Gunpowder Goes Poof! [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Regitnui

2018-01-21, 07:55 AM

Now I know we have these medieval stagnation debates fairly often, but i'm going to throw this video into the mix. It's old, I know, but bear with me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycEZIbQqA8A

Given that the average D&D world is full of swords, armour and crossbows, we can assume that they're alternate histories to ours, where gunpowder isn't known. Whether that means it hasn't been discovered yet or won't ever be discovered is up to you. I know Forgotten Realms has divine interference to prevent gunpowder and gunpowder weapons from becoming a thing. Other settings do not. It is safe to say that, given a roughly similar middle ages/Roman Empire level of technology, D&D universes would follow the path described in the video; stronger metals, better crossbows, and more frequent, less deadly conflicts.

What this video doesn't cover is the addition of magic to this scenario. Forgive me for this, but I'm going to use Eberron as my running example, as most other D&D settings are even less advanced technologically. Eberron in the current time is 998YK, after a century-long, continent-wide war. Needless to say, this has given technology in both its mundane and mystical senses a great push forward, putting Eberron into its Reneissance/Industrial Revolution. With the Last War being such a looming shadow over the setting, we also get a great look at what the military technology of the time is.

Unsurprisingly, Eberron relies on hand-to-hand combat. Largely, the War was two armies lined up on either end of a field and proceeding to beat the snot out of each other with blades, armour and crossbow volleys. Pretty standard. Until you add the magic. Let's add the basic warmage; capable of casting shield and magic missile. That's kinda like a normal soldier, except the metal is replaced with arcane energy. Shillelagh makes this base mage competent enough in melee as well.

So adding a warmage doesn't do that much, perhaps? Not until you start adding what else a warmage could do. 5e has pared down a lot of the utility spells from previous editions, so looking at the spell list of a wizard (assume our basic soldier-mage is a half- or third-caster) is practically a list of ways to hurt people. When you add spells like dancing lights (signals), shape water (move/freeze a river), and mold earth (instant cover), war stops being similar to anything we've experienced.

And all of that is anywhere in the D&D worlds, provided you can scrounge up/train a selection of casters. When you add industry and the creation of magic items, you can make wands that produce any number of personal effects, and staves that can launch projectiles across a battlefield. Other magic items, individually little more than a curiosity for adventurers, become downright gamechanging in a war. Which general wouldn't want Eyes of the Eagle, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, and Necklaces of Adaption on their best troops? Battlefield surgery becomes less deadly when Keoghtom's Ointment is available on a large scale. The effectiveness of cavalry is upped tremendously when the battalion is mounted on saddles of the cavalier.

All this is what Eberron has done, and what other D&D worlds could do. Imagine an army kitted out with Uncommon magic items, like all the ones I mention above. Formidable hardly begins to describe it. Guns would hardly help when the opposing army has a front line casting shield and a second line with magic missile and burning hands ready to go. I admit I have little experience with modern gunpowder weaponry, but everything we have today has been built after centuries of refinement. Give one army as many primitive guns and ammo as they want, and ask them to face down the magic army. The simple reason why nobody in D&D has considered gunpowder weaponry worth the effort to develop, illustrated in a military setting.

So personally, I feel I have good reason to declare guns a curiosity and obsolete technology at best when considering D&D. If you enjoy having guns or the gunslinger in your campaign, don't let this rain on your fun. That's you. This topic is just to give you something to think about, and argue that there's a good reason D&D doesn't depict someone shooting a giant with a rifle on the front of the PHB. Thanks to you if you've read this far before starting your inevitable reply. Thank you as well if your reply below is an engagement rather than a knee-jerk reaction.

tl;dr Don't be lazy. Read the whole thing.

Laserlight

2018-01-21, 08:58 AM

Squiddish

2018-01-21, 11:01 AM

Actually, the forgotten realms has divine intervention specifically to make gunpowder and gunpowder weapons a thing, which is exactly why neither became common.

Ellisthion

2018-01-21, 11:14 AM

Tiadoppler

2018-01-21, 11:18 AM

This is a cool idea, and (if my personal campaigns didn't bump up the cost and rarity of magical items) is exactly what nations in my stories would try to do. Things to consider:

In D&D 5e, spellcasting ranges are ridiculously, absurdly short. Off the top of my head, the max range of a direct combat spell like Eldritch Blast, with the Spear invocation is 300' (100 yards) and the max range of Magic Missile is 120' (40 yards). Longbows have a somewhat reasonable 'long' range of 600' (200 yards) which I would say represents ability to hit a specific target accurately, not the ability to volley fire longer distances.

In the 1700s and 1800s, many cannons had a range of roughly 2000 yards (6000'), and 600' (200 yards) was point-blank range, the range at which the cannon did not need to elevate at all, it just pointed straight at the target. 600' was scarily close melee range for artillery.

Starting in the early 1900s, artillery had a range best described in miles (or kilometers). Machine guns were accurate at well over a mile, and an individual soldier's rifle could be accurately aimed at 2000' (700 yards). 300', or 100 yards was scarily close melee range for an individual soldier with a standard rifle.

The maximum range of Eldritch Blast, when optimized for distance, is the minimum preferred distance for a soldier... a hundred years ago.

So, when comparing effectiveness of a gunpowder weapon, to a D&D spell, consider that a Magic Missile would barely be considered a ranged weapon by the standards of gunpowder era combat. It's a last ditch, pistol-like self defense tool. A fireball has only a 20' radius of effect, compared to the tens or hundreds of yards grenades or artillery can affect.

Anymage

2018-01-21, 11:19 AM

Lots of things that are real military tactics wouldn't work in D&D, due to the way hit points work. Real life injuries can cause disability and have long-term repercussions (there's a reason that infected wounds were so bad back then), while hit points are just lost until you can get them back. Plus the fact that hit points make combat more predictable and reduce the odds of a given wound being deadly, while one stray bullet in real life is often enough to be fatal.

(And all that ignores the specific healing rules in 5e, where you refill you rHP and a good chunk of your HD just for a good night's sleep. As a game mechanic it works much better than glacial rates of healing did in 3e and before, but it's a place where good game mechanics and strict adherence to real life diverge.)

Aside from firearms specifically, though, magic will indeed take over the role of "highly dangerous weapon". Guns can exist, be backup weapons for characters who don't normally expect to need a weapon, and can with the right class features/feat support/whatever be a character's special shtick. When magic takes over for technology, though, you can still expect advances in both tactics and thaumaturgy. People who innovate and advance will simply outcompete those who stagnate, unless there's some cosmic level power with its thumb on the scale. So a setting where guns aren't impactful enough to completely redefine military strategies is very possible. A setting with millenia of medieval stagnation is less so.

War_lord

2018-01-21, 11:25 AM

Given that the average D&D world is full of swords, armour and crossbows, we can assume that they're alternate histories to ours, where gunpowder isn't known. Whether that means it hasn't been discovered yet or won't ever be discovered is up to you.

I hate the phrase "average D&D world". When people say that what they really mean is "the published settings" More specifically, they mean Grayhawk, FR, and Eberron. It's impossible to say anything about the "average" D&D world, because you haven't done a poll of every third party and homebrew world. Guns and cannons exist in my setting, and it really doesn't effect anything, because guns consistent with the D&D tech level aren't very useful in the small scale encounters of the D&D adventuring party.

I know Forgotten Realms has divine interference to prevent gunpowder and gunpowder weapons from becoming a thing. Other settings do not.

Grayhawk essentially has divine intervention, in that gunpowder and explosives simply don't function on Oerth, because Gygax A. Didn't want them to be a thing in his games (with one single exception) and B. Didn't believe (or at least claimed not to due to the feud) in the idea of world building in the Tolkien sense. Oerth was named Oerth to annoy people who did.

Forgotten Realms has the aforementioned Divine Intervention, Dark Sun takes place after a collapse and Eberron is a tumorous growth from 3.5's video game approach to magic items. Again, this was never motivated by "alternative" (counterfactual) history. It has its origins in Gygax's lack of interest in including firearms in his own game. Although he also wrote Expedition to the Barrier peaks, so that's somewhat inconsistent.

It is safe to say that, given a roughly similar middle ages/Roman Empire level of technology, D&D universes would follow the path described in the video; stronger metals, better crossbows, and more frequent, less deadly conflicts.

It's not "safe to say" anything, the problem with counterfactual history is that it's devoid of any factual basis. Any answer to a "what if" question is inherently incorrect, because it's uninformed speculation.

What this video doesn't cover is the addition of magic to this scenario.

Because that would be absurdist.

Forgive me for this, but I'm going to use Eberron as my running example,

Regitnui using Eberron in a discussion? No, I'm not about to forgive you for it.

as most other D&D settings are even less advanced technologically.

Eberron is not technologically advanced, Eberron is arguably suffering the worst case of stasis of all of the published settings. Eberron does not at any divine intervention keeping all of the advances hidden, Eberron doesn't have rare magic, any schmuck can use magic. Eberron should have society totally unlike anything in D&D or even in our history, because any idiot can use magic. But it doesn't, and the excuse used is literally "because magic".

Eberron in the current time is 998YK, after a century-long, continent-wide war. Needless to say, this has given technology in both its mundane and mystical senses a great push forward, putting Eberron into its Reneissance/Industrial Revolution.

Magic is not technology. It's magic. Magic is not indistinguishable from significantly advanced technology, because the technology can be explained. As for the great push forward, the train knockoff hasn't had a speed increase in over 100 years right?

With the Last War being such a looming shadow over the setting, we also get a great look at what the military technology of the time is. Unsurprisingly, Eberron relies on hand-to-hand combat. Largely, the War was two armies lined up on either end of a field and proceeding to beat the snot out of each other with blades, armour and crossbow volleys. Pretty standard.

Pretty stupid in a setting where wands are common and any idiot can use magic. In the real world infantry nowadays play second fiddle to artillery, tanks and airpower. Armies should not be a thing in setting where people who can cast fireball are easily found. Entire wars should hinge on duels between mages.

Until you add the magic. Let's add the basic warmage; capable of casting shield and magic missile. That's kinda like a normal soldier, except the metal is replaced with arcane energy. Shillelagh makes this base mage competent enough in melee as well.

So adding a warmage doesn't do that much, perhaps? Not until you start adding what else a warmage could do. 5e has pared down a lot of the utility spells from previous editions, so looking at the spell list of a wizard (assume our basic soldier-mage is a half- or third-caster) is practically a list of ways to hurt people. When you add spells like dancing lights (signals), shape water (move/freeze a river), and mold earth (instant cover), war stops being similar to anything we've experienced.

And all of that is anywhere in the D&D worlds, provided you can scrounge up/train a selection of casters.

Why would these people want to serve in an army? Furthermore, if magic is that easy to learn, why are there conventional wars at all?

When you add industry and the creation of magic items, you can make wands that produce any number of personal effects, and staves that can launch projectiles across a battlefield. Other magic items, individually little more than a curiosity for adventurers, become downright gamechanging in a war. Which general wouldn't want Eyes of the Eagle, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, and Necklaces of Adaption on their best troops? Battlefield surgery becomes less deadly when Keoghtom's Ointment is available on a large scale. The effectiveness of cavalry is upped tremendously when the battalion is mounted on saddles of the cavalier.

These items are interesting because they're rare boons for heroes, if they're mass produced in the millions (which you would have to do for them to effect anything on the army level) they stop being interesting and they're just things that exist. There's no reason to prize a magic item if you can buy crates of them from a wholesaler.

All this is what Eberron has done, and what other D&D worlds could do.

No, because they don't make the same assumptions Eberron does. I get that you love Eberron, not everyone does. Even most people who like Eberron probably don't want it to be the only setting in existence. Which seems to be the point of this thread.

Imagine an army kitted out with Uncommon magic items, like all the ones I mention above.

Then they WOULDN'T BE UNCOMMON.

Formidable hardly begins to describe it. Guns would hardly help when the opposing army has a front line casting shield and a second line with magic missile and burning hands ready to go.

Yes, guns would not be very useful in a world where magic is so simple to grasp and use that even pvt. Snuffy can throw down like Elminster. Most D&D settings aren't like that.

I admit I have little experience with modern gunpowder weaponry, but everything we have today has been built after centuries of refinement. Give one army as many primitive guns and ammo as they want, and ask them to face down the magic army. The simple reason why nobody in D&D has considered gunpowder weaponry worth the effort to develop, illustrated in a military setting.

The reason nobody has considered gunpowder in Grayhawk is because it literally doesn't work there. The reason no one has gunpowder in FR is because a god doesn't want it messing with status quo. Your description of armies of Gish soldiers doesn't fit anywhere but Eberron.

EDIT: Since you're not familiar with modern gunpowder weaponry, let me give you a fact. Artillery shells, Missiles and Bombs kill FAR MORE infantry then other infantry do.

So personally, I feel I have good reason to declare guns a curiosity and obsolete technology at best when considering D&D. If you enjoy having guns or the gunslinger in your campaign, don't let this rain on your fun. That's you. This topic is just to give you something to think about, and argue that there's a good reason D&D doesn't depict someone shooting a giant with a rifle on the front of the PHB. Thanks to you if you've read this far before starting your inevitable reply. Thank you as well if your reply below is an engagement rather than a knee-jerk reaction.

Do you realize you never talk about anything but Eberron? Do you realise there's a whole wealth of setting material out there that isn't Eberron? Because you just wrote an Essay that boils down to "all D&D should be Eberron". To which my response is, no, I hate Eberron and you've just explained one of the reasons why. Because magic means nothing to you people.

Tiadoppler

2018-01-21, 12:05 PM

When I world-build the armed forces of nations in D&D, I have an overarching concept I like to use:

Magical items are rare, expensive, and are best used by a small number of elite, or at least highly trained forces. They're time consuming to make, and they're owned by the government that ordered their production. They're generally not available to the public, or sold to foreign nations. They take the place of things like rocket launchers, flamethrowers, tanks, and aircraft, in that they provide a force multiplier to a larger number of soldiers wielding cheap, non-magical gear. An experienced adventuring party isn't just a bunch of random people with common gear who somehow defeat dangerous foes; they're Iron Man or Batman with a collection of powerful equipment well beyond what most nations can produce and employ. A level 15+ party isn't a mercenary band; they're a squadron of freelance, plausibly deniable, fighter jets for hire.

