[Grim Tales] Muskets

[HeapThaumaturgist]

There's a certain point after which you get diminishing returns, however, as far as damage goes.

That and ball and bullets are two pretty different things. I'm pretty sure, say, that musket ball would interact very well with Kevlar. Soft lead, alot of surface area, it would splatter and spread the energy out nicely. Against flesh, though, it'd go through just as easy as modern ammunition. Even at "low" musket velocities, flesh and bone are little barrier. Modern bullets are smaller and have to be specially designed to splatter more or you get through-and-through penetration without doing enough damage to surrounding tissue.

--fje

 

[Captain Tagon]

Yeah, I was going to make the range increment pretty small. Maybe something of the order of 20ft for pistols...

That's probably about the max range increment for pistols. I'd probably use something more along the lines of 15 ft.

 

[GMSkarka]

Simple Firearms from SKULL & BONES (circa 1700):

Musket, long: 2d6 damage, x3 Crit, 60ft range increment, 6 full rounds to reload.
Musket, short: 2d6 damage, x3 Crit, 40ft range increment, 6 full rounds to reload.
Pistol: 2d4 damage, x3 Crit, 10 ft. range increment, 6 full rounds to reload.

There are Martial and Exotic ones as well (Blunderbuss, Double-barrel pistol, etc.).

 

[Yuan-Ti]

Simple Firearms from SKULL & BONES (circa 1700):

Musket, long: 2d6 damage, x3 Crit, 60ft range increment, 6 full rounds to reload.
Musket, short: 2d6 damage, x3 Crit, 40ft range increment, 6 full rounds to reload.
Pistol: 2d4 damage, x3 Crit, 10 ft. range increment, 6 full rounds to reload.

There are Martial and Exotic ones as well (Blunderbuss, Double-barrel pistol, etc.).

Those sound pretty good to me.

 

[mmadsen]

What calibre/damage should they be? I'm trying to keep them worth spending a feat on, but not so much that they're the obvious choice. Has anyone any insights on the guns of this era?

Early matcholock firearms were functionally equivalent to the crossbows of the era, but a bit cheaper, louder, and scarier -- and with lighter ammo. They should not require an exotic weapon proficiency, since they are quite easy to use.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

Early matcholock firearms were functionally equivalent to the crossbows of the era, but a bit cheaper, louder, and scarier -- and with lighter ammo. They should not require an exotic weapon proficiency, since they are quite easy to use.

I believe in GT I recommend that they be Simple Weapons, but require a Feat to reload. I know I couldn't load a muzzleloader...


Wulf

 

[Serps]

I take it that the high damage capability of the Freeport firearms would be out of the question?

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

I take it that the high damage capability of the Freeport firearms would be out of the question?

1) What are the stats?

2) You can't really go wrong trusting Green Ronin.


Wulf

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

Even as simple weapons, the Skull and Bones firearms are hugely out-performed by a heavy crossbow all up and down the line. Only slightly less damage (1d10) but only a single full-round reload (as opposed to 6) also simple. Dunno as I'd ever willingly use one of those in a game, unless it was all y'got.

Just seems a little odd to me. Did you remove crossbows and/or reduce the damage dealt by melee weapons?

--fje

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

My Work Thus Far ...

Working with Grim Tales stuff, trying to build some muzzleloaders. This is what I'm getting so far:

Pistol, .22-.29 | Damage: 1d6+2 , x2 | Range: 15ft. | Reload Time: 3 Rounds (Tiny)
Pistol, .30-.40 | Damage: 1d10+2 , x2 | Range: 15ft. | Reload Time: 2 Rounds (Small)
Pistol, .43-.58 | Damage: 1d12+2 , x2 | Range: 20ft. | Reload Time: 2 Rounds (Med.)
Musketoon* | Damage: 1d20+2 , x2 | Range: 30ft. | Reload Time: 2 Rounds (Large)
Musket | Damage: 4d6 , x2 | Range: 50ft. | Reload Time: 3 Rounds (Large)
Blunderbuss | Damage: 5d4 , x2 | Range: 10ft. | Reload Time: 4 Rounds (Large)

Have three different pistols there because from my little bit of research it looks like bores varied quite a bit. The .22 is for tiny concealable "pocket pistols" and for combining in some Exotic weapons like the Pistol-Dagger.

The .30-.40 looks about average for a small utility pistol ... by utility I mean "Boarding Actions".

The .43+ is for the large calvary-type pistols like the British seemed fond of. Huge.

A musketoon is sort of a "carbine" musket, a shorter version more useful shipboard. I'm assuming something between a .43 and a .60 there. I'm using the much-neglected d20-damage-die for it to maintain, as much as I can, the improved linear method. I figure most people don't use it because it can be "confusing" to use the d20 for damage, but I think I'll give 'er the run around the block to see how it works.

For the musket I'm just assuming a big ol' .50-.60 ball, so that's why the huge damage. I was going to keep it at 2 round reload, but I want to encourage the musketoon and the kind of average damage this thing does will force an MDT on quite a large percentage of the population, so that's my control switch. I may ratchet it back to 2 rounds for muskets (with equal range) that have smaller loads and therefore smaller damage.

The blunderbuss is, of course, a shotgun style weapon with the spread rules from GT. I ordinarily don't like those for shotguns (not to get into a physics-of-shotguns debate) but the blunderbuss seems to have had a big ugly and dangerous (to everybody) spread and I think it'll be fun watching it carve a swath of destruction.

Dunno if this is of use to anybody. I'm going to work out some weights and purchase DCs. Any comments are more than welcome, as I'm still not set in stone.

--fje