Gunpowder, fantasy and you

[ProfessorCirno]

Greyhawk also had a god that was literally just a cowboy.

So um.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Do you generally like gunpowder weapons in a fantasy setting? Of course if you play steampunk or some other bit more futuristic fantasy, gunpowder is natural addition but how about in a more standard fantasy setting? FR, Greyhawk, Eberron... Do you avoid it at all cost or find it as a flavorful part of the setting?

Avoid.

The last time I took part in such a debate, someone proved to me that handguns were being (infrequently) used in the Hundred Years' War. (The actual documents stated "hand gonnes", so they weren't cannons just being called guns. *Sigh* )

Anyway, I avoid them. Even in settings where they fit better, like most d20 Modern settings, people tend to fetishize them in a way that's scarier than katana fetishes. Because guns are not only real and frequently used, but people actually know stuff about them, I've had players confront me with real-life stats of really badass guns they want their characters to use. My current d20 Modern campaign takes place in the early 1970s, and I still have to deal with "really cool guns". (Modern isn't DnD, it doesn't have a magic item equivalent system, and I refuse to design one for modern guns.)

The WotC Modern boards were (and probably still are) infested with threads where people complain the gun rules aren't granular enough, a 10 mm gun should do more damage than a 9 mm gun but less than an 11 mm gun (because in real life, they do!) and players routinely just go for the biggest gun they can get, without realizing that a Barret Light 50 is a) not light b) not portable 3) not in the least big legal 4) you're better off using a sniper rifle rather than an anti-material rifle.

The biggest problem, I think, is because old guns were pretty "crappy" in real life and the biggest enthusiasts about guns often insist that they be "realistic" (while ignoring the unrealism of swords, something most of us know little about anyway). So guns do big damage (you know, swords are pretty deadly too, so why not crank their damage as well?) with unfun restrictions (expensive, tend to misfire or even blow up, take three rounds to load, etc). Realistic, sure, so why put them into a game?

The main reason people used muskets and other such guns in real life was because you could more easily train 1000 guys to use guns (with a bare amount of competence, focusing on rate of fire to the exclusion of accuracy and other such traits) than 100 archers. So you've got these unreliable, barely accurate weapons, pretty handy when you've got armies of thousands of soldiers vs similar armies, but not so handy when you've got an adventuring party of four or five people! Unless you're playing Napoleonic Era Squads & Soldiers, you're probably trying to shoehorn the wrong type of weapon into the gaming construct.

One thing that's always puzzled me in these recurring firearms-and-fantasy threads is the idea that firearms must be treated realistically to a degree that nothing else is subjected to the same treatment. Thus, firearms take forever to reload, they explode or misfire often, they do horrendous amounts of damage, they punch right through armor, et cetera (and ignoring the fact that this realism is often not terribly realistic).

The firearms system I used in my game wasn't designed to be realistic. It was designed to be usable, balanced with other mundane weapons, and fun.

Cheers. (This is what I get for skipping 7 pages.)

Personally I like the option of modeling early Firearms as more powerful than bows or crossbows, but with shorter ranges and other drawbacks: Harder to reload, ammunition can be very hard to come by, it is LOUD so everyone in the area is going to know you just fired it, cause limited 'obscuring mist' like clouds (A drawback or a bonus, depending on the location.), and lastly, walking around with a sack of gun powder at your hip is not the best of ideas if you're fighting something that can breath fire,...

That sounds ... overly complicated.

 

[DragonLancer]

I'm not one for gunpowder weapons really. I like my DnD to be an earlier age. More dark ages less rennaisence.

 

[luckless]

That sounds ... overly complicated.

When you were referring to my preference of firearms being loud, higher damage than bows, slower to reload, and optionally having ammo hard to find, and cast a small 'obscuring mist'.

I have to ask, what exactly is 'overly complicated'?

They're loud. Meaning if you are trying to sneak attack a guard and not have his buddy beside him notice till you go to kill him too,... Then a gun likely isn't your best choice.

Higher damage, so you roll 2 dice rather than 1. What is complicated about that?

Slower reload, so you take two full round actions to reload it rather than 1 with the heavy crossbow. Not to be insulting or anything, but is counting to 2 really that hard for a Pen and Paper player? I would have thought we had to be a little better at math than that to actually play the game in the first place.

Hard to find ammo? If you care about counting arrows and bolts to start with, then harder to find ammo just means that you might have to hunt around for it, and your average little village in the middle of the woods might not have any for you to buy.

Dealing with smoke? How is this any harder to deal with than already existing spells that do the exact same thing, but on larger scales?

Add in a rule for it doubling as a melee weapon: You have 2 weapons, and one can be drawn instantly if the other is currently held. You roll 2d10 when you use one, and a 1d8 when you use the other. Not exactly harder than a fighter who happens to carry a bow and a long sword.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

When you were referring to my preference of firearms being loud, higher damage than bows, slower to reload, and optionally having ammo hard to find, and cast a small 'obscuring mist'.

The mist.

Slower reload, so you take two full round actions to reload it rather than 1 with the heavy crossbow. Not to be insulting or anything, but is counting to 2 really that hard for a Pen and Paper player? I would have thought we had to be a little better at math than that to actually play the game in the first place.

That's not complicated. Boring though. "Guess what I'm doing this round? Fiddling with my gun!"

