Firearms and the Campaign

[Shades of Green]

I m currently in the process of building my campaign world, centered around the savage land of Renya (which is mostly low-hill marshlands to the south and hilly/mountain jungles to the north); Renya is slowly being colonized and conquered by the Humano-Dwarven empire of he far, cold south.

The issue at hand is my desire to integrate certain Steampunk elemnts into my campaign, centered around the technically-advanced Humano-Dwarven empire. While this won't include extreme steampunk (full-blown sentient Analytical Engines), this will include steam-powered vehicles (ships and trains, but to a very limited degree in the Renyan frontier) and, among other things, possibly firearms.

My question is: How unbalancing flintlock pistols/musketes are to the game world, and how deeply they ill effect warfare (i.e. how much weapons/armor will be outdated). I wish to create a feel similar to the later Age of Sail with the first few steps of the industrial revolution (and steampunk/clockwork tech) taking place.

 

[arwink]

That's a hard question to answer, largely because it'll depend highly on a bunch of variables related to your suspension of disbelief and desire for realism in your game.

I've included pistols and firearms in most of the games I've run in 3e thus far, essentially setting them up as a more powerful version of the crossbow that costs an exotic weapon proficiency to use (the rules are straight out of the DMG). They haven't really proven to be a problem at all - the player with a pistol never felt like he'd gotten a raw deal because of his weapon choice, and the other players never felt overshadowed by his weaponry.

Of course, I threw realism out the window in favor of mechanical ease and he was reloading said pistols pretty damn fast by the campaigns end.

 

[Estlor]

I had a Mystara campaign that dallied in the Savage Coast for a while. We picked up a PC fighter/ranger that was a cowboy right down to the pair of guns holstered at his waist. Another player in my campaign detested guns in D&D and always asked me how long they would continue to function (as, in the standard Savage Coast/Mystara rules, guns are supposed to cease functioning outside the area of the Red Curse). My answer was always, "As long as they don't cause problems."

I've found that if guns are commonplace and as easy to get as a crossbow/bow without too much of an additional cost (monetary or skill/feat), they'll become a weapon of choice and may end up replacing a lot of other weapons, but if you keep things in check by making them expensive or requiring an Exotic Weapon Proficiency or offsetting any ability to punch through armor with range restrictions of misfire chance, people who like them/think they're a cool character concept will use it and everybody else will stick to swords and axes.

 

[dougmander]

They're only unbalancing if you make them more reliable, accurate, and powerful than their real-world analogs. Three shots a minute would be a good rate of fire for a flintlock -- that's about one shot every three or four combat rounds.
In my forthcoming Northern Crown campaign setting (go here), guns have great critical threat ranges, good damage, and long reload times. This encourages players to fire at the enemy once, then draw their swords and wade in, just how I'd want them to be used in an age-of-sail setting. Inventors can create things like organ guns and multibarrel weapons, but they're expensive, cumbersome, and have a high chance of misfire.
One suggestion: if you introduce guns in your campaign, think about how armor might change in response to gunfire. In the real world, armor became really heavy and was abandoned except for special applications like the cuirassier's back-and-breastplate.

 

[mmadsen]

How unbalancing flintlock pistols/musketes are to the game world, and how deeply they ill effect warfare (i.e. how much weapons/armor will be outdated).

In the real world, firearms were used alongside bows and crossbows for a long time, and alongside swords and spears for centuries. The chief advantages of firearms are:

• They're easy to use. It takes quite a bit of drilling to get to three rounds per minute (with the later flintlocks), but it doesn't take long to learn to aim and shoot.
• They're intimidating. Thunder, flames, smoke.
• Their high-velocity projectiles punch through armor -- but thicker, heavier armor "of proof" could withstand a pistol shot or a long-distance arquebus shot.
• Their ammo is small and light. You can easily carry more rounds than you'll use.
• They're actually pretty cheap.

On the other hand, they're not reliable, they're not particularly accurate, and they have a terrible rate of fire.

For matchlock firearms, just use the crossbow stats, renamed:

hand crossbow -- pistol
light crossbow -- arquebus (or hackbutt)
heavy crossbow -- musket

If you want a swashbuckling campaign with minimal armor, you can have firearms bypass armor, but that's a bit extreme.

Realistically, it should take a minute or so to load a matchlock -- 10 rounds -- without taking a few Firearms Drill feats.

 

[Shades of Green]

For matchlock firearms, just use the crossbow stats, renamed:

hand crossbow -- pistol
light crossbow -- arquebus (or hackbutt)
heavy crossbow -- musket

Actually I have Legends and Lairs: Steam & Sorcery, so rules are not an issue here, just the game world/game balance implications.

