D&D 5E (2014) Let's Talk About Guns in 5E

[Frozen_Heart]

It absolutely is: At the the current point in 5.5.

As long as firearms and bullets are martial weapons and many times the cost of shortbows and arrows, musketeers are going to be very rare, elite units, and work fine being fielded in the same armies as swords and plate.

D&D firearms aren't cheap or simple enough to be adopted en masse and change the way armies work.

Yeah it weirds me out how people say that guns could never be balanced in DnD, when the PHB literally has functional and balanced guns as options in it.

 

[Cergorach]

Whereas firearms, particularly in the sort of contexts we're imagining here, they're the products of workshops, tools. Labour.

But in D&D 5e 2024 it's a LOT of labour (Thinkerer): 50gp for the tinker's tools, 250gp for the musket materials, and 400 hours of work making one. Based on our 40 hour working week, that would be two and a half months of work, or maybe 5 muskets per year per Thinkerer. Of course the Thinker would need 300gp up front for tools and material, not to mention working space, and board/food for those two and a half months... With only a day off per month, you would maybe get seven muskets per year per Thinkerer.

A guild, noble, king might hire a Thinkerer for 2gp/day, paying for the workshop, the Thinkerer tools, and the musket component prices. They hire a hundred Thinkerers for a year and spend 180,000gp plus the price of a workshop, armory, guards guarding that, etc.

Now imagine a thief with a Bag of Holding (or ten = 4,000gp) stealing those 500 muskets (worth 250,000gp)...

Imho the only reason why Gith (pirates) have muskets and pistols at all is because they kick in a thief with two Bags of Holding (only 800gp), drag all the muskets, pistols, and ammo into a 10' radius, 'detonate' the Bag of Holding inside the other Bag of Holding in the middle of the pile and get dragged into the Astral plane, where their buddies pick up the goods with the thief... No need to exit at all...

But they are trainable in hours rather than years

Not in D&D, in D&D a musket and pistol are martial weapons, while a light crossbow is a simple weapon. What people keep forgetting is that we're talking D&D and not RW...

Yeah it weirds me out how people say that guns could never be balanced in DnD, when the PHB literally has functional and balanced guns as options in it.

That's because most people overvalue what a firearm can do, and undervalue what a simple knife can do... Hence they assign far more damage to a firearm then to a knife.

 

[Reynard]

But in D&D 5e 2024 it's a LOT of labour (Thinkerer): 50gp for the tinker's tools, 250gp for the musket materials, and 400 hours of work making one. Based on our 40 hour working week, that would be two and a half months of work, or maybe 5 muskets per year per Thinkerer. Of course the Thinker would need 300gp up front for tools and material, not to mention working space, and board/food for those two and a half months... With only a day off per month, you would maybe get seven muskets per year per Thinkerer.

A guild, noble, king might hire a Thinkerer for 2gp/day, paying for the workshop, the Thinkerer tools, and the musket component prices. They hire a hundred Thinkerers for a year and spend 180,000gp plus the price of a workshop, armory, guards guarding that, etc.

Now imagine a thief with a Bag of Holding (or ten = 4,000gp) stealing those 500 muskets (worth 250,000gp)...

Imho the only reason why Gith (pirates) have muskets and pistols at all is because they kick in a thief with two Bags of Holding (only 800gp), drag all the muskets, pistols, and ammo into a 10' radius, 'detonate' the Bag of Holding inside the other Bag of Holding in the middle of the pile and get dragged into the Astral plane, where their buddies pick up the goods with the thief... No need to exit at all...

Not in D&D, in D&D a musket and pistol are martial weapons, while a light crossbow is a simple weapon. What people keep forgetting is that we're talking D&D and not RW...

That's because most people overvalue what a firearm can do, and undervalue what a simple knife can do... Hence they assign far more damage to a firearm then to a knife.

Prices in D&D are interesting bits of worldbuilding and genre enforcement. They don't provide any balance, otherwise all weapons that do 1d12 damage would cost 500 gp. A heavy crossbow is 1/10th the cost of the musket in the PHB, for an average 1 less point of damage. That's not an attempt to "balance" firearms in any way. That is a way for the designers to tell you that in D&D, guns are rare and expensive and suboptimal.

