[Icelander]

Originally Posted by martinl

Huh. I was sure that after the ToT this position of the Gondish church wrt spreading tech, especially smokepowder, was reversed via divine revelation. To be precise, the ToT put Gond in direct contact with the masses, and the god decided to stop being such a jerk. (Presumably, as a god, he had an idea of the eventual equalizing effect firearms and other tech have wrt peasants/aristocracy.)

On reflection, this would break the DnD paradigm fairly quickly if allowed to continue, so I'm not surprised it was reversed. (Assuming I didn't get it wrong in the first place.)

The church had previously all but forbidden its use, but now no longer enforces that ban. Instead, they hope to be able to leverage their knowledge of the formula and many competent smiths and alchemists into a monopoly position.

They hope to spread out its use, yes, but unfortunately, the clergy are not good businessmen. They equivocate between trying to hand-pick buyers and reaching out to new markets, they price themselves far above sustainable prices and in short, absuse their near-monopoly status in a way that is not only immoral, it is in-efficient.

Gods in the setting are very limited in their intelligence. They have inhuman, near omniscient knowledge of their relevant portfolios, but they are curiously blind when it comes to the portfolios of other gods. While a human may be able to see things from multiple perspectives and realise that his interests are actually intertwined with others whose interests appear at first glance to be entirely unconnected, it is by no means certain that a divine being is capable of look outside his area of focus (the realm of invention and ideas) to understand the commercial application of those inventions.

This is why the church of Gond retards progress as much as it advances it. They create marvellous works, but they are rather helpless when it comes to marketing them and, indeed, somewhat hostile to the idea that something should be manufactured using economies of scale, as that dilutes the special relationship between the inventor and his invention. In their ideal world, only prototypes are built, to prove the concept.

Church are not monolithic entities, though, and at least one arm of the Gondite church, the Lantanese, shows some willingness to change. The priests, though, are mostly the same people that were in power before the ToT and it is very hard to change institutional culture.

It is entirely possible that some of the independent gnomish alchemists selling smokepowder are serving the will of Gond, though the established church does not realise it.

Originally Posted by martinl

If the current version didn't have the Gondites spreading the powder around, who is doing it?

Good question.

There are refugees and travellers from Kara-Tur in the Theskan region. Since smokepowder has been fairly well known, if no less expensive, in that country for hundreds of years, there have already been all kinds of experiments with its military use. So that's one source of it.

Then there are those alchemists who have managed to learn the formula without belonging to the temples of Gond or who belonged to it in the past but no longer do. Those are not all that few, since new lay worshippers join all the time and there will always be those who are dissatisfied with a faith after trying it out and in addition, if a substance can be sold for three times the materials cost, there will be those who want to go into business for themselves.

Third, the church is spreading knowledge of it, even if they are demanding ridiculous prices. A learned alchemist could hear of it, buy a small sample and with research, manage to extract the formula.

Originally Posted by martinl

Mooks get in one to three (if lucky) attacks before getting mowed down in any case. Reload time is not as big a deal in that scenario.

In a formation of pikes or polearms, that isn't a given. It's hard to kill people with Reach 2 and 3 when you've got Reach 1 like most adventurers with their fancy one-handed weapons.

If the adventurers can truly shatter the formation with ease and slaughter anyone within their reach instantly, the people need an escape plan, not a battle plan.

Originally Posted by martinl

If your crossbows do damage comparable to your muskets however, and are significantly cheaper and already accepted, the muskets are not likely to be adopted at all.

Agreed.

Though crossbows which can almost equal muskets for penetration power do significantly worse against soft targets, so the damage is not equivalent, but it is not far away. And such siege crossbows, while cheaper to operate than muskets, are actually more expensive and equally heavy (heavier, counting the rack).

Comparing a standard battlefield crossbow with a standard musketoon/caliver gives a damage of 1d(2) imp vs. 4d pi++ or penetration of DR 6 vs. penetration of DR 13. The crossbow can shoot three or four times faster, though.

Originally Posted by martinl

These are not simple spells, and damage from attack spells is limited. A ribcage full of REF 0.8 powder and a suit of heavy mail over top would be nasty.

There might be a narrow window of capability in which the powder is more powerful than the spells of the wizard, but he can still command some minor undead or such, but anyone capable of summoning air elementals will probably also have easy access to Firetrap spells which do the same thing for much less hard cash.

Originally Posted by martinl

Not sure of the relative costs of magic vs. powder in your game though, or the limits on and availability of boom spells. (Relatively cheap and available boom spells are effectively military artillery in most cases, and lead to more modern looking armies than the shield walls I've seen you discuss here in the past.)

At a guess, wizards can usually make a bigger boom for less money, provided you have wizards. They are, however, never as many as you'd wish.

The shield walls I've discussed in the past are explicitly lower TL than much of the setting, being a feature of orcish warfare in the Vastar. These orcs are not used to facing wizards that rank as much more than the equivalent to low-levels in D&D and their tactics have evolved in that environment. Most of their battles are against each other. Against humans with greater levels of magic, they consistently find themselves at a disadvantage.