What version of the various rules there have been over the years for gunpowder weapons do you personally prefer, supposing that you do use guns occasionally at least in your D&D games?
For me, my personal favorite have always been to give damage by quality/size of the weapons (anything from a d4 to a d10), and for the damage to "explode" (that is, if you roll max damage you roll another die and add it to the total).
Incidentally, what kind of level of frequency do you like having these weapons in your games? Personally, I like for them to be quite expensive and only available for purchase in metropolises.
RPGPundit
you'll likely hate this but...
Everybody has an AC 10 (descending) against all firearms- unless they have some kind of techo-armor. This rule also applies to energy weapons
Anyone hit by a firearm has to roll a saving throw*. If they miss the saving throw they have to take a spin on the super brutal 1d4 wound table. This rule also apples to arrows** and energy weapons. If they make the save they take 1d6 damage.
Wound table:
Roll 1d4
1. Minor Wound: 1d4 days to heal [-1 to all die rolls and - 1d4-1 to movement rate during the recovery period].
2. Major Wound: 2d8+2 days to heal [-3 to all die rolls and -1d6+1 to movement rate during recovery period].
3. Grievous Wound: d30 +10 days to heal. [-6 to all die rolls and movement reduced to 1 during recovery period]. Note: A character with a grievous wound must be stabilized within 10 rounds or make a successful saving throw otherwise the wound becomes a mortal wound, and all related conditions apply.
4. Mortal wound: Save or die. A successful save reduces the damage to a Grievous Wound with doubled recovery time. A failed save results in death in 1d6-1 rounds. AT THE REFEREE'S DISCRETION dead character may be healed by miraculous means (super science or magic) for 1d100 rounds after death.
I think this stuff is pretty rare. You can buy it in few places, but revolvers and such are super expensive and energy weapons are pretty much found as treasure only (as opposed to being purchased). My thinking is that energy weapons are not being manufactured anymore, and the local powers that be snatch them off the market before they become generally available.
*I use the unified save from S&W.
** I have some special rules for arrows and shields too.
Can't hold back progress. If black powder weaposn are effective in your world, they will will become pervasive in a matter of years and in doing so get cheaper to produce. It's hard to imagine adventurers who can seemingly so casually afford all sort of magical weapons and armour to draw the line at guns. Likewise imagine the king who can either train his peasants from childhood to use the longbow, or splash out for some muskets and 2 weeks training.
The only thing that could keep it back is an actual ban (like crossbows in Europe or firearms in Japan) or cheaper alternatives. If wands of magic missle were cheaper to produce than muskets, then the of course the technology would not really take off.
Quote from: Soylent Green;411735Can't hold back progress. If black powder weaposn are effective in your world, they will will become pervasive in a matter of years and in doing so get cheaper to produce.
Metal is scarce and outside of a few monopolistic mining interests can only be obtained at risk. There is nothing resembling a modern manufacture base. When guns are made they are made by smiths. One at a time. Demand is low because people don't often fight inside the cities. Very few people venture outside the cities.
Quote from: Soylent Green;411735It's hard to imagine adventurers who can seemingly so casually afford all sort of magical weapons and armour to draw the line at guns. Likewise imagine the king who can either train his peasants from childhood to use the longbow, or splash out for some muskets and 2 weeks training.
Magic weapons are super rare in my setting.
There are no standing armies. Civilization is dying, large swaths of wilderness exist between settlements. No one has a standing army of any significant size. it is virtually impossible for large groups to travel long distances, because living off the land is not really an option.
Quote from: Soylent Green;411735The only thing that could keep it back is an actual ban (like crossbows in Europe or firearms in Japan) or cheaper alternatives. If wands of magic missle were cheaper to produce than muskets, then the of course the technology would not really take off.
Modern economics do not necessarily apply to a fantasy setting. I violate the laws of physics and biology all the time- the law of supply and demand is nothing in comparison.
Firearms usually do high damage, for a sword, and crit on 18+. They ignore armor, though dex still applies when taking cover.
Against a commoner, a firearm is certain death, but the fighting ability of even a 3rd level character is so far beyond any real world person that I see no reason to tarnish their greatness by acting like a mere gun can hurt them.
