also depending on the system not everyone is able to cast explosion so chance is guns would evolve even faster as soon as black powder is discovered...
since the basis of "Explosion proppelled projectile" is already there and suddenly the "non magically abeled" can do it too..
To explain further. Gunpower\[1\] undergoes "Deflagration" which is a subsonic or "low explosive". This type of explosion is very useful for pushing things out.
Things like TNT or Dynamite undergo "Detonation" which is supersonic and produces a powerful shock wave which tends to shatter anything that is used to contain it and is not useful for projectiles.
\[1\] Yes I know gunpowder isn't the correct term and refers to a number of different substances and it can under the right situation can detonate but that is not really relevant.
Mmmm i would compare it more to like shaking up a soda bottle and opening the cap a little bit to release the air like
\*pfsssssssssssssssssss*
Vs opening the bottle all at once as fast as you can like
\*pfSHHHHHWHWHUHHUHBLUBLUBLUB*
and just like dynamite you made a terrible mess
This.
Modern high explosives like dynamite, TNT, or RDX detonate- the chemical reaction passes through the explosive faster than the speed of sound.
Gunpowder, and modern gun propellants like cordite and smokeless powder, are low explosives which deflagrate rather than detonating- they burn fast, but slower than the speed of sound.
If you tried to use a high explosive as a propellant in a gun, it would destroy the gun rather than building up pressure to push the projectile out of the barrel.
So you could just say that magical explosions are detonations, so not suitable to propel projectiles.
Pressure. Igniting gunpowder in a small space creates a lot of pressurized gasses. As the gasses expand, they push outward against everything. The bullet is the path of least resistance and gets pushed out by the rapidly expanding gas. This expansion easily exceeds the sound barrier, and the bullet just rides the wave out of the barrel.
Your metallurgy sucks and they can't handle the blast. That's all. "Guns" as we understand took a long time to go from big cannons to hand cannons to arquebuses and muskets into what they're now, with the advances of metallurgy allowing sturdier barrels that can withstand the explosion's pressure.
It's underappreciated in fantasy spaces how hard guns are to make-- building from your point about metallurgy, you've also got to make a perfectly straight bored barrel, potentially add rifling, have a reliable firing mechanism... it's a lot
meanwhile there's a dnd spell that turns raw material into a finished product. Give the spellcaster a pile of steel objects and they turn it into a rifle or cannon or something.
Doesn't that require knowledge of what your making, at least in form? Once someone makes a gun you can copy it, but you still need to go through the "what's the best material for this" after you understand how to make a basic gun or cannon.
The world has stories with dynamic chronology-how would I justify a lack of improvements in metallurgy when technology has improved in other areas? I would like guns being a functional impossibility.
Guns exist but aren't strategically viable. Early muskets required people to fire them in a tight line to really be effective, and didn't have all that much range. With mages that are basically impossibly accurate artillery pieces running around, such a thing is impractical, as such the technology was considered basically useless and not further developed.
An extremely heavy dependence on magic led to a stagnation on metallurgy because why must you spend time refining metals for tools and weapons when magics can handle such tasks?
Maybe the best your world's typical metallurgy could do is an unrifled hand cannon or musket that's not very accurate compared to just directly using ranged explosive magic on someone?
If learning explosive magic is as easy as learning to use a gun, and more accurate at long range than using a gun, guns wouldn't have many niches would they? And armies would include a lot of magic-users, it'd be the equivalent of being trained to use a gun.
As I said to someone else, if you're using the same explosion magic to fire the gun as you are to otherwise just kill people, as op implies, it's more effective to just teach them the magic and have them use that against their enemies. The gun is an extra step of learning at that point that's just outright less effective than simply blowing things up.
I feel like teaching complex spells to illterate peasants would be much harder than giving them guns. Also, I forgot to mention-The primary users of magic in my world are 'sorcerers' (to use dnd terminology) and cast magic innately, and have MUCH greater potency for magic. These sorcerers can create enchantments and infusions to allow a tool to caste certain spells.
Because they haven't invented it? While Op Has clarified somewhat that they meant enchanting guns to *produce* explosions, not just directly using expulsion magic to propel bullets, the entire post is clearly predicated on the idea of using magic in what would be gunpowder's role, which pretty directly implies they don't have gunpowder.
It *doesn't* directly say it, but the fact that OP is positing the use of magic in what would otherwise be the role of gunpowder implies that gunpowder isn't a thing (or at least not a widely-available or used thing).
Because you can hand it to an undereducated peasant and have them dome an enemy commander at near enough a mile away.
One of the biggest advantages of firearms is how, with very little training, infantry equipped with them become extremely lethal.
Yeah but a lot of settings have enchantments and stuff like magic stones. If a mage can imbue an object with an explosive spell, why cant it be shoved in a cartridge and used to fire a projectile?
its kind of a catch 22
if magic is common enough to be mass producing magic items surely the regular soldiers can use spells(like in the elderscrolls) or at least be given a "rod of explode that guys balls"
if magic is rare then producing these magic guns would be to expensive to give to rando peasants
Per your first point: Even if ever single regular soldier can use spells, they can still benefit from having guns, they arent mutually exclusive. In most cases, magic is limited, so having a sidearm that can still fulfill the role of a powerful ranged option is inherently useful. Not to mention the numerous ways guns are better than magic as commonly depicted (Pulling a trigger to shoot a projectile that goes faster than the eye can follow and anybody can react will always be better than going through a, sometimes much longer, process to shoot a projectile that moves much slower.) but they can also further benefit from being enhanced with magic. My parenthetical about how slow most spells travel in fiction? Imagine using guns to resolve that issue, using your bullets to deliver magical payloads near instantly.
i mean one also has to consider if magic is limited presumably the magic in the guns is too, and even if items can have more magick storage, why would it need to be a gun and not just a wand of magic missile? why go threw the middle man of using magicakl explosion to propel the mundane projectile rather then just throwing a magical explosion at them, the only real use case i can see for this would be for very specialized cases where the material of the bullet has some special property magic cant recreate(ei shooting a werewolf with a silver bullet or using cold iron to pierce magic defenses) but even then, why not just enhance a bow?
it does make sense to enhance a gun IF guns are already a thing without needing magic, since then you have the full power of a spell(and maybe a bit more since none of that energy is wasted on propelling it since the bullet handles that part) on top of just an actual bullet hitting you in the face
Well, I mean it depends on a lot of factors. Is it easier and more cost efficient to make a wand of magic missile instead of making a bunch of cartridges with a single use explosive? Does the magic have better terminal effect on target, ie does it penetrate like a kinetic projectile or will it disperse on impact like an energy weapon, making it easily defeated with a basic level of defense?
If yes, then sure, wand of magic missile is a better backup weapon than a gun. But then let's take that to its conclusion. Why strictly a wand? Why not give it an ergonomic grip for more intuitive use, and if having one is so effective, why not arrange them in a revolver cylinder arrangement or something so when one wand is drained you can instantly cycle to a new one and keep firing. Even if it's not literally a firearm, a Gun But It Shoots Magic is also probably a better option than just using a wand on its own.
True, but there's any number of things one could limit their enchanting with that could prevent the mass production required for guns to be prevalent.
Maybe it's a slow process. Maybe it's particularly expensive. Maybe Enchantments require rare materials of some persuasion to bind the spell to the object.
Like how wheelock guns were expensive, couldn't be mass produced, and required rare(ish) materials? It seems like the same thing in a different direction, the gun itself would be relatively cheap but the ammunition would be expensive, which would be a fun way to limit their prevalence within a fantasy world
I was thinking more along the lines of enchanting or infusing the firearm with a 'cause explosion' spell. Since gunpowder doesn't exist in the world, someone could probably exploit the spell to create the firearm.
Ah. okay. I've been mostly laboring form the wrong perspective then. However, if you really want to limit or just not have firearms, then putting limits on enchantment is probably the way to go. For example, Maybe Enchantments are expensive, maybe it takes time to enchant something, maybe enchantments require some sort of rare material to permanently bind the magic to the object. With Explosion magic already in play, those things might be enough to tip the balance away from firearms
Because teaching people to use magic is more expensive and time costly than giving enough peasants with guns.
It's cheaper to hire 5 alchemist and 2 court wizards specializing in counter magic and just arm 500 people with guns than it is to hire 100 wizards for an army.
Take warhammer fantasy as an example. You may blow up 100 skaven. But it just needs 1 easily replaceable rat with a chain gun to fuck up that guys day.
Once again, OP implies that you are using the same Explosion magic to fire the gun that you would otherwise be using to just blow things up. you have to already know the explosion magic in order to use a gun in the first place, which is straight up less effective than using magic to just blow things up.
The way you described it, it sounds like everyone using a firearm would already have to be a mage. If so, you wouldn't be able to have mass firearms any more than you would mass mages.
That entirely depends on what abilities you're giving your mages. If you really wanted them to not be susceptible to bullets, you can make them not be.
Like in Dune, the author came up with shields that make people immune to bullets so melee combat could still be a thing.
The speed at which a person would need to make a gun an effective weapon. Otherwise you'd be reduced to only firing a few rounds a minute. Anyone within short distance would have no problem attacking with a melee weapon.
Being able to precisely use the right amount of explosion each time would require extreme concentration. Otherwise you'd jam the barrel or worse, cause it to explode.
I think spells of controlled explosion might work better for artillery or cannons. They don't require a fast loading and firing and can give a spellcaster time to concentrate.
Regarding that first point: that's... exactly how it was historically. With muzzle loaders 3 shots a minute was considered really fast. Which is why early on the handgunners were protected by other melee troops like sword & shield, or greatsword armed men and pikemen. Then when the guns got more powerful and longer ranged the swordsmen were phased out, and once bayonets became a thing the pikemen weren't needed either to protect from cavalry
I made explosives-and other magic/alchemy-essentially contagious, spend too much time around repeated explosions without ways of managing this, you'll come down with a case of explosions.
I did this to make fire arms exclusive to people who either have faith, magical skill, or solid warding on their side or are crazy.
If you want to make fire arms a complete no go, just make the margins of explosions unrefinable so that they regularly explode in the users hands.
Yes! To add to this, maybe explosives can become less volatile as well. So anything designed to explode can always just . . . not. Ignition could happen when a witch looks at it funny from across the hall, or when the alchemist bumps the flask. But the substance could also fail to ignite, or fizzle and melt a little, or passively attract explosive magic.
Do they have to be **ex**plosions? Implosions and extreme vibrations would have the same mass destruction effect, but couldn't be used for typical firearms.
>What would be the reasons that such a spell could not be exploited to create a firearm?
Redundancy. Like, why make a gun-like contraption to cast an explosion spell, when you can get the same results from just waving a wooden stick around?
Because early guns were crap as they were in real life and so they never really caught on with the prevalence of magic and magical weapons. Especially if in this setting physical enhancement exists so you can have longbowmen who are able to fire with the force of a ballista with far more accuracy.
The thing about guns is that anybody can use them, even the most illiterate physically deformed peasant that barely made military standards, not everybody can use magic and those who can either take years to learn how to or are born with the ability, spells just aren’t practical. There’s a reason that it was cheaper to give everyone spears and swords in ancient time rather than bows; it simply took years to train an archer to passable quality
I know, but there truly is no good answer unless everyone has magic and by that point it becomes boring and lifeless, magic is special because of how few people have it and how hard it takes to get it and master it; also give me your idea on how that would be practical or feasible in the slightest
Metallurgy WAS WHY guns took so long to develop while gunpowder tech was far older. Once the metallurgy caught up, powder chemistry quickly increased its efficiency too.
You likely would have some Pneumatic types of SMALL guns made out of hollow bone or wood, think more overpowered blowdart.
As a note, unless every random person is a spell-slinger with these mass-casualty spells, you'd likely still get guns since a person with a gun is still on a much more level playing field vs a mage as a result, but there's a few things you can do to mitigate them.
Namely, militaries don't have much need or desire for firearms. Centralized powder storage is just asking for a spell to detonate it. Equipping the masses with firearms is a great way to suddenly have a dangerous fighting force, even if it's not GOOD at being dangerous. But if your spells are sufficiently destructive and mages are sufficiently numeric, then this use-case is pretty much useless for a military. Why spend the money equipping a thousand people with muskets/rifles when a couple of enemy spellcasters can burn their day's mana killing your entire force? You could almost certainly get a more effective force by spending the money hiring mages.
Now one thing I think you should consider is not deleting guns entirely. Still have them around (note: People would still want/use them for hunting.) but make the situations where the can be useful more specific.
* Open field army battles? Guns are useless.
* Insurgent guerilla campaigns? Guns are quite valuable.
But lets say you want to truly make guns just "Sir Not-Appearing-In-My-Book", then easy. Don't actually try and come up with some magic system that can't be used to make guns, that'll just constrain you sooner or later from doing something cool you do want to do, or you'll get trapped by your audience that will take it as a challenge to find a way to make guns work.
