By: Carlos Silva
Imagine this scenario: you and your colleagues have been raiding a tomb, and are attacked by bandits who want the idol you were sent to retrieve. You are low on spell slots, and the DM has let in Renaissance firearms so the enemy is coming in with flintlocks and muskets. With a proficiency in firearms, they can reload with a basic action and have been able to pin you guys in a corner while they go to the altar and take the idol. Your brave warrior uses a Battle Mastery die to disarm the bandit with a loaded rifle and it’s now your initiative. You grab the musket as the bandit tries to enter the chamber and you take your shot. Natural 20. Critical hit. That’s 1d12 damage x2, and you roll a two on the damage die.
Four points in total as a critical hit. Congratulations, you did as much damage as one dart from a Magic Missile spell conjured at level 1. Why is that? Was the rifle ineffective? I would say no, as it has the potential to one-shot kill many low-level players. Maybe it was a grazing shot? No, you had a critical hit. Your damage was doubled because you did such a direct hit. So what happened? Why was such a weapon so ineffective? The weapon has the potential to do so much damage. Imagine if I rolled an eleven on the damage die instead of two. Not even the maximum; you would have one-shotted a poltergeist. This is the correct damage die as found in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.
Being a DM, I can see how some of these situations can be frustrating to the players. It is very frustrating to myself as a DM because I may feel as if I am cheating a player out of a critical hit just as one of my low-level bandits runs away with the MacGuffin. I did nothing wrong. We have no one to blame but the dice for the guy getting away. What can be done to balance the damage here all the while keeping the weapon in balance within the game?
My suggestion is a simple one: more dice. We as players and DMs love to roll dice. We watch them clop around the table. Dice towers are used even when we are thinking of our next move. We smile when metal dice hit the wood with such a thud that the table might move. However, just throwing more dice will tip the balance of power too far in one direction. We want a rifle that can strike fear, not threaten an entire city with a simple tool.
We generally don’t want to toy with the shooting mechanic. The D20 is already set and will scale if your player or enemy has the correct proficiency. That leaves the damage dice. A d12 can roll from one to twelve so the average you would take the middle value, six, should be the rough average damage dealt from the weapon. 2D6 has about the same damage average as the d12. 3+3=6. However, what we have done is now rounded off the edges of what the range of the damage could be. You can never have just one because you are always adding two dice together. You can still get twelve albeit harder. This is because you now have to rely on both dice hitting their maximum. One lower die may drag down a higher die and vice versa, but more dice push you to the center value of the total faces. 1D12 is less controlled than 2D6. If you wanted to push it further, go 3D4. You cannot roll lower than three but still have the ability to go to twelve. In fact, due to the law of averages, more dice may average more than six.
Try that for yourself. Roll 1d12 and then 3d4. See what results you get. Do it a couple of times and see how the damage from a weapon with more, smaller dice gives you a more steady value than the single die.
A fun homebrew weapon I like to give my players is a blunderbuss. If you are not familiar with this weapon, it is the typical rifle seen being held by Pilgrims for the Thanksgiving holiday here in America. They were weapons loaded like muskets but loaded with buckshot instead of a single musket ball and a conical rifle barrel to spread the shot around more. It gives you a blanket coverage area at the cost of accuracy. I do a 6d4 in a 15-feet cone with a Dex DC save for half damage. It’s a great feels-like-a-fireball but not as powerful a weapon. I can roll a 15 damage and Dex save for 7. Full action to reload sure to slow them down, but when you hold six dice in your hand for damage, that is quite a feeling that won’t give you a four with a critical hit.
About the Author
Carlos Silva has been both DM and player in TTRPG since 1998, and currently DMs for Nerdvana TTRPG store in Egg Harbor Township, NJ.
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