D&D (2024) Firearms to be made a fixed part of the game, new Weapons Rules

[Jefe Bergenstein]

now if we only get more set DC examples for skills and tools.

Better yet, expertise only DC's to actually make skill training matter.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean, being real, I'm not too concerned either way, because this one thing the "70% approval" will deal with one way or another.

I honestly don't know how many people use guns in their D&D settings on a regular basis. I suspect it's a minority, but a growing one.

However, I also know there is a growing minority of D&D players who would happily X-card firearms, because of the sheer daily slaughter going on in the US involving firearms (anyone going "But a musket is different to an AR15!" is truly profoundly missing the woods for the trees).

The playtesting will likely reflect whether there is broad approval of this move, or there isn't. My guess? There isn't. But we'll see.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Yep, I agree. If Heavy Crossbow = Windlass Crossbow, that is a ridiculous reload time. But the "heavy crossbow" as it's described in the Player's Handbook could be any crossbow that takes 2 hands to aim and fire...I don't think a windlass mechanism is described. Flintlocks, however, are explicitly mentioned.

But your point stands: the reload speed of crossbows in D&D is incredibly, unbelievably fast. The only part I'm disagreeing with is the part where you suggest these firearm reload speeds are equally unbelievable.

Another way to look at it... In most D&D worlds, the tech has been frozen for a loooong time. Your 300 year old dwarven smith has been personally making full plate armor for almost longer than it was ever even used on Earth, and is drawing upon tradition and innovation stretching back thousands of years. Their gear should be considerably better than the Earth equivalent. Look how far firearms came in 100 years. Imagine if the same functionally immortal engineers were continuously working on their own designs.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Imagine if the same functionally immortal engineers were continuously working on their own designs.

I mean, they'd have machineguns. Or at the very least cartridge-based breachloaders and rifles with magazines and revolvers and so on. They might not be mass-producing them, but they'd be making them. They wouldn't be using unrifled muskets or the like unless there was something in the way of technological development, like The Legacy in Worlds Without Number.

 

[Emberashh]

It can also be said however that innovation doesn't normally result from purposeless diligence. As long as something works, there generally isn't a real drive to innovate, but at the same time if some newfangled thing appears that isn't terribly good, then theres little value in trying to improve it either when theres already alternatives.

Firearms in fantasy settings, logically speaking, probably wouldn't ever be invented, and would probably never catch on even if they did, just because it would take a couple of centuries of constant innovation before they weren't hot garbage compared to a fireball spell or an arrow from an Elf that spent 3000 years practicing.

That being said though it does introduce a pretty peculiar chance at a different intepretation, where firearms are actually superior to magic.

Theres a fan theory out there for Harry Potter that suggests the Wizards are in hiding because the Muggles won some unspoken of war in the past, and the Wizards basically gaslight themselves into thinking they're the superior ones.

The idea here being that the war likely happened around the time Muggles started using guns, and so Wizards, having otherwise human reflexes, couldn't keep up even with magic.

But that takes us down a road in fantasy that even the world that inspired the thought doesn't really go down.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Firearms in fantasy settings, logically speaking, probably wouldn't ever be invented, and would probably never catch on even if they did, just because it would take a couple of centuries of constant innovation before they weren't hot garbage compared to a fireball spell or an arrow from an Elf that spent 3000 years practicing.

You can't give a random, easily replaceable peasant the ability to cast fireball or 3000 years of elven archery. You can give them a musket and point them in a direction for massed fire.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The idea here being that the war likely happened around the time Muggles started using guns, and so Wizards, having otherwise human reflexes, couldn't keep up even with magic.

LOL this is amazing. I'd never heard this. Certainly it does seem like the slow-casting and limited magic of the HP series would be dealt with pretty swiftly by repeating firearms. You'd need something more dangerous, like Grishaverse Small Science to deal with gun.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

You can't give a random, easily replaceable peasant the ability to cast fireball or 3000 years of elven archery. You can give them a musket and point them in a direction for massed fire.

That kind of assumes there are big, slowly-manuevering open-field battles going on though, and I'm not sure that's a sound assumption if fireballs and so on are going off.

Also it seems like developing a spell to detonate gunpowder at range would be literally the first thing a Wizard would do when muskets got on the scene.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I mean, being real, I'm not too concerned either way, because this one thing the "70% approval" will deal with one way or another.

and that right there is the death of creativity and progress...

 

[Ruin Explorer]

and that right there is the death of creativity and progress...

It's funny how it's always "creativity and progress" when someone likes the thing that loses the popularity contest, and "just reflecting what people want" when they don't like it lol.

I mean, I don't disagree that the 70% method is dumb, but it's what they're doing, and if that's why there's no psionics, well, frankly guns can eat it (or not) for the same reason.