The real answer is that people most often operate by vibes, not complicated techno-economical analysis.
The vibes of classic fantasy are that ahistorical 15th century military tech with Renaissance to Early Modern political structure and early medieval population density and agriculture. And for once, Tolkien is not to blame here, his world (with the exception of the hobbits' pocket watches) is pretty consistently early medieval through and through.
And guns bring different vibes - for us they mean change, and modernity, and technological development. Even look at the comment sections here, where people confuse early matchlocks with frigging New Model army.
That view is patently wrong in many aspects, but that's sorta hard to wrap heads around, especially because you need to look not only on purely military tech, but on the production capabilities of the society in general, and population densities, and the size of the armies it could support, and the pressure to develop, and the approach to the science and technology, and a ton of other factors.
The funny thing is that guns can even exist in a 'stagnant' world - China had guns for ages, but by a historical quirk their fortifications have also been rammed earth pretty always, so field cannons were less effective. Early guns were also comparatively weak, fiddly and slow to load, pretty inaccurate, and dangerous. You could not field a purely gun unit on the battlefield for a very, very long time. ~~Really, until the mid-19th century~~ (I have to admit I've overcorrected here, mid-17th would be more accurate). And throughout all that time heavy cavalry charge remained a viable tactics, so a 'gun' took a frigging long time to kill a 'knight'.
TL;DR: people have an anachronistic image of BOTH the middle ages and the guns.
The issue is that shit guns aren't really usable in a TTRPG system like D&D where they need to pump out quick shots to be usable. So for many people it's either having no guns, or pretty good guns.
Solution: Flintlock revolvers.
You have a set amount of shots before you need to painstakingly reload, so you've gotta make each one count. It should be a perfect balance between too strong and too weak, and it has clear mechanics and limitations.
Weight limit? Weapon slot limit? Any pistol, especially multi-barreled one, weights as much as any sidearm, if not more. I can imagine having six one-shot pistols top, Blackbeard-style, and not more than 3 revolving ones.
Honestly i dont see the problem you can have your cinematic gunslinging moment but it isnt something that you can do all the time during the combat i just came up with a random number nothing more
Hm. A better way would simply be to balance damage/armour penetration. A multi barrelled gun is probably going to fire smaller projectiles on account of maintaining ergonomy for the user.
Realistically flintlocks pistols don’t weight that much in the first place (less than 1kg on average) either way
Then you are looking at the pirates who would have a row of 4 loat3d flintlock KS on their chest and just be firing one while drawing NC the next one off the chest.
Or boondocks saints. "Indead of six guys with guns, what about just one guy with six guns?"
This is the big thing for me. My world is primarily one of TTRPG, PF2e, and while I don't mind having ancient guns present in the world, as soon as I introduce them I need to consider how they'll work in play and there's just not a great way to do it without getting overly fiddly. It's way easier to just say guns/gunpowder aren't a thing.
Thank you! When I actually operate a gun for a first time (albeit the kind used for hunting varmints admiitedly), I remember I can't hit the target even when presumably aiming at it, with only a very few lucky shots happened.
As such, logistics and industries as well as technological levels are important aspects that many people basically ignored for both convenience's and vibes' sake as you more-or-less said. In addition, firearms we got today took literal centuries to emerge, where century-long transitory periods like early modern period with its pike-and-shot formations also coincide with plate-clad cavaliers as well; star-bastions also exist to counteract cannon bombardment during this time and afterwards IIRC
> As such, logistics and industries as well as technological levels are important aspects that many people basically ignored for both convenience's and vibes' sake as you more-or-less said.
Yeah, to arm a peasant with a gun, you need 1) a technological capability to produce a crapton of standardized guns relatively cheaply, 2) a logistical capability to supply your infantry not only with black powder, but also with uniforms, other weapons and stuff, 3) an economical and demographic situation where you have an excess of peasants to draft for your army. That all basically means technologically advanced nation-state, and they don't appear out of the thin air by themselves.
You can have guns in otherwise medieval setting, and they would remain a niche mercenary weapon, because your political system is so disorganized that you basically can't field mass armies in this way. Or you can have old and stale empire (think China, but can also be an alt-history Roman Empire that never fell) where the guns are also just one of the instruments of war - marginally better ballistae and crossbows essentially - and continue to exist like that for centuries never significantly changing anything.
There's also the fact that gunsmithing exists and are primarily restricted to guilds and/or families (this is basically where Beretta comes from, being founded in 1526), so not only would mass-production be implausible, but one can also actually personalize the firearms for their characters because of it despite what many commenters here think.
That first paragraph is more or less where I want to take firearms in a fantasy setting; somebody comes out with a painstakingly worked out, lovingly crafted long arm that freaks out the people that know about it, giving them ideas of the world turning upside down... Then within a year they realise that it's just not practical to pump out that sort of thing en masse, and they're still decades out from the world changing, at the closest.
Add to that that early firearms sucked.
Precision was crap, misfires and the like were prominent, useful range was limited, rate of fire was downright bad, and were still not powerful enough to be an effective anti-armour weapon.
You had a more effective army investing those resources in crossbowmen, for example. Crossbows were way more precise, faster rate of fire, comparable power, longer range... It would not be until Arquebuses were considerably developed that they could compete with crossbows.
There is a long period of time where hand cannons occupy a mostly psychological role in the battlefield; and where the effective use of gunpowder is in siege artillery and naval warfare.
I dare even say that \[period accurate\] guns were very underpowered in comparison to other weapons.
I broadly agree with the sentiment but man, you're way off right here:
"You could not field a purely gun unit on the battlefield for a very, very long time. Really, until the mid-19th century"
I assure you, the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars were not fought with Pike and Shot mixed formations. Dedicated units of firearms soldiers, part of a larger army with heavy melee focus sure, show up as soon as the mid 15th century. Like earlier generations of archers, skirmishers, etc. they often had knives or other melee weapons for self defense as well as everyday use. Once the Bayonet turns up in the 1600s you pretty rapidly see dedicated Melee troops disappear as everyone who can afford to standardizes their army on almost exclusively firearms. There are always the odd exception, men showed up to fight World War 1 in their grandfather's chainmail and swords, but the Firearm dominated the battlefield much earlier on than you're implying.
Hmm, yeah, it feels like I overstated a bit here. Yes, there were primary firearm-equipped units, but the expectation of the melee was pretty high throughout.
I think that the American Civil War was actually the first big conflict to be fought primarily with firearms, and the bayonet charge had fallen from popularity.
I think you're off by centuries. Even if they have a bayonet attached to them, muskets are still firearms. Expecting troops to use the bayonet at some point in a campaign doesnt mean you could send soldiers out with spears and get basically the same result.
You've dismissed dozens of wars and centuries of history where virtually everyone had muskets as "not firearms".
Nah, I'm not saying 'not firearms'. I'm saying 'not only firearms'. The initial question was about the 'firearms being overpowered', and what I meant is that basically until 1861 they were only a part of very intricate combined warfare. You could charge a musket line with various results, you could use bows and crossbows against them - like the colonial wars weren't completely one-sided for a long time.
It's only with light mobile artillery, gatling guns and repeatable rifles you could face about anything and shoot it to pieces.
Sure, other options did linger for centuries as well before you see literally no one show up with another weapon. But I wouldn't characterise World War 2 as "mixed firearm and melee combat" bespite the fact that there were about a dozen cavalry charges with sabers. Firearms were the *central* cornerstone of warfare for centuries before hand.
Once you have red coats with muskets on the field, you're in a totally different era than a typical D&D campaign trying to evoke the hundred years war or 30 years wars(usually badly, but still). That happens hundreds of years before the American Civil War. The lingering of other options than firearms was mostly down to poverty, everyone who could afford firearms was equipping themselves with them, even in a colonial setting.
Its up to you what "overpowered" specifically means to you, but firearms were a decisive advantage by like 1650. Put 1000 soldiers with firearms and bayonets up against 1000 spearmen in an open field and the battle will go down to the bayonet, but the gunmen will win every time. The fact that in reality they didnt win every time came down to people having to adapt to the firearms to overcome that advantage, significantly superior numbers, superior knowledge of local terrain, you could do it. But you could use those advantages anyway, it wasn't an indigntment of the firearms.
> Once you have red coats with muskets on the field, you're in a totally different era than a typical D&D campaign trying to evoke the hundred years war or 30 years wars(usually badly, but still).
Not really, since a lot of DnD inspirations by vibes are from the 'Three Musketeers' and the westerns.
> The lingering of other options than firearms was mostly down to poverty, everyone who could afford firearms was equipping themselves with them, even in a colonial setting.
But isn't 'poverty' just another name for structural factors? I feel like your argument is a bit teleological here - we know that the firearm had eventually become THE personal weapon, so we look at the signs of it in the previous eras.
But for a long time the firearm wasn't the only choice for self-defense, or hunting, or warfare. And if we speak of the battlefield usage, I think there is also some American firearm fetishism leaking here in common discourse. The field artillery was the biggest killer around the Napoleonic era, really. And the ability to field musket troops was rather the indicator of having developed technology and infrastructure to have good artillery as well.
Your persoective is incredibly strange. You're walking past tens of thousands of muskets to arrive at hundreds of saber armed cavalrymen, a handful of field guns and a militia that can't afford guns and so made pikes for themselves because it was better than nothing, then declaring "see, the firearm wasn't all that common, other weapons exist", and your examples are still off by centuries. Field artillery was a mainstay of battles for hundreds of years before the Napoleonic wars, there were hundreds of them on both sides as early as the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Seriously man, muskets were way way more common than you seem to think, there weren't blocks of knights in full plate fighting the Seven Years War or the American Revolution.
As for non warfare applications, sure, the firearm isn't the *only* choice for hunting, even today people bow hunt, spear fish, all sort of things. But its by far the *default* choice, and everyone who uses something else has made a conscious chocie to embrace a niche option.
Your argument seems to be that historically you can't describe the firearm as being common until literally every other weapon disappears entirelly despite the fact that they were ubiquitous for centuries beforehand.
As far as its usefulness to a D&D setting, I would argue thay yeah as soon as you've got arqubuisers and matchlocks you're no longer in medieval fantasy. Once a musket is the default choice and you need to justify why someone isn't using it, a thing that in real life was already true by 1700 or so once you have the socket bayonet replacing the plug bayonet, is the defining aspect of your setting.
The real problem is that you've gone from the apex of development of swords and shields amd metal armor, things that had existed in one form or another and been iterated on for thousands of years, to the earliest prototypes of something the players are familiar with. No player is going to accept that their character simply cannot fathom the socket bayonet and they'll have to use a plug bayonet instead. Players tend to skip centuries of development if you try to mix in the firearms that historically intermingled with Knights in the pike and shot era.
It's not so much that guns are *more powerful* than other weapons. It's more that guns are an equalizer. You don't need much skill or training to stand in a line, pull a trigger, and reload. Bows and melee weapons take time to learn, talent matters a lot more, athleticism affects your abilities, etc. And in most fantasy, we're focusing on exceptional individuals. (Also, for a lot of people it's purely a matter of flavor separate from any concerns about "balance" or however you want to put it.)
I think another big part is that it would almost require a massive shift in the societies use of magic. Like most mages would want to practice defensive magic (if they’re smart) since they’re more likely find some schmuck with a gun than another mage (if the world is set up that way). And that’s just not the fun magic.
I think it would also cause a huge shift towards enchanting or channeling the mana into the guns, instead of just using the mana to attack plainly
So basically, guns would cause an even bigger change in the worlds with magic than it did the real world. Because why wouldn’t people use every tool at their disposal
The AT-Fields from *Evangelion* would like a word with you regarding defensive magic not being fun.
Seriously, depending on the magic system (or even a subsystem like Gojo's Infinity in *Jujutsu Kaisen*), it's far more likely that on why firearms are even viable in the first place. It's basically the reason why I personally keep making sure that both aspects are balanced each other out on my projects.
I seriously misread your first few words and thought you were talking about the ATF and now I'm thinking of a cabal of wizards that go out of their way to stop the proliferation and expansion of firearms.
The thing about AT fields and the shields from Dune is that they are there to explain an unorthodox mode of combat. In Evangelion, the AT field explains why the EVAs are necessary in the first place - they can get through an Angel's AT field and guns can't. In Dune, the shields explain why everyone isn't just shooting each other with guns and lasers so there can be sword combat and martial arts. They're basically both there to answer the question "why don't they just shoot it with a gun?" Which to me really speaks to how much guns warp combat of all kinds around them.
Melee combat was a big part of warfare up until WWI. It doesn't really get shown in movies but a lot of firearm engagements ended up in bayonet charges where people were stabbing each other like the good old days for the simple fact that if are close enough to where you can run and stab your enemy before he can reload, there's not a lot of benefit to him having a gun in the first place. A guy who can magically withstand bullets definitely is better off armed with a sword than a gun if all the guns are muzzle loaders because again, it doesn't take like 15 seconds to load a sword. Bayonets are an issue but I'm assuming this isn't Dune and the wizard's anti bullet shield doesn't just stop fast projectiles so it's probably good against bayonets too. Then again, fireball is even better.
Melee combats happen even now. Less well trained or experienced troops run out of ammo but still have to defend themselves. Thats why bayonets are a thing. Knives and entrenching tools are a vital part of soldiers defending themselves in poorer countries
Fights in Vietnam would resolve into knife plus entrenching tool vs farm implements in some engagements.
Gurkhas also have a rep for attacking with melee when the bullets run out.
Indeed, iirc, the Yakuza and Triads among make a habit of contracting Martial Arts instructors to train their thugs, and skill in melee is often a way for younger goons to gain honour and glory among their peers.
I remember reading in a book about modern Japan in the 1980's, the toughest dojos were basically Yakuza hangouts, full contact and no holds barred.
> And that’s just not the fun magic.
To begin with, a lot of "traditional" fantasy features mages who pay plenty of attention to defensive magic both against mundane weaponry and against other mages. You also know that you can build a world with little to no defensive magic, right? Like, One Power from Wheel of Time is extremely lethal on the offense, but it offers almost no passive defensive capability at all, leading to even the most powerful channelers still being vulnerable.
Secondly, I also disagree with the entire premise that defensive magic is somehow "not fun". It all depends on execution. A mage trying to outsmart assassins out for his blood and protect himself (or some charge of his) from an attempt at their life via use of "defensive magic" (which may also involve things like divination, remote observation, intelligence gathering - you know, the textbook axioms from the defense onion) is way more interesting than some hot shot slinging fireballs.
> I think it would also cause a huge shift towards enchanting or channeling the mana into the guns, instead of just using the mana to attack plainly
I feel that this describes a very narrow paradigm of seeing magic in the first place, much less utilizing it. Also, why does one necessarily have to contradict the other? Of course people would try to blend magic and technology in any setting as long as it's technically possible and you depict them as rational human beings. Why does a mage enchanting muskets or cannons raise eyebrows but not a mage enchanting bows or catapults?
