Dark Fantasy Ideas

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by johndallman

I've played a TL4-5 swashbuckler in fantasy-like settings, and reloading has never seemed worth attempting. Pistols are for softening up opponents, and you Fast-Draw them, fire at short range without an Aim, and drop them. Next turn, do that with your next pistol, or Fast-Draw your sword. This seems a bit complicated for berserkers - remember that Berserk is a [-15] disadvantage.

Berserk explicitly lets you reload a weapon so long as doing so takes no more than a Ready, and also explicitly lets you draw a firearm. So a berserker with a brace of pistols is readily-achievable. The biggest drawback of Berserk is the fact you lose the ability to defend (you must take All Out actions), and that's still in play here.


As for an adventuring rifle, there are a few options to make them more viable. Leaving a socket bayonet on the weapon gives a penalty to ranged attacks - although I let this be negated with a Perk (with the Perk also meaning you don't need to take a Ready to switch between melee and Ranged) - but means you still have a pretty solid spear to use. If you allow for the Bow Fencer Advantage (which lets you use Bow skill in melee, treating your bow as a baton and also letting you stab if you've got an arrow Ready), you may want to allow for a version to let you use Guns in place of Spear to strike and Parry with your rifle (tossing the benefits of the above Perk into the mix would probably be fine while still at [10]).

If instead you want to be able to fire more often, consider a breechloader. Those have a base reload time of 10 seconds, or 8 seconds with Fast-Draw. The Rapid Reload Perk makes it 6 seconds with Fast-Draw, and using paper cartridges halves that down to a 3-second reload. LT only has one breechloader available, and it's a wimpy one (2d pi+, comparable to a heavy pistol) but the design rules from GURPS Classic Vehicles has breechloaders having 1.5x the weight of an equivalent muzzleloader, which should work here. Such weapons are going to be more expensive, and are also typically less reliable (although for small arms - pistols and longarms, but not cannon - this is a less-pronounced effect; Vehicles only has cannon suffering from being less reliable). +50% to weight and +2 CF (basically meaning they cost twice as much per lb), along with -1 Malf, should work. Once you have a breechloader, there's less reason not to rifle your barrel (for a muzzleloader prior to the invention of the Minie ball, rifled barrels made them take longer to reload, but that's not a concern for a breechloader); I'd say rifling gives +50% to base Acc (round up, minimum +1) and is +1 CF (you could justify up to +3 CF, basically making a Fine (Accurate) Rifled weapon cost the same as a Very Fine (Accurate) smoothbore weapon, but I'd be inclined to just go with +1).

Another option is a revolver (although note for a longarm you may need to either wear armor on the arm of your off-hand or have some sort of shielding built into the weapon - revolvers are "leaky," and having high-velocity hot gases hit your arm isn't going to make a for a pleasant experience). A TL 4 version probably requires a Ready between each shot (to rotate the chambers). I suggest a 5-shot revolver - this means you don't need to worry about fouling during the fight (fouling gives a -1 Malf every 5 shots, and a -1 Acc every 10 shots) and also conveniently results in a weapon that is twice the weight of a muzzleloader. Such revolvers are probably going to be more finicky than breechloaders, however. So, something like +100% weight, +3 CF, and -2 Malf would probably work. I'd allow the reliability of the cylinders to be improved independently of Fine/Very Fine (Reliable), for +1 to Malf for +1 CF to represent a better-fitting cylinder (giving the same Malf as a breechloader). Again, rifling would probably be a good idea.

Finally, there's something like the Kalthoff Repeater - Wikipedia article here and a possible GURPS interpretation here - which could potentially let you get off a good number of shots before needing a reload, and was indeed TL 4 (somewhat-late TL 4), so it could be an option (particularly with magic allowing for more reliable manufacturing).