Okay, so in a fantasy setting there's very advanced armor, more advanced than anything that ever actually existed, why didn't guns phase it out?
More durable metals?
Why didn't they make bullets out of the more useful metal?
Would have been more cost effective.
Magic armor?
Magic bullets.
What are some lore friendly reasons why in your fantasy setting muskets don't wreck armor.
Magic and economics. People didn't stop using armour because of guns. They stopped doing so, because it became unaffordable to equip everybody with armour and guns as wars became bigger and bigger.
Because I'm the GM
Bayonets are not invented yet. No, seriously. Nobody came with with sticking a knife at the end of a gun until the end of 17th century.
Because an explosive powder was not an exiting development when people could cause explosions far more easily with magic. The powder actually has a disadvantage that it's quite simple for a mage to set it off. Cannons exist only as a very large and heavily protected siege weapon, with the powder being mixed at the site.
>>46166967
Because only total plebs want guns in their magic fantasy settings.
If you introduce guns and gunpowder, everything that's cool about fantasy just gets blown to smithereens.
Dungeon? No, the nearby town hired some miners and collapsed it all with gunpowder, then made a fortune digging out the gold and artifacts among all the squished monsters.
Hire adventurers? Why would we when we have a militia with cannons.
Cool castles? Uhm, no, we have to build squat, blocky fortresses with a dirt rampart around them to catch cannonballs.
Enchanted swords? No, we have the apprentices churning out musketballs +5 now, what are you going to do with a sword grandpa?
Guns in a fantasy setting is only fun when it focuses on how guns completely fucks up the fantasy setting (Like in Instrumentalities of the Night where silver grapeshot is the best way to kill everything supernatural)
If you just want to introduce it because you're a weapons nerd and you want muskets and knights and katanas to coexist it's always shitty and terrible.
Yes, I'm fully aware that historically, they totally coexisted, but we're not talking historical role-playing here.
>>46166967
>What are some lore friendly reasons why in your fantasy setting muskets don't wreck armor.
Honestly, this has already been discussed to death, and I can't for the life of me understand why you didn't google this shit. Anyway, it all depends on range and the quality of the armor. The one thing that did happen, was that metal armor couldn't catch up with muskets since piling on stupid amounts of metal will make you slow and encumbered as shit.So in whatever setting, you just say muskets are shit beyond close range.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isIgZ-D9oAI
>>46167184
>milling gunpowder on site
I guess you know nothing about how it works then. I bet you didn't even know you need a still to make components for the milling process.
>>46166967
the limit in performance of the kind of guns used in most fantasy settings isn't the material of the bullets, you could make them out of your settings best wonder metal and they'd at best do only marginally better.
In real life guns didn't immediately phase out armor either. You could still see cuirasses all the way into the 19th century.
As long as guns aren't that advanced, it's very likely both would exist
Interestingly, early guns were more accurate than later guns because there was an arm race for higher volume of fire over accuracy.
>>46167218
see
>>46167377
Handgonnes have been around for centuries.
>>46166967
>Depends on the setting
That's used a lot, but it really does tend to be true.
A lot of settings simply don't have widespread firearms. Either the knowledge is kept under wraps for whatever reason or people straight up don't know how to make gunpowder.
I saw one setting where they didn't use firearms because mages were fairly common. They weren't as common as normal people by any stretch of the imagination, but if someone was a Knight then they probably had magical capability. This is important because it makes transporting gunpowder in large quantities dangerous as fuck. That train of supply wagons you were counting on? Some fucker on a gryphon just threw lightning at it and now the whole thing has gone up.
This doesn't mean gunpowder weapons aren't feasible in the setting, but people never bothered to develop them much since they didn't seem to do anything a guy with an enchanted crossbow bolt couldn't do. Black powder has mostly been relegated to rarely deployed mortars or more commonly used 'hand grenades' (read: magically shrunken barrels which are dropped and then detonated by pegasus knights. They do this with pitch also).
In a setting like WoW they don't have much advantage on anything else until you get into the really large shit. Yeah you can shoot that warrior in the face, but he got punched in the jaw by a living boulder the size of a car just yesterday, he can probably take it.
>>46167257
>>46166967
if you could make the barrel out of magicalmetal™ you could load more powder into a very light (thin barrel) and incredibly sleek gun making it for an ideal civilian personal defense weapon and as thus replacing the fencing weapons/rapiers
>>46167219
I'm well aware of how it happened in reality, I'm asking this to brainstorm for my 'late medieval' somewhat 'high fantasy' world I'm creating.
Pikes, not guns, made the Knights obsolete.
>>46167439
>Handgonnes
these required like two people, and took fucking forever to load and steady. Two knights would rape him from 500m away. One if he missed.
A more mechanical, tangible system of magic where there's no real way to overcome the advantages of altering the structure of armor at the atomic level versus altering the structure of a musket ball at the atomic level, which would if anything lessen the usefulness of a bullet. Most magic systems are just "Magic exists and it does magical stuff", they aren't fleshed out to autistic detail. Limiting magic to altering substances and energy on a very tangible, observational level gets rid of this problem, but isn't what most people look for when they want to be Dumbledore in a campaign.
>>46167218
Everything you've complained about gunpowder ruining in settings is equally(if not more-so) fucked by magic in the same exact way in those settings. >>46167038 is a much better explanation.
>>46167468
>late medieval
then how...?
Why not magic guns? If you can enchant arrows and bows, you surely can do the same for muskets and balls.
>>46167377
It's not that guns weren't advanced, it's that they weren't widespread or well implemented. Knights or heavy infantry are still totally viable if guns are still just a curiosity and not fielded en masse, but as soon as people have enough of them and figure out some solid tactics they blow everything else out of the water. Just look at what the hussites did.
Feudal Knights < Mercenaries < Conscripts.
>>46166967
Because it costs way too much to enchant each individual bullet.
>>46167468
Alternatively, just make kevlar and ceramic plates armor, and you are good.
>>46166967
Guns didn't phase armor out. People were still wearing breastplates and such well into the 19th century, cavalry were still wearing armor during WWI, albeit to little effect.
What spelled the end of fully armored men in war was more economics than firearms technology. Armored men were simply too expensive to field in the line, it was better to have more men than fewer men with armor.
That said, there were certainly exceptions, particularly in regards to cavalry. The Winged Hussars of Poland were still charging pike formations with fucking lances after the 30 Years War--sometimes successfully. During the English Civil War, there are handlists detailing large numbers of "bulletproof pots" being ordered because cavalry often fought with pistols and swords at the time, and armor could actually protect against those because of the weaker charges in pistols compared to full-length guns.
>>46166967
Because guns weren't invented.
It's a generic fantasy setting, just because they have kickass armor doesn't mean they automatically must have guns.
What you should be asking is, how do you integrate guns in a fantasy setting while still retaining the generic swords&sorcery aesthetic?
>>46166967
>What are some lore friendly reasons why in your fantasy setting muskets don't wreck armor.
Because it didn't in real life.
Are you aware that guns predate plate armour by half a century?
For my own special snowflake setting I decided to blatently copy skaven and port them in. Saddly this meant I had to bring guns with them. I mean you could have skaven without guns but it wouldn't be quiet the same.
