D20 modern weapons in a Pathfinder game

The world I created is Earth about 1000 years or after a nuclear war has destroyed nearly everything, because of the tons and tons of radiation set off by the A-bombs the survivors have harnessed the radiation to preform "Magic" and have become reliant on the magic slowing down the recovery of technology.

I want an army the army of ogres, orcs, goblins ect ect... to have found a cache of modern weapons. I want them to have access to this list from D20 modern weapons. The army is attacking basically attacking a post nuclear war New York (fewer sky scrappers, but has recovered with the help of magic.

http://www.systemreferencedocuments....#rangedweapons

Is this a good idea? Anyone have any experience doing something like this? Tips? Thank you.

I'm not an expert on d20 Modern, so these are more "food for thought" comments than anything I find specifically wrong with mechanics.

1. DnD armor is not bulletproof. Even the platemail which was designed to stop bullets (the origin of the term bullet proof, for those not familiar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_armor#Plate burried, but it's there) was done so against musket ball type ordinance, not the tipped/rifled rounds used in modern guns. Armors like leather would do nothing at all against a rifle round, so handling AC vs. fire arms might be a challenge... You might have to make them touch attacks...?

2. When using things like crossbows, its easy to just say "You miss" and forget about where the bolt goes. But if a firing line of orcs is hosing down a group of infantry with automatic weapons fire, you might look into some alternative attack rules such as attacking vs. a reflex save or a larger area or something.


... I thought I'd have more of these...

One thing you should keep in mind is that D20 Modern was designed with the concept of a massive damage threshold. If you take more damage than your Constitution score you immediately have to make a DC 15 Fortitude save or be reduced to -1 hp. This makes any 2d6 damage weapon capable of instakilling most people, while a 3d6 damage weapon is very likely to one-shot anybody. D&D works very differently, putting the massive damage threshold at 50.

If I had to do it I would use magic item creation rules to make modern weaponry. They'd be doing several d6s of piercing damage with touch attacks, cost thousands of gp, and you could price them like charged items (each bullet is a "charge"). You could probably reduce their market price by 10% to require exotic weapon proficiency as a drawback.

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Originally Posted by 00dlez

I'm not an expert on d20 Modern, so these are more "food for thought" comments than anything I find specifically wrong with mechanics.

1. DnD armor is not bulletproof. Even the platemail which was designed to stop bullets (the origin of the term bullet proof, for those not familiar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_armor#Plate burried, but it's there) was done so against musket ball type ordinance, not the tipped/rifled rounds used in modern guns. Armors like leather would do nothing at all against a rifle round, so handling AC vs. fire arms might be a challenge... You might have to make them touch attacks...?

2. When using things like crossbows, its easy to just say "You miss" and forget about where the bolt goes. But if a firing line of orcs is hosing down a group of infantry with automatic weapons fire, you might look into some alternative attack rules such as attacking vs. a reflex save or a larger area or something.

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Automatic fire gives you a DC 15 reflex save to avoid the damage. Also, while I might be trying the same kind of conversion for 3.5, all you need to do is convert Purchase Dc to gold cost. Keep the rest the same, and then add in "reality slightly favors magic systems". Either that, or give them a boost to critical. Let the smallest be a crit on a 17-20, and it's a *3. Let snipers be 10-20 and *6 or 7. Easy enough, and let each bypass a amount of fortifcation ?(From 10-80%). They're badass, without overly changing them or their theme.

Biggest problem I see is figuring out how AC works with firearms. Hm... three ways you could do this.

1. Magic stops bullets. ALL armor with a +1 bonus or better can deflect bullets. Then AC can scale as normal and you can use AC vs. guns as normal. Your puny weapons do nothing against my +2 Fortified fullplate!

2. Use D20 Modern armor. High tech guns, meet high tech armor. Now you have some defense against bullets, and it should scale about the same with D&D armor proficincies. Keep in mind, D20 Modern classes got Defense bonuses on top of armor because every shot was (potentially) fatal due to the shock damage rules. But if you aren't making guns any more lethal than arrows and swords and staying with Pathfinder rules for damage, then it should be about right. Pathfinder characters are going to be 'hit' by bullets more than a D20 Mod character would be.

3. Rule of Cool, or it's ok for everyone to wear whatever they want. Use 3.5 Defense Bounus . This will give the game a grittier feel and might be really cool. Imagine your paladin in a long black duster with a sword on his belt, and your rogue with daggers tucked into pockets on his cargo pants and hoodie. Their defenses scale automatically using this chart, and you can easily assign other pathfinder classes to the chart. I (personally) think this sounds the most fun.

Or...

Weapons with the "ballistic" damage type ignore the first 4 points of armour bonus to AC (exact number can vary to suit your preferred game balance point, and may vary depending on range and/or gun/calibre type). Enhancement bonuses to armour still provide AC as normal.

You might also want to pinch the 2e "exploding dice" mechanic in some form.

I'd weaken the "save or die" mechanic though, because it reduces winning or losing a fight to a single die roll. Perhaps that failed save means you lose half your remaining hp (before damage is rolled) instead.

You could also look at the Star Wars Saga Edition rules, they are fairly comprehensive at blending melee with hard-hitting ranged weapons. However, the whole thing has a different health system, including a condition track similar to that of Modern. Difference is when you get hit for damage above your "Threshold" you move down a step on the track. You have 5 steps and if you hit the final one you are knocked out. There's also rules for catching your breath and such and in addition the weapons do larger damage than those in 3.5 since a blaster SHOULD do a lot of damage anyways. However, you also get a good number more hit points so... Enough of my ranting.

I can't really describe all of it, I will just say that you should look into it because I personally think it'd be very easy to make a crossover of the two systems. If you want advice on it feel free to send me a message.

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Originally Posted by Stormageddon

The world I created is Earth about 1000 years or after a nuclear war has destroyed nearly everything, because of the tons and tons of radiation set off by the A-bombs the survivors have harnessed the radiation to preform "Magic" and have become reliant on the magic slowing down the recovery of technology.

I want an army the army of ogres, orcs, goblins ect ect... to have found a cache of modern weapons. I want them to have access to this list from D20 modern weapons. The army is attacking basically attacking a post nuclear war New York (fewer sky scrappers, but has recovered with the help of magic.

http://www.systemreferencedocuments....#rangedweapons

Is this a good idea? Anyone have any experience doing something like this? Tips? Thank you.

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We ran several games like that from zombies to a demonic invasion of the modern world. The end result was with massive damage threshold rules and armor as damage reduction it worked pretty well.
I think those campaigns inspired candlelight games kickstarter for a guns book.
But overall they worked well your mages still act as your heavy artillery but have to take a much more multi tool approach to spells.