My setting doesn't need gunpowder! Ships and fortifications can just mount ballistae instead of cannons, right?

>Hating on Van Helsing
It's like kicking a puppy man. Not fair.

Pretty sure the elvish word for Friend is in there somewhere

It would also be far harder to use a lot of them (since a ballista anywhere near useful is fucking huge) and not actually be all that effective at breaking ships compared to a cannonball.

It definetly is. But as long as gunpowder doesn't get ''discovered'' that's the only thing they can use.

Most pirate-casters are storm sorcerers though so they're naturally good with sea stuff. Pirates are pretty rare in the setting though, it's not really a viable way of making a lot of money. Given the world is fairly young, unexplored and most of the islands with viable communities for trade are yet to be discovered

Well if it IS Da Vinci, he would write backwards so no one but him could read his notes. Also it's probably written in an older form of Italian.

Da Vinci is Sauron, all is made clear.

It is Da Vincis writing.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_navy#Armament_and_tactics
>In the Hellenistic period, the larger navies came instead to rely on greater vessels. This had several advantages: the heavier and sturdier construction lessened the effects of ramming, and the greater space and stability of the vessels allowed the transport not only of more marines, but also the placement of deck-mounted ballistae and catapults.
What's wrong with ship mounted ballistae, again?

>No less than the presence of any other explosives or fires if the mage knows what they're doing.
I'm just thinking about how fire is used differently in a fireball than a cannon. A cannon is large metal tube the explosion happens in, launching a ball made of metal at a structure made of wood.

A mage shooting a fireball is a human being in cloth robes, presumably standing on the ship, with nothing surrounding him, shooting a projectile made of fire at another structure made of wood, all while at sea in uncertain conditions of stability.

>My setting doesn't need gunpowder! Ships and fortifications can just mount ballistae instead of cannons, right?
yes
>It doesn't need guns either! I just include hand crossbows, automatic crossbows, sniper crossbows... hmm... shotcrossbows?
yes, yes, sniper crossbow..maybe a crossbow that takes a animal hitched to it to pull, so it has extreme range? and shotcrossbow, fletchettes
>A-anyway, it doesn't need guns at all! See?
correct, no setting needs guns.
all said, you sound like a retard, and guns are no problem if the dm handles them right and the player dosent expect a black powder pistol to shoot like a revolver and be as accurate

Sounds cool.

IMHO, a setting without guns is no problem, crossbows are no problem, but when they're used in such a way that it's clear the GM had guns in mind and just didn't want to break some imaginary "no guns" rule it's annoying.

Saruman was pretty much evil wizard Da Vinci

He's also a diplomancer

Yeah but it's magic fire so it's cool.

explosive powder and armaments pose the same issues. I trust the Mage more than the drunk pirate to not blow me up though.

Yes. Siege of Dover in the 11th century. And you have trebuchets and catapults for that kind of task, too.

Besides, you're not gonna go through a star fort with a black powder gun.

> magic fire
> cool

user, I'm afraid you don't quite grasp how fire works.

What about drunk mages?

>magic

What if it's a drunk pirate mage?

> fire

is that like drunk monks?

>m a g i c

The setting exists such that the chemistry of the world contains a substance which hinders the effects of gunpowder, however there is an abundance of magic to the point that it is cost effective to enchant hundreds of bolts at a time with various enchantments ranging from speed, explosive, and weight.

There is a specialized industry for enchanters who focus primarily on being able to mass produce these enchanted bolts, or develop highly explosive ballistae bolts as effective artillery (the larger the bolt, the greater the ability to enchant).

A knight in steel will find that a peasant weidling a crossbow could fire an explosive bolt that would knock him off his horse with a hole the size of a fist in his chest, or a speed enchanted bolt that uses pure kinetic force to rip a hole the size of a pinky through his armor and through several trees behind him.

Heavy ballistae range in size and shape from small mortar like devices to those with the capability of matching howitzers.

One of the more elaborate pieces are "Thunder Bolts". These are fired from special all steel ballistae, with enchantments that launch the bolt at Mach 2. This creates the characteristic sonic boom noise when fired, and the payload of the enchanted tip is such to be able to tear asunder castle walls as well as a 150mm howitzer shell.

Although the speed at which the individual infantry can fire is notably less than a proper machine gun, the speed at which ballistae can reload and shoot far surpasses that of conventional artillery.