It's a high magic world so guns don't make that much of an impact really. Also we get armour today specially designed to protect against firearms, I figured with an adundance of magic infulenced crafting it wouldn't be a hard thing for "fantasy land" to develop.
>>46167468
Guns and Knights existed side-by-side for over 300 years. The term "bullet proof" was invented by blacksmiths showing how their armour could stop bullets. But really, Knights were going the way of the Dodo with or without guns.
>>46167722
Fucking this.
Jesus Christ educate yourselves, /tg/.
>>46166967
Because pre-modern guns didnt cut through armor like it was butter. The decline of armor and the ascendance of guns had more to do with the ability for massed conscripts to be effective. Guns required very little training for a conscript to be effective (when compared with bows or crossbows), and were able to be mass produced. Likewise, armor is difficult and expensive to produce in large amounts.
In fantasy settings, the power of individual elite warriors is so great that it can win wars. Equipping those warriors with protective equipment is therefore very important. When I run games that have pre-modern guns, they are the weapon of the common soldier, not the weapon of a hero.
Also, the presence of magic creates an environment where guns are less useful. Why fuck around with a musket when a wand of magic missiles does the same thing, at a greater rate of fire, without the possibility of missing? Why mess with bombs, when fireballs do it better?
Guns exist, but they are relegated to a niche role, waiting for the technological innovation to make them truly useful. It is a position not too dissimilar to that they held for hundreds of years in Europe before they began to be integrated into pike and shot units.
Knights just stopped being knights and began to call themselves mercenaries. End of Story.
>>46167468
If you are well aware how it worked in real life then WHY are you not just applying reality to your game? Seems pointless reinventing the wheel when any fucking history book has your answer for you.
...
>>46167804
What if I'm a mage with a magic musket that shots magic balls of destruction?
>>46167722
>>46167780
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, I get it, I studied it, point being musket men(used with pike men) became the thing and armored knights were phased out through a long period of time, bit by bit throughout the ages.
>Because economics!!!!
I never said that wasn't a thing.
>>46167877
Oh for crying out loud really?
I obviously was talking about plate armor.
No more nitpicking please.
Some really good stuff here though.
What is this thing you call "KNIGHT"? HA! Nothing that can't be defeated with our arrows. HAHAHA!
>>46167531
So a wizard altered every single iron bar that was going to be used for warfare?
>>46167963
I don't get you.
Why do you need reasons to justify something that you supposedly understand didn't happen? Just have it not happen.
>>46168039
Not "a wizard", every blacksmith's imbuer.
>>46167901
What if you're a mage and you just cut out the musket part
>>46168120
What if the musket is enchanted in such a way that it make your firewalls 10x stronger?
>>46167184
>implying the average kingdom has an infinite supply of wizards
>>46168168
depends on the setting.
The reason guns wouldn't overwhelm fantasy is actually pretty simple. Large formations of infantry are not an efficient method of warfare in a setting where wizards, dragons and other monsters are a thing.
Early firearms relied on a formation which effectively allowed soldiers to fire a wall of lead about 100 ft. ahead of themselves, fall back to let the second line fire while they reloaded, rinse and repeat. This is all well and good against a wall of peasants with pitchforks, sure, but keep in mind that a battlefield in, say, D&D-style fantasy is not going to resemble one in medieval history. It simply isn't sensible to pretend it would be.
Magical communication is a key factor here. If you can make simple enchantments to allow commanders to issue commands, you've broken the main problem of commanding an army in this time period. Now your forces can go anywhere and keep in communication. A battlemage in each fireteam (to use a modern term) means that even a single section can wipe out a small army of rank-and-file soldiers in traditional formation with a couple AOE spells. Guerrilla warfare tactics become even more viable because the bow and crossbow are effectively silent, and your team might have an arcane trickster or some equivalent to keep you virtually undetectable. Teams moving in a largely independent fashion while able to whisper up the line to their commander for intel will be operating more like a modern soldier does in war. The musket, with a longer reload time than an arbalest and nearly a third of the range, will prove ineffective for actual warfare.
>>46167580
Mass volley fire didn't completely phase out the armored cuirassier until the 18th century, and what caused the cuirassiers to start ditching their armors on the battlefield was that it was too heavy to be comfortable due to needing to be bullet proof at 30 paces, and more importantly too expensive to risk fucking up with a bullet hole.
A lot of the cavalry lower ranks could simply not afford the kind of expenses that aristocratic knights could.
Wizards are generally alchemist and inventors. Likely, they would have been the inventors of guns too.
What if there's an arm race between wizards that keep improving musket-throwing fireballs vs armor-magic wizards?
>>46167854
Well I guess I could just have the 'guns didn't really become a thing because magic was better and because bullet proof armor.'
That's feasible right?
Also my world is very old and wanted a reason why guns never became a thing in a very long time frame. Guess I got a good an answer that I could ever get.
A lot of people in this thread seem to have the impression that magic is so common in most settings that you'll have a magic mart in every town ready to sell anyone and everyone any enchanted goods they desire.
While I'm sure there are a lot of settings that do operate this way, a lot of them aren't intended to.
>>46167963
Huh?
So you know why guns didn't defeat armour but you are asking why guns won't defeat armour, despite knowing why guns don't defeat armour yet you are still asking why guns won't defeat armour while guns didn't defeat armour?
So you are asking for an explantion why guns won't defeat armour despite guns not defeating armour?
Am I missing something here or are you missing something? I seriously don't understand what you are asking?
>>46168201
These formations aren't that big. The AOE of a D&D 3.5 fireball, even if you go nuts on metamagic, wouldn't actually make much more of a dent in your lines than shooting at them with cannons, and they don't require a 1 in 100, expensive, hard to replace and incredibly fickle specialist.
IIRC even a level 20 wizard in 3.5 gets outranged by napoleonic field artillery.
>>46167018
This man here actually read history. G
Anyone know that "bullet proof' came from Smith's shooting their armor with a gun & leaving a small smudge to show that their customers that their armor could withstand bullets. Armored horsemen wielded pistols for crying out loud.
>>46168039
At least in my setting, someone with extensive knowledge of mana use, metallurgy and physics could "perfect" metal alloy compositions and structure arrangement to resist being pierced or broken, which does a lot more for armor and melee weapons than it does for firearms. There's no sort of "enchant with fire property" deal going on(though you can light things on fire), or things along that nature, so someone experienced with melee armor and weapons has a fair chance against someone using firearms. Firearms also have reload times that don't effect melee weaponry.
Firearms have a definite advantage in open areas in my setting. Melee weapons have an extreme advantage in compact areas.
>>46168249
I wanted a reason why say, this armor thing could instead not coexist with armor for 300 years but completely rend guns more or less ineffective for 3000 years.
>>46167531
Except that magic is magic and not an easily reproduced technology that becomes so common that it changes the face of warfare. You can make a setting with one guy in a million having magic, but with guns all you need are craftsmen.
So no, they're not the same when it comes to worldbuilding.
>>46168256
Why is an otherwise medieval setting suddenly have Napoleon era gun technology?
>>46168256
You are forgetting that Wizards can wear cloaks of invisibility and cast avada kedavra to kill school kids.
>>46168201
>Early firearms relied on a formation which effectively allowed soldiers to fire a wall of lead about 100 ft.
