Why I Made My .40 S&W House Rule

In the rules as written, ball 9mm does 2d+2 pi, .40 S&W does 2d+2 pi+ and .45 ACP does 2d pi+.

That gives average damages, to an unarmored torso, of 9, 13, and 10.

Hollow points average 12, 16 and 12.

The thing is, .40 S&W is not 25% better than 9mm or .45 ACP.  If it were, we wouldn't be seeing a shift in law enforcement away from .40 back to 9mm.

My house rule was to change the damage of .40 S&W from 2d+2 pi+ to 2d pi+.

I'm not the first person who noticed the disparity in damage with the rules as written.  Some people took the tack I've taken and changed the damage.  Others left it alone and justified the additional damage on the basis that .40 S&W is a TL8 round and 9mm and .45 are TL6.

To me the higher TL gives the smaller and lighter ammo rather than more damage.  More shots, same damage as .45, lighter magazines.

I came to this conclusion because, despite being TL8, .45 GAP has the exact same stats as TL6 .45 ACP.  It's lighter per shot and smaller; just like .40 S&W.

The good news is it has yet to come up in any game I've run.  There are only two fully statted .40 pistols in the entire rule set, the rest of them are mentioned in the weapon descriptions of 9mm guns.

The players tend to not buy guns from the descriptions and stick to the weapons tables.