Historically Accurate Loading Times for Firearms?

[Nerdynick]

Recently introduced to Ravenloft as a setting and loving it thusfar. I was looking at the firearms rules (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/weapons/firearms), though, and I was questioning what the impact would be on the game if they took a historically accurate amount of time to load.

To my understanding, soldiers were able to fire about 3 shots a minute with a flintlock rifle. 1 minute = 10 rounds, so 3 rounds for shooting, 7 rounds for loading. 7 / 3 = 2.333.

Would guns be unusable if their reloading times were doubled to 2 full round actions for rifles and 2 standard actions for pistols? If the reloading times were increased, what would be needed to balance them back out? Increasing the damage by one die size?

[NightbringerGGZ]

Main problem is you make it impossible to get iterative attacks off use feats like Rapid shot. This means that you'll have good damage at lower levels but it won't scale as you advance. You could pick up Vital Strike, but even that's not a great option if you're only getting a shot out every third turn.

You'd need to make some other changes to balance out damage, or players would just use bows instead.

[grarrrg]

Would guns be unusable if their reloading times were doubled to 2 full round actions for rifles and 2 standard actions for pistols? If the reloading times were increased, what would be needed to balance them back out? Increasing the damage by one die size?

Most people will probably argue that if you can't get off at least 1 attack per round with a weapon, then that weapon probably isn't worth using.
Bumping the damage die up one will _NOT_ do anything to fix this.

The most likely scenario for these load times is "just don't bother" or "one and done" (using gun for first shot, then dropping it and using something _useable_).

Instead of increasing load times, I'd start by simply dis-allowing Rapid Reload and Alchemical Cartridges. Making it a HARD Full-Round/Standard action (or limiting the reduction down to Move at fastest) would enforce the slowness, without making them unusable.


As compensation...I'm not sure. You'd have to noticeably bump up the damage to make up for it. They already hit Touch AC, so an accuracy boost seems odd (and old guns weren't known for their accuracy anyway).

[Blackhawk748]

Well iterative attacks are solved by grabbing Quick Draw and drawing a new pistol for every attack, or getting a double barrel. Basically what changing the reloads would do is make people have lots of guns, accurate but freakin annoying.

[Kantolin]

Insofar as PC use...

Weapon A does 1d8 damage, and can be used for multiple attacks per round as per your BAB.
Weapon B does 1d12 damage, but only once every second round.

Very few people will go for weapon B over weapon A (Which is I believe faster than your proposed change)

Now, if Weapon B did 2d8 damage every other round, then there's a reason to use it over a weapon that does 1d8 damage every round... until the 1d8 weapon can be used twice a round at BAB+6, in which we're back to square one.

If it was something like... uh, every round you spend packing the weapon, you (essentially) put a number of dice into it equal to the attacks you're squandering, then that'd at least have parity.
(So if Weapon A does 1d8 and gets four shots off in the span of time a similarly feated person could use Weapon B, then weapon B should at the very least do 4d8 to achieve parity. You actually want more than that, since the 4d8er is getting no real benefit over those extra rounds, but hey)

[Necroticplague]

Well iterative attacks are solved by grabbing Quick Draw and drawing a new pistol for every attack, or getting a double barrel. Basically what changing the reloads would do is make people have lots of guns, accurate but freakin annoying.

Which is fairly realistic (IIRC, early bandoleers holding a whole brace of pistols weren't unheard of), but would likely end up being taken to ridiculous levels as martials get more attacks. Even just from BaB alone, going through 12 pistols a combat at the higher level is fairly realistic. And Gods help if you want to dual-wield them, you'll end each combat in a small pile of pistols.

[Blackhawk748]

Which is fairly realistic (IIRC, early bandoleers holding a whole brace of pistols weren't unheard of), but would likely end up being taken to ridiculous levels as martials get more attacks. Even just from BaB alone, going through 12 pistols a combat at the higher level is fairly realistic. And Gods help if you want to dual-wield them, you'll end each combat in a small pile of pistols.

It gets worse if you make all of them aptitude (holy crap thatd be expensive) and use Lightning Maces :smallbiggrin: This could be slightly mitigated by using an entire bandoleer of double barrel pistols.

And ya realistic, but by the gods i dont wanna reload all of those :smalleek:

[TrollCapAmerica]

Crossbows had similar loading times and can be fired quite often in D&D

[Nerdynick]

Crossbows had similar loading times and can be fired quite often in D&D

Crossbows also had goatsfoot levers that made it way easier (like, matter of seconds) to c0ck.

[TrollCapAmerica]

Crossbows also had goatsfoot levers that made it way easier (like, matter of seconds) to c0ck.

And heavy crossbows still had to be cranked

The point is making them work in D&Ds abstract system means a lot of realistic things get ignored

[Eloel]

The point is making them work in D&Ds abstract system means a lot of realistic things get ignored
This. A vanilla Level16 fighter is going to make an attack every 1.5 seconds with a Greataxe. I don't know what a realistic time looks like, but I'm not convinced that is one.

I'd make it an attack action to reload a pistol, and two to reload a rifle, and call it a day.