ey I replied to comments, for that vid check here! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iM1kq61evtLNd6M.html edit: Just to summarize some points people keep bringing up that are also mentioned in the response video: This video covered multiple approaches because no one approach is going to work for every table or will adequately capture every single type of theming that exists. It's more meant to get you thinking about how design decisions impact both the fantasy you want and the mechanical balance, picking and choosing what aspects of realism and gameplay best fit your goals. "This is the best way to implement firearms" couldn't be further from the goal of this video. I also re-recorded for it 4 times because I kept being unsatisfied with my points and kept starting over, so there's some things that I missed or omitted or ran out of space for. -"Just play [Other system]" Systems that already have good firearm rules don't *need* a video like this. 5e kinda does need help though. It's disingenuous to suggest people to learn an entirely new system or move their games to another system entirely just for the sake of one facet of equipment. Trying new systems can be worthwhile but dismissively suggesting it like that does far more harm than good. (I should know, I've played plenty of pathfinder 1 and 2 and know firsthand how evangelical its fans can be, despite how much of a different experience Pathfinder offers over 5e.) -"Guns weren't all that lethal" Yeah, but I'm referring to the kind of fantasy people want to implement. Games are an abstraction of reality, so trying to quantify damage like that is kinda moot. No human can survive 40 sword stabs anywhere near as effectively as your adventurer can, for comparison. "High damage, limited use mcguffins" for firearms for instance are _mechanical_ decisions that are meant to embody certain elements that people often want to capture and encourage specific kinds of gameplay. Likewise if you want your guns more reasonable like other weapons, then you tool their strength to give them parity and optionally give them some unique interactions, as described in the latter half of the video. (I personally prefer the latter option, but there's definitely merit in the mcguffin approach.)

There's an old saying. "If you want to train a man to use a bow, start with his grandfather. If you want to train him to use a musket, start Tuesday." Guns became popular because they were significantly easier to use than bows were, and also tend to have much greater range.

Guns being lethal always suffers from 1 major misconception. You are not your character. You are a commoner, with 4hp. So something that does 1d10 damage, will on average kill your ass dead. So the idea of making them 'realistic' would mean addressing the fact that some characters could face tank a nuke and then regenerate that damage over a cup of tea.

"Firearms and Kevlar doesn't belong in D&D" You're right. Let's all use laser blasters and power armour instead, as our 1e Barrier Peak ancestors intended.

People: "Guns in DnD are not realistic!" No Mercy Percy: "I miss the part where that's my problem."

"The most difficult part of DnD is finding a day when everybody can play. " - Master Oogway

The sorcerer: guns shouldn't exist, because there's no way to make them realistic without being way too overpowered and deal too much damage. Also the sorcerer: I cast fireball (in every situation)

Hot take on shotguns: SPREAD: This weapon deals double normal damage to creatures that are Swarms, and damage dealt to creatures that are Swarms cannot be reduced by resistances.

For anyone brining up the point of realism, may I remind you that the raven has a flight speed of 50 feet per turn. If each turn is 6 seconds, that translates to about 8.3 feet per second, or 16.6 feet per second, if you're dashing. That translates to about 10 miles per hour when dashing. At max speed.

Other people: "guns don't belong in a fantasy world!" Me: (Banging fist on table) MAGIC GUNS! MAGIC GUNS!

People always seem to forget that firearms have been around for a *very* long time. Rifling and wheellocks came around during the peak of plate armour, with rifles (not those famously inaccurate muskets) becoming common *before* plate armour went out of fashion.

I always wanted to run a Fantasy, old west campaign. It would be cool to see a world where shoot outs between magic slingers and gunslingers are common, as well as how magic would be integrated into an industrializing world.

_"D&D 5E isn't my favorite game, I just play it because it's what everybody else plays..."_ I relate to this on a personal level.

If you wanna homebrew guns in your game, the most important thing to ask yourself first is: what

Zedrin: "The only other weapon that has a d12 for its damage die is the greataxe." Me: *glares angrily in **_LANCE_*

With guns in my steampunk 5e game, I replaced hp with luck. Every “hit” with a gun is a miss/graze, but as your luck runs out, the next shot may just be that fatal blow. So no complaining about realism for tanking 8 bullets to the head or anything. Essentially, guns become flavored bows. The luck idea plays nice with the idea of getting stabbed multiple times, too.

