Ranged weapons (Action)
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| Heroic Action Role-Play |
This is a list of ranged weapons for Action, for use with Shoot. Melee weapons with the Throw property can also be used with the Shoot skill, but only when thrown.
The table shows weapons sorted by category, but the categories themselves appear only in the descriptions and have no gave effect.
Ranged Weapon Descriptions
Muscle-Powered Weapons
Bola
Three weights connected by strings. Thrown by spinning, it does limited bludgeoning damage but more importantly ties up the target's limbs.
Boomerang
A curved stick used as a throwing weapon. Made of hardwood, light metal, or plastic. In Action, all boomerangs return to their thrower.
Javelin
Shuriken
Shakram
A steel ring or disk about half a meter in diameter; sometimes worn as a necklace or head wear. Used as a throwing weapon. In Action, the ring can snare an opponent's weapon and perform other similar stunts.
Blowgun
A long pipe held to the mouth with both hands. A sharp thrust of breath fires a light dart that is usually poisoned with a Neurotoxin. A blowpipe is about as long as you are. An ancient blowgun cannot be used in melee without ruining the weapon, as they are quite frail. Modern metal versions could be made to perform like a Quarterstaff.
Sling
A strip of cloth or leather used to spin a rock or lead ball, then released to throw. Often with some sort of shallow pouch to hold the ball. Quite an effective weapon in skilled hands, and it has the advantage that it can be improvised. While it is technically possible to use a sling with one hand, it takes two hands to load.
War Sling
A much larger and more powerful sling, shooting lead balls and using either a very wide loop or a staff handle for extra leverage.
Shortbow
A light selfbow for hunting small game. Can be made quite easily from a sapling tree of the right sort. It differs from more powerful bows in that it has only a single curve to the bow.
Longbow
A powerful bow longer than the wielder. This can be a composite or selfbow. A selfbow differs from more powerful bows in that it has only a single curve to the bow where a composite bow has several, but either can be powerful if you make them large.
Horse Bow
A recurved bow of composite materials, the horse bow is more powerful and flexible than a shortbow but not quite as powerful as the longbow This makes the weapon suitable for skirmishers and horse archers. Elves and faeries make bows of similar effect by cultivating sprouts to grow into the desired form.
Slingshot
A Y-shaped piece of metal or wood and a flexible string, usually rubber, this is a weaponized children's toy. Fires pebbles or ball bearings.
Crossbow
A light crossbow with a laminated or wooden bow. Loaded with a hand lever, it is a practical and silent weapon and can be used while mounted.
Arbalest
A very powerful crossbow fitted with a winch or stirrup mechanism. The bow is of worked iron; some arbalests use torsion torque instead and have a rigid cross shape. Useful mainly as a siege weapon or for sniping. The legendary Chinese siege bow has the same statistics. It is an oversize bow that is fired lying down, the bow held by the feet and the arrow held in both hands.
Crossbow Pistol
A very light crossbow held in one hand and loaded by simple hand action.
Repeating Crossbow
A very light crossbow with a laminated or metal bow, loaded with a lever mechanism from a gravity-fed magazine on top.
Dart Gun
A bolt-action carbine adapted to fire darts. Intended for animal capture, it can be used as a kidnapping tool or with lethal toxins. Dosage so too uncertain that this is not considered a safe subdual weapon for law enforcement.
Grenades and Grenade Launchers
Napthta Grenade
A ceramic jar filled with naphtha, greek fire, or other simply manufactured combustible wrapped in a rag soaked in the same. The rag must be lit before throwing, potentially a very hazardous process. If all goes well, the container breaks on impact and ignites. These weapons are always considered improvised and blow up when ignited on a mishap or fumble. This is a secret super-weapon and would only be in the hands of trusted experts. While easy to make, it requires a suitable combustible which generally cannot be synthesized until the Coal technology level. Somewhat later, it makes a return as a weapon against early combustion vehicles and becomes known as the Molotov Cocktail.
Iron Grenade
The classical round black iron case with attached fuse, this is the first type of grenade and considered so special that it took special types of troops to use them - grenadiers.
Molotov
Dynamite
A stick or small satchel charge of dynamite, this is a desperate and dangerous weapon, but can be highly effective.
Hand Grenade
A modern grenade, factory-made to be used as such. The main improvement is that you no longer need to cut and light fuses - a chemical timer does this for you - and it almost never fails.
Incendiary Grenade
Flash-Bang Grenade
Entangling Grenade
Micro Grenade
A hand grenade small enough to be easily concealable. Variants are available that have the warhead of any other type of grenade.
Aifoil Grenade
A micro grenade with a discus shape and sophisticated balancing systems allowing it to be thrown further and more accurately. Effectively, this is a small suicide drone. An airfoil grenade can carry different types of warheads, different types of airfoil grenades can have the effect of any other grenade.