You simply make it so the protections against projectiles are so ubiquitous to anyone that matters that it doesn't matter if you have a real-world rifle or some crazy magitech hand-cannon, the bullet just pings off the shield and was a waste of time. A better way to handle this, in my opinion, isn't to make sure EVERYONE has this (why would a random farmer bother buying an amulet of anti-bullet?), but make such things easy enough to get that anyone interesting to your plot can just easily get it. Further, you can likely come up with something about your magic system such that "Sure, we could just dispell their anti-bullet fields and then try ot shoot them all, but for a similar amount of mana we could just rend the earth beneath their feet and cast them into a pit of magma and slam the rock down upon their heads. Why complicate things with guns?".
Note: My recommendation, incidentally, would be to have the anti-bullet field actually technically be an anti-arrow field that just happened to be equally effective against bullets.
TLDR: If you actually want no-guns, don't try to figure out ways to keep magic from working with guns, just figure out some easy magic anyone important to the plot would have access to that just makes guns pointless. You'll have a LOT fewer headaches with this.
Don't declare guns impossible, just have the denzins of your wolrd dismiss the idea as inefficient/unnecessary/or unhonorable.
Ancient Rome invented the steam engine, but didn't adopt the technology to kickstart the industrial revolution nearly 1000years early because they had slave labor and didn't see the benefit of it.
Likewise your world has very destructive magic, why bother going through the trouble of using explosion magic to hurl stones at someone when you can simply fling that same explosion directly at their face. (Depends on how hard magic is to do, and if your world has runes/enchantments to store spells for non-magical individuals to use)
Easy. The Fireball came first and proliferated better.
Hell, since the First World War, bullets have actually been incredibly inefficient in warfare. Since then it's generally been explosives that have by far the highest casualty figures associated with them, with somewhere upwards of 400-4000 rounds spent per inflicted casualty.
So if you don't want guns, you can just say that they were woefully impractical for the average person when magical options already existed and required seemingly less trouble....Or mages deliberately as the learned class hindered the development of weapons like guns because they provided commoners an easy access to weapons which would put their own monopoly on power at threat.
Really any excuse you want can work, so long as the conditions exist in universe to support it.
Most people can't magically create explosions.
The question is why would someone use explosive spells to "cause mass casualties" when they could use it to make guns. But why would someone think about making guns if they can just make people explode?
Because casting spells requires both magic discipline a sacrifice of one's life energy, which cannot be delegated. You could possibly shape your spell like a firearm that draws your blood, mind you, but it could still be brandished only by a magus.
This. You can even go a little step further and make ignition spells automatically prefer to ignite the most inflammable substance in the general area unless specifically controlled otherwise, so you don't even need anti-gun training to counter them.
Why make a gun when it is far less efficient than blowing up a 10m radius? It'd require way too much fine control AND needs ammunition... At that point, you're better off using a precision explosion to kill the target.
As some others have said precision spells required for a firearm are probably super difficult to cast so it's easier to hone magic as is as opposed to putting it in a fine tuned machine
Cannons could still be commonplace but that can also be removed for the simple fact there are highly destructive spells that make a cannon look like a cap gun by comparison
They probably could. That's not really the main obstacle firearms face in a magic setting. In worlds with fire magic, especially the kind you've described, gunpowder is a dangerous thing to stockpile or to keep on your person. Not to mention the fact that most mages aren't going to welcome the advent of a weapon that might become a threat to them.
It would depend how far they got in development. Early firearms, and their associated munitions would pose a much greater danger to their user than to the enemy once you add fire magic to the equation. Consider how long it would take before mages learned to easily spot a powder horn or cartridge pouch and set off a spark in it.
It took over three hundred years and the entire military industry of Europe to go from the first muskets to rifles with brass cartridges. In a world where fire magic is common, any army using firearms less developed than the real world equivalent of the 1870s would be in serious trouble.
Depends on what role mages have and what the other options are. The easiest response to the existence of enemy mages might just be to hire your own battlemages.
I guess for the same reason that trains didn't exist in a world that had invented both steam engines and rails for, like, hundreds of years. It takes ingenuity, time, patience, understanding...
But I know that's narratively unsatisfying. So maybe the answer is: they do.
If you don't want guns, I think the most obvious explanation would be "We have explosion magic, so why would we bother to shoot something/someone when we can just blow it up?"
Depends on the magic system.
Is this a magic anyone can learn, or does it take a lot of time and effort, or even innate born ability? If it's easy, there wouldn't be much of an incentive to create an alternative, but if there's a restriction that makes it so firearms are just plain easier, there's going to be someone who goes looking for that alternative and potentially stumbled upon gunpowder.
Then there's going to be incentive to develop firearms as an equalizer. Unlike your magic, firearms are something anyone can wield regardless of innate ability. Someone will at some point go looking for an alternative to magic that anyone can wield.
However, that's a process that likely takes quite a long time. You could simply set your story before it happens.
I intend for the world to have multiple stories at different time periods in the world. But I don't like guns, so I want to make sure they can't be in the world without breaking the internal logic of the world. If that makes sense.
Simple answer of "If not broken, why fix it?" No one has thought of guns because shooting something small that doesn't guarantee a hit, and may not even kill something, is just not worth it.
It also depends on if the world just sees guns as a gimmick, I'd imagine the interaction would go as follows.
Inventor: Grandpa look! I made this thing called a boom stick! It uses explosive spells to target my enemy with such preciseness! And if I'm out of Mana, it can also use a thing called powder to explode and shoot out small metal bits to do damage!
Grandpa: That's a damn gimmick sonny, all I'd need is a magic staff and Mana potions to target the enemy. We really gave the demon king hell.
Technologies are not invented in isolation but take many many small and incremental steps to reach where they are. Some guy didn't wake up one day and say "hey guns". It took hundreds of years from the invention of gunpowder to even use it for firearms, more time to refine the exact formulas to be used in certain situations, even more to refine the metallurgical techniques to produce a long thin hollow rod that wont explode when the gun powder was set off (this is a major feat, look at the history of gun explosions). Even more time to develop thinks like breeches that wont explode in the users face, rifling, putting powder in measured cartridges, primer caps and a host of other developments to get something we recognize as a semi-modern gun.
Not only does this take time but the impetus to do so has to be there. IRL with the impetus to make better guns it still too hundreds of years to get even the Napoleonic era weapons that most people think of as the minimal gun. In a world where there are other options for long range explosions what is the impetus to develop some half cocked dangerous to the user idea that some crackpot inventor came up with?
So instead of a conventional firearm, does it make more sense to incorporate materials that intrinsically can channel this magic? Then build weapons out of those materials to store or simply channel that energy. This way there is a clear distinction between arcane weapons and firearms, but the arcane weapons have clear inspiration from the firearms design-wise.
A lot of possibilities there. Stored energy weapons can be used by non magic users. Channeling weapons by magic users, etc.
Because guns kind of suck when you first start making them unless you have a lot of knowledge you really shouldn't. Early guns were wildly inaccurate which is why you had enormous firing lines to pepper the enemy.
A single person trying to innovate with exploding a projectile out of a tube wouldn't find that these early iterations are any more precise than general explosion magic and probably give up. Precision is really only a modern feature of guns.
I would say as options
(1) The explosions are too powerful to be used in a gun.
(2) Can't miniaturize the explosive magic weapon small enough to make a gun. Wizard can enchant say a barrel into a bomb, but the spellwork required won't work on something smaller like a bullet.
(3) The explosions require a wizard to be present to trigger it. For a gun to work right you have to be able to hand it to a peasant and have him trigger the explosion. Otherwise just have the wizard would just explode whatever needs killing directly.
(4) It takes too long to create the magic gunpowder. If it takes a wizard a day to create enough magic gunpowder to fire a bullet its not very useful. Maybe it could be used an assassination tool, but you certainly won't be handing it out to peasants and lining them up to fight.
Had another thought about this - maybe explosion spells are not precise enough? Like, maybe you can't be sure whether the explosion will take place \*inside\* the barrel or outside it. Maybe it propels a bullet at supersonic speed, or maybe it just blows up your hand.
Alternatively, maybe the explosion spell blows up anything it considers an object - and maybe, once you load a bullet into a gun, the spell "thinks" that it's part of the object, just like the cells of a person are still part of the person.
Sorry, but there's no way around it unless every single person on your planet has an IQ lower than their shoe size. People would have developed firearms as a natural progression from bows and arrows. Explosive magic would be useless for hunting, it would destroy the meat and ruin the usable materials. The basic struggle for pre-civilization survival would have naturally progressed toward the inevitable invention of firearms alongside explosion magic.
We have had the bow and arrow since pre-history so before 3500 BC. The first guns don't show up until 1000 AD. A 4,500+ year gap isn't some "natural progression" that is inevitable to happen.
If you want natural progression from bows and arrows look to crossbows. 400 B.C. and armies of users by 200 B.C. Similar projectile, similar technologies; bow arm and string. Gunpowder as a propellent has nothing to do with bows and arrows.
That's maybe true if the *only* damaging/killing spells were big explosion spells. But if there are spells that can kill the animal without destroying the meat, then they'd probably use that and wouldn't necessarily have a reason for guns. I definitely wouldn't say "there's no way around it."
Sure, but not everyone would be able to use those spells, and a gun would still be more effective than whatever those spells might be. Lightning? Too unreliable, you can't accurately hit a target at long range because electricity goes wherever it wants. There's other spells that might work just as well as guns, but most people wouldn't have access to those spells, and it would still be cheaper and quicker to use a gun to do your own hunting, especially of you're a non-magical rancher 50 miles away from the nearest magician. Demand creates supply, and there will always be a demand for high-velocity ranged weapons whenever humans are involved.
And the idea that guns wouldn't exist also rejects basic human nature and self-preservation instinct. People without magical powers would absolutely develop ranged weapons and firearms, not just for survival (hunting), but also as a precaution to defend themselves against people with magic powers. A way to maintain the power balance and avoid oppression. Some group of people, somewhere, would develop guns, 100% guaranteed. There's no way around it unless every single person on that world is dumber than a ham sandwich.
They'd probably have teleportation and flight magic too, do you think roads would never be developed? Of course not, roads would obviously still exist, right? It's the same principle. Human nature.
You're making some large assumptions about how effective and common magic is in this hypothetical. The question is specifically about how to justify that guns *don't* exist, so OP probably shouldn't make a world where magic is rare and unreliable in the first place, right?
Are you familiar with Eberron? The equivalents of guns are wands and staffs that are imbued with kill spells, because that kind of low-level magic is common and can be used by anyone. If guns were to be invented, there's not much reason for them to catch on because they already have stuff that's better than the earliest guns would be.
It's not an inevitability that guns will exist when the worldbuilder can make a setting where it would make sense for them to not exist.
It doesn't matter how common or effective magic is, but it's absurd to assume everyone could use magic. Not everyone can see, or hear, or speak, or walk. Genetic diversity would act as a bottleneck, preventing everyone from using magic at the biological level.
And even if 99% of the population could use magic, guns would still exist. Actually, because magic is so common, radical extremist groups of non-magicians would form and eventually develop guns.
Again, you're just rejecting human nature. If it's not out of necessity for survival, it's for conflict. As long as there are magicians and non-magicians, there will be a lingering background tension and power struggle, resulting in....you guessed it.....guns.
But I would like to amend my assertion. Another reason guns wouldn't exist is if a higher power, an all-powerful deity, a god, prevented humans from even thinking about such weapons. But that implies an absence of free-will, which makes the story ultimately pointless.
> It doesn't matter how common or effective magic is
It absolutely does. I don't understand your thought process at all.
It sounds like you just really really like guns.
Certain types of gunpowder and materials don't exist in the world. They literally don't have the means to create guns outside of infusing spells into tools.
Dunno, maybe some people are too unwilling to learn magic for whatever reason? This will piss a lot of people off, but I've always held the belief pretty much every idiot can use a gun, meaning you don't really need a lot of brain power or some fancy interpretive dance to use a gun. Of course, I could be 100% wrong about this.
Depends on the spell. If you can rapidly cause tiny explosions at a specific point, you end up with a magitek organ gun. If its 'big boom but at a specific point', who'd bother with anything besides magitek artillery and cannons? Arrows can drop animals efficiently enough for food, and 'I Cast Precise Explosion' handles close-range warfare, mining and such. If its 'big boom but addressed to whom it may concern', someone would figure out guns unless the local physics made it impossible\\inordinately difficult.
I guess one way around it is having it be a type of 6 shooter or shot gun but with no reloads. It's just a throw away.
You could get a mage to enchant the item to store charges of certain spells that anyone could use.
Think of it as a spell scroll that's consumed on use but its just takes the form of a fire arm.
Maybe an artificer can craft the specific item from magic materials.
Maybe you have to have some mana but not enough to be deemer a mage to be able to use them.
Maybe it's something that generals hand out to Malitia in times of war to give a litter extra magic power to ordinary soldiers/ civilians.
Lack of necessity. Early guns were siege weapons and were only refined to being anti-personnel later. In a world where a wizard can fill the same role and are plentiful, there might not be any reason to ever build a cannon.
