Emerging smokepowder weapons in my fantasy

[Kalzazz]

I haven't shot many handguns

I do know that the 9mm semis I've fired have had way more felt recoil to me than the very undercharged .357 hand loads my employer had at the range, fired from similar weight handguns (the former being distinctly unpleasant feeling, the range guns firing the practice ammo had less recoil than most BB guns or .22s I've fired, and I could actually see the bullet as it streaked downrange)

Are there examples in HT of revolvers and semiautos flinging the same round?

I believe HT has a Desert Eagle flinging .44 Mag and a M29 flinging the same

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Icelander

...
Very true.

The 19th century fighting pistols are not any better against armour than a slight woman or young boy with a composite crossbow (ST 7-8; thr+5 imp) or the smallest kind of TL2 Scorpion (1d+2 imp) weighing 2 lbs., a an average innkeeper with an affordable hand-spanned crossbow under his bar (ST 9-10; thr+4 imp), a modestly skilled archer with a reflex bow (ST 9-10 and Strongbow Perk; thr+3 imp) or a strong man with a sling (ST 13; sw pi).

...

Sorry just quickly isn't part of the problem here with this comparison is not that the pistols are weak, but the damage for LT bow and crossbow are way too high? I.e if you go with Deadly spring pistols look better

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Sorry just quickly isn't part of the problem here with this comparison is not that the pistols are weak, but the damage for LT bow and crossbow are way too high? I.e if you go with Deadly spring pistols look better

They do, but then slings, atl-atls and thrown weapons just replace the bows and crossbows in the examples. Not as bad, to be sure, at least in that it calls for strong men, but since a heavy infantry soldier will have minimum ST 12 almost by definition* and some will have more than the minimum, it would be nice to load the boarding pistols with something better at penetrating a breastplate than their other weapons.**

*See Kromm post on the high MinST of some historically common heavy infantry weapons.
**Fine boarding pike at thr+4, therefore minimum 1d+3 imp; boarding axe at sw+2, thefore minimum 1d+4 cut.

[Kalzazz]

Do you have a link to this Kromm post?

I admit I have a hard tine easily seeing the atlatl catching on for boarding actions

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Icelander

They do, but then slings, atl-atls and thrown weapons just replace the bows and crossbows in the examples. Not as bad, to be sure, at least in that it calls for strong men, but since a heavy infantry soldier will have minimum ST 12 almost by definition* and some will have more than the minimum, it would be nice to load the boarding pistols with something better at penetrating a breastplate than their other weapons.**

*See Kromm post on the high MinST of some historically common heavy infantry weapons.
**Fine boarding pike at thr+4, therefore minimum 1d+3 imp; boarding axe at sw+2, thefore minimum 1d+4 cut.

You make a good point about slings (but well same point really!)

I haven't see the Kromm post in question, but if it's MinST12 weapons mean Infantry must all have a minimum ST of 12, I'll disagree as I have in the past. But it's a moot here anyway that's an argument from realism and if I was running a Forgotten Realms campaign I wouldn't be stat normalising anyway ;-)!*

Either way, if you've got lots of infantry running around with ST12, just scale up your pistols accordingly (the ones in LT are generally MinST 9-10 or 11 but used two handed like the petronel bringing the MinST down). Pretty much like you have with the Giff guns and the Gnome pistol with the more powerful charge

More importantly for the battle field they'll also be able to use 4d+2 pi++ muskets comfortably without rests (so like the lighter guns in the list were)

And if you want them to be more like the historical Musketeer with a rest let them have that 5d+1 wall gun (or even something bigger).

What I think they actually end up with is more stuff like the fusils or flintlock carbine which will give you increased range and power over pistols in a package thats pretty handy for the ST12 solider (i.e the boundary between big long pistol and short handy long arm is pretty diffuse here)



*i.e. I suggest we don't derail this into another thread about ST.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Do you have a link to this Kromm post?

Here's what he said first

And here's clarification.

