Re: [DL] Fanning, Single and Double action pistols.

["David L. Hoff" <dlhoff1@charter.net>]

Bobby Farris wrote:

Howdy y’all. Gotta question for ya.

 

When I started playin’ Deadlands there wasn’t any weapon speed. Yep, I am that old. Anyhoo. I am now starting a new campaign and using the new weapon speed rules. I understand them fine and like that they speed up combat, ie by making it more deadly, but I hate what they have done to Fannin’ and Single Action revolvers.

 

My new posse won’t touch a Single action revolver because why do it? Just use a Double action and get more shots and not have any penalties to hit with lower TN’s.

 

So, I really don’t want to go back to weapon speeds, but I want to change it so that Single Action pistols have some bite to them and make it more of a question of preference on what to use.

 

So, what or how would you do it? I am playing around with the idea of making the double shot of the Double action pistol work like automatic fire where you have to get a raise to get the second bullet to hit.

That's the way I always ran it, as if it were a 2 round burst of autofire. Now, this still means that when you fire two shots, it is better to use a double action than a single action, because you won't get the -2 fannin' penalty. But if you want to send a whole lot of lead flying, then fannin' is the way to go. I have adapted the suppressive fire rules from HOE over to Deadlands, so a player can fan off a bunch of rounds to try and make the bad guys duck for cover. I require that the player fan off a minimum of 3 rounds in order to do suppressive fire, but instead of  using the HOE rule of +2 for each burst fired, I give a +1 for each bullet fired. This may seem a bit generous, but since fannin' and autofire aren't very commonplace in the old west, I figure the noise and hail of bullets would scare people more. For these reasons, I actually have a player whose character carries both a single action and a double action pistol. He uses the double action in most situations, but has on occasion quick drawn the single action so he could fan it.

--David L. Hoff
dlhoff1@charter.net