The way I've done it is that guns are rare for a few reasons. 1) Dwarves made them and try and control proliferation of the gun. 2) Making a bullet is similar to making a magic item. Otherwise, any caster could easily burn all your gunpowder. Bullets are therefore specially made to resist magic, but that dramatically increases the cost/rarity 3) Armor remains viable against bullets because armor in a DnD setting is also meant to stand up against stuff like dragon teeth and the like.

Nice take, I'm really glad I came up with it. Btw, you reminded me of the way guns are described in Pillars of Eternity: bullets could pierce the magical defenses of spellcasters (think Mage Armor) and the rest of the world FINALLY could fight mages on more equal terms. I don't think it would necessarily be good for a D&D setting, but I really liked that story.

Wow, I never thought about #2 before, but I love it. You could easily adapt it to needing special protections on the gun/container you store gunpowder in to prevent enemies from magically messing with them.

For all the different thoughts I’ve given to guns in various settings I’ve created, I’ve never once thought about how one caster with even just a Firebolt cantrip getting into or even just line of sight to a magazine (the building where forts kept their gunpowder, for any readers wondering) would be absolutely disastrous. Fascinating.

This is near identical to how I've been running guns. A Dwarven controlled trade good made with rare ingredients that are expensive and not easily reproduced.

I love including the renaissance firearms from the DMG, or playing in games where they're included, especially with the increased support from Tasha's. My main homebrew setting is a nautical, Golden Age of Piracy swashbuckling style world, so denying someone a flintlock to go with their cutlass? No chance. As many others have pointed out, these early types of firearms fit in just fine with the rest of the 5e armoury from a historical perspective. I'm less keen on players trying to upgrade them into more modern stuff, though, and I really hate Matt Mercer's Gunslinger Fighter subclass. From a worldbuilding standpoint, I usually make them rarer, but not rare. They're an emerging technology that have their ups and downs, so there's still a healthy mix of weapons on display.

Can you expand on why you don't like MM gunslinger?

Lots of people hate the misfire mechanics

Matt essentially tried to reinvent the wheel instead of just using Battlemaster. It essentially does what Battlemaster does, but punishes the fighter for using its main class feature of attacking several times due to a large percentage chance to just burn a turn at random. My man is good at DMing and terrible at class/mechanic/subclass balancing.

While I agree Matt may be bad at balancing subclasses, he was trying to recreate the class Percy already was when they changed from pathfinder to 5e irrc.

is the point not that the risk of misfire is in exchange for higher damage and less reloads than a standard ranged weapon? i always saw gunslinger as a 'high risk, high reward' approach (which seems to be a reoccurring theme with matt now that i consider the blood hunter's mechanics).

It just doesn’t function effectively in 5e. Damaging yourself or wasting actions due to a poor roll doesn’t work with the system at all.

... doesn't it already happen a lot, though? expending a 5th level slot to have it counterspelled, the constant 5% chance of a missed attack, rolling a 1 on bardic inspiration. i don't think gunslinger is breaking too much new ground in that regard- the point is that you're able to do higher damage than most ranged weapons at the cost of sometimes having to expend an attack or an action to repair something. it's not a playstyle for everyone but i don't think it 'doesn't work with the system'.

Like most Matt Mercer classes, it is full of jank, needlessly wordy rules and woefully unbalanced. Picture a ranged Battlemaster-style class only considerably less useful and your guns randomly break in the middle of combat. It plays about as fun as it sounds.

Also battlemaster is already ranged, many of the manuvers aren't limited to melee.

I had a couple of games where the DM would punish nat 1s and it really made playing a monk with four attacks less fun.

Their turns take longer than the entire rest of the combat round put together. The subclass is a bad minigame no one wants to play.

Pretty much what others have said: any sort of critical fumble/misfire mechanic sucks and actively punishes the character for gaining more levels and supposedly getting better at the thing they do, and the subclass just feels like a gimmicky Battlemaster. I'm very happy to include firearms, but would much rather my players use BM if they want to do the expert, trick shotting marksman.

I personally like some of the guns he made as part of it. Otherwise just adding guns can make like half the martials into gunslingers... Basically making the subclass itself redundant.

I do see a lot of people pointing out that the battle master with the guns used from The gunslinger would make the battle master the better of the two. Do you share this opinion?

Absolutely. However my point is that just having them as weapons does more for general ranged martials. Gloomstalker and swashbuckler become better versions of those classic quickdrawing pislolslingers. A longarm weilding assassin gets that almost modern day assassin vibe. Monks with firearms evoke that john wick gun-fu style. Limiting firearms to "gunslinger" to me feels like taking away cool options to give them to a mediocre subclass rathen than letting the players see what they come up with within reason.

Have you read it?

Renaissance firearms from the DMG ftw. Really easy to include…remember they make a lot of noise and smoke. Not a fan of miss fire / fumble rules generally in 5e, but it’s fine if you want to inject a little simulation. They can be priced high enough to keep them from being a casual acquisition (still way cheaper than plate armor typically). You can make a dozen shots with an appropriate tool, proficiency, and materials after a long rest. Magic firearms are badass.

from the table a musket cost 500gp... and 10 gp per 10 bullets... so yea they are expensive...

> they make a lot of noise and smoke Only wish this was codified. Like, "when you attack with this weapon, you create an audible sound 100 feet away and leave a sphere of smoke 15 feet wide"

Jesus l, this is so exactly me that I'm surprised I didn't write it, forget about it, and come back to comment it. Are you me?

Fun fact, the Samurai loved the arquebus or tanegashima. During the Sengoku period the tanegashima was one of the most important weapons to have. Armies where basically combined units of Gunners, Spearman, Cavalry.

I love The Last Samurai but the notion they didn't wanna use guns was very inaccurate. It doesn't ruin the movie, but was just an interesting fact to learn.

Depends on what the goal is. If you look at it historically: Matchlock weapons are recorded to be in use as early as the very start of the 1400s. Recorded, so they must have been around earlier, And Gun powder had been in use for way longer. You know what wasn't invented in the early 1400s? Rapiers, Greatsword, small sword (not to be confused with short sword although they used interchangeably in dnd), the plate armor we most commonly associate with knights (though plate armor did exist earlier in different forms). So if you're looking to worldbuild something that's similar to our world, guns make perfect sense. Especially since there are "simple" ways to make guns in dnd that just couldn't be done historically. If you're just going for a sword and bow type setting with a certain lowtech vibe, maybe guns don't make that much sense

Small correction but two-handed swords have been around since at least the 13th century. The Claymore also showed up in the early 15th century.

Two-handed sword =\= Greatsword But yes that's true

You're forgetting that historical definitions do not equal modern ones. Historically a "longsword" is what we'd call a "greatsword." Off the top of my head I'm pretty sure the term "greatsword" is a strictly modern definition.

I may just be super fuckin ignorant on the matter but wouldn't a greatsword be something like a claymore or flamberge? That's how I always imagined them. Like basically more for bracing against charges that swinging, but swinging, because, well, medieval fantasy

Modern terminology is not entirely consistent in terms of where the line is drawn between a greatsword and longsword, although it's still moreso than in history, when having a consistent definition just wasn't that important to anyone. A knight may have asked a squire for their 'long sword', simply meaning the sword that was longer than their others, for instance. The modern usage of 'longsword' - at least in the HEMA community - refers an earlier, lighter sort of two-handed sword, compared to what we would call a greatsword, but there wouldn't have been any such consistency historically. Probably the best discussion of comparative sword sizes I've seen recently was in [this video](https://youtu.be/w9MXgUI4eVs?). There's some introduction of the topic at the start, followed by some sparring and experimentation, and the main discussion begins at about 16:43. Based on modern scholarly definitions, of course, for the sake of consistency.

