Today I’d like to talk a little bit about firearms in your 5e game, I’m not going to have the firearms don’t belong in fantasy discussion, I want to focus primarily on modern 5e settings where firearms are appropriate.

The 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide gave us some sample firearms in the back to help us the same way the original AD&D DMG had rules for crossing over with Boot Hill. I have noticed that among the modern settings they all vary widely with how much damage they think a typical firearm does. This makes life interesting for a 3PP looking to write supplements of my own that players can use with these settings.

Of the settings selected the EN5ider firearms supplements Amazing Adventures and Carbon 2185 stick closest to the DMG.

Firearm	5e DMG	Amazing Adventures	Carbon 2185	Ultramodern/REDUX	Spy Game	EN5ider
Renaissance Arms
Pistol	1d10 Pistol	—		—	—	1d10 Pistol
Musket	1d12 Musket	—		—	—	1d12 Musket
Western and Modern
Light Pistol	1d10 Pistol	1d8 Light Pistol	2d4 21st Century	1d4 Pocket Pistol	1d8 Light	1d6 Pocket Pistol
Medium Pistol	2d6 Semi Auto	1d10 Medium Pistol	2d6 Heavy Pistol	1d4 Revolver	—	1d10 Pepperbox
Heavy Pistol	2d8 Revolver	1d12 Heavy Pistol	2d8 Revolver	1d6 High Caliber Auto	1d10 Heavy	2d6 Revolver
Release Date	December 2014	June 2020	October 2019	Aug 2016/Feb 2020	October 2020	July 2019
Sales @ DriveThruRPG	Millions?	Copper	Gold	Mithral/Platinum	Copper	No Metals

Now Spy Game doesn’t change the melee and primitive weapons at all, so their reduced firearms damage probably doesn’t come from NPCs and monsters that are balanced differently than D&D. At the higher end, Shotguns and certain rifles do more damage than the DMG suggests, so the approach is inconsistent.

Ultramodern has a greatly reduced damage for modern firearms, but devotes a large page count to futuristic weapons which do the same or more than the DMG’s suggested amount. In this case the reduced damage probably IS there to prevent the futuristic weapons from escalating monsters into irrelevance. Ultramodern’s Plasma Sword does the same damage as a Longsword, the various Bayonets do the same as Daggers and Shortswords or Spears so again the firearms seem to be the only thing that were nerfed.

Amazing Adventures melee weapons do not deviate from D&D at all and the firearms are only a tiny bit less powerful. One should expect that D&D monsters would still present adequate challenges to the heroes in Amazing Adventures.

Carbon 2185 stays pretty close to the DMG damage, all pistols in Carbon 2185 use 9 or 10mm bullets, rifles use 5.56mm and .308 which should give me some basis for comparison but who knows what 200 years of propellant technology will do for us. Again as the Cyber reskin of D&D keeps to the same melee damage as ye olde swords so as not to disrupt the creature math. A mono-edge katana does the same damage as a longsword held one-handed, but it ignores resistance, the phase shift sword is exactly ye olde longsword. Their Alternate ammo types lower the die code of their firearms and d4s become 1 point so the decisions for the 21st century pistol to do 2d4 and only 2 points with special ammo is very conscious departure from the DMG’s Light Pistol doing 1d10 and becoming 1d8 with alternative ammo like Incendiary or Armor Piercing.

Based on the above I think my only real choice is to list any weapons books we write with separate tables for each system because they vary not only in damage, but also in their use of properties.

If you have any feedback about this post or our books please feel free to contact us.

Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com