Don't see why you'd need faux-Chinese when you have dwarfs, gnomes, and dozens of other sentient species who have a reason to blow things up and a tendency to experiment with materials and chemicals. And even if they never do it, humans have a tendency to blow things up and experiment with materials and chemicals.
Honestly, I think that if you ever need to come up with racial traits for human beyond a generic "we're good at everything and so get a small bonus to stats/skills," blowing stuff up and experimenting with stuff we probably shouldn't should be our species' hat. Human like big boom.
Fair enough, but I'd really like to avoid having to worry about rules for all the various gunpowder-based weapons; never mind those weapons made earlier weapons obsolete pretty fast.
Problem here is that someone will eventually figure out how to make versions that don't require magic.
And the mages will buy them out and suppress the technology.
While Eberron is not my favorite setting, it's honestly the most logical.
Agreed in principle.
D&D magic is not only repeatable but reliable. A spell will always work, and always in the same way (with the very rare exception of spells like teleport). There's no rolls to cast the spells and no problems with miscasts causing problems (except for wild mages, assuming that the edition uses them), and there are no limitations as to who can cast, beyond, perhaps, a minimal Int score or (ugh) racial limitations.
Modern D&D magic is waaaay more reliable than TSR-era D&D magic. There, it could be very easily interrupted, and other spells beyond just teleport had some hazards built in.
Then you get DMs like me who add in wild magic surges to the mix, and magic becomes the high-risk high-reward way to go.
So logically, unless the GM introduces something into the setting that seriously limits spellcasting in some way (either rules or some sort of in-fiction limitation), every D&D setting should be magitech. And if the GM does introduce something that limits casting, then there should be higher levels of real-world tech. Including guns.
(Or you can just go "%&*! logic" and simply not have them in the world.
Yep, that's kinda been my approach all along.
If I had to, I could just rationalize it by saying the components used to make gunpowder don't react with each other in game-world physics or something; but I've never really had to worry about it.
And if a player wants to create them, well, they're playing with explosives and have to roll really well not not die while doing it. Or simply set your game in the stone or bronze ages, not the iron/medieval/renaissance periods that are typical.)
Stone or bronze age would deny all sorts of other things I'd really like to keep, though, all the way from heavy armour to ocean-going sailing ships to agriculture to etc. etc.
What I do is just mix and match tech levels to suit what I want. Marine tech is up to age-of-sail in some parts of the world even while Norse still use longboats in other parts. Buildings and construction are up to late Renaissance standards even though the designs still echo previous eras in many places. Armour and weaponry is, other than the complete lack of gunpowder, at late-Renaissance level.
I've often toyed with introducing steampunk or similar, but can't think of a way to do so without pretty much eliminating the various faux-ancient cultures I've got.
In thinking about it, it might be better to simply have magic be the real-world equivalent of electronics, not mechanics--let the nonmagical folk create their tech, but they'll be building with clockworks and steam and primitive internal combustion while the wizards have computers with AI (bound spirit) and holographic (illusory) interface that let them hack the world, Mage: the Ascension style. At least that way, if someone magic-less mortal tries to reverse engineer such a device, they'll release the spirits and probably get killed by them in the process.
That could work. I already have magic replicating electronics in a few ways e.g. pairs of items that function just like modern walkie-talkies or scrying devices that function not unlike CCTVs.
