Why is gunpowder fantasy so underutilized?

>firearms aren't 'romantic'
Every dual-wielding gunslinger in written, spoken, filmed or animated fiction say you are a tremendous faggot.

Nonsense. Highwaymen are literally romantic figures.

I didn't say it makes sense. That's just how romanticism rolls.

Because people don't understand that guns and melee fighting have coexisted extensively up until the early 20th century and still do to some extent today, and that single shot firearms (or even muzzeloading revolvers, etc) can really only be used for a few attacks before swords must be employed.

Because they'd make armour obsolite and fuck that I love me some wizard armour

Honestly? Because adventurers don't really need or benefit from most guns from that period.
>Super long reloading times
>Still have to fight monsters

I think I've played a grand total of one game where firearms were depicted as having ammunition. It was an online med-fan strategy/RPG where most firearms had one or two shots and gun builds were expected to either carry a shitload of them or do their best to make those few shots count.

>Guns do 1d6 damage.
>A firing line of ten people needs to reload four time to kill your character.

Because of the absolute state of D&D.

This.

Explosives can but a DM in a really bad position, when he has to decide between letting the cheese commence or just nerf the explosive, which leaves a bad taste.

The problem less prevalent in narrative games, with highly abstract damage or consequences.

We had one guy, who used Hold Person/grenade combo every time he had the opportunity, paralized the other guy, stuck a greande in his mouth or something, and walked away. Auto crit, high damage, maximum cheese. The potential damage was so high, he just kept trying again and again.

>firearms aren't 'romantic'.

Hogwash

>10 people
good thing firing lines in the 30 years war were like 50 - 100 guys

>We had one guy, who used Hold Person/grenade combo every time he had the opportunity, paralized the other guy, stuck a greande in his mouth or something, and walked away. Auto crit, high damage, maximum cheese. The potential damage was so high, he just kept trying again and again.

Sounds like he had figured out a pretty smart way to fight. Why risk life and limb in fair battle if a single spell and grenade can do the trick? I wonder though how he would had reacted if an enemy tried to use same tactic against him.

>I wonder though how he would had reacted if an enemy tried to use same tactic against him.
One of the cardinal rules of GMing is to let players invent the creative ways opponents will fight against them. Never break a trick like this out against your PCs till they start abusing it themselves.

>Playing a tabletop with 6 people at most
>Bringing up 50+ Firing Lines

>dm doesn't put you up against challenging encounters

Either guns should do plenty of damage, or the average guard has some quick reload feats, or 2 or 3 pistols in his bandoleer / straps or the DM throws plenty of enemies at you, or the DM should have a combination of ranged and close up guys (like pikemen and musketeers working together as in the Italian wars and TYW)

We played a campaign in a pseudo-thirty years war setting which was great - all guards had 2 or 3 pistols and a rapier. They fire at you then draw their sword.

The idea was absolutely right, but most systems are limiting coup de grâce against enemies and players for a reason, and with explosives, it's kinda easy to circumvent the restrictions.

>All guards had 2 or 3 pistols
>Quick reloading
The absolute STATE of Powderfags

Pillars of Eternity was such shit, I sincerely believe anyone who pretends to like it is either retarded or is paid by Obsidian with kickstarter money.

>he doesn't know that historically people used to carry multiple pistols on them so that they wouldn't have to spend time by reloading
>he doesn't know that multibarreled pistols were also common
>he doesn't know that people were also keen with combining guns with pretty much everything; keyguns, knifeguns, latternguns, swordguns, axeguns, maceguns, shieldguns, helmetguns, etc.

Rapid reloading for common guards is pretty shit idea though.

>make reloading immediately end their turn
>make reloading require two turns to simulate the time consuming action of reloading flintlocks
done

>you can fire a flintlock 12 times a minute
>you can swing a sword 10 times a minute
How many turns does it take to swing a sword if reloding a gun takes 2?

Because it isn't you nigger

2 or 3 pistols is historically accurate. You can only fire them once before needing a lengthy reload so why not carry a few?