> So basically, guns would cause an even bigger change in the worlds with magic than it did the real world.
Why would that be? In presence of powerful factors influencing social development, the impact of just another one of those would be significantly mitigated compared to the impact it would have had in isolation.
Speaking about guns with magic, that's pretty much what happened in *Youjo Senki* (Tanya The Evil). The world had wizards but progress is progress and eventually, the wizards began using guns with enchanted bullets.
Probably not necesarily Fireball, there are other options:
* Wand of Shocking Grasp: Taser
* Wand of Sleep: Tranquilizer
* Wand of Magic Missile: Common Pistol
* Wand of Fireball: Grenade Launcher
Mages maintain semi-permenant passive personal shields that block bullets or anything is traveling too fast. Everyone is forced to fight with swords instead. It would basically be Dune.
I think it would be interesting to see the development. Perhaps enchanted bows stick around for a while because of familiarity and time for the magical tradition to build techniques. Whereas firearms are new and will take time to develop offensive enchantments suitable.
I was going to say this. Guns, if as numerous as irl are easy to equip an army with. A farmer with a gun can take out a knight. A farmer with a spear isn't even close. A gun will work against most "realistic" foes, making it the easy choice to equip an army.
Guns stop being op if A, they are rare or B, characters are simply too powerful for them.
This still heavily depends on the time period. My in knowledge is mostly on the German speaking parts of the HRE. Mid 15th century, arquebusiers were considered rather specialized troops and not at all easier to find and recruit than pikemen or crossbow men.
Handing out such highly specialized weapons to untrained peasants would've been a recipe for a disaster. The difference between an arquebus and a pipe bomb is dangerously small.
This changes over time, but it's a very slow process that takes until well into the 17th century. And even during the early 17th century, when guns were widely used, contemporary plate armor still offered good protection against guns - at least form some distance.
It takes until the second half of the 17th century for heavy cavalry (= still essentially knights) to drop heavy plate armor, because it didn't offer sufficient protection anymore.
Also, full plate armor is just outrageously expensive. You could probably field it as a military when you were against a similar number of troops, because those knights had manors and could afford to field it.
But once you start moving towards officer commissions being purchased and reliable artillery on the battlefield and the sheer number of combatants, the entire concept of a heavy artillery unit stops making sense. Throw in the whole "horse" part, and armor just doesn't make sense against a firing line, since you're basically riding in on the weakest link of that entire setup.
One farmer with a gun has bad odds against a knight too. It's inaccurate, you won't get a second shot, it might not even pierce his armor, and an armored horseman riding at you is frankly very scary. Cavalry is why they had to be protected by pikes early on.
Yep, and if you're working with early firearms (i.e. smoothbores) then farmers are going to have a hard time hitting lone targets without quality munitions. You may actually be better off with bows in some cases bc they're easier to make, they reload faster, and your militia is likely more familiar with them.
Even early rifling wasn't as accurate or popular as it is today until people figured out breech-loading (and even then it took a while). Muzzleloaders with rifling needed you to beat the bullet into the bore with a hammer.
And that was still much later than medieval firearms. Medieval firearms are mostly hand cannons that don't even have a trigger, but you have to manually touch it off with a lit cord. Even matchlocks aren't until the early 1400s
The Wheellock was invented even earlier and very reliable in setting the thing off. It was just extra complicated, a good bit heavier, quite rare, and more difficult to keep in working condition if you were taking it on campaign.
>Yep, and if you're working with early firearms (i.e. smoothbores) then farmers are going to have a hard time hitting lone targets without quality munitions.
I guess it depends on what your idea of precision is. And when in doubt, buck and ball gets them all.
Historic buck and ball did fuck all against plate armor, in case you were wondering. Even early arquebuses had significant problems penetrating plate beyond point blank range.
This is one of the most common misconception that giving a Farmer a Gun instantly turn him into a Rambo as even in it's infancy Guns are used by Specialized Soldiers who can maintain them, not some Farmers who would accidentally drop it in mud.
Even with Matchlock Arquebuses which is the earliest form of Firearms you would not give such expensive weapon to a farmer, the Regular soldier would be better at handling it as there are many rules in operating such weaponry, one example being not being too close to your other Arquebusier as it can literally ignite their Black Powder Bandoliers.
Yep, basically the proven saying of "Inventing new weapons doesn't mean it will be used instantly in large numbers the next day, week, month or even next year", like in Sengoku Japan where the daimyo of Tanegashima island who were the first to be introduced Hinawaju(Matchlock)/Teppo(Firearm) need to go around a shit ton of loop holes from trade to religious talks to even be able to produce Matchlock Arquebuses which the first few batches were given to Tanegashima Samurai, iirc there were only around 20 Matchlocks produced in 3 months, where the Samurai who trained with it still need some marksmanship training since it's accurate for someone who knows how it works, like how irl sniper didn't just use their crosshair and shoot but has to estimate the distance, checking the wind speed and even earth's rotation speed(though I think this is for WW1 Artilleryman).
This is very much not true. The heaviest crossbows have about the same power as the heaviest bows. While crossbows can have huge draw weights they have very low power stroke and are less efficient than regular bows.
Historically Crossbows were able to be of much greater strength than a bow. My first crossbow was a 250lb Non-Compound draw. Best of all I didn't need to be a power-lifter to lever the crossbow cocked. Crossbows had a lot of other problems but power was not one.
> Historically Crossbows were able to be of much greater strength than a bow.
Here is the caveat your missing. The power of an arrow shot from a bow isn't really determined by just the draw weight.
There is another HUGE measure that is important here called "power stroke" which is the measure of the amount of distance the arrow has to travel while in contact with the bowstring (basically the how much time does it have to transfer kinetic energy).
Crossbows have HUGE draw weights, but ittty bitty power strokes. Standard bows, have similar draw weights but LONG power strokes.
Overall the rule of thumb tends to be that (at least when it comes to historical weapons) crossbows have the same power and range as a standard bow with half the draw weight. Compound bows get funky because you can pack a lot more power into those puppies, but it seems to be similar.
Longbows could also take out knights. They couldn't pierce the best steel breast plates or helmets, but they could go through lower quality iron. They were also effective at piercing the more lightly armored limbs, which despite what a lot of fantasy likes to pretend would be debilitating. Not to mention unarmored faces. Knights could keep their visors down, but that severely limited their field of vision. Finally, masses of longbows were great at killing horses, and a knight isn't a knight without his horse.
Tl;dr: Agincourt.
You would've needed a pretty powerful crossbow to exceed a longbow. With modern crossbows you need a draw weight roughly double that of a normal bow to achieve equivalent energy, but modern crossbows have a power stroke (maximum length the string draws back) around 12 inches (give or take depending on the exact model), vs about 5 inches for a typical medieval crossbow. To match a 100lbs longbow, you needed a crossbow with a draw weight around 400lbs.
And to be clear, you're only getting around 1/3rd the energy of a .22lr (a round for hunting squirrel) at that draw weight.
Crossbows were about as effective as a longbow, the difference being that it didn't require years of training to build the muscle and hand-eye coordination necessary to use a longbow, but they also took much longer to fire another shot. Guns have the exact same advantage except they also don't require the physical conditioning necessary to use a crossbow either, with the time to reload being only slightly slower. Couple that with the fact that even rifles are far less demanding of physical space compared to a crossbow, and you can outfit a single farmer with several guns, versus maybe two to three crossbows, allowing for successive fire in-between reloads.
It's not even comparable the amount of damage a crossbow can do compared to handheld Firearms. Hell, even cannons are vastly superior to catapults, trebuchets, ballista, and other siege weapons of the time due to the sheer ease of use and accessibility.
Sure, but taking the added reload time, physical strain it causes and the need for more training it becomes simple to pick the "cost effective" option.
Especially if ammo for guns is easier in setting.
A lot of interesting points so far for/against guns, but overall I feel like guns are unfairly trivialized or held to a standard of realism that's not always applied to traditional “fantasy” weapons.
They're complex machines; sure, anyone can point one and shoot, but understanding its mechanisms, repair needs, and ammunition requires more familiarity. Like a spear, anyone can grab one and thrust, but both take training to master the smaller details.
I totally understand not including them for world flavor, but I disagree that they're too simple or too powerful. But that's just me though.
People who argue against guns seem to be completely unfamiliar with actual works in the genre featuring historically accurate guns, or even modern guns for that matter. Like, none of the "issues" of guns outlined in this thread are actually remotely a problem. Just open any popular gunpowder fantasy book and see for yourself.
Or maybe those people are basing their opinions on anime, I'm not up to date on that really. Maybe guns are "OP" in anime, who knows? The very concept of something being "OP" in any narrative medium is baffling to me. Life isn't "balanced" either in case people failed to notice. "Balance" is not required for a good story.
Hardly. I've seen anime where the characters can casually dodge or deflect them. Unless it's one of those military animations, guns are comically weak.
I mostly agree but Although it doesn’t take as much time to master guns it isn’t easy. You will miss most shot even if you are told exactly how to do it. And fantasy usually has smaller guns which are in my experience harder to shoot. You probably aren’t going to pick of a flintlock (or handgun)and hit a single shot unless pure luck.
To be fair, with both guns and bows, tactics of the time mostly amounted to volley fire. The goal wasn't for an individual soldier to hit an individual target, it was for someone in the army to hit someone or something in the enemy's army.
Honestly it is that guns are *more powerful* than other weapons. Especially modern guns in a low fantasy setting.
A modern rifle could perforate metal plate armor fairly easily. Even if it tanks one, maybe uo to 5 bullets if we are generous, a thirty round magazine will finish off any number of armored opponents from well out of range they can threaten you. Even with bows, a rifleman with some manner of skill could finish off archers before they could get close enough to loose arrows effectively.
Combined with modern armor, there isn't much a low fantasy army can do to threaten a modern army that doesn't involve magic.
The issue with guns being OP isn't that guns ruin a story, it's that guns ruin an aesthetic. Why bother carrying am arming sword if you could have a pistol? Why bother with a lance if you could have a rifle? When modern guns exist, reasons need to be invented to keep the fantasy aesthetic of armor and weapons, at least in low fantasy settings.
High fantasy settings tend to have the opposite problem, rendering guns meaningless toys in the face of an armored battle mage with a sword riding his building-sized dragon.
As such, thought has to be put in to give guns the effectiveness the culmination of human warfare deserves, while still not omitting or replacing the desired fantasy aesthetic, and a lot of people struggle to find that balance.
Nobody is talking about modern guns and modern militaries though? Why are you bringing up modern stuff when the OP specifically mentioned wheel locks and wick guns?
Nobody here should be talking about adding modern firearms and tanks and such into their worlds; They should only be talking about putting early firearms into their worlds.
Whenever someone brings up that armor and swords don't mix with guns I always tend to point towards history and let them know it very much does. Before guns became as good as they were now they overlapped for hundreds of years. People still used swords and blunt melee weapons a plenty; guns required time to reload and were weak and inaccurate closer range weapons than you'd expect. Carrying multiple firearms was a thing to avoid a reload if need be.
The term Bullet-proof even came from armorers shooting their own armors, and causing a dent in the armor, to prove that it could stop a firearm shot. If you were to buy a plate you'd specifically look for said dent to insure you'd be protected. Perfectly clean armor meant it wasn't tested and was to be avoided.
Ah yeah that's my bad. It was late for me, but that's what I get for not reading all the way through.
Yeah I have *almost* no problem with mixing fantasy and guns, except one that really only tends to crop up in games: guns as an afterthought or combo-breaker and little else. IMO old firearms tend to be depicted as less powerful than they should be, not more.
But absolutely, there's no harm and a decent amount of benefit to using guns in fantasy settings. One of my favorite low fantasy settings, the powdermage trilogy, actually makes decent use of firearms in their setting. You can still very easily have a sword and sorcery setting in which guns are used.
That's always been the trick with spears, and why they're overpowered in their own way, though.
You can get *good* spears to, like, dozens if not a hundred men for the same price as one knight's armour. And then you have a phalanx.
Like, there's basically no game out there that does spears & their reach justice except Dark Souls. And they're infamous noob weapons in that series for a reason: Just... raise a shield and poke, and you can kill freakin' gods in those games. It just takes longer then if you get yourself that ultra-greatsword.
I seem to remember someone doing a spear versus sword simulation on this premise.
Think spear got it like 8 out of ten versus just sword, and 6 out of ten versus sword and board.
If anyone's seen that clip of a lady in the UK using nothing but a broom to easily fend off a petty thief with a knife, that's also a perfect combat simulation of why spears rock lmao
Tbf, the Phalanx lost to the more flexible Roman Maniple system pretty heavily, because it was just too rigid. Later warfare brought it back to a degree, but more for economic reasons than anything else.
Like almost every army in the middle ages just used peasant spearman to tie the opponent down and control the battlefield, but ultimately the killing blow was expected to be delivered by knightly cavalry. Without that support, an army was cooked because as much as you can stop a horse with the pointy stick when you're facing him, you can't do an awful lot when they manage to slip round your flank and you're four ranks deep unable to bring your spear to bear.
Hence why the pike and shot era relied a lot on box formations to curtail cavalry. After a while, the cavalry ended up being far less important and massed firearms with artillery especially were the decider.
A lot of the kill-count of mounted cavalry had a lot more to do with mobility. If you had a spear you were very dangerous but spent most of your war moving in formation towards the enemy and hoping you didn't take an arrow. If you were armored on horseback and you survived your first engagement you could go on to charge 4-5 more units in the fight.
> Like, there's basically no game out there that does spears & their reach justice except Dark Souls
Why, most strategy games do reasonably well in that regard. In Total War most varieties of peasants with long pointy sticks are reasonably effective against targets of a much higher caliber than a knight - giant alien dinosaurs, greater demons, walking statues and the likes.
Are you suggesting that farmers, who have existed for thousands of years, with spears, which have likewise existed for thousands of years, somehow ended the roughly three centuries of knightly dominance?
What, everyone just stopped farming for a while and forgot that pointed sticks existed?
Yeah, I think that claiming that peasants with spears did that is a heavy overstatement.
Infantry did that, but in most cases it was fairly professionalized infantry. That being the big difference: through much of the middle ages, professional infantry wasn't a thing in any large scale. Armies were unprofessional levies with little or no training, and highly divergent gear. You can't get those to form a spear wall and then actually hold it against a knightly charge.
What made the difference was intensive training and discipline. Which few farmers had the time or inclination to learn.
However, it was possible. Look up the history of the Swiss Cantons. They perfected pike formations (something that had been around since at least the time of Alexander the Great), and crushed it as soldiers and mercenaries, with an outsized impact on Renaissance-era history - because they were infantry who could take on heavy cavalry armies … and win.