Grenade Sling
Rifle Grenade
Grenade Launcher
Automatic GL
Handguns
Snuff Gun
An early holdout pistol, the snuff gun is a small caliber (for the time), short barrel weapon concealed in some everyday item - a snuff box is the most popular, but everything from cutlery to crucifixes had guns fitted in them. However, the craftsmanship is such that any close inspection will reveal the weapon for what it is. In addition, carrying one of these weapons around primed is quite dangerous.
Pepperbox
Multiple pistol barrels rotated to face the hammer one after the other, the pepper-box allows multiple shots without reloading. The lack of robustness makes the mechanism unreliable.
Dueling Pistol
A high-quality, thin-calibre wheellock pistol - later versions even had percussion locks - made for precision. Slow to reload and fragile, they seldom saw use on the battlefield, but these weapons were quite popular in duels.
Cavalry Pistol
Really a short carbine, the cavalry pistol is made to be as dangerous as a single-hand firearm can be.
Derringer
An early holdout weapon, the derringer is a single large caliber round in a very short barrel,
Revolver
The revolver is the first reliable handgun that can fire a number of rounds in rapid succession. Available in different calibers for different Body scores, commonly call Navy (light) and Army (heavy) calibers.
Automatic Pistol
Automatic pistols are introduced early, but early models are unreliable. At the Combustion tech level the technology matures. Examples of this include the various "wonder nine" or other auto pistols firing .45 or 9mm rounds. A weapon that is perfected during this era and very, very common, almost totally replacing the revolver except among gun aficionados.
Pen Pistol
Pocket Pistol
A mature small automatic pistol, fitting inside the hand of the user and still having decent ammunition capacity and stopping power.
Heavy Revolver
Revolvers kept an edge in power for a long time; the most powerful handgun in the world is generally a revolver. Even at this time, the frame of a revolver is somewhat sturdier than that of an automatic pistol - and in a cinematic game like this, revolvers should keep an edge in power. These big guns are double-action, but the recoil is such that they are mostly fired single-action anyway.
Heavy Automatic Pistol
With improved metallurgy, powder, and precision tooling, firearms can now be custom-built to fire calibres as big as they used to fire hundreds of years ago - but this time, they do it well.
Subsonic Pistol
An automatic pistol firing a high-weight round at subsonic velocities. This means it can be truly silent. Muzzle energy is still in the range of an ordinary pistol, and the heavy round has excellent damage transferring and armor-piercing characteristics. A drawback is that the ammunition of the weapon is heavy and ammo capacity is small.
Rifles
Pistola
A very early handgun; a metal tube at the end of a wooden rod. Fires a metal ball. More accurate than a rocket.
Arquebus
This overlong smoothbore weapon is a precursor of the musket. It must be fired lying down, braced, or using a "fork" support. As you must stand up to load it, lying down to fire is generally impractical. Most armies abandoned the arquebus quite early and settled for the more practical Musket. This weapon made a return in the middle east as the Jezail and in the pre-civil-war wild west as the Buffalo Rifle.
Musket
The basic military firearm of the period, a musket is a high caliber smooth bore weapon made to produce a high volume of fire against big targets, such as massed infantry.
Rifled Musket
An expensive hunting weapon of comparatively fine caliber. The barrel is rifled, which stabilizes the bullet through rotation. Early models are fitted with a wheel lock, later replaced by the flintlock.
Early on, these weapons are so expensive that they are only available to kings and major nobles. Usually fancifully decorated - a few hundred hours spent on decoration has only a minor impact on the price. Some horrendously heavy and expensive pieces have two barrels. Late in the period, these weapons become cheap enough to be given to military specialists - sharpshooters. This was a highly unpopular move among officers, who naturally became prime targets for such accurate fire.
Repeating Rifle
A revolver action or lever action carbine, typically firing .44 "army" caliber. Popular in the old west because it uses the same ammunition as the army revolver, this gun lacks the power of a true rifle. Historically it is rare to see a weapon like this outside America.
Bolt-Action Carbine
Bolt-Action Rifle
A bolt-action rifle, this is the main infantry weapon of the early twentieth century and the late nineteenth century European stage.
Semi-automatic Carbine
A bolt-action carbine firing rifle rounds, this weapon is intended for cavalry and light troops, but it is also a popular civilian weapon for hunting large game.
Semiautomatic Rifle
A self-loading long arm capable of bursts of very high rate of fire, if still much slower than full automatic fire. The military has always been skeptical of allowing soldiers to waste shots in this manner, and were slow to adopt this weapon. Technically, this can be either a carbine or a rifle - in this era the distinction is largely obsolete, the length of rifles reduced to where carbines used to be.
