Kalthoff Repeater [TL4]

[Phantasm]

Yes, this gun actually existed! It was a flintlock (occasionally wheel-lock) lever-action repeating black powder gun produced by a single family of gunsmiths from 1630 to around 1670. It is perhaps the only black powder repeating firearm to see use as a military firearm prior to the American Civil War, in service with Denmark from 1657 to 1696.

As a thought to making it available in my heavy-clocktech fantasy setting - though no doubt sold to adventurers and various cavalries rather than any infantry force - and lacking any kind of GURPS 4e Gun Design, I pulled out the GURPS (Classic) Vehicles's weapon design chapter and kit-bashed something together. I used the following switches: conventional smoothbore, low power, short barrel, and manual repeater, with a .40 caliber/10.16mm ball.

TL: 4
Weapon: Kalthoff Repeater Carbine, .40
Damage: 2d pi+
Acc: 2
Range: 90/800
Weight: 8.79/0.09
RoF: 1
Shots: 15 (2i)
ST: 9†
Bulk: -5
Rcl: 4
Cost: $685

Notes:
1. Requires a Ready maneuver between shots fired to work the lever. This Ready maneuver may be removed with a successful Fast-Firing roll.
2. The "(2i)" under Shots is for loading the ball into the tube magazine; it takes 10 seconds to refill the powder reservoir, which holds enough powder for 15 shots.


Reload is a complete guestimate. The Ready between shots comes from the wiki article of working the lever in 1-2 seconds; I figured a single second should suffice for my purposes. I also figured that the Fast-Firing technique (as described in Gun-Fu) should be suitable to make it a "free" action for a single shot, enabling the user to fire every round.


So, thoughts?

[johndallman]

Here's a Forgotten Weapons video on a closely related design. Watching that makes me think that the Malf rules on p. B407 should definitely be applied.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Phantasm

Y It is perhaps the only black powder repeating firearm to see use as a military firearm prior to the American Civil War, in service with Denmark from 1657 to 1696.

ts?

I'm pretty sure there were some Colts used in the Mexican-American War so that would be your date for "conventional" blackpowder repeaters.

There's also the Ferguson rifle experimented with around the the time of the US Revolutionary War.

.....and I see that John Dallman has already brought up the magic word 'Lorenzoni". There are others too.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Here's a Forgotten Weapons video on a closely related design. Watching that makes me think that the Malf rules on p. B407 should definitely be applied.

Well, that video would have helped at least a little with this _long_ argument I had several years ago with a person who had seen a still poicture of a Lorenzoni and was somehhow just sure that the lever on the side was effectively a crank and the thing would fire just as fast as you could spin the crank.

For that you actually need a Gatling gun......

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatling_gun

.....as the earliest versions pre-dated fully deveoped brass cartridges.

[Varyon]

Fascinating weapon. I typically favor using 5-round* revolvers (which I also have using a lever and a Ready between shots, this case for rotating to the next chamber) for repeating rifles in LT/Fantasy settings, but having something like this available at a higher cost could be interesting. In theory, the 1-2 seconds could suggest something like "takes 2 seconds to cycle, or 1 second with a successful Fast-Draw (Ammo) roll," so it's up to you if you want it to be 2 seconds by default (1 second with Fast-Draw, 0 seconds with Fast-Draw plus the Rapid Reload Perk) or 1 second by default (0 seconds with Fast-Draw; the Rapid Reload Perk is only useful for rapidly filling the magazines).

As for actually reloading (rather than cycling) the weapon, here's what I see as the typical breakdown (but note I'm basing this off the Lorenzoni pistol from the FW video). You need 1 Ready to move the lever out of its "rest" position and pop open the magazines. You would then typically take a Ready to grab a handful of bullets, and another Ready for each bullet to thumb them into the magazine one at a time. Once you're done there, you use a Ready to grab your powder flask (probably dropping the leftover bullets back into their pouch in the process), another to fill the powder magazine, and yet another to return the pouch to its original position. You then take a Ready to close the magazine and finish cocking the lever, and a final Ready to get back into a firing stance. That's a total of 7+S Readies, where S is the number of bullets you load. I feel Fast-Draw on its own would reduce this by about 3 Readies. Using the Double-Loading Technique would reduce it by a further S/2 - or you could have preloaded wooden tubes that reduces S to 1 (you draw the tube and pop off the top, then line it up with the opening and let the bullets fall through). A self-measuring powder flask (or whatever they're called, don't have access to HT or LT at the moment) may be able to justify shaving another Ready off, although I'd probably only have it do so if you succeeded at a Fast-Draw. So, with preloaded bullet tubes, a self-measuring powder flask, and a successful Fast-Draw, you could cut the time down to about 4 seconds - or 3 seconds if you have Rapid Reload - to go from "empty" to "full and ready to shoot again."

