Matchlocks, flintlocks, and others

I want handguns and handcannons and chinese handcannons; with the latest development being corned powder and barrels strong enough to use em.

In my (poorly developed and woefully inadequately researched) potential novel that will never get written let’s be honest, Dwarves made the first rifles/handguns, but Elves took to that shit like ducks to water. They refined the process of gunmaking to such a science that you would be honestly forgiven for thinking that they made the first guns. Hell, some are so smug that they won’t correct you. How Elves got their hands on the first prototypes, none can say, but you can be damn sure that ale was involved...and also gold. A *shit*-ton of gold. They reversed engineered what they could from Dwarven and Human guns, and what they couldn’t QUITE understand, they experimented until they got the basics right, then went from there.

And despite making the first guns, Dwarves actually were reluctant to incorporate them in any significant fashion. The very first prototypes required tooling that was in itself rather expensive for the time they were introduced and the materials were also hard to come by (the Dwarven Empire was somewhat isolationist during the period guns were being tested so restrictive trade policies definitely didn’t work in favor of mass produced Dwarven firearms), so the Dwarves just spammed crossbow bolts at everything until said trade policies were lifted, but by then they were so behind the curve compared to most everyone else that it was almost pointless to continue the project. They did eventually get around to mass production, but they’re busy trying to play catch up in an engineering sense.

Strangely enough, Humans independently developed their own guns apart from the Dwarves. Of course, the Elves stole those prototypes, too, but they eventually refined they first had to learn from Humans. Whatever concepts the Elves came up with, the Humans did first.

The nomadic Orc tribes prefer not to use guns, but do use them on occasion, such as when their caravan is raided and they need their warriors armed right the fuck now.

>that will never get written
>dwarves
>elves
And nothing of value was lost

how did his character find out how to do this?

Fire, poison, the fact that having a hardy stick lodged in a limb limits your movement.
Up until real guns made their appereance we were still hunting particularily nasty things like hogs and sick animals with arrows, traps and spears because they could take your bullet and run the fuck away with it either to die who the fuck knows where and attract bears, or not die at all and just become more violent towards humans.

I invite you to hunt a boar. I'll hold the primitive and rudimentary spear, you can have the flintlock rifle.

LOL, HES A MASTER METAL SMITH DWARF, BRO! He totally understands chemistry enough to make smokeless powder! He's so insightful that he realize you can capture the expanding gasses of burning gun powder flowing down the barrel and redirect against a bolt, rotate it with a cam, then use a spring to force the bolt back forward! You know, that thing the Chinese never figured out after centuries despite having invented gunpowder.

>flintlock
>rifle
By the time rifling was commonplace, flintlocks were not.

I try to imagine how it would actually evolve in a D&D setting which by all rights should already have guns and cannons up to a pretty notable level

The Pike and Shot period is actually the setting I like most. When you could have the guns making an impact on the field but still have a significant portion of the same weapons in the PHB of your average D&D running around all together

Now how the different races react to it would be interesting in a 5E game. Humans are innovative enough to have invented modified and manufactured them by themselves. They had probably done the same with Crossbows already.Dwarves tend to spend more time in underground environments and ranged combat isnt as much of a factor. Combine that with their general lack of innovation and guns and crossbows would at best be a novelty. The Elves simply dont have much of a use for them considering their Longbow loving culture lower numbers and tendency towards skirmishing.I could see Halflings taking a shine to them especially Halfling militia protecting their homes and the occasional sharpshooter.Gnomes likely helped innovate many of the tech advances alongside Humans even if they are too rare to do much with the tech themselves.Orcs meanwhile have an Int so low in 6E its hard to imagine them using anything more complicated than a big rock

Wouldn't that be the case whenn you hunted with bows as well?

Yes. Don't listen to Noguns McNobows try to tell you that having a stick poke you at some 500 feet per second is more debilitating than a basketball sized hole through both of your lungs.

Fantasy guns with no basis in reality. Barsoomian rifles with radium bullets. Might even replace wands.

>Orcs meanwhile have an Int so low in 6E its hard to imagine them using anything more complicated than a big rock
Come on, the average orc as depicted in the Monster Manual has 7 Int, and that's probably only 1 less than your local 8 Int fighter who's proficient with everything possible. And reasonably speaking it's probably easier to aim a musket than the javelins they've got in the stat block. Admittedly, harder to ready again.

