Louis Porter Jr. Design, has released its preview for the upcoming Pirates of the Bronze Sky setting for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, inspired by a war torn fantastical dark pulp genre with non-traditional fantasy technologies powered by magic like skyships and mechanical beings. Here is information on the Black Powder Weaponry (PRPG) Preview:
The current state of the art in personal firearms is a smoothbore weapon with a wheellock firing mechanism. Earlier matchlocks, which required a lit match held in a “matchlock” to fire, and the even earlier hand culverins, which required manual application of a lit match, are still in circulation but no regular forces use them. Though most firearms come from the mass production gunworks of the Monarchy weapon forges, there are skilled craftsmen in other locations that can and do build firearms.
Written by Written by Louis Porter Jr. Available Here!!!
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Louis, you need to correct your OGL on the last page. I think you may have copied/pasted from Obsidian Twilight when you actually meant for it to say Pirates of the Bronze Sky.
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The good: Yay, guns with actual damage capacity!
The bad: two full-round actions to reload? Makes them basically useless unless you carry a brace (say, half a dozen) of them.
The ugly: the violations of the laws of physics in the artwork, i.e. the pirate chick and her absurdly huge, uh... field grade weaponry.
the violations of the laws of physics in the artwork, i.e. the pirate chick and her absurdly huge, uh... field grade weaponry.
You only say that because you don't know her backstory, where she valiantly uses a Ring of Wishes to save her crew when their ship is sunk, and turns herself into a living lifeboat.
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the violations of the laws of physics in the artwork, i.e. the pirate chick and her absurdly huge, uh... field grade weaponry.You only say that because you don't know her backstory, where she valiantly uses a Ring of Wishes to save her crew when their ship is sunk, and turns herself into a living lifeboat.
+1 LMAO
Looks great! Keep up the good work!
The bad: two full-round actions to reload? Makes them basically useless unless you carry a brace (say, half a dozen) of them.
This. This is harsh. I wouldn't consider trying to use these things. And I certainly don't see how a pistol takes the same amount of time to load as a musket.
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The bad: two full-round actions to reload? Makes them basically useless unless you carry a brace (say, half a dozen) of them.This. This is harsh. I wouldn't consider trying to use these things. And I certainly don't see how a pistol takes the same amount of time to load as a musket.
It is generous, by historical standards. These are muzzle-loading weapons. Even with plenty of training, you would be doing well to get off a shot per minute let alone the two that this gives.
Even with these as they are, I'd not want to charge a party of guardsmen with loaded weapons.
The bad: two full-round actions to reload? Makes them basically useless unless you carry a brace (say, half a dozen) of them.This. This is harsh. I wouldn't consider trying to use these things. And I certainly don't see how a pistol takes the same amount of time to load as a musket.
Harsh, yes. But as realistic as you can get for a period muzzle loader, and still be usable in game. Technically, the pistol should be the 2 rounds, and the musket should be 3 or 4. (I've read that the fastest most soldiers could do it was around 15 seconds, allowing for 3 or 4 shots per minute. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket#Loading_and_firing ) You can only tamp the load so hard before the pressure will set it off, causing you to either lose your loading rod, or misfire and foul (or destroy) the barrel. (Seen it happen at re-enactments.)
That's why a good musketeer would want to have at least three guns and two people backing him up to reload (for a standing position, like behind a wall). Or, you have an army with three rolling columns, two reloading and the forward one firing.
A breach-loader could probably be reloaded as a single full-round action, but those were not covered in this document.
It really isn't until you get to more modern firearm shells that you could reliably reload within the time constraints of a move action. (Or swap a clip with a free action, if you train at it.)
Its interesting to me that this is kind of illustrating the point that James Jacobs made about guns. A full round penalty is a hefty penalty in the game that reinforces that guns don't reload quickly. Combat is, despite assigning "6 seconds per round," more or less an abstract thing.
Once you start talking about multiple full round actions, you do pretty much make the weapon a non-started, especially if its an exotic weapon. It may be historical if you believe that the 6 second round is more concrete and less abstract, but its almost like introducing something for the express purpose of making sure no one uses it. Its almost like a thought exercise at that point.