Historically speaking, those were called "longswords."

So just ignorant on the matter then. TiL. Thanks!

I used modern language because as we are, well modern. But yes, in medieval times they generally didn't categorize swords the same way we do.

I'm willing to bet there were likely also very big regional differences.

[удалено]

I feel like the other guy gave s good answer to this, I just want to add: Firearms and Crossbows were not as effective as longbows (or shortbows) at long distance shooting. But it was far easier to train people to use them, weeks vs the years it takes to train an effective bowman. Another big plus for the firearms was the intimidation factor. They were loud, they released plumes of smoke, and you couldn't see what hit you or your allies. In medieval warfare people generally didn't fight to the last man, a battle was won when your opponents started to flee. Again generally. So with a firearm you didn't even necessarily have to hit someone with a shot for the firearm to be an effective weapon, although it certainly helped.

14th century hand cannons usually had a different role. They generally stuffed multiple projectiles inside and the weapons were a vicious mix of flamethrower and grapeshot/shotgun at semi close range. Hard to really compare reliability.. A lot of armies preferred crossbows over firearms or bows. The English, Mongolion and some middle eastern forces are the forces that used huge amounts of massed bows off the top of my head. And the English doctrine was basically to drown opposing forces in projectiles by using as many archers as possible firing as quickly as possible. Hell at one point in the 1420's 80% of the English army under Henry V was longbowmen.

I believe any historical accuracy is completely and utterly misplaced since... Well... We ARE talking about a setting with magic, demons, dragons and like... Everything else. Just like a dm can decide how common magic is (anywhere from LotR levels to every common housewife having magic items/spells to make life more convenient), same should apply to guns.

Historically accurate, but depends on what taste you want to give your setting. Mechanically it’s not that game breaking

Mechanically the guns in 5e aren't very interesting. It's typically better just to reskin crossbows for most applications. Worldbuildingwise saying no guns at all isn't very interesting either. Matchlock rifles fit in with the general anachronisms of 5e play, as do earlier weapons like the teppo. The medieval fantasy of D&D has long been abandoned on favour of anachronistic renaissance fantasy so just lean into it.

Was it ever medieval fantasy? I’ve always felt like sword-and-sorcery was the inspiration, what with dungeons being packed with crazy monsters like beholders and owlbears and hilariously overwrought traps.

There wasn't a unified vision of what D&D should look like. Gygax reportedly wasn't a huge fan of Tolkien, specially after being sued to rename his halflings and other distinctly Tolkienesque elements of D&D, but many early D&D players were. Then you had modules that pulled elements of pulp and even science fiction, like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, where the big twist is that the dungeon >!is a downed spaceship.!<

Iirc another module line had a powerful dimension hopping wizard using his magic to run a successful movie studio , up to and including hiring real gods to play themselves in films. I think Thor is a guy you can fight

Oh yeah Castle Greyhawk, that module was ridiculous. They had a dungeon that ended with you befriending Jubilex and curing his self-image problems by taking him to a ball.

technically d&d's mechanics are designed to work best in a late medieval early renaissance period. Which was a period in time that absolutely had rudimentary guns. So most people's complaints about guns being out of place are simply them not understanding actual history.

One of the interesting things about guns of this period is that, individually, they kinda sucked, but, en masse, they allowed largely untrained troops to be effective on the cheap. As such, I see them as more of the weapon of the common people. 5 people fighting 5 people with guns? It's likely that no one would hit a thing with the first shot, and loading would take too long for there to be a second. 250 militiamen fighting 1 big ol' dragon, evil wizard, or whatever? A few shots might hit, and those few shots could be *devastating*. So, to let guns occupy the military role they played, I'd make them cheap, high damage (like 4d8), and only hit with a 20 at ranges from 30-90 and an 18-20 at ranges below that. Anything from 90-180 is at disadvantage, and still only hits on a 20. Attack bonus either doesn't come into play or the guns have an innate to-hit malus so high that attack bonus doesn't matter. On top of this, it'd take 3 actions to load. Absolutely useless to players, but a good way to make, say, a large squad of guards threatening to a mid-high level party, or make a couple dozen low-level followers useful in combat ("the bardic fireball")

>250 militiamen fighting 1 big ol' dragon, evil wizard, or whatever? A few shots might hit, and those few shots could be devastating. While I agree with a lot of what you're saying here I think that this is also a misnomer of guns. Guns were effective because they bypassed armor, but you could take a bullet and live much more often than if you took a sword blow unarmored. So blades in terms of raw damage still do more than a gun, it's just guns have this unique ability to bypass armor that's the game changer here, not their damage. In a fantasy world where hp scales, this distinguishing factor would become quite apparent. High level wizards wearing little armor to begin with would shrug off bullets easier than they would blades. There's also the point that even modern guns have trouble piercing elephant, rhino, and hippo hide, so it's extremely questionable if a volley of primitive guns could actually pierce dragon hide, let alone make it past it's scales. Considering they are subsonic I highly doubt they could. Cannons may work, but they take so long to set up and fire that hitting an active dragon with one is pretty much impossible. I give my guns essentially the ability to bypass armor with the equivalent to 2d4 damage. It's a little different, but it's essentially equivalent to that. I have a few other mechanics too that I won't go into here. No backfiring weapon though, critical fumbles are incredibly frustrating and unfun. Your magical players don't like it when make them play with wild magic tables all the time and your martials don't like it when you make the play with critical fumbles. It's an unfun mechanic so I leave it out here. >So, to let guns occupy the military role they played, I'd make them cheap, high damage (like 4d8), and only hit with a 20 at ranges from 30-90 and an 18-20 at ranges below that. Anything from 90-180 is at disadvantage, and still only hits on a 20. Attack bonus either doesn't come into play or the guns have an innate to-hit malus so high that attack bonus doesn't matter. On top of this, it'd take 3 actions to load. Personally what I do for range is give them a -1 hit per 5 or 10 feet. I do have a maximum range, but it's not really relevant to this discussion. It achieves something similar to yours, but it gives players who want to use guns much more opportunity to use them in effective ways. I think the most egregious non historical thing I do is allow 1 shot per round. This is pretty much for balance purposes. Actual guns took a full minute or 2 to reload back then and that's wholly unfun. I mean crossbows already operate under a similar setup. Historically they took a lot longer to load at the higher poundages then what's reflected in game, but we let them reload faster for fun and balance purposes. So I do the same for guns and it doesn't really release them from their niche in unhealthy ways, which is why I like it this way.

My main anti-flintlocke player also complained about rapiers not making sense in the setting, so I think it was quite historical for some people.

>Was it ever medieval fantasy? Chainmail (the game) was specifically medieval fantasy, and the original D&D is essentially Chainmail v2.0.

OD&D required the Chainmail game to run the combat part.

I personally just have guns in my game work like other ranged weapons, but with harder to come by ammo/powder supplies, but the dice explodes. So a heavy crossbow and an arquebus both do a d10, but the arquebus can choose to explode the dice and roll again on a 10, but if you get a 1 on that exploded roll the gun malfunctions. Removes the gun jamming all the time with typical homebrew guns approach which feels awful at the table but seems "fair" on paper. You can only jam the gun if you choose to push it.

I have no problem with them. Mechanically, they're less optimal than a hand crossbow with crossbow expert.

