Ebberon - If not guns, then what?

Aeric

Explorer
I've read many forum threads about firearms and their place (or lack thereof) in the Eberron campaign setting lately. The biggest argument against them is the proliferation of magic in that world. Why have guns when you can have magic? While it isn't necessarily an argument I agree with (gunpowder can be alchemical in nature), I will concede the point for the sake of this discussion.

Having done so, however, I must ask - what would the soldiers in the Last War be using to kill each other with? After 100+ years of a magical arms proliferation, including living constructs, animated siege engines, and airships, I find it very hard to believe that no one ever came up with a deadlier weapon for the common soldier to use than a pointy bit of metal.

Aside from crossbows, the closest analogy for the gun in D&D is the wand. A Magic Missile wand of the lowest level costs slightly more than a musket (as per DMG prices, at least), but it has a better range, plenty of shots, no reload time, and best of all, it never misses. Sure, it does crappy damage, but most first-level warriors don't have that many hit points to begin with, and besides, it never misses. So iwhat if t takes you two shots to down that enemy soldier instead of one? If the rest of your squad is similarly armed, it won't be an issue.

The biggest problem with wands, besides the price, is the training required to use them. Then again, it seems reasonable in a world like Eberron for Use Magic Device to be a class skill for pretty much everyone except for barbarians, or to create a feat which allows non-casters to use certain items (such as wands) as if they were spellcasters. Or simply to allow a feat which gives characters UMD as a class skill.

So let's assume that the rank-and-file soldiers in Eberron, through whatever means, have the ability to use Magic Missile wands. Great! Every warrior is issued a wand. Every soldier now has a gun that doesn't miss. If he sees you, he can kill you, or at least damage you greatly. How does this change the battlefields of Khorvaire?

I imagine that the Five Kingdoms would quickly realize that marching into battle in formation and setting up firing lines directly opposite one another is a bad idea, especially with weaons that don't miss. At least with the musket, there was a chance (a pretty high one, actually, especially once the "fog of war" rolls in) that the enemy will miss you. With Magic Missiles, it's simply a matter of who wins initiative and who has more hit points (or more wands to be fired at once, since it's likely to take two shots to take down a single man).

It's easy to imagine the Magic Missile wand being the motivation behind the hiring of humanoid mercenaries (who on average have more hit points than the typical human warrior), as well as the creation of the warforged. An ogre or a bugbear doesn't follow orders well, and complex maneuvers are typically beyond them, but they can withstand several hits from a wand before going down, and will probably be able to reach the enemy's firing line and take a few of them with him before he does. Plus an ogre with a greatclub would cost a lot less than a human with a Magic Missile wand. The downside to using big, dumb humanoids is intrinsic, however. It's a lot easier to command troops with intelligence and loyalty than it a monster who would most likely eat you as soon as look at you.

So on the one side you have big, dumb brutes who are cheap but unreliable, and on the other side you have intelligent and deadly weapons which are reliable but expensive. If the Last War was so important that it was waged for over a century, I'm thinking that the Five Nations would have invested the money in developing the intelligent and deadly weapons. So wand-wielding troopers it is.

Now comes the question of protecting our troops. Magic Missile never misses, and it is unaffected by anything except total cover. Ideally, every soldier would have a Brooch of Shielding, but those are twice as expensive as the wands, and let's face it, life is cheap. Officers would probably have them, as would anyone lucky enough to be able to buy one for himself (he'd better not let his squad-mates find out about it, though!), but for the most part, soldiers would have to find other ways to protect themselves.

Enter trench warfare. When you have to fight somewhere where there is no cover, you create cover. And you bring the cover with you. Trench warfare would be a great explanation as to why the Last War lasted for so long, and since the Last War is an analogy for WWI, it fits perfectly.

What do people think? Does anyone else have any good ideas for magical warfare in Eberron?
 

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In my Eberron, most soldiers would have used the same missile weapons as soldiers used in our history before the advent of gunpowder.

I personally envision that most of the magical analogues for gunpowder weapons would be on the scale of cannons and other large weapons - arcane ballistae, for instance. Smaller magical weapons like wands and whatnot would be in the hands of specialist artificers and other spellcasters, roughly equivalent to squad automatic weapons and other crew-served weapons which might be attached to infantry, like shoulder-launched missile weapons or mortars.

In any case, I wouldn't envision a situation where your common soldier carries magical weapons, even something as simple and limited in use as an eternal wand.
 

A Wand of Magic Missile costs 750 gp. No nation can afford thousands of soldiers armed with such weapons. (Even worse when your side loses and your enemy steals your wands.)

