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

[Dannyalcatraz]

That's only applicable to modern firearms though. Try shooting someone 3+ times with a musket, and I think you'd find the reload time prohibitive. I imagine it would be much easier to stab a capable opponent 3+ times, than to shoot them an equal number with a musket.

Also, I have to wonder what the odds of survival are after being stabbed 3+ times. While it might not be 1%, I'd wager to guess that it isn't far off. The human body simply isn't meant to be abused in such a manner.

While it would be harder to actually have the time to hit someone 3 times with a musket in any reasonable amount of time, given the size of musket balls- American musket balls were .69 caliber or bigger- I'd imagine the fatality rate for that number of hits was pretty similar.

As for stabbings, I was recently looking at an Australian report by Kenneth Wong and Jeffrey Petchell (of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital) who looked at stabbings and shootings. They noted that the stabbings primarily involved knives and machetes. Of the people studied, 52% had been injured in multiple locations...and the overall fatality rate of firearm injuries was double that of those who were stabbed or cut.

Another study (Journal of the American College of Surgeons) showed the survival rates were 16.8% for stab wounds and 4.3% for gunshot wounds...but I don't recall a break down of the results into number of injuries per patient.

 

[Fanaelialae]

While it would be harder to actually have the time to hit someone 3 times with a musket in any reasonable amount of time, given the size of musket balls- American musket balls were .69 caliber or bigger- I'd imagine the fatality rate for that number of hits was pretty similar.

As has been mentioned, swords are significantly bigger than your average knife. Muskets are notably less accurate than modern firearms, and possess a remarkably reduced rate of fire. Using modern data to compare medieval/renaissance weaponry is likely misleading.

As for stabbings, I was recently looking at an Australian report by Kenneth Wong and Jeffrey Petchell (of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital) who looked at stabbings and shootings. They noted that the stabbings primarily involved knives and machetes. Of the people studied, 52% had been injured in multiple locations...and the overall fatality rate of firearm injuries was double that of those who were stabbed or cut.

Another study (Journal of the American College of Surgeons) showed the survival rates were 16.8% for stab wounds and 4.3% for gunshot wounds...but I don't recall a break down of the results into number of injuries per patient.

Again, you'd have to break that data down significantly before it would be of any practical value. You want to look at machete/sword attacks for stab wounds, because a knife produces a much smaller wound than a sword (which would naturally increase the survival rate). You want to look at single shot, higher caliber shootings for firearms (because the ability to shoot someone multiple times in rapid succession will obviously lower the survival rate). Finally, you'd want to utilize those instances that did not have rapid response (because modern medicine can be borderline miraculous at times, and victims who had to be resuscitated will only confuse the data).

If you haven't accounted for as many factors as possible, then your statistics are unscientific to say the least. I don't think anyone here is contesting that a modern firearm is deadlier than a knife.

The debate is over primitive firearms versus swords (and other medieval weaponry), which is hardly what the data you presented above is based on. It's entirely possible that much of this data is comparing a cooking utensil to an actual weapon; of course the weapon is superior in that scenario! A musket is not the equivalent of a semi-automatic rifle. A steak knife is not the equivalent of a sword.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

As has been mentioned, swords are significantly bigger than your average knife. Muskets are notably less accurate than modern firearms, and possess a remarkably reduced rate of fire. Using modern data to compare medieval/renaissance weaponry is likely misleading.

As has been mentioned, accuracy isn't the issue I'm talking about. When I'm talking about guns here, I'm talking about surviving multiple contemporaneous gunshots. That issue doesn't change significantly over time in favor of the modern firearm. In fact, with modern medicine, survival rates from gunshot injuries have risen. Don't believe me? Start looking at how many people died of complications from gunshot wounds from the Civil War on- where you have a combination of muskets, the beginnings of modern battlefield medicine and relatively reliable statistics- and you'll see the trend. Modern medicine has done wonders in this area...mostly because of improvements in control of post-surgical infections that claimed the lives of huge numbers of wounded, but also in surgical techniques that turn formerly fatal wounds into survivable ones.

