Why DON'T people like guns in D&D?

[Glade Riven]

I can see how guns can grate people wrong. As to why firearms arn't usually developed in D&D settings...seriously; weapon wands, even those that need a range-touch role, are far more potent. Most settings do not have a need for firearms to develope. I did a check one time with Privateer Press's Iron Kingdoms setting (which has guns) on building a "ray gun" out of their Liber Mechanica book. The damage was sick in comparison (Scorching Ray 4d6 vs. Range Touch, hook it up to warcaster armor via a cable and infinite WAND of DOOM vs. 2d8 gun that requires a skill check to reload on the next turn).

Now, I like guns & my players like guns, and am working on some homebrew rules for a Pathfinder campaign setting. It starts with smoothbore muskets as exotic weapons with a 1dx (x being dice size for type of weapon) 17-20/x3 crit, full round action to reload. Hard to hit things accuratly, but when they do hit, the wound is nasty. It makes my PCs slightly uncomfortable with their mortality. Possible upgrades increase accuracy (rifling, 2dx dmg 19-20/x2 crit), but lessens the potential nastyness of the crit. Cartrege system upgrade improves reload time, but costs extra per round. Costs are equil to certaint magical improvements. In my setting it fits the fluff, and it makes random NPCs or villians dangerous. I can see it not working in other settings, though.

Oh, and Eberron doesn't have guns explicitly mentioned in any of the books - but if it exists in D&D, it exists somewhere in Eberron.

 

[pawsplay]

When I was eight and starting playing D&D, I was fascinated by Charlemagne and the history that followed it. The Basic Set lists plate mail as the heaviest armor. Thus, my earliest memories of D&D conjure up the 9th and 10th centuries more than than the 14th. When I get nostalgic about D&D, it's the dark, dark ages all the way. Nonetheless, I am also a big Warhammer Fantasy (1e and 2e) fan.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I didn't say useless. I said they sucked. We have 2 battles won by heavy infantry (in a strong defensive position) with archer support and 1 battle won by horsearchers with heavy cavalry support. The Carrhae description makes clear that without the heavy cavalry the battle would have been indecisive.

Spot the ratio of troops used at Carrhae. There was a reason the horse archers massively outnumbered the heavy cavalry. And a monoculture of anything is going to get beaten. No weapon or armour is perfect. (And without the horse archers, the Parthians would probably have lost).

Historically, all bows have struggled against all armor.

Yes, it's called an arms race. There has been a continual struggle between weapons and armour. Bows have been part of it. Armour was for a long time bulletproof - and sold with a deliberate dent in it to prove it had stood up to being shot at. It took a lot of advances in gun technology before they finally struggled past armour. And armour made a comeback in the 20th Century.

And as for struggling against armour, tell that to anyone who thought chain was a defence against bows.

As for rate of fire, IIRC matchlocks were around 2/minute (less earlier), flintlocks around 3, and longbows found six a comfortable pace when worried about exhaustion. They also had a better range than napoleonic muskets - and as armour had been driven off the battlefield by that point (it still wasn't worth spending the years to train the longbowmen).

Bows have always been marginal weapons. Which has a whole lot to do with people not really fielding them much. ... And no army (other than in siege and maybe naval circumstances) used the longbow as a primary arm. Fancy that.

Um. I can't be the only Englishman on this forum?

One primary arm generally makes you vulnerable to whatever can beat it. Which is why very few armies have ever stuck to just one. (Even the Romans didn't).

And thanks, SkyOdin.

 

[Kraydak]

It is continuing the threadjack, but:

Spot the ratio of troops used at Carrhae. There was a reason the horse archers massively outnumbered the heavy cavalry. And a monoculture of anything is going to get beaten. No weapon or armour is perfect. (And without the horse archers, the Parthians would probably have lost).

So heavy lancers are expensive. That doesn't mean that the purpose of archers (as archers) wasn't, (as it has always been) "mere" harassment.

