Gunpowder, fantasy and you

[Brutalskars]

"It could be lightly integrated. Firearms are distinct weapons with their own characteristics. Setting impact is light but basic economic factors are accounted for and some impact on society and fortifications, armies, etc. is considered" -Marcq

Yes. See we found that we were able to use the firearms both in a colonial way and in other ways. In one part of our campaign a halflinf sniper pinned down the group using a +2 "Ultra-Keen" Flintlock, basically had a critical range of 18-20 x3. And he pegged two of the NPC soldiers that were with the party, killing both.
There were plenty of times guns were outclassed, one instance was a human captain bragged of his men's rifles, double barrel flintlocks. They were attacked at twilight along with the party. The enemy was gnolls armed with composite short bows with poisoned arrows. The poison was a paralytic.

Twenty riflemen did not stand a chance against a rabble of about 12 gnolls that caught them by suprise. The heros hardly won the fight. One of the gnolls was actually shot.


Tactics changed a lot in our world. Knights generally carried a preloaded pistol with them and sometimes a blunderbuss and would ride into battle discharging the blunderbuss instead of using a lance. Then they would switch to longswords.
A dwarven gatling gun of sorts was in one game, the party took it and used it to keep back an ogre advance of about twenty or so ogres. No ogres died from it, but it made them halt the charge and take over while NPC riflemen got ready and swordsmen lined up.


Guns caused combat to evolve. It actually caused healers to rethink their efforts. Because the use of guns caused men to drop from a volley at close range, so healers were closer to battles. More combat medic like, instead of a cleric being a good fighter clerics focused on being very hard to kill and healing comrades.

 

[Haltherrion]

Also, I never said anything about there being a mysterious lack of gunpowder use outside of guns.

Okay, I'll take your word on it. I don't recall saying you did but if you read it that way, I apologize.

I've been dealing with multiple, different objections to my posts from different people. Some have argued firearms have little change, some have argued there is nothing wrong with reskinning other weapons as firearms, others have made it clear that they have put some thought into these impacts, others tell me (I think) I'm not being imaginative enough if I don't have them. My posts sometimes address more than one objection and its hard to keep the crossfire straight

Guns are not more advanced than other D&D weapons. Historically speaking, they all existed alongside each other for centuries.

Certainly, few weapon systems immediately replace another. But during this period of co-existence, they rapidly evolved from a somewhat ineffective peripheral system to the core weapon systems in armies. Were the first guns more advanced? Arguable. Were the latter ones more advanced? Seems clear to me. Maybe we mean different things when we say advanced.

Ultimately, a gun and a bow really are not very different. The physical principles behind them are very different, but they are nothing more than two different ways of throwing a projectile at an enemy at lethal speed. Nothing more, and nothing less. Why should they have different rules (beyond the normal rules differences, at least) when their basic effect is so similar?

Given that on Earth no one uses bows for military or law enforcement purposes anymore and they use guns, it seems there must be some differences between the two worthy of note.

To further address the point that "we need different rules for more advanced weapons", I have to ask how is a laser weapon any different than a Brilliant Energy weapon.

Always thought Brilliant energy weapons were analogs to light sabers myself. Also thought that in 3.5 they ignored armor. That's pretty different from a sword. Perhaps I recall differently but in any case, not sure what your point is. The brilliant energy weapon is treated very differently than a sword. Not sure why it matters whether it ought to be treated differently than a light sabre (assuming that is the better analog than laser weapon) but if you really did mean laser weapon, seems like in Star Wars blasters (laser weapon standin) were different from light sabres so sure, treat them differently

As for your reasons... I've done nothing but try to point out why I don't accept those reasons, and why I don't share them.

I feel I've done nothing but try to clearly explain where and why I view firearms as I do. At this point, I think we'll have to simply note the differences and move on.

Eberron doesn't have guns...

Oopsie. Never read it; thought someone said it did.

And honestly, even if guns were thrown in without anything being "addressed" I don't think it would be a problem for the game.

Here's how I think it would be a problem with the gamers I play with:

1. If I did not treat firearms sufficiently differently, each use or each time the setting did not account for them (say in castle design), my players would have a reasonable chance of starting a discussion on why it should be different. That's wasted session time in my book.
2. A subset of my players would question my judgement as a referee in other areas if I ignored things about firearms that they thought were obvious.

Some folks may not care about either of these points or may not have these issues with their players so YMMV.

 

[Haltherrion]

Guns caused combat to evolve. It actually caused healers to rethink their efforts. Because the use of guns caused men to drop from a volley at close range, so healers were closer to battles. More combat medic like, instead of a cleric being a good fighter clerics focused on being very hard to kill and healing comrades.

Bravo! No doubt some suspect I must have paid you to say that

Put another way, you modeled guns in a differentiated enough way that they caused changes in the behavior of your players. This is a microcosm of earth history where they also caused substantial changes.

