What Do You Do For: GUNPOWDER

[trav_laney]

In my home game, the party of heroes will be sailing for six months across the ocean to a far-away land. I want the people of this new land to have a very distinctive culture, possibly with some sort of alternative technology...and I think gunpowder would fit the bill (I'm picturing something along the lines of feudal China.)

All that to say, I am kicking around the idea of introducing gunpowder into my game. I was wondering if anyone had used gunpowder in a D&D game setting before, and if it caused any problems. Did the D20 Modern rules work fine, or did you have to tweak them? Do you have any custom equipment, such as cannons, grenades, or firecrackers?

Or is this whole thing a bad, bad idea?

 

[Henrix]

What role do you want gunpowder to have in your game?

Do you want it to be a simple but exotic weapon that low-level soldiers have in the armies, but is not very attractive to PCs? Then it is a simple weapon to use, on par with crossbows but with even slower rate of fire, that requires the aid of a gunsmith every now and then.
Matchlock guns, rocketry, flamethrowers, all using black powder with a lot of sizzling and smoke (scares horses), like in Sung china, is all suitable.

Or is it dashing pistoliers you want? Then make them a lot better, and wheellock, and require exotic weapon profiency to use them. Basically one-shot per encounter wonders.

Both are viable and playable options, as are any options in between.

 

[Celebrim]

The biggest problem I've seen with the introduction of gunpowder into games is the players using OOC knowledge to try to game the presence of the gunpowder. In other words, regardless of the tech level you introduce, the players are going to try to invent howitzers, anti-personel mines, machine guns, etc.

"My character thinks gunpowder is really neat and has alot of potential, but that its presently being used in a suboptimal way. I want to learn about gunpowder and see if I can make improvements..."

A really smart player is going to be hard to thwart in this without creating a huge argument. He's going to argue that his Int 20 12th level Wizard with max ranks in Alchemy and Knowledge (Engineering) ought to be a rather impressive inventor, which is a rather reasonable position, and that each incremental invention (match locks, wheel locks, flint locks, rifling, breech loading) is perfectly reasonable. And if he doesn't have a character with high ranks in Alchemy and Knowledge (Engineering) he's going to argue that he ought to be able to hire one, and he's going to argue that many of the major problems with developing firearms in the real world aren't really problems in the fantasy world because, for example, a Dwarven metalurgist can already produce steel of as high (or even higher) quality as modern processes, and techniques already exist for forging large iron objects (for example see the precence of iron golems) and that these techniques could be readily adopted to cannon manufacturing.

Plus, any player that goes this route is almost certainly going to take the time to make himself an expert in gunpowder production techniques and early modern firearm crafting, and will be able to stymy demands for any degree of detail with 'my character thinks it will be a good idea to...'. Don't assume that you can out knowledge a player.

Even the 3rd edition mechanics may be fighting against you here, because if you insist (perfectly reasonably) in 'idea checks' to come up with inventions, you are almost certainly going to be met with a high int character using magical buffs to increase his intelligence and 'taking 20' on his idea check by conducting research.

And I'm not basing this on a single case either, lest you think I'm dealing with a single degenerate player. I know of at least three campaigns that went this route because the player(s) wouldn't be reasonable and not use his OOC knowledge, and the DM couldn't control it without the player getting upset that the DM was unreasonably trying to stifle his character/railroad/etc.

My solution to this has always been to insist that the chemistry/metalurgy/physics of the D&D universe only appears to be similar to that of the real world, but at a fundamental level - atoms and molecules - is nothing at all alike. I typically point out several experiments in early science - such as the 'caloric' experiment or LaVoisiers demonstration that the ashes of an object weigh more than the object - will produce very different results in D&D than in the real world. In this way, I invalidate a player's OOC knowledge and can even (if I'm annoyed) justify it going dangerously wrong.

But even this might not stop a determined player in 3rd edition, precisely because the presence of skill and ability checks give them a work around that players didn't have in 1st edition. A determined player in 3rd edition could fill in the gaps in his OOC idea with IC knowledge, so be ready for that.

If you reach that point, the other way to go about this is insist research is time consuming and expensive. This however never thwarts determined power gamers, so beware.

 

[Laman Stahros]

Use the "smokepowder" fix. Gunpowder doesn't work, only smokepowder does and charge an arm and a leg for it.

I haven't had any problems so far with allowing smokepowder in my games, but I don't have any players that try to break the system in the ways that Celebrim describes. I am really lucky.

 

[Stormborn]

Using gunpowder is not a bad idea, but with several different executions it can be somewhat haphazard. There is a Monte Cook PDF available for free here and its somethign I have used before. The problem with their use in d20 M for DnD is that d20M uses a Massive damage threshold that is equal to Con, thus making firearms fairly deadly. In an established game, where you dont want to start changing a lot of rules, the easist thing to do is make them like crossbows, just different (which is basically the way that Monte handles them, as do a lot of other sources).