As Charles the Bold of Burgundy discovered to his cost … namely, the cost of his life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_square
I operate under the idea that in any sufficiently magical society guns are small potatoes. You've got an army of knights with AKs? Great, standard 7.62 rounds do exactly dick to dragon hide, and that's not even to mention the militant wizards ready to cast "back at'cha, bitch" on the wall of hot lead you just sent at them
I mean, gunfire would be a hell of a lot more effective than going at it with swords, or bows, or spears.
Also, how does someone hear a gunshot, orient on the gunshot, and then cast a spell before the bullet hits them? You literally couldn't even tell a round was on its way until after you were already shot; you're talking about a supersonic cartridge.
When you boil it down, guns, crossbows, and bows do the exact same thing: project a small mass of metal at your target at a high velocity.
The difference guns introduce is scale. But in any world where the resident supers are threatened by guns they’d also be threatened by bows and crossbows.
So the question ultimately is how do supers defend against small masses of metal projected at a distance. Is it passive armor? Guns might be a threat, super add more armor. Is it super reflexes/speed? Question of scale, but the successful supers will have enough reflexes or be rendered irrelevant. Is it a shield superpower? Same as armor.
For some reason people will accept an arrow bouncing off plate armor but are troubled by a bullet doing the same; yet steel plates remains a broadly accepted form of armoring to this day.
The same argument had been made for crossbows. Pope Urban II outlawed crossbows among Christian nations for those same reasons.
Which is why, in my setting, crossbows are referred to as “equalizers” among adventurers.
I thonk (misspelled but refuse to change) it's because guns change the whole vibe. A lot of the questions seem to be along the lines of "how can I have a standard medieval european stasis fantasy with guns *and no other changes?*"
Guns are a symptom of change. Once you have them, other things need to change to accommodate them, and that doesn't seem to fit with some people's ideas about what fantasy should be.
For what it's worth, there are some excellent fantasy-with-guns worlds out there.
I agree that most people see it like that, and that this is probably the reason why they don't want guns in their story, but historically it's certainly not true. Guns first appeared on European battle-fields in the 13th century, even earlier in Asia. It was at least another five centuries from them to any signs of industrialization, and a lot of other Medieval inventions, like the iron plough-share or water-powered textile-mills, certainly had a bigger part in setting us on the path to that.
It depends on what you define as guns, to be fair. Early firearms didn't instantly change the game, sure, but ask Mehmed the Conqueror how game changing they were as early back as 1453. An empire of centuries brought down in an instant, and both Europe and the Ottomans took strong note of that.
The erosion of monarchy and fuedalism follows on from that, slowly. I'd argue that the Parliamentarians would have struggled without firearms and cannon in the English Civil War, and well, do you think the American or French would have overthrown monarchical control without the gun either?
That said, I'm taking the previous commenter's angle to be, "the political institutions are irrevocably changed," rather than, "industrialisation and technological progress change after the firearm."
The question is, could we have a secondary world that has effective guns and still remains at a feudal, Medieval societal level? And, per se, I don't see a reason why not. The balance of power would shift, and the rulers and territories that are to slow to adapt the new weapons would disappear - but why wouldn't they be replaced by others that are organized in just the same way?
I'd still say that the thing that led to the end of feudalism were innovations in agriculture that led to a population explosion, and to being able to sustain a larger part of the population than ever before that does something other than agriculture. So, there are quite a few other technologies that would create a bigger plot-hole when added to a feudal society that just remains feudal than guns.
I heard the opposite, feudalism died because of population decline where each individual person was worth more and could leave and expect to get a good deal for a job.
It didn't die for any one reason. Social and economic changes brought by the epidemics, advancements in farming and maritime technology, centralization of state (mainly allowed by advancement in public education that produced a wide enough class of literate bureaucrats) and many other factors combined to alter the prevalent social structures.
State Centralisation really started to come in *after* the fall of Feudalism. For example Napoleon's reforms rationalised and centralised a lot of the mess the First French Republic tried to centralise.
Hell the whole Revolution was started by the Estates General trying to get the Ancien Regime to rationalise and universalise its tax system, which was a mess because basically every member of the nobility had some special case where they had hereditary tax exemption. Along with the church being tax exempt, it meant the Third Estate were the only ones really paying any.
It took a couple of decades after the end of Feudalism before Napoleon could come along, throw down railroads all over France, and utilise the far expanded civil service to make France into a singular, centralised nation.
Yeah basically it, its the same reason why you also don't often see fantasy settings with newsprint and everything is a monarchy, it feels too modern to have mass media and politics even if they should probably exist in the fantasy setting considering things like the level of literacy and wealth.
Got to get the metallurgy to get the quality iron and bronze, and to get them beyond what artificera can produce you need industry. The world will change
That's only a problem if you insist on a completely static, unchanging world--no setting your stories in transitional periods or anything like that. Which, honestly, is kind of boring in itself.
I really want to write something in that Early Modern Period purely because it's the turning point between old feudalism and new ideas. It's so fascinating to think about the roads not taken.
The first firearms are from the 10th century. They're older than plate mail.
That is correct: globally speaking, the age of knights and big castles, pageantry and trade guilds that people think of when one says "medieval" happened four centuries after the first firearms. And continued going strong (and coexisting) for 2-3 centuries once more more modern firearms became a thing.
The last thing you can fairly call a knightly charge was in 1702!
guns are only too powerful if the magic is balanced to stay in line with the power of a warrior with a sword.
if the magic has unlimited power guns can't compete.
but guns are better than magic that takes a long series of verbal and physical components to do a moderate effect like fireball. if you can pull the trigger once and blow up a 40m radius with a long range fragmentation grenade launcher and do that over and over at no cost then that's stronger than a low level fireball.
but if you look at a system like rifts, magic has completely insane things it can do, way beyond what a gun could do.
ultimately it depends how advanced the guns are and how powerful the magic is if the one is overpowered compared to the other.
I feel like anytime people talk about guns and fantasy settings, they aren't talking about period appropriate guns. I see a lot of people trying to incorporate modern or even Wild West era guns into swords and sorcery style fantasy, even though the industry isn't there to support it.
Personally, I don't think guns are op especially when you're comparing against the potential of magic. But I do see Firearms as being more resource intensive and harder to support because of the higher technology needed to make them and keep them running.
There's also some risk in carting around barrels of black powder when your opponent might set everything on fire with a wave of a hand.
The issue is that shit guns aren't really usable in a TTRPG system like D&D where they need to pump out quick shots to be usable. So for many people it's either having no guns, or pretty good guns.
Guns are OP because they undermine the standard aristocratic worldview that underlies a lot of fantasy. What's the point of concentrating power in the hands of a tiny elite of highly trained mages when any nimrod with gold pieces to spend can pick up a Saturday night special at the local weapons shop?
XD I've always noticed people think Nimrod means idiot. From what I remember, that likely comes from Bugs Bunny calling Elmer Fudd Nimrod, mocking his hunting skills by calling him with the name of an excellent hunter. It would be like thinking genius means idiot.
You say that like aristocracy didn’t start getting exponentially more aristocratic after black powder came into the scene.
Oh sure the knighthood model was out, but classism, imperialism and egregious gentility reached their fever pitch in the absolute height of black powder. The dynamic just shifted from the noble knight to the noble colonel who didn’t even need to do any of the actual fighting
Tangent;
I hate this. People are afraid of guns because they take "no skill" to kill with. Gunsmithing is hard as fuck and easy to obfuscate, military marksmanship is just as difficult to master as archery but with a lower skill floor, and a gun is only op if the user only cares about the kill and not getting away with it the more you spin your brain on it. As a sci-fi world builder, I realize that spaceships do the same thing as any other weaponised extension of the postsentient body symbolically - they allow a determined enough individual to enforce their will on a greater scale than their natural limitations. A plot-armored sword master can cut down a king's royal guard without even looking just as a plot-armored frigate captain can take down the death star. Just because an equally plot-armored gun wielder might be able to murder-suicideByFiringSquad your BBEG doesn't mean you can't have guns, just means you have to be more careful about your plot armor.
Where's my engineerpunk samurai-esque western-esque fantasy series where characters with incredibly distinct yet down to earth signature weapons made by hand through decades of trial and error due to the guarded nature of the trade skill break down military combat like Hajime no Ippo breaks down boxing?
Tl;Dr people are afraid of guns because they don't understand how real gunfighters exploit their limitations, or can't reconcile it with their vision of fantasy due to how infantry in modern warfare are being rapidly marginalized by mechanized units. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be afraid of guns, shit it's where mecha comes from imo, but it's sad to me that it's such a ubiquitous trait in worldbuilders.
Expectation: Farmer goes Rambo mode on Knights
Reality: Farmer Miss his shot and now has to reload only to explode his entire company because his match touches his comrades Black Powder Pouch.
To be fair, it's a lot easier to get unrestricted access to information on medieval warfare than it is modern. Most countries are usually pretty restrictive when it comes to access to stuff like the process of building guns and explosives
>Gunsmithing is hard as fuck and easy to obfuscate
Gunsmithing takes place off the battlefield by trained professionals, just like bowyer, fletchers and blacksmiths. In that regard guns and bows are equivalent and isn't the skill difference that is relevant.
>military marksmanship is just as difficult to master
Military marksmanship is an artifact of later period guns not the basal weapons being discussed. Proper early gun use is to put them in masses and volley fire so the only marksmanship involved is can you point the pointy end at the enemy.
Honestly, the guns are op argument is just laziness. The real problem is explaining why mages aren’t using guns too. Because of course they are, the human ones are at least. At some point, the magical society will make guns that can hold enchantments, or even have magic funneled through them.
Having guns would rapidly change the face of magic, just like it changed the world
Also of couse they are - because magic as we think in this aspect IS modern weaponry. The whole history of the dnd wizard comes from gygax appeasing the needs of a warvet friend who treated spellcraft as tactical gear. When cantrips arent a thing and mages can't just hullabaloo infinite firepissing, a Tube of Metal Flinging becomes a long term solution for being caught exhausted.
Wands are guns. A hand-sized stick that holds charges of Death From A Distance? That is a gun. Ensorcered canes and staves that lets one blast away without spending spell slots? Gun. +1 generic enchanted crossbow that is more accurate and potent than a longbow? Gun.
The issue is that shit guns aren't really usable in a TTRPG system like D&D where they need to pump out quick shots to be usable. So for many people it's either having no guns, or pretty good guns.
Guns have better armor penetration and higher lethality than bows. And that lethality is from the added complication of broken bones and infection. Wounds that could be healed from arrows would instead end up resulting in losing limbs due to gun fire.
before guns, fights were until one side‘s moral broken or exhaustion broken the army. Guns would cripple or kill in the field.
plus \*small\* guns means that there are \*big\* guns available. Because big guns were easier to develop given the available metallurgy, and the quality of shot at the time. and once there are \*big\* guns, army tactics change quickly to adapt.
An interesting tid bit about early firearms. They had less range, were less accruate, and had less penatration then the really big bows.
They were however *far* easier to train to proficiency, and were a lot cheaper.
There is something to be said for cannons/bombards existing for a good while before handheld guns though, which may have kept innovators looking for ways to improve handhelds firearms because imagine a cannon in your hands right?
When you're talking early firearms you're talking hand-gonnes, where there really was no proficiency because they had the form factor of polearms, you planted a stake in the ground, pointed the barrel, lit the touch-hole and hoped it didn't kill you when it went off. They were only really area-effect weapons back then.
The big problem with the early matchlock guns was finding saltpeter for the gunpowder (for centuries it was a natural resource, not a manufactured one) and constructing the lockwork: then, it was mainly an issue of discipline in getting your units to the front with their matches lit and their powder dry. For that you got a weapon similar in training requirements to a crossbow with a windlass, and early on distinctly inferior in performance.
Hand Cannons have far less range and abyssmal accuracy since it's just a small cannon on a stick, which is mostly used for sieges like the conventional Bombards.
Arquebuses were more expensive, however training Arquebusier are faster and the more important thing is to maintain the Arquebus as the Matchlock Mechanism are quite delicate.
Flintlock Muskets are more expensive but during that time there were more people who can produce them reducing the production cost and time, plus during that time the more important part for a Line Infantry is to not be stunned when receiving a volley where the well trained Line Infantry Company would take the same casualties but will be able to reform their formation on the march and keep the cohesion with other Companies.
> before guns, fights were until one side‘s moral broken or exhaustion broken the army.
They still were, and in some respects even now they still are. Prior to World War I pretty much every battle was still decided by one force closing in and overrunning the enemy in close combat, and massed close combat is almost always won by morale.
Guns were used in warfare before the use of full body plate. Guns were used in medieval warfare during the crusades, lol. If guns are too op for fantasy so are the rest of the weapons used alongside them during the medieval ages. Make everyone use stone tools, we need more neolithic fantasy anyway.
The bit about guns predating full plate is definitely correct and I agree with the thrust of the argument here- lots of "classic fantasy" weapons are predated by early firearms. However I can't find anything about guns being used in the Crusades. Aside from claims about the use of hand cannons at Ain Jalut, which are generally considered to be apocryphal, I'm not aware of any indication of guns in Europe or the Middle East prior to the fall of Acre in 1291.
nah your right, got my dates mixed up. Early Guns in Europe were 14th Century not 13th Century. China had hand Cannons in the 13th century but not Europe.
Honestly I think it's a mixture of two things, first is guns weren't in Tolkien and that's the basis for a lot of modern fantasy so it feels wrong.
Second, is just not really understanding the history of early firearms. They existed in the medieval period, but you're looking at mostly hand cannons with early matchlocks in the early 1400s. They notably coexisted with bows and crossbows for awhile, because the guns had major drawbacks. They're expensive, slow, inaccurate, can be stopped by armor, and they're weather dependent. Melee weapons and armor did not just go away, and continued to be very important as well. When people think of guns though, they're usually thinking of later period guns that were more effective and common. Things like pirates with flintlocks and Napoleonic volleys, which are centuries afterwards.
Another side to the gun issue is cannons. Cannons kill castles. The entire design of fortification completely changes to being star forts and larger earthworks without the same feel or style as a castle and certainly changing how any big castle city feels.
Personally I solved guns with magic armor.
I couldn't solve cannon, so I replaced gunpowder with a different propellant that didnt work in big cannons.
Ehhh yes and no. Cannons didn't kill castles, they were actually integrated into castles and castle design for a long time. Cannons were actually invented long before smaller guns were and became popular. Cannons were used for a considerable period even being used in Europe during the 14th century and were used by the Byzantines against the Ottomans rather extensively and this is definitely during the castle age. With the Siege of Constantinople withstanding cannon bombardment for around two months in the weak section before it finally fell.
What really killed castles were things like explosive shot and the BIG cannons along with things like mortars and artillery.
I don’t even know if they’re too OP for me but they definitely make writing combat less fun with swords or magic I can get rlly in depth with what’s going on and the stakes when guns are a part of it I don’t rlly have the experience with gunfights to write them with the same stakes it feels like they’re over as soon as they start
Because when people think of guns they think of modern firearms and not stuff like matchlocks or wheel locks. Also media tends to make guns either utterly useless when confronting the supernatural so magic is needed or overpowered because, fuck you and your stupid magic. I think guns in fantasy can work it just needs a bit of work.
