D&D 5E Fireguns, pistols, musket... A question of balance.

[Ednoc]

Hello guys, mister, gentlemen, ladies, lizardfolks, half-goblins or whatever you want to be called...

I know there is plenty of threads about this, but a lot of are pretty old... Some are very interesting, but some are just people talking about other things, or having arguments with each others… Which happen. Sometimes. Commonly… Often. Always… *Cough*

So, I know there’s no magical solution to this “problem” and we all have different ways to see and feel how guns works or SHOULD works in a fantastical universe. But I want to try to make things clear, straight-forward and try to engage a conversation with you, the Enworld community. I know there’s a lot of people here who love to do optimized things or so, but I would to try to do something by my own. My fear is what people are scared about… Balance.
Do the fireguns have to be powerful, like fire-canon-obliterating-unstoppable-hellfire-launcher-of-the-dead-who-even-ignore-armor-like-why-not-after-all-you-know.
Or should I have to be more “realistic” and find a way to make fireguns interesting and not a re-skin of crossbows…

For context purpose I’m trying to set up a steampunk campaign based on already existing universes like Arcanum. (A video game. If you don’t know what It is, go check I out, it’s a pretty neat one actually.)
My problem is that I want to have some new “weaponry” for my players, and I want that to be some pistols, musket, blackpowder guns in general and, why not, some kind of revolver maybe…
My problem is that there’s a lot… I mean… A LOT OF threads with A LOT OF suggestions about what kind of damage it should do, the range they must have, their prices and of the top of that… How many damages they must have to do ?

I personally think that early fireguns aren’t that strong and are as lethal as bows or crossbows so I don’t think they should have some crazy over numbered dices…
If I take this thread in consideration : http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...s-damage-table-Hopefully-little-more-balanced
Pistol should do 2d4 damage, light, loading 30/120
Musket 2d6 damage, heavy, two-handed, loading 60/240
Etc…

Loading should be a part of the problem too, since you have to keep them interesting for late levels (As you can do for Crossbows with a feat) and don’t make them too strong for early levels.

If you take a look at this thread, you can see some good points : http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?490109-Guns-in-your-world-and-in-mine!
Or this one too : http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?418692-Has-anyone-used-the-firearm-rules-in-the-dmg
(You could find some interesting point like, should we have to add DEX mod to damage or not, add some arbitrary +2 or +3 for some reason for let them being attractive to people with fewer DEX, and make bows a better option for characters with 18 or 20 DEX etc…)

Or maybe this one, with some more homebrews rules : http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?365364-Please-critique-my-firearm-rules
Which is dangerous if you consider that the 5E want to make things clearer than latest versions.

So, many people talked about firearms, guns, but even if you can’t make a perfect system, I want to try to make something balanced to my configuration… I don’t want to make them useless and frustrate my players who want to play in a different style, but I don’t want to make them too powerful for the same reason : I don’t want my other players to feel like they HAVE to use them instead of other things just because they’re too powerful.


I hope it’s clear. My apologies for all my mistakes, I keep trying to do my best here. If you don’t understand something (Or maybe, anything) just tell it to me.

Thanks

 

[Lancelot]

I've had good success with firearms just using the rules in the 5e DMG (pages 267-268). The stats there are basically similar to what you're proposing above. A renaissance era pistol is 1d10 piercing (average 5.5; 0.5 more than average of 2d4), loading, range 30/90. A musket is 1d12 piercing (average 6.5; 0.5 less than average of 2d6), two-handed, loading, range 40/120.

For an Arcanum setting, I'd allow some of the more exotic or masterwork firearms to draw stats from the Modern section of the table (rather than the Renaissance section). For a true Arcanum feel, I'd also consider using the Alien Technology table on page 268 as a "failure chance" table the first time a highly magical character tried to use a mechanical device. In the CRPG, wizards had a hard time using mechanical devices (and PCs with a lot of mechanical gear had a hard time casting spells). Maybe the first time a spellcaster tries to use a gun in combat, they need to roll on the table to see if it works?

