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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AlViking" data-source="post: 9714946" data-attributes="member: 6906980"><p>Just because this thread doesn't have enough tangents, I've kind of cycled through multiple explanations for why there is not gunpowder.  It hasn't ever come up as anything I need to explain in game because there's no reason for a character to ask about something that doesn't exist that they couldn't know of so I've never settled on an answer.  But as a philosophical debate, the reasons gunpowder doesn't exist that I can remember:</p><ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Early gunpowder weapons were not very effective. We think gunpowder and at the very least with think flintlock type weapons but it took centuries to get there.  So if someone comes along and says "I can make a flash and smoke" everyone else just looks at them funny and casts a low level spell (or cantrip in current editions) that is much, much more impressive.  Nobody is going to fund the R&D in order to make something useful.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The chemistry of Magic World is slightly different and gunpowder either doesn't work or it's less stable than normal gunpowder.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Gunpowder could work, but it's like a drug to fire based elementals.  So people work on it for a bit, make some progress and the next thing you know some minor fire elemental comes along and makes everything go boom.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Every time gunpowder has gained any traction at all, wizards everywhere look at it as competition and created spells something along the lines of sending out tiny sparks that home in on gunpowder causing it to explode.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The gods have foreseen the chaos that would follow the development of gunpowder and forbidden it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">There is a secret order of <insert long lived race> that fear gunpowder in the hands of humans.  Anytime someone starts making progress ninja assassins take them out.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">The people that would have developed it are smart enough to do magic or do things like transform lead into gold.  Also explains why gold is so relatively abundant and devalued.</li> </ol></blockquote><p></p>

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