Right, so. I'm trying to build a skillset where you can use guns. The flavor is of course bullets, but the mechanical idea is using - instead of, say, items or mana or whatever - your actions as a resource. So all the guns require at least one turn to load them, but you never have to worry about ammunition. Each of the eight levels gives you access to either a different kind of gun or a different kind of ammunition. Level 0 is the basic musket (one shot per "clip"), 2 is a revolver (three or four shots in a clip, but each deals less damage), and 6 will be the grenade launcher (two turns to load a single shot, but deals more damage and deals AOE damage). Level 1 gives you concussive rounds (knocks the target back, plus the stronger guns stun) and level 3 or 5 is incendiary rounds (bonus conflagratory damage, and lights the target on fire). With all that said, I'm trying to figure out three things. 1. What gun should I give for level 4? It should be relatively iconic as a gun, but also do something differently than the others. 2. What's a third ammunition type I can use for level 3 or 5? I could have, like, hollow point or piercing rounds, but I'm not sure you can scale damage based on your targets' stats. 3. What type of damage should bullets do? I could see arguments for either piercing or bludgeoning, but I'm not sure.
If anything, I think you should figure out how to make that idea work. Then you will be free to design guns.
If there is any way to comsume multiple buffs with 1 spell, maybe you could do 1 loading spell and then 1 shot for every level, each shot costing more and more the higher the level.
It's not actually a problem if you know how to do it, Frelus; the whole thing is really simple, and you can even achieve it with one spell for both reloading and shooting. The problem lies within the fact that it's difficult to do it if other people had to tell you about the solution...
No, I think I know how to do it. At least, I've seen the pieces, and I know it's possible - you need one (of a large set of) buff(s) on at all times, tracking what gun you're using, whether it's loaded, and what ammo it's using, and then have the level 0 skill fire a different "bullet" or "reload" spell depending on which buff it is. The code will be kind of ugly, mostly because I don't think there's any way to code a string of "if/else if/else" statements without running through a spell per if statement, but it should work.
I'll be releasing guns in my swashbucklers mod project. Flintlock only, of course, for canonical as well as coding reasons.
It would be cool to have an "aiming" buff. Cast it on a target, and that target gets a 1-turn debuff that ensures you'll hit and do massive damage to it. Gives a sort of "take time to aim... then fire!" feeling. Pretty cool. All you need is a "need to reload" debuff which prevents you from using certain abilities - your gun skill abilities. Then give another ability called "quick reload" which dispels the "need to reload" buff. Easy. Of course, that assumes just 1 loaded/unloaded state, but if you do that you should be able to do all sorts of things like: change ammunition type, track load/unload for multiple weapons, etc.
I tried making the same, but I failed. thats why my mod is called: "Gunz&No Bulletz" and best of luck to make an gun mod!
Why "need to reload"? Would it not be easier to make a skill that gives you a buff "Loaded!", and the skill that uses it has consumebuffbyname? That way, you could also make 1 shooting skill and use different "ammunition".. explosive, armor piercing, maybe a "bullet hell" skill that does damage in a pattern, damage still depending on used ammunition, and the ultimate being either a big AE pattern, a small one with greatly amplified damage, or a really good ammunition type.
The loaded buff could be stackable (6 stacks for revolver, for example) and it could go down by one per attack. The spell would refresh the stacks, and maybe it could even scale with tinkering, or something, so you get more bullets per clip as you tinker. I'd need to try coding it myself to see if it would work, though, so I can't be sure it'd be that easy. Related note: I was thinking of making a guns mod that was a skillset of guns (level 1 gives you a shotgun spell, level 2 gives you a spell that works as a revolver and so on), but each spell would have the consume effect so you'd need bullets. Unfortunately, I got side tracked before I could figure out if you even could add a new item class :/