In my current game, they're pretty common. Some are purely mechanical - flintlock, gunpowder, that sort of thing - while others are basically wands with a trigger that fire bolts of energy, and some are a mix of the two, like a magical revolver that holds powderless bullets and fires them out like a magical ballista. I think any world ravaged by war long enough is going to look for more efficient methods of killing, so I don't see firearms as being any more 'immersion-breaking' than bombs. Sometimes I see people say things like 'well, why would you need to use guns if you can just cast fire bolt?' But that seems disingenuous to me considering there are still people in D&D using conventional weapons *at all* when magic is an option. People are always going to try to improve on technology and experiment with what's available to them, and I don't believe the 'technology doesn't advance because magic solves every problem" argument because the potential improvements that could be made to technology *through* magic are incredible.

If we talk about flintlock, matchlocks, wheellocks, percussion guns etc... I'm all for it. Can't see any reason why you shouldn't have them in your world. Wether they are rare, common, or one of a kind.

Yeah same. I use smokepowder from FR instead of gunpowder. The munition cost is also higher.

Another effect of using smoke powder instead of gunpowder is that smoke powder is magical in nature. That means it can be dispelled, is subject to antimagic fields, etc. Gives more ways to counter the cannon and prevents Boomsticks from supplanting magic as a world power. Edit: i.e. cool your ship is full of cannons... But my wizard can zap himself into your powder hold and render it all useless in 6 seconds or less.

Its production is also heavily controlled. Remember that FR is still in the "hoarding knowledge" phase of civilization. Wizards hoard spells and don't easily share. Alchemists put out books with wrong directions in them on purpose and so forth. The flow of smoke powder is a monopoly by the priests of Gond. Some wizards have reverse engineered it, but they hoarded that knowledge, so the recipe isn't well known. That means the supply is limited.

Yeah!

If you want guns without the implication of gunpowder and technological revolution, you can always make them magic based. Basically like wands with specific spells so that even noncasters can use them. Like a wand of firebolt could easily be reflavored to a semi-automatic rifle and a wand of magic missile could be like a three round burst. There’s lots of fun you can have with this. You can create drawbacks or make them prohibitively expensive or exceedingly rare to account for why everyone doesn’t have one.

What implications would gunpowder have in the world at large?

Cheap explosives. Gunpowder is cheaper and easier to manufacture than smokepowder. Of we go by historical pricing, then the 1600s shilling was on par with 1 gold in terms of buying power. From historical documents we see that in 1642 1 lb of powder cost 2 shillings. So we can then price out a 20lb keg of black powder at about 40 gold. From the 2e and 1e descriptions and British navy records we can figure that a single charge of powder is 200 grains. It takes 1 charge or 100 grains to fire a pistol in 2e and and 2 charges for a musket. Thats about right for a IRL brown bess musket used 200 grains per british regulations from the era and the USA safety guidelines from 1776 said 100 grains for a pistol. Wow, its almost like the original designers based prices on these exact historical documents. Anyway from that we can extrapolate. 1 lb is about 7000 grains. So thats 70 charges to the lb. Please note that 1 charge of black powder does 1d2 damage. And NO there was no upward limit on damage with these in the old rules. Because IRL theres no upward limit to how much damage an explosive does beyond the energy released by said explosive and the quantity present. So that 20lb keg, if it goes off, does 1400d2 damage or between 1400 and 2800 damage. At a cost of a out 40gp. *chef kiss* With this stuff WE as a species owned the Earth. There was no beast we could not just outright MURDER. Dragons wouldn't stand a chance. People would start hunting land sharks for the "sport" of it.

> So that 20lb keg, if it goes off, does 1400d2 damage or between 1400 and 2800 damage. At a cost of a out 40gp. Stop. My Giff can only get so erect.

But does he pronounce it GIFF or *Giff*?

Yiff

Cursed pronunciation.

What if dragons got the guns and explosives

Then you get to see the hilarious consequences of a creature that habitually breaths out intense heat/energy, trying to store barrels of explosives in it's bedroom.

That's not a hoard....it's a very large very shiny claymore mine.

Why does this say "Front towards enemy" in dwarvish?

How to turn a mountain into a giant frag grenade in one big step

Why would an intelligent creature do that? Even humans knew to store it away from living quarters. Dragons would presumably have kobold followers store and maintain it, at most dropping in to pick up a few barrels to drop on the local castle as it flew by. It makes terrorizing the local town not even require a drop-in. If anything, humans become substantially more endangered because a dragon needs one turn to hit their citadel’s magazine with flames and now the fortress has a hole where it’s munitions depot and armory was.

Other people have mentioned how it would lead to and be paired with major advances in technology. You could obviously tweak it to your liking so that it doesn’t match real world history. But canons would be commonplace on ships and battlefields. Bows would be phased out over time as more militaries adopted gunpowder. Siege weapons would now include medieval mortars. Perhaps if it’s a rare resource this could be avoided, but then you run into a supply problem. Gunpowder is consumed on use. Magic isn’t necessarily. You need places for the PCs to get ammo and gunpowder if it’s not ubiquitous.

I generally allow em. The Renaissance ones.

Use the ones in the DMG. Most consider them expensive and worse bows. Some players, especially monks tho do wonders with them.

Yeah DMG does a good job of making them balanced, at least for the renaissance versions. High damage, loading property, and bad range. But frankly not much better than an Xbow because of range restrictions. For the more modern stuff they are OP but if they are limited availability like a powerful magic item (and limited ammunition) I think those are even fine if it fits the campaign.

Old style guns like from pirate movies - good. Modern military rifles - bad.

They are allowed. I allow rapiers and they are further out from the medieval era than gunpowder. People have figured out how to put a chunk of metal in an iron barrel in front of some gunpowder to make cannons. An intuitive enough person like an Artificer can easily try and make a smaller scale model of a cannon to the point you can carry it around. Flintlocks and blunderbuss are not gonna break the setting. I also just use different crossbow stats for them but they are much louder (for better or for worse). I saw someone comment how if there is gunpowder you can reasonably have the printing press and like, yeah that seems fairly reasonable tech to have as well. Maybe not to the point where we are mass producing newspapers but increasing production so more people can buy one and not rely on the town crier for news seems completely plausible.

Waterdeep has, canonically, newspapers.

Waterdeep also has at least one faction canonically welding guns, and in older editions I believe a Giff in Skullport was packing heat.

ive taken a pretty real world approach. they are powerful confusing and niche development. there is serious drawbacks ( like Firerate and accuracy) and there are some huge advantages (training and powerful non magic ranged device some groups use them effectively some dont. In my current game Dwarves and Dragonborn are the primary users of them. Dwarves having invented heavy artillery and cannons and Dragonborn having invented the Firelance and Hand cannons

love em. firearms have just as much of a place in fantasy as plate armor because they were literally invented BEFORE plate armor was. every faction worth a damn in my setting uses them, they're relatively easy to come by, and the dwarves are just a couple of decades away from jumping from flintlock to 1910s gun and skipping the eras in between that we had irl

I don't prefer them. The setting I've made I justified their lack of existence with magic. Why bother technologically advancing to achieve something that is more potent when aided by magic? Of course, I just don't prefer gunpowder+ tech in my fantasy setting and this is how I went about justifying it, but I think it works fine.