A homebrew flavor for the reloading mechanic: make the action the reload, but then have the reloading property be a bonus action to fire the weapon you reloaded. You cannot take this bonus action if you are not proficient in firearms. Thus, you can fire, do a bonus action, next turn reload as your action and fire again. Make a Gunslinger feat that allows you to ignore the reloading property on firearms with the finesse or versatile properties.

My favorite use of firearms thematically, is that they're a direct response of commonfolk keeping up with spellcasters. Rather than evolving to defeat plate mail, they were invented to match and even directly hunt magic users. To this end, I treat them a lot like reskinned wands of spells like burning hands, magic missile, etc.

"Goblin Layer" a dream we all strive for.

I've always liked the idea of a magic user who uses a break-action pistol or rifle that fires spells contained within bullets. Think Sharla from Xenoblade Chronicles

Usually in games I've been in with guns, we usually make it an action to reload and they have an amount of ammo that is in the gun at once, so for example, if you have a six shooter revolver, you can shoot it six times before having to take an action to reload it.

"You can just limit how many guns you give your party" Literally any party member with Smith's Tools proficiency: I missed the part where that's my problem

I like what I am hearing. One thing people tend to skip over in this discussion is sword and pistol style. With one or the other as a primary weapon.

I like the idea of a soft firearm basically being basically another version of bows, crossbows and other ranged weapons. So it doesn’t affect balance to much or terrifying PCs that they can get one shot by a lv1 commoner, but are a threat that needs to be considered carefully

All this seems pretty reasonable. Something I'd like to add to the conversation is the use of enchanting on firearms. Something I never hear about, but would 1000% be possible with magic is a powderless firearm. Just pull the trigger and a rune or something explodes in the chamber, allowing you to skip arguably the most time consuming part of the loading process. Let's say you're using the system towards the end where loading your weapon eats your movement because you've gotta stop to put the powder in. With the magical powderless firearm you could cut that down to a bonus action to ram a ball in, allowing you to move, load, and fire in the same turn, making you much more of a threat to mobile enemies. Seems like it would make for a pretty cool and flavorful piece of loot for a musketeer/gunslinger when they start falling behind in the party's action economy.

Maybe I should've made the "maybe try other systems too if you want guns in your game" message less implicit cause it's going way over a lot of commenters heads.

I’m sure many of you know about the “peasant rail gun,” but what about Counter Marching, aka the “medieval machine gun?” Unlike the peasant rail gun, this one is actually a real tactic that doesn’t require exploiting game logic. You just get a big line of guys who each have a gun, have the front one fire and then move to the back of the line. Then the next guy fires and goes to the back. And on and on until the first guy is back at the front having reloaded his weapon in the time he was waiting in line, ready to fire again.

This vid has some great points on homebrew in general, not just guns. Decide what you wanna accomplish and adjust the item accordingly without being too complex. Good watch 👌

One cool way you could do it is that the guns are extremely powerful but ammo is very hard to come by, having to either buy it for an exorbinant cost or manufacture it themselves to replace rest time. Could work for the “Extremely powerful right out of the box” idea while also having it actually be tactically interesting.

I think combining the "Deal 1 damage to enemies withing 5 feet of your target" and "Treat 3/4 cover as 1/2 cover and 1/2 cover as no cover, but enemies count as full cover" is the perfect synthesis necessary to make shotguns both feel realistic but also make them work nicely.

An interesting bit of firearms history: The 30 years war was when firearms became truly prolific and began serving in Europe-wide conflicts, when bayonets hadn’t yet become a workable concept. The usual combat formation was the “Tercio”, blocks of pikemen supported by smaller blocks of muskets, plus light cavalry and skirmishers with rifled weapons. Arquebusiers would fire, retreat between the pikes, reload, and emerge for another volley. Funnily enough, a battle was won because an entire army just ducked when the enemy fired, then advanced and attacked. As for actually topical stuff, I plan to run a hyperrealism campaign with the gang, and plan to include guns for the exact reason you laid out at the start: there aren’t prerequisites for use. Whereas warbows (which don’t necessarily need to be longbows, just high-poundage bows) need a strength minimum and a number of weapons require proficiency to even use, guns are grab-and-go, providing basically single-use ranged firepower to the wielder.