Or you could just save yourself the bullshit and use guns if you want guns.

Really.
I will never understand the hate guns get in fantasy settings.

> f i r e

>m a g i c

What are some cool naval weapons if you wanted to steer away from guns and ballistae? Something high fantasy.

I always had a fun idea of captured fire breathing lizards chained to the boat but I want to hear some new ideas.

Arcane focus arrays. Cast any ray spell into them and they'll shoot out a version of it at the enemy with a higher caster level and a shitload of metamagic.

You could probably make something way worse than greek fire if you throw in some alchemism or magic.

I've heard the Greeks mounted some on their own ships, but ramming and boarding actions were more effective tactics combined with regular archers onboard to hit soft targets.

Though against the Persians the Athenian fleet took Spartans onboard to use as marines, turning the sea battle into a land battle through boarding and very effectively slaughtering the Persians before they made landfall.

>asshole player keeps pestering me to allow him to invent gunpowder so he can metagame cannons and guns out of nowhere and blow all his enemies up with 30 kegs of gunpowder
>add magical laser guns instead and credit some nerdy research mage with their invention
>this dweeby mage becomes one of the most important figures in the setting overnight
I did the right thing, right?

Well, you seem to have derailed your entire setting just in order to spite a player, so depending on your philosophy as a GM you're either "awesome" or "awful".

Undead galley slaves that never tire.

Gunpowder isn't that cool. Lasers are cool.

Ramming.

You don't know what you're talking about.

>spoken like a true 3.PFaggot

Nothing, OP is just trying to make a point about how a lot of people have an aversion to include guns in fantasy campaigns in the most convoluted way possible

Exactly. It's the same problem with extensive magitech: if you want to run a medieval fantasy game, run medieval fantasy. If you don't want to run medieval fantasy, run something else. Just don't try to force your medieval fantasy world into something it isn't just because you can't be bothered to learn any non-medieval fantasy system

The problem with gunpowder is that players always want to use them, and expect them to be amazing, because guns of all times were amazing, right? That, and some people just don't like it thematically. Least, that's my opinions on the matter for most generic fantasy. I'm also a sucker for the age of pike and shot, but I feel like that age is a bit too advanced for "generic fantasy." If you have in mind that you're going to run in an age when they're prevalent, as I sometimes like doing, that's perfectly fine, but you have to be aware of the circumstances of the time.

5E, actually.

My wizard's just gonna give all his wands pistol grips then.

Spellguns are sweet.

Warhammer fantasy pulls this off perfectly fine.
rip

sounds cool DM, infact I always wanted to try this large double crossbow vital strike build, can I show you some of my notes and see if it would be ok?

Warhammer fantasy's Empire is more of a pike-and-shot army. Hence the rules for supporting units.

I like that also other races are not complete inept when it comes to gunpowder weaponry. Sometimes even better.

if your having late middle ages then you can have historically accurate guns with no accurate that shoot rocks into the air and hopefully land near or on the enemy formations.

Depending on how magic works in the setting, a drunk mage can be completely harmless.

And then a rival division of abjurers is formed to counter the enchanters developing arcane dampening armor that reduces the effects of magic bolts for men, and placing stronger wards on castle walls to reduce impact from advanced siege weaponry.

sounds like a shit DM

its not the hate of guns in high fantasy but in a historically accurate low fantasy like when i was in a game about the war of the roses i didn't want rifled marksmen who could knock some one off a horse at over 100 yards vs a modern day magic is real and demons are invading the world. it depends on your setting

'Exploding gunpowder barrels' leads to the worst kind of PC bullshit.

Like people who let them fuck around with fire. Suddenly they're demanding to be able to burn down a forest with a flint and steel.

30 kegs of gunpowder wouldn't do anything because its a low explosive so it would just smolder. you need it to be in a confined space to work. Granadas were large and fairly effective compared to modern (dating back to WWI ) grenades.
what this guy said

kegs of gunpowder wouldn't do anything because its a low explosive so it would just smolder
That's not what happened in Pirates of the Carribean. Don't base your expectations of what your players will do on reality, because they're generally out of touch with reality.

not the guy you were talking to and cant confirm this but i know at the height of the egyption empire there ships had baristas

This seems like the right thread for an unrelated yet explosion-related question.

Bat guano.
Explosive? Flammable? Or neither?

