[4e] Firearms (again.../PEACH)

[Panda-s1]

Okay, so I made a post about this a long time ago, but I finally went through with it and made up rules.

A few things about my views on guns in fantasy settings: 1) Guns are still somewhat rare in my setting, and mostly used by the military, but I don't feel compelled to putting a huge price tag on them to represent this fact. They cost more than other ranged weapons, but don't cost thousands of gp. 2) Early firearms were rife with problems, but once they were somewhat reliable people kept using them. The arquebus is an older gun, so I will give that an exploding rule, but muskets and pistols don't have that problem. It's not to say that they didn't backfire, but I trust that an adventurer with a gun is going to keep very good care of it, so much that I don't feel like I have to put such rules in. 3) And what's with the "zOMG, spend a standard action to reload!" rule that other people like to use? Honestly, comparing the reloading time of a crossbow to a musket in real life, I can't see why it should take longer in game time to reload a muzzle loading firearm.

So yeah, here's firearms:

{table]|Type|Prof. Bonus|Damage|Range|Price|Weight|Group|Properties
Pistol|Simple One-handed|+2|1d6|10/20|25 gp|2 lb.|Handgun|Load free, High-crit
Arquebus|Simple Two-handed|+2|2d4|5/10|40 gp|6 lb.|Handgun|Load minor
Musket|Military Two-handed|+2|1d10|10/20|50 gp|6 lb.|Handgun|Load minor, High-crit
Rifle|Superior Two-handed|+3|2d8|15/30|50 gp|7 lb.|Handgun|Load minor[/table]

So yeah, comments are appreciated. Especially ideas for the arquebus backfiring. Especially for magic arquebuses, I can see a mundane one exploding, but I can't see a magical one doing the same unless there was a really good reason.

[Zenos]

Shouldn't this be in the homebrew forum?

Otherwise, isn't the reload rate a bit fast for that kind of firearms? I am not especially knowledgeable about 4E, but I guess a minor action is not very much.

Didn't read the thing about reload rate. Sorry.

[LiteYear]

To me, it looks like the Rifle is such a leg up over the other rifles that, even needing a feat to use it, would pretty much be any gun user's choice.

[Spiryt]

Well, is pistol modern one style or some flintlock old one? If so it probably shouldn't have more range than arquebus

[MickJay]

I'm not sure if any of them should be simple to use, if firearms are indeed rare, then few people would have an opportunity to learn how to use them. On top of that, early firearms, like the ones you described, would have been more complicated in use than modern models.

A musket would take -teen seconds to reload to a fully trained professional, reloading any single shot firearm in six seconds would already be close to a superhuman ability. You need to clean the barrel; measure out needed amount of gunpowder (unless you have cartridges prepared); thrust the projectile in with a ramrod; set the firing mechanism (flintlock?). Long barrel would make all these actions more difficult.

Reloading a crossbow could be done in a few seconds, unless it was a heavy crossbow with windlass/crank. Many crossbowmen would be able to fire twice as fast as someone using a gun. On top of that, until rifling was invented, most firearms would be very inaccurate, unless used at a very short range. Most pistols were made heavy enough and balanced (at least into XVIII century) so that after firing a shot they could be thrown at the enemy, since reloading would take too much time.

The rifle would need to be more expensive, I think. Muskets tended to be much heavier than rifles.

To offset all this, the actual damage dealt could be (even significantly) increased and some sort of knockback effect (it was quite strong due to - usually - large caliber of projectiles) added.

If your rifles are breech loaded, then reloading would indeed be fast, but breech loading made older firearms so obsolete that they very quickly disappeared from regular military use; this would mean an almost immediate decline of melee weapons (except the bayonet/combat knife) as well, with possible exception of cavalry, where sabres would be retained in addition to pistols and rifles.

Risk of weapon exploding would increase, if the barrel was not cleaned, after each shot, you could balance the faster reloading with increased risk of explosion somehow (cumulative +5% until it reaches 25% perhaps?).

[Kurald Galain]

Otherwise, isn't the reload rate a bit fast for that kind of firearms? I am not especially knowledgeable about 4E, but I guess a minor action is not very much.

No. 4E is never about restricting your players, therefore even though it might be realistic for an xbow or rifle, 4E would never use a "standard action" as reload time.

The arquebus is an older gun, so I will give that an exploding rule, but muskets and pistols don't have that problem.

Likewise, having a PC's weapons explode is against the spirit of 4E.

I note that your pistol is identical to the PHB hand crossbow, except that it has high crit.

[Shadow_Elf]

If guns are almost only used by the military, then I think giving them all (except the Rifle) the military proficiency level would be appropriate. Also, I would suggest making the Rifle 2d6. Any base weapon above a 2d6 damage level breaks a few rules.