Not really. They were just as accurate as bows/crossbows. The issue with big formations is a trade-off between volume of fire vs quality of fire. Early firearms were more accurate than Napoleon ones, but were also slower to reload.
Guns phased out armor for like all of 150 years, when they briefly advanced much faster than armor did. Guns were introduced in europe in the 13th century, while curiassers remained armored out into to the mid-19th century. The plate armor we associate with knights was actually developed much later than people think, sometime into the 14th century. So basically, there was never a time when there were knights in plate armor but no guns.
Anyway, armor's been catching back up since at least ww2. Any country worth a damn issues it's soldiers and police with armor, and said armor has advanced from "hopefully reducing the lethal radius of shrapnel from explosives somewhat" to "stops pistol rounds, most shrapnel" to "Stops anything short of multiple full power GPMG rounds on a 10x12" square on the chest and back", in a time where weapons have remained essentially unchanged except for ergonomics.
What will make full body armor relevant again will likely be some combination of lighter materials, powered exoskeletons, and advanced cooling. though I guess if some wonder-material gets invented that can stop bullets like crazy but is no thicker or heavier than basic bitch sheet metal, then I guess it'll be a thing right away.
The real problem will not be justifying why bitchin' armor is around with guns, it will be justifying why melee weapons are back. Unless they aren't, and everyone fights with guns. Armoring against melee weapons wielded by dudes with basic human strength, grit, and determination is pretty simple to armor against. Something as simple as a half-centimeter of ABS plastic would be pretty damn good armor, (it's pretty much what riot gear is) let alone something more advanced.
Battleporker 40k has it's power fields, Battletech, shadowrun, star wars et.al. have vibroblades. Most of those also have monomolecular blades.
>>46168201
Furthermore, the inclusion of monstrous creatures makes the use of traditional warfare of the medieval period even less efficient.
Imagine the troll, to start with. Eight feet tall, able to regenerate from anything but fire and acid, and even then a tough son of a bitch. You get a small shock team of these guys with a bit of plate? They'll charge your rifleman line and not even feel the impact of the shot before they're sweeping five or more men off the field with every swing of whatever weapon you hand them. Cover them in foliage, put them on the edge of the field and make it look like there's heavy brush nearby, you might not even get a shot off before they've closed to melee.
The addition of flying monsters (such as gargoyles, for example) makes things worse. Even if you do gun a few down, those giant stone hulks are coming down on your formation, and the survivors will be more than willing to dive bomb behind their comrades and use the cover to close in. Anything with breath weapons, flying or not, is also going to have a field day with a mob of soldiers all in neat rows and columns right near one another. Just imagine how many men fit in a 60 foot cone, and how much damage a single dragon of moderate age can do to them with a breath weapon attack.
All in all, the firearm might be useful in the form of a more cannon-like weapon for siege warfare and naval combat, or powder kegs being used as traps or conventional bombs to soften up harder, larger targets. The musket, however, would only see viability in the hands of the peasant defending his land from bears or wolves, who are as like to be scared off by the sound as they are wounded from the shot.
>>46168244
>>46168302
Except hardly anyone actually used the proof armor; your typical armor in the field could withstand a hit at 50 or so paces, not a shot right in your face, which is part of why the reiter pistol charge was so devastating against traditional french gendarmes.
The for show proof armors that could withstand a full charge pistol shot are almost inevitably too heavy to wear for long.
>>46168244
People will instantly assume the metaphysics of 3.5 with awareness of what early modern warfare was like on the level of a cursory reading of osprey books
>>46168216
>what caused the cuirassiers to start ditching their armors on the battlefield was that it was too expensive to risk fucking up with a bullet hole.
Heh I get the image of some armoured dude charging down another guy who pulls out a gun. First one grinds to a halt yelling stop. "If you're going to fire that thing at me I need to get this armour off first".
>>46168337
Just giving an example. FWIW early drills for matchlock favored range over rof, unlike what happened from the 17th century onwards
>>46168329
You can make a setting where magic use is literally on the same level as gunsmiths if not more common. You are describing magic in the non-detailed way I mentioned in my original post, almost exactly.
>"Most magic systems are just "Magic exists and it does magical stuff""
>"magic is magic"
Magic is not necessarily, "magic" in every setting.
>>46168322
Either magic makes firearms unfeasible, or progress has completely stagnated.
>>46168322
For the same reasons every other fantasy setting is locked in the same tech level for thousands of years.
Who cares.
>>46168329
Try telling Terry Pratchet that.
>>46168373
>The real problem will not be justifying why bitchin' armor is around with guns, it will be justifying why melee weapons are back.
You already justified it.
>What will make full body armor relevant again will likely be some combination of lighter materials, powered exoskeletons, and advanced cooling.
You consider how good those suits would have to be, it isn't hard to imagine how well you could fuck something up with a melee weapon.
>>46168322
This is another trope entirely.
"Why people are stuck in historical stagnation for thousand and thousands of years? "
>>46167683
Winged Hussars also carried pistols and their retainers carried carbines.
>>46166967
because they didn't
bullets can penetrate armor but they cannot penetrate magic armor. metal is a physical material that can only stop projectiles up to a point. once you have a projectile which is launched with great force it can penetrate the metal. magic does not rely on physical laws however, it is determined simply by the strength of a persons mystical energy and their ability to will things into being.
a wizard can use magic to deflect a bullet away from a person, however, wizards are people who are born into the physical world. they themselves are tangible and must obey the laws of the physical world. can a wizard make a rock float? yes but only because he has a seen a hummingbird do it. can a wizard walk on water? yes but only because he has seen leaves floating on the rivers surface.
the power of the wizard is in making his internal beliefs have external effects. magic can deflect bullets on it's own but by putting a suit of armor on a person it is much easier for the wizard to believe it.
it's not a rock it's a hummingbird. i am a leaf on an autumn day. the bullet cannot penetrate the armor.
>>46168416
That's the thing, they were heavy and pricey. If someone defeated someone wearing full plate, they'd best not kill him so they can random his rich ass back to his money filled family.
>>46168479
In the discworld, magic is barely present, if at all. The wizards just build complicated machines that harness what little magical energies are left to maximize efficiency, but most of them just sleep around and get fat from eating too much.
>>46168498
Well in my setting technology is still improving but most improvements are magic related.
>>46168373
cont.
>Why didn't they make bullets out of the more useful metal?
The traits that make good armor don't necessarily make good penetrators, and vice versa. Tungsten makes a great projectile for piercing armor, it's dense, it's hard. it's dense. It makes pretty poor armor because it's dense, it's brittle, and it's not all that strong. It may have a place somewhere in a composite armor material, but a solid plate of tungsten will not be good armor for how much such a thing would weigh.
On the flipside, really strong polymer fibers such as kevlar, spectra, nylon-6, or spider silk can be woven or formed into a composite material that provides good protection from bullets, but a bullet made out of kevlar would not be dense enough to perform well. Same with melee weapons, really. You couldn't really make a sword out of kevlar. You could make a whip, but while it would be a very strong, heat, and chemical resistant whip, it wouldn't penetrate armor any better than one made of, say, denim.
