Just to make sure I’m getting this, before I run a game next weekend: excluding armor and “fine” equipment, the purpose of equipment is basically to determine what I have narrative permission to do (positioning), and providing another trait to impact in the case of devils bargains.
My question comes when I am looking at the character sheet there is a notch for a pistol, and then a second pistol. If having a firearm gives me permission to take that kind of action, what would the mechanical impact be of having a pair of them?
It’s entirely likely that I’ve overlooked something, but I can’t find it in the books, and I haven’t notice it come up in any of the actual play yet. Can one of you folks set me straight?
You’re right about the way equipment works.
Here’s why you have two pistol slots: they take a long time to reload. If you fired that pistol and you’re in the middle of a Skirmish, that’s probably the only time you’re getting a chance to fire that pistol, so if you miss … you pull out a second pistol, of course! (or change weapon).
I may have gotten my tech timelines screwed up, are they assumed to be using single-shot barrel loaded guns? I was thinking they were using wheel guns by the time the late 1800s came around.
They absolutely were, but the guns in Blades are intentionally behind the development in our timeline (to make blades a more viable option, probably).
A Pistol: A heavy, single-shot, breech- loading firearm. Devastating at 20 paces, slow to reload.
It mentions explicitly that it’s single-shot and slow to reload. I don’t know if there’s a more detailed explanation of how guns work anywhere in the book.
I guess even if they are barrel loaded weapons (which I imagine take half of a combat to load), it would be another statistic of an item that would be used for instances of needing a devils bargain, or assigning some kind of consequence during an engagement. Kind of like Fate rpg, the aspect is always there and gives narrative permission, but the mechanic doesn’t care about it until there is a reason for it to draw narrative focus.
Does that sound right?
Oh, breech loading. I don’t know how I missed that geesh
Thank you for checking on that for me. I appreciate the help. I feel like I’m right at the cusp of the “getting it” phase, so it’s helpful to sound some of this out a bit.
Yeah it’s fully a “fantasy gun” rules set. Breech would mean cartridges of some kind which would go against the vein of slow to load.
Therefore it’s some tech we never used and likely some basic sparkcraft.
This sounds like something you should ask you Hounds, Cutters, and Leeches about!
How do you explain the Hound’s ability to lay town suppressing fire?
Richard Robertson super-quick reloading and/or using multiple guns one after the other
Richard Robertson Maybe the Hound is pulling echoes of loaded pistols out of the Ghost Field?
Special abilities allow you to narratively “break the rules of the world” – I would just ask the Hound’s player to explain it if they asked.
I’m not seeing any mention of a suppressing fire special ability for the Hound. Is that in another version? I have 8.1
Either way, I like the idea of being able to lay down suppressing fire with a single shot breach loader being related to the Hounds ability to know “when and where” to let off a round, instead of being able to get lots of lead down field. It might be an in theme way to look at something like that.
By the way, I googled “breech load pistol” and there are some really beautiful guns. I actually like that tech more, it’s almost modern tech, but because it’s not something I’ve ever seen represented in entertainment it looks like alien tech 🙂
Marcus Grubbs You’re looking for the Sharpshooter special ability to answer your question. Despite the name it’s a mashup of two very different special combat maneuver permissions.
The Hound might have a Harmonica Gun.
thenortheasttoday.com – 5 most bizarre weapons in human history
Richard Robertson I’ve always imagined this as a basically supernatural ability– shooting what should be a slow, single fire gun like a machine gun (or at least a semi-automatic pistol) for a brief moment. Forming bullets out of electroplasmic energy inside the gun as it fires, or something like that. Arne Jamtgaard ‘s idea of pulling multiple ghostly pistols is also very cool ^_^
Quickly firing and reloading a breech-loader (like a shotgun for trap shooting) isn’t supernatural, but it is a specialized skill. I got to be decent with it after a bit of training, but far from what the experts could do.
Modern people think of suppressive fire as a full-auto effect, but that’s not required.
There’s art in the book which illustrates a pistol with an open breech ready to be loaded, along with a cartridge.
Damn I really want to see a Hound do some cool marksmanship in my game now…