[DF] Imma Chargin' Mah (Fantasy) Lazors!!!

[Stripe]

For an upcoming Dungeon Fantasy session, I'm considering introducing ray guns in the style of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or Taarna or Thundarr the Barbarian or Filmation's The New Adventures of Flash Gordon -- basically Conan the Barbarian plus ray guns. Normally, though I love the original Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy IV with all my heart, I don't like mixing sci-fi with my fantasy in table-top gaming, but this is just a short campaign of connected dungeons.

What I don't want to do is make the ray guns magic boom sticks like musket-shaped wands enchanted with Lightning Bolt. I want them to be fashioned with some form of weird fantasy technology, probably using crystals, mirrors (making them fragile), platinum and gold with wooden stocks. I want them to be TL3^ on the very cutting edge, almost TL4^.

I want to make sure they are balanced in a fantasy setting beside archers using bows and arrows.

As a starting reference point for balance, Heroic Archers with striking ST 13 and a composite bow does 1d+3 imp damage per turn, more for Weapon Masters. However, they can use different arrows including bodkin points doing piercing damage with an armor divisor (B277), or willow leaf arrows doing cutting damage (Treasure-Tables, p. 8; Low-Tech, p. 73). They add accuracy bonus without taking an Aim maneuver and have further options in Power-Ups that can make them even more fearsome. Plus, bows will be much cheaper. So, adding balanced ray guns won't make archers obsolete. At least, that's the goal.

While I was going to design my own, the more I thought about it, the more I like the idea of just using unmodified electro lasers. Then, I adjusted the damage up to 1d(2) burn (still with the surge and aff) and worsened the Shots considerably from practically unlimited to 12(3) and 24(3). Getting "ammo" will be as difficult as magic items.

Weapon           Damage       Acc  Range      Weight   RoF  Shots  Cost    ST   Bulk Rcl
Composite Bow    1d+3 imp     3    280/350    4/0.1    1    1(2)   $900    10†  -7   -
Handgonne, .90   2d pi++      0    100/600    15/0.1   1    1(60)  $300    10†  -6   4
Musket, .75      4d pi++      2    100/1,500  13/0.05  1    1(15)  $200    10†  -6   4

Raygonne         1d (2) burn  4    40/80      2.2/0.5  3    12(3)  $1,800  4    -2   1
linked           HT-4(2) aff  
Ray-Musket       1d (2) burn  8+1  160/470    3.7/1    3    24(3)  $3,900  4†   -4   1
linked           HT-4(2) aff

I threw a couple old guns in there for reference.

using the stats from the Basic Set, electro lasers don't have good range or damage, certainly not against armored opponents. In fact, they seem to be a pretty poorly suited for the battle field. They seem to perhaps have been designed for riot control or as less-lethal police sidearms.

As personal weapons in a fantasy campaign, though, they don't seem too terribly bad, especially for a dual-weapon fighter who has a sword or axe in one hand, raygonne in the other. With a rapier, it would be a cool Swashbuckler concept.

What do you all think? Would they be too powerful or too weak? Should I lower the damage back down to 1d-3 burn with no armor divisor?

What about unmodified TL9^ flamers from Ultra-Tech?

Of course, when they first encounter them, they won't have any idea how to use them, but they will know they are weapons from seeing them used previously. I'll have an NPC there to tell them, "This is the business end. Don't point it at anything you don't want to kill. Hold it like this. Look through the sites like this. Pull this trigger to make it shoot. Be careful with that. You'll shoot your eye out."

I'm considering introducing the concept in a dungeon-ized wreckage of an ancient alien spaceship. Most, if not all, of the psionic elder-thing space alien squizards are dead, but the psychopathic AI still functions as do a small squad of robot soldiers. Real robots, not robot-like golems, mind you. Of course, the robots will probably be colored evil-skull white and there will be a bad-ass black version and scary red version. The Mother Brain-like boss will be a giant psi-borg.

I think it would be a significant and refreshing departure from what I've done in the past.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Nifty. Let me also suggest checking out David Pulver's Blaster and Laser Design in #3/37 Pyramid: Tech and Toys (p. 11) and my own Metatronic Generators #3/46 Pyramid: Weird Science (p. 16) for designing further blaster-y weaponry.

[quarkstomper]

I'm kind of in a similar situation with the Thundercats campaign I just started. My wife's character got a hold of an enemy's rife. I decided to give it the Electro-carbine stats, as it was incapacitating but mostly non-lethal and I thought better fit the genre than something doing massive armor-piercing burn damage

[Faolyn]

Maybe the laser guns from Tales of the Solar Patrol, since they come with that space opera-y over-the-top feel built in?

[Stripe]

Thudercats! Another great example of the sci-fi fantasy genre, as is John Carter of Mars, of which I've read the first Barsoom book but not seen the movie.

