most fantasy RPGs are only mildly simulative so there isn’t a (weird imo) expectation that when a flintlock gun appears on an inventory list it’s so powerful that everyone retires their swords and bows and wears a brace of pistols.
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Also flintlocks and muskets sucked ass in smaller combats where you couldn’t just point a thousand people in a direction, tell them all to fire, and be confident most of them would hit something.
Which is why they still used pikes, and swords thru the English civil war!
Zero reason for a gun to be designed as strictly superior to other weapons when pulling from a historical source. They were very powerful but slow, inaccurate and awkward to use.
that was mostly a matter of range, reload speed, and opposing cavalry. there's a reason pirates and other boarders often had firearms in addition to melee weapons. events like the French & Indian War and American War of Independence prove skirmish tactics were viable too.
Not saying they were worthless, but I am saying that there were situations where pistols were strictly much much worse than swords or daggers. Just saying it’s silly to act like the invention of firearms immediately obsoleted swords, spears, bows and other medieval weapons. There was a long period
man, if i'm living in a world where people can do chain lightning with their minds or trap my soul in a cursed artifact, i need a gun just to level the playing field
A good example of that : in KCD2, a somewhat realistic game, there is guns. Tey have many drawbacks : slow to load, not precise, and noisy, I used them for only one thing : to one shot of the most armored bad guy in a group, then I switched to sword.
when guns appeared in 2nd edition FR they were fine, mechanically. arguably they kind of sucked. they certainly weren’t overpowered and no one stopped playing bow and sword characters.
Yeah, i feel the action economy around guns feels borked (though i guess no more than crossbows), since 2nd attacks work great, the damage trade (even with rapid reload) doesnt necessarily feel worth it for how little gain in damage guns, maybe if guns could ignore some AC to make them appealing
I kinda like how Pathfinder2e handles guns: very low base damage, but generous with extra damage die on crits, making them pretty decent crit fish weapons for fighters or gunslingers, the only classes that can get legendary proficiency in any weapons. Provides an interesting mechanical niche.
i was thinking that guns probably needed crit range, but i genuinely cant remember if dnd even does crit range anymore. They likely need Devastating crits or something because if i was behind the wheel guns would be full action reloads so you need to make the most of any shot you get.
They're more expensive crossbows, right? Crossbows don't need much strength or skill to aim and fire, unlike a bow, but they take ages to reload, and if you don't have the required skills they only work at short range. Also, crossbows still work in the rain, unlike a flintlock.
Firmly of the conviction that if you want to exclude techs from your fantasy setting, then you might as well commit to it being a Bronze or Iron Age Fantasy and be a dick about that too
Like the simple way to balance this in your RPG is that at basically any tech level below that of like 19th century Earth, it's always going to be quicker to get another arrow knocked than it is to reload your gun. We can make action economies do the "both guns and bows are viable" work for us.
Usually when i see gun criticism it's the other way around , like people wouldn't invent guns anyway because you can already fire an icicle or fire ball at 100mph
Really ? Considering gun's mythologizing as "the great equalizer", I most often see guns as the common man's response to the elite wizard in people's power fantasies. Even Pillars of Eternity has a bit of that in its lore.
i think a 4e-style framework would work great with early firearms; each gun you have is an encounter power so once each combat you get to pull out a wheellock and blow away an otyugh
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Which is why they still used pikes, and swords thru the English civil war!
Not to be confused with GUNS, the projectile weapon, which were invented independently by a different culture 👏🏻