>>46168373
Melee weapons had a massive comeback after the 30 years war. Bayonets made everyone a pikeman when the pike part of most armies had dropped to at most a quarter of the infantry, and most cavalry outside Poland was predominantly using heavy pistols that could potentially double as maces (or a sword) for backup, until the 18th century.
>>46166967
>Magic armor?
>Magic bullets.
insert reason:
>All magical equipment worth mentioning was created by an ancient civilization (or ancient gods, dragons, whatever) that collapsed (died off, ran out of magic, left the mortal plane, whatever). They weren't very advanced. As a result, there is plenty of magic armor lying around, but no magic guns.
>Magic equipment grows in power naturally over time, accumulating power from every person who uses it (or the legend that develops around it, the opponents defeated by its bearer, or whatever). The older a piece of equipment, therefore, the stronger the weapon. Recent innovations like guns barely qualify as magic equiment at all, but old suits of armor are often very powerful.
>Enchantment is extremely expense and/or expends scarce resources. Enchanting every individual bullet is extremely wasteful. Enchanting a suit of armour that will be used over and over again, however, is perfectly economical.
>Magic equipment is fuelled by the user's own energy/spirit/soul. A suit of armour, directly surrounding the user, is especially powerful. Projectiles like bullets, which need to fly away from the user, don't have much power at all.
>Magic is chaotic and tends to make guns volatile and unreliable, due to the gunpowder component and overall being more complex than other equipment.
and so on. just don't assume that magic always works like D&D and you can figure something out.
Amusingly, gunpowder had been invented two-full centuries before the Church officially acknowledged witches. And the invention of arquebus or the matchlocknever stopped Occultist from writing grimoires well into the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th centuries.
>>46168020
The Mongols! Always the exception.
>>46167218
>>46168538
At this point ransoming was really rare and was more of a thing when war was mostly expected to be infantry slugging it out while the gentlemanly cavalry would spar, kill a few and then capture the losers for a ransom or two. The wars western europe fought in the 15th century changed that.
It only lasted longer in Italy because they mostly practiced extremely ritualized warfare, the condotieri being usually unwilling to gamble all of their incredibly expensive mercenaries.
>>46168495
>You already justified it.
How so?
It might be that full body armor that stops guns outright does an even better job against melee weapons, and so everyone has to fight with rocket launchers with HEAT rounds.
Or maybe it takes more strength than anyone can manage, so they have to resort to KILLDOZERs
>>46167459
that would help with ergonomics but wouldn't improve performance. The problem is the black powder, its only ao efficient. Once you start using enough too reliably penetrate heavy armour at long range you have a weapon with too much recoil too feasibly use as a handheld weapon.
sure you could then use magic powder but then you're using a generally rare and expensive resource to counter a cheap and mundane thing.
>>46168553
Was just reffering to (I think) Men At Arms, a book where there are plenty of wizards in the world (a whole university of them to begin with, even if as you say they don't actully do much magic), but only one gun. It's a one of a kind item that has never been reproduced. Exactly the situation the post I replied to said doesn't happen. Admittadly in it's defence the guy that made the gun could easily make more if he wanted, and once another craftsman got his hands on it he instantly planned on trying to reproduce it.
>>46167218
>Because only total plebs want guns in their magic fantasy settings.
How do you keep your jaw so supple, even with sucking that much cock?
Why Men-at-arms and Knights are necessary when you have golems?
>>46167218
The typical D&D freebooting adventurer is actually a massive anachronism outside the early modern period.
Also what are the three musketeers.
>>46168739
They aren't if golems are easy to produce.
What if guns have evolved less to kill infantry and more to put the hurt on big monsters cheaply and safely than throwing men with punny swords at trolls? There's such a thing as elephant guns.
>>46167218
>Dungeon? No, the nearby town hired some miners and collapsed it all with gunpowder, then made a fortune digging out the gold and artifacts among all the squished monsters.
Because digging a giant pit is basically free and totally won't bankrupt you long before you ever reach the treasure.
>>46167218
Also, read A Mighty Fortress (2e AD&D's 16th-17th century European supplement)
>>46166967
Simply put I make gunpowder some weird, hazardous alchemical creation.
>if wet, becomes useless
>if struck by a spark it explodes, a real threat when "firebolt" is a cantrip any elf can learn
IRL economics determined the victory of the gun in the long run:
>spend thousands of modern dollars training, equipping, and fielding a heavily armed and armored knight and horse
>for the same cost buy several muskets, shot, and powder; peasants are cheap and easily trained to line the dash up with the person downrange.
>muskets will fuck up horse or, as things progressed, the knight despite armor
>oh no, peasant died? field another peasant in a month with new equipment and training. Still a fraction of the cost of a knight.
>>46168824
Isn't that image a punt gun, a massive shotgun used to mass-hunt ducks?
>>46168878
Yes.
>>46168878
If it can hunt a hundred regular ducks, it should be able to hunt a single duck which is a hundred times more massive than a normal duck!
>>46168739
You need wizardknights to control and direct the golems.
>>46168868
Except that's retarded. Guns reached supremacy on the battlefield when most armies were still expensive mercenary and aristocratic forces.
Western cavalry fucking loved pistols.
>This kills the Dragon.
>>46168910
the size is for accuracy, probably.
>>46168910
Unless the Dire Duck's natural armor is too high for it to even deal more than a point of damage.
However I can see it being pointed at swarms of small monsters with just as much effectiveness as a flock of ducks.
>>46168039
Swords and armor are meant to last.
Bullets are fired by the thousands (millions, more likely). It's pretty economical to enchant a sword that's going to be passed down to your sons, but imbuing every single bullet with a spell is going to be a lot more difficult.
>>46168360
You are so far off the mark that I am genuinely curious as to where you got your info.
A handgonne fires a larger cruder projectile at a lower velocity with inferior powder from a shorter barrel than say, a Brown Bess musket.
Arquebuses are better, but still not as accurate as a musket.
>>46169106
Range, mostly.
The idea is to not spook the ducks before you can get in range of the gun, so the gun needs to shoot farther.
>>46169189
same shit.
>>46166967
Simple answer? Monsters.
If you're going to kill a man, and you know he owns/uses guns, you won't bother wearing plate. But against a wyvern or chimera or something similar, I'd really feel safer with some steel between me and it.
>>46168739
Golems are tactically inflexible and lack initiative.
Also, they can't ride horses.
>>46169246
>wearing armor vs. monsters
I'd probably just cast an animate object spell on a shitload of shotguns, then arrange them in all possible directions around me, and trigger them to fire whenever something comes close enough. My armor is fear.
>>46169266
Build a Golemtaur?
>>46169246
Against any of the larger monsters, plate would do very little
>>46169301
Are we just going to ignore that magic exists?
>>46169316
Just because magic exists doesn't mean everything is magic.
>>46169316
Magic can do literally anything, so it's pretty hard to use it in a discussion.
>>46169380
>muh no limits
>>46169316
Does the magic freeze up all the joints when the monster does the Khrushchev special and smashes you into the earth so hard you wind up six feet underground whether you're dead or not?
>>46169399
Then define some? Just saying magic doesn't help anything.
Thank you, /tg/.
I think this is the first firearms thread I've read in seven years of browsing /tg/ that actually considered what circumstances would lead to a decline of firearms, that actually explored the advantages and disadvantages of firearms, that honestly considered what dynamics typical magic systems and the presence of things like monsters would have, and the like, rather than just shitting on anybody who wants anything remotely anachronistic.
