Uni-the-Unicorn!
Hero
They don’t. Hit points and damage in DND don’t represent physical damage
D&D 5E Why do guns do so much damage?
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
Sure they do. Sometimes. Maybe.
Flamestrike
Legend
This just popped up in my feed. Feel free to view how lethal shotguns (roughly analogous to muskets) are to the human body.
Here is a video showing what a 5.56mm round does to the body:
As you can see, that tiny little (supersonic) round basically destroys a football sized amount of tissue (i.e. organs) as the body absorbs the joules of energy.
Here is a 9mm handgun round vs a human head:
Note how the skull is absolutely shattered from the implosion of having the brains turned to absolute mush from absorbing the kinetic energy of the round?
These things dont just 'poke holes' in people. They literally turn large (internal) parts of your body into paste, and shatter nearby bones when they hit, including heavy bones like the skull which is literally shattered into several pieces.
One of these things is not like the others! One of these things just isn't the same!
One of these things is not like the others! One of these things just doesn't belong!
Seriously. Imagining that modern firearms with supersonic bullets, rifling, carefully chemically balanced standardized gunpowder, and literally multiple centuries of fine tuning somehow do the -exact- same sort of damage as the earliest firearms is just... Wild.
D&D is a Fantasy game, of course. So go wild!
Oofta
Legend
People seem to really underestimate how much more advanced today's guns are from guns even 200 years ago, much less 400 which approximates most D&D campaign technology levels. Roughly. Sort of.
One of these things is not like the others! One of these things just isn't the same!
One of these things is not like the others! One of these things just doesn't belong!
Seriously. Imagining that modern firearms with supersonic bullets, rifling, carefully chemically balanced standardized gunpowder, and literally multiple centuries of fine tuning somehow do the -exact- same sort of damage as the earliest firearms is just... Wild.
D&D is a Fantasy game, of course. So go wild!
My point is that I agree, use guns however you want but keep in mind that guns, armor, melee weapons all coincided for a long time. It's not like somebody said "Ooh, this combination of minerals goes boom" and the next day armor and every other weapon was obsolete.
Just for kicks, went back and looked up the old Boot Hill to AD&D 1e conversion from the DMG.
The rate of fire is really different from going to 5e given that in 1e a combat round is 1 minute (instead of 6 seconds).
Edit: Went back and found the rate of fire table from Boot Hill. Apparently "turns" in Boot Hill were 10 seconds long. If you were firing while moving during the turn, the number of shots you got depended on your weapon speed. There is also a table for the chance of a misfire (up to 5% for a older weapons, 1% for later).
The rate of fire is really different from going to 5e given that in 1e a combat round is 1 minute (instead of 6 seconds).
Edit: Went back and found the rate of fire table from Boot Hill. Apparently "turns" in Boot Hill were 10 seconds long. If you were firing while moving during the turn, the number of shots you got depended on your weapon speed. There is also a table for the chance of a misfire (up to 5% for a older weapons, 1% for later).
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PsyzhranV2
Hero
How about these?
I love how in the first video he literally talks about how much more refined modern gunpowder is, how the ancient refining process depended on the amount of time people were willing to work the grinder, and how travel distances could change the quality of the powder. And then he gets...
414m/s on the ball. Which is what I've previously referenced. That's a granulated form of 1 and 1/2 F gunpowder. Which is -similar- to the stuff that would've been used in early Renaissance firearms. Though it probably wouldn't have been wet-ground or formed into grains. Instead it would've been a loose powder that can separate. So it should be noted that would represent a good mix that hasn't traveled over long distances, causing it to separate out.
At about 9 minutes and 35 seconds you can see the wound channel and the nearby disrupted tissues.
The red line is the wound channel. It's the hole that the bullet left behind. The yellow area is damaged tissue that isn't specifically penetrated. Things like muscles and flesh being stretched or warped by the force of the bullet without being directly hit or directly punctured. Nervous tissue in the affected area is likely screaming in pain, and organs will probably have some damage or deformation without perforation. (Barring bullet-breakage, of course)
And the result... a fairly narrow but very long wound channel. Which is great if your target's vital organs or major arteries are in the line of that wound channel. Or very close to it. The tissue damage area around it maxes out at a little under 3 inches from top to bottom.
Meanwhile the slower moving, heavier, cuboid shaped tumbling hunk of lead dealt WAY more damage, even though it was going slower. Creating a much wider wound channel than you might otherwise get. Largely because of the tumbling. Though I'm honestly kind of surprised by how swiftly the secondary tissue damage falls off in relation to the larger wound channel. I guess it's lost enough kinetic energy by the 38cm mark to have much less impact on connected tissue?
Clearly, the lead cuboid is a much more deadly piece of ammunition, because not only is the primary wound channel wider than the lead ball, the secondary tissue damage areas are also wider, and longer, than the ball's. The tissue damage area hits around 3.5 inches but it retains it's larger footprint for further than the ball does.
All in all, a very impressive test with appropriate contextual information! I like it!
In the second video, Skallagrim uses more than double the powder charge of a 2F powder. The corning of a 2F powder is up to about double the corning of a 1 and a half F powder. Meaning it burns up to twice as fast and produces a faster blast. So he's doubled not only the burn rate of the explosion behind the ball from the first test, but -also- the quantity of fuel.
And the helmet was -still- able to deflect an oblique shot. Which is what any curved metal armor surface is meant to do. And then firing at as close to a flat angle as he could manage with a helmet... it still deflects! The helmet is drastically warped, and another shot to the same area from a slightly different trajectory is liable to punch right through.
