PROTOTYPING 2E

WEAPONS! Everybody loves weapons, right? Right. Good for staking vampires at range,
a nice tool for a promethean whos disquiet is acting up, a demon can be *great*
with them and hunters- ohhhhh HUNTERS... They LOOOOOOVE their guns, oh yes they do.
If you know a hunter then the fastest way to their heart would be a nice fancy
shotgun, trust me. Now, back in 1e, there was a book called 'Armory Reloaded',
which had new rules for basic guns (which i haven't read), new fighting style
merits (which i have also, not read), aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand, drumroll please,
rules for *fancy* guns. That is to say, science guns, future weapons, zappy
doodads, laser cannons, shock rifles, you know them, you love them, PROTOTYPE
WEAPONS. The issue is that the book was never really *updated* to 2e, which means
that these fancy, wonderful, amazing weapons were forever lost to time, because
weapon rules in CofD were, in fact, updated at least a fair little bit from 1 to
2e. Sadly, this means that now prototype weapons don't exist. Hunters will have to
settle for boring ol' gatling guns, you'll have to stake that vampire up close and
personal, and i guess that promethean i mentioned probably had some horrific fate.
Too bad, so sad.

NOT! I'm here in this text document for the very simple reason of updating the 1e
rules for prototype weapons, so that you too, in this game about running away from
the horrific monsters of the night, can whip out the great equalizer and reduce
that werewolf over there to jelly. Horrible, silver-scorned jelly. Fun!

CREATION:
Prototype weapons *caaaaaaan* be bought. If you're filthy stinkin' rich (resources
5). This is a risky procedure though- You never know what you're gonna get, nor
what special surprises could be inside. It could just explode, it could be a sting,
it could all go horribly wrong. If you want something more *reliable* though... You
COULD run over to a workshop and make something yourself! This has its own
requirements, but is USUALLY more reliable.

1. You still do need to be *incredibly rich, good god is this not cheap*. So,
resources 5. You can, thank god, pool resources for this.
2. You need a machine shop, or an engineering bench, or some other place to just
make the thing properly. Buying the equipment increases the amount of cash you need
by another resource dot, but if you can find it for free, then you've found it for
free.
3. You need a computers guy- Someone with computers 3, to work the design software
and such.
4. A crafts guy. He'll need to have 4 dots in crafts, but if you can get a gunsmith
specialty, then you only need two dots- Far more reasonable.
5. Someone with a good head for science will also be needed- Again, 4 dots. This is
only needed if you need exotic metallurgy or materials and such- Which you don't
actually always need, so you night not need it! Always ask and check.
6. Firearms 4. You REALLY need to know your guns for this.

The resource and tool requirements are NOT AT ALL negotiable- You can't build a
gatling gun that fires flaming iron-wood stakes with silver cores as bullets on a
shoestring budget with a squeaky hammer and rubber screwdriver. With approval of
the ST, you can ignore some of the skill requirements- Science is most likely,
since that's only needed if you're doing fancy metallurgy or exotic stuff, you
shouldn't need it if you aren't doing any fancy stuff like that. Anything more
though, and Bugs might arrive. Eugh, Bugs. Once everything is set up and you have
your friend group/RND department all set up and ready to go, get to work.

You need to perform an intelligence+academics roll, or INT+Science roll, as an

extended action, with a goal of 10 successes. Each roll is two days of coding,
chatting guns, and ordering pizza so you aren't working on an empty stomach. A
group doing this (it probably will be a group- Dropping the funnyman facade for a
moment this is a LOT of requirements for just one dude to do all of it unless his
whole thing as a character is the guy who makes big guns) allows you to use the
teamwork rules for it, which is always nice.

Once the blueprinting, CADing, drawing, and yelling over color schemes and stickers
is all done, you now need to get to work on the actual 'building the gun' thing.
This requires materials, which is a wholly seperate but equally agonizing ordeal to
the initial design process. Sometimes it's fast and easy, other times long and
hard- It depends, basically, it's mostly just a story thing, no real rules here,
just discuss it with your storyteller.

Once you get the stuff to manufacture your big fancy gun, now comes the part where
you put it together. A general rule of thumb is that each Breakthrough (fancy gun
superpower) that a weapon has, adds a month to the build time. Skill rolls may be
performed at various stages, and exceptional successes can even lower the build
time, so always be on the lookout! You can also just slap together a prototype far
faster. Each month you cut off though, has its consequences. A good rule of thumb
here is that for every months worth of corners cut, the ST decides that those
corners cause either a -2 to the durability of the gun, impose a -3 penalty to use
the gun, or add a new Bug (eugh).

