Actually it does. A lot of technologies we associate with medieval knights only existed because of guns. Without them no one would have created as heavy plate armor as they did for example.
Pathfinder 1E Yet another Pathfinder With Firearms thread
- Thread starter Matthias
- Start date
Actually it does. A lot of technologies we associate with medieval knights only existed because of guns. Without them no one would have created as heavy plate armor as they did for example.
Starfox
Hero
Armor underwent a formidable change when guns appeared, becoming thicker but also less covering. Pre guns armor was a body suit, early guns armor was a much thicker cuirass. Less useful in melee, but a decent defense against guns.
In other words, the pathfinder touch attak rule for guns really only apply to pre guns armor, but post guns armor would offer less overall AC.
In other words, the pathfinder touch attak rule for guns really only apply to pre guns armor, but post guns armor would offer less overall AC.
Celebrim
Legend
Now we are going to have to start moving into term papers and academic essays.
First of all, you are moving the goal posts. The original question was, "How do you go about keeping weapons technology from quickly spreading and becoming widespread?" and not, "How do you go about keeping weapons technology from fundamentally overturning the socio-political order and all military paradigms in 400 centuries or less?"
Of the three, only #1 really is limiting and I would argue that #1 was assumed by my statement of 'give a technological advantage to an isolated region'. Large continious empires with many neighbors tend to reach a point where they become inward looking and cease expansion. Two doesn't apply because as point of fact, England began importing trees early in its expansion from North America and Russia. In particular, England ran out of trees to build suitable tall masts almost immediately. Spain didn't have enough trees to run its naval empire right from the start, so began importing lumber from the Carribean almost as soon as it figured out it could import gold from there as well. Three doesn't apply because while England did achieve fairly high population density for its size, it was never as densely populated or as populace as the continent to say nothing of its size relative to the population of the empire it carved out. The same was earlier true of the city of Rome and its surrounding Latin speaking region. A small population with a technological advantage can successfully dominate a much much larger one.
This is part of the different choices made in the 15th century I mentioned earlier. But again, at this point China was large, with many neighbors, and hardly the isolated region I postulated. Besides, regardless of China's decision to halt expansion (see Rome for parallels right down to the building of walls), this can't be used as an example of not leaknig weapons technology. China invents it, it filters out to the hinterlands, and bam, you have a bunch of formerly backwater kingdoms in Europe conquering not just the known world but the whole world.
I know what you mean by that, but it is an exageration to suggest that it took 400 years for guns to make a major socio-political or military impact. In half that time, the gun had overturned fuedalism, helped create the moderrn nation state, changed the concept of an army from being a small cadre of elite aristocrats to a mass of plebians, helped usher in a proto-democracy in England, changed the global balance of power, helped launch the European powers into the beginnings of colonialism, and had become the dominate army of both land and naval warfare. By the 16th century, every single aspect of medieval military technology was obselete. The curtain wall had to be replaced by the star fortress. Infantry replaced cavalry as the dominate arm, and the professional mercenary had replaced feudal service. Armor was increasingly obselete on the battlefield, naval actions were increasingly about gunplay rather than boarding actions. The musket was revolutionary from its introduction, and the arquebus and cannon as much nearly so.
And again, this system is not stable as its too much of an advantage to those outside the group to steal the recipe and make it widespread. There must be additional barriers beyond secrecy alone to justify the lack of widespread knowledge.
But yes, with a sufficiently primitive firearms technology, it can exist along side traditionl melee weapons for a considerable period. All of this brings me back to what I said in the first place, "Take away those advantages, make them unreliable, expensive, difficult to use, impossible to stockpile, and really no more lethal than longbows or magic, and they become a marginalized weapon.
I will admit that the Patherfinder RAW makes this job more difficult because they use the mechanic of the 'touch attack', which means that the musket resolves for the average D&D military a very intragient and otherwise difficult problem - "What can you do to make your average soldier effective against monsters that have very high AC, usually as a result of supernaturally strong natural armor?" Under my preferred rules for firearms, the advantages they produce are not nearly so radical. " That is, the advantages aren't nearly so radical for primitive weapons.
However, there is an additional problem with trying to introduce firearms at a sufficiently low level of technology. With many groups, you'll get metagaming by the players who know that its relevatively easy to lift firearms technology by a couple of decades or centuries and will actively work to do so.
First of all, you are moving the goal posts. The original question was, "How do you go about keeping weapons technology from quickly spreading and becoming widespread?" and not, "How do you go about keeping weapons technology from fundamentally overturning the socio-political order and all military paradigms in 400 centuries or less?"
