What's the best way to implicate blackpowder weapons in a fantasy setting with other ranged weapons?

>Once flintlocks exist, you're not really in fantasy anymore.
Well this is the dumbest thing I've seen all day. You can have fantasy with lasers and shapeships and shit, it's got nothing to do with the time period it's set in.

>Flintlocks didn't come about until the 17th century and didn't become widespread in European armies till the 17th century.

Anonymous if you're going to say that authority, you should probably be atleast well versed in what you're talking about. You're confusing the "true flintlock" with all flintlock mechanisms. Flintlock weapons came into existence sometime in the mid1500s

If a post begins with "Not Really" chances are the person writing it is probably a retard.

It's late at night cut me a break homie.

It's pretty obvious the OP is referring to traditional fantasy here.

>balanced
Why? Why would you want all weapons to be equally good? Fantasy settings are full of magic swords which are strictly better than non-magic swords- they're just more rare and expensive.

>Fun

Actually because you want to roleplay whatever character you want, and weapons define characters in certain genres, so you don't want to have to suffer penalties to choose the weapon which suites your character thematically.

Your image is of the arquebus, which is one of the first firearms. They sucked. They were unreliable, and slow to reload. Bows existed alongside guns for considerable time.
When we think of guns, we think of modern guns. And even then many people think of the pop culture idea of guns which are basically deathrays. Guns are very, very deadly. But being shot isn't the same as being killed, and the accuracy of early guns especially was atrocious.

In the times of the arquebus and the bow, a highly skilled bowman could shoot multiple arrows in SECONDS. A highly skilled gunman could shoot maybe 2 shots in a minute if he possessed certain innovative (For the time) items that allowed for easier loading, like cartridges with premeasured powder and such.

Furthermore, early guns were not of standard size or machining. If you see anything about a modern enactor firing an arquebus or similar weapon very quickly, this is due to modern machining techniques producing a reliable, uniform bullet. Primitive techniques of the 15th century did not do this. Standardisation of bullets & bores was a significant revolution in firearms when it occurred.

>Your image is of the arquebus, which is one of the first firearms. They sucked
Wrong. Period writings state the opposite actually. See:
"The commentaries of Messire Blaize de Montluc, mareschal of France" by Blaize de Montluc (1500-1577)
"A breefe discourse, concerning the force and effect of all manuall weapons of fire and the disability of the long bowe or archery" by Humfrey Barwick (1592)
"A briefe discourse of vvarre" by Sir Roger Williams (1590)
"The arte of vvarre Beeing the onely rare booke of myllitarie profession" by William Garrard (1591)
"Certain discourses" by Sir John Smythe (1591)
"A right exelent and pleasaunt dialogue, betwene Mercury and an English souldier" by Barnabe Rich (1574)
"The theorike and practike of moderne vvarres discoursed in dialogue vvise." by Robert Barret (1598)
What you're thinking of is handcanons.

>They were unreliable, and slow to reload. Bows existed alongside guns for considerable time.
Bows disappeared from European armies in the 16th century. It was only the English that clung to it till the end of the century as they were slow to modernize.

>But being shot isn't the same as being killed, and the accuracy of early guns especially was atrocious.
Their inaccuracy is overstated. They were fine in accuracy and military writers in England during the 16th century all generally agreed that they were more accurate than the longbow.

>In the times of the arquebus and the bow, a highly skilled bowman could shoot multiple arrows in SECONDS. A highly skilled gunman could shoot maybe 2 shots in a minute if he possessed certain innovative (For the time) items that allowed for easier loading, like cartridges with premeasured powder and such.
It's true that bows did have a higher RoF but Barwick mentions you could load your gun with multiple projectiles to overcome this. And, as I said in the OP, military writers did not fear arrows as they had low lethality.

