Quote from: JeremyR;670236TSR's own Masque of the Red Death setting for Ravenloft/2E would come close

That's in the 1880s, IIRC, so a little bit later, but not that much, depending on which Napoleon you mean. Still, firearms are more advanced.

I've never actually played it, but it seems like it would be extremely deadly. You can fire all six shots in a revolver in a combat round, and each does 2d6 damage (and they use the exploding dice rule, so if you roll a 6 for damage, you roll that again)

That seems overly lethal. I don't see any reason for bullets to do more damage than other weapons. Kind of like J Arcane says here:

Quote from: J Arcane;670620It is also, I think, important to avoid the 'magic bullet' assumption, making firearms oh-so-much more powerful than old fashioned weapons. Getting shot sucks, and hurts, but in the context of D&D, or even relative real world results, it's not necessarily particularly worse than getting a limb hacked off by a longsword.  

AR's firearm damages for single-shot guns are largely on par with crossbows and heavier melee weapons in the damage department, and I think starting with crossbows is a good comparison, especially for black powder guns, which frankly weren't that lethal in many cases, more likely to kill from gangrene and blood loss than massive damage.

The thing that made bullets different was that they made armor ineffective, not that they did more "damage". The easiest way to simulate that is to have them ignore armor. If you want to have them be less accurate, set their base to hit value as AC 7/13 (pick another AC if you think it makes more sense), no matter the actual mundane armor worn.

Armor wouldn't be useless, since it would still protect against sword and tooth and claw, but since it was no good against shot and shell it wasn't worth the weight and heat penalties anymore.

Quote from: Ronin;670629Tomahawk/Hatchet, Axe (Wood Cutting), Billy club/Baton, Sap/Blackjack, Cane/Shillelagh/Club, sickle, scythe, whip/cat-o-nine tails/crop, Maul (more of an improvised weapon/tool), and pike

Were tomahawks really in use by troops? I could see it, but it seems odd. Sickle, scythe, and whip just don't work, to me. Pikes are a good catch, though.

Quote from: danbuter;670781Were tomahawks really in use by troops?

Not unless they are Ethan Gage.

Really for the military it is just Muskets, Sabres, bayonets if your desperate and pikes if your a pikeman (which do not go away for a surprisingly long time).

Cavalry use Musketoons instead of muskets and the British slowly adopt rifles.

Quote from: danbuter;670781Were tomahawks really in use by troops? I could see it, but it seems odd. Sickle, scythe, and whip just don't work, to me. Pikes are a good catch, though.

Didn't realise you were focusing exclusively on troops. But the tomahawk was used by us dirty rebelling colonists here in the new world. Sickle and Scythe are both definitely improvised/peasant kind of thing. I thought of whips just because of use on ships at the time for discipline, or an officer smacking someone with his riding crop.

Quote from: danbuter;670781Were tomahawks really in use by troops? I could see it, but it seems odd. Sickle, scythe, and whip just don't work, to me. Pikes are a good catch, though.

Quote from: Ronin;670795Didn't realise you were focusing exclusively on troops. But the tomahawk was used by us dirty rebelling colonists here in the new world. Sickle and Scythe are both definitely improvised/peasant kind of thing. I thought of whips just because of use on ships at the time for discipline, or an officer smacking someone with his riding crop.

That's what I was thinking of. I'm not really interested in Napoleonic D&D if it is explicitly about Napoleon's troops (and their opponents,) but I just watched a documentary recently about the Lewis & Clark expedition, which was the same time period. It made me want to have long journeys punctuated by adventures in D&D.

There was an interesting bit about guns in that documentary, too. When the expedition hear warnings about a monster (grizzlies) and then encountered one for the first time, they specifically thought the indian tribes were afraid of grizzlies mostly because they were getting guns from the French or Spanish, but these were inferior to Kentucky long rifles, which dispatched grizzlies quickly. After several more grizzly encounters, which they still won, they were like "Enough with the damn grizzlies already! They're hard to kill!"

All AC does is make it take more shots to hit; accuracy with smoothbores vs. individual targets was pretty poor anyhow!

It's the advantage in doing unto the other fellow first -- and preferably also in HP -- that gives a better chance of survival (as opposed to just a longer fight).

For an RPG, I think you probably want light cavalrymen or riflemen.

Since you're going for all out fantasy, with monsters and magic, no reason your PCs can't have spells to give them an edge as well.

Flintloque I recall as a pathetic ripoff, the manual mostly really dreadful 'fluff'. What's it worth to you to get lyrics to "Orcs in the Hills and Fire Away," eh?

