What if gun?

Design
1

I want to give Marth a glock. I want to fill a dragon with holes. I want Hector to pull out an ak-47 and say “its heccin time” and hecc all over the place.

In all seriousness, FE doesn’t ever try to diversify its setting, and I think that’s a shame. Case in point, guns. Firearms have been around for a looooong time, in many forms; whether it be handcannons, arquebusses, muskets, or… whatever the pepperbox pistol was. Not only that, but they actually did exist during the late medieval era. They could fit in a Fire Emblem game just fine. Hell, give me a steampunk Fire Emblem game! (No, Codename: STEAM doesn’t count.)

Anyway, I think the main issue doesn’t have anything to do with whether it would fit, because it would fit in just fine (as long as you don’t have more modern guns, though it would be pretty funny if you could give Seth a pump shotgun). The main issue would be… how would they work in gameplay? I mean, there’s a reason why firearms were so widely adopted once they became more developed. How would you balance them? If archery is still a thing, how do you make them not outclass archers?

First off, guns shouldn’t scale off strength. There are 2 ideas I had for this; one would be to use skill instead of strength, the other would be to have them do set damage or have set might that goes unaffected by the user’s stats. I could honestly go either way with this, but its the kind of thing I would want to playtest to get an idea of what works.

Second, they should have similar, if not higher range than bows. Generally, it should be around 1-2 or 1-3 range, mayyybe 4 if you want to stretch it. You could also just go for Gaiden ranges, which is a whole other can of worms, but could work. Maybe. You might think being able to counter at 1-range could be overkill/easily abused, but…

Third, reload times. Yes, you heard me right. Before bullet magezines were a thing, guns took a lot more effort to reload. Depending on the gun, it could take a decent amount of time before you’re able to fire it again. So, why not implement that into gameplay? You could make it so that muskets, for example, take 1 turn to reload. Since they only have one shot, that means they won’t be able to counter in enemy phase if they already fired during player phase. You could also just give them a triangle disadvantage if they’re attacked at 1-range.

Fourth, bullets should be a resource. Let guns be unbreakable and have bullets be their “durability”. You could limit how much ammo you give to the player, and make bullets something you want to conserve.

That’s the general idea of how I would make them work, but yeah. Firearms cool. Unfortunately, I don’t think IS has the balls to give Wrys a colt revolver, but maybe a fangame could do that.
Thoughts?

Side note: anyone remember the Castlevania Emblem “leaks”? Yeah, that’s what this idea came from. I feel like I’m the only one who remembers those fake leaks… please prove me wrong.

9 Likes
2

Kinda liked how Disgaea handled gun range, that is, its range was only in a straight line with no diagonals… I think they also had longer range but it’s been years since I’ve played any.

Not sure on anything else though. I have wanted to experiment with firearms but no real reason to go too in-depth yet since I’m also stupid and want to do battle animations for it first. ack.

i do not recall those leaks, but i also don’t remember anything.
Who are you? Where am I? What’s that in my hand?

2 Likes
3

If gun ammo is to be used as a resource, there should be multiple ammo types for each gun. Even if there is only one bullet type, it’s worth it as long as there are multiple ammo types. Add magic crystals that can be used as elemental gun ammo.