According to one Welsh captain, "I never saw Welshmen or Englishmen so bad hearted or so unventuresome as I saw at this time. Not a single one of them would dare to go near where the handguns were shooting at us." Humfrey Barwick, an Englishman who had spent his youth learning archery before being given an arquebus when he joined the army, claimed that "I did never see or hear, of any thing by them don with their long bowes, to any great effect. But many have I seene lye dead in divers skirmishes and incounters [from harquebus and pistol bullets] . . ." From the French side veteran Blaise de Monluc noted that there was a fair amount of respect for the English and their bravery when the conflict began, but after skirmishing with them for a while, he concluded that there was little to fear since the english carried "arms of little reach" compared to the French harquebusiers and they could be made to turn their backs "with as great facility as any Nation that ever I saw".

Just treat them as crossbows that deal a bit more damage.
Should be fine for early guns.

>but why would you use a crossbow then?
Cheaper and potentially reusable and poisonable ammo
much quieter than a gun

Don't do anything different in terms of rate of fire or misfire chance or dumb shit like that.
They were no slower to load or less reliable than a crossbow

Each and every one of these is significantly later than your image.

First off, it needs to be said that an adventuring party is nothing like a standing military and is not obligated to follow what would pass for common sense for the military. If your dude uses a bow and arrow in an age where guns are common it could be because he's never seen or used a gun before or just doesn't want to use one.

Even if your dude was a former/current military man of some sort you're not fighting in a line against similiar enemies. One minute you could be fighting a pack of wolves. Another minute you could be knee deep in a pit fighting demons while a wizard is jerking more out of asshole down on you.

This pretty much applies to everything and it shames me to think people keep asking this same question over and over again when it's kind of obvious.

No it isn't. I'm guessing you're thinking of this gun. The image of the OP appeared around the 15th century.

Use the Thirty years war as a reference - huge blocks of musketeers fucking shit up, everyone having 1-shot pistols. Bows and crossbows long gone.

Take the thirty years war (or Italian Wars) or even the Napoleonic Wars or ECW or ACW and add fantasy. Done.

Have it do three or four times the damage of a longbow, but at 1/3 or 1/4 the rate of fire. Also relies on a open flame to fire, so difficult to use in some conditions (rain, wind, sleet) and the gunpowder has to be properly mixed, has to be dry and can seperate (until 'caking' is discovered) over time. Guns will be cheap to make (just a holowed tube on a stick) while gunpowder will be expensive.

so am debating with my friend if someone how got isekai how hard is it to make breach loading weapons

>Have it do three or four times the damage of a longbow, but at 1/3 or 1/4 the rate of fire.
Terrible for game balance

>Also relies on a open flame to fire, so difficult to use in some conditions (rain, wind, sleet)
So are bows though, so why make a special rule for guns?

>and the gunpowder has to be properly mixed,
Unless you're making it yourself, what's the issue?

>has to be dry and can seperate (until 'caking' is discovered) over time.
And bows can't be kept strung, every weapon has maintenance.

>Guns will be cheap to make (just a holowed tube on a stick)
>while gunpowder will be expensive.
Depends on the era

That firearm is from the early to mid 15th century. The OP one appeared during the mid 15th, a full 150 years before those sources.

>Terrible for game balance
Doesn't matter. If that's how guns are in the setting, then that's how they are.

...

>Doesn't matter. If that's how guns are in the setting, then that's how they are.
>Doesn't matter.

Go reread the OP
>>So what would be a balanced way of implementing them?

>Le balance maymay
Kys already

And if you are too big pussy for that, then read your own post. You already stated in it historical reasons why guns weren't so hot early on, along with developing tactics to counter their main issue - the fucking fire rate, you moron.
Also, you know that there are also crossbows... right? Which only lost to firearms due to a price tag, as they had the exact same capabilities of early guns, but were roughtly 4 times more expensive to make and even more sensitive to weather.

The arquebus was still used well into the 16th century where most of the writers wrote about their experience. The reason that I use those sources is because there was a big debate if the longbow should be done away in England, which was one of the last strongholds of the weapon in Europe. Those men wrote about their experiences in the 16th century during the wars in France and the low countries.
In the 16th century there was the arquebus, which was perfect for skirmishing as it was light-weight, and the musket, which was a 20 pound gun that required a rest.

