How would you justify the continued use of medieval weaponry while modern weaponry exists in your fantasy setting?

But what about guns that shoot swords, Frank?
What about a Frank that shoots Franks?

I go this route:
but also use silver = magical bullshit killer idea as well. Any magical creature can only be perma killed with silver which has become rarer and rarer over the centuries (silver is worth more than gold and is exclusively used for large trade deals). By the time the first guns were invented silver was already being hoarded by the elite of society and handed out only to their most trusted warriors/soldiers. Technically, silver bullets are far more effective than a silver sword/spear/whatever, but it is also far more wasteful. Even silver arrow tips are hard to justify for anyone who isn't at least on the same skill level as a lvl 1 PC. Paying for silver is a major problem for PCs and I tend to inflate their monetary rewards as reequipping themselves will run their pockets empty very quickly.

There are also the aliens that brought energy weapons with them, but their tech is able to auto-cast magic and tend to use disintegrate when someone other than their creators touch them. It is possible for PCs to use them temporarily with certain tricks, but then they can't reload them so it is only ever a temporary bonus. This is how I include the ability for PCs to regularly use guns while keeping melee weapons and magic the center of attention as guns are usually saved for big encounters.

Firearms aren't exactly as they are in our world. Different charges for firing a round, lower pressure, etc. Having the properties of smokeless powder with a much lower pressure(and therefore slower/less hard hitting) round would be fine. Inefficient designs that redirect a lot of energy away from the bullet could work too.

Make a setting where RPG mechanics are literally true and people have power levels.
A weapon is not inherently strong or weak, it is an extension of its user's power, and what kind of weapon you use depends on circumstantial convenience and personal familiarity.

>Oh look, this question again

Because being practical is not an absolute requirement to two groups of people to want to kill each other. why does everyone overthink this?

This literally is true in my setting. Its a fantasy setting that progressed into the modern era, and there is STILL a subset of the population who, through either training or good genes, have superhuman power [whether magical, physical, or so on]

Most of these people still LARP in platemail and wizard robes just because its tradition and because the advantage of guns and explosives vs people who can tank these things isn't that large compared to enchanted swords that can cut through tank armor or people who run over 60 MPH.

Though 'adventuring' isn't as huge a deal as it once was. It still exists, but a lot of these superhumans have gone into academia, become athletes, or joined law enforcement or the military. In the good old days war was basically just two groups of heroes fighting it Fire Emblem style, nowadays they're used as special ops and shock troops.

The industry required for modern firearms is damn near non-existent. Yes, there's manuals out there on how to make an AK-47 from iron ore and olga's toenails but the high speed lathes, steel stamping dies, and bessimer steel furnaces simply don't exist.

On the other hand, anybody can hammer some good scrap iron into a halfway decent sword.

Swords are basically just one giant piece of metal with a handle on it, thus easy as hell to enchant. Guns, however, have so many individual pieces, and to have any effect you have to enchant every single piece, PLUS the ammunition, that it's not easily affordable. This also extends to bows and arrows, they are just a long piece of wood with a string attached, and a skinny stick with a piece of metal and some feathers. VS a crossbow with all kinds of individual pieces, and pegs, and shit. Also, you have take into account traditions and culture, where individual swords have been passed down for hundreds of generations. And with each new wielder it slowly absorbs any ambient energy/mana/power from their aura and thus gradually grows more powerful on a day to day basis. So a cheap piece of shit bronze sword made a thousands years ago today has the power to slay high ranking demons and demigods. So the only guns that exist today that have anywhere close to that power are basically small warship canons that have to be carried around on the back of a horse.

a Frank that shoots Franks
Way too overpowered man, you should only use that as a last resort, same as rocks falling.

I created air powered guns/rifles in one of my settings. It's basically a hollow tube shaped vaguely like a RL gun. You load long thick needles with a puffball at one end into it, (basically a blow gun dart, or a tranquilizer dart) and then when you pull the safety off a magic spell sucks up and compresses air through the opposite end of the tube, the butt of the gun. Once you pull the trigger the spell releases and takes a couple seconds or a full minute to recharge off of ambient energy, depending on whether or not it's a short range handgun, or a long range rifle. And also on how powerful it is.

Fairies fucking love it because you can make both the ammunition and the gun/rifle out of anything, since it doesn't use gunpowder. So they make theirs out of wood from trees that died of natural causes and they are so tiny (and thus recharge instantly) that a single fairy can load you up full of a dozen poison tipped splinters that will either drive you insane from a hallucinogenic trip or flat out kill you. Their favorite poison to use is an extracted and concentrated venom from the blue ring octopus. Because even in RL there is no known antivenom to counteract it. And in my setting it's immune to magic and or divine will.

