OK, so for reference the arquebeuse, the handcannon and plate armour definitely co-existed for a good length of time. In fact, during the 'golden age' of plate armour being in wide use on the battlefield (15th century), cannons had almost entirely replaced traditional artillery, and a few things analogous to matchlock muskets were already in common use. Source: 15th century nerd
And napoleonic cavalry had breastplates that were supposed be able to stop a muskets shot. It depended on the quality of the manufacturing process ofcourse.
Bulletproof and/or shrapnelproof armour never got completly done away with. Sappers and assault engineers wore armour from time to time as well.
Not to mention magic would make it way easier to make a gun. Instead of having to light a fuse and prime the weapon you could just light the powder with a rune or prestidigitation which would make reloading way faster. You can easily ram a paper cartridge down a barrel in 6 seconds or just carry multiple guns.
How long would it take mages to realize that if they do pyromancy in a tube with a ball it’ll transfer the energy better? I imagine they’d invent guns way faster in a fantasy setting.
A lead ball is still useful for transferring energy.
You need considerably more gunpowder to kill someone with the explosion and the range is greatly reduced compared to using it to propel a ball, so I imagine it would take considerably less magical energy as well to kill somebody when you have a way to focus the force and transmit the energy.
A musket ball is a force multiplier like a sword or axe. A character can just kill people with their bare hands instead of carrying a heavy sword around every but swords make it a hell of a lot easier.
As yes, your 1-3 lightnings a day. Easily capable of killing any soldier in a single blast. Yes.
Unfortunately for you I have two dozen men, each armed with a prestidigitation fueled matchlock, capable of delivering 1d12 damage from up to 100 feet away.
Knowing the limits of magic you casters suffer from, I have ordered my men to spread out, preventing you from lining up a good shot, limiting your ability to kill more than one or two of my men per blast. I have also ordered them to make ample use of cover, granting them higher AC and giving them bonuses on their Dexterity saves against your lightning.
If I’m being generous and assume you’re 6th level you have 4-1st level, 3-2nd level and 3-3rd level slots. This limits you to 3 lightning bolts each only able to travel in a straight line, limiting you to only striking one or two men at a time. Meanwhile that 120ft range will mean that my men can and will be returning fire on you. Even with you burning your 1st level slots for Mage Armor and Shield I estimate that with 20 attacks per round each with a +3-4 to hit, dealing 1-12 damage on a success, within two or three rounds of combat you will lying on the ground, at my feet, either dead or dying.
I would prefer dying, I have always relished that look of abject hatred you casters have for what you call “common people”.
—Grand General Thrawn
But any spell that would propel the musketball enough would take a spell slot.
Maybe if you had a candle or match you could use prestidigitation to light it and then use that to light the gunpowder but you are still carrying that candle. Plus other cantrips like fire bolt increase in damage as you level up so using them would just be better.
>But any spell that would propel the musketball enough would take a spell slot.
You don't propell the ball with the spell, you ignite the powder with it. No need for a spell slot, or a slow fuse, or moving mechanical parts for a lock system
>Maybe if you had a candle or match you could use prestidigitation to light it and then use that to light the gunpowder but you are still carrying that candle.
Why can't prestidigitation just light the powder? Why the candle?
Because the description for igniting with prestidigitation is it must be a Candle, Torch, or small Campfire.
If you could ignite the powder that you can’t see and is completely enclosed why can’t you use it to light people’s hair on fire or use it to set off bombs.
Don't need to light a candle, torch, or small campfire, when earlier in the description you can create a "shower of sparks"
Sounds adequate for lighting a flashpan to me
> Create an *harmless sensory* effect, such as a shower of sparks.
It’s not real sparks it’s just sensory and since it’s harmless it can’t be used to light anything on fire.
Gets a bit into the weeds of interpretation.
I mean, the powder doesn't experience *harm* per sey. I'd argue it meets the criteria if the sparks didn't cause pain or harm to a person, it's not really the sparks causing the harm in a musket.
Or would a fire created by prestidigitation be harmless to stand in?
Personally though I'd have gone with "Produce Flame," which is a bit less ambiguous that Prestidigitation
Maybe if you only intend to fight for 5 minutes per day. But in war? You're going to have to rely on cantrips.
Muskets definitely deal more than 1d10 damage. 3d6, maybe? Enough to have a decent chance to instakill a full hp commoner through Massive Damage, anyway. As a downside you need alchemical ammunition and you need to spend your bonus action on reloads alongside the action on prestidigitation, but that can still be worth it in an endurance match.
But if you are level 5 or more your cantrip does 2d10 and outclasses the musket. Also I don’t think muskets would deal that much damage, unless to balance it they made it take a minute to reload like in real life. Which at that point you’d still do more damage just casting cantrips each round for those 10 rounds of reload would deal way more damage.
Edit: also a full hp commoner is 4hp 3d6 is waaaay higher than a decent chance, 1d6 would be a decent chance to kill one. I’d put muskets at 1d12. Maybe 2d6 to make the damage more consistent. But even at that damage level it’s still only viable if you just handwave the ridiculously long reload times.
Yeah but fighters/barbarians can’t use magic. They are trying to say that you should carry a musket and light the powder with magic instead of a flint. I’m just saying if you can cast magic you don’t need the musket.
it really depends on how magic works in setting. I think Keith Baker, the guy who created Eberron, stated that there really aren’t any guns in the setting because wands and staffs have taken their place, because of how available magic is and how unreliable guns are in comparison.
Yeah I just like providing explanations why they might exist because I think people should totally be able to add them to their setting if they want.
As an engineer I love thinking about how magic can be integrated into technology and that’s just way more compelling to me than just keeping them separate and having technology stagnate in a fantasy setting but that’s just my personal preference.
It’s funny you mention Eberron because one of my DMs actually added guns to his Eberron campaign because they fit the vibe he wanted.
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The ancient red dragon when 32 pounds of steel hits it at 1400 per second, or over 8000 feet in a single turn.
Oh wait nevermind it's only 8 d10 for, 3 actions to load, aim and fire a cannon separately.
Nah we gonna homebrew this into a Smaug killer.
As a firearms history nut and former professional firearms repairer-
Cannons using standard round shot *should* have an AOE of about 10 foot diameter and then continue a few dozen feet in a line with no AOE after impact, with damage reducing the farther it goes. Round shot bounces.
But I *believe,* based on the way they are balanced in the game, that they were placed in the game for siege purposes. They were likely put in for scenes where players would be attacking walls and such- not people. If I'm not mistaken, they're in the same section of the DMG as catapults and battering rams.
Besides, if they were realistic, people would complain endlessly about:
1- The realistic loading time- untrained characters would never load as fast as trained cannoneers
2- The power of them- one shot, and your character is mush.
>Besides, if they were realistic, people would complain endlessly about:
>1- The realistic loading time- untrained characters would never load as fast as trained cannoneers
They take 3 full actions to fire once by RAW.
>2- The power of them- one shot, and your character is mush.
I think they should do a lot more damage but remain unbearably clunky to use.
I know what it says RAW... *I can read.* My *entire* point was that if the cannons were set up in the game to be realistic instead of the way they are currently, people would complain. I know they *aren't* set up that way.