Dealing with smoke? How is this any harder to deal with than already existing spells that do the exact same thing, but on larger scales?

WotC actually overnerfed darkness in 3.x for pretty much that reason. Anything that messes with LoS causes confusion.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Incidentally, D&D tech levels are all over the damn place.

You have medieval knights worshipping a greek pantheon in ren-era plate mail using a caveman-esque club and a roman shield. Oh, and he has a 20th century morality system. This is ignoring the futuristic alien crashes that occur from time to time and the 16th century sailing techniques and how every other kingdom seems to be in a different era as far as social structure goes.

So saying firearms is "too high tech" just makes my head spin. Compared to which of the thousands of years that D&D "tech" makes up?

 

[Celebrim]

Incidentally, D&D tech levels are all over the damn place.

You have medieval knights worshipping a greek pantheon in ren-era plate mail using a caveman-esque club and a roman shield. Oh, and he has a 20th century morality system. This is ignoring the futuristic alien crashes that occur from time to time and the 16th century sailing techniques and how every other kingdom seems to be in a different era as far as social structure goes.

So saying firearms is "too high tech" just makes my head spin. Compared to which of the thousands of years that D&D "tech" makes up?

Ahhh... you seem to have a misunderstanding.

My campaign isn't located on the earth, nor is it an attempt to recreate a particular historical period. Considering that there are 1024 (ish) active deities regularly visiting the planet, a 12000 year old written history, three significant dark ages, regular commerce with other universes, seven major and dozens of minor sentient species, and an entirely different underlying basis of physics and chemistry, I don't find it particularly surprising that its not easy to peg any nations culture to a particular real world century or corner of the planet. I have nations ruled by vampires, centuries old alchemists, immortal demigods, ghosts, genni's, spells, sentient curses, living artifacts, and plain old ordinary autocracies in more flavors than Baskin Robbins. Longbowmen go into battle besides wooly mammoths, stone golems, and griffin riders. There are plucracies, kritarchies, cryptarchies, diarchies, theocracies, matriarchies, syndocracies, magocracies, and gerontocracies. Overflowing polythiests that would baffle a pious Hindu vie with fanatical atheists that think the whole divine thing is just a collective delusion. People burn witches at the stake, and there are nations where magic is so prevalent that fireproof cloth is an ordinary craft industry. There are vast areas still in the stone ages, and if you aren't careful you might stumble into a war machine left over from a culture that blurs Clarke's Law and Niven's Law past the point of recognition.

And the scary thing is that the real world in any given century is probably more diverse.

But no firearms. It's "too high tech".

 

[Derren]

Can muskets work in fantasy? Considering that I recently read Temeraire (Napoleonic wars + dragons) it certainly can.

Generally, "Fantasy" can pretty much mean anything so of course firearms can work with some of its variations.

The question here rather seems to be "Can firearms work with D&D"? Well, they can, but not very well.

D&D characters are very hard to kill because of the HP bloat and easy healing. That means that slow firing weapons like most firearms have a huge disadvantage as even with high damage they won't take out an enemy in one shot and by the time they are ready to fire again the enemy might have been healed.
And, when addressing the 4E rules specifically, the enemies who can be killed in one hit from a firearm can also be killed by a hit of anything else. So again a fast rate of fire is prefferable to slightly higher damage (which, compared to the HP of the enemy is rather insignificant).

The generally short encounter range in D&D also makes ranged weapons less valuable.
That combined means that in D&D most of the time you can't kill enemies with ranged weapons before they get into melee range.
In other systems were characters and enemies have less HP, muskets become a lot more viable while still being balanced as they are slow firing.

When you want to add firearms to D&D imo the historic version works much better than the romantic one.
The "romantic" image of firearms are slow firing, extremly dangerous (to both users), armor piercing superweapons.
That leads to extremly long (for D&D combat) reload times, touch attacks, exploding criticals and pretty fatal misshaps. And that all combined means no sane person ever wants to touch a gun.

Now historically, guns weren't better than bows for a long time till rifles came along. The reason why they still replaced them for mass combat was that they are very easy to build and use.
If you use that rationale behind firearms in D&D they would be simple weapons everyone can pick up while crossbows would be martial and bows superior weapons.
No special rules required except that muskets have a slight load time (move actions). That should work rather well when you want to add them to your game.

If you still want to give muskets an extra punch, add a bajonett to them, so the user can decide to reload them or to charge without the need to switch weapons (or to enchant several ones).

Oh, and by the way. Firearms existed as early as the 10th century in China. So actually most weapons already used in D&D are more "high tech" than early guns.
And you don't want to know when rockets were invented...

 

[pawsplay]

And the best thing about having firearms in a fantasy world is that you can have them enchanted like you can swords bows and other weapons.

I'd love to see a Paladin wielding a Holy M16. That would be awesome!

Listen up, you primitive screwheads. This is my Holy Avenger.

 

[pawsplay]

EDIT: If I was looking to represent musket era firearms in my fantasy games then I'd probably have them do a high-ish amount of damage, long reload times, and the ability to reduce the effectiveness of armor.

Guns are radically effective against armor. Except... breastplates and full plate will stop them, so they shouldn't get a bonus against that type of armor. So, what we need is a special chart that compares weapon type to armor worn...