How useful would a guy with a machine gun be in a generic sword and sorcery setting?

Modern Machine gun?

Depends but possibly very lethal until he runs out of bullets.

Some user once worked out via d20 modern that modern heavy weapons (not small arms like a machine gun mind you) do enough dmg to outright bypass a Balors DR by brute force alone and basically paste them, IE, Tank beats Demon, stats wise.

>Tank beats Demon, stats wise
Only if you want it to.

What is this from? I need to enter seething rage against something and this is the perfect thing.

(Google says that's a helicopter. Thanks Google).

>doing 290 damage with one shot
yeah fuck no that'd blow apart a citadel.

How about that Conan story where he makes the evil wizard eat lead eh?

Owari no Seraph.

Though I haven't watched it so I don't know what you'll get from it.

A modern machine gun would mow down tons of dudes to be sure, but machine guns are designed for 2 things: mowing down tons of dudes in clumps quickly, and suppressing fire. Both of these things 1. Do not require much accuracy, but 2. Require tons of bullets. A m240 machine gun fires between 650 and 950 rounds per minute depending on it's gas setting. It loads from a 100 round bandolier. Your average squad gunner will carry around 2k in rounds in various pouches and cans on their person whenever they go out 'under the wire'. As a result, you can assume a operator is carrying enough ammunition for 2-3 minutes of pure sustained fire on their person. You will go through ammunition long before the weapon suffers mechanical failure.

However valuable this is, the extended use of the gun is limited entirely by circumstance. Against massed infantry at any range out to around a thousand yards? Lethal, regardless of whatever kind of plate they're wearing. The enemy is likely to figure this out very quickly though.

A bolt action rifle would be much more useful in my opinion. A more precision weapon and rugged enough to be serviced with pre industrial tools. Smaller quantities of ammo are less of an issue when you're using that ammunition more sparingly.

...

A tank pretty much would do that.

youtube.com/watch?v=3jho-peCAKs

You drastically overestimate a tank round.
Undamaged? No. Annihilated? Fuck no.

We have different images of what counts as a Citadel.

Either that or you think tanks can destroy an entire city block in a single shot, which wouldn't be the stupidest thing I've read.

as effective as a standard strength firespark at 50 shots per turn.
I treat firearms like spells with material cost , but with physical damage types.
making decent quality ammo requires heavy tools , making ammo creation during travels a pain in the ass while mana simply regenerates, and sharpening a stick + putting some feathers on it can be made with minimal equipment.

using magic also means having multiple different guns at your disposal , may it be homing missiles , javelins (the spear) , javelins (the rocket), mortars , flamethrowers , or good old boolits.-all of this combined in your own body or a 3-6 kg staff as a catalyst. even if you are literaly disarmed , you can still learn to channel magic through your upper arm stumps and aim using your mind.
gunpowder & metal ammo on the other hand have a far higher potential reach and dont cause magical sickness once being used too often per day, and allows to instantly attack rather than prepare the spell for a second first. therefore , guns are the "magic" of dex and str builds, but having a somewhat decent variety of weapons can slow you down a lot.

another thing is , while magic directly improves with its user , you need a gun with bigger boolits if you want to use it against stronger targets , increasing recoil and ammo cost & weight on higher levels.

Why didn't the helicopters just fly above the arrows?

>How useful would a guy with a machine gun be in a generic sword and sorcery setting?

>i answer your hypothetical scenario by claiming that it can not happen...
...despite i could just , in fact , put a machine gunner into our current sword & sorcery campaign

literaly the worst answer , you wasted your time here

>whats a crit shot

also most stronger creatures and many armors have magical shielding , which can only be beaten effectively by a counter-enchantment. works wonders with melee weapons since they are directly connected to their source of power (you) , but enchanting bullets AND building in a storage with enough mana would make you shooting a guy in decently enchanted armor waste a pound of gold.
enchanted armor would cost rarely more than 3 or 4 sets of regular armor , so it was not uncommon for succesful mercenaries to wear.

instead you would use one of these neat rifle-shaped wizard staffs and break their shield from a distance before the other guy shoots a few holes into their armor (works not as good in urban areas since he would notice his shield breaking and go back into cover untl recovery)

Maybe they were coming down to land. Maybe the archers out-range the helicopters maximum combat range so it wouldn't make a difference. Maybe the author just wanted it to happen and doesn't care/know about tactics.