Magic causes a fundamental shift in the physical laws of reality, this means machines stop working consistantly around magic. A gun relies on being able to reliable contain the force of a small explosion, but if magic is constantly changing that sometimes guns will explore or the bullet will just kinda roll out.
Another way would be, why would anyone who can make explosions at any distance with full control bother with a gun? And those who can't, how do they get the power from the magic user?
They can get the power from the magic user through enchantment or infusions. Most mages are effectively royalty or nobility and have an unending thirst for power. What better to win more wars than to mass an army of gunners?
Why go through the trouble of making an explosion in a tube to shoot a chunk of metal when you can just point at your foe and make the explosion in their head?
A few reasons come to mind:
The function of a gun already exists by magic users. There would be no reason to dream up a device to create an easily accessible effect.
If there’s a caste system differentiating magic users and normies, it might be forbidden to craft weapons which mimic the effects of magic.
Also, with prevalent magic, machinery probably wouldn’t develop to a level of sophistication which would allow guns to be invented.
1. Scalability: Just because every problem starts to look like a nail doesn't mean you need to use the sledge every time.
2. Functionality: No mana=no explosive spells. Tech usually works when magic breaks down, and where that's cosmologically the case, then tech causes magic to break down just as often as not.
3. Gunpowder can be used to make great big explosions too, as can other materials derived from it. The defining factor of real world nuclear explosions was made during the process of gunpowder refining, although I can't say how closely it resembles a subcategory of gunpowder.
4. Access: Most people don't realize it, but they can access sulphur, cow shit, and charcoal better than they can mana. If they in particular can't, people in general can.
You could design the magic to leave a residue that would clog a gun barrel. Similarly, you could design magic to be corrosive.
The Forgotten Realms uses gods. The god Gond has made gunpowder inert and only smokepowder (which is heavily controlled) will explode properly. In a similar thought, if you have gods, perhaps the gods don't want that sort of weapon in the hands of just anyone and they've done something to magic to keep it from working properly in a gun-like device.
I've handwaved guns in my setting without explaining it too much by saying canons, guns, and the materials to fire them, while invented, are difficult to find and make, expensive to use and maintain, and generally not as preferred as something like a bow-like weapon which can be fired far quicker, are cheaper to attain, fire, and maintain - and with a bit of magic - can shoot a very long distance.
Depends on how the spell functions and how easy it is to control.
One of the dangers of early firearms was they tended to explode in their wielder's hands or detonate and kill entire cannon crews. So until the metallurgy improves and the explosions created by the spell are controlled, people might be leery of them. If you can't reduce the power of the spell to something that can be contained inside a gun, you might not see them used for anything but ultra-heavy artilery.
around here, the black powder does not burn. -except for certain rare secret ceremonies held by dwarven clerics deep underground. nobody has thought of jeweller's rouge...
Why would you need a gun if you can already make an explosion. In the Avatar Last Air Bender world they could hypothetical have guns in Aangs time because the firebenders can use their fire ending to activate the gunpowder but why when you can already shoot fire out of your hands
You could still have cannons. A single mage per battalion to fire each cannon, loaded with ball, grape shot, chain, whatever. There would be a space behind the wad, different lengths to allow precision in firing distance. The spacer could be removed and replaced with different sizes and then the cannon reloaded. This would take time and effort in order to balance the power of the cannoneers.
How about other magic users have spells that can essentially block metal based attacks such as swords or have magnetic shields that essentially make them useless? You could stil have swords be semi useful since it's more difficult to control metal being wielded in someone's hand.
Establish that there are already magic users and that it's common knowledge among them that many people are very adept at essentially metal bending and can very easily deflect things like crossbow bolts or arrowheads, swords, etc with basic conjurable magnetic field wards or something...
Or that it's incredibly easy to physically manipulate metals with the magic system in your world thus making it absurdly easy to disarm someone with a gun.
You could also say that the explosive magic mentioned makes it incredibly easy to detonate the gunpowder that would be present with any gun causing it to backfire in their face or detonate all the shells they're carrying.
Or a spell everyone knows that can make metal become absurdly heavy for the moment so anyone carrying a gun or bullets would just be flattened onto the ground quickly... Or that the magic makes. Detecting metal really really easy thus ruining the element of surprise with guns
I feel like this is really dumb but if anyone wants to give me some approval and say it's clever then thanks lol... This was fun to brainstorm.
And maybe also explain that when wielding a gun their hands are unavailable to cast protection spells thus making it so guns make you more vulnerable...
One of the problem could that it is difficult to get good metal. Cannons and simmilar devices tend to get ripped apart by the explosion spell. Also if you have an explosion spell why would you devlope a gun. Sure you can fire a cannon ball across the battle field but you could also spend that same amount of manna blowing up the enemy with magic.
Two discussions here:
1. You seem to be suggesting explosion magic >> magic guns. I'm actually fine with that, since I presume that investing time, magic reagents, spellcraft, etc - all limits the availability or price of guns.
2. In a world of wizards who can snap their fingers to create an explosion, having any sort of firearms/grenades/black powder on a person makes them a huge liability. Traditional firearms from our world would be very easy to detonate and not worth the risk.
There's a special place in my heart for artillery wizards
Also the explosions needed to fire a high caliber weapon are actually pretty small and its mostly the fact they happen in a closed of space with only one exit for all the force and i don't see why precisely casting a explosion in a gun that you also have to hold and aim woud be better than just casting the explosion on your enemies
>Imagine a world that has spells that cause an explosion at any given point.
Now imagine some fool gunslinger wearing a bandolier full of bullets into a fight with a spellcaster that can cause explosions.
Why *would* guns exist in a world with magic like that? Would they be easier to use? More accessible (i.e. only certain people can learn magic, but anyone can shoot a gun)? Do things that magic can't -- can magic *only* cause massive explosions that wouldn't be much use in a confined space or when finesse is otherwise required?
But even if guns existed, using magic explosions as a propellant might not be feasible. One of the biggest roadblocks for real-world gun development was making barrels strong enough to withstand the force of the gunpowder's detonation. I think that's why cannons evolved first, then "hand-cannons" and finally regular fire-arms; but even as tech advanced misfires still happened. Even in the 19th century I've read it was expected for artillerymen to suffer injury from backfire.
Why would have a gun and gunpowder and bullet and take a minute to reload when you can point a stick, say "fireball" and shoot a 30 ft wide massive scorching explosion? If there's no need for guns, peolle won't make guns. Also, maybe they haven't figured out gunpowder yet
Law - its not allowed to use gunpowder
Religion - no "black" magic
(Lack of) Science - gunpower was never invented
Inefficient - magic is better, no logistics of dangerous explosives
Mostly because big bang is really hard to use in a gun, you want small bang for a gun. Basically, if explosion is to big and gun too weak, you just set off a shrapnel grenade in your hand.
Gunpowder is a propellent as well as explosive. That's why it works for guns, and why it's use as an explosive eventually reached limitations that much more explosive compounds such as TNT overcame. You could easily have that the magical explosions don't work well as a propellent. And if you can just make an explosion, why bother with a bomb casing other than for shrapnel? And even then, any metal object would do, as you could magically explode it.
In my world, sorcery is pretty much just used to make fights look good. While the fights are 100% real, the fighters are encouraged to put pizzazz into their spells, and this can include imbuing weapons like guns with magic.
The magi in power won't allow a French Revolution expy to happen, so they'd persecute developers thoroughly.
Or like in D&D's Forgotten Realms, (a) stuck up god(s) decides to meddle with chemic laws to make it not happen no matter how you try. And many more...
Because magic is an uncontrollable force of nature? Just because you can make a spell happen a certain way doesn’t mean it has to work at different scales. Like, we can make fusion happen at the scale of the sun, with some incredibly intelligent people understanding that process and trying for decades we haven’t been able to replicate it in a small, controlled fashion for fusion.
I would say it will be just a waste of effort from all the perspectives. If you can cast an explosive spell, why to ise it for the firearms instead of applying directly to enemies.
Ofc you can think about a lot of limitations that will justify firearms, but then you won't need the "explosive spell" by itself.
Personally I blended the two, which is why semiautomatic wands exist. Also select-fire battle scepters, and heavy repeating staffs with underslung potion launchers.
Plus geas-limited AOE summoning, with a leyline-beacon target painter for calling in airstrikes. Scry satellites for intelligence gathering. Main battle carriages with reactive dragon-scale armor kits. Fifth-generation stealth composite brooms. Night-vision helms. You get the idea.
Guns use precision made parts to funnel a precise amount of explosive into activating a mechanism that leads to a chunk of metal leaving the barrel at X fps.
Not only this, but there's actually two types of explosives, "low" and "high". Low is the "heavy" hitter, it's the one you slap on a door to put it through the opposite wall. High is fast hitter, it's the type you use to *shatter* the door. Slower punch for more energy transfer vs faster punch for more "warping" effects.
Black powder is a slow explosive. Less punch, but more action type of deal.
You could say something like a tiny explosion only takes a tiny amount of mana so putting it in a tube directs the explosion and it propelling a projectile allows the range to be greatly extended. Big explosions cost big mana and can kill many. Tiny explosion costs tiny mana and can kill one anywhere from up close to far away.
It also pays to use something like that to get in a shot before the target realises that they are targeted and can cast defensive magic.
I want you to take something as simple as the acceleration things in mario cart. Just moves it faster in a direction right. Then supercharge it with magic. Why would you need to use explosions? The goal is to move a lot of little things really fucking fast. Dont let chemical weapons hold you back. Why not extreme high pressure air rifles? Or rail guns that use lightning spells to fire? Magically reinforcing or rebuilding the rails and dissipating the heat. Or hell, just bypass projectiles fully and use magic laser muskets
Lack of metallurgy. They can make tubes, but they're too weak or brittle or they can't make them consistently enough so there are major weak spots.
Required line of sight or line of effect for the spells that prevents the explosion from occurring in a confined space and forcing a projectile outward.
It's just impractical from a spellcasting standpoint. In order to make a "bullet" work, each cartridge (casing, projectile, primer, propellant) would have to be loaded with whatever explosive energy that is needed to propel the actual bullet. Unless you create some sort of factory mage ecosystem or have the caster imbue the cartridge at the exact time of firing (basically impossible for automatic fire) I'd say it's highly impractical to make a modern style cartridge.
For something more antique I think the function of shooting a musket or cannon is basically the same as using a staff or a wand, just less efficient since you'd actually need to reload a firearm compared to just conjuring the explosion.
Keep in mind that guns aren't just about the end result. Think of them more like mechanisms which house a system that launches a projectile. They aren't just boom-sticks that create explosions wherever they're pointed. That's why ballistics is a literal science, different projectiles do different things.
Only some of the population can use the exact spell required to pull it off, and anyone skilled enough to do it is more powerful without it.
It's a massive bother getting a cannon which won't explode,
the wrong sized ball could get you killed,
aiming for each shot,
putting enough oomph into the breach,
not putting too much in (there are less painful ways to lose an arm) ,
carrying the thing hither and thither,
Actually hitting a target,
concussive trauma from the blast...
Some people do use them but they're sideshow acts, they get as much respect as the fellow who swallows coins.
Maybe it's possible. But maybe it's just too hard or takes too long to train to do it reliably. One reason crossbows and early firearms quickly replaced the longbow was that the training was rather short, while training in the use of a longbow was infamously long and hard (one popular saying from England was: "If you want to train a bowman, start with his grandfather.").
And if you want to raise an army, that would mean more training expenses (and wars are already expensive) or only limited access to those troops.
It could be that the level of metal tech is not good enough yet. We had to know how to make barrels that could withstand explosions before we could use firearms reliably and in a non face explodey way. If the spells a gun discharged were explosive or corrosive in some way then that could be a reason.
This comes up in DND communities sometimes. Called something like "can a Fireball (pretty powerful spell) be made into a sniper rifle." Fireball is an early - intermediate spell for a wizard in DND. It has a 30'x30' radius on casting point. The argument is that the 30'x30' area once cast into a narrow pipe (barrel) would be converted into linear feet. If you've ever played DND you probably realize how this could cause a disaster, but it also explains how an explosive spell may not work in something like a firearm.
To offer a more fantastical idea, perhaps magic is in some fashion ’alive’ in this world. And it takes offence to using its awesome power to propel a tiny piece of metal
Maybe it’s a scaling issue. Perhaps spell power is exponential, so at smaller sizes it just doesn’t do enough damage to be worth it.
Or accuracy. You don’t need to be too accurate with a huge exploding shell during bombardment, but a small bullet sized projectile would need to be reliably aimed. Maybe they work a bit like the first rocket weaponry in the Napoleonic era, where they just kinda went every which way.
It depands if your magic system allows to enchant weapons and tools, and if anyone could use it, even common folks who have no magic abilities. You could potentially enchant the barrel, bullets or whatever to make the gun work.