And other than the fact that this belongs in the homebrew forums, I don't see any other problems.

[Artanis]

3) And what's with the "zOMG, spend a standard action to reload!" rule that other people like to use? Honestly, comparing the reloading time of a crossbow to a musket in real life, I can't see why it should take longer in game time to reload a muzzle loading firearm.

Actually, in real life, a musket-user could maxed out at about four rounds per minute, and that's if he was really, really well-trained. So one standard action would be reasonably close-ish to "realistic", though two standard actions would probably be closer.

Yours looks a lot more fun though, because only getting to attack once every two or three rounds is boring . But I guess some people like it that way.

[Asbestos]

How about a compromise and having it cost a move action? Who loads a musket on the move anyway?

[MickJay]

I'll just add that having mostly military use firearms is very realistic, for individuals they would be impractical in typical adventuring; the most realistic use of early firearms by an adventurer would be to have him carry half a dozen or more pistols strapped to a leather harness or belt and discarding them (or throwing them at the enemy) after each shot, not bothering to reload. Since you want to make your firearms cheap (realistically this would require large manufactures, and greater availability of guns), such tactics seems quite feasible. Perhaps double-barreled pistols could be used as well, either for double punch or to allow for longer shooting before reloading is necessary.

[Panda-s1]

Alright, alright, so people do have some qualms about my guns. On the reload issue, it's not about this being 4e, it's about the fact that time to reload a crossbow has been reduced to 2-3 seconds. I can't see how this should be different for firearms, and only big, heavy siege weaponry should have lengthy load times. And what's to gain by making it a move action to reload anyway?

On rarity, I more or less look at the fact that everyone goes "guns are rare back then, make them super rare" as though everyone's going about with their +1 longswords raiding dungeons for food for the week. Guns are rare, yes. But so are half the things adventurer's carry! If your average commoner is running around with a gun then yeah we have a problem, but this would not be the case ('cept in America, but that's a different story).

I do want the arquebus to explode occasionally, they were a lot less reliable, notably enough that I don't have a problem with it. And neither do my players, like some of you they insisted all the guns would have a chance to explode! Like I said the only problem I have with it would be dealing with how magical arquebuses explode, 'cause there is no real easy way to do it without having to write several paragraphs about it.

The handgun is strictly better than the hand crossbow, and that was a minor insight on my part. So I guess I'll bump it up to military, even if classes like warlord can't get them (which would really make sense, but whatever). And yeah, it should have a shorter range than arquebus. Or y'know, maybe I'll just give it 5/10 range, and the arquebus 6/12 'cause neither should have range comparable to the musket.

The rifle has 2d8 damage dice 'cause I thought it was a nice way to get around having to give it high-crit. I mean 2d6 is fine, but then what does it have above the superior crossbow? In theory I could just give it Brutal # instead, but I don't think they ever specified how brutal works on multiple damage die weapons. I figured doing 2d8 damage would reflect that rifles were more reliable to aim, thereby doing average damage instead of doing extra damage on a lucky shot.

And yes, this should be in the homebrew forums. Anyone know how to notify the admin?

[Artanis]

Alright, alright, so people do have some qualms about my guns. On the reload issue, it's not about this being 4e, it's about the fact that time to reload a crossbow has been reduced to 2-3 seconds. I can't see how this should be different for firearms, and only big, heavy siege weaponry should have lengthy load times. And what's to gain by making it a move action to reload anyway?

For the record, I never said the crossbow was realistic

[Inyssius Tor]

The rifle has 2d8 damage dice 'cause I thought it was a nice way to get around having to give it high-crit. I mean 2d6 is fine, but then what does it have above the superior crossbow? In theory I could just give it Brutal # instead, but I don't think they ever specified how brutal works on multiple damage die weapons. I figured doing 2d8 damage would reflect that rifles were more reliable to aim, thereby doing average damage instead of doing extra damage on a lucky shot.

2d8 is a lot better than 2d6 high crit, isn't it? But that's kind of irrelevant and I don't have time to do any more thinking. Note: Brutal on a multi-die weapon works the same way; if you ever roll a foo on any of your dice, you reroll that die.

[MickJay]

Realistically, crossbows should take a full actions to reload (the simple models), firearms at least 2-3 (that's how these things work IRL), people who design D&D already made ranged weapons more useful and versatile than they realistically should have been.

I think your table is not very realistic, but well balanced game-wise; making it realistic would make firearms next to useless for typical adventuring (except maybe for the guy with 12 pistols who reloads them after combat). If the players would need to reload their guns for a round or two before firing, they'd need very high damage that would justify using guns in the first place, and that's just asking for some exploit or lack of balance.

[Dervag]

Hand crossbows shouldn't be balanced with pistols, to be quite honest. Historically, hand crossbows were never a popular weapon. By the time the technology existed to build a decent-power crossbow into such a small package, guns were flat out better than "pistol crossbows."

