D&D 5E Why do guns do so much damage?

[Horwath]

Logan story short: game designers need a diet heavier in Jet Li and Jackie Chan and lower in Johns Wayne, Woo and Rambo.

 

[zarionofarabel]

My vote is to keep them as is!

The extra damage is a way of extrapolating one of two things, the AP nature of firearms (because you can stop a knife thrust with your hand, but not a bullet), or to compensate for not getting STR bonus to damage (do firearms get DEX bonus to damage???).

Anyway, bullets cause catastrophic damage to a human body, same as any weapon. The only real advantage firearms have over melee weapons is range. The real advantage firearms have over bows and crossbows is ammunition and rate of fire. You can blast away thousands of rounds, hundreds of rounds per minute, with a man portable machine gun. That would require hundreds or thousands of troops and wagon loads of arrows or bolts. One guy can carry several thousands rounds of alone. Even black powder firearms have the advantage of ammunition, as a single soldier could carry several hundred shot. Don't bring a knife to a gun fight...

Extrapolate all that in an RPG...

Yeah, guns do more damage!!!

......

Yay!

.....

Let's play D&D!

(Yeah...just keep whatever rules are in the game. Then play D&D!)

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Guns do more damage than sword as guns ARE BETTER at killing people than swords, that is why we invest so much research in guns last 500 years and not so much in melee weapons.

I just want to slightly correct this, as I agree that guns are better at killing, but a major part of this is that guns can be used at range and with accuracy while swords can't. Sure, bows and crossbows exist, but guns require less strength to use and are generally easier to aim with.

 

[clearstream]

So a Flintlock Pistol in 5e D&D deals 1d10 damage. A longsword deals 1d8 damage, 1d10 if you hold it with both hands.

But if you've ever seen what a sword can -do- to a human body, you know that the damage difference is incomparable!

Yeah, a bullet can be really effective at killing a person by catastrophically randomizing a narrow line through their body. If you hit something vital, death is assured in fairly short order, and if you don't hit something vital there's a decent shot the person will still bleed out over the course of the next hour or two, depending on their activity during that time and lack of medical care.

If you hit something vital with a sword, your target will -also- die in very short order. But if you don't strike something vital they will STILL DIE IN VERY SHORT ORDER. This is because a Sword catastrophically randomizes a very large area of the human body on each strike. At least when compared to something like a Pistol.

Depending on your ammo type a gun is going to put a fairly small hole in the front of your target and a moderately larger hole out of the back of your target with a relatively straight line between the two. With the appropriate training, a sword will completely eradicate your ability to have intestines that remain both inside your body and intact.

Take a look at this video if you can/care to (TW: Dead Animal, Fake Blood, Violence)

Spoiler: Kilij vs Pig

This is a Kilij. Roughly the same shape as a scimitar, it's got a slightly weighted tip to increase percussive force. It would not be out of place in most D&D campaign settings. It cuts -through- that pig on the first strike. And the second. The third sets it spinning and the fourth cuts through, again.

Compare that to a single hole running through your torso.

You could of course argue that that was a fairly small pig and thus the sword could easily pass through it. But upscale that pig and the damage would -still- be significant even if the sword didn't manage to pass through the bones. And all the internal organs in it's very wide, very deep, path would be randomized and compromised.

Now I'm not saying that pistols aren't deadly. They flatly and -absolutely- are deadly. But compared to the damage that a -sword- can do? It's not even in the same ball park. And that's not even getting INTO things like two-handed swords, axes of any variety, or spears...

Now you could argue that they do so much damage because HP is an abstraction and it shows how well they punch through armor... but you still make the same attack roll with the same bonuses and the same AC to overcome. And AC is -itself- an abstraction accounting for both the deflecting and cushioning effects of a piece of armor between you and oncoming metal.

And it only gets worse when you get into Revolvers and Rifles that jump up to the 2d8 and 2d10 damage range.

