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ShortQuests -- Pocket Sized Adventures! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed for 1-2 game sessions.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Pbartender" data-source="post: 3594615" data-attributes="member: 7533">I'm sorry, but that's inaccurate.  Do a little bit of <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=musket+loading&btnG=Google+Search" target="_blank">research</a>.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.</blockquote>

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