D&D 5E Has anyone used the firearm rules in the dmg?

[aramis erak]

I know comparatively little about muskets but your statements about lower velocity are, generally, correct. Impact area varies wildly, but on average a musket ball is bigger than a modern bullet with significant overlap. However, I know quite a bit about modern firearms and you are seriously underestimating their ability to penetrate. 18 gauge steel is a 1 mm thick and while not all steel is created equal and neither are all bullets but unless you are using something like AR500 or you have light loads a .357 will care precisely not at all about 18 gauge sheet metal. A .357 revolver can also fire .38 Short Colt and .38 Special with no modification and people often use these lighter loads for target practice. Neither round is especially potent, but I would guess that they might be stopped by 18 gauge sheet steel. In fact, it's probably that a fast .22 would penetrate 18 gauge steel. A cheap hollow steel door has walls about 1mm thick and I'm willing to assume this guy knows what he's shooting at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl2MBRu9WlU

More .22 LR penetration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbEKKXU4bLo

If you'd really like, I can head out to the woods and put some holes in things for demo purposes. I don't own a .357, but a +p 9mm round should suffice as a decent stand in even if it is a bit slower if I can't borrow a .357.

1) work on your math
2) I've done some destructive testing. My friends during college included a bunch of gun nuts

I've shot a .357 using round nosed police-standard lead ball (non-jacketed) at a steel plate of 18 gage - which is 25.4/18= 1.41 mm thick - and it didn't go through. I've seen .357 stopped by car doors, too... on older cars, where it was as thick as 18ga. In both cases, visible deformation, no penetration.

Factors that influence penetration include incidence angle (anything other than 90° increase both the skip chance and the effective thickness), specific metal composition, specific tempering, method of working (hammer-worked is different from rolled), amount of air traveled through (drag reduces bullet energy), bullet composition (straight lead penetrates less than FMJ), bullet shape, temperature of the metals, age and flexion history of the plate.

Your 9mm probably will penetrate 1mm steel if shot within 5 yards and aimed dead on... because autopistol rounds are ususally jacketed. It also won't do much past it.

And a breastplate is seldom worn without quilt underneath. Yeah, it is gonna hurt. No, it's not going through. But the same is true of a sword.

Ignoring armor isn't the solution, especially since most firearm to body armor shots are going to be other than 90°.
Using armor as a damage reduction rather than pure hit/miss is the best way to simply represent firearms damage. It's also not the best D&D choice.

 

[Derren]

Ignoring armor isn't the solution, especially since most firearm to body armor shots are going to be other than 90°.
Using armor as a damage reduction rather than pure hit/miss is the best way to simply represent firearms damage. It's also not the best D&D choice.

The problem, especially in D&D, but also in many other RPGs is that they do not model the parts were guns were advantageous over bows much or at all. So instead, and also because of unrealistic Hollywood expectations, they are given unrealistic attributes like the mentioned armor penetration.

The advantage of guns were for example that everyone could use them. High strength bows required a rather strong person to use especially over a long time. That was the main reason why good longbow archers were rather rare. Crossbows, at least the stronger ones, used various mechanisms to ready them but that made them rather large and still exhausted the wielder. Guns on the other hand could be used by anyone over a far longer time as the power of the shot was stored in the gunpowder and did not have to be supplied by the user.
Also at first they had quite a moral impact with their noise and their "invisible" shots.

Another thing was the ammunition. Yes, you had to carry around large amounts of gunpowder. But soon enough that could be made fairly easily in large quantities. Bullets could be made on the field rather easily with a mold. Now making arrows was not all that easy as some might think. To make a good arrow you need to need a good piece of wood, something rather unlikely you find on a field in large quantities. Supplying a big army with enough arrows over a long campaign was quite a task.
As for the armor penetration, where do you think the name "bulletproof" came from? It comes from the practice of shooting a piece of plate armor to show that they are proof against firearms.

And D&D has the additional problem of HP bloat where ranged weapons in general are unable to kill enemies before they could close into melee range except at very low level.

The imo best way to add firearms to a fantasy setting is to dispel the Hollywood notion of super powerful armor piercing weapons and instead make them "one shot" weapons people who are not strong or proficient enough to use (cross)bows as indeed over a large part of history a bow was superior to a musket for a trained user.

 

[ceiling90]

Here's an interesting tidbit about the info you're (royal) providing - the strength and quality of the bullet is the most important factor to the lethality of a gun, especially game terms.

So what would you say a basic gun (standard consumer) would do steel plate and the person inside?

Then think about, wartime guns (as in military grade and high lethality) and what they would do.

My point, is that I think Gun damage is highly reliant on bullet type. Obviously AP bullets could ignore armor. Which in effect is highly cool.

