How different would early guns be in a fantasy setting?

Draph are life

Because gunpowder weapons can kill them much easier?

Brits won every pitched battle, despite having unrifled weapons...

losing the occasional grunt only qualifies as defeat to modern Americans.

Is an assumption you are making which is not implicitly true.

Gunpowder is better at punching monsters than mook muscles. Gunpowder can do it from a bigger radius than bows, which increases the number of units that can target the monster. And gunpowder has a smaller logistical train than archery, so the bigger, more powerful army is now also better supplied.

All of which relies on assumptions that might not necessarily be true.

Are you stupid? Cannons will kill giants much easier than catapults ever could. Not even mentioning stuff like falconets.

Gunpowder is a game changer.

What assumptions? Those are facts.

Those are facts in reality, yes.

That they will apply equally and absolutely in a fantasy setting is an assumption you are making.

Gunpowder is only a gamechanger if you make it one. Stop putting your biases and assumptions before the premise. Just because things work one way in our world does not necessarily mean they must function identically in a fantasy world, even if they are superficially similar.

That said, it is very stupid to attack a monster with a sword. Why would you ever bother with it? Pikes would be an extreme case. It makes far more sense to attack big beast with siege weapons like ballistas and cannons.

...

Because you are in a heroic setting, not a realistic one.

Heroic settings have different rules. Heroes kill giant monsters with personal scale melee weapons, because that is how the world works. Siege weapons manned by faceless mooks get obliterated without doing much good, although a hero using one can get something done.

Why the fuck would gunpowder work different in a fantasy world? And worse on top of that? If anything alchemists could make it better.

>every fantasy must be super heroic

Go away.

Because whether it works the same, or better, or worse, is something that whoever is creating the world can define as they wish. You were making the assumption of absolute equivalency, which is not necessarily true.

And of all the many reasons why you would change it, restrict it and limit it? This thread started out with one of the best ones- If you want gunpowder to be an element without dominating the setting. Adapting the laws of the world, the setting and such to that end is entirely understandable.

There are plenty fantasy settings where you do most of the damage against dragons with the help of siege weapons.

I'm not saying every fantasy has to be. I'm just saying they can be.

>Why the fuck would gunpowder work different in a fantasy world?

Works a SHIT tonne worse in the Iron Kingdoms setting. Which is why guns have such short ranges/.

That's your assumption, and many settings don't share it.

Absolutely. But I stated my assumptions, while the post I replied to failed to do so, seeming to be making a general point that is not true in all cases.

Posting cuter sister

It was handled nicely in Pillars of Eternity and Arcanum (lore-wise that is).

Peasants now have a fighting chance against monsters lurking in the woods, and the power gap between spellcasters and normal people is lessened greatly.

Every one of these arguements can also be made for ballistas, which commonly exist in these fantasy settings without the giants and trolls going extinct.

Indeed, I can think of a number of reasons why bringing cannons to fight a dragon would be an idea that sounds good on paper but in practice ends up with your army killed by its own gunpowder.

Swivel-guns loaded with shot would be incredibly useful.

A dragon that proportioned in a way where it'd be physically possible for it to fly is not a tough target. Lead shot will do a number on it.

Early guns wouldn't be that good against fast flying targets.

But against things like giants or trolls they would be super effective.

Assuming that kind of realism has a place in the setting, maybe.

If the Dragon is, however, as fast and maneuverable as they're often depicted, as well as tough, it might have a lot of problems.

Gun against a dragon is fair game.
Dragon with a gun not so much.

I always wondered, what's the rigger mechanism on swivel guns?

>Assuming that kind of realism has a place in the setting, maybe.
Personal preference, but I really enjoy that kind of realism.

I don't think black powder guns would be all that useful for a dragon other than against other dragons. Grenades though could be incredibly useful - a dragon could swoop in fast and low to minimize the risk of getting then drop a cast iron ball full of powder right into infantry formations.

Dragon(s) on their own couldn't handle a large scale battle, but with human or human-equivalent allies on their side in a combined arms army they would be be a brutally effective cavalry/artillery of sorts.

A slow match on a stick in all likelihood.

>A dragon that proportioned in a way where it'd be physically possible for it to fly
Congratulations, you've killed off all dragons due to such a thing not being possible. There is a reason Quetzalcoatlus (the largest flying animal) looks nothing like a dragon.

They'd basically have to either be living hot air balloons, or have some of the most ridiculous muscles and wingspan imaginable

On the other hand, a dragon from most pop culture and myth would be as protected as plate against early firearms, they ain't giving a shit about lower power shot with more balls.

