Guns or Wands?

[SangoProduction]

I've justified the relative absence of guns by the fact that the region's main inventorial culture already came up with wands. So I'm here to justify the decision to myself, and get feedback from people who aren't under my uncaring thumb, and who will not die if they annoy me.

EDIT: This is using Pathfinder rules.

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So, there are a couple of factors to consider when comparing the two:

1. Costs (ease of creation is going to be juist...considered to be directly tied to this)
2. Effectiveness
3. Ease of Use
4. Reliability
5. Adaptability
6. Ease of discovery
7. Range
8. Rate of Fire
9 (and beyond). Something i've failed to think of yet.

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We then need representatives at any given level.
lvl 1:
Early age Pistol

CL 1 Wand of Magic Missile (Because that's just the classic standard "use your action to blow something up" at low levels)

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Now Compare:

1. Cost.
G: 1,000 gp
W: 750 gp
But we forgot ammo. Wands, the ammo is included, but for guns, that's + 10 gp (black powder) + 1 gp per shot, for a total of + 550 gp per 50 shots...almost the entire cost of a new wand.
So in this category, Wands beat them out easily, at almost half price, for the same number of shots, although, discounting misfire chance, there's a lower cost if you go for a whole lot more shots. (But a single wand does even an adventurer more than they normally need....so...Yeah.)

2. Effectiveness.
They both ignore armor, although you've got to be within waddling distance with the pistol to do so. However, the Pistol does twice as Magic Missile, but only marginally more than Biting Wind.

3. Ease of Use.
The magic missile doesn't need an attack roll...but it does need a DC 20 UMD...which is going to be harder than making an attack vs a regular varmint for a "Joe Shmoe"....At least, until you consider that the Pistol is a black powder weapon, and is ranked as Exotic. So, even before even getting to "real black powder guns", which were a PITA, the character has a 20% chance of blowing himself up. Each attack. And that's not even guaranteeing the shot.

So, for an un-(or barely-)trained nobody, it's impossible to use either effectively. But at least with the wand, you don't destroy it and blow off your hand when you fail to use it properly. And you don't just puff 51 gp in to the ether when you "miss" either.
However, a single class level fixes the wand, while you still have a failure chance with the gun. Probably a better than 50% chance, which would be needed to make the average damage of the gun be better, so long as you weren't out fighting level-appropriate enemies. And thus, even for well-trained men, you'd still prefer skilled wand-users to skilled pistoleers.

4. Know what? Lump this in with #3.

5. Adaptability.
The individual weapons/wands have no adaptability. However, the skills required to shoot a pistol are...barely transferrable at all. Especially if you include the feats to use them. Meanwhile, a Wand-caster can cast any wand equally as reliably. New situation makes the wand obsolete? Get a new one. If it makes the gun obsolete?....pick up a bow? Wait that's the same damage type...uh...Grab a sling? Throw your shoe?

6. Ease of Discovery.
They both require feats to be able to craft the items. However, one is a magic crafting feat, and the other is a feat completely unrelated to literally every other feat that doesn't already assume Firearms are a thing. You are more likely to come up with something if you have something similar (another magic crafting feat) than you are to come up with something completely novel.

7. Range.
Wand: 110 ft. Works perfectly fine to max range. Pretty decent for defending a city wall. Not great, but decent.
Pistol: 20 ft at max effectiveness, and up to 100 ft where you are not only losing the point in having a firearm, but also losing accuracy. But a Pistol is hardly a fair comparison here.
Musket: 40 ft max effectiveness, with 200 maximum... This is...better, but you're still facing the -2 range penalty (in ideal conditions) for shooting out to the Wand's range, and so if you truly want to use it's range for defense, you'd need volley fire...which will sap the entire kingdom's treasury. Compare that to even the light crossbow, which requires almost no training, is really cheap, and has double the range.

8. Rate of Fire.
Wand: 1/round.
Pistol: A lot less, without significant investment.

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Anything in particular I missed? I decided to not go through this with the higher level options, since I think I got my point across, and this was really long regardless.

[Blackhawk748]

Two big questions: Why does making a gun take a feat? (it should be Craft: Gunsmithing) And why does the Musket have a range that is less than half of a heavy crossbow? Like, thats insanely short range.