Any nation that could afford to give three or four magical items to every soldier in their army would have far simpler and more efficient ways to conquer the world.

Regitnui

2018-01-21, 12:13 PM

All of this is presuming that casters are common, willing to join the army, not better employed elsewhere, and easily replaced.

Ranged AoEs such as Shatter and Fireball would force dispersion instead of mass formations.

It'd be interesting to generate a pair of battalions (800 men ea) and put them against each other for a few iterations and see what evolves, but since we don't have functional mass combat rules, it might take... a while.

I can tell you that low-level casters are fairly common in Eberron, and you can train people to use basic spells (cantrip, level 1). I'm basically drawing that off the Magic Initiate feat, which any human can have as standard.

I'm no expert on mass combat either in reality or in tabletop, so it could be interesting to run guns vs magic sides.

Actually, the forgotten realms has divine intervention specifically to make gunpowder and gunpowder weapons a thing, which is exactly why neither became common.

That's Gond, right? The god of artifice/technology/whatever they call it?

Ship combat is what's giving me problems. In real life, cannons were mainstream long before war galleys were retired in favour of sailing ships, but sailing ships are pretty common in many D&D worlds. But... even in a moderate-magic setting, replacing all the cannons with spellcasters is completely infeasible due to the number of casters you'd need. So how do you reconcile this?

The video above, cutting out gunpowder altogether, says cannons don't exist. But if I recall the 3.5 book Stormwrack correctly, you could have ballistas, figureheads that alchemically "breathed" fire or acid, and even small trebuchets. Not sure about the accuracy or practicality of any of those. There is always the old-fashioned tactic of ramming, and personal-range magic might be especially devastating in that sort of battle.

So, when comparing effectiveness of a gunpowder weapon, to a D&D spell, consider that a Magic Missile would barely be considered a ranged weapon by the standards of gunpowder era combat. It's a last ditch, pistol-like self defense tool. A fireball has only a 20' radius of effect, compared to the tens or hundreds of yards grenades or artillery can affect.

You make excellent points, but we're talking about a world where spells like magic missile and tools like crossbows were more effective and safer than the most primitive gunpowder flamethrowers first used. Magic against even pre-WW1 weaponry would be either even or weaker, but I'm proposing that gunpowder never took off because magic outcompeted it from the beginning.

Aside from firearms specifically, though, magic will indeed take over the role of "highly dangerous weapon". Guns can exist, be backup weapons for characters who don't normally expect to need a weapon, and can with the right class features/feat support/whatever be a character's special shtick. When magic takes over for technology, though, you can still expect advances in both tactics and thaumaturgy. People who innovate and advance will simply outcompete those who stagnate, unless there's some cosmic level power with its thumb on the scale. So a setting where guns aren't impactful enough to completely redefine military strategies is very possible. A setting with millenia of medieval stagnation is less so.

I agree with you. Medieval stagnation really makes no sense. A setting held at a particular point in its history, like Eberron, makes more sense than a setting where time is explicitly passing, but nobody's innovating. At the very least, you'd expect to hear about new spells being invented in Forgotten Realms, for example. The whole trope of fantasy worlds having had their great expansion of magic in the ancient times is starting to sound extremely silly.

Any nation that could afford to give three or four magical items to every soldier in their army would have far simpler and more efficient ways to conquer the world.

This is true. I specifically chose Uncommon items with the idea that they'd be given to the specialist units. The troops with Eyes of the Eagle, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, and Necklaces of Adaption would be the equivalent of Navy SEALS, SAS or Recces. For lack of a better term, the "officially employed adventurers". But yes, any faction who could afford that many magic items probably already rules the world. Or at least thinks it does.

Tiadoppler

2018-01-21, 01:11 PM

You make excellent points, but we're talking about a world where spells like magic missile and tools like crossbows were more effective and safer than the most primitive gunpowder flamethrowers first used. Magic against even pre-WW1 weaponry would be either even or weaker, but I'm proposing that gunpowder never took off because magic outcompeted it from the beginning.

Yikes, gunpowder flamethrowers sound terrifying. If gunpowder exists in a setting, it represents a chemical energy storage method similar to alchemist's fire, so it'd be able to find a niche in the 'making things go BOOM' department. People are very good at thinking of ways to use BOOM. You will get things like mining explosives and sappers pretty much instantly. Eventually, people will figure out how effective grenadiers and simple cannons are. Even a very simple cannon can attack a fortification from well beyond archery/spellcaster range, and even a cheap, early grenade will outperform a simple fireball spell.

The concept of gunpowder weaponry didn't start with small pistols and rifles. It started with siege weapons and explosives and evolved from there.

This is true. I specifically chose Uncommon items with the idea that they'd be given to the specialist units. The troops with Eyes of the Eagle, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, and Necklaces of Adaption would be the equivalent of Navy SEALS, SAS or Recces. For lack of a better term, the "officially employed adventurers". But yes, any faction who could afford that many magic items probably already rules the world. Or at least thinks it does.

That's a lot more reasonable, but then you're left with the result that once again the common infantry soldier has only non-magical gear, and things like alchemist's fire or simple gunpowder grenades become much more attractive for mass deployment and standard issue.

I do agree that this would take time. Going from the discovery of gunpowder to the revolver or repeating rifle in less than a few hundred years would require some specific source of knowledge or a series of genius-level breakthroughs.

JackPhoenix

2018-01-21, 01:15 PM

Snip

Sure, but that's about five centuries (or more) of developement since the gunpowder weapons first appeared. When the black powder is discovered for the first time, it's alchemical substance that burns easily... well, we already have alchemist's fire for that, does the same thing, but cheaper. It would be a novelty, but nothing special. It would be put aside in favor of cheaper and more effective materials (we have plenty of such examples in our own history). But if the alchemists do that, they miss one advantage black powder has over alchemist's fire: you can't use the later for guns, at least not if you don't have an idea what are you trying to accomplish up front. It's liquid, it's more dangerous to use and store, and it's self-igniting on contact with air.

There's also the loss of one of the advantages early gunpowder weapons offered: the noise, fire and smoke was scary to those unfamiliar with it. In D&D, people already know Fireballs, dragons, undead and other, more terrifying things exist, even if they've never encounter one before. Compared to that, guns are nothing.

Tiadoppler

2018-01-21, 01:23 PM

Richard369

2018-01-21, 01:25 PM

There are a ton of great points on here. Inevitably it all boils down to personal flavor. Something like Eberron is a high magic epic, whereas many other campaigns go off of a more traditional, low magic, Lord of the Rings feel.

Personally, I place gunpowder with culture. In my campaign world, Dwarves have a more imperial China-esque culture as opposed to the horns and wings of Asgardian society. They have cannons, arquebus and even some rifles. Still, it's a rare mechanic because of the guild and royal laden control of gunpowder itself.

Regitnui

2018-01-21, 01:33 PM

I agree, and I was editing my comment to include your first point when you posted that.

It takes a long time to refine the technology, and it'd start out crude. Still, it wouldn't become lost knowledge, and you'd still get people making Alchemical Thunderdust, and it'd be refined over time into something recognizable as a cannon or hand bomb.

Who's to say that gunpowder (or black powder) isn't a component of Alchemist's Fire? It's simply made in such a way that it isn't going to go boom unexpectedly.

There are a ton of great points on here. Inevitably it all boils down to personal flavor. Something like Eberron is a high magic epic, whereas many other campaigns go off of a more traditional, low magic, Lord of the Rings feel.

Personally, I place gunpowder with culture. In my campaign world, Dwarves have a more imperial China-esque culture as opposed to the horns and wings of Asgardian society. They have cannons, arquebus and even some rifles. Still, it's a rare mechanic because of the guild and royal laden control of gunpowder itself.

Eberron is low-level wide-access magic, which is why I'm not using any spell above first-level in my arguments, but I agree. If you like using guns and gunpowder in your games, I'm not going to say you're wrong. I've heard of a lot of people assigning the development of gunpowder to dwarves or gnomes. I post this to say why guns aren't the inevitable result of technological development. When your magic is as quantifiable and predictable as D&D, you (as an NPC general) have better options.

War_lord

2018-01-21, 01:50 PM

When your magic is as quantifiable and predictable as D&D, you (as an NPC general) have better options.

In most settings Wizards and other Mages make up only a tiny portion of the population, the whole point of a firearm, even a medieval one is that with a relatively small amount of training anyone can use it effectively. Magic in most D&D worlds requires either special ancestry, a pact with certain powers, or years and years of training. You'd understand that if you actually bothered doing research before your latest sermon on the mount.

Regitnui

2018-01-21, 02:04 PM

In most settings Wizards and other Mages make up only a tiny portion of the population, the whole point of a firearm, even a medieval one is that with a relatively small amount of training anyone can use it effectively. Magic in most D&D worlds requires either special ancestry, a pact with certain powers, or years and years of training. You'd understand that if you actually bothered doing research before your latest sermon on the mount.

Magic Initiate feat - Bang, anyone knows three spells.
Eldritch Knight - Rote learning, presumably integrated with regular combat training
Arcane Trickster - Spells cast from practice.
Druid - Belief in the power of nature
Bard - Literally singing magic into being.
Monk - Magic-like "ki".
Ranger - Who knows where ranger spells come from?
(Not yet official in 5e)
Artificer - Infuse magic into items. Does involve study, I'll admit.
Mystic - Magical effects (not necessarily spells) from the power of the mind.

In 5e, it's positively easy to get a little bit of magic. Don't be so exclusionary. If you want magic to be a rare and difficult thing, that's great. But it's just not the case in 5e. You describe Sorcerer, Warlock/Cleric and Wizard. I give you 7 options that don't follow your list.

And assuming the regular adventurer is a step above the normal person, what's stopping anyone else from learning the same skills any of these classes have to a lesser degree? Like 3.5's NPC classes; not a wizard, a mage. Not a fighter, a warrior. Not a druid, a gleaner. Not an artificer, a magewright.

8wGremlin

2018-01-21, 02:08 PM

thoughts:

Plate armour costs: 1500gp

or

3 x Broom of Flying (uncommon): 500gp

one simple magic item changes the course of the whole battle.

Imagine 10 valiant knights on chargers, vs 30 lightly armoured archers, all with a Broom of Flying.

----

Next thought:

How would a high elven army change that with every elf having a single wizard spell?
How would a Gnomish army change that with every gnome casting minor illusion, and speaking to small animal scouts?
How would a variant Human army change with every human getting a feat?
What if that feat was Magic Initiate?

How many bards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, wizards and warlocks do you have per capita?
How many would serve in an army, or be drafted in case of emergency?

----

Next thought:

Scenario:
Your little hamlet of 50 1st level villagers is about to be attacked by:
10 knights (approx. @1700gp of equipment), 20 archers (@300gp), and 20 men at arms (@500gp), they are all standard 1st level (normal) humans fighters.

You have 20 villagers trained to defend.
What would you pick, as race, and how would you equip them?

----

tl/dr
access to magic and your race change everything about a society.

Tiadoppler

2018-01-21, 02:32 PM

Re: Availability of magic and class levels to commonfolk

An adventurer is described as having a 27 point buy for their stats, leading to stat arrays like
15,15,15,8,8,8 or 13,13,13,12,12,12 or 13,13,13,13,13,10
but an average, expected score for a stat in the general population is a 10.

A 10 is described as an average score, so most people in this society would have a 12 point buy array: 10,10,10,10,10,10 or 12,12,12,8,8,8 or 15,9,8,8,8,8

Many, if not most people would not qualify for any class at all (if you require 13 in the primary stat, similar to multiclassing) much less two or more. Not every NPC has class levels. A Variant Human Commoner can take magic initiate and learn a few spells, but with a +1 in their casting stat and no proficiency, they'll have a +1 to hit, saving throw of 9.

Full-fledged adventurers are rare! They have stats and abilities that go beyond what most people are capable of. It's okay, and desirable for PCs to be special. Don't water down your campaign by letting every priest take four or five combat-optimized cleric levels, every hermit be a mid-level monk, every bandit be a rogue, every scholar be a wizard.

TL;DR:
D&D is a game about extraordinary adventurers. Most NPCs are not extraordinary adventurers. Most NPCs do not meet the prerequisites for becoming an extraordinary adventurer. Don't use a 27 point array to stat up Jimmy the Street Urchin or Bernard the Village Priest unless these NPCs are actually retired, experienced heroes.

War_lord

2018-01-21, 02:40 PM

Magic Initiate feat - Bang, anyone knows three spells.

Feats are an optional rule, even if we're assuming you're in a game that uses them, that's not how NPC's work in 5th edition.

Eldritch Knight - Rote learning, presumably integrated with regular combat training
Arcane Trickster - Spells cast from practice.
Druid - Belief in the power of nature
Bard - Literally singing magic into being.
Monk - Magic-like "ki".
Ranger - Who knows where ranger spells come from?
(Not yet official in 5e)
Artificer - Infuse magic into items. Does involve study, I'll admit.
Mystic - Magical effects (not necessarily spells) from the power of the mind.

NPCs in 5th edition don't normally have classes, they have monster style blocks. Even the NPCs based on character classes are only based on those classes. This isn't 3.5.

In 5e, it's positively easy to get a little bit of magic.

For players, not for NPCs.

Don't be so exclusionary. If you want magic to be a rare and difficult thing, that's great. But it's just not the case in 5e. You describe Sorcerer, Warlock/Cleric and Wizard. I give you 7 options that don't follow your list.