Heck, Pathfinder already does the very "unhistorical" thing of allowing someone with the right feats to fire their crossbow up to their normal number of attacks. Sure it costs a few feats, but its sound from an in game mechanical standpoint, even if its hard to picture in the real world.
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I'm not arguing the historical realities of the situation, just saying that the reload times makes these gun rules just about as useless in combat as the ones in the Pathfinder Campaign Setting. Plink away at them for 1d8 every round, or 2d6 every third round, either way, why bother with them when compared to a good sword?
Its interesting to me that this is kind of illustrating the point that James Jacobs made about guns. A full round penalty is a hefty penalty in the game that reinforces that guns don't reload quickly. Combat is, despite assigning "6 seconds per round," more or less an abstract thing.
Once you start talking about multiple full round actions, you do pretty much make the weapon a non-started, especially if its an exotic weapon. It may be historical if you believe that the 6 second round is more concrete and less abstract, but its almost like introducing something for the express purpose of making sure no one uses it. Its almost like a thought exercise at that point.
Heck, Pathfinder already does the very "unhistorical" thing of allowing someone with the right feats to fire their crossbow up to their normal number of attacks. Sure it costs a few feats, but its sound from an in game mechanical standpoint, even if its hard to picture in the real world.
From a historical perspective, in game terms, the muzzle loader's high damage output was sufficient to outweigh its long reload time and low accuracy, when used with the right tactics in a mass battle situation.
If you try to use a muzzle loader in an individual combat situation, they quickly become unusable. (Let's not count one-shot pistol duels.)
This is well represented by the muzzle loader being an Exotic weapon, requiring very specialized training to use. Once you get to more advanced models of guns, they are better represented by a Martial weapon proficiency, like the crossbow is, allowing a highly trained individual who has put most of their feats into using their guns, to fire at full attack bonus like your crossbow example.
In modern times, the most basic of firearms could almost be placed in the category of Simple weapons, where almost anyone can use them with the slightest bit of training.
My whole concept of firearm in this type of setting for me is to fire it once; do some good damage on one NPC or kill them outright; then drop the firearm and go into melee combat with hand-to-hand weapons. Firearms shouldn't be like machine guns they should be a one or two use powerful weapon.
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Heck, Pathfinder already does the very "unhistorical" thing of allowing someone with the right feats to fire their crossbow up to their normal number of attacks. Sure it costs a few feats, but its sound from an in game mechanical standpoint, even if its hard to picture in the real world.
I'd certainly allow that with these guns, I just think that a 2 round reload is a good starting point.
2d6 with exploding dice is a good amount of damage (compared to 1d8 for a crossbow), and you would typically only do that once before closing (or being closed) to melee range, so the reload is not a problem.
If you want to play a character who uses one of these from range while the rest of the party melees then hire a couple of boys from the local village as reloaders.
Ninja'd by LMPjr007 and a +1 for his concept.
Stick a couple of pistols in your belt for situations when you have to spend a round moving to be able to melee the next one as well. Just remember where you dropped them.
Ooo, I just saw this is available. I'm "mxyzplk" on my blog and other boards, so I'm the author of most of this... (Louis must have added the bayonets). I hope you all enjoy it.
You're correct in that you're not going to be firing a gun every round, and that's not what they're for. It's not only for realism but also for maintaining the fantasy-vs-modern feel. I like having guns around, but I don't want my D&D/Pathfinder game to turn into a gunslinger-fest.
I've had a group of PCs playing through Second Darkness and other adventures using these rules for the last 4 months and I think they're working out well. We have one priest of Gozreh who especially likes guns. He has a blunderbuss and a pistol; he uses the blunderbuss out of the gate, does his cleric thing most of the time, and then whips out the pistol when he needs to finish someone off. The exploding damage is nice when it comes - he one-shotted Angvar Thestlecrit from Shadow in the Sky with his pistol. I like where the rules fall, for us they've been in the same place all rules like this should fall - "one character in a party likes them and uses them, and the others don't, and everyone is happy with their choices." Guns, psionics, whatever, that's what they should aspire to IMO...