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A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover

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[X] Crake

I don't really want to invent guns. I like the feel of my high fantasy pseudo-Renaissance setting, thank you very much. We've already got spaceships, cannons and some Renaissance social mores (Braavosi ones mostly). Do we really need guns for our soldiers?

Reasons not to invest in that :
  • Getting cold iron or silvered melee weapons is much easier than doing huge numbers of bullets. And bullets can't be reused after battle as easily.
  • Many enemies easily negate ranged fire, meaning that melee troops will never entirely vanish.
  • Gunpowder is risky in a setting in which everyone and their mother has ranged fire attacks.
  • It's thematically bad, pls don't :cry:
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
[X] Crake

I don't really want to invent guns. I like the feel of my high fantasy pseudo-Renaissance setting, thank you very much. We've already got spaceships, cannons and some Renaissance social mores (Braavosi ones mostly). Do we really need guns for our soldiers?

Reasons not to invest in that :
  • Getting cold iron or silvered melee weapons is much easier than doing huge numbers of bullets. And bullets can't be reused after battle as easily.
  • Many enemies easily negate ranged fire, meaning that melee troops will never entirely vanish.
  • Gunpowder is risky in a setting in which everyone and their mother has ranged fire attacks.
  • It's thematically bad, pls don't :cry:
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While I don't really care if we never get guns since as has been pointed out we're well beyond small arms, I disagree on it being thematically bad. Guns are perfectly capable of meshing well with fantasy if you do it right. If we wanted to be fantasy purists we shouldn't have gone down the magitech route in the first place and just stuck with genie skyships instead of designing our own spaceships, or never made steam cannons, or never explored steam power research in general, or had our foremost aerial units being dragonriders and griffin knights, etc.

EDIT: Also you're seriously overestimating the material cost of bullets. They are absolutely minuscule, measured by grains (a 7,000th of a pound). Even with rarer metals like Cold Iron, Mithril, Adamantine, or even Imperial Steel, that kind of expenditure isn't all that much. That said, those would count as special munitions, with the regular fare being mundane metals.
 
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For cost-saving you can even use a tinier solid core of the exotic material coated in a jacket of the cheaper stuff. A shaped penetrator core of hardened steel with a soft lead jacket or something like that.
 
[X] Crake

Ah, sleep and a weekend did wonders. Z let's try and do better this time.

I am leery of restarting Valyrian traditions, but this is unlikely to be the straw that breaks that particular camel's back.
 
TalonofAnathrax said:
[X] Crake

I don't really want to invent guns. I like the feel of my high fantasy pseudo-Renaissance setting, thank you very much. We've already got spaceships, cannons and some Renaissance social mores (Braavosi ones mostly). Do we really need guns for our soldiers?

Reasons not to invest in that :
  • Getting cold iron or silvered melee weapons is much easier than doing huge numbers of bullets. And bullets can't be reused after battle as easily.
  • Many enemies easily negate ranged fire, meaning that melee troops will never entirely vanish.
  • Gunpowder is risky in a setting in which everyone and their mother has ranged fire attacks.
  • It's thematically bad, pls don't :cry:
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The way that a century of people ripping off Tolkien and Arthurian myths has warped peoples perception is horrifying to me. Renaissance means gunpowder for fucks sake. There were ample numbers of simple cannons used in the hundred years war. Conflicts with the islamic cultural sphere in Spain and Bizantium saw gunpowder as far back as the 13th century. Cannon use thus predates plate armor by a century and plate-armor is contemporary with matchlock rifles. The War of the Roses, which the War of the Five Kings was modeled after, saw the use of both cannons and handguns from foreign mercenaries hired by both sides. And don't get me started on the TV show, which depicted entire armies in half-plate and full-plate, something you would not have seen at any point before the 16th century on this scale.

Most fantasy stories are thematically set in a migration-era to early medieval era, but using random stuff from much later centuries thrown in there, like ubiquitous plate armor and Renaissance art styles. Except gunpowder. I do not know who wished something weird upon a monkey paw and now nobody is willing to acknowledge the existence of the early gunpowder era, but I'm having strong feelings about this. There should be actual stories set in the era that use period appropriate gunpowder technology and tactics, but instead we get complete omission or rampant fan-wank whenever the concept is introduced in fanfiction.

TL;DR

If you talk about pseudo-Renaissance, then it's perfectly thematically appropriate to have gunpowder in pseudo-Europe for a century already, while pseudo-Islamic-World should already have had it for around two centuries and pseudo-China for at least three centuries.
 
zxzx24 said:
I'm still totally excited for Gun Monks if were going to do gunpowder!

Rule's for them hm.
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Pathfinder, being one of the few fantasy-ish things to buck the trend (I'm not giving full credit here since Pathfinder also has crashed space ships, nanotech magic and similar sci-fi trappings), has rules for those.
In fact, I was explicitly modifying Pathfinder rules when making the steam cannon rules.
 