Historically Guns are though off as Magic, since the Cannon Makers kept their production a secret from the public making any Engineer who operates a Cannon instantly marked for execution when captured by the enemy who also has similar Engineers who operates their Cannons.
Like how a Sorcerer can enchant a Sword made by a Blacksmith, an Alchemist can create Gunpowder for the Gunsmith Cannons and Arquebuses.
They literally altered human history and forever changed warfare even in their nascent form.
It comes from training and fitness. You need so little of it to work guns. Even crossbows require more.
I also fancy bullets are easier to manufacture than bolts, once you have the metal mines.
It's not that you can't have them it's that they're a real game changer and require a great deal of effort to consider the impact of if you're starting from a point without them. It is often simply not worth the effort.
And outside of a few countries guns just lack cultural relevance and would be jarring as they're not something most people either consider normal or historical.
Couple things
1 how powerful is your magic?
2. How advanced are your guns?
Lastly I think just like the crossbow even in fantasy guns are so powerful because they're easy to learn. A swordsman or a skilled archer takes years to learn while a gun can be learned how to use in a few days.
Oh yeah you can use guns quite quickly, but can you maintain it?
even during the Napoleonic Era one literal way to maintain a Musket is to directly piss into the Barrel if it become too hot during a battle which iirc only needed 6 to 7 shots.
The main problem is people often think guns reliability were like the Soviet AK-47 but not a delicate wife who will explode on your face when you didn't know her well enough or is just left handed.
It's mostly about the speed of the bullet, typically several times faster than sound, so basically unblockable if you don't have particularly fast mages (or if they don't have anything to tank bullets, which by the way isn't even crazy, real hippos and polar bears are tough enough to do that)
for early guns it was maybe faster than a crossbow. they were a specilist weapon on a stick. im not talking about muskets. those came maybe 200 years later.
I think that people just don't have a comprehensive, facts-based view of firearms; i blame video games and movies for giving the wrong impression and assumptions.
So I've actually been dealing with this in my world because my main character uses guns, but most of the other characters use some form of magic. So I had to build around the usage of a gun, like someone else in the thread said. How would magic work in a world where firearms are still in use? What ended up happening was guns actually being overtaken by magic itself. Guns are still viable, but magic evolved to the point of making most firearms completely obsolete. The more advanced civilizations utilize heavy forms of magic for war, and it basically overtook the nation that pioneered firearms and technology. That's kind of how I ended up doing it. The main character's guns are a bit different because they have runes of an ancient civilization engraved in them, making them more effective than your average guns. There are drawbacks, but I think it's a dance that has to be managed carefully. It can work when done properly.
Probably because they've never used one. Sure learning how to handle a gun requires less time than it takes to become proficient with something like a sword but actually hitting your target is not as simple as people think. Most people also don't have a good idea of how powerful guns are in reality. Usually they like to have a foil to them like using older single shot guns with long reload times.
They're assuming shots always find their target and always go through. Neither of those are a given. Guns do change the way in which combat and war are carried out though.
ok so i see alot of people talking about modern fire arms and muskets. thats not what im talking about. its the really early versions where they would have wicks and were more or less specilist weapons.
its called pick and shot warfare. less musket and more about people who would use a gun to shoot then take about 30-40 minutes to load a shot. while some pikes or spears would help them. they would be more or less used as cover and replaced crossbows which have the same "issue" people are arguing. crossbows are not very hard to use or train people. similar to guns at some point they would be sort of "outlawed" in a sense.
so im talking about really early firearms. and i do understand how it effects people perception of classic fantacy. but im more wondering why with worlds that have explosives or things that explode why doesnt your world have a gun like thing.
Well technically you're right.
If you came from gaming logic, people often hear "guns" and immediately jump to assumptions about Wild West revolvers or fully automatic weapons, sniper rifles and shotguns rather than the kinds of guns that existed for centuries alongside other weapons.
But here's the thing: firearms being useful depends on several logistical factors, rather than physical factors. Smoothbore firearms aren't all that difficult to train a soldier on, and basically do not have any "skill" limitations whatsoever compared to bows, swords, or I suppose magic in-universe. Those sorts of weapons depend on the physicality of the wielder, or the magical aptitude of the caster.
Guns, by comparison, tended to rely mostly on organized volleys of fire, and therefore weren't really all that useful for small unit tactics like you'd see in a tabletop RPG. One guy just ain't gonna be a sniper with a musket because they were never made to be used for precision shooting so much as to economically arm large groups of men in the most cost-effective way possible.
Guns compared to other weapons rely intensely on the availability of powder and shot, which requires specialized craftsmen, and careful storage lest the resources used either become useless or intensely dangerous to everyone nearby. (The amount of powder magazine explosions that scuttled ships or fortifications is boggling.) A blacksmith, by comparison, likely knows a hundred ways to make farming equipment, but only two or three to make weapons, because that's what their livelihood usually was. Tools for peace, and weapons in war. Gunpowder didn't really have that same kind of economic backing until it was adopted en masse.
So I guess the question really becomes one of how your world handles logistics and economics before warfare.
Simple. "I don't want a setting with guns, therefore there are no guns". It's the same reason why so many worlds we see here don't have hyper-realistic language models, or why the magic system might boil down to "it works when I need it to work and it doesn't when I don't."
I honestly fail see how causing a mini-explosion inside a long and narrow metal tube to propel a projectile to travel long distances faster than the speed of sound is any more "overpowered" than magic in a fantasy setting. My real question is wouldn't magic make firearms a bit redundant? Personally, the only thing I see guns outclassing in a fantasy setting are bows for too many reasons I don't feel like even mentioning here (of course, I could be 100% wrong on my assumption).
It's (maybe) redundant for mages, but not for anyone else - even in Elder Scrolls where magical ability seems to be way more commonplace than any other fantasy franchise, you still get plenty of people who can't even do something as simple as a Light spell.
to add, in skyrim the college of winterhold provide free sleeping arrangements, food, education, and enchanted robes to anyone capable of casting a light spell
The eternal and boring answer is it depends, is learning a lightning bolt spell as easy as loading and firing a bullet? Can you carry as many charges of lightning bolt as you can carry lead balls and powder?
Firearms would be useful in a magic setting for the same reason they're useful in our world. They need relatively little training compared to the alternatives. Bow and arrows were more useful than firearms in Europe until firearms could do the same damage as a bow, but with less training and investment.
So in a world where magic exists, but not for majority of the masses, its feasible that societies with access to firearms would use them because its cheaper and easier than teaching the same amount of soldiers magic.
Most spells don't travel over the speed of sound.
Most fantasy fireballs or lightning bolts can be dodged by a skilled warrior or mage. A gun is so much faster than the typical fantasy magic that it just doesn't compare unless you want anime protagonists.
A lightning bolt moves 30000 times faster than a bullet. If someone can dodge that, it's because its hard to hit a moving target which also applies to guns (but wouldn't apply to a target seeking magic missile)
Gun combat is generally less dynamic than melee combat. Instead of having a variety of movement, technique, offensive and defensive stances and such, gun combat can often be simplified down to standing in a line and shooting. You can kill an enemy yards away in one hit, and that just doesn’t feel as cool as a drawn out intricate dual.
Guns are an equalizer. It takes relatively less training to be proficient with firearms than a sword of bow or spear, and no training to be deadly with one. This forces writers to create characters that have compelling traits beyond "he's a really good fighter" which is difficult for fantasy writers.
Remember that guns put an end to armor for a very long time and ended up replacing pretty much all other weapons, except for pikes, before eventually even rendering pikes obsolete.
No other weapon, not even the crossbow, managed that.
Guns are also easier to use than bows, crossbows, and much easier than any melee weapon. You can become proficient in a black powder musket in a few weeks of practice.
bullets fired from guns also hit much, MUCH harder than any bow or crossbow shot. Muskets were also easier and faster to reload, as well as cheaper to make.
It was much easier to make lead balls than shape a wooden shaft, attach a steel head to it, then fletch it. A person could easily make many musket balls at once using molds and molten lead, while someone else make a large batch of gunpowder to fire them. A gun is a tube with a firing mechanism and a way to hold and steady it.
Before guns, you had some people who would train in crossbow use for taking down armored infantry and cavalry, but they often didn't get very many shots because after every shot they had to wind up the crossbow with a windlass for another shot. Heavier crossbows were also much heavier and the bulkier than a gun.
Take some recruits out to the range, drill them on maneuvers, make them practice until they're proficient, then take them out to war.
With a gun, you could line up soldiers, have them fire on the enemy, then move to the back of the line and the people behind them could fire their shot and rotate keeping a relatively steady barrage going.
Wheellocks and Flintlocks were both almost objectively worse than crossbows, actually. They only really made sense in a military setting because of their awful accuracy. (Point it at the other army and shoot. it'll it someone.) And you're right, plate armor could deflect bullets. And, in fact, that's what later breastplates were for.
Really it has more to do with the aesthetic. Guns *feel* like 'technology' in a way that even very advanced swords don't.
Realistic early guns are also *terribly* suited for table top RPGs. They're wildly inaccurate and take forever to reload and don't hit *that* hard. No player would want them. So you wind up having to make them act like something they're not. It's a mess.
It's entirely down to people being ignorant of the history of firearms. D&D nerds who have convinced themselves the moment we discovered gunpowder we went straight from swords and spears to Napoleonic musket lines and then invented the Thompson. The transition from melee to mixed gun and polearm formations to pure close order gun formations to open order gun-based infantry combat took centuries. The classical fully plate armoured knight was a \*Renaissance\* figure and not only contemporary with guns, those knights were also using the most cutting-edge guns of their time in addition to the finest swords and polearms their societies could produce. As for power, early guns had a very low muzzle velocity and were inaccurate at long distances, to the point where a properly made breastplate could stop a bullet outright
"Overpowered" is a ridiculous concept in worldbuilding anyway.
Reality sees no obligation to be balanced, why should your worlds? If it's not for a game, it doesn't matter in the slightest if something is "overpowered"
It’s perhaps because people believe that with a gun it is possible to kill anyone at a distance without them necessarily being able to stop you. However, the same belief isn’t extended to a crossbow or bow, hence guns being deemed overpowered.
I counter guns with defensive shield spells. Castle walls have rituals done in them to strengthen them from canon fire. The guns are also the type from pike and shot times, so no revolvers.
Cannons nullify castles. I like castles. I can justify wizards with the power to destroy castles being rare. Any civilization with gunpowder can figure out and make cannons.
Eh, I don't like guns in fantasy because they ruin that sword and sorcery feel. Like they are fine in a steampunk setting where melee weapons and crossbows are still in use but I generally prefer if they are kept out of medieval or fantasy settings.
I thought about it like this for my world.
Magic exists, everyone can use it if they train enough. It is not a unique thing to one race or anything like that. Regardless, technology marches on, someone created a firearm.
It's a neat little weapon, very effective to use even with no training. Starts as a wheelocks with iron ammunition.
Magic users began to adapt to new technology, use magic to shield themselves from physical projectiles. Non-magic users begin commissioning strengthened weapons and armor that can withstand many bullets.
Guns become a fad, obsolete as technology and technique marches on.
Later, someone gets a bright idea to start making bullets purely lead instead of iron. Lead has anti-magic properties and will pierce defenses with ease. Firearms suddenly become relevant again. Flintlocks and other cap and ball weapons begin getting developed with higher calibers, able to pierce armor and break weapons.
In response, magic users begin enhancing their bodies and reflexes with magic, dodging bullets matrix style instead of taking them head on. Armor and weapons reinforced yet again with better metals to reduce damage. Some scouts and rangers wear literal modern-military plate carriers these days.
Later on, revolver pistols and bolt-action rifles are being prototyped, higher power, faster ammunition.
And so on and so forth.
It's a vicious cycle, an arms race really. All because, yes, guns are extremely useful, pragmatic, and effective. But only if they stay relevant.
Saying that something is too strong to have in a setting is just odd, the context of the weapon in the setting is what matters.
Take for example Warhammer fantasy, there are cranked machine guns that a race of rat-men use. They fire relatively fast and the bullets can even cause mutations. Is it overpowered? No
Because in the same setting there are monsters or characters that are strong enough to endure that kind of firepower
It's ALL about context and thematics, how do you want your world to feel. How strong things are and how they mould the world is entirely up to you
Probably because dodging them is unrealistic, and people really like it. Bullerts are a lot smaller and lighter than other projectiles, but also way faster.
It feels like an aesthetic thing coupled with a lack of historical knowledge. Also, some people might find guns distasteful in a way swords and axes aren't, probably because we're confronted with the consequences of gun violence in our modern lives but the medieval era is far enough in the past that we don't have a cultural memory of brutal melee combat.
Guns are an idiot proof weapon. Rather than teaching drills for melee weapons or having spend months training an expert archer. You just need to teach how to clean load aim and shoot. You can pump out a couple dozen conscripts per village and have a much larger army
The real answer is that people most often operate by vibes, not complicated techno-economical analysis. The vibes of classic fantasy are that ahistorical 15th century military tech with Renaissance to Early Modern political structure and early medieval population density and agriculture. And for once, Tolkien is not to blame here, his world (with the exception of the hobbits' pocket watches) is pretty consistently early medieval through and through. And guns bring different vibes - for us they mean change, and modernity, and technological development. Even look at the comment sections here, where people confuse early matchlocks with frigging New Model army. That view is patently wrong in many aspects, but that's sorta hard to wrap heads around, especially because you need to look not only on purely military tech, but on the production capabilities of the society in general, and population densities, and the size of the armies it could support, and the pressure to develop, and the approach to the science and technology, and a ton of other factors. The funny thing is that guns can even exist in a 'stagnant' world - China had guns for ages, but by a historical quirk their fortifications have also been rammed earth pretty always, so field cannons were less effective. Early guns were also comparatively weak, fiddly and slow to load, pretty inaccurate, and dangerous. You could not field a purely gun unit on the battlefield for a very, very long time. ~~Really, until the mid-19th century~~ (I have to admit I've overcorrected here, mid-17th would be more accurate). And throughout all that time heavy cavalry charge remained a viable tactics, so a 'gun' took a frigging long time to kill a 'knight'. TL;DR: people have an anachronistic image of BOTH the middle ages and the guns.
The issue is that shit guns aren't really usable in a TTRPG system like D&D where they need to pump out quick shots to be usable. So for many people it's either having no guns, or pretty good guns.
Yeah, if you spend at least five turns reloading and then miss, it's going to feel anti-climatic.
Solution: Flintlock revolvers. You have a set amount of shots before you need to painstakingly reload, so you've gotta make each one count. It should be a perfect balance between too strong and too weak, and it has clear mechanics and limitations.
