Making guns palatable in high fantasy [Design Theory]

[Derren]

Then we need to toss the D&D monk out as well, because- inaccurate though it may be- it most closely resembles the fantastic Eastern martial monk tradition, not the clergymen of the West at all.

Likewise, for consistency, certain weapons need to be tossed from "Western" fantasy fiction & RPGs: kukris, shuriken (and almost any "monk weapon" except the quarterstaff), repeating crossbow (Hawk the Slayer, OH NOES!), etc.

Exactly. When we also remove all weapons which were invented after cannons and guns the weapon list would be quite short indeed.
- Longsword
- Shortsword
- Dagger
- Axe
- Spear
- Bow
- Crossbow
- Club

I agree with Umbran that the early middle ages would fit very well with the concept of D&D where you have low populations and wandering bands of mercenaries. But that is simply not how D&D is used. Just look at the Forgotten Realms. Even after all the catastrophes in 4E it is still high middle ages (and also has guns)
And even in "generic" settings you have standing armies, a city guard, sewers and other "modern" stuff.

Yes, wands would have interesting consequences for war.

Imo they wouldn't change that much. Too expensive for mass production. Just think how many crossbowmen you could equip with that kind of money. But if you have heroes on your sides that would change radically (or you are just short on manpower)

I really wish there was a proper, well thought writeup of what D&D warfare looks like. Or is there? I haven't seen any.

Depending on the magic level it would either look like WW1 or nothing would change at all.
I think there was a 3E book about mass combat which touched that topic but it only acknowledged the WW1 scenario and described only the mediveal one.

 

[Hassassin]

Imo they wouldn't change that much. Too expensive for mass production. Just think how many crossbowmen you could equip with that kind of money. But if you have heroes on your sides that would change radically (or you are just short on manpower)

But I think I showed that they aren't all that expensive, compared to the cost of cavalry and armor. Magic missile or scorching ray might not offer much in comparison to crossbows (they just ignore armor...), but area effects and utility magic fill very different niches.

 

[Umbran]

The problem is that the existence of guns played a very important part in the development of those armors.

Well, try this then - somewhere several hundred million years ago, there was a far more important historical development, that led to the fact that there's no such thing as a functional six-limbed vertebrate! Dragons and pegasi don't match real-world history. Do we have to toss them?

If you can say evolutionary history need not apply to the fictional world, why not say that technological history also need not apply?

Heck, let us be honest - in the history of the game, aggregated over players, would we not expect the most common use of heavy armor has been on some fighter type, on foot, in a dungeon crawl? Never mind that that armor was not intended for or typically used by infantry, much less for small unit tactical incursions in enclosed spaces!

But we're going to quibble that the presence of armor requires guns? Really?

Then we need to toss the D&D monk out as well, because- inaccurate though it may be- it most closely resembles the fantastic Eastern martial monk tradition, not the clergymen of the West at all.

You seem to be proving my point.

If we are looking for historical and cultural accuracy, then yes. If you are arguing for guns because guns go with the armor, then yes, you probably ought to toss out the monks, because they *don't* go with the armor. Though, oddly, they do go with the guns. Go figure.

But, since I've said a bunch of times already that form of accuracy and consistency means rather little to me when I sit down to a game, I can have them! I'm worried about integrity of tropes, not integrity of history.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Well, the twisted logic of "no guns, even primative guns" and yet lasers are acceptable (wand of scorching ray) kinda bugs me. The veil between scifi and fantasy is a thin one, but a passionatly defended one. At least until gnomes show up.

That's probably why tinker gnomes are hated.

That thin fantasy coating is what makes Wand of Scorching Ray fantasy instead of scifi. Hense, what I'm trying to do is add that same schlack to guns.

While we're talking fun facts of the real world, most bullets fired in actual combat do not contribute to kills - those shots are to pin down the enemy and make them duck behind cover.

There don't seem to be good rules for that. Players are generally unwilling to give up the "kill the bad guy" option in order to "make them keep their heads down".

Since several people seem intent on pointing out the expense of Wizards and the training time for guns...just how much time does it take to train someone to use a wand of fireballs or scorching ray? Considering that a rogue off the street can figure it out, it can't be too hard. That's a nice "clip" of 50 shots per wand, no reload times, and a simple point interface.

