Wizards With Guns: The Grimm's Arsenal

Wizards With Guns

The steel in your hands is hot- it remembers the noonday sun that beat down on it when it was forged. The bullet between your fingers hums with arcane energies, the gunpowder, eagle’s feather, weathered lapis bead, and tiny silver pellet within it humming with barely-restrained power a hair’s breadth from explosion. You mutter a quick cuss as you slide it into the revolver’s chamber with practiced ease and take aim- the thing has already barreled through the barber’s shop, but you’ll be damned again if you let it take out the saloon. Its eyes are frenzied in the moonlight and its scything claws take apart a tied horse with frightening strength, long dark fur floating like a corona around its hulking frame. Your breath slows- in, out, in, and … fire.

 

Caio Santos

Breath, Bone, Gunpowder, and Grit
Stats are rated by a die size, d4->d6->d8->d10->d12. To test a stat, roll its die. On any die, a 1 is a critical failure, a 2-3 is a failure, and a 4+ is a success. Critical failures may add additional complications to the situation, but they also represent your character tiring as they exert themselves. Whenever you roll a 1, reduce the stat you just rolled by one step down the progression, a d8 becoming a d6, a d6 becoming a d4, etc. If you would reduce a d4, instead you are exhausted and can’t test that stat again for a full minute. The stat is only temporarily reduced: all stats are restored to their base level with a good night’s rest. Advantages or disadvantages to a roll often change the die size as well: a bonus is often recorded as +1d, indicating to improve the die size by one step for the test, and a penalty is the opposite, noted as -1d. If it falls off the progression on either side, don’t bother, the outcome should be obvious.

Test Breath to perform a careful or precise action, to move quickly, to know things about history, nature, or science, and to concentrate or focus on something despite distractions.
Test Bone to perform a strenuous or difficult physical action, to exert strength, to resist pain or fatigue, and to endure harsh weather or exhausting travel.
Test Gunpowder to know about or perform magic.
Test Grit to be recognized for good or ill, to be impressive and charismatic, to know things about people or places, and to remain unmoved and unperturbed in the face of mortal peril.

Resting
Taking a night’s sleep restores all lost HP and Fatigue, allows the wizard to clear their engraved spells from their guns, and restore all their stats to their base levels, if any had degraded through critical failures. Taking a 30 minute breather with jerky or whiskey or both restores all lost Fatigue.

Combat
When combat begins, test a stat appropriate to the situation- Grit to notice the ambush, Gunpowder to ready your spell-bullets a hair faster than the enemy wizard, Breath to spring into action before they notice you, Bone to squint through the dust-storm before the Gila-drakes strike. Success means taking your turn before the enemies, and failure means taking it afterwards. On your turn, you may move one range band towards or away from an enemy, from melee to close to medium to far, make one attack or cast one spell, and make one maneuver, such as closing a door or pulling your opponent’s hat down in their face or drinking from a flask.

Shooting Guns
Human beings can’t dodge bullets. You probably can’t either. If you shoot a gun at something, unless there’s a good reason it shouldn’t hit, it does. If the target is behind significant cover or at Far or further range, the shooter tests Breath, and hits on a success at -1d per range band beyond Far. If the target has magical protection, the protective magic will specify the test needed to overcome it. Bullets deal a d4 of damage. You are assumed to have as many as you need at any point in time- only if you roll a 1 on a d4 Gunpowder test are you out of ammunition, and even then only until you have some time to rifle more thoroughly through your poncho pockets and shake your boots out all the way.

Casting Spells
Spells in Wizards With Guns are extremely freeform- choose a magic word and an effect word and describe what they do, and that’s what the spell does. As a baseline, all spells have a basic effect of d4, a one round duration, and have one target. The spell Sunlight Beam deals 1d4 damage, bathes the target in anti-magical zenithshine for 1 round, and hits 1 target. The spell Stone Shaping allows the caster to control rock and stone, rolling a d4 for any tests required while controlling it, for 1 round, and control about a person-sized amount of material at a time. The spell Lightning Horse would summon an elemental of electricity in the shape of a horse from the storm clouds, with 1d4 HP, for 1 round, that one person can ride. If you aren’t sure what a spell might do, argue with the DM until one of you agrees with the other.