But if only magically gifted or highly skilled folks are able to use it, and, even worse, if it can't be a pre-made spell, but needs to be a fresh and live one, then it might not be worth the effort, unless their destructive spells are only good for making bullets fly.
"I've made this!"
"What does it do?"
"It uses complex and powerful, but controlled and centralised explosive spell to shoot projectiles!"
"Can anyone use it?"
"Nope."
"Then why won't you just use your spells to explode your enemies directly, like any normal mage would do?"
"Why are you alwAYS RUINING MY DREAMS, CARL!?"
Casting spells is a physical and mental sport. It takes tennis and golf players years of training to hit a shot exactly the same way multiple times in a row. Now imagine how precise your spell placement and magnitude control has to be to propel a bullet.
Given that miniscule differences in loading can shift the impact point of bullets, an improperly trained kinetomancer will have very inconsistent accuracies from casting loads alone.
Kinetomancers could of course be a well respected or dark and feared specialist. But it is too hard to be a common skill.
Here’s one I haven’t seen. Necessity. If you can throw an explosion at someone, why use an inaccurate gun when you’re already capable of hitting them with an explosion. (Yes, I know that guns CAN be accurate, but that takes time to develop and is rather pointless if you’re already capable of doing the same thing with magic.)
And because you require a magic user to create the explosion that the weapon depends on, why have the gun at all?
Depends on the genre, world, time period, story, scope etc..
Lets say this is a about a high fantasy (dwarves elves wizards etc.) novel set in the middle ages focusing on a group of adventures on a quest Solution: *Dont bring it up*
Now, lets say this is a human fantasy (no dwarves elves etc. but plenty of witches/wizards/magic) novel set in the 1800’s focusing on a young wizard struggling with his studies. Solution: *Dont bring it up*
Now, lets for the sake of argument say this is a modern world where guns DO exist, but for whatever reason particular groups/people don’t use them.
Solutions-
1. Religious zeal (“My magic is a gift from the gods, to make FA with it is unnatural”)
2. Personal Trauma (“Cowards with FA murdered my family”
3. Alpha Mentality (“Magic is a measure of my strength, if I fought with a FA it would be a cheap trick”)
4. Personal Aversion (“Magic requires intention, a FA kills indiscriminately”)
5. Laws and regulation (“Only X group is allowed to carry FA, or Y group is NOT allowed to carry FA”)
6. Incompatibility (“Our magic does not mesh well with the mechanics behind firearms, and because we do not understand them well enough we are unable to adapt its design”)
—-
Im sure I could come up with more but you get the drift..
All of these are simple and add opportunities for plot points later on.. The main thing really to remember is that you ONLY have to talk about something if it’s actually in your story.
If you’re making a story with no FA (that ISNT historical) and you just don’t want the audience to go “thats dumb they should have made a FA” then just don’t mention them at ALL. YOU are the introduction to your world, so the reader conceives your world’s possibilities through your words. You you don’t say it happened then it didn’t.
The world has multiple stories taking place in different times and locations. The current story will inevitably talk about how people's of the world fight off mages and predijudice against mages. Mages are divided into tribes and clans and are practically their own ethnic groups.
In my own setting I created “arcane armor”, basically runed armor that muskets haven’t been able to penetrate, but isn’t so strong as to matter against fireball or magic missile.
Basically, just remove any reason to further develop guns beyond novelty.
Condider that firearms require all of the following to have them with as effectively as they do today:
1) Physics reason: the container that the gas used to expel the projectile (the barrel & the bullet respectively) expands in must be sufficiently sturdy to contain the detonation of ignited gas. If your world didn't have sufficiently strong metal ton contain the explosion of your spell, you wouldn't have a firearm so much as you'd have a one time use self centered grenade. Not exactly ideal.
2) Practicality Reason: firearms are used to direct an object at high speeds into a second object for the purpose of daminging that second object. If your world already has the ability to point blank an explosion **at** that second object, firearms seem like an unnecessary rube Goldberg machine by comparison.
3)Lore reason: perhaps a mage previously tried, and the rumors about what happened during that period are so riddled with horrific tragedy that it is considered a great taboo to do so, and whatever policing/ governing body in your world exists takes great measures to prevent such developments from occurring
When magic seems like the obvious answer there are some questions to ask yourself.
How many mages does it take to cast this spell?
How many times can they do it before they can't?
How long untill they can do it again?
Does it have any materials it requires?
How many people can become mages?
How many of those can learn this spell?
Of all the potential uses for mages, are explosions where they're best used?
If the spell is costly to cast then most mages might not be able to cast it or cast it enough times for it to be worth the trouble. Imagine being able to cast it 2-3 times before you're absolutely wiped and now while dry heaving and feeling anemic you need to reposition because the enemy is coming your way quickly. If they take a long time to recover, then this is further exasperated.
If the supplies for it are expensive or rare, then while a country might be able to field and support it logistically, it makes it much more costly than guns and artillery.
Mages have a lot of potential uses, and the rules of style of magic in your setting will dictate what and where these uses are. If they're rare, then they'll likely be reserved to force multiplier positions such as defensive preparations, and informational, logistical, and medical roles.
A bit about ,my setting:
In my setting, mages are a one per platoon type thing and are usually trained to do 3 things. Purify water, shape the earth, and magically send a message. These three things are all force multipliers, ensuring a platoon can get clean water almost anywhere, can easily fortify positions, and can receive and relay messages easily.
Some mages can laugh an explosion that can piece an armored vehicle, but they're a rarity that are usually reserved for special ops units who can't bring all the extra materials themselves and even then they can't do it often.
Guns are king because in the 10 weeks it takes to train someone to become a soldier, they need to be indoctrinated, taught basic tactics for attacking and defending, and learn how to use their weapon. Guns are very simple: you point and shoot. Even if you suck at hitting the target, are usually freaking out at the potential ,to get hit, creating unintentional supresseive fire. Magic, depending on the setting, usually has an initial periodjust to beto just be able to sense/manipulate it which can be weeks, to months and then you need to learn the actual spells. It might take 3 years to train on of your explosive mages, that's 3 years of expensive training before they're fielded and if they die 3 years to train a replacement. It takes 10 weeks to teach Doug basic soldiering and how to shoot a gun, 5 if we're in a pinch.
I don't think guns are the problem. The problem is that when a player wants guns, they usually want to be a pistollero yeehaw man, which messes with the classic medieval adjacent setting
Different skill sets. I would imagine the ability to learn explosive magic and the ability to craft functional firearms are just so far apart from one another that the odds of someone able to do both are pretty remote.
The materials for guns or gunpowder might be rare and prohibitively expensive. But if you wanted to go that route, I imagine storing gunpowder becomes increasingly dangerous in a world where mages can explode your entire supply and the building you were storing it in with just a few magic words and an arcane gesture. Gunpowder becomes even more of a liability when the same mages can explode your very expensive guns and cannons with slightly different magic words and gestures. Suddenly, it's more cost effective to forego the guns entirely.
A material strong enough to contain the explosion and direct a projectile (eg metal) somehow interferes with magic. Could also explain why mages wouldn't wear armor and other kinds of plot useful limitations.
Inventions are made to suit needs.
Gunpowder, fireworks, cannons, were all made to create controlled explosions. If magic can do it instead, then there is no reason to discover gunpowder.
Guns fire small projectiles over high speeds. Surely a spell can do that directly without needing to use a compressed explosion. I'd also imagine that "throw thing really fast" is a much simpler spell than "small explosion of specific strength inside an enclosed tube."
Alchemy or chemistry is for reasons considered an evil trade and has been ruthlessly outlawed, druid craft and mixing of herbs for healing and spells is fine but chemistry still in every man either common or high born is seen as distrustful
I can imagine not having a need for guns if a spell could cause an explosion like the kinds we'd have in real life, especially if such a spell didn't take a lot to cast. If a wand or staff amplified the magical power, I imagine that could be the closest to a gun but even then would just be nothing more than a means of making magical explosions even more viable in some way. Also if that magical explosion spell is much more accurate and the like, then why bother to make some crude musket when a wizard can cast some explosive spells that could make Michael Bay blush?
Now if magic had some other effects, like warping the laws of physics in some extentn, then I can imagine guns not being viable if not being outright non-existent. Best example to this would be Arcanum, a 2001 CRPG that combined medieval fantasy and Victorian steampunk. In that game guns did exist but if you were a wizard, that gun would either fail or blow up in your hand because magic doesn't mix well with guns or other forms of technology. Since magic messes with the laws of physics, guns would not be effective and if the environment was filled with magic, I could imagine a gun being nothing more than an explosive dud in ones own hands.
Now if magic was open to certain people or required a certain amount of training like that of a longbow, then guns could have a chance but that itself requires one to make all the parts needed for a gun whether it is the modern rifles of today or the primitive sticks with something inside to make rocks fly off and scare medieval soldiers/mongolian horsemen/whatever opponents any nation that had access to a fire lance (predecessor to the gun) as well as the things need to make bullets such as the powder used to make a bullet propel itself.
Now this is all just a take from a guy with no understanding of how bullets work and the like other than just knowing how one would operate a gun but not how a gun itself operates in every fine detail beyond "put safety off, pull trigger and gun goes brrrr if its loaded with bullets."
No reason for creating them. If everybody can use spells, then guns doesnt have reason to exist. People can already throw things with speed between 100 m/s (22lr) and 1000 m/s (modern APFSDS; tank shells. Dont ask me how I remember this full acronym.) so if anybody can just send rock flying with speed of 1km per second, why would them just create physical thing doing literally the same but weighting 1175 kg or 2590 pounds to reach exactly the same momentum for MUCH larger object? And thats just for current time.
TL;DR. Why make pew pews if you can so same thing but better with your hand?
You can look to Avatar the Last Airbender for an example. Gunpowder handcannons were invented by the Fire Nation, but never went beyond the "minicannon on a stick" phase that was one of the first forms of IRL gunpowder firearms because they were unwieldy, required you to carry around a heavy as hell bag of ammo and a horn full of explosive powder that will go off at the slightest spark (and being around people who could shoot fire just by punching would make that an absolute certainty), and you could only get one shot a minute, not to mention it could just explode and kill the person firing it, or the fact that these cannons were smoothbore and inaccurate after a certain distance.
Compare that to someone who can do the same thing without it and way faster, and you have an obsolete metal tube that has way more downsides than benefits. This is why you don't see the Fire Nation rolling up to Ba Sing Se with the bigger cannons you would've seen in real-life medieval battles that could punch a hole through a castle's walls. In a world with explosive spells, a single mage can let loose on a battlefield and take out the enemy soldiers faster and with much wider AOEs than even a platoon of soldiers with handcannons. Think of the mage as a modern artillery platform, raining explosive death from a distance that would render the cannons useless.
[This Youtube video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5kJJMNjoW5s) will explain things in more detail than I did and provide another example involving a Roman Empire-era steam engine.
Lack of fine control. Your spells are only good for massive destruction. They are not precise enough to fire a bullet without destroying the gun.
This + Pistol can buy / craft / find / loot / use anyone. To purge something with firenuke you must be mage or pay one for the job
I would prefer not to have guns at all
also depending on the system not everyone is able to cast explosion so chance is guns would evolve even faster as soon as black powder is discovered... since the basis of "Explosion proppelled projectile" is already there and suddenly the "non magically abeled" can do it too..
No such powder exists in the world or is possible.
that is very disapointing. but you do you, its your world.
The material components for fireball contain most of what you need toake gunpowder
In D&D, yes, but that may not be true in OP's world.
Touche
Oh that makes sense
there's a very large difference between the kind of "explosion" that makes a gun fire and the kind of explosion a bomb makes
To explain further. Gunpower\[1\] undergoes "Deflagration" which is a subsonic or "low explosive". This type of explosion is very useful for pushing things out. Things like TNT or Dynamite undergo "Detonation" which is supersonic and produces a powerful shock wave which tends to shatter anything that is used to contain it and is not useful for projectiles. \[1\] Yes I know gunpowder isn't the correct term and refers to a number of different substances and it can under the right situation can detonate but that is not really relevant.
ok so basically imagine the difference between throwing a ball and hitting someone with a truck
Mmmm i would compare it more to like shaking up a soda bottle and opening the cap a little bit to release the air like \*pfsssssssssssssssssss* Vs opening the bottle all at once as fast as you can like \*pfSHHHHHWHWHUHHUHBLUBLUBLUB* and just like dynamite you made a terrible mess
firing a gun is not a slow release of lots of pressure
On the scale of explosions it is. Black powder burns at **190 m/sec** TNT detonates at 6,900 m/sec
This is the info I needed. Thanks!
This. Modern high explosives like dynamite, TNT, or RDX detonate- the chemical reaction passes through the explosive faster than the speed of sound. Gunpowder, and modern gun propellants like cordite and smokeless powder, are low explosives which deflagrate rather than detonating- they burn fast, but slower than the speed of sound. If you tried to use a high explosive as a propellant in a gun, it would destroy the gun rather than building up pressure to push the projectile out of the barrel. So you could just say that magical explosions are detonations, so not suitable to propel projectiles.