[SangoProduction]

Two big questions: Why does making a gun take a feat? (it should be Craft: Gunsmithing) And why does the Musket have a range that is less than half of a heavy crossbow? Like, thats insanely short range.

I know right?

[HouseRules]

Fantasy games want to stay away from Modern Era.

The American Civil War is the Last Napoleonic War and the First Modern War.

To not be modern, you have to stay away from American Civil War.

Staying away from the Napoleonic Wars Era is favorable to those that want to have a Preindustrial revolution game.

[Blackhawk748]

Fantasy games want to stay away from Modern Era.

The American Civil War is the Last Napoleonic War and the First Modern War.

To not be modern, you have to stay away from American Civil War.

Staying away from the Napoleonic Wars Era is favorable to those that want to have a Preindustrial revolution game.

Except that freaking Matchlocks have better range than that, and those coexisted with Plate Armor, which is in fantasy!!


I know right?

Wait...are those the rules for them in the DMG? Thats so beyond moronic that it makes my brain hurt. WHY ARE GAME DEVS SO BAD AT UNDERSTANDING GUNS???

[ericgrau]

1. Cost. Yeah the whole thing is dead right here. Even an early musket cost the modern equivalent of $1,000. Or at most 50 gp based on the gp to dollar threads. Possibly 10 gp. Buying a wand is like getting a car, and as a firearm it's spent the very first day on the practice range.

That's based on this: https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-a-musket-cost-in-the-1700s

I also checked 1600s and every single colonial was actually required to carry one for self defense. Whatever the price, they were affordable. At another site a flintlock cost about a month's wages for a smith. Not cheap, but plenty buyable.

I stopped there but you seem to be fudging heavily in favor of wands on multiple points. Perhaps you'd like to make magic items cheaper in general and have a high magic item world?

[HouseRules]

Range attacks tend to be nerf because of the Live Action Role Playing (LARP). LARP needs to maintain safety, and range attacks cannot be safe at any reasonable way without severely forcing it to get nerf.

We know how it goes. The old melee combat phased out entirely, and Rifles are the new melee combat in modern wars.

[Deophaun]

Range attacks tend to be nerf because of the Live Action Role Playing (LARP). LARP needs to maintain safety, and range attacks cannot be safe at any reasonable way without severely forcing it to get nerf.
Now I have an image of people in full camo gear with airsoft rifles shouting "Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!"

[Blackhawk748]

Now I have an image of people in full camo gear with airsoft rifles shouting "Lightning bolt! Lightning bolt!"

I've done that. It was a Sci Fi Rp, and it was throwing "vials of acid" but same principle.

[SangoProduction]

1. Cost. Yeah the whole thing is dead right here. Even an early musket cost the modern equivalent of $1,000. Or at most 50 gp based on the gp to dollar threads. Possibly 10 gp. Buying a wand is like getting a car, and as a firearm it's spent the very first day on the practice range.

That's based on this: https://www.quora.com/How-much-did-a-musket-cost-in-the-1700s

I also checked 1600s and every single colonial was actually required to carry one for self defense. Whatever the price, they were affordable. At another site a flintlock cost about a month's wages for a smith. Not cheap, but plenty buyable.

I stopped there but you seem to be fudging heavily in favor of wands on multiple points. Perhaps you'd like to make magic items cheaper in general and have a high magic item world?

I was using Pathfinder's official rules for guns. I'm fudging nothing.

[ngilop]

One thing I have always hated about D&D based firearms was the lack of historical accuracy (even for D&D). The rate of fire (especially 3rd ed on) for guns are horribly ( the rate of fire for guns during the late 1800s was 2 or 3 per minute average) The actual accuracy of muskets at 100 yards or so was 5%, hence why battles in the early 1600s featured blocks of hundreds of musketeers firing at each other.

The stats they give firearms more closely resembles what we had in the mi 1800s with percussion ignition and metallic cartridge bullets, where rate of fire went up to 8 to 1o rounds per minute.



If you want wands over guns, you could just say ' that whole gunpowder things doesn't work like it does in real world, SO instead of needing sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate. One needs some kind of extra magic.. like a spell component-esque thing.


Anyways.. just some food for thoughts.

