Pathfinder 1E Yet another Pathfinder With Firearms thread

[Kurtomatic]

That such a nation would stagnate technologically and would not have the best firearms any more is reasonable (see China as example) but that they unlearn to do it? For that to happen there must be a religious or social shift which would make guns obsolete or discriminated against (again, see China and ships).

The declining firearm rarity description is simply flavor to support the mechanical and economic choices made. I thought it was interesting that the Paizo-provided rarity descriptions only went in one direction. I don't think emerging guns equals declining guns, just with different color text.

Part of the OP's issue was making advanced firearms (which has a very specific meaning in PF) available at reasonable prices, without overshadowing everything else; I was simply trying to offer a different spin on rarity. Perhaps stagnation would be a better description: the trends driving firearms development progress only so far, but then stop. The social and economic drivers change, and leave firearms in a semi-advanced state that fails to completely take over military doctrine.

Personally, I don't have much trouble suspending disbelief on concurrent fantasy firearms as long the rates of fire are kept under control. It's when you get to repeaters like revolvers or lever-action rifles you really have start serious stretching for fantasy firearms. In my opinion.

The OP is also trying to meet the needs of his players. All the academic arguments aside, I like a very practical approach to justifying minority firearms in the game fiction, because at the end of the day what really counts is what happens at the table. I think most players fall into three functional categories when looking at guns in D&D: purists, skeptics, and fans (these buckets are grossly exaggerated for effect):

The purists simply don't like guns in D&D. For them guns are a deal-breaker. I can't argue with that; more power to 'em. I think guns in your fantasy game is such an edge-case, that requiring unanimity at the table is very reasonable. There's no need to try to convince folks with some crazy game fiction, just don't even go there.​

The skeptics are okay with guns in D&D, as long as their needs with the traditional fantasy weapon tropes are being met. They're not going to directly engage with firearms, but if they feel like they're being pushed in that direction (because firearms are just too good, or whatever), then they'll be unhappy. I believe Exotic Weapon Proficiency (firearms) was created just to solve this problem. Firearms require a feat tax and/or an oddball, lightly supported class? Great, live and let live.

Now the fans are obviously on board from the get-go. They're ready to pack some heat. Ironically, these are the players you need to placate with some game fiction. You've just bought-off the skeptics with a feat tax, and now you have to explain to the fans why they're paying that tax, and how their guns are still cool and effective without being common or dominant. Fortunately, these players are already invested in the idea, so you just need to show them some socio-economic jazz-hands in the setting fiction to seal the deal. It doesn't have to be PhD thesis-quality, you're usually preaching to the choir here.​

In the case of the Empire of Tarsis (Ptolus), there's no actually unlearning involved. But since the empire was the main driver for firearms technology and manufacture, and because they've long-since stopped innovating with guns and have surplus stock, the availability and sophistication of new advanced firearms has begun to decline in general (there are exceptions to this).

So in my interpretation of this setting, a man on the street can pretty easily buy a Saturday Night Special for about 125 gp, and end up with a muzzle-loading dragon gun that misfires on a 1-4, can be loaded manually with powder and shot for 2 gp, or he can pay an alchemist 6 gp for a paper cartridge. This gun was hand-manufactured by a local gunsmith (working for the mob). If he gets caught by the authorities carrying the gun with no permit, he's looking at a 500 gp fine and a few nights in clink.

The same man could instead pay 10 gp for his firearms permit (after clearing a procedural background check) and locate a licensed firearms re-seller with a bit of work. There he can (perhaps) buy an authentic surplus imperial rifle for around 1,200 gp, ending up with a single-shot, break-action breach-loading rifle that misfires on a 1 and accepts all imperial-standard brass rifle cartridges. With his permit, he can also buy a case of ammo for 500 gp, containing 100 rounds of imperial-stamped rifle cartridges (approximately .44 caliber). This gear was manufactured in an imperial armory on tooling originally created by a dwarven master craftsman 300 years ago.