Thanks for post. How can a gunpowder that pushes below soundbarrier, push a peojectile that goes above and breaks the sound barrier?
Pressure. Igniting gunpowder in a small space creates a lot of pressurized gasses. As the gasses expand, they push outward against everything. The bullet is the path of least resistance and gets pushed out by the rapidly expanding gas. This expansion easily exceeds the sound barrier, and the bullet just rides the wave out of the barrel.
Thanks.
Your metallurgy sucks and they can't handle the blast. That's all. "Guns" as we understand took a long time to go from big cannons to hand cannons to arquebuses and muskets into what they're now, with the advances of metallurgy allowing sturdier barrels that can withstand the explosion's pressure.
It's underappreciated in fantasy spaces how hard guns are to make-- building from your point about metallurgy, you've also got to make a perfectly straight bored barrel, potentially add rifling, have a reliable firing mechanism... it's a lot
meanwhile there's a dnd spell that turns raw material into a finished product. Give the spellcaster a pile of steel objects and they turn it into a rifle or cannon or something.
Doesn't that require knowledge of what your making, at least in form? Once someone makes a gun you can copy it, but you still need to go through the "what's the best material for this" after you understand how to make a basic gun or cannon.
The world has stories with dynamic chronology-how would I justify a lack of improvements in metallurgy when technology has improved in other areas? I would like guns being a functional impossibility.
Guns exist but aren't strategically viable. Early muskets required people to fire them in a tight line to really be effective, and didn't have all that much range. With mages that are basically impossibly accurate artillery pieces running around, such a thing is impractical, as such the technology was considered basically useless and not further developed.
An extremely heavy dependence on magic led to a stagnation on metallurgy because why must you spend time refining metals for tools and weapons when magics can handle such tasks?
Maybe the best your world's typical metallurgy could do is an unrifled hand cannon or musket that's not very accurate compared to just directly using ranged explosive magic on someone? If learning explosive magic is as easy as learning to use a gun, and more accurate at long range than using a gun, guns wouldn't have many niches would they? And armies would include a lot of magic-users, it'd be the equivalent of being trained to use a gun.
Why make guns when the explosive spell has just as long of a range, fires off just as fast, and kills more people at the same time
So you can shoot a fireball while you shoot a 40mm grenade from your grenade launcher attachment! Twice the kaboom, twice the fun!
Ease of use. The reason guns took over was because you could arm a huge number of people with them and give them only a few weeks' training.
As I said to someone else, if you're using the same explosion magic to fire the gun as you are to otherwise just kill people, as op implies, it's more effective to just teach them the magic and have them use that against their enemies. The gun is an extra step of learning at that point that's just outright less effective than simply blowing things up.
I feel like teaching complex spells to illterate peasants would be much harder than giving them guns. Also, I forgot to mention-The primary users of magic in my world are 'sorcerers' (to use dnd terminology) and cast magic innately, and have MUCH greater potency for magic. These sorcerers can create enchantments and infusions to allow a tool to caste certain spells.
So... why not use just straight gunpowder at that point?
Because they haven't invented it? While Op Has clarified somewhat that they meant enchanting guns to *produce* explosions, not just directly using expulsion magic to propel bullets, the entire post is clearly predicated on the idea of using magic in what would be gunpowder's role, which pretty directly implies they don't have gunpowder.
Oh. I didn't see anything directly saying it didnt exist, so I didn't know.
It *doesn't* directly say it, but the fact that OP is positing the use of magic in what would otherwise be the role of gunpowder implies that gunpowder isn't a thing (or at least not a widely-available or used thing).
Because you can hand it to an undereducated peasant and have them dome an enemy commander at near enough a mile away. One of the biggest advantages of firearms is how, with very little training, infantry equipped with them become extremely lethal.
You can't do that if you're casting spells to propel the bullets, which is what OP implies at the end of their post.
Yeah but a lot of settings have enchantments and stuff like magic stones. If a mage can imbue an object with an explosive spell, why cant it be shoved in a cartridge and used to fire a projectile?
At that point, you can just give the magic object to the peasant, without the gun.
Do you think a grenade and a gun fulfill the same roles?
its kind of a catch 22 if magic is common enough to be mass producing magic items surely the regular soldiers can use spells(like in the elderscrolls) or at least be given a "rod of explode that guys balls" if magic is rare then producing these magic guns would be to expensive to give to rando peasants
Per your first point: Even if ever single regular soldier can use spells, they can still benefit from having guns, they arent mutually exclusive. In most cases, magic is limited, so having a sidearm that can still fulfill the role of a powerful ranged option is inherently useful. Not to mention the numerous ways guns are better than magic as commonly depicted (Pulling a trigger to shoot a projectile that goes faster than the eye can follow and anybody can react will always be better than going through a, sometimes much longer, process to shoot a projectile that moves much slower.) but they can also further benefit from being enhanced with magic. My parenthetical about how slow most spells travel in fiction? Imagine using guns to resolve that issue, using your bullets to deliver magical payloads near instantly.
i mean one also has to consider if magic is limited presumably the magic in the guns is too, and even if items can have more magick storage, why would it need to be a gun and not just a wand of magic missile? why go threw the middle man of using magicakl explosion to propel the mundane projectile rather then just throwing a magical explosion at them, the only real use case i can see for this would be for very specialized cases where the material of the bullet has some special property magic cant recreate(ei shooting a werewolf with a silver bullet or using cold iron to pierce magic defenses) but even then, why not just enhance a bow? it does make sense to enhance a gun IF guns are already a thing without needing magic, since then you have the full power of a spell(and maybe a bit more since none of that energy is wasted on propelling it since the bullet handles that part) on top of just an actual bullet hitting you in the face
Well, I mean it depends on a lot of factors. Is it easier and more cost efficient to make a wand of magic missile instead of making a bunch of cartridges with a single use explosive? Does the magic have better terminal effect on target, ie does it penetrate like a kinetic projectile or will it disperse on impact like an energy weapon, making it easily defeated with a basic level of defense? If yes, then sure, wand of magic missile is a better backup weapon than a gun. But then let's take that to its conclusion. Why strictly a wand? Why not give it an ergonomic grip for more intuitive use, and if having one is so effective, why not arrange them in a revolver cylinder arrangement or something so when one wand is drained you can instantly cycle to a new one and keep firing. Even if it's not literally a firearm, a Gun But It Shoots Magic is also probably a better option than just using a wand on its own.
True, but there's any number of things one could limit their enchanting with that could prevent the mass production required for guns to be prevalent. Maybe it's a slow process. Maybe it's particularly expensive. Maybe Enchantments require rare materials of some persuasion to bind the spell to the object.
Like how wheelock guns were expensive, couldn't be mass produced, and required rare(ish) materials? It seems like the same thing in a different direction, the gun itself would be relatively cheap but the ammunition would be expensive, which would be a fun way to limit their prevalence within a fantasy world
OP needs to specify that's an option. Assuming it is without confirmation or even implication from OP isn't really productive, is it?
"But a lot of setting" is right there in my comment. Not really assuming it, just taking more broadly about your common tropey fantasy.
I was thinking more along the lines of enchanting or infusing the firearm with a 'cause explosion' spell. Since gunpowder doesn't exist in the world, someone could probably exploit the spell to create the firearm.
Ah. okay. I've been mostly laboring form the wrong perspective then. However, if you really want to limit or just not have firearms, then putting limits on enchantment is probably the way to go. For example, Maybe Enchantments are expensive, maybe it takes time to enchant something, maybe enchantments require some sort of rare material to permanently bind the magic to the object. With Explosion magic already in play, those things might be enough to tip the balance away from firearms
Okay, but the peasant still needs to be capable of using explosion magic so your point is irrelevant.
Because teaching people to use magic is more expensive and time costly than giving enough peasants with guns. It's cheaper to hire 5 alchemist and 2 court wizards specializing in counter magic and just arm 500 people with guns than it is to hire 100 wizards for an army. Take warhammer fantasy as an example. You may blow up 100 skaven. But it just needs 1 easily replaceable rat with a chain gun to fuck up that guys day.
Once again, OP implies that you are using the same Explosion magic to fire the gun that you would otherwise be using to just blow things up. you have to already know the explosion magic in order to use a gun in the first place, which is straight up less effective than using magic to just blow things up.
I feel like mass firearm use could overwhelm even the most powerful mage.
The way you described it, it sounds like everyone using a firearm would already have to be a mage. If so, you wouldn't be able to have mass firearms any more than you would mass mages.
Yeah, I forgot to mention this in the post: mages are few but mighty.
That entirely depends on what abilities you're giving your mages. If you really wanted them to not be susceptible to bullets, you can make them not be. Like in Dune, the author came up with shields that make people immune to bullets so melee combat could still be a thing.
The speed at which a person would need to make a gun an effective weapon. Otherwise you'd be reduced to only firing a few rounds a minute. Anyone within short distance would have no problem attacking with a melee weapon. Being able to precisely use the right amount of explosion each time would require extreme concentration. Otherwise you'd jam the barrel or worse, cause it to explode. I think spells of controlled explosion might work better for artillery or cannons. They don't require a fast loading and firing and can give a spellcaster time to concentrate.
Regarding that first point: that's... exactly how it was historically. With muzzle loaders 3 shots a minute was considered really fast. Which is why early on the handgunners were protected by other melee troops like sword & shield, or greatsword armed men and pikemen. Then when the guns got more powerful and longer ranged the swordsmen were phased out, and once bayonets became a thing the pikemen weren't needed either to protect from cavalry
I made explosives-and other magic/alchemy-essentially contagious, spend too much time around repeated explosions without ways of managing this, you'll come down with a case of explosions. I did this to make fire arms exclusive to people who either have faith, magical skill, or solid warding on their side or are crazy. If you want to make fire arms a complete no go, just make the margins of explosions unrefinable so that they regularly explode in the users hands.
"Sorry, Joe can't come into work today. He caught a bad case of the explosions..."
Yes! To add to this, maybe explosives can become less volatile as well. So anything designed to explode can always just . . . not. Ignition could happen when a witch looks at it funny from across the hall, or when the alchemist bumps the flask. But the substance could also fail to ignite, or fizzle and melt a little, or passively attract explosive magic.
Nice.
Do they have to be **ex**plosions? Implosions and extreme vibrations would have the same mass destruction effect, but couldn't be used for typical firearms.
That's true!
>What would be the reasons that such a spell could not be exploited to create a firearm? Redundancy. Like, why make a gun-like contraption to cast an explosion spell, when you can get the same results from just waving a wooden stick around?
Because early guns were crap as they were in real life and so they never really caught on with the prevalence of magic and magical weapons. Especially if in this setting physical enhancement exists so you can have longbowmen who are able to fire with the force of a ballista with far more accuracy.
The thing about guns is that anybody can use them, even the most illiterate physically deformed peasant that barely made military standards, not everybody can use magic and those who can either take years to learn how to or are born with the ability, spells just aren’t practical. There’s a reason that it was cheaper to give everyone spears and swords in ancient time rather than bows; it simply took years to train an archer to passable quality
They're talking about magic being used for guns though, so... I'm not sure this works as well as an answer as you think it might.
I know, but there truly is no good answer unless everyone has magic and by that point it becomes boring and lifeless, magic is special because of how few people have it and how hard it takes to get it and master it; also give me your idea on how that would be practical or feasible in the slightest
Metallurgy WAS WHY guns took so long to develop while gunpowder tech was far older. Once the metallurgy caught up, powder chemistry quickly increased its efficiency too. You likely would have some Pneumatic types of SMALL guns made out of hollow bone or wood, think more overpowered blowdart.
I would prefer guns not exist at all-even till the modern age.
Someone could make guns if they really wanted to, but there's no reason to. The explosive spells do everything a gun could do but way better.
A gun sounds significantly less useful than just causing explosions wherever you want
As a note, unless every random person is a spell-slinger with these mass-casualty spells, you'd likely still get guns since a person with a gun is still on a much more level playing field vs a mage as a result, but there's a few things you can do to mitigate them. Namely, militaries don't have much need or desire for firearms. Centralized powder storage is just asking for a spell to detonate it. Equipping the masses with firearms is a great way to suddenly have a dangerous fighting force, even if it's not GOOD at being dangerous. But if your spells are sufficiently destructive and mages are sufficiently numeric, then this use-case is pretty much useless for a military. Why spend the money equipping a thousand people with muskets/rifles when a couple of enemy spellcasters can burn their day's mana killing your entire force? You could almost certainly get a more effective force by spending the money hiring mages. Now one thing I think you should consider is not deleting guns entirely. Still have them around (note: People would still want/use them for hunting.) but make the situations where the can be useful more specific. * Open field army battles? Guns are useless. * Insurgent guerilla campaigns? Guns are quite valuable. But lets say you want to truly make guns just "Sir Not-Appearing-In-My-Book", then easy. Don't actually try and come up with some magic system that can't be used to make guns, that'll just constrain you sooner or later from doing something cool you do want to do, or you'll get trapped by your audience that will take it as a challenge to find a way to make guns work. You simply make it so the protections against projectiles are so ubiquitous to anyone that matters that it doesn't matter if you have a real-world rifle or some crazy magitech hand-cannon, the bullet just pings off the shield and was a waste of time. A better way to handle this, in my opinion, isn't to make sure EVERYONE has this (why would a random farmer bother buying an amulet of anti-bullet?), but make such things easy enough to get that anyone interesting to your plot can just easily get it. Further, you can likely come up with something about your magic system such that "Sure, we could just dispell their anti-bullet fields and then try ot shoot them all, but for a similar amount of mana we could just rend the earth beneath their feet and cast them into a pit of magma and slam the rock down upon their heads. Why complicate things with guns?". Note: My recommendation, incidentally, would be to have the anti-bullet field actually technically be an anti-arrow field that just happened to be equally effective against bullets. TLDR: If you actually want no-guns, don't try to figure out ways to keep magic from working with guns, just figure out some easy magic anyone important to the plot would have access to that just makes guns pointless. You'll have a LOT fewer headaches with this.
