Ohhhhhh Submarines!

[the Jester]

I too have no problem whatsoever with technology in my D&D (including Points of Light D&D) so seeing Submarines is just more goodness for me on-top of ornithopters and airships. Now where are my firearms!

I like this kind of stuff too, though I usually power it with magic a la Eberron. (Or is it Ebberon? I can never keep that one straight!) I like the submersibles in the current issue of Dungeon, and I like firearms too.

If it helps, imc certain orcs have guns that use sunpowder- basically, there's a sun god that they got converted to by dwarven missionaries; taking the most warlike aspects of this god, they learned to turn sunlight into a volatile liquid, then to turn this liquid into an explosive powder. So I have (5th level) orcish pistoleers. The sunpowder pistols are superior weapons, range 10/20, reload minor, dex-based attack, damage 1d10+dex bonus. In addition, when a pistol fires, its wielder's space is filled with smoke until the end of his next turn, granting him concealment.

I have no idea what the prof. bonus is; it's not really a weapon for pcs, since they can't get shot and powder. But the wizard really wanted one- if you've ever seen the animated movie Wizards, you can understand.

 

[pukunui]

Er, that's why I said "born a couple hundred years earlier."

Maybe I was unclear; what I meant was, you could have an analog to da Vinci in your PoL setting that could clean up the potential discontinuity of having steampunk in your dark ages style.

I kind of figured that's what you meant, but I was saying that (in my mind at least), you need to have the kind of environment that was presented to people like da Vinci by the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. It's not all that "realistic" for someone like da Vinci to have existed in a Dark Ages period. HOWEVER, I acknowledge that this is fantasy and it's more about plausibility/believability than realism.

I've gotten it off my chest and don't really have a problem with it anymore.