Gunpowder in your games

[Gellion]

How many people here use gunpowder in your games? The game i am in doesnt. My DM thinks it ruins the "Fantasy" feel of the game.

 

[billbo]

I think it interferes with the fantasy feel, myself.

But I think guns could definitely work on another plane, a la the Amber series. And, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't there a plane inhabited by dwarf-like creatures -- armed with muskets and blunderbusses -- who were fighting a Vampire King in one of the side-planes in the Queen of the Demiweb Pits module?

Now that would be cool. As a longish adventure, it would be cool to use guns and such. But I think it would be best to keep that sort of thing for another demiplane.

 

[Azure Trance]

I believe that as long as it's not the dominant weapon of choice, it won't have a dramatic impact. (IE, you fire your pistol, then run into the melee and charge).

 

[Neowolf]

In our game, it's used by invaders from another continent. From various prisoners we've interrogated, they also seem to have access to railroads, hot-air balloons, and presumably steamships. They totally abhor magic, but their technology blows our characters' minds.

 

[DanMcS]

I like guns and gunpowder, but I would like it to be auxiliary, I want fighters to still use swords . For my shoot-em-out games, I prefer d20 modern. So primitive guns exist, but they take two or three full-round-actions to reload, so if the players use them it will be at the level of "fire and then draw sword".

They haven't really bothered yet, they decided to play people from a more primitive area, and I think they've kind of forgotten about the guns. One of the bad guys used a gunpowder charge to blast open a door, and I think they thought I was sending a powerful wizard after them (they're only third level). Blew their mind when they couldn't find him, heh.

 

[NoOneofConsequence]

In our Spider Moon campaign guns are available to anyone who wants them - my psychic warrior's the only one who uses them. He fires his musket and then charges into melee.

The halfling ranger (with short bow) still craps all over him for ranged damage. We find that the fantasy feel holds pretty well, it's just a different kind of fantasy.

 

[Gellion]

In our game, it's used by invaders from another continent. From various prisoners we've interrogated, they also seem to have access to railroads, hot-air balloons, and presumably steamships. They totally abhor magic, but their technology blows our characters' minds.

I think it would be cool to have an entire kingdom that used Technology instead of magic. It would be fun place to visit as PCs.

 

[Kilmore]

Guns in my campaign work on a little more alchemical process than simple gunpowder. The powder used is called "Demon-Dust" and can only be made by specially trained members of two clans. There is a class made to represent these clans, and unless you are a member of this class, your weapon malfunctions on a 1-4 on a 1d6, 1-2 on a 1d6 with a feat. Having one of the "duster" class supervising you halves that. Plus if you don't belong to the chief clan (the other are renegade), you can face serious trouble for using the weapon.

In my campaign.

 

[Jeremy757]

Gunpowder or smokepowder can have its place especially in a renicance-like era setting like Forgotten Realms, as long as they are treated appropriately. To do that I think they have to be relegated to fire and forget or first strike weapons.
Here is how I treat them in my game:

The pros:
they are touch attack weapons,
pistols do 2d6, rifles do 2d8;

The cons:
It takes a half minute to reload
they are expensive 200g+ for a pistol,
they are delicate, on a roll of natural one the gun breaks and can not be used again until repairs are made
They require a seprete craft skill (gunsmithing) to build and repair.
Only humans and gnomes currently build them.
Ammo is heavy, it requires a one ounze bullet and one ounze of smoke powder to fire a single shot. Meaning just to carry 16 shots is going to weigh 2lbs

I think there is some other stuff but its late and my frontal lobe is starting to shut down for the evening.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I'm not averse to gunpowder, though I don't think it's that great of an idea for a personal weapon for several reasons:

1.) As Swashbuckling Adventures pointed out, if you really wanted to simulate the reload times of guns you would have to give them reload times into five or six rounds, course if we were to be that accurate crossbows would get pretty heavily nerfed too.

2.) I'm certain we are all aware of how often open flame sources and burning liquids are used in DnD combat. And I'm not the sort of DM who won't roll for item saves when gunpowder is in the mix.

I like it for siege weapons, though. Carriageless bombards are rockin.