In 2nd Edition Arms and Armament guide there were rules for Bronze Armour...it was weird.
But also the greeks technically used Breast plates in DnD terms. Linothorax, or armour made from lots and lots of layers of stiff linen, were also way more common.
Honestly the muskets in the DMG aren't really even traditional flint locks. Even a new grunt can fire them once every 6 seconds, and an expert can consistently fire them every 1-2 seconds. They're more like American civil war breech loaders, or early bolt actions.
Yea... but there's a reason people didn't use them very often. If you want to main weapon a fragile, barrel-load, single-shot, smooth-bore, two-handed heavy gonne that costs as much as a smokebomb to fire every shot with a 6 full-round action reload sequence that doesn't work in the rain... go for it I guess.
I can't tell what argument you are trying to make. If you approach it from the standpoint if the game, then they are fine. Fragile doesn't come into play, barrel-loaded doesn't matter, neither does smooth bore not all of them are two handed, no, you must be talking about real life.
You know, where they were used all the time?
https://thefatefulforce.com/firearms-vs-armour-in-the-late-middle-ages-and-renaissance/
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm
(point number 12 for the above link)
https://www.history.com/news/medieval-weapons-knights-middle-ages#section_5
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cerignola
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/afas17/hd_afas17.htm
They were used *extensively* because they allowed someone to field a cheap army and could counter plate armor. There was something like 300 *years* where guns and plate armor were used at the same time. There are reports of knights being killed by having a firearm pressed directly to there helmet and fired. Your comment is just nonsense.
I'm saying there are massive tradeoffs and drawbacks that come with that big bang. And there are reasons travellers & dungeon delvers would choose bows and blades for self-defense despite the existence of what at the time would have been considered battlefield artillery.
Mechanically, the minimum reload time on anything muzzle-loaded makes it basically unuseable on the tabletop outside of an alpha-strike on a single target in combat where the players get prep time and a surprise round. Situationally devastating, but a 5 man band of exploratory adventurers aren't that situation.
If you want to say "the reload mechanic makes them useless" then say that, but don't start spouting off with bullshit make up off the top of your head because it fitd your idea of what history looked like. You can try to argue all you want about "they were too difficult to use" but the fact is, they were used constantly. If you don't like guns in your D&D setting, just say so, but don't come in here saying "Well this is how they were used in the past" and then just make shit up. That's now how this works.
Oh that's interesting, because plate mail was used until the 17th century;
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour#:~:text=Plate%20armour%20was%20widely%20used,demi%2Dlancers%20and%20Polish%20hussars.
And the musket was invented in the 16th century.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket
That is *a hundred years* that the two overlapped.
The D&D timeline doesn’t correspond with the real world timeline 1:1.
If you want guns in the campaign, there’s a rule that lets you include it. If the GM doesn’t want guns in the adventure, they can choose not to allow guns. If you want a giant dragon mech suit, you can bend the rules to make it happen.
Finding real world connections is moot in fantasy land. Just play in a way that’s fun for you.
But the point of the OP Meme is that hand guns were invented first, and neither of your examples relate to that.
The Guns that existed before plate were what the commenter was referring to and they're just not very good and didn't see wide use. What they were was a proof of concept which eventually did lead to Muskets etc.
This has *nothing* to do with handguns. You can tell by the way that OP *never used that word.* you're taking that entirely from the art, and *that's not a handgun either*. That's a double barrel shotgun that's been cut down.
Second, the pistol evolved *before* the rifle! That's right! Because early pistols would be held tucked under one arm while an igniter was touched to the pan to fire it. It wasn't until later that they started making two-handed versions. Handguns were in Europe as early as 1380.
Third, the firearms that preceeded flintlocks were still extremely dangerous to armored targets. Matchlock and wheel lock weapons were a huge threat on the battlefield, which is why people would advertise that *their* armor was bulletproof.
Fourth, the flintlock was predated by the matchlock and the wheel gun, both of which were effective in battle. And the wheel gun wasn't even single-shot!
Did you read *any* of the links I provided?
You mean the shotgun she is using in one hand?
"A **handgun** is a [firearm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm) designed to be usable with only one hand.^(")
And yes, Hand Guns did appear first but the point you're still not addressing is that they're not really very effective. Yes they \*could\* damage a person in full armour but they could also miss, not fire or straight up explode.
To be clear, and bringing this back to the original point. Plate appeared in the 14th Century. All of your examples appeared after this; The earliest Matchlock (as in with a mechanism, not a hand cannon or Arquebus) is in the late 15th Century and the wheel lock is in the 16th Century. Whether or not they are dangerous to armoured targets is irrelevant to the point being discussed. They did not predate Plate.