Which classes can use Use Magic Device?

The DC to use a wand is at least 20, but there are higher DCs for "activate blindly". (Otherwise, said rogue would have to pay a wizard to use an identify spell/ritual to figure out the command word.)

In 3.x terms, a rogue with Charisma 14 at start needs to reach 8th-level (assuming no Charisma boosting, as that's going into Dex) to activate a wand with a known command word half the time, and I don't think the DM would allow the rogue to "take 10" on such checks, not without another ability to do so. An expert can take any 10 class skills, and could probably do a little better, although their starting highest stat (Cha) would be 13, but they might as well boost Cha, take Skill Focus (Use Magic Device) and a +2/+2 feat, if available for that, letting them pull this off at 4th-level. A 1st-level wizard could do so reliably with no checks (it would break the rules of game balance in terms of item values to NPCs, but I don't think we're talking about that here).

At this point, the real reason Wands of Fireball aren't given to experts on the field is the expense of making these wands and how quickly experts die. (Yes, wizards are also fragile, but they have better defensive options.)

In Eberron, artificers can use wands more easily, and I think even magewrights can do so. (Magewrights are an NPC class that are all about making and using items. Using the Mark of Making, Cannith magewrights might be able to make Wands of Fire despite not having class levels or even appropriate ability scores, using the "background" super economy-busting items that PCs never get to use.) Of course, Eberron is specifically written to allow for this.

 

[mmadsen]

Guns are controversial in role playing, despite their historical roles.

Guns are controversial in fantasy RPGs because fantasy is not about recreating the middle ages so much as it about recreating medieval romances.

One of Rateliff's Classics of Fantasy pieces discussing William Morris's The Well at the World's End addressed this:

Morris not only served as Tolkien's personal role-model as a writer but is also responsible for fantasy's characteristic medievalism and the emphasis on what Tolkien called the subcreated world: a self-consistent fantasy setting resembling our own world but distinct from it. Before Morris, fantasy settings generally resembled the arbitrary dreamscapes of Carroll's Wonderland and MacDonald's fairy tales; Morris shifted the balance to a pseudo-medieval world that was realistic in the main but independent of real-world history and included fantastic elements such as the elusive presence of magical creatures.

Ironically, Morris did not intend to help create a new genre but was seeking to revive a very old one: He was attempting to recreate the medieval romance -- those sprawling quest-stories of knights and ladies, heroes and dastards, friends, enemies, and lovers, marvels and simple pleasures and above all adventures. The most familiar examples of such tales to modern readers are the many stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, but these were merely the most well-known among a vast multitude of now-forgotten tales. Morris deliberately sat down to write new stories in the same vein and even something of the same style, right down to deliberately archaic word choice. But just as the creators of opera thought they were recreating classical Greek drama a la Aeschylus and wound up giving birth to a new art form instead, so too did Morris's new medieval tales belong to a new genre: the fantasy novel.​

Even in the non-fictional real world, there was a lot of nostalgia for pre-gunpowder warfare, and that lasted for centuries. The warrior elites wanted armored knights on horseback to rule the battlefield long after they stopped being the most effective "weapon system", and adventure fiction didn't give up on sword fights and cavalry charges until they became laughable -- when we got light saber duels instead.

The swords & sorcery genre isn't about medieval romance so much as any and every adventure sub-genre pulled together without the necessity for meticulous research, fitting everything into existing (real-world) continuity, etc. Even there though, if guns exist, they're an adjunct to the real fighting, which tends to be hand-to-hand.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

The way I see it, there are three main ways to approach firearms in a D&D campaign:

1. No such animal. This is pretty simple.

2. Firearms exist, but take a very long time to load. I would approach this by giving them excellent stats but prohibitive (2-3 rounds at least) reload times. Thus, the standard tactic would be to fire your gun once, then draw your sword for melee.

3. Firearms exist and can be reloaded relatively quickly. In this case, they should be treated more or less like any other ranged weapon.

I prefer #1 or #2, myself. #3 makes it feel like there's no difference between a musket and a bow, and that's kind of dull. #2 provides a clear difference between the weapons. Guns are for melee types who need a single-shot ranged option, and for casters who want a nonmagical sidearm for use in a pinch. Bows are for dedicated ranged fighters.