>This thread again
Is there any way to finally make Anglos realise longbows were fucking stupid and it's a meme that could not only rival, but beat katanas (folded 1000 times by sacret blacksmiths) in being most meme weapon of them all? Sticking to a fucking bow in times when platoon fire and tercio tactics were already a thing is the dumbest thing imaginable... which Anglos gladly did for another 50 years, "because muh tradition". And the bows themselves were never good to begin with.

Just make guns rarer, limit resources for them, make them more expensive including ammo, rig them to be less powerful than they should be, ie can't penetrate heavy armor at a distance. If your party spends a lot of time away from any major cite, getting powder to shoot should be damn near impossible, unlike an archer who can make arrows or buy them from pretty much anywhere.

>Do the exact reverse of reality, surely this is going to work out!
Guns were cheaper, easier to make and easier to train with, along with having equal or greater range without taking into consideration how fit and trained the shooter was, you imbecile. Their only limiting factor was fire rate. Which was solved first by introduction of platoon fire and then of pre-measured paper cartridges and iron ram-rods.

Remember this is a made up world not ours. The DM can have:
>Lack of skilled smiths
>lack of adequate resources, metal capable of withstanding the forces of an exploding round, saltpeter, sulfur or even charcoal
>lack of ability to make perfect shot resulting in inperfect targeting/range, think paintballs.

It took well over a hundred years until gunpowder weapons really matched up to weapons such as bow and crossbow. Basic fire arms were in Europe used as soon as during the Hussite Uprising in 15 century, but their effectiveness was questionable. In china, gunpowder and classic ranged weapons co-existed for several centuries. You would also find adoption of fire-arms being slow in some societies since they were often more easy to maintain and operate under certain conditions (I think even Cossacks prefered bows to guns while on horse back way up till 17 or 18th century).

Furthermore, as many had suggested, there is nothing easier than to create an arbitrary limitation for your particular world: lack of resources to create gunpowder(or it's fantasy equivalence), for an instance.
In my world, not only the resources are limited, but the entire process of gunpowder making itself is connected to several taboos and social/religious restrictions, making larger-quentity production hardly possible. Combined with fictional materials that make guns less efficient against heavy armor than in real life, it regulates the amount of fire-arms and the frequency of it's use neatly down to a level where I want to keep it.
That said, I don't really have to deal with bow vs. gun rivalry (bows and crossbows are not particularly common in my world either), rather with melee vs. ranged one.

>In china, gunpowder and classic ranged weapons co-existed for several centuries.
They didn't invent guns though.
But maybe that was your point?
I'm not sure.

>So what would be a balanced way of implementing them?
the fact that a lone musket man is dead meat
massed in formations, properly trained and drilled, and firing in volleys, they are deadly
but without a formation to protect him as he loads, and with open flanks, your prized musketeer will have to make his (unrifled) shot count, because he isnt getting another
most RPGs take place at individual or squad level, rarely exceeding 5v5, so your musketeers will spend more time being mickey mouse from his movie rather than actually using his gun
an archer, with stealth and firing rate, would have a decisive advantage over a musketeer in a fight more closely resembling a typical adventuring party, as 5e loading is already a crippling disadvantage despite already being twice as fast as a arquebus, fiddling with 45 second reload time will get your musketeer to drop his gun, draw his rapier, andd yell "all for one" faster than the swiss pikemen were killed by cannons

Actually, they did invent handcanons and many other portable gunpowder-based weapons, they just did not persue them in the way way we later did.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_firearm

Take the ACKS approach and make gunpowder way way more expensive based upon setting elements.

So maybe it needs to be made by trained Alchemists rather than just by mixing some random shit together; maybe one component is only found deep underground in toxic conditions and Dwarves are the only race that can stand mining it, so they have a monopoly; at the extreme end maybe it's literally magical and requires an honest-to-goodness wizard to actually spend time making it.