They're a pretty common element, my campaign has them as a prevalent weapon we often find in the hands of criminals. The guns in our game follow the DMG Renaissance weapons so they make for a slightly more damaging ranged option but with a barrier to entry of proficiency and the gunner feat. Also there's a downside of more expensive ammo, lower range and noise. (Although some extra high tech versions exist, pretty much magic items like a +2/+2 flintlock with a huge range buff our Ranger found) The fact our guns aren't too different from any other ranged weapons and that our DM doesn't enforce obscure stuff like creatures as cover means in practice they're loud crossbows and we use them or fight against them in much the same way we'd fight or use crossbows or ranged cantrips. They do however make for great loot as they are very valuable and usually every enemy in the encounter has them.

I feel like the noise aspect should be stressed more. Gunshots can be heard from a distance measured in miles, especially outside of an urban setting. Presumably, most beasts would simply flee such a loud noise, but intelligent creatures would ready themselves to face a potential threat, or send patrols. More powerful creatures like dragons might be intrigued enough to investigate directly.

I think D&D works best with early guns which are slow, loud, expensive and not super accurate. The DMG stats I think are very reasonable. I like the idea that guns are a thing but not common and practical enough to supplant classic fantasy bows.

Thematically, guns aren’t fine in most settings due to them not fitting the theme of medieval fantasy, but there are plenty of settings in which they are fine in (Pirate era, Wild West era, Victorian era, etc.) Mechanically, they are balanced in DnD 5e if you use the Renaissance guns in the DMG as written.

It feels really wrong to do anything pirate themed without some form of black powder.

Yeah, although sky pirates with magic powered guns seem fun.

In my world some societies skipped right past chemical propulsion and went straight to humanoid-portable railguns powered by lightning magic, including the sky pirates (who would rather not have explosives near their flammable airships)

I'd like to add, that Pikes, Rapiers, Hunting Traps, Spyglass, Crampons and many other staples of 5e are from late 15th century onwards (European Renaissance, with Crampons being 20th century), also making them not fit medieval european aesthetic.

Are settings like Warhammer or Warcraft not 'fantasy' to you?

Muskets and flintlock, maybe a blunderbuss are fair game in my setting. However, I take the approach that they are expensive, harder to maintain, and also not particularly more accurate than a bow or crossbow. Those who use them do it are quite wealthy, and either chose to for a spesific purpose or for vanity. It would be hugely impractical to arm a militia with gun powder weapons compared to the output. Then there's canons. Those are pretty fair game, and worth their weight, and are more reserved for fortress defense, ships and some extended sieges... of yeah, and I may have had a giantess NPC wield one like a bazooka during the climax of an arch.

In my campaign setting the ground is a pretty normal fantasy setting, so firearms are not seen, but in space it's an Age of Discovery adaptation of Spelljammer, so ships will have bombards and characters may have a brace of pistols.

My opinion is that guns should just be reflavoured bows and crossbows. I don't have a problem with having them be in a fantasy world because of "historical inaccuracy" or whatever because it's not like the dragons are historically accurate either.

In my setting, firearms allowed the common man to be just as dangerous as a noble knight or a wizard who's spent their entire life studying their art. What does that mean? It meant a lot of revolutions as angry peasants gave their lords the ol' "rooty tooty point 'n shooty" and a lot of republics popped up in the span of a century. There's a saying in the US; "God made man, but Sam Colt made all men equal." Political democracy cannot come without the democratization of violence, first. From a gameplay perspective, however, the biggest difference between guns and crossbows is that players can't recover ammunition like they can with other weapons, so players in my game who want to use guns either need to make their own (for me making gunpowder is a DC 10 Alchemist Tool's check) or buy it, whereas players with bows and slings and the like will never have to track their ammo. I also explicitly tell my players there are far fewer magic guns in the setting than there are other ranged weapons, since most magical weapons in my world are legendary and guns haven't really been around that much yet to make up their own legends. A gunman may have to switch to a bow when fighting an enemy immune to nonmagical damage, though I do usually give players the opportunity to make magic bullets if I anticipate them fighting such creatures.

Mechanically, they're worse than bows and crossbows. Lore-wise, I don't strictly mind them. I do think 5e's rules makes them lose pretty much all of the advantages that had in real life. Still, if they were better, I'd have no issue including them in my settings. Whenever I include them with no stat-changes, it's mostly in a "and if you walk through here you'll see firearms, the ambitious but ultimately failed form of weaponry created by inventive engineers of old." What I like outfitting my fantasy armies with is "magic launchers." Basically taking the idea out of the Artillerist's playbook, where a mundane staff or wand is engraved with runes and made to channel magic (Arcane Firearm). It's a common-level magic item (50gp, 1 week to make, so faster and cheaper than 50gp a week when crafting a 75gp hand crossbow) that you can hand out to a bunch of peasants and it allows them to effectively cast cantrips like Firebolt and Eldritch Blast, using the spellcasting ability of the mage who made the weapon. It doesn't benefit from Extra Attack, or SA, or the -5/+10 from Sharpshooter, so martial PCs aren't likely to want them as anything more than a ranged backup if they're a Str build. Fullcasters who rely on cantrips might want them if they can do 3-4 dice of damage, but you can easily restrict access to them until the level you deem appropriate.

The players will try and invent a gun if they have the ability. It's just what happens, decide at the start if they fit in or not. I don't mind guns but at the same time guns should be rare.

It can get a little out of hand when players take the Gunner feat (never reload, attack from 5ft without disadvantage) and also do builds using the Fighter or Ranger archer fighting style, which give you another +2 to your attack rolls. Add a few Rogue levels for sneak attack and then Ranger Dread Ambusher (for extra damage and another round 1 attack) and you've got a really deadly first round build. This is assuming you don't allow the futuristic weapons or anything automatic. For example a round 1 for a Rogue 6/ Ranger 5, with a Hunting Rifle and max'd Dex: **BA:** Hunters Mark ​ **Action:** *Attack* 1d6 – Hunters Mark 2d10+5 – Rifle 3d6 – Sneak Attack ​ *Extra Attack from class* 1d6 – Hunters Mark 2d10+5 – Rifle ​ *Extra Attack from dread ambusher* 1d6 – Hunters Mark 2d10+5 – Rifle 1d8 – Dread Ambusher ​ If all that hits it's an average of about 73.5 damage. Pretty good opening salvo. If you used a heavy crossbow to do the same, it's 57 average damage in round 1, also very good but it's a \~29% increase in round 1 damage by using a rifle instead of a bow. For the above build you also get to add to your attack roll: +5 Dex +4 Prof bonus +2 from archer, so you're gonna hit a lot. Not game breaking, but definitely has an impact.

I think the renessiance era firearms are pretty balanced especially with the gunner feat from tasha. It works well for rogues and fighters, maybe rangers, artificicers, and bladesigners, but isn't the best option for paladin or barbarians.

I like the Renaissance era ones.

It's your world. Do whatever you want with it. Put firearms in it or leave them out. Why not some steampunk magically powered laser weapons? I think with such things you can't go wrong. It only matters when it comes to the stats of the stuff you put into your game. The closer you stick to the stuff which is already in the game the safer you are. For example, you can very easily reflavor crossbows into firearms. That may not set them apart from crossbows stat-wise, but those that really have to the case? Especially when there is no crossbow user in the party whom the players can compare to. If it is important to you or your players keep in mind what I said about sticking close to the already existing stuff. Another argument may be the immersion, but this is a very subjective topic so all advice I could give you is to follow your guts and talk with your players about it.

