cmad1977
Hero
A player of mine is using this in my Curse of Strahd campaign. It seems really well built and I think it’s interesting that it’s a fighter subclass.
Firearms
A player of mine is using this in my Curse of Strahd campaign. It seems really well built and I think it’s interesting that it’s a fighter subclass.
jasper
Rotten DM
So me historical experts taking damage from a fire ball. Most of the armour stuff in the game is bs too. Do like them don't let them in your campaign, or don't use them.
Psyzhran2357
First Post
I assume the reason this was not implemented RAW is because sitting out a turn doing nothing isn't fun. The way things are, you're at least getting a chance to get a hit in every turn.I suggest musket 2 actions to reload, pistol 1 action to reload (but make the pistol a Light weapon), and increase musket damage to 2d8. A musket ball was a massive chunk of lead you definitely did not want to get hit by, but definitely not a practical skirmish weapon beyond the first shot! To be kind to high level warriors I'd let them use 1 attack for a reload action, so a Fighter-20 could potentially shoot a musket twice in 6 seconds!
Edit: And if you want heavy crossbows resembling historical ones they should be at least as slow as the musket, and do a lot more than 1d10 damage, likewise - I use 2d10 at short range (unlike a musket ball x-bow bolt effectiveness drops off fast with range). The 5e stats make them more like (slightly less) light crossbows.
Besides, the only classes that can use the DMG Renaissance firearms to their full potential are Rogues who took Weapon Master to get proficiency, and maybe Tempest, War, and Death Clerics using Divine Strike tk shore up the damage? Jacking up the reload time would punsih even them for using those firearms, which are pretty suboptimal for everybody else. Sure they have a bigger damage die, but almodt everybody who can use them also wants to use Extr
a Attack, and the ammo is way more expensive than it's worth.
Cap'n Kobold
Hero
I generally find that the greatest issue with introducing (balanced) firearms to a setting is rarely the firearm itself.
- Its making gunpowder readily available to the PCs that tends to have worse knock-on effects than just reskinning a hand crossbow.
- Its making gunpowder readily available to the PCs that tends to have worse knock-on effects than just reskinning a hand crossbow.
Well for a renaissance setting the weapons need to be a lot cheaper, and count as simple weapons. PCs should be using a brace of pistols, and I wouldn't expect a PC to carry a musket, it's more something you'd see an enemy squad carrying.
Scott Graves
First Post
Yeah... black powder is dangerous stuff to play with. However a DM should require them to spend a lot of time studying how to blow things up. It's not as easy as setting a keg of powder in the middle of a bridge and setting it off.
David Howery
Hero
The only time I ever used firearms was in a 2E campaign, where the PCs ended up with some wheellock pistols after a sojourn into Realmspace. I had them pretty simple... 1D4 damage, ignore armor at close range, 1 shot per round (considering that a 2E round was a full minute, reloading inside that space was reasonable). Just to simplify things, I had the PCs buy 'cartridges' (those paper/linen things they used back in the day) just like buying arrows or bolts, sold in packs of 20 just like them. Not incredibly accurate, but it did the job. Of course, different D&D systems will have to change it around (IIRC, a 5E round is 6 seconds, which is incredibly fast for reloading)…
Satyrn
First Post
When I converted the Borderlands video game guns into D&D, I wound up refluffling the manufacturers into legendary dwarven smiths. Doing that, and wanting to keep gunpowder out of the setting for reasons similar to what @Cap'n Kobold mentioned, made me rework how the guns actually fuction so that they were more dwarvish than real-world guns.
I wound up calling them "Dwarfbows" and they are built with the typical dwarf's blend of clockwork gears and magical enhancement. When the trigger is pulled, the clockwork gears swing a miniature hammer, the hammer strikes a dart loaded into the launch chamber, and the force of this strike is magically amplified, launching the dart with lethal power.
And instead of firing with a bang, they sound like a hammer striking an anvil. They fire with a clang.
I wound up calling them "Dwarfbows" and they are built with the typical dwarf's blend of clockwork gears and magical enhancement. When the trigger is pulled, the clockwork gears swing a miniature hammer, the hammer strikes a dart loaded into the launch chamber, and the force of this strike is magically amplified, launching the dart with lethal power.
And instead of firing with a bang, they sound like a hammer striking an anvil. They fire with a clang.
Kobold Avenger
Legend
I'm fine with having a round or 2 sitting out reloading, there's a reason pistols were often used with swords and muskets had bayonets. I want to encourage such things.
LuisCarlos17f
Legend
Don't forget firearms can be used by enemies, and a goblin with a rifle from the top of a tree is a higher challenge and it XPs reward should be different.
When we talk about firearms and d20 I say the "Cobretti effect" because in the movie "Cobra" Brigitte Nielsen's character couldn't face night slasher but only to hide and run away like in a survival horror game, but Sylvester Stallone with enough weapons, and ammo, could kill all the members of the New Dawn cult.
This isn't only about gunpowder, also we have to talk about crossbows what can reload itself. The biopunk tech, machines by living tissues are canon in Athas, Dark Sun, by the halflings (rhul-thaun) lifeshape tech. Do you remember the tyranid weapons from Warhammer 40.000 or the yuuzhan vongs from Star Wars legends? In the real life the pistol shrimp can kill "firing bubbles". Let's imagine spellcaster using reverse engineering to create a weapon like the gristle gun in the Chinese restaurant scene from the movie "ExistEnZ".
Players and DM create their homebred countermeasures against firearms, for example a little piece of ectoplasm to block a canon, illusory magic like the equivalent of smoke grenades, or summoning swarns. In D&D some supernatural factions (dragons, giants, lord feys, sentient undeads, clerchy of war gods) don't want to allow them.
When we talk about firearms and d20 I say the "Cobretti effect" because in the movie "Cobra" Brigitte Nielsen's character couldn't face night slasher but only to hide and run away like in a survival horror game, but Sylvester Stallone with enough weapons, and ammo, could kill all the members of the New Dawn cult.
This isn't only about gunpowder, also we have to talk about crossbows what can reload itself. The biopunk tech, machines by living tissues are canon in Athas, Dark Sun, by the halflings (rhul-thaun) lifeshape tech. Do you remember the tyranid weapons from Warhammer 40.000 or the yuuzhan vongs from Star Wars legends? In the real life the pistol shrimp can kill "firing bubbles". Let's imagine spellcaster using reverse engineering to create a weapon like the gristle gun in the Chinese restaurant scene from the movie "ExistEnZ".
Players and DM create their homebred countermeasures against firearms, for example a little piece of ectoplasm to block a canon, illusory magic like the equivalent of smoke grenades, or summoning swarns. In D&D some supernatural factions (dragons, giants, lord feys, sentient undeads, clerchy of war gods) don't want to allow them.
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