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Guns in D&D - A Hot Take
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7560138" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Great, Extra Credits. Even though I'm very familiar with Extra Credits, and it has over the years influenced heavily how I think and talk about gaming, it's always good to spread the word around.</p><p></p><p>But, it still doesn't address where I'm going to with this question, which is your assertion that the mythology of the weapon rather than its physical properties ought to define it's mechanics.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Are we speaking of 5e? The answer is probably that that is the way the two weapons were in 3e D&D, long before Brutal Critical or Savage Attack was conceived of.</p><p></p><p>But as for the mythology of the axe, the axe is a primitive weapon associated with the European Dark Ages and even the pre-Roman Gaelic past, and the sword requires a much higher level of metallurgy to forge and so didn't really supersede the ax until the Medieval period. The great sword itself was a relatively rare weapon, which didn't get much use until you had musketeers and Pikemen on the battlefields of Europe, so it's associated with a more civilized era.</p><p></p><p>None of that has any clear relationship to why in 3e they gave the great sword 2d6 damage and the great axe 1d12. I doubt it was that well thought out, since initially there wasn't support for the sort of weapon style you are talking about in 5e. That's a later development based on later refinements in the game. You might say that as the game became defined designers reached for mechanics that suggested, for example, the savage brutality of the axe because of the mythology of the axe. But then you might also reasonably suggest that that is not wrong, since it is not mythology that the axe is a brute force weapon that sacrifices defense and whose successful employment requires heavy continuous strikes, and that real battlefield ready great swords are lighter in weight than axes of equivalent size. </p><p></p><p>Nor does the answer of swords get at what I was getting at, which is given a particular gun mythology (say American to keep it easy) what does that say about stating out a 14th century hand gonne or a 16th century puffer wheellock - or can you even apply American mythology to a gun that preexisted the concept of America?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7560138, member: 4937"] Great, Extra Credits. Even though I'm very familiar with Extra Credits, and it has over the years influenced heavily how I think and talk about gaming, it's always good to spread the word around. But, it still doesn't address where I'm going to with this question, which is your assertion that the mythology of the weapon rather than its physical properties ought to define it's mechanics. Are we speaking of 5e? The answer is probably that that is the way the two weapons were in 3e D&D, long before Brutal Critical or Savage Attack was conceived of. But as for the mythology of the axe, the axe is a primitive weapon associated with the European Dark Ages and even the pre-Roman Gaelic past, and the sword requires a much higher level of metallurgy to forge and so didn't really supersede the ax until the Medieval period. The great sword itself was a relatively rare weapon, which didn't get much use until you had musketeers and Pikemen on the battlefields of Europe, so it's associated with a more civilized era. None of that has any clear relationship to why in 3e they gave the great sword 2d6 damage and the great axe 1d12. I doubt it was that well thought out, since initially there wasn't support for the sort of weapon style you are talking about in 5e. That's a later development based on later refinements in the game. You might say that as the game became defined designers reached for mechanics that suggested, for example, the savage brutality of the axe because of the mythology of the axe. But then you might also reasonably suggest that that is not wrong, since it is not mythology that the axe is a brute force weapon that sacrifices defense and whose successful employment requires heavy continuous strikes, and that real battlefield ready great swords are lighter in weight than axes of equivalent size. Nor does the answer of swords get at what I was getting at, which is given a particular gun mythology (say American to keep it easy) what does that say about stating out a 14th century hand gonne or a 16th century puffer wheellock - or can you even apply American mythology to a gun that preexisted the concept of America? [/QUOTE]
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