D&D 5E Why do guns do so much damage?

[Grendel_Khan]

Doing some quick calculations...

There were 34 pistol balls to the pound for English Pistols. That means each one is about 0.029lbs or about 0.013kg.

The muzzle velocity of a musket is the closest approximation we have of acceleration... so let's just input that value whole instead of acceleration at 414m/s.

And that gives us... 5.9 Newtons of Force. That's pretty great!

Average weight of a Longsword was between 1 and 1.5kgs. Averaging it out, let's go for 1.25kgs. Let's compare them to Baseball Bats for ease of "Fast Speeds". The fastest swings of a bat are around 41mph or 21.4m/s. Let's put that in annnnd....

26.75 Newtons of Force.

Even with it's -vastly- lower speed (just over 1/20th!) the longsword imparts nearly five times as much force as the bullet does. Even dropping the sword's swing speed to 12.1m/s (about 20mph, the "Slower" swings of a bat) you wind up with 15 Newtons of Force which is still three times as much.

While I had a gut instinct that a heavier weight would impart more force just through simple mass, I didn't expect the force difference to be -this- drastic.

... That's -interesting-...

I love these sorts of back-of-the-napkin calculations, but I'm pretty sure this is missing some key context. By this logic you should be able to hack a car door in half with your mighty longsword, while a bullet just pings off. In reality it's the opposite--a longsword would leave a dent, while, TV and movies notwithstanding, most bullets punch through car doors no problem.

 

[Weiley31]

Esper Genesis actually has a specific rule that deals with this notion since almost all firearms, with some exceptions, possess what is known as the High-Velocity quality. Which means If your enemy is not wearing any kind of armor or Portable Shielding whatsoever, then you actually increase the amount of damage the Firearm does by an additional Damage Die and you can score a Crit on a roll of 19-20.

 

[Steampunkette]

I love these sorts of back-of-the-napkin calculations, but I'm pretty sure this is missing some key context. By this logic you should be able to hack a car door in half with your mighty longsword, while a bullet just pings off. In reality it's the opposite--a longsword would leave a dent, while, TV and movies notwithstanding, most bullets punch through car doors no problem.

Sort of... but not really? Here's a Zombie Tools Video of testing out one of their weapons. The Deuce.


In the first moments of the testing, they cut down into the hood of a truck with their blade and get a penetration depth equal to the blade width (or depth, depending on perception). I would argue that the amount of damage they're doing to the metal is at least equal to, if not greater than, a flintlock pistol bullet slamming into and possibly through that car hood.

Because, again, we're talking about a Flintlock pistol ball, not a modern bullet.

Similarly, you can see him chop a phone book to confetti. I've little doubt that a flintlock pistol ball would shoot through a phonebook, but the comparable damage of a hole in a book and the right half of every page missing is significantly different.

You also get to see them chop right through the metal pipes that hold a bicycle together. A well-placed pistol shot would probably cut through those pipes, too... But probably not sever them, entirely.

 

[Cadence]

Some quotes of the time I hadn't seen before, links to more, and a few seemingly false things too Musket vs. Crossbow & Longbow...

 

[Oofta]

Casting lightning bolts requires years of training and special aptitude to be able to even cast a few per day.

I can train and arm hundreds of men to use guns in a day, and they can fire them over and over.

Only because you jump from the very earliest implementation of gunpowder to muskets. The very first gunpowder based weapons would in most campaigns been as rare, or rarer than spellcasters. Cantrips would have been more useful.

My argument is that gunpowder was, as far as we know, discovered by accident. It took centuries of development of the mixture of gunpowder as well as how to refine the ingredients across multiple cultures before we get to the level of even the most primitive guns mentioned in D&D.

If you want guns in your game, that's perfectly fine. I've considered it myself. But I can also see why in many campaigns guns never gained any traction.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Sort of... but not really? Here's a Zombie Tools Video of testing out one of their weapons. The Deuce.

In the first moments of the testing, they cut down into the hood of a truck with their blade and get a penetration depth equal to the blade width (or depth, depending on perception). I would argue that the amount of damage they're doing to the metal is at least equal to, if not greater than, a flintlock pistol bullet slamming into and possibly through that car hood.

Because, again, we're talking about a Flintlock pistol ball, not a modern bullet.

Yeah I’m over-generalizing a bit, since a flintlock ball is pretty bad at cutting through stuff compared to a modern bullet, but that calculation you did wasn’t getting into edge geometries either. But I honestly think that video just isn’t telling us anything all that useful. They’re using a chopper, not a more traditional sword, they’re hitting the hood at the perfect angle for chopping, and it’s not a test of penetration, the way a bullet would, but a weird sort of hacking. So we don’t know how much energy is left behind.