This also gets into fighting intelligent dragons who will figure out very quickly how to ruin a gunpowder equipped army's day. You think people spiking your guns and wetting your powder is bad as a sneak attack? Dragon just pulled a high altitude dive on a cloudy night, blew your powder store, and melted your guns.

Now where powder would be useful against an intelligent dragon is as a sneak attack on its lair. Just dynamite the cave down on top of it as it sleeps.

I know of those. It's however a false assumption that something larger would necessarily be unable to fly - it could simply be that the evolutionary path to such a creature is extremely unlikely.

I mean it would have to take flight from a knuckle-running start or from a cliff.

Dude, quetzalcoatlus pushes the boundaries of what's possible on Earth. It's literally a matter of balancing the required musculature vs ability to get off the ground reasonably, and jumping off cliffs just isnt reasonable.

Evolution is pretty good at finding the optimal shape and design for boundary conditions, and quetzalcoatlus and its relatives are pretty much it for large flying creatures that aren't magical.

How about you suck a dick. Not every fantasy setting has to be these "gritty low magic settings" where magic is so rare but there are magic users fucking everywhere.

And why your shiny gunpowder siege weapons would fare better than balistas and what not?
After all, genre staples and all that

People like you are the exact reason gunpowder never works in fantasy games. One fucking chemical reaction and suddenly the whole setting better obey whatever you think physics should be, or so help you god you will never let anyone forget it.

Everyone uses swords and bows? Its fantasy, its fine.

Someone, somewhere, made gunpowder once? [15 pages of autistic pop science arguements]

Every. Fucking. Time.

It's not like guns would be immediately practical for "adventuring" types anyway. Early firearms were useful in the military sense because of firing lines, but when it's just you and a few other guys I think it wouldn't really be a huge improvement over the standard fantasy character equipment since generally monsters aren't something that die in one shot (without some sort of "magical quick loading" element anyway). It would probably just be a thing used to open a fight or in a pinch

Dude, I run Pathfinder, where there is a literal gunslinger class. These are revolvers and such, more advanced than the simple firearms of the late medieval period. Guns don't matter to me. I'm just trying to correct that fucknugget on his expectations of what is possible without magic, If he wants sizable dragons, he's going to have to suspend certain ideas about "realistic" physics to have them be possible.

For me at least, 7foot tall dragonmen wielding large guns to fight off the rampaging behemoths that plague their empire due to the god of destruction spawning lesser versions of it self is my jam, and features heavily in the setting.

This is the thing that kills me. Everyone is willing to speculate with total realism how guns would steam roll fantasy settings with no thought of what happens when that technology is equally accessible to the fantasy races.

What do you do when you have giants walking around with Rotary guns you normally have to mount on vehicles and they are carrying them like rifles? What happens when trolls burst through the walls with shotguns and knives and are tanking bullets with their regeneration?

People've got some weird blindspot when it comes to firearms in fantasy settings. They think Gunpowder has to be some magical material that slowly turns the setting from High Fantasy to Low Fantasy. Personally I blame the games and books that claim that the rise of technology meant that magic got it's ass kicked

What if the Giants have cannons too?

Eh. I think it makes sense that intelligent races with good hand-eye coordination and dexterity would invent firearms of any description. A troll or many giants just wouldn't have the intelligence nor inclination to patiently work out gunpowder.

And even if they up and steal someone else's weapons, seeing them use them would be the exception considering they'd need to know how they work without blowing themselves up and where to find more shot and powder ...

... And most creatures that are both intelligent, and have full ability to invent and craft firearms - But aren't humanoid? Well, often they've got all sorts of other potent abilities, magical or not, that they don't really need guns t

Repeating early firearms like this often get downplayed in fantasy systems so much.

They existed since early days of firearms they were just too expensive for common soldiers. For rich adventurers they would be perfectly affordable.

user, armies without gunpowder would be even less effective vs dragons.

At least against an army with anti air falkonets he would need to be really careful.

Battles turn into artillery duels?

It's part of the HFY mental disease that Veeky Forums suffers. Real world tech is only ever a boon for humans because it makes us seem more impressive, thus strokes our epeen.

I wasn't making an argument in defense of a regular army either, everything is fucked against a dragon. This is how it should be, killing a dragon is the stuff of legends after all.

Adventuring types used them in reality. Nothing is stopping you from walking around with 4 loaded pistols.