Yes, it's called an arms race. There has been a continual struggle between weapons and armour. Bows have been part of it. Armour was for a long time bulletproof - and sold with a deliberate dent in it to prove it had stood up to being shot at. It took a lot of advances in gun technology before they finally struggled past armour. And armour made a comeback in the 20th Century.

I'll let you be the judge of how full a powder load the armorer used... But yes, you could make plate breastplates that bounced pistols. However, that armor was proof against *everything (including lances)* except longarms. Making armor that was proof against longarms was semi-possible (it is much, much easier to wield a bigger gun than to wear twice as thick and heavy armor) for a time, although the coverage had to be reduced.

myArmoury.com: From Lance to Pistol

And as for struggling against armour, tell that to anyone who thought chain was a defence against bows.

myArmoury.com: Mail: Unchained

As for rate of fire, IIRC matchlocks were around 2/minute (less earlier), flintlocks around 3, and longbows found six a comfortable pace when worried about exhaustion. They also had a better range than napoleonic muskets - and as armour had been driven off the battlefield by that point (it still wasn't worth spending the years to train the longbowmen).

People keep on saying that bows have better ranges than muskets. It isn't true. What is true is that archers can afford to start shooting earlier because they can reload for a second volley. The musketmen need to wait because they will only get one volley off. On the other hand, firearms are the first and only ranged weapon ever fielded that could reasonably reliably stop disciplined infantry from closing (as witnessed by the fact that they are the first and only ranged infantry weapon ever fielded without melee support).

...

Getting back on topic, firearms in DnD (and many RPGs) suffer from the fact that the system cannot handle the RL aspects of the weapons in any meaningful sense. So the appeal of firearms is limited to those who are excited by them AND feel that merely going "boom" is adequate to be a gun. As people who are excited by firearms are also more prone to caring about the simulationism of their performace, you are left with a very small target audience. Say, enough for a few lines in an out-of-the-way location (3e's DMG, for example), or a small dedicated 3rd party product.

 

[Mark Chance]

Getting back on topic, weapons in DnD (and many RPGs) suffer from the fact that the system cannot handle the RL aspects of the weapons in any meaningful sense.

Fixed that for you.

 

[Barastrondo]

So it turns out to look like the only reason people seem to have for not liking guns in D&D is personal taste, however rationalized.

And the only reason people seem to have for liking them in D&D, too!

Which is fine. Great, even. Ideal. Our games should reflect our favorite images of the fantastic.

Exactly so.

 

[Desdichado]

Heroic literature is associated with periods in which expensive defensive technology largely outstripped offensive technology resulting in a military period where a well equipped and well trained artistocrat was relatively immune to attack and, hense, capable of great deeds. Converse periods where offensive power tends to overwhelm defensive technology become eras of great conscript armies, which, while stirring to a wargamer aren't necessarily the stuff of heroic literature.

The medieval period with its advances in armor technology is one such period. It's a military age of aristocratic armored horse warriors. So too was the great Heroic age of Greece, when similar advances in Bronze armor and weapons left unarmored combatants with stone and wood tools in awe. Medieval Japan is a similar period of armored aristocratic warriors. Gradually, these ages were eclipsed by various advances in offensive technology: crossbows, longbows, and ultimately firearms.

For the past 400 years or so, the firearm in various incarnations has almost completely overwhelmed defensive technology. That may be changing with the introduction of new materials for making armor, but hithertoo, the firearm has been the great equalizer of men and left relatively little oppurtunity for great deeds on the field of battle given the scope of modern war, the relatively small influence a single person usually has (except in command), and the instant death that haunts even the most skilled combatant.

D&D creates a game in the heroic mold. The ablative hit point mechanic and the relatively low damage weapons caused compared to the maximum hit points at high level means that a high level D&D hero is worth dozens if not hundreds of ordinary soldiers. The hit point mechanic creates a natural narrative of being hit and yet able to resist many blows that would fell an ordinary mortal.