The end result is you can have a game where adventurers and other super-rich characters can afford it, but units of muskets will be rare and cannons practically non-existent except for the largest and most wealthy nations.

(Also what other people said above about not allowing flintlocks. Matchlocks misfire constantly, wheel-locks jam, but flintlocks are just too damn good.)

>introduction of platoon fire
Answering the question again.
How does an bow/crossbow beat a matchlock? Easy, both their users are alone.

The arquebus existed to up to the early 17th century, the term persisted but it didn't refer to one kind of specific weapon. An arqeuebus refers to a firearm that is smaller than a musket, with its firing mechanism changing as time moved on.

The innovations of Gustavus Adolfus eliminated both it and the Heavy Muskets, as a lighter Musket was developed that fulfilled the role of both on the battlefield.

Dexterity roll whenever the character is exposed to rain or has to fjord a river that their gunpowder becomes soaked and thus rendered usable.

This and a whole lot of other roll saves from misfire to the power being damp.

Fun fact. In the Great Siege of Malta and when the Knights were running out of gunpowder, the Hospitallers busted open the armories and blew the dust off some century old arblasts. They found out that the crossbows were so powerful that they shot clean through the wooden shields used by the lightly armored Ottoman infantry.

Also cheap firearms should risk the potential of exploding in the user's face.

And there he have it.
Another implemented range weapon.
Higher damage and crit, a turn reload and with attached user detriments.

Also should have the ability to cause terror, unlike bows or crossbows.

This is probably the best way to imlement it. Early guns and poorly made ones were a risk to their user. If someone wants to go out and adventure why pick a weapon that could end said adventure very quickly. In a more crunchy way, it would be a turn off for players if their high damage comes at the cost of potentially killing themselves while firing while injured. This is especially true if for just a bit less damage you could get a crossbow and use specialist ammo.

It scales with expense. The higher the cost of the gun, the more reliable it is, with the most reliable not risking explosion. With crossbows the more expensive it is, the more powerful it is and the less likely it is to snap from tension.

The advantage of bows is that they're less likely to suffer a critical existence failure at the cost of being expensive and having less power.

underrated post

2d8 dmg

Well would you look at that, Pathfinder did it right this time. Pathfinder early firearms have:
1: a longer reload time than bows.
2: an easier time hitting than bows.
3: a higher damage die than bows (most of them.)
4: ammunition that is ruined when exposed to water.
5: a chance of breaking when fired.

>yell "all for one" faster than the swiss pikemen were killed by cannons
that gave me a historical kek

should a firearm really do twice as much damage as a crossbow? I think they should be basically the same, maybe D10, but have a bonus against armor and have better crits to represent head shots. Wait, crossbows can pierce skulls as well, can't they?

Have them be high-tier weaponry with scarce ammo and a bit of risk added to them.

So you have a setting with
>No blacksmith
>No metal-smelting capabilities
>Incapable of producing three out of twenty most easily obtainable chemical compounds
>Inhabited by blind people
And this somehow also makes the same world and setting has people perfectly capable of making bows, which take MONTHS to make, after the wood was seasoned in proper fashion for YEARS, because you are stupid enough to assume bow = stick with string.

People like you disgust me when present on Veeky Forums. We are mangling this subject over and over and over and over again and yet there is always this dipshit that just decides to say "but it's not our world" or some similar shit, based entirely on being completely ignorant to the subject.
It takes considerably more skills and resources to make combat-useful bow than to make muzzle-loaded guns. Hammer that into your head. It's even easier to make low-power crossbows than making a bow. There is the reason why bows were so eagerly abandoned - they've cost a tonne and required highly trained soldiers that still had to fire in volleys to have any real effect. Crossbows allowed aiming and lessened the physical demands. Guns made physical demans completely obsolete, aside not being completely blind, all while costing a fraction of any other weapon. Took a while for folks to realise how to use them properly with slow rate of fire, but that's Yuropoors being slow - Japs barely got their hands on matchlocks and two decades later developed on their own platoon fire, along with entrenchment against cavalry.