In my opinion, a bullet that "strikes" for 12 damage against someone with 40 hit points was deflected off a masterwork sword. D&D characters are so unbelievably superhuman that you can't make sense of them by attributing the vulnerabilities of real people to them.
Played in a couple of D&D games (3.0 and 3.5) set in the Warhammer World and so with gun rules. Just used the DMG versions - slow reload times but lots of damage (2d6 or 2d8). In the 3.5 game most of the PCs didn't use them to due to class/proficiency issues - we had a Brettonian paladin (code of conduct issues), a dwarf cleric (my PC), a druid from Araby (nonproficient, though she could use a great scimitar due to Central Casting), plus various other things from player #4 (a fighter then a rogue then a monk - none used guns).
The previous game had about 2/4 PCs with guns (the merchant rogue and a Bright Mage liked guns; the cleric of "Lanshor" and the Tilean noble didn't particularly).
I didn't mind Arquebus rolling up damage on a "10" in 2nd ed, but I have math nazi objections to the max damage rolling up in 3.5 - weapon size does funny things to this, like gnomes getting to roll up their damage more often.
Quite liked T&Ts approach to Gunnes as well - you can buy them but they sometimes explode, and cost upwards of 4000 Gold Pieces to buy.
Remember that black powder weapons were highly susceptible to weather and even relative humidity. You either have rules for that or ignore the reality of BP weapons, and if you do that why bother?
Another thing to keep in mind is that black powder weapons require a fair bit of practice to be proficient in them. Hell the reload sequence alone is particularly involved and if you get it wrong you can permanently damage the gun. When gunpowder weapons became widely used in the armies of our world it was nothing for musketeers to drill on reload techniques for weeks so that they could do it in correct sequence while an enemy was charging towards them. Therefore PCs who want to use them will have to practice extensively in their use and that practice will require lots of expendable material (powder and shot). An expensive proposition. Add to that the fact that early black powder weapons were very twitchy and it might limit their appeal.
As far as how I have them work in combat: High damage, slow reload (possibly requiring a reload test is user is having to rush) and almost always armor piercing. I have allowed players to track down specialty alchemist/forgers who can offer a breastplate or helmet that has been 'proofed' against gun shot. Meaning that it will offer some protection. But that's often just as expensive/time consuming as becoming proficient in a gun.
On a side note, The Fantasy Trip's world of Cidri had firearms (blunderbuss and arquebuss). One of the ways they limited access was having one of the active ingredients in the Alchemy Guild's gunpowder recipe being dragon crap. Making gunpowder therefore was very expensive and very dangerious. If a group of adventurers could find a dragon's preferred 'drop zone' they could really clean up.
Quote from: Cylonophile;411765Remember that black powder weapons were highly susceptible to weather and even relative humidity. You either have rules for that or ignore the reality of BP weapons, and if you do that why bother?
It all comes down to how abstractly you want to model given elements of your game world. Some things you might want to pixel bitch about; others you might want to let slide.
I'm still working through how far I want to go right now.
In the game / setting I am working on, I am doing "all weapons do base D6" and gun damage explode on 6s. But more importantly, guns spook animals and spirits.
Quote from: RPGPundit;411727What version of the various rules there have been over the years for gunpowder weapons do you personally prefer, supposing that you do use guns occasionally at least in your D&D games?
Ptolus firearms. Firearms do a reasonable amount of damage (d8, d10, d12, 2d8 or 3d6 depending on the weapon), they do have armor-piercing abilities, just as much as the longbow. They therefore all have x3 critical multiplier in the abstract D&D 3.5 damage system. All firearms (but for the Dwarves' and the Shuul's) are relics of the past glory of the Tarsis Empire. They might have been much more powerful weapons in the past, but these secrets are likely to have been lost.
Let me also mention that this is for non-magical firearms. They CAN be magical, as well as their ammunitions, in Ptolus.
Quote from: RPGPundit;411727Incidentally, what kind of level of frequency do you like having these weapons in your games? Personally, I like for them to be quite expensive and only available for purchase in metropolises.
RPGPundit
They are quite expensive in Ptolus (250 GP for a dragon pistol to 2,000 GP for a repeater rifle) and relatively rare, as I just explained. I like them to make some appearances in my games, and thus for the PCs to potentially acquire them, but I don't make it a habit.