Or, y'know, he could just buy a longbow in the local market for 75 gp and be done with it.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

I played in a game where we had WWI era firearm technology available but I was a warforged paladin wielding a bastard sword. Despite many foes having basic pistols or even some shotgun type weapons, my character could typically close within a round and start pummeling the shooter or even sundering the gun. It helped that I took the Adamantine Body feat at 1st level though (Warforged feat that grants DR 2/adamantine).
The cost of firearms was still rather prohibitive, and the fact that you cannot really add to the damage dice, which weren't significantly better than melee weapons, without just magicking things up made them useful but not overpowering. Also, three other things contribute to them not being totally dominating. 1) Magic. Spellcasters can still sling high damage AoE spells that can cause more havoc than any easy to access firearm. 2) Feats are not really geared towards adding damage to ranged attacks, for the most part, so a melee fighter can still close and make up for a few shots suffered. 3) The range increments on firearms are typically lower than bows and crossbows, which means less accuracy over distances. While firearms compensate by being a touch attack in the first increment, that effectiveness gets nixed once the target is 70' away or so.

 

[Celebrim]

Where firearms change the dynamics of a game is the balance of power between mooks and heroes. Firearms are generally of low value to heroes, as the heroes can usually find something better to do in the average system or gain at most a little advantage from guns. But mooks on the other hand gain a huge advantage against heroes.

A party of 10th level heroes could face off against and handily defeat 300 or so hobgoblin mooks. But give those mooks firearms and the equation starts changing rapidly. The more advanced the firearms technology, the more profoundly the CR of a mook increases. Mechanics like touch attacks for example vastly favor the mooks over the heroes, as mooks can now reliably negate what is probably the single biggest advantage a hero has - AC's that allow mooks to hit only on 20's (or similarly low percentages). Armed with 20th century weaponry, the same 300 hobgoblin mooks could depending on the terrain decimate your average 10th level heroes.

I played in a game where we had WWI era firearm technology available but I was a warforged paladin wielding a bastard sword. Despite many foes having basic pistols or even some shotgun type weapons, my character could typically close within a round and start pummeling the shooter or even sundering the gun.

That is an encounter design issue. Realistic WWI era firearms include bolt action rifles with range increments of 120 feet or more that will penetrate 5mm of steel out to about 300 feet, and a rate of fire of several times per round. If you are closing the distance on that in a single round then you've either got a severe mechnical disconnect or else the DM is having riflemen never set up prepared firing positions 400 yards away precisely the way all real riflemen are trained to do. Realistic WWI era firearms also include machine guns of various sorts that effectively give you AoE attacks, and hand held anti-tank guns in the 20mm range which would rather effectively stop an elephant. Such a weapon goes right off Ken Hoods chart, but I'm guessing in his system would have a damage of around 4d8+6.

So imagine this as a realistic WWI tactical set up. The enemy force has set up in a prepared fighting position with 400 yard field of fire and they are using medium caliber bolt action rifles, and they've positioned light machine guns in firing nests so as to have interlapping fields of fire. They also have four firing teams with 20mm AT rifles space along the line. For added nastiness, in front of their position, they've strung up a network of barbed wire and anti-personnel mines. Suddenly, it doesn't really matter that the force is made up of 1st level fighters. Even if your 8th level, you are screwed. What's interesting though is that if the whole force is made up of 8th level characters, it might not be the case that the same weapons are necessarily that much more dangerous than traditional D&D weapons.

Now if you role this back toward say 18th century firearms, suddenly the balance between melee and missile shifts enough that the mook isn't nearly so favored. The reload time is such that they are likely to only get off a single shot before melee closes with them and then heroes gain the edge. But still, that's still a fairly large advantage from a volley of 20 muskets compared to 20 crossbows.

 

[sr123]

To add to the history and effectiveness of guns:

Individual guns and muskets were never more lethal or effective than melee weapons until the invention of revolvers and rifles (started being used by military starting around 1850). Surveys of battlefield casualties during the American Civil War show that up until the widespread use of rifles (1863 or so), about equal numbers of soldiers were killed by bayonettes and sabres as by guns (non-artillery).

When the longbow was invented, it could penetrate plate armor at close range, while a musket usually could not. And of course the composite bows used by the Mongols and Saracens were even deadlier. The reason infantry guns displaced bows is as people said before: guns required little training and used cheaper ammo. Remember that 99% of those in medieval armies were commoners with spears (to become bayonettes), not professional knights and soldiers.

