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

[Sinfire Titan]

Incorrect; heavy maces are easier to use than rapiers, shortswords, slings, and longbows as long as you are strong enough to swing them, but are still martial weapons.

Heavy Maces are simple weapons...

[X-Codes]

He might be talking about the heavy flail... which is not at all easy to use.  I'll take a sword any day over one of those.

[SneeR]

WHAT AN IDIOT AM I!
I meant greatclub. Literally: "big stick; nails sometimes included."

[Sinfire Titan]

Personally, the developers seem like they wanted to keep weapons with damage dice over 1d8 out of the Simple range as a stealth nerf to noncasters. It's fairly tedious to change it too, because a not-insignificant number of low CR creatures have manufactured weapons.

[SneeR]

Okay, so going off the tenet: "more damage but same mechanics gets bumped up," the musket from DMG uses the mechanics of heavy crossbow (I think), but does more damage than it. Therefore, bump up to martial.

[veekie]

The hostility to firearms includes firearms as a modern weapon, with modern effectiveness, yet without considering similar accommodations made for stuff like Full Plate or crossbows.

Accommodations? What accommodations? First, crossbows were around much earlier than either of those, going back as far as the 4th century.

Second, full plate plainly sucks in D&D. It's too expensive to even afford at earlier levels, and then it limits your mobility so much that 99% of the time you're better off wearing lighter armor.

You all make it sound like fullplate is some "godmode" that allows a character to shrugg off anything, but it's just some extra AC points, while crippling your movement speed and severly limiting your Dex bonus to AC. Not to mention needing heavy armor proficiency, which only a few classes get. Why should guns get free tickets?

Those are the accomodations. Actual fullplate is closer to DR 5/-, barring a hit that got through a joint(no mean feat given that these are narrow, angled slots), flat out punched through a section of plate(warpicks and polearms used this tactic, but also with difficulty due to the geometry tending to make thrusting attacks glance off) or blunt trauma through the metal(claymores and warhammer tended to carry enough sheer kinetic energy on a good swing to break bones even through the armor). So you were using either precision damage, high multiplier critical hits(for the nasty piercers) or high damage dice(blunt weapons) to kick through plate at all. This was the accommodation for allowing fullplate in the game.

Crossbows, meanwhile, possessed frankly terrible penetrating power in the game(real crossbows were extremely good at penetration), but had a massively faster cock time than real crossbows(you seriously won't be getting move action load times unless you were strong enough to pull the string back without using the crank).
A realistic crossbow would be fairly high crit multiplier, and contain a Mighty option, but would take more time to load for each step short of the Mighty rating, reflecting the crank gear ratios.
A gun would be similar usage difficulty to the crossbow(that is, Simple), but with higher base damage dice, but a smaller crit multiplier. The Mighty option would simply be the weapon caliber and hence the recoil(possibly double penalty for being Simple rather than martial).

[brainpiercing]

Those are the accomodations. Actual fullplate is closer to DR 5/-, barring a hit that got through a joint(no mean feat given that these are narrow, angled slots), flat out punched through a section of plate(warpicks and polearms used this tactic, but also with difficulty due to the geometry tending to make thrusting attacks glance off) or blunt trauma through the metal(claymores and warhammer tended to carry enough sheer kinetic energy on a good swing to break bones even through the armor).

I can assure you that without deformation of the armour you won't be breaking any bones. And a sword, no matter how heavy, usually doesn't deform an armour much. There are people who do full contect melee with blunt weapons for sport, even nowadays, and they are very safe. Hammers, yes, those can make nasty dents.
Anyway, that is just the D&D way, of not granting DR to armour, but rather making you harder to hit. Also, the numbers are tuned for level 1 characters, and at that level they make perfect sense. Full plate seems different from other armours, because it covers the entire body, so basically "hitting", as the normal D&D operation of bypassing armour, makes less sense. However, that's just the D&D abstraction. Armour=harder to hit. But really, an attack that does not hit due to armour actually might hit the armour, it just glances off. Damage reduction is an entirely different mechanic. If you give DR to armour, you have to give it to natural armour, too, etc.

(Maybe D&D should have use a hard/soft armour concept, where hard armour grants AC bonus + DR, and soft armour grants only grants AC.)

So you were using either precision damage, high multiplier critical hits(for the nasty piercers) or high damage dice(blunt weapons) to kick through plate at all. This was the accommodation for allowing fullplate in the game.

I find the approach taken by the designers to be entirely consistent - armour doesn't behave realistically, but so do many things.

Crossbows, meanwhile, possessed frankly terrible penetrating power in the game(real crossbows were extremely good at penetration), but had a massively faster cock time than real crossbows(you seriously won't be getting move action load times unless you were strong enough to pull the string back without using the crank).
A realistic crossbow would be fairly high crit multiplier, and contain a Mighty option, but would take more time to load for each step short of the Mighty rating, reflecting the crank gear ratios.