Quote from: Aos;411733you'll likely hate this but...
I don't. Since these are super-rare items on the Metal Earth, it's logical to almost treat them like artifacts, and have specific uses for them aside from the classic weapon damage. Context is what matters to me.
Quote from: Benoist;411806I don't. Since these are super-rare items on the Metal Earth, it's logical to almost treat them like artifacts, and have specific uses for them aside from the classic weapon damage. Context is what matters to me.
I'm starting a huge, long play test starting in January. I suspect a lot of this stuff will change a little after we get rolling. I really like the idea dangerous snipers and everyone running for cover as soon as a shot rings out. PCs can be that kind of deadly too. I've already got a player who wants to have a lizard man sniper as a PC. Kind of like Hawkeye from
The Last of the Mahicans, but you know, a reptile.
Yeah. There's always that fear that someone giving PCs some cool stuff will wreck the game somehow. I don't subscribe to this point of view. Players should have stuff to play with, too.
And the reptile sniper idea is neat.
Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;411783Another thing to keep in mind is that black powder weapons require a fair bit of practice to be proficient in them. Hell the reload sequence alone is particularly involved and if you get it wrong you can permanently damage the gun. When gunpowder weapons became widely used in the armies of our world it was nothing for musketeers to drill on reload techniques for weeks so that they could do it in correct sequence while an enemy was charging towards them. Therefore PCs who want to use them will have to practice extensively in their use and that practice will require lots of expendable material (powder and shot). An expensive proposition. Add to that the fact that early black powder weapons were very twitchy and it might limit their appeal.
More training than a longbow? More expensive than magical elven chainmail?
The problem bullets and arrows comes from players thinking it is totally reasonable for a fighter to kill dozens of men in melée or survive several rounds of choking by a giant or red dragon, but it is not reasonable for this same guy to pass between bullets or bounce them off his sword. The ogre with his retart chimp strength can't brain you with one hit from his tree club, but a bullet should obviously be able to.
Quote from: Cranewings;411814The problem bullets and arrows comes from players thinking it is totally reasonable for a fighter to kill dozens of men in melée or survive several rounds of choking by a giant or red dragon, but it is not reasonable for this same guy to pass between bullets or bounce them off his sword. The ogre with his retart chimp strength can't brain you with one hit from his tree club, but a bullet should obviously be able to.
Is that a problem with bullets and arrows or a problem with the system?
Quote from: Soylent Green;411813More training than a longbow? More expensive than magical elven chainmail?
Not sure about the training for a longbow, however the materials for longbows are more readily available. Though since its possible that a fantasy character has at least used a short bow for hunting in their youth, they would have been practicing the basics of archery for quite a while. They would 'just now' be picking up a gun and starting from square one.
As for magical elven chainmail, is that often available at the local armory? I was mostly trying to illustrate the point that guns, especially primitive guns, are not something you just pick up and start blasting away with. There are lots of fiddly bits, yes a good deal more fiddly than a longbow, and those bits are very expensive and require significant skill to produce and maintain.
A bowyer can make a longbow, that's all it takes. A gun needs an advanced blacksmith working with good quality metals and an alchemist/chemist type supplying gunpowder and lots of it. Not to mention tracking someone down to teach you the skills you need to accurately fire and keep it in good working order. Specialize skills to create + complex assembly and materials = $$$$
I have no problem with guns in a fantasy game. Honestly I've no problem with most things in a fantasy game. Its up to the GM to maintain balance. And a sufficiently powerful magical artifact can unbalance a game faster than the introduction of primitive firearms. But early guns require a fair bit of work to keep up and if its a weapon used by a player its a good chance he didn't just pick it up in the market one day.
In the TSR-era, I favored the exploding damage die when max damage rolled. I did have a special fumble table for critical failures with a powder firearm. It included "hung shots" in addition to your oh-so-typical explosions. I think it was in Combat & Tactics.
In the d20 era, I gave firearms a good but reasonable damage die and then beefed up their critical threat range and damage multiplier.