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I admit I have a hard tine easily seeing the atlatl catching on for boarding actions

No stranger than many other things. Note also that thrown spears or harpoons would be available, doing thr+2 to thr+4 imp.

[Tomsdad]

Right OK caught up with the rest of the thread now including the stuff about higher REF's, higher costs etc.


OK I think you write ups for the pistol etc are pretty spot on, you guns are going to heavier and MinST & Rcl higher then rel life guns but you get more damage (all due to increased REF) but again that works fine if your giving these to ST12 chaps.

These guns are going to be niche though even given the rather advanced nature of Trade in FR and the cash rich nature of many adventurers and adventurer run organisations.

Earlier you said that even with cost of 0.8 smoke powered being so high it still comparative cheaper than magical per shot alternatives (wands etc)?

But I was thinking of a couple of alternative ways magic could come in here.

1). given how expensive per shot firing these things are how feasible it it oi value add accuracy to a gun or shot with magic? Either directly to the gun, or with say magic sights / scopes etc (basically if you increases your chance of hitting you save money per shot in terms of damage/cost, and you open up the role of battlefield sniper taking out high value targets more and more)

2). will wizards see this and try and replicate through magic smoke powder and gun? for instance I'm not sure what magic system your using, but instead of smoke powder could an adapted explosive rune cast been used as a propelling charge?*

3). does the spell "protection from normal missiles" work against them? (I can't remember what that's called in GURPS I can only remember the AD&D name)

Ultimately you have the opposite situation from historical reality where advances made mass producing guns and ammunition easier thus allowing the fielding of larger and larger groups with them (combining with the ease of training in comparison to bows ect).
Unless you reduce the cost of smoke powder this will stay niche. However that said I think there's no harm in leveraging the benefit you do have. High REF and high ST users to make these niche weapons appropriately effective, since you don't need to worry about other limiting factors.



Ok now what about the ramifications for Gond and his church. I gather from your first post this is not so much magic but knowledge that Gond's priests tend to have due to their interests and synergy with Gond's purview. (other's have it as well and the knowledge is spreading).

so I guess my question is how has this effected the church of Gond in the Setting, and could Gond's speciality priests develop ways to ease the production of this stuff (either through direct divine means or through divine inspiration via their skills with alchemy),

Could since smoke powder is not inherently magical (I think) there be essential version of smoke powder?

On the subject of mixing magic with utility what about the Harulans (sp?), in the south, And of course the red wizards (who I seem to remember had cannon in the setting?)


Of course when thinking about all of this stuff I'm guessing you want to preserve the FR setting motifs and not end up with a FR/Eberron mash up!

Right sorry if any of this has already been addressed (and if my FR knowledge is out of date or faded)

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Right OK caught up with the rest of the thread now including the stuff about higher REF's, higher costs etc.

Cool, cool, cool.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

OK I think you write ups for the pistol etc are pretty spot on, you guns are going to heavier and MinST & Rcl higher then rel life guns but you get more damage (all due to increased REF) but again that works fine if your giving these to ST12 chaps.

Giff actually have an average racial ST 20, with Lifting ST +5 and Lifting ST +5 (Encumbrance purposes only). A giff warrior will usually be ST 21-30, with most of them around ST 21-24. They are SM +1 and most weigh between 450-1,100 lbs. with females and juveniles being around the lower bound, full-grown warrior bulls at 600+ lbs.

I'd love suggestions for more giff smokepowder weapons that really take advantage of their massive strength. Giff usually live on other worlds than Toril (the world of Forgotten Realms), with functioning black powder. Their weapons may thus 'waste' a prodigious amount of powder for a modest increase in destructive capability. Smokepowder is an unwelcome* substitute for Toril, because black powder doesn't work there.

*Unwelcome because they distrust magic.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Earlier you said that even with cost of 0.8 smoke powered being so high it still comparative cheaper than magical per shot alternatives (wands etc)?

True dat, at least in so far as it takes someone with Magery 0, Power Investiture or the appropriate Perks (the equivalent to D&D's Use Magic Device) to use most of the effective wands. It might 'only' cost $250 to $500 per charge to get a magical wand attack that is better than most smokepowder guns, but that will only benefit mages.

