00dani wrote:Although I suppose the answer is just to make the swords/axes/whips magical and therefore able to magically compete with modern mundane weaponry. Duh.
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My homebrew has archaic weapons, subweapons, modern weapons, and even futuristic weapons.
Frank's question of relevancy is very important. Most modern firearms (to say nothing of futuristic weapons, which I will exclude mentioning below for sake of brevity) outclass ye olde arming sword and spear. There's a few ways one might have their cake and eat it too.
Modern weapons are less likely to be magical, and even less likely to be legendary. So the ubiquitous damage resistance to non-magical weapons that monsters have will reduce the modern weapons' effectiveness, absent the expenditure of spells and class abilities from the wielder's allies.
In the case of special enemies like Dracula himself, not just any weapon will do when sending him off to his century of torpor. It needs to be a weapon fated to destroy him, such as the Vampire Killer, or a select handful of marvelously blessed weapons. Riddling him with bullets and cutting off his head will mean he'll be back and ready for another round in fifty years or less and nobody wants that!
This may be an unpopular method for leveling the playing field, but you can curtail the effectiveness of modern weapons. Making the parts and ammunition scarce, the weapons themselves seldom found, expensive or impossible to maintain in the area of operations, the character build requirements to operate them costly, or simply putting a hard cap on how often they can be deployed. The setting I will be using for my game is after a nuclear apocalypse, and so many of the above limit the scope of modern weapons usage, and also reduce the availability of modern niceties like smart phones to boot.
Another option for allowing the deadly delights of modern weapons would to strongly incentivize their use as chaff monster sweepers. Particularly in 5th edition, vast hordes of weakling monsters can be an even greater threat than a small handful of advanced enemies. If you make the clouds of skeletons and flea men and medusa heads and zombies and enraged wildlife of a staggering size, the heroes will be forced to expend their belts of ammo and bundles of dynamite and tanks of napalm cleaning the streets or risk being overrun and ripped to shreds. I think this is preferable to making the boss fights and more sophisticated opposition into padded sumos.
As a final thought for balancing things, you could certainly make it a plot point that monster hunters could use more modern weapons but choose not to. Soma Cruz is the main protagonist in the series to use modern weapons, but he certainly has no reservations about doing whatever it takes to get out of the castle with his love interest safe and sound.
One thing to carefully consider when using modern arms is the potential TPK risk when arming monsters with LMGs and the like. Believe it or not, there is precedence for such things. Monsters have used grenades, combat knives, rpgs, and bolt action rifles rifles to name a few more modern weapons. As Frank correctly states, Dracula always has futuristic tech no matter what time period he rises in. You just don't want to place that sort of devastating firepower in the hands of the vast numerical superiority of team monster. At least not without adjusting the Challenge Level to reflect the greater threat.
@OgreBattle Blackjack eh? That's a wild idea. I like it though. Memorable game mechanics are worth their weight in gold and can get you a splendid play experience. The moment you descend into a slog you know you goofed. Thank you for sharing that interesting idea!
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