Anyone else think that it's weird that firearms deal so much damage?
A pistol deals 1d10 damage
An automatic rifle deals 2d8 damage
A hunting rifle deals 2d10 damage
Getting stabbed with a dagger deals only 1d4 damage. A longsword 1d8. If you had to choose whether to be hit with a longsword or shot with a hunting rifle, you'd be better off taking the shot from the rifle. A hunting rifle also dramatically out-damages a greatsword and deals twice as much damage as a halberd - and a hunting rifle deals double the damage of a heavy crossbow.
Have you ever held a halberd? I've trained with various pole weapons. You are way more likely to survive a bullet than a halberd blow.
The benefits of firearms are that they're easy to use (require almost no training to be proficient compared to less modern weapons), easy to carry (including ammunition, which is small and stacks easily), and are dangerous at range. They don't deal more damage than getting hit by an axe.
As a person that has both been shot and stabbed, I would rather be stabbed. A bullet passing through the body does far more damage than being stabbed or cut. The stabbing is definitely more painful though.
Worth noting: whether or not you'd want to take a round from a hunting rifle versus a hit from a longsword depends very much on what kind of longsword hit.
Most common hunting rifles, if one assumes a deerhunting rifle or other common "Generic Hunting" tasks, use .308 Winchester rounds or similarly-powered loads. These rounds are intended to take animals that often mass far more than a standard human being with a single shot. If you take a .308 round anywhere in the torso, it is an immediately grievous and life-threatening injury. You may or may not be salvageable depending on where you were hit and the range you were hit at, but the trauma will be tremendous and devastating. Deep-penetrating piercing injuries such as rifle fire are almost always more life-threatening that surface lacerations, even severe ones. To say nothing of the rifle's cavitation or other secondary wound shock. If you're hit with a big game load, something like .300 Win Mag, 45-70 Gov't, or similar? Good luck, buddy. Hope your god of choice is listening because you're about to be seeing them in person.
Old-world black powder rifles, which most D&D games generally assume, are both better and worse. They fire at significantly lower muzzle velocities, often lower than even modern handgun rounds, and a lower-velocity projectile imparts a lot less energy. It's why handgun rounds are generally considered survivable while many rifle rounds are not - less velocity means less cavitation and less damage to tissue surrounding the wound channel. Buuuut...old-world blackpowder rounds are commonly fifty, sixty, or even higher calibers. They are an enormous mass of metal propelled far faster than any amount of muscle power could generate. They are, to say, still guns.
If you ask me whether I'd rather take a blow from a trained user with a longsword or a shot from a trained marksman with a flintlock arquebus? I'd honestly just flip a coin, because either is likely to be the end of me. Yeah, the trained halberdier cane separate my bits, but even the halberd is generally relying on blood loss and gross structural damage to win a fight. The rifle will turn your innards into meat jelly. Intermediate military rounds (i.e. 5.56, 5.45, and similar) are a lot less likely to be instantly, irrevocably lethal, yeah, but any rifle shot to the torso is generally going to be lethal unless you get expert medical assistance toot flippin' sweet. people did, however, survive blows from longswords and even occasionally halberds through sheer grit and the basic medical aid available at the time.
It's pretty common, these days, for people to underestimate just how destructive firearms are. There's a reason no serious military fights with melee weapons anymore, and it's not just "guns are easier to train with".
A straight up match between a longsword blow and a gun shot, you'd have a point. But that's not what's happening.
With a sword, you don't get hacked to pieces and still fight effectively. Instead, HP simulates the wearing down over time as you fight. The initial hits wouid be little nicks, but you lose energy and strength, occasionally getting a more significant wound. The damage just gets averaged out, rather than having it quite so variable damage - the damage per strike wouod be quote low. Guns, though? Generally, you just get hit and down you go, no blocking, semi parties and so forth. You either hit or you don't. Hence it makes sense to have a higher damage per attack.
That's my headcanon at any rate.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Bear in mind also that in the d&d mechanical sense a "hit" is abstract and doesn't represent a physical blow to the body in all cases. A "hit" could be a sword glancing off your pauldron leaving you unhurt but spooked. A "hit" could be a blade coming for your throat causing you to twist in some crazy maneuver that costs you your footing and drains your energy. A "hit" could be a bullet whizzing by your temple and causing you to flinch and lessening your will to fight on. The only "hit" that necessarily involves bodily damage by the weapon is the one (or last few) that kill you.
The damage is assigned in a way that is mechanical and balanced for a game trying to model reality, but expecting it to be realistic is a tall order. I've noticed that if you scrutinize the mechanical rules surrounding ranged combat specifically you'll notice weird gameisms that render combat kind of ridiculous because if you're too "realistic" and a hit with an arrow is a literal arrow stuck in someone then enemies and players are running around with 4-5 arrows like boromir in their chest and barely phased by it, or if you're too abstract in your interpretation then your eagle-eyed archer characters are flinging arrow after arrow with very few of them actually connecting to a target, which also looks just as ridiculous as the "realistic" approach.
