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Originally Posted by TheFred
Hmm, interesting question.
I can think of a couple of plausible hypothetical reasons. The main one is probably that I believe guns are (perceived to be) more deadly. D&D, Pathfinder, and in fact many games are set up such that getting hit in the face with a greatsword usually isn't fatal. This is ridiculous (in 3.5/PF you can fall from space onto pointy rocks and not die once you hit the mid-to-high levels) but it's mainly for gameplay and balance reasons, so it sort of makes sense. However, for some reason, this feels less tolerable for guns. We all know* that if you get shot, you basically just die straight away, whereas suffering a stab wound and carrying on at least for a bit does not seem so crazy, or even go all Boromir on them, running around bristling with arrows.
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I believe that asterisk is meant to lead to a footnote that reads something like "*And that's completely incorrect, guns don't actually work that way at all, and people are severely misinformed."
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I suppose this is a smaller part of a larger issue, which is (perceived) realism. Actually, in D&D 3.5, firearms are just the same as other projectile weapons. This makes Renaissance firearms a bit weak, but only because they are basically just crossbows. A musket is a 1d12 heavy crossbow with a 150ft range, though, which is hardly to be sniffed at.
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Except they have a way better critical, IIRC. (Nope, looked it up, that was Pathfinder.) Oh, and you lose out on attack rate and bow-specific feats and class abilities. (Multishot, rapid shot, etcetera.) This of course means they're ultimately inferior weapons in 3.5 to bows.
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But then how do you expect modern firearms to be balanced against slings and spears? They're just not comparable.
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Modern firearms, you wouldn't. But wide varieties of firearms were used at the same time as spears, and when modern-ish firearms came into being in the late 19th century, swords were still common weapons. That's about the tech level of my game, actually, which is why it matters.
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Furthermore, people expect firearms to work differently. People stopped wearing armour when firearms became big because it wasn't so much use, and we want the rules to reflect this. That's why PF firearms are touch attacks. However, that introduces massive balance issues because the game expects most attacks to target regular AC.
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This is actually false. Handheld firearms did not render armour obsolete. Armour didn't fall out of style for regular infantry until about 400 years after firearms were invented, and even when it did it wasn't because of handheld firearms anyway, it was because of the prevalence of artillery. Even after that point, armour never completely stopped being used with some very heavy uniforms being designed to resist sabres, knives and bayonets, officers and some cavalry wore breastplates until the Napoleonic era, and some cavalry continued wearing breastplates until cavalry became obsolete.
Early firearms actually had inferior penetration to other projectile weapons of their time, and that didn't change until the Renaissance. Later firearms were better against armour, but they didn't ignore it or render it obsolete, they just changed its design to focus more protection on the torso. Lighter armour was also eliminated in favour of cut and stab resistant coats, which you can't call armour but were still a protective garment.
Even in the early 20th century, personal armour did exist and did see some use, but it wasn't common and was not intended to stop rifle fire. Instead, it was intended to protect against close-quarters firearms such as pistols, shotguns and submachine guns as those would be the primary weapons when clearing trenches. In World War II these were far less common and the uniforms used by most nations (Germany being the exception) were no longer knife-resistant, but flak jackets (which are also a form of body armour) became far more common. Mobsters also wore very thick, multi-layered silk suits (which cost enough money to buy a car) that provided significant protection against handguns and shotguns.
After WWII modern-style bulletproof vests began to be introduced to regular infantry in increasing numbers. That process was slow going, but eventually reached the point where today body armour that is completely impervious to small arms fire is now standard issue in the militaries of developed nations. Which means that for the entire history of firearms, body armour has been in use, much of it specifically to defeat firearms, and was quite capable of defeating at least some common firearms that were present on the battlefield.
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Firearms also don't add damage based on Strength or anything like that. This means that a moderately strong person is still doing more damage with a greatsword than with even a modern firearm by 3.5 or PF rules.
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A greatsword doing more damage than a firearm makes sense. Guns, contrary to popular belief, don't actually inflict an especially lethal wound. The advantage of a firearm is range and ease of use, for later firearms also armour penetration and for modern firearms rate of fire. These are all things that are a factor in most game systems, so a gun doesn't need to have its damage be as high to be as good or better. It definitely helps, but that's not the weapon's main draw and it's only realistic with some firearms for them to deal a lot of damage and not with others.
Modern firearms are also not more lethal than historical firearms, the .78 calibre ball of a land pattern musket or "brown bess" is quite a bit more lethal than the wound left by an AR-15. Brown bess was known to rip arms off, they're not even remotely comparable. The thing that makes the AR-15 better is it's faster firing, more accurate and has longer range. Of course, that's also quite a bit more modern than anything in my game. Most people shot by it will survive if they're hit once, especially not right away (dying takes time, even with very large wounds), but it's still a life-threatening injury and you tend to be hit more than once when shot with an automatic weapon.
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Consequently you risk ending up with either firearms which are really good at the low levels (anyone can pick up a gun and deal 2d12 damage or whatever), firearms which are really bad at the higher levels (so with my 30 Strength and special bow, I can shoot an arrow dealing 1d8+10 damage, more than a bullet), or - usually - both.
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My solution to that issue was to allow for better, more sophisticated firearms later in the game as finances became available. If your 1st level adventurer can only afford a musket that was obsolete a century ago, but a 20th level adventurer has a blowback-operated rifle that's so state of the art it's only made by gnomes and they refuse to sell it to anybody, it's possible for them to only have weapons that are balanced at any given time. I also used weapon modifications and special ammunition to further this. As for how well it'll work, we'll find out.
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Originally Posted by Actana
Depends on the intricacy of the rules for weapons. There are plenty of systems where melee and ranged weapons have negligible differences, or no differences at all.
But for systems that go deeper into the differences of guns and melee weapons, there are several factors. "Realism" (or a misguided sense of) is a common cause.
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Yes, and I'm concerned I might not be able to do ANYTHING about that. If people think bullet wounds result in reliable, instantaneous death, nothing I can do is going to change that expectation if that expectation persists despite the fact that they're obviously, blatantly wrong and are incontrovertibly disproven on a daily basis whenever a shooting is covered on the news.
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There's a reason people don't hit each other with sharp sticks anymore. Guns are just better and more efficient at killing.
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Modern guns, sure, but not all firearms throughout history and not generally in terms of damage dealt. Most of the reason they won out over other weapons is once they were present, you had to risk a life-threatening gunshot wound to get into range with any other weapon and even so melee weapons are still standard issue in the form of combat knives and bayonets.
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Also, as far as I recall Star Wars Saga Edition did a decent job at balancing the two. Of course, it also has lightsabers so is it really accurate to compare.
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I've never played that game, actually.
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In general I think scifi games have a bit more effort put into them, whereas in many fantasy games guns are a curiosity or footnote mechanically.
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They have to. If melee weapons exist in a sci-fi setting as anything but a backup weapon, they need some explanation as to why. And if it's going to be anything other than a knife or a bayonet they seem to think it can't just be a backup weapon. (Nevermind that swords in particular were already a backup weapon, even in the medieval period, so clearly yes they friggin' can be.) And they also can't just be better because A: That makes no sense at all, and B: If they were, everybody would use them.