Relative to explorers? Possibly. We had a way-overpowered explorer with str16 dex18 once; he was a pain in my ass. In the general case, though, explorers have to split their stats between both reqs while fighters can just dump it all in one; I think it helps fighters more in the wilderness levels than it does explorers (since you can go from plate-and-spear dungeon phalanx to plate-and-longbow wilderness phalanx and keep more of your damage).
[quote="Jard"]
Dungeon Guns: yeah, it seems like taking noise into account would be super important, but I'm a little worried that if it's too punitive people basically won't bother with them. I also have no idea how to make a balanced mechanic to figure how far away they'd be heard.
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That's a good question, actually; I can't imagine there's not studies around that could be mangled to fit an average case. Have to see what the decibels are on a musket shot first, I guess.
[quote="Jard"]
Eras: so the interesting thing is, Flintlock appears to be superior to Wheellock in almost every way, except that for some reason Flintlock has a higher failure rate than wheellock in wet conditions. At least according to tables, I've already demonstrated I have poor reading comprehension at least once in this thread
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Right. To simplify immensely, imagine the Flintlock as your default Bic lighter - anyone who used to smoke knows they occasionally didn't work very well, and those are machine-made, not a hand-shaped flint on a hand-made mechanism. Little metal bit spins against a flint stone to create a spark. If either the flint or the starting powder is damp, ignition may not happen.
The wheellock, however, is a spring-loaded mechanism that has a lot more motive force behind it than just 'flicking your bic' - I dunno if you remember those spark-throwing toys that you pulled the plastic strip out of to make the metal wheel spin and throw sparks? Vague memory from the 80s...?
Anyway, the wheellock has enough spin/friction/heat generated that it burns out any collected moisture, and therefore is generally immune to moisture-related failure.
Fascinating. Today I learned :-)
So it seems like with slightly increased prices and an across-the-board failure rate of 10%, (or possibly 10-20-20), matchlock could be the "upgrade" that spendy adventurers use for themselves.
I would allow cleaving with pistols if the user had multiple loaded pistols on them. Blackbeard (along with other pirates) was known for tying flintlock pistols to his belt with ribbons, so he could fire and drop them without losing them. There were also mounted cavalry troopers that would carry four to six (or more) pistols so that they could fire multiple times before having to reload.
I'm stealing that rule. Thank you.
No, I mean because it improves everyone's damage across a broad range of weapons. Anything that does that effectively weakens the Fighter, as it dilutes their dominance in the realm of weapon damage.
It does lead to a question about morale checks, which I think can be best illustrated by a scenario.
6 goblins corner a dwarven pistolier with 4 loaded wheel-lock pistols. The dwarf wins initiative and shoots a goblin. It falls, he cleaves and shoots a second goblin. The same thing happens, and he drops a third goblin, cleaves one more time and drops a fourth goblin, but now is out of pistols and cannot attack again.
How many morale checks do the two survivors take? Because goblins have a -1 morale, gunfire triggers a morale check, and the multiple shots and multiple deaths allow multiple scenarios. I can see a few possibilities:
1. The goblins make morale checks after each shot, plus a check at the end of the round at -2 due to having more than half their group killed in one round.
2. The goblins make morale checks after each shot, with the two at -2 due to the shots killing a target and half the group being dead.
3. The goblins make one morale check at the end of the round at -2.
4. (this one extrapolates from the rules) The goblins make one morale check at the end of the round at -4 because there are three situations forcing a check (firearm discharge, death, and half dead).
5. (the roll, roll, roll your die method) There are tons of morale checks - one for each shot and one for each death.
6. (my favored one, with totally no rule support) The goblins make a morale check immediately upon the first shot being fired. They make a second check at -2 immediately upon the first death, and a third check at -4 once half the group has been killed. The rolls occur only when the morale penalty gets worse, so if the dwarf had fired, killed a goblin, shot again, and didn't kill that target, there would be morale check #1 for the gunshot and check #2 for the death, but no check for the second shot, because it doesn't cause a further morale drop.
Only if your party contains high-strength characters who aren’t already classes with fighter damage bonus. This isn’t something I see with my group; if they have a high stat, they either play a class that has that stat as a req, or aggressively trade that stat down to boost a req for some other class that they want to play. In an 11 man party, they have a total of 5 points of positive modifiers that aren’t prime reqs for that character (4 of those 5 points are in Con, and the last is a 13 wisdom on a henchfighter whose stats they didn’t get to optimize).