The conclusion you draw is that the combat mechanics don't perfectly mirror real combat, and the more attention you draw to it the worse it looks.
Hit points represent a combination of physical and mental durability, the will to live, and luck.
Getting hit with a dagger attack deals 1d4 damage, but that "hit" could mean many things - maybe you were hit directly, maybe you only took a glancing blow, or maybe the weapon missed but caused you to expend a lot of stamina to avoid a lethal blow. Maybe it represents a morale loss as you realize how potent your enemy is, or maybe it simply ate into some of your luck.
The DM narration can adapt to the actual amount of damage, factoring in your player's health.
Firearms damage makes sense, not from a comparison to weapons point of view, but from a game mechanics point of view. They're so rare and cost prohibitive AND mechanic prohibitive that when a player finally gets one, you want it to be able to look and feel cool. Most DMs and players, from an ajudication point of view, are simply going to ignore the reloading mechanics, and probably the misfire mechanics too. I'm sure most of the DMs in this thread might say otherwise, but every time I've been at my local hobby shop, or a game online that had guns(or myself), when a gun was finally given out, it was a milestone moment and we wanted that person to feel cool and not bogged down by all sorts of new mechanics and things to track.
The discussion about how much damage something does really boils down to "D&D <> real life. not even comparable.", because it isn't. I don't care how experienced the best knight in the real world is, one good blow from alongsword to his shoulder is going to **** their day up permanently. In D&D? 'Tis merely a flesh wound.
The game rules are based on time periods where the weapons were used in practice and without significant chance of misfire. Pistols are based on the US Old West single action revolvers and do far too much damage. They really ought to do 1d4 at most. It would take a full action to reload each bullet, and no matter how many attacks per Attack action, the gun would only fire once. Weapons that required both hands to use would be perhaps 1d6, and long barreled weapons that could only fire once every other round might do 1d8.
The current stats are for 20th century guns; semi-automatic pistols, sub-machine guns, and sniper rifles.
Anyone else think that it's weird that firearms deal so much damage?
A pistol deals 1d10 damage
An automatic rifle deals 2d8 damage
A hunting rifle deals 2d10 damage
Getting stabbed with a dagger deals only 1d4 damage. A longsword 1d8. If you had to choose whether to be hit with a longsword or shot with a hunting rifle, you'd be better off taking the shot from the rifle. A hunting rifle also dramatically out-damages a greatsword and deals twice as much damage as a halberd - and a hunting rifle deals double the damage of a heavy crossbow.
Have you ever held a halberd? I've trained with various pole weapons. You are way more likely to survive a bullet than a halberd blow.
I always thought the firearms options were completely sensible, Mercer's are a little cruder/dirtier but also sensible.
I think I'm having trouble understanding the framework from which you're trying to claim there's something weird about the rules options. You've trained in pole weapons as a martial art (with any practical usage outside the training environment?)? Some sort of simulation group? Ok, do you have any training with firearms or familiarity with the trauma they actually do (there is actually a lot of IRL data on gunshot trauma ... some game systems even make use of them to determine lethality mechanics ... and if you're at least in an English speaking country it's not that hard to find someone with stories from the past two decades re: gunshot trauma)? Yurei has the ballistics basically right, hunting loads often outclass military small arms calibers (automatic rifles in the 5.56/.223 - 7.62 range), sniper rifles are roughly analogous, pistols can be funky under .45 caliber ... I'll save the board the U.S. feds and almost everyone else's move from 9mm to .40 and back to 9mm as well as some weird stories about those rounds failing (and a few other stories about .223) but generally if you're taking there most commonly issued rounds center mass or in the eye/nose box portal to the brain, you're dead. I have had the fortune of never having been shot or stabbed but of those injuries I've seen, and those I've seen recovered from, while I wouldn't wish either, I know which I'd prefer. And my preference doesn't involved gunpowder.
Bow hunting, and I'd reckon crossbow hunting isn't as forgiving as firearms hunting. Better or more eating perhaps, at least it feels cleaner, but it's more work.
The benefits of firearms are that they're easy to use (require almost no training to be proficient compared to less modern weapons), easy to carry (including ammunition, which is small and stacks easily), and are dangerous at range. They don't deal more damage than getting hit by an axe.