Casting a spell at base costs nothing and requires no tests. You are a magical fucking wizard and you can cast your spells whenever you want. However, casting a spell at base is often moderately weak. Whenever you cast a spell, you may test your Gunpowder to Push that spell, improving an aspect of it. You may Push a spell any number of times until you fail a test to push it. For example, if you roll a 5, then a 6, then a 4, then an 8, then a 2, you have Pushed that spell four times, but you may not Push it further. Each Push may be spent one-for-one to improve the spell- either increase the damage or effect along the following track one step (d4->d6->d8->d10->d12), increase the duration along the following track one step (1 round->1 minute->10 minutes->1 hour->until next noon), or increase the number of targets by 1 or the size of the effect along the following track one step (person sized-> horse sized-> wagon sized-> building sized-> mesa sized). For example, if you rolled a 5,6,4,8,2 as above, you Pushed the spell four times, and could improve the damage to d8, the duration to 1 minute, and the number of targets to 2.

A Note on Wards
One of the most common types of spells wizards cast in the Untamed Lands is the Ward spell. Turns out, not getting shot is high on many wizard’s lists of things to use magic for. Therefore, it’s a good idea to explain in slightly more detail how they work in this magic system. A ward spell has a base protection of d4, a base duration of 1 round, and protects one person at base. At base, the spell names one thing that it wards against (bullets, bad luck, claws, rain) and whenever that thing would happen to the protected target, it makes a test with the spell’s resistance die. For the purpose of effects that care about what test is being made, the spell’s caster determines if it uses Breath, Bone, Gunpowder, or Grit to resist the effect. For example, the spell Dust Ward protects against bullets by using intimidating glares to vaporize bullets into dust before they hit. Whenever the protected target is shot with a bullet, they roll a d4, and on a 4, the bullet turns to dust and deals no damage. Pushing a ward spell’s effect improves the resistance roll, for example from a d4 to a d6, Pushing a spell’s duration increases its duration as expected, and Pushing its targets extends the spell’s protection to more people or things, as expected. If a 1 is rolled on a resistance roll with a ward, it decreases the resistance die of the ward, but does not decrease the caster or protected wizard’s stats. If a ward’s resistance test rolls a 1 and is already a d4, the spell ends.

A Note on Healing
Healing in the Untamed Lands is hard. Bodies are complicated, and the gunpowder magics of a wizard are extremely unsuited for the delicate task of knitting flesh and bone in a way that isn’t a cancerous growth of undifferentiated matter. A wizard can benefit from healing magic only once per day, and healing spells only restore 1HP per effect die size (d4 restores 1, d6 restores 2, etc.) and takes a much longer amount of time, compared to other spells. A healing spell takes 5 rounds to cast at base, though pushing its duration reduces this one step for each Push. For example, Pushing the duration three times would reduce the casting time from 5 rounds to 2.

Enemies and Obstacles
The primary principle in Wizards With Guns is that the DM rolls dice only on random tables and when doing damage. Enemy statblocks don’t have actual stats, they have tests that players can make against them and penalties that they impose on those tests. Usually, it consists of a name, HP, penalties to tests against them, abilities, an attack and sometimes something the players can do against that attack, and a description of the monster. For example:

Tavern Goblin: 4HP, Bone -1d, Floorboard tunneling (can swim through worked wood like water), Drunken Burst, 1d4 damage, drunk for 1 minute, one target. Small, ugly creature similar in color to stained wood. Live in taverns and lick spilled alcohol from the floorboards. Sometimes paid by owners to creak floorboards when people they don’t recognize walk over them.