I like guns in some settings and dislike them in others. This thread has given me a lot of ideas for both kinds of settings.
>>46169402
That wouldn't stop you from dying.
Also, we're talking fantasy RPGs where HP is a thing.
>You take 3d6 damage.
>I shrug it off and hack the goat's head. *crits* It takes 48 damage.
>The Chimera's goat head dies.
>>46169362
Enchanted armor is, and has been a thing for a long time in RPGs. Try to keep up.
>>46169503
And why would enchanted armor be less useful against guns?
>>46169503
Let me clarify because you're clearly incapable of basic cognitive reasoning.
Just because enchanted armor exists doesn't mean all armor is enchanted.
>>46169160
Armies are followed by an entire guild of people who pull enchanted bullets out of corpses to resell.
>>46169545
It wouldn't be, inherently.
But then, we'd have to consider enchanted armor vs. enchanted guns, and the sort of arms race that might develop.
Which could be fun.
>>46169282
Still tactically inflexible and lacking initiative.
Your classic golem is controlled by a set of prewritten instructions inserted into it's head cavity, which means if it encounters something outside it's programming it will either ignore it or default to mindless smash, depending on appropriacy to it's function.
That's why Golem are better as immortal guardians than field troops; they can't go on peacekeeping detail, or pillage opportunistically, or react to adapting battlefield conditions like a free willed warrior can.
Guys what do you think of this my players are about to find some special kraken fighting armor thats basically indestructible (hardest material on the planet) but the catch is no one uses the material because its highly flammable above water (and the art of forging with it is lost).
Like gunpowder flammable, kaboom
>>46169573
Then what are we discussing? The specific cases where armor is not enchanted, therefore of little use against firearms and monsters?
Yes. Let's talk about something that is of no interest to anyone.
>>46169579
That's easy to get round. I just write the "programe" so it says "Do exactly what I would want you to have done in this situation".
>>46169618
Looks like you're the one who needs to keep up.
>>46169578
>arms race
>with magic items
You think dragon hearts and pure diamonds grow on trees?
You think any random smith can go to Cania to quench the blade and make it back alive?
>>46169652
Everyone else in this thread seems to think so.
>>46169647
I can see you have zero experience with coding.
>>46169647
Which it has no means of knowing, because all a golem knows is what's on it's tablet.
Unless you have some sort of mind-link to your Golem and could take control directly, of course, but that's going well beyond the remit of a "standard" golem.
It's like magical programming; look up The Golem of Prague.
>>46169652
>Cania
>Clearly D&D
>A meta-setting where spellcasters can create entire demiplanes composed of whatever they want
>Including diamonds
>Clearly these powerful spellcasters are incapable of planestraveling and dragonslaying
My idea for my fantasy, is that guns replace cross except hunting or subterfuge.
But bows remain as it is really hard to put any magical energy into a gun on the grounds you might warp the barrel or destroy the gun in an explosion.
Since trying to make a bullet shoot lighting or become so sharp it can cut a dragon is just dumb.
Until they get to actual bullets or cartridges it is going to be impossible to for magic bullets to have any use.
Bows are going to last longer, because arrows don't explode and can be directly touched by the magic user.
They can also be possibly retrieved.
So in my setting when revolvers and breech loaders come around. They are going to be somewhat big and clunky but allow a sorcerer to really hit someone with a specialized round that is enchanted to their liking.
Lets say you have to fight five goblins with rusty weapons that suddenly appear in your business. Would you rather have
A. a flintlock and materials for 50 reloads
B. full steel plate armor and a wooden ladle
>>46169747
If I have friends with A and bayonets we win.
Disciplined formations in narrow corners win.
Flintlock is fast enough and reliable enough to have good reload and hitting at close quarters.
Steel Armor means nothing if I get ganged up, wrestled down and then stabbed everywhere.
>>46169727
>D&D is only 3.5
Eat shit, threeaboo.
Also fuck's sake, you're still not going to get mass production of overpowered magic items without ignoring most of 3.5's economics section, as shit as it is.
>>46169747
Either way you're dead.
The flintlock takes too long to reload to kill more than one goblin before the rest swam you, and you don't have time to put the armor on before the goblins swarm and kill you.
>>46169579
Unless your setting has efficient and low-level communication spells those armies the golem is up against are also going to be tactically inflexible. You don't even really need it to do much. Cavalry charge? Walk the golem in front of it. Enemy troop formation? Send in the golem and watch the formation have to break cohesion to avoid it. Siege? Golem, bust down that gate, golem, break that portcullis, golem, hurl this giant barrel of burning pitch over the wall, golem, show the inhabitants of yonder castle your best Kool-Aid Man impression.
>>46169835
>Unless your setting has efficient and low-level communication spells those armies the golem is up against are also going to be tactically inflexible.
What are communications using drums.
Also mass drill didn't really become a thing straight away.
>>46169187
Not that anon but period accounts from the late Renaissance like Humfrey Barwick's 1595 treatise indicate arquebuses and muskets being at least as accurate in the hands of a 6 month recruit as longbows were in the hands of 20 year veterans.
While there might be some hyperbole involved, in formation fighting at least it's probably safe to say they were fairly accurate weapons for that purpose.
They also have much better effective volume of fire, which is the real measurement of effectiveness, but their accuracy per se is fine relative to bows.
>>46169829
That's because the crafting system uses how expensive an item is to determine how long it makes.
Which means anything made from gold is going to take weeks or months to make.
But you can still enchant things in a number of days = each 1k gp the enchantment is worth.
Even so, it's not like 2e and 4e don't have similar problems. I haven't looked at crafting in 5e, but if they cut it out, then it, and 1e and previous editions are the only ones without this problem.
>>46169715
>>46169722
Next you'll be saying the programe I wrote in MSword for my computer to invent and build a time machine has no chance of ever working.
>>46169835
Even primitive warrior societies have war signals that they use to communicate in battle; whoops, howls, horns and drums, banners and signal arrows.
And your human warriors are more than self-aware enough to instinctively avoid harm from new and unexpected sources.
Golem armies would be highly vulnerable to ambushes with pitfalls and boulder drops, against forces that refuse to engage in a pitched battle, or have no fixed settlements to defend, you may just end up being led round in circles as your relatively unresponsive and robotic soldiers are picked off opportunistically.
Basically, reading all this thread it come to something simple.
If low magic: any historical explanations works and so they can coexist. Specially when you talk about adventurers.
If High magic: If magic bullets are being developed, they are developed by wizards, who also can make magic armor en masse, economically with something resembling modern armor, exoeskeletons, powered suits, and basically all low-sci fi armors of that kind. Think synthetic dragon scale instead of kevlar. And maybe some mithrill instead of plastics because is light too. If economics allow mass gunpowder weapons and even magical ones, they should allow mass magic armor.
Unless you give your magic some rules that makes firearms production a better idea. For example, making small things magical is easier that making huge things like plates.
>>46169949
The crafting system also costs XP, just sayin. It's not a thing you mass produce.
>>46169949
>Constructing a feasible economy when magic exists
No. Economics breaks down with magic.