This is very good! I'm making a wild-west dark domain setting called Rexfald right now and I've tried out lots of ideas for firearms and their usage (DMG and Mercer Rules never sat right with me). One thing I think you could have entertained here as well is the idea that firearms, like in real life, are powerful but irritable to elements and degradation more than your standard bow and arrow would be: Wet powder, Muck, Grime, etc. It would be neat to dive into having spells like CREATE OR DESTROY WATER now having combat utility.

Here's a thing to tell anyone who says "guns aren't Medieval or fantasy" tell them about the Siege of Calais 1346, or the Battle of Kutná Hora in 1421, or Li Ting and his troops in 1287. Guns existed, just not widespread, by the late Medieval blacksmiths had already started making different types of armor for dealing with guns.

Man I can't wait to take on 50 goblins all at once.

“But how am I supposed to parry a gun” By...blocking the bullets? Or by typical club/bat style block if they’re out of ammo. Problem solved.

I'll throw in my experience, I created and ran a homebrew for 5e (basically reskinned sections of the PH) designed around late Civil War era firearms (around 4d8 damage per attack). My group also tends to play tactically and to build characters more carefully, so this might not work out with more willy nilly groups. Our sessions very much echoed experiences I've had in high-magic, high level settings in 3.5e. As fighters become more powerful, the more traditional offensive classes (STR-Fighter, Fireballing Sorcerer) become irrelevant and the more wits, utility spell casters, tactics, gear and spell choices win the day. The party now cared far more about the AC bonus from cover or the speed bonus from a horse than a +1 attack bonus. My favorite is how much value they placed on a grease spell or the cunning use of dynamite than any one characters attack. Letting things be dangerous and out of whack can be okay if the group is up for it, but there is a reason D&D has stayed the way it is. The game gives players some leeway to act out their characters in a way that a swarm of commoners unloading heroic levels of damage doesn't.

Thank you so much for this video! I've been trying to implement 16th and 17th Century firearms into my D&D 5e Homebrew and you have been extremely helpful. I appreciate you.

The concept of firearms as "martial wands," is a super cool way of representing them

"gUnS iN d&d ShOuLd Be SuPeR lEtHaL tO bE rEaLiStIc" Me: Uses gun that deals, say, 1d8 damage, which is an OHKO to a peasant with 4 hp 50% of the time and is otherwise a very big wound

Another thing to consider as a Firearm rule would be the billowing clouds of smoke that they put out. Having, say, a cloud that appears in the space in front of you that lasts for a round and provides Light Cover/concealment to both you and your opponent would make things more interesting. You'd have to move if you wanted an unobscured firing line next turn, but you'd also be somewhat protected from enemy ranged weapons.

I think, flavor-wise, I like muskets and pistols a lot less than hand cannons. and I don’t mean like just a heavy handgun, I mean one of those ancient Chinese polearms that had miniature cannons on the end. (As seen in mulan?) These things were so cool, you could drive the pole into the ground and shoot them like mortars for indirect fire.

Comparing guns to wands reminds me that Wizard with a Gun is a game that exists and will be released soon.

Firearms belong in a fantasy setting. So does high tech in general. Why? Because when you got literal barriers, magic missile, and world destroying creatures, anything goes. Just remember that magical sword might turn the normie level six shooter quite redundant.

My rule for muskets is u can reload as a bonus action but it takes 3 turns, (kind of like a cool-down) or if you’re impatient u can use one full action to reload it

My solution for my Forsaken West setting was to make then rare magic items, essentially like getting a +2 crossbow

Firearms are rater perfect in a timetable from ancient China to Japan, topping off at European Fuse-, Wheel-, and Flintlocks. As one might notice, that completely overlaps with the historical equivalent of pretty much any fantasy equivalent. During these times you get firearms with interesting mechanics and that is before you add some warpstone to them yes-yes.

