D&D 5E (2014) Let's Talk About Guns in 5E

W'rkncacnter · 2026-04-17T18:46:17+0100

CreamCloud0 said:
i agree with most of this, guns aren't special, don't mythologize them, don't have a feat that circumvents loading, but i would at least say don't make them all loading by default, there should be guns you can fire quickly and guns you can only shoot once a round.

i would say don't mythologize guns any more then dnd mythologizes any other weapon.
which is to say some mythologizing is fine. a lot of weapons in dnd have some mythologizing going on, especially swords. just be careful about it.

also, hot take - loading should add extra weapon damage dice for each extra attack your character has (to represent replacing a flurry of attacks with superior aim). it'd still be less effective then extra attack (only one chance to do damage plus only applying per-attack modifiers once) but it'd actually make loading weapons not complete unmitigated garbage for characters with extra attack while still maintaining enough believability to not be outright comical

Cap'n Kobold · 2026-04-17T18:56:34+0100

I think that the idea is not that "Simple weapons require no training", but more that Simple weapons are likely to have been used and trained in by common people. Martial weapons are ones that generally only dedicated warriors or military would have been trained in.

CreamCloud0 · 2026-04-17T19:06:38+0100

Cap'n Kobold said:
I think that the idea is not that "Simple weapons require no training", but more that Simple weapons are likely to have been used and trained in by common people. Martial weapons are ones that generally only dedicated warriors or military would have been trained in.

yeah, as i mentioned earlier, in '14 it was possible to not have proficiency in all simple weapons, meaning that to some degree, simple weapons do still need some degree of training to wield properly, meaning they're not just 'weapons anyone can just pick up and use'

Minigiant · 2026-04-17T19:35:37+0100

W'rkncacnter said:
ignoring that if firearms were logistically expensive they never would have caught on, "commoner men-at-arms" is kind of a contradiction unless you just mean "commoner" to mean "not a noble". men-at-arms were highly trained and well equipped. they wouldn't need an "easy" option (though depending on what it was they might like it).

I mean I like D&D guns to be simple to use, easy to hoard, but hard to transport.

So firearms can be used by people but not by the masses of the battlefields of war.

W'rkncacnter · 2026-04-17T19:58:00+0100

Minigiant said:
I mean I like D&D guns to be simple to use, easy to hoard, but hard to transport.

So firearms can be used by people but not by the masses of the battlefields of war.

i understood what you meant. that's why i said what i said.

WhammeWhamme · 2026-04-18T01:01:10+0100

NotAYakk said:
Again, I was disagreeing with " Colonial era warfare was generally, up until quite late stages, a matter of larger European armies defeating smaller armies possessed by economically weaker polities."

None of these where larger European armies defeating smaller armies. Sending a large European army in ships overseas to defeat people on their home turf is not the typical colonial war to the best of my knowledge.

If you are making apparently false claims like "colonial wars are about larger European armies defeating smaller armies", then backing up to different claim, then saying this different claim disagrees with what I said (which it does not), then it is an extremely rude way to talk to someone. I do not appreciate it.

Mate, I specifically included the notes on naval conflict in the same post you're quoting.

I'm not "backing up". You skipped important context.

Either engage with the post in context, or don't, but the sentence you quoted was never meant to include naval warfare and that exception was right there in the original post.

(It's already a long and tortured sentence. You really wanted me to staple the entire next paragraph to it before using a full stop?)

QuentinGeorge · 2026-04-18T09:15:32+0100

Remathilis said:
There is lots of other things that don't fit D&D's medieval aesthetic: galleon ships, rapiers, polytheism, and much of the D&D diet (I'm not talking sushi and tacos, I'm talking pumpkins and potatoes). If you really want to be a stickler, we shouldn't have a lot of ancient world elements (like medusas or minotaurs) either. And let's not even get into how much technology is refluffed as magic, allowing for plumbing, continual lamp street lights, not to mention the Victorian aesthetic of Ravenloft or the turn of the century elements of Eberron. Hell, even Greyhawk has a deity who wears a pair of six shooters.

"When consistency gets in the way of samurai gunslingers riding on dinosaurs, it's time for consistency to take a day off." - Barsoomcore.

Pumpkins and potatoes are nothing to do with eras, they are (at least on earth) to do with geography. There were plenty of people in the medieval era eating potatoes, they just weren't in Europe.

And I can't agree with saying that medusas or minotaurs are not medieval - medieval people still retold and enjoyed these classical myths. They even illustrated them.

Remathilis · 2026-04-18T14:27:51+0100

QuentinGeorge said:
Pumpkins and potatoes are nothing to do with eras, they are (at least on earth) to do with geography. There were plenty of people in the medieval era eating potatoes, they just weren't in Europe.

Lots of depictions medieval Europe (or ME type settings) do place them there before the ships needed to routinely make that trip were built (yes I know, Vikings. They weren't importing potatoes back to Scandinavia). On the one hand, few people care about authentic medieval diets in a world of magic and monsters. On the other, Samwise's Po-tay-toes are as anachronistic as an arquebus.

QuentinGeorge said:
And I can't agree with saying that medusas or minotaurs are not medieval - medieval people still retold and enjoyed these classical myths. They even illustrated them.

Again, the middle ages didn't believe minotaurs and medusa didn't still wander the Earth. They were tales told.