The idea for this thread was blatantly "borrowed" from a thread over on the OD&D proboards. How do you, or would you balance firearms of various sorts with standard fantasy weaponry, magic, etc. Have you done this before? What existing systems do you think do this kind of thing best?
Entirely depends on the setting and type of firearm.
Ye olde flintlocks in a traditional fantasy setting? Lots of damage and range, but you're gonna need to reload that sucker.
Japanese high magic isekai with automatic firearms? Treat them like mid to high level spells and you're gonna need to track ammo.
One easy solution that worked well with 4E was to make firearms into encounter-power based magic items on the rationale that a realistic load time of 20 seconds (which presumes no one is trying to take your head off with a sword while doing it) after firing is almost as long as most combats in that system last (5 rounds x 6 seconds = 30 seconds).
There's a reason pirates and the like would often carry a brace of 2-4 pistols rather than one and a powder horn.
Basically, muskets and pistols in a typical PC vs. monsters battle should be things you fire once per combat. PCs who want multiple shots per combat should either be carrying multiple pistols (which starts to get cumbersome) or have hirelings on hand to had him a new loaded rifle after every shot (see the Last of the Mohicans film for an example where multiple people were loading rifles for Natty Bumpo to use).
As essentially magic item encounter powers in 4E, their damage could be scaled appropriately letting them hit sufficiently hard to feel like more than just a refluffed crossbow.
Quote from: Arkansan on January 10, 2022, 12:02:22 AM
The idea for this thread was blatantly "borrowed" from a thread over on the OD&D proboards. How do you, or would you balance firearms of various sorts with standard fantasy weaponry, magic, etc. Have you done this before? What existing systems do you think do this kind of thing best?
What does "balance" mean?
Firearms displaced every other form of "melee" and "ranged" combat on the battlefield for a reason. If you're wanting "firearms" to be simply a schtick in your game that doesn't do what firearms actually did (supplant every other form of combat in terms of efficiency in killing people) then you simply have to create mechanics that give you want you really want from "firearms" as an abstract way to engage in combat.
So I'm going to ASSUME you don't want to be realistic.
Qualities to consider -
1) Reload times
2) Armor piercing
3) Damage - based on caliber?
4) Range
5) Rarity/Cost - who makes these things?
6) Cultural significance - why do they exist in your fantasy world?
The problem I see is that most people want to pretend that firearms are "too powerful" for fantasy games where ironically casters are abundant and generally cast spells *far* more powerful than most weapons in the game. I say lean into the abstraction of making them as powerful and unique as your setting demands.
If you want to make them less efficient, but cool - just make sure you size them up against other easily available schticks like bows and crossbows and make them distinct from them either in damage or rate of fire. You need to figure out how far you wanna push this.
Think of how granular you want to make it: are options for rifling, optics (however crude), actual cased ammo?, etc. on the table? Firearms really are their own class of weapon, and you simply need to decide how deep you wanna go with it to justify its existence - then explain WHY everyone isn't using them.
Rate of Fire + High Damage is probably the simplest way of doing it. Make powder easily spoiled, but you should make it a SERIOUS choice between normal archery and crossbows and magic.
Armor piercing is the other obvious choice.
If you wanna get into realism... well that's going to change *everything*.
Edit: I know I'm a broken record on this: Savage Worlds does a great job with it. I can take the Deadlands firearms values and literally drop them into ANY Savage Worlds game, and let'er rip. They're not "realistic" - they are GOOD and FUN.
Soloman Kane is standard Sword and Sorcery fare, so from a source point of view there is no issue, although he his a bit of an outlyer in most peoples minds compared to the various barbarian types.
Powder Mage is also a good fictional resource for ideas on this topic. It has, among other things, a type of mage that snorts gunpowder to power their abilities.
In OD&D, 1D6 is the basis for both a human's HP and a weapon. AKA, one good blow from a sword/axe/spear will take down most people.
So what is a boomstick by comparison?
In my OD&D games with flintlocks, they do 1D6 damage like any other death dealing tool, but they are LOUD AS FUCK, are crappy at long range and take 1 turn to reload (aka, that's why pirates wear multiple pistols). They are expensive and can be used by any class.
The LOUD AS FUCK part is where stuff gets interesting. Boomsticks cause low-INT and non-INT creatures to roll morale or flee in panic. Also, I steal from Chinese mythology in regards to how fireworks send evil spirits fleeing so the Undead are affected as if a 1st level Cleric attempted a Turn Undead.
Of course, the LOUD AS FUCK part also means everybody for a long way hears the sound...