Fucking /thread.

Very high damage.
Very poor accuracy
Very high reload time.

If you manage to blast a man square in the chest, he is dead or wishing he was dead.

But let's be real, guns can't be your main thing if you spend all session reloading.
So they're essentially like an OP spell if you can get close enough for that smooth bore to hit.

Ranged weapons in general need a buff, up their damage by 2x or 3x and give all of them a penalty to hit that decreases when firing into a crowd, but you randomize who you hit in the crowd.

bows should hit as hard as crossbows but without armor piercing. Additionally they should scale in damage with strength.
Crossbows should take longer to reload than bows but have good armor piercing, and can be aimed as a full round action to get rid of that hit penalty.
Guns should hit harder than Crossbows, either in upping the die count, or by making them more likely to cause a wound effect if thats the kind of system you want. They should also have high armor piercing, but take 2 full rounds to reload.

For additional effects you can give guns a smoke screen quality that drops a smoke barrier in front of the user after they shoot. its a penalty to shoot though for them and the enemy.
Bows can have an ark effect where their damage is highest at the end of their range, and at the front but weak in the middle.
and crossbows can rend armor, or otherwise decrease the AC or DR of what they hit depending on the system you want to run.

>a higher damage die than bows
Not by nearly enough though, the damage you get is pitiful and when you add the feats a bow can get muskets are horribly outclassed... just like all ranged weapons

Magic enchantments on other ranged weapons which can't work with guns due to their dirty nature. Magic arrows which can explode like a grenade, for example.

>So what would be a balanced way of implementing them?

Same stats on both weapons.

Make weapons according to a point buy system, give them same # points.

Bow-using class much stronger with better abilities than Gun-using class.

Gunpowder very expensive, arrows very cheap.

so make guns worse in every way?

>so make guns worse in every way?

How could you possibly read OP, then read my post, then think that's what it means?

Were you dropped?

>Same stats on both weapons.
>Make weapons according to a point buy system, give them same # points.
>Bow-using class much stronger with better abilities than Gun-using class.
>Gunpowder very expensive, arrows very cheap.

How the fuck was i supposed to interpret this genius?
if they do the same damage, and have the same number of customization points then they're the same, only guns have worse ability's and more costly shots

Pick one of the suggestions, not all four at the same time.

Jesus.

>should a firearm really do twice as much damage as a crossbow?

absolutely. Early muskets were powerful enough to shatter bones and dent breastplates.

Archery can also win out in situations where indirect fire is desirable. That is to say, you need to see what you're shooting at, or at least have a clear line of fire, in order to hit a target with a musket ball. Conversely you can take advantage of an arrow's arc in order to hit something that you can't directly see or don't have a direct line of fire to, as long as you know the distance to your target and know it's there.

Americans had to deal with this when fighting the Seminole people of Florida, who used it to great effect: the three Seminole Wars were each military stalemates for America, where the Seminole successfully resisted efforts to forcibly move them from Florida; in the end they only left for Oklahoma because America paid them.

Holy shit, Warhammer Fantasy has been lying about its name the whole time! Thanks for showing me the truth, user.

The way that Pathfinder does it is fairly good. Guns are shorter range than bows, take longer to reload, deal more damage, do more damage on a critical hit, pierce armor.

Only in settings without magic. If wizards are throwing around lightning bolts then a boomstick is just another loud projectile thrower.

nigger have you ever heard of adding an or

>2d8 dmg

In my games, matchlock muskets do 4d4 damage, but require an action to prepare the match (if the player did not do so before combat) and an action to reload.

For these reasons, they're excellent weapons for classes without multiple attacks and for characters without high dex mods - but they're bad weapons for high-dex multiattackers.

im with the other guy that wasnt super clear

As primitive or extremely expensive toys. Flintlocks became widespread only after 1600.

Here is what most people don't get and what most systems ignore or get wrong:

Bows and crossbows are literally useless against good armor. Even at point blank range you won't pierce good armor with them. Meanwhile firearms penetrate them fine.