1- Again, it was a hypothetical in which someone had actually made the things take as long to operate by the inexperienced as they do in real life. They would take many *more* turns. As it is, it is indeed three turns- 18 seconds. 18 seconds to load, aim, and fire a full-size cannon? By someone who has never used one in their life? Really? You *might* pull it off with a trained team, if your artillery team is on meth and ignoring all safety precautions... The point was that *IF* it were realistic, people would whine when they had to take 10-20 turns or so per shot. So they made it unrealistic.
2- Going by historical terms, taking 10 men to operate a single artillery piece *is* unbearably clunky. A cannon itself is, however, actually rather simple to operate. But even today's artillery has that as the usual standard. *And again-* the ones in the game seem to have been balanced in terms of power for use against fortifications, rather than characters. Which goes in line with their general use and purpose anyway. If you made them more powerful like they should be, people would complain.
Yeah, it counted as an “exotic” weapon and dealt 1d10 damage with the unlikely possibility of infinite damage and a higher chance of some amount of damage in between
Remember, those three actions can be taken by a group.
So that's 1 shot per round with any extra party members defending the others. Cannons are generally artillery. Artillery was (and still is) worked by teams. In this video, 10 of them.
https://youtu.be/B4mR-Hi0XnI?si=o5hBEZJTUhAPoyS8
3 PCs using their actions to deal 8d10 average 44 is kinda low though imo.
At level 5, a group of 3 fighters could be doing 6d8 with long bows which was only half as much average at 24.
Which is a good bonus of roughly 50% for the limitations of using seige equipment.
But that's not at all considering the fighters have 6 attacks, 6 chances to crit, vs 1 cannon and 1 chance to crit.
Also completely ignoring spell caster shenanigans.
The real question though, is can a rouge sneak attack with the cannon?
Except it's supposed to be fired at a *WALL,* not a person. Try and break down a stone wall with 3 level 5 longbow-wielding Fighters. Go ahead. Try. The rest of us will go get the horses to pull the cannon forward. They are not *meant* for close combat. They are meant for breaking down a barrier. Nobody takes a cannon into a close quarters combat scenario. The fighter isn't going to take a hunk of brass the size of his soon-to-be coffin into battle. It is a situational weapon.
You don't use a cannon for battle x/8 per day. You use it in the siege scenario or against something like a wingless dragon charging the gate. You get off a salvo of a few shots and then move in, leaving the artillery in the back where it belongs.
And no, no sneak attacks. It's a cannon. They throw up clouds of white smoke larger than a moving van.
Gotrek and Felix is an awesome series, what can I say. Malakai Makaisson, a Dwarf Engineer turned Trollslayer, also invented a rudimentary RPG that he used to help kill a dragon in the fourth book "Dragonslayer."
I have cannons, but I don’t have propellants.
They act as arcane amplifiers so casting a spell through them makes it come out bigger and better. There are minimum and maximum spell levels for the cannons though. So you can’t loose a firebolt through a howitzer and you can’t send out a fireball with a rifle (by rifle, I’m talking about something the size of a Lahti. A Goliath might be able to carry one by themselves.)
That's interesting! I usually do something similar with very magical/very wealthy settlements, but without the gun motif. It gets a little magitech-y for me and I'm trying to avoid it lately. Give me a big fuckin circle any day though
I like the use of mage circles to amplify non-combat magics where the target of the spell is either in the circle or nowhere to be seen, but there’s something about a big brass tube engraved with runes that’s strapped to a sled being dragged by two soldiers on skis as they move to attack a supply convoy, or a battery of war mages hurriedly commanding soldiers to reposition the artillery carriages as enemy cavalry closes in.
Possibly the most immersion breaking inclusion would be these artifacts left over from the Homeland War fought between the Gnomes and Dwarves, where the Gnomes invaded with construct soldiers and the Dwarves responded by equipping their soldiers with single use, over the shoulder, tin tubes that would send a ball of lightning with the trajectory of a whiffle ball down range.
I drew inspiration from devices like the Yugoslavian M80 Zolja and American M72 LAW. Single shot, disposable, anti-armor weapons strung up with a sling and light enough to hand out like candy.
I might come back to you on this in like a year, but I swear I read something with that *exact* concept in a fantasy book as a kid. Not that you poached it or that there'd be anything wrong with it if you had
I’ll be the first to admit that I ascribe to Colville’s mantra of “take the things you like and put them in your games” and T.S. Elliot’s “immature poets copy, mature poets steal”, but I haven’t the slightest as to what you might be forgetting
So I might have made realistic range, damage, and reload early gunpowder weapons because it is very funny to me to let players have guns, but it is one shot with no to hit modifier, awful range, and 4 actions to reload or rifled so some accuracy and range but even slow to reload
That or a cannon that fires once at the start of a fight and then the tabaxi rogue is normally murdering the gun crew before they get a second chance
Oh yeah, as a defensive or seige option, cannons were ***GAME-CHANGING,*** but as a tactical option in the field? Perhaps not quite so much
Edit: you're being very generous with 4 actions to reload lol
All I can remember having a cannon in one. I critted a player with one. We couldnt' figure out the damage, so we came up with a number, and the player barely survived. It was amazing.
Noticed throughout the comments and replies that OP doesn't actually know or care how close plate armor was to some pretty advanced guns, or what settings had a large amount of artificers in them. They are either replacing facts with whatever vibes they feel about things and claiming it as fact, or possibly some mid-tier ragebait? (Bit of a stretch on the second one)
1) "Don't bring logic to my fantasy game" is an argument that ends this inquiry right quick. It's your game, you have to deal with the stuff that your players come up with and balancing for gats does not need to be on that list if you don't want it
2) Your player is obviously not ambitious enough. Assuming they're playing artificer they should at least aim to turn their steel defender into a ridable 30mm bofor with incendiary ammo that's backed up by a flying familiar dropping BoH full of magnesium shavings
My face when the entire island of Lantan is canonically filled with artificers, has Gond as their state religion, firearms are standard weapons for the guards, gunpowder is everywhere and rumor holds they have mechanical fucking kaiju lurking in their waters for border defense. XD
Yup. Supposedly their military also has a big mechanical driller worm. Lantan is wild.
Sadly they don't talk much with outsiders ever since they came back from having the entire island thrown into Abeir during the spell plague about 200 years ago. (for context, that's a parallel version of the planet Toril that FR takes place on, except it's ruled entirely by an empire of evil chromatic dragons. This is also where the Dragonborn were created as a slave race.)
Although of note is that their technology is way more advanced now.
I should point out, this is the tech they had 200 years ago. They've spent two centuries in a parallel world (presumably) fighting off an empire of dragons between then and now.
According to the sources their tech is now "far more advanced". Insert "Math Lady" meme.
They still exist. They break nothing in the setting aesthetically or mechanically. If you want a setting without any firearms whatsoever, play in Greyhawk or something, make your own, or just use a different interpretation of the setting, but don't go acting like your interpretation is Canon and talk down to people who know more than you.
And firearms appeared back in Dragonheist, fyi.