If games or anime (like Final Fantasy's medieval-themed ones to anime like Fairy Tail) can pull of guns in a semi-believable & immersive way, from magic-fueled muskets to clockwork Metal Gears, I think anyone can if planed correctly. note: I don't play D&D just know someone who does

One concept that I love to use in my games is to view magic and technology as diametrically opposed like in the RPG Arcanum, so devices like rifles misfire when used by magic users and are only used by non-magic average people to stay up to par with magic users. Coupled with the fact that Muskets are typically quite heavy they have little to no armor to balance it out.

honestly, watching this video made me have my own sudden ideas for how to implement guns better into my games. Great vid

I think it's important to take into consideration what the *players* want out of guns. Do they want realism? Do they want slow shooting? Do they want reflavored crossbows? Realism always takes a backseat to fun imo. If players want to be a gunslinger with a fancy clockwork gun they can reload quickly, let them. Just find a way to balance it. You could even have it both ways. Maybe regular firearms take a long time to reload and are basic weapons, but there are also fancy magitech guns that require special training and fire quickly but do less damage.

How I do spread on shotguns is that they get extra damage dice, and don’t suffer disadvantage at longer range, *BUT,* they have a shorter range than most firearms, and outside of their normal range, within their long range, they deal half damage dice, even on crits. Another interesting feature I add is that at long range, the wielder can target 2 creatures standing side by side, relative to the shooter, and attack both at the same time.

For shotguns and blunderbusses, I always make it a DC dex save for the target(s) within the cone. With the target having disadvantage on this check at melee range, straight check at medium, and advantage on long range, on success they take half. The shotgun in my campaign at level 6 is 3d6+dex, but does need an action to reload. It has worked really really well.

Just the right attention span. You did great, and love the ideas.

The biggest part of training with early firearms was getting faster reload speeds and moving/firing in formation. There was some experience needed to keep the rods and powder and bullets all organized on your person in the middle of battle.

My brother had a spore druid with a gun in our evil hell campaign and used a magic tattoo to make it necrotic damage

This has been the best video on the subject. Absolutely! Thank you.

normally when I think about firearms in a fantasy setting in general, I think muskets, cannons, things before the Prussian invention of the dreyse needle rifle in the 1840's (first rifle to reload faster than muskets and would later inspire the lever-action and bolt-action that would inspire other styles, etc.) but right after the discovery than gunpowder can be used for devasting effects when used in a combat situation.

Zedrin: _Creates Spider-Bayonetta_ Me: *So spider have gun gun?* (Could also look cool on Spiser-girl ngl)

I like how guns are done in Grim Hollow, especially with the highwayman subclass for rogues that’s designed around riding a horse with rifles which is super cool

Bro. My guy. My man. You have just earned a subscriber my dude. I have been trying to homebrew firearms for a while and this is SO MUCH BETTER than what I came up with xD Thanks bro.

Loving the d&d stuff! Hope to see more!

So far (knock on wood), I've had really good luck with the firearm-using characters that people have played in my home games. In fact, my wife is playing a musket master gunslinger in the Pathfinder AP we're currently playing. She's effective, but not OP and definitely has situations where she has to switch to a crossbow (musket is broken, fight is underwater, party is trying to be stealthy, etc...) Back when I was a PFS organized play GM, I do remember some players trying to make that 'broken' gunslinger that would kill everything in 1 or 2 rounds, but they usually got clobbered with a well-timed confusion spell or whatnot and then never came back (problem solved!)

So here was a thought I had while watching the vid.... Smoothbore firearms (muskets) implement an 'inaccurate' property. What this does is it means you can't use your proficiency modifier with this weapon, even if you should otherwise have proficiency with it. This property would only work with smoothbore, single-projectile weapons like Arquebus and Muskets. Rifles and Shotguns/Blunderbus would use proficiency modifiers as normal (but) rifles would be more expensive/rarer and scatterguns would have reduced range compared to a musket.

I was planning to eventually do a campaign where real world WW1 got mixed with the dnd world, and the players have to figure out how to undo it. This gave me a lot of insight and ideas on how to go about balancing guns. I imagine they will kinda just be reflavored crossbows, but it’s still just a thought in my head, and I’m not actively working on it rn

18:27 A simple way to do Touch AC in 5e (but not perfect...) "If the target is wearing medium armor, heavy armor, or using a shield, you have a +3 bonus to the attack roll with this weapon." This is... "Touch-lite" AC?