I have improvised junk muskets and the like. They take multiple rounds of combat to reload but cause everyone to take a will save when fired because none of them have seen a gun before, as well as filling the area with smoke so that everything gets confused as fuck.

>basketball sized hole through both of your lungs
that's not how bullets work. You're either thinking of a fucking canon, thinking the ballistic gel demonstration is an accurate representation of what happens to your organs when hit (or some other misinformation) or you're thinking of collapsed lungs.

A basketball sized hole in both your lungs is literal(literal) obliteration of the organs which bullets don't do.

I like going the Monster Hunter route, and pulling crazy shit like the Gunlance.

youtube.com/watch?v=UW_2gma8Yk8

Look up minié ball wounds.

not even close to basketball sized lung annihilating wounds

In realistic-ish setting there's no problem as transitionary period from melee to gun is a fun setting to play in. Not everyone will have guns, and there are still many situations where sword/spear is more useful.

In fantastical settings, chances are that the fighter is able to dodge bullets or get a hole in his chest and continue to attack without much flinching.

So guns in fantasy are only a problem when they clash thematically with rest of the setting, either as one-shot killsticks in high fantasy environment or as piddly peashooters in realistic-ish fantasy.

Rifling isn't much newer than flintlocks. There were plenty of flintlock rifles, but they were more expensive so they were usually only used by specialized military units and hunters.

4E D&D already had grenades:

funin.space/compendium/item/Thunderstone.html

Inspired by those, I made two custom items, "Pistol" and "Musket" (Arquebus sounds ugly to my ears).

They're both Alchemical items that read something like

============
Pistol

Fire - Minor (Encounter):
Make an attack; Range 10, +8 vs Reflex. Hit: 2d4 damage and 5 ongoing damage (Save ends).
Note: To recharge "Fire," you must spend one charge of gunpowder and shot.

============

The difference between the pistol and the musket is that the musket has range 20 but uses a Standard instead of a Minor action.

Additionally, you'll notice that the attack is +8 vs Reflex instead of Dexterity vs Reflex. This means that firearms are fine for the lower levels but swiftly lose utility as you fight greater and greater enemies.

I tend to assume that in a world with magic, early fireams never catch up because they just aren't competitive. And technology for firearms that are better than magic is just not there yet, or never gets developed due to lack of practice with firearms proper.

In one case I devised a magic system based on drawing runs on things to alter their property and things being composed of many small parts, like guns are way too hard to enchant properly compared to drawing a big-ass rune of bulletproofing on your cloak.

So except for the most wealthy people who can afford enchanted guns, those are for hunting at best, not for use against people.

And yet, also, swords and arrows still do damage and kill stuff so...yeah. Still wrong. Unless your system isn’t D&D of course, but let’s face it; it is D&D.
This is a pretty inaccurate statement.
Their usage and usefulness in military units was often debated even during the time period they used them in due to the expensive, but people often stopped complaining when rifle unit capped off a bunch of enemy officers in the middle of battle or when skirmishers cut apart enemy skirmish attacks during picket duty.

>the fact that having a hardy stick lodged in a limb limits your movement.
but a 5 inch ball of lead tearing your arm off is not as bad?

Early automobiles were vastly inferior to horses. Didn't stop them from gaining popularity.
Plus, how many people are actually capable of magic? Everybody else is gonna want a way to fight against that. Hell, I'd think having magic would encourage firearm development.

This is one of the common conceits of a fantasy setting, that “magic is so much more efficient/effective that guns don’t get used”, but in practice it’s rarely shown any examples in-setting to be true.
To truly supplant the development of firearms magic needs to be these three things;
1: Easy to learn. As in you need to be able to do at least as much damage as a musket or more in less then a month of training with incremental improvements over longer training periods.
2: Accessible. It needs to be usable by literally everyone. As in every soldier needs to be able to learn to use it as part of regular militia or professional soldier drills the same way you need to learn to hold a shield or what end you stick pointy stuff into the other guy with.
3: Cheap. Cost-efficiency matters.

If at least two of those things is proven untrue by the statement, then guns would develop eventually so long as chemistry works the same way and the formula was discovered for them. Notably, if they aren’t cheap then they become a weapon for elite formation units instead, but they STILL do get made and used.

