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Lately I've had a few requests for help with weapons and armor, so I decided to sum up a few of my thoughts in one spot to make it really easy for you guys to choose armor and weaponry that works for your character.
I've broken it down into two spoilers below - one for guns, one for armor. This'll also be a Q&A thread, so if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.
I've broken it down into two spoilers below - one for guns, one for armor. This'll also be a Q&A thread, so if you have any questions don't hesitate to ask.
When designing your character's firearms, the first thing to do is decide what flavor of weapon best fits your character. Is he a smuggler? A soldier? A demolitions expert? A pilot?
What your character does for a living, what his build is, and what his funding is should determine what weapon he gets. For now, let's just assume that you're running a fairly generic human smuggler, average in build with moderate funding.
First, look at his job. He's a smuggler. He needs to be reasonably discrete. Assault rifles and heavy sniping weapons are out. You should look at close range stuff. Sawed-off shotguns, blaster carbines, submachineguns, and pistols rule the day here.
You've narrowed the field, so let's cut it down again. Anything he packs should be light enough and small enough to be used in very close quarters, such as aboard a starship or in a club. It should have enough power to defeat at least light body armor, and enough range, accuracy, and ammo to hold out in a extended firefight. Don't worry about grenades or heavy weapons - if you need them, you're boned anyways.
Now you've decided against shotguns and submachineguns, so let's focus on carbines and pistols. You have another choice to make - ballistic or energy? Do you want a slugthrower, or a blaster, or a railgun, or a gauss gun?
Let's just say you went with blasters, since they're simple enough to work with.
You want three weapons. A carbine he can keep aboard his ship that's tiny enough to be used in CQC, but packs some vicious firepower for its size. A blaster pistol as an exposed carry pistol, something to intimidate but also to pack enough zap to knock most beings flat on their asses. Last, a compact pistol you can tuck into a boot, just in case.
Let's talk designs. Here's a very simple template.
Here's another, easier one.
Let's use the second and whip up a pretty basic blaster carbine.
There, now you've got a weapon. Just find a ref pic and BAM, you're good. Alternatively, use the other format and you get...
There we go. You now know roughly how to build a gun for your character! If you need more help, or want a few basic designs, feel free to PM me. I almost always have some gun designs floating around.
But before you run off, let me point a few things I've noticed on SWRP.
1) Sniper Rifles are Useless.
I've literally never seen a PC killed or even wounded by one. Ditch it. Take a battle rifle with a 4x scope or an assault rifle with a scope instead. You want a good multirole weapon, you never want a weapon purpose-built for a task. Modularity and adaptability are key.
2) Smart Weapons are Dead
Star Wars is, essentially, WWII in space. Throw away that fancy homing rocket launcher and that lightsaber chainsaw. You don't need them. Don't create weapons that are hilariously advanced or that are extremely intelligent. It just won't end well.
3) Ammo, ammo, ammo.
Sometimes, having staying power in a fight matters more than having the firepower to end a duel in a single hit. Find a balance between overwhelming firepower, mobility, and endurance. A good suggestion would be to carry one or two really good weapons and lots of ammunition for it. I'd suggest either a carbine or a rifle and a pistol. Even if you don't have a plate carrier or armored vest, you can still stuff enough ammo into your pockets to have a good 120 rounds for your rifle and at least 50 to 60 for your pistol. With a plate carrier or vest with pouches, that skyrockets to 300-400 rounds for your rifle and a good 120 rounds for your pistol - about 10 mags for each weapon.
[NOTE: As a rule of thumb, the more powerful the gun the less ammo it has.]
4) Don't take a Knife to a Tankfight
Arm yourself appropriately. You can't anticipate every situation out there, but you can prepare yourself so that you won't be helpless if you're stuck in a fight with, say, a super battle droid. This is pretty easy - carry a weapon good against armor. Carry a weapon good against everything else. A good combo is a heavy blaster pistol and a carbine.
The carbine is light, compact, and has lots of ammo, and can chew through most people pretty fast. A heavy blaster pistol has shitloads of stopping power, but isn't much for range or accuracy. Use the heavy blaster against well-armored foes, droids, even power armor or very thin-skinned vehicles; use the carbine against everything else.
Point is, don't grab just a carbine and a stock blaster pistol and expect it to be effective against everything. You will come across chars in power armor, you will come across wookiees, you'll come across.... Well, shit, if it'll ruin your day, you'll probably meet it at some point.
5) Explosives are Counterproductive
Contrary to popular belief, grenades don't win gunfights. Guns win gunfights.
A grenade is a defensive weapon and should be used as such. A grenade's wounding radius should be assumed to always be bigger than your throwing radius - ie, once you throw it you need to duck because you're in its blast range.