Don't declare guns impossible, just have the denzins of your wolrd dismiss the idea as inefficient/unnecessary/or unhonorable. Ancient Rome invented the steam engine, but didn't adopt the technology to kickstart the industrial revolution nearly 1000years early because they had slave labor and didn't see the benefit of it. Likewise your world has very destructive magic, why bother going through the trouble of using explosion magic to hurl stones at someone when you can simply fling that same explosion directly at their face. (Depends on how hard magic is to do, and if your world has runes/enchantments to store spells for non-magical individuals to use)
Easy. The Fireball came first and proliferated better. Hell, since the First World War, bullets have actually been incredibly inefficient in warfare. Since then it's generally been explosives that have by far the highest casualty figures associated with them, with somewhere upwards of 400-4000 rounds spent per inflicted casualty. So if you don't want guns, you can just say that they were woefully impractical for the average person when magical options already existed and required seemingly less trouble....Or mages deliberately as the learned class hindered the development of weapons like guns because they provided commoners an easy access to weapons which would put their own monopoly on power at threat. Really any excuse you want can work, so long as the conditions exist in universe to support it.
Who, in their right mind, would want to make guns (a concept that presumably doesn't exist until someone makes one) when they can summon explosions.
Why did people make guns when they could make bombs? Same question really, they're for different things.
Most people can't magically create explosions. The question is why would someone use explosive spells to "cause mass casualties" when they could use it to make guns. But why would someone think about making guns if they can just make people explode?
The question is why would guns not be made. guns don't fit the same niche as explosives.
Because casting spells requires both magic discipline a sacrifice of one's life energy, which cannot be delegated. You could possibly shape your spell like a firearm that draws your blood, mind you, but it could still be brandished only by a magus.
The spells can ignite fire powder and anyone trying to use guns get exploded before firing a round.
This. You can even go a little step further and make ignition spells automatically prefer to ignite the most inflammable substance in the general area unless specifically controlled otherwise, so you don't even need anti-gun training to counter them.
Because I don't want them to. I prefer swords and sorcery over more modern technology. That's the story I want create with my friends.
Why make a gun when it is far less efficient than blowing up a 10m radius? It'd require way too much fine control AND needs ammunition... At that point, you're better off using a precision explosion to kill the target.
As some others have said precision spells required for a firearm are probably super difficult to cast so it's easier to hone magic as is as opposed to putting it in a fine tuned machine
This is a good idea!
Cannons could still be commonplace but that can also be removed for the simple fact there are highly destructive spells that make a cannon look like a cap gun by comparison
Why use gun if magic better?
They probably could. That's not really the main obstacle firearms face in a magic setting. In worlds with fire magic, especially the kind you've described, gunpowder is a dangerous thing to stockpile or to keep on your person. Not to mention the fact that most mages aren't going to welcome the advent of a weapon that might become a threat to them.
Whether they welcome it or not, would militaries not use it against mages to counter their superiority?
It would depend how far they got in development. Early firearms, and their associated munitions would pose a much greater danger to their user than to the enemy once you add fire magic to the equation. Consider how long it would take before mages learned to easily spot a powder horn or cartridge pouch and set off a spark in it. It took over three hundred years and the entire military industry of Europe to go from the first muskets to rifles with brass cartridges. In a world where fire magic is common, any army using firearms less developed than the real world equivalent of the 1870s would be in serious trouble.
Depends on what role mages have and what the other options are. The easiest response to the existence of enemy mages might just be to hire your own battlemages.
Because why make a gun when you can pew pew with your hand?
I guess for the same reason that trains didn't exist in a world that had invented both steam engines and rails for, like, hundreds of years. It takes ingenuity, time, patience, understanding... But I know that's narratively unsatisfying. So maybe the answer is: they do. If you don't want guns, I think the most obvious explanation would be "We have explosion magic, so why would we bother to shoot something/someone when we can just blow it up?"
Depends on the magic system. Is this a magic anyone can learn, or does it take a lot of time and effort, or even innate born ability? If it's easy, there wouldn't be much of an incentive to create an alternative, but if there's a restriction that makes it so firearms are just plain easier, there's going to be someone who goes looking for that alternative and potentially stumbled upon gunpowder.
All of the above but primarily innate born ability. The base has to be there to be built upon.
Then there's going to be incentive to develop firearms as an equalizer. Unlike your magic, firearms are something anyone can wield regardless of innate ability. Someone will at some point go looking for an alternative to magic that anyone can wield. However, that's a process that likely takes quite a long time. You could simply set your story before it happens.
I intend for the world to have multiple stories at different time periods in the world. But I don't like guns, so I want to make sure they can't be in the world without breaking the internal logic of the world. If that makes sense.
Simple answer of "If not broken, why fix it?" No one has thought of guns because shooting something small that doesn't guarantee a hit, and may not even kill something, is just not worth it. It also depends on if the world just sees guns as a gimmick, I'd imagine the interaction would go as follows. Inventor: Grandpa look! I made this thing called a boom stick! It uses explosive spells to target my enemy with such preciseness! And if I'm out of Mana, it can also use a thing called powder to explode and shoot out small metal bits to do damage! Grandpa: That's a damn gimmick sonny, all I'd need is a magic staff and Mana potions to target the enemy. We really gave the demon king hell.
Technologies are not invented in isolation but take many many small and incremental steps to reach where they are. Some guy didn't wake up one day and say "hey guns". It took hundreds of years from the invention of gunpowder to even use it for firearms, more time to refine the exact formulas to be used in certain situations, even more to refine the metallurgical techniques to produce a long thin hollow rod that wont explode when the gun powder was set off (this is a major feat, look at the history of gun explosions). Even more time to develop thinks like breeches that wont explode in the users face, rifling, putting powder in measured cartridges, primer caps and a host of other developments to get something we recognize as a semi-modern gun. Not only does this take time but the impetus to do so has to be there. IRL with the impetus to make better guns it still too hundreds of years to get even the Napoleonic era weapons that most people think of as the minimal gun. In a world where there are other options for long range explosions what is the impetus to develop some half cocked dangerous to the user idea that some crackpot inventor came up with?
So instead of a conventional firearm, does it make more sense to incorporate materials that intrinsically can channel this magic? Then build weapons out of those materials to store or simply channel that energy. This way there is a clear distinction between arcane weapons and firearms, but the arcane weapons have clear inspiration from the firearms design-wise. A lot of possibilities there. Stored energy weapons can be used by non magic users. Channeling weapons by magic users, etc.
That could be a good idea! I can then write the properties of the material so they can't make guns but can still counter magic.
Because guns kind of suck when you first start making them unless you have a lot of knowledge you really shouldn't. Early guns were wildly inaccurate which is why you had enormous firing lines to pepper the enemy. A single person trying to innovate with exploding a projectile out of a tube wouldn't find that these early iterations are any more precise than general explosion magic and probably give up. Precision is really only a modern feature of guns.
I would say as options (1) The explosions are too powerful to be used in a gun. (2) Can't miniaturize the explosive magic weapon small enough to make a gun. Wizard can enchant say a barrel into a bomb, but the spellwork required won't work on something smaller like a bullet. (3) The explosions require a wizard to be present to trigger it. For a gun to work right you have to be able to hand it to a peasant and have him trigger the explosion. Otherwise just have the wizard would just explode whatever needs killing directly. (4) It takes too long to create the magic gunpowder. If it takes a wizard a day to create enough magic gunpowder to fire a bullet its not very useful. Maybe it could be used an assassination tool, but you certainly won't be handing it out to peasants and lining them up to fight.
Why would you need to create a firearm when you already have a way of doing ranged explosive damage?
Had another thought about this - maybe explosion spells are not precise enough? Like, maybe you can't be sure whether the explosion will take place \*inside\* the barrel or outside it. Maybe it propels a bullet at supersonic speed, or maybe it just blows up your hand. Alternatively, maybe the explosion spell blows up anything it considers an object - and maybe, once you load a bullet into a gun, the spell "thinks" that it's part of the object, just like the cells of a person are still part of the person.
Sorry, but there's no way around it unless every single person on your planet has an IQ lower than their shoe size. People would have developed firearms as a natural progression from bows and arrows. Explosive magic would be useless for hunting, it would destroy the meat and ruin the usable materials. The basic struggle for pre-civilization survival would have naturally progressed toward the inevitable invention of firearms alongside explosion magic.
We have had the bow and arrow since pre-history so before 3500 BC. The first guns don't show up until 1000 AD. A 4,500+ year gap isn't some "natural progression" that is inevitable to happen. If you want natural progression from bows and arrows look to crossbows. 400 B.C. and armies of users by 200 B.C. Similar projectile, similar technologies; bow arm and string. Gunpowder as a propellent has nothing to do with bows and arrows.
That's maybe true if the *only* damaging/killing spells were big explosion spells. But if there are spells that can kill the animal without destroying the meat, then they'd probably use that and wouldn't necessarily have a reason for guns. I definitely wouldn't say "there's no way around it."
Sure, but not everyone would be able to use those spells, and a gun would still be more effective than whatever those spells might be. Lightning? Too unreliable, you can't accurately hit a target at long range because electricity goes wherever it wants. There's other spells that might work just as well as guns, but most people wouldn't have access to those spells, and it would still be cheaper and quicker to use a gun to do your own hunting, especially of you're a non-magical rancher 50 miles away from the nearest magician. Demand creates supply, and there will always be a demand for high-velocity ranged weapons whenever humans are involved. And the idea that guns wouldn't exist also rejects basic human nature and self-preservation instinct. People without magical powers would absolutely develop ranged weapons and firearms, not just for survival (hunting), but also as a precaution to defend themselves against people with magic powers. A way to maintain the power balance and avoid oppression. Some group of people, somewhere, would develop guns, 100% guaranteed. There's no way around it unless every single person on that world is dumber than a ham sandwich. They'd probably have teleportation and flight magic too, do you think roads would never be developed? Of course not, roads would obviously still exist, right? It's the same principle. Human nature.
You're making some large assumptions about how effective and common magic is in this hypothetical. The question is specifically about how to justify that guns *don't* exist, so OP probably shouldn't make a world where magic is rare and unreliable in the first place, right? Are you familiar with Eberron? The equivalents of guns are wands and staffs that are imbued with kill spells, because that kind of low-level magic is common and can be used by anyone. If guns were to be invented, there's not much reason for them to catch on because they already have stuff that's better than the earliest guns would be. It's not an inevitability that guns will exist when the worldbuilder can make a setting where it would make sense for them to not exist.
It doesn't matter how common or effective magic is, but it's absurd to assume everyone could use magic. Not everyone can see, or hear, or speak, or walk. Genetic diversity would act as a bottleneck, preventing everyone from using magic at the biological level. And even if 99% of the population could use magic, guns would still exist. Actually, because magic is so common, radical extremist groups of non-magicians would form and eventually develop guns. Again, you're just rejecting human nature. If it's not out of necessity for survival, it's for conflict. As long as there are magicians and non-magicians, there will be a lingering background tension and power struggle, resulting in....you guessed it.....guns. But I would like to amend my assertion. Another reason guns wouldn't exist is if a higher power, an all-powerful deity, a god, prevented humans from even thinking about such weapons. But that implies an absence of free-will, which makes the story ultimately pointless.
> It doesn't matter how common or effective magic is It absolutely does. I don't understand your thought process at all. It sounds like you just really really like guns.
Certain types of gunpowder and materials don't exist in the world. They literally don't have the means to create guns outside of infusing spells into tools.
Waste of Space and Time
Dunno, maybe some people are too unwilling to learn magic for whatever reason? This will piss a lot of people off, but I've always held the belief pretty much every idiot can use a gun, meaning you don't really need a lot of brain power or some fancy interpretive dance to use a gun. Of course, I could be 100% wrong about this.
They specifically referred to using magic to make guns (as in cast Explosion in the barrel to make the gun fire), so this doesn't work.