And despite those improvements, that poor survival rate from multiple (3+, as stated by the trauma surgeon) GSWs was calculated using data from top-flight medical facilities. Away from those facilities, its probable that death from multiple GSWs is virtually assured, possibly indistinguishable from rates of death from earlier eras.

Your point has more validity with bladed weapons, where the societal trend is to smaller and less inherently lethal blades, which fewer and fewer people carry, and with which fewer and fewer persons are actually trained to fight.

Still, though, the Aussie study did include machete data...and still the firearms outperformed bladed weapons.

(I recently tried to find data on machete attacks/fatalities exclusively, but instead of getting crime rates, I kept getting referred to terrorism reports, not crime statistics.)

 

[ProfessorCirno]

The debate is over primitive firearms versus swords (and other medieval weaponry).

Not really. As Hobo said, the red herring is over primitive firearms versus swords.

Realism has never had a place in D&D. That it suddenly has to be slammed in whenever someone wants to make a ranged attack with a weapon that isn't a bow is staggeringly dumb.

 

[Fanaelialae]

As has been mentioned, accuracy isn't the issue I'm talking about. When I'm talking about guns here, I'm talking about surviving multiple contemporaneous gunshots. That issue doesn't change significantly over time in favor of the modern firearm. In fact, with modern medicine, survival rates from gunshot injuries have risen. Don't believe me? Start looking at how many people died of complications from gunshot wounds from the Civil War on- where you have a combination of muskets, the beginnings of modern battlefield medicine and relatively reliable statistics- and you'll see the trend. Modern medicine has done wonders in this area...mostly because of improvements in control of post-surgical infections that claimed the lives of huge numbers of wounded, but also in surgical techniques that turn formerly fatal wounds into survivable ones.

And despite those improvements, that poor survival rate from multiple (3+, as stated by the trauma surgeon) GSWs was calculated using data from top-flight medical facilities. Away from those facilities, its probable that death from multiple GSWs is virtually assured, possibly indistinguishable from rates of death from earlier eras.

You've completely missed my point, which is that you effectively can't receive "multiple contemporaneous gunshots" from a musket! It would either require multiple shooters/guns or take a long time due to slow reload speed. Hence, saying that the survival rate for being shot 3+ times is low is quite misleading, because isn't very likely to happen in your typical D&D scenario with guns.

I'm aware that modern medicine has increased survival rates among gunshot victims. I also imagine that modern medicine has increased survival rates among stab victims. If both types of injuries approached 0% survivability in medieval times, then they're equally deadly. Mind you, that 0% is mere supposition as I've no data to back it; I'm just pointing out a scenario which would indicate that medieval firearms were no deadlier than a sword, much less a crossbow.

Your point has more validity with bladed weapons, where the societal trend is to smaller and less inherently lethal blades, which fewer and fewer people carry, and with which fewer and fewer persons are actually trained to fight.

Still, though, the Aussie study did include machete data...and still the firearms outperformed bladed weapons.

(I recently tried to find data on machete attacks/fatalities exclusively, but instead of getting crime rates, I kept getting referred to terrorism reports, not crime statistics.)

The Aussie study included machete data. Knife stabbings skew that data (the only knife fighter in D&D is the rogue, who is more akin to a professional assassin). Never mind that a machete isn't really a sword to begin with.

The most accurate data for the situation is from those shot a single time. It would also be helpful to know how often a single shot was fired and completely missed (because gunshot statistics don't include those people the bullet avoided).

You can get any kind of crazy result if you only select data that suits your desired results, but if it doesn't mimic the theoretical scenario as closely as possible, then for all practical purposes your data is meaningless and potentially misleading.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

You've completely missed my point, which is that you effectively can't receive "multiple contemporaneous gunshots" from a musket! It would either require multiple shooters/guns or take a long time due to slow reload speed. Hence, saying that the survival rate for being shot 3+ times is low is quite misleading, because isn't very likely to happen in your typical D&D scenario with guns.