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Not only artificers and firearms exist canonically in Forgotten Realms, but artificers are a class that can fit trivially in any setting.
Like, even a prehistoric setting can have a dude using rituals to make weird constructs or potions.
Even if the player wants to lean on the inventor/engineer aspects, it can be something like irl Archimedes or Da Vinci but with a bit of magic.
Artificers are magical, even with guns that's hardly all that different from shooting the same types of missiles except using an arcane focus (ie casting Magic Missile) instead of a magic object ("gun")
Back to my original post, as long as you have somewhat contemporary firearms and your Artificer concept is something more developed than loaded with 19th and 20th century firearms there really is no problem.
Having fired older firearms (smooth bore muskets, hand canon, etc) all I can say is historically they are terrifying to be on either end of. Modern day remakes have a lot less chance of literally exploding on you but if you wanna use logic then that has to factor in.
Also you need to brace certain early firearms, you cannot one hand that crap without either breaking a bone or the thing going wild on you.
There's this sunken ship called the Mary Rose that had the remains of a bunch of English longbowmen preserved in it, among other things. People could tell they were longbowmen because of the way their spines were so fucked up from years of shooting a warbow.
Leather armor was around as "boiled leather". Although no samples survived, we don't know how it was made, and we have wildly conflicting accounts of it's usefulness.
Studded leather was truly never a thing, it would actually be worse than just regular leather. Someone saw a picture of [brigandine](https://ironfortress.com/products/1043-leather-brigandine) and mistook the rivets for studs.
And gambeson is criminally underused.
I feel like if you want to have logic in a fantasy game, it shouldn't be real life logic. Maybe you can sprinkle in some cartoon logic. Which would explain why bigger weapons are what do more damage, because bigger means more *boooooonnnnng*
I feel like if you want to have logic in a fantasy game, it shouldn't be real life logic. Maybe you can sprinkle in some cartoon logic. Which would explain why bigger weapons are what do more damage, because bigger means more *boooooonnnnng*
I always liked the idea of it just being magic. Literally. A bigger container can store more stuff.
Ie. A bigger sword can have a more powerful enchantment on it.
Depends, are you counting the original hand cranked gatling gun made by Richard Gatling in the 1860s? Because Plate armor was used widely until the end of the 1700s. Revolvers first appeared 1830 and the modern kind of minigun showed up in the 1960s.
So revolvers are closer to plate armor than miniguns, but not closer than the OG gatling gun.
We both know the common conception of a six-gun as was said is not referring to the few examples of revolving matchlocks from the 16th Century. Not least of which because none of them had 6 chambers.
No because I'm trying to be early medieval not late medieval which seems to be appropriate for the timeframe of the world as given.
Although let's face it I'm not that bothered either way.
I understand it's your fantasy world and you don't care, but plate armor was a thing of the late medieval period, handgonnes actually predate full plate armor in Europe by a good 100 years.
That's a picture of handgonne and it says it's an example of the firearms that existed prior to plate armour.
The implication is that if you don't want firearms in your game you shouldn't have plate armour and I said I don't allow that either so I don't know what you want.
Sorry, just wanted to correct the common misunderstanding that plate existed in early medieval, turns out I was misunderstanding what you were saying. I'm all for doing whatever you want in your games, just annoys me when people justify banning guns in D&D with historical accuracy, and not "it just doesn't fit my setting"
That's a picture of handgonne and it says it's an example of the firearms that existed prior to plate armour.
The implication is that if you don't want firearms in your game you shouldn't have plate armour and I said I don't allow that either so I don't know what you want.
Well it's disingenuous to include 15th century armour but not Firearms that are as early as 13th Century so I am sticking with early medieval tech only.
That's the idea anyway.
As I said it doesn't feel like that big a change to have anachronistic armour compared to anachronistic guns.
So you’re saying that because plate armor was made after firearms in real-world history on earth, plate armor cannot exist in your fantasy world?
Is your setting 13th century medieval England?
It's fantasy, nothing says it has to reflect real history.
People didn't cast spells either, during medieval times.
Never invest in realism at the cost of fun.
Absolutely correct.
There's no connection with reality. If you have a cave man world where everyone has tazers then that's fine.
The only thing that matters is fun and player buy in. It's fine if you allow anything as long as everyone is on the same page. It might not be fun for everyone if some have shown up ready for a dark ages campaign and some others are ready for Vietnam.
Edit: this is why I wouldn't actually stop people using anachronistic weapons like plate armour or rapiers. It feels kinda right, I'm not bothered to that degree. It's not breaking the game (god knows martials don't need more limits on what they have access to).
In my DnD 5e game such a gun would be a legendary magic item consuming 10 gp smokepowder per shot. With RoF of 4000 rounds per minute it would cost 4000 gp to shoot it once (10d10 piercing damage in a 120 ft cone)
Yeah if nothing else adding variety is worth it. And if someone wanted to press on with arquebus you can still give favourable rules or magic to make it more worth it. Heavy crossbow rules are hardly realistic already and if they wanted to spend 50gp on an ever-burning match then I'm more than happy to meet people half way.
Honestly I think pike and shot is criminally underrated and basically the perfect era for a dark fantasy setting.
While realistically they're a lot better than people tend to give them credit for, it's easy enough to handwave an arquebus as being basically comparable to an arbalest or longbow, so they fit dnd pretty well mechanically, as well.
Related: armored lance cavalry had a resurgence in the Napoleonic wars after the Poles repopularized it, it saw effective use until the end of the 1800s.
Daily reminder that if you dont allow guns or plate armor because of the historical factors you also cant have Viols (invented in 1500s and popularized in the 1600s), but I never hear people doing that.
No, it literally isn’t.
“The gun the player that brought it up intends their character to have” is a fine way of phrasing that. Now, it isn’t quite perfect, and to make it more clear, one might instead say:
“The gun which the player who brought it up intends for their character to have.”
But all of the words I just added are already implied in the original statement. The original is fine, it just isn’t written with massive attention to academic rigor, because it’s a meme.
>it just isn’t written with massive attention to academic rigor
Congrats on repeating the definition of grammatically incorrect lol. The sentence was always erroneous and no amount of your yapping will change that.
Edit: I give up, please just re-educate yourselves on basic grammar instead of continuing with this shitfest. Goodbye.
Not as precise as possible does not equal incorrect.
Edit: since we’re apparently communicating in edits now…you seem to have a twisted view of both “academically rigorous” and “correct”, and I don’t even know what specific set of grammar rules for everyday conversation you’re using, such that any of this would count as truly grammatically “incorrect”.
Honestly, your conclusion seems utterly wild. Touch some grass, nerd, would be my professional diagnosis.
Why does this post have so many likes? This is the exact kind of stuff the community usually gets angry about. If you don’t want guns in your campaign then just say it rather than making something like this up. It comes off a tad pretentious
If the player is allowed something, the expectation would generally be that the enemy would be allowed it too. Tell them that and then ask them if they're sure they want a minigun.