I just don't know the basis of your claims other than a conjecture apparently privileging "pole weapons training" over modern firearms combat training (I feel this is sorta an Obi Wan augment for lightsabers vs. blasters...). So sword and ax attacks do occur, and they're just not as lethal as firearms. Firearms are actually not as easy to use in combat as you're claiming (it's a popular notion widely circulated, it's just not accurate), that's why in professions where firearms are a tool, they have qualification courses. Sure anyone with enough time and the right conditions can put a bullet through the good part of a target. But put those targets on edging timer, require multiple shots on target in two seconds. Five second drills where you fire twice, reload and then fire a head shot, there's a thing called trigger discipline, it's not what you think (shoot don't shoot is called judgment), if it's not trained into you or you're otherwise not some preternaturally cool walk on I guarantee you any professional course of fire will have the bulk of your rounds dropping to the left into the no points zone if you even land the paper. Gunfighting skills require a lot of training and are very perishable. Not even getting into shooting and moving, complexities of site picture vs point shooting in close quarters battle, shooting at range. Look at relatively untrained gunfights and see how many shots were fired vs how many actually hit who the shooter was actually trying to hit. Btw, how much "training" quantitatively in time or maneuver repetitions does a Halberd wielder in whatever job function they carried a Halberd receive? Police and military fire 1000s of rounds to prove basic competency with their weapons. Police fire hundred more every year to maintain that competency. Military and more tactical oriented police fire thousands, sometimes tens of thousands. It's not just for bragging rights.
The game rules are based on time periods where the weapons were used in practice and without significant chance of misfire. Pistols are based on the US Old West single action revolvers and do far too much damage. They really ought to do 1d4 at most. It would take a full action to reload each bullet, and no matter how many attacks per Attack action, the gun would only fire once. Weapons that required both hands to use would be perhaps 1d6, and long barreled weapons that could only fire once every other round might do 1d8.
The current stats are for 20th century guns; semi-automatic pistols, sub-machine guns, and sniper rifles.
The .45 colts that "won the West" aren't that different from the .45 caliber revolvers used today. I'd probably put a Derringer in 1d4 category but not a .45. Someone who knows how to manipulate a revolver (hi, training and practice, again) can definitely fire off the whole six rounds in under a six second "round." With practice I might even get the whole thing reloaded in a round too.
Something the rules don't cover but worth noting, at least a side arm becomes lethal a lot faster out of holster than drawn melee weapons. Especially at melee range.
As far as the D&D damage being a continuum of stuff ranging from actual physical trauma to the "stress" of being under attack, while I'm personally a fan of characters and monsters getting "arrowed" Boromir style, I'll say and a neuropsychologist might be able to say why but the threat/stress of being under attack from a firearm or possibly under attack from a firearm is just magnified over any melee threat I've ever experienced (can't say with any experience on arrows having never had one pointed at me as far as I know). In other words fire arms can be more "draining" of their targets in that regard too.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
A bullet may well have more energy (not sure, not crunched the math) but is hitting a pinpoint compared to the much broader strike of an axe or halberd and too much power and the bullet passes cleanly through, not even necessarily hitting any vital organ. The heavy melee weapon hitting wider has much greater chance to hit vital organs, quite likely snapping bones in its path, with a correspondingly greater likelihood of driving bone fragments into organs as well.
Firearms can indeed be very lethal but do not underestimate the power of even simpler machines such as the lever and the wedge.
You're privileging your understanding of the physics of melee and admit to not have a grasp on how the same principles effect firearms. Especially the pinpoint analogy, that's ironically very imprecise. Bullets never work like laser beams. Bone shattering and attendant mushrooming trauma has historically happened throughout the history of firearms. When it comes to lethality, modern hollow point pistol rounds are often considered "overkill" over their predecessors. Also going to prior "low powered" bullets it wasn't the bullet going through you clean like a laser pin or whatever, the bullet stayed in the body, and that added a whole knew form of morbidity to trauma.
Your conjecture is also contending with a few people who've actually seen or experienced what firearms first hand do as well as what melee weapons do including axes. Again I wouldn't want either, but under duress I'd choose getting thwacked, slashed or stabbed over getting shot.
Counter argue away but your entry is basically dancing on the head of poorly analogous pinpoint. I'm holstering up for this thread since it seems most of the optional rules critics aren't hitting the mark in their objections.
Realism is not really a D&D trait, because if it was, every time you got shot, you would be making a roll to determine where you were hit and then in most cases a roll vs. death and regardless of the injury you would immediately start bleeding to death. Realistically this would be true about many melee weapons as well.
I think what the damage stats for firearms in D&D say is that "hey these are rare and exotic weapons so they do more damage than standard weapons".
As soon as you apply even a small amount of realism into D&D the entire game comes apart at the seams, bugs bunny cartoons have more realism then D&D.
While I still stand by my claims that the firearms damage stats in D&D "outgun" so to speak the traditional weapons on reasonable grounds, this is also true.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
If you want an example of "unrealistic", a one-handed quartstaff strike does the same damage as a one-handed longsword strike. Yes, I know that it's not meant to be exactly like real life and made the same argument earlier, but it's an even more counterintuitive detail that guns v swords.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It is not that you are overstating the lethality of firearms, so much as underplaying the lethality of melee weapons. The downside to melee weapons is that it is a lot harder to score a good hit with one, since the opponent can usually run away or at least try to block it. Trying to dodge bullets does normally work so well.