 

[CreamCloud0]

But in D&D 5e 2024 it's a LOT of labour (Thinkerer): 50gp for the tinker's tools, 250gp for the musket materials, and 400 hours of work making one. Based on our 40 hour working week, that would be two and a half months of work, or maybe 5 muskets per year per Thinkerer. Of course the Thinker would need 300gp up front for tools and material, not to mention working space, and board/food for those two and a half months... With only a day off per month, you would maybe get seven muskets per year per Thinkerer.

A guild, noble, king might hire a Thinkerer for 2gp/day, paying for the workshop, the Thinkerer tools, and the musket component prices. They hire a hundred Thinkerers for a year and spend 180,000gp plus the price of a workshop, armory, guards guarding that, etc.

Now imagine a thief with a Bag of Holding (or ten = 4,000gp) stealing those 500 muskets (worth 250,000gp)...

Imho the only reason why Gith (pirates) have muskets and pistols at all is because they kick in a thief with two Bags of Holding (only 800gp), drag all the muskets, pistols, and ammo into a 10' radius, 'detonate' the Bag of Holding inside the other Bag of Holding in the middle of the pile and get dragged into the Astral plane, where their buddies pick up the goods with the thief... No need to exit at all...

Not in D&D, in D&D a musket and pistol are martial weapons, while a light crossbow is a simple weapon. What people keep forgetting is that we're talking D&D and not RW...

That's because most people overvalue what a firearm can do, and undervalue what a simple knife can do... Hence they assign far more damage to a firearm then to a knife.

I would imagine, a dedicated craftsman for muskets should not be judged by the metrics of what adventurers are capable of, even an adventurer who, and big scare quotes here: ‘professionally’ makes them, not to mention they’d also have a proper workshop with equipment and an entire production line crew to make them.

We used to have NPC classes for this sort of thing in previous editions did we not?

 

[VashVet]

That's because most people overvalue what a firearm can do, and undervalue what a simple knife can do... Hence they assign far more damage to a firearm then to a knife.

Agreed. This, and katanas as doing higher damage than a standard sword. To me, if you want to see guns more widespread in your games, you can’t make their damage radically better or worse than other options.

 

[Remathilis]

Yeah it weirds me out how people say that guns could never be balanced in DnD, when the PHB literally has functional and balanced guns as options in it.

Agreed. This, and katanas as doing higher damage than a standard sword. To me, if you want to see guns more widespread in your games, you can’t make their damage radically better or worse than other options.

I just want to say thank you for making the points I was trying to make for a dozen pages or so!

 

[Remathilis]

But in D&D 5e 2024 it's a LOT of labour (Thinkerer): 50gp for the tinker's tools, 250gp for the musket materials, and 400 hours of work making one. Based on our 40 hour working week, that would be two and a half months of work, or maybe 5 muskets per year per Thinkerer. Of course the Thinker would need 300gp up front for tools and material, not to mention working space, and board/food for those two and a half months... With only a day off per month, you would maybe get seven muskets per year per Thinkerer.

Would a tinkerer make regular bullets and a thinkerer make mind bullets?

And if you think about it (heh) full plate is just as expensive and time consuming to make. So most of the world building considerations that a firearm would have would apply to plate.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah it weirds me out how people say that guns could never be balanced in DnD, when the PHB literally has functional and balanced guns as options in it.

Right, by having firearms frozen at a particular low point and by underemphasjzinf how they would impact combat. But modern D&D combat is about vibes, not war game simulation.

 

[Parmandur]

It absolutely is: At the the current point in 5.5.

As long as firearms and bullets are martial weapons and many times the cost of shortbows and arrows, musketeers are going to be very rare, elite units, and work fine being fielded in the same armies as swords and plate.

D&D firearms aren't cheap or simple enough to be adopted en masse and change the way armies work.

Sure, the PHB has firearms artificially frozen there, and doesn't address how they would impact armor.

 

[James Gasik]

I mentioned AoE and saving throw attacks upthread but guns could also be used for giving martials more energy damage attacks, ice shells, acid rounds, lightning shot, although i guess there’s no reason (other than DnD is afraid to give martials consistent elemental damage) that we couldn’t of just had elemental arrows and bolts BotW Zelda style for a good while now.

I've long wondered why we can't have at least fire arrows, since there are perfectly good reasons for "martials" to need sources of elemental damage, which is handed out for free to many classes with cantrips, but a Fighter has to make do with improvised weapons like torches and alchemist's fire.