I know some people like to overly complicate firearm lists, but I've never had a problem with just using the options in the DMG. Longswords come in a broad variety of shapes and sizes (some of 'em are even called katanas), but they're all ultimately 1d8 slashing, versatile weapons in my campaign worlds. Handguns are exactly the same. Rather than try to stat up the very marginal differences between different calibers and manufacturers, they can all be adequately modeled using the generic rules in the DMG.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So, I know there’s no magical solution to this “problem”

But of course there is! Magic can do anything. Want guns? Boom! (literally & onomatopoetically) Magic Guns. Could just be wands of magic missiles, for instance. Grenades? Necklace of Missiles. Light Anti-tank Weapon? Javelin of Lightning. Man-portable SAM? Javelin of Piercing.

My fear is what people are scared about… Balance.

Meh. If guns are common, simple weapons (which might not be unrealistic depending on the period you're drawing them from) then they're not going to overbalance any one particular sort of PC. Much.

If go with a slow loading time - like a minute, so not practical in combat - how bad could it be?

Do the fireguns have to be powerful, like fire-canon-obliterating-unstoppable-hellfire-launcher-of-the-dead-who-even-ignore-armor-like-why-not-after-all-you-know.

One thing to remember about hypothetical firearms in D&D, is that they're deadly weapons. And so are crossbows and daggers. We may be used to seeing people decorously fall over dead when shot in old westerns, but there's (ironically, considering my faux-rant, above) nothing magical about guns. They fire bullets, bullets punch holes in things down range. If that thing is a human heart, death. If it's a human spleen, severe injury, but you might well survive. If it's the corner of your cloak, no big deal. Your just as dead with an arrow through your heart, but the arrow doesn't need to d% damage or exploding damage or save-or-die to model that, it just does a die of damage, and you decorously drop dead like the baddies in the old movie if you happen to be low on hps...

End of story.

Guns could be d4 ranged piercing weapons and leave it at that, if you wanted.

Or should I have to be more “realistic” and find a way to make fireguns interesting and not a re-skin of crossbows…

If it's just a weapon, its really not going to be that interesting. Weapons aren't that interesting in D&D. They might as well be sharp sticks for all the difference it makes.

My problem is that I want to have some new “weaponry” for my players, and I want that to be some pistols, musket, blackpowder guns in general and, why not, some kind of revolver maybe…

If you want them to be common weapons, not radically more rare, expensive, or hard to use than swords & crossbows or the like, yeah, just make them slightly-different crossbows. They take longer to load, but are smaller (pistols downright concealable), while still doing as much or slightly more damage. Smoothbore muzzle-loaders could be fired, by trained trooops several times a minute, so a full-round re-load or a heavy crossbow re-load time wouldn't be totally insane (the RoF of D&D crossbows is pretty high, 'realistically').

The revolver could be a special case. A cap-and-ball revolver takes a long time to reload, so have it a load out of combat deal. It can be more expensive. It needn't be more damage than the regular pistol, but it'll be very attractive to more skilled combatants who have extra attack.

(You could find some interesting point like, should we have to add DEX mod to damage or not, add some arbitrary +2 or +3 for some reason for let them being attractive to people with fewer DEX, and make bows a better option for characters with 18 or 20 DEX etc…)

Along with eventually rendering armor impractical (for a time), one of the popular impacts of early firearms was their relative ease of use by minimally trained troops. Making them more attractive to low-level and ordinary-stat users could be a way to evoke that.


Last time I used firearms in a D&D game, I made them alchemical items (called Thunderfire Rods, that looked like ornate wheel-locks) that had a fixed attack/damage that didn't use the proficiency or stats of the user. That made them very attractive weapons for the minimally trained or ordinary person. They also made good ranged weapons for PCs who otherwise sucked at ranged combat, so even a dedicated melee type could carry a brace of pistols like a good pirate, and touch them off when he couldn't engage for whatever reason.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=6815535]Ednoc[/MENTION] I'll second what [MENTION=30022]Lancelot[/MENTION] said. Just use the DMG rules for Renaissance firearms.

Here's an example of how I implemented these rules for my "Age of Sail" era campaign...

The DMG contains rules for Renaissance firearms, which I use with lower prices. Most PCs have proficiency with pistols, provided it makes sense for the character's background (e.g. a Druid or Monk most likely would not). However, only PCs with martial ranged weapon proficiency are proficient with muskets and cannons.