Enchanted bullets are fucking expensive, and the guns which can handle them are even more costly. Good luck killing something or someone actually in need of killing without magic, by the way.

How would magic-powered cellphones impact a medieval world? Assume in one case they're rare (only available to experienced wizards and the richest nobles), and in the other they're as commonly available as cellphones in the first world.

>magic powered cellphones
You mean small handheld magic mirrors?

object spirits are real.
The sword is more useful than the gun because it has a 600 year old small god living inside of it.

Since an object has to be 100 years minimum before its object spirit awakens, only the oldest of guns and tanks and planes have even the weakest of spirits.

shintoism is fucking amazing for plot hooks and campaign settings.
And modern day settings.
Especially on the 100th anniversary of mcdonalds, when the ronaldform breaches the walls of our reality.

Magic

Considering how simple early guns were, it wouldn't be a problem. They were basically tubes attached to a stick, it'd be like enchanting a spear. The enchants would also be different. You'd want enchants that would make them safer to fire, prevent corrosion and rust, and increased reliability. Also guns are in reality very, very old; primary archaeological sources date back over 700 years while secondary sources put them at roughly 900 years old. The AR is 58 years old, the AK is 68 years old, and it's not uncommon to see firearms handed down through families.

Historically many knights refused to use crossbows as they felt having the power to kill people with little to no training was too much power. Something like a code of ethics could work if it's not super modern tech.

True, but I was thinking more along the terms of modern day pistols and machine guns, due to OP's pic. Vs flintlock rifles. Which is why I specifically mentioned warship canons being enchanted, but they are too young to match bronze swords made thousands of years ago before the use of iron even existed.

Read this shit and find out.

You'd still get more versatility out of that artillery piece. Things like revolvers would be piss easy to enchant and modern polymer handguns and assault rifles would also be pretty simple to enchant.

Dune style personal shields.

that's why I like the object spirit one better.

Right now, only the earliest of semi-auto pistols and such will be awakened, and even then, they have to be cared for pretty well for it to happen.

Or really poorly, but somehow survive.

Because evil object spirits are a thing too.

Modern as in right now modern, or modern as in the historical era that started in about the Renaissance? If the latter my setting borrows heavily from Warhammer Fantasy so I've got gyrocopters and canons. I've technically got firearms but they haven't shown up yet, but because of magic, armor is able to stop bullets decently enough.

While only the earliest of semi-autos would be awakened, you'd still be looking some of the earliest examples of some very popular guns having spirits, like the 1911 and Mosin-Nagant.

My nigga

>A way to instantly/near-instantly reduce the distance between you and your target in a safe-ish manner.
>A way to possess skills that turn you into a human blender in close-quarters combat.
>A way to trivialize or outright ignore ranged attacks made against you.

Fluff these in whatever way most pleases you but as long as they are ALL present, then melee is a viable and sane tactic that will be used by smart, competent people.

If you mean guns vs swords:

Because meele weapons can be better empowered by magic/ki/psionics due to their proximity and being in direct contact to their users

If you mean why would ancient weapons would be used over modern equivalents:

Some magical ancient weapons might get more powerful over time and not being able to be succesfully replaced through modern methods, theres also some enchatments that can only be achieved through precise rituals codified in old designs that cant be replicated

Can't enchant anything that's been machined. Blame the elves for this. Either way now you have the best of both worlds. Peasants wielding ak-47s because a fully automatic is more useful in untrained hands. However a knight is still rocking runed up harquebus shooting lead balls that pack the same punch as a piece of field artillery in his suit of plate that's literally on par with mbt armor.

Focus on giving magical guns effects and aoes, and magical sharps lightsaber-like penetration so that both ranged and melee have their roles.

Then mix and max. An adventurer in leather hardened with sap from an ancient elvish grove, rocking a silenced smg while infiltrating an enemy camp. A dragon dodging sam fire, only to be felled by an extremely powerful arrow crafted by blood magic. Setting up claymores to protect the camp from the local goblins. Strapping reactive armor to your breast plate as to improve your odds against rocket cavalry.

Modern weaponry is for the mooks and normal folk that can't into Qi/Magic/Superpowers
It works just fine on normal everyday people but your adventurer/xia/mage/PC can basically ignore it by either tanking it or getting out of the way once they hit a certain level of skill
They use swords because whatever melee weapon they use can be made by [insert mystical magical nonsense] to withstand the attacks they make and be sharp enough to do the thing they require of them

>Be an anime character
Got it user thanks.