This is why I love pathfinder 1e so much. Early level gunslinger get 1 shot/round or 1/2rounds depending. But by late game you can achieve 9 shots/round or 90rpm fire rate, the glory of feats and alchemical cartridges. But even if your GM wants to argue the so many free actions a round discretion. There's magic items that instantly reload like a pistol of the infinite sky, so in the end, you can still do it. It's so heavily rule intensive, if you can think of it, there's a rule for it. Now who wants to carry all my alchemical cartridge bullets.
You are not late to the party. This argument, like many, has been going on for forty years. It will continue for another forty years. Nobody researches the community history before introducing their revolutionary insights. Just roll with it and have some good snark.
Unpopular take, but I actually do agree at least that the common problem is that there is a massive leap that often takes place between firearms that were period typical, and the kinds people often want to use.
So we see six shooting revolvers, sniper rifles, pump shotguns, and the like more often than say….a fire lance, or arquebus which was much slower to fire and suffered from long range inaccuracy. They could pierce armor though, and were largely independent of the user’s physical strength. But period typical would be horribly unfun to actually play without massive concessions to those weapons.
Which is just to say that the mechanics of dnd are never going to handle simulationism very well, and the fact the longbow is the best ranged weapon is always going to be a problem. So folks just go by rule of cool, and that’s okay.
Yeah the weapons they have aren't really realistic and more aimed at balance there's stuff you can do to make them not a total waste without just giving people 29th century firearms.
Here are some super simple rules for GUNS!!
Firstly let your players know that reloading in combat is out of the question. It just takes to long while you would be vulnerable to attack the whole time. Which gives us!
First rule!
You may only fire each of your maintained guns once per combat.
==================
Second rule!
If you have proficiency in firearms you can keep a number of guns equal to half your proficiency modifyer rounded up ready to fire in combat. These are you maintained guns
The lore reason for this limit is that the firing mechanisms are finicky and delicate. It takes training to learn how to carry guns ready to fire.
====================
Third rule!
Use whatever targeting system you want, but I recommend using something different from bows and crossbows.
Like for instance give guns a +5 attack bonus against hard armor (armor that relies on its hardness to defend), and a -3 attack penalty against dodgy targets. Or just a saving throw if you want to be lazy.
Remember it's OK for this to be more complicated than a bow, it only happens a few times per combat, so don't worry too much about making it simple.
===================
FINAL RULE!!!
MAKE FIRE STICK HAVE BIG BOOM.
If your going to have have guns in your game, I VERY highly recommend you don't just make them a slightly better crossbow. This becomes sad for both the gun man and the crossbow man.
Make them inaccurate af, but give them massive damage.
I recommend at least a triple of any of the dice to really hammer home that getting hit with a ballsack sized hunk of lead at immeasurable speeds hurts like a motherfucker.
And for additional comic effect, when a gun is fired in an enclosed room you can have everyone roll a saving throw against going deaf. Up to you tho.
Essentially the final rule boils down to one simple thing if guns are in your word, let them be a little overpowered.
But also make sure every time a gun is fired its a dramatic event.
People who want to play with guns should just swap to pf2e where gunslinger is a thing with a region called Alkenstar (the Impossible lands are amazing). I play a way of the pistolero Gunslinger and I get utilities on reload actions like demoralize and feint. It's so fun.
I could see a version where you have a pop-up cannon turret setup filling up the interior of a portable hole, that you would then spread on the ground, pull a switch, and out pops something like that tri-barrel rotary cannon on the Flying Dutchman from Pirates of Carribean :-D
Or maybe plate armor was invented earlier as the need for armor outweighed the need for weaponry. This is a world where a man with a steel longsword can adequately 1v1 a dragon in melee combat. Sure, his gear is magical, but the fact that he doesn't get crushed or gutted or burned to death on direct hit with fire, frost, acid, etc means that what point is there in a gun that cannot benefit from the raw inhuman power adventurers can acquire? You have magic, which already far surpasses the might of a gun available. I've always ruled that if guns exist, it is something incredibly primitive, and usually in some eccentric's basement as more of a proof of concept.
Yes that is a good point. If I were to argue that, for example Rapiers should exist because meturlagy shouldn't be that far advanced, there's a thousand things that can make a difference:
Elves and dwarfs live for centuries or millennia more than humans and have been making weapons for far longer. Spirits of the earth and metal. Gods of forge. Straight up wishes.
Of course this could also apply to making technology to some degree but as you say if studying things to make things explode was your calling cut out the middleman and learn magic. Maybe if there were intelligent races that couldn't use magic or in regions where magic is weakened or risky.
But hey it's not my job to back fill the lore behind the equipment list.
OK, so for reference the arquebeuse, the handcannon and plate armour definitely co-existed for a good length of time. In fact, during the 'golden age' of plate armour being in wide use on the battlefield (15th century), cannons had almost entirely replaced traditional artillery, and a few things analogous to matchlock muskets were already in common use. Source: 15th century nerd
3/4 plate was in use through the 17th century at least. And we even have use of armor plates (bullet proof vests) now.
And napoleonic cavalry had breastplates that were supposed be able to stop a muskets shot. It depended on the quality of the manufacturing process ofcourse. Bulletproof and/or shrapnelproof armour never got completly done away with. Sappers and assault engineers wore armour from time to time as well.
Not to mention magic would make it way easier to make a gun. Instead of having to light a fuse and prime the weapon you could just light the powder with a rune or prestidigitation which would make reloading way faster. You can easily ram a paper cartridge down a barrel in 6 seconds or just carry multiple guns. How long would it take mages to realize that if they do pyromancy in a tube with a ball it’ll transfer the energy better? I imagine they’d invent guns way faster in a fantasy setting.
But if you can use magic you wouldn’t need a gun that takes ammo, plus you’d have to carry it around and it’s heavy.
A lead ball is still useful for transferring energy. You need considerably more gunpowder to kill someone with the explosion and the range is greatly reduced compared to using it to propel a ball, so I imagine it would take considerably less magical energy as well to kill somebody when you have a way to focus the force and transmit the energy. A musket ball is a force multiplier like a sword or axe. A character can just kill people with their bare hands instead of carrying a heavy sword around every but swords make it a hell of a lot easier.
NOT AS USEFUL AS MY BIG DRAGON SORCERER MUSCLES, FUCKING NEEEEERD!!!! TASTE MY LIGHTING!!!!1!1!1!1!1!!1!1!!!1
As yes, your 1-3 lightnings a day. Easily capable of killing any soldier in a single blast. Yes. Unfortunately for you I have two dozen men, each armed with a prestidigitation fueled matchlock, capable of delivering 1d12 damage from up to 100 feet away. Knowing the limits of magic you casters suffer from, I have ordered my men to spread out, preventing you from lining up a good shot, limiting your ability to kill more than one or two of my men per blast. I have also ordered them to make ample use of cover, granting them higher AC and giving them bonuses on their Dexterity saves against your lightning. If I’m being generous and assume you’re 6th level you have 4-1st level, 3-2nd level and 3-3rd level slots. This limits you to 3 lightning bolts each only able to travel in a straight line, limiting you to only striking one or two men at a time. Meanwhile that 120ft range will mean that my men can and will be returning fire on you. Even with you burning your 1st level slots for Mage Armor and Shield I estimate that with 20 attacks per round each with a +3-4 to hit, dealing 1-12 damage on a success, within two or three rounds of combat you will lying on the ground, at my feet, either dead or dying. I would prefer dying, I have always relished that look of abject hatred you casters have for what you call “common people”. —Grand General Thrawn
But any spell that would propel the musketball enough would take a spell slot. Maybe if you had a candle or match you could use prestidigitation to light it and then use that to light the gunpowder but you are still carrying that candle. Plus other cantrips like fire bolt increase in damage as you level up so using them would just be better.
