[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Nereidalbel

Shells aren't outside the realm of possibility, however. A bit of bamboo would serve quite well, actually. And if your shot is made of small enough pellets, you can get roughly the same penetration as solid lead, while causing considerably more internal injury.

I don't see why shells would be all that useful while the guns are still muzzleloading and the action either matchlock, wheellock or some form of magical action.

Paper cartridges are another matter, in that they decrease the time to reload muzzleloaders amazingly, and they have been adopted with alacrity among the PCs' men.

In any case, from a smoothbore, the ball has to be as close to spherical as possible for accuracy. Any deformation of shape, such as wax might be prone to, means that it's not useful at as long a range.

Minié and conical bullets haven't been invented yet and might not be for a long time. Until that time, replicating their shape with wax is unlikely to occur to anyone as an experiment worth conducting.

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Bows, crossbows and the like also are rather useful vs unarmored targets . . . . so likely not worth spending smoke powder on

At least not in the form of frangible slugs. Slung concussion grenades rigged to explode on contact, however, work amazingly well against massive creatures with high HP, but low DR. And for a crowd of un- or poorly-armoured human foes, there is always canister, grapeshot or fragmenting shell. It's worth spending the smokepowder if the alternative is to have pirate boarders swarm over the deck of a valuable ship filled with steel-torsion mechinical artillery, alchemist's fire, small volley guns, personal firearms and smokepowder.

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

There really needs to be a guns/crossbows default. When the state greatly liberalized crossbow laws recently many of my friends who had never touched a crossbow before bought them and had no issue going and hunting with them

Agreed.

Though I don't much worry about point value for NPCs and simply declare that a few days of familiarisation are enough make crossbowmen tolerable at shooting longarms, with a few weeks usually making them perfectly proficient. PCs and their point-valued Allies can spend earned points on Guns in only a few days of they have Crossbow.