If that's how you wanna fluff it, more power to you.

>Mosin-Nagant weapon spirit

I like this idea

Yes, anime-level stuff existing is the only way guns wouldnt dominate the battlefield, people who say personal forcefields and the like are wrong, only magic can put swords on the same level

A force-field, a jet-pack and some mad sword-skills ticks every condition I put hereThing is, with just a force field, you still need to reach your target while keeping in mind they also have legs, same as you. You also need to be able to deal with said target if you do reach them, cause getting the shit kicked out of you cause you thought you were hot stuff is pretty embarrassing.

I mean sure, I guess it all depends on wherever magic of impracticality break more your personal suspension of disbelief

Like I said, fluff it however you want and as appropriate for whatever setting you have in mind, but if anyone wants melee to be viable, these must be present in some way.

You tell your players "this setting has modern day technology but people still fight with swords and wear suits of armor".

Done.

See WWI.

>Rumors exist of legendary Mosin from the first production batch which some say has seen combat in every deployment of the rifle
>supposedly it is constantly on the move seeking out places in need

Land features prevents raw resouce transport in large quatities hence hindering industrialization. Even though information and craftsmen travel freely everything has to be made localy using materials at hand.

Nearly indestructible material used in armor that requires consistent proximity to bypass

you can parry bullets

Its a high powered setting. If you and your enemies have super strength and duralitity bullets don't scale with your stength. Same goes for superspeed.

Just make a more powerful gun, then.

Why couldn't you enchant the gun?

The Slow blade penetrates the shield.

Knives and clubs are still used in the present day, there's no reason they can't exist alongside guns. Closer than 6ft to someone a gun isn't all that great compared to a big ass knife or machete.

In Legend of Galatic Heroes anime/manga melee weapons are used in space ship to ship boarding actions as the air was filled with ignitible particles (like Zephyr Particles, for instance) so using their laser guns would have pretty much been suicide.

Or you could just say projectiles or lasers powerful enough to pierce the armour being worn would also breach the hull. I guess if the combat is in a unsealed vacuum it wouldn’t matter.

Even without fantasy particles using guns inside of a spaceship would be fucking dangerous

>trench warfare
(axe beats rifle in melee)
>scarcity of ammunition
>dune style shields
>aboard space ships
(environment where projectiles are just as hazardous to the shooter)

For cultural/religious/legal reasons.
>fighting with firearms is thought of as dishonourable, while swordfighting is seen as noble.
>duels with swords are used to settle disputes and trials.
>jousting and gladiatorial games in which traditional weapons are used are common entertainment.
>hunting with guns is considered disrespectful to the animal, so hunting is done with bows and crossbows, or even spears.
>firearms are illegal for civilians to own, but traditional weapons are legal to carry around.

>(axe beats rifle in melee)
Have you met my friend?

If you have a unpressurized area of the ship would it be that dangerous to have a shootout in? I assume it would be standard operating procedure to open the hatches to the areas of a ship where boarders are detected. But then most borders would be in armored Eva suits.

It was a short magazine Lee-Enfield three-oh-three caliber, and its worn brass buttplate and the scars and scratches on its woodwork spoke volumes of the century gone by.

They spoke of Mons, nineteen-fourteen. Where cries of TEN ROUNDS RAPID! Convinced the German soldiers that they faced machinegun fire and English bowman from the time of Agincourt (so legend has it) appeared in the clouds to cover the retreat. They spoke of Harry and Jack on their way up to Arras, of the morning on the Somme when men of Ulster, Scotland Wales and Ireland all the children of the Empires fixed bayonet as long as swords and went to feed the earth.

They spoke of Tommies on the Beach at Dunkirk. Taking hopeful potshots at the Stukas and of stopping Rommel dead at Alam Halfa. They spoke of Normandy, the sneaking gang-fights in the Hedgerows. Where a platoon could bleed out faster that its predecessors on the Somme.

Finally they spoke of Afghanistan. The land that swallows armies. Of ancient rifles in the hands of men as hard as the mountains, glimpsed on CNN and BBC. Anachronism next to things of tin and plastic. Of weapons taken by the locals from the Empire that had fought them. An inheritance of iron and gun-oil cut on the North-West frontier.

Most of all, they spoke of History..........

I was just pointing out the bayonet but now I've got a tear in my eye.

I imagine most anti-boarding proceedures would involve dumping the environment in some key areas and everyone wearing emergency suits or armored EVA (AEVA as I call them) The boarders will want to take the ship so keeping damage to a minial is priority hince the use of melee weapons and penumatic weapons like down scale pile drivers with longer spikes.