>>46170092
There was never an economy built into 3.5 in the first place.
>>46170080
There's ways to substitute other things for XP, including GP (which, since you can make demiplanes of platinum, is a non-issue).
>>46170029
The only sensible post.
>>46169830
you arent just holding the armor in your hands you twit hahahaha
>>46170092
Correction; our current model of economics breaks down.
You just have to render your fantasy world's physical laws internally consistent, and define the usual limitations of "magic" within it, and then you can build a hypothetical economy as you extrapolate from that
>>46170092
Not really, you just don't make it as common as everyone in this thread assumes.
>>46170142
Why are you standing around in a business with full armor on but not a weapon in sight?
>>46169647
That isn't how that works at all.
Not sure if you're familiar with 40K, but you're basically describing a Necron Warrior.
While they're extremely good at doing what they're told, and are very, very good at killing, they are physically incapable of innovation and creative thinking - their entire thought process is basically a giant "If; Then" statement. They are essentially nothing more than a mindless killing machine, the husks of what were once people, who only do exactly what they're told, and nothing more. They will continue to follow their given order even when it is not tactically prudent to do so (like advancing slowly across a field at night in an attempt to be stealthy, but you're then detected and fired upon) or, if they have no orders nor any commands that can deal with a current situation, they fall into a defensive formation and then sit there until you die, they die, or they get new orders. Again, really good at killing things, but terrible soldiers.
>>46170151
Ultimately, this is what a setting needs. It needs to have an internally consistent system of magic that has limitations and costs that can be analyzed.
Without it, we have:
>assumptions that everything is magic
and the reverse:
>nuh-uh! not everything is magic!
>>46169747
Wad up the gunpowder, jam in a wick and use it as a grenade, then bludgeon the maimed disoriented Goblins to death with the butt of your gun.
>>46170201
you were trying to sell soup to save up money because you bought armor and no weapon like a fool and then the goblins ambushed you
>>46169817
who said you have any friends , try again
>>46170236
Newcron fluff has them thinking by themselves.
>>46170236
I thought that all necron warriors shared a common programming developed from the immortals that allows them to deal with any tactical situation the immortals had ever encountered?
>>46170139
>implying you can buy the goods needed with a demiplane of platinum
Look, if you're going to be a retard and do splat escalation just say so and I'll ignore your opinions as being the equivalent of the kid who calls forcefield while playing cops and robbers.
>>46170270
That makes perfect sense, then.
>>46170236
Warriors are more sophisticated than that, they're capable of strategy and tactics.
>>46170281
No, you're thinking of things like Lychguard and kinda-sorta Immortals (but even their sentience is very limited, and they're still constrained by the type of problem, their hardware is just much more extensive).
Warriors don't think - they're still completely mindless slaves. While it's hinted that there may be some random quirks of personality that may exist in the machines (like the fact that they sometimes scream when they die) the average Warrior doesn't have coherent thoughts and can't do anything of its own accord. What little, if any, brain activity it has is random snippets of broken memories that it doesn't understand because it doesn't understand what it even currently is.
>>46170317
Look, if you want to create a common sense economy for D&D, be my guest. But one doesn't exist as per the rules.
As per the rules, a metropolis with 25,001 people (3.5 anyway) has 2,500,100 greatswords available for purchase.
There's no saving that train wreck.
>>46169998
>>46169867
Drums and war signals are unreliable and limited in what they can convey.
Also this is assuming that both sides have an army with one having golems.
>>46170332
Those are the Immortals, which can act as rough equivalents of Squad Leaders to different phalanxes of Warriors and direct the flow of the battlefield with a degree of competency. Warriors are still very much point-and-shoot that do exactly and only what they are told.
>>46170300
This is true within a specific dynasty force, but not across the Necron race as a whole. The Immortals of a dynasty operate with shared intelligence, but they're still deprived of true sentience and the ability to make any sort of decision not related directly to combat, and even that is not perfect (especially if their Tomb World wasn't in perfect shape when they woke up).
>>46166967
>What are some lore friendly reasons why in your fantasy setting muskets don't wreck armor.
Magic crossbows are more effective if way lower range. In general full plate is only a thing for Blooline Mages because they summon REALLY tough shit, the rest use body armour similar to what you'd find in a modern setting, except based around magic and ceramics.
>>46170405
>Warriors are still very much point-and-shoot that do exactly and only what they are told.
So every Commissars dream recruit?
>>46168498
Just for fun, I'm also working on a sci-fi variant of my setting, where mages got so good at incredibly intricate symbols and runes for enchanting that they became able to make magic spaceships.
Want to make it a point to avoid the stagnation thing.
>>46170405
in that case would a tomb world that has suffered protracted attacks from orks be better at fighting them on a necron warrior level than warriors who had never fought them?
The drow have invented light mortars whose shells explode into monstrous spiders. Discuss.
>>46170613
Little more than a psychological weapon, but a pretty damn good one.
>>46170613
Why would you use a mortar when you live underground?
>>46170690
Seriously, most of the troops will be too busy going "HOLY SHIT SPIDERS" to even notice the infantry closing in on them. It'd be pretty effective at distracting and breaking ranks before moving in for the kill.
>>46170719
Probably specifically for surface warfare.
>>46167218
>Guns in a fantasy setting is only fun when it focuses on how guns completely fucks up the fantasy setting (Like in Instrumentalities of the Night where silver grapeshot is the best way to kill everything supernatural)
>If you just want to introduce it because you're a weapons nerd and you want muskets and knights and katanas to coexist it's always shitty and terrible.
>Yes, I'm fully aware that historically, they totally coexisted, but we're not talking historical role-playing here.
Pretty much my opinions exactly. Once you include guns, you aren't in Mythological Fantasy anymore, you're in something else. That something else might be cool and fun, but in terms of theme, you've chosen to step away from Beowulf and King Arthur and enter something veering closer to Urban Fantasy. High-magic D&D settings with wizard shops on every corner have a lot more in common with the Dresden Files than they do with the Odyssey.
Though desu this is more of a semantic quibble about people using 'Fantasy' as a specific term implying those high-magic-yet-technologically-stagnant D&D settings when really it's a gargantuan umbrella term that has a lot of different settings in them.
>>46170613
>unforeseen problem, the spiders are fried and the ones that aren't die on impact.
I'm just going to leave this here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill
>>46170800
>The period between the iron age and the industrial era doesn't exist
>>46170819
>the dead spiders are followed up by a volley of necromatic shells, turning the corpses into a horde of MONSTROUS ZOMBIE SPIDERS
>>46170613
Chorine gas in the underground 24/7
I'll just put it out there. The archetype of the werewolf tale is from 18th century France. Anything involving witchcraft dates from the 16th century at the earliest. Card reading is again from the early modern period.
The french have an entire genre of novels based around 16th-18th century France, with some authors including fantastical elements already when it appeared in the 19th century.
The narrow limitation of fantasy to "things that Tolkien liked" and "Hundred Years war reenactment with elves" is silly and stifles the genre.
>>46170800
ALL D&D is closer to Dresden Files than the Odyssey or the Vulgate or pretty much any myth or story
>>46170882
Not the guy you responded but i have similar problems, or at least have problem players who feel that the rise of the gun and the slow death of the sword is inevitable, even when the GM's world building is trying to stop swords becoming obsolete .
