Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 2304187" data-attributes="member: 1645">If that's the case, just create three clones of the hand crossbow, light crossbow, and heavy crossbow, called pistol, arquebus, and musket.It's pretty simple.  All early firearms were muzzle-loaders; you had to pour the powder and jam the lead ball down from the tip of the barrel (the muzzle).  In the very earliest firearms, you had to hold a match to the tiny touch hole to light the powder.  This was quickly replaced by a trigger mechanism borrowed from crossbows, with a lit "match" (more like a slow-burning fuse) held away from the touch hole until the gunner pulled the trigger.  This was a matchlock.(You'll note that a firearm has three major components: lock, stock, and barrel.)Later, tinkerers found out how to make a really complicated, really expensive piece of hardware called a wheellock, which spun a wheel, via spring power, which ran its serrated edges along pyrite and showered sparks on the powder in the priming pan.Later, the flintlock offered a reliable, inexpensive way to ignite the powder in the pan, by striking a flint (on the tip of a spring-loaded hammer) against steel.It was seen as the end of an era for the knight (i.e. hero), but it didn't happen overnight.  Heroic fiction from the gunpowder era has heroes who do not flinch as thundering guns wreck havoc around them on the battlefield, then they charge (like the knights of old) and engage, sabre in hand.They were cheaper than both longbows and crossbows, and as easy to use as crossbows -- and they made a really big BANG and really gruesome injuries.  But they were very inaccurate.Certainly -- but reloading is very, very slow if you're not a well-drilled soldier (with lots of Firearms Drill feats): three rounds per minute was fast, even after the loading process had been streamlined over the centuries.Here's where it gets complicated.  A longbow arrow or crossbow bolt goes right through a coat of mail too, but we don't ignore that armor's AC.  And an arquebus ball doesn't go right through plate armor at range.  The ranged touch attack is a simple mechanic, but we're trying to model a not-so-simple phenomenon.I think this is missing the crux of what hit points are and how D&D combat works.  Since a D&D "hit" isn't necessarily a hit, and since hit points don't necessarily represent physical damage, it's probably best to keep it all abstract.  On the battlefield, early firearams were not vastly more effective than crossbows.Of course, being charged by an 8' ogre should have a similar effect. Just make masses of arquebusiers common.  One elf archer may be vastly superior, but he took 100 years of training to get that way, and he draws a bowstring made from spider silk.  At 100-to-1 odds, all he can do is make a heroic last stand or quit the field.</blockquote>

Verification