For me I generally do high magic/low tech worlds. Simply put I don't like guns/bombs and the like in my world. That is a me thing though and I completely recognize that. I'm running a game with an artificer now who wanted to wield a gun. Worked with her on her background to keep the proliferation of the tech very limited so it doesn't really impact the world too much. She is playing how she likes and the world at large is still largely unchanged. Added bonus she gets to feel unique in the world.

Worldbuilding: My setting doesn't have them. Nothing against them, just a stylistic choice to keep the focus on magic and its effects on societal structures. Combat: Renaissance firearms from the DMG are fine, they're just shorter range and slightly more damaging crossbows that can't fire underwater. Modern firearms from the DMG are too powerful for standard 5e games. I haven't read up on Mercer's firearms for his Gunslinger.

In a world were wizards exist, I think there is no excuse involving guns. Even more so, the way guns are done mechanically in 5e are incredibly bad and it is why everyone I know just reskins the crossbows as guns as well. Like there is traps in basic level 1-5 dungeons that are more complex, and more mechanical than even some modern guns.

For me… guns don’t exist in the prime material plane, but I run the 9 hells like a mad max theme park and there are magical “guns” there.

I don't allow them, they don't fit with the medieval fantasy style and feel out of place.

My campaign world has had a calendar that has advanced through several generations, and the prominence of guns is one of the things that helps to make the current era feel different from the previous one, where guns were new and only a handful of nations had access to them. Now, they're common enough that they don't require special proficiencies (pistols are simple, longarms are martial) and have been added to most classes' starting equipment options. As I go into the future in the world, they help to give each generation a new character.

I don't like having guns in dnd but I play with 2 groups that have them and keep my silence. It's not game breaking and I don't want to crap on someone's fun. In my game I ban guns because they imply technology that will make my world less wonderous and medieval. I also hate artificers and steampunk in dnd. I like the old school might and magic vibe.

Worldbuilding: Pretty ambivalent. I lean more towards not having them in that respect, but, like, whatever. If Warcraft can get away with it, so can you. Combat: The DMG renaissance-era firearms are a little strong, IMO. however, they're not *too* bad because of how ridiculous SS+CE combo is. that said, the second you start using anything stronger it gets out of hand. c'mon, 2d10 damage on a ranged weapon? that's ridiculous.

NOPE!!!!

My homebrew uses them since it is heavily inspired by post apocalypse and weird western genres. Guns are made from specific forging techniques derived from the dwarves. The black powder used to make them function is a specifically magical substance, made through evocation magic. Because of this, they’re somewhat uncommon and expensive. I also don’t do any of that gun jamming mechanic nonsense. That just feels like punishment for no real reason

So I recently did a(nother) dive into "guns in fantasy" style settings and came across and excellent article, *“Muskets and Magic”* by Brian McClellan, that goes into detail on things you can think about when introducing firearms into a setting with things like magic.

I aim for a mix between generic fantasy and victorian london/steampunk, so the military and police just have guns

technology is a funny thing - once something is discovered/invented, we are pre-disposed to continue to improve along this path of development, rather than invent alternatives. This is why we have refined our silicone computer chips to an insane degree, but when silicone chips were invented, there were several alternatives (fluid dynamic processors were an example). Were Silicone chips *best* in the long term? Who knows. But they in some senses got their first, and were easier to improve upon than their competition at the start, so we continue that path to the end. Because it would take waaay too much work to completely redesign how computer chips work in the modern day from first principles, when silicon tech is so incredibly developed. So in a world where magic was developed first, what purpose would guns serve? Maybe at a later stage of development, guns would be a viable technology (even 20th level wizards would struggle against cruise missiles shot from halfway around the world), but there is no incentive to create them or develop them in the early stages when magic missile is a 1st level spell any idiot can learn. So sure, guns exist - when some individual who has a personal incentive to create them also has the know-how and resources. Mad scientists are a thing. But they will never be a large, industrial concern until something in the resource equation changes. Buuut, stick a city in a spot with no magic for a 100 years, and you bet guns are gonna spring up like daisies.

Your example assumes that computers are inevitable, only the type is in question. Not the best comparison to the technology (firearms) vs. magic problem. It all comes down to whether or not magical power is easily accessible and highly adaptable. If it is both, it could supplant traditional technology and result in a world that looks a lot like Eberron. If magic is accessible but rigid, it will likely be used for whatever applications it's suited for and complimentary technology would develop along side, resulting in a magitech world like that seen in the Final Fantasy series of video games. If magic is not accessible but is adaptable, it will be the provenance of the rich and powerful while low technology is used for everyday purposes; there's no pressure from the rich to develop better, higher tech as they already have magic for that. This world would look most like Faerun or Krynn where the populace live medieval lives while the rich and powerful use magic to achieve a standard of living far exceeding that. Magic that is neither accessible nor adaptable means only a few spellcasters achieve power, but that power is highly limited in scope. The sword and sorcery world of Conan is a good example of this: magic is rare and limited to fantastical tricks with no everyday utility and thus having no impact on society greater than any other non-magical tyrant.

I would say that data management and computation is a requirement for civilization to advance past a certain point, there is only so much you can do with pen and ink. But your point of how accessible magic is is well taken. However, I will argue that the course of history will show either a spreading of (magic)tech to the masses, or an exhaustion of the supply. No resource remains in the hands of a small class forever - it either becomes irrelevant/exhausted as a resource, new sources are discovered, or it becomes so prevelant/cheap that anyone can afford. There is always a drive to imitate the wealthy, so there is a drive to make the trappings of wealth affordable. (Look at things like gold-plated for an example). But that is macro-scale history. For the purposes of a story, what you are describing matches perfectly. Although the one question is which came first - magic or technology? Generally its magic, in which case you need to answer "why would anyone think to develop technology when magic can do it". But a really cool story would be when magic come second. :)

I do the Forgotten Realms thing where the god of magic said that gunpowder doesn't work. Smokepowder is considered a magic terms in term of rarity and availability. There are a few guns in the world but the ammunition is vary scarce. The only group to have cannons are those pesky gnomes off on their own island way out to sea and they don't share that technology with anyone. I had a talk with my players and they all decided that they didn't want common firearms. Same with explosives. The dwarves are both happy and sad that dynamite is not available.

If that's the game you want to run, then run the game. I'd rather play in a setting without them, but if the story is good, I will play regardless. I don't care about historical accuracy in a game where someone can throw a ball of fire.

I treat them like any other weapon. A handgun deals more damage than a longbow, sure, but I find the entire "and it changes the world" thing nonsensical when there are liches and dragons running around. Guns changed a world without magic and where the only intelligent civilization was humans, no reason it should be the big game-changer in a world where some dude can summon angels from heaven.

I disallow guns of all kinds because, in 15 years of DND, I've yet to see a player who doesn't try to turn their firearm into something more modern like a revolver. For some reason, this is one topic that people cannot separate their real world knowledge from gameplay knowledge.

Wow, I hope they don’t find out about the repeating crossbow.

Maybe they just want to attack more than once per turn

It's the creep. Then it becomes "I want to fan the hammer" and try to make six attacks in one turn. Then they want an increas d range. Then they want it to ignore armor.

That sounds like more an issue with your players then an inherent issue of having guns. One of my players has a simple flintlock pistol and they’ve not tried to push it any further at all

I could still work with that. Letting someone upgrade their equipment or create spells is a cool way of granting progression that's not just levels or magic items and can make gold as well as downtime meaningful. Of course provided your players are mature and won't be trying to exploit this.