Monster Gun
Named either for what it is or, in some settings, for what it is used to hunt. This is an oversize rifle, with cartridges the size of cigars. Used to shoot big game, light vehicles, and creatures man was not meant to hurt. Sometimes optimistically named anti-tank rifles.
Sniper Rifle
A rifle specifically designed for sniping, with flash-suppression and advanced targeting systems, capable of killing a man behind a brick wall or inside a light vehicle. This is definitely not the first weapon used for sniping, but earlier sniper rifles were just be normal rifles with telescopic sights.
Assault Rifles
Rifles, firing rifle caliber rounds in full automatic mode. Standard infantry weapons of the Electronic age.
Machine Rifle
Light machine guns carried by a single man; these are heavier than assault rifles and considered support weapons. The classic example is the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle.
Assault Carbine
A lighter and handier version of the Assault Rifle initially for soldiers whose primary duty is not to be riflemen, over time the assault carbine became the universal handarm and Assault Rifles reserved for special roles. Typically this is a 5.56 caliber weapon.
Assault Rifle
A fully automatic rifle for general use. Brings a whole new level of threat to personal combat.
Advanced Combat Rifle
The final development of the chemically propelled rifle. Features such as caseless ammunition, computerized fire control, bullpup design, superimposed loading and a variety of other features, different by brand, makes this a compact, deadly weapon. Still in prototype during the Electronic era, these weapons reach maturity in the early Fusion era, but are soon supplanted by entirely new technologies. This makes them popular with criminals and thirdly world armies of the fusion era.
Minigun
A machine gun carried on a belt slung, making it uniquely mobile for an assault weapon.
Sub Machine Guns
A mix of pistol and assault rifle, firing pistol rounds with a full automatic action.
Machine Pistol
A full-auto pistol commonly fired in one hand. Dangerously inaccurate in most cases, with a great potential for collateral damage. Still, it is dangerous enough to give an advantage in a close encounter, and very intimidating. Firing light pistol rounds, stopping power and range is not impressive.
Submachinegun
A weapon firing pistol ammunition on automatic, the sub machine gun is the first common automatic handarm. It suffers from the low power of the pistol and the bulk of the rifle, but it is still an excellent short-range weapon.
Subsonic SMG
A submachinegun firing heavier bullets at reduced velocities, maintaining efficiency while allowing the weapon to be truly silenced.
Shotguns
Shotguns are weapons firing bursts of shot, smaller projectiles that come out together and slowly spread out in a cone. Depending on the choke of the weapon and the length of the barrel, this cone can be wide and short or long and narrow. Shotguns are smoothbore, which makes them easy to make, but limits their range. An advantage of this is that there is no barrel signature for forensics to analyze; shot and even slugs cannot be linked to any one particular weapon. Another advantage is that it is easy to make custom ammunition. Shotguns can fire slugs (a single large mass) instead of pellet, removing Scatter but increasing damage by one. They are also suitable for firing nonlethal loads, such as salt or rubber loads, replacing Scatter with Stun. High-tech shotguns might fire flechettes or explosive rounds instead of shot with no change in rules.
Dragon
The pistol version of the blunderbuss, itself a primitive precursor of the shotgun, this is is a high-caliber pistol firing shot. The trademark flared muzzle assists in loading, but was generally not very pronounced. It is a cavalry or ship boarding weapon.
Blunderbuss
A primitive precursor of the shotgun, a blunderbuss is a short, high-caliber musket firing shot; in an emergency it can be loaded with gravel, or whatever junk is available when loading it. The trademark flared muzzle assists in loading, but was not generally very pronounced. It is mainly a weapon for city fighting and shipboard defense.
Sawed-off Shotgun
A twin barrel shotgun with a short barrel, either made this way or actually sawed off. A very dangerous and powerful short-range weapon, practical because it is relatively easy to acquire both the weapon and ammunition.
Shotgun
This is a large-caliber shotgun (usually 12 gauge) pump action firing heavy shot. Smaller bird guns would do about three points less damage.
Trench Gun
A pump action, short-barreled shotgun for use in trench warfare in WWI. The Germans accused the U.S. of war crimes for using these weapons; being captured with one could get you shot. It still remains popular but infamous for city fighting and close encounters. Police generally call it the Riot Gun.
Assault Shotgun
A fully automatic shotgun for close-in fighting.
Projectors
Taser
The taser is an incapacitating weapon, firing darts that give off electric pulses to shock the target. Intended as a police weapon, it has since become a favorite among criminals who want to avoid killing.
Because the battery is housed in the gun, there must be a wire between the gun and the dart, which gives the weapon an absolute maximum range of about ten meters. At the Electronic this is no longer the case.