Exactly. However, even a parried or blocked strike wears you down. Even a bear miss. After a while, it stresses you out, so you're more likely to make a serious error. It tires you out, which makes your reflexes slower and more likely to allow a strike through your guard. You become more frustrated which clouds your thinking.
I'm changing how I model damage. I'm now modelling it more on the psychological and physiological aspects above rather than describing how the warrior received a strong hit from a longsword for the 3rd time, but he's showing no signs of weakening. They may got nicks and cuts, but nothing that an hours break can't help and a good night's rest can't relegate to insignificant - at least, not if they don't lose all their HP, at any rate.
I model monsters slightly differently. For human sized and smaller, the more serious injuries come sooner (because I don't have to worry about healing them). For much larger, I just model it as direct damage, which emphasises their sheer strength. Last night, a few high HP enemies came upon the party, ones that the party had never fought before. The party used its heavy artillery to blast them, with the expectation that it would obliterate them. When they saw that the enemies tanked the blast, shook it off and kept coming, the atmosphere changed instantly.
Anyways, whole guns are inaccurate, being shot at is even more stressful, hence the higher damage.
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If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I feel like firearms should level the playing field when it comes to armour class - probably a case where they cause the target to make a contested dex save to avoid being hit, and then lower damage. Armour's good for protecting against swords and such, but firearms should come down to how well they are shot vs how well the target avoids being hit. Armour won't help much with firearms! That's why suits of armour went out of fashion after guns came to prominence - they didn't help!
I feel like firearms should level the playing field when it comes to armour class - probably a case where they cause the target to make a contested dex save to avoid being hit, and then lower damage. Armour's good for protecting against swords and such, but firearms should come down to how well they are shot vs how well the target avoids being hit. Armour won't help much with firearms! That's why suits of armour went out of fashion after guns came to prominence - they didn't help!
Jury is out with Mithril or Adamantine. There may well also be Kevlar equivalents too, involving dragon hide or the like. And even steel armour, angled would almost certainly have at least some effectiveness. Was it really the musket that caused armour to be of such limited use or rather the cannon? The latter seems much more likely.
I almost feel like armour will either work or not, with no middle ground. But then, hitting certain places makes it more likely.
On one hand, I feel like firearms should do lower damage but have a higher chance to hit (as armour won't be as effective, and armour is as much a part of rolling to hit as dexterity).
The problem is that they're so far removed from conventional weapond that you almost need to go more in-depth to really represent them. A single dice rolled against an "AC" which can represent armour, dodging, semi-etherealness, and all manner of other things which prevent people being hit cannot really distinguish between guns, bows, or daggers.
I wonder if the best bet for guns might be to have their "sheer power" be reflected by downgrading resistance and immunity, so if someone resistant to piercing damage is shot, they aren't resistant to that. Then just keep them in line with bows and crossbows for damage, or perhaps even slightly lower (as a trade-off). That and needing expensive specialist ammo!
I feel like firearms should level the playing field when it comes to armour class - probably a case where they cause the target to make a contested dex save to avoid being hit, and then lower damage. Armour's good for protecting against swords and such, but firearms should come down to how well they are shot vs how well the target avoids being hit. Armour won't help much with firearms! That's why suits of armour went out of fashion after guns came to prominence - they didn't help!
Jury is out with Mithril or Adamantine. There may well also be Kevlar equivalents too, involving dragon hide or the like. And even steel armour, angled would almost certainly have at least some effectiveness. Was it really the musket that caused armour to be of such limited use or rather the cannon? The latter seems much more likely.
It was the flintlock musket, specifically. Plate armor stopped being a big deal long before the development of artillery with enough accuracy to hit what you aimed it at. People still wore armour for centuries (and soldiers wear armour today), but big heavy metal suits faded out in the 17th century because they weren't worth the effort due to flintlocks.
Of course, this was in the real world, where armour doesn't add to your AC because it doesn't make you less likely to be hit. Plate armour primarily works by trying to spread incoming force over a larger area, because force per unit area is generally what kills you. In D&D 5E terms, that would be some combination of threshold, reduction, and weird resistance that might not be 1/2 per se. A bullet and an arrow both have to obey the same core physics of the real world - bullets just achieve significantly higher velocities in practice, with much less effort exerted by the shooter.
Modern armour abandons this as untenable in the face of firearms. It works the same way your car does in a car crash, assuming your car is also modern (older cars were made to be durable, so in a crash, the driver takes all the damage). It assumes the incoming damage is going to happen, and suffers it for you - in 5E terms, modern armor is just a pool of hit points, like an Abjurer's Arcane Ward. It's designed to break when shot so you don't break, because the incoming force is consumed shattering it. Here's a link discussing it.