The inclusion of a slow-reloading, high damage weapon adds a bit of a kink in 5e's combat that I don't think a lot of DMs account for in their combats: They make the first turn of combat significantly more deadly. This has all kinds of tactical implications, but in general it gives an even greater advantage to the side that goes first, and makes the already deadly ambushes of 5th edition even deadlier. I don't have a lot of advice to give to counteract this, other than adding more enemies (which is dangerous thanks to action economy) or relying less on powerful singular enemies (which is something that 5e is already bad at, even with legendary actions/resistances)

For me in my setting I use guns to represent the dawning of technology as well as a bygone era. Their are two types of firearms in my setting. Powder guns and rivet guns. Powder guns are slightly more powerful than traditional weapons, but are limited in range and need an action to reload. Some operate like the blunderbuss, others are multi barrel and the masterpieces are closer to revolvers. With simple and martial variant, some stronger guns have a simple extra rule for jamming, these are exotic for thematic purposes. They also cost more to get and for ammo. But my issue with guns is players, often firearms attract Mary/Marty sue/stue players that want assault rifles that annihilate dragons in one shot. Or to have sniper rifles that can shoot for miles, and heaven forbid an enemy uses any of these weapons However for my group I'm going to be redoing 5e weapon system a bit. Simply adding universal traits. I love 5e but it has its faults that could be easily fixed in many cases.

I always let my players reflavor crossbows as guns, then I look away for five seconds and I have AT LEAST two cowboys in the party

"How dare you disagree with me, I am right, you are not!" The line that got me to subscribe. =) Thanks for the great content!!

Here’s an idea: make reloading have concentration! This works especially well with gunpowder guns, as you’d have to go through the whole rigmarole of pouring powder, putting in the bullet, tamping, etc.

11:46 Misfire actually outweighs the benefits of Deadly, despite both of them being 1/20 chances,.since you get +dX damage if you score a crit, but if you score a misfire then you miss out on damage AND the potential bonus damage. It also aggressively cuts off your actions in the same way multi-turn reloads do.

The loud cracks off your flint attract two more patrols of goblins. You will not be able to rest after this encounter.

Love the idea of using movement as the reload requirement. One shot per round and movement to reload. Add bayonets and you get a spear that shoots pretty cool weapon.

I like the guns in 5e, and implement them into all of my campaigns. Having ranged enemies that can murk players quickly can make the combat very dynamic and tense so long as you properly implement cover

Pathfinder 1e did firearms decently well, the issue was when you could suddenly get a second attack in the form of Rapid Shot. This was of course only something (as far as I know) Gunslingers could take, and it usually came with Deadly Aim to boot. You could do both at the same time, Deadly Aim applied to pretty much both attacks (and if you took 2 levels in bard, you could "juggle" the guns, though this is just a fancy way of saying "dual weilding pistols", therefore giving you three attacks). Depending on level, doing both would put you at like a -2 or -4 to hit, but given the fact you weren't even targeting normal AC, but instead Touch AC, which is usually far lower and with the Gunslinger BABs, is nearly always a hit. It made Gunslingers really fucking OP, but I continue to think with some changes to the system, you could make it work a bit better. Thank you for this video, Zed. Been trying to figure out how to go about gun rules for a weird west campaign I've been trying to work on.

Spider bayonetta sounds like a cool character archetype to try out once for fun

What I do for shotguns is I have a “kobold shotgun,” which just sends out a blast of fire in that “shotgun cone,” instead of using bullets. It uses only gunpowder (or in my campaign, spark dust), and large amounts of it, making it expensive to use.

I think the best way to balance guns would be to: Make them hybrid weapons, like the Polish Cavalry shotgun-axe. Remove any stealth property. Deal heavier damage than a bow or crossbow, but lack the ability to be enchanted. Use early breachloading tech (no auto) and struggle against heavy armor.