I think the "trick," in either case, is not to shine a spotlight on your guns (unless that's part of your campaigns shtick) or gimp them out of use in an attempt to "balance" them against more traditional ranged weapons. I've seen DMs make both mistakes quite a few times. In the latter cases, I wondered if they wanted players to even choose to use guns at all, given all the hoops they made people jump through to use them. It would have been far better for DMs to just give out their guns as treasure.
As for availability, that's fairly setting specific, but I practice the idea that it takes a specialized craftsman to repair or make a firearm. However, there are going to be settings where firearms are common enough that the group can resupply by looting the local barracks or jumping a band of armed orcs.
I liked the take on firearms in Privateer Press' Iron Kingdoms when I ran it. The weapons are expensive and require an extremely skilled and well equipped craftsman to make them; this pushes price way up. The best weapons are all military, and more difficult to obtain than even their high price would indicate. The "BP" is in fact a magical concoction of two alchemical reagents, and the secret of making it is kept and controlled by a particular mage's guild that guards it jealously. Once again, price and availability are limited. Ammunition is also specific to a particular weapon type. Reloading the weapons takes some training, neccesitating a skill check. Failure leaves the weapon unloaded, and a failure by 5 or more ruins the ammo. Damage is good compared to other weapons, generally being in the 2-dice range (2d8 for a rifle, 2d6 for a pistol), with x3 criticals and 19-20 threat ranges. They also have better range increments than other weapons.
With all this said, I still felt they weren't quite deadly enough for me. I understand the argument being made with the example above of an ogre wielding a tree, but I always had less trouble imagining someone rolling with a melee blow, however nasty, than dodging a bullet. That just moved into broken suspension of disbelief for me. It might be fantasy, but we all have our own tolerance for these things. I also wanted to have even an experienced character worry about a commoner pointing a loaded pistol at him.
I achieved that by tweaking threat ranges and damage calculation.
Quote from: Soylent Green;411735Can't hold back progress. If black powder weaposn are effective in your world, they will will become pervasive in a matter of years and in doing so get cheaper to produce.
Metallurgy and mechanical engineering need to catch up. You have about a 100 to a 150 year period where they are just better siege weapon. Hand gunpowder weapons were literally cannons you could hold in your hand. The fact that gunpowder was only available in it's serpentine form (a dry loose powder) meant that it didn't store well.
What this all means that there is a lot of leeway in how you use gunpowder in a fantasy D&D game. You can tweak it realistically by choosing how far back it was introduced. My own Majestic Wilderlands has Dragon Powder and it is a recent innovation. So far it has been used as a better siege weapons. The most recent innovation was that bronze bell casting techniques could be used to make a more reliable cannon. Basically the bombard. Corned powder has not been discovered yet.
Note that black powder hand weapons has that same advantages as crossbows in that they were easy to train and use. Once corned powers, better metallurgy and better mechanics they proved superior to both crossbows and longbows. Mostly because while they only slightly faster than the fire rate of a crossbow they had a lot more punch then a crossbow. The bow remained more accurate.
These two wikipedia articles sum accurately the situations with the first blackpowder hand weapons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arquebus
a mixed formation of pike, sword, and arquebusiers dominated warfare for a century in europe. The Spanish Tercio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Tercio
Both of these are Phase II development occurring after after a long Phase I where they were mostly specialty equipment for sieges.
In short the introduction of gunpowder is no more revolutionary than any other advance in armor/weaponary. It is only significant when looking across back the gulf of centuries.
Back in the day we never came up with a system to make guns in D&D work in a way we found satisfactory. None of my group in the 80s ever thought of anything like exploding dice, which is the kind of thing I'd use now.
The rationalization I use now for why gunpowder weapons are not supplanting other kinds of weapons is that they never got the traction in a fantasy world that they did in the real world. Magic, particularly the kind of magic in D&D and how common it is implied to be by the system, simply makes researching stuff like gunpowder not as much of a priority. I assume dwarves to be more technologically-inclined, especially when it comes to big machinery, so they have artillery and heavy rifles and sidearms, while gnomes would work on smaller, more complex stuff like revolvers. The halflings in my campaigns are more hobbitish, with a bit more curiosity about machines, and would have squirrel guns they like to go out and plink some cans with.
