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

[Necrozius]

From what meagre things I’ve learned from history, things were a lot more complex than film and game media would have us believe.

Towards the end of their “life”, longbows and crossbows were already making plate armor less useful. I think that firearms became so much more potent as a military force because of how comparatively quickly a group of nobodies could be trained on how to load, aim and fire.

If one wanted to show how much of an impact firearms would have on a fantasy setting, I’d probably reduce the damage dice to the equivalent of bows and crossbows, but make muskets Basic/common weapons to show how easily they could be used by people.

This would show the unbalancing nature of them. Now anybody could do significant damage with ranged weapons, not just heavily trained soldiers or special PC classes. Peasants didn’t need to rely as much on nobles for self defence or Bowyer/fletcher guilds for hunting tools.

A parent could teach their children how to load and maintain a musket for hunting rabbits and birds.

Dwarves and Gnomes would likely shake up the existing economy as they’d jump on such production and industry. Elves would get pretty upset that other races could pull up military units in much quicker time constraints, and coupled with their longer life and lower populations... things could get tragic for the Elder folk.

It could be really interesting of a concept.

Pistols, however, might still be more of a thing for officers, gunslingers and elite warriors though. A shorter tube = less accurate so maybe they require more target practice? I dunno.

edit: what @Cap'n Kobold said

 

[QuentinGeorge]

The idea that "gunpowder ended armor" is a persistent myth. I mean, sure, eventually armour wasn't cost-effective against the firearms available (18th century), but there was never a period where armor was useless.

And gunpowder arrived a lot earlier in European warfare than people expect....

...and armor didn't reach its apogee until the Spanish conquest of the Americas.

Clearly no one told Cortez and co that the money they spent on their fine cuirasses was wasted.

Or, indeed, centuries later, these cavalrymen of Waterloo:

It is very odd that D&D players seem fine with plate armor and breastplates, but very troubled by gunpowder, even though the latter is more authentically medieval than the former, and I think part of this, is the absurd pop-culture beliefs about firearms. The effectiveness they have now is a much more recent things. Pre-Victorian era they weren't the killing machines you might think.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

My issue with D&D renaissance firearms is that they're absurdly fast to load. That's what breaks my suspension of disbelief. I would actually increase their damage, but make them much slower to load.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If the sword guy had sprint-rushed Indie, at that short a distance, and just tried to kill rather than intimidate, the movie would be shorter.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

My issue with D&D renaissance firearms is that they're absurdly fast to load. That's what breaks my suspension of disbelief. I would actually increase their damage, but make them much slower to load.

Yes, forget armor - a single musketeer is frantically trying to stoke his weapon while the swordsman stabs him multiple times, which was why firearms were always used with large numbers of troops. Multiple lines of gunmen and massed fire took care of the two weaknesses: slow reloading and bad accuracy.

 

[Horwath]

My issue with D&D renaissance firearms is that they're absurdly fast to load. That's what breaks my suspension of disbelief. I would actually increase their damage, but make them much slower to load.

I hear you, but for gameplay aspect anything above 1 Action(reduced to Bonus action with feat/style) is not good for the game.
Unless you want to go with Bag of holding and several firearms pre-loaded.

 

[DEFCON 1]

All I know is that when one of my groups that was playing Curse of Strahd was in the tombs beneath the castle and they found the crypt that had the anachronistic "rifle"... I knew I wanted it to be more powerful than a typical D&D melee or ranged weapon just so that the "ballistic weapon" meant something to them.

So I basically treated it like a magic item and gave it almost the same properties as a Wand of Lightning Bolts:

This rifle has 7 "rounds" (charges). While holding it, you can use an action to use 1 of its "rounds" to fire the rifle (cast the lightning bolt spell (save DC 15) but the damage is force rather than lightning and only can hit one target).

The rifle regains 1d6 + 1 expended "rounds" daily at dawn as you spend the night "prepping additional ammo". If you expend the rifle's last "round", roll a d20. On a 1, the rifle backfires and crumbles into ashes and is destroyed.

These are also not "realistic" per se... but since none of the combat rules in D&D are "realistic" in my opinion, all that mattered to me was to find the best way to make the rifle feel different and "better" in comparison to normal weaponry, while at the same time making sure the item was still balanced with anything else already in the game. Treating it like a magic item did that.

But if this kind of thing doesn't work for you, another option of course is that you use the Gunslinger fighter subclass for 5E that Matt Mercer had made (based off of the Pathfinder class), and which you can get rules for either from DMs Guild, or on D&D Beyond. And they include all the rules for firing, misfiring, reloading, trick shots, repairing the weapon and so forth.

 

[Steampunkette]

There's definitely a lot here to digest from both sides of the argument. I know from my studies of history that @QuentinGeorge is -absolutely- correct that armor was effective against firearms to varying degrees, but not economically viable. Particularly after Napoleon began the era of insanely huge armies on the field of battle as opposed to the much smaller armies of earlier eras.

Agincourt, for example, saw an incredibly massive 25,000+ Frenchmen lose to 10,000+ Englishmen... But Napoleon marched around Europe with almost 700,000 Frenchmen just 350 years later.

On the other hand, I had not considered the hydrostatic lateral pressure from a bullet. And while I still do not think it comparable, it is something to consider. The reason being that the example clay shot used 78 grains of modern 300 Blackout powder which is very different from the 50-60 grains of much lower quality gunpowder that would've been available in the early renaissance. Primarily due to relative chemical purities and varying levels of mixture without laboratory equipment providing precise measures.

For now, what I think I'll do is:

1) Make Pistols and Rifles available for players to purchase but otherwise largely have them in the hands of the well off.
2) Treat all these Pistols and Rifles as Breach-Loading weapons rather than ramrod.
3) Define all ammo for such as paper-cartridge shots that are very susceptible to water damage.
4) Make that ammo -dirt- cheap.
5) Get rid of any Misfire chance. Seriously, that's not remotely fun for anyone. If a gun blows up it should be for narrative effect, exclusively.
6) Assign them damage equivalent to Hand and Heavy crossbows for Pistol and Rifle, respectively, along with proficiency and feat-interactions.
7) Give them the same load/ammunition qualities as the respective crossbows.
8) Make their fire audible from 100ft away for pistols, 300ft for rifles (mirroring Thunderclap and Thunderwave)
9) Make them simple weapons that someone with the "Noble" background can start with in place of a ranged weapon from their class)
10) Change their Damage Type to Bludgeoning.
11) Have a great time.

All weapon damage in the game is, after all, an abstraction placed behind a further abstraction. A combination of luck, mettle, and morale rather than a measure meat being destroyed

Probably won't use Mercer's Gunslinger... Though I might make a Rogue or Ranger subclass that does gun-tricks as a fun option.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I hear you, but for gameplay aspect anything above 1 Action(reduced to Bonus action with feat/style) is not good for the game.
Unless you want to go with Bag of holding and several firearms pre-loaded.

Well, carrying a brace of pistols seems perfectly appropriate, and I don't feel a bag of holding with several nonmagical guns will be a problem at the levels at which other characters are wielding their magic swords and bows.

 

[Umbran]

Well, carrying a brace of pistols seems perfectly appropriate, and I don't feel a bag of holding with several nonmagical guns will be a problem at the levels at which other characters are wielding their magic swords and bows.

Also, once you get here, you get some wiseacre making the Holster of Ehlonna... Actually, Murlynd's Holster would probably be a better name, as he's the original canonical D&D pistol-guy...