You could give the other martial characters weaboo fitan majix to compete with firearms.
Quote from: Mishihari on January 10, 2022, 05:26:53 PM
Powder Mage is also a good fictional resource for ideas on this topic. It has, among other things, a type of mage that snorts gunpowder to power their abilities.
IIRC in the Powder Mage trilogy the over all technology level is akin to Napoleonic Europe, so firearms are the dominant battlefield weapon and their mages or privileged as they call them effectively act as artillery.
Dune-like shields
Depends on the level of firearms you're talking about. Remember that it took around 500 years for firearms to replace traditional weapons in the real world. So if it's black powder muskets, pistols, or even cannon, that's hardly game-breaking. A good early modern archer could get off a half dozen arrows or more in the time it took a musketeer to get off one shot and reload. And the range and penetration power of the early muskets wasn't better than arrows. The main advantage was that training time was far less for one to acquire proficiency in guns compared to bows.
Now in gaming terms, lots of games have firearms right alongside the traditional fantasy weapons, magic etc. Warhammer has done it from the beginning. We do it it my campaign and it's fine. They can do more damage, especially if you crit, but there's also a chance they literally blow up in your face. And getting gunpowder & ammo isn't easy.
Quote from: tenbones on January 10, 2022, 09:58:47 AMFirearms displaced every other form of "melee" and "ranged" combat on the battlefield for a reason.
Are you saying all those action movies lied to me?
Aside from damage, I think firearms have a couple of advantages over muscle-powered weapons: ease of use, and range.
You don't need years of training or to be really strong to pull a trigger, and you can do it at some distance, too. This is a great advantage in combat, especially when you get into organised bodies of men, without even speaking of the relative wound effects.
One-to-one and close in it's a bit more even, judging from homicide and police shooting stats, thus knives etc still being in use in those scenarios.
Of course, "balancing" all this in a world of magic is another matter.
Quote from: Persimmon on January 10, 2022, 11:30:15 PM
And the range and penetration power of the early muskets wasn't better than arrows.
Accurate range was probably lower, but surely shot penetration was always far superior for a musket ball compared to any bow or crossbow.
Quote from: Arkansan on January 10, 2022, 09:32:36 PM
Quote from: Mishihari on January 10, 2022, 05:26:53 PM
Powder Mage is also a good fictional resource for ideas on this topic. It has, among other things, a type of mage that snorts gunpowder to power their abilities.
IIRC in the Powder Mage trilogy the over all technology level is akin to Napoleonic Europe, so firearms are the dominant battlefield weapon and their mages or privileged as they call them effectively act as artillery.
There were mounted lance, and I believe I recall pike as well, though I could be wrong as it's been quite a while since I read any of them.
Quote from: S'mon on January 11, 2022, 03:54:08 AM
Quote from: Persimmon on January 10, 2022, 11:30:15 PM
And the range and penetration power of the early muskets wasn't better than arrows.
Accurate range was probably lower, but surely shot penetration was always far superior for a musket ball compared to any bow or crossbow.
Not really, and certainly not always... again depending on era. Prior to the modern era, firearms were custom-made one at a time just like swords and armor and the metallurgy and tolerances for a functional firearm were still more art than science. Likewise, each individual shot depended on the quality of the ball, amount of powder used, how well cleaned the barrel was, etc.
If your mold for making the balls was slightly too small for the barrel of your weapon or if you under loaded your powder you could have a ball that barely goes a dozen yards and with far less penetration than an arrow or crossbow bolt.
Heck, the very word "bullet-proof" came from smiths firing a pistol at point blank range into their armor's breastplate. The dent it left was the "bullet proof" (i.e. proof it could stop a firearm).
Now, as time went on and the kinks were worked out the amount of armor needed to stop a bullet increased; which is why we see the pullback to just breastplates and helmets by the 1400-1500's and eventually abandoned entirely until armor technology finally caught up in 20th century and our solders started wearing body armor again.
But no... depending on era, there is no guarantee that a firearm would have more penetration than, say, a crossbow. I mean, Benjamin Franklin made a serious case to the Continental Congress that Washington's army be equipped and trained with bows and arrows because muskets still weren't THAT much superior in penetration or range (particularly once everyone stopped wearing armor) and bows had massively better rate of fire.
It was rejected, but the fact thaf it wasn't just laughed out of Congress and Franklin's reputation ruined by the proposal says a lot about where the technology was at that point.
