Guns!!

[Kmart Kommando]

a whole brace of pistols, to fire 4-6 shots?


a brace of pistols is 2 pistols, so 2 shots.

 

[Pbartender]

a whole brace of pistols, to fire 4-6 shots?


a brace of pistols is 2 pistols, so 2 shots.

Sorry... you're right. For some reason I always thought of a brace as "a group of multiples of two" -- Two, four, six, etc...

I should have said, "several braces of pistols".

Consider it corrected. Thanks.

 

[Jondor_Battlehammer]

I find the implication of the magical immunity quite interesting.

Can normal guns ignore magical defenses? Does this include armor (or just the magic part)? How about Force effects like Mage Armor, Bracers of Armor or the Shield spell?

How do guns interact with things that have DR X/Magic?

Well, the bullets are made of lead, so you'll never divine the one that hits you.


This does bring a pricing questions to mind. How much would it cost to apply an Anti magic Field to a weapon, so it could cut through all spells?

You also seem to be missing shotguns. Say 30' range, 2d6, 20/3.

 

[JDJblatherings]

I'm sorry, but that's inaccurate. Do a little bit of research.

An average person who wasn't "well trained" -- say, a farmer going hunting -- would properly load a musket in about half a minute.

An average soldier could load and fire his musket three times in about a minute... That'd be three full-actions to reload and a standard action to fire, or about 21 seconds.

By drilling the reloading process until it was instinctual (or by skipping less important steps in the reloading process), the very best trained (or most reckless) soldiers, like the British Redcoats (or the Confederate skirmishers), could get as many as four shots off in a minute (five, if the gun was loaded to begin with)... that's two full round action to reload and a standard action to fire, or about 15 seconds.

That's why the battle formations and volley fire was so important... and would still make sense using D20 rules. Take a formation of Redcoats three ranks deep for example:

Every round of the battle, you'd have one rank performing their first full round of reloading, one rank performing their second round of reloading, and then the rear rank which uses a movement action to step in front of the other two ranks and a standard action to fire in a volley. Every round 1/3 of the formation is firing while the rest reload.

That's another reason pistol stay useful... Out of a mass formation, muskets are only really good for hunting, because it takes too long to reload. As you mention, though, pistols are small enough to carry several and be used one-handed, so an individual combatant can carry several braces of pistols and get off four or six shots before needing to reload, while sitll carrying a sword in your other hand to defend yourself at close quarters.

pardon me...I've done research. I've been exposed to them since I was a child. I have competed in and witnessed far more competitions of folks firing muzzloaders.

2 rounds to load + 1 to aim and fire + 2 rounds to load+1 to aim and fire + 2 rounds to load +1 round to aim and fire a rate of 3 shots a minute .., the rate of napleons average troops.

1 round to fire +1 to aim and fire +1 round to fire +1 to aim and fire+1 round to fire +1 to aim and fire+1 round to fire +1 to aim and fire + 1 round to fire +1 to aim and fire is a rate of 5 shots a minute for people l I figure to be experts. English troops managed 4 a minute.


as a slight aside - a famous balck powder era skirimish - the sand bar fight. look it up if you dont' know about it, it is a good example of how fights of the era could unfold.

 

[Pbartender]

a rate of 3 shots a minute .., the rate of napleons average troops.

...

...a rate of 5 shots a minute for people l I figure to be experts. English troops managed 4 a minute.

Then I misunderstood you... I wouldn't have said that Napoleon's average troops "aren't well trained" or that English troops are simply "well trained", and I wasn't using an entire full round action to fire the gun, since an attack in D&D only really requires a Standard action... That's can make a big difference in the soldiers who can manage faster fire rates.

At one full action to reload and a standard action to fire (about 9 seconds total), you can fire a musket nearly 7 times in a minute.

the sand bar fight...

Yep... that's the duel between Samuel Wells and Dr. Thomas Maddox that went bad. James Bowie, of Bowie knife fame, was present if I remember correctly. An excellent example of a melee involving pistols.