DMG pg 9, core assumptions, The World is Magical "Practitioners of magic are relatively few in number, but they leave evidence of their craft everywhere"

DMG pg 9, it's your world, Magic is everywhere "The Eberron setting makes the use of magic an everyday occurrence, as magical flying ships and trains carry travels from one great city to another"

So actually you're the one advocating things that aren't the case in default 5e.

And assuming the regular adventurer is a step above the normal person, what's stopping anyone else from learning the same skills any of these classes have to a lesser degree? Like 3.5's NPC classes; not a wizard, a mage. Not a fighter, a warrior. Not a druid, a gleaner. Not an artificer, a magewright.

There's nothing stopping an NPC being a Wizard, there's an entire list of NPC wizard stat blocks from different schools of magic. But most worlds don't have publicly funded magic schools for anyone to just "decide" to be a Wizard, in most worlds divine casting requires a lot of faith, in most worlds to be a Bard you have to be really talented. It's like asking why everyone in the real world doesn't have a PhD, or isn't a rockstar.

Laserlight

2018-01-21, 02:43 PM

I can tell you that low-level casters are fairly common in Eberron, and you can train people to use basic spells (cantrip, level 1).

You started out talking about "The average D&D world", not "This applies only to Eberron". My point was that whether mass war casters are feasible depends on several factors, which are highly setting specific.

I'll point out that longbows are better weapons than early handguns: more accurate, longer range, better rate of fire, etc. But you can train a replacement arquebusier in a couple of months, as opposed to the many years that it takes for a good longbowman; therefore gunpowder replaced archers.

I'm basically drawing that off the Magic Initiate feat, which any human can have as standard.

Which any Player Character can have, which is not necessarily the same thing.

War_lord

2018-01-21, 02:48 PM

You started out talking about "The average D&D world", not "This applies only to Eberron".

I fear you face an uphill battle if you hope to keep this on a non-Eberron topic.

Regitnui

2018-01-21, 02:59 PM

*snip*
D&D is a game about extraordinary adventurers. Most NPCs are not extraordinary adventurers. Most NPCs do not meet the prerequisites for becoming an extraordinary adventurer. Don't use a 27 point array to stat up Jimmy the Street Urchin or Bernard the Village Priest unless these NPCs are actually retired, experienced heroes.

(also applies to Laserlight) Alright, I concede the point. It's unlikely that a significant number of people have class levels. Can we agree it is possible in most D&D worlds to learn both a few weak spells and how to use wands? Perhaps using time on par with longbowmen, like Laserlight said above?

You started out talking about "The average D&D world", not "This applies only to Eberron". My point was that whether mass war casters are feasible depends on several factors, which are highly setting specific.

I'll point out that longbows are better weapons than early handguns: more accurate, longer range, better rate of fire, etc. But you can train a replacement arquebusier in a couple of months, as opposed to the many years that it takes for a good longbowman; therefore gunpowder replaced archers.

What about crossbows, though? How long does it take to train up a new crossbowman vs an arquebusier?

danpit2991

2018-01-21, 03:53 PM

Ship combat is what's giving me problems. In real life, cannons were mainstream long before war galleys were retired in favour of sailing ships, but sailing ships are pretty common in many D&D worlds. But... even in a moderate-magic setting, replacing all the cannons with spellcasters is completely infeasible due to the number of casters you'd need. So how do you reconcile this?

it would be expensive but then again so were cannon lets say that a kingdom had a large navy and was a trading powerhouse (mages are expensive ) lets use the english navy in the mid 1700s as an example they had about 300 warships divided by "Rates"

they had about 20 first and second rate ships (the largest and best armed first rate 100+ guns second 90-100 guns)
around 40 third rate (70-90 guns ) and the rest were various lesser rated ships anything from 10 gun sloops to small frigates and brigs and the like

lets just say that our fictional kingdom has 100 warships because england was very aggressive in its colonization and power projection all over the world (and 100 is eaiser to work with) so it has a breakdown like this

10 first rate
20 second rate
30 third rate

50 lesser warships to include medium/ small warships,transports, couriers ect.

lets look at what levels of spells each ship would be expected to be able to bring to bear (going to focus on combat)

well i believe a ship of the first and second rates would have the most powerful mages so lets say capable of fireball at a minimum so a 5th level caster at the least and if each 1st and 2nd rate ship gets at least one 5th level caster thats 30 5th level casters so extremely expensive to field that kind of magic but i figure each first rate should have 3 mages of at least 5th and their apprentices so without some sort of magic academy i dont see them putting up those numbers because remember a 5th level caster is near godlike to normal people

Laserlight

2018-01-21, 08:07 PM

(also applies to Laserlight) Alright, I concede the point. It's unlikely that a significant number of people have class levels. Can we agree it is possible in most D&D worlds to learn both a few weak spells and how to use wands?

No. It is possible that in some D&D worlds, etc. etc. but I don't think most DMs have peasants casting spells.
Of course, you can certainly do that in your setting, but that boils down to "if you move the Setting Dials in such a way that mass warcasters become possible, then mass warcasters become possible."

What about crossbows, though? How long does it take to train up a new crossbowman vs an arquebusier?

Not particularly relevant, since the point was that a weapon which appears worse in theorycrafting can be better in practice, due to logistical reasons.

But to answer the question anyway...I'd say gunpowder won out for several factors: your cavalry can use gunpowder pistols, morale effect of noise, you can use a firearm as a club, and of course it can penetrate plate.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-01-21, 08:22 PM

Even if NPCs can take the equivalent of feats, how many peasants are going to take combat spells? I'd put light, mending, and prestidigitation way ahead of fire bolt. Note that NPCs (or any character really, outside of game conveniences) don't get a list of spells and classes that they can choose from. If they know a cantrip, it's because they've picked up a knack somewhere that relates to their background and history. There are also (I'd imagine) lots of spells not in the PHB--farming, cooking, and manufacturing spells. The songs that a bardic-ly inclined peasant sings as he plows which helps the ground be fertile and the oxen pull straight and not get sick. The rituals that cooks perform over the rising bread dough or over the preserves to ward off spoilage. Etc. Those are the spells that most people learn. PHB spells are for adventurers, whose job often involves killing things. So those are the spells adventurers learn. But those aren't all the spells, nor are they the common ones to be learned.

And we know that magic (even wizardry) can't be a matter of just knowing the right words. If it were so, wizards wouldn't be limited to spell slots, because perfect repetition would have the same effect. You need talent. And the fiction is full of this--wizard apprentices who were better than others, some that wanted to be wizards but couldn't hack it, and not just because of raw intellect (a common source of fiend warlocks if you ask me), etc.

My setting has ~10% of the people able to cast a single 1st level spell/day. Which type depends on race and society--high elves tend to be wizards (because their race selected for wizardry and invented it in the first place). Wood elves tend toward druidism and ranger-style casting, because they invented that. Humans and halflings tend to the clerical, because they were the ones that first gained power by worshiping the gods. Dragonborn tend to sorcery (because, well, dragons). Etc.

Edit: and wands, by the basic rules, are super expensive. There are a few wands (secrets, war mage +1, magic detection, and magic missiles in the SRD) that are uncommon, most are rare+. And even an uncommon wand (500 gp) is most of a year's wage for a skilled hireling, or 3 years wage for an unskilled one. A rare wand is oodles more (more than several suits of plate). If you can find them--it's not like there are factories churning out wands in most settings.

Vogie

2018-01-21, 09:49 PM

I like this idea just because I like diversity of options and counterplay... these are great game mechanics, but not how real life works. In general, whoever wins is copied, and the people group who win the most get copied the most, which evens the memetic battlefield until someone with a new idea comes along.

In a world without gunpowder, but one where magic exists, I would explore the "evolution in isolation" idea applied to those countries. If something as awesome and world bending as magic exists, each locale should warp that idea to their own perspective. Sure, there's going to be heirarchical countries, where there's legions of mooks around their handful of supertalented ultrapowerful wizards - but they may be matched by a rival nation where they train EVERYONE to do basic magic, where even the average Helmet bro can launch magic missiles.

In starting with a diversity mindset, the different nations will look at magic in their own ways.

Nautical-focused nations would have aggressive focus on using magic to control the seas and weather, perhaps even making it so that the only way one can become a captain of a vessel is by mastering nautical magic.
A hypermiltiaristic culture, such as the Spartans, may require magic as a part of their discipline and toughness regimen that everyone goes through.
An existing feudal, bloodline-oriented culture may warp their "houses" so that magic is part of solely the ruling classes.
A Socially Specialist-oriented culture may opt for their magic-users as specialists, to be operating as a support systems for the "real" troops.
A Capitalist-materialist nation may eschew actual practitioners instead focusing a way to mass-produce magic items
A noble-combat-venerating culture may only focus on the "buffing" or subtle magical arts, treating the obvious use of magic as dishonorable.
An isolationist nation will prize different aspects of magic than a nomadic one

PeteNutButter

2018-01-21, 11:24 PM

A few unrelated points, many have been touched on:

1) D&D worlds tend to be balanced on the idea that magic (at least high level magic) is extraordinarily rare. If high level isn't rare in your world, then you have do a ton of work explaining how the world is still how it is, or how that magic has changed it, or just ignore if you treat your game world like a video game.

2) Combat in a D&D world with even a moderate amount of magic would probably more closely resemble modern combat than it would medieval combat. Armies would not face each other in the open all lumped together in "fireball formation." Armies would be spread out as far as communication would allow. Being 40 ft apart should prevent most AoE spells from really doing much.

3) Wealthy non-magical folks would be CONSTANTLY looking for ways to level the playing field. In fact, you could make the case that magic would hasten the development of military technology, as non-mages would be desperate for a fair fight. History has shown many times that people generally advance out of necessity. If you have a sword and he has a sword, ok that's fine. But if you have a sword and he can shoot fireballs at you, it's time to hit the books and labs to see what we can do.

4) This is more directed at the video than the OP, but it ignores a couple major things. First, it makes a presumption that European civilization dominated the world due to gunpowder, when they didn't even invent it. Perhaps there is a cultural element there... like all that war they were doing. Second, it ignores all the other modern weapons that exist or could theoretically exist, that aren't in widespread use just because guns are so cheap and effective. It turns out war is an Optimizer. If they invent a ray gun they have to ask, does it kill faster, further, easier, and cheaper than a gun? If not, then keep making dem guns. If guns didn't exist, we would decidedly NOT be using swords in warfare in the 21st century. For crying out loud, the Byzantines had flame throwers in their boats. Don't you think people would perfect that? All you need is a pump system, and something sprayable and flammable. These technologies exist in most D&D worlds separately already.

Regitnui

2018-01-22, 12:21 AM

No. It is possible that in some D&D worlds, etc. etc. but I don't think most DMs have peasants casting spells.
Of course, you can certainly do that in your setting, but that boils down to "if you move the Setting Dials in such a way that mass warcasters become possible, then mass warcasters become possible."

I didn't say you have every peasant casting spells. I said you have maybe 1 in 5-10 casting cantrips and a first-level spell. Is it possible in your average D&D world to teach the average person to cast basic spells? I don't propose we have John on the farm casting plant growth daily on the crops. I propose we have John conscripted into the army during war and taught fire bolt alongside where to aim the pointy end of a sword.

Not particularly relevant, since the point was that a weapon which appears worse in theorycrafting can be better in practice, due to logistical reasons.

But to answer the question anyway...I'd say gunpowder won out for several factors: your cavalry can use gunpowder pistols, morale effect of noise, you can use a firearm as a club, and of course it can penetrate plate.

Your cavalry can cast spells from horseback (at least, there aren't any rules against a wizard throwing spells while mounted), you can find louder noises than gunfire in basic cantrips (thunderclap), I'll give you the part about the club, but a staff is similar, and an attack cantrip (by RAW) can hurt someone in plate just as effectively as a gun.

How long does it take to train a crossbowman? "Why gunpowder won" isn't an answer to "why aren't enhanced crossbows an equal option".

Tiadoppler

2018-01-22, 12:47 AM

Your cavalry can cast spells from horseback (at least, there aren't any rules against a wizard throwing spells while mounted), you can find louder noises than gunfire in basic cantrips (thunderclap), I'll give you the part about the club, but a staff is similar, and an attack cantrip (by RAW) can hurt someone in plate just as effectively as a gun.

How long does it take to train a crossbowman? "Why gunpowder won" isn't an answer to "why aren't enhanced crossbows an equal option".

A commoner (who isn't amazingly intelligent or charismatic) who is taught Fire Bolt or Eldritch Blast has a weak and very short range attack that requires a free hand for Somatic components. It's up to the DM how long it takes to teach a commoner a spell, but even a shortbow would be more effective than a weak cantrip as an enemy army approaches. If you have superior range, you can start attacking the enemy before they get close enough to hurt you at all. Defeating the enemy without being hit is a good thing, and Fire Bolt and Eldritch Blast have a base range of only 40 yards.

Crossbows are similar in training time to early muskets. Crossbows are bulky, and difficult to reload while seated. Gunpowder weapons are much less bulky, and cavalry could carry multiple single-shot pistols, firing one after another. I could definitely see wizards on horse-(or gryphon-)back supporting an army, but the truly high level wizards are rare and valuable.

The cantrip thunderclap can only be heard a hundred feet away. For hearing safety, you should be wearing ear protection if you're that close to a rifle. Rifles are easily audible for a mile or more (depending on terrain). Thunderclap does have a damaging close range magical effect, but the actual sound level seems more like a quiet shout.

I'll admit that the DMG guidelines for firearms are freakishly short-ranged, and using them as written wouldn't make combat spellcasting (or even the other standard D&D weapons) obsolete.

War_lord

2018-01-22, 08:32 AM

How long does it take to train a crossbowman? "Why gunpowder won" isn't an answer to "why aren't enhanced crossbows an equal option".