I'mma be that guy and say this, as some one who has used the fire arms from the DMG, "Acktually" the Renaissance fire arms in the DMG are pretty fair and maybe even weak in comparison to other options. Sure they bump up one damage die and rival great axes and heavy crossbows, or eldritch blast, but they quickly fall behind in other ways. for example if you're a fighter or ranger, the musket or pistol might seem good at level one, but once you reach level 5 or get your first feat the one shot per turn musket falls behind in terms of just about everything including damage since you can make multiple attacks with bows, or take the crossbow expert feat which will give you a bonus action to fire another shot. sure you could take tasha's gunner feat, but you'll still find you're just behind crossbows most days, or have used that feat to take sharp shooter instead. do the math assuming you have a 18 dex for both and a hand crossbow and crossbow expert feat that's 3d6 + 12 or 21 damage on average which is on par if not more than musket with gunner feat 2d12 + 8 which is an average of 20 damage. In terms of a rogue which gets one attack anyway. it still falls behind crossbows in terms of range, which will often cost you advantage and sneak attack unless you're absolutely right on them, or take the sharpshooter feat, but even then its still much less than if you just used a crossbow or hand crossbow. This forces you to have closer positioning and can limit your hiding spaces. meanwhile the damage you gain is barely noticeable as you stack sneak attack on it. and 2d6+Mod+Mod is more damage than 1d12+mod no matter how you cut it. And you could even argue in terms of roleplay are rogue with a loud musket is much less sneaky. Not to mention switching from crossbow to musket or vice versa, you'll barely notice the difference in damage, but you will feel the range difference. Some other problems you might encounter if you live in the Sword Coast like Neverwinter or Waterdeep or storm giants thunder is that guns and ammo are illegal and/or expensive, making them a chore to hide and carry and a huge risk to use without alerting authorities. And another thing, while you might be able to retrieve arrows you fired after combat, or loot them off enemies, and easily buy them in town or make them, good luck doing any of that with a gun. If the DM is a nice guy, he'll let you know the recipe for gunpowder/smoke powder or have a black market selling it. But if you run out in the field you're done, and you'll be counting your shots the whole way. Honestly if you can go through the effort of character building, in character paying for, and combat positioning yourself in the right place to be in effective range to use your Renaissance pistol or musket you deserve the cool factor and next to negligible and mediocre damage increase if any.

"You mean in a figth rigth" My Dude was to Based for this world

I can just imagine a group at a boss fight, the gun user goes, “I got this,” then runs up to the enemy, misses their shots and dies

"Any game that incorporate firearms goes against everything dnd stands for" I'm sorry sir, have you heard of the artificer artillerist class with the tiny size eldritch cannon, WHICH IS LITERALLY A GUN.

When I played a game with firearms the DM made the ammo incredibly rare, but the guns substantially powerful to make up for it. It essentially became a panic weapon for our artificer if we were in a tough fight.

Worth mentioning but D&D has heavy crossbows and full plate which were definitely not around yet but the time of the first guns, so anyone saying "no firearms because fantasy setting" is literally forgetting that firearms ranging from firelance to arquebus coexisted with real life settings of equal or lower tech for 600 years.

Muskets and flintlocks or blunderbuss are very fitting with fantasy as it stays to the medieval theme

I do really like the idea of the fatal property. Having lower base damage but more punishing criticals sounds like a good way to add some fun high points to firearms.

yo seriously feel 100% platonically parasocially proud of you that you finished this despite having that good ol executive dysfunction. I know how painful it can be to get anything done, let alone something that's then recorded,video edited,posted online, and maybe even sharing it on social media. I know that any one of those steps or in between or even before can halt progress indefinitely and It's inspiring and awesome that you were able to work through it all and post this.

As long as you don't make guns stand out like a sore thumb, they're actually pretty cool additions.

Found your channel from this video. Enjoyed the video and gave me some good ideas to think about for my upcoming game.

