Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Grue" data-source="post: 5315385" data-attributes="member: 11989">Heh... normally I try to keep the blinders on when it comes to realism for a fantasy setting but technology discussions always tear them off.I try to keep my games interally consistent as far as the settings go (even though most of my players really don't care about the political lay of the land for the most part until some baron tries to tax them;-).  But guns, plus the fairly 'westernized' state\culture of most of Golarion, plus printing press.... I don't think 100 years or 4000 years is gonna make a huge difference in the rarity of guns and having it hang logically.Either magic has to be a whole lot more common and easier to learn or guns will be (or become) a lot more common.If a spell lobber has to spend years learning how to throw a fireball, it might make more economic sense to spend a few weeks training soldiers how to operate and fire a cannon.  Given the high quality metallurgy available in Golarion, I'd have to say that it'd be pretty unrealistic that their cannon would be less reliable than our actual historical artillery.  For firearms it's the same problem the Japanese had... arquebus armed ashigaru peasant foot troops pretty much negated the years of martial training of the samurai.  Japan in the 16th century was most likely producing the best guns in the world and had more of them than anybody else IIRC.   <quick google search> Arquebuses were introduced to Japan in 1543 by Portuguese traders (Fernão Mendes Pinto), who landed by accident on Tanegashima, an island south of Kyūshū in the region controlled by the Shimazu clan. By 1550, copies of the Portuguese arquebus were being produced in large quantities, and they were often seen on the battlefields all over Japan. Oda Nobunaga revolutionized musket tactics in Japan by splitting loaders and shooters and assigning three guns to a shooter at the Battle of Nagashino in 1575. Just doesn't fit in a logical consistent manner that even in magical areas, that it wouldn't eventually be recognized that those 'dangerous' and 'unrealiable' guns fired enmasse by peasantry with a few weeks of training wouldn't be more economical than keeping all those mages on the state's payroll.  No doubt they would keep some magical support but most of the Golarion states aren't backward...</blockquote>

Verification