Firearm Accessories
Bullets (12) (5 sp, 2 lbs) includes powder, shot, and wadding
Gunpowder horn (35 gp, 2 lbs) water-resistant
Keg of gunpowder (250 gp, 20 lbs) If lit afire, a keg of gunpowder explodes, dealing 7d6 fire damage to all within 10 feet, DC 12 Dexterity saving throw for half damage.

Martial Ranged Weapons
Pistol (10 gp, 3 lbs) 1d10 piercing damage / ammunition - single shot (range 30/90), loading, light
Musket (20 gp, 10 lbs) 1d12 piercing damage / ammunition - single shot (range 40/120), loading, two-handed
Blunderbuss (15 gp, 8 lbs) 2d6 piercing damage / ammunition - single shot (range 20/60), loading, two-handed, misfire (1)

Blunderbuss: Misfire (1) means that on a roll of 1 you take 2d6 fire damage from the powder blowing up in your face and the gun requires a short rest to be cleaned before it will work. However, blunderbusses also have an advantage in that they can be loaded with almost anything, not just bullets...pebbles, pitons, dinner forks...could come in handy in some scenarios!

Shipboard Martial Weapons
Swivel Gun (1 pounder) (50 gp) 4d6 piercing damage / ammunition - single shot (range 100/300),
loading, ship
Demi-Culverin (9 pounder) (100 gp) 1d4x10 piercing damage / ammunition - single shot (range 200/600), loading, ship
Culverin (18 pounder) (150 gp) 2d4x10 piercing damage / ammunition - single shot (range 250/750), loading, ship
Demi-Cannon (24 pounder) (200 gp) 3d4x10 piercing damage / ammunition - single shot (range 300/900), loading, ship
Cannon (45 pounder) (400 gp) 4d4x10 piercing damage / ammunition - single shot (range 350/1050), loading, ship

 

[TerraDave]

Welcome to ENWorld.

Now, since you asked...the real issue is what do you want to accomplish?

Personel firearms coexisted with other weapons for centuries. And co-exist again, with the popularity of bow and cross-bow hunting. Muzzle loaders are also fashionable. You can watch you-tube videos and learn all sorts of things, some of which can be surprising.

Hint: you can deer hunt with a bow or crossbow, but probably would not do that with a 9mm pistol or even an AR 15. And this should not even be a surprise.

Again, if realism is your goal, you can delve into research and learn all sorts of things. Even read a book or two.

I am guessing though that you may have other goals besides precise simulation. You should figure those goals out.

*Do you want people to carry guns around almost exclusively? Make them slightly better then other weapons and accessible.

*Or do you want them to coexist with other weapons, especially ranged weapons? Then you probably have to limit through cost, rate of fire, or training.

*Do you want people to not wear much armor? Give guns an advantage against armored opponents.

*Do you want single shot weapons, with lots of gun combat? then ranges need to be decent and guns cheap so you can carry more then one.

*Do you want single shot weapons, with lots of sword and other melee combat? Ranges should be limited as should the "brace of pistols".

*Do you want multi-shot weapons, with some scope for melee? Now we are in the late 19th century, guns dominate, but their are sabres and bayonets (keep the ranged attack at disad rule). With limited armor arrows and other primitive weapons can still be quite viable, but are clearly inferior.

*Shotguns, concealed derringers, long range rifles?

*While you are at it, do you want cannons, grenades, rockets, mortars and so forth?

Basically think about how guns should work in the world, then figure out their stats.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

My experience has generally been that unless the guns are dramatically better, players seem to ignore them for more traditional options. Pathfinder did a good job with making guns interesting but still balanced. But on the whole, it seems like players want their guns to be overpowered. It's like the old uber-katana debates from years past.

Personally, I like both the Lamentations of the Flame Princess firearm rules and the old 2e Spelljammer ones. I tried renaissance weapons in one campaign, and got a resounding "meh" from my group.

 

[marcelvdpol]

I'd make the Firearm different from "just another crossbow".

Slow Loading
Weapons with this property are particularly slow to load, requiring complex tasks that take mental concentration and focus.
Make an Intelligence check against the DC of the weapon in order to load it. If the Intelligence check is failed, the loading uses your Action that turn; otherwise it uses a Bonus Action. Note that you cannot attempt to load the weapon if you have already used either you Action, your Bonus Action or both during your turn.