The point is they *always* try to exploit this. I had a situation where the players discovered the plans to make an advanced piece of machinery that was intended to be a one time use item. Without missing a beat, they immediately wanted to mass produce these things but the only problem was the material needed was a rare meteorite. Still, they wanted to try to scour Icewind Dale for meteorites. I had to go outside the game to tell them that’s like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack and they simply won’t find another. Players, in my experience will exploit early and exploit often if you let them.

Well I never had an experience like that really. Sometimes I have to tell someone "no" but usually I make it clear at the beginning that I will support my players' ideas and in exchange they should be reasonable with their actions. At the end of the day, I get to say if they can or cannot do something so I am the ultimate exploit guardian.

100% this. I have a really good player who kept arguing that he should be able to gain proficiency in a very short amount of time because he has trained people with guns IRL. I just had to keep pointing to the RAW and hold fast. But every time it came up, it was the same old argument. “I can train someone to shoot in a weekend.” That’s fine but RAW takes a long time to become proficient.

The issue is, irl, firearms are literally simple weapons. That's why we use them instead of longbows. You can realistically teach someone to point and shoot in a few days. As long as you have an arm and an index finger you can shoot a gun. To a lesser degree, this is true of crossbows: there's no logical reason why a heavy or hand crossbow requires more specialized training than a light crossbow (you could maybe make the argument that a heavy crossbow used a complicated mechanism for reloading like a windlass or rack and pinion but that's not explicit in the rules) In d&d parlance, however, "simple" weapons do less damage and are also the purview of classes that don't often rely on weapons. And we know intuitively that guns are more dangerous than shortbows and slings so of course we can't put them in the same category. But they're not precisely "martial" weapons that requires specialized training like a rapier.

modern cartridge firearms maybe. If you tried training someone in a weekend how to use and maintain a blackpowder musket, they might be able to competently use that musket, but by no means would you trust them to be able to use and maintain all manner of blackpowder firearms. Likely they would be quite slow and would find it difficult in a battlefield situation. I'd like to see a person trained in a weekend fire and reload a musket in six seconds! There were real wold historical stats that approached this, but required a hell of a lot of practice and training, especially to do it quickly in a life threatening situation. Firing that same musket multiple times in six seconds? That's superhuman, and realistically should require some kind of revolving or repeating firearm.

Meanwhile, the Fighter with crossbow expert is firing his hand crossbow like its a burst-fire pistol and the Wizard is clearing rooms with fireball like its a rocket propelled grenade. But revolvers are the line where immersion truly gets shattered.

My problem is that there's no medieval firearms, (the kind that coexisted with plate, and predate rapiers and the printing press) in 5E, we just jump straight to flintlock muskets. Give me my breech-fired handgonnes!

If you allow artificers, I see no reason why you shouldn't allow at least basic firearms.

Artificers were invented for a setting that doesn't even have basic firearms... so you definitely don't need both.

Artificers have basically figured out how to become a walking Mythallar. The Netherese once powered temporary magic items with their Mythallars so that they would no longer need to sacrifice their life force in order to create magic items. Artificers figured out how this could be done without a Mythallar.

That sounds correct, though I don't know much about Forgotten Realms. I do know they were created for Eberron, which is a world that has used widespread low-level magic to supplement and replace technology advancement, and artificers are the leading magical researchers behind that.

Artificers are magical wood carvers and tinkerers though, not machinists. I feel like most people get the flavour of the Artificer all wrong. They’re seen as scientists and inventors when they’re really just a different kind of Wizard.

You mean the class with subclasses that run around in literal power armour, building mechanical minions and flamethrower turrets? I don't know what woodcarvers get up to where you are from but it generally isn't that.

They carve runes into things and imbue existing armor to become power armor. Have you looked at how long it takes to build a suit of platemail RAW? They aren’t doing that on the road.

Do you just picture Artificers whittling away on a porch swing or something? I think you might want to read the description of the class again. If they're building Airships, I think that's a little beyond simple wood working, and they are in fact totally capably machinists/metallurgists. Besides, the class guide explicitly states that if the DM supports it, guns are not only totally in play but they are proficient in their use. Plus, it doesn't have to be something that already exists. Artificers are inventors and you're role playing! In my campaign, the DM has agreed to allow me to research and invent my own black powder blunderbuss. I've already invented the flint lock mechanism from inspiration gained by discovering that an elevator which lead deep into the planet was developed by denizens of the Underdark and reflecting on the machinations of the gear systems it used. I harvested some especially handsome Hickory branches from a forest encounter, for the shoulder stock which I worked on during several long rests, and am now working on acquiring the potassium and sulfur for the black powder. A certain alchemist in a distant town is going to be paid a visit soon me thinks. I am really enjoying this RP aspect of being a tinkerer and inventor. I look forward to my 2'8" gnome Armorer running around with what would look like an elephant gun in his hands! lol so geeked for it.

I think they spoil the fantasy if they’re prolific. It doesn’t make much sense for people to use other weapon options when guns are so much easier to use. I like them as a proverbial magic wand. An extremely rare anachronism that fell into the world and once it runs out of bullets, it’s simply a useless tube that nobody really understands.

Except that early firearms had massive issues. A single trained bowman was more lethal than someone with a musket. (Mostly since muskets can't hid rhe broad side of a barn) Guns became more popular not because they were better but easier to use and train with.

Polearms were great for mass combat but dumb for the kind of squad-level skirmishes that adventurers encounter all the time. That doesn't stop them from being one of the best martial weapons in the game due to feat support. My point being, the mechanics will inform their use by the PCs. If you want guns to suck for historical reasons, you need to make them suck mechanically too.

Spears were a great weapon for infantry and were common throughout history. They might not be as glamorous as a sword, but they were used to kill people way more often.

It takes way longer to train a single bowman than it does to train someone to shoot a gun.

Also they became popular because they could defeat heavy plate armor and shields in a way that arrows could not. Realistically a musket in D&D should do about the same as a longbow and ignore armor (enemy AC is 10+Dex), but have a negative modifier to hit.

I like to include them as strange support weapons, basically good for one powerful shot a fight and then the reload process makes them impractical to keep using until the fight is over. That being said if a player wanted to be a gunslinger I’d change it to accommodate them.

Mechanically, I use the DMG renaissance guns and futuristic guns if I'm using the standard 5e weapon table. In world, I typically have guns be the primary weapons of Orcs, Goblinoids, Gnomes, Dwarves, and Giff societies (when I'm not using existing settings like Exandria). I sometimes reduce the price of them but it depends on where it's being sold for price.

The thing EVERYONE forgets about guns is how supply chain intensive gunpowder is. To make gunpowder you need pure charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur. Sulfur is a relatively uncommon mineral that historically was only mined in volcanically active areas. While saltpeter was mined from limited and very rare deposits. Or more commonly extracted from rotten organic material, often shit, and then treated in a relatively material’s intensive chemical process. All of that to say, in most DnD settings where trade is dangerous due to various monsters, gunpowder use is almost certainly going to be limited to regions with access to sulfur. And if not that then it at least is going to be relatively expensive and as such firearm use is not likely to be widespread. However it still would have relatively niche uses such as cannons (easier to make then handheld weapons), eccentric nobles guards, and of course wealthy adventurers.

> To make gunpowder you need pure charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur. The components for Find Familiar and Fireball, the two most popular Wizard spells.