I've made them higher damage than bows but taking several rounds to reload, costing slightly more than bows not outrageously so.
There are pragmatic reasons that keep their use down. They're not good for stealth missions of the sort that adventurers often do. You also wouldn't want to shoot a bunch of guns in an underground dungeon if you wan to hear anything in the near future. Most rpg combat also takes place at short ranges so that only one shot per gun per combat is really possible, and only when there is no one around or you don't care if people know that you're in a fight. In the end, they're just another tool like alchemy but not on the level of powerful magic.
Quote from: Soylent Green;411816Is that a problem with bullets and arrows or a problem with the system?
It isn't a problem with the system. The system is designed to depict cartoonish super heroes fighting their way through completely impossible odds with their superhuman reflexes and hardiness.
I have no problem with a D&D hero fighting off a giant that is choking him with two hands. Realistically, someone who is 1800 pounds and all muscle should have the strength to obliterate any normal man with a single blow, especially if he is smart enough to put that strength behind a lever or tool. That doesn't matter in D&D because it isn't trying to show you how a REAL PERSON would overcome a giant or a dragon.
Similarly, bullets shouldn't be able to do anything more to a D&D character than a sword. If swords do 1d8 + Strength, guns can do 2d6+6 and I'd call it pretty fair. A high level fighter could easily ignore firearm damage, and as well he should, because any man that can slide under dragon fire, wrestle giants, and survive hundred foot falls should be able to monitor the barrel of a gun and dodge it or block the bullets with his master work sword.
Hit points only make sense if you see them as script immunity and so someone shooting at a guy with a LOT of hit point will miss, even if he does damage. 12 points of damage to a guy with 100 hit points means so little, he might as well have blocked the bullets with his sword.
Like I said, the problem is the players, because they are willing to imagine all these different heroic exploits, but then try to insert some bullshit realism when bullets are applied. It is stupid.
Quote from: Cranewings;411896It isn't a problem with the system. The system is designed to depict cartoonish super heroes fighting their way through completely impossible odds with their superhuman reflexes and hardiness.
...
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Okay, I get where you are coming from now and what you raise are all valid points.
I've been running a Freeport game using FC for about a year now, and I've pretty much lost all fear of them.
It uses an approach similar to:
Quote from: Cranewings;411757Firearms usually do high damage, for a sword, and crit on 18+.
with the notable additional point that in fantasy craft, crits go straight to wounds (=con), so are even pretty threatening for PCs. No "armor doesn't apply" thing; in FC, armor subtracts from damage, but guns do enough damage that they render most armor moot.
It's expensive, but not incredibly so. It does have a slow reload time, though, so for the most part, they are limited to fight-opening shots.
It hasn't become pervasive, because the range and training advantages they have in the real world aren't something that factor in too strongly to the personal/heroic scale. Most fights begin close enough that you are pretty much invariably in melee by round 2.
Its kind of easy why in fantasy worlds guns aren't that popular.
Until the Wild West/Victorian era guns kind of.. SUCKED, especially from a gamer's standpoint. They are slow, inaccurate, and unsexy.
Its like a Crossbow that's even more involved to prepare for firing, less accurate, and more likely to blow up in your face. And don't even get into weather affecting the powder or gun itself..
If you have guys throwing Magic Missiles (Rate of Fire based on edition of course) and Sleep spells that can take out an entire combat squad, a firearm that takes 10-20 seconds (for a more experienced wielder) to prepare each shot isn't very handy.
Yeah they make mincemeat out of heavily armored troops. Who cares? Fireball is far more effective and that weedy little wizard or appealingly underdressed sorceress can go a lot more places than a cannon will...
I don't think I have ever used firearms under 3.P before. I did use them quite a bit in 2E though. One thing I did was use 'exploding' dice. If you rolled maximum damage you got to roll again and add the two numbers together. This keeps repeating until you don't roll maximum damage. Under 3.P I think I might give them some limited armour piercing capabilities. Maybe -1 AC for a Light weapon, -2 AC for a One-handed weapon and -3 AC for a Two-handed weapon. You would probably not want to be hit by a cannon...
Quote from: Captain Rufus;412033And don't even get into weather affecting the powder or gun itself..
