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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9361182" data-attributes="member: 4937">Guns from before the 19th century don't change very much owing to their very low rate of fire and relative low power.&nbsp;&nbsp; They do give a small leg up to low level characters in terms of &quot;first strike&quot; power so that a group of 1st level fighter riflemen with flintlocks is vastly more dangerous to PCs than any other 1st level fighter but we aren't yet to the point where real weapons are outperforming fantasy weapons.This starts to change in the 19th century with the introduction of cap locks with rifled ball ammunition, breach loading carbines, and early repeaters developed by figures like Colt and Spenser.&nbsp; At that point you start dealing with the fact that the weapons are outperforming fantasy weapons and the gap between a low level fighter with the weapon and a high level fighter is dropping rapidly because of the accuracy, hitting power, and range of the weapon.&nbsp; At this point you can only start dealing with this by giving your high level fighter fantasy levels of speed and durability or plot protection, and at some point being superhuman.&nbsp; You have to bullet proof your heroes.&nbsp; By the time you get to the 20th century, you're dealing with weapons that replicate fairly high level spellpower in the hands of low level fighters.&nbsp; You have an infantry platoon with grenades, automatic weapons, mines, and large caliber sniper weapons and now you have gone from having 1 10th level fighter being worth hundreds of 1st level foes to 40 1st level characters being able to take down a party of 10th level characters.&nbsp; What happens when you empty an automatic weapon toward a higher level character, even one that might be hard to hit?&nbsp; What happens with command detonated mines and tossed grenades?&nbsp; Even if the damage isn't fireball level, suddenly things are hitting really hard compared to the expectations, and with a sniper type weapon even with conservative modelling of damage (less than it would take even with a critical to one shot large animals in D&amp;D) it really only takes one nat 20 to ruin the target's day.And that's just small arms.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9361182, member: 4937"] Guns from before the 19th century don't change very much owing to their very low rate of fire and relative low power. They do give a small leg up to low level characters in terms of "first strike" power so that a group of 1st level fighter riflemen with flintlocks is vastly more dangerous to PCs than any other 1st level fighter but we aren't yet to the point where real weapons are outperforming fantasy weapons. This starts to change in the 19th century with the introduction of cap locks with rifled ball ammunition, breach loading carbines, and early repeaters developed by figures like Colt and Spenser. At that point you start dealing with the fact that the weapons are outperforming fantasy weapons and the gap between a low level fighter with the weapon and a high level fighter is dropping rapidly because of the accuracy, hitting power, and range of the weapon. At this point you can only start dealing with this by giving your high level fighter fantasy levels of speed and durability or plot protection, and at some point being superhuman. You have to bullet proof your heroes. By the time you get to the 20th century, you're dealing with weapons that replicate fairly high level spellpower in the hands of low level fighters. You have an infantry platoon with grenades, automatic weapons, mines, and large caliber sniper weapons and now you have gone from having 1 10th level fighter being worth hundreds of 1st level foes to 40 1st level characters being able to take down a party of 10th level characters. What happens when you empty an automatic weapon toward a higher level character, even one that might be hard to hit? What happens with command detonated mines and tossed grenades? Even if the damage isn't fireball level, suddenly things are hitting really hard compared to the expectations, and with a sniper type weapon even with conservative modelling of damage (less than it would take even with a critical to one shot large animals in D&D) it really only takes one nat 20 to ruin the target's day. And that's just small arms. [/QUOTE]

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