These sorts of 'slapped together in a workshop over some beer and pizza' type
superguns tend to sorta fall apart fast. Any Prototype weapon made in less than a
month just sorta craps out after the first scene it's used- You need a whole extra
month to make it usable again, adding said month to the construction process.

GUIDELINES FOR OOC DESIGN:

You should REALLY, REALLY actually have a good idea in mind of what you're making.
just about any prototype gun is gonna be trying to be a better version of another
gun- You don't just make some whacked out science cannon of doom with no idea what
you're doing, you take a shotgun already on the market, and try to improve upon
that by making it shoot, i dunno, bees, or silver, or bees made of silver. Past
that, all prototypes are more or less unique.

When designing a cool, interesting, and generally neat gun, you first wanna decide
if it's a small arms weapon (pistols, shotguns, machine guns, submachine guns,
machine subguns, and submachine subguns.), or a heavy weapon (HMGs, rocket
launchers, mortars, basically all the cool stuff you'd use to knock over a building
or wade through a horde of zombies). Light weapons need no training beyond a
regular gun, heavy weapons need the heavy weapons specialty or you're taking an
untrained penalty.

Finally, breakthroughs. You can take up to three breakthroughs for no penalty

beyond the minimum that all prototypes have, or up to 5 with the risk that it's
probably going to have fifteen types of issues hidden inside it waiting to bite you
in the rear. The ST is *ABSOLUTELY* allowed to have hidden 'features' for extra fun
times. As a note, **all prototypes have at minimum one bug. This is just the cost
of having a prototype weapon.**

BREAKTHROUGHS
Advanced Rifling: +1 to the weapon bonus, obviously.
Exotic Ammunition: Range is always halved and general damage reduced by 1 depending
on the ammo, this breakthrough causes bane effects or other supernatural
shenannigans, or just poisons things or similar. Great as a way to represent silver
bullets, cold-iron shotgun shells, or just a giant laser cannon that shoots UV
rays. Or to represent a gun that shoots depleted uranium, or cyanide pellets.
Extended range: Medium range becomes short, extrapolate new range from that-
Effectively, doubled range.
Hail of lead: Increase max burst by +1- None to short, short to medium, medium to
long, or long to sustained. Sustained gives a +4 bonus and uses 30 ammo, but you
can *only* fire long or sustained bursts- This just just does not even slightly
have enough control to do otherwise.
Heavy Bore:In 1e it added automatic successes to the final damage, in 2e that's
just how guns *work by default*, so increase damage by 1.5, maybe 2?
Increased Capacity: Twice ammo capacity, no sizze or weight increase
Metaphysical: Weird effects- Poison attacks, bane effects, other such weirdness.
Has a cost to use it related to the effect. Presumably its effects are more
inherent to the gun itself than to what it's shooting- See exotic ammo, or it's
just more powerful to make up for its weird downsides.
Miniaturization: -2 size, strength needed is still the same
Non-lethal: Reduce damage to bashing
Stability:Strength requirement -1
Stealth: Lower rate of fire, but you can fire without breaking stealth
Supersonic: Half range, attack gains rote quality
Targeting: Single shot attacks have a half penalty to called shots, and headshots
do agg damage

BUGS
Ammo Hog: The weapon requires double ammo for burts
Bulky: The weapon isn't very streamlined. At all. Strength and size of the gun get
a +1
Drifting Sights: It's very hard to aim- The scope seems to just hate you. -2 to all
shots.
Fire Frenzy: On an exceptional success on a burst shot the thing just keeps firing.
And firing. And firing. Lose autofire bonus and you get a -1 penalty to all shots.
Hot Potato: Firing more than once a turn makes the gun hot enough to cause bashing
damage on holding it.
Jammed: Dramatic failures get a bullet lodged in the barrel. next shot, the gun
explodes, putting it out of action and delealing 2b to the user. You need to take
it to the workshop to fix it.
Malfunction: Dramatic failure or two failed shots in a row means the thing won't
SHOOT. You need a dexterity+crafts roll at -3 to fix it, if it's mid battle then -
5. Prototype specialty in crafts can reduce the penalty by 2 either way.