Furthermore, most fights on SWRP are CQC, so you're within spitting distance of Baddy McEvil. If you chuck a grenade at him and he spots him, chances are he remembers that funny little button in Modern Warfare that let him throw grenades back at the enemy, and you'll wind up meeting your own frag 'nade face-to-face. Worse still, the grenade will go off and do something unexpected to the environment, giving him an easy out or wrecking your face when a gas main asplodes or some such madness.
Point being, if you want a grenade, stick to the safe[r] ones. Flashbangs, concussion grenades [still kill, just don't have shrapnel to worry about], and smoke grenades. Incendiaries, fragmentation, thermal detonators, anti-tank, and other sorts of grenades may be tempting, but they're usually just not worth the effort. If you want them, though, then by all means carry them! Just keep them in an armored pouch where they can't be easily shot, and tape down the pins or something so some smuck Jedi doesn't just walk past and go 'YOINK', leaving you with a bandoleer of armed frags on your chest. That ends badly.
6) K.I.S.S.
Keep it Simple, Stupid. If your gun could be accurately described as an 'urban survival kit', then it's too complex. Your rifle is not a barbie doll; you do not have to accessorize every last nub and knob on the bloody thing. Here's an easy way to check and see if you're suffering from an overdose of accessories: This is the Annihilator 2000. This is a hilariously bad weapon in every way imaginable, which takes all the good features of the M16 rifle platform and buries it in so many useless accessories that when the protagonist attempts to fire the weapon later in the movie, it takes him a dangerously long period of time just to arm and fire the bloody thing! Axel Foley said it best - "Now who the hell is gonna buy that shit?"
What your character does for a living, what his build is, and what his funding is should determine what weapon he gets. For now, let's just assume that you're running a fairly generic human smuggler, average in build with moderate funding.
First, look at his job. He's a smuggler. He needs to be reasonably discrete. Assault rifles and heavy sniping weapons are out. You should look at close range stuff. Sawed-off shotguns, blaster carbines, submachineguns, and pistols rule the day here.
You've narrowed the field, so let's cut it down again. Anything he packs should be light enough and small enough to be used in very close quarters, such as aboard a starship or in a club. It should have enough power to defeat at least light body armor, and enough range, accuracy, and ammo to hold out in a extended firefight. Don't worry about grenades or heavy weapons - if you need them, you're boned anyways.
Now you've decided against shotguns and submachineguns, so let's focus on carbines and pistols. You have another choice to make - ballistic or energy? Do you want a slugthrower, or a blaster, or a railgun, or a gauss gun?
Let's just say you went with blasters, since they're simple enough to work with.
You want three weapons. A carbine he can keep aboard his ship that's tiny enough to be used in CQC, but packs some vicious firepower for its size. A blaster pistol as an exposed carry pistol, something to intimidate but also to pack enough zap to knock most beings flat on their asses. Last, a compact pistol you can tuck into a boot, just in case.
Let's talk designs. Here's a very simple template.
Here's another, easier one.
Let's use the second and whip up a pretty basic blaster carbine.
There, now you've got a weapon. Just find a ref pic and BAM, you're good. Alternatively, use the other format and you get...
There we go. You now know roughly how to build a gun for your character! If you need more help, or want a few basic designs, feel free to PM me. I almost always have some gun designs floating around.
But before you run off, let me point a few things I've noticed on SWRP.
1) Sniper Rifles are Useless.
I've literally never seen a PC killed or even wounded by one. Ditch it. Take a battle rifle with a 4x scope or an assault rifle with a scope instead. You want a good multirole weapon, you never want a weapon purpose-built for a task. Modularity and adaptability are key.
2) Smart Weapons are Dead
Star Wars is, essentially, WWII in space. Throw away that fancy homing rocket launcher and that lightsaber chainsaw. You don't need them. Don't create weapons that are hilariously advanced or that are extremely intelligent. It just won't end well.
3) Ammo, ammo, ammo.
Sometimes, having staying power in a fight matters more than having the firepower to end a duel in a single hit. Find a balance between overwhelming firepower, mobility, and endurance. A good suggestion would be to carry one or two really good weapons and lots of ammunition for it. I'd suggest either a carbine or a rifle and a pistol. Even if you don't have a plate carrier or armored vest, you can still stuff enough ammo into your pockets to have a good 120 rounds for your rifle and at least 50 to 60 for your pistol. With a plate carrier or vest with pouches, that skyrockets to 300-400 rounds for your rifle and a good 120 rounds for your pistol - about 10 mags for each weapon.
[NOTE: As a rule of thumb, the more powerful the gun the less ammo it has.]
4) Don't take a Knife to a Tankfight
Arm yourself appropriately. You can't anticipate every situation out there, but you can prepare yourself so that you won't be helpless if you're stuck in a fight with, say, a super battle droid. This is pretty easy - carry a weapon good against armor. Carry a weapon good against everything else. A good combo is a heavy blaster pistol and a carbine.
