D&D 5E Why do guns do so much damage?

[Necrozius]

Yeah so I’d handle black powder weapons like so:

1. Simple weapons to reflect their ease of use by even farmers

2. Lower costs for ammo than other ranged weapons, however a powder horn is also needed (a separate piece of equipment)

3. Damage for pistols is d6, can be used as a small club for d4

4. Damage for muskets is d8, can be used as a club for d6. Add a bayonet and it becomes a spear (d8 if two handed)

5. because of the ubiquitous social-cultural familiarity of such weapons and relatively quick adoption, bows and crossbows become martial (only something specially trained people use)

6. the loading quality of black powder weapons cannot be offset by Feats (unless using more expensive, fancy ammo packets that include pre-measured amounts of gunpowder made by Gnomes or engineers)

7. Carrying multiple, preloaded pistols offsets the loading quality limitations until you’ve used them all, then it’s back to normal limitations

8. disadvantage on using these weapons in rainy weather or if the PC was recently submerged in water (dry up after a long rest, I guess)

 

[ECMO3]

D&D absurdly overvalues firearms, particularly late medieval and early Renaissance firearms. Plate Armour exists to counter firearms, the conquistadors were staggering around with breastplates on while they had guns. The utility of early firearms was in their ability to be used enmasse. A single person wielding a blunderbuss wasn't actually that deadly.

Plate Armor will not stop a renaissance-era flintlock bullet. The plate (and I think it was only a breast plate, not full plate by the 16th century) is there to deflect pikes and spears primarily and to a lessor extent and arrows and such.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Plate Armor will not stop a renaissance-era flintlock bullet. The plate (and I think it was only a breast plate, not full plate by the 16th century) is there to deflect pikes and spears primarily and to a lessor extent and arrows and such.

My understanding was that was the purpose behind the angling on the cuirass, but I can imagine more often than not you were still in danger. Still it was better than wading in unarmoured and it was still a century or so until they gave up on armor for infantry altogether.

 

[Ixal]

Yeah so I’d handle black powder weapons like so:

1. Simple weapons to reflect their ease of use by even farmers

2. Lower costs for ammo than other ranged weapons, however a powder horn is also needed (a separate piece of equipment)

3. Damage for pistols is d6, can be used as a small club for d4

4. Damage for muskets is d8, can be used as a club for d6. Add a bayonet and it becomes a spear (d8 if two handed)

5. because of the ubiquitous social-cultural familiarity of such weapons and relatively quick adoption, bows and crossbows become martial (only something specially trained people use)

6. the loading quality of black powder weapons cannot be offset by Feats (unless using more expensive, fancy ammo packets that include pre-measured amounts of gunpowder made by Gnomes or engineers)

7. Carrying multiple, preloaded pistols offsets the loading quality limitations until you’ve used them all, then it’s back to normal limitations

8. disadvantage on using these weapons in rainy weather or if the PC was recently submerged in water (dry up after a long rest, I guess)

Bows should always be martial weapons. And/Or they should be MAD, dex to hit, strength to damage. Likewise Rapid Reload should have strength as perquisite and not dex. Only firearms should be dex only.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Plate Armor will not stop a renaissance-era flintlock bullet. The plate (and I think it was only a breast plate, not full plate by the 16th century) is there to deflect pikes and spears primarily and to a lessor extent and arrows and such.

A musket at point-blank range? Probably not. But even heavy cloth has been recorded as stopping musket balls (although I'd imagine that there was significant bruising.)

One of the reasons that renaissance battlefield armour was being reduced to a breastplate was because it had become significantly thicker (and therefore heavier) specifically for the purpose of stopping flintlock ball.
Hence why the armour was often "proofed" as a point of quality by firing a flintlock into it, generally leaving a dent.

 

[Coroc]

So a Flintlock Pistol in 5e D&D deals 1d10 damage. A longsword deals 1d8 damage, 1d10 if you hold it with both hands.

But if you've ever seen what a sword can -do- to a human body, you know that the damage difference is incomparable!

Yeah, a bullet can be really effective at killing a person by catastrophically randomizing a narrow line through their body. If you hit something vital, death is assured in fairly short order, and if you don't hit something vital there's a decent shot the person will still bleed out over the course of the next hour or two, depending on their activity during that time and lack of medical care.

If you hit something vital with a sword, your target will -also- die in very short order. But if you don't strike something vital they will STILL DIE IN VERY SHORT ORDER. This is because a Sword catastrophically randomizes a very large area of the human body on each strike. At least when compared to something like a Pistol.

Depending on your ammo type a gun is going to put a fairly small hole in the front of your target and a moderately larger hole out of the back of your target with a relatively straight line between the two. With the appropriate training, a sword will completely eradicate your ability to have intestines that remain both inside your body and intact.