>>46170882
I'm talking subgenres of fantasy, not historical periods. Though I mentioned a piece of medieval literature so I really have no idea what you're trying to >imply.
>>46171037
Yeah, I know. Thematically speaking, D&D is more like Urban Fantasy than it is Swords & Sorcery or Mythological fantasy.
>>46171037
It's closer to Discworld than to Dresden.
>>46171310
I'm saying that thematically the fantasy exploration novel already existed in the 16th century and presented a world that was essentially 16th century people, with fantasy often trying to imitate stylistic elements of classic literature while telling new stories about their own heroes.
California is named for a queen of the amazons in a book that was basically fantasy literature of the era. The heroes essentially looked and acted like contemporaries. Fantasy is more than just what exists now in the anglosphere. Most fairy tales as we know them basically date from the 17th-18th centuries with rare exceptions.
>>46166967
Meanwhile in real life, firearms have never managed to totally remove armour from the battlefield. Cuirassiers were in service up to the First World War and the First and Second World Wars saw the re-introduction of personal armour for fighting men on foot. In fact, firearms have led to the reintroduction of body armour as a standard piece of military gear.
>>46167377
Try 20th century.
While they're on display here, French heavy cavalry still wore steel breastplates, albeit under dark canvas covers when in combat in 1914.
>>46171506
The breastplates were purely ceremonial and completely useless against anything except shrapnel, which usually disabled the horses anyway.
>>46168216
Actually German and French units still used breastplates up until 1914.
>>46171520
>Completely ceremonial
Nope, French units wore them into the field in the opening stages of the First World War.
>>46171521
Yes, on paper. Most of the french and german horse cavalry was, by mid 1915, dead or being rotated to other roles.
Also on paper cuirassiers also still used breastplates through the napoleonic war, but you'd have been lucky to see more than a third of them actually wearing the fucking breastplate at Borodino.
>>46171547
Useless against anything but shrapnel and pistol rounds. Also pretty much limited to pioneer units.
>>46171591
The french entered the war with field uniforms that were virtually undistinguishable from their parade uniform. I know they wore them in the field. They still didn't do any good.
>>46171606
>Pioneer units
Wrong, they were used by entrenched infantry, especially machine gunners to protect mostly from shrapnel, but also to provide a degree of protection from small arms fire. Too heavy for pioneer units.
>>46171606
Not on paper. They were worn into combat during the opening stages of the war. And I never said that they lasted all through the war, but they were still being used in 1914. The argument OP made was that 'guns phased out armour in warfare' when in reality they never did.
>>46171652
Here's a view of some captured armour where you can see it from the back; it wasn't attached to the body, more or less, it was just hooked on. A pioneer wearing it while crawling and moving A. would be unable to move quickly due to the weight and B. would have it fall off his torso the first time he hit the ground.
>>46171710
Fixed.
>>46171652
Dude, I was there. It was rare as hell.
>>46171606
Now in the Second World War, personal armour was being worn by pioneer units especially by the Soviets.
Everybody carries a personal shielding device which projects a field with the properties of a non-newtonian fluid when a solid object moving faster than a certain threshold of speed tries to pass through it, meaning you need to get up close and personal if you want to kill somebody. Does dick-all for energy, but if you shoot it with a magic missile both the person wearing the shield and the person who shot the magic missile will explode (equivalent to being at the epicenter of an Enhanced Greater Fireball)
>>46171772
fuck off Dune!
>>46171769
>ayy lmao
>>46171811
How about YOU fuck off?
>>46171506
It wouldn't be incorrect to say that the use of metal armor has continued unbroken to this day, with German Stormtroopers putting metal bits into their uniform in WW1 to storm trenches, modern soldiers wearing plate carriers with metal and modern materials at the same time, and every developed military in between finding a good use for the stuff.
>>46170481
Not really, because a Commissar expects his men to excel above and beyond and give their lives dearly for the Emperor in a courageous display of faith and heroism to inspire others to do the same.
Necron Warriors are literally robots who do exactly, and only, what you tell them to do. Nothing more, nothing less. If you aren't explicit in your commands or make a bad decision, there isn't any way for them to work around what you said or to think of a different alternative, but instead will mindlessly march forward with zero thought to the consequences.
A good example is this: The Commissar demands his squad enter into the sewer tunnels. He doesn't know what's down there, but he knows they need to get to the other side.
The Guardsmen on hand might have inside knowledge of what exactly is down in those sewers, or help him refine his strategy a bit to make a better tactical choice ("We don't want to go down there, it's filled with Genestealers and the other road is relatively open."). If those Guardsmen operated like Warriors, they'd march down in there to their deaths with no thought to the effects of doing so, and take you with them.
Believe it or not, intellect and initiative are greatly valued on the battlefield, as it can change the outcome of an entire battle.
>>46167218
>all fantasy has to be medieval
>guns somehow instantly ruin everything and magic doesn't
God damn you're so fucking stupid.
Most of the shit adventurers do would be canceled out by an organized military force of any tech level. You have so little imagination it pisses me off.
What if firearms are expensive and not widespread?
What if it's cheaper to hire adventurers to clear out the dungeon than strip mining thousands of feet into the earth for some loose change in a goblin's lair.
Maybe the castles are still there asshat, they didn't tear them down the moment the cannon was invented. Also, maybe the castle owner just hires an abjurer to block cannonballs.
Also, in what fucking setting are you playing where enchanted weapons come off an assembly line?
>>46166967
One issue is that it implies to the players that they're a relic. That their skills and abilities won't matter in the future, like the magic of the world is dying. Grim feeling.
>>46171037
>Implying I can't somehow bastardise a perfect synthesis of both
I just need a sprinkle of Moorcock, a dash of Wagner, three pinches of Edgar Rice Burroughs, to season with subtle undertones of Gargantua and Pantagruel, and garnish with the Lusiads.
>>46168373
Ceramic vests have nowhere near the same style, feel, or class as plate.
>>46166967
Because the average fa/tg/uy gets anally devastated the moment 'guns' and 'fantasy' occur in the same sentence.
Especially when these same fa/tg/uys let alchemists whip around bombs.
>>46168329
Nah. I can make make magic common. I can even make it so certain magical and alchemical processes can be automated. What is this "can't" nonsense?
>then it's not medieval/not magic/not fantasy/etc. anymore.
Okay.
I would like to build a setting where enchanted melee weapons, sorcery, monsters and the like exist with magical fantasy versions of modern fire arms and vehicles, and they somehow all have their own place or niche in combat and warfare. Knights with magic lances riding on hippogriffs having dogfights with fighter jets. Groups of wizards struggling to keep a barrier up over a castle under magic-enhanced mortar fire. An entire nation centered on advanced bio technology, built on the back of decades of brutal and inhuman experimentation. But hey, Guyver suits!
I want an insane magic/machine/organic arms race. Sort of like Leviathan but even more kitchen sink.
This thread is interesting to me, but I wish there was less focus on making things realistic and practical and a little less emphasis on historical accuracy. I feel like it limits the ideas somewhat when you try so hard to keep everything so grounded. We build worlds here. The question, I feel, is less "how does this make sense" and more along the lines of "how would you FORCE this to make sense, and what impact would that have on all the other factors that go into building a world around that?"