And thanks to the advice of all the people in this thread, I'm considering firearms to require an exotic weapons proficiency (atleast in the backwater Renya); add to that the high humidity levels of the Renyan swamps, which cause problems for firearms (sure, there are alchemical ways to protect gunpowder against humidity, but they increase the price significantly), and I think this will keep bows and crossbows (especially repeater ones, favored by both Gnomes and Kobolds) around.

 

[Gorrstagg]

Actually I have Legends and Lairs: Steam & Sorcery, so rules are not an issue here, just the game world/game balance implications.

And thanks to the advice of all the people in this thread, I'm considering firearms to require an exotic weapons proficiency (atleast in the backwater Renya); add to that the high humidity levels of the Renyan swamps, which cause problems for firearms (sure, there are alchemical ways to protect gunpowder against humidity, but they increase the price significantly), and I think this will keep bows and crossbows (especially repeater ones, favored by both Gnomes and Kobolds) around.

Heya Shades

I have been using firearms in my homebrew for quite a bit of time. I have two modeled styles, and one uses a Monte Cook style gun, and another uses a d20 Warcraft gun.

And in my world they are both prohibitively expensive. And require the Exotic Weapon Proficiencty: Firearms

The whole game is abstracted, and I did comparison damages and found letting it run like a typical ranged weapon, worked just fine. And I've been happy with it.

I think you'll find it works well.. however you do end up doing it.

 

[mmadsen]

Actually I have Legends and Lairs: Steam & Sorcery, so rules are not an issue here, just the game world/game balance implications.

Don't the game-balance implications hinge on what rules you choose to use?

And thanks to the advice of all the people in this thread, I'm considering firearms to require an exotic weapons proficiency (atleast in the backwater Renya); add to that the high humidity levels of the Renyan swamps, which cause problems for firearms (sure, there are alchemical ways to protect gunpowder against humidity, but they increase the price significantly), and I think this will keep bows and crossbows (especially repeater ones, favored by both Gnomes and Kobolds) around.

One of the key strengths of firearms (especially over longbows) was that they did not require extensive training to use effectively. Thus, I wouldn't require an exotic weapon proficiency. On the other hand, loading a blackpowder weapon, especially in combat, is a time-consuming, error-prone process. A nine-round reload time (reduced with the appropriate Firearms Drill feats) would be realistic and would reduce the allure of firearms -- particularly for high-level characters, who could do much more with a bow or a sword.

 

[Shades of Green]

I was talking more about game world balance than game rule balance. But anyway, I'd consider having firearms be simple weapons - but they'll take time to reload. And yes, they won't be much efficient for non-specialized high level characters - that's the whole point of them: They give lower level characters an extra sting. Historically, a knight would have much more training (expressed in "level"/BAB/feats/skills in D&D 3E) than a peasant; a primitive musket would make the peasant a real threat to the knight. This, ofcourse, doesn't take magic into account, so high level characters would still have a significant edge (especially against monsters whith damage reduction and weapon immunities).

And reloading times shouldn't be less than a full round for a skilled gunner (fast loading (?) feat) successfully using the Munitions skill. An untrained character would take 3 rounds to load, and a skilled character would take two full rounds to load without rolling a Munitions check. Slower reloading times might make firearms totally unfavorable in comparison to older ranged weapons (not to mention the modern repeater crossbow built by kobold "engineers" and used extensively by Goblinoid soldiers or built and used by Gnomes (a far better version than the Kobold one).

 

[Ace]

In my steampunk game I was going for an "Arcana" computer game feel

My solution was to make bullets and alchemical item costing dice size silver pieces -- FREX a pocket pistol (tiny) does 1d6 and rounds for it cost 6SP --

Damage was basically with 1 die size more than an appropriate weapon (Horse pistol, the size of a shortsword did d8-- Carbine --which was longsword sized did 1d0 and so on) -- with a 19-20/x3 crit

armor worked normally and attacks worked normally with IIRC a feat ro two from D20 Modern

because these were alchemical weapons using glass cartridges reloading was pretty quick -- 1 MEA per round -- or later stripper clip or speedloader --

a feat allowed quick reloading once per round as a free action. This way I didn't have to do with the "3 full actions to reload" and "fire and forget" issues my players disliked

It also took a feat to be proficient -- fighters (and only fighters) got this free

This let me have gunslingers and the like while remaining a D&Dish feel