Up until now, you've missed my point, which is that you obviously CAN receive multiple musket wounds.

While its highly improbable that a person could receive multiple contemporaneous gunshot wounds from the same musket, there is nothing preventing a single target receiving multiple wounds from multiple shooters.

So, to be perfectly clear: I don't care about ROF, accuracy or number of shooters, just the survival rate from multiple contemporaneous GSWs.

You claim that "being shot 3+ times is low is quite misleading, because isn't very likely to happen in your typical D&D scenario with guns."

This is an odd statement to me because:

1. There is no such thing as a "typical D&D scenario with guns"- a typical D&D scenario has no guns. A D&D scenario with guns is, perforce, atypical.
2. IME, most parties have multiple PCs with ranged weapons.
3. In those few D&D campaigns in which I have participated that did include guns, nearly every PC in the group had at least one, if not multiple, firearms- even the spellcasters.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Up until now, you've missed my point, which is that you obviously CAN receive multiple musket wounds.

While its highly improbable that a person could receive multiple contemporaneous gunshot wounds from the same musket, there is nothing preventing a single target receiving multiple wounds from multiple shooters.

So, to be perfectly clear: I don't care about ROF, accuracy or number of shooters, just the survival rate from multiple contemporaneous GSWs.

You claim that "being shot 3+ times is low is quite misleading, because isn't very likely to happen in your typical D&D scenario with guns."

This is an odd statement to me because:

1. There is no such thing as a "typical D&D scenario with guns"- a typical D&D scenario has no guns. A D&D scenario with guns is, perforce, atypical.
2. IME, most parties have multiple PCs with ranged weapons.
3. In those few D&D campaigns in which I have participated that did include guns, nearly every PC in the group had at least one, if not multiple, firearms- even the spellcasters.

By "typical D&D scenario with guns" I mean that D&D is based around the idea of a small party of adventurers. You won't normally encounter an entire platoon of musketeers because D&D combat typically doesn't take place on that scale. Muskets are most effective when used in military scale engagements, which D&D generally avoids (hence the lack of mass combat rules in 4e).

You said that in one study, where roughly 50% of the people had multiple stab wounds, the survival rate of stab wounds was double that of gunshots. Another study showed stab wounds had a roughly 17% stab survival versus 4% for gunshots (but doesn't account for the number of wounds).

Leaving aside that I still believe these statistics aren't very practical since they're based on modern weaponry, they do show a trend. If a person is shot or stabbed, the odds are that he will die regardless of the type of weapon used. If you want to model realism, that seems like a good place to start; getting hit would allow only a 20% or less chance for survival (knives could apply a -3 and guns a -16 modifier to that base). It would certainly be quite gritty, but not much in keeping with the spirit of D&D or fun, IMO.

 

[SKyOdin]

Dannyalcatraz, what exactly are you trying to get at with the argument that guns are more deadly than bladed weapons? What bearing does that argument have on the question of whether or not guns are acceptable in D&D? Even if you are right, and guns are more deadly than bladed weapons, so what? That in of itself has nothing to do with guns being in D&D. You need to be a lot more clear about how this relates to the main point of the thread.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Actually, it probably doesn't- it was, AFAIK, just an interesting tangent that started with Hobo's puzzlement in post #216.

 

[Herobizkit]

@ SKyOdin: It is an interesting conversation even if it doesn't relate to the OP. While guns may (or may not) tend to be more deadly than knife wounds in reality, it doesn't much matter in a game system where damage is abstract and, by far and away, ranged weapons tend to be INferior to melee weapons.

If we were to make guns more lethal, we'd likely have to change the way damage is handled at present... likely by using the True 20 damage track, or cap a PC's max HP at his CON score (which I've always wanted to try, but no one was up for it).