This week I wanted to take a look at the weapons of other Everyday Heroes Quickstart Guide and compare them to the Firearms in the DMG, the Firearms from EN World, and some other sources.

Looking at the EDH QG, two things readily become apparent, they aren’t using the weapons from the back of the DMG. I’ve since gotten the Core Rules and had a message from one of the designers, and they took some well-reasoned positions. The first being that guns are rare in D&D 5e and therefore, class abilities might not work with them, so they do outsized damage to compensate for their rarity. In EDH, guns are a fact of life and not only do things like class abilities interact with their special properties, but the properties also allow things not part of regular D&D.

Their Assault Carbine with 3-round burst, I’m guessing an M-16 or M-4, does 1d12 damage which is not the same as the DMG Rifle Automatic doing 2D8. 1d12 counts as an average of 6.5 points of damage, 2d8 as 9 points on average. If you manage to hit with the burst, you do 2d12 or 13 points on average.

The Gunfighter has the ability to do burst fire with a non-automatic weapon, so 1d6, 1d8, or 1d10 for pistols can get an extra die they would have had anyway in the DMG.

The Frag Grenade from EDH does 4d8 (18), and the one from the DMG does 5d6 (17.5), which is more comparable. Since EDH doesn’t have any, and the Frag grenades are so close, I’ll use DMG’s Dynamite rules. In the final Core Book, the TNT stick is roughly the same as DMG Dynamite.

I like the Shot feature of shotguns, giving them a slight advantage over other kinds of firearms at close range, it should probably be dependent on using actual shots and not slugs and so probably shouldn’t be tied to the weapon but the ammo. It might be just as easy to say Slugs don’t get the ‘shot’ property and lose the close-range advantage. I like that they don’t do more damage than the assault rifle on average but have higher minimum damage. Unlike the DMG’s double-barrel, EDH’s pump shotgun is actually a modern weapon.

EDH has a .38 revolver at a lowly 1d6, there are a lot of things less powerful than a .38, so those things will likely do 1d4. Their 9mm service pistol does 1d10, which seems like a lot since their concealed carry does 1d8, and most concealed carry pistols are also 9mm. I can find service pistols that are mightier, .40 and 10mm, maybe a specific load of high velocity 9mm and .45 ACP that would blow up an older pistol and justify the 1d10 over a normal 9mm. If you know how D20 Modern went, you know there’s some guy out there who wants to buy a .50 Desert Eagle or S&W .500, which we can kindly tie to the 1d12 or 2d6 rifles and shotguns.

So what has this got to do with the Old West? We’ll get there. The old black powder from the 1800s isn’t anywhere near as potent as the smokeless powders that we use today, some of the guns might seem underpowered. The general depowering EDH did from the DMG will have to flow down to the cap and ball pistols and muskets as well. It won’t be too bad, old single-shot pistols and muskets used huge balls to overcome their relatively slow speeds. Since the Wild West period of gunfights was during the 1870s after the Civil War and, for the most part, after the advent of metallic cartridges, we won’t see a lot of single-shot pistols and muskets.

The basic revolver and concealed carry 9mm are both Light, which means they can be dual-wielded, but the concealed carry pistol doesn’t have any property that makes it easier to conceal. The classic western dual wield is the 1851 Colt Navy which is a smaller bore than a .38, so that should be fine.

The heavy improvised weapon has the Heavy property that requires a 15 strength to wield without penalty, I am thinking that Rambo carrying a .50 cal machine gun or a SAW gunner might have a similar requirement. Jesse Ventura in Predator with the minigun and the backpack full of ammo because reloading is for chumps. A Colt Walker Dragoon, .50 Desert Eagle, and S&W .500 all might be Heavy. Upon further reflection, those all fit the Hand Cannon pretty nicely, notwithstanding the individual number of shots and reload times of each, the EDH Hand Cannon is very likely a .50 Desert Eagle.

I had thought I needed to compare the guns from the DMG to EDH, Ultramodern, Spy Game, Tribality and EN World’s Firearms EN5ider articles, and some other 5e-based systems just to get a baseline of where everyone is and how feats and class abilities would interact with the different power levels used.

Firearm	DMG	EDH	UM5	Spy	Tribe	ENW
Pistol, Flintlock	1d10
Musket	1d12
Revolver	2d8	1d8
Revolver, Heavy		1d10
Machinegun, Light		2d6
Machinegun, Medium		2d8
Machinegun, Heavy		2d10
Pistol, Concealed		1d8
Pistol, Hand Cannon		1d12
Pistol, Holdout		1d6
Pistol, Pocket		1d6
Pistol, Semiauto	2d6	1d10
Rifle, Anti-Material		2d10
Rifle, Assault		1d12
Rifle, Assault Carbine		1d12
Rifle, Automatic	2d8
Rifle, Hunting	2d10	1d10
Rifle, Sniper		2d8
Rifle, Tactical		1d12
Shotgun	2d8 (P)	2d6 B
Shotgun, Double		2d6
Shotgun, Pump		2d6
Submachinegun		1d10
Submachinegun, SpecOps		1d8

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Paul

Evilrobotgames at Gmail.com