Trenches won't protect you from Magic Missile. Don't you need total cover to avoid it?
 

My concept is closer to mhacdebgandia's.

Troops are troops with spears, axes and crossbows. But you could have with each troop an expert or a magewright with one "Blasting" wand like magic missile or burning hands and a few eternal wands of cure light wound or other low level utility spells. It would give a squad of 8 or so warriors a much bigger punch and not be all that more expensive.
 

Why not have a gun...but it relies on magic instead of gunpowder and bullets? Or maybe alchemical items?

I don't see why a line of weapons couldn't be introduced as "firearms" and improved versions of crossbows. A gun that fires a magical beam of energy or a rifle that shoots powerful, piercing forces of sonic energy? With the way Eberron is technologically, I am confused by the sudden evolutionary "gap" where firearms should be.
 

(Psi)SeveredHead said:
A Wand of Magic Missile costs 750 gp. No nation can afford thousands of soldiers armed with such weapons. (Even worse when your side loses and your enemy steals your wands.)

According to the DMG, a musket costs 500gp, and many real-world nations had thousands of soldiers armed with them.

Besides, according to Forge of War, a single warforged cost 5,000-6,000gp a piece. Warforged have slightly more hit points than a human of the same class and level, and are no more efficient at actual fighting than a human, yet they were ordered from House Cannith by the thousands by all Five Nations. If they have the gold to spend on that, why not on wands?

Also keep in mind that House Cannith as well as other artificers and magewrights have ways of lowering the cost to produce magic items. It seems reasonable that a first-level wand would be cheaper in Eberron than in, say, Greyhawk, especially if you have the equivalent of a megacorporation cranking them out by the millions.

Trenches won't protect you from Magic Missile. Don't you need total cover to avoid it?[/QUOTE]

Total concealment also blocks Magic Missile, meaning that it requires line of sight to use. If my understanding of the rules is correct, a solider could duck down into the trench before you had the chance to fire your wand. If nothing else, trenches and other less-than-total cover would allow you to make Hide checks. You can't shoot what you can't see, or what you don't know is there in the first place.
 

Razz said:
Why not have a gun...but it relies on magic instead of gunpowder and bullets? Or maybe alchemical items?

You're preaching to the choir, Razz. :) IMC, House Cannith discovered gunpowder while researching a less-volatile equivalent of alchemist's fire.

I'm basically approaching this with the mindset that most Eberron fans seem to have. I can accept that no one would have thought to mix certain powders together to propel a hunk of metal through the air if such things as magic wands were readily available. I'm just wondering how they would be implemented. Call it an academic exercise if nothing else.

I don't see why a line of weapons couldn't be introduced as "firearms" and improved versions of crossbows. A gun that fires a magical beam of energy or a rifle that shoots powerful, piercing forces of sonic energy?

Such a weapon would essentially be a wand, even if it didn't look like one. The trick seems to be making something that anyone can activate, not just spellcasters or those with the UMD skill. The fact that eternal wands were developed so late in the war, were so expensive, and so limited in use, seems to indicate that there's some kind of stumbling block preventing this from happening. Personally, I think it's hogwash, which is why I allow it IMC.
 

Aeric said:
Besides, according to Forge of War, a single warforged cost 5,000-6,000gp a piece. Warforged have slightly more hit points than a human of the same class and level, and are no more efficient at actual fighting than a human, yet they were ordered from House Cannith by the thousands by all Five Nations. If they have the gold to spend on that, why not on wands?
One point I'll mention that Hellcow (Baker) has mentioned quite a few time, though I'm not sure if it got cannonized in Forge of War, is that when a warforged steps out of the creation forge their typically 2nd level PC classes and have the elite array ability scores (15 14 13 12 10 8), while most soldiers are warrior (if lucky) or commoner (if less lucky) 1s with the non-elite array (13 12 10 10 9 8). Which makes a squad of warforged much tougher than a bunch of conscripts.
 


Destil said:
One point I'll mention that Hellcow (Baker) has mentioned quite a few time, though I'm not sure if it got cannonized in Forge of War, is that when a warforged steps out of the creation forge their typically 2nd level PC classes and have the elite array ability scores (15 14 13 12 10 8), while most soldiers are warrior (if lucky) or commoner (if less lucky) 1s with the non-elite array (13 12 10 10 9 8). Which makes a squad of warforged much tougher than a bunch of conscripts.

Now that you mention it, I do remember reading something like that somewhere...possibly in the old "Ask Keith Baker" thread over at the Wizards boards. No mention of that in FoW, though. I'm still not sure that makes them worth the price, but it does make them closer to being worth the price. And FoW does mention that the cost dropped as time went on.
 

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