Even more amazing is that it wasn't until World War I that the US Army stopped considering the Bayonet (i.e. a spear) to be the primary weapon of the infantry (i.e. tactics were to use gunfire to soften up the enemy before a bayonet charge). The doctrine was starting to change because of the Civil War and the improvements in weapon technology (particularly the revolver, the repeating rifle and the Gatling gun) were requiring it... but WW1 was the first time all those advances came together into a conflict that highlighted the supremacy of firearms over everything else.
In terms of the Medieval period, early firearms starting showing up in siege warfare by the 1300's, but wouldn't be anything useful for adventurers to be carrying around until well into the Renaissance with the matchlock (i.e. stick a burning string into the fire hole to ignite the powder... hope it doesn't get wet, and good luck sneaking around while carrying a burning rope) emerging around 1475 and wheelocks as a very expensive alternative to the matchlock in the early 1500's and true flintlocks (what we mostly think of as primitive firearms) didn't become prominent until the late 1600's (though earlier less reliable versions like the snaplock had been around since the late 1500's).
Short version... if you're playing in the late Medieval period, firearms are either a curiosity or something used in sieges by extremely wealthy nobles. Until you're out of the Renaissance and well into the Early Modern period around the 1700's firearms are going to be fairly cumbersome and difficult to use on your typical dungeon delve (and basically useless as soon as any amount of rain or water is involved).
Even with D&D's typical schizotech firearms useful for adventurers would be a stretch and something akin to how they're commonly presented (i.e. need just 6 seconds/1 turn to reload) should basically be a magic item (one of the more common things I've seen in various settings is to make gunpowder explicitly an alchemical/magic consumable).
I don't know much about guns, but AFAIK a knife in close range is equally dangerous. Depending on the gun, one might be shot ten times and still live - but also die with a single shoot (or stab wound). At medium and long range, however, there is not much balance to be had, I think. And modern weapons are also quick and precise... an in some cases so easy to use that almost scares me.
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on January 10, 2022, 11:59:31 PM
Are you saying all those action movies lied to me?
Sometimes they lied to you, and me, in glorious fashion. See: every 1980's action movie evaaar!
Quote from: Kyle Aaron on January 10, 2022, 11:59:31 PMAside from damage, I think firearms have a couple of advantages over muscle-powered weapons: ease of use, and range.
You don't need years of training or to be really strong to pull a trigger, and you can do it at some distance, too. This is a great advantage in combat, especially when you get into organised bodies of men, without even speaking of the relative wound effects.
One-to-one and close in it's a bit more even, judging from homicide and police shooting stats, thus knives etc still being in use in those scenarios.
Of course, "balancing" all this in a world of magic is another matter.
Stipulated. The "balancing" thing is the real issue. What's the *real* goal of introducing "firearms" (note I'm not being specific between modern or blackpowder)? The more "realistic" one gets, the more it's going to change the overall tone of the game - whatever that may be.
Quote from: S'mon on January 11, 2022, 03:54:08 AM
Quote from: Persimmon on January 10, 2022, 11:30:15 PM
And the range and penetration power of the early muskets wasn't better than arrows.
Accurate range was probably lower, but surely shot penetration was always far superior for a musket ball compared to any bow or crossbow.
No; it wasn't. And we have examples of armor to prove it where musket balls bounced off and arrows went through, particularly in Asia. Smooth boring helped this considerably but it took centuries of experimentation with design and gunpowder formulas to increase accuracy and penetration power.
Quote from: tenbones on January 10, 2022, 09:58:47 AM
The problem I see is that most people want to pretend that firearms are "too powerful" for fantasy games where ironically casters are abundant and generally cast spells *far* more powerful than most weapons in the game. I say lean into the abstraction of making them as powerful and unique as your setting demands.
This. Too powerful? Is a firearm more powerful than a fire
ball? Hardly.
So how is powerful magic "balanced" against sword-fighting? Perhaps most typical is by limiting availability in some way.
So one way is to make firearms as scarce as magic, and make ammunition scarcer still.
This kinda gets brought up in the 1632 series by Eric Flint. The smoothbore arquebus of that era wasn't a hugely effective weapon except in massed volley fire, nor were the wheel-lock pistols. Soldiers with pistols often carried more than two -- that wasn't just a pirate tactic. More to the point, heavy leather 'buff coats' combined with breastplate armor could deflect the slow-moving rounds in many cases.
I personally would stick to single shot muzzle-loaders in a D&D game. Although a friend of mine played in a game as a paladin/gunslinger, using smite with his musket. When he was grappled by an evil foe, it didn't help; he'd draw a derringer from his coat and blast the poor guy at pointblank range. Ouch.