It was the flintlock musket, specifically. Plate armor stopped being a big deal long before the development of artillery with enough accuracy to hit what you aimed it at. People still wore armour for centuries (and soldiers wear armour today), but big heavy metal suits faded out in the 17th century because they weren't worth the effort due to flintlocks.
Kind of. Armour was still effective against musket fire at longer ranges, but the main influencing factor was simply training time, and cost. You can train a man to be an effective musketeer with one day's training per month (in England in the 17th century, each village had to have a Village Soldier who went to train 1 day per month with the rest of the village soldiers in the county - I did a project using the parish records once). And it's cheap. He needs a musket, and some ammo. Compared to that, a heavily armoured horsemen (such as the 'lobster men' on the parliamentary side in the English civil war) are extremely expensive, and require massive amounts of training (horsemanship not being the least part). Factor in the combination of pike blocks with musket support, and the role of the heavily armoured infantryman died away as well. If you can equip and pay 20 men with muskets for the cost of one cavalryman, then you do it.
Consider that in the 16th century, an era of heavily armoured knights, that longbowmen were used alongside gunners on the Mary Rose and similar ships (our surviving longbows come from the MR). Longbows do not shoot straight through armour as the English myth would have us believe - breastplates have specific arrow catchers on them to deflect shattering shafts away from the helm as they flew upwards, and tests against accurately made armour using accurately made longbows confirm this. But longbows were considered better than handguns for a long time for open warfare (so much that men were legally obligated to learn to use them in England).
After the invention of the musket, as armour began to be restricted purely to the torso and fewer soldiers were wearing it, the calibres of guns used actually got smaller. The term "bullet proof" literally comes from the mark left after firing a pistol at a cuirass to demonstrate that it was proof against bullets. Armour remained effective, and even as late as the first world war, soldiers would wear armoured jackets despite their majorly reduced effectiveness (and because they made shrapnel wounds worse). Modern military forces continue to wear body armour to this day.
Anyone else think that it's weird that firearms deal so much damage?
Getting stabbed with a dagger deals only 1d4 damage. A longsword 1d8. If you had to choose whether to be hit with a longsword or shot with a hunting rifle, you'd be better off taking the shot from the rifle. A hunting rifle also dramatically out-damages a greatsword and deals twice as much damage as a halberd - and a hunting rifle deals double the damage of a heavy crossbow.
Have you ever held a halberd? I've trained with various pole weapons. You are way more likely to survive a bullet than a halberd blow.
The benefits of firearms are that they're easy to use (require almost no training to be proficient compared to less modern weapons), easy to carry (including ammunition, which is small and stacks easily), and are dangerous at range. They don't deal more damage than getting hit by an axe.
As a person that has both been shot and stabbed, I would rather be stabbed. A bullet passing through the body does far more damage than being stabbed or cut. The stabbing is definitely more painful though.
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D&D <> real life. not even comparable.
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Worth noting: whether or not you'd want to take a round from a hunting rifle versus a hit from a longsword depends very much on what kind of longsword hit.
Most common hunting rifles, if one assumes a deerhunting rifle or other common "Generic Hunting" tasks, use .308 Winchester rounds or similarly-powered loads. These rounds are intended to take animals that often mass far more than a standard human being with a single shot. If you take a .308 round anywhere in the torso, it is an immediately grievous and life-threatening injury. You may or may not be salvageable depending on where you were hit and the range you were hit at, but the trauma will be tremendous and devastating. Deep-penetrating piercing injuries such as rifle fire are almost always more life-threatening that surface lacerations, even severe ones. To say nothing of the rifle's cavitation or other secondary wound shock. If you're hit with a big game load, something like .300 Win Mag, 45-70 Gov't, or similar? Good luck, buddy. Hope your god of choice is listening because you're about to be seeing them in person.
Old-world black powder rifles, which most D&D games generally assume, are both better and worse. They fire at significantly lower muzzle velocities, often lower than even modern handgun rounds, and a lower-velocity projectile imparts a lot less energy. It's why handgun rounds are generally considered survivable while many rifle rounds are not - less velocity means less cavitation and less damage to tissue surrounding the wound channel. Buuuut...old-world blackpowder rounds are commonly fifty, sixty, or even higher calibers. They are an enormous mass of metal propelled far faster than any amount of muscle power could generate. They are, to say, still guns.
