[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

That's true, as I said above even if just keep in to TL4 there is a huge range of results and capabilities within a pretty short period of time.

And TL5 has probably the fastest progression of world-changing technology in history over the latter half of the 19th century.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

True, but steps were also taken to keep the guns form over heating and mishaps when fires at that rate, resting them, wet blankets, swabs etc, etc.

Absolutely true. But with note that firing a personal firearm fast enough and long enough so that you need wet blankets to cool it is likely to end in permanent damage. Cannon were seriously overbuilt for a variety of reasons, among them that it made overheating damage or dangerous accidents rarer.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

either way over engineering was a pretty natural tendency when metallurgy wasn't as uniform as it could be (and later would be), and that's not going to change going form big to small.

(although that could be another factor you could tweak in your setting)

I believe I will. Articulated plate and steel-spring crossbows are centuries old technology in the setting. Breastplates and helmets for mercenaries are widespread and cheap enough to make any explanation other than large-scale production of munition plate implausible.

Golems and even more, clockwork creations, imply that powerful mages can easily acquire metallurgy and smithing that would have been considered miraculous at our TL4. Elven steel, dwarven steel, enhanced 'hardened' bronze, orichalum, mithril, adamantine alloys and various other metallurgy-related products imply that there are a lot of high-quality options available for those who want better than TL3-4 steel.

And it's easy to explain advanced metallurgy. Dwarves have an instinct for prospecting and mining, clerics of various Earth gods can commune with rock, stone and mine shaft, Earth elementals can be summoned to help with mining and processing ore, wizards and priests can analyse samples with as much precision as they can understand using simple spells and there are artificer mages who make swords or armour for the purpose of enchantments with purely magical methods, thus learning a great deal about the properties of the metals they use.

Even bombards, rockets and gonnes have more than a century of history in known lands on Toril.* To be sure, at first among isolated cultures and working with very inferior (and dangerous) smokepowder, but there has been plenty of time to learn to work out the kinks in gunsmithing. Spelljamming vessels tend to be secretive about their true nature, but any polity with significant contact with those who sail the phlogiston technically has the possibility of trading with late TL4 / early TL5 smiths with full access to ordinary gunpowder*** and the resulting experience of gunpowder warfare.

The smokepowder weapons coming into use now aren't the first experiments with a new technology. They can rather be said to represent a formerly niche product, pretty much restricted to those who were connected with the Spelljamming world or had some way of getting smokepowder reliably at an economically sustainable price, but that respected master craftsmen are now learning how to make to satisfy increased demand.

*There are also several hundred years of history during a prior age of the decrepit Mulhorandi Empire, but divine politics resulted in some pretty strict bans on most of the more advanced engineering marvels of the Church of Thoth, including all smokepowder weapons. Even general knowledge of this period is now restricted to the upper echelons of the churches and specialised scholars and sages, while the technological knowledge and blueprints are kept as closely guarded secrets by the inner circle of the House of Tholaunt.**
**The hereditary divinely-descended upper priesthood of the Church of Thoth.
***Which works in most places Spelljamming ships visit, even if it does not work on Toril.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Well I think it pretty low velocity and relatively short barrelled for use at close range, also comparing it later elephant guns seems to be a bit unfair ;-)

Fine. The Swivel Gun is also pretty wimpy compared to the Wall Gun, which is much, much lighter, but not all that much less effective.

I'd really like to see a clear gain in effectiveness when going from a powerful man-portable weapon to a mounted one with a crew of 2-3.

I'm okay with poor long-ranged ball performance, but I'd really like to be able to get grapeshot and canister performance that approach historical figures from short-barrelled carronades.

If 24-lb carronades could get around 200 oversized iron balls to over 1600 fps velocity, surely there's some hope for 1-lb and 3-lb swivel guns where the goal is to get from 27-100 lead shot of around a half-inch diameter (heavier for the smaller load) to a similar velocity?

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Cool, what is the driving force behind these prices by the way, constituent parts or labour?

Almost exclusively labour for the wizards using magic, a combination of labour and rare parts for the magico-alchemical ones.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Could work of course it requires judging if that was the thing that stopped the chap from falling over (you could just have missed etc, etc), and your gambling a pretty expensive resource. One of the down sides of this muskets ets was the smoke made it hard to tell immediate effect.

A $250 enchanted bullet is expensive, but not as expensive as a mage, cleric or other champion getting to unleash their awesome-ity on your side.

The PCs pay, feed and house their soldiers very decently. They even have a system of family death benefits and retirement benefits for those crippled during their service. Losing men is expensive.

A soldier with three months of basic training and three months of in-unit apprenticeship is already a $5,000-$10,000 investment in trainers' time, as well as his CoL and salary, depending on his exact unit and background. Add some $5,000-$15,000 of PC-owned equipment he's wearing and carrying* and $10,000 to the family of a dead soldier or to support a crippled veteran, and you're up to pretty high numbers. If the soldier had to be given emergency clerical treatment and perhaps kept in a hospice for a year, one casulty can end up costing as much as $50,000. And that's not even assuming an experienced and valued soldier, NCO or officer.

This may not sound much in modern terms, but I assure you that their war profiteering and shady mercenary dealings would not remain profitable very long if they often suffered massive casualties.

Better by far to spend some money on causing casualties among the opposition and hopefully forcing them to abandon their war in the near future.

*Which they would not charge his family for if it could not be recovered from his dead body.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Actually that's a point I've been assuming smoke powder, creates a lot of smoke when used, in this the case though can we get smokeless smoke powder?

The REF 0.8 version produces much less smoke than the REF 0.3-0.5 versions. This applies especially if it is magically ignited and totally consumed.

The substance was first named 'smokepowder' when it appeared in the first, low-explosive, imperfectly mixed forms, where it ranged from REF 0.2-0.3 and produced a choking cloud of foul smelling smoke. Despite the much better varieties available a century later, the name stuck.

Assuming non-magical guns and ignition, smokepowder guns still produce smoke like black powder firearms, but may perhaps be compared to the amount of smoke seen in the finest modern 'black' powder, with a burn rate and charge matching the barrel length.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Absolutely you could spin it both ways i.e "your nothing but pair of hands for the gun" vs. "look we value you by trusting you with this resource", etc, etc

So far, smokepowder weapons have mostly been issued to experienced soldiers who already had skill in weapons such as crossbow, sword and spear; as well formation fighting, marching, garrison duty and enough combat engineering to build fortified camps.

While it is true that the PCs are looking to equip some new soldiers with them, those new soldiers will still be chosen from the most promising prospects among some 1,500,000 people.*

*And those 1,500,000 being those who have survived the past half century of turmoil, strife and war (full-scale civil war since 15 years ago, invasion and conquest some two years ago), with 6,000,000 being a more reasonable population number for the recruitment area. The very young and the very old have mostly died, anyone unhealthy is dead and the living are pretty well self-selected for mental toughness, adaptability and willpower.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Cool, so the smoke powder itself is the limiting factor, I'm guessing some kid of R&D on that?

Yep and that will improve things slightly, but since there are exotic components involved, it's unlikely that the price will ever be less than terribly high. There are several different alchemical recipies, but all of them have some components that require one to pay extremely courageous adventurers huge sums of money for taking unreasonable risks.

Some known incredients from some of the most well known recipies: powdered beholder eyeballs, sulphur harvested from an active volcano, fire crystals which only appear in one (monster infested) volcano range in the world, red dragon scales, amethyst dragon larynx (powdered), powdered remorhaz heat organs, essence of smoke mephit breath, diamond dust, ashes from the nest of a tshala, etc.