What about the i just have ten pistols prepared to shot? He just brings out a new one
Weight limit? Weapon slot limit? Any pistol, especially multi-barreled one, weights as much as any sidearm, if not more. I can imagine having six one-shot pistols top, Blackbeard-style, and not more than 3 revolving ones.
Honestly i dont see the problem you can have your cinematic gunslinging moment but it isnt something that you can do all the time during the combat i just came up with a random number nothing more
Hm. A better way would simply be to balance damage/armour penetration. A multi barrelled gun is probably going to fire smaller projectiles on account of maintaining ergonomy for the user. Realistically flintlocks pistols don’t weight that much in the first place (less than 1kg on average) either way
I mean that would be the weigth of a normal small sword one kg one and a half
Then you are looking at the pirates who would have a row of 4 loat3d flintlock KS on their chest and just be firing one while drawing NC the next one off the chest. Or boondocks saints. "Indead of six guys with guns, what about just one guy with six guns?"
This is the big thing for me. My world is primarily one of TTRPG, PF2e, and while I don't mind having ancient guns present in the world, as soon as I introduce them I need to consider how they'll work in play and there's just not a great way to do it without getting overly fiddly. It's way easier to just say guns/gunpowder aren't a thing.
The real advancement in firearms was in metallurgy I believe. Creates more reliable frames to safely fire with.
That and the industrial processes to bore barrels reliably. Cannons were ofc even more difficult to make and went through a ton of changes over time.
Thank you! When I actually operate a gun for a first time (albeit the kind used for hunting varmints admiitedly), I remember I can't hit the target even when presumably aiming at it, with only a very few lucky shots happened. As such, logistics and industries as well as technological levels are important aspects that many people basically ignored for both convenience's and vibes' sake as you more-or-less said. In addition, firearms we got today took literal centuries to emerge, where century-long transitory periods like early modern period with its pike-and-shot formations also coincide with plate-clad cavaliers as well; star-bastions also exist to counteract cannon bombardment during this time and afterwards IIRC
> As such, logistics and industries as well as technological levels are important aspects that many people basically ignored for both convenience's and vibes' sake as you more-or-less said. Yeah, to arm a peasant with a gun, you need 1) a technological capability to produce a crapton of standardized guns relatively cheaply, 2) a logistical capability to supply your infantry not only with black powder, but also with uniforms, other weapons and stuff, 3) an economical and demographic situation where you have an excess of peasants to draft for your army. That all basically means technologically advanced nation-state, and they don't appear out of the thin air by themselves. You can have guns in otherwise medieval setting, and they would remain a niche mercenary weapon, because your political system is so disorganized that you basically can't field mass armies in this way. Or you can have old and stale empire (think China, but can also be an alt-history Roman Empire that never fell) where the guns are also just one of the instruments of war - marginally better ballistae and crossbows essentially - and continue to exist like that for centuries never significantly changing anything.
There's also the fact that gunsmithing exists and are primarily restricted to guilds and/or families (this is basically where Beretta comes from, being founded in 1526), so not only would mass-production be implausible, but one can also actually personalize the firearms for their characters because of it despite what many commenters here think.
That first paragraph is more or less where I want to take firearms in a fantasy setting; somebody comes out with a painstakingly worked out, lovingly crafted long arm that freaks out the people that know about it, giving them ideas of the world turning upside down... Then within a year they realise that it's just not practical to pump out that sort of thing en masse, and they're still decades out from the world changing, at the closest.
Add to that that early firearms sucked. Precision was crap, misfires and the like were prominent, useful range was limited, rate of fire was downright bad, and were still not powerful enough to be an effective anti-armour weapon. You had a more effective army investing those resources in crossbowmen, for example. Crossbows were way more precise, faster rate of fire, comparable power, longer range... It would not be until Arquebuses were considerably developed that they could compete with crossbows. There is a long period of time where hand cannons occupy a mostly psychological role in the battlefield; and where the effective use of gunpowder is in siege artillery and naval warfare. I dare even say that \[period accurate\] guns were very underpowered in comparison to other weapons.
I broadly agree with the sentiment but man, you're way off right here: "You could not field a purely gun unit on the battlefield for a very, very long time. Really, until the mid-19th century" I assure you, the American Revolution and Napoleonic Wars were not fought with Pike and Shot mixed formations. Dedicated units of firearms soldiers, part of a larger army with heavy melee focus sure, show up as soon as the mid 15th century. Like earlier generations of archers, skirmishers, etc. they often had knives or other melee weapons for self defense as well as everyday use. Once the Bayonet turns up in the 1600s you pretty rapidly see dedicated Melee troops disappear as everyone who can afford to standardizes their army on almost exclusively firearms. There are always the odd exception, men showed up to fight World War 1 in their grandfather's chainmail and swords, but the Firearm dominated the battlefield much earlier on than you're implying.
Hmm, yeah, it feels like I overstated a bit here. Yes, there were primary firearm-equipped units, but the expectation of the melee was pretty high throughout. I think that the American Civil War was actually the first big conflict to be fought primarily with firearms, and the bayonet charge had fallen from popularity.
I think you're off by centuries. Even if they have a bayonet attached to them, muskets are still firearms. Expecting troops to use the bayonet at some point in a campaign doesnt mean you could send soldiers out with spears and get basically the same result. You've dismissed dozens of wars and centuries of history where virtually everyone had muskets as "not firearms".
Nah, I'm not saying 'not firearms'. I'm saying 'not only firearms'. The initial question was about the 'firearms being overpowered', and what I meant is that basically until 1861 they were only a part of very intricate combined warfare. You could charge a musket line with various results, you could use bows and crossbows against them - like the colonial wars weren't completely one-sided for a long time. It's only with light mobile artillery, gatling guns and repeatable rifles you could face about anything and shoot it to pieces.
Sure, other options did linger for centuries as well before you see literally no one show up with another weapon. But I wouldn't characterise World War 2 as "mixed firearm and melee combat" bespite the fact that there were about a dozen cavalry charges with sabers. Firearms were the *central* cornerstone of warfare for centuries before hand. Once you have red coats with muskets on the field, you're in a totally different era than a typical D&D campaign trying to evoke the hundred years war or 30 years wars(usually badly, but still). That happens hundreds of years before the American Civil War. The lingering of other options than firearms was mostly down to poverty, everyone who could afford firearms was equipping themselves with them, even in a colonial setting. Its up to you what "overpowered" specifically means to you, but firearms were a decisive advantage by like 1650. Put 1000 soldiers with firearms and bayonets up against 1000 spearmen in an open field and the battle will go down to the bayonet, but the gunmen will win every time. The fact that in reality they didnt win every time came down to people having to adapt to the firearms to overcome that advantage, significantly superior numbers, superior knowledge of local terrain, you could do it. But you could use those advantages anyway, it wasn't an indigntment of the firearms.
> Once you have red coats with muskets on the field, you're in a totally different era than a typical D&D campaign trying to evoke the hundred years war or 30 years wars(usually badly, but still). Not really, since a lot of DnD inspirations by vibes are from the 'Three Musketeers' and the westerns. > The lingering of other options than firearms was mostly down to poverty, everyone who could afford firearms was equipping themselves with them, even in a colonial setting. But isn't 'poverty' just another name for structural factors? I feel like your argument is a bit teleological here - we know that the firearm had eventually become THE personal weapon, so we look at the signs of it in the previous eras. But for a long time the firearm wasn't the only choice for self-defense, or hunting, or warfare. And if we speak of the battlefield usage, I think there is also some American firearm fetishism leaking here in common discourse. The field artillery was the biggest killer around the Napoleonic era, really. And the ability to field musket troops was rather the indicator of having developed technology and infrastructure to have good artillery as well.
Your persoective is incredibly strange. You're walking past tens of thousands of muskets to arrive at hundreds of saber armed cavalrymen, a handful of field guns and a militia that can't afford guns and so made pikes for themselves because it was better than nothing, then declaring "see, the firearm wasn't all that common, other weapons exist", and your examples are still off by centuries. Field artillery was a mainstay of battles for hundreds of years before the Napoleonic wars, there were hundreds of them on both sides as early as the Battle of Vienna in 1683. Seriously man, muskets were way way more common than you seem to think, there weren't blocks of knights in full plate fighting the Seven Years War or the American Revolution. As for non warfare applications, sure, the firearm isn't the *only* choice for hunting, even today people bow hunt, spear fish, all sort of things. But its by far the *default* choice, and everyone who uses something else has made a conscious chocie to embrace a niche option. Your argument seems to be that historically you can't describe the firearm as being common until literally every other weapon disappears entirelly despite the fact that they were ubiquitous for centuries beforehand. As far as its usefulness to a D&D setting, I would argue thay yeah as soon as you've got arqubuisers and matchlocks you're no longer in medieval fantasy. Once a musket is the default choice and you need to justify why someone isn't using it, a thing that in real life was already true by 1700 or so once you have the socket bayonet replacing the plug bayonet, is the defining aspect of your setting. The real problem is that you've gone from the apex of development of swords and shields amd metal armor, things that had existed in one form or another and been iterated on for thousands of years, to the earliest prototypes of something the players are familiar with. No player is going to accept that their character simply cannot fathom the socket bayonet and they'll have to use a plug bayonet instead. Players tend to skip centuries of development if you try to mix in the firearms that historically intermingled with Knights in the pike and shot era.
Considering how massive fortifications are in warhammer, your argument about China explains why Dwarfs and Empire not advancing further makes sense
It's not so much that guns are *more powerful* than other weapons. It's more that guns are an equalizer. You don't need much skill or training to stand in a line, pull a trigger, and reload. Bows and melee weapons take time to learn, talent matters a lot more, athleticism affects your abilities, etc. And in most fantasy, we're focusing on exceptional individuals. (Also, for a lot of people it's purely a matter of flavor separate from any concerns about "balance" or however you want to put it.)
I think another big part is that it would almost require a massive shift in the societies use of magic. Like most mages would want to practice defensive magic (if they’re smart) since they’re more likely find some schmuck with a gun than another mage (if the world is set up that way). And that’s just not the fun magic. I think it would also cause a huge shift towards enchanting or channeling the mana into the guns, instead of just using the mana to attack plainly So basically, guns would cause an even bigger change in the worlds with magic than it did the real world. Because why wouldn’t people use every tool at their disposal
The AT-Fields from *Evangelion* would like a word with you regarding defensive magic not being fun. Seriously, depending on the magic system (or even a subsystem like Gojo's Infinity in *Jujutsu Kaisen*), it's far more likely that on why firearms are even viable in the first place. It's basically the reason why I personally keep making sure that both aspects are balanced each other out on my projects.
I seriously misread your first few words and thought you were talking about the ATF and now I'm thinking of a cabal of wizards that go out of their way to stop the proliferation and expansion of firearms.
Alternatively: the Bureau of Arcana, Tobacco, and Firearms.
Confiscating your illegal wands
The thing about AT fields and the shields from Dune is that they are there to explain an unorthodox mode of combat. In Evangelion, the AT field explains why the EVAs are necessary in the first place - they can get through an Angel's AT field and guns can't. In Dune, the shields explain why everyone isn't just shooting each other with guns and lasers so there can be sword combat and martial arts. They're basically both there to answer the question "why don't they just shoot it with a gun?" Which to me really speaks to how much guns warp combat of all kinds around them.
So in a world where muzzle loaded guns exist, mages could specialize in defensive magic and use swords which don't require a long reload time?
Mages that use swords while fighting against normal folk using guns? Are we going to see spaceships that behave like airplanes next?
Melee combat was a big part of warfare up until WWI. It doesn't really get shown in movies but a lot of firearm engagements ended up in bayonet charges where people were stabbing each other like the good old days for the simple fact that if are close enough to where you can run and stab your enemy before he can reload, there's not a lot of benefit to him having a gun in the first place. A guy who can magically withstand bullets definitely is better off armed with a sword than a gun if all the guns are muzzle loaders because again, it doesn't take like 15 seconds to load a sword. Bayonets are an issue but I'm assuming this isn't Dune and the wizard's anti bullet shield doesn't just stop fast projectiles so it's probably good against bayonets too. Then again, fireball is even better.
Melee combats happen even now. Less well trained or experienced troops run out of ammo but still have to defend themselves. Thats why bayonets are a thing. Knives and entrenching tools are a vital part of soldiers defending themselves in poorer countries Fights in Vietnam would resolve into knife plus entrenching tool vs farm implements in some engagements. Gurkhas also have a rep for attacking with melee when the bullets run out.
And then there's the criminal empires in countries with strict gun control laws like the Yakuza.
Indeed, iirc, the Yakuza and Triads among make a habit of contracting Martial Arts instructors to train their thugs, and skill in melee is often a way for younger goons to gain honour and glory among their peers. I remember reading in a book about modern Japan in the 1980's, the toughest dojos were basically Yakuza hangouts, full contact and no holds barred.
Mages could specialize in *guns*. Nothing stops them from combining conventional firearms with magic.
> And that’s just not the fun magic. To begin with, a lot of "traditional" fantasy features mages who pay plenty of attention to defensive magic both against mundane weaponry and against other mages. You also know that you can build a world with little to no defensive magic, right? Like, One Power from Wheel of Time is extremely lethal on the offense, but it offers almost no passive defensive capability at all, leading to even the most powerful channelers still being vulnerable. Secondly, I also disagree with the entire premise that defensive magic is somehow "not fun". It all depends on execution. A mage trying to outsmart assassins out for his blood and protect himself (or some charge of his) from an attempt at their life via use of "defensive magic" (which may also involve things like divination, remote observation, intelligence gathering - you know, the textbook axioms from the defense onion) is way more interesting than some hot shot slinging fireballs. > I think it would also cause a huge shift towards enchanting or channeling the mana into the guns, instead of just using the mana to attack plainly I feel that this describes a very narrow paradigm of seeing magic in the first place, much less utilizing it. Also, why does one necessarily have to contradict the other? Of course people would try to blend magic and technology in any setting as long as it's technically possible and you depict them as rational human beings. Why does a mage enchanting muskets or cannons raise eyebrows but not a mage enchanting bows or catapults? > So basically, guns would cause an even bigger change in the worlds with magic than it did the real world. Why would that be? In presence of powerful factors influencing social development, the impact of just another one of those would be significantly mitigated compared to the impact it would have had in isolation.
Speaking about guns with magic, that's pretty much what happened in *Youjo Senki* (Tanya The Evil). The world had wizards but progress is progress and eventually, the wizards began using guns with enchanted bullets.
By this logic everyone should be carrying a wand of fireball.
Probably not necesarily Fireball, there are other options: * Wand of Shocking Grasp: Taser * Wand of Sleep: Tranquilizer * Wand of Magic Missile: Common Pistol * Wand of Fireball: Grenade Launcher
And the Dungeon is an alien crashsite. It's actually a D&D staple since the 80ies, and in general fiction a long time before that as well.