All but the fanciest guns were matchlock, so a loaded gun had a lit match that would give itself away at night.

Armor breastplates were sold with a dent from being shot as "proof" that they could withstand a bullet at close range, hence "bulletproof". The armorer often adorned this dent dramatically.

As for fortifications vs artillery, artillery was extremely immobile, and seige strategy was to build machines on-site, where metal casting would be difficult. So while a good howitzer could dent a castle wall from beyond gun and bow range, they were not ubiquitous until much later when, among other things, transportation logistics improved.

Conversely, the tall castle walls could not support artillery because the recoil stress of firing could crumble the wall. Fortifications consequently evolved from 8m-high 1m-thick walls to 3m-high 3m-thick walls.

Basically, personal guns sucked until the invention of rifles, and officers would rather fight with their horse, breastplate, and sword.

Oh, and one can never stress enough the importance of psychological warfare: firing blanks because they are louder and brighter, soldiers walking in step into cannonfire in a single line, arrowheads on bottle rockets, and good old-fashioned ninjas setting themselves on fire to keep from being grabbed. Okay, I stole that last one from Dr McNinja.

--------------

Long story short, please please please do not have your guns deal more damage than longbows or greatswords.

Source: primarily "The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare" by T.N. Dupuy - a must-read for any anachronistic gen.

 

[Nigh Invulnerable]

Where firearms change the dynamics of a game is the balance of power between mooks and heroes. Firearms are generally of low value to heroes, as the heroes can usually find something better to do in the average system or gain at most a little advantage from guns. But mooks on the other hand gain a huge advantage against heroes.

A party of 10th level heroes could face off against and handily defeat 300 or so hobgoblin mooks. But give those mooks firearms and the equation starts changing rapidly. The more advanced the firearms technology, the more profoundly the CR of a mook increases. Mechanics like touch attacks for example vastly favor the mooks over the heroes, as mooks can now reliably negate what is probably the single biggest advantage a hero has - AC's that allow mooks to hit only on 20's (or similarly low percentages). Armed with 20th century weaponry, the same 300 hobgoblin mooks could depending on the terrain decimate your average 10th level heroes.



That is an encounter design issue. Realistic WWI era firearms include bolt action rifles with range increments of 120 feet or more that will penetrate 5mm of steel out to about 300 feet, and a rate of fire of several times per round. If you are closing the distance on that in a single round then you've either got a severe mechnical disconnect or else the DM is having riflemen never set up prepared firing positions 400 yards away precisely the way all real riflemen are trained to do. Realistic WWI era firearms also include machine guns of various sorts that effectively give you AoE attacks, and hand held anti-tank guns in the 20mm range which would rather effectively stop an elephant. Such a weapon goes right off Ken Hoods chart, but I'm guessing in his system would have a damage of around 4d8+6.

So imagine this as a realistic WWI tactical set up. The enemy force has set up in a prepared fighting position with 400 yard field of fire and they are using medium caliber bolt action rifles, and they've positioned light machine guns in firing nests so as to have interlapping fields of fire. They also have four firing teams with 20mm AT rifles space along the line. For added nastiness, in front of their position, they've strung up a network of barbed wire and anti-personnel mines. Suddenly, it doesn't really matter that the force is made up of 1st level fighters. Even if your 8th level, you are screwed. What's interesting though is that if the whole force is made up of 8th level characters, it might not be the case that the same weapons are necessarily that much more dangerous than traditional D&D weapons.

Now if you role this back toward say 18th century firearms, suddenly the balance between melee and missile shifts enough that the mook isn't nearly so favored. The reload time is such that they are likely to only get off a single shot before melee closes with them and then heroes gain the edge. But still, that's still a fairly large advantage from a volley of 20 muskets compared to 20 crossbows.

Some clarification, while the guns were more advanced, we were playing largely in an urban setting, so most encounters took place within buildings, sewers, or small alleyways, so the range was somewhat negated for firearm users. That said, yes, if we were talking about open ground and whatnot, my warforged would've been chewed up pretty quickly. He always carried some kind of firearm himself though, in case of just what you were positing.

 

[Derren]

Part of the OP's issue was making advanced firearms (which has a very specific meaning in PF) available at reasonable prices

What exactly are "advanced firearms" in Pathfinder?