Eh, yes it is an answer, to get a Crossbow with the same power behind it, you need a higher draw weight. A higher draw weight means more tension on the weapon, so it needs thicker wood and a heavier string. So they're very heavy. And at that point the string becomes for too taut to be pulled but a human hand and needs a special winding device. By the time you have a Crossbow with the penetrating power of an arquebus, you don't have an individual weapon, you have a small ballista. That's the hard limitation of a crossbow, the only way to really "enhance" it is to make it bigger, and a bigger crossbow is more complex and harder to wield.

Azgeroth

2018-01-22, 09:26 AM

Eh, yes it is an answer, to get a Crossbow with the same power behind it, you need a higher draw weight. A higher draw weight means more tension on the weapon, so it needs thicker wood and a heavier string. So they're very heavy. And at that point the string becomes for too taut to be pulled but a human hand and needs a special winding device. By the time you have a Crossbow with the penetrating power of an arquebus, you don't have an individual weapon, you have a small ballista. That's the hard limitation of a crossbow, the only way to really "enhance" it is to make it bigger, and a bigger crossbow is more complex and harder to wield.

that entire premise is assumptions built on material strength.. use 'magic' and suddenly that hand crossbow hits like a scorpion..

also, if we assume that the guns we have in DnD are the very first kind, with lead shot, wadding, and powder having to be put into the barrel from the business end, they suck whole sale.. the only reason they were adopted is they are easier to operate, ammunition is easier to manufacture, and also economics, make more sell more, make more sell more, make more sell more.. these things were also prone to exploding in your face..

if we assume we have the first kind of 'modern' gun, where a bullet is loaded into a chamber, then fired. the use gets easier, but ammo production gets ALOT more complex, and thus alot more expensive..

so, we either have a questionable fighting force, marginally better than crossbows, aside from the glaring weakness at range, much more inferior to longbows, but easier to pick up and use. or a weapon superior to bows or crossbows, reliable, easy to use, but ammo is ludicrously expensive..

look at that, humans rocking around with flint locks? elves with longbows on horses.. win goes to the elves.

or, throw in 1 level 5 caster, and all those silly rifleman get set on fire, and there powder explodes in there pocket..

got modern guns, with no industrial revolution to support the manufacturing? your not arming a large scale army with these.. and you will burn the ammo a hell of a lot faster than it can be made..

though this is looking at warfare, magic wins warfare, no matter the opposition, magic..

for your general peasant though, that flintlock is AMAZING. it hits harder than the heavy crossbow, doesnt take years to learn, and is alot easier to reload, also its cool as ****

Laserlight

2018-01-22, 10:41 AM

humans rocking around with flint locks? elves with longbows on horses.. win goes to the elves.

Six weeks later, you've replaced the musketeers. It takes years to train a good archer, moreso if mounted. The musketeers can take 10 casualties for every archer and win by attrition. That why I said above that the "better" weapon may not actually be better, once you take into account logistical factors.

or, throw in 1 level 5 caster, and all those silly rifleman get set on fire, and there powder explodes in there pocket.

First off, OP has been claiming that these are commoners without caster levels. Do you really have enough L5 casters in the army?
Second, if you do, the response is to disperse, just like modern infantry doesn't line up in Napoleonic battalion assault columns.
Third, historical rifles have a significant range advantage over the ranges given for casters--for example, in the Peninsular war, Gen Colbert was killed by a 95th rifleman firing from ~900 ft.

Obviously, if you want massed caster warfare, you can modify the setting to make that plausible. For that matter, you can modify the setting to have interstellar travel with mercenary hippos. But I think it's a stretch to call either of those the "average" D&D setting.

Tiadoppler

2018-01-22, 12:16 PM

that entire premise is assumptions built on material strength.. use 'magic' and suddenly that hand crossbow hits like a scorpion..

Then imagine how hard an enchanted pistol, with magical ammunition would hit. An upgrade's an upgrade. No reason for your campaign world to put some sort of artificial split between 'guns' and 'other weapons'.

also, if we assume that the guns we have in DnD are the very first kind, with lead shot, wadding, and powder having to be put into the barrel from the business end, they suck whole sale.. the only reason they were adopted is they are easier to operate, ammunition is easier to manufacture, and also economics, make more sell more, make more sell more, make more sell more.. these things were also prone to exploding in your face..

if we assume we have the first kind of 'modern' gun, where a bullet is loaded into a chamber, then fired. the use gets easier, but ammo production gets ALOT more complex, and thus alot more expensive..

Agreed. It takes a lot of tech advancement to go from the first attempts at a new technology, to a mature technology. Saying 'it's more expensive' is somewhat inaccurate though. It's expensive in different ways. A firearm would be more expensive than a crossbow, and much more expensive than a shortbow/longbow, but the ammunition is smaller, lighter, and with production lines, cheaper. Also, bullets can't be fired back at you once you've shot them at the enemy (with exception of some early roundshot in muzzleloaders, I believe).

so, we either have a questionable fighting force, marginally better than crossbows, aside from the glaring weakness at range, much more inferior to longbows, but easier to pick up and use. or a weapon superior to bows or crossbows, reliable, easy to use, but ammo is ludicrously expensive..

look at that, humans rocking around with flint locks? elves with longbows on horses.. win goes to the elves.

Well, one, ammunition for a muzzleloading musket is pretty trivially cheap. A hunk of a common metal that can be melted into a ball on a stovetop (lead), a piece of wadding (paper, cloth), and a relatively simple chemical (gunpowder). Until the formula for gunpowder became widely spread, arrows would still be cheaper. Once every little town has a few people who know how to cobble it together, and many cities have factories for making the stuff, it becomes cheaper than arrows.

Second, early firearm range is pretty similar to longbow and crossbow range. Why not let the elves be smart? Elven rangers with rifles would be amazing skirmishers or snipers. I'm not interested in the species vs species thing at the moment. Yes, trained cavalry longbowmen (Hmm, how well do longbows really work on horseback?) would defeat a similarly sized force of conscript musketmen. The problem is that it's cheaper for nations to mass produce conscript musketmen, then it is for nations to train large numbers of archer-cavalry specialists, so you'll end up with a hundred conscript musketmen against twenty cavalry-archers.

or, throw in 1 level 5 caster, and all those silly rifleman get set on fire, and there powder explodes in there pocket..

Only if the silly riflemen are silly enough to let the caster get close enough to shoot a fireball. 40 yards is a VERY short distance. A level 5 caster is tough to train, and riflemen are easy to train. If a level 5 caster dies to kill a dozen musketmen, the musketmen are still winning. A fireball can be cast a limited number of times per day, and requires a lot of training to use. A grenade is similar in effect (if not more so), requires minimal training, and is only limited by how many you can carry.

got modern guns, with no industrial revolution to support the manufacturing? your not arming a large scale army with these.. and you will burn the ammo a hell of a lot faster than it can be made..

Agreed. If people have rifles and ammunition, but don't know how to make them/repair them/build spare parts, they're useless over time.

though this is looking at warfare, magic wins warfare, no matter the opposition, magic..

Umm. In D&D 5e, "Wish" wins warfare. Maybe in 3.5 wizards could dominate everything by providing raw effectiveness that large numbers of soldiers simply couldn't match, but in 5e there aren't as many stacking buff combos, and there is bounded accuracy. Spellcasters would absolutely dominate medicine. A healing spell, restoration, or even resurrection are all amazing, and cannot be duplicated even by modern science. Spellcasters can mind control people, turn invisible, and summon monsters from parallel universes. Spellcasters would not dominate, or even keep up with military destructive capabilities.
Fireball is an underpowered hand grenade. Meteor Swarm isn't a cruise missile, or artillery, or even a tank's main weapon: it's a few rounds from a small mortar team.

for your general peasant though, that flintlock is AMAZING. it hits harder than the heavy crossbow, doesnt take years to learn, and is alot easier to reload, also its cool as ****

Agreed. And if it's amazing and affordable for a peasant, it's amazing and affordable for a nation who wants a big, cheap, effective army.

War_lord

2018-01-22, 01:08 PM

that entire premise is assumptions built on material strength.. use 'magic' and suddenly that hand crossbow hits like a scorpion..

And we just explained that in any of the D&D setting that aren't Eberron, you're not going to get your hands on enough of these magic crossbows to equip enough of your army for it to matter. I don't really care if in your setting you just use "magic" as an asspull when someone logically explains why one of your ideas doesn't work in reality, but the OP seemed to want to have everyone's ideas justified on the grounds of some kind of internal logic.

also, if we assume that the guns we have in DnD are the very first kind, with lead shot, wadding, and powder having to be put into the barrel from the business end, they suck whole sale.. the only reason they were adopted is they are easier to operate, ammunition is easier to manufacture,

We've already explained that they had a better power to weight ratio, could punch thorough Plate reliably, could be used as a club if the formation found itself in close combat, and a well timed volley could stop an infantry charge dead. Crossbows can't do any of these things.

and also economics, make more sell more, make more sell more, make more sell more.. these things were also prone to exploding in your face..

If the Arquebus was a totally useless and actively dangerous scam of a weapon, it wouldn't have replaced the Crossbow in the first place. There's two possibilities here.

A. Either the finest military minds and greatest armies of the Late Medieval and Renaissance periods in were a bunch of utter morons who all somehow got scammed into basing their military tactics around weapons inferior to what they had been using for over 200 years previously.

Or B. They knew things you don't.

My money is on B.

so, we either have a questionable fighting force, marginally better than crossbows, aside from the glaring weakness at range, much more inferior to longbows, but easier to pick up and use.

What range disadvantage? You realize that accuracy doesn't really matter right? In ranged combat before the advent of rifling it was formation vs formation, you're not aiming at point targets.

look at that, humans rocking around with flint locks? elves with longbows on horses.. win goes to the elves.

It takes years to train a single man in the use of the medieval longbow, horses are incredibly expensive to keep and historically cavalry was mostly drawn from the nobility. Elves in most fantasy settings are even more rare.

So lets assume your 200 elves come up against my 2,000 Musketeers, and somehow I have no cavalry to drive yours off. Even if they wipe out my formation to the last man and lose only 25 of their own, all that means is that next time it's my 2,000 Muskets vs 175 of your elves. Eventually I win because unlike you I can just draft more farmboys.

or, throw in 1 level 5 caster, and all those silly rifleman get set on fire, and there powder explodes in there pocket..

Assuming you can even convince them to play soldier for you without paying them absurd amounts of gold and giving them command of their own army, all it takes is one lucky shot to scupper your whole plan. Oh, and they're not "riflemen". They're Arquebusier. A "rifle" is called a rifle because there's rifling in the barrel to make the bullet spin, making it more accurate.

though this is looking at warfare, magic wins warfare, no matter the opposition, magic..

Magic doesn't win warfare, because in most D&D settings, you either A. don't have access to enough magic to effect things on a large enough scale or B. the other side has just as much magic and can adjust their tactics to counter yours. If armies were full of people casting fire spells from their fingers, you wouldn't have formation combat anymore.

(Hmm, how well do longbows really work on horseback?).

They don't, at least if we mean the English style Longbow (and in a vs Guns debate it has to be). Historically the French created units of "Mounted Longbowmen" as part of the Compagnies d'ordonnance reforms, but these where mounted for mobility and had to dismount to shoot, much like the later concept of Dragoon cavalry. I didn't bring it up because none of this applies in D&D logic.

Tiadoppler

2018-01-22, 03:26 PM

They don't, at least if we mean the English style Longbow (and in a vs Guns debate it has to be). Historically the French created units of "Mounted Longbowmen" as part of the Compagnies d'ordonnance reforms, but these where mounted for mobility and had to dismount to shoot, much like the later concept of Dragoon cavalry. I didn't bring it up because none of this applies in D&D logic.

I think the Japanese have a longbow-style horse archery technique, but it's not the English Longbow at all. It's very asymmetrical (Google says it's called a "Yumi"). I think if you use the phrase D&D logic, you have to put logic in quotes, or at least use a [/Sarcasm] tag :D

D&D "Logic" ftfy

danpit2991

2018-01-22, 05:02 PM

as far as cost goes i dont think a simple matchlock would be more expensive than a crossbow, a flintlock probably more expensive due to having more fiddly bits both would definitely be more expensive than bows but arrows are more expensive than bulets,but still it comes down to expensive weapons(guns) and cheap soldiers who are easily trained vs cheap weapons and expensive hard to train soldiers.

you can train some one to be proficient with a firearm in a matter of days compared to the years it takes to make a effective bowman the crossbow i think would be somewhere in the middle here as to cost and training but once you factor in ammo cost then the gun is the winner and that folks is why we stopped using bows in combat they are just more efficient and cost effective

danpit2991

2018-01-22, 09:03 PM

Regitnui

2018-01-22, 11:23 PM

danpit2991

2018-01-22, 11:53 PM

8wGremlin

2018-01-23, 12:05 AM

War_lord

2018-01-23, 12:14 AM

Just in case anyone is interested. But 3.5 had information on just how many of what you got in a population.

I could dig that up if anyone is interested. It’s what most of the current settings were based off.

Not really useful information. 3.5 forced certain assumptions onto the worlds. Such as NPCs and PCs being fundamentally the same thing to force "system mastery" (read: buying all the splatbooks) onto the DM and having magic items be absolutely everywhere as a result of the decision to have them be baked into expected character progression (a result of Monte Cook's open and strange dislike of non-caster classes being even slightly playable)

danpit2991

2018-01-23, 12:21 AM

Regitnui

2018-01-23, 12:29 AM

Just in case anyone is interested. But 3.5 had information on just how many of what you got in a population.

I could dig that up if anyone is interested. It’s what most of the current settings were based off.

The old occupations and races tables? That could be fairly useful to this discussion, if only for the system-neutral demographic info. I'll cast a vote for having them. They could add to the discussion.

Danpit, could you go back to your long post and add punctuation? I want to respond, but I can't make heads or tails of it.

Tiadoppler

2018-01-23, 01:58 AM

So let's do some alternate history theorizing, including D&D's low-level magic and its quantifiable effects. Especially since D&D magic is almost scientific; it's repeatable, verifiable, and definable when used in the ways described in the books.

Okay!