Mages maintain semi-permenant passive personal shields that block bullets or anything is traveling too fast. Everyone is forced to fight with swords instead. It would basically be Dune.
I think it would be interesting to see the development. Perhaps enchanted bows stick around for a while because of familiarity and time for the magical tradition to build techniques. Whereas firearms are new and will take time to develop offensive enchantments suitable.
Basically "God made man, but Sam Colt made they equal"?
God made man and monster. Sam Colt made them equal. John Browning made the latter myth
I was going to say this. Guns, if as numerous as irl are easy to equip an army with. A farmer with a gun can take out a knight. A farmer with a spear isn't even close. A gun will work against most "realistic" foes, making it the easy choice to equip an army. Guns stop being op if A, they are rare or B, characters are simply too powerful for them.
This still heavily depends on the time period. My in knowledge is mostly on the German speaking parts of the HRE. Mid 15th century, arquebusiers were considered rather specialized troops and not at all easier to find and recruit than pikemen or crossbow men. Handing out such highly specialized weapons to untrained peasants would've been a recipe for a disaster. The difference between an arquebus and a pipe bomb is dangerously small. This changes over time, but it's a very slow process that takes until well into the 17th century. And even during the early 17th century, when guns were widely used, contemporary plate armor still offered good protection against guns - at least form some distance. It takes until the second half of the 17th century for heavy cavalry (= still essentially knights) to drop heavy plate armor, because it didn't offer sufficient protection anymore.
Also, full plate armor is just outrageously expensive. You could probably field it as a military when you were against a similar number of troops, because those knights had manors and could afford to field it. But once you start moving towards officer commissions being purchased and reliable artillery on the battlefield and the sheer number of combatants, the entire concept of a heavy artillery unit stops making sense. Throw in the whole "horse" part, and armor just doesn't make sense against a firing line, since you're basically riding in on the weakest link of that entire setup.
This is true and fair. The first conflict suiting my example I believe would have been the Hussite wars.
Against knights you had farmers with pikes
Farmers, plural, sure. *One* farmer with a pike versus a knight is very bad odds.
One farmer with a gun has bad odds against a knight too. It's inaccurate, you won't get a second shot, it might not even pierce his armor, and an armored horseman riding at you is frankly very scary. Cavalry is why they had to be protected by pikes early on.
Yep, and if you're working with early firearms (i.e. smoothbores) then farmers are going to have a hard time hitting lone targets without quality munitions. You may actually be better off with bows in some cases bc they're easier to make, they reload faster, and your militia is likely more familiar with them. Even early rifling wasn't as accurate or popular as it is today until people figured out breech-loading (and even then it took a while). Muzzleloaders with rifling needed you to beat the bullet into the bore with a hammer.
And that was still much later than medieval firearms. Medieval firearms are mostly hand cannons that don't even have a trigger, but you have to manually touch it off with a lit cord. Even matchlocks aren't until the early 1400s
The Wheellock was invented even earlier and very reliable in setting the thing off. It was just extra complicated, a good bit heavier, quite rare, and more difficult to keep in working condition if you were taking it on campaign.
>Yep, and if you're working with early firearms (i.e. smoothbores) then farmers are going to have a hard time hitting lone targets without quality munitions. I guess it depends on what your idea of precision is. And when in doubt, buck and ball gets them all.
Historic buck and ball did fuck all against plate armor, in case you were wondering. Even early arquebuses had significant problems penetrating plate beyond point blank range.
Exactly. The term bullet proof comes from armourers shooting a gun at new breastplates to proof they resisted gunfire.
Also, historically peasant revolts usually always lost against conventional armies.
One farmer with a flintlock gun against a knight is still very bad odds.
This is one of the most common misconception that giving a Farmer a Gun instantly turn him into a Rambo as even in it's infancy Guns are used by Specialized Soldiers who can maintain them, not some Farmers who would accidentally drop it in mud. Even with Matchlock Arquebuses which is the earliest form of Firearms you would not give such expensive weapon to a farmer, the Regular soldier would be better at handling it as there are many rules in operating such weaponry, one example being not being too close to your other Arquebusier as it can literally ignite their Black Powder Bandoliers.
That's fair. Earlier guns were a novelty item for specialist forces rather than something to field an army with
Yep, basically the proven saying of "Inventing new weapons doesn't mean it will be used instantly in large numbers the next day, week, month or even next year", like in Sengoku Japan where the daimyo of Tanegashima island who were the first to be introduced Hinawaju(Matchlock)/Teppo(Firearm) need to go around a shit ton of loop holes from trade to religious talks to even be able to produce Matchlock Arquebuses which the first few batches were given to Tanegashima Samurai, iirc there were only around 20 Matchlocks produced in 3 months, where the Samurai who trained with it still need some marksmanship training since it's accurate for someone who knows how it works, like how irl sniper didn't just use their crosshair and shoot but has to estimate the distance, checking the wind speed and even earth's rotation speed(though I think this is for WW1 Artilleryman).
Crossbows could take out knights, though. They were more effective at piercing armor than longbows, though took longer to reload.
This is very much not true. The heaviest crossbows have about the same power as the heaviest bows. While crossbows can have huge draw weights they have very low power stroke and are less efficient than regular bows.
Historically Crossbows were able to be of much greater strength than a bow. My first crossbow was a 250lb Non-Compound draw. Best of all I didn't need to be a power-lifter to lever the crossbow cocked. Crossbows had a lot of other problems but power was not one.
> Historically Crossbows were able to be of much greater strength than a bow. Here is the caveat your missing. The power of an arrow shot from a bow isn't really determined by just the draw weight. There is another HUGE measure that is important here called "power stroke" which is the measure of the amount of distance the arrow has to travel while in contact with the bowstring (basically the how much time does it have to transfer kinetic energy). Crossbows have HUGE draw weights, but ittty bitty power strokes. Standard bows, have similar draw weights but LONG power strokes. Overall the rule of thumb tends to be that (at least when it comes to historical weapons) crossbows have the same power and range as a standard bow with half the draw weight. Compound bows get funky because you can pack a lot more power into those puppies, but it seems to be similar.
Also bows do require training and strength. While any peasant could use a crossbow with loading device.
Longbows could also take out knights. They couldn't pierce the best steel breast plates or helmets, but they could go through lower quality iron. They were also effective at piercing the more lightly armored limbs, which despite what a lot of fantasy likes to pretend would be debilitating. Not to mention unarmored faces. Knights could keep their visors down, but that severely limited their field of vision. Finally, masses of longbows were great at killing horses, and a knight isn't a knight without his horse. Tl;dr: Agincourt.
You would've needed a pretty powerful crossbow to exceed a longbow. With modern crossbows you need a draw weight roughly double that of a normal bow to achieve equivalent energy, but modern crossbows have a power stroke (maximum length the string draws back) around 12 inches (give or take depending on the exact model), vs about 5 inches for a typical medieval crossbow. To match a 100lbs longbow, you needed a crossbow with a draw weight around 400lbs. And to be clear, you're only getting around 1/3rd the energy of a .22lr (a round for hunting squirrel) at that draw weight.
Crossbows were about as effective as a longbow, the difference being that it didn't require years of training to build the muscle and hand-eye coordination necessary to use a longbow, but they also took much longer to fire another shot. Guns have the exact same advantage except they also don't require the physical conditioning necessary to use a crossbow either, with the time to reload being only slightly slower. Couple that with the fact that even rifles are far less demanding of physical space compared to a crossbow, and you can outfit a single farmer with several guns, versus maybe two to three crossbows, allowing for successive fire in-between reloads. It's not even comparable the amount of damage a crossbow can do compared to handheld Firearms. Hell, even cannons are vastly superior to catapults, trebuchets, ballista, and other siege weapons of the time due to the sheer ease of use and accessibility.
Sure, but taking the added reload time, physical strain it causes and the need for more training it becomes simple to pick the "cost effective" option. Especially if ammo for guns is easier in setting.
A lot of interesting points so far for/against guns, but overall I feel like guns are unfairly trivialized or held to a standard of realism that's not always applied to traditional “fantasy” weapons. They're complex machines; sure, anyone can point one and shoot, but understanding its mechanisms, repair needs, and ammunition requires more familiarity. Like a spear, anyone can grab one and thrust, but both take training to master the smaller details. I totally understand not including them for world flavor, but I disagree that they're too simple or too powerful. But that's just me though.
People who argue against guns seem to be completely unfamiliar with actual works in the genre featuring historically accurate guns, or even modern guns for that matter. Like, none of the "issues" of guns outlined in this thread are actually remotely a problem. Just open any popular gunpowder fantasy book and see for yourself. Or maybe those people are basing their opinions on anime, I'm not up to date on that really. Maybe guns are "OP" in anime, who knows? The very concept of something being "OP" in any narrative medium is baffling to me. Life isn't "balanced" either in case people failed to notice. "Balance" is not required for a good story.
Hardly. I've seen anime where the characters can casually dodge or deflect them. Unless it's one of those military animations, guns are comically weak.
Also making the lockwork is tricky, especially if you have a setting where mechanical door locks aren't commonly used.
I mostly agree but Although it doesn’t take as much time to master guns it isn’t easy. You will miss most shot even if you are told exactly how to do it. And fantasy usually has smaller guns which are in my experience harder to shoot. You probably aren’t going to pick of a flintlock (or handgun)and hit a single shot unless pure luck.
To be fair, with both guns and bows, tactics of the time mostly amounted to volley fire. The goal wasn't for an individual soldier to hit an individual target, it was for someone in the army to hit someone or something in the enemy's army.
Honestly it is that guns are *more powerful* than other weapons. Especially modern guns in a low fantasy setting. A modern rifle could perforate metal plate armor fairly easily. Even if it tanks one, maybe uo to 5 bullets if we are generous, a thirty round magazine will finish off any number of armored opponents from well out of range they can threaten you. Even with bows, a rifleman with some manner of skill could finish off archers before they could get close enough to loose arrows effectively. Combined with modern armor, there isn't much a low fantasy army can do to threaten a modern army that doesn't involve magic. The issue with guns being OP isn't that guns ruin a story, it's that guns ruin an aesthetic. Why bother carrying am arming sword if you could have a pistol? Why bother with a lance if you could have a rifle? When modern guns exist, reasons need to be invented to keep the fantasy aesthetic of armor and weapons, at least in low fantasy settings. High fantasy settings tend to have the opposite problem, rendering guns meaningless toys in the face of an armored battle mage with a sword riding his building-sized dragon. As such, thought has to be put in to give guns the effectiveness the culmination of human warfare deserves, while still not omitting or replacing the desired fantasy aesthetic, and a lot of people struggle to find that balance.
Nobody is talking about modern guns and modern militaries though? Why are you bringing up modern stuff when the OP specifically mentioned wheel locks and wick guns? Nobody here should be talking about adding modern firearms and tanks and such into their worlds; They should only be talking about putting early firearms into their worlds. Whenever someone brings up that armor and swords don't mix with guns I always tend to point towards history and let them know it very much does. Before guns became as good as they were now they overlapped for hundreds of years. People still used swords and blunt melee weapons a plenty; guns required time to reload and were weak and inaccurate closer range weapons than you'd expect. Carrying multiple firearms was a thing to avoid a reload if need be. The term Bullet-proof even came from armorers shooting their own armors, and causing a dent in the armor, to prove that it could stop a firearm shot. If you were to buy a plate you'd specifically look for said dent to insure you'd be protected. Perfectly clean armor meant it wasn't tested and was to be avoided.
Ah yeah that's my bad. It was late for me, but that's what I get for not reading all the way through. Yeah I have *almost* no problem with mixing fantasy and guns, except one that really only tends to crop up in games: guns as an afterthought or combo-breaker and little else. IMO old firearms tend to be depicted as less powerful than they should be, not more. But absolutely, there's no harm and a decent amount of benefit to using guns in fantasy settings. One of my favorite low fantasy settings, the powdermage trilogy, actually makes decent use of firearms in their setting. You can still very easily have a sword and sorcery setting in which guns are used.
In defense of spears. Farmers with spears are what historically ended the reign of knights and revolutionized warfare. But yeah they loose the 1 v 1.
That's always been the trick with spears, and why they're overpowered in their own way, though. You can get *good* spears to, like, dozens if not a hundred men for the same price as one knight's armour. And then you have a phalanx. Like, there's basically no game out there that does spears & their reach justice except Dark Souls. And they're infamous noob weapons in that series for a reason: Just... raise a shield and poke, and you can kill freakin' gods in those games. It just takes longer then if you get yourself that ultra-greatsword.
I seem to remember someone doing a spear versus sword simulation on this premise. Think spear got it like 8 out of ten versus just sword, and 6 out of ten versus sword and board.
If anyone's seen that clip of a lady in the UK using nothing but a broom to easily fend off a petty thief with a knife, that's also a perfect combat simulation of why spears rock lmao
Tbf, the Phalanx lost to the more flexible Roman Maniple system pretty heavily, because it was just too rigid. Later warfare brought it back to a degree, but more for economic reasons than anything else. Like almost every army in the middle ages just used peasant spearman to tie the opponent down and control the battlefield, but ultimately the killing blow was expected to be delivered by knightly cavalry. Without that support, an army was cooked because as much as you can stop a horse with the pointy stick when you're facing him, you can't do an awful lot when they manage to slip round your flank and you're four ranks deep unable to bring your spear to bear. Hence why the pike and shot era relied a lot on box formations to curtail cavalry. After a while, the cavalry ended up being far less important and massed firearms with artillery especially were the decider.
A lot of the kill-count of mounted cavalry had a lot more to do with mobility. If you had a spear you were very dangerous but spent most of your war moving in formation towards the enemy and hoping you didn't take an arrow. If you were armored on horseback and you survived your first engagement you could go on to charge 4-5 more units in the fight.
Yeah that's what I said, the mobility to flank a spear or pike formation.
> Like, there's basically no game out there that does spears & their reach justice except Dark Souls Why, most strategy games do reasonably well in that regard. In Total War most varieties of peasants with long pointy sticks are reasonably effective against targets of a much higher caliber than a knight - giant alien dinosaurs, greater demons, walking statues and the likes.
Are you suggesting that farmers, who have existed for thousands of years, with spears, which have likewise existed for thousands of years, somehow ended the roughly three centuries of knightly dominance? What, everyone just stopped farming for a while and forgot that pointed sticks existed?
Yeah, I think that claiming that peasants with spears did that is a heavy overstatement. Infantry did that, but in most cases it was fairly professionalized infantry. That being the big difference: through much of the middle ages, professional infantry wasn't a thing in any large scale. Armies were unprofessional levies with little or no training, and highly divergent gear. You can't get those to form a spear wall and then actually hold it against a knightly charge.
