D&D Musings About Firearms

I like the idea of introducing firearms into D&D, but I'm a pedantic ass son of a bitch and players can be more horrible creatures than a hag when I tell them why they can't have cool shit. If you give them a gun and tell them it's a rare and exotic weapon and that they don't have proficiency in firearms and they couldn't reload one without great risk and expense, and ammunition is also rare and exotic and is finite, I'm sure that'll go over well. Also, is proficiency with tinker tools available to players by race, class, or background? "Why bother," they'll ask with frustration. And that's a very fair point. You don't want to give the players something cool and make it uncool by putting all these barriers to entry in front of them.

OK, so here's a solution. Give them a gun and give them a manual or a teacher. The manual and teacher can be magical or otherworldly. They can learn what it takes to simply load and shoot. You can rule that the guns don't need maintenance and they don't misfire when you roll a 1. If they want proficiency, make training for proficiency with firearms available as a downtime activity. They are either studying the manual and practicing for 8 hours a day for 250 days or they are practicing under the teacher for 8 hours a day for 250 days. Training with firearms is more costly than training for anything else because ammunition is so costly.

Seriously, what asshole is going to teach any murderhobo to use firearms for the normal training cost of 1 gp per day? The ammunition is going to be 3 gp for 10 shots. Gun powder, fuses, paper, bullets, cleaning clothe and cleaning rods, oil? Yeah, those are things you can find. Tinker tools is a separate proficiency. It's supposedly a tool you need to perform proper maintenance on these things and resolving misfires. Whatever. Training for firearms proficiency cost 3 gp per day minimum.

Maybe the guns are magic guns that don't misfire and don't require maintenance. Cool, so like, how every other weapon in D&D works. Neat. OK, now don't hold it against them that loading a flintlock weapon is probably more of a science than an art. Cool, you can just reload a gun. Neat. OK, barriers to entry have been resolved, namely, ignore realism. If you find a gun, you understand how to operate and maintain it, you just don't have proficiency and can't add your proficiency bonus. OK, not bad.

Now that the group understands that they can use guns if they have them, they're just going to kind of suck with them, what now? Ammo! Where do you get this stuff? Bits of metal and powder that explodes? You cannot just buy that stuff from the local general store. You might want a some pliers small crucible and some bullet molds and a foundry and some metal to melt down. Cool. Custom tools you can commission from a blacksmith. You might also want to know how to mix gunpowder which includes sulfur and charcoal, and according to wikipedia, potassium. Hey, that's chemistry! That's something you're going to possibly get from an apothecary, maybe? Whatever the knowledge is, it's going to be rare knowledge in Faerun.

So yeah, you need some facilities, custom items, exotic materials, and the combined knowledge-sets of chemistry, metallurgy/blacksmithing, and maybe engineering. And lots of money. I think guns in a setting like Faerun belong to rich, smart people. How about you?

Now, I think I could learn all these skills and knowledge. I think you could learn it all too. The key thing here is we could learn if from someone else who knows it all. I'm sure that 18th century American revolutionaries or 19th century explorers didn't learn everything, but they lived in a setting where they likely didn't have to be entirely self-sufficient. But I'm sure they could have learned this stuff too. Someone in the D&D setting could too, and IRL it probably wouldn't take 250 days. As long as you're not making the gun, I'm sure you can do everything else.

OK, so how about this. Proficiency with firearms means you get all this knowledge and skill, in addition to firing the weapon. That means firearm proficiency is unique because it's simultaneously a weapon proficiency and a crafting skill. Archers don't make their own ammunition, but I think making a ball out of metal sounds like something an idiot can do with a bullet mold. Cool. The only question is how many bullets can you make during a rest or a day? This is important because crafting in D&D is deliberately a long and expensive process, and I don't want to apply crafting rules inconsistently. 10 ammunition is 3 gp in the Dungeon Masers Guide. For simplicity, I will rule that you complete 16 ammunition in 8 hours of crafting. That may or may not be realistic, but whateves. Hit points and falling aren't realistic in 5e. Jump off a roof and tell me how many fucking hit points damage that was from the emergency room. I'll sign your cast "The ground rolled a crit, take 2d6 bludgeoning damage to the tibia."

Also, tell the players no one wants to buy ammunition from them. Tell them no merchant is going to be able to resell it, so they will refuse to buy it. If the players try, they lose reputation with the merchant for attempting to sell bits of metal and powder wrapped in paper. People all over town will know about the weirdos asking for a lot of gold pieces for strange, useless crafts and wasting merchants valuable time.

Or, let's say the player takes one of those feat things that lets them have proficiency in a martial weapon. Then they just learn it? OK, I supposed that's fair. You could rule that firearms are off the table for this feat, but if your using feats and they want to trade ability score improvements for firearms, cool. Barriers to entry are completely resolved now, except the money part, but that's part of the deal with firearms. You get a unique weapon in D&D, and ammunition is rare, exotic and expensive. It's a whole motif.

The only problem is the fact that the gun doesn't fit the setting, but by just calling it an exotic item means that no one knows what the fuck it is, and that actually kind of resolves that problem. It's not quite setting appropriate, but it's not too setting inappropriate; at least for me. There could be conflicts, though. "Who the fuck is the guy with the boomstick? Is he a wizard? What sort of magic is this? It's not magic? I must know about this!" Wouldn't evil people be on your ass all the time trying to steal your secret Krabby Patty Formula gun stuff. What if your PC decides to sell their secret gun knowledge to change the setting or abuse it to fuck with the setting? Bro, please get on the plot railroad and stop making more work for the DM.

Let's face it, humans like power and guns are power. If you have a guy with a gun going around solving mysteries and slaying monsters, that's going to incentivize industrious NPCs to acquire the technology and introduce it to the setting. Thanks for breaking my setting you cheeky fuck. Geez. I suppose the solution is to put barriers to entry for the NPCs. In case you don't know, to create a new technology, you need the concept, the technological resources, a the political power. The new technology needs to be more cost effect than the current technology. In D&D, it may not be more cost effective. Historically on earth, it totally was. That's why we don't fight crime with swords. True story.

Guns would probably make magic go away. That's actually kind of an interesting concept to me. A setting where new technology is outclassing magic in a low magic to medium magic setting and making spellcasters obsolete. Cool. I could totally do something with that. How do spellcasters cope? They have to work to keep or find new relevance in a world that finds them increasingly inessential. Justify yourself to society or become a lost art. Simple and relatable concept. Result 1: The old thing goes away. Result 2: The new thing doesn't work out and goes away making room for the old thing. Result 3. The old thing adapts and becomes essential. Maybe even synergies with the old thing. No, we're not doing magic guns, that's stupid. We'd make magic ammo, duh.

Magic ammo isn't going to be be ammunition wrapped in a spell scroll because you can't read your bullets. I am sure you're going to have to put the spell components into each bullet, right? I don't know. Fuck it. That's a problem for the wizards to solve. You gotta earn your place, old guard!

Anyway, I would just not introduce guns or accept the fact that guns make no sense. Moving on.