So if we've made the decision to include pistols at all, it's quite reasonable that they would be superior to hand crossbows. On the other hand, flintlock or wheellock pistols will take a long time to reload (maybe it should be a standard action).

So the way you use pistols in a fight is to buy a bunch of them and shoot them off sequentially. It's expensive, but effective. A single hand crossbow can be fired more rapidly than a single pistol, but a pistol fires much heavier bullets and you can carry multiples of them more easily.

I'd say that firearms should do great damage but have the major drawback of taking a standard action to reload. They're not good adventurer weapons (except for pistols, as above). But they're great as mook weapons; arm your minions with them and they become very dangerous ranged combatants.

Think about it. Even well into the gunpowder era, the iconic heroes were still swashbucklers using swords. The "three musketeers" hardly ever used their muskets. Mechanically, muskets that work better for mooks than for heroes fit right into that model.

[Asbestos]

And what's to gain by making it a move action to reload anyway?

Well, it allows the PCs to shoot their guns every round, but it also changes up their tactics. It changes the ranged guys from skirmishers to red coat infantry, holding a position as they reload and fire.

[Dervag]

Thing is, skirmishing is a better way to fight with guns. The disadvantage of skirmishing is that you can't withstand a determined melee attack that can survive being shot at while it closes with you. But on the scale of an adventuring party, there isn't much advantage in being "redcoat infantry" instead of skirmishers. Infantry had to stand their ground in formation in order to repel mass melee attacks by large units of cavalry or infantry. If you're fighting a small group with a small group, that simply doesn't apply.

[Asbestos]

Thing is, skirmishing is a better way to fight with guns. The disadvantage of skirmishing is that you can't withstand a determined melee attack that can survive being shot at while it closes with you. But on the scale of an adventuring party, there isn't much advantage in being "redcoat infantry" instead of skirmishers. Infantry had to stand their ground in formation in order to repel mass melee attacks by large units of cavalry or infantry. If you're fighting a small group with a small group, that simply doesn't apply.

I never said it'd be more advantageous to go red coat over skirmisher, I'm just saying it'd be more realistic when using muskets and such. Like, you either move, or you stand there and clean/load your gun.

@the OP: If you want to add in exploding guns... do what IK did, make reloading a skill check. If you botch the check enough, kablooie! For magic guns, maybe they just foul and need to be cleaned, rather than being ruined.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Making Muskets and Arquebuses Reload (Move) would be sensible. There is a reason muskets were almost never used outside of standing in well-formed semi-stationary battle lines. Rifles, assuming they're bolt-action or the like, can stay minor. Dedicated gun-users (probably Rangers) will spring for the extra feat to use them in a skirmishy fashion.

[Yahzi]

time to reload a crossbow has been reduced to 2-3 seconds. I can't see how this should be different for firearms

Reloading a firearm is more complicated than reloading a crossbow. There are a number of fiddly bits and pieces: the powder, the ball, the wadding, the need to ram it home, cocking the hammer without knocking the flint out, and adding powder to the pan (unless you're using wheel-locks, which means winding up the ignition, an act as fiddly as winding up a watch.

Also, of course, the reload times on crossbows are just stupid. D&D is at best a crude approximation of reality. For instance, the rate of fire of the Longbow is accurate enough - yeoman could shoot that fast - but they only carried 40 arrows into combat (basically, 2 minutes worth of shooting). Why? Because after pulling a 90-lb bow 40 times, your arm is like a wet rag. Crossbows with winches were a lot easier to keep shooting. And firearms - well, you can shoot a gun all day long.

And what's to gain by making it a move action to reload anyway?

Since realism is off the table, the answer is game balance. Guns should do much more damage than bows, but take much longer to reload. This leads to the musketeer: one shot, and then close with swords. It also leads to all of your players becoming like wizards: a few rounds of massive death, until they run out of loaded guns, and then - retreat!

I do want the arquebus to explode occasionally,

Heavy steel crossbows also exploded, generally with equally bad results.

The rifle has 2d8 damage dice 'cause

That's also the value I independently arrived at.

Under no circumstance allow guns to be ranged touch attacks, no matter how compelling the logic (no medieval armor can deflect bullets - if it could, they'd just add more powder!). If you do so, your adventure is over the second your players realize that a platoon of 0th level riflemen can destroy most anything. Unless your idea of adventure is to run a Civil War campaign.

siege engines

Cannon were deployed on the battlefield long before handguns, and to great effect. Can you imagine what a 5 inch Napoleon full of grapeshot would do to a dragon?

[Ninetail]

Under no circumstance allow guns to be ranged touch attacks, no matter how compelling the logic (no medieval armor can deflect bullets - if it could, they'd just add more powder!).

