Brainstorming for a Guns with Powers Campaign!

[Varyon]

Something that may serve as a jumping-off point for you is the weapon design system I created for my Limit Breakers thread; you can skip to the second post for that bit (the first is for the Limit Breakers themselves, which aren't necessary).

For a bit of an "Under The Hood," I'll explain how I came up with the various parts of that. Essentially, I used "Natural Weapons" (Pyramid #3/65) to design the weapons themselves, aiming toward an end cost of around [10] for the base weapon. I then set this as the base cost to simplify things, and each Special Quality is around a +50% Enhancement (hence each costing [5]). For Breaker Ammo, I assumed the fact they were reliant on the projectile weapon's motive force was balanced by them basing their damage on that of the weapon itself, rather than using the character's damage. For Shadow Mode... that was pretty much pure fiat, although part of it was meant to balance out the fact the weapon used [10] as a base cost rather than the lower value it would have if actually building it as a Natural Weapon. Weight was also pretty much pure fiat (although that doesn't matter so much if you're doing Breaker Ammo and/or Breaker Blasters rather than the default melee Breaker Weapons or Breaker Shields).

I'm not saying this system will work for your purposes as-is, but it may give you some ideas.

[Donny Brook]

Spitballing here...

Let's throw aside logic and convention and just riff off the cool of guns and powers. Guns are cool. Guns are so cool that in this world they are manifestations of the aether and characters' attuned to the aether can summon guns out of it into physical form. Let's call characters attuned to the aether "Aetherians". Only summoned guns actually work. If anyone tries to build a gun, it is simply inert.

Let's say the number of guns an Aetherian can summon, and the ease with which they can do it, is some kind of function of their potency as a character.

BUT!-- the aether contains one unique and special gun for each Aetherian and the power and abilities of that special gun is randomly independent of any personal characteristics. The thing is, an Aetherian might go her entire lifetime never matching up with her unique and special weapon, while another might get lucky and have it pop in the first time they try.

An Aetherian's special weapon has a mental bond with their match, but other weapons do not, so an Aetherian knows immediately when they've found their match. For reference, I'll toss on a possible term for such a gun: collectively telarcta or singular, a character's telarctum

Other than being summonable and aetheric by nature, most guns have the characteristics of a mundane techonological weapon of whatever TLs you want to have the setting include. Only the telarcta have special powers. For those, I'd suggest including Imbuements, possibly but not necessarily as the core defining features.

[Doppã]

I tried making some settings with it, it’s not complete yet and the path is still unclear, but they’re approaching some possibilities.

Cyberpunk

Firearms powers are technological themed and the weapons are “sapient” AIs. They can shape themselves from a small flat portable cuboid, being “Summoned” with a ready action. An example of power is a bullet that hacks the brain cybernetics of the victim, controlling their body for one second. For downtime, they have to be maintained, or they may have psychosis.

Gothic

Powers are supernatural themed, with curses and evil creatures (zombies, bats, etc). Guns could be possessed by ghost spirits, making them “sapient” and perhaps able to communicate. One power example is turning the victim into a living portrait of themselves once shot.
I don’t know of a downtime activity for this, perhaps hunting ghosts and turning them into bullets. The firearms are supernaturals, being able to be summoned.

SlugTerra/Palworld

Powers are small creatures you collect on the wilderness. To be used as bullets they need to be fed and healthy. A downtime activity includes collecting them from different biomes, and taking proper measures to ensure they’re healthy and ready to use, much like keeping a farm. One example of bullet would be one where the animal impact result in its liquids marking the target, making other animals hostile to it and having a long range. (The animal would spill that as a defense mechanism against predators). Firearm this way do not need or make sense to be summonable.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Spitballing here...

Let's throw aside logic and convention and just riff off the cool of guns and powers. Guns are cool. Guns are so cool that in this world they are manifestations of the aether and characters' attuned to the aether can summon guns out of it into physical form. Let's call characters attuned to the aether "Aetherians". Only summoned guns actually work. If anyone tries to build a gun, it is simply inert.

Let's say the number of guns an Aetherian can summon, and the ease with which they can do it, is some kind of function of their potency as a character.

BUT!-- the aether contains one unique and special gun for each Aetherian and the power and abilities of that special gun is randomly independent of any personal characteristics. The thing is, an Aetherian might go her entire lifetime never matching up with her unique and special weapon, while another might get lucky and have it pop in the first time they try.

An Aetherian's special weapon has a mental bond with their match, but other weapons do not, so an Aetherian knows immediately when they've found their match. For reference, I'll toss on a possible term for such a gun: collectively telarcta or singular, a character's telarctum

Other than being summonable and aetheric by nature, most guns have the characteristics of a mundane techonological weapon of whatever TLs you want to have the setting include. Only the telarcta have special powers. For those, I'd suggest including Imbuements, possibly but not necessarily as the core defining features.

Oh, I like this. A few modifications I'd be inclined to have:

Mundane firearms do exist, and do work, although only Aetherians can craft them (they're still Powered by Awesome, and only Aetherians have access to enough Awesome to infuse a mundane piece of steel and wood into a functional firearm). This allows you to still have non-Aetherian mooks and redshirts armed with firearms. But Aetherian firearms - not just the telarcta, but any weapon summoned from aether - are much better than the mundane ones. Maybe they have regenerating magazines, and/or an Aetherian can simply dismiss an empty one and summon a new one already in place with a single Concentrate, allowing them to reload more quickly (for older designs with longer reload times, something like reloading in a third of the default time - or perhaps half the time it takes with Fast-Draw - might work). Maybe they deal more damage, have more range, and/or have higher Acc. Maybe they never malfunction. Or maybe it's something more esoteric - perhaps an aether firearm fires semi-guided bullets, halving Range penalties (so -1 out to 5 yards away, -2 out to 10 yards, -3 out to 20, -4 out to 50, etc). Although some of that you may want to reserve for the telarcta.