Eh, I don't think I'd agree, because the addition of guns in fiction that insists that it changes the meta rarely portrays it as a good thing.

To make guns you need industry. You need industry to make bullets and gunpowder too. And the likes of trolls are too dumb to operate guns.

As long as their function and support absolutely obeys the same rules as the real world. Which is not implicitly the case.

Warhammer always had guns. Including experimental repeating guns.

And I don't remember people crying about it or claiming it destroys fantasy.

Guns are a problem in D&D because slow firing weapons simply don't work well in D20.

user, laws of physics are the same in 99% of fantasy. For settings where everything farts magic this discussion is pointless anyways.

Where exactly do guns work completely different than they do in reality? Because in all settings I know they are the same.

Then the Giants are always gonna win. They can carry heavy artillery with them. If you introduce realistic cannons into a setting with evil, intelligent monsters, human settlements are gonna cease to be a thing.

Fantasy guns are incredibly underrated. Try to tell me that swords are cooler than shit like this:

youtube.com/watch?v=J_hnC6x036Q

Humans have numbers and industry to support those numbers.

Giants are also giant targets.

Giants can use enough armour to stop anything short of a big cannon. Because giant giants are giant.
Also, Orcs outnumber people by a lot.
I wonder how ant-man would fare with firearms... Mad discipline yo

Forget giants. What about the fucking ELVES?

Assume for the sake of argument that the generally more advanced elvish civilization didn't invent this shit in the first place, its only a matter of time before Superior Elvish Craftsmanship (tm) means that your traditional elvish archers who can fire 5 arrows on a single draw evolve into Elvish Muskateers that play a game where they see how many people they can kill with a single musket ball by curving the path of the bullet. Because with the stereotypical elvish keen eyes and whatnot, the elves WILL be excellent fucking shots.

Do you really want Legolas "They're taking the Hobbits to Isengard!" son of Thranduil to to have a sniper rifle whose range can keep up with his eyesight? Cause that's going to happen.

I actually am enjoying the entire thought of where warfare would go. Racial kingdoms would give way to multi-racial empires. Dwarfs for siege, sapping, production, maintenance and mountain warfare. Elves from sharpshooting, skirmishing, and scouting. Gnomes could put their illusion skills to awesome effect as they throw off enemy intelligence. Orc/Ogre/Giant shock troops and grenadiers! Bugbear/Gnoll ambushers! Goblin/Kobold Sappers! Hobgoblin and Human line troops! Hell, Half-orcs are probably grabbed as much as possible for guard units. Halfling irregulars and cooks of course. Wyvern, Griffon, Dragon, ect. ect. air corps. I mean, it goes on and on.

Guns prevailed because they are cheap and easy and could outrange bows in the field.
But bows were arguably superior to early guns in many ways, they just weren't worth it. Except when they were: Mounted archers being a nice example, coexisting with guns for a long time before finally taking the gun up the horse.

Elves live a lot, train a lot, move fast and tend to be quality > quantity. Can't see a gun being better for them than a bow.

Yes, yes I do actually.

I want the dwarves who roll out a massive gatling gun with each barrel carefully hand crafted and set into a rotary mechanism that resembles a dragons head while they feed belts of bullets into the thing while another dude is cranking it full bore.

I want the one human who's gone crazy and lives out in the woods and only shows up in town to buy more lead so he can smelt them into bullets and trade the various monsters he kills for shit.

I want fucking orc pirates who had his hand cut off and decided to pull a Guts and has a small cannon in place of a hook because fuck you captain bitch ass wig wearing boy molesting fruit, have some grape shot.

Yeah, good luck keeping up with the increased fatality in combat with that long as fuck life cycle.

How do they get the metal and how are they turning it into armor? Do they make giant forges?

And can you even imagine orcs calmly loading early guns?

>orcs calmly loading early guns?
No, if I was their commander I would give them a brace of pistols and send them off for an old Highland Charge. Hobgoblins are your line troops dude.

Why do orcs outnumber people, though? Unless they control an enourmous territory, orcs should be inferior in number to races that farm.

Orcs do farm. They farm mushrooms, which they also ferment into beer, and they raise squigs as livestock. They also reproduce asexually by releasing spores on death. That's a huge advantage and why they can attain such high numbers

>Do they make giant forges?
Why not? They often have a culture, weapons, etc.

You're thinking of Orks

Orcs (or some other kind of non-human barbarian horde) outnumbering everyone is a fantasy stable.