Lifestyle of a D&D 5e commoner: (PHB 157)
A poor lifestyle costs 2sp per day, or 73 gp per year
A modest lifestyle costs 1gp per day, or 365gp per year
A comfortable lifestyle costs 2gp per day, or 730 gp per year

Maintenance of common buildings: (DMG 127)
Farm, 5sp per day, or 182.5 gp per year
Shop, 2gp per day, or 730 gp per year

A skilled craftsman can craft 5gp per day of equipment (PHB 187), or 1825 gp per year
This would pay for the maintenance of a shop, a comfortable lifestyle, and savings of 1gp per day, if he's able to sell what he produces.

Even something like a consumable, common magical item (potion of healing) would cost nearly 2 months of his savings.
An emergency medical service like Revivify would cost 10 months of savings, and would only work if there was a spellcaster capable of casting level 3 spells within shouting distance.
A Resurrection spell would cost two and a half years of a craftsman's savings.

Another way to look at it: Let's pretend that 1gp is $50USD. You can live comfortably on $100(2gp) per day. A potion of healing would cost $2,500, which compares favorably to many modern medical expenses. A Resurrection spell would cost $50,000, as trivial as buying another car to a multi-millionaire, but a difficult expense requiring a loan for most others. A permanent rare magical item might cost $250,000, similar to an up-armored HMMWV. A permanent very rare magical item might cost $2,500,000, roughly 1/3 of the cost of a modern tank.

The US is a rich country of 300,000,000 people. The US has around 230,000 HMMWVs and 10,000 M1A3s. If the US were a D&D nation, they'd have 230,000 rare magical items and 30,000 very rare magical items (This is a gross oversimplification, and it's just looking at these two, relatively common and famous vehicle types). So, in a rich, modern nation, in a global economy, the government can afford 1 very rare magical item for every 10,000 taxpayers, and 1 rare magical item for every 1000ish taxpayers. This is a good maximum value.

If a D&D nation is poorer, and has a smaller population, this number decreases quickly. Let's (be generous and) assume that Baldur's Gate has an economy 75% as efficient as a modern, globalized, Earth nation. Baldur's Gate has a population of around 100,000 people, and it is a large city. They can afford 8(7.5) very rare magical items and 75 rare magical items for their armed forces.

In the Forgotten Realms at least, nations seem to max out at around 5,000,000, which lets them field armies with 3750 rare items and 375 very rare items. That's a significant number, but it's not huge and magical items in D&D5e aren't as overpowering as they were previously. Powerful magical items would be rare and exciting, but it's something that people would see occasionally.

I know we ended up with guns and missiles in the Real World. But what about a D&D world with their (implied) rules of physics? What would war or weaponry be like there? To be clear, I am talking about everything, including the unexplainable-by-our-standards magic, when I say D&D physics. What can we draw out into a Watsonian view of the world's Laws by having the Doylist RAW?

There are intelligent species who can fly and swim underwater. An 'air force' and 'navy' could each have a significant infantry component rather than relying solely on large, expensive vehicles.

Mind control and perfect duplication of an individual both work. Nations would be incredibly paranoid of spies. Anybody coming back from a trip to a potentially hostile foreign land might be scanned telepathically or tested magically. There would be no leaders visiting each other for fear that they would be replaced by a doppelganger.

Afterlives are real, and pleasant, and your Great Great Grandfather says he's got a spare house (with a pool) waiting for you when you hit your third death save, and why haven't you gotten married yet? Immortality is an achievable goal if you're strong enough. People literally get stronger and smarter and faster by killing others.

If you kill enough people and animals with karate, you stop aging.
If you kill enough people and animals, and learn magic spells, you can find a spell called Wish that can do almost anything.
If you kill enough people and animals in the name of your deity, your deity will grant you the power of... bringing some of them back?

War_lord

2018-01-23, 02:54 AM

This discussion of "guns are strictly better than everything" is great, and brings up good points after the insistence that gunpowder must exist. However, what if gunpowder doesn't exist/doesn't work? Would we end up with something closer to technologically advanced D&D, where adamantine and mithril are new alloys for swords and armour? Would crossbows or wands take the place of pistols?

Adamantine and Mithril would have to be A. possible to produce on the same scale as Steel, B. Inexpensive enough that Kingdoms/Republics can actually afford it and C. reasonably cost efficient vs return on investment compared to just using steel, particularly steel produced using major advances in Metallurgy.

That's more the sort of direction I was hoping for, not the "guns are best and the natural culmination of warfare." So let's do some alternate history theorizing, including D&D's low-level magic and its quantifiable effects. Especially since D&D magic is almost scientific; it's repeatable, verifiable, and definable when used in the ways described in the books.

You repeatedly cast aspersions on the effectiveness of early gunpowder weaponry. In fact a central thesis of your opening post is that guns are obsolete in D&D, not one setting, all of D&D. Your original premise that no one would bother inventing guns. Multiple people explained why that not the case. And instead of just admitting that you got it wrong, you're pretending that wasn't part of your premise at all, and that everyone else is at fault for addressing it. You didn't begin with an open question, you began with authoritative statements.

"Eberron as Useful Model.

Several people who aren't me have already explained to you that Eberron isn't useful as a model for anything but Eberron. How often does that need repeating before you accept it.

War_Lord, No." If War_Lord clicked here, I'm not interested in your opinion of Eberron. I've heard it. That's why this is in spoilers. You don't like Eberron, so ignore this please.

This isn't a classroom, you don't get to arbitrarily dictate who can and can't participate in a discussion. If you don't want Eberron in a discussion, stop making Eberron a keystone in your arguments.

One of Eberron's design goals was to take D&D's quantified and definable magic, especially in 3.5's rule-heavy system, and extrapolate to how it would change a society without excessively exploiting the rules. In essence, what would happen to a world where magic is used by people other than elitists in ivory towers, monsters of the physical and mental sort, and the madmen who explore ruins and fight both of the others. Wizard academies, BBEGs, and player characters, essentially.

Close, but no. Eberron isn't built on D&D's magic. It's build specifically on 3.5's magic. And one of the assumptions 3.5 makes is that magic items are incredibly easy and cheap to manufacture, making commerce in those items a viable trade, and putting magical weapons and armor within the reach of most professional warriors.

5th edition doesn't have that approach, in 5th edition magic items are rare boons, the core assumption is that you might never find any.

I know we ended up with guns and missiles in the Real World. But what about a D&D world with their (implied) rules of physics? What would war or weaponry be like there? To be clear, I am talking about everything, including the unexplainable-by-our-standards magic, when I say D&D physics. What can we draw out into a Watsonian view of the world's Laws by having the Doylist RAW?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_square

The pike square ends up being the dominant style of warfare without the existence of shot. Medieval stasis ensues, the only advances being improvements in metallurgy and castle construction.

And we should ignore inherent FR or setting bias in the books.

Your opening premise was "Eberron does this, all other settings can too". That's not setting bias? I could literally turn your premise on its head and use it to claim the gods of Eberron must exist. But I don't because Eberron is it's own setting and deliberately sets out to make itself as different from "default" D&D as it can while remaining within the rules of 3.5, and I can respect that even if I find it tiresome. Try that approach some time.

EDIT: And there's another separate point I'd like to make, people rail against Medieval Stasis in D&D for being silly or uncreative. But the fact of the matter is that the game needs to have that Stasis, because otherwise technology and politics are going to advance at a logical pace, and after 400 years, you'd be playing an entirely different style of RPG.

Regitnui

2018-01-23, 06:26 AM

EDIT: And there's another separate point I'd like to make, people rail against Medieval Stasis in D&D for being silly or uncreative. But the fact of the matter is that the game needs to have that Stasis, because otherwise technology and politics are going to advance at a logical pace, and after 400 years, you'd be playing an entirely different style of RPG.

I'm going to ignore the rest of your post, thought you make some good points before you slip back into condemning my taste as badwrongfun and disgusting. Also, if I was proven wrong on guns, then I was proven wrong. Want me to commit verbal seppuku in apology or something? Sheesh. Like I said, you don't like Eberron. Don't go on about it when the main contribution you have to the discussion regards it is blunt contradiction.

The Medieval Stasis is made ridiculous in Forgotten Realms explicitly because we're told time is passing with each new rules edition, adventure, and novel. It's a poor way to handle a setting, when most settings I've read, even outside D&D, describe a single point in a setting's timeline.

War_lord

2018-01-23, 07:06 AM

I'm going to ignore the rest of your post

Because once again you're shown to be utterly incapable of addressing an argument and would rather complain about feeling persecuted.

Regitnui

2018-01-23, 07:13 AM

Because once again you're shown to be utterly incapable of addressing an argument and would rather complain about feeling persecuted.

Are you aware how you've addressed me throughout this thread, and in fact anywhere else where I talk about Eberron in even the slightest depth? I simply ask you to behave in a civil manner. I've asked you via PM, I've asked you multiple times, but you don't seem to want to. I am too old to have to deal with bullies, so I'll ask you one more time to stop insulting me. Please.

Also, I'm checking this from work. I don't have time to put together a mega-post responding to everything right now.

War_lord

2018-01-23, 07:49 AM

Are you aware how you've addressed me throughout this thread, and in fact anywhere else where I talk about Eberron in even the slightest depth? I simply ask you to behave in a civil manner.

Are your aware that all of my posts have the exactly same tone, no matter who it is I'm addressing. and the only one projecting that as an attack is you? The issue here is that you're taking the fact that we disagree on virtually everything, particularly Eberron, which you insist on dragging into every discussion, and taking it as some kind of personal attack on you as a person.

I've asked you via PM, I've asked you multiple times, but you don't seem to want to. I am too old to have to deal with bullies, so I'll ask you one more time to stop insulting me. Please.

No one is insulting you, you just can't handle anyone challenging your ideas.

The Medieval Stasis is made ridiculous in Forgotten Realms explicitly because we're told time is passing with each new rules edition, adventure, and novel. It's a poor way to handle a setting, when most settings I've read, even outside D&D, describe a single point in a setting's timeline.

That's the price of having a metaplot, and metaplots were huge in roleplaying from the Dragonlance era right up until pretty recently. It's only pretty recently in RPG history that designers have looked back and said "you know, metaplot causes a lot of problems, and it doesn't sell merchandise anymore, lets stop with that"

Logosloki

2018-01-23, 07:55 AM

There was a web novel I was reading where there was magic in the world (amongst other things) but no small arms. There was even gunpowder in the universe, as well as cannons. The reason there was no push for anything smaller than a cannon though was a mixture of logistics and magic. You have to bring gunpowder with you. Which means there is going to be caches and wagons of gunpowder in your logistical chain. Which is vulnerable to attack and therefore explosion. Even if you get it to the battlefield though there is the issue that in this setting mages have a tendency to use wide area attacks, which are great for igniting things, like all that gunpowder that is around you and that you are carrying.

Cannons were still in because cannon crews could be shielded and ammunition was enchanted up the wazoo with runes and/or spells (sending out an artillery shell that air-bursts with a mixture of dispel runes and exploding runes was a party favour).

On the magic side of things. There are two major magical systems (and various minor ones). Either you use runes carved into objects (needs to be in proximity to something to activate but you can carve runes and give them to someone else to use since the magic has been paid for) or a keyword casting system (long range but requires you to memorise the flow of magic through your magical equivalent of a nervous system so takes years of practice and requires frequent training to keep the patterns alive in your mind). Magic is uncommon, those with magic though were given titles and made into the aristocracy. In return for their titles and lands the nobles perform as artillery mages, or if from wealthier or more shrewd families (or if they summoned a good familiar), they join various companies. The entire system works because the aristocracy are drilled from birth in both magic, weaponcraft, statesmanship and instilled a sense of noblesse oblige. Also it helps that the People on top are also from ancient and rather powerful families (Dude, one of the kings sits on a throne of fire because the kings always summon a phoenix which makes you nigh fireproof).

So, with the tangent over. It is reasonable in a world of magic that has superceded a certain degree of density that there may be no personal level of small arms. Not because there isn't gunpowder but because gunpowder causes issues in logistics.

2D8HP

2018-01-23, 08:56 AM

....there's another separate point I'd like to make, people rail against Medieval Stasis in D&D for being silly or uncreative. But the fact of the matter is that the game needs to have that Stasis, because otherwise technology and politics are going to advance at a logical pace, and after 400 years, you'd be playing an entirely different style of RPG..
Technological stasis need not be unrealistic.

Take (for example) a citizen of Athens in 500 B.C., advance her or him to 100 B.C., and technology is much the same, advance again to 300 A.D., still much the same, in fact from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D. (a thousand years), life for most hasn't changed that much (certainly not as much as someone who lived from 1870 to 1970 A.D.

It's with the combinatiom of the Moldboard Plough (in Britain late 6th century) with the Horsecollar (12th century), that there starts to be much change, but a rural laborer from say the 14th wouldn't feel that out of place in the 16th century, it's only in the second half of the 19th century that most peoples lives become much different than their grandparents, the Industrial Revolution wasn't called that for nothing! Now my grandfather started life in 1917, on a farm without electricity or indoor plumbing, and lived to see long enough to see the introduction of tractors, atomic energy, and the moon landing (he helped build components for NASA), so big changes, in contrast, except for internet access, my mother's life (born in 1946), hasn't seen such a dramatic shift in how she lives.

Technological progress is not continuous every year (we just assume that because of the last 150 years), there's been centuries with little change.

War_lord

2018-01-23, 10:04 AM

.
Technological stasis need not be unrealistic.

Take (for example) a citizen of Athens in 500 B.C., advance her or him to 100 B.C., and technology is much the same, advance again to 300 A.D., still much the same, in fact from 500 B.C. to 500 A.D. (a thousand years), life for most hasn't changed that much (certainly not as much as someone who lived from 1870 to 1970 A.D.