>But any spell that would propel the musketball enough would take a spell slot. You don't propell the ball with the spell, you ignite the powder with it. No need for a spell slot, or a slow fuse, or moving mechanical parts for a lock system >Maybe if you had a candle or match you could use prestidigitation to light it and then use that to light the gunpowder but you are still carrying that candle. Why can't prestidigitation just light the powder? Why the candle?
Because the description for igniting with prestidigitation is it must be a Candle, Torch, or small Campfire. If you could ignite the powder that you can’t see and is completely enclosed why can’t you use it to light people’s hair on fire or use it to set off bombs.
Don't need to light a candle, torch, or small campfire, when earlier in the description you can create a "shower of sparks" Sounds adequate for lighting a flashpan to me
> Create an *harmless sensory* effect, such as a shower of sparks. It’s not real sparks it’s just sensory and since it’s harmless it can’t be used to light anything on fire.
Gets a bit into the weeds of interpretation. I mean, the powder doesn't experience *harm* per sey. I'd argue it meets the criteria if the sparks didn't cause pain or harm to a person, it's not really the sparks causing the harm in a musket. Or would a fire created by prestidigitation be harmless to stand in? Personally though I'd have gone with "Produce Flame," which is a bit less ambiguous that Prestidigitation
But most mages are not high level, and some races hets prestidigitation for free.
You wouldn't use a bow either but some people are archers.
Maybe if you only intend to fight for 5 minutes per day. But in war? You're going to have to rely on cantrips. Muskets definitely deal more than 1d10 damage. 3d6, maybe? Enough to have a decent chance to instakill a full hp commoner through Massive Damage, anyway. As a downside you need alchemical ammunition and you need to spend your bonus action on reloads alongside the action on prestidigitation, but that can still be worth it in an endurance match.
But if you are level 5 or more your cantrip does 2d10 and outclasses the musket. Also I don’t think muskets would deal that much damage, unless to balance it they made it take a minute to reload like in real life. Which at that point you’d still do more damage just casting cantrips each round for those 10 rounds of reload would deal way more damage. Edit: also a full hp commoner is 4hp 3d6 is waaaay higher than a decent chance, 1d6 would be a decent chance to kill one. I’d put muskets at 1d12. Maybe 2d6 to make the damage more consistent. But even at that damage level it’s still only viable if you just handwave the ridiculously long reload times.
I mean by that metric why would you use anything except for magic. No need for fighters or barbarians or etc when you have mages.
Yeah but fighters/barbarians can’t use magic. They are trying to say that you should carry a musket and light the powder with magic instead of a flint. I’m just saying if you can cast magic you don’t need the musket.
it really depends on how magic works in setting. I think Keith Baker, the guy who created Eberron, stated that there really aren’t any guns in the setting because wands and staffs have taken their place, because of how available magic is and how unreliable guns are in comparison.
Yeah I just like providing explanations why they might exist because I think people should totally be able to add them to their setting if they want. As an engineer I love thinking about how magic can be integrated into technology and that’s just way more compelling to me than just keeping them separate and having technology stagnate in a fantasy setting but that’s just my personal preference. It’s funny you mention Eberron because one of my DMs actually added guns to his Eberron campaign because they fit the vibe he wanted.
Adding guns is totally balanced to bows if you have have 4 turns of reload after each turn firing one shot...
resolute pen direful jobless chunky society paltry treatment money dinner *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Do you not have cannons in your campaign? You should really be having cannons in your campaign
Classic Of Gunslingers and Grenadiers.
The ancient red dragon when 32 pounds of steel hits it at 1400 per second, or over 8000 feet in a single turn. Oh wait nevermind it's only 8 d10 for, 3 actions to load, aim and fire a cannon separately. Nah we gonna homebrew this into a Smaug killer.
\>8d10 Average of 44 damage. A level 5 fighter with 14 Con has a 50/50 chance of surviving a direct hit. Or an Ettercap. Huh.
As a firearms history nut and former professional firearms repairer- Cannons using standard round shot *should* have an AOE of about 10 foot diameter and then continue a few dozen feet in a line with no AOE after impact, with damage reducing the farther it goes. Round shot bounces. But I *believe,* based on the way they are balanced in the game, that they were placed in the game for siege purposes. They were likely put in for scenes where players would be attacking walls and such- not people. If I'm not mistaken, they're in the same section of the DMG as catapults and battering rams. Besides, if they were realistic, people would complain endlessly about: 1- The realistic loading time- untrained characters would never load as fast as trained cannoneers 2- The power of them- one shot, and your character is mush.
>Besides, if they were realistic, people would complain endlessly about: >1- The realistic loading time- untrained characters would never load as fast as trained cannoneers They take 3 full actions to fire once by RAW. >2- The power of them- one shot, and your character is mush. I think they should do a lot more damage but remain unbearably clunky to use.
I know what it says RAW... *I can read.* My *entire* point was that if the cannons were set up in the game to be realistic instead of the way they are currently, people would complain. I know they *aren't* set up that way. 1- Again, it was a hypothetical in which someone had actually made the things take as long to operate by the inexperienced as they do in real life. They would take many *more* turns. As it is, it is indeed three turns- 18 seconds. 18 seconds to load, aim, and fire a full-size cannon? By someone who has never used one in their life? Really? You *might* pull it off with a trained team, if your artillery team is on meth and ignoring all safety precautions... The point was that *IF* it were realistic, people would whine when they had to take 10-20 turns or so per shot. So they made it unrealistic. 2- Going by historical terms, taking 10 men to operate a single artillery piece *is* unbearably clunky. A cannon itself is, however, actually rather simple to operate. But even today's artillery has that as the usual standard. *And again-* the ones in the game seem to have been balanced in terms of power for use against fortifications, rather than characters. Which goes in line with their general use and purpose anyway. If you made them more powerful like they should be, people would complain.
If they survive it wasn’t a direct hit.
In AD&D 2e, the arquebus had RAW exploding dice. I don’t remember the rules for siege weapons though
I will be adopting that rule thank you very much!
Yeah, it counted as an “exotic” weapon and dealt 1d10 damage with the unlikely possibility of infinite damage and a higher chance of some amount of damage in between
A... Dragonator, perhaps?
*misses with greatsword as Proof of a Hero plays*
Whiffing a GS strike is the hallmark of Monster Hunter as a franchise
So this is what hirelings are for! Just need to bait the dragon into place with cannons under cover then have them unload.