This narrative is strongly at odds with the narrative created by guns. To really see how the presence of guns impacts the heroic narrative, the best device is to watch Kirosawa's 'Seven Samurii' and watch how the gun plays out in the narrative as an unheroic, magical, capracious, arbitrary, and ultimately unjust tool. It's hard to be heroic when a random mook with a firearm can cut you down in your prime without even giving you a chance to defend yourself. And, conversely, if you don't have gun mechanics that let random mooks cut you down in your prime without even giving you a chance to defend yourself, the 'gun' doesn't feel very much like a gun ought to.

Most people don't like guns in their fantasy because they instinctively know that they make it harder to tell heroic stories. It can be done, preferably with a somewhat different system than default D&D, but the default setting that everyone is or less comfortable in has to go away and you end up with something a bit more 'punk'.

That all sounds pretty reasonable... however, it's easily demonstrable as wrong. There's an entire subgenre of modern action movies called "gun fu" that belies your entire post. There's also a genre you may be familiar with called the "western" in which heroic (and villainous) gunfighters go around the frontier countryside as icons of heroic stories.

 

[NewJeffCT]

For some reason, a lot of people seem to block out large sections of this timeline from their thinking. When "early firearms" are brought up, they think of the 18th century, and completely forget about the seven hundred years of much more complicated history that preceded it. For example, Napoleon's troops were not using anything even resembling what could be called "early firearms", yet he seems to be continuously brought up in these discussions as if he did. It is also worth pointing out that plate armor and the knight are not directly correlated; plate armor only came into use in the twilight days of the knight, and lived on for centuries longer.

My background as a student of history makes me much more inclined to like having guns in D&D.

Great history lesson - thanks. That is part of what I said in my first post in this thread. Whenever I see guns in D&D, it tends to be flintlock musket type guns against medieval arms & armor. Early guns took a good 90-120 seconds to reload after each shot. You could get 18-24 longbow arrows off in that time, 9-12 light crossbow bolts and 4-6 heavy crossbow bolts.

 

[Dausuul]

So heavy lancers are expensive. That doesn't mean that the purpose of archers (as archers) wasn't, (as it has always been) "mere" harassment.

Call it what you like. The lancers would not have won without the archers. If archers are "mere" harassment, so is a modern air force, but good luck fighting a war without one.

On the other hand, firearms are the first and only ranged weapon ever fielded that could reasonably reliably stop disciplined infantry from closing (as witnessed by the fact that they are the first and only ranged infantry weapon ever fielded without melee support).

Originally, firearms were fielded the same way bows were, with ranks of pikemen to protect the gunners. Later, someone came up with a clever idea; unlike a bow, a gun is a long iron tube solid enough to serve as a melee weapon, so why not put something pointy on the end of it and dispense with the pikemen?

Hence the invention of the bayonet. Guns no longer needed melee support because they were melee weapons themselves. You can be damn sure that without that, pikemen would have stuck around--when your ranged weapon takes upwards of 15 seconds to reload and has a maximum effective range of about 100 yards, you do not want to rely on it exclusively. Bayonets may seem like a curiosity nowadays, but back then they were an essential part of a soldier's gear. (Although even now, bayonets see use once in a while. In 2004, a Scottish unit deployed to Iraq was ambushed by insurgents; running low on ammo, they fixed bayonets and charged to great effect.)

But specialized melee troops were still employed, specifically sabre-wielding cavalry. You know what they did? They charged in and slaughtered the disorganized foe after massed gunfire broke up the enemy formation. Sound familiar? It should, because it's exactly what cavalry working with archers did, centuries before. Mongol horse archers took on much larger armies that way; your own "Lance to Pistol" link describes tactics that could have come straight out of General Subutai's handbook, if he'd had a handbook.

No one here is disputing that guns eventually became superior to bows. If they hadn't, we'd still be shooting arrows today. But early pistoliers and arquebusiers were deployed in exactly the same manner as archers, to perform exactly the same function--and not because the generals didn't know what they were doing, either.

 

[Desdichado]

Okay Celtavian, you just need to stop this. It is becoming increasingly obvious that you don't know what you are talking about.

I second the call for Celtavian to stop.