Do you and your players kind of gloss over the fact that traditional firearms are really, fantastically loud? Or do you have all the dungeon inhabitants begin investigating or taking up defensive positions at the sound of the first shot? Why?
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That feels like kind of a loaded 'or' there.
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Oh boy, I definitely don't gloss over loud things. One of my players used lightning bolt to kill a sentry robot. I couldn't, in good conscience, let a bolt of lightning be unheard a few rooms over.
That being said, I usually don't build my campaigns such that there's a bunch of chained together rooms to go through one by one, and if I do I make sure there's thick walls and long tunnels that make the noise of combat not such a big deal. The lightning example above was an outlier.
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Are hammers hitting on steel shields really loud?
If your monsters are close enough together that combat without special precautions has a tendency to pull them in, they should be budgeted as a single encounter. You can make it a bit bigger budget encounter because they won't all be there at the start of the combat, but if you know it's more likely than not to be part of the same encounter, you should budget that way.
Do you and your players kind of gloss over the fact that traditional firearms are really, fantastically loud?
*shrug* It's glossed over as much as any other 'loud' activity that characters take: for instance, how often does the DM figure out just how far the "strong voice" needed for verbal components are heard? Or a Command activiation's "loud and strong voice"? Or how far away an Echoing Weapon or Concordant Choir is heard? The answer to any of these is likely the same answer to the firearms question.
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As a player I make it a point to complain about my poor ears when my fellow party member unleashes his arquebus right next to my character in a small room. The GM doesn’t seem super concerned about it, though.
I figure dungeon inhabitants would probably react as they would to the sounds of combat (metal against metal, magical explosions, etc.).
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I can’t believe everyone has already forgotten that all dungeons in Golarion are made out of soundproofium alloy.
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Battle in general is loud whether swinging a sword and blowing off a spell or shooting a gun. I make the inhabitants who might hear and consider the sound unusual to ready themselves if a battle is going and it isn't over in a round with quiet assassin types killing whatever is in the room or area.
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I'm betting that most things scream pretty loud when you hit them with an axe, anyway.
How loud do you figure the air guns are (or firearms modified to use that)?
How loud is a spoon gun going SPROING?
I actually think those air guns are probably pretty quiet. Similar to a paintball or airsoft gun, in my estimation.
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I actually think those air guns are probably pretty quiet. Similar to a paintball or airsoft gun, in my estimation.How loud do you figure the air guns are (or firearms modified to use that)?
How loud is a spoon gun going SPROING?
Hence why I said "traditional " firearms.
I dread to think of the sound the tentacle cannon makes when fired.
I usually try not to be a jerk by linking fights that are not supposed to be. That said, if you are trying to be stealthy maybe a gun whithout a silencer is not the best idea, just like chopping someone with an axe and having him scream his lungs off would not
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Casual range safety advice that your should always wear hearing protection when shooting a gun, or when being around gunfire.
That said, I don't actually gloss over it. Typically, I make almost any fight alert nearby forces, but in game this generally means "the next encounter gets to prebuff" and not "the party is fighting twice and many bad guys". It's actually pretty often that the party chooses to avoid the weenies at all costs because the more they fight, the more prepared the boss gets to be.
If I'm going something like stealth movie silent guard removal, I typically adjudocate it as a stealth check to sneak up to the guard, and an attack roll to kill them quietly. It might be a different story if the party covers themselves in level 4 silence spells and takes care to keep enemies in the area, though
I tend to treat sounds of fighting in a more general sense and budget multiple groups as one encounter if they're close enough to combine as a result of loud noises. If the feature mentions being especially loud, I'll let it travel further, but generally, I try to avoid dungeons where the enemy rooms are so close together that it would matter if they aren't planned to turn into a single encounter.