1 Like
4

I would take a page out of some ttrpgs rules for guns.
High hit rate at close ranges, way lower hit rates the further away you are from target.
Set amount of Mt. that does not account for the users stats (Like Echoes Levin Sword) but they ignore half the targets def. 'cause, well, its a gun. This will make your damage values a little varied on different targets based on their def, while keeping the set Mt. so they don’t completely outshine other weapon types. I for one, would find it incredibly boring if my gun unit always just did a set X amount of damage to every single unit they fight. (Think of it like anyone can shoot you with a gun and it will hurt the same amount, relatively. But the strongest man in the world hitting you with a sword will hurt a great deal more than some random skinny guy.)
Reloading needs to suck, this is why guns were not the main weapon of soldiers for a long time until they were able to move away from black powder loading and into cartridge rounds. I think your idea of it is your action to reload is a good way to implement this. (That, and they were incredibly expensive, when compared to other cheap arms such as polearms that were way cheaper to produce and took virtually no training to use. Easy to teach someone to hit a guy with a long stick after all.)
Depending on your games setting the guns can be a signature weapon of a couple classes or even a specific unit, instead of a guns everywhere setting. This can make for some easy and cool gameplay-story integration of one of your main characters getting inspiration to create such a deadly and effective weapon, and the ramifications of introducing such a weapon into a traditional medieval fantasy setting. If you are doing a gun everywhere setting then I would make a few different gun types, breaking them up into handguns (flintlock pistols, pepperboxes) Rifles (muskets and the like) and scatterguns (blunderbuss and shotgun like weapons) and have different classes able to use different ones, same as sword or axe wielding classes. Pistols are the all rounder weapon class, rifles have way less hit rate drop off at higher ranges, and scatterguns do higher damage close up but have awful hit rate drop off.

All this just as, y’know, random examples.
Guns are cool man.

1 Like
5

Muskets are pretty terribly inaccurate past like 15 meters lol, so the range would be 3 tiles. The reason muskets were adopted was not, in fact, the range, but the fact that it was easier to find or make a soldier proficient in shooting a gun than shooting a bow. An untrained archer is only useful when you’ve got like 300 archers, and wars were being fought with progressively less people.

Edit: So in terms of design, a gun would be a sidearm usable regardless of weapon rank. It would give melee units a way to attack from range, but the prohibitive expensiveness and lack of reliability would prevent it from being a main weapon.

3 Likes
6

If you’ve ever seen a film like The Patriot they do a good job of portraying how flintlock weapons would work in a military setting. Even with every foot soldier having musket rifles, the advanced units and main villain was in fact, a sword wielding cavalry-man, who also used a pistol on occasion. This is as late as the late 1700s mind you. And yes the muskets were like shooting into the wind they literally lined their soldiers up like toy soldiers and had them fire at each other across fields, you’ll probably hit someone in a crowd that big, but certainly not who you were aiming for.
So design wise it would be scatterguns 1-2 range. Highest Mt. Awful hit rates at 2 range. (You could also give them a skill like Savage Blow to emulate the spread if you’re feeling crazy)
Pistols 1-2 range okay at both. Lowest Mt.
Rifles 1-3 or 2-3 range and have less drop off than pistols or shotguns. Middle of the pack Mt. If you think a musket is gonna be some 1-5 range sniper rifle then you are just wrong.

2 Likes
7

I remember those vampire FE “leaks”, where Luna and Sol swapped effects because of the gothic vampire theming.

As for guns, I think you’d need to change the way magic and bows work to accomodate guns/gunpowder weapons. You’d need to find a way to make each one stand out from eachother, and what benefits there are.

Its been a while since I played so I may not remember the specific mechanics properly but Nephilim Saga does have them as well as daggers and kinda makes them interesting, but it only kind of works because of the squad system. In that game; Gunpowder units are purely player phase, but are the strongest. However they can only attack once in attack phase and cannot counter. Where as bows/crossbows can double and (counter). Longbows also out range gunners but are on par with cannons. Magic in that game have other effects such as splash or line damage etc. Knives have a vantage effect and always strike first (unless they were attacked by an enemy knife user). I don’t think its 100% accurate to the mechanics, I wasnt intending to replay that game until the DLC comes out so I can’t confirm.

4 Likes
8

Remember the bowgun?

9

Bowgun? You mean this thing?

Joergsprave

2 Likes
10

That is so perfect. To top it off, his name is so close to being “Jeorge”

1 Like
11

Even though it’s class is archery, the Ballistician class in Fates was a tank shooting fireballs in the animation.
In Eiyuu Senki the gun class is weak to everything but is strong against everything but throwing and archery weapons.
Maybe do like Engage and make guns part of a ranged weapon triangle.
It reminds me of Tactics Ogre and that one part when a villain got his hand on one. Then the pirate class which wields guns.

12

Come to think of it, wasn’t there a game like Fire Emblem but in 3D where cute anime girls use big guns to shoot tanks?