Quick reloading feats are pretty common. Loading a crossbow takes quite a bit of time, probably around the same as a musket or maybe slightly quicker.

In the game we played quick reloading feats just meant you could fire once per turn rather than having to spend a turn reloading

1 turn to swing a sword vs 1 turn to fire a single flint + 2 turns to reload

Actually armor was still used long after the invention of guns. You can thank the Swedish for the europe-wide abandonment of full plate

Miltibarreled pistols such as a pepperbox were common yes, but they were very expensive and you have a picture of a goddamn duckfoot. Duckfoots are shit.

>he doesn't like the idea of gunning down entire roomful of scum with a single volley
>he wouldn't want to miss at least half of the targets of that volley

Sir, you have objectively the shittiest taste ever know to man.

I love the idea of a blunderbuss.
I don’t love the idea of a gun specifically designed for when you get caught cheating at cards.

Typing that out I realize that I may have unfairly judged the duckfoot.

How does literally any modern or futuristic setting work then? Why are you assuming anyone can just go out and purchase enough gunpowder to explode the plot for a handful of gold?

only the last bullet actually hits

because in many settings with potential murderhobos going around it is a force multiplier hard to balance with most other already existing ones, especially in a way that wont break logical immersion into this fantasy.

>I wonder though how he would had reacted if an enemy tried to use same tactic against him.
It's a pretty sadistic mode of execution. Doesn't seem like it would come up that often unless you're fighting an enemy who's as fucked in the head as the player character.

Don't muskeys usually do D12 damage?

>instantly kill a monster in a single hit if you destroy a vital organ
>not useful
I'd argue that guns are TOO STRONG, what's the point in hiring an adventure with a diamond encrusted magic sword and blessed silver armor when a platoon of rifleman can kill a dragon in a single salvo.

Guns change the nature of combat to such an extent that adventure parties of elite adventurers become much less valuable as their killing power is comparable to any random shmuck who managed to get his hands on a firearm.

Because guns are often used as a symbol of industrialization which Tolkien based fantasy despises.

>Guns Are Overpowered in 5e

Why should a gun be such a threat? The fighter can not only survive a hit from a sword three times his own size from a giant before he's even level 10, he can often deflect it with his own shield. Guns are not more deadly than being hit with a sword larger than your entire body.

>instantly kill a monster in a single hit if you destroy a vital organ
>implying this doesn't apply to every single weapon ever

>playing dnd
That's your problem

Anyway, if swords scale with level then why wouldn't guns do as well? A level 1 gun kills a guy in 1 shot and ignores level 1 armor so a level 10 gun would kill a level 10 warrior in 1 shot as well as ignore his armor.

The difference is that guns have the ability to go deeper than, let's say, an arrow or a spear, allowing the gun to destroy a vital organ that a spear or arrow wouldn't be able to reach.

>A gun being effective against Dragonscale
>A platoon being effective against opponents that don't stay in a straight line and have more dexterity than a man
Why do powderfags underestimate the world they'll be fighting in?

Because the guns will scale as well.

A level 1 gun can kill a man in 1 shot but a level 20 gun can shatter an entire mountain range.

The reason guns beat warriors/adventurers is because a low level gun is better than a low level warrior. A level 1 man with a gun is able to beat a level 3 warrior with ease.

Why do you insist on shitposting about muh archery fantasy?

>The reason guns beat warriors/adventurers is because a low level gun is better than a low level warrior. A level 1 man with a gun is able to beat a level 3 warrior with ease.

Why? What stops the level 3 guy from ruining the shit of the level 1 gun? After all, he's level 3 and level is supposed to actually mean something.

>A weapon where the gun can misfire regardless of skill can scale better than weapons based entirely on skill

>Anyway, if swords scale with level then why wouldn't guns do as well? A level 1 gun kills a guy in 1 shot and ignores level 1 armor so a level 10 gun would kill a level 10 warrior in 1 shot as well as ignore his armor.

Why would a gun just one shot a guy? Swords and Axes are plenty deadly too and they rarely one shot a guy in most games.