Take a look at this video if you can/care to (TW: Dead Animal, Fake Blood, Violence)

Spoiler: Kilij vs Pig

This is a Kilij. Roughly the same shape as a scimitar, it's got a slightly weighted tip to increase percussive force. It would not be out of place in most D&D campaign settings. It cuts -through- that pig on the first strike. And the second. The third sets it spinning and the fourth cuts through, again.

Compare that to a single hole running through your torso.

You could of course argue that that was a fairly small pig and thus the sword could easily pass through it. But upscale that pig and the damage would -still- be significant even if the sword didn't manage to pass through the bones. And all the internal organs in it's very wide, very deep, path would be randomized and compromised.

Now I'm not saying that pistols aren't deadly. They flatly and -absolutely- are deadly. But compared to the damage that a -sword- can do? It's not even in the same ball park. And that's not even getting INTO things like two-handed swords, axes of any variety, or spears...

Now you could argue that they do so much damage because HP is an abstraction and it shows how well they punch through armor... but you still make the same attack roll with the same bonuses and the same AC to overcome. And AC is -itself- an abstraction accounting for both the deflecting and cushioning effects of a piece of armor between you and oncoming metal.

And it only gets worse when you get into Revolvers and Rifles that jump up to the 2d8 and 2d10 damage range.

All things considered... I just feel like guns should do damage in-line with the rest of the weapons available. 1d6 for a pistol, 1d10 for a rifle. Basically a Hand and Heavy Crossbow for all intents and purposes. And then making them repeating weapons or whatever should just increase the number of shots before you have to spend an action reloading. I think the designers, and many players, overwhelmingly inflate just how much damage a gun does to a human being compared to the weapons, and monsters, D&D characters face.

That's my take, anyhow.

once more d&d s unrealistic combat simulation strikes.
ok, a sword does to little damage iypov.
so did you take into account, that full plate armor makes neigh invulnerable versus swords IRL whereas a bullet tends to penetrate mostly unhindered?

Also other types of armor, even padded linen protects quite well vs edged damage.

watch scholagladiatoria matt eastons channel on YouTube if you are interested on how weaponry and armor and the context they were used in history sevelopped.

 

[Coroc]

A musket at point-blank range? Probably not. But even heavy cloth has been recorded as stopping musket balls (although I'd imagine that there was significant bruising.)

One of the reasons that renaissance battlefield armour was being reduced to a breastplate was because it had become significantly thicker (and therefore heavier) specifically for the purpose of stopping flintlock ball.
Hence why the armour was often "proofed" as a point of quality by firing a flintlock into it, generally leaving a dent.

you are right for the latter development and the more costly plate armors in renaissance. For all other stuff it was rather the exception that a bullet would not penetrate, a musket bullet got four times the kinetic energy of a crossbow bolt and even more than compared to an arrow.

 

[Ixal]

once more d&d s unrealistic combat simulation strikes.
ok, a sword does to little damage iypov.
so did you take into account, that full plate armor makes neigh invulnerable versus swords IRL whereas a bullet tends to penetrate mostly unhindered?

Also other types of armor, even padded linen protects quite well vs edged damage.

watch scholagladiatoria matt eastons channel on YouTube if you are interested on how weaponry and armor and the context they were used in history sevelopped.

Pretty much this. If anything melee weapons and especially swords are overvalued in D&D,
Against someone in plate armour a sword is nearly useless. You are better off to use it as a makeshift club or a lever for grappling than as a sword.
And against a giant, dragon or other garagantuan enemy a normal melee weapon would be night useless as even when you drive it into the monster up to the hilt you have only penetrated the skin and outer fat and muscle layer without reaching any vital organ. Its like fighting a human with needles.

 

[ph0rk]

British Flintlock Balls were 10.9mm in diameter and weighed 1.3g. They also traveled a lot slower, as the muzzle velocity for a Flintlock is around 253m/s while a 9mm (only slightly smaller and infinitely more bullet-shaped) can clock in at over 400m/s.

Those are late in the development of muzzle loaders, and are essentially a smaller bore than the earlier weapons. .6-.7 calibre (15.24-17.78mm) bores were common, and larger bores were sometimes used.

Also, I am pretty sure a 10-11mm diameter metal or stone ball would weigh more than 1.3 grams. A few coffee beans weigh 1.3 grams. A .64 calibre ball typically weighed around 25 grams.

 

[ph0rk]

Bows should always be martial weapons. And/Or they should be MAD, dex to hit, strength to damage. Likewise Rapid Reload should have strength as perquisite and not dex. Only firearms should be dex only.

Dex to hit strength to damage was one of the good ideas from previous editions. Drawing and holding recurve bow is not trivial, or wasn’t when I took archery in college.