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

[Kraydak]

DnD (and most RPGs) have major problems with ranged weapons in general that just get exacerbated with pre-modern firearms. Modern firearms in RPGs of course suffer from the "in RL, you would never use anything that isn't a gun, so do we want to support martial artists/knife fighter character concepts" problem.

People have no problem abstracting away melee activity in a round to an arbitrary number of swings. Ammunition, on the other hand, is quite countable. If your ammunition is magic or otherwise limited, it gets even worse. So attack rates for ranged weapons *means something concrete* while attack rates for melee weapons *doesn't*.

Further, in RL it generally only takes one honest hit to drop someone. In an RPG, it frequently takes many (in DnD, it takes lots). Again, melee attacks are abstract, while ranged attacks are concrete. If it takes 10 sword "hits" to drop a guy, no one worries. If it takes 10 arrow shots, you have a problem (you can't really shoot even a bow all *that* fast). If it takes 10 *crossbow bolts*, the *concrete* loading time breaks your system. If it takes 10 early blackpowder shots, pray you are using 1 minute rounds.

As early firearms take the utter extreme in high hitting power (including, in DnD's armor piercing=to hit world, good accurary)/low ROF parameter space, they don't work in DnD. Yes, you could inflate their ROF and deflate their damage, but then, why even bother? You don't have "firearms" in any meaningful sense anymore.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Who says I don't?

I've no objection to arquebusses, muskets, or even muzzle loading rifles. I just expect adventurers to want to be able to hit the broad side of a barn door and not spend several rounds reloading. Early gunpowder is therefore not an issue for adventurers any more than I expect there to be adventuring pikemen. (About all it does is makes the town militia a force on the battlefield or provides non-magical artillery). And I'd back trained longbowmen even against Napoleonic infantry. (American Civil War infantry with breachloading rifles are another issue).

Longbows are better than crossbows - partly because there are fewer functional limits to the weapon and partly because they take much more training. The reason the crossbow was considered dishonourable was that you could train a peasant in an afternoon to shoot hard enough to take down a knight. (Longbows take years).

And I want a modern convertion of 4e that works as an action movie - Shotguns doing knockback etc. (Bows and crossbows discarded).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Is that the case in D&D? Nope.

If you go by how D&D stats their guns, you would think a bowman far superior to a gunman. Yet in the real world that is not the case at all.

I get that you lean on the Simulationist side of the equation a little hard, but is it out of league to say that guns, in D&D, are quite a bit different than in the real world?

Maybe they're more like wands, that the "common folk" can use, launching rounds with magic (or even launching magic)? Maybe the alchemical formula is different, giving them different penetrating power? Perhaps monsters and villains in fantasy games have the same ability to dodge and block bullets, what with their enchantments and their hide like diamond and their godlike reflexes? Perhaps bullets in a fantasy world are brittle and blunted and lack the piercing power of a steel round?

For my mileage, bows and guns do almost the same thing in FFZ (they've got some different "treasure" versions, but the basic guns and the basic bows have the same basic stats). Neither is superior, mostly because at FFZ's level of abstraction, it's a wash. Heck, they even wind up doing the same damage, though that's more of a coincidence, an accident of design (they could do more or less).

I don't see this as unrealistic, because I don't see these fantasy "guns" as having a lot to do with historical guns. They look similar, and work in vaguely similar ways, but they are not the same thing, at all.

 

[Celtavian]

I get that you lean on the Simulationist side of the equation a little hard, but is it out of league to say that guns, in D&D, are quite a bit different than in the real world?

Maybe they're more like wands, that the "common folk" can use, launching rounds with magic (or even launching magic)? Maybe the alchemical formula is different, giving them different penetrating power? Perhaps monsters and villains in fantasy games have the same ability to dodge and block bullets, what with their enchantments and their hide like diamond and their godlike reflexes? Perhaps bullets in a fantasy world are brittle and blunted and lack the piercing power of a steel round?

For my mileage, bows and guns do almost the same thing in FFZ (they've got some different "treasure" versions, but the basic guns and the basic bows have the same basic stats). Neither is superior, mostly because at FFZ's level of abstraction, it's a wash. Heck, they even wind up doing the same damage, though that's more of a coincidence, an accident of design (they could do more or less).

I don't see this as unrealistic, because I don't see these fantasy "guns" as having a lot to do with historical guns. They look similar, and work in vaguely similar ways, but they are not the same thing, at all.

I wouldn't want to do it that way. Seems pointless. Why would anyone use a gun if a bow is much, much better?