In d20 systems that is literally impossible to do correctly. Slow firing weapons are generally impossible to do correctly in something with bloated HP and incredibly abstract armor. You end up with bullshit like hand crossbows being the best ranged weapon because most of the damage comes from feats and it doesn't matter shit if your weapon does d4 or d8 damage if you can get more attacks.

It was more a case of it was law for most of the potential soldiers to be trained with Longbows. Thought process was why waste all this training.

>an archer, with stealth and firing rate
Bowstrings make quite a lot of noise user, not in the range of noise a gun produces but it will stand out.

Then you go gunslinger to pick up a lot of gun related shit and it about balances out.

Bows are relatively silent, produce no flash and smoke. It's not much but when you want to strike and retreat into hiding it can be a difference between life and death.

>load your gun with multiple projectiles
what is this even supposed to mean? if you only have one barrel, you're only shooting one projectile and if you cram many in there, you'll have a ton of problems that if you cannot foresee them, I have no way to help you.

it's easy, alchemy check to safely and effectively mix the ingredients, expertise trait to safely load and discharge. Untrained people can do the same thing, but are more likely to over or undercharge the load and risk fuse or barrel failure

If the average combat round is ~6 seconds it should take 6 rounds to reload a slug or ball, longer for shot. These are going to be disposable or one shot weapons in most cases, like an expensive wand but cheaper and probably worse.

Keep your powder dry, have fun lighting off using magic so you don't have to deal with pesky things like fuses. Don't allow your players to keep infinite ammunition or arms. Remember, lead weighs about as much as gold and blessed silver bullets are werewolf killers.

>Magic enchantments on other ranged weapons which can't work with guns due to their dirty nature.
dumbass, do you know how much bullshit you can do with magical sulfur?

You can absolutely enchant your wooden stock, are you daft?

youtube.com/watch?v=O4sNcozOrkU

1000lbs crossbow can't even pen gambeson at close range.

No wonder firearms replaced this crap so fast.

>and if you cram many in there
Like they actually did?
>It was sometimes advocated that an arquebusier should load his weapon with multiple bullets or small shot at close ranges rather than a single ball.[60]
>Barwick, Humfrey (1594). A Breefe Discourse
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arquebus

except
1) either you're using an equivalent of buckshot, or multiple normal-sized bullets, which then are under-propelled because there's only so much powder you can cram behind them without risking the barrel exploding
2) that solves the rate of fire problem fucking how?

Say a man putting two bullets down his barrel is shooting next to a man putting one bullet down his barrel. They are shooting at the same rate (maybe two bullets man is a few seconds slower). Who is putting more bullets down range, over a given time?

>equivalent of buckshot
duh

are you serious
because I can't take that seriously
thanks for the laugh I guess

>didn't watch the full video.

Lol no.

>Arrows, you have a small hole punched in a guy. Lots of screaming, lots of blood, but that's it.

>Bolts. you have a small hole in the victim, lots of screaming, lots of blood, not much else.

>Shotte, gigantic cavernous holes or entire chunks of people missing due to high caliber slow moving rounds, lots of screaming, lots of blood, exposed organs, and bits of bone if it struck something hard.

>Meanwhile firearms penetrate them fine.
Nope.

Yes, of course I'm serious, please explain

Crossbows will in fact struggle to penetrate a gambeson with the wrong arrow head. People need to understand that penetration against targets with bows and crossbows can vary a LOT just based on what kind of head you're using for your arrows. It's why hunters always argue over this shit and there's a shitton of commercial arrowheads out there all touting to have XTREME PENETRATION.

You fire a fat sharp tipped bolt or arrow at gambeson, it's going to fail to penetrate (but probably break a rip). You fire that same bolt at the more lightly armored arms (plate armor is thinner on the limbs, and is thickest over the head and torso) and you'll score a penetration. Although that might fail to penetrate the arming doublet worn under the plate.