Guns in a Renascence Era Campaign

[James Lockart]

Ablative Armour is intended to be a plot item, one member of the party get's it for plot reasons to make an otherwise extraordinary difficult mission "moderate." Also, armor was still effective against lead round up until we started using copper jackets (has nothing to do with the "hardness" of the copper and everything to do with the fact the bullets were moving so fast bare lead would melt in the barrel from friction.) Bullet "proofing" was an old way of testing armor. They would shoot it and place a decorative mark around the dent as "proof it would stop a bullet." The main reason we switched from bows to guns was the dramatically simplified logistics. It can take days to weeks to learn to shoot a bow, it takes hours to days to learn a gun. Then the musket men could carry 100 rounds or more when the archer only had a few dozen. Wounds to fleash also tend to be nastier with bullets but I'm starting to digress.

 

[James Lockart]

"Mage guns" were considered, but magic ammo already exsits out the wazu thanks to a few of the more interesting rules books. Mordenkainen's Emporium (am i spelling that right?) and the Reaving ammo is sweet. (Basically take 5 ongoing or spend your move action to end it.)

 

[Unwise]

I like what you have come up with, I have done something very similar before. Realism is not important, capturing the percieved concept of an weapon is. I just thought I would share a couple of thoughts.

- Blunderbusses take so long to load that they can be thought of as a reusable alchemical item. Each use costs X amount of gunpowder. This allows you to make them area effect weapons using preexisting rules. A short range AoE attack works well whether it is an alchemical firebomb or a blunderbuss shot. What is also great about this is that alchemical items have a set + to hit. This is great for the blunderbuss as it really requires no signiciant skill on behalf of the user. A blunderbuss should be an item that is just as deadly in the hands of a granny or an adventurer.

- You need to both show that Firearms are a superior weapon and will eventually dominate the world, but at the same time make them balanced with other weapons so that the PCs retain a choice of style without feeling gimped. What makes firearms much superior to other ranged weapons is their ease of use. As such, I would treat them much like crossbows (as you have), but they are simple weapons so anybody can use them.
The good thing about this is that they are no better for skilled martial combatant who can already use crossbows or longbows, but they are much better for the unskilled.

- I had a mono-pod item for use with the arquebuses/mini-swivel-cannons that gave +1 to hit if they did not move that turn. I think carrying it also lowered the persons speed by 1 too, but that was an unnecessary complexity.

 

[James Lockart]

I like the idea of all firearms being simple weapons. That is the big advantage of the firearm after all.

 

[Blue]

I was considering firearms, and instead of trying for a simulation (which if I did I shoudl also make crossbows armor piercing), instead what I planned was that the equivilent of gunpowder was alchemical arcane and just allowed reskinning of any crossbow (to show a user) or implement with arcane power (to show a maker who could "charge" the load when firing to do things like AoEs and other energy types).

I was also planning on reskinning the armors to all seem much lighter, with Plate becoming something like a chain shirt and everything lighter being variations on clothes & leather, perhaps some local reinforcement.

Between the two, looked rather swashbuckler-y without the need for new rules. Got no problems with new rules, but thsi seemed to hit my needs without needing playtest.

 

[NewJeffCT]

good ideas - I might balance the higher damage with a shorter range for the guns. I think most early guns did have a fairly short effective range, if I recall.

 

[Ryujin]

Since rifled barrels didn't come along for a while, short range and less accurate weapons would make sense.

 

[James Lockart]

Rifling was invented in the 1500's, it just wasn't widely used until 1800+

 

[Ryujin]

Considering that firearms had been around in one for or another since the 1200s, I stand by my 'didn't come along for a while' statement. 'Proper' rifling wasn't around until the 1600s, but that's splitting hairs.