Orcs in Lord of the Rings do because they are industrious and Mordor is very fertile. Orcs in warhammer do because they are fungous. Otherwise, it is rarely explained.

The Mongols, for example, never relied on superior numbers to win their battles.

So what? (hint: firearms don't mean realism, or change of genre)

>Boromir would of recaptured Minas Morgul if his men could fire 5 volleys per minute

>heroic settings can't be realistic

Get a load of Buzz-kill Aldrin over here!

Wilful misunderstandings aren't clever, user.

This is why in my setting elves are Prussian Mercenaries who are rightly feared skirmishers and Jagers because of their exceedingly well crafted rifles (actual rifles, minie ball ammunition, while everyone else is using muskets), and literally centuries of experience. The only thing keeping them from being the major power is their lack of numbers, which is why they work as mercenaries for everyone so no one wants to be on their bad side.

Their rifles are enchanted to destroy themselves if a non-elf tries to fire them or take them apart

So Warhammer Fantasy
I give the orcs blunderbus' with a big old bayonet on the bottom

The older sister is the cutest

Swivel cannons wouldn't do dick to an Ancient Red Dragon. They have +33 natural armor (to give you a comparison, a set of the highest quality steel full plate armor is +8. On top of this they have Damage Reduction 15 against all mundane weaponry. You'd have an easier time killing a dragon with an enchanted ballista than you would a swivel gun.

>A dragon that proportioned in a way where it'd be physically possible for it to fly is not a tough target

That's not really a dragon then.

>or have some of the most ridiculous muscles and wingspan imaginable

An ancient red dragon has 39 strength. In comparison, Solar's, literal ANGELS that protect and serve as the guardians of actual GODS, have a strength of 29. Welcome to D&D mother fucker.

>misunderstandings

He literally just separated heroic fantasy and realistic fantasy into two different categories. How did I misunderstand him?

Because you're showing your ignorance of what those terms mean. It's about the fundamental conceits and assumptions of the setting. At no point is it implied that heroism is impossible in realistic settings.

>To make guns you need industry. You need industry to make bullets and gunpowder too.

A bunch of Duergar could totally churn out guns and arm dangerous, high-level monsters with them.

In fact, Gracklestug is basically a colossal gun factory in my main setting.

>ignorance of what those terms mean

>It's about the fundamental conceits and assumptions of the setting.

So what you're saying is you have no idea what those terms mean then? Heroic does not imply at all about anything he was saying in his post, heroism by definition just means "great bravery", while also describing such things as "noble" and "self-sacrificial", so again, wrong and wrong.

Even by his own terms as he laid out (which were incorrect to begin with) he was wrong. So who am I misunderstanding, really? Because I sure as shit aren't misunderstanding you. The only reasonable conclusion is that the "realism" he was describing could also include heroic attributes.

Orks are just WHF Orcs in space.

Context is everything, and if you're going to flagrantly ignore it to try and save face, you're not worth talking to. Fuck, it's even spelled out in the post you're bitching about.

Heroic fantasy implies mythological storytelling, focusing on classical themes, over the top characters with less emphasis on authentic or accurate historical details. D&D has tended towards heroic fantasy more and more over its lifespan, with 5e being the first real step backwards in that regard. Realistic fantasy, by contrast, strives for more of that authenticity and realism. But all of this should be blatantly obvious if you actually read the thread or, fuck, the bloody post.

>flagrantly ignore it

But I'm not. You're the only one ignoring the attributes to heroic fantasy, even when ascribed to the context of his post. It simply doesn't make sense any way you slice it. Realism goes hand in hand with heroism day in and day out.

>Heroic fantasy implies mythological storytelling

No it does not.

>Heroic fantasy is a subgenre of fantasy which chronicles the tales of heroes in imaginary lands. Frequently, the protagonist is reluctant to be a champion, and/or is of low or humble origin, may have royal ancestors or parents but does not know it.

So what definition are we going by, just some anecdotal context that appeals to your sensibilities so you can seem right, or actual definitions and descriptions of what has already existed for thousands of years?

If we're going by some useless definition that you're making up on the spot, then okay, by all means, "i misunderstood you", just as you "misunderstood me", seeing as I had no idea what insane implications you had about the definition of "heroic fantasy."

I was using the term as it tends to be used in conversation on Veeky Forums. I'm not sure what book you're dragging out archaic definitions from, but you seem really fond of trying to prove yourself correct with technicalities. It's kinda pathetic.