(Regarding the comparison with crossbows, I think crossbows ought to go the #2 route as well, to be honest. I don't understand why it's necessary to have crossbow specialists who can match the rate of fire of a longbow. If people want crossbow specialists, can't they do something different?)

I lean towards 2 or 3, mostly 3 - but that has more to do with the moaning and the crying if I tried to give crossbows a realistic reload time.

But then I think that crossbows should pretty much ignore most armor. They were actually better at penetrating armor than bullets were. Longbows did much the same with basic chain mail - as far as the arrow was concerned chain mail was a series of loosely connected holes. Bar mail and double mail were a response to the longbow. (I would treat both of those as 'masterworked', if I were given to adding armor penetration for bows, crossbows, and warhammers.)

The Auld Grump

 

[Derren]

Imo 2. Firearms should exist but should be at the bottom of the ranged weapon pecking order (which would also match reality for that time period).

 

[Fanaelialae]

While option 2 is the more interesting method, I wouldn't recommend it. Some clever player will inevitably break the system by creating a character with quick draw and a brace of pistols. From what I understand, that's reasonable on a historical basis. You'd have to balance them with that in mind, and at that point they'd likely be like a crossbow with a worse rate of fire (possibly historically accurate, but not much fun).

I don't think option 3 is a bad choice. I'm of the school of thought that a killing weapon is a killing weapon. Until they achieve a better RoF, guns don't seem to me to be superior to a crossbow or a sword. Any of the three can kill one dead. Once you can let lose a hail of lead in roughly the same time that a crossbowman can loose a single bolt, that changes dramatically of course.

Would a hand cannon have any advantage over a crossbow in a duel? From what I know (and I admit I'm not expert on the matter) I would say the answer is no. Therefore guns shouldn't be a superior type of weapon. That isn't to say that you cannot differentiate them by making them 1d4 (x4 crit) for example. Just that I think the best approach is to keep them balanced with similar weapon types.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

Would a hand cannon have any advantage over a crossbow in a duel? From what I know (and I admit I'm not expert on the matter) I would say the answer is no. Therefore guns shouldn't be a superior type of weapon. That isn't to say that you cannot differentiate them by making them 1d4 (x4 crit) for example. Just that I think the best approach is to keep them balanced with similar weapon types.

Yes, they actually did have an advantage - they were much quicker to load.

I wish folks could find some crossbows with detachable cranquins, just so they can see how long the danged thing takes to load. No to mention that it is actually fairly hard work to get the bugger cranked up.

Even a hand cannon will get in at least three shots to every two with an arbalest. Four with someone who knows what they are doing.

Don't get me wrong - I would still rather have a crossbow than a handgonne, but the matchlock was really where the deathknell of the crossbow began as far as war was concerned. For hunting, the crossbow remains a better choice, at least until the wheellock (though wheellocks were much more complex and expensive), the snapchance and the flintlock made guns cheaper as well as faster than the crossbow.

My own favorite period for gaming is c. 17th century. Printing presses, religious turmoil, the dissemination of improved mining technologies, and, yes, decent guns....

The Auld Grump, oh, cursed be the locksmith, that made me old gun,
For I've shot my own true love, in the rue of a swan.
She had her apron wrapped around her, and I took her for a swan.
But alas and alack, it was she, Polly Vaughn....

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You seem to be proving my point.

Not so much.

To my mind, D&D is vast, it contains multitudes. AD&D had all kinds of anomalies- including a spaceship full of robots & blasters- so I don't have a problem including firearms as well. Later editions had their own quirks.

Not that I do so on a regular basis. Maybe...5 times in 30 years as a DM?

For me, including firearms is not so much a drive for historical accuracy, but more of a "Why not?"

As in, why not include firearms (historically accurate or not) in a setting with other things from the same period...and other things as well?

When I did use them, they did really decent damage, but each iteration had their own drawbacks: accuracy, reliability...and as pointed out before, carrying gunpowder in a realm where guys can shoot fire from their fingertips or summon water at will has its own risks.

And some of the firearms in those games were either anachronistic themselves- I included a Gatling like thing in one- or had no RW analogs- like a reloadable gun-grenade that would fire bullets in all directions.