Materials for making guns are harder to come by than bows. Materials for ammunition are harder to come by. Why would anyone put out the effort to make a gun if they are inferior to a bow?

If you want to throw guns in just because a player thinks it cool, then do it. But don't try to make it seem reasonable or well-simulated as some game designers seem to try to do.

Make it like bows. As in they can fire up to 4 or 5 shots a round. A real bowman can't fire 5 or 6 shots a round no matter how long they've been doing it. They can't start off with a double shot or split three arrows together at targets within 30 feet. Why are game designers going out of their way to make crossbowman and gunman realistic while letting bow users go off?

That's not fair. Don't suddenly get realistic with guns and crossbows while letting bows be machine guns. That's what I'm talking about when I say done right on top of the affect on warfare.

No way some inventor is going to make some weak gun that pales in comparison to a bow as anything more than a novelty. So the game designers should ensure that there are feats in place (as they have recently done with crossbows) to make guns competitive and interesting if they are going to include them. Otherwise, why bother? The only way I would allow a gun is if I was building a setting based around gun technology or some player just really, really wanted to make a character like The Warlord comic I used to read and had to have a gun. And if I did that, I would at least make his gun special and cool rather than saying "here you go. Here's your d8 gun. Look at the longbowmen firing tons of arrows while your little piddly gun gets one shot or runs out of ammo."

 

[Celtavian]

Who says I don't?

And I'd back trained longbowmen even against Napoleonic infantry. (American Civil War infantry with breachloading rifles are another issue).

If Longbowmen were better, they would have been used. Every general or king was looking for a battle advantage. They would have went back to using longbowmen if they could beat infantry. But a group of infantry backed up by artillery would decimate longbowmen.

 

[nightwyrm]

I wouldn't want to do it that way. Seems pointless. Why would anyone use a gun if a bow is much, much better?

One word. Training. You could train a peasant to shoot a gun in battlefield conditions in a few weeks. You need years of training and physical conditioning to shoot a longbow continuously for a battle.

Early firearms were worse than bows. Early guns had worse accuracy and rate of fire. But would you rather have several hundred bowman or several thousand gunman.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I've no objection to arquebusses, muskets, or even muzzle loading rifles. I just expect adventurers to want to be able to hit the broad side of a barn door and not spend several rounds reloading. Early gunpowder is therefore not an issue for adventurers any more than I expect there to be adventuring pikemen. (About all it does is makes the town militia a force on the battlefield or provides non-magical artillery). And I'd back trained longbowmen even against Napoleonic infantry. (American Civil War infantry with breachloading rifles are another issue).

Longbows are better than crossbows - partly because there are fewer functional limits to the weapon and partly because they take much more training. The reason the crossbow was considered dishonourable was that you could train a peasant in an afternoon to shoot hard enough to take down a knight. (Longbows take years).

Good points - early firearms were basically only effective at short range and when using massed firepower. A primary value of them was the shock & awe of the loud noise and smoke scaring horses.

As a DM, I tend to use crossbows as weapons for lower level minion types, as they likely won't do more than get one shot off anyhow, but bows for specialized NPCs and bad guys. (I still remember 1E and 2E days when bows got 2 shots a round, which indicated they fired twice as fast as crossbows...)

I think a realistic reload time for a medieval/early Renaissance gun would be at least a couple of rounds.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

One word. Training. You could train a peasant to shoot a gun in battlefield conditions in a few weeks. You need years of training and physical conditioning to shoot a longbow continuously for a battle.

Early firearms were worse than bows. Early guns had worse accuracy and rate of fire. But would you rather have several hundred bowman or several thousand gunman.

A longbowman was a years long investment, a peasant with a gun is expendable. A longbowman might be twice as effective as a handgonner, but you could field a lot more than two musketeers to each longbowman.

The real competition for the gun was the crossbow - even easier to train users, but so very, very slow to load.... A crossbow was more accurate, and was better at penetrating armor, but did less tissue damage than a bullet.

Pikes, warhammers, and polearms lasted more than a century after the gun became common - during the Thirty Years War the Spanish Hapsburgs still fielded more than twice as many pike as arquebusiers.

The Auld Grump

 

[Neonchameleon]

If Longbowmen were better, they would have been used. Every general or king was looking for a battle advantage. They would have went back to using longbowmen if they could beat infantry. But a group of infantry backed up by artillery would decimate longbowmen.

