Firearms

My goblins that use crude pistols have distilled, crystallized, nitroglycerine as the replacement for black powder. I.e. "pyroglycerine".

Risky....

Wikipedia said:

In its pure form, nitroglycerin is a contact explosive, with physical shock causing it to explode, and it degrades over time to even more unstable forms. This makes nitroglycerin highly dangerous to transport or use. In its undiluted form, it is one of the world's most powerful explosives, comparable to the more recently developed RDX and PETN.

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Kobold Avenger said:

A DM could also rule that since blackpowder firearms have been going off for a few rounds in the same general area, the entire area is now obscured with smoke.

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another side affect would be the smell... in my younger days, I had fun blasting away with some replica muzzle-loading firearms I have. That 'rotten egg' sulfer smell permeates everything!

This is what generally happens—you start talking about firearms in D&D, and suddenly people are concerned with "realism" in a game where other weapons, armor, creatures, settings, etc. are inherently unrealistic.

SkidAce said:

My goblins that use crude pistols have distilled, crystallized, nitroglycerine as the replacement for black powder. I.e. "pyroglycerine".

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The best known explosives in my campaign world has the stability of raw nitroglycerin (or less) and the explosive power of black powder.

The goblins have on several occasions tried to weaponize it, including inventing firearms. However, in battle the tendency is for one spell or accident to set off one or more soldiers stored powder, which then sets of a chain reaction that decimates the entire force. As a result, firearms are widely considered something of a joke, and attempts to weaponize explosives in battle are a parable for military ineptness and foolishness.

Azzy said:

This is what generally happens—you start talking about firearms in D&D, and suddenly people are concerned with "realism" in a game where other weapons, armor, creatures, settings, etc. are inherently unrealistic.

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I've never really understood the point of this statement and others like it. What are you trying to demonstrate?

He’s demonstrating the fact that people only ever care about realism when firearms are involved. Nobody cares about whether plate armor is actually only 1 AC more protective than half plate. Nobody cares about how protective armor is against an actual long bow, or the fact that while plate armor may have an effect at stopping an arrow from a longbow, chain mail had no effect whatsoever. So if we wanted to be REAL realistic, then longbows would ignore all armor that wasn’t a metal sheet of a certain thickness.

But someone mentions firearms and all of a sudden we’re like “Oh, black powder! Oh, the smell! Oh, the historical accuracy of weapons of the time! Oh, it’s so over powered! Oh, it’s no different from a bow in terms of damage! Oh, we have to make it realistic or we can’t have it in our game!”

It’s bupkiss. It’s faux outrage. Nobody really cares whether or not it’s realistic, they just don’t Ike your modern mixing with their fantasy, so they come up with ways to nerf it or make it complicated or otherwise make it not palatable for their players.

tglassy said:

He’s demonstrating the fact that people only ever care about realism when firearms are involved. Nobody cares about whether plate armor is actually only 1 AC more protective than half plate. Nobody cares about how protective armor is against an actual long bow, or the fact that while plate armor may have an effect at stopping an arrow from a longbow, chain mail had no effect whatsoever. So if we wanted to be REAL realistic, then longbows would ignore all armor that wasn’t a metal sheet of a certain thickness.

But someone mentions firearms and all of a sudden we’re like “Oh, black powder! Oh, the smell! Oh, the historical accuracy of weapons of the time! Oh, it’s so over powered! Oh, it’s no different from a bow in terms of damage! Oh, we have to make it realistic or we can’t have it in our game!”

It’s bupkiss. It’s faux outrage. Nobody really cares whether or not it’s realistic, they just don’t Ike your modern mixing with their fantasy, so they come up with ways to nerf it or make it complicated or otherwise make it not palatable for their players.

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Or they are familiar with the effects of guns, and not familiar with bows and plate mail.

Just giving "some" of them the benefit of doubt.

SkidAce said:

Or they are familiar with the effects of guns, and not familiar with bows and plate mail.

Just giving "some" of them the benefit of doubt.