Maybe basic bullets act normal, maybe hollowpoints do more damage to non-armored targets, maybe AP bullets completely ignore Armor.

This of course is talking about modern firearms.

 

[inquisitorthreefive]

1) work on your math

That should read "about 1 mm thick." So I'll give you that part. However, math doesn't really come into play. In the US the thickness of sheet metal is codified by law to be 1/20th of an inch thick, or 1.27 mm. In practice it varies a little. Hence the about.I'm not certain where you got your 25.4/18, since gauge is based on weight per a given volume. 1.41 is very close to what I've seen listed for zinc, though.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/206

2) I've done some destructive testing. My friends during college included a bunch of gun nuts

I've shot a .357 using round nosed police-standard lead ball (non-jacketed) at a steel plate of 18 gage - which is 25.4/18= 1.41 mm thick - and it didn't go through. I've seen .357 stopped by car doors, too... on older cars, where it was as thick as 18ga. In both cases, visible deformation, no penetration.

Yeah, I've done a fair amount of destructive testing in my time, too. I've used .357 to knock holes in steel about twice that thickness on occasion and there has definitely been some failures to penetrate there, however I haven't used lead ball to do it and that will make a difference. Frankly, these days it'll likely be difficult to find that without putting more effort into it than I'm willing to, but I'm willing to check the local gun shops and see what's around. Likely the closest I can find is semi-jacketed soft nose without ordering something. There really wasn't any "standard" load like you're describing, except perhaps 158 gr semi-wad cutter. I hope your friends didn't have you shooting cowboy action loads: those have half to 3/4's of the velocity of a .357 loaded to SAAMI pressures and would explain your experience. However, what you said was this:

A .357 won't reliably penetrate 18ga steel... which is a little light for breastplates.

Which is demonstrably false with commonly available ammunition. I'm still willing to go shoot at some 18 gauge steel and I'll even try to find some ammo comparable to what you were using to put alongside it, if you'd like.

Factors that influence penetration include incidence angle (anything other than 90° increase both the skip chance and the effective thickness), specific metal composition, specific tempering, method of working (hammer-worked is different from rolled), amount of air traveled through (drag reduces bullet energy), bullet composition (straight lead penetrates less than FMJ), bullet shape, temperature of the metals, age and flexion history of the plate.

You're preaching to the choir here, but thanks.

Your 9mm probably will penetrate 1mm steel if shot within 5 yards and aimed dead on... because autopistol rounds are ususally jacketed. It also won't do much past it.

And a breastplate is seldom worn without quilt underneath. Yeah, it is gonna hurt. No, it's not going through. But the same is true of a sword.

Actually, it seems this gentleman has already done the testing for us, using .357 Sig, which was designed to perform as closely as possible to .357 magnum in terms of penetration, 9mm and .45. The steel here was measured at 0.05" (18 gauge, 1.27mm) and there were three plates, all of which were penetrated by the .357 sig at 115 gr and 1600 FPS. The steel wasn't factory fresh, however.
http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_5/577709_.html

Edit: It doesn't say how far he was shooting the plates from. However, he did say he took it to a range which implies a minimum safe distance, plus it looks like the target was resting on the ground.

Historically, yes, gambesons were worn. Those would make a difference, yes. However, we weren't talking about gambesons. I'm mostly taking issue with your claim that .357 won't reliably penetrate 18 gauge steel.

Ignoring armor isn't the solution, especially since most firearm to body armor shots are going to be other than 90°.
Using armor as a damage reduction rather than pure hit/miss is the best way to simply represent firearms damage. It's also not the best D&D choice.

I never said it was the solution to the problem of firearms in DnD. On that we certainly agree. DnD firearms rules suck and always have.

 

[xuriel]

For two months, I've been running a fantasy colonial period D&D campaign, drawing inspiration from Solomon Kane stories, so I've been using the DMG gunpowder weapon rules, along with a few house rules:

Starting equipment

Players who wish their 1st level character to begin with a pistol or two or a musket may choose to have up to two poor quality pistol or one musket as part of their starting equipment. A poor quality pistol or musket jams on an attack roll of 1. Jammed weapons may not be used again until the jam is cleared after a short or long rest.

Gunpowder weapons and proficiencies

In addition to classes proficient with all martial weapons, bards and rogues are also proficient with gunpowder weapons.

Pistol Expert (feat)

Thanks to your extensive practice with the pistol, you gain the following benefits:

• You can draw or stow a one-handed weapon and a pistol when you would normally be able to draw or stow only one.
• Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls with pistols.
• When you use the Attack action and attack with a one-handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a loaded pistol you are holding.

So far, these rules have worked out well for us.

