Having played several Survivor Forces with a Minutemen Focus over the last week i found it kind of sad that the Laser Musket had no crank mechanic (it is still a good weapon, though).
I liked the uniqueness of this weapon in Fallout 4 and that, with the right mods, you could use it throughout the whole game without feeling underpowerd.
So i thought about a way to houserule a crank mechanic without making the laser musket too strong or too weak and this is what i came up with:
-Change Basedamage to 1 (This is the 1-crank, weak but fast attack)
-Add the following Text: As a Action or Quickaction you may add one counting token to this card up to a max. of 3 Tokens.
When attacking with this weapon remove all counting tokens from this card, add +1 Damage per removed token.
-As a custom weapon mod you could even add additional cranks
This makes the basic Attack weaker but if you take the time to crank it up you can deal some serious damage.
What do you think ?
Serious damage indeed. That’s equivalent damage to a mini-nuke which seems a bit off for a laser musket. One thing I’ve noticed is all of the damage by weapons is fairly low with die modifiers (usually black) to potentially bump those up. So, I’d perhaps suggest adding a black die per charge and limit the charges to 2 max (so 2 base damage + 2 possible black die when fully charged). Would still provide a charging option but doesn’t necessarily go too outside the norm for all other weapons so far.
And I think you already touched on a reason why the laser musket has the stats it does; mods in FO4 are what make this weapon more viable. In the hands of run-of-the-mill Minutemen the musket as-is is probably fairly accurate. Adding Mods to the weapon (which of course already exist in this game) may be what you’re looking for. Also, the charging option you laid out, or my alternate option, could come into play as a Perk for a faction leader, again, following more in line with FO4 style of gameplay.