If the boarders are already in the ship and moving about you either give up or get ready to face some serious damage or death defending your shit.

There's a light and readily available material that stops bullets but not swords and magic.

There is a certain amount of practicality to medieval weapons as the majority of them were used by peasants and militia with little/no skill and training. So they where relatively simple and effective killing weapons that where c cheap to make and didn't take ammo, unless where talking projectile weapons, even then some of those points still apply.

Unless you're going to beat them with the gun that's not effective.

Use medieval weapons such as arming swords in a setting with modern guns because armor has advanced in response to the penetrating power of common small arms by becoming heavy overlapping plates. easily able to deflect or absorb incoming fire, and even the best shots have difficulty lining up a shot at an exposed area such as the armpits, backs of the knees, etc. medieval weapons make a come back as a response to this - arming swords being useful against both unarmored (duh) and armored - by effectively crowbaring their way past the armor.

Society is completely tribal and a vast majority of tribes consider guns dishonourable (or just don't know how to make them).
That and/or firearms technology is at a WW1 level at best so many folk still consider melee weapons superior.

You can enchant clothes to be bulletproof easily, and you can enchant a blade to penetrate such cloth, but bullets are too small.

Guns are artifacts of the old world, and none of the facilities used to machine gun parts, nor the facilities used to produce modern gun powder and primer, survived the fall of that world.

Uncovering a cache of weapons and ammunition from the old world is like finding an enormous vein of gold. It's the kind of discovery that elevates local leaders to the highest nobility over the course of a generation.

Turns out modern weaponry isn't as great as you'd think in the close quarters combat of the trenches.

Ask these guys.

Because the sword does more damage and spells/enchantments that reduce projectile and spell damage are commonplace and so easy to make that an untalented peasant can get their hands on one.

It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to be there for when your players ask why.

Canadians?

The handwavium magic realm reasons are weak. But the my culture doesn’t like them or guns aren’t good for CQB are worse. Firearms are the superior weapon.

>Modern tech is extremely rare and/or temperamental
>Guns can't be enchanted like swords and other melee weapons
>Magic forcefields that only work against projectile weapons

Weapon enchantments weaken if not constantly channeled by the user. If you want your target to explode into a trillion spears of light upon contact, goring every dipshit standing behind them, you have to shoot it with a bullet that has that effect. The engraving for it is about 5 meters long if written in single line and must be done by a smith skilled in it using an engraving pen that has to be channeled constantly to get the enhancement to stick, so good luck getting emergency orders for ammunition through unless you own the national armory or something.

You can instantly crisp a motherfucker with a touch from a lightning-charged blade(assuming you can keep the zap mumbo up), but the bullet starts losing charge from the moment it leaves the engraved barrel and anything beyond 50 meters is just a normal bullet. It doesn't really matter if you're fighting Joe and his chucklefuck bandit gang, but unfortunately for us, the neighboring nation loves their knightly groups with their burnished Platemail Set of Deflection, and it's about time for the bi-yearly descent of Fanglets from the Badlands. I don't need to remind you that they're born hungry, plated, and with an ingrained taste for warm-blooded flesh.

Thankfully for us, sometime ago some rich fuck with too much time on hand discovered that increasing the speed of things with magic is an amazing use of offense that just no-sells the implications of Randowel's Algorithm of Bleedoff. Yeah, Fanglets really don't like the cold, but hosing them down with a shitstorm of bullets with enhanced speed is a viable second option. It may not seem like much, but the effect is much greater with human opponents, since they and their equipment are basically baseline once they get tired out from the stress of increased channeling. Haven't heard the alarm for a border skirmish ever since we got the new rifles to keep up with those poncy platemail fuckers.

human society is made up of small semi-allied states. professional armies are uncommon and most militias consist of a few riflemen, an improvised tachanka and a load of spearmen

Martial arts.

There are ancient methods for using swords to defeat gun users. Speed to close with them, the ability to not die from taking bullets, the strength to thrust a spear through the armour of a tank and kill whoever's inside it, or slice a man in two with a single sword swing.