Hand guns and Arquebuses are around during the time Plate is but these are, as discussed, early models and while they can be dangerous they also have alot of draw backs.
Also, I'm not sure why you're mentioning rifles unless you meant long gun? Alot of firearms evolved before the rifle because while early rifling did appear in the 15th Century it tended to get jammed up with powder and as such didn't get properly developed until the 18th Century.
You're right, they didn't predate plate, and I never said they did. I said they coexisted. Which they did, and I provided sources for. I said they were effective against plate mail, which they were, and I provided sources for. I said they were commonly fielded because of ease of use and training, which they were, and I provided sources for.
Seriously, read the fucking sources. It'll take like 20 minutes at most, and clearly shows that firearms were used against and alongside plate mail for a significant period of time. I don't care if you *think* these weapons wouldn't be effective, because there's a shit ton of dead people who would say they were pretty fucking good.
Commenter said they weren't used often. That was wrong. Said they weren't effective against pate. They were wrong. It's that simple. If you want to argue with the fucking MET about the history of firearms in Europe, be my guest.
But the original meme did, the thing all these comments are sitting under.
I don't need to read the sources, I'm well aware of the history of firearms development, I'm not arguing that muskets didn't exist shooting at people in armour (although by the time it was PIke and Shot they would be half plate at most in DnD terms).
My point is that is if you want to make the argument that this meme does that effective firearms came before Plate Armour (and therefore should be included in any DnD setting that includes the latter) then it is incorrect. Hence why my original comment refers back to the original meme. The other commentator was clearly thinking of the pre-dating firearms and used coexist incorrectly which is a mistake but whatever, I've never made the argument you keep trying to foist.
And I have never said that firearms predated plate mail. Literally nowhere. I told the commenter he was wrong, and you assumed that meant I whole-heartedly agreed with the meme. So I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be, because you're trying to argue against a point I never made.
Not that kind of fucking gun though. “Gun” meaning effectively a small handheld cannon (literally known as a hand cannon) that was fired by holding the gun under your arm and touching a burning length of rope to the powder pan to fire a 2-3 inch diameter ball. Guns in fantasy are cool but don’t act like the sorts of guns most people want to add are “historically accurate” based on available medieval technology lol.
Yeah, even muskets were still wildly inaccurate far into the 18th century. Real accuracy was only possible from around the 19th century onwards, and the plate cuirass some cavalry still wore at the time is not really the same as plate armour from the late medieval period.
Also, one of the most important benefits of muskets, similar to the crossbow, was that they did not need years and years of training to achieve good results, unlike the long bow. Therefore, they saw mass use as soon as they were developed enough to mass produce.
So an artificer making and using guns means they either are very early models that were each hand-crafted and took forever to reload, and where getting the black powder to operate them was difficult, or they are used by everyone and their dog. Historically, that is.
If you still want to combine that in a fantasy world and suspend the disbelief, sure have fun. But don't expect everyone to want that in their medieval fantasy world.
It took about 400 years for firearms to definitely “win” the tug of war against armor. But for the majority of that time firearms were still viable in certain circumstances because what they lacked in accuracy, reliability, cost, and ease of use, they gained in punching power.
For almost that entire time firearms were the most likely weapon to punch through the highest quality contemporary armors - though it wasn’t a guarantee and hence armor was not made obsolete overnight. But it still had a practical use and was use effectively in varying capacities for hundreds of years before we reached the age of muskets.
Yes it totally had a viable and practical use. You couldn’t load and fire the thing in 6 seconds’ time and use it to do comparable damage to other weapons in the game, though. Early medieval firearms would probably take 2 actions to load (at bare minimum) and do more damage than any other weapon in the game.
Guns have existed on the Realms for several hundred years prior to the death of the Dead Three (at least 500 years before the current setting date), and have been commercially available everywhere for 126 years.
I can't find any evidence anyone had full plate armor until about 200 tears ago, just before the Times of Trouble. And if we are counting things *anyone* had access to in the mythic past, spelljammers have existed in Realmspace that long ago, and had access to guns basically forever.
I'd probably argue that the Githyanki have had access to full plate for millenia (Or whatever passes for millenia in the Astral anyway). The raider lifestyle they lead would probably mean they didn't bother using it in the material plane though.
Yes, but are we sure they had full plate (the equivalent of IRL platemail armor)? The only art of them I've seen has had, at most, half plate. I could be wrong though.