The fact that magic almost always is difficult to use or learn in-setting already makes crude firearms an inevitability given the correct chemistry and logical technological advancement.
Everyone seems to think warfare is about effectiveness and killing power, but as someone who’s actually served in the Army I can tell you it’s about 60% more about efficiency, logistics, and ease of use.

No, no, no.

A bullet hits MUCH harder than an arrow, like many, many times over. They would be ESPECIALLY effective against monsters and undead.

Also as a history student that just finished a course about 1600-1700 noblemen and kings, a time where hunting was a favorite past-time, the only used guns, bows had been outdated for ca 200 by then.

The bows only real advantage is rate of fire (which does count for something.)

>Guns are the best weapons against humans. But they're not much good against undead, elementals or most monsters. And the people know it very well.

???

this doesn't make any sense at all. An early musket would blow a skeleton to pieces, and a blunderbuss would be even better.

The only reason guns could be balanced in a fantasy adventure setting is that guns are vulnerable to the rigors of adventuring - if the party falls into a river, all of their powder is instantly ruined. If it's raining, their matchlocks will smoulder and fail to fire. In small-party tactical combat, the reload time of early firearms makes them nearly useless.

>The bows only real advantage is rate of fire (which does count for something.)

Rate of fire, waterproofing, the ability to kill silently, and the ability to fire nonstandard ammunition (rope arrows, water arrows, fire arrows etc), which are all -very- valuable features in your standard small-party fantasy romp.

Yup, you didn't have the tools to mechanically rifle the barrels so you had to do it with hand tools, which was time consuming and prone to failure.

About 1850's you start to get good enough at making these machine tools, to mass-produce rifles.

Rifles do have drawbacks like reload time being increased.

Magic also needs to have a similar application to firearms, i.e lots of direct damage and armour penetration. Most rpg magic does this to some degree, but if your setting mainly has support magic such as enchanting, curses and scrying then boomsticks are very useful.

Further, magic needs to be able to consistently deal damage for an entire battle. If your average mage-soldier can only cast a few fireballs before running out of spell-slots or mana or whatever then that is going to be a problem in battles lasting hours against hundreds or thouands of enemies. Archers and gunners can pump out damage until they are exhausted and run out of ammo.

In a medieval context, the biggest impact of blackpowder was not handheld guns but cannon. Cannon had a huge impact on sigege warfare and unless your super-high magic setting where everyone is a wizard has made castles obsolete development of blackpowder weapons will continue and hit a point where guns are competitive.

Finally, if everyone is a mage why are bows still around? Guns compete with archers, crossbowmen and slingers, not wizards. If your setting still has those weapons in use, guns have a niche to fill.

Why wouldn't a bullet be enchanted?

Also, a bow isn't really much more waterproof than a gun, at least not the string. A rainy battlefield would diminish archers efficiency quickly, just like with gunpowder.

Basically gunpowder needs to be dry, but so does a bow-string.

Your point about silent killings is true though.

>Why wouldn't a bullet be enchanted?

Presumably, because the bullet is too small to contain any carved runes or arcane symbols, and any writing on them would deform during firing.

Your setting might support magic bullets, but generally I think the expectations of players is that magic and technology don't mix very well.

>Also, a bow isn't really much more waterproof than a gun, at least not the string. A rainy battlefield would diminish archers efficiency quickly, just like with gunpowder.

It's easy to dry a bowstring over the course of a sunny afternoon. Powder, on the other hand, needs to be carefully baked to eliminate moisture.

Bows are extremely vulnerable to rain and damp conditions, it's very bad for the wood. Guns just need their powder stores to stay dry and they'll last.

>Powder, on the other hand, needs to be carefully baked to eliminate moisture.
It should be noted here that this was true in real life and it did nothing to stop us from using it because it really WAS that useful when it worked.

>Your setting might support magic bullets, but generally I think the expectations of players is that magic and technology don't mix very well.

Well, isn't this why we are having this thread?
The expectations come from most fantasy being set in the Medieval era, an era that's been romanticized to a point where everyone have an image of what it is, while the renaissance/enlightenment doesn't have the same fantastical and mythical aura around it in popular culture. Which is sad, since it's littered with just the same heroism and fantastic tales as the Middle Ages. Also people had weird "womanly" clothes, which I guess is also a big downer for some people.

>It's easy to dry a bowstring over the course of a sunny afternoon
True on a strategic level it's easier to dry a bowstring than gunpowder, but assuming that you arrive at the battle with dry ammunition/bowstring, it's basically the same. Gunpowder can also by carried in waterproof pouches on the field, while the string would be exposed to the elements as soon as you put it on the bow.