Azel said:
Pathfinder, being one of the few fantasy-ish things to buck the trend (I'm not giving full credit here since Pathfinder also has crashed space ships, nanotech magic and similar sci-fi trappings), has rules for those.
In fact, I was explicitly modifying Pathfinder rules when making the steam cannon rules.
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They do make sense. Some funkiness with armor class aside.

I was largely under the impression launchers fill that niche out pretty well however.
 
Azel said:
The way that a century of people ripping off Tolkien and Arthurian myths has warped peoples perception is horrifying to me. Renaissance means gunpowder for fucks sake. There were ample numbers of simple cannons used in the hundred years war. Conflicts with the islamic cultural sphere in Spain and Bizantium saw gunpowder as far back as the 13th century. Cannon use thus predates plate armor by a century and plate-armor is contemporary with matchlock rifles. The War of the Roses, which the War of the Five Kings was modeled after, saw the use of both cannons and handguns from foreign mercenaries hired by both sides. And don't get me started on the TV show, which depicted entire armies in half-plate and full-plate, something you would not have seen at any point before the 16th century on this scale.

Most fantasy stories are thematically set in a migration-era to early medieval era, but using random stuff from much later centuries thrown in there, like ubiquitous plate armor and Renaissance art styles. Except gunpowder. I do not know who wished something weird upon a monkey paw and now nobody is willing to acknowledge the existence of the early gunpowder era, but I'm having strong feelings about this. There should be actual stories set in the era that use period appropriate gunpowder technology and tactics, but instead we get complete omission or rampant fan-wank whenever the concept is introduced in fanfiction.

TL;DR

If you talk about pseudo-Renaissance, then it's perfectly thematically appropriate to have gunpowder in pseudo-Europe for a century already, while pseudo-Islamic-World should already have had it for around two centuries and pseudo-China for at least three centuries.
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If we're going to try to direct efforts to unlock the Firearms tech tree, I would prefer to bypass black powder entirely and just develop a method to use small amounts of the substance in Explosive Packs as a propellant. The Alchemical "chemistry" is already well understood and something be can produced in bulk. There was a lot of trial and error and experimentation over several centuries to arrive at reliable old school black powder, with a serious amount of infrastructure involved in producing the stuff in any reasonable quantity. Getting the sulfur and charcoal for black powder is easy enough, but the potassium nitrate, that's a real bitch to get if you're not lucky and knowledgeable. I remember a program I watched on the History Channel years ago that detailed one of the ways Potassium Nitrate was isolated to produce black powder and it involved collecting huge quantities of urine to extract the stuff from over a not insignificant amount of time.

A single "Explosive Pack" consists of two pounds of highly stable and reliable explosive materials which we can detonate on demand. A .44 Magnum cartridge uses 37.9 grains of propellant, with there being 7,000 grains to the pound. Assuming we used 40 grains in our standard small firearms ammunition, that would be 350 rounds which could be produced per Explosive Pack.

The real hurdle for making effective firearms which will even be worth using is in the engineering involved. There are a lot of small innovations that need to come together to make firearm practical and reliable in comparison to more archaic weapons and Launchers.
 
zxzx24 said:
They do make sense. Some funkiness with armor class aside.

I was largely under the impression launchers fill that niche out pretty well however.
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The issue with Launchers is the short range. They hit nearly perfectly up to 440 ft. and then can't hit anything at all. This means it has a better accuracy then matchlock guns at the cost of being unable to make shots at extreme range at all. However, cannons, even man-portable ones, have much better range. We are kinda going into the direction of field artillery with our new Warstriders, but they also highlight how we can't scale down steam powered cannons beyond a certain point. The smallest we manage is to strap one of those on a Gargantuan construct.

The main niche for now would be crew serviced cannons and especially small cannons / large guns that are used like longer ranged versions of our crew-serviced heavy launchers. If the gun later replaces the Launcher as an infantry weapon depends on two things:
1. If the gun becomes cheaper then a Launcher to produce and supply with ammo, at which point they become the more economic choice.
2. If gun-tech reaches the point where they are as accurate as Launchers on short distances, at which point they become the militarily superior choice.
 
[X] Crake

I wonder how Oberyn is taking actual lordship now. Has it perks and cons after all for a man like him.
 
Azel said:
1. If the gun becomes cheaper then a Launcher to produce and supply with ammo, at which point they become the more economic choice.
2. If gun-tech reaches the point where they are as accurate as Launchers on short distances, at which point they become the militarily superior choice.
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A Launch Item object always has to take in a certain amount of reagents to enchant the spell effect onto the device. So there is no way to scale down the cost.