Any setting with crossbows can just as easily have guns.
>>46168769
>What are the three musketeers
Fruits.
>>46172394
wow great post +1 internets to you shitlord
>>46172428
Yeah I never understood why people think having loud crossbows in your game would change anything significantly.
>>46171484
Modern armor is ugly vests with plastic and ceramic sewn into them.
>>46172527
Swords are now useless is why.
>>46172731
How?
Bows and crossbows don't make swords useless, why do the loud crossbows?
>>46172774
Dunno anon, why are there no swords on the modern battlefield?
>>46172527
But if you have guns next thing you know is the fighter will whip out a gatling gun!
>proceeds to stat out a completely reliable, anachronistically powerful chokuno
>>46172789
Modern battlefields don't use smoothbore muzzle loaded black powder firearms.
>>46172789
It's like you're trying not to understand
>>46172774
Guns are easy to mass-produce and easy to use, making unskilled peasants much more deadly
Guns also usually imply a forward progression of firearms technology. Crossbows didn't really have anywhere to go, while firearms steadily advanced into the present day. This progression made swords and the like increasingly obsolete and don't mesh well with a sword-and-sorcery aesthetic that well if your setting spans centuries.
>>46172836
>muh glorious archers destroyed by hordes of gun armed peasants maymay
The earliest gun focused armies were mercenary forces and professionals. The tercio was not random peasants. The french first six regiments were not random peasants. Condotieri forces were not random peasants.
Powder B and bolt action rifles were invented at the tail end of the 19th century. Meanwhile people used a smattering of matchlocks and wheellocks well into the 17th century (the swedes actually wanted to field wheellock guns in the 1690s but money won out). The flintlock lasted almost 200 years on its own. With tremendous overlap.
There was no great leap, there was a lot of minor tweaks that didn't really go anywhere for the most part. They implied no more advancement than a heavier draw bow does.
>>46172836
Lots of things we take for granted in most fantasy settings had much larger impacts on the IRL tech level than guns.
Additionally their ease of production just means your fantasy kingdoms can go it with epically sized armies more reasonably than one armed with strictly muscle powered weapons.
For fucks sake of we're going to ignore the impact and minutia of every other piece of gear, tech, and development taken for granted in Fantasy settings, why do we have to get full autistic with guns?
>>46172888
Because guns are, to the typical 20th century fantasy writer, symptomatic of the fall, emblematic of the society that led to the world wars and to the highly mechanistic world where raw virile strength is seen as superfluous, even detrimental at times. It's the same mentality that gives us loinclothed bodybuilders as heroes.
>>46172825
And it wasn't the modern battlefield that saw away with swords. They were relegated to very niche roles centuries before then. It's just that modern guns shot the ailing pooch, finally.
If you introduce muskets, then before long you will have modern guns. The technology with naturally develop. It's an inevitability that even the absurdly niche role swords would have, which your fighter would not be involved in, would die.
>>46172888
Here comes the predictable "but muh other technologies" counter-argument. We don't ignore those other aspects by default, but the point is that once you open Pandora's Box, there's no closing it. Short of apocalypse, firearms will progress barring asspull situations.
>>46172916
>before long
It took 400 years to go from Matchlocks and Wheellocks to Bolt Actions. That's the whole existence of the roman empire from Augustus to the fall of the West.
>>46172888
Guns are one of the single most important bits of technology in history, is why. It's like asking why clothing is a big deal.
>>46172916
>>46172925
So why, exactly, did you decide firearms were the "pandora's box" of progress than, say, literally anything else?
>>46172925
There was nothing in the invention of gunpowder by crazed chinese alchemists trying to find the secret of eternal youth that predestined the invention of cordite and nitrocellulose, both of which rely on advanced chemical processes that were only figured out in the mid 19th century. Without which modern guns aren't possible because blackpowder fouls horrible with heavy use.
>>46172939
In the grand look of human history, that is not long. You also ignored how swords were in a niche for centuries before modern arms. They were for boarding actions and other such rare roles, not a mainline weapon for anyone.
Do you even want to tell your knight PC that his skillset and value as a human will be irrelevant in 30 years? Does that fill him with energy and nobility and fun?
>>46172948
Because they do away with the worth of all the classic hero archetypes beyond maybe a rogue.
>>46172964
>they were a niche
Literally everyone of note had a sword. Cavalry used swords and pistols before the lance had a comeback in the west. Swords only became a sign of officer's status in the late 18th century.
>>46172948
Because PCs don't really tend to focus on advancements in irrigation technology. Guns are in-your-face and demand attention. They are easier to quantify, for they are not subtle. It is far easier to handwave other stuff than it is to handwave why firearms haven't changed when they should.
>>46172975
Point already refuted, try again.
>>46172983
>Literally everyone of note had a sword.
For show.
>>46172975
>Cavaliers
>Musketeers
>Corsairs
>not classical hero archetypes
>>46172991
Where? Where are you disproving that your rifle isn't outdoing the archer and the knight, at the least? Wizards depend on the setting, but are certainly going to be far rarer than guns.
>>46172997
They're not.
>>46172994
No, a real sword. The "sword for show" is the 18th century. The small sword. During the era of pike and shot, musketeers were expected to carry a sword in case.
>>46172986
PCs also don't focus on advances in modern chemistry required to go beyond haphazardly put together flintlock pepperboxes.
>>46173016
>in case
So again, the sword was not a mainline weapon. It's only akin to a modern soldier's combat knife.
>>46173007
Read the thread and maybe a book on early firearms.
>>46173016
They sure as hell do if they want to use guns. Fuck, That Guy trying to invent gunpowder or revolvers or such in games is practically a trope.
>>46173027
>Expecting me to buy a book to continue this discussion.
>>46173007
>They're not.
Uh huh
>>46172789
what does that have to do with crossbows?
Secondly there never were alot of swords on the ancient battlefield, the main weapon of choice since time immemorial is the spear, or something like it. Those weapons persisted well into the use of firearms, Pike and Shot was a thing
>>46173045
>Uh huh
Classic fantasy heroes are not your early modern pirates and frumpy frenchmen. That's not what people imagine. They think knights and rangers and wizards. All of which are invalidated by guns to some degree.
>>46173061
Care to explain how?
>>46172975
>gunslinger
>sharpshooter
>minuteman
>dragoon
>sniper
>gun-kata expert
>grenadier
Don't project your own creative failings on others anon.
>>46173061
Lots of people play pathfinder and that has guns.
>>46173090
People who play Pathfinder aren't known for having valuable opinions
>>46173061
>Knights who act like cavaliers
>Cavaliers are literally knights
>Like literally, they were the royalist gentry
>Rangers
That's even less of a classic heroic archetype
>Wizards
>Not academic wizards
>Not alchemists
Right, so what you mean is "archetypes of 50s fantasy" because all I see is Howard and Tolkien with a dash of Ivanhoe
>>46173061
>wizards
>invalidated by guns to some degree
>can fly around the battlefield shooting explosions from the their fingertips
>invalidated by guns to some degree
If your classic fantasy hero is wearing plate armor he post dates guns by quite a bit.
>>46173113
Except of the part in where Tolkien's wizard uses gunpowder.