I have to disagree with that, at least when it comes to military technology and the political situation. In 500 B.C. heavy Hoplites are the greatest infantry force in Europe. Darius I is the King of an unimaginably vast and powerful (at least to the citizen of a Greek city) Achaemenid Empire, Rome is an obscure city state in a backwater part of the world, Greece is a series of independent cites, Corinth is a booming city. In 100 B.C that same obscure city state is now a vast empire, with uncontested control of the Mediterranean sea. They've also missed the entire rise of Macedonia, Alexander's invading the Achaemenids and establishing his own empire on the rubble, they missed that empire being carved up in the war of the Diadochi. They've totally missed the existence of the Helleno-Persian culture, although they'll find traces of it in Alexandria. One of the many wealthy cities named Alexandria that wasn't on the map when that person vanished, and in the kingdom of Pontus, which is also new to them. What was the heartland of the Persian empire is now ruled by a people called the "Parthians), who apparently won it off a Macedonian dynasty called the "Seleucids".

The city of Corinth doesn't exist anymore, since the Romans wiped them off the map for daring to oppose the total conquest of Hellas itself. Not that Corinth was independent at that time, since they had been subjects of the Macedonians. Oh, I forgot to mention that when our boy/girl was displaced in time in 500 B.C. the Macedonians were considered a joke of a people whose tribal armies were ineffective and who clung to the archaic notion of obeying a king, barely better then barbarians.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. It's tempting to gloss over history and say "nothing happened for 200 years", but in reality the world changed quite a bit. D&D setting with metaplot tend to be bad at copying that. Could you imagine the uproar if the next book advancing the FR metaplot had Baldur's Gate be demolished, every man dead and every woman and child enslaved?

Dr. Cliché

2018-01-23, 10:18 AM

All this is what Eberron has done, and what other D&D worlds could do. Imagine an army kitted out with Uncommon magic items, like all the ones I mention above. Formidable hardly begins to describe it. Guns would hardly help when the opposing army has a front line casting shield and a second line with magic missile and burning hands ready to go. I admit I have little experience with modern gunpowder weaponry, but everything we have today has been built after centuries of refinement. Give one army as many primitive guns and ammo as they want, and ask them to face down the magic army. The simple reason why nobody in D&D has considered gunpowder weaponry worth the effort to develop, illustrated in a military setting.

So personally, I feel I have good reason to declare guns a curiosity and obsolete technology at best when considering D&D. If you enjoy having guns or the gunslinger in your campaign, don't let this rain on your fun. That's you. This topic is just to give you something to think about, and argue that there's a good reason D&D doesn't depict someone shooting a giant with a rifle on the front of the PHB. Thanks to you if you've read this far before starting your inevitable reply. Thank you as well if your reply below is an engagement rather than a knee-jerk reaction.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but are you at all familiar with the development of gunpowder* weapons?

*Technically, most would be black powder weapons, since modern gunpowder is a relatively recent invention.

Here's the thing - early guns didn't dominate the battlefield. In fact, for a considerable period of time, guns were really weak. Their range was shorter than that of longbows, they had a much slower firing speed compared to longbows, and they had less penetrating power than a longbow (it would be centuries before they were able to penetrate full-plate armour at any meaningful range).

So why were they used at all?

Ease of training. Training someone to use a longbow (or warbow) took a considerable amount of time. And, in many cases, armies were formed at least partially from militia or conscripts (people who spent most of their time farming or such, and so wouldn't have the time to train with bows). However, training someone to use a gun was much, much easier (it also required far less strength than a warbow). And even in the case of professional soldiers, training them with guns instead of warbows saved a great deal of time.

My point is, guns weren't initially any sort of 'wonder weapon' - they were actually worse than many of their competitors, but gained popularity because of the ease with which someone could be trained in their use.

What's more, D&D also brings us an additional consideration - namely the small races. Let's just say that the longbow is the optimal weapon. Well, have fun trying to use one as a halfing or gnome. Even Dwarves, in spite of their strength, will probably struggle to use one simply because of its sheer size (or will have to settle for a smaller, weaker version). Hence, these races all have good reason to look for alternative weapons. In the case of Gnomes and Halflings, they'll also want weapons that aren't reliant on the user's strength - something that perfectly describes guns.

To go back to your example, let's assume that that army of mages auto-wins against any army using mundane weapons. Well, in this case, your army is dead regardless of whether they were using bows or guns. But which is more costly - losing an army of bowmen that you spent years training, or losing some gunners that you trained in just a few months? And which will be the easier replacement for your lost men?

TL:DR I think it's entirely plausible that, even in a world with magic, guns would still be developed and used.

Regitnui

2018-01-23, 10:35 AM

*Impressive maths snipped*

In the Forgotten Realms at least, nations seem to max out at around 5,000,000, which lets them field armies with 3750 rare items and 375 very rare items. That's a significant number, but it's not huge and magical items in D&D5e aren't as overpowering as they were previously. Powerful magical items would be rare and exciting, but it's something that people would see occasionally.

So if I'm allowed to draw that comparison, powerful magic items (Rare and up) would be much like high technology in our world. A drone, for example, might be the equivalent of a Rare magic item; everyone knows about them, and can plan for them, but not every nation has them or can field them.

There are intelligent species who can fly and swim underwater. An 'air force' and 'navy' could each have a significant infantry component rather than relying solely on large, expensive vehicles.

Mind control and perfect duplication of an individual both work. Nations would be incredibly paranoid of spies. Anybody coming back from a trip to a potentially hostile foreign land might be scanned telepathically or tested magically. There would be no leaders visiting each other for fear that they would be replaced by a doppelganger.

Afterlives are real, and pleasant, and your Great Great Grandfather says he's got a spare house (with a pool) waiting for you when you hit your third death save, and why haven't you gotten married yet? Immortality is an achievable goal if you're strong enough. People literally get stronger and smarter and faster by killing others.

While this is all excellent stuff, I'd like to point out that XP isn't necessarily for killing things, but resolving encounters. Nine times out of ten in a game that means "kill everything", but a lot of DMs offer Roleplay XP, or XP for ending encounters by talking down the opponents or avoiding a fight altogether. A person in D&D could get stronger by talking circles around progressively harder-to-fool people, like a lawyer. :smallwink:

I especially like the idea of navy and air force being heavily infantry-focused as well. It's a nice angle to explore. I was going to mention aerial mounts at some point before the battleking tangent. I'm less inclined to mention them now.

It is reasonable in a world of magic that has superceded a certain degree of density that there may be no personal level of small arms. Not because there isn't gunpowder but because gunpowder causes issues in logistics.

What's this novel? It sounds interesting.

.
Technological stasis need not be unrealistic.
.

I'll agree with you on that. We have lived in a massive acceleration of technological development. I wouldn't have been able to talk on a forum like this when I was in primary/elementary school. I remember phones going from hardly having a screen to being all screen. But it's not the time for that.

The unrealistic part in the medieval stasis of Forgotten Realms and others is that there's been little effort at change. Why have all the great spell-inventing mages died before Elminster started kissing Mystara's ethereal toes? Where are the wizards inventing the better fireball, as an example? Perhaps that's enforced by the Gods of Forgotten Realms, who are basically either benevolent or cruel dictators at this point.

I have to disagree with that, at least when it comes to military technology and the political situation.

War_lord, he was talking about technological stagnation, i.e. Nobody's developed new magical or mundane technology. You're talking about political stagnation, which hasn't been a thing ever since people learned how to disagree with each other. The odd part of the human Forgotten Realms is that they're almost as stable as elven (practically immortal) and dwarven (bureaucratic and traditional) Realms. Judging by our own history, watching individual human kingdoms and states in FR should be like the tides for the longer-lived races. Few civilisations here lasted more than a millenium; ten elven generations.

TL:DR I think it's entirely plausible that, even in a world with magic, guns would still be developed and used.

Apparently I'm not allowed to mention the "tumour off 3.5 item mechanics", but I'll do it anyway. I have been convinced that guns are a plausible weapon for fantasy worlds to develop, I'm not convinced that it's the only route to equivalent power. After all, [SETTING NAME REDACTED FOR TRIGGER] has cantrip or level-1-spell wands in the "personal sidearm" category, though I'm unsure of how ubiquitous those were in battles. Certainly after the war, they're used by spies, nobles and scientists, all people who could afford or be given magic items by a stockpiling authority.

And if you have a spell that throws a projectile over 60 feet, but can be enhanced to a greater range, why wouldn't mages or artificers try to make it get flung further?

War_lord

2018-01-23, 11:07 AM

Dr. Cliché

2018-01-23, 11:25 AM

Apparently I'm not allowed to mention the "tumour off 3.5 item mechanics", but I'll do it anyway. I have been convinced that guns are a plausible weapon for fantasy worlds to develop, I'm not convinced that it's the only route to equivalent power. After all, [SETTING NAME REDACTED FOR TRIGGER] has cantrip or level-1-spell wands in the "personal sidearm" category, though I'm unsure of how ubiquitous those were in battles. Certainly after the war, they're used by spies, nobles and scientists, all people who could afford or be given magic items by a stockpiling authority.

What I'd say is that it would probably depend on the rarity/cost of magic items.

If they're rare/expensive then, as you say, they're going to be mainly used by wealthy nobles and such. However, the basic soldiers are still going to be using mundane weapons of one sort or another.

However, if they're cheap and can be mass-produced, then I could easily see them replacing not just gunpowder weapons but also bows and crossbows (they're lighter, they're far easier to carry/conceal, you don't need to carry ammunition for them, and depending on the spell, you might not even have to aim them).

Not D&D, but there are some 'Fantasy WWII' books wherein the soldiers are basically shooting at one another with magic wands/staffs (referred to as 'sticks').

And if you have a spell that throws a projectile over 60 feet, but can be enhanced to a greater range, why wouldn't mages or artificers try to make it get flung further?

See, I think this sort of idea would be an interesting concept in and of itself. It just gets a bit weird with D&D mechanics, since the spells are done in a very rigid manner.

War_lord

2018-01-23, 11:26 AM

The unrealistic part in the medieval stasis of Forgotten Realms and others is that there's been little effort at change. Why have all the great spell-inventing mages died before Elminster started kissing Mystara's ethereal toes? Where are the wizards inventing the better fireball, as an example? Perhaps that's enforced by the Gods of Forgotten Realms, who are basically either benevolent or cruel dictators at this point.

And if you have a spell that throws a projectile over 60 feet, but can be enhanced to a greater range, why wouldn't mages or artificers try to make it get flung further?

The crazy magic inventing people were the Empire of Netheril. They killed the Goddess of magic and almost managed to destroy the Weave entirely with their antics. Anauroch, that massive, geographically impossible desert beside the Dalelands? That's a magical desert created when Karsus's attempt to become a god backfired and caused most of their floating cities to plummet to the ground. After that the new Mystara set hard limits on how powerful spells could be (9th level), and the event would obviously make future generations of Wizards weary of reckless magical experimentation.

2D8HP

2018-01-23, 11:34 AM

...early guns didn't dominate the battlefield. In fact, for a considerable period of time, guns were really weak. Their range was shorter than that of longbows, they had a much slower firing speed compared to longbows, and they had less penetrating power than a longbow (it would be centuries before they were able to penetrate full-plate armour at any meaningful range).....
The Battle of Cerignola in 1503 was largely won by Spain through the use of matchlock firearms, but the English warship The Mary Rose (http://www.maryrose.org/meet-the-crew/soldiers-and-gunners/archery/), which sunk in 1545 during Henry the 8th reign, still had longbows for war use, as the bone structure of skeletons recovered with the wreck indicate (they showed lifelong practice pulling the great draw weights), just as they were 100 years earlier, but in the time that Henry the 8th daughter Elizabeth was Queen, longbow were hardly used for war, even by the English, technology doesn't go forward at a steady pace, nor does it spread evenly, they're still people who live much like their ancestors did 1,000 years ago.

..he was talking about technological stagnation, i.e. Nobody's developed new magical or mundane technology.....
There is also real world historic precedent for technologies being lost, sometimes deliberately so.

The Chinese had and scuttled ocean going ships (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_history_of_China),

The knowledge of making

Roman concrete (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete)

was lost for centuries, and the recipe for

Greek fire (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire)

is still lost.

In my own work I've seen machines that functioned well for decades stop being used because the guy who knew how to maintain them died, increasingly plumbing fixtures in the building I maintain that work longer with less maintenance need to be replaced with inferior modern replacements because they're"obsolete" and replacement parts are no longer made, steam heating systems that provide more comfortable heat than modern forced air are replaced because the guys who knew how to build them are dead, etc.

...The odd part of the human Forgotten Realms is that they're almost as stable as elven (practically immortal) and dwarven (bureaucratic and traditional) Realms. Judging by our own history, watching individual human kingdoms and states in FR should be like the tides for the longer-lived races. Few civilisations here lasted more than a millenium; ten elven generations....
Yeah, various "Fantasyland" timescales are off (I'm looking at you Westeros), while at least in my youth, there were people still living much as their ancestors did 10,000 years ago (at least according to National Geographic), that some parts of a world, post agriculture, could remain technologically stagnant for centuries I may believe, but that all parts for 10,000 years do is a stretch.

I guess a wizard did it.

Dr. Cliché

2018-01-23, 11:42 AM

.
The Battle of Cerignola in 1503 was largely won by Spain through the use of matchlock firearms, but the English warship The Mary Rose (http://www.maryrose.org/meet-the-crew/soldiers-and-gunners/archery/), which sunk in 1545 during Henry the 8th reign, still had longbows for war use, as the bone structure of skeletons recovered with the wreck indicate (they showed lifelong practice pulling the great draw weights), just as they were 100 years earlier, but in the time that Henry the 8th daughter Elizabeth was Queen, longbow were hardly used for war, even by the English, technology doesn't go forward at a steady pace, nor does it spread evenly, they're still people who live much like their ancestors did 1,000 years ago.

Oh, absolutely.

I was just trying to get across that guns were initially worse than bows, but were still used for different reasons.