1) Mass production AND magic being used to shorten transportation time, obviate scarcity and streamline/cut labor costs means firearms should be nearly free.
1.1) Fire arms are basically a bunch of parts fitted together, fabricate should be able to make all of those parts, so we don't even really need to develop traditional automation.
(In fact it is so convenient, that while it makes sense from our perspective/in terms of hindsight bias to actually have a way to ease production without having to rely on mages or rare reagents to do things, it's not like we aren't improving mundane engineering principles along the way, just look at steam engines we're working toward. Steam could be used to power a lot of things, and stuff like water wheels etc. should already be a thing, so the concept is within reach regardless of magic making it a bit pointless.)

2) Launchers are probably great for grenadiers, which the Praetorians are shaping up to be. They just allow you to easily deliver explosive munitions a huge distance (relative to their role) with perfect accuracy. Which is something actual grenadiers can't really do, even though they're selected for performance.

Massgamer said:
[X] Crake

I wonder how Oberyn is taking actual lordship now. Has it perks and cons after all for a man like him.
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Well, he has the ability to delegate to the administration at any time. It's not like he doesn't tend to go adventuring even now.
 
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Goldfish said:
If we're going to try to direct efforts to unlock the Firearms tech tree, I would prefer to bypass black powder entirely and just develop a method to use small amounts of the substance in Explosive Packs as a propellant. The Alchemical "chemistry" is already well understood and something be can produced in bulk. There was a lot of trial and error and experimentation over several centuries to arrive at reliable old school black powder, with a serious amount of infrastructure involved in producing the stuff in any reasonable quantity. Getting the sulfur and charcoal for black powder is easy enough, but the potassium nitrate, that's a real bitch to get if you're not lucky and knowledgeable. I remember a program I watched on the History Channel years ago that detailed one of the ways Potassium Nitrate was isolated to produce black powder and it involved collecting huge quantities of urine to extract the stuff from over a not insignificant amount of time.

A single "Explosive Pack" consists of two pounds of highly stable and reliable explosive materials which we can detonate on demand. A .44 Magnum cartridge uses 37.9 grains of propellant, with there being 7,000 grains to the pound. Assuming we used 40 grains in our standard small firearms ammunition, that would be 350 rounds which could be produced per Explosive Pack.

The real hurdle for making effective firearms which will even be worth using is in the engineering involved. There are a lot of small innovations that need to come together to make firearm practical and reliable in comparison to more archaic weapons and Launchers.
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Yeah, as I said before, Explosive Packs are definitely the way to go. Last but not least because we already have the necessary infrastructure to mass-produce them. A purely mundane explosive that does not rely on alchemy would be even easier to produce at scale, but that's something we should see happen on it's own at some point. Sooner or later, someone is likely going to discover gunpowder while studying alchemy, but it won't rise over a curiosity and usage in fireworks with Explosive Packs already available, but it might spur some interest that will ultimately lead towards things like nitro-compounds.

As for early innovation, scaling down our existing steam cannons would be the obvious first step, replacing the steam with an Explosive Pack. At the earliest though, that would make sense after the Westeros conquest, since that will likely be the first conflict when Warstriders will see deployment, proving the value of having cannon support for infantry. From there on, we could slowly work on replacing first the armaments of Medium Warstriders, then those of the Light Warstriders with cannons, before going for a man-portable one.
Crake said:
A Launch Item object always has to take in a certain amount of reagents to enchant the spell effect onto the device. So there is no way to scale down the cost.

1) Mass production AND magic being used to shorten transportation time, obviate scarcity and streamline/cut labor costs means firearms should be nearly free.
1.1) Fire arms are basically a bunch of parts fitted together, fabricate should be able to make all of those parts, so we don't even really need to develop traditional automation.
(In fact it is so convenient, that while it makes sense from our perspective/in terms of hindsight bias to actually have a way to ease production without having to rely on mages or rare reagents to do things, it's not like we aren't improving mundane engineering principles along the way, just look at steam engines we're working toward. Steam could be used to power a lot of things, and stuff like water wheels etc. should already be a thing, so the concept is within reach regardless of magic making it a bit pointless.)

2) Launchers are probably great for grenadiers, which the Praetorians are shaping up to be. They just allow you to easily deliver explosive munitions a huge distance (relative to their role) with perfect accuracy. Which is something actual grenadiers can't really do, even though they're selected for performance.


Well, he has the ability to delegate to the administration at any time. It's not like he doesn't tend to go adventuring even now.
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1. Thing is, we still have automation happening. The Everfire Dale ironworks are already using a manufactory style work divsion and when we get steam trains, we can get steam powered trip-hammers as a side-product. From there on, it's not that far to simple stamped parts. The main question is if it's more economic then using a Fabricate item, though I doubt it. Regular manufacturing will likely remain largely an artisan practice, while mass-production will always tend towards magic.

2. Yeah, I'm kinda viewing them as a mix of matchlock rifles and short ranged mortars right now. The Praetorians will be a huge break from Planetosi warfare thus far, being the first large scale military unit that focuses on ranged combat over close combat.
 
I'm okay with Gunpowder in general, but I find Steam-powered weaponry to be more interesting as a concept.
 
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