I think my favorite DND campaign I’ve taken part in in the last few years was one set in approximately the early to mid 1500s, so the initial colonization of the New World, where I played a fire Genasi Cavalier fighter from the setting’s equivalent of France, flavored as a disgraced cuirassier, so medium armor, with a DM‘s guide musket with pistol range, a broadsword (a long sword without the versatile tag), and my mount was a wingless griffin (The DM stole a lot of stuff from Warhammer fantasy). We realize that the DM had forgotten to make a setting equivalent of Spain, so we all just sort of agreed that we were going to head down to fantasy Central/South America and kick it with the Yuan-ti and lizardmen. It was very open world, lots of focus on exploring and survival, unfortunately it ended up falling apart because there was only myself and one other player who could consistently make it to sessions, so it was just us two and a rotating cast of secondary players, which wasn’t helped by the fact that the DM was a new DM and would OK basically every homebrew out in front of him, and, at a few points I had to actually tell him to tone down some of the homebrew gear that he was giving us.

When I implement guns in a campaign, I like to classify their damage as a completely different type known as ballistic damage. This way I can give certain creatures ballistic immunity, resistance, or weakness as so I can balance them easily. If the Creature is built like a tank with lots of fatty tissue, then they have ballistic resistance. If the creatures body is mainly composed of a steal like material, then they have ballistic immunity. If they’re a thinly build creature with nothing but fur or clothing to protect themselves, then they have ballistic weakness.

If anyone ever tells you guns dont belong in a fantasy setting, litteraly just point at warhammer fantasy and watch them cope and seethe

Fantastic video dude! Really really helped me out

Barbarian: "The only guns I am packing are these!" *Begins flexing muscles

Considering Spelljammer being just announced, I could DEFINITELY see buccaneer-syle combat, ie one pistol shot followed by some sword duelling

I don't know that ALL firearms need to be considered all that much more dangerous than bows. They should ignore some of the armor AC that bows don't, but like, a hunting broadhead does pretty seriously traumatic injuries. I think .50 cal musket vs 9mm vs warbow isn't necessarily a question of raw damage. Obviously full caliber rifles and shotguns are insanely lethal.

A few notes on realism, worldbuilding and being appropriate for a setting. Firearms have existed in some form for over a millenia, including the last two centures of the middle ages, as well as all of early modern history, on which most fantasy settings actually tend to be patterned on. They are completely settung appropriate, and as a matter of fact a mine to bring down hornburgs wall even features in lotr. The bigger concern in regards to worldbuilding, is weather lines of battle and musketeers should replace the levy spearmen and knights in the professional armies of the setting. Well, I have good news, infantry pike formations fearured as the primary form of fighting force until the 1750s, and melee cavalry existed in a useful form well into the second half of the 1900s. Bicorns and tschakos are optional, you get to have your knights and city guards even with guns in a setting, whilst remaining faithful to reality. And lastly, lethality, which was mhch of the reason guns took so long to replace melee. They are piss poor at killing people. Early smoothbores may have a high rate of lethality on a solid hit to a vital area, but they are so inaccurate as to be nigh useless unless massed by the company, and even then, have much shorter effective range than bows and crossbows. Their primary advantage over the former is ease of use, and ability to pierce armour over the latter. And by the time you get fast firing and accurate firearms, the individual lethality of their shots drops massively. Modern pistol bullets inflict lethal wounds less than a third of the time someone is shot, and even then it can take minutes or hours to kill. So really, unless you have rifle caliber, cartridge firing, self loading weapons, melee remains relevant. (And looking at trench raiding in ww1, even those may not be sufficient to make a good old billy club obsolete)

I have so many quirky ideas for kensei and the Gun Monk is one of them. It's also historically accurate.

4:30: The one thing I'd add for a "realistic flintlock" feeling would be rules for using the gun itself as a melee weapon. It obviously wouldn't be as good as a magic sword, but they should make decent clubs (or shortspears, if you have a bayonet).

I'm looking to DM my first campaign with my friends and this vid is helping me guide out what I'd like my guns to be. The setting of mine would be more modern, so guns are essentially replacements for bows. I was thinking of the gun carry limit, be either one primary, one sidearm, or maybe further down the campaign 2 primaries, one sidearm type deal. I was thinking about taking RPM and recoil into consideration too (affecting how many die is thrown + hit rate). For reloading I want to try a middle of the road approach where you can only move 1/2 distance if you need to, this would, hopefully, encourage more cover usage. I loved your explanations for shotguns too, and I was thinking of ammo types, such as AP rounds piercing through cover and targets but doing less overall damage/range and Hollow Point which would deal more individual damage but can't penetrate any cover or heavy enough armor