Guns? (primarily Iron kingdoms)

[tetsujin28]

Coolness factor and roleplaying.

And the minis are cool That, and some classes (such as the gun mage) get the feat for free.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

IIRC, Even up until the late 19th century, the British (their other troops armed with machine guns and bolt-action rifles) used cavalry armed with lances.

Very good for running down fleeing troops. I believe they'd switched to using a thrusting sword right before WWI.

Brad

 

[mmadsen]

With guns, armor became useless. Melee became a thing of the past. How do they explain the coexistance of each of these? Why are melee (swords, etc) and armor still used, wouldn't they fade out with the discovery of this new technology?

Do you have an aversion to history? I ask because guns shared the battlefield with swords, lances, and even armor for centuries. The conquest of Mexico, the English Civil War, the Age of Piracy, the Napoleanic Wars, the British Empire's "Little Wars" -- they all involve a mix of firearms and cold steel.

Early firearms, after all, have a very low rate of fire, and they don't have great range either.

 

[mythusmage]

The Iron Kingdoms are in transition. Steam is replacing sail on the seas, firearms are replacing swords and bows. But it's taking time. The war and the threat from Cyrix are both accelerating and slowing progress.

The closest real world analog is the early to mid 19th century in Western Europe and North America.

Then you have the Western Immorean's fixation on grandiose devices. While warjacks impress the plebes (and mecha are cool), they're also expensive to build and expensive to maintain. It's like building the 1860 version of a tiger tank. It means you tie up resources that could be used to equip a unit and keep it in the field. From the illustrations I figure Cygnar alone could equip a infantry battallion plus a 6 gun battery. The first Iron Kingdoms nation to figure out they'll get more bang for the buck if they dropped 'jacks is going to revolutionize warfare.

(And think of the arcane resources being tied up in 'jacks. The Iron Kingdoms are ripe for an arcane industrial revolution, which is being stalled by the need for arcanes to work with and on 'jacks.)

In short, the Iron Kingdoms are a fine example of what can happen when people are not sensible. Never thought you'd get a lesson in human psychology, now did you?

 

[VirgilCaine]

Very good for running down fleeing troops. I believe they'd switched to using a thrusting sword right before WWI.

Brad

Fleeing troops or fleeing enemies?

 

[mythusmage]

Fleeing troops or fleeing enemies?

They're fleeing and you're chasing, they're enemies.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

So, what is the advantage of firearms in IK over bows or crossbows? Why would a person take one as an exotic feat?

To my mind? Not enough of an advantage to either justify the expense, nor the exotic weapon feat. I dropped the idea of the alchemical powder, and reduced the price of both guns and the powder. And made guns martial rather than exotic, given that most of the armies have soldiers trained in their use...

The Auld Grump - some of the longer muskets could penetrate a breastplate, but most shorter guns could not penetrate a well made one. (I count masterworked breastplate and plate armor as 'proofed' - granting full protection against bullets. Lesser armors halve their effectiveness against guns, and chainmail actually increases the damage by a point, as the rings are driven into the wearer's flesh.)

 

[glass]

guns can also have a much faster shooting rate, so you can probably attack maybe 5 times, with a -4 on the attack roll, instead of just once.

lol!


glass.

 

[Tetsubo]

In my last campaign I had firearms as Martial weapons and used an Alchemy style of powder. Though I had it be a simple two part mixed in a 1:1 ratio. The odd mixes in the IK setting just seem silly to me. The players only ever encountered one gunman I think. Pity the campaign ended before I could toss more at them...

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

The advantage of guns in IK is in the first volley of shots - a military pistol does 2d6 with a crit range of 19-20 and a x3 multiplier. So compared to a heavy crossbow, it does 1.5 more HP of damage per shot, and the max damage on a crit is 36 as opposed to 20. Of course, the feat required cancels some of that benefit out, but I think it's fairly decent. It's also easier to carry multiple pistols, which negates the long reload time.