On that topic, I'm not a big fan of access to the telarctum being purely a matter of luck. I'd be more inclined to have luck be a factor, but have skill/potency play a big role in it, so being a telarctum-wielder is something that marks you as exceptional amongst Aetherians rather than being something that makes you exceptional. I'm assuming the telarctum would be built (and paid for) as a unique ability, separate from being an Aetherian.


Note both objections go away if Aetherians are extremely common - probably if they're close to as common or even more common than pure mundanes, for example. If that's the case, then there's no shortage of mooks and redshirts, and having "I've unlocked my telarctum" be what sets the PC's apart from the rank-and-file probably works.

[Doppã]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

Spitballing here...

Let's throw aside logic and convention and just riff off the cool of guns and powers. Guns are cool. Guns are so cool that in this world they are manifestations of the aether and characters' attuned to the aether can summon guns out of it into physical form. Let's call characters attuned to the aether "Aetherians". Only summoned guns actually work. If anyone tries to build a gun, it is simply inert.

Let's say the number of guns an Aetherian can summon, and the ease with which they can do it, is some kind of function of their potency as a character.

BUT!-- the aether contains one unique and special gun for each Aetherian and the power and abilities of that special gun is randomly independent of any personal characteristics. The thing is, an Aetherian might go her entire lifetime never matching up with her unique and special weapon, while another might get lucky and have it pop in the first time they try.

An Aetherian's special weapon has a mental bond with their match, but other weapons do not, so an Aetherian knows immediately when they've found their match. For reference, I'll toss on a possible term for such a gun: collectively telarcta or singular, a character's telarctum

Other than being summonable and aetheric by nature, most guns have the characteristics of a mundane techonological weapon of whatever TLs you want to have the setting include. Only the telarcta have special powers. For those, I'd suggest including Imbuements, possibly but not necessarily as the core defining features.

Those are cool ideas! I take it that one could have the “magery” level of it and be able to see Artherian’s weapons, while being unable to use it on their own. That can work both as a setting, if we complement more on that, or for some of the ones I mentioned above.

[Doppã]

I’m neutral towards the Aetherian suggestion, it can be included in various settings. Reminds me of Stands from JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (hence the “Magery 0” suggestion).

[Doppã]

Also, it’s worth mentioning that I’m a complete firearm newbie. What would be 4 cool firearms for my players to have? Preferably with some variety between those, if one is a close range shotgun, the other is a sniper rifle, to not mention the two pistols and… perhaps a machine gun? I can balance them with the powers later, so don’t worry about that.

Did some research and for the Machine Gun, I picked M1919A4Browning
https://imfdb.org/wiki/File:M1919A4Browning.jpg

[Donny Brook]

Originally Posted by Doppã

Also, it’s worth mentioning that I’m a complete firearm newbie. What would be 4 cool firearms for my players to have? Preferably with some variety between those, if one is a close range shotgun, the other is a sniper rifle, to not mention the two pistols and… perhaps a machine gun? I can balance them with the powers later, so don’t worry about that.

Did some research and for the Machine Gun, I picked M1919A4Browning
https://imfdb.org/wiki/File:M1919A4Browning.jpg

That's a very heavy weapon to be lugging around.

If you want to keep the list of available gun types to just four, I would recommend an auto pistol, a pump shotgun, a lever-action rifle, and a heavy automatic rifle or very light machine gun.

I'll suggest specific models if you tell me which books you have.

[Doppã]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

That's a very heavy weapon to be lugging around.

If you want to keep the list of available gun types to just four, I would recommend an auto pistol, a pump shotgun, a lever-action rifle, and a heavy automatic rifle or very light machine gun.

I'll suggest specific models if you tell me which books you have.

That’s intentional! All the firearms are summonable, so it doesn’t weight until you summon it. I wanted this one to reduce their movement, since it’s much more powerful than a pistol (to keep things balanced). I discussed with the players about all these setting options we could have, including the one you suggested, and they unanimously voted for a Cyberpunk one, so “summoning” is basically having a cuboid become a firearm (some weird science shenanigans). I guess that guides our options?

For equipment I have Ultra-Tech, Bio-Tech and Powers (I still want them to do cool stuff!), but High-Tech: Weapon Tables is just $4. I can get that any day of the week. So for this purpose, I essentially have High-Tech too.

[Doppã]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Something that may serve as a jumping-off point for you is the weapon design system I created for my Limit Breakers thread; you can skip to the second post for that bit (the first is for the Limit Breakers themselves, which aren't necessary).

For a bit of an "Under The Hood," I'll explain how I came up with the various parts of that. Essentially, I used "Natural Weapons" (Pyramid #3/65) to design the weapons themselves, aiming toward an end cost of around [10] for the base weapon. I then set this as the base cost to simplify things, and each Special Quality is around a +50% Enhancement (hence each costing [5]). For Breaker Ammo, I assumed the fact they were reliant on the projectile weapon's motive force was balanced by them basing their damage on that of the weapon itself, rather than using the character's damage. For Shadow Mode... that was pretty much pure fiat, although part of it was meant to balance out the fact the weapon used [10] as a base cost rather than the lower value it would have if actually building it as a Natural Weapon. Weight was also pretty much pure fiat (although that doesn't matter so much if you're doing Breaker Ammo and/or Breaker Blasters rather than the default melee Breaker Weapons or Breaker Shields).

I'm not saying this system will work for your purposes as-is, but it may give you some ideas.

That’s some great insight, thanks for sharing it. It fits some of the above mentioned settings (2/3). Shadow forms are an interesting feature, I might change a bit here and there as you mentioned but I’m really satisfied with that idea.