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Message: <blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 9279001" data-attributes="member: 5948">I've messed with this idea a lot actually, in a long-term project of mine which is a re-jigging of Ravenloft into Regency/Napoleonic era England (happy to drop my WiP rules in here, if you're interested).It's a worthy idea, but it does run pretty hard into some of the base assumptions of 5e.First is that most martial PCs will specialise for one kind of combat.  Feats and fighting styles (and battlemaster maneuvers, and subclass/class abilities, etc etc etc).  The system is not real friendly for those who want to be jacks-of-all-trades, which is awkward for those PCs who want to take one volley with their horsepistol or blunderbuss and then wade in with a sabre.Second is that D&D abstracts encumbrance.  IF you make a gun an 'encounter power' without implementing the rule in strictly game-y terms, then I guarantee every party will have a PC who's carrying 7 or 8 or more loaded firearms all the time (perfectly manageable, with a moderately decent Str!) which means that they can fire them every round regardless of the intention of the rule.  I know that the American Revolution 5e-esque game that kickstarted a while back and whise name I've forgotten had some sort of more granular encumbrance rule to address this problem - such a rule would 100% be needed.  Of course, this strategy is partly historical!  I think Napoleon's lancers routinely carried a couple fo pistols in addition to their lance.  But it's certainly abusable.Third is that 'disposable' or one-shot weapons are kinda anathema to a player base who for 50 years has associated success with getting cool loot like powerful magic weapons.  Being able to use that weapon only once per fight will not go down well among many.Fourth (and the big one!) is that martial classes rely heavily on getting extra attacks for their damage output, and this rule removes that factor compeletely.  If you can only use a musket once per fight, then what's the motivation for a 10th level fighter to ever use one, even in the first round of combat?  They'd do better taking their three attacks with a longbow.  And that's not even taking into account additional attacks from stuff like Haste, battlemaster maneuvers and other special abilities etc.  It shouldn't be detrimental to a skilled warrior to use the most advanced weapon of their time!There's other problems with firearms in general which have been discussed on here and in other D&D fora for many years of course.  D&Ds combat/damage system is heavily based around armour, what do you do with a weapon that historically made armour obsolete?  And if the unchallenged best weapon in the time period/setting is a ranged weapon based on dex, and rapiers still exist, it just makes Dex an even more overwhelmingly strong ability score, and remove the one niche in the game for high-Str characters, which was sheer damage output.   But the 'one shot and then draw your sword' model of firearms has plenty of problems of its own.</blockquote>

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