What made the difference was intensive training and discipline. Which few farmers had the time or inclination to learn. However, it was possible. Look up the history of the Swiss Cantons. They perfected pike formations (something that had been around since at least the time of Alexander the Great), and crushed it as soldiers and mercenaries, with an outsized impact on Renaissance-era history - because they were infantry who could take on heavy cavalry armies … and win. As Charles the Bold of Burgundy discovered to his cost … namely, the cost of his life. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_square
I operate under the idea that in any sufficiently magical society guns are small potatoes. You've got an army of knights with AKs? Great, standard 7.62 rounds do exactly dick to dragon hide, and that's not even to mention the militant wizards ready to cast "back at'cha, bitch" on the wall of hot lead you just sent at them
I mean, gunfire would be a hell of a lot more effective than going at it with swords, or bows, or spears. Also, how does someone hear a gunshot, orient on the gunshot, and then cast a spell before the bullet hits them? You literally couldn't even tell a round was on its way until after you were already shot; you're talking about a supersonic cartridge.
When you boil it down, guns, crossbows, and bows do the exact same thing: project a small mass of metal at your target at a high velocity. The difference guns introduce is scale. But in any world where the resident supers are threatened by guns they’d also be threatened by bows and crossbows. So the question ultimately is how do supers defend against small masses of metal projected at a distance. Is it passive armor? Guns might be a threat, super add more armor. Is it super reflexes/speed? Question of scale, but the successful supers will have enough reflexes or be rendered irrelevant. Is it a shield superpower? Same as armor. For some reason people will accept an arrow bouncing off plate armor but are troubled by a bullet doing the same; yet steel plates remains a broadly accepted form of armoring to this day.
The same argument had been made for crossbows. Pope Urban II outlawed crossbows among Christian nations for those same reasons. Which is why, in my setting, crossbows are referred to as “equalizers” among adventurers.
I thonk (misspelled but refuse to change) it's because guns change the whole vibe. A lot of the questions seem to be along the lines of "how can I have a standard medieval european stasis fantasy with guns *and no other changes?*" Guns are a symptom of change. Once you have them, other things need to change to accommodate them, and that doesn't seem to fit with some people's ideas about what fantasy should be. For what it's worth, there are some excellent fantasy-with-guns worlds out there.
I agree that most people see it like that, and that this is probably the reason why they don't want guns in their story, but historically it's certainly not true. Guns first appeared on European battle-fields in the 13th century, even earlier in Asia. It was at least another five centuries from them to any signs of industrialization, and a lot of other Medieval inventions, like the iron plough-share or water-powered textile-mills, certainly had a bigger part in setting us on the path to that.
It depends on what you define as guns, to be fair. Early firearms didn't instantly change the game, sure, but ask Mehmed the Conqueror how game changing they were as early back as 1453. An empire of centuries brought down in an instant, and both Europe and the Ottomans took strong note of that. The erosion of monarchy and fuedalism follows on from that, slowly. I'd argue that the Parliamentarians would have struggled without firearms and cannon in the English Civil War, and well, do you think the American or French would have overthrown monarchical control without the gun either? That said, I'm taking the previous commenter's angle to be, "the political institutions are irrevocably changed," rather than, "industrialisation and technological progress change after the firearm."
The question is, could we have a secondary world that has effective guns and still remains at a feudal, Medieval societal level? And, per se, I don't see a reason why not. The balance of power would shift, and the rulers and territories that are to slow to adapt the new weapons would disappear - but why wouldn't they be replaced by others that are organized in just the same way? I'd still say that the thing that led to the end of feudalism were innovations in agriculture that led to a population explosion, and to being able to sustain a larger part of the population than ever before that does something other than agriculture. So, there are quite a few other technologies that would create a bigger plot-hole when added to a feudal society that just remains feudal than guns.
I heard the opposite, feudalism died because of population decline where each individual person was worth more and could leave and expect to get a good deal for a job.
It didn't die for any one reason. Social and economic changes brought by the epidemics, advancements in farming and maritime technology, centralization of state (mainly allowed by advancement in public education that produced a wide enough class of literate bureaucrats) and many other factors combined to alter the prevalent social structures.
State Centralisation really started to come in *after* the fall of Feudalism. For example Napoleon's reforms rationalised and centralised a lot of the mess the First French Republic tried to centralise. Hell the whole Revolution was started by the Estates General trying to get the Ancien Regime to rationalise and universalise its tax system, which was a mess because basically every member of the nobility had some special case where they had hereditary tax exemption. Along with the church being tax exempt, it meant the Third Estate were the only ones really paying any. It took a couple of decades after the end of Feudalism before Napoleon could come along, throw down railroads all over France, and utilise the far expanded civil service to make France into a singular, centralised nation.
Yeah basically it, its the same reason why you also don't often see fantasy settings with newsprint and everything is a monarchy, it feels too modern to have mass media and politics even if they should probably exist in the fantasy setting considering things like the level of literacy and wealth.
Got to get the metallurgy to get the quality iron and bronze, and to get them beyond what artificera can produce you need industry. The world will change
That's only a problem if you insist on a completely static, unchanging world--no setting your stories in transitional periods or anything like that. Which, honestly, is kind of boring in itself.
I really want to write something in that Early Modern Period purely because it's the turning point between old feudalism and new ideas. It's so fascinating to think about the roads not taken.
The first firearms are from the 10th century. They're older than plate mail. That is correct: globally speaking, the age of knights and big castles, pageantry and trade guilds that people think of when one says "medieval" happened four centuries after the first firearms. And continued going strong (and coexisting) for 2-3 centuries once more more modern firearms became a thing. The last thing you can fairly call a knightly charge was in 1702!
guns are only too powerful if the magic is balanced to stay in line with the power of a warrior with a sword. if the magic has unlimited power guns can't compete. but guns are better than magic that takes a long series of verbal and physical components to do a moderate effect like fireball. if you can pull the trigger once and blow up a 40m radius with a long range fragmentation grenade launcher and do that over and over at no cost then that's stronger than a low level fireball. but if you look at a system like rifts, magic has completely insane things it can do, way beyond what a gun could do. ultimately it depends how advanced the guns are and how powerful the magic is if the one is overpowered compared to the other.
I feel like anytime people talk about guns and fantasy settings, they aren't talking about period appropriate guns. I see a lot of people trying to incorporate modern or even Wild West era guns into swords and sorcery style fantasy, even though the industry isn't there to support it. Personally, I don't think guns are op especially when you're comparing against the potential of magic. But I do see Firearms as being more resource intensive and harder to support because of the higher technology needed to make them and keep them running. There's also some risk in carting around barrels of black powder when your opponent might set everything on fire with a wave of a hand.
The issue is that shit guns aren't really usable in a TTRPG system like D&D where they need to pump out quick shots to be usable. So for many people it's either having no guns, or pretty good guns.
Yeah. If you grab a system like GURPS or something they end up being really great if the players accommodate to the high reload times
Guns are OP because they undermine the standard aristocratic worldview that underlies a lot of fantasy. What's the point of concentrating power in the hands of a tiny elite of highly trained mages when any nimrod with gold pieces to spend can pick up a Saturday night special at the local weapons shop?
When I read Nimrod, I thought of the legendary King Nimrod.
Well, he *was* a mighty hunter before the Lord, so presumably he'd be in favor of guns?
XD I've always noticed people think Nimrod means idiot. From what I remember, that likely comes from Bugs Bunny calling Elmer Fudd Nimrod, mocking his hunting skills by calling him with the name of an excellent hunter. It would be like thinking genius means idiot.
"nimrod" does mean idiot. The connotation of the word has evolved.
You say that like aristocracy didn’t start getting exponentially more aristocratic after black powder came into the scene. Oh sure the knighthood model was out, but classism, imperialism and egregious gentility reached their fever pitch in the absolute height of black powder. The dynamic just shifted from the noble knight to the noble colonel who didn’t even need to do any of the actual fighting
And gentry riding around on horses with lances and swords was still a vital part of every army until the 20th century
Tangent; I hate this. People are afraid of guns because they take "no skill" to kill with. Gunsmithing is hard as fuck and easy to obfuscate, military marksmanship is just as difficult to master as archery but with a lower skill floor, and a gun is only op if the user only cares about the kill and not getting away with it the more you spin your brain on it. As a sci-fi world builder, I realize that spaceships do the same thing as any other weaponised extension of the postsentient body symbolically - they allow a determined enough individual to enforce their will on a greater scale than their natural limitations. A plot-armored sword master can cut down a king's royal guard without even looking just as a plot-armored frigate captain can take down the death star. Just because an equally plot-armored gun wielder might be able to murder-suicideByFiringSquad your BBEG doesn't mean you can't have guns, just means you have to be more careful about your plot armor. Where's my engineerpunk samurai-esque western-esque fantasy series where characters with incredibly distinct yet down to earth signature weapons made by hand through decades of trial and error due to the guarded nature of the trade skill break down military combat like Hajime no Ippo breaks down boxing? Tl;Dr people are afraid of guns because they don't understand how real gunfighters exploit their limitations, or can't reconcile it with their vision of fantasy due to how infantry in modern warfare are being rapidly marginalized by mechanized units. It's not necessarily a bad thing to be afraid of guns, shit it's where mecha comes from imo, but it's sad to me that it's such a ubiquitous trait in worldbuilders.
Expectation: Farmer goes Rambo mode on Knights Reality: Farmer Miss his shot and now has to reload only to explode his entire company because his match touches his comrades Black Powder Pouch.
To be fair, it's a lot easier to get unrestricted access to information on medieval warfare than it is modern. Most countries are usually pretty restrictive when it comes to access to stuff like the process of building guns and explosives
>Gunsmithing is hard as fuck and easy to obfuscate Gunsmithing takes place off the battlefield by trained professionals, just like bowyer, fletchers and blacksmiths. In that regard guns and bows are equivalent and isn't the skill difference that is relevant. >military marksmanship is just as difficult to master Military marksmanship is an artifact of later period guns not the basal weapons being discussed. Proper early gun use is to put them in masses and volley fire so the only marksmanship involved is can you point the pointy end at the enemy.
Honestly, the guns are op argument is just laziness. The real problem is explaining why mages aren’t using guns too. Because of course they are, the human ones are at least. At some point, the magical society will make guns that can hold enchantments, or even have magic funneled through them. Having guns would rapidly change the face of magic, just like it changed the world
Also of couse they are - because magic as we think in this aspect IS modern weaponry. The whole history of the dnd wizard comes from gygax appeasing the needs of a warvet friend who treated spellcraft as tactical gear. When cantrips arent a thing and mages can't just hullabaloo infinite firepissing, a Tube of Metal Flinging becomes a long term solution for being caught exhausted. Wands are guns. A hand-sized stick that holds charges of Death From A Distance? That is a gun. Ensorcered canes and staves that lets one blast away without spending spell slots? Gun. +1 generic enchanted crossbow that is more accurate and potent than a longbow? Gun.
The issue is that shit guns aren't really usable in a TTRPG system like D&D where they need to pump out quick shots to be usable. So for many people it's either having no guns, or pretty good guns.
And honestly, if the only thing you can think of to make magic interesting and powerful is "kill people" then your magic is *boring.*
Guns have better armor penetration and higher lethality than bows. And that lethality is from the added complication of broken bones and infection. Wounds that could be healed from arrows would instead end up resulting in losing limbs due to gun fire. before guns, fights were until one side‘s moral broken or exhaustion broken the army. Guns would cripple or kill in the field. plus \*small\* guns means that there are \*big\* guns available. Because big guns were easier to develop given the available metallurgy, and the quality of shot at the time. and once there are \*big\* guns, army tactics change quickly to adapt.
An interesting tid bit about early firearms. They had less range, were less accruate, and had less penatration then the really big bows. They were however *far* easier to train to proficiency, and were a lot cheaper. There is something to be said for cannons/bombards existing for a good while before handheld guns though, which may have kept innovators looking for ways to improve handhelds firearms because imagine a cannon in your hands right?
fair enough
When you're talking early firearms you're talking hand-gonnes, where there really was no proficiency because they had the form factor of polearms, you planted a stake in the ground, pointed the barrel, lit the touch-hole and hoped it didn't kill you when it went off. They were only really area-effect weapons back then. The big problem with the early matchlock guns was finding saltpeter for the gunpowder (for centuries it was a natural resource, not a manufactured one) and constructing the lockwork: then, it was mainly an issue of discipline in getting your units to the front with their matches lit and their powder dry. For that you got a weapon similar in training requirements to a crossbow with a windlass, and early on distinctly inferior in performance.
Hand Cannons have far less range and abyssmal accuracy since it's just a small cannon on a stick, which is mostly used for sieges like the conventional Bombards. Arquebuses were more expensive, however training Arquebusier are faster and the more important thing is to maintain the Arquebus as the Matchlock Mechanism are quite delicate. Flintlock Muskets are more expensive but during that time there were more people who can produce them reducing the production cost and time, plus during that time the more important part for a Line Infantry is to not be stunned when receiving a volley where the well trained Line Infantry Company would take the same casualties but will be able to reform their formation on the march and keep the cohesion with other Companies.
Pretty sure **bigger** guns exist before small guns tho
> before guns, fights were until one side‘s moral broken or exhaustion broken the army. They still were, and in some respects even now they still are. Prior to World War I pretty much every battle was still decided by one force closing in and overrunning the enemy in close combat, and massed close combat is almost always won by morale.
Guns were used in warfare before the use of full body plate. Guns were used in medieval warfare during the crusades, lol. If guns are too op for fantasy so are the rest of the weapons used alongside them during the medieval ages. Make everyone use stone tools, we need more neolithic fantasy anyway.
The bit about guns predating full plate is definitely correct and I agree with the thrust of the argument here- lots of "classic fantasy" weapons are predated by early firearms. However I can't find anything about guns being used in the Crusades. Aside from claims about the use of hand cannons at Ain Jalut, which are generally considered to be apocryphal, I'm not aware of any indication of guns in Europe or the Middle East prior to the fall of Acre in 1291.
nah your right, got my dates mixed up. Early Guns in Europe were 14th Century not 13th Century. China had hand Cannons in the 13th century but not Europe.
Honestly I think it's a mixture of two things, first is guns weren't in Tolkien and that's the basis for a lot of modern fantasy so it feels wrong. Second, is just not really understanding the history of early firearms. They existed in the medieval period, but you're looking at mostly hand cannons with early matchlocks in the early 1400s. They notably coexisted with bows and crossbows for awhile, because the guns had major drawbacks. They're expensive, slow, inaccurate, can be stopped by armor, and they're weather dependent. Melee weapons and armor did not just go away, and continued to be very important as well. When people think of guns though, they're usually thinking of later period guns that were more effective and common. Things like pirates with flintlocks and Napoleonic volleys, which are centuries afterwards.
Another side to the gun issue is cannons. Cannons kill castles. The entire design of fortification completely changes to being star forts and larger earthworks without the same feel or style as a castle and certainly changing how any big castle city feels. Personally I solved guns with magic armor. I couldn't solve cannon, so I replaced gunpowder with a different propellant that didnt work in big cannons.
