Gunpowder in D&D, or why do firearms get the shaft?

[Libertad]

Muskets saw use as early as the 1500s, so one can technically say that Age of Exploration-era firearms can fit into a D&D setting.  Given staples like Wizard experiments and "technomage" gnomes, it's plausible that gunpowder weapons may exist somewhere.

Whether due to adherence to "realism and authenticity" or a deliberate desire to relegate guns to gimmick status, game mechanics for pistols, muskets, and cannons are sort of lackluster.

In many products, pistols and muskets do more damage than bows and crossbows but have shorter range increments, take longer times to load, and are exotic weapons.  In Green Ronin's Freeport series of books, a gun can take anywhere from 1-3 full-round actions to reload!

One could say that in the real world, early firearms didn't gain prominence due to the superiority of a bow.  The trend reversed when firearms design improved armor penetration and accuracy.

In many settings, gunpowder is either a closely guarded secret or popular only among a certain culture or nation.

Naturally, I say "who cares?!" to the adherents of "firearms are unreliable and must be worse in every way!"  The idea of playing pirates and musketeers with pistols and cutlasses can be cool!  For character optimizers and folk who care about weapon reliability, firearms need to have some advantage over composite bows in order to merit a feat slot.

What do you guys think?  How do you incorporate firearms into D&D settings?  Any recommended house rules or sourcebooks with good Age of Exploration-era gun stats?

[Prime32]

One could say that in the real world, early firearms didn't gain prominence due to the superiority of a bow.  The trend reversed when firearms design improved armor penetration and accuracy.

The bow was superior, but it also required training. Guns were pretty much point-and-shoot. So it was easier to give guns to a bunch of serfs than to train an archer.

And that's why guns being exotic weapons is silly. While Pathfinder's firearm rules have a lot of weirdness*, they at least include a "guns everywhere" campaign option where they're simple weapons and 10 times as cheap.

*Overpriced, ignore the normal pricing rules for ammunition, have misfire mechanics when crossbows and spells do not, use touch attacks to represent armor-piercing when better-piercing weapons like warhammers picks do not, ignore parts of the rules on touch attacks at random, need two feats and special bullets (which increase the rate of misfires) to use effectively.


EDIT:

Muskets saw use as early as the 1500s, so one can technically say that Age of Exploration-era firearms can fit into a D&D setting.  Given staples like Wizard experiments and "technomage" gnomes, it's plausible that gunpowder weapons may exist somewhere.

As veekie has pointed out to me, the Chinese were using gunpowder weapons in the 10th century, while knights in plate armor date to the 15th-16th centuries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huolongjing

[SneeR]

Mundanes can't have nice things! Shame on you! 

But, in all seriousness, guns make combat completely different. True guns would perhaps let you Make a Reflex save for half damage and use your armor as damage reduction, but the "point at things you want dead for results" thing is hard to deny. Guns revolutionized combat. The knight in shining armor was just slowing himself down so he couldn't dodge. An stooge off the street could kill him with a few buddies to watch his back as he reloaded! Seriously, hit AC 10 and win.

In reality, a breastplate could barely hold up to one shot of an early firearm, and then it was structurally compromised. They would have to design a whole new mechanic for guns to be realistic yet balanced. What they do in the DMG is pretty pathetic.

My best shot at making it a nomral-ish weapon is that a gun is a ranged touch attack; if it hits, your armor bonus and half shield bonus added together are your effective damage reduction against that attack. There. Still breaks everything at level 1, though.

EDIT: D&D's natural gunslinger never reloads in combat. He has twenty loaded guns on him at all times. Then, he full attacks with quickdraw every round, dropping each gun at his feat as a free action. He reloads them when all the peoplez fall down.

[Libertad]

You guys raise some very good points about how firearms irreversibly changed warfare.  Since most major settlements are full of 1st-level Commoners, firearms can be very effective indeed.

But how revolutionary would firearms be in a world full of magic and monsters?  A gunsmith may pierce through a knight's armor in the real world, but would he remain effective against a drow sorcerer with spells like Darkness and Blur?  What about wands of scorching ray and fireball?  Can the mundane gunslinger be so powerful in such a world?

[oslecamo]

Guns revolutionized combat. The knight in shining armor was just slowing himself down so he couldn't dodge. An stooge off the street could kill him with a few buddies to watch his back as he reloaded!

Crossbows pierced armor quite easily. Crossbows did revolutionize warfare. England actualy outlawed crossbows on the basis that a peasant could easily get one and shoot down a knight with it. It was quite a long time untill guns became superior to crossbows.

So if you make guns better than crossbows, you'll have quite a bit of raging players. Yes, I'm asking demanding crossbows get buffed first.

[veekie]

Guns revolutionized combat. The knight in shining armor was just slowing himself down so he couldn't dodge. An stooge off the street could kill him with a few buddies to watch his back as he reloaded!

Crossbows pierced armor quite easily. Crossbows did revolutionize warfare. England actualy outlawed crossbows on the basis that a peasant could easily get one and shoot down a knight with it. It was quite a long time untill guns became superior to crossbows.