[HouseRules]

One thing I have always hated about D&D based firearms was the lack of historical accuracy (even for D&D). The rate of fire (especially 3rd ed on) for guns are horribly ( the rate of fire for guns during the late 1800s was 2 or 3 per minute average) The actual accuracy of muskets at 100 yards or so was 5%, hence why battles in the early 1600s featured blocks of hundreds of musketeers firing at each other.

The stats they give firearms more closely resembles what we had in the mid 1800s with percussion ignition and metallic cartridge bullets, where rate of fire went up to 8 to 1o rounds per minute.

If you want wands over guns, you could just say ' that whole gunpowder things doesn't work like it does in real world, SO instead of needing sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate. One needs some kind of extra magic.. like a spell component-esque thing.

Anyways.. just some food for thoughts.

Morale does limit the rate of fire. American Civil War takes 30 seconds to reload and fire, but they fire once every 8 minutes because morale is hard to keep up during the firefight.
Yes, every game nerf ranged attacks. Guns happen to be nerfed more in D&D than other types of ranged attacks, but all ranged attacks tends to be nerf for arbitrary game balance.
Some of those causes of nerf as I've stated above, evolve from maintaining safety during LARP.

[Tvtyrant]

One thing I have always hated about D&D based firearms was the lack of historical accuracy (even for D&D). The rate of fire (especially 3rd ed on) for guns are horribly ( the rate of fire for guns during the late 1800s was 2 or 3 per minute average) The actual accuracy of muskets at 100 yards or so was 5%, hence why battles in the early 1600s featured blocks of hundreds of musketeers firing at each other.

The stats they give firearms more closely resembles what we had in the mi 1800s with percussion ignition and metallic cartridge bullets, where rate of fire went up to 8 to 1o rounds per minute.



If you want wands over guns, you could just say ' that whole gunpowder things doesn't work like it does in real world, SO instead of needing sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate. One needs some kind of extra magic.. like a spell component-esque thing.


Anyways.. just some food for thoughts.
You could easily do guns as having massive damage rolls, horrible reload times and bad aim. Everyone fires muskets and pistols at each other then charges with swords drawn, like what happened in small group combat up until the mid Nineteenth Century.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

I agree that firearms, mechanically, are totally funky in comparison to magic. The rules are accurate to their Golarion incarnation (justified technology in an area where the alternative will literally blow up in your face and cause Wild Magic, then kept limited), but it gets hard to justify in other situations. In the setting I work on, we have the rule that early firearms are martial weapons and the cost is slashed to 1/4, but advanced firearms are still exotic weapons (which by itself makes about as much sense as the base rules as you described, admittedly, but advanced firearms are a different beast than early firearms). With most guns being expensive (but not outrageously so) and ammo being much less expensive (but still noticeably more than arrows), its an actual tactical choice. Though it has led to the party gunslingers crafting 25 GP kegs of gunpowder, which is... exploitable.

[Crake]

So a few things I think you missed:

Blackpowder is a mere 1gp if you craft it, and bullets 0.1gp. For a pistol loaded without a cartridge, it's 1.1gp per shot, or 55gp for 50 shots, not the 550gp cited, unless you're buying them.

Additionally, the 1000gp cost of a pistol is assuming rare/emerging guns. If guns are prolific in your setting, then that cost can be reduced by as much as 90% as per the firearms in your campaign rules:


Firearms in Your Campaign

Firearms and gunslingers are not for every campaign, and even if you are excited about introducing firearms into your campaign, you should still make a decision about how commonplace they are. The following are broad categories of firearm rarity and the rules that govern them. Pathfinder’s campaign setting uses the rules for emerging guns, which is also the default category of gun rarity.

No Guns: If you do not want guns in your campaign, simply don’t allow the rules that follow. The Pathfinder Roleplaying Game plays perfectly well without them.

Very Rare Guns: Early firearms are rare; advanced firearms, the gunslinger class, the Amateur Gunslinger feat, and archetypes that use the firearm rules do not exist in this type of campaign. Firearms are treated more like magic items—things of wonder and mystery—rather than like things that are mass-produced. Few know the strange secrets of firearm creation. Only NPCs can take the Gunsmithing feat.

