I don't have my copy of Ultimate Combat yet, so I don't know if this is covered (or even thought of before, I dunno). But say you're shooting a musket, something like Daniel Boone's Kentucky long rifle. What's to stop someone from dropping two (or more) musketballs in the barrel, packing them in, and firing them both at once? Would this damage the rifle, or do double damage to a foe?
I'll admit that while I'm a Southern boy born and bred, I know very little about firearms in general, and less about early firearms.
Musket and a Kentucky long rifle are different beasts, but if you place two balls in each, your asking for it to explode and split the barrel or backfire. If you get lucky it'll shoot em and just destroy the barrel.
Musket and a Kentucky long rifle are different beasts, but if you place two balls in each, your asking for it to explode and split the barrel or backfire. If you get lucky it'll shoot em and just destroy the barrel.
The problem is all this, plus physics. Two ball bearing cause friction against each other and the side of the barrel. At best it's Less than ideal.
Not true, actually. It was a common practice in the American Revolution and in the Indian Wars to do a double load. The problem is not splitting barrels, but greatly variable accuracy. Sometimes the bullets hit in almost the exact same spot, sometimes they would hit feet or yards apart, depending on the range. Range also suffered somewhat, but with the 'normal' accuracy of muskets, it was hard to tell. As far as game rules, I would say that a natural roll of 1 (misfire) would do the ammo's damage to the musket (ignoring hardness). You would make two separate rolls to hit, with only the first capable of doing a critical. Using more than two would require too much powder, and would definitely damage the barrel.
Common practice doesn't make it a good idea, nor does it alter the (bad) physics of such a thing.
Common practice doesn't make it a good idea, nor does it alter the (bad) physics of such a thing.Bad physics has rarely stopped my players from trying something really foolish err imaginative ... yeah, imaginative, that's the word I meant to use.
Touche
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"Double shotting" it's called, at least with cannons. I agree though, it's beyond the range of most of the weapons presented in the book. I guess, if they really, really wanted to, allow it with maybe a doubling of the misfire range, a to-hit penalty, and something nasty occurring if it does. Maybe it gets the broken condition after 5 such firings regardless of rolls. Make it very much not worth their while to do it all the time.
An aside: At US Civil War battlefields it's actually surprising how many weapons are found with multiple loads in them (3 or 4). It's usually accounted to the soldier not realizing it hadn't fired rather than trying to do something fancy. At Antietam there was one found with 7. Not a charge and 7 balls but charge, wadding, ball, charge wadding, ball, repeated seven times. The guess was the guy was panicking, didn't notice that he wasn't firing nor noticing that he wasn't ramming as far down each time he went to reload. Had it actually gone off ... yikes. (Don't ask for a source, don't know of one, this was from a relative that worked there at the time it was dug up.)
It happened during the Napoleonic wars too.
Generally they were soldiers at the first battle panicking and forgetting to prime the firing pan.Another common incident for green soldier was to forget the ramrod in the rifle barrel after loading it, so firing it with the next shot and being incapable to reload the gun.