What people tend to forget is that bows sucked almost as much in bad weather. Wind and rain made it hard to hit anything. Worse, the strings were made of gut or sinew so reconstituted if they got wet and became stretchy.
OK, to add a bit to the conversation: Should firearms be considered Simple, Martial or Exotic weapons?
I argue they should be considered Simple. Early firearms were no more complex than heavy crossbows that used mechanical cranks to draw.
You can avoid the weather issue if you use an alchemical propellant rather than actual, real world gunpowder. The game seems to ignore weather as far as bows and crossbows goes anyway.
In my 2E campaign I used an alchemical smokepowder that had to be ignited by a special crystal. The chemical wasn't hard to make but the crystals were hard to find...
If we are talking about D&D and Pathfinder, I just really don't think there is a need to find ways to nerf them. So much of what we talk about are justifications for limiting their use with price and difficulty. Against a D&D hero, I don't see why they would be any more effective than any of the other stuff the characters shrug off, like Fireballs, Dragonfire, Magic Missiles, ogre javelins, and anything else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XSzfyB_xxs&feature=related#t=1m37s
In that video, I'd say the samurai took a good 15 points of damage. He has a good 100 hp, so it didn't mean much to him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKMFcZ4HzgY&p=29DE3E54E0A9F3D7&playnext=1&index=59#t=1m03s
In that video, I'd say the samurai use the catch arrows feat, or a 6th level version of it.
I'm just saying, firearms aren't that scary, or shouldn't be, to people that fight dragons / dozens of men at the same time, dodging their arrows and flame throwers and what not.
Another thought, with the first video, is that he has +1 magical armor which can't be penetrated by bullets, just like a mythral shirt can't be penetrated by anything. That something I had in my last fantasy game with guns. The party came up against beings in hell that had modern weapons and they were still partly immune while in magical armor and always technically dodging if they had hit points left after the attack.
Quote from: Soylent Green;411735Can't hold back progress. If black powder weaposn are effective in your world, they will will become pervasive in a matter of years and in doing so get cheaper to produce. It's hard to imagine adventurers who can seemingly so casually afford all sort of magical weapons and armour to draw the line at guns. Likewise imagine the king who can either train his peasants from childhood to use the longbow, or splash out for some muskets and 2 weeks training.
The only thing that could keep it back is an actual ban (like crossbows in Europe or firearms in Japan) or cheaper alternatives. If wands of magic missle were cheaper to produce than muskets, then the of course the technology would not really take off.
Actually, that's an easy one. Make sulfer rare and expensive. Blackpowder requires charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfer. Saltpeter is easy to make from animalwaste/urine. Most worlds will also likely have lots of wood, but sulfer is a naturally occuring mineral and could be quite rare.
Quote from: Cylonophile;411765Remember that black powder weapons were highly susceptible to weather and even relative humidity. You either have rules for that or ignore the reality of BP weapons, and if you do that why bother?
Whatcha mean were? My flintlocks still won't fire if I don't keep the pan covered when it rains. Of course, a leather cover is very simple and easy to put on... Humidity isn't a factor really. Flintlocks will fail to fire about 1/3 - 1/4 of the time, usually requiring a quick adjustment to the flint. Wheellocks are delicate but will always fire as will matchlocks with a lit match.
Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;411783Another thing to keep in mind is that black powder weapons require a fair bit of practice to be proficient in them. Hell the reload sequence alone is particularly involved and if you get it wrong you can permanently damage the gun. When gunpowder weapons became widely used in the armies of our world it was nothing for musketeers to drill on reload techniques for weeks so that they could do it in correct sequence while an enemy was charging towards them. Therefore PCs who want to use them will have to practice extensively in their use and that practice will require lots of expendable material (powder and shot). An expensive proposition. Add to that the fact that early black powder weapons were very twitchy and it might limit their appeal.
Uh, nope. Muskets are far easier to learn to shoot than a bow and arrow. All you have to do is poor some powder down the barrel, drop in a ball, tamp it and put a little powder in the pan. Anybody of any age can learn to do this in about 30 seconds. This is the primary reasons guns replaced longbows - you could hand hundreds of them to peasants and have a deadly force, whereas archers must be kept and trained for years. Training simply involves getting faster. A novice loading a gun will take about a minute; a practiced soldier will do it in 15-20 seconds.