Emerging Guns: Firearms become more common. They are mass-produced by small guilds, lone gunsmiths, dwarven clans, or maybe even a nation or two—the secret is slipping out, and the occasional rare adventurer uses guns. The baseline gunslinger rules and the prices for ammunition given in this chapter are for this type of campaign. Early firearms are available, but are relatively rare. Adventurers who want to use guns must take the Gunsmithing feat just to make them feasible weapons. Advanced firearms may exist, but only as rare and wondrous items—the stuff of high-level treasure troves.

Commonplace Guns: While still expensive and tricky to wield, early firearms are readily available. Instead of requiring the Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat, all firearms are martial weapons. Early firearms and their ammunition cost 25% of the amounts listed in this book, but advanced firearms and their ammunition are still rare and cost the full price to purchase or craft.

Guns Everywhere: Guns are commonplace. Early firearms are seen as antiques, and advanced firearms are widespread. Firearms are simple weapons, and early firearms, advanced guns, and their ammunition are bought or crafted for 10% of the cost listed in this chapter. The gunslinger loses the gunsmith class feature and instead gains the gun training class feature at 1st level.

The last section explains why gunsmithing is a feat: Because you're doing something far ahead of the curve. Once the technology reaches "Guns Everywhere", then crafting guns becomes commonplace knowledge that anyone can do, no feat required.

Ultimately, unless you're using at the very least, commonplace guns, it's hard to justify comparing a wand to a gun of any sort without having the gunsmithing feat to a) craft your own guns for half price, and b) craft your ammo and blackpowder for 1/10th the price.

It's also worth noting by the way that guns don't change handedness between size changes, so you can actually create a large gun to increase the damage dice of your weapon at a cost of -2. You may start having trouble carrying it around though if you keep going :smalltongue:

Regarding the range on early firearms: you need to keep in mind that early firearms didn't have anywhere near the ballistics technology that we do today. They were shooting little round balls of lead, which had no applied spin to them by the barrel of the gun, and as a result, tended to veer wildly off course after relatively short distances, making guns highly inaccurate beyond close ranges. Modern era firearms began to actually use pointed bullets like we do today, and having spiraled barrels to actually give the bullet spin, giving it a much more stable trajectory, and that is of course reflected by their longer range increments.

[SangoProduction]

I agree that firearms, mechanically, are totally funky in comparison to magic. The rules are accurate to their Golarion incarnation (justified technology in an area where the alternative will literally blow up in your face and cause Wild Magic, then kept limited), but it gets hard to justify in other situations. In the setting I work on, we have the rule that early firearms are martial weapons and the cost is slashed to 1/4, but advanced firearms are still exotic weapons (which by itself makes about as much sense as the base rules as you described, admittedly, but advanced firearms are a different beast than early firearms). With most guns being expensive (but not outrageously so) and ammo being much less expensive (but still noticeably more than arrows), its an actual tactical choice. Though it has led to the party gunslingers crafting 25 GP kegs of gunpowder, which is... exploitable.

With those slashed prices, and not-insane proficiency requirements, it would be much easier to at least happen upon a couple of them. If for no reason other than the novelty of them.

[Ninjaxenomorph]

Gunslingers using them becomes very viable, since Gunsmithing is an alternative to Craft (Firearms), not a replacer. The ammo cost is much better, and while the price is better for using Craft rules to make your firearm, using Gunsmithing is MUUUUCH faster. Diegetically, I've had one gunslinger boss character equip an entire bandit gang with muskets for not much cost overall, which proved very effective, and gave the PCs some choices whether to close distance or not. Also, against something with spell resistance (not a hallmark of low-level creatures, sure, but it's not rare, drow for example), pistol beats out the wand.

Also, if you misfire a wand with UMD, you can't use it for 24 hours. Misfire a firearm, it needs to be fixed (pretty easy, trivial if you have the crafting feat, which most classes that use firearms grant for free).

[SangoProduction]

Gunslingers using them becomes very viable, since Gunsmithing is an alternative to Craft (Firearms), not a replacer. The ammo cost is much better, and while the price is better for using Craft rules to make your firearm, using Gunsmithing is MUUUUCH faster. Diegetically, I've had one gunslinger boss character equip an entire bandit gang with muskets for not much cost overall, which proved very effective, and gave the PCs some choices whether to close distance or not. Also, against something with spell resistance (not a hallmark of low-level creatures, sure, but it's not rare, drow for example), pistol beats out the wand.