The carbine is light, compact, and has lots of ammo, and can chew through most people pretty fast. A heavy blaster pistol has shitloads of stopping power, but isn't much for range or accuracy. Use the heavy blaster against well-armored foes, droids, even power armor or very thin-skinned vehicles; use the carbine against everything else.
Point is, don't grab just a carbine and a stock blaster pistol and expect it to be effective against everything. You will come across chars in power armor, you will come across wookiees, you'll come across.... Well, shit, if it'll ruin your day, you'll probably meet it at some point.
5) Explosives are Counterproductive
Contrary to popular belief, grenades don't win gunfights. Guns win gunfights.
A grenade is a defensive weapon and should be used as such. A grenade's wounding radius should be assumed to always be bigger than your throwing radius - ie, once you throw it you need to duck because you're in its blast range.
Furthermore, most fights on SWRP are CQC, so you're within spitting distance of Baddy McEvil. If you chuck a grenade at him and he spots him, chances are he remembers that funny little button in Modern Warfare that let him throw grenades back at the enemy, and you'll wind up meeting your own frag 'nade face-to-face. Worse still, the grenade will go off and do something unexpected to the environment, giving him an easy out or wrecking your face when a gas main asplodes or some such madness.
Point being, if you want a grenade, stick to the safe[r] ones. Flashbangs, concussion grenades [still kill, just don't have shrapnel to worry about], and smoke grenades. Incendiaries, fragmentation, thermal detonators, anti-tank, and other sorts of grenades may be tempting, but they're usually just not worth the effort. If you want them, though, then by all means carry them! Just keep them in an armored pouch where they can't be easily shot, and tape down the pins or something so some smuck Jedi doesn't just walk past and go 'YOINK', leaving you with a bandoleer of armed frags on your chest. That ends badly.
6) K.I.S.S.
Keep it Simple, Stupid. If your gun could be accurately described as an 'urban survival kit', then it's too complex. Your rifle is not a barbie doll; you do not have to accessorize every last nub and knob on the bloody thing. Here's an easy way to check and see if you're suffering from an overdose of accessories: This is the Annihilator 2000. This is a hilariously bad weapon in every way imaginable, which takes all the good features of the M16 rifle platform and buries it in so many useless accessories that when the protagonist attempts to fire the weapon later in the movie, it takes him a dangerously long period of time just to arm and fire the bloody thing! Axel Foley said it best - "Now who the hell is gonna buy that shit?"
Picking your armor is a little trickier than picking your gun. Your armor will define your character's appearance, and could well be the thing that saves his life in the future. If you're going to put any effort into any of your gear, make all your effort go into your armor. It's the most important thing of all.
First, assess your character's needs. Let's use the smuggler once more.
He needs something modest in price, slim, yet offers good protection. You decide to go with a simple vest, so that he can wear his jacket/coat/flight vest of awesome/whatever over it, so that it doesn't impact his appearance all that much.
Now you need to either find a reference, or leave it undescribed. For full-on suits, you really need to find a reference. It's not -required-, but I strongly suggest you find a picture or art or something. Anything.
With that done, it's time to figure out what you need the vest to do. In the Smuggler's case, it must be inexpensive, lightweight, slim, and must offer protection against knives, pistols, stun weapons, and shrapnel - the biggest threats in his line of work.
Now it's time to design it. You've really only got a literary template to work with, but I've include both a [completed] simple version and a literary version for convenience's sake.
Now, for the literary version!
And there you have it!
Now, a few quick notes...
1) If you want your armor to be good at something, WRITE IT IN. If it's not written down, then your armor CANNOT do it. This goes for anything else in your inventory, be it a gun, starship, or toothpick. [The same does not apply for Force Powers, mind you.]
2) Your character should never have super mega ultra awesome Space Marine armor without a good reason. How s/he acquired expensive armor should always be covered in detail in the bio, or it should be acquired through a RP.
3) Armor isn't invincible...
...And you should never try to make it invincible.
No, seriously.
Don't try to make armor that protects against everything. It needs its weaknesses. If your armor is super good at protecting against blasters, then it's probably weak against ballistics. If it's fantastic at stopping ballistic weapons, then it's probably weak against energy weapons. If it's good against stopping both, then it's just well-balanced. Also, don't try to make armor that is resistant to EMP, lightsabers, -and- ranged weapons. I will eat you if you try.
4) Armor Degrades.
Remember this! As you take hits, your armor gradually weakens and eventually buckles, usually right in the middle of a hostile attack. RP it realistically - if you get stitched across the chest by a submachine gun, then your armor probably won't take another burst in that area unless it's ridiculously beefy, and only power armor is ridiculously beefy.
5) Power Armor isn't cool.