Rifles - which weren't invented until after the middle ages - have a cloth patch added to seat the ball before you ram it down the barrel, but that's it.
Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;411783As far as how I have them work in combat: High damage, slow reload (possibly requiring a reload test is user is having to rush) and almost always armor piercing. I have allowed players to track down specialty alchemist/forgers who can offer a breastplate or helmet that has been 'proofed' against gun shot. Meaning that it will offer some protection. But that's often just as expensive/time consuming as becoming proficient in a gun.
Damage an armor penetration will depend on three things: Ball caliber, powder load, and distance. shots with inadequate powder or at greater distance will have poor penetrating power. During an early conflict in the French and Indian war, George Washington found a ball in the lining of his wool coat. It had just penetrated the wool and stopped at the lining.
My problem with BP weapons in D&D is their sheer variety.
Flintlocks
Percussion cap
Matchlock
Handgonnes
Wheellock
Caliber sizes
Powder quality and quantity
Range
Rifled
Unlike say bows or crossbows where the variety is fairly limited. Historically BP weapons existed alongside elaborate plate armor.
A lot of these questions can be answered by narrowing down which BP weapons you want to use. In past Eberron games I've used Wheellock pistols and rifles. They're slow to reload, have greater range penalties, grant a bonus to hit at point blank range, and pistols can be used in melee. Damage is comparable with crossbows. Unless I'm prepared to use something like Aos' hit point and wound rules then guns are just another ranged weapon.
Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;411818Not sure about the training for a longbow, ...
A bowyer can make a longbow, that's all it takes. A gun needs an advanced blacksmith working with good quality metals and an alchemist/chemist type supplying gunpowder and lots of it. Not to mention tracking someone down to teach you the skills you need to accurately fire and keep it in good working order. Specialize skills to create + complex assembly and materials = $$$$
Longbows take years of daily practice to master accuracy and develop the strength necessary to pull 90 - 200 lbs of draw weight. I can manage about a 70 pound recurve at most and I've been shooting casually for years since I was a teenager and have taught archery to boy scouts.
Guns need a gunsmith, yes, and iron, but are far less complicated or time consuming to make than armor. The only technically difficult bit is the lock, which consists of a leaf spring, a gear, a catch and a release lever (trigger). It must be sawn and filed from a block of steel or cast in a mold, but any half competant smith could do it. Matchlocks are far more simpler still, consiting of a lever attached to a trigger and anybody could make that. Gunsmiths can and did make rifles, muskets and fowling pieces from scratch in very isolated conditions, such as appalachia, very often, at a rate of about one per week.
Here are the skills you need to accurately fire and keep it in good working order.
Point the barrel at the target. If you have sights, align them. Adjusting for drop over distance will vary with the weapon and load and can only be learned with an afternoon of experiamentation.
When finished shooting, and possibly several times before, swab out the barrel with a small cloth attached to the ramrod or to a stick, dipped in soapy water or a thin oil.
When finished, wipe clean and oil the gun.
Quote from: Aldarron;412371Guns need a gunsmith, yes, and iron, but are far less complicated or time consuming to make than armor. The only technically difficult bit is the lock, which consists of a leaf spring, a gear, a catch and a release lever (trigger). It must be sawn and filed from a block of steel or cast in a mold, but any half competant smith could do it. Matchlocks are far more simpler still, consiting of a lever attached to a trigger and anybody could make that. Gunsmiths can and did make rifles, muskets and fowling pieces from scratch in very isolated conditions, such as appalachia, very often, at a rate of about one per week.
I always thought that reliably making non-exploding smoothbore barrels wasn't so easy; perhaps not as time-consuming as plate armor, but requiring more specialised tools, no?
There is an old saying about making a great longbow-man.
"If you want a greater archer, start with the Grandfather."
Using a longbow properly is a lifelong pursuit. It is a career. Learning to use a blackpowder firearm is a much simpler skill.
Quote from: Bobloblah;412405I always thought that reliably making non-exploding smoothbore barrels wasn't so easy; perhaps not as time-consuming as plate armor, but requiring more specialised tools, no?
