Firearms: Yes or No

Ibram · May 23, 2004

I'm currious about the availabilty of black powder weapons in peoples games. I know that there are some people out there who allow them, and others who forbid them. But I curious as to how many fall into each camp.

Personaly I've run, and played in, games with and without Firearms and I've never realy seen them as undermining experience.

Wombat · May 23, 2004

I always find it amusing how people like having the plate armour and other late Medieval/Renaissance trappings, but dislike the gunpowder arms -- the two go hand-in-gauntlet.

My next campaign is set up specifically to have a 16th century feel to it, a New World setting, etc., so there are matchlock gunpowder weapons. Such weapons are finiky, slow to load, not terribly accurate, but they will have a large Critical Threat range.

I have run other games in the past with such weapons. A handful of players will pick up a musket or even a pistol, and they turn into fire-and-forget weapons. Doesn't really impact the flow of the game at all.

Fenes · May 23, 2004

I don't allow firearms in games I DM. If I want to play with firearms then I play modern games, not D&D.

Thanee · May 23, 2004

I like black powder weapons in the Warhammer world, but not in D&D.

It doesn't fit my image of Sword & Sorcery.

Bye
Thanee

Darklone · May 23, 2004

Sometimes I run games with blackpowder... but people tend to overestimate them. Range , potential damage and accuracy of e.g. 15th century guns were much worse than a crossbow or longbow...

But at least you shocked the enemy and his horses

adwyn · May 23, 2004

I have long allowed primitive black powder weapons. In themselves they are not unballancing at all. Slow to load, relatively short ranged compared to high quality bows and crossbows, and with the ever present unreliability they are not popular choices. The draw back is every character wanting to have access to the cask of gunpowder to use as a bomb.

kamosa · May 23, 2004

In a party with magic: no

I tend to think about this issue in terms of the respective roles the players take in solving adventures. You have the fighter that melee battles, you have the tactical fighter in the thief and you have the healer and support charcter in the priest. In this world view, the wizard is your distance damage expert. They bring the damage from a distance.

For this reason, I wouldn't bring in firearms. Either they are way to powerful and magic user is stuck watching the unlimited fire character take their spot in the sun, or magic is way better and the firearms character is stuck loading their weapon while everyone else solves it.

Just seems like a bad fit party balance wise to D&D.

Humanophile · May 23, 2004

Darklone said:
Sometimes I run games with blackpowder... but people tend to overestimate them. Range , potential damage and accuracy of e.g. 15th century guns were much worse than a crossbow or longbow...

But at least you shocked the enemy and his horses

This actually raises a question I've been wondering for a while; according to the rules, firearms are a waste of effort. The only reason to use one is an anachronistic woody on the part of the player.

Yet, firearms developed in the real world. I'm sure that if firearms were in all ways inferior to the alternatives, nobody would waste the time and effort improving them to the point where they were a viable alternative; it's not like people back then knew where the technology could go or had anachronistic fantasies of their own.

So could someone tell me what benefits firearms had to overcome all their disadvantages? Fragile, expensive, inaccurate, unreliable, slow... what made anyone think these blasted things were worth improving to where they are now?

MonsterMash · May 23, 2004

I don't usually have firearms in D&D.

Reasons that firearms took over from bows and crossbows. Inital reason on bows is firearms (and crossbows) require less training and less reliance on physical strength (though crossbows without a windlass are tough to use for a prolonged time). Things that occur with both are firearms are easier to mass produce, provide a bigger impact per pound of weapon and ammunition is potentially lighter.

Raven Crowking · May 23, 2004

IMC, the dwarves are the only ones who have any kind of firearms. Known as "Dragons of the Deep," they are cannons used to defend dwarven citadels from other underground races. There may be some Dragons pointed toward the outside world, but these are rare indeed as they (1) make hiding the locations of dwarven citadels difficult and (2) most of the things dwarves worry about come from below, not above.

As far as hand weapons go, I'm considering it.

Side Note: I almost quit playing D&D with 2nd Ed AD&D because it wasn't capable of doing the things I wanted (specifically, running a game where modern people are transported to a fantasy world, ala Narnia or Fionavar Tapestry). You couldn't easily stat the effects of things like disturbing a hornet's nest, so people tended not to worry about such mundane concerns. I would look through my Dictionary of Imaginary Places, and nine places out of ten would be difficult to set a game in. It bothered me.

With 3.0/3.5, you can stat anything you like, and make it involved in an adventure. World with trains? Bring it on. Guns? No problem. War-Forged Titans? Hey, that's okay too.

Level progression is a bit fast for my tastes, and the basic version of the game has too much of a "video game/Magic the Gathering" feel for my tastes, but that's really easy to fix.

Raven Crowking