So if you make guns better than crossbows, you'll have quite a bit of raging players. Yes, I'm asking demanding crossbows get buffed first.

Actually, crossbows penetrated armor better than guns. Lead slugs and pellets deform and deflect against armor, particularly early firearms with low penetration, low muzzle velocity, lack of shaped ammunition(they tended to tumble and this made it very easy to glance off metal armor) and lack of steel jacketing.

Guns however, were excellent against light armored infantry, lead pellets were easy to cast in bulk, and powder could be prepared at practically any scale given the knowledge and materials, in contrast with the process of forging bolts or fletching arrows. Since most infantry in the field were light armored(nobody but the elite could afford much armor), that worked out just fine.

Now in terms of weapon attributes:
Crossbows
-Slow loading, real crossbows take either a long time(longer than guns in fact) or a massive amount of arm strength to load quickly. This varies by the draw of the crossbow of course, but then they tend not to be primary weapon(you wind them before the fight, then fire them off for range advantage, and if its an open field you could reload about once more before you dropped them for a shortsword.
-High penetration. You can apply your strength to crossbows, even strength in excess of what you have.
-Lower range than bows, since they can't arch.
Statwise:
Retain base damage.
Retain load times.
Allow Mighty at the cost of increased load time for strength shortfall. Possibly introduce Mighty inefficiencies(like you need the Mighty rating *1.5 to quickload it)

Guns
Basically its similar to the crossbow except for penetration and load time, so you change base damage, but add recoil.

[oslecamo]

Guns however, were excellent against light armored infantry, lead pellets were easy to cast in bulk, and powder could be prepared at practically any scale given the knowledge and materials, in contrast with the process of forging bolts or fletching arrows. Since most infantry in the field were light armored(nobody but the elite could afford much armor), that worked out just fine.

Oh, c'mon, it was still centuries from gunpowder's discovery until someone developed an efficient method of mass-producing handheld guns that didn't break after some uses. Bullets and the gunwpoder are easy yes, but the gun itself took a lot of experimenting to get done properly.

-Lower range than bows, since they can't arch.

Where did you get that one from? Absolutely nothing stops a crossbow bolt from arching (they're still affected by gravity after all). Crossbows actually had the range advantage for the simple fact you could pump more strenght on it. Never before could you reliably kill people from so from far away.

[veekie]

More that once you DO have field capable guns, its easy to keep them supplied on a per shot basis and they ripped up light infantry good.

As for crossbows, possibly you could arch, but the training mainly emphasizes straight shooting(which is fairly easy to teach for peasants), and the bow delivers more accuracy over distance(which the crossbow is a bit weaker at), it had more straight power, but power isn't everything.

[oslecamo]

More that once you DO have field capable guns, its easy to keep them supplied on a per shot basis and they ripped up light infantry good.

They also tend to blow up in your face if you don't properly train the troops, and the fact massed formations of infantry kept charging into melee for centuries further shows they really weren't that reliable.

As for crossbows, possibly you could arch, but the training mainly emphasizes straight shooting(which is fairly easy to teach for peasants),

It emphasizes straight shooting because you don't need to arch. Good crossbows could kill people as far as your eyes could see. You would only need to arch to hit something you couldn't even spot. Meanwhile even a longbow needs to arch just to start competing with the crossbow straight range.

and the bow delivers more accuracy over distance(which the crossbow is a bit weaker at), it had more straight power, but power isn't everything.

Indeed it isn't, but the bows main advantage was quantity over quality. It had both less range and less power, but a trained bowman could fire arrows much faster than any crossbow, and moar dakka is always an efficient strategy, in particular if you manage to catch your oponent in some kind of hard terrain, where they can't close in melee fast enough while staying inside the bow killing range.

[Prime32]

More that once you DO have field capable guns, its easy to keep them supplied on a per shot basis and they ripped up light infantry good.

They also tend to blow up in your face if you don't properly train the troops, and the fact massed formations of infantry kept charging into melee for centuries further shows they really weren't that reliable.

The usual tactic was to fire your guns, drop them, then charge using the smoke as cover. You could often reach the enemy before they could reload.

[RobbyPants]

Probably the easiest way to make firearms useful in the campaign would be to assume that they're advanced to the point that they're handy in the hands of a few skilled people. So, instead of muzzle-loading muskets, use breach-loading rifles that shoot bullets. This can get the reload time down to a move action (or faster with Rapid Reload), and you can give it descent enough stats to make it worth while.

Old school muskets were really only useful in the hands of large groups of guys. It wasn't until we started rifling the barrels in the 19th century that they became accurate enough to use in smaller sizes. Before that, you basically had to hand hundreds of them over to a bunch of soldiers and have them all fire at once. Any individual skirmisher would likely do better with a bow (if he had the training).


tl;dr: If you want PCs using firearms, they need to be advance to the point where this makes sense.