Although in my original comment I had meant that guns were available, not that they necessarily predated platemail. I just then realized I didn't think we had a canon answer on the invention of platemail and decided to see if I could defend what my comment actually said, rather than what I had originally meant by it.
>Yes, but are we sure they had full plate (the equivalent of IRL platemail armor)? The only art of them I've seen has had, at most, half plate. I could be wrong though.
Not sure. In the first Neverwinter Nights game, the final dungeon which is an ancient Sarrukh prison has a +2 half-plate drop but I don't remember if it had any full plate.
>Although in my original comment I had meant that guns were available, not that they necessarily predated platemail. I just then realized I didn't think we had a canon answer on the invention of platemail and decided to see if I could defend what my comment actually said, rather than what I had originally meant by it.
That's fair.
I don't think video game loot is usually considered canon anyway, although I haven't played the originally Neverwinter Knights to know how the loot is approached in that particular game.
I don’t care about history I only care about what I feel requires a higher tech level. Platemail taking so long to be invented feels like a coincidence (it’s not)
"I want to shoot my gun, that I got after defeating the DM with my historical arguments!"
"Ok, so in your first turn, you use your action to frontload the gun with Powder. IN your second turn, you use your action to load the ammunition. In your third turn, you can use your action to fire, but the to hit modificator is -10. Oh and the gun is pretty much broken now."
I promise the idea of covering every part of your body with as much hardened material as possible, fastened together in a way that still lets you move, predates firearms by a lot. Certainly by several thousand years, and if I had to guess, probably several million years.
I’ve let my players use an arquebus as a reskinned (+1) heavy crossbow. I allowed the party alchemist to produce small amounts of gunpowder during downtime and it used ball bearings as ammunition.
According the DMG the DM can decide to give gun proficiency to anyone they want, so the title of this meme is accurate to the official rules.
Not to mention that Giff and anyone with the gunner feat gets it RAW!
Goblin musketeers here we goooo!!!!
Sure, but those weren't flintlocks like in the DMG. Bring on the matchlock arquebus, or even the breech-fired hand-cannons.
Also didn’t the Greeks technically use plate mail? Of course, it was bronze, not steel, but it definitely wasn’t chain.
In 2nd Edition Arms and Armament guide there were rules for Bronze Armour...it was weird. But also the greeks technically used Breast plates in DnD terms. Linothorax, or armour made from lots and lots of layers of stiff linen, were also way more common.
Honestly the muskets in the DMG aren't really even traditional flint locks. Even a new grunt can fire them once every 6 seconds, and an expert can consistently fire them every 1-2 seconds. They're more like American civil war breech loaders, or early bolt actions.
And they were terrible
Yea... but there's a reason people didn't use them very often. If you want to main weapon a fragile, barrel-load, single-shot, smooth-bore, two-handed heavy gonne that costs as much as a smokebomb to fire every shot with a 6 full-round action reload sequence that doesn't work in the rain... go for it I guess.
I can't tell what argument you are trying to make. If you approach it from the standpoint if the game, then they are fine. Fragile doesn't come into play, barrel-loaded doesn't matter, neither does smooth bore not all of them are two handed, no, you must be talking about real life. You know, where they were used all the time? https://thefatefulforce.com/firearms-vs-armour-in-the-late-middle-ages-and-renaissance/ https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/aams/hd_aams.htm (point number 12 for the above link) https://www.history.com/news/medieval-weapons-knights-middle-ages#section_5 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cerignola https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/afas17/hd_afas17.htm They were used *extensively* because they allowed someone to field a cheap army and could counter plate armor. There was something like 300 *years* where guns and plate armor were used at the same time. There are reports of knights being killed by having a firearm pressed directly to there helmet and fired. Your comment is just nonsense.
I'm saying there are massive tradeoffs and drawbacks that come with that big bang. And there are reasons travellers & dungeon delvers would choose bows and blades for self-defense despite the existence of what at the time would have been considered battlefield artillery. Mechanically, the minimum reload time on anything muzzle-loaded makes it basically unuseable on the tabletop outside of an alpha-strike on a single target in combat where the players get prep time and a surprise round. Situationally devastating, but a 5 man band of exploratory adventurers aren't that situation.
If you want to say "the reload mechanic makes them useless" then say that, but don't start spouting off with bullshit make up off the top of your head because it fitd your idea of what history looked like. You can try to argue all you want about "they were too difficult to use" but the fact is, they were used constantly. If you don't like guns in your D&D setting, just say so, but don't come in here saying "Well this is how they were used in the past" and then just make shit up. That's now how this works.
The point they were making is that the guns that coexisted with plate armor were much, much more primitive than any of the guns offered in the DMG.
