Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 5549904" data-attributes="member: 6957">Yeah, I have friends who are ACW reenactors. (One of them got to be in the movie Gettysburg. There were a lot of reenactors in that movie. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Tim was a Union soldier who died in about ten seconds of screen time.)Them newfangled percussion caps.... not bad in a rifle, heck, they made breechloaders a whole lot easier, but some of the horror stories I have heard of what can go wrong with a percussion cap revolver.... Those can blow up in your hands if you get a chain fire.For balance, I just kept the ranges really short for smoothbores. You get more range (and better penetration) from a heavy crossbow.If you rolled a 1 and confirmed it as a fumble then you either drop the gun or you spend a round cleaning it. Blackpowder guns get fouled quickly if you don't maintain them. If you don't need a cranquin to load it then it's is not a heavy crossbow. The use of a goatsfoot is pretty much the definition of a light crossbow. And they were the exception, not the rule, at least for warfare. (Unless you count the very early gastraphetes, which was drawn against the belly - thus 'gastra'.)A heavy crossbow pretty much ignored armor that would stop a bullet from a smoothbore. It also had much, much better range and accuracy than an early gun, or a longbow in the hands of all but the best. Slow as dirt though. It could take one to five minutes to load a cranquin drawn crossbow, longer for an arbelesta. A gun took a lot less time then that - an expert can get four shots per minute with a Brown Bess. I can get maybe three or just a bit less. (I take too long cleaning between shots, so it ends up being closer to a minute and ten seconds to get off three shots, with the third shot rushed more than it should be.) I recently confirmed my times. This is using paper cartridges. Using apostles, maybe half that rate? Firing a Buccaneer musket I didn't time it... how often am I going to have a chance to fire a gun that is more than seven feet long?The best way to find out how long it takes to load a gun is to see if there are any reenactors in your area. Maine is lucky, and has Revolutionary War (and thus the Brown Bess), American Civil War (including an artillery group), and SCA (hey, I have helped build trebuchet!). We also have a 'Pirates and Maritime' group. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Most groups are happy to give demonstrations.Experience is a hell of a lot better than getting 'expert advice' on the interweb, and can be a lot more fun too. Go looking, you may pick up a new hobby. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />The Auld Grump, then there is the joy of firing blackpowder weapons in a heavy fog... the stink just hangs there.</blockquote>

Verification