As for crossbows, possibly you could arch, but the training mainly emphasizes straight shooting(which is fairly easy to teach for peasants),

It emphasizes straight shooting because you don't need to arch. Good crossbows could kill people as far as your eyes could see. You would only need to arch to hit something you couldn't even spot. Meanwhile even a longbow needs to arch just to start competing with the crossbow straight range.

So, are you saying that it'd be reasonable to noticeably increase the crossbows range if you have martial weapon proficiency?

[veekie]

^^
Actually, yes. Simple weapons with advanced training are often just as good as a weapon that particularly requires advanced training. It also makes no sense to punish a character with an inferior weapon just because he prefers using a simple weapon despite having martial proficiency.

[archangel.arcanis]

I just wanted to chime in on an often forgotten fact of how badass the crossbow was:

Can. 29 of the Second Lateran Council under Pope Innocent II in 1139 banned the use of crossbows against Christians.

This was long after the English longbow had been in service and it was never banned as a weapon of war.

[veekie]

Right, so can we conclude that crossbows and muskets alike should default as Simple(point and click peasant weapon), but Martial proficiency brings them to bow-grade(different in nature but not in power)?

[RobbyPants]

Right, so can we conclude that crossbows and muskets alike should default as Simple(point and click peasant weapon), but Martial proficiency brings them to bow-grade(different in nature but not in power)?

I'd be fine with that.

[brainpiercing]

Ok, seriusly, most weapons in D&D are bullshit.

A light, or worse, a hand crossbow that you can reload with one hand is a completely useless weapon that will deliver 0 penetration. An early pre-perfect-steel-grade heavy crossbow is a 10-20lb monstrosity that can - in its heavier variations - only be reliably fired on a bi- or monopod, the same as early high-power muskets. (Especially seeing that with the slow reload, you do want that one shot to hit.) On the other hand its power is basically arbitrary. In D&D terms, with stupid physical and mental stats, and magic, it should be possible to construct basically any kind of draw weight.

Check out these modern-made historical crossbows:
http://www.wikingerschmiede.de/Armbrust__Jagd-Armbrust_Kampf-/body_armbrust__jagd-armbrust_kampf-.html

Note that the hunting crossbows have standard draws of 200-250lbs (up to 600lbs optional), and weigh around 10lbs, but even the hand-crossbow at the bottom has a 100lb draw. That's not something you can pull just like that, so even the hand crossbow has the stirrup affair at the front. The winch crossbow has up to 1000lb draw, longbows can just go home now.

But once we're there there is just nothing wrong with just making firearms just like crossbows, with a one full-round-action reload for muskets, or one move action for breech loaders. Any damage bonus or special characteristics come simply from class features. Or you could give them a boost and make the damage like the crossbow one category larger.

(Once we include the stupid mental stats that can be attained in the game, it's also not too far-fetched to even include modern, cartridge loading weapons. In fact, this is D&D, even a full auto heavy machine gun is hardly game breaking, it'll just ruin the challenge rating of encounters.

For example:
Muzzle loader:
2d8, complex action reload.
Breech loader/bolt action
2d8, move action reload
Semi-auto-rifle
2d8, can do full-attacks,

Automatic weapons get weird, I simply suggest volleys:
M16
2d6, when using 3rd-burst mode fires a volley of three shots with each attack for a -2 penalty on all attacks
MG3
2d8, when using full-auto mode fires a volley of three shots with each attack for a -2 penalty on all attacks
50cal HMG (LARGE weapon)
3d8, when using full-auto mode fires a volley of two shots with each attack for a -2 penalty on all attacks.

[SneeR]

If you want to get technical, fellows, the stake is practically the bane of all knights. A particularly dishonorable knight might hire 15 peasants to swarm his enemy knight and pin him to the ground. He would then take a stake and hammer and pound it right through his breastplate. There are plenty of breastplates with big holes just so to prove it!

[Prime32]

Results of a "guns vs crossbows" Google search
http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/44056
http://www.nationalgunforum.com/showthread.php?22327-Survival-Tools-Cartridge-Guns-Vs.-Muzzleloaders-Vs.-Crossbows-Vs.-Bows

Anyway, crossbows are a lot more stealthy than guns, for both sight and hearing.

[caelic]

One major problem with the development of firearms in a magic-heavy setting is the impact such magic would have.  If you want a consistent world, you need to explain:

1. Why anyone would experiment with gunpowder in the first place, given that superior forms of artillery are available.

2. How gunpowder weapons would be viable in a battlefield setting, given the need to supply them with powder and the extreme vulnerability of powder magazines to fire-based attacks.


A race or culture that considers magic evil, for example, might develop gunpowder as an alternative--but would still need to develop means to protect their magazines.

[oslecamo]

Right, so can we conclude that crossbows and muskets alike should default as Simple(point and click peasant weapon), but Martial proficiency brings them to bow-grade(different in nature but not in power)?

I'd be fine with that.

+2. And since we're at it we could expand it to other "great" simple weapons such as the spear. It can kill something even in the hands of a peasant, but in the hands of a trained warrior it was a top military choice for millenia. Or in more crunchy terms, military proficiency allows you to use it 1-handed.