Quote:
Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
The Sengoku Period (1467-1603) proved the effectiveness of firearms against Japanese samurai (and Japanese archery), which is one of the reasons why the Tokugawa Shogunate banned firearms for over two centuries. If Nobunaga Oda had survived long enough to establish an Oda Shogunate, I do not doubt that the Japanese would have replaced archery with marksmanship within a generation.
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I was in no way questioning the overall effectiveness of early firearms, just saying that bows were better in some areas, and the example here is one of the places bows do well. Firearms are useful because their high power has a better chance of penetrating armor and it is much easier to train musketeers than archers. In this case, you already have trained archers firing at lightly or unarmored foes so their high rate of fire is a big advantage. (At least to my reading of the situation the PCs are lightly armored. I could be wrong there.)
Also my point still stands that if a pirate crew of swashbucklers found them selves in Japan in 1660 or so, they would most likely be facing off against bowmen. Thus the idea that putting bowmen against the swashbuckler is somehow ahistorical is untrue. It might not have been a common match up historically, but still quite possible. I am sure some Spanish conquistadors with rapiers came under arrow fire in the New Word at some point.