War_lord

2018-01-23, 11:44 AM

Lost technology isn't the same as "nothing was invented". A historical example of a state that stopped advanced would be Imperial China, under the Qing dynasty they became so used to the idea that China as the center of the world and that all else was inferior, that they actively began resisting innovation. That resulted in the rapid humiliation of the Empire by much smaller but more advanced colonial powers.

2D8HP

2018-01-23, 12:03 PM

Oh, absolutely.

I was just trying to get across that guns were initially worse than bows, but were still used for different reasons..
True, now I'm wondering why only the British had the lifelong training to use longbow, I guess I'll take the question to the

Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=22778693#post22778693)

Regitnui

2018-01-23, 12:35 PM

Eberron is one setting. The assumptions of Eberron do not apply to any other setting. Wands coming in by the crate load is one of those Eberron things. This has been explained, over and over. Like, people keep explaining why magic isn't going to replace every mundane weapon, and you just keep claiming it will.

Are you seriously claiming the Romans didn't invent anything? Like, was the engineering done by Gnomes in your version of history?

The Romans invented things. But there wasn't the massive acceleration in all technologies we've experienced over the past half-century or so. If a Roman smith made a shield, it was likely using the same techniques that the Greek 500 years earlier did.

And wands everywhere isn't just an Eberron thing. It happens in many fantasy universes, not just D&D. Eberron might be the premier example in D&D, but don't cut off every branch of speculation that you don't like. See below.

What I'd say is that it would probably depend on the rarity/cost of magic items.

If they're rare/expensive then, as you say, they're going to be mainly used by wealthy nobles and such. However, the basic soldiers are still going to be using mundane weapons of one sort or another.

However, if they're cheap and can be mass-produced, then I could easily see them replacing not just gunpowder weapons but also bows and crossbows (they're lighter, they're far easier to carry/conceal, you don't need to carry ammunition for them, and depending on the spell, you might not even have to aim them).

Not D&D, but there are some 'Fantasy WWII' books wherein the soldiers are basically shooting at one another with magic wands/staffs (referred to as 'sticks').

The problem there is mass production. As a setting in the middle of its Industrial Revolution, Eberron does have the means. Most other settings are stuck in the Middle Ages with little chance of ever leaving. That's where the theory topics like this come in. I think it's entirely plausible that FR, were it allowed to proceed technologically, would eventually mass-produce wands. Since gunpowder is being intentionally kept out of people's minds by their God of Artifice, it's a small step, equivalent to going from hand cannons to matchlocks.

See, I think this sort of idea would be an interesting concept in and of itself. It just gets a bit weird with D&D mechanics, since the spells are done in a very rigid manner.

There was a theory I read that the somatic, verbal and material components are how spells developed in D&D. At first, they were quite literally just trying to force your will on the world. Then someone discovered that using two lodestones made mending simpler to cast. Later, someone (probably randomly swearing at a difficult problem) learned that a certain sequence of syllables made it even easier. Finally, someone else realised that if you held the broken pieces together somehow (in clamps, other people's hands, or with string) and make a certain gesture, the process was even easier.

Via that method, mending would have gone from 3rd level down to cantrip through magical innovation.

There is also real world historic precedent for technologies being lost, sometimes deliberately so.

The Chinese had and scuttled ocean going ships (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_history_of_China),

The knowledge of making

Roman concrete (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_concrete)

was lost for centuries, and the recipe for

Greek fire (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire)

is still lost.

In my own work I've seen machines that functioned well for decades stop being used because the guy who knew how to maintain them died, increasingly plumbing fixtures in the building I maintain that work longer with less maintenance need to be replaced with inferior modern replacements because they're"obsolete" and replacement parts are no longer made, steam heating systems that provide more comfortable heat than modern forced air are replaced because the guys who knew how to build them are dead, etc.

Lost technology I have no trouble with. It's a great storytelling trope. What I find unusual is when you can toss your players back in time a century and people still talk the same, use the same spells and items (mundane or magic) the same way, and know precisely what the players are talking about when they ask for the "lost artefact of notinmytime". English from a century ago is odd. English from 500 years ago is for all intents and purposes a different language.

Yeah, various "Fantasyland" timescales are off (I'm looking at you Westeros), while at least in my youth, there were people still living much as their ancestors did 10,000 years ago (at least according to National Geographic), that some parts of a world, post agriculture, could remain technologically stagnant for centuries I may believe, but that all parts for 10,000 years do is a stretch.

I guess a wizard did it.

Or a tyrannically repressive "Lawful Good" god. Also the fantasy version of Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale). After all, we only live for about 80 years on average, a generation being about 20. How can fantasy authors really understand that human civilisation (recorded) is only about 5000 years old? That's practically infantile in most fantasy worlds.

Tiadoppler

2018-01-23, 12:43 PM

So if I'm allowed to draw that comparison, powerful magic items (Rare and up) would be much like high technology in our world. A drone, for example, might be the equivalent of a Rare magic item; everyone knows about them, and can plan for them, but not every nation has them or can field them.

Yeah, you might get an army that fields a rare item at the platoon level (one item as a support for a few dozen soldiers), or you might get an army that fields extremely elite forces (a squad where each soldier has several items each) in small numbers among a much larger number of non-magically-equipped troops.

You'd definitely get specialist teams in which each member has a variety of common/uncommon equipment, but these would be rarely seen simply because of the cost involved.

While this is all excellent stuff, I'd like to point out that XP isn't necessarily for killing things, but resolving encounters. Nine times out of ten in a game that means "kill everything", but a lot of DMs offer Roleplay XP, or XP for ending encounters by talking down the opponents or avoiding a fight altogether. A person in D&D could get stronger by talking circles around progressively harder-to-fool people, like a lawyer. :smallwink:

I especially like the idea of navy and air force being heavily infantry-focused as well. It's a nice angle to explore. I was going to mention aerial mounts at some point before the battleking tangent. I'm less inclined to mention them now.

I meant the XP thing mostly as a joke. Could you imagine a world in which people can become immortal, or grant wishes, by having a dramatic personal life, or a quirky-but-consistent personality? Maybe the reason NPCs are weak, boring and not fleshed out is because... they're boring people, and they can never gain RP experience because of that. I'm going full-on meta here.

Okay, here are my thoughts on combat:

Tall, picturesque stone castles would be made obsolete by magic (stone shape, just for starters) and aerial bombardment. They would be replaced by cheaper (to build, and to replace) earthworks and bunkers with overhead cover. WWI style trenches and bunkers would be extremely effective in limiting the effects of magical spells and weapons dropped from above. Armies would not stand in Fireball formation volleying at each other, they'd have to spread out and take cover to avoid magical effects.

When you imagine a 'traditional' D&D ship, you're probably thinking of an Age of Sail vessel, with something like ballistae, catapults, or magical doodads as broadside weaponry. This is a great design for dealing with other surface combatants, but a poor design for defending against aerial attack, or underwater attack. In terms of weapon placement, a D&D warship designer would have to include anti-air weaponry and some way to defend against or drive off underwater attackers.

Maybe they'd cobble together alchemical depth charges, or vats of poison to dump into the water to kill/drive off a merfolk attack (the Druid Lobby might have something to say about this). Maybe they'd have harpoon launchers mounted to point straight down off the sides of the ship. As a last resort, they might even drop meat overboard in an attempt to 'chum' the waters and attract sharks to drive off the enemy infantry. They'd definitely have large, pintle-mounted crossbows and ballistae set up to launch arrows, sacks of gravel, pails of nails at hostile fliers.

They might also have netting or awnings strung up over the main deck as a first line of defense against incoming spells and alchemical bombs. The nets might only catch one or two before burning up, but they'd prevent the main deck from being hit right away. Ship designers might also include: flight decks from which aerial infantry can take off and land without hitting the sails and rigging, handholds along the bottom of the ship for aquatic infantry to hold onto while fighting off opponents, so they don't get left behind by the ship, airlocks and hatches in the underside of the ship for covert launch/recovery of aquatic strike teams.

Aquatic races would domesticate and train whales and dolphins for use as pack animals and 'submarine ships'. A large whale might carry a 'backpack' full of freight in between cities. Military forces might have trained, armored Orcas ridden by squads of water-breathing troops for raiding and destroying surface ships.

In our universe, on our planet, specialist teams like SEALs are difficult to train, elite, and use expensive specialist gear to allow them to operate underwater for relatively short periods of time. In D&Dland, a SEAeLf team could be cobbled together from their basic infantry force. Paratroopers could similarly be replaced by soldiers who can actually fly. They would not be unusual, although depending on demographics, they might be relatively uncommon.

Aerial infantry can fly over fortifications and surface ships and drop alchemist's fire and acid from a high altitude, so most large targets would need to maintain a 'screen' of their own aerial infantry to serve as interceptors. Perhaps ship-to-ship combat would most closely resemble carrier combat: the ships don't get into direct range of each other, they simply send out long-distance infantry (above and below water) to attack each other.

Regitnui

2018-01-23, 12:57 PM

Perhaps ship-to-ship combat would most closely resemble carrier combat: the ships don't get into direct range of each other, they simply send out long-distance infantry (above and below water) to attack each other.

Not that the rest of those are really well thought out and awesome ideas, but I never knew I wanted to see this until I read it. Would have made a great final clash for my pirate campaign.

Tiadoppler

2018-01-23, 01:56 PM

Depending on how real-worldy you want to get, you can consider having international treaties in place:

A Ban on RWPs:
The use of reality warping powers (like Wish) are banned by international law. The knowledge and instructions for the Wish spell (and similar) are strictly controlled. A nation would probably have only a few specialists with knowledge of Wish, and they would be watched carefully. Nations would spend large chunks of their military budget on manufacturing Rings of Wish and carefully hiding them in secure locations, like squirrels burying nuclear acorns.

A Ban on SPNs:
The use of self-propagating necromancy(zombie plagues) is a war crime. Research into self-propagating necromancy is illegal except for a few, multinational laboratories which focus on the creation of cures and countermeasures, with strict supervision and careful safeguards. It is generally assumed, however, that most nations have secret laboratories for SPN research.

Occasional, a rogue SPN researcher (evil necromancer) will show himself and nations around the world will send covert forces (PCs) to destroy the rogue researcher and his creations+research.

A Partial Ban on EPCs:
Most nations around the world accept that the use of Extra-Planar Combatants in warfare is cruel and illegal, however a few large nations disagree, either in general, or for specific use cases. The summoning of demons, devils and other extra-planar combatants is thoroughly illegal for civilians, and used only by a few militaries.

Just some ideas on fleshing out international politics and warfare in a theoretical D&Dland.

Zephirus

2018-01-23, 05:38 PM

To put it simply, gunpowder does not make sense in D&D World. Guns and fireballs does not interact well. A wizard throws a fireball into a muket unit and all muskets goes boom in their bearer faces.
Also, why would you waste time and resources building a complex device like a gun if you can just make a pact with a fey, a demon or an unfathomable being from beyond and get the same benefits of always be packing a .40?Or even better, just study the magic of those who do take this pact.
An army of 1's lvl Human Variant Fighters with Magic Initiate(Warlock) feat to grab Eldritch Blast, minor illusion and Armor of Agathys along with Close Quarter Shooter as Fighter's fighting style is probably as dangerous as a musketeer unit, and you don't even need to bother about providing them with a weapon (a weapon would get in the way of casting eldritch blast anyway).
Cast Armor of Agathys before the engagement for the +5hp and retributive damage, cast minor illusion to create marching noise and thus making the unit sound much larger than it really is. Just before engaging this unit get a free eldritch blast volley. On first contact all enemies that hit take 5 points of damage and your unit will probably withstand the charge with the temporary HP. Then you fight with eldritch blasts in melee and shield.
That being said, it is not unlikely that Dwarves or Gnomes or any race not too keen on magic but with some technological edge start manufacturing muskets or pistols and even issuing them to their troops. I would make dwarven fire pistols with the same damage of a War Crossbow, but single handed and you would have to be proficient in gunsmithing tools to be able to reload it, not to shoot. And Dwarven muskets would have 2d6 damage dice, be two handed and also counting as a spear(if you use a bayonette) or quaterstaff in close combat. Also needing proficiency in gunsmithing tools to reload.

JackPhoenix

2018-01-23, 06:11 PM

In 5e, Wand of Magic Missiles is better weapon than musket.

It's cheaper (well, not really, as uncommon non-consumable item, it costs the same 500 gp, but doesn't require expensive and volatile ammunition) and faster to make (magic item creation progress at 25 gp/day, while mundane crafting goes with 5gp/day). Though the wandmaker needs to be level 3 character (though that only matters for PCs, as NPCs don't have levels) with a formula and an ability to cast Magic Missile, while the gunsmith only needs appropriate tool proficiency.

It's easier to use (doesn't need attunement or proficiency... anyone can grab WoMM and use it, commoner, child...), it's got the same maximum range (120'), but doesn't suffer penalty for shooting at long range, and actually has 100% accuracy. It's also magical, so it works on lycanthropes and monsters immune or resistant to mundane weapons, and force is the best damage type overall. It's more powerful (3x 1d4+1 vs. musket's 1d12), the "shot" may be empowered with more charges (though this is inefficient, better left for emergencies) and can target up to 3 separate creatures at a time. However, you're limited to 6 charges per day, unless you want to risk destroying the wand, while you can shoot musket as long as you have money (and gunpowder) to burn.

Now, what can the wand actually do? Anyone equiped with the wand can one-shot any normal civilian, even the extra-resilient, hill dwarf commoners, who have 6 hp (increased Con and +1 racial hp compared to human commoner). You can take down basic kobolds just as easily, and reliably (75% chance) deal with goblins (9 hp), thanks to how damage with MM works. You have 50:50 chance to kill guards, bandits, cultists and similar. All with only one charge. With full "magazine" and bit of luck, you can kill up to 21 commoners in 7 rounds (42 seconds)... while being commoner yourself. With the musket, you have to hit first (55% chance for an untrained commoner against another commoner, worse against anyone with better AC), and then have 79.896% chance to inflict enough damage to kill a commoner in one shot. Again, less for anything tougher.