So, again, a massive increase in the explosive powder used to propel the bullet and the result is a deflected shot. Though I'd also argue that that post-1900 helmet likely has a -much- better overall quality of steel than something used during the middle ages or Renaissance. I am still surprised it held up that well!
The third video refers to grain counts of "Fine Black Powder". No further explanation on the powder is given which is... meh. He's also firing from 1 foot away, where each of the other tests simulated longer distant shots. The whole video is just giving examples of penetration. Which is nice? But I'd have loved to see the blocks taken apart with charts like in the first video.
And the last video refers to "30 grains of Black Powder" as the only reference on the explosive involved... poo. And then he reveals that the revolver is Rifled. Which, I mean, should've been obvious as soon as he said "1898" but like a sucker I wasn't paying enough attention to the date.
Very interesting and informative! Thank you,@PsyzhranV2!
414m/s on the ball. Which is what I've previously referenced. That's a granulated form of 1 and 1/2 F gunpowder. Which is -similar- to the stuff that would've been used in early Renaissance firearms. Though it probably wouldn't have been wet-ground or formed into grains. Instead it would've been a loose powder that can separate. So it should be noted that would represent a good mix that hasn't traveled over long distances, causing it to separate out.
At about 9 minutes and 35 seconds you can see the wound channel and the nearby disrupted tissues.
The red line is the wound channel. It's the hole that the bullet left behind. The yellow area is damaged tissue that isn't specifically penetrated. Things like muscles and flesh being stretched or warped by the force of the bullet without being directly hit or directly punctured. Nervous tissue in the affected area is likely screaming in pain, and organs will probably have some damage or deformation without perforation. (Barring bullet-breakage, of course)
And the result... a fairly narrow but very long wound channel. Which is great if your target's vital organs or major arteries are in the line of that wound channel. Or very close to it. The tissue damage area around it maxes out at a little under 3 inches from top to bottom.
Meanwhile the slower moving, heavier, cuboid shaped tumbling hunk of lead dealt WAY more damage, even though it was going slower. Creating a much wider wound channel than you might otherwise get. Largely because of the tumbling. Though I'm honestly kind of surprised by how swiftly the secondary tissue damage falls off in relation to the larger wound channel. I guess it's lost enough kinetic energy by the 38cm mark to have much less impact on connected tissue?
Clearly, the lead cuboid is a much more deadly piece of ammunition, because not only is the primary wound channel wider than the lead ball, the secondary tissue damage areas are also wider, and longer, than the ball's. The tissue damage area hits around 3.5 inches but it retains it's larger footprint for further than the ball does.
All in all, a very impressive test with appropriate contextual information! I like it!
In the second video, Skallagrim uses more than double the powder charge of a 2F powder. The corning of a 2F powder is up to about double the corning of a 1 and a half F powder. Meaning it burns up to twice as fast and produces a faster blast. So he's doubled not only the burn rate of the explosion behind the ball from the first test, but -also- the quantity of fuel.
And the helmet was -still- able to deflect an oblique shot. Which is what any curved metal armor surface is meant to do. And then firing at as close to a flat angle as he could manage with a helmet... it still deflects! The helmet is drastically warped, and another shot to the same area from a slightly different trajectory is liable to punch right through.
So, again, a massive increase in the explosive powder used to propel the bullet and the result is a deflected shot. Though I'd also argue that that post-1900 helmet likely has a -much- better overall quality of steel than something used during the middle ages or Renaissance. I am still surprised it held up that well!
The third video refers to grain counts of "Fine Black Powder". No further explanation on the powder is given which is... meh. He's also firing from 1 foot away, where each of the other tests simulated longer distant shots. The whole video is just giving examples of penetration. Which is nice? But I'd have loved to see the blocks taken apart with charts like in the first video.
And the last video refers to "30 grains of Black Powder" as the only reference on the explosive involved... poo. And then he reveals that the revolver is Rifled. Which, I mean, should've been obvious as soon as he said "1898" but like a sucker I wasn't paying enough attention to the date.
Very interesting and informative! Thank you,@PsyzhranV2!
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Flamestrike
Legend
Shotguns do not have either of those things, and pistols have rifling (not that it matters that much with a 6 inch barrel).
12 gauge shotgun slugs travel around 1500 fps, which is very close to a .69 caliber (16 gauge) Musket balls 1200 fps.
Muzzle velocity - Wikipedia.
Subsonic, no rifled barrels, both of them.
But fine - here is how a musket fares in the same tests:
And in this video, they are literally firing ACTUAL 400 year old medieval musket balls into things:
Ballistic jelly at 6:07 above. It utterly pulps it.
Now imagine one of them in the chest or head and the kind of implosion it would cause.
Oofta
Legend
Not sure exactly what the point is to some of this. An unarmored person getting hit dead on from relatively close range is going to be hurting, if not dead most of the time. Same as if someone is standing stock still with no armor is hit with a longsword, as demonstrated by pig carcasses being chopped in two.
Nobody is denying that a solid hit with a bullet is bad. On the other hand, the standard number of shots is 3 per minute with a flintlock musket. Some people claim they can do 5 per minute under ideal conditions. So, one shot and then an action to load seems reasonable to me. But that's with relatively advanced firearms, and of course lever action and then bolt action rifles were game changers along with smokeless powder.
What level of firearms are you trying to emulate? How much do you care about realism? How effective do you want guns to be? Are they used to get a single shot off before closing or do you want an "wild west" feel with six shooters and lever action guns?
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