To turn it around, it rubs me wrong if they are modeled in a way that doesn't cause changes. But that's my view, others have made it perfectly clear they don't see it that way and have provided lengthy rebuttals

By "rubs me wrong" I mean I wouldn't do it in my settings and I would avoid such games, not that I insist anyone must differentiate. I'm just explaining how I see it.

 

[Brutalskars]

Well. I have to say, the changes I saw in my group were quite favorable. I saw reckless strategy cast aside once they realized how every weapon, every spell and every terrain had some sort of affect.

So, guns should enhance your story, not debilitate it.

I also dislike making a weapon that is simply for aesthetics. Coming from someone that has studied martial combat both oriental and European middle aged; all weapons were designed for certain tasks. I believe that like what 4th edition did to make differences between many of the weapons was useful, useful to the point I stole 4th edition weapons for my 3.5 games and got help from my players and other DMs in designing these things at least in a basic way.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Guns need to have dramatic changes on a setting.

You know, not like literal magic.

I'm sorry, this is just too much of a disconnect for me. You're saying that guns need to have a super huge big dramatic change on the setting, but the fact that clerics can literally talk to god doesn't.

 

[Brutalskars]

Well, would they make a massive change on a setting? That is up to the setting to decide, players and the DM, mostly the DM.

Who are we too say how much firearms would change a fantasy world that has magic, fireballs, healing spells and the like. I hardly believe rifles provide a massive change, but cannons begin to scale a big change, because giantkin and dragons suddenly have a bit more to fear.

Magic would help nullify the drastic-ness of the implementation. If I can use healing magic, no need to worry about the problems from the civil war with amputation being needed so often, because it will not be infected.

 

[Orius]

Well, I'm going to test guns in D&D for myself. I'm starting up a 3.5 pirate campaign, and I felt that the flavor just had to have some guns:

As part of the pirate crew, everyone starts with 1 pistol and enough powder and ammo for 20 shots. This is a bonus to your regular gear. Medium-sized pistols do 1d10 damage, have a crit multiplier of x3, a range increment of 50 ft, weigh 3lbs. and do Piercing damage. They are considered Simple weapons for members of the pirate crews.

Just took the stats out of the DMG really, and allowed Rapid Reload to be applied to guns as well as crossbows. It shouldn't mess things up too badly.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Bravo! No doubt some suspect I must have paid you to say that

Put another way, you modeled guns in a differentiated enough way that they caused changes in the behavior of your players. This is a microcosm of earth history where they also caused substantial changes.

To turn it around, it rubs me wrong if they are modeled in a way that doesn't cause changes. But that's my view, others have made it perfectly clear they don't see it that way and have provided lengthy rebuttals

By "rubs me wrong" I mean I wouldn't do it in my settings and I would avoid such games, not that I insist anyone must differentiate. I'm just explaining how I see it.

Heh - I just went with a period where guns were around, and had been for a century or two. The changes had already happened. (I like the Reformation/Counter-Reformation, and the religious strife that accompanied it.)

For my setting I had magic returning, or at the least getting stronger - and that was fueling cultural changes, most particularly feeding into the religious strife of the period (I folded it in with the indulgences that so irked Martin Luther - wizards could be 'licensed' for either worthy deeds or a wheelbarrow full of money, with a License being a limited form of indulgence). Over much of the world magic had stopped functioning roughly a thousand years before play began. With the weakening of the Church magic returned.

Curiously, in the Orthodox and few remaining pagan lands magic was still accepted, and still worked. (In the real world Albertus Magnus is a saint on the Orthodox calendar.) The Orthodox faith accepted magic as a gift from god, and many of the priests, both cloistered and clerical, are either wizards or multiclassed wizard-clerics.

I have a lengthy table on how various faiths feel about magic, the presence of hedge magic, and what punishments, if any, are common for the crime of magic use.

For that matter I have a table of 'what can breed with what'....

The Auld Grump, prone to the creation of tables and charts.

 

[Phaezen]

This article from the Nevermet Blog has some interesting thoughts on Firearms in fantasy. I am particularly interested to see the second part with some firearms for 4e.

From the comments:

It is probably not giving too much away to say that (A) I made firearms encounter weapons, and (B) I assigned them levels based on the damage they do. I like simple solutions and this seemed a reasonable course of action, a plausible way of balancing a number of issues.

 

[Haltherrion]

I'm sorry, this is just too much of a disconnect for me. You're saying that guns need to have a super huge big dramatic change on the setting, but the fact that clerics can literally talk to god doesn't.

Well, no, I'm not saying firearms and gunpowder have to have a "huge super dramatic change" on the setting nor that it has to be a bigger change than for gods or magic. But it should have some change on the setting.