The tools required to make a smoothbore barrel are a hammer, a forge, a metal rod around which to wrap the iron bar, and a sanding agent - like a stone - or a cutting blade, to smooth the barrrel channel after welding.
If the barrel is to have a threaded tang on the closed end (older ones didn't) then that end must be threaded (female) to about an inch of depth.
A gun barrel, in the end, is just a pipe.
Quote from: Aldarron;412705The tools required to make a smoothbore barrel are a hammer, a forge, a metal rod around which to wrap the iron bar, and a sanding agent - like a stone - or a cutting blade, to smooth the barrrel channel after welding.
If the barrel is to have a threaded tang on the closed end (older ones didn't) then that end must be threaded (female) to about an inch of depth.
A gun barrel, in the end, is just a pipe.
There are gunsmiths in the world today that make functioning replicas of AK-47 assault rifles with little more than this.
Quote from: Tetsubo;412713There are gunsmiths in the world today that make functioning replicas of AK-47 assault rifles with little more than this.
I saw a tape of some guy in afghanistan making an AK4l from scrap metal in a very crude facility.
In a fantasy setting like D&D yo could have huge creatures carrying and using BPWs. Imagine an ogre sized BP rifle. That could be of some effect, but then again an ogre's so good at melee would you bother with it?
I wonder of magic could aid in making BP weapons. Perhaps some basic spells could help purify metal to make good grade iron/steel with a minimal effort.
Likewise perhaps a simple spell on a BP container could keep water/moisture out.
Very low level magics applied in volume could help make BP weapons more useful, again just a simple purity spell on a large volume of crude metal could make the final product stronger or the BP more potent.
Need to consider things like that.
Well, at the end of the day, I think my bp weapons are going to be more or less how I described them. 1d6/8 depending on the size, relatively poorer range than the longbow or the crossbow (as early black powder weapons were), dice explodes on a maximum result.
I'm debating still whether to take a page from what Majestic Wilderlands does with crossbows, and give them a +2 or +4 bonus to hit due to their power.
RPGPundit
In my third to last Greyhawk campaign, there were some significant naval battles in Year Two. Unable to imagine naval warfare without cannons thundering off the broadsides, I was glad I had decided before the campaign that gunpowder would work on my world of Greyhawk. The players were informed that rifles and pistols also existed, but had never come into common usage. The players' actions reflected that; in 10 years, not one of them ever chose to use a rifle or pistol in lieu of more traditional weapons.
~Scott C.
I was reading the Grimms' tale "The Expert Huntsman" and it brought to mind whether anyone had ever included something like an air-gun in a D&D campaign?
I can easily picture an adventurer with something like this: (http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1354/5163327308_de2187d47c.jpg) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_Air_Rifle)
complete with a dedicated hireling or two to team the wagon pump.
I read a short article in an old S&T (when it was by SPI) about an experimental airgun in the Napoleonic era. Lethality was nearly on par with muskets of the time for the first dozen shots or so and it wasn't much bulkier. It failed to be adopted because of expense, required additional training, and it was more fragile in field conditions compared to a musket.
In a Napoleonic spy game, a gun that fires multiple shots with little noise or smoke would be a cool toy.
Quote from: Nicephorus;416075In a Napoleonic spy game, a gun that fires multiple shots with little noise or smoke would be a cool toy.
I've wanted to try running D&D against a more 1700s/early 1800s backdrop for a while.
Quote from: RPGPundit;411727Incidentally, what kind of level of frequency do you like having these weapons in your games? Personally, I like for them to be quite expensive and only available for purchase in metropolises. RPGPundit
The catalyst in my game is created via alchemy and magical enchantment. With firearms being a rather recent introduction to the world. With the combination of deep professional and personal arcane talent serving as the requirements to craft "blast (/thunder) powder", its not only hard to locate with any regularity, but its very expensive to boot. Add to this that the firearms themselves require regular maintenance in order to function properly, but because of their "young" nature are less reliable than your crossbow. The upside being that when functioning at full potential, thump (/boom) canons can be extremely lethal when compared to more established weaponry. Save for other high maintenance weapons like an engineered chain sword or repeating crossbow.