Adjathazar |
Hey all
Am working on an arcane spellcaster, who I plan to equip with a pistol to supplement his spellcasting, mostly for flavor reasons. This is my first real encounter with the rules governing the use and pricing of firearms, and there's just a few things I have to get off my chest.
1) Why is the pricing of firearm ammunition so ridiculously high? I mean, a bullet is something like ½-1 cm in diameter and typically made of lead or iron, arguably cheap materials, and yet it costs one gold piece? I mean, I can buy a light steel shield for 9gp, presumably made entirely or mostly out of steel, with a weight of 6 lbs. so there's a lot of metal there, but a single bullet costs me 1 gp??
Changing material makes no more sense. A single silver bullet costs 25gp (25!!!), but an entire silver (alchemical) dagger costs just 22?
Claiming difficult crafting procedues doesn't help, since bullets (not cartriges) are some of the easiest things to manufacture by a smith... you just need a small cast.
I presume the goal is to limit the access to firearms, and I do get that the pricing of firearms themselves should be high, at least compared to "older" weapon groups, since they might be more difficult to manufacture, but the bullets themselves? Makes no sense!
2) Why arent firearms included in the simple weapons? Bows take skill i.e. training to use, but a pistol? I'm not a historian, but it was my understanding that two of the main reasons firearms replaced almost all previous weapon was 1) their effectiveness and 2) their ease of use.
I mean, a crossbow is listed as a simple weapon, and it still has to be cocked correctly, presumably oiled and maintained, perhaps the string needs replacing etc. Are the use of firearms really that difficult, that they need to be restricted to specific classes (i.e. a specific subset of skills) or as a martial weapon.
I'm not arguing the rules, and I get that the first priority of a fantasy roleplaying game isn't nessesarily to reflect reality, but these examples just seem overly disproportionate.
(Also, if there exists some rule I havent noticed explaining that the price of one bullet really covers like 50 bullets, please excuse the first half of the post.)
:-)