Magical items which can make at will attack with a spell of FP 4 or so, through a high Power enchantment, are of course a highly competative alternative to a pistol and by sheer rate of fire, probably better than muskets. But most of the damage-dealing sorts are restricted to spellcasters so they don't replace firearms for elite soldiers.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

1). given how expensive per shot firing these things are how feasible it it oi value add accuracy to a gun or shot with magic? Either directly to the gun, or with say magic sights / scopes etc (basically if you increases your chance of hitting you save money per shot in terms of damage/cost, and you open up the role of battlefield sniper taking out high value targets more and more)

Very feasible, but limited by how many wizards you have who can enchant with the Power spell, as draining Fatigue to maintain the spell from your Hawk Vision using snipers is likely to get them killed quickly.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

2). will wizards see this and try and replicate through magic smoke powder and gun? for instance I'm not sure what magic system your using, but instead of smoke powder could an adapted explosive rune cast been used as a propelling charge?*
[...]
Could since smoke powder is not inherently magical (I think) there be essential version of smoke powder?

Smokepowder is inherently magical. It's made with Alchemy, not chemistry, and the process requires mixing together a bunch of inherently magical components. Smokepowder does not work in No Mana Zones.

Wizards can make other magical propellants. The Red Wizards of Thay use Oil of Impact to make an oil-based propellant for bombards and before the Incarnation of Horus-Re forbade it, the Church of Thoth in Mulhorand not only made smokepowder, but they also developed spells to replicate its functioning through the expenditure of magical power* by a wizard and not through rare components.

*Necessary to be able to make golems fire endlessly from arm-guns.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

3). does the spell "protection from normal missiles" work against them? (I can't remember what that's called in GURPS I can only remember the AD&D name)

It does, unless you enchant the musket ball.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Ultimately you have the opposite situation from historical reality where advances made mass producing guns and ammunition easier thus allowing the fielding of larger and larger groups with them (combining with the ease of training in comparison to bows ect).

That's true. Smokepowder-armed troops are a viable type of elite, where the time to train might be shorter than that for many other types of elite*, but the equipment and running costs are much higher.

There's little need for them if you can recruit among several million people, some couple of hundred of thousand of whom come from traditionally military castes or families and grow up learning a military skill. In that case, any elites you want to have in your army and can afford to equip, pay and feed, you can select from among them.

Only if you quickly need many more elite soldiers than the part of your population which consists of a full-time warrior class can support would you consider training smokepowder troops. And then only if you have a lot of money and do not have any cheaper options; like remitting provincial taxes in exchange for more elite cavalry and superlative horse archers or raising a legion of the hungry dead to fight for you.

*Knights and men-at-arms usually have some 7-14 years of full-time apprenticeship before taking their place as elite heavy cavalry; archers have to grow up shooting a heavy warbow, which means at least ten years; and bow-armed cataphrachts have to master archery and mounted lance charges and generally come from a mileu where they've had a master-at-arms from childhood.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Unless you reduce the cost of smoke powder this will stay niche. However that said I think there's no harm in leveraging the benefit you do have. High REF and high ST users to make these niche weapons appropriately effective, since you don't need to worry about other limiting factors.

The PCs will mostly be arming ST 11-12 marines and ST 10-11 sharpshooters and skirmishers. They'll even have a regiment of female volunteers, where the average will be ST 9* and they need a nice weapon for them.

*Which in terms of upper-body ST is strong for a woman, let alone a woman from a country where there has been misrule for centuries, a terrible plague two generations ago and chaos, war, civil war and strife for the past fifteen years.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

so I guess my question is how has this effected the church of Gond in the Setting, and could Gond's speciality priests develop ways to ease the production of this stuff (either through direct divine means or through divine inspiration via their skills with alchemy),

The Church of Gond is utter rubbish at encouraging mass production. Love of intellectual exploration, tinkering with blueprints or recipies and individual craftsmanship is deeply engrained in them. They want everyone to be experimental engineers, who build exactly one proof of concept of each project, and don't have much of a head for business.