IIRC they looked into going back to longbowmen. Better range, better accuracy, better rate of fire. There was, however, one good reason they considered the attempt impractical. Training time. It took days to train someone to use a musket competently. It takes years to build up the skill and strength required for a 100lb+ longbow.

 

[Jack7]

I have three general points against guns in fantasy role play games.

1. Once they become widespread then you can kill a man, and most other things fairly easily, tipping the balance of power to technology versus magic. (Sure, you could invent a spell that acts as shield or even a targeting displacement, but could you get it up in time before several guys discharge rounds to your head or a vital organ? And don't forget that if everyone or even a sufficient number of individuals have guns then the disadvantages of long re-load and re-fire times can be rather easily overcome by smart and practiced variable rates of fire, along with variable position fire.) So they tip power scales against other forces towards combat oriented technology, but not just combat oriented technology, but technology with a highly lethal potential and capability. Which initially sounds great but this merely redirects the use of magic (as but one easily noticed side-effect) towards ever more combat-oriented expression in an attempt to counter-balance force-projection capabilities (and magic in fantasy games is already far too combat oriented to me - meaning all you really have left is a tactical combat game with magic attempting to match technology at the level of basic engagement, a supposedly game of role-playing would become even more just a tactical skirmish game with new weapon systems). After all if magic cannot effectively compete with technology as a combat tool then it will be abandoned as a combat tool, so as far as combat is concerned magic would either adapt, or die. If you do not believe this then ask yourself this question, "how likely would it be that if gun(s) were introduced into your campaign that this would not be almost immediately followed by an arms-race?" The race implying a rush to technological improvement that would far exceed that of other weapons, because gun weapons are far more open ended and versatile in capability and potential than swords, pikes, spears, long-bows, etc. In the narrow range of combat function they show almost as much potential as magic, and can often be far more directly lethal.

2. How wide spread exactly will they be and how fast will they spread? Once guns become replicable (in the sense of being mass-produced, and believe me a smart political and military power will look for ways to mass produce effective weapon systems) then the period of time in which they will be of little practical value (see fire-rate mastery above) will be a short one. The natural impetus of technological advancement is of relatively short direction and for an easy reason and that is that technology works upon the foundations of science, meaning a thing is almost always replicable. Meaning it spreads like wildfire and improves constantly over the lifespan of the invention, sometimes for generations and generations. With magic, which unfortunately in games far too often mimics pseudo science in effect, the implication (still existing, even if unstated) at least is that magic is very hard to master and so hard to replicate that only a few practitioners or experts may master the principles in any given population group. A child, and I have trained my own children to shoot well, can master any sufficiently advanced firearm and easily dispatch a far more dangerous yet unarmed opponent. If you're being honest about it. (Of course if your firearm is so primitive that it is extremely inaccurate and is very ineffective then that's beyond the point - because why really employ such an inaccurate and dangerous device, except maybe as a psychological weapon, or to render a one time shock effect.) So as a matte of technology and science guns are extremely dangerous to any world in which they are introduced when it comes to replication and how fast they will spread. Because once guns are mass produced they are no longer tactical weapons like swords, they become strategic weapons. Numbers of swords always remain in actual effect, tactical weans. Numbers of guns, behind a good leader, or anyone who really understands their potential, always become over time strategic weapons. And that's a whole nuther kettle of fish. Only in cartoons is Judo ever much of a match for a Peacemaker. Plus it takes a along time to kill a man with a knife if he's fighting back and knows what he's doing, and that kinda thing is extremely dangerous to everybody involved. I can do it almost instantly if he's in effective range of my shotgun. The only real danger to me is the question of how many shells will I discharge before he ain't breathing no more. And that's an economic question, not even much of a tactical one one.

3. I think they defeat the point of personal and heroic valor (only as regards the duel or close combat aspect of fantasy gaming combat styles - I am not implying gun combat cannot be valorous and dangerous and heroic under certain circumstances - I've seen this myself) in fantasy combat. Because of what I said in points one and two above.

Now all of that being said I am not against guns ever appearing in a fantasy setting and a few have in mine. Only one used a modified type of gunpowder, the other three functioned in different ways (one even fired different types of ammunition). But to me guns in fantasy settings should be proprietary artifacts, either created or discovered, have certain built in limitations (all guns, like any other technology, does anyway, it just might not be immediately evident to those unfamiliar with how guns really operate), as well as certain capability advantages, but should not be easily replicable, if at all. They should be like a sufficiently high-powered magical artifact.

That limits how wide-spread they can become in a given fantasy world but does not necessarily limit their overall effectiveness in use for small scale combat.