Pathfinder 1E Yet another Pathfinder With Firearms thread

[Matthias]

I'm not sure I would like having to do such "advanced math" as taking the average of two numbers as a player. To me, if I decided touch AC was too easy a target, I would probably award firearms an equipment(?) bonus to attack rolls to represent the extra power of their projectiles (compared to conventional ranged weapons). This way you can give firearms of varying strength a different bonus to attack which may or may not completely overcome the armor of your target.

A different idea: give firearms (or any weapon) a "penetration" rating. The default penetration of a weapon is 0, but many firearms will have a nonzero value. If a firearm's penetration is higher than the hardness of the target's armor, then hits are resolved as a touch attack. If not, then the attack is resolved as a normal attack against full AC. Leather may not matter to attacks from a specific kind of firearm, but the heavier metal armors might be tough enough to resist the penetrative value of that weapon.

 

[Starfox]

I played in a game where we had WWI era firearm technology available but I was a warforged paladin wielding a bastard sword. by being a touch attack in the first increment, that effectiveness gets nixed once the target is 70' away or so.

Continuing with anecdotes, I playrd in a Dragonstar SF game based on 3.0 rules, an most of the characters had melee weapoms at least for backup. One was a barbarian that favored his claymore over any gun. My elf was one of the few range purists, and he enhanced his Str to 22 justbto carry his minigun effortlessly.

DnD rules favor melee, and that bias works even if you introduce modern guns.

 

[Celebrim]

I'm not sure I would like having to do such "advanced math" as taking the average of two numbers as a player. To me, if I decided touch AC was too easy a target, I would probably award firearms an equipment(?) bonus to attack rolls to represent the extra power of their projectiles (compared to conventional ranged weapons). This way you can give firearms of varying strength a different bonus to attack which may or may not completely overcome the armor of your target.

That is more or less how Ken Hood's rules work. Firearms get some additional descriptors. The 'Penetration' characteristic works like you describe. A flintlock pistol might have a penetration of 1, meaning that it reduces the armor bonus of the target by 1. Mundane armor is still relatively useful. A .50 caliber Barret sniper rifle has a penetration rating of 9, meaning that most mundane armor offers no protection at all. Additionally, firearms have an accuracy bonus which adds directly to 'to hit' and is generally between +0 and +3, reflecting their extreme ease of use because of their very flat trajectory compared to lower velocity missile weapons. Some primitive firearms balance negative accuracy with higher penetration, meaning that unarmed targets are actually harder to hit compared to standard missile weapons. They also get a 'recoil' number, which reflects the penalty you recieve for firing shots in rapid succession, something that becomes increasingly important once you get past muzzle loaders. For example, a high level fighter might be able to squeeze 12 shots out of a semiautomatic weapon assuming the clip was large enough, but if the weapon had high recoil the shots would become increasingly erratic.

Ken Hood's rules are extemely well thought out. If you trace out the history of firearms using his rules, the effectiveness of the firearms relative to melee weapons almost exactingly reflects the actual historical move away from melee to firearms where melee is first the dominate arm of battle supported by firearms, then a partner in battle, and finally to the point where firearms are of such frightening lethality that they completely dominate over melee. There is this wonderful aspect where not only does it feel like the small scale tactical situation would play out write, but if you ported the weapons into a mass combat system that they'd fulfill their function relative to lances, pikes, bayonettes and the like from period to period. Moreover, you can take any historical firearm or any fantasy firearm you can imagine, and in a minute or so generate a complete balanced set of stats for it with almost no subjective determination or guessing. It also has rules covering shotguns, fully automatic weapons, and pretty much anything you'd desire.

Seriously, I wouldn't run D20 with firearms using any other rules.

 

[Jester David]

This is also a weak explanation. There is no historical evidence social schemes like that ever blocked the spread of new weapon technology, though they were on occasion tried (for the crossbow, for example). One reason is that if the weapon is useful, each kingdom is encouraged to enlarge its position and power by cheating, and licensing the weapon as broadly as possible. 'Gun control' isn't going to work, because it requires your neighbor to concede weapon development to you. Each nation is going to want as many firearm owners as possible, in order to conscript powerful armies to use against the other.

Except in Japan, where they were banned as a dishonourable foriegn influence and their absence greatly extended the sword-wielding feudal era.

Banning guns would work well, especially if tied to a religious doctrine declaring them the weapon of heathens or something.

 

[sheadunne]

Except in Japan, where they were banned as a dishonourable foriegn influence and their absence greatly extended the sword-wielding feudal era.

Banning guns would work well, especially if tied to a religious doctrine declaring them the weapon of heathens or something.

And they live on an island or isolated geographic area where it's easier to block foreign influence.

 

[Celebrim]

And they live on an island or isolated geographic area where it's easier to block foreign influence.

It's even more unusual of a situation than that. Japan provides the counter example to almost every broad historical observation you can make. The Meiji restoration was probably the most unusual socio-political event in human history, and stands in absolute contrast to every other excession event in history.