Well, okay, power armor is actually pretty ****ing awesome. Just remember that it HAS to be balanced. It has to have weaknesses. Don't make it resistant to EMP. Set it up so that it might be able to move and see after being hit by an EMP, but it shouldn't be able to fight at full strength. Also, don't make power armor into a walking tank. It's a bad idea - the bigger you are, the more immobile you are, and the more immobile you are, the easier it'll be for Joe Flannigan the Jedi Shmuck to drop a giant brick on you and squish you out of your tin suit.
6) DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH SHIELDS.
Seriously, don't. I'll roll a D20 and give you cancer if you do.
That said, if you insist on having a shield, remember these things: It can only take a few hits before failing. It can only defend against either an energy weapon or a physical weapon, never both. It cannot reactivate instantly after it is disabled.
The only exception to this is magseals, but those are finicky in that you can really only broadcast a 'wall' of energy with them, sorta like the Jackal's shield in the Halo series, or a Tower shield of some sort. You can get pretty damn creative with them, but you can't make a shield that completely encompasses the body, and the bigger a magseal shield the weaker it is and the fewer hits it'll take. A tiny shield, say one that only covers the forearm, will stop a saber - one the size of a tower shield will probably be lucky to stop a few blaster bolts.... Aw, frack it. Just PM an admin if you want to do anything with a Magseal-based shield. Or PM me and get lots of ideas on how to properly use them.
First, assess your character's needs. Let's use the smuggler once more.
He needs something modest in price, slim, yet offers good protection. You decide to go with a simple vest, so that he can wear his jacket/coat/flight vest of awesome/whatever over it, so that it doesn't impact his appearance all that much.
Now you need to either find a reference, or leave it undescribed. For full-on suits, you really need to find a reference. It's not -required-, but I strongly suggest you find a picture or art or something. Anything.
With that done, it's time to figure out what you need the vest to do. In the Smuggler's case, it must be inexpensive, lightweight, slim, and must offer protection against knives, pistols, stun weapons, and shrapnel - the biggest threats in his line of work.
Now it's time to design it. You've really only got a literary template to work with, but I've include both a [completed] simple version and a literary version for convenience's sake.
Now, for the literary version!
And there you have it!
Now, a few quick notes...
1) If you want your armor to be good at something, WRITE IT IN. If it's not written down, then your armor CANNOT do it. This goes for anything else in your inventory, be it a gun, starship, or toothpick. [The same does not apply for Force Powers, mind you.]
2) Your character should never have super mega ultra awesome Space Marine armor without a good reason. How s/he acquired expensive armor should always be covered in detail in the bio, or it should be acquired through a RP.
3) Armor isn't invincible...
...And you should never try to make it invincible.
No, seriously.
Don't try to make armor that protects against everything. It needs its weaknesses. If your armor is super good at protecting against blasters, then it's probably weak against ballistics. If it's fantastic at stopping ballistic weapons, then it's probably weak against energy weapons. If it's good against stopping both, then it's just well-balanced. Also, don't try to make armor that is resistant to EMP, lightsabers, -and- ranged weapons. I will eat you if you try.
4) Armor Degrades.
Remember this! As you take hits, your armor gradually weakens and eventually buckles, usually right in the middle of a hostile attack. RP it realistically - if you get stitched across the chest by a submachine gun, then your armor probably won't take another burst in that area unless it's ridiculously beefy, and only power armor is ridiculously beefy.
5) Power Armor isn't cool.
Well, okay, power armor is actually pretty ****ing awesome. Just remember that it HAS to be balanced. It has to have weaknesses. Don't make it resistant to EMP. Set it up so that it might be able to move and see after being hit by an EMP, but it shouldn't be able to fight at full strength. Also, don't make power armor into a walking tank. It's a bad idea - the bigger you are, the more immobile you are, and the more immobile you are, the easier it'll be for Joe Flannigan the Jedi Shmuck to drop a giant brick on you and squish you out of your tin suit.
6) DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH SHIELDS.
Seriously, don't. I'll roll a D20 and give you cancer if you do.
That said, if you insist on having a shield, remember these things: It can only take a few hits before failing. It can only defend against either an energy weapon or a physical weapon, never both. It cannot reactivate instantly after it is disabled.
The only exception to this is magseals, but those are finicky in that you can really only broadcast a 'wall' of energy with them, sorta like the Jackal's shield in the Halo series, or a Tower shield of some sort. You can get pretty damn creative with them, but you can't make a shield that completely encompasses the body, and the bigger a magseal shield the weaker it is and the fewer hits it'll take. A tiny shield, say one that only covers the forearm, will stop a saber - one the size of a tower shield will probably be lucky to stop a few blaster bolts.... Aw, frack it. Just PM an admin if you want to do anything with a Magseal-based shield. Or PM me and get lots of ideas on how to properly use them.
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