Bucklers With Firearms?

[Greatfrito]

I'm working on integrating technology into our current campaign world (to a degree... ) using Monte Cooks's web enhancement for Chaositech (which I may consider buying, though the pdf for "real" technology is free no matter what). A large nation of gnomes to the north have been working on technological inventions for a long while, and between them and some northern dwarves, firearms have become a realistic issue.

When making an NPC to introduce firearms to the players with, I was going through his equipment, and decided that he should have a buckler, if only for the classiness of it. However, when I look at it, it seems that the rules imply that a person using a ranged projectile weapon (examples in the book are bows and crossbows, but I'm just stretching that to include firearms) still gets the shield bonus from teh buckler on a round when he attacks with the ranged weapon.

Anywho, the quote from the SRD is:

(From the SRD)
You can use a bow or crossbow without penalty while carrying it. You can also use your shield arm to wield a weapon (whether you are using an off-hand weapon or using your off hand to help wield a two-handed weapon), but you take a –1 penalty on attack rolls while doing so. This penalty stacks with those that may apply for fighting with your off hand and for fighting with two weapons. In any case, if you use a weapon in your off hand, you don’t get the buckler’s AC bonus for the rest of the round.

Just for my own future clarification (and for my players, as one of them may be going the archer route soon), do you get a buckler's shield bonus even if using a two-handed projectile weapon?

 

[Spatula]

Using a two-handed weapon would count as having a weapon in your off-hand, I would think. My impression was that the advantage to using a buckler was not that you got its AC bonus when firing your bow, but that you could wear it while firing your bow and thus make use of it immediately if forced into melee.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

You can benefit from the buckler's AC if your buckler hand isn't holding the weapon. You won't benefit from the buckler's AC if you're handling a 2-handed firearm. You would benefit from it were you handling a 1-handed firearm (much in the same way you can benefit from a buckler's AC when using a hand crossbow).

AR

 

[rkanodia]

In Spelljammer, firearms are common, but it's always fun to have technology be a dynamic sort of thing. My campaign includes a gnomish scientist (who I was expecting to be a recurring cameo at best, but the players really took a shine to his 'blunt indignant genius' personality) who specializes in lightning and particularly the harnessing thereof. Of course the science behind his lightning arc pistols is utter bunk, but I think it works better to embrace a Baroque-era understanding of it (i.e. electricity is a blue fluid suffusing all metals, only visible when it jumps from one to another) than to try and make a 'realistic' device. He also provides a minor, somewhat comic tie to previous editions of D&D; he's continually searching for a large supply of electrum (which of course possesses beneficial properties for electrical devices, but only in its naturally-occurring form) which is now amazingly rare despite the 'legends' claiming that it was once so common that it was used for currency.

 

[Greatfrito]

(off-topic)Oh, no, don't take it the wrong way about the tech thing. This won't be real-world tech (though half of my players are engineers and/or physics majors, so they do have a tendency to call "real-world" on some things), but more of an "Arcanum" approach to it, using Monte Cook's info as a jumping off point (and it is good stuff). Arcanum just caught a very good hold in the imaginations of my players, and in our world which we're all just sort of communally brainstorming (just the general facts; specifics I take responsibility for, for obvious plot reasons) we ended up with a culture that will be very technologically balanced.(/off-topic)

Anyways, it sounds like the concensus is that you don't get the shield bonus, but that you can get it easily enough, by using a one-handed weapon (or just not using the bow to attack, I would assume). This works for me.

 

[Bagpuss]

You don't want to carry a buckler and a firearm you want one of these.

Which is a shield AND a firearm in one.