Guns in a fantasy setting

[mmadsen]

Warhammer 40K has a great system that is mimicked very well in the Pathfinder Ultimate Combat system Wounds and Vigor. It makes your average adventurer slightly more powerful than the regular commoner, but then what is all that experience really good for if it's not going to make you slightly better than the average person?

I don't think an experienced gun-fighter should be slightly better than the average person in a gun fight. He should stand head and shoulders above the average person in a gun fight. He just shouldn't do it by shrugging off gun shots.

If you didn't know how D&D worked, but you knew that a 4th-level character was supposed to be a hero, you wouldn't immediately define him as able to take four times as many bullets, +20% accuracy, etc.

He would be awesome by almost always hitting, even while shooting blindingly fast and getting shot at. Ordinary city-slickers might have a 1-in-20 chance of hitting, while he'd have a 19-in 20 chance of hitting.

 

[Derren]

D&D is not really a good system for guns, no matter which area (as are most other systems with HP).

In order to keep melee and ranged weapons balanced D&D "nerfs" the big advantages ranged weapons had, namely the ability to kill at range. It does that by reducing the effective range of ranged weapons and reduce its killing power because of HP bloat.

It is pretty much impossible at "not low" level to kill an enemy before he has a chance to engage in melee. And at such a short range having a long reload time is especially crippling.

So unless you want your cowboys to club and stab each other to death most of the time you should look for a non D20 system.

If you want to add them anyway I suggest you make them different to bows/crossbows by useability and not by damage.
In 4E that would mean
Guns: Simple
Crossbows: Martial
Bows: Superior

In 3E
Guns: Simple
Crosbow: Martial
Bow: Exotic

I don't think I'd consider it derailing. Your point:

The main reason I've avoided allowing firearms altogether in my games, is simply because the lessons of history. Historically, advancements in firearms pretty much ended the effectiveness of metal armor. [...] Firearms also ended the middle ages, so I feel that any campaign using firearms is at least pre-victorian if not renaissance.​

It wasn't firearms per se that ended the Middle Ages; it was cannons, capable of bringing down castles. In a D&D fantasy world, it's not clear that cannons would play that role.

Also, the late Middle Ages, when knights wore head-to-toe plate armor, had plenty of early guns, which eventually pushed armor toward much thicker (heavier) plates covering less of the body. D&D's combat system may not model this well, but there are hundreds of years of guns overlapping with swords and armor.

I wouldn't even say that cannons ended the middle ages. It was generally the ability of the common man to defeat knights, be it with guns, cannons or pike formations or other armor piercing weapons.
About the plate armor, the full plate which we now associate with knights was actually only invented as counter for guns and were generally considered to be bulletproof (That term was actually invented for plate armor as new suits of plate armor were fired at once as proof that bullets could not penetrate it).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

About the plate armor, the full plate which we now associate with knights was actually only invented as counter for guns and were generally considered to be bulletproof (That term was actually invented for plate armor as new suits of plate armor were fired at once as proof that bullets could not penetrate it).

Saw a demo of that once. Very enlightening.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

D&D is not really a good system for guns, no matter which area (as are most other systems with HP).

In order to keep melee and ranged weapons balanced D&D "nerfs" the big advantages ranged weapons had, namely the ability to kill at range. It does that by reducing the effective range of ranged weapons and reduce its killing power because of HP bloat.

It is pretty much impossible at "not low" level to kill an enemy before he has a chance to engage in melee. And at such a short range having a long reload time is especially crippling.

So unless you want your cowboys to club and stab each other to death most of the time you should look for a non D20 system.

If you want to add them anyway I suggest you make them different to bows/crossbows by useability and not by damage.
In 4E that would mean
Guns: Simple
Crossbows: Martial
Bows: Superior

In 3E
Guns: Simple
Crosbow: Martial
Bow: Exotic



I wouldn't even say that cannons ended the middle ages. It was generally the ability of the common man to defeat knights, be it with guns, cannons or pike formations or other armor piercing weapons.
About the plate armor, the full plate which we now associate with knights was actually only invented as counter for guns and were generally considered to be bulletproof (That term was actually invented for plate armor as new suits of plate armor were fired at once as proof that bullets could not penetrate it).

My only disagreement is that crossbows are simple. I have never seen anybody who, having used a gun at all, could not figure out how a crossbow works.

For my game I run with:
Crossbows - Simple
Guns - Martial (which will change when the snaphaunce and flintlock come into common use - they become Simple.)
Bows - Martial
Longbows - Exotic. (If you want to train a longbowman, start with his grandfather....)

