I was looking for a cheap heavy weapon to use as starting gear for a character in a sci-fi setting. Turning to the modern gear list, the cheapest heavy ranged weapon was the shotgun, so I thought to use that as a starting point.

However, based on the shotgun’s damage and modifiers, it seems to be priced WAY lower than it should. Is there something I’m overlooking that makes the modern shotgun worse than it looks on paper?

Well, the price could vary a lot based on the setting. Even something that has a value, in a place where it's very very common, the price would be very small.

I really have no idea how to create a balanced value for all the weapons in a new scenario.

Could be a good idea to use any RPG or game as base and just copy the prices.

7 hours ago, MasterDinadan2 said:

I was looking for a cheap heavy weapon to use as starting gear for a character in a sci-fi setting. Turning to the modern gear list, the cheapest heavy ranged weapon was the shotgun, so I thought to use that as a starting point.

However, based on the shotgun’s damage and modifiers, it seems to be priced WAY lower than it should. Is there something I’m overlooking that makes the modern shotgun worse than it looks on paper?

It looks like the gear list was either a) done before the pricing rules or b) done without access to the pricing rules. When you start a new game you have three options:

1. Use the prices in the book and forget about "appropriate" price
2. Rework everything so the prices are "correct"
3. Use someone else's work so you don't have to do #2

I personally fall into camp #2. I like it when things are done "right", so I'll take the time to rework it all so it's correct. But to each their own. Who knows, maybe the prices for the modern setting are taken from a firearms catalogue or something. I'm not a gun-person so I have no idea what a shotgun should cost.

Thanks. As long as I didn’t miss anything, I’ll tweak the numbers to make a “starter” shotgun and rifle that are weaker than what’s out of the box.

Still going to be more pricy than the light weapons, but that will mean that our heavy weapon person doesn’t totally eclipse everyone else, and gives them room to grow with more money...

Could be that pricing was adjusted for some things if they are considered more common.

30 minutes ago, mouthymerc said:

Could be that pricing was adjusted for some things if they are considered more common.

While possible, I sincerely hope not. If it is, that means they left off even more info in the Make Your Own Stuff chapter. There already is a metric for how common an item is: rarity.

On 19/03/2018 at 10:24 AM, c__beck said:

While possible, I sincerely hope not. If it is, that means they left off even more info in the Make Your Own Stuff chapter. There already is a metric for how common an item is: rarity.

Considering no costs are absolutes and that the weapons table in the Modern section is meant to be representative of the milieu it could be possible that said costs were adjusted as per the Costs and Rarity section on page 199.