If you ask me whether I'd rather take a blow from a trained user with a longsword or a shot from a trained marksman with a flintlock arquebus? I'd honestly just flip a coin, because either is likely to be the end of me. Yeah, the trained halberdier cane separate my bits, but even the halberd is generally relying on blood loss and gross structural damage to win a fight. The rifle will turn your innards into meat jelly. Intermediate military rounds (i.e. 5.56, 5.45, and similar) are a lot less likely to be instantly, irrevocably lethal, yeah, but any rifle shot to the torso is generally going to be lethal unless you get expert medical assistance toot flippin' sweet. people did, however, survive blows from longswords and even occasionally halberds through sheer grit and the basic medical aid available at the time.
It's pretty common, these days, for people to underestimate just how destructive firearms are. There's a reason no serious military fights with melee weapons anymore, and it's not just "guns are easier to train with".
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A straight up match between a longsword blow and a gun shot, you'd have a point. But that's not what's happening.
With a sword, you don't get hacked to pieces and still fight effectively. Instead, HP simulates the wearing down over time as you fight. The initial hits wouid be little nicks, but you lose energy and strength, occasionally getting a more significant wound. The damage just gets averaged out, rather than having it quite so variable damage - the damage per strike wouod be quote low. Guns, though? Generally, you just get hit and down you go, no blocking, semi parties and so forth. You either hit or you don't. Hence it makes sense to have a higher damage per attack.
That's my headcanon at any rate.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
Bear in mind also that in the d&d mechanical sense a "hit" is abstract and doesn't represent a physical blow to the body in all cases. A "hit" could be a sword glancing off your pauldron leaving you unhurt but spooked. A "hit" could be a blade coming for your throat causing you to twist in some crazy maneuver that costs you your footing and drains your energy. A "hit" could be a bullet whizzing by your temple and causing you to flinch and lessening your will to fight on. The only "hit" that necessarily involves bodily damage by the weapon is the one (or last few) that kill you.
The damage is assigned in a way that is mechanical and balanced for a game trying to model reality, but expecting it to be realistic is a tall order. I've noticed that if you scrutinize the mechanical rules surrounding ranged combat specifically you'll notice weird gameisms that render combat kind of ridiculous because if you're too "realistic" and a hit with an arrow is a literal arrow stuck in someone then enemies and players are running around with 4-5 arrows like boromir in their chest and barely phased by it, or if you're too abstract in your interpretation then your eagle-eyed archer characters are flinging arrow after arrow with very few of them actually connecting to a target, which also looks just as ridiculous as the "realistic" approach.
The conclusion you draw is that the combat mechanics don't perfectly mirror real combat, and the more attention you draw to it the worse it looks.
Getting hit with a dagger attack deals 1d4 damage, but that "hit" could mean many things - maybe you were hit directly, maybe you only took a glancing blow, or maybe the weapon missed but caused you to expend a lot of stamina to avoid a lethal blow. Maybe it represents a morale loss as you realize how potent your enemy is, or maybe it simply ate into some of your luck.
The DM narration can adapt to the actual amount of damage, factoring in your player's health.
Firearms damage makes sense, not from a comparison to weapons point of view, but from a game mechanics point of view. They're so rare and cost prohibitive AND mechanic prohibitive that when a player finally gets one, you want it to be able to look and feel cool. Most DMs and players, from an ajudication point of view, are simply going to ignore the reloading mechanics, and probably the misfire mechanics too. I'm sure most of the DMs in this thread might say otherwise, but every time I've been at my local hobby shop, or a game online that had guns(or myself), when a gun was finally given out, it was a milestone moment and we wanted that person to feel cool and not bogged down by all sorts of new mechanics and things to track.
The discussion about how much damage something does really boils down to "D&D <> real life. not even comparable.", because it isn't. I don't care how experienced the best knight in the real world is, one good blow from alongsword to his shoulder is going to **** their day up permanently. In D&D? 'Tis merely a flesh wound.
The game rules are based on time periods where the weapons were used in practice and without significant chance of misfire. Pistols are based on the US Old West single action revolvers and do far too much damage. They really ought to do 1d4 at most. It would take a full action to reload each bullet, and no matter how many attacks per Attack action, the gun would only fire once. Weapons that required both hands to use would be perhaps 1d6, and long barreled weapons that could only fire once every other round might do 1d8.
The current stats are for 20th century guns; semi-automatic pistols, sub-machine guns, and sniper rifles.
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I always thought the firearms options were completely sensible, Mercer's are a little cruder/dirtier but also sensible.
