Hi!

From my gaming club now I bring you some pretty sweet homebrew rules concerning ranged weapons and ranged weapon upgrades. I'm not exactly sure if they fit into the design philosophy of the 2.0 Beta (backward compatibility issues) but hey, sharing is caring so here they are:

First and foremost, the goal of these changes is to shake up the rather dull ranged weapon stats. We love diversity but in the current system it is very hard to represent different "shades" of the same weapon (for example a slightly more accurate autogun). This is unacceptable in the Great Galaxy of Guns.

So we removed Long and Extreme range completely, the fixed +10 BS bonus for aiming

and reworked Single/Burst/Auto Fire so they have no BS modifiers. We also added four (+1) new weapon stats: Range Increment, Accuracy, Aiming Accuracy (+Scatter Accuracy for Blast weapons) and Handling.

Range Increment replaces the Long and Extreme ranges. It is a multiplier that determines the maximum range of the weapon. For example a weapon with a Range Increment of x4 can fire to four times its listed Range at maximum. The character receives a penalty to his BS test from range according to what Range Increment he has to use: for each Range Increment used above the first he receives a -10 penalty to the BS test (so firing at Range Increment x2 will have a -10 penalty, Range Increment x3 will have a -20 penalty and so on).

With Range Increment the rules can represent weapons that have long normal Range but relatively short maximal Range or vica versa. Or weapons that overall suck with range (Meltaguns for example).

Accuracy is a flat BS bonus or penalty provided by the weapon. A weapon doesn't necessary have an Accuracy modifier but if it has then it is always "active".

Aiming Accuracy is the BS bonus you receive with the Aim action. This is pretty straightforward: you use Aim once, you get the Aiming Accuracy of the weapon as a BS bonus instead of the flat +10. You Aim twice, you get twice the Aiming Accuracy.

Scatter Accuracy is the "How much meters it will scatter if I fail the BS test?" thing, now represented in a section where it belongs. Blast weapons only.

Handling represents the recoil of the weapon. It is a series of penalties (for example: -1 / -2 / -3 / -4 / -5) that are used when the character uses Burst or Auto Fire. When firing Burst/Auto the character takes a number of penalties from Handling equal to the bullets fired. From the lowest penalty to the highest of course. For example a character who fires a 3-round Burst will take a BS penalty equal to the sum of the first three Handling modifiers (with the example Handling modifiers above, the character will take a (-1)+(-2)+(-3)=-6 penalty).

In some cases, one or more Handling modifiers have "ranges" so they have a multiplier in front of them. This means that the Handling modifier is in fact there multiple times, for example a Handling of -1 / 3x-2 / -3 is in fact a Handling of -1 / -2 / -2 / -2 / -3.

If there are more bullets than Handling modifiers then the last modifier is applied repeatedly.

Note that Handling doesn't affect Single Fire and Single Fire only weapons always have a Handling of 0.

And now some example weapon stats (focusing on the changes, the missing parts are unchanged):

LOL, forum engine vs AtoMaki 1-0. See the attached document because the table doesn't work.

The multiplier in the Range section is the Range Increment. The first value in the Accuracy section is the normal Accuracy, the second value is the Aiming Accuracy.

As you can see, there are plenty of room for modifications to represent different versions of the same gun. The M36 lasgun maybe has better Aiming Accuracy but its first handling modifier is a plain 0 instead of 2x0 - on the other hand the Triplex has less Range but one point higher Range Increment. This allows the players to have a gun for their personal playstyle instead of using cookie-cutter weapons.

And with that, we reached the bestest part: weapon modifications. because if you can't have your Dream Gun then you sill have the option to turn an average gun into it with carefully applied weapon mods. With the wider range of weapon stats we can have a much wider range of weapon mods and certain mods can finally affect things they should (I'm looking at you red-dot laser sight). For example:

- Weapon sights improve Aiming Accuracy (like reflex Sight improves Aiming Accuracy by 6)

- Underslug grips improve Handling (like Vertical Grip decreases the first handling modifier by 1)

- Long barrel improves Range Increment (by +1, turning a x3 to x4 for example)

- Muzzle brake slightly improves both Accuracy and Handling

It is like a Gun-Nut's wet dream. One of our players made a Christmas tree sniper rifle that had some +242 BS modifier (note that a very high BS bonus makes sense for weapons with very high Range Increment - like the sniper rifle). It was absolutely crazy. But it was also absolutely awesome and the player treasured his weapon much better than usual because it was his very own, unique, custom-made sniper rifle.