Crossbows without class features that make them better suck quite a bit. But then I'm guessing this was a design decision. the designers obviously liked bows better. Your house rules make sense, except they won't increase crossbow use, much, because the "power" in d&D lies in full attacks. But an army outfitted with

A gun would be similar usage difficulty to the crossbow(that is, Simple), but with higher base damage dice, but a smaller crit multiplier. The Mighty option would simply be the weapon caliber and hence the recoil(possibly double penalty for being Simple rather than martial).

That seems like a good way of handling it.

[veekie]

^^
The way armor works also means theres no differentiation between the heavy clanky guy in good armor and the evasive guy with ninja dodging(other than armor generally getting you more AC than trying to be dodgy). Both simply don't get hurt, or when they do, they get hurt bad. Dividing defenses between lightly armored evasion(and getting hurt bad when you fail to evade) and heavily armored soak(and getting hit all the time, but to less effect) gives a bit more variation. Heavier armors can also add bonuses towards resisting critical hits and the like, most solid armor geometry is aimed at covering vital areas primarily.
It also means that point for point, healing the heavy would be more value for money since it tends to matter more.

As for real armors, the big two handed claymores do hit with enough force to cause nasty concussions through armor(which can cause bruises and break bones even while they are encased in a solid shell, its something to do with the physics of the impact and bone), and generally have a solid spike to thrust through armor with.
They would still take a good while to take out someone in full plate though, since a hit that would break a bone on someone in plate, would have destroyed the limb entire on someone without.

[SneeR]

About the spikes penetrating armor...
Some knights would actually ride into a peasant village before they faced down an armored opponent and pay the villagers to swarm the opponent when he got there. Once he was pulled off his horse and pinned to the ground under their combined weight, the schemer would take a stake and hammer and pound the stake through his opponent's breastplate through his heart!

[veekie]

Yeah, its quite difficult to get a spike through a decent breastplate on a moving opponent(since armored combat training is more than getting used to moving around while encased in metal, it involves interposing the thick, curved bits of armor between you and piercing or heavy slashing weapons), even warhammers had a spike end for that purpose, since blunt impacts, while excellent at banging your victim silly, were less than wholly effective at actually killing them on a effort:kill ratio basis.

[brainpiercing]

^^
The way armor works also means theres no differentiation between the heavy clanky guy in good armor and the evasive guy with ninja dodging(other than armor generally getting you more AC than trying to be dodgy). Both simply don't get hurt, or when they do, they get hurt bad. Dividing defenses between lightly armored evasion(and getting hurt bad when you fail to evade) and heavily armored soak(and getting hit all the time, but to less effect) gives a bit more variation. Heavier armors can also add bonuses towards resisting critical hits and the like, most solid armor geometry is aimed at covering vital areas primarily.
It also means that point for point, healing the heavy would be more value for money since it tends to matter more.

I guess that's the trade-off: In Soak games there is often the Death-of-a-thousand-cuts phenomenon, and armour is really a lot more important and necessary. In D&D, the light armour is rather favoured, but that's a problem of the balance point, and can be easily tuned by changing some numbers.

As for real armors, the big two handed claymores do hit with enough force to cause nasty concussions through armor(which can cause bruises and break bones even while they are encased in a solid shell, its something to do with the physics of the impact and bone), and generally have a solid spike to thrust through armor with.
They would still take a good while to take out someone in full plate though, since a hit that would break a bone on someone in plate, would have destroyed the limb entire on someone without.

Umm...still not seeing it. A claymore weighs, what, 8lbs? 10 lbs? Anything more and you just won't swing it very quickly. An arm encased in armour weighs about the same. Now you have a bone encased in a thick layer of muscle (which you do absolutely need in order to even wear the armour for any period of time), then a 2cm thick hard packed padding, and then a non-deforming layer of steel. There is no way you'll bring enough force into a balanced blade to shatter a bone without deformation of the armour. You would basically have to yank the entire limb from the join or similar, which is car wreck level of forces involved, and you won't transfer that amount of force or energy with a blade. Hydrostatic shock from a bullet can break bones, but you're not transferring the force to a point directly into the tissue, it gets transferred over the entire piece of armour, and from there into the padding. You would need a very lucky or precise hit in order to hit a spot where the transferred forces are enough to break a bone or damage a join - a direct elbow hit towards the shoulder, maybe, or precisely in the centre of the upper arm at right angles, with the arm already pressed against the body so it can't move. But at that point you're better off just taking a far smaller sword and hitting the guy's fingers.

YES you can absolutely rip off an arm even with a blunt blade, but the way armour works is by distributing the forces, and you just lose all shearing capabilities.

About the spikes penetrating armor...
Some knights would actually ride into a peasant village before they faced down an armored opponent and pay the villagers to swarm the opponent when he got there. Once he was pulled off his horse and pinned to the ground under their combined weight, the schemer would take a stake and hammer and pound the stake through his opponent's breastplate through his heart!

The throat or eye holes would be easier, but yeah, I guess through the breastplate wins from being a lot more scary . You'll know you're a goner when you feel the first poke, but it'll take a few more swings of the hammer until you're finally dead.