Explosive ammunition
Weapons of this type use unstable ammunition. Whenever a player rolls a "1" on any To Hit roll with this weapon, the ammunition explodes in the barrel of the weapon. While the weapon itself is undamaged, roll damage against the creature using the weapon as if the creature was hit by the weapon being used.

Pistol
1-Handed, Range 30/60, Slow Loading (DC:8), Explosive Ammunition.
Damage: 2d8, bludgeoning , fire

Musket
2-Handed, Range 80/160, Slow Loading (DC:10), Explosive Ammunition.
Damage: 2d12, bludgeoning, fire

Blunder Buss
2-Handed, Range: all targets in 20 foot cone, Slow Loading (DC:12), Explosive Ammunition.
Damage: 2d6, bludgeoning, fire

Reasoning: the fire arms should be quite different (a separate ranged weapon type) from Crossbows, Bows and other ranged weapons. This is emphasized in several ways. The Action or Bonus Action to load the weapon makes it much harder to repeatedly use the weapon; you get at most one shot per turn so you need to buff this one attack to make it count. The "repeater hand crossbow build" is not possible with this type of weapon.

Loading the fire arm is uncertain (this emphasizes that firearms are an unusual weapon in this world) and requires an Intelligence check, additionally making the weapon harder to use and more like some sort of Alchemy Tool check, linking the weapon to Alchemy.

To compensate for this, the weapon rolls more damage dice compared to normal ranged weapons and adds the "fire" damage type to indicate a hot ball of lead impacting the target. Also, the Blunder Buss has a range of "20 foot Cone" to indicate a shotgun-type scatter shot, able to impact all targets in the cone. Note that it says "all targets"; you cannot discriminate between friend and foe with this type of shot. Could be quite powerful (which is why the damage is only 2d6); against a single target the Musket is much better.

The firearms deal much more ranged damage in a single shot compared to other ranged weapons and add the Fire trait to the damage. However, the logistics surrounding the weapon are much more difficult; at most fire arms are one-shot weapons that are then thrown away in favour of perhaps a melee weapon such as a rapier (especially when Extra Attack is available).

 

[Celebrim]

The best treatment of firearms in a D20/D&D context is by the author Ken Hood. I managed to snag a beta version of his Firearms rules, which so far as I know was never really published. However, they are awesome.

The first thing to understand is that primitive firearms, that is basically any firearm up until the 18th century when rifled flintlocks started appearing, is going to be basically balanced with advanced melee and missile weapons. The primary advantage of primitive firearms over slings and longbows, lances and pikes, is the simplicity of employing the weapon effectively. It's far easier, quicker and cheaper to train a large number of musketeers than it is to train a large number of longbow men. A primitive matchlock or even wheel lock weapon is really not that much more effective than a modern crossbow. In terms of balance, you can safely introduce firearms into a fantasy campaign without wrecking it.

You will have to deal with two consequences. First, firearms are a powerful force multiplier for low skilled armies. It's much harder to be heroic in a world of firearms, and as such NPCs benefit from realistic firearms far more than PCs do. A force of musket armed goblins is potentially quite formidable to low level PCs. Secondly, you have to deal with the far more consequential impact of gunpowder on your world, which in quantity will wreck your game far more thoroughly than firearms ever will. One of the most difficult and most frustrating things that a DM has to deal with is terrain destruction. A DM soon learns to not build the dungeon out of anything flammable, because the time invested in creating the dungeon will be wasted effort if the PC just burn the thing down - which they inevitably will try to do, thinking that they are being really out of the box rather than really obvious and often counterproductive (no treasure for them). Even experienced DMs will make this mistake and rue it. Imagine how worse the problem gets when the PC's can tote around barrels of gunpowder, and fill up portable holes with the stuff.

If you are willing to forge ahead despite those two problems, a few important things to note about implementing firearms:

1) Realistically, firearms lived alongside armor for centuries. Realistic firearms don't ignore armor. They do ignore lighter armors, but they still have difficulty penetrating say plate or other advanced armors. You can model this with some sort of penetration mechanic which reduces the effect of armor to some degree. You can either have armor/natural reduced by a couple of points, or you could in the context of D&D say, "Light armor is ignored." Either way, this is a bonus to hit only when targeting creatures in armor, but not as great as ignoring armor completely.