There are individual exceptions, of course, but since Gond himself is known to love craftsmanship and creation for its own sake, the Church officially follows a line all but hostile to mass production. Gond has far more favour for the priest who spends a lifetime building one prototype that is not economically viable (but a beautiful machine, with an ingenious innovation) than the one who makes minor simplifications to the creations of others, so that it no longer takes a master craftsman to build them and they can be cobbled together by a band of unqualified jobsmen.

The Church of Gond is working on higher REF smokepowder, complex lock and action types, multi-barrelled firearms and repeating firearms. In each case, if you were to ask the designer about the manufacturing process for his invention, he'd reply by offering to take you on as an apprentice and spend a few years building your own version. Which would, of course, be significantly different and probably a proof of concept of something else of which he'd thought during his former project.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

On the subject of mixing magic with utility what about the Harulans (sp?), in the south, And of course the red wizards (who I seem to remember had cannon in the setting?)

The PCs have no information on Halruaans using smokepowder on any kind of organised scale, though it is far from unlikely that individual alchemists or wizards know how to make some. It might be useful to them, as an adjunst to pure magical power, but it's plausible that they are among the few nations that can actually rely entirely on wizards as artillery and even naval armament.

Red Wizards do make bombards, it is true, but not smokepowder bombards. At least, none have been spotted yet. They use an oil of their own design, which is actually a better propellant than smokepowder, albeit more expensive. An increasing number of Thayan alchemists have learned to make smokepowder, though, and the PCs have bought some of theirs from Thayans. Not specifically from Red Wizards, though, just alchemists who come from Thay.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Of course when thinking about all of thsi stuff I;m guessing you want o preserve the FR setting motifs and not end up with a FR/Eberron mash up!

No worries. I do want to avoid Minié and conical bullets, as that would possibly change warfare enough to make infantry melee a rare circumstance, instead of the usual arm of decision.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Giff actually have an average racial ST 20, with Lifting ST +5 and Lifting ST +5 (Encumbrance purposes only). A giff warrior will usually be ST 21-30, with most of them around ST 21-24. They are SM +1 and most weigh between 450-1,100 lbs. with females and juveniles being around the lower bound, full-grown warrior bulls at 600+ lbs.

I'd love suggestions for more giff smokepowder weapons that really take advantage of their massive strength. Giff usually live on other worlds than Toril (the world of Forgotten Realms), with functioning black powder. Their weapons may thus 'waste' a prodigious amount of powder for a modest increase in destructive capability. Smokepowder is an unwelcome* substitute for Toril, because black powder doesn't work there.

*Unwelcome because they distrust magic.

Well I'd just repurpose some of the smaller cannon from LT (I think as a rough rule of thumb is unless FR metallurgy is significantly better than TL4 the increased REF and increased structural integrity balance each other out, maybe reduce length and weight a little)

The Swivel gun would seem appropriate for ship to ship boarding, or the "long range awe inspiring gun" (aka "bloody great big shotgun")

Originally Posted by Icelander

True dat, at least in so far as it takes someone with Magery 0, Power Investiture or the appropriate Perks (the equivalent to D&D's Use Magic Device) to use most of the effective wands. It might 'only' cost $250 to $500 per charge to get a magical wand attack that is better than most smokepowder guns, but that will only benefit mages.

Magical items which can make at will attack with a spell of FP 4 or so, through a high Power enchantment, are of course a highly competative alternative to a pistol and by sheer rate of fire, probably better than muskets. But most of the damage-dealing sorts are restricted to spellcasters so they don't replace firearms for elite soldiers.

True enough

Originally Posted by Icelander

Very feasible, but limited by how many wizards you have who can enchant with the Power spell, as draining Fatigue to maintain the spell from your Hawk Vision using snipers is likely to get them killed quickly.

I'll be honest I wasn't quite sure what spell would be used or how it works

Originally Posted by Icelander

Smokepowder is inherently magical. It's made with Alchemy, not chemistry, and the process requires mixing together a bunch of inherently magical components. Smokepowder does not work in No Mana Zones.

