[Ultra Tech] Increased Firearm Power with TL

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The first of those would be affected by ergonomics: horribly front-heavy guns, or ones that have weight sticking out to the left or right, would have higher MinST1.

But Phoenix Command and madness lie along this route.

The rules from LTC2 on MinST for melee weapons simply have poorly-balanced weapons (like those with a heavy weight at the end) have +1 to MinST, particularly well-balanced ones have -1 to MinST. Of course, I'm not overly fond of those rules, as it seems like the weight one should be able to wield should scale linearly with BL, and that's not the case there. Something like "You can wield poorly-balanced weapons that weigh up to 10% BL, relatively-balanced weapons that weigh up to 15% BL, and well-balanced weapons that weigh up to 20% BL" should be workable (for an ST 10 character, that would be 2 lb, 3 lb, and 4 lb, respectively). What counts as poorly/regularly/well balanced would simply be up to the GM. Because they're just held steady rather than being used to strike, firearms should probably have lower MinST - maybe treat them as around 70% nominal weight if one-handed, 50% if two-handed (LTC2 has two-handed weapons weigh 2/3 normal, which is right around 70%). The bigger issue is recoil, and I have no idea how you'd start to work that up... and it may not be something that can really be simplified down enough to be usable.