I've got a player trying to persuade me that it explodes due to the saltpeter content.

Hipster fucks.

it all depends on your lvl of fantasy and time period

Tell that fuck to refine it first

saltpeter is just an oxidizer not an explosive. it needs to be mixed with a fuel

not to mention its a low explosive

role a d20. 20 they kill 1 guy no save no questions asked

Yea, it might go up like a powder keg!

>Once again, the mage does everything

1 it blows up in there face and they take 2 d20 damage in a 5ft radius

>"guns down fit into this setting"
>uses other assets liberally that are much younger than rifles/guns

>Wands of Fireball exist
>b-but guns will destroy my setting!

>Literal chronology is the only factor involved in what degree the inclusion of an anachronism will alter the setting

Cheers guys. He found a couple of references in dodgy caving manuals to explosive guano deposits and ran with it.

On topic, period-appropriate guns are top shit.
I go with slow to reload and inaccurate at range but armour piercing in my game.
Not super historically accurate since we get the word bulletproof from period armour, but balanced enough compared to bows and crossbows that I'm ok with it.

Have you considered using a comma, m80?

Honestly, I think it's because of plain ignorance. Some people just have a realy vague idea of what the fuck firearms are. Like, they don't even know what the difference between, let's say, an arquebus and modern firearms is, other than that the modern ones are supposedly better. Somehow. They're not sure.
In their worldview the entirety of human history can be neatly divided into five parts: the Stone Age, the Ancient World, the Middle Ages, World War 2 and Today.

Modern firearms potentially could if you make them widespread for some reason

youtube.com/watch?v=mP6MwwiMjFs

comas are for people who have time to stop. not one step back

I played in a setting where gunpowder never took off beyond fireworks and modern weapons were derived from crossbows, magic gauss rifles that fired bolts designed to penetrate and shatter in the wound, or worse. The sniper rifle equivalent shot a meter long rod of sharpened tungsten rebar through just about anything put before it.

They had shot crossbows in the 1500s, they were called stonebows or pellet bows.

....um...
>f i r e

Traditionally, you'd use grappling hooks to lash the ships together and if you weren't fighting in a boarding action you were tossing spears and insults at enemy ships.

And if you want to run medieval fantasy with extreme magitech run that as well. Sometimes the goal is not "let's do something else but force it into a medieval fantasy world" but rather a genuine interest in the thing you are mistaking for shoehorned.

There is nothing wrong with wanting an option presented to be at least on par with other options. If your guns aren't as viable an option mechanically as your bows and your swords why bother having them in the first place?

for a long time I pondered why Veeky Forums hates guns, and then it finally dawned on me. Guns are the best IRL and Veeky Forums is for people who want to live in a fantasy world, so they obviously hate guns because they also hate reality.

As long as they aren't presented as being mechanically equivalent, it's fine to have disparity between available options. Flavor is a thing.

>If your guns aren't as viable an option mechanically as your bows and your swords why bother having them in the first place?
That's the issue. A significant portion of players believe that guns and gunpowder are the ultimate weapon in any case they are introduced, even if mechanically they aren't. And then they'll argue they should be the best. And then there's the difficulty presented by trying to balance early firearms. The reason they came into use was that they were cheaper to produce than crossbows, yet didn't require the years of muscle training required to use a warbow. Early firearms were strictly worse in "combat ability" than their contemporary bows and crossbows. With that in mind, players don't think of arquebuses, they think of flintlocks and rifled muskets. Those are not good contemporaries, and implies a level of technological advancement which goes beyond what most fantasy games have.

>implying I hate guns
I just don't like them in fantasy because people automatically assume what you just posted. I like them in meatspace, and own several myself. Don't get to go shooting as often as I'd like, but c'est le vie.

the romans made a spiked bridge that collapses onto the opponents ship so they could engage in melee.

Autocorrect is a beautiful thing.

S.M. Stirling says hello!

Fable and Van Helsing both did it right.
Guns are cool, they're fast, but crossbows are more accurate at a distance and more powerful up close, and repeating (both bolt and gatling) crossbows could also be made with more antiquated technology than semi-automatic guns.
You want to mug people or kill a rival fopfag to steal his grill? Use guns. You want to hunt werewolves and vampires? Bring a crossbow.

Maybe you could put your mage in a specialised emplacement to minimise the risks?