Not him, but why are you assuming so much retarded shit that he never mentioned?
"Guns are the best weapons against humans" reads (at least for me) "It's hard to kill a demon with a gun, try this sacred blade the demon is vulnerable to" and "It's hard to kill a piece of animated lava with a gun, try using a bucket of water or magic"

The barrel and stock are covered in mystic glyphs.
Scopes crafted from crystal balls that provide night vision and detection of invisible targets
Bullets cast from blessed silver or lead taken from the roof of a church. Runes can be put onto the bullet mold so the resulting ball is covered in them without needing to hand carve them.
Alchemical powder mixes that produce magical effects.
Sigils drawn on the paper wadding
Barrel and lock mechanism made from enchanted metals.

Look at actual late medieval and renaissance magic, spells and guns absolutely went together with all sorts of enchantments to enhance and protect against firearms. It might be passable in a modern setting but tech vs. magic before the Industrial Revolution rarely works well unless the fae are involved but they hate iron which has been used since 1000BC so I doubt they'd single out guns.

Well seems to me that you're assuming what he is saying. He specifically mentions why bows would be better than guns, nothing about blessed anti-demons swords.

Also he haven't said anything like your assumption in any of his replies.

This.

Plenty of princely renaissance era weapons already look magical enough

Meanwhile, with a flintlock...
youtube.com/watch?v=PwyuBumlDzc

Oh, and the only reason there's such a long delay between the flash and the firing is because this goober used pyrodex instead of proper black powder

It's more than just the string. The arrows will get wet and heavier, which is going to alter their flight characteristics and throw off the bowman who aims by "instinct." Plus, the fletching will also get wet and not work nearly as well when it comes to stabilizing the arrow. Not to mention the wood of the bow itself getting wet, which will also contribute to making it less effective.
But we don't deal with all of these things in RPGs, do we? Nope, we only care if gunpowder gets wet.

Historic black powder professional. AMA.

You do know that posion bullets are a thing right?

Loading a muzzle loader prone is a real cunt. Crossbows are easier.

A .69cal slug being thrown at subsonic speeds will fuck up anything made of bone and meat's day. I've gone hunting with my flintlock and have had no problems with boar and deer. Protip: Hunting deer with a '76 Charleville results in bambi jello, and there is a reason hunting muskets are smaller calibers than war muskets.

Except that is patently wrong. Rifles have been around since the first milled barrels. There are rifled Handgonnes in the 14thC. You also have to take the cost of production in preindustrial standards: Labour is cheap, material is expensive. Rifles were not as common simply due to the fact that one could buy four smoothbore for the price of one rifle, and quantity/speed of firepower will always win out in battlefield casualties vs. slow/accurate/limited firepower.

Any man can be taught to manual of arms in a week, loading an firing a matchlock in 40 seconds, and a flintlock in 15. The reason that the technology expanded so quickly is that its literally idiot proofed and easy to learn in a short turnaround, while being vastly powerful.

You're confusing hydrostatic shock with concussive damage. Also, Minies are really late to what most technology is being assumed here.

Both work fine if you know what you're doing.

...What the fucking fuck is this retard doing?

yeah, my ass puckered at that burn rate.

How accurate is that thing, how quick can you reload it, and what era is it a recreation of.

I once played in a campaign with a guy who's PC's entire shtick was having like 6-8 flintlock pistols on his person, loaded, so he could put an ungodly amount of shot into the enemy.

I know historically it wasn't unheard of for pirates and the like to have multiple pistols for firing rapidly before/during boarding, but does anyone know what the downside of carrying all those pistols would be?

>Loading a muzzle loader prone is a real cunt. Crossbows are easier.
Are you using a small enough ball like infantry actually did or are you jamming a big-ass ball in there for extra accuracy? That's the only way I can think of a crossbow's long-ass reloading time being anywhere close to a proper smoothbore musket load in speed.

>Except that is patently wrong.

Never disagreed with your position, nor does your post indicate anything that hasn't already been said

If I make the guns stronger than bows, as soon as they have gold for, why use bows?

If I make the reload take a serious amount of time, gunslingers will carry six guns and use one per round.

