Author Topic: Guns and Armor Penetration?  (Read 2920 times)

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RealMarkP

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Guns and Armor Penetration?
« on: July 14, 2011, 01:09:57 PM »
I'm thinking of starting a steampunk-style campaign set in an age similar to the Victorian era. Blunderbusses and Muskets (non-rifled) weapons would be common. From what I read, when guns first hit Europe, they were fairly effective at piercing plate armor, although not very accurate. It wasn't until rifling was invented that guns became fairly accurate. I was wondering, are there any mechanics that I could use in D&D that would take into account the armor penetration ability of high-speed projectiles?

I was thinking of using something similar to sundering armor. The player would roll a sunder attempt, and if successful, the bullet would penetrate the armor.

weenog

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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #1 on: July 14, 2011, 02:06:28 PM »
Trouble is, real world armor doesn't work remotely like D&D armor.  Probably what you need to do is use some kind of armor as DR variant and give bullets the ability to ignore some or all armor-based DR.
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RealMarkP

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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #2 on: July 14, 2011, 02:35:24 PM »
Trouble is, real world armor doesn't work remotely like D&D armor.  Probably what you need to do is use some kind of armor as DR variant and give bullets the ability to ignore some or all armor-based DR.
I was just looking at the UA version of armor as DR. Your suggestion works. I will use it, unless someone comes up with a better mechanic.

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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #3 on: July 14, 2011, 04:48:20 PM »
With the default armor rules, I have considered allowing bullets to have a +2/4/6/8 on attack bonuses vs armor depending on how powerful the bullet is, but lose that bonus vs armor made of certain materials

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Prime32

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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #4 on: July 14, 2011, 05:55:34 PM »
Eh, a warhammer also has high ability to penetrate armor. In D&D warhammers are referred to as picks, so give similar mechanics. I.e. high crit multipliers.
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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #5 on: July 14, 2011, 05:56:46 PM »
That would be more elegant than my idea.

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veekie

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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #6 on: July 15, 2011, 04:21:47 AM »
Eh, a warhammer also has high ability to penetrate armor. In D&D warhammers are referred to as picks, so give similar mechanics. I.e. high crit multipliers.
Exactly. Except guns basically just provided an idiot proof means of dealing as much damage as a crossbow, without needing the 5 minutes to wind the stupid crank.

However. Guns did not notably gain armor piercing power compared to a bow or crossbow. For the matter, they had LESS piercing power until someone invented the steel jacketed bullet. A crossbow bolt or arrow focuses the impact on a hard, steel point, whereas the bullet is counting purely on mass, but is soft lead, so if it hits an impact surface of say...a breastplate, the bullet deforms and deflects.

Also super long guns in fantasy post I made elsewhere

Quote
1st generation guns:
Once you get past the age of bombards and other artillery pieces and metallurgy gets good enough for hand held guns. They are essentially crossbows with more kick but worse accuracy over a distance. You need to put the right amount of powder, load the shot and then apply the flame. This is slower than crossbows(which, btw, would takes longer to load than the 2 seconds D&D has), so generally you get one or two shots off, then use the gun as a large metal club or spear(with bayonet).

This improves in various ways:
Ignition - You start from the burning taper(which is ridiculous, since you need to light it before combat and then shove it into the hole), then move on to matchlocks(you still need to light the taper, but theres a mechanism to make sure it goes into the hole smoothly), flintlocks(i.e. the same mechanism in cigarette lighters) and blasting caps(i.e. modern guns). Be You'd need at least matchlock to be PC usable(it's essentially just an additional move action to draw the weapon and light the taper). Flintlocks make them comparable to bows.

Powder - Most of these just affect shot power, reliability and range. Too little powder and the shot goes nowhere, too much and your weapon explodes. Advancements are more consistent powders(theres a problem with any particular weight of powder being too powerful or weak), pre-measured mixes(just pour one sachet in for one shot), and much later, cartridges(independent of or combined with bullet) and then magazines. Once you have consistent powders and cartridges, misfires are down to crossbow level. Cartridges reduces it to the load times of a crossbow. Magazines bring it to a bow.