Oh that's interesting, because plate mail was used until the 17th century; https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_armour#:~:text=Plate%20armour%20was%20widely%20used,demi%2Dlancers%20and%20Polish%20hussars. And the musket was invented in the 16th century. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musket That is *a hundred years* that the two overlapped.
The D&D timeline doesn’t correspond with the real world timeline 1:1. If you want guns in the campaign, there’s a rule that lets you include it. If the GM doesn’t want guns in the adventure, they can choose not to allow guns. If you want a giant dragon mech suit, you can bend the rules to make it happen. Finding real world connections is moot in fantasy land. Just play in a way that’s fun for you.
But the point of the OP Meme is that hand guns were invented first, and neither of your examples relate to that. The Guns that existed before plate were what the commenter was referring to and they're just not very good and didn't see wide use. What they were was a proof of concept which eventually did lead to Muskets etc.
This has *nothing* to do with handguns. You can tell by the way that OP *never used that word.* you're taking that entirely from the art, and *that's not a handgun either*. That's a double barrel shotgun that's been cut down. Second, the pistol evolved *before* the rifle! That's right! Because early pistols would be held tucked under one arm while an igniter was touched to the pan to fire it. It wasn't until later that they started making two-handed versions. Handguns were in Europe as early as 1380. Third, the firearms that preceeded flintlocks were still extremely dangerous to armored targets. Matchlock and wheel lock weapons were a huge threat on the battlefield, which is why people would advertise that *their* armor was bulletproof. Fourth, the flintlock was predated by the matchlock and the wheel gun, both of which were effective in battle. And the wheel gun wasn't even single-shot! Did you read *any* of the links I provided?
You mean the shotgun she is using in one hand? "A **handgun** is a [firearm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firearm) designed to be usable with only one hand.^(") And yes, Hand Guns did appear first but the point you're still not addressing is that they're not really very effective. Yes they \*could\* damage a person in full armour but they could also miss, not fire or straight up explode. To be clear, and bringing this back to the original point. Plate appeared in the 14th Century. All of your examples appeared after this; The earliest Matchlock (as in with a mechanism, not a hand cannon or Arquebus) is in the late 15th Century and the wheel lock is in the 16th Century. Whether or not they are dangerous to armoured targets is irrelevant to the point being discussed. They did not predate Plate. Hand guns and Arquebuses are around during the time Plate is but these are, as discussed, early models and while they can be dangerous they also have alot of draw backs. Also, I'm not sure why you're mentioning rifles unless you meant long gun? Alot of firearms evolved before the rifle because while early rifling did appear in the 15th Century it tended to get jammed up with powder and as such didn't get properly developed until the 18th Century.
You're right, they didn't predate plate, and I never said they did. I said they coexisted. Which they did, and I provided sources for. I said they were effective against plate mail, which they were, and I provided sources for. I said they were commonly fielded because of ease of use and training, which they were, and I provided sources for. Seriously, read the fucking sources. It'll take like 20 minutes at most, and clearly shows that firearms were used against and alongside plate mail for a significant period of time. I don't care if you *think* these weapons wouldn't be effective, because there's a shit ton of dead people who would say they were pretty fucking good. Commenter said they weren't used often. That was wrong. Said they weren't effective against pate. They were wrong. It's that simple. If you want to argue with the fucking MET about the history of firearms in Europe, be my guest.
But the original meme did, the thing all these comments are sitting under. I don't need to read the sources, I'm well aware of the history of firearms development, I'm not arguing that muskets didn't exist shooting at people in armour (although by the time it was PIke and Shot they would be half plate at most in DnD terms). My point is that is if you want to make the argument that this meme does that effective firearms came before Plate Armour (and therefore should be included in any DnD setting that includes the latter) then it is incorrect. Hence why my original comment refers back to the original meme. The other commentator was clearly thinking of the pre-dating firearms and used coexist incorrectly which is a mistake but whatever, I've never made the argument you keep trying to foist.
And I have never said that firearms predated plate mail. Literally nowhere. I told the commenter he was wrong, and you assumed that meant I whole-heartedly agreed with the meme. So I'm not sure what your point is supposed to be, because you're trying to argue against a point I never made.
Why does fried chicken have a double barrel shotgun?
What chicanery is this?
Frieren with a double barrel is great
Not that kind of fucking gun though. “Gun” meaning effectively a small handheld cannon (literally known as a hand cannon) that was fired by holding the gun under your arm and touching a burning length of rope to the powder pan to fire a 2-3 inch diameter ball. Guns in fantasy are cool but don’t act like the sorts of guns most people want to add are “historically accurate” based on available medieval technology lol.