The only way I can think is either making the sound attract too much attention (more so than the usual sound of battle?), or make it not much better than bows, mostly fluff choice or sword/axe difference.

If you make longswords stronger than short swords, as soon as they have the gold for it, why use short swords?

That one is a late 16th/early 17thC matchlock musket of roughly .80 caliber, shooting a .75 caliber ball. Slightly larger than my mid-to-late 16thC arquibus in .

I can load a live round in roughly 45 seconds (which is slower than the manual allows in period), and hit a 12 inch diameter target at about 100 meters.

Matchlock is the focus mainly of my previous job (still do some special programs) and my hobby, mostly late 15th to mid 16thC. My dayjob revolves around mid to late 18thC flintlock (15 seconds, 9inch diameter target at 100m).

What are good rules for a handgonne?

>It should be noted here that this was true in real life and it did nothing to stop ARMIES from using it
fixed.
Guns are not for adventurers, they're for soldiers.
And no shit a fucking 1800 revolver can drop werewolves with the right bullets. Of course nobody cares about anachronism when it's for the sake of giving /k/ fags shit 3 centuries in advance of the rest of technology in the setting.

>>It should be noted here that this was true in real life and it did nothing to stop ARMIES from using it
Exactly. Only armies used guns. No explorers, bandits, highwaymen, pirates, hunters, Native Americans or anyone else not engaging in volleyfire ever touched firearms at all even when they were available.

>Guns are not for adventurers

>I know, right?

If your rules already have anything for matchlock pistols, you can pretty much just use that but make them two handed (you have to touch the match to the touch hole to fire a handgonne or use a fuse). You could have them double as a light two-handed mace as well.

...

He assumed correctly and I had not replied until now.
Enchanted arrows are common in folklore, RPGs and video games. Anchanted bullets are not.
Yes, a gatling gun may be great for dropping zombies. Try reloading a 15th century musket before the nest of ghouls you just gave your exact position to reach you.
And yes, a gun can kill anything ever because Murrika! That's why there's loads of stories and anecdotes from 18th century safaris going after lions, bears, hogs, rhinos and other animals that would just not drop. I'm sure a catoblepas or giant will cower at the mighty boomstick.

Guns are for soldiers, and soldiers are for killing soldiers. If you want to mix your napoleonic reenactment with your roleplaying and everyone is cool with playing a military campaign that's fantastic. Just remember than barely 30 years prior the same guns and tactics failed to put down a fucking wolf at Gévaudan for close to 4 years.

Ohhh, you're a butthurt euro noguns. I get it now.

>That's why there's loads of stories and anecdotes from 18th century safaris going after lions, bears, hogs, rhinos and other animals that would just not drop.
Foolish hunters for using guns, they would surely be much better off with bows. That's why they switched to incredibly expensive wheellock rifles all the way back in the 16thC out of sheer pique.

>explorers, bandits, highwaymen, pirates, hunters, Native Americans
How many of these worked in your usual "5 losers away from home with no base of operations and often not even a mule" party configuration.

Bandits and highwaymen operated near their hideouts. pirates traveled inside their fucking armory/kitchen/lootbox and native americans were soldiers even if their limited resources made them more a guerrilla than an army.

Hunters is your only valid comparison and even then, hunters hunt near their towns and lodges, or organize in large groups to hunt prey outside their terrotory, taking with them all the resources they need.

Also:
Had a caravan
Were an army

If you have to not play the usual RPG configuration in order to make guns work, that's perfectly fine, but make a note of it so we're not wasting time arguing logistics when we're not even playing the same kind of game.

Poland has guns. And noguns EU faggots are more likely to overblow old gun's effectiveness than contest it.
I'll always pick a szabla and shield over a flintlock if I'm going after ghouls.
They would have been better off using traps.

Good god you are Fucking stupid. If this is your argument why aren't you applying the same stand a to polearms archers mounted charges etc

>Guns are for soldiers

Nah. Bows (especially longbows) are the fucking katanas of Europe.

>Had a caravan
A self contained caravan with no resupply. They ran out of meds before ammo.
>Were an army
Barely. An army without a logistic supply outside of what they brought.

But you still miss the point; you can suspend your disbelief that an adventurer can craft arrows while in a dungeon, but not carry enough powder and shot?

If you're counting on hobbling an undead with an arrow shaft stuck in its ribcage then you can definitely count on hobbling an undead by smashing its pelvic ring with a bullet.