All things considered... I just feel like guns should do damage in-line with the rest of the weapons available. 1d6 for a pistol, 1d10 for a rifle. Basically a Hand and Heavy Crossbow for all intents and purposes. And then making them repeating weapons or whatever should just increase the number of shots before you have to spend an action reloading. I think the designers, and many players, overwhelmingly inflate just how much damage a gun does to a human being compared to the weapons, and monsters, D&D characters face.

That's my take, anyhow.

I found gun damage underwhelming, considering the following

1. they have the ammunition and reload properties
2. if you are using the Renaissance guns, they are more costly - that pistol costs 10x the price of a light crossbow
3. short range - that pistol has about 1/3rd the range of a light crossbow

The gun user gains +1 point of damage in exchange for a more expensive, shorter ranged weapon. A light crossbow +1 is on average the same price and will hit more often at a longer range.

 

[Horwath]

I found gun damage underwhelming, considering the following

1. they have the ammunition and reload properties
2. if you are using the Renaissance guns, they are more costly - that pistol costs 10x the price of a light crossbow
3. short range - that pistol has about 1/3rd the range of a light crossbow

The gun user gains +1 point of damage in exchange for a more expensive, shorter ranged weapon. A light crossbow +1 is on average the same price and will hit more often at a longer range.

that is a problem of trying to balance two systems that essentially cannot be balanced together.
For gameplay reasons, swords(melee weapons) need to be too good or guns need to be far worse than they are.

 

[John R Davis]

I like the idea that guns=cantrips
The massed ranks of 10 peasants with +2 to hit against a high AC fighter. I'm sure if the fighter needs to making a dex save versus the peasants needing to hit, more damage will be done.

This way armour has no bearing on whether the bullets hit you. I guess you could subtract any magic bonus of the armour from the damage?

 

[Horwath]

I just want to slightly correct this, as I agree that guns are better at killing, but a major part of this is that guns can be used at range and with accuracy while swords can't. Sure, bows and crossbows exist, but guns require less strength to use and are generally easier to aim with.

true, but in the end, only thing that matters, is that it works better.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

This is the classic conflict of gameplay vs realism/accuracy. If the firearms could cause more damage in the game then all the players would want to be gunslingers and the classic melee combatant classes (barbarian, paladin, monk) would be forgotten because the disuse.

And we are in the age of videogames. This means players notice katanas vs kalashnikovs are spectacular fights in the anime and movies, but a total disaster in normal videogames, but if the firearms are "nerferd".

And the players can invent homebred anti-gun countermeassures, for example pieces of ectoplasm to block cannons or bulleproof barriers, summoning swarms, remote-control trained war beasts, or illusory magic to create effects as smoke grenades.

Real machine-guns can be lethal, but they can overheat too much if you keep shooting.

Not only PCs can use firearms, but also the enemy humanoids nPCs, and this can break the power balance easily if the PCs are from a civilitation with a lower level tech.

* What about to use "organic tech" to craft crossbows that reload itself thanks artificial muscles by a creature from real nature, the pistol shrimp

I remember a fun gif of Assasin Creed III about expectation vs reality, where the players is killed fastly when he tries to charge against a squad of musketeers.

 

[clearstream]

that is a problem of trying to balance two systems that essentially cannot be balanced together.
For gameplay reasons, swords(melee weapons) need to be too good or guns need to be far worse than they are.

If we are speaking of the Renaissance guns (per the OP - flintlock pistol) they do not need to be worse than they are.

Honestly, it's a non-issue: at least so far as the game mechanics are concerned. With 250gp I can buy a pistol or for 100-500gp I can buy a +1 light crossbow (call it 300gp on average). It's a complete wash! I'd rather have the crossbow - better range, more likely to hit.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

To better reflect how reliable damage wit a weapon is, dnd used modifiers and even exploding dice in the case of firearms.

So a sword would better be represented with 1d6+1 or 2d4 because you usually do a reliable amount of damage.
Bullets used to do 1d4/6 explode 4/6 if I remember correctly. So usually you do less damage, but in the case of a good hit, you do a lot more.