*This is for two reasons. First off, IIRC, with the weapon creation rules from Classic Vehicles, a 5-shot revolver weighs in at more-or-less exactly twice the weight of a muzzleloader (ignoring stocks and the like). More importantly, however, GURPS Low-Tech for 4e suggests that a weapon using black powder needs to be cleaned after every 5 shots or it starts to suffer from reduced Malf and Acc, as well as increased reload times - so restricting weapons to basically 5 shots per battle means you only have to deal with that if you fail to clean your weapon between battles.

[Pursuivant]

I've worked up some GURPS Stats for TL4/5 firearms in the past, including some attempts to stat out BP repeaters like the Lorenzoni.

I'd suggest Malf 16 for a repeater BP firearm kept in perfect repair. Reduce Malf to 15 for any breechloading mechanism which delivers loose powder to the firing chamber. Reduce Malf to 14 for any breechloader mechanism which delivers both powder and shot. Malf quickly drops with use, due to black powder fouling.

Without meticulous cleaning and maintenance, Malf and overall Quality quickly drop, since black powder played hell with the steel of the time and machining tolerances weren't good enough to get good seals between metal parts (even screws). Hot corrosive powder particles would gradually erode the seals, eventually causing loss of chamber pressure, blowback from escaping powder, or even catastrophic failure.

Critical Miss with any BP breechloader or repeater is likely to cause blowback, delivering 1d-3 HP of burn damage to the shooter's face. A bad Critical Miss might cause the weapon to explode, delivering half the weapon's bullet damage as explosive burn damage with 1d-3 HP of cutting shrapnel.

Other than that, the stats look good.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Other than that, the stats look good.

Except the price. The listed figure wouldn't be enough for even hypothetcal "mass produced" varieties. Only a gunsmith whose normal work would be Fine or even Very Fine could even attempt repeater work.

That's something you can see in the video link. The guns were beautifully made.

So price should have a 4x or even 19x CF. Probably soem more for Decorated too.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Except the price. The listed figure wouldn't be enough for even hypothetcal "mass produced" varieties. Only a gunsmith whose normal work would be Fine or even Very Fine could even attempt repeater work.

You're right.

I just looked at the combat stats, since GURPS 3E Vehicles prices are notional.

With few exceptions, any pre-1800 repeater or breechloader would be a custom job by a bespoke gunsmith, hence "if you have to ask you can't afford it" prices, and probably lots of decoration to make it obvious to everyone that it was made by a master.

So, 4x or 19x price would be more in line with historical reality, with Good- or Fine-Quality being assumed in the base design. (That is, the gun's already as good as it's going to get. No further quality improvement is possible, at least with TL4-5 machining and materials.) Maybe a further 2x to 5x cost increase for being a custom job and then a further 4x or 19x for decoration.

That said, the Kalthoff Repeater was designed as working gun rather than as a wallhanger and they were as close to mass-produced as you could get for 17th c. weapons. A gun in 0.40 caliber would be a reasonable weapon for small game or target shooting and the guns in the photos are often undecorated. So, no decoration, but required Good-quality workmanship for +4x cost = ~$3,500.

Taking a second look at combat stats, 2d damage is a bit generous, especially for a small game gun. Powder load was probably kept on the low side to reduce strain on the parts. Relatively low quality powder* typically available in the 17-18th centuries might also reduce effective muzzle velocity, hence range and damage. 1d+1 or 1d+2 might be more realistic, with perhaps a 5% or 10% drop in Max range.

A battlefield version would use ~.60 to .80 caliber balls and would do damage and have range roughly equivalent to the Brown Bess or Charleville muskets listed in High Tech.

*It didn't necessarily start off as low quality, but black powder is anything but shelf stable and variances in the ingredients and manufacturing process could make individual batches more or less powerful.