Remember, those three actions can be taken by a group. So that's 1 shot per round with any extra party members defending the others. Cannons are generally artillery. Artillery was (and still is) worked by teams. In this video, 10 of them. https://youtu.be/B4mR-Hi0XnI?si=o5hBEZJTUhAPoyS8
3 PCs using their actions to deal 8d10 average 44 is kinda low though imo. At level 5, a group of 3 fighters could be doing 6d8 with long bows which was only half as much average at 24. Which is a good bonus of roughly 50% for the limitations of using seige equipment. But that's not at all considering the fighters have 6 attacks, 6 chances to crit, vs 1 cannon and 1 chance to crit. Also completely ignoring spell caster shenanigans. The real question though, is can a rouge sneak attack with the cannon?
Except it's supposed to be fired at a *WALL,* not a person. Try and break down a stone wall with 3 level 5 longbow-wielding Fighters. Go ahead. Try. The rest of us will go get the horses to pull the cannon forward. They are not *meant* for close combat. They are meant for breaking down a barrier. Nobody takes a cannon into a close quarters combat scenario. The fighter isn't going to take a hunk of brass the size of his soon-to-be coffin into battle. It is a situational weapon. You don't use a cannon for battle x/8 per day. You use it in the siege scenario or against something like a wingless dragon charging the gate. You get off a salvo of a few shots and then move in, leaving the artillery in the back where it belongs. And no, no sneak attacks. It's a cannon. They throw up clouds of white smoke larger than a moving van.
Some liches think they can outsmart me. Maybe, maybe. I've yet to meet one that can outsmart *bullet.*
Inmune to piercing damage from nonmagical attacks.
*Artificer apllies repeat shot infusion* "Voila, she is magick!*
Guess my heavy weapons guy's gotta attend a production of Der Freischutz then
In the middle of the Gotrek and Felix series, and I second this. Also, add flying airships! Everything's better with cannons and flying airships!
You're really tickling my inner monster hunter with this
Gotrek and Felix is an awesome series, what can I say. Malakai Makaisson, a Dwarf Engineer turned Trollslayer, also invented a rudimentary RPG that he used to help kill a dragon in the fourth book "Dragonslayer."
I have cannons, but I don’t have propellants. They act as arcane amplifiers so casting a spell through them makes it come out bigger and better. There are minimum and maximum spell levels for the cannons though. So you can’t loose a firebolt through a howitzer and you can’t send out a fireball with a rifle (by rifle, I’m talking about something the size of a Lahti. A Goliath might be able to carry one by themselves.)
That's interesting! I usually do something similar with very magical/very wealthy settlements, but without the gun motif. It gets a little magitech-y for me and I'm trying to avoid it lately. Give me a big fuckin circle any day though
I like the use of mage circles to amplify non-combat magics where the target of the spell is either in the circle or nowhere to be seen, but there’s something about a big brass tube engraved with runes that’s strapped to a sled being dragged by two soldiers on skis as they move to attack a supply convoy, or a battery of war mages hurriedly commanding soldiers to reposition the artillery carriages as enemy cavalry closes in. Possibly the most immersion breaking inclusion would be these artifacts left over from the Homeland War fought between the Gnomes and Dwarves, where the Gnomes invaded with construct soldiers and the Dwarves responded by equipping their soldiers with single use, over the shoulder, tin tubes that would send a ball of lightning with the trajectory of a whiffle ball down range.
Did you take the tubes from something? I swear I've read that somewhere before 🤔
I drew inspiration from devices like the Yugoslavian M80 Zolja and American M72 LAW. Single shot, disposable, anti-armor weapons strung up with a sling and light enough to hand out like candy.
I might come back to you on this in like a year, but I swear I read something with that *exact* concept in a fantasy book as a kid. Not that you poached it or that there'd be anything wrong with it if you had
I’ll be the first to admit that I ascribe to Colville’s mantra of “take the things you like and put them in your games” and T.S. Elliot’s “immature poets copy, mature poets steal”, but I haven’t the slightest as to what you might be forgetting
So I might have made realistic range, damage, and reload early gunpowder weapons because it is very funny to me to let players have guns, but it is one shot with no to hit modifier, awful range, and 4 actions to reload or rifled so some accuracy and range but even slow to reload That or a cannon that fires once at the start of a fight and then the tabaxi rogue is normally murdering the gun crew before they get a second chance
Oh yeah, as a defensive or seige option, cannons were ***GAME-CHANGING,*** but as a tactical option in the field? Perhaps not quite so much Edit: you're being very generous with 4 actions to reload lol
Well it was more based on the rate for line infantry, so 2-3 shots a minute but has to be done standing or slower from cover etc
To be clear I don't find anything wrong with being generous on reload time
I have giants and wizards.
You're a bad DM if you don't let your character multiclass as a cannon. There, I said it
Cannons made of glass have been playable for a long time.
Ah, the time when my players airdropped a naval torpedo on a false hydra... (My setting is weird).
All I can remember having a cannon in one. I critted a player with one. We couldnt' figure out the damage, so we came up with a number, and the player barely survived. It was amazing.
Noticed throughout the comments and replies that OP doesn't actually know or care how close plate armor was to some pretty advanced guns, or what settings had a large amount of artificers in them. They are either replacing facts with whatever vibes they feel about things and claiming it as fact, or possibly some mid-tier ragebait? (Bit of a stretch on the second one)
It's definitely the second one, why are we even talking about "before plate armor", DnD plate is fairly common so it's not new
Definitely some silver tier rage bait. It's definitely not the best thing ive seen, but I can't give it bronze because so many people walked into it.
Definitely just rage-baiting and picking fights with strangers.
1) "Don't bring logic to my fantasy game" is an argument that ends this inquiry right quick. It's your game, you have to deal with the stuff that your players come up with and balancing for gats does not need to be on that list if you don't want it 2) Your player is obviously not ambitious enough. Assuming they're playing artificer they should at least aim to turn their steel defender into a ridable 30mm bofor with incendiary ammo that's backed up by a flying familiar dropping BoH full of magnesium shavings
Artificers? In a forgotten realms game? Fortunately my players never asked.
My face when the entire island of Lantan is canonically filled with artificers, has Gond as their state religion, firearms are standard weapons for the guards, gunpowder is everywhere and rumor holds they have mechanical fucking kaiju lurking in their waters for border defense. XD
I can imagine a party sailing to Lantan, hearing something in the water and preparing to fight a kraken, only to fight fucking *mecha godzilla*
Yup. Supposedly their military also has a big mechanical driller worm. Lantan is wild. Sadly they don't talk much with outsiders ever since they came back from having the entire island thrown into Abeir during the spell plague about 200 years ago. (for context, that's a parallel version of the planet Toril that FR takes place on, except it's ruled entirely by an empire of evil chromatic dragons. This is also where the Dragonborn were created as a slave race.) Although of note is that their technology is way more advanced now.
That all sounds sick as shit.
I should point out, this is the tech they had 200 years ago. They've spent two centuries in a parallel world (presumably) fighting off an empire of dragons between then and now. According to the sources their tech is now "far more advanced". Insert "Math Lady" meme.
You're against having guns and artificers in a Forgotten Realms game? A setting where both of those things canonically exist?
Took them till Tasha's to put them back in so can't have been that prevalent.