Wizards can make other magical propellants. The Red Wizards of Thay use Oil of Impact to make an oil-based propellant for bombards and before the Incarnation of Horus-Re forbade it, the Church of Thoth in Mulhorand not only made smokepowder, but they also developed spells to replicate its functioning through the expenditure of magical power* by a wizard and not through rare components.

*Necessary to be able to make golems fire endlessly from arm-guns.

Ok in terms of cost effectiveness how do they stack up.

Originally Posted by Icelander

It does, unless you enchant the musket ball.

Cool (this might get in the way of high value sniping)

Originally Posted by Icelander

That's true. Smokepowder-armed troops are a viable type of elite, where the time to train might be shorter than that for many other types of elite*, but the equipment and running costs are much higher.

There's little need for them if you can recruit among several million people, some couple of hundred of thousand of whom come from traditionally military castes or families and grow up learning a military skill. In that case, any elites you want to have in your army and can afford to equip, pay and feed, you can select from among them.

Only if you quickly need many more elite soldiers than the part of your population which consists of a full-time warrior class can support would you consider training smokepowder troops. And then only if you have a lot of money and do not have any cheaper options; like remitting provincial taxes in exchange for more elite cavalry and superlative horse archers or raising a legion of the hungry dead to fight for you.

*Knights and men-at-arms usually have some 7-14 years of full-time apprenticeship before taking their place as elite heavy cavalry; archers have to grow up shooting a heavy warbow, which means at least ten years; and bow-armed cataphrachts have to master archery and mounted lance charges and generally come from a mileu where they've had a master-at-arms from childhood.

There are other advantages, it's the kit that gives the effect here rather than years of investment in time and training. So losses can be sustained if the kit is retrieved. Paranoid commander can limit the amount of smoke powder avoidable (as it's the smoke powder this all hangs on). The corollary is this also can help maintain loyalty, if you are an elite smoke powder musketeer you know you position and your effectiveness is maintained by a supply of smoke powder.

Elite heavy western style cavalry (aka knight) tend to come with social baggage of their own as well. Plus require a lot more infrastructure and are despite their speed in the charge are a less nimble force when travelling about.


That said disciplined horse archers who had an cadre of chaps with these guns would be something scary indeed

Originally Posted by Icelander

The PCs will mostly be arming ST 11-12 marines and ST 10-11 sharpshooters and skirmishers. They'll even have a regiment of female volunteers, where the average will be ST 9* and they need a nice weapon for them.

*Which in terms of upper-body ST is strong for a woman, let alone a woman from a country where there has been misrule for centuries, a terrible plague two generations ago and chaos, war, civil war and strife for the past fifteen years.

It would seem the characters are in an unusual position in having lots of gun and powder rather than lots of gunners. (I agree giving a gun to ST9 warrior is good way to leverage them)

Originally Posted by Icelander

The Church of Gond is utter rubbish at encouraging mass production. Love of intellectual exploration, tinkering with blueprints or recipies and individual craftsmanship is deeply engrained in them. They want everyone to be experimental engineers, who build exactly one proof of concept of each project, and don't have much of a head for business.

There are individual exceptions, of course, but since Gond himself is known to love craftsmanship and creation for its own sake, the Church officially follows a line all but hostile to mass production. Gond has far more favour for the priest who spends a lifetime building one prototype that is not economically viable (but a beautiful machine, with an ingenious innovation) than the one who makes minor simplifications to the creations of others, so that it no longer takes a master craftsman to build them and they can be cobbled together by a band of unqualified jobsmen.

Ah Ok, I guess I have an inherently cynical POV on this sort of thing. Ultimately most gods like more worship, and thus look favourably on things that increase temporal power of their church as well as their spiritual draw. (if nothing else the FR pantheon is competitive)

Originally Posted by Icelander

The Church of Gond is working on higher REF smokepowder, complex lock and action types, multi-barrelled firearms and repeating firearms. In each case, if you were to ask the designer about the manufacturing process for his invention, he'd reply by offering to take you on as an apprentice and spend a few years building your own version. Which would, of course, be significantly different and probably a proof of concept of something else of which he'd thought during his former project.