Of the three, only #1 really is limiting and I would argue that #1 was assumed by my statement of 'give a technological advantage to an isolated region'. Large continious empires with many neighbors tend to reach a point where they become inward looking and cease expansion. Two doesn't apply because as point of fact, England began importing trees early in its expansion from North America and Russia. In particular, England ran out of trees to build suitable tall masts almost immediately. Spain didn't have enough trees to run its naval empire right from the start, so began importing lumber from the Carribean almost as soon as it figured out it could import gold from there as well. Three doesn't apply because while England did achieve fairly high population density for its size, it was never as densely populated or as populace as the continent to say nothing of its size relative to the population of the empire it carved out. The same was earlier true of the city of Rome and its surrounding Latin speaking region. A small population with a technological advantage can successfully dominate a much much larger one.
This is part of the different choices made in the 15th century I mentioned earlier. But again, at this point China was large, with many neighbors, and hardly the isolated region I postulated. Besides, regardless of China's decision to halt expansion (see Rome for parallels right down to the building of walls), this can't be used as an example of not leaknig weapons technology. China invents it, it filters out to the hinterlands, and bam, you have a bunch of formerly backwater kingdoms in Europe conquering not just the known world but the whole world.
I know what you mean by that, but it is an exageration to suggest that it took 400 years for guns to make a major socio-political or military impact. In half that time, the gun had overturned fuedalism, helped create the moderrn nation state, changed the concept of an army from being a small cadre of elite aristocrats to a mass of plebians, helped usher in a proto-democracy in England, changed the global balance of power, helped launch the European powers into the beginnings of colonialism, and had become the dominate army of both land and naval warfare. By the 16th century, every single aspect of medieval military technology was obselete. The curtain wall had to be replaced by the star fortress. Infantry replaced cavalry as the dominate arm, and the professional mercenary had replaced feudal service. Armor was increasingly obselete on the battlefield, naval actions were increasingly about gunplay rather than boarding actions. The musket was revolutionary from its introduction, and the arquebus and cannon as much nearly so.
And again, this system is not stable as its too much of an advantage to those outside the group to steal the recipe and make it widespread. There must be additional barriers beyond secrecy alone to justify the lack of widespread knowledge.
But yes, with a sufficiently primitive firearms technology, it can exist along side traditionl melee weapons for a considerable period. All of this brings me back to what I said in the first place, "Take away those advantages, make them unreliable, expensive, difficult to use, impossible to stockpile, and really no more lethal than longbows or magic, and they become a marginalized weapon.
I will admit that the Patherfinder RAW makes this job more difficult because they use the mechanic of the 'touch attack', which means that the musket resolves for the average D&D military a very intragient and otherwise difficult problem - "What can you do to make your average soldier effective against monsters that have very high AC, usually as a result of supernaturally strong natural armor?" Under my preferred rules for firearms, the advantages they produce are not nearly so radical. " That is, the advantages aren't nearly so radical for primitive weapons.
However, there is an additional problem with trying to introduce firearms at a sufficiently low level of technology. With many groups, you'll get metagaming by the players who know that its relevatively easy to lift firearms technology by a couple of decades or centuries and will actively work to do so.
Jester David
Hero
Yes, but it did take three-hundred years and beyond the era of the quasi-medieval period most fantasy RPGs emulate.
Yes and no.
It's only a touch attack within the first ranged increment (an average of 30 feet or so) and the penalty for being non-proficient means it's only slightly better than a crossbow. And there's a 5-10% chance or ruining the weapon with a misfire (which increases to 25-30% if the wielder is not proficient). Plus the cost of firearms is prohibitive.
It would be cheaper to equip an army with light crossbow, and they'd be able to get a couple extra shots in. An army of warriors armed with crossbows would devastate an army of gunwielders in Pathfinder since they could either fire twice as often or at the same rate while also moving keeping just out of range of the guns.
Which is a problem outside of the rules and campaign setting.
I think we can assume that the OP - because he wants to introduce guns - has decided this is not an issue.