Have a look at www.freewargamesrules.co.uk/.

Quote from: danbuter;670781Were tomahawks really in use by troops? I could see it, but it seems odd. Sickle, scythe, and whip just don't work, to me. Pikes are a good catch, though.

Pioneers were equipped with axes. Some NCOs had spontoons.

When muskets or ammo were short, militia and partisans were armed with pikes (or whatever was to be had).

Standard infantry: Smoothbore musket, bayonet, often but not always saber/hanger. Officers had saber or epee type swords, sometimes pistols, did not carry muskets.

Light infantry: Mostly the same, but ideally with better quality muskets. The British developed a famous Rifle Brigade, and some other armies had Jager units at least partially equipped with rifles.

Rifles gave good accuracy, but about half the rate of fire. Some had no bayonet fitting, while others had "sword bayonets" to make up for short barrels.

The Austrians had some air rifles.

Cavalry: Sword (saber for light, epee for heavy), often also carbine or pistols. Lancers came back into vogue during the Napoleonic Wars. Some cuirassier regiments actually wore cuirasses (either all-round or just breastplate).

Dragoons at the time usually actually fought as cavalry rather than as mounted infantry.

Shooting from horseback was even more rubbish than on foot.

Some Russian tribes mustered mounted bowmen, but they did not impress the French. The Egyptian Mamelukes perhaps likewise.

Anyone have suggestions for short/medium/long ranges for muskets and pistols from this time period?

Wikipedia thinks that a Brown Bess Musket has an Effective range of 50-100 yards.

While the french Charleville Musket it has down as 50-75 yards with a Maximum range of 100-200.

In meters:

25/50/250 would be about right I'd say.

Thanks for the range info!
Anyone have a link to a website with free-to-use/common use Napoleonic artwork? I've found some stuff via search engines, but no site really dedicated to this. You'd think there would be one.

Quote from: danbuter;671320Thanks for the range info!
Anyone have a link to a website with free-to-use/common use Napoleonic artwork? I've found some stuff via search engines, but no site really dedicated to this. You'd think there would be one.

A lot of art from the period (which includes drawings of battlefields) ought to be free by now. Are you looking for yourself or for formal publication? I'd like to know so I don't throw you a bad link.

My tip would be - just google what you want to get (Napoleonic Soldier, Devout, etc. etc). There are thousands of paintings and drawings from the Era, so finding them won't be a problem. There was also a system of making portraits of prisoners, started by Vidocq in that era, so there may be a chance to find pictures from Surete archives. Pardon - I screwed it up here, they were only writing descriptions, not drawings themselves.

Benoist, do you know perhaps if Surete ever released it's criminal archives from XIX century/early 20s? A lot of police forces do it these days, but I suspect it'll be a French site, so hard to google - fu it in English.

Publication in the US (via Lulu). Not sure I'd actually do this, but if I did, I'd prefer to not have to worry about lawsuits.

Quote from: danbuter;671375Publication in the US (via Lulu). Not sure I'd actually do this, but if I did, I'd prefer to not have to worry about lawsuits.

I'm 99% sure most of the art is now in Public whatchamacallit (I have a brain fart, can't remember). I remember StormBringer linking me once public images depository (and I suspect vast amounts of art from the period should be there), ask him perhaps?

Quote from: danbuter;671185Anyone have suggestions for short/medium/long ranges for muskets and pistols from this time period?

The maker of this video found that firing on a bench, you can fire 6 inch groups at 50 yards with a Brown Bess. This is under ideal conditions. Actual field performance was much poorer because the Brown Bess had no sight, only a  bayonet lug as a rough guide and most users could not reliably hit anything beyond 50 yards. Modern black-powder shooters undoubtedly do far better than their ancestors because they have the advantage of modern training and experience.

Again it depends whether you're talking about ranges for small units or massed combat. Let me suggest the following for skirmishing.

[FONT=System]                                  
                         D20 Hit Modifier (avg to-hit 11)

Short: to 25 yards            0  (11)
Medium: to 50 yards       -4   (15)
Long: to 100 yards.         -8   (19)[/FONT]

On the other hand, realistic damage from a musket ball should be substantial when it does hit. These were large heavy rounds with a lot of energy behind them. They tumbled in the body, shattered bone, and inflicted large wounds.

In volley firing, however, 100 yards is murderously short range, due to the sheer volume of fire, and lines would usually engage each other at 200+ yards. At that range, hit percentages are too low to count for individual characters, but a brigade or regiment of 500+ men might fire 500 rounds in every volley and score maybe .5% hits on the enemy with each volley.