>>gunpowder fantasy can't be done well
>warhammer
>>gunpowder isn't medieval enough
>first european firearms used as early as the 1200s

>greande
where the hell did he get so many grenades, anyway? did he just carry a bandolier of them to every fight?

Guns aren't seen as heroic, so heros seldom use them

Guns are relatively more common grunt for npcs

It causes problems with internal game balance with regards to simulationism. The short answer is that it's usually not easy to balance guns against swords and bows without making one choice clearly and evidently superior. There's also the argument that in fantasy the usage of magic makes gunpowder somewhat redundant. Finally, fantasy generally is predicated on medieval stasis timelines in which the development of Gunpowder but the retention of medieval culture and rough tech-level is jarring.

Essentially the answer is it takes a lot of work and justification for gunpowder to play a role in most fantasy settings and games and usually isn't really worth it

>Warhammer
>Done well

He was a tinkerer/weaponsmith, and since the party had a Bag of Holding it there was no option to fuck them up for carrying a shitload of gunpowder.

Warhammer doesn't do guns well. Seriously, in the RPG guns are the fucking worst, since they barely hit harder than bows and have so many other downsides.

*not age of shitmar warhammer

I agree, but literally two minutes of homebrew fixes them. If we're talking 2e of the RPG that is. If you mean 3e then yeah they're shit, but then again most people don't like 3e.

>bag of holding FILLED with gunpowder
>no option to fuck them up
Who would win?
A magical bag that's larger on the inside and capable of carrying hundreds of pounds of explosive powder
OR
One spicy boi

If the gunpowdwer is in another dimension it really don't fucking do much when you light it on fire.

Lets say a spark makes its way into the bag. Is it air-tight? If so, they no longer have any gunpowder and everything else inside the bag is now a fine ash. If not, they no longer have any gunpowder, everything inside is a fine ash and a column of deadly flame just erupted from the opening.

>I agree, but literally two minutes of homebrew fixes them

Yeah but I mean, that applies to any RPG.

because grognards

Why can we thank them for that when armor was being phased out by the larger companies of musketeers that typically didn't wear it?

>didyourtriednot playingd&d.jpg
Seriously, that taboo not using gunpower is mostly in d&d. There are enough fantasy settings where at least dwarves or gnomes have gun powder.

The argument about long reloads and single shots only applies if you want it to. Flintlock and wheelock revolvers have existed almost as long as firearms

It takes more work to remove gunpowder from the late middle/ages early rennaisance than it does to put it back in! Of course most fantasy games don't bother with that work, leaving weird incoherent settings that make nerds argue on the internet, so whatever.

I don't understand this attitude I must say.I have firearms in all my D+D campaigns. It hasn't caused any problems at all. Anything the PCs can do, the NPCs can also do.

>Anything the PCs can do, the NPCs can also do
I've never heard this said in a campaign that didn't sooner or later turn into a retarded arms race.

Not saying its wrong, but that's what I've seen around and about.

>Use one spell and one grenade to kill one single target
or
>Use one sleep spell and a knife to slit the throats of ten orcs

Too often it's used as an excuse for GMs to punish clever players. Instead of thinking about whether their NPCs would employ the same tactics, they seem to treat it as a tit for tat scenario, and for some reason can't think of encounters that will still be challenging.

>guns caused industrialization
And to answer your question OP, it's because most writers of fantasy have no idea how medieval history, firearms, or politics in general work and get all of their cues from media leading to the incestuous fantasy genre that we know today.

The main problem I have personally found when trying to play with guns is that, if you want to more or less fully translate what guns actually mean to a low-mid fantasy setting, it gets out of hand pretty quickly (or they end up becoming another flavor of bows). In a "realistic" scenario they normalize the power curve too much, since a random guy with a gun is as valuable in terms of raw power as a low level adventurer. Their inclusion shaped forever they way war and conflict was understood in our world, so I think it is a bit hard to pretend that it's not going to affect a fantasy setting.

