D&D 5E How to Make Firearms Powerful But Not Crazy in 5E?

[Aeradom]

First off, allow me to give you the setup of what's going on in the campaign. Basically, there is a faction in the game capable of creating energy weapons powered from small power crystals. Now, I'm trying to figure out what stats would be best for said weapons, as I've seen so many different options as to how to stat them, I'm just trying to think of the best way to implement them. Now, I'm not looking for it to be "balanced" in terms of compared to the other weapons, their meant to be the next step forward... but just not several steps forward. So far I see four options (there's a rifle and pistol version btw but I just want to focus on the rifle version at the moment) to do it:

+2 weapon, 1d12 radiant (or heat) damage
+2 weapons, 2d6 radiant (or heat damage
No modifier, 1d12 radiant (or heat) damage
No modifier, 2d6 radiant (or heat) damage

So yeah, be glad for input.

 

[Dormouse]

The easiest way to balance firearms is just to say that PCs are not proficient in them, which they logically would not be. Losing the proficiency bonus will scare away most PCs from using them, even if they are readily available and deal impressive damage, while freeing them up for NPC villains to use them and train to be proficient in them. A PC might take the feat to gain proficiency in them, but that is fine as feats are a significant cost.

I would go with: Laser Pistol, one handed, 2d6 radiant damage; Laser rifle, two handed, 2d8 radiant damage (with the normal dex bonus to hit and damage).

As for +1 or +2 bonuses just follow the normal rules for magic weapons. No reason a +1 laser pistol needs to be handled any differently than a +1 longsword.

 

[S'mon]

DMG pg 268
Laser pistol - 3d6 radiant, 50 shots
Antimatter rifle - 6d8 necrotic, 2 shots
Laser rifle - 3d8 radiant, 30 shots

The pistol looks a bit OP compared to the rifle, to me.

 

[Horwath]

BFG 9000; 20d6 in 30ft radius.

 

[RangerWickett]

In ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution, we added early firearms (19th century style) to D&D 4th edition. Our conceit was that yes, they're powerful, but they're a pain to reload, and so you usually only fire them once at the start of combat, then switch to a different weapon. The only time it's feasible to keep firing is when your enemy cannot close the distance, like if you're in a tower shooting down.

So for 5e, I think I might do something like:

Pistol - 1d8, but expand its crit range by 2 (so 18-20 for most PCs). However, it takes two actions to reload. One handed.

Musket - 1d12, plus expanded crit range and two action reload. Two handed.

Shotgun - 1d12, but you have advantage at short range, disadvantage at long range. If you have advantage and both attack rolls hit, you deal an extra 1d12. Two handed.

Now, I assume your 'energy weapons powered by crystals' are meant to be more like flintlock pistols than Star Trek phasers, right? If so, the above works. You shoot, and then you have to open a delicate case, remove a crystal, load a new crystal, make sure it's aligned properly, then close the case.

Or, if you don't like one-use crystals, it could be: "Fire, then it takes two rounds for it to recharge."

You still run into a slight problem if a PC can buy three of the weapons and cycle between them. Maybe the crystals are reusable, but only hold one charge at a time, and after firing you have to cast a spell (even a cantrip) into them to recharge them.

 

[Herobizkit]

Use the stats for crossbows but up the die one step and change the damage to fire and/or radiant.

Hand xbow = light pistol = 1d8
Light xbow = heavy pistol = 1d10
Heavy xbow = rifle = 1d12

From a 5e mechanics standpoint, all you'd be doing is giving cantrips in gun form.

 

[ccooke]

For my setting that's tech-equivalent to Europe in the 1800s, I used the mechanics for simple pistols and muskets from the DMG, although with updated prices. After doing some research into the relative costs of muskets, rifles and pistols in the napoleonic wars compared to swords from the time - an officer's sabre - I ended up rounding the prices to:

pistol: 50gp, stats as per DMG
musket: 100gp, stats as per DMG

For the rilfe: 150gp, 1d12 piercing damage (same as the musket), 10lb (same as the musket), with special features: Ammunition (range 40/120), loading, two-handed, rifled (2d6, range 100/200)

The Rifled property is:

Rifled. This weapon can be loaded with standard bullets or rifle shot. Loading rifle shot requires the Use an Object action; these smaller bullets are wrapped in a leather patch which makes a tighter seal and allows the rifling inside this weapon’s barrel to impart a spin; if the weapon was loaded with rifle shot, use the damage and range information from the Rifled property.

Rifles in this period were often used in the same way as muskets, and with the same accuracy. Packaged bullets with their own black powder did not come into effect until later. Thus, for my rifles, you can either use them as a more expensive musket or take the time to load them and get better accuracy and more consistent damage. Requiring the Use an Object action has the fun side effect that Rogues - at least, the Thief and Arcane Trickster subclasses, who can both get Use an Object as a bonus action - make the best rifle skirmishers, since they can load the rifle properly every round.

 

[77IM]

In my experience, if you introduce a weapon that is even slightly better than existing weapons, PCs will gravitate towards it. So you don't need massive damage increases to make firearms (or magic crystal blasters, or whatever) seem powerful. I'd give a slight damage increase -- bumping up the crossbow damage die by 1 step is a great suggestion -- and then make the weapon seem exotic in other ways (using radiant damage does this nicely).

 

[leonardoraele]

I think the stats suggested in the Dungeon Master's Guide (p.268) is pretty fine, though.

Also, a rifle definitely would not do radiant damage.

 

[procproc]

I've always found the easiest way to make firearms work for this kind of effect is to re-skin wands and describe them as firearms. I personally like making activating a firearm to be a special action like activating a magic item, rather than an attack that scales up with the number of attacks you make as an Attack action.

I don't think the DMG has wands for cantrips, but for the pistol mechanics, you could basically just give the user the ability to cast Produce Flame at will a limited (or unlimited) number of times. You could modify it so it always uses its attack roll based on Dex (or Chr/Int/Wis, if you wanted the activation to be based on some kind of mental interaction with the gun).

For a rifle, I'd probably just use a wand of Scorching Ray. It fires a "three round burst" of rays, which is somewhat analogous to real automatic rifles.

Alternately, you could use the stats on 268 of the DMG for guns, but those are much deadlier than what I've described. It depends on how much you want the access to guns to take over the campaign.