Metallurgy - Again mostly it's largely power, accuracy and range. Early gun barrels tend to warp or crack from the pressure and heat of firing, so they tended to burst or just leak. They also tended to be hideously heavy, as the compensation was just to add more metal(which incidentally made it a great bludgeon). Improvements with hardening technique brings it up in reliability, and combined with powder consistency, largely eliminates misfires. Metallurgy improvements also makes rifling possible, which improves range increments.

Bullets - Lead shot, then shaped lead shots, then jacketed bullets. The earliest have terrible range, since their shape isn't aerodynamic or heck, even regular. Shaped bullets came around when rifling turned up, which improved distance, but still generally splashed against good armor with only dents(the proof of a good breastplate of this era was basically to shoot it at point blank, and if the armor holds, its cool). Good armor was much more expensive than good guns though.

Loading - You simply go from muzzle loaded, to breech loaded(this took some improvements in metallurgy, since the moving part of the breech needs to be able to handle the pressure and also hold the force), to revolvers, to magazine loaded.

From what it looks like, the guns used there are Flintlock, pre-measured powders, plain lead shot, muzzle loaded and early metallurgy. That'd place them at comparable loading times to heavy crossbows(pour powder into flash pan, load bullet), worse armor penetration than crossbows(lead shot vs steel bolt), and generally shoddy range.

A more practical era for gaming might be Flintlock, Cartridges, shaped bullets, Breech loading(or revolver for the wild west feel) muskets. That'd give you a more damaging heavy crossbow with the loading times of a light crossbow, but worse range increment and no misfires.
EDIT: And yeah, all versions are Simple. You do have feat investment, but thats just for Rapid Reload.

And suitable gunnery
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Simple Ranged
Large Revolver 1d8 /x3 Range 50ft. Reload every 6 shots as a full round action. 1 handed. Using 2 handed halves Mighty strength requirement
Small Revolver 1d6 /x3 Range 50ft. Reload every 6 shots as a full round action. Light.
Speed Loader - Reduce Revolver load to standard action. Stacks with Rapid Reload to a move action.

Rifle 2d6 /x3 Range 100ft. Reload as standard action. Half Mighty strength requirement.

Mighty would be just larger caliber(+50gp per rating? +100?)
You simply add the Mighty rating to the bullet damage, and if your Str is less than the Mighty rating you take a -1 to hit for every point of Str short. You only need half the rating in Str for firing 2 handed and double it for off hand.
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veekie

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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #7 on: July 15, 2011, 04:24:03 AM »
Oh and the Mighty cost is for the guns, you need to buy Mighty bullets too, and you can use a less Mighty bullet than your gun can handle(more would damage your gun on firing, if you could load it at all)
The mind transcends the body.
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"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. At 2:15, it begins rolling up characters."

[spoiler]
"Just what do you think the moon up in the sky is? Everyone sees that big, round shiny thing and thinks there must be something round up there, right? That's just silly. The truth is much more awesome than that. You can almost never see the real Moon, and its appearance is death to humans. You can only see the Moon when it's reflected in things. And the things it reflects in, like water or glass, can all be broken, right? Since the moon you see in the sky is just being reflected in the heavens, if you tear open the heavens it's easy to break it~"
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RobbyPants

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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #8 on: July 15, 2011, 02:11:16 PM »
Trouble is, real world armor doesn't work remotely like D&D armor.  Probably what you need to do is use some kind of armor as DR variant and give bullets the ability to ignore some or all armor-based DR.
You can do it without switching to armor-is-DR. Just have guns ignore some portion of armor-based AC.

At the end of the day, DR and AC are the same thing: mechanics that slow down how long it takes for you to die. They work differently vs many small attacks or few large attacks, but when you get down to it, a bullet that bypasses DR or AC is doing the same thing: killing an armored guy faster than you would if you used a sword.
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Prime32

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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #9 on: July 15, 2011, 02:47:47 PM »
I could see magic substituting for mundane advancements there. I'm pretty sure there's a cantrip which ignites things, for instance, which would cost only 25gp to craft into a single use item, or 1,000gp for at-will.