>Enchant the extractor
>Enchant the buffer tube
>Enchant the pins
>Enchant the trigger
Why? You could enchant the barrel and maybe the firing pin and that would work. Maybe you'd want to enchant the magazine (maybe 5 pieces total so don't say it's too complicated) to hold more, or the bolt to be more reliable or somehring, but my barrel should totslly be able to be enchanted to make a +1 flaming Galil. Also you can enchant stuff like a suit of chainmail when that has way more pieces than a gun, so it really has no basis. A better answer would be "After WW1 guns were found to be horrible weapons and were banned for use in war, most countries banned them for hunting as well and now they are very expensive and not too common because nobody can hunt or anything with them"

there are spells and enhancements that only affect quickly moving projectiles, and they're more effective the faster the projectile is.

the power of the ward depends on the proficiency of the caster. A novice might be able to ward against small arms fire whereas a full fledged wizard might, with the help of human sacrifice, be able to ward an entire city against nuclear weapons for a limited amount of time.

"Any soldier without a sword is improperly dressed"

This.
Dune-style shields also make stuff like missiles, bombing or artillery really impractical to use. It's nearly the perfect solution if you want a setting with high technology but still have a "credible" reason while people prefer stabbing each other with swords.

I see no reason for those guns to not have the starts of spirits to them.

Still not as intense as a 600 year old sword, but pretty good nonetheless.

It is a requirement if they want to last long enough to continue killing each other and become a fixture of the setting

The infrastructure to make guns and ammo no longer really exists for the most part, and what pockets of it remain are strictly in the hands of a few elites. Firearms from the old world remain scattered about, but they're largely treated as precious artifacts and relics.
That being said, firearms are very effective at what they do. But even then, it's not impossible to win against their wielders.

also the only confirmed bow kill during ww2

That comic had an amazing start but the ending was fucking garbage

Never read Dune?

hence why every other answer is "dun shields lol" or "Gunpowder doesn't exist"

Is it possible to just except the fact that a dude can carry a sharp stabby choppy thing as well as a shooty thing and find a way to make use of both?

People can "energize" weapons, which lets them hurt a lot more, and makes them able to hurt like magic shit.

Ranged weapons lose the energy unless you're smacking them with said object.

There are shields that when modern weaponry strikes them causes the target and the person wielding the weapon to both violently explode.
So everyone uses swords.

Magic used to be more powerful in ancient times than in the modern day. So a weapon passed down from thousands of years ago is going to be pretty basic in technological terms, but much more powerful in magical terms than a gun with a modern enchantment.

You could say this makes modern weapons better for fighting regular humans (guns are more efficient at mowing down large numbers of people quickly, the extra power of the magical sword is redundant) while ancient weapons are better at fighting powerful opponents whose magical defences need to be broken.

>How would you justify the continued use of medieval weaponry while modern weaponry exists in your fantasy setting?
Medieval weapons are generally quieter to use and can attack about as fast as you can swing it while modern weaponry allows for more speed, range, and accuracy while at the same time requiring that you learn how to conserve your ammo.

In practice though, there isn't really a reason why someone wouldn't have access to both.

Enchants require constant tactile contact in order to maintain their power and bullets are far outclassed by the various over powered enchants available since they don't maintain physical contact.

>Canadians
>Guns
Pick one, eh.

What if, the more complicated the mechanism the more difficult it is to enchant? A hammer for instance could consist of the head and the shaft (lets assume the grip is carved out of the shaft), so we have two pieces. Then you just take said hammer and smash something with it, easy, and during this whole process the user is in constant contact with the weapon. Now say we have a gun, simpler guns could be easier to enchant but they're shit, also the ammunition is never really in contact with the user once it's loaded, and it travels away from the user once fired. Things like vehicles and automatons are even crazier and difficult to enchant, not to mention the cost of materials. That being said, a gun can have parts on it that are separately enchanted, such as a bolt that never jams, a trigger that only works for the right user, or a magazine of holding.

this is pretty closely to how I justify it in a lot of my settings, although it's less that Enchantment is always super expensive and time consuming and more that enchanting something like a sword or a helmet is something that has hundreds if not thousands of years of magical theory and practice in their use and thus is fairly streamlined and reasonably priced for doing the equivalent of a +1 weapon, while for something like a gun you might have a hundred years tops of people being able to enchant them beyond really basic stuff, so it's pretty expensive

so the balancing is that a Sword can have some pretty impressive stuff magically done to it if you're willing to invest time and/or money into it(and even the run of the mill stuff keeps them viable), but gunpowder weapons still have a ton of evolution left in them and thus room for improvement, so their worth is also recognized

also if someone has a "PC Class" then they're inherently supernatural to some extent, even a level 1 Fighter is going to have the tactical worth of an entire squad or two of non-classed warriors in sheer strength and durability

to clarify most of my settings fall between the 30 Years War at the low tech end, and somewhere between WW1 and the very start of WW2 at the high end