But here’s my bigger question: Why pursue this sword trutherism? Like do we really think swords have been unfairly maligned and shelved by Big Gun? The house rules you laid out above seem like a great way to deal with them in the specific setting and system you’re using. But even if flintlock guns are scary, they have tons of problems that make melee weapons still super-viable.

EDIT: Forgot to add that muzzle velocities are a tricky thing to apply directly to damage/penetration. If you look at the pure numerical differences between gun muzzle velocities you could come up with some very unrealistic damage comparisons. The size of bullets, the way they tumble, the way they lose energy at different ranges...it’s all very crazy and hard to model. For games I personally think the more important thing is the idea of the gun, the idea of a sword, etc. We’re just playing with various tropes and genre conventions, right? Once you start reverse engineering stuff with math and physics you should start having ogres constantly tip over and 20 different tables to determine how each kind of weapon deals with each layered material in someone’s armor.

 

[Flamestrike]

"Handgun Bullet" and "Flintlock Pistol Ball" are two different animals.

Swords -also- destroy organs that they hit, and impart significant kinetic force to the target over a larger area through a VASTLY greater mass.

Google images of 'sword wounds'. While horrific, few are directly fatal. Killing someone outright in a singe sword blow is rare (barring defenseless people with exposed necks etc), you usually have to literally hack away at them for some time to kill them, or wait for them to bleed out after the fact.

Thrusts to the chest and abdomen (which pierce organs) are often fatal. Thrusts to the head and limbs are less so. Hacking even less so (hacks to the neck and limbs is often enough to incapacitate someone).

Edged weapons (while lethal) generally have very low stopping power.

However:

The research found the Brown Bess musket to be a lethal weapon at the ranges at which enemy was commonly engaged, so long as it was accurate enough to hit the target. A single shot fired at 150 yards could penetrate at least two soldiers, even if bone were hit.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1163/157407808X382737?journalCode=yjca20

A single musket ball to the chest, abdomen or head OTOH almost certainly is fatal, as would be a single shot from a modern handgun or high powered (.223 and above) supersonic rifle round.

A lot more people can get hit by a sword and survive, than can get shot by a handgun, musket or rifle and say the same thing.

Im not going to get into terminal ballistics with you, but this is the damage your average 5.56mm intermediate cartridge does to the human body:

You're basically left with a football sized area of mush in your body.

That 5.56mm bullet is travelling at supersonic speeds of around 1000m per second, and delivering around 1300 ft lbs of energy on target, or just short of 2000 J.

Musket rounds were on average .75 caliber (or around 19mm, so 4 times the size of our 5.56mm round) and were capable of delivering nearly 2000 ft lbs of energy on the target. The speed of the bullets was half as much as a modern intermediate cartridge at between 450–540 m/s, however due to the size, the kinetic energy on target was around 3000–4000 J.

The musket could penetrate 4mm of steel at 100m, something a sword couldn't dream of doing, and the wound cavity was almost always fatal, turning whatever organ it hit, plus every neighboring organ to jelly.

 

[Cadence]

Only because you jump from the very earliest implementation of gunpowder to muskets. The very first gunpowder based weapons would in most campaigns been as rare, or rarer than spellcasters. Cantrips would have been more useful.

My argument is that gunpowder was, as far as we know, discovered by accident. It took centuries of development of the mixture of gunpowder as well as how to refine the ingredients across multiple cultures before we get to the level of even the most primitive guns mentioned in D&D.

If you want guns in your game, that's perfectly fine. I've considered it myself. But I can also see why in many campaigns guns never gained any traction.

Pathfinder 1e tried to give a wide variety of ranges of tech levels for guns and various subclasses (should pretty much all be findable in the various srd's online). I still never got around to incorporating them.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Then why does sneak attack work?

Didn't say location and precision aren't important; a well placed strike with any weapon can kill. Just responded to the comments that speed doesn't matter and that a bullet wound is just a finger wide hole. Kinetic energy is very important.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I love these sorts of back-of-the-napkin calculations, but I'm pretty sure this is missing some key context. By this logic you should be able to hack a car door in half with your mighty longsword, while a bullet just pings off. In reality it's the opposite--a longsword would leave a dent, while, TV and movies notwithstanding, most bullets punch through car doors no problem.

There's the area the force is applied to, as well as the friction that occurs as the impacting object passes through the other object. A car backing into you at low speed might just jostle you, whereas if the car's
energy were applied to a small flechette, it would certainly penetrate skin because it is applying that same force to a much smaller area.

That said, I've been and still am of the belief that early firearms and swords cause similarly serious injuries. The average person receiving an injury from either is much more likely to lay down and cry than to do anything productive.

Regarding modern firearms, there are a lot of factors to consider, in particular ammunition. Ammo that is designed for penetration will result in significantly less trauma than the (somewhat horrific) types of ammo that are intended to deform in order to transfer most/all of their energy into the target. Of course, there are always trade-offs. The former will be significantly more effective against an armored target than the latter, for obvious reasons.