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

[Mark Chance]

Guns no longer needed melee support because they were melee weapons themselves.

Ah, the fond memories of bayonet drills and hand-to-hand combat training with the M-16.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

17th century: Around 1650, the flintlock musket is developed, finally creating a weapon that obsoletes plate armor. (The Scientific Revolution takes place.)

Point of order! Flintlocks were invented well before 1650! (They just didn't become popular until then, for who knows what reason. )

 

[TheAuldGrump]

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.

Which actually demonstrates that the load times on heavy crossbows are wrong - slow as loading an early handgun was it was still faster than operating the cranquin on a heavy crossbow.

The argument that has made the most sense, and the only irrefutable one, is 'personal preference' - some folks like guns, and some folks don't.

I like guns in my game, and focus on the early to mid 17th century in regards to weapons. Others like an earlier period, and still others just use what is in the books. And all those choices are fine.

I have found that folks in my games prefer having shorter the arquebus than to lugging around seven feet of musket. My favorite is still a musket that has been cut down to carbine length, but the range was sacrificed for wieldiness on shipboard - ranges in a boarding action being much shorter. But some of the most telling uses of musket aboard ship were as sniping weapons to kill officers.

In play the guns are fired once, and then quarters close. Players seem to prefer dropping the gun and pulling a melee weapon to affixing a plug bayonet. Then again, I think that I have only had one player ever use a spear in my games, and that was a ranger with a long spear.

The Auld Grump

 

[Neonchameleon]

It is continuing the threadjack, but:

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.

Horses in general are expensive. It was the archers that won Carrhae - the heavy cavalry couldn't break the Roman infantry on their own. But could handle the Roman cavalry. Heavy cavalry on their own would just have bounced off the disciplined heavy infantry the Romans liked using. The heavy cavalry were the secondary element in slaughtering the Romans - without the heavy cavalry it would have been a minor roman defeat - but without the horse archers, the Romans wouldn't have been seriously threatened.

Combined arms historically has been a good thing. (Or are you advocating for no air force?)

I'll let you be the judge of how full a powder load the armorer used...

Depends how honest the armourer was. And what period the test was. Arquebusses normally couldn't. But they developed over time and the heavier muskets normally could. Not all longarms are the same.

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.

Smoothbore or rifled musket? I'll accept that someone using a muzzle loading rifle was as accurate as a longbowman. And even slower firing than a normal muzzle loader - which is why they were a specialist role.

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).

And no one is claiming that longbows are as effective as American Civil War firearms. On the other hand, early-mid 17th century firearms as used in the thirty years war were mixed with pikemen to prevent the enemy closing and pikemen were still used effectively by professional armies such as the Swedes in the 1720s. They simply were not used without melee support until a lot of development had been done. And longbows could see off unarmoured infantry and most cavalry without too much trouble - it was heavily armoured infantry that they suffered against. (Which is why there were proposals to bring them back in the Napoleonic wars - the better armour piercing of the bullets had removed the targets longbows were weak against.

You appear to be working under the assumption that a breachloading rifle loaded with cartridges and a matchlock arquebus loaded using a powder horn are both firearms and that they are therefore equivalent. There were hundreds of years of evolution before firearms came to completely dominate the battlefield.

 

[HandofMystra]

I am not sure if the OP got his question answered: I, personally, do not like guns.

 

[NewJeffCT]

Which actually demonstrates that the load times on heavy crossbows are wrong - slow as loading an early handgun was it was still faster than operating the cranquin on a heavy crossbow.

The argument that has made the most sense, and the only irrefutable one, is 'personal preference' - some folks like guns, and some folks don't.

I like guns in my game, and focus on the early to mid 17th century in regards to weapons. Others like an earlier period, and still others just use what is in the books. And all those choices are fine.

The Auld Grump

I should have said a heavier crossbow, not a heavy crossbow, which was often a 2 man operation. I was watching a demo of crossbow vs longbow and the light crossbow was firing at about half the rate of the longbow, but the guy using the crossbow said that the more typical medieval crossbow would have been half again as slow, mean about 1/4 the speed of a longbow, but still faster than any sort of firearms from the same era.

 

[shadow]

Just to chime in with my 2cp - I used to actively dislike the inclusion of firearms in D&D games. This was really because of genre reasons. Most of the heroic high fantasy (or swords and sorcery) that comes to people's minds don't include firearms (e.g. The Lord of the Rings, King Aurthur, etc.) However, I've come to loosen my stance of firearms in D&D. Now the question is - what type of setting are you trying to create. A setting in some legendary, mythic past probably doesn't need guns. However, in swashbuckling style game, firearms are definitely appropriate.

 

[messy]

anachronism.

(hooray for one-word posts!)

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

A setting in some legendary, mythic past probably doesn't need guns. However, in swashbuckling style game, firearms are definitely appropriate.

We had a steampunkish Planescape game where guns up to repeating cartridge rifles were available.

Amazingly, nobody used them.

Why? They weren't worth the effort after like 4th level. The characters I remember were either strength-types (my kensei anthro-tiger or the Dr00dzilla) or casters (the psion, the wizard, etc). A weapon that didn't add a stat to damage was basically worthless to us.

The one time I recall using them, the druid player insisted we take these demons under rifle fire so as not to alert them to our possession of a kick-ass demon-killing spear.

By about the 20th round, when it was obvious the damage wasn't getting past their healing, we charged and killed them in two rounds in melee and great nukage.

Now, later on we ran into a golem with a gatling gun on his arm, and that was cool and scary. And at lower levels we ran into puds with rifles, but they really just didn't do much. We talked about it, and the best way we could find to make the firearms that the DM came up with was to start with a monk, use Zen Archery, and make a custom gunslinger monk prestige class based on the dude from Kung Fu, or maybe stack a ton of sneak attack onto it.

Brad

 

[pawsplay]

Melee weapons are not more "heroic" than guns. Sword-fights, like gun-fights, are usually settled in seconds once serious combat is initiated, and usually go to the person with the steadier nerves and steadiest hand. Now, if you are more familiar with guns than with swords, it might be easier to romanticize them, but I think it should be evident that exciting sword fights are not necessarily realistic.