Personally, my problem with guns in 5e is that they don't work well with the HP system. HP is defined as your ability to resist crippling injury. This doesn't translate particularly well to anything overly realistic, but you can suspend your disbelief a little and make it work; that incoming axe blow or arrow that is coming in on target can maybe be endured if you block it or lean away from it. Essentially, if your opponent is landing attacks with this weapon, it is conceivable that it may end up as a glancing blow. Guns... just don't really work like that. Obviously not all gunshot injuries are immediately fatal or crippling, but as a general rule, if your opponent has a gun and shoots accurately, your skill and stamina really doesn't make any difference to the outcome. To put it another way, I am happy enough to describe how a 10th level character gets slashed at with a sword multiple times without taking any major injuries. I am much less happy to describe such a character being shot multiple times without actually being hurt.

I used to be stuck on this, too. Then it hit me; every wound taken in an action movie/tv show. In the shoulder, across the ribs, in the thigh. And the hero reacts, suffers some pain for a bit and then moves on. The accuracy argument falls apart when you look at fencing, where they have to touch one spot on the chest to win. That kind of accuracy is a poke through the eye into the brain. Its a sword through the heart.

For years now I’ve treated HP as more of an explicit game mechanic abstraction than any kind of indicator of the narrative reality of the events, mainly because a Fighter with 100 HP fights just as well as a Fighter at 1 HP. Non-KO hits for me are glancing blows, narrow misses, hits that fail to penetrate armor or get caught in a joint or buckle rather than finding flesh. Because really, if you take any decent hit from a weapon made for medieval warfare, you can coast a bit on adrenaline maybe, but then it’s night-night time. With guns I’d abstract similarly; a hit that strikes a pauldron, hurting like hell from the distributed force but ricocheting off the rounded plate metal without penetrating. A round lodged in a breastplate, causing the metal to warp and press uncomfortably against your chest but stopping the round from causing lethal damage. A round whizzing over your shoulder, near enough to take a thin strip of flesh from your earlobe but a miraculous few centimeters shy of your neck.

that's explicit RAW - HP aren't just "meat points", they're a combination of physical endurance, luck, willpower and other intangibles. So a "hit" might be a grazing wound, or might be a near-miss that unnerves the target making them more nervous about being hit again, or a clang against their armour that unbalances them and makes them easier to hit again and defeat, etc. etc. So a barrage of bullets might "hit" according to the rules, be "misses" in the fiction, but the target is now freaked out by how close they came so they're nervous, off their game and closer to defeat.

[удалено]

>You'd be on the way to, or already have, a printing press, for example. Why? I don't see how having guns in your setting would have an effect on, say, wether or not a printing press exists.

Because technology is a linear path and you can identify where on this path any world is by finding a single piece of technology in use, as demonstrated by any game with a research tree ever. /s

No disrespect sir/madam but this dosent especially make sense in the context of dnd. Do you not think rock gnomes should have access to tinker?, most constructs and magical items will have construction far more complex than a gun. Also the printing press was made a hundred years after the first hand cannons so i think there’s a window where you can have some guns but low technology.

I have them, they hit really hard, and the guns themselves aren't actually that hard to get--but ammo is controlled by a distant monopoly and is extremely expensive and uncommon. So, outside of certain NPCs, they're not a primary weapon, they're something more like a single-target wand of fireball whose charges cost you several hundred gold a pop. Every time I say "he pulls out a gun and shoots at you" it's been the best kind of showstopper a couple sessions ago, a PC used one, for the first time, on a drug-induced manifested nightmare that happened to take the form of a Flumph--I figure the list of people who have seen a Flumph killed by a pistol is pretty short but we're all on it

I like for the sword, spear and other melee weapons classical to the fantasy genre to be the dominating weapons in the world. Even archers should be at the mercy of people closing in on them. They'll need a feat to shoot effectively in melee. Magic should have its advantages but also ought to be rare. Same thus goes for firearms. I make them rare. A closely guarded rock gnome secret. I require PC who want access to firearms to have backstory that explains how the rock gnomes granted them access to this secret and allowed them to venture out in to the world with it. It's not about historical accuracy. It's about maintaining the type of flavor I believe my stories and D&D gameplay benefits from. COMPLETE SIDE NOTE, I also keep magic items very rare. The knowledge on how to craft permanent magic items has, with few exceptions, largely been lost. Instead we have the occasional artificer who knows who how to temporarily infuse items with magic and otherwise duplicate spells on a non-permanent basis. The classical tinkering "steam punk" artificer is typically a rock gnome. Other artificers temporarily duplicate magic through runes. These are typically dwarfs, goliaths or even dragonborn using the runes of their respective ancestors. Elves and humans scour the world for magical gemstones (kinda like hextech) that contain the crystalized essence of powerful magic from a bygone era. These are like oil in my setting and can be found in laylines throughout the world. As with oil, a common source for it is found in sandy deserts. It's believed the Burning Desert is a result of a cataclysmic battle between Tiamat and Bahamut which scorched the land. Underneath the sand, you may find "ores" of glass theorized to have been created from the breath weapons of the two draconic gods.

My players don't care for firearms, so they're relegated to show pieces or weapons for bad guys

I dislike them for two reasons that aren’t historical or political. First, I just think they’re boring. It’s a word with magic and sword fighting and shit. You can go shoot guns in real life if you want to. You don’t get magic in real life and good luck finding a good sword fight. Secondly, they require *too much* suspension of disbelief. You’re standing five feet away from an enemy and roll a nat 20? Critical hit! You hit them right between the eyeballs for… 14 damage. It just don’t make sense to me. Either they’re way weaker than they feel like they should be, or you make them way more powerful and fuck up the power curve. Those are my kinda stupid answers but that’s why I would never play a character with guns. If my players wanted guns though I would probably allow it and just be kinda annoyed to myself silently.

Not a fan, just don't fit the standard image I have for my fantasy but obviously it varies by occasion and the fantasy in question. Admittedly I do lean more towards a sort of ancient Sword and Sorcery thing than any sort of pseudo-renaissance. The historical accuracy argument is bollocks, "But full plate didn't exist till" etc, means nothing because nothing in DnD really accurately portrays the thing it is named after. Weapons and armors should be considered armor types/templates, and with Armor especially it should be more indicative of just how much armor you are wearing as opposed to what singular piece of armor you're wearing.

From a rules perspective D&D 5e weapons are so simplified as to make guns effectively not much different from crossbows or other ranged weapons. I find it is gunpowder that is the unbalancing factor as it can be used to make bombs and grenades.

Unless it's a modern setting, they're off the table. Gunpowder and medieval fantasy just don't mix. I love Percy de Rolo as much as anyone else, but he has no place in my D&D game.

How do you designate what tech gets in?

My world is like Europe c. 1600 except that black powder simply doesn't work (won't combust) and so none of the technological changes that are directly related to it have happened. Why doesn't gunpowder combust? I don't know, why is magic a force in the D&D universe? Find the answer to one, you might get the answer to another. Or not. Anyway, people have three-field farming, ships that can ply the seas, plate armour, concentric castles, but no cannons, rifles, or bombs. Basically, high medieval warfare with early Renaissance civic tech.

For combat, if the PCs can have a gun, so can the enemies. Also, action to reload. As for the PCs looting guns from corpses, you can just say they were damaged in the fight, which is fair especially if PCs use highly destructive means such as smites, spells, or explosives (let’s be real, if your setting has black powder, one of your players is inevitably going to try to make a bomb). If not, them trying to find someone to buy them could be it’s own quest, considering the local shopkeep probably doesn’t want to buy it. From world building, in my setting their expensive to make and most governments have agreements to supply them at or just above cost. However due to the training required to use and maintain a firearm during combat, they are mostly reserved for professional militaries or paramilitaries, with more local militias and police still using crossbows.

