Some Rules for Laser Weapons and Rifles

The best thing about weapons in the OD&D of the 3LBBs is that you can treat Laser Weapons as normal weapons, dealing 1-6 damage. Not only does this make absolute sense, but is also very simple to handle. However, I fiddled around a bit with the Hit Point system in D&D and came up with the following "universal" rules.

Laser Weapons and Firearms: Hit Points in D&D increase with the character's level to simulate the fact that the character, from combat to combat, becomes much more able to avoid mortal damage. This is, however, justified only in hand to hand combat, in which the characters are trained. You can be pretty skilled, but if someone shot you in the face, you're probably dead. Thus, characters can withstand a quantity of damage from Laser Weapons or Firearms equal to their Constitution score. The damage is still subtracted from the hit point total (not from Constitution), meaning that a character can die even before reaching their Constitution total. This is pretty mechanical, but I think it should work out just fine with more complex systems like AD&D.

Rifles: Rifles are considered as Firearms, but they can fire a large number of bullets every round. You can use a rifle basically two ways:

• Called Shot: If you decide to shoot at only one target, roll a d20 (to hit) and a d10 (to see how many bullets you fire). The first bullet hits with no bonus or penalties, the second at -1, the third at -2 and so on, using the same to hit roll. For example, say you hit AC 3: the second bullet hits AC 4, the third AC 5, the fourth AC 6 and so on.
• Blanket Fire: This is good for making some noise. You don't roll to hit but instead use the rules for missile "Misses" in the DMG (page 64, basically, roll a dice for every bullet to see what direction it takes). If someone is in the line of fire, allow a save vs. death to avoid damage. It is likely that most enemies will throw themselves to the ground or run away.

Armor: Normal armor doesn't grant any protection against Laser Weapons and Firearms. Only bulletproof vests and combat suits do (being AC 5 and 3, respectively). However, these do not grant much protection against normal weapons (AC 7 and 6, respectively). Concealed characters receive the normal bonuses.

Morale: First shot with a gun requires opponents to check morale, also if they wear proper armor. This rule is optional, since in my campaigns opponents also check morale when the first spell is cast.