>archers out-range the helicopters maximum combat range
Those are AH-64D Apache Longbows, user.
Their chin mounted gun is an M230 chain gun, firing 625 30x113mm rounds per minute, at a muzzle velocity of 805m/s with an effective firing range out to 15,700 meters (that's 9.75 miles).
They're visibly carrying AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-surface missiles, which have an effective range of 8,000 meters.
tl;dr that's complete bullshit.

Assuming Laguna's SMG type device, setting has appropriate equipment for things within the setting (IE, armor isn't being designed specifically to stop bullets, tactics haven't been deployed to better fight automatic guns). Also assuming there's some sort of magical logistic chain that allows the firearm to be used generally as much as it would in its correct setting.

Against pure martials at normal levels, as long as there's a clear line of sight, the man with the machine gun is going to chew through people without any trouble. Human plate armor isn't really thick enough to stop too many until you get up to fancy stuff fantasy settings seem to use, such as moving to thick dragonscale or something like a giant wearing a massive thick iron plate, close to being equivalent to an armored car (And assuming he's got it covering his vital points like his eyes and other squishy bits.).

Against lower leveled casters, they'll probably find themselves shredded before they can do much unless they can cast before the gun can be drawn, which may or may not be common in the setting. This assumes a caster has no defensive spells in effect before combat to deflect rounds and is just trying to go toe to toe with his foe. Seeing as magic is something that's very setting specific, this is difficult to answer.

Really, magical creatures would be the best way to go about fighting a guy with a gun. Guns rely on piercing through targets and shredding internal organs, which are important for humans but completely missing from, say, a slime or a skeleton. Oddly enough, a gunner would be much, much less effective than any other level 1 character in a dungeon comprised of similar targets as the previous -- pretty much everything else is going to impart more kinetic force for destroying targets in comparison.

One thing about magic though is that it's very much an exclusive sort of art. Wizards need to spend years studying to learn and memorize spells. Sorcerers have to be born with innate magical talent. Clerics have to be gifted what they need by their gods. Guns have none of that baggage attached, instead requiring an industrial supply chain in place of it all.

Looking at guns in real life, they were a natural extension of weapon development against primary real world targets (IE humans) and made possible by advances in industrial strength and national communication/cooperation. If you remove the ability to continually produce additional ammunition, and change your target, you'll find that guns are both difficult to continually use and may not work well against your enemy.

But, if you need to assassinate a human king riding through the town, I can't think of something better.

Even within FF8's world, people who use melee weapons in open combat are comparativly rare.

As even Squall's use of the gunblade was said to be rare itself.

Most of the armies in the setting do use guns and I would imagine the same would be said of SeeD members as well with the smattering of people using various melee weapons.

that's an assault rifle, though

I don't think it was really thought out in any realistic fashion. Enemies were mostly uniform and faceless mooks, the main characters used melee weapons for the most part not indicative of their skill (Save Squall), but because the devs wanted to make them stand out from everyone else.

Really, in a setting where everything boils down to white numbers summing up the effect of your attack, it's pretty easy to suspend disbelief and just see all weapons as valid. You can actually go the same route in tabletop if you wanted to, though I always prefer some damaging modeling in my games to give players a reason to use different tools for the job.

Plot twist: the setting is anima.

I agree to an extent and frankly it's the same way in 12 as well. There are guns in the setting, hell there is a scene where Vaan and the gang get caught and the Arcadian soldiers surround them with guns drawn and pointed at them. Yet at the beginning of the game where you see the big battle the same Arcadian guys are mixing it up with their polearms/sword and board but also have airships with magic guns on them as well so ultimately it just boils down to Rule of Cool.

The better question is why the arrows are even penetrating the helicopters at all instead of harmlessly bouncing off or why did they not just fire before the bowmen could see them

I suppose if the arrows were significantly heavy, they could impart enough force to penetrate aircraft armor. DU arrows or higher maybe?

By what I gather the setting has vampires and magic powers so the arrows being somehow enchanted wouldn't surprise me one bit

God fucking damnit I loved this game. The way square handles sci-fi is just perfect. And it has the best mini-game in the entire FF series. Now why the fuck can't someone write a good tabletop system based on FF material?