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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7804060" data-attributes="member: 6873517">Certainly, and the goal is not to simulate real combat at all, generally, but heroic genre fiction. I'm not sure I agree with either point. Mid 19th Century rifled muskets were indeed quite deadly but the rifle bullets designed in the late 19th Century smokeless powder era were roughly designed to replicate their performance, albeit with a smaller bullet needed due to the massively increased performance of smokeless powder. The ballistics are markedly different, with ACW muskets being slow with heavy bullets and a smokeless powder rifle (e.g,. a Lee-Enfield or Mauser) being much faster. There were marked improvements to the bullets in the early 19th Century, as well. One big reason to downsize from 7.62mm to 5.56mm was to allow an infantryman to carry a lot of ammo---recall they're usually carrying belts of machine-gun ammo and/or mortar rounds. The real killer on the modern battlefield was judged to be artillery and crew-served weapons like the machine-gun or mortar, with the role of the infantry rifle being primarily for suppression and defense of these.  I suspect the notion that modern military weapons are designed to wound is rather an urban legend but I'd definitely like for someone who has expertise to comment. Indeed, and in my still running after all these years 2E game guns feature prominently. I have some classics of the era: The PC who's most into them indeed has several pistols and I've let him take his end of round attack with a pistol if he wants so as to encourage his use; he's going to get a clockwork pistol soon. Enemies often have a team of a shooter and one or more loaders. AFAIK, machine-guns are rarely used in sustained fire, although during World War I that happened at times with the water-cooled machine-guns of the time. Generally speaking, they're used in short, controlled bursts to prevent the barrel from overheating and to avoid wasting ammo. If you dump a 100 round belt through a modern general purpose machine-gun you'll waste most of the ammo and hasten the demise of the barrel.As to the relevance of archers, I often abstract a horde of archers as a Dex save of some sort so I can avoid having to deal with targeting or rolling all those dice, so if there were a lot of rapid fire weapons I'd do the same thing.</blockquote>

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