2) The biggest reason firearms will be balanced until rather late in their development is their very slow rate of fire. Most of the improvements in firearms between their introduction in the 14th century and their dominance in the 18th century was in rate of fire and reliability, with a lesser but important improvement in range and accuracy. Depending on what century you model your technology on, you'll have a reload time between 9 rounds (14th century) and about 2 rounds (17th century), with pistols generally being slower and more complicated to reload so that they were generally treated as one shot disposable weapons during battle. Only attacking every 3rd to 10th round isn't exactly game breaking. As such, these aren't going to be weapons that anyone with the possibility of multiple attacks per round are going to rely on commonly, and indeed they are mostly going to be weapons used only in the first round or so of combat before closing to melee. As such, they are slightly better heavy crossbows with slightly longer rates of fire and poorer reliability especially in wet conditions.

3) Catching the flavor of a firearm is mostly a matter of overcoming the player's need to see getting hit by a firearm as something more traumatic than getting hit by a crossbow or a battleax. In other words, you need to narrate most cases where someone is shot the way you'd narrate most 'hits' in D&D as being grazing, glancing, superficial wounds. Being hit in D&D with a weapon doesn't mean that the weapon solidly connected, only that it in some way touched the target. At least in the case of humanoids, only with a critical or after hit points are whittled down do weapons start to solidly connect. One concession you can make to this is making the critical from a firearm being more effective than is usual for the critical for other weapons. For example in 3e, I used a critical of 19-20/x3 for firearms, which nicely captured the expectations of being shot without making them grossly overpowered. Similar adaptations of being slightly better when a critical hit is earned could be used in 5e.

Much of this is dealt with in Ken Hood's work if you can find it.

As a last caveat, the other big problem with endorsing technology in a fantasy world is you are thereby endorsing science and technology, and with it opening yourself up to metagaming as players use their knowledge to increase the pace of technical advancement in your world. In other words, given matchlocks, you are likely to have players wanting to invent rifled flintlocks and eventually repeating weapons ASAP. Don't let them do that, as even if you tolerate the metagaming to some extent, advancing technology is a process that requires master craftsman with years of time on their hands - not something that PC's can do just because their players already know the details.

 

[RCanine]

Personally, I prefer firearms to sit in a relatively balanced space with other weapons like they do in video games like WoW and Guild Wars 2. I also like how they work in games like Warhammer, and in pirate movies, where pistols work as a short-range one-shot weapon.

I've futzed with houserules for pistols and they look something like

| Pistol | 250 gp | 1d8 piercing | 3 lb. | Ammunition (range 10/30) light, loading, misfire |

Misfire: rolling a natural 1 on your attack causes the weapon to become damaged; it cannot be fired again until after a short or long rest.

I also houserule two weapon fighting to allow for ranged weapons and rapier/dagger style (off-topic, lmk if you're interested).

 

[Draegn]

Our game is very heavily homebrewed. We start with more attacks per round than a typical game. Using a firearm your rate of fire is 1/4th the number of attacks you have per round. Firearms have less range than crossbows, cannot be used if wet, give away your position and have a chance of misfiring which may result in the weapon exploding in your hand and or face. Like crossbows they can be fired with line of sight, in enclosed quarters and reloaded in confined spaces. At close range firearms reduce armor.

(Using Star Wars saga terms)

Hold out pistol 1d4+1
Light Pistol 2d4+2
Pistol 3d4+3
Heavy Pistol 4d4+4

Light blunderbuss 2d4+2 one handed area effect (think Mad Max's shotgun pistol)
Blunderbuss 3d4+3 two handed area effect
Heavy blunderbuss 4d4+4 two handed area effect

*note a blunderbuss can be loaded with special shot to inflict conditions*

Light rifle 3d4+3
Rifle 4d4+4
Heavy rifle 5d4+5

A firearm fired at greater than close range has a chance of the shot going astray, either to the left, right, over or under which may still hit a target if one is in that area.