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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6092525" data-attributes="member: 4937">Where firearms change the dynamics of a game is the balance of power between mooks and heroes.  Firearms are generally of low value to heroes, as the heroes can usually find something better to do in the average system or gain at most a little advantage from guns.  But mooks on the other hand gain a huge advantage against heroes.  A party of 10th level heroes could face off against and handily defeat 300 or so hobgoblin mooks.  But give those mooks firearms and the equation starts changing rapidly.  The more advanced the firearms technology, the more profoundly the CR of a mook increases.   Mechanics like touch attacks for example vastly favor the mooks over the heroes, as mooks can now reliably negate what is probably the single biggest advantage a hero has - AC's that allow mooks to hit only on 20's (or similarly low percentages).   Armed with 20th century weaponry, the same 300 hobgoblin mooks could depending on the terrain decimate your average 10th level heroes.That is an encounter design issue.  Realistic WWI era firearms include bolt action rifles with range increments of 120 feet or more that will penetrate 5mm of steel out to about 300 feet, and a rate of fire of several times per round.  If you are closing the distance on that in a single round then you've either got a severe mechnical disconnect or else the DM is having riflemen never set up prepared firing positions 400 yards away precisely the way all real riflemen are trained to do.  Realistic WWI era firearms also include machine guns of various sorts that effectively give you AoE attacks, and hand held anti-tank guns in the 20mm range which would rather effectively stop an elephant.  Such a weapon goes right off Ken Hoods chart, but I'm guessing in his system would have a damage of around 4d8+6.   So imagine this as a realistic WWI tactical set up.  The enemy force has set up in a prepared fighting position with 400 yard field of fire and they are using medium caliber bolt action rifles, and they've positioned light machine guns in firing nests so as to have interlapping fields of fire.  They also have four firing teams with 20mm AT rifles space along the line.  For added nastiness, in front of their position, they've strung up a network of barbed wire and anti-personnel mines.  Suddenly, it doesn't really matter that the force is made up of 1st level fighters.   Even if your 8th level, you are screwed.  What's interesting though is that if the whole force is made up of 8th level characters, it might not be the case that the same weapons are necessarily that much more dangerous than traditional D&D weapons.  Now if you role this back toward say 18th century firearms, suddenly the balance between melee and missile shifts enough that the mook isn't nearly so favored.  The reload time is such that they are likely to only get off a single shot before melee closes with them and then heroes gain the edge.  But still, that's still a fairly large advantage from a volley of 20 muskets compared to 20 crossbows.</blockquote>

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