Do gunpowder weapons have a place in d&d?

[Moto Jojo]

Our group started a pirate-themed campaign a few weeks ago, and firearms are readily available and common in the region we're in.

Our firearms rules were cobbled together as a group, taking bits from several sources. Firearms in our world are only a Simple weapon to fire, but you use the Craft (firearms) skill to reload, as from the Iron Kingdoms rules. The key thing we're doing with our firearms that I haven't seen anywhere else is that they've got a really short range increment - just 15 feet for a pistol. Our vision of pirate-age firearms is that they're big, noisy, smokey things with big old lead balls that veer off course pretty quickly, but sure do hurt if they hit.

So our version of the average heavy pistol is like this:

Pistol - simple weapon - DC 8 Craft (firearms) check to reload.
1d10 damage
range increment 15
move-equivalent action to reload

Whether firearms fit or not depends entirely on your campaign. We have another game going at the same time where firearms would be terribly out of place, and so they simply don't exist.

Firearms absolutely have a place in DnD, just not in every campaign.

 

[Ace]

I have an "Age of Powder" setting so I am in the "Gunpowder is good" crowd for sure.

 

[Gez]

I said "yes", but it's obvious this depends mainly on the setting. For a "dark age" setting, no (except maybe in the hands of one particular civilization if you want to). For a "renaissance" setting, yes.

But that's like anything else in D&D. You may have a campaign where monks would be terribly out of place. Or elves. Or umber hulks. Or...