The other option is to make them rare, expensive, and powerful. In your campaing, where you want something "different" why not make the alien culture pseudoasian, with the warrior-elite the only ones allowed by law to carry firearms. Each one is handcrafted by a family gunsmith, all of whom are closely guarded and highly prized, and each one works a little differently. Come up with some ahistorical propelant (like IKs binary compound that only ignites when the two substances mix) to nix any real world knowledge of firearms. ["Pure" or paraelements like liquid fire and powedered air that when mixed cause tremendous explosions; dragon bones; distilled essences of extraplanar beings; special materials for the bullets too to do more and more damage, etc.] They could, for example, be the warrior caste's technological answer to "witches" (sorcerers and warlocks would work great), something that functions like magic but isn't. You could have hand grenades that function like fireballs (full of that liquid fire) and guns that work like the warlock's blast. Price them like magic items, require a EWP to use them, a Craft roll to load, and maybe make them more deadly by allowing them to ignore a certain amount of non-magical AC. In any case, play up the roleplaying issues involving them. Their legality. They almost mystic symbolism int he culture. Maybe the PCs could win a dispensation to carry or gain noble status, or they could join with a rebel gunsmith who is arming the middle class for an upcoming revolution.

Fantasy firearms can be cool, or they can be slightly more intersting replacements for crossbows.

 

[papastebu]

The problems that Celebrim brings up are valid, but you could keep them down to a minimum by controlling access to the things needed to make gunpowder, the skills needed to make and use it, and the skills needed to develop new technology based on it. Also, even if the character in question were to find out about gunpowder in the "travel to the far east" scenario described, it's going to take them time to gain the knowledge--it could be a closely-guarded secret--to make it, to use it, and to develop new uses for it. In-game, such extrapolation could take years, even centuries, which could be simulated using extremely-high skill-check DCs. Mechanically, the player's character isn't going to have the skill points and feats available immediately, anyway, and that will slow them down a bit, too.

The game is about player options. If you are careful about it, you should be able to introduce the gunpowder, allow the characters access, and even allow for the use of high-powered rifles eventually.

By the time a character is up around 12th or higher level, he will have access to some pretty devastating hardware/magic items/spells/powers that he can use fairly often. The situation is definitely within your capability of controlling.

 

[Celebrim]

Using gunpowder is not a bad idea, but with several different executions it can be somewhat haphazard.

The execution you wish to adopt depends on your goals. If you want 'realistic' firearms, versimlitude, or firearms that impact the campaign minimally, you should adopt different executions.

an established game, where you dont want to start changing a lot of rules, the easist thing to do is make them like crossbows, just different (which is basically the way that Monte handles them, as do a lot of other sources).

Monte's apparant goal in his execution of firearms is to add flavor while impacting the game minimally. His guns are basically slightly superior crossbows. Personally, this implementation doesn't meet minimum standards for versimlitude.

1) Once you hit the musket stage, guns are simple rather than exotic weapons. In fact, the thing that makes guns so important early on is that they are easy to use.
2) Guns aren't all powerful, but they should be notably more powerful than non-firearm missile weapons.
3) Reloading an early firearm should take at least 5 rounds or so (without a fast loading feat). This is one of the reasons #2 needs to be true.

The other option is to make them rare, expensive, and powerful.

This only serves to keep them out of NPC hands. It doesn't do alot to keep them out of PC hands. Although forcing the expenditure of a feat might give pause, if they really are powerful it won't give pause for long. You example culture is reasonable and interesting, but it won't keep guns out of PC's hands because PC's can just steal/loot or otherwise obtain the ammo/weapons. The more the NPC's rely on guns to punish this behavior, the easier it will be for PC's to evade the regulations by simply looting opponents.

My personal preference if I were to add them to a campaign would be to make them fairly common, reasonably inexpensive, somewhat powerful, but only moderately helpful to the PC's. For example, that 5 round reloading time - while realistic - seriously hampers the utility of a musket compared to a sword in the hands of a hero. And, for the genera we are trying to capture, that's probably exactly what we want.

 

[Shades of Green]

What was, historically, the advantage of guns (atleast muskets) over crossbows? Were they easier to use? Easier to learn how to use? Cheaper to manifacture? More lethal or pentrating? Longer ranged?

 

[Agamemnon]

Easier to use by untrained peasant militia. Especially when compared with longbows (very skill-intensive), but even a crossbow is fairly complex by comparison.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Easier to use by untrained peasant militia. Especially when compared with longbows (very skill-intensive), but even a crossbow is fairly complex by comparison.

Yep, until you hit metallic cartridges and repeating weapons firearms were very simple with just a few moving parts. And if anyone doesn't believe they're simple just look at how fast military basic rifle qualification goes. A longbow takes years to learn well. A musket or rifle? Just snatch a bunch of peasants teach 'em to march in step and point in roughly the same direction until rifling becomes practical.

What should really bother people's games isn't firearms. It's PCs inventing the claymore using blackpowder and lead sling bullets. Or giant wagon mounted shaped-charges for breaching fortifications. Fortress surrounded by a fraise no problem, "we kill that horse stuff it's intestines full of blackpowder like a sausage and attach it to the big shotput thing the orc was carrying," wizard casts bull's strength and enlarge on fighter ,"now that he threw it most of the way across the fraise we detonate the thing and charge down the cleared lane." Congrat's your players just invented the linear mine-clearing charge. That's what you should worry about.