The crossbow was actually more effective against armor than a gun. I don't know where gamers gt the idea that armor would not stop an archaic firearm.

The Auld Grump

 

[mmadsen]

I wouldn't even say that cannons ended the middle ages. It was generally the ability of the common man to defeat knights, be it with guns, cannons or pike formations or other armor piercing weapons.

Cannons ended feudalism by allowing a single wealthy king to knock down the castles of all the lords beneath him and thus centralize power.

About the plate armor, the full plate which we now associate with knights was actually only invented as counter for guns and were generally considered to be bulletproof (That term was actually invented for plate armor as new suits of plate armor were fired at once as proof that bullets could not penetrate it).

Full plate was not devised specifically as a counter to guns, but thicker armor of proof certainly was. In fact, the move toward thicker, heaver armor led away from full plate toward three-quarter and half plate -- which was not a mix of plate and (chain)mail, but plate armor covering everything but the legs or the arms and legs.

I don't know where gamers gt the idea that armor would not stop an archaic firearm.

Armor obviously didn't stop early firearms, because they had to start making it thicker to produce armor of proof, and even that didn't stop muskets, with their longer barrels and higher muzzle velocities -- at least at short range.

 

[David Howery]

in terms of proficiency, early guns are kinda... weird. Consider a sword vs. a gun. A sword is rather simple to understand... pick it up, swing pointy end/sharp edge at enemy. Pretty much anyone can do it. Of course, learning to use a sword well takes a lot of time and practice and experience. An early gun, OTOH, has a complicated loading process (especially matchlocks). You can't just pick it up and guess at it... someone has to show you how to do it. Once you know how to do it though, firearms are a lot easier to become proficient with. So, as I said... weird, in game terms...

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Armor obviously didn't stop early firearms, because they had to start making it thicker to produce armor of proof, and even that didn't stop muskets, with their longer barrels and higher muzzle velocities -- at least at short range.

However, crossbows were actually better at it then guns.

I could see having armor that is less effective than, say, breastplate be ineffective against both crossbows and guns, but plate armors in general were a reaction to both guns and crossbows. (And the Church actually tried to ban the crossbow. It didn't succeed.) But gamers tend to have guns ignore all armor, which just was not the case.

A common armor is a combination of a placart (belly plate) and a buffcoat, with the coat protecting against incidental damage. (Splinters, rocks kicked up by a near miss, etc..)

For the record, I have fired a fair number of black powder guns, they are neither as mind numbingly slow as some gamers make out, nor are they all powerful in regards to penetrating armor.

What they do well is transfer energy - a big, slow, soft musket ball does not break bone, it pulverizes it. So, a high damage works, with a good crit modifier. Give it a short range increment and all is good.

Trying to single out the gun for special rules... not so much.

The Auld Grump - I love the Brown Bess, reliable, simple, easy to maintain....

 

[AWizardInDallas]

Anyway I think we can all agree that the development of gunpowder was a pivotal turning point in world history. It's also a line that some of us just prefer not to cross in our games and I guess I'm one of those.

 

[amerigoV]

I have never had an aversion to guns in fantasy, but I have had an aversion to guns in D&D. Its nothing on a pure mechanical basis - you can make it work. But it just never fit for me perception-wise. I cut my teeth on 1e - there, your mid-level fighter could stroll through an open field just ignoring arrow fire -- even if they did hit my great AC (based on Dex and Armor), that piddly 3hp of damage really was not going to stop my guy from taking is normal action. Archers are what you killed last cuz they were not a "threat".

Now, that is just a trope of the system. Even under 3e and 4e, you need an archer "build" in order to be dangerous. A commoner picking up a bow is back to 1e in my mindset ("fire your bow, then I will run my sword through you heart or incinerate you with magic!"). But since I am not sitting there watching a ton of war movies based on the bow and arrow period, it just faded into the gamest background like many other things.

Guns are a different matter. While the early guns a varying degrees of effectiveness, that is not what pops into my mind when the word "gun" is used. When guns are fired, you get to cover. That what happens in the cowboy movies, in the war movies, and in Dirty Harry. But in D&D, what is not what happens. It is just a funny crossbow mechanically (yawn).

(and thats why I love Savage Worlds - when guns or even bows come into play, you best head to Cover, partner! - I would to play in a Solomon Kane setting - guns and swords!).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

When guns are fired, you get to cover. That what happens in the cowboy movies,

In the cowboy movies, people take cover when arrows are being fired- "Get the wagons in a circle!"- and sometimes even when bar fights break out.