Plus I'm sure reliable flintlock rifles are possible in a world of dwarven craftsmen, mithral and tindertwigs.
« Last Edit: July 15, 2011, 02:52:03 PM by Prime32 »
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The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

veekie

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Re: Guns and Armor Penetration?
« Reply #10 on: July 15, 2011, 04:22:19 PM »
Reliability isn't a big problem, its just essentially an entry cost for a simple weapon. The problem is everyone seems to think bullets chew through armor especially well or something. They have volume of fire, simplicity, and adequate damage.

Bows - Excellent rate of fire(that is, D&D rates of fire are about right), excellent penetration(they actually hit harder than a sword because all the impact force is concentrated into the point, and the bow being basically a spring, stores more energy in a single pull than a sword swing), great range(if you actually arch the arrow, you tend to get more distance out of a bow and bypass things like obstacles) and good accuracy. But a good bowman takes a lot of time to train, in technique and physique.

Crossbows - Terrible rate of fire(the D&D heavy crossbow reload has nothing on a real crossbow's crank and load time, you can't even pre-crank it because the crossbow would go slack after you do that too much), Excellent penetration(same reasons as the bow), fairly good range(can't arch a crossbow that well) and good accuracy. Simple to use is the key, you could round up a ton of peasants, teach them to point it in the right direction and fire it off. They would then spend forever cranking the thing, but well, theres more peasants where that came from, and crossbows are cheaper than good archers. They are more inaccurate than bows in use but thats mostly because crossbowmen tend to be less trained.

Guns
-Range: Bad rate of fire with the old muzzle loaded(but faster than a crossbow), but improves until you can get just below a bow's rate of fire(once flintlocks and cartridges are invented) and beyond(modern magazine loaded/automatics).
-Penetration: Terrible, the original ammo isn't even aerodynamic, so the bullet tended to tumble, the bullet itself is soft lead hitting hard steel, it splashes, until the armor piercing bullet is invented well beyond the medieval/renaissance age. What it has is volume of fire and...most of the troops on the field aren't heavily armored. A volley of musket fire would do the same thing to pikemen as a volley of arrows, and its cheaper. Against armored troops, bowmen would do better.
-Range: Terrible until rifling is invented. Thats fairly late on, as were aerodynamic bullets. And even modern bullets have problems with cover. Still again, volume of fire.
-Accuracy: See range. Between unreliable powders, irregular bullets that tumbled as they were fired and the lack of rifling, bullets tended to go every which way. And they tended to burst barrels every so often. Modern firearms got rid of the problem but machining would probably take a wizard or maybe Fine sized creatures with chisels.
-Simplicity: Can't be beat, only slightly more complex than a crossbow and that only for the older gun types, they were simple to use, had greater volume of fire(and thats what crossbows were used for anyway) and worked great on mook armies.
The mind transcends the body.
It's also a little cold because of that.
Please get it a blanket.

I wish I could read your mind,
I can barely read mine.

"Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. At 2:15, it begins rolling up characters."

[spoiler]
"Just what do you think the moon up in the sky is? Everyone sees that big, round shiny thing and thinks there must be something round up there, right? That's just silly. The truth is much more awesome than that. You can almost never see the real Moon, and its appearance is death to humans. You can only see the Moon when it's reflected in things. And the things it reflects in, like water or glass, can all be broken, right? Since the moon you see in the sky is just being reflected in the heavens, if you tear open the heavens it's easy to break it~"
-Ibuki Suika, on overkill

To sumbolaion diakoneto moi, basilisk ouranionon.
Epigenentheto, apoleia keraune hos timeis pteirei.
Hekatonkatis kai khiliakis astrapsato.
Khiliarkhou Astrape!
[/spoiler]

There is no higher price than 'free'.

"I won't die. I've been ordered not to die."