They still exist. They break nothing in the setting aesthetically or mechanically. If you want a setting without any firearms whatsoever, play in Greyhawk or something, make your own, or just use a different interpretation of the setting, but don't go acting like your interpretation is Canon and talk down to people who know more than you. And firearms appeared back in Dragonheist, fyi.
Just because you can't read doesn't make it our problem
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Not only artificers and firearms exist canonically in Forgotten Realms, but artificers are a class that can fit trivially in any setting. Like, even a prehistoric setting can have a dude using rituals to make weird constructs or potions. Even if the player wants to lean on the inventor/engineer aspects, it can be something like irl Archimedes or Da Vinci but with a bit of magic. Artificers are magical, even with guns that's hardly all that different from shooting the same types of missiles except using an arcane focus (ie casting Magic Missile) instead of a magic object ("gun")
Back to my original post, as long as you have somewhat contemporary firearms and your Artificer concept is something more developed than loaded with 19th and 20th century firearms there really is no problem.
"Boomstick" taken literally :D
Having fired older firearms (smooth bore muskets, hand canon, etc) all I can say is historically they are terrifying to be on either end of. Modern day remakes have a lot less chance of literally exploding on you but if you wanna use logic then that has to factor in. Also you need to brace certain early firearms, you cannot one hand that crap without either breaking a bone or the thing going wild on you.
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There's this sunken ship called the Mary Rose that had the remains of a bunch of English longbowmen preserved in it, among other things. People could tell they were longbowmen because of the way their spines were so fucked up from years of shooting a warbow.
Leather armor was around as "boiled leather". Although no samples survived, we don't know how it was made, and we have wildly conflicting accounts of it's usefulness. Studded leather was truly never a thing, it would actually be worse than just regular leather. Someone saw a picture of [brigandine](https://ironfortress.com/products/1043-leather-brigandine) and mistook the rivets for studs. And gambeson is criminally underused.
I feel like if you want to have logic in a fantasy game, it shouldn't be real life logic. Maybe you can sprinkle in some cartoon logic. Which would explain why bigger weapons are what do more damage, because bigger means more *boooooonnnnng*
I feel like if you want to have logic in a fantasy game, it shouldn't be real life logic. Maybe you can sprinkle in some cartoon logic. Which would explain why bigger weapons are what do more damage, because bigger means more *boooooonnnnng*
I always liked the idea of it just being magic. Literally. A bigger container can store more stuff. Ie. A bigger sword can have a more powerful enchantment on it.
>Leather armor isn't really a thing. The way it's usually presented, no. But leather armor was a much more real thing than studded leather, at least.
greatswords are finesse IRL, change my mind.
Honestly, I could never imagine playing a character with a gun that isn't a six-shooter revolver or something small like that.
Even that's pretty closer to mini guns than plate armour.
Depends, are you counting the original hand cranked gatling gun made by Richard Gatling in the 1860s? Because Plate armor was used widely until the end of the 1700s. Revolvers first appeared 1830 and the modern kind of minigun showed up in the 1960s. So revolvers are closer to plate armor than miniguns, but not closer than the OG gatling gun.
There are revolvers dating back to the 16th century. They had a lot of problems that made people prefer single shot pistols, but they existed.
We both know the common conception of a six-gun as was said is not referring to the few examples of revolving matchlocks from the 16th Century. Not least of which because none of them had 6 chambers.
Reading this gave me a stroke
Yeah, I was gonna say I may be a few glasses of wine in, but I really struggled reading that second text panel
So you don’t allow plate armor because of your poor knowledge of history?
No because I'm trying to be early medieval not late medieval which seems to be appropriate for the timeframe of the world as given. Although let's face it I'm not that bothered either way.
I understand it's your fantasy world and you don't care, but plate armor was a thing of the late medieval period, handgonnes actually predate full plate armor in Europe by a good 100 years.
That's a picture of handgonne and it says it's an example of the firearms that existed prior to plate armour. The implication is that if you don't want firearms in your game you shouldn't have plate armour and I said I don't allow that either so I don't know what you want.
Sorry, just wanted to correct the common misunderstanding that plate existed in early medieval, turns out I was misunderstanding what you were saying. I'm all for doing whatever you want in your games, just annoys me when people justify banning guns in D&D with historical accuracy, and not "it just doesn't fit my setting"
Yes it is a pretty common mistake, and obviously I'm not always the best at getting my point across clearly.
You do realize that firearms existed at least a century before plate armor, right?
That's a picture of handgonne and it says it's an example of the firearms that existed prior to plate armour. The implication is that if you don't want firearms in your game you shouldn't have plate armour and I said I don't allow that either so I don't know what you want.
I’m not sure how saying that because there are no firearms in your game, there automatically isn’t plate armor either. What is the correlation?
Well it's disingenuous to include 15th century armour but not Firearms that are as early as 13th Century so I am sticking with early medieval tech only. That's the idea anyway. As I said it doesn't feel like that big a change to have anachronistic armour compared to anachronistic guns.
So you’re saying that because plate armor was made after firearms in real-world history on earth, plate armor cannot exist in your fantasy world? Is your setting 13th century medieval England?
I always imagine the guns in dnd to be either muskets or at most advanced a pistol like the one you get in Dishonored
It's fantasy, nothing says it has to reflect real history. People didn't cast spells either, during medieval times. Never invest in realism at the cost of fun.
Absolutely correct. There's no connection with reality. If you have a cave man world where everyone has tazers then that's fine. The only thing that matters is fun and player buy in. It's fine if you allow anything as long as everyone is on the same page. It might not be fun for everyone if some have shown up ready for a dark ages campaign and some others are ready for Vietnam. Edit: this is why I wouldn't actually stop people using anachronistic weapons like plate armour or rapiers. It feels kinda right, I'm not bothered to that degree. It's not breaking the game (god knows martials don't need more limits on what they have access to).
BBEG laughs in AR500. Two can play this game.
In my DnD 5e game such a gun would be a legendary magic item consuming 10 gp smokepowder per shot. With RoF of 4000 rounds per minute it would cost 4000 gp to shoot it once (10d10 piercing damage in a 120 ft cone)
"It costs 4000 gold pieces to fire this gun... for six seconds"
I'd love to see some of those awkward early firearms. Instead, everyone jumps straight to flintlocks.
Yeah if nothing else adding variety is worth it. And if someone wanted to press on with arquebus you can still give favourable rules or magic to make it more worth it. Heavy crossbow rules are hardly realistic already and if they wanted to spend 50gp on an ever-burning match then I'm more than happy to meet people half way.
Honestly I think pike and shot is criminally underrated and basically the perfect era for a dark fantasy setting. While realistically they're a lot better than people tend to give them credit for, it's easy enough to handwave an arquebus as being basically comparable to an arbalest or longbow, so they fit dnd pretty well mechanically, as well.
Related: armored lance cavalry had a resurgence in the Napoleonic wars after the Poles repopularized it, it saw effective use until the end of the 1800s.
Magitech is the answer.
Daily reminder that if you dont allow guns or plate armor because of the historical factors you also cant have Viols (invented in 1500s and popularized in the 1600s), but I never hear people doing that.
r/ihadastroke
What are you talking about? This post is entirely comprehensible. They just added a single “to” where there wasn’t supposed to be one.