Also, if you misfire a wand with UMD, you can't use it for 24 hours. Misfire a firearm, it needs to be fixed (pretty easy, trivial if you have the crafting feat, which most classes that use firearms grant for free).

Oh? I didn't know that about UMD. Then again. I never used it, so it would make sense that I didn't.
Yeah. The Gunslinger is pretty much mandatory for having guns do something. You're still spitting 6 gp out (without alchemical cartridges) each shot, but that's better than the 15 gp per magic missile. Now you'd need to miss about 4-5 times to have equivalent damage to gp ratio, which is pretty favorable.

And you've got a point about the spell resistance, at least for most damage spells. But then again, casters have already solved that problem some years ago. Mostly by casting non-SR spells.

After contemplating it far too long, considering I was trying to go to sleep before stupidly checking this thread: Yeah. I guess Gunslingers are the "fringe technologist" by default, so it would make perfect sense for them to be the ones who try to start it, rather than just someone who hops on when they find a gun.

It'd still be incredibly fringe for all of the other reasons listed above, and how, in most ways, either going full-wand or just sticking with crossbows is superior to trying to mess with it.

[Crake]

Oh? I didn't know that about UMD. Then again. I never used it, so it would make sense that I didn't.

To be fair, UMD "Misfires" only occur if you roll a 1 and the result is a failure, so if you have +19 to UMD, you can't "misfire" a wand.

Likewise, I beleive there is a gun enchantment that reduces missfire range, and is able to reduce it to 0, so it is also possible for a gun to hit that same 0 chance of misfire

[ericgrau]

To be fair, UMD "Misfires" only occur if you roll a 1 and the result is a failure, so if you have +19 to UMD, you can't "misfire" a wand.

Likewise, I beleive there is a gun enchantment that reduces missfire range, and is able to reduce it to 0, so it is also possible for a gun to hit that same 0 chance of misfire

And only if you are activating blindly, without even knowing the activation word. Often the activation word is written on the wand, or once one player deciphers it (via identify if nothing else) he can share it. So as long as you can get a +10 UMD you can at least shoot part of the time without worrying about a mishap.


I was using Pathfinder's official rules for guns. I'm fudging nothing.
Besides what Crake said, early firearms were so bad that most people still used bows even if well off enough to get guns. As they improved train soldiers still used bows, but less experienced people did better with firearms. It basically became an upgrade to crossbows. Until finally bows were phased out entirely.

So if you're going to go with very early guns, and very early guns are usually worse than bows, then the question is really bows vs wands. Again wands are way too expensive for 99% of people. And you usually do better damage with bows even on a rich person.

That likewise doesn't mean wands or bows will prevent guns from becoming popular. Rather like real guns over time they can become better, cheaper and more popular while becoming less of a novelty.

[Florian]

Guns are simply not needed for a fantasy game. With D20 mechanics, guns are not even "fun" and "headshot, boom!" is not an option, so why bother? I mean, Alkenstar has a reason, because magic there is unstable, but the rest of the world?

[Crake]

And only if you are activating blindly, without even knowing the activation word. Often the activation word is written on the wand, or once one player deciphers it (via identify if nothing else) he can share it. So as long as you can get a +10 UMD you can at least shoot part of the time without worrying about a mishap.

I think you're referring to to the activate blindly backlash. There's a universal rule that applies to all UMD checks:


Try Again

Yes, but if you ever roll a natural 1 while attempting to activate an item and you fail, then you can’t try to activate that item again for 24 hours.

This is the part I was referring to. So if you have +19 to UMD, you roll a 1 to activate the wand, but you still succeed, so that rule isn't invoked. If you had +18 and rolled a 1, that wand wouldn't be usable for 24 hours.

[gkathellar]

The actual accuracy of muskets at 100 yards or so was 5%, hence why battles in the early 1600s featured blocks of hundreds of musketeers firing at each other.

In training exercises from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, inexperienced musketeers could hit a target at 300 yards roughly 20% of the time, down to 5% at 400 yards. Obviously the press of combat is different, and accuracy declines significantly, but that's a universal - we have credible estimates of 250 shots fired per downed enemy combatant from as late as 1876, when relatively accurate carbines and rifles were in use. In the modern day, the use of suppressing fire makes accuracy estimates impossible.