Of course, sometimes creatures might sort of hunker down if they hear loud noises and be like "I sure hope whatever that is doesn't bother me" especially in a traditional dungeon, the enemies aren't exactly always on the same side so the sounds of combat could very well be struggle over turf or an altercation that hopefully won't meaningfully affect them. They might also think differently about it based off where their own territory is-- 'what are the odds someone is going to find this space'
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Even a black powder firearm with its rumbling boom instead of the sharp crack of modern weapons is going to be far-and-away the loudest sound on most battlefields. Think of it this way, a blender which is pretty noticeable even at a distance is ~90db, an airhorn 1m [3.3ft] away from you is 110db (4 times as loud), a low-powered unsilenced .22 calibre rifle is 140db (32 times louder than the blender, 8 times louder than the airhorn. There is nothing within a large range that won't hear that unless you use magic, they can't hear, or they're on the other side of a very thick wall with no cracks or nearby doors/windows.
TLDR; guns are way louder than any non-shooter might expect.
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Are hammers hitting on steel shields really loud?
Honestly, I don't know as I have never been in a dungeon when two people were fighting in close quarters, but I assume it sounds like what amounts to claw hammers on garbage cans. However, I have been on a lot of construction sites, inside industrial plants, and I can hear a neighborhood dog from many blocks away and gunfire across town, so I am going to say that unless there is a SIGNIFICANT distance and/or material (like earth) between you and the "bangers" you are going to hear it from virtually anywhere within the average fantasy dungeon.
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I usually try not to be a jerk by linking fights that are not supposed to be.
Would the players be considered jerks if their actions pull those encounters? I don't always know if the author expects the PCs to fire off an arquebus or sonic boom from a lightning bolt in an space where the echo is almost assuredly going to alert the next encounter.
In general, I consider that a single door doesn't block the sound of combat, but that 2 doors or a door and a 60ft. distance is enough.
So, if my players don't plan accordingly, they bring multiple encounters at once. The game accept quite some chaining of encounters as long as you avoid Severe ones in the middle and put at least a round between each encounter. I've found that, despite being really scary, chaining encounters is not as dangerous as people think it is.
And I hate finding a bunch of enemies in the room next to the one where a big fight happened. It's just not realistic at all (even if I agree, the sound of combat should be heard for way more than a round or two, but above that you bring the entire dungeon and it completely change the tone of the game).
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I really want to make a dungeon or encampment with one really loud obnoxious enemy and everyone else is walking around with ear plugs in.
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In general, I consider that a single door doesn't block the sound of combat, but that 2 doors or a door and a 60ft. distance is enough.
So, if my players don't plan accordingly, they bring multiple encounters at once. The game accept quite some chaining of encounters as long as you avoid Severe ones in the middle and put at least a round between each encounter. I've found that, despite being really scary, chaining encounters is not as dangerous as people think it is.And I hate finding a bunch of enemies in the room next to the one where a big fight happened. It's just not realistic at all (even if I agree, the sound of combat should be heard for way more than a round or two, but above that you bring the entire dungeon and it completely change the tone of the game).
That's a decent rule of thumb. I like chained encounters, they're immersive and dynamic. But they do require a careful hand planning. Quite doable like you say, but most of the published dungeons I see aren't planned that way.
You can probably convert those by just sprinkling some Weak templates around.
Do any rules currently exist at all for the DCs of perception checks to notice loud sounds such as combat? I know 1E had rules for it ( https://www.aonprd.com/Skills.aspx?ItemName=Perception ), but I don't think I've seen anything similar in 2E.
I could have sworn I saw a sample DC for "the sound of combat" somewhere.
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I could have sworn I saw a sample DC for "the sound of combat" somewhere.
It's in the rules for Unconscious CRB p. 459:
Loud noise is being made around you—though this isn’t automatic. At the start of your turn, you automatically attempt a Perception check against the noise’s DC (or the lowest DC if there is more than one noise), waking up if you succeed. This is often DC 5 for a battle, but if creatures are attempting to stay quiet around you, this Perception check uses their Stealth DC. Some magical effects make you sleep so deeply that they don’t allow you to attempt this Perception check.
And there's the silencer item...
That is consumed After the first shot rending it useless in combat