One thing you should not forget, there is a huge disconnect between how firearms worked in real life and how they work in D20 games.
In real life the advantages were either the ease of use and more easy logistics (doesn't apply to heroes) or the ability to kill enemies at range. This ability is flat out missing in D20 games because of the escalating HP higher level characters and the usually rather close ranges in which D&D combat happens. This ensures that higher level melee characters can easily close the distance to a firearm using enemy without being killed or even seriously wounded.
So in the end, while advanced or even modern firearms were certainly not "balanced" in real life compared to swords, they can be when using D20 rules.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

What exactly are "advanced firearms" in Pathfinder?

One thing you should not forget, there is a huge disconnect between how firearms worked in real life and how they work in D20 games.
In real life the advantages were either the ease of use and more easy logistics (doesn't apply to heroes) or the ability to kill enemies at range. This ability is flat out missing in D20 games because of the escalating HP higher level characters and the usually rather close ranges in which D&D combat happens. This ensures that higher level melee characters can easily close the distance to a firearm using enemy without being killed or even seriously wounded.
So in the end, while advanced or even modern firearms were certainly not "balanced" in real life compared to swords, they can be when using D20 rules.

Very true in d20 Modern. I once played a martial artist with a speed of 40 feet and Flying Kick. Unless we were fighting in a big empty field, I could close with the bad guys in one round, then clobber them. (See my sig.)

But you can make massed "mooks" dangerous still, simply because focus fire is very dangerous (especially with lots of range), and if you put them on hills or up trees, it becomes much harder for melee guys to get to them. Ironically, Pathfinder rules for making guns awesome at short range is a "hidden nerf" on the NPC side, because it encourages them to get within charge range of their melee opponents.

I scored my first PC kill in d20 Modern that way. (Felt a little bad for the player, as he was playing a low-combat Charismatic fellow. He tried to rush across a 100 foot cleared field to the generators or whatever the NPCs were using for cover. The attackers didn't even have to take range increment penalties (a typical rifle range increment is 80 feet in Modern), because the PC had closed the gap just enough!)

 

[Kurtomatic]

What exactly are "advanced firearms" in Pathfinder?

One thing you should not forget, there is a huge disconnect between how firearms worked in real life and how they work in D20 games.

Agreed.

Pathfinder divides firearms into two categories with slightly different rules. In general, muzzle-loading guns are early, and chamber-loading guns are advanced...

Early Firearms: When firing an early firearm, the attack resolves against the target’s touch AC when the target is within the first range increment of the weapon. Unlike other projectile weapons, early firearms have a maximum range of five range increments.

Early firearms are muzzle-loaded, requiring bullets or pellets and black powder to be rammed down the muzzle. If an early firearm has multiple barrels, each barrel must be loaded separately. It is a standard action to load each barrel of a one-handed early firearm and a full-round action to load each barrel of a two-handed early firearm.

Advanced Firearms: Advanced firearms resolve their attacks against touch AC when the target is within the first five range increments. Advanced firearms have a maximum range of 10 range increments.

Advanced firearms are chamber-loaded. It is a move action to load a one-handed or two-handed advanced firearm to its full capacity.

My personal hangup here is the attack vs. touch AC (which puts me in plenty good company).

 

[Squire James]

My favorite gun house-rule creates what I call a "gun AC" that is the average of normal AC and touch AC. Then I allow this to apply to guns at all ranges. This means armor is not useless, but guns still have some armor-piercing effects. Mooks are dangerous but not quite to the extent they would be with touch attacks. To tell you the truth, I am thinking of applying the "gun AC" for all touch attacks but I'm not sure how bad this would make it for wizards. Still, I dislike "1 checks" for attack rolls unless there is an overwhelming power difference, and this helps solve it.

 

[sr123]

My personal hangup here is the attack vs. touch AC

Agreed. As I noted in my earlier loooong post, knight/officer breastplates in the age of muskets were "literally" bulletproof. If anything, because the muzzle velocity is so high, guns should attack vs flatfooted.

Rapiers have 10 times the armor-piercing capability of muskets. But I can rant about the patheticness of sword use in virtually every fantasy video game and rpg (except, oddly enough, Star Wars) all day.