If anything, musketeers often weren't trained for accuracy because it was unnecessary in the predominant style of pike-and-shot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_and_shot) warfare, a style necessitated by relatively low reloading speeds and the continued supremacy of the pike formation. At least one widely-employed reloading technique was known to reduce accuracy, but was used anyway because if you only have to shoot in a direction, speed is more important.

Despite all this, wider adoption of the musket-and-bayonet is thought to be one cause of pike-and-shot's decline, leading to the end of the huge infantry blocks you're talking about.

And of course, there are muskets and then there are muskets. Early muskets expected to contend with armor were much heavier and used larger balls.


Besides what Crake said, early firearms were so bad that most people still used bows even if well off enough to get guns. As they improved train soldiers still used bows, but less experienced people did better with firearms. It basically became an upgrade to crossbows. Until finally bows were phased out entirely.

Crossbows, bows, and firearms were all used concurrently for different purposes well into the 1600s. Much of the choice came down to local orthodoxy and the availability of troops proficient in the weapon. In Europe, bows only really predominated in the British isles and parts of France. Crossbows were often preferred in Central Europe, where expertise was celebrated and encouraged (there's some indication that crossbows were excellent for dealing with cavalry in particular). And while firearms were certainly the preferred weapon of the unskilled, they were also used by sharpshooters, and in the press of melee - we've got quite a few training manuals that depict the use of long and short guns in close quarters. There's also the cavalry question: horse archery being extraordinarily difficult to train and impossible with most longbows, the crossbow and gun were the main options available to the mounted fighter.

[ericgrau]

I think you're referring to to the activate blindly backlash. There's a universal rule that applies to all UMD checks:



This is the part I was referring to. So if you have +19 to UMD, you roll a 1 to activate the wand, but you still succeed, so that rule isn't invoked. If you had +18 and rolled a 1, that wand wouldn't be usable for 24 hours.

This sounds like communication confusion and we're in total agreement here.

I don't think you necessarily need a +19 though, except for a high level character to auto pass. A low level person can still pass part of the time and it's ok. In early fights there's only 1 gunshot anyway followed by melee. Most soldiers are level 1-3, maybe 5, so that's where most of the weapons will be. If you do"jam" the wand you can carry a spare or stick to melee. Often there won't be another fight anyway.

Unless you're talking about adventurers and other high level people. They would have much less use for guns.

There's also the question that if early guns were so bad, why did they progress at all? Well because of cannons, which are what led to tinkering with guns in the first place. So you need to consider the impact of cannons in your setting too.

Basically all these facts everyone is talking about gives you ideas of how you might mix, not mix or substitute guns into your setting. And part of that is deciding how far along gun technology is. Early on it's less likely to be useful, and of use only to a few people if any. So then will the well off put ranks in UMD with a chance of misfire, or will they carry a crude inaccurate pistol? Or neither? Perhaps a one-off magic item requiring no UMD would be a better emergency tool. A 500 gp whip feather token perhaps. Or a 200 gp CL 4 potion of vanish to get away. Or a 300 gp potion of invisibility. Later on a cheap gun compared to an expensive wand is a no brainer for most low level soldiers.

[Blackhawk748]

Besides what Crake said, early firearms were so bad that most people still used bows even if well off enough to get guns. As they improved train soldiers still used bows, but less experienced people did better with firearms. It basically became an upgrade to crossbows. Until finally bows were phased out entirely.

So if you're going to go with very early guns, and very early guns are usually worse than bows, then the question is really bows vs wands. Again wands are way too expensive for 99% of people. And you usually do better damage with bows even on a rich person.

That likewise doesn't mean wands or bows will prevent guns from becoming popular. Rather like real guns over time they can become better, cheaper and more popular while becoming less of a novelty.

You're overstating how bad early firearms were. As stated by gkathellar, bows were mostly a British and French thing, with everyone else using crossbows. On top of this, Bows hung around for so long because their rate of fire was so much better and early on their range was better, but that changed fairly early on.

On top of this accuracy isn't overly important on the battlefield. The British didn't care about accuracy with their longbows generally speaking. They fired massive vollies of arrows as fast as they could to drown their opponenets in arrows.