I think I'm having trouble understanding the framework from which you're trying to claim there's something weird about the rules options. You've trained in pole weapons as a martial art (with any practical usage outside the training environment?)? Some sort of simulation group? Ok, do you have any training with firearms or familiarity with the trauma they actually do (there is actually a lot of IRL data on gunshot trauma ... some game systems even make use of them to determine lethality mechanics ... and if you're at least in an English speaking country it's not that hard to find someone with stories from the past two decades re: gunshot trauma)? Yurei has the ballistics basically right, hunting loads often outclass military small arms calibers (automatic rifles in the 5.56/.223 - 7.62 range), sniper rifles are roughly analogous, pistols can be funky under .45 caliber ... I'll save the board the U.S. feds and almost everyone else's move from 9mm to .40 and back to 9mm as well as some weird stories about those rounds failing (and a few other stories about .223) but generally if you're taking there most commonly issued rounds center mass or in the eye/nose box portal to the brain, you're dead. I have had the fortune of never having been shot or stabbed but of those injuries I've seen, and those I've seen recovered from, while I wouldn't wish either, I know which I'd prefer. And my preference doesn't involved gunpowder.
Bow hunting, and I'd reckon crossbow hunting isn't as forgiving as firearms hunting. Better or more eating perhaps, at least it feels cleaner, but it's more work.
I just don't know the basis of your claims other than a conjecture apparently privileging "pole weapons training" over modern firearms combat training (I feel this is sorta an Obi Wan augment for lightsabers vs. blasters...). So sword and ax attacks do occur, and they're just not as lethal as firearms. Firearms are actually not as easy to use in combat as you're claiming (it's a popular notion widely circulated, it's just not accurate), that's why in professions where firearms are a tool, they have qualification courses. Sure anyone with enough time and the right conditions can put a bullet through the good part of a target. But put those targets on edging timer, require multiple shots on target in two seconds. Five second drills where you fire twice, reload and then fire a head shot, there's a thing called trigger discipline, it's not what you think (shoot don't shoot is called judgment), if it's not trained into you or you're otherwise not some preternaturally cool walk on I guarantee you any professional course of fire will have the bulk of your rounds dropping to the left into the no points zone if you even land the paper. Gunfighting skills require a lot of training and are very perishable. Not even getting into shooting and moving, complexities of site picture vs point shooting in close quarters battle, shooting at range. Look at relatively untrained gunfights and see how many shots were fired vs how many actually hit who the shooter was actually trying to hit. Btw, how much "training" quantitatively in time or maneuver repetitions does a Halberd wielder in whatever job function they carried a Halberd receive? Police and military fire 1000s of rounds to prove basic competency with their weapons. Police fire hundred more every year to maintain that competency. Military and more tactical oriented police fire thousands, sometimes tens of thousands. It's not just for bragging rights.
The .45 colts that "won the West" aren't that different from the .45 caliber revolvers used today. I'd probably put a Derringer in 1d4 category but not a .45. Someone who knows how to manipulate a revolver (hi, training and practice, again) can definitely fire off the whole six rounds in under a six second "round." With practice I might even get the whole thing reloaded in a round too.
Something the rules don't cover but worth noting, at least a side arm becomes lethal a lot faster out of holster than drawn melee weapons. Especially at melee range.
As far as the D&D damage being a continuum of stuff ranging from actual physical trauma to the "stress" of being under attack, while I'm personally a fan of characters and monsters getting "arrowed" Boromir style, I'll say and a neuropsychologist might be able to say why but the threat/stress of being under attack from a firearm or possibly under attack from a firearm is just magnified over any melee threat I've ever experienced (can't say with any experience on arrows having never had one pointed at me as far as I know). In other words fire arms can be more "draining" of their targets in that regard too.
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You're privileging your understanding of the physics of melee and admit to not have a grasp on how the same principles effect firearms. Especially the pinpoint analogy, that's ironically very imprecise. Bullets never work like laser beams. Bone shattering and attendant mushrooming trauma has historically happened throughout the history of firearms. When it comes to lethality, modern hollow point pistol rounds are often considered "overkill" over their predecessors. Also going to prior "low powered" bullets it wasn't the bullet going through you clean like a laser pin or whatever, the bullet stayed in the body, and that added a whole knew form of morbidity to trauma.
Your conjecture is also contending with a few people who've actually seen or experienced what firearms first hand do as well as what melee weapons do including axes. Again I wouldn't want either, but under duress I'd choose getting thwacked, slashed or stabbed over getting shot.
Counter argue away but your entry is basically dancing on the head of poorly analogous pinpoint. I'm holstering up for this thread since it seems most of the optional rules critics aren't hitting the mark in their objections.
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While I still stand by my claims that the firearms damage stats in D&D "outgun" so to speak the traditional weapons on reasonable grounds, this is also true.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
If you want an example of "unrealistic", a one-handed quartstaff strike does the same damage as a one-handed longsword strike. Yes, I know that it's not meant to be exactly like real life and made the same argument earlier, but it's an even more counterintuitive detail that guns v swords.
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Exactly. However, even a parried or blocked strike wears you down. Even a bear miss. After a while, it stresses you out, so you're more likely to make a serious error. It tires you out, which makes your reflexes slower and more likely to allow a strike through your guard. You become more frustrated which clouds your thinking.