We only encountered one problem: these changes demand some calculations that could be quite time-consuming. It isn't a big issue if the players and the GM are prepared (so they pre-calculate the bonuses/penalties) but sometimes, it can be a little bit burdensome.

So that's all. Hope you will like it. I would love to see something like this in the final product: a true Galaxy of Guns and players putting holes into heretics/daemons/xenos with their personalized, one-of-a-kind weapons.

Proposed Weapons (Stats).doc

I really like some of the ideas.

The changes would be so complex though that I think its too late in the development to consider most of it

It is very inspiring anyway !

Are you familiar with Infinity? It uses a "range band" system to represent the accuracy/practicality of weapons at different ranges. For example, a combi-rifle gives +3 to hit up to 16" away, and the bonus decreases fairly steadily out to the max range of the weapon. The more unwieldy sniper rifle gives +0 to hit out to 8", then give +3 out to a significantly longer range than the combi-rifle. A shotgun gives +3 to hit out to something like 12", but the bonus drops off very quickly after that. (I'll edit this post to give more specific values once I get home and can check the rules).

I think range bands do an excellent job of representing the effectiveness of weapons at different ranges. I was never a fan of range increments for weapons in D&D since they required too much measurement and multiplication in combat -- would you consider giving this system a try instead?

^Yeah, I actually play Infinity, but the range bands would be a little bit too complex IMHO. And we also wanted to define weapon ranges much better in terms of penalties. Like how you could fire at x20 range with a -190 BS penalty and such.

GURPS has something like this (or had last I checked anyway).

GURPS uses a logarithmic scale for increasing distance penalties:
+0 out to 2y
-1 - 3y
-2 - 5y
-3 - 7y
etc.

There's a handy table out to 1000 yards and a free supplement for a ruler (which assumes 1' hexes though).
Seems like very steep penalties, until you factor in the Accuracy stat of weapons, which, for a modern day rifle is 6-7, canceling all penalties out to 20 or 30 yards. This allows you, with a simple sighted shot, that is 1s aim, full skill at that distance. For a soldier, this should be skill 12-14 at least, giving 74 - 90% chance of success.
With no other tools or skills, this soldier could aim for two more seconds, giving another +1/s, boosting his range up to 100y of unmodified skill. Past that, he will have to start doing things like brace (+1) and all-out attack (+1).
Doing all of this, should get him up to 200y range without penalties. Past that it's high time to use a scope.

Which not only seems reasonable, but works perfectly in game; at least, in my experience.

My players play combat extremely tactically, getting into proper positions, bracing their guns whenever possible, taking aim (most of the time) and, as a result, are much more effective than their non-combat oriented builds would suggest.
They've also avoided a fight or two, because they couldn't see a way to get a massive advantage over the enemy and didn't want to die, which I thought was cool.


Oh, and guns have realistic rates of fire, which helps at least my immersion and is also not broken, while improving your chances of a hit.

^Yeah, I actually play Infinity, but the range bands would be a little bit too complex IMHO. And we also wanted to define weapon ranges much better in terms of penalties. Like how you could fire at x20 range with a -190 BS penalty and such.

That's a fair point. I would personally prefer range bands because they allow you to address some weird balancing issues with the current system. For example, if a thug with a chainsword charged you in a cramped corridor at short/point blank range, a shotgun should be more effective than a sniper rifle. Under the current DH2 rules, the sniper is actually much better.

This is some pretty cool stuff, I like it a lot

Alas it wouldn't fly in my group, I have a 'Keep it Simple' guy who finds the current modifier muckings about irritating enough.

May implement them after some further forum hijinks regardless....we shall see....

Are you familiar with Infinity? It uses a "range band" system to represent the accuracy/practicality of weapons at different ranges. For example, a combi-rifle gives +3 to hit up to 16" away, and the bonus decreases fairly steadily out to the max range of the weapon. The more unwieldy sniper rifle gives +0 to hit out to 8", then give +3 out to a significantly longer range than the combi-rifle. A shotgun gives +3 to hit out to something like 12", but the bonus drops off very quickly after that. (I'll edit this post to give more specific values once I get home and can check the rules).

I think range bands do an excellent job of representing the effectiveness of weapons at different ranges. I was never a fan of range increments for weapons in D&D since they required too much measurement and multiplication in combat -- would you consider giving this system a try instead?

I actually think that this would be a better stat for the weapons to have than all of the inaccurate ranges. It would also encourage maneuvering around the battlefield in order to be within your weapon's ideal range. Of course, I suggested doing something like this while also abstracting distances to things like "melee, short, medium, long, extreme". I realize that would lead to the occasional odd situation with triangulating things, but it would also once and for all get rid of the half-baked miniatures-necessary combat for the game.