[veekie]

On the bright side, if you don't have a breastplate they wouldn't need the stake to hammer you dead through the ribs.

[littha]

As far as I understand, two handed swords were generally for fighting spears and pikes not knights.

[brainpiercing]

As far as I understand, two handed swords were generally for fighting spears and pikes not knights.

I read a huge article about the Landsknechts who were the main users of two-handed swords on the European continent from 1400 to 1600 or so on wikipedia, and I'm thinking this is true. Mounted Knights were stopped by pikemen, then when they were stopped they had to be pulled down and skewered somehow. Greatswords could, I suppose, be used on horses' legs from a safer distance, but mainly the "double mercenaries" were used as shock troops (actually more like suicide troops) even in front of the main lines, or once the lines were locked to break up the enemy line from the side. I do suppose once the lines were broken and mounted armoured knights went in with heavy maces to clobber hapless infantry then having that range without the unwieldiness of a pike was a benefit. Still, the target has to be the horse, or the saddlestraps, you can't swing at the man in an elevated position with enough force to bring him down, or in any case the curved face of the breastplate will make the blade glance off.

Heavy infantry armour wasn't much in use, except by officers, so there wasn't much of a point in specialising an attack on that, you just used the armour pokers you were carrying for the knights, anyway. Officers often carried halberds or short pikes, more to keep their own pikemen in line than anything else, and against that you were also fine with a two-handed sword, but penetrating the armour was still not its job.

[veekie]

Oh, when you used a 2H sword against armored/mounted opponents, you generally switched to half-sword(gripping the sword by the intentionally blunt section above the hilt) and used it as full metal thrusting weapon.  Swinging was somewhat unwise against cavalry, but often the 2H sword users were heavily armored as well, so they could take hits as well as dish them out.

[dman11235]

Everyone's talking about gunpowder.  Would gunpowder be developed?  Pursued?  etc?  Well, caelic said it on the last page, but didn't really emphasise it enough: there are already explosives in the game.  Not only that, we have chemical (alchemical, really) mixtures that cause explosions in various different ways, including smoke, poison, and plain old fire, all in the controlled ways that a gun of some sort would require.  All we need now are groups known for tinkering, and making mechanics.  Something like, oh, say, gnomes (or dwarves).  I know there's at least one setting where steam power is minorly available, as well, and that's not far off from what gunpowder would require.  Now, again, magic is going to make it different.  It makes it easier to produce mundane things, and it makes it easier to make mundane things better.  And it also is a different approach to the warfare.

So what I think is that "gunpowder" weapons would and should exist in this setting (this setting being the prototypical D&D setting), it's just that they are powered by a combination of magic and alchemy, rather than chemistry.  I think that the guns available would be a gnomish (dwarves tend to prefer the hammer, of course) rarity, only available from gnomes and those capable of a gnomish level of tinkering.  So I'd imagine that they are available as expensive, but effective, hunting tools and murder weapons.  NOt fit for an army, except for special forces.  So an adventurer could definitely have a gun.

This does play into the horrible gold problem of the game.  Which is another discussion entirely, but I'm thinking an economy where magic doesn't cost gold (instantaneous does (potions), and services do, but things like a +1 weapon doesn't cost gold).  Guns cost a lot more than a bow, but are better.  Because they cost more, they are harder to come by, and reduce your wealth for buying other things, like armor (full late costs a lot, but is better, and the same thing happens, so you generally can't have medium or heavier armor and a gun due to cost).

[Sinfire Titan]

Right. Cannons, at the very least, exists in the DMG and are little more than oversized muskets. It's utterly stupid to deny a high-Int character the ability to extrapolate from cannons to muskets.

[Halinn]

Right. Cannons, at the very least, exists in the DMG and are little more than oversized muskets. It's utterly stupid to deny a high-Int character the ability to extrapolate from cannons to muskets.

Interesting tidbit here. Something else that exists in the DMG: guns.

[snakeman830]

Right. Cannons, at the very least, exists in the DMG and are little more than oversized muskets. It's utterly stupid to deny a high-Int character the ability to extrapolate from cannons to muskets.

Interesting tidbit here. Something else that exists in the DMG: guns.

The difference being that guns are listed as Renaissance weapons and not just weapons.

Also, those guns suck, which is the whole point of this discussion.

[dman11235]

Well, I was more focusing on the act that explosives exist in the fantasy version (the prototypical one), and the discussion was whether or not explosives would be developed.  I was a tad late, but only because I registered for the new boards not a week and a half ago.

So now that explosives exist, the question is, will a race (or races) develop explosive based weaponry?  I say why not?  Even in the real world we pursue avenues that have no obvious immediate benefits.  Although those comments about gunpowder being a medicine first, why would that happen in this world if there's magical healing?  The answer is the same as why not guns: magic is not omnipresent.  There are villages that have never seen a magic user before.  So I'm saying that explosive based (not necessarily gunpowder based, allthough the new substance would likely be called gunpowder, it just wouldn't necessarily be chemically similar to ours) would almost certainly be developed eventually, the question now becomes: Are they available now or is it going to take place at a later time in this setting?