Monitors: drafting some weapons

So following my previous post, the question is what and how to implement in terms of weapons balance. I'm aiming for a reasonable mixture of:

• choice (allowing people to equip characters as they'd like)
• balance (not having some choices so superior or inferior that maths overrides flavour)
• variety (having different weapons actually feel different to use)
• simplicity (keeping choices, mechanics and descriptions straightforward)

I don't want this silly little game bogged down by twenty-column weapons profiles, or long periods spent agonising over shopping lists. At the same time, I'd like to offer people some choice about their equipment, and to have it actually make some difference to how the character plays.

The most basic and essential factors here are range and effect. You need to know what you can shoot at and what happens if you hit - are they hurt, knocked out, turned into chocolate? Having outlined some armour rules, a further concern is how good the weapon is against armour and what protects you against it. We should also give some kind of indication of how big it is. I'd also like to indicate some general properties of the weapon (mostly the way it works) as these may affect its interactions with other mechanics, such as resistances. As some weapons will affect an area, I need to note that down somewhere too.

So an early look at things might look something like this (numbers are arbitrary):

Weapon	Range	Target	Strength	Size	Notes	Class	Defence
Flare pistol	Short	Single	Blind 1d4	1		Photon	Visor
Magnesium bomb	Throw	Blast	Blind 1d6	1	Disposable	Photon	Visor
Photon cannon	Long	Blast	Blind 1d10	30	Unwieldy	Photon	Visor
Stunner	Melée	Single	Slow 1d4	1		Shock	Armour
Shock rifle	Medium	Single	6	5	Two-handed	Shock	Armour
Mister	Melée	Single	Slow 1d4	1	Gas	Chemical	Mask
Needler	Short	Single	Slow 1d4	1		Chemical	Armour

I don't really like the "Notes" business. And there are too many columns already. I don't see why blast/single needs its own column. Also, I think we could simplify things by having the Class determine the Defence used, rather than a separate attribute. I don't want to use Effect for that because there's no reason why (for example) gas can't blind someone, and this wouldn't target the same defence as a photon effect would.

Weapon	Range	Effect	Strength	Class	Notes
Flare pistol	Short	Blind 1d4	2	Photon	Stealthy
Magnesium bomb	Throw	Blind 1d6 blast	5	Photon	Disposable
Photon cannon	Long	Blind 1d10 blast	10	Photon	Unwieldy
Stunner	Melée	Slow 1d4	2	Shock
Shock rifle	Medium	1 Wound	5	Shock	Two-handed
Mister	Melée	Slow 1d4	2	Gas, Toxin	Stealthy
Needler	Short	Slow 1d4	2	Physical, Toxin	Stealthy

Here, we know that Photon effects always target Visor, Gas effects target Mask, and that Physical, Shock and Force effects target Armour. The Toxin keyword will mostly come into play when robots and other entities with odd physiology are involved. Other keywords may well have special properties: for example, Gas effects used in low-G may behave differently, and Shock weapons have more effect against robots. Stealthy weapons are both silent and invisible except to the target, ideal for subterfuge - most photon weapons can't achieve this, as there tends to be visible overspill, but the small pistol can maintain a narrow beam.

Further notes

The eagle-eyed among you may notice that I forgot to include ammunition capacity. Nope. I'm not using ammo. This is part of my effort to distinguish Tech and Magic: technology is fundamentally reliable and predictable, which means your weapon will never run out of juice mid-combat. This doesn't mean they've endless capacity, it just means you shouldn't be taken by surprise. Rather than a resource to manage, ammunition/charge becomes a narrative limit. You know that you don't have enough charge in your blaster to take out every soldier in the base, but you never have to worry about it in ordinary "reaasonable" use. Without having to track it most of the time, the GM can offer appropriate limits if the character is in an unusual situation, perhaps stranded somewhere and unable to recharge. Only grenades have limited use, and the same limit may apply to some other one-use items.

One possibility is to have generic weapon groups (Pistol, Rifle, Heavy) that combined several properties like Range, Size and how many hands you need. This would certainly make the tables smaller, but wouldn't actually be much simpler - you still need to know what those properties are, so I'm not sure it's an improvement.

I could certainly further simplify things by dropping the range of weapons. For example, without the Needler and Stunner, we could decide that all Slowing weapons are Gas, and then use Class to determine the damage type, rather than having a separate entry.

Another thing I want to consider for future drafts is whether the familiar scheme of Light (short range, low damage, low pen) and Heavy (long range, high damage, high pen) weapons is suitable, or whether I can mix it up a bit.