening turn in combat attacking with the firearm instead... so giving it a pseudo-two-weapon-fighting feature feels like it's adding too much. I think the main problem is juggling held items... if you start the round unarmed, you can draw and fire a pistol in your first round... but then next round you either have to drop the gun to draw a fresh weapon on the same turn, or you have to use your free action to stow the pistol and just find something else to do with your action other than a weapon attack. So I think you could swap Brace with something like:
Quickdraw - You can both draw and stow this weapon once each during your turn.
" If you wanna homebrew guns in your game, the most important thing to ask yourself first is: what do you want them to accomplish? Do you want them to be unfamiliar, rare technology, or do you want them to be weapons that can replace your players' longbows? Where do you pull from realism and where do you shirk it in favor of game balance? Are you afraid of Spider Bayonetta? Should you give your players a Barrett M95 anti material rifle? "
I'm currently making a setting for my new game with an existing group and I want to have early firearms in the setting but I really don't like how quickly reloadable and how mediocre damage wise the Renaissance pistol and musket are in the base firearm rules. I want firearms in my setting to be more of the powerful and potentially scary but you aren't reloading it in the middle of the fight style (with the possible exception of something funky for artificers). So in most cases a pistol or musket is something that will get fired once at the start of a fight and then the players switch to a different weapon. To that end I was thinking of making the following stats to represent firearms in my setting I'm planning to give all martials access to proficiency with them.
Pistol 250gp 2d8 piercing Ammunition (range 30/90), long loading, Brace
Musket 500gp 2d10 piercing Ammunition (range 40/120), long loading, two-handed
Long Loading. Weapons with this property require an extremely long time to reload and once fired cannot be fired again until 3 actions are used to prepare and reload the weapon this requires you to be holding the weapon and have a hand free.
Brace. When more than one weapon with this property is wielded simultaneously and the wielder makes the attack action with a Brace weapon they may use a bonus action to make an additional attack with a loaded brace weapon in their other hand. You don’t add your ability modifier to the damage of the bonus attack, unless that modifier is negative.
Would these stats with their increased damage be enough for you as a player to want to carry a firearm as an opener? Are they scary enough damage wise that you would hesitate before charging around a corner into a group of guards who had readied actions to fire at you? Does the fudged two weapon fighting rules for the pistols work ok? Should I add a rule to remove melee disadvantage for the pistol? Will they encourage shenanigans like using illusions or some such to get opponents to fire and leave themselves vulnerable to a charge?
Any feedback to help mechanically enable my vision appreciated.
I think for Long Loading, the intent seems to be that it can't be done in-combat, so I would just change it to having a reload time of 1 minute, rather than give it any more complex description than that.
I think you also don't really need the Brace property. The idea of the weapons seems to be that they're powerful enough that you would spend your opening turn in combat attacking with the firearm instead... so giving it a pseudo-two-weapon-fighting feature feels like it's adding too much. I think the main problem is juggling held items... if you start the round unarmed, you can draw and fire a pistol in your first round... but then next round you either have to drop the gun to draw a fresh weapon on the same turn, or you have to use your free action to stow the pistol and just find something else to do with your action other than a weapon attack. So I think you could swap Brace with something like:
Quickdraw - You can both draw and stow this weapon once each during your turn.
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" If you wanna homebrew guns in your game, the most important thing to ask yourself first is: what do you want them to accomplish? Do you want them to be unfamiliar, rare technology, or do you want them to be weapons that can replace your players' longbows? Where do you pull from realism and where do you shirk it in favor of game balance? Are you afraid of Spider Bayonetta? Should you give your players a Barrett M95 anti material rifle? "
This guy make some very good points in it's video :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZcNuAYPy34&t=823s&ab_channel=Zedrin
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