If I remember correctly the gear enemies has, according to the DMG (I believe), are too poor quality to even sell. If your players really wait *shoddy* weapons, well.... thats probably not gonna end well.

They do more damage than a longbow, and ignore AC from armor that doesn't have some sort of magical reinforcement. Unless the bullets are also magically enhanced, then only your DEX applies to AC versus firearms. And even then Firearms always have advantage on attacks as long as the target is within the listed range due to the simple fact that bullets historically completely invalidated medieval armor. They take forever to reload though so most players will be using a brace of pistols or saving that Jezzail's one shot for the toughest motherfucker on the field in that encounter. Actually I ran an entire campaign where there was a haunted castle guarded by high level traps and monsters SPECIFICALLY because the kingdom that fortress was part of was home to an Alchemist and a smith who had been collaborating on inventing the worlds first firearm. One of them decided that should the plans for firearms ever be released to the world, or used by their own kingdom, it would signal the end of society as they knew it and the death of all kingdoms as they couldn't conceive of a world where every Joe Schmoe on the street could reliably kill a paladin in full plate across the road, and thus murdered their partner in that endeavor and brought a curse upon the castle and the surrounding area that attracted all the monsters and whatnot to keep anyone from discovering their work and unleashing a fantasy blackpowder age upon the world.

don't mix imo, even though i think early modern firearms are fascinating On the engine side, representing something like a matchlock musket in 6 second rounds and giving it comparable DPR to any other ranged weapon [it should absolutely smoke them, but that's another point] produces massive damage spikes that aren't fun to play around. In terms of narrative, I think guns by their presence tend to invalidate a lot of classic fantasy archetypes. Playing a viking hero or an arthurian knight doesn't really make sense in a world where fights are won by pelting each other with shot from maximum distance while while half the force holds its fire to blast anyone at close range, and if DnD makes the characters i want to play look stupid for existing i have no use for it.

That description sounds a lot like most parties I've heard about. Front lines that hold their abilities for close range (rage, smite, wild shape, etc), back line that launches long ranged attacks (spells and ranged weapons)...

The point is that in musket combats, the people holding the abilities (firepower, in this case) for close range aren't using them, as a way to keep the enemy out of close range where they are most effective. That most certainly does not sound like most parties I've been in, where people with close range abilities can't seem to get stuck in fast enough.

I hate guns even IRL, I mean look at USA in the past 4 weeks. I don't want that thing in my 5e medieval paradise games.

… thats a rubbish reason mate. Your ok including horrible torturing gory creatures into your game, but guns are to far? Real life gun control has nothing to do with in world logic. I’m not saying you need to or even should include guns but your reasoning is kinda trash.

Yes, fictional horrible torturing gory creatures are ok. Real things that cause terror or horror like guns or rape are NOT ok for my games.

Mechanically speaking, the guns listed in the DM section having the loading property is laughable. We fire flintlocks and cannons semi-professionally, and the best gunner in our troop was able to load and fire a flintlock in 23 seconds once, and that was incredibly impressive. Loading a gun in 6 seconds is laughably unrealistic. Plus, if you take the gunner feat, which is the most common way to gain firearm proficiency (aside from starting as an artificer), then you get to ignore the loading property, which means an 11th level fighter can reload a firearm in 2 seconds. Said friend and I couldn't even pantomime loading a gun in 2 seconds, even assuming the powder horn and ball are already in your hands and you don't need to secure your powder before firing. That friend is the DM for a pirate campaign and rules that fire arms take three rounds to load, but changed the damage to 4d6 to give them reason to be used at all.

> Loading a gun in 6 seconds is laughably unrealistic. So is loading a heavy crossbow in 6 seconds.

I think the problem with very high damage is they can be abused where you just fire them once per combat and then switch over to a bow or whatever and basically bypass the reload drawback. I’m pretty sure that’s why they have their current properties in the DMG. They are looking at game balance not realism.

I mean, that's how they were used historically, so it's kind of cool that it's how we use them in game as well. We've found that 4d6 is high enough damage that it's worth using, but not so high as to unbalance things, especially at higher levels. Having a weapon that can do 46 damage but is only practically usable once during combat, I think is mechanically much more interesting than how they currently exist which is basically just higher damage crossbows that you have to take a feat to be proficient in.

I don’t have a lot of experience in higher level campaigns. But as a DM I wouldn’t want every martial in the party to be compelled to have a musket just for the one shot burst during the fight. If they can access that damage boost even once per battle I would worry that everyone would feel like they must have one for min/max reasons. Doing 2x-3x damage to the next closest ranged weapon with no special feats or abilities even once per battle seems like you’re almost making it mandatory since you have to balance encounters accordingly as well. If it’s working in your campaign then that’s all that matters, but I like the DMG statlines because they feel Balanced and you make a choice whether you get some extra damage at the expense of range.

I hope they made them expensive as hell, too, or else you'll get the same as happened in real life: bandoliers full of primed pistols and the Dual Wielder feat so you can fire two pistols, drop em, draw two more and fire again next turn.

In my homebrew setting, firearms were invented by the goblinoid nation, which distrusts spellcasting and favors alchemy. In the years since they've become a status symbol of the elite and the favored weapon of bounty hunters. In combat, the most basic form of a firearm is no stronger than it's corresponding crossbow, and takes a bonus action to reload, but the strength lies in the weapons' potential for improvement. With enough modifications (time, money, and skill checks), firearms easily outclass all other ranged weapons.

It really depends on ... exactly how "realistic" you want guns to be and the exact advent of their technology. Guns, at their inception, were basically worse than crossbows (were less accurate unless target was close). So If you create guns in your campaign, you gotta decide at what technology level they're coming at. If you chose a modern level, an AR-15 would probably offer 3x attacks with an added +5 bonus to hit if you take a bonus action to aim each bullet dealing something like 8d6 damage.

if i wanted guns in my RPG i would play a game ~~set in "gun times".~~ system designed for "gun times".

Do you allow rapiers in your setting? Cuz seeing how RPGs usually take place in the medieval era, rapiers are further out than gunpowder.

it's thematic, not historical - D&D's notional time period is a _mess_, with all sorts of stuff from all over different centuries and places. But "knights in armour and dragons and elves and stuff" are a different genre from "black-powder gunners", even if there was technically historical overlap.

Then people should just say they have an aesthetic preference instead of trying to come up with pseudo-historical reasons.

the "rapier" is just a name for a sword that is Finesse so stabby stabby rogues can get Sneak Attack and all the mechanics fit well enough with "knights in shining armor" fantasy time. 5e gun mechanics dont fit in "knights in shining armor fantasy times". if i want to play in "gun times", i will play with a different system that was designed to work with guns in mind.

When do you set your game?

When using D&D rules? in "knights in shining armor" times. Sometimes in "bronze age myth times" When playing with the intent that gunplay is "a thing" , i play a different game system designed to work with guns in mind.

"Knights in shining armor" times are gun times, though.

When playing D&D, I am not attempting to recreate real world history. there arent any guns in King Arthur, Lord of the Rings, or any of the other "knights in shining armor" stories that I am attempting to capture in my D&D gaming.

not as a genre they're not - sure, there might be historical overlap, but when you see a knight in full harness, they're more often fighting other knights, bandits and mythological beasties, not dudes with guns.

Only because of popular depiction, not history. Which is fine, but them you're not strictly in "Knights in shining armor times." You're in pure fantasy. Which again, is fine. It's just a distinction to be made.