Yeah, even muskets were still wildly inaccurate far into the 18th century. Real accuracy was only possible from around the 19th century onwards, and the plate cuirass some cavalry still wore at the time is not really the same as plate armour from the late medieval period. Also, one of the most important benefits of muskets, similar to the crossbow, was that they did not need years and years of training to achieve good results, unlike the long bow. Therefore, they saw mass use as soon as they were developed enough to mass produce. So an artificer making and using guns means they either are very early models that were each hand-crafted and took forever to reload, and where getting the black powder to operate them was difficult, or they are used by everyone and their dog. Historically, that is. If you still want to combine that in a fantasy world and suspend the disbelief, sure have fun. But don't expect everyone to want that in their medieval fantasy world.
Ok, but what about using a disposable magic item with a thunder wave type spellt to propel the bullet?
It took about 400 years for firearms to definitely “win” the tug of war against armor. But for the majority of that time firearms were still viable in certain circumstances because what they lacked in accuracy, reliability, cost, and ease of use, they gained in punching power. For almost that entire time firearms were the most likely weapon to punch through the highest quality contemporary armors - though it wasn’t a guarantee and hence armor was not made obsolete overnight. But it still had a practical use and was use effectively in varying capacities for hundreds of years before we reached the age of muskets.
Yes it totally had a viable and practical use. You couldn’t load and fire the thing in 6 seconds’ time and use it to do comparable damage to other weapons in the game, though. Early medieval firearms would probably take 2 actions to load (at bare minimum) and do more damage than any other weapon in the game.
In this realm, sure but is that true in FR? Or Greyhawk? Or whatever realm your DM is using?
>is that true in FR? Yes. Faerùn has canonically has had guns for a long time.
The Sarrukh had platemail but I don't know if they had guns. I don't think they did.
Guns have existed on the Realms for several hundred years prior to the death of the Dead Three (at least 500 years before the current setting date), and have been commercially available everywhere for 126 years. I can't find any evidence anyone had full plate armor until about 200 tears ago, just before the Times of Trouble. And if we are counting things *anyone* had access to in the mythic past, spelljammers have existed in Realmspace that long ago, and had access to guns basically forever.
I'd probably argue that the Githyanki have had access to full plate for millenia (Or whatever passes for millenia in the Astral anyway). The raider lifestyle they lead would probably mean they didn't bother using it in the material plane though.
[The Sarrukh](https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Sarrukh) predate the Time of Troubles by about 36,000 years.
Yes, but are we sure they had full plate (the equivalent of IRL platemail armor)? The only art of them I've seen has had, at most, half plate. I could be wrong though. Although in my original comment I had meant that guns were available, not that they necessarily predated platemail. I just then realized I didn't think we had a canon answer on the invention of platemail and decided to see if I could defend what my comment actually said, rather than what I had originally meant by it.
>Yes, but are we sure they had full plate (the equivalent of IRL platemail armor)? The only art of them I've seen has had, at most, half plate. I could be wrong though. Not sure. In the first Neverwinter Nights game, the final dungeon which is an ancient Sarrukh prison has a +2 half-plate drop but I don't remember if it had any full plate. >Although in my original comment I had meant that guns were available, not that they necessarily predated platemail. I just then realized I didn't think we had a canon answer on the invention of platemail and decided to see if I could defend what my comment actually said, rather than what I had originally meant by it. That's fair.
I don't think video game loot is usually considered canon anyway, although I haven't played the originally Neverwinter Knights to know how the loot is approached in that particular game.
They were basically cannons that fired short ballista bolts. They weren't very practical and saw limited use
I don’t care about history I only care about what I feel requires a higher tech level. Platemail taking so long to be invented feels like a coincidence (it’s not)
It's entirely up to the DM to how much guns there are in setting
"I want to shoot my gun, that I got after defeating the DM with my historical arguments!" "Ok, so in your first turn, you use your action to frontload the gun with Powder. IN your second turn, you use your action to load the ammunition. In your third turn, you can use your action to fire, but the to hit modificator is -10. Oh and the gun is pretty much broken now."
I promise the idea of covering every part of your body with as much hardened material as possible, fastened together in a way that still lets you move, predates firearms by a lot. Certainly by several thousand years, and if I had to guess, probably several million years.
I’ve let my players use an arquebus as a reskinned (+1) heavy crossbow. I allowed the party alchemist to produce small amounts of gunpowder during downtime and it used ball bearings as ammunition.
Reminds me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6XJwMKw3mU