Guns as the weapons of the Elite

[Stormborn]

There are historical precedents for swords, in a highly stratified society, being used only by an elite warrior caste. The threads about the gun's impact on society, as well as a few things on the history channel lately, have got me wondering how a society might work where this was true of the gun.

Imagine a society where a very small warrior caste develops and thighly regulates firearms. The knowledge of their construction and the development of powder is a closely guarded secret. Most of them in use are given by a lord to his retainers, although they might be purchased by certain classes of people for a very high price. For any one not of the warrior caste possessing one is a death sentence. They are not stockpiled, nor made in mass quantities. Tradition keeps them fairly unchanged for generations, with only slight improvements here and there. Pistol and sword fighting styles develop, as do specialized armor, for when members of the elite face off against one another.

Now, as has been stated else where, firearms really only make sense in a low magic society. Let's hypothesize that the game setting uses the d20 modern or Grim Tales rules, magic is fairly rare, and it to may be the province of an elite caste.

Would such a world be logically consitant, or at least as logically consitant as any other game world? What would the implications of such a society be? Could such a society be sustainable over generations?

 

[Celebrim]

Elite warrior societies tend to develop whenever a weapon is expensive and requires lifetime devotion to gain useful degrees of skill in. For example, the European Knight required equipment worth about one million dollars in modern terms, and spent 14 years training to master the mounted lance. The Spartan Hoplites had to master formation drill with the long pike and shield. The Japanese samurii is most commonly associated with swordmastery, but also mastered such demanding skills as mounted archery and wielding a halberd from horseback.

Mastery of the musket as an elite weapon would be highly unusual, and would depend on the ability to control the technology to a very high degree. A peasant militia suddenly finding itself in the possession of muskets might not be an actual threat to a well drilled aristocracy of musketeers, but individually outside the level of armies meeting armies a group of peasants with muskets is a series threat to any aristocrat. Note that the same wouldn't be true of a Samurii or Knight who suddenly finds himself beset by a small group of peasants that have acquired arms. The difference is that the Samurii or Knight got really huge dividends in skill from that lifetime of training, but with firearms the marginal returns on additional training get smaller much quicker. The more effective that the firearms become, the more that is true. Between the Napoleonic wars and WWI you have a real true age of the conscript soldier, when numbers and tactics tended to matter far more than small differences in the skills of the soldiers on either side. Prior to that time, muskets were ineffective enough that you got huge dividends out of the speed with which you could reload under fire. After that time, warfare became complex enough and units had to spread out enough to avoid taking high casualties, that formation tactics became impossible, and skills training for individual soldiers started yielding big dividends again.

I think that it would be in theory possible to have such a society, but it would be really brittle because the society is based around a social structure that the technology just doesn't really support. A single Knight could effectively face a dozen or so unarmored peasants with improvised weapons. A single Musketeer just can't, if only because he can't reload fast enough to prevent himself being overrun. A force of Musketeers with early muskets could probably not face off against a force several times its size armed with bows and other 'primitive' weapons if that was the only advantage that they had.

One interesting take on the notion of an elite warrior society though is Sean McMullen's "The Miocene Arrow" in which a Feudal society with external constraints that keep its technology stagnant develops around producing WWI era fighter technology.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

I coule only see firearms remaining weapons of the elite if they required a special process to fire ( have to use a 0-level spell slot for example) or if the ammunition was almost prohibitive in cost.

 

[solkan_uk]

If you wanted to bring it forward a bit to modern guns, an elite based around the Gun-Kata of Equilibrium would work quite well.

 

[James Heard]

If the actual weapon construction costs were somehow very prohibitive, or if the elite weaponry were somehow vastly superior to what the common folk have access to. It could also be as simple as the elite having other responsibilities that are hard to learn/master too. So, if the average gun is a matchlock and the elite are getting semi-magical brass cartridge carbines by constructing their weapons with alchemy (and requiring their members to study alchemy) and training for mounted combat then I could see it - easy. Just remember that the non-elite would probably still have pretty effective artillery.

