Firearms: Yes or No

[Psion]

In my homebrew, some nations had access to alchemical black-powder style firearms, at some expense.

In my second world game, no blackpowder, but technomagic firearms out of Arsenal.

 

[Krellic]

I have firearms in my new campaign but black powder is a magical rather than plain alchemical substance and is sparked by the use of runelocks.

They're not all that common and so far none of the party have picked one up but I don't think they'll cause any problems...

 

[tetsujin28]

My 17th century game would be pretty silly without firearms.

 

[tetsujin28]

I have run other games in the past with such weapons. A handful of players will pick up a musket or even a pistol, and they turn into fire-and-forget weapons. Doesn't really impact the flow of the game at all.

Exactly. A bow in D&D will always be more useful to those who like to sneak around the edges of a fight, simply due to the greater rate of fire. But if you've got a bunch of firearms at hand whilst others are reloading them (like in the defense of a fort), then you're talking some serious trouble.

 

[Tiew]

Humanophile, as far as I understand the advantage of firearms was that it was much easier to train people to use them. I may be wrong, but I think that in order to use a longbow you had to start training when you were young. With firearms the most important thing you needed to be able to do was march in a line, which you could teach a peasant to do in a few months. I think firearms lead to much larger armies filled with conscripts who needed less training than earlier warriors.

Keep in mind, even an early gun that you would be lucky to hit a haystack with could be intimidating if fired by a thousand people standing shoulder to shoulder.

I guess that's why I wouldn't want to see characters using guns in my D&D game. I think they're weapons for soldiers not warriors, if that makes any sense. If someone wanted to use one I guess I'd let them, but they'd probably end up only shooting once and missing every combat.

(People who know more history feel free to correct me about this. It's been over 5 years since I read that book on the evolution of warfare. )

 

[Ibram]

that brings me to my next question: what races and classes can use black powder weapons in your games.

IMC
races that make and use black powder weapons

Dwarves: the ones who first developed black powder weapons
Humans: have copied Dwarven weapons
Kataros: homebrewed race of cat-people, are the most technologicly advanced race on the planet
Gnomes: make heavy use of Dwarven guns

Classes
only Paladins and Druids are forbidden to use black powder weapons.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Allow but slow to load and you have to be close to hit.

 

[Ghostmoon]

I run a city based/pirate/tropical island campaign. I wanted to introduce firearms, and while I thought the rules in the DMG were probably realistic, they were never worth the feat the PC would have to use them. Instead, I have been using Monte Cook's firearms rules and found them to be great:

Harnessing the Natural Laws: Technology in Your Game: http://www.montecook.com/images/Technology.pdf

The only change I made is I cranked the damage die down by one degree (as Monte had done in an earlier version of the rules: Technology in Ptolus: http://www.montecook.com/arch_ptolus5.html). I wanted them to be worth exotic weapon feat, but not overwhelming. So far, it has been working very well. Out of the seven players in the campaign, only the halfling rogue has really latched onto them and made it her primary weapon. I took this as a good sign that the rules were fairly balanced, as if they were too good, everyone would want it and would take the feat if they could.

As for your second question, firearms are mostly the providence of the gnomes and the wealthy. In addition, they are being reverse engineered by other races, such as kobolds, and new variants are filtering out.

 

[WayneLigon]

Fragile, expensive, inaccurate, unreliable, slow... what made anyone think these blasted things were worth improving to where they are now?

Because any doofus can use them with very little training. When measured against how much damage they do versus how little training is required to use one, firearms tend to come out ahead. For a long time, they were not the only weapon carried, either; you'd shoot someone with one gun, shoot another person with the other you carried, then wade in with cutlass. So there was a fairly long time where you saw both sword and gun being used. As various improvements began to mount up (powder that was more stable, faster and faster means of reloading, greater accuracy, greater damage) only then did melee weapons begin to fade away.

My only concern is generally not with the firearms per se; really they just become a heavy crossbow you can load faster. The concern I get is with black powder itself; sooner or later you get someone just say 'to hell with it' and roll a keg into the villains lair and fireball it, or ignite the powder stores on a ship. When you make the transition from guns to bombs, that's where I start to lose interest.

 

[barsoomcore]

You lose interest as the explosions get bigger? Huh. That makes you pretty much the opposite of the average Hollywood film-goer.



Barsoom has flintlocks. Cause they're cool. People use them because, well, pretty much because they're cool.

BOOM! POW!