I'm changing how I model damage. I'm now modelling it more on the psychological and physiological aspects above rather than describing how the warrior received a strong hit from a longsword for the 3rd time, but he's showing no signs of weakening. They may got nicks and cuts, but nothing that an hours break can't help and a good night's rest can't relegate to insignificant - at least, not if they don't lose all their HP, at any rate.
I model monsters slightly differently. For human sized and smaller, the more serious injuries come sooner (because I don't have to worry about healing them). For much larger, I just model it as direct damage, which emphasises their sheer strength. Last night, a few high HP enemies came upon the party, ones that the party had never fought before. The party used its heavy artillery to blast them, with the expectation that it would obliterate them. When they saw that the enemies tanked the blast, shook it off and kept coming, the atmosphere changed instantly.
Anyways, whole guns are inaccurate, being shot at is even more stressful, hence the higher damage.
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I feel like firearms should level the playing field when it comes to armour class - probably a case where they cause the target to make a contested dex save to avoid being hit, and then lower damage. Armour's good for protecting against swords and such, but firearms should come down to how well they are shot vs how well the target avoids being hit. Armour won't help much with firearms! That's why suits of armour went out of fashion after guns came to prominence - they didn't help!
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I almost feel like armour will either work or not, with no middle ground. But then, hitting certain places makes it more likely.
On one hand, I feel like firearms should do lower damage but have a higher chance to hit (as armour won't be as effective, and armour is as much a part of rolling to hit as dexterity).
The problem is that they're so far removed from conventional weapond that you almost need to go more in-depth to really represent them. A single dice rolled against an "AC" which can represent armour, dodging, semi-etherealness, and all manner of other things which prevent people being hit cannot really distinguish between guns, bows, or daggers.
I wonder if the best bet for guns might be to have their "sheer power" be reflected by downgrading resistance and immunity, so if someone resistant to piercing damage is shot, they aren't resistant to that. Then just keep them in line with bows and crossbows for damage, or perhaps even slightly lower (as a trade-off). That and needing expensive specialist ammo!
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It was the flintlock musket, specifically. Plate armor stopped being a big deal long before the development of artillery with enough accuracy to hit what you aimed it at. People still wore armour for centuries (and soldiers wear armour today), but big heavy metal suits faded out in the 17th century because they weren't worth the effort due to flintlocks.
Of course, this was in the real world, where armour doesn't add to your AC because it doesn't make you less likely to be hit. Plate armour primarily works by trying to spread incoming force over a larger area, because force per unit area is generally what kills you. In D&D 5E terms, that would be some combination of threshold, reduction, and weird resistance that might not be 1/2 per se. A bullet and an arrow both have to obey the same core physics of the real world - bullets just achieve significantly higher velocities in practice, with much less effort exerted by the shooter.
Modern armour abandons this as untenable in the face of firearms. It works the same way your car does in a car crash, assuming your car is also modern (older cars were made to be durable, so in a crash, the driver takes all the damage). It assumes the incoming damage is going to happen, and suffers it for you - in 5E terms, modern armor is just a pool of hit points, like an Abjurer's Arcane Ward. It's designed to break when shot so you don't break, because the incoming force is consumed shattering it. Here's a link discussing it.
Kind of. Armour was still effective against musket fire at longer ranges, but the main influencing factor was simply training time, and cost. You can train a man to be an effective musketeer with one day's training per month (in England in the 17th century, each village had to have a Village Soldier who went to train 1 day per month with the rest of the village soldiers in the county - I did a project using the parish records once). And it's cheap. He needs a musket, and some ammo. Compared to that, a heavily armoured horsemen (such as the 'lobster men' on the parliamentary side in the English civil war) are extremely expensive, and require massive amounts of training (horsemanship not being the least part). Factor in the combination of pike blocks with musket support, and the role of the heavily armoured infantryman died away as well. If you can equip and pay 20 men with muskets for the cost of one cavalryman, then you do it.
Consider that in the 16th century, an era of heavily armoured knights, that longbowmen were used alongside gunners on the Mary Rose and similar ships (our surviving longbows come from the MR). Longbows do not shoot straight through armour as the English myth would have us believe - breastplates have specific arrow catchers on them to deflect shattering shafts away from the helm as they flew upwards, and tests against accurately made armour using accurately made longbows confirm this. But longbows were considered better than handguns for a long time for open warfare (so much that men were legally obligated to learn to use them in England).
After the invention of the musket, as armour began to be restricted purely to the torso and fewer soldiers were wearing it, the calibres of guns used actually got smaller. The term "bullet proof" literally comes from the mark left after firing a pistol at a cuirass to demonstrate that it was proof against bullets. Armour remained effective, and even as late as the first world war, soldiers would wear armoured jackets despite their majorly reduced effectiveness (and because they made shrapnel wounds worse). Modern military forces continue to wear body armour to this day.