So, there's one vote for going back to just using the unmodified EL stats.

I don't have Tales so I don't know about them.

[Stripe]

Okay, the more I think about it, unmodified electro lasers from Ultra-Tech look like the way to go. I like the idea of the kill/stun setting, too.

Apparently -- and correct me if I'm wrong with a page reference -- damage doesn't need to penetrate DR to cause the affliction and need to roll against stunning, though victims get half DR as a bonus to the HT roll. If so, that will make them good weapons against the Electrical robots, and actually any high-DR, high-HP creature capable of being stunned, such as dragons or giants or power-armor troops.

Yeah, they really seem to work well with the genre. They are altogether different than bows and thus don't really threaten that niche.

Thinking more about the game, I'm planing on having the PC's accidentally awaken the ship, which is a long-lost scout of a horrible alien civilization of cruel psionic Mindwarpers who feed upon the brains of the sentient. If the ship gets away, the whole world could be doomed!

[Jovus]

You have read S3: Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, yes?

[Stripe]

I've certainly heard of it and Metamorphosis Alpha, which was was updated and expanded into Gamma World, but I've never read it. It sounds a lot like what I'm proposing.


This is going to be straight Dungeon Fantasy at the beginning of the first session and the players will have no knowledge I'm going to introduce ray guns, robots and psionics all in short order. The PC's will have never heard of any type of firearm before and will consider it pure magic at first.

After an opening scene, the PC's will be traveling from point A to point B on a completely unrelated mission. The players won't know that I don't even have that mission planned because the PC's won't reach that destination within the scope of this series of adventures. It'll just be some minor standard DF mission, like slay a troll under a bridge or whatever.

They get lost for whatever reason and wander into some hidden valley, perhaps around some mystic rune-covered wayfarer standing stones. You know the drill. They get actually get transported to another world near a TL4^ civilization.

Though they do have TL 4 firearms, black powder and such haven't yet really caught on because of the existence of magi-tech like the raygonne. There are even golem cyborgs and a large number of levitating conveyances (enchanted with Flying Carpet).

The folk in this new realm are peaceful and compassionate and will generally want to help the PC's return to their world as long as the PC's are civil.

However, the PC's first meeting with the people of this land will be after a warning shot ("magic bolt") strikes a nearby rock and the PC's are given a command for them to halt from a soldier aboard a large metallic flying disk similar to a flying horseless chariot. Four others, some carrying halberds, are aboard. They wear grandiloquent bascinets and steel corselets.

We'll have to see how the players, with 250-point DF characters react. The Wizard might just cast Force Dome and support the Heroic Archer Scout's arrows with fireballs. If so, things could get pretty bloody and the people of the sprawling walled city may put them on trial for murder or manslaughter rather than accept them graciously (the trial would most likely result in exile and serve the same purpose, though).

These humans' racial template will have IQ+1 and Magery 0 to total 25-points. Hundreds of not thousands of well-paid enchanters work nine-to-five in large circles and there is an unrivaled Academy of Wizardry at the city's heart. Agriculture and foodstuffs In this utopian society of magic, science, and art, violence is abhorred while logic, reason and creativity are upheld.

Of course, the land isn't without danger. They are currently outnumbered and at war with a vast army of darkness and hellspawn.

The real immediate threat, however, will come from the discovery of the Mindwarper's scout spaceship, which may have crash landed only a relatively short time ago, perhaps days or weeks or months or a few years.

[Jovus]

How can I get in this game? (Kidding, but it would be cool.)

Were I you, I'd also look into secret spells and strange ways to interact with or use current spells for a SF feel. Things that come to mind immediately are Force Dome as force fields (complete with magical/material ways to bypass or "overload" them) and manaburner engines powering rickety TL 4^ vehicles and establishments held together with Essential Wood or Earth. I'd imagine you don't want to go overboard with this, though.

Places to look for direct inspiration might include GURPS Technomancer, though that's a higher TL than you intend, and GURPS Fantasy Tech 1 - The Edge of Reality (I don't think there are any more in that series, unfortunately.)

Also, it needs be said that much of the magic in Jack Vance's Dying Earth books has the feel of actually being science. D&D magic wands have always (to me) had the feel of being ray-guns and the like, complete with limited charges and strange methods of activation.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by Stripe

For an upcoming Dungeon Fantasy session, I'm considering introducing ray guns in the style of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe or Taarna or Thundarr the Barbarian or Filmation's The New Adventures of Flash Gordon -- basically Conan the Barbarian plus ray guns. Normally, though I love the original Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy IV with all my heart, I don't like mixing sci-fi with my fantasy in table-top gaming, but this is just a short campaign of connected dungeons.

No Skeleton Warriors or Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors?