Pathfinder 1E Firearms Resolve on Touch AC (The Calculation)

[foscadh]

In my game I house-ruled "gun AC" to be the average of normal AC and touch AC, and made that apply at all ranges for firearms (so a dragon 5 ft past the first range increment wouldn't suddenly gain +30 AC, for example). Basically, armor and natural armor had half normal effect. I feel this is a fair adjustment since most gun-users are at a +1 BAB/level progression so they should have good enough attack rolls that this is not a hardship. ....

That seems very reasonable to me. If firearms are modeling relativly early black powder pieces they shouldn't have huge amounts of penetration. I can see them doing pretty heavy damage but you really don't see firearms with much penetration until very late in the 19th or early 20th century.

 

[N'raac]

Well, we could certainly structure more "real world" early firearms. Just provide for them to do massive damage, with a lengthy reload time. The logical result should be characters who carry one or more loaded firearms, discharge them into combat (for massive damage), then complete the combat in melee, since reloading is prohibitively time-consuming.

Or we accept a compromise model where damage and reload time are scaled down and a firearm user can be competitive with other combat options. Much like the realism that most deaths from medieval combat came from infection, dragging out over some time, and was not instant on the battlefield, realistic early firearms would probably not add to the enjoyability of the game, so we sacrifice realism to game play.

 

[Starfox]

Or we accept a compromise model where damage and reload time are scaled down and a firearm user can be competitive with other combat options. Much like the realism that most deaths from medieval combat came from infection, dragging out over some time, and was not instant on the battlefield, realistic early firearms would probably not add to the enjoyability of the game, so we sacrifice realism to game play.

Agree this is the way to go - in a hit-point system "realistic" weapon damage just doesn't sit well. Which is why archers need quivers holding arrows in the hundreds instead of dozens, firearms need to "hit" more than once, and so on. It is the price we pay for simulating heroism.

Pazio choose for their firearms to do relatively little damage and gave them very high critical hit multiples to give them the possibility of being very lethal. I support this choice.

 

[Starfox]

If firearms are modeling relatively early black powder pieces they shouldn't have huge amounts of penetration. I can see them doing pretty heavy damage but you really don't see firearms with much penetration until very late in the 19th or early 20th century.

While high-penetration firearms may partially be a myth, firearms did influence the design of armor a lot. Armor became less covering, and heavier in the parts it did cover. Basically, it devolved from what was almost a complete exoskeleton in the 15th century back to a helm, breastplate, vambraces, and greaves setup that an ancient Greek hoplite would have recognized. But a big part of this effect was social - firearms were cheap, logistically simple, and easy to train in, so armies got bigger, which meant armor needed to get cheaper to be affordable.

 

[Kinak]

Easy Question, When calculating the attack bonus for a firearms, assuming that all proficiency are met such as a gun slinger, would be (DEX+Base attack) With feats added to that.

You got it. It's handled just like a normal ranged attack, but compared against touch AC rather than full AC.

Cheers!
Kinak

 

[foscadh]

While high-penetration firearms may partially be a myth, firearms did influence the design of armor a lot. Armor became less covering, and heavier in the parts it did cover. Basically, it devolved from what was almost a complete exoskeleton in the 15th century back to a helm, breastplate, vambraces, and greaves setup that an ancient Greek hoplite would have recognized. But a big part of this effect was social - firearms were cheap, logistically simple, and easy to train in, so armies got bigger, which meant armor needed to get cheaper to be affordable.

Well there's some contention that the armor changes were as much or more due to mobility being seen as important again. There was actually a fair amount of armor made and carried for a short while during the ACW. Most was discarded after or more like during the first long march. Firearms were not all that cheap and I'm not sure I'd call them logistically simple. Neither parts nor projectiles were interchangeable (the Brown Bess being the first real exception to this) and powder wasn't cheap either.

 

[Starfox]

Well there's some contention that the armor changes were as much or more due to mobility being seen as important again. ...Neither parts nor projectiles were interchangeable (the Brown Bess being the first real exception to this) and powder wasn't cheap either.

We're not really in disagreement, just polishing up each others' arguments.

Shot was cheaper than arrows, that had to be individually crafted. And also much easier to transport - powder could be carried in bulk and bullets were cast on location by the soldiers themselves - a city where an army had quartered was quite likely to be short most of it's lead pipes. But yes, mobility also played into it. Armor did stay a long time for some special units - engineers if I recall, and heavy cavalry had armor even in Napoleonic times. And during the 16th century, which is much closer to what we're talking about in Pathfinder, even infantry often had helm and cuirass. So it was all very gradual.

My personal opinion about what truly killed personal military armor was artillery. not handguns. If a cannonball could punch through an infantry block 10 men deep, armor or no armor, armor would start to seem a bit pointless. As would deep blocks of infantry. And once the infantry block is gone, small group tactics and mobility becomes more important as troops moved over from squares into lines. Emphasis on mobility meant equipment had to become lighter again. And rifles themselves were heavy, heavier than the melee weapons and (cross)bows they replaced. Something had to go to let the troops still move. But this was a slow process with many setbacks.

Comparing Imperial and Swedish units in the 30 years war is very illuminating - even if we are now outside the time period covered in Pathfinder. In the late 15th C, the progress had come to half-armor, that is armor that weight as much as full plate, yet only cover the shoulders, front, and down to the knees. And such armor was considered bullet-proof at 30 paces. Many a cuisass actually showed dents where it had been bullet-tested at such range. Below 30 paces we have the point-blank range touch attack rule in Pathfinder.

 

[captainembewrath]

The touch AC that firearms aim for only applies to the first range increment. After that it's the normal AC of the target. So if you can keep a Gunslinger at a distance, they're nowhere near as effective. It's when you let them get close that they become dangerous.

 

[foscadh]

I missed that. Make sense.

 

[Warbringer]

The touch AC that firearms aim for only applies to the first range increment. After that it's the normal AC of the target. So if you can keep a Gunslinger at a distance, they're nowhere near as effective. It's when you let them get close that they become dangerous.

Now that is a clever rule structure.