Anyways, I think it's one of those places I'd construct a PrC for a game to fill the notion. Prereqs: Alchemy, BAB, Mounted Combat, & ranks in Ride. Abilities: cool weapon & restricted Craft feat, mounted combat feats and rapid reload. Maybe 5 levels.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Well, let's get a little funky.

Guns as guns I think is a non-starter for reasons already mentioned in this thread.

But let's take a situation where perhaps guns have come and gone. Say one where guns have been invented but gunpowder kept going all ka-blooey when wizards torched them. So guns are a known technology, just not a reliable one. Centuries pass and guns keep getting developed by hobbists and scientists (one and the same in a fantasy world). They eventually figure out rifling and cartridge ammunition. However, in order to use guns they have to be magically protected to keep from going all ka-blooey. This makes guns very expensive and rare, which for the nobility just adds to the charm.

So the nobles might manufacture the archaic gunpowder weapons and have them all be +1 with spell resistance. They're pretty easy to use, so there is no real training needed like you would need with bows. And you can get a decent rate of fire out of them, unlike a crossbow (longbows and shortbows have a high rate of fire, this is not reflected in the d20 rules). So jigger with the stats a bit. Maybe give them 1d6 damage with a x4 multiplier. Rule that you can get a second attack in with the weapon at no to hit penalty, and the gunpowder cooks off if the weilder misses a save from a fire-based attack by more than 4.

That's a combination of power and impracticality that may appeal to your world's upper classes.

 

[The_Universe]

An elite can form around anything as long as they have sufficient will and power to regulate access to whatever makes them "elite."

In the case of mounted knights (listed above) the elite was largely self-regulating. Economic pressures prevented any truly large number of people from being able to access and maintain the "technology." While gunpowder tech does not naturally lend itself to the same kind of hierarchical distribution, there's no reason that a sufficiently determined group of people with a willingness to use the powers that they have access to couldn't make themselves an elite.

I did a similar thing in a D&D game I ran for a long time, and the only way that I could maintain verisimilitude and still not have guns all over the place was to make the penalties for possessing a firearm without the blessing of the "elite" (in this case, the King's military/closest advisors) ridiculously steep. In short, discharging and/or possessing a firearm unless you were a member of a specific group was a capital offense. It didn't matter if you'd hit/hurt anything - simply having one was enough to warrant your death.

That edict, coupled with a reasonably vigilant and centrally controlled police-type organization was able to restrict the spread of guns and related technology significantly, to the degree that they remained uncommon/exotic for almost 1000 years after their introduction.

For real world examples of such central control preventing the spread of firearms, read up on Chinese and Japanese history. In both cases, a powerful central authority were able to almost completely stamp out the use of such easy and inelegent weapons as firearms.

 

[mmadsen]

Elite warrior societies tend to develop whenever a weapon is expensive and requires lifetime devotion to gain useful degrees of skill in.

Exactly. I can easily see an elite "warrior" caste with "guns" if those warriors are wizards, and their guns are wands.

 

[Warehouse23]

My problem with firearms being the "elite" weapon of a warrior caste comes from my geek heritage. Simply put: "This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or as random as a blaster, but an elegant weapon for a more civilized age."

Now a real laser pistol....that's a civilized weapon.

 

[Dark Jezter]

The Japanese samurii is most commonly associated with swordmastery, but also mastered such demanding skills as mounted archery and wielding a halberd from horseback.

The image of samurai as master swordsmen is really overstated by movies and anime. In reality, only a very small amount of samurai were dedicated swordsmen (the most famous of which being Miyomoto Musashi) because the katana was more of a ceremonial object than an actual weapon. In battle, Samurai mainly used bows or polearms. The katana was really only used for duels (which didn't happen very often), executions/seppuku, and for cutting down insolant peasents.

Movies and anime also love to portray the katana as some kind of indestructable super-sword that can cut through metal armor like a blowtorch through butter. In reality, studded leather is capable of providing protection against a katana.