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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 8300502" data-attributes="member: 87792">OK. We know some basic facts about guns:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Guns were relatively easy to use. This is very much overrated as a reason for their adoption IMO.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Guns were slow. Good Napoleonic infantry might be able to fire four shots a minute but three was more normal and earlier guns took longer.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Guns were powerful. There's a reason armour was advertised as being bullet proof. Much sword-stopping armour wasn't (and guns basically turned chain links into ready made shrapnel and wooden shields into flying splinters).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Guns have a narrow penetration but cause damage outside that channel. Meanwhile sword thrusts don't cause much damage outside that channel - and sword cuts were a bad plan against armour because you had to cut through so much more metal - which is part of why long curved edges correlate with little armour in a society (other than the cavalry charge version of curved stabby swords working with the momentum of the horse).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Guns had a long range and massive amount of accuracy compared to bows with most of the attempts to claim otherwise comparing area fire from bows (aim at 45 degrees into the air and the arrows will land in the rough area if the target unit is big enough) with accurate gunshots.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Tests in London in 1811 using relatively green soldiers not trained to aim had 23% hitting using standard issue Land Pattern/Brown Bess muskets at 300 yards (274 meters). </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">By contrast <a href="https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/mens-archery-farthest-accurate-distance" target="_blank">the Guinness Book of Records records the furthest accurate archery shot as 283m</a></li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There's a reason that basically every archery culture from the Mongols to the Native Americans switched to guns as the dominant weapon within a single generation when they became available.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Two inventions were gamechangers with respect to guns and revolutionised warfare; the bayonet and the breach loader or repeating rifle.</li> </ul>In warfare before the bayonet there was a standard counter to guns - the cavalry charge. You'd wait until the guns had fired, charge from out of their range, and hack them down while they were reloading - and swords were sidearms and not very good protection against armoured horsemen who could kill you with lance or swords.  But horses aren't suicidal and won't charge onto close-packed spikes (like spears) so charging spears or pikes from the front is not going to happen. This is why arquebuses and early muskets needed pikes to defend themselves in the pike and shot era (while the muskets could shoot the pikemen on the other side because they moved more slowly). The bayonet changed that, turning the musket into effectively a third rate spear. But a third rate spear can still make a wall of spikes so horses couldn't charge muskets with bayonets either and they didn't need pikes to protect them. Skirmishers were still dead meat against cavalry and close order was needed.Repeating and muzzle loading rifles on the other hand meant that even if you had fired you could fire again and again before what was left of the cavalry reached you so you didn't need to be shoulder to shoulder to create the unbroken wall of spikes. They were a gamechanger in another way too; in order to reload a muzzle loader you need to stand up to pour the powder down the muzzle of the gun (meaning that you're actually less able to use cover than an archer) while with repeaters and breach loaders you can lie down. And if you can do that accuracy suddenly becomes important because you aren't firing at huge densely packed blocks of troops.Getting back to it, guns in modern D&D with six second combat rounds are nothing like muskets - and remember that the Three Musketeers were explicitly musketeers but did most of their fighting with swords. No one has time in a melee for a 20 second reload, and the closest to realistic pre-American Civil War guns I've seen in any system was in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay where a couple of characters had a pistol or two or a blunderbuss that they'd fire in the first round of combat as a nasty one shot weapon before drawing their sword. D&D guns if anything don't do enough damage but have reload speeds that put them starkly into the realms of fantasy.</blockquote>

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