 

[Strithe]

Gunpowder weapons are really more of an advantage in mass combat. As Darren points out, they historically were very cheap, especially on the ammunition side. Plus, you didn't need much physical effort to load, aim, and fire one compared with bows or crossbows. With muzzle-loaders, you couldn't even over-heat the barrels like you can with modern automatic weapons.

Smoothbore muskets & pistols are actually very cheap to make compared to a bow or crossbow, and as Darren said the ammo is even cheaper to produce.

You can train your peasant levies to shoot, load, and maintain their gunpowder weapons in a manner of weeks, which means that you can field a LOT more missile troops than your enemies. Sure, individually they aren't any more effective and are less accurate than a trained bowmen, but you can field a lot more of them. Plus massed gunfire can panic even trained mounts in a way that bows & crossbows can't do. Also remember that a mounted knight is much less effective when dismounted, and horses usually aren't as well armored as their riders.

True, your peasant conscripts aren't going to stand as well in a close combat, which is why you space your pikeman & cavalry in blocks between the groups of musket-troops. It's the early version of "combined arms."

Also, since gunpowder weapons are relatively easy train on, your existing professional troops can add them to their repitoire of killing. For instance, one popular early gunpowder-age tactic was to give cavalry braces of 4-6 pistols. If there was a tough (non-musket) infantry formation they were facing off against, they'd ride in loose columns. The lead rank would fire a pistol, wheel about, and ride to the back of the column to draw the next loaded weapon. The next rank would fire and repeat. When all the pistols were exhausted they'd draw broadswords & charge the infantry they'd just spent the last few minutes peppering with pistol fire.


There's really nothing that wrong with the rules other than the prices for early firearms are at least 10 times too high (the prices for bows & crossbows are also too high, but that's a whole different discussion). The main problem is that it's really a mass-combat weapon and D&D combat is skirmish combat. One on one a musketeer is dead meat if they face off against an armored knight or an expert archer, and that's as it should be in a skirmish.

What I'd do if you wanted to make things a bit more realistic:

1) Divide the prices of the early gunpowder weapons & their ammunition by 10 (or whatever gets powder & shot cheaper than arrows, I don't have the book in front of me).

2) Reduce the ranges of gunpowder weapons significantly if they're equivalent to bows or crossobws (or worse, longer). Again I don't have the books in front of me.

3) Add a heavy musket, this has the Heavy property, the same range as the regular musket, and does more damage (increase the dice one step, 2d12 I think?).

4) Any class proficient in crossbows is proficient in equivalent firearms.

5) Add a "Musketeer" feat. It requires proficiency and Dexterity 12 or higher. You can Reload a musket as a bonus action but still can't fire the weapon more than once a round.

6) Add rifled weapons. These are priced higher, have longer ranges, and and don't get the benefits of the Musketeer feat.


If there's any interest, I'll throw up some actual stat ideas when I get home tonight & can reference the books.

 

[Derren]

One on one a musketeer is dead meat if they face off against an armored knight or an expert archer, and that's as it should be in a skirmish.

Not really if it is just one knight. That knight has to get into melee and as soon as he comes close even a musket can't miss so the musketeer can kill the knight before he reaches him.
That is big problem with ranged weapons in D&D. Thanks to the HP bloat it is impossible to kill an enemy before he gets into melee range except at low level, yet that is the entire point of ranged weapons.

But I agree with the archer. 1 on 1 the archer will win.

 

[Strithe]

OK, so looking at the DMG (finally). It looks like the ranges look about right.

A "realistic" price would be 10 gp for the pistol, 20 gp for the musket.

A heavy musket i'd put at 50 gp, 2d8 piercing damage, 20 lb, Ammunition (50 / 150), loading, two-handed, heavy.

Ammunition should be 1 sp per 10 "bullets."

Rifled weapons would cost three times as much and the range would be:
Pistol (40 / 160), Rifle (80 / 320), Heavy Rifle (100 / 400).

I'd suggest that natural animals and non-warhorses would be naturally frightened of gunfire: they have to make a Wisdom Save (DC 10) or be panicked for 1 minute or until calmed by a rider.

Add this feat:

Musketeer
Ignore the loading property of smoothbore muskets & pistols you're proficient with. Note that this doesn't affect rifled weapons, which naturally load slowly.
Being within 5 feet of a hostile creature doesn't impose disadvantage on your ranged attack rolls.
When you use the attack action and attack with a one-handed weapon, you can use a bonus action to attack with a loaded pistol you're holding.

 

[Riley37]

RPGers have been working on rules for fire-arms for most of the last four decades. The available set of fire-arms rules is huge. If there are particular rules - from GURPs or anywhere else - that you want converted to 5E, that can be done.