Celebrim
Legend
I would argue that D&D ends up emulating the early 19th century in most cases in all but weaponry. A reasonably good argument can be made that the average person of the 21st century isn't really capable of imagining much back before then. For example, the costuming of all the traditional Disney princesses but one (Sleeping Beauty), indicate that the stories are set in the 19th century. Clothes in a typical D&D environment are usually equivalently modern. The size of cities, the architectural elements of cities, the culture, tropes, and other aspects of urban environments have more to do with Dickens than the 12th century. Home and dungeon furniture is typically modern and varied, and typically by construction indicative of a 18th century or later date. Standing armies, magistrates, strong monarchies, relatively large populations of free men compared to slaves, commonplace iron tools, ease of travel, books, globalization, types of sailing vessels, etc., etc., etc. that are typical in D&D campaign worlds, all indicate a setting which is early modern at the least. You have to very consciously emulate medieval settings, which most people can't do, and many have no desire to do.
As for your recount of the rules on firearms, you missed my point. I guess I shouldn't have bolded anything, since it distracted you from the context.
Squire James
Explorer
It's kind of disturbing to see (X+Y)/2 being considered "advanced math", even as a joke! It's another number on the character sheet, that's all. If you wish, you can think of it as "the stuff that would normally not go toward touch AC has half effect rather than no effect". Or use flat-footed AC... that suggestion's pretty good too.
Ken Hood starts his explanation for penetration rules with: "In the 1850’s, a black-powder rifle ... was capable of firing a 10.5mm ball with such force...". His only mention of earlier weapons: "When creating a musket, halve all range increments and reduce base Accuracy to +0."
Basically, 98% of his gun rules, and what has been said in this forum, are for *rifles* from the 1850s and later. Rifles were only possible to produce practically after the developments of expanding ammunition (Minie ball) and industrialization (uniform specs).
So while Ken Hood's rules work great for modern firearms, they are really unequipped for anything before the Industrial Revolution, which seems to be, at least mostly, the setting of your game.
...
And for modern firearms, note that Hood's rules are incomplete. For example, armor-piercing bullets will do less damage to an unarmored target than will a hollow point, silencers make a gun virtually useless for long range, and there's nothing on mounted machineguns, which are prone overheating or jamming (especially in WWI). Granted he can't include everything -- his guide covers what it covers very well -- but remember it's not the end-all.
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I'm currently taking Calculus II, and I made an A in Calculus I and Statistics, so taking the mean of a value for me isn't complicated. But, Pathfinder (or D&D) is supposed to be an enjoyable pastime. I play Pathfinder to get away from math, not indulge in it further.
Celebrim
Legend
First, most of Ken's rules are for firearms post 1850 because beginning in 1850 there was an absolute revolution in firearms production brought about by names like Lee, Henry, Colt, and Winchester. There has been very rapid evolution in firearms since that time compared to the very slow and incremental improvements that occurred before that.
Second, many of the things that you not Ken's rules being incomplete on are such minor differences between firearms that, for the scale D&D operates at, they really don't ammount to anything. A 5% improvement in damage on a 1d6 is like +.05-3. D20 tends to get itself into trouble by trying to be completionist with long lists of +1's and -1's that don't really amount to anything but rules bloat.
Thirdly, Ken's rules were never completed. But they are - despite their terseness - in my opinion far more complete than a whole lot of much longer rules sets I've seen out. It's an elegant framework. All elegant frameworks are almost infinitely extensible by their very nature, but then again, if you aren't careful you end up cluttering your rules set up with a bunch of trivia that destroys the elegance. Yes, I could use to have more than a page devoted to muzzle loaders (rifles weren't invented in 1850 you know, ask the British about the Kentucky rifle), and it might be nice to have some mention of handcannons or hand gonne's, and on the other end of the spectrum it would be nice to have rules for crewed weapons and say diameters up to 30mm or maybe even artillery. All that would be great, but I have looked around at a lot of other firearms systems for D20 and the 20 page necessarily incomplete beta rule sets is less limited than anything else I've seen out there.
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Re: Everyone on Advanced Math -- Combat rounds have to be paced somewhat reasonably (especially in RP), and taking an average is slow. If you doubt the significance of addition/division time, look at vids of any add-3-dice game (the one of Will Wheaton posted here, for example).
Re: Celebrim on Ken Hood's rules -- I disagree with nothing you said and you disagree with nothing I said. The point: the rules are not applicable to pre-1850 guns. If OP wants his campaign to be pre-industrialization with some reasonable gun rules, Hood's rules won't help.
Re: Celebrim on Ken Hood's rules -- I disagree with nothing you said and you disagree with nothing I said. The point: the rules are not applicable to pre-1850 guns. If OP wants his campaign to be pre-industrialization with some reasonable gun rules, Hood's rules won't help.
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