Not so compelling, actually. The above logic is not historically accurate. Plate armor could and did deflect musket balls at moderate ranges.

What happened was that guns and armor entered an arms race of sorts. As guns spread, plate armor became thicker, and (because better metallurgy was developed) began to be made of better steel. In fact, in the Renaissance, breastplates were sometimes "proven" by being shot at after crafting. If the plate survived intact, the buyer could rest secure in its strength.

The main weapons development that ended plate armor was not "more powder" but the rifled barrel, which made the balls fly further, more accurately, and with greater power. And even then, it didn't go right away. A good number of European heavy cavalry units wore breastplates into the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

I have my own take on guns. I treat them as superior weapons, mainly for balance purposes: they're better than the crossbows I based them on, but not so much better that superior wouldn't cover it. Also, while the aim-and-fire part of using a firearm is easy, the "reload in three seconds" is not -- but the feat covers the specialized training necessary to be able to handle the weapon in such a manner.

(Not exactly realistic, no, but if I can handle someone throwing fireballs around, I can handle a 3-second flintlock reload.)

[Mystral]

How about someone recently invented breech-loading weapons? Those can be reloaded very quickly, and you can balance that out with fewer damage (less gunpowder) and costly cartridges.

[Mercenary Pen]

There was a question in yesterday's WotC D&D podcast on the subject of firearms in 4e. It might be worth checking out if you haven't already.

podcast can be found here if you're interested.

Also, has anyone considered the potential usage of gunpowder-based rockets?

[TheOOB]

For the record, move actions in 4e are only supposed actually move your character. One of the big changes from 3.5 to 4 is that you never have to sacrifice battlefield mobility to do what you are supposed to do.

I would choose minor or standard based purely on how common I want them to be, if guns are supposed to replace bows and crossbows as the standard firearm, they would be minor, and do close to equivalent damage to crossbows. If I wanted them to be a rare new thing, they would be standard and do a bit more damage to compensate.

[Asbestos]

Wait... you find move action reloading to be inhibiting the character more than standard action reloading?

Both of them allow the PC to reload and then move (either you use your move to reload and then your standard action to move, or you use your move as normal and then reload with your standard) except that using your move to reload still allows you to fire every round.

[Panda-s1]

There was a question in yesterday's WotC D&D podcast on the subject of firearms in 4e. It might be worth checking out if you haven't already.

podcast can be found here if you're interested.

Also, has anyone considered the potential usage of gunpowder-based rockets?

Oh no, I listened to that, and they brought up some very interesting things. I'll probably make feats based around guns that do interesting things, but I won't put unique properties on guns unless I can think of good ones.

[Yakk]

Balance wise, the above table is horrible. A Ranger is now rolling 4d8 at +3 damage on a standard action (twin strike)?

If your goal is to obsolete all other weapons and all damage-based spells, it worked.

Ie: start with what you want these items to do. Do you want them to be rare like a magic weapon? Then make their value based off of magic weapons.

Ie:
Arquebus - L 1 Firearm
Flintlock Pistol - L 6 Firearm
Musket - L 11 Firearm
Breachlock Rifle - L 16 Firearm
Revolver - L 21 Firearm
Repeating Rifle - L 26 Firearm

This gives you lots of room to give these weapons decent power. They can be non-enchanted, but have a high proficiency bonus, and do larger damage dice, etc.

[Artanis]

Nitpick:

Balance wise, the above table is horrible. A Ranger is now rolling 4d8 at +3 proficiency on a standard action (twin strike)?

/nitpick

[Asbestos]

Balance wise, the above table is horrible. A Ranger is now rolling 4d8 at +3 damage on a standard action (twin strike)?

If your goal is to obsolete all other weapons and all damage-based spells, it worked.

Ie: start with what you want these items to do. Do you want them to be rare like a magic weapon? Then make their value based off of magic weapons.

Ie:
Arquebus - L 1 Firearm
Flintlock Pistol - L 6 Firearm
Musket - L 11 Firearm
Breachlock Rifle - L 16 Firearm
Revolver - L 21 Firearm
Repeating Rifle - L 26 Firearm

This gives you lots of room to give these weapons decent power. They can be non-enchanted, but have a high proficiency bonus, and do larger damage dice, etc.

I wonder if it would work if you could have it so that, unlike other ranged weapons, the reload time on firearms is not taken into account in the powers that allow multiple shots (like twin strike). Split the Tree is way wonky though.

[Zeful]

I wonder if it would work if you could have it so that, unlike other ranged weapons, the reload time on firearms is not taken into account in the powers that allow multiple shots (like twin strike). Split the Tree is way wonky though.

The easiest thing to do would be slap on "Powers that require multiple attack rolls cannot be used with this weapon."