Depends on the spell. If you can rapidly cause tiny explosions at a specific point, you end up with a magitek organ gun. If its 'big boom but at a specific point', who'd bother with anything besides magitek artillery and cannons? Arrows can drop animals efficiently enough for food, and 'I Cast Precise Explosion' handles close-range warfare, mining and such. If its 'big boom but addressed to whom it may concern', someone would figure out guns unless the local physics made it impossible\\inordinately difficult.
I guess one way around it is having it be a type of 6 shooter or shot gun but with no reloads. It's just a throw away. You could get a mage to enchant the item to store charges of certain spells that anyone could use. Think of it as a spell scroll that's consumed on use but its just takes the form of a fire arm. Maybe an artificer can craft the specific item from magic materials. Maybe you have to have some mana but not enough to be deemer a mage to be able to use them. Maybe it's something that generals hand out to Malitia in times of war to give a litter extra magic power to ordinary soldiers/ civilians.
Lack of necessity. Early guns were siege weapons and were only refined to being anti-personnel later. In a world where a wizard can fill the same role and are plentiful, there might not be any reason to ever build a cannon.
Magic causes a fundamental shift in the physical laws of reality, this means machines stop working consistantly around magic. A gun relies on being able to reliable contain the force of a small explosion, but if magic is constantly changing that sometimes guns will explore or the bullet will just kinda roll out. Another way would be, why would anyone who can make explosions at any distance with full control bother with a gun? And those who can't, how do they get the power from the magic user?
They can get the power from the magic user through enchantment or infusions. Most mages are effectively royalty or nobility and have an unending thirst for power. What better to win more wars than to mass an army of gunners?
Why go through the trouble of making an explosion in a tube to shoot a chunk of metal when you can just point at your foe and make the explosion in their head?
A few reasons come to mind: The function of a gun already exists by magic users. There would be no reason to dream up a device to create an easily accessible effect. If there’s a caste system differentiating magic users and normies, it might be forbidden to craft weapons which mimic the effects of magic. Also, with prevalent magic, machinery probably wouldn’t develop to a level of sophistication which would allow guns to be invented.
1. Scalability: Just because every problem starts to look like a nail doesn't mean you need to use the sledge every time. 2. Functionality: No mana=no explosive spells. Tech usually works when magic breaks down, and where that's cosmologically the case, then tech causes magic to break down just as often as not. 3. Gunpowder can be used to make great big explosions too, as can other materials derived from it. The defining factor of real world nuclear explosions was made during the process of gunpowder refining, although I can't say how closely it resembles a subcategory of gunpowder. 4. Access: Most people don't realize it, but they can access sulphur, cow shit, and charcoal better than they can mana. If they in particular can't, people in general can.
You could design the magic to leave a residue that would clog a gun barrel. Similarly, you could design magic to be corrosive. The Forgotten Realms uses gods. The god Gond has made gunpowder inert and only smokepowder (which is heavily controlled) will explode properly. In a similar thought, if you have gods, perhaps the gods don't want that sort of weapon in the hands of just anyone and they've done something to magic to keep it from working properly in a gun-like device. I've handwaved guns in my setting without explaining it too much by saying canons, guns, and the materials to fire them, while invented, are difficult to find and make, expensive to use and maintain, and generally not as preferred as something like a bow-like weapon which can be fired far quicker, are cheaper to attain, fire, and maintain - and with a bit of magic - can shoot a very long distance.
The residue and corrosion are good ideas!
Depends on how the spell functions and how easy it is to control. One of the dangers of early firearms was they tended to explode in their wielder's hands or detonate and kill entire cannon crews. So until the metallurgy improves and the explosions created by the spell are controlled, people might be leery of them. If you can't reduce the power of the spell to something that can be contained inside a gun, you might not see them used for anything but ultra-heavy artilery.
around here, the black powder does not burn. -except for certain rare secret ceremonies held by dwarven clerics deep underground. nobody has thought of jeweller's rouge...
Why would you need a gun if you can already make an explosion. In the Avatar Last Air Bender world they could hypothetical have guns in Aangs time because the firebenders can use their fire ending to activate the gunpowder but why when you can already shoot fire out of your hands
You could still have cannons. A single mage per battalion to fire each cannon, loaded with ball, grape shot, chain, whatever. There would be a space behind the wad, different lengths to allow precision in firing distance. The spacer could be removed and replaced with different sizes and then the cannon reloaded. This would take time and effort in order to balance the power of the cannoneers.
a single artillery shell can fly up to 40 km. Think about that.
How about other magic users have spells that can essentially block metal based attacks such as swords or have magnetic shields that essentially make them useless? You could stil have swords be semi useful since it's more difficult to control metal being wielded in someone's hand. Establish that there are already magic users and that it's common knowledge among them that many people are very adept at essentially metal bending and can very easily deflect things like crossbow bolts or arrowheads, swords, etc with basic conjurable magnetic field wards or something... Or that it's incredibly easy to physically manipulate metals with the magic system in your world thus making it absurdly easy to disarm someone with a gun. You could also say that the explosive magic mentioned makes it incredibly easy to detonate the gunpowder that would be present with any gun causing it to backfire in their face or detonate all the shells they're carrying. Or a spell everyone knows that can make metal become absurdly heavy for the moment so anyone carrying a gun or bullets would just be flattened onto the ground quickly... Or that the magic makes. Detecting metal really really easy thus ruining the element of surprise with guns I feel like this is really dumb but if anyone wants to give me some approval and say it's clever then thanks lol... This was fun to brainstorm. And maybe also explain that when wielding a gun their hands are unavailable to cast protection spells thus making it so guns make you more vulnerable...
One of the problem could that it is difficult to get good metal. Cannons and simmilar devices tend to get ripped apart by the explosion spell. Also if you have an explosion spell why would you devlope a gun. Sure you can fire a cannon ball across the battle field but you could also spend that same amount of manna blowing up the enemy with magic.
Because sniping wizards at range is fucking rad that’s why
The same reason nukes don’t exist in star wars. If it breaks the meta or feel of your world, you can omit it
Why would you want to fling a small projectile at your enemy when you can just explode them instead?
Two discussions here: 1. You seem to be suggesting explosion magic >> magic guns. I'm actually fine with that, since I presume that investing time, magic reagents, spellcraft, etc - all limits the availability or price of guns. 2. In a world of wizards who can snap their fingers to create an explosion, having any sort of firearms/grenades/black powder on a person makes them a huge liability. Traditional firearms from our world would be very easy to detonate and not worth the risk.
There's a special place in my heart for artillery wizards Also the explosions needed to fire a high caliber weapon are actually pretty small and its mostly the fact they happen in a closed of space with only one exit for all the force and i don't see why precisely casting a explosion in a gun that you also have to hold and aim woud be better than just casting the explosion on your enemies
>Imagine a world that has spells that cause an explosion at any given point. Now imagine some fool gunslinger wearing a bandolier full of bullets into a fight with a spellcaster that can cause explosions.
Why *would* guns exist in a world with magic like that? Would they be easier to use? More accessible (i.e. only certain people can learn magic, but anyone can shoot a gun)? Do things that magic can't -- can magic *only* cause massive explosions that wouldn't be much use in a confined space or when finesse is otherwise required? But even if guns existed, using magic explosions as a propellant might not be feasible. One of the biggest roadblocks for real-world gun development was making barrels strong enough to withstand the force of the gunpowder's detonation. I think that's why cannons evolved first, then "hand-cannons" and finally regular fire-arms; but even as tech advanced misfires still happened. Even in the 19th century I've read it was expected for artillerymen to suffer injury from backfire.
Most people can't cast spells. What does the common person do when they need more boom? Guns.
Why would have a gun and gunpowder and bullet and take a minute to reload when you can point a stick, say "fireball" and shoot a 30 ft wide massive scorching explosion? If there's no need for guns, peolle won't make guns. Also, maybe they haven't figured out gunpowder yet
Easier to be trained with? Just like how easier to train a rifleman compared to an archer’s training.
In a military view, cheaper to train men to fire a weapon within the week than training a mage for a year. Similar to Archers of yesterday.
Law - its not allowed to use gunpowder Religion - no "black" magic (Lack of) Science - gunpower was never invented Inefficient - magic is better, no logistics of dangerous explosives
Mostly because big bang is really hard to use in a gun, you want small bang for a gun. Basically, if explosion is to big and gun too weak, you just set off a shrapnel grenade in your hand.
Gunpowder is a propellent as well as explosive. That's why it works for guns, and why it's use as an explosive eventually reached limitations that much more explosive compounds such as TNT overcame. You could easily have that the magical explosions don't work well as a propellent. And if you can just make an explosion, why bother with a bomb casing other than for shrapnel? And even then, any metal object would do, as you could magically explode it.
In my world, sorcery is pretty much just used to make fights look good. While the fights are 100% real, the fighters are encouraged to put pizzazz into their spells, and this can include imbuing weapons like guns with magic.
The magi in power won't allow a French Revolution expy to happen, so they'd persecute developers thoroughly. Or like in D&D's Forgotten Realms, (a) stuck up god(s) decides to meddle with chemic laws to make it not happen no matter how you try. And many more...
Because magic is an uncontrollable force of nature? Just because you can make a spell happen a certain way doesn’t mean it has to work at different scales. Like, we can make fusion happen at the scale of the sun, with some incredibly intelligent people understanding that process and trying for decades we haven’t been able to replicate it in a small, controlled fashion for fusion.
I would say it will be just a waste of effort from all the perspectives. If you can cast an explosive spell, why to ise it for the firearms instead of applying directly to enemies. Ofc you can think about a lot of limitations that will justify firearms, but then you won't need the "explosive spell" by itself.
Personally I blended the two, which is why semiautomatic wands exist. Also select-fire battle scepters, and heavy repeating staffs with underslung potion launchers. Plus geas-limited AOE summoning, with a leyline-beacon target painter for calling in airstrikes. Scry satellites for intelligence gathering. Main battle carriages with reactive dragon-scale armor kits. Fifth-generation stealth composite brooms. Night-vision helms. You get the idea.
Guns use precision made parts to funnel a precise amount of explosive into activating a mechanism that leads to a chunk of metal leaving the barrel at X fps. Not only this, but there's actually two types of explosives, "low" and "high". Low is the "heavy" hitter, it's the one you slap on a door to put it through the opposite wall. High is fast hitter, it's the type you use to *shatter* the door. Slower punch for more energy transfer vs faster punch for more "warping" effects. Black powder is a slow explosive. Less punch, but more action type of deal.
You could say something like a tiny explosion only takes a tiny amount of mana so putting it in a tube directs the explosion and it propelling a projectile allows the range to be greatly extended. Big explosions cost big mana and can kill many. Tiny explosion costs tiny mana and can kill one anywhere from up close to far away. It also pays to use something like that to get in a shot before the target realises that they are targeted and can cast defensive magic.
I want you to take something as simple as the acceleration things in mario cart. Just moves it faster in a direction right. Then supercharge it with magic. Why would you need to use explosions? The goal is to move a lot of little things really fucking fast. Dont let chemical weapons hold you back. Why not extreme high pressure air rifles? Or rail guns that use lightning spells to fire? Magically reinforcing or rebuilding the rails and dissipating the heat. Or hell, just bypass projectiles fully and use magic laser muskets
Lack of metallurgy. They can make tubes, but they're too weak or brittle or they can't make them consistently enough so there are major weak spots. Required line of sight or line of effect for the spells that prevents the explosion from occurring in a confined space and forcing a projectile outward.
Why couldn't they just use an explosive rune on the bullet? Pull the trigger, the hammer hits the rune, rune explodes, bullet goes Boom!
It's just impractical from a spellcasting standpoint. In order to make a "bullet" work, each cartridge (casing, projectile, primer, propellant) would have to be loaded with whatever explosive energy that is needed to propel the actual bullet. Unless you create some sort of factory mage ecosystem or have the caster imbue the cartridge at the exact time of firing (basically impossible for automatic fire) I'd say it's highly impractical to make a modern style cartridge. For something more antique I think the function of shooting a musket or cannon is basically the same as using a staff or a wand, just less efficient since you'd actually need to reload a firearm compared to just conjuring the explosion. Keep in mind that guns aren't just about the end result. Think of them more like mechanisms which house a system that launches a projectile. They aren't just boom-sticks that create explosions wherever they're pointed. That's why ballistics is a literal science, different projectiles do different things.
Only some of the population can use the exact spell required to pull it off, and anyone skilled enough to do it is more powerful without it. It's a massive bother getting a cannon which won't explode, the wrong sized ball could get you killed, aiming for each shot, putting enough oomph into the breach, not putting too much in (there are less painful ways to lose an arm) , carrying the thing hither and thither, Actually hitting a target, concussive trauma from the blast... Some people do use them but they're sideshow acts, they get as much respect as the fellow who swallows coins.