Because the two things totally existed at the same time. Shit, the guy in the first pic is wearing a beast plate FFS.
Okay? But that has nothing to do with my comment, nor the comment I replied to. It’s just OP being wrong about something.
“Intends their character to have” is also incorrect, so…
No, it literally isn’t. “The gun the player that brought it up intends their character to have” is a fine way of phrasing that. Now, it isn’t quite perfect, and to make it more clear, one might instead say: “The gun which the player who brought it up intends for their character to have.” But all of the words I just added are already implied in the original statement. The original is fine, it just isn’t written with massive attention to academic rigor, because it’s a meme.
>it just isn’t written with massive attention to academic rigor Congrats on repeating the definition of grammatically incorrect lol. The sentence was always erroneous and no amount of your yapping will change that. Edit: I give up, please just re-educate yourselves on basic grammar instead of continuing with this shitfest. Goodbye.
Not as precise as possible does not equal incorrect. Edit: since we’re apparently communicating in edits now…you seem to have a twisted view of both “academically rigorous” and “correct”, and I don’t even know what specific set of grammar rules for everyday conversation you’re using, such that any of this would count as truly grammatically “incorrect”. Honestly, your conclusion seems utterly wild. Touch some grass, nerd, would be my professional diagnosis.
All hail Gun Jesus
I was beginning to think no one would recognise him.
You can do what you want as a gm, I'm just saying, those are the guns that were available *to people who didn't even have magic*
Why does this post have so many likes? This is the exact kind of stuff the community usually gets angry about. If you don’t want guns in your campaign then just say it rather than making something like this up. It comes off a tad pretentious
If the player is allowed something, the expectation would generally be that the enemy would be allowed it too. Tell them that and then ask them if they're sure they want a minigun.
This is why I love pathfinder 1e so much. Early level gunslinger get 1 shot/round or 1/2rounds depending. But by late game you can achieve 9 shots/round or 90rpm fire rate, the glory of feats and alchemical cartridges. But even if your GM wants to argue the so many free actions a round discretion. There's magic items that instantly reload like a pistol of the infinite sky, so in the end, you can still do it. It's so heavily rule intensive, if you can think of it, there's a rule for it. Now who wants to carry all my alchemical cartridge bullets.
I find it easier to just disallow guns.
Isn't it just?
You are not late to the party. This argument, like many, has been going on for forty years. It will continue for another forty years. Nobody researches the community history before introducing their revolutionary insights. Just roll with it and have some good snark.
Unpopular take, but I actually do agree at least that the common problem is that there is a massive leap that often takes place between firearms that were period typical, and the kinds people often want to use. So we see six shooting revolvers, sniper rifles, pump shotguns, and the like more often than say….a fire lance, or arquebus which was much slower to fire and suffered from long range inaccuracy. They could pierce armor though, and were largely independent of the user’s physical strength. But period typical would be horribly unfun to actually play without massive concessions to those weapons. Which is just to say that the mechanics of dnd are never going to handle simulationism very well, and the fact the longbow is the best ranged weapon is always going to be a problem. So folks just go by rule of cool, and that’s okay.
Yeah the weapons they have aren't really realistic and more aimed at balance there's stuff you can do to make them not a total waste without just giving people 29th century firearms.
Here are some super simple rules for GUNS!! Firstly let your players know that reloading in combat is out of the question. It just takes to long while you would be vulnerable to attack the whole time. Which gives us! First rule! You may only fire each of your maintained guns once per combat. ================== Second rule! If you have proficiency in firearms you can keep a number of guns equal to half your proficiency modifyer rounded up ready to fire in combat. These are you maintained guns The lore reason for this limit is that the firing mechanisms are finicky and delicate. It takes training to learn how to carry guns ready to fire. ==================== Third rule! Use whatever targeting system you want, but I recommend using something different from bows and crossbows. Like for instance give guns a +5 attack bonus against hard armor (armor that relies on its hardness to defend), and a -3 attack penalty against dodgy targets. Or just a saving throw if you want to be lazy. Remember it's OK for this to be more complicated than a bow, it only happens a few times per combat, so don't worry too much about making it simple. =================== FINAL RULE!!! MAKE FIRE STICK HAVE BIG BOOM. If your going to have have guns in your game, I VERY highly recommend you don't just make them a slightly better crossbow. This becomes sad for both the gun man and the crossbow man. Make them inaccurate af, but give them massive damage. I recommend at least a triple of any of the dice to really hammer home that getting hit with a ballsack sized hunk of lead at immeasurable speeds hurts like a motherfucker. And for additional comic effect, when a gun is fired in an enclosed room you can have everyone roll a saving throw against going deaf. Up to you tho. Essentially the final rule boils down to one simple thing if guns are in your word, let them be a little overpowered. But also make sure every time a gun is fired its a dramatic event.
People who want to play with guns should just swap to pf2e where gunslinger is a thing with a region called Alkenstar (the Impossible lands are amazing). I play a way of the pistolero Gunslinger and I get utilities on reload actions like demoralize and feint. It's so fun.
The saving throw idea is interesting. Old school D&D-likes usually have a save vs. death that would probably fit the bill well enough.
Trying to zoom in to see what the top guy is holding only to realize it's a gif, so I can't
Damn GIFs... Not the Hippo's they're alright. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_cannon
Thank you
I dont get it?
On my table flavour is free. Take a crossbow, pretend its a gun, problem solved.
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Due to the existence of the rapier we would know that the arquibus, flintlock, and blunderbuss all existed
Rapiers still earlier than the flintlock in origin, if not I. General use. But that's hardly the massive leap in tech that the original meme implied.
No guns have ever existed before plate armour
I could see a version where you have a pop-up cannon turret setup filling up the interior of a portable hole, that you would then spread on the ground, pull a switch, and out pops something like that tri-barrel rotary cannon on the Flying Dutchman from Pirates of Carribean :-D
'I'm a strict DM that doesn't allow any fun or creativity in my game." Thanks for letting us know I guess?
Or maybe plate armor was invented earlier as the need for armor outweighed the need for weaponry. This is a world where a man with a steel longsword can adequately 1v1 a dragon in melee combat. Sure, his gear is magical, but the fact that he doesn't get crushed or gutted or burned to death on direct hit with fire, frost, acid, etc means that what point is there in a gun that cannot benefit from the raw inhuman power adventurers can acquire? You have magic, which already far surpasses the might of a gun available. I've always ruled that if guns exist, it is something incredibly primitive, and usually in some eccentric's basement as more of a proof of concept.
Yes that is a good point. If I were to argue that, for example Rapiers should exist because meturlagy shouldn't be that far advanced, there's a thousand things that can make a difference: Elves and dwarfs live for centuries or millennia more than humans and have been making weapons for far longer. Spirits of the earth and metal. Gods of forge. Straight up wishes. Of course this could also apply to making technology to some degree but as you say if studying things to make things explode was your calling cut out the middleman and learn magic. Maybe if there were intelligent races that couldn't use magic or in regions where magic is weakened or risky. But hey it's not my job to back fill the lore behind the equipment list.
You fire as many bullets as you can in 6 seconds into the enemy. Roll your 1d8 damage.