Why would a "modern" fantasy world with firearms still have swords and plate mail?

Rackhir · Apr 22, 2002

It all comes down to one simple question - Are they of any use?

Guns, swords, armor and bows co-existed for several centuries, because they all served a role. Guns while devastating if they hit, were inaccurate, slow to fire and useless in close combat for a long time. Bows while accurate and had a high rate of fire, required troops with decades of training. Neither was any good in close combat, thus swords, spears and other assorted weapons of destruction persisted. Armor increased your chances of surviving in melee and thus it didn't go away.

Poul Anderson's classic novel High Crusade, provides and amusing if improbable example of how "Low Tech" can conqure "High Tech".

Once guns were accurate enough, powerful enough and of sufficient rate of fire, the rest went away. You didn't engage in melee, a few weeks training got you equivalent accuracy and firepower to a well trained bowman and armor wouldn't stop bullets effectively given it's penalty in weight and encumberance.

If you can change those factors they will re-appear. Body armor is starting to come back given advances in materials and technology that considerably reduce the weight and encumberance, while still providing a substantial increase in one's survivability vs firearms.

The idea of iron countering magic is a good one. You can also leverage the advantages of magic. Iron Golem powered armor for example. DR armor would render bullets useless. Hasted, expeditious retreat, troops could close the distance before muzzle loaded guns could be reloaded. Etc...

Cloudgatherer · Apr 22, 2002

Because you can still run out of bullets?

BiggusGeekus · Apr 22, 2002

FIREBALLS!

Geeze. Who'd be dumb enough to bring a gun to a firefight?

BG

PS: Channeling Beavis & Butthead: heh-huh heh-uh, he said "fireballs"

DM_Matt · Apr 22, 2002

Well, some creatures cant be killed by nonmagical metal piercing weapons. A good example of a modern DnD-style setting is the buffyverse. Crossbows and swords are still common becuase demons need to be killed with wooden stakes or beheaded. If you shoot one, DR and regen makes your shots nearly useless.

Now on the other hand, why the demons would not start carrying firearms when the existance of a powerful group of human demon-hunters in town is well-known DOES stretch the imagination more than somewhat...

Aaron L · Apr 22, 2002

Because some places may have "antitech" fields, the same as some areas have "antimagic" fields.

Jack Daniel · Apr 22, 2002

Well if you check out the campaign preview on my website at www.geocities.com/ivan_327/resetting.htm you'll see how I handle guns. Since I use a variant of vitality & wounds, as well as class based defense, it became obvious that I needed some sort of armor-based DR to balance the unarmored defense bonus, and I simply ruled that guns leave the AC bonus unaffected, but halve the DR, and to a lesser effect as armor quality improves (mythrill, dragonhide, adamant, etc). The firearms themselves aren't on the website but they look like this:

Belt pistol: 1d8; 20/x3; 20'
Horse pistol: 1d10; 20/x3; 50'
Rifled carbine: 1d10; 20/x3; 100'
Rifled musket: 1d12; 20/x3; 150'

Hand blunderbuss: 3d4; 19-20/x2; 15' cone; Ref half
Shoulder blunderbuss: 3d6; 19-20/x2; 30' cone; Ref half

Revolver: 2d6; 20/x3; 30'
Repeater rifle: 2d10; 20/x3; 175'
Shotgun: 3d10; 20/x2; 60' line; Ref half

Umbran · Apr 22, 2002

I'll give you what I call the "Dune" argument - in a game world with magic (and any tech to which Clarke's Law applies), there will be magical protections against guns, leaving melee combat the main choice. It always makes sense to make the enemy risk his own skin to fight you. And that means many peole will keep having armor and melee weapons.

Don't expect use of magic to ignore the presence of technology. Magic will respond to the technology. Protection from Arrows (or, in this world, the old name of Protection from Normal Missiles might be better) is only a second level spell. If guns become prevalent, so will application of this or similar magics. Compared to the cost of magic bullets, the protection should be pretty cheap.

Victim · Apr 22, 2002

Shields that are extremely effective against ranged attacks, ala Dune.

Protection from Arrows is easier to cast than Stoneskin.

There are lots of combat tricks that ranged weapons can't do. They don't threaten an area, can't be used with whirlwind or cleave, etc. Therefore, characters with extreme skill and training will probably get more out of a melee weapon.

If people can close through a gun's effective range quickly, then melee weapons which are often more deadly will be prefered. If everyone has super fast movement from grav belts, or most fights take place in very constrained areas, then the range on a gun doesn't matter.

Magic stuff is virtually indestructable, so it's likely to still be around and get some use simply because it doesn't need maintainence.

Humanophile · Apr 22, 2002

For the large part, I'd have to say no, but not for the reasons everyone else is saying.

I'm, assuming that by modern fantasy, you mean more Shadowrun than Final Fantasy. And assuming a roughly similar culture to ours, you can probably go about day to day business without being armed. In that case, if you do have a weapon for backup, it'd probably be something small and concealable as opposed to something meant to advertise that you're ready for a fight. So plate armor and swords are right out for most anyone who doesn't want a confrontation from your campaign's equivalent of John Law.

OTOH, if you're properly trained, there are several circumstances even today where a trained melee fighter could outdo a gunman, and if close combat was better against magic, all the better. Still, while I think that police officers and soldiers would carry swords, I don't quite see plate armor making a showing. Plate armor versus the more common guns puts you at too much of a disadvantage, so armor is more likely to be light unless you're specifically suiting up to kick demon ass. Maybe not even then, as you'll have to close with said demnos, quite likely armed ones.

PenguinKing · Apr 22, 2002

Humanophile said:
Still, while I think that police officers and soldiers would carry swords, I don't quite see plate armor making a showing. Plate armor versus the more common guns puts you at too much of a disadvantage, so armor is more likely to be light unless you're specifically suiting up to kick demon ass. Maybe not even then, as you'll have to close with said demnos, quite likely armed ones.

Well, plate armor wasn't ever exactly common even historically - as I understand it, it was mostly for show. But like I said in my previous post, if magic was common enough that even well-educated street punks might have a minor spell or two up their sleeves*, and we are saying that iron blocks magic, I can see chainmail shirts or a modern equivalent (probably some sort of machine-produced steel mesh) being useful enough that even urban law-enforcement might keep a few around. Am I totally off base there?

- Sir Bob.

* (I'm reminded of a scene from a Final Fantasy game with small boys playing a game that involved zinging each other with scaled-down, "subdual-damage" variants of destructive combat-magic, but that's just silly, isn't it?

)