Well if nothing else those high concept items would make cool alternate high value magic weapons.

Originally Posted by Icelander

The PCs have no information on Halruaans using smokepowder on any kind of organised scale, though it is far from unlikely that individual alchemists or wizards know how to make some. It might be useful to them, as an adjunst to pure magical power, but it's plausible that they are among the few nations that can actually rely entirely on wizards as artillery and even naval armament.

True (or using more wizardly alternative like the oil of impact you mentioned above) I was thinking of flying ships and hand guns and having a "Lone wolf shadows on the sand moment"

Originally Posted by Icelander

Red Wizards do make bombards, it is true, but not smokepowder bombards. At least, none have been spotted yet. They use an oil of their own design, which is actually a better propellant than smokepowder, albeit more expensive. An increasing number of Thayan alchemists have learned to make smokepowder, though, and the PCs have bought some of theirs from Thayans. Not specifically from Red Wizards, though, just alchemists who come from Thay.

Cool

Originally Posted by Icelander

No worries. I do want to avoid Minié and conical bullets, as that would possibly change warfare enough to make infantry melee a rare circumstance, instead of the usual arm of decision.

yeah, although again scarcity/expense will also do that job for you.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

I haven't see the Kromm post in question, but if it's MinST12 weapons mean Infantry must all have a minimum ST of 12, I'll disagree as I have in the past.

#NotAllInfantry

:-)

Heavy infantry at TL1 to TL4 are not representative of normal men suitable for the draft after the military revolutions in the Early Modern age. Potential heavy infantrymen generally excludes at least 95% of the poorer (and thus generally smaller, unhealthier and less strong) of the population, because, in general, only landowners, their sons or nephews or other wealthy men owned expensive armour and had the leisure to be trained to war. Heavy infantry are either from a warrior class or are professional soldiers, they are usually much better fed than average and in many cultures, they have no other function than to fight, eat or train for war.

I view ST 11-13 as quite achievable with an active lifestyle and healthy diet, for anyone not small, very unhealthy or crippled by injury or malnutrition. It's not necessarily exceptional genetics, it's an exceptional lifestyle, compared to a person who doesn't want or need to spend a lot of time doing what amounts to exercise, healthy living and muscle-building.

If infantry is defined as 'guys who fight on a battlefield', I quite agree that ST 12+ is not necessary to belong to it at any TL. There are plenty of levies, skirmishers and other people who may be fairly strong and active for their weight because farming calls for a fair bit of physical work, but are much smaller and weaker than the better fed warrior class. Also, they are much less likely to have the leisure to compete in feats of strength, wrestling and other ST-intensive sports on a regular basis.

Kromm was specifically talking about a non-technical definition of 'heavy infantry'; halberdiers, axemen, macemen, longswordmen and suchlike, not Dan Howard's (and Mass Combat's) formation-based* definition of the term. In other words, elite, heavily-armed and armoured soldiers who carry impressive weapons that mark their distinction, like the Swiss Guard, Varangian Guard or Doppelsoldner and/or dismounted knights.

See more Krommpost on the subject of the 'Navy SEALS of their time'.

*Where naked spearmen are 'Heavy infantry' (with poor equipment) if they fight in close formation, but a group of dismounted knights in field plate with pollaxes and maces are Light or Medium Infantry (with exceptional equipment) if they fight in loose formation or skirmish order.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

But it's a moot here anyway that's an argument from realism and if I was running a Forgotten Realms campaign I wouldn't be stat normalising anyway ;-)!*

*i.e. I suggest we don't derail this into another thread about ST.

Good point.

I'm not all that stat normalised, but I do limit human characters to ST 20 and DX, IQ, HT, Per and Will 15 unless they buy Special Exercises (for exceeding ST and one level of Per or Will) or Unusual Background.