>firearms must do 4d100 damage, because they're lethal. Someone bashing your skull in with a halberd? No, that's fine, 1d10
>firearms need to take 18 turns to reload, it's only realistic. Anyway here's my heavy crossbow, I'm gonna fire that 4 times in 6 seconds.
>oh also every time you fire you have to roll 8 dice and consult the ouija board to see if you misfire and all gunpowder in the world explodes

is why

This.

>Why is gunpowder fantasy so underutilized?

it's not

any other questions?

Poorly implemented rules?
In MY rpgs?!

Say it isn't so!

It's because firearms are so lethal! I mean, sure our halfing took out the GMs favourite wizard with a Boys AT rifle, but that was a critical hit. The orc warband with FG42s was a nightmare and when we had to raid the renegade dwarven stronghold, they were all armed with tommy guns and BARs - the cleric was working overtime so it was lucky that the bard had a couple of rounds left for the PIAT. Fortunately we had found a panzerfaust cache at the bandit camp so we were able to take out the final dragon boss. But surely the GM should have realised that the quad 50 cals should have added to its challenge rating?

There's a simple way to counteract this much cheese - let him do it, sure, I mean it is kinda funky. But the explosion destroys most of the items held by the explodee. He had an important letter on him? Should've taken that into account before you murderblastered him.

Blunderbusses were not shotguns. They were flared for easier loading on the horse or on the coach.

A few years ago I was making up my own setting in my mind and I asked myself "Why isn't anything ever set in the 19th century/equivalent?" So I made it just that. Pretty cool stuff, then I thought about how it would translate to a vidya or RPG and it came down to; this guy has a sword and pistol, and this guy has a rifle with a bayonet. That was it. And that's not even mentioning the reloading which you just can't fix in any way while trying to be a little realistic. No one wears armor either. Meanwhile in medieval fantasy shit you get tons of variety and bows don't take a year to reload.

This is why, user.

Using the knife would scale with strength. An orc with enough damage resistance could very well no-sell a coup de grace. Some creatures are just that tough. Their skin could be so tough and leathery that the knife just isn't cutting.

That and you have to make sure the sleep spell works on all 10 orcs and keeps working long enough to kill them all. That and botching a single roll will basically kill you.

Symbols of industrialization. They're actually indirectly responsible by virtue of demanding larger armies but only in part.

Because firearms are controlled in some way in modern times by law. In the past they were controlled by wealth, something adventures can bypass. You see the issue. I still use gunpowder myself when appropriate in my games but I understand why it's so often omitted.

>laws didn't exist in the past
Why can't anti-firearmfags just admit they don't want their misconception of the medieval times ruined?

>Because firearms are controlled in some way in modern times by law.
Nigger I bought a shotgun while grocery shopping once.

It isn't. Stop playing Forgotten Realms you douchewhistle.

For the same reason urban fantasy is, or if it is utilized it's a "masquerade" setting so the writer doesn't have to think through how magic and shit would actually change society.

People are too familiar with it. Not many gamers have any experience with swordfighting, for instance, but even a lot of non gun owners have at least fired a gun at some point.

Okay so how did your adventurer buy an axe? Sword? Longbow? Crossbow? Also I love guns and own several; you're an idiot.

>in some way

Where are you gonna get large quantities of explosives in a modern setting without getting v&

Literally any hardware store. Stuff like black powder is also very easily acquired. But why did "firearms" become "large quantities of explosives"?

Any store that sells sulfur and potassium nitrate, it's super easy to make crude bombs user.

There were incredibly strict and class-based laws defining who could carry what and where, in a lot of medieval countries. For instance, in a lot of areas only the aristocracy were allowed to own or carry swords.

Biggest issue with these arguments is education. It's easy now to know how to make gunpowder cheaply. Back then it wasn't; it was much harder to get the materials and know what to do with them. So there was a knowledge and financial barrier there.

I knew someone would bring this up and all I have to say is Grosse Messier. Plus, games aren't much of a game if the players can't get weapons. Well, at least traditionally. It could be cool to play a game where everything but a hatchet or knife is illegal for commoners.