I think that for Japan you have to consider two things. They aren't merely isolated geographically, with their back to the Pacific ocean and its seemingly empty endless expanse, but they are sandwiched on the other side by what had been for most of human history the world's great economic and military superpower - China. So it wasn't merely that they were isolated and could block foreign influence, they had their back against the wall against the most powerful foreign influence imaginable - a heavily populated, prosperous, literate, advanced, aggressively imperialistic empire. They have no where to expand to, and their culture is pretty much dominated by unrelievable population pressure combined with the overriding need to defend themselves militarily and culturally from being engulfed and absorbed into thier larger neighbor. The musket shows up and the Japanese do their usual thing of taking a foreign design and immediately improving upon it, and just like in Europe (which in some sense is like Japan on a larger scale) there is a backlash among the martial aristocracy about this new plebian weapon. But I don't think that it was merely that that got the musket supressed in Japan, but rather the musket was suppressed as part of the general fear of foreign influence. The Japanese feared losing their identity, and so threw out everything the Portugese had brought with them. They could do that because China was in the middle of its long slow self-inflicted stagnation induced collapse (see the very different choices China and Europe made in the 15th century), and because they were at 'the ends of the Earth'.

But even then, it didn't last very long in the whole sweep of history. As soon as the powers that be realized that there was a developing weapons gap that rendered them insecure after all, the firearm came back.

 

[Jester David]

And they live on an island or isolated geographic area where it's easier to block foreign influence.

Right, so flip it around. Have guns created on an island of isolated geographically area and have the rest of the world blocking easy access.

 

[sheadunne]

Right, so flip it around. Have guns created on an island of isolated geographically area and have the rest of the world blocking easy access.

Sounds good to me

 

[Celebrim]

Right, so flip it around. Have guns created on an island of isolated geographically area and have the rest of the world blocking easy access.

That doesn't work. Give the isolated island a technological advantage, and what you get is England's empire over which the sun never sets. Had Japan realized that the musket was about to give them a technological advantage over their larger hated neighbor, they would have - and did - immediately change from isolationists to rabidly agressive imperial expansionists. If they had done that in the 16th century rather than the 19th, we'd have been talking about Japan along side England and France as one of the world's great colonial powers.

What you have in the situation of guns being invented somewhere and the whole world colluding not to take them, is precisely the scenario I originally had argued was impossible - because it requires just one member of the community - whether or nation, group, or subculture - to secretly break the agreement in order to gain the clear advantage there by and the arms race is on. Heck, you don't even need that - you just need the belief that your enemy might be secretly doing that to persuade you to do it too. What you have is a prisoner's dilemma where the prisoner gets a much better deal by betraying the others. If the 'others' are anything less than loved like brothers, the outcome is obvious.

 

[Jester David]

That doesn't work. Give the isolated island a technological advantage, and what you get is England's empire over which the sun never sets. Had Japan realized that the musket was about to give them a technological advantage over their larger hated neighbor, they would have - and did - immediately change from isolationists to rabidly agressive imperial expansionists. If they had done that in the 16th century rather than the 19th, we'd have been talking about Japan along side England and France as one of the world's great colonial powers.

What you have in the situation of guns being invented somewhere and the whole world colluding not to take them, is precisely the scenario I originally had argued was impossible - because it requires just one member of the community - whether or nation, group, or subculture - to secretly break the agreement in order to gain the clear advantage there by and the arms race is on. Heck, you don't even need that - you just need the belief that your enemy might be secretly doing that to persuade you to do it too. What you have is a prisoner's dilemma where the prisoner gets a much better deal by betraying the others. If the 'others' are anything less than loved like brothers, the outcome is obvious.

Only if:
1) The nation is interested in expansion
2) The island has enough trees for a vast armada of boats
3) The nation is populous enough to stand against all other nations

China had crude had firearms as early as the 1300s and boat-making technology capable of reaching North America. Yet somehow they failed to take over the entire world. But they didn't because they did not consider the rest of the world as worth conquering.

Likewise, canons and guns made their way into the European and Arab worlds as early as the 14th century but it took four-hundred years for them to slowly replace and rewrite all the established rules of warfare. People don't react well to change and people in positions of power are not always able to recognise the potential of new weapons and ideas.

And even if guns have been around long enough to be slighly more common, that doesn't mean methods of construction or creating gunpowder would be common. It's been shown on MythBusters that even knowing the ingredients of black powder and ratios of the ingredients does not always produce a usable explosive. The knowledge of black powder could be a "secret recipe" kept hidden by gunsmiths and masters and only taught to apprentices.


Introducing guns to a world is not going to suddenly cause a wave of interest in firearms and vast revolutions in military technology, especially if there simply are not enough guns to equip an army. In the same way many modern replacements for soldiers or military gear have not become widespread because the individual cost is too high and the reliability is not there yet.

There's enough situational wiggle room for DMs to design multiple campaign worlds with guns that have plausible excuse for why guns have not spread everywhere. No, they may not be perfect but they're good enough. No more absurd that many other design flaws that creep into designing a campaign or a fantasy world. You just need a reasonable reason to give to the players when they ask "why doesn't everyone have guns?" to satisfy them long enough to re-hook them with the adventure.