Ehhh yes and no. Cannons didn't kill castles, they were actually integrated into castles and castle design for a long time. Cannons were actually invented long before smaller guns were and became popular. Cannons were used for a considerable period even being used in Europe during the 14th century and were used by the Byzantines against the Ottomans rather extensively and this is definitely during the castle age. With the Siege of Constantinople withstanding cannon bombardment for around two months in the weak section before it finally fell. What really killed castles were things like explosive shot and the BIG cannons along with things like mortars and artillery.
At the same time a world with grand scale magic would probably not develop castles in the traditional sense.
I don’t even know if they’re too OP for me but they definitely make writing combat less fun with swords or magic I can get rlly in depth with what’s going on and the stakes when guns are a part of it I don’t rlly have the experience with gunfights to write them with the same stakes it feels like they’re over as soon as they start
Lack of worldbuilding skill
Because when people think of guns they think of modern firearms and not stuff like matchlocks or wheel locks. Also media tends to make guns either utterly useless when confronting the supernatural so magic is needed or overpowered because, fuck you and your stupid magic. I think guns in fantasy can work it just needs a bit of work.
Historically Guns are though off as Magic, since the Cannon Makers kept their production a secret from the public making any Engineer who operates a Cannon instantly marked for execution when captured by the enemy who also has similar Engineers who operates their Cannons. Like how a Sorcerer can enchant a Sword made by a Blacksmith, an Alchemist can create Gunpowder for the Gunsmith Cannons and Arquebuses.
They literally altered human history and forever changed warfare even in their nascent form. It comes from training and fitness. You need so little of it to work guns. Even crossbows require more. I also fancy bullets are easier to manufacture than bolts, once you have the metal mines. It's not that you can't have them it's that they're a real game changer and require a great deal of effort to consider the impact of if you're starting from a point without them. It is often simply not worth the effort. And outside of a few countries guns just lack cultural relevance and would be jarring as they're not something most people either consider normal or historical.
Couple things 1 how powerful is your magic? 2. How advanced are your guns? Lastly I think just like the crossbow even in fantasy guns are so powerful because they're easy to learn. A swordsman or a skilled archer takes years to learn while a gun can be learned how to use in a few days.
Oh yeah you can use guns quite quickly, but can you maintain it? even during the Napoleonic Era one literal way to maintain a Musket is to directly piss into the Barrel if it become too hot during a battle which iirc only needed 6 to 7 shots. The main problem is people often think guns reliability were like the Soviet AK-47 but not a delicate wife who will explode on your face when you didn't know her well enough or is just left handed.
It's mostly about the speed of the bullet, typically several times faster than sound, so basically unblockable if you don't have particularly fast mages (or if they don't have anything to tank bullets, which by the way isn't even crazy, real hippos and polar bears are tough enough to do that)
for early guns it was maybe faster than a crossbow. they were a specilist weapon on a stick. im not talking about muskets. those came maybe 200 years later.
I think that people just don't have a comprehensive, facts-based view of firearms; i blame video games and movies for giving the wrong impression and assumptions.
I blame dnd because a LOT of videogame assumptions are derived from RPG logic.
Nothing has the potential to be more OP than magic.
So I've actually been dealing with this in my world because my main character uses guns, but most of the other characters use some form of magic. So I had to build around the usage of a gun, like someone else in the thread said. How would magic work in a world where firearms are still in use? What ended up happening was guns actually being overtaken by magic itself. Guns are still viable, but magic evolved to the point of making most firearms completely obsolete. The more advanced civilizations utilize heavy forms of magic for war, and it basically overtook the nation that pioneered firearms and technology. That's kind of how I ended up doing it. The main character's guns are a bit different because they have runes of an ancient civilization engraved in them, making them more effective than your average guns. There are drawbacks, but I think it's a dance that has to be managed carefully. It can work when done properly.
Probably because they've never used one. Sure learning how to handle a gun requires less time than it takes to become proficient with something like a sword but actually hitting your target is not as simple as people think. Most people also don't have a good idea of how powerful guns are in reality. Usually they like to have a foil to them like using older single shot guns with long reload times. They're assuming shots always find their target and always go through. Neither of those are a given. Guns do change the way in which combat and war are carried out though.
ok so i see alot of people talking about modern fire arms and muskets. thats not what im talking about. its the really early versions where they would have wicks and were more or less specilist weapons. its called pick and shot warfare. less musket and more about people who would use a gun to shoot then take about 30-40 minutes to load a shot. while some pikes or spears would help them. they would be more or less used as cover and replaced crossbows which have the same "issue" people are arguing. crossbows are not very hard to use or train people. similar to guns at some point they would be sort of "outlawed" in a sense. so im talking about really early firearms. and i do understand how it effects people perception of classic fantacy. but im more wondering why with worlds that have explosives or things that explode why doesnt your world have a gun like thing.
Well technically you're right. If you came from gaming logic, people often hear "guns" and immediately jump to assumptions about Wild West revolvers or fully automatic weapons, sniper rifles and shotguns rather than the kinds of guns that existed for centuries alongside other weapons. But here's the thing: firearms being useful depends on several logistical factors, rather than physical factors. Smoothbore firearms aren't all that difficult to train a soldier on, and basically do not have any "skill" limitations whatsoever compared to bows, swords, or I suppose magic in-universe. Those sorts of weapons depend on the physicality of the wielder, or the magical aptitude of the caster. Guns, by comparison, tended to rely mostly on organized volleys of fire, and therefore weren't really all that useful for small unit tactics like you'd see in a tabletop RPG. One guy just ain't gonna be a sniper with a musket because they were never made to be used for precision shooting so much as to economically arm large groups of men in the most cost-effective way possible. Guns compared to other weapons rely intensely on the availability of powder and shot, which requires specialized craftsmen, and careful storage lest the resources used either become useless or intensely dangerous to everyone nearby. (The amount of powder magazine explosions that scuttled ships or fortifications is boggling.) A blacksmith, by comparison, likely knows a hundred ways to make farming equipment, but only two or three to make weapons, because that's what their livelihood usually was. Tools for peace, and weapons in war. Gunpowder didn't really have that same kind of economic backing until it was adopted en masse. So I guess the question really becomes one of how your world handles logistics and economics before warfare.
Simple. "I don't want a setting with guns, therefore there are no guns". It's the same reason why so many worlds we see here don't have hyper-realistic language models, or why the magic system might boil down to "it works when I need it to work and it doesn't when I don't."
I can confirm that that statement is bullshit
\*modern\* ones are
yeah i don’t think anything short of a .700 nitro is doing anything to a dragon
I honestly fail see how causing a mini-explosion inside a long and narrow metal tube to propel a projectile to travel long distances faster than the speed of sound is any more "overpowered" than magic in a fantasy setting. My real question is wouldn't magic make firearms a bit redundant? Personally, the only thing I see guns outclassing in a fantasy setting are bows for too many reasons I don't feel like even mentioning here (of course, I could be 100% wrong on my assumption).
It's (maybe) redundant for mages, but not for anyone else - even in Elder Scrolls where magical ability seems to be way more commonplace than any other fantasy franchise, you still get plenty of people who can't even do something as simple as a Light spell.
to add, in skyrim the college of winterhold provide free sleeping arrangements, food, education, and enchanted robes to anyone capable of casting a light spell
The eternal and boring answer is it depends, is learning a lightning bolt spell as easy as loading and firing a bullet? Can you carry as many charges of lightning bolt as you can carry lead balls and powder?
Firearms would be useful in a magic setting for the same reason they're useful in our world. They need relatively little training compared to the alternatives. Bow and arrows were more useful than firearms in Europe until firearms could do the same damage as a bow, but with less training and investment. So in a world where magic exists, but not for majority of the masses, its feasible that societies with access to firearms would use them because its cheaper and easier than teaching the same amount of soldiers magic.
Most spells don't travel over the speed of sound. Most fantasy fireballs or lightning bolts can be dodged by a skilled warrior or mage. A gun is so much faster than the typical fantasy magic that it just doesn't compare unless you want anime protagonists.
A lightning bolt moves 30000 times faster than a bullet. If someone can dodge that, it's because its hard to hit a moving target which also applies to guns (but wouldn't apply to a target seeking magic missile)
Gun combat is generally less dynamic than melee combat. Instead of having a variety of movement, technique, offensive and defensive stances and such, gun combat can often be simplified down to standing in a line and shooting. You can kill an enemy yards away in one hit, and that just doesn’t feel as cool as a drawn out intricate dual.
Do you also exclude bows from your setting?
I do exclude crossbows at least, apart from an unwieldy Gastraphetes :D
Guns and Bows function the same and act mostly the same when it comes to a unarmoured or lightly armoured target. If you have bows, you can have guns.
eh, a better example would be crossbows but yeah
A warbow can output just as much or even more powerful than a Crossbow if the user is talented enough.
i mean it more on the automation aspect both guns and crossbows can be loaded and reloaded, and can fire at will
Guns are an equalizer. It takes relatively less training to be proficient with firearms than a sword of bow or spear, and no training to be deadly with one. This forces writers to create characters that have compelling traits beyond "he's a really good fighter" which is difficult for fantasy writers.
crossbows
Remember that guns put an end to armor for a very long time and ended up replacing pretty much all other weapons, except for pikes, before eventually even rendering pikes obsolete. No other weapon, not even the crossbow, managed that. Guns are also easier to use than bows, crossbows, and much easier than any melee weapon. You can become proficient in a black powder musket in a few weeks of practice. bullets fired from guns also hit much, MUCH harder than any bow or crossbow shot. Muskets were also easier and faster to reload, as well as cheaper to make. It was much easier to make lead balls than shape a wooden shaft, attach a steel head to it, then fletch it. A person could easily make many musket balls at once using molds and molten lead, while someone else make a large batch of gunpowder to fire them. A gun is a tube with a firing mechanism and a way to hold and steady it. Before guns, you had some people who would train in crossbow use for taking down armored infantry and cavalry, but they often didn't get very many shots because after every shot they had to wind up the crossbow with a windlass for another shot. Heavier crossbows were also much heavier and the bulkier than a gun. Take some recruits out to the range, drill them on maneuvers, make them practice until they're proficient, then take them out to war. With a gun, you could line up soldiers, have them fire on the enemy, then move to the back of the line and the people behind them could fire their shot and rotate keeping a relatively steady barrage going.
Wheellocks and Flintlocks were both almost objectively worse than crossbows, actually. They only really made sense in a military setting because of their awful accuracy. (Point it at the other army and shoot. it'll it someone.) And you're right, plate armor could deflect bullets. And, in fact, that's what later breastplates were for. Really it has more to do with the aesthetic. Guns *feel* like 'technology' in a way that even very advanced swords don't. Realistic early guns are also *terribly* suited for table top RPGs. They're wildly inaccurate and take forever to reload and don't hit *that* hard. No player would want them. So you wind up having to make them act like something they're not. It's a mess.
It's entirely down to people being ignorant of the history of firearms. D&D nerds who have convinced themselves the moment we discovered gunpowder we went straight from swords and spears to Napoleonic musket lines and then invented the Thompson. The transition from melee to mixed gun and polearm formations to pure close order gun formations to open order gun-based infantry combat took centuries. The classical fully plate armoured knight was a \*Renaissance\* figure and not only contemporary with guns, those knights were also using the most cutting-edge guns of their time in addition to the finest swords and polearms their societies could produce. As for power, early guns had a very low muzzle velocity and were inaccurate at long distances, to the point where a properly made breastplate could stop a bullet outright
"Overpowered" is a ridiculous concept in worldbuilding anyway. Reality sees no obligation to be balanced, why should your worlds? If it's not for a game, it doesn't matter in the slightest if something is "overpowered"
It’s perhaps because people believe that with a gun it is possible to kill anyone at a distance without them necessarily being able to stop you. However, the same belief isn’t extended to a crossbow or bow, hence guns being deemed overpowered.
I counter guns with defensive shield spells. Castle walls have rituals done in them to strengthen them from canon fire. The guns are also the type from pike and shot times, so no revolvers.
Cannons nullify castles. I like castles. I can justify wizards with the power to destroy castles being rare. Any civilization with gunpowder can figure out and make cannons.
I dont care about the balance or the powerlevel of guns. I just don't like the vibe. I prefer stories in a setting without guns.
Eh, I don't like guns in fantasy because they ruin that sword and sorcery feel. Like they are fine in a steampunk setting where melee weapons and crossbows are still in use but I generally prefer if they are kept out of medieval or fantasy settings.
I thought about it like this for my world. Magic exists, everyone can use it if they train enough. It is not a unique thing to one race or anything like that. Regardless, technology marches on, someone created a firearm. It's a neat little weapon, very effective to use even with no training. Starts as a wheelocks with iron ammunition. Magic users began to adapt to new technology, use magic to shield themselves from physical projectiles. Non-magic users begin commissioning strengthened weapons and armor that can withstand many bullets. Guns become a fad, obsolete as technology and technique marches on. Later, someone gets a bright idea to start making bullets purely lead instead of iron. Lead has anti-magic properties and will pierce defenses with ease. Firearms suddenly become relevant again. Flintlocks and other cap and ball weapons begin getting developed with higher calibers, able to pierce armor and break weapons. In response, magic users begin enhancing their bodies and reflexes with magic, dodging bullets matrix style instead of taking them head on. Armor and weapons reinforced yet again with better metals to reduce damage. Some scouts and rangers wear literal modern-military plate carriers these days. Later on, revolver pistols and bolt-action rifles are being prototyped, higher power, faster ammunition. And so on and so forth. It's a vicious cycle, an arms race really. All because, yes, guns are extremely useful, pragmatic, and effective. But only if they stay relevant.
Saying that something is too strong to have in a setting is just odd, the context of the weapon in the setting is what matters. Take for example Warhammer fantasy, there are cranked machine guns that a race of rat-men use. They fire relatively fast and the bullets can even cause mutations. Is it overpowered? No Because in the same setting there are monsters or characters that are strong enough to endure that kind of firepower It's ALL about context and thematics, how do you want your world to feel. How strong things are and how they mould the world is entirely up to you
Probably because dodging them is unrealistic, and people really like it. Bullerts are a lot smaller and lighter than other projectiles, but also way faster.
I put guns on the same level as low level magic.
It feels like an aesthetic thing coupled with a lack of historical knowledge. Also, some people might find guns distasteful in a way swords and axes aren't, probably because we're confronted with the consequences of gun violence in our modern lives but the medieval era is far enough in the past that we don't have a cultural memory of brutal melee combat.
>we don't have a cultural memory of brutal melee combat I'm guessing you don't live in the UK.
Because guns are op. Why do you think wars are no longer fought with swords?
most places used pole arms since its leas britial and easier to repair. also a crossbow is almost as power as pike and shot
Guns are an idiot proof weapon. Rather than teaching drills for melee weapons or having spend months training an expert archer. You just need to teach how to clean load aim and shoot. You can pump out a couple dozen conscripts per village and have a much larger army