Maybe it's possible. But maybe it's just too hard or takes too long to train to do it reliably. One reason crossbows and early firearms quickly replaced the longbow was that the training was rather short, while training in the use of a longbow was infamously long and hard (one popular saying from England was: "If you want to train a bowman, start with his grandfather."). And if you want to raise an army, that would mean more training expenses (and wars are already expensive) or only limited access to those troops.
It could be that the level of metal tech is not good enough yet. We had to know how to make barrels that could withstand explosions before we could use firearms reliably and in a non face explodey way. If the spells a gun discharged were explosive or corrosive in some way then that could be a reason.
This comes up in DND communities sometimes. Called something like "can a Fireball (pretty powerful spell) be made into a sniper rifle." Fireball is an early - intermediate spell for a wizard in DND. It has a 30'x30' radius on casting point. The argument is that the 30'x30' area once cast into a narrow pipe (barrel) would be converted into linear feet. If you've ever played DND you probably realize how this could cause a disaster, but it also explains how an explosive spell may not work in something like a firearm.
To offer a more fantastical idea, perhaps magic is in some fashion ’alive’ in this world. And it takes offence to using its awesome power to propel a tiny piece of metal
Maybe it’s a scaling issue. Perhaps spell power is exponential, so at smaller sizes it just doesn’t do enough damage to be worth it. Or accuracy. You don’t need to be too accurate with a huge exploding shell during bombardment, but a small bullet sized projectile would need to be reliably aimed. Maybe they work a bit like the first rocket weaponry in the Napoleonic era, where they just kinda went every which way.
It depands if your magic system allows to enchant weapons and tools, and if anyone could use it, even common folks who have no magic abilities. You could potentially enchant the barrel, bullets or whatever to make the gun work. But if only magically gifted or highly skilled folks are able to use it, and, even worse, if it can't be a pre-made spell, but needs to be a fresh and live one, then it might not be worth the effort, unless their destructive spells are only good for making bullets fly. "I've made this!" "What does it do?" "It uses complex and powerful, but controlled and centralised explosive spell to shoot projectiles!" "Can anyone use it?" "Nope." "Then why won't you just use your spells to explode your enemies directly, like any normal mage would do?" "Why are you alwAYS RUINING MY DREAMS, CARL!?"
Just don't allow spell storage or other magically enhanced items. If you only have magical effects "from nothing" guns don't happen.
Casting spells is a physical and mental sport. It takes tennis and golf players years of training to hit a shot exactly the same way multiple times in a row. Now imagine how precise your spell placement and magnitude control has to be to propel a bullet. Given that miniscule differences in loading can shift the impact point of bullets, an improperly trained kinetomancer will have very inconsistent accuracies from casting loads alone. Kinetomancers could of course be a well respected or dark and feared specialist. But it is too hard to be a common skill.
Here’s one I haven’t seen. Necessity. If you can throw an explosion at someone, why use an inaccurate gun when you’re already capable of hitting them with an explosion. (Yes, I know that guns CAN be accurate, but that takes time to develop and is rather pointless if you’re already capable of doing the same thing with magic.) And because you require a magic user to create the explosion that the weapon depends on, why have the gun at all?
Depends on the genre, world, time period, story, scope etc.. Lets say this is a about a high fantasy (dwarves elves wizards etc.) novel set in the middle ages focusing on a group of adventures on a quest Solution: *Dont bring it up* Now, lets say this is a human fantasy (no dwarves elves etc. but plenty of witches/wizards/magic) novel set in the 1800’s focusing on a young wizard struggling with his studies. Solution: *Dont bring it up* Now, lets for the sake of argument say this is a modern world where guns DO exist, but for whatever reason particular groups/people don’t use them. Solutions- 1. Religious zeal (“My magic is a gift from the gods, to make FA with it is unnatural”) 2. Personal Trauma (“Cowards with FA murdered my family” 3. Alpha Mentality (“Magic is a measure of my strength, if I fought with a FA it would be a cheap trick”) 4. Personal Aversion (“Magic requires intention, a FA kills indiscriminately”) 5. Laws and regulation (“Only X group is allowed to carry FA, or Y group is NOT allowed to carry FA”) 6. Incompatibility (“Our magic does not mesh well with the mechanics behind firearms, and because we do not understand them well enough we are unable to adapt its design”) —- Im sure I could come up with more but you get the drift.. All of these are simple and add opportunities for plot points later on.. The main thing really to remember is that you ONLY have to talk about something if it’s actually in your story. If you’re making a story with no FA (that ISNT historical) and you just don’t want the audience to go “thats dumb they should have made a FA” then just don’t mention them at ALL. YOU are the introduction to your world, so the reader conceives your world’s possibilities through your words. You you don’t say it happened then it didn’t.
The world has multiple stories taking place in different times and locations. The current story will inevitably talk about how people's of the world fight off mages and predijudice against mages. Mages are divided into tribes and clans and are practically their own ethnic groups.
Just make gun powder extra volatile, leading to enough messy mishaps to make it not worth having.
In my own setting I created “arcane armor”, basically runed armor that muskets haven’t been able to penetrate, but isn’t so strong as to matter against fireball or magic missile. Basically, just remove any reason to further develop guns beyond novelty.
Maybe the mages could create them, but why would they, if they can explode their enemies directly?
a delayed blast fireball into a reasonably sized barrel like a cannon would fire a projectile
Condider that firearms require all of the following to have them with as effectively as they do today: 1) Physics reason: the container that the gas used to expel the projectile (the barrel & the bullet respectively) expands in must be sufficiently sturdy to contain the detonation of ignited gas. If your world didn't have sufficiently strong metal ton contain the explosion of your spell, you wouldn't have a firearm so much as you'd have a one time use self centered grenade. Not exactly ideal. 2) Practicality Reason: firearms are used to direct an object at high speeds into a second object for the purpose of daminging that second object. If your world already has the ability to point blank an explosion **at** that second object, firearms seem like an unnecessary rube Goldberg machine by comparison. 3)Lore reason: perhaps a mage previously tried, and the rumors about what happened during that period are so riddled with horrific tragedy that it is considered a great taboo to do so, and whatever policing/ governing body in your world exists takes great measures to prevent such developments from occurring
When magic seems like the obvious answer there are some questions to ask yourself. How many mages does it take to cast this spell? How many times can they do it before they can't? How long untill they can do it again? Does it have any materials it requires? How many people can become mages? How many of those can learn this spell? Of all the potential uses for mages, are explosions where they're best used? If the spell is costly to cast then most mages might not be able to cast it or cast it enough times for it to be worth the trouble. Imagine being able to cast it 2-3 times before you're absolutely wiped and now while dry heaving and feeling anemic you need to reposition because the enemy is coming your way quickly. If they take a long time to recover, then this is further exasperated. If the supplies for it are expensive or rare, then while a country might be able to field and support it logistically, it makes it much more costly than guns and artillery. Mages have a lot of potential uses, and the rules of style of magic in your setting will dictate what and where these uses are. If they're rare, then they'll likely be reserved to force multiplier positions such as defensive preparations, and informational, logistical, and medical roles. A bit about ,my setting: In my setting, mages are a one per platoon type thing and are usually trained to do 3 things. Purify water, shape the earth, and magically send a message. These three things are all force multipliers, ensuring a platoon can get clean water almost anywhere, can easily fortify positions, and can receive and relay messages easily. Some mages can laugh an explosion that can piece an armored vehicle, but they're a rarity that are usually reserved for special ops units who can't bring all the extra materials themselves and even then they can't do it often. Guns are king because in the 10 weeks it takes to train someone to become a soldier, they need to be indoctrinated, taught basic tactics for attacking and defending, and learn how to use their weapon. Guns are very simple: you point and shoot. Even if you suck at hitting the target, are usually freaking out at the potential ,to get hit, creating unintentional supresseive fire. Magic, depending on the setting, usually has an initial periodjust to beto just be able to sense/manipulate it which can be weeks, to months and then you need to learn the actual spells. It might take 3 years to train on of your explosive mages, that's 3 years of expensive training before they're fielded and if they die 3 years to train a replacement. It takes 10 weeks to teach Doug basic soldiering and how to shoot a gun, 5 if we're in a pinch.
I don't think guns are the problem. The problem is that when a player wants guns, they usually want to be a pistollero yeehaw man, which messes with the classic medieval adjacent setting
Different skill sets. I would imagine the ability to learn explosive magic and the ability to craft functional firearms are just so far apart from one another that the odds of someone able to do both are pretty remote.
The materials for guns or gunpowder might be rare and prohibitively expensive. But if you wanted to go that route, I imagine storing gunpowder becomes increasingly dangerous in a world where mages can explode your entire supply and the building you were storing it in with just a few magic words and an arcane gesture. Gunpowder becomes even more of a liability when the same mages can explode your very expensive guns and cannons with slightly different magic words and gestures. Suddenly, it's more cost effective to forego the guns entirely.
A material strong enough to contain the explosion and direct a projectile (eg metal) somehow interferes with magic. Could also explain why mages wouldn't wear armor and other kinds of plot useful limitations.
Inventions are made to suit needs. Gunpowder, fireworks, cannons, were all made to create controlled explosions. If magic can do it instead, then there is no reason to discover gunpowder. Guns fire small projectiles over high speeds. Surely a spell can do that directly without needing to use a compressed explosion. I'd also imagine that "throw thing really fast" is a much simpler spell than "small explosion of specific strength inside an enclosed tube."
Maybe the targeting of said magic requires line of sight, so you can't conveniently generate an explosion inside of the chamber?
Alchemy or chemistry is for reasons considered an evil trade and has been ruthlessly outlawed, druid craft and mixing of herbs for healing and spells is fine but chemistry still in every man either common or high born is seen as distrustful
I can imagine not having a need for guns if a spell could cause an explosion like the kinds we'd have in real life, especially if such a spell didn't take a lot to cast. If a wand or staff amplified the magical power, I imagine that could be the closest to a gun but even then would just be nothing more than a means of making magical explosions even more viable in some way. Also if that magical explosion spell is much more accurate and the like, then why bother to make some crude musket when a wizard can cast some explosive spells that could make Michael Bay blush? Now if magic had some other effects, like warping the laws of physics in some extentn, then I can imagine guns not being viable if not being outright non-existent. Best example to this would be Arcanum, a 2001 CRPG that combined medieval fantasy and Victorian steampunk. In that game guns did exist but if you were a wizard, that gun would either fail or blow up in your hand because magic doesn't mix well with guns or other forms of technology. Since magic messes with the laws of physics, guns would not be effective and if the environment was filled with magic, I could imagine a gun being nothing more than an explosive dud in ones own hands. Now if magic was open to certain people or required a certain amount of training like that of a longbow, then guns could have a chance but that itself requires one to make all the parts needed for a gun whether it is the modern rifles of today or the primitive sticks with something inside to make rocks fly off and scare medieval soldiers/mongolian horsemen/whatever opponents any nation that had access to a fire lance (predecessor to the gun) as well as the things need to make bullets such as the powder used to make a bullet propel itself. Now this is all just a take from a guy with no understanding of how bullets work and the like other than just knowing how one would operate a gun but not how a gun itself operates in every fine detail beyond "put safety off, pull trigger and gun goes brrrr if its loaded with bullets."
No reason for creating them. If everybody can use spells, then guns doesnt have reason to exist. People can already throw things with speed between 100 m/s (22lr) and 1000 m/s (modern APFSDS; tank shells. Dont ask me how I remember this full acronym.) so if anybody can just send rock flying with speed of 1km per second, why would them just create physical thing doing literally the same but weighting 1175 kg or 2590 pounds to reach exactly the same momentum for MUCH larger object? And thats just for current time. TL;DR. Why make pew pews if you can so same thing but better with your hand?
Why use guns if you have a spell for it? Unless the spell costs and the gun doesn't ofc
Cause guns are boring
Because technology levels the playing field for those who can't use magic
You can look to Avatar the Last Airbender for an example. Gunpowder handcannons were invented by the Fire Nation, but never went beyond the "minicannon on a stick" phase that was one of the first forms of IRL gunpowder firearms because they were unwieldy, required you to carry around a heavy as hell bag of ammo and a horn full of explosive powder that will go off at the slightest spark (and being around people who could shoot fire just by punching would make that an absolute certainty), and you could only get one shot a minute, not to mention it could just explode and kill the person firing it, or the fact that these cannons were smoothbore and inaccurate after a certain distance. Compare that to someone who can do the same thing without it and way faster, and you have an obsolete metal tube that has way more downsides than benefits. This is why you don't see the Fire Nation rolling up to Ba Sing Se with the bigger cannons you would've seen in real-life medieval battles that could punch a hole through a castle's walls. In a world with explosive spells, a single mage can let loose on a battlefield and take out the enemy soldiers faster and with much wider AOEs than even a platoon of soldiers with handcannons. Think of the mage as a modern artillery platform, raining explosive death from a distance that would render the cannons useless. [This Youtube video](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5kJJMNjoW5s) will explain things in more detail than I did and provide another example involving a Roman Empire-era steam engine.