Shut up Gropey, don't you get that muskets are for soldiers and if you have a mule that makes you a soldier and any place you fight a battlefield?

Also weapons are useless for hunters, and you are stupid if you try to shoot hogs instead of only packing traps.

Nah, he's just mad his GM gave him -4 strength for being a woman and now he can't carry anything more than a sword.

It looks like your complaint isn't "guns are unfeasible for adventurers" but actually "adventurers are unfeasible".

You wouldn't be reloading them anytime soon after firing them. So if you're fighting multiple enemies and you're not carrying another weapon, you're screwed after shooting all your guns. And it would take time to draw and shoot and put back each gun.
Not sure if those are historical problems with carrying multiple guns but those are some problems I can think of

If you're gonna carry and care for a caravan so that your precious gunpowder will not get ruined while you travel cross-country sure let's play that game, that can be fun and interesting.
If you want to be a ranger with a much better weapon and no penalties the very first creature capable of doing so is gonna fireball your shit.

>the fact that having a hardy stick lodged in a limb limits your movement.
This is only effective on people because it's painful. If you don't actually care about your organs (and many undead don't, or else they wouldn't be piles of rotten meat) then the arrow will only be effective at locking movement if you place it in very particular spots. A gut shot, a shot to the meat of the limbs, or most of the ribs would do just about nil. You'd be better off hoping to shatter something with a ball.

Well, there is a reason most modern adventuring is just one-man sports or culinary stuff. It is an inherently primitive activity and the more technology progresses the more you question why are these people doing this "go get the mcguffin" shit instead of paying the specialized people who built a "get the macguffin" structured institution to do so for them.

Yes, because a 30 round cartridge box? Powder flask and shot bag take up more room than a quiver, of course.

>Trapping Hogs
...WHAT.

The problem is that you all have this weird preconceived idea about how easily powder got wet. We developed water resistant carrying devices as fast as we developed powder. People were not idiots.

The Chinese had exactly what impetus to develop recoil/gas operation without any cased cartridges?
Smokeless propellant doesn't have to be wizardry; at its most basic all you need to do is nitrate some cellulose (cotton).

And nobody cares about Bowstrings getting ruined by adverse conditions and armor chafing but the minute a firearm pops up they ready for them to catch on fire from a stiff breeze

Right, but adventurers can still visit cities and exchange money for goods and services. You could start fires with a flint and steel or a bow drill if you really wanted to, but a $2 pre-filled barbecue lighter does the job better, even if it depends on a finite, technologically-refined resource and has more points of failure.

Fireballs are dangerous; big whoop! Better stop using wooden arrows and bows and shields and wearing flammable or heat-conducting armor and clothing!

*blocks your boar*

Hans, we are going to kill the Beast of Teufelwald that has been terrorising the village for too long!
>By St Michael Franz, it shall be done. I shall grab my hunting rifle and some shot and we can be off
A Gun, Hans! What are we doing!? I've suddenly realised what a terrible idea defending ourselves is. We should sell all we own and hire some mercenaries instead.
>Uh Franz, you remember what happened the last time mercenaries were here during the War
SHUT UP HANS! DON'T BE A FUCKING PRIMITIVE

Note that this is only a problem because anything bigger than a rat in TTRPGs can usually take 3 or 4 hits from a weapon before dying

"Hydrostatic shock" is the 5.7mm cultist myth that kinetic energy from a bullet propagates through the water in the body and travels up to the brain or other vitals. What you're thinking of is temporary cavitation.

>Are you using a small enough ball like infantry actually did or are you jamming a big-ass ball in there for extra accuracy? That's the only way I can think of a crossbow's long-ass reloading time being anywhere close to a proper smoothbore musket load in speed.
Wouldn't it depend heavily on the draw strength of the crossbow?

Like yeah, a siege crossbow would be a massive bitch to reel up, but the smaller ones can be cocked back in just a few seconds.

A musket can be readied in just a few seconds. Crossbows basically have all of the disadvantages of the early (post-handgonne) firearms and bows of the time. That's why they went obsolete very quickly when matchlocks came about (longbows followed not long after, really).

Cavitation of the wound is indeed an aspect, but the disruption of cell integrity by gross energy dissipation of a 3/4" diameter ball of lead slamming into you at just bellow the speed of sound, leads to meat jello, bro. We're talk a big, slow chunk of lead being introduced into the body.