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Being familiar with one and not the other doesn't really let someone off the hook for feeling guns need a massive injection of realism when so much else about the game is just fine with a light sprinkling of realism. It's also worth noting that this injection of realism almost always results in guns being nerfed so hard they become inviable, or just downright inferior, as a primary weapon option.

Regardless of the actual reason for it (and it certainly may vary beyond just a desire to keep effective guns out of the game), guns are one of the very few topics where bringing them up spawns a staunch realism debate. The only other topics I've seen that create such a debate are the inspirational healing and damage on a miss mechanics.

tglassy said:

He’s demonstrating the fact that people only ever care about realism when firearms are involved.

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Economics? Demographics and population? Geography? Realistic weather patterns? Feudalism? Army sizes? You've never heard arguments about realism applied to these things? You've not been around that long.

No one rants about the fact that studded leather armor shouldn't exist? Or that chain mail should be just called mail? Or that what's called a 'longsword' in D&D is actually an arming sword? Perhaps I should dig out my house rules for you if you think things like that don't bother people.

Nobody cares about whether plate armor is actually only 1 AC more protective than half plate. Nobody cares about how protective armor is against an actual long bow, or the fact that while plate armor may have an effect at stopping an arrow from a longbow, chain mail had no effect whatsoever. So if we wanted to be REAL realistic, then longbows would ignore all armor that wasn’t a metal sheet of a certain thickness.

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Believe me, there are people that care about these things. Ever played GURPS? Chain mail has multiple AC's depending on the type of weapon used against it. Heck, there are bits and pieces of this in the original 1e AD&D rules, where different weapons got bonuses or penalties against certain types of armor.

But someone mentions firearms and all of a sudden we’re like “Oh, black powder! Oh, the smell! Oh, the historical accuracy of weapons of the time! Oh, it’s so over powered! Oh, it’s no different from a bow in terms of damage! Oh, we have to make it realistic or we can’t have it in our game!”

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This is just normal nerdiness.

It’s bupkiss. It’s faux outrage. Nobody really cares whether or not it’s realistic, they just don’t Ike your modern mixing with their fantasy, so they come up with ways to nerf it or make it complicated or otherwise make it not palatable for their players.

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I don't buy it. I think quite obviously they do, or most of them do care about whether it's realistic. What I suspect is these kinds of arguments are just proxy arguments for the claim, "You shouldn't care whether it is realistic, because I don't care if it is realistic." Incidentally, I've seen arguments from realism go the other direction with firearms as well - that they should be more lethal - because the writer couldn't swallow the idea of a gun only doing say 1d10 damage, and arguments break out citing things like the infamous 1986 Miami-Dade shootout (among other things) as to whether or not it was realistic for a person to be struck multiple times by a bullet and still be fighting.

But beyond that, I don't really see why there needs to be a rule about everything being equally 'realistic', whatever that means applied to something that isn't real. Fantasy and science fiction always have conceits in them, which the audience is expected to accept, that a certain magical thing or a certain bit of technology works. That's the conceit of the genre or the story. So, dragons can fly - axiomatically - because it is fantasy. However, outside of the conceits it's typical to try to be reasonably 'realistic', or at least 'believable' so as to not demand too much suspension of disbelief and so stretch the audiences into incredulity. RPGs are no different. It's not unreasonable to expect the audience to accept flying dragons, but still expect that something shared between the fantasy world and the real world - like say firearms - behave in a familiar and plausible manner. Firearms are real; dragons are not real. Why should we apply any sort of identical standard of 'realism' to them in the first place?

Celebrim said:

I've never really understood the point of this statement and others like it. What are you trying to demonstrate?

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I need not demonstrate it when this thread does an excellent job for me. I'm simply pointing out the inherent irrationality of trying to assert hyper-"realism" (or, more often, a false perception of realism) on the mechanics of firearms in a game the eschews such realism on other weapons or other aspects of the game. A nice example has been provided here in wanting firearms to be deafening despite similarly loud sounds from spells not being so. This all typically leads to bad game design that is punishing, kuldgy, and/or unecessary.

Instead, rules need to be playable, in keeping with the other rules of the game, and not add undue or unnecessary complexity.