The highest PC score in an Attribute that isn't ST is DX 17, the roguish Murlak. Several PCs or their closest allies have 16s, with two of them (since last night) having IQ, Per and Will all at 16. ST 20 is still the highest ST among the PCs, but 'Brash' Mickey has a Girdle of Giant Strength (+10 to ST) and Gauntlets of Ogre Power (+6 Arm ST).

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Either way, if you've got lots of infantry running around with ST12, just scale up your pistols accordingly (the ones in LT are generally MinST 9-10 or 11 but used two handed like the petronel bringing the MinST down). Pretty much like you have with the Giff guns and the Gnome pistol with the more powerful charge

Well, unless you are equipping specialists, you have to tailor the issue weapon to the lowest ST in a unit. And that's ST 10 for the land-based caliver corps or sailors and ST 11 for the Marines.

ST 12 and ST 13 weapons are still valuable additions, though, because there will usually be several big guys who can carry bigger weapons.

For most Low-Tech firearms, though, I don't have a very clear benchmark of how much MinST is a function of the Weight of the weapon and how much it's a function of the recoil. Usually, LT has lighter weapons have lower MinST, even if that would mean a pretty fearsome recoil. It is to be considered that MinST 10 apparently covers handling the recoil of anything up to a Charleville musket, i.e. the musket used by the French in the Napoleonic Wars and the emergent United States in the Revolutionary War, with a ca 500 grain ball at 800-900 fps.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

More importantly for the battle field they'll also be able to use 4d+2 pi++ muskets comfortably without rests (so like the lighter guns in the list were)

To be sure.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

And if you want them to be more like the historical Musketeer with a rest let them have that 5d+1 wall gun (or even something bigger).

To be sure, this is a role.

On the other hand, with REF 0.8 smokepowder, which explodes more energetically than black powder, it ought to be possible to get somewhat smaller balls to a higher velocity than typical black powder velocities. Which gives you more penetration for a given recoil impulse.

There is some pretty advanced math involved in determining at what velocity you're efficiently using your propellant and when increasing velocity costs you a disproportionate amount of extra propellant.

I haven't done any actual math, meaning anything with arcane symbols in it, but I'm pretty sure that with a REF 0.8 propellant, you have a higher velocity as the baseline practical value than with black powder REF 0.4 to 0.5 propellant.

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

What I think they actually end up with is more stuff like the fusils or flintlock carbine which will give you increased range and power over pistols in a package thats pretty handy for the ST12 solider (i.e the boundary between big long pistol and short handy long arm is pretty diffuse here)

Well, that's one role, but they have several different types of smokepowder troops. There are Marines that specialise in boarding actions, but can also fight as line infantry; caliver corps troopers that fight as line infantry; sailors and naval officers who have access to pistols and blunderbusses for boarding actions; a few naval marksmen who have a rifle; and a unit of slingers who shoot grenades. And the group of Giff mercenaries, now.

Future units will be elite riflemen who can both perform as scouts and fight as infantry; a military police unit for headquarter security; sharpshooters; scout/skirmishers; and the unit of female recruits, who will probably be sharpshooters as well. Selected Marines will be trained as sharpshooters as soon as they have rifles (in fact, some of them have already been using rifles owned by the ships and meant for use by naval ratings).

As an aside:

The Flintlock Carbine from LT is extremely attractive in terms of stats. I wonder why it gets so much better stats than everything else. It has a decent Dmg, but even though it is actually lighter than a heavy pistol once you subtract the stock, it doesn't have very high Rcl or MinST.

And it has Acc 3 as a smoothbore, higher than all the full-size muskets and equal to a Jaeger, Kentucky or a Baker rifle; which does suggest that all that rifling and longer barrel was a waste of effort.

Even when used as a pistol it is clearly better than all the other pistols, with Acc 2 and higher Dmg than all of them, but only MinST 10.

I would like to allow a weapon with the same design principle in my campaign, but I'd have to find some credible sources that the historical 1690s weapon really was that good before using the stats unchanged.