Let's look at the "peasants with guns were the end of armored knights" scenario. For the price of one knight (well, only his plate armor, not other equipment), we can equip 3 commoners with muskets or wands. The knight present in MM fights on foot (greatsword isn't that great while mounted). Let's have the knight attack the peasants from their max range of 120', on the usual featureless plain. What happens?
The commoners with guns need to roll 18+ to hit him, or 16+ if we're generous and give them proficiency (musket is, for some reason, martial weapon in 5e). 15 or 25% chance to hit, each for average 6.5 damage. They also hit at disadvantage at >40'. In the first round, the musketeers fire, inflicting on average 0.715 damage each, and move 30' away from the knight. The knight doesn't use his crossbow, and instead dashes, ending up 90' away from the shooters, with on average 2.145 hp missing from his 52 hp maximum. 2nd round, the same thing happens, the knight ends up 60' away with 4.29 hp missing. 3rd round, peasants move first and ready an action to fire when the knight gets in 40' to avoid disadvantage. Knight ends up 30' away, and suffers average 5.85 damage, for 10.14 hp missing. 4th round, peasants once again inflict 5.85 damage, but the knight reaches them now, and can easily kill them in melee. He may still take some damage, but he lost only about 16 hp to the bullets, less than third of his total.

With wands, it's easier. The wand autohits, causing 10.5 average damage per peasant. The knight lost 31.5 hp in the first turn, the peasants don't even have to move. Only two of them should be needed to finish him off with 21 average damage the next round. 5 charges out of 21 total expanded. The peasants may be able to deal with 3 more knights today.

Now, proper archers or crossbowmen may outrange both muskets and wands, but I think the results of this comparison speak clearly.

To put it simply, gunpowder does not make sense in D&D World. Guns and fireballs does not interact well. A wizard throws a fireball into a muket unit and all muskets goes boom in their bearer faces.
Also, why would you waste time and resources building a complex device like a gun if you can just make a pact with a fey, a demon or an unfathomable being from beyond and get the same benefits of always be packing a .40?Or even better, just study the magic of those who do take this pact.
An army of 1's lvl Human Variant Fighters with Magic Initiate(Warlock) feat to grab Eldritch Blast, minor illusion and Armor of Agathys along with Close Quarter Shooter as Fighter's fighting style is probably as dangerous as a musketeer unit, and you don't even need to bother about providing them with a weapon (a weapon would get in the way of casting eldritch blast anyway).
Cast Armor of Agathys before the engagement for the +5hp and retributive damage, cast minor illusion to create marching noise and thus making the unit sound much larger than it really is. Just before engaging this unit get a free eldritch blast volley. On first contact all enemies that hit take 5 points of damage and your unit will probably withstand the charge with the temporary HP. Then you fight with eldritch blasts in melee and shield.
That being said, it is not unlikely that Dwarves or Gnomes or any race not too keen on magic but with some technological edge start manufacturing muskets or pistols and even issuing them to their troops. I would make dwarven fire pistols with the same damage of a War Crossbow, but single handed and you would have to be proficient in gunsmithing tools to be able to reload it, not to shoot. And Dwarven muskets would have 2d6 damage dice, be two handed and also counting as a spear(if you use a bayonette) or quaterstaff in close combat. Also needing proficiency in gunsmithing tools to reload.

Wizard throws a Fireball into a musket unit and nothing much happens (though he propably kills all the musketeers himself). Fireball doesn't damage equipment.
Army of 1's lvl Human Variant Fighters doesn't exist. Class levels are for player characters, as is human variant, not for NPCs. Army is bunch of appropriate NPCs... propably guards, with some veterans, scouts, nobles, knights and maybe spellcasters and other NPC types (thugs, conscripted commoners, etc.) mixed in.
Firearms are in the DMG.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-01-23, 06:18 PM

In 5e, Wand of Magic Missiles is better weapon than musket.

It's cheaper (well, not really, as uncommon non-consumable item, it costs the same 500 gp, but doesn't require expensive and volatile ammunition) and faster to make (magic item creation progress at 25 gp/day, while mundane crafting goes with 5gp/day). Though the wandmaker needs to be level 3 character (though that only matters for PCs, as NPCs don't have levels) with a formula and an ability to cast Magic Missile, while the gunsmith only needs appropriate tool proficiency.

It's easier to use (doesn't need attunement or proficiency... anyone can grab WoMM and use it, commoner, child...), it's got the same maximum range (120'), but doesn't suffer penalty for shooting at long range, and actually has 100% accuracy. It's also magical, so it works on lycanthropes and monsters immune or resistant to mundane weapons, and force is the best damage type overall. It's more powerful (3x 1d4+1 vs. musket's 1d12), the "shot" may be empowered with more charges (though this is inefficient, better left for emergencies) and can target up to 3 separate creatures at a time. However, you're limited to 6 charges per day, unless you want to risk destroying the wand, while you can shoot musket as long as you have money (and gunpowder) to burn.

Now, what can the wand actually do? Anyone equiped with the wand can one-shot any normal civilian, even the extra-resilient, hill dwarf commoners, who have 6 hp (increased Con and +1 racial hp compared to human commoner). You can take down basic kobolds just as easily, and reliably (75% chance) deal with goblins (9 hp), thanks to how damage with MM works. You have 50:50 chance to kill guards, bandits, cultists and similar. All with only one charge. With full "magazine" and bit of luck, you can kill up to 21 commoners in 7 rounds (42 seconds)... while being commoner yourself. With the musket, you have to hit first (55% chance for an untrained commoner against another commoner, worse against anyone with better AC), and then have 79.896% chance to inflict enough damage to kill a commoner in one shot. Again, less for anything tougher.

Let's look at the "peasants with guns were the end of armored knights" scenario. For the price of one knight (well, only his plate armor, not other equipment), we can equip 3 commoners with muskets or wands. The knight present in MM fights on foot (greatsword isn't that great while mounted). Let's have the knight attack the peasants from their max range of 120', on the usual featureless plain. What happens?
The commoners with guns need to roll 18+ to hit him, or 16+ if we're generous and give them proficiency (musket is, for some reason, martial weapon in 5e). 15 or 25% chance to hit, each for average 6.5 damage. They also hit at disadvantage at >40'. In the first round, the musketeers fire, inflicting on average 0.715 damage each, and move 30' away from the knight. The knight doesn't use his crossbow, and instead dashes, ending up 90' away from the shooters, with on average 2.145 hp missing from his 52 hp maximum. 2nd round, the same thing happens, the knight ends up 60' away with 4.29 hp missing. 3rd round, peasants move first and ready an action to fire when the knight gets in 40' to avoid disadvantage. Knight ends up 30' away, and suffers average 5.85 damage, for 10.14 hp missing. 4th round, peasants once again inflict 5.85 damage, but the knight reaches them now, and can easily kill them in melee. He may still take some damage, but he lost only about 16 hp to the bullets, less than third of his total.

With wands, it's easier. The wand autohits, causing 10.5 average damage per peasant. The knight lost 31.5 hp in the first turn, the peasants don't even have to move. Only two of them should be needed to finish him off with 21 average damage the next round. 5 charges out of 21 total expanded. The peasants may be able to deal with 3 more knights today.

Now, proper archers or crossbowmen may outrange both muskets and wands, but I think the results of this comparison speak clearly.

The one thing here is the availability of wands, and their formulas. Note that to create magical items you also need an appropriate (ie DM-determined) item per item. And the formulas are one step more rare than the items themselves. Each crafter needs one as well.

Also, note that the rules there are for PCs crafting. NPCs don't inherently use the same rules. That cuts both ways, but leaves it up to the worldbuilder entirely.

My setting only just recently rediscovered the creation of magical items and it actually ages the creator (a few years for a common item, more for a rarer item) to do so, as you have to invest part of your own soul into it. So no country's going to be fielding armies of commoners with wands anytime soon.

JackPhoenix

2018-01-23, 06:25 PM

The one thing here is the availability of wands, and their formulas. Note that to create magical items you also need an appropriate (ie DM-determined) item per item. And the formulas are one step more rare than the items themselves. Each crafter needs one as well.

Formula may be a problem, as can the extra component, though as it is at GM's discretion, it doesn't play role in RAW. However, you can get away with using one formula per 3 crafters, if share it in 8-hour shifts.

PhoenixPhyre

2018-01-23, 06:30 PM

Formula may be a problem, as can the extra component, though as it is at GM's discretion, it doesn't play role in RAW. However, you can get away with using one formula per 3 crafters, if share it in 8-hour shifts.

Nothing in RAW matters at all for world-building. NPCs don't play by player rules. That is, it's entirely up to the world-builder as to prices. Thus, discussions of RAW are meaningless for these purposes. The difficulty of creating magic items is a free parameter in world design (as is the number of each tier of spell-casters).

War_lord

2018-01-23, 06:45 PM

To put it simply, gunpowder does not make sense in D&D World. Guns and fireballs does not interact well. A wizard throws a fireball into a muket unit and all muskets goes boom in their bearer faces.

We've been through this, there are not enough people capable of casting Fireball in even relatively spellcaster dense Forgotten Realms for that to be a problem. If there were, the effect on warfare would be far more profound then just a lack of guns. Armor, physical weapons and formation fighting would all disappear, no one is going to stand around in a compact formation, wearing totally ineffective armor patently waiting to get Fireballed.

Also, why would you waste time and resources building a complex device like a gun

The arquebus isn't complex, you've already been told in this thread that one of the reasons for its adoption is that it's actually a pretty simple weapon.

if you can just make a pact with a fey, a demon or an unfathomable being from beyond and get the same benefits of always be packing a .40?Or even better, just study the magic of those who do take this pact.

You understand the scale of an army right? We're not talking four people, we're talking 4,000 minimum. Muskets are good because any idiot can be trained to stand in formation and follow the shooting drills.

An army of 1's lvl Human Variant Fighters with Magic Initiate(Warlock) feat to grab Eldritch Blast, minor illusion and Armor of Agathys along with Close Quarter Shooter as Fighter's fighting style is probably as dangerous as a musketeer unit, and you don't even need to bother about providing them with a weapon (a weapon would get in the way of casting eldritch blast anyway).

That's not how NPCs work in 5th edition. Players have player classes, NPCs have monster style statblocks. NPCs don't "take feats". Feats, levels and character classes are purely game concepts. NPCs are assumed to have actually trained to gain whatever skills they have.

Cast Armor of Agathys before the engagement for the +5hp and retributive damage, cast minor illusion to create marching noise and thus making the unit sound much larger than it really is. Just before engaging this unit get a free eldritch blast volley. On first contact all enemies that hit take 5 points of damage and your unit will probably withstand the charge with the temporary HP. Then you fight with eldritch blasts in melee and shield.

Greats, you have an elite guard of, let's be generous, fifty of these magic users, is the rest of the army just sitting back while these guys get swamped by numbers and cut down? A tiny band of elite warrior isn't going to take down an entire army.

That being said, it is not unlikely that Dwarves or Gnomes or any race not too keen on magic but with some technological edge start manufacturing muskets or pistols and even issuing them to their troops. I would make dwarven fire pistols with the same damage of a War Crossbow, but single handed and you would have to be proficient in gunsmithing tools to be able to reload it, not to shoot. And Dwarven muskets would have 2d6 damage dice, be two handed and also counting as a spear(if you use a bayonette) or quaterstaff in close combat. Also needing proficiency in gunsmithing tools to reload.

You don't need to know how to make a musket (which isn't that hard to begin with) to reload a Musket. One of the advantages of early firearms is that you can train a formation in the fundamentals in just a few days. It requires less training then the Crossbows it's replacing, and years less then an English style longbow.

In 5e, Wand of Magic Missiles is better weapon than musket.

It would be, if you could mass produce Wands like you can Muskets. Since in most places in 5th edition you can't do that, the Wand being better doesn't matter on the scale of armies.

danpit2991

2018-01-23, 10:16 PM

Danpit, could you go back to your long post and add punctuation? I want to respond, but I can't make heads or tails of it.

i have made so many long ones but i will try

danpit2991

2018-01-23, 10:23 PM

I have to disagree with that, at least when it comes to military technology and the political situation. In 500 B.C. heavy Hoplites are the greatest infantry force in Europe. Darius I is the King of an unimaginably vast and powerful (at least to the citizen of a Greek city) Achaemenid Empire, Rome is an obscure city state in a backwater part of the world, Greece is a series of independent cites, Corinth is a booming city. In 100 B.C that same obscure city state is now a vast empire, with uncontested control of the Mediterranean sea. They've also missed the entire rise of Macedonia, Alexander's invading the Achaemenids and establishing his own empire on the rubble, they missed that empire being carved up in the war of the Diadochi. They've totally missed the existence of the Helleno-Persian culture, although they'll find traces of it in Alexandria. One of the many wealthy cities named Alexandria that wasn't on the map when that person vanished, and in the kingdom of Pontus, which is also new to them. What was the heartland of the Persian empire is now ruled by a people called the "Parthians), who apparently won it off a Macedonian dynasty called the "Seleucids".

The city of Corinth doesn't exist anymore, since the Romans wiped them off the map for daring to oppose the total conquest of Hellas itself. Not that Corinth was independent at that time, since they had been subjects of the Macedonians. Oh, I forgot to mention that when our boy/girl was displaced in time in 500 B.C. the Macedonians were considered a joke of a people whose tribal armies were ineffective and who clung to the archaic notion of obeying a king, barely better then barbarians.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point. It's tempting to gloss over history and say "nothing happened for 200 years", but in reality the world changed quite a bit. D&D setting with metaplot tend to be bad at copying that. Could you imagine the uproar if the next book advancing the FR metaplot had Baldur's Gate be demolished, every man dead and every woman and child enslaved?

those chances are more social than technological yes arms and armor evolved during this time but over all the level of tech was the same