Agreed, I think the cost and weight involved is a fair balance against the additional shooting power.
I think I'd go with #4.
wow, all this talk of cleaving with pistols makes me realize that they do a d8 for damage, just like 2-handed guns.
This seems a bit off to me. My first instinct is to either lower their damage to 1d6 or to cap their ability to "cleave" to a maximum of 2, meaning you can only cleave with a gun in your hand. Unquestionably, there's still an advantage to having numerous pre-loaded pistols at the ready, even if it takes a couple rounds to use them all.
Blame James Raggi for the d8 damage! :)
Since this is general discussion, I’ve just been reading the Backer’s draft, and saw my contribution to GoW: dragoons. Came about from a very timely conversation with Alex about them. Awesome.
Dragoons have been a favorite of mine ever since a translation mistake in Final Fantasy 4 labeled one of the classes as one!
An additional firearm for Guns of War, predating even the matchlock:
Handgonne - the handgonne is a late medieval firearm, developed in the 1300s and still in use in the 1500s. Visually, it resembles a small cannon on a thick pole, held by the gonner and lit by a slowmatch or hot piece of metal. Early handgonnes simply used a small hole in the top, with a slight concavity for the priming powder; later handgonnes used a priming dish to the side, which would be duplicated and improved on by most later firearms. By the standards of later guns, they're primitive and slow to fire, but have the same damage and armor penetration as any other smoothbore.
Handgonne - 1d8 damage, range 50/100(-4)/200(-10), reload 12 drilled, 15 undrilled, misfire chance 30%/60%/90%, encumbrance 2 stone, cost 10gp, can be used as staff in melee.
Has there been any consideration for how to include something like the Hussite war wagon?
http://www.peashooter85.com/post/51857782070/medieval-tank-warfare-the-hussite-war-wagon-in
It predates the Age of Pike and Shot, but in a setting where access to guns were limited to a small group such as the dwarves then something like the Hussite war wagon would make a lot of sense. Once guns become relatively common the war wagon is just a nice big target for the enemy guns, but if your opponents are using medieval technology the war wagon can be a valid technology. Could it be modeled as a kind of mobile fortification? Does the combined arms nature of the troops manning the war wagon preclude making this a unit?
In a setting where dwarves control the firearms production I can see them developing the war wagons as a counter to armored cavalry without even having to involve Machinist trying to come up with clockwork tanks.
Bear in mind that Dwarves live in the mountains, which is not prime War Wagon terrain.
Perhaps not, but when they organize trade caravans through dangerous regions, or they travel to another dwarven realm to render assistance making use of war wagons could be a powerful tactic turning the caravan into a fortified position from which firearms and small artillery pieces could be fired. In some settings trade with the dwarves doesn't happen right at their front gate, but at some point relatively removed.
Admittedly this might be an edge case, and not needing resolution for most campaigns. In scenarios where this could exist I can see dwarven realms launching campaigns into other realms using the war wagons as a means of reaching deep into enemy territory without having to worry about their lack of cavalry.
Being mixed doesn't preclude it from existing as a unit. In game terms, wouldn't it just be a high AC unit that can't charge, but is always readied against a charge?
I'm going a bit off on a tangent (as usual), but in my reading on naval ships, I ran across Tudor breech-loading artillery. Most of their artillery was muzzle-loading, but a few items (bases, slings, and port-pieces) used a barrel with a separate chamber, which could be lifted out of the gun, loaded with powder while the shot was placed in the barrel, then set behind the barrel and wedged tightly before firing. I realize the rules are trying to avoid modern breech-loaders, but what sort of rules could be set up around these pieces?
Some miscellaneous information:
Breechloaders tended to be light. Most were 2 inch caliber or smaller, although some 8" breech-loading guns that fired stone balls were recovered from the Mary Rose in the 1830s.
Heat dissipation was still a concern, so rate of fire, while it may improve, wouldn't be vastly greater.
Because of the relatively weak seal at the chamber, breech-loaders were known for not firing as strongly as muzzle-loaders.
My first thoughts:
Breech-loaders improve rate of fire by 10% (rounded to the nearest), but subtract 10% from all ranges (round to the nearest 10 feet). They also cost 10% more to account for the cost of an additional breech.