Tufenk
Flamethrower
Strictly a military weapon, the flamethrower consists of a backpack tank and a hand-held hose. Flammable liquid or gel is sprayed through the hose and ignited. The flamethrower is a truly terrible weapon, that can turn a defensive position such as a bunker into a deathtrap.
Fire Extingusiher
A carbon dioxide fire extinguisher is a sturdy metal tube with high-pressure carbon dioxide under high pressure. When released, this forms dry ice and does damage through shock and frost burn. Tough it has a range of only Reach it is always used with Shoot. Variants of this can use other substances, such as an incendiary or corrosive chemical or high-pressure steam. These work the same, but do other kinds of damage.
Incinerator
Gyrojet Weapons
A high-power civilian weapon, gyrojet weapons fire miniature self-propelled rockets. A tiny explosive sends the rocket out of the gun, then the rocket ignites and gives it further power. While rockets are rather simple, giving them precision and control is not; in fact each rocket is a miniature smart missile. Because there is hardly any barrel interaction and the rocket is destroyed on impact, there is very little to link a gyrojet projectile to the weapon that fired it, a popular feature among criminals. Gyrojet weapons are common among police, security forces, criminals, and for home defense. They are accurate, have long range, and do great damage. The guns are cheap, even flimsy. The drawback is that the ammunition is both complex, bulky and very expensive. This makes these weapons popular among those who mostly want their guns to impress and for the occasional firefight but unpopular with the military and combat units.
Holdout Gyrojet
A tiny gyrojet weapon, often camouflaged as something else; a cigarette, pen, piece of jewelry or other tiny, harmless object.
Gyrojet Carbine
This is a box-like gyrojet weapon popular for personal and home defense and with hitmen and irregular forces.
Lasers
Lasers fire very short and intense pulses of coherent light in rapid succession. When these hit, they vaporize some of the target, causing a small surface explosion. Because the weapon is almost instantly ready to fire again, a laser can be played over the target for additional damage or zig-zagged to provide suppressive fire. Lasers are accurate, light, and cause a lot of damage but cannot use special ammunition. The weapons are expensive, but the chargeable energy cells are cheap in the log run, making lasers popular as military weapons. They are also quite common as improvised weapons, made from mining and construction tools or communications equipment. Such improvised laser weapons are Unreliable. Contrary to popular opinion, lasers are not silent when fired in an atmosphere; they create a vacuum tunnel in the air that collapses with a sonic boom. Forensic scientists can identify laser hits by burn patterns, so these weapons can be traced.
Laser Pistol
Purpose-built lasers pistols are common sidearms for military police, pilots, technicians, and staff. A small hand laser popular as a tool and easily modified into a laser pistol.
Laser Carbine
Used for hunting and to fire at drones, a laser carbine is rare as an infantry weapon but popular among marines as the poor penetration leaves ships undamaged. Can be improvised from a heavy duty laser, such as a mining or construction tool.
Laser Cannon
Scavenged from the construction or communication lasers or built as a military support weapon, the laser cannon is definitely a dangerous weapon. Firing a short, very strong puls and then needing time to cool down and charge capacitors, the laser cannot is a single-shot weapon.
Needlers
A long rifle capable of a high volume of accurate fire, needlers are military weapons. Rail guns are magnetic accelerator weapons that hurl thin slivers of magnetic metal at the target at high velocities. Penetration and striking power are high, rate of fire is spectacular, and ammunition is cheap and easy to manufacture, which makes these popular military weapons. The price of the weapons themselves and the difficulty of building them makes them uncommon among civilians. In addition, needlers need to be long to work well, making them hard to conceal and transport. Needlers can be rail guns, coil guns, or use other magnetic acceleration models; the technical differences are beyond the average user, and needler is the name that stuck.
Needle Pistol
Calling this a pistol is very generous, it is the size of a regular submachinegun and capable of very rapid fire.
Needle Rifle
A long handarm similar to a light machinegun of today, only lighter and more handy.
Railgun
A railgun is a needler that gives up rate of fire to fire longer, heavier projectiles.
Electro Weapons
Electro weapons, also called blasters, are man-carried particle weapons. Electro Guns use a laser to make a vacuum tunnel through the air, then channel a burst of electrons and possibly neutrons through the tunnel. With charged particles, the weapons Stun. If firing neutral particles, the weapons Penetrate. You must choose one or the other, but most blasters can change mode with the flip of a switch. Civilian models are available that always fire charged particles to Stun.
Electro